Tia Meredith shares her inspiring and exciting story with us. Tia Meredith is a digital nomad. At the age of 16, her mother was diagnosed with cancer, and she took care of her. Her mother went into remission. She received a BS in psychology, and a master’s in management, and she became the first in her family to make a six-figure-a-year income working for the federal government. In 2012, after moving several cities and finding herself in Washington, DC, she booked a two-week vacation alone to Greece. That vacation changed her life forever. She quit her job and moved to Greece. She filed for bankruptcy and opened a travel agency, eventually making six figures again; She published a children’s book upon moving back to the states. In 2012 her mother died from pancreatic cancer. It was then that he understood how quickly life changes and how moments transform who you are. Tia currently works as a marketing consultant for a top self-help publishing company with plans to move to Croatia with her husband. Her story shows us that life is what you make it, and you can build a life that you love! You have to have the courage and perseverance to stick to it through difficult times. It is a genuinely inspiring story you do not want to miss!
Episode Transcription
Intro Plays
Ari: Welcome to whispers and bricks. My name is Ari show and I’m your hosts. I have with me today as my guest, Tia Meredith, who is a Missouri native turn digital nomad who lives life with Audacity. When she was 16, she took care of a mother who had leukemia. She went on to receive a BS in psychology and a master’s in management, and she became the first in her family to make a six figure a year income working for the federal government. In 2012, after moving several cities and finding herself in Washington, DC, she booked a two week vacation alone to Greece, and her life changed forever, leaving a six figure career after 11 years to move to Greece, filing for bankruptcy, becoming a travel agent, making her way back to six figures again, which isn’t even the bottom of what she’s experienced, has helped her to understand what it means to overcome. She wrote a children’s book, Leah natus. And the dolphin, which she published upon her return to the United States in 2014 2016. T his mother died from pancreatic cancer. It was then that he understood how quickly life changes and how moments transform who you are. Tia currently works as a marketing consultant for a top self help publishing company. Using our 20 years of marketing experience. She has spent the last five years focused on marketing online courses that grossed 500,000, up to $1 million at cart close her desire now to teach these marketing techniques to self help and spiritual entrepreneurs through an upcoming course called Launch to legacy marketing. Releasing in the spring of 2022. Please help me welcome to America. Hey, Tia, how you doing?
Tia: Hi, Ari, thanks for having me today.
Ari: Oh, it’s my pleasure, man. Let me tell you, it sounds like a wild roller coaster ride there. Yeah, and I think, you know, I know, it was a lot to encompass. And like I’d mentioned there, there are many more ups and downs. But I think those are the most major that maybe other people could relate to. And that’s what I’m hoping to do here is share with you and share with your audience, the ability to change and for life to change and survive. Yeah, that’s great, because as you know, the name of the podcast is whispers in bricks, the whispers of those voices telling us what the right thing to do is, and they represent the good in life. And the bricks represent the bad things that we go through in life. And let’s be real, we all get hit with bricks, some bigger, some smaller, but at the end of the day, there are many ups and downs and many bumps in the road. Now, to get started, the first brick that you were hit with came about when you were 16. That’s when your mother had leukemia. Tell us about that. What was going on?
Tia: Well, at that time, my parents were divorced. And my brother was playing division one football and he was on a full ride scholarship. So I was the only one that was home. And my mother just got very ill she wound up losing her job. She was the head of she was an RN and head of nursing home at the time. And she was hospitalized for a year during that time. So at that point, we had lost the home that we were in, we wound up back in the house that I grown up in, that was not in a great neighborhood. And I was living alone and going to school every day going back and forth to the hospital. My mother was intensive care at the time for a considerable amount of time. So it was just a really rough period. And I was a child. You know, I was only 16 at the time. So thankfully I could drive which was helpful. But I was in the hospital room with her at one point. And she coded blue in front of me and I just remember people running in and pulling me out of the room. And, you know, I was thinking this was going to be the moment this is I’m going to lose my mother and I have nothing. I don’t have any support. I don’t know how to feed myself. And it was just a real coming of age moment of like, how am I going to survive this experience? Thankfully, she came through it, but that was just where it began. You know, after she got out of the hospital. She had gone through all these chemo treatments. There was a hospital bed, you know, that came into the house. And we lived in this two story home so there was a like a pot, you know where she had to use the restroom and I was carrying this full pot up a whole two flights of stairs to empty it and again, I’m just 16 I don’t understand that She was medically trained. I never was. So it was just a very, very difficult time.
Ari: Wow, wow. Oh my talk about a brick. That was like, really, really Sunday. But after that you went on to college, you received a BS in psychology, a master’s in management. Were you the first in your family get a college degree?
Tia: No, my mother was a registered nurse. But she went back to school when we were kids. So it was kind of an interesting thing. But on my father’s side, I was the first one to go.
Ari: Okay, so after after you graduated from college, got your master’s degree, what happened next? What did you do after that?
Tia: So during that time, I was working, I got an internship with the federal government and I, I just started working and building my career and getting really focused on what that meant, you know, as a young person, and I wound up just kind of moving and shaking and going up, and I wound up in marketing. I mean, I think that things get selected in a way on your path. And my path was marketing and teaching. And I was helping small businesses, IT firms get contracts with the federal government. So that’s what was my main stay for a long time. And I just got kind of, like, bored in the Midwest, I was like, I’d set up, you know, from Missouri, originally, and I was just tired. I was in my 30s. I was like, I’m done with this. So at my 30th birthday, I moved to Seattle. I didn’t really know anyone there and I transferred my role my job into Seattle. And it was a huge culture shock. from Missouri to Seattle.
I can imagine a world of Starbucks
has Yeah, well, that’s where I started drinking coffee. I’m glad you brought that up. Like I didn’t drink it before then.
Ari: Okay, so let me understand you were, you’re 11 years in this great job. Yeah, making a six figure income. And then what happens? You go on vacation.
Tia: Yeah, I was in DC by this point. Because as a federal employee, if you’re going to go to the top, that’s where you go. And so I had found myself there. And I was just really feeling empty. I’m like, on the metro every day going to work. And everybody’s heads down, everybody’s wearing black and gray. And like, I’m just feeling really does down. And this, I just got this feeling. And I’d gotten it in Seattle, but didn’t listen the first time. And it was just like, You should go to Greece, like no one in my family had traveled internationally by that point. And especially in Greece, it was just a very odd feeling. But my best friend at the time, like Sister in law owned a travel agency. And she was like, well, I’ll just connect you with this person. And so next thing, you know, I just took this vacation alone for two weeks and degrees.
Right? And all of a sudden, after two weeks in Greece, what do you decide to do? Give a six figure income for reasons unknown, right? Sounds like a whisper to me. Yeah. So So what happened there?
So I came back. And I had spoken to a friend, I was just so relaxed already, like I was so wound tight, you know, working for the federal government, I looked completely different than to straight hair. And like, I was just relaxed for the first time in my life. And one of my good friends at the time said, I don’t know what you have to do to go back to Greece, but you need to do it. And because I’m so intense, I took that as well, I guess I need to go like I need to quit this job, I need to sell everything I need to pack two suitcases and I need to go. And I did it in the quiet because to tell my family, you know, to be this successful, and to be at that next stage of my career and really being like this executive and saying, No, it’s like saying, I’m just gonna go be a bum somewhere. Like it just made no sense to them. So I did a lot of things behind the scenes before I told them that I had resigned. And of course, they tried to convince me to get a sabbatical and all of that, and I was like, No, I’m all in. I need to burn the backup plan.
Ari: Wow.
So you went to Greece to be a beach bum.
Tia: That’s what they thought. That was not the case. I worked very hard in Greece. But yes,
Ari: I can imagine I can imagine. Okay, so again, sounds like another whisper on that side. All right. And then what happens in 2016? You get hit with a major brick. Want to tell us about that?
Tia: Yeah. And in 2016, I was then in San Diego and I had just gotten married, my husband and I had just gotten married. And my mother called me about a month later and told me that she’d been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And she had three to six months to live. And so it was, you know, it also brought up old trauma of being 16. Again, and the illness that she went through, but I knew this time she was done. It was just in her voice at that point of I’m tired of fighting. Oh,
Ari: wow. Wow. So she died in 2016 for pancreatic cancer. Wow. Yeah. So, again, another brick. But I think after that, I think there was some whispers. I think your journey toward healing your own life, I think led you to discover some deeper truths about yourself, about your life, about the life we all share. And I think it was through practicing kindness and care and compassion, expanding your awareness, evolving, expanding your consciousness, and staying committed to the process and trusting love yourself and the universe. I think that everything started to change. Am I right?
Tia: You’re 100%. Right. Alright,
Ari: tell it tell us a little bit about that, about that change. And, you know, and where you are today.
Tia: Yeah, you know, the change really happened when I my mother passed away. And I was in the room with her when she passed. And I think that that’s such a special gift that I don’t know, that everyone gets, and it seems like a very big fear, and something that’s terrible. But it was really beautiful to watch her go out. And I thought to myself at the time, you know, she brought me into the world, but I got to be present to watch her go out. And everything changed in that moment. And I, I remember going back to work and going like none of this matters. Like you started to see the just how we as people get wound up in the doing of things and the lack of importance around it’s just like egos in a room battling. And I just started to really expand and grow and and step into myself because I was able to let go have an image of who I should be like, the one person that I cared about and who was my person in the world was gone. Who else was I trying to show up for? It really released me in a way as well. And I really became this artist and this creative, but like this very grounded, spiritually seeking person. past that point, I began meditating, and being in taking care of myself and being present in my relationships and healing these traumas that had come up and abandonment wounds and everything else that I could arrive as a whole person in my romantic relationship with my husband, and then in my friendships, and it’s just really amazing when you go inside, and you really dig into that shadow part of yourself, like who you become on the other side.
Ari: Wow, that’s the it’s just amazing, you know? So I guess I mean, if I were to ask you, Who is the one person you can point to? Who you would say had the most influence in your life? Who would that be?
Tia: I would definitely say early in my life. It was my mother. She was my signpost I think, without her on the planet, I think it’s just it really is life at this point. And there are people that I meet like you Ari, that just give you gifts and, and ways of expanding and looking at to new ideas and ways of being so now it’s just who I come across, you know, who’s kind Yeah,
Ari: yeah, I hear you. So what, what are you doing right now? And what are your plans? I mean, you’re you you’ve got, I mean, I have to tell you, just in the short time that we’ve known each other, you know, I understand you’ve got so much potential, it’s not even funny. You’re strong. You’re smart. I mean, you’ve you’ve got Yes, you’ve suffered the bricks, but you’ve also got the whispers that are really, really working with you. And I think it’s wonderful. So, so tell us a little bit more about what you’re doing and who you’re helping these days.
Tia: Yeah, so I work as a marketing consultant, and I have worked, I work, you know, I don’t say out loud, but who I work for as a self help company. And so what I do is help build people’s platforms truly, I’m doing a lot of digital marketing, online course creation, all the way to launching it, which you had opened with so kindly, you know, $500,000 up to a million, that’s my responsibility. That’s how I have to show up in the world. And so now I want to gift that knowledge to newer self help. And spiritual entrepreneurs. You know, there’s a lot of struggle in that realm with money and being comfortable with money and that I don’t deserve to have money because what I do is spiritual. And so there’s a lot of mindset work that I have to do with folks help them get through and be successful. We want the kind, heart centered folks to be successful in the world to change the dynamic of what we’re all experiencing. But I’m in the process of moving. We talked about od Cara. So I’m one step away from moving to Croatia. So that’s Croatia going on. Yeah,
Ari: Croatia. Yeah. What is in Croatia?
Tia: You know, just a life with my husband and my pug. And that’s really the reason I wanted to be digital. So I could live as a global citizen. And that’s really my love and my desire, because Greece changed me so much.
Ari: Does your husband want to move to Croatia? I mean, is this your decision? His decision? What will
Tia: he was kind enough to oblige me? He is Croatian. So he’s going,
Ari: Oh, he is Croatian. Okay. Now, it makes a little bit more sense. Because I can’t imagine why anybody a young couple who live in the States, right. And all of a sudden, that movie of all places, Croatia. Yeah. It’s like, why? Well, now I get it. Your husband’s Croatian. Okay. Yeah. All right. That kind of that kind of completes the circle here. Yeah. Okay. That’s, that’s really, really wonderful. It’s so great. And I have to tell you something, just going back on what you were just saying, I find that people as much as people have a fear of failure. I think the thing that really holds them back is the fear of success. Yeah, you know, I remember there was a there was a Seinfeld episode, where I was a big Seinfeld guy. But I never watched it. When it first came out, I will only watch the after when syndicated. But there was one, it was one episode where George was, you know, was on the verge of becoming very successful. And he literally had a meltdown, it goes, I don’t know if I could be successful, you know, but it was so true. Because you see a time and again, you know, somebody’s got the potential, they’re there, they’ve got everything they need. And yet that fear of success holds them back. So, um, you know, I certainly am one to appreciate what you’re doing and trying to help people, you know, get over that fear of success. I think that’s great. I think it’s wonderful. Yeah. So let me ask you this, is there anything else that you’d like to share with my audience, before we go any words of wisdom?
Tia: You know, the thing that I always talk to my clients about is Be brave, be bold, be you. And that courage is something that you have within you. Because marketing is about being courageous and audacious enough to say, this is what I do for a living. That’s all it is distill down, this is what I do, check it out. If this is your thing, you should come and hang out with me. You know, I mean, it’s that simple. And so those, those that’s what I want to leave people with. It’s just a really do those three things.
Ari: Great. So now, if people want to get in touch with you, what’s the best way to do that? Do you have a website? Do you have an email? Cell phone? You know, what’s the best way to find you? Social media?
Tia Yeah, I have a website. It’s my name, www.tiameredith.com, and then you can find me on Instagram at TM, Meredith writer. And then, you know, I there’s contact forums and places to get me there. Those are the two easiest places for sure.
Ari: Great. And I’m sure you’re open to talking to people are trying to help people because you know, my audience, they they appreciate the guests that I bring on because as much as people always think that they’re the only ones going through something at the end of the day. We know there are hundreds, if not 1000s of people that are going through the exact same thing. But everybody who goes through these things feel like they’re all alone. And the reason that I do this podcast and I bring on guests like you is to let people know you’re not alone. There are people that have gone through this and guess what, they’ve gone through it, they’ve made it through, and if they did it, you can do it too. And so I really, really want to thank you for sharing your story with my audience to good luck going forward. I wish you all the best. Enjoy Croatia. I will I will. That’s great. That’s great. You were listening to whispers in bricks and I’m your host Gary Shomer. Until next time, listen to the whispers avoid the bricks and never ever give up on your dreams. Bye for now. Join us
