Pam Ivey (00:00): You’re listening to the Flourish & Grow to CEO Podcast, episode 10

Pam Ivey (00:26): Are you a lady boss making $50-$100k in your business? And you’re ready to break through that six figure barrier.

Jane Garee (00:34): You’ve done a great job of creating a nice life as the ultimate gig master but your inner CEO is calling you to greater Heights. You’re in the right place if you want to create and implement solid fundamentals in your business – without sacrificing fun.

Pam Ivey (00:48): I’m Pam Ivey. I’m certified in small business management and I concentrate in the areas of training and certifying real estate assistance, coaching and mentoring entrepreneurs in online business, marketing, growth and profit acceleration. And I take men and women business owners aged 40 plus to bucket list destinations around the world for a month at a time to work, explore, and live in community.

Jane Garee (01:14): And I’m Jane Garee known as the sales strategist for the non-salesperson. And I work with business owners who want to increase their conversion rate, shorten their sales cycle and have more impact and influence with the work they do, all while having more fun with selling.

Pam Ivey (01:29): Hey, welcome back everyone. Can you believe Jane? This is our 10th episode.

Jane Garee (01:36): I really can’t believe it. When we first started working on this, we were kind of thinking it’s never going to cross the finish line, but here we are at episode 10. Yeah. Pretty exciting.

Pam Ivey (01:46): And it’s so exciting that we really found something that we’re enjoying so much, that we’re really being consistent with it.

Jane Garee (01:53): Yeah. That’s a big thing for us, and for all entrepreneurs, consistency gets stuff through to completion.

Pam Ivey (01:59): You got it, baby. You know, we’ve just celebrated the new year. So many of us are pretty darn happy to have a clean slate. I know I am. 2020 has been a challenging year to say the least. And we have some thoughts to share, to hit the reset button, redirect and stay present in the moment. All important components of growing our businesses. So Jane, why don’t you start us off with your thoughts of a reset button?

Jane Garee (02:29): Yeah. There’s something so incredibly powerful about hitting that reset button. And I know if you’re of a certain age, you probably remember recording things or making a mix tape. I’m really starting to show my age, but whether it was on the TV or any song that you were wanting to create a project that you were creating, when things weren’t going right, you could hit the reset button and it would just erase everything and it starts you over. And that really got me to thinking about one of the most powerful journeys that I have had in my life. It was a literal geographical journey and it was also a very emotional internal journey. And it was this in 2016, after 19 years of living in South Florida, which I loved, I decided I was going to move back to Cincinnati, Ohio, which is where my entire family is.

Jane Garee (03:23): And the last several years that I was in Florida, they were really, really challenging. The market had crashed. It was in 2008, the market had crashed, and it took me a long time to really recover. And I don’t know that I ever emotionally really recovered from all of that. You know, it was a big loss to all of us and especially in South Florida. And at the time I was in mortgages, this was back in 2008, a lot of loss for everybody in the industry. And that state was hit very hard. So, I stayed down there for another almost decade, just turning things around and trying to get everything back on track. But my soul was really just crying out to be with my family. I had, again, 19 years down in South Florida, I was constantly getting phone calls from the whole family.

Jane Garee (04:07): We’re going here, we’re doing this. And I came back to Cincinnati so I can see them, but it was only really a few times a year. My parents were getting older, my niece and nephews, whom I just absolutely adored. They were all growing up. And the more I was in Florida, the more I just felt like, you know what? I think this chapter in my life is ending. I can come back to Florida. Florida always is going to be here, but there’s just something about this that feels like it needs to get wrapped up. So, I got in the car and I drove home to Cincinnati. And when I first got to Cincinnati, it was really like that scene in the Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy walks out of her house in Kansas, from the tornado where everything’s in black and white. And then you go in and it’s in color.

Jane Garee (04:46): It’s a little bit reversed because everything in Florida in April, which is the month that I’m talking about now is in color. You come back to the Midwest in April. It’s not so much in color yet. There’s still a lot of black and white, but I was driving around Cincinnati. And because I hadn’t been in the area for 19 years, I really didn’t recognize anything. There were new buildings that were up. There were buildings that no longer existed, as you might imagine, the whole topography of Ohio from Florida completely different. And I spent the first month just lost, kind of lost in my head. But what I’m talking about specifically is on the road. When I was in my car, I just was lost. I couldn’t find anything. I’m not great with directions anyway. So this was just kind of adding fuel to the fire, adding some stress on top of everything.

Jane Garee (05:32): I think the store’s over here. No, it’s not. Or I wanted to go visit a friend and I had, I really got lost on that one. I had no idea where I was. My best friend when I’m driving is that GPS system, because it is really hard for me to get anywhere. I always joke that it’s a great day when I can get from work to home. Although I work from home, but anywhere that I would go every day and get back home, that that’s a small victory for every day. So driving around, not being familiar with the terrain, stressed out, big upheaval in my life. It was pretty intense. So, I have the GPS on at all times. And inevitably what I kept hearing the GPS say to me is “recalculating, recalculating”, because I was always lost. So, I would take a wrong turn.

Jane Garee (06:16): I would get lost. I’d be off the roots. You know, you hear that, you see the little flash up that says resume route, but I kept hearing this recalculating recalculating. And I thought, you know what? I’m going to take it easy on myself. That’s all life really is when you’re in the car and you’re driving and you get lost or you make a wrong turn or you get off track or whatever the situation is, the GPS lady doesn’t say you idiot. What were you thinking? Why would you decide to go left? When you knew you should go, right? GPS, doesn’t say that it says recalculating, or when you get lost. Cause I can’t even tell you how lost lost. I got way out into some, I don’t even know where I was out in the woods. And some of these places, she didn’t come on and say, I can’t believe the decisions that you make.

Jane Garee (07:07): Look at you here. You are again in a mess. What are you thinking? She just said recalculating. And I thought, you know what? I’m gonna make this. I’m gonna make this, my new motto. This is the thing. And this is how I’m going to talk to myself. I’m not lost. Like it’s a really bad deal. I’m not way out in left field. I can’t find my way back. I’m not panicked because I took a left one. I should’ve taken a right. So, metaphorically that’s what happens in life. And I just made a decision. I was no longer going to talk to myself in those harsh terms. I was going to be the GPS lady and I was going to look at my life. And when I did make a decision that put me in a place I wasn’t anticipating or realize I didn’t really want to be in, or I felt like I made a wrong move or a wrong turn or whatever the situation was.

Jane Garee (07:54): I thought I’m going to remind myself, I’m recalculating recalculating, because you can always get back on track. You can always take the right when you were supposed to take the right, whatever the situation is. So the power of a reset button is really when you can just dig in and say, you know what? What’s behind me is behind me. There were some great things there. I learned a lot. I met some wonderful people. I went through some situations. Didn’t love it. Don’t want to go through it again, but it really turned me into the person that I am today. And every single move that I make, I’m just recalculating. It’s not bad. It’s not wrong. It’s certainly not the end of the world. And I haven’t ruined my life. I’m just recalculating. And I can always get back on track or go in a different direction, which is maybe the exact direction I was supposed to go in any way,

Pam Ivey (08:43): How true. I was just thinking in business, we go down a path. Sometimes we think we have an idea for an amazing product or a course or a program. And we get halfway through it and kind of realize that it may not be all that we thought it might be. It’s totally okay to recalculate or hit the reset button just because you’re halfway through. Doesn’t mean you have to finish it if it’s not working for you, set it aside. Reset.

Jane Garee (09:13): Yeah. Yeah.

Pam Ivey (09:15): My problem is I’m really results-oriented. So I tend to power through to the end of things and then realize that I should’ve hit the reset button.

Jane Garee (09:25): I think that that’s a common attribute of entrepreneurs. I tend to do the same thing. And I think it’s because part of being a successful business owner is you’ve got to lock in and be really stubborn because people will tell you it can’t be done. Situations are going to push back on you and make you think it can’t be done. And your own internal inner game is going to tell you, you’re kind of nuts. What are you doing? This isn’t going to happen. So that kind of focus and perseverance and the commitment to pushing through is a great thing. And when it’s in a certain context, it can be a really big challenge. So you know what I’d love to talk about. If we’re talking about kind of three key points today for a new year and a fresh start, the power of the reset. Great. But I know you and I talked about something, that’s I kind of term like “rejection is redirection”. So I have stories. I know you have stories. I’d love to hear yours. What can you share with us when you think about rejection is redirection? What does it mean and how have you experienced it?

Pam Ivey (10:21): Well, you said it yesterday. All things are conspiring to work in your favor. I thought how powerful, and I know I’ve heard that before, but when we were talking about it in context, it really resonated with me. And it’s so funny because you talked about the 2008 crash. Well, that’s my story.

Pam Ivey (10:47): The real estate industry. So, it totally makes sense. You’re in mortgages. I was a real estate virtual assistant. I had this huge team of 19 people counting on me to pay them and the bottom fell out of the economy. It just dropped out,  as everybody knows, I lost literally 95% of my clients because the majority of my clients were real estate. I had a team of 19 people. I mean, I had agents, but I also had full brokerage houses that went belly up in this 2008 crash. Plus, one of my clients, a very high, high level, high profile business coach went bankrupt and she went bankrupt with an $28,000 bill outstanding with me. And I still had to pay my team.

Pam Ivey (11:41): We managed to work all that out. And that coach by the way, was so in integrity because she came back to me and said, how can we work this out? We worked together to create a program. I kept all the profits. She coached me for a couple of years on her dime. I mean, she was just integrity plus for me. But what this did for me was allow me to redirect because I really, in the last couple of years that I was a virtual assistant of the 10, actually nine years that I was a virtual assistant. I was not enjoying it at all. I wanted out somehow and I had always had training programs. So, I always had online courses, but this crash allowed me the time because, you know, I didn’t have any clients to create other online courses. And I really moved my business in that direction.

Pam Ivey (12:35): So, I wasn’t counting on only clients. I was broadening my offerings, not putting my eggs all in one basket, so that when 95% of your clients go down, you’re screwed. I had virtual assistants’ associations that were bringing me in consistent income monthly. I had training programs, evergreen training programs, that were really gaining traction and bringing me in good income monthly. And I had been coaching all along, but I brought on more private one-on-one coaching clients, which brought on more money. It totally allowed me to redirect and really reinvent my business. And when they say all things are conspiring to work in your favor, it was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Jane Garee (13:26): It’s so hard when you’re going through something that’s challenging and the bigger, the challenge, the harder it is to really buckle in, you know, and go, okay, I have got to get through this and I’m just going to do the only way to survive. It is just survive it. But there always is some blessing in every single challenge. It’s just, you got to turn it inside out. And a lot of times that can’t happen until you’re on the other side of it. I know exactly what you’re talking about though. What feels like such a rejection. It’s a complete redirection. Um, I’ve experienced it with everything from bad breakup with men to jobs, to just different situations or circumstances. It can feel so bone crushing when you’re in the middle of it. And you’re thinking, ah, well what’s wrong with me? Why does this keep happening? You know, that whole, like it’s not happening to you. It’s happening for you. So there’s all these little nice little bumper stickers that you can say, but they’re true. That’s why they exist. So, rejection it is. It’s just it’s redirection.

Pam Ivey (14:27): Absolutely. And the other point that we wanted to talk about was, I mean, it’s so cliche, but we want people to enjoy the journey. Not always concentrating or focusing on the destination. That’s really hard for so many of us.

Jane Garee (14:45): Incredibly hard. I, like you, which I would think most entrepreneurs are business owners, very driven while the result is the destination. The result is what happens as a culmination of all of the things that happened along the journey. So, as a business owner, yeah, of course, you’ve got to have your eye on the destination because that’s the result. That’s the final goal. That’s your measurable., Have we been successful in this endeavor? And I always kind of scoffed it, joy in the journey, you know, no, I just want to get where I’m going when it comes to travel and you, and I know, cause we’ve traveled extensively together. When it comes to travel several years ago, I started saying, I am my best version of myself when I travel. And somebody said, what does that mean? And at first blush, I was thinking, well, I’m really happy.

Jane Garee (15:30): And what does that mean? I started thinking about it. I thought, well, I’m really happy. And I don’t really let things get to me. And that’s what I said, Oh, that’s what it is. When I am traveling, the joy actually is in the journey from missed flights to taking wrong turns in the middle of some country where you don’t speak the language, to eating weird food that you just spit out because it’s just so bad. You didn’t understand what you were eating. The joy is really in the journey for the travel. When I’m traveling. My whole attitude is one of, let me see what happens here because it’s all going to be an adventure. But in real life, I feel more like I’m going to do this thing and it needs to go exactly how I see it in my head or it’s not going to be good and I’m going to be upset.

Pam Ivey (16:18): How true. You know, when we’re traveling, we kind of allow things to just happen, unless we’re scheduled to the nines, which you and I definitely aren’t. We just allow things to unfold before us.

Jane Garee (16:30): And I think in travel, the reason is there are so many things that you just have no control over in real life though. There is more control, but I think it’s the illusion that you have a lot more control than you actually do in your everyday life. That can start making things go sideways. I wanted this to happen. I was going to make this happen and it didn’t happen. And now I’m upset. You can’t say that about a flight when it’s canceled due to inclement weather, there’s really nothing you can do. So you choose to get upset or not, but you know that you had no part in it. So, it’s very tricky. It’s just like this little subtle thing that can get into your head. And the next thing you know, you’re no longer enjoying building the business because all you’re focused on is I have to get to this result and you’re no longer taking the time to take care of the people who would help you build the business or even your friends who just are emotionally supporting you because you’re so focused on the end result, you stop taking the time to enjoy the journey.

Jane Garee (17:35): And half the time you stopped taking the time to just not even be on the journey because you’re so focused on that final destination, isn’t it?

Pam Ivey (17:42): That the truth, you know, we’re going through complications. Say we have hiccups in our business as we go along and go towards those goals. I think a lot of us will think if I can only get here, things will be perfect. You know, if I can only get to the next level, but I love the saying “new level, new devil.” once you get to that next level, believe me, there’s a whole different set of challenges. So, keep in mind that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side and we should enjoy what we’re going through. It’s really hard. I think as entrepreneurs we’re so future seeing or future seeking, all I can say is try to live in the moment. You know, Jane, my husband passed away eight years ago and I had a really hard time with it. My doctor sent me to a program that’s, you know, I’m Canadian.

Pam Ivey (18:35): So, we have some amazing programs that are available to us for free. And this one was on mindfulness training and it was with a psychologist. It was a very small group, and I learned some really cool things about being in the moment, living in the moment. So one of the reasons why it’s so important, it’s really helps you to stay healthy and happy to live in the moment. It helps you to fight anxiety, cut down on worrying, and it keeps you grounded and connected to yourself and everything around you. You know, although it’s become a popular topic in recent years, living in the present, isn’t just a fad or trendy lifestyle tip. It’s a way of life that’s backed by good science. So, being present and exerting our ability to be mindful, it not only makes us happier, it can also help us deal with pain, more effectively, reduce our stress, which is something we talked about last episode, and decrease its impact on our health and improve our ability to cope with negative emotions like fear and anger.

Jane Garee (19:46): It is, I mean, it sounds so cliche and faddy. Oh, just the present is a gift and stay focused in the moment and, you hear those kind of platitudes and when you’re in the middle of the storm, you’re thinking, yeah. Okay, nice. I’m so glad you’re able to speak those little words of comfort there. And it’s just not going to happen years and years and years ago, because I really struggled to stay present. I am always future pasting and years ago, what I realized is that in the moment that’s really where all the power is because in the future, when you’re future pacing and projecting and imagining, that’s where all the stress and worry is because it’s, what if, what if my business doesn’t make enough money to pay my bills? What if this relationship falls apart? What if somebody, I love gets sick?

Jane Garee (20:32): What if it’s always this? What if so, all this anxiety is in the future, but in the moment, none of it’s happening or it’s just in the beginnings or you don’t know the outcome. We can’t tell the future when we’re sitting there and we can’t anyway. But especially when you’re in the moment in the present on the flip side, the opposite bookend of the future is the past. And the past is where all the regret is and the shame or the guilt or the, I call it the spins. You just sit and spin. Why did I do that? Why did I say that? Why did I make that decision? So up in the future, all the worry and anxiety back there in the past behind you, all the regret and shame and guilt, it’s really in the moment where the power is.

Pam Ivey (21:13): How true. So, when we engage in mindfulness or present moment meditation, we’re not ignoring or denying thoughts of the past or future, we’re simply choosing not to dwell on them. There are happy thoughts in our past. There are really exciting things in our future, but we don’t dwell on the past or the future. We try and live in the moment. So, here are some tips for staying in the moment. One of them is to do a mindful body scan. It’s a simple exercise, and it’s a great way to get yourself in a mindful mood and get in touch with your body. Doing this in the morning can also help you get your day off to a great start. So, here’s what you do: while sitting or lying down on your bed (but not falling asleep). Again, take a few deep breaths, just concentrate on your breath and notice the way your breath enters and exits your lungs.

Pam Ivey (22:15): Now, starting with your toes, you focus your attention on one part of your body at a time, pay attention to how that area is feeling and notice any sensations that you’re experiencing. After a few moments of focused attention, move up to the next part of your body. Like after your toes, focus on your feet, then your ankles and your calves, and so on.

Another good exercise that can help you set a right mindful tone for the day is to write in a journal. And this is something that I have gotten into the habit of, and it really helps me early in the morning, before you get started checking things off your long to-do list. Take a few minutes to pull out your journal or a notebook and make an entry. And what you write down here is any mindless chatter in your head. You just log it down as it comes to you. No thinking about what you’re writing down, no criticism, just write down whatever chatters in your head. And you can also log any particularly insightful dreams that maybe you had or ideas. Just anything that pops into your head that’s really helped me to kind of empty my brain if you will, at the beginning of the day. Because there’s just always so much swimming around in our heads, especially as entrepreneurs, especially ideas, right?

Jane Garee (23:37): Yeah. One of my very favorite authors, Julia Cameron, she’s got a whole series called The Artist’s Way. And the premise of it is really about how to release your inner creative, regardless of your chosen profession. The exercise that she suggests everybody can do. Yeah, everybody. Yeah, that’s right there. I started doing this, oh gosh, it’s probably been 15 years now at this point is she calls it Morning Pages. You get up every morning and you write three solid pages, eight and a half by 11 size, just brain dump it. Sometimes it’s really easy to just keep going for three pages. If you’re a journaler and a writer and you have a lot of thoughts, that’s usually where I am. I have to break at three pages because I can keep going.

Jane Garee (24:23): I’ve heard that other people really struggle with it, but once they get going, they actually stop the struggle because there’s so much that gets locked up in there. Here’s my favorite thing about sitting down and journaling every morning: You will start to see it’s like magic stuffs lifting up off the page. And if you leave everything alone for at least two or three days, but say maybe even a week, and then you go back and you look at it, all your answers are right there. The stuff that you wanted to do, but you weren’t sure you’ll find those answers things that you wanted to create, dreams that you had, maybe things that you want to let go of when you just purge and get all of that out onto a paper. It’s so cleansing and scientific. And it’s amazing how much your intuition and your inner self actually knows.

Pam Ivey (25:11): Isn’t that the truth I was waiting for more…

Jane Garee (25:17): There is more because then what you have to do for all y’all who want to sit down and write every morning and it is unfiltered raw. This is what is in my heart and in my head. Boom. On a piece of paper, you have to enlist the aid of your best friend. And this is what you say this, because this is what I said to mine in the event of my untimely demise. You need to come to my house, get all of my morning pages journal and burn them. That’s the thing that needs to happen before anybody can deal with anything else. That’s hilarious.

Pam Ivey (25:49): Visualization of goal completion is another really cool technique. It helps you improve your focus and mindfulness, but it can also lower your stress because you’re thinking about what you need to go through during your day and how you’re going to get it done. So, it’s not kind of that unknown. Again, another technique is to conduct a mindful review of your day. I know you can get easily tired and worn out by the end of the day, but try this exercise toward the end, perhaps after you’ve finished all of your must do’s for the day or right before you head off to bed, take a few minutes to review your day. Think back to the start of the day and remember your mindfulness exercise that kicked it all off. Think about how that made you feel now think through the rest of your day, being sure to know any particular mindful moments or memorable events take stock of your mood as you move through your daily routine.

Pam Ivey (26:50): Now, if you want to keep track of your progress towards greater mindfulness, it’s a great idea to write all of this down in a journal or a diary. But the point is to give yourself yet another opportunity to be mindful at the end of your day and on the right note. One thing that I know like another tip, one thing I do at the end of my day, actually, when I’m in bed to relax. Because I, like a lot of other entrepreneurs, it’s getting cliche, have a little bit of a hard time sleeping, getting to sleep. So I do this exercise where I breathe in for a count of seven, I hold it for a count of seven and I breathe out for a count of seven. And I do that for a good three to five minutes at the same time, I’m relaxing. Like the exercise that I talked about before, I’m kind of relaxing from my toes all the way up to my head.

Pam Ivey (27:48): And I’m just really concentrating on relaxing those body parts. So they feel like they’re sinking. They’re going deeper into the bed. And by the time I’m at my head, I’m pretty much asleep. So that’s another exercise that you can try. Meditation is a funny word. And so many people say to me, how do I meditate? How long should I meditate? Just because I’ve taken that course on mindfulness. And we learned a lot of meditation techniques. Meditation is literally, if you get down to the core basics of it, is just taking a moment to be in the moment – to be still. I mean, chatter’s going to come into your mind and you can acknowledge it and just let it go. But it’s just being still and meditation can be two minutes long. It does not have to be an hour like a Yogi. Anything that centers you and brings you back to yourself. That’s all really it is. So, on that note, let’s just kind of wrap up Jane, what we’ve learned today.

Jane Garee (29:00): Yeah. So the three big takeaways today are number one, the power of hitting the reset button, the power of reset. You’re not wrong. You’re not lost. It’s not hopeless. You’re just recalculating. The second one is rejection. It really is redirection. So don’t panic. Don’t get upset. If you feel like you’re getting rejected, it’s a redirection to someplace else. And then number three, enjoy the joy of the journey. You’ve got to really sink into what you’re doing along the way and not get so focused on the destination that you miss everything that happens up to that point.

Pam Ivey (29:34): Exactly. And remember new level, new devil. So, it’s not always better when we get to the level. It’s awesome. Don’t get me wrong, but there’s always going to be challenges along the way.

Jane Garee:  Yeah. There’s always going to be challenges along the way. I’ll share this one insight that I get from all the consultations, the sales conversations I have, if you will. And when people are looking to invest and they want to know how much is it to this thing. And I’ll say whatever the investment is, let’s say $5,000. Um, for the most part, not a lot of people have $5,000 sitting around in the slush fund. You know, certainly at the, at the business level that we’re talking about like, Oh, here, let me go grab that. That’s just been bankrolled for awhile here. Not a big deal. So $5,000, it’s a significant investment. And I hear this all the time. I can’t wait until investing in my business at $5,000 is no big deal at all because I can easily afford it. And what I always say to them is I have really good news and you need a mind shift a little bit here. So the good news is you absolutely will get to a point in your business where investing $5,000 is no big deal. You’re going to easily be able to afford it. It will be sitting in your slush fund, but here’s the scoop. When you get to the point where investing a $5,000 amount is no big deal, you will not be vesting investing at $5,000 amounts.

Jane Garee (31:04): And then you’re going to say the same thing. I can’t wait until we’re investing $25,000 in my business is no big deal. I guess what it will be. And then you’ll be investing at a a hundred thousand dollar level. So I really want everybody to grasp that. It’s like everything else in life, I’ll be happy when you can’t do that. Because the, when, when it happens, because it will, there’s always a new one out in front of you. How true be happy. Now, I think that’s a great place to wrap up this episode of the flourishing, grow to CEO podcast.

Pam Ivey: If you liked this episode, we’d love it. If you’d share it with your friends and colleagues, just take a screenshot of the episode and upload it to your favorite social media place and let them know to listen. We want you to know that we truly appreciate you.

Pam Ivey (32:01): Thanks for joining us this week on the Flourish & Grow to CEO Podcast. Be sure to visit our website at www.Flourish.biz. That’s F L O U R I S H.biz, where you can subscribe to the shows in iTunes, Stitcher, or via RSS so you’ll never miss an episode. You can also find our show notes and resources there too. And while you’re at it, if you found value in this show, we’d love for you to leave a rating on iTunes. Or if you’d simply tell a friend about the show, that would sure help us out. Now get out there and flourish!