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Ep #104: Reimagine Your Dream Life with Sheri Salata

Reimagine Your Dream Life with Sheri Salata

This interview was definitely a pinch-me moment because I’ve got the one and only Sheri Salata on the show. I was initially excited to have Sheri on the show because she was the executive producer of The Oprah Winfrey Show, the CEO of the network, and essentially Oprah’s right arm, and y’all know she’s my idol. That said, once I read Sheri’s book, The Beautiful No, I was blown away by her story and transformation, I was so inspired by Sheri herself, and I can’t wait for you to listen in and see why.

Sheri is now the founder of the aspirational lifestyle brand, The Pillar Life, which helps women step into who they truly are, especially in midlife or later years, and she’s also the co-host of The Sheri + Nancy Show, a top podcast about reinventing the middle of life. Redefining our lives and wanting to make changes at any age can be terrifying, but Sheri’s insights on how she did this in her own life will light a fire under you to want to do the same.

Join us this week as Sheri exemplifies what it really means to create and live your dream life. It’s never too late to make changes and reset your life towards a direction you want it to go in, and Sheri’s wisdom around this is going to open your eyes to all the opportunities that are available to you. You are in the driver’s seat and have all the power to change your life and choose happiness, and Sheri is giving us some gold nuggets on how you can start implementing some of these practices into your own life.

If you want to keep this conversation going, you have to join my free Design You Podcast community on Facebook. We have great conversations over there about the podcast episodes and our podcast guests are in there too! So head on over and I’ll see you there! 

What You'll Learn From This Episode

  • How Sheri made the shift from working with Oprah to her new ventures. 
  • The three major epiphanies Sheri had when she left her career with Oprah.
  • How Sheri found herself in a moment of reckoning about her life.
  • The myriad of small changes Sheri made that led to resetting her life.
  • Why all or nothing thinking keeps you stuck.
  • How we miss so much pleasure and satisfaction in our lives by not savoring small moments.
  • Why the shame we feel disconnects us from opportunities for intimacy with other people.
  • Sheri’s number one focus in life and the impact it has on her experience.
  • Why Sheri believes we have to guard our stories and tend to them carefully.
  • How meditation has become an integral part of Sheri’s life. 

Featured On The Show

Full Episode Transcript

Female Announcer: You are listening to The Design You Podcast with Tobi Fairley, episode number 104.

Welcome to The Design You Podcast, a show where interior designers and creatives learn to say no to busy and say yes to more health, wealth, and joy. Here’s your host Tobi Fairley.

Tobi Fairley: Okay. So, today is sort of a pinch me moment, sort of. Today’s podcast is one-degree separation from my all-time idol, Oprah Winfrey because on today’s podcast, I have Sheri Salata. As I tell Sheri in the episode, I came to this interview thinking, “Oh, my gosh. I’m interviewing Oprah’s right arm,” but what changed between the time I booked Sheri on the podcast, and I actually interviewed her was I read Sheri’s incredible book, The Beautiful No.

I was so blown away by Sheri in every way. Her writing, her story, her transformation, everything. That by the time I got to the episode and recording it, I forgot she even had anything to do with Oprah because I was so inspired by Sheri herself. I know you’re going to feel the exact same way.

So, her official bio is that she is the best-selling author of The Beautiful No. The subtitle of the book is The Beautiful No and Other Tales of Trial, Transcendence and Transformation. It is an incredible story. She’s such an amazing writer. She had me in tears multiple times. I didn’t want it to end. I told her it’s one part self-help, one part memoir, one part, I don’t know, like watching a movie in the best sort of way.

I know you’re going to love today’s episode, and you’re going to love her book too. You’ve got to get her book. So, the rest of her bio is that she was Oprah’s right arm literally for a lot of years. She was the executive producer of The Oprah Winfrey Show for five years. She was the co-CEO of the Oprah Winfrey Network, OWN, and now, she’s the founder of the aspirational lifestyle brand, The Pillar Life, which really helps women step into who they truly are, especially when they’re in their mid-life or later years.

So, you’ve got to check Sheri out with her co-host Nancy on her own amazing podcast called The Sheri and Nancy Show. It’s about reinventing the middle of life, and it’s so, so good, but before you check that out, you’ve got to listen to this amazing episode because I know that you’re going to absolutely love it. So, enjoy this literal pinch me moment of an amazing interview with the Sheri Salata.

Hey, Sheri. Welcome to The Design You Podcast. It is such an honor to have you here.

Sheri Salata: Oh, I’m so glad to be here.

Tobi Fairley: Everybody heard in my introduction about who you are, and really, it’s so fascinating because I came the idea of interviewing you thinking, “Oh, my gosh. She’s worked with my idols and icons, the Nate Berkus’ and Oprah Winfrey’s of the world.” Then I read your book, and I was like, “I don’t even care about those people anymore. I just want to talk about Sheri and this incredible, incredible book you wrote.” I literally was in tears with you like three or four times.

You’re such an amazing writer, and I can just relate to so much, and that’s what I want to get into today. Before we do that, is there anything besides all of the obvious stuff you talk about in the book about your career path with working on The Oprah Show and being the executive producer, and then CEO of Oprah’s network? Anything about that that we should start with before we get into your book and your story?

Sheri Salata: Well, many people think that I went to college, got a film and television degree, and hatched like an egg right into the magical, wonderful world of Oprah, and nothing could be further from the truth. If you’ve read The Beautiful No, you know that I really started at Oprah at 35 years old in an entry-level promo producer position. So, what happened afterwards for the next 20 years really astounds even me.

Tobi Fairley: That’s amazing. I love that so much because you’re so right. I was sitting there thinking, “This lady was a manager of a 7/11 store, like the least glamorous things that most of us could think about.”

Sheri Salata: I know, hardest job ever.

Tobi Fairley: Yeah, and you’re like, “People didn’t even treat me nice. They looked down on me.” It’s so funny because we can put you on a pedestal now and say, “Oh, my gosh. She was Oprah’s right arm,” but the truth is there was a long and hard path to get to where that 35-year-old start with Oprah.

Sheri Salata: Well, Tobi, I think that’s the real connective tissue for all of us, is that we all have our twisty-turny journeys, and our struggles, and things that we had to transcend or transform. It isn’t just the Instagram picture to the world.

Tobi Fairley: Yeah, that’s so true. That’s what made it so, I don’t know, like you said, it’s the connection, it’s the thread. I started the book, I think, feeling like I was reading just my next self-help book, or my next business book, or whatever. It’s kind of like self-help meets business, meets life, meets memoir all rolled into one, but I just felt so connected to you, like I was going on the journey with you, and that speaks to your writing, but also just the story that you told.

Sheri Salata: Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much. Here’s what I wanted to say. As we were doing this interview, you showed me my book with a million post-its and underlines in it, and you could not pay me a higher compliment.

Tobi Fairley: Well, I loved every minute, and that is such a huge compliment because that is how I read a book that I love and things I don’t want to forget. There’s places in there that’s like, “This is the best part of the book,” and it’s like, “This is the second best part of the book,” and it’s like, “This is the third best part. Don’t forget this part which is so good.”

That’s what I want to talk about today. I want to take you through a list of some of my favorite things and let you just expand on them and have a conversation about it. Let’s start right at the very beginning, which is something that I think so many women relate to. Really, the book is more about when you left your job with Oprah, when that had come to a close, and you starting to figure out for the first time who you really wanted to be.

I think what I really could relate to right off the bat was you talk about how you completely believed for so many years that your worth was tied to your achievement, and it was about doing, and now, you were moving into this place of being instead, which had to feel terrifying, I’m sure, because I’ve tried that a little bit myself just to move away from the treadmill and the exhaustion. I deal with anxiety. We don’t know how to be that way if all we’ve ever done is do. So, how did you start to make that shift initially?

Sheri Salata: Well, I look back on the process now, and I could give a name to it. I called it the reckoning. I had to fire my self-critical voice and find the tenderest most compassionate lens through which view this life that I had created. I had three major epiphanies. The first epiphany was that I had created and manifested the career of my dreams, but not the life of my dreams.

I was not completely without self-awareness, but in that busyness, you tend to hide a lot of things that need attention, and wait for the “some day” when you can get to it. My second epiphany was that I had been an untrustworthy steward of my own well-being. Very good at taking care of things for everybody else, but never putting myself anywhere on the list because I don’t think I saw a lot of value in it.

The value was achievement, and accomplishment, and that led to my third epiphany that I had this really screwed up relationship between the idea of achievement and worthiness. Worthiness meaning lovability, likability, that thing that we all need to be able to really come to that place of falling madly in love with ourselves, but somehow, and it probably happened with my first report card, who knows, that I had somehow linked achievement to being loved and to being worthy.

So, it’s no surprise then that I set off on this odyssey of achievement, achievement, achievement, achievement, even though, quite frankly, I wasn’t super ambitious, but I did know that achievement was going to bring good things to me. By that, it was validation, recognition, and that all got very twisted up and confusing to me, and landed me at 56 years old in a big, huge moment of reckoning.

All I can say is the fact that I could find a tender voice, and a tender lens, and look at what I’ve created, and begin to say, “But it’s not too late, Sheri. It’s not too late. Maybe your most glorious days are really ahead of you.”

Tobi Fairley: Oh, I love that so much. I can relate in so many ways, and I think our parents don’t mean to do any disservice to us. They’re trying to encourage us, and we’re living by all the cultural norms of get good grades, and get a good job, and I did the same thing. I can relate. I got an accounting degree first, and then was like, “There’s no way I want to be an accountant. Let me actually go do something I love,” which became interior design. I can just relate in so many ways.

You kind of didn’t have a choice, right? Well, you did have a choice, but you found yourself in this wide, open space of being able to recreate your life. I think for a lot of us, that moment comes because of some catastrophe like a marriage ends, or we get a cancer diagnosis, or whatever. You didn’t have necessarily, even though you had some residual health things from the way you had not cared for yourself. How did that look when you’re literally just standing there, and you have the choice to say, “What now?”

Sheri Salata: I want to say to everybody listening, what I did eventually realize was all of these epiphanies, all of the myriad of little changes I began to make in my life, starting with my belief system, I could’ve done while I had the big job, I could’ve done years ago. I wasn’t working 24 hours a day. I might’ve worked really, really long days, but I needed to replace the way I coped with stress, the way I took care of myself with other things.

The irony is, as you can imagine, I had a front row seat to every thought leader, doctor, expert, wisdom keeper of our time. I produced most of them. I’m such a good student, I took copious notes about all the nuggets and gems they had to share, but again, because of intrinsic worthiness, I come last on the list thing, which we were preaching to our audience at The Oprah Show, it was, “I’ll put that off to the side for some day because right now, I’ve got this big thing to do.”

So, what I realized is that yeah, I think a lot of us get a reset or a restart when we have a catastrophic illness, the end of a marriage, some big thing, but I don’t think we have to wait for that, and that’s really my method. If you even just started a little 15-minute a daydream practice where you just said, “Okay, here are the areas of my life that matter to me. If I could have it any way with no limitations, what would it be?”

You just stir the fires of hope for yourself and say, “Okay. What are some things I can do to just start to move in the direction?” I think one of the ways I set myself up to fail when it came to my own health and wellness over and over and over again was big, grandiose plans and strategies.

It was like, “Okay. I’m never going to do this again. I’m only going to do this,” instead of like, “Hey, let’s add three more glasses of water and a walk around the block,” because that didn’t seem exciting enough, but it’s all those little things that have truly transformed my life four years later.

Tobi Fairley: I love that. I can so relate. I’m just like you. Any time I went through a period of crazy over working, numbing out with food, gaining the same 20 pounds back again, then my next move was always, “Okay. I’m going to run a marathon,” like, “I’m going to start training today.”

My mom, who is such a beautiful influence on me, would say, “Why don’t you just start with walking around the block?” I’m like, “No, that would be terribly boring,” just like you’re saying. She’s thinking, “Yeah, but sustainable,” but that didn’t matter at all. We wanted the big hype, and the big excitement.

Sheri Salata: Because rather than doing a very deep level of almost spiritually backed inspiration, we try to motivate ourselves out of the dull drums with that all or nothing thinking, which in my experience, usually ends to nothing.

Tobi Fairley: Yes, yes, and the belief that everything needs to be inspiring all the time. It has to be exciting. All of the good stuff really comes in the boring, monotonous, just doing it again today anyway because you chose to.

Sheri Salata: Well, and especially if you are a high achieving person. If you have big dreams, you tend to write off the little moments, and those little satisfactions like a glass of filtered water when you’re thirsty, or moving in your body and just feeling your own soul in this earth suit, as Gary Zukav would say, and having the pleasure of that. We’re missing so much pleasure and satisfaction in our own lives by discounting and not savoring those little moments.

Tobi Fairley: Yes, that’s so good. I was thinking when you were talking about having literally the front row seat or even creating some of the biggest names that we now all look to for spirituality and health, and wellness, and all the things.

It’s funny to think about the part of the book where you say that you and Dr. Oz had almost a love-hate relationship because you would skirt around when he was in the studio or when you were having him on the show because you didn’t want to face the way you were living, and he was kind of like, “Yeah, I see you over there.”

Sheri Salata: Well, here is the truth, and I have a follow-up for you on the Dr. Oz story. So, I did write about it, and the truth is I loved him then, and I love him now, but I had so much shame around my executive producer desk, which was stacked with gallons of diet Coke and big o lattes, and just trying to keep myself going as I’d be sitting in the control room hour after hour.

At the time, I was a smoker. So, I was the last person in Chicago, I was outside when it was freezing cold and snowing smoking, and just all those things were just an attempt to relieve the stress that I would feel. I knew that Dr. Oz would have something to say about those things. So, I would avoid him.

When my book came out last June, and Dr. Oz, God bless him, had me on his show, made a big deal about it, I had a big walk-on, and my name was up in the big screen. We sat down, and I wanted to be a good guest for him, so I shared my confession, which was that I was always avoiding him and waving to him from afar because I had so much shame around my self-destructive behavior.

On camera, on the show, live, in front of the entire country, he said, “Well, you know what I thought, Sheri?” I thought you didn’t like me. Well, first of all, we had a healing. I’m like, “No, not only did I like you, I liked you so much.”

Tobi Fairley: Yeah, you didn’t want to disappoint him.

Sheri Salata: Well, that stuck with me for weeks, and weeks, and months after that appearance. You know why it hit me so deeply is because that’s what we do to ourselves. We have no idea how the things we’re ashamed of, the things we don’t want people to find out about us, the things we don’t want to share, are disconnecting us from the opportunity to have real intimacy with the people in our lives.

I just thought, “I had no idea he felt that way, nor would I ever want someone to feel that way that I like so much.” I was like, “Wow, what a revelation to me that my own behavior had these unintended consequences keeping me from connection with somebody who wanted to connect.” That is yet another turning point in this journey I’m on.

Tobi Fairley: Wow, that blows my mind. I love that so much, to just be able to check in and say where are we keeping ourselves from some of our greatest gifts that we could be experiencing right now because of our own choices and our own thoughts? That’s huge. Well, let’s talk about then when you started to move away from that level of self-judgement that you were doing in those moments.

It gave me chills. You write about how you decided to redefine what you think is beautiful because we’re also guilty of judging ourselves so harshly. We’re always judging other people so harshly, and gossiping about people, and there’s so much toxic about judging, and gossiping, and all of that. So, talk about that a little bit because I think it’s so important for us to believe that it’s a choice that we’re making, and we can absolutely decide to redefine what we think is beautiful.

Sheri Salata: Well, I know everybody has had this moment where you look at a picture from a time in your life when you thought you were ugly, fat, bad hair, whatever. You had no business going out and showing yourself to anybody. You look at the picture, and you see your beauty, and you would wish you looked like that.

Now, we’ve all had that moment, and it’s because we have such a distorted view of ourselves physically. We’re so hyperconscious of what we perceive as every little flaw, that I literally had to walk that back for myself. Like, “What is it that I think is beautiful? Listen, I’ve known some physically beautiful people who think they’re hideous. So, there’s a real problem with that.”

What I ended up coming to the conclusion of is that we must crown ourselves with our own beauty. We must anoint ourselves. There’s nobody going to come along that’s going to make us feel beautiful. That job is left to us like everything else. That is the bigger idea, is that there’s nobody that’s going to come along to capital M manager life, to capital C curate your experiences, to capital C coach you through things, and to anoint you for your own beauty.

That job, it’s an inside job always. Continuing to seek outside of yourself for that validation is just going to be a fruitless road of disappointment. I realized that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You need to be the beholder, and you need to decide. You need to decide for your own beauty and go from there.

Tobi Fairley: I love that. The thing is, even if it is coming from outside of us, if we don’t believe it, anybody can tell us every day we’re beautiful, and we still won’t be beautiful. You’re so right. It has to come from the inside. I thought that was so great. I love that you were shining a light on the fact that we’re just so in the habit of judging ourselves and others, and you even talk about gossip and how it takes a toll on us when we practice those kind of behaviors.

Sheri Salata: Well, at the end of day, everything is energy. Usually, when you’re gossiping, it’s because you’re feeling insecure, or you’re trying to elevate yourself at the expense of somebody else. All those little things add up to your own life experience.

Like I was saying just a second ago, at a certain point, you’re going to have to really see that it’s in your hands, that you are co-creating this experience with the big divine forces, and everything you do matters. From the story you tell yourself about yourself in your own mind, no more important story than that, to what you say about other people, to what you believe about life.

I saw a quote that has become very familiar that worry is a form of prayer. I was raised by worriers, and it was almost like they were warding off bad things by worrying about them, but that isn’t how the quantum field works. What you think about, you draw right to you in some form or fashion. So, guard your words, guard your story. You got to tend to that really, really carefully.

In following my own reckoning, and recommitting to focusing on what I say and think about life, possibility, my dreams, myself, my own beauty, my own well-being, that has become my number one focus, and it literally changes the outcome of my experience on earth.

Tobi Fairley: I love everything about that. You even go on to say, which is pretty much what you’re talking about right now. You talk about how you just began to cultivate happiness as your compass, and I love that because you say if happiness is your compass, then misery is impossible.

Sheri Salata: Listen, until the day I walked into the Oprah show, I looked at that career ride, and that was 14 years where I never would move on from a situation that was ill fitting or a relationship that wasn’t working until I was so miserable, I couldn’t get out of bed. Then it’d be like, “Time to go.” What I realized is that’s like making misery your compass. So, that means misery is always the end game instead of gently leaning into the direction of happiness. That’s why I said, “Make happiness your compass. Cut to the chase.”

It’s okay to lean into things that feel good. Your own body is giving you signs from your soul about what direction you should be going in, and what relationships you should be cultivating, and what practices can work for you, for your highest well-being. What feels good? What feels right? What feels enjoyable? What makes you happy? So, when I realized that, “Oh, maybe we can turn this around. Instead of misery being your compass, let’s make happiness your compass and see what happens then.”

Tobi Fairley: Wow, that just blew my mind at a whole other level the way you described it because I think you’re so right. When things are going well, we’re questioning it, we’re thinking, “This is too good to be true. Surely, the other shoe is going to drop soon.” It’s not until we’re miserable that we’re willing to make a change, and that’s such a profound shift. Even you’re noticing in the tinniest moment, “Okay. This feels not right. Over here feels really good. Let’s lean to this direction instead.” That’s so smart. So good.

Sheri Salata: Employing the universal forces, it doesn’t mean you can say, “Hm, this job isn’t feeling so good. Let me just quit.” You can just start to dream it up like, “Hm, this isn’t feeling like a fit anymore. What is it that I do want? What is it that I do want?” Then just make your life. Get on the easy road. Get on the joy ride. Don’t make things so much harder for yourself. That’s what I say to myself every day now.

Tobi Fairley: I love that. Of course, I’m just pulling out all my favorite soundbites. There were so, so many. That leads me to another one that you said, “I want to dream like I’m going to live to 100, but live every day like it’s my last.” That fits to that same concept of what you tolerate and what you use as your compass. It’s so good.

I’d love to talk a little bit about being on the treadmill in that workaholic mode you went into, and how you started to think differently because one of my favorite sentences in the entire book, I think I drew arrows, and stars, and there’s fireworks going off on that page because you said that you finally realized that all of your time was free time. You get to decide. I think we all feel like we’re at the effect other people, and our time, and our schedule, and that was just profound to me. Will you talk a little bit about that and that shift?

Sheri Salata: Yeah. I think what happens with our story, and there’s a lot of reasons for it because we have bills to pay, we start using the word have to, have to, have to in our lives as it relates to our work in the world, or our jobs, or our routines. Next thing you know, we start to behave and we start to language our work like we’re in the Gulag. It may be true that there are some people who don’t have any control over their physical freedom, some people on the planet, but it’s not true of most of us.

Even when I had the best jobs on the planet, there are times when I feel myself doing that same thing, as if I had no free will, as if I had to free choice. Constantly reminding ourselves that we are free. I’m not going to be bound up by a credit card payment or a mortgage. We are free. We need to keep reminding ourselves that we continue to choose things and create outcomes for ourselves.

It was all wrapped up for me. Another big area of shame for me was never feeling like I could accomplish that mythical work life balance notion. I would get asked as the EP of the Oprah show to do panels or speaking, and I’m like, “Oh, God. When is that question going to come up?” It always did, and I’d always try to shrug it off, until one time, I literally realized, “You know what? I don’t think I believe in work-life balance.”

I think that language just sets us up for failure because you only come into balance when you’re out of it, and in it, and out of it. I think I write about that works very well in architectural design and yoga tree pose, but it’s not really conducive to living.

So, what I began to think about for myself is, “I really want an integrative life. I don’t want my work to be in one drawer, and my so-called personal life to be in another drawer. I want an integrative life where my work is really my expression of creativity and innovation in the world.”

It’s, “I am putting out value to the world. The world is bringing value back into me, and all these areas of my life are working in relationship to one another. I’m just not going to use language that makes me feel bad about myself.”

Tobi Fairley: Yes. I’m telling you guys, buy this freaking book and block off your free time, because you can, and read it immediately because there’s just not even nuggets, huge life lessons and so much insight. So many, we couldn’t even get through. I think before we go, I want you to speak to a couple of things. It goes together.

Towards the end of the book, you say you really were coming into this understanding that it’s not about reaching the goal, that it’s in all the moments that we’re supposed to live. One of the ways that you really started working towards that and believing that was through meditation. I know we all know that we should meditate. We’ve heard it. We’ve heard about the benefits of it, but I love how you talk about it was the way for you to stop intellectualizing, to get off the hamster wheel, and you just made this a practice.

I would love for people to hear you speak about that because I think it’s one of the many things that for a lot of us, it’s on our to-do list, but it’s step number 20 or item number 20. How do we get it up to the top? Share with us how it helped you really create this and design the life that you’re living now.

Sheri Salata: Well, I’m no different than anybody else. I love to talk about meditation. I love to talk about yoga, and that it’s sitting in the chair and getting on the mat. That’s the struggle. Part of the thing is just, again, like we spoke about at the beginning of our conversation, not to turn it into a big, major deal. Just sit down and watch your breath for five minutes, and just calm yourself. Just start somewhere.

If I went back to my 16-year-old self, 17-year-old self, and said, “There’s one thing you could do that will profoundly ease your way for the next 40 years,” it would be get a meditation practice and sit and meditate every day because there is no question that in this modern day with so much input, so much content, which is great for a million ways.

I don’t want to go back to pioneer days and the pony express. I think technology, you just have to be the master of it for yourself, but what’s really great is to find those ways, meditation, and I think yoga goes hand-in-hand with that, where you come back to yourself, when you come back to your breath, when you come back to your soul, and you rebalance your energy so you aren’t always at the effect of what’s going on externally.

So, the events of the world aren’t running you. You are back in the master seat creating your life as you wish it to be. It is possible. That is the spiritual path, my friends. It is possible to do that. It is possible to change your vibration. It is possible to choose happiness.

Any little practice you can do like hydrating yourself, doing some breathing, making meditation a daily practice, doing a dream practice every day, taking little, teeny, weeny chunks of time for yourself to do those things absolutely changes the quality of your life. You have but just to prove it for yourself.

Tobi Fairley: Yeah, I love it.

Sheri Salata: Prove it to yourself.

Tobi Fairley: There’s no excuse, right? If you’re saying an hour or four hours, we can find all kinds of excuses and justifications, but we all can start something for five minutes a couple of days a week and see how we feel.

Sheri Salata: That’s right. Take a look at how you spend your time. Put on your science hat like you’re a scientist, and you’re excavating what’s the truth of your life, and just look how you spend your time. Every now and then, I’m like, “Oh, I’m feeling some anxiety. Oh, yeah, because I’ve been watching cable news. We’re doing three hours a day.” I start out thinking I’m watching a dramatic play, but it’s having an effect on my energy. So, let’s dial that down and go do some spiritual reading or some breathing. You literally are in control of how you spend your minutes.

Tobi Fairley: I love it so much. I know they’re going to buy the book. We’ve already told them about the book. You have an amazing podcast with your business partner Nancy that we’re going to direct them to. So, anything you want to share about the podcast real quick before we go?

Sheri Salata: Oh, my gosh. So, Nancy Hala is one of my nearest and dearest for 30 years. About three years ago, she and I launched a podcast, and it’s called the Sheri and Nancy show. We just have a ball, but every week, we’re talking about the very things you and I are talking about right now because she and I are on a shared quest to live the lives of our dream.

Tobi Fairley: I love it. I love it. The whole time I was reading the book, I was wondering like, “I got to go listen to some of those podcast episodes again because now, I want to remember how much progress she’s made, and how she’s different now, and how she’s changed.” I wanted to hear the rest of the story. So, I hope you write book number two sometime soon.

Sheri Salata: Yeah, it’s in my little dream pot. I’m stirring the dream pot. I really did. This has been a really great experience digging deep and finding out what I want to say, what matters to me, and then having conversations about it because we all have these stories. We all have these gems, and it’s been really, really such a life-changing experience.

Tobi Fairley: Well, you definitely changed my life with your book. You’re so inspiring. I can’t wait to follow you in a higher, deeper level. As I said at the beginning of the show, I really came in thinking, “Oh, my gosh. I’m going to get to talk to a person that’s like one-degree separation from Oprah,” and by the time I read the book, I’m like, “Wait, Oprah who? I want to know more about Sheri.”

I want to really pour myself into your lessons, and we don’t have to learn it the hard way. We can learn it from wonderful people like you who are willing to share their journey. I just am so grateful not only for you being here today, but just for you being willing to share because it makes such a difference.

Sheri Salata: Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much.

Tobi Fairley: Okay. Was I right? She’s so amazing. I just feel so much, I don’t know, richer, fulfilled, wise just from knowing her, just form having a conversation with Sheri. I know you’re going to continue to feel that way too. She’s so down to earth. She’s so real in every way, and she’s teaching us how to be a much, much better version of ourselves because we love ourselves. We’re kind to ourselves, and we reimagine every part of our life, including what beautiful means.

So, if you want more of Sheri, go pick up her book, The Beautiful No. Check her out at sherisalata.com, which we will have in the show notes so you can figure out exactly where to find her. Follow her on Instagram, and send both Sheri and me a message. If you loved this episode, what part you were inspired by because I know you were. I hope you took copious notes. I hope you’re clearing your schedule to read her book right now because I highly, highly recommend it. Thank you so much for joining us today, and I’ll see you back next week with another amazing episode of The Design You Podcast. Bye for now, friends.

Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of The Design You Podcast. If you’d like even more support for designing a business and a life that you love, then check out my exclusive monthly coaching program Design You at tobifairley.com.

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Hi! I'm Tobi

I help creative women (and a few really progressive dudes) design profit-generating, soul-fulfilling businesses that let them own their schedule, upgrade their life and feel more alive than ever!

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