27. When Intuition Meets Boldness with Stacie Shifflet

Bao MC Yang: 00:00

Today, I'm receiving Stacie Stifflet, she has had such an amazing career, and I truly admire her for that, for her boldness, optimism, guts she had, listening, and following her intuition.

Bao MC Yang: 00:14

I want to tell you so much more about her, but I think it's better if you listen to this episode. So let me introduce her. Stacie Stifflet is a catalyst for personal transformation and the founder of Modern Consciousness. As a successful businesswoman and entrepreneur with a diverse background in multiple industries, she has curved her path as a sought-after expert in empowering individuals to reclaim their joy and peace of mind.

Bao MC Yang: 00:39

In 2012, a life-changing event propelled her on a profound personal journey of healing and self-discovery. Fueling her thirst for understanding the human condition and her own belief and mindset, she thought of mentorship from world-renowned experts in various disciplines. This immersive exploration ignited within her a deep desire to guide others toward embracing their unique brilliance.

Bao MC Yang: 01:07

As a visionary founder and CEO of Modern Consciousness, Stacie channels her insights, grit, and optimism to help individuals raise their awareness and conscious patterns from the past. By intentionally shifting these patterns, she enables her clients to transform their daily lives from being overshadowed by inner turmoil and frustration to embodying internal peace and joy. Stacie firmly believes that awakening to modern consciousness is a secret source to a life well lived. Her credentials are a testament to her dedication and expertise. She is a three-times international bestselling author, empowering readers with transformative knowledge. As a modern consciousness coach, she guides individuals through their personal evolution, supporting them in the pursuit of alignment and fulfillment. She is also a certified Theta Healer, Free-mE Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) Practitioner, and Master Practitioner of Neurolinguistic Programming. Her expertise extends to being a Professional Neuro-Shine Technology Coach and a Certified High-Performance Coach. With her passionate heart and commitment to helping others unlock their true potential, Stacie Stifflet is an inspiring guide on the journey to personal growth and conscious living. Through her visionary leadership at Modern Consciousness, she continues to empower individuals worldwide to embrace their innate brilliance and experience a life of authentic joy and peace.

Bao MC Yang: 02:37

I met Stacie through a platform called Podmatch, and I love this platform. Let me tell you, I call it Tinder for podcasts, but I don't think it's an official title for it. Podmatch is so simple to use and yet extremely powerful because a lot of the steps involved in the process of podcast interviews, from applying to recording, are automatized. It makes life so simple, but most of all, thanks to Podmatch, I get to meet such interesting profiles, ones that I wouldn't have never met otherwise in life, like Stacie Stifflet. So if you are serious about podcasting and you want to be featured on podcasts or look for guests for your podcast, I can only recommend Podmatch. You can find an affiliate link in the show notes. But if you want to listen more to her story, And how mixing interest and boldness, and optimism has worked for her as an empath. Stay tuned. We're about to start.

Bao MC Yang: 03:52

Hi, Stacie! I'm so happy to have you here.

Stacie Stifflet: 03:55

Oh, so good to see you. Thank you so much for having me.

Bao MC Yang: 03:59

Yeah. I think we're going to have a very nice conversation. There's so much about you that I want to know.

Stacie Stifflet: 04:04

Oh, thank you. We had a good pre-call. I enjoyed it.

Bao MC Yang: 04:07

Yeah. Thank you. First of all, I just would like to know. We already talked about that in our pre-independent corporate. Would you say that you are an empath or HSP?

Stacie Stifflet: 04:17

I would say so, yes. I'm highly intuitive. I'm sensitive to others, right? And to the energies around me. So yes, I would say certainly.

Bao MC Yang: 04:28

You have quite a career. I think you have done many things and worked in many industries. I think you have been also quite successful in it. So do you want to tell us a little bit about your journey? Career-wise.

Stacie Stifflet: 04:42

Yeah, certainly career-wise. I didn't really realize until just a couple of years ago. Just how strong my value of self-actualization was. I've been that way ever since I was a small child. I really like to figure things out myself. I liked to do them my way, and I didn't necessarily rely on what someone said I should or shouldn't do or the impacts of certain choices. I liked to make my own choices and my own decisions and have those experiences. And as I said, just since a young child, much of the consternation of my mom every once in a while, but yes, always been very sensitive career-wise. It's been an interesting journey for me. I spoke with someone the other day that said, wow, your superpower is your ability to reinvent yourself. And I have done that a number of times throughout my lifetime. I've been in a number of industries. I was in the hospitality industry, which was a nice way of saying I attended a bar and waited tables for years. I did well at that. I was pretty bold. I would walk up to a manager in a restaurant and say, hey, why don't you hire me? I can increase your revenue at the bar. You're not charging enough for the drinks, and I was, like, barely old enough to be there. Maybe 20 years old. I think the drinking age was 18, and they would say, well, wow, that's pretty bold, and tell me what your plan is, and I would tell them, and I would get hired on the spot. So I made a career out of that for a bit. And then when I got married, I'm divorced now. I was married for 28 years when I first got a job there. It was through the good graces of a woman at church. It was a friend of my mother's because I had no office skills. Right? But I was hired on to do some very basic bookkeeping and some typing and things. Very quickly took to that. I rolled out within a year, probably of working at that company. It was a small woman-owned contracting company in DC. I rolled out the 1st IBM PC decks, desktops to the entire Department of Health and Human Services.

Stacie Stifflet: 06:59

So I learned pretty quick. That was a pretty big deal for that into a career subject matter expert in the field of federal government procurement. Particularly in automation; I worked in that industry for a while. I did a 50 million dollar acquisition of a company without having a penny. Got my sweat equity out of that deal. It took me 9 months. They thought I was crazy, but I did it. And when the investors flipped the company, I cashed out of that. Then I had a framing construction company in DC build 4 and 5-story apartment buildings. I raised llamas along the way. If you can believe that, did you think that you would meet a llama breeder? I did that while I was raising my son, and now here I am in Sarasota, Florida, and I have a new company called Modern Consciousness.

Bao MC Yang: 07:48

I love that. It's so fascinating how much you have done, and it's just coming from what you just said hospitality is like, we, obviously, there are intelligent people and very capable people in hospitality, but It's not something that I would automatically think that you can have such a career starting from there, and so my question would be because you said your superpower is to reinvent yourself. So I know you said that you were bold, but what does it take to have such a path? Like, is it blind trust and faith in the, I don't know, universe and your destiny or anything? Is it like pure optimism? What is it?

Stacie Stifflet: 08:27

I think it's a combination of confidence. I think it's confidence. I think it's optimistic. I think that before I've even really been aware of what manifestation was just kind of had a knack for doing that, I could see, or I sought after opportunities. I stepped into them, just like with acquiring that software company who does that people looking at me and going, you know, that's insane and, you know, I pulled a team member with me. That had some merger and acquisition experience because I had none. It was a space. I knew very well. It was actually even a company. I knew very well. My divine timing, I reached out to the owners of the company and said, hey, I want to figure out how to buy your software company. I don't know how to do it, but I want to figure it out, and they said, gosh, Stacie, we just listed it with the broker. So you're going to have to go through the broker. And at 1st, I was disappointed, but honestly. That's the only way it could have worked. I think with so many things that I've done, that's kind of the epitome. I never doubted it. I felt it was meant to be, and I absolutely never doubted that it would happen. It took nine months. They called me a cashless investor people told me it was impossible. The partner that I pulled in on the deal to help me do it. Several times he was ready to quit. He's like, We can't do this. This is insane. And I said, we will do it, and we did do it. Every acquisition company investment company that we put our deal in front of one of the deals. So we got our choice of who to work with, and the rest is history. I had a great position within that company for five years, and as I said, when they flipped it, I, I took my money and got out, and that really set me financially for three years.

Bao MC Yang: 10:24

I can really see how you are really leading the boat. Like the way you just said right now, no, we're going to do it. You were shining so much confidence. Like I was not there, but I was thinking, Oh yeah, let's do that. I mean, it's very calm, confident. It's like, we want to follow you. Yeah. Oh, yeah. If she's going, then I'm going to, you know.

Stacie Stifflet: 10:50

It was just a fantastic experience that, you know, I still have friends at that company. I had worked at that company for a number of years, and I had friends with them for years as well. And it was great. It was a great feeling to go in. It was a great feeling too, you know, when you're doing an acquisition and. The people that are acquiring the company and putting up the money, you know, they don't know the people that are there. So. There's always a lot of fear of shuffling around, and I was very adamant with them that the management team and the execution team at that company was the exact right team to have on the ground. They didn't need to bring anybody else in. In order to continue to succeed and do what they did. So I don't think anybody got laid off in that acquisition. It was a pretty cool thing.

Bao MC Yang: 11:38

And so you mentioned earlier like you had this like that divine timing, and I'm just wondering, like the way you tell your story, it seems like you had so many changes in your life, and that was actually initiated by you. I just wonder, like, do you just wake up one morning and be like, Hey, you know what, I'm going to do this today.

Stacie Stifflet: 12:00

Sometimes I do. That's why I'm in Sarasota, Florida. I literally woke up one morning. I had never been to Sarasota, Florida. I was born in Miami, but gosh, I hadn't been in Florida for decades and decades. We moved to the DC area when I was in 1st grade. So that was very 60 years ago. Right? A long time ago. I literally woke up 1 morning and. I just had a profound knowing that I need to move to Sarasota, Florida. I had to look it up on the map. I wasn't exactly sure where it was. I thought it was on the Gulf Coast somewhere, but I wasn't exactly sure. Didn't know anybody, and within 2 weeks. I had a realtor, was on a plane, flew down here, and bought a house. That's how pulled I was, and that's how confident that this is what I was supposed to do. And I assume that it will reveal to me over time why I'm here. There was a few little things already, but I haven't got that big like, Oh my God, that's, that's why, right?

Stacie Stifflet: 12:59

I haven't gotten that yet, but I don't doubt that I will.

Bao MC Yang: 13:02

That's so amazing. I love that. I'm learning to tune into my intuition right now, and I'm making some progress, but every time that I know that my intuition is right, I know it because I'm scared if it's a no for me, it's going to be like, I'm not even thinking about this, but run eyes. Yes, let's do that next step, and the first days, I would say, is always accompanied with fear. And I love how you talk about your story because you're really at the opposite of what I'm doing right now. I just love that. It's so beautiful to see you embracing your intuition and also like following it with this boldness and confidence.

Stacie Stifflet: 13:42

I have a tendency to jump in with the feet. I'd say with modern consciousness and with my current company, it's been a little different. I had a calling, and I actually had some information downloaded for this company, sort of what to do with it, what to name it, and the vision that I was gifted with was very, very large, and I'm like, I don't know how to do that. I don't know if I wanted to do that at this stage of my life as well to start a new business. So on and so forth. And honestly, I resisted it for probably 2 years. I was continuing my personal development work. I've been on a very strong personal and spiritual development journey for over a decade at this point. But the idea, it literally would not leave me alone. It just nagged me all the time. It was like, my consciousness, my consciousness, and I'm like. And finally, you know, I couldn't rest. It was constantly circulating in my mind. So I was meditating 1 day, and I said, okay, all right, you won't leave me alone. So my intention for this meditation is I really just need for you to tell me what the next step is, and the guidance that I got was to write. And it wasn't the 1st time that I had been guided to write, but it was the 1st time that I said, okay, I surrender, and I will write. I will start writing what I'm going to write. I don't know, but I will write. I've got goosebumps even telling me this. And within 2 hours, probably I got a text message from a friend of mine in Canada, and she said, hey, I've got a friend of mine. She owns ignite Publishing. J. B. O. and great lady, and she's doing a collaboration book and anthology book with the less Brown shows a spot open in the book. Would you like to join the project? My God, I couldn't say no. I mean, I just sort of sat there with my mouth open, and I'm like. Yes, please connect me, and I would love to find out about the project.

Stacie Stifflet: 15:54

So, in working on that project with J. B. Owen and with Les Brown, that's when the realization hit me that I could coordinate the launching of this company along with the release of that book. And that book came out maybe about 18 months ago. So what I said about doing was building the website and what I called it infrastructure, getting incorporated, you know, all the business stuff that you have to do before the launch of that book. So still in the early stages, I've created a signature program, which is what I'm going to start with because it was just too big a vision. And I actually got a business coach who's been fabulous. To help me scale that in and look at something a good direction to start in that was fully aligned with me. She's very much in the feminine business model and has a lot of experience and a lot of success. To help me hone in on what we call the small modern consciousness, right? And that's what I will deliver myself, and then we have what we call the big modern consciousness because I really would like to create a movement, a modern consciousness movement. I think we would all benefit from a little more awareness in our lives and intentional living.

Bao MC Yang: 17:12

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So that's to be.

Bao MC Yang: 17:17

I love that. I really like also the fact that you're still in it and you have just the confidence to talk about it as you're going through this, and this example shows that, yeah, it's not always the outcome will not always be visible and obvious and will not always be also obvious right after you take the action, you know, and sometimes you're going to only connect the dots, like years later, when you're going to be like, oh, right, actually, now I see it. Now, I understand why I needed to make that step. Despite that you're still in that project, you're still doing it. You're still pushing through, and that's beautiful.

Stacie Stifflet: 17:59

Thank you. Yes, this business has been a little different for me because not that I have much experience with, but, you know, I tell myself, you know, I didn't know how to do anything else. When I started doing, I'll just figure it out and, you know, I think the other part is getting a good team around you, a good team of advisors, and that takes time as well. A good team of advisors that you can trust. That you want to model and to mentor you to bring your business and bring your business along.

Bao MC Yang: 18:31

But I feel that this is also something that happened before, right? When you were having an idea, you also surround yourself by people who could help you.

Stacie Stifflet: 18:39

I did. I've had some great mentors along the way and. You know, it was a lot of effort on my part as well. You know, it's an exchange of energy. You know, I would step into new roles. The woman that I worked for when I first got into technology, I mean, it was a very small company and. I learned very quickly. I really learned the stuff on the computers very fast, and we should joke with me. I took to it like a duck on water, right? Which is a very famous saying, a very common saying in the US, and as her people would leave, and she really only had a handful of people, I would step into that role, and I stepped into it capably. She would nurture and show me, and I would absorb it, and off I would go. So I think that makes a big difference. And I think, you know, with just manifesting overall, which, of course, I'm much more exposed to now. It's a very popular term now. It is your mindset, but it is also your effort. It doesn't come without effort, and I think that what we do as well, I think it's very important that it's aligned with our strengths. And we can grow our strengths, and we can grow into new strengths. But there has to be a vibrational match there, I think, to get started, and then things do grow, and things do reveal themselves to you in bigger ways.

Bao MC Yang: 20:11

I have a question around the way you have lived your life. So you have had all these different projects, and they don't always make sense with each other, and I'm wondering because I am quite the opposite in the sense that it's quite cohesive, and I feel that even if I'm drifting a little bit, I'm always coming back to who I am and what is my big purpose, and so I'm just wondering about you and about, what do you think about this big purpose Do you feel that you have one purpose? Do you feel that you have a North Star, or how does it look like for you?

Stacie Stifflet: 20:48

When I was younger, I wasn't really aware of a purpose. I'll put it that way because I honestly think now, in hindsight, that my purpose really was having as many experiences and gaining the wisdom and the knowledge from those experiences as possible along the way, and that has created in me, I believe, and others have told me this as well. So I can talk to a homeless guy on the street and have a conversation just as easily as I can talk with someone in the boardroom. I've had a lot of exposure in a lot of different areas. You know, I've had some hardships along the way as well. I lost my 1st son. He died as an infant. I described that as, you know, going to hell, and I was lucky to come back out, but I did divorce after 28 years of marriage. That was, you know, that was a big 1 that certainly disrupted my life in a lot of ways. Looking back on my life now, at 66 years old, I mean, I think that my purpose really was to fill myself up with all of these experiences and to gain the wisdom and the knowledge from those experiences.

Stacie Stifflet: 22:05

I have a theory of modern consciousness, which was gifted to me that's not really linear, but the 1st level of that, the 1st aspect of it, I call Automaton 2.0, and that's acknowledged that we're adults now, but, you know, we have so much programming in our heads and in our personalities, and that is actually the way it has to be. We come into the world. Helpless, we don't know anything; we can't take care of ourselves. So we absorb everything and learn everything around us, and that's not even getting into the stuff about genetics and past lives and ancestral and all of that stuff. That's what powers us forward. I think many of us in our younger years to go to school, do well, and choose a college degree. I actually never graduated college. I was making pretty good money in the restaurant business. So I quit. I thought I'm cloud 9. I was doing well and get married, have a family. Choose a career path, all of these things and. From where I'm at now, and when I look at others, and particularly with what I do now, I really see that at some point, I think people stop and go, gosh, you know, I'm doing all this, and I have accumulated all these things, or I reached that partnership in my law firm, you know, whatever it is and. They're not really feeling very fulfilled, and I think that we create lives where it shifts to the momentum of our life pulls us forward. It pushes us forward. Right? We've got this scheduled that schedule. We got to get the kids to soccer. We got to get to the grocery store. You know, we just keep up, and although we do routine maintenance and inspections and assessments on a number of things, right? Our performance, our bank accounts, you name it, right? The car, you know, we need to take the car in for routine maintenance. All of these different pieces of our lives that we look at, and we evaluate separately, but I don't think what I see anyway is that many do not ever as an adult until they have a crisis often stop and exhale and go, what am I doing? Let me reevaluate my life. Let me take a look at it, and that is what I personally walk people through is that process to say, okay, here are all the pieces and parts. This is how it's all working. I believe it's all connected, and then really intentionally sit down and create your aspirations. What are my aspirations now?

Stacie Stifflet: 24:47

A lot of times I don't believe that we sit down and reconsider that I didn't. To really say, okay, this is where I want my life to be. This is what I want to be creating in my life, not just with the career but with your life as a whole. When that process starts in my model of modern consciousness, and we move into that 2nd aspect, which I call an awakening soul, and I don't necessarily mean soul in a, you know, it's not a spiritual awakening necessarily, although that certainly comes into play. But it's really raising our awareness and beginning to question the status quo, but that question is followed by action, right? We don't just continue to go. There's got to be a better way. We keep doing the same old way. We actually start seeking knowledge. And wisdom, we have a sense within us, something within us is saying. You need to do something, but we just don't know what that something is. Right? But we know that we have an urging, and I think that's what pushes us into being awakening soul and starting to reevaluate those things and then really elevate our lives as we learn.

Bao MC Yang: 25:57

It's so beautiful. I love everything you said; as you just mentioned around modern consciousness, business itself might not be very much like mature the way you see it, but I do feel that; nevertheless, you might be the exact right leader for the right person because when I'm listening to you, it's like you just mentioned it, like, we have so much conditioning and then people, they wake up to some point, and it kind of be like, oh, I have so much deconditioning to do and of course, you have had some setbacks and some things you have to go through, but you have less of this conditioning to do. You don't even have to do it because you lived your life in a very authentic way, following your place simply, and I feel that you have also experienced all these, like divine timing, synchronicities, and guidance. I do feel when I'm listening to you that you are so very good at surrendering, which is not something I'm good at. So this is why I noticed that you are good and I feel that you might just be the right person to do that. And, of course, there are things that are not clear yet for you in terms of the how and all of this.

Stacie Stifflet: 27:05

Thanks. Not sure how to create a community of, you know, a million people. I don't know how I'm supposed to do that. And I'm guessing I'll figure it out. I will be guided to the answers and to the people that will help me do that. So, I accepted and say, okay, these are the things that show me areas that I can move forward. Now, and then that's what I step into, you know, the ideas just come and come and come, you know, once, once you open that portal, it's prolific. So I don't always just stay in my lane. I've jumped lanes, and I've driven over median strips into a completely different before I did not follow a traditional path.

Bao MC Yang: 27:50

I just want to end the interview on that because my agents are ambitious empaths, and you have such a particular path career-wise. And I just wanted to know, and you are an empath as well. So what can potentially make, uh, empath successful entrepreneurs? Like is there something about them that they can capitalize on or develop, or is this something that they have in them that can make them successful entrepreneurs?

Stacie Stifflet: 28:18

You know, if we look at the traditional characteristics of an empath, we have a lot of empathy. We have intuition. We have a lot of compassion. We care for and about people, and we feel it. I actually count all of those as character strengths. Even though I can remember being told, you know, oh, you're just too sensitive, right? And many of us have, especially with the woman, right? So the collective consciousness will label a woman too sensitive. Oftentimes overly sensitive man, they're not labeled very nicely either in our society. Right. But I'll tell you, I was a Tony Robbins platinum partner for 2 years, and Tony's what? 6 foot 7, 6 foot 8, this behemoth. Masculine man is one of the most sensitive people that I have ever come across. You know, he will be moved to tears, and I've seen him be moved to tears, and he's not ashamed of that either. He embraces both, but I think really what it is. They're awesome character strengths. It's really more the emotional regulation that we have around them. We need to be able to regulate or appreciate those characteristics and strengths. But be able to regulate ourselves so that they operate for us and not against us so that we know when to set healthy boundaries and how to maintain those boundaries that we know. To give ourselves a little quiet time because we might be at something that overstimulates us and overwhelms us to be selective about who we spend our time with.

Stacie Stifflet: 29:55

So I think it's really a matter of the strategies that you put in place. I think they're great benefits. They're great character strengths. Who doesn't want to deal with people that are compassionate and kind and feeling and truly in the heart. Right? So I think it's a matter of the strategies that we put around that. To manage those awesome characteristics, because everything has a scale, you know, the pendulum can swing way too far 1 way or the other. And I think that's why we make great business people because we can create wonderful teams and wonderful relationships.

Bao MC Yang: 30:31

Yeah, also to believe that we're good at sales and marketing, we're able to understand others, and I feel that, so marketing is a lot around understanding your customers and what do they want, and of course you have part of it that is articulating the benefits so that it speaks to them. But I feel that also in sales, for example, I listened to a lot of podcasts about salespeople and sales strategies and all this, and I feel that what they are saying, in the end, is that the better listener you are and the better salesperson you become. It's not just about being this sleazy person, trying to sell you a vacuum cleaner or whatever at your doorstep, but it's really about connecting with the other person and understanding them, making them comfortable, and those who can sell you anything without that, you really notice it. And you're even happy about that. I do feel that because of our empathy, I mean, potentially if we, I don't know, maybe we need to learn the techniques or whatever, but I think that empaths can make great salespeople. This is my opinion.

Stacie Stifflet: 31:36

I think that's really. Interesting. I guess I've done sales my whole life, but I never think of it as, you know, what I define as sales. But it's interesting because I think the point that you're making or the point that I'm taking from that, and I appreciate expanding my knowledge about this, is really to be able to step out of what you think it is or what you think it should be, or what you think you should be doing or what your beliefs are, and really to step in with curiosity to really learn what other people need and what their needs are. So I appreciate that. I like that. Thank you.

Bao MC Yang: 32:14

It was so nice to have you here. It was so inspiring. I think you're one of a kind. I mean, probably.

Stacie Stifflet: 32:20

Oh, thank you.

Bao MC Yang: 32:21

People have told you before, just this very bold and confident aura, but at the same time, you're just so warm and welcoming. I have loved talking with you so much.

Stacie Stifflet: 32:32

I really enjoyed our conversations as well. I really, really have.

Bao MC Yang: 32:35

So if someone wants to know more about you and follow you and reach out to you, so where can they find you?

Stacie Stifflet: 32:42

They can find me my website is modernconsciousness.com, and it's spelled just the way that it's spelled. My Facebook and Instagram pages are also under modern consciousness. They could email me at empower@aware.life. E. M. P. O. W. E. R. @ aware of the word awareness, right? We have. I'm living an aware life. So it's aware dot life.

Bao MC Yang: 33:08

Amazing Thank you so much, Stacie.

Stacie Stifflet: 33:11

Thank you.