Get in Alignment to Transition and Lead the Next New Normal

KATHLEEN: Hello everyone and welcome to the Journey of an Awakening Spirit. This is Kathleen Flanagan, your host, and we're streaming on the Bold Brave TV Network. And because we're running a little late for various reasons, I'm going to forgo the introduction, but I am still going to use the tuning forks where I'm going to bring in love, light, and happiness that will set the tone for both.

KATHLEEN: Me and my guests so let's begin Today we have Amber Vilhauer and she is a books and business strategist, multi-best-selling author, speaker, and founder of NGNG Enterprises, which means no guts, no glory. She is an Inc. 5000 top marketing agency. Amber has helped thousands of entrepreneurs align their business with their core talents and desires to naturally scale revenue and impact.

KATHLEEN: She does this by implementing custom marketing strategies. Launching best-selling books, and growing engaged followings that convert. She is the author of Infinite Impact and the co-author of The Long Forest Trail with her son, Clay. Connect and learn more with Amber at ngngenterprises.com, booksandbusiness.com, and ambervillehoward.com. Welcome, Amber.

AMBER: Thank you so much for having me here.

KATHLEEN: You're welcome.

AMBER: The rest of the audience today, always.

KATHLEEN: Yeah. So anyways, I just want everyone to give you a little bit of background about Amber because it appears like she's not the kind of person that should be on my show, but she really should be on my show.

KATHLEEN: I've known Amber for over probably 12, 15 years now, somewhere in there. It's been a long time. And how I ever met that woman, I still don't know. All I know is I remember meeting her when I was launching my first book. I was actually in the process of having it launched and edited and everything through Judith Briles at Authoru. And I met Amber back then. And I think we both kind of fell in love with each other.

KATHLEEN: Just put it that way. We really liked each other. There was a connection there, not knowing what it was. And I've watched Amber grow in her business for years. And when she wrote Infinite Impact, and we're going to get into that. But when she wrote that book, I thought she was just going to send me a couple of chapters, and she ended up sending me the entire book.

KATHLEEN: And it was very much like my book, Dancing Souls, except for she's more business-related, very practical, absolutely amazing book to read. And I highly recommend it. And you know, guys, I don't recommend books or anything. I don't participate. But this is a definite must-read. So Amber, if you would, would you just tell the audience a little bit about your journey of becoming an awakening spirit.

AMBER: Yes, I would be honored to.

AMBER: It's interesting when we look at people online, we think we've got them all figured out.

AMBER: People might look at me right now and see my big smile and my poppy flower background. You know, make certain judgments. They see me walking out on stages and having this impact in the world, but that's not really where the story begins. I mean, I grew up suffering in silence to use your words, Kathleen, greatly and deeply suffering in silence.

AMBER: And my mom was a single mom. She was gone working all the time to provide a great life for us. I always felt loved. So that was never a question. But there was great loneliness. My older sister, I think, resented having to take care of me because she was a kid herself.

AMBER: And so there were a lot of door slams. There was a lot of distance and rejection. And I can't even blame her for it. I mean, she was just a kid herself, but to me, I was alone too much and I didn't receive enough of the love and nurturing that I really needed as a sensitive soul. And as I went into school, I didn't make friends.

AMBER: Nobody ever taught me how to make friends. So I just, I really, I didn't know how. And I became the weird kid in the schoolyard and that. Created more suffering and more of this feeling of rejection and loneliness. And it just kept compounding over the years, Kathleen, until by the time I got into high school, I got bullied.

AMBER: I mean, I was the one that would eat lunch in the bathroom stalls just to avoid conflict or getting sand thrown at me or being labeled a lot of names that were very confusing and hurtful. And it wasn't until I was 18 years old. That I got a job selling Cutco cutlery, which is high-end kitchenware.

AMBER: And that was what I would label divine intervention, Kathleen, because what business did I have having that job? I have no idea. But on the first day of training, I was sitting amongst about a hundred other college students. And on the first day of training, the trainer said, there are three types of people in the world.

AMBER: The first type of person is the person who sits on the fence watching everyone else. The second type of person is the person who dips their pinky toe into the pool to see how it feels. And the third type of person is the person who's going to jump in with both feet and cannonball into the pool.

AMBER: And Kathleen, I didn't know what the hell I was doing in a training seminar about to sell knives, but I knew I wanted to be that third person. I had to grow into that. And I chose that training opportunity as a moment to start my training. By the time I walked out.

AMBER: Did my first weekend, came into advanced training Monday morning. I was surrounded by applause. And I even looked around to see who they were applauding. And I guess it was me. And I had been one of the top sales reps in the whole training class that weekend without even knowing it.

AMBER: And in that moment, that was the first time in my life that I felt true belonging. And it changed everything for me. And that was the moment that I decided to dedicate the rest of my life to helping individuals in front of me feeling heard, seen, and valued. Because we all deserve that feeling. And I'm on a mission to make it happen.

KATHLEEN: I know I've heard your story a lot. And it's okay because, I'm the one that just started this. Decided to coin Suffering in Silence because when I followed your, how you chose to do the avatar, that's what came up for me when I was following what you were doing in your book as far as really marketing to me and who Jane was.

KATHLEEN: Because Jane is who my avatar is and she was somebody who did Suffer in Silence. She was the one putting on the show. She was the one out there making the world. Making changes in the world, has all the accolades, and nothing meant anything because she was messed up up here. She didn't know what was up here, always on the outside looking in instead of being up from the inside looking out.

KATHLEEN: And even though I have been on the spiritual quest and read all the books, it still didn't come inside because we weren't taught to look inside. We're not taught that at all. We're supposed to just go out there and do X, Y, Z, make a Mark in the world and die. But I felt that we were here for a bigger, grander purpose.

KATHLEEN: And I needed to know that I had to have some value in my life. I already knew I wasn't seen. I didn't want to be seen. Nobody wanted to hear anything I had to say. So I had no voice. So in my 20s, I had nothing to say because nobody wanted to hear it other than when I vomited because there was so much pain that would. Emote out of me when I finally couldn't take it and valued, oh, that was never anything there.

KATHLEEN: So I think when I first met you, I must've sensed that about you because I saw you, I heard you, and how you were showing up in the world was mind blowing to me because you've had that. Facebook thing figured out. And I was terrified of Facebook. And I'm like, how does she do this?

KATHLEEN: How does she know how to do, certain things? And, I know this is all going into the book and I'm going to try to like weave this in a little bit more because I think there's a lot of people out there that don't know how to weave like part of their personal self, their real self, because we put on masks. And we know that a lot of this has to do with not being in alignment.

KATHLEEN: And I described it last week on the show is we have different masks. We have a mask for work. We have a mask for family. We have a mask for friends. We have a mask for church, whatever it is. But we're never all together. So I want to talk a little bit more or have you describe what happened with you as far as you want to go.

KATHLEEN: It's where you want to go with it. And what brought you into this world of alignment?

KATHLEEN: Because it's key.

AMBER: Well, it's kind of a funny story in that when I was 16 years old, this is not the funny part. I'm going to lead with the not funny part. But when I was 16 years old, I had what I called my rock bottom moment. And it was a time where I chose to use my voice for the first time. And I was sticking up for a friend and I shared a secret that I wasn't supposed to share, high school stuff. You know what I mean?

AMBER: It was like her boyfriend was sleeping with another friend and I found out and I wanted to protect her by letting her know kind of thing, and it was the first time I used my voice and it did not end well. I ended up going to a party about a week and a half later where five girls stomped in.

AMBER: Asking where Amber was and proceeded to drag me out in the backyard and beat me up. They jumped me that night at a party that was set up for me. And I didn't even know it.

AMBER: And this was my punishment, for sharing the secret, which felt to me, it created this belief, Kathleen, that when I use my voice, I get punished. When I use my voice, I get jumped. When I use my voice, bad things happen. And when you form that belief as a kid, it has a natural impact on your worldview and what you do from there on out.

AMBER: And so then, I had the Cutco experience where I felt belonging. I went to a Tony Robbins thing where I broke through the board with my hand and broke through my limiting belief. And then all of a sudden I felt like, cool, got the hard, messy part of life out as a youngster. Like now, what am I going to do with the rest of my life?

AMBER: Now that I don't have to do the same stuff that I observed other people have to do, like midlife crisis and all of that. So that's the fun part is I had convinced myself that the hard part was behind me and that I was conscious and I learned from it. And I really did. I mean, I started making better decisions.

AMBER: I did the hard work. I went from failing out of classes my freshman year to graduating with honors. I turned my whole life around. I became. The responsible one. I started saving. I bought a house early on. Like I was really, I'd really convinced myself, Kathleen, that all was right in the world. And along the way in 2007, my company was born.

AMBER: And I also call that divine intervention because it wasn't anything I intended to do. People came to me and just, I started saying yes to their needs and the company was born. And over the years I've launched over thousand websites that I've designed. I had a team of as many as 37 people at one point.

AMBER: I've made a thousand authors, number one bestsellers. I hit awards. I got the badges, I did the things. And along that journey, I was really known as a books and business strategist. So if you had a book that you wanted to launch, if you wanted to build a brand online, you would hire me and I would give you the plan and the strategy and the training and support to be able to do that.

AMBER: And yet the deeper work that I was doing, Kathleen, the part that I didn't advertise online is I was getting people into alignment, except I just didn't know that that's what I was doing back then. I led people through this exercise called the avatar exercise that a mentor had shared with me.

AMBER: And traditionally avatar is taught as coming up with a whole demographic of an audience of people that you serve. And my challenge with that is like how I would market to a 35 year old stay at home mom is very different than how I would market to a 65 year old man who's retiring.

AMBER: This avatar exercise that we teach in alignment sessions allow one person to come into our imagination that represents the audience. My avatar is Heather, and this is one of multiple ways that I got my clients into alignment. So now fast forward, the other part of this story, which is a little bit shorter, is that in October of 2021, I can only describe it, Kathleen, like a nuclear bomb went off in my belief system.

AMBER: It was divine intervention times 100. And looking back on it, it was sort of the lesson of, Amber, you have built this castle around yourself, this magical fairytale land, convincing yourself that everything was good in the world. Everything is good, good, good. Nothing to see here, folks. Coping, baby.

AMBER: Hoping, not wanting to see the stuff that made me feel bad. And so I just put up those walls and I genuinely thought everything was fine, fine, fine, fine until it wasn't. And it literally took what felt like an asteroid destroying my construct for me to look around. And when you back a human being into a corner and they don't know who to believe or what is real anymore, that's scary.

AMBER: That's what happened to me. And luckily, a guardian angel dropped in out of nowhere and held me in this space for the last two and a half years and helped me to identify just how many narcissists I had surrounded myself with and just how many of them had been gaslighting me and manipulating me and keeping my light small because it threatened me and because they wanted to take it for themselves.

AMBER: And when I looked around at all of the people that I thought I was in this genuine, loving, mutually reciprocative relationship, it turns out that that's not at all what it was like.

AMBER: It was like me doing enough of that work for both of us and pouring in and pouring in and pouring into everybody else, ignoring me because I had no self-trust and self-love. Because nobody ever taught me what that even was, let alone how to get it. And so I just gave my power to anybody that would take it. Anybody that would save me, just like that night when I was 16, wondering who would save me.

AMBER: And it's been this theme, I'll end here, of I have to save me. And so I really did the work. I rebuilt a lot of my programming, a lot of my beliefs. I removed a lot of... Relationships in my life that were very difficult to remove, very painful.

AMBER: And it's a story of freedom, of self, of learning what self-trust and self-love means, and then being able to open up instead of being guarded and hiding in my castle and choosing a life of being open and self-expressing the real me, not the compartmentalized hiding me, but the real me. And that's who you get to see today. And that's in part, I would say, what this book is about and the process of alignment.

KATHLEEN: Well, I know that that part, I'm sure you did a lot of questioning of who is Amber.

AMBER: Yeah.

KATHLEEN: What does Amber think? How does Amber feel? What does Amber have to say in the world? Because you cannot break a wall like that and wonder who the hell you are. And I know what that's like because I went through that in Chicago when everything was blowing up in my face. I mean, I remember calling my mother on her birthday and she didn't know I had moved to Chicago at that moment.

KATHLEEN: And I decided to finally tell her. And I became a bitch at that moment. And she hung up on me. And she was not happy when she found out that I was there. Because I was thinking, my God, she's going to be proud of me. I put my big girl panties on and I made a decision all by myself.

KATHLEEN: That was how I felt about it because I always felt small around my family. And I wanted to be like, I made it, mom. You know, I'm 40 some years old or 50, whatever it was when I moved out there. And I wanted to be like, be proud of me. And that was anything but my mother felt.

KATHLEEN: And that was a very hard realization to realize that not only did I upsert my life and I'm making these massive changes and I'm literally all alone in this apartment, little 600 square foot place. Was the perfect size because anything bigger than that, I think I would have gotten lost in the space. So I needed to like really downsize, so to speak.

KATHLEEN: And I think that's a beautiful way that spirit does for us, even though we don't think it's fun at the time, it's actually one of the most beautiful gifts we could ever receive from spirit. So, what were some of the steps that you did to start coming out? And discovering who Amber really is? And what did you do to come out of that dark place? Because I know it was dark.

AMBER: It was very dark. It was very hard.

AMBER: I mean, I feel like at least the first year and a half, it just felt like a never ending hurricane. And that's a long time to feel like you're stuck in the middle of a hurricane. I mean. The days become weeks, the weeks become months. And after many, many, many months, you start to wonder, like, are you ever going to get out of the valley? Did you just make up the valley? Are you hysterical?

AMBER: Like, did you make up this idea that it could be anything but a valley? You know, it was like, you get a little lost in that.

AMBER: Because it was my whole life had to be addressed. Such a simple thing, but a very, very... Eye-opening thing for me was I had a friend who suddenly lost his wife and he was grieving and he had already booked this trip to New Orleans. And I guess he and his wife used to frequent there and buy a bunch of art.

AMBER: And he was really into art. And I remember that's kind of the basis of where our friendship even began because I was invited to a dinner party at his house. And when I walked in, it was like an art. Gallery. And I had forgotten that in college, I was a junkie for my art history class.

AMBER: I mean, it was just a random elective or something that I took, but man, it was the most, I'd been alive. And now fast forward all of this time later, he introduces me to art again, and I'm admiring it from a distance. And then his wife passes, and then he's supposed to go to this trip to New Orleans. And I was just getting off of a separation, a divorce.

AMBER: And he asked me like, hey, if we have separate hotel rooms and everything, would you come with me so that I don't go alone on this trip? Because I'm afraid I'm just going to grieve my wife the whole time. And I said, I'd be happy to go. And he was a very wealthy man. I mean, he would walk into these art galleries and people would stop what they're doing.

AMBER: Oh, Mr. So-And-So, like, hello, let me escort you here. Can we get you a glass of champagne? And I'm like, who is this guy? Like, what is this? Why is this so funny? And there was a time though, in one of the art galleries that I saw this painting of these aspens and it was so colorful and vivid and beautiful.

AMBER: And it made me cry, Kathleen. And I just was mesmerized looking at this art and these colors. It's just like it hypnotized me. And I had to have it, even though the painting was $3,500, which was all the money in the world at that moment when I was getting a divorce and everything, all the stuff in your head.

AMBER: Well, it didn't stop there because the next art gallery we walked into, I saw the $15,000 painting. And then I went into another one and saw a $5,000 photograph that I just had to have. And it was the most expensive trip of my life by far. And I walked out of there and there was a part of me saying, what in the world did you just do? But in hindsight, I look back and you know what, Kathleen?

AMBER: I put these paintings up on the wall and every day I almost bow in reverence to them because it's a mirror for the truth of who I am. And when I reflect back, when I was in my marriage, I never cared about painting walls.

AMBER: All the walls were white and all of the artwork we had was like Brown drab, but you know, prints that you would get it anywhere cheap. I never cared. And I said, oh, I don't care. You make the decision. Priding myself on how low maintenance I was.

AMBER: And really this was one of those moments where I just was lost and like, oh my gosh, that's who I am. I had forgotten that after the art history class, I had gone, taken lots of art classes and I had created all of these pieces of art myself. And I had a whole wall in my home that I called the Amber Wall and it was all of my artwork.

AMBER: And when I met my ex-husband, he didn't like it very much. And when we moved houses, my art wall kind of went to the back of the house. And then when we moved again, my art wall got packaged up and hasn't left the portfolio ever since because he didn't really like it. And I just thought, well, okay, that's fine. Low maintenance, Amber prided myself on that.

AMBER: And then the Brown artwork went up and it's just, I can see how I gave away my power and I lost who I was completely. So even in such a seemingly small moment, that was Epic for me seeing the colorful artwork. Kathleen was like, Oh yeah, there she is. Something in there and buying that artwork. Was an act of self-love. And I thought, oh, this is, I'm onto something here.

AMBER: This is how you nurture and love yourself. And when you nurture and love yourself, like all of the things change in your life. And now fast forward, I have a purple wall. I've got colorful art everywhere. I've got twinkle lights everywhere. Everywhere I look around, it's me. And I feel so free and so energized and loved.

AMBER: Every single day because I'm nurturing myself. And then because I'm nurturing myself, that emanates out to everyone around me. And it's so healing for everybody. So that's kind of the deeper alignment where it comes through a series of steps. We talk about in the book and other places, but it's so beautiful what life can be like on the other side of that damn valley.

KATHLEEN: I love that. And we're going to go ahead and take a quick commercial break.

KATHLEEN: Welcome back everyone to the journey of an awakening spirit this is Kathleen Flanagan your host and we're streaming on the Bold Brave TV Network and I have Amber Vilhauer in the house with us today so I want to talk a little bit about your art and color because I got into that when right at around 30 I had a Not such a nice guy in my life, but he just seemed to know how to spend my money for me.

KATHLEEN: And anyways, but I got into art. I love art and I have art and it's very colorful. It's contemporary. So anybody could see, look at it and they create their own interpretation of it. And I remember when I finally, when they showed me this one piece and I was like, I did, that's all I could do was it takes like half a wall. I mean, literally it's so heavy.

KATHLEEN: And I just sat there and said, I'm getting it. I don't know where I was going to cough up $2,000 because that was a lot of money, 37 years. Yeah, it's a ton. But I was going to have it. And I got it. I got the art. And I got several other pieces. And I became friends with a friend. It was Aaron Art Studios down in Larimer Square back in the day. And it was like I just fell in love with art.

KATHLEEN: But what was so interesting that when I was going through all of my stuff in Chicago, and I didn't have a whole lot of walls. But I always had room for my art. I go in a house and it's like, okay, my art doesn't fit next because it was going to go on the walls. You know, that was just the bottom line. But I found so much solace in that.

KATHLEEN: And then as I got rid of like my mother's stuff after she died, like her furniture and whatever else I had of my mother's, and I brought me into my home. And I understand when it's, this is me and I have color everywhere. Everywhere. So if I have gray walls or purple walls, but basically gray, I take a lot of color and accent everything in color. So I mean, they're just bright reds and vibrance.

KATHLEEN: That's why your picture behind you is like, ah, she should see my house because color just makes me feel alive. And I know that that's part of that whole alignment, but I never looked at it like you just said about being in alignment, but I was coming further into alignment by doing that. So let's get into the next phase of how your book was birthed. Great.

AMBER: I call it divine intervention again.

AMBER: It's funny, being the book launch director for 20 years, people have been saying, Amber, when is your book coming out? And I say, yeah, yeah, it's coming. It wasn't for lack of effort or dumping lost money into the concept, but it just never really worked out for one reason or another.

AMBER: The book that I thought I was going to write is how to launch your book and grow your business online, because that's what I've been doing for my whole career. And I've been getting this nudge, all throughout last summer and into the fall of, you got to dump the last. Two decades of your career into a book. You need to dump it somewhere because you're moving on.

AMBER: And I'm like, what am I moving on to? And there was no answer. So I just, in December, I sat down to try to write the book and man, it was a miserable existence. It wasn't coming out. I was super frustrated. And I had just come off of this, last few years of a lot of stuff, the growing and the healing and all of that.

AMBER: So on January 1st, I thought, I'm not going to write the book this year and that's okay. You know, you can only do your best. And so I'm going to take this year. And for the first time in my life, I'm going to be selfish and I'm going to put the business on autopilot and I'm just going to cruise and heal and go out to my cabin in the forest and just be.

AMBER: And by January 7th, divine intervention hit. And the message was, you are writing this book. And it needs to be done by April 3rd because I had an in-person event planned. And I said, no, I'm not doing that. And it was like, you're doing it.

AMBER: And I was like, I don't want to do it. And it's like, you're doing it. And so I sat down and I was pissed, Kathleen, I'm not an angry person, but I was pissed. I did not want to do this right now. And yet I know better than to ignore my intuition and that voice of God with them. So. I said, fine. All right.

AMBER: Of the thousands of people that I've spoken to in the last 20 years, what do they all have in common? And the message dropped in and said, they were all out of alignment. And I was like, out of alignment? What does that even mean? I don't even think I've said that in my whole life. How do you get people in alignment? Silence. Hello?

AMBER: I'm not kidding. I wish I could say it were a different story, but this is genuinely how it happened. And so I'm sitting down at my computer and all I knew is that my production team that needed to type set the book and get it up on Amazon and all of that. They said, I need the final locked manuscript in seven weeks.

AMBER: No more changes. Now I had never written a book before in my life. I didn't even know how to write a book and there was no time to learn. And single mom, CEO. I got sick for three weeks. Jason was gone for over two weeks. So I had Clay by myself for two full weeks in the middle of all of this. And I had to pop this book out that I didn't even know what was coming.

AMBER: And so, as I mentioned, I look back and realize that the deeper work I did for clients while I'm launching their books and website and getting their brand online is I actually really was getting them into alignment. Well, how did I do that? One was by helping them identify their avatar. One person they were doing this for. And when I taught that, it helps them to overcome their resistance to visibility.

AMBER: Visibility of when I'm seen and heard, bad things happen. And a lot of people have that core belief that's outdated from when they were kids. So I thought, okay, well, that's interesting. That's part of it. And I also think that you need to know your core values as your guardrails to kind of keep you in alignment. So I had two pillars down and then I thought, well, you have to know where you're going.

AMBER: So you need vision, but I don't like the way that vision has been taught. I want to help 10 million people in the world. Like what? Where does pick a number out of the sky? Sure. That sounds good. That's literally how most people come up with their vision. Kathleen is they just pick something random that means nothing to them.

AMBER: It's awful. And I'm like, why? It's 2024. Why are we still doing this? So I realized in January that what if instead of some big vision that we may never achieve in our life, what if we could achieve our vision every day? Well, my purpose was always to help individuals feel heard, seen, and valued. So maybe that was my vision all along and I never really knew it.

AMBER: And what if I could teach other people to come up with this micro vision in service to their avatar? Okay, I'm onto something, but there was something missing and I knew it. I could feel it, but I didn't know like intellectually what the thing was. And I remember weeks going by frustrated, not knowing what this missing piece was, Kathleen.

AMBER: And all of a sudden, one day in pure aggravation and tears, it dawned on me. For so long, I had been around the narcissist, right? And so one of the biggest things for me is how do you know what's real and true in the world? Because, people that gaslight you get you really confused.

AMBER: And I learned last summer that in order to discern if somebody is being honest with me, and this is a real relationship, there must be giving and receiving. There must be mutual reciprocation. And I thought, well, interesting. You know, we're not really taught that as entrepreneurs.

AMBER: We're givers. We don't like takers. And so I realized that that was the missing piece, that in vision, you're always giving to humanity. And when you really look at how why is traditionally taught, it's because you want to be in service to humanity. So it's all giving, giving, giving.

AMBER: And yet we are over here wondering why we don't feel fulfilled at the end of the day and why so many entrepreneurs are in burnout. It's because they're not receiving. So I thought, what if your vision is how you're in service to humanity and your why becomes how that is in service to you?

AMBER: Meaning if Kathleen, my vision is to help you feel heard, seen and valued, then in return, I will feel heard, seen and valued by your reaction. And that's going to feel very fulfilling and good in the world. And instead of pushing back that beautiful moment to receive, what if I could just fully embrace it?

AMBER: Embrace it, my talent, my capability, me, well, then my own needs would be met inside. And I would have much more energy to then help more people. And as long as that comes back to me and I receive it, well, then I have even more energy to give to more people. And I feel incredibly fulfilled. I feel free and I never run out of energy. I mean, if people ask all the time, what the hell do you take?

AMBER: You know, you've so much energy. How could you be on back-to-back Zoom calls for 13 hours a day? I would hate that existence. Not me, because every moment I just get more energy and more energy. If anything, my challenge is how do I calm down at the end of the day? Because I just feel like I could go forever because my spirit is so abundant.

AMBER: And that is the process for alignment that came through to me while I was writing the book, then got 15 beta readers, two editors. Had to rework the beginning. It was all just coming so fast while working and taking care of Clay. Hit my deadline. Had the books in hand at the event. Launched it in May. In June, people said they wanted to get certified to do alignment sessions.

AMBER: By July, I'm certifying people. And now it's like I spoke on a stage in front of 2,000 franchise owners in July. I'm getting more keynote requests and workshop requests and one-on-one requests. And it's just coming out of the woodwork. And this was the year that I wanted to take off and just put me on autopilot.

AMBER: I didn't have a choice.

KATHLEEN: Oh, God, I know. So, people, I'm going to tell you something right now. Okay, Amber started this process, even though she didn't start the book. I was going through the David Bayer whole human framework.

KATHLEEN: I had my avatar the way she described the avatar. Didn't know that then, but I did. And I did a manifesto. And then I did. I knew what my core values were, but I never really put them in. And Amber talked about it, and I created a soul vision.

KATHLEEN: Which is a little bit bigger than what Amber's doing here. But what she's doing is beautiful because it is part of a soul vision. It's just a smaller piece to make it manageable. And what was so interesting about that when she talked about the core values and bringing it into my business, it was like, that's the missing piece for me.

KATHLEEN: I didn't know how to bring that into business. And I'll never forget because I had this VA at the time and he just would go rogue. And I thought, okay, my core value, one of them is integrity and this guy is not in integrity ever.

KATHLEEN: And I pulled out the contract and he didn't do one thing in his contract. Not one, not one. And that was it fired. So I sent him, he said, you're fired. And all of a sudden it's like, oh no, we can make this work. It's like, oh no, you don't understand.

KATHLEEN: You're a liar. You don't have integrity. And that was the first time it wasn't, oh, I feel bad. And what if I'm doing that? I didn't do head trash anymore.

AMBER: Yeah.

KATHLEEN: That was huge for me because this head trash and people and paying them. There's this weird sense of responsibility that we have when we do that. So we want to make sure that, and I wanted to stay in alignment and stay in integrity with myself. And that was the big game changer for me. And yes, folks, I became one of her certified guides because it just went along with everything I'm doing.

KATHLEEN: And it is an amazing process. I will say that. It's absolutely amazing. It's definitely divinely. Guided. When you follow this script and we follow it to the letter, you actually see things change. You see people change. A light bulb goes off every single time. And it doesn't, you don't know when it's going to go off, but it will go off. And you can sit there and you can have, the walls are up.

KATHLEEN: I've done all this. I know how to do this, but you haven't done it this way. So. Exactly. Open mind. And when they say they will have an open mind, everything changes. And it even works for the serial preneurs, because I have several other companies, too. And, you know, when Amber said that and I was like, she's actually right about this.

KATHLEEN: I could have been using Jane for this and this and this and this because I've been saying it, but not knowing how to do it and taking individual products and thinking I had to have. Individual avatars, how many people think like that? The world thinks like that. And that's not the case. So I want to turn it back over to you, Amber, because I just want people to understand there is something behind what Amber created here.

KATHLEEN: And I'm a very strong proponent of it. And I don't need Amber to do this, but because it's so powerful and it's the most incredible alignment exercise I have ever taken. Because when I get her, when I did it for her and she's like, comes back and goes, oh, wow. And I'm like, what is she wowing about? I didn't even have a clue.

KATHLEEN: So I went through and read it and I went, oh my God. And then it was like, and then I'm talking to my coach about it. And then it was like, oh, she suffers in silence. And that's what dropped for me. So even though I may have had all these things, I'm not above anybody. You know, I can learn from anyone. And it just brought so much more cohesiveness to what I was doing.

KATHLEEN: And then it was like I was able to refine my message more. So it doesn't matter where you are on your path in your business. I think everybody could use this because it brings a clarity of vision that most people are unaware of.

AMBER: Yeah, there's a congruence. Assessment that's in the book. And you can go to infinite impact book.com and scroll down about 20% of the page. And there's a button, a gold button that allows you to get the full color PDF for free. You don't have to opt in. I don't need anything from you. Just grab the book.

AMBER: But there's a congruence assessment inside that you can take to see, am I in alignment? Am I out of alignment? How is that showing up in my life? And some of the indicators that you might be out of alignment would be if it just feels like something is off. You know what I mean? Like there's just some blind spot.

AMBER: It's like there's just something going on and I don't know what it is and I don't know how to find it, but something feels off. You might be out of alignment. If you find yourself in this rut of making similar mistakes or finding yourself in similar conflict over and over and over again, you might be out of alignment.

AMBER: If you feel resistance in your life, like I really want to ask her out, but I don't really know if I should, or I really want to make those phone calls and I really want to make this offer, but gosh, I don't know if I should. If you talk yourself out of things, it's like this constant forcing of yourself and exhaustion and pushing and pulling and grinding and forcing.

AMBER: These are signs that you might be out of alignment. And in terms of getting into alignment, I mean, the book outlines it. There's writing prompts, there's troubleshooting. I give you all of my very honest answers when I did the alignment as I was writing the book. So you have a friend in me.

AMBER: You really can go through it yourself. It's just that it is harder work when you're going through stuff yourself because your resistance bubbles up and you want to put it away, but then you're, you're like compelled to keep going. And it's like, you're wrestling with yourself and you're second guessing yourself.

AMBER: And when you do these alignment sessions, like, please, please, I beg you to hire Kathleen and just experience it. I don't care who you are, what walk of life you have. It doesn't matter. I've done this for young adults. I've done this for couples. I've done this for entrepreneurs, non-solopreneurs, nopreneurs, people that don't have a job at every stage of life between 17 and 75, on big stages everywhere.

AMBER: Thousands of people have gone through this experience now. So it's literally for everyone. Traditionally taught for business because when you can focus in on the one person you wanna serve and you know the exact, vision you have for that person and the language to use to connect with them.

AMBER: Well, can you imagine the power that you now have in your marketing and sales? Like your results come so naturally that it almost doesn't even feel right and fair because it used to be so hard before, but now it's like, it's just, it tracks in so effortlessly. And on a personal level, like once you see your alignment, you can't unsee it.

AMBER: It's just done. Unless you have some massive life trauma that totally changes you, it doesn't change. So even as an individual, it just drops you right to the truth of who you really are. And you can see it so clearly, like all of the drab paintings and the white walls and everything just fade away.

AMBER: And it's like, oh yeah, that's who you are. And then it's just a matter of being that in the world. And when you have that, it's so easy. It's so easy to just be your natural self and you have more energy. You have more connection with people because you're not so guarded and bitter.

AMBER: And it's like everything becomes available to you. It's actually quite magical. And so Kathleen can do that for you in 90 minutes. Just reach out to her on her contact page and experience it for yourself because it's pretty, it's life changing. It just is. And what a gift.

KATHLEEN: It is very much life-changing. And I know that your books and business is sold out, but I'm going to make a plug for it anyways, because you're going to be doing more.

KATHLEEN: And Amber invited me to attend her books and business in April. And I know that I talked to you guys a little bit about my experience there. And it was magical. And this is when she launched her book. And I'm sitting there and who I am, and I'm around all these business people. And I'm like, I don't know you people. I don't even have businesses quite like you.

KATHLEEN: I mean, I was uncomfortable, but I showed up and I just brought everything I had to the table. I really went out of my way. I introduced myself. She got us all on stage, which I think was one of the most beautiful things because then I got to know everybody in the room and all of a sudden you're friends. And so when I say Amber. Knows how to bring people together.

KATHLEEN: She knows how to bring people together. And we all made connections in a way that were very powerful and very dynamic. And I have never, ever been to an event like this in my life. And I'm telling you that the next time she opens it up, I highly suggest you guys go. So we're almost at the end of our time, Amber. So how could people get a hold of you?

AMBER: I mean, I'm literally everywhere. So whatever your channel of choice is, but, ambervillehauer.com. I know that's kind of a rough last name to remember and spell. So you could do NGNG Enterprises or books and business.com. Find me on Instagram.

AMBER: And honestly, I'm so easy to connect with. I would really love to know who you are. I'd love to know what resonated with you. I'd love to know how you're hiding. I'd love to know what your alignment is. I'd love to know what you thought of the book.

AMBER: I'd love you to share your story with me because I'm here for genuine connection and impact. I'm not here for transaction and ego and surprises, like the bad kind of surprises. So yeah, I just, let's build a relationship. Let's see where it goes.

KATHLEEN: I want to thank you so much, Amber, for being on the show. It's been a- pure honor and blessing to have you in my life, even though we haven't, we've been watching each other, so to speak over the years, but to make this real revamp, the connection has been amazing. It's just been.

AMBER: It's just so heartfelt for both of us.

KATHLEEN: Yeah. It's just been, I've just grown so much because of this, just this added piece that you brought to it. And then being introduced to your community and building friendships and foundational work with people that I've never thought I would ever meet. And it's just an honor to know you. And I'm so grateful that you were on the show.

KATHLEEN: And I want to thank everyone for watching the show. And if you got anything out of the show at all today, please like, and subscribe to the show. Amber's contact information will be in the show notes. And that concludes us for today. And And from my heart to yours, I hope you guys all have a fabulous week.