969: The power of curiosity and SKILL vs WILL in your leadership journey w/ Amanda Love

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Hey, what is up?

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Welcome to this episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

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As always, I'm your host, brian LoFermento, and I'll tell you what.

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I am so excited for us to kick this week off by talking about something that all of us need to think about.

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Whether you are a wantrepreneur which you're still in a nine to five job, today's guest is really going to give you a lot of food for thought about how to perform in your job and set yourself up for success as an entrepreneur, or especially for all of you entrepreneurs out there who are tuning into today's episode.

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We are talking about leadership.

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This is something that all of us whether we choose that label or not we are leaders in our own rights when it comes to growing our businesses, when it comes to growing our team, servicing our clients heck even leading ourselves in life and in business, and today's guest brings so much energy and passion and expertise in this domain from a really incredible career up to this point.

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Let me tell you all about today's guest.

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Her name is Amanda Love.

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Amanda is a hardscrabble Southern lady who earned her leadership stripes through high-level strategy and execution at the world's largest retailer and through learning and development.

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Uniquely skilled as a leadership mentor.

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Her success has been defined by her commitment to reshaping the next generation of business professionals.

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Over the course of Amanda's 20-year retail career, she's empowered individuals to reach new heights in their own professional journeys.

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Her tenacious focus on leadership, coupled with effective team management, have resulted in her successfully designing and executing programs that have empowered individuals and teams to thrive in the ever-evolving landscape of today's workforce.

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And for all of us who are navigating entrepreneurial waters and maybe you're side hustling, maybe you've still got your job we're all going to learn a lot from Amanda today.

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I'm super excited about this one.

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I'm not going to say anything else.

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Let's dive straight into my interview with Amanda Love.

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All right, amanda, I'm so excited that you're here with us today.

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First things first, welcome to the show.

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Thank you so much for having me Heck yes talking about leadership on a Monday, the day that this episode airs.

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Super excited to kick off a new week with a really big topic.

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And, amanda, I've got to get into what's your origin story of having this love for leadership and helping others understand it.

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Take us beyond the bio.

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Give us that backstory, take us beyond the bio, give us that backstory.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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I have always gravitated towards people and I can remember as far back as high school.

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I was cheer captain.

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I know that's shocker, so I was cheer captain but I always loved the engaging and teaching others and seeing that aha moment and it really inspired me as I entered into the workforce, into my retail career, to identify high potential people who wanted to grow within the organization, and the better I got at just working my people skills and helping guide others to their success, I really started branching out to identify well, maybe it's not right for you to stay in retail, maybe it's something else that I can help guide you in what you want to do.

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So it goes beyond that specific career track that everyone believes that they have to have as soon as they enter the workforce.

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It's about finding things that are really resonating with you and aligning and fulfilling to you, and I really enjoy doing that.

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I always have and it's all about that relationship with individuals and helping them identify what makes them happy and thrive in their lives.

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Yeah, I love that overview, Amanda, especially because I think it's really clear that you and I both share a love for people.

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We really love people, and I'm going to add on to that is that we very frequently probably almost all the time for both of us we see the high potential in literally everybody.

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We see them not for who they are today and all the barriers that they've built in their own lives and in their professional careers, but we see them as those high potential people.

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Which leads me to this question, amanda, of what are those traits when you talk about seeing potential in leaders and people who are going to progress professionally, personally.

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What are some of those traits that you see and you go gosh, let's get those out of you.

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Let's really maximize and tap into your leadership potential.

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Yeah, absolutely so.

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I love people who have a hunger for learning and growing.

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If you exhibit any of those talents or traits, skills where you're asking really deep questions to understand the root of something, why do we execute it this way, or why is it that I have to do X, y or Z?

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And having that curiosity about them really creates this dynamic in a leader that's going to step outside that traditional leadership role of I have to do the task and I have to delegate the task to my team, and it becomes more about if I'm a curious person or individual.

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I am going to be curious about others and how I can support them and meet them where they are.

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So I think that that's probably the one thing that I always look for is people that are really curious.

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Yeah, it's an important trait and actually I even want to pick on that one word, because that is the word that I use when I ask you is what are some of those traits?

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I love that you answered it by talking about talents and skills, because those are things that we can work on, amanda, and I feel like when we talk within the scope of leadership, people always point to oh, that person is naturally a leader, that person does this.

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How much of it is that quote unquote natural, which the older I get, the less I like that term of natural, versus truly those skills and those talents that we can work towards and, most importantly, that we can develop and grow into.

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You know, bright, I think that's a really great question.

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The skill versus the will is always what I go back to.

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If you want to be a leader, if you want to be an entrepreneur, you have the will to succeed.

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You may not have the skill, but skill is teachable.

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Will is not.

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Will comes from inside of you and I really think that it's important to understand if you've got a willing participant or not.

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And that's where it comes back to oh, it's natural.

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No, they have a willingness to step up as a leader.

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Yeah, I love that.

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Ooh, I'm going to use that.

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I think that that's such a great way to articulate.

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I've never heard that before, amanda.

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So I really appreciate you bringing that knowledge to us and that perspective to us Because, also, speaking of just my entrepreneurial maturity, the older that I get in life and in business I'm 16 years into being an entrepreneur and the more I realize it's those intangibles, it's those things that make the difference in whether we succeed as entrepreneurs or not.

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You don't need to be the best marketer in the world.

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You don't need to have the most clever marketing strategies and marketing funnel and copywriting.

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You don't need to have those.

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You need to be personable, you need to stand out, you need to care.

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I did an episode on that a few months ago and so, along those lines, amanda, these intangibles, that's what makes it so hard for people to put their finger on and grasp leadership.

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What does leadership actually mean to you?

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What are those things that create a good leader?

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Leadership to me is about being able to connect with others.

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I was told by one of my leaders along my career that this is a people business and unless you are connecting with people, you won't be successful.

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And that was really.

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That was from sales, that wasn't necessarily from leadership, but he was my leader and that resonated with me in a way that it aligned with my own core belief about leaders should be individuals that support and prop up their teams and help them grow into success, and that's a reflection on them as a leader.

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Those that, if we go back to what I actually define as a boss and just delegate, delegate and got to get the task done and that's all we're focused on, that's not really leadership.

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So that leader-centric heart of caring for others is really what sums it up.

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Yeah, and I think for both you and I who have operated in team environments, whether it's athletically, whether it's professionally, and I think for both you and I who have operated in team environments, whether it's athletically, whether it's professionally, I think it's such an important focus that we've seen leadership in action.

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And I want to ask you this question because for entrepreneurs and we hear from listeners all the time that they're always looking for that inflection point of when things are going to change in our businesses we all kind of hope.

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You know, every product or service we launch we're like that's the one, that's the one that's going to change the course of my business and, of course, it's an ever-evolving process.

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So I want to ask you this, which is about the point that we either become leaders or step into leadership.

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I know in the world of corporate America, a lot of people think leadership is just going to come with that promotion.

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One day they're going to wake up and someone's going to appoint them a leader.

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Amanda, where does leadership, where and when does leadership really begin?

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Leadership begins with you as an individual wanting to influence others, and that can come in the form of having a network of friends that you want to go see a particular movie and really stepping up as the one that says we're going to see this movie.

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Everyone buy tickets.

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So really it comes down to stepping into your own confidence in all situations and really being authentically yourself in all of the different environments you find yourself in, whether it's personal life, whether it's your family life, or even in your corporate career or entrepreneurial career.

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It's stepping into your own confidence and becoming who you want to be and believing in yourself.

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That is when you become a leader, when you believe in yourself.

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Yeah, I'm just thinking about all the objections that people have and they probably tell themselves.

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We all lie to ourselves and we tell ourselves oh well, I'm just.

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You know, I'm thinking about my career in corporate when I graduated college.

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I'm just a business analyst, I didn't have anyone reporting to me, or I'm just a secretary let's use any title that we can all apply to it, whereas the clients that you work with, amanda, I think it's so cool because you take them wherever they are in their career, whether they're feeling stuck, whether they have had that progression, and you tap into those inner strengths that they have.

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Talk to us about that shedding of labels.

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Whatever it is that we're defined in our current job titles, how is it that we can get past that?

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I guess part of it is labels that have given to us by our job titles, but also that self-identity.

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I want to introduce that into the equation here.

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How do we start tackling those and working towards where we want to be despite our current situation?

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towards where we want to be despite our current situation.

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So it's so.

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I talk about this a lot with my clients and it really comes down to your own mental mindset.

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It is really, really easy to get caught up in the spiral of I'm not good enough or I don't know, and we spoke to that a little earlier about.

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You don't have to be the best marketer to be an entrepreneur.

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There are people that are great and willing to help you for a cost, so hire them.

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They do this for a living and they're experts in this space.

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You don't have to be an expert, and so really it comes down to that mental mindset of what you believe you are capable of.

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I will share a pretty vulnerable moment here and say that when I decided to start coaching as my business, I didn't think or even believe that I would be successful.

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I just knew I wanted to do it, and the more I would work on all of my content, the more confident I would get.

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But then I still had these lows of I really don't think I have anything I want.

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I want people to know.

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But the more I put in into it, the more confident I became, and I really looked back on those things that I was saying to myself in the very beginning about I don't think people want to know this.

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I really don't know if I have anything to share that's worthy.

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Looking back, I just laugh at myself and say I really did believe those lies I told myself and we're all guilty of exactly that.

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I told myself and we're all guilty of exactly that, and so we've got to shed those, those I'm not capable and all of those lies that we tell ourselves and put ourselves on in these pigeonhole.

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We put ourselves in these boxes of lies of who we are or who we believe ourselves to be, and truly we are not those people.

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If we don't want to be those people, we have to build ourselves up and retell ourselves.

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We are exactly who we want to be.

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If we want to be a leader, we're a leader.

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If we want to be an entrepreneur, we're an entrepreneur.

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And pull yourself out and surround yourself with people who can help you with that.

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If you are struggling with the lies that you tell yourself, oh, that was really vulnerable.

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Amanda.

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I so appreciate that.

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I really do.

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I think that that's such a powerful real life example obviously from your own experiences, because here we are talking about leadership, but I so appreciate the fact that you're bringing us down to belief systems.

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It's this quote that I heard many years ago and I still think about it to this day that says we don't see things as they are.

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We see things as we are, and the way that we view ourselves really projects onto the way that we see the world, and I think it's such an important point.

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So I want to ask you about this, knowing that you not only had an incredible career for yourself, but now you help corporate women who do feel stuck in their own careers.

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What are some of those you picked?

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On that?

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Am I good enough?

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And that's something that I think every single one of us faces.

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Heck, we face it as entrepreneurs.

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We don't get to borrow the confidence from having a big employer attached to our names.

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We have to lean on the things that we are creating with our own minds and our own hands and, in the case of many of us, our own keyboards and computers.

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But we don't get to borrow that confidence from others.

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So all of these limiting beliefs pop into our minds.

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Amanda, this is the big question for you, which is it's easier said than done.

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It's easy for us to point to these belief patterns and say that we need to change them.

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How the heck do we actually go about changing our own belief patterns?

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Well, I will first start out and say exactly what I tell all of my clients, because I believe this to my core.

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You probably need a support system, and I would start with a therapist or counselor support system, and I would start with a therapist or counselor.

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I thoroughly believe that they're worth every single penny spent, because I don't know that I personally could have pulled myself out of the mindset that I was in.

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It really pushed, pushed me over the edge as an entrepreneur.

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I really felt like we were.

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We were in dire straits.

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We were going to have to ask for help to get groceries.

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It was that bad.

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And when I started talking to my therapist, she says take a deep breath and tell yourself it's not that bad.

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This is a lie that you're telling yourself.

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And we walked through it and she helped me really realize that there were a lot of lies that I was telling myself about being a successful entrepreneur.

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So really, I would start with get a therapist, get a coach, surround yourself with friends who believe in you and will remind you of your value and your worth.

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Those three things.

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Yes, and I think it's so important.

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Amanda, this is the real stuff that our listeners have come to know and love here on this show, and I appreciate you bringing that real and actionable advice for every single entrepreneur.

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And when I look at the things that you embrace and the things that you're passionate about in your own journey, learning comes down to it is obviously having that self-awareness, working with therapists or coaches or just external counsel that can give us that unique vantage point.

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But then at the end of it is also coming back to that curiosity that you talked about earlier in our conversation is you love learning, and so I want to ask you about that, because a lot of people think that they can learn leadership or learn personal development from a book, in that you know, check the box, job done, whereas obviously this is a lifelong pursuit, it's a never ending pursuit.

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Talk to us about that learning process and especially I want to hear your perspective on how we can actually combine that learning with the implementation.

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That actually hammers home those points that we're learning.

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So I think that's a really great point.

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I've got a bookshelf of great books behind me about leadership.

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I've read most of them, haven't completed them all, and I bet I'm not the only one that's guilty of that and I think to your point.

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Books are really hard to have actionable account of or accountable action out of them if you're not in like a book group or book club and reading it together as a, as a cohort, so to speak, and discussing and holding each other accountable.

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Wow, I probably just dated myself on that one, but today it's really really challenging to find cohorts that do book studies and hold each other accountable.

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So there are lots of programs out there that offer coaching with guided steps and then accountability through different components, whether it's coaching calls or touch bases and emails.

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There's a lot of accountability built in behind that helps you follow through the steps.

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Has come from just in the last couple of years is just going and finding these programs that add value to what I'm doing with a little bit of accountability.

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So I know I'm going to get this done.

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Yeah, I think that's such an important point.

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I actually don't think we talk about that enough as entrepreneurs, as we obviously are responsible for holding ourselves accountable in all the different ways, but even when it comes to developing skills, having that accountability from others to actively work on the things that we want to become and the things that we want to add to our repertoire, I think it's so important and accountability really is that missing ingredient in so many ways.

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So I want to switch gears a little bit, amanda, and ask you about strengths and weaknesses, because I feel like it's kind of layered under all of the things we're talking about today.

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When we talk about beliefs, when we talk about labels, it's easy for us to be critical of ourselves I think that's just a uniquely human experience and so it's easy for us to look at our weaknesses and see those deficiencies, whereas I know that so much of your work focuses on those strengths.

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Talk to us about that battle of strengths versus weaknesses and what we should focus on and what we can focus on in that personal development journey.

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I really think that's a great question, brian.

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So I speak to that with my clients all the time that your weaknesses are also really strengths.

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They're more shadow strengths, they're the things that kind of lay in wait or that you could maybe leverage down the road.

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And I'm sure that there are people that might disagree with me, but I feel like the strengths are the things that we all know and we lean in on and we celebrate and bang drums around and say, look at me and everyone can recognize those pretty quickly about themselves or even about other individuals.

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But those, those things that maybe we don't celebrate as often and that we aren't out there saying, oh, I'm not really great at these things.

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One is is that you telling yourself another lie?

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Have you really given it some, some efforts to to learn or to get better or to really determine if you're you're bad at it?

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And then, two, we go back to if I'm not great at it, who is great in my network that can help me with this or teach me what I need to know?

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And so really it comes down to yes, you may have strengths and weaknesses, but weaknesses aren't necessarily invaluable.

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They're just lying underneath and waiting to be leveraged.

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Yeah, Amanda, I love that point.

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I want to go deeper here because I don't know if you realize this or not, but this is probably one of your superpowers is that ability to identify the shadow sides behind our strengths and our weaknesses.

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It's a topic I'll be honest with you, Amanda.

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I'm very new to this world.

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I recently I saw a quote that was talking about sensitivity, using that as the example, and it's easy to point to oh, that's a sensitive person, but the bad side to that, if you will, is that, of course, it's easy for a sensitive person to get hurt.

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However, the shadows I love the good side of it, which is sensitive people are very in tune with themselves, they're in tune with others and they also, if easy small things hurt them, easy small things also make them grateful, and that level of gratitude allows them to see the world in a different way.

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So that level of gratitude allows them to see the world in a different way.

00:22:05.124 --> 00:22:10.603
So that's just one small example of these shadow sides that I've recently been informed about.

00:22:10.603 --> 00:22:28.619
Amanda, can you talk a little bit more about that, Because that's one thing that I think is lacking societally and, of course, that's also prevalent within the world of entrepreneurship is stepping into, is seeing those beautiful sides of our perceived weaknesses stepping into is seeing those beautiful sides of our perceived weaknesses.

00:22:34.440 --> 00:22:37.767
Yeah, it's one of those things that I am really great with my clients when talking to any individual, even in a party setting.

00:22:37.767 --> 00:22:51.913
My husband and I went to a Christmas event last year and I was speaking with some brand new individuals to me and I was able to walk away and say, hey, I think that your coworker might be really great at this.

00:22:51.913 --> 00:23:09.721
You should suggest that she go talk to so and so that we just met and really it came down to being able to just extrapolate through conversation what they're passionate about, and and really it's just conversational and I'm not asking a ton of direct questions that are what are you passionate about?

00:23:09.721 --> 00:23:18.248
Just talking and hearing the thing, the themes that that reoccur during the conversation, will tell you a lot of things about individuals.

00:23:18.248 --> 00:23:22.021
And that's true even outside of individuals.

00:23:22.021 --> 00:23:24.851
It can be true, true, even in the corporate space.

00:23:24.851 --> 00:23:37.170
I used to tell my leadership all the time all you have to do is listen to the things that are going on around you and you'll know everything that's happening inside the office.

00:23:38.172 --> 00:23:38.792
Yeah, it's true.

00:23:38.792 --> 00:23:41.599
It's why the water cooler gets the reputation that it gets.

00:23:41.599 --> 00:23:43.326
You can learn so much from there.

00:23:43.326 --> 00:23:50.949
You brought up a word and this is something I knew we'd touch on here today when you talk about passion and obviously purpose goes hand in hand with so much of that.

00:23:50.949 --> 00:24:04.394
A lot of times here on business podcasts or in business videos on YouTube, or business courses, events, conferences we always talk about having that North Star, having that purpose that guides us in the difficult times, but also in the good times.

00:24:04.394 --> 00:24:09.882
Talk to us about the importance of that, because I do feel like it's advice that we throw out there very frequently.

00:24:09.882 --> 00:24:13.550
But how do we actually navigate to find that, Amanda?

00:24:13.550 --> 00:24:24.901
Because I think a lot of people will just knee-jerk, say, oh, my purpose is impacting people and serving people, and it's easy for people like us, who love people, to say things like that that are very broad.

00:24:24.901 --> 00:24:31.142
But what does an actual passion or purpose look like in a way that it can actually guide us to something?

00:24:33.068 --> 00:24:34.836
So, brian, that's such a great question.

00:24:34.836 --> 00:24:41.119
I feel like you've already gone through my whole program because we've touched on every component and this is what we start off with.

00:24:41.119 --> 00:24:46.544
All of our clients start off with first is vision generating and goal planning.

00:24:46.544 --> 00:25:04.234
So and we do it backwards we ask them what goals they want to accomplish in the next couple of years, what are the things that they want to do in their career, and then we back into it for their long term vision and any additional goals that need to be added and kind of chunk it up.

00:25:04.234 --> 00:25:15.846
So really, in building that vision and those goals, we have conversations, and when we are having these conversations, sometimes some of the things that'll come up.

00:25:15.886 --> 00:25:21.509
I'll give you an example of of um, one of the gals that I worked with actually in the corporate space.

00:25:21.509 --> 00:25:28.906
Um, she was a colleague of mine and she came to me and said you know, I like my job.

00:25:28.906 --> 00:25:29.689
It's money.

00:25:29.689 --> 00:25:36.669
I'm grateful for it, but I really am not happy and I feel like there's so much more I could be doing.

00:25:36.669 --> 00:25:48.448
So she knew she needed and wanted something else, but she just didn't know where to turn or where to figure this out, and so she and I went off site and I think that that's part of the key.

00:25:48.448 --> 00:25:51.695
It's less distracting to be somewhere.

00:25:51.695 --> 00:25:52.759
That's not work.

00:25:53.400 --> 00:25:56.166
And we went and had coffee and we just talked.

00:25:56.166 --> 00:25:57.991
I learned about her boyfriend.

00:25:57.991 --> 00:26:01.201
I learned about her struggles.

00:26:01.201 --> 00:26:04.810
She had just moved from another state and was living in her car.

00:26:05.231 --> 00:26:11.352
I would not have known that or learned that, having stayed in the office building to talk about it.

00:26:11.352 --> 00:26:36.795
And so when I started hearing more of her story about how she was really passionate about supporting this charity that helped her get on her feet and to find this job but she so desired so much more I told her that she needed to go and expose herself to some leaders and to some other people in the organization and I helped facilitate connecting her with some of those folks.

00:26:36.795 --> 00:26:47.667
And today, just a couple of years after she and I worked together and I suggested she do those things, she found what was really exciting and fulfilling for her in the office.

00:26:47.667 --> 00:26:55.039
She went from a store role in retail to the home office to be in finance and that's a big jump.

00:26:55.039 --> 00:27:08.675
But she made that jump very successfully because she was extremely clear about what she wanted and got to kind of dip her toe in the water and get that exposure and make those connections that would support her in getting that next role.

00:27:09.519 --> 00:27:32.068
Yeah, amanda, I think that's a really powerful example that you just gave to us, because something just revealed there that when you talk about going to a coffee shop with her and she ends up talking about her boyfriend and so much life stuff that we all face, I feel like all too often we have a tendency of, if we're obsessing about how do I grow my business, how do I further my career, we just look within the professional scope, whereas we're humans.

00:27:32.068 --> 00:27:37.114
We can't leave our personal lives at home, just like we can't leave our professional lives at the office.

00:27:37.114 --> 00:27:59.191
How much of your work looks at that personal and professional, and how important is it to address both sides of the coin, because we are just one person who carries all this stuff with us balance is key in everything that I do and I express that to all of my clients.

00:27:59.211 --> 00:27:59.853
That balance is key.

00:27:59.853 --> 00:28:06.029
There will be days whether you are a corporate business woman, man, you're an entrepreneur, does not matter.

00:28:06.029 --> 00:28:15.376
There will be days that you put in everything and then some, and you've worked 8090 hours in the week and you're just exhausted.

00:28:15.376 --> 00:28:23.405
And then there will be days and weeks where you work your 40 and you go home and things just operate as they should.

00:28:23.405 --> 00:28:41.510
But balance in all things is what will keep your mental health and your physical health in line when you're not constantly burning yourself out.

00:28:41.951 --> 00:28:49.430
And so I have always always had Fridays as my personal development day.

00:28:49.430 --> 00:28:52.159
I've done this for 10 or 15 years now.

00:28:52.159 --> 00:29:04.935
I still do it as an entrepreneur and I set aside Friday for coffee chats or reading my self-help books or getting on LinkedIn, learning and learning a new skill.

00:29:04.935 --> 00:29:21.856
So I'm always investing in me because that's important, and balancing my workload to have Fridays off, and especially on summers I get to I can take a self-help book, to the pool with the kids.

00:29:21.856 --> 00:29:43.616
So there's a lot of balance that I encourage in there and a lot of people that have set and paved the path for me in my career where they took Fridays off because they wanted to stay at home with their kids on Fridays and they were executive level and set that tone for me very early and I admired that and I instituted that and I encourage all of my clients to do the same.

00:29:44.424 --> 00:29:48.040
Yeah, I love that you saw those examples early on in your career.

00:29:48.040 --> 00:29:51.413
I think that's so important for us to see and I think it's a natural segue.

00:29:51.413 --> 00:29:57.470
Amanda, hearing these conversations, I love talking to you, not only as the subject matter expert that you are, but you're also one of us.

00:29:57.470 --> 00:29:59.095
You are a fellow entrepreneur.

00:29:59.095 --> 00:30:06.247
So I want to ask you, as someone with such an incredible career in the world of retail for 20 years, what are some of the differences that you've noticed?

00:30:06.247 --> 00:30:19.467
What are some of the surprises as you've transitioned to being your own boss, being your own entrepreneur and someone who owns a business where you can just take Fridays off Heck, you could take a random Tuesday off or a random Wednesday off.

00:30:19.467 --> 00:30:21.491
You literally call all of the shots.

00:30:21.491 --> 00:30:27.037
Now, what are some of those things that you enjoy that were surprises to you as you transition to being an entrepreneur?

00:30:28.766 --> 00:30:44.877
I think the most enjoyable and even surprising moment that I have enjoyed as an entrepreneur is the autonomy that I get to build into my schedule, and I really felt it was going to be oh, instead of nine to five, it'll be nine to three, with Fridays off.

00:30:44.877 --> 00:30:46.146
And that's really.

00:30:46.146 --> 00:31:03.336
That was my corporate brain thinking about that, and I hope that everyone laughed at that, because I know I'd laugh at that If I heard someone say that uh, it's really about the autonomy to say oh, you know what, I've got to run to the grocery store and grab lunch.

00:31:03.336 --> 00:31:09.926
Let's hop in the car and run to get some lunch and come back and we'll have lunch at one.

00:31:09.926 --> 00:31:18.874
Now instead, you know, and I get to do those things Taking the kids to the pool during the summer and bringing my laptop down to the pool and working.

00:31:18.874 --> 00:31:22.989
It's just so great I get to be with the kids at school.

00:31:22.989 --> 00:31:29.788
Also, they're not going to be around for long and we only get one life, so let's make the most of it.

00:31:30.671 --> 00:31:31.973
Yes, amen to that.

00:31:31.973 --> 00:31:34.398
Honestly, those are the true beauties.

00:31:34.398 --> 00:31:37.894
They're so simple, but that is such a beautiful part of being an entrepreneur.

00:31:37.894 --> 00:31:45.833
When people talk about how terrible Trader Joe's parking lots are, I can't relate to that because I go to Trader's Joe on a Monday at 1130.

00:31:45.853 --> 00:31:47.498
So I love that perspective.

00:31:47.498 --> 00:32:01.977
Amanda, I do want to ask you about the fact that when you started your own business, you really recognize serving a past version of yourself, those corporate women and I think that's so incredible about how fine-tuned you are, about the types of people that you want to serve.

00:32:01.977 --> 00:32:13.891
Talk to us about those intentional choices and I know that in your business, the advancing leader method obviously that's something that you've baked into so much of your past experiences and, like I said, serving that past version of yourself.

00:32:13.891 --> 00:32:18.546
Talk to us about the origins and the focus of how it is that you want to serve these people.

00:32:19.949 --> 00:32:20.308
Yeah.

00:32:20.308 --> 00:32:27.546
So spending time in a corporate career as many may relate, it's a grind.

00:32:27.546 --> 00:32:30.509
It's a really, really tough grind.

00:32:30.509 --> 00:32:48.065
I think if I were to compare it to something I always hear grandparents say having children's for the young I feel like the corporate grind is for the young and it's exhausting.

00:32:48.065 --> 00:32:50.413
It becomes really wearing and taxing.

00:32:50.413 --> 00:32:51.326
It becomes really wearing and taxing.

00:32:51.326 --> 00:33:11.561
And I recognize that while I was in my corporate career it was going to be even more of a struggle to navigate the corporate culture and the promotion schedule beyond a certain level.

00:33:11.561 --> 00:33:16.068
So I was at a senior director level and the next level is VP.

00:33:16.068 --> 00:33:39.892
Okay so, unless there's some nepotism going on in my space, it wasn't going to happen and I recognize that and I am a proponent of DEI across the board and I really feel like the nepotism and patriarchy still exists in corporate America and on a broader scale.

00:33:39.892 --> 00:33:43.118
I want to do something that impacts that and supports people.

00:33:43.118 --> 00:33:50.838
Women specifically navigate those really murky waters that are still out there.

00:33:51.845 --> 00:33:54.067
Yeah, and I think that's a powerful point we talk about.

00:33:54.067 --> 00:33:59.509
The beauties of entrepreneurship is this is the thing we get to be the change that we wish to see in the world.

00:33:59.509 --> 00:34:05.468
You don't just have to be a participant or, even worse, just a spectator seeing these things happen.

00:34:05.468 --> 00:34:21.436
You can be the person and huge kudos to you, as well as literally every entrepreneur on the planet that sees these situations, the climates that we're all operating in, and they say I don't want that to be the case and I actively want to be part of the change and part of the solution.

00:34:21.436 --> 00:34:23.251
So huge kudos to you, amanda.

00:34:23.324 --> 00:34:30.610
I so appreciate the work that you're doing and the people that you're serving, and it's based off of so many things that you've experienced through your own living.

00:34:30.610 --> 00:34:33.195
So huge kudos to you for being part of that change.

00:34:33.195 --> 00:34:39.431
And I always love wrapping these conversations up with a question that is so broad that you can truly take it in any direction you want.

00:34:39.431 --> 00:34:48.795
And that is what's the one takeaway, the one piece of advice that you want to leave listeners with, knowing that they're at all different stages of their growth journeys, personally and professionally.

00:34:48.795 --> 00:34:51.449
What's that one thing that you want to impart on them today?

00:35:03.744 --> 00:35:04.166
Believe in yourself.

00:35:04.166 --> 00:35:09.297
You are everything you need to be and you have all the skills you need to be the person you believe and want and desire to be.

00:35:10.606 --> 00:35:14.836
Yes, powerful advice that is relevant to every single one of us.

00:35:14.836 --> 00:35:18.914
It's not advice that we need to hear once or twice or 10 times.

00:35:18.914 --> 00:35:26.893
It's advice that we need to incorporate into our psyche, into our mindset and, amanda, so powerfully that, like you shared with us today into our belief patterns.

00:35:26.893 --> 00:35:28.320
So thanks so much for that.

00:35:28.320 --> 00:35:33.231
For listeners you already you shouted out a little bit that it seems like I've gone through your program.

00:35:33.231 --> 00:35:40.496
It's because you have so much good stuff out there about the way that you talk, about the work that you do and the impact that you want to have on all of your clients.

00:35:40.496 --> 00:35:45.849
So, amanda, for listeners who want to find all this great stuff that you're up to, drop those links on us.

00:35:45.849 --> 00:35:47.454
Where should listeners go from here?

00:35:48.905 --> 00:35:55.559
They should go to the Empowered Leadership Circle Facebook community and request to join.

00:35:57.246 --> 00:36:01.456
Yes, listeners, you see how easy Amanda is making it for you, how inviting she is.

00:36:01.456 --> 00:36:06.240
You'll find that link down below in the show notes, wherever it is that you're tuning into today's episode.

00:36:06.240 --> 00:36:08.130
We're also linking to her personal LinkedIn.

00:36:08.130 --> 00:36:23.755
I will tell you, as someone who researched so much of the amazing work that she's done before starting her business and, of course, since starting her business, you'll find that the way she talks about these things and articulates these things on her personal LinkedIn is super powerful and you can be supported by her Facebook group.

00:36:23.755 --> 00:36:26.344
So find those links down below in the show notes.

00:36:26.344 --> 00:36:32.449
Otherwise, amanda, on behalf of myself and all the listeners worldwide, thanks so much for joining us on the show today.

00:36:33.291 --> 00:36:34.375
Thank you for having me.

00:36:34.375 --> 00:36:35.076
I enjoyed it.

00:36:39.985 --> 00:36:42.739
Hey, it's Brian here, and thanks for tuning in to yet another episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

00:36:42.739 --> 00:36:45.572
If you haven't checked us out online, there's so much good stuff there.

00:36:45.572 --> 00:36:54.789
Check out the show's website and all the show notes that we talked about in today's episode at thewantrepreneurshowcom, and I just want to give a shout out to our amazing guests.

00:36:54.789 --> 00:37:03.557
There's a reason why we are ad free and have produced so many incredible episodes five days a week for you, and it's because our guests step up to the plate.

00:37:03.664 --> 00:37:05.628
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00:37:05.628 --> 00:37:07.233
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00:37:07.233 --> 00:37:10.708
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00:37:10.708 --> 00:37:21.670
They so deeply believe in the power of getting their message out in front of you, awesome entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs, that they contribute to help us make these productions possible.

00:37:21.670 --> 00:37:30.164
So thank you to not only today's guests, but all of our guests in general, and I just want to invite you check out our website because you can send us a voicemail there.

00:37:30.164 --> 00:37:31.507
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00:37:31.507 --> 00:37:36.135
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00:37:36.135 --> 00:37:37.536
Initiate a live chat.

00:37:37.536 --> 00:37:46.949
It's for real me, and I'm excited because I'll see you, as always every Monday, wednesday, friday, saturday and Sunday here on the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.