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Guest: Maria Jackson

For seven years, Maria Jackson did everything right and still kept getting knocked down. Three rounds of IVF. Loans taken out, paid off, and taken out again. A patient in her chair telling her she was too late to ever be a mother while she held it together until she reached her car. And one morning, a day after her birthday, she woke up certain she had lost the baby, and her first thought was how many shifts it would take to pay off the loan so she could try again.

In this episode, Maria shares the full arc of that journey and the version of herself it built. She walks through the moment everything looked like a massacre and the lunchtime ultrasound that changed everything, the church service where she finally surrendered, and the first Mother's Day that felt heavier than she expected. She also opens up about her career, trading 20 years in dentistry for a full reinvention into AI and business analytics, earning a master's degree full time with a one year old at home, and turning a brutal season of interview rejection into the fuel that got her where she is now.

This is a conversation about persistence that has receipts, about keeping the quiet promises you make to yourself, and about reframing every setback into a route forward. Maria's throughline says it all: she does not give up, she just finds another angle.

The episode closes, as every episode does, with the three signature questions:

1. What does the unbreakable advantage mean to you?

2. What did you have to let go of to become who you are today?

3. What do you still need to let go of to become who you want to be tomorrow?

About the guest: Maria Jackson spent two decades in dentistry, more than 15 of those years as a hygienist, before pivoting fully out of clinical work. Today she serves as a clinical advisor and CTO, supports product development for AI software startups, and helps dental professionals move from clinical roles into nonclinical careers. She is based in South Florida. Find her on LinkedIn and at Mariadentalai.com.

Call to Action

You showed up today, and that already says something about who you are. If this conversation moved you, share it with someone who needs the reminder that a slow season is not a wasted one. Subscribe wherever you listen, and come find me on LinkedIn and Instagram.

And if you lead a team, run a business, or carry pressure most people never see, this work goes beyond the mic. With over 15 years in commercial insurance and employee benefits and more than two decades of leadership experience, I help people turn what they have survived into a durable professional edge through advisory, workshops, and keynotes. Start at unbreakableadvantage.com.

You were not broken. You were built. Until next week, keep becoming.

Host: Misty Carson, MSHRM, founder of The Unbreakable Advantage Institute. Listen and connect at unbreakableadvantage.com, on YouTube and Instagram @unbreakableadvantage, and Misty Carson, MSHRM on LinkedIn.

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At 16, pregnant, emancipated, and on her own, Misty Carson had no home, no safety net, and no degree. What she had was a whisper that said there is more for you than this, and a roomful of louder voices telling her to stay exactly where she was.

This is the origin story of The Unbreakable Advantage, told in two parts in one sitting.

In Part 1, The Eagle in the Chicken Coop, Misty traces the pattern she was born into. Generational poverty, volatility, abuse, and a family where the women earned everything and decided nothing. She walks you through the years of starting over, the 110 college credits with nothing to show for them, the associate's degree that meant everything because she finished, and the climb that ended with a job offer so big she cried for twenty four hours because part of her was still waiting to be found out.

In Part 2, The Loudest Liar in the Room, she goes one layer deeper into the voice inside your own head. The one that calls your wins anomalies and your struggles the truth. You will hear the four faces of that lie, shrinking, performing, overcompensating, and disappearing, and the moment a leader told her there was a third option between shrinking and overcompensating that changed everything about how she moved.

If you have ever stood in a room you earned your way into and waited for someone to ask you to leave, this one is for you.

You were not broken. You were built.

WHAT YOU WILL TAKE FROM THIS EPISODE

Why the whisper that calls you forward is never the loudest voice in the room, and how to tell it apart from the ones holding you in place.

How a belief built in childhood can follow you into every adult room you walk into, still whispering the same lie with no expiration date.

The four survival responses to that lie, and how to recognize the one you default to.

What it actually means to lead with what you can offer instead of leading with your elbows.

The self-imposed ceiling Misty did not know was there until she was already above it.

LINES WORTH REPLAYING

"That voice that tells you that you don't belong, it is lying to you. It has always been lying to you."

"We are the authors and editors of our own stories. Our circumstances do not have to become our cages."

"You are only one decision away from a completely different life."

"Same shoes. Completely different relationship with myself."

"If mine is the only voice in the room saying I don't belong, then my voice is the liar."

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

Part 1: Whose voice are you actually listening to, and is it calling you forward, or are you allowing your circumstances to become your cage?

Part 2: What evidence are you sitting on right now that the voice in your head hasn't seen yet?

CONNECT WITH MISTY

If this resonated, follow the show so you never miss what comes next, and share it with someone who needs to hear it.

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@unbreakableadvantage Explore the movement, the book, and more: https://unbreakableadvantage.com/

Misty Carson is the Founder and CEO of The Unbreakable Advantage Institute, with over 15 years in commercial insurance and employee benefits and more than two decades of leadership experience. She helps people reframe their past and step into the person they were forged to be.

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Some threats announce themselves. The most dangerous ones never do.

In the first guest episode of The Unbreakable Advantage, Misty Carson sits down with Tami Fitzpatrick, Founder and CEO of Entropy Technology Design, whose proprietary low frequency magnetic field detection sees storms forming 3,000 miles out and catches the weaponized drones that slip in under the radar. Her work protects people who have no idea it exists. And it was born from a life spent surviving threats no one around her could see.

Tami takes us back fifteen years to a marriage overseas that was not what it was promised to be. To the day a threat against her life rewrote her identity. To the decade she spent in denial, the rock bottom that woke her up, and the exit strategy that ended with her evacuating a third world country in the back of a military chopper with her three small children as war broke out around her.

Then she does it again in business. The day she voted four board members off her own board for cause, and the gut punch that followed: realizing the fight was not just something to win, but something that called her up to become a stronger leader.

The line from her forthcoming book, Invisible Threats, frames the whole conversation. Every catastrophe begins as something invisible. Tami believes the same is true of us. Our thoughts, our programming, our pain. Left undetected, they destroy. Brought into the light, they build.

This is a conversation about turning what tried to break you into the very thing that makes you unstoppable.

You were not broken. You were built.

A listener note: this episode includes honest discussion of domestic and emotional abuse and a description of reaching a breaking point. Please listen with care.

WHAT YOU WILL TAKE FROM THIS EPISODE

Why the threats that shape a life are almost always invisible at first, in the sky, in the ground, and in the mind.

How abuse can be quiet control rather than something loud, and why that version is so hard to name from the inside.

How two truths can live in the same person, a great parent and a poor partner, and why holding both is part of healing.

What it looks like to win a fight and still take accountability for your side of the street.

The difference between staying a victim and becoming a victor, and why roughly half of people who survive deep adversity grow from it.

Why the better question is never what did this take from me, but what did this give me.

LINES WORTH REPLAYING

"Every catastrophe begins as something invisible."

"Abuse is not always loud and abrasive. Sometimes it is quiet control."

"We are the authors and editors of our own stories."

"The only way you earn it is going through that fire."

"My question is not what has this taken from me, but what has it given me."

"It didn't break me. You made me."

REFLECTION QUESTION

What invisible threat have you been carrying without naming it, and what would change if you brought it into the light?

And the three questions Misty closes every guest episode with:

What does the unbreakable advantage mean to you? What did you have to let go of to become who you are today? What do you still need to let go of to become who you want to be tomorrow?

CONNECT

If this episode moved you, share it with someone who needs to hear it, and follow the show so you never miss what comes next.

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@unbreakableadvantage Explore the movement, the book, and more: https://unbreakableadvantage.com/

Connect with Misty Carson on LinkedIn and on Instagram at The Unbreakable Advantage. Misty is the Founder and CEO of The Unbreakable Advantage Institute, with over 15 years in commercial insurance and employee benefits and more than two decades of leadership experience. If you want to be a future guest, reach out through the website.

Connect with Tami Fitzpatrick at www.TamiFitzpatrick.com and on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook, where you can also find her companies, including Entropy Technology Design. Watch for her forthcoming book, Invisible Threats.

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