Heroes in Business - Alex Petrowski, 5EP Podcast Conversation with Nancy Gale Founder of JAMAH and AMBITION, Continued

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

Choose to be happy and support others. Nancy Gale is the Founder of JAMAH and Founder of the non-profit AMBITION and platform 23 Years of Ramen. She stops by the 5EP Podcast to discuss with Alex the disservice given to the idea of hard work and how to change the dialog around value and mental health. Further topics they delve into in this 2nd part of the interview include resilience through challenges, choosing happiness and cause in commerce. Join the growing community 5ep_podcast on Instagram

Hey Siri, what's on my calendar for today? Today, you have the 5EP podcast. Would you like to keep it on your calendar? 5EP? Yeah! Welcome to the 5EP podcast. Interview interviews and conversations to guide the genesis of personal development. Mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, and social. The five pillars of living a five exclamation point life. On now with your host, Alex Petrowski. your host, Alex Petrowski. Welcome to another episode of the 5EP podcast. I'm here with my guest, Nancy Gale. She had founded JAMA all the way back in around 2000, and then 10 years later had founded a nonprofit, Ambition ambition that she had ensured was

intertwined with JAMA and that they truly need each other and that she is driving the intersection of cause and commerce on a daily basis with those two endeavors. So without further ado, Nancy Gale. Hi, Alex. It's so nice to see you. It's great to see you, Nancy. I'd love to show the 5EP community a short video on all the amazing things you're doing with ambition and helping out this next generation of entrepreneurs, no matter what table that they sit in, whether it's a low income or high income, it doesn't matter. You're providing the resources for them. for them. Resilience, the ability to spring back into shape after being pulled, bent, or stretched.

Resilience, flexible, pliable, supple. Resilience, the capability to recover quickly from difficulties. Whether you grew up with a silver spoon or in poverty, resilience is your greatest asset. The beauty is that resilience is not something one is born with. It is a choice. The most important choice we all get to make is whether we will happen to our lives or whether our lives will happen to us.

My life, my story, are proof, however, that a charmed existence is not a state of mind, but a state of being, a matter of choice. I have learned with no uncertainty that we are never immune to great challenges, yet we are gifted with the opportunity to choose how we deal with them. So stay impassioned, have fun, be resilient, persevere.

Every challenge simply becomes an achievable task. It is up to us to make the choice as to how we deal with what is thrown in our path. My choice, my path is resilience. So welcome back to the 5AP show. I'm your host, Alex Petrowski. I'm here talking with Nancy Gale, the founder of JAMA and Ambition, the video you just watched. And this brings us to our next topic, the intersection between cause and commerce. I'd love to learn more about how you truly intertwine both your for-profit and nonprofit business venture. So when I started JAMA 23 years ago,

trauma 23 years ago, cause marketing was very big. And what it looked like for me was find a cause, any cause, act like you care and use that to market your business. So okay, it gives a few bucks to these nonprofits. That's great. But I didn't, I always questioned how sustainable that would be. And it is from a dollar standpoint, but I know that I believe volunteerism is really, really important. And so what I recognize, though, is I can volunteer, I can commit. But truth be known, when business life takes over, when personal life takes over, often the first thing to go is the volunteering. And many people, to be fair, make up for that with dollars, but we need the volunteers.

So I realized what I need to do is intermingle my cause and my commerce so much that one can't survive without the other. And people thought I was crazy. But for me, it was the only thing that felt right to hold my feet to the fire. Because if I did that, I knew no matter what, I could never let my business fail. And believe me, I went through some tough, tough times. But I would say in those really tough times, ambition and these students are what really made me step through. So what I realized, I started wondering, like, what does that really look like? Because I don't want to do, oh, look, every time we sell a bag, we give a donation. Again, there's nothing wrong with that. I just feel that it's much bigger than that, or at least it is for me. in a way that JAMA would give the bandwidth necessary, or the success of JAMA would give the bandwidth necessary to support ambition. And so now everybody that works with me does volunteers one way or another for ambition. And then those who don't work with me,

we get donations for scholarship funds and for some operations through fundraising drives. But most importantly, or at least as importantly, our mentors show up for our students. They have to make a monthly commitment. And usually they come every single week to work with our kids. And so that way I have a company that's supporting this and the energy of the company and also what it does for

it unifies everybody that works with me, even those who haven't met one another. There's just this common thread. And so that's been really, really exciting for me, is to see how everybody in their own way can care for these kids to the point where I have clients that donate to our funds and mentor our students. So it's really brought everything together. And I think that has to happen from the vision of the founder. And if it doesn't happen from the vision of the founder, because perhaps the founder is no longer living like in really large companies, it has to happen from the vision from the people that are really behind the scenes. And there's just something really special when you mix them that way, because then nothing falls off.

Like you're committed. We're in. And so as much as it feels that holding my feet to the fire that way was a crazy decision. And believe me, every decision I make some days, I think that was the craziest decision. And believe me, it's taken a long time. Twenty three years is a long time. 23 years is a long time of sticking to it. And sort of going back to the original conversation around work ethic and how fast everybody wants things to happen. I've found this incredible joy in how long this has taken.

Because when I was a young girl, I was fascinated with companies that at the time were 40, 50, 60, 100 years old. I think there's just the stories behind that are so incredible. And as a founder of multiple companies, how do you gauge when an opportunity is truly viable to go all in on? I think when no matter the argument, I have a, I can answer those arguments with strategy and agenda and that no matter what someone says to me, they cannot intellectually talk me out of it. And that takes a lot of being honest with yourself. I knew how long it was going to take to build JAMA. So you can imagine over 20 years, the conversations, especially in this era that we're in of everything's fast, fast, fast, and technology has, of course, accelerated that. But I look back at the big, big brands that were started in the early 1900s, that people didn't recognize for 30, 40, 50 years.

And that just fascinated me, the idea of just really picking away at something. But sort of back to your question, if I could walk away from those arguments and actually not argue with the naysayers, just take it in. If I could walk away and ask myself those questions realistically and rationally, and I still felt compelled to move that I knew I had to move. I love that. There's always a workaround no matter what life throws at you. And in order to truly know that it's viable, you really have to be able to work around any kind of obstacle that's thrown at you. And that's with anything in life, which actually leads me to my next question. In the beginning stages, when you're making a lot of mistakes, what advice would you have for somebody to stay the course and really go all in when it looks like from all corners, everything's piling in on you at once? looks like from all corners, everything's piling in on you at once. Ah, goodness. I would say for me, go to people with experience and it doesn't necessarily mean in your industry and not experience where you want to know how they figured out their business,

but how they got through those times. I think that one of the things that I notice is we don't have a lot of respect anymore or we don't give enough respect to people that are older than we are. And I have this theory that if people that are older simply by having more time on this planet, have had more experiences. It doesn't mean that a younger person can't be more worldly and more traveled. But I believe if we can look to people that are older than we are and ask them how they got through any situation in their life, that sort of repertoire, that material.

If I had like a vault for all the stories I've heard about people who got through tough times, those are the gems. Those stories are the gems. And I think what happens when older people are telling younger people's stories, what's what we start to hear is, well, it's different now, it's different now. But I don't believe the human being at the core is any different when it comes to resilience and getting through tough times. So I know for me listening to, you know, I had a father who was in World War II. The world was falling apart. But that generation made it and they did something. And I feel that we're very busy now bashing every prior generation for all they got wrong. There's been a lot wrong and there's been a lot right.

But one thing that people have had is fortitude and resilience. So I, for me, listening to the stories of people who made it through, that's where the answers lie for me. Support systems are so crucial. And I'm a firm believer that when you have a strong support system that is in the area of where you want to be later in life, you can learn through them and not make those same mistakes. Are there any specific mistakes that you see being made over and over again by this younger generation? mistakes that you see being made over and over again by this younger generation? And I would say, yes. And I would say that the generation before me thought the same thing about us. I believe one of the statements I always think about is when people say, well, you have

to learn from your own mistakes. Most people I know don't have to do heroin to know that it's not a good idea. So I think what we should, what's helpful is to recognize where we actually can learn from others' mistakes by listening, by not deciding that because we're a new generation with more technology, that we're actually smarter. So I think not seeing the intelligence of prior generations, that's a mistake. I think, in fact, I used to have this debate with one of the mentors for my program, and he was very successful, wise, one of the dearest friends I could have. He's recently passed away, but he would always say, if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life.

And I said, huh, I love what I do. When I'm up at two in the morning, figuring out how to pay the bills and how to, you know, keep inventory or stock or whatever it is that I have to do, working with the students. It's work. And I said, and one day the light went on and I said, you know, that statement in itself, although I understand where it comes from, it's another way of saying you love what you do, but it's actually another way of saying work is bad. And why aren't we saying work is good and work is fulfilling? Because I feel like those conversations are what have gotten us to this idea that work is the bad, that's what we need do less of. And so my thought around all of that is let's look at the people that are happy. Let's not decide ahead of time what makes someone happy. Find the people that you feel joy around

and ask them questions. I feel like that's a mistake. And I don't know if it's this generation making it or our generation not emphasizing that enough. But I do know it's something that if you find the people that you just feel joy, not that are telling you that are joyful, that you just feel it, that's who you should be asking the questions to. feel it, that's who you should be asking the questions to. And with that, Nancy, I have one final question for you. What advice would you give yourself? Would you give your younger self between the ages of 18 and 25?

I think probably very common. Have more faith in yourself and your conviction in your decisions. And just march forward no matter how many people tell you it's impossible because all the real greatness in the world, those people that made that happen were told it was impossible. I love that. Being a visionary, you see what's not already possible. Yes, absolutely. And with that, that concludes our episode with Nancy Gale. I look forward to seeing you all next week on the 5EP Podcast. I'm Alex Petrowski, tuning off. Thank you.

You've been listening to the 5EP podcast with Alex Petrowski. Interviews and conversations to guide the genesis of personal development. If you enjoyed the show, share it with friends and family and on your social media. And feel free to send us your feedback. Until next time, thank you for listening and live your 5X Mission Point life every day.