Live, Life, Love with Francesca Hogi

 

There are so many people who find it difficult to find the right person to spend their life with. In today’s day and age, the process has certainly changed. However, it’s not about the process of where you find the perfect person but how you look within yourself to see what other people see. TV personality, speaker, and love and life coach Francesca Hogi joins Carolyn as they talk about being able to open up our minds and really take a look at how we operate ourselves. They also break down some life lessons that all of us need to work on every single day and the importance of figuring out what’s truly important to us in a relationship so that we can fully live and love.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Live, Life, Love with Francesca Hogi

I was talking to some people and when they found out that I was on Survivor, they look at me with that look that they can’t seem to place you. They say they’ve seen every episode, but don’t remember my name. They’re not going to remember everyone. I always say, “Do you know Mama C?” and they say, “Yes, I know Mama C,” then I say, “I am Mama C.” That makes me laugh because people who have no idea who Carolyn Rivera is or that I was ever on Survivor. I need to change my name to Mama C because that’s how I’m going to be recognized whenever people are Survivor fans. I thought that was funny because it happened to me again.

I was in Boston for that minus eleven-degree temperature. It was not fun, I must admit. I was doing training. By the end of the last day, I couldn’t even breathe. I was sick. I flew back to Florida. I lay in bed for two days and I was annoyed because my niece’s baby shower was Saturday, but I couldn’t go as I was traveling again to Boston and I had to get rid of this cold. What else happened? Super Bowl fans, whether you’re a Patriots fan or not, we’ve all seen the legacy that Tom Brady and his team have built, but there is so much controversy about the big game. I’m no expert. I don’t know half the things that they’re talking about, but I know that on the news 99% of the sports channels were talking about the big game. The teams that were in the big game and the fact that it wasn’t such a fabulous game. Either way, it’s Super Bowl Sunday. It’s a good time to have chicken wings, watch football and chill out. That’s probably what a lot of people did.

In the last episode, I was talking about the power of influence. I defined influence as getting people to do what you want them to do but get them to want to do it themselves. We use influence in every single thing we do every day but getting people to do what you want them to do is not an easy task. Many times, when people want to influence a decision, they’re only focused on what they want. That is not the ticket to success. As we talked about in the last episode, they may try to force people to do what you want to do. If you force people to do something, they may do it once, but they’re not going to be totally aligned with you. Some people may try to use a different tactic like intimidation to get what they want. They try to scare you into doing what they want you to do. The only time we want to be scared is at the movies when we’re watching a scary movie. That is not a great approach to trying to build a following.

We also talked about some people use their position power to get you to do something. A boss, a parent, a teacher are all examples of people who have position power. These people at times may basically tell you what you need to do because of their position power. We don’t feel we have a choice, so we do it. Nobody likes to feel pushed into doing something. Nobody likes to feel like they don’t matter. We all can tell when someone is ingenuine. People can see when you’re pretending and you’re not real. The examples that I gave you are ones where you will not succeed long-term. We talked about this in detail in the last episode.

If you want more information about the power of influence, go ahead and read the last episode. We talked about what it takes to successfully get people to change their mindset and it’s all about getting to know what’s important to them. Focusing on connecting with people and finding out what makes them tick. When you genuinely have their best interest in mind, the magic of influence will happen. There’s more information on influence in my book called Plant Your Flag: The Seven Secrets To Winning. You can go to my website CarolynJRivera.com and find more information about that.

I am super excited about what we’re going to be talking about now because I have a special guest joining me, Francesca Hogi. She is a love and life coach. She appeared on Survivor two times. Prior to her coaching career, Francesca Hogi was a corporate lawyer, an independent film producer and a professional matchmaker. We’ve got some great things to talk about. Let me explain one other thing. We’re going to talk a little about her Survivor career, but these are her words. Don’t hate the person introducing this fabulous guest. She’s proud of her status as the least successful Survivor contestant ever. I don’t necessarily agree that that’s the case, Francesca. Welcome to the show.

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Mama C, thank you so much for having me.

We are going to get down and dirty into what your career has been all about. When I was looking at your background, I was like, “This is an interesting background.” Let’s start by talking about you being a corporate lawyer. How long did you work in Corporate America?

I was in Corporate America for about ten years. It was a long time. I was entrenched in that world.

I’m a corporate rat. I love to talk to people who also got into that game. What made you leave?

I never really wanted to be a lawyer. Undergrad, I studied TV and Film Production and I had plans to go into the movie business. When I first graduated from college, I was working on movies in production, being a PA. I didn’t have a good experience doing that. People started telling me, “If you want to produce, you should go to law school. You can do anything with a law degree.” I was like, “I’ll do that.” It seemed the easiest thing to do at the time. I was in law school. What happens when you go to law school? I went to the University of Michigan, which is a great law school and I had a great experience there. They have all of these big firms that come and recruit you. I wanted to work at a big firm, but I was young and they were offering me a lot of money. I got sucked in. The longer you’re in something, the easier it is to stay. I always knew it was something I wanted to do forever. I always was looking for an escape plan.

A lot of people that I talk to that started their career in the corporate world, they had this in the back burner thinking that, “This is my game right now but there are other things that I want to do.” Like you, film producer. You left the corporate lawyer world to be a film producer.

 

I did. I was an independent producer. I had my own production company with a producing partner. It’s a hard business to make money in. This was when Netflix was still DVDs. The biggest innovation we had with TiVo was like, “You can record your shows.” That was the technology at the time. If you wanted to make movies that people saw, you had to go through a studio system. It was hard to make movies outside of that and it’s extremely difficult to get a movie made. As an independent producer, you’re basically the last person who gets paid. It was a struggle and I was doing all these production jobs to make ends meet. I love movies. I don’t know that I need to make them because I also didn’t like the business and the people in Hollywood are tough. No one’s ever said that before. Everyone knows it as Hollywood is an extremely tough business. I love making movies. I’m a hard worker, but this is not the path. I didn’t know what else to do. I went back into the law because that was the easiest thing for me to do, and then I got recruited for Survivor. That started me on a path to figuring out, “It’s time for me to make some big changes in my life.”

Before you went on Survivor, were you a matchmaker?

I was not. I was a lawyer. Basically, after my second season of Survivor, I was like, “I went on Survivor twice.” It was a fiasco both times.

Some people might not know what you’re talking about. First of all, you watched Survivor but not a super fan.

I was not a super fan. I had seen The Australian Outback season, season two and I had watched Fiji because I knew someone who was on the show. Those were the only two seasons that I had watched. I was not a fan. I was a very casual viewer. I was a fan of The Amazing Race. That was a show that I wanted to be on. I was like, “I can totally win The Amazing Race. You get to travel around the world and have these amazing adventures.” It’s the perfect show for me because I’m a big traveler and I love to travel, and I’ve done a lot of traveling.

Who were you going to be on that with?

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I was going to be on that with my boyfriend at the time. We went through the whole casting process and they liked me, they didn’t like him. You know all of the casting people and it’s the same casting team for The Amazing Race as for Survivor. Throughout each round of interviews, they say to me like, “You’re great. Keep doing what you’re doing.” They’d say to him, “What’s wrong with you?” Needless to say, we came close to getting on the show. We got our vaccinations and they took our passports and visas and everything, but we got cut at the last minute. I was like, “The dream is dead.” I was in New York working away and I got a call to come in for Survivor, which I originally said no to because I was like, “That doesn’t seem like my show at all.” I thought, “There are a lot of people who want this opportunity,” and they probably won’t cast me anyway. I went into the casting process with zero attachment. I was like, “This is probably not going to happen. I’m here so I can feel like I tried.” The rest is history.

You weren’t tied to the show in any way and if you didn’t get on it wasn’t going to be devastating. You’re like, “Whatever.” My experience was slightly different. I had been watching the show for several years and watched every single solitary season, but I was interested in going on the show since the first episode. I said to my family, “This is the best show ever. I have to be on this show.”

You made it happen. How cool is that?

It was crazy because I let it go for several years because my kids were young. To me, it wasn’t the right time. When my son was a junior in high school, that’s when I started to apply. Even then it took me a few years and you got recruited and didn’t even want to get on. Whatever’s meant to be will be. That’s what happens.

You did a lot better on the show than I did.

Let’s talk about your experience in the first season. How many years was that? What was the show? That was Redemption Island first?

 

That was Redemption Island. It was season 22 and it aired in 2011. Even though it was not my dream at all to be on Survivor, once I got cast on the show then I was like, “If I’m going to do this, I want to win.” I went into it wanting to win. I wasn’t like, “We’ll see what happens.” I’m a competitive person. Once I was in that situation, then I was like, “Now I’m invested.” I want to make that clear.

At that point, there were probably only 300 people in the United States that got onto the show, Survivor. You should be excited about that. Tell me about what your experience was on the island and what happened.

I was on the season where there were two returning players, one on each tribe and the rest of us were newbies. One of the returning players was Russell Hantz who was a notorious villain. His first season with Survivor: Samoa. The other returning player was Boston Rob Mariano. This was his fourth time playing and he was also a villain but incredibly charming. I had watched Heroes Versus Villains in my preparation for being on the show. That was a season that both Rob and Russell were on. I was familiar with both of them. When I got out there and I saw that this was the twist and that we were going to be on a tribe with one of them, I was like, “This is not good.” I immediately knew this was not going to be a good thing.

Never in a million years did it occur to me that I wouldn’t do well on the show. I’m a personable person. I make friends easily. People usually like me a lot. I was like, “I’ll be friends with everyone. I’ll be fine.” Boston Rob was on my tribe. He and I got along great. I got along well with everyone except for one person and he and I clashed. Unfortunately, he was a person who Boston Rob had decided was the one he wanted to take to the end of the game. Boston Rob had the entire tribe under his belt. Everyone did whatever he said. I was saying to them like, “He’s going to win this game. You guys are going to give him $1 million because you want him to like you? Are you crazy?”

Unfortunately, we lost the first challenge. We went to Tribal Council. I had an hour’s long fight at Tribal Council with the guy on my tribe who I did not like and did not get along with. It ended with me being voted out. I was the first person voted out. I would’ve bet $1 million if there’s no way I would have been the first person voted out going into the game. It was shocking and not fun. My first season there was a twist so when you got voted out you went to go live by yourself on this beach where I then had to go live and wait for the next person to be voted out. We stayed there together and then we had a duel. It was a little bit more involved than the usual situation, but I still went home first and I figured, “That’s the end of Survivor. Good riddance.” They wound up asking me to come back for a second season, which was surprising because they’d never ask a person who was voted out first to return. I hadn’t even considered it as a possibility because it had never happened before. I went back and the same thing happened again. I got voted out first for the second time. When I say that I’m the least successful Survivor contestant ever, I mean it.

Survivor is not just about one person. In your second season, you were back on the tribe with the same person who you didn’t get along with in the first season.

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It was the same situation of people wanting to go to the end of the game with him because he’s such an odd and irritating person that there’s no way that anyone would ever vote for him to win the game. Some people have the ability to be extremely patient and to put aside their true feelings for the sake of the game and live with somebody for 39 days who you don’t like but you want to keep in the game because you think you can beat them at the end. In both of my seasons, the person whose plan it was to take, his name is Philip, to the end of the game. They both won so they were onto something. I don’t take it personally, honestly. My second season aired in 2013. I was like, “I did it again and I don’t ever have to do it again.” They’ve called me a couple of times to come back on the show, which is very flattering and I’m like, “Are you kidding me?”

You do realize you are the only first boot that has ever played twice. Nobody does that. They like you. No worries there.

I appreciate it but I’m like, “This is bizarre.” Survivor was good for many reasons. Some of my dearest friends are people that I know from Survivor. I know that you can relate to this. There are many people who we never would have crossed paths in our regular life and now they’re important people in my life. That’s such a blessing. I’m grateful for that. It is gratifying that even though I was the biggest loser, the fact that a lot of people still resonated with me and I got a lot of positive feedback from both of my seasons, which was nice. People still like me, that’s good. After the second season I was like, “I’ve been on the show twice. It ended the same way twice. I’m going back to the same job, which is a perfectly good job but it’s not what I want to do forever. It’s time for me to change something.” I felt really motivated to make a big life change after my second season. I have Survivor to thank for that as well. The first thing that I did when I left my job was to become a matchmaker. That was when I became a matchmaker after my second season. Over time, that has transitioned into being a coach.

Let’s talk about this matchmaker. I know when you’re on Survivor you think about what you’re doing. You think about, “Am I happy? I’ve spent time on an island. I’ve given up 39 days of my life with my family, with no social media, with all of this stuff.” You have a lot of time to think about what you want to do. There are many Survivors that I know of that have changed their lives after their seasons. You have that time to think and you begin to think about what you’re doing in life. Am I making the decisions that I want to make? Am I living the life that I want to lead? You finished Survivor for the second time. You take that energy and that emotion. You change your career. You become a matchmaker. Tell me how that transition happens.

I had a lot of time on Survivor to think about what’s next because I went out of the game early. I always knew that I wanted to do something else. After my stint in the movie business didn’t work out, I was like, “That was the thing that I always thought I wanted to do, now what?” I didn’t have an answer to that. It was hard for me to figure it out, but there was something that I had always been interested in that I didn’t even know as a possible career which was setting people up. I was the person who likes to set my friends up. I was a person who likes to meddle in other people’s love lives. I was a person that if you told me that you liked somebody, I’d be like, “What are we going to do? Let’s strategize. Let’s make this happen.”

I even had a dating advice blog when I was a lawyer for fun. I had a blog because I liked talking about dating. There were all these clues in my life that I had not realized and I’m like, “What should I do?” It never did occur to me. You should go into the love industry because I didn’t even know there was such a thing. It just so happens that after I came back from Survivor, I went to a 4th of July barbecue and I met a woman there who told me about this matchmaker that she followed on Twitter. She’s like, “There’s this black male matchmaker. I follow him. His name is Paul Brunson.” I was like, “There’s a black male matchmaker? I never heard of a matchmaker other than Patti Stanger, The Millionaire Matchmaker.” Through him, I realized there are this whole world and this whole industry. He tweeted that he was going to be speaking at the Matchmaking Institute Conference in New York. I was like, “There’s a Matchmaking Institute?” My mind was blown and I was like, “I’m in New York. I’m going to go to this conference,” and that’s what I did.

 

I met all of these matchmakers from all around the world. I found out it was this whole industry and I was like, “This is what I want to do.” I got my matchmaking certification. I said, “Let me see if anyone will hire me. This is so out of the box but let me see. What do I have to lose?” That’s another good thing that comes from failing very publicly like I did. It can’t be worse than being in my underwear on high def TV only to be the first person voted out. This is such a real talk. This is literally what was going through my head. I was like, “It can’t be worse. At least it’s not going to be on national television if I don’t succeed at this.” I went on Facebook and I updated my status. I was like, “Everyone, I’ve decided to become a matchmaker. Send me all of your single people.” Everyone was like, “What are you talking about? How did this happen?” but I stuck with it.

Did they send you the single people?

Some of them did. When you’re a matchmaker, people do come to you because there are many single people who are frustrated that they’re open. They’re like, “I can outsource this pain and you can fix this for me.” It started from there. I’ve been lucky to have some great opportunities. I was doing a love segment on The Today Show for a year-and-a-half, which was good for my career in terms of my visibility and credibility. The reason I don’t matchmake anymore and the reason I coach instead is that I realized that the clients I can successfully match were the ones who were open to doing things differently and open to looking at like, “What are the choices that I’m making? What are my expectations?” They were the ones who are able to be flexible enough and be brave enough to look inward and do things differently. The people who didn’t want to do that are like, “I want what I want because I want it and I don’t want to talk about it. Bring me who I want.” It was impossible to match those clients. I realized the coaching piece of it and the openness to being coached was the most important part. I coach people to be their own matchmaker and it’s way more gratifying for me and it’s way more successful for my clients.

Some people don’t realize that they’re the ones that are standing in their own way of being successful in terms of finding the right person. They don’t want to take an inward look and see, “I’m doing this wrong or I’m focusing on me and not anybody else.” I can see how frustrating that could be to try and match people because you think you know what they’re doing, but even on The Millionaire Matchmaker when you watch it on TV and she told them, “Don’t do this and don’t do that,” and then you see it on TV and it’s like, “They didn’t listen to her at all.”

The reason that I went from being a matchmaker to then a love coach and then to life coaching is that the same principle applies to all areas of your life in terms of, “If you don’t like your job, if you’re super stressed out, if you don’t feel fulfilled and if you don’t have good family relationships or friendships or all these other things, then you are still the common denominator. It’s still up to you to make the changes in your life so that you can have more peace, you can have more joy, you can have more fulfillment and you can have more love.” That’s how my business has expanded because some people would come to me because they want to meet someone. After we’d work together for the love stuff and they’d be like, “I want you to help me with this and I want you to help me with that,” and my business expanded organically because of that.

Most of the time we are our own worst enemy. We don’t always see things that are standing in our way. Sometimes we have to look for other ways to help us see those things and to understand how people perceive us because perception is a reality. How do you handle helping people understand how they’re coming across to other people?

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One of the great things about matchmaking was that when my clients go out on a date, I would get feedback from their date in addition to the client. I was able to provide that, “You’ve gone out with four guys in the last month and they all saw the same thing. It’s not them.” Since I don’t matchmake anymore, I still want to get that feedback. When I work with someone, it’s optional, but I highly recommend. I have some questions that I have them send to the people in their lives who are close to them, who knew them well. They send that feedback to me directly. I’m able to present it to my clients like, “You said you think your single because of this and the feedback that I got generally was X, Y, Z. What do you think about that? Does that resonate with you? Let’s talk about that.”

For people to have the openness to know like, “I think I’m doing everything right but clearly, it’s not working. I need to talk to a coach. I want to get a different perspective.” Having that openness right there, you’re further along than most people. It can be hard for people depending on what the feedback is. Usually, I find that people are open to it because they’re like, “I was thinking that but I didn’t know that other people picked up on it.” When you’re ready to be really honest with yourself, you have the answer. Sometimes you need an outside nudge to suggest something to you that you’re like, “You’re right. That is true. I do that.”

The validation of other people from not just one person, not just two people but your inner circle. If you truly want to change and you truly send out those surveys and get feedback from your inner circle, it hits home. I’ve seen it. I’ve coached people in Corporate America. People who have worked for me that were struggling. It was interesting because when I was working with them one-on-one, they were like, “It’s just Carolyn. She’s the only one who thinks that way.” Once I got the validation from other people, then all of a sudden it was like, “It’s not just her. Maybe it is four other boyfriends that tried to tell you the same exact thing.” It’s a change in mindset. They have to be ready to hear what those other people are going to say.

Once you’re ready for that, that’s when you can change your life.

Can’t you look at them and see the a-ha moment that happens, even if you’re on the phone or you’re Skyping? All of a sudden the light bulb goes on and you’re like, “It worked.”

I live for those moments. I love those moments. I do a session with my clients when we first start working together. I call it a Clarity Session. That session tends to be filled with a lot of those a-has that I’m like, “Yes.” I eat it up. I love it.

 

You’re waiting and hoping for that. I know that our audience is going to be like, “What are some of these Love Doctor Potion or Success in Life Potion?” Too bad we don’t have those magic wands and it’s not fairy dust that we can sprinkle on people. There’s no one-size-fits-all. Can you give us some tips to help people see things that they might not see?

The first thing and you can listen to all the advice in the world, but it’s not going to be helpful unless you accept this one proposition. That is that you have far more control over your life and your life outcomes than you think you do. Once you accept that, even if you can’t fully accept it and you’re like, “Do I really have more control over my love life?” All these things have happened to me. I have all this evidence of people who cheated or didn’t want to commit or all these other things. I have all this evidence of being broke or having jobs that I hate or all these other things.” I understand there’s a reason you have all that evidence but accept the possibility that you can change all of that and have whatever outcome you want. That’s the first step.

A lot of people know that they are dissatisfied, but they don’t know why. If you want to meet someone, get clear on why you want to meet someone. What do you want to do? What’s the goal? Do you want to meet somebody to fall in love? Do you want to date different people so you can gain more confidence and have some fun? What are your goals? Understanding that is important because the ways you date when you’re looking for your forever partner and the way you date when you’re looking to have fun should be different. They’re not always different, but they should be different. Get clear with yourself like, “This is what my goal is right now,” then you can work on a strategy that’s going to get you that thing that you want. If you are looking for something serious, for instance, if your criteria are that they’re a certain height and have a certain eye color and make a certain amount of money and went to a certain school, those are all wants. Those are not needs.

If you’re looking for a relationship with someone where you can build a life together, you need to make sure that your relationship needs like what’s going to go on in that relationship with the other person. The person that you’re sitting across from deciding do you want to be with, you need to figure out whether that person is capable of fulfilling those needs. I’m talking about honesty, communication, emotional intimacy, all of these things. You have to decide for yourself what the core needs are. Once you find people who have those, then you look to see, “How many of my wants are taken care of?” At least a couple, you wouldn’t want to be with somebody who doesn’t have any of your wants, but you can’t treat those things equally.

It’s the same thing with many different areas of your life. If you want to get in better shape, what are your goals? Are you trying to become a triathlete? Do you just want to have more energy and feel better in your jeans? Those are different goals. If you want to feel more comfortable in your body, if you’re not exercising at all, commit to walking around the block every day at lunch. It’s all about setting yourself up to win and you do that by a small, incremental goal. Don’t think you have to go to the gym seven days a week. Maybe it makes sense for you depending on what your goals are, but maybe making sure that you’re spending an hour a week moving your body. That’s progress for you right now.

We’ve had a fabulous discussion with Francesca Hogi on the show. The tips that she gave you were outstanding. I’m going to reiterate, accept that you have control in your life. Understand your goals. Not everyone has the same goals, but sometimes you might not even realize what your goals are. Dig deep. Figure out what those goals are. Identify the difference between your wants versus your needs. You have to be able to fill those needs with the person that you’re looking to be with. There is a difference between wants and needs and you have control over your life so you can get them. The last thing is to take those incremental small steps towards victory, and you will achieve what you want to. Francesca, tell us where can our audience find you?

You can find me on Twitter, on Instagram, @DearFranny. You can find me at FrancescaHogi.com. I have a free monthly coaching program that anyone can join.

I’m sure that people are going to be interested in hearing some more from you. Thank you so much for being on the show. It was a pleasure having you. I enjoyed talking about Survivor. It was fabulous hearing about the change in career through entrepreneurship. I’ve talked about being an entrepreneur on many of my other shows as well. Thank you.

Thank you.

Everyone is always looking for ways to improve themselves. This episode, that’s what we talked about. Another thing is a way to improve yourself. You don’t want to go through the days one by one. You want to enjoy them. You want to live them with intention. Go to my website at www.CarolynJRivera.com, ask me some questions. Share your thoughts so we can see what you’re capable of doing. Are you ready to change your mindset? Next episode, we’ll have another great show for you. The Carolyn Rivera Show is all about you. My purpose is to research and share what’s on your minds now. To talk about the things that all of us are going through that we may be struggling with and find ways to help us through them and to be more successful in all aspects of our lives. Follow me on Instagram, @CarolynRivera14. Believe, commit, achieve is the secret sauce you’re looking for.

Important Links:

• Plant Your Flag: The Seven Secrets To Winning
• Francesca Hogi
• Twitter – Francesca Hogi
• FrancescaHogi.com
• Instagram – @DearFranny
• Instagram – @CarolynRivera14

About Francesca Hogi

From being a corporate lawyer to a movie producer to “surviving” in the wilds of Nicaragua and the Philippines, to being a regular expert guest on the Today Show, I have deliberately forged my own unique life path.

The desire to live an extraordinary life was ignited in me at a very young age.

Blame it on the trashy Sidney Sheldon novels I covertly read starting when I was 10, or the adventure books I loved or the movies that captured my imagination. In my heart I knew there was a world I wanted to see and adventures I wanted to have and that I would have to find a way to make those things happen for myself.

You could say my love coaching career began at Manhattan East Junior High.

I was, frankly – boy crazy.

Boys became endlessly fascinating to me. But I didn’t just want to sit idly by and talk to my friends about how much we liked a particular boy. I became fascinated with what to do about it.

I started a dating advice blog back in 2009, just for fun, because I wanted an outlet for my passion for discussing dating and relationships. Much to my surprise, people were listening to me and telling me my advice was actually helping them!

For some, this might have been an A-ha! moment, but it took me a few more years, a series of events that included a major break-up, a 4th of July BBQ, and Twitter that led me to first becoming a matchmaker and then a coach.

Up to that point, I had a degree in Television and Film Production from Syracuse University, a law degree from University of Michigan, and all of the “default” career options those degrees hold.

I also had boldness, an inherent sense of adventure, an unwavering belief in the power of love, a penchant for finding the fun in most any situation, and that long-held desire to do something extraordinary with my life.