92: How Higher Accountability Helps You Find Freedom

You're listening to the Time to Level Up Podcast. I'm your host, business life coach, Andrea Liebross. I help women in business commit to their own growth personally and professionally. Each week, I'll bring you strategies to help you think clearly, gain confidence, make your time productive, turn every obstacle into an opportunity, and finally overcome the overwhelm so that you can make money and manage life. Let's create a plan so you have a profitable business, successful career, and best of all, live with unapologetic ambition. Are you ready to drop the drama and figure out the how in order to reach your goals? You're in the right place. It's Time to Level Up. Let's do this.

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the Time to Level Up Podcast. Hope you're having a good week. I am recording this bright and early on a Monday morning. It is Monday, this is the day I usually record podcasts. We got woken up early. My husband's on call, phone rang so I was awake and I decided to do what I call eat the frog which means doing the most-important thing of the day and something you probably have a little resistance to.

As much as I love recording podcasts, I'm going to be honest in that I don't love recording them in this little closet that I sit in. Hopefully, this closet situation will change in the next year but I know I got to get this done today and I'm prepared so I decided hey, there's no better time than the present to come down and record it. Eat the frog really means frogs leap away, they like to escape us, but if you capture it quickly, it can't escape.

I like to tell my clients to eat the frog, that means doing the thing first thing in the morning that you might have some resistance to, that you might keep pushing off and off and off and maybe eventually get to. So I would definitely record this today no matter what. But I decided let's just get it done now, so that is my eat-the-frog story for you.

Let's get to the point of what today is all about. It is about being part of a group, the importance of that, what it can offer you, and what it gives you that you can't really create alone. Let's face it, entrepreneurship, if you're an entrepreneur, is lonely, motherhood can be lonely, being single can be lonely, and sometimes, even marriage is lonely. I hate to break it to you if you are not married.

But I would never do anything else, I love the situation I'm in, being an entrepreneur, a mom, and married, but it can often feel like I'm running a race that nobody else even knows is happening. Does that happen to you? Do you feel like sometimes you're running a race that no one else even knows is happening?

While you can talk to your family, most family members don't really get it because they're in the story with you. Forget it if you talk to them about business or entrepreneurship, they really don't get it. You can talk to your girlfriends about being a mom, being single, or being married but that can also just turn into a bunch of commiserating because, again, they're just in the story with you and their role is to support you.

An entrepreneur, a mom, a married woman, a single mom, we all can feel like we are jumping off a cliff and building a plane on the way down—I'm full of analogies I guess this morning—so you're jumping off a cliff but you're only building the plane on the way down. How can we expect others around us to relate to that and even understand why we're running towards the cliff?

Today, I wanted to talk to you about being part of a group. Now, I lead and run two groups—a group coaching program and a mastermind—and I am part of several other groups as a member. I feel that there is such value in a group and that's why I have purposely chosen the containers in which I offer coaching to be group based.

I coach women in a variety of ways, and the way that works best for them is really based on where they are professionally and personally, the container that they're in. My group coaching program, which you probably heard me talk about a lot, Committed to Growth, is really for women who are looking to go from confused or worn out to committed, who are seeking personal growth and know that it is the stepping stone for professional growth.

My other group container is my mastermind Runway to Freedom. That is for women who have a foundation in personal growth and are now really ready to take their professional side or their business to the next level because the way they have gotten to where they are now is not the way they're going to get to that next level. Those women in the Runway to Freedom mastermind also have access to Committed to Growth because personal growth, my friends, is never over, it's a process, it's a practice, it's never done. But in Runway to Freedom, we just take this growth up a step or up a level and focus it on the business. Those are the two containers in which I coach women. Both are group based.

I want to talk to you today about the importance of any group. This could be a coaching group, this could be a group at your church or synagogue, this could be a group that you're in as part of a volunteer opportunity, this could be a group that you're in in like a running club, any of those. The idea of like-minded community was really popularized by Napoleon Hill, the famous author, and he believed that being with people of similar interest will definitely contribute to one's success in a great way.

He wrote a book Think and Grow Rich. He defines mastermind as the coordination of knowledge, effort, and a spirit of harmony with people for the attainment of a definite purpose. I think that definition can almost be used for any group. Think about if you're in a running club, you're coordinating strategies on running form, how to run faster and farther, and how to get the best nutrition. You're in harmony with people for the attainment of a definite purpose.

In a coaching group, in Committed to Growth, we are all in there because we are ready to commit to ourselves to grow personally. In Runway to Freedom, we are all in there because we are ready to commit to getting our businesses and ourselves to that next level and giving ourselves a little more freedom, space, time, or margin in our businesses. Belonging to any type of group is an excellent way to keep you on the right path to your goals while you're connecting to like-minded women who are also running their invisible race.

Remember, you're running a race that no one knows about or you're jumping off that cliff and building a plane along the way. Inside these groups, you're with people who have similar goals. That, my friends, is powerful because of the following reasons. I am going to share with you six or seven benefits of having a great circle of influence.

Think about this. A group is a great circle of influence, it's really a way to help you create change. Having people of similar interests and ideologies enriches our minds and expands our potential so that we can achieve our greater goals. You cannot do that alone. You can enrich your mind and you can read, but really with that, you're only exposing yourself to the things that you want to expose yourself. When you're in a group, you don't even know what you're going to be exposed to and ideas that you haven't even thought about can come out of nowhere.

Let's see how such a community or group can benefit you in personal and professional ways. As I go through these ways, I want you to think about who do you have in your world that serves this purpose, are you part of a group that serves these purposes? If you're not, what would it be like or what would change for you if you were part of something like this?

Here's the first benefit: Groups act as a support pillar. Do you want a support pillar? I would raise my hand and say yes. Do you want a support pillar? Yes. Unlike people who de-motivate us with judgments—which sometimes could be our family members—the like-minded group community will support you no matter what. But they'll also caution you on things that you may not have considered and this is hugely motivating to move forward in life.

Inside Committed to Growth, as I am coaching, that chat box is going and people are commenting on what I am coaching on. They are oftentimes putting things in there like suggestions, “You might want to consider this or here's a resource that you may not be aware of.” They are there to support you no matter what, judgment free. There's a sense of camaraderie in there that you're not going to find in your regular group of friends. Being part of a group is like having a personal board of directors. You feel very much taken care of. It's a little cocoon. Again, think of a group as a container in which you're in. Raise your hand, would you like a support pillar? I'm raising my hand, yes.

Here is the second benefit that I thought about you get as being part of a group. A group can be a cheerleader for you when the ride off the cliff is rough or when the tide that you're rolling in is rough, life is really filled with ups and downs. We've talked about this on the podcast before, how life can be a roller coaster, and it's never easy to get right back on track after a huge setback, when the going gets tough. But when the going gets tough, like-minded people act like a cushion to fall on, a shoulder to cry on, and act like a dose of your daily happiness. They are your built-in cheerleader and built-in celebration team.

One of the things that I always ask my clients at the beginning of calls is “What are we celebrating?” When I do that on a group call, there is a team there to celebrate with them, and it could be the littlest things like grilling out. One of my clients a couple weeks ago said, “I am celebrating that we grilled out.” Another client said, “I just won an award.” It doesn't matter but that being part of a group, you've got a celebration team and you also have a team to support you when things are not going so well.

For example, when you feel like you are just swamped with obligations and responsibilities and you can't seem to see your way out, they're there to support you. When you're ready to resign from a job but feeling like “Hmm. I don't know”, again, they're there to support you in a whole different way than family, friends, or colleagues do. Raise your hand if you would like to have a built-in cheerleading and celebration team that would hold a pep rally for you whenever you needed it. Yes. I want that.

Here's the next benefit: Benefit number three of being part of a group is they hold you accountable. This seems like the obvious one but listen to me for a second, when you have set your goals, it is often easy to fall behind with the action steps of achieving the goals. But being with the right people helps you be accountable throughout the process. They give you the push, you need to keep moving forward, and that takes you to a whole new level.

They recognize too that this is a process. They're not going to say to you, “Why aren't you there yet?” and they are going to give you that push. They're showing up in the group for themselves but they're also showing up for you. You show up for yourself when you're part of a group because you feel as if you owe it to yourself and to the others in the group. Again, totally different than meeting women for a glass of wine on a Wednesday night. They're going to say, “Oh, it is totally okay that you didn't do that,” whereas in a group, they might say, “You know what, everything's okay but let's move forward.” That's the difference.

They're not going to stop at the place of, “Oh, don't worry about it,” they're going to go and say, “Not a big deal. Today's today but tomorrow's a new day. What are we doing differently?” Your friends aren't doing that over a glass of wine, at least mine aren't. Third thing is they hold you accountable.

Moving on to the fourth benefit that you get from being part of a group: A group setting inside that container, you are being offered advice and guidance. Having people—and I'm going to talk about this actually in this framework of the Runway to Freedom group mastermind—having people of similar business minds will help you have alternatives and solutions for the challenges you face. Think about these; alternatives and solutions. Being able to reach out to a group of women to get different perspectives on a challenge or issue is extremely valuable.

Inside Runway to Freedom, a lot of my women in there, for example, are trying to figure out what they should be outsourcing or if they should be bringing on additional help and hiring and firing okay. That is rough, my friends, those are rough discussions filled with a lot of emotion.

But just a week or so ago, one of my clients was struggling with this and someone said to her, “Hey, listen, I don't think your job descriptions are super clear and that may be the reason that you're having trouble finding the right person.” To her, they were really clear because she's stuck in her own jar but an outside person reading it, no, not so clear. That advice, guidance, or reflection that was shared was so valuable.

Guess what, she rewrote them and she's on the way to finding that right person. She's got lots of people. Offering advice, guidance, alternatives, and solutions, when is the last time someone in your family offered you alternatives? Sometimes they might give you a solution, like one, but are they giving you alternatives? They're not usually sitting there saying, “Well, have you considered this? Have you considered that?” They just like to blurt out the solution.

Even in a work setting sometimes, people just blurt out solutions versus giving you all the alternatives. A couple podcasts ago, we talked about having all your options on the table in order to make the right decision. When you're in a group, you're getting all of the options, they are helping you put all of the options on the table. That makes it so much easier. That is the fourth thing. Number one was acting as a support pillar, two was having your built-in cheerleading and celebration team, three was holding you accountable, four was offering you advice and guidance.

Here's number five: When you are part of a group and you show up for the group, it is a way to hold space for yourself, hold time and space to reflect, to reflect on what's happened in the past and to prepare for the future. It's a space for you to move out of the day-to-day, to stop working through your to-do list, to pause and to take time to look at things from that 30,000-foot view which is really hard to do on our own. It's also space for you to understand what you might want to move away from and move toward. Because as you're sitting and listening, you can understand, “Hey, I want to move away from putting out fires and move toward working on what I really want to work on.”

One of the best parts I think about a group is it allows you the space to sit with a question versus move quickly. In a group, you can marinate on something, you can ponder it as you listen to others which helps you generate your own thinking. A group really is not a transaction because it's a long-term thing too, it's not just a one-time event, it's not transactional. It allows you really to use those slow-twitch muscles, those ones that might take a little while to fire. It's not transactional.

A lot of times, people ask me, “Hey, Andrea, why don't you do just one-off sessions?” The one-off session thing I do is actually a half-day VIP session so that's not even a quick little event, but “Could you just do 15 minutes of coaching with me?” Not really because that's going to be very transactional and it's not going to allow you to move your slow-twitch muscles. That's one of the benefits of groups.

Raise your hand if you would like some space to reflect, to move out of the day-to-day, to sit with the questions, to fire your slow-twitch muscles. Yep, I see your hands going up. Yes. What do you have right now that allows you to do that? Again, this is also just a space to grow you to think about new ideas for you, personal growth.

Here's the next one: Being part of a group enhances your growth and inspiration. Having a chat with people on a similar wavelength, or trying to build the same plane to help them survive, really makes you feel alive. They portray a positive vibe of encouragement that inspires you because you also see what they can achieve or they want to achieve. That can be very inspirational. Nothing beats a supportive group who directs you to a higher level. I'm going to say that again, nothing beats a supportive group who directs you to a higher level.

Who is your group that's helping you get to that higher level? There is something about when you get off a call with your group, you are on fire, you are alive. I can't think of one time when I've gotten off a call with my group where I've felt down and out. I always feel alive. Acting as a support pillar, being your cheerleader and celebration team, holding you accountable, giving you advice and guidance, serving as a way to hold space, and enhancing your growth and inspiration.

Here's the last one which puts them all together: Being part of a group, although this might seem counterintuitive, is actually very freeing. It provides you freedom. It provides you freedom to ask questions, to ask hard questions, to ask questions of yourself, to ask questions that you're afraid to ask in any other setting, to ask the hard questions. Being part of a group, a supportive group, a group of people who are also wanting similar things to you, allows you to be authentic. You don't have to look good, you don't have to show up all decked out, you can be your authentic self inside and outside. It gives you a sense of freedom like, “Ah, finally, a safe space.”

Without such empowering groups to lift you up in your business or your personal life, you might deal with a series of issues that may even go unnoticed when you get accustomed to your current surroundings which often aren't super positive. If you are not part of a group, here are a couple things that might happen: You start getting a feeling of isolation from family and friends which can lead to some low self-confidence.

Confidence, my friends, is pretty much the number one thing people want when they start working with me, all sorts of different kinds of confidence but confidence. A lot of times, they feel pretty lonely in their own heads. Being part of a group can help provide a solution to that.

Here's another problem that may occur: You may also develop an insecurity and expectation of what relationships of all kinds are supposed to be like. You may have started to develop some expectations of others and they're not living up to them. The reason this is happening is because you're really seeing things from inside your own peanut butter jar and you're stuck in there. When you're inside your own peanut butter jar, you can't read the label.

Being part of a group, you've got all these label readers that help you see what's really going on. You're in your own story, you're in your own head, you haven't thought of the alternatives, you haven't really sought out advice, you haven't given yourself the space to think about things in a different way so you have developed a little insecurity and you've probably created some expectations of others. If you're not part of a group, that is something that often happens. Why is this going the way it's going? Why is this person acting the way they're acting?

I just had a conversation with someone who really is in a work situation that she's not loving and she said to me, “How can I not hate my boss?” I said, “This is super easy. We just have to change our thinking around it.” You can say, “Have you learned things in this job situation?” She's like, “Oh, yeah. I've learned so many things.”

I said, “Okay, so let's stop thinking about the boss specifically. Let's think about your job situation and think, ‘Huh, this has offered me a lot of insight, knowledge, and perspective. It's been a great learning opportunity and I'm ready to move on.’ Putting the boss aside from this whole thing.” She hadn't really even thought about that; she was just thinking about her boss as the center of all disgruntlement and was neglecting to look at all the great things that had come from the job experience as a whole. She needed that outside perspective.

Here's the third thing that you may be experiencing if you're not part of a group: You may feel unmotivated to pursue your dreams and goals. I like to say you've put the dreams and goals on the shelf. When there are no support groups to help you in achieving your biggest dreams, it can be really hard, too hard, to stick to your guns.

If you're at a place where you're like, “I don't know. Kind of giving up on this. What's my problem? Why can't this happen?” do you have the support you need to achieve those biggest dreams and to help you stay on track, to stay on the path? That is what a group can do. There's something about like in my groups Committed to Growth, we meet each week, it's very grounding. Runway to Freedom twice a month, very grounding.

Here are the reasons I gave you why it's important to be part of a group: It can act as a support pillar, it can be a cheerleading and celebration team, it holds you accountable, it offers advice and guidance, groups give you the space to reflect and step out of your day-to-day, they enhance your growth and inspiration, and they give you freedom. Without them, you can start to feel isolated, start to create some low self-confidence, develop a little insecurity, have high expectations of others and yourself, feel unmotivated, and give up on achieving your biggest dreams.

The key to surrounding yourself with like-minded people is knowing what kind of people make you feel most secure, inspired, and confident. The people who fill your life with joy and push you to be the best person you can be are the ones that you should surround yourself with and they are often outside of your family or work community. They might even be in a virtual community. Here's my two cents on virtual communities. Yes, COVID really upped the virtual community game, but here are some benefits of a virtual community.

I actually think virtual communities sometimes are better than in-person for a few reasons. You don't have to be so on. You can really be in the comfort of your own space. There's a level of comfort and space in being virtual. It also sometimes I think leads to better questioning and reflection before you answer.

You don't feel so on the spot, you're not right in front of the person, and you can go deeper because you can come back to the group—usually in their online forums, I have some online question and answer forums—to ask for more the next day, you don't have to go meet with them in-person again. And virtual, it's always there. You can be part of it no matter where you are. That's my two cents on virtual groups.

But really think about this. Who is your close-knit group? What would happen if you had one? Do you want to be part of a close-knit group to give you new ideas, to tackle issues you're struggling with, to figure things out not on your own? Being part of a group gives you new perspectives and challenges you to approach your own challenges with an open mind.

It's like a think tank, my friends. Groups understand you and your business so they can suggest new ideas that you may not have thought of because you're too involved in your own world and own story to take a step back and look at things with a different set of eyes.

You need to actively seek out the people or the group you want to be in. Therein lies the beauty of group coaching in masterminds. They are already groups formed of like-minded people. Remember, success is a team sport, and as we are turned into adults, we don't often participate in team sports, so this is a way for you to have a team.

The doors to our team inside Committed to Growth are now open. I open the doors every month for people who want to join us the next month. Applications to join us in September—if you're listening to this in real time—are due on August 25th, the last Thursday of the month. This goes for every month. If you would love to join us in Committed to Growth or you just want to learn more about it, you need to get your application in by the last Thursday of the month to join us the next month. Getting your application starts the process, which means that you and I have a conversation to decide if this is the right group for you.

Inside Committed to Growth, each month, we tackle a different topic that I believe is crucial to helping you think, feel, and act your best so that you can create the life you want that you can grow personally and professionally. We meet together inside Committed to Growth each week. The women in there have committed to being in there for at least six months so that they can, not just have a one-shot deal, it's not transactional like we talked about before, they can start to flex their slow-twitch muscles and create some momentum.

The doors are also open to join us inside Runway to Freedom. Runway to Freedom is a year-long commitment with applications only being accepted twice a year. If you want to join us and be part of our fall 2022 cohort, the deadline to apply is September 30th. Inside Runway to Freedom, we mastermind on how you can take yourself and your business to the next level. We look at you as a leader, we look at your people, your systems, your operations, your numbers, and re-work what you have from where you're at so that you can continue to grow.

Those are two options that I have for you to be part of groups. Just depending on where you're at, we figure out which option is best for you. Get an application in so we can start to have a conversation about this. An application is just an invitation for a conversation, it's not a “you haven't signed on the dotted line.” Applications for Committed to Growth are always due the last Thursday of the month and applications for Runway to Freedom for the fall 2022 cohort are due September 30th. If you're listening to this after then, you can go to the Runway to Freedom page and get on the waitlist for the next cohort.

You can check out all the details, the formats, the features of both of these groups, and all the other ways in which we can work together on the Work With Me page on my website. That's www.andrealiebross.com/work-with-me and we can start creating growth for you. Okay, my friends, that's what I have for you today. Remember, now is the time to level up. I hope you found this discussion informative about how groups are so important to our growth. See you next week.

Thanks for listening to the Time to Level Up Podcast with me, your host, Andrea Liebross. If you know someone who could benefit from listening to this episode, I encourage you to take a screenshot and share it with them. Okay. Now, what about you? You've listened to the podcast, and if you now know that you're ready to upgrade your life, upgrade your business, upgrade you, then stop being only a listener and start being a liver living that upgraded life. Head over to my website and schedule a call. Right there on that call, we'll start changing the way you think and act so that you can have the freedom to achieve the impossible in life and business, and have the resources to do it. You deserve an upgrade. Let's do it.