Patty Ivey is a visionary entrepreneur who has generated millions of dollars, building and leading three innovative, first-to-market businesses. She has spent zero time in corporate America and does not have a single high-level degree, or resume. Patty is a mentor, life guide and confidante to successful leaders and entrepreneurs, who are no longer inspired by the big mission that once made them come alive. They are ready to move away from all of the doing and explore a deeper sense of being, but not sure how to start. This is where she comes in!
In this episode of TechTalk Podcast, Brad Cost, Dr. Jay Greenstein, and Patty Ivey sit down to discuss:
Patty Ivey's journey to becoming a successful yogi master.
How Patty Ivey is changing the world in her everyday lifestyle.
Patty Ivey's positive, go-getter attitude in her walk with breast cancer.
SHOW NOTES:
1:49 – Becoming a yogi master. “Gosh, how did I get to being a yogi master? The truth of the matter is I blew my knee out running, Jay sent me to the doctor that I had surgery with, and then I rehabbed in his office. I think it was you that said I needed to go do yoga. I didn’t want to go to yoga, but I went and hated it. My yoga teacher was interested in the fact that I had owned another business, so we started talking, having lunch and she approached me about whether or not I'd be interested in helping her open a yoga studio. I hate yoga, so I told her I'm not doing that. She invited me to go up to Boston to take class with her teacher and I literally walked out the door, thinking this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Four months later, Down Dog opened. I had no idea what I was doing - it was like a wing and a prayer. I followed my intuition in 2003, and now we’ve been open 21 years now.”
8:04 - The ingredients of success. “My greatest success is that nothing was going through my head. I just did it, you know? That's who I am. The truth of the matter is that I am a visionary through and through, so I will get an inspiration and just do it. It wasn't like I wanted to open a business for me. I want to change the world. I have to feel inspired to want to change the world or I'm not doing it. It starts there for me and then I just figure it out as I go along. I'm a really great student, so I have no problem asking anyone that I trust. I have less than a handful of who I would consider great mentors of mine, and I would lean into people and ask them. Everybody loves that. I know I love when people come to me and really have an interest to be mentored. That's really how I start out. I never start out thinking I was going to scale this. I didn't really have an interest in scaling, but I was so passionate about that I just wanted to drop into pockets of community to keep making change because I believed at the time that yoga was it. Yes, from a physical perspective, but more from the emotional transformational piece of what yoga could do in your life. That's what really grabbed me.”
13:47 - Businesswoman background & changing the world. “I actually did run a couple of other businesses, but I did them the same exact way. Everything had to come from a passion. The first business I started was called the Cookie Lady - I owned three small bakeries way back in the day. There were lines out the door. I used to sell 42 dozen muffins in 90 minutes out of one of my little stores. That feeling when you're passionate about something and it's happening and you’re seeing people get so lit up over a muffin - it just gives me a lot of joy. So, I had my Cookie Lady business, but then my mom had cancer, so I closed that business up. I went through a divorce, went home to New York to help my dad out for a while until my mom passed, and then put myself through massage school. I started giving massages at the Four Seasons but didn’t want to hang around because they took half my money. I started out with one client who followed me from there and then I had a wait list of people. I had high end clients, like people in the government, celebrities. It was my destiny. It’s who I was meant to be in the world. I still had that business when I had the opportunity to open up Down Dog Yoga. My massage clients were crying for me to keep them, but I had to go. Then, I opened Down Dog. Like I said, I literally went from taking that class to walking up to Baron Baptiste, who became my teacher, and asking him what his plans for growth were. He wanted to open up studios all throughout the country, but I suggested him opening affiliate studios, where he would show us how to do it. I wrote a proposal for him, and I was his first affiliate. That's how his affiliate program began, and he had about 150 affiliates prior to COVID. I don't know how many he has now, but I opened Down Dog after that class and went from having two people to lines down the block of people trying to get in. I would have a classroom of 60 people and send 40 people home. That's how busy it was because it was a vibe. People want to be where they can't get in. They were literally crawling between people's legs to get ahead of everybody. It was insane.”
19:38 – Loyal friendships throughout it all. “We're loyal to our friends, right? Once you're in my circle, you're in it. We take care of and support each other through everything, the good and the bad. We've been through a lot together in every single way. I'll get mad at Jay because he'll cancel a phone call on me 10 times until I’m sick of it, so I tell him not to call me until he can really sit and have a talk. That literally happened and I was so mad, but it happens. I know when he's with me, he's really with me. At the end of the day, that means more than talking to him 100 times a year, you know?”
29:41 – Transformation physically, mentally, and emotionally. “When I stepped into that classroom with Baron Baptiste, it was 95 degrees with mats half an inch apart and I was sweating like a crazy person, but the whole time he was speaking to possibility, to personal transformation. I had never heard anyone talking to anything like that. It's like you're in the sweat lodge, sweating out all these demons and things from the past, but you have somebody talk to you about reaching higher into possibility. I loved it. I've never ever had that experience before. The talk about being your best self. The mindset on how we looked at life. The opportunity that anything is possible when you set your mind to it. That became my thing. I know that that's why my classes were sold out year after year, night after night because people needed to hear that. 20+ years into having a daily yoga practice, it's such a gift. It's a lifestyle practice. It's the breath work. It's moving through the poses. It's the space between the breath. Breath moves energy and energy moves the mind. The most important part of yoga is that I could teach an entire class, just saying inhale and exhale and people will come out transformed. It's not my words that are shifting anything. I'm not the magic, but it's knowing how to put all those pieces together. It's that movement with the heat for the detox. We know that heat is good for the immune system, right? The physical movements that are strengthening and stretching you together with that breath work and the sweating… it's literally transformation in action.”
34:04 – Permission to be messy and imperfect. “When I'm teaching, I really keep it upbeat - not talking about what you shouldn't be doing, but what's possible. Most people in life are going to talk about what they should be doing and shame themselves. I'm committed to getting people out of that mindset and allow themselves to be human. It's not about being perfect. It's giving people permission to be messy in life. That's where the magic is. Everyone will come to yoga because their doctor said come to yoga and then all of a sudden, they're trying to perfect poses. It's so backwards. That's not why they’re here. You're not here to perfect poses. You're here to shed all of that needing to be perfect. It takes time for all that to settle in and it takes commitment for people to stick with it.”
36:36 – Just do it. “When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I remember I was shocked, stunned, and kept asking every single doctor, how did I get cancer? I was healthy. They reminded me that cancer doesn't care how healthy you are. I did yoga every day. I ate really well. I had a clean diet. But I wasn’t healthy in my chronic stress levels from being an entrepreneur, a high performer, from pushing myself all the time. I knew that the majority of my cancer was energetic. In some ways, I went through the normal protocol. I was in Italy three days after I was diagnosed at some entrepreneur group pushing myself again and a shaman happened to be there. He sat down next to me, and he goes, tell me everything. I told him and he said to me, go through all of your Western protocol, do whatever the doctors tell you, and call me when you get to the other side of it. I just spent a week with him in Arizona. My good physical health gave me a strong foundation to work with and my doctors love me because my mindset is incredible. I did not go down the rabbit hole, even when I wasn’t feeling well. I'd go through chemo, feel like crap, and know the medicine's working. I would just constantly remind myself. I went through the normal protocol, which included eight sessions of chemotherapy over a 16-week period, a double mastectomy, and radiation. I told the doctors very clearly that it really was important to me that they walk shoulder to shoulder with me. I was going to do whatever they told me to do, and I needed them to have that same respect for me since I do a lot of Eastern medicine. I told them I didn’t want to hear negative words. Tell me the truth, but it has to have hope and possibility. They walked it with me. It was nine months of a challenging journey, but it was doable. I think it's really important for people to get it. You can do it. Is it wonderful? Does anyone want to lose all their hair? Does anyone want to feel sick all the time? Do you want to go through major surgery? No. But I did it.”
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