Catalyst Conversations

In this episode, I have the honor and the privilege of talking with Ande Lyons, an enthusiastic and experienced entrepreneur with an MBA and four successful businesses to her credit.

Her earlier companies include venture-backed College Broadcast, a broadband media portal with over 50,000 viewers per day; Goddess Granola, a gourmet food product Ande took from recipe to manufacturing, branding and national distribution; and Bring Back Desire, a website devoted to sharing tips, tools and resources with couples seeking more love and intimacy in their relationship.

She now lends her expertise to start ups as the founder and Chief Startup Officer of Startup Life with Ande Lyons. We talk about what it takes to make it as a startup founder – the advice she gives on staying resilient, getting past the grueling “glorification of entrepreneurship” that causes so many of us to lose our balance, and more.

We talk about:

+ why Ande is specifically passionate about start up founders

+ how she knows that they are REALLY ready to start a business

+ “the glorification of entrepreneurship”

+ why she gets very real with her clients; she shares, “If you’re seeking a smooth road, don’t start a business!”

+ managing high levels of uncertainty

+ knowing when to keep slogging and when to strategically quit

+ how she and her husband have weathered personal tragedy and professional loss, but not each other

Ande shares, “I’m looking for determination, tenacity, resilience and persistence, because… go run out in traffic. If you can handle that, start a business. If you’re looking for a smooth road forget it. I’m looking for someone who is in it to win it – they’re willing to hustle, they’re willing to stretch out of their comfort zone. They may be crying the whole way, wringing their hands, I’m ok with that. It’s something about their nature that I see and can filter out in a conversation with them that they are passionate about their idea in the way that I know they will get through the days that they’ve lost hope. “

Resources from this episode:

Brandy Lawson

Eleanor Beaton

Ande’s Pitch Deck Template (use code StartupLife for 20% off)

Million Dollar Woman: The Essential Guide for Female Entrepreneurs Who Want to Go Big

Ande’s Links:

http://andelyons.com/

https://www.facebook.com/ande.lyons

https://www.instagram.com/ande_lyons/

https://twitter.com/AndeLyons

In this episode, I speak with my friend Geeta Sidhu-Robb – a renowned author, inspirational speaker, and the CEO and Founder of Nosh Detox, based in London. She is a coach and nutritionist who uses her expertise to support the health of high-performers – those of us who tend to burn the candle at both ends. She was awarded Entrepreneur and Business Woman of the Year in 2010, 2011 and 2014. She’s grown her business from a start-up to an award-winning empire including Nosh Raw and Nosh Infusion.

In this interview, we talk about how advocating for her son’s health transitioned her out of a successful career in law to launching Nosh, her secret to troubleshooting her business when issues arise, and how she has embraces her failures on the path to success.

In this episode

We talk about

+ Her incredible story of leaving a very lucrative legal practice to sleeping on her friend’s floor with her kids to rebuilding her fortune

+ The common problems she sees in high-performers when they’re neglecting their health

+ That you might not think it, but she’s overcome fear and failure more times than she can count

+ How she created her own reality, tuning out the naysayers

Geeta shares, “The biggest growth journey in entrepreneurialism is about you as a person. What I know that most people don’t know is… You are the biggest bottleneck in your business. You are. Your fear, your ill health, your scarcity mentality, your everything… You’re the bottleneck. Now I know this about me, so when my business is stalling, I don’t go looking outside for a solution, I go inside for a solution.”

Connect with Nosh Detox

https://noshdetox.com/ (get the Balance Sheet Geeta refers to on the homepage)

https://www.facebook.com/NoshDetox/

I had the pleasure of speaking with Bridgett McGowen an awarded international public speaker and the founder of public speaking coaching firm, BMcTALKS, LLC. She works with clients on improving their communication skills to engage and connect with their audiences, and her goal is to help people use their voices to undeniably stand out as leaders. Bridgett has designed and facilitated for national and international audiences hundreds of high-impact webinars, and has been selected to speak at conferences alongside notable figures including Former President Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Senate Majority Leader Dr. Bill Frist to name a few. In this episode of Catalyst Conversations, Bridgett and I talk about the obstacles she overcame to start her business, and how there are no new messages, only unique messengers. We also discuss why presentation skills are so important regardless of your industry, the advice she has for both new and seasoned presenters, her number one tip for being a legendary speaker, and her top tips for women entrepreneurs.

Victoria Repka-Geller, is a CMO and career and transformational coach with over 20 years experience in Advertising and Marketing.

She brings an educated perspective that is rare and invaluable among today’s personal development coaches in that she couples her expertise, passion, and talent with real work-life experience.

She has been featured in the NYTimes People on the Move Series, WSJ’s The High Cost of Avoiding Conflict at Work and Barbara Stanny-Huson’s Sacred Success (one of my favorite books!).

In this episode of Catalyst Conversations, we talk about:

+ surviving in the male-dominated, at times dehumanizing, advertising industry where it was the norm to work 80-90 hours a week, despite being a single mom.

+ how women, especially, must overcome second-guessing themselves and automatically going to “how do I change me?” when there is a problem at work.

+ how we fool ourselves with “fake control” thinking we can (and should) fix everything, and the myth that being “too sensitive” is a bad thing.

+ helping her clients to recognize and deal with severe burnout, and how men and women differ with inner dialogue and when it comes to dealing with pressure.

+ the ways fear protects us while also holding us back, and how to leave those stories behind.

My guest, Julie Farha, has become one of the Nation's most sought out intuitives and intuition experts. She understands the importance of intuition and teaches people and companies how to apply it to everyday life and decision making, which I got a taste of in
a recent session with her.
 
In this episode we discuss:
 
+ what Julie calls  “being in the midst of a paradigm shift” – we’re living in an age where guiding your day-to-day activities and objectives through your intuition is a true asset.
 
+ everyone having intuition, and how to develop the skill, especially when it comes to making business decisions.
 
+ how she grew up as the black sheep in a family of Christian Middle Eastern Immigrants in Kansas, trying to fit in despite obviously sticking out with her profound gift.
 
+ developing your gift of intuition with simple yes or no questions and learning to trust the answers and the process.
 
+ how to marry your logic, research and intelligence with intuition to grow your own business.
 
+ what Mercury in Retrograde REALLY means for your business (and I find out that it’s not all bad!).

Destinee Berman has been called a “soul sister,” “Durga Destinee,” and the secret “visionary” behind today’s most widely recognized online schools in the intuitive arts and spiritual healing spaces.

After spending 15 years in Silicon Valley, managing accounts for Twitter and Oracle Marketing Cloud, Destinee left in 2014 answering the call to serve higher and walk her own spiritual path.

In this episode, we talk about:

+ what she did to guarantee she wouldn’t turn back to her corporate job, even when she didn’t have a plan for her business.

+ why it’s important to her to normalize spirituality as part of the business planning process.

+ how she recommends bringing more of your own spirituality and intuition into your business.

+ how she learned to trust her intuition when making business decisions.

+ recognizing our triggers and “feeling through” the issue before reacting.

My guest, Shawn Bradford, founder of Breathe and Work had a life centered around her job in corporate America while her marriage, family and her own sense of fulfillment suffered.

Ultimately, she left her job to launch her own business, helping corporate employees to take control of their stress and providing them with self-care techniques and tools.

In this episode, we talk about:
+ what Shawn’s life was like as a corporate employee, and how she knew it was time to leave.

+ why corporate America needs to introduce wellness initiatives now.

+ techniques for taming stress and taking back control for more peace and balance.

In this episode, I interview Sara Andrews, founder of Bumbleroot Foods, focused on the things that matter most to her – “top-notch nutrition, sustainable agriculture, fair prices for farmers, and, of course, scrumptious snacks and beverages.”

The grandaughter of ranchers and farmers, she served as an advisor in the U.S. Senate on agriculture and international trade issues and served as a strategy consultant to a Fortune 250 company.

In this episode we talk about:
+ her time working in Zimbabwe, witnessing the negative impacts of U.S. agricultural practices on local farmers and the land.

+ how that experience shaped her philosophy on supporting farmers to work with nature instead of against it.

+ her experience as a woman founding a company that runs totally counter to the .current food industry

Today, I spoke with Nikki Riojas who is in Corpus Christi, Texas. She was fabulous to talk to.

She launched her online retail business—it’s a home decor and lifestyle site—13andmarket.com 16 years ago. She’s got some really interesting experience and insight from what it was like launching online retail from back in the day when we didn’t have handy templates and we didn’t have easy to use carts and merchant services—if you can remember online back that far ago.

She also moved to Texas four years ago and started asking around about where women entrepreneurs meet, support, and collaborate. The answer was that there really wasn’t anything. So six months ago, she formed officially her nonprofit, and hosts events each month where these women can come together.

They’re having the opposite issue that lots of entrepreneurs and founders experience when they’re developing groups. They’re scaling so quickly that they’re having trouble finding space. But really it points to the fact that women entrepreneurs are looking for that sense of community and she is serving her community very, very well. She is fabulous to talk to. I hope you will check out her website for her nonprofit, it’s wescc.org.

Oh, my guest today, oh my word! Tricia Arce! She is half of the duo with her spouse Hazel who owns The Toasted Mallow.

I was introduced to Tricia a few weeks ago by a mutual friend, Joanie Simon, who I also interviewed for this podcast.

Tricia is kind of like Barbara Huson, who is another good friend of mine that is on this podcast, but she’s one of these people that there are so much depth and substance. I had never met this woman, didn’t know she existed before Joanie introduced us.

We sat and we had our hot tea and our coffee and just immediately started talking about this really deep stuff, and our past, our history, and being entrepreneurs. She’s just amazing.

I think, as women entrepreneurs, we can learn so much from each other and she’s got so much to offer.

She is again, the co-owner of The Toasted Mallow which was launched as a home-based business in 2013 by she and her wife Hazel. The demand grew organically through farmers markets, an amazing social media. They actually took the startup from Etsy to a retail location and they now ship nationally. Their social media is incredible, so authentic, so real, and so good.

We talk about how the loss of her grandmother really propelled her forward in creating her business because before that, she really just wanted to climb the corporate ladder and realized that there were other things that she wanted to be doing. That brought her joy. We also talk about overcoming self-doubt and how authenticity is really key.

You can’t force it in business and have it resonate with your audience. I hope you enjoy it. You can visit them at thetoastedmallow.com.