Meet Michelle Couch-friedman

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Michelle Couch-friedman a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Michelle, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

I have always known I wanted to be in a service profession.

As a young girl, I began volunteering as a candy striper. I still remember how excited I was to receive my red and white uniform. I put it on immediately, stood in front of a full-length mirror, and stared at my professional image. I was amazed and proud that the local hospital had bestowed it on me.

I was 11 years old.

My very professional job was to bring the snack cart to the patients’ rooms – a super important responsibility. I would carefully fill their water jugs, offer a variety of treats, and spend time chatting with anyone up to it. I loved that job so much. At the end of the day, I was tired but exhilarated. It gave me such a good feeling to brighten people’s day in my small way.

As I grew older and went off to college, I always found opportunities to volunteer to help people, animals, projects, and missions. Anything I perceived to be something that could make the world a better place, I went all in.

After I earned my post-master’s degree in clinical social work, I spent many years as a therapist in a state psychiatric hospital’s secure care unit. That was the floor where the most disturbed and violent patients were treated.

The pay was low, and the danger was high. No one wanted to work there. But I took it as a challenge. I did want to work there and with those patients. I thrived in that highly unpredictable unit, gaining the trust of even the most psychotic patients.

Of course, working with psychotic patients, sometimes things don’t go exactly as planned, and on one occasion, things really didn’t go as planned. After an unstable patient suddenly attacked me in his confusion, I ended up with a broken nose and concussion.

Anyone who knows me knows I don’t give up easily, so after spending two days convalescing, I dusted myself off, was back on the unit, and accepted my patient’s apology.

This was my life for ten years, and I truly loved my work, patients, team, and clients’ families. But after I was married and had my first baby, I knew I couldn’t work in such a risky place. I wasn’t just free-wheeling on my own anymore.

As I raised my two little girls, I volunteered in many important organizations, including my children’s schools and the Learning Ally, which records books for the blind and dyslexic.

But then, in 2016, I suddenly found my true purpose: Consumer Advocacy and Service Journalism. I stumbled onto this new path quite by accident, but once I was on it, there was no getting off.

I started volunteering a few hours a week to help a journalist with his personal website, which he wanted to grow into a consumer advocacy nonprofit. His vision was to create a nonprofit where we could solve consumer problems and then write about our efforts. We would then publish our articles and that way, we could help more than just one consumer at a time. I thought this was a fabulous idea and super necessary in today’s consumer world.

So, I went all in on this project, and soon, I was working full-time. A short time later, I became the executive director of the nonprofit. I loved what we were doing. Throughout my six-year tenure, I answered thousands of consumer questions, directly mediated case after case, wrote hundreds of articles and retrieved millions of dollars for the people who asked for our help.

But when the founder told me he wanted to take the nonprofit in a different direction, one that I didn’t feel in my soul, I knew I couldn’t be part of this new plan.

My service to the nonprofit ended, and Consumer Rescue was born! At the same time, I started writing a bi-monthly consumer advocacy/ ombudsman column at The Points Guy.

The trusted and loyal advocacy and editorial team I built at the nonprofit over the years is here with me at Consumer Rescue. That fact warms my heart every day. Today, the Consumer Rescue team is busy helping consumers, publishing articles to help our readers navigate problems, and always looking for new ways to further our mission – and we do it all free of charge.

That’s the long way of telling you how I found my purpose.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I am a consumer reporter, advocate, and ombudsman columnist. I’m also the founder and CEO of Consumer Rescue, which is dedicated to educating, defending, and protecting consumers. Any consumer who has a problem with a company and can’t fix it on their own can ask our team for help, and we’ll investigate. Our direct consumer mediation and executive customer service contact finder are always free of charge.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

As a mental health professional, I believe empathy, integrity, and resilience are the three most important qualities for all humans to develop.

When you think about it, those three qualities are really essential to having a civilized, evolving society.

Without empathy, individuals are unable to put themselves in others’ shoes and understand the feelings of people around them. Of course, we’ve all known people who lack empathy and seem oblivious to others’ feelings. Those are genuinely unpleasant individuals.

I see more and more people having a problem developing and maintaining integrity. Integrity is probably the most important quality to possess, but people struggle with it because it means doing what’s right even if they don’t feel like it or they’d prefer to be doing something else.

Resilience is a quality that all successful people possess. Of course, everyone will face failures and setbacks in their lives, but resilient people see failure as a challenge to be better. Resilience also involves sometimes forgiving yourself for making mistakes, laughing about some of those mistakes, and then dusting yourself off and getting back on your path toward your goal.

Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?

Be easy on yourself. Feeling overwhelmed sometimes is just a part of life.

The number one way to reduce stress and feel less overwhelmed is to spend time laughing with friends and family. So, to anyone feeling overwhelmed, I recommend a healthy dose of getting out of your office and out into the sunshine with loved ones.

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