The Question Every Successful Woman Eventually Asks

Hey. Hey. Welcome to.

Leadership is Feminine. Hey, you know what's interesting is I recorded a lot of the podcasts that you've been listening to a while ago as I've been working on some ideas and creating some things. And so what's coming up here on the podcast? So for the next four weeks, I'm going to be featuring live interviews that I did, coaching calls with women who volunteered to come on live and be a part of the podcast. And I'm super excited to share those conversations with you. I think you're going to find that they're a combination of tactical ideas and then several of them we really talk pretty significantly about not just the, the problem they presented with. Right. Like, this is the thing I'm working on, but more so why is this coming up for you now? Why is this an issue for you now? And how does not solving that actually perpetuate the issue for you? Going on and on and on and on. And really, like, to the point of one of the women that I talked to was quite moving for her because I asked her some questions that she really either didn't, hadn't thought about or didn't really want to think about. And so I'm just really excited to share these conversations with you. I know that, you know, I don't, I don't run a huge business in terms of the practice that I have. I have never had aspirations to have thousands and thousands of people in my programs. My work, I find, is much more intimate. I like to have connection with all of the women that I work with. But I know that what that means is there's a lot of you that listen to the podcast, and that's never going to be something that we'll do together. Right. Like, for whatever reason, I would love it if you would like to work with me. And I think that if that's been something that you've had on your list, I mean, one of the women I talked to through this exercise has been listening to my podcast for eight years. I think we can make really great things happen for you when we work together personally. So I, I wanted to share with you, you know, what, what this looks like. A little behind the scenes, a little behind the curtain. There's a lot of noise around coaching right now, and that's fine. It happens in every, in every industry and every practice, everything people do there. We go through different levels of scrutiny and then also different sort of leveling up expectations. And coaching in general had just a huge mad influx of people into it over the last 10 years. And I've been doing, I've been studying coaching since 1994. So I do consider myself a little OG here in this life coaching space. And I just integrated all of my experience working with, with leaders into what I already know. So I stand very confidently in the work that I do. I think all the noise out in the world about coaching can go on. I'm over here doing my work and feeling really good about the work that I do with my clients. But I wanted to give you a snippet of what goes on in the inside, and I also wanted to do that because I've really made some significant changes in my portfolio, if you will, how I will be going forward working with clients. And I'm going to talk more about that in an episode that you'll be getting in a few weeks. But I will give you some insight right now. For years, you know, the, the sort of, the joke and the ongoing kind of refrain is that I help, you know, people figure out how to deal with Rhonda and accounting, right? Like, I've got this person on the team, she's not doing her job. Please help me figure out what to do with her. And listen, there isn't any person on the team that you're struggling with that I know I can't help you figure out how to work, how to deal with her and figure it out or him or whatever. But, you know, after doing this for so many years, there's, there's a little secret that you need to understand, and that is that it has nothing to do with Rhonda and it has nothing to do with your team and has nothing to do with accounting, and it has nothing to do with their behavior. Really, the challenges that you face as someone who's leading a business and leading a life has everything to do with what you think people should be doing and what they're not or what people are doing and you think they shouldn't be doing and what you make all that mean and why it's hard for you. So what if Rhonda and accounting's not doing your job? Why is that a problem for you? And why don't you just address it? Why don't you just handle it? That's the work we work on. So what if you aren't making the money that you want in your business? So what if you can't hire the right person for the job that you want? So what if you keep firing people every time you hire them? So what? Like, okay, so the question isn't really, how do I deal with Rhonda and accounting? It's how do I become the woman who's not so fricking affected and so suffers so much when people I hire don't do the things that I think they should or do things I think they shouldn't? You become that version of you. You're unstoppable. But that's actually quite a bit of internal personal transformation. And I just don't think not most people are interested in that. I really don't. I think. I think most people just want this. The quick answer of how do they make Rhonda be different? And I know that you can't make Rhonda be different, but what you can do is decide who you want to be. And for the woman who does that, she's. She's ready, and she's the woman who walks the path of the Sage. And what I mean by that is that this is a conversation I had with my coach that was so fascinating, is that, you know, the women who end up working with me in my Sage program are really unique, powerful, interesting collective of women. And she said to me, do you think that the women who have ended up working with you in your Sage program had to go through the process of building a business and being the CEO of their business in order to become and be and step into this Sage space? And so we had this really deep kind of conversation about it, because I'm like, yeah, I think that's actually really true, because I think that women who ultimately end up working with me and Sage have this innate knowing and curiosity that there's more than just operational details of a business. And I also think there are people who create companies who really. That is, their primary focus is the operational details of the business, and they don't necessarily correlate the growth of the business to the growth of themselves. It's not. I don't say that even in judgment. I just say that's just really the truth. Like, the business is a vessel. The business is here to make money. How do I maximize the business? That's what I want, and that's great. But those are not women who view themselves as people who have something more to give and offer and to be of service in a different way, and that their own growth and evolution positions themselves to do that. Those are the women who are inherently intrigued by what I do in sage. And so over the past month and a half or so, we have really pivoted, and we no longer offer any of the signature programs. I've Been building and creating for the last seven, eight years. So Lead for Women has been retired. How to CEO was retired some time ago. The advisory, which was my ongoing coaching program, is no longer. Slowly but surely the elements that I have been. The offers that I have had that have been about focusing on helping you be better with dealing with your team are no longer featured in the work that I do. I've made a tool for those of you who really do like to get, like, quick answers, because I get it. I want one. I am a ChatGPT disciple. I use ChatGPT for everything. I don't know why anybody wouldn't. ChatGPT has become my best brainstorming partner, my best informant. My chatgpt has helped me write white papers and do research. I've done all sorts of really, really cool things. I do it every day. And so through that work, I thought, gosh, I wish there was a way to take all of the work that I've ever created in my life and put it into a knowledge base and. And let my clients have a Chris GPT.

Where it's just built on my content. It's not built on generalized leadership, team managing content, just my stuff. And I'm happy to report that exists. And I created it and it is now available. And I can't stand how excited I am to be able to tell you about it. And so we're making that available to you right now. If you go to the Visionary CEO website, you'll see a little bubble that says, chat with Chris GPT. And you can go in there and you can do a couple of messages, and then if you want to continue, it's $27 a month, y'. All. And for $27 a month, you. You get access to every single piece of content I've ever created, all my programs, all of how to CEO, all of lead, all of my podcasts, all of my books, all of my videos. Everything has been loaded. And so then when you ask a question, you don't have to go look for the video. You just ask the question. It pulls directly from my content. And so one of my clients just joined it this morning, and she's like, oh, my God, this is so. She's so excited about it. So I just want to share with you that that is available to you, and it's super easy to access. You can just go to the Visionary CEO and you're going to see a little bubble. Just click on the bubble and start the conversation. And if you want to join for $27, that's our founding rate, founders rate. I don't know if we'll change it or not, but right now it's, I think, really reasonable given the access that you have. And it's really also kind of weird and creepy because you can press the Play button button and it'll play a voice. And while the voice is not exactly my voice, it has all my intonations and inflections, which is kind of odd, but it doesn't sound like me all the way yet. But it is kind of like having your own little personal podcast based on your questions. So, so this, the inter, this sort of inter Middle podcast is about telling you that the next four, four podcasts are going to be coaching calls for from women who signed up who are podcast listeners who wanted to have coaching with me. So I'm super excited to share that. I also wanted you to know about Chris GPT, and if you're interested in that, just go to the visionary CEO. You'll see it on the homepage. And I wanted to really help you understand the, the, the direction that the work I do is going. And so I'll say a couple of final things here. I've written a few things that I have shared with my subscribers. So if you're on my mailing list, you're already getting a little bit of this. But I recognize that there is a population of women. It's not all women that are in this sort of area. And I don't think age is necessarily a factor, although I am finding it to be. But that's probably because of who I am as well. But women who have reached certain levels of success in their business.

Who are generationally the first women that they've really known who have achieved the level of success that they've achieved through their own business, they are finding this place that they are in now where, yeah, I mean, the business is operating, the success is there, the team is doing okay. The team could always be better. Sure, I have some team issues. Every now and then I need to figure out how to develop my managers. That's probably my next big step, which we've been working on with our clients as well. And, and, you know, but I'm just kind of, I don't know, bored, restless, anxious, uncomfortable. Is this it? What would I do if I don't have, like, I don't know, I really want to run this business anymore, but what am I going to do if I don't have this business? And if I keep it too long, do, do I run the risk of Messing it up. And there's some truth to that. You can outlive your vision, and that vision isn't necessarily meant to be yours forever. Some. For some of us, it is, but for some of us, it isn't. And because we don't have a lot of modeling, because we don't have a lot of people in our lives who, especially women who we've watched go through this, right? And even for women who have sat at the C suite, at the helm, right, you've been at the helm of your. Of your work. You've hit that pinnacle. You've. You've hit the. The money, the team size, the. The customer impact, the. The level of growth within your own career. You've gotten to these places and you're not sure if this is what you really want anymore. You want to figure out what's beyond the CEO, what's beyond the helm. You've done this for a long time. You've reached these moments of success. You've built the business, and mostly it's doing okay, but you're still a little hyper, involved in some of the operations. And is that because you need to be, or because you don't know what else to do with yourself, or is it because you're afraid if you aren't, it'll fall apart? And so I've been talking with my clients about what is beyond the CEO role for you. What do we need to look at that you're not. I've been talking with my clients about how to step into the consultancy or advisory role of your own business. And what does that look like? And how do we. How do we step away from something that has been the thing that we have used to define ourselves for so long? And so I've really, I've cultivated something that I'm. I'm calling the path of the Sage era, right? Beyond the CEO. These are really the things that I've watched and see in women that we have to be willing to investigate in order to get to that next step. Is the business ready? Am I ready? What are the lies I keep telling myself that keep me here? What do I want in my future? And my lack of clarity, how is that affecting me? Do you play? Do you try? Do you explore? Are you willing? And again, as I said before, I believe there are some folks on the planet who just. That's not their jam. They don't really want to do that. They don't want to figure out, they don't want to explore, they don't want to poke at their Wisdom, Right. But I have always believed that my wisdom craves new palettes. She craves new territory so that she can reveal herself to me so that I can remember her. And those are the women that I want to invite into my world. So one of the advantages of working with me in my visionary Sage program is, of course, because of the 30 plus years that I've spent in business, leading, managing, coaching, advising is, you know, there's not going to be anything that comes up in your business that's not going to be solvable. But my work, my legacy, my hope is that what I do with my clients isn't just about tactical efficiency in your operations, but it's that you really blossom beyond where you are. Because the other thing that's very true is that especially if you're in your 50s, your late 40s, your 50s, you're looking at a lot of these questions that I know I've just pondered. And you still have a whole life to live, mama. But you can't go back to the version that you were when you wanted to start this business and ask her what you're supposed to do. Now we have to get to know the version of you that is today. Who is she? And I think there's a lot of us who don't really know what this person today is truly, truly desirous of. Not a lot of materialistic ways, because most of the women I work with are very well resourced. In fact, being well resourced can be debilitating, paralyzing, too many options. So you're going to start hearing me talk more about, you know, moving beyond the CEO, stepping into your Sage era. And I'm going to host a live event where I'm going to introduce all of this and spend two days with women who are interested. We'll be in Sonoma, California, August 18th and 19th at a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful inn in Sonoma. We will meet in a room called the Living Room, which is absolutely fantastic. And I would love to invite you if what I'm saying to you is dropping in and it's a conversation you want to have, and it's a conversation you find is hard to find, do have that there aren't other women in your circle who are having this kind of a conversation. Maybe they're talking about selling their business, maybe they're talking about their families. Maybe they're talking about, you know, the cars they want to buy or the, you know, there's. All of us go through all these different phases of our lives. This woman is, is seeking Substantive, rich wisdom. And I think for myself, that has always been the case. I've always sort of struggled with tertiary basic human interaction. And so I'll prefer to isolate than have to put so much effort into connecting. And so I know that one of the reasons I've curated the work that I do in Sage is for personally to call in the women that are these women who have. Have a level of authenticity and depth that is rare. So we did open up a landing page where you can put your name in. If you're interested in learning more about the live event, just go to the visionary CEO beyondCEO, that's thevisionary CEO beyond CEO. And you can just add your name and we will send you more details on how we're going about registering people for the event in Sonoma. But if you've thought about working with me and you're not really sure, maybe you're not ready to make the commitment to do a full year. I understand. Join me for two days. Let's see where we go. Yeah. So listen, one of my clients said to me once that she really loves how much and how much I'm willing to change, how much I'm willing to end things, to begin new things. And, you know, I don't. I. I don't see myself from the outside. I only see what's going on on the inside. And I a tendency to learn my lessons quickly, which is why once I've built something, I'm sort of like, okay, now I'm gonna go build something else. Because as a visionary, I can outstay my vision, which I did do. I stayed too long in the lead era of my business, and I am now. I needed to close the door in order to fully embrace what is beyond the CEO for you and for me. So I hope I get to traverse with you here as we go forward. I'll talk to you soon.

Hey there, gorgeous. Wouldn't it be so cool if we could have a conversation together? I'd love to invite you you to join me for beyond the CEO in August in Sonoma. Just go to TheVisionary CEO BeyondCEO, that's TheVisionary CEO BeyondCEO. Add your name, and I will send you all the details. It's gonna be so amazing. I hope you'll join.