We recently connected with Mitzi Campbell and have shared our conversation below.

Mitzi , appreciate you joining us today. What’s something crazy on unexpected that’s happened to you or your business

I love serendipities and every time I have a “Wow! That just happened!” moment, I feel like I could burst with gratitude. One of the most rewarding things about podcasting is that I get to have meaningful conversations with people I admire, many of whom are well known. I had a full-body-chills moment when I ended up with someone from “The Secret” on my show. I belong to a business networking group (something I highly recommend to my fellow entre+solo+preneurs) where Dr. Joe Vitale was a guest speaker. We were allowed to ask questions and there was a contest that the person who asked him the “best” question would win one of his books. I won the contest! I was thrilled and thought that was that. A couple of weeks later, I got a package in the mail. Inside the package was not only one book, but two! Dr. Joe had sent me a bonus book, entitled, “Unexpected Kindness” as an unexpected kindness! I put the books aside and started to throw out the envelope when I noticed a return address sticker. It was the kind of sticker you get in the mail as a free gift from an animal charity looking for donations, pink with a fluffy gray cat face on it, along with Dr. Joe’s return address. It reminded me of my childhood and made me smile and I thought, “He’s old-school. Let me send him a hand-written thank you note.” I can’t tell you the last time I sent a thank you note in the mail, but I instinctively knew it was the right thing to do. In the note, I took a chance and invited him to be a guest on my podcast, leaving him my contact information. About a week later, I got an email from Dr. Joe accepting my invitation. He scheduled right away, and we had an amazing conversation where the energy was off the charts. He was so gracious and gave me high compliments on my interviewing style and the whole experience was beyond my expectations.
But it was this crazy bit of serendipity that is the best part! As I prepared for the interview a few days before we were scheduled to speak, I pulled out the book, “Unexpected Kindness” and read it for the first time. It turns out that the entire premise of that book, the book I had not opened until AFTER I sent the note and Dr. Joe booked with me, is about sending hand-written notes to people you admire. I kid you not! I did, without knowing, the exact thing that Dr. Joe writes about in the book he sent me. He has a hundred books. He could have sent me any one of them. But he sent that one. And that is why he said, “Yes” to me. This experience remains the top “this is why you listen to your intuition, Mitzi” moment in my life and it still gives me goosebumps!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My official degrees are in education and psychology. Unofficially, I’m a clair-sentient half-brit free-nester with a low tolerance for small talk and an intense curiosity about other humans aiming to do nothing less than raise the collective consciousness.

For decades, I worked as a professor teaching all things, English and Writing and I loved working with 20-somethings; it kept me on my pop-culture toes! I had been feeling “the itch” that I was meant for something more, but I didn’t scratch it. So the universe decided to move my hand. I woke up one morning and as I sat up, everything began to spin. I was caught up in a vortex. I closed my eyes and laid back down. I tried to get up again, and again I was thrown into a whirl. This was the beginning of a two year long unexplained neurological nightmare, aka… my healing journey. I tell my health story on Episode 100 of The Blessons Podcast, my show, but in a nutshell, spiritually speaking, if you don’t get the message about taking your life in a different direction, the universe will make you move. Sometimes it has to hit you over the head with something serious to make that happen. Medically speaking, disease doesn’t just occur suddenly; it’s a collection of experiences and exposures that compound slowly filling a bucket of symptoms, stressors and toxins until the bucket finally overflows and you take notice.

I only recently found out how to keep vertigo and other pesky neurological symptoms at bay after more than two years of doctors, tests, diets, eliminations and stark lifestyle changes, but I know that I was meant to go through that process because I had other, deeper things to learn.

I’m not one to sit still even if I’m debilitated. At that time, I could not look at any devices, wear my glasses, watch TV, use my computer, drive or do any of the things I would normally do. I could not teach my courses. But I could do one thing: listen. So I signed up for a course on how to podcast. And I popped in my headphones as I laid on the floor flat on my back to keep the room from spinning. I knew I was a teacher at heart and I needed to reach a wider audience with my messages of growth mindset, love, positivity, non-judgement, healing and self-actualization. Given my dis-ease, I wasn’t sure how I would do it, but I felt drawn to podcasting and I knew I needed a platform that was global. I needed a new foundation. I was ready to break out of the university to teach in the school of life. This period gave me a sense of meaning and purpose when I was tempted to lay in bed and give up. Learning how to podcast was the beginning of my healing journey and it was the basis of a key pivot in my career.

Now, I help people access the tools they need to live their best lives. These are internal tools, which we all possess, but not everyone understands how to unlock the toolbox. My duel expertise in both education and psychology affords me access to intellectual insights about thinking and research about the way the mind works. My creativity and sensitivity to something bigger than me is my pathway to allowing and receiving and teaching others how to tap into that internal guidance system. I’ve seen first-hand how things in life compound, both negative and positive, that it’s a process and that we are spacious beings with a capacity to receive and we get to choose and control what things we allow.

I established The Blessons Podcast to shine a light on the lessons and blessings of life because that is how we learn. And that is why we are here. We are here to learn. As we learn, we get the opportunity to transform and as we transform, we ascend. We get better. We grow. We rise. We are empowered and we get to activate our potential. I love guiding folks through this process and watching the light inside them turn on. I imagine every day what the world would be like if everyone had a growth mindset, not always happy, but feeling all our emotions, optimistic and positive about life, certain that by harnessing our inner power, we can attain success, joy, love and vibrant health. I do my part to raise the collective consciousness one human at a time by mentoring people through the self-actualization process, holding deep public conversations and providing a daily mindset habit tool I developed, called “Your Positive Moment.”

I am proud of myself for aligning with a health challenge, rather than letting it take me down. I use my experiences to ask, “How can I give back now that I’ve learned these important life lessons?” I allow my journey, my expertise and my soul’s purpose to be the catalysts for bringing change to the perfectly imperfect world I love. I’m one person. You, reading this, are one person. But together, all the people create that same compound effect that when we choose growth mindset tools and orientation toward positivity, we can fill our buckets with only the good stuff.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

The book “Mindset” by Dr. Carol Dweck is one of my go-to’s when I am looking to level up by tapping into my natural resources. Here are the top three actionable tools I use with my clients, inspired by this iconic book:

1. Play Up: Challenge yourself by “playing” with those better than you. If you want to learn and improve, then get in the game with those who are already crushing it at what you want to do.
2. Don’t ask, “Can I do something?” Ask, “HOW can I do something?” It’s not that you haven’t done it. It’s that you haven’t found the way to do it YET.
3. With enemies or frenemies, wish them well and go on your way. Showing kindness to someone who doesn’t have your best interest at heart doesn’t mean you are a pushover, it means you don’t let them control how you move in the world.

This book is chock full of real-world mindset tools. The great thing about a growth mindset is once you get in the groove, you don’t need to rely on tools; higher level thinking and success come naturally.

Have you ever had to pivot?

When I first started my entrepreneurial journey, I was eager to monetize. I knew I could not return to a classroom. I had seen the world beyond and being my own boss, doing meaningful work was like music to my soul. But, I had bills. Beyond my work in the past as a professor, I also held real estate investments. A rental property kept me afloat while I was getting my footing with mentoring, speaking and podcasting. The truth is, I love real estate too and I can and will do both! However, I had to put a magnitude of energy into my new venture to breathe life into it. I tried many different things at the outset. I held a course. I did one-on-one coaching. I sold books. But I hadn’t found the sweet spot yet. So I decided to try a membership community. I wanted it to be very valuable, so I used my professor skills to form a paid book club that was more of a serious class situation. We read impactful personal development books and I lead a deep dive into the content each week. Participants got a ton of information and it was very collegiate! Too collegiate. I found that people were not reading the chapters. I found that folks were skipping meetings. I started to dread all the prep work I had to do, just like I was back in the classroom. It began to feel like a drag.

Here’s the lesson: I learned I had to listen to my body during my healing journey and often that meant I had to do something hard (like give up champagne) to feel better. So, after the next book was over, I ended the membership.

I was making money. It was scalable. It was providing amazing value. But it didn’t feel right. So I knew this was a pivot point.

The interesting thing about a pivot is that, although it seems assumed you are immediately moving in a new direction, that actually doesn’t have to happen all at once. If you look at the motion of a pivot, there are steps, there are different actions you go through. First, you stop. Then you turn in a new direction. Then you move. These things do not have to happen in immediate succession.

I stopped the book club. And I waited there for a bit. I reflected on what happened and how I felt and what I learned and what I liked and disliked about this membership experience. And I stayed there until I knew what direction to turn. It took some time, but as I let myself receive inner guidance, I got a new idea. Something that resonated more because now I knew what I did not want. I thought about something I love and how it makes me feel and I used that as inspiration, my father’s morning text message to me. I smile when I get that message. I count on it and I cherish it because my dad is getting older. I thought about how I could give that feeling along with a powerful mindset tool to others to make a difference in their lives. Same goal. Different delivery system. I created Your Positive Moment, a daily morning mindset text message service. And I love it. I brought in a new team member, a marketing specialist, to help me, so I wouldn’t feel burdened and burned out. I write all the messages myself and it feels so good to put that out into the world. YPM is growth mindset on auto-pilot. I found a sweet spot. It feels right in my heart and my goal is now to scale it to 100,000 users by the end of 2025.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mitzicampbell.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mitzianncampbell/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100086033058973
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitzi-campbell-m-a-26575167/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/mitziacampbell
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN9nGqoncQsQugZtyQVpeBg

Image Credits

Jen Parente Photography