Pursue You

Goals, goals, all types of goals! Any SNL fans out there? I love the skit Back Home Baller and the song "Bowls, bowls, all types of bowls", and if you haven't seen it you might want to watch it, but today, we're not talking about bowls. We're talking about goals! Like many of my stories, I had one of my most amazing revelations about goals at a retreat I went to in October. This message is applicable any time of year if you are thinking about setting goals, but I wanted to share it now as we're approaching the beginning of the new year because I know many of you are deep in goal setting mode. Now, I've been the person who always knows what the next goal is and I've been the person who has no time to even think about setting goals, so whichever one you are right now, I hope this will help change the way you think about goals, and let you see that when you care about the goals it will be much easier to work towards achieving those goals.

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I've been on a roller coaster with sleep I would dare to say my entire life, and maybe it's because I'm getting older (I just celebrated my birthday), or maybe I went through a period of sleep deprivation with two littles; but the more I read, and study, and actually live in a way where I'm conscious of my sleep, I'm still blown away!

Sleep is important. We've all heard it, but I wasn't listening. I never really had it sink in, so that's what I want to chat about today. I'm going to share tidbits about my sleep journey in hopes that you can hear the importance of sleep in a different way, so it sinks in for you. When I say this is life changing, I'm not exaggerating. I think you'll understand if you've ever been sleep-deprived that it's also INSANELY real and something I'm finding so many of you in my community struggle with, so yes, I'm spending this entire episode talking about sleep!

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Today is a really big deal! I love listening to interviews and I love to share and learn from other people who are excelling. When I recorded Episode 3 – Three Reasons You're Not Making Your First Hire, I got the idea of who my first guest would be, and it was only confirmed when you guys asked for more information on hiring. I knew I had to bring on my husband, Eddie, Ed, Papa, aka Dr. Ed Gigliotti. Before I bring him on to share his favorite hiring tool, I have to share a little about him. He has grown his chiropractic office from the ground up. He knew no one here in Rochester in 2013, and today, he's one of the top chiropractors in the state. In the six years he's been open, his business has exploded, and he has perfected his systems and hired an incredible team. Today, he's on to share his favorite hiring tool, the DISC assessment along with practical tools for making your next hire.

[4:55] Eddie and I start off sharing a little about what the DISC assessment is. We talk about the theory behind it that centers on four personality traits: dominance, influence, steadiness, and compliance.

[5:45] Eddie shares how he got into learning about and studying the DISC assessment. He shares how his own interactions with his team lead him to search for a way to hire the best people for the work he needed. He wanted to best serve the people on his team, so they could provide the best service to their clients.

[8:05] Eddie and I spend the next several minutes digging deep into each of the four characteristics and what different traits tend to show up in each category. We discuss their strengths as well as their fears. We also share stories of how we've learned to better interact with these different people on our own teams as we've become more understanding of the DISC assessment.

[17:00] We recommend you start by taking the DISC assessment for yourself. You can take it for free at www.wizehire.com. Find out who you are and how you're showing up, and then offer it to people on your team, whether that's business or family.

[18:00] Eddie and I introduce four ways you can use the DISC assessment as you begin to figure out roles you may need to fill on your team and how to find the right person to fill it.

[19:00] 1. Look at your job description and decide who would find the most success in that role. You want to make sure that you are putting people in the right role, otherwise you'll have great team members get burnt out because they are doing the wrong job.

[24:40] 2. When you get a good resume in response to your ad, request that they take the DISC assessment and send it back to you. This will give you more clarity on who is excited about the job and who would be a good fit.

[27:00] 3. Review each person's DISC assessment before setting up a phone interview with them. Review the information so that you are able to communicate with them in the best way possible, and so you can decide what additional information you'd like to find out on the phone interview.

[27:40] 4. Have a phone interview to validate the DISC assessment. Use pointed questions that will allow you to clarify and validate the results of their assessment. This will allow you to make sure you want to take the time to bring them in for a full, in house interview.

[29:27] – Eddie shares one last piece of advice on how to start using the DISC tool now, with your current employees and team members before you start implementing it as a hiring tool.

Utilizing the DISC tool when you are looking to hire, and with your current team or family has unlimited value for you. Remember, do not label yourself your one DISC trait. It's great to know yourself better, and it helps the relationship you have with your team, but you can also use this information about yourself to grow and change as you pursue you.

Today I want to talk to about pruning, and before I get into it, I have to call out the elephant in the room. If you know what pruning is, it has to do with gardening, but don't be fooled into thinking I know what I'm doing when it comes to gardening. In fact, I'm so bad at gardening that I once killed a cactus. But today, I want to talk about pruning as a metaphor for your life. Pruning, by definition is when you trim a tree, shrub, or bush by cutting away dead or overgrown branches or stems, for the purpose of increasing fruitfulness and growth. Today, I want to share with you four areas of your life that might need pruning in order to increase your ability to pursue your best self, and thereby give the gift of your best self, to those around you.

[1:50] I share a story about when I first came to understand the idea of pruning as a metaphor for life, and how it prompted me to realize that I needed change in my life, no matter how hard it was going to be.

[5:35] I introduce the four areas of life that I am going to challenge you to reflect on and see where you might need to do some pruning in your own life.

[5:50] 1. Commitments: The things you have committed to, be it committees, family, church, etc. are either fulfilling you or draining you. I share some of the excuses I made before I finally made the decision to leave the committees that were draining me, and I challenge you to examine your commitments and see which ones you need to step away from.

[10:52] I ask the question, "How do we know if something is fulfilling or draining?". Then, I challenge you to ask yourself these questions in relation to your current commitments: How did I feel doing what I did today? How did I feel on the way there, after it was over? How do I feel about it at the end of the day? Did I show up better or worse after?

[11:45] 2. Habits – Which habits are positively or negatively impacting your life? This one is hard because they are small things, like hitting the snooze button, or checking email in bed, or not hugging your spouse enough. They aren't massive, but they compound, and they turn into bigger problems. Ask someone else to help you notice these things. What is consuming your time at each segment of your day?

[16:20] 3. Content Consumption - You are in control of what you consume on social media, tv, movies, etc. I challenge you to reflect on how the people you follow on social media make you feel, how you respond to watching the news or certain T.V. shows, etc. Find the content that lifts you up and empowers you as you go throughout your day.

[23:00] Relationships – If you met the people you spend the most time with at a party today, would you see them and want them to be the people that were influencing you? Do a relationship check to make sure your close, close friends are all people who fill you up. Are there people in your life that aren't serving you? If they aren't serving you, you can't serve them.

Pruning is hard. It takes a lot of work, reflection and self-awareness. It takes counseling and experimentation to see what's serving you and what isn't. Here's the harder part, for me at least. As you start to prune, you may go into panic mode and try to hold on to things that you need to be letting go of. Until you really reflect, you won't have the confidence to do the hard action of pruning. Pruning can make you feel so empty, but what feels like emptiness at the time, that emptiness is really space. It's space to make active choices on everything from your commitments, to habits, to relationships, and as they slowly fill back up, you realize your life is now filled with things that empower you and fulfill you. All your energy and time is being put to the best use and that focused energy goes towards the right things. I challenge you to see how pruning can change your life. It will give you space to design and pursue a life that allows you to give the gift of your best self to everyone around you.

Welcome to the Pursue You Podcast, where we are empowering you to continually reflect, design and pursue who you were created to be so you can give the gift of your best self to your family, community, and business!

Today we're talking about the Rise Business Conference I attended that is put on by Rachel Hollis and her husband Dave Hollis through the Hollis Company. While they have held multiple personal development conferences, this was their first ever Rise Business conference, emphasis on business!

In a nutshell, it was awesome! It was fabulous, and not just in that emotional high feeling where you feel like you just want to live in an imaginary bubble after a great conference, but I was able to leave with very real, tactical takeaways. Now that I've had time to think about my experience, review my notes, and summarize my takeaways, I want to share them with you, and hopefully pass along some of the amazing wisdom I heard during the conference.

3:00 I start off sharing my story of how I discovered Rachel Hollis, who she was, what she was about, and my internal struggle with being excited about her and her mission, but also feeling like I couldn't pursue what I wanted to because she was already doing it.

6:50 I introduce the "bean dip" (Rachel's term) or Ladder concept that the conference centered around. Each rung represents a different topic that we covered during the conference.

7:29: Rung 1 - YOU - You are the problem, but you are also the solution. We spent nearly an entire day focusing on this topic. I'm sharing my biggest takeaways from all of the speakers that covered this topic, but ultimately, I want to share Rachel's 5 points – humility, hard work, health, honesty, optimism.

17:42: Rung 2 - Product and Service – The big point that hit me was that they helped us realize the businesses that were really succeeding were offering a product, service, AND an experience and that experience is key. I challenge you to ask yourself: what can you do to enhance your experience opportunity?

19:20: Rungs 3 & 4 - Branding and Customer Experience – In order to create a better product, service or experience you need to listen to your customer and respond to what they are asking for. Let's work on this practically by creating a circular flow chart that outlines your customer's journey in order to assess how you can offer a better customer experience.

22:00: Rung 5 - Marketing – Amy Porterfield hit on this topic so well and her biggest point was about having an email list that allows you to constantly engage with your customer base in an personal and authentic way, while delivering original content that you are creating (like a podcast!) to them each week!

25:00: Rung 6 - Sales – Most of us are selling something because we want to help our customer when they are in need. In order to do this successfully, we have to be passionate about what we are selling. If we aren't, we shouldn't be selling it.

28:14: Rung 7 - Finances – This is often a difficult subject for business owners, because they honeslty don't know their numbers. I'm here to encourage you from this conference that you need to know your numbers, and it's okay to ask what they are and to learn how to understand it better. Once you do this, you'll be able to figure out simple things you could change or tweak to make even more money.

32:20: Rung 8 - Systems & Processes – The best way to establish your systems and processes is to figure out what your goal is, and then, work backwards to outline a road map to get there.

33:38: Rung 9 – People – Define what success looks like for you and then make sure that every decision you make supports that goal. Otherwise you will never be able to stay rooted in what you value.

37:25: Rung 10 – Servant Leadership - A great leader makes it all about the team. A servant leader asks questions: How are you? What are you working on? How can I help? Then, follow up and follow through. You are responsible for providing the trainings and resources your team needs to grow.

This conference was an incredible experience and I was excited to break it down the 10 rungs of the ladder for you. I am just siting here after going through this, and I remember the overwhelming sense of joy I had there, and I think about hoisting a business conference just like this in the future. I know you guys that are here listening are excited about that with me, and you are the ones that give me so much fire. You've shared about how you're using these episodes to grow you and think bigger in your business. I don't know how long it will take to do this, but I know that I am going to be pursuing it! I am excited to pursue this big, crazy dream. Thanks for being my hype tribe and get me excited about this "Pursue You" business! Having you on this journey makes it even more enjoyable for me. Thank you!

Welcome to the Pursue You Podcast, where we are empowering you to continually reflect, design and pursue who you were created to be so you can give the gift of your best self to your family, community, and business!

I am so excited to share one of my favorite books I read in 2019 for today's Pursue You Pick. It's called Do Less, by Kate Northrup. I first heard her on the Goal Digger Podcast with Jenna Kutcher, a podcast that I absolutely love - and so I of course fell in love with Kate's message and wanted to dive into more of her work.

Kate is an entrepreneur who supports ambitious women to light up the world without burning themselves out in the process. CAN I GET AN AMEN!?

There's a quote on the insert of her book that says, "In our culture, the way we're working isn't working. Our addiction to busyness and obsession with always trying to do more leads us to feel like we're always failing our families, our careers, our spouses, and ourselves. We need to revolutionize the way we work."

The overall premise of the book is the idea of doing less, so that we can have more, or rather, experience more.

[3:45] I start off sharing a bit of Kate's personal story that she outlines in the book, and what led her to the conclusions she shares in her book.

[7:20] I challenge you to think about things that are restricting your time today and try to start brainstorming how you can do those things in less time.

[11:50] I share with you Kate's explanation of how our energy levels and productivity can be related to our 28-day menstrual cycle. I outline the four phases that Kate discusses and share with you how she relates them to our energy and productivity.

[15:20] For those that don't currently have a cycle, I briefly discuss how you can look at your energy and productivity in relations to the four moon cycles.

[17:45] I share how recognizing these phases and cycles and what my body needs at the time allows me to give myself more grace and helps me to plan my business and life accordingly in order to maintain maximum productivity without busyness and burnout.

[22:00] I share my top three favorite experiments of the 14 that Kate shares in her book. I challenge you to grab a copy of the book so that you can see which experiments will help you boost your productivity while also finding more time to experience more of what you love.

I related to this book in so many ways, and I feel like it just gave me permission to look at productivity the way that my body was telling me to. Hopefully, this episode has peaked your interest, and encouraged you to pick up this book (hard-copy or Audible) for yourself and try one of these tweaks or experiments to see how it fits into your life. Then, I hope you'll be able to pursue YOU as you do less and experience more!

I am grateful you were here for today's episode! To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, I encourage you to subscribe to the podcast. Click here to subscribe on iTunes.

In order to help others find this podcast and help inspire them, I would love for you to leave a review of the podcast. Share something that motivated you, or something that helped you re-frame the way you approach your life and goals. I'd love to hear how you're pursuing your best self. Click here to review the show on iTunes. You can go to "Ratings and Reviews" and "Write a Review". Your comments are greatly appreciated!

Episode 7: Screen Time Hacks

Episode 5: Pursue You Picks: The ONE Thing

Episode 2: Why Self-Care is NOT the Answer…and What Is!

Let's talk about screen time! No, I don't mean for your kids...I mean for you! As a realtor for the last 10 years, screen time has been a huge challenge for me. I need to be by my phone for other realtors, for my clients, to monitor new listings, to reach out to a new client wanting to work with me, etc. And when I was on it 24/7, my business grew! It was this self-perpetuated addiction to my phone. Today I want to share with you some screen time hacks along with some perspective that I have found ultra-helpful as a parent and entrepreneur. My goal is that you'll see that there are tactical tools and mindset shifts that, wherever you are with screen time, so you can feel confident that you are in control of how technology is influencing your life and how you're showing up in the world.

I am grateful you were here for today's episode! To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, I encourage you to subscribe to the podcast. Click here to subscribe on iTunes.

In order to help others find this podcast and help inspire them, I would love for you to leave a review of the podcast. Share something that motivated you, or something that helped you re-frame the way you approach your life and goals. I'd love to hear how you're pursuing your best self. Click here to review the show on iTunes. You can go to "Ratings and Reviews" and "Write a Review". Your comments are greatly appreciated!

The total nerd in me, that I now 100% embrace, is coming out in today's episode. If you haven't recognized yet, I LOVE attending seminars and conferences. I love that feeling of being immersed in a world of other growth minded people. One of my favorites that I work hard to attend every year is called Global Leadership Summit. The mission of the Global Leadership Summit is a community that is committed to learning from each other and using our influence to accomplish God's purpose on earth. Now while it's hosted at a church, the focus of these two days is very much leadership and growth focused. The first year there was my first-time hearing about Craig Groschel. From the moment I first heard him talk I was in absolute AWE. A little more about him, he has the Craig Groschel Leadership podcast, and he is the founder of Life Church, and creator of the YouVersion Bible App. He's also a husband and father so his speaking really resonated with me. This past year when I attended his opening talk was called Bend the Curve, and one of the topics he shared with us was this idea called GETMO. G-E-T-M-O. And when I first heard it, I was like get more? Nope, it stands for "good enough to move on". GETMO. Get it?

I am grateful you were here for today's episode! To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, I encourage you to subscribe to the podcast. Click here to subscribe on iTunes.

In order to help others find this podcast and help inspire them, I would love for you to leave a review of the podcast. Share something that motivated you, or something that helped you re-frame the way you approach your life and goals. I'd love to hear how you're pursuing your best self. Click here to review the show on iTunes. You can go to "Ratings and Reviews" and "Write a Review". Your comments are greatly appreciated!

Up until a few years ago, I wasn't what you'd call a big reader. I'd gotten through a few books here and there, but as a realtor, entrepreneur, wife, and mother, my day to day schedule was crazy! Books or professional and personal development took a back burner. It wasn't until my life and business hit a wall that I realized I needed to step it up a bit. My original business passion is real estate and Gary Keller is the author of a book I was introduced to as a result of my career with Keller Williams, and though I had read it before, I decided I needed to read it again after I had this mindset change, and it ignited a fire in me! I saw how consuming this content actually converted into me being more productive and feeling more confident in myself. It allowed me to live proactively rather than re-actively!

Because of the impact this book made on my, The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan is my first Pursue You Pick! This pick is a book or podcast that I love and think you would benefit from. I'm going to share my big takeaways, and how it's impacted me, and I hope it will encourage you to check it out for yourself to dig deeper.

The ideas of this book aren't earth shattering, they are mostly simple, and it finishes with some tactical advice on time blocking and recognizing when you need systems to break through dead ends and avoid burnout. Despite its simplicity, however, this book helped me move from merely entrepreneurial to purposeful. After spending the last few years reflecting and working on my productivity, I realized it wasn't the grind that brought me success, and it wasn't necessary. The problem with the grind for me was that I lacked the awareness of the damage it was causing in the other areas of my life. The takeaways from this book had a big impact on helping me recognize this and reorient my business and life to allow me to pursue my priorities in the best way.

I hope you'll grab the book, check out the podcast and dig deeper into materials that will present you with small tweaks that will allow you to pursue you and have a greater impact on those around you.

Links

The One Thing Book

The One Thing Podcast

Subscribe to the Podcast

I am grateful you were here for today's episode! To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, I encourage you to subscribe to the podcast. Click here to subscribe on iTunes.

In order to help others find this podcast and help inspire them, I would love for you to leave a review of the podcast. Share something that motivated you, or something that helped you re-frame the way you approach your life and goals. I'd love to hear how you're pursuing your best self. Click here to review the show on iTunes. You can go to "Ratings and Reviews" and "Write a Review". Your comments are greatly appreciated!

More Episodes You'd Be Interested In

Episode 4: The Antidote to FOMO

Episode 3: 3 Reasons You're Not Making Your First Hire

Episode 2: Why Self Care is NOT the Answer…and What Is!

We've all heard of FOMO right? It's the fear of missing out. It's a classic phrase we kind of joke about, but it's pretty real. It has a big impact on us because we say yes before we consider anything else we've made a commitment to. It affects our businesses, our families and even the opportunities we have to serve. It's often overwhelming and can be debilitating.

Don't worry though! I have the antidote for FOMO: a little thing called JOMO, the joy of missing out. I saw this and fell madly in love with it, so I've gone really deep into it. Life is a bunch of small decisions that are all about what you're saying yes to, and what you're saying no to. This makes up how we spend our time and that is what our life is. So how do we make sure that what we say yes or no to is leading us to find JOMO?

I am grateful you were here for today's episode! To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, I encourage you to subscribe to the podcast. Click here to subscribe on iTunes.

In order to help others find this podcast and help inspire them, I would love for you to leave a review of the podcast. Share something that motivated you, or something helped you reframe the way you approach your life and goals. I'd love to hear how you're pursuing your best self. Click here to review the show on iTunes. You can go to "Ratings and Reviews" and "Write a Review". Your comments are greatly appreciated!