Anchored Leadership: For Business Owners Ready to Lead and Not Just Manage

Today I want to take a moment to talk about joy. Not just joy itself, but about finding joy when it’s not easy to see. Right now a lot of people, people both close and unrelated to me, are going through incredible challenges - loss of loved ones, health issues, financial struggles, not being able to meet basic needs - and coupled with what’s going on in the world, it sparks confusion and a sense of helplessness in me. How do I make a difference or find peace?

You might be feeling that way too. I’m certain you can identify with the feelings of not having the answers or being able to solve things. But I have realized that sometimes we have to give up control and simply accept that we don’t always get to know the why, the how, and the way to fix things. We have to give up control. How do we do that?

The advice I have for you today centers on the idea of gratitude for no reason. It’s easy to be grateful when things are going our way and we’re succeeding. But that’s not true gratitude. How can learn to be grateful, to find happiness and joy, when things aren’t going well for us? I’ll tell you how I’ve started working on it. The things I’ve focused on day to day to make sure I’m not letting life go by without some sense of gratitude. I hope this episode can help you appreciate little things that are always there so you can find bits of joy this season.

Key Moments

02:46  When we need to look beyond ourselves

04:33  Happy for no reason

07:43  One of the things I have come to be grateful for

• We can be happy or unhappy for a reason, but we need to cultivate happiness for no reason
• There is power in great art and music
• Pets spark gratitude  

__

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Gift Guide for Small Business Owners
• QuickBooks Online
• “Happy For No Reason” by Marci Shimoff

__

Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: 

• Website: BeTheAnchor.ca
• Facebook: BeTheAnchorLtd
• Instagram: BeTheAnchor.ca
• Linkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd

__

Transcript:

Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea, big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy, and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode, so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much!

Kari Lotzien: [00:01:10] Hello my friends. I'm so glad you're here. I want to talk today about looking for joy and in particular looking for joy when it's not super easy to find. What I noticed the last few weeks is that there are a lot of people going through hard stuff. I have friends who are facing challenges as their loved ones are passing and going through incredible challenges with their own health. I've noticed more and more people who are really struggling to meet their financial needs, their basic needs, putting food on the table, let alone planning some sort of a holiday for their families and their children. When I look at what's going on in the world, there are times where I feel both confused and helpless and I don't know how to make a difference. I don't know how to let people know that I care. And as someone who's a high performer and who really loves to solve problems, it's really challenging to find peace in those moments where you don't have the answer and you don't know what the roadmap is, and you don't know how to make things different.

Kari Lotzien: [00:02:28] Today, when I thought about my episode, I thought, you know what, maybe you're feeling that way too. And maybe together I can share a little bit of the advice that I've been given over the years when things are hard, and maybe that'll help somebody today, too. What I found is that this is a time, when things are difficult, that we need to look beyond ourselves. That sometimes the answers don't lie between our own ears. As much as I like to think that if I just focus hard enough and think hard enough and do the work and put action behind it, that I can make a difference, sometimes we can't. And that acceptance that sometimes it takes more than me and sometimes I don't get to know. I don't get to know why. I don't get to have the answers. I don't get to be able to know what to do next. And those things are hard for me. Giving up control, feeling like there's a greater purpose, has not always been something that's come easily. There are people who it does, and I am always somewhat intrigued by the people who can have that higher sense of faith and trust. Bless your hearts, but for me, it just doesn't come easily. I want to know how to fix things. What I noticed in myself is that when I would look to a gratitude practice, which was something that I'd been told about time and time again, that one of the ways that we lead towards success is being grateful for what we currently have. And one of the things that I noticed is that I found it easy to be grateful when things were going well. When I was meeting my goals, when I was overcoming challenges, when I was helping other people, and I was seeing the impact that it had, and I was watching this unfold in a positive direction. Now I know that that's actually not true gratitude.

Kari Lotzien: [00:04:33] I read a book years ago called Happy For No Reason, and in this book she talked about when you are happy for a reason, such as what I just described, being happy because you're getting ahead, being happy because things are going well, being happy because the weather is great, or you've got money in the bank or your friends and family are moving ahead in their lives, and you're just so proud of them. That's being happy for a reason. Sometimes we're unhappy for a reason as well. We're unhappy because things are hard. We're unhappy because we don't have health, or we're having financial struggles, or we're facing something that we don't know how to get out of. Unhappy for a reason. I think with gratitude, it's this bigger idea that we can be happy for no reason. It's finding even the smallest thread of joy in the midst of anything that is going on, no matter what it is, no matter if you feel like you are overwhelmed with the pressures of life, no matter if you feel like you don't have the answers, or you don't know how to help, or you don't know what to do. There are moments where the light can come in, where there's just a crack in the density of whatever we're holding, where we can see that glimmer of gratitude.

Kari Lotzien: [00:06:01] Now, if, like me, that doesn't come completely naturally to you, and you notice that the things you're grateful for could also be equated with things are good, things are easy, I'm moving forward, let me talk to you a little bit more about where I've been finding gratitude lately. Just to show the difference. So I can be grateful, I can be thrilled when things are going well. And I want to build on those. But I also want to find these moments that feel beyond myself. They feel like something bigger than me, that my only role, the only thing I need to do is pause and notice. And that's it.

[00:06:50] Okay, my friends, we're well in the season of gift giving. And if you know of someone who's a small business owner in your life and you want to get them the perfect thing that you know will be so valued and appreciated and it'll just make them feel cared for, click on the link in the show notes. I've put together a guide of my favorite gift ideas for small business owners, and there is everything from absolutely free to a lot of options that are less than the price of a gift basket with lotions and candles. But it's really what people want. If you are a business owner, and maybe you just need some ideas of ways that people could support you, this might give you some good ideas of what to ask for. I'm sending you so much love this holiday season. Click on the link in the show notes. I'll send you the list. Back to the show.

Kari Lotzien: [00:07:43] One of the things that brings me this feeling is watching sunrises and sunsets. And lately we've been having some incredible sunrises, especially here, where the whole sky just fills with this beautiful pink cotton candy sky. And in the moment I would at first notice and think, oh my gosh, that is so beautiful. And when I follow the thread of gratitude, I can follow it to a place that says I am so grateful that I'm here in this moment. That my window faces this direction and that I was able to take five minutes this morning and truly appreciate the beauty that unfolded right in front of me. Wasn't on my schedule, wasn't something I planned for, I have absolutely no control over it. My only role is to notice and appreciate.

Kari Lotzien: [00:08:43] And it changes how I feel in my body. It makes me feel like there is a message so much greater than myself that it is going to be okay. That even though I don't understand it, I don't know how a sunrise happens, I don't know what makes the sky turn this beautiful pink hue. And I don't think it's for me to know. It is simply for me to appreciate. I also get this same feeling when I listen to artists, songwriters, music. I can stand in just pure appreciation for how something so complex, the lyrics, the music, the instruments, and how it all just comes together in some beautiful perfection. And my role is to just notice it. And I even hold back sometimes from thinking, ooh, I like that song, or I don't like that song, or analyzing, oh, who is that singer? Or what is that instrument? Can I just pause and appreciate the full impact of the beauty in this creation. I think some people find that in art as well. A beautiful painting or a drawing or a sculpture. Any of those things where our role is just to hold it.

Kari Lotzien: [00:10:09] The other little piece that I'm finding gratitude in right now is my dog smiling. Now, I don't know how many of you have dogs that smile. But every morning I feed my dog. She eats, and as soon as she's finished, she will come to me wherever I am in the house and lick my hand as if she's saying, thanks for looking after me. And when I look down at her, she looks up and smiles. And I think, what a beautiful world I get to live in, where I have a dog that smiles at me and thanks me for looking after her. Again, it makes me feel like there's something bigger than myself. I talk to the dog all day long. I take advice, I share all my thoughts and feelings and frustrations with her. But the connection, I think sometimes that we have with animals and their ability to lean in, to snuggle up, to give us that look, or to just cuddle up on our laps when things are hard, makes me feel like there is something more. It makes me feel like things are going to be okay. And it's through nothing that I do, or nothing that I say or nothing that I create. It is beyond me. Another little gratitude moment are just conversations, small ones where I can see humor in just the smallest little thing, where I can have a giggle with a perfect stranger and see something funny in the world. It can be small thing or a big thing. Where we just share a moment.

Kari Lotzien: [00:11:51] It can be when I thank someone for their service, or I give someone a compliment by just telling them, oh my gosh, you look amazing today or you are glowing. And watching their face light up. That feels like gratitude. And although I may have had some impact on it, I also love being a bystander. I also love just watching. I love watching and consciously looking for connection. When I see it, you know, a little one running up to their parent and being so excited and jumping into their arms. I see it when I'm out and maybe a young couple in love is holding hands and just the way they look at each other lights me up. I think this holds the key that opens the door to true joy. I feel that joy and the experience of joy, it's more than an emotion. It's more than just creating situations that feel easy and feel abundant and are turning our lives ahead. I think these small little micro doses of joy are like a key that opens the door to so much more. And I think that our human experience is about pausing and understanding that our role is merely gratitude. It's noticing and seeing it and appreciating it in the moment.

Kari Lotzien: [00:13:21] Oh, it's a short episode today. But this one was really speaking to me. I hope that no matter what is going on in your life right now, no matter how much you want to solve a problem, no matter how much you want to make a change or to move forward, if things feel hard or sticky or you just don't know what to do, I hope that these tips and these little examples of ways to just appreciate, notice, can light something in you, can just provide that glimmer of hope that you can start looking for it in your own life and just notice. Does it compound? Does it spread to others? I bet it does.

Kari Lotzien: [00:14:06] Thank you so much for being here. If you haven't liked and subscribed to the podcast yet, please do. It just means the world to me. And even better, the thing that would make the most difference to me today is if you shared this podcast, this episode, with someone who might be struggling to find the joy. And just let them know that you're thinking about them. Maybe let them know that thinking of them, their humor, their face, a story, a favorite memory, was what was a key for you today. And then pass and just see what ripple could happen. Thanks so much for being here.

Kari Lotzien: [00:14:49] Please know that this podcast is meant for entertainment purposes only. It is not a substitution for medical or professional mental health advice. If you require support, please do reach out. Thanks so much.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I am talking about something that I know all too well in this episode: feeling awkward in social settings. I’m specifically talking about holiday parties and networking events for those of us who are socially anxious and who find social events stressful and nerve-wracking. You’re not alone! I’ve found some things that help me not just survive but actually enjoy networking and parties and I’m sharing those with you. 

Some of you, like my spouse, are socially at ease in any situation. You can make chit-chat and strike up casual conversations without any worry at all. So this may all sound foreign to you. But if you’re one of those people who find social networking easy, hopefully, this episode will give you more insight into what some of your friends and colleagues are going through. 

The strategies I use to help myself through parties and events have a lot to do with preparation. I think one of the biggest things that causes social anxiety is the fear of not knowing what to say. We walk into the room and are nervous about having anything to talk about and just feel overwhelmed. I actually prepare conversation topics in advance. It might sound strange, but being prepared takes some of the anxiety away. I have a lot of advice and tips to share and I want this episode to make all of you who are socially awkward feel less alone, and to give you tools to make it through the holidays less stressed.

Key Moments

06:18  Creating a strategy around chit-chat and how to try it out

08:37  An easy way to prepare for a party with friends

10:24  How to prepare for a networking event

• You can gamify your networking goals to make it more fun
• Set yourself an end time, you’re allowed to know in advance when you want to leave
• Watch alcohol intake

__

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Gift Guide for Small Business Owners
• QuickBooks Online

__

Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: 

• Website: BeTheAnchor.ca
• Facebook: BeTheAnchorLtd
• Instagram: BeTheAnchor.ca
• Linkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd

__

Transcript:

Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach, Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us, to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea, big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy, and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode, so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much.

Kari Lotzien: [00:01:10] I'm so glad you're here. Today I want to talk about holiday parties and networking for those of you who are socially anxious or just feel awkward in social settings. This is me. I can tell you that I get stressed when I need to go to a holiday party or something that sounds like it's supposed to be fun for other people. For me, it causes me a lot of stress and I get really nervous. I don't know what I'm going to talk about. And if that's you, I wanted to do this episode, number one, so you know that you're not alone, that there is not all of these people out in the world that love to connect with other people and that we are somehow outsiders. I think there's a lot of us. And the more people that I've talked to about this, the more I have people opening up to me that they feel the same way I do. So I wanted to have this, like side conversation with you to give you maybe some ideas on how I have coped. I am not an expert at all in this area, but I feel like maybe I've got some things that might be helpful for you too.

Kari Lotzien: [00:02:20] Now, I think, like many of us who feel socially anxious or awkward, somehow we connect with partners that are outgoing and sociable and that these things come naturally to them. At least, that's how it is in my life. My partner, my spouse, I don't know if he was born with it, but he is amazing when it comes to connecting with people, striking up light conversation. He knows how to blend a great story and add a little humor. I feel like I am missing that part of my brain. I tend to be a little more serious, a little more rigid, and I feel like I can't pull off this casual 'How's the weather' type conversation. Now, if you want to tell me about your deepest challenges or your biggest dreams, or the most exciting vacation you ever went on, if you want to talk to me about how worried you are about your kids, I am all there for it. Having deep conversations is much, much easier for me than this more light-hearted chit-chat. I don't know why that is.

Kari Lotzien: [00:03:35] A lot of people are really surprised when they hear how much anxiety I have in a social situation because they're like, Kari, you have a podcast, you do a lot of speaking engagements, you speak on stages all over the place. Yeah, I do. But I think a part of it, and why I really enjoy it is because when I do these episodes or I'm speaking on stages, I know what we're going to talk about. I can rehearse the topics and the ideas and the conversation, and therefore it reduces my anxiety because it's really predictable. Even on guest episodes, I have a pretty good idea what we're going to talk about before we start talking. In my coaching, I love really deep diving with people and being that safe place. I think that is my superpower. But social, where there's a lot of people in a group and we're supposed to be having a good time and there's no agenda of what we're going to talk about, oh my goodness, that that I find really overwhelming. And maybe you do too.

Kari Lotzien: [00:04:45] So I want to acknowledge that this is not just impacting me in places where there are perfect strangers. I can actually strike up a conversation more easily with a perfect stranger than I can with an acquaintance. And I think it's because with a stranger, they have no expectation of me, I have no expectation of them, and I can choose whether or not I want to talk to them. So sitting beside a perfect stranger on a plane, or standing in a grocery store line-up and striking up a conversation with the person behind me, that I can do some of the time if I'm in the right, the right state of mind, it works. But I think with strangers, because there's not as much expectation, it feels a little bit easier and it typically isn't going to last as long on a flight. I'll really think about if I'm going to strike up a conversation with the person sitting next to me, and when I'm going to do it based on how long the flight is, because I don't want to be stuck in a conversation for hours with someone that I happen to be sitting right beside when I can't predict it. So if it's a long flight, I often won't strike up a conversation with someone until the last like 15-20 minutes of the flight. It feels safer.

Kari Lotzien: [00:06:09] If it's a one-hour flight, I'm more likely to open that door or make just a casual comment way earlier in the flight. I create strategy around how I'm going to chit-chat. If it's a grocery store line-up, I likely know I'm only going to be with this person for five minutes so I can kind of try out my new content with how to create chit-chat in an easier way. So I might talk about the weather. I might talk about the price of food. I might talk about, you know, random things, and I kind of try out my content on those people and just see how it responds. And then I kind of prepare it for when I'm in new situations where I'm in a networking meeting or I'm at a holiday party, or I'm at a gathering with a group of people that I'm supposed to be connecting with. Now I've kind of got some pre-rehearsed content that I've tried out on the people in the grocery store line-up that I can now apply to my situation. Now, that might sound completely crazy to you, and if it does, you're probably someone more like my husband than like me. And if you're one of those people, you're probably just going to listen to this and be like, this sounds insane. But it might also help you to understand your partner, your spouse, your friends who don't have this magical thing that you have. So maybe continue to listen or come back to the next episode.

[00:07:26] Okay my friends, we are well in the season of gift-giving. And if you know of someone who's a small business owner in your life and you want to get them the perfect thing that you know will be so valued and appreciated and it'll just make them feel cared for, click on the link in the show notes. I've put together a guide of my favorite gift ideas for small business owners, and there is everything from absolutely free to a lot of options that are less than the price of a gift basket with lotions and candles. But it's really what people want. If you are a business owner, and maybe you just need some ideas of ways that people could support you, this might give you some good ideas of what to ask for. I'm sending you so much love this holiday season. Click on the link in the show notes. I'll send you the list. Back to the show. 

Kari Lotzien: [00:07:26] Okay. Now, other things that I do when I'm having to be in a group situation with friends or acquaintances, I research. So again, like this might sound crazy and and I'm okay with it because it might help someone, and seriously, we need to be in this together. I will go back and I'll look through their social media. So if it's friends, I'll go back through their social media and I'll think of like 2 or 3 things that are going on in their life. So if they've taken a trip or maybe one of their kids has had an exciting thing happen in their lives, or I know what they might be interested in, I will put notes in my phone. I put the person's name, and then I'll put like 2 or 3 points of things that are happening in their lives that I've seen on social media that I can then use when I'm more anxious and I can't think of what to say. I'll sneak off, I'll go to the washroom, and I'll have a quick look at my phone and be like, okay, these are the three things that I can talk to that person about. And then I don't sound so crazy. Because before what would happen is I would go in unprepared and then I wouldn't know what to talk about and it would seem awkward.

Kari Lotzien: [00:09:28] So then I would either talk too much about what was going on in my life, and I'd get nervous and try to hold the conversation, or I would end up with these, like, kind of open-ended questions that felt a little bit shallow or disconnected with the other person. And then I would get home after the event and when my anxiety was lower, I'd be like, oh my gosh, I should have asked them about this situation, or I should have asked them how their mom was doing, I heard she was sick, or I should have made a comment about that big vacation that they went on, or that big promotion that they just celebrated at work. And then I would feel like a jerk, because it would seem like I didn't show up in a way that I cared. And this just helps me to kind of remind myself of what's going on in people's lives so that my anxiety doesn't take over. And then I have, my brain is a blank. So. Sounds weird. Might work.

Kari Lotzien: [00:10:24] If it's more of like a networking event where I don't necessarily know the other people as well, like on a friend basis, then I will actually go on to their website. I'll go on to their social media platforms in their business, and I do the same thing. I won't research every single person that's going to be in there, but I will have a target. So if there's 1 or 2 people that I'm wanting to meet, or I'm sincerely wanting to learn more about what they do or their business or whatever that is, I will actually go and I'll make a list again in the notes app in my phone, because I will have it with me. And it would be weird to bring out like a notebook of my ideas of what I can talk about in a social setting. So I don't want to look strange, but I do want to have this with me. I'll just make a few notes of who I want to talk with. And here's the cool thing about it, if you make the note and you write the person's name down and their business name, and then a couple of ideas you want to talk about, even if you don't look at your phone, even if you don't even look at that list, it will actually help you to remember their name and help you to be more prepared when you're in the moment so your anxiety doesn't just completely take over. It also helps to focus your attention, because another strange thing that would sometimes happen with me is I would go into an environment and I just feel overwhelmed by the number of people in the room. So I can hear all of these people, I can see all of these people, but I actually might not recognize people that I kind of know that I might be comfortable talking to, or that I want to talk to because I get a little bit more overwhelmed.

Kari Lotzien: [00:12:00] So this way, if I, sometimes I'll actually even put a screenshot or a picture in their off their social media so that I recognize their face, and then I can start to do some pre-work by learning that face and that name and putting them together. Because how many times have you been in a situation where someone introduces you to another person and the name isn't even out of their mouths yet, and you've forgotten it already? You feel like you look like you're not caring or not listening. Not the case. So you can do a little bit of pre-work like flashcards by looking at the picture and pairing the name with it, and then putting that into an app or into your, even your notes app on your phone, so that you can create that visual image of connection and then have a couple of topics to talk about. Then when you get introduced, your brain goes, oh yeah, yeah, we remember that person and it will connect the ideas more easily for you as you then start to strike up a conversation. So you're not relying on that in the moment, trying to think of something to say. You've kind of pre-prepared it in your own mind. Now, if you feel like this sounds like not very personable and not very natural and caring, I can tell you in my own life when I do this, it actually allows me to be the caring, compassionate human that I really want to be, and it allows me to show up in a more natural way. I get just really weird and awkward, and I can't remember what to say when I don't have these tools and strategies to help kind of prep me along the way. So maybe that helps for you too.

Kari Lotzien: [00:13:34] Now I will also game-ify it, so I will make a little scorecard almost, to help me like remind that meeting new people and making new connections does not have to be awful, it can be fun. And so I will make myself a little like scorecard or a little cheat sheet to say, okay, find one other person who enjoys hiking or camping. Find one person who could recommend a great virtual assistant. Find one person and hear what they like to do over the holidays, or if they're traveling outside of the country. And then once I've met those three things, then I'm done. Then I can go home. So this is the other big thing is so often we go to these networking events and we don't know how long we have to stay. And when we feel awkward, especially at the beginning, you might have only been there four minutes and you're thinking, okay, when can I leave? When will be a natural time when I can actually get out of here? Give yourself a little bit of a scorecard, make it a little bit fun, and then once you've hit those goals that you set for that event, even if it's family holidays, once you've had your three conversations, you've talked to so-and-so about their kid going off to university, you've talked to someone about their promotion at work, and you've, you know, connected with one of the kids in the group, and now you can leave.

Kari Lotzien: [00:15:05] Give yourself permission to not stay until the very end, until you're overwhelmed and you're tired and you're exhausted. So you can set a time limit as well. Like you can just give yourself permission that you're going to leave at 9:00, and you don't have to make an excuse that you're not feeling well. You don't have to say that you have a headache. Just simply thank the host so much for having you and then you peace out. Setting an end time will help your mind know that this isn't going to go on forever, and it's not something that you're just tolerating, but that you actually have a time that it will end. I can also tell you that I know hosts who question, can I put an end time on my event? Can I put an end time on my party because I don't like when people stay until midnight, then I'm exhausted and I still want to clean up and I don't feel well the next day. And I always say to people, clear is kind. So if you tell the host, oh, I'm so grateful that you invited me, you know, I'll be able to stop in, but I need to leave by 9, I hope that's okay. Right? So you just kind of put it out there.

Kari Lotzien: [00:16:15] But even as the host, you can put an end time on your event. You can say that it is from 5:00 until 9:00 pm, or it is from 7 until midnight, whatever that is, when you know that there's an end in mind, now it's just that clear is kind. It puts borders on the expectations and it'll allow you to feel more comfortable. So whether you're a guest or a host, you can do that.

Kari Lotzien: [00:16:40] Here's the other big one. And again from experience, eat before you go and eat something substantial. Here's why. So you might find yourself thinking, oh, there's going to be snacks there, I don't need to eat, I'll just eat when I get there. But then if you're anxious, you might find a) you either eat and eat and eat because it's a way that you're doing something with your hands and you're occupying yourself, but then you eat way more than you wanted to, or you eat things that just don't make you feel good. I do that. Or you don't eat enough and you find yourself maybe when you get feeling socially anxious, you might feel nauseous and it just doesn't quite feel right. So then you don't eat enough. Now your anxiety actually increases because your body is also giving off hunger signals like, hey, how come you didn't feed me? Combine that with the social anxiety you're feeling and the whole thing just feels more awkward. So eat before you go.

Kari Lotzien: [00:17:41] Which then connects to the next one: be really conscious of your alcohol intake. Again, sometimes when we feel anxious, if you're the type of person that will naturally stand beside the food counter and just be popping things in your mouth because... Another topic, but eating actually can help regulate your nervous system. It actually makes you feel more calm. So we might do this naturally to try and calm our nervous system, but sometimes people will also do the same thing, you have a drink in your hand, and when we're feeling a little bit more anxious, you might just notice that you're taking more drinks than you typically would. And the next thing you know, your social anxiety goes down because you might now be feeling the effects of the alcohol in your system. The anxiety goes down but now you might act or say or do things that are not really in alignment with the image that you want to portray in that environment. So protect yourself from yourself and know in advance that maybe you're going to consciously take one alcoholic drink, and then you're going to make sure that you follow it up with water or something that is a non-alcoholic beverage, so that you know that you're not accidentally impairing yourself as you're going through this thing.

Kari Lotzien: [00:19:04] And be cautious too, because there are times where that just the impact of alcohol in our system, it lowers our social anxiety, and we also want to, I think, be cautious and careful that we're not using that to then build a bridge for us to feel more comfortable with other people, because then that can become a crutch that we're starting to explore on a more regular basis when we need to be with other people. And without any judgment at all, it's something that I often hear my clients talking about, that alcohol is often a part of social events, it's part of networking events, it's part of holiday things, and they are a little bit anxious just about that, that they don't want to drink too much, or they're concerned that it is starting to become a crutch. So I just want to acknowledge that with you, that just be aware of it. Just be aware as you move through.

Kari Lotzien: [00:20:04] So networking for holiday success for the socially awkward like myself. We don't want to avoid. We know, we've heard that we need to be engaging with people. We want to be making those connections both in our business and in our lives. This is what creates the life that you love. It is being with people who are like-minded, who are kind, and by staying at home or avoiding those situations, we don't get the experience and the reminder that most often people are good. And most often when you go back and you look at that event that you might have been nervous to go to, or you might have been a little bit unsure, you will notice most of the time that it actually was better than you thought it was going to be. Your brain is trying to protect you from new situations by thinking of all the catastrophic things that could happen and how awful it will be, and by just sealing up a bookend to go, actually, that was better than I thought. And the little strategies and tips that I've shared with you have helped me to feel more confident in those social situations, especially when I'm with acquaintances or people that I don't see as often so that I can show up in a way that I feel more like myself, I'm more conscious of the image that I want to present, and it is so much more likely that the next morning or after the event is over, that I will have that little voice in my head that goes, huh, that was better than I thought, and I do feel a little bit better. I feel a little bit closer to other people. I am making those connections. I'm building that community because that's what we all want to do. I think that's what the world is about, is creating community and connections. Some of us just might need a little bit more support in how we do that.

Kari Lotzien: [00:21:59] All right, I want to finish this episode. We are coming up to year end. For a lot of us who have end of fiscal year, year ends. And I want to share one of my favorite things with you. As I close up, I'm going to be sharing more and more of these things throughout the podcast, I want to talk about QuickBooks Online. I was introduced to QuickBooks Online by my bookkeeper, because I am one of those people that has great intentions to make sure that my expenses are uploaded, to make sure that I keep track of my receipts so that the world is easier when I take it to my bookkeeper, but I inevitably would end up at year end with a pile of receipts in Ziploc bags and shoe boxes that are crumpled up. Half of them are missing, and I would always feel guilty when I took them to the bookkeeper and dumped this all on her. And she introduced me to QuickBooks online, which has an app, and now I can take a quick photo of my receipts and upload them through my app when I'm at the restaurant, when I'm at that event, when I've made that purchase for office supplies, it's so much quicker and easier, and the reports that I'm able to generate are actually in terms that I understand.

Kari Lotzien: [00:23:12] So I am a better business owner. My books are more accurate and more close to real time, so that I can get a pulse on my business and how we're actually doing. I wanted to share that with you. Check out QuickBooks Online, especially if you're coming up to year end and you're having that feeling of, oh gosh, I should have been better at this. I had the best intentions. Maybe next year you set yourself up to be really successful and get on those things so you can have a closer vision of how your business is doing.

Kari Lotzien: [00:23:43] Thanks so much for being here. If you haven't liked and subscribed to the podcast yet, you know how to do it. Whatever platform you're on, go click on those three little dots and make sure you follow. Even better, if you know someone who is feeling socially awkward in those networking events in those holiday parties this season, take a screenshot or share this episode with them and let them know they're not alone. We can do this together and make those connections and build community. We'll see you next week.

Kari Lotzien: [00:24:16] Please know that this podcast is meant for entertainment purposes only. It is not a substitution for medical or professional mental health advice. If you require support, please do reach out. Thanks so much.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I was listening to a podcast that was advising leaders on how to take the emotion out of delivering difficult news to employees and it got me fired up. I believe taking the emotion out of anything is taking the humanity out of connection. That’s what I’m talking about today: how to be a great leader by working with your emotions.

Delivering hard news without emotion makes you come across as cold, hard, and uncaring. That’s not how you want to appear to the people who have done the hard work and their best jobs for you. We aren’t advised to take the emotion out of exciting news or joyful things, so why should we remove it from hard things? I think we do it to avoid feeling uncomfortable. Let’s talk about that.

Emotions are not a gendered issue, either. All humans have emotions and leading with compassion is a human quality, not a gendered one. So join me to find out how to lead with emotion in a healthy way. What does that look like? How can we avoid explosive emotions without ignoring them entirely? How do we share our emotions in ways that allow our employees to feel safe in their own emotions as well?

Key Moments

03:20  How it looks when delivering hard news without emotion  

05:02  Explaining ways in which emotion shows up

09:40  How to manage our emotions before sharing them

• Partner your logical mind with your emotions before sharing news
• The importance of creating a safe space for everyone’s emotion
• The dangers of being emotional to customers but closed off to employees

__

Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: 

• Website: BeTheAnchor.ca
• Facebook: BeTheAnchorLtd
• Instagram: BeTheAnchor.ca
• Linkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd

__

Transcript:

Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea, big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy, and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode, so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much!

Kari Lotzien: [00:01:10] Hello my friends. I'm so glad you're here. I am fired up a little bit again today. I was listening to a podcast, and it was talking to leaders about how to take the emotion out of delivering hard or difficult news to an employee, and it just ticked me off because I thought taking the emotion out of it is like taking the humanity out of connection. It is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, and I think we need to take this to the recycling bin. Actually, no. The trash. I don't want to ever see it again. I am so tired of hearing this idea in leadership that to be a great leader and for people to respect you, it means that you need to shut off your emotion and that you just deliver the hard news. I think it disconnects us not only from our teams and our employees, it disconnects us from our customers and from each other. And the biggest issue is I think it disconnects us from ourselves.

Kari Lotzien: [00:02:17] Let me tell you more about it. I have never heard anyone say to take the emotion out of something when you are excited, or when you're joyful, or when you're sharing a win in your business. When you are fired up and things are going so well, nobody tells you to take the emotion out of it. The only time we ever hear 'take the emotion out of it' is when we're delivering difficult news, when we've had an underperforming employee, where maybe you have to lay people off, where you're telling someone that they're not doing a great job. This is when we're giving the advice to take the emotion out of it. And I think the reason we do it is because we're not comfortable, that we don't like feeling discomfort in conversations. We don't like to show that we feel anxious or fearful or maybe really frustrated or we're angry. So we're told that in those specific scenarios shut the emotion off, deliver the hard conversation, and carry on with your day.

Kari Lotzien: [00:03:20] We have gone through some really tough times in business in these last few years, and a lot of people have had to lay off employees, cut back on hours, change job allocations, and we know in our hearts that people may not be really excited about these changes. What I know for sure is that when you try to deliver this type of information without any emotion, you come across as being cold, uncaring, not having compassion. And these are the people who have often showed up in your business, they've done the hard work, they're doing their best jobs for you. And when you show up and shut off emotion and deliver difficult news to them without showing compassion, we're doing it the wrong way. And I think what we're trying to do is just protect ourselves from those uncomfortable feelings. Another little sidebar that I want to address here is that when I talk about emotions in leadership, people often think that I'm speaking to the female leaders, and I'm not. Men have emotions, too. Men lead with their emotions. Men have compassion, and they create incredible teams as much as women. This is not a gender-specific issue. Just because you are emotional does not mean that you are feminine.

Kari Lotzien: [00:04:51] I am talking to everyone in leadership. Instead of talking about emotions as being a gender issue, I like to think of it as being more like developmental stages. When we show up with our emotions like a toddler, I want you to envision what that looks like. Toddlers, typically when they're upset, don't think about other people. They're very self-focused and they just want what they want. Their emotions are big and intense and they kind of flare them all over the place. We don't want to show up with our emotions like a toddler, because when we show up like that, the image we give to others is that we don't have that empathy, that care and compassion, and we also don't have a sense of control over those big emotions. You might also think of it like a teenager. I don't know about you, but I remember that stage being a teenager where I wanted to portray one image of maybe being confident or having courage and being able to stand out in a crowd. But inside I was anxious and nervous and fearful. I think when we show up with our emotions like a teenager, it feels incongruent because we forget that that whole fake it til you make it, it doesn't quite land. We sometimes forget that not only our emotions show up in the way that we speak and the words that we use, but it shows up in our body language, our facial expressions, our tone of voice. And it is really difficult, if not impossible, to fake that sort of emotion. And it just comes off as kind of awkward and weird. What we want to do is show up like a well-regulated adult that can see the bigger picture, that understands empathy and emotion and is in alignment with their emotions. We're not letting them lead like a toddler. We're not trying to navigate this back and forth like a teenager, of presenting an image that isn't in alignment with how we're actually feeling. We want to partner with our emotion and move forward from there.

Kari Lotzien: [00:07:03] And the more that I work with employers who have been in business for years, what I hear from them is when they have to have hard conversations, when they have to lay people off, when they have to tell someone that they weren't the successful candidate for that job, and they know that that person was so hopeful that they had already started spending their first paycheck. They had already told their friends and their family members that they were sure that they got the job, and you're the one that has to let them down. Every employer I know, when they have a safe space to open up, they talk to me about how much that affects them. They talked me about how days after they had to have layoffs, they couldn't sleep, that their stomach was just in knots. Their emotion still lands in their own bodies.

Kari Lotzien: [00:07:56] Now, what does it feel like when we can show up in a healthy way? Leading with emotion? This doesn't mean that you let that toddler who is letting their emotions lead, where their logical thinking brain is not on par, which is often why they don't have any words when that happens, we don't want to lead with our emotion like a toddler. We don't want to let it come into the room first and set the tone for the meeting before our logical-thinking brains get there. And we've all been there. You've had leaders, coaches, teachers over years that you have seen when their emotion walked in the door before their brains did. They're yelling, they're screaming. They're maybe crying or telling you how upset or overwhelmed they feel. Maybe the anxiety is leading and they're just sharing this doom and gloom story with you. We know that leading with that type of emotion doesn't feel good for anyone. Because when we lead with intense emotion as a leader, those who we are leading, those who we are sharing information with, it will induce feelings of discomfort, uncertainty. They don't know what to expect, they don't know what's going on, and it can feel really dysregulating for them. But that doesn't mean we shut it down. What we want to do is partner with our emotion by first taking some time before that interaction happens, before you have to deliver that difficult news, before you have to step into that challenging meeting where you're going to talk about the change that's upcoming that you think might not be received so well.

Kari Lotzien: [00:09:41] Spend some time with your emotion before you go into that meeting and just ask yourself, what am I truly feeling about this? Acknowledge it. Give yourself a chance to say, this is really upsetting me. I'm so angry. And then the secondary question is to ask yourself, what is the story I'm creating about this emotion? We have an emotion, the first thing our logical brains will do is try to attach it to logical fact as to why we should feel that way. Once you get your logical thinking connected to your emotion, it allows you to then unpack it a little bit to say, okay, there might be other reasons. 

Kari Lotzien: [00:10:23] Okay, I want to share a story that highlights this idea of how we connect stories and emotions. A few years ago, I was going into a significant contract negotiation with one of our stakeholders, and before the negotiations were taking place, I knew that this contractor was asking us to make significant changes in our service delivery model, and it was a request that I was not comfortable with at all. 

Kari Lotzien: [00:10:54] I felt angry, I felt that this stakeholder was asking us to do something, and not appreciating the value of what we were providing to their clients. The care and the service and the quality of what we were doing was not being appreciated, and they were just cutting and cutting and cutting. And I felt that what was happening is they believed we would continue to do a great service, but that they wouldn't have to pay the money for it and it would cut into our revenue. At first I was really angry and I wanted to go into that negotiation, trying to be defensive of our position and to fight back. I took a little bit of time, sat with it, and went back to visiting the core values of my business and how we wanted to show up in that service provision. What it got really clear on is that the requests that were being made of us were not in alignment with the service delivery model that we had prided ourselves on for years. And I felt that if we agreed to do this, to make these changes, that it was going to damage our reputation, potentially to a point that would be very, very difficult, if not impossible to recover from. 

Kari Lotzien: [00:12:07] And I wasn't willing to take the chance. I got really clear on that, and when I went into the negotiation, prepared to talk about the core values and how we have the same goals, and that we wanted to be on the same page and we wanted to have this true partnership - I got clear on that - but when I showed up for the negotiation, the meeting start to finish, from the time I got out of my car until I was back in my car was less than ten minutes. I didn't get a chance to talk about anything that I was passionate about. I didn't get a chance to talk about our results and the testimonials and all of the great things that we had been doing. All I got was based on the initial conversation we had had when the request had been made to cut services and to change our delivery model, based on my initial reaction to that, they had decided that my company was no longer demonstrating the flexibility that they were requiring to move forward with the delivery, and they were choosing to pursue other options. Didn't even get a chance to come to the table. I went back to my car and I spiraled. I felt that my emotions had led. I felt that shame. I felt I did something wrong, that now I potentially had catastrophic consequences for my team. That one stakeholder represented about 30% of our revenue and having the loss, even though we were going to have a few months to navigate that as we finished out the current contract, I knew that it was going to have a significant impact on our business. 

Kari Lotzien: [00:13:49] I chose to not go back to the office that day, because I knew that our whole team knew that I was going into this negotiation. They knew that it was being a bit tense, and they were going to ask me, and I did not have the capacity to hold my emotion back. I was just feeling completely overwhelmed and afraid, honestly, of what was going to happen in the business. So I took some time. I got clear. Because I knew that if I showed up in that meeting with all of my fears around what was going to happen, losing 30% of our revenue, that my team was going to feel that uncertainty, and I was setting them up to feel like they should be afraid. When I came back into that meeting and I got really clear and I came back to the core values of our business and the delivery model that I had, that we had created over decades, that we were so proud of and that had earned us an incredible reputation in this field, and I wasn't willing to negotiate that, what happened is that bit of anger fueled the passion that I had for the core values of the business and the service that we did. 

Kari Lotzien: [00:15:04] I combined that with a little bit of honesty around my fear, in that I didn't have an answer on what we were going to do next. I didn't have an immediate solution to the problem, but I wanted to sit in this space of, we can do this. I do believe that. And when I presented it to my team, I acknowledged that I was disappointed in the information that I had to share, but that I felt the request that was being made of us in that negotiation would not have served our company well, and it actually would have been worse for the providers themselves. It would have been worse for my team, in that they were being asked to do things that they didn't believe in, and I couldn't risk what that would be. I acknowledged that I didn't know what it was going to look like from there. I had some ideas that there were things that we might need to learn. I might have to reach out to other potential sources and stakeholders to see if we could come through this. In just setting that up and pairing with my emotion, not letting it lead, what it invited was some really amazing conversation about where we can go from here. My team shared that they were actually really grateful that I stood up for them, that I continued to show the integrity, even though that meant a significant loss in revenue, that when push came to shove, they knew that I would stick up for our values and our service model first, that that came ahead of every other decision when it came to revenue that I was making. 

Kari Lotzien: [00:16:35] It actually connected our team in solidarity. And as we moved forward, and I did ask them to do challenging things, we had to learn new skills, we had to reach out and do things that we were a little less comfortable with. But they were on board. And that shift we joined together. So I think this is a beautiful example of how you can partner with your emotion, even when things don't go well, even when you feel like maybe it was your fault that things didn't go well. This story is meant to just show you how this can play out in reality. Okay, so once you get the story unpacked and you acknowledge it. So at the beginning of that story, I was thinking, okay, this is my fault, and this is the demise of our company. And when I checked the facts on that story, I realized, you know what? Nope, I'm not holding on to that. It doesn't represent reality, and it's not going to serve in the direction that I want to go. So this is just a great example of how connect to your story, look for the logic, address the emotion and then create a plan to move forward. Okay. 

Kari Lotzien: [00:17:48] Say you're feeling really anxious or stressed, you have some bad news. You know that you're going to disappoint people. And it's just, it's really weighing heavily on you. The emotion you might feel is sadness. You might feel guilt or shame. Maybe you're taking a responsibility that you feel like this is your fault that you've gotten into this situation. So the story that you're creating is that I'm feeling this sense of guilt and I show up in a place of shame. And when I then bring my logical brain on board to say, do I know that for sure? Do I know for sure that this is my fault? When you then ask questions back to that story to say, give me the proof, give me the facts, show me this is real, quite often you'll find that, well, no, this is what's happening in the market or this is what we know about how things have changed. It invites that logical mind to come in and start to work with your emotion, and it may just shift it a little bit. Now, you might shift so that you're not showing up in the height of your frustration or your anger. You're not showing up in the height of your discomfort, your shame, your guilt, and bringing that to your team. But when you diffuse it a little bit, when you dilute it a little bit, when you question the story, you might find that your emotions lose their intensity, they lose a bit of their power, and you start to be able to express - still in emotion - but maybe your anger turns to, I'm just feeling confused as to how this happened. Maybe your shame or your guilt turns to, I feel disappointed in the news that I have to share.

Kari Lotzien: [00:19:35] So what we can do is just diffuse so that the intensity of that emotion doesn't filter down into our teams and the people that we're sharing with. But what we do is we start to just buffer it a little bit so that it feels safer for now other people to also have emotion because this is how you connect. This is how your compassion shows. If you come in with an intense level of anger, automatically your people are likely going to respond by either shutting down, they go into this fear response where they just clam up, or they might go to battle with you and get really defensive and now it turns into a conflict or a really big power struggle.

Kari Lotzien: [00:20:17] What you want to do is create space within the emotion that you can invite other people's emotion to come into it. We do our work ahead of time. We question. We invite our logical brains to come in and to analyze, Okay, what is the emotion I'm having? What's the story I've created with that? And then link it to, okay, what's the proof? Where's the data? Could there be another reason for this that inevitably will feed back in that loop and start to damper, buffer or question your emotions, which takes a lot of the intensity out of it and allows you to show up as an effective leader. Which also has space for the emotions of the people that you are leading, that you're sharing that information with. This is about processing emotion in leadership. It's working with the emotion in your leadership. It is not about shutting it down. That's what I want to leave you with today, is that if you are still reading books that talk about taking the emotion out of it and not dealing with it, just stick to the facts, deal with the whole cold, hard truth, know that this is not the future of leadership. For many of you who work in service-based businesses it's going to feel like you are trying to shut your emotion off in one sense, and then using it as your greatest asset and your greatest power in your front-line service, because many of you in service, your ability to empathize, your intuition, your ability to connect with other people, if you're leaning in and you can notice how people are feeling and you know when to ask the right question, emotion is an integral part of your business. It is one of your greatest assets. To turn it off when you're managing or when you're in a leadership role, it will seem ridiculous.

Kari Lotzien: [00:22:12] And one step further than that, if you present that way, where you show up one way with your clients or customers, and then you show up another way with your team, you're going to feel inauthentic to your team. They're going to feel like you can't be trusted because you're a bit like a chameleon and you only show up with emotion, care, and compassion when you're with clients or customers. And when you're with your team, you show up with this lack or this armor up feeling. Your team will lose trust in you and it will hurt your business, I guarantee it. So what I want you to step forward with is know that emotion is part of it. It is part of really solid, beautiful, effective team-building, team culture. It is not about being, you know, all Pollyanna and happy all the time. It's not about rainbows and unicorns. It's not about avoiding the hard conversations and just showering people with praise. That's not it. It's about embracing the emotion, whatever it looks like, wherever it's at, linking it to a story that you have created in your own mind, and then walking with that emotion in all aspects of your business.

Kari Lotzien: [00:23:34] Thanks so much for being here. I would love to hear your thoughts on this. One of how emotion is showing up in your business, what you notice, where the tricky parts are, where the sticky parts are. Reach out to me. DM me on social media. Let's have the conversation. I'd love to hear your questions on this. If we can start a conversation, maybe we come back and do a follow up episode with some questions. I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you haven't liked and subscribed to this podcast yet. Hey, why not? Make sure that you go, if you're on Apple, just go to the podcast page and click on that little check mark in the top right hand corner. If you want to share it, click on those three little dots. Scroll down and you'll see a thing that says Share Episode. This will help you to spread the news and build our community. If you're on Spotify, also so easy. Go to the podcast page, click on follow, and again, those three little dots will give you an option to share the episode. Thanks so much for being here. See you next week.

Kari Lotzien: [00:24:35] Please know that this podcast is meant for entertainment purposes only. It is not a substitution for medical or professional mental health advice. If you require support, please do reach out. Thanks so much.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I love to talk to female entrepreneurs who are embracing the journey. Hearing their stories is inspiring and they often share insights about entrepreneurship that may be a bit different than what we have learned in traditional leadership and business courses. So I’m thrilled today to talk with Ruby Cole-Ellis, founder of The Maby Studio and the Sylvan Lake Chamber of Commerce 2021 Businesswoman of the Year. Ruby is a powerful woman and we explore the powerful women in her family who helped shape her as we talk about generational business. 

Ruby’s grandmother was an entrepreneur, a businesswoman and an investor, who raised four children alone in the 60s. I can only imagine the toughness and composure she needed to succeed in a man’s world. Her ability to pivot and always move forward informed the lessons she passed on to her family. Ruby’s mother supported and encouraged all her dreams from the start, understanding that entrepreneurial drive. Generations of women encouraging each other in their goals.

There are so many powerful lessons to take away from my conversation with Ruby. The importance of inspiring new generations. The vital aspect of the attitude with which you conduct business. But Ruby also leans into business from a female perspective. She listens to the external seasons and the natural cycles of a woman’s life to inform how she does business. How can we harness our cycles for success? How much are we listening to our own needs?

Key Moments

03:49  Learning about Ruby’s grandmother

13:56  Recognizing we are mirrors and why we should reflect calm

27:39  Ruby explaining rhythms and cycle syncing in business

• Why the saying “sometimes you win, sometimes you learn” from Ruby’s grandmother is so powerful
• The ability to pivot is part of success
• Having it all is possible if everything is taken one step at a time, allowing for cycles

__

About Ruby Cole-Ellis:

J. Ruby Cole-Ellis is the Owner, Founder and Principal Designer of The Maby Studio. She has almost a decade of design and management experience in Guatemala, El Salvador and Canada.

Ruby holds a Bachelors in Architecture, a Master's in History and a Master's in Architecture & Design from the Francisco Marroquin University in Guatemala. She also possesses a Postgraduate Degree in Management from the University of Calgary and the IEDP ™ Designation (International Event Decorating Professional) by the QC Event School in New York. She recently earned Creative Professional “Mickey Ears” from the Disney Institute™.

In late 2016, Ruby was asked to decorate a friend’s wedding. Immediately after that event, she was asked by the Bride’s sister and Maid-of-Honor to help design their upcoming weddings. Seeing the Event Decor industry as an outlet for her creative mind, Ruby founded, “Maby Rentals” on June 1, 2017. The name was inspired by her wedding’s hashtag: #maby (Matt + Ruby). In 2018, the company changed its name to, “The Maby Studio,” evoking a place where design and art are created.

The Maby Studio has just celebrated its 400th Event Milestone with clients all across Central Alberta since its inception. The current Company’s Portfolio includes Weddings, Fundraisers, Baby Showers, and Anniversaries. In 2020 The Maby Studio opened its Experience Design Division which includes Corporate Events, Brand Activations and Gifting Design Services.

__

Contact Ruby Cole-Ellis | The Maby Studio:

• Website: TheMabyStudio.com
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• Twitter/X

__

Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: 

• Website: BeTheAnchor.ca
• Facebook: BeTheAnchorLtd
• Instagram: BeTheAnchor.ca
• Linkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd

__

Transcript:

Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor, the Podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach, Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea, big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy, and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode, so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much.

Kari Lotzien: [00:01:10] All right. Welcome to Be the Anchor. I am so excited to introduce a dear friend and just rock star entrepreneur, Ruby Cole-Ellis. Ruby Cole-Ellis is a businesswoman, designer and business coach originally from Guatemala and has lived in Canada for the last 11 years. She is passionate about women's empowerment and teaching women how to manage that work life while business partnering with God. She had her first million-dollar evaluation with her first startup at only 25 years old. She was named businesswoman of the year by the Sylvan Lake Chamber of Commerce in 2021, and is a Proud Girl Power Alliance ambassador. She was the winner of the 2023 Spirit Award, a peer-nominated and peer-voted award for members who personify that Spirit of Girl Power Alliance. Welcome, Ruby. As you can see, what a powerful woman. And I'm just so excited to have you here today.

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:02:11] Well, thanks for having me. The pleasure is totally mine.

Kari Lotzien: [00:02:14] To start in entrepreneurship in your early 20s. And I mean, if you had $1 million valuation by 25, that tells me you didn't start at 25. You started young. And you and I have had some conversations around women in business generationally, and I'd love to hear more about your story and what brought you to wanting to be an entrepreneur, and just what contributed to that? Is there a personal little bit that you can share?

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:02:44] Yeah, you bet. I think I've always had that entrepreneurial bug and I always think that, you know, we're kind of a different breed. You kind of have to be able to do this. But I think from a very early age, I was very encouraged by both my parents to pursue pretty much anything that I wanted to do. I think with my dad being an economics professor, business was always something that, there was always The Economist and the Wall Street Journal at home, you know, that he would be reading and I would read too since a very little girl and then The New Yorker. At first originally it was for the cartoons, but I loved reading those magazines from a very early age, which is not very common. But then on my mother's side, her mom was a self-made millionaire and entrepreneur. She started her journey at a very young age as a single mom of four in the 60s and 70s. So I think, you know, I, from a very early age, was inspired to to do that. And I think, you know, yeah, I definitely started young, that's for sure.

Kari Lotzien: [00:03:49] Tell me more about your grandmother. Did you did you get to spend time with her? What was her personality like? I mean, I can't imagine what life would have been like as a single mom of four and an entrepreneur at that time in the world.

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:04:03] Yeah, and completely self-made. Like, she didn't even finish high school. And so I didn't really get to interact a lot with her. Unfortunately, she passed fairly young just when, you know, she was in her early 60s. And so I didn't really get to spend a lot of time. But what I do remember is that she was a tough cookie. And so as a little girl, I would never necessarily say, like, mom, can we visit her? Right? Because I always wanted to go to my other Nana, that was loving and, you know, the typical grandma that would have treats for us. But I do remember her being very stern and definitely to the point. And as a little girl, you know, you don't really get it. And so I didn't really want to hang out with her a lot. You know, I'm a little embarrassed to say that as now, you know, an adult. But I can understand where she came from. You had to have a tough skin back then. I mean, I can only imagine negotiating, you know, deals with businessmen in the 60s when you're on stilettos and dresses and have four little girls behind you, you kind of have to have that tough skin. And so she was a little bit, I would say, rough around the edges. She was definitely a lady. She was beautiful, always well-dressed and very graceful that way. But I would say definitely she had a tough character and she started very young. I think she originally started by trading, so she would buy and resell, buy and resell very little things, you know. And so that's the whole concept of bootstrapping, right. So I actually built The Maby Studio bootstrapping too. So I guess I copied and you know, got inspired by her. And then, you know, she grew into investing and then funds and then she would be an angel investor for other projects. So people would come to her and pitch The Godfather style.

Kari Lotzien: [00:05:48] Oh my goodness, I love it. I have this vision that, like, your grandmother was like the first Shark Tank.

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:05:54] And a mean one too.

Kari Lotzien: [00:05:56] And I mean before her time. I can imagine you talk about the thick skin and just, she must have had a lot of faith in herself. I mean, to be able to raise four girls and to be dealing with businessmen and doing her own sales, but then also having that discernment of what are good investments. I mean, I can imagine her level of self-awareness and trust must have been substantial.

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:06:22] It was. I think, the biggest thing I remember, and that is something actually I heard her say, this was not coming from stories of my mom, which she has lots, she told me, you know, sometimes you win and sometimes you learn. I don't think I've ever seen someone, she had made an investment in some farming and something happened and she lost quite a bit of money, and she was just so poised and composed. She wasn't happy, but you would think anyone else would like, you know, be extremely upset. And, you know, when my mom was like, you know, my mom was worried, like mom, like, we need to sue this person. And she's like, no, you know, sometimes you win, sometimes you learn. So, you know, she was like, well, now I know what not to invest next year. And she went on with her day. And I remember that stock like, I must have been eight years old. And I was like, holy. Like, that's pretty badass.

Kari Lotzien: [00:07:21] I think of your mom being probably a little bit concerned about her mother and being taken advantage of.

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:07:28] Because she was older, right? Like, this is already her being in her like, 50s, right? So, you know, my mom was seriously like, you know, your money, right? Like your retirement money or things like that. And yeah, she was just like, sometimes you lose, right? That's it.

Kari Lotzien: [00:07:44] What a gift. What a message. I mean, to hear that at eight years old and then have it stick.

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:07:49] I still remember what she was wearing, where we were like, it really stuck to me how, you know, she was so, like I said, it's not that she was happy about it, but how she literally just took it as like, you know, that's that's the rule of the game, right? If I don't do those risky investments, you don't win as much as I win. That's what I took from it, right? It's like you don't get to win how I win unless you do that. You want to win safe, you know? And that's a whole thing that I've carried a lot now, right? Like it's, you've got to be bold if you want to win big. If you want to, you know, if you want to do slow and steady, well then don't get upset, and yeah, for sure. But if you want to win like her, you got to do it.

Kari Lotzien: [00:08:37] You got to play big. The other thing I hear in this is how you said, you know what? She played big. She was stern, she was strong. She had thick skin, but she was poised. And I think what I hear, you know, I talk a lot about regulation and managing your own nervous system and how, I mean I am sure that internally she was not thrilled. I'm sure that, you know, internally, her blood was probably boiling for losing that much, but she didn't give everything over to that situation. She didn't attach herself to, you know, beating herself up and really taking it, but could hold this place of staying poised in the moment and saying, Okay, like the logical part of my mind is I'm going to take this as a lesson. But that emotional social connection part, I'm not going to lose it on you. I'm not going to show you my anger and my, you know, losing it. I'm going to stay poised and I'm just going to call my next shot.

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:09:36] Yeah. And for me, the other big lesson was she moved on. She didn't go and pursue and sue and, you know, went on and on and on and tried to, you know, she's just like, Okay, that's it, let's go, next. Right? And so that is, I think, pretty cool. Yeah.

Kari Lotzien: [00:09:54] In your own journey as an entrepreneur, talk to me about how that lesson has shown up for you.

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:10:01] I've been very adventurous from the very beginning, and I have taken a lot of risks. I've had to start from zero a few times. For me, it has always been extremely important to, quote/unquote, make it on my own. So, you know, everything that I have, I've done by myself without the help of anyone or my family. And so I think that kind of has come along and say, okay, well, you know, what would she do? Or what would, you know, what would she say? Right? I think sometimes I've had projects that have worked and projects that have not. I have had business partnerships that have worked and business partnerships that have not. And so I think that whole, you know, letting it go has been really helpful for me to keep going. I'm fairly young still. I'm only 36. And so I think, you know, people could still be stuck with something that happened ten years ago very easily. Whereas for me it's, you know, move on. And so I think that is something that I definitely have to credit to her.

Kari Lotzien: [00:11:12] I feel a bit like you're being a bit humble. And so I really, I want my audience to just clearly understand the power of how this is actually showing up. Because I've seen you in action. And I remember so clearly, actually, the very first time that I saw you in action, it was at a very large event, and you were with The Maby Studio. You were helping to set the room, set the experience for all of the participants. And as someone who is in the audience, I noticed you. Now I tend to be the person that I always look for the people behind the scenes, like who is making this experience run so smoothly? And this is what stood out to me with you, is you never ran. You never looked like you were stressed. You had this appearance on your face, you had a smile on at all times. And you moved with grace but purpose. And you just danced through touching base with the organizers. Things were just coming together behind the scenes, but they were coming together smoothly. And when I noticed it, I reached out to you that day and I was like, who are you? And what is happening here? Because I feel like you are the one that is just making this happen without anyone really even noticing you're there. Now, your business, you work with brides on what can be the most stressful day of their lives. And I think emotional regulation is not something that probably a lot of your customers come with, that you really are that point of stability, and just no matter what's happening. Talk to me about that. And I feel like this is your secret sauce and I want to talk more about that.

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:13:13] I think it's that thick-skinned, soft heart that we were talking about with with my grandmother. I've learned from a very early age to be very mature emotionally, that that's the easiest way to relate to all genders, all ages, all ethnicities, all cultures, is to truly be able to meet them where they're at. And you can't do that if you're not in a state of calm and just being in a state of receiving. A lot of people focus so much on the giving side, they're forgetting that, you know, the best way to actually give back is to be a soundboard, right? Most people are mirrors, and so they will give you what you they see reflected back in you. And so, you know, with brides, it's a lot of that. You know, I always joke that people in the wedding industry have a guaranteed place in heaven, which I think is true. And so when you're dealing with a stressful situation where you're the producer, like you were saying, of a big event, or you're dealing with a wedding or things like that, you know, at the end you have to be able to pivot. And I think that's, you know, when you were talking about, you know, what are the things that you could learn from your grandma. She pivots so quickly. You know, when you hear stories of how she was already on the next best thing when she was on the cusp of something big, she was already thinking of something else in case that didn't work out.

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:14:48] I just love that. That is my modus operandi. Right? Okay, in case that doesn't work out, this is plan B, and if that doesn't work out, this plan C and I already have it. And so, you know, you go and you show up and, you know, the whole room flooded? Okay great. Now we do this. So I think, you know, having that open heart to be able to pivot and to be able to really to receive, right, receive anything, you know, if you're stressed out and you come to me and I'm willing to receive it and not judge you and meet you where you're at, chances are you're going to calm down. I'm not going to make you calm down, you're going to make yourself calm down by you being reflected through me, back at you. And so if that, if there's any secret sauce, is that it. It's just to be able to meet people where they're at and to be able to keep yourself poised and, you know, things are going to happen. Like you were saying, it's not like inside you're like, holy, you know, cuss words. You know, you still get stressed, you still get mad, you still get frustrated. But if you let others see it, they're going to mirror it back. And then nothing good comes out of that. So that goes with team, that goes with family, that goes with staff and clients and projects too.

Kari Lotzien: [00:16:03] What a beautiful message. Like just think of yourself as being able to reflect back and that you're not absorbing, kind of the tension of the room or what's going on, but that you're really holding that space.

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:16:15] It's not your responsibility.

Kari Lotzien: [00:16:17] We've got this. We've got this. It's all, you know...

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:16:20] Yeah. It's not your responsibility to change that person's feelings. And, you know, you can't take it personal, right? You can't take it personal. You know that bride is not mad at you. They're going to be just fine after the wedding, right? Or that client is not stressed or frustrated at you, they're frustrated at the situation. And so it takes a lot of practice. I, you know, for sure it doesn't come easy.

Kari Lotzien: [00:16:48] I wanted to circle back. You said tough skin, soft heart. Right? And when I think back to how you described your grandmother, it sounded like there was times where, although she had a tough skin and could operate in that position of being very poised, that maybe it was a little bit more challenging for her to find that soft heart. Talk to me about, how do you feel being now third generation female entrepreneur. How do you think that concept of tough skin, soft heart has changed or has it over the generations? And where where do you see it going from here?

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:17:31] Yeah, I think my grandma didn't have the luxury to be able to be feminine. She was the minority. She stood out everywhere, right? Everywhere that she went. And so I think, you know, we now, third generation, take it for granted that, you know, you can be powerful and feminine and you can be poised and graceful at the same time. Right? I think, you know, some people still feel that there is this glass ceiling that they need to break. And the only way that they can make it is if they are a b---, right? Like the movies, right? It's the only way you can make things happen, it's the only way that you can be cutthroat in Wall Street or the financial world or construction world. And I think if anything, you know, embracing that femininity, it is a super tool and a power that we get to be able to leverage on. And so I think there's a huge difference, you know, between her and me that way. You know, maybe the the core concept of being able to pivot and being able to self-regulate is there. And I think maybe it's in our DNA, but I think our approach is completely different. Like you were saying, you know, I like to smile and I genuinely smile because I mean, like, I want to smile. It's not just to, you know, out of flattery, where I barely saw her smile. And so I never want to be like that. And so I think, you know, that definitely has changed. And if anything, if it hasn't, then I want to be that example that it can change.

Kari Lotzien: [00:19:10] Oh, so good. Tailing on to that, so I know, I mean, you... Actually, I don't know, I'm guessing that you don't build businesses of your size all by yourself. You referred to having a team and clients and business partners. And over time, I'm guessing that teaching this skill of regulation and being the calm in the storm - couple of weeks ago, we had an episode talking about conflict, and one of the things that I said is just because you have conflict in your business, just because you're dealing with customers or team members who are upset, does not mean you're doing anything wrong. And I think in your industry, like you said, with brides, it's just, it's a challenging time. And you trust, with your experience, and I know that we get through this, and I know we do a great job., I know you're going to love me afterwards. How do you teach that to your employees? How have you passed on that messaging?

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:20:15] It's funny because like when we do our kickoff every season, we've had girls who have come a few times. It's a fun summer job. So we have a lot of very young staff too, that it's a cool summer job. It's the first thing that we talk about, right? And I say, you know, like, smile. You know, anything that we do is a ticking bomb, right? Like our presence, our poise, our text, you know, our posture, how we do things, how you use your hands, how we pack things, everything is part of the experience. Right? And so literally, you know, from the moment they come, they are ready to fight. And so you can be the difference between them having a moment to breathe or not, or even when they come back, right, sometimes it's the family members who return things on their behalf. They're tired, they're stressed or hung over, and so I say, like, the first thing you do, you know, what do you do? How did it go? Do you have any pictures? We haven't even talked about all the paperwork and this and the balances and, you know, the incidentals.

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:21:22] Like, we let them calm down and you have a big smile and, you know, you go through their gallery and sometimes they're there at the garage door for 30 minutes. Right? But I want to explain it to them that their actions truly can change everything. And so it is the best experience sometimes, you know, when I am maybe in my desk and I kind of overhear what's going on, right? They take care of it, you know, I don't have to be there. And you see, maybe like the team leads, right? You forgot to smile, right? To tell, you know, telling the other girl or like, you know, next time, you know, maybe like, talk a little slower and calmer, because if you talk fast, they talk fast, right? And I'm not even teaching them that. They are taking it on their own. That truly, how we do like you know, I teach them how we we don't run. We don't run at the day of the event, we might be late, but we literally just like glide. We glide fast, we glide.

Kari Lotzien: [00:22:22] I'm taking that, we glide fast.

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:22:27] Because you can't run, if you run, then you know it literally, you just set this almost like butterfly effect of something is wrong. Right? And sometimes you get there and vendors have messed up and things that are out of our control. But we are that, like, regulation of, Ooooh the Maby team is here. And so, you know, I think a lot of it is by example, a lot of it is explaining it to them even after an experience saying like, you know, next time try this. And if they do and they see it worked, you know, they're going to do it again, you don't even need to mention it to them again. But you are right, it is part of a corporate culture. I'm extremely proud of that, especially because, you know, some of these girls, this is their first job, right? So then they call, you know, after they've graduated and, you know, we're a reference or something for their next job. And you bump into them and they're like, it's not the same. Wherever they're working now or whatnot. And that's the best compliment that I can get, right? Or being like, you know, you teach us this and they don't even talk about that at Boston Pizza.

Kari Lotzien: [00:23:37] But I want to pause there, and I really, I want to let this sink in for the listeners, because you're right, I don't think a lot of businesses are talking about this. I think a lot of businesses are relying on task lists and job descriptions and roles and responsibilities. And when we talk about soft skills, it almost gets this like, oh, just toss that in the backseat. That if you're nice and you smile, then people will like you. And I think you've chosen an industry that this is a critical piece of. But I want my listeners to hear that this is a part of every service business that exists. And even product-based businesses projects. Yeah, like, this is not a soft skill. This is not a back seat. This is how you lead your company. This is how you lead strong teams. And this element of being able to be that mirror for your clients, it's everything. And when you, when you're talking about, you know, being the first job for some of these young ladies and how they come back, you referred to the butterfly effect, and I hear this - it's giving me goosebumps, honestly - because what I'm feeling in this is what your grandmother was to you in one way, think of the impact that you're having on this next generation of young women who are going, hey, wait, like, what could I do? What business could I have? And how can I use all of who I am and how I show up, and how fast I talk, and how I connect with people, and how I can solve problems that maybe are not my own, right, if it's a vendor issue or something with the location. I mean, there's so many different things that can happen. You don't need to own it, but you can absolutely create such a change in the way that experience happens. And I just think what a profound gift that you're giving to those next generations.

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:25:40] Yeah. No, thanks. You know, as I said, that's the biggest compliment we can have, right? We have girls that have been with us for four summers and then literally, you know, moved to Japan and can't work with us after that. But, you know, they're like, if I could, I would stay here forever. That's the best compliment that we can get. And so if they can do that and transfer it, then to their other things or, like, their own mothers, their own mothers will tell me, you know, like what a transformation from, you know, the beginning of the summer to that. That's the best compliment that I can get for sure. For sure.

Kari Lotzien: [00:26:13] Oh, what a gift. I'm going to pivot a little bit, because a few years back, you and I had a networking meeting, and at the time I had - and I honestly, I thought I was the only one who did it - I was tracking my own rhythms, and I was very in tune with when I took on new projects seasonally, I really noticed the effect that I had of when my highest levels of productivity were, when I just wanted to be free and not have any responsibilities, and you and I had an in-depth conversation about using rhythms in your business. And I think that in a lot of leadership books, a lot of the trainings that we hear that are, let's be honest, written by men, we hear a lot about consistency. That you have to slay the day, and that it needs to look the same every day, and that when you can show up consistently, that is the path to success. And I think that introducing the idea of rhythms feels so much easier. Talk to me about how you use rhythms in your business. I mean, obviously, the wedding industry has a rhythm to it, especially when we live in a country like Canada where our winters are very cold. Talk to me about all of that, personally, business-wise.

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:27:39] I was very curious about rhythms or cycle syncing, especially when I moved to Canada. I realized that, it really hit me, the whole, you know, seasonal depression and, you know, the winter thing and the winter blues and things like that. And I realized, you know, okay, I'm clearly not very productive. You're right, a lot of gurus that you hear about productivity and process management talk about this linear productivity. And so you have like the whole year flat. And then, you know, you pretty much start and then end and reset. And it's all very linear and it's very about processes and things like that. But the truth is that as women we don't operate like that. We are definitely cyclical, not only with our hormones and menstrual cycles, but, you know, cyclical in terms of, you know, even when we are pregnant, right? There are cycles through that as well. Then with us, you know, we go through menstruation and then menopause like we literally truly are in tune with the seasons. Right? And in Guatemala, we don't really have the four seasons as marked, we pretty much have two seasons a year, I would say. And so I hadn't really experienced what completely having different cycles through the year. And so I started looking into that, and I realized that our cycle in a month is pretty much like the seasons in a year. And so there are points where, you know, there's the whole, you know, you reap and you know, you sow, right? And so you start literally doing all the prep work.

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:29:22] And then there's times to hustle and go and harvest time. And then there's times to set and, you know, rest and then there's times to reset. And so what I realized is that you can use that to your advantage. Like I was saying, I truly decided to embrace my femininity. And instead of fighting the whole idea that every day needs to be the same, you know, kind of playing it by ear. I started researching about pitching. And so I have done quite a bit of pitching competition, especially in the early 20s, I did a lot of crowdfunding and also angel investing. And so, you know, you have to pitch and so, you know, even picking what day of the month to do that, you know, there's days that you can like go into a room and everybody's going to turn and look and see who's that. And then there's, you know, you're bigger than life. And so those are the days that you want to probably do sales. And so I started incorporating that to my daily routine. I use it now for client consultations. I'll make sure that on my ovulation days when I see clients and when, you know, this is the time to enamorate them and, you know, present and to be able to be creative and, you know, hopefully for them to see a proposal and then make a choice and hire you. And so I bundle them once a month. I don't do them very often. I usually do consultations once a month.

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:30:52] And I make sure that I pick that it's a good time. And it has worked for me. And so any woman has their own cycles. We're not all in sync. And so when it comes to teams, you know, it's important to recognize that, you know, especially if you have a lot of women in your team, everybody's going to be at different cycles. And so, you know, to embrace that they might not be in tune with yours, which is a very male thing to do. Right? It's very like this is where we all, like because Ruby is in go time means we're all go time. I think recognizing that that might not be their season has been really helpful as well. Just being, once again, just being able to receive information, ask, right, are you okay? You know, and being comfortable, right? Are you on your period, like are you feeling okay? Do you want to go home? Do you want to work from home today? Should we reschedule this for tomorrow? Right? All those things are little things that add up and that can significantly improve, you know, working the whole concept of working smarter, not harder. And so when you and I talked about it, I think if we can embrace it instead of resisting it, especially as self-employed. And get rid of this expectation that we're supposed to be go, go, go, and the hustle and grind and all these things, you know, we're able to incorporate things like that and be more in tune with what works for us.

Kari Lotzien: [00:32:20] What I want to just layer on to that is, like you said, I mean, we have the benefit of being self-employed and I can hear, you know, from my listeners, you may not be in an industry where this works for you, whereas it's as easy to work with those rhythms. And please know we do understand that. And what I want to highlight as well is that if you are in a position of leadership and maybe you're just starting to get more comfortable in this concept that, hey, wait, everyone here is working in rhythms and we have a very female dominated team and therefore, you know, it's not likely that we're all in the same place. I think in the past we've, you know, when we talk about generations, when I was in my early 20s, it was, we talked about PMS, that that was the time that you were hard to get along with. And, you know, sales wouldn't go well. But we never really talked about how that time is also really good. So if you need someone to be discerning, to really kind of look at the details of a situation and go, I don't know that this is going to work or to poke holes in it and to do that safely and still with respect. But if you have someone who's in drive mode, who's super creative and is going, and then you have someone on the same team who can sit in that discernment space, and then when you go into this kind of like rest, reflection, okay, what do we do next, how do we come up with a plan? To be able to follow that, it is remarkable what that can do in business. And like you said, instead of hustling through it, trying to just hustle, drive, push through when it's not working, this can be, I think, such an incredible strength to businesses.

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:34:08] Yeah. And even if you're in a position that you're an employee, you can use this too. Right? And like as I said, like my team, they're employees of mine. So, you know, you can use this in terms of having grace for yourself of maybe, you know, going to bed earlier, maybe, you know, pushing things or not filling up your cup after work, maybe of what you're eating or not eating, maybe just telling people how you feel. You know, I have cramps, I don't feel great right now. Right? Like you can use all these things as well to your advantage and also to give yourself grace. So, for example, if you're in commission sales, right, you know, you can start planning your whole month and saying, okay, well, this is the time I call and set appointments, right? I don't feel that great. And so, you know, I organize, I follow up on paperwork, invoicing all the things. And so I make sure that the week that I, you know, I feel the best, that's when I go. And I don't worry about paperwork and I don't worry about catching up. It's go time, it's networking, it's meeting people, being that social butterfly, doing the presentations, doing the sales, following up. And then you go back into a cycle. Right? And so you can still use that regardless of the industry you're into.

Kari Lotzien: [00:35:24] One of the things I've noticed, so being a little past 36 myself, now, I think what we have in common is I also started my entrepreneurial journey in my early 20s, so I knew what that felt like. And when you're in your 20s, you have all kinds of energy. And I remember, you know, to blast out a 14, 16 hour day, it didn't feel hard, right? I had all of this abundance of energy. And I think there's also some seasons when we look at our own age and what the other things that kind of ride along with it, when I had kids. My energy level and when I did certain types of work changed, even during the daytime. Right? So I adjusted my schedule a little bit so that I could be there for my kids and I could run them to appointments, and then I would sometimes come back to work and do more of that paperwork and or admin in the evenings. And I'll tell you that when I hit my 40s, and my kids are now moved out, I had this assumption on myself that I thought, okay, well, I'm going to I'll go back to those long days and I'll have all this extra time in the evenings and now I'm not having to worry about feeding a whole family for meals.

Kari Lotzien: [00:36:39] And I'm tired. I don't have the same level of energy that I did before. And when you talk about working smarter and not harder, I think some of that also comes with recognizing just the stage of life that you're in and that hustle and go that is often associated with entrepreneurship, it's not a good long-term plan to assume that the energy you had for your startup when you're 20 is going to be the same 20 years later, and we need to start thinking about succession planning and having good systems so that we're not carrying as much of that hustle weight in the business and in the home life. And now I know you're you're at a different stage. So when you think about kind of what's next for you, in terms of, I know that you're multi-passionate, I know you've got so many kind of wonderful ideas and how you're moving through. Any exciting things coming up for you?

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:37:35] Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm pregnant with twins.

Kari Lotzien: [00:37:39] Oh my goodness.

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:37:41] So, you know, that's coming up. So they should come sometime in spring. So I think a lot of right now has been to restructure where my energy is going to be at. And so being able to see from a perspective of leadership like, you know, if I need to hire or team members that I need to be able to take care of, certain things that I'm involved with, but also on my own personal side, where I want to spend my time and energy moving forward. I think I'm more intentional about projects that are going to fill my cup and, you know, try to be a little bit more selfish on that end. I know they're going to, there's going to be a lot of me giving, right, with newborns and things like that. So I want to make sure that I have things that are going to be exciting for me, that are going to fill my cup. So right now, for the next three months, there's a lot of planning and restructuring and delegating and it's all exciting. But definitely next year is going to look very different.

Kari Lotzien: [00:38:42] A huge congratulations. And of course, I mean, my listeners know, Ruby and I did talk about this ahead of time, I didn't bounce that on her like the Jerry Springer Show or something. But I think what I wanted to highlight is I feel like there are a lot of entrepreneurs and female entrepreneurs that think that it's one or the other, that we're either able to be there for our families and that we give to them, or we're these strong, especially corporate type business women, like you are building seven figure businesses. You've got multi different things going on. This isn't a side hustle for you. And what I loved hearing is that you are not having this perception in your own mind that says, oh, I'm just going to do it all. I can still run my business exactly the way that I always have, and I'm going to be nurturing these two newborns in my home. That you're really planning strategically for that to say, okay, what projects do I want to take on? How do I want to move into this next space and phase, giving myself grace while not just letting it all go, shutting down my team and saying, okay, we're just going to be on hiatus for a while. But your plan is that that business is still going to operate and operate beautifully while you're in a place where your personal tasks are going to look a little different or a lot different. And I just, I wanted to give space to that, that you can run multi-seven figure businesses and have time with your family. It's through delegation. It's through having a strategic plan for that.

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:40:30] That's right. And just recognizing it's a season, right? We go back to cycles. This is a different cycle for me. And I've always worked in that mindset. And so, yes, my off-season right now is happening with the [00:40:45] Maby studio. [00:40:45] And so usually this time I do a lot more coaching and a lot more planning that way. Or, you know, I work more on my architectural projects or my properties that, you know, that we're working on. But, you know, for now, I just have another season, right? And so next year, some of them are going to have to get pushed and shuffled. This one might be a little longer, right? I'm hoping to enjoy maternity leave. I'm actually taking an extended maternity leave, so I'm starting in January so I can really enjoy it. And so, you know, you just, you just have to give yourself grace that, you know, you can do everything, just not all at once.

Kari Lotzien: [00:41:24] Oh, I love it. I want to kind of move towards wrapping it up. I love how we've moved through this conversation, starting talking about your grandmother and just what a power of strength she was, and how we've talked about your mom and how that, you know, she was just so encouraging and supporting of you. And now you coming forward with your own beautiful children to bring into the world. If you were going to talk about giving back to that next generation of entrepreneurs, when you talk about the advice you got from your grandmother, right, you win or you learn, what advice would you have for that next generation?

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:42:13] It's one of my favorite quotes. I tell it to my clients, I tell it to my family, I tell it to my husband, I tell it to everyone. It's kind of a joke, but, you know, Kari, how do you catch ten bunnies? What's the fastest way to catch ten bunnies? One at a time. That's how the fastest way, you just focus on one, you have it in the cage and then you go to the next. And so I think that would be my advice. You know, kind of this, you know, let go of the fact that we can't have it all. We can. Right? I think, like you were saying, I think we're bombarded with making choices and decisions and labels and stereotypes. We can have it all. It's just we got to focus on one thing at a time, right? And then, you know, you get that it's in the cage, it's the bunny, you're going to nurture it and love it. But now you go on to the next and catch the next one. And that's how you do business. That's how you do projects. That's how you do life. I think that's how you create wealth, friendships, and relationships, is just one at a time.

Kari Lotzien: [00:43:13] Beautiful advice. Thank you. In closing, I love to ask all of my guests, how do you stay anchored?

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:43:24] It has to do, for me, with releasing expectations. You know, I think we are our hardest critics. We are, you know, we put ourselves in the highest bars that our clients don't, our team doesn't, our family doesn't. However, you know, we give grace to everybody except ourselves. And so for me, it's just catching myself trying to avoid an emotion, you just make it bigger. So, you know, Okay, clearly this is frustrating me, clearly, this is making me stressed out. Where is it coming from, right? Do I really need to answer right now? Or is the client really going to notice? Or did my husband really ask for that? Or, I think that's like what a good wife is supposed to do, right? I think just catching myself and then you're just like, okay, that was a waste of 20 minutes or a day or a week and, you know, and just releasing it. And so I think just managing my own expectations is the fastest way to just identify what it is that's going on and just moving on.

Kari Lotzien: [00:44:26] Thank you so much for being here and sharing your beautiful wisdom through the generations, and just all the things that you bring to your teams, to your colleagues, to your business partners. You are truly just such a gift to the world. And I thank you so much for being here. I want to make sure that people know where to find you. Where is the best place that you hang out where people can follow along?

Ruby Cole-Ellis: [00:44:54] You bet. You can follow me on all major social media platforms @RubyColeEllis, all together, that's where you can find my adventures. And again, I think the same of you, Kari. I appreciate the time and thanks for the opportunity.

Kari Lotzien: [00:45:08] You're very welcome. And all of Ruby's contacts will be in the show notes as well. You can go and find them there. And I just want to remind everyone, if you have not liked and subscribed yet to the podcast, please make sure that you are doing that so that you don't miss an episode. We want to make sure that we're building this community together. I want to bring you more incredible people like Ruby, who are just building amazing businesses, but also building community. That's what this is about for me. That's what I want this podcast to be about. So be sure to like, share, subscribe to the podcast and we'll see you next week.

Kari Lotzien: [00:45:49] Please know that this podcast is meant for entertainment purposes only. It is not a substitution for medical or professional mental health advice. If you require support, please do reach out. Thanks so much.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I read a study about small business owners that included the statistic that only 1 in 5 small business owners take a regular break from work when needed and that taking time off work didn’t guarantee being rested. How can that be? Today I’m diving into the topic of rest for solopreneurs and small business owners to explore what rest truly means and what type is best for our mental health.

Taking the coveted long vacation away from work does not prove restful in many cases. Often we find ourselves working more ahead of the vacation so work doesn’t pile up and then scrambling to get back on top when we return. The stress doesn’t leave. We don’t truly rest. So, then, what do we do in lieu of big vacation breaks?

I want to talk about three key things: business friendships, integrating rest into day-to-day work, and setting the necessary time aside to teach when delegating. In exploring these three ideas - and note I did not include taking time off as a key rest point - I have found ways to incorporate rest and increase well-being. That’s what I want to share with you today: redefining how we approach rest so that it truly becomes restful.

Key Moments

01:19  The study on well-being in small business

10:39 The importance of business friendships

14:05 What it looks like to integrate rest into your daily routine

• Rest means stepping completely away from the phone, emails, and team issues
• Half of small business owners struggle with mental health, poor sleep, and financial worries
• The notion of active recovery can be a key component of daily rest

__

Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: 

• Website: BeTheAnchor.ca
• Facebook: BeTheAnchorLtd
• Instagram: BeTheAnchor.ca
• Linkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd

__

Transcript:

Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor the Podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea, big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy, and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode, so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much!

Kari Lotzien: [00:01:10] Hello my friends. I'm so glad you're here. I want to tell you today about a couple of studies that I came across this week. The first one is from a company called Xero, and they surveyed 4600 small business owners over seven countries, and they looked at the well-being of small business owners and different factors that were related to the sense of well-being. Now, there were some things that didn't really surprise me, such as 45% of small business owners feel stress from work invading their personal lives more than half of the time. Not a great statistic, but also not particularly surprising. They also reported that managing employee mental health reduced the business owner's well-being in 44% of cases. That supporting their employees and their team members with mental health was a challenge of the small business owner, and a lot felt they didn't have the resources or know how to best support their team members. Here was a statistic that took a bit of a twist for me. Not surprising, only 1 in 5 small business owners take a regular break from work when they need to. And they talked about just that relentless pace of a small business owner always working. And even when they were taking time off, they were also still having the challenge of being available to their business.

Kari Lotzien: [00:02:52] Here was the part that I found really interesting. The ability to take time off work when needed didn't guarantee restedness. In fact, far from it. What they revealed is that in some countries, South Africa and Singapore, business owners in those countries felt rested and refreshed despite being able to take a step back from their work. Whereas in the US and Australia, what they found is even when owners were able to take regular breaks from work they didn't feel rested. Now, when I read studies like this, I always ask myself why? What's the story behind the data? And I don't know exactly what the reasons are for small business owners showing the data in this way. But when I started to think about it in my own business and what that looked like for me, I started to get curious because I think so often we are told we need to delegate, that we need to hire out, that by having team members that it'll allow us to take a break from our business and just get away. And I think there's a myth that when we get a break we'll find this sense of rejuvenation and reset. When I thought about my own business, I thought, you know, I kind of do understand this because often when I would take a break, I would take a vacation, I would try to prepare ahead of time, working intensely for the weeks ahead of the vacation to try and prepare so that there wasn't as much of a glitch when I wasn't there. I was trying to manage all of the potential things that could go wrong, or get ahead of some of the the tasks that needed to be done during that week. And on the flip side, often when I would come back from holidays, I would spend a few days sometimes catching up on all of the things that were going on in the business while I was away. And that added to the fact that rarely did I truly step completely away from the business during my holidays, I was still checking emails at least once a day. I was still responding to client issues or team issues when I wasn't there. Sometimes more than others, depending on what was happening on the front lines.

Kari Lotzien: [00:05:31] And I think this idea of kind of being one foot in a holiday and one foot out of a holiday, it doesn't give our nervous system that sense to exhale, drop our shoulders, relax, and just be truly away from the business. Now what about the other side of it? So the people that aren't taking true time away when they need it, but are still finding this feeling of being well rested? How is that working? What I wonder is in those situations are people focusing on integrating rest into their day to day activities? Are they better at not having the ebb and flow of being so busy and then trying to take a break completely away for a few days or maybe a few weeks, but have they found the ability to take small breaks within the ebb and flow of the daily tasks in the business? I'm just curious, and it's something that I think is worth looking at as business owners, because the truth is, we want to be in this game long term. We don't want to be short bursts of energy and then have our business completely decline when we need to step away. And I'm going to be really honest with you, I think we often hope and kind of have this silent prayer that we never get sick, that we never have to completely step away for things like surgery or something catastrophic happening. In reality, this isn't the case. You're human. I'm human. And there is going to be times in your life where you need to step away from your business, whether it's family priorities, your own health, maybe something comes up that just really needs your focus and attention and you will not be able to do both at the same time. We have to set ourselves up to be able to truly step away from our business if needed.

Kari Lotzien: [00:07:51] I want to also address that I think there are times where small business owners are feeling that stress, or they're feeling the, I'm not going to call it burnout, but we are singed. We're fizzling. And many high performers can exist in this state of being in mild burnout for a very long time. And I think we ignore the symptoms in our own bodies around lack of sleep, having challenges with our eating or digestion. That maybe we find our nervous system has a hard time when we do take a break from our business, that we're not able to relax, that we stay in this high, intense, energetic position because it's like our bodies forget how to relax. And how to just shut off. A study out of the National Health Service in England talked about over half of small business owners have experienced poor mental health in the last 12 months. Reporting things like I was talking to you about struggles with sleep. Many surviving on less than five hours of sleep a night. They talked about business owners not being able to take leave again. They talked about financial worries, feeling that pressure of the cost of living increasing and food prices, that the financial worries and I think the stress of your employees, your team members just making ends meet, takes a toll.

Kari Lotzien: [00:09:38] The thing I want to talk about is, okay, what do we do then? How, if we're not going to take these long breaks away from our business, because potentially that's not going to give us the sense of reset and relaxation that we need to fill our energy buckets back up so that we can come back into our business and carry on. Then what is it? What are other ways that we can take this sense of survival of ebbs and flows in our business so that we can sustain this long term. What might that look like? The first thing I want to acknowledge is I'm not going to talk about taking time off. I'm not going to talk about delegation as a one end all, be all, solution. I'm going to talk about different things. I'm going to talk about friendships. Do you have a group? Do you have a network of business friendships? Now, the reason I'm calling it a business friendship is because this isn't marketing. It's not networking in its surface level sense, where we are merely sharing our service and products, and we're looking for opportunities to collaborate. We're looking for affiliate partners or referral partners. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is, do you have people in your world that know how you feel, that know the pressures of running and operating a small business? Who can sit with you during those times of stress? Who might be able to share ideas or suggestions if you'd like, but they're able to be that sounding board for you, they know how you feel, and they're able to join. They're able to truly be a friend in those moments.

Kari Lotzien: [00:11:42] I think often small business owners, especially if we are solopreneurs earlier in business, when we network with other business owners, we tend to armor up and we talk about being grateful, but things are busy. But it is really good, right? We almost have this sense where we protect our truth that maybe things aren't that good. Maybe you're having a hard time making payroll this month. Maybe you launched a product or a service that did not receive well from your customers or clients. Maybe you've got a parent that is struggling with their health and you really want to be there for them, but you're feeling just such pull between your personal life and your business. Business friendships, where you have this space where you can just drop the armor, where you can take off the mask, and you can have those connections that are vulnerable and truthful with people who get it can offer a huge lifeline during these times. And what I know is that when you open up a little bit in those situations, what you'll often find is that people that you thought had it all together and looked really good from the outside, they're going through stuff too. We're all struggling to just make our way through it, and sometimes when we can show a little bit of vulnerability, it opens the door for other people to do the same thing. I think we have heard about vulnerability in leadership with our teams and with kind of being able to open up what's going on with us. What I'm talking about is a little bit different than that. It's not about opening up within your own team, which you can do, but there's also a limitation there, because the people on your team are not the ones who are captaining the ship. They're not at the helm. They're not the ones that are necessarily navigating this with you. Their experience is a little bit different. And by having other business owners to join with you in this, they understand the nitty gritty of what you're feeling.

Kari Lotzien: [00:14:05] The second thing I want to address is integrating rest into your day to day work and what that looks like. When you look at your day, when you look at what takes time in your day, ask yourself, Where do I rest? Where do I have white space? If your day is filled with task after task after task and just going through this never ending to do list, your mind and your body are experiencing a stress state all of the time. You're always in this place where your body is being flooded with chemicals that say you have to keep going. You can't rest. These things must be done. And there's a pressure of what the consequences will be if that doesn't happen. What I know for sure is that when we are up against challenges, when we are facing stressful situations, if your mind and body are in that state, it is almost impossible to come up with the best solution. What can inevitably happen is we get hyper focused on the problem, and it can be difficult to see the different opportunities that might be available or the different solutions to a problem, because our minds are almost cramped up. It's like when your muscle gets tight, there's no space for movement because it's cramped and it's stationary. Your mind is the same. It needs rest, or what I would call active recovery, which means you might be going for a walk. Or taking a longer lunch break. So it's not necessarily that you're just completely shutting down watching Netflix and zoning out for hours on end or scrolling social media. It's not that you're sleeping and completely shutting down. But this idea of active recovery can come with gentle stretching, yoga, going for a walk, taking your dog outside. When we pair space and movement, it can help relax our mind at the same time. And you can do this in a 5 or 10 minute walk a few times a week. It doesn't have to be these big, extravagant getaways where you need to book hotels and spend a lot of money and go to a beach somewhere, although that is really nice too. But when you can integrate the rest into your workday, this allows you to sustain long term.

Kari Lotzien: [00:16:47] In previous episodes, I talked about my challenge, my issue with challenge culture, that idea that we need to be pushing and hustling and going harder and doing one more and just that hustle and grind and that that is the only way to get ahead. That does not work with your nervous system. Your nervous system needs to rest. Business ownership is a long term plan. There may be times where you're going to really narrow it in, and you are going to hyper focus, or you might have less rests because you've got a big project to knock out, but you still want to be introducing small rests into your day, especially if you're doing a big project. I actually listened to an influencer this morning who did a multi-million dollar project, and she was talking about how in a two week period, the focus and attention and what her team was doing was taking, you know, often 12 to 14 hour days. But she said my non-negotiable during that time was I made sure that I had a rest. So sometimes I napped for 20 or 30 minutes mid-day. Sometimes I just shut everything down and went and closed my eyes and laid down for 20 minutes. And she said, I know that without that rest, I would not have been able to do the level of work that we did in that short period of time. So introduce that. Is it going to a workout class? Is it going to a spin class? Is it going for a walk? Going to enjoy your kids hockey game. Whatever it is, how can you integrate rest into your day? How can you truly step away, shut off those distractions. So in these short bursts, you also don't want to be available. It's only a half an hour. But this is a time where you're shutting off your phone, you're shutting down your email, you're truly not available. You're giving your mind that idea that I am protecting this space and time.

Kari Lotzien: [00:18:59] And lastly, I do want to touch on the idea of delegation, because I think there is a myth that is buried here that is hurting us. I think we have an idea, especially moving from solopreneurs into building our teams, that there is more hustle and grind required as a solopreneur than there is as we build our team. And in my experience, it's not true. When I was new in my company and I was doing all of the marketing, all of the bookkeeping, I was providing the front line service, I dealt with every customer that came in, every client who got service received it from me. I answered the phones. I returned all the emails. But I had found a rhythm in that where I knew what had to be done, and I just needed to set aside time to do it. Sometimes that was late at night after my kids had gone to bed. There was times where I would provide the service all day, I would take a break, have dinner with my family, and then come back and do some of my admin tasks at night. There were a lot of times where I would spend a few hours on the weekend. But I did have mostly a flow and a rhythm. The times that it didn't work were when I wanted to look at growing my business, and I needed to look at how was I going to be able to dedicate more time to revenue generating activities in my business? And my first move was that I started to delegate the admin tasks. What I didn't realize, and I think what a lot of my clients don't realize, is how much time it takes to delegate well. You need to have time and space longer than what it takes you to do the task yourself to teach it to someone else and to teach it well. This is where we can get caught up, because when it takes us longer to train someone than it does to just do it ourselves, do you see how we just slide right back into doing it ourselves? Because we're more efficient and we know what needs to be done, and if it's costing us money to train someone, we can convince ourselves that this is not a good investment long term.

Kari Lotzien: [00:21:16] I use the word investment because when you do take the time and you have space in your schedule to say, I am going to invest this amount of time, more than it would take to do it myself, to teach someone else well, all of the moving parts of this particular role or responsibility, then we slowly shift that balance between doing it all ourselves to someone else, not only completing the task, but taking the responsibility for doing it well. They take over managing any timelines, any challenges that come up. They're the ones that can see the big picture and how it connects. This is the part that truly takes the time off of your schedule and puts it onto someone else's. But it's an investment. And I want to make sure, especially as you start to delegate, that we do it in a really strategic way so that you're not trying to train three new team members and you're finding that same experience where now it's taking you twice as long to do the tasks that you were able to do on the weekend or in the evenings especially, because these people may not be available during those times when you are typically doing that task. When we look at your wellbeing and we look at making that investment long term, what I just want to make sure of is that you are setting yourself up for success.

Kari Lotzien: [00:22:44] So let's come back. Is rest overrated? No. We do need time and space to be creative, to move our businesses forward, and to create the life that we really crave, to do the things that matter to us, but we need to move out of that idea of it's all work or all rest, and taking large vacations or time away from our business that many of us don't get. Number one, find yourself a network of business friendships, people who understand what you're going through, where you can be vulnerable, and you can share some of the stressors and the experiences that you're having, as well as the joys with people who truly understand. Number two, integrate rest into your day to day world, whether that is short walks, having little bits and pieces where you can join a gym. If it's spending time with your dog, or just stepping outside to enjoy a little bit of nature. Doesn't have to be big, big things, but having time and space dedicated to just slowing down every day is critical. And number three, when you move towards delegating, recognize that there's a bit of a slingshot effect where it is going to take you more time, more energy, more focus as you shift to delegation. It will be more work to start delegating than it was to just do it yourself. Recognize that, plan for it, have a strategic plan in how you're going to implement that shift in responsibility or task. I believe these are three major things that will help to get your wellbeing in a place that feels more solid.

Kari Lotzien: [00:24:39] Thank you so much for being here. I wish you all the very best in integrating rest into your business so that you can truly launch and do the amazing things that you were put here to do. Stay awesome. I will see you next week. And hey, if you haven't liked and subscribed to this podcast yet, go click on the link. Do it. And even better, if you know someone who's being stretched and their mental health feels like maybe they're fizzling, they're starting to burn out, share this episode with them. These are easy ways that we can connect, and that we can help support the people who have chosen entrepreneurship as their journey and to just build together. Thanks so much for being here.

Kari Lotzien: [00:25:32] Please know that this podcast is meant for entertainment purposes only. It is not a substitution for medical or professional mental health advice. If you require support, please do reach out. Thanks so much.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today I’m talking to you about becoming an anchored leader. Before you decide to skip this episode because you think it doesn’t apply to you - you’re not a boss or a CEO, you’re not in a senior management position - know that I’m actually directly talking to you. Anchored leadership is not about having a title. It’s the ability to lead from wherever you are in whatever situation you find yourself in.

I have three example stories about how anchored leadership works and what it looks like in everyday life. These are not stories from Fortune 500 companies or about high-level executives, these are stories taken from everyday life situations. Anchored leadership is about finding a connection with other people, finding that true positive community, and bridging the reality of the situation with what you want the experience to become. That’s what my stories demonstrate. Anyone can be an anchored leader.

I’ll answer your questions about how to approach that connected leadership mindset. What if you’re not naturally an empathic person who acts with a high EQ? Anchored leadership is a skill and anyone can learn it. This is a critical skill we’re not taught in school or in our training, but it’s one that will serve us in every area of our career and life.

Key Moments

02:53 Differentiating anchored leadership from negative manipulation

10:58 Anchored leadership from a civilian in a car accident situation

20:23 Anchored leadership isn’t about titles and a 15-year-old hockey player proves it

• It’s important to understand your own feelings in a situation so you can assess those around you.
• What tone and feeling do you want everyone to share in the situation at hand?
• Find a support group to help with unpacking and learning communication skills.

__

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Anchored Leadership Academy
• Remember, podcast listeners can get into Anchored Leadership Academy on an early bird rate for the first 20 people to register. 40% off with coupon code ANCHOREDVIP40 at check out.

__

Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor:

• Website: BeTheAnchor.ca
• Facebook: BeTheAnchorLtd
• Instagram: BeTheAnchor.ca
• Linkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd

__

Transcript:

Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach, Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea, big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy, and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode, so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much!

Kari Lotzien: [00:01:10] Hello my friends, I'm so glad you're here. Today I want to talk about anchored leadership. Now, if the first thought that comes to mind is, I don't think this episode applies to me, I'm not in management, I'm not a boss or a CEO, I am not in a senior level position, I am talking to you. Being an anchored leader is not about having a title. It is not about being the boss, the CEO, the coach, or the person in the most senior-level position. Anchored leadership is also not about having a specific set of education or skills in management or leadership. Anchored leadership is the ability to lead from wherever you are, and I want to highlight that if you are in an entry-level position in your company, if you're in your early 20s just starting out, or you're in a company that maybe you've been there for a while, but you're not in management, you're not in a position of being responsible for others or a team, this episode is still for you. What anchored leadership is, is simply the ability to recognize that your actions, your behavior, the way that you connect with other people has an impact on the way that they feel and the way that they act. And as an anchored leader, we are using this skill of reading other people, assessing ourselves, knowing how we show up, knowing our subtle cues, and using them intentionally for good.

Kari Lotzien: [00:02:53] Okay, I want to address one key point, because you might be thinking right now that you have dealt with people who are aware of the impact they have on others, and they use things like threatening, manipulation, anger, frustration to influence others. I think we have all had a boss or a leader or a coach that makes you feel less than. Anchored leadership is about doing this in a place that leads us forward, and it does it from a place of connection and security and stability. The underlying theme to anchored leadership is the assumption that people are good. That we want to be in community, that we believe that there is something good that can come out of our interactions with each other. If you are using things like threatening, shame, anger or tension to influence how people perform, and they do it based out of fear that they'll lose their job, fear of embarrassment, fear of being ashamed, that is not anchored leadership. I want to be really clear that we define the difference, anchored leadership is based from the feeling of connection that we are in this together, and it is from a place of safety, stability and connection, not a place of threatening, loss or fear.

Kari Lotzien: [00:04:31] Anchored leaders are incredible in every role in your company. If you are on a volunteer board, and whether you've been there for a long time or you've just started, using these skills will have an impact. If you are a server or in any sort of customer service position, anchored leadership will change the way that you experience the amount of joy that you feel in your position, and the amount of influence that you recognize that you have in creating your own experience. Now, this is not about persuasion or manipulation. It's not about coercing. This is about connection. It's about feeling this sense of true community and connection with other people. It's a combination of recognizing and empathizing with others, whether that be your client, your team, your kids, and recognizing what you want, what you want the experience to be, what you want the story to be, and then being able to create a bridge between those two with intentionality. Let me give you an example of what this would look like. Now, every example that I'm going to share with you today is not going to be of people who are Fortune 500 company owners. It's not about people who are building seven and eight-figure businesses. It's not from people who hold titles of leadership. And I did that intentionally because I really want you to connect with this idea no matter where you're at.

Kari Lotzien: [00:06:16] An experience I think a lot of us have. Being in a restaurant and being really irritated with the service. So maybe your food is taking an exceptionally long time to come out and things just aren't coming together like you hoped they would. Maybe your meal was cold. Maybe you didn't get the seat or the table that you wanted. Okay, so whatever it is, you're in a restaurant and you're just feeling that experience. But have you had the opportunity to experience an anchored leader who's in a serving position? Now, what does this look like? It's that person who can create a story, who comes to you, acknowledges I am so sorry your food is running late, my gosh, what can I do for you? And they might do things like strike up a conversation about how your day is going, and maybe they take up 3 or 4 minutes of that wait time in just listening and maybe joking with you, maybe talking about a hockey game or talking about the weather, or they're talking about something that interests you. Maybe they're asking how your day went or if you have plans for the weekend. They're creating a connection and an experience that is guiding you towards talking about something that makes you feel lighter, makes you feel more joyful. I'm just going to acknowledge it's hard to then flip that and go back to feeling angry and irritated and maybe complaining about how awful the service is and how long you've waited. This person might give you a glimpse into what's happening in the back. So maybe they say, Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry for the wait, we had, you know, two members of our team call in sick unexpectedly today, and so therefore we've got a lot of new people in the kitchen. Man, they're doing their best but I'll get that out to you as soon as I can. Can I get you a refill on your drink? They're not making excuses for what's happening in the back, but what they're doing is they're inviting you into the story. They're inviting you into this team experience to say, you know, I know, I can guess that you're a naturally good person. And if you understood what was going on back there and that they are really good people trying their best, but maybe we're busier than we expected to be or whatever that is, this server has the ability to change your story.

Kari Lotzien: [00:08:47] And instead of you leaving that evening with the feeling that your service was terrible, you felt like you paid too much for what you got and it just was not enjoyable, maybe your story changes to, Yeah, you know what, the food took a long time, but our server was just really personable, and we were able to kind of strike up a conversation. Yeah, and from what I hear, they were a bit short staffed. And, man, I know what that's like, it seems to be something common everywhere. Now all of a sudden the story changes. This is anchored leadership. It's recognizing that that customer might have been feeling irritated and the potential to lose a customer, not get a great tip, to have to maybe promo your meal, is the outcome that you don't want. And they recognize that although they can't solve the problem, they can't go make the meal. They can't speed things up in the kitchen. Things are what they are. They recognize by just how they show up, how they connect with someone, by empathizing with how they're feeling and then inviting a different story or a different experience, the power of influence in changing that experience for the customer and potentially getting a repeat customer is much higher.

Kari Lotzien: [00:10:09] Another example, this one has a little bit more seriousness to it. So a couple of months ago I was leaving my home and was headed into town. Come up, I was in a rush and I was feeling a bit distracted, I knew I was running late, I come up to the corner and I come up to a fairly major accident. Immediately I decided, Okay, well, I'm obviously not going to make my appointment. I pulled over, got out, and went running over to a vehicle that had rolled, and there was a gentleman who was standing right beside that vehicle, attending to the passengers in the vehicle that were trapped at that moment. There was only about ten people that had stopped and emergency personnel were not there yet. This was, it had just happened. This person who was on site helping these passengers wasn't wearing a uniform, had no identifying characteristics that he was the person that was leading this operation. And yet at a glance, I knew he was the person that I needed to talk to. He had become the hub of the wheel where all of these people were going to him asking questions, having quick conversations, and then leaving again. In a moment, I knew he was the anchored leader. I went over. Immediately he asked me just a few questions about my experience if I had had first aid or CPR, he sent me over and said, If you're comfortable, there is a second vehicle. It's on the other side of the road. I think there's also a passenger in there that is likely injured. If you could go and just assess that situation, don't move him, just talk with him. Come back if you need more help. Otherwise, if you could just stay with him until emergency personnel get here, that would be awesome. So clear. Now, I was not the first person there. He had said to people ahead of me, Can you go to your vehicle and get blankets and come back? He had said to other people who were upset and were feeling pretty overwhelmed, he assessed that in the moment and just sent them back to their vehicles. He asked if they had witnessed the accident and said, If you could just go back to your vehicle, you can just stay there until emergency personnel get here because they may want to talk to you, that would be the best thing you could do right now.

Kari Lotzien: [00:12:41] He was able to not only be in the situation helping the passenger who really needed him, he also had his head up and was reading multiple queues of people who had come up on this accident, assigning them really clear action items, and created a story for all of us that said, here's what I need you to do, this is really important, and help is on the way. The way that he communicated was clear. He wasn't yelling. He demonstrated this sense of it's going to be okay. We've got this handled. In that moment he was able to be that center hub, constantly assess the situation of how everyone else was doing, and then he ended up assigning a role at the, kind of as he got enough people that were doing what they needed to do, he assigned a role to someone, If you could just, if people stop, if you could just be the one that tells them, we're okay, help's on the way, go ahead, you can keep going. Really phenomenal. That's a bit of a serious situation. And what I want to acknowledge is that he was able to set the thermostat as being one of calm, in control, with clarity, in a moment where the people around him may have been feeling really overwhelmed, anxious, stressed, worried, feeling really overwhelmed or uncertain. And he was able to anchor that in a story that says, Here's what I need you to do, here's your role, and help is on the way. It's going to be okay. Again, I want to come back to the fact he was not an EMT. He was not professionally trained. He was merely a civilian that happened to be one of the first people who showed up on the accident. Now, he obviously had first aid and CPR training. But I can tell you, most people who have CPR and first aid training don't demonstrate that level of calmness and clarity in those moments. This was a different skill set. He knew what to do, but in the anchored part of that service, he knew how to execute that, he knew how to stay calm in the moment, he knew how to demonstrate and influence others based on what they were feeling in that moment and what they were available for.

Kari Lotzien: [00:15:10] So the idea with the anchored leader that I want to keep pulling back to is not only the idea that you can regulate your own emotion, your own body, I have no doubt in my mind he likely was not calm on the inside. His heart was probably racing. His breath was probably very quick. He was probably uncertain around how long emergency personnel were going to be. There was probably a lot of things happening for him internally that he was able to acknowledge but demonstrate something different that was calm and clear in the moment. He was able to connect it to a story that says, this isn't going to last forever, and we're going to be okay.

[00:15:58] Hi my friends, I want to interrupt for just a second and ask you a question. What would your results be at this time next year if you took time to get really clear on what you want and how to plan, and could take action to move that vision forward? You might be saying things like, okay, so I hired a bookkeeper, a social media manager. I have a virtual assistant, and I thought that delegating was supposed to give me all of my time back, but I feel like I am still in my business answering all of the questions, and I feel like I just can't give any more. I'm not sure what to do next. This program was designed for you. In the Anchored Leadership Academy, I have given ten modules that you work through on your own to develop the skill of leading well, to take your vision from being all on your shoulders, to really taking it to a team that can implement the next level of your business with you. You're going to learn how to hire and recruit, delegate well, provide feedback with confidence and clarity, and we're going to have some hard conversations about where you might be getting in your own way. We are going to have ten live sessions together where you get to meet other business owners who are going through similar things that you are. This program is going to be incredible. I'd love for you to join me. Check out the link in the show notes, along with a coupon code for 40% off for my listeners only. I hope to see you there. Back to the show.

Kari Lotzien: [00:17:39] The third example I want to give you. So I want to acknowledge that it's not always about calming and being that kind of lowering the temperature with people. Sometimes what we want to do is lighten it up. The third story I want to share with you is from, I wasn't in the room, but it was a story that stuck with me. It's from my son's minor hockey days. We were going into playoffs and we'd had a pretty good year. We were coming up against a team that was really competitive with us. It was, we figured it was going to be a really exciting game. Of course, we're hoping to come out on top, and it was close to the end of the minor hockey career for these boys, they had played together for a really long time. And of course the team, the fans, we all wanted to have this kind of like made-for-TV movie great year ending where we win the championship and everybody is thrilled. We're going into this game, into playoffs, close to the end of the year, and about two hours before the game was starting, we find out that one of our key players, stronger players, is really sick and isn't going to be able to make the game. One of our other really strong players was injured and unable to play, but was at the game and on the bench just to support the team. I think what had happened is with that unexpected change that happened really last minute, all of a sudden it had created kind of a cascade effect on we had to change the lines, and the plays that they had been working on in practice that week with those two key players, now had to be changed. The coach himself was feeling a little bit anxious, overwhelmed, unsure. And that anxious energy, uncertainty, frustration, whatever it was, was showing up.

Kari Lotzien: [00:19:41] First period we were not playing well, kind of as expected. Plays were not coming out as anticipated. The team just was not connecting because the lines were all mixed up. Coming out of the first period, I think we were down by 3 or 4 goals. It was not going well. You could feel it. The kids were bickering at each other. They were blaming each other. The coach was frustrated, there was a lot of, you know, hand running through the hair and a lot of sighing and head shaking. You could sense the tension that this is not the way that the story is supposed to go. Now here's the cool part about it. They take a break during intermission, and the player that's injured, who is one of our key players but is unable to play, puts his hand up to the coach and says, Can you give me two minutes? And keeps the coach and all of the coaching staff out of the dressing room in intermission. He walks into the dressing room and, as you can imagine, all the players are sitting around kind of bickering back and forth, and they're upset with the way the game is going and they're kind of blaming each other. This player walks into the dressing room and kicks the garbage can. Now, garbage can was empty, but he sends it flying across the room and hollers at the top of his lungs, You are an embarrassment! And then bursts into laughing, doubles himself over and says, I have waited my whole life for that moment. Thanks, guys. The whole team cracks up because the kid's ridiculous and he now takes on this, like, kind of silly persona of being this, like, completely off the rails coach who's losing his cool, and all he did was start lightning everyone up. As it turned out, now, my spouse was on the coaching staff and he said from the hallway waiting outside, thinking that we were going to come in and have a talk with these boys after a few minutes, could hear all of a sudden they're laughing. And they moved right into now talking about what they could do, changing their plays, figuring out what had happened.

Kari Lotzien: [00:22:03] And he said, we recognized in the moment we weren't needed. That teenage kid who had zero coaching experience in his whole life, but had been a key member of the team, he knew how his team was feeling. He knew they were frustrated. He knew that things were not playing out in the story that they had anticipated. He could see that they were turning on each other and they were frustrated. And he recognized in the moment that what they needed was not someone to put more pressure on them, and to get more upset and to point out all the mistakes they were making. They weren't available for necessarily someone coming in and saying, okay, here's what we're going to do with the plays. What he recognized in the moment is they actually just needed to laugh a little bit and kind of let go of some of that tension that they were placing in the room that they were putting on each other, that was not allowing them to execute some of the things that they had known for years. The tension was impacting their performance and by introducing humor and a little bit of silliness and being over the top, he was able to lighten that whole mood. Anchored leadership. When I heard that story on the way home, which was just so fun, and I can tell you, we actually lost the game. But our team came out, the remaining two periods were so fun to watch because all of a sudden the energy of it has changed. We were in the game. It was really competitive. Now I don't even know how the rest of the season went. But what I knew in that moment is that that kid, at 15 years old, had leadership abilities that no matter where he goes in his life, no matter what he chooses to do, he will be successful with people. Because if you have the ability to read people like that, you will go far.

Kari Lotzien: [00:23:59] Okay, now here's what I want to point out, because some of you might be thinking right now, Okay, well, aren't some people just like that? It's like it's built into them that they're naturally really empathic with other people, and they know what to do in the moment. And it just kind of seems to flow or go easily. I will admit, yes, some people this is more of a natural skill for them. They have a higher what we would call EQ and they use it well. All right. So yeah, for some people this does come more easily. But it is a skill that you can learn. It is simple but it is not easy. I'd love to tell you that I have a three step solution on how to be more anchored in your life, and how to read other people. That's not how it goes. I'm still figuring a lot of this out myself, but I can tell you that having a group of people who are at the same stage of business that you are, and provide a safe space for you to do some of this work in unpacking your own beliefs, reflecting on where you're at, and then figuring out different ways to move forward is invaluable not only in your business, but in your life. And whether you do this in a group like the Anchored Leadership Academy, which I know is going to be absolutely amazing. The people that have signed up so far are top notch, incredible, beautiful, kind people and we'd love to have you there. And if you're at a space where you just don't feel that safety yet in a group, I encourage you to reach out to a coach or someone, myself, or someone who's a great fit for you to start to do this work of unpacking, providing a safe place to self-reflect, and to do some of this heavy lifting when it comes to communication, because the impact that it can make is unbelievable.

Kari Lotzien: [00:25:58] Thank you so much for being here. If you haven't liked and subscribed to the podcast yet, please do. This is how we build our community and I'm so excited to see it grow. See you next week.

Kari Lotzien: [00:26:13] Please know that this podcast is meant for entertainment purposes only. It is not a substitution for medical or professional mental health advice. If you require support, please do reach out. Thanks so much.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You want to create raving fans out of your customers and you can! You do that by creating exceptional customer experiences. Not through discounts, giving away freebies or adding overhead to your business, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m going to tell you how to give wonderful experiences to your customers with minimal stress on your end. But that relieves maximum stress on your customer’s end.

I share a story about how an appliance store made my life so much easier when my freezer died by first giving me the heads-up my fridge would be next and then by offering me a loaner fridge while I waited for my ordered replacement to arrive. They solved the cause of my stress in the moment I needed it. And that’s a key to an exceptional customer experience. How can you make your customer feel seen and how can you relieve some of their stress?

Customer experience that makes the customer feel special, feel VIP, feel understood and valued, that doesn’t come through freebies and discounts. It comes from anticipating the customer’s need and making small adjustments to your service to accommodate it. Maybe you check back in with customers after three weeks of them coming to your gym. Maybe it’s a personal welcome note in a hotel room. I’m going to tell you how actually easy it is to deliver the kind of experience customers will rave about.

Key Moments

01:43 My appliance store customer service story

09:25 How that customer experience worked to alleviate my stress

14:35 An example of a brilliant resort strategy for guest rooms

• What are recurring stress points for your customers that you can alleviate?
• Do your customers feel individually seen?
• Simple things can mean the most, it doesn’t have to upend your whole company.

__

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Anchored Leadership Academy
• Remember, podcast listeners can get into Anchored Leadership Academy on an early bird rate for the first 20 people to register. 40% off with coupon code ANCHOREDVIP40 at check out.

__

Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor:

• Website: BeTheAnchor.ca
• Facebook: BeTheAnchorLtd
• Instagram: BeTheAnchor.ca
• Linkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd

__

Transcript:

Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor, the Podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea, big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy, and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode, so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much!

Kari Lotzien: [00:01:10] Hello my friends. I'm so glad you're here. Today I want to talk to you about creating an exceptional customer experience. But I'm not going to talk to you about creating discounts or giving away a bunch of freebies or adding overhead to your business. The strategies I'm going to talk about today are going to add minimal stress, and are not only going to create raving fans in your business, but they're also going to make things easier on you and your team.

Kari Lotzien: [00:01:43] I want to start with a story. A few weeks back, I was rushing around in the morning, running late, trying to feed the dog with one hand, load my coffee with the other, and organize some sort of breakfast that I was going to take on the road so I wasn't late for my meeting. I'm flying around thinking I'll just quickly throw together a smoothie. I reach into the freezer compartment of my fridge and my hand goes directly into this mushy, gushy, wet, disgusting soup of half frozen fruit and things that were in my freezer. Not the way I wanted to start my morning. And here's the crappy thing. I knew that freezer was going, I knew that our time was limited with our fridge. We had gone shopping for a new fridge and stove a few weeks back, because both of the appliances were starting to get quirky. The fridge was having issues maintaining a consistent temperature. We knew it was on our way out. But spending money on a new fridge and stove is really not that exciting, and it wasn't really where we wanted to be investing. So we went and looked and then we procrastinated for another couple of months until this happened. I called our local appliance store who we've dealt with before, that was where we had gone and checked out some of the fridges and stoves previously, and I said to him, I need to come in later today, what time are you guys open until because my freezer thawed out.

Kari Lotzien: [00:03:27] Interestingly enough, he says to me, Just so you're aware, if your freezer is thawed, you probably only have a day or two maximum until your fridge goes too. Note that does not sound like exceptional customer service experience, but I'm getting there. What he did was tell me, okay, he's saving me from myself. He already knows that I've procrastinated for two months knowing that I probably was going to need a fridge and stove, and I didn't get around to ordering it, and now I've got myself into this situation. He's telling me you can't wait much longer before you're going to have a bigger issue than the one that's already causing you stress right now. I did appreciate his honesty. Now later that day, I changed my schedule a little bit so that I can make sure that I get there to the store before they close so that I can get this stinking thing ordered. With the age of our house and the way that our kitchen was designed, I know that my choices for a new fridge are limited because of the cut out in the wall. So there is only one option for a fridge in this smaller town store that fits into that particular area. And I don't really like it. So I'm sitting in the middle of the store already feeling a little bit stressed and ticked off with myself. And really not wanting to spend money on a fridge at all and don't want to spend money on a fridge that I don't really like and doesn't have the features that I want. So I'm sitting in the store having a conversation on the phone with my husband about, well, maybe I could order a fridge that I'm not quite sure how long it's going to take to get here, and I can give away some food. I can move things into the bar fridge that's in our garage, and maybe this will all work out. Here's where the exceptional customer service comes in. Sales Guy comes over and says, oh, if you'd like, we can bring you out a loaner fridge. A loaner fridge. I didn't even know such a thing existed. I said, talk to me about this. He says, well, let me know what your schedule is tomorrow. I can have my guys come out. We can bring you a loaner fridge. It is not fancy. It is not at all what you're looking for. But it works. It has a fridge freezer. It will serve the purpose. You can have it for as long as you need until your fridge comes in. When your fridge arrives, we'll take this one out and off you go.

Kari Lotzien: [00:06:11] Exceptional. What happened in that moment was he could have so easily said, well, if you would have ordered the fridge when you were first in, it would be here by now and you wouldn't be dealing with this. He didn't. He anticipated that my biggest stress in that moment was I didn't want to lose all of the food that was already in my fridge, and I didn't want to spend money on a fridge that, although I could get it right away, was not really what I wanted. One of the services that they offer on all major appliances is that they will take and dispose of your old appliance, so you don't have to worry about wrecking your back or trying to find someone to help you lift it out. You don't have to find a truck. You don't have to take it to the dump yourself. You don't have to deal with any of that. For a small fee they handle it all for you. This is exceptional customer experience. They predicted what I needed in the moment to reduce my stress: a loaner fridge. 

Kari Lotzien: [00:07:41]Once I had that loaner fridge, I wasn't worried about the delivery window on my new fridge. Because I had something that was absolutely serving the purpose. So they were experiencing a lot of issues with supply chain delivery timelines. Things were delayed. We didn't really know exactly when things were going to be delivered. He could give me a few week window. But now that I had a loaner fridge, I wasn't really worried about that. It then takes the stress off their team to not have to deal with someone who's calling and asking, when is my fridge going to be here? I didn't call them at all. I knew and trusted they would call me when it came in, so it took pressure off their front line as well to just make things a little bit easier. My fridge came in, we changed it out, ordered a stove as well, so that I learned this time that I wasn't going to take this for granted again. Notice how timing is everything. This wasn't something that they needed to offer to every customer or to advertise it. Although I did go back and say, I really want to tell every single person I know about how amazing this was. Is this something you typically do, or is this just because I'm special? Because honestly, it felt pretty exceptional to have such a level of customer service. I thought maybe I was like a VIP customer. He says to me, well, you are pretty special. But no, we do offer this for everyone who needs it.

Kari Lotzien: [00:09:25] Do you see how they were able to create a customer experience for me in my stress, in my frustration, in my procrastination that had nothing to do with offering me a discount. It had nothing to do with them carrying inventory for the product or service that I needed. It had everything to do with solving my challenge in that particular moment and just helping me out. Their customer journey, for someone who's doing a kitchen renovation, or who's building a new house and is excited to have new appliances, it might look like a completely different path than what mine did. Knowing who your customers are, what their stressors, what their questions are, and just meeting them in that moment where they're at. This is another example of where timing is everything. He solved my problem in that moment. For someone who's looking at building a new home, they might do something around design and remodeling and maybe the top ten things that people need to consider when building a new home that you might not have thought of before. These are little things that just help your customer to go I understand what you're going through right now.

Kari Lotzien: [00:10:44] Another example. Now this one is the other end of the spectrum. We had the privilege of being able to go to a Four Seasons resort with my husband's company because he had won a trip. What I love about having these types of experiences with very large companies is I get to see how companies that are doing amazing business who have built multi-million dollar corporations, how they're doing it. And I almost take it as this little study of business and customer service and how to make people feel seen. I want to share a simple example. We get to this Four Seasons Resort. So we come in a ferry, so there is about 120 people who get off the ferry at the same time, so we're all checking into the resort at the same time, which can create a huge delay when people are tired and they're hungry and they've had a long day of just getting to this point in their holiday. We're not relaxed yet. We just left work. We just finished leaving our kids with people and arranging baby sitters and dog sitters. We've been through airports. At this point we are not relaxed, grateful, happy travelers. We are tired and we're a little bit irritable, so there's a potential that things can go sideways.

Kari Lotzien: [00:12:24] Even though this was a really exciting trip, we were at a stage where we were stressed. They had an assembly line on how to check us in, so we had to find our last name, there was our room key, everything we needed was already there, already put together for us. Then, as we're going to our room - so this resort is huge, I think there was 20 different buildings that all looked very, very similar. The rooms looked similar. The grounds looked similar. When you're tired and you've never been to a place before, it's brand new, it can be difficult to just navigate your way to find your room. The room keys now, so that when you lose them, no one else can get into your room, don't have your number written on them. This is important. As we were going to our room, every single time there was a fork in the sidewalk where we could have taken one direction or another, the resort had placed a person, a real live person. They greeted us and asked what our room number was and then guided us in the direction where we needed to go. This happened probably 4 or 5 times on our way to our room the very first time. We get to our room, we get all checked in, first thing I notice, there's a nice little handwritten note with our names on it saying how grateful they were that we were there and a little snack. Something sweet and something salty. They had anticipated our needs. Let us make it easy for you to get to your room. Let's get you checked in. Let's give you the experience of we knew you were coming by using your name. We're glad you're here. And we've anticipated you might be a little hungry after a long day of traveling. Here's something right in your room that gives you a couple of options and now you don't need to stress.

Kari Lotzien: [00:14:35] It wasn't until later that night that I saw the true brilliance of the approach of having people set at all of the forks in the sidewalk. Later that night, we go for dinner, we're a distance from our room, and as we're going back, I now realize they prevented us from taking any wrong turns on our very first time going to our room. Other thing that they did, they created a system that had us repeat our room number a minimum of five times before we got to our room our very first time. In the evening, I realized that with 120 new guests in that resort on that very first night who were tired, who were in a very large resort where everything kind of looked the same, by having us repeat our room number over and over and over again, it embedded it into our memories. I wondered how many times before they implemented this system did they have people on the first night of their trip get lost trying to go back to their room and didn't know what room they were in. Which then created stress for the staff. And it impacted the first night of that travelers experience at the resort. It induced stress that maybe they didn't need to have. And by implementing this very small system, it embedded in our minds what our room number was, and made it more likely that using the signs, we would be able to find our way to our own rooms on our first night without having to utilize the additional resources of the resort and pull those people off of whatever task they needed to be doing late at night when they had less resources, less people working. Brilliant. I also loved that the way that that hotel was designed and the way that their systems operated, they had a lot of people showing up at a certain time.

Kari Lotzien: [00:16:54] You might have this in your business as well. Notice, if you're a mechanic, do you have a lot of people who show up first thing in the morning to drop their vehicles off? And is that a time where you really want to implement a system that allows for things to be additionally efficient, so that that process is even easier for them? Do you have more resources on hand for people to ensure that they're getting what they need in that moment? You don't need to have those additional resources. That resort did not have people sitting at every fork in the sidewalk for the entire day. They had strategically placed them there for a short amount of time when they knew they could invest that resource to preventing challenges later on. It was brilliant. What I want you to take away from this is that, number one, empathy. Anticipate what is potentially causing stress for your customers, whether that is the fridge situation or that they're tired from traveling, or that they're upset that they, you know, have had their car break down. Are they nervous about coming to a new place, or how can you anticipate how they're feeling, what they're thinking? And can you find a way to verbalize that to them and make their process just a little bit easier? Let them know what to expect. Just like my appliance guy who said, just so you know, you only have two days until your fridge goes as well and now you've got a much bigger issue. He was letting me know based on his knowledge and experience, this is what is coming, this is what you can expect. So therefore I knew if I procrastinated any longer, he was giving me a warning what was going to happen that was likely going to make me even more upset. So he was he was protecting me from myself.

[00:18:55] Hi my friends, I want to interrupt for just a second and ask you a question. What would your results be at this time next year if you took time to get really clear on what you want and how to plan, and could take action to move that vision forward? You might be saying things like, okay, so I hired a bookkeeper, a social media manager. I have a virtual assistant, and I thought that delegating was supposed to give me all of my time back, but I feel like I am still in my business answering all of the questions, and I feel like I just can't give any more. I'm not sure what to do next. This program was designed for you. In the Anchored Leadership Academy, I have given ten modules that you work through on your own to develop the skill of leading well, to take your vision from being all on your shoulders, to really taking it to a team that can implement the next level of your business with you. You're going to learn how to hire and recruit, delegate well, provide feedback with confidence and clarity, and we're going to have some hard conversations about where you might be getting in your own way. We are going to have ten live sessions together where you get to meet other business owners who are going through similar things that you are. This program is going to be incredible. I'd love for you to join me. Check out the link in the show notes, along with a coupon code for 40% off for my listeners only. I hope to see you there. Back to the show.

Kari Lotzien: [00:20:36] I want to also just acknowledge how these situations when you implement timing in anticipating what your customer or client needs at this exact moment, prevents future challenges for your team and makes things easier for you. So I want to pull this out because sometimes it's hard when we think about a specific industry or a specific service, to pull that into our business or our service. So I want to just give you a couple of examples. Things like going to the gym. I think a lot of gyms do a really great job onboarding new clients. So we go through what the check in process is like. We might have an initial welcome process where we go through key pieces of equipment or you know, how to check in for a class. We give people a lot of information at the beginning. But then what I'd like you to do is think a few, it might be a few days, it might be a few weeks. Does your client need change? Do they experience something differently once they have committed or once they've started? Do their needs change? This gives you a second opportunity to be exceptional. So let's just say someone signs up for the gym. We know that there's a certain level of motivation that keeps people coming for the first week or two. But it usually plummets by week three. By leaning in with a personalized, like the resort, using their name, getting some feedback, How are you feeling? We find a lot of our clients in week three might have new questions, or we find that maybe you're wanting something different, or you're finding it maybe a little bit more difficult to get here. We'd just like to let you know, we think you're amazing. We're so grateful you're here and we just want to invite or we want to give you an additional resource or a little bit of information about another program that you might be interested in that we offer.

Kari Lotzien: [00:22:49] This allows your client to have that same experience that I did when I felt like a VIP. I wondered, does everybody get this? Because you're using my name and you're making me feel so appreciated. In the second contact or that follow up, this is where you can absolutely up level your customer service experience because most businesses don't do this. Let's talk about even a massage business. If you have chiropractic, massage, physiotherapy, any service-based business where your client comes to you sometimes when they're injured or they're in pain, we know that when we've solved that initial problem oftentimes people stop coming. If you have a system or a process that says someone comes to us with an illness or an injury, we anticipate that they'll come 3 or 4 times before that injury is resolved, let's create a system where someone from our team touches base with that person to say, hey, we're just following up wondering how your shoulder is feeling. We want to make sure that we're preventing further injuries. I've attached a little handout on some stretches to just make sure that you're you're continuing to stay really healthy. Do you see how incredible that would feel? You feel seen. You feel appreciated. But it also invites you to stay top of mind in your customer's experience so that when they're not in stress or feeling that pressure of, I need your service immediately, now you've invited them into a different type of relationship where they might look at something different.

Kari Lotzien: [00:24:38] For example, with my appliance store, once they solved my fridge issue I went back and I ordered a new stove. It was much less stressful because I had a stove that was working. It was a different experience, but they were able, through their exceptional customer service the first time, to invite me into a second relationship in that customer service experience. This type of intention with your processes will take you to a whole other level of satisfaction with your customers and revenue. Other ways that you might consider this, so just a couple more examples, if you're a mechanic and you have that drop off in the morning where a lot of people are dropping off their vehicles for service, things like having a shuttle service available to take them to work can take pressure off your team because it doesn't impact your customer's day as much. If they're taking time off, which is maybe why they've procrastinated or they haven't got their vehicle in to get their winter tires put on, or to do that oil change to do that maintenance, if you can take that pressure off and say, oh, well, we can run you to work, no problem. What time's your lunch break? We'll come back and pick you up and your vehicle will be done. That can take pressure off your team, because now if they're running a little bit late, they don't have a customer who's now staring down your receptionist wondering, you said that my vehicle would be 47 minutes, and now it's been an hour and two minutes, and I have another appointment that I need to get to. It just takes the pressure off. By having really good internet with an easy login, so that if you have customers who are in a waiting room, they can still do some of their work, they can check their emails, you've got good coffee available for them. These are little things that just make your customers feel seen and appreciated, and it makes their experience with you just a little bit easier.

Kari Lotzien: [00:28:44] I think timing is the biggest piece of this. Whether it's following up after an injury, if you're a massage therapist, whether it's helping someone find their way to their room as a tired traveler, whether it is anticipating the needs for someone whose appliance shuts down. Whatever it is, it's thinking about what do they need right now and not necessarily delivering everything all at once, but doing it in a nice step by step approach and creating a system for that. The beautiful thing is that every one of these examples, if you follow the thread, reduces the pressure on the business itself. And I'm going to point out not one of these systems talks about offering a discount. It doesn't talk about carrying more inventory, offering more products or service. It's just a matter of empathizing in the moment.

Kari Lotzien: [00:29:43] I want to finish up with the most simple way that you can uplevel your customer service experience that you can do so easily. By just smiling and greeting someone by name, and I'm not saying looking at their credit card and then mispronouncing their name, but if this is someone that you're anticipating who's coming for an appointment, by sincerely saying good morning, asking how their day is going and using their name in a natural way, it allows people to feel seen. And I think this is one of the most beautiful things about being in a small business, is we have the opportunity to both make money and build business and revenue and support our communities, while allowing people to feel appreciated, seen, and thanked for doing business with us. I think we've lost some of this in the last little bit, but it is the simplest way to come back. If you're coaching your receptionist, your frontline staff, whatever it is, or if you are the owner of a large company, if you can come in and greet one of your key customers by name, or introduce yourself and then use that person's name back and just thank them for their business, this will absolutely grow your business. It will grow your revenue and your profit line. And it's so simple. It's the simple things that can really change how this all plays out. I want to thank you so much for being here. Make sure to like and subscribe to the podcast. Share it with someone who is building a business and is looking for key ways to just help make this whole thing even more exceptional, and to add to the passion they already have. Thanks so much. We'll see you next week.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If you’re a solopreneur or a small business owner, there is an expectation that you’ll automatically want to also be CEO. Sometimes you don’t want to, though. Sometimes doing the frontline work is what you love about your business and you don’t want to step away from that. There are ways for you to keep doing what you love while also taking small moments of “CEO time”. I’m going to talk about how.

The first thing to talk about is what CEO time actually means. There are three main roles in your business and it’s important to separate them: the provider role which is frontline, the admin role which is scheduling and invoicing and social media, and the CEO role. What does the CEO role look like? How do you accomplish it while keeping yourself invested in the other roles? I have advice for you. 

Your CEO role doesn’t need to pull you out of the frontline work that you might love. And, in fact, you might decide to include a CEO in your business down the line. But while you’re a solopreneur it’s important that you understand how to carve out that big picture visionary time every so often where your head is out of the day to day and you’re looking into the future of your business.

Key Moments

05:51 The three roles in business

06:37 What CEO time looks like

14:35 How to do effective market research as a solopreneur

• How can distractions be eliminated during CEO time?
• Focussing on wins in business is a key part of future strategy
• How a CEO type goal is very different in nature from items on a To Do list

__

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Anchored Leadership Academy
• Remember, podcast listeners can get into Anchored Leadership Academy on an early bird rate for the first 20 people to register. 40% off with coupon code ANCHOREDVIP40 at check out.

__

Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor:

• Website: BeTheAnchor.ca
• Facebook: BeTheAnchorLtd
• Instagram: BeTheAnchor.ca
• Linkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd

__

Transcript:

Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be The Anchor the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life gets stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea, big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy, and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode, so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much!

Kari Lotzien: [00:01:11] Hello, my friends. I'm so glad you're here. Today I want to talk about being a CEO and a solopreneur. Most of the clients that I work with are either moving to a small team, under 10 or 20 people, or they're making that transition from being a solopreneur in their own job to starting to think of their job as more of a business. Transitioning to what does this look like long term? Where do I want it to go? This is what I call taking the CEO approach to your business. Now I started that way as well. I think one of the difficulties in the podcasts and the courses and the books that I read on entrepreneurship tend to have the philosophy that to be successful in business, you need to move toward the position of CEO in your company, and that you need to move away from working frontline in your business, delivering the service or the product, or doing that kind of frontline work. And here's the thing, I feel that there are a lot of entrepreneurs that don't want that. That their vision of why they went into business was not because they wanted to hold the CEO position in their own company. Oftentimes, it was because they wanted to deliver a product or a service in a different way that they didn't see in the marketplace. Maybe they worked for someone else, but they didn't have the freedom and flexibility that they wanted to support the lifestyle that they wanted to live. Maybe they wanted to do things a little bit of a different way, but they still were dedicated to the front line service in their business. And I think this is a challenge that a lot of us face when we really love what we do. We love working in our business. And when we listen to those types of trainings or podcasts or opinions, it feels like they just don't really get me. They don't really understand my business. I don't want to be corporate. I don't want to grow to 500 employees and multi eight figures in business.

Kari Lotzien: [00:03:35] And here's the thing, you don't have to. It doesn't have to be like that. When I think about anchored leadership and being an anchor in your business, what I'm talking about is when you're running a business and you're doing the front line service, it's like you're paddling that boat. You are doing the work. You're generating the revenue and you need to. That's what having a business is, that it's a trade, your time, your product, for money that then serves your life. When you're paddling that boat, you're doing the work. You're in it. The time spent as a CEO in your business is the time where you pause from paddling. You lift your head and you notice, am I headed in the direction that I want this business to go? Are we still on course? Is there something coming? You notice the current. You notice challenges or waves that are happening out there in the marketplace and you go, oh, I see that coming up and I intentionally make a decision or adjust to change course so that things feel easier. Or maybe you prepare yourself. You know what? I think this is going to be a really difficult time we're coming into and here's my approach. I'm going to, you know, gather some people or I'm going to really save my energy because I know that we're going into a challenging time that's maybe going to require more of me.

Kari Lotzien: [00:05:08] The time where you pause and lift your head is what I call CEO time. The mistakes that I often see solopreneurs make is that we shift from working in the business, delivering the service or the product, paddling the boat and then we go to admin type tasks and we think that we're working on the business. If you're sending receipts to your bookkeeper, if you're meeting with your accountant, if you're meeting with lawyers to finish off your year end or whatever that looks like, if you're sending invoices or sending out payments, that is admin work. That's not CEO work. So I think the first thing you want to do is separate those three roles in your business. Your provider role where you are frontline, serving customers, selling products, what that looks like and all of the tasks around that, ordering, reordering, invoicing, all of that. Shifting to admin, admin includes scheduling your social media, any type of marketing task, all of your accounts, payables and receivables, all of your bookkeeping type tasks, returning emails, returning phone calls, all of the things that are required to keep your business operational. Those are admin type tasks. You are still working in the business. As we move to, well, what do CEO tasks look like then? It often just looks like spending time intentionally to lift your head and notice what's happening around you. How I suggest this working best as a solopreneur is you need to literally shift your physical environment. I don't suggest spending your CEO time, if you have a brick and mortar location, do not be doing this in your office because all of the triggers, all of the visual stimulation around you says, here's what we do when we are in this space, and you will naturally go to working in the business, you'll be doing admin, you'll be dealing with clients. I would also suggest you're not doing this at home because you have other distractions there. Ideally just carving out some time, this could be a couple of hours at a coffee shop, this could be booking yourself an Airbnb or a hotel for one night. But you're carving out this time and space as CEO time. Make sure you're letting people know that you are away, that you are not available during this time, because if you get a client phone call or an email or you've got distractions during this time, your brain and your body will learn that that takes precedent. That takes priority over working on the business. And you're used to doing that. You are used to multitasking and dealing with all of these things. So what you want to do is during this particular CEO time, you're kind of protecting yourself from yourself. You're cutting off that contact, you're eliminating those distractions so that you can come back to really setting your course and where you want to go next.

Kari Lotzien: [00:08:36] Okay, so some of you might be picturing right now that you're sitting in a hotel, you don't have the distraction, and now you have no idea what to do next. And I get it, I totally understand. So I'm going to send you away with some key questions and ideas on okay, then what do I spend my time doing? What does this look like? Process. Number one, start with your wins. Since the last time you sat down, so maybe it's been a year, maybe it's been a couple. Or maybe it's been just a few months. Write down where have you made gains? Where have you had wins in your business? And I always like to start here because many of my clients, and I will admit I was this way myself, and I still kind of am, we tend to focus ahead of ourselves all the time. We are visionaries, naturally, so we're always thinking about where we want to go next or things that aren't working, problems that we need to solve, but we always tend to be in forward motion, and we don't spend enough time looking back and really celebrating what has got us to this point in our business.

Kari Lotzien: [00:09:50] You build your business on multiple wins, things that are going well, whether that is you had a client situation that went really wonderfully, you found someone to help you schedule your social media posts, you had a really great conversation where you shared some inspiration or a passion around your business. Big or small, acknowledging the wins that you've had thus far will help you to build forward and, too, it almost primes your nervous system that you're building on success. When we naturally kind of come to this time as a CEO, you might notice that you're thinking about challenges that you are facing or problems that you need to solve or things that you're worried about. And naturally, when that happens, we have a negativity bias, every human being has it, when you focus on the negative, your ability to be creative and come up with solutions is limited. Because when we feel challenged, when we feel like we are under fire, or we're having the stress of trying to solve a challenge, our focus narrows. And it's harder for us to think of creative solutions. It's harder for us to have multiple visions of different opportunities that we could face, because just naturally we go into that protective mode which says, I just need to solve this immediate problem and get out of this discomfort or overcome this immediate challenge. So by focusing on your wins first, this allows you to kind of relax your brain and it reminds your brain and your body that things are mostly going well and that I am a resilient person. I've overcome so many challenges in the past. I have faith that this will happen again for me, and it kind of just relaxes and creates space. I quite literally envision this as my muscles relax, my brain relaxes, and when I have more space in my muscles, in my thoughts, in my mind, this is where new ideas have space to flow in. So that's what you want to do first. Other ways that you can do this is you might start this time by going for a walk, listening to music that you really enjoy, pairing it with your favorite warm beverage. You know, a nice cup of tea. Do things that help promote that sense of relaxation that things are okay, and that you have space.

Kari Lotzien: [00:12:31] When you put those things together in your CEO time, this will help to build the foundation for you to have really great ideas. Then you want to lean into, so what are your wins first, then reflect. What is feeling easy right now in your business? What are you really enjoying or what are you getting great feedback on? Maybe this is a time where you're going to review some of your finances with a focus on what has been profitable, what's working. So when we start with this again, it's layering on what are our wins, what's feeling easy? What am I really enjoying in my business right now? What seems to be working? And then you can shift to, now let's start to think about others. Are you noticing feedback from your clients or your customers? What are they enjoying? What are they purchasing? What are they interested in? Have they been making requests of things that they would like to see in your business, or ideas that they have? Start to notice that. If you've had a new product or a service that you've been offering, how are your clients reacting to that? Taking time to just kind of step back and notice. And if you get to this point and you think, well, we did try that product or service but I don't really know what our clients are thinking about it, and I'm not really sure what the feedback has been, I don't know if they're enjoying it or not. You can look at a portion of the data being, are they spending money on it? Are they giving their time and their resources to it? But if there's other things you want to know, this is a great CEO type activity to say, okay, actually, something I want to take away from this is I need to find out what our clients are thinking about this. I need to find out if they've got some ideas of things that we could adjust or change. What do they like? What do they not like? And I'm going to focus some time on just getting that feedback.

Kari Lotzien: [00:14:36] This then leads to the next piece. And I say this one, I want you to imagine this next point coming with a little bit of a caution sign in front of it. I want to talk about market research. The trick with market research, I don't want you to go down the path of your competitors and start to get stuck in the comparison trap. What I want you to do is to think strategically based on what we've talked about before. Your wins, reflecting on what's easy and what's working, following client or customer patterns and noticing what's going on, and then saying, okay, these are some questions I have about the market. Are we still priced competitively in our market? What are some other trends that we're seeing or things that maybe my competitors or my partners are offering that maybe we haven't offered yet? Dial in your questions. Know exactly what you want to research or what you want to know before you go into this rabbit hole. Because if you go in without a plan into your market research, you might find yourself hours later just being stuck in a comparison trap of what we're doing and they're not, or vice versa. You don't want to go there. When you're doing market research, you're dialing it in to find out key questions about best practices, about what's happening in the market. Is there a trend or something that's happening in the outside world that you feel might be affecting your business? Dial it in and set a time on it. I suggest absolutely maximum no more than an hour that you're dialing this in, because you don't want to follow threads and end up on like a family circus path where you're nowhere close to where you started or what you needed. Set yourself a time limit and stick to it so that you know where you're looking for that information and you know exactly what you're looking for. Then you pull it into, what challenges are we facing? Maybe what issues or sticky parts are coming up in the business that maybe aren't easy? Are there things that just feel hard right now? Are there things that you are not enjoying in your business? And I want to highlight these things you may not be enjoying, may be profitable. This just gives us space for it. We're not making a decision just yet, but I want you to acknowledge that this feels hard, that this doesn't feel like something that you're really enjoying in your business, even if it's profitable. Are there things in your business that you're really enjoying, that feel easy, but maybe are not generating the profit that you're wanting them to? Again, this is not time to decide whether or not you're going to continue with it, but it's a space to just acknowledge what's happening.

Kari Lotzien: [00:17:39] You're just literally lifting your head, looking around, and noticing what's happening around you. Then you can brain dump. What are all of the ideas that I have floating around right now of maybe things that I want to consider trying in my business? Are there maybe positions that I'm starting to think, oh, maybe I could outsource this part because it's something I need to do, but I'm really not enjoying it anymore, or I'm finding it difficult. Maybe I understood it at one level, but now that we're going to this next space or I'm advancing in my company, I really need to have someone with more of an expertise. Just start to brain dump ideas. Again, we want to give space for idea generation before we jump to decision. Sometimes when we are squeezed and we're in our business and we've got multiple demands on our time, we will jump through this process too quickly. And we'll decide, oh, that isn't making money, we're going to stop doing that. We're not going to offer that product or service anymore. Or oh, here's a new idea, but it just seems like it's too much to implement. So we're not going to do that right now. CEO time allows you to just have space and time to generate ideas without making a decision, without moving forward. It's just a space where you start to collect your ideas.

Hi my friends, I want to interrupt for just a second and ask you a question. What would your results be at this time next year if you took time to get really clear on what you want and how to plan, and could take action to move that vision forward? You might be saying things like, okay, so I hired a bookkeeper, a social media manager, I have a virtual assistant, and I thought that delegating was supposed to give me all of my time back. But I feel like I am still in my business answering all of the questions, and I feel like I just can't give any more. I'm not sure what to do next. This program was designed for you. In the Anchored Leadership Academy, I have given ten modules that you work through on your own to develop the skill of leading well. To take your vision from being all on your shoulders, to really taking it to a team that can implement the next level of your business with you. You're going to learn how to hire and recruit, delegate well, provide feedback with confidence and clarity, and we're going to have some hard conversations about where you might be getting in your own way. We are going to have ten live sessions together where you get to meet other business owners who are going through similar things that you are. This program is going to be incredible. I'd love for you to join me. Check out the link in the show notes, along with the coupon code for 40% off for my listeners only. I hope to see you there. Back to the show.

Kari Lotzien: Now, that being said, when you're collecting your ideas, make sure that you write them down. If you think of a board meeting in a large company where there's a lot of advisors and you're having that CEO type meeting, they are taking minutes. Make sure you're taking minutes so that you're capturing these ideas, even if you are all by yourself. You might think that you'll remember or there's a place to come back to it. Often we forget because when you go back to the front line in your business and your mind kind of gets tangled up again in the day to day, you may forget all of these ideas. So I suggest either having a Google document, an ongoing document that you can add to over time, or it can be as simple as just a notebook, but I would title that document or that notebook, your CEO minutes, because you don't want that to get caught up in all of the minutes and ideas and documents of all of the other things you're working on in your business, you want this to kind of be a separate thing, so that the next time you have carved out time as a CEO, you're coming back to your minutes from the previous meeting and you're just reviewing those ideas and maybe doing some updates like, ooh, that was a challenge then. And it's something that we've overcome now. It might become a win in your next meeting.

Kari Lotzien: Or as you are looking at your patterns with your customers and clients, you might now have the data that you needed to fill in a gap that you identified last time. So we want this, these CEO meetings, even if you're all by yourself, to have a sense of continuity and they're occurring on a fairly regular basis, whether you're doing it monthly, quarterly or even annually at the beginning, I don't suggest that, I suggest doing it on a more regular basis. But you have that sense of a thread that you're creating that story and that vision for your business as CEO. So make sure that you're absorbing that. And then before you close out that session, you're going to look at all of the data that you've produced right from what's happening in the markets, where your wins have been, what's feeling good, what information do you need? Where are the sticky spots? And before you close out that meeting, you're going to create action items. Now, I suggest do not create a list of 22 things that you want to do in your business in the next month. Decide on 1 or 2 things that you want to focus on in that CEO role. So this is different than a to do list of these are all the urgent things that just need to be done to close out our month end, or to get ready for year end or to, you know, work with clients.

Kari Lotzien: This is a CEO type goal. This is what I'm looking towards for maybe the next year. And here is the area that I'm going to focus on so that I'm moving towards that bigger goal. So maybe that's I'm going to find out a little bit more about market research. Maybe I took my hour, but now I've noticed that I actually need to find out more information about certain areas so I'm going to make a list of what things do I need to find out, that's going to be my area of focus for the next quarter. Or do you need to have something that you're gathering, more testimonials or more client feedback, and that's going to be your area of focus. Maybe you're deciding you actually do want to move forward with a new product or service, and you want to start to create a funnel so that you're attracting clients, or you're letting them know this is a new service or a product that we're offering, and how am I going to optimize that in the bigger picture? So the planning and the big picture guiding towards is CEO. When you're thinking about your marketing funnel, when you're thinking about who might be set for this product, maybe who else do I need to let know, because they may be a good referral source, or they may be someone who would be interested in their clients also needing this product, that is CEO time. When you're looking at kind of that big picture marketing, when you're looking at creating social media posts and actually implementing that, now that's back to your admin. So I want you to just see the thread through that system. Putting it all in one spot, having that journal so you can create that story of your business. This, even if you are by yourself in the meeting, these same processes will apply in any small business.

Kari Lotzien: Where I want to bring this back full circle is know that you don't need to fully step out of the front line of your business. If you really enjoy providing that service, being with your customers, and that's what fills you up, that's what feels good for you, know that to be successful in business, you don't have to move up that proverbial ladder to be a 100% CEO. But you do need to take time on a regular basis, even if it's a short amount of time, to step into the CEO role and give yourself space and time to do this type of long term visionary work and then come back to that front line. You might do this even as you build your team for long periods. I have a lot of clients that they are the main revenue generator in their business. Chiropractors. Massage therapists. Psychotherapists. If you move into your CEO role full time, you might really be taking away the major revenue generating piece of your business, and you don't want to do that. So just know that you can do both. You might decide that maybe your long term vision is that you want to be doing customer care three days a week, and you really want to hold more of that ownership or CEO role two full days a week as you build your team. That's fine. I just want to give you permission that you don't need to have this vision of moving out of frontline work, because the other thing that I sometimes, actually often see, is that as owners move into that more management or ownership role and they move away from client service, they actually start to lose the passion for their business. So if that's happening to you, you also want to give yourself a place to notice that and to say, okay, you know what, I thought this was what I wanted, but it's not working for me. This doesn't feel enjoyable. I don't really like spending all of my time working with team members and managing staff and working with all of that piece. If you don't, then that can also be time in your CEO role where you say, okay, these are the pieces of the business that I'm actually not enjoying doing. I want to make the customer care and that frontline piece of my work central in my long term plan. And then we look at filling different areas. So you may look at bringing in someone into your business who is more of a CEO type role, or an integrator role as a partner, or even as a senior level manager in your business. That might be your long term plan. And that's okay.

Kari Lotzien: I hope today gave you some clear ideas on how, even as a solopreneur, you can set aside time as a CEO. I hope that you take away those points to see exactly how you can use that time, so that you don't just kind of spin your wheels and end up not having value in that time that really moves your business forward. Thank you so much for being here. Make sure that you like and subscribe to the podcast and please share it. There are so many people out in the world right now who are trying to make a go of business. They've got a brilliant product or service. They are a wonderful person and you want to see them succeed. But navigating this journey can be challenging. Share the resource with them. Give them that little boost up. It's free, it's easy, and it builds our communities together. Thanks so much for being here. See you next week.

Kari Lotzien: Please know that this podcast is meant for entertainment purposes only. It is not a substitution for medical or professional mental health advice. If you require support, please do reach out. Thanks so much.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

None of us get into business anticipating disappointing clients or having disgruntled employees. We all have the best of intentions about pleasing customers and making employees feel valued in jobs they enjoy. Unfortunately, humans have different perspectives and navigating those perspectives can lead to conflict. So how do we manage conflict when it arises in our business?

The first step to developing a strategy for conflict is to reflect on how you currently manage it. Do you tend to ignore conflict, hoping it will go away? Do you feel like you need to have all the answers and scramble for a solution? Or do you immediately go on the defensive? All of these are natural responses but they aren’t effective strategies. I’m going to talk about how to work past those instinctive responses to develop a more measured plan of action.

Part of conflict management is getting to the root of the issue and then being willing to address it. Simply giving in to complaints only reinforces negative behavior by rewarding it. What is the complaint really about? Could it have been preemptively avoided by inviting regular feedback from customers and employees? I’m helping you with the difficult navigation of conflict, but I’m also going to help you avoid some of it by talking about strategies that deflate complaints before they become conflicts. 

Key Moments

05:36 Avoiding conflict and other ineffective methods of dealing with it

07:25 Conflict with customers

18:50 Conflict with employees

• How do we manage when we’ve had a negative review?
• Why getting feedback, positive and negative, is so important
• Do employees have all the correct expectations about their roles so they can rise and obtain raises?

__

Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor:

• Website: BeTheAnchor.ca
• Facebook: BeTheAnchorLtd
• Instagram: BeTheAnchor.ca
• Linkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd

__

Transcript:

Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be The Anchor the Podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life gets stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea, big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy, and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode, so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much!

Kari Lotzien: [00:01:10] Hello my friends, I'm so glad you're here. Today I want to talk about a bit of a sticky subject around managing conflict in your business. Now, no one went into business planning to disappoint people or have disgruntled employees. You went into business because you really thought that you could deliver a product or a service that your customers wanted, and that they valued, and that they would appreciate you for. You hired people thinking that you would treat them well, and that they would have jobs that they enjoy, and they would contribute to the growth and the success of your business. I get that. And just because you're dealing with conflict, big or small, in your business, doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. I want you to really hear that. If you are working with, serving, or have humans as part of your business, we have different perspectives. There are times where we're maybe not as responsive and we're maybe a little more reactive than we want to be. And as we're trying to just navigate this together, it can create challenge and sometimes sticky, uncomfortable situations. Now if this is happening on a repeated basis and there's a pattern to it, then maybe we want to dive into that a little bit deeper. But for the most part, I want to just talk about how you might have a strategy or a plan to navigate that conflict in your business.

Kari Lotzien: [00:02:43] The first step, I think, is just pausing to take a bit of time to reflect on how you manage conflict currently. When someone shares with you that they're not that happy or they feel that they were treated poorly in your business, what's your natural reaction? And how is it working for you? So I can tell you I had a rehabilitation practice for well over 20 years. And when I first encountered conflict in my business, it was often related to cancellations, so late cancellations that came in, or people who just didn't show up for their appointments. And I got to a point where I developed a cancellation policy that if you canceled within 24 hours of your appointment, that you were charged a 50% fee. What I didn't have a plan for was how I was going to implement that when someone would say that they didn't want to pay it, or that they felt it was unfair. And to be honest with you, there was times where they didn't say a word about it, and I anticipated that they were going to be upset. So I just didn't charge it. I would do whatever I could to appease my client, to just not have to deal with that so that they would stay happy and I feel like they would continue to have a long term relationship with us as client. Now what happened is my lack of ability to manage that conflict ended up creating a bigger conflict when I had additional team members, because now when someone would cancel on very short notice or would just forget about their appointment and not show up, my staff still expected to be paid. And let's be honest, we had clients that were kind of notorious for canceling last minute, and we wanted to change that behavior. We wanted to make sure that, especially when we had a wait list for our services, that if there was going to be a cancellation we could allow someone off the wait list to come in on short notice so that we could fill that slot. That was our desire. But when we weren't either at least addressing the issue of what that means to our business when you cancel on such short notice, how that affects the clients that are sitting on the wait list, how that affects your success in your program, all of these things, when we didn't address them, just compounded the problem and made it bigger later on.

Kari Lotzien: [00:05:36] The other thing I often see is people who just avoid the conflict. They might hear rumblings that people aren't happy or there's something going on, and we just kind of ignore it and hope that it goes away. And I can tell you not the best solution either. The third, sometimes we feel like, especially if we are a sole entrepreneur or we are the single leader of a team, that we feel like we have to have the answers. So if someone comes to us with a conflict that we immediately have to have the solution. And when we are stressed, when we are feeling overwhelmed, we might not have the solution, or we might not be the one who has the full perspective of what's going on. So just notice, are you the type that feels like it's up to you to come up with the solution to the conflict? And the last is when people feel like they need to defend themselves. So when someone comes to you with any sort of disappointment that you feel the need to go into that defensive posture to explain your side of the story and that you are right. This can happen online. I think we see it often with business owners who will go on and respond to a negative review and try to explain their side of the story, which creates this position of opposition with their client or their customer. And again, not the strategy that I would suggest. So I think the first thing to do is just recognize how are you responding right now? And is it working? Are you potentially creating more conflict in the future in your method that you're currently managing these things that are coming up?

Kari Lotzien: [00:07:25] The next thing I want to go into is to just kind of divide into two sections. So let's talk about conflict when it comes to customers. So how do we manage when we've had a negative review? Or how do we manage when maybe one of our customers is not completely satisfied with our service and they've come to us about it? The first thing. So I'm going to talk to you about a customer of mine, she prides herself on their business being efficient, professional, they do incredible work. And she called me one day and said, Kari, I don't know what to do. We have had someone post a really negative review of our business and she was devastated. Number one, she felt that it was a really personal attack. The way that it was written was really questioning the professionalism of her business. So what was happening is this person attacked their pricing structure and accused them of overcharging and basically falsifying information on an invoice, and she took it really personally. So as we kind of dove into it, we started looking at, okay, how have we dealt with this in the past, number one? And how did it get to this point? Third, we go to is there anything we could have done to prevent this in the future?

Kari Lotzien: [00:08:56] So number one, when I asked her tell me about this client. So number one, she couldn't respond to go into defense, which is what she kind of wanted to do was to tell her side of the story as to why the charges were absolutely justified, how they tracked their time, why her pricing was very similar, if not better than her competitors. She wanted to go into the whole story. Naturally. But what we were also a little bit tied with, and if you are in health care or you have a business that needs you to protect the confidential information of your clients, you need to be really careful of this, because we don't want her to disclose any of the confidential information about her client, or to put them at risk. So, number one, she couldn't do that. She also didn't want to just ignore it because she said, I only have a couple of Google reviews on my site, which we're going to circle back to.

Kari Lotzien: [00:09:59] I said, did you know that this client was upset previous? And she said, oh yeah, this client does this every month. They complain about their invoice. Okay. How has that been managed in the past? And she said, well, it started off where this customer would just email us back and say that I feel that there was an overcharge on this and this and this. And she said we would typically just adjust our invoice and carry on. And she said, and then I got to the point where I was like, kind of getting irritated with it. So she said, I didn't respond, and I just sent the reminder that the invoice needed to be paid. And she said, and then the customer phoned me and said, I need to talk with you about these charges. I think this is unfair. And she said, and when they leaned in and complained again about the charges, I adjusted the invoice and carried on. So do you see what's happening? What had built over time is that this customer was being financially rewarded through their conflict, and the way that the owner just wanted to appease the client, right? We have that idea the customer is always right, so she was waiving parts of his bill and saving him significant money just to appease him.

Kari Lotzien: [00:11:18] Now, what had happened was she decided in this particular encounter that she was no longer going to do that. And she said, please give me a call. I'm willing to go with you through the invoice with you line by line and explain the charges, but we will not be reducing our fees this time. So she held the boundary, which she had never held before, and he increased it and took it to a public platform to really show a negative review on her business. So when we leaned into this, number one, we had to recognize that part of the problem was the way that she had dealt with the conflict in the past. She had never felt that she had overcharged. She had never felt that there had been falsified information on an invoice. She absolutely stood behind her systems and processes in things being very accurate. And she was really proud of the fact that her team was efficient and often came in under the budgets of her competitors. But in this particular situation there was a reward for him complaining. So we recognize that if we would have set that boundary earlier, it likely would not have escalated to this point. So then we went through and just navigated how we were going to go through this together. So we leaned in, we said, I want you to create some sort of a response to the review. So we want you to lean in, acknowledge that you understand that there were some challenges that you are really open to discussing in a private situation, and that you would be reaching out by phone within the day to discuss this further.

Kari Lotzien: [00:13:03] So what this does on the public platform is it takes it to, Who's watching? All your audience wants to know when they look at your reviews online is, Are you willing to address the challenge? So the fact that she doesn't say, you know, reach out to me if you want to talk more about this, she takes the initiative and says, I will be reaching out to you today by phone to discuss this in a private setting. What this did for her audience is it showed even if someone's upset, she doesn't ever break confidentiality when it comes to her clients. She is willing to lean into that discussion, which is difficult, and she took some initiative on how she was going to deal with that. So we developed a little bit of a script on how she could respond to any negative reviews that come up in the future. The other piece of this, that we dug down a little bit deeper to, was she didn't have many five star reviews because she never asked for reviews from her customers. She relied on word of mouth, which I know a lot of you do. We tend to think that when people are happy with our service, they recommend their friends and family, and they recommend us to other people and that that just builds. But if someone doesn't know you yet and they find you online, they rely on those reviews to decide if you're the type of business that they want to work with. So make sure that you're proactively asking for feedback from your customers.

Kari Lotzien: [00:14:30] Now let's lean into that a little bit more. I think getting into the habit of asking for feedback from your customers, and not just give us a five star review, get detailed, ask them questions about how their experience was. What they maybe particularly enjoyed or what stood out to them. And is there anything that we could have done that would have made your experience just a little bit better? Those three questions can help your clients if they were hesitant in sharing that, you know, maybe they weren't upset with the service, but it wasn't as good as it could have been. This opens the door for them to say, I want your feedback. We value you as a customer, and we really want your experience with our business to be exceptional every time. When you invite that feedback, and you do it not only with new customers, but you do it with your long term clients as well, maybe that looks a little bit different. So it's not the same questionnaire that goes out every single time they come to your business. Maybe one of the times you have your admin phone and just say, hey, I noticed you came in last week. Just like to touch base on how your experience was. You've been a long term customer. We really appreciate that. Anything you feel we could be doing a little bit better? Right? That tells your customer, hey, I know you've been here a long time and we really appreciate you. And I don't take for granted that just because you keep coming back, that means you're a raving fan. We can always be doing a little bit better.

Kari Lotzien: [00:16:13] One of my clients, she's a massage therapist, and she said, one of the things that I used to do is when someone came to see me for a massage and they had a really particular issue or challenge going on - so maybe they had, you know, a lot of pain in their upper back and they were really struggling with shoulder checking - she said, I made a habit to just give them a quick phone call within 24 to 48 hours later and just, she said, often, I never even talked to them. I left a quick message and just said, Hey, I'm just checking in. I'd really like to know how you're feeling today. How's your neck? Are you able to shoulder check, noticing any differences? If you have any questions, give me a call. She said 90% of the time they never called back, but they always commented on it the next time they came in. They'd never had that experience before. When you lean in to getting feedback, when you take that extra little step, this creates that open door where people, if they do have something maybe a little bit subtle that just didn't quite feel right, they're going to reach out to you because what we don't want is they start to feel maybe a little bit disappointed and instead of saying anything, they take their business somewhere else. And worst off, when someone asks them for a referral, they don't give it to you. They send it somewhere else, and maybe they share their disappointing experience with their friend or their family member, and they never let us know. Which never gives us an opportunity to change the experience. So I really feel like when you lean into this with your customers and you show a willingness to get curious about what their experience was like, and you show them that you're not just going to defend your own position, even if you're justified. So the position with my client, who had a really negative review, that was a little bit different than what I'm talking about here in getting ahead of it. Your approach is a little bit different, but when you consistently use a proactive approach to inviting any negative feedback, it really creates long term raving fans because then we see it over and over again. You know you can't be all over social media if someone says something negative about you on a community page. But when you have created a habit of leaning in and requesting feedback from your customers, they have your back. So if they're on the site, they will defend you. They'll tag you in the post to make sure that you have a chance to respond. It's really the best thing ever.

Kari Lotzien: [00:18:50] Okay, now let's go to the other side. Let's talk a little bit about employees. So I want to give just a three step kind of process to how we can manage conflict on our team. And I'm going to do this through just a couple of examples. A couple of things that are coming up quite often are working from home or working remotely. Or, I feel like I should be paid more. The working from home challenge. What we're hearing is that with the last few years, a lot of businesses allowed their team members to work from home or work remotely, or have some sort of a hybrid model where they were in the office sometimes and not others. And where I'm seeing it is owners and managers are questioning, Do I still continue this because I have a discomfort with it? Is this really working well? Is it working well for my team culture? Am I getting the results from employees that I really need? So the first step to this is make sure you've identified the real issue. Because often the issue that is brought up - I feel I'm not being paid enough or how come they get to work from home and I don't, are we allowed to work from home or not - that's not the real issue.

Kari Lotzien: [00:20:19] When we peel the layers of the onion we can dig down to what is the actual issue. Working from home. When I start asking more questions, which is the number one thing that I think we need to do is stay curious before we react. Especially if you're the type of person that just wants to appease or wants to go to defensiveness. Can you stay in that middle zone and just stay curious? Not respond. Give yourself a little more time to understand. When I dig in with a lot of my clients around, what is the real issue when it comes to working from home? The issue is not where they work. The issue is, well, I have some questions because I notice that when this one person works from home, they get a ton of things done and I really don't have an issue with that. But when this other person works from home, what I notice is that when I call them, they don't respond. I email them, sometimes hours go by and I don't hear anything, and I question, Are they really doing the work that I need them to do? Or, you know, when they have the distraction of kids in the background, is that really impacting their ability to stay focused on the projects and the work that we need done? When I dig into that with them, we identify that the issue is not whether you work from home or not as a team. The issue is how do we ensure that there's accountability no matter where we're working from? And how do we distinguish if a remote working environment is the best solution for this employee with this role in this situation. And it might be different for different members of your team. When we dig into that and we then start to identify, okay, now let's go to the second step of let's explore all the solutions to this challenge. So the solution might be we allow everyone the option of working from home. Or, nope, everyone has to come into the office. There might be more solutions that allow us to address the true issue. How are we going to measure accountability? How are we going to maintain team culture and connection? How are we going to ensure that there is a high level of service for our customers, that we still have that same quality no matter where we're working from? How do we measure that? How do we do a check in? Now do you see it opens up so many different options and different solutions. Then we go to deciding what the outcome from that conflict is going to be.

Kari Lotzien: [00:23:05] What I suggest is that when we go to step two, you might get some input from the team. You might decide that you know what? Help explain to me why this works for you, or what your concerns are, or why you really want this. And I'm going to share with you what our worries are or how we're going to work through this together. So you create this space where you're not trying to defend your own position. You're just looking at all options. So your goal at this place is to stay really broad in your perspective and scope. Then you may take it back to a smaller team. Maybe this is your senior management, maybe this is just you, to make the final decision. So you want to be clear, if you take this to a team, this is not a vote. It's not that the majority wins. It's not that the loudest person in the room wins, or that person that you like the best. You want to identify that you will be taking the input from everyone, and that you will come back with a final decision and likely an explanation as to how you got there or why. Now, once you've decided you can make a different decision, you might then talk about reevaluating. So we're going to try this plan for 2 or 3 months and then we're going to evaluate how it's working. So just because you make the decision doesn't mean that you need to be forever stuck in it. But it's important that you make a decision. Don't stay in that gray zone too long, because that's when people start to feel really uncertain and they don't really know what's happening, and they feel like nothing's being done and maybe you're going back to just ignoring the problem. So you want to make sure that you've got that.

Kari Lotzien: [00:24:47] Now let's let's go for the other side. I feel like I'm not being paid enough, I feel like I deserve to have a raise. When we dig into that, what might be revealed is that the issue is maybe not that this person is being paid unfairly compared to a similar role within your organization or with the competition. So the first data that you might need is has the market changed? Are people being paid more and you were just unaware of it? That might be one of the issues. The issue might be that you're actually expecting more of this person, that you hired them, and you really expected, based on their experience and their background, that they were going to be able to deliver a little bit better quality than what they are. It could be that this person really wants to go to that next level. But maybe in your mind you think, I need a little bit more experience or I need you to have this specific skill set. Maybe it's a course or some really focused training to be able to access that next level. When you look at the real issue, is it that they're being paid unfairly compared to market? Is it that you could pay them more but they don't know what training or what your expectations are, because maybe your job description was not clear. And when you come back and you reflect on the description of the job at hiring, to just say, okay, are we matching the expectation of what you're currently being paid and pointing out if there's any gaps, then the person knows, okay, these are the things that I need to clean up so that I can get a promotion or I can be financially compensated for what I'm doing here. If I want a really substantial raise, it's not a matter of just showing up and doing the same job for longer, but that really I need to up level my skills or I need to take an additional training course, or I need to get some licensing or a different role. Now you've shown them the guideline as to here's how you could achieve that next level. So when you look at all of the solutions, this isn't just about paying them more so that they stay in their current role so that they don't quit. When you then make the decision, We'll review this in three months, here's the training that I want you to do. Or here's a couple of the key skills that I really want you to work on. And then we're going to book a meeting and follow this up in 6 to 8 weeks to see how this is going, it moves us through the conflict together.

Kari Lotzien: [00:27:26] Because what I don't want to see, similar to the customer that was leaving the negative Google review, what we're seeing sometimes in business is that your employee threatens to quit, or they ask for a raise and they get it. And you don't want to set up a situation where the only time people get raises is when they threaten to quit because the word will get out. And typically people who have done it once or twice will continue to do it because it works the same way it was working for that client to get money taken off of his invoice. What you want is that business is a collaborative relationship. It's an exchange. You are more than willing to pay for service that is improving the quality and the service in your business. But your employees might not know how to get there. So make sure that you're just helping to set that up. And if you really just can't, if there is a reason why you are maxed out and this decision just is not available to you, then with some reflection and integrity, you don't want to be disclosing too much, but you do want to make sure that people know why you've made the decision that you've made based on the knowledge or the data that you have available. So if you just can't give raises right now because your lease costs just went up 30%, or your utility costs have doubled, or maybe you're in the food industry and you are just not able to recover the price of food based on the overhead of your building, your utilities, and your food costs, make sure that people know that, because sometimes we'll create a story in ourselves that we assume, Well, the reason that they don't want to give me what I'm asking for is because they don't care about me. They don't value what I'm doing here, or they're taking it all for themselves. So you want to make sure, be transparent and speak to that. If you value that person, make sure they know that. I absolutely appreciate the time and the energy that you put into this. Here's what I see, I see that you're always looking to make our business better, I see that you are absolutely exceptional with our customers. And I absolutely don't want to lose the appreciation or the value that I see in you. I can't do this right now, but here's how we could or here's maybe another solution to our challenge. Could I give you a bonus somewhere else? Could I give you a little bit more flexible hours? Could I offer you maybe a different role where you could develop a different skill set and be compensated in a different way? Show that you're willing to work together to solve the conflict, that it doesn't just become a you win or I win situation.

Kari Lotzien: [00:30:17] All right. A couple of just dangers that I want you to just think about as we close up. I want you to know that there is a long term consequence of not leaning into conflict. Developing the skill set for knowing how to navigate this, which starts with self-reflection, know how you typically respond, and ask yourself if it's working for you. If you find that you lean towards kind of ignoring conflicts and hoping they go away or assuming that the loudest voice in the crowd represents the majority, this brings us all the way back to the beginning. I know that you didn't go into business to disappoint people and to have them say bad things about you. But sometimes it can feel like the loudest voice in the crowd represents all of your customers, and you can start to feel really discouraged and feel like no one appreciates what you're doing, and the value is just not there and that you're not appreciated. Recognize that it is just because one voice in the crowd is so much louder than the others. So it is up to you as a business owner to ensure that those quieter voices in the crowd have a space to have their voice heard, whether that's through one on one reaching out, having them fill out a customer service questionnaire, asking them for a review with some focused questions. We want to make sure that we are surveying enough people that we get an accurate representation of where the issues are and where we're doing really well so that it balances out. This, I know, will help you to create a community of people who are raving fans of your business and will have your back when you're not there.

Kari Lotzien: [00:32:06] All right. This is where I'm going to leave you. I want you to lean in to just a little bit of conflict. You know where it is. You know where there's potentially some gossip or some sticky things going on. How can you show up with a little bit of transparency today, keeping your feet on the ground, to just lean in and get a little bit curious? Thanks so much for being here. I'm so grateful that you're listening in, that you're continuing. If you haven't liked and subscribed yet, please do. I don't want you to miss an episode. And if you know of someone who is really struggling to navigate some negative feedback in their business right now, please take a screenshot or share a link to this episode with them, because this time can be a little tricky and we want to make sure that there's support. Let's give each other a hand up. And if someone's doing something really well in business and you've had a great experience, let's make sure those voices are heard too. If you can reach out and give someone just a little bit of a boost today, please do. Thanks so much.

Kari Lotzien: [00:33:12] Please know that this podcast is meant for entertainment purposes only. It is not a substitution for medical or professional mental health advice. If you require support, please do reach out. Thanks so much.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Do you remember the kids’ table at holiday gatherings with the family? Where perhaps too many people were crammed into too small a space so the kids were shoved to another table that felt like it wasn’t the important table to be at? That’s what inspired the idea I’m sharing with you today, the understanding of the 3 rooms we need to travel through to achieve success.

The 3 rooms fit into the journey of life, of business, and of achievement. They are a series of rooms, as I envision them, that we hopefully travel through as we learn more on our journey. Not everyone will actually leave the first room. And those who make it to the second room may not leave that room either. But my hope, for myself and all of you, is that we all make it to the third room.

I’ll share what each room feels like and the mindset of the people in that room. Entrepreneurs and business owners all go through every room. So the best advice I can give is to learn the lessons of each room and progress through to the next level of success. Room Three, a place of opportunity, collaboration, and conversation, is the pinnacle of the journey. What mentors can help get you there? And if you’re there, how can you bring others in? 

Key Moments

06:07 Room One, the Kid Table room

09:24 Room Two, the Room of Independence 

13:12 Room Three, the Mastermind Room 

• Do you have a mentor or can you be a mentor?
• Do you cling to the scarcity mindset, the belief that there’s not enough to go around?
• Envision a place where people listen more than speak and collaborate willingly with each other

__

Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor:

• Website: BeTheAnchor.ca
• Facebook: BeTheAnchorLtd
• Instagram: BeTheAnchor.ca
• Linkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd

__

Transcript:

Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be The Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life gets stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much.

Kari Lotzien: [00:01:11] Hello my friends. Welcome to the podcast. I'm your host, Kari Lotzien, business and leadership coach. Today I want to talk to you about an idea that I have shared with a ton of clients and friends in my life, and it's just getting so much traction, so excited to talk to you about it. I grew up in a family that there was a lot of cousins and a lot of aunts and uncles, and for holidays we would gather at my grandparents house, which was this tiny little home, and we would pack all in there and it was just loud and noisy and chaotic and things got broken and kids were fighting.

Kari Lotzien: [00:01:50] But it was some of my best memories from my childhood. Although we had a kid table. I don't know if you grew up in one of those families that was really chaotic and we tried to squeeze a lot of people into a small space. Inevitably, we had this kid table, which all the kids were pushed off of the good table where the adults would sit and into the kid table, which was sometimes the coffee table, sometimes a card table, sometimes, you know, a random picnic table that was brought in from outside, dust it off and we didn't... sometimes you'd stand, sometimes you'd sit if you didn't have enough chairs. But I always felt that the kid table was the second rate table. Being one of the older cousins, I, you know, would have to look after the younger cousins, help them cut their food, help them, encourage them to eat. And I always would be watching that adult table and thinking that's where the good stuff's happening. That's where I really need to be. What age do I need to be? What are the qualifications that I can finally move my butt out of this kid table to over where the good stuff's happening? Now we can talk about how coming into adulthood is maybe not as exciting as it seems, and maybe the conversations over there were just really not as entertaining as I thought they were.

Kari Lotzien: [00:03:13] But this idea of a kid table and wanting so badly to be at the adult table, I've taken it and twisted it a little bit into life, business, where we want to go and who we want to go there with. As I'm coming into some middle years, let's call them, of my life, one of the things that just keeps coming back to me is how absolutely grateful I am for the people that have become friends, that maybe started as clients, started as colleagues, or maybe even competition and how they've become some of the best people on this journey of life and how those relationships have changed over time. Because I come from a small community in rural Alberta, Canada, where I felt like my world was pretty small. I felt like my opportunities were pretty limited because what I could see was based on the people that I was around on a daily basis. I didn't get to see people who were living big dreams, especially women. Most of the business owners in my community were men. They were very, very few of them.

Kari Lotzien: [00:04:33] And I had this kind of admiration, but not accessibility. I always felt like we were on completely different grounds. And as I've kind of been looking back and thinking, okay, how did this whole thing work out for me? How did I end up developing two different businesses? How did I end up continuing to want to push to go to that next level of success? What got me there from being this small town kid who didn't have a lot of experience with entrepreneurs in my family or in my friend group. How did I get there? And so I want to share this with you because for me it's exciting. And I think what it does and what I hope it does for you is it shows that this journey to success, whatever that means for you, whatever that definition is for you, is available no matter where you are right now, no matter if you are sitting in your little crappy one bedroom or maybe even not even a one bedroom, maybe a little studio apartment that is dirty and has nasty shag carpet, this is available to you too. It's not about money. It's not about handouts. It's not about opportunities that are multigenerational. I think this is different and I'm so excited about it.

Kari Lotzien: [00:05:56] It starts with the kid table analogy, and now I want it to have really exciting titles for the rooms. What I'm going to talk to you about is three rooms. Room one. This is like the kid table room. I think this is where many of us start. This is where I started when I was a teenager, when I was a young adult. It was the idea that where your life goes is a direct correlation to what is offered to you. The reins are held by someone else. This room is noisy because what you're going to hear is people complaining, complaining about their bosses who don't see them, complaining about their parents who maybe didn't give them the opportunity to go to university or they didn't have the encouragement or the love or the support that they needed, that the government is unfair and that they just don't get the opportunities. This is a place, this Room One, where we feel like life is happening to us and that we can only go so far because the fences were built by someone else. They were built by our family, our upbringing, where we live, who we're related to, what jobs we've had. But there's a constraint in this where we feel almost out of control of our own destination. Now, I can tell you there are people who live in this room for their entire lives. You know them. You know them. You get together and the conversation is just naturally about all of the hard things. And any time maybe you invite this person to reflect on what they could do or something that's available to them or an opportunity, it's often met with, You don't understand, and the bulk of the conversation is helping you to understand how hard life is and how those opportunities of the people that are leading successful businesses that are on YouTube, that are taking control of their lives, aren't available to me because 'insert the multitude of reasons, slash excuses why that's never going to happen'.

Kari Lotzien: [00:08:22] And the trick is that if we stay in this room too long, it can feed our sense of there's a lack, that lack mindset. There's no opportunities, things are hard, things are unfair. The good stuff is reserved for other people, but it's not available to me. And there's all different levels of this, right? So there's a Room One and, you know, some people - I'm going to be very, very honest with you - grew up in really difficult situations where maybe they faced neglect or abuse or trauma. And I'm not saying, and I want to be cautious, that this is not about blaming that person and saying that you just need to get over it. It's not like that at all. It's saying, yes, this happened to me and that doesn't mean that I'm going to stay here long term and not look for this next step.

Kari Lotzien: [00:09:21] The next room is the Room of Independence. And when I picture this room in my mind, I see this large room filled with cubicles and everyone is kind of huddled over their project, their computer, their papers, and they're almost protecting it from everyone else. It's a room in isolation, but yet everyone is kind of talking over each other, just trying to be heard. So as we move from that Room One where we're blaming everyone else, where we feel that someone else built the fences, someone else has set the ceiling, Room Two is when we take responsibility and say, you know what, I think I can do it differently. I think that maybe this is available to me if I work hard, if I get the experience, if I get the knowledge, if I go to the school, if I take the course, if I do the thing, maybe I can take the reins back in my own life. It's exciting. But it can also be a little bit lonely. This is when all of a sudden when you put your foot on the gas and you think, this is what I am driving towards, oftentimes those fences dissolve, the ceiling, you know, sets itself at a different level, and you can see opportunities that you didn't see before, that you didn't have experience directly in your hometown or in your family or in your small friend group. Now you're starting to set your own destination and you're saying, you know what, this is my vehicle of life and I'm driving it. I'm taking responsibility and this is what I want. And it's different.

Kari Lotzien: [00:11:05] Now, I can tell you, I think it's an important place to be. I think we have to step through this room where we start to take our power back. But if we stay here long term, we also feel like there's not enough to go around. You know, when I said that, it's like being in a cubicle where we protect our own ideas and we think that our own hustle and our own effort and learning all of the things is the path to success. This is the room that leads to burnout, because this is where we can be our own worst enemy, because we do all of the things. We don't have that trust in others so we try to learn it all ourselves. We try to really lean in and think, okay, I need to learn it all. Do it all. Do all of the work to get the thing that I need next. It's really based in hustle. And again, many of us, if this was the experience that we had in our lives, so maybe you did grow up in a family where there were entrepreneurs and maybe you've grown up in a space where you did get to see some people that were taking that next step, when we look back - and some of this, I think, is history related - what can happen is we are fed the belief that there is not enough to go around. That if we share our ideas that someone else will take them. That if we don't keep our foot on the gas, if we don't keep driving, that it's going to dry up. That there's not going to be enough. That when we're rewarded and people say things like, oh my gosh, I don't know how you do it, oh my goodness, you work so hard. There's also accolades and a pride in being successful, but it can start to build and snowball on itself that we protect because we naturally don't trust that there's enough to go around. We don't trust that there's this next step.

Kari Lotzien: [00:13:12] The third room. When I imagine stepping into this room, what I picture is these really comfy chairs and the room is quite quiet. There's not people talking over one another. Often there's only one person talking. But they're all seated together. No one's trying to be seen. No one's trying to be the center of attention. There are far more listeners in this room than there are speakers. I call this the Mastermind Room. This is the room of the people who have hustled. They've done the work. They've put in the the grind and the hustle. They've done all of that. And now they've come to a place where they know that there is enough to go around. They have taken the chance. They've reached out to other people to collaborate or say, Hey, I've got this new idea and I'm really excited about it, but I'd just really like to run it past you. And they've opened that door and they've released their ideas, their thoughts, their fears, all of it with someone else and what they got back in return was not someone stealing their ideas. It wasn't competition. It wasn't the scarcity. But it was this solid feedback of this is what I've done. This is what worked for me but I think things might be different now and here's how I see it for you. And there's this dialog that comes back and forth that you know these people are wise. They're not loud, they are gentle. This room is much, much quieter. There's more questions than answers in this room. These people are great listeners. They're curious. And this is the room that I am consciously aiming to be in. And what I can tell you, this isn't you get to a certain age and then you come through it and you move to the next room. I wish it was like that, it's not. There are people who will live their entire lives in Room One blaming everyone else. There are people who will live their entire lives in Room Two feeling that there is not enough to go around and that they need to do it all and they need to push and grind and they can't trust anyone else for fear that there's not going to be enough.

Kari Lotzien: [00:15:39] Every time you step into a new room, there are less and less people there, I can tell you that for sure. And as you move through the rooms, every time you step into a new room, you will feel like an imposter. You'll feel like you don't belong there. You'll feel like you haven't done the work, that it doesn't fit. I can tell you, this is normal. I have a really beautiful story. I've done the work. I had had my business at that point for about 18 years, and I had been invited to speak internationally. This was, I think, the second time that I had spoken internationally. And I was over the moon excited because my name and the description of what I was talking about was going to be in the same booklet as the people, the gurus that I had looked up to. And I felt so filled that someone was going to find out that I didn't belong there, that my credentials were not of the same level or the same quality as these people who had gone before. And as I walked into the conference feeling my stomach was churning, I was feeling hot and cold and dizzy and constantly thinking, Oh my gosh, I'm going to wake up tomorrow morning when I need to speak and I'm going to be so sick. Like, you know when your nerves get so big that you feel like you're most definitely coming down with an illness that is going to completely incapacitate you? That's how I was feeling. And I was trying to overcome this with, you know, I'll go to the the networking event at the beginning and I'll chat with some people and I'll smile at some people. But internally, I was completely a wreck. I did the workshop, I got through it. I dragged my sister along because she was this just one point of stability that I knew she would be gentle with me. She would look after me if something went sideways, she would support and help me. It was incredible to have her there. I got through it. I got beautiful feedback in my workshop and I remember someone coming back to me at the end and telling me that they were a researcher from Stanford and had been sitting in my audience. I almost passed out when they told me that because I thought, Oh my gosh, I'm so glad I did not know you were in here before because I wouldn't have been able to talk.

Kari Lotzien: [00:18:11] And guess what? They were kind. They gave me feedback. They told me how they resonated with some of the topics that I had brought up. And later that night, one of the women who I have looked up to for at least 20 years of my career, she was an absolute leader in the field, came over and just congratulated me on my presentation, and I said to her, I really want to be at the big kids table in this industry. I really want to know what do I need to do? What courses do I need to take? What do I need to study to be at that table? And she looked at me, gave me this really beautiful, unassuming smile, shrugged her shoulders and said, Oh, Kari, the seat is there. It is yours. You already have it. You just need to sit down. I still get emotional thinking about what that felt like in that moment of being welcomed into this room, feeling like not only did I get to sit at the adult table, but that there was a seat open for me and that my biggest resistance in occupying that space was my own. Oh, huge. This is where I think we need to be. We need to recognize that once you've done the work, reaching out and collaborating with other people will take you to a level of success that you can't even dream of. It's bigger than you. The peak of the hustle and the effort, it's actually in the second room. The first and second room are so much harder because the pressure is on. The tension is there. But when you get to this third room and you recognize that you can do your part and that you are merely a piece of a beautiful puzzle, that you are one voice in an orchestra, and that when you find those other voices, when you find those other people that will support the bigger picture, it feels easy. It feels like you can just show up and do the thing that lights you up and other people will contribute to that and you will build on each other. You will encourage each other, you'll challenge each other. You'll push each other forward. And when you experience this level of acceptance and belonging, it is the most incredible feeling.

Kari Lotzien: [00:21:04] And I don't say this in a way, because I think that when I was in that Room One, when I was sitting in my small community and I couldn't see any other entrepreneurs, certainly not ones that were willing to speak with me and talk to me about their journey, I couldn't at that point have said, Oh, I just need to get to Room Three. I had to go through the challenges of being in that independence and hustle and and push through. But then when it was time, when I was at that point where I just was thinking, I can't do it like this anymore, I can't take on any more of myself. That's your invitation to move into Room Three. Who else do you need to connect with? Who do you need to reach out to? Who do you need to share your idea with? So that it becomes easy again. And often as we move into this collaborative place, this mastermind, we're a little bit older. There's more demands on our time, but this is the place where it starts to feel easy. And if you are in that place, if when you are listening to this podcast and you think, you know what, I am in Room Three, I have these amazing people in my life, keep your head up because there is an opportunity for you to be what that beautiful mentor was to me. You can reach out and let the person know, who's still hustling and grinding and doing the work, let them know that you see them. Invite them into your group. Allow them to join your table, share your ideas, make them feel welcomed, and know that they're not going to naturally maybe take their place at the table because they didn't know that they had got it yet. They didn't know that it was available to them. But if you're already there, invite them in. It's how you make that table stronger, how you get new voices, new ideas. It's how the whole thing builds. But we have to do it together.

Kari Lotzien: [00:23:06] I am thrilled to share this episode with you, and I hope that it's been really helpful as you reflect on where you are in your own journey. And is it time for you to consider moving into the next room? There's fewer people. It's not as noisy. You're going to feel uncomfortable. You're not going to feel like you belong there. But it's where the magic happens. Thank you so much for being here. If you love what you heard and you're inspired to share, take a screenshot of the podcast and share it on your social media. Like and subscribe to the podcast, this is how we build community. As I've moved into this third room and I'm going to be honest, there's times where I bounce back and I think I still need to do it all myself and I come back to Room Two, but as I move into Room Three, it's really important for me that I build community. I believe that is the legacy that I want to leave in this world. I want to encourage more people to live their dreams no matter where they started, no matter what their story was at the beginning. Whatever story that started your journey, own it, love it, appreciate what it's brought. Don't get stuck there. Let's build community together. Let's encourage each other because this is the way that we go to the next place in really developing incredible, strong, supportive communities where we can all see what's possible. Thanks so much. Chat soon.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.