143: Unlocking Your Potential By Thinking Big Enough with Aileen Paszek

Andrea Liebross: Welcome to the Time to Level Up Podcast. I'm your host, Andrea Liebross. Each week, I focus on the systems, strategy, and big thinking you need to CEO your business and life to the next level. Are you ready? Let's go.

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the Time to Level Up Podcast. How are you doing today? What's happening? I hope you're having a great day. I'm wearing a very fun shirt that I just got from the Nordstrom anniversary sale and it's making me feel excited and summery. I hope you're feeling summery and excited too.

Today what I want to do is I want you to think about something, a decision that you maybe have been debating for a very long time. Maybe you've made the decision and you've taken the leap or maybe you haven't but today's guest is a client of mine, Aileen Paszek, and she had to decide after being at her employer for 19 years and enjoying it, really enjoying it, she made the decision to leave and to start her own business in her 40s.

She started that business about 18 months before she and I met. We met via a mutual friend so it was a fun way to meet. She realized that maybe I could help her. Really, her business was booming. She had clients. She was profitable but really take her business to the next level and help her with mindset and systems so that she could have more freedom, more time freedom, money freedom, brain power freedom.

What's interesting is that what Aileen does is that she is a coach, she coaches people who are in the job market looking for their next opportunity, I'll let her explain that in a better way. She's a coach. She's got her own coaching set of skills, yet she realized that she needed a coach to get her to that next level because she was getting in her own way and wasn't really thinking enough about the what-if scenarios: what if I did this? How could I make this possible? Why not?

I hope you enjoy this discussion that I'm having with her. It's really just another example of thinking big. She wasn't thinking small but she wasn't thinking big enough. Notice that theme throughout our conversation today and see if you can apply some of what she is talking about to yourself. How does what she's talking about apply to you? This is a coaching skill, my friends, taking other people's coaching or other people's experiences, applying it to yourself, and using it to help you grow. Sit back, buckle up, and listen in to my conversation with Aileen.

Hey, Time to Level Up listeners. Welcome back to the podcast. I am thrilled today to have one of my favorite people that I really haven't known for very long but I do feel like I have known her for a very long time for some reason, just like that's the way it goes, Aileen, this is my client and friend, Aileen. I'm just going to have her introduce herself. I think that's just the easiest thing so let's do it.

Aileen Paszek: Thank you, Andrea. I feel the same way. You know how the universe works sometimes that all of a sudden, you get introduced to someone and you're like, “We're really connecting very quickly.”

Andrea Liebross: We are, yes.

Aileen Paszek: My name is Aileen Paszek and I live in Northfield, Illinois, which is a small suburbian enclave north of Chicago. I live with my husband Chris and my five children who range in age from 16 down to 6 and our crazy golden retriever dog. I recently launched, last year 2022, my own business, it's called Joblink.

What I do is I support and coach job seekers who are in transition through the tactical pieces of the job search but also the strategic pieces around mindset, confidence, and really connecting to their true purpose.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah. So fun. It's interesting, Aileen and I met because, I mean this is a good little story in itself so I have a friend Terese, Terese you need to be listening to this, and I see Terese often and she always said to me, “You need to meet my cousin Aileen. I'm going to connect you. I'm going to do it.”

Then finally one day, she did. Aileen and I just set up a Zoom call or whatever. We had a call, she's like, “You need to meet Aileen. She's a real firecracker like you.” We were just talking and I was telling her what I did and then all of a sudden, Aileen's like, “Wait, what do you do? I think we might need this.”

You never know what's going to happen when you meet someone, it's so true. Aileen's business started, like you said, in 2022 and when we met, you were going like it was happening.

Aileen Paszek: Yeah, it was happening. I had my LLC created about eight years ago. I was working at Deloitte at the time and I decided, as I normally do, that I wanted to do something else on top of my day job. I just wasn't challenged enough so I decided to do the job search coaching on the side, very much a side gig.

I set up the LLC and I started taking clients just simply through word-of-mouth referrals. Again, a couple of hours a week max. Then I started doing some public speaking at local events that were geared toward career-changing and in particular, women and so forth.

I did that but I never really thought about doing it full time. I just always thought, “Well, I need the benefits. I had the golden handcuffs at Deloitte.

Andrea Liebross: How many years were the golden handcuffs on?

Aileen Paszek: The golden handcuffs were on for about 19 and a half years. Long time. I spent the majority of my career at Deloitte and I must say, it was an amazing run, such a terrific company, and I learned so much while I was there. I always recommend Deloitte to anyone who is looking at Big Four Consulting. But I had always done it, dabbled in it but I always had that fear of making the leap into doing something on my own.

Andrea Liebross: Okay. So then you finally did. What made you do it?

Aileen Paszek: Well, 19 years in at Deloitte, I had maxed out all of the internal roles that I was transitioning to. The majority of the time, I was in talent roles. I started in talent acquisition and I did recruiting, worked my way up for maybe about 10 years. Then there was a little group at Deloitte called Transition Assistance and there were only five coaches.

It was very unique. This is one of the things that I tell people on the market. Deloitte is one of the only firms that does this. When they let people go, not for cause certainly but for market conditions let's say, they provide coaching for free for up to a year for each person individually to help them land on their feet.

I had helped and supported this group when they had an uptick during the last downturn 10 years or so ago and I loved it. I just loved the coaching. I loved helping people navigate the job market so I tried, I begged, borrowed, and stole my way into that group because everybody loves working with them.

I finally got a job in that area and I did it for about seven and a half years, developed all of my skills, tools, and relationships there, and then I just felt like I was tapped out. I felt like I was as challenged as I could be in that role. I did it for a while. It was very difficult but I made the decision to leave Deloitte.

I went to an HR consulting firm for a short period of time. I tried my hand at consulting. It was good but I just made up my mind like, “I just want to be my own boss.” That was a little over a year ago.

Andrea Liebross: Okay. That's interesting because I think people really do get to the place where they just say, “I want to be my own boss.” That is a common theme I hear. There's nothing really wrong, again, it's like nothing's gone wrong, there's nothing wrong with what you were doing but you just wanted to be your own boss and that's just the way it is. Now you're your own boss. What has happened since you have become your own boss?

Aileen Paszek: It's been a wild ride in many ways. The hardest part was making the decision to quit my last job and go off on my own because it's so scary. A lot of the clients that I coach who are in transition that are contemplating entrepreneurship, I tell them my story.

I said, “It's certainly not an easy decision. It's very risky like any entrepreneur would say. But when you get to a point where you know you want to be your own boss and you have those skills and expertise to really offer value on your own, you just have to take that leap.”

Andrea Liebross: You just gotta do it. To think big, in the spirit of thinking big, you gotta think big and take the leap. I think when you do start your own business, it really is a leap, it's not just a baby step. It's a leap. You honestly don't even know what you're leaping into.

Even if you have an inkling of maybe what you're going to be jumping into, you don't know how fast those things will actually happen. I think what's happened to you, you've had the good problem of growing super fast. What do you think some of the hardest challenges that you have faced have been over the last say six months?

Aileen Paszek: I would say over the last six months, it's been managing my own time as the CEO of my business. Six months ago, I was a team of one, me, and so when you're launching your own business, you take what you can get, at least I did.

Andrea Liebross: Right. When you and I met, you were taking what you could get and she’s still a team of one.

Aileen Paszek: I was still a team of one. Enter Andrea.

Andrea Liebross: Enter Andrea. Stage right.

Aileen Paszek: And you challenged me to think big, not to sound too cheesy. But I started to say that some of the things that I'm doing are a little bit repetitive, I'm not really energized by them, and then you introduced the novel idea of, “Well, why don't you outsource them or why don't you hire some freelancers who can do that part for you?”

In my case, at that point was the resume writing which is a huge part of my business. I just had been doing it for so long, I could do it in my sleep. It wasn't energizing me, it was draining me, and it also took a lot of time away from the coaching. The biggest thing that happened over the last six months is I hired three contract resume writers.

Andrea Liebross: That's huge. This is an example of Aileen is more than capable of doing the resume writing, she can do it in her sleep so it's easy, it's not hard but it wasn't filling her up. It also is something, no matter how easy or hard it is, it is time-consuming. It's interesting that a lot of times, we just don't see, “Well, I could hire someone else to do this but I can still do it.”

You keep falling back of like, “I'm capable. It's not like this is hard for me.” But what happens or what have you found now that you've hired three, so since April, we're recording this in July, so since April, Aileen has hired three resume writers, what has that allowed you to do? What's been possible?

Aileen Paszek: Well, it's allowed me a lot more work-life balance just for myself, which is important for me. It's freed up my time for me to focus on the things that I enjoy more such as the actual interactive coaching with the clients and it's allowed me to set up some systems for my business, which I needed.

I've seen really big growth. You think that hiring people, you're worried about the money, the revenue, and what you're going to pay for them, but I've actually seen more growth because it freed up my time.

Andrea Liebross: It's interesting, going back to like I say, there are your three most valuable resources: time, money, brain power, and relationships are a resource but they're also the things that we want freedom in too. By hiring, you've created time freedom, you've created money freedom, you've created brain space freedom, you've actually created more relationship freedom in a sense too because you're interacting more or in a way that you want to interact with your clients.

You're enjoying your relationships with your clients more because you're doing what you want to do with them versus just the resume writing. Even though you've spent resources to bring these people on, it's more than paid off.

Aileen Paszek: Absolutely, no question, and I have a little team. They're not full-time employees but we meet once a week and collaborate and brainstorm. It's nice to work on a small team.

Andrea Liebross: It's fun, isn't it?

Aileen Paszek: Yeah.

Andrea Liebross: Okay, tell me about the systems and processes that you've put in place because you were doing everything when we met originally. Every day was a new day, every email was a new email, every client was a new client. Aileen didn't really have templates or processes, just none of that was there, which nothing's wrong with that, again, nothing's wrong but it wasn't freeing, it was time-consuming. It sucked the energy out of you.

Aileen Paszek: Yeah. I was trying to keep track of all of my clients either through email, which is ridiculous, or through an Excel spreadsheet. The two main systems that I've implemented so far are Trello. I use Trello to manage the resume projects. Trello has been amazing in terms of me communicating with my resume writers, project management, status, and so forth.

The second key tool for me was Dubsado which is the CRM tool, which I still needed a little bit of support [implementing] it. But it's really helped me in particular with invoicing and getting people to pay on time.

Andrea Liebross: Oh, look at that, imagine that. How have you restructured your offers? What thinking did you have to employ, or did I encourage you to employ, to make that happen? How did you [inaudible]?

Aileen Paszek: You really helped me with elevating or increasing, I should say, my pricing because when I first started, and again, when you're a new business owner and you're trying to develop new business, you tend to have a scarcity mindset like take what I can get, I just need the business, and it's hard to shift from that scarcity mindset to that “Hey, I'm worth it” mindset or my skills and what I offer is this valuable.

You helped me to really level up my pricing but also think through the way that I offer packages to individuals. Because one recent change for me is with job seekers, I was asking them to pay one flat fee upfront or over a period of time like three months is really the standard and then I realized that if I got them to do like a monthly payment plan, it was just more digestible.

It's easier for people to think, “Okay, I can pay it out over a number of months versus all up front,” and it's still the same amount of money so that was helpful.

Andrea Liebross: It's like if you think about systems, first, Aileen needed to do have a decision-making system in a sense. She started making decisions in a different way. She started making decisions, and maybe I'm wrong but you started really thinking more, “How can I scale this? How can this be sustainable? How do I get what I want out of my business?” That was the framework in which you started to make decisions.

I call it a decision-making system and then you really changed your offer system and how you made offers, what they were, how you were delivering your services, so that system all changed, and then you changed in a sense also your sales system because I think I don't think you changed that up, how you're doing your consults, how people are coming into your funnel, all of that.

Really, all of these systems put together are team systems, all of these systems are what upgraded you or up-leveled you and helped increase time, money, and the space to think. It's really hard to do that on our own. I find it hard to do it on my own.

Aileen Paszek: Yes, it is. Well, and as a coach, it's imperative for me to also have a coach. It's like when you're a therapist, you also need your own therapist because sometimes you don't necessarily take your own advice so I think you and all of the folks that are in the mastermind that I've met, we really challenge each other to think bigger and like, “Why couldn't this happen?”

Andrea Liebross: Right. Why couldn't it happen?

Aileen Paszek: Yeah. Why couldn't this happen? What's standing in your way? Identify the obstacle which is usually our own thought processes or our own thoughts and the [inaudible] that are associated with those thoughts.

The other piece is taking action and I tell my clients that all the time. When they're considering their next move professionally and they have a couple of target jobs or target companies in mind, then they get stuck. They're like, “Okay, well, I know what I want to do but then what?”

Then they go round and round circles in their brain. I’m like, “You don't know what you don't know until you start exploring through talking to people at those target companies or talking to people that are in those target jobs and getting the action steps that you need to take to move the needle forward.” So many people get to this stuck stress as you would say. Then once they even take some of those mini action steps, then they feel so much better.

Andrea Liebross: Okay. It's like having a belief plan, an action plan, and a time plan, which is something I talk about a lot. What I find so fun about this is that what you're doing in your business as part of Joblink is helping people have a bigger belief in themselves that they don't have to stay in this job that they've been in for 19 years, that they can find something that they're more aligned with or feels more exciting to them.

You're helping them create that belief plan. You're helping them say, “Okay, go take these actions. Talk to these five people. Do whatever.” You got to take some action and it doesn't have to last, talk about time plan, this doesn't have to go on and on for two years.

You could find a new role in a very short amount of time if you've got the belief in the action. But yet when we do this for ourselves, when you're trying to do it for you as the new business seeker, we get in our own way.

Aileen Paszek: We get in our own way. We could talk to ourselves all day long and build ourselves up but for me in particular, and most people, I need that coaching from a third party who can see things from that perspective. It's a game-changer.

Andrea Liebross: Yes. Aileen is in my mastermind so this is a whole group of women business owners who have successful businesses, who are profitable. They're making money. They're on their way. Most of them, this isn't their first rodeo, they've had some other business in the past. What have you found most valuable about being inside that community?

Aileen Paszek: Oh, inside the mastermind community, I think it's just sharing the vulnerabilities and some of the roadblocks with one another and knowing that we're not on Earth. Everybody feels the same things.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah, variations on a theme.

Aileen Paszek: Yeah, variations on the same theme, and when you coach, and you say this on our meetings and our calls, when you coach one, you're really coaching all of us because typically, the themes are consistent. It's interesting to feed off one another on our calls because sometimes, people come into the calls really frustrated, upset, stuck, and others are like on a high. We can balance each other out and help one another in the group setting. So I find the group very valuable.

Andrea Liebross: I think it's interesting too because I always think, at least, I'm in my groups, I almost get more out of listening to other people's trials, tribulations, and then coaching that they're getting more valuable than my own in a sense. When I'm getting my own coaching, I feel like I'm much more problem-solving oriented but when I'm listening to other people get coached, it's helping me more even in the mindset piece because it's easier to see what's going through their mind than seeing what's going through your own mind.

Aileen Paszek: Totally, 100%, and you think, “Oh, why are they being so down on themselves? Wait a second, why are they putting the roadblocks up for themselves?” and then you're like, “Oh, gosh, I do that to myself even worse sometimes.”

Andrea Liebross: Yep. Actually, for you, this is true in our conversation here, mindset plus systems. You had to shift your mindset, not that you were never a big thinker, I would never say that about you, but this business, how do I get it to the place I want it to be? That was a shift in mindset and then it was a shift in putting more systems in place. Then also, I think you tweaked a little bit of who do you want to work with.

Aileen Paszek: Yes.

Andrea Liebross: Who do you want to work with?

Aileen Paszek: I got to a point, almost like a pivot point in my own business where I started to, not many, but I started to turn some potential clients away and say, “I'm not the right person for you,” and that felt pretty good because it was true but also I didn't feel like I was in that vulnerable desperate position where I just had to do whatever I could. That's very helpful.

Andrea Liebross: And the confidence piece of saying, I remember you had one client and you said to me, “I really feel like I've done a good job with this. I think I've delivered everything I said I was going to deliver but yet they're not happy it seems like. I don't know,” and then having the confidence to say to them, “Hey, this is the deal. This is what's gone on. This is how I can help you further,” but not taking on their stress.

I always say you have to be calm, cool, collected, confident but you also have to be compassionate to yourself, with yourself, and recognize, “Hey, this doesn't feel right, what can I do to help myself? Because you've had to get a little compassionate with yourself.

Aileen Paszek: Oh, yes. I think getting more compassionate with myself. But I think I've set good boundaries too.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah, you've been working on that. Tell us about the email at night. What happened to the email at night?

Aileen Paszek: Yeah. My calendar is only open to clients between about 8:00 and 3:00 central time, Chicago. I set that in stone nine months or so ago because I found that after 3:00 PM, my energy was absolutely sapped so I wouldn't have been great for my clients anyway. Plus it gave me the time to pick up my kids from school, which is really important for me right now at their ages.

Then I also really just stopped, if anybody was emailing me after those hours, for the most part, I don't respond. Plus, my clients don't need anything that quickly. There is that.

Andrea Liebross: But you did think they needed it all quickly.

Aileen Paszek: Yes, that's true. I think in the beginning with that scarcity mindset, I felt like I had to get back to them like that. Now, no. I'm a morning person so if somebody emails me about something at 7:00 PM, let's say, I don't get back to them until the following morning and quite frankly, I'm much in a better headspace in the morning to give them a better answer to what they’re asking for. That's worked for me.

Andrea Liebross: That's another example of thinking bigger and realizing what would the future Aileen who feels calm, cool, collected, confident, compassionate, how would she respond to someone. She wouldn't necessarily rush and respond to them when she's not in the best headspace. She would respond the next morning.

These are all mindset shifts that I see the business owners that are most successful, they make these mindset shifts and they actually put themselves in containers, I'll say, or positions where they get the support to help them do that. Because, again, we get stuck in our own heads.

Well, we're going to wrap up. Aileen, in two sentences, what are some tangible results or differences, changes you have seen since April? What do you think?

Aileen Paszek: Tangible results is I've had the best revenue months since starting my business.

Andrea Liebross: Yay!

Aileen Paszek: The first month I worked with you actually, I doubled my revenue. That was awesome. It was insane. I was like, “Oh, this is crazy.” I've been feeling more financially confident now I'm entering year two of the business. That's been huge for me.

The second was hiring a small team of people, three people to take the resume writing off my plate, which again, something that drained me and took a lot of time. Then the third is I think I've already in the past couple of months been evolving my business and really planning ahead working with you on the three-year plan, the one-year plan, the three-year plan, the 10-year plan, and then breaking it down into rocks, quarterly rocks and even smaller so that I can understand how I'm going to get there.

Ten years seems like a long way away. What kinds of things are you going to set up or think about now in order to get there?

Andrea Liebross: Yeah. What do we need to do now to fuel what we want in the future? That's big thinking too. Yes, I force everybody to think about 10 years from now, which usually what happens is that someone's like, “Okay, in 10 years from now, I'm going to be X-number years old, my kids are going to be this many years old, we might be living in the same house,” and then they stop.

Aileen Paszek: Yeah, exactly.

Andrea Liebross: I don't know. A lot of my clients maybe I don't even want to be working 10 years from now and even just admitting that is also tricky. But what do we need to do now and next year and three years from now in order to make that happen? I think that's really fun thinking.

I have so loved watching this evolve. We've only been working together for a handful of months but I've seen so much growth. It seems like you're enjoying it a lot more too.

Aileen Paszek: I am, because I'm thinking differently about everything. Thanks to you.

Andrea Liebross: Well, thank you. Thank you. My last question, how do you define, in your words, thinking big?

Aileen Paszek: It's being scared, when you think big, at least for me, I think most human beings, our fear is going to come up immediately. For me, the tension arises in my body like, “Oh, I could never do that,” or “I don't deserve that” when you think big. But what I've really learned from you is that the world is our oyster, it's just up to us to get over those fears and just do it. [Inaudible] happen is you learn from a couple of missteps or failures but why not just go for it?

Andrea Liebross: What's your favorite saying or what's your favorite Andrea saying? You told me what if.

Aileen Paszek: It’s like, “What if?” When you're listening to me and I'm talking through something, like an issue, problem, challenge, whatever it is, you'll be like, “But what if you do this?” and I'm like, “Wow, you're making it sound so easy but you're right. Why am I not doing that? Why am I not taking that step? It's fear.”

Andrea Liebross: It's fear. It's usually fear getting in the way but we're pushing past that or through it. It's always going to be there. Fear is always going to be there. It's not going away. But it's learning how to be almost like I picture sometimes when there's the paper, there's paper covering a door opening and you have to break through it, just push through it and getting better at not thinking about it so much.

Aileen Paszek: The true value of having a coach is that person almost pulls you through the door.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah. That's what you're doing. That's what you're doing with your clients.

Aileen Paszek: Exactly. Sometimes you just need that.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah. Well, this has been super fun. Thank you for coming on the Time to Level Up Podcast. I've loved having you.

Aileen Paszek: Thank you, Andrea. I loved being here.

Andrea Liebross: What if people want to find you? Where are they going to find you? We're going to put all the links in the show notes but where are they going to find you?

Aileen Paszek: The easiest way to find me is through my website, which is www.joblinkllc.com.

Andrea Liebross: And go follow Aileen on LinkedIn. She is an excellent example of LinkedIn goodness. I'm going to put that plug in there too.

Aileen Paszek: Sounds good.

Andrea Liebross: Alright, thanks so much.

Aileen Paszek: Alright, Andrea. Thank you.

Andrea Liebross: What if your results changed like Aileen’s? What if you doubled your income? What if you brought on a team? What if you recognized that really anything was possible? All of that is available to you, my friends. All of it's out there. It's just as available as it is to Aileen.

Aileen and I met just through a friend. When we first started talking to each other, I was definitely not thinking like, “Oh, this one could be a potential client.” It was not in my brain at all. But things happen and things happen for a reason. What if you listening to this podcast is happening for a reason? What if you listening to this podcast is as a tool for which you too realize what's possible for you? What if you listening to this podcast is a sign that you need to think bigger?

If it's any of those things that I just mentioned, please reach out. Please schedule a call with me. The call in and of itself, I always like to say, is worth $10,000. It's a call where I can help you start to think this way, start to see what's going on, and if we end up working together, great. If we don't, I'll still love you. No skin off my back or yours but it's worth it.

It's worth having someone else out there to help you explore what's going on in your brain, whether that's just for half an hour or ongoing, it doesn't matter. It's worth it. So reach out, DM me, go to the links in the show notes, or go to andreaslinks.com and book a call.

If you haven't gotten on the shethinksbigthebook.com and gotten on the Think Big Launch List, you need to go there because you can start reading She Thinks Big right now and you can also get yourself ready for a whole other slew of amazingness that's coming your way with the book launch. Alright, my friends, I will see you next week. Remember now is your time to level up. If it's not now, when is it? What are you waiting for? Let's do this. See you soon.

Hey, listening to podcasts is great. But you also have to do something to kick your business up a notch. You need to take some action, right? So go to andreaslinks.com and take the quiz. I guarantee you'll walk away knowing exactly what your next best step is to level up.