Impact & Legacy

Meet Today's Guest: Regina YoungRegina Young has always charted her own journey in life and believed standing in your own power makes you unstoppable. Regina has a degree from the Art and Fashion Institute of Philadelphia in Fashion. She is a podcaster, plus-size model, personal branding image consultant, and speaker. She can be heard on Teatime Midlife Edition podcast, a weekly teacup conversation about midlife victories, struggles, and how you’re going to live your best life now in the community.

Please Tell Our Audience About Your JourneyAt one point, I had to make a bunch of choices. I could do the nine to five, or I could live my dream and just take chances. I chose to do both. I didn't even choose to do one or the other. I said I can have it all, why not? I started modeling or going on the journey for modeling. That was one thing. And then at one point, I became a Ford Model. That was one of the journeys that I took. Another journey that I took was around podcasting. I got to the place in mid-life where I was like, is this all there is? Is there anything else? Or can I create something? The pandemic opened up an opportunity to be heard and seen in mid-life. And that's how I started with the podcast, Teatime Midlife Edition.

Can You Tell Us What Teatime Midlife Edition Podcast Is All About?It is for women in midlife. Sometimes women can be alone in midlife. It shouldn’t be that way. Women should be in a community in mid-life, and it is a teacup conversation. It takes about 20 minutes, once a week, for the first season. The second season may look a little different, but we talk about the struggles, the victories, all kinds of things. In a community, supporting one another is a key to feeling fulfilled, and having a good sense of life. Feeling like life is working, because you have someone you can rely on and you could share your victories with. That's what it’s about.

How Do You Overcome the Challenges of Having Difficult Conversations Over the Airwaves?If I want to make a difference in the world, I have to be the example. If I'm going to be vulnerable, then I assert that other people will be vulnerable. I can't ask one to do more than what I'm willing to do. Unfortunately, my father just passed away, and I shared the different phases of grief. Being open and honest like that. I'm not under the illusion that I'm the only one going through it. I feel like if I make it okay, for me to share myself, maybe you'll be okay with sharing yourself.

What Can You Say to the Mid-Lifers Listening Right Now to Pour Into Them?I do stand in the quote, if it's to be it's up to me. You’re going to have to participate in your own rescue. That is the real deal. Believe that this too shall pass. Those are the three things that I use to move forward in any challenging situation. It’s important to be in a community. You have someone who’s the support that can help prop you up if necessary. Most of all, someone to hold your hand or comfort you when it's down and say it's going to be okay. In a community, you will get everything you need, because there's someone who's already been through it, going through it, or missed it. But the reality is you'll get everything you need in a community.

I Heard You Have Some Great Things Coming up That You're Putting Together. Could You Tell Us a Little Bit About That?I am starting a curriculum for women in mid-life. It's helpful in midlife because there's a point where you get into a fashion rut. There's an opportunity to rebrand yourself or reinvent yourself in your image. And my course is called Model Perfect Woman. Every woman is model-perfect with style. I want to reach a lot of women, where they get to reinvent themselves and see their image newly. It’s not about trying something old and making it new. It's about authentically being yourself. Having your image represent you from your core authentic self. You've always wanted to do it. You just couldn't see how. People get stuck in past images. They get into a fashion rut. They loved themselves 10 years ago, and they looked fabulous. Everything was perfect. And now look, it's mid-life and they don't know what's next and how to bridge from 10 years ago.

If You Were to Describe Yourself With Three Different Words, What Would Those Three Words Be?Persisted. Fun. Loving.

What Is Your All-Time Favorite Business Look?I love a simple blazer jacket and a simple dress. It could be zip up the back, knee-length. I do like a little black dress or a patterned dress with a jacket. That's a simple business look.

What Is Your All-Time Favorite Business Book?"Who Moved My Cheese?" By Dr. Spencer Johnson and "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/teatimersmidlife

Website: www.teatimemidlife.com

Website: modelperfectwoman.com

Meet Todays Guest: Birgit LuedersBirgit Lueders is the mother of two wonderful daughters Emma and Lisa, living in Philadelphia, PA. She is a certified Master Herbalist, Yoga Teacher, Iridology Instructor, and Wellness Coach. Birgit first learned the values of an organic herbal lifestyle in her home country of Austria. Since 2009 she has operated BirgitCare -- a business focusing on health, wellness, and natural healing in Philadelphia, PA. Through BirgitCare, she offers personalized wellness coaching to support her client's emotional, physical, and spiritual wellbeing by using modalities like Iridology, Herbalism, Nutrition, and Colorpuncture. In 2012 Birgit founded the Center for Iridology, where she is teaching Iridology Courses around the world and annually in major cities like New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia. In 2020, during the pandemic, she adapted her Iridology Courses for online certifications and was able to move her wellness coaching program online. Throughout the past 10 years, Birgit has been a known speaker in her field at numerous national and international EXPO’s, while being consistently featured on radio and TV. After being a Fellow, a Diplomat, and the Vice-President of the International Iridology Practitioner Association (IIPA), in 2020 Birgit became President of IIPA through 2023.

Can You Give Us a Little Backstory on How You Became a Master Iridologist?  It's a long path. And I swear, I believe that our destiny is written ahead of us, and somehow, we come into this life with our soul purpose and soul path. And we feel like we are writing it all up and then come into this lifetime, and then we live it. And if we live true to our soul, then we have every day for fun, or we feel at ease, or balanced, right. But if we do something that was not our destiny, or wasn't our, you know, expertise, then work is work. Like then you feel like you really working all day and one of my friends who is also a colleague of mine, she said, I made my passion as my profession. And I never worked a single day. And I thought that was very interesting when she said that. Because when you're really, isn't it true when you do what you were supposed to do? I mean, just you could be different for every single person, right? But if you do what, like for example, you do right now we're getting all the women together, you don't work a single day, right? And it's the same for me. I'm in a holistic field. And I wasn't meant to be in a holistic field at all, when I started, went for school, and started a career and college in the finance world because I actually thought my destiny was making as much money as possible, as quickly as possible, and then retire early. So, then I can have fun, right? I worked really hard got into a great, great job. Very early, early age 25 in a big, pretty much main world, right? I mean, there wasn't like 25-year olds running around, you know, like me. But I was honored that I was getting, you know, moves to have this amazing career. And it was the American Express bank in Vienna. So, I still remember I had so much fun buying my expensive, like suits and, purses and march to work, right. But then there was one thing that was missing, I had no fun at that job. I had zero fun. I was good at it, but I wasn't loving it. And so, there was this problem that I was talking about to friends that it didn't show like mentally, and because then I had fun on the weekend. But then it actually made itself clear that I wasn't on my right path, Physically. I became so sick constantly in my digestive system, it didn't matter what I was eating, I felt sick, nauseous, almost vomiting every Sunday. And I had this grandmother who was very connected to nature and herbs. And one day she said to me, maybe it's not what you're eating, maybe it's what is eating you. And when she said that I was like, wow, this is true, because I was compensating not having this passion in this field, but buying myself expensive stuff and, travel on the weekends and party and have fun. I mean, I was young, right? But then when it's Sunday, hit around eight o'clock, I felt nauseous and sick. Because I was dreading forward to the future of Monday having to start this day, again, that I wasn't happy about. And like I said, I was seen as a movie at that time, you know, anyways, it was the movie out groundhog days. Right? Groundhog Day. And when I was sort of moving, I'm like, that's me. Like, it's like, every day you wake up and you go and live for the same day. Same problems, but I knew, maybe I just have to stick it through for another five, six years. And then maybe I can work. You know, an American Express Bank as a branch manager in Singapore, which has been taught to me so far, like, okay, I just have to put the time down, right, I have to just invest my life into it. But you know what, I didn't make it beyond three years, I made it to two and a half years with so many digestive system issues, with so much misery physically, not even like emotionally that one day, then I was sitting in the office, looking at the stock exchange and currency exchange values. And I saw an ad for flight attendants. And something really strong kind of pulled me to this ad, it was really tiny, it says, flight attendant wanted, called this number. And I'm like, I mean, I was way overpaid, you know, for being a flight attendant. But there was something that said, go do this, take time off, find yourself. So, I call them up, went for all the tests that I had to do in Europe to be a flight attendant and you had to speak several languages you're hired in a certain way to remember was way more? Yeah, kind of strict. So, when Aiden told me the next day, when I want to start with the flight attendant school, I was a little bit worried for a second with my left brain, and I know, you know, like the left brain, right. It's the logical mind. Right? And the right brain was the one, no I want to have fun. So, in this moment, then I just went for it. I just took the pay cut. But at that moment, I started to realize that I didn't work a single day, there was after six months of traveling for the whole world like India, Australia, and Africa and everywhere. I felt like you know what, maybe someday I have to start working, working again. Like I didn't even register that this was work. But so, it was really fun for me as I travel around, but at that time, I still didn't make any decision, honestly, because what did I do? I wasn't happy with the education I had. And I was running away too, right? I mean, a flight attendant is a great thing. You don't need to take any responsibilities. You just jump from one plane to the next. You don't have any attachments. You don't need to career you just travel. And I realized that I don't know how long I'm going to do that before I decide what I should do in my life. And unfortunately, that also came into a complete Hold then, because my father got sick in a very short time on pancreatic cancer. And I remember still when I was like 26, and saw the whole, you know, the cemetery filled with all the people because everybody loved my dad. And my dad really was a people pleaser, but he never took care of himself. So, I was standing there, and he passed away when he was 58 from pancreatic cancer and I was 26 and I looked around and I thought to Myself, I think time is short a life of 100 years. Like if we get lucky if we can live 100 years, I think it's a short time it goes away in a blink of an eye. And I remember, all the people always say that to you, when you're like 18. They're like, enjoy those times when you're like 18, right? Yeah. And now I'm 48. And I just sent my daughter off to college and I’m like enjoy the college time. Same story. So long story short, that's how I got into natural healing because I felt like, you know, I want to live a fulfilled life by giving back to others. And I discovered herbalism, yoga, wellness coaching. And I just stumbled into this whole field, because I wanted to understand how my dad could just pass away so quickly without any symptoms. And I want to make sure that nobody else has to go through the pain that I had, as a young adult, to lose their dad.

What Is the Big, Huge Research Behind Iridology?So, we found out, for example, blue eye people or people who have like certain orange pigments in the brown in the outer ring of the eyes are having a hard time digesting the protein in dairy, so what that means is then, in your case, it might not be lactose intolerance. It might be Casein intolerance, which is the protein in the dairy. So, the moment you eat it, not a body's working so hard, it can’t break down that casting. So, it trying to store it away, you know, I know mucous membranes well on because it's an inflammation now. So now we are waking up with like, you know, having to clear my throat and feel like nasally and all the ingestion, right? Yeah, so this is exactly that. So free parts go into iridology, then I'm working on is the physical of eliminating certain foods that we know from the perspective of the eyes, then making, you know, emotional treatment for certain emotions, which can be a meditation about letting go of grief, right? Or it can be a brainwave meditation, which can let go of anxiety or tension. There's also Emotional Freedom tapping that I use, which has certain acupuncture points, that you can tap on you to let go of that emotion. So, in my case, it was about sweetness in life, and gladly I ran off from this job that didn't give me sweetness.

How Would the Audience Go About Getting Connected with Somebody That Can Help Them?You can have them come to my practice, or nowadays since we're in a digital world, where everybody can actually take amazing pictures of their eyes off their iPhones. So, if they connect with me, then I send them a little YouTube link on how to take the iris picture with their phone. So, then they can send me a left and right picture. I can do online readings via zoom calls nowadays, which is awesome. Yeah. So, I have clients actually all over the world like my favorites are when the time zones are so different. Then I get up very early, and then I think about my work with my Japanese clients. Okay. So yeah, I can know it helps anybody to understand who they are with the blueprint reading of the eyes line also have to know how to read the eyes. I want to make sure if I leave this earth that iridology is not dying out. This is where my next passion comes into place. I feel like I'm carrying on the light of iridology. It's like, you know, when you see the Olympics, and they're running with the Olympic flag within the brigade, you're heartfelt. Yeah. That's all filled with your knowledge, especially those experts. But people were not treating me that welcoming. I'm like, you know what, I don't care, I'm going to hold on to this flame and let it not die off. Because it's not true always that we need to have something brand new. We do not have to have that we can work with something that has already existed 1000s of years ago, and we just don't want to make it die out. So that's why I created my school called the center for iridology, and I teach chiropractors, I teach massage therapists, energy healers.

Can You Share One Success Story of One of Your Clients, That Would Help the Audience Really Understand How Valuable This Diagnostic Tool Is?When people come and hit an iridologist, just the most likely run out of ideas what to do anymore to have, like, you know, symptoms, that doesn't make any sense. They go for older medical, you know, diagnosis and diagnostics and nothing comes back, which is good. But in the end, that person just feels still dragged, tired, exhausted, and drained to feel that, Okay, everybody tells him that it's just like in their head, but it's not. So, then they end up finally, in my practice. And when I evaluate them, and for example, I see like one client, for example, came with me and she has, you know, dizzy spells, she had hair loss, she had nausea and insomnia. When you put all those like symptoms to get it doesn't make any sense. So of course, she got the MRI and all that. And she came back one more, everything was perfect. No iron deficiency for tiredness. But when I looked into her iris are so certain signs around the corner, like the thyroid area in my Iris map, which is considered a thyroid weakness. So, then I told her I'm like, you know, did you get a thyroid test? And she says, Yeah, and it was perfect. And I'm like, you know what, I see a genetic really weakness in your thyroid areas. So, it makes sense for me that you feel tired, exhausted, drained, you lose your hair, you can’t sleep because it's part of the endocrine system. And then I asked her, is anybody in your family? And she says, Yeah, my mother has been on thyroid medication for a long time. So, what is that what happens? Now usually, you would have to sit at home and wait for five, six years until you go every year back to the doctor to prove that you have a thyroid weakness, right? And it might never happen. Meantime, this client gained so much weight could lose weight, starved herself, and tried everything possible in a book to lose weight couldn't and couldn't get better. I gave it a thyroid based healthy diet. So, I use food as my medicine. So, in this case, it was a thyroid healthy based diet that also gave her supplements as herbs that supports a healthy but an already nonfunctioning thyroid. And here's the third part of what I did. The thyroid is associated that you have difficulties with your fifth chakra, which is your fluid area. Okay? So, fluid has to do everything with like, obviously, you and I, we don't have any problems to communicate or we wouldn't be on public podcasts right now. Some people, they have weakness because there was some press with the speech, or they're not speaking the truth from what they really want to say because they want to keep the peace. So, I asked her what was going on with that and she found out that when she was little, she had very strong parents, and it was much better to be not heard just to be seen as a child. Remember that kind of old parenting. So that's what she learned that anytime she wanted to say Something she rather have suppressed it. And she had been also in a relationship there was like this, where she was very overpowered by this partner because she rather suppress her opinion. And so, I became one person's opinion. So, she suffered in this relationship as well. So, I had her go back to a psychologist to work with her speech and find out why she's not expressing herself. So, once you discover that, then all healing came into place, she lost weight. She looked better; hair loss was gone. I mean, his whole thing just disappeared. And since then, she's a great believer in iridology. 

W Hat Is One Book That Is on Your Bedside Table Right Now?A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

What Is Your Favorite Thing to Do on the Weekends?On the weekends? Oh, Walk at the Park.

What Is the Best Gift You've Ever Received?The best gift that I've ever received. That's, oh, I think oh, book. My dad always brought me books when he went for travels. And what I really loved about that is because you could read about the stories from where he was going, and you have something to hold on to that was my best gift. And that's how I became obsessed with reading. Because I'm an avid reader as well.

How to Connect with Birgitwww.centerforiridology.com www.birgitcare.com 

Meet Today's Guest: Danica Joan

Danica Joan joins us to share her commitment to restoring families experiencing high conflict custody matters. As a family advocate of over 20 years, Danica created the non profit, Kids Need Both, Inc as a way of educating parents and professionals on how to create positive change in high conflict families that gives the children a whole new future. It has been through her own heartache that she found her voice as a family advocate and now makes it her life mission to help others. Life's struggles that start may be your opportunity to step into your life's calling. With over 20 years’ experience as an educator, Danica provides families with workable solutions to their custody conflicts. She is a Certified Family Mediator with Florida Supreme Court, Guardian Ad Litem, the author for Florida’s Family Stabilization Parent Education curriculum and a personal custody coach.

Tell the audience a little bit about your story.It was my friend, Donna Eller, that introduced us and she says this could be something that would be a great place to connect. And it's been a really great opportunity to be able to, to be a contributing author in this book, because it's not, even though I knew my story, I had the basis of my story. It was actually through the writing process that I discovered so many things I didn't see before and 20 years ago was when I kind of, my journey ended up choosing its course in working with families going through high conflict custody situations, because that was where my journey started. I was going through, I ended up in a marriage that was not healthy. It was very, it was dysfunctional, and there were children involved. So, it wasn't just the decisions I made were not just for me, but it was also for my children. And yet I chose to in the marriage, thinking it was going to go one way and it didn't. And I realized I found myself in a very high conflict custody situation. So, you know, just sort of going through survival and trying to make the most of the situation. I realized, well wait a minute. This is not a calling I asked for, but it was kind of thrust upon me to help other families, other parents who were going through high conflict custody situations. So, over the course of the years, I created a nonprofit called kids need both. And its mission is to educate those who are dealing with high conflict families, not just the parents themselves. But I also found in my journey that the professionals were not very well equipped to deal with effectively deal with these high conflict families. So that's what I do today is I work with, I'm a mediator. I'm an author of the family stabilization curriculum. And I coach families who are going through divorce.

I love what you guys are and what you're doing with your nonprofit. I want you to be able to share a little bit more about that.I was talking to a friend of mine, who's one of the founders of a divorce professionals like organization nationwide, and her and I were sharing, she says, you know, the legal field doesn't get a bad reputation for no reason, as far as you know, the legal process being dragged out, and it costing people 10s of 1000s of dollars and all that, and I've got to believe that there are good people in those in all of those fields, but there's a lot of resignation in that situation. So, you know, the thing is, is divorce has three ways to go, it can go mediation centered, it could go like collaborative, or it could go litigated, and ultimately, mediation is where the most harmonious wants, collaborative is the next stage and of course litigated is if somehow there can be an establishment of trying to filter out those families So we're not pushing everybody into the presumed litigated direction. It would make a big difference for families and that's what I do with my team, with kids need both is to create options for families and actually empower the parents because the parents need to be in the driver's seat of their custody situation. And not just expect that just because you're an attorney that you're going to be the one to take care of everything. And understanding that parents are sometimes they're in a very emotional, they're in survival mode, they're concerned about the roof over their head, being able to have enough money to pay to support themselves plus the children. There's just a lot of worries. And that's why we get attorneys to take care of those things. But we've got to remember that we're in we are the ones in charge, and it's our responsibility to, to empower ourselves, maybe even you know, to find a divorce coach that helps us to think more grounded Lee and, you know, so that we can go in there and make the right decision. A lot of times, we go into mediations make completely unprepared. And we're making decisions for our six month old child or a preschool child that will last 18 years. And I guarantee that that agreement, that parenting plan agreement that was okay, when the child was 18 months old, does not work when they're 18 years.

How do you support your families and how does your nonprofit support your families?My team has created a platform community. It's a subscription-based platform community, this has been in the works for a while because we've already we've been doing conferences every few years, in bringing experts in, in a conference structure. And of course, with the pandemic, it shifted to an online conference. And then we discovered something, we discovered that, first of all, we had access to way more families actually globally, by shifting it to an online conference. So, then we said, okay, what's next? We created this platform community called hope for families. And it still has a lot of the blog content and the experts, but it also has access to a director of professionals that we've vetted and said, you know, these are the people that we would recommend, if you need any of their services, and what's really special, probably the big flagship are the coach led groups. So, like, a might be a six-week group where the topic might be, you know, parenting plans or finances or whatever topic that our coaches are an expert in, we have them lead, like a, like a curriculum based six-week group, and you can join that. And then when your, your six weeks is up, you might want to try a different one. And it's the design is to make an interactive kind of conversation, so that you can discover things together. And versus I kind of, I kind of correlate it to, like, the church structure. So, when you sit down for your worship service, it's, it's a passive activity of being, you know, taught to, and it's wonderful, you have some great insights. But then it's in those small groups, the Sunday school classes and stuff like that, that you develop relationships, and you actually, you know, transform your way of thinking, and you becoming more empowered. So that's what we've got going, you know, to help families along with, of course, our services that the professionals, the practitioners have available, maybe like the course of their own, maybe a self-directed course, or just utilizing them, as you know, a mediator or a counselor, you know, that kind of thing.

Can you share one of the nuggets of wisdom that you included with your story for anybody that may be really connecting with your journey and want to maybe learn something from you?At the beginning, I like I said, I knew my story very well, I thought I did. Before I started discovering myself, I realized that my ex, wasn't really the bad guy that thrust me into this mission. It was so easy to see that because it was right out there. However, over time, I realized what had me even get connected into that kind of dynamic was because of my lack of, like loving myself and selfishly. That's kind of been my thing is love yourself, selfishly. Because you really cannot love. You can't give what you don't have.

What advice would you give to somebody in the audience right now, who may be struggling with a high conflict divorce, or maybe an upcoming divorce that they feel maybe high conflict?Well, I would say the first thing that you need to do before you hire an attorney before anything, is to find a trusted coach. A coach will help. And I know this to be true, because I have coached many people, they come back to me and they said, Wow, everything, I started with lots of fear and trepidation. And I got through it with everything I wanted. Not, you didn't get everything. But you got it to end the way you wanted it to end, which was harmoniously. And through having a coach that can actually navigate and guide you. In the directions. It's like having a trusted friend right next to your side.

Somebody looking for a divorce coach, like, how would they find that type of person to connect with? Or should they connect with you? Well, they certainly could, could connect with me because on the platform, that's one of the things that we're really, really trying to connect people with is get yourself a coach, and people have no idea how valuable it really is to have that before they spend tons and tons of money that they don't have any place else.

What is a book right now that is on your bedside table?Love Lessons: Signs of a True Soulmate by Jamie Hirsch

If you can be any superhero, which one would you choose to be? Wonder Women. She's like, powerful and she's sexy. 

How to connect with Danica:

www.DanicaJoan.com

www.KidsNeedBoth.org 

I’m happy to have you here for Episode Number 16, which is episode number two in our miniseries on goal setting and bringing your goals to fruition. We have already gone through the first four steps. And today we only have one step left. Today we are going to jump right in and we’re going to be talking about implementation. We can’t set a goal without putting in place the right steps to make those goals happen. I know we want to dream big, and I know we want to get out of our comfort zone. At this point, you’ve already identified goals in eight areas of your life that you want to focus on. Now, you may have cheated a little bit and maybe you have two or three goals in one category, and you’re missing one or another. I encourage you to not do that. We need to make sure there’s balance. I encourage you to have at least one in each one of these categories. We’re going to take that list, and we’re going to make sure that they become a part of our DNA. We’re not just writing them down one time a year and forgetting about them or writing them down one time a year and expecting magic to happen. Here are the steps to follow to make sure they happen.

#1 – We went over our goals and our limiting beliefs, but I want you to take each one of those goals and write each one in the present tense and be very specific. Make sure they’re measurable. Internalize those and accept that they are going to happen.

#2 – Take that list, put it on a specific paper that you can print out, and carry it with you every single day. Don’t leave it on your desk. Fold it up and stick it in your pocket or your purse. Read them out every morning when you wake up, and before you go to bed. Be sure you say them, and you believe them.

#3 – Make a recording. When you’re driving, you can listen to that recording. Most phones have an app that will allow you to record something, and it can become one of your files on your phone. Take that recording, and you can have it transcribed.

#4 – Make a vision board. We must be using all of our senses. Having a vision board with pictures allows you to also see something from a creative space that will represent that specific goal. If you have 12 goals, make a vision board with an image for each one of those 12 areas. You can even use the back of your paper for your vision board.

#5 – Now we are going to reverse engineer how we’re going to make these things happen. If one of your goals is to lose 10 pounds in three months, then you need to write down the steps that you are going to take to make this happen. Use the same document, but I like to take the first page and have it be a table of contents. Then I take that same list, and copy and paste it on page three, because on page two are my images, and then for each one of those, they become its own piece of paper. Then do a brain dump for that specific goal. Use one goal per sheet of paper. So if you have 12 goals, then you should have 14 pieces of paper on your document that you have filled, because you’ve got your table of contents, page one, page two is all your images. And then pages three through 14 is each goal with the title of what that goal is, and then all of the steps that need to happen to make that goal come to fruition.

#6 – Schedule your goals. If you are going to say one of your goals is to get up every single morning and ride your stationary bike, then put that on your calendar. Without putting these items on your calendar, it allows you to cheat and not necessarily follow through. Make sure you take the extra step to schedule in your steps to accomplish your goals.

#7 – Make a celebration list. So now if we’ve got 12 steps, we’re on page 15. Make a list of all of the different things you are going to do to celebrate your successes and reward and victories. Maybe it’s going for a massage, a spa day, a facial, maybe it’s getting your nails done, maybe it’s having an extra dessert on the weekend. It’s going to be so much fun when you can check off one of your goals.

#8 – Use a tracking system to maintain all this. I would encourage you on page 16 is to have a spreadsheet with all of your goals. I want you to track each one of them. You can have a one-sentence list of your goals and then maybe have 12 squares behind it. Every month you have a success or failure then check off your success or leave blank if not accomplished. It needs to be a visual representation of your progress.

#9 – Get rid of something old. You can’t keep adding more to your bucket without making space in your bucket. Before you can add more onto your plate and add another goal to your list, you need to see what space can be created by letting go of things that don’t matter, or things that aren’t important, or things that are not supporting your goals.

#10 – Have a process for accountability. One of my stories that I want to share is my daughter gave me a Bible that’s specifically designed to help me go through the Bible in a year. It breaks the Bible down with specific reading plans. I’m going to read short increments every single day. So then that way, when the year is over, I will have gotten through the whole book, and I’ll be so happy that I did. I wanted to create a process of accountability, because my spiritual growth is one of my goals, to have more time with the Lord every single day. And so, for me to ensure that I accomplished that specific goal, I created an accountability team. I created a Facebook group for women who want to go on that journey with me. If you want to be a part of that, it’s a closed group so you won’t be able to find it but shoot me a Facebook message and I would be happy to invite you into that group. Accountability is a huge component for me to accomplish anything.

If you would like to be a part of my book creation program, it is a 12-month ongoing rolling program. So if you are listening to this podcast in January, when it launches, or you’re listening to it later in March, you are more than welcome to join our program. It is a robust program that has a lot of training, it has a ton of resources, and we will teach you how to self-publish. We will give you everything you need to know to make sure that you get your book out of your head and into your hands. Specifically, if it’s a business book, my goal is to help you make sure that it’s profitable, and that it brings you money beyond a book sale. That’s what I help my clients do. And I’d love to have you be a part of that.

Join my Profitable Book Incubator Program:  https://christieruffino.com/profitable-book-incubator/

Apply to Overcoming Mediocrity Podcast: https://overcomingmediocrity.org/podcast-guest-pitch/

Apply to Overcoming Mediocrity Project: https://overcomingmediocrity.org/apply/

Goals to Fruition Part 1

Today we are having our very first episode of 2021. And since you're with me, I want to share something that I heard recently on another podcast. I believe it was the Driven Entrepreneur podcast which is an amazing resource from one of my friends, Matt Brauning. He mentioned in one of his episodes, that as humans, we are meaning making machines. We make meaning out of everything. Think about our stories, think about our lives. I'm sure, I'm not the only one that's experienced this. If something happens to you, and you interpret it a certain way, and you get your feelings hurt, or you get upset, or you tell yourself a story about that situation, which is completely different or completely not the situation that the other person intended. And in their story they're telling themselves something completely different. Now there is a divide in what you believe, in what they believe. And unless you communicate about it, and figure out what the real story is, you both go on your merry way. We make meaning out of things that don't necessarily need to happen. That is the same thing with our life.

Think about where you are right now. We want to live every day as humans, of course, believing that there is a purpose to our life that we were created for a reason. This time of the year, as the new year is just rolling in. We tend to take stock in our lives and think about what we've accomplished in the previous year. I know I do that. I've been doing that for years. Every year I take a piece of paper and jot down my business and personal goals for the next year. As I look upon my previous years, I really see that there is a pattern of success where I have created goals that I wanted to accomplish for the year to come. I love having this intention. I love being able to take stock of what we've done because we can't just coast through life. People do coast through life, but then we lose our passion, we lose our motivation, and we lose our drive. I have had the very great fortune of being able to build a lot of relationships and meet a lot of people throughout the years, specifically women who have connected with me because they had an amazing story. Their story is what led them to discover their purpose. They then took that purpose and created a business around it and were able step into their power and get on a trajectory that they thought was in perfect alignment with what they were excited about and what they believe they were created to pursue.

We all have different seasons in our life. At one point, one of the seasons I had was to become the best mom ever in my purpose. I loved being a mom. I loved having the freedom to spend a lot of time with my kids. I was a stay at home for many years. I always had some other work outside of the home that I was able to do. That honestly, for me, allowed me to keep my sanity. But during that period, my goal was never to pursue creating another business. I was happy. More importantly, for me, my personal purpose was to be the best mom I could be. That was perfect for that season of my life. Then things happened, and my life pattern or my life trajectory changed which brought me to a different season. I realized I could make my own goals, and I could discover my own purpose. But I didn't know what that was, and I was lost.

My purpose became making money, which isn't really a life purpose. I got lost in what my purpose was. I got caught up in the day-to-day task, and I got busy pursuing actions that would allow me to meet my needs and the needs of my family as a single mom. But then I lost touch with what I wanted to do and who I was and what my purpose was. Over the years, as I've been able to talk to other women and help them discover their purpose and get more in touch with my purpose at the same time. As I planned our schedule of podcast episodes for our 12 Days of Christmas launch, we had some amazing guests. The guests were some dear friends of mine who were experienced in the podcasting world. They helped me put the podcast together and other friends who have successful businesses came on and were my premier guests. I have so many other clients that I've worked with that have already recorded for future episodes. I had to learn this whole process because putting a podcast together isn't easy. I brought the right people together, and we made it happen. Then I remembered the end of the year is here. I knew what I was going to do as far as goal setting for the year to come. I knew I needed to interrupt the schedule and bring a couple of goal setting episodes to our audience. That way, I can not only implement my strategy, but share what I've been doing over the years. I made a decision to juggle things around and we're going to have a couple episodes on bringing our goals to fruition.

What are the steps that we need to do to make our goals come to fruition?

If you don't know who I am, I am the founder of the Dynamic Professional Women's Network. My name is Christie Ruffino. And I founded that organization 16 years ago. I started the Overcoming Mediocrity Project about eight years ago. With that, I have produced nine co-authored books for our clients under the Overcoming Mediocrity brand and I've helped other clients produce their own co-authored books. Co-authored books are a really great way to have a first book completed and get a lot of viewers to your story. We're now bringing women together for book number 10, which is super exciting. Now our podcast is another platform for our clients to be able to share their story. That leads us to where we are now. I am going to share with you my five-step strategy to be able to not only set goals, but have them come to fruition. This is going to be a two-part miniseries. In this episode, I'm going to go through steps one through four. Next week, we'll dive into step five, and then go into all of the mini steps associated with that specific step. As I talk about what this first step is, I am going to be sharing a few stories along the way.

#1 - The first step is to analyze your year in review. The bottom line is you can't set a new course of your direction unless you know where you're coming from. Before I have my goals set for the next year, I need to take a good account of what my goals were for the previous year, what I accomplished, and what I didn't do. Maybe you didn't set goals for last year. Maybe you only had them in your brain. But what I want you to do is if you don't have that your goals written on a piece of paper, I want you to pull out your calendar, and take a look and remember what happened the year before. Take a piece of paper and list out all of your accomplishments, everything that you were able to do. Then think about what you're grateful for, what were the milestones that you were able to meet and how you felt for being able to accomplish them. Take a moment to write those down.

Then look at all of the things that you almost succeeded at. What did you try and maybe not finish or not accomplish? You don't want to set your goals to be so big that you fail. Because then you get discouraged. Now we want to have big goals, but we're not going to always meet them. There are going to be times that you don't accomplish your goals. And that's okay. Don't look at that as a failure. You look at that as a work in progress, or an opportunity to pivot or an opportunity to grow. When you look at those goals that you didn't achieve, what stopped you from making them happen? What did you learn? When think about your goals for next year, what are you going to do differently to make them happen? I'm going to challenge you to be open to the possibility of doing things a little differently.

#2 - Step number two is your wheel of life. I have a handout that you will be able to get at the end of this miniseries, where you can go through all of the exercises and fill in the blanks. In step two, there will be a wheel of life for you to look at. I'm sure you've all seen it, but there's eight different areas of your life. And the goal of this is to take a good look at your wheel of life and make sure you have balance. You’ll need to fill in the blanks on how well you've achieved having balanced in that specific segment. Envision a wheel and it's got eight different segments, and then every segment can be filled up based on how fulfilled you feel, and how well you accomplished meeting that specific area. The different areas are, spirituality, personal development, education, personal growth, hobbies, wellness, exercise and physical activity, personal finance, your profession, and the final segment of the wheel is your family, friends and relationships.

When you make your goals for the next year, we need to make sure that we are keeping balance in our life. We can tend to have our wheels be out of balance. I can be filled up in the career profession area, and all my goals will be about my career and my profession, but I don't have a lot of goals around my exercise, or my finances, or my relationships. I would like you to have a brain dump of the eight areas, and put down three to six goals on every single area that you want to accomplish. What I want you to realize is you don't have to only set goals at the beginning of the year, you can have goals at any point in your life for any period of time. This does not have to be your yearly goals; this could be your next six-month goals and so that's why I don't want you to have a ton of goals. I want you to have one goal for each of these categories that you want to pursue.

#3 - Step number three, is where you really need to identify your purpose and your mission. I honestly believe that everyone was created for a specific purpose. Whatever your purpose is, it's going to be epic in its own right, and it's going to be perfect for you. You can't just move forward without some sort of purpose. And I believe, especially since I know firsthand from talking to hundreds and hundreds of women, that many times the biggest challenges in our lives happen for a reason. We can not only step into our purpose, but we can gain the wisdom and the skills and the experiences to become good at something specific. I have a whole class on how to discover your purpose. I'm not going to get into all of the details on helping you define your purpose right now but think about what you experienced in your life. Think about what is the thing in the world that you want to change? Who needs that change? Who is the person out there that you feel you can really help? Think about what you want to do, what big change you want to see happen in the world. And I want you to own the fact that your purpose may be bigger than you even realize right now. You can grow into that purpose when it's time. Feel free to let your brain not only think about a bigger purpose for your life, but also accept that the purpose you're in right now is perfect just for you.

When you are able to identify your purpose and you feel like you have a good plan of action or a good path to follow, what that does is it activates our reticular activating system. And when you're able to envision something specific and you set your mind on it, the world seems to be bringing you people, places, resources that support that mission. It's because now you're recognizing things differently. There’re stimuli happening every moment of every day, and we have to open up our mind to our purpose for it to actually come to fruition.

#4 – Recognize the cycle of quitting. Figure out your limiting beliefs and making sure you stay motivated to accomplish your goals. In step number five, which will be on the next episode, we are going to get into the action plan. Today we need to recognize that there are going to be things that come into your world that are going to stop you or overwhelm you to the point that you feel like giving up. A lot of those feelings and actions that you have are because over the years, you have been conditioned to do certain things and think certain things. We have had things in our lives that we've created specific meanings around, and that's conditioned us to act certain ways or believe certain things. Until we can move forward, we need to recognize that some of the cycles are happening, and we can, we can do something to stop them. Before we can stop them, we must recognize what they are. I have a list of things that could possibly be stopping you. Take a piece of paper, and jot down beliefs that you feel stop you from doing certain things. There is a lot of limiting beliefs that you can have around each one of those topics. It's going to be empowering for you to discover what those beliefs are so you can do something to overcome them. You can do something to ensure that these success habits we're going to create for you are going to help you accomplish your goals, and you're not going to let these limiting beliefs stop you. If you have my handout, feel free to check off all of the items that you resonate with, or go back to your top goals, and discover what possible limiting beliefs you have around each one of those.

I want you to do is write a new empowering decision around each one of those eight goals. I want you to make an empowering statement around each one of those goals that will help you set your brain to activate your reticular activating system, that event is going to happen. Don't say it may happen or it could happen. We have to believe that it is happening right now or that it's already happening. Writing the empowering decision down means it's already starting to happen. Take a moment to write down one empowering decision for each one of these goals as if you are already on the path of making it happen.

I would encourage you to join us on our next episode where we're going to dive deep into your success habits. These are the actions that will take your goals and have them come to fruition. Until then have an amazing day and I hope you have a great 2021 and I know that these exercises are going to help you accomplish your wildest dreams to not only have your best year ever, but to have your best month, your best week. Your best life ever.

anything that's alive is either growing or dying, in an array of relationship with alive.

Meet Today’s Guest: Jean Kadkhodaian

Jean Kadkhodaian and her husband, Dr. Ray Kadkhodaian, have been counseling thousands of couples since 2002. They work with couples as a couple. Their experience inspired them to create the Couples Synergy Method, a proven system to develop strong, resilient and empowered relationships. Join their online community called, Connections, and listen to live weekly webinars. Learn how to work on your relationship through their #1 podcast for couples called, "Couples Synergy - Real Couples, Real Stories". Treat you and your partner to a fun-filled relationship boosting Weekend Intensive, or work with Dr. Ray & Jean personally through their premiere Couple 2 Couple coaching program. Dr. Ray & Jean were married on February 14, 1998, and have 2 adult sons, a daughter-in-law and 2 pet stingrays. They enjoy riding motorcycles, scuba diving, hiking and traveling. 

Tell the audience a little bit about your story.

I have eight siblings. And I grew up in a home that had a lot of a lot of chaos. I coped with that by working full time when I was in high school, so I would work and go to school, and I was pretty lonely. Early on, I got into a relationship with someone that ended up being a fairly toxic relationship. I was a mess. About a year after that, he decided to go away to college, and I didn't have a plan. I decided to join the army. When I got on the plane to go to basic training, I thought, you know, I'm going to reinvent myself.

The whole town where we lived knew who we were because were such a big family. There was always like a label that I couldn't get out from under. I was the youngest girl, and I was really shy, and I got on the plane, I'm like, I'm not going to be that anymore. I remember getting off the plane and shaking people's hands and introducing myself and having this false confidence which basic training really reinforced. I learned a lot about self-care and self-esteem and self-worth and discipline. And that really changed my life.

I came back home and got lost again and got pregnant at 20 years old. That was such a life changing event of mine. I joined a single mom support group, and I decided that was the work that I want to do. At the time I found out I was dyslexic, and it was the beginning of the word processor. I don't think I could have gone to school unless I had that to correct my spelling. I muscled my way through school with my son. I think I started when he was three and finished my bachelor's when he was eight. I continued to work really hard on myself during that entire time and I was in another toxic relationship.

Relationships became something that was a really strong passion of mine to figure out. And at some point, once I finished my bachelor's, I bought my own condo, which was a huge accomplishment for me. I was actually going to plan on being single the rest of my life because I was so bad at being in relationships and they were so painful. I spent three years and what I would say is you have to become the person that you want to spend the rest of your life with, in order to be in a relationship where you have something to offer another person. And of course, once I got into that three-year mark where I really knew myself, I had all these wonderful ways of getting my needs met through family, friends, work kids, and pets. That's when I met my husband.

At the time, we were both working on our master's degree in clinical psychology. We started working in community mental health where there's very little training. We decided we could do it better. We started working together as a couple with couples. The incredible part of that journey is that when I was 30 years old, and my son was nine years old, I fell in love with a guy who was 24. Ray and I had this big age gap. We didn’t look good on paper, but we both had this passion. He too was coming out of a seven-year toxic relationship. We had a drive to figure out how to feel safe and healthy in a relationship while supporting and growing together. As we started working with couples, we developed a method called Couples Synergy Method. You can't do this work without living it. Throughout our relationship, we have gone through, and we share on our podcast, that we fight, we work through stuff, and we continue to grow and learn and develop. I don't know any other way to live. It's never been comfortable. Just as it is been painful, it's been as awesome.

You've taken your wisdom from years of training in the industry to start with Lighthouse Emotional Wellness. Tell us a little bit about what that.

The foundation of it is, we started working with couples, and then what would happen is our couples wanted their kids to come on board. We have a second program called Family Synergy Therapy. We also work with individual people. And about 50% of the work I did was with couples and 50% was with individuals. I got certified in hypnosis, which I knew nothing about. From there I dove into understanding our spiritual anatomy and energy healing and how to use not just the talk therapy or the conscious parts of the brain, but the hind brain in the limbic system.

When someone goes through a trauma, they're going to respond in their fight or flight system, which is not in the hindbrain. If they haven't really fully developed, they're not going to be able to do talk therapy very well. I have a rule, I don't work with anyone just in hypnosis, or energy healing, and I don't work with anyone just in conscious. It's a merging of the two, that helps people transform and not go into regression. We hired a staff to work with the other people. And then we have people who do EMDR biofeedback. We've had people add yoga into therapy, or we had a personal trainer and she did boxing. There's not a lot of space for this in the mental health field to bring in different tools to help people. The Lighthouse is a place for our therapists to have the freedom to bring in things like aromatherapy or EMDR, where they can integrate into traditional counseling methods. It’s for individuals, kids, families, all of the above, but our specialty is couples and families.

Can you share a little bit more about different kinds of therapy?

The interesting thing about my journey is I do have a foot in both worlds. And that's what I was trying to figure out when we were doing couples synergy, because it's such a passion of mine and my husband's to work with couples. But I always bring in this other piece. I thought I had to give one up for the other, and we found a way to make it both work. And that's why when we do the weekend intensives we do a component of teaching about meditation and sound healing and some spirituality.

I was explaining to you in the fifth chakra is that it's connected to our sense of taste, sense of smell, our sense of hearing, our bronchia, our lungs, in our throat, which are all the symptoms of COVID. To me, when we have illness, that means we're going through some form of adjustment, some transformation. We're told we have to wear masks and the fifth chakra is about speaking your truth. The difficult thing about speaking your truth it that the fifth chakra comes from our spiritual center. Our truth is actually a small t truth. Capital T truth is gravity, and gravity is going to work the same whether you're Russian or American, or have money or don't have money, or you're younger, you're older. It works exactly the same.

Small t truth is, what job should you do? How many kids should you have? Should you get married? Where should you live? What's true for you, and what's true for me is completely different. And so we get away from that right or wrong stuff. You see that in the world right now with everyone having a lot of strong opinions, and everyone is really frustrated. I guess that goes back to this idea of taking personal responsibility. When we talk about the, the mess of your life, the garbage or the fertilizer of your life, if you take responsibility for that, then you have power and become empowered. If you want to give up responsibility, then you are in a place with what I call force, where you give up forces external, so you either give up your control to something external to you, or something external is trying to control you.

Going into an example of elderly couples that have been together for years, can you delve into the biological aspect of that kind of relationship?

Yes, so there's actually a biological component to that, which is really fascinating. Before I get to the biological, there's generational. When my grandparents got married, you didn't get divorced. You didn't care about happiness. You didn't care about happiness and the job that you did. You went to work, you did your 40 years, you got your gold watch, and you put food on the table. This happiness business is hard work. When my parents got married, my mom met my dad at 15. They got married, and she was 19. She had seven kids by the time she was 30. So did most of the friends she had. That's how they lived, and they she stayed home while my dad worked. Now, we have many options. You can't go back to your parents and say, hey, how did you make that work? Because their life was so different.

A study was done on our brain chemistry and what happens when we fall in love. And in the beginning for the first nine months to two years, our brains are like on drugs. It’s like you can live on sunshine and water and you don't even need to sleep. I think that's our brains way of saying, hey, it really is fabulous to connect with another human being, it's really worth it. And then that chemistry slows down, and we go into something called the commitment phase. The commitment phase is where you as, are we going to really work on this? Do we have enough in a romance phase to say, let's stick with it? Because not being with you is, is not going to increase my life as much.

If I was going to define what a healthy relationship is for my grandparents, it would be, to be together till you're dead. But to me, it's a relationship that you're growing and thriving in. And if you're not growing and thriving in it, it probably isn't a healthy or successful relationship. In some relationships maybe they're only going to last 10 years or 15 years. They don't have that longevity, but they still serve that function, and that purpose to get you through that part of your journey. So then once you make it to the commitment phase, you get into what we call the transition phase. And this is where most couples don't make it unfortunately. This is where the work is. Where you are raised like this, and they were raised like that, and that's your domestication, but somewhere in the middle is healthy.

My husband and I don't have issues anymore. Issues are in the beginning. Like who's doing the dishes, who's going to pay the bills, those kinds of issues. What we have now is healing moments and in a forging of who we are as a couple. And that really does take 20 to 25 years to get to. What you're seeing in couples that are 25 years plus, if they did the work, their brain chemistry is more exciting than the people in the beginning, which is really cool.

They found two periods where it dips the four-year mark and the 10 year mark. And their hypothesis was if you got together and created a child, the child's physical development up till age four was going to have a much more success rate of survival. And we're talking back in the day at 10 years old when people were mature and independent and had been working on the farm forever. So at 10, there's their chance of getting to full adulthood and reproducing was greater. And they think biologically, we're designed to have those kinds of impacts at four years and 10 years, and then the 25 year mark.

If both people in a relationship are committed to doing the work, then you will, even though it may be difficult, forge together. Correct?

Right. The Couples Synergy Method that we teach is a 12 week course. And this course is designed to show you the process of how you do the work. This is not traditional therapy, we're not diving into things. We're showing them, here's your relationship dance, here's how you communicate and here's how you show up for your partner to help them heal those wounds that really have almost nothing to do with you. Although when they're talking about the toothpaste or whatever it seems like that, but we call that an iceberg. So you're looking at the 15% above the water, which you're part of. You probably hurt your partner, they hurt you. But it's sitting on 85% of history and the pain is 100%.

If you could see your partner as a four year old that's hurting, you certainly wouldn't go up to a four year old be like knock it off. You'd ask what's wrong? We lose that with our partner, because it's so personal and so painful. We teach them that whole process. And then at that point, they know how to do this kind of work. And they understand themselves to that level. And then from there on is, is the growth process of that. People want to go to therapy, and they don't understand all the underlying things, and they want to fix that little bit at the top. And it doesn't work. It's not sustainable. It's really growth through that kind of stuff that we are really passionate about teaching and why we continue to teach.

How to connect with Jean:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/couplessynergy

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/couplessynergy/

FREE GIFT LINK: https://go.couplessynergymethod.com/Connections

Meet Today’s Guest: Amy Fritz

What is the journey you went on to be the expert you are now?

I am a 20-year breast cancer survivor. I didn't just get diagnosed once but I had to two separate diagnosis. I was really hit hard with cancer when I was in my early 20s. And that's a real difficult time for people in their lives. You're becoming an adult, you're finding your footing, you're trying to either finish up education as I was or getting started with a career. And so to suddenly have your life come to a complete halt and have to fight cancer. That's a real challenge. And not everyone has the opportunity and privilege to be able to survive from that. Some people do live past cancer, but it hits them hard, and it really changes their life. Knowing this, I really wanted to make sure that I really had the opportunity to build a life I love and not to be stuck in survivor mentality and feeling sorry for myself asking myself, why did this happen? I wanted to make sure that I went from a survivor to a thriver really loving life and living it to its fullest.

My story in the book is about my journey with cancer, some of the details that I went through while I was fighting cancer and the surgeries that followed. And then what I did with my life afterwards. I was an undergraduate at the University of Washington, finishing up my Bachelor of Science in atmospheric sciences. I'm a little bit of a book nerd. And I love math. If anyone wants to know math and science, I love them both. Once I was free and clear of cancer, I went on to graduate school at both Penn State University, where I earned a Master of Science in meteorology. And then I went on to NC State University, where I received a Master of Science in physical oceanography.

When I was fighting cancer, one of the things that my doctor encouraged me was to set big goals, things that would excite me, things that would motivate me. And for me, really getting the opportunity to go to graduate school was worth it. For me, when I was fighting cancer, it was putting that goal out in front of me. In fact, while I was fighting, I was filling out applications for graduate school. I took the graduate required exam even during chemo. I was just doing everything I could to keep my life moving forward, because it's so important not to get stuck in your battle. Once I was done with doctor's appointments and the follow ups and the x rays and the surgeries. I had something else in my future. So that's a little bit about my story.

Now you're probably wondering, where does laughter come into this? Why is laughter so important? Where laughter comes in is it's been shown that as we laugh, we release positive endorphins throughout our body which could actually help your immune system. It's a great way to bring your mind back to being centered and focused. Laughter is wonderful. It has so many incredible benefits I can't even begin to explain, but it's also good exercise, which is another piece of my life.

You were faced at one point with a grim diagnosis, and you were physically drained and just weak. And you decided to go somewhere. Tell us more.

As I was taking rounds of chemotherapy, there came a time when my body wasn't bouncing back, my white blood cell count wasn't recovering. I was like borderline hospitalization for weeks. At one point in time, my doctors looked at me, held my hand, and shook their heads and said, you really need to get your affairs in order. It's very difficult to listen to a doctor not really know how much time you have left. I wanted to see if I could make one last memory in my life. If I could have one last really exciting thing to do, what would that be?

I asked my doctors if I could go to Disneyland. I lived in Washington state at the time. I know this is a real huge ask because we were worried about my immune system. If I pick up anything, it could be the end of me. I didn’t know how much time I had left. I really wanted to go to Disneyland. It's notoriously called, “The Happiest Place on Earth.” You can't step through the gates and not be smiling and feeling joy and just overwhelmed with happiness everywhere. That's where I chose to go.

You were very weak when you got there. You said every day you got stronger and stronger and stronger. The positive laughter energy was transformational for you. Can you explain a little bit more?

Physically you could see the difference. My first day in the park, the employees offered me a wheelchair. They escorted me through the park and allowed me to go to the front of the lines. It was great that they were so helpful. I think I went on maybe three rides, and I was done for the day. But it was great.

The next day I woke up and I had about a quarter of an inch of hair on top of my head. I went from completely shiny and bald to a quarter of an inch of hair. And when that happens, you almost don't recognize yourself. On top of that I went from looking very pale, almost greenish, with dark sunken eyes to very normal coloring. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I suddenly no longer looked like a cancer patient, but I looked like a normal person. When we went back to the park, I pushed my wheelchair around, but it was more or less just in case, but I really was able to enjoy the park.

By my last day I had hair, I had gained weight, I was tan and my freckles had come out. On top of that, I could really feel my energy had come back and my appetite had returned. It was a huge transformation. I wish I had pictures of the before and the after. Within a span of about five days, I completely physically transformed. And it did something really powerful to the inside of me too. I went from feeling hopeless and doomed to all of a sudden I could see that I had more life to live, that I had opportunities that I could create for my future, and that it was I was going to make it. I think felt in my heart I could see that I was going to beat cancer. And that was the biggest part for me on that trip to Disneyland was to get that hope back.

Are you willing to share the strategies you use with your clients to help them accomplish their wildest dreams?

Since my journey with cancer, my husband, Ryan Fritz, and I started a business called Science of Cardio. Together, he and I, help other people reach their goals. His focus is the fitness and the nutrition side, but I help with things like motivation, and inspiration. We have quite the following of people who really look to us as role models for living a life that you love.

#1 – Laughter. We talked previously about laughter.

#2 - Fill your life with love. Love the people around you, love the things you do, and love yourself. I can't emphasize that enough. It's really important for us to take off the critical lens and look at ourselves, for who we are. Who I am is not my body. I am my character, I am my personality, I'm my spiritual person, but I'm not my body. Love who you are, love who you are to others, love who you are in this world. Love the things that you do to contribute to other people's lives. Make sure you have others you love, and who love you in return. That is an important piece in having a fulfilling and wonderful life.

#3 – Make plans. I think part of loving your life is having something to look forward to down the road. It really helps to know that you have something you're looking forward to, whether it's a walk in the park, or getting together with friends virtually over the computer, and when all this is over, getting together with people. Maybe make a date night with you and a loved one. Figure out what really excites you. You’ll know you found it when you can't stop talking about it. When you're filled with joy about it. When thinking about it just lifts your spirits.

How did you end up meeting your husband Ryan?

So back to making plans. I had a cousin who's not the most athletically inclined, but she knew that I ran. I like to run a lot of charity runs. And she came to me and said, Amy, I'd really like to run a marathon. But I can't do it alone, I need your help. And if we train together, then I know I'll be able to do it. While I was in the middle of training, here in Maryland, I was on a trail and sitting on a bench where I was going to take a break, my bench was occupied by this handsome man. When I ran by, he had a big smile. I had to finish my run and then track back to the bench. And when I ran by, he was noteworthy. He caught my eye. When I walked back, he was still there. I asked if I could sit down and rest on the bench because I just came from a long hot run. He happily scooted over and made room for me, and we started talking. The next thing I know, I invited him home for dinner. And it was a life changing moment. I knew when I saw him on the bench that I was at a crossroads in my life. Either I was going to make a new relationship, or I was going to move on and lose that opportunity. I'm so glad I took that opportunity and sat down because he and I fell in love during the course of my training for the marathon. We officially started dating after the marathon and about two years later, we got married in Hawaii.

When I was dating him, he was a personal trainer at a gym. I told him we need to start our own business. Between the two of us, he had all the experience with physical training and education on fitness. We joined forces, and together we started Science of Cardio. He works with the clients in the DC area and remotely all over on their physical fitness and training goals. He focuses on low impact saving your joints. He's always thinking about the long run, how can we make sure that whatever you're doing is sustainable. He and I have made a great team. Science of Cardio has been in business for nine years now.

You put your heads together and came up with something that you'd love to share with our audience. What is it?

We would like to offer the listeners a free first consultation and remote fitness coaching program.

Christie believes that mastering our stories is the key to everything we want in life. Our stories can either hold us back, or they can propel us to great heights. Once we master our story, we can identify our real purpose, step into our power, and help other people change their story by sharing our wisdom and guiding them to accomplish their goals. 

In today’s episode, Christie shares 3-Key Principles to help you master your story so that you, too, can enjoy a business and life of true significance.

Let's get this party started...

When I interview our guests, the first thing I asked them is, what is your story? How did you become the expert at what you do right now? And what's funny is many of them look at me and say, Well, I'm not an expert, but they don't realize that they are I mean, we kind of don't necessarily give us enough ourselves enough credit. But what I see with so many of my guests and the clients I work with that the challenges that they face in their life in their journey, set them up perfectly to be where they are now.

I am like some of our guests where I went through something really traumatic. And I'm not going to go through the traumatic part of my journey in detail. But I will say that I went through a pretty difficult divorce. I came out on the other side broke, and not knowing how I was going to be able to feed my family. I didn't know I was going to be able to support my children. But I did, I was able to find a great job in the mortgage industry which set me on the path to start the Dynamic Professional Women's Network as the means or a tool or resource for me to get clients. Then 17 years later we have a thriving organization, and then on that journey, I was asked to share my story.

Now I was five or six years out of it, and I did not really see how my story was relevant. I hear that all the time with the women that I talk to or interview, that their story isn’t important. We don't really see how sharing our journey could help other people. Sometimes our stories are difficult stories and are pretty fresh. We don't want to necessarily go back there. We want to keep moving forward. I like to learn from my mistakes. I like to learn from the past, but then I like to find solutions to move forward. And I think that's very true of successful people as we learn from our mistakes. We realize that we can make a decision to stay stuck in our problem, and to wallow in our misery, and to just use that challenge as an excuse, instead of using it as the fuel to go to that next place.

I was in that situation where I had to make a decision to move forward. Once I decided to move forward, and it was very challenging to navigate through, I had many times on that journey where I didn't think I was going to get out. I didn't think I was going to ever get out of my financial situation or dealing with the divorce or managing my children. We have many obstacles on our journeys, and I had to figure it out on my own.

When I was asked to share my story, my first response was no. I had to take a step back. The person that invited me to share my story was our guest on day two, Michelle Prince. And that book, Dare to be a Difference Maker was my first step into this journey. So many great things came out of my messy divorce, and the Overcoming Mediocrity Project is one of those blessings. Michelle asked me a simple question, she asked me, if your story could just help one person, wouldn't it be worth it? I had to step out of my own shoes and think about it from that perspective. I was so wrapped up in my problem. I was in depression, very deep depression, where I wasn't getting out of bed for days. When my mom took my kids away that woke me up. I made a decision to do something about my situation. It was a slow journey. But I did. I was able to share my story. Not only was that experience transformational for my business, because I believe my business really blossomed after that, but it was because of the visibility I received as a new author. But I think mostly it was my mindset.

The whole process of taking my story and writing it down and refining it and getting feedback and realizing that other people are going to read it was something that really helped me get out of my shell and look at things from a different perspective. My mindset completely shifted, because now I'm an author. It transformed me personally, as well as professionally. And then someone reached out to me and thank me for sharing my story. She was in a dark place, and she read my story. She shared with me how my story helped her and that right there made it all worth it. That was the reason why I started the Overcoming Mediocrity Project. At that point, I had this thriving organization. I had a bunch of members all over. I had a community of women that were supporting each other, and I was constantly trying to find resources to help them and I thought, well, heck if this experience helped me, why would I not share that? That was when our very first book, Overcoming Mediocrity, Volume One was birthed. I had an amazing lineup of women in that book with some very powerful stories.

I didn't necessarily know how to navigate a co-authored book project. At that point, I was new, but I was fortunate that Michelle Prince helped me. I learned from her and she mentored me, and I had another great friend who helped me. I was able to figure it out. My project 10 books later is completely different. We take our clients through a whole process of how to write a book and how to find their story and how to deliver some amazing teaching points. We give our clients a lot of exposure. We've got a whole program to help them build their profitable business.

When that first book was done, like a baby, we enjoyed that little bundle of joy. Even though you don't sleep a whole lot, you enjoy it, and you think maybe I'll have another baby. And then time goes on, and the baby gets a little easier, and you start sleeping a little bit more. And you think, oh, this baby is so cute. I love it so much, I need another one. That’s how it was with our first Overcoming Mediocrity book. We kind of got on the other side of producing the first book and I saw how the women were just loving it. So we put together our second book, which was the Overcoming Mediocrity Courageous Women edition. We went back and re-branded our first book to be the Dynamic Woman edition. Every book has its own subtitle. When I get a team of women onboard for each volume, I let them decide what the next book is going to be. Now I'm bringing women together for book number 10.

But all that being said, that is the story that brought together our Overcoming Mediocrity project. It’s a way to help women find their stories. We have a lot of things in our life that happened to us, but what is our signature story? What is the story that we're going to share with the world so we can make a bigger impact? How are we going to use our story to connect with our prospects and to build loyalty with our clients? How are we going to use a book to get more visibility? How are we going to be able to use a book to build another profit center in our business so we can not only sell books, but we can increase the offerings we provide our clients. Maybe we can increase our offerings by providing other avenues to support our clients. Maybe we're just writing our story and sharing it so we can leave a legacy so other people can get to know us and know our journey I know in one of our books.

My mom is amazing, but unfortunately, we lost her this year during COVID. But I will say one of the blessings of doing this project is that I was able to have my mom's story featured in one of our books. She wasn't really up for writing her story, so I had someone interview her and put together her story. And that is a legacy that I will have forever. I wanted to share that because there's a lot of reasons why people join our project. And there's a lot of reasons why people want to share their stories. That is my story. That is how I got on the journey to help women share their stories.

Part 2

The first thing I want to share is that I believe that everybody has a story to share. I believe and I have seen over and over again that our stories can either hold us back, or they can propel us forward. And once we're able to master the story of our lives, we're able to really help other people change the story of their life. That is what I feel my purpose is. To help people step into their power, live their greatness, share their stories with other people, and honestly build a very successful business based on their story. It's honestly more than our story. It's about our purpose. Because I am a woman of faith. And I believe that God put us on a particular journey, to be able to allow us to experience what we need to so we can do something very specific. And you've seen in some of our guests, and I've seen after talking to hundreds, if not 1000s of women, how their journey, how their story, how their biggest challenge in life has brought them to a place that they feel they want to build a business around that.

Your story is what people connect to. Nobody wants to buy your product or service as much as they want to buy you. Let's say you are shopping for insurance agents. There are many insurance people out there that have great products. And there are many insurance agents out there that have very similar products. But I bet you the reason why you chose your insurance agent, is because you connected with that person on a more personal level. There was something about them. How they treated you, how you got to know them, how they got to know you, maybe you were referred to them, but there's something on a personal level that allowed you to make the decision to work with that person. If you were faced with two insurance agents, and you realize that this insurance agent really gets me, they understand the problems that I have or that I could potentially have and they're going to support me. Wouldn't you be more inclined to work with that person? Of course, you would.

Let me share another story about another client who has a journey that is completely different than what she does now. The principles that she learned on her journey has allowed her to become an expert at what she does. This client has an amazing story of her journey as being an equine trainer, a horse trainer. We were trying to figure out how to take her story and leverage it in her business right now because it is not working with horses. The principles that she learned on her horse journey, the system that she created for herself, is something that she learned that she could transfer and correlate to an outside perspective. She does the exact steps, but different industry.

We as professionals need to recognize how our stories are meant for us to become skilled at something very specific.

#1 – Understand your purpose. What is your purpose? What is the journey your life has? What is the journey that you've been on that has set you up perfectly to do something very specific? Be able to leverage your story and be able to build a profitable legacy business by identifying your true purpose. When you have your purpose, everything will become easier. You will not be beating your head against the wall. You're going to be crystal clear on your direction. When you're in that position, you have this presence about you and this energy around that makes you attractive to other people. People are going to be drawn to you when you start living your purpose, because you're living your life with abundance and ease, and people are going to see that and they're going to want to be a part of it.

#2 – Focus on your income. Money is important, but money is not the most important thing. In business, money flow is energy flow. The more money that comes in, the more energy that comes in. The more energy you can give to your clients the more money you have to create more freedom in your life. The more money you have, the you can become bigger and better at what you do. Wherever you are, whatever you're trying to do, the money will allow you to expedite your result. Money can give you the freedom to take Friday's off, take a week off, take a month off. It gives you the freedom to do nice things for people, it gives you the freedom to make decisions that you couldn't make if you were broke. Your purpose will bring you to the money if you have the right systems in place

#3 – Have systems in place. You have to have the right systems in place to make it happen in what I call continuity. You can't be building your business by grasping at straws. There is a simple step-by-step process for you to build out a profitable business model that has an evergreen, scalable offer that you can start out small, grow it, make it bigger, bring your right people into it, support them, help them, get that machine operating well and then go to the next level and keep building it out. Be very clear on who you serve, how you serve them. Know the solutions that you can provide to your clients to get them great results. If you don't know how to do it, you're not supposed to know how to do it. And that's where I actually have an amazing masterclass that I put together.

My free gift is my signature stories that convert. It is a step-by-step plan to actually help you ensure that your story will attract your clients and not only attract your clients but solidify the relationship with your clients so once you've drawn them in and they've gotten to know you and your story, it will also go to that next step and have you build loyalty with them.

If you sign up, you will be the first to be able to get the invitation to my free masterclass that is going to be debuting in January.

FREE GIFT LINK: www.OvercomingMediocrity.org/Freebie 

Masterclass Registration (live after the holidays): www.profitizeyourpurpose.com

Meet Today’s Guest: Pat Mussieux

Pat Mussieux is an internationally acclaimed speaker, award-winning business coach, TV host and author located in Edmonton, Canada.  Her newest book, ‘Business Gets Better When YOU Get Better! How to Change Yourself to Change Your Results” will be released in the summer of 2021. She has also co-written ‘Leadership Gurus Speak Out!” contributing her wisdom and expertise in the fields of Human Resources, Sales, Marketing and Training.  She has appeared regularly in media and print publications. Pat won the (New York based) STEVIE Award – Female Entrepreneur of the Year in Canada (4x), the STEVIE Award for Women in Business – Female Executive of the Year in Canada. Pat has been named as one of the “Top 100 Women Entrepreneur Experts to follow on Twitter”. She has also been nominated for Chatelaine magazine’s ‘Woman of the Year’.    Having transformed her life at age 57 from trash bag to travel in a private plane around the world, as well as taking her business from zero to close to a million dollars in less than 6 years are a direct result of her expertise in the area of mindset, marketing and money. She works with entrepreneurs around the world, including a mentoring project in both Johannesburg and Zimbabwe.    Pat regularly hosted a TV show, ‘Wealthy Women Leaders’ – where she interviewed successful, mature women entrepreneurs discussing the ‘good, the bad and the ugly’ of being in business and leadership. The intention of the show is to spark and inspire budding entrepreneurs when it comes to mindset, leadership and success.    She is very well known for her skills and expertise in the areas of networking, marketing, time/energy management, life balance ……and her mantra is ‘it’s never too late’! Her presentations are timely and relevant when it comes to productivity, motivation and inspiration.    Pat is well known in the world of association management having been involved, over a period of 30 years, as a board member, committee member, strategic planning facilitator and speaker at the local, Provincial and National levels. She has been a keynote speaker at national conferences for the CSAE and the Alzheimer society.    And while she loves all of that, her most important role and commitment is that of grandmother to 3 amazing young adults!!

How did you get to be the expert you’re in right now?

I am on a mission to share my story. Because if we were to sum it up my message to individuals to professionals to women is it's never too late. And you're never too old. My story is long, because I'm old. I'm going to start with a 10-year period in the 90s. That really was the foundation for who I am now, how I think, what I do, how I create my life, and many of your listeners may be familiar with Lou Tice and the Pacific Institute. I worked with Lou, I mentored with Lou, I was part of the institute's faculty, I was part of the International Speaker's Bureau, and the Pacific Institute is an international educational institute. And the focus of all the programs is around mindset, critical thinking skills. So I had the good fortune over a 10 year period of going on out into the world delivering this information, public sector, private sector, nonprofit. I became who I am now, because as I learned from Lou and all of the research psychologists that we worked with. There's certain ways of thinking to create the life that you do want.

My mother-in-law had Alzheimer's disease, my father-in-law had terminal cancer, my best friend was dying of breast cancer, my infant grandson was taken off life support and passed away. All of those life things that typically would happen over a period of time, for me, happened in a very condensed period of time. And had it not been for the incredible mentoring and training from Lou Tice, I don't know that I would have had the mental, emotional, even physical strength to get through some of those big life hits. While that was happening, I was traveling around working for the Pacific Institute, my marriage was dying too. I made a decision that after 25 years in that relationship to walk out the door, because my soul was dying. I know many people can relate to that right now, whether it's been a long term career in corporate, whether it's been a long time relationship, my soul was dying.

I knew that there was so much more to life and so much more to me. And so I walked out of that marriage, and I moved across the country with virtually my life in a trash bag and landed there with no business, no contacts, no money. However, I had a dream. And I had the critical thinking skills to reinvent myself. I've given that trash bag away to a lot of people to who made a decision after hearing my story. I landed on the east coast. What I didn't know was how to market. And these were the days where social media was really just becoming a thing. So I knew I needed to learn that piece. So I hired a high-level marketing coach out of New York. And I knew she had passed the million-dollar mark. I hired her and said, look, I'm way older than you, I have less time, I want you to teach me everything I need to know. And I will do it. Because another one of my principles that I teach is she who implements wins.

I did take my speaking and coaching business way up to the million dollar mark. I was traveling all around the place, loving what I was doing. However, what happened then that took me to the next phase of transformation is that you cannot be on the road three weeks of every month, different hotels, different countries, different stages, different cultures, different time zones, and maintain a certain level of health. It was in Chicago in January. This particular year, I'd been on the road for three weeks and I was tired. I had been to Argentina, Florida, California, Seattle, Vancouver and was heading back and landed in Chicago. There was only one Saturday connecting flight from Chicago to where I lived in London, Ontario and it got cancelled. Then I went into the washroom in the airport, and I looked in the mirror, and I didn't recognize who was looking back at me. I had big black bags under my eyes. I was inflamed. My skin tone was gray. I put on weight, I was exhausted. And I and I just started crying.

I vowed right then and there that I was going to make some changes. When I got back home, I called my personal trainer and I said I need to make some changes. While I am a workout fanatic, I love working out and my personal trainer said, it's not your exercise, it's your nutrition. I argued it wasn’t my nutrition. I worked for Weight Watchers for eight years. I know my nutrition. He said, no, you don't. He said, I want you to try this system for 30 days, it will change everything for you. I did follow his nutritional advice. The nutritional system, the exercise changed everything for me. When you’ve got your health and energy you really can take on the world.

Then what happened simultaneously, my very best friend like my soul sister in Ontario was diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer. I took a bit of a sabbatical from my business because she was divorced like me, entrepreneur like me, lived alone like me, were best friends. So I took her to every chemo visit every Friday. After every surgery, I moved in with her to make sure she was okay and all through hospice care. We had a lot of those deathbed conversations and she said you need to stop talking about making money, and you need to start talking to women about how you've transformed your health. So she passed away. And I made a commitment to myself at that time that I am going to make another change in my life. Because while I was there for her, I recognize where I lived, I had nobody there for me. So I moved back across the country I sold everything again. I came back here to be near my family. I made a decision to downsize my life. I downsized all my mastermind groups, all my coaching clients, I had a full speaking calendar. I loved speaking and it was prime places, prime fee for service, it was perfect for 2020 and 2021. And then COVID hit. My business died overnight. I lost probably close to $200,000 - $250,000 in revenue overnight. Now, what I used to coach in my mastermind groups and with my clients was you've always got to have additional streams of revenue, always. And I walked my talk. So I did have this third stream of revenue an online business in the wellness space. And with COVID and being isolated, online is the way to go. So I rolled up my sleeves and got to work helping women now online get healthy and wealthy. And in working with my speaking coach, we've changed my signature talk. My message now is that for different stages of life, you can have a different purpose. You can pivot, and it is never too late. So that's my story.

You have focused now on helping women become healthier and wealthier? How do you do that?

Here’s two driving forces for me. I do not wake up every day to be mediocre. I have God given gifts and talents and shame on me if I don't use them. And I like I said to you earlier, I've been around enough of my friends who are dying. And they're either still dying, or they're dead. And they have died with their gifts in them, which gave me all the more stimulus if you will, to keep going and get very clear and focused on what I am doing. So I have no intention of being mediocre. And I do have every intention of standing out in the crowd, because what I know for sure, is that it's crowded at the bottom. When you start climbing, you get to the top, the view is clear, the air is fresh, there's elbow room, there's room to grow, and really be who you are. And the majority of people in life are followers. I recognize that and I recognize my leadership skills. I'm quite clear and direct and focused on stepping out and helping anybody who wants it and is ready for it.

There are so many women at home right now. I read from the Business Insider that in the United States in September 860,000 women in September left the workforce. They're at home rethinking their life, they're at home rethinking their gifts, they're at home rethinking their time and their energy, and those are the women I'm working with. Whether it is health related or whether they're joining my team and creating residual in leveraged income, which is so important these days, because there's so much uncertainty outside you can bring that certainty inside and create this online business. That's my focus.

You can't start climbing a mountain if you're not in good shape. That comes down to my five daily non negotiables.

# 1 – hydration

#2 – sleep

#3 – exercise

#4 – nutrition

#5 gratitude and meditation

Those are my five daily non-negotiables and I intend every day to focus on those because at my 70th birthday party, I intend to take seven of my fittest, happiest, healthiest colleagues and friends with me to Sedona, and we're going to climb Cathedral Mountain. And I've been there three times now and just about made it to the top. But at 70, I'm going to the top, and we're going to meditate, and we're going to drink, we're going to celebrate.

I have a simple formula for people.

#1 - You've got to have a vision. Now, I typically would teach people to do a vision board, and a vision for their business in their life for six months for a year. Now I'm telling them do it for a month, because the world is so uncertain. You've got to have a vision. Without a vision, you will perish, without a vision, you just go in circles without a vision, you don't want to get out of bed. And life is to be lived. So have a vision.

#2 - Take that vision and move it into specific goals. I focus on three goals. Most people just create a huge list. It's overwhelming. It's intimidating, it's exhausting, and they are bored again. Focus on three goals and move those three goals into three action steps. Keep it simple. Live your life, create your life with intention, and then make a decision to create that vision, to put it into action. Goals are great, but they've got to be action-oriented and move that into your calendar and commit to it in ink. You do not give yourself out.

#3 – Celebrate your achievements no matter how big or how small. It's important to celebrate.

#4 - The other piece is accountability. I have three accountability buddies who hold my feet to the fire. And vice versa. I have an accountability buddy for health. I have an accountability buddy for wealth and I have an accountability buddy for happiness.

Pat’s Free Gift

A complimentary 30-minute 'Pivot on Purpose' strategy call (value: $500). Please email Pat at [email protected] with the subject line: Pivot On Purpose.

With a core personal value of lifelong-learning, Lori Highby has shared creative and strategic digital marketing, personal branding, and entrepreneurship lessons with people and organizations from all over. Her 20 years experience, education, and involvement range from currently owning a digital marketing agency, Keystone Click, being the 2013 recipient of the “Bravo! Entrepreneur Award” from BizTimes Media, teaching undergraduate students as an adjunct professor at UW-Milwaukee, and serving on numerous boards including the Better Business Bureau of Wisconsin. Lori earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Business & Marketing from Marian University and her MBA from Cardinal Stritch University.

What I want to talk about is your story and how you got to the place you are now. Let our audience know how you've got to be the expert you are.

I was going to school to school for commercial art and graphic design. And I found I was working full time at a web development company while I was going to school and found that those were the marketing guys out doing all the fun things, they're going to golf outings, taking clients to lunch where the designers were just sitting at their desk, day in and day out. I'm like, I don't want to be doing that. At the same time, I was also taking a sociology course. I was really fascinated by how messages and visuals can really impact a decision that someone makes and that really comes down to marketing. So I shifted my educational direction to be in marketing, while also working full time.

I was at this agency for about five years. I was doing SEO and PPC and email marketing before those were common acronyms in the space. And then actually went to a traditional marketing firm, where I was doing outdoor radio print for quite some time. They brought me on because they wanted to start tapping into the digital space a little bit. They weren't as eager as they had initially sold it. So while I learned a ton about traditional marketing and advertising, I found that my true passion is really in the digital space, because so many cool things can be done, and it's constantly evolving. In 2008, I decided to start my own shop.

When I did start, I was just going to do websites, because that was something that I knew a lot about. I found that over time someone would ask me after we built the site, now how do we get found on Google? And I would just tell them what to do, because I knew how to do it. And or they'd say Facebook's coming up, and they're like, should my business be on Facebook? And I'd say, yeah, this is how you do it. So eventually, my clients were coming back and saying, Well, can you do this for me? Because they don't want to be doing it.

So eventually we've evolved to become more of a strategic digital marketing agency. It was never a smooth path. I know this podcast is very much about overcoming the challenges that we faced. And I went in and started a business because I love marketing, and I'm passionate about it.

Understanding the financials is something that I'd say, is probably one of my weakest areas. And I'm heading to a two-day workshop to better myself in this. I think that's one of the things that as a professional, and a leader is we continually need to be educating ourselves, while also aligning ourselves with those that have the strengths that are our weaknesses. It's still good to consistently be adding knowledge to our buckets. In the space that we're in digital marketing, there's new things happening all the time. We are constantly educating ourselves.

What was it like when you hired your first team member?

I had no idea what I was doing. That's definitely another area where I invested some time to be properly trained. To be properly trained first on the interviewing process, I had someone coached me on how to conduct behavioral interviewing, and that significantly changed how I do interviewing. And now our interviewing process is no different than, like the sales pipeline process. It's a funnel. You have this big bucket of candidates and you have different levels of activities that you're engaging with them on to see who's going to move on to that next level.

Please share the interview process you use.

We will post a job that's available out on a number of channels that align with our industry. And we use a platform called Workable.com. It acts like a sales funnel, but you set the stages for the different candidates that you have. Then we do a phone interview where we ask them the same 10 questions. It's a quick 10-minute call. But the process for them scheduling the interview is one of the tests. You qualified yourself right away. The next phase, based on how that phone interview went, is what we typically like to do an in person, but now it's via zoom. It's more of a deeper conversation with some additional team members. I'm not in it at that point. It's more making sure that the team is comfortable with the personality of that individual. It's extremely important that we maintain a positive culture and workplace. And then I conduct the behavioral interview if they pass that stage, and then we also will do a skills assessment. Pending on what their role is, we want to make sure that they can actually do what it is that they say they can do.

You gave me a little sneak preview on how we can be very focused in our messaging. We want to help the person that we can really give the best results. But we have to have our messaging on target. So then that way, they know we can provide the solution for them.

Tip #1 - Conduct research in order to build a solid marketing plan together. And obviously, in today's day, and age content is the fuel around that. First and foremost you need to know what it is that you're trying to achieve. So earlier today, I had a phone call with a prospective client of ours, and she wants us to run some Facebook ads with her. So what is the goal? What do you what do you want to happen? She wasn't able to give me a clear answer. How do you define success if you don't even know what it is that you're trying to achieve?

You need to know where you're trying to go. What is the goal that you're trying to achieve? Before you can build your plan anywhere. I always like to relate to it like a GPS. We have our end destination, we plug it into the phone, and you get a couple route options. And you may end up getting a detour, which I'd say 2020 is a great detour for all of us. If at the very least, and this is why I really emphasize having that plan, you've got part of the way to your goal and objective. So it's easier to follow that detour to help you achieve that goal that you have at the end of the day. Or maybe you just tweak the goal slightly, but you really need to know where you are today and where you want to be.

When I say where are you today, some of the things that you really should be looking at are your website analytics. How much traffic is coming to your site? How are people finding you? I look at the forms on your website and see how many conversions you have. As far as social media followers, what type of engagement you have. The size of your email list is going to be extremely important to take a look at as well as the open rates. If you have videos, a good metric to look at is the time watched on your videos. Then just high level looking at your content. Where are you distributing your content? What is the message that's being conveyed? And then you're just looking at those end results. You want to know where you are today. Where is it that you want to get to, and then that's when you build your roadmap on how it is you're going to achieve that.

Tip #2 - Take a look at your competition. I don't want you to put too much thought into this, that you're constantly looking at them. But when you're looking at that that destination that you're trying to reach, it's really good to see what competition you have out there and take a look at what they're doing.

We typically recommend looking at about three to five competitors. You want to look at where are they showing up online? What channels on social media? Are they sending out newsletters? Are they blogging? And what is it that they're saying? Is there a consistent message that's being conveyed? Or are they just kind of all over the place? What type of content are they publishing that people are engaging with? You also want to take a look at how they are showing up in the search engines. When you are Googling for your offering, and your competitor shows up, but you don't, that may give you some insight into what they're doing on their website and the type of content that they're creating. You can also take a look at what kind of ads they're buying. On LinkedIn, and Facebook, you can type in any company's name, their page on those channels, and see what ads that they've been doing.

Tip #3 - Really understand your customer. And there's an exercise that we like to do with our clients, which is to identify who your favorite customer is to work with. Try to get inside their head and you want to understand what is their biggest pain? What are their values? What's important to them? Who is it that they're trying to impress? And why is this important? Understanding the ins and outs of that ideal customer is going to be extremely important. But at the end of the day, you really want to know what is it exactly that they want from you. You can conduct this research on your own or you can find a third party. I find when we do this, we get a lot more information, if we're speaking to our clients customer, as opposed to them getting it direct.

You want to understand when the third party is involved, they can ask additional questions like how they found you. Why do they keep buying from you? Do they refer you business? Why or why not? You also want to ask some non-business questions like what social media channels are you on? Do you listen to any podcasters? Do you subscribe to any newsletters and just better understand what your ideal customer is doing as an individual and a human being. The better that you can understand that customer, where they're hanging out online, what pains they have, you can ultimately craft content and position it in the right spot to attract that ideal customer to you.

I want you to go back to the ideal client, because I know we kind of breezed by that and you are on point with we've got to get inside their head, but why is it important?

If you're trying to help the world and help everyone, you're helping no one unfortunately. I can build a website for anybody. But we very clearly state that we pursue and target the B2B industrial manufacturer. We've done websites for all walks of life. But when you're trying to attract a certain type of person, you need to be very clear and concise in that messaging. What you want is someone to land on your site or see a post and go, this is exactly what I'm looking for. And if you're not clearly conveying that you're confusing them. You can have multiple segments that you pursue, but you just have to make sure that you're clearly communicating that you work with a, b, and c type companies. You don't work with everybody.

Lori’s Free Gift:

My team and I have put together this Guide to Profits. It's fantastic. It's got 42 ways to help build brand awareness generate leads and nurture those opportunities online. As a printed very nicely bound booklet, or as a PDF.

Free Gift Link: http://www.keystoneclick.com/profit

“You want to have clarity in your message, and you want to make it easy for the right client to find you.” – Lori Highby