Episode 70 – Christy Trujillo

The Blueprint E70 – Christy Trujillo

00:00:00:00 – 00:01:33:13
Christy Trujillo
In talking with women for so many years, knowing that we all have our biggest demons, whether it’s fear, whether it’s confidence, self-esteem, et cetera, et cetera, they really, it can hold us back. So, how the book came to fruition is in 2017, I was actually diagnosed with breast cancer. And so, I went through the cancer journey, and it changed me. During that journey, my faith really strengthened. The first night I was diagnosed, I prayed, “Keep me out of the darkness”. And one of the things that did that was daily journaling. From the moment I was diagnosed on the exam table, I had a vision. It was like this moment of, “Who are you going to be through this process?”. This problem was actually brought to me to serve me, if I will allow myself to learn through it, instead of being a victim, getting angry about it. You can still be mad, you know. I mean, I was mad I got cancer. But what am I going to do about it? And so, how can I grow through this? What can I learn from this? If nobody ever reads it but my 2 daughters, it will have been worth the time and effort, because I’m leaving a legacy to them.

00:01:33:15 – 00:01:50:15
Brandon Adams
Hey everybody, welcome back to The Blueprint. Today I’m here with Christy Trujillo. She is a sales leader and an author and she’s here to tell us what’s what and tell you how to become a billionaire. Stay tuned.

00:01:50:20 – 00:02:01:19
Brandon Adams
And if you guys could do me a favor, just make sure that you hit the subscribe button on the bottom. That’s going to allow us to get more people’s stories out there and we’re able to get more people out in front of you. So, that’d be awesome. Christy, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it.

00:02:01:22 – 00:02:04:06
Christy Trujillo
Thank you for the invitation. I’m honored.

00:02:04:08 – 00:02:25:22
Brandon Adams
Yeah, 100%. Well, I want to know a little bit about your life story as we go through, and that’s kind of how we set up these podcasts—tell a little bit about you. If you could just give me five minutes, just to give me a taste of what these people are going to hear as they go through the podcast; a little bit about your end result of what you’re doing with being an author and a sales leader.

00:02:25:24 – 00:02:53:09
Christy Trujillo
So, I was raised in a small town in Rockwall, Texas, by two really hardworking people, entrepreneurs. My mom actually is a Cuban immigrant, came from Cuba in 1960 when Castro took over. And my father was the first in his family to go off to college, became a doctor and farmer. And so, we were just their three girls.

00:02:53:09 – 00:03:18:06
Christy Trujillo
We were raised with lots of work ethic. If we didn’t really play together as a family, we did a lot of working together as a family. That was just how I was raised. And of course, growing up, probably hated that. But as I grew, it’s probably one of the things that I love most that I was given as a child is just a really strong work ethic.

00:03:18:06 – 00:03:44:05
Christy Trujillo
So, I went on to work corporate America. I did that for 13 years. Had a couple babies, I’ve got two daughters. And I got into being an entrepreneur about 17 years ago by chance. I’m actually in the direct sales space. I do sales leadership with a jewelry company. And I had always wanted something for myself.

00:03:44:07 – 00:04:12:03
Christy Trujillo
But having been raised in a family of entrepreneurs, and my older sister was an entrepreneur as well, I saw the work and the effort that goes into the behind the scenes. Yes, you have amazing flexibility, but it’s 24/7. I mean, my mother was my dad’s office manager. My dad took calls through dinner, talking about people’s medical issues.

00:04:12:05 – 00:04:34:10
Christy Trujillo
And it just was nonstop. And then he was a farmer on the side. So, I think I would try to think of things that I could do and nothing really fell into my lap until 2008, and I was introduced to the direct sales space. And I thought, “I don’t know, maybe I’ll try this”.

00:04:35:15 – 00:04:37:19
Brandon Adams
Wait, what is direct sales, just as you’re getting into that?

00:04:37:24 – 00:05:01:05
Christy Trujillo
Great question. If you’ve heard of multi-level marketing, network marketing, basically you join a company to either sell a product, learn about the product, share it with your friends, family, your connections, your sales base that you build, your customer base you build. But really, what you do with it is up to you.

00:05:01:07 – 00:05:30:11
Christy Trujillo
And you’ve probably known many people get into the industry that have had some success—success defined however you want to define it. Lots of people get in and don’t do too much. I had, if I’m honest, a negative impression of the industry because I had just known people that got in and kind of dabbled, but never really took ownership of, “This is my business. This is what I’m going to pursue”.

00:05:30:12 – 00:05:51:21
Christy Trujillo
So when I considered doing it, I didn’t really have a positive mind for it. I decided to do it with my two sisters. So I’ve got two sisters, and we are very close. We were all in pharmaceutical sales together for years. It’s kind of a very strange relationship; we’re all best friends.

00:05:51:21 – 00:06:28:03
Christy Trujillo
It’s not normal, but it’s really great. We love it. But we decided to try it together. And once I got in and I did a little bit of training, I was like, “This could be really fun. This could be really impactful. This could actually be very lucrative”. After about six months of kind of following the training that they set up, I started seeing people that were doing really well, and I started realizing this is not an industry for you don’t have to be a brainiac.

00:06:28:05 – 00:06:48:04
Christy Trujillo
But you do, if you’ve got a work ethic, you could do really well. So about six months in, I decided to quit my job that I had; I was in pharma sales with a company called GSK. I decided to quit my job and pursue it with the full-time flexible focus. So, I’ve been doing that now for 17 years.

00:06:48:08 – 00:07:07:15
Christy Trujillo
Really just started as I’d sell a little bit of product, but I fell in love with it and I started building and developing a team. And so now I’ve been in sales leadership. I lead a large organization of women, helping them and a few men. Actually, one of our top sellers is a man, so I should not exclude him.

00:07:07:17 – 00:07:22:16
Christy Trujillo
Just helping them build mostly online businesses now, but some do it in-home, et cetera. So, that’s really the business model. And then you get paid on your direct sales, and you get paid on what your team does, which is no different than what I did in pharmaceutical sales.

00:07:22:18 – 00:07:30:13
Brandon Adams
Let me ask you this question, because a lot of people are going to hear direct sales, they’re going to hear you said MLM after that. There’s a lot of negative.

00:07:30:14 – 00:07:31:12
Christy Trujillo
Yes, I had it.

00:07:31:13 – 00:07:50:03
Brandon Adams
Yeah, right? So when you hear people kind of walk into that, you’re like, “Hey, I want to get into this,” do you start wearing out your friend base? Do you start becoming a pariah for the people that are around you? Because next thing you know, you’re peddling whatever to all of your friends.

00:07:50:03 – 00:07:56:17
Brandon Adams
Because you said it: your friends, your family, your circles. It’s not really reaching out; you’re staying within, right?

00:07:56:19 – 00:08:16:24
Christy Trujillo
If you don’t do it right. So, that was my biggest concern. In fact, my husband, when I was considering joining, he said, “But I don’t want you chasing our friends around with a catalog”. And I’m like, “Well, I don’t either. You know, who do you think you know I am?”. Because that had kind of been my impression. That had been what I had seen a lot of my friends or acquaintances do, social media contacts.

00:08:17:01 – 00:08:44:14
Christy Trujillo
So, the differences are, or how you really build a big business is you start with friends and family, just as I’m sure you did, Brandon, when you started your business. And what happens is, especially in what I do which is actually party planning.

00:08:44:16 – 00:09:03:24
Christy Trujillo
So, imagine this: You’ve got a friend—my best friend loves the jewelry—and so, jewelry, actually, is what I sell. And so she wants more of the jewelry, but she’s like, “I don’t really want to buy it all”. “So, I’ll have a party. I’ll invite my friends to shop the jewelry”. And then she gets free jewelry for doing so.

00:09:04:01 – 00:09:19:05
Christy Trujillo
So, she invites her friends. Her friends shop the jewelry, they love the jewelry, whatever. A few of her friends are like, “You know what? I don’t want to spend all my money either. I’ll do a party too, get some free jewelry, if you’re willing to do it”. “Well, sure I am”. So anyway, then we go to meet her friends.

00:09:19:07 – 00:09:42:21
Christy Trujillo
Well, all of a sudden, I’m in what we call Strangerville. I’m beyond my friends and family. So, when you learn the skills to do that, just like you would do or a plumber would do or a roofer would do to build their business from the ground up, you start to meet strangers through referrals, through the business itself, et cetera.

00:09:42:24 – 00:10:06:15
Christy Trujillo
So, it’s no different. The problem is, is there are those, just like with any business, that give it a bad name. Because they’re going to either hound their friends, make them feel uncomfortable. But I’ll be honest, Brandon, after 17 years of doing this, I’m sure I sell to some friends that just love jewelry.

00:10:06:20 – 00:10:15:07
Christy Trujillo
I couldn’t tell you, I was with friends last night for dinner. I don’t think one of them shopped with me. It’s just not my circle of customer base now. But it’s been through building over the years.

00:10:15:08 – 00:10:39:19
Brandon Adams
I was going to say, like for me, I don’t think I do business with any of my friends. To be quite honest, I didn’t start that way. Started through the general marketing channels and kind of building that way, so it’s always interesting to me to hear how people start to recruit, or people start to bring people into the circle for how they want to bring their business out, right?

00:10:39:19 – 00:10:45:24
Brandon Adams
Because it’s a completely different approach as to, “Hey, let me hit everybody that’s a contact list in my phone”.

00:10:46:00 – 00:10:46:20
Christy Trujillo
Oh, absolutely.

00:10:46:20 – 00:10:51:08
Brandon Adams
Yeah. Versus, “How do I find people that are actually looking for this product?”.

00:10:51:10 – 00:11:14:13
Christy Trujillo
Well, and that’s what I love. You know, there’s so many different ways to do network marketing, direct sales. Different products, different avenues. There’s a lot that really focus a lot on social media presence. I do have social media presence and I do work on that, but really, with what I do, it’s more party planning.

00:11:14:15 – 00:11:36:01
Christy Trujillo
And, you know, this is not a commercial but you’re asking me. What I love about party planning is that my hostess, my person that’s like, “I really want to get some free jewelry so let’s do a party,” she brings me her friends. I’m not having to go scratch around, dig around for friends or connections on social media.

00:11:36:03 – 00:11:47:08
Christy Trujillo
Or in my contact list, et cetera. She’s bringing me her people, so it’s like complete strangers coming to me. That’s why I love the model that I’m with. So anyway, but yeah, that’s how it works.

00:11:47:10 – 00:11:49:08
Brandon Adams
Well, very cool. And so you’ve been doing that for 17 years now?

00:11:49:09 – 00:11:50:07
Christy Trujillo
17 years, yeah.

00:11:50:13 – 00:11:54:24
Brandon Adams
You also said you’re in party planning as well. Completely different. Sounds like you’ve got a lot of irons in the fire.

00:11:55:02 – 00:11:59:24
Christy Trujillo
So, party planning with the jewelry.

00:12:04:08 – 00:12:22:14
Brandon Adams
I got what you’re saying. That’s a really cool point of that, to understand the different ways to get exposure and as you start to get past that, what led you into getting exposure for the book? How did you say, “I need to get something off my chest, I need to say something, I need to go through that”?

00:12:22:14 – 00:12:50:17
Christy Trujillo
So, in talking with women for so many years, knowing that we all have our biggest demons, whether it’s fear, whether it’s confidence, self-esteem, et cetera, et cetera, they really can hold us back. So, how the book came to fruition is in 2017, I was actually diagnosed with breast cancer. And so I went through the cancer journey and it changed me.

00:12:50:23 – 00:13:17:11
Christy Trujillo
I mean, I’ve always had a faith. I shouldn’t say really strong faith, I’ve always had a faith. But during that journey, my faith really strengthened and I learned for myself to really lean into my faith. For me, it’s the Lord. For whoever, everybody has their own versions of that, or different versions possibly.

00:13:17:13 – 00:13:30:16
Christy Trujillo
Something in that time period told me to journal. So I really started journaling every day how I felt. One of the things I prayed for was to stay out of the darkness because I didn’t want to get in.

00:13:30:16 – 00:13:31:11
Brandon Adams
What does that mean?

00:13:31:17 – 00:13:52:03
Christy Trujillo
So, to me it was negativity, it was fear, it was really just the fear of, “Would I make it through this?”. “Why did this happen to me? How is it going to affect my kids, how is it going to affect my husband?”. I wanted to stay out of that.

00:13:52:03 – 00:13:54:01
Brandon Adams
Just negatively spiraling downhill. Negative thoughts, yeah.

00:13:54:02 – 00:14:16:12
Christy Trujillo
Yeah, wanted to stay out of the negative thoughts. And so, literally the first night I was diagnosed, I prayed, “Keep me out of the darkness”. And one of the things that did that was daily journaling. I didn’t have this strategy or I didn’t read this somewhere. It just kind of manifested with time. At the time I was working with a life coach and I told her, “I’m journaling every day. I don’t know, something in me feels like at some point I may need to share this story”.

00:14:16:13 – 00:14:40:04
Christy Trujillo
Because from the moment I was diagnosed on the exam table, I had a vision. Not like a for real vision. I wish I could say that but I didn’t, but it was like this moment of, “Who are you going to be through this process?”.

00:14:40:06 – 00:15:05:07
Christy Trujillo
I don’t know if you’ve had thoughts like that—like, “If I get this thing, would I fall to pieces or would I just have tons of strength?”. And in that moment I decided, “No, I’m going to rise up. I’m going to be a pillar of strength”. Something in me just said, “You’re going to be this”. And I do know now it was the Lord.

00:15:05:07 – 00:15:28:04
Christy Trujillo
And so I started journaling, and I started thinking, “One day maybe I want to share this story.” Okay, fast forward. I went through a corporate lawsuit about a year later. My two sisters and I were with a company prior to the company we’re with now, and we were sued when we left.

00:15:28:06 – 00:15:54:09
Christy Trujillo
It was a terrible situation because I’d built a large team, a ten year reputation. I pride myself on my reputation, my ethics. And all of a sudden, all these relationships that you had had, people started questioning who you were. It was an awful experience to go through, but it was humbling, and as in any difficult situation, I grew tremendously through that.

00:15:54:11 – 00:16:14:07
Christy Trujillo
So, that happened one year after the cancer. We started over our businesses with a new company, which was scary and exciting and all this kind of thing. Best decision I ever made. And then about a year after that, I went through a divorce of a 23-year marriage and a 25-year relationship.

00:16:14:09 – 00:16:41:01
Christy Trujillo
And through all of that, I did a lot of self-reflection, a lot of counseling, a lot of trauma therapy. I decided—there were so many podcasters, authors, people I didn’t know, just followed on social media in addition to friends—that the reason I made it through those three, I call it my trifecta situation, was because of their stories.

00:16:41:03 – 00:17:06:07
Christy Trujillo
The things that they had gone through and seeing them rise, thrive, start new lives, start over, gave me hope. And I’m a true believer that that is why the Lord puts us here. He wants us to share. We’re all going to go through stuff.

00:17:06:07 – 00:17:36:23
Christy Trujillo
So one of the talents He gave me, or skills or characteristics, is I do have the ability to be very vulnerable. It doesn’t bother me. It can get you in trouble, but every strength has its weakness. But I feel very comfortable doing that; I always have. And so for me, I felt this extreme calling, like you need to put your story down so that you can help other people when they’re struggling.

00:17:36:24 – 00:17:40:19
Christy Trujillo
So that’s kind of the long story of where the book, how it came.

00:17:40:22 – 00:17:50:12
Brandon Adams
Well, I mean, it’s not a super… I mean, I think that there’s three parts to this I really want to talk about. One is, you talked about becoming the pillar. That’s an amazing thing or concept to really put out to people, because people don’t really think about—they react to things that come to them.

00:17:51:12 – 00:18:08:13
Brandon Adams
They don’t think through how they’re going to handle things. They’re just reactionary for the most part. I try to do that for myself too, is like, X could be coming.

00:18:09:16 – 00:18:27:10
Brandon Adams
How do you handle this? Who will you be? And you coach yourself up. Where you get to the point where there are two paths that I’m going to take. I’m going to fold, right? I’m going to be a crumble and cry in the corner.

00:18:27:11 – 00:18:31:18
Brandon Adams
Or I know all of these daggers are going to be coming my way. I know I’m going to have to survive these. They’re going to hurt the same either way.

00:18:32:20 – 00:18:49:21
Brandon Adams
Whether I’m laying in a pile getting stabbed or whether I’m walking through the fire getting stabbed, this one on the left is going to help me recover so much faster because I’m taking them all head-on. Is that how you perceive that? I don’t know that a lot of people perceive it the same way, so that’s why I’m asking. That’s the way I feel.

00:18:51:14 – 00:19:20:04
Christy Trujillo
Oh, absolutely. It’s a choice you make. And one of the things I talk about in the book is when you go through these trials, tribulations, stresses, making that choice that this problem was actually brought to me to serve me, if I will allow myself to learn through it. Instead of being a victim, getting angry about it.

00:19:20:06 – 00:19:43:22
Christy Trujillo
You can still be mad, you know. I was mad I got cancer. But what am I going to do about it? And so how can I grow through this? What can I learn from this? Who can I serve through this? That will carry me through it, but also bring bigger purpose to it, versus just Christy got cancer.

00:19:43:24 – 00:20:05:03
Christy Trujillo
That’s her story. So I feel—and this is what I try to teach my girls as well—every single challenge that comes our way: what can I learn from this in order to strengthen myself and grow? So it is a choice, and it’s not always easy.

00:20:05:05 – 00:20:06:18
Christy Trujillo
And I’m not always perfect at it.

00:20:06:21 – 00:20:17:22
Brandon Adams
No one is, right? I mean, that’s the journey. That’s testing yourself. When you start to build a little bit of a—I don’t want to say a callous or like you’re shielding yourself.

00:20:19:02 – 00:20:31:01
Brandon Adams
But you know what you’re walking into and you know what that’s going to feel like. Do you ever think about—and I equate these two things the same way—do you ever think about pain? Physical pain?

00:20:32:06 – 00:20:33:20
Brandon Adams
What truly is that?

00:20:35:01 – 00:21:02:04
Brandon Adams
I broke my arm pretty significantly 10 years ago. I didn’t wail over it, I didn’t cry. I thought through the process and I saw what was happening and I was looking at my arm. There’s sensory going on in my hand, right? And I can feel what it is, but I’m not shocked by it because I’m sitting here thinking what it feels like.

00:21:02:06 – 00:21:13:01
Brandon Adams
If I go to draw blood, I’ll watch the needle go in my arm because I want to understand what’s happening. I want to feel that. I want to equate the feeling of that. Am I psyching myself out by going, “Oh, I don’t want to look”?

00:21:13:22 – 00:21:26:13
Brandon Adams
I make it worse than it is, but if I take it head-on, I look at it, and I can see it going in, it’s like—is that really so painful that I can’t take it? A tattoo—I have a lot of tattoos. I notice you have tattoos as well.

00:21:26:14 – 00:21:27:04
Christy Trujillo
Yes.

00:21:27:06 – 00:21:34:03
Brandon Adams
I’m sure we’ll get to that point. But when you start to think about that, it’s like so many people talk about, “It’s the worst feeling in the world”.

00:21:34:03 – 00:21:38:01
Christy Trujillo
The funniest question I get is, “Did it hurt?” Well, what do you think?

00:21:38:01 – 00:21:39:23
Brandon Adams
Yeah, of course.

00:21:40:03 – 00:21:43:12
Christy Trujillo
It’s not comfortable. But it’s not awful. You’re not crying.

00:21:43:12 – 00:22:03:07
Brandon Adams
Yeah. And there’s some pain to it, but at the end of the day, too, it’s like, I think people tell a story to others to make it feel bigger than it is. And I think people tell a story to themselves to make them feel it’s more important or bigger than it is, right?

00:22:04:20 – 00:22:10:18
Brandon Adams
And so they really blow things out of scope. And if you really take a moment to watch the prick.

00:22:11:15 – 00:22:14:07
Brandon Adams
Or breathe through the break.

00:22:15:13 – 00:22:29:04
Brandon Adams
You know, you really start to understand: is that true pain? Is this something that I can’t handle, or is this something that I’m conditioned to now be aware during the time of other situations?

00:22:29:05 – 00:22:51:06
Christy Trujillo
Well, it’s interesting you bring up the physical pain. When I was going through my divorce, I’d never been through this before, never imagined I’d go through it. And I felt physical pain. And I would, when it would come, at first I didn’t know what it was.

00:22:51:06 – 00:23:11:20
Christy Trujillo
And then I learned through counseling this is normal. And it would be like my arms would hurt and my legs would hurt. It was almost like when I’d gone through radiation and the cells were like pulling me down. So strange. I know it sounds very strange, but I was advised: “Lay down. Feel the pain”.

00:23:11:22 – 00:23:36:23
Christy Trujillo
“Don’t try to avoid the pain, because you’ll grow through the pain”. If you try to avoid the pain, it actually—what it does scientifically, which I could never explain—makes it worse. But if you allow your body to feel it, then you will overcome it in time. Like building up the callous, I guess would be a good analogy.

00:23:37:00 – 00:24:03:24
Christy Trujillo
And so I had to learn to do that. But what I noticed is it made me capable of taking on more challenges. Because I’m learning and conditioning myself to expect challenges, expect problems. And what I have found also is through this, gaining confidence in myself. It’s a really amazing feeling.

00:24:03:24 – 00:24:19:07
Christy Trujillo
I would never wish the things that I’ve gone through on anybody. There’s much worse things that I could go through. I would never wish those things, but I’m so grateful now because of the strength that I feel, that I could kind of take on anything.

00:24:19:08 – 00:24:37:10
Brandon Adams
Yeah. You know, it’s funny, like that term that you use—I always mentally try to spin it a different way. You say, “I can get through anything.” I always tell myself, “I’m going to get through everything”. That’s how I choose to accept it. And what road I take, I’m still going to take the same path.

00:24:37:23 – 00:25:03:19
Brandon Adams
Whether I want to or whether I go through kicking and screaming. The path is going to happen. So, am I going to be aware of my decisions? Am I going to be aware of my situations, or am I going to be so self-absorbed with the “why did it happen to me” and things that are going on that I can’t think through, I can’t make the best decision at that moment because I’m off feeling sorry for myself?

00:25:03:21 – 00:25:08:17
Brandon Adams
You’re going to make it through life to a certain point—everyone’s going to die.

00:25:08:19 – 00:25:10:01
Christy Trujillo
But either this way or that way.

00:25:10:01 – 00:25:18:07
Brandon Adams
Right. We all can and we will, but it’s how you choose to take that path, right?

00:25:18:09 – 00:25:41:05
Christy Trujillo
It’s a choice. That’s why I say I can only equate it to being like a divine intervention. Because I remember being in that moment and making a choice, and that one choice then affected how I handled the next massive thing that came my way and the next massive thing that came my way.

00:25:41:07 – 00:25:57:23
Christy Trujillo
I don’t remember prior to that really having had that filter, but that’s part of why I want to share my story. Because hopefully, you impact somebody to maybe consider that when it’s their turn to go through something.

00:25:58:02 – 00:26:02:08
Brandon Adams
So in this chain of three events you call your trifecta, the first one was…

00:26:02:09 – 00:26:03:10
Christy Trujillo
Was getting cancer.

00:26:03:14 – 00:26:06:18
Brandon Adams
Getting cancer, yeah. Okay, and so let’s talk about it. Are you okay to talk about that for a minute?

00:26:06:22 – 00:26:09:14
Christy Trujillo
Oh my God, absolutely. I told you, I’m very vulnerable.

00:26:09:18 – 00:26:15:14
Brandon Adams
My mother got diagnosed with breast cancer a month and a half ago.

00:26:15:15 – 00:26:15:20
Christy Trujillo
Oh, I’m sorry.

00:26:15:20 – 00:26:33:06
Brandon Adams
So we’re going through that right now. Things are going well, and that’s the first time I’ve said that out loud to anybody, quite honestly. Sorry, Mom, if you don’t want that on a podcast. Probably should have asked beforehand. But at the end of the day, she’s the strongest woman I’ve ever been around.

00:26:33:06 – 00:26:53:10
Brandon Adams
She’s just like—can do anything and whatever. And to see her question things or try to understand, she stuck it, she took it like a champ, you know? To be quite honest. And I’m like, “Well, this is exactly where I get this from”.

00:26:53:10 – 00:27:14:20
Brandon Adams
She’s like, “Okay, I got to do this and I got to do that and I got to do that”, and she didn’t freak out. She didn’t fall on the ground, she didn’t do whatever. She would call me and talk me through the things that are going to happen and the way they’re going to happen. And I’m like, “This is exactly the way I, and why I think this way”, right?

00:27:14:21 – 00:27:22:06
Brandon Adams
So from your experience, you’re at the doctor’s office, you go through this news. Because there’s so many people out there that are feeling the same thing literally right now. Like my mom. Take me through this experience.

00:27:22:08 – 00:27:42:03
Christy Trujillo
So, you know, I never thought it’d be me. Honestly, most of us don’t think it’ll be me. You wonder, you know, you worry. But cancer’s so prevalent these days. But you know, I, for some reason, I have no idea why, I’ve always been very diligent about my checkups. So, if there’s anything I could say to anybody, go get your mammogram.

00:27:42:03 – 00:28:01:11
Christy Trujillo
Like I am so diligent about it. It didn’t run in my family, no history of cancer. My grandfather had it because he was a smoker. So, anyway, I’m doing my annual checkups and I get a letter on the counter or in the mailbox one day saying, you know, it was an irregular test or abnormal results come back.

00:28:01:13 – 00:28:20:09
Christy Trujillo
And I remember my husband said, “Oh my gosh.” I said, “Oh no, I’m not worried”. Like that same thing happened last year. So I go in for my next visit, for the advanced mammogram. I can’t even remember the terms at this moment. But, and they scheduled me when they knew there would be a radiologist there, just in case.

00:28:20:11 – 00:28:43:09
Christy Trujillo
And so, they did the scan, they called me in, the radiologist is there, and my father is actually a physician in the community that, or was, he’s retired now. So, he starts asking about my dad. My dad was a big hunter, big deer hunter. So, we’re talking about hunting and all of a sudden, the conversation stopped.

00:28:43:11 – 00:29:03:00
Christy Trujillo
And the mood changed. And then I knew something was not right. And so I’m laying on that table and that’s when I mentioned that, you know, something came over me like, “Who are you gonna be? Who are you gonna be through this?”.

00:28:43:11 – 00:29:03:00
Christy Trujillo
And I got in the car and I remember calling my dad, and it was just a whirlwind. That day was a whirlwind. I, my husband and I came together.

00:29:03:02 – 00:29:19:23
Christy Trujillo
We met with my OBGYN that night, and she kinda talked us through the fear component and just what would happen over the next year, and then it’s finding your doctors and you, and I was curious what your mom, what your mom’s thoughts were.

00:29:19:23 – 00:29:41:11
Christy Trujillo
Because the biggest thing that came to my mind was, “What did I do?”. What did I do to cause this? I’ve always been an exerciser. You know? FA- lived a very fairly healthy life. I mean, I might have french fries once a week. You know? I mean, but a fairly healthy life.

00:29:41:13 – 00:29:59:20
Christy Trujillo
And I was 45, I guess, at the time when I was diagnosed, and so, “What did I do?”. And then I had the girls, my daughters were eight and 12 at the time, and then you start thinking, “Oh my gosh,” you know, “Who’s gonna be there for them if something happens to me?”.

00:29:59:22 – 00:30:15:12
Christy Trujillo
So, I mean, your mind just cycles. And then the first night, that’s the night I prayed, “Keep me out of the darkness.” And I remember texting my husband from the bed. He was in the living room watching TV, and I said, “Come in here with me. I’m scared.”

00:30:15:13 – 00:30:37:02
Christy Trujillo
I didn’t want to go to bed at night with fear. Because I just knew that that was… and I was cognizant to think, you know, that’s what Satan does. He wants us to feel that, and I am gonna do everything I can to try to stay out of that. So, I mean, from then on, it was just find the right doctors, learning more.

00:30:15:13 – 00:30:37:02
Christy Trujillo
I refused to read anything on the internet. That was my pharmaceutical background because, and I was raised—Mayo Clinic-scared? Yes. I was like, “I am not get- there is so much on there, I’m just gonna go to the people that I trust, which are the physicians I researched.”

00:30:45:20 – 00:30:51:20
Christy Trujillo
“And I’m gonna listen to what they tell me, and that’s all I need to know.” I don’t need to know any more. I was lucky. I don’t know what kind of cancer your mother has, but I had invasive ductal carcinoma which is what my physician said is old lady cancer.

00:30:51:20 – 00:31:11:24
Christy Trujillo
It’s the most common. We caught it early because I get my mammograms, and I was able to do a lumpectomy and radiation. I did not have to have chemo, but that was enough.

00:31:12:01 – 00:31:37:08
Christy Trujillo
And then I went through the process of—I joined a cancer support group. Because of all the fear, all the questions, and my confidants had always been my mom and my 2 sisters. Yes, I have friends outside of that, but those were like my go-tos. None of them had been through it.

00:31:37:08 – 00:31:59:14
Christy Trujillo
And my mom said, “You’ve got to find somebody to lean on where you can ask specific questions.” So I joined a support group, and I remember—which that conversation with my mom is a lot of too why I wrote the book. It’s just interesting how your life can be put together like a puzzle, you know?

00:31:59:16 – 00:32:19:05
Christy Trujillo
But I went to my very first support group, and I almost felt like a, imposter, like I had imposter syndrome. Because what I realized, that I would encourage anybody to go to a support group, is my situation was not as bad as somebody else’s situation. So it made me feel more hopeful.

00:32:19:10 – 00:32:22:06
Brandon Adams
Did it make you feel guilty for feeling bad for yourself at that point?

00:32:22:08 – 00:32:22:17
Christy Trujillo
Yes.

00:32:22:18 – 00:32:24:07
Brandon Adams
Which is interesting.

00:32:24:09 – 00:32:43:01
Christy Trujillo
And it also made me feel like, oh my God, they’re going through all these different chemos, they’ve been through rounds of—I haven’t gone through that. Maybe I shouldn’t even be here. What value do I have to bring? It was a process, and I had to learn to get over that. Everybody’s got a different cancer journey.

00:32:43:01 – 00:33:08:22
Christy Trujillo
There’s no one size fits all. And my experiences that, in my mindset, could help somebody there, where maybe I couldn’t talk about what my chemo session was like, I could talk about how I’ve helped myself stay in a positive mindset and that was gonna serve somebody.

00:33:08:22 – 00:33:27:22
Christy Trujillo
So, it was just an interesting process, and it was about a year long of treatment and surgeries and radiation and recoveries and medications and all that kind of stuff. But I was told the day I was diagnosed by my OBGYN, “It’ll be a yucky year, but you will get through it.”

00:33:27:23 – 00:33:44:24
Brandon Adams
When you say a yucky year, let’s talk about a yucky year. You’re going into this thing. You hear the news. They give you the schedule. You’re gonna go into your surgery. We’re gonna put the tracking devices or whatever they put in there to find exactly where the cancer is before they go to surgery, right?

00:33:44:24 – 00:33:52:23
Brandon Adams
And then what? Like, you’ve gone through and you have your surgery. Do you feel like… did they get it? Is it gone?

00:33:53:04 – 00:34:14:05
Christy Trujillo
Yes, there’s that that goes through because especially with any kind of cancer, one of the things that shocked me is when I went to interview my first surgeon, she presented to me like, “Here are your options. You can do da, da, da, da.” And I’m like, “Oh, no, what would you do? Don’t—I don’t want options.”

00:34:14:06 – 00:34:32:24
Christy Trujillo
“Just tell me what to do.” And what I realized is there is no one size fits all. So there were choices I had to make. Did I wanna have a mastectomy? Did I wanna have a lumpectomy? Did I wanna worry that I could potentially have it again if I didn’t remove my breast?

00:34:33:01 – 00:35:00:20
Christy Trujillo
So yeah, there’s all these questions that you have. “Did I do the right thing? Did I go to the right surgeon? Did I get the right protocol for radiation?” And with what I went through, I actually was prescribed medication called tamoxifen.

00:35:00:22 – 00:35:25:20
Christy Trujillo
That if you are premenopausal, you take this estrogen-mimicking product for up to 5 years to help you reduce your chances of the cancer coming back, a recurrence . And the medication has yucky side effects. And so, I was given the medication prior to starting radiation and had such bad side effects. It was extreme bloating. I couldn’t walk and pick up my feet enough that I would trip over just the rugs in the kitchen.

00:35:25:20 – 00:35:46:06
Christy Trujillo
Wow. And so, I went through those side effects, I don’t remember how many weeks, 4 weeks or something. I was miserable, thinking, “I gotta do this for 5 years. I’m an entrepreneur. I own my own business . I’m a mommy of these 2 little girls. How in the world am I gonna keep all this up?” from an emotional perspective and a physical perspective .

00:35:46:08 – 00:36:12:03
Christy Trujillo
So I remember going to my surgeon, and he said, “You know what? Let’s put that medication on the side for a minute . Let’s get you through your radiation,” because I knew there were gonna be side effects with that. “And we’ll revisit this after your radiation”. Oh my God, I felt like I won the lottery because the quality of life wasn’t there . And I’m very Type-A, very high functioning. You know, I zoom around the house doing all the things, and I didn’t wanna stop my life .

00:36:12:07 – 00:36:35:11
Christy Trujillo
And so anyway, I got through the radiation, got through the side effects. We restarted the medication. So all of this is just a process. It’s not just the surgery, just the healing. It’s then there’s this, and then there’s this. And then knowing that I’d been taking this medication for 5 years was like, “Oh, my goodness” .

00:36:35:13 – 00:37:08:05
Christy Trujillo
I ended up taking it for two and a half. I made it for two and a half years, and then my oncologist and I came to the conclusion together that the quality of life struggle on the medication was not worth the small percentage for my case . So anybody listening, it’s different with everybody. But for my case, it was like a percentage difference in recurrence rates, and I was having to take an antidepressant on top of it because it would alter your mood, and then what are the side effects with that? It was like you’re layering on all this stuff .

00:37:11:23 – 00:37:12:13
Brandon Adams
Right, yeah.

00:37:12:13 – 00:37:26:08
Christy Trujillo
For 1% difference. There was like 1.5% difference in recurrence rates. So we made a choice to stop. But that process just goes on for a while, and I didn’t feel like myself for probably two and a half years .

00:37:26:10 – 00:37:33:22
Brandon Adams
And so, as you’re going through this you’re talking about, “How am I gonna be a Type-A, I got my business, I got my kids.” I like to operate like that . I haven’t heard you mention your husband at the time.

00:37:38:03 – 00:37:42:21
Christy Trujillo
So, in regards to just where he fit in the piece of this?

00:37:43:24 – 00:38:07:12
Christy Trujillo
Well, he’s an entrepreneur as well. This is my ex-husband now. He’s an entrepreneur as well. And so during that process, his way of coping with it was throwing himself into work. And because my income could be affected. And that’s really what our friends and my family and his family said like, “This is where you could be helpful”.

00:38:07:12 – 00:38:26:17
Christy Trujillo
And so that is what he did. He threw himself into work, and so yeah. But he was by my side. Absolutely by my side, helping me through all the struggles of the day-to-day stuff. But, works long hours and that kinda thing.

00:38:26:17 – 00:38:29:06
Brandon Adams
Did this cause a divide between you guys?

00:38:29:08 – 00:38:33:04
Christy Trujillo
So…

00:38:33:06 – 00:39:02:13
Christy Trujillo
I would say actually it brought us closer together during that period. Because I leaned so much on him emotionally. And one of the things that’s interesting, it’s so funny because you don’t think about this stuff all the time and you’re bringing me back to some memories . One of the things I loved about going through that experience, which sounds crazy, is when you go through something like that versus a corporate lawsuit.

00:39:02:15 – 00:39:26:08
Christy Trujillo
You’re surrounded by love. Everybody is there to support you. I mean, if you have a strong support system, you know they’re there to support you . They wanna bring you meals, they wanna help you emotionally, be there for you. And during that time, it was one of the first times in my life, because I’ve always been a worker bee, that I allowed myself, because I had to, to slow down .

00:39:26:10 – 00:39:53:05
Christy Trujillo
And I loved slowing down the pace. And I was afraid; I used to say, “I’m afraid to reenter my life” . Because I just was almost on a hamster wheel. And I loved the calm, slowing down pace of just being Christy more than I was, because I was mom and wife and business owner and all the different hats that you wear .

00:39:53:05 – 00:40:03:22
Christy Trujillo
So that was a joyful time. I actually remember enjoying us being together as a family . It was actually really good.

00:40:03:24 – 00:40:27:09
Brandon Adams
That is very interesting that you say like, here’s some good memories that came out of this. Everyone can think, “Oh, this is the darkest point in my life, I struggled, I got through this” . But you just looked fondly on kinda tearing yourself down and rebuilding, not just physically but mentally. You tore yourself down and brought yourself back, but only to the place that was the best spot for you to be in.

00:40:27:11 – 00:40:50:10
Christy Trujillo
Absolutely. That’s why I’m so grateful for the experience. But that’s been a choice . I’ve made the choice to think of it like that versus to look for the goodness, to look for the signs, look for the opportunities within those moments, because they’re there if you’re willing to really look for them .

00:40:55:08 – 00:41:06:06
Brandon Adams
So after that first year, it took you a little bit to kinda get mentally back after that first year. How long do you think you were until you made it back on your 2 feet where you felt like Christy again?

00:41:06:08 – 00:41:26:23
Christy Trujillo
It was a good year and a half before I actually felt like myself again. Like, energy level, where I could go—actually, fully probably two and a half years, because that’s when I finally got off the medication. But I felt like I wasn’t the cancer patient. I wasn’t wearing that hat anymore, probably after about a year and a half .

00:41:28:07 – 00:41:33:14
Brandon Adams
And so, you got through that, and then how long until the next?

00:41:33:16 – 00:41:35:02
Christy Trujillo
It happened during…

00:41:35:19 – 00:42:06:07
Christy Trujillo
The middle of this . So, I was diagnosed in April of 2017. And probably about February, March—so 11, 12 months later—an opportunity came to us to explore a new company . And with greater—honestly greater earning potential for us as well as our team members. And so, decided to explore it. Was not looking for anything .

00:42:06:09 – 00:42:27:00
Christy Trujillo
And this is one of the things that I talk a lot about in the book that really has become a foundation of who I am, and kind of why I decided to come meet you. I am such a believer that God will open doors, and if we are willing to walk through them and see what possibly is on the other side, who knows what is, but He’s gonna close the ones that aren’t meant for us to walk through .

00:42:27:02 – 00:42:53:06
Christy Trujillo
This door opened. And we weren’t looking for another opportunity. Things weren’t going great at our past company. But we decided to go get information. Why not get information? So anyway, after weeks and weeks of researching and deciding—and because basically in our industry, you start over, you kind of quit a company, you start over with a new company .

00:42:53:06 – 00:43:11:07
Christy Trujillo
And was it gonna be worth that, or are we going to be able to financially make that work for our families? So anyway, it seemed really like a great opportunity, so we decided to walk through the door. I was still finishing my cancer treatment. And so about a week or 2 in for us switching companies, we get hit with a lawsuit .

00:43:11:07 – 00:43:33:16
Christy Trujillo
So, it was right in the middle of it . But what’s interesting, that was a miserable experience. I shared a little bit a few minutes ago. And I would say this is way worse than the cancer. And my sisters would say to me, because they were all going through it with me, “How?”

00:43:33:18 – 00:43:48:23
Christy Trujillo
Like I said a second ago, when you go through something like a health issue, you are surrounded by support and love. When we went through this we were being torn down by everyone . By everyone . Even your team and your staff.

00:43:50:18 – 00:44:12:20
Christy Trujillo
They—because there were lies shared that people will believe. Because what I’ve learned is this—and now I’ve heard this happens with churches, this happens a lot when a situation happens like us, and we were some of the top income earners, they leave . Well, it’s like, oh my God, what does it say about the company?

00:44:12:22 – 00:44:26:20
Christy Trujillo
Was the company going down? And so, basically, a PR campaign has to be created in order to save the company, and it worked . So, it was just a really yucky experience we went through.

00:44:26:22 – 00:44:30:17
Brandon Adams
So they slandered you to keep everyone?

00:44:30:18 – 00:44:50:19
Christy Trujillo
To make people doubt us . So then it was, “Oh my gosh, I’ve worked on my reputation for all these years. How in the world could this fall apart in a matter of a week, 24 hours?” So, surrounded by a lot of hate .

00:44:50:20 – 00:45:14:15
Christy Trujillo
I mentioned in the book too, like, people didn’t wanna take pictures with us if they would see us in public . I mean, it was really crazy now to think about . But again, you can go through crap to get on the other side . And I would not change a thing that we had to go through that because I have this where we are now .

00:45:14:21 – 00:45:35:16
Brandon Adams
So, it was a great decision, but you had to walk through a lot of pain to get there . I love your doors analogy, and talking about praying for certain doors to be opened and things like that . I use that all the time in my life too. I say that prayer all the time.

00:45:36:13 – 00:45:57:06
Brandon Adams
But I always say, “Lord, don’t show me a door. Don’t even show it to me, because if you know if I see a door, I’m kicking it down” . Just don’t put it in front of me. You know what I mean? Like, I think there are certain situations where we condition ourselves for this type of—like your mentality, your work ethic, the things you go through, the things that build you, and then leaning on faith to help you out through those things .

00:45:57:06 – 00:46:12:24
Brandon Adams
Like I really loved your analogy there of like, “I needed this, and then I had to really kinda set myself back to go like, hey look, in the big scheme of things, I’m really a pawn in this thing,” you know? I’m not nothing special. I’m not big . I know everyone’s gonna go through trials, I know everyone’s gonna have certain things and to different degrees in their life of how hard the hardships are .

00:46:20:03 – 00:46:32:09
Brandon Adams
But I’m gonna have to live through those. So I know who I am, I know who I’ve been built to be, I know who I’m conditioned to be, please serve me this way . And be very forthright of what you’re asking for.

00:46:32:11 – 00:46:53:08
Christy Trujillo
Absolutely, yeah. I mean, it’s interesting. I tell a story in the book about my daughter. So my oldest daughter is 23 now, she just turned 23, and she went to Texas Tech for a couple years. She was a plant and soil science major. She’s obsessed with plants and, but she’s super artsy.

00:46:53:10 – 00:47:11:09
Christy Trujillo
And that’s a very conservative city. And so she, after 2 years there, she was like, “Mom, I just cannot be in Lubbock anymore”. And I was like, “Oh, God,” transferring, like, are we gonna lose credits and all that kind of stuff. She’s like, “I really want to go to UNT. I really wanna transfer to Denton” .

00:47:11:09 – 00:47:32:05
Christy Trujillo
And her dad was against it. He was a Tech alumni, and against it for valid reasons, like will we lose money? Will we lose her, will she lose her credits? She was never a stellar student. School has always been hard for her. And I’m thinking, “Oh, gosh, this is gonna extend her time that she has to go to school”.

00:47:34:16 – 00:47:52:22
Christy Trujillo
In addition, in Lubbock, a lot of the internships and stuff for the ag department, which is where they put her, was like corn and cotton and she’s like, “That is not what I am interested in” . So anyway, I said, “You know what, babe? I’m willing to explore this with you” .

00:47:52:24 – 00:48:09:00
Christy Trujillo
“But we’re gonna do this the way I believe we’re gonna get the right answer. We’re gonna walk through the doors that God opens and we’re gonna not walk through the ones He closes . So here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna schedule an appointment with the advisor . If the advisor tells us we’re not gonna lose credits, there’s a door open”.

00:48:09:02 – 00:48:30:13
Christy Trujillo
“Okay, then we’re gonna schedule an appointment to find out about the department you want to transfer to. We’re gonna see how many more hours that would take. Is that gonna extend your time? If the door opens, great. If it closes, it is what it is” . That is what I try to live by.

00:48:30:15 – 00:48:57:10
Christy Trujillo
Because the hardest decision I’ve ever made in my life was whether to file for divorce . I never wanted to go through that. I didn’t come from a family that had, so in my mind, it was like failure—which I don’t believe that anymore . For anybody out there listening, I do not believe that anymore.

00:48:57:12 – 00:49:16:21
Christy Trujillo
But that was my conditioned thinking, and I needed somebody else to make the decision for me, because I didn’t wanna be responsible for that decision for my kids. And so that is when I really learned to pray into, “If you tell me what to do, because I can’t do it on my own” .

00:49:16:23 – 00:49:20:17
Christy Trujillo
And so this is what I try to live by now, because it’s way easier for Him to tell me than for me to have to make a decision myself . So that’s what I’m trying to teach my girls as well.

00:49:20:19 – 00:49:31:21
Brandon Adams
So, if I’m wrapping my mind around what you’re saying, if the world offers you a clear path, you try to step through the door no matter what the answer is. Very interesting.

00:49:32:13 – 00:49:34:00
Christy Trujillo
That’s bold. I can give you another analogy.

00:49:34:00 – 00:49:36:07
Brandon Adams
Yeah, gimme something. I need to hear that one .

00:49:36:08 – 00:50:02:20
Christy Trujillo
So I had the idea of writing the book. And to me, I’m not an author. I would never have called myself one. I now have accepted that term. You know, I hated English class. I hated writing papers. Like, that was not my thing.

00:50:02:22 – 00:50:20:11
Christy Trujillo
I didn’t know how to do it. I didn’t know how to write a book from a marketing perspective, like what chapter goes first, what chapter goes last . I’m smart enough to know there’s gotta be a formula, right? I don’t know the formula . How in the world would I do this?

00:50:20:11 – 00:50:39:07
Christy Trujillo
Number 2, I work so much in my primary job. When would I do this? I’m now in a new marriage, I want to spend time with my husband and my 3 stepsons . Like, when would I do this? So I had lots of doubt.

00:50:39:09 – 00:51:00:12
Christy Trujillo
Well, I was working with a business coach, and the first meeting I met with him he said, “You know, what do you want to gain out of this?” And I said, “I think I wanna start a book. I wanna learn how to forgive,” because I was struggling with that . “And I wanna grow my business by 20% this year”. And the first thing he said was, “Tell me about this book”.

00:51:00:14 – 00:51:11:24
Christy Trujillo
So I started telling him, “Well, you know, I have this idea and it’s about learning to trust yourself, and this, you know, with my story and what I’ve gone through”. And he said, “You know, go write down some chapter titles, and the next time we talk, let’s talk through it again. I might have a writing coach I could hook you up with”.

00:51:12:01 – 00:51:13:24
Brandon Adams
ChatGPT, here you are.

00:51:14:05 – 00:51:32:13
Christy Trujillo
I didn’t even know about ChatGPT back then. That’s so embarrassing. But that’s been almost 2 years now. So, anyway, I take a plane ride to Manhattan, and on the plane the whole time I’m just, like, writing down chapter ideas and all this kind of stuff .

00:51:32:13 – 00:51:51:11
Christy Trujillo
So we get back to our next meeting, and he says, “Wow, you actually have really thought this through”. And I’m like, “No, I really have been thinking about this for many years, but I don’t know how to do this”. And he said, “Well, I know somebody I could hook you up with,” and I was like, “Okay”.

00:51:51:15 – 00:52:23:07
Christy Trujillo
So I prayed about it, like, “If this is meant to be, let this be His will, not my will,” because I didn’t want it to be that I want my story on pages . I wanted it to be this story could help somebody get through their day, get through their challenge if they need to hear it . Not about me; it needed to be about others .

00:52:23:07 – 00:52:46:10
Christy Trujillo
And sometimes you don’t know like within your own self, is it the ego or is it not? So anyway, I go to meet with this writing coach. Prayed before, let it be a good match. Within 10 minutes, I knew this was the woman for me . Like, I wanted her in my life, I wanted her in my circle .

00:52:46:13 – 00:52:58:06
Christy Trujillo
She was a faith-filled person. She had recently gone through a divorce. Like, we aligned like that. So to me, that’s a door opening. Versus it being, “I don’t know about this person, we’re not really connecting” . And then it was, “Okay, do I wanna pay for this? What does it cost to do this kinda thing?”

00:52:58:08 – 00:53:00:06
Brandon Adams
Just opportunity showing itself.

00:53:00:08 – 00:53:19:19
Christy Trujillo
Yes. But being willing to go… and let me tell you, I was scared the whole time. Scared the whole time, yeah . Like something new. But what I also was told is when you have a passion like this inside of you that is so strong that you’re thinking about often for a long time, it’s not going anywhere .

00:53:19:21 – 00:53:42:09
Christy Trujillo
It is put there for a reason. And you can either act on the reason or you could regret it later. Act on it and at least try, and at least you know . If it doesn’t succeed, who cares? You aren’t going to succeed if you never try. Anyway, that’s what I’ve learned is my comfort level.

00:53:42:09 – 00:53:43:11
Christy Trujillo
That’s just what’s helped me.

00:53:43:16 – 00:53:49:08
Brandon Adams
You mentioned the term, “I was scared the whole time”. Is “scared” the word? Is “anxious”? Because I think, is it true fear of what’s gonna happen or is it not knowing where you’re going and there being some anxiety built up behind that?

00:54:14:07 – 00:54:24:15
Brandon Adams
If you can kind of elaborate a little bit more on what you mean by “scared”. Do you mean like, “I don’t know where these things are coming from and I’m kinda anxious on how this is going” ? I just wanna know a little bit deeper about the term “scared” for you and what that meant.

00:54:29:14 – 00:54:37:17
Christy Trujillo
Well, in relation to this, it was multifaceted. I was scared to be vulnerable and let people read about myself.

00:54:39:15 – 00:55:05:24
Christy Trujillo
You know, it is a vulnerable thing to do to talk—put your story out into the world . In a book, whatever. That was scary. It scared me, the process—and this is interesting, because I learned this about my personality during this process .

00:55:06:01 – 00:56:38:11
Christy Trujillo
The process of, oh my gosh, it seems overwhelming to accomplish this goal. Like, to get it on paper, to read through all the edits, to figure out which chapter goes here and here, which story, which chapters have enough stories, and then what do you do with the book afterward? For myself, thinking too far into the future would shut me down. For me, ignorance was bliss. I don’t know where we’re going. It was one day at a time, one step at a time . But we’re all different. It can be that way also with, like, let’s just talk about exercise or weight loss . Like, a New Year’s resolution, you’re gonna exercise, you’re going to the gym 3 days a week. I have found for myself that that can be overwhelming . If I’ll just tell myself, “Let’s just get out and walk 20 minutes.” Like, if I can commit to 20 minutes 3 days a week, like, that’s doing something . And then I start to build confidence. You start to see a little results from the action . Maybe your stamina builds up or whatever, and then your confidence builds up. That’s what I train my team on a lot . You gotta take action to get some results.

00:56:38:18 – 00:56:58:04
Brandon Adams
So you just want to get gas in your car and get going?

00:56:58:04 – 00:57:12:05
Christy Trujillo
Yes. And figure it out on the way. Present over perfect . Too many people feel like they have to have the entire plan before they start any action . And that’s what I talk to women about every day. That’s what I do in my business, that they’re stopped by fear. We get stopped by fear . Because, maybe something felt uncomfortable or maybe we don’t exactly know how it’s going to look in the end. It’s like no, just make the decision and then just start. You’ll figure it out along the way .

00:57:12:06 – 00:57:33:05
Brandon Adams
I like to, I do that same thing, except I take a little different approach by saying like, “Hey, I make a plan and I start it” . If I tell somebody I’m doing it, it is happening 100%. Like, and I make myself start that thing. Now, I will go down the plan that I’ve started out, but if something comes up to block me, I just pivot from that point .

00:57:35:09 – 00:57:47:15
Brandon Adams
Find another way, and I always use the analogy of like, it sounds crazy, but like water rolling down a hill . It’s going to come across a rock at some point and the water is going to get downhill. It just has to change directions .

00:57:47:24 – 00:58:03:06
Brandon Adams
100%. That’s the way that we have to think about these plans and the things that we’re going through. If you think you’re going to have every step of the process figured out and all you have to do is just follow a map, okay, good luck, man. We’ll see you in 40 years. That’s not happening .

00:58:03:06 – 00:58:23:13
Christy Trujillo
Business especially is always pivoting. Always pivoting . I mean, it’s funny, when working with my team, I actually bought these note cards that says, Plan A, Plan B, and they’re scratched out and it says plan X, Y, Z. It is plan A is very rarely going to be what happens. You’re going to have to pivot .

00:58:25:24 – 00:58:28:08
Brandon Adams
Hustle and trust I think is the number one thing . Put that on a hat. Hustle and trust .

00:58:32:18 – 00:58:40:18
Brandon Adams
All right, so we’ve made it through, you know, were you able to get clear of Phase Two there?

00:58:40:20 – 00:59:00:03
Christy Trujillo
Of the lawsuit? Yes, absolutely. Everything worked out perfect. And yes, settle outside of court. And we were able to move on and it’s history now. That’s now been seven years and just like anything we get stronger as we go on .

00:59:01:13 – 00:59:02:04
Christy Trujillo
Yes.

00:59:03:09 – 00:59:11:02
Christy Trujillo
The most devastating. That was a divorce that a 23 year marriage .

00:59:11:04 – 00:59:13:00
Brandon Adams
And what led up to that?

00:59:13:02 – 00:59:48:17
Christy Trujillo
You know, a lot of things. I mean, it’s interesting, and this is really where a lot of the foundation of the book talks about. Over the years, I stopped trusting some internal instincts and would make excuses or would not want to believe maybe some of the things that I thought were happening that weren’t comfortable. And so I would either avoid talking about them or I would, like I said, make excuses for them and really ultimately stop trusting myself .

00:59:59:19 – 01:00:18:19
Christy Trujillo
Stop trusting that internal compass, your internal instinct . And had a great, great marriage for many, many years. But I think something that happens, you know, you have two kids, you’ve got two people having very demanding careers. And we grew apart, but not necessarily through choice .

01:00:18:21 – 01:00:48:16
Christy Trujillo
It just happened, choices made. I really don’t want to get into the details . But I ultimately discovered some things that were not okay with me. And I had to decide at that point, “What do I do?” . And that was a lot of prior to that was like I mentioned earlier, was, let’s work through this. We went through 12 years of counseling .

01:01:02:01 – 01:01:29:16
Christy Trujillo
But every time I would think we’re doing better, the Lord would show me otherwise. And I wanted nothing more than to keep. I loved that man more than anything in the world. And loved our family . But I discovered that I was enabling by staying. And had to trust that life could be better on the other side. And that is very hard .

01:01:40:28 – 01:01:51:13
Christy Trujillo
So if there’s anybody that listens that’s going through that decision making process, there is nothing easy about it. But what I will say, and this could come across very strange, I wasn’t a believer in divorce. I’m a believer in divorce, and that probably needs to be explained .

01:01:53:22 – 01:02:31:07
Christy Trujillo
It’s not that I didn’t. Yes, of course I believe that there’s certain circumstances or people that need to get divorced. And I was raised biblically like, you know, there’s only certain reasons to get divorced . But what I learned through the process is if there is destruction happening and it’s not benefiting anyone, including the children, that it’s okay to go through it if it ends up being better for everybody in the end .

01:02:31:09 – 01:02:51:06
Christy Trujillo
Because I judged myself and I judged myself and I judged myself for ultimately tearing our family apart. I mean, I didn’t tear the family apart, but you know, it happened, it ultimately happened .

01:02:51:08 – 01:02:52:05
Brandon Adams
On a decision.

01:02:52:07 – 01:03:13:14
Christy Trujillo
On a decision. And that’s why I said I couldn’t make it on my own . And let me just say this too, the aftermath is terrible. I mean, there is nothing pretty about a divorce during a divorce and even several years in. I mean, I actually went through through it when my daughters were teenagers. Very difficult time .

01:03:13:16 – 01:03:39:13
Christy Trujillo
They’re going through so many changes. In fact, the day my daughter moved to Tech, I drove home and filed for divorce that day. So it, she never came back home to the home she grew up in . And at the time my youngest was 14 and starting high school. Very very pivotal developmental stages .

01:03:39:15 – 01:04:00:20
Christy Trujillo
It was awful. I mean, having them not have the home that they had and what they believe they would always have is heartbreaking for me to this day. There’s days I don’t question myself but there’s, it’s very often that I will say to myself, “Oh my gosh, like I caused this” .

01:04:04:20 – 01:04:25:22
Christy Trujillo
My husband now gets really angry at me when I say that. But it’s just a natural thing that you do and but in the end you come out on the other side. And our lives, all of us, the four original of us are all better because of it .

01:04:26:00 – 01:04:36:09
Christy Trujillo
Yeah. Because of it. So, you can get through it and you can thrive on the other side. So yeah it was, but it was the toughest thing I’ve ever, ever gone through .

01:04:44:12 – 01:05:00:01
Brandon Adams
Self-evaluation is the main thing that we probably need to self-reflect on our decisions all the time of, you know, we’re not going to make the best ones all the time. We’re not going to make the right ones all the time . And just to say, like, “I don’t worry about it, I did what I did and I move on”—okay, yeah. But you can also take into an understanding of, “Man, maybe I did make a wrong decision” .

01:05:05:16 – 01:05:23:19
Brandon Adams
I’m not saying that decision was wrong at all. I’m just saying like to make decisions and then just go, “Here’s what it is. Here we go.” Like, I understand where you’re coming from of how you felt, where you were, like, “I caused this” or “I did this” .

01:05:23:21 – 01:05:42:05
Brandon Adams
There is a butterfly effect. Every decision that’s made. And that’s okay. Like you, you just need self-reflection I think is a big part of this to make sure that we are going, “Okay, the next one that I make, I’m going to be aware that it’s not going to be this simple. There’s going to be this and this and this that go with it” .

01:05:43:21 – 01:06:07:07
Christy Trujillo
Absolutely. And you know it’s I’ve had a lot of friends or acquaintances, a referral sounds kind of weird. You know, we’ll say, “Oh, you know, you’re going through this. Maybe you could talk to my friend Christy” or something like that that are going through these type of situations .

01:06:07:07 – 01:06:41:04
Christy Trujillo
And it’s there’s not a one size fits all in this either. And it’s very specific to everybody’s different circumstances. But ultimately, had I stayed, I would have been a shell of who I was, who I am. And I know that’s not either what the Lord wanted from me either .

01:06:41:09 – 01:07:05:05
Christy Trujillo
So but yes it’s, I think healthy to constantly be looking at your evaluating yourself of did I do it, but not beating yourself up . Because I can do that. You know sometimes when things get challenging it’s even still with one of one of my daughters. You know, they’re going through something and I think, oh my gosh, if they didn’t have two parents that weren’t different, would it be like this?

01:07:05:06 – 01:07:11:05
Christy Trujillo
And then I have to think, look, things happen in our life and we’ve kind of just do we did what we did with the time, with the information that we had. And we got to just move on .

01:07:11:07 – 01:07:30:14
Brandon Adams
I mean, there’s some building blocks to it, you know, for sure. And for those people that are out there, like, I’m sure it really helps for you to be able to say, “Hey, look out for this. You know, this and this and this are going to happen” .

01:07:30:16 – 01:07:37:01
Brandon Adams
And as you go through making those decisions with those people, it’s almost like how much of the pain is built up, how much of it is real, how much it is me looking at the needle to see what that really feels like? Or am I spinning out of control because I’m not thinking through the situation?

01:07:37:02 – 01:08:06:10
Christy Trujillo
Absolutely. You know, and I think one of my biggest missions is to help people, you know, for women because that’s just my journey and I’m being the female in the story. But, to feel normal. I think we judge ourselves. We get concerned about what other people think. And, you know, just to feel like, okay, because I’m going through these things does not make me bad .

01:08:06:12 – 01:08:37:20
Christy Trujillo
It doesn’t make me bad that I haven’t figured it out. Doesn’t make me a failure . Because all of those things I felt like why I mean I didn’t have a good friend or a family member that had could be like a mentor through that process . You know it was the same actually when I was with cancer, I shared that and my mom said you’ve got to find some people that could be your mentor. They’ve gone through this .

01:08:37:20 – 01:08:59:12
Christy Trujillo
Had to do the same with divorce. You know, find somebody that I could in a group. There’s a group called divorcecare.org. So I got like professional advice because, I mean, I didn’t want to be making decisions and based on co-parenting and this kind of thing that weren’t going to be healthy for the girls .

01:09:04:10 – 01:09:15:01
Christy Trujillo
God, it’s a lot of self-judgment. I mean, you’re just, you know, doubting the steps you’re going through . So, like I said, one of my biggest missions is just to make people feel normal. It’s okay if you felt that way. I did too .

01:09:15:03 – 01:09:37:00
Brandon Adams
Would you say that, you know, in your family role, because I’m hearing like I’m trying to decide for myself with you and your story. You talk about the roles in your family and when you grew up as a kid and your hard work and family, and y’all were together and then you talk about your husband and how much you loved him and the kids and the things that really kind of reflected out of that .

01:09:37:02 – 01:09:52:11
Brandon Adams
Do you believe that there’s, are you a traditionalist when it comes to like family roles, like how you truly can separate men kind of do some things and women kind of do some things naturally?

01:09:52:13 – 01:10:26:02
Christy Trujillo
Yeah. So I’m not. In a sense, it’s funny because I was raised more like. Well, I say that, you know, my dad was financially a provider. But my mother worked in his office her entire life. My mom had a college degree .

01:10:26:04 – 01:10:46:18
Christy Trujillo
So to just reflect a little bit on that, my mother fled Cuba in 1960 when Fidel Castro took over, and they came here to the Dallas area. Her two aunts actually lived in the Dallas area prior to the revolution . So my grandmother was the oldest of three girls. And they came to be or the aunts were anticipating to always go back .

01:10:46:20 – 01:11:20:04
Christy Trujillo
You know, she enrolled in school at Bryan Adams. She was very smart. She ends up getting a full scholarship to SMU . They didn’t have a penny, you know, she got full scholarship there. She took family car to go back and forth, et cetera. Based on the fact that her family lost everything, she raised us very much that education was huge .

01:11:03:58 – 01:11:20:04
Christy Trujillo
Because the government can take away your money. They did to them. The government can take away your weapons you know, for protection from the guerrillas and so forth, coming in to take them to work for the government . But they cannot take away your mind.

01:11:22:15 – 01:11:52:08
Christy Trujillo
And so we were always encouraged education and to have our own ability to work. Even though she was available to us all the time because she worked for my dad’s so the flexibility was her own hours. We saw our mother work .

01:11:52:09 – 01:12:14:24
Christy Trujillo
And so for us it wasn’t like a bad thing that our mom was not a stay at home mom. Like, it wasn’t like she wasn’t available for us, or it wasn’t abnormal to us to have a working mother . So then I got to become a mother and that’s my role model. And I struggled with that because so many of my friends you know became stay at home moms and it just wasn’t for me .

01:12:15:00 – 01:12:35:09
Christy Trujillo
I tried it for a year and I felt like I was an alien. I became so anxious. My mom was like, “Oh my God, you got to get back to work” . Anyway, so from that perspective, I’ve always felt the desire to have something for myself. It was never we were never raised like you never know, you want to rely on a man like that was not the message .

01:12:35:09 – 01:12:58:24
Christy Trujillo
The message was the revolution and the government and this can actually be a real thing. So you want to have your own independence . So I’m so grateful because, you know, I did become a single mom and I’ve always had a career, so I wasn’t somebody that had to start from zero . In fact, instead of just survive, I thrive because I have a very successful business .

01:12:59:01 – 01:13:17:15
Christy Trujillo
So that’s nontraditional from that perspective. When it comes to the house, the traditional roles. Yeah I love to cook. You know, I love to garden. But we’re definitely, you know, 50/50 household when it comes to kind of the traditional roles .

01:13:37:02 – 01:13:45:14
Brandon Adams
It is kind of interesting too because I think about hearing you talk and hearing the way that you speak about things, it sounds like you have a very traditional value system set up. And then see the balance between here is this lady that wants to be an entrepreneur who is an entrepreneur and is doing all these different things .

01:13:45:16 – 01:14:05:11
Christy Trujillo
I am 53 now, so it has been years of practice. That is the first thing. I do not truly feel you are ever balanced, which is interesting. I think you just have stages. There are stages where I feel like I am thriving in one area and there are stages of the year that I might be thriving in another area .

01:14:05:13 – 01:14:36:04
Christy Trujillo
I think what has been so great is that because I am an entrepreneur, I have the flexibility. So my girls will tell you I was always there. I did not miss a Valentine’s party. I worked from home. I wanted to be home when they got off the bus. But they have also seen me work, and now it is so fun because my 23 year old is getting old enough where, for example, I went for a meeting with her professor .

01:14:36:04 – 01:14:53:22
Christy Trujillo
She is actually applying to grad school. Never thought that would happen. This is my kid that struggles in school. Her master’s professor is meeting with her, and he was complimenting her on her networking. She is amazing at networking and she goes, “Well, you know who I got that from” .

01:14:53:23 – 01:15:32:11
Christy Trujillo
You start to see those things show up in your kids. I am so grateful because I want nothing more than for them to be able to take care of themselves. Especially in today’s world, getting by on one income is really a challenge. It will only be more so as they start to have their own families. I am so grateful now that they have had the best of both worlds where they have been able to see me work, but I have also been able to be available to them. I did not do well when I was working in corporate America and I had to feel guilt when my kid was sick. I did not do well with that .

01:15:32:12 – 01:15:39:18
Christy Trujillo
Balance is always a struggle, but I have gotten better as I have gotten older, I definitely have .

01:15:39:18 – 01:15:59:16
Brandon Adams
My wife stayed home with our kids. She went to school, went to college, got her degrees and then started her first job and got pregnant with our first kid when she was six months into her first job. Then she got put on bed rest, she had preeclampsia .

01:16:01:10 – 01:16:22:22
Brandon Adams
She had to stay on bed rest the last three months of the pregnancy. We expected to go back as soon as our first child was born. And you look into their eyes, you are like, “I am responsible here right now.” So now I am looking in, trying to make sure that they are safe. They are safe .

01:16:22:22 – 01:16:25:15
Brandon Adams
So we made a bond like the first five years of this kid before he gets sent to daycare. The first five years she was like, “I want to stay home” .

01:16:26:07 – 01:16:41:12
Brandon Adams
And I was like, cool, I will take care of everything. You stay home and take care of that. Well, two years into that, two and a half years into that, we had another one. So there is a reset the clock for another five years. Well, then it gets to kindergarten and it goes for another five years .

01:16:41:18 – 01:17:02:23
Brandon Adams
And it goes into the middle school. And finally, when it gets to middle school, I looked and I said, “Hey look, here is the real crux of this. I do not care if you ever work or do not work, but the thing that I am scared the most about is like, as a member of this family, you have to at some point, if something happens to me tomorrow, I need you to survive” .

01:17:03:11 – 01:17:20:04
Brandon Adams
Right. And so I do not care if you make $1 million, you make $5, I do not care. I just need you to do something where you can be self-sufficient, where you can land on your feet, and you will not be dependent on anybody else, whether you walk through this door or not. She got out and she is brilliant. She got out and decided to take another degree for her third one and got into her own career. So she is done that and so very proud of her for that .

01:17:30:08 – 01:17:31:02
Christy Trujillo
That is awesome.

01:17:31:02 – 01:17:43:15
Brandon Adams
But at the end of the day too, it is like that was her feet in both worlds. Right. And kind of feeling kind of the same thing that you are talking about of like very traditional roles on one hand and then very nontraditional roles on the other hand .

01:17:43:15 – 01:18:06:24
Christy Trujillo
I am just the same way. In the home, I am totally a traditionalist. But it is interesting because you use the word security. That is the foundation of what my mom instilled in us. It was not a, it was just that security that she did not care if we worked or did not work, she wanted us to have the security to where we had the education if we needed to work .

01:18:07:01 – 01:18:21:23
Christy Trujillo
Then we could. And so it is interesting the word of, do you ever do like the word of the year? Have you ever heard of that concept like you pick a word for the year?

01:18:21:24 – 01:18:48:18
Christy Trujillo
I do not know where I learned this several years ago, where instead of having a New Year’s resolution, you have a word for the year. And it is a word that you like run everything through. Okay, so, for example, the year after I divorced, my word became security. Like, this year, I want to feel secure. Whether it was financially, whether it was like getting alarm on the house, whether it was like secure in my emotions, make sure I was doing counseling, like, this year is all about security. I want to feel secure in my decisions and all that kind of stuff .

01:18:48:18 – 01:19:08:22
Christy Trujillo
This year my word is actually joy. Every year it is different. And I find something to run it. It gets filtered through everything. So all the decisions I make, you know, is that going to bring joy? Is that going to take joy away?

01:19:09:23 – 01:19:11:03
Brandon Adams
Interesting.

01:19:11:05 – 01:19:24:19
Christy Trujillo
Yeah. So I will do anything from one year it was thrive. Last year was flourish. I want to flourish. Which actually, it is kind of the filter of flourish by becoming an author. So anyway, yeah .

01:19:24:21 – 01:19:30:05
Brandon Adams
Very interesting to take everything that you do and try to put it to the scope of one word. What a big decision .

01:19:30:07 – 01:19:34:14
Christy Trujillo
Right. And it has to, it is not going to come to you.

01:19:34:16 – 01:19:36:19
Brandon Adams
Is this going to make me sleep better? Right.

01:19:36:21 – 01:19:51:24
Christy Trujillo
That is actually really important one at my age. But you have to kind of sit on it and then it will like hit me like, “Oh my God, that is it.” That happened to me last week. And I was like, joy, that is it. Oh my gosh, to wait. That is where I am in my life right now. So yeah .

01:19:52:04 – 01:19:53:22
Brandon Adams
How many how many times you done this?

01:19:53:24 – 01:20:12:11
Christy Trujillo
Probably for a decade. I heard a concept probably ten years ago when I started doing it. I like it better than a New Year’s resolution, because then you can fit it in to like whatever that needs to be. Like, everybody talks about fitness for a New Year’s resolution. It is like, well, I started Pilates .

01:20:12:14 – 01:20:21:04
Christy Trujillo
It is actually bringing me joy because there is like lovely people in there and I am not sweating so much. I am still feeling like I am doing something. Yeah, well that is good .

01:20:21:06 – 01:20:37:10
Brandon Adams
So. As you have gone through this too, like, is there anything in this book that you want to talk about as far as like the journey goes into like really creating a book? The steps. And for those people out there that have never done this and everyone’s got a dream to be a writer one day, you actually made it happen .

01:20:37:12 – 01:20:39:15
Brandon Adams
Are there steps that we should go through to do that?

01:20:39:17 – 01:20:44:16
Christy Trujillo
You know, I do not feel super qualified to give advice on that.

01:20:46:12 – 01:21:10:17
Christy Trujillo
It is not funny. Like, it is like the imposter syndrome. I totally did it. What I would say is that you should do it. If you have the inkling at all to do it, do it. And I had to decide I made a decision to do it. I had to decide if nobody ever reads it but my two daughters .

01:21:10:19 – 01:21:35:06
Christy Trujillo
It will have been worth the time and effort. Because I am leaving a legacy to them. And in fact just last weekend my daughter, my oldest read it, the youngest had not read it yet and she called me almost in tears. And she said, “Mom I read the book seeing you as a woman, not as my mom” .

01:21:35:08 – 01:21:59:06
Christy Trujillo
I there are so many stories I did not know. And I was just, that is all I needed to just give me the validation that it was worth it. So I guess my biggest advice would be do it. There are so many resources that I personally hired a writing coach because I knew that I wanted to do it, but I did not trust myself to put the time aside .

01:21:59:07 – 01:22:14:18
Christy Trujillo
Right. So by hiring somebody to dedicate like every Wednesday from 12 to 1, we are sitting down and we are doing this was effective for me. But there are so many ways to do it. So that is really what I would say .

01:22:14:21 – 01:22:23:05
Brandon Adams
So yeah I mean much like artwork people ask me all the time like how do I get started or whatever. And I said put it on social media. Let people see it .

01:22:23:17 – 01:22:37:16
Brandon Adams
Because that is the hardest thing to do when you craft something that is your baby. You write a story, or you paint a picture, or you make some pottery or you do whatever. Showing the world so they can kick the crap out of it is a hard thing to do .

01:22:37:18 – 01:22:55:12
Christy Trujillo
So that is what you asked about the fear. I was so worried the week the book launch, like, “Oh my gosh, what is the feedback going to be?” And I have gotten wonderful feedback. Which is what made me want to actually promote it .

01:22:55:14 – 01:23:01:04
Brandon Adams
But at the same time, like getting the crap kicked out of you is growth. It is growth. And you cannot believe everybody that tells you you are awesome either .

01:23:14:01 – 01:23:32:21
Christy Trujillo
Exactly. So and 2, yeah, I mean, at least for myself, I taught myself this is my first time to do it. I am proud of the fact that I actually did it. You know I do not know if you have ever heard of Brené Brown. Brené Brown, she talks about she, it is Theodore Roosevelt that actually said this quote of, so she gives him credit .

01:23:32:21 – 01:23:54:15
Christy Trujillo
But basically it is like, “Unless you are in the arena, you are not allowed to give feedback.” And you cannot, it is something she talks herself through, like for social media comments or criticism that she will get. It is like, “Unless you are out there doing it yourself, I really do not want to hear what you have to say” .

01:23:54:15 – 01:23:58:11
Christy Trujillo
Because it is, if you have been out, if you have done it, I want to hear like, “Tell me more. What? How can I get better?” And I had to be okay with that. But it is scary .

01:23:58:17 – 01:24:07:20
Brandon Adams
Yeah. Well, I heard I heard one that reminds me of a quote that I heard. It says, “That is not that great. I could do that,” from the person that has never done anything .

01:24:09:15 – 01:24:09:21
Christy Trujillo
Exactly.

01:24:10:02 – 01:24:24:15
Brandon Adams
Right. Everybody wants to tell you your stuff is not that great because it is a self reflection. I am not doing any of that, you know? So if people do stuff, they are going to get kicked. It is going to happen, people. I am telling you this, it is going to happen .

01:24:24:15 – 01:24:30:06
Brandon Adams
If you go out and you do something, people are going to hate you. They are going to kick on you. They are going to do everything. But there is also going to be people that are going to throw bouquets at you. You are somewhere in the middle .

01:24:30:08 – 01:24:31:10
Christy Trujillo
Absolutely.

01:24:31:11 – 01:24:32:09
Brandon Adams
It is, you know.

01:24:32:09 – 01:24:37:12
Christy Trujillo
Launching a podcast. Yeah. I mean, you are going to get haters and then there is going to be people that cannot wait for the next episode .

01:24:37:14 – 01:24:40:23
Brandon Adams
I am surprised people can still fight through this accent, to be quite honest. They are like, “Let me listen to the redneck for an hour and a half” .

01:24:41:18 – 01:24:56:14
Brandon Adams
But anyways, so that is really cool. So, if you were to give them three stages to go through for this book, what is the first thing to do? The second thing to do. The third thing to do to writing something ?

01:24:56:16 – 01:25:20:05
Christy Trujillo
I would say get your thoughts on paper. You know, just scratch paper. I mean, this was in my notes on my phone. I just wrote down different things. I would make notes about a story that I wanted to be sure and tell or concept, or if I was listening to a podcast or reading another book, I would jot down those notes like, just get them on paper .

01:25:20:07 – 01:25:41:18
Christy Trujillo
Get your general outline. I am not talking literal outline, but a general outline of what you would want your message to be. That would be the first step. Second step would be either find somebody help you, or find a resource. There are so many resources online. I mean, ChatGPT there are apps that you can join that will actually help you work through the processes .

01:25:41:19 – 01:26:02:10
Christy Trujillo
You can get one on one coaching. You can get group coaching, whatever. And then the third process is the publishing process, I actually hired a publisher to do it. I do not really have experience on self-publishing. I have got a really good friend who self-published her book. It was less expensive .

01:26:02:10 – 01:26:10:23
Christy Trujillo
I only know what I know. So I was like, “I am going to start here and try.” You just gotta start. Start because you are gonna learn through the process. Yeah. But that is what I would say .

01:26:11:00 – 01:26:16:09
Brandon Adams
Yeah. Just go get it in for. Just do it. Just do it. So Nike adage right?

01:26:16:10 – 01:26:19:17
Christy Trujillo
I, exactly, yes.

01:26:19:19 – 01:26:55:03
Brandon Adams
Things that go through your life and make a mark on you. Scars, things like that. I noticed you got tattoos. I read something that said I got my first tattoo. I have quite a few tattoos across my body. And they all mean something to me, you know? They are part of my story .

01:26:55:05 – 01:27:13:07
Brandon Adams
They are a part of like, they are the only thing that no matter what happens, I will have for me my entire life, no matter from the day that I take it to the day that I go to the dirt. That will be with me. That is the only thing. So I like to invest in the concept of telling a little bit about myself behind each one of these pieces. Right ?

01:27:13:09 – 01:27:40:24
Christy Trujillo
So can I read you the opening sentence? At 50 years old, I was supposed to be sitting, settling into predictable routines. Not getting my first tattoo. So, my first tattoo actually is down my spine. It is Isaiah 4110. “Fear not. For I am with you,” which was my scripture that I carried with me through breast cancer .

01:27:41:01 – 01:28:01:00
Christy Trujillo
It is something I would literally lay in the chamber when I was getting radiation. It was, I said it over and over, I had bracelets, I had it was just all around me because I did not want to live in the darkness. And so I had never had a tattoo. My husband did not have tattoos .

01:28:01:02 – 01:28:22:14
Christy Trujillo
My parents think that if you have tattoos you are in a Harley gang because that was their generation. It was not accepted in my family. And as I went through the cancer, etc., and after the fact, I was like, one day I just want to get Isaiah 4110 tattooed on me .

01:28:22:17 – 01:28:45:05
Christy Trujillo
Okay. So then I meet my now husband and he is just tatted up. And so I tell him one day I have really what I really want to do that. But I am scared to death. My family is gonna think I am crazy. Here I am a 50 year old woman worried what my family is going to think .

01:28:45:06 – 01:29:04:14
Christy Trujillo
And so we were in New York City. We love to go to New York City. We are theater people, so we love to go to the theater. And it was raining one day and we are like we are going to. He goes, so we researched and found this place, you know, looked at reviews because he was like, “You do not shop this. The tattoo. You do not shop prices” .

01:29:04:14 – 01:29:19:19
Christy Trujillo
“You shop quality.” So I was like, okay. So we went into this place and I told the lady, you know what I was wanting and I said, “I do not have any idea where I want it.” I mean, this is how much thought I had put into it. And so she said, “What kind of font?” I said, “I do not know” .

01:29:19:20 – 01:29:39:20
Christy Trujillo
So I start just googling. And I see something down somebody’s spine. And I thought, “Your spine holds you up. This scripture is what has held me up. It is my life scripture now. I want to have it on my spine.” And she is like, “Well that hurts on your spine” .

01:29:39:22 – 01:29:40:22
Brandon Adams
They all hurt.

01:29:40:23 – 01:29:59:16
Christy Trujillo
Well yeah. I am like, “I am going to do it.” And so I decided to do instead of just Isaiah 41 and it says Isaiah 4110, “Fear not, for I am with you.” And it is actually in her handwriting, which is beautiful. It is very, very creative, very artistic looking. So that my first. So my family thought I lost my mind .

01:30:11:15 – 01:30:19:23
Christy Trujillo
And my dad had sent me articles about people that have tattoos, and they get this and that, you know, blood cancers and all this stuff. Because he is a scientist. Anyway. So to get over all that. So then my second tattoo I got actually over one of my scars from my surgery. Just to kind of be a reflection of that .

01:30:20:00 – 01:30:36:13
Christy Trujillo
So there is an artist that I became interested and her name is, Deanna James. So my husband has a beautiful, floral shoulder .

01:30:36:13 – 01:30:38:14
Brandon Adams
Floral? Yeah. She did a piece on my chest .

01:30:38:15 – 01:30:59:01
Christy Trujillo
Okay. So he, she was an apprentice under one of his artists when she was apprenticing. And so he turned me on to her, and I saw the roses, and I was like, “I want that.” I looked at that for probably 18 months, two years. I was like, “I want that.” But, you know, she is $3,000 a session. Small world, right ?

01:30:59:07 – 01:31:00:07
Brandon Adams
Yeah.

01:31:00:08 – 01:31:45:12
Christy Trujillo
And so, we so, but I had idea what I wanted. But it really was frowned upon in my family. And through this just rebirth of myself, of like learning to trust myself again. Learning to learning where I held back different aspects of my life. Things I have not shared much because I did not want to build them up when I honestly I probably should have pursued that, but it really was not in my traditional families, you know, ideas, etc. I have learned throughout, since my divorce so much about myself and how I have held back in certain areas where really it is things that either, you know, guess that the Lord’s given me that I’ve just not pursued because it wasn’t maybe the common thing for my family to accept, etc.

01:31:45:12 – 01:32:08:14
Christy Trujillo
So I am in the line, we were in Manhattan again, different, different trip. And I am in the line at a, intermission during a theater. And the theaters are tiny. They are in the bathroom lines are long. So I am saying this long line and I am wearing a dress that’s backless. And this girl about 2 or 3 people behind me, young girl, she taps me on the shoulder and she says, “Excuse me, do you mind me asking what your tattoo says?”

01:32:08:16 – 01:32:32:10
Christy Trujillo
And so I told her, you know, “Fear not, for I am with you” and I told her my story of cancer and she starts bawling and she says her mother died from cancer three years ago and that her and her sister had been checked for the bracketing. And she has it, but her sister does not .

01:32:32:10 – 01:33:00:07
Christy Trujillo
And how she is grateful it is her because her sister has down syndrome. I mean, she is just she probably hugged me 3 or 4 times, and in that moment I thought, “This tattoo opened the door for me to make a connection with somebody.” How dare me hold myself back? Thinking, “Oh, what are people going to think if I get this big flower on me?”

01:33:00:09 – 01:33:21:09
Christy Trujillo
And I walked into the theater and I told my husband, “We are going to go get that tattoo tomorrow.” So we researched and we found an artist that could do similar to Deanna James because I you cannot recreate somebody’s artwork. You know that you are an artist. And so I have the flower all over .

01:33:21:10 – 01:33:35:12
Christy Trujillo
I am so proud of myself that I got over that fear and just did it. It is for me. And it opened so many conversations that I love. I love that aspect. It is a relationship building .

01:33:35:14 – 01:33:45:09
Brandon Adams
No, that is a cool thing. I think that they really mean something in your life. And for me, it is like, you know, it is almost like, a time capsule or something of, you know what you go through .

01:33:45:09 – 01:33:55:16
Brandon Adams
What you were in that time period and what you stand for and everything else. And so, Deanna actually did a tattoo on my chest when she was, intern at, working for Francisco .

01:33:56:18 – 01:33:57:02
Brandon Adams
Frank.

01:33:57:02 – 01:33:58:24
Christy Trujillo
Sanchez, who my husband had worked with .

01:34:00:68 – 01:34:01:21
Christy Trujillo
Okay.

01:34:01:23 – 01:34:18:22
Brandon Adams
But it has. It is, you know, a heart in the middle of my chest, and it is like, it is like an anatomy heart. Not like a illustrated heart, but. And it has two daggers going through the middle of it. So poking out this side and poking out this side and then out of the top is a flame. And then there is a crown on the top of it .

01:34:18:24 – 01:34:30:19
Brandon Adams
And then hanging from it is a cross on it. On a chain. Right. And it just means no matter what you go through in your life, if you’re super passionate about it, you’re going to take daggers .

01:34:30:21 – 01:34:31:24
Christy Trujillo
Oh, that’s so good.

01:34:32:04 – 01:34:42:12
Brandon Adams
Regardless, it’s your passion. This is what you have heart for. Right? So just remember, you know, as you go through this it’s going to stick .

01:34:43:08 – 01:34:48:08
Brandon Adams
But if you really believe that you really love it and you really have heart for it, that’s part of the process. You know it .

01:34:50:16 – 01:35:04:21
Brandon Adams
It’s just a, it’s a, it’s a memory for me, you know to be like it keeps me in check to have like if you, if you’re going to do this and you’re kicking doors down, just remember this is who you are and this is what you’re about. And, and, keep kicking doors down, you know.

01:35:04:23 – 01:35:19:09
Christy Trujillo
And it does. And, and there will be things that happen. Yeah, but it’s worth it. Yeah. Anything worth doing is is going to be a challenge. You know, everything we’re doing is going to be a challenge. So. Yeah, that’s really good .

01:35:19:11 – 01:35:41:04
Brandon Adams
Well I tell you what, man, I’ve had a I’ve had a really good time, talking and exploring with you and kind of going through some, you know, business aspects or whatever, but really we’ve gone through like, soul searching and, you know, creating a person, you know, and kind of finding out, helping people with the journey, you know, and and that to me means more than making a dollar .

01:35:42:19 – 01:35:45:10
Christy Trujillo
Anything else? Yeah, absolutely .

01:35:45:12 – 01:35:49:20
Brandon Adams
Well, if you could, you just tell everybody, like, where they can find your book, where they can find you?

01:35:50:01 – 01:36:12:24
Christy Trujillo
Absolutely. So on Amazon, you can find my book on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. And my website is christytrujillo.com. So yeah, if you want to find me there, follow me on any of my social media. And it’s all linked to my website. So would love to love to have anybody review the book or give me your feedback or share with me how it touched you .

01:36:13:00 – 01:36:15:23
Christy Trujillo
I love to hear the stories. Keeps me going. So that’s .

01:36:15:23 – 01:36:17:17
Brandon Adams
Awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on .

01:36:17:20 – 01:36:20:13
Christy Trujillo
Thank you for the invite. I really appreciate it .

01:36:20:15 – 01:36:24:02
Brandon Adams
Well, everybody, until next time. That’s the Blueprint.