Celebrating 200!

This is episode 200 of the Empowered Team podcast. Can you even believe it? 200 episodes. I never could have imagined getting here. But we want to celebrate with you by running a little contest so that you can win a really awesome, remarkable tablet. It's a thing that has really made such a huge difference in my work, especially working remotely so I can write on it and have all my notebooks in one place and, and go onto my computer and onto my phone and it's all right there. I love it, love it, love it. So for you to win a remarkable and support us in our journey on this podcast, do our contest. It's so easy, easy, easy. Just pick your favorite episode, share some episodes and the more people you share with, the more entries you get to win a remarkable tablet. So don't wait. Find the link in the show notes and hopefully you win. Awesome. We'll have an extra surprise too. The zenith is back. The most amazing retreat that really dives in to getting you to your next level, physically, mentally, spiritually. We have leased out a five acre oceanfront gorgeous spot in Sayulita, Mexico. And it is time for you to dive in and change your life. And I don't mean there's anything wrong with your life. I mean up level expansion. Make it what you really want. The Z ness is coming end of February this year. We'll tell you more. We just want you to know ahead of time, save the dates. Welcome to the Empowered Team podcast where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now your host, executive coach and life strategist, Kari Schneider. It is unbelievable to me at this point. This is our 200th podcast episode and I didn't think that this would come. I didn't. Couldn't even imagine getting here. I don't know if there's something that you've worked really, really hard for and you couldn't imagine getting to a place where it actually came to fruition, or you were 200 episodes in, or you lost a certain amount of weight, or you built the business to a certain point, or you made it to the Olympics. But I'll bet that there's something in your life that's so monumental that you couldn't see how it could actually happen. And yet here we are, we're 200 podcasts in on the Empowered Team podcast. So thank you so much. If you've been listening from the beginning, I'm sure you've seen all kinds of changes and adaptations and thank you for being through, being with us through all of those changes. So if you're a new listener, who is this podcast for? This is for our achievers. These are the men and women who maybe were athletes, are athletes, or nurture an inner athlete. These are people who achiever, who are achievers who tend to do a lot but want more fulfillment, more growth, and executives who push their limits and want to know how to have it all. The family, the fitness, the performance, the, the business success. Those are the people that we tend to serve not only as clientele and consulting and coaching, but also through our podcast as this way of starting our Monday mornings with Mindset Monday and having that mindset for the week, or the monthly podcast that is our performance power, our five minute facts of something health and fitness related in order to physically and mentally perform, or our interviews with Olympians or successful business entrepreneurs and authors and coaches. We want to bring you the people who can be examples of, tell their stories or have the expertise that you can learn from so that you feel like you can create your own empowered life. And that is our Empowered Team podcast. We want to give you all the tools that you'll need in order to have your best life, your most empowered life. So that's who it's for and that's why we do what we do. We take these lessons from high performance sport, cutting edge mental and physical training techniques and bring you that expertise and experience to learn from. We also share, Paul and I share our own personal stories and we share them because we've learned it and earned it. Paul, having been a professional and national level athlete for almost two decades, has a ton of world experience and extremely high performance experience. And I being in the coaching world for over two decades, over 25 years, and been in business for over 16 years, have all kinds of stories of failure and success and performance to share and I have expertise to share in the realm of mindset and physical coaching. So this is why we share this for you, so that you can have your most empowered life. But when it came to our 200th episode, you know, many people listening now may not know how it began. It started as the Empowered Athlete podcast. And we started the podcast because we were seeing something in multiple athletes that Paul was experiencing and I was experiencing with Paul. And it was a level of, of loss, a level of feeling alone and a level of depression that a lot of high level achievers in the athlete world were experiencing. And we felt, I thought I had this idea, I thought that if we started a podcast and we shared, we shared with other people how, how to overcome the things that have held them back. So if someone in. So for instance, in sport we had a, a national level diver struggling with body image and this person wears a bathing suit every day, or people getting cut from an Olympic team after a lifetime of putting all their blood, sweat and tears for that sport. And so we'd experienced this firsthand with Paul losing his identity after retiring from sport and thought that we could help other athletes along the way. And so we started interviewing high end athletes, Olympians, national level athletes, some grassroots athletes, but mostly very, very high performers. And what we found over time is that as we evolved and we were less involved in sport, so I wasn't coaching as many high performance athletes and Paul was still commentating, but wasn't involved in sport as much as our lives evolved, the podcast evolved because it's been four years to create 200 episodes. And as our life evolved out of the gym and more into business and more into our relationship, we, we adapted the podcast to evolve as well, to really serve people who want some of the things that we want. We want incredible, fulfilling relationships, high level business success. We want to really serve and contribute to other people and to us, that's living an empowered life, A life where we have amazing control over our health and fitness and can pivot and adapt to the areas that we don't have control. A life where we have deep and meaningful connection with people that we truly love to be around. A life where we adventure and travel and still live an incredibly healthy and vital life that's connected with each other and connected to the world and nature around us. So we adapted the name of the podcast to the Empowered Team Podcast, really realizing that this life that we want to live is a team sport. It's Although we tend to be individuals and have our own preferences and sometimes act like individual sport athletes and really pushing ourselves, we still have the reliance on each other as a family, as a small family unit, but also units of units in business where there are collaborations or reliance on each other as a business team. So we wanted to make sure that how we deliver this podcast, when it comes to self leadership, when it comes to leadership within a family or leadership within a business, that we could really help people not only feel individually empowered, but empowered in a way that supports those around them, whether it's in a team, as a family unit, or a business. So that's how it evolved into the Empowered Team Podcast. But ultimately, I think that reaching 200 podcast episodes sends a different message and it's a message that we can all learn from. So that this milestone is a message in and of itself. And it's one that is one of consistency, of perseverance, of adaptation. Because 200 episodes, what does it really mean? It means that there were 200 weeks of consistency. It means that there was creativity day in and day out to create what we felt would be helpful for ourselves and helpful for other people in being their best. It meant showing up continually and it meant we had to show up for each other and communicate with each other in ways that we weren't necessarily prepared to do. Paul evolved from being a co host on the podcast to more of a producer. He loves the behind the scenes and putting out the. The episodes and producing them and getting them scheduled and doing all that stuff that I don't want to do. And he didn't like as much the on air work that that we would originally do when we did the interviews. So he pivoted from being on air and being a co host to more of a production side on the podcast. And those pivots may happen again. He still comes on to co host occasionally, but what that looks like for him, for his most empowered life. He was stretched too thin and mentally to prepare for podcasts that I was mostly creating. It was too much with everything else he was doing, especially with commentating for CBC or for the Olympics, plus a high level position within his work as a director of sales and now a CEO. Then it was just so much extra bandwidth that he picked what he preferred. And what he preferred was the production side of things. So that meant a lot of adaptation. But in order for us to make those changes, we had to communicate. So not only the consistency of week in and week out, but the communication, the adaptation, the failing, so completely failing. Where tech broke down, where people didn't show up when we thought we'd interview them, where we would show up but had the wrong person scheduled. There were so many fails along the way, and yet we still kept producing. We found a way to still get the episodes out. There were miscommunications. There were, there were times where. There was one time where I had somebody book a podcast. They reach out to me via email and I thought they were reaching out about coaching. And yet the person who came onto Zoom was someone who was expecting to get interviewed on the podcast. And I was just very embarrassed and still did the podcast anyway. So it taught me a lot about just continuing to perform no matter what. And in this particular context, I know a lot about performing when it comes to being a family member and A parent and a business owner, but for a podcast that nobody's making us do it, nobody's paying us to do it. It's simply for the output of creation, to keep getting us better and to keep serving other people with a free, free product that can make a difference in their lives. And that's the lesson in and of itself that we had to keep asking ourselves, do we want to still do this? Is it still worth it for us? Is there still growth in it for us as well as that, that amazing, fulfilling, rewarding feeling of contributing to other people with something that we can offer that's free, it costs nothing. It's amazing opportunity for people to listen in and get the lessons from people who have lived it or learned it. So we had rejection. We had to learn new things. I had to learn all about getting a system and structure so that we could keep putting out the podcast. And one of the biggest things that I didn't expect in this experience of 200 episodes was faith. Just having the faith that doing this would actually be good for something. We didn't know what. We didn't know what would happen when we started it, but would it be good for something, something that would make a difference for other people and really be rewarding for them in some form or another. And we think it has been. We think that every time we hear from someone else, oh, that podcast on thermostat responsibility, it taught me so much. Or that podcast on, you know, where we, where we needed to learn more about rehabbing knee injuries helped me do the next step when I didn't have a therapist, a physiotherapist. So there's so many things that we get feedback on that have us start to go, oh, it is actually making a difference. It is reaching out to people. So to wrap this up, I'd really like to again be very thankful for those who have stuck with us, tried us out, checked out this podcast just to see what they could learn. Because we're just flailing around trying to see what's going to work and trying to offer the best expertise and the best little stories so that other people can learn from our mistakes and learn from what we've done. So if you haven't been with us for, from the beginning, if you are just joining us now, then check back some of the really meaningful episodes that I think really mark what this journey has been. If you go to the very, very beginning, you're going to find episodes with Olympic sevens and 15s, rugby national level player Connor Trainor. He's an Olympian with Stanley cup winner Dave Boland with Olympian and national level diver Selena Toth with someone might recognize that, recognize this name. Simon Whitfield, the Olympic triathlon triathlete for Canada. So we had all kinds of athlete interviews, especially in the early episodes and then transitioning into we post at least two to three Mindset Mondays per month so that you can start your Mondays powerfully heading into the week, knowing that you've got something in your back pocket to lean on to keep your performance and your mindset high. Because if there's one thing we've learned, it doesn't matter whether you are in business. And we what we like to think of is that competitive executive. A lot of people that we work with are having to run some sort of business and they're performing as a personal athlete. So they might be their own inner athlete that they train in terms of their fitness every day, or they might be competitive in something like in something like hockey or triathlon or cycling or running. And so we want to keep serving that. And the thing that that is the most important because most of the people that we speak to or coach are action takers. There's not very many people that I work with who aren't into taking a lot of action. So when we offer up the mindset Monday, it's because the people who are into taking action, there's usually something that might be missing. And it's a form of thinking, of mindset, of positioning the brain such that they can not only do action, but experience life fully instead of just doing action in order to get a certain feeling. And so that's why we put out those mindset Mondays so that people can still be in massive action, but also feeling amazing at the same time. So the Mindset Mondays evolved into the program. I there are so many different ones between adaptability as a superpower, vision versus action, thermostat responsibility. We did a series on Team T E A M. It's an acronym for culture creation. This could be within your family or your business. So there's so many little episodes that might be even 10 to 15 minutes long and that have these incredible nuggets that really launch you into a powerful week using your mindset. And then there's action based episodes that are our performance power. So this might be health action based episodes. And. And then also guests that we have on where we find out what works for them so we can learn from their expertise. And this could be even people like Jonathan Depotter, he's into psychedelics as Therapy. Jackie Insinger has an amazing book on spark, brilliance. It was so powerful. Adam Hill, another triathlon, a triathlete who has accomplished so much overcoming alcoholism. Another one, Michele Graglia. He's a record holder in ultras, ultra marathons. And these interviews not only teach us so much about, about what's possible, what, what people are capable of, that we want to share that message to our audience. We want to show people what actually is possible. What can people overcome? What can you overcome within your life that's going to get you where you really want to be? Whether it's greater connection with your family or business success or growth. It's truly that empowered positioning in your life. So that's what our 200 episodes really has, has brought to us and taught us. And I hope that, that it continues to serve you in your life and what we'd really love to know because we're going to be sharing our podcast contest winners shortly. So if you haven't entered, you still have a chance to enter and enter for our contest to win a remarkable tablet. This is something I use every day in replace of about four, four notebooks that I used to use and a Smart plate food scale. This is a remarkable new product that is fresh on the market and it is a game changer for people who really want to understand whether they're getting the protein, carbohydrates or fats that they want and being able to get to their goals, whatever their goals are, whether it's gaining muscle mass, losing fat mass, better energy. This food scale is, is transformational. It's really, really powerful. So you've got an opportunity to win those, the remarkable or the Smart Plate by entering our contest. That link will be in the show notes and, and in that contest, as you enter, tell us what you want to hear about. Tell us how we can serve you because we really are lit up by finding the answers that you want to know so that you can live your most empowered life. That's what gets us going. I mean, there's lots of things that we do, but that's one of the things that just turns my crank and in being able to learn more so that I can deliver it for you, whether it's my own personal experiences or whether it's the experience that someone else has brought within an interview. So let us know what you want and we will keep serving you in every way we can. And thank you again for being on our, our listener, our listener profile so that, so that you're bettering your life in whatever way you can keep being empowered, keep living your best life, and keep being your best. Hold up, hold up. Wait a minute. Go to the show Notes. Grab the link. Enter yourself into our contest to win a remarkable to celebrate our 200th episode, help us reach 100,000 downloads. That means we've helped 100,000 people in some way by sharing with mindset tips, health tips, exercise performance, you name it. We want to make a difference for others and you can help us. So share away and tell us what you want to hear more of in our contest. We can't wait to hear what you think. And thank you so much for being with us on this journey so far.