Last week was such a wild week and I am still absorbing all the goodness.
To catch you up quickly a week ago I had a chance to meet Marianne Williamson for the first time and to see her speak. If you don’t know it is her words that I am quoting at the end of every episode of this podcast.
I heard that quote almost 20 years ago and it would bring me to tears every time I heard it. It has been hanging in my home and it is at the core of my personal mission.
I am talking with someone on her team this week about having Marianne on the podcast so please send some good energy, thoughts and prayers my way.
Days later an event that I have been involved in creating for the past 2 ½ years came to be. The inaugural event of The Maine Women’s Conference went down on Wednesday, May 9, 2018.
I’m getting emotional because as I’m writing this because I am still trying to take in all that happened before, during and after the event and what it means to me.
When I look back on my greatest and most meaningful accomplishments there isn’t one that I can think of that I did on my own. It has always been in collaboration that I have produced the things of which I am most proud.
I and the other women on the board for The Maine Women’s Conference knew we had poured our hearts and souls into this event, we knew we were being supported by amazingly talented women on our committees and other volunteers who wanted this day to be something special.
We knew all the details, and there were thousands of details, and we knew there was a growing curiosity and excitement for this event.
What we didn’t know was how blown away we were all going to be on the day it all came together. The board, the vendors, the speakers, the sponsors and the attendees experienced a day of energy, support, encouragement, celebration and a call to something greater.
At one point in the morning it was all starting to seem so surreal I didn’t know what to think or feel anymore and I had to consciously stay in a state of both service of the women in attendance and in receiving as woman after woman wanted to congratulate me, thank me and tell me how this event had exceeded their expectations.
Now, were there somethings that could have been better? Yes!
There’s always room for improvement. Something we already knew going into the event that we wished we had had the time, money, energy and other resources to make happen and there were somethings we learned as we were executing the day.
We are also collecting some great feedback and suggestions for next year from those in attendance. If you were at The Maine Women’s Conference and you haven’t filled out the survey you would have received via email please fill it out! We want all voices to be heard.
As much as I am dancing on cloud 9 and feel so gratified I could cry I know there were hundreds of people, men and women that contributed to the success of this event.
Even in the microcosm of the board of 9 women I can clearly see that without the commitment, passion, vision, skills and expertise, willingness at times to voice a dissenting opinion, and willingness at times to concede this event would not have been half of what it was.
I also don’t want to gloss over the journey. Day of we were a united team and a force to be reckoned with but it wasn’t always that way. Most of us were strangers to each other when we began working together.
And, our board had a rocky start. There was a lot of turnover in the beginning and that lead much of the community at large to believe that we weren’t going to make it.
The rumors became so strong at one point that I had several conversations with women in my network who expressed surprise to hear I was still working on the conference because they had gotten it on “good authority” that the conference was cancelled.
With any team there are four stages of development. They are forming, storming, norming and performing. Forming is when the group members are identified and come together. Storming is the stage of tension and differing opinions as the group tries to figure out its identity, shared values, common goals, roles within the group and overall team dynamic. Norming is the stage after when all of that has been decided and accepted, consciously or unconsciously, and performing is the final stage when, because time and energy is now freed up to deliver on the purpose of the team.
With our turnover and fledgling relationships with each other we went through the first 2-3 stages of team development several times.
In the process we also went from being an annual event to needing to become a 501(c)(3) because we could not find a fiscal sponsor to manage sponsorship and donations on our behalf.
I say all this because I know there are times when you are going after a big goal and you wonder if it’s worth it. There are times when you leave a meeting where no one seemed to agree and you wonder if you can take it much longer. Maybe you’ve heard through the grapevine that people are betting you’re going to fail.
I want you to know that it is all part of it. It is so normal it’s ridiculous. And to keep on a recent theme, it’s all part of The Dip. But there is the other side of The Dip and it is an experience like no other and you can share it with everyone who was with you in The Dip.
Don’t be afraid of big goals. The secret to achieving big goals is to surround yourself with other positive doers that would like to join you on your journey. Some may make a small contribution; some may be there for only parts of the journey, while others will be there the whole way with you also pouring their hearts and souls into the work.
And to be clear, although I loved the idea of someday attending a women’s conference in Maine, I did not initiate this idea. Someone else came forward and declared they wanted this to be and was I interested in being a part of it. I was recruited but the goal was also my own. That’s how it works and that’s how great things happen.
Don’t go it alone. Amazing things happen when we do this together.
As always I hope this was helpful to you and here’s to your success!
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Zebralove Web Solutions: Your website tells a story about your business! At Zebralove Web Solutions, Milly and her team are going to make sure your website tells the story you want your customers to hear. Connect with Milly at zebralovewebsolutions.com to create the impression you want to make!
Private Facebook Community: Chat, share and collaborate with other women listening to the podcast!
Accomplished: How to Go from Dreaming to Doing: A simple, step by step system that gives you the foundation and structure to take your goals and make them happen.
Keisha Reynolds is an expert marketer and project management strategist. She developed skills within a 20-year career mastering being a spokesperson, handling media crisis, implementing project schedules, developing strategies, writing speeches and articles, executing events and managing online tools for nonprofits, corporate businesses and government agencies.
Keisha uses her skills to coach inspirational business owners and entrepreneurs to “next level” their brands through increased visibility and comprehensive strategies.
She lives in Maryland with her husband and son. Outside of spending time with her family, Keisha enjoys creative writing and running her podcast, Global Warriors.
Keisha had always followed other people’s rules and thought that in order to be successful, she had to follow the path that many others had taken. Keisha was on the path that her parents had wanted her to follow, and was successful by many standards, but realized something was missing. While doing research for a children’s book she was writing, Keisha stumbled upon an internship in Tanzania offered by Jane Goodall. Keisha wasn’t sure if she would be accepted, but the opportunity both scared and excited her and she was determined to apply. Being accepted into that internship changed Keisha’s life.
Like most others, Keisha’s leadership style has changed over time and now that she trusts herself more, she would call herself an intuitive leader. Teamwork has also always been very important to Keisha, and she doesn’t try to hide in the background anymore.
In the past, Keisha’s marketing business and spirituality have always been separate. After attending a recent business conference, she was inspired to embrace her spirituality to help change the world. Keisha is excited about her new interview series featuring well-known influencers as they talk about how they are using their message to transform others. Two ideas that were once very separate to her have come together and given her a new way to think about marketing.
Now that Keisha is working one-on-one with more entrepreneurs and change makers, she struggles with ways to get her message across to more people without taking away from the experience. Family, freedom and travel are all still very important to Keisha, and she doesn’t want to take away from those things, but wants to spread her knowledge.
Meditation is key to keeping Keisha level in her daily routine. When Keisha taps into that divine energy source, she has a better reaction to unexpected things that happen to pop up during the day.
“Be authentic.” In the past, Keisha would strive to be what others wanted her to be, but always had the best results when she was true to herself.
“There is something inside of us that transcends the human experience of race, and culture, and class, and for me thats the human spirit.”
Website: http://www.keishareynolds.com/
Podcast: http://globalwarriors.org
Twitter: https://twitter.com/keishamreynolds
Instagram: @keishamreynolds
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keisha-reynolds-80680020/
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Private Facebook Community: Chat, share and collaborate with other women in the community!
Accomplished: How to Go from Dreaming to Doing: A simple, step by step system that gives you the foundation and structure to take your goals and make them happen.
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Hello everyone and thank you for joining me. In last week’s 100% Jodi episode I talked about the book The Dip by Seth Godin. Godin describes The Dip as “the long slog between beginning and mastery.”
I have to tell you after writing and recording that episode it was like psychologically I was in The Dip in every area of my life. Has that ever happened to you?
I was catching up with a friend and talking about all the amazing opportunities that have been coming my way in my business. On paper just about everything is fantastic and I have many reasons to be grateful.
And then I ended my update with “and I am so [insert expletive] bored with my life.”
Daily the lyrics from Bruce Springstein’s song Dancing in the Dark kept running through my head and after meeting with my mastermind group at the end of last week I know exactly why and I’m going to get into that in just a bit.
What I’ve been going through has gotten me thinking about the Tolerations Detox Challenge we did at the beginning of the year and I think it’s time to bring it back again but I’m going to do it a little bit differently.
Instead of releasing the 5 challenges every other day, starting on Monday, May 7, I’m going to release one a week for 5 weeks. I heard all your feedback and it was tough to keep up with the challenges and I know many of you did not like falling behind.
With each challenge coming out once a week it will be no problem for you to identify 2 things that you are tolerating or avoiding in the area selected for that week (think home and transportation, work and technology, health and wellness, etc.). Then you’ll have the whole week to address them before the next challenge comes out.
If you are interested in joining in the Tolerations Detox Challenge for this round and getting back a whole bunch of energy before the summer begins sign up at womentakingthelead.com/tolerations to sign up!
This week is the month-end episode so that means an update on goals but as promised in the last episode I’m going give the updates and comment on whether I’m crushing the goal, if I’m experiencing The Dip, or if I’m starting to wonder if something is a Dead End.
To review, in The Dip you’re doing a lot of hard work and you may not be getting a lot of traction but there definitely is progress or you can see where your efforts are going to turn into progress. With a dead end things don’t get better or worse. They pretty much stay the same.
The original goal for strength and endurance was to do 300 Spartan-regulation burpees in good form in one session by June 30 but I completed that in February. Crushed that goal and set a new goal.
My burpee goal is now at 1000 burpees. Separately, I have a goal to do an unassisted pull-up before the end of this year.
I have started incorporating pull-ups with the pull-up bands into my workouts during the week. I really shouldn’t say it’s incorporated into my workouts because the truth is I work from home so I do pull-ups whenever I think of it or feel like doing pull-ups which isn’t very often.
I don’t dislike pull-ups and I’m starting to do them more often. It’s just a new activity being incorporated into my day so I’m sure this will pick up and become a daily thing this month.
At first I could only do one or two assisted pull-ups with each attempt and now I’m up to four pull-ups with the band.
As of the day I’m recording this episode I have completed doing 500 spartan-regulation burbees (chest to ground) in good form in one workout session and by the time this episode goes live I’ll have done 525 in one workout.
The 500 burpee workout took me 1:43:49 to complete so I have to start planning my workout within larger time blocks.
Yes, doing the workout is a slog but I wouldn’t say I’m suffering through it and I’m definitely making progress. With this goal I am in The Dip but I am leaning into it and enjoying the positive consequences of doing a workout that intense on a weekly basis.
I’ve also increased the intensity of my separate strength-training and cardio workouts to support doing the burpee workouts with more ease.
In October, which is breast cancer awareness month, I will be collaborating with Emily leRoux, the Spartan Women Global Leader of Spartan Races, Inc. to do a “Burpees for Boobs” event. I am going to coordinate the event here in Maine but the intention is to have these events happening globally in October.
As I reported in last month’s update there has not been a lot of extra time to make significant progress on this goal but I am continuing to share this goal with people who are ready to take action as soon as things are in place.
I’ve got The Maine Women’s Conference coming up on Wednesday, May 9, 2018 in Portland, ME as well as some corporate workshops that need my attention but come June I’m going to be shifting my focus to this event.
Side note: If you have not bought your tickets for The Maine Women’s Conference you can purchase your ticket at themainewomensconference.org. We have Caroline Paul and Maysoon Zayid as keynotes, there will be two panel discussions and I will be one of 12 breakout session speakers. I’ll be talking about one of my favorite topics: How to Grow and Leverage Your Network with Ease!
Again, go to themainewomensconference.org to buy your ticket and I’ll look forward to seeing you there.
I keep reminding myself each week as I do my burpee workout that the preparation to do 1000 burpees at the Burpees for Boobs event in October is the work I am doing to prepare for that event, for now.
For this goal I have not made enough progress to hit The Dip or a dead end so I have no commentary here.
Goal: have a net income (earnings minus expenses) of $80,000 minimum this year.
March’s Profit and Loss report showed a net profit of $2854.72. That is better than February’s profit of $493.82 but still far off from the average $6700/month required to see a net profit of $80,000. Some of my largest business bills come due in February and March and that is past now so I’m looking forward to seeing what the next few months bring.
Am I experiencing a dead end in this area? No.
This is what the slog looks like. I am making progress. The work I am doing is making an impact and I am getting more inquiries for training and coaching. It just takes time and consistent effort to get to the tipping point.
I have been reviewing and tweaking the strategies I have for increasing the profits in my business that may not be getting the traction that I hoped for.
I am continuing to offer the Energy Leadership Assessment, strategy sessions and private coaching. I also will be running a group program over the summer around transforming who you are in your career and business so you can start getting traction and hitting your goals with ease.
I have also been spending more time talking about the corporate trainings during my BNI meeting and in the networking coffee dates I’ve been having. The word is getting out so now my job is to continue to spread the word and create a landing page for the corporate workshops I offer on my website.
Goal: (contingent upon profitability goal) to outsource social media content creation and email inbox management.
If any of my goals feel like a dead end this is the one because it’s based on my profitability goals and I haven’t hit my target on that goal yet.
Something I also didn’t plan for well was figuring into my profitability goal the fact that my business expenses would go up at first to pay for more virtual assistance as I brought in more money. I may start sharing my profit number with and without the expense of outsourcing to show more progress.
In relationships I am not looking to be the best in the world but there are dips and dead ends in relationships that I am becoming more familiar with.
I need to be open-minded and recognize when the work is to stay open-minded and compassionate, while at the same time be able to gauge when there is no chemistry. Or worse, when there is chemistry but the guy is not available, for whatever reason, so I’ll know when to cut my losses and move on.
I have found myself getting a little tired of the process of finding a partner, at least on the dating app.
In my exhaustion I have been questioning my goal in terms of do I need to be in a relationship or is dating casually good enough? Do I care if he’s seeing other people? Am I looking for a partner or am I okay with male attention from someone who at the very least considers my feelings.
I had even considered casually dating someone whose life wasn’t suited to the time commitment of building a relationship. I wondered if I could see him occasionally while I continued my search for a partner. We just got along so well and had great chemistry that I didn’t want to move on.
Who am I kidding? I still don’t want to move on. We had a lot of fun when we were together and I enjoyed the male attention. It is like sunshine on your skin.
The reality is though all those things are okay to start with, I ultimately want a partner, and I know I would become emotionally involved if I continue to see him, and thus emotionally unavailable to other men. It’s the recipe for disaster.
And it’s difficult to walk away from semi-good sunshine into a cold shadow once again. That’s where the boredom started and why the song Dancing in the Dark kept popping into my head.
When I broke down my feelings and my perspective with my mastermind group last week it was pointed out to me that almost all my time and successes were coming from masculine pursuits.
I was spending hardly any time in feminine pursuits. For me this would look like singing, dancing, flirting, gardening, conversations that are not around business, politics or religion.
Flirting and having romance in my life is important and it’s not something I’m capable of denying anymore.
What I’ve also come to realize is, though there is a progression, I want someone to share my life with and I want to be a part of their life.
And where I am in the process right now, being on the dating app, takes practicing patience. I say practicing because I’ve also come to realize I am not naturally a patient person; I have to work at it.
It will also take having thick skin, not taking things personally, and consistently letting go of the past and being open to something new. It takes holding to my boundaries, being honest about what I’m looking for, keeping it light and fun, and not lowering my standards just because I’m temporarily feeling lonely.
None of this is easy. It’s as Seth Godin says, “the long slog between beginning and mastery.” It’s The Dip and I am in it. However, as the cliché goes, I am in it to win it.
Okay, that’s it for now. Again you can join the Tolerations Detox Challenge at womentakingthelead.com/tolerations to remove all the little things in your life that are zapping your energy and leaving you feeling drained by the end of the day and the end of the week.
As always I hope this was of value to you and here’s to your success!
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Zebralove Web Solutions: Your website tells a story about your business! At Zebralove Web Solutions, Milly and her team are going to make sure your website tells the story you want your customers to hear. Connect with Milly at zebralovewebsolutions.com to create the impression you want to make!
Private Facebook Community: Chat, share and collaborate with other women listening to the podcast!
Accomplished: How to Go from Dreaming to Doing: A simple, step by step system that gives you the foundation and structure to take your goals and make them happen.
I feel like it has been a while since I have personally said hello to you. I was horribly ill at the beginning of April and that messed up my production schedule a bit but I am back in full health once again and doing burpees like crazy.
In the “March update on goals” episode I mentioned that I would be talking about The Dip by Seth Godin next and I think this is perfect timing. You’ll have to let me know if this topic resonates with you right now or not but it definitely resonates with me.
“The Dip” Seth Godin explains is a natural phenomenon that occurs when you set out to achieve a goal. At the beginning it’s exciting and interesting so you have a lot of energy and it’s easy to stay engaged.
Then The Dip happens. Seth Godin describes it as “the long slog between beginning and mastery.”
The Dip is what separates the half-hearted from the committed. It is the naturally occurring obstacles (bureaucracy, administrative work, study and practice) that are unenjoyable but required to achieve the goal.
Depending on the goal some dips are longer than others. Think about med school or the career track to becoming the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Typically the bigger the goal the bigger the dip and that’s why so few people emerge on the other end and ultimately achieve that particular goal.
Podcasting is one of those things with a relatively big dip and it’s the reason most podcasts fade after a couple of years. It takes doing a lot of work for a long time week in and week out to grow a loyal audience.
Many people go into podcasting to make money but they quickly realize it’s a marathon and not sprint and they give up before the podcast has a chance to pay off.
Seth Godin also puts forth that that successful people don’t put up with The Dip they actually seek it out and lean into it.
This has been true for me and podcasting as well. I’ve leaned into the work and as a result I’ve grown my network exponentially, I’ve become a better communicator, coach, and human being. I’ve definitely been in The Dip with Women Taking the Lead but by no means has it been wasted time.
According to Seth Godin If you’re not willing to work through the dip you’re better off not investing the time and energy to even start. You are better off investing your time and energy in something you are willing to get so good at you see a return on your investment.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve started and stopped learning a second language because I love the idea of being fluent in another language. I spent countless hours to not even become mediocre because I didn’t have the staying power and the perceived benefits were not enough to get through the dip.
I now take that time and invest it in my podcast and becoming a better host, coach and community leader.
In his book The Dip Seth Godin also talks about another situation that can look like a dip but is actually a dead end. This is a situation where you work and work and work and not much changes; it doesn’t get better or worse. Think dead end jobs and dead end relationships.
It’s important to recognize if you are in a dead end situation so you can get out of it fast because the dead end will keep you from doing something else that would provide better opportunities and results.
There’s a stigma against quitting but the reality is successful people quit all the time; but it’s important to know when to quit. Strategic quitting can actually make you more successful (i.e. letting go of commitments that are distractions to your goals). While reactive or serial quitting can work against you.
Quitting is difficult because it’s hard to admit you’re not going to be that good at something or you’ll never have the opportunities that you hoped for.
Never stay in a dead end because you don’t like the short-term stress. Not quitting when it would be hard to quit is a bad decision.
I’ve seen this with relationships, jobs, investments, team members, marketing plans, etc. If it’s hard to quit or pivot people tend to keep on doing what they are doing even though they are not happy.
If something is not working and it’s not getting better with increased efforts deal with the short-term stress and cut your losses.
If that’s your plan you’re better off not getting started. If you want success you have to:
(1) Recognize if you are in a dip or a dead end. Are you moving forward and making progress?
(2) Having recognized you’re in a dip you have to give it your all especially when it gets stressful because that’s when the transformation takes place.
Quitting in the midst of a true dip is a waste of time and energy and is very foolish. Do the work, push through The Dip and reap the rewards and long-term benefits of sticking with it and giving it your all.
Never quit something with great long-term potential because you don’t like the short-term stress.
Next week I’m going to be giving a progress report on my goals and with each one I’m going to cover if I’m experiencing The Dip in any of them or if a goal is appearing to be a dead end.
Until then, join the Facebook group to be in community to get support and have some fun with other women who are working on their goals too. If you’re going to be in The Dip anyway let’s go through it together. Go to womentakingthelead.com/group to join us.
As always I hope this was helpful to you and here’s to your success!
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Zebralove Web Solutions: Your website tells a story about your business! At Zebralove Web Solutions, Milly and her team are going to make sure your website tells the story you want your customers to hear. Connect with Milly at zebralovewebsolutions.com to create the impression you want to make!
Private Facebook Community: Chat, share and collaborate with other women listening to the podcast!
Accomplished: How to Go from Dreaming to Doing: A simple, step by step system that gives you the foundation and structure to take your goals and make them happen.
Anna brings her special blend of creativity and analysis, along with a commitment to excellence, to all that she does. Anna founded CreativeIQ in 2016 and leads a dynamic team partnering with clients seeking their consulting services in business and organizational strategy development, along with copywriting and communications advice. Based in a small town in regional Western Australia, Anna has rapidly grown the business to service, literally, the world.
Website: https://creativeiq.net/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/annacreativeiq
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/creativeiqconsulting/
Podcast Movement is the world’s largest gathering of new and veteran podcasters, or anyone looking to start their own podcast the right way. For $50 off any level of registration, visit podcastmovement.com and enter promotional code lead.
Zebralove Web Solutions: Your website tells a story about your business! At Zebralove Web Solutions, Milly and her team are going to make sure your website tells the story you want your customers to hear. Connect with Milly at zebralovewebsolutions.com to create the impression you want to make!
Private Facebook Community: Chat, share and collaborate with other women in the community!
Accomplished: How to Go from Dreaming to Doing: A simple, step by step system that gives you the foundation and structure to take your goals and make them happen.
If you enjoyed this episode subscribe in iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Google Play Music or iHeart Radio and never miss out on inspiration and community!
Angela Lussier is an award-winning speaker, five-time author, two-time TEDx presenter, and CEO and founder of the Speaker Sisterhood, a network of speaking clubs that help women discover, awaken, and create their voice through the art of public speaking. Angela is the host of Claim the Stage, a public speaking podcast for women rated #1 on the inspiring podcasts list by Forbes in 2017. She is a contributor to Huffington Post and her work has been featured on ABC, NBC, Forbes, Virgin, and Entrepreneur. Her motto: Stop waiting. Start creating.
Angela’s most defining small moment took place in 2008, when she was employed at an executive recruiting firm. Angela’s job was very refining. She sat at a desk all day, while making calls and reading the same script. Her boss approached her and asked her to create a presentation showcasing how she stood out from the other recruiters. Angela saw this as an amazing opportunity and put together a detailed presentation. After presenting at the meeting, Angela’s boss told her they knew her creativity would be a problem. Angela struggled to fit into the box they made for her, before realizing maybe the problem wasn’t her at all.
Angela leads by example. She shares her stores to inspire and show others how she got to where she is now. Angela also shares tips and shows them the steps they could be taking to move forward. Now that Angela has a staff working for her, she makes sure to ask lots of questions and welcome their ideas so it can be a more productive space, with her team more invested in their jobs.
Angela will be on a speaking tour throughout New England in April. The tour will help spread the word about speaking up and asking what for what you need at home, and at work. Angela will also be promoting her new book, The Secret Life of Speaking Up Prequel: 30 Tiny Speaking Adventures.
As CEO, Angela is often weighed down by financial worries. There is cash flow and revenue, but they are so close to not being a sustainable business. Angela has a goal, and now has a plan to get there by next year.
Angela is a creative person who tends to come up with a lot of ideas, but when there are too many ideas going at once, not much gets accomplished. Angela’s ability to focus on 1 or 2 ideas at a time, and executing them before continuing to new ideas, really helps her lead effectively.
Surrounding yourself with coaches, mentors and a support team, is not essentially a bad thing, but you still need to trust and believe in yourself and the things you want at the same time.
“Stop waiting. Start creating.”
Twitter: https://twitter.com/angelalussier
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/angelalussier/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelalussier
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/speakersisterhood
Speaker Sisterhood: https://speakersisterhood.com
Website: http://angelalussier.us
My episode with Angela on Claim the Stage: https://speakersisterhood.com/2018/01/10/podcast-ep-77-4-ways-to-get-out-of-your-own-way-and-put-yourself-out-there-with-jodi-flynn/
#SpeakUpTour2018: https://speakersisterhood.com/speakup/
“The Secret Life of Speaking Up Prequel: 30 Tiny Speaking Adventures” Book: https://speakersisterhood.com/tiny/
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Zebralove Web Solutions: Your website tells a story about your business! At Zebralove Web Solutions, Milly and her team are going to make sure your website tells the story you want your customers to hear. Connect with Milly at zebralovewebsolutions.com to create the impression you want to make!
Private Facebook Community: Chat, share and collaborate with other women in the community!
Accomplished: How to Go from Dreaming to Doing: A simple, step by step system that gives you the foundation and structure to take your goals and make them happen.
If you enjoyed this episode subscribe in iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Google Play Music or iHeart Radio and never miss out on inspiration and community!
Hello everyone and thank you for joining me. This episode is going to be short and sweet this week for a couple of reasons. I am going to give you a quick update on my goals and frankly, I have learned another lesson about spreading myself too thin.
I did in fact spread myself too thin but this time it wasn’t about time or physical energy, it was creativity. I took on projects that definitely fit in my calendar and were not going to burn a lot of calories but they were going to take a lot of mental focus and creativity.
Before I knew it I was spent and started to have an aversion to sitting at my desk. I started to work with a pad of paper and a pen out in the living room. I lit a candle and made hot cocoa. I tried all my normal tricks and they helped a little but they only got me so far.
Although I would love to offer you some new insights this week I’m going to leave it to updates for the sake of my brain. Next week I’m releasing my interview with Angela Lussier of the Speaker Sisterhood and the week after that I will be coming with a fresh and well-rested 100% Jodi episode on The Dip. The Dip is a book by Seth Godin and subtitle is “A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick).”
Are you feeling that topic? I am and I’m going to share my experiences with you in just a couple of episodes from here.
Until then you know you can always be a part of the community and the conversation in the private facebook group. Go to womentakingthelead.com/group and it will take you right to where you can ask to join and fill out some information about yourself.
On to the update on my goals…
Original goal for strength and endurance was to do 300 Spartan-regulation burpees in good form in one session by June 30. Separately, do an unassisted pull-up.
Let me start with the pull-up. I said I would have the pull-up bands to help with my goal of doing an unassisted pull-up and I received them last week. Now I just need to start incorporating pull-ups into my workouts during the week.
Last month I accomplished my goal of 300 Spartan-regulation burpees in good form in one session on February 20th.
In last month’s episode I reported that I’ve changed my goal to doing 1000 Spartan-regulation burpees in good form in one session. I have the plan all mapped out and as of this morning I have done 425 Spartan-regulation burpees in good form in one session.
I’m shooting to have this goal of 1000 burpees accomplished in October.at a fundraising event.
In last week’s episode I released the Facebook Live I had done with Emily leRoux of Spartan Races on International Women’s Day. In that conversation we announced that in October, which is breast cancer awareness month, we will be collaborating to do a “Burpees for Boobs” event. I am going to coordinate the event here in Maine but the intention is to have these events happening globally in October.
There has not been a lot of extra time to make significant progress on this goal but I have been sharing this goal with a lot of people who are ready to take action as soon as I can give some marching orders.
I am crazy-excited about this and it’s almost chaffing me that other things need my attention before I can give this my full focus. However, there will be more to come on this in a couple of months.
One of my milestones was to join a dating app and I announced last month that I did that.
Additionally, I had a conversation with a friend about going on the dating app and we went back and forth about what I was looking for. After getting some good critical feedback I declared that I would just start with the intention of meeting good human beings. Since then I have met several good human beings and I’m glad I’ve met them. Some I would want to continue to spend time with but no spark just yet.
I have no expectation that this goal will be achieved quickly. My only expectation is that conversations happen that lead to dates, so I can get to know more men.
Goal: have a net income (earnings minus expenses) of $80,000 minimum this year.
February’s Profit and Loss report showed a net profit of $493.82. That’s not good and can be partially explained by where my annual bills fall. Some of my largest bills come due in February and March. I’ve also had some legal work done and if you remember from last month I’ve been giving more work to my Virtual Assistant to alleviate my workload as I begin to take on new projects. That has served me well and I am still in the black.
However, as I stated last month if I’m going to have a net profit of $80,000 I’m going to need to start recording an average net profit of about $6700 a month. So I’m a little further behind but there is more potential in the coming months.
Goal: (contingent upon profitability goal) to outsource social media content creation and email inbox management.
Although I am outsourcing more items to my VA my intention was to outsource social media content creation and the management of my email inbox. I am behind on emails and I don’t feel great about that.
Seeing this goal realized is definitely going to take having the funds available to pay for these services. I am hopeful that this will happen sooner rather than later.
Again you can be a part of the community and the conversation in the private facebook group. Go to womentakingthelead.com/group and it will take you right to where you can ask to join and fill out some information about yourself. I would love to meet you there.
As always I hope this was of value to you and here’s to your success!
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Zebralove Web Solutions: Your website tells a story about your business! At Zebralove Web Solutions, Milly and her team are going to make sure your website tells the story you want your customers to hear. Connect with Milly at zebralovewebsolutions.com to create the impression you want to make!
Private Facebook Community: Chat, share and collaborate with other women listening to the podcast!
Accomplished: How to Go from Dreaming to Doing: A simple, step by step system that gives you the foundation and structure to take your goals and make them happen.
For this bonus episode, I met up with Emily leRoux, the Spartan Women Global Leader for Spartan Races, Inc, for a special Facebook Live recording on International Women's Day.
Emily is a top ranked sales professional with 14 years experience partnering with some of the world's largest consumer businesses in the UK and Japan. An encouraging leader and mentor of a diverse, multicultural team of highly skilled and motivated salespeople and staff. Emily is the founder of Mums in Business Tokyo; an ever-growing network of professional females with one thing in common - we're all frantically trying to find ways to balance working life with everything family life throws at us too. She was nominated as '2016 Entrepreneur of the Year' by the British Chamber of Commerce in Japan.
Emily is heading up Spartan Women and the Global Spartan Women Ambassador Program on a mission to harness the immense ability, inspiration and experiences of Spartan Women, sharing them with our community to inspire others in overcoming the challenges of everyday life.
Original Facebook Live:
https://www.facebook.com/womentakingthelead/videos/878081589038041/
Spartan Women Facebook Group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/spartanwomenofficial/
Spartan Up! interview with Marla Sweeney:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY5bcqyHppQ
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/spartanwomen/
Podcast Movement is the world’s largest gathering of new and veteran podcasters, or anyone looking to start their own podcast the right way. For $50 off any level of registration, visit podcastmovement.com and enter promotional code lead.
Zebralove Web Solutions: Your website tells a story about your business! At Zebralove Web Solutions, Milly and her team are going to make sure your website tells the story you want your customers to hear. Connect with Milly at zebralovewebsolutions.com to create the impression you want to make!
Private Facebook Community: Chat, share and collaborate with other women in the community!
Accomplished: How to Go from Dreaming to Doing: A simple, step by step system that gives you the foundation and structure to take your goals and make them happen.
If you enjoyed this episode subscribe in iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Google Play Music or iHeart Radio and never miss out on inspiration and community!
We are this close to official Spring in the northern hemisphere and I am ready for it! I do appreciate winter for what it brings: reflection, the holidays and the slower pace. At least, it’s supposed to be a slower pace. I do less travelling in the winter but that didn’t stop my schedule this year from being pretty jam-packed.
I am ready to be energized by Spring and I’m looking forward to what this season has to offer.
Spring is also bringing Marianne Williamson to Portland, Maine and I am freaking out. She is the author of the quote at the end of each and every episode of this podcast.
I first heard this quote from her book Return to Love: Reflections on A Course in Miracles exactly 20 years ago. It was 1998 and I was in a leadership development program at the time and one of the other participants read the quote and passed out printed copies of it.
Hearing the quote the first time gave me goosebumps and I remember starting to cry the words resonated so strongly with me. To say Marianne Williamson has had an impact on my life would be an understatement.
Her words changed the way I related to myself and this concept is at the core of the coaching I do today. I feel like this is another of the many blessings that have come into my life when I started putting out to the Universe what I wanted.
Here is the link to buy tickets to this event: http://www.leapinlizards.biz/event/marianne-williamson-love-america-tour/2018-05-06/
This week I wanted to chat about something that has been on my mind because of the work I’ve done for my website and it comes up in conversations on the regular for me.
I promote myself as a coach for Type A women, and naturally that’s my answer to the questions, “What is it you do?” or, “Tell me about your business.” I can see how my answer immediately has the person I’m talking to assessing whether or not they would put themselves in that category.
I often hear as a first response, “I don’t know if I’m Type A” or, “I wouldn’t categorize myself as Type A.”
When I ask a few questions to help them figure it out it commonly turns out that they do in fact have Type A tendencies.
Because this is a common occurrence I debated on changing the language to describe the work that I do.
However, rather than being coy about the fact that women with Type A tendencies are my ideal client I’d would prefer to remove the stigma of being Type A. Because that is what I believe is at the heart of this.
There is a negative connotation in our culture to having Type A tendencies.
The qualities of being driven, goal-oriented, results focused are not considered feminine qualities. The stereotypical image I believe most of us have about a Type A person comes from a masculine image of an aggressive, super-competitive, “winning is the only thing that matters”, workaholic, unfeeling type of person.
That’s not me and that’s not you. I don’t even know many men that would fit this stereotypical description.
I think this negative stereotype of being Type A is why many women shy away from the term Type A until I can get them to see their own natural tendencies and laugh about them.
Let me give you some background on where the term Type A came from, along with some descriptors of Type A tendencies and the positive and negative aspects of these tendencies.
In the 1950s a study on heart disease was conducted by two cardiologists, Drs. Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman. As was common at the time all the subjects of the study were men and this study identified three types of behaviors:
Type A, which they labeled as competitive, ambitious, impatient, aggressive, and fast-talking;
Type B, which is more relaxed and non-competitive, and
Type C, which is hard-working but becomes apathetic when faced with stress.
Now I bet you and I can both consider those categories and see ourselves in some but not all of those descriptors in different areas of our lives.
More research has been done over the years and more nuances to Type A behavior have been uncovered.
For instance, people with Type A tendencies are likely to:
You can hear/see that in this list a balance of strengths and weaknesses and the weakness come when Type A tendencies are un-managed.
If left unmanaged, these tendencies lead to stress, anxiety, frustration, exhaustion, martyrdom, overwhelm, feelings of powerlessness, self-doubt, insomnia, and an inability to concentrate, make decisions, unplug/relax, have fun or feel happy.
All of this impacts the quality of health, relationships, finances, and career or businesses.
I also want to point out that because of our culture more and more people are exhibiting Type A tendencies. There’s more value placed on achievement, to be successful, be known, stand out of the crowd and make a mark, etc.
I can’t speak for other countries but in the US, because of the cost of living the standard American lifestyle most households require both partners to bring in a good salary. This also creates a push to land a great job, have regular career advancement or for the self-employed, to be making enough profit consistently to sustain the household budget.
So people who under different circumstances would have comfortably described themselves at Type B or Type C they are now finding themselves exhibiting Type A tendencies.
It seems pretty bleak talking about un-managed Type A tendencies but I’m here to tell you being Type A is pretty awesome, as long as you are taking care of yourself and keeping it in check.
If you take pleasure in your work and have a value of excellence, what’s so bad about that?
If you are motivated by competition because it brings out your best work and your most creative ideas, what’s so bad about that?
If being driven and focused on results means you can look back on all your efforts and see that they did in fact make a difference and changed the lives of others for the better, what’s so bad about that?
If your leadership and organization rally’s other to achieving their goals, where they might have otherwise been left floundering, what’s so bad about that?
And if you find you are going into overdrive working too much and not finding the space to relax, reach out to me. I can help you to accomplish more by doing less. It’s all about leveraging your strengths so you have more time to relax and stay in a creative and connected space.
Being Type A is pretty awesome and I wouldn’t change if given a choice. I’m speaking for myself when I say I wouldn’t have started my business or this podcast if I wasn’t so driven. I may have written my book but I wouldn’t have gotten so into my health and fitness. I definitely would not have moved to Maine or gotten so many promotions in my corporate career.
There’s nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to hide if you are driven to get results and love the excitement of a new challenge.
Do you need to take excellent care of yourself in and out of your work? Yes, you definitely do.
But if that’s your struggle, that’s what I’m here for. And it’s probably why you’re here as well.
Did that provide any new insights for you? I’d love to get your feedback. Being Type A I love both critical and affirming feedback. I can’t get better if I don’t know what can be improved and I’m all about getting better, thank you very much.
You can comment wherever you found this episode or you can email me directly at Jodi@womentakingthelead.com.
As always I hope my drive for excellence and providing great content was helpful to you and here’s to your success!
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Zebralove Web Solutions: Your website tells a story about your business! At Zebralove Web Solutions, Milly and her team are going to make sure your website tells the story you want your customers to hear. Connect with Milly at zebralovewebsolutions.com to create the impression you want to make!
Jen Hemphill, a military spouse & proud bilingual Latina, helps women who are tired of the traditional money advice gain a renewed sense of control, confidence and freedom in their financial life. She is a Money Confidence Coach, an AFC® (Accredited Financial Counselor) and host of the Her Money Matters® Podcast. Her first book, Her Money Matters: The Missing Truths From Traditional Money Advice, helps to fill the missing gaps for when you are financially stuck.
Jen had no intention to ever write a book. Perfectionism held her back from ever adding it to her bucket list. Until one day, a publisher approached her and asked if she was interested in writing a book. Jen realized it was a great opportunity that she couldn’t pass up. In the process, Jen was able to observe her journey around money and mold her advice more around why she was getting stuck.
We have all heard the same traditional money advice, but sometimes it doesn’t work that cut and dry. You work so hard on what you are supposed to do, but often it doesn’t work out the way it should. Jen believes a big problem is that we aren’t talking enough about the emotional part of it… the money mindset.
When Jen refers to your money headquarters it is essentially a hub for your money. When you build a house, you start with the foundation, which is like your money mindset. Then you build from there, piece by piece. The next piece is money actions, then money skills. If you don’t have a strong foundation, just like a house, its not going to be steady.
Confidence. “Grab the confidence and run with it.”
Website: http://jenhemphill.com
Book: http://jenhemphill.com/book
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Zebralove Web Solutions: Your website tells a story about your business! At Zebralove Web Solutions, Milly and her team are going to make sure your website tells the story you want your customers to hear. Connect with Milly at zebralovewebsolutions.com to create the impression you want to make!
Private Facebook Community: Chat, share and collaborate with other women in the community!
Accomplished: How to Go from Dreaming to Doing: A simple, step by step system that gives you the foundation and structure to take your goals and make them happen.
The Accomplished Community: A community of entrepreneurial Type A women uniting to achieve their biggest goals with confidence, integrity and a sense of humor.
If you enjoyed this episode subscribe in iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Google Play Music or iHeart Radio and never miss out on inspiration and community!
I hope this episode finds you well and well on your way to achieving your goals. This is the last episode of the month so as promised I will be giving you an update on my goals.
The Accomplished Intensive has kicked off and I am very excited to be partnering with the women who said yes to invest in themselves and allow me to guide them through the next phase of their journey. It’s not always an easy decision and the benefits begin right away which is so cool to witness and be a part of.
If doing a group program was not in the cards for you at this time but you still feel like you need some insight, some support or some direction I’m going to suggest you take the Energy Leadership Assessment. This is the assessment tool I am licensed to administer and I use with my clients to get right to the heart of what is holding them back from having the business, the career and the life they want.
We oftentimes think it’s the circumstances that are keeping us stuck but that is rarely the case, and we have way more power than we realize. This assessment tool reveals where your power lies and where you have been giving your power away. It is amazing, it is powerful and it is eye-opening. If you need a little boost and this sounds like what you need right now go to womentakingthelead.com/coaching. You’ll get more information on the assessment and can purchase it there if you so choose.
While sharing the progress I’ve made on my goals I’m also going to share with you some of the realizations I’ve had as I am thinking about my goals and taking action on them. This is very personal and I’m a little queasy sharing this but from all the feedback I’ve been getting from you I know my being open about my experience is helping you to face your fears and make progress on your goals.
I’m going to start off with my relationship goal because that’s where the most stuff has been coming up.
Goal #2 Be in a relationship.
Goal: be in a committed, monogamous, romantic partnership with a man.
Here are some of the good things that are going on in regard to the metrics and milestones I set.
In terms of taking on embodying being more open to partnership and having fun, I have practiced being more aware and less hyper-focused when I'm out and about. I don’t want give off signals like I'm already in a relationship or I'm too busy or disinterested in chatting with strangers. That is going well. I’ve made eye contact with more men, I’ve gotten appreciate glances an smiles back so I’m definitely getting feedback from those around me that I’m doing something different.
I have continued to tell more people about my goal and my preference to be introduced to men who are into personal development. No set ups yet but as I write this I’m realizing I’m not being explicit in asking the person I’m talking with to introduce me to the single men they know who are into personal development.
A male friend of mine challenged me on this need to have someone who is into personal development. He thought I was limiting myself and that part of being in relationship was to have someone who balanced you out. I’m still pondering this. Please weigh in. Send me a note or comment on any of the posts about this episode on social medial.
I have also researched online dating apps and asked around as to which one would be the best for me. I committed to being signed up on an app by the end of the month and that is done. I’ve only been on for a few days at the time of this recording and I can say so far it has been fun and interesting.
In terms of milestones and metrics I am on track with this goal. But let’s face it working toward a goal is never limited to whether or not you take the action. There is a whole mental, emotional and spiritual component to achieving our goals. If there weren’t we would have already achieved them by now.
Without putting any effort into uncovering them our limiting beliefs that have held us back in certain areas will rear their ugly heads when we begin to take action, or even consider taking action, and you will be overcome with the experience of it. This is what has been happening to me and although it’s not pleasant it’s an opportunity to change the belief. I was astounded not only by the belief itself, because it was an illogical belief, but as I worked through one belief another would be revealed. It’s fascinating!
The first belief that got in my face was I am not worthy, lovable enough, or deserve to be in a relationship. Who would want me?
This is not logical but it creeps into my psyche in moments of doubt. The ego is not logical and it repeats and harps on limiting beliefs to taunt you and get you to hold back and play small. So I faced this one head on and also talked through it with a friend.
I was in a good place and feeling myself moving forward and then the next limiting belief hit me a couple of days later: I resist receiving love and so will sabotage anything good that comes along. My conflict with receiving love is not limited to the area of romantic relationship. It also plays itself out in the areas of accepting help, accepting compliments or payment for my services, which also has impacted my ability to earn income in my business.
I would much rather be the giver because it is safer, more acceptable and to be honest I’m in control of what and how much I give. Sometimes without warning someone pays a compliment, gives a gift or asks to hire me. The accepting of this love does not happen as naturally or easily as you think it would. It takes some effort for me to manage myself in these moments and be gracious.
Even hearing “Thank you” can be annoying to me at times. Isn’t that interesting?
Today as I was gathering my thoughts for this episode I was randomly on my phone cleaning up the podcast app to remove any podcasts I have not listened to in some time.
I came across the Affirmations Podcast which I have not listened to in months. I went in to see if the host was still releasing episodes, because if she wasn’t I was just going to delete the podcast off my phone. I saw that yes she was still releasing episodes and the latest episode was titled Receiving Love. How funny is that? I feel supported in dealing with this limiting belief because clearly the Universe is on it and is sending me the messengers I need.
The most recent limiting belief I encountered around relationship was I will have to give up full control over my life. Where I live, holidays, meals, entertainment will all be a negotiation. Rather than looking at this as an adventure I was looking at it as a loss of freedom. The actual belief can probably be translated to “negotiation is burdensome.” I definitely need to change my mindset around this one.
The other interesting thing is that although these limiting beliefs have come up primarily in regard to relationship I can see how they have, and if left unchecked would continue to, hold me back with my other goals.
This may sound a little odd but I’m actually looking forward to the next layer of limiting beliefs that I can face because when I do face them and move through them I feel space, something opens and creates more possibilities in my life. More on that in a bit.
I’m going to talk about two my goals together because they are starting to overlap.
Goal #1 Build more strength and endurance.
Goal #4 Do a Women Taking the Lead branded full-day event in the summer or fall
Goal for strength and endurance: Do 300 Spartan-regulation burpees in good form in one session by June 30. Separately, do an unassisted pull-up.
Originally I guessed my baseline was 50 burpees and on January 12 I discovered it was actually 100. The surprises keep coming because I can report to you that I have already achieved my goal of doing 300 Spartan-regulation burpees in good form in one workout session.
It seems a little shocking to me that I achieved this goal so fast but in retrospect it’s not surprising anymore. I want to offer this to you because this is what happened.
I changed my mind. Yes, I changed my mind.
I had a belief of who I was and what I was capable of and I changed it.
I believed it would take me until May to do 300 burpees and it took me until February. It definitely helped to just get started but even when I hit 120 and 150 burpees in one session I still didn’t see 300 burpees so close on the horizon.
At one point when I was doing my burpee workout I decided I was someone who could easily do 300 burpees and within 2 weeks I did.
I have changed my goal to doing 1000 Spartan-regulation burpees in good form in one session. I believe I can easily achieve this by December 31, 2018 but I’m actually going to attempt to achieve this goal sooner. I know I can do this because I’ve decided I’m someone who can easily do 1000 burpees in one session. I’ve already got my plan in an Excel spreadsheet.
This is the key to achieving your goals and it’s at the heart of my coaching system.
You have to decide you are the person who can achieve your goal. You are the type of person who does it easily. If you struggle with this I know a great coach who can help you. Because I’m the type of person who can coach someone around this.
During one of my burpee sessions I got the inspiration to turn the achievement of 300 burpees into an event. The idea became a vision to find a place to accomplish this goal, invite others to burpees with me (although they don't have to shoot for 300 burpees) but it could be a fundraiser for a local charity and maybe do a Facebook live.
The last time I talked about this on the podcast I was playing with this idea but this idea is now becoming a reality. I am teaming up with Spartan Races, Inc., and many other local businesses to do a fundraiser in the Greater Portland area in the Fall. The details are still being hashed out so stay tuned on that.
I also have the goal to do one unassisted pull-up by the end of the year. I have not ordered the pull-up bands yet so I will put that on my list to get done before the goals update at the end of March. Also, I declared that if I can't do a pull-up by September I'm going to hire a personal trainer to help me with this goal.
Goal #3 Increase profitability in my business.
Goal: have a net income (earnings minus expenses) of $80,000 minimum.
I have created a spreadsheet that outlines how many books, assessments, strategy sessions, group programs, private coaching packages, etc. that I need to sell in order to hit my goal. I have definitely focused on the marketing and the promotion of those things.
I have also had more people reach out to me out of the blue wanting to talk about private coaching and doing workshops within the workplace, so there is a lot of potential for increased profits there.
January’s Profit and Loss report showed a net profit of $4,115.49. That ended up much better than it was looking mid-month so that’s great. However, if I’m going to have a net profit of $80,000 I’m going to need to start recording an average net profit of about $6700 a month. So I’m a little behind but like I mentioned there is a more potential in the coming months.
Goal #5 Outsourcing. I originally stated that Outsourcing was going to be contingent upon my profitability goal so I didn’t expect to see much action here. However, all the prep work and meetings that have gone into this potential new work in the coming months had me leaning on my VA for more support in the past few weeks and so this goal has already seen some movement.
The key to achieving this goal will be a matter of whether I can sustain it. I don’t want to outsource and then take work back. I want to outsource and continue to have so much paid work coming into my business that there is no thought of ever taking work that I’ve delegated back.
Ultimately, this has only made sense because some of the extra work I’ve asked of my VA was work related to the promotion of my products and services. The hope being the extra work I’ve paid her for will come to have paid for itself many times over and then I can give her more projects which she has been eager to get.
I also have to recognize that in the short-term my profitability goal will take a hit but this does not mean it’s a bad thing. It’s an investment now for more profit down the line.
I want to mention again the Energy Leadership Assessment because this tool is brilliant at revealing the limiting beliefs and the perspective you have of yourself, other people and the world that limits your ability to experience and have the life you want. If you’ve been wondering where you get started this is it.
This assessment is a low-cost, low-risk, high value experience that will clear the path and get you moving toward your ultimate goals. Go to womentakingthelead.com/coaching to find out more and to get started.
Please feel free to reach out to me regarding anything you heard in this podcast or if you are looking for some support with limiting beliefs and the achievement of your goals for 2018. You can reach me at jodi@womentakingthelead.com.
As always I hope this was helpful to you and here’s to your success!
Zebralove Web Solutions: Your website tells a story about your business! At Zebralove Web Solutions, Milly and her team are going to make sure your website tells the story you want your customers to hear. Connect with Milly at zebralovewebsolutions.com to create the impression you want to make!
Private Facebook Community: Chat, share and collaborate with other women listening to the podcast!
Accomplished: How to Go from Dreaming to Doing: A simple, step by step system that gives you the foundation and structure to take your goals and make them happen.
Jen Hatzung is a business strategist who focuses on social media, online strategy + influencer marketing, as well as a podcaster (podcast currently on hiatus) who lives in Norfolk, VA with her husband, daughter, and dachshund.
She can be found drinking copious amounts of coffee while making lists and strategizing when she can fit in her next run. She currently co-leads her local MOPS group, runs her own skincare and makeup business, and does the preschool/naptime hustle helping small business owners with online engagement and strategy. She is on a personal journey to learn how to live a life of abundance.
Before she embarked on her motherhood journey she was managed the social media for a non-profit as well as a social shopper agency that paired brands with bloggers.
If there is any time left in the day she has her nose in a book or watching HGTV.
Instagram: @JenHatzung
Instagram: @abundantaffirmations
Website: JenHatzung.com
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Podcast Movement is the world's largest gathering of new and veteran podcasters, or anyone looking to start their own podcast the right way. For $50 off any level of registration, visit podcastmovement.com and enter promotional code lead.
Zebralove Web Solutions: Your website tells a story about your business! At Zebralove Web Solutions, Milly and her team are going to make sure your website tells the story you want your customers to hear. Connect with Milly at zebralovewebsolutions.com to create the impression you want to make!
Private Facebook Community: Chat, share and collaborate with other women in the community!
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Hello everyone. Thank you for joining me! Here we are kicking off the week of Valentine’s Day. We are celebrating one of my favorite things: LOVE!
Remember this holiday is not only about romantic love. Although I do have a goal to be in partnership this year, this day is intended to bring our attention and awareness to all the relationships in which we share love; that could be family members, friends, colleagues, team members, you name it.
Be sure to spread the love this week as a kickoff to showing appreciation and gratitude for those you love throughout the year.
I had a few experiences recently in which I felt loved in this community and in the work that I do. In one day I received emails from three different women in this community and let me tell you, I felt tightness in my chest and had watery eyes with each one.
I got permission to share their emails on the podcast because I thought what they shared might be helpful to you as well.
The first one was from Karen.
“Hi Jodi! I have been on fire since completing the tolerations detox. Still much to be done, but I am blasting through barriers!
My New Year’s resolution is 4 words... be good to yourself. :)
Thanks for all you do! Please feel free to use me as a reference or testimonial!
Have a great weekend!”
That was pretty sweet and then this email from Kathy came within the hour:
“Guess what?! I finally put on my big girl pants and decided to face my financial distraction. Knowing my credit is in bad shape, I neglect viewing my credit report. I finally did it! And while yes my credit score is bad, it's a pretty small amount of money to clean it up! I felt both ashamed and encouraged when I realized that and made a plan to tackle it! Yeah!”
In my response I did address with Kathy the shame piece. With so much progress why feel ashamed? I suggested she focus on the feeling of relief that her credit score could be easily restored and she agreed that felt much better.
Lastly I received this email from Ashley and I want to use this to springboard the topic for today:
“I feel really different lately. Not quite what I would call enlightened, but I've definitely turned a corner. I feel GRACEFUL! :D
I don't put my foot in my mouth - as much. ;)
I have patience; I’m grateful, calm when needed, though I’m still so full of energy! I take time to really focus on people when they speak to me. I find myself making sure I’ve worded the email correctly before i just hit send, all willy-nilly.
I feel like I can see how my love and light are touching the hearts of the people I interact with. I’m having deep conversations with strangers - well, rather than, ‘this weather sucks’, it’s more like, ‘I love how we get time to slow down when it snows!’
I remember back when I started on this path, 18ish months ago. I wrote something in an email to you about how I wanted to be like you. And you responded that I already was. I couldn’t see then what you meant, but now I do. Greatness is in all of us! We've just been told that we weren't good at x, or we failed at z, and are subconsciously afraid to try it again.
I'm not sure what exactly I'm trying to say here. I have this question... I might as well share it; maybe you're the person who can answer it??
What is the simplest way to get someone from not seeing how wonderful they are to realizing their true potential?
Ha! That is such a big question. And I'd venture a guess that the answer is different for all of us.
I've noticed that being present is pretty important. Maybe it's #1.
You're tapped into this line of thought... What are your thoughts on the subject?”
Oh Ashley, you just hit on the work that I do. This is exactly the journey I take my clients on; from not seeing themselves to recognizing and owning how amazing and talented they already are. From there, their relationships begin to change in a good way. And they begin leaning into and leveraging all they’ve been blessed with so they don’t have to work so hard to find their success.
However, to Ashley’s question, she is asking how she can do this for others and I’m guessing you probably have some people in your life that you wish would just realize they are already amazing so they can stop holding themselves back. What can you do to help these people?
This was my response to Ashley’s email:
“The answer I have to your question, "What is the simplest way to get someone from not seeing how wonderful they are to realizing their true potential?” is modeling and reflecting back.
You can't make a person see themselves any way in which they are not ready to see. However, rather than getting frustrated with them or trying to manipulate them to change (which would be coming from a place of judging them unfavorably) you interact with their highest self in all situations.
That's what you picked up on in our first interaction. I don't interact with the person who says she is confused, I interact with the being who is on a quest for answers. And that is what you are seeing in yourself now.
I am you and you are me. If I am seeing lack in another it's because I see the lack in myself and cannot tolerate it. When I am able to celebrate myself for the being I am, however I am, I can celebrate others for the being they are, however they are. You are fabulous, even when you are cranky. ;)”
You and I have heard this before but it bears hearing many times: we cannot make other people change; we can only control our own behavior. Furthermore, another person is less likely to change if they feel like we need them to change in order to find them more acceptable.
Think back on your own experiences when you may have felt that you were judged and found lacking by another person. How motivated were you to change for them? Depending on who it was you may have made an attempt but probably couldn’t sustain it because it wasn’t motivated by an internal desire for growth.
It’s hard enough to make changes to our behavior even when we want to change. Think of all the New Year’s resolutions you couldn’t sustain because it was too hard or you didn’t really, really, really, really want to make the change.
Now consider how hard it is to change because someone else wants us to. The desire and the motivation are not strong enough.
However, I do recall times when another person consistently treated me with admiration and respect. I could tell in every interaction they saw something in me I didn’t quite see yet but I wanted to. And with enough contact with these people I eventually did.
You almost can’t help it. When someone treats you that way and sees you as perfect you find yourself living up to expectations. When you see what’s possible in yourself you start to explore that uncharted territory to become more familiar with it. Eventually it is so natural to you that you wonder that you didn’t see it before.
If you want others to see themselves the way you see them (as wonderful) you must consistently reflect back to them through your words, body language, tone and behavior how wonderful they are.
Don’t be put off if they try to deny it or test you on your stance. Some people want to know for sure if you are being genuine and they will act out to see if you stay consistent. They may not even be aware they are doing this.
And some people, through their past experience, have a hard time trusting others. They may openly display their distrust of your motives and even say something to you about it. They’ve been burnt and have a hard time believing anyone would be nice to them without wanting something from them.
I’ve had people become visibly upset and even openly hostile because I was being too nice to them.
Don’t let them put you off. If you see something wonderful in another, it’s there. Keep gently reflecting it back to them.
Just know they won’t change until they can see it for themselves and that they have to do on their own.
Keep modeling for them a person who sees wonder within themselves and wonder within other people. You need to be the role model for others to see what’s possible.
This situation will show up in all areas and levels of leadership: at work, at home, within friendships, volunteering and participation in other organizations you choose to join.
I know many of you are in various stages of your own journey of personal development, higher consciousness, and spirituality – whatever you want to name it. If ever you want to share your experience or ask a question, reach out! I love talking about this stuff!
And if you want to supercharge your journey I’m going to encourage you to join The Accomplished Intensive.
The Accomplished Intensive is a program designed to help you see and own who you truly are at your core and then make the changes in your external environment so you are living in alignment with who you really are.
When this happens you are suddenly moving quickly toward accomplishing everything you dreamed about.
It sounds airy-fairy I know but I have witnessed this process time and again. I have seen my clients go from being worn out, overworked, sick of having their nights and weekends eaten up with work to having the systems and relationships in place that allow work to come to them and be completed with less effort.
My clients experience less stress and have more free time for their health, hobbies, vacations, whatever they want to also be spending time on.
If you are curious about The Accomplished Intensive go to womentakingthelead.com/intensive. This program is starting February 20 so if this sounds like what you’ve been looking for and you want to join me and other ambitious go-getting women who also want more joy and freedom in their life, register and let’s get started. Go to womentakingthelead.com/intensive
As always I hope this was helpful to you and here’s to your success!
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Zebralove Web Solutions: Your website tells a story about your business! At Zebralove Web Solutions, Milly and her team are going to make sure your website tells the story you want your customers to hear. Connect with Milly at zebralovewebsolutions.com to create the impression you want to make!
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Accomplished: How to Go from Dreaming to Doing: A simple, step by step system that gives you the foundation and structure to take your goals and make them happen.
Kristy Wallace is the CEO of Ellevate Network, and is responsible for executing Ellevate Network’s mission to close the gender achievement gap in business by providing professional women with a global community to lean on and learn from. Kristy strives to support women and girls in achieving their dreams. She is the host of the Ellevate Podcast: Conversations with Women Changing the Face of Business; an Angel Investor with Pipeline Angels, and organization creating capital for women and non-binary femme social entrepreneurs; a Member of the UN Women Global Innovation Coalition for Change; an Advisor for the 92Y Women in Power Fellowship for Rising Female Leaders; on the Advisory Council for the Villanova University Innovation, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship Institute; Co-Chair of the Leadership Advisory Board for the Girl Scouts of Greater NYC; and a Board Member at Workforce Professionals Training Institute.
Tweet: @kristysisko is sharing her story to inspire you on Women Taking the Lead https://womentakingthelead.com/246 #inspiration
After having her children, Kristy was unsure what she wanted to do with her career. She is the type of person who always puts in 110% to whatever she is doing, and she didn’t know if she could balance work and home. Kristy applied for jobs she wasn’t really excited about, thinking it would help, but she just ended up undervaluing herself.
Kristy is honest with herself about her strengths and weaknesses. It is also really important for her as a leader to get to know her team, how they communicate and how they learn. It’s not one size fits all when it comes to being a leader.
Ellevate Network focuses on supporting women in business and how to give them more resources to get ahead or help them through professional or residential transitions. They have been making more progress they are really excited about it.
With a growing team, Kristy knows they need more structure and details to act upon but she struggles with how to break down her vision into those micro details.
Kristy ensures she is very approachable. She also believes that being open to feedback and being connected to your team helps the whole company thrive.
Don’t overthink it.
“Love what you do.”
Twitter: @kristysisko + @ellevatentwk
Instagram: @ellevate_ntwk and @kristyawallace
Ellevate Network on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EllevateNetwork/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristysiskowallace/
Podcast Movement is the world’s largest gathering of new and veteran podcasters, or anyone looking to start their own podcast the right way. For $50 off any level of registration, visit podcastmovement.com and enter promotional code lead.
Private Facebook Community: Chat, share and collaborate with other women in the community!
Accomplished: How to Go from Dreaming to Doing: A simple, step by step system that gives you the foundation and structure to take your goals and make them happen.
The Accomplished Community: A community of entrepreneurial Type A women uniting to achieve their biggest goals with confidence, integrity and a sense of humor.
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We are just about to close out January. Can you believe we are already checking off one month in 2018?
I hope you are feeling momentum and a sense of “I got this” now that we are a few weeks in. If you don’t I want you to know you are not alone!
There is a virtual workshop I am doing next week on how to get hours back in your week and in retrospect I am seeing that I will be doing this workshop prior to starting the Tolerations Detox Challenge the next time I run it.
The reason for this is the biggest obstacle those who did the challenge faced was not having enough time to keep up the pace and complete the challenge.
What has been heartening is I am still getting messages from women letting me know they fell off but they are carving out time in the next couple of weeks to complete it.
They are reporting that they’ve seen the benefits of identifying and removing tolerations from their life, even though they may have only addressed two or three thus far. Those benefits include a sense of relief, feeling in control, having more mental and physical energy and feeling like they can tackle more.
Also, I’ve been getting feedback on The Accomplished Intensive. The common theme is, “it sounds great but an 8 week commitment feels too overwhelming right now.”
I get it so I’m going to break the intensive into two separate shorter programs and you’ll be hearing more on that soon!
As for the workshop next week, this idea came to me as I was getting all this feedback.
For those of you struggling with managing your time, whether you’re currently still working through the Tolerations Detox Challenge, thinking about doing The Accomplished Intensive, or you just are overwhelmed with what you’ve already got going on in your life, this workshop may be the thing that draws the line in sand for you regarding overwhelm.
I’m going to cover 7 different strategies that will help you get control of your time, your calendar and your peace of mind so you are accomplishing everything you want to be accomplishing with more ease and a sense that there is plenty of time.
To find out more about this workshop and to sign up go to womentakingthelead.com/time.
If this workshop interests you but you can’t make the call live, don’t worry about it, still register. I will be recording the call and sending the link to the video and worksheets to anyone who registers.
Since this episode represents month end I thought I would give you and update on the progress I’ve made with my goals at the very end of this episode. Since many of you expressed how helpful it was for me to use myself as an example for creating goals, I’m going to give monthly updates that will be in the 100% Jodi episode at the end of each month.
In this episode I am going to cover transparency, authenticity and vulnerability. These have become buzzwords in the current vernacular.
We have a strong desire to connect with something real. Turns out reality TV is actually staged and the current requirement for political correctness has caused an avoidance of truth.
With all the media channels, social or otherwise, that we are now on to engage with our friends and find out what’s going on out in the world we have also exposed ourselves to an enormous amount of over-done marketing.
It can be exhausting.
On the flip side is the experience when someone without drama or manipulation tells the truth.
They open up their minds, their hearts and share their experiences in the hopes they can connect with others and be helpful to them.
Just thinking about the experiences I’ve had when another person was willing to be real with me, it makes me feel joy. I sigh with relief because we can let go of the pretenses and have a real conversation about things that mean something to us.
You can see why the pendulum is swinging and we are craving more of these experiences. Now many people are jumping on the movement to be more real but this is also causing the waters to muddy because people are using the terms transparency, authenticity and vulnerability incorrectly and it’s creating some confusion.
Given that I have taken on Vulnerability as my theme for 2018 I am especially interested in clarifying these terms because it will keep my intention top of mind.
To start let me give you some simple definitions.
Transparency is how much you share.
Transparency has more to do with the quantity of information you share rather than the relevance or quality of information you share.
People or organizations that have a core-value of transparency will likely let you see a good deal of their records but you may have no interest in that information.
Authenticity is the truth of your words and actions.
Authenticity has more to do with the quality of the information you share rather than the quantity and it is backed up in everything you do.
People who have a core-value of authenticity will not quibble or try to couch their responses to your questions. They will give you their honest perspective and their gut-reactions. You may not like what you hear them say but that’s your issue, not theirs.
Vulnerability is the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally.
The added layer that is required to being vulnerable is risk. You have to be willing to risk rejection or attack. This is why Brene Brown, who is a social researcher on shame and human connection, rarely talks about vulnerability without discussing bravery.
To truly connect with others we must be brave and take the risk of getting vulnerable.
To be vulnerable you must share more than you are comfortable with and be completely honest in the sharing.
In The Accomplished Community, which is my membership community, we have two Zoom calls a month when anyone and everyone can jump on to ask questions, get feedback from the group or get coaching.
In one of our December calls someone asked about how to build confidence. There were a lot of great tips shared by the whole group. After it was done I invited everyone, rather than focusing on building confidence, to take on being more vulnerable.
Because when you are willing to be vulnerable you don’t need confidence and those you are speaking with are more likely to connect with you as a human, as a professional and as an expert.
I did a presentation for a local women’s network about a year ago and one of my clients came and sat in the front row.
After the presentation she came up to me all excited and said, “I couldn’t believe it. When you started talking you did great and then I saw your hands were shaking and I realized you were nervous!”
I responded, “Yes, I was nervous! There are a lot of powerful women in this room.”
She went on, “Before today I would have never imagined you getting nervous about anything. And while I watched you be nervous and still do a great presentation I realized I can do it to. Before today if something made me nervous I would avoid it. Now I know I can be nervous and do it anyway.”
Spoiler alert: before I speak and probably for a good minute or two at the beginning I get nervous. Some of it’s just excitement but nonetheless my mouth will get dry, my voice my tremble and my hands may shake. I don’t let that stop me.
Because I’m clear that I can help people by doing public speaking I take the risk of looking foolish and I speak, openly and honestly. That’s vulnerability.
Just like The Accomplished Community I want to encourage you to find more opportunities to seek to be vulnerable rather than confident.
For those of you who need to tell your story as a part of your business or your career you’re going to need to get vulnerable if you want to create a human connection. I’m not just talking about facts and figures. That’s transparency.
You need to be transparent and authentic to the point that you expose yourself to being judged and rejected. That’s vulnerability.
If you are looking to transform a relationship in any area of your life, that’s going to take vulnerability.
If you want to have influence, start a movement or gain buy-in... You guessed it, vulnerability.
To quote Brene Brown in her book, Daring Greatly…
“Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.” ~ Brené Brown
Vulnerability is on the agenda this year for me and so is my helping you to feel more freedom in your time.
For those of you struggling with managing your time my workshop may be the thing that does the trick for you in letting go of overwhelm.
In this online workshop I’m going to cover 7 different strategies that will help you get control of your time, your calendar and your peace of mind so you are accomplishing everything you want to be accomplishing with more ease and a sense that there is plenty of time.
If this workshop interests you but you can’t make the call live, don’t worry about it, still register. I will be recording the call and sending the link to the video and worksheets to anyone who registers.
1. Build more strength and endurance.
Goal: Do 300 Spartan-regulation burpees in one session by June 30. Separately, do an unassisted pull-up.
Originally I guessed my baseline was 50 burpees in a session but turns out my baseline was 100 and the next week I did 120 burpees and then last week I did 140 burpees. At this rate I will hit 300 burpees well before June 30.
And during one of my burpee sessions I got the inspiration to turn the achievement of 300 burpees into an event. Maybe find a place to accomplish this goal, invite others to burpee with me (they don't have to do 300 burpees) but it could be a fundraiser for a local charity and maybe do a Facebook live. I'm still playing with the idea.
So it was great that I was more fit than I had guessed but I was feeling like I was going to have to really raise the bar on the area of strength and endurance and then I remembered, Oh yeah I also have to do a pull-up. I don't think I'm going to accomplish this goal so easily so it will probably keep me busy for a while.
I already have a pull-up bar. My next step is to buy a set of pull up bands. I'll start with the largest band for support and graduate to a smaller band when I can do 3 sets of 5 pull-ups in one session. That sounds right but if you’re a personal trainer and you have a better idea for me let me know. I am totally open to feedback on this goal.
And if I can't do a pull-up by September I'm going to hire a personal trainer to help me with this goal.
2. Be in a relationship.
Goal: be in a committed, monogamous, romantic partnership with a man.
*I am taking on embodying being more open to partnership and having fun (look the part). I tend to be very focused when I'm out and about and I have gotten feedback from friends and family that I give off signals like I'm already in a relationship or I'm too busy or disinterested in chatting with strangers. Sigh. I'm going to have to change that.
*I have begun telling my family and friends about my goal and ask that they introduce me to single men that they admire and who they think I would get along with, preferably a man with some goals in life who is interested in self-improvement.
*I have also started to research online dating apps and been asking around as to which one would be the best for me. If you've successfully done online dating and you have any tips for me please reach out - jodi@womentakingthelead.com. My intention is to do the organic thing to start and then create an account in online dating app by end of February.
3. Increase profitability in my business.
Goal: have a net income (earnings minus expenses) of $80,000 minimum.
I have created a spreadsheet that outlines how many books, assessments, strategy sessions, group programs, private coaching packages, etc. that I need to sell in order to hit my goal.
Now I’m focusing on the marketing and the promotion of those things.
As for my Profit and Loss report I’m going to have to give you the January update in the episode I do at the end of February but I’m in the black at this point by about $1000 and I am pre-recording this obviously so the final numbers are not in. However, if I’m going to have a net profit of $80,000 I’m going to have to do a lot better than this.
The last two goals, 4. Do a Women Taking the Lead branded full-day event in the summer or fall and 5. Outsourcing are contingent upon my profitability goal so no real action taken in these areas as of yet but I’ve started documenting some actions steps I can take when I’m ready to take action.
Okay, that’s it for now. Please feel free to reach out to me regarding anything you heard in this podcast or if you are looking for some support with vulnerability or your goals for 2018 you can reach me at jodi@womentakingthelead.com.
As always I hope this was helpful to you and here’s to your success!
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Private Facebook Community: Chat, share and collaborate with other women listening to the podcast!
Accomplished: How to Go from Dreaming to Doing: A simple, step by step system that gives you the foundation and structure to take your goals and make them happen.
I have for you another on-air coaching call all around how to still pursue a long-term goal even if you know you have to wait before everything will fall into place. There’s always something we can do and that makes us feel good, more empowered in our own destiny and our day-to-day.
Before we dive into that I wanted to tell you about a special call that is happening for this community. Let me give you some background on this call. Starting on January 1 and running until January 10 I lead a challenge to help everyone increase their energy, focus and wellbeing as they were beginning the New Year. Well, something happened during The Tolerations Detox Challenge that was surprising and yet not surprising at all.
During the challenge we covered what we were tolerating in various areas of life in the following order: health and wellness, home and transportation, work and technology, finances and lastly relationships.
Some people reached out for help for the first few challenges but when we got to finances, the comments in the Facebook group went up as well as the number of SOS emails hitting my inbox.
After getting so much feedback on how intimidating/annoying and scary it was to look at and take action around finances I knew this was not limited to the participants of the challenge, this is a universal fear.
So I've called in the big guns for help! Jen Hemphill of Her Money Matters was my roommate at Podcast Movement in 2016 and we hit it off! I love her energy, insight and genuine compassion for women who struggle with their personal finances.
She and I have been on each other's podcasts and her episode on Women Taking the Lead is the most downloaded episode to date!
She is about to be a published author on the subject so she's got the subject of money down. And when I asked Jen for her help she was an immediate, "Yes!" I love that about her. :)
To get an overview of the areas she is going to cover and to reserve your seat (only 50 people will be able to be on the call live): MONEY FREEDOM
Even if you cannot make it register, even if you are hearing this after the call happened and you want to hear it, register. I will be recording our call and sending the replay to everyone who has registered.
Christina Mathis is a classically trained pianist with a Bachelor of Arts in Piano Performance from Judson College in Marion, Alabama. Christina has extensive experience as a church musician, collaborative pianist, and music educator. She has been teaching private piano lessons for more than 25 years and in private schools throughout Alabama for 13 years as a classroom music teacher and choral director.
Christina currently teaches private lessons at her home studio and is pursuing a Masters in Music Education from Liberty University Online and national certification from the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA).
Christina lives in Decatur, Alabama, where she is pianist at First Baptist Church Decatur, choral pianist and piano teacher at Austin High School, and staff accompanist at University of North Alabama in Florence.
Christina has been in the process of "cleaning up" her career. She has does some work over the past year to focus on the work she loves to do, teaching piano. However, there is still more work to do but given everything she has going on, and her big dream cannot be accomplished right now, she's feeling unsettled with life.
Email: christina.genae@gmail.com
Facebook: @christinamathismusic
Instagram: @christinamathismusic
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Private Facebook Community: Chat, share and collaborate with other women in the community!
Accomplished: How to Go from Dreaming to Doing: A simple, step by step system that gives you the foundation and structure to take your goals and make them happen.
Hello and thank you for joining me! The Tolerations Detox Challenge wrapped up this past week and it was so much fun! To say I’m delighted with how everything went was an understatement. I got emails and messages from women who wanted to share their wins and what they were getting done and I heard from women who were struggling and I loved both types of messages.
If you were doing the challenge and were struggling and never reached out to me, reach out to me now. I can only support you if I know you need support.
High-fives to everyone who participated, however you participated.
I’m going to continue this week to talk about goals because this last piece of goal-setting is actually crucial if you want to hit your goal but if you have been having a hard time choosing your goal and writing out the plan, don’t feel bad.
Goal-setting is one of those things that can trigger us because 1) it takes some work to craft the goal in a way that will stretch you but not be impossible to achieve, 2) you are opening yourself up to a potential failure and 3) by choosing a goal, writing it down and declaring it you have made a commitment to see it through and for some of you that may feel constraining.
Having done several episodes on goal-setting and each one completed the day before it was going live, which is unlike me and something I do not like to do, I started to wonder as I was writing this if there isn’t a part of me that resists the goal-setting process as well.
However, what I know is that when I do this entire process I always hit my goal. Always. Without fail. I’m not kidding. It’s crazy, but you’re going to have to take my word for it.
Knowing this was a sticky area for some of you I put something together that will provide you some structure and guidance for working on your goals. If you have found yourself struggling or avoiding this process this is especially for you.
You’re either going to love me or hate me for this but I created a worksheet that will take you through each of the steps covered in all four 100% Jodi episodes on goal setting. Access it here: Creating Goals Worthy of You.
Even if you’ve been following along and doing your goals you may want to grab this for a mid-year reset or for later this year when you start creating your goals for 2019.
This last area of goal-setting is actually the most important part of goal setting: who do you need to BE in order to achieve your goals.
At the end of this episode I’m going to go over a transformational process that is like jet fuel in becoming who you need to be in order to achieve your goals but I want to go over the methodical step-by-step process first because the other process is not for everyone at this time.
It’s great to have goals, to have a plan and to be taking some action - these are the fundamentals. But if you are not embodying the qualities that are required to achieve your goal it won’t matter how clear your goal is, how great your plan is or how much action you are taking.
This is where I see a lot of us Type A action-takers start to spin in place, essentially go into overdrive without making much progress.
If you’re not getting results you may start to think you need to work harder and take more action. However, it is your state of mind, your attitude, and your presence that will see you to your goal.
Just like the last episode I’ll use myself as an example to clarify what I’m talking about.
I’ll go over my focus areas and the goal that was worthy of me that I chose to indicate what success would look like for me in this area, and then I’ll list the qualities that I will need to develop and exude to achieve the goal.
1. Build more strength and endurance.
Goal: do 300 Spartan-regulation burpees (chest to the ground) in one session. Separately, do an unassisted pull-up.
My strength and endurance slipped because I wasn't focused on it. So one of the qualities I need to develop is focus. There are a variety of workouts I need to do for this goal so I’ll also need discipline to do the workouts and stay the course even when I don’t want to.
Another quality that will be important for me with this an all my goals is playfulness. I need to be having fun or I will quickly loose interest and then motivation. So my workouts will either need to be social or I need to make them some sort of a game. This is a quality I have developed over the years so this will not be a problem.
Another quality that is required for all goals is the quality of being committed. This goes for you too. If you are not committed to achieving a goal that is worthy of you then it’s not really a goal. It’s a “nice to have” and you will likely not achieve it. So when you create your own list of qualities you will need to exude to achieve your goal make sure “committed” is on your list.
2. Be in a relationship.
Goal: be in a committed, monogamous, romantic partnership with a man.
I didn't achieve my goal to date last year because I wasn't focused on it. This is not a goal that is hard to achieve so I literally was not paying attention to it or taking it seriously. Obviously, that means commitment and focus are required. The other qualities that will help me to achieve my goal is that playfulness piece again; being light about it and not taking it too seriously, and intending it to be fun.
Another quality is aware; I need to be more aware of my surroundings, who is around and also be making eye contact with people. Bringing lightness and smiling more wouldn’t hurt anything either.
Lastly, open. Open-minded, open to possibilities, open to it not looking exactly how I may be picturing how dating and being in a relationship is going to happen.
3. Increase profitability in my business.
Goal: have a net income (earnings minus expenses) of $80,000 minimum.
I had marginal profits in my business last year due somewhat to a lack of focus. Though I was very active sometimes it was just being busy doing things that were not moving my business forward.
What really hurt my profitability was I didn't get vulnerable. I didn't ask for help in terms of getting feedback on my business.
I asked for a few testimonials but not many, and I didn’t let certain people know how much I wanted to work with them. I didn't get vulnerable and that hurt my business.
4. Do a Women Taking the Lead branded full-day event.
Goal: Do a WTL branded full-day event in the summer or fall.
I've wanted to do a full-day live event for a few years but have not done it because it has felt too overwhelming and the initial investment is a little scary. What I've lacked is clarity on the cost and the scope of the work it will involve.
The quality that will help me to be clear is inquisitiveness. And to pull the trigger or not on this event I’m going to have to be decisive. If I am well on my way to achieving my profitability goal in the next few months this will be a go and there will be a lot of decisions to make.
I’m also going to need a lot of help so I’m also going to need the quality of being to open to asking for help.
5. Outsourcing
Goal: (contingent upon profitability goal) outsource social media content creation and email inbox management.
For this I will need to be organized. I need to be clear on what I’m going to outsource and have any checklists, procedures and training materials ready to go before I hire anyone.
Since this goal is also contingent upon profitability it will require me to embody all the qualities I listed for that goal.
The worksheets I mentioned at the beginning of this episode will help you not only identify these qualities but also start formulating a plan for how you are going to develop these qualities. You can find the worksheets here.
Pulling this all together and looking over my list of qualities that I need to develop and BE to achieve my goals, I’m going to condense playful, light, and fun-loving to just fun-loving. That word in my world involves being playful and light and I don’t want to overthink or overdo this list.
The qualities I’ll be developing and exuding this year are committed, focused, fun-loving, aware, open, vulnerable, inquisitive and organized.
My next step with be identifying ways to amplify these qualities. For, example, in terms of being committed, having all of this information in a podcast episode for anyone in the world to hear and be able to call me on, that certainly helps with commitment.
I’ve also created a recurring task on my calendar on Fridays to review the progress of my goals and I have identified accountability partners for each of my goals. For each quality I’m going to go through a similar process to identify how to embody that quality.
I told you at the beginning of this episode I was going to also cover a transformational process that is like jet fuel in becoming who you need to be to achieve your goals.
Anything you truly desire you can achieve. Because that desire came from you, was fashioned by you, you can achieve because you are created to be able to achieve anything you desire in truth.
What I mean by “desire in truth“ is that the desire for something comes from who you really are. Not because others want it for you, not because society says you should want it, not because it’s part of the plan other people have for you. What you desire in truth comes from who you really are and therefore you are capable of achieving it.
What I am saying is that if you have not been able to achieve a goal that you truly desire it’s because you have forgotten who you really are and what you are capable of.
If you’ve spent any time following me or Women Taking the Lead you know my core mission is to help you overcome self-doubt so you can lead with confidence, integrity and a sense of humor.
Any self-doubt or hesitation you experience is caused by you not knowing who you really are and what you are capable of. When that changes internally, you automatically and with very little effort, start to make changes externally.
You start leading yourself in your own life with confidence, integrity and humor.
To help you with this I have taken my coaching system, that is in my book and that I take my private clients through, and created a group program called The Accomplished Intensive.
In this program you will find the belief in yourself to go after what you really want. For some of you, this will be when you finally give yourself permission to go after what you want.
The Accomplished Intensive is an 8-week transformational program that will take you from a place of feeling self-doubt, confused, lost or lacking clarity to being clear, decisive and in action toward your big worthy goals.
This program will completely change how you see yourself and what you think they are capable of.
Because this is a pilot program, because it’s the first time I’m taking a group through my system, I have greatly reduced the price. And, if you sign up with another person (a friend, colleague or team member) it’s even less per person. This is a smoking hot deal and we won’t see this price again.
If any of this interests you or is resonating with you, find out more about The Accomplished Intensive.
I am CONFIDENT that if you do this program and fully commit to the process you’ll remember 2018 as being the year when everything changed and success and fulfillment got a whole lot easier.
Check out the page at womentakingthelead.com/intensive and if you have any questions you can reach me at jodi@womentakingthelead.com or fill out the contact form on the page.
As always, I hope this was of value to you and here’s to your success!
Zebralove Web Solutions: Your website tells a story about your business! At Zebralove Web Solutions, Milly and her team are going to make sure your website tells the story you want your customers to hear. Connect with Milly at zebralovewebsolutions.com to create the impression you want to make!
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Accomplished: How to Go from Dreaming to Doing: A simple, step by step system that gives you the foundation and structure to take your goals and make them happen.
Happy New Year!! I hope it is going great for you thus far. There has been so much energy and excitement around 2018 and what’s possible I can’t help but feel this is going to be a great year. And it’s all within our power, right?
I’ve also been feeling the momentum as I am running the Tolerations Detox Challenge. Ultimately, 112 people have registered and as of the day this episode is released we are on Day 8 of 10. And as I expected people are reporting feeling more empowered, more energy, momentum and enthusiasm for their goals, the coming year and life in general.
Most of the activity has been playing out in the private Facebook group so if you a woman (sorry guys) and you have not joined us yet go to https://womentakingthelead.com/group to join the conversation and get support from other go-getting women just like you.
Okay, in the last 100% Jodi episode that came out a couple weeks ago I shared a process to create goals that are worthy of you. Near the end of that episode I touched upon creating the milestones and metrics of each goal but having listened back on that episode I realized I didn’t give those topics their due.
Since I am in the process of creating the milestones and metrics for the focus areas I’ve chosen it made perfect sense to continue this series on goal setting and in the next 100% Jodi episode I have the final piece that will bring all this together.
So for this to all make sense I’ll share with you what I’ve been doing with my focus areas. Since focus areas are not always specific you need to choose a goal that represents success in the focus areas you have chosen. I’ll cover the focus areas I chose in the original episode on creating goals that are worthy of you and then I’ll share what I chose as a specific goal and we can use these to get into metrics and milestones.
Here are my focus areas and the goal I chose to indicate what success would look like for me in this area.
1. Build more strength and endurance.
Goal: do 300 Spartan-regulation burpees (belly and chest to the ground) in one session. Separately, do an unassisted pull-up.
2. Be in a relationship.
Goal: be in a committed (monogamous) romantic partnership with a man.
3. Increase profitability in my business.
Goal: have a net income (earnings minus expenses) of $80,000 minimum.
4. Do WTL branded local paid workshops
Goal: this morphed into doing a full-day event.
5. Outsource
Goal: (contingent upon profitability goal) outsource social media content creation and email inbox management.
Metrics are measurements like dials on the dashboard. They are indicators of how you’re doing, tracking your progress toward goals. An example of a metric would be how many burbees I can do in one workout session. They would let me gauge where I am on a given day or week and allow me to track my progress. My clothing size is technically a metric, however, since my focus area is to increase strength and endurance going down a clothing size is nice yet irrelevant.
When determining the metrics for your goal you want to make sure they are relevant to the focus area and the goal you chose. Something that lets you know you’re making progress.
Now, for my goal to do an unassisted pull-up as a sign of success in building strength, dropping a few pounds may be a part of my strategy to achieve that goal. Essentially, my thinking is if I am a little lighter it will be easier to do an unassisted pull-up.
Some of you might be thinking that’s counter-intuitive because if I’m dropping weight I would be pulling less weight, thus undermining the amount of strength I can build. However, during the progression of a pull-up, from hanging from the bar to pulling your chin over the top of the bar, you transition through different muscles in your back, arms and shoulders. Being able to do the full progression of the pull-up is what I’m looking for and being a little lighter will make that easier.
Now, making a progress is awesome but as you know we can stretch progress on endlessly and take forever to finally hit our goals. This is why milestones are so helpful.
Milestones make a plan to achieve a goal specific and concrete. They are the mini-goals you are looking to hit on your way to achieving the bigger goal. Milestones can be dates, deadlines, tasks, and budgets. Metrics will allow you to track progress all you want but if you don't have something specific you are looking to achieve and a date by which you want to achieve it, you can find yourself feeling like you’re not getting much traction toward your goal.
For my goal of doing 300 burbees in one workout session I’m going to start by seeing where I am now. I want to know how many burbees I can do before I just can’t do another burpee with good form. I haven’t done this yet but say I can do 50 burpees maintaining good form before I start to feel my back bowing as I come up from the ground while doing the push up. That means I have a gap of 250 burpees to hit my goal.
I also need to know by when I want to achieve this goal. If my goal is to do this by December 31 my milestones are going to be different than if my intention is to achieve this goal by June 30.
There’s no time like the present so I’m going to shoot for June 30. Based on the date I am releasing this episode and my guess that I can do 50 Spartan-regulation burpees in good form as of today that gives me a little less than 6 months to increase that number by 250.
Yes, you see that correctly. I am shooting to achieve my goal ahead of schedule to give myself some wiggle room in the last month for the unexpected. Always put some cushion in your plans for the unexpected.
This is where we high-achievers can get ourselves into trouble. We don’t account for the unexpected and they feel like complete failures if we didn’t achieve our goal according to the original plan. Remember to be a little bit flexible so you can pivot and tweak your plan if you need to. This is your goal and you get to decide how and when achieve it.
If you don’t have metrics and milestones for your goals yet, no worries! Put some time on your calendar in the next week or two to get it done. This can be an eye-opening experience in that you may realize your goal was a bit unrealistic or you may realize it’s more easily achieved than you first thought.
I’ll be continuing to build out the plan to achieve my goals and would love to hear where you are in creating your goals and forming the plan. Let me know if there is anything I can do to support you. You can reach me at jodi@womentakingthelead.com or join the Facebook group and get some support there. Go to https://womentakingthelead.com/group to join us there and be a part of fun and supportive group of women just like you.
As always, I hope this was of value to you and here’s to your success!
Zebralove Web Solutions: Your website tells a story about your business! At Zebralove Web Solutions, Milly and her team are going to make sure your website tells the story you want your customers to hear. Connect with Milly at zebralovewebsolutions.com to create the impression you want to make!
Private Facebook Community: Chat, share and collaborate with other women listening to the podcast!
Accomplished: How to Go from Dreaming to Doing: A simple, step by step system that gives you the foundation and structure to take your goals and make them happen.
The Accomplished Community: A community of entrepreneurial Type A women uniting to achieve their biggest goals with confidence, integrity and a sense of humor.
Brian Ligotti is a health coach and the owner of Dirigo Fitness in Falmouth, Maine. Having overcome years of struggling with his weight, being uncomfortable in his own skin, he obtained his degree in Exercise Physiology because he wanted to make sure no one ever felt the same despair he had felt. Brian spent most of his life addicted to one thing or another; food, then drugs, then food again. Fitness allowed him to find the piece of himself that could face anything and push through discomfort. It showed him that there is nothing more important than your health and that the people around you benefit when you are taking care of yourself.
A voracious learner, Brian applies the knowledge he has gained with the philosophy that helped him turn his health around: "The only way to create lasting change is to stay focused, have a clear reason for what you are doing, and be consistent with small changes."
Click to tweet: Brian Ligotti is sharing his story to inspire you on Women Taking the Lead https://womentakingthelead.com/245 #inspiration
Brian’s mom has always been a huge influence in his life. She raised three kids on her own, which was not an easy task. Considering her children often spent their free time fighting, they all turned out to be decent adults.
Another inspiration to Brian was Silvia Anthony. She grew up near his grandfather. In the 60’s after her divorce, she started homeless shelters for women with no formal training, because she wanted to help. Mother Theresa has also impacted Brian for the same reason. Through helping one person at a time, Mother Theresa became one of the most powerful women of the 21st century.
The most common thing that Brian encounters is that women typically place everyone else before themselves, especially when it comes to fitness and self care. Women tend to think that they have to be able to do it all, all the time. If you are running yourself ragged, because you feel like you have to, that hurts everyone around you.
Another thing Brian tends to see is not choosing to be happy in the moment. He believes you have to make the decision to have a good time, despite the bad things happening.
Brian has learned the power of being present with someone through working with women. He finds that a lot of people, when they are speaking, are just waiting for their turn to talk, but women respond better to presence. The power of just “being” in the moment and listening with your full attention is very important.
Brian grew up around women, and one of his early survival skills was tuning things out. His mom and sisters would call him out when he wasn’t listening, so this is a practice he has been learning from early on.
Brian feels that women need to embrace who they are at the core of their being. He has seen that women can sometimes need reassurance when they get in their own head.
Brian is excited to be offering health and fitness coaching online and over Skype. Skype allows him to see a person’s face and their body language, which is important as he feels communication can get lost in text, email or phone.
“I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think” ~Rumi
www.dirigofitness.com
brian@dirigofitness.com
Zebralove Web Solutions: Your website tells a story about your business! At Zebralove Web Solutions, Milly and her team are going to make sure your website tells the story you want your customers to hear. Connect with Milly at zebralovewebsolutions.com to create the impression you want to make!
Private Facebook Community: Chat, share and collaborate with other women in the community!
Accomplished: How to Go from Dreaming to Doing: A simple, step by step system that gives you the foundation and structure to take your goals and make them happen.
The Accomplished Community: A community of entrepreneurial Type A women uniting to achieve their biggest goals with confidence, integrity and a sense of humor.
In the last 100% Jodi episode I shared the first step to creating your goals for 2018: reflecting back on all you’ve accomplished this past year. In this episode I’m going to go over the whole process I use for setting worthy goals so if you’re celebrating Christmas today you may want to save this episode and come back to it in a day or two.
My background is in psychology and I’m one of those people who, after spending 6 years working on my undergraduate and graduate degree, realized I didn’t like where my studies were taking me and so opted for something else.
I was really discouraged and disappointed with where my life had gone and when I took an entry level corporate position I decided I was not going to stay there for long.
However, I thrived in that position and in the next 6 years I was promoted 5 times and it had everything to do with my mindset and my practice of setting goals.
I use this combination of mindset and action goals to help my clients achieve the results that they have been craving without having to work themselves into the ground. The tools and exercises I use with my clients help them to identify their own mindset and start zeroing in on the actions that are going to lead them to their ultimate goal.
Although we’re not getting into mindset here, there are plenty of episodes I’ve released that definitely help you with mindset, for this episode I’m diving into the exercise I’ve been using for the past several years for myself and on occasion with my clients to create goals.
This is not something to rush through so be sure you can dedicate a decent amount of time to give each question some thought.
Pull out a blank piece of paper or on your electronic device write down and answer the following questions based on the prior year:
1. What were my successes and opportunities (personal and professional)?
If you listened to the last 100% Jodi episode, Before You Choose Your Goals, Do This, you may already have done this.
Do not do this quickly. Really dig deep and look at every area of your life: health, finances, relationships, career, spirituality, personal development, etc. Ask others to help you with this one if you don’t have a good list going. We often dismiss our successes thinking they are no big deal. They are a big deal and they should be acknowledged.
2. What are the lessons I learned?
This may be easier to come up with if you are someone who tends to focus on or beat yourself up over mistakes. Think of the things that happened that prompted you to think, “I won’t be doing that again.”
3. What surprised me?
It's the unexpected that helps us to make our blind spots a little smaller. What results, outcomes, opportunities, or consequences did you not expect - good, bad or neutral?
4. Based on my Values and who I REALLY am, what do I want?
Don’t hold back, be honest about what you want to happen in the coming year. Don’t worry about how it’s going to happen.
You’ll use this section later to calibrate your answers to make sure your goals are worthy of you. These can't be things that incrementally build on the goals you've accomplished (or did not accomplish) last year. These goals must reflect your values and focus on creating, rather than changing, a situation or relationship in your life.
For instance, the goal would not be to lose 10 pounds. A goal that is worthy of you is to wake in the morning feeling refreshed and energized, comfortable in your own skin.
Part of attaining that goal may include changing your nutrition or getting more activity in your day but 10 pounds is arbitrary and does not guarantee you'll feel energized. To feel refreshed and energized in the morning will call on more than diet and exercise and will have a greater ripple effect than the scale moving or your clothing size changing.
5. What from the list of answers above informs me how I can recreate any area of my personal or professional life? (Circle or highlight the one’s that stand out)
Of the items you circled or highlighted pick four or five. These are your focus areas in 2018.
Define your overarching goal and set milestones
From here you will create a plan and milestones (or smaller goals) that will help you to achieve your overarching goals. You will also use these focus areas to weigh whether or not to let some things go or take advantage of a new opportunity.
6. Create your goals or metrics based on your focus areas.
For example, you’re focus area may be to increase your income or profitability margin. You’ll want to define what that means. It may be to make to make $5,000 more than last year. A metric may be to ask for a raise, start a side-business or improve your retention rate.
Another example, your focus area may be to run a Spartan race successfully. You’ll first want to define what “successfully” means to you. Based on that definition you’ll create metrics and milestones to help you get there. It may be how fast you can run 5 miles, being able to do pull-ups, etc.
With each goal create an action plan with milestones that will take you to your goal.
Plug in celebrations and rewards for hitting the milestones and get an accountability partner. Having another person who will witness your challenges and successes will motivate you to stay on track.
Make sure the goals you choose reflect your highest values and get you excited. The satisfaction you feel on achieving your goals is directly related to choosing the right goals for you, the ones that stretched you a bit, and how well you executed your plan.
A goal that is worthy of you calls you to express the best parts of you and motivates you to keep going, even when staying on track is tough. And upon reaching a goal that is worth of you, you will feel pure joy.
And if you want to set yourself up for a great new year by playing along with the Tolerations Detox Challenge register here womentakingthelead.com/tolerations.
As always, I hope this was of value to you and here’s to your success!
Zebralove Web Solutions: Your website tells a story about your business! At Zebralove Web Solutions, Milly and her team are going to make sure your website tells the story you want your customers to hear. Connect with Milly at zebralovewebsolutions.com to create the impression you want to make!
Private Facebook Community: Chat, share and collaborate with other women listening to the podcast!
Accomplished: How to Go from Dreaming to Doing: A simple, step by step system that gives you the foundation and structure to take your goals and make them happen.
The Accomplished Community: A community of entrepreneurial Type A women uniting to achieve their biggest goals with confidence, integrity and a sense of humor.
Marie is a veteran of the Portland and Maine media markets, in sales, business development and management positions. She also produced and distributed television programs that received industry acclaim.
Most recently, Marie worked internationally for the Young Presidents’ Organization, the premier Chief Executive Leadership organization in the world - with over 20,000 members. As Director of Integration, she interfaced with business leaders around the world in a myriad of areas including, but not limited to, membership support, event and workshop planning, corporate communication, and creating the first, full-fledged new member integration program from the ground-up.
In this on-air coaching episode Marie needed some clarity around using live video to engage her audience. It was something she resisted and was surprised to find…she loves it! However, she wants to make sure she is doing it purposefully it helps her to forward Daughters of Change and doesn’t become another thing to do.
Although on the surface it appears like we are just talking about live video. However, as is common in the coaching I do, there is a lot more going on under the surface that is keeping Marie from releasing live videos to more than just her friends and family.
Thank you again, Marie, for sharing what you are struggling with right now. And for those of you listening, if you’re experiencing doubts in your business or your career, reach out! This is what I do. I was email corresponding with Nicole Boucher yesterday, who was on the last On-Air Coaching episode and she reported that things have been wonderful over the past few weeks and to quote her, “I feel that I have such a sense of purpose and clarity. I need to blog about my word of the year ("Nourish") and your help in getting me to that place.
Nicole, I cannot wait for you to post that blog. I’m going to blast it everywhere.
Again, if you feel like you’re spinning your wheels because it’s not clear what direction you should take or how to go about making things happen, reach out to me. Email me at jodi @ womentakingthelead.com or message me through any platform. I’m always happy to hear from you!
Web: http://www.daughtersofchange.com
Email: msola@daughtersofchange.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/daughtersofchange
Women Taking the Lead Interview: https://womentakingthelead.com/marie-sola/
Zola Registry: Zola is an all-in-one wedding registry that will do anything for love. Register for the things that you need and want, as well as experiences, cash funds, and honeymoon funds – all in one place! Choose products from their beautifully curated assortment in the Zola store, and ask for contributions towards your honeymoon…or anything at all! To sign up and get a $50 credit towards your registry, click here.
Zebralove Web Solutions: Your website tells a story about your business! At Zebralove Web Solutions, Milly and her team are going to make sure your website tells the story you want your customers to hear. Connect with Milly at zebralovewebsolutions.com to create the impression you want to make!
Private Facebook Community: Chat, share and collaborate with other women in the community!
Accomplished: How to Go from Dreaming to Doing: A simple, step by step system that gives you the foundation and structure to take your goals and make them happen.
The Accomplished Community: A community of entrepreneurial Type A women uniting to achieve their biggest goals with confidence, integrity and a sense of humor.
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I hope that as you’re listening to this episode you are in a good place physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I hope you are enjoying the season and surrounded with love. This time of year there is greater emphasis on having gratitude for what we have and to be kind to those around us.
I’m going to encourage you to especially be kind to yourself. I know you all are working so hard to hit your goals, to take care of your families and to honor your responsibilities. Just remember, you at your best can get all that done more quickly and easily than the version of you that is over-tired, feeling frazzled or unappreciated; or the you that is fighting off an illness.
Those around you are happy when you’re happy so give them what they want.
I also have some exciting news for the New Year. Year after year I, and many of you, experience the post-holidays fatigue. I’ve gotten the low-down from many of you. You’re so wiped from all the activity that you limp into the New Year and don’t hit your groove until late January or even February.
Let’s change that this year. Starting on January 1st I’m going to help you get re-energized within days. I’ve done this work with my clients and it is remarkable how quickly this can help you go from feeling tired and burdened to light, energized and ready for action!
This is a Tolerations Detox. What happens is that over time in our busy lives we begin to tolerate things because we tell ourselves that we don’t have the time or energy to deal with them head on. So we ignore them, put up with them; we try to let go, move on, accept or make peace with these things but consciously or subconsciously they are still bothering us so we have to use some of our energy to try to keep them off our radar.
And when I say we have to use some of energy I mean we have to use some of our energy for each little thing we are tolerating, and the bigger the toleration the more energy it takes. And for some of us we are tolerating so many things we are expending a great deal of energy to keep from getting bogged down by them, to keep up appearance of “everything’s fine” and to stay on top of the important things that need our attention.
As our overall energy becomes depleted we start to feel busier and so we feel like we have even less time and less energy to deal with the things that bother us. These tolerations start to build like plaque and clog up our energy system.
To explain away our lack of energy and lack of ability to focus and engage, we say things like “It’s because I’m getting older” or “I’ve just been so busy” or “the weather is bringing me down” or, “I think I have adult ADD.”
At the end of the day you’re probably baffled by how tired you are and wonder how other people get the energy to get in a workout, go out with friends, or work on a hobby or project after dinner. While you are sitting on the couch watching TV because it’s the time you can check out and unplug from the day.
What I’m going to tell you, and I want you to sit with this, is you have as much energy as all those people. You could also be waking up in the morning jumping out of bed, rocking your day and spending your evenings doing whatever you like, whatever you find fulfilling.
What I have for you that will help you get back your energy is a Tolerations Detox Challenge.
This Challenge will kick off on January 1st and every other day for 10 days I’m going to guide you through identifying all the little and big things you are tolerating in your life, your home, your finances, your relationships, your work and even your car or mode of transportation; not all at once, we’re going to do this little by little and I’m going to share with you how to remove the tolerations in a way that feels good to you. I’m not going to ask you to do anything that you’re not ready to do.
You’ll do this process at your pace. You’ll have a couple of days in between each challenge to remove a couple of tolerations (or more if you’re so motivated). Let me tell you, once you do a few you’re going to feel a difference and it’s going to feel great.
If you are interested in playing along with this challenge go to womentakingthelead.com/tolerations to register. Let’s kick off the New Year with a bang and with an abundance of good energy. Go to womentakingthelead.com/tolerations to sign up for the Tolerations Detox Challenge.
Last week I promised to take you through a goal-setting process I use for myself and my clients. Today, we’re going to take the first step.
Years ago, my coach and I were talking about my goals for the coming year. Before I got into the list I had created she asked if I had captured all my accomplishments from the previous year.
It gave me pause and at first I resisted the notion.
All I could think was, "great, another task." It reminded me of preparing for my own performance reviews in the past and that thought brought me no pleasure. It felt like I had to prove I had been productive and valuable in the past year. That was a turn off.
Then she explained the reason she was asking. She said, "Often times I find I've accomplished way more than I would have given myself credit for at first glance. It's so easy to forget the small victories you've had along the way when you're focused on all the obstacles that still need to be faced to achieve the big goal."
She was right. When I started to create the list I started with the obvious. That year I had survived my second corporate acquisition with my sanity intact, for the most part. I became certified as a professional coach, started my business, took my first paying clients and performed a comedy skit in front of 150 people and received a standing ovation.
Then I started remembering the less obvious accomplishments. There was a relationship with one of my sisters that had previously been on life support was transformed that year, I developed amazing connections with fellow coaches and business owners, I changed my coaching niche...etc.
It had the desired effect. I was awed at what an amazing year I had, amazed at who I became in the process and grateful for all that I had faced.
Reflecting on and writing down your achievements is like a booster shot in the arm.
Giving yourself the credit you deserve increases your confidence, quiets the critical voice in your head and energizes you to go after bigger goals.
The first step to creating your goals for next year is to start with what you've achieved this past year. What worked for you? What went well? Even if it was unexpected, write it down!
We are all capable of more than we give ourselves credit for. Celebrating and remembering all our victories great and small will get us that much closer to reaching our full potential.
Do yourself a favor, take the time to sit still and reflect on the most important thing in your life: you.
And if you want to set yourself up for a great new year by playing along with the Tolerations Detox Challenge go to womentakingthelead.com/tolerations to register. Again, that’s womentakingthelead.com/tolerations.
As always, I hope this was of value to you and here’s to your success!
Zebralove Web Solutions: Your website tells a story about your business! At Zebralove Web Solutions, Milly and her team are going to make sure your website tells the story you want your customers to hear. Connect with Milly at zebralovewebsolutions.com to create the impression you want to make!
Private Facebook Community: Chat, share and collaborate with other women listening to the podcast!
Accomplished: How to Go from Dreaming to Doing: A simple, step by step system that gives you the foundation and structure to take your goals and make them happen.
The Accomplished Community: A community of entrepreneurial Type A women uniting to achieve their biggest goals with confidence, integrity and a sense of humor.
We are now in December and it is getting chilly here in Maine but I’m getting excited for Christmas. What’s been fun has been chatting with those of you in the Facebook group who are in the southern hemisphere. As I’m posting about the cooling temperatures you are getting ready for some hot days. I love that this podcast has allowed me to connect with so many amazing people all over the globe. I feel blessed and I’m looking forward to meeting more of you in the year to come.
Speaking of the year to come I have an episode coming next week that will start you thinking about goals. Tis the season for goal setting but I’m not a believer in jumping right in and setting arbitrary goals. I have a process I am going to take you through over a couple of episodes that will make sure the goals you set will inspire you and be worthy of you.
In the meantime, I want to talk to you about the assessment tool I use in my business because I don’t think I’ve given it its proper due up until this point.
I am licensed to administer the Energy Leadership Index Assessment. This is a one-of-a-kind attitudinal assessment that acts as a mirror to reveal your perceptions, attitudes, behaviors and overall leadership capabilities – as they currently are. Because attitude is subjective it can be altered and get you the results your looking for. But the first step is awareness and the Energy Leadership Assessment provides that.
This assessment is administered online – so you can do it when it is convenient for you – and it takes about 20 minutes to complete. You’ll then have access to my calendar to schedule a 75-minute debrief of your results. You get a report that breaks out 7 levels of awareness and we are going to go through each one and identify what perceptions, attitudes and behaviors are holding you back and what ones are working for you that you can lean into.
I have administered this assessment to over 100 people and the common reactions are amazement, relief that there are simple solutions to common problems and a feeling that the future holds a lot more opportunity than what was previously perceived.
Although I commonly use the assessment as a beginning to a coaching package or a lead in to a strategy session it can be a stand-alone opportunity to identify some hidden areas of opportunity that you have overlooked.
I can’t stress enough this assessment and debrief is powerful and well worth the money. If you are ready to do this next year differently, with better results and less stress, contact me at Jodi at Women Taking the Lead dot com.
Next on the agenda that I wanted to let you know is there is going to be a frequency change to the podcast. I am now going to be releasing one episode per week. This is coming about for a couple of reasons. Taking on doing a 100% Jodi episode each week has been awesome and taxing. I don’t want the quality of these episodes to slip so I’m going to weave in some natural breaks.
Also, I’ve been getting feedback from all of you about the episodes that are hitting home for you and providing the most value. Everyone agrees the interviews are good and there’s always a nugget of wisdom, if not more, to walk away with. You are loving the 100% Jodi episodes, thank you, and the On-Air Coaching episodes are blowing your mind. Awesome!
Taking all that in and the new frequency of one episode per week, here’s what it’s going to look like. I will release one interview episode per month, one On-Air Coaching episode per month and the other weeks will be 100% Jodi episodes.
I think this will give the right mix of content that you are looking for and that I can provide.
Now, to do one On-Air Coaching episode per month I am going to need volunteers from the community. What I am asking is that those who volunteer either have read my book, taken the assessment or done private coaching with me. This will ensure that the content of the coaching episode stay focused on the intent of the podcast: to help you overcome self-doubt so you lead with confidence, integrity and a sense of humor.
If you meet this criteria reach out to me. I am scheduling virtual coffee chats with volunteers so we can meet, talk about what the experience will be like and answer any questions. Email me at Jodi at Women Taking the Lead dot com.
Wow, there have been many changes made since launching Women Taking the Lead over 2 ½ years ago. I can’t think of a change that was initiated by the feedback in this community that didn’t result in a better quality podcast. Continue to give me your feedback and I promise to continue to do my best to make the changes that will provide everyone what they need.
I found this quote by Pearl Zhu. “Change shouldn’t be treated as a singular occurrence when it is an ongoing, continued process and dynamic capability within the organization.” I believe that! Rather than seeing change as a bad thing we can see thought out changes as opportunities for growth, experimenting, finding efficiencies and getting better results.
Having said that, I’ve got one more thought for the Energy Leadership Index Assessment. If there are some changes you know you need to make but you’ve been hesitating or resisting them this assessment could be the catalyst that will make those changes much easier. Get this done before the New Year and I guarantee your 2018 will be much more fulfilling than your 2017.
I hope this was of value to you and here’s to your success!!
Zebralove Web Solutions: Your website tells a story about your business! At Zebralove Web Solutions, Milly and her team are going to make sure your website tells the story you want your customers to hear. Connect with Milly at zebralovewebsolutions.com to create the impression you want to make!
Private Facebook Community: Chat, share and collaborate with other women listening to the podcast!
Accomplished: How to Go from Dreaming to Doing: A simple, step by step system that gives you the foundation and structure to take your goals and make them happen.
The Accomplished Community: A community of entrepreneurial Type A women uniting to achieve their biggest goals with confidence, integrity and a sense of humor.
Suzanne Anderson is a change agent for women change makers. As a psychologist, author, executive coach, speaker and transformational facilitator she has dedicated the past 15 years of her career in leadership development to decoding an embodied, integral and accelerated pathway to awaken consciousness and leadership capacity in women. In her global online programs and retreats she guides women to do the deep work of upgrading their inner operating systems and becoming a match for these complex times. She is the coauthor of the award-winning book The Way of the Mysterial Woman: Upgrading How you Live, Love and Lead.
Click to tweet: @MysterialWoman is sharing her story to inspire you on Women Taking the Lead https://womentakingthelead.com/244 #inspiration
At the end of 2012, Suzanne was preparing for a huge launch for the new year. It was time to take what she knew and bring it out into the world. A few days into January, Suzanne’s world came crashing down as she came home to find her husband dead. Within 6 months, her life had drastically contracted, when she had expected expansion, and everything she considered the most dear was gone. Through it all, Suzanne’s center held, even though she had never felt so uncertain.
Suzanne’s leadership is Mysterial. She brings together the feminine and masculine principles and embraces the capacity to unfold the emergent.
Suzanne is excited about her transition into the online world. When the online world wasn’t as present, Suzanne had a vision of 144,000 Mysterial Women. At the time she didn’t know how she would achieve those numbers, as most of her work in the past was based around retreats. Now with the worldwide online community, Suzanna can see her vision coming to life.
Though Suzanne is excited about the online world, she finds it challenging to get her name out there in order to reach those 144,000 women.
Suzanne starts each day with what she calls her Morning Flow. “How we enter into the day has everything to do with what actually unfolds in the day.”
“I know it doesn’t feel like you belong, but your time is coming. Keep following the thread of your destiny. You were born for these times and we are getting you ready for what you need to do.”
“The place life calls you to, where the most aliveness is, is where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” ~Frederick Buechner
Website: mysterialwoman.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Suzanne.Anderson.MysterialWoman/
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/mysterialwoman/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mysterialwoman/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MysterialWoman
ThirdLove: Tired of compromising comfort, ThirdLove® set out to create a better bra. Armed with research and a lot of opinions, they scrapped the standard bra cup size molds—literally broke them!—and developed their own half-cup sizes based on real women’s measurements. Check out ThirdLove today!
Zebralove Web Solutions: Your website tells a story about your business! At Zebralove Web Solutions, Milly and her team are going to make sure your website tells the story you want your customers to hear. Connect with Milly at zebralovewebsolutions.com to create the impression you want to make!
Private Facebook Community: Chat, share and collaborate with other women in the community!
Accomplished: How to Go from Dreaming to Doing: A simple, step by step system that gives you the foundation and structure to take your goals and make them happen.
The Accomplished Community: A community of entrepreneurial Type A women uniting to achieve their biggest goals with confidence, integrity and a sense of humor.
If you enjoyed this episode subscribe in iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Google Play Music or iHeart Radio and never miss out on inspiration and community!
Nicole Boucher is a Project Manager who helps small business owners be more productive and strategic with their time so they can grow their businesses with less overwhelm. She loves the business side of business—strategy, spreadsheets, and systems—and her clients love feeling the weight lifting off their shoulders with the support of a true brand partner.
Zebralove Web Solutions: Your website tells a story about your business! At Zebralove Web Solutions, Milly and her team are going to make sure your website tells the story you want your customers to hear. Connect with Milly at zebralovewebsolutions.com to create the impression you want to make!
Private Facebook Community: Chat, share and collaborate with other women in the community!
Accomplished: How to Go from Dreaming to Doing: A simple, step by step system that gives you the foundation and structure to take your goals and make them happen.
The Accomplished Community: A community of entrepreneurial Type A women uniting to achieve their biggest goals with confidence, integrity and a sense of humor.
If you enjoyed this episode subscribe in iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Google Play Music or iHeart Radio and never miss out on inspiration and community!