Burnout, Recovery, And Resilience, With Kelly Meerbott

Don’t let burnout steal your joy. It’s time to address it before it takes a toll on your health. Join J.R. Lowry as he sits down with Kelly Meerbott, who shares her transformative journey of overcoming burnout and reinventing her career through executive coaching. After a life-altering layoff, Kelly discovered her true passion for executive coaching. Now, she helps others break free from burnout and find their purpose. Learn about the power of relationships, practical strategies for managing stress, and why mental health should be a priority in today’s fast-paced world. Get ready to be inspired by Kelly’s story and discover how you can transform your career and life.

Check out the full series of “Career Sessions, Career Lessons” podcasts here or visit pathwise.io/podcast. A full written transcript of this episode is also available at https://pathwise.io/podcast/kelly-meerbott

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Burnout, Recovery, And Resilience, With Kelly Meerbott

Speaker, Author, Podcast Host, And Expert In Organizational Change

Historical Start

My guest is Kelly Meerbott. Kelly is a sought-after and award-winning keynote and TEDx speaker, author, podcast host, team builder, facilitator, and expert in organizational change, organizational development, and leadership. With a unique trauma-informed approach and PTSD training, she has transformed the leadership landscape for executives, C-suite members, and senior military officers. In our discussion, we’re going to be covering Kelly’s early work in marketing and PR, her transition into coaching, her work with C-level and military leaders, and her current focus on the burnout epidemic. Kelly, welcome, and thank you so much for joining me on the show. 

JR, it is a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it.

I thought we’d maybe do a little bit of a historical start. You started in marketing and public relations when you were an undergrad at Holy Cross. Would you say that that was the plan or did it happen that way? 

No, it was not the plan. I went in as a pre-med biology major, then organic chemistry sifted me out pretty quickly. 

As it does. 

I’m somebody who likes good grades and does all of that. When I didn’t get a good grade in organic chemistry, I was like, “Time to pivot.” I became an English major with a minor in writing and women’s studies. I did an internship in 1997 at WPTV in West Palm Beach, an NBC affiliate. It was the summer Versace was murdered. I was an intern there and was with the reporters, international journalists, the satellite truck, and all of that. I’m going to be the next Diane Sawyer. 

I realized after I graduated that I would have to go to a small market in the middle of nowhere with no money, no contacts, and having to do everything. That scared me as a 22-year-old. I went home and my first official paying job out of college was at Bath and Body Works, sitting in front of the store with all the mall walkers in South Florida and asking them if they’d like to have a spray of cucumber melon body spray. If you put it in the refrigerator, it’s very cool. That was how it started. I got recruited by the NPR PBS affiliate and I was the promotions assistant. 

For all of the shows that you saw or heard on the NPR affiliate, we did all the promos. I learned baptism by fire. My whole career has been baptism by fire. Clear Channel recruited me and they’re now iHeart Media and I became the promotions director for six radio stations. That was again baptism by fire, but it was such a good learning experience, not only dealing with the general public but seeing what it took to get an event or to get a promotion on air or a contest and all of that. From there, I got hired by one of the clients I worked with as a promotion director, as their director of marketing. 

That was a very short-lived career because I went from corporate to local nonprofit. Let’s just say that the resources were not in support. We’ll be kind. Everything I’ve done in my career has been a stepping stone to what I’m doing now. I look back on it and go, “That had to happen for this to happen.” From there, I went to a PR firm and worked with PR. I then got recruited by a timeshare company, which I didn’t understand that’s what it was until I got in because I was in my 20s. I don’t know about you, but when I was in my 20s, I had a lot more brashness in me. 

When this company recruited me from Williamsburg, Virginia out of West Palm Beach, Florida I said, “I’ll do it, but I want a title change, $25,000 more, three weeks of paid vacation, and you have to pay for my relocation.” They were like, “Okay.” I packed up my Prius a couple of weeks later with everything that I owned in the world and drove to Williamsburg, Virginia. That was a hard job if anything about timeshare. The team that I managed was 60 type-A saleswomen in this industry that are aggressive. They were nicknamed the body snatchers, which is not very kind, but that’s what they called them.

I watched a lot of things that were not in alignment with the core of who I was. I stayed one day after my relocation contract and left. I went back to work in Virginia Beach for a boss who remembered me from West Palm. You and I both know that especially with social media, it’s a very small world. He called me and said, “Do you want to have lunch?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “We don’t have any openings in marketing.” I said, “I don’t want to do marketing.” He said, “You don’t?” I said, “No, I want to do sales.”

He was like, “Why would you want to do that?” I said, “A bunch of your salespeople in West Palm made a ton of money off of my promotions and I want to do that.” I went into radio sales. I listened to ask questions and turned relationships that were contentious with the company around to the point where they were spending 300% more and we were getting money out of buckets we had never gotten before. 

I then got laid off on January 20, 2009, and it was a shock. Even as I’m talking to you about it, I can feel my stomach clenching. After I got laid off, about two years later, I wrote my boss who let go of me a thank you note because it launched me to what I’m called to do, which is executive coaching. That’s how it happened. 

Learning From Previous Work

What did you learn about yourself from the PR, the marketing, the promotions work, and the sales work that you apply in your current work?

First of all, the brain learns in contrast. I learned what not to do. I had one good boss in corporate and I was like, “If I’m going to coach, then I’ll do the opposite of what they told me.” The other thing I realized was that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. It’s all about relationships. I will tell you the clients that I turned around, the contentious relationships, and I’m toning it down but one of the calls with my boss and I and McDonald’s corporation started out with, “We hate you and we hate your company.”

Burnout: It’s not what you know. It’s who you know. It’s all about relationships.

I was like, “I’ve never met you.” My mind saying this, “I never met you before in my life.” What I said to them was, “Tell me what’s going on, what’s happening.” I cultivated a relationship with them because their previous rep never saw them for seven years and just cashed her check or whatever. The promotions and marketing pieces came by one side, garnered their trust, and built a rapport where they realized that I was a collaborator and a co-creator in the process.

I would come up with these ideas. One of my favorites was, and I don’t know if you remember this, but McDonald’s came up with a Southern-style chicken and biscuit. Let’s be real. They were trying to get market share from Chick-fil-A because when I was in that meeting with them, I was like, “Tell me what makes it Southern because I was thinking, what if we do like Southern hospitality, that kind of thing?” They looked at me and they went, “The pickle.” 

I said, “We cannot build a national promotion off of that. What can we do?” What we ended up doing was taking our morning show team who needed to be out in the community anyway, to certain McDonald’s on certain Fridays throughout May and June. If somebody came in and bought a Southern-style chicken and biscuit and made a donation to the Ronald McDonald house, they got another coupon to come back. 

We were recycling people. What I learned from marketing and PR is number one, relationships, but also when you work with a client, regardless of your coach or in sales or tech, it’s a co-creative process. You have to let go of the binary “I’m right, you’re wrong” because it doesn’t work that way. That’s what I learned. There’s probably more, but off the top of my head, that’s it. 

Getting Into Coaching

Getting laid off is a spark that got you into coaching, but why coaching in particular?

My husband was in the military and he was at Guantanamo Bay working with the 9/11 detainees. I had seven days in my house by myself. I tell this story a lot, face down on the couch, crying and sobbing. I didn’t take a shower. I think I left the house to let the dogs out. I’m going to humanize her, but our golden retriever at the time put her head up on my lap on Sunday and I was like, “Enough of this. Let’s put your big girl panties on.”

I got in the shower and I washed my hair and I was like, “I want to do something more life-affirming with my life, but I don’t know what that is.” I bought a 12-disc CD set, a success course from Steve Chandler called Mind Shift. Mind Shift came with a 90-minute coaching session with one of the coaches who came through Steve. Her name is Charrise McCrorey. I’m still in touch with her. She was a great coach and she still is. Now we’re friends and colleagues.

I remember I brought her 25 pages of documentation of all of these horrible things that Clear Channel gave to me and did to me and all that stuff. She’s listening and 45 minutes into the call, she says, “Can I offer you some coaching around this?” I was like, “Of course, that’s what I’m here for.” She said, “I think you’re a victim. I think you need to take ownership of your life.” JR, am I allowed to curse here?

Yes. 

I told her to fuck off and I hung up the phone on her. I was sitting at this desk in Virginia and two thoughts came into my mind almost immediately. One was, “Is she right?” The second one is, “Is there any truth to what she’s saying?” All the answers that came back were yes. I looked at my watch. I was like, “There’s 45 minutes left on the free call.” I called her back. I apologized and we ended up working together for three and a half years, which during that time she had said, “I think you’re good at marketing, but I don’t think it lights you up inside. I think you should coach.” 

Now the context I have coaching was life coaching where women are walking through fields of flowers, tossing petals, and talking about the Law of Attraction. I was like, “No, we’re not doing that.” Finally, she said to me, “What if you weren’t able to change the corporate conversation based on how you showed up?” I was like, “Tell me more about that.” That’s how it happened. Like any good coach, she saw the highest potential in me based on how I was showing up.

I’ll tell you a funny story because this is full circle. Two years ago, I talked to Charrise and she stopped coaching. She’s taking care of her mom who has dementia and she’s working on art. She looked at me and she said, “You’re the poster child of my coaching. You did everything I told you to do and look at what you’re doing now.” To have somebody who changed your life for the better to say that, and say, “I see what you’re doing.” That’s how it happened. It wasn’t the plan. This was never the plan. The plan was Clear Channel and be the first female CEO, but something had other plans for me. I’m grateful that it did. 

I know you made the connection between the coaching that your dad got in his professional golf days. When did it occur to you that there was that linkage back to what you had seen as a child watching him work on his craft as a golfer? 

The awareness of it came in 2009 as I was on my coaching journey. How I started articulating it was probably a couple of years ago because my last name was different than my father’s. My married name is Meerbott, my maiden name is Burns and his name is George Burns III. I was with my team and I said to them, “Do you think it would have any value to add that in?” They were like, “Yes, are you crazy?” Here’s what I was thinking. I never wanted to be seen as somebody who wrote on somebody else’s coattail. I always wanted to be seen for the merit and the work that I did on my own. 

Reflecting back, the first four and a half years of my life were spent in hotel rooms, living in suitcases, and spending time with people like Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, and Lee Trevino. All of these people are titans of industry like Ogden Phipps, who owned a major secretariat and a four-and-a-half-year-old at that time seen and not heard.

I listened a lot. I watched a lot of body language. I watched him work with personal trainers, swing coaches, and sports psychologists. With elite athletes like that, the level of burnout, especially when it goes to their craft, I was like, “If I can help people in that way to clear away that energy and trauma that’s blocking them from being the best version of themselves, I want to be part of that.” 

I think kids don’t learn what you tell them. They learn what you show them. My dad taught me that. Ironically, he still doesn’t understand what I do. I’m like, “Dad, please stop telling people I’m a psychologist. I’m not. I’m a coach.” That was the connection. It was embracing a part of me that I had been shunning because I didn’t want people to think I didn’t earn this or I didn’t deserve what I had. 

Burnout: Kids don’t learn what you tell them. They learn what you show them.

You got into the business. How were your early experiences as a coach and as a business owner? 

First of all, I didn’t know what I was doing. I had no clue, which I think everybody as a business owner doesn’t. I think back to something Rich Litvin, who was also one of my coaches, said to me, “MSU Kelly, MSU.” I was like, “What the hell is that?” He goes, “Make shit up. Everybody does that.” I remember my husband, when I finally got a hold of him after I was laid off, said to me, “Are you done?” I said, “Done with what?” He said, “Done working for stupid bosses. I think it’s time for you to start your own thing.” I was like, “Let’s start our own business.” 

Fortunately, the Commonwealth of Virginia, thanks to Senator Mark Warner, is one of the best and easiest places to start a business. I googled it and I knew I needed a business license. That was $40 and I had $75 in my bank account when this happened because I was waiting for severance and other things to come through, which I know is a privilege and it’s not lost on me. I put $35 of gas in my Prius and then I started working for my center of influence and because I had such a short runway, it was all pedal to the metal. Four months later, I secured my first client and I’ve been in the block ever since, which is great. The other thing as a coach, first of all, that was 2009. 

I’m in financial services. I remember. 

I remember so many naysayers came out. Even my family was like, “You’re going to do what? You’re going to do what?” I don’t know. They still don’t get it, which is fine. I would have women come to me, and it was mostly women, which is a shame, that would come to me and say, “You do realize it’s the worst recession in the history of the recession. You do realize that coaching is hard and complicated and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” I’m the type of person that if you say something like that to me, I’m like, “Grab your popcorn and watch.” It fuels me. I use it as a tailwind, not a headwind. 

I constantly educate myself and try to stay up on things. That’s what served me and my sales background served me because I knew that a sale occurred in a prospect’s world and it occurred through conversation. If I could get somebody into conversation with me, then I’ve already won because if I can practice my set and I walk away and they’re not a client, that’s okay because I’ve honed my craft. If they do become a client, fantastic. If they say no, then I’ve learned resilience. It’s a three-pronged learning situation. 

When did you first start working with military officers? 

That’s such a great story. My husband has twenty years in the military. He was enlisted and there’s a distinction between enlisted and officers. When we moved from Virginia to Philadelphia in 2013, right around 2014, I got this message on LinkedIn from this gentleman who owns a show called Executive Leaders Radio. He said, “We need hosts. We followed you, we think you would be great. You’re not going to pay us, we’re not going to pay you, but in exchange for hosting, you can business develop with the CEOs that we have in our show.” I did that for two years.

I met this woman, Marilyn Wiles, who is from DC and he wanted to host a show in DC. We talked for two hours. This was in 2014. Fast forward to February 2020, I’m sitting there and I’m like, “This has been fun. I guess we’re going to shutter the doors.” She calls me and says, “Kel, you’re still coaching, right?” “Yep.” “You’re married to a veteran, right?” “Yes.” “We have this huge government contract where we’re going to be working with high-ranking officers on emotional intelligence and emotional well-being. Would you like to be part of it?” I said yes immediately.

That’s how it started. It got to the point where I got so good and honed such a tight formula that was getting them results that they started telling their friends. Out of that contract, I was included in the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA, TSA, and Department of Transportation. All of these things were fantastic because these were leaders that needed help.

Especially in that time period.

The way I got the officers to understand because a lot of them would be like, “I don’t want to answer your soft questions, Kelly, and blah, blah, blah, blah.” I was like, “Okay.” I said, “You’re going to ignore valuable data.” They were like, “What do you mean?” I said, “Your emotions and physical sensations are giving you feedback and you’re not tapping into those to utilize them to be a better leader.” It was like, “Light bulb, okay.” Now that’s different. I would teach them how their emotions and their bodies were guidance systems. If something felt off, it probably was off. How do we use that to be a better leader? That was how it happened. 

You’d been working with private sector leaders up until that point. How would you say that coaching military or government leaders is similar and different from people who are in the private sector?

First of all, I want to debunk that myth. Government and state, local, and federal are not different from the private sector. They’re both bureaucratic. They’re both huge organizations but with the military specifically, their jobs never stop. What was different about working with the military was that I could be tougher on them. I remember there was this five-star general that I was working with, and I’m sure he had the nuclear codes, who was in Alabama after the murder of George Floyd. The feedback I was getting was, “What are you reading? What are you giving to your clients about anti-racism?”

This gentleman got on, and he had been sexist and misogynistic to me. My belief is if you have one ism, it’s not a big jump to another. He starts railing on the fact that he’s not racist. I said, “Let me pause you right there. Yes, you are and so am I.” He said, “What the fuck did you just say to me?” That’s where I was like, “My home address is on my website and he might have the nuclear code.” 

This is what I said to him. I said, “It’s not people marching the streets. It’s not burning crosses on lawns. It’s a series and a system of processes, procedures, and institutions that were built in favor of us because we have no color in our skin.” He goes, “Such as?” I said, “The GI Bill.” He was like, “What do you mean?” I said, “One in a hundred soldiers coming back from the wars were Black. Not to mention redlining and all of this stuff.” It was like a game of chicken, don’t blink. I’m holding my breath like, “It’s out there.” 

I got to stand toe to toe with this guy and he looked at me and said, “You’ve changed the way I’ve thought you’re going to change the way I’ve led. By the way, I love the resource guide on anti-racism. Can you do one on sexism for me?” I went to him and said, “Could you give me 10 to 20 years on that one because that’s enormous?” You can be a little more direct and a little bit more forceful. I’ll tell you another funny story. I was telling my dad that I use the F word with military and he was like, “Kelly, that’s so offensive.” He’s old school. I say, “Dad, if I didn’t say the word fuck to them, they’d be like, ‘Get out of here.’”

I think with the military because they’re battle and stress tested, first of all, you have to find a connection point. I also utilize the families in the process. I had five hours with them that were allocated. I’m like, “If I’m going to get them results, I need to bring in the neck that turns them.” I would talk to the spouses and tell them to bring the kids in and ask, “What do I need to improve as a dad? What do I need to improve as a spouse?” Then bring that back to me and let’s work on that. 

Sometimes I would have conversations with the spouses because they were with them more than I was. It would move things forward. Now I’ve developed a technique where I say to people, because I’m all about giving tough love if I need to, but I do it kindly. I find that leaders at the level I work at don’t have somebody who’s going to provoke their mindset in a kind yet provocative way. 

If I were working with you, JR, I would say, “I have something uncomfortable for me to say that may be uncomfortable for you to hear. Is now the right time?” I will tell you that everybody I’ve said that question to has said yes, then I say what I need to say. A lot of these leaders live in an echo chamber and I say to them up front, “If you’re looking for a yes woman, keep looking. That’s not me.” 

Burnout

That’s not me either. Yes, man, not a yes woman. Let’s talk about burnout. When did burnout as a topic first come on to your radar and what was it that brought it into focus for you? 

2018 is when it came in and I think it came into focus for me. I’ve told this story in burnout presentations. Probably in 2009 when I was trying to balance being an entrepreneur working from home and saying to my husband, “No, I’m not doing laundry between the hours of 9 and 5. Let me be clear. I like doing laundry. It’s soothing to me. I know that’s weird but if I was at work, I wouldn’t be doing laundry.” There was one moment where I was sorting through things. I’ll tell you a little quirky thing about me. I safety pin my socks together because I don’t want to have to search for the mate because they’re good socks. 

I always think that’s part of the fun. 

Hunting for the mate? I didn’t want to do that. I remember sitting on the floor folding laundry and bursting into tears because I couldn’t find the mate to the sock. My husband goes, “Look at yourself. Look at what’s going on. What is happening, you need help. You’re burnt out.” For me, it felt like an electrical charge underneath my skin. When I would get into bed, I was so tired, but I couldn’t settle down. It was because, in burnout, you’re constantly stuck in this state of fight or flight. 

You have to tell your body it’s safe. That’s when it first happened, 2009, then fast forward to 2018. I started noticing people burnt out around me. I was like, “Let me look into this. What is this?” They codified it and then the World Health Organization labeled it. I cannot remember a disease or a syndrome. I cannot remember what it is, but I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I then started seeing it in the pandemic. I was like, “I hate to say this, but I think the second wave of the pandemic is going to be mental health and we’re going to start seeing it in our kids.” 

That’s how it happened. It’s building in pockets of time throughout your day to create relief. I’m working with somebody who’s very high-powered in the entertainment industry right now, and who is constantly on the go. I’ve been teaching her these techniques. One of them was, “When you’re washing your hands, take those twenty seconds and pay attention to your hands touching each other. If you’re going to sing happy birthday, sing happy birthday, take three breaths. People who are burnt out have a ton on their plate. You don’t want to create a healing situation where it’s, “One here, do this technique, do this technique.”

I teach them about techniques they can do on a Zoom call where you take your index finger and run it along your collarbone, find the crook between your arm and your pectoral muscle, and press in and breathe to trigger and allow your body to release it because it’s hitting your body first. That’s how it came out. I was doing all these techniques with clients that were working. I put together the Burnout to Bliss Journal and Toolkit. It is 28 days of things that prompt a quote, a journal entry, and then rate it. At the end of the 28 days, you go back and see what was most highly rated and repeat those and pepper that throughout your day.

This allows you to figure out what works for you because different things will work for different people.

I always joke and say one of my favorites is the primal scream. You can either take a pillow or I like to go in my car and turn up Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train. When he says “All aboard,” I scream my head off. I do it because it’s soundproof. For the first time I tested this technique, my husband came running out. He’s like, “What’s wrong?” I was like, “I’m just testing a new technique to see if it will work.” Warn your people, please. I’m telling your audience to warn their people when there are some loved ones. It’s an epidemic. Until we get mental health to the top of the list of priorities, we’re going to keep doing the same stuff. 

I often wonder, and I’ve asked this question of other guests when we start talking about mental health and burnout and related topics. Is it worse now or are we finally talking about it? I know the pandemic certainly had a unique impact on a lot of people, but I wonder whether it’s worse now than 20, 30, or 40 years ago.

I think it is illuminated now. Here’s what I mean by that. I think, and thank God that the Gen Z, Millennials, and Alpha generations have watched us, meaning I’m Gen X and the Boomers. Be loyal to these jobs that are burning them out and not going on. Maybe firing them three months before the golden watch. They were like, “We don’t do that.” They’ve got this vocabulary and language around mental health that we didn’t have. I think them calling it out and them leading by example is teaching us to say it’s okay to say, “I need to take a mental health day,” or “I need to take a sabbatical,” or “I’m going to talk to my therapist.”

I have a whole care team around me. I have somebody who works with me somatically and all of those things because as coaches, this is my belief that it’s our job to model what an ideal leader could look like. If I’m talking to you about burnout and I’m not going and doing my own work, why would you even hire me? That’s completely out of alignment. It’s also hypocritical, which are two things that I won’t compromise on those. To answer your question in short form, I think it was probably more prevalent and it’s been a presence all along. 

I think the previous generations didn’t have the language. I think there was shame and a lot of things that we were taught to hide and now the younger generations are modeling another alternative for us. Now we also have language and go, “It’s burnout.” It’s not just in business. Caregiver burnout, a lot of my clients are caregivers for their parents, and it’s a whole different dynamic, which drains the heck out of them. In my team, Cecily Kellogg was taking care of her mom and she did such a good She loves her mother, but the toll it took on her. It broke my heart but also, my heart went out to her because she was doing such a good thing for this person that she cared for, but it was also wreaking havoc.

I think it’s prevalent and permeates almost every area of our lives. I also think the United States is doing something wrong because you look at European countries or certain Asian countries like Bhutan. Instead of having a gross national product, they have a gross happiness product and they’re the happiest place. What are they doing that we’re not doing? I think that that’s another hazard of living in the United States. We think we know everything or countries that have done it better than us for a very long time. 

It’s also a country that has its roots in bootstrapping your existence and your living. Over the years, we’ve created these fantastic systems of entrepreneurship and approaches to capitalism, but there’s a dark underbelly to that stuff too. It becomes so much about stuff and so much about achievement that people forget how to be in the moment, to give themselves a bit of a break, and to take their foot off the gas. 

I think that’s the thing. Going back to your point about wanting three weeks of vacation when you were taking that job in Williamsburg. We got fewer vacations in America than most other countries in the developed world and people don’t even take it because they feel guilty about it. There are many good things about the United States, but there are also, I think in the work world in particular there are things that are probably not the most healthy.

It’s interesting that you brought that up because I finished a book called Rest is Resistance. It’s by Tricia Hersey. She’s the head of that ministry and she’s a black woman. She was talking about how capitalism was built on the back of the black community. She told a story about how one of her relatives had a head injury while he was an enslaved person. They sent him back into the fields to work till midnight. Fast forward, she gets in a horrific car accident and ends up in the hospital and her boss calls her and is like, “Could you come in?” She’s like, “I’m in the emergency room.” There are amazing things about this country and I love it. Also, I think we need to be more introspective and be honest with ourselves that this is damaging to humans. 

Coming back to your playbook of Burnout to Bliss. When people go through this recovery process, how do you help them figure out what created the problem in the first place and avoid creeping back into that? 

First of all, I’m a guide. I always say to my clients, “I’m not here to tell you what to do, judge you, or yell at you. That’s not my job.” My job is to offer information to help you make the best decision for yourself. I help them figure it out. Where do you think it first showed up? What’s one baby step we can take to shift the narrative? What are the emotions and physical sensations that came up in your body to signal that?

One of my clients was telling me she was driving down a major highway because I don’t know if people know 76, but she was driving down 76, a major highway here, and all of a sudden, the right side of her body went completely numb and she couldn’t feel it. She called her doctor. The doctor said, “Go to the emergency room.” They couldn’t find one thing physically wrong with her and said, “It’s your stress levels.” 

They manifest in your body. If I can tune my clients into what their bodies are saying and what their emotions and energy are telling them, when those clues start to show up in their bodies, let’s go back to the electrical charge in my body. If I know that’s showing up, then I know I’m steps away from burnout. If we can find those clues and make the adjustment before it gets to that point, then we’ve won. 

We use every resource available to us, mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, and energetic because those are all the resources we have at our fingertips inherently. It’s ancient wisdom in our bodies. The problem is because we work so much, we’ve disconnected from our hearts and souls. That’s how we do it. I’ll reflect on patterns that I see. “I’m seeing you do this. Remember that happened here. What do we need to do to either shift or change or change directions?”

For leaders or companies, what can they do to help their teams or their organizations avoid burnout? What should they stop focusing on because it’s not working? 

Pay attention to your team. Ask them questions. Get to know them. Get to know what their triggers are. Get to know what their inspiration is. Talk to them like humans, because you’ll know. I know when my clients come on and we do our work on Zoom, if their skin is gray or they’re low energy, I’m calling it out immediately. I’m like, “Why do I not believe you? Why are you low energy? How are you sleeping?” Ask those questions. You don’t have to go and have cocktails with them after work every day, but get to know them on an intimate basis so you don’t lose somebody. Help them understand that rest is part of the process. Any elite athlete, they have rest days. 

They focus a lot more on all of this. It’s interesting you mentioned that your dad did this back in the ‘70s or ‘80s or whenever. He was in his heyday as a golfer because I think about the professional athletes of the ‘50s. They’re out at the bar the night before they’re playing hungover. Now elite athletes are so dialed in. There was a transition from the old days, and it’s interesting your dad was doing all of these things even 40 years ago. 

He still does it. He’s 75 and he’s more flexible than I am. He stretched every day of his life. What I don’t think he knew and had a language for was the mental toughness that was required. In 1981, he led the US Open here at the Marion Club three rounds in a row and lost by two shots. This is a story I’ve told before, but I remember we were sequestered at the time in an apartment where nobody knew where we were. We have family here. They didn’t know where we were. Somehow his agent found us.

I was in the bedroom eavesdropping where I wasn’t supposed to. I was like six. His agent pulled out this legal pad and drew a line down the middle that said column A and column B. In column A, he wrote all the things that my dad would get if he won. Column B was empty if he lost, and he lost by two strokes the next day because he allowed somebody to enter into his mind and take up mental real estate that we were protecting and making sure that we were a good steward of his mental space. I’ll go as far as to say that people like Taylor Swift and Beyonce and all of these performers are high-performance athletes too. Taylor Swift was talking about how she stopped drinking. I don’t even want to know what it would feel like performing at the Heiress Tour hungover. 

Think about it. She trained for this tour on the treadmill.

Yes. I think it’s 8 miles or something like that. I’ve seen a lot of people on social media try to do it. Everything we do is an inside out. This is a vehicle for our soul to go through life. 

I think there’s a movie about that and a sequel. 

Inside Out. Yeah. I’ve been recommending that to all my clients. I’m like, “If you want to know what emotional intelligence is, go take your kids. See one. See two.” I love those movies. Those are great. 

PTSD

I was talking about that with some people the other day. I’ve not seen the second one yet, but I will at some point. You also focus a bit on PTSD. How did that come into the fold for you? 

I am a three-time survivor of sexual assault, which is told in a TED Talk. I didn’t know what PTSD was. There were moments in my journey where I felt like my skin was so thin that if you rubbed up against it, my whole insides would fall out. At the same time, it was holding me together. I then started working with the military. What a perfect alliance that way. I knew how I got myself through my journey. 

My journey is my journey. It’s not JR’s journey or Cecily’s or GG’s or John’s. I wanted to understand what PTSD and trauma do to the brain and how it reacts. I took a class and I’m a certified behavioral trauma therapist. I don’t call myself a therapist. I have the training from the Arizona Trauma Institute. I wanted to be able to help people understand what was going on and help point them in the direction of the resources that might align with them. I don’t believe anybody is broken. 

I’m not there to solve their problems. I’m there to share information and resources and then if something is out of my training, I will call it out. I’ll say, “I’ll continue to work alongside you. Let’s work together to find somebody who can help you with these other issues.” At least I understand what impact it has on them, their bodies, their energy, and their loved ones. My family was like, “We don’t understand why she’s raging every five minutes or why a word set her off.” I didn’t understand it either. 

Did they know that all of that had happened to you? 

I told them. Of course, my dad wanted to go up. 

As dads do. 

I wouldn’t let him. To this day, he still feels like a failure in that. I was like, “That was not your fight to fight. That was mine.” I believe Karma is the best lesson teacher and she has a very funny sense of humor. 

She often does. All through this, what strengths have you consistently relied on and what did you have to work the most on developing? 

Resilience, inner strength, and reminding myself that I’ve survived one of the hardest things that any human can ever survive. I can survive that. I can survive this. The universe is very funny because I have been recruited by many big companies and I’ve entertained offers and all of that. Every time that happens, somehow I get these clients that come out of nowhere. I’m like, “I guess this is where I’m supposed to be.” For me, resilience is not about falling because we all fall. We all fall. We all get bloody. We all get injured and we all get hurt.

It’s getting up, healing, learning from what that situation taught you, and then moving forward with that new knowledge. The number one thing is resilience and resourcefulness. Who do I know? Asking people like you, JR, who do you know that could benefit from a conversation with me and not being afraid of that. Harvard put out a study that 98% of business owners do not get referrals because they don’t ask. They ask. I’m like, “I’m going to be part of the 2% and ask.” Get over the fact that that might be shameful because as entrepreneurs, we hunt and eat what we kill and we need help. You’re not an island. 

What have you had to work on developing? 

Patience. I’ve also worked on not reacting. I had a very tense situation with a C-suite executive. We’re working with a very dysfunctional C-suite right now. He was extremely sexist and very offensive in three meetings directed at me. He was a much older White man. At the last one, it looked like a tantrum. When he finished, I said, “Okay,” because what he wanted me to do was to react, and I’m not going to feed into that. 

One of the reasons why I wrote the Fables is because I feel like everybody is screaming at each other. What if we could get people to understand through the natural world what is going on in a gentle way? Some people have read the book, Meerbott’s Fables, available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or my website. People who have had wildly different back upbringings, wildly different backgrounds, and completely different religious and political beliefs have come to me and been like, “That was the best read. You’ve flipped on its head the things that I’ve thought of.”

One guy said, “I read it five times. You’re smart.” I was like, “Thank you. I’m glad you did that.” I think not reacting and not getting to this outrage overload is what has helped me win because I’m not lowering myself and lowering that energy to a negative vibration because I don’t want that. I don’t want that in my life. I don’t want that in my body. I’ve had to develop that because I do have a short temper. Now it’s controlled and it’s a tool. I use it when I need to. 

What’s ahead for you? What’s ahead for your work? 

We have this global cohort of 60 coaches all around the world and deploy them to different clients. What is on our bucket list is getting two more big organizations that they can go in and transform. I would say volume two of Meerbott’s Fables is coming out in April and it’s already written. I’m excited about it, I’m already working on volume three, and more talks and more work and more great conversations like this. Honestly, I don’t think that far in advance. All I’m thinking about is hoping I’m giving you good answers. When I’m done with this, what’s next? I try to take it day by day. If that’s too much, moment by moment. In my mind, that’s what I love. 

Future Plans

Most people cannot plan all that far in advance anyway, but it is helpful to have at least maybe this North Star that’s out there that you’re aiming toward. 

Absolutely, and walking alongside more people on their journey to help them achieve what they want to achieve. I’m not here to tell them that, but as long as they’re not doing harm to themselves or others, let’s go for it.

Thank you for doing the show. I appreciate it. 

Thank you so much. I appreciate you. It’s been a great conversation. I hope you got everything you needed to get. 

—

I want to thank Kelly for joining me today to discuss her career journey, her coaching work with military and private sector leaders, and her focus on burnout and PTSD. You can check out her website, KellyMeerbott.Com, where you’ll find her book, From Burnout to Bliss. You can find her latest book, Meerbott’s Fables at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, or through her website. If you’d like to work on your career journey, visit PathWise.io and become a member. Basic membership is free. You can also sign up on the website for our newsletter. Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok. Thanks, have a great day.

Important Links

• Kelly Meerbott
• Rest is Resistance
• Burnout to Bliss
• Meerbott’s Fables

About Kelly Meerbott

Kelly Meerbott is a sought-after and award-winning keynote and TEDx speaker, author, podcast host, team-builder, facilitator, and expert in organizational change, organizational development and leadership expert. With a unique trauma-informed approach and PTSD training, she has transformed the leadership landscape for executives, C-suite members, and senior military officers. Her proven strategies help 90% of her clients overcome burnout, become more resilient, and achieve their goals. Her insights on burnout are featured in her bestselling book From Burnout to Bliss and her latest release Meerbott’s Fables.

Kelly is a Leadership Philadelphia Fellow (2019 Core Class), and a guest columnist for the Philadelphia Business Journal & Forbes. She hosts the “Hidden Human: The Stories Behind the Business Leader” podcast and is recognized as one of LinkedIn’s top recommended professionals. She is a contributing expert on Evisors.com and Noomii.com. She was named 2018’s “Best Person to get your Life and Business Together” by Philly Current Magazine.

Kelly earned a B.A. in English Literature from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA and has completed post-graduate work in Emotional Intelligence from Case Western Reserve University, Modern Psychology from Princeton, and Leadership Development from UPenn.