About the Guest Madison Malloy is a best-selling author, mindset coach, speaker, and podcast host of Next to Madison — a show about confidence, identity, and reinvention. She started her career as a mortgage bond trader on Wall Street, survived the 2008 financial crisis, ran her own company, performed stand-up comedy for 13 years (including with the Red Hot Chili Peppers), and ultimately followed her gut to Nashville, where she now creates content and coaches others on how to stop overcomplicating life and start living authentically. She is the author of Time to Light the F**k Up and can be found at madisonmalloy.com and @realmadisonmalloy on Instagram and TikTok. Episode Summary In this wildly entertaining and surprisingly deep conversation, Jen Aks sits down with mindset coach, comedian, and multi-pivot queen Madison Malloy for a conversation about what happens when you spend decades ignoring your gut — and what opens up when you finally stop. Madison traces her path from a 16-year-old who decided she’d be an investment banker, to a mortgage bond trader living through the 2008 crash, to stand-up comedian, to author, to Nashville transplant who finally — after 37 years — feels genuinely calm. Along the way: rock bottom, antidepressants, scarcity mindset, a nudist colony in Jamaica, the ‘reject’ technique, mortality as a mindset hack, and why your gut was always right. This episode is as funny as it is profound — and it will make you want to follow your gut immediately. What You’ll Learn • How Madison decided to go to Wall Street at age 16 — and how little it had to do with passion • What the 2008 financial crisis looked like from the inside — and why it became Madison’s exit sign • Why living in fight-or-flight felt completely normal — and how she didn’t realize it until she moved out of New York City six weeks before this recording • How to know when your gut is right: build a track record and use the proof • Why you can manifest what you don’t want just as easily as what you do — and how to stop • The ‘reject’ technique: a simple mental tool to stop other people’s scarcity from imprinting on your subconscious • How Madison hit rock bottom — including her lowest moment — and how gratitude started to change everything • Why she went on a mild antidepressant, and why she’s not ashamed of it • How 13 years of stand-up comedy and a nudist colony in Jamaica taught her not to judge and to stop taking herself so seriously • Why thinking about mortality makes you braver, more honest, and less afraid of rejection • The video game mindset: stop, reset, go through — and enjoy it while it lasts Key Concepts Introduced • The Gut Track Record — Madison’s method for building trust in her intuition: when the feeling came up and she was later proven right, she used that as evidence to start listening • Manifesting What You Don’t Want — the warning that fear-based thinking and constant scarcity can pull unwanted outcomes toward you just as powerfully as desire-based thinking pulls good ones • The Reject Technique — mentally saying ‘reject’ while listening to someone else’s negativity or scarcity so it doesn’t imprint on your subconscious • The Video Game Mindset — treating life as a game: stop, reset, move forward; nothing is permanent, and the whole thing is shorter than you think • Mortality as a Mindset Hack — keeping the reality of impermanence in conscious view as a way to dissolve rejection fears, increase vulnerability, and stop sweating the small stuff • Bodyset vs. Mindset — Jen’s framework applied throughout: Madison listened to her body for decades without having a name for it; this episode names it • Life Is Happening For Me —
