A Conversation with Tanya Dalton | S01 Episode 03

Hello, everyone. Welcome, welcome. I'm so excited to share this episode of Leadership Is Feminine with you. I have a very special guest today for our interview featuring all of the things that she has to share with other female CEOs, being one that is incredibly successful herself and also works with thousands of female CEOs all over the planet. And I'm excited to have her here to announce the release of her upcoming.

Book, let's get started.

Hey, hey, everyone.

Welcome, welcome. I'm so excited today to have you tune in to the interview that I'm conducting with Tanya Dalton. Tanya and I met, gosh, now, I don't remember, probably almost a year ago. She has been working with Ali Brown for quite some time and she and I met through that intersection and now she and I are both members of the Trust, which is Ali's amazing program. And honestly, as soon as I met Tanya, I just immediately gravitated to her. She's dynamic, she's energetic, she's lovely, generous. If you know Tanya, then my hunch is those words sound very familiar. And she really is everything. She shows up as in the way that she is in the world. And I'm very grateful to know her. So I was very honored that she agreed to be on the podcast and super excited for her because she is in the process of almost releasing her brand new book called on the Busy Woman's Guide to an Extraordinary Life of Meaning and Success, which is so cool. I'll need that. Right now on this podcast, we're going to be talking about her book and how it's right on time for so many of us. Tanya is a nationally recognized productivity expert, best selling author and speaker. She serves as a growth strategist for female leaders in the corporate and entrepreneurial sectors. In addition to her first book, the Joy of Missing out, being named one of the top 10 business books of 2019 by Fortune magazine, Tanya's podcast, the Intentional Advantage, is ranked among the top business podcasts on itunes. She's also a regular contributor for Entrepreneur and has been featured in some of the world's leading publications including Forbes Inc. Fast Company and Real Simple. She's been awarded the Elite Enterprising Woman Award and has been named the female entrepreneur to watch for the state of North Carolina. Tanya is also the founder and CEO of Inkwell Press Productivity Co, a multimillion dollar company providing tools that work as a catalyst in helping women do less while achieving more. And I can attest to that. I have been one of her clients and she's outstanding. Her products are outstanding. And her message is outstanding. Without further ado, I'm really excited to have Tanya join us on this episode of Leadership Is Feminine to talk about all things powerful related to being a woman, being a CEO, being productive, being productive on purpose, and how she went through the process of reinvention and reimagining her life as a woman leading a business.

Let's get started.

So happy to have Tonya Dalton here. Hi, Tanya.

Hi. So happy to be here.

Welcome, welcome. I'm looking at us as we're filming this, and we both have cute, sassy short haircuts.

Yeah, we do. Yeah, we're sassy. We're sassy people.

Very summer. Okay, so, Tanya, I know I just did the introduction, but I would love for you, in your own words, to sort of help the listeners know a little bit about you and how you got where you are and why you do what you do. It's a pretty general ask, but why don't we start there?

Yeah, Well, I like to say that I'm. I'm a wife, I'm a mother, I'm a CEO, a recovering perfectionist. Like many of your listeners, I like to. For a long time, I felt like I needed to do all the things, and that's really gotten me to where. Where I am is figuring out that I don't have to do all the things. I started out my first business back in 2008, and I started it with $50. And that was was supposed to be a little side business, kind of a little hobby. While my husband was traveling the world, he would leave our home in Dallas, Texas, and he would buy a ticket called the around the World ticket. So he would literally fly and circle the globe. He would leave Dallas and he would come all the way back around the other side. So he'd be gone for like three or four weeks at a time. I'm a stay at home mom with two small kids. So I thought, you know what? I'm going to start this little side business and I'll just do this on the side. But I had a conversation with my husband when he was on the other side of the planet that changed everything. It changed the whole trajectory of my life. And in a great way. You know where I'm talking to him, I'm chatting on about what was happening in our day. And he got really quiet and he said, I'm missing everything. I'm missing all the milestones. I'm missing the moments with the kids. I'm missing all of it. And I said, oh, no, no, no, you're not. And he said, it is. You know, I am, I am totally missing all of this. And so I hung over the phone that night with my husband and I stood in my kitchen, my bright yellow kitchen, and I made a decision that I was going to grow this tiny little side hobby business to the point where he could come and work alongside of me. I was going to absorb his MBA income. So he has his MBA working for Fortune 500 companies. And I was going to do it within about a year, which is a pretty audacious goal for someone who's a stay at home mom with zero business experience, never even took a business course in college. And within about a year that came true, made that happen. And he's been working with me since 2009. We ran our own business and that allowed us to move to Asheville, North Carolina, which is where we wanted to. We didn't want to wait till we retired. We wanted to live where we wanted to live while we were young, relatively young. And then I looked at him. In 2000, we moved here at Nashville 2012. In 2013, I looked at my husband and I said, I love you, I love working with you, but I love what we are doing. I am not really passionate about what we are creating and putting forth in the world. And he said, ok, what do you want to do? And I am like, I don't know, what do I want to do? And so that became this time for me where I had to transition and figure out what is it I want to be when I grow up, who is it I want to be. So I decided to close down that first business, which was our sole income, that fed my kids three meals a day. They do like to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. They do like to have a roof on their kids. I mean, that's. I mean, they're kind a little. It's so demanding, right? And so that was a really scary thing to do. And yet out of giving myself that time to really figure out what is it I want to do, I really figured out there were three things I'm really passionate about. I'm really passionate about empowering women. I love working with women. I love speaking to women. I love watching the light bulbs light up in women's eyes. I love talking about productivity and really showcasing how you can spend your days doing things that really matter to you. I like to say productivity is not about doing more, it is doing what's most important. And I love teaching. I used to be a teacher, so education is a big part of me. And I took those three very unrelated disconnected things and I connected them and I create Inkwell Press out of those three passions of mine. And I opened up Inkwell Press, I scaled it to seven figures within the first 18 months, and here we are, you know, years later. I've now, you know, I have a podcast, I've had a best selling book, I have another book coming out in October, and it's just snowballed because of this whole idea of shifting and transforming and reinventing who I am.

Which is why I love that you.

Were talking about that this evening.

I know. Perfect timing and full disclosure to all the listeners. So this podcast, which is now featuring sort of more of a season with a theme, came from Tanya's brain. So Tanya and I are in a program together and we were talking about podcasts and she shared how she does hers. And I absolutely adored the idea and really just anchored on it immediately. And I'm such a quick start. As soon as she said it, I was already planning.

You already had notes? Yeah. And I see you're like, here's all these notes of what I'm going to do.

Here's how it's going to work. And I sent you, I think, and Allie an email the next day, right. And said, okay.

You did? Yeah. What do you think? Let me know. Do it. And here you are.

Here we are. We're doing it. So reinvention is a core theme too. Isn't that so interesting? I think that we can talk more about this. Right? But that marriage between security, safety, stability, and then what you have to do. I often think of it as if you're swinging on a vine in the jungle. You've had this one vine that's really strong and really capable, and it goes the distance.

It does what you held you up the whole time.

There gets to be that point where you got to grab onto the next one and you don't really know if that one's strong, if it's going to hold you, and then you have to let go of the other one because you can't simultaneously swing on two vines. Doesn't work. Right. So that's a common theme, right. When we're talking about really pivoting, recreating, creating, just even if we take the re off of all of it. And so I'm going to want to talk to you a little bit about what you witnessed in yourself through that process. And also, I know you work with other female CEOs too, who go through similar decisions and what that is for them.

And this is A big part of what I talk about in this new book, we confuse comfort with happiness. Comfort doesn't necessarily mean happiness. A lot of times comfort means just kind of putting up with things. Just kind of like, well, this is how it is. We become comfortable in our own discomfort, and then we become afraid to move away from that, to grab onto that other vine. Yeah, absolutely. And you have to. You have to step out of comfort. And that is. That's frightening. It really is at times. So it's not about being fearless. We think, you know, mistakenly, a lot of times that we have to be fearless. And it's not the absence of fear. It's really bravery. It's choosing to see the fear and stepping into it regardless. Right. So we need to let go of that whole idea that if we're not fearless, we're not strong enough. It's really about choosing to overcome that fear in ourselves.

Yeah. And I wonder what your thoughts are about. So when you were. When you made that decision. Right. So here you are. You have a successful business, you and your husband are working together. Your kids are all having three meals a day.

I mean. Yeah. Sometimes four.

Once they're teenagers. It's every hour.

Yes. All day.

You also had to have a wisdom to honor the fact that you weren't happy. Right. So I imagine this is in your book. Right. That you stepped away from comfortable that wasn't happiness with the risk of creating something that would be more fulfilling. Right. So what. When you reflect on that and. And again, I'm assuming this is part of what you talk about in your new book, which is called On Purpose.

The Busy Woman's Guide to an Extraordinary Life of Meaning and Success.

Brilliant. Okay, we'll talk more about that. What do you think that. What did you say to yourself that made it like. Because a lot of women don't honor their own insight and their own system.

Right.

What was different for you?

Well, I think. I think we undervalue happiness. We undervalue joy. We really do. Like, we feel like we just are supposed to punch the clock, that there's this moment far into the future where the clouds will part, the sunshine ray just shoots down, and rainbows come up here in the sky. And it's like, then we'll be happy when we retire, when we land the big client, when we hit seven figures with our business. When, when, when, when, when, when. Whenever something happens. Right. And we undervalue the happiness of our everyday lives. And I truly want women to understand that there is happiness nestled right there in the cracks. And the crevices of your everydays. We just have to choose to see it. We have to slow down and enjoy every moment of getting to that finish line. Because the problem is we get so fixated on this someday syndrome, crossing this finish line, that when I get to this goal, then I am going to be happy. And what happens is we reach a goal. It is actually called the goal setting paradox. You reach a goal and you have this momentary high. It is an amazing moment. And then it is followed up with, well, now what? What do I do? And there's this feeling of dissatisfaction, which is why I think it's really important that we tie our lives to something bigger. That's the whole. I mean, I was supposed to write a goal setting book for this book and we talk about goals in it, but goals are not the goal. It's not about crossing a finish line. It's really about finding that joy in our everydays of really living to something bigger that helps us rise up and see what we have available to us. We start to have that abundance. Mindse. So for me, in that moment of choosing, gosh, you know what, this is really stable. We have this great business that's making lots of money, but it's not bringing me joy. It was really thinking to myself and rooting into this idea, yes, I can pay the bills, yes, the kids can go do really nice things, yes, we can afford really expensive things, but is that enough for me? And the answer was no. It really wasn't enough for me to get up and feel like I was slogging through my days. And so I had to really glom on that idea of what makes me happy. And when you think about any goal, any dream, any aspiration, isn't it steeped in happiness? Why do you want to finish a marathon? So you can be happy when you cross the finish line. Why do you want to lose those ten pounds? So you can be happy and feel good and confident in your clothing. Right? Why do you want to run your own business? You can be happy not working for somebody else. It is all steeped in happiness. But we feel like happy is a. It is a soft kind of thing, right? We focus in on the metrics and the numbers. And I think metrics and numbers are important, but we become so fixated on them, we lose sight of really the joy that we can have in our everyday life. And it is possible to be highly, highly productive to create an amazing, incredible business that impacts your life, the life of your family and the lives of your customers, and enjoy It. What a novel concept that is, right? Absolutely. Like, let's. Let's wake up in the morning on fire. Let's remember that fire in our belly that got us to start these businesses. Or if that fire is not there, let's shift gears and find where that fire is.

Yeah.

And I think that's really important to. To tie into that intuition that we have within us that I feel like there's something more and to accept it and to say, okay, if there's something more, what do I think it is? And giving yourself the space and the grace to find it. I think that's the thing is if we don't know the answer right away, we think, oh, this is just me being dissatisfied. And it's like, no, it's okay to acknowledge that you're not quite happy or content with where you are. What can I do to change that for myself? You have that power of choice, and we forget that we get to choose. You're never painted into a corner. It's funny because recently I had a conversation with my husband. We were making some. Some shifts and making some changes. And I said, it's funny. I thought I was painted into a corner. I forgot to look up and realize there's no walls. There's no walls. Especially when you run your own business. Like, you're never put into a corner. I think that's really powerful to remember.

Well, I think that you've struck on a really important point, that there are so many constructs that have been created over the hundreds and hundreds of years. Right. That sort of dictate to us what things are supposed to look like. Right. And there are very few people, really, who. Who step out of that and live sort of these anomalous. Anomalous. I'm not saying that. Right. But we're lives.

Well, we follow you. Yeah.

The anomaly. And you know, because. And I know that comes from our innate need to be a part of the tribe and not be, you know, ostracized and all the things that's all very innate in us. But talk about being able to shift gears. One of the themes I'm hearing in you, and you called it an abundance mindset. One of the things I know I've said to myself and I've talked to other clients about is, is that we either, you know, I was at Carol Dweck, who taught us the mindset book.

Yes.

But we either, like, we either believe all things are possible or we don't. Right. There's this belief inside are that initiation of reinventing Something that, you know, like I had this conversation with my son not long ago. I've always. Even when things are awful, I've always just had this belief like things are going to be okay. It's going to be okay.

Yes. And that we're going to make it through.

Yeah. And that belief allows me to probably take some risks that maybe other people don't feel as comfortable doing. And so what I'm always trying to figure out is how to help people see that your experience in your life, that your joy, that your contentment, that your fulfillment is the priority. It's not, especially for women. Because, I mean, you very well had said, I'll just keep it till the kids go to school and then we'll figure something else out.

Oh, it's so easy. It's so easy to blame everything on our kids. Right. Those kinds of things. I can't do these things because of my kids.

Right.

We have to tie a lot of that mom guilt into it.

Yeah.

And that's.

And women believe that. Like, it's the response.

We do. Yes.

The responsible thing to do is to keep business. It's paying the bills. Who am I to think that I should pursue my dream? Right. I have all these other people.

Right.

Yeah. I actually had a coaching conversation. This was right after I got laid off and I started my business, and I was about eight months in. I probably scratched together $4,000.

Right.

It wasn't going great. And I was in my mast coach training. And that was the thought I was thinking is that it's irresponsible for me to pursue my own dreams.

That's an easy belief to fall into.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think it's just perpetuated socially.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So let's talk about on purpose and let's talk about what you really identify as the. I don't know, what do you call them? Like the core tenants of living an extraordinary life on purpose.

Yes.

You'd like to share with us?

Well, honestly, the entire book is about the power of choice. Every chapter is about a choice that we can make. And really understanding that it is by choosing that we create an extraordinary life for ourselves. Our lives have that ability to be extraordinary. And so it really is. And I walk you through. There are four sections of the book. Reflection, projection, action and alteration. And we walk through those. Those four steps to really understand and to help you recognize and realize the choices that you do have. I think so often we're so busy chasing busy that we forget that we have the power of Choice. So there's things like choosing to disrupt your patterns, looking at your past and choosing to change it, to shift it. We can look at our past also and use those breadcrumbs to remind us of what we're capable of. Sometimes you have to see how far you've come to know how far you can go. Right. That you talked about that just a moment ago. We can choose our identity. We can choose how we identify ourselves. I think this is a really big thing for women, especially women CEOs. Stepping in fully into our expertise and owning that with no fear of what other people are going to think or letting go of that imposter syndrome. Choosing how we identify ourselves is incredibly important. But we often wait for someone else to identify us as an expert or as something of value. Right. Why can't we choose that for ourselves? Choosing to see your future, choosing to find your focus. A lot of people hide behind that identity of multi passionate. I'm a multi passionate person, which is just a way of saying I can't focus. And then if I focus, I might actually have to. Yeah, I can't make up my mind. And choosing to focus is a big one. Choosing to invest in yourself, choosing to release your fears, choosing to create the time, that's a big one. Because, you know, people love to blame time. And it's not choosing to find the time, it's choosing to create it. Because we are the creators of our time. We're the owners of our time. And then choosing to give grace. All of those are choices we make on a regular basis that define us, that tell us what we're capable of, that feed that little voice in our head, whether it's the kind voice of our intuition or the angry voice of our limiting beliefs, all of those things inform how we feel about our world. Because it is your world and you make these choices that create that world around you. Choosing to choose is incredibly important. But oftentimes we choose not to choose. It's kind of a funny phrase, right? But we make a lot of choices without even recognizing that we're choosing those things.

Yeah, well, ultimately. Right. I think it's Gary Vee that says this. I think I've read him writing this or something. Right. That happiness is found in total accountability. If you accept total accountability for all of the circumstances of your life, you just take responsibility and accountability for them. That's where happiness is. Because as soon as you blame or justify or make excuses for, you are now obviously positioning yourself as a victim to your circumstance. But that also begets Misery and suffering and all the other things that go with that. Right.

It's so true. Having that victim stance of the universe is against me or I never have enough time. If you take accountability for how you're choosing those things to work for you, then you're going to be happier because you have ownership over what you're doing and what your world looks like. And I think that's incredibly powerful. And I think sometimes women especially will kind of get riled up with the idea of control when we talk about what we can control versus what we can't. And there's this thing with women that we worry about being controlling and all that is is a worry about how we are perceived. We'll do anything to not be perceived as. I don't know if you. Wow, this language, but being a bitch, I mean, we'll do anything to not be seen as a bitch. We'll make ourselves small. Sometimes there's some people who are happy.

To be called that.

Have you met them? Yes, there are some of them. Yes, indeed.

I think they have sweatshirts. Yeah, but no, I know because it's such a negative label. It's just. It is, yeah. It's like saying all in one word, you're uncaring, mean, self serving, aggressive, awful, human. Right.

Well, and it comes down to again, that whole idea of how we want to choose to identify ourselves. It's. It's this whole idea, you know, with being a boss, right. We soften it. We say things like girl boss, lady boss, mompreneur, right? All those things to soften the word boss. What's wrong with just being the boss? But you know what the problem is with boss? This is one of the things I talk about in this book is I started to investigate why is it that women feel. I mean, we don't call men hunk boss, right? I mean, can we start that? That would be funny, right? Boss, boy boss. Like you would think that was ridiculous for Gary Vee to go on stage and talk about the fact he's a boy boss.

Right?

But the thing is, is as girls, we were taught that if we were overconfident, we were bossy, right? Boys are never called bossy, they're called overconfident. Girls are told they're bossy and they're redirected to play nice. So we have this whole fear of boss and bossiness because those go hand in hand. It's really pretty interesting when you start to choose to embrace your identity as a CEO, as a boss, the universe starts showing up for you in ways that you are projecting out. And I think that's what's amazing, is it really is your world that you created.

One of the exercises I have my clients do in the how to CEO program. The first things we do is we. We change on the zoom, call your name, and then we put comma, CEO just I make.

Oh, I like that.

Yeah. Just. Just to watch how their brain loses its mind.

Literally.

Right. Like, people are like.

Like, so nervous. Can I do this? Yeah.

I had a conversation with someone yesterday who is in the healing profession, and she talked about how it just took forever for her to really adopt that because they feel like they're contrasting. So all to say, right, that if you want to recreate who you are, how you experience the world, how other people experience you, it begins as. I love what you're saying. Right. It begins with a choice. And I love that you said you first have to choose to choose. If you like. I could imagine just right now, even I'm going to ask you what you sort of help people do, because I know you have a blueprint also that we want to talk about. But I can even see myself with my notepad writing down choices I haven't chosen. Right. Like, where there's a lot. Where am I still not choosing? I'm either ignoring, abdicating, hiding, tolerating. Right.

Oh, we tolerate a lot and tolerate a lot.

That's a choice. Right. But I'm not.

It doesn't feel like it's on purpose.

As you've said. It's. It's easy, it's. It's comfortable. Instead of.

Well, our brain. Our brain is designed to make choices without us thinking about it. I mean, it's. And that's a great thing. You know, we don't want to have to think about when we touch the hot stove. We don't have to think, wow, I should probably raise my hand up. Our brain makes that decision for us. Like, oh, I'm going to move my hand. Right. Or when we sneeze, we automatically shut our eyes and we cover our mouth. Because we've been trained to do that. We don't actively choose. Choose that our body just snaps into, okay, this is. We're making a choice here. And so it's a little bit of understanding how your brain works and then stopping that train, getting it off those tracks and saying, okay, I'm going to choose. Great. You can choose the things like getting my heart to beat, getting me to breathe, blinking my eyes, all those things, but really stopping and assessing and Figuring out. And that's why reflection is where we start this book. It's really about reflecting on, have you made choices? Where have you not made choices? Where have you just leaned in and said, well, this is just the pattern of my past. I have no choice because I don't have an education. I could have easily said, I've never taken a business course in my life. Not one single class in college on business. I could have said, well, there's no way I can do this. But I chose to ignore that. I chose to say, who cares? I'll figure it out, right? I got my MBA on the mean streets. That's not true. But it is, but sounds good, you know, it's all about how we want to see ourselves and view ourselves. And I think. I think it really comes down to choosing.

Okay, so for women listening who are now, I'm sure, as am I, like, oh, this is so interesting. What choices do I need to make on purpose? Like, what's the. Where do we start?

Well, we start with reflection. We do. We start by looking backwards so then we can move forward. What are the patterns of your past that you want to disrupt? What are the patterns of your past that you want to lean into? Your past is this amazing, you know, fertile ground. And so often we want to just shove it under the rug. We want to pretend like it's not there because there's some oozy hurt and there's some pain and there's. There's some trauma there. And it feels like you don't want to lift that bandage and take a look because it's kind of. It doesn't feel good. But when you lift the bandages, that air gets in. That's when healing starts. And I like to tell people that those shiny trophies of our past, the things we're really proud of, those are amazing. And those are great to hold up and to look at and say, oh, I can do these things. It is really pain that is the most fertile ground. It is regret that we can push against that stronger. I mean, we don't make the decision to lose the 10 pounds until the pants get too tight. We don't make the decision to leave work early until we have overworked ourselves to death and we have missed dinner with the kids again. Right? We push against pain so much stronger, so much harder than we push towards pleasure. And so starting with that reflection process, I think is incredibly important. And then we move into the projection. What is it I want? What do I think I really want in my future? And then we move into action. How am I going to do that? And then we move into alteration. What happens now when life happens, Right. And those are all four steps that we go through in the book. I also walk through these in the extraordinary life blueprint. Where it is. It's not difficult. And I think that's the thing that's so important for people to understand. I feel like that word purpose is. It could feel heavy, right? Like, oh, gosh, purpose is this big word. Living on purpose is not about changing who you are. It's rising up to become the best version of you. It's making these, I call them small, huge movements, simple to implement, easy to manage, but monumental in the impact they make in your daily life. And it doesn't have to be difficult. What I teach is not rocket science. You don't have to have a PhD. It's actually really, really simple steps to be able to live a life that feels purposeful, that feels meaningful, that feels extraordinary. I want more women to go to bed at night and go, gosh, I did good today. Yeah, it was a good day. And today was amazing. Yeah, right?

Yeah.

We don't end enough days like that.

Being asleep before your head hits the pillow. That's not. No.

Yes.

Yeah.

I love. I think that there's a powerful essence in what you're saying around knowing yourself. Like, you know, when you use the band aid example, that's a really powerful one because, you know, when we get injured physically, right. We just want to do everything to not feel the pain. And so when we go through those experiences also emotionally, we shut them off and we do. Yeah, that. That excavation of self awareness. I was actually listening to Interview the other day on npr, a woman who wrote a book, Insight. I know there's a tagline that goes with it, but she was talking about self awareness and she was saying that really, 9 to 10% of us really ever achieve true self awareness because we tend to ask ourselves the wrong questions. And what I love about what you said is. So she said that what we do is we tend to ask a lot of why. Why is this happening to me? Why did I end up here? And that just fosters more trapped, negative thinking. Whereas what. What did I learn from this? What could I do? How. What could I do with this next time?

What could I. Differently.

Yes. And that. Well, that's that piece that I think you're talking about too, when you're talking about even alterations, right? Like you get to a place, you try something that doesn't work instead of saying, why didn't it work? It's more like, oh, what did I learn? Yeah.

What did I get from that? Yeah. Let me give a quick example of how I've used that as a CEO. We had a shipment of our orders come in and my whole warehouse is jam packed full of. Full of pallets and boxes like it is. It's like that scene from Indiana Jones where they're putting the arc back there and it's just jam packed. And I go and I open up the first box and everything inside is ruined. It's like packed wrong. Every planner in there is not sellable. I open up box after box after box and they're all ruined. All of these, like thousands and thousands of products. And so I had to, just to make a long story short, we had to kind of Frankenstein all these books. This is several years ago. Had to redo everything. I spent three months working insane hours, seven days a week, 15 hour days, wearing myself out. The kids went straight from school to the warehouse, sat there. Where else? Why did these kinds of things helped out? And I got to the end of that season and I felt like the world's worst mom. I felt terrible. I was like, what did I do with my kids for the past three months? Nothing. Nothing. I worked the whole time. And that was something that was really hard to say out loud. And I had to say it out loud so my own ears could hear it. But that was when I made the decision that I was no longer working past 3 o' clock Monday through Thursday, and I was going to take Fridays off. And I have lived that life as a CEO since that moment. If I hadn't had that pain, if I hadn't stopped and thought to myself, world's worst mom. What did I do? What did I learn from this? I learned I didn't want to do that again.

Right.

And if I want to not do that again, I need to create stronger boundaries. So I use that pain of feeling like a terrible moment to push me to the life I want. And now I've been doing that for several years. And I love it. I'm so much happier for it. But I couldn't have gotten there if I didn't have that moment of pain.

Right. But you also captured the experience of the pain and used some reflection. Right. And made a choice.

Yes.

How you wanted to invent things and that, you know, it's interesting, right? Like not working past 3:00'. Clock. You socialize that in the world and people are like, what? How do you. What?

That's. Hold on what are you just dropping off? You work four day weeks. Yeah. How do you run your business? Is it a real business? I'm like making seven figures, baby. Yeah. Feel pretty good with that.

Yeah.

Money is real. Money's real. I mean, we're doing all right.

Yeah.

And probably more so.

More so because you're more fulfilled and more joy filled, right?

Yes. Well. And it really helped me choose. There's that word again. It helped me choose what's most important. What do I really want to spend my time doing if I'm getting off work every day at 3? What does that mean I got to get rid of? What does it mean that I'm no longer doing? And that is really important because we think we have to do all the things right and we don't. Every time opportunity comes knocking, we don't have to open up that door. It's not always our opportunity. Sometimes it's somebody else's opportunity and that's hard. As a business owner, we worry that, oh, this is going to pass me by and I'm going to miss out. Well, name my first book was Joy of Missing Out. There's some joy in choosing to miss out to say no to a lot of those things and choose to say yes to the life you want. And we do that with reflection, through pushing against the pain.

Yeah. And really learning, really paying attention to who you are and what you want for yourself and your life. I love that and I love the idea too that you could choose again. So you might decide.

Yes.

You know what, I'm actually going to stop working at one o' clock and I'm going to take Thursdays off. Like you could. You could choose again. Yes. It's not. I think a lot of people think a choice is a choice is a choice. Like, no, no, no, no.

It's not a crock pot. Set it and forget it. It's, you know, you can keep adjusting it.

Yeah, yeah.

Well. And that's why I talk to people about. It's really important to be regularly checking in with your goals, with that vision that you have for your company, with your North Star, your mission, your vision, your core values. Each quarter, just stopping and spending a little bit of time. It doesn't take much. Just stopping and reassessing and asking, is this still for me? And sometimes that answer is going to be no. You just did that recently with your podcast where it was like, is this really working for me? You can't make that decision if you're in the throes of busyness. If you don't stop, take a step back and go, am I feeling fulfilled by this? Am I feeling happy with what I'm doing here? And it's okay if the answer is sometimes no, because you have the power to choose. You have the power to reinvent. You have the power to transform, to evolve, to grow. I mean, think about who you are now versus who you were five, 10 years ago. You've changed. What's wrong with making the choice to change? You've done it in the past, so why can't you do it moving forward? So taking control of that and choosing to see that you have that ability, I think is really, really powerful for us as. Not just as CEOs, but us as women as a whole. Leaning into who we are, into our intuition and into our desires, and not feeling like taking care of our needs and our desires is selfish, because it's not. Because when we're taking care of those, those needs of ours, we're filling our cup and it overflows and it flows into everyone we come into contact with our clients, our customers, our kids, our spouses, our friends, our community, and we're able to give even more. And so it's never selfish to give to yourself, because when you give to yourself, you give more to others. You give the best version of you to others. And I think that's what I want women to realize, because we do. We have a lot of guilt. We have a lot of worry about how things are going to look, how things are going to appear. What are people going to think if I do things on my own terms? You know, when people say, what are you thinking? Leaving work at 3 o'?

Clock?

I tell them I'm thinking, yes, I'm leaving work at 3 o'. Clock. You know, I'm going home with my mom. Hat on. Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't, that doesn't bother me. Other people questioning my choices doesn't mean my choices are wrong. It just means that maybe they're questioning their own choices. And that has no bearing on me. I cannot control what other people think, feel, believe about me. All I can control is what I think, feel and believe about myself, which.

You have to pay attention to. And then you can make those choices on purpose. Right. Really? Your own wisdom. Wisdom to listen to. Okay, so tell us about the Extraordinary Life Blueprint and how to get your book and where to go and do all the things.

Yes. Well, what I'm excited about with the Extraordinary Life Blueprint is it's the tagline for it is a paint by number system to set up your year for success. And it's a course that I have created. It's a 14 day course that's designed to be simple for you to implement so you can really set up your year for success. And it really mimics what we talk about in the book. It allows you to dive deeper into it. And what I love about it is I've created it so that it is free if you pre order the book. So as my thank you for pre ordering the book, you get this course for free. So after, after, I think it's September 30th, the course is going to be, we're going to be charging for it because it's a, it's an excellent program. I'm really excited about it. But as my thank you for women pre ordering the book and supporting me, supporting the message. And that's how we get the word out there about books like this. This is what tells Amazon to showcase the book. This is what tells people like Barnes and Noble to put the book at the front table, move aside all those men's books and put these women's books in front. It's through the pre orders. And so that's a wonderful way to support women CEOs, women authors. And so as my thank you, I am giving you this course so you can find out about it@tanyadalton.com ELB for extraordinary life Blueprint Perfect. But yeah, I'm really excited. I love for people to take action. I never want someone to listen to an episode with me or close the COVID of a book and feel like, okay, great, now what? I want them to feel like, all right, I know what I need to do to take action and then to go and do it. That's what I think is exciting. Like when I talk to you about the podcast and you're like, here's my ideas for seasons, I'm like, this is what I love. This makes me happy. So that's my way of making that happen.

I love it. And you guys, Tanya is such a vast.

Cauldron. Is that the right word? But you just have such incredible insights and wisdom to share with people. And so connecting with Tanya, going to her website, getting involved in the work that she does in the world, buying her book so that you can get her course is an invaluable investment. So I can't stress enough how much I'll be doing it.

How early. When can I pre order this book? When does the book go on sale?

The pre order the book is on sale now. Oh, the pre order is available right now. The pre orders are right now. So. And like right now and then the pre order period ends. You know, when the book comes out. That's considered. Then the book is launched.

But fair enough.

Yeah. So yes, go now.

That's.

It's anywhere, really. Books are. Yeah, go find it on Amazon too.

Can I buy the book on Amazon?

Yes, Amazon, Barnes and Noble. I don't know if it's on target.com just yet. Indie Books, a bookshop, which is a great way to support independent bookstores as well. All of those work.

Okay, one more time.

The title is On Purpose. The Busy Woman's Guide to an Extraordinary Life of Meaning and Success.

Brilliant.

And that's what I want. I want women to have an extraordinary life. So thank you so much for the kind words.

Well, thank you. You are as well. Chris, you are as well.

Well, thank you for being here. It was lovely to chat with you and I'm super excited to share your work with everyone. Go get the book and make some choices.

Maybe just one today.

One new choice, just to start.

I love the idea of that.

Yeah.

Okay. All you need is one little step.

Have a good day.