Breaking Free: Emily Adams on Cultural Transition from the Amish Culture to Entrepreneurial Success

Perseverance

Jul 30

Written By Netta Dobbins

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In this episode, I'm diving deep into an extraordinary story of resilience, growth, and leadership with Emily Adams.

Emily's journey from leaving the Amish community at 17 to becoming a successful leadership coach is nothing short of inspirational. We're unpacking her experiences and the valuable lessons she's learned along the way.

Get ready to discover:

How Emily transitioned from a restrictive culture to thriving in the business world
The power of reprogramming your mindset for success
Essential leadership skills for small business owners and entrepreneurs
Strategies for overcoming limiting beliefs and valuing your worth

Whether you're facing personal challenges or looking to level up your leadership skills, this episode is packed with powerful insights and actionable advice. Emily's story proves that with determination and the right mindset, you can overcome any obstacle and achieve your dreams.

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Emily Adams: [00:00:00] So we have these dreams until. People come in and kind of stomp on those dreams. And so growing up, I always knew that I was not your typical Amish girl. I always knew this. I didn't fit in. I didn't do the things.

And that's not normal in the Amish culture. And so when I went, hung out with my dad, he's an entrepreneur, had all these businesses, right? That's where I learned business. And then I got to see more of the outside world working with customers. And I'm like, wait a minute, there's more to this. , if there's other women out here having careers and they're not going to burn in hell, then I'm probably not going to burn in hell if I go to do the same thing.

Netta Dobbins: Welcome to How I Made My First Dollar, your go to podcast for entrepreneurial success stories and actionable marketing advice. I'm your host Netta Dobbins, and with over a decade of marketing experience and an interesting journey of successfully building my own business, I'll be your guide here, helping you create a revenue generating business everyone should know about.[00:01:00]

If you're already 10 toes down in entrepreneurship or simply flirting with the idea of taking the leap, this This podcast will help you unlock actionable strategies to really shift your business to the next level. Let's get started.

Welcome everyone to another episode of How I Made My First Dollar. My name is Netta Dobbins and I'm your host. And today we have another pretty interesting conversation with our guest Emily Adams. Emily is a leadership coach and she has a very interesting background that we're going to get into all the details.

But before we do that, I want to welcome Emily to the podcast. Hey.

Emily Adams: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so glad to be here.

Netta Dobbins: Of course. We are happy to have you. [00:02:00] So why don't we start with just a general background and then we'll kind of dive into all the things.

Emily Adams: So I'll try to keep this high level, but general background is.

I was born and raised in the Amish culture left when I was 17. And for those of us listening to Amish culture, it's, that's a whole other rabbit hole we can go down, but I was just saying, and that culture, it's not known for women to have any kind of career. So from little up from the time I was born, like you're only there to cook, clean and have babies.

That's your sole purpose. And there women are not seen, heard, respected, , Or shown the value that men are. So that's just kind of a background left, , in the middle of the night, jumped out of a two story house and never looked back. And from there went through a massive culture shock, , got pregnant at 17, had my first son at 18.

And went through an abusive marriage from there, graduated from Purdue and [00:03:00] worked full time, , after my marriage, after the, going through a divorce and was in the automotive industry for over a decade. And that was the only place that would hire me without a GED. Cause in the Amish culture, you only go to sixth grade.

What's equivalent to a sixth grade education. So from there, I got my GED and then went to Purdue and stayed in the automotive industry and worked up into leadership positions and then realized, uh, this is not for me. And then went into software for a little bit and then started, , transformative leadership with my business partner.

And that's where I'm at today. So that's a really high level.

Netta Dobbins: It's a really high level, but she gave us so many like, Oh, yeah. How do we get there moments, right? And, um, what you just said is like, realized it wasn't for me. And I think even with the brief overview of your background, there are many moments in there where we can say, Oh, didn't realize it was for me.

Didn't realize it was for me. So let's step back a little [00:04:00] bit and let's dive into some of that. So Talk to us more about when you realized, you know, the Amish culture is not for me and I'm going to get out.

Emily Adams: Yeah, I would say for that one, you know, we all have our intuition. And no matter how crazy it is, as children, we tend to play into that dream world of like, what would life look like for us?

So we have these dreams until. People come in and kind of stomp on those dreams. And so growing up, I always knew that I was not your typical Amish girl. I always knew this. I didn't fit in. I didn't do the things. And that's not normal in the Amish culture. And so when I went, hung out with my dad, he's an entrepreneur, had all these businesses, right? That's where I learned business And then I got to see more of the outside world working with customers. And I'm like, wait a minute, there's more to this.

If there's other women out here having [00:05:00] careers and they're not going to burn in hell, then I'm probably not going to burn in hell if I go to do the same thing, right? So that really kind of opened and expanded me. But then what was the turning point is I lost my best friend in a buggy accident, and she had passed away unexpectedly.

And at her funeral, there was something said, and I was like, there's no way that God operates this way. And if so, I don't care. Like, I'm just gonna go ahead and burn in hell. If that's what it means, I might as well go live my best life.

Netta Dobbins: Yeah.

Emily Adams: And just, and just live it. Right. So that was kind of really the turning point for me to be like, I'm out.

And from there, it kind of was a process of, you know, your parents and your family comes in and, um, gaslights you. And then the church comes in and gaslights you and the, the culture is very fulfilled with a lot of trauma.

And so getting out of that and breaking from that was. Yeah, that was a lot of healing work.[00:06:00]

Netta Dobbins: Yeah. And I want to talk a little bit more about just the Amish culture so that we have a full sense of what that means that our listeners do too. Can you, let's back up a little bit more. I know you've talked about, you know, your education starts at. Stops at the sixth grade and women are seen as homemakers.

You don't really have careers. Talk to us a little bit more about, I guess, day to day, what did it look like for you growing up and you said your friend was killed in a buggy accident. Right. So talk to us a little bit more about the day to day life.

Emily Adams: Yeah, the day to day life really, and there's versions, different versions, different levels of Amish, and so I'm just going to go like high level.

There's some that have electricity, and there's some that do not, and there's some that do not have running water. So where I was born and raised, we had running water, we had gas. Refrigerator gas stove, but we did not have electricity. So there was no technology. You never had any technology, social media, or any of that growing up day to day.

Um, you got up, you got up and did the chores before [00:07:00] you went to school. Then the school day is, you know, a normal school day, eight to three came home, did the chores again. And then usually you got this little window to play. Um, it's a very, a work, a grind culture, right? So it's work six days a week. And then Sundays is.

You don't work, right? It's you just don't work. However, the women's work never stops because even on Sundays you're cooking, you're taking care of like gatherings and church and stuff. So that's kind of the day to day. Um, there was a time we were lived on a dairy farm. So it was like getting up at 4am, milking the cows, showering, going to school, coming back home and doing that same thing because it's twice a day, right?

And then, um, After, so school, you get out of school when you're 13 and they go to 8th grade, but it's only equivalent to a 6th grade education. So there school is very different. It's, that's a whole other subject and their fluent language is also German. So that's [00:08:00] primary language in the culture.

Netta Dobbins: Okay. So we are going through our day to day things or hanging out with our dad because it's like, I, I'm not doing all this. Listen, right. So you decide you're going to leave. And you said you jumped out of a two story window in the middle of the night. Take us to that moment when that decision was made and like the process of actually leaving the Amish community.

Emily Adams: Yeah, that decision was made, I would say, over a long period of time. I would say probably a good six months and my parents knew that it was coming. They just didn't know how or when. And I had gotten to the point where I was so frustrated with the gas lighting from my family, from my church, that I just completely stopped talking.

I wouldn't even talk. I went weeks without talking to my parents and I had two younger brothers at the time in the house and they were scared I was going to influence them. So they asked me to go live with my [00:09:00] sister and her husband.

She

also had children. So I was like, okay, cool. Whatever. Like I'll go stay there.

And that's kind of where I was like, You know what? I'm just gonna write her a letter and tell her, like, I can no longer do this, and I'm sorry, like, I'm 17, don't try to, like, come convince me, and it was probably the hardest moment, and when I, I still remember, like, it was, like, yesterday, of, like, opening the window and being like, okay, we're about to jump, there's no going back, and there was, like, this hesitation, and I was like, okay, what if I jump and I break my leg, right, like, all these thoughts are going through your head, but I was like, This is where you get to jump and the net just comes out and catches you somehow.

And so I always go back to that when I'm trying to take a jump and a leap in my business or in my personal life. It's like, I don't know how this works out, but I know in my body and I feel that this is where I'm called to go. And I know that I'm going to be the crazy one because, you know, that's, that's me, right?

Like I'm the rebel. [00:10:00] So taking that jump and just leaving, and there was a time of, uh, a lot of grief, right? Because I went through the shunning process with my family. And it took a lot, but in that moment, it was just like knowing I either take the jump or I'm going to get married and have kids and be miserable for the rest of my life.

Netta Dobbins: So you essentially took the jump into a new life, right? Because now you are, you're 17 years old and you are You're out of Amish culture, but what, like, what are you doing? You're not technically legal just yet. So how are you kind of making that new way and making that new life?

Emily Adams: So yeah, I had a friend and I stayed with, um, his family and kind of started It was kind of a culture shift, right?

I had to figure out, like, how do I dress? What do I do with my hair? What do I, how, what is my [00:11:00] identity now? And I would say that was probably the hardest thing for me to figure out is, like, who am I now? And for the longest time, I would search for, like, because I was raised in community, right? Even though it was not a healthy community.

But I was like, Where's my people at? And then there was so many things to learn, like, educational wise, like, oh, this, you know, this is how you act, this is what you do. And it was, I would say it took me a good decade to, to learn that and to shift that identity.

Netta Dobbins: Yeah, so, okay, we are, we're out, we're 17 years old, we get pregnant.

Talk to us about this shift because, um, in your bio, you talk about this shift really taking you to leadership coaching in a sense. So, so give us how we got in this situation.

Emily Adams: So in this and also transparency, there's no sex education in the Amish culture. There's zero. I didn't know. I thought [00:12:00] I was dying when I got my period.

And, um, getting pregnant, I had no idea how it worked and no idea that it happened. And I thought I had the stomach flu for a couple of days until I had a co worker tell me. you should probably go get a pregnancy test. And I was like, what? No, there's no way. Like, I'm not having kids. And then realizing, oh yeah, I'm pregnant.

And it was in that moment of like, wow, like now I have another human to take care of. And now like things got really serious really quick. Right. So fast forward, that led to like getting married. And cause in the culture, the Amish culture, if you get pregnant with someone. You also have to get married to them.

So that was still my mindset, right? So got married, went through a very abusive marriage. And that really shifted. And I'll be honest for a while, like, that drove me to compete in powerlifting to get my education, like all these things, [00:13:00] because I was in so survival mode of like, you know what, screw you, I will show you after divorce, like, I can survive without you.

And so it's very survival mode, but going through school and then building my career. I worked like the hardest person in the room because I was in such survival mode. And then that led me to really in 2019 fast forward 2019 2020 had a huge spiritual awakening and realized. I accomplished all these things in survival mode and you don't have to do this in survival mode anymore.

You can do it in thriving, but all these skills like resilience, mental strength, reprogramming your brain and your mind. These are skill sets that today I get to help other leaders to teach them that because they didn't have those life experiences like I did. So now when somebody comes to me and like, You know, I'm trying to reprogram this.

I'm like, Oh, I got you. Like, here's how it works. Um, but yeah, it, I always, I'm a firm believer, like your life lessons [00:14:00] help you become your greatest skills and your greatest gifts to the world.

Netta Dobbins: Yeah. And you have a lot of life lessons. And I loved how you said you, you worked on reprogramming yourself so that you can reprogram others.

And it's actually a great shift because now I want to talk about coaching, right? Leadership coaching. . How when did you realize that one leadership coaching is an option, right? Because I feel like coaching seems so foreign to a lot of people until you kind of fall into it, right? So talk to us about when you discovered this and when you were like, I can do that.

Emily Adams: Yeah, I think a lot of my career. So in automotive, I was in leadership positions from, um, man, out of the 10 years, eight of those years, I was in leadership positions. And I always was. in a leadership position. And I realized that one of the unique things that I always felt as a leader is whoever is working for me, I'm going to train them to take my place.

And so I'm going to develop [00:15:00] them, share all the skills, all the knowledge I have. And I realized in corporate, That wasn't known because my boss wasn't doing that with me. I had to learn and I didn't have those great mentors in corporate.

And then fast forward, I'm all of a sudden helping, you know, some of my friends in leadership positions.

They're calling me like, Hey, I'm trying to get this raise. How do I get it? And I'm like, Well, let's reprogram your mind because you got a bad, you know, money mindset. Like, let's start there. And then we're going to work on your skills to back that up. And a lot of it is everybody has that skills inside of them.

You just have to be able to have someone pull them out of you. Right. And then seeing that, and also seeing that I'm really good at business operations, and that's kind of where we, I was like me and my business partner, we're like, we can mix the two. But our leadership development side is not some PowerPoint training or some assessment, but instead taking a mix of spirituality, self development tools and some other [00:16:00] tools and really getting to the root of it, right?

How do you lead yourself on a daily basis? Like, we're going to start there before we're going to start about you leading your team effectively. And that's when we realized like, wow, this is huge for, you know, anyone that's wanting their career. And then the business owner side, business owners, their minds just like expanded.

Like, Oh, I had no idea I was doing that. So, you know, when we're on calls, working through things, I'm very directed to the point. And I'm going to say, Hey, are you open to seeing what your gap is in leadership? This is what I'm seeing. And if they say yes, I'm going to give them all that and give them some life work to go with it now, let's close these gaps.

Netta Dobbins: Yeah. Yeah. So talk to us about. When you decided, okay, you know, I've been in amazing positions and leadership in automotive industry, but I trust my gut and I trust that I can win if I take the leap and do this. Talk to us about that transition.

Emily Adams: That [00:17:00] transition. Man, that took a lot of self worth and self value work and a lot of remembering and acknowledging who I am and the skills I have.

And if you're listening to this, and this is one of the things that you are challenged with. There's this exercise I'll just share real quick. That really helped me was to sit down and write every single skill set that I had, not just on the leadership side, not just on the business side, but that I have as a human and put a dollar sign to it.

And then ask yourself, why can't you, right? Because you, you acknowledge your value. You see the value. And so for me, it was really looking at myself because people would see it in me before I could see it in myself and to be able to do that work and be like, yeah, I totally got this. And then at the more that I showed up, the more that I coach, the more that I teach, And see the transformation myself.

I'm like, you know, it's a piece of cake. Right. And I [00:18:00] love it. It lights me up to be able to do it. That's the other factor.

Netta Dobbins: Yeah. So two things that you said that I want to kind of hone in on. One, if you don't believe in yourself, write out everything that you've accomplished in your personal life and in your career.

I do this all the time. It's like writing my autobiography and things come up that I forgot that I even did until I'm writing it down. And I'm like, Oh my God, like I actually, am pretty capable of being in these rooms and doing the work that I'm doing, right? Two, you said you already have the skill set inside of you.

Sometimes you just need somebody to pull it out. In a previous episode with Briana Hawkins, which I'll link to in the description, we talked about this. We talked about how if something comes easy, you shouldn't be fearful of that. You should stand in that because that's your God given talent. And that's what's going to make you successful.

So I love that. I love that. Like all of these podcasts episodes [00:19:00] are building onto each other. So I just wanted to just call that out. The next thing I want to talk about in business and you starting a business is pricing, right? Because money is something that I feel like. Everybody struggles with, and especially you coming from, you know, the Amish culture where you don't have like technology, you're making everything with your hands.

And then you say you're operating out of survival mode a lot. How did you get to a point where you're like, okay, you know, I have to, well, one, how did you price it? And two, how did you get to a point where you're like, I have to survive if I'm going to run this business. And that means I can't have this anxiety around money.

I have to have a thriving mindset.

Emily Adams: Yeah, so money mindset. There's a lot of work that I did, and I will tell you probably the one that shifted me the most was looking at the stories and the programming from a childhood perspective. So starting there first, that's [00:20:00] baseline. So money doesn't grow on trees. A lot of us hear that growing up.

Well, maybe it does. Right. So it's just like looking at those stories and those programming. And then when it comes to pricing, I used to coach for free, like, because it was so easy for me. I'm like, well, you know, do I really need to charge? But then I realized that I was doing a disservice to myself because I was not honoring the value that I had.

And then all of a sudden I started being like, okay, it's 50 an hour. And then all of a sudden I'm like. Oh, 50. Like, no, I can't do this anymore. Like it's out of alignment. So price increase, price increase, right? And so I would take myself through the same process that I take clients through now. And that's really tapping into the body, not into the ego to see Where do I feel that my value is at on a pricing scale and listening from your heart and your intuition, not an ego base, because a lot [00:21:00] of times our head and our heart are not in alignment.

And so in our, in our head, we could be like, Oh, I just want to make a $100K ($100,000). But when I tap into the body, into your full worthiness, into your full value that you have as a human, your body may be saying, I want to make $500K ($500,000). Well then guess what? Now you get to increase your prices. And as you increase prices, the other thing to look at is what stories are coming up, why you can't meet the price increase.

And so really it's like this discovery phase. And it's also being able to sit in the discomfort of like, this does not feel comfortable, but growth doesn't always feel comfortable. And so being able to sit in the space and hold the capacity in the space for myself to say. We're going to view these things and understand.

What's coming up with the price increase?

Netta Dobbins: Mm-Hmm. .

Emily Adams: And now when I put packages out there, like, oh, you know, our packages range from $3K ($3,000) to $250K ($250,000) depending on how you wanna work with [00:22:00] us. People are like, whoa. Like, how did you get there? And I'm like, a lot of mindset work, a lot of body work, and a lot of reprogramming.

I just made this post today about like money mindset is not just about the mind because it's layers also in our body. It's layers and layers and layers and we just keep discovering it. You can't just do the work one time and be like, I'm good. I'm done because something is going to pop up. And when a client rejects your price, right?

You can't take those personally. You can be like, no, I stand in my value and I stand in my worth.

Netta Dobbins: Not charging your price is a disservice to yourself. That is a quote. You said that.

Your mission is to empower leaders and I want you to just give some advice to some of the small business owners who are listening to this podcast, who may be in the process of growing their own teams, what should they be thinking [00:23:00] about when they are honing their own leadership skills.

Emily Adams: I would say the biggest thing is to do a self reflection of you as a person, as a leader first. So looking at what are the areas that you are avoiding to lead into? Are you avoiding the leading in your relationships, leading in fitness, health? Like I'm a huge believer in mind, body, and soul. Are you avoiding any of those?

Because that is going to impact your business, that is going to impact your team. Because when you are avoiding it and it's like a two out of a ten, that's your area of opportunity. And then when it comes to leading teams effectively, the biggest thing to learn as a leader is being able to hold a safe, sacred, non judgmental space.

So if you can have that culture and start that with your team, they're going to bring you ideas that may be crazy, but they're also going to bring you [00:24:00] ideas that are going to make you millions of dollars because you've, you've set the foundation of having that safe, sacred space that Okay. Thank you for bringing the idea, but we're going to go ahead and table that.

However, I love XYZ and giving them that feedback, right? And pouring life into them and seeing them as humans who also have a desire to be developed. As the leader, that is part of your responsibility. Is to develop your team and to continue to pour into them as well. I would say the other thing is a huge one that we see a lot of and coach a lot of on is communication and how you speak, the words you use, the tone you use.

And then also how you listen, are you listening to respond? Or are you listening to actually truly listen? And I will say for there's one key thing that I feel like we've implemented and me and my business partner's relationship and we do it with all of our [00:25:00] clients is when someone is sharing something, we will ask, do you want advice?

Are you just sharing to vent or how, what kind of support do you need? Or if they're just, you know, sharing to vent, cool. That's what it is, right? And there's no unsolicited advice given. Or, you know, framing the question of like, are you open to a different perception instead of just blurting out your advice that you want to give them?

Because not everyone may be open at that time.

Netta Dobbins: Mm hmm. This has been like, I am in awe of you. Like I am just, you're, you're such an interesting person. When we actually connected via threads, I've been shouting out threads in like almost every podcast episode. Um, so shout out to Instagram. You're doing something right with the threads algorithm on that.

But we connected, she sent me her bio and I was like. No, immediately need her on the podcast. So thank you so much for taking out the time to talk with me, to [00:26:00] talk to small business owners, people who we may not even know who may be going through some of the same things, , tell our listeners where they can connect with you, , and potentially work with you.

Emily Adams: Yeah. Threads is my space. Um, so on threads, I'm, I'm, I'm under Emily Adams underscore, same thing with on Instagram, Emily Adams underscore (emilyadams_). Uh, you can also go to our website, transformative leadership LLC. com (transformativeleadershipllc.com). Um, shoot, I'm always open in the DMs, shoot me a message and yeah, I'm always happy to answer any questions.

Netta Dobbins: Amazing. And you all know where to find me. I am @NettaDobbins everywhere. I think I'm everywhere these days. But that is all for today's episode. Keep listening for more and we will see you soon. Happy marketing.

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