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Cut the tie to anything holding you back from success. Welcome to the Cut the Tie podcast. Hi. I'm your host, Thomas Helfrich. And in each episode, we bring you real entrepreneurs that really overcame challenges on their journey to become successful. We look at the impact, the moment, how it affected everything in their lives. Follow us on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. Now let's meet our guest on Cut the Tie podcast. Today, we're joined with Sharon Spano. She is gonna talk about how she helps executive leaders kind of cut ties to things that are holding them back and helps them become the best versions of their leader. So let's meet our guest, Sharon Spano. Sharon, welcome. I am great. It's great to be here today. I love it. Your mission is so aligned to ours with helping executives get rid of what's holding them back. We share, like, actual tagline conversations, and I saw you show up into our kind of feed of someone who wanna be a guest. I was like, hell, yeah. Let's get Sharon on here because you have a PhD in this, if I remember correctly. Yeah. The PhD is in human and organizational systems, and then it's evolved into this deeper work where I work primarily with leaders to help them really discover or uncover
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whatever it is that's holding them back. I actually just interviewed a new client yesterday, and it's often that, you know, they've done the hard work. You know, they built a business or they're CEO of a company or in the c suite or even middle management, and they somehow have come to a point in their life, and sometimes it's because of a live transition, some event that has happened, where they just feel, even though I am successful by the measurements or the metrics of the world, I'm not happy. I don't feel fulfilled, and they don't know why. Usually they don't have a sense of why. And then that's where I come in and we do the hard work to figure it out and move them to that next level. We're really looking at what can we do to help them experience a different stage of human development. If you were to give me the power statement, you know, the metrics driven power statement or whatever, why should executive work with you? It's not the typical coaching protocol. It's really based on years and years of research and my years of experience in the field. And transformational, as you know, Thomas is such a cliche word today, but it is a human development model that literally takes people's consciousness, if you will, to an entirely different place where they have a whole new perspective on the world and their life. In your own journey, what was the tie you had to cut? A lot of serious issues that I was not aware of. I eventually had to fire him, but it was very difficult because I had high hopes. It was about a three year process that took a lot of time, energy, and money, and it was extremely painful. What was that moment when you realized I gotta get rid of this guy? I can see it just like as clear as day when he walked up to my car and said he needed some money, which was kind of a theme. He was always needing money and always behind. I can't even explain it, but there was a look in his eye, and I knew in that moment that he really had been taking advantage of me and my husband for, you know, a good many years, and it was over. It's amazing how people get to that point in their lives where Yeah. You feel bad for them because they're probably in internalizing
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good people, but with their own things to bear. Right? And they can't get through it. And it's it's hard to watch the train wreck happen when you're like such a good person with giant human faults. But I learned so much, and it's given me a lot of compassion for my clients
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because it took me on a journey of trying to understand narcissism, manipulation, bipolar disorder, all these other things that I was dealing with within this relationship. I mean, I really thank him every day for the lessons that I learned through that process because it I think it's made me a better human being. I'd like to think a better coach, a better consultant,
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certainly wiser. Right. I mean, I was gonna ask you, like, what the impact was. But even beyond that, you know, it looks like you've done something for yourself, which is instead of that happened to me, that happened for you. Because because of that horrible experience, you became better at what you did. It almost set you on a path to where you are now. Is that a fair statement? Yeah. I mean, it was an interesting year. This was 02/2008.
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My son, who was disabled, was critically ill. So I fired this gentleman in March. My son died in September. So there was a tremendous journey that year. That's one of the other pieces that I've learned with high impact leaders. It's been very interesting to me is that many of them are driven to be high achievers because of some level of trauma in their background, and they've overcome it, but maybe they still need some work around that. And I'm not talking about complex trauma. I'm talking more about the typical things that, you know, many of us go through in life. Our parents divorced when we're very young, or maybe I came over with immigrant parents and I, you know, I didn't understand the country, the language. You know, there's a lot of different things that I have seen, but there's things that we all carry, and there's ways to learn how to maneuver
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through those moments of time and really learn and grow from them. And that's what the developmental work is about, is really helping you make meaning of the things that happen to us so that we can grow and develop into our highest self. And it's just a a real privilege to watch that happen in another human being. It's, the analogy that I've I've used a few times is, you know, the the trauma is a giant anchor attached to you, but you've learned to swim anyway. And when you cut that anchor off, you're the one of the fastest swimmers out there that can go as long and farther and faster than anyone because you've been swimming your whole life with a giant anchor that would have drowned a lot of people. And I and I and I think that really works because you can feel that, oh my gosh. If I don't swim stronger, I drowned. And, yes, I will not drown. It's interesting. You said you had to cut the tie and that was one of the ones you you identified was getting rid of this individual from your organization. But, you lost a son the same year, which sounds like a much larger tie to have to get through. And take it to where you were, with it, but how's the lost child not the tie that had to be cut? How did you navigate that being less traumatic maybe or less of a tie to cut? Well, I don't think of it as a tie to be cut. It was more of an experience to go through. This is going to sound really crazy, but what I went through, the ordeal with this gentleman was happening as my son was critical. My son was critical for four years. And so I was dealing with kind of both of them. And when I cut the tie with the gentleman, it was so painful that I feel in some odd way,
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it almost prepared me for the pain that was coming, because I was having to do a lot of spiritual work on myself to get through the first one. And then when my son, Michael passed, there's a numbing, I think, that occurs for a parent when you lose a child or loss in general. And that was a healing period for me that I had to go through, but I had enough support and enough
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education and training. And, you know, I knew enough about a lot of things to help myself move through that piece. But I don't see it as a cut the tie because I feel like he's with me all the time, and he inspires my work for sure. And I think that is the tie that you never formed. It never held you back. You dealt with it. You move forward and it became part of who you are and what your inspiration is, where others may be like they could never move past it. And that becomes something that's tying them down. So I applaud you and celebrate you for how hard of a time that must have been. Just that that sounds like the worst year possible, and somehow you've persevered through. So good for you, and I'm sure your son looks down from wherever he is going, mom, you're kicking ass. And something I want to do later when I ever can come up for air is develop some work. And I have pieces of it for parents who lose a child, because it is a different
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type of grief that I don't believe is really addressed in the best possible way. So someday when I can get to it, I'd love to do that level. What would be the biggest lesson you'd leave for the listeners? I think the biggest thing, and certainly tied to what we just said is that every moment is an opportunity for us to grow into our highest self. And it's how we make meaning of those moments that really enables us to raise consciousness and become more compassionate human beings. So rather than see them as negatives or something to run from, to me, again, it's opportunity to lean into it and experience it. And sometimes you need more supports than others, but to know that it's all part of our growth as human beings. I agree that it's part of the experience of life. It's not gonna all be positive and sunshine. The more you can look at lessons in life benefit you, the better your life will be. Let's do some rapid fire questions. Who gives you inspiration and and why? Well, a lot of people do, but I would certainly say my husband would be one. You know, he's very wise businessman and a very patient man, so I look to him a lot. My faith is another inspiring factor for me. And then I read a lot of, you know, high level books and listen to a lot of high level podcasts and things like that. I'm always learning from someone. Husband. So the list is long. What was the best business advice you've ever received and who gave it to you? Gosh, that's a really tough one. I think years ago, I mentored under the renowned Nido Cabane.
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He taught me compassion, and he was just a very wise yet judicious man in terms of how he thought about money. And that was a big turning point for me, because I'm not really good with finances. And he made me aware of things in a different way. And he made me a long answer to a very short question, but he also made me aware of my own value in terms of the work that I do. That's a very, very important one for how you price your services and the time you spend with people. I would say for anyone listening, that is one of the most important lessons you can learn is your own value because you almost all cases undervalue yourself when you have value to give, and the people who overvalue themselves Yeah. Don't have anything to give because that's their connecting with money or financial means as a way to drive value where the people of value are trying to drive value and don't know how to price it. What's one of the best books for entrepreneurs to read and what was the one thing you took from it? Well, The Theory of You is one of my favorite. I've read it many times.
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I think Ken Wilber's book, The Brief History of Everything, those are, I know that every entrepreneur would care about those books, but for me, why they're important is because they show how we are interconnected in this world and how important it is for us to really appreciate and support one another in business as in life. Integral theory is, my work is also grounded in integral theory, which is a very important framework for business people. If they haven't exposed themselves to it, I highly recommend it. What's your favorite AI tool or technology you're leveraging your business right now? Right now it's ChatGPT, but I know I need to go into some of the others that really hold proprietary information better. But I really do feel that it's helped my business grow because it's helped me speed up some of my processes. And it's I look at it as like a a community, like I'm in a a think tank of creative beings. It's not just chat. It's like thousands and millions of chats,
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that helps me really analyze things in a whole different way. I tell people all the time, talk to it like it's the smartest human in the world. That's how you should start the conversation with it. If you had to start over today, your whole career, what's the one thing you would do differently?
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I wish I'd taken more business classes because I was always interested in more philosophy and psychology and those kind of things, which is great for the field that I'm in. But again, you know, the whole business components, I've learned so much working with clients, you know, going in because I'm a systems thinker. So I could go in and I can do all the work in a corporation because I can see what's broken in the systems. But I rely on the CFO when it comes to let's look at the numbers because that's just not my area. Final question for you is, you know, if there's one question I should have asked you today, but I didn't, what's that question and how do you answer it? Well, I always love to talk more about the stages of human development. So if you ask me what are the stages of human development, maybe I can give you a quicker answer for the listener's sake. There are 12 stages of human development that we know about based on the research today. And the average American in the workforce is at stage four or 68%. That is just intended to give people hope and alignment with everything else that I've said, that there is so much more opportunity
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for us to grow up into our highest self if we just are willing to do the work. I went to my high school reunion of thirty years a little while ago, and it dawned on me that I, you know, I I don't drink. I work out. I've don't never smoked. So I probably got good solid thirty years of cognitive ability ahead of me and productive work that I'd wanna do. And it just dawned me that I just graduated high school again when I was at that reunion. So I have thirty years ahead. What would I do different? And I think if people look at that knowing that there's lots of stages of life ahead and most are positive till the end. I'm sure the end end ones are kind of acceptance and goes down the the grief path, but the idea being is that you have you can reinvent yourself any kind of like you said you wish you had taken more business classes. You still could if you really wanted to, but you've solved it another way. So you've taken your business class because you solved it. Mhmm. And and I think people realizing that there are stages of life and you are not trapped. You you still have a perspective of grandparents as old, but you're gonna be that age and not feel old until, you know, until you are. And so I think that's the shifting of mind and mentality. So I'm not sure all that will make it in, but just between you and I, I think that's a really very great question to ask. What are those stages of human life? Yeah. Why should I care? I think that's very good. Maybe we'll do that at the end here. I wanna give you, though, shameless plug time. Where can people get ahold of you? My website is sharonspanner.com.
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Feel free to email me at sharon@sharonspano.com. And then we've got a new lead magnet coming out on the stages that I just mentioned. It's a a quiz type version to help people see where their center of gravity is. It's not quite out yet, but we also have, a wait list for the Leaders Edge, which is a six week masterclass that I do. So they can find that at my website as well if anyone wants to. I'm only gonna do those every quarter. So if anyone's interested, they can get on that wait list. sharonspano.com. Sharon, thank you so much for joining me today.
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Thank you for joining us on this episode of Cut the Tie. Let's stay connected. Please hit that follow button on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube. And if you're ready to advance your entrepreneurial journey even further, join our free community at facebook.com/groups/cutthetie. Cut the tie to everything holding you back from success.