S2 EP6 From Cult to Career: Amber Powers' Journey of Liberation and Resilience

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Cults. We all know about them, and we're all curious about them. Some of the biggest crime stories have come out of cults. Cults like Waco, Jim Jones and the Guyana tragedy, just to name a couple. But what is it like to be born inside of a cult, get out and find yourself back into one? How do you find the courage to get out?

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once and for all, join me as I talk with extraordinary person, Amber Powers, on this episode of True Crime, Authors, and Extraordinary People.

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Welcome to True Crime, Authors and Extraordinary People, the podcast where we bring two passions together. The show that gives new meaning to the old adage, truth is stranger than fiction. And reminding you that there is an extraordinary person in all of us. Here is your host, David McClam. What's going on everybody, and welcome to another episode of True Crime, Authors and Extraordinary People. Of course, I'm your man.

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David McClam, hey, if you guys haven't already, make sure you follow us on all of our social media. One link to a link tree will get you every link you need to have pertaining to the show. Let me tell you the fabulous person we have for you today. After escaping the grips of a cult, even losing two family members in the Jonestown massacre, she found herself adrift and isolated. After being groomed into marriage at a young age, she started to doubt her entire existence.

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With the mint courage, she bravely chose to leave behind her childhood beliefs, her spouse, her church community, her lifelong companions, and even some family members. She is a shining example of resilience and strength. She dared to dismantle the falsehood she once embraced as truth and emerged a successful entrepreneur who is dedicated to helping others bravely embrace their voice and their purpose regardless of their past.

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She is both the president of Powers Digital Marketing and the founder of Shop From Her, a startup intended to cause consumers and businesses to consciously choose to buy or hire from a woman-owned business. She has over 22 years of marketing experience and has successfully led her marketing firm, specializing in creating and nurturing ethical influencers since 2014. She is the author of the upcoming book, Untethered, Tales of a Modern Day Alice,

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which is coming out February, 2024 in our Extraordinary Person. Please welcome Amber Powers. Amber, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. It's great to be here with you. Well, it is awesome to have you. I'm looking forward to our conversation. Before we begin, that is a wonderful introduction. Is there anything out there that we don't know about Amber that was not included here? Other than the fact that I'm married to an unc...

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incredible man that I met later in life. I think that pretty much sums it up. We live a life on the road. We are full-time RVers, traveling around the world to spotlight women on businesses to really draw attention to those women entrepreneurs. Excellent, excellent. Well, let's kind of jump in a little bit. I think I'll tell you, since we're gonna discuss this, now I said that you did lose a couple of family members in the Jonestown, Guyana tragedy.

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I was about six years old when that happened. I happened actually 17 days after my sixth birthday in 1978. Wow. And it's what actually brought me to true crime. That case alone, I studied, I watched every documentary. There's even a website called the Jonestown Institute that has all of his tapes. I was enthralled in it. Do you know how your family members got involved in the Jonestown situation?

04:07
I do, to an extent. On my father's side, my great-grandmother attended church downtown Indianapolis, just a few blocks away from his people's temple. And Jim Jones would actually come to our church and many neighboring churches that were in line with his

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belief system, his theology. He knew what he was doing. And so he would recruit members from those churches. And my family members happened to be at the churches where he was recruiting. I will say that my father's side, my great grandmother had, oh gosh, I think six or seven daughters, and they all were attending, but she was pretty quick to pick up that something was not quite right with him. And before

05:04
You know, the Diana incident happened. She pulled everyone from the church. So she escaped on my mother's side. They did not. There were two cousins, actually four cousins who were in Diana, a father, a son, and both of their wives. They told the wives to leave and they did. Two men stayed behind and they.

05:32
Yeah, it's kind of hard not to with that one. Um, you know, because he was hell bent on taking everybody out. I mean, he had got to the point of where everybody was believing. You know, his rhetoric. And as you know, when it got to the point to where people started questioning that after he moved everybody to Guyana, you know, the governor went over and everything like that, Leo Ryan, now no, no, the jigs up, you know, all these people want to leave must not be happy. So now we've got to take everybody out.

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Now I spend a lot of time telling people that Jim Jones was actually on the up and up when he started. He came out as a Baptist minister. He was all for interracial stuff. Yep. From the things you've known and researched, just to see if I get a different answer than what I have, where do you think or feel that he went wrong and where did people start getting brainwashed to his rhetoric? Where did he go wrong? I think that people just end up buying into their own hype. Ego kind of takes over.

06:29
That has been the case not only in what I have researched. I was only two years old when this happened. So based on my experience in growing up in a cult myself and the research that I've done with Jim Jones, I read much of what you read and I've researched a lot of the same. There is sort of this love bombing energy, I guess, associated with...

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Him at the beginning and that's very attractive. Why wouldn't you be attracted to that? And that's oftentimes the tool that many cults use to draw you in. They just mother you with love and why would you ever want to leave? Now, I'll just make this a word to the audience because now we're gonna talk about, you know, how you found yourself in a cult and how that came to be. We're not saying the name of that because legality pre-reasons and things of that nature. You can't divulge.

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names like that. So I don't want any orders writing me going, how come you tell us the name of the cult? She cannot. So we're not going to even ask. We can talk about it. So how did you find yourself in a cult after you witnessed, you know, I know you were too, but after you know the story of your family members, how did you get enthralled in the one yourself? Much of what I learned about Jim Jones and the Jones town massacre, I didn't learn until after we were actually out of the cult. People started talking about cults more.

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freely. So the word cult really never entered my vocabulary until I was a late teen. So I was really quite unaware of what I was involved in. I was born into the church where I went. The church actually began in a small town in Kentucky. And like many churches of that time, old big tent revivals that

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you know, turned into many different churches. And that was the case for this church. This church in particular, pulled doctrine from a lot of other churches and other cults as it would turn out. I just grew into, I was born into it. I was baptized into it. I was dedicated as a child, as an infant into the church. And I really didn't know anything else. So your parents were a part of this church?

08:53
Yes. Um, my grandparents attended that church, uh, that big tent revival in Kentucky. And from there, they just became members and they followed the church wherever it went. As they migrated, they got married. My grandfather and my grandmother on my mom's side got married. They moved to Indianapolis. My grandfather and my grandmother on my dad's side were actually from Bristol, Virginia.

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and they were seeking employment. Jobs in Virginia had kind of plummeted and they heard that Indianapolis was booming. So they moved my dad and themselves to Indianapolis in search for work and they quickly started going to this church where my other grandmother and grandfather went. So my mom and dad grew up together. My dad was four years her senior.

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They ended up pregnant when my mom was 17. That's when I was conceived. That's how I came to be a part of it. So since you were baptized in it as you grew up in it, what about the cult or the leaders do you think got to your grandparents to make them want to join this cult and stay with it? A couple of things. First is, you know, what I mentioned earlier was there's just this enveloping love. There's a sense of community.

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unlike any other community I've ever been involved in because I've been to other churches since I left and The community in the cult was very much. We are a family like Nothing I've ever experienced before So that is hard to leave it's hard to leave family and the other part is The theology so this is where fear comes into play

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the theology of you have to be perfect in order to make it to heaven. We are the chosen people of God. If you marry outside of our faith and you have children, they'll be doomed to hell if they were to pass away. All of these very fear-based theologies that we are the ones, we are the chosen, and even

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perfect of the perfect will actually make it to first heaven where we get to actually be in the presence of God. And so there's this like constant striving to be better and better and better and better, more perfect. It's just never enough. And so the only place we can do that, the only way we can be that person, that perfection is by being a part of the body of Christ. Now I don't want to offend anybody.

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Because to some people, Jehovah's Witnesses are a cult, and to some people they are not. The rhetoric that you just use or the term is a Jehovah's Witness belief that only 144,000 people is going to make it to heaven, which if you read the Bible, that is totally taken out of context because it was talking about the 144,000 tribes. When you got into that, you started learning the...

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Theology, what they were teaching, apparently is based in Christianity, which is always funny to me because I am a Christian and people say Christianity is not real, God doesn't exist. But over 90% of your cults out there base their whole entire being on Christianity. As you got older, what was it about it then, besides the fact that you was born into it and your family's there, what kept you there underneath the laws and the rules of the cult?

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So as I got older, it was actually when I was 16 that my parents pulled the plug. They decided we were not going to be going back and I'll never forget that moment. In that moment, my cousin, his fiance, called from church because normally we would be back for Sunday evening service at that point. And she wanted to know if we were coming back.

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And I was standing there listening to my mom on the phone and she said, we won't ever be back to that church. And she started to just very gently without any specifics, tell her, you know, over and over again, we just, we've made a decision that's not, you know, in the best interest of our family. And I couldn't understand. I was so brainwashed that in that moment, I just began.

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and screaming at the top of my lungs, I will never leave that church. I will find a way back. If you can just place yourself in my shoes for a moment to understand the fear that just took over my entire being, you took away heaven for me. In that moment, you took away heaven for me. And so...

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You know, my mom and dad made that decision for my brother and I, and they started going to church, completely different religion, really none of the same theology. And I just couldn't wrap my mind around it. And so I'm getting to the point to answer your question, which is when did I start to realize that something was kind of off? So I would say around.

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16 to 17 years old, I decided to make their new church home, my church home. For the first time in my Christian life, I was going to receive communion. And it wasn't communion like you see many churches have now. It wasn't wafer and little cups of grape juice. It was loaves of bread, a foot washing station, and two chalices of grape juice that you would dip your...

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piece of bread into. And the church where I grew up had a very specific doctrine that if you were to receive the body and blood of Christ unworthily, you would be doomed to hell. That was it. And so I literally remember on Easter, I think it was my 16th year, on Easter, contemplating, is this something I'm actually going to do? This is huge.

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And I stood in line the whole time just making a decision. Is this the right thing for me? I was petrified. I was shaking like a leaf at the thought of potentially being damned to hell forever by taking communion. And when I got to the front of the break in the pews and I saw the foot washing station on the left, I sat down and the pastor poured warm water over my feet.

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and he began to wash my feet. And this sense of peace just came over me to where I couldn't deny it. Like what I was involved in in that moment was so peaceful to me, it couldn't be wrong. And from that moment on, that was my moment where I really woke up and I was like, something wasn't quite right in what we were taught.

16:35
Well, for those who are not really grounded in the church, I always question when I was, because from a young kid, we already had the wafers and the grape juice, but the breaking of actual loaves of bread, the chalices of grape juice is closer to what Jesus did when He did that communion before He was crucified. And a lot of churches do that in the feet washing station for humility. So I'm with you on that. I understand all the doctrine. Yeah.

16:59
So they put any type of control over like families, like if your mom and dad were married, they had to be broke up, you can only have sex with X, Y, and Z, or somebody was committed directly to the leader. Did you guys have anything like that going on? Oh no, nothing like that. The leader of the church, you know, ultimately was found to have been a child molester. He was accused of rape, embezzling, all sorts of nastiness.

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really what caused my parents to say, and we're out. So that was their moment. When it comes to relationships, the only real rule that there was around relationships was that we had to, and when I say had to, I don't mean it was forced. I don't mean there was a arranged marriage. It wasn't like that, but it was kind of a rule and it was a doctrine.

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and people decided whether they wanted to follow doctrine or not. So it was doctrine that if we were to marry, it needed to be within the church. Anyone married outside of the church, to my knowledge, they weren't allowed to be married within the church. And then, like I mentioned before, if they were to have children and the children were to pass, those children would be doomed to hell. But as far as like marrying them off to a leader or anything like that, it wasn't like that.

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Now, as we know, cults are about control. They're about fear. This is how they keep and maintain their members. I have done extensive studies into cults. I haven't brought a lot of them over to the show yet, but when I did my other podcast, I used to do what they called, um, Coke Month, where I would just do them, but talk about cults. So I understand the way they work in the control. The one thing that irritates me, especially when I talk to somebody like yourself, and I've talked to other survivors, is I always get the people that's like, Oh my gosh, well, you know what?

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They could have got out of the cold. They could have left at any time. And it irritates me because we both know it is not that easy. So can you explain for the audience the power that a cold has on someone that literally prevents them from leaving, even if the door is wide open and you can just walk through it, what prevents you? Can you explain the fear that prevents you from leaving and keep you there? Totally. If none of you have watched the Unbreakable, Kenny Schmidt.

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I don't know if you have seen it, David. I have not. No, I'm having to take that out now. Yeah, check it out. My husband refers to me as his very own Kimmy Schmidt. So real quick synopsis, cult leader collects a few women and convinces them that the world is over. He puts them in a bunker and they have to do all of these ridiculous things that don't make any kind of sense. It's just mind control. And until they get rescued. Then they develop.

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then they get to discover this whole new world that they thought was completely over. I don't know how many years later, 10 years later. It really is mind control. There are so many people who are like, how? I've been asked that question so many times, but how? You have been mind controlled. That's called a group think. So if you are in a circle of people and you have been persuaded to do, say, or think anything that is-

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group think that is mind control. And it's done to an extreme extent in a cult because they want to maintain control. How they do this is through fear, mostly, as you just said David, it is it's the doctrine of burning and how it's the doctrine of if you're not perfect. So what do they have to gain from a perfect congregation? Everything.

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I remember sitting in multiple, I feel like it was like every three or four months, maybe every six months, because I was a kid and I didn't keep track of time well, but every, I would say three or four months, there would be a huge service where all it was, was outbidding each other on how much they could give to the church. That was the literal service.

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So the people who couldn't give much back there and humiliation and watch the more wealthy people give thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars out in open air because they wanted to be the most perfect. That's what they had to gain. It's a mind control way to keep people under your thumb and in fear of leaving because of what will happen if they do leave.

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I mean, think of it this way. I had nothing before this. I was literally born into it. This is all I knew. And so I had nothing to compare it to. Why would I think that my parents or that the people who were my church family, why would I think they would hurt me? All they showed me was love. I grew up thinking that's what love was. It was fear and it was control.

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And so it took a lot of undoing that in my adult life. Now, at some point you finally said enough. You found the courage to get out of the cold. What made you leave and how did you finally find that courage to get out? What made me finally just sever ties? Because I did end up going to a fraction of the church that broke away from the main church in the 1970s after I left.

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And what made me really step away from all of it was that the other people who left at the same time we did, because there was really a mass exodus, and I started listening to the verbiage that people were using, and they were saying the word cult. And like I said earlier, this was the first time that this word actually entered my vocabulary, other than like, what was the one? Were they in Texas, Waco, Texas?

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I'd seen that on the news and I was like, oh, that's not us. You know what I mean? Like, that's not us. So I had no reason to believe that I was in a cult. But once the people that were a part of it with me started using that language, and then I started getting prompts to do the research. Well, what is a cult really? What does a cult mean? What are their behaviors? And I was like, oh my God, I'm in a cult. And at that moment,

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I stopped going. I did start going to another Christian church, but I stopped going to that church altogether. So being that you were in a cult, I heard you just said you went to another Christian church. That didn't do anything to deter your faith or belief in God at that point? Not at that point. I mean, I was a very naive person and in many ways I still am. My husband will talk to me about certain music.

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And I'll be like, I don't know what you're talking about. What is this song? And he's like, what are you talking about? Didn't you have MTV? And I'm like, no, we weren't really even supposed to have a TV, we have one, but we certainly weren't watching MTV. So much of popular culture was kept away from us. It didn't, it didn't dissuade me. I still felt like I needed a connection to Jesus and

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So I sought it out in the most acceptable way that I could think of. It was important to me because I was still married to the man that I married from that church at the time. So it was important to me that both of our families were comfortable with our faith decision because that's how we moved. We moved in packs of families. So that part was still important, but it didn't sway my faith really.

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So you get out of the cult, we jump out of that into, let's talk about that you were groomed into marriage. I'm assuming that was part of this cult thing too, at one point, how old were you and how did that happen? Yeah, so like I said, my parents were married very young. My mom was barely 18 when they got married and I was born in December when she was 18 years old and my dad was four years older than her.

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And so because they had to get married within the church, why not? She was pregnant. You know what I mean? I was born and it was actually in my early teens when my mom started kind of grooming me for marriage as well. I was the one that girls would come to our home and I would have bridal magazines and I already had the dress picked out. I had the honeymoon location picked out.

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It was all already decided and it was very much encouraged by my mother. I didn't know that anything was wrong with that. To me, I mean, little girls are, you know, four and five years old, putting pillowcases on their heads, pretending they're walking down the aisle with their future grooms. So to me, this was like playtime. I fell in love, truly fell in love at the age of

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13 had my heart broken quickly thereafter with someone at church. He was also four years older than me. And so I feel like there were some parallels there that really frightened my mom and dad. And I found out as an adult, actually in my mid thirties, I approached him because it caused me so much trauma. And I said, what the heck happened? Um, and he told me, I, I was basically told I would be jail date if I dated you, if I pursued you. So I couldn't.

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So then things started to click and it was almost as if my mom was pushing me to find someone else, but more my age. So she wanted me to find that person. She needed to be more comfortable with his age. And so she took me to glamour shots. I don't know if you remember glamour shots, David. Well, you all remember glamour shots. Everybody had one on their wall. Yeah.

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Yes, but that was really taboo. So I was confused because in our church, we couldn't wear makeup, we couldn't wear jewelry, we had to be very conservative and modest. And so here my mom is taking me to this glamour shop where they're dressing me in sequins and blue eyeshadow and my hair's up to here and it just wasn't matching. But then I started to understand because soon after I got those photos, I was able to sit with my youth group.

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and the youth group sat in a separate section. It was boys behind, girls in front, and they saw me looking at those photos. And all of a sudden, one of the guys peeks up in the pew in front, and he says, hey, let me see those. And my glamour shot get passed back and forth down the pew. The gentleman sitting next to the guy who asked for them actually ended up being the man that I married. And so...

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Um, it was very, it was very much pushed. When are you getting married? Has he talked about engagement? Um, do we have a date in mind? Has he given you any hints? Like it felt like it was just a constant barrage of marriage questions from my mom. Because that's what women did. I mean, in our church, we were literally told that in 1980 something, I forget what the date was, I think 84, Jesus was going to come back.

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So we were constantly afraid of what was next, what could happen, what could the, let's move, move, move, move, move. And so that was instilled in her and therefore she instilled that in me. I always find it funny because I've talked to others involved from a cult and they said they always use the Jesus is coming back. And I said, Jesus has been coming back for the last like four years. One person said to me, he's like, well then when I found out what a cult was and actually read the doctrine, it says no man really knows when he's coming back.

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So they use that as a fear tactic. Like exactly, we don't know, he's just gonna show up one day and that's it. Right. So once you got married, how long did the marriage last and how did you end up getting out of it? So it lasted for right at five years, that was it. To be perfectly honest, I ended up in an emotional affair with another man and this was not the first one. I was married to him because I was supposed to be. I was.

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told I had to find someone. He wasn't a bad person. He was a hard worker. His family was held in high esteem at the church, but he just wasn't for me. And so I was intellectually not stimulated. I would say emotionally I wasn't cared for in the way that I needed to be cared for. And I thought it out in other ways. And so I ended up having actually

30:32
in the course of our relationship three emotional affairs. The first one before we got married and he gave me an ultimatum, it's him or me. And then the other two were during our marriage. And the last one was just kind of it. Like this is the third one. Something is not, it's not matching up here. And obviously what I need, you can't provide. And I ended up leaving.

31:02
So apparently that didn't deter you from marriage. Cause now you said that you were married to a wonderful man. Were you sour on marriage for a while? Or when you met your current husband, did you know this would be it? And you felt like you could do that again. I was disillusioned. I didn't know what marriage was really supposed to be like in the real world. I knew what marriage was portrayed to be in the cult where I was raised. And I didn't do that. Right. I broke that.

31:30
I broke it a lot. And so when I got out of marriage, I was very, my self-worth was shot. I didn't even know who I was. Like, to me, the person I was was the person I was raised to be. I was forced to fit into this mold that was, you know, pre-made for me. But who was I? And so I went through a number of relationships. The first one was...

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with a man in the Bahamas. I was with him for about a year and a half long distance. And the last thing he said to me that I remember was just that he took particular note of how much I didn't love myself. And while that hurt at the moment, it was a real wake up call for me to discover who I was. And so...

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The first part after, and when I say first part, I'm talking probably four, five, six, seven years after my divorce. It was a self-discovery through who men wanted me to be, who potential partners wanted me to be. And I kept being turned down. And so there was this, I'm not good enough feeling. And I remember finding this video on YouTube. It was

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probably around 2010-ish, and it was just about taking time with yourself. No one else, taking yourself out to the movies, taking yourself to the diner without a cell phone, and just like, what thoughts come to your mind? And I was like, you know what? I've tried everything else, why not? And so I did, I started taking myself on dates for the year and a half before I met my husband. I had just kind of...

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not in a bitter way, but I had found who I was and I started to be okay with just being her and actually liking her a whole lot. After a year and a half of that, I kind of started craving the companionship again. I converted to Catholicism soon after that. That was a huge pickup in my family. You would have thought that I murdered 17 people.

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But during that conversion process, before I actually converted, I would go to Mass 15 minutes early every day. I would thank God for the person that He would bring to me. And I would be specific. And I would place myself in the mindset of gratitude for what He had already given me. Because the Bible says, the power of life and death is in the tongue.

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And as a man thinketh, so is he. And so I started to use these verses to try to really bring around the person that was going to not just be my husband, but he was gonna be my partner in life and he was gonna be my companion, he was gonna be my lover, he was gonna be my right hand and I was his left and truly develop a partnership where we would compliment one another.

34:49
Well, I'm happy that you found that it is certainly hard to do, especially after all that you went through. So I'm glad that you was able to find somebody that could actually teach you the true meaning of what being married is and how to help us in such a life. Thank you. So now we jump out of all of that to the good stuff. So now that you got out of the cold and got rid of the husband that was there. Now you survived and you are now the president of Power's Digital Marketing.

35:18
Yeah. Why don't you talk a little bit about Powell's Digital Marketing, how you came to find the company. Yeah, for sure. So, um, back in 2001, I actually started working as an agent for a group of, uh, international keynote speakers. They were my first introduction to marketing and I fell in love with it. I was good at it. I had this keen intuition for what needed to happen next to really make the business grow. And I was actually hired as like.

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a gopher. I went and got stamps and envelopes and did mail runs and all of the things that nobody really wants to do. But I saw these speakers in person and I knew that I had to work for them. And within, I think it was less than a year, she was just the vice president. She was like, just

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take this role, like we'll bring in a marketing person that knows all of the like logistics and all the techniques and all of the things that you need to know as it pertains to marketing. So you very clearly have a very good talent for this. And she really nurtured that and helped me grow it. And after my divorce in 2005, I stopped. I went back to the nine to five. And again, in 2014, we maintained this relationship with that business.

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They are some of my best friends and they've always been an encourager but in 2014 they said Enough you are so talented There is no reason you should be working for anybody else You should have people knocking down your door to work with you So I did they housed me for over a year They said we don't want you to worry about anything. We don't want you to buy toothpaste toilet paper

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anything. We just want you to focus on building this business. They really believed in me. And so from that point on, I did. I worked my tail off. I went to networking events. I learned the importance of building your circle. Through that, I found that speakers really were the initial influencers, right? They were the people out there spreading the message, selling the books and the merch after their presentation.

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That's really where I fell in love with influencing. And it wasn't a cute little girl standing in a pink skirt, holding an umbrella in the middle of a sunflower field kind of influencer. It's like, I want people who want to make a change in the world. I want to work with those people. I want to nurture them to the point where they get to see their dream become a reality. And so that's really where I focus. Well, then out of that.

38:04
That led you to become the founder of Shop From Her. Yes. Tell us about Shop From Her and how and why you started that. I started Shop From Her because a few years earlier, we had moved to Florida. And in Florida, we hit five networking events in one day. And they are what I call very bro-centric. It was 30 second popcorn testimonials. If anyone in-

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competing with your particular niche was in the room, you couldn't speak. And then you had 45 minutes ish at the end to rub elbows with the right people. And I was just kind of grossed out like every, everywhere I went, the same people were there. And I was just like, there has to be a better way to just genuinely get to know people. And so I started a Facebook group called Women Business Owners, supporting women business owners, because I was, I was just

39:05
I felt really defeated to be very honest with you. And I wanted other women to feel encouraged about their business, not defeated, not like they were struggling. So I created a safe space for them to be able to show up and ask questions and get help and to provide help to help elevate other women. I created this group within about a year and a half, it hit a thousand members, which is great. That's nothing to balk at, but after it hit a thousand members,

39:32
Within six months, it was 15,000 members. And now we're sitting at 35,000 members. Mid pandemic, a lot of the women really just started to clamor. What am I gonna do? Am I gonna have to close my business? I'm like, how do I pivot? And I wanted to create a platform that really was all about showcasing women, the amazing things that they do and how they run their business and just really.

40:01
open the platform up to where people can consciously choose to both hire and shop from a women-owned business instead of just automatically doing the convenient thing, right? Because it makes a difference. Economically, it makes such a profound difference. 95% of our economy is built on the backs of small businesses. And if we don't support them, our economy fails. So this is my effort to be a world changer.

40:29
So do you feel that women is not taking seriously when it comes to business? Yes. That's the short answer. A lot of the women in my group, I find it to be such a privilege to be able to hear some of the stories, but also I see how far we have to go in our society when it comes to equal, uh, pay equal treatment in the workforce. Absolutely. They're

40:58
are disparities and one of my ambitions is to bulldoze that disparity. My wife runs a small business of her own. She does crafts and she also makes food. So like caramel and things of that nature. And she's felt that right. Because, you know, a lot of people would rather, if she's selling the same thing next to a guy, uh, they would want to nickel and dime her, but didn't have any problems paying the guy whatever he's asking for. Right. So I do see it.

41:26
So with this platform, I think it's a good one because women has a place to go. I love to support female businesses. So I know some other work, but I can go to find some. I think that there are women that does extraordinary things and you have unfortunately a large demographic of females that are single moms these days now. And a lot of single moms starts businesses out of necessity from home to take care of them and their children. So when I read-

41:54
about you and I was like, I've never seen a platform like this before. This is awesome. So I'm glad there is where it is. I do think that you are a game changer. I think that this alone is going to change games and help to elevate women. That is my hope. So with, you know, if I was asked you now with, with, um, shop from her, where do you want it to be say five years from now? I want it to be in the form of an app to where it makes it easy for people.

42:24
pull it up when you're shopping for, if you wanna solely support black women owned businesses, you can plug that in. If you wanna search for indigenous women owned businesses, you can plug that in. If you wanna search for handmade products, you can plug that in and it just makes it so easy. If you're looking for a virtual assistant, it's a global platform too, which is amazing. Right now we're focusing our tour on the United States, but...

42:53
It is a global platform. So if you're in India and you want to support a local Indian woman who offers coding services or virtual assistant services, or she makes handmade things, you have the ability to do those searches and impact your local economy, which obviously goes to your, to support your national economy. So for all the women out there listening that may be thinking about doing their own business.

43:21
Tell them why your platform from shop from her is absolutely the best for them to join. So shot from her, there are so many platforms out there that exists and they exist in directory forms. And this became very popular during the pandemic. And unfortunately those platforms sit, they're not active. And the active part is what's important.

43:51
I have a marketing background, I have a digital marketing background. So I understand not all of the intricacies of the back end, but I do understand that when you're active blogging, when you're active on YouTube and you add those videos to your blog, it helps boost your SEO. My whole purpose in this is to get you found. It's not to add you to a directory and let it sit there. It's to ensure that you get found so that you get business, so that you can feed your

44:21
so that you can take those courses and take care of yourself. Because my gosh, that's the one thing that women struggle with. It's taking care of themselves by yourself, some bath salts, take yourself an exercise class, whatever it is you need to do. It's my, my whole purpose of this is to get people to you so that you can get money and take care of yourself and your family. So we wanted to shop from some of the women on your platform. How would we go about doing that? So the platform is being built.

44:50
Currently, right now, the best way to get involved is to join the Women Business Owners Supporting Women Business Owners Facebook group. It's purposely named so that people can find it easily. That's why it's grown to 35,000 people so quickly. So get in there, become active, ask questions, help other women. That's how we grow and that's how we elevate is when we lift one another up. And that was Supporting Women? Women Business Owners, Supporting Women Business Owners.

45:20
Oh, that's, that's catchy. Just crazy enough to work, right? Well, I believe that you are onto something great. Uh, if there's anything else, anything I can ever help you with, feel free to reach out. I'm all for that. I have three daughters. I've always told my daughters they could do anything that they put their mind to. Yes, I know that you guys live in a male world, but now you see a lot of these women coming out, taking their piece of the pie, standing up for what they need to.

45:49
and not laying down. And I think that a shot from her is gonna be a big catalyst in that. So I look forward to see where that's going. Thank you. So real quick, before we get out of here, we know that you have a book that is coming out. I said at the beginning, it's called Untethered Tales of a Modern Day Alice. It is coming February, 2024. Can you tell us a little bit about the book so to whet our appetites, we go out and pick it up when it comes out? Yes, totally.

46:19
So a lot of the book is centered around the church that I was raised in, how it impacted my life, and the most important part, I understand that the cult part is really interesting because a lot of people don't know what it's like to be raised in that type of environment, but the most important part is what happened on the other side of that. It's the untangling, it's the untethering of that cord, it's the finding of your voice.

46:47
and not being afraid to use it, no matter what. That's the key, no matter what. You have these voices in your head saying, but what if so-and-so walks away? What if I don't have a relationship with this person or that person? If they're walking away from you because you're speaking your truth, that's okay. And so that's what I want women to walk away with. Use your voice. Do not let fear consume you to the point where you just...

47:16
give up. That sounds interesting. I'm looking very much forward to reading that. In closing, what do you want people to take away from the story that they've heard here today? I think a couple of things I would have them take away. Number one, show grace in dealing with others because you really don't know where they're at.

47:45
I didn't even know where I was at when I was going through some of the hardest things in my life. Secondly, is that we all have a story to share. I truly believe that we're all here for some purpose, even if it's a small one. And some of us have bigger purposes, but we all have that. And so never stop seeking, never stop dreaming, and don't let anyone ever tell you that you can't.

48:10
Well, Amber, I thank you for coming to the show today. It has been an enlightening conversation. I enjoyed our talk. I've learned a lot from you. I cannot wait to read your book. I would love to have you come back next year when it comes out and we can discuss the book in detail. If you'd like to do that. Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much, David. Thank you for coming on. I totally appreciate it. Likewise.

48:36
All right, guys, that was the incredible Amber Powers. You can learn more about her at powersdigitalmarketing.com. Also, her social media handles will be in the show notes, as well as truecrimeandauthors.com, where you will see her profile attached to her episode. I hope you guys enjoyed this. I hope that this was enlightening. It's touched somebody. Maybe you're in a cult somewhere. This is giving you the strength to get out.

49:05
So we always tell these empowering stories to help others. So I thank you guys for tuning in. This has been a great start to season two. I'm so happy you guys are joining with me. Hope you're being safe out there. And always remember, always stay humble. An act of kindness can make someone's day. A little love and compassion can go a long way. And remember that there is an extraordinary person in all of us.

49:34
I'll catch you guys on the next one.

49:39
Don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe. Join us on social media. One link to the link tree has it all. Feel free to drop us a line at truecrimeandauthors at gmail.com. Cover art and logo designed by Arslan. Sound mixing and editing by David McClam. Intro script by Sophie Wilde and David McClam. Theme music, legendary, by New Alchemist. Introduction and ending credits by Jackie Voice.

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See you next time on True Crime, Authors, and Extraordinary People.