217: You Deserve More Than ‘You’re Doing Great’—Here’s How to Get It

Andrea Liebross: Welcome to the She Thinks Big! Podcast. Get ready to level up your thinking and expand your horizons. I’m your host, Andrea Liebross, your guide on this journey of big ideas and bold moves. I am the best-selling author of She Thinks Big: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Guide to Moving Past the Messy Middle and Into the Extraordinary.

I support women like you with the insights and mindset you need to think bigger and the strategies and systems you need to turn that thinking into action and make it all a reality. Are you ready to stop thinking small and start thinking big? Let’s dive in.

Hello, my friends and welcome back to the She Thinks Big Podcast. I am curious, where are you listening to this today? Are you driving on your drive to Target? Am I in the carpool line? Am I emptying the dishwasher with you? What am I doing with you today? I'm going to guess whatever I'm doing with you today is something that the woman I am going to talk about today has done too.

I want to bring you some more case studies here on the podcast, because I think it's really helpful for you and me too, to see each other and other people and to see how things evolve. Because a lot of times, while we may have some big thinking, we can't figure out, or you can't figure out, and even I can't figure out sometimes, “What do I need to do in order to make that big thinking a reality? Or what are the actions I need to take in order to turn whatever I'm envisioning into something real?”

A lot of times I notice that women, you, me, we’re hesitant to seek support in making things happen. I know that I can speak to myself, I'm always eager to give support or find support for my kids, my husband, other people, but it's harder to seek support for ourselves.

What I want to share with you today is a case study of a client of mine named Jill, and she's been on the podcast before. I want to share with you almost like reflecting, looking back at her journey of where she was when she came to me initially for coaching and where she is now. I think it's a really good example of an evolution of a woman who is turning an idea into something big and turning the idea into something big that is profitable, turning an idea into something big that is the start of a new version of a business and actually a new business.

She took her big thinking, didn't know quite what to do with it, but over time and by working with me, we did, together, turn it into something amazing. Now she is thriving. Jill is from Western, North Carolina. She's got two adult girls, adult grown-up girls who don't live with her anymore. She's got a husband who is, or at the time we were working together, was kind of approaching ready for retirement. He was getting close to retirement.

They had a property in Florida that they wanted to spend more time at and she had been doing what she had been doing for a very long time. I think 20 years plus she was a real estate agent. She is still a real estate agent. She worked with families on moving to Hendersonville, North Carolina, Asheville, North Carolina, that area, and moving in and out. She was really good at what she did.

This wasn't a case of “My business is falling apart.” This wasn't a case of anything was really wrong. This was not a case of, “I don't know what I'm doing with my life.” It wasn’t any of those things. What it really was is her turning an idea into a reality. Listen to these two clips describing when she reached out to me and why and also what it took, she had to get over some of these external doubts I'm going to call them.

Jill Hart: Everybody was telling me, “Why would you want to do that? You're doing so great. Why would you want to do that?” I just did. I wanted to do that from the beginning. I had all these great ideas, and I heard you on a podcast as a guest speaker. Even though I'm an avid podcast listener and have never reached out to anybody, I got home that day and got on your website and asked for my call.

Andrea Liebross: Once Jill reached out and had a conversation with me, we decided that she needed to create a plan on how this was all going to happen. Now, I'm going to talk about the intricacies of the plan in a minute, but what I want to bring to light here is part of creating this plan, part of turning your vision into action steps, is baked into that, is addressing some feelings.

It's not all about actions. It's also about addressing feelings and managing your mind. Jill had three things that really had to do with more mind management than anything else. Number one, she needed to gain some confidence that she could take the steps that she needed to to make this all a reality, that she could do it “on her own,” that she could do what she wanted to do.

Baked into this Vision into Action Intensive, vision into action plan was confidence work, which is about managing your mind. Number two, something else that was baked into the plan was helping her solve, we'll call it the mental burden that dealing with buyers was placing on her. Remember, she's a real estate agent. She's got sellers and buyers.

The sellers were going to most likely be seniors if this thing all panned out like she wanted to. But the buyers were not going to be seniors necessarily. We had to figure out a way for her to be okay with offloading those buyers onto another agent. We figured out a way for her to still make some money there, but that was a mental burden more than anything else. That had to get baked into this Vision into Action Intensive.

Then the third thing that we had to bake in, which isn't like a one, two, three exercise here, but we had to bake in how she could gain more control over her own schedule. She had that typical, I'll call it stereotypical agent thought process that you are always on call, we'll call it. But if she was going to grow Silver Pathways, if she was going to start this business, then she couldn't operate like that anymore. She had to gain control of her schedule.

Notice none of those are action steps one, two, three. There's a lot of mind management. There's a lot of thought management that needs to get baked into planning the rollout of something. It's not just action steps. Sometimes I think this kind of stuff is the hardest piece of the puzzle. Listen in to Jill describe these three things that we had to bake into her plan.

Jill Hart: I didn't have the confidence to do it on my own. That's one big thing that coaching helped me with, is figuring out that yes, you can do it, which gave me confidence to really launch what I wanted to do. This is another thing I found out, is buyers for my real estate brokerage give those as a referral to another agent, any buyers that I get, unless they're like my best friend.

That for me is a huge win because she's much better at working with buyers than I am and I don't enjoy it as much as I enjoy working with the seniors who are selling. It frees up my schedule to work with those seniors because I'm not having a buyer call me and say, “Hey, I really need to see this house right now.” I'm way more in control of my schedule.

Andrea Liebross: Another part of the plan, stemmed from gaining more confidence, stemmed from handing off buyers, stemmed from really though, trying to gain more control of her schedule. She had to start to get comfortable with outsourcing, letting go of tasks, not being the only one.

When you're a real estate agent, you really are doing a lot of the stuff on your own. Even though you might have the support of an agency, you are kind of your own boss. You can do all the things. Jill was a great example of someone like you gave her something to do, she did it. She has an attitude where she can tackle anything.

A lot of my clients, I hear this, “Hey, Andrea, just tell me exactly what to do and I'm going to do it. I'm really good at following instructions.” Jill was really good at that. But now she had to flip this and figure out how she would be the instruction giver. She grappled with this. It was going to take time to be the instruction giver. It was going to cost her to be the instruction giver.

Did she really have to spend money on someone else doing something that she could do? I hear this so much. Also, could she afford it? I mean, after all, this next version of this business was just getting started. Did she have the funds to support the outsourcing?

Then she figured out once we got through those little hurdles, then she realized it wasn't just going to be one person that was going to support her. She really needed a team. She needed more than one person. She needed a cast of characters, all with areas of expertise. This again kind of came back to a mindset shift around hiring. She had to recognize that she didn't have to hire someone full-time.

She actually didn't even have to hire someone consistently part-time. She could pay people hourly. She could just have contractors. So we built into the plan, yes, she was going to outsource this and outsource that and hire someone to do this and that, but what the work we also had to do was the workaround becoming comfortable with this.

Let me tell you, when we do a Vision to Action Intensive, which is a lot of times how people come to me, which is the case with Jill, we do that. Then afterwards, we decide what kind of ongoing support do you need to implement this? What kind of ongoing support do you need to get comfortable with doing the things that are inside our plan? That was true with Jill.

We did do this Vision to Action Intensive. We actually did several of them over the course of the couple of years I worked with her. But she also knew that she needed ongoing support. This wasn't a one-and-done. The reason that she needed the ongoing support was not necessarily to come up with new ideas but to help implement the ideas we already had really more from a mindset standpoint than the action item standpoint.

I want you to listen to Jill as she describes how she evolved and how she got comfortable with the idea of outsourcing and hiring, what those people would look like, what kinds of things they were doing, and what kinds of things that she didn't need or have to do anymore.

Jill Hart: Letting some of the things go that I just didn't have time to do, you helped with, you're like, "Oh, let's see how we can outsource this and let's see how we can outsource that." And so really, [inaudible], so I don't want to spend the money on that, but now I'm like, "Oh, how much money can I throw at that so I don't have to do it?"

Farmed out email blasts. I've farmed out social media content creation. I've farmed out social media content scheduling, I've farmed out graphic design, I've farmed out printing, which sounds funny, but it's like I'm not on the computer uploading stuff to Staples or Office Depot and then figuring out exactly how it needs to be laid out and whatever. I just send what my graphic designer does to the printer and then I go and pick it up.

I farmed out content writing. I farmed out my two new website designs. I had done my website prior to this and I'm glad I know how to do it, but I'm glad I'm not doing it anymore. One thing that was holding me back on that is I felt like I had to hire somebody at least on a part-time basis and through this process, I realized I don't have to do that. I just need to find the people that don't want to work part-time that just want to work as needed.

I ended up finding three people who are 1099 employees that helped me on an as-needed basis and they love it. They're so happy to have the opportunity to just work as their schedule allows.

Andrea Liebross: I just want to summarize here a little bit. I want you to notice that a lot of what we do in coaching, or at least the coaching I do is yes, I help you turn your vision into action steps so that it becomes a reality, 100%. A lot of what I do is give you support in managing your mind as you're turning these things into a reality, because let's face it, it's really hard to stay on track and not talk yourself out of things.

It's really hard to keep taking consistent action when you may not see the results immediately. It's really hard to put resources, time, money, and energy into making something a reality when you haven't seen the dollars flow in just yet. The kind of coaching I do is a mix of business and life. Here we're talking about Jill's business and I do want to tell you that Silver Pathways is a huge success.

You need to check it out. We'll put the link in the show notes. You need to go follow Jill. She's really active on LinkedIn, go follow her. But I think she would attest that what coaching did was yes, help her create a plan, yes, take the actions she's needed, but third and maybe most importantly, I helped her keep herself in that space of belief. I helped her keep herself in the space of confidence. I helped her keep herself in the space of consistency.

That's all like mind management, my friends. When you're going to Target and you're standing on the sidelines at people's games, or when you've had dinner and someone says, "Why would you do that? You've got such a great business like it is now," that's hard stuff. There are distractions.

There are external distractions, like all the things that are going on in your life, like the Target and the basketball game, and then there are internal distractions, which is that chatter. Someone calls it the itty bitty shitty committee, the one that's telling you to stop or don't do it, or “Are you sure?” or “You don't know how to do that,” that kind of stuff.

What coaching can do, what doing a Vision to Action Intensive can do, and then getting support on going to implement it, what that can do is to quiet all of that and give you the space to really make the impact that you want to make, to create a business that works for you, to get excited and stay excited about what's ahead. That's what this can all do.

I hope that you reach out to me just like Jill did that day, schedule a call. What's the worst thing that could happen? What's the worst thing that could happen if you and I talk? I'm going to go with nothing. There's no worst. It's only good if anything, you leave with some ideas. The best thing that could happen is that you turn your dream into a reality, that you become Jill.

Even at age 50 plus there, you can teach an old dog new tricks. Even though she'd been doing what she'd been doing really successfully for so long, she wanted something different. She wanted to evolve and who doesn't want to evolve? That's a human trait and I want to help you evolve. I want to help you get to that next level.

Let's do this, pause this podcast, pull over if you're driving, click on the link in the show notes, and find that book a call button on my website, just like Jill did. Let's do this. Okay, my friends, hope you got to your final destination. Hope that dishwasher is emptied. Hope the laundry is folded. I want to be with you on your next journey. I want to be with you on your next journey in an even more meaningful, deeper way. See you next time.

Thanks for tuning into the She Thinks Big! Podcast. If you're ready to learn the secret to unleashing your full potential, don't forget to grab a copy of my book, She Thinks Big: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Guide to Moving Past the Messy Middle and Into the Extraordinary. It's available on Amazon and at your favorite bookstore.

And while you're there, grab a copy for a friend. Inside, you'll both find actionable strategies and empowering insights to help you navigate the complexities of entrepreneurship and life, and step confidently into your extraordinary future.

If you found value in today's episode, please consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast platform. And if you're ready to take this learning a step further and apply it to your own business and life, head to andreaslinks.com and click the button to schedule a discovery call. Until next time, keep thinking big.