Hey there, we're talking about the entrepreneurial transformational journey today. If you've ever noticed that building a business helps you learn so much about yourself, well, today we're leaning right into that with Sussi Mattsson, and she advocates healing through writing.
Sussi's Emmy-nominated documentaries on greats like Jack Canfield and Jay Abraham.
This episode is for you if you're an entrepreneur or you're interested in mental health, you might be a coach, a wellness advocate, an executive producer or an author. And so welcome to Resilient Entrepreneurs, we are the podcast that speaks with business owners and entrepreneurs from all around the world, from all walks of life, in the hopes that something you hear today will leave your business a little richer. We're your co-hosts, Vicki and Laura from Two Four One Branding, and we support new entrepreneurs as you launch your business. We offer you the tools you need to succeed and it's exactly why we invite experienced, successful entrepreneurs like Sussi to share her wisdom with you. Now, just before we get into the conversation, we have one thing to ask from you. It's a small thing, but it has a big impact. Please share your love of this podcast by subscribing on the platform. Whether you're watching or listening now, just click that button and subscribe. What that will do is it will help other startups and other entrepreneurs to discover this on their playlist and you'll be sharing the love and helping people find the resilient entrepreneur within them. By the way, thank you for getting us to 10,000 downloads. Well, Sussi, welcome. It is an absolute joy to share our platform with you, can't wait to have this conversation.
Thank you, Vicki, and thank you Laura, for having me.
Oh, thank you so much for joining us. I like to start these kinds of conversations with resilient entrepreneurs like yourself at the beginning. So can you tell us some of your backstory? What was your childhood like? Where did you grow up? And were you entrepreneurial as a kid?
Yeah, my childhood story is, I think, pretty different from many other kids. Because when I was eight years old, my mom passed away from cancer. And then I had to live with my super abusive father, which I found out six months later after living with him that he was about to sell me to strangers in a foreign country down to Southern Europe, and I was only eight years old. So my stepmother found this false passport and also a one way ticket, airline ticket for the following day, which put me in a situation that I needed to make a decision really quickly to save my life and to save myself from boarding that plane straight to hell.
So the following day, I actually ran away from home. I was eight years old, and I had equal to $1 in my pocket.
So that's the childhood story, and moving fast forward, in 2012 I had a really successful coaching business around the world and still I found myself not living with purpose. I had success but not fulfilment. So that was the starting point of going back and trying to connect the dots of understanding myself better and diving deep into the discovery of my childhood trauma.
That's the story behind all this. And I came to a point where I couldn't identify myself with that little courageous brave girl who ran away from home, but also follow through with action. So I decided to at least write her a letter to say thank you. Thank you for saving my life, thank you for being brave, and thank you for taking action. And in that process of writing that letter to my younger self, something really shifted in my body and the pain and the burden that I had been carrying around for over 34 years, it felt like it belonged to the letter. It didn't belong to me anymore. So I thought it was really interesting. So that was the starting point of me studying how writing is healing and what specific factors do we need to address in a healing letter to yourself.
And also later on I also discovered in which order do you need to address those factors, key factors to set yourself up for healing and how we can turn past wounds into wisdom. So this whole story is the starting point of the wisdom writer and the For Me To You Movement of writing a healing letter to yourself, but also sending in and provide your wisdom and pay forward that to other people who are currently in pain. So that's the story behind all this.
Thank you so much for sharing such vulnerability and such a deeply personal story. My heart goes out to you, I can see that you're strong and you've come through it and there must have been so much resilience around all of that as an eight-year-old and even now as an adult to know that is a part of your journey. And I mean, there can't be anyone better suited to run a campaign, a movement like this to help other people get to the place of healing that you have come to. So thank you. Thank you for sharing you, as we explore this conversation.
I can't help but want to know a little more of that story, Sussi. So how does an eight year old run away and where did you go? What was the next, next steps for you? I'm left with such a desire for more.
Well, my father lived in a different city and I only lived with him for six months, which means that I didn't know myself around the town. I didn't know the town at all, I couldn't find anything. But I do believe that what is important to consider is that I thought I was worth saving. Even though I was only eight years old, that was the thought that I had. “I'm worth saving”. And “It has to be a better life somewhere”. I didn't know where, but somewhere. So I think that was the driving force to be courageous. I mean, sometimes you take actions and you don't feel any fear because it's just something you need to do. There is no time for fear, you just do it because you need to save yourself. So what happened, I think I want to leave you with a cliffhanger because that's all in the book.
Ah, fair enough, fair enough.
But I ended up with a lovely family in Sweden with a lot of love and compassion. And that is also hard to shift from being in an abusive home, living really poor, almost no money for food and having this abusive father and then coming to a loving home where you had enough food every night, I took a bath every night, I got hugs and kisses. That's also a shift to be able to acclimate yourself into that environment. But the story could easily have ended up differently, my runaway could easily have ended up being homeless, living on the streets for several years or being a prostitute or drug addict or whatever, but in my case, it didn't. So the rest is in the book.
Okay, okay. Can we find your book on Amazon? Is it easy to find? Or where can people find your book?
I will give you notice when the book is out on the market, which will be now in the spring.
Coming soon. Coming soon.
Coming soon.
Great, that's exciting.
And will this be your first book, Sussi? Because you've produced a number of documentaries, so you're already a prolific content producer.
Well, I have just written chapters in other people's books, so this is my first book that I have written myself. Yeah.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
And how did you come to be working on those documentaries that you've produced? Tell us a bit about that.
That was just by default. It was not a goal or anything like that, but Jack Canfield was during 2012 and 13, a close friend and mentor. So when the time came up to do this documentary about his life, then I got involved in that. So that's the story behind that.
Fascinating, so Laura asked that question about your childhood because that often we find is what shapes our experiences and clearly that is the case for you. As it relates to entrepreneurship, working for yourself, you said you had a successful coaching business. I'm so intrigued that coaching in itself seems to be a career that is built on purpose, yet you're saying you were successful without the fulfilment. Can we have a conversation around that?
Yes, of course. So I actually educated myself as an interior architect and I worked 13 years internationally, creating beautiful homes and ambassadors, villas and stuff like that, five star hotels and stuff like that. But I came to a point where it was a challenge with my values to create tons of million dollar homes and just outside the streets there were really poor people. So I think that started something within me to question myself to do something more, being a difference maker in people's life. So when I started to work at IKEA, the Swedish furniture company, as a business developer, I started this business academy, educating high performance leaders and high potential leaders and then I started my own company doing the same thing. And I think that now when I look back, I can easily see that my choice of career is actually a trauma response, because creating beautiful homes for other people, being super poor, that's absolutely a connection and working with leaders, executives or successful entrepreneurs on self-leadership and how to create a happier fulfilment life for them is also a trauma response from myself that helping others being happy, helping others turn their past wounds into a ‘piece of wisdom’ and turn their pain into purpose. I couldn't see it in the beginning, but now looking back, I can totally understand that it is part of my healing journey to help other people heal. And if I can help other people be happier, create a more happier life and be successful, then I think I can contribute with something because I know real pain. I have been through a lot. So when I show up authentic and real and genuine, I automatically give the space to my coaching clients to do the same. And I think that's one of the key factors of the success that we are in a space where we can, I'm the corner man so to speak, and genuinely helped them succeed in their personal life and also in their professional life.
So what was it that got you into feeling fulfilled? What was the thing that opened the gate to feeling fulfilled?
When I understood myself better by visiting my past and who I am and what shaped me and why, I got more understanding of why I am a coach and why my coaching clients say I'm good and why I've always got my coaching clients through word of mouth. So I think that when you understand yourself better, you can easily see that there is a pattern and it reveals the truth. It's more deeper in a way. And I also think that for my coaching clients, when they heard about my story, they also understood everything, the pieces of the puzzle suddenly was in place. So I think helping other people in a deeper level and making a real difference in people's lives and that is something that brought more fulfilment, not just helping them succeed and make more dollars, but in a deeper level of self leadership, that is the real work.
And what are some of the ways we can help face and heal our traumas? Because I think very few people escape life without trauma, and often with childhood trauma, and often with suppressed, so things we may have forgotten about or put in the back, but they've affected our lives and choices that we make. Why is it important to deal with it versus suppressing it and forgetting about it and pushing on with life?
Well, what I can see from my experience coaching thousands of people is that exactly what you are saying, Laura, they are closing the door, they're not talking about it, and if we're not talking about it, it doesn't exist. But we do need to understand that our stories live in our hearts and our actions, that is our unhealed wounds, our unhealed traumas that is our actions. And I think a lot of leaders see that they have built up some, if I may say so, soul-sucking survival patterns to create a new normal and they believe that new normal is just fine, “I am okay as I was”.
I was also creating a lot of soul-sucking survival patterns and I also built those invisible walls around my heart because I believe they will protect me and that is just a human response to pain.
But the first step is always to acknowledge what happened, to 100% acknowledge, no judgment and no blaming, just very plain and simple, acknowledge what happened to you. And when we do acknowledge, then it is easier for us to raise our self-awareness about what kind of belief system has this experience brought me to? What kind of values do I have because of what happened to me? And when we can acknowledge our story, then we can also pull out the life lessons learned. And when we can pull out the life lessons learned, then growth takes place. So it's all connected to raise awareness and grow from that experience, but also turn those life lessons, transform them into ‘piece of wisdom’. Because when we see the wisdom that we have gained from that experience, then self-confidence will increase. So it's all connected in this writing, four-step writing method that I have created.
Sussi, do you think this work is for people who already acknowledge that they feel a lack of fulfilment or purpose? Or is it also for people who say genuinely believe, like if we were having this conversation with them one on one, they'd be saying, no, I don't experience any of this. I haven't had any past trauma, I've lived a good life, I had a happy childhood and look at me, I'm full-on success. I have absolutely nothing to do with this conversation.
That's usually Vicki, the response to my coaching clients because they call me and they say to me, “Well, Sussi, I got your name because I want to take my business to the next level.” And I'm “Okay, that's good but we need to take you to the next level first before you are able to take your business to the next level”. And then we start talking and I totally believe that everybody has a story, I do believe that. And so far there is coaching clients who are exactly what you said, Vicki. They don't believe they have any story, but when you're scratching the surface a little bit and you say, “Well, what kind of leader are you?” And usually they say, "Well, I walk my talk.” And I'm, “No, I'm sorry, but you're not. You're walking, but you're not walking your talk because you don't know what your talk is.” So we need to go back and see the values. What value do you stand for? What belief system do you have? And where does that come from? And usually that is absolutely connected to your past trauma. I also believe that some people have that belief system that I have nothing to share, I don't have any trauma because there is so much pain connected that I believe it's a kind of human survival mode that embrace your body and your soul and your mind to save you, and you're blocking your memory, but usually asking the right questions, you are getting the deeper answers.
Yeah, we compartmentalise trauma a lot. Well, a lot of people do for sure, because there's so many negative emotions that go with it. Guilt, shame, anger, helplessness, especially when it happens at a young age, and I think it's very much blocked out, but for those who are open and ready to face it, what's the first step? Obviously finding somebody like you right? To open up and be able to start talking about it, but what's the next step once they're “Okay, I'm open, I know I need to face this, I've been blocking it my whole life but it's blocking me from being the great leader that I want to be”, for example, if you get to that space in life, so what do you recommend the first step for somebody like that is?
If they want to become a ‘wisdom writer’, which is something I call all the people who have sent in their wisdom letters and contributing with their ‘piece of wisdom’, there is this four-step method that I have created that is proven. Because right now we have, we stopped counting when we had 11,000 letters from all around and that was a couple of years ago, what wisdom writers have shared with me is that this four-step method is simple but yet profound.
And I also believe that there are a lot of different healing methods, obviously, how to heal past trauma, but in this case, it's two beautiful gifts in this letter writing method because the first gift is obviously to yourself, healing yourself, and the second gift is for you to share your ‘piece of wisdom’ and leave your legacy. And that is something that people have found really beautiful in this method because I'm not dwelling into the trauma that I have had because I'm just sharing. The first step is acknowledging exactly what happened. What was my thoughts and what was my feelings? And you need to be just brutally honest with yourself and just share that story. And that is the first step. You need to do that, even though it's hard and it's painful.
But the bridge to then identifying your life lessons, and then identifying your wisdom, and then doing the forgiveness work and love, it leaves you with a high. And all the people so far who have written their wisdom letters, they get empowered by their story because they can see how much they have grown as a person, how much confidence it has given them and how much life lessons they have learned they didn't know. And the piece of wisdom that they give to others makes them feel good about themself. So I think that some therapy is all about dwelling on the trauma and in this case, you are just talking about it in the first step, and then we are just positive and positive and positive and positive steps, and leaves you with the love and forgiveness work towards yourself and to others. And so I think that what I have seen from wisdom writers is that they have done exceptional things after they have finished writing their wisdom letter. For example, I have one wisdom writer who didn't talk to his mother for 15 years because she was in jail and he wrote a wisdom letter all about that trauma. And afterwards he said, he called me and he said, well, “I have booked a ticket now, I'm going to visit her in Alaska” and he hadn't seen her for 15 years. And we have a lot of successful stories of people taking action to forgive the past or forgive the person, but also forgive themselves for being that little kid or for not having the tools or resources and doing amazing job in their lives and being super successful. So I think that is what we talked about earlier, Vicki, about fulfilment for me helping other people leave that pain and have some peace to the heart and live more like this feeling of freedom when you leave the pain behind.
Yeah. Sussi we've talked about emotional trauma a lot today, yet we would be remiss not to talk about physical trauma given some events of your adulthood. Now, everything we've talked about, I believe, is a conversation around resilience, what it takes to be resilient. And that's a question we're going to ask you before we say goodbye but, there's another level of resilience that you've lived through and are continuing to rehab from. Can you share with us a bit about your bouncing back from a serious brain injury?
So my daughter and I was a passenger in a serious car accident in New York in 2016, and yeah, it was pretty serious. I had three and a half years it took me to come back to be able to work again. But the physical comeback is one thing, but the mentally comeback is a totally different level of comeback because that was the real challenge.
When you face the challenge that the brain is my product, I don't sell a lamp or a car or something like that. The brain is my product, and you know that my brain is not working as before and I couldn't recognise myself. So when you see yourself in the mirror and you’re kind of asking yourself, “Who are you?” because that's not the woman I used to be, and knowing that you need to just put everything, your business, everything on hold, because you're not able to manage your clients or your speaking engagements or your leadership workshops and everything that I had going on. So I think the physical comeback is one thing, but the mental comeback of coming back and believing that you can do it, instead of having fear and hopelessness and all that negative emotions taking over and find yourself in the valley, you need to pull yourself up as quickly as you can.
And I do believe that I am the ultimate case study here to practise my own tools to be able to come back and speak actually, because I had a really difficult time of speaking, I couldn't find my words, I had memory loss and etc, etc. So just being able to conduct this is a huge victory, of course, and going back to my coaching clients and going back to speaking business. So I have a permanent disability of 9% on my brain, but still believe that if I can do it in my own way and making my own rules, then I'm still good enough to continue the work. So it takes a lot of self-belief and positive self-talk and also focus on the controllables. A lot of hard work, I can say that.
Yeah, definitely. It sounds like, it's that eight year-old in your adult body saying, “I'm worth saving, I need to save me”, just in a different way. I mean, thank you very much, life for sending all of these big ones to one person, to me Sussi, wow, I feel like your life path is a demonstration of you learned it through experience and now you get to use it and test it. Let's pray that this is the last time that you're going to do a big test. Oh my goodness, and you just come through it smiling. And honestly, it's a story of ultimate resilience, in my opinion. And thank you for sharing that journey, I'm sure it's an ongoing journey. Even the acceptance using your own method, accepting that things are different now than what they used to be. That in itself would stop people in their tracks.
Yeah, yeah. But I do believe that one thing that absolutely changed direction was when I asked myself the question, “Do I need to be happy ever after or just happy now? And that was absolutely the turning point for me that I didn't need to see the whole staircase - what's going on with the company, I have one company in Sweden, I have another company in the US, I had my daughter, I was a single mom. The whole package, you don't need to see the whole staircase, just focus on being happy now, instead of happy ever after and that was something that clicked for me at least, that if I can just be mindful and present in each and every day and make the most of that and be happy now, then I got a lot of happy days. So my track record was a lot of happy days. So I think that is a good question to ask yourself, that sometimes we are so focused on the future that we are forgetting to be happy now.
I feel like that's a good book title, Be Happy Now. Just tell people, be happy now. That'd be a great book. Maybe it's already one, I'm not sure. But I'm gonna claim that one if it's not, just for you Sussi, you write the book, you can have it. Thank you for sharing all that, and it's absolutely true, the importance of being happy now. And because we're Resilient Entrepreneurs and like Vicki just said, so much of this conversation is all about resilience, personal resilience that which we give to others through being so resilient. But what's your thoughts on resilience? How does a person become resilient?
Well, I think that at least if I'm talking from my own experience, one piece is to not be afraid to dive deep into the darkness. Don't be afraid of the dark side, because you will find answers to questions you didn't know you had. I found out a lot of family secrets diving back and I was able to connect the dots. So I think that is absolutely one piece of advice to not be afraid of the dark side or diving deep into your trauma.
Another thing is to be loyal to your core values, because the core values is absolutely connected to your quality of life. If you're loyal to your core values, then you live by design and not by default and that will build resilience over time because you will be able to say no to things and yes to other things and that is character building and strength building. So that is a second advice.
Thank you. I don't think we've ever had that response, Laura, on this show. Sussi, we are coming to the end of this delicious conversation. And again, thank you for showing up as you do and sharing everything of you. We would love for you, if you have a question of us, to put us on the spot. You can sit in the interviewer seat and ask us a question. It's just some fun thing that we've started doing on this show.
Okay, so talking about happiness and creating be present. What do you do ladies to create happiness and joy in your everyday life and to fill your cup?
Such a good question. You go first this time, Vicki.
Oh, mine are pretty simple. I feel like I live a pretty simple life in that respect. If I am feeling a depleted cup and it's time to fill up, I'll head out to nature. So even if it's as simple as walking my dog down to the creek where there's just beautiful, big cockatoos flying around and squawking and gorgeous, incredible gum trees that I just stand and put my hand on their trunk and admire how the bark just falls away and all the light falling on the trunk of the tree. Simple, simple things. This absolutely does it for me every single time.
Oh, that's such a good answer. Well, I would say so much of my joy and happiness comes from my two kids. Like you, Sussi, I'm a single mom, so I'm raising them on my own, and they're both coming into themselves now and doing some really cool things. So seeing them excel in their passions, one's an artist and he's doing incredible cool entrepreneurial stuff with his art, and my daughter's a dancer, and seeing her light up on stage. It just makes all the hard days so worth it and overflows my cup for sure when I see them both just beaming, excited, loving what they're doing and I just get to like sit there and cheer them on. That's the coolest part of motherhood for me, it definitely fills me up.
Thank you for asking that, that's such a great question. I hope the listeners also take that question to themselves and answer that. Maybe write it down, put it in a journal, let's start writing. I really appreciate all that you've shared with us today on writing and the importance and the value of it. I recently said in a podcast about writing to get things out of my head when my head was getting overwhelmed and stressed and upset about life and world events and just the therapy that writing brings to release all this stuff that's confusing and stressful out. It's so valuable and I definitely see it and I love wisdom writing. That's an amazing thing to share. So putting down in words, our wisdom, our experiences, it's a legacy for the next generation. Speaking of children, it's a great thing to do for them too. I recently just wrote a letter to my daughter on her birthday about her from birth till now. And yeah, just cool. There's so many things you can do with writing that are really, really powerful and they can last a lot longer than anything else than the words spoken, words written are really, really powerful. So thank you so much for sharing this and what you do. We'll try to link the book. You have to let us know when it's published. We'll link so that people can find it and celebrate it and share it. And thank you so much for your wisdom, your guidance, your story, your vulnerability. It's meant an awful lot to Vicki and I that you joined us today.
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you, Vicki and thank you, Laura.
