The Grit Factor Podcast w/ Karl Jacobi | Episode 24: The Thirty-Five Dollar Co-Pay Wasn't Working. So She Bet on the Four Hundred Dollar Coachwith Carly Pepin

Episode 24: The Thirty-Five Dollar Co-Pay Wasn't Working. So She Bet on the Four Hundred Dollar Coachwith Carly Pepin

April 28, 2026 / 01:21:59/E24

Episode Summary

Carly Pepin grew up in LA knowing something was off but not having a name for it. She was reactive at work, rough around the edges when challenged, and excellent at showing up for teams she believed in and a disaster when asked to do things that violated what she stood for. She was the kind of employee who screamed in an office and quit on the spot when her boss asked her to create a fraudulent invoice for a quarter million dollars. She was not hiding her struggle particularly well. What she did not know yet was that almost everything she was experiencing traced back to one thing: she was living completely outside her own values without knowing what those values actually were.

She booked a one-way ticket to Australia at twenty-nine, just before the working holiday visa closed to her age bracket, and landed convinced that a change of scenery would fix it. Within weeks she had no distractions, no gym, no social network, and a marine engineer friend who had to ship out a week after she arrived. Alone in a foreign country working remotely on a different time zone, the noise cleared and what was underneath was still there. She nearly left after the first month. Instead she found a bulletin board, a coaching flyer, and a woman who charged four hundred dollars an hour and had personally gotten to the other side of something. Carly had done thirty-five dollar therapy co-pays for years and never heard anyone say that. She signed up.

What followed was a discovery of values work through the DeMartini method, a pathway off anxiety medication she had been on for years, and a recovery from an eating disorder that had controlled her environment for so long she used to have to keep her kitchen entirely empty to feel safe. Then a certification program in Scotland. Then building a coaching business from scratch in a foreign country, taking donations instead of cash while she got her reps in, including a photograph from a photographer client that she still has in her office today. Then coming home to LA and building West Coast Growth Advisors, where she now partners with CEOs and founders on the Scaling Up methodology, combining deep personal development work with operational strategy, quarterly intensives, and the kind of honest business conversations most leadership teams avoid.

This episode is for anyone whose business is currently running them instead of the other way around, and for anyone still waiting for a change of scenery to solve a problem that moved with them.

In This Episode, You'll Discover:

How Carly traced the reactive, rough-around-the-edges version of herself all the way back to one root cause: living completely outside her own values without knowing what they were
What the decision to move to Australia actually looked like, the one-year working holiday visa, the twenty-nine year old deadline, and the week when her only friend shipped out and she was completely alone with no distractions
How a bulletin board, a car that stalled, and a flyer from a coach who said she had gotten to the other side changed the entire trajectory of Carly's life and career
What the DeMartini values work revealed about her anxiety, how understanding her values changed things that medication had not been able to fully resolve, and what genuine recovery from an eating disorder looked like when approached through a values lens rather than food logs and shame
Why Carly flew from Australia to Scotland for a twenty-five-thousand-dollar coaching certification, how she figured out the cash, and what she took from those teachers even when she later found their methods had significant gaps
The DeMartini method explained: what it does, how it works, and why Carly says going beyond forgiveness to genuine gratitude, not coping but actual gratitude, is the only thing that truly frees the mental real estate
What Carly's work with CEOs and founders actually looks like today: quarterly on-site or off-site intensives, culture and values alignment, cash flow health, personal development woven into every engagement, and the belief that a business cannot scale past its founder's unresolved inner roadblocks
Why Carly disagrees with Khang's answer from Episode 23 about worldly things and the meaning of life, and what she thinks we get wrong about the relationship between inspiration, attachment, and purpose

Key Takeaways:

You Cannot Fix an Internal Problem With an External Change. Carly moved continents and the problem followed her there in under a month. Not because travel is bad, but because the noise that had been masking the real issue simply stopped when she arrived. Quiet reveals what was already there. Before you book the ticket, ask what you are taking with you.
Your Values Are Already There. You Are Not Finding Them. You Are Uncovering Them. Carly did not have to invent her values. She had to learn to see what was already driving every decision, every reaction, every fight and every flight. The DeMartini values assessment does not create a value system. It reveals the one you already have and have been living unconsciously.
You Spot It, You Got It. This is Carly's core message. Whatever you admire in someone else, you have it too. You are just not identifying where you already do it. Whatever drives you crazy in someone else, that same quality lives in you. The work is not to fix those parts. It is to love them and redirect them. This is the thing she wants every listener to carry out of this conversation.
Forgiveness Is Not the Goal. Gratitude Is. If you are forgiving someone, you are still positioning them as having done something wrong to you. The DeMartini method goes further. The goal is genuine gratitude, not as a coping mechanism, but as a real recognition that this challenge, this person, this event gave you something you could not have gotten another way. That shift moves trauma from a weight you carry to a tool you use.
The Body Keeps Score. Carly could not do a private yoga session without uncontrollable crying between every posture. She could not speak clearly to a mentor without shaking. After doing the DeMartini process, both of those responses were gone. The nervous system does not forget what the mind suppresses. You can either work through it intentionally or have it surface without warning.
When You Cannot See the Other Side of a Problem, Drain Sets In. Carly sees this in every founder she works with. The exhaustion is not always about workload. It is about feeling stuck in a problem with no visible exit. Her process starts with the personal development work because understanding why the problem exists at a deeper level often reveals the solution and reactivates the leader's energy before a single operational change is made.
Your Business Cannot Outgrow You. Every ceiling a company hits can be traced back to the founder's unresolved interpretation of themselves. Carly's job is not just to fix the org chart or clean up the SOP. It is to help the leader see where they are the bottleneck, not just operationally but psychologically, and to close that gap so the business can move.
What Gets You Inspired Is Part of the Meaning, Not a Distraction From It. Carly pushes back directly on the idea that letting go of worldly things is the path to purpose. She sits at a hand-crafted desk made by an artist and calls it life-giving every morning. The goal is not to release what inspires you. It is to release the attachment, the fear of losing it, and allow inspiration to be what it was always meant to be: fuel.

Timestamps:

[00:00] Karl introduces Carly Pepin: human behavior specialist, West Coast Growth Advisors founder, DeMartini method facilitator, Built for This podcast host, international speaker
[03:00] What was wrong before she could name it: growing up in LA, living outside her values without knowing they were values, and the noise that covered it for years
[07:00] The forged invoice moment: being asked to create a fraudulent document, screaming in the office, quitting on the spot, and what her values had to say about why that hit so hard
[13:00] Karl's ad break: The Grit Code Exposed at https://gritcodeexposed.com
[14:00] The decision to move to Australia at twenty-nine: the working holiday visa deadline, the beachy-girl pull, and the belief that something would be different there
[18:00] Week one in Australia: her only friend ships out, she is working remotely in a different time zone, no gym, no people, nearly left after month one
[21:00] The bulletin board, the stalled car, the flyer, and the coach who said she had gotten to the other side
[24:00] Four hundred dollars an hour versus thirty-five dollar co-pays, and why Carly showed up differently when the investment matched the stakes
[27:00] What the first transformation actually looked like: values work, anxiety medication, and a different approach to recovery from an eating disorder
[33:00] Throwing away food for the first time and why that was one of the biggest milestones of Carly's life
[37:00] The decision to become a coach herself: twenty-five thousand dollars plus a flight from Australia to Scotland, figuring out the cash, and showing up for the in-person intensive
[42:00] Building a coaching business from scratch in a foreign country: no network, no gym clients, no easy translation from another career
[46:00] Working for donations while building her reps: the photographer client, the photo still in her office, and what that season actually built in her
[49:00] What focus unlocks: when the meaning is high enough, you find the time and you do the work
[52:00] Karl's ad break: The Grit Code Exposed at https://gritcodeexposed.com
[53:00] The DeMartini method explained: transforming perceptions, moving obstacles from in the way to on the way, and the difference between forgiveness and gratitude
[57:00] The sexual experience Carly had as a child, the DeMartini process she did on it, and what genuine gratitude rather than forgiveness actually freed in her life
[01:02:00] The yoga session that became uncontrollable crying between every posture, and the nervous system science behind why
[01:07:00] How the body keeps score: what Carly's shaking around certain mentors revealed, and what happened after she did the process
[01:12:00] The work Carly does today: West Coast Growth Advisors, quarterly intensives, Scaling Up methodology, personal development woven into every business engagement
[01:17:00] Why the business cannot outgrow the founder and how Carly identifies the real roadblock before touching the strategy
[01:21:00] The client who had ten million dollars stolen, the DeMartini process, and how he now says it was one of the best things that ever happened to him
[01:25:00] Karl's own six-figure theft story, and who he is thanking publicly for the first time in this episode
[01:27:00] Grit defined: a natural quality that emerges when you are pursuing something truly meaningful
[01:28:00] Subtraction in this season: losing her dad last year, the refinement that followed, and what she is no longer willing to carry
[01:30:00] The directive: take no credit, take no blame, just keep focused on your chief aim
[01:31:00] Carly's question for the next guest: what is the hardest thing you went through and what are you genuinely grateful for because of it?
[01:33:00] Khang's question from Episode 23: what is the true meaning of life if all worldly things go away?
[01:35:00] Carly's answer: the worldly things ARE part of the meaning, the goal is not detachment but releasing the attachment
[01:38:00] Where to find Carly and Karl's close