#43 Freedom Has a Voice…Are Your Listening?

Find Your Voice, Change Your Life Podcast
Podcast Host: Dr. Doreen Downing
Free Guide to Fearless Speaking: Doreen7steps.com

Episode #43 Joe Perrone

“Freedom Has a Voice… Are You Listening?”

(00:35) Dr. Doreen Downing
Hi, this is Dr. Doreen Downing and I’m host of the Find Your Voice, Change Your Life podcast. What I do here is to invite guests who have the willingness to look at their own lives and talk about the struggles that they’ve had in expressing themselves in this world. Whether it was originally something that happened in their family, in the past, or whether it was when they were in high school and had peers that were bullying them or when they entered the work world where there was a lot of competition. So, it’s always something new, depending on the guests, because everybody has their own story. Today, I’m very pleased to introduce Joe Perrone, a very good friend that I’ve been able to meet through the internet, this is something that is possible nowadays, to make friends and to give each other support and to bring them into my world, my tribe, and to say, hey, look at Joe. So, let me introduce you and say a few things about him before we get on with the podcast. Joe is a strategist who helps business owners reclaim their time freedom. We’ll learn more about what time freedom really means. He believes that your business should run itself. It shouldn’t run you into the ground. Joe has been helping his clients find full enjoyment in everything that they create, and do it without burning out. Joe is an entrepreneur himself. He owns and operates two successful automotive repair shops, and he does it on about six hours a week. Joe’s favorite ways to invest his reclaimed time is by building strong relationships with his wife and his two young sons. I would add strong relationships with his new friends because that’s what I feel like we are too, but also building a business that runs successfully without him and helping other business owners do the same. Oh, Joe, welcome.

(03:00) Joe Perrone
Doreen, such an honor, privilege and a blessing to be here today and share this time with you.

(03:06) Dr. Doreen Downing
Great. Well, the topic is finding your voice so at some point, it feels like we can start maybe where was it that you remember not having a voice, I know that now even nowadays we have challenges. But I always like to– I’m a psychologist I always like to dive a little deeper and back in somebody’s history to see what they remember, any events or challenges about being more of who you could have been as a little kid?

(03:41) Joe Perrone
Yeah. So, I will say that, I am the oldest of three and I was the kid that was sitting on my mother’s lap playing cards or sitting with my father, he drove a tow truck at night so I’d go with him on rides and stuff. So, I always felt that I had a voice at that, at that point in my life and in growing up being the oldest with a sibling that’s 18 months younger than me. I always felt like part of the adult tribe and part of that world. Without skimming too much over that it really when I felt like I lost that voice was when I entered into the workforce at age 18. That’s really when I found my biggest challenge because Doreen at that point, I was the oldest boy. I had a say, I had a voice and going into the workforce back in 1998, that was when my first full time job was really when I felt like I lost that voice and as we connected and met and I said, I’m going to come on the Dr. Doreen Downing podcast, I really dug deep and thought about that. So, I have some– I definitely have some challenges that I experienced at that point in my life.

(05:24) Dr. Doreen Downing
Oh, I really am open to hearing more. It feels like this is a new kind of story too, that you’ve felt comfortable and confident and as an older brother, you had a place and some responsibility. There was– it just felt like you had a sense of value of yourself. I imagine, I don’t know, you grew up in the East Coast. You were in Connecticut.

(05:55) Joe Perrone
I’m born and raised New Haven, Connecticut area.

(05:59) Dr. Doreen Downing
Yes. So, I imagine that high school– I mean, you seem pretty athletic just by looking at you. High school must have been pretty easy.

(06:12) Joe Perrone
So, it was really, really easy because I had gotten homeschooled as well. That was a decision that my parents and I had made and so I did homeschool which is really unique. It’s something that in networking circles, what’s something no one knows about you and I don’t think you knew that’s probably the first time you heard it. But I had gone to private schools all the way up till ninth grade. Then in 10th grade the school was no longer going, they were kind of disbanding. My parents didn’t want to send me to public high school, we kind of made some decisions because where we were in New Haven, there weren’t great options for me. Then we made the decision to do homeschool, but that was another area now that we’re bringing it up, that was a place where I really actually had to find a voice because now, I don’t have that social structure. I had friends I had people that I had associated with, but now I really had to go out and learn how to build a network of people. That’s really where I learned a lot of speaking up. If I wanted something, I had to go ask for it. I had to be comfortable with being introduced to new people and being eclectic, diverse background of people. So, I’ve really been experiencing a lot of that now. Later in life and these skills that I learned because of the fact that I was homeschooled, and that was never an impediment for me. That was always something that I really was like, yeah, I was homeschooled, isn’t that cool? I never saw that as something that– it’s just something I did. But a lot of those things that I learned and how to speak up for myself and how if I wanted to meet this person and I didn’t go to high school. It’s not like I went to class with them. I had to be bold, and go out and meet them. When I was dating, I really had to work a little harder for it. So, there are definitely some things that I learned in being homeschooled.

(08:31) Dr. Doreen Downing
That’s great insight. Thank you for sharing that. I could also imagine that in a school setting, it’s like you’re one of many and how do you get attention and how do you get your voice heard? How do you speak up in class? It seems like in homeschooling you have probably your parents or the teachers that they hired, that would give you attention and you’re being listened to, when you speak up, you’ve got the attention in a lot of ways that we don’t in high school. So, I see that as another way in which you were building confidence early on and then 18 happens and you go out into the work world. Tell us about that.

(09:18) Joe Perrone
Well, 18 was the full time work. I’d done some part time stuff because I had a shorter day with being homeschooled. I would do some jobs and stuff with my dad and the garages that he worked in. But I was a part time kid, they treated me still like a young kid like he doesn’t need this, he’s helping out so I was always like, kind of uplifted in that sense. It wasn’t until 18 now where you have a full-time job you have a responsible job yet now you have a commitment, a 40-hour commitment to this job. That’s where I really began to see that my voice was starting to be a little bit drowned out, and it was a reality check and a wakeup call for me because now I started to see what the real world and what this was. This was another realm of my life that I’m entering, and it’s okay, now I’m trading my time for money now. So, early on learning about what that trade off was going to be. Financially, I was always a saver, I was always a person that was really, I knew the value of my dollars and learned to kind of be selective with where I would let those hard-earned dollars go. I remember a specific story about one day, I was wrapping up a job at the shop that I currently now own. But back in 1998, I was just, floor sweeper, wash the cars and I put everything I had into doing that job. But I remember, the owner of the company, coming to me at the end of a work day, and really having an attitude to me, and it was him lashing out at one of his employees, that there was no reason for him to treat me in that in that manner. That was the first time that I really learned about friendship in business, because I had come into that business, knowing the owners. We were somewhat friendly, but now I learned the distinction between friendship and business. As the money goes, and the money flows, that’s where certain business owners can fall into a trap of this is how I’m going to treat my employees and that culture that was built in this company, small business. It’s small business, millions of them across this country and across the world. But now, it’s a lesson learned that on a Friday, where I had just got my paycheck, I’m ready to go out on the town and enjoy some of the fruits of my labor. But I kind of ended the workday on a real low, because I had just gotten lashed out at for something that, the husband yells at the wife, who yells at the kid, who kicks the dog, who bites the cat who eats the fish. It’s that you’ve heard that before, right?

(12:53) Dr. Doreen Downing
Yes.

(12:54) Joe Perrone
A person who had gotten into him. He was unhappy about it. There was nobody but himself to blame for it and he lashed out at me, I’m kind of low man on the pole at that point. I just remembered not having that voice to really stand up for myself and say, no, you don’t have to be talked to like that. Because the fear kind of came in and said, well, if I challenge him, I could lose my job. I didn’t have rent to pay for, I didn’t really have anything to fall back on to say, okay, you need this to support your family or something. But I realized that could be me and 10 years from now, I could have a mortgage, I could have these obligations, that I better learn how to find this now. Not for myself now.

(13:52) Dr. Doreen Downing
Yeah, what you’re saying is, in terms of business culture, and what’s expected of the people who are considered employees, and the whole separation between– to me it sounds like power, who has the power. Of course, the person who owns the business has apparently, when our society has the power and those who work for this person don’t have power. I think that has something to do with voice, what you just explained about being treated in such a way and disregarded and not being able to speak up is a bind, that I feel like happens in all sorts of small business to large corporations.

(14:42) Joe Perrone
I totally agree and it’s also that power of what are we giving power to? Are we giving power away? That power is only given, it’s never ceased or taken by force. It’s given, collectively, individually that power is given out. So, that’s one of the things that I love to work with people on or tell anybody, is that, that power is here, it’s inside of you, you have the choice to give that power away, you have the choice to let that affect you and say, okay, well, if this person is holding this dollar over my head, well, now what’s got the power, the person or the dollar, what’s got the power? What that dollar represents to you, you’ve given that power to that dollar. So, now if that person uses that tool of that dollar to control you, they win the game because they control the dollar. If you’ve minimized the amount– the effect that that dollar has on you, and you’ve given the dollar less power, you’ve given more power to your peace of mind, your sanity, your well-being if you’ve given that more power. That’s not a thing they could swing anymore.

(16:18) Dr. Doreen Downing
I think what you’re saying right now is so profound, Joe, how we come to accept the less in our life, because we want the dollar. What you’re saying is, look at what you value, and I think, partly what I know about you, and the work that you do is that you value, your life, your community, your family and if it’s all about the dollar, which I do know some of your story, too, which maybe you’ll share how you eventually became this crazy, manic overwork, or maybe that kind of boss yourself? I don’t know. But yeah, so continue with this story, please.

(17:13) Joe Perrone
I just want to go back to that point about the dollar and given that power to dollar, it’s also where that dollar goes in our life. Also, is indirect, maybe you’ll help me with the word of how much power we give it. So, I’ve had clients where they bought a bigger house than they should have, living way above the means. I’m not saying anybody to not dream, I’m not saying stuff is bad. But when stuff takes your voice away from you, because it takes your power away from you, it takes your decision-making abilities away from you. That’s a problem and that’s where we lose. I love talking about time freedom, I love talking about freedom, we’ll lose our freedom in direct comparison to what we’re putting the value of these tools that people can have to sway us in and affect our decision making. That’s why we’re a debt society. That’s why we’re in debt and all that because now who controls the debt? Is who controls the decisions and who has the power in our world? Just something to think about as it relates to where our voice gets lost. Because there’s no teeth there.

(18:53) Dr. Doreen Downing
That’s a great note, no teeth there. No teeth, lips. Well, Joe, I know that you became a boss and I’m wondering if you kind of got lost yourself in that making those dollars.

(19:14) Joe Perrone
So yeah, so it was interesting, because there’s one day, I did regain that voice as an employee and I stood up for myself, I stood up for my fellow employees, I stood up and said no more to some of these things that were coming down the pipeline that were not fair. They were not just fair. They were things that we shouldn’t have been dealing with as employees and I said, you know what, I’m not going to take this anymore for me. But guess what, I’m not going to take this for everybody else because I value all my coworkers, I value these people and this affects them directly and this affects how they get compensated, and it affects everything about their lives. I said no way, I said no more. I was willing to put it on the line at that point to lose my job to fight this. There were six of us there at the time, maybe six or seven of us and nobody else was going to stick up and say what they needed to say. It was being said, in the back offices, in the shop, it was being said and I said, I’m not going to take this. I went into the office boldly, knees knocking, but what’s the quote, your hands might be shaking. But the power of the voice that you still have even though your hands could be shaking. My knees were knocking, my hands were shaking and I said to hell with this, I’m not going to accept this. Our boss, he said, you know, you’re right. He didn’t see it through, he was seeing it through a financial lens, he was seeing it through a business lens, he didn’t see it through the human lens of what it was going to do to all of us and how it was going to affect our productivity, what we were going to be thinking about first, we should have been thinking about service to the customer first. We should have been thinking about quality and doing a good job and just putting our best work out there. Now everybody was climbing over everybody else. Climbing for that dollar, which was wrong.

(21:29) Dr. Doreen Downing
Competition.

(21:31) Joe Perrone
It was creating this unhealthy competition and it was forcing people that might not have been good in a certain area, to try to be something that they weren’t. Not because they wanted to because that’s the structure. So, that was a good point, where I reclaimed that voice and you asked me about. I did become the business owner at a certain point and that was from claiming my voice and having that confidence before David killed Goliath, he had killed a bear, he had killed a lion. He had some Mojo and–

(22:10) Dr. Doreen Downing
Muscle.

(22:13) Joe Perrone
He didn’t just go fight Goliath blindly, he had a little bit of confidence built up there, he knew what he was working with. When it was time to say no more to a boss that was kind of mismanaging funds and the company was not going in the direction that we thought it should be going in as employees and put time and effort into this company and we bought the business. I’m going to leave it at that part, we bought the business. So, we buy the business, and we get into business. It was a lot of unraveling things that had been done, there was some debt we had to pay off and there was a lot of ugly things that needed to be corrected, but we corrected them. But in that process, being busy, busy that word we use it. So, I catch myself when I use it. But busy is not always what it’s cracked up to be. Doreen when you serve people, and we do a really good job, we actually care about people, you’re going to have a lot of people coming to you for your service. That’s what I’ll make the distinction of busy, but your phone will ring, your doors will swing, your email will ping and people want to do business with people they know I can trust and people knew us, they loved us and they really trusted us. If you go on our website for my automotive businesses where 4.8 rated throughout the state, we’re the highest rated in our area. It’s no surprise to me at this point. We have a great team. But back then we were doing all this stuff and we lost it, I caught that bug for the dollar. I caught that bug for the business owner, the title and I felt this. We worked really hard Doreen, it was a challenge, we had to stand up to get that business. We had to claim that business and wrestle it from the previous owner because this was something we had a vested interest in and build. But we put too much– I put too much of my interest into the business. We’ve talked about the power and it wasn’t the power of I’m a boss and I want to overlord over my subjects. It was I felt this unhealthy obligation to my customers into putting out an amazing product and not losing a foothold where we were because if you were ranking automotive shop, we were kind of at the bottom. There’s bigger, there’s still bigger, there’s still places that churn out stuff. But I know that we give the best customer service. I got this, like, unhealthy obsession with customer service and going overboard for people, I lost my boundaries, a customer called with a complaint, I would just lose it. But because I forgot about what we were doing this for and that, yes, we are here to serve our customers. But I’m also here to serve the people that are making this happen to. It’s not me. A certain point, I haven’t touched a car, like I haven’t fixed the car with hands in a decade. So, it’s like, I need these people. These people are so extremely valuable to me. I didn’t become that boss that would lash out on a Friday at my employees. But I overwhelmed them.

(26:30) Dr. Doreen Downing
Ah, okay. You had expectations.

(26:32) Joe Perrone
Overwhelm them. I stress them out. High expectations. I had grown a little bit of resentment. Resentment is a really tricky thing, in that when you pay somebody to do a job, and they do a job, that’s the contract that you have. But then when you overburden them with expectations, when you overwhelm them with tasks, when you just have an unhealthy expectation for what they’re supposed to do, and how and when they’re supposed to do it. They’re human beings, they are not robots. They have challenges. They wake up with challenges, just like I wake up with challenges, and they have to go about their day. Just like I have to go about my day.

(27:26) Dr. Doreen Downing
Well, your voice sounds like it was more more, more, more, more, more. I just felt like that was the mantra.

(27:39) Joe Perrone
It was never about– and this is the one thing that I ordered myself for and had to later on, go back and do that, because I really had beaten myself down at a point. Because when I realized what I was doing, I really came down hard on myself. But I did have to honor myself for the fact that we did pay people well, we never hung it over their heads, we went to bat for them on anything, we always sided with the employees. If there was a problem, we owned it and then we dealt with it after the fact. We were good employers by our people, except for the fact that we overwhelmed them and put way too high of demands on them.

(28:30) Dr. Doreen Downing
Well, those high demands feel like you putting high demands on yourself also and I know given we have, you said you needed to go pick up your son speaking of time, I want to make sure and come back to, well, what was the aha, and how did that relate to your voice?

(28:55) Joe Perrone
Oh, baby. So, 2014 I’ll set up the day for it. 2014 it was like the middle of summer. All the lack of setting boundaries, all of the high expectations, all of the demands that I put on myself that I put on our business just came to a head and middle of a workday, just was overwhelmed with what I later would find out was a series of panic attacks. I had been having them, I didn’t know what they were, my health was not great. I was dehydrated, I wasn’t eating properly. I was like intermittently fasting and doing these like I didn’t have a handle on my body and my body just said no more. This was the physical response to all this high pressure that I had put on myself. I asked my partner, I kind of collapsed at my shop, I had to sit down and almost pass out. My business partner, thank God for him, brought me to the emergency room and I sat in the emergency room for half the day trying to figure out what was going on and I didn’t know it was panic attack, I didn’t know I was dehydrated, I didn’t know that I had some form of built-up anxiety. At that point, it was like, right now it’s right here in your face.

(30:34) Dr. Doreen Downing
Well, your body was speaking to you, you weren’t listening to your body’s voice.

(30:41) Joe Perrone
Correct. Not listening to that voice and not listening to that still small voice that we all have inside of us that we bury with busy. We bury with all these external expectations, all the demand that we think we need to answer every call, every email, every text, every message, all of that was now it’s just sitting there. It’s a thing now. Looking at myself, I’m saying is this working? If this is the result, if this is the fruits of all of these things that you’ve done, what’s the result? You’re in the hospital, Joe? Now what? The part for me that was the hardest was the doctor came in, and God bless doctors, God bless all our health care people. But this doctor on this day, said to me, you’re going to have to be on antidepressants for a good portion of your life. I don’t know if he said that, because he believed that. I don’t know if he did it to scare me. But the part was it really put off new fear in me. Because I just watched my brother go through 10 years of drug addiction. He’s clean and he’s sober and thank God that he’s doing well and thriving now. But I said, I don’t want to subject my body to pills and this to correct the problem that I knew that I had put myself in this position. So, I didn’t have to take a pill to get into this position. Why should I have to take a pill to get out of this position? right?

(32:39) Dr. Doreen Downing
Yes.

(32:40) Joe Perrone
This was 2014 and Jim Rohn was probably the first person that I had heard it said, in this exact way. But for anything to change in your life, you have to change.

(32:58) Dr. Doreen Downing
Well, that’s a voice, isn’t it?

(33:00) Joe Perrone
Yeah.

(33:01) Dr. Doreen Downing
Yeah. You heard that voice.

(33:03) Joe Perrone
I sat on that for a couple days. I was watching a video or a lecture of him and I’d stopped it right there. Because I knew that was the voice that I needed to hear at that particular time. Learning that if there was anything in my life to change, I could change it. Or what does that mean? So now that voice, still small voice starts getting clearer and clearer and clearer. So, now–

(33:44) Dr. Doreen Downing
If somebody could watch you right now those who are listening, I just want to say you just said clearer and clearer and you just got a brighter and brighter smile. You’re radiating right now because of the transformation that you made. Given where you’ve got some time to, we need to wrap up I want to go to where that transformation led and what your message is today.

(34:15) Joe Perrone
Well, after I learned about change, what’s that word change? What does that mean? I learned about the change of who I was being. Changing my state, the first person I heard that the state was from Tony Robbins and Jim Rohn coincidently was Tony Robbins mentor and changing my state. So, now who did I wake up as now? If I woke up yesterday as the busy burnt-out boss that’s burning everybody else out. Who could I choose? What character can I choose today? Who can I wake up as today? That didn’t happen overnight. I work on that, this morning, I will work on that. But it was so much freedom. That’s my word, is freedom. It was so freeing to know that it was up to me for anything in your life to change, you have to change. What am I going to change today? What’s going to be different today that wasn’t there yesterday, that I wasn’t being yesterday. So, now, I had to set boundaries. I had to fire clients, I had to unravel all of these things that I had over committed and overwhelm comes from over commitment. Overstepping, letting others overstep those boundaries allowing that. So, the transformation came when I learned that for anything to change, I can change and be, what can I be? Can I be that person that takes care of his body? Can I be that person? How would a person that was fully functioning calm, cool, just existing in this world and thriving? What are they doing? I went out, and I found so many mentors. My bookshelves are full of mentors. I can name the books that we’ve all, know love and read and fill that shelf with mentors and learn. All right, well, how can I be this? What will it take for me to be this? Oh, okay. Find these little things I could do every day, these little commitments I can make every day. I could say no to that, really? Oh, my gosh, that’s an option. Learning to say no, learning to set boundaries, learning to if I don’t want to do something. First of all, why don’t I want to do, what is happening that I don’t want to do this? Is this a story that I’ve told myself? Is this a story that I’ve committed to? What’s the story I could change about that? I don’t like doing this. Why don’t you like doing it? Oh, I have this story that I’ve been telling myself about it. What if you just change the story? Oh, I change the story. I actually like doing this now. I like this part of it and it’s only about 2% of this part that I don’t like. Well, can I ask for help with this? Can I ask somebody to– I like doing this 98% of this? But that’s just 2% I just don’t like doing this. Oh, I’ll take that off your plate.

(37:49) Dr. Doreen Downing
What I hear, what you’re showing people right now is the kind of conversation and we’re talking about voice and you have to listen. You mentioned the small still silent voice inside, the voice of just the pure being and beingness does have a voice, I think. Because we’re at the end now I’d like to make sure that people get to hear what you talk about in terms of what you pass on to people about freedom.

(38:20) Joe Perrone
Freedom to me, and what I would challenge your listeners Dr. Doreen is, what does that word mean to you? What does that word freedom mean to you? That’s not something that you’re going to know in a minute, it may be. But if I struggled with learning what freedom was to me, I knew what freedom I thought was freedom to other people. I know what I looked up to as a vision of freedom. But what truly is freedom? What does that word mean to me? What does time freedom mean to me? What does it mean to me? What I found for freedom meaning to me was it shaped me when I read the Five Regrets of The Dying by Broonie Ware, where she worked with people on their deathbed and learning about what will actually matter when that last day comes for all of us and not to fear it but to say okay, I have this much time left physically here on Earth. In this physical body, what do I want to do? What do I want to be free to do, to be, to see, to have and it’s not a materialistic it’s not a I want to cram all these things in but what do I want to experience, what do I want to be free to experience? Some of us including myself, want to just be free to experience receiving good opportunities, complements, kindness from others, I just want to be free to do that without feeling guilty. That was something that was freedom for me. It’s not just freedom to roam around the planet, that’s freedom too but freedom to just accept what is., I love the book by Byron Katie, Loving What Is. It’s such a profound book and doing the work as she calls it. Freedom comes from that inquiry, freedom comes from that going back in, using that voice to hear what’s free to you?

(40:38) Dr. Doreen Downing
Well, I think what I’m getting right now from you is that freedom has a voice and that each one of us can ask, what is freedom and freedom speaks back to us and tells us what do you think about that?

(40:55) Joe Perrone
Freedom will tell you exactly what it is for you. Freedom will use its voice. If you’re going through a time– there’s a listener out there, you are going through a time where something is just physically, they get that feeling this is not right, I don’t want to be doing this. That’s freedom telling you. So, inquire. Tell me more. Tell me what I should do for you.

(41:28) Dr. Doreen Downing
Oh, I like that idea of having a dialogue with freedom and freedom has a voice and that’s something we can leave our listeners with. Joe, how can people find you?

(41:41) Joe Perrone
I love, love, love connecting through all the social media channels. You can find me Joe Perrone. I’m on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, my website, joeperrone.biz. We’d love to have anybody that’s interested in freedom. Just come in, let the website speak to you, let the podcast, the blog speak to you and if you want to make a connection, I’m here to connect with you.

(41:42) Dr. Doreen Downing
Wonderful. Well, thank you for sharing all the details that you did today around where voice got tangled up and where it started to show up in terms of that panic attack that said Hey, you listen, and then to where you finally integrated so much of the wisdom of the world that’s out there for us to be more fully expressed. Thank you for sharing your voice today.

(42:44) Joe Perrone
Dr. Doreen, it is my pleasure. Thank you.