INTERVIEW: Jamie Kern Lima - WORTHY: How to Believe You Are Enough and Transform Your Life

This episode focuses on overcoming self-doubt and building self-worth, especially in the context of entrepreneurship and personal growth.

1. Self-worth vs. Self-confidence: Understanding the difference is crucial for personal growth and success.
2. Reframing Rejection: Transforming how we perceive rejection can change our lives.
3. Impact of Underlying Beliefs: Unresolved self-worth issues can sabotage personal and professional achievements.
4. Practical Frameworks: Lima provides tools for building unshakable self-worth.
5. Personal Stories: Sharing her own experiences, Lima makes the case for the importance of self-acceptance.

1: Introduction

Jamie Kern Lima is introduced as the founder of IT Cosmetics and author of "Worthy." The episode sets the stage for a discussion on self-worth.

• Sean Castrina: "Today is going to be a great podcast."

2: The Role of Self-Worth in Success

Lima discusses the critical role self-worth plays in achieving and sustaining success.

• Jamie Kern Lima: "We don't become what we want, we become what we believe we're worthy of."

3: Practical Advice from 'Worthy'

Lima shares frameworks from her book to help listeners deal with rejection and build self-worth.

• Jamie Kern Lima: "Change your relationship with rejection, change your entire life."

4: Personal Insights and Stories

Detailed stories from Lima's life illustrate how overcoming personal challenges led to her professional success.

• Jamie Kern Lima: "I had to learn how to reframe my perceptions of being abandoned."

1. Identify and Reframe Rejections: Review past rejections and actively change the narratives attached to them.
2. Separate Self-Worth from Achievement: Recognize that your value does not depend on your successes or failures.
3. Practice Self-Acceptance: Regularly affirm that you are enough exactly as you are.
4. Set Boundaries in Relationships: Avoid letting others define your worth.
5. Seek Supportive Communities: Engage with groups that reinforce positive self-worth.

Jamie Kern Lima is author of the upcoming book “WORTHY: How to Believe You Are Enough and Transform Your Life”, “Believe IT: How to Go from Underestimated to Unstoppable“, and Founder of IT Cosmetics.

People

Jamie Kern Lima, Sean Castrina

Companies

IT Cosmetics

Books

Worthy

Guest Name(s):

Jamie Kern Lima

Content Warnings:

None

Sean Castrina

You are listening to the ten minute entrepreneur podcast with host Sean Castrina.

Today is going to be a great podcast. I have the founder of it Cosmetics, which had a billion dollar sale. She's also the author of Worthy, how to believe you are enough and transform your life. And she saw and she taught a class with Oprah. I have Jamie Kern Lima with me here today.

Jamie, it's great to have you on the podcast. So great to be here. Thank you so much. Okay. It's called the class you taught with Oprah was life.

You want class, is that correct? It is, yes. That caught my attention when I saw it. Like, how do you teach with Oprah? So we did a whole course on resilience, which you would know so well.

Jamie Kern Lima

One of the keys to entrepreneurship, resilience. And we also went deep on the topic of worthiness and self worth. And it's so applicable to entrepreneurs and to business because a lot of people think that they need to sharpen their business skills and then their business will take off or their leadership will take off. And in life and in our business, by the way, we don't become what we want. We actually become what we believe we're worthy of.

And so kind of the heart and soul of what she and I talked about and why I wrote the book, worthy is really, you want to double your business, double your self worth, like, you want to double your net worth, double your self worth. So many of us spend our whole lives, and even our whole business careers or entrepreneurship careers, building these skills and all this that's important, that builds our self confidence. But if underneath it all, we don't also have strong self worth, which is different, it's our identity level stuff, we will either sabotage opportunities, we won't take that risk in our business because we don't soar to the level of our goals and dreams in life. We literally stay stuck at the level of our self worth. And this has impacted my life in so many areas, and I just kind of became obsessed with this topic and super honored to share it with you and talk with you.

Thank you. So typically, when somebody's, I would venture that if you wrote about this, this obviously played a part in your life. So where was there this point where it was like, okay, maybe I didn't feel like I was, and then obviously, you created an incredible it cosmetic. So where did this hit you to where at one point you were maybe not looking at yourself the way you should have, and it started clicking for you because I sense there's a backdrop in here. There's such a backdrop.

And by the way, I would love to ask you this question too, especially just learning about your story and about how you entered entrepreneurship and all that and how you felt worthy and enough of it, because right now, 80% of women don't believe they're enough and 73% of men feel they're inadequate and not enough. It's a real thing that so many people don't talk about. And so for me, when people typically google my story, they'll see what looks like a fairy tale. They'll see like Denny's waitress builds billion dollar company. And yes, that is true, but most of my life I didn't feel enough and I didn't know why.

There were so many times I doubted myself out of my own destiny, for lack of a better way to put it. And even in building a cosmetics, when I took that risk and launched the business, started doing 100 hours weeks, what I didn't know and anticipate was I would go through over three years of hundreds and hundreds of rejections, literally teetered on bankruptcy for a long time, very close to it for a long time. And there were tools I had to build in order to not just give up and quit and think that because what happens for a lot of us is we think because we've failed so many times or we get rejected so many times, we start to let it take root at an identity level and think I'm a failure or I'm a reject. And for a lot of us, especially ambitious entrepreneurs, we will bury those things deep down inside and not realize they're impacting what we go through. And I want to share this example with you.

That might be a big aha moment for a lot of people. It was in my life, you can be doing all the things right that build self confidence. But if underlying all of it, you don't have strong self worth and they're very different. With low self worth underneath things, you can achieve everything in the world. You can have a big bank account, huge company, success, all of this.

But if you have low self worth underneath it all, you'll either stay stuck going to the next level or you'll go for things and sabotage them. Or if you have medium to high self worth, you can have all the confidence in the world and keep achieving, achieving, achieving. But underneath it all, you still don't feel like you're enough and you feel like something's missing. And so there's a whole chapter in worthy, the book called change your relationship with rejection. Change your entire life, which I go through the four part framework on how to do that, because for me, it was how I dealt with hundreds of rejections and eventually built a billion dollar business.

We sold for $1.2 billion cash to L'Oreal. And it was learning. A key to that was learning how to not take rejection at an identity level and how to reframe it and become fearless about it. But the biggest thing to share this quick example with you is that there is a massive difference between self confidence and self worth. And self confidence, while it's an internal trait, is so much based on external things that fluctuate if we're winning or losing, our assessment of our own skills and abilities, our willingness to try and go for it, how we feel we stack up and compare against others, or how much of the world's definition of success we have.

And self worth is the deep internal knowing that you are enough and worthy of love and belonging, exactly as you are, not as you achieve. And here's what happens for so many entrepreneurs, like anyone listening to us right now, if they feel like, okay, I've gotten all these goals, I still feel like something's missing in my life. I still don't feel like it's enough. This is what happens to so many of us. We think, right, and maybe imagine a time in your life, too, Sean, or everyone listening to, like, when you, like, if you've ever had this goal and you thought, once I get that thing, then I'll be happy.

And maybe it's a certain job title, or it's your company hitting a certain threshold, or it's the six pack abs or the white picket fence, the marriage, whatever it is. And so we work so, so hard, and we finally get that thing, and we're like, wait a minute. I thought this was going to be the thing that made me happy and fulfilled and feeling like I'm enough forever. And what happens when we arrive at that thing? For so many of us, we're happy for a month or a week or a few hours, and before we know it, we're back to feeling like something's missing.

So we think the solution is, let me just work harder and achieve more and more and more. What happens in that journey? And most people do this their entire life, and they never feel fulfilled, and they never feel like it's enough or they're enough. When that is our journey, we're building a whole lot of self confidence and growth and all that which is beautiful and important, but none of that builds self worth. And if underneath it all, you do not believe you're enough as you are, you'll never be able to fill fulfillment in this journey.

And so why I wrote worthy. There's over 20 tools about how to build unshakable self worth. And to answer your question about I'll use Oprah as an example. I was in a moment in time where my whole life I had dreamed of meeting her. Like, I watched her grow enough every day in my living room.

It was a lifelong dream to meet her. I finally met her. To cut a long story short, I got invited to her house for lunch. This was like a lifelong dream. I had just sold my business for over a billion dollars cash.

Became the first woman to hold a CEO title of a brand in L'Oreal's 100 plus year. History was in Forbes. All these things on the outside looked like I had it all. And I felt so much self confidence. I had this lunch with Oprah.

The very end of it, she gave me her cell phone number and said, you can call me anytime. Call me anytime. And Sean, I didn't call her for four years. And this is what happens when we can have a whole lot of self confidence, but underneath, not believer worthy of things. I didn't call her for four years.

And in that four year window, I told myself stories like, oh, when I have the right thing to say, then I'll call her, or everyone wants something from her. I'm going to prove I don't need anything. Like all these stories I told myself. And one day, four years later, I realized the real reason I didn't call her was deep down inside, I didn't feel I was worthy of being her friend. And when we, on an identity level, don't feel we're worthy, whether it's of our business, hitting seven figures for eight figures per nine figures, we don't think we're worthy of a healthy, loving relationship, of being an incredible, strong leader.

Whatever it is, we will either sabotage it like I did with Oprah, or we'll stay stuck and never go for things. Or if we have medium to high self worth, the best we can do is go after the things and get them, but still feel like something's missing. So that's why these examples in my life have taught me, wow, you can have all the confidence, you can achieve all the things. But that's not the ticket. The ticket is learning how to build strong self worth underneath all of it.

And when you believe you're enough as you are, it doesn't curb your ambition. You actually become more ambitious because you realize oh. If I fall flat on my face, it does not impact my self worth. It might impact my confidence for a minute, but my self worth is rock solid. So you actually become more fearless and going after the things and more ambitious.

So that's one example of many. Listen, went to college, and I was a psych minor and went to grad school for counseling. And I completely agree. And I typically find we allow someone at some point in our life to criticize, condemn, diminish us, and we carry that, and we give someone who doesn't deserve it, no matter how close they are in our life. And it can typically be very often as a parent, a sibling, and then, or a relationship where somebody dismisses you or diminishes you and whatever, and then you're spending your whole life trying to get this imaginary, it's okay, you did it.

Sean Castrina

You spend that time trying to earn this. And it's typically a person that a lot of times, they don't ever think they ever did anything wrong anyway. So even if you have the conversation, they dismiss it. And so you're actually fighting this demon that you can't beat anyway, but you carry it around with you, and we. Let those labels take root.

Jamie Kern Lima

And one of the things I go deep into the book worthy, there's a chapter that's called when you change a relationship with rejection, you change your life. And I take people through this framework of how do you revisit past rejections and failures and actually reframe them so that they don't take root in your identity and reframe them in a way where you actually really believe a new meaning, because everything, life is a meaning we attach to it. And this has been huge for me in failures and rejections I faced in business, but also, to your point, personal. I was adopted. And for a lot of my life, my parents who raised me worked a lot, and they were amazing.

They worked a lot. I always felt abandoned, and I always kind of had this label. I stuck on myself as abandoned or rejected, not enough. And I literally had to learn how to reframe all of it in a way, I believed. And in this particular case, I was like, wait a minute.

God chose me to come into this world. My birth parents were together one time ever. That was it. And I came into this world that God chose me. And then my birth mom, she could have given her life would have been way easier if she did not have me.

So I was like, she chose to have me. My adoptive parents chose me. Oh, I wasn't rejected. I was chosen and I believe that to my core. And I go through how to do that in every area of our life in this book.

Because the meaning to your point exactly, the meaning we give to past things, sometimes we're not even aware of it. They're almost like these labels we've stuck on ourselves. Like, in my case, rejected, unwanted, like these labels, and they're like lead balloons attached to our wings when we're trying to soar. And what we typically do is mask them by achievement. And all the things that somehow the world teaches us makes us feel enough.

But if we have those underlying things stuck to our identity, we'll never feel enough. And so resolving those is huge because it's like clipping those lead balloons away from your wings and being able to fly and actually enjoy the heights that you're flying to, whether it's as an entrepreneur or just as a leader with your team. By the way, these things affect leadership as well. Self worth stuff affects leadership big time, right? Big time.

Because underneath it all, we have self worth issues. And again, 73% of men do, 80% of women do. We'll second guess our decision making as leaders. We'll think, okay, if we're crushing it and hitting numbers, I'm not going to share that risky idea. Just in case it fails, we'll sabotage things.

This shows up in so many areas, and it's easy to think like, oh, I'm past all that. It's my past. And it literally affects every part of our lives. And so I thought I had it all literally, and I was still sabotaging stuff because I didn't feel worthy of it. And it was like, okay, this isn't the secret to life.

And how many people do you know, you have probably met thousands of people the way I have that have incredible business success, but they're just not fulfilled or happy. And this is a big reason why, when you, on your own, have underlying self worth issues, a lot of people don't realize, why does something feel like it's missing in my marriage? Or why do I feel unfulfilled in my job? I feel like something's missing. And so then they quit their job or they end the marriage or whatever it might be.

Not realizing that, it all starts internally with, do you believe you're enough and worthy of love and belonging as you are? And it's almost like self confidence is your belief in your abilities as a person, and self worth is your belief in your value as a person. And self confidence is sort of like self worth is a foundation, right? And self confidence is a house we build. There's a lot of entrepreneurs with amazing house.

Sean Castrina

And you can play a character and you can play a character. The reality is like self confidence. And I know you know how to do this. I know how to do this. It could be the worst day of our life.

But if we have an important meeting at 04:00 or we need to be on stage or something, we can literally go from an airplane to a car and snap the facade. Yes. And play the role and look like everything is absolutely together because it becomes a character. Yeah. And a skill set we could tap into and deliver.

Jamie Kern Lima

Right. I used to have to do that with them. I did over a thousand live shows on QVC. And the sales pressure is massive. And you don't hit sales by the minute.

You lose a product. And I remember I used to have those moments where I had that skill set and that confidence to be able to snap into that even if I'm having an off day and be able to be fully present. And to your point. Yeah, totally. That's our skill set.

That's all. But if underneath it all, like that day with Oprah, it was the best lunch ever, like three hour lunch, it was like a dream come true. And yet underneath it all, I didn't feel I was enough and so I sabotaged it. And it's like that will surface in every area of our life and business until we, until we build that rock solid foundation of self worth that holds up our big house of confidence on top of it. No, I just know life is amazing.

Sean Castrina

But it does start know having, valuing yourself, loving yourself. It's a thermostat. Everything in life is coming out of that inner thermostat. And wherever that's set, it's going to dictate so many things in your life. I have Jamie Kern Lima with me here today.

She is the author of Worthy how to believe you are enough and transform your life. Jamie, thank you so much for being on the podcast. How can my audience connect with you? Obviously, you can buy books every. We all know where to buy books.

Amazon and any other place that you can find a book. So that goes without saying. How can they connect with you, Jamie? So I'm on worthybook.com. There's lots of thank you gifts for buying the book.

Jamie Kern Lima

I don't sell anything on my site, by the way, donating 100% of proceeds from the book. This is just like my life's greatest work, to be honest. It's everything I've gone through. I'm helping others now realize that, especially as someone who's been CEO of a pretty big company and all the things, and I'm on Instagram at Jamie Kernlema, and it's such a gift and honor to be here with you. And thank you for having me on your show.

Sean Castrina

Thank you. Super excited again. I hope you learned something today. Read the book. And if some of the things that are being discussed is really resonating with you on a personal level, talk to somebody.

Read the book. Sometimes things can peel back some layers today and you're like, wow. Spend a little bit more time looking into that. That's what I would encourage you to because everybody deals with areas, challenges, and things of that nature. Want to thank you so much for listening to the podcast.

Number one entrepreneurship podcast. Always in the top ten of business podcasts. It's because you tell others about it. So thank you so much. It's brought to you by gig strategic.

They're the best, best digital marketing company for small businesses. Look them up. Gigstrategic.com. They handle all my companies. I want to thank you for listening, and we'll talk again soon.

Bye.