In this episode, Amber gets real about her journey as a teenage mom with 4 jobs to her now prosperous business helping other entrepreneurs. We talk about creating systems and the power of being yourself. Amber also shares the impetus behind her philanthropic work with Children’s Cup.

Amber is an empowerment and business mastery coach but she’s a certified coach, a business consultant, a professional speaker, she’s also worked with some amazing companies like Myriad, AT&T, FedEx, Lowes, Gaylord Hotels, in addition to also working with entrepreneurs.

Let’s go first to the beginning of your journey.  I’d love to know a little bit about you have a past that is so inspiring and I think it can really help a lot of people particularly women entrepreneurs.

I like to go all the way back when I was 15 years old.  I was very involved in school.  I was president of that, vice president of this.  Think I turned 16 about the time that I was featured on the local national news station.  I want to go to local news stations, like at 6 and 10 for an entire week.  Everybody is talking at school, “Oh Ambers on the news” because I was one of like ten good kids in Milan, Tennessee.  So they follow these rounds, we went into this loft on 2nd Avenue in Nashville and they talked to us, and why we’re involved in things and it was kind of big deal.

A couple weeks after that, I had to let everybody know, “Well, you know what?  I’ve made a bad decision, now I have a good thing in my life and I had to, well, I chose to resign from all of my leadership positions because at 16 years old I was pregnant.” So, that obviously changed a lot of me and it started me down the dual path of both just a lot of trial, tribulation, and that doesn’t even begin to cover it, those words are not strong enough.

Also having to figure out how to make life work, do everything possible to find success within my ethical boundaries of my values and of course all that and somehow still respect my own humanity.  So the driver for me, if we want to relate it to the entrepreneurial journey, was that when I had my daughter Brittany.  I looked at her and thought, “This child is going to have every opportunity at 18 years old that a child not born to a teen mom would have at 18 years old.”

I was committed to that.  I adore my kids, Brittany, she was actually born dead.  We had a very difficult emergency C-section because the umbilical cord is wrapped around her neck.  So she’s a miracle child, I can compare that to the entrepreneurial journey because if you don’t have that big why of why you’re doing what you’re doing, you’re not going to be able to what it takes in order to get to that and go.

For example, I like to share because this was probably the pick, like the epic time of struggle for me.  I worked four jobs at one time and there were two nights of every week where I didn’t go to sleep.  I truly just went from job to job to job, came home, I have amazing very supportive roommates and they had a daughter about the same age as Brittany, so they were able to keep Brittany overnight.  But I would come home early, early morning, take a shower, spend some time with my daughter, just long enough for breakfast.  I’ll drive her to the educational preschool that I couldn’t afford but I figured out how to pay for because my kid’s smart and I didn’t want to gyp her and then I went to my next job with no sleep.

I think, sometimes as entrepreneurs, we don’t focus in on the why and so when things get tough, we go let things go. We say, “I’m just going to go get a job”.  And if your big why is not big enough, then that’s probably what you should begin with.

How do you stay focused when you’ve got so much to juggle?

Work Ethic

You just start to figure out how to orchestrate it all by working in a way that doesn’t go against your natural flow and that fits within your lifestyle. I see so often, especially with women, women tend to be pleasers so it’s like, “Well I’m going to this because that’s how so and so would do it or how so and so would like it” or, “This book said I should do it this way so I don’t fit that mold and now I hate myself because we beat our self’s up so much.” And I just want to say, “Do you have ADD, well why are you trying to do something that somebody who does not have ADD says work for them?” Are you a creative personality? Why are you trying to do something in a linear way when you are a creative, like work with what your business, what your life and you know what works for were here using your current environment.

Talk to us a little bit about one of your core messages that I absolutely love and I think it’s so important, I want to like scream it from the top of a mountain and you say just do you.

I mean, that’s winner-winner-chicken-dinner as we say her in Tennessee. If you can get that part right then everything falls in place.

If you present yourself in the same way to everyone, no matter the situation and I’m not saying you can’t morph a little chameleon, but if you stay true to the essence of who you are, then everybody will know who the true you is.

So if I go into a professional or personal situation, “I’m Amber”, people can pretty much nail me down very, very easily in terms of personality and what my gifts are and that sort of thing. And so because I just do me consistently, people know I want to work with Amber yes or no, they feel strongly about to like, “Amber is not for me. That girl is way too fast, I am a slow mover. She would kick my butt, that would not be it and that would not set me up for success.” And then in the same, other people know what type of opportunities to bring to me. Because they are at a cocktail party and someone says, “Oh here are the problems that I’m having”, they can be like, “Ah! Amber, Amber is the person for that.” So if you just do you, you attract the right people and opportunities into your life and then that’s how you get that snowball and success going.

Instead of trying to be someone for every different type of person and always trying to be the next John Lee Dumas or be the next Marie Forleo, just do you and you will find your own path to success.

That is a golden nugget. I love the way you do you. You are very loving and you put your spirituality out there, your faith out there, yet you are also extremely firm. You’re not going to let people mess around on their dreams, you’re going to hold them accountable which I love.

There’s too much to think—it’s because I love and I think that my clients know that. The people who get close to me, family members, friends.  I love them so much, when I see that they’re pussyfooting around or they’re getting off track then I’m going to call them out on it.

I’ve been told I have a velvet machete, it’s because I want to see them succeed. Because I am as invested in them as I could possibly be that I’m going to shoot them straight. If nobody else from their life is telling them, “You’re making a bad decision” or “You’re not on track with what you said you’re going to do, why aren’t you on track with your own promise to yourself?” then who else is going to?

That’s my job.

I love the velvet machete, perfect!

What is one of your big secrets on how you create systems?

I have a checklist first that I give to my clients and group coaching clients and courses. What I have them do from my kind of done for you process is I have them picked five systems that they need to implement out of this two page list that will immediately make a difference in their business.

So that means either they don’t have to think about, “Oh gee, how did I do that last time?” and waste time doing that or that they can go through this process with their virtual assistant or whoever that could possibly help them with their business and hand that process up.

What we do is first we pick the systems that will make the most impact and then we go step by step as if you were telling it to somebody who knew nothing about your business. Would they understand this? So you put it together and then the very next time that you do that process, you go by your checklist. If you do something that’s not on that checklist, then you need to put that back into the system.

Right now, you’ve got a beautiful family, you’re a super young and amazing grandma, you also do things with a good cup called The Children’s Cup. Tell me a little bit about that and your journey with becoming a philanthropist.

I started out with mentoring younger people myself and I still do. That’s always probably going to be a part of what I do. And then as my financial means continue to increase, I found that my time was more limited and my bank account was a little more full. I’ve worked in fundraising capacities before I definitely believed in giving back to your alma mater but then Children’s Cup came along.

I am very spiritual, I’m not religious. I definitely have some pretty liberal social views, however for me to say God is not a huge part of my life, in my decision making and that He hasn’t shown off an enormous, tremendous ways at all the critical points in my life and daily. But I would just be lying and so I did feel very led out of nowhere to go to Africa and I remember thinking of, “How am I going to tell this to my boyfriend?” Because he lived in Georgia, I lived in Tennessee and I thought, “He didn’t really know me that well. He’s going think I’m crazy.”

So I sat down for one day and I think I’m supposed to work with children and before I could say anything just goes, “Oh I really want to go to Africa.” And I was like, “Hold up. Wait a second.” So long story short, he and I went to Africa. It was shortly after and it’s the whole of the long story. We don’t have time to get into but we lost his daughter very, very suddenly to — encapsulated bacteria to cover her body. I mean she was gone in 12 hours, the day after Christmas and it was awful. I can’t even begin to describe what that felt like then and how it continuous t to impact. You know, there’s always somebody missing after thanksgiving table and she’s a bright, wonderful, beautiful young girl, definitely a champion of people and the underdog.

And so at that point, when we went to Africa we realized that we weren’t just going to Africa because that was something that we wanted to do but we were going to look for a way to ensure that Anna’s memory and what was important to Anna and that was protecting those who cannot be protected. She was that way with kids and animals and everything. We started looking at Africa as what can we do to invest ourselves and this be more of a permanent thing. So we connected with Children’s Cup and we went to Mozambique and Swaziland and the need is tremendous. I mean it is tremendous, I can’t even begin to describe just the poverty, the highest rate of HIV AIDS is in Swaziland, like 48% or something just insane. I mean kids are losing their parents, it’s really a complicated culture but a beautiful people. And so needless to say I cry myself to sleep every night. We were there for two weeks. I left a part of myself there.

Jeff and I of course eventually got married. We have the Anna Brooke Hurdle Foundation that does some work and as a couple and then through my business, we support Children’s Cup because we see how they feed the thousands with the few fish and loaves of bread. And most importantly, what they do is they take these small children who don’t have an opportunity to be educated and they put them on what they call care point.

They educate them and education is definitely high on my values list that’s why they land the second most intimate act that any human can do with another human is to feed them. That’s a very important thing so as we were feeding them their meal of the day, I mean let me just tell you the energy there was extraordinary. And I’m going to cry just thinking about it.

That’s a big why, you know I joke around sometimes with my—one of the things that you can get if you come to my side is this worksheet that I work people through to help them figure out how to really get some traction with their — who they are, what they want to be known for and how can they make money and that sort of thing. And I just flat out say when I’m talking about what type of person do you want to work with. If you don’t feel like there’s a calling in your life like you weren’t born to do something in this life, do not call me. I’m uninterested. I’m not your girl. I want to start talking about why are you on the planet and I also have very tactical things, but if that’s not something you want to talk about then there’s a bajillion good coaches out there, go call them.

If I have the capacity in here the United States to use my business my influence, financial means that I’ve been so richly blessed with to, then make an impact around the world and see these little kids that have some kind of hope in their life , like hope is given to me when I was going through a terrible time in my life, that is something that’s on my agenda every day of the week.

Can you give a little bit of some advice for the entrepreneurs that are listening who may think, “Okay, just do me, I do want to follow who I am but how do I even uncover that?”

You don’t have to have at all figured out today. I think that’s the first thing like go ahead and take that pressure off right now. You don’t have to have it figured out. You just have to have your next step figured out. And I get real visionary people and you kind of see like the end of the story but you don’t know how to get there, you’re not going to this way. So let’s just get that off the table right away. The next thing that I would encourage you to do is to look at what makes your heart think. Why do you get up in the morning, like what are the things that excite you when you look for those things that you’re passionate about, then you’re on to something. Passion are not mistakes. Then look at how you’ve been helpful.

Some people are like, “Well I’m a new entrepreneur so I haven’t tested any products or services.” Well, what have you done in your career with corporate or your day job or whatever in it and don’t tell me, “I wasn’t an accountant, I don’t want to be in account anymore.” When you were an accountant, how did people look at you, what was your personal brand with your organization? Were you to go to a person? Did you plan all the company padlocks or were you the problem solver, the people can fight in you. I mean what are those little hints, look for those breadcrumbs and then finally think about, “What in my perfect day look like? Who I would be working with? What would my day to day look like?

And don’t tell me, “I want to sit on the beach and drink Mai Tai and then work for three hours and life will just be perfect” because reality is it takes a heck of a lot of work to get there.

If that’s what you want and it’s probably never going happen for the majority of people so let’s get that off the table too. If you had to work and it wouldn’t feel like working, what would that look like to you? And then what could you possibly make money at? Look at the last year of business, where is your profit center?

The example that I like to give is like a pizza chain. You don’t call a pizza chain and then they make a lot of money because you ordered chicken wings. Do they offer chicken wings? Absolutely but what are they selling? They’re selling pizza, their commercials have pizza in them. Their print advertising has pizza in the. Can you buy extra toppings? Is that an option? Absolutely, you can. But can you get extra toppings if you don’t buy the pizza? No. So their profit center is pizza and everything else revolves around that. That’s what you need to find out for yourself. Don’t spread yourself thin and offer 20 bajillion offerings. Make sure that you understand where your profit center is and then if you’re going to sell anything else, make sure that complements your pizza.

How can people get more Amber, how can they find out more about you?

Go to AmberHurdle.com, you can opt in right there in the front page, you can get my five steps to profit and clarity worksheets.  If you’ve been in business for a while and you still don’t feel like you’re there yet or if you’re about to launch your business and you want to be more focused on who you are and what you offer then this worksheet will work you through the whole process. At the end, you’ll have a better idea of who you are, what you want to be known for and how you’re going to make money.

You can also join Amber live for her next Bombshell Business Bootcamp here!