516 Caitlyn Pyle:

We all have stories we tell ourselves … about ourselves … and some of these are true and some are …outright lies. That’s right. Lies. And we all need to find ways to break free of the made up stories we tell ourselves about ourselves that hold us back from stepping into our truth.

MELINDA

I’m Melinda Wittstock and today on Wings of Inspired Business we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who says the lies she was telling herself were all borne of fear.

Caitlin Pyle decided one day it was time to break free of her fears – and has transformed her life and now helps others generate more freedom and income — on their OWN terms!

Caitlin is the founder of Proofread Anywhere and Work-At-Home School. She also hosts the Work-At-Home Heroes podcast along with a popular community of the same name on Facebook and the social podcast app Podopolo! She is also the author of Work At Home, with important insights she shares today on how to create a business in alignment with your lifestyle and true purpose.

Caitlin Pyle says she came from a triple-wide trailer in the middle of nowhere. In 2011, she says she created an admittedly terrible e-book about proofreading because friends and acquaintances wanted to know how she was making money as a freelance proofreader.

As people kept asking her more questions, she started the blog Proofread Anywhere to help others make money through proofreading, too. Proofread Anywhere grew rapidly- and has generated more than eight million dollars in five years and has evolved to include books, additional courses (Work-At-Home School!), a podcast, and a thriving virtual community.

And yet for most of that time… Caitlyn says she wasn’t really happy. She realized she had been living in fear. She was riddled with anxiety and depressed. Today on Wings Caitlyn shares how she discovered the root cause of her unhappiness and unease – and much more.

And be sure to join both the Wings community on Podopolo – as well as Caitlyn Pyle’s “work at home heroes” podcast community. You’ll be making new friends, connecting directly with inspiring podcasters, putting learning into action in your life, and winning prizes and cool freebies as you do it. That’s Podopolo – free in both app stores.

Caitlyn Pyle shares what it is like to live a life of fear.

Fear of what others thought of her.

Fear of what might go wrong because of a decision she made.

Fear of not being enough.

Fear of being too much.

And then one day, after being told by her husband that he wanted a divorce, she decided she didn’t want to be afraid anymore. Then she made a simple decision: She didn’t need anyone else’s approval to be happy.

Life blossomed for her. She had a new lease on life. Then her ex-husband betrayed her in an effort to take her business away from her. Caitlyn shares today the steps of transformation she took to learn to trust herself again, differentiate truth from lies, and look herself square in the face and take 100% responsibility for her business and the team running it.

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Caitlin Pyle.

Melinda Wittstock:       Caitlyn, welcome to Wings.

Caitlyn Pyle:                 Hey Melinda, thanks so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Melinda Wittstock:       I’m excited to talk to you. I love this theme of yours, of breaking free from really the lies that hold us back. The lies being the things that we tell ourselves that they’re not necessarily true. Tell me how you arrived at that. That ability to break free.

Caitlyn Pyle:                 Oh wow. Well, getting divorced was the icing on the cake. But before that, I mean, it’s been a lifelong struggle because so many of us have been programmed and we don’t realize it. We don’t realize that the Disney movies we watch as little girls turn us into people who pine after a man to solve all of our problems. We also don’t realize that Bambi losing his mom could also traumatize us, and so can that one scene in Fox and the Hound. I’m a little bitter about how those things have affected my life, but I’m loving the new Disney movies that are coming out. Especially I love the one with Emma Watson as the inventor in Beauty and the Beast. I really identify with that, as some type of archetype for me, because I was holding myself back in so many ways because of the programming of my childhood.

And then my parents did the best that they could and I don’t deny that. They did the best that they knew how to do, right? I never knew that therapy was a thing because my dad literally thought it was a crock of S-H-I-T. That doesn’t mean … I asked him … We were just talking about it the other day. I said, “Hey, dad,” me a year ago, right? Freshly divorced and super depressed, down on myself, in a shame spiral from hell, blaming myself for, I was very codependent. I did not realize that people who love you don’t abandon you. I thought I was a narcissist for three months, not realizing that I’d been making myself small to help my ex husband look big.

That’s just a major example of how the programming from my childhood made me put myself in a prison in my own mind, literally. I never thought I was going to get out, Melinda. I thought I’d be dead this time, this year right now. I didn’t know how, I knew deep down that I would never actually commit the act of suicide because I was too scared, right? So I was aware that it was fear, but I still felt powerless because I’d named myself as the reason for all of the pain. I blamed myself but I realized how much time I’d been spending, energy I’d been spending trying to make my husband feel good and to protect his ego as I grew my business alongside him, right?

I was protecting his parents. I was protecting his sister and their opinions of me because they appreciated me. But I had once or twice been chided by them about being too big and making them look small. I think that was just their perception because I am a big personality. I shine brightly and loudly, and I was making myself small to keep them all happy and narcissists don’t do that. And so, that was a big thing. I realized I was codependent and had a lot of those tendencies and was letting all of that control me in some ways that really were damaging for me and ultimately the people that I’m serving.

Now that I’m free from that, I’ve been leveling out my mindset and leveling on my skills at rapid fire pace. It’s incredible. And that’s step two that I teach my students. First, is break free like you mentioned. And then step two is to level up. So replace all that garbage that you tossed out with gold, truth about life and yourself and other people and replacing all that programming with something that’s pure and intentional and good to serve the people that you’re working with. So really leveling up. And then you can take action once you’ve leveled up. And that makes taking action so much more fun and enjoyable. It’s really like you’re soaring with your shero wings.

Melinda Wittstock:       Absolutely. Hearing you talk Caitlyn, I feel like we’ve been on a similar path because I too was in a marriage for 18 years, where I was so conscious of protecting him. Every time I went big or did something big or succeeded, he would undermine me in some way. It’s interesting that you mentioned that codependency because I held all of that inside and I did everything to keep the peace, everything to tiptoe. I felt over time, like I was just walking on eggshells and I couldn’t really be myself, and the feelings of shame. I think you mentioned the word shame, really came up. I don’t know. When I look back on it now, I don’t know how you feel about this, but I look back on it now. And I say, who was that woman? Because I don’t even recognize her. Why did I let that happen to me, right?

Caitlyn Pyle:                 A hundred percent. Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:       Because it seems so far back now in the rear-view mirror, but I see so many women struggle with this idea of stepping into the light. There’s so much fear of success that we have, because we think girlfriends won’t like us. We won’t find a man, all this kind of stuff.

Caitlyn Pyle:                 Yeah. Or we’ll make our friends jealous and we know what it feels like to be jealous because we were all kids on the playground and kids who didn’t get picked from time to time. I ran for president when I was in eighth grade, I ran for president of student council and I was the best choice for the job. I had been involved since the beginning and had a lot of fun ideas to bring people together. There were people that were so jealous of my, I don’t want to say intelligence because I don’t believe that my education gave me any type of intelligence, or real education whatsoever. But I was somewhat of a teacher’s pet, really worked hard on my schoolwork and was not afraid of being smart and people didn’t like me for it. And so, kind of that last minute, a lot of people decided to vote for somebody else who had not been involved.

In many ways I took that as me believing that people didn’t want to hear what I had to say. And so, I was also valedictorian among 15 other students at my high school. I graduated in 2005 and we were all brought into a room and given the opportunities to throw our hat in the ring to give a speech. One of six of the 16 valedictorians at my school, my principal just felt it was fair to give all students who got all A’s for the entire time they were in school, the title of valedictorian. I agree with him on that. I think that was really nice. But then the one who has the highest GPA got to give a speech and we all got to compete to give a speech.

I think can see now that me not winning the presidency and taking that to mean that nobody wanted to hear what I had to say, I let that mean that, why even bother trying to give a speech. Nobody wants to hear what I have to say. I did get to speak at graduation. We all got speaking parts. And I was introducing teacher of the year, support staff member of the year. And I took the opportunity ironically, as the founder of Proofread Anywhere, I took the opportunity back then 2005, standing on stage in my cap and gown very seriously to tell them that my name had been misspelled in the program.

I thought that that was ironic. Very ironic, since I’m graduating with supposedly education. Of course, I didn’t say any of that sarcastic stuff. I moved on to what I was supposed to be saying, but man, I let those stories that I told myself about people not wanting to hear what I had to say. And then certain things that my parents did, when I would talk and the things that I had to say to me were very interesting, interesting ideas, but I got the eye roll a lot. I got that’s ridiculous a lot. And then also these hand gestures that would indicate that she was waiting for me to finish talking. I would let her get back to what she was doing, and so that led to me feeling like I wasn’t important.

Yet my mom has also been one of my biggest fans. So we’ve worked through a lot of things together, a lot of things together. I think it’s brought us closer. She remembers me walking down the beach with a microphone and walking up to random strangers and wanting to interview them at five years old, with this microphone [inaudible 00:08:05] McDonald’s, you know? Yeah. And then she remembers how I loved recording devices and she bought me a cassette tape player that I could hit record and have my little talk show. And then here I am launching my second podcast about brave women and the boys who love them. So I’m really excited about what’s to come and just breaking free has made all of that possible. But it starts with identifying the lies that we’ve been believing for our entire lives and not having realized it.

Melinda Wittstock:       Yeah. I want to dig deep into that because I think the clues of who we really are and our soul’s purpose and our true talents, all those things lie in early childhood. For anybody, if you really go back and you think, what did you love to do as a child that you couldn’t do enough of, right? And what do you love to do where time stands still? You lose track of time, all those sorts of things, are the things that really we should be doing. And the clues are always there. Just like the clues to why we play small or why we’re afraid of stepping into the light are all things that have kind of happened to us or these sort of messages over time. Honestly, they could come, not even from your own experiences, they could come from overhearing your mom on the phone when you’re five years old or hearing your dad or someone say money doesn’t grow on trees.

Caitlyn Pyle:                 Yeah. My mom literally said that to me, she was like, “What do you think, I’m made out of money? Money doesn’t grow on trees.” All those phrases, yeah, [crosstalk 00:09:34] mindset a lot and that comes up so heavily and the truth is money is unlimited. The government prints more of it and they have been since we went off the gold standard in 1971. And so, it really does grow on trees because they print it on paper and they print it constantly [inaudible 00:09:50] dollars in debt. We just have to do a little bit of simple math here. We don’t have to understand it, but we need to just do the math and act with that data and those indications.

Melinda Wittstock:       I see so many women waking up to this. Women who have had some sort of bad relationship or challenge in their life or something that has prevented them from really stepping into who they really are, are genuinely speaking up and showing how smart they are, stopping apologizing, really stepping into their full empowerment. I see such a change in the world right now.

And yet, I also look at my daughter who is 17 and I catch her apologizing all the time and I’m like, “Where’s that coming from?”

Melinda Wittstock:       Do you think that’s true that we really do need the validation, I guess, of other women to be able to feel free, to be fully ourselves in all our power and glory?

Caitlyn Pyle:                 Yes, yes, yes, Melinda, that’s a great, great point. In fact, it’s on my bucket list too. At first it was to go back and talk to all the high school students at my school. Currently, I haven’t been there in 16 years. I can’t believe it’s been that long, but I have a lot of experiences that I remember very vividly from my high school experiences. I want to share what I’ve learned since then. I have thought about how I do it, but now it’s really become maybe I’m going to talk to all the women, all the girls, the young women that are in that school, because then I can get really candid and I can get really candid about what I wish I had known and teaching them about how nobody’s going to give them permission to be who they really are and that we exist.

It’s a great school and I want to make sure that the school feels affirmed, but I want to make sure that they feel affirmed, but there’s nobody that’s going to be standing at the finish line when they’re done with school, giving them permission to become who they truly are. And if we’re not careful, what we learn in school may become that this is all I need to know. And that can turn into this entitlement mentality that holds us back by a lot of self-sabotage when we make it about ourselves, when we make it about being better than others and being right instead of about being kind and helping each other achieve the dream and teach them about the scarcity mindset and teach them about …

I have some very candid opinions about college and my experience with it in my book. I do plan on giving a copy of my book, Work At Home to each student and probably leave the bit about college out and let their parents read it for themselves and not judge me because they’ve seen my journey in full in the book. Not in full, I’m already working on a second book because as soon as I turned in the manuscript for the first one, I got separated. And then when it came out in bookstores, I had already gotten divorced and I read about my husband and gave him credit very unfairly to me and the dedication as well as credit to his family. They just don’t deserve it.

They were actually my biggest naysayers in the beginning, and it’s about time that I recognize that and stop giving credit where it’s not due. While Ben, my ex husband was not a bad person, he was just not emotionally intelligent and neither was I, and it was people that you love, they are not supposed to abandon you and people that use you, abandon you when they’re done with you. I really see that now. So I absolutely agree that we do need to, I think, set an example first.

It’s not so much about talking to women and telling them, hey, it’s okay to tell your story. It’s about telling your story, and inviting others to share yours with you. That’s another reason why I’m starting the Brave Girl podcast. It’s getting people to talk about their stories that maybe have never talked and shared their stories before and they can do so anonymously if they’d like. There’s going to be all kinds of options to help them be brave and stuff out. So I think that’s so important.

Melinda Wittstock:       One of the things that I’ve learned is that when we actually put it out there vulnerably and nothing bad happens to us, we kind of take the sting or the power out of that hurt or out of that shame, right? We realize that what we’ve been through is actually pretty universal in a way and we give permission to other people to feel their feelings. Through my marriage, I went through a long time of pretending that everything was good, kind of praising myself, look how resilient I am, look what I can tolerate.

Caitlyn Pyle:                 Oh my gosh, I use that same word, Melinda.

Melinda Wittstock:       Yeah, right? It was really kind of interesting.

Caitlyn Pyle:                 We martyred ourselves. Women martyr themselves sometimes, and I think that’s …

Melinda Wittstock:       Absolutely.

Caitlyn Pyle:                 Yeah. We just have to recognize it.

Melinda Wittstock:       I was drawing some sort of weird power from like, oh, I can tolerate this and whatnot, but deep down, I had all this shame, I think. The way I look at it now, I think God, probably the underlying fear was if people really knew me or knew what was going on, would they like me? Would I be accepted? Would it harm my business, if people actually knew, right? All those sorts of things and it flipped around to the more I share that, actually the better things go. It’s an opportunity to heal. Well, I’m just going to say that again too. Sorry. I’ve realized the more that I’ve started to share those things that used to be terrifying to me to talk about, the more it empowers others to share, the more it empowers other people to heal, the more it heals me, and on and on and on.

Caitlyn Pyle:                 Yeah. It’s really about learning in this life. It’s about learning and sharing and giving and growing. If we focus on that, it becomes joyful. If we focus on metrics and numbers and customer data and acquisition and money and all these things, and that leads to an empty, empty life. That’s what I had when I was married.

Melinda Wittstock:       I’m curious about the reaction of men to strong women. It seems to spark a fear in some of them of being kind of shown up or not being strong enough or whatever it is. We’re as women quite empathetic generally, and I think we pick on that underlying fear and that’s one of the reasons why we kind of overcompensate and try and make sure they feel good and protect their ego and all that stuff at a personal cost to ourselves. So what’s your perspective on what’s going on with men there and what needs to change in them and how we can help them kind of heal that part of themselves that keeps them in such fear of being kind of shown up by a strong woman?

Caitlyn Pyle:                 Oh yeah, such a good question, Melinda. It’s funny because in an ironic way, because I have been talking to my partner about producing some videos as a team to not just talk about the lies that hold people back and we want to inject a lot more comedy. And so we’ve set up this fun idea where he’s going to be interviewing all kinds of characters that I’m impersonating and giving these very serious sounding excuses as reasons, masquerading as reasons why I don’t have the life that I wish for and blaming it on others and really shining light on these things in a funny way that is empowering to say, you know what, we can laugh at this stuff. And then let’s just throw it out the window and burn the box that we’ve been living it.

So, the Brave Girl podcast is going to be a show about girls who do hard things and the boys who love them because we love our men. I love my man, my new man, because he is a real man, he is becoming a very self-assured and confident man. And he’s in a relationship with a very powerful woman. I’m an entrepreneur. And I think having someone by my side, not in front of, or behind me is what women crave and we want someone who’s willing to listen to us and not interrupt us and not give us looks like we’ve been talking for too long and to affirm us and to lift us up as we lift … Like lift us, like go together, be on a team. That’s something that I noticed when I was married, that it was always an inconvenience when I asked for support in some way, and I had to figure out how to word it. I had to make sure he wasn’t busy.

Melinda Wittstock:       Oh my God, are we sisters?

Caitlyn Pyle:                 I know, right? I know. And the more women, you’re so right, Melinda, when you said that you heal more, the more you speak about it, because I have experienced this and I figured it out by going to therapy. I was very resistant to spend money to just talk about what was going on. But as I did that, I figured it out in my own head. So it was listening to myself talk is what helped me figure some of this stuff out, and then it did heal me. And that allowed me to talk about it more clearly and objectively with other people.

I’ve been sharing very candidly on my Facebook and it is not about ego. It’s not about proving that my ex was some kind of closet narcissist and didn’t realize it. It’s not about igniting some flurry of shaming onto him. It’s about sharing candidly about my experience and how I have decided that I’m not going to hide anymore. I’m not going to let other people’s comfort level or reactions inform how I’m showing up in my life for myself and for my partner and for my family and for my tribe, and then for my friends and everything in life.

Melinda Wittstock:       Caitlyn, I love what you said though about your current man, because I also, again, another mirror, we have so much in common. Because the relationship I have with this is with another really strong accomplished man, also an entrepreneur who is supportive but not threatened.

Caitlyn Pyle:                 Right. It’s all about not being threatened and you’re right. We have to let men know that us being big personalities and influencers, we … Jonathan and I have the same goals. We want to help people wake up to the follies that they have in their lives and the ways that they’re holding themselves back and pursue, with a little bit of humor, the path of wisdom that will transform their lives and really allow them to step into the light more confidently, the way that we have over time. It’s not been an easy journey. So a lot of that is going to be us sharing our own stories confidently and openly and not being ashamed of that.

And then opening up a lot of dialogue in terms of how spirituality mixes with mental health, and how the current state of affairs in the mental world have completely adulterated spirituality. I really want to dig deep in some of those topics and we both love philosophy. So we’ll probably have some cool guests on and in all manner of fields. It’s really going to cover the whole thing.

Melinda Wittstock:       That sounds amazing.

Caitlyn Pyle:                 A lot like your podcast. A lot like your podcast.

Melinda Wittstock:       Yeah. Well, you two should both come on my other podcast, 10X Together because it’s about relationships and business.

Caitlyn Pyle:                 Oh, awesome. Yeah. That’d be fun.

Melinda Wittstock:       So I want to turn the corner and talk about what you do as well because you’ve got another podcast called Work-At-Home Heroes and it’s on the Podopolo podcasting network.

Caitlyn Pyle:                 Yes, it is.

Melinda Wittstock:       So exciting to have you there. It’s really like of our time right now because our economy is shifting to a gig work economy. There’s a lot of people out of work. There’s a lot of people also who didn’t actually like their jobs before coronavirus hit. They were doing the thing they thought they should do, but it wasn’t necessarily something that gave them any joy. And even before coronavirus, the economy was moving to the point where at least half the country were gig workers, that is going from gig to gig or freelance or whatever.

So you have a whole program about how to work from home and make money just doing the thing that you love. So I want you to talk a little bit about that, what that takes for somebody to just start from scratch, turn their side hustle into something or their expertise into something that can make them nice, consistent recurring revenue, while they’re actually enjoying it.

Caitlyn Pyle:                 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it is possible to have it all in that way and it really comes down to those three super basic, not easy, but very simple steps of breaking free from the lies that hold you back, leveling up your mindset and your skills, and then launching your business. A lot of people will skip towards launching before they’ve done that foundational work and fall flat on their faces and then say working at home doesn’t work, or I had a really bad experience. And that’s a lot of what I got when I started working for myself. It’s like, oh, the business will own you.

And that’s what you get. Every time I said something remotely negative, it’s like, okay, well that’s not a reason to quit. Maybe you would quit, but maybe you did quit, but I didn’t and I’m not going to, and yeah, I want to work all afternoon instead of take a walk because it’s something that’s way more fun than a conversation with many people. I want to be brave about the things that I’m talking about and things that are happening to other people. And so it really starts with those foundational steps.

Yeah, over at Work-at-Home School, we have a suite of courses. It’s 30 plus courses that have been contributed and curated by us and vetted by us. And it is at 93% discount, so it’s over $8,000 worth of content that we have curated and vetted at just 497. It’s an incredible value. So, that’s over at Work-at-Home School. It’s a great place to get started at a super low price. And then Proofread Anywhere is actually where I started. And because my background is in freelance proofreading, I was doing that since 2007 when I was living in Germany as an exchange student for non-native English speakers. That was my first paid proofreading.

And then I started doing it as a side hustle when I worked at a court reporting office in 2009, which was my first and last real job, full time job that I’ve ever had to this day. I worked at a desk as a receptionist and moved up the ranks into the marketing manager. I knew nothing about marketing. It turns out at that point, there was a lot more to learn, but I knew more than them and so I elevated quickly and my proofreading skills were a plus of course, in marketing realm. But I ended up getting fired because I was just so sick of getting paid so little for having to do other people’s work and just very poor management practices in retrospect.

Seeing how I’ve grown into a leader that manages her own business with a lot of remote employees that make several, you know, we’re going to do over $3 million for the first time this year, I am crushing it and doing it better than my old boss. And so it’s like, I want to listen to me now and not looking back to, okay, well, how did they run things, right? Because they weren’t running things well, and that’s why I got fired. That’s why everybody who worked there when I worked there is now gone, and one of them is my realtor. It’s not a safe, forever kind of place, but it evolved into me getting fired and proofreading as a side hustle while going to personal training school and not liking that when I got into it as a side hustle, as a personal trainer, fitness instructor, it’s fun, but showing up at a certain time and doing something, which is not my jam never having a Thursday night free, for example.

And so realizing that I could proofread on the side and make more money doing it in any location where I had access to the internet and email just completely changed my life. And then when I got onto doing it with an iPad that became even easier and I wrote an ebook in November, 2014 on how to proofread transcripts for court reporters and get paid for it. It was like a mint green Microsoft Word ebook cover.

It was real bad and absolutely abysmal, but it turned into proofreadanywhere.com, which is now rolled into BCP Media, which is my corporation that is Work-at-Home School, Proofread Anywhere and all the other projects that I do, teaching people how to turn their so-called ordinary skill into extraordinary income that is just beyond what they ever could have imagined was possible for themselves before they started throwing out all the garbage they’ve been telling themselves, right? So, that’s what I do, and that’s how I got started.

Melinda Wittstock:       Yeah. I mean, e-learning is a massive industry and growing because you look at the disruption say that coronavirus has hastened, I think, because I think these trends were happening anyway. But look at how broken the school system is, the college system. People graduating with mountains of debt that they have struggled to pay back with nothing that actually necessarily translates into a job. And then you have a whole bunch of jobs that people don’t actually really want to do, or they’re not really aligned. You got the whole kind of work at home thing now too, like we don’t really know how much long, you know, the coronavirus could play out for a while.

Caitlyn Pyle:                 Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:       So I think how we work is changing really rapidly. So, you’re sort of at the intersection of all those massive trends, and everybody I’m convinced everybody has something they can teach because we all have experiences. We all have skills, talents, whatever. There’s always a market of people who want to learn what you know, in your specific way with your specific voice. So it’s such a great opportunity for people to really take this time right now and figure out what it is like that, like what do people ask you say when they say, “Hey, I really want to pick your brain about whatever,” like whatever you’re getting consistent hits like that, that’s a really good clue for anyone listening here.

Caitlyn Pyle:                 Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:       That’s a course. That’s something you could do from home, right?

Caitlyn Pyle:                 Yeah, absolutely. That’s how it happened for me. People were asking how I do what I do, my ex-husband would talk about me at work, how I’d make more money than him part time, and they would wonder how it happened. That’s in retrospect kind of how that seemingly innocent manipulation started and to, “Hey honey, why don’t you write an ebook like so and so?” Or, “Hey, how about you turn this into an online course?” I would look back and chalk it up to, oh, I just had mindset issues and he had to push me. And if it weren’t for him pushing me, I never would have done it and really not believing in myself and uncovering that and realizing that I had done that to myself and sabotaged myself in so many ways.

Caitlyn Pyle:                 And so when I put a price tag on it, people invested in themselves and saw that they could do more than what they were currently doing. I think that’s a major thing that I would want everyone listening to remember, is that just because you maybe don’t think that the things you know how to do have value that people would pay for, and maybe they don’t.

Let’s assume the worst, right? Let’s assume that you’re right. Let’s assume that you’re right, and nothing you know is valuable. You can learn more stuff. I think that’s one thing that we get programmed with in the education system in this country, the very poor education system. I think we can all agree on that. It’s not a political thing. It just is. The education system, public schools are not good in the United States. I have met a lot of Europeans, and so I know that that’s true. My current partner grew up in Turkey in that school system in private school and it’s just a complete difference to the men that grew up in this school system. It’s unbelievable. And so it absolutely just ties into how we were raised and believing the things that we do.

Melinda Wittstock:       I think in this country, yeah. Sorry, I’m going to pass, and I’m just going to ask that again, too. It’s interesting what you say about different education systems. I think for such a long time here in the United States, we got used to being the world’s super power, right? So like everything here was the best and it’s clearly not, right?

Caitlyn Pyle:                 Yes. We’re very arrogant. We’re extremely arrogant.

Melinda Wittstock:       Right? Like in education and in healthcare, and in so many things, we’re actually really lagging behind. Just even in infrastructure, even in technology, I mean, we’re lagging behind a lot of other countries in the world. I was laughing today because I’d heard this kind of hashtag for July 4th that’s coming, which is going to be all countries matter.

Caitlyn Pyle:                 Oh boy.

Melinda Wittstock:       Which is hilarious for the irony, right?

Caitlyn Pyle:                 Yes. The irony of that. What I’ve learned about narcissism, and I’m sure you’ve learned as well, narcissism versus codependency and how they attract each other and seeing how, what a big game we talk about our education system and our jobs, and without getting too political, just everything that’s so great about this country. But when you look at how many people are ill educated and don’t know that you can provide a service to someone and make money, like the literal bedrock of how to make money is providing a service to another person. And people don’t know they can do that to make money without a job. What? Like, what does that really say? We’re so narcissistic as a country.

Melinda Wittstock:       Yes. So the education system, I think, has to change to become entrepreneurial. If the education system taught people about money and how to manage money and from an abundance perspective and how to cashflow live and all these sorts of things, how to create assets, how to create wealth. They don’t teach anybody about money and they don’t teach anything about entrepreneurship. I think what you’re doing is interesting because it is the root of the beginnings of kind of getting that entrepreneurial, creative innovation muscle going in people, which is like, I believe entrepreneurship is the ultimate empowerment.

I also believe it’s the way to really change society as well, because it’s inherently innovative and finding new ways to solve problems. That’s what entrepreneurs do. They see a problem, they run in and they solve it with some sort of innovation. So I think when you combine those two things together, you’re really onto something. Entrepreneurship is the thing that I always say, if you want therapy, just become an entrepreneur because it’s going to make you grow.

Melinda Wittstock:      So, Caitlyn, when people come in to work with you, share a little bit about your process and kind of like what they get and what you put them through and what they emerge with.

Caitlyn Pyle:                 Yeah. Well, there’s a bunch of different ways to work with me these days. I’m just not super public about most of them, but the main ways are through my online courses and we set it up to be super simple. We have a masterclass for Work-at-Home School, and of course my book as a great starting point for people who are just super new and don’t want to invest any money or hardly any time. Reading a book or coming on to audio books soon as well, hopefully by the end of the summer. And we’ve got a really good 90-minute masterclass on working from home that takes them through basically what I teach in the book in a nutshell.

And so within a few hours, whether you’re reading a book or going through our masterclass, you’re going to have a good foundation that you can take in any direction, whether or not you choose to enroll in Work-at-Home School or not. If you do choose to enroll at Work-at-Home School, then you kind of walk through that virtual doorway and you get to meet all of these instructors that we’ve curated, that have content and varying areas of the work at home world. We like to make it holistic. And so I always say that you don’t just work at home, you home at work and there is overlap there. And that’s part of it too, is not taking things too seriously because when we take things too seriously, it’s because we’re afraid. I learned a lot from JP Sears in that regard.

Melinda Wittstock:       He’s hilarious.

Caitlyn Pyle:                 He’s hilarious, and he’s just a great guy. So, I’ve learned from him and that’s what he teaches.

Melinda Wittstock:       I want you to tell everybody how they can find you and work with you and listen to your podcast. Of course, they have to download the Podopolo app. Like that’s a no brainer.

Caitlyn Pyle:                 Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:       Download the Podopolo app. There are so many great podcasts on there, like Caitlyn’s podcast and many, many others besides. But otherwise, how can people find you and work with you?

Caitlyn Pyle:                 Yeah. Check out Proofread Anywhere on Facebook, we have got a great community, great content, some funny content, really funny content on Facebook. And we’ve got Work-At-Home Heroes, the group on Facebook. We’re about 50,000 members strong now, lots of tips and free stuff as part of that community. And then of course, Work-At-Home Heroes podcast on Podopolo, and you can also find us at workathomeschool.com, all kinds of great resources there.

And of course, proofreadanywhere.com if you’re interested in learning about how to monetize your [inaudible 00:38:12] skills like I did, and that got me started into so many different things. So you just never know what that skill could be for you and where it could go. So I just want to encourage everybody listening to remember that you can grow and you can change and you’re not stuck unless you choose to be.

Melinda Wittstock:       That’s wonderful. Caitlyn, I want to thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us and sharing vulnerably. Again, I just want to emphasize to everybody, the more we speak up about these things, the more we take the sting out of them and the more we can heal and step into our true shining light and fly like superheroes. So thank you so much for joining us today.

Caitlyn Pyle:                 Thanks so much, Melinda. It’s been the best conversation I’ve had in a while.