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This is the third part in a three-part series about being a collaborative author. In this one, I'm sharing the five reasons to be a collaborative author when you have a book or are currently writing your own, or have been in a collaborative book (You can read the first two parts of this series where I shared about the three ways you’ll get left behind by NOT being an author and what to look for in collaborative book opportunities.)
Leadership Secrets is coming up in the next year. Our first call for authors closes, April 17 at 11:59PM, where we have the opportunity for 18 women to jump into co-authorship with us. This is part of why I'm doing this three-part series. On April 15, we also have a training called Collaborative Author 101: How to Explode Your Audience, Establish Your Authority, and Leave a Legacy by Entering the World of Co-Writing. If you missed it and would like a replay, please reach out to [email protected] as soon as possible so that we can see if we can get that to you. Depending on when you reach out, we might even be in our second call for authors or we might be able to squeak you in the first. We'll see. No guarantees. There are so many benefits to being in a collaborative book, and we offer so many bonuses when you’re in Leadership Secrets. Now, here are the five different reasons to be a collaborative author, even if you're already an author, or you're writing your own book. These are also for you if you were already part of a collaborative book. You might think, “Well, I'm already an author, why bother?” Well, there's actually a strategy for why to be an author. I've been part of collaborative books from other people, and even if they don’t have all the strategy pieces that I want, there’s still some benefit to it, and I still do it. You can read my previous blogs where I talked about what to look for in collaborative book opportunities and the previous one to is about the three ways you'll get left behind by not being an author. But today, I want to speak to those who have had a book, who are writing their own books, or have been in a collaborative book and are thinking, “Why would I bother being a collaborative author?” I'm going to talk through these five pieces. Because I'll tell you, I felt the same way. Reason 1: It's a jumping-off point. Some authors who have been part of Dynamic Women® Secrets Books have used this as a learning opportunity to then jump off and do their own solo book. They’ve been able to build confidence as a writer and also be able to say, “Okay, I'm a collaborative author, and this is the first book and now I'm going to be a solo author of my own book.” Then they go on to do their own. If you're writing your own book, now's a really great time to invest in this type of opportunity with us because you're going to be able to have our book come out, and then your book. Sort of like “Bam, Bam.” You get to leverage my network and our promo to then position your own book. Here's a little bonus tip: You can bundle the books when you go to sell them as a way to make even more money to get a double sale rather than just a single sale. If you already have a book that's out there, then you can use this opportunity to link it back to your book that you've already done. Cool, eh? Reason 2: To plant the seed. If you're currently writing your own book, then you want to plant the seed to the readers that your book is coming out. You can plant the seed forward to the next book or you can plant the seed backwards to a book that you've already done so that the people reading this collaborative book with us can go back and purchase the book that you've already done. Planting the seed for a future book, a past book, or a current book is a really amazing reason to be a collaborative author. I've done that a bunch of times. In one book, I talked about being a Dynamic Woman. Then I linked it back to the Dynamic You™ Book. I've also been in another one where I talked about the importance of celebrating our successes and linked it over to the Dynamic Year journal. You might even write your piece as something that will open up an idea that is then more thoroughly talked about in your own book or in another collaborative book. There are different ways. I can even write in someone else's collaborative book about the importance of being a collaborative author and link it back to my opportunity. It doesn't even have to be directly to the book. It could be to other opportunities or offerings. Reason 3: To build your audience. How do you build your audience? Well, the obvious one is you’re building your audience with the readers who buy your book from you.  You're also building your audience by the other authors selling it to their audiences. Plus, you can build your audience by leveraging your own social media promotion before the book even comes out, and when it’s out. What you might not have thought about for your own book or even with a collaborative book is to share the content from other authors or commenting on their posts to gain more connections and followers. What you might not have thought about for your own book is the power of the publisher, in this case it’s me, promoting you as an author to my network. As I mentioned in my previous blog, you want to be looking for full promo from a collaborative book opportunity. It’s them promoting you and also giving you lots of promo materials for social media, emails etc. that they have designed personalized to you. That's a really key thing and strategy. That's something we teach in our book opportunity. Reason 4: Build your network. You might be like, “What's the difference between audience and network?” Well, if we think of audiences, these are people who could buy from you, who do buy from you and leads. Then we talk about networks. Yes, that could also be leads. Yes, that can also be potential customers. It can also be your audience. But I want you to think of it differently in the way of network by connecting with a network of authors. You are an author. Now you have permission to reach out to the other authors. Obviously not a salesy or creepy way. You can be like, “Hey, I'm an author in the Dynamic Women® Secrets Book. I'm secret number 13. I see you’re secret number 28. Let's connect.” Now, you're connecting, not just as maybe an expert in your topic, but you're connecting as authors. Connecting on another level, and even though you've maybe already been part of a collaborative book, this is a new set of authors. Even if you've written your own book, this is now you connecting with other authors. It's always important to continue to expand your network, grow your network, and build your network, so that you can continue to build collaborative opportunities, joint ventures, affiliates, referral partnerships, all of these things to move your business forward.  If you don’t grow your network, eventually, by having just the same group of people, you're going to hit some dead ends, and your lists are all going to start being the same. Reason 5: Being relevant. You need to continue to add to your achievements and your bio with a current book. I don't lean on the power and the success of my solo book back in 2017. I'm constantly putting out books or being part of books so that I continue to be relevant. I continue to be on people's radars like, “Whoa, you're an author again. Wow. Cool.” The ability to say, “My latest book” is powerful, and then in selling this new book, you can bring in your old books and bundle them. Authors, if your book is over a year old, you need another book. You need some fresh readers. There's so much strategy that can be used here around being a collaborative author. That's why I continue to be a collaborative author, even though some of the opportunities don't hold all the things I really want in collaborative authorship opportunities. Wrapping Up These five reasons: a jumping-off point, planting the seed, building your audience, building your network, and being relevant - are game changers in your business, to get the message out there, to be able to bring business back to you, and really, to stand apart from other people in your industry. I hope you'll consider joining the Dynamic Women® Leadership Secrets book. Check in with us to see if we still have opportunities depending on when you read this and go back and read the other two parts of this series so that you can really get all of the information to make the right choices about being a collaborative author. Also, invite your friend to be an author with you. That's a really cool opportunity as well as growth for you, your friend, and for your friendship as you both move up in the world in the same book and make a change in other people's lives. Read my other blogs:
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This is the second part of a three-part series about being a collaborative author. You can read the first part here. In this blog, I’m going to be covering what to look for in collaborative book opportunities.  Collaborative book opportunities To kick things off, I want you to know that there are many collaborative book opportunities out there, mine included. After publishing five of my own books, three of them collaborative in the Dynamic Women® Secrets Series. We have Success Secrets, Confidence Secrets, and Trailblazer Secrets, and now in the next year, we're going to be launching Leadership Secrets. I also have my Dynamic Year Journal, my Dynamic You book and I’ve been in six other collaborative books. I don’t share this to brag, I share this only because I have learned a lot about the process: writing, editing, formatting, layout, editing, publishing and promotion. I have learned what to do, what not to do, and really what I look for in collaborative opportunities. All of them are basically going to have done-for-you options, meaning you submit your piece, and they put it in the book, and they publish it. But there are many other things to look out for. This is true in the way that I look for opportunities, but I'm also noticing I've even joined books that don't have all of these opportunities. There's a different reason why I'm joining, but I don't get the full ROI (return on investment) when I am part of these book opportunities. I do it for different reasons. I won't fully go into that today. I want to let you know some things that you can look for. One of my collaborative authors in this new Leadership Secrets book came to me and said, “You know, Diane, I was part of another collaborative book, but I just didn't like how it was going, so I actually dropped out and asked for a refund. Now, I'm joining your book because I see the opportunities here and I see the different levels of opportunity that you're providing for my investment.” Side note: We have a Call for Authors right now for Leadership Secrets and we have 18 spots for authors to jump in. There will be special perks for this group, but some spots are already taken and doors close April 17th at 11:59 pm PDT. If you’d like more info, then join us on April 15th from 1-3:00 PM PDT, we are going to have a free training called “Collaborative Author 101: How to Explode Your Audience, Establish Your Authority, and Leave a Legacy by Entering the World of Co-Writing”. We're doing two more Call for Authors throughout the year. But this group will have most of the perks. I encourage you to check it out to be part of this opportunity. Who is this opportunity good for?
The 3 things to look for in collaborative book opportunities #1: Strategy Support You're looking for strategy support. Now what do I mean by that? Well, I've been in books before. I joined, I paid the investment and then it was, “Okay, you need to submit your piece within 10 days.” Or “You need to have your piece in by this date.” What I would love to see happen more and what we do in our book is we offer a course called “Book Writing Strategies.” You get an idea-generating session with everyone to talk about what you could write about, so it’s easier to write your piece. Then we look at the “Book Writing Strategies” where you get strategies on what to write and how to write it to boomerang business back to you: leads, clients, sales, and opportunities. Then that gives you the best ROI. There are a lot of different things I’ve learned over the years and in being part of six other people's collaborative books and three of my own. There's a lot of strategy in how to write your piece, what to put in your bio, what your title should be, and which links to use for readers to connect with you, each part of your piece is important so you can boomerang business and opportunities back to you. There's a lot of strategy that goes into every word. You can choose to just write your piece and submit it and be done. But I really think that if you're looking for a collaborative opportunity to be part of a book, you want to get that outside view of what’s possible.
be a big part of the opportunities that you say yes to. #2: Full promotion What I mean by full promotion is in two pieces: 1. The publisher, or whoever is providing this opportunity, gives you promotional assets. I say full because you get your book, and then you say, “Now what do I do with it?” What we do on our team is we do something called “Author-in-a-Box” where you get all the promo assets needed to properly promote the book. We provide you with the sales sheets, PR press release, and all the promo, including stories, videos, graphics, and everything. Not just, “Here's the book” and it's generic for everyone, it is personalized for you, your name, your image, and the ability for you to do that with the videos and other pieces. It's a full promo. It’s personalized. It is about you being announced as an author, promo for the virtual book launch party, as well as more promo for when the book is out to help you sell it. That's what I see as a full promo. You’re provided with the copy, the images or graphics, everything, so you can just copy and paste, basically because we want it to be easy for you. That’s why we call it “Author-in-a-Box”. It's super easy to just copy and paste into your email, onto your social media, or wherever you want to put it. 2. The other side of this is actually that the publisher is promoting you. I think the publisher should be doing this by promoting all of the authors and their names, not just an image of them on a banner or something and no one knows who they are.I announce that everyone is an author on multiple platforms of mine, like LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. It's on my banners I promote on my social. You need both sides for it to be full promo. Then the publisher promotes the book to their network and encourages all the authors to do so with the opportunity for wholesale copies. #3: Wholesale copies This is definitely something you want to be looking for, the ability to purchase wholesale copies. If I give you copy and images to promo, then you can easily promote the book, sell the book to your network and make money off of it. Imagine making 10-20 bucks per book or using the book in a way that's going to help you bring in more clients, more opportunities, and more checks. That's key, right? If you have to buy the book retail from the publisher or Amazon then you are not making money off it unless you raise the price, but you wouldn’t since it’s listed as lower elsewhere. This also stops you from being able to gift the books cheaply or using them strategically to for leads. Bonus: Another thing that you want to look for in an opportunity that encourages you and teaches you the ways to sell the books and bring more business and cheques back to you by using the book.  I do a training that gives you 20+ ways to use the book to bring in clients, opportunities, money, and sales. These are all proven things that I have done in my business. It’s really crucial that if you're going to invest money in an opportunity to be a collaborative author, you want to have opportunities to bring the money back to you and to get a really good ROI. Wrapping Up When you're looking for that collaborative book opportunity, you want to look for a publisher who’s giving you strategy support, the full promo, personalized promo for multiple parts of the book process, as well as wholesale copies so that you can make money off of it and teaches you how to use the book in different ways to bring business leads and money back to you. If you want to be part of our next collaborative book called Dynamic Women® Leadership Secrets, apply here. We have open doors right now until April 17. This is our first call for authors. I encourage you to jump in now. The best perks will be now. On April 15, we have a training called “Collaborative Author 101: How to Explode Your Audience, Establish Your Authority, and Leave a Legacy by Entering the World of Co-Writing”. You can join by registering here. It’s free to attend. If you have any questions reach out to me, [email protected]. Stay tuned for the next blog (we are dropping right now) where I talk about the “5 Reasons to be a Collaborative Author When you Have a Book or You're Writing Your Own Book”. If I can say so myself, I share some really cool strategy in it as well. Read my other blogs:
Today, I will share about the three ways you'll get left behind by not being an author. This is part one of a three-part series about being a collaborative author. In the next two blogs, I’ll cover what to look for in collaborative book opportunities and the five reasons to be a collaborative author even when you have a book or are writing your own book.  Sidenote: Doors are open for our first call for authors for the next book in the Dynamic Women® Secret series. The book is called Dynamic Women® Leadership Secrets. Our first call for authors is closing on April 17, at 11:59PM PDT, and we’ve opened 18 spots for this round. There are bonuses and benefits to being in this first group. If you’re interested and want to learn more about this opportunity, you can come to our info session happening on April 15 at 1 PM PDT where I will share about, “Collaborative Author 101: How to Explode Your Audience, Establish Your Authority, and Leave a Legacy by Entering the World of Co-Writing”. The Three Ways You’ll Get Left Behind by NOT Being an Author These ways are for all people including those who…
#1: Competitive Edge I wrote my first book seven years ago called “Dynamic You: The Nine Pillars of Being a Dynamic Woman.” Being an author is still very special, but things have changed because more books are being put out. It is a little bit easier to self-publish these days, rather than having to find a publisher.
I hear, “Well, why would you go and be in other people's books when you can just publish more of your own?” There’s a strategy in all of this. There's a reason why I do all of these things, so watch out for my next two blogs in the coming weeks because I will go through the reasons why I continue to be in books. I've now put out one solo book, three Dynamic Women® Secrets books - Success Secrets, Confidence Secrets, and Trailblazer Secrets. I've also put out the Dynamic Year journal. That's me doing five of my own, then I've been in six other books that other people have put out, and I'm going to be signing up to be part of yet another one. That competitive edge is what you want over other people in the industry. I'll talk about how that comes into play in the second way. #2: Expertise and bio depth. You may think, “Well, I'm not quite an expert at what I am doing.” Or you may believe, “Well, I am an expert.” That's okay you both can be in a book. Being an author…
Adding that you're an author, a collaborative author, and an author again, is a benefit that can move you ahead of others. As I said, almost everyone will have a book in the next couple of years. Then it's since most people have at least one book or have been in one book, you’ll need to have more. When I get introduced to go and speak and they say, “10-time bestselling author”, that's pretty impressive. I'm not saying you need 10. But 1, 2, or 3 would be wonderful. Expertise and bio depth come into play when your leads and clients are looking at their options. They're weighing options. “I’ve got this person, that person and one other person to consider.” You're one of three, one of two, one of 10. Who knows. If it's between you and these other people, they will start weighing the bios and the expertise. As soon as they see someone has a book, that they're an author, or they're an author in something and other people aren't, that's one thing that can make your competitors stand out compared to you. Also, it can help them to be seen as the expert, even though you might have more expertise than they do, and will give them more bio depth than your bio. Even if you have been published, if you don't have a recent publication, then that can also put you down if someone else has a recent book that's come out. We're going to see that in LinkedIn, as it's put up as a milestone. There's new energy around that. #3: Missing out on opportunities You may think, “Well, what opportunities?” In my training that I've done about being a collaborative author, I talk about 10 to 20 ways of benefiting from being in a book or putting out your own book. Some of the ones that you're going to be missing out on are opportunities like speaking engagements. Being asked to speak because you're an author and expert on a topic. If you're not an author, you can’t join authors’ groups or be brought on to podcasts about being an author, or about the book that you're in. Those are some of the key benefits you’ll miss out on as well as summits. I get invited into summits and podcasts because of books that I've been in, because they found me that way, or they've been justified in asking me because they see that I have books for sale on my website.  The last piece around missing out on opportunities is list building. Now, with list building, there are multiple ways you can be doing it:
There are so many different ways that you're missing out on opportunities by not being in a book. You don't want to be left behind, especially because I'm sure you're doing such great work in the world, that you're super passionate about, and you can help people with your products and your services. Wrapping Up I’m guessing you now see how you want to have that competitive edge. You want to have expertise and bio depth. You don’t want to be missing out on opportunities. You don't want to get left behind by not being an author. I do provide a very simple, easy and affordable way that you can be an collaborative author. As I said, the call for authors is closing April 17th, 2024. You can go here to learn more about this exciting opportunity! There is an investment because we do have to pay for editors, the design team, the layout, the promos, and all the other pieces that we do. There is a very minor investment, I would say, in being part of this amazing opportunity. You can also join us on April 15 to learn more. We do have an amazing new training that I'm doing called, “Collaborative Author 101: How to Explode Your Audience, Establish Your Authority, and Leave a Legacy by Entering the World of Co-Writing”. I encourage you to jump onto that or reach out to me [email protected] if you have any questions. Read my other blogs:
Are you feeling tired of having to be on a treadmill towards your success and continuing to go after results and milestones, and it's still never really good enough?  Today, I'm sharing about stopping measuring your life according to your success. This was something I had to learn about many years ago as a recovering perfectionist and as someone who's highly driven and A-type. Maybe you can relate. It was always about…
But I often felt tired, unfulfilled, and empty. It's really sad I felt that way even though I often achieved what I wanted when I was younger…
I'm not saying that to brag. I'm sharing the pressure. I had the feeling of, “You have to do these things.” There was no doubt from others I’d perform and no discussion I'd be going to university. I continued in my life with goal after goal and result after result and asking myself, “Can I be the best at everything?” The greatest gift I received from my first coach was her helping me see that I was measuring life according to success when she introduced me to the wheel of life, which is a professional coaching tool. It is now a nonnegotiable, something that I go through every quarter, and then I take my clients through as well. Switching from measuring your life according to success to measuring life according to your satisfaction was a complete game changer for me.  I hope that if you haven't already heard of it, you go and do it or you reach out to me so that we can do it together. When you measure your life according to success, you will always be chasing success. Because the moment you achieve success, you probably won't fully celebrate it. You'll just look for the next goal or the next piece of success. Success is fleeting because…
Everything is a moment in time. What happens all the other days? Well, if you measure your life according to your satisfaction, then you can have success, not just when you're having the success, not just the moment you decided, but you can have happiness now, you can have happiness later, and you can have happiness every single day on the way to success. Recently, I spoke at the LEAP Conference put on by the Vancouver Regional Construction Association (VRCA) and Canadian Construction Women (CCW). They hosted this event, and I asked the audience, “Do you want to have happiness now or happiness later?” People were like, “Oh, I kind of want both?” Yes, it's like in construction. If you said to a homeowner or a soon-to-be homeowner whose house you're building your house, “Hey, do you want to have floors or ceilings?” They’d answer, “Don’t I want both and walls in between?” You do, right? You want success now and happiness now. You want happiness every single day and you want happiness and success on the day you feel like you're successful. But what's happening is we get into the success trap, where we're striving and pushing and working harder and ignoring our intuition, our self-awareness, what we want, and that inner voice. We just keep pushing it, pushing it down, pushing down, pushing it down because society is telling us these are the things that you want:
It is friggin’ tiring. Doesn't it tire you out just thinking about all of that? Yes! I have been a victim of that and so have my clients, and I see this in women in my audiences. Have you been as well? The Solution The simple solution is to stop measuring life according to success, get out of that success trap, and instead measure life according to your satisfaction. Right? A life built on satisfaction is happier, more full of energy, more full of confidence for yourself, there is more joy, there is more space, and you get to really honour the things that matter most to you. Because that's the problem. We're honouring things that matter to society. But really, that's society's agenda. It's not your agenda. If you're not even looking out for you, who is? Wrapping Up I encourage you to reach out to me. Let's do my Wheel of Life because there are extra areas in mine, which means extra opportunities for more satisfaction in life. There's a very specific way that I take my clients through.  The benefit of it is in the end, it's going to give you a 360 view of where you are in your life in your satisfaction. It's a game changer in the way that we use it to ask, “Where do we want to be?” Not let's look at the sadness of the low numbers now, but where do we want to be and let's use that to paint the picture about what life can look like. Some opportunities for you We had our 1st call for authors for the next book in the Dynamic Women® series. We had Success Secrets, Confidence Secrets, Trailblazer Secrets, and now Leadership Secrets. If you feel like you have something to share there, please apply here. Another opportunity is the She’s Goaled Program 2.0. In that, we’ll use the wheel of life and we're going to be helping you use that as a speed course to reach your goals with coaching masterminding, group support, connection with others. Every single month you’ll be able to reach your goals that much faster and feel much more satisfied in life. Satisfaction equals happiness, energy and resonance PLUS feeling proud, contentment and joy of being where you know you want to be. If you're still struggling around striving for success, let me know. If you want more success, but more ease reach out. You can comment or email me [email protected]. If you don’t want to be tired and worn out anymore, you can have success and happiness without having to give of yourself so fully and intensely. You get to take a step back and really decide what works best for you and live a life that has more space, more joy, and more time for you. Read my other blogs:
Have you felt the power of other people cheering for you? Have you also felt the disadvantage and the annoyance of people competing with you? Today, I’ll talk to you about five ways you can cheerlead other women rather than compete. A little background story What brought this topic on was my latest blog where I talked about the things I do after an event.  I've been sitting in this fun place of doing a great keynote and getting a lot of accolades. Obviously, I want the clients to be happy. But the ones that impacted me the most were from other speakers and the other women who are my peers. Having them cheerlead for me is really meaningful. I've been in a lot of situations in my life, where people have been intimidated by me. People have felt the need to compete. They maybe went into that place of being jealous and tried to cut me down. Do you know what I found? The more we cheerlead for each other, the more room there is for everyone to succeed, not just a few, but for everyone to succeed. I've got five things that you can do to cheerlead more. #1: Acknowledgments Acknowledging someone else. You can do a simple acknowledgment in four or five words. This is something I often talk about and teach in my programs. Basically, “You are a/an” plus an adjective and then the title. For example:
That can be professional. It can also be around things more personal or around who they're being. For example:
We can go through all these different adjectives, all these different titles - you have many options. The key thing is, that you say nothing after. You’re acknowledging the person for who they're being, not telling them the exact situation or thing they did to get the acknowlegement. It's really impactful when you just say the five words or you change “You are” to “You're” and then it becomes four words. We're starved for acknowledgment in society because everything is about competition. Everything is asking us, “Are you good enough?” The number one limiting belief all rolls down to “You are not good enough” or “I'm not good enough.” To combat that, acknowledgments have such power.  These acknowledgments in advance and after are profound. I've been receiving these different acknowledgments on LinkedIn, on social media, on my posts, on other people's posts, and where they tagged me in them sharing what they took away from my talk, or how well I did. I've been receiving them in emails, and just verbally people saying them to me, and I'll tell you, you can never hear it enough. If you think, “I'm not going to go up to the speaker. They've already heard it 20 times from the people who talked to them before me,” still say it. You might say in the bathroom when you see them and walking down the hallway, in an email later, on LinkedIn, writing them a recommendation, whatever it may be, don't miss the opportunity to acknowledge them. #2: Get photos together with the other people That's something I'm very grateful for Michelle Diamond, who did all my photos on the day and does all my photos for my business. When she was at the event, she said, “Let's get photos with the other speakers.” It's funny because a lot of times I get photos with maybe the organizers, the person who put on the event, the hosts, the sponsors, and people who just want a photo together with me, people who bought my book and such.  But getting photos together with other people shows that you're cheering them on, and you want to collaborate, or you want to just acknowledge and not be in competition with them. Get the photo and then post it on social media, right? That's cool to do to show, “Hey, this person did awesome, and here we are in a photo.” If you find yourself entering a room, and you're intimidated by someone, or you feel like “Oh, she does the same thing I do.” Why not chat? Then say, “Hey, let's get a photo together.” It could be a selfie or someone else could take the photo, and then just tag them on social and be like, “Hey, great meeting you.” Super simple to do. #3: Connect on social media Since with the photo you have the opportunity to tag them, you can also friend them, be a connection on LinkedIn, whatever it is. Don’t feel like, “Oh, we can't be friends on social because we do the same thing”. We’re all unique and therefore not in competition. Different people hire based on their preferences. That's how wild it is in the different industries with customers. It might be like:
There are so many different reasons. There are no two people who are the same. Just like your fingerprint. Everyone is unique. Connect on social so that you can be in each other's lives. If you do feel that you're triggered by what they're doing because you're jealous or such, really check in with that. Get some coaching on that so that you understand…
Then you can get beyond it. What I found is a lot of times with people I'm jealous of, it's because I'm not moving forward in that area of life, and I wish I was like they were. Or I'm triggered by them because they probably have a quality that I have that I'm either not turning up enough or I feel like, “I could do better by turning it down a little bit.” You're connecting on social so that you can cheer each other on in the future. #4: Liking and commenting on their posts How do you cheer each other on? After you connect on social, you can like their posts and comment on their posts. That's where you can cheer them on. It doesn't mean you have to have them on your podcast or in a book or something. But just hitting the like button is a really easy way for you to cheer on someone else. Even if they're doing a similar thing as you, it is totally fine. #5: Compliment them We acknowledged them, but why don't we also compliment them?
You might be wondering, “Well, what's the difference between an acknowledgment and a compliment?” Oftentimes, an acknowledgment is acknowledging who they're being while a compliment can be more so around what they're doing or what they have done. Compliments often come after the fact and are specific, and acknowledgments can also come before and be more general. Wrapping Up There are your five ways to cheer others on. Which one of these do you think you're going to use more in your life to cheerlead others rather than compete, and which ones are you already using? Hey, you might even have some that I didn't mention. More than likely, and I would love to hear those as well. Comment below! P.S. Are you a leader? Then we invite you to become one of our collaborative authors for the upcoming Dynamic Women Leadership Secrets book! Apply here. Read my other blogs:
I often get asked what I do to prepare for a talk or how I land a talk. Today, I'm going to talk today about what I do after a big talk. It's maybe not something people talk much about. We usually talk about…
 But how about what you need to do AFTER a big talk? It’s just as important as the others to your career. Please note: These tips are good for after a big event, project, party, book/product launch and anything else that needed a lot of your energy or time. Here are the three things I do after a big talk: #1: Celebrate: I celebrate that I did a big talk or that I had an event, or I had a book launch or whatever it may be. I celebrate that I've done it. How do I celebrate it? I'm going to give you three main things: 1. I write down the things that I did well or I do voice-to-text on my notes.
I write down all the accomplishments that I had. The reason why I want to do this is because we're so quick to forget or we're quick to point out all the things we did wrong. 2. I share online. I grab some pictures, I write a caption, and I thank the client. I tag some people who were part of it, and I share how the event went. I wanted to tag them. I wanted to share on social that I worked with them, and so that people know, “Oh, okay, she can speak for that industry. She can speak on that topic, and she can open a conference with high energy and a powerful message.” Celebrating publically is super important. This is one of the things I just shared on stage at the LEAP conference for the Vancouver Regional Construction Association (VRCA) and Canadian Construction Women. There is great importance to accomplishments and then sharing our successes with others because a lot of times as women we downplay them or don’t own them at all. (You may have heard me say this before) According to a Business Insider study, also on leanin.org, women and men view success differently. Men attribute their success to their innate qualities and skills. Women attribute their success to hard work, luck, and help from others. How are we ever going to move forward if we don't actually own and share our successes? That's going to help us to elevate and be promoted and to be asked and called upon for, in my case, more speaking engagements and maybe in your case, being a trainer or something else that is important to you in your life and moving your career forward. 3. Capturing any positive feedback and images in a folder. What I did right away was for anyone who shared in their Instagram or Facebook stories or put in their stories, anything about me, then I made sure that I shared it back. Then I also put it in my highlights so that it would be there. But then because I was heading on vacation right away, I asked one of my team members, to go online and take screenshots of any positive feedback, any photos of me, and then save them into a folder. The folder is the date and the name of the talk so that I can go back to it and look at what's there - and probably share them later in other ways. Also making sure we're commenting back on everyone who posted and replied and everyone who posted about my talk, about me, about meeting me, about getting my books, whatever it may be. #2: Recharging
I see that as my “Recharge Day” because I give a lot of energy to my talks on stage and then after the event talking with audience members. I also show up early to do a tech check. I've practiced all week maybe even before. Plus doing my regular work that I take care of, so I see it as a rest day. I relax. I sleep in. I hydrate. I eat really good food. If I'm home, I book a massage or I book some other type of restorative session with a practitioner. I take care of myself. Probably I'm doing some celebrating on that day as well, but recharging is so important. I've given you a list of lots of different things you can do. Even if you can just give yourself a few hours in the morning or have a slower start to your day, it's really helpful. I get that you might have two, three events in a row or talks in a row or projects in a row. Make sure you book yourself off that weekend, or in the evenings, you book yourself off to have a break. #3: Review I don't know if I'll review this week, but I get the recording of my talk, whether it be the video recording, which is ideal, and I transcribe it, and I review the transcription as well. I go over it and review…
Not just my actual stage time, but what did I learn and what did I do well before, during and after? The weeks leading up to it, the morning of or the day of tech check, then the stage, then after, and also when I was on stage, oftentimes, I'll ad-lib. I'll add something that just comes to me at the moment and I want to capture that for future talks if the audience likes it. I might add in new jokes or new one-liners or a callback, which means referencing something I did before, or I'll have some audience engagement. There are things that I will change, so that's another question, what will I change? It's funny because for this talk I had a double applause at the end. There was applause like, “Woohoo, great job!” but I hadn't finished. There were another few sentences and then there was another applause. Because at that point, this was now pushing me overtime, I basically ran off the stage. This is an example of something I would change: I'm going to change the closing to make sure it's one powerful close with one powerful eruption of applause, rather than two of them.  Then I'm going to stand on stage, and I'm going to receive the applause and standing ovation. Those are small things that I might change. I review the tape and also when I say I transcribe it, the reason is I want to see certain words that are very important to the way I present. Now, the way I do a keynote is different from the way I do a speak-and-offer. However, I still want the audience to have benefits based on certain things that I say. If you're a client of mine, ask me what those things are. Those are like covert ninja moves that I do from stage. I review the recording and I review the transcription. I see how I did with this talk. It was a new talk. It was customized to the audience, and so there were a lot of pieces that were customized. Now what I'll do is I'll go back, and I'll say, “Okay, what pieces are for that audience, and I have to change them for the new audience and what things can carry forward. How can I tighten this up a little bit better? Do I want to say something else? Did this piece not land?” I'm also going to be listening to the audience's reaction on the video. If I can, because we had multiple cameras, I'm going to be watching their faces to see their response to the different points. If it landed as strongly as I wanted each piece to land or which pieces landed stronger, I'm going to pull info based on what I did. There is quite a bit of analyzing that goes into it, and that's just so I can keep elevating my presentation and my keynote skills. So for this third step, review the recording and the transcription, what did I do well, what did I learn, and what will I change for next time? Wrapping Up Those are the three phases I go through after I do a big talk. But it's the same after a big event. It's the same after a book launch. It's the same after I lead a program or a training. The list can go on. Make sure that after you complete something, you celebrate it because when you celebrate, you're going to get some motivation from it. Take time to recharge so that you're not burnt out. You want to keep going and doing well afterwards because you probably gave a lot to it. We want to pump you back up again. The last thing is to review it. Focus on the good. Grab the learning from both the good and the things you think you can do better on so that you don't wallow in the disappointments of it, that you really pinpoint the good stuff and make sure you carry all of that forward. I hope that you have had a recent opportunity to be able to now go and apply these three things. If not, put a little note in your calendar for the day after this big event, write down the words celebrate, recharge, and review, and give yourself some time in your calendar. I always book myself off so no one is allowed to book me for a meeting or coaching session the day after a big event, a big party, whatever it may be. I hope this was helpful. Let me know in the comments what the best part was. Share this with a friend who makes you think, “Wow, yeah, my friend should do these things. This would be beneficial. I want to see if my friend has done these or these people in my network.” P.S. One of the biggest things I did for 2024 was launching the Trailblazer Secrets book. It’s the third book in the Dynamic Women series. We’re now working on the fourth book - the Leadership Secrets. If you want to be one of our collaborative authors, apply here, and we’ll reach out to you. Read my other blogs:
It's International Women's Day, and how exciting that we get to not only celebrate women on the day, but we get to move our gender forward.  Today, I'm going to be sharing about the things you should be doing around this time, the ways you can be, and the things that you must be doing for us to be moving forward as women. We have lots to do if we are going to be moved forward as a gender and be able to have gender parity and equality before the year 2154, (which is the year that has been estimated). It’s definitely not going to happen before I die, but what if it could? What if we looked at appreciative inquiry and we said,
We amplify that. We multiply that by many. I’m going to share nine things today: three things you can do, three people you can be, and three things you must do. 3 things you can do #1: Attend an event Well, firstly, for International Women's Day, I don't know how many events are happening. Maybe hundreds, thousands, or millions. Attend an event, whether it's in-person or online. Be there to be educated. Be there to hear and to support. Just attend an event. I'm always getting multiple invitations. This International Women's Day, I am very honored to be speaking for the Vancouver Region Construction Association for their International Women's Day event called Leap. I'm going to be talking about leaping forward and the tools that we can use to be able to break barriers and elevate success. #2: Implement one action Just one action. What's one thing you can do that will help to move women forward?
There are so many different things that you can do. You don't need to look to me. Go attend an event. You'll find something out. It might even just be something that moves you forward. #3: Educating yourself just 1% more In putting the final details on my presentation that I'm going to be doing this week, I wanted to grab some stats. I am in Canada, so I grabbed a bunch from Stats Canada. I'm going to let you know them so that you can educate yourself and know 1% more. 89 cents is what women working full-time and part-time make for every dollar men make. That's from Stats Canada in 2022. I like to think it went up, but not sure that it actually would. The next one is women in Canada hold about a third, to be precise 35.6%, of management occupations, then only 30.9% of senior management level occupations. This is from Stats Canada 2022 as well. One of the first times I heard a stat that just astonished me was that there are more CEOs named “John” than there are female CEOs. That really ticked me off. That's part of why I talk a lot about women's empowerment and confidence, and I want women to talk more about their successes so they can be seen as the ones who are a perfect fit for the job. I wish they wouldn’t be so humble and downplay their accomplishments. I'm not blaming women by any means, that is why I do the work I do. The reason why we have Dynamic Women Global Community is because I want women to be able to feel confident to step into these roles, and not wait to be asked. Another stat is, according to Stats Canada from 2019, one and a half million women live in poverty in Canada. The horrible thing is, a lot of times, these women are also single mothers, and so their children suffer as well. That's not okay. Let me give you one more stat, which for me was pretty shocking. Everyone talks about the glass ceiling, but there's actually something called the “broken rung”, meaning the rung on a ladder. It's actually just that first step, that management role, that rung is often quite broken, meaning women aren’t getting into that role so they're not even able to move up the ladder, which is pretty sad. Here's the stat that goes with it. “For the ninth consecutive year, women face their biggest hurdle at the first critical step up to manager. This year, for every 100 men promoted from entry-level to manager, 87 women were promoted. That's 13 less, and this gap is trending the wrong way for women of color. This year, 73 women of color.” It’s 14 less than what I'm guessing they're saying is Caucasian women. “73 women of color were promoted to manager for every 100 men, which is down from 82 of women of color last year.” Crazy. This is as a result of the broken rung. Women fall behind, and they just can't catch up. There's also mommy's penalty, meaning that when they leave the workforce to have children, then they come back, it takes them 10 years to catch up in their pay. When men leave to take care of a child on paternity leave or when they have a child, their pay doesn't change. Then again, worse for women of color. Horrible, horrible, horrible. The three things you can do:
3 people you can be #1: Be a trailblazer You be the one to step forward and to speak about inequality. You be the one to say, “I'll take that manager role. I'll take that supervisory role.” You be the one to say, “That's not okay.” You need to be following the rules if that's the case. Be a trailblazer to speak up about these things, maybe not in your company, if that's uncomfortable, but maybe to other people around you to be a trailblazer. If you want to know more about how to be a trailblazer in different ways, you can always grab the Trailblazer Secrets book. # 2: Be an ally This is really great for the women who are already in a position that they're really happy with, already making the money that they want to make, and already have the life they want to live and also for men. You can be an ally. You can be speaking up for others.  #3: Be a mentor When you’re a mentor, you have a mentee. You're going to put that hand out to give a help up to someone. Not to do things for them, but…
There are so many ways you can be an ally and be a mentor and really help women to step up. A lot of times women will only step into roles where they see role models. Where they go, “Ah, that person has done it. That woman's done it. I can do that too.” If you are willing to put some time in and some care and share some of your expertise, or some of your cheerleading, with a woman in any industry, the one you're in or even a different industry, that would make a huge difference. 3 things you must do If you don't do these things, I’m going to be ticked, and you'll understand why. #1: Say someone's name in a room that they're not in You can't say, “I really wish that there would be more women in upper management” if you are in management, and you're not going to say a woman's name. You can't say that you think women should be earning more, and then again, not put a woman's name forward. We could go on and on and on and on. This is something you must do even if it's not, “I think this person is perfect for the role,” but “I think this person is showing promise.” Or “I think we could invest in this person to get some more training.” Say their name. I experienced this recently with someone in my speaking community. She's also a client of mine and a dear friend now. A couple of times, she has said my name. She has put my name forward in areas where I'm newer to it. What a joy it was to receive an email that said, “Hey, so and so said these things about you.” Wow, that made that email to me more of a warm introduction, rather than “Will I be able to talk this person into hiring me.” Say someone else's name when they're not in the room because the only way they can get in the room a lot of the times is if you do say something. #2: Hire female speakers and pay them There has been a big debate in my speaking community, CAPS or the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers. Without naming names of people who are speaking up about this, a bunch of women were invited to speak for International Women's Day events, for no fee. What are we saying about that? “You're good enough to come and speak to our people for International Women's Day, where we want you to inspire others, and we want to move gender parity, equality, all of this forward, yet, we're not going to pay you. We don't have a budget for you.” Now, all the speakers I know if there's an organization that is in alignment with us, we might work out an agreement. But if you're going to ask someone to speak, if you're going to ask someone to train, to coach, to use their expertise, especially on International Women's Day, please pay them. Also, please don't underpay them either because by underpaying them, you're really devaluing them. If you're going to do a women's event, please make sure it is worth the while of the women that are coming. Their time and expertise matter. #3: When women have the courage to speak up about the ways they were wronged or in the ways they want to move forward, their dreams, their goals, and their aspirations, listen to them. Listen to what they have to say. If they were wronged, validate their truth. If they are desiring to move forward, validate that truth. We need to do that because what happens is, if the women speak up, and they're not listened to, they won't speak up anymore. If they speak up, and we listen, but then we don't validate the truth, or do something about it or connect them with someone who can, how can we move forward? You can even just emotionally support them or cheerlead them on as I mentioned, when you're an ally or a mentor.  Now, I've shared with you the three things you must do:
Wrapping Up These are the nine different things that you can do not just to celebrate women on International Women's Day. That's just not enough to actually move the gender ahead. I get that you may feel that you’re just one person, “What can I really do?” It just takes one person doing one thing to impact one life and then inspire. That ripples out. When one helps one, the other one will help others. That often reminds me of when a very, very simple act of me speaking and coming off the stage and someone speaking into me positive words and saying, “Diane, you really have a gift. You're going to go places.” I was like, “Oh, I'm going to go places like, what's that mean?” We know that means, “You're going to go do great things and have great opportunities to have success.” But to hear someone else that I admired, they didn't know I'd admired them, but that I admired and looked up to, speak inyo me was powerful. Bonus: Compliment those around you There's my bonus to you because I want to round it up to 10. Compliment those around you. Tell them what you see in them, tell them the skills they have, the personality traits that are coming out, and the positive things so that they latch on to that and do them more and then they're be boosted. Because being a woman can be really hard. There's an uphill battle. We know for our BIPOC ladies, it's even harder. Then, if you're also an immigrant, even harder. If English is your second language in Canada, it's even harder. If you have multiple kids, you're a single mom, you have an illness, it's even harder. When we speak that into others, that's something amazing. You won't even know the impact and the power that you've had. Let's share one last thing. Here’s one last example of that. Last weekend, I was at an event for the launch of another book that I'm in and the organizer of all of it said to me, “Diane, you look really happy. Since the last time I saw you, you seem really happy.” I said, “I am really happy.” Probably helped that I had a “Life is awesome” shirt with sequins all over it. But her sharing that, and witnessing who I was showing up felt really, really good. I encourage you to do that today. Every day compliment, speak into at least one woman. You can speak into men too but make that the bonus. Just make sure you compliment a woman every day. Not just about her appearance, but who she's being and what she's doing. I hope you're going to implement some of these things and that you’ll celebrate International Women's Day to help to move our gender forward. Read my other blogs:
Sometimes the people who get ahead are the ones who have more confidence. In this blog, I'm going to talk about how you can boost your confidence so that you can achieve more of what you want and be powerful in going for it, and how to boost your confidence using a three-step process.  Why I want to share this with you Every year as we come to the point of launching another Dynamic Women's Secrets Book, there's this weird place where the coauthors don’t feel like they are authors. (I'm calling them coauthors because that's what they are based on this process. They might be coaches, trainers, or speakers. They might work in a nine-to-five. They might be business leaders or entrepreneurs in another way.) Because they don’t feel like full-blown authors who have their own solo book they don’t share much about it, they don’t invite people to the book launch party, and don’t ask people to buy it. (Side note: We've launched Success Secrets, then Confidence Secrets, and then Trailblazer Secrets. We just announced that the fourth book, Leadership Secrets, is coming out in the next 12 months. Applications are open here.) They’re like, “Oh, Diane. You put it together, I only had a small piece in it and so I'm not really an author.” Yeah, you are. You wrote the piece. Your name is on it. Your face is on it. So often I see this, especially in my clients who are women, is that we downplay our accomplishments. We take that place of being humble. I'll tell you, men don't stand in that place of being humble most of the time. They own their successes. I'm not saying that they're wrong for owning their successes. I'm not saying they're egotistical. What they do extremely well is these three phases. The 3-phase process to become confident I'm going to talk through these three phases, give you some examples of how you can apply this to your own life, even though you might not be a published author, yet. Phase 1: Being present to your successes. Being in that place of, “What did I accomplish this week? Not just in my business, but in every area of life.” When you do that, when you look at every area, and you say…
When you're present with your successes, and you acknowledge them yourself and document them, you will boost your confidence. I love using the Dynamic Year Journal for this step. Every week, going in and writing down my weekly successes. I'll tell you, when you start filling this in every day or once a week, and you look back you go, “Wow, look at all the cool things I did. Look at my achievements. Look at what I learned from them. Look at who I was being. Look at what I mastered. Look at what obstacles I overcame.”  Whatever it may be, when we are present with our successes, we acknowledge them, and we write them down, wow, the power that comes from that! Here’s an example: I had a client who was going for a job. She felt this a little bit beneath her. She’s like, “But hey, I'll go to the interview. It's good practice.” When they started asking her questions about, “What successes have you had? Where do you do well? Have you done well in your jobs?” She could easily answer because she had been practicing writing down her successes and achievements. She could easily recall specifics when she did these things, who she was being, what she learned, and why she is amazing. Now, she didn't come across as egotistical. She came across as successful, confident, and the best option for them for this job. Now, as I said, the job was a little bit beneath her. But what happened was as the interview went on, and she was more and more confident and shared more and more of her successes and achievements, they changed the role. They even ended up giving her a better job title. And when the interview turned into an offer, she was in the driver's seat and was able to say, “If I accept, I'd like more vacation time. I'd like to be able to work remotely. I'd like all these things.” She got her dream position, and she had all those bonuses. Isn't that amazing? Because she gained confidence by writing things down and being present with her successes, she had them in the interview trying to woo her, changing the job, making it a better title, better job description with better benefits. Amazing example! Phase 2: Receive compliments and acknowledgments from others. There's a Business Insider study of how men and women view success differently. When men have success, they believe it's due to their innate skills and talents. Great. Amazing. High five, you guys. For women, they believe their success comes from luck and help from others. How many times do we receive awards, and we say, “I want to thank everyone else”? Or, “It was nothing” like when someone says, “Oh, that was an amazing dinner”, we say, “Oh, it was nothing.” You've heard these things before. We need to receive compliments. For example:
Receive compliments from others, acknowledgments from others, and be present with them. Breathe. Thank them for it, and then, go back to step one and write them in your Dynamic Year Journal so that you can capture the learning from them as well and document it as a success or an achievement. Receive those compliments. Don't deflect them. Don't push them away. Don't ignore them. Receive them. Thank them. You could even agree with them. Don't push them down. It's kind of like someone giving you an amazing gift, and you're giving it right back to them. We don't want to be doing that with these word gifts of compliments and acknowledgments. Phase 3: Announce it to others. This has a lot of people super uncomfortable. In the case of coauthors in the Trailblazer Secrets book and even the other two books, they need to announce:
It's not coming from an egotistical place. It's coming from a celebratory place. If you don't have people in your life who will celebrate you, if you just have people who cut you down or ignore the fact that you've done well, you need some new people in your life. I'm not saying you have to cut those people out. But you definitely need some fans, some people who will get excited with you, for you, and encourage you to do more things that maybe you didn't believe you could. When you announce things to others, like when I announced the interview with Jack Canfield, how he was interviewing me, people paid attention. When I announced being flown down to Washington State to do the opening and closing keynote, people paid attention. Do you know what came from that? By announcing these different achievements, people not only paid attention, but opportunities came my way. Opportunities that were in alignment with what I wanted.  You can have the same thing happen too. Announcing it to others doesn't have to be like, “Look at me. I'm so amazing. I did another book.” It can be, “So grateful to be able to share my story in this book.” It could be, “I'm a published author. Thank you to Diane and her team for putting this together.” We can still come from a place of gratitude without pushing down and ignoring our successes. Wrapping Up I encourage you this next week, when you have a success, sit in the glory of it, sit in the excitement of it, and write it down. Also, when you receive compliments and acknowledgments, say thank you. You also don't have to say a compliment right back. You can just say thank you, and then write those acknowledgments and compliments down so that you can easily share them with others. In the next week, and I hope moving forward, you'll do all these three things, look for something you can announce. Maybe even today, as you're reading this blog, you have something you've just recently accomplished, share it. Don't just think about sharing after the success. You can share before it happens. You can share when it's happening. You can share after it happens. That's a really smart business move to be able to leverage something longer. For the Jack Canfield interview, I said I was going to do it. I then showed photos of me going to do it and then talked about the experience and how it was. It was funny because, I didn't even release the interview for about 45–60 days! People kept saying to me, “Oh, can I still talk to you? You've been rubbing shoulders with celebrities” and “Well, how have you been doing amazing things to have Jack Canfield interview you? This is incredible!” I realized, “Wow, I haven't even put the interview out there. No one's even heard it. They just knew it was happening, or it had happened.” You can leverage your successes and your acknowledgments. This will also boost your confidence because not only are you acknowledging it yourself, other people are acknowledging it. But when you announce it out there, other opportunities or people wanting to work with you will come forward, it's going to boost your confidence even more. Let me know which of these three phases is the most important for you. They all are important, but what's the number one for you? If you have a topic that you'd like me to cover, please reach out to [email protected]. P.S. You have an opportunity to be a published author in 2024 alongside me! You’ll boost your credibility and increase opportunities and profits! Apply today. Read my other blogs:
Have you been feeling like, “Oh my gosh. I just have too much going on right now” or “Life is just moving at a really fast pace”? Then maybe you need to make your own Snow Day.  What is a Snow Day A snow day means there’s no school for the kids and no work for most of us. A lot of things are being cancelled because we would get a big dump or a really big storm through the night and the snowplows, the salt trucks, and everything, they just weren't able to keep up with how much was being dumped. My Two Snow Days I'm in North Vancouver, but I grew up in Ontario where we had quite a few snow days. Ontario has a really good infrastructure for that, so we didn't have as many snow days because they were on the ball. But in Vancouver, we don't have the greatest infrastructure to take care of all the snow when it does come. Plus, not a lot of people have the right tires. I could go on and on and on about this, plus the geography of hills and mountains against us. We're very hilly, up and down all over the place. When snow dumps in Vancouver, there is almost an automatic snow day because we can't handle it.
That's what happened to me… I woke up to my women's church group being cancelled. My lunch meeting was cancelled. School was cancelled. All of a sudden, all of these responsibilities and commitments that I had, were just wiped clean. Emptied off my schedule. Here’s what I want you to think about on a Snow Day: it’s a day when you're not going to be meeting people or going anywhere. What it opened my eyes up to was:
 How it opened my eyes It showed me the physical, emotional, and mental relief of, “Oh, okay, I don't have to rush around. I can just cozy up in my house.” Had it been another day, it wouldn't have affected anything because I work online. I have so many bookings, one after another that are all virtual. But in this case, it was a day of rushing here, rushing there, and going all over the place - all wonderful things that are priorities in my life that I really did want to do. But all of a sudden my day opened up. I had a leisurely morning. Sipped my coffee, drank it while it was hot, and eased into my day. That's the one thing that I was thinking about - easing into my day. The other thing was, as I said, catching up. Catching up on things that I hadn't gotten to yet. This is what it opened my eyes up to. Maybe you've had a recent snow day or a day when things got cancelled.
You-Made Snow Day I want to flip this from a nature-made snow day to a “you-made snow day”, meaning a day of no outside commitments and not even virtual commitments. I've talked a lot with clients about having “Me days” or days when there's no responsibility. It doesn't just mean you take a day off of work, but then you go to the dentist, and you run errands, and you pick up this thing, and you go fill in that form. No! A day of absolutely no responsibility. A “me day”. You wake up, and you ask yourself, “What do I want to do today?” It could be:
This is the idea of a “Me day” - having no responsibility for work or life, unless you feel like it. Instead, a snow day is a day that you're still going to do some work, but it's going to be slightly more slow-paced and restful. It'll be “You-led” where it's like, “What do I want to do right now?” It's a great catch-up day. What I did in my Snow Days We ended up having two Snow Days. Here’s what I did:
I was able to get things moving. I've got some really fun things happening that I want to do this year, so I reached out to two people who have done similar things and have inspired me. I reached out to them to have a conversation. There are often so many things to do and having that ability to just go back through that to-do list that's been hanging out in my head or hanging out in my memos where I think, “I have to get to that. I have to do that thing. I have to finish that.”  Man, did I feel super productive! It was amazing. How to create your own “Snow Day” that is consistent? That's what we want it to be - consistent. With “me days”, I talk with my clients about having at least one every quarter. Ideally, a “Me day” once every month. It doesn't have to happen on a work day or a weekday. It could happen on the weekend. But being able to have a snow day at least once a quarter. But wouldn't it be fun if there was a “Snow Day”, that happened once a month? Maybe you've heard of buffer days, clean-up days, days of no meetings, days that you don't let people know you're in the office sort of days. No, it's not on the weekend. But what if every quarter you created one of these “Snow Days”? A day of no meetings and responsibilities. It was filled with whatever you knew you needed to do. What would the benefits be to you? Maybe…
How do you create consistency nowadays? You just book it in your calendar. You look at your calendar and think, “How often do I want to have these?” Once a quarter? Great. Go to every quarter and pop that day in. This is what I'm going to be doing. I'm going to mark “Snow day” and just book the whole day off, so no one can book my calendar. I'm actually going to do this once a month, if possible because I have stuff every day, but I'm going. How do you best use your snow day? Well, maybe as you go through the month, and you're freaking out about different things, “Oh, I’ve got to meet that person. I’ve got to do that task.” You just create a Snow Day list of things that you might want to do on a snow day. Then when your Snow Day happens, I encourage you not to plan anything in yet. But as you wake up on your Snow Day, you go, “Ok, what do I want to achieve today?” You can go back to your list to start checking things off. Plus, you can start the day a little bit slower, easier. Maybe your day ends early. Maybe you start it late, and then you end it late. But you also have a nap in the middle of the day, just like you could on a “Me day”. It’s not a day during the month or during the quarter to start plugging meetings into it. Treat it as if you're on a plane and you cannot be reached. Those are some of my most productive times. I don't get the internet. I write or I brainstorm, sitting on a five-hour flight. That is the best use of my time because I'm not distracted by anything else. Wrapping Up What do you think? Are you going to make a “snow day” for yourself? Or when a snow day happens, are you going to capitalize on it? Maybe the whole time you've been reading, you've said, “Oh Diane, the snow day was horrible because the kids were home” or “I had to shovel” or “I still had to go out because people still wanted to have the meetings”, then you need to create your own “snow day”. That happens when you say it happens. Where you get all the benefits of what a snow day can provide you without the surprise of when it's going to happen and without the needs of others, really pulling from all the benefits of your snow day. Let me know. Are you going to try it? Have you tried it? Share your wins with me. Share this blog with a friend. Because hey, maybe you want to have your snow day together. Let's hold each other accountable to have one snow day, every quarter, once a month, every other month, whatever it may be, so that you can really feel the benefits that I felt during my own two legitimate snow days. Until next time. Stay dynamic! P.S. Do you have your copy of the Trailblazer Secrets Book? If you haven’t yet, order here. This NEW “Game-Changing Book” reveals how you can use simple tips to be a trailblazer, increase your motivation, and feel empowered to achieve your goals. Read my other blogs here:
One of the highlights of my 2023 was being interviewed by Jack Canfield. I’ve shared it in my podcast, my social media, and on YouTube. But there are a lot of nuggets in that 20-minute interview so I want to share with you now the full transcript in this blog! Read my answers to Jack’s burning questions about my passions and the challenges my clients face. Enjoy reading!  JACK CANFIELD: Hi, I'm Jack Canfield. You may know me as the co-author of the 'Chicken Soup for the Soul' series, the book 'The Success Principles,' and featured teacher in the movie 'The Secret.' I'm here with Diane Rolston, and we'll have a great conversation about her amazing work in the world. Welcome, Diane. DIANE ROLSTON: Thank you. A pleasure to be here with you. JACK CANFIELD: I'm glad you're here. Tell us a little bit about what you do. DIANE ROLSTON: Well, Jack, I do two things. First, I've had great success as a certified life and business coach. I specialize in coaching high-level dynamic women as well as entrepreneurs. I find that they prioritize success over their satisfaction in life, so I help them rebalance their life while still getting to their goals quickly and powerfully. Because of my work, I'm often brought in with my expertise to do keynotes, so fee-paid keynotes. I talk to women's groups. I speak to conferences, associations, corporations, and such. They have me basically come in to be the person to inspire them, to get the event going, and to share some of my strategies on leadership, success, business and life. Because of that piece, the coaching and the speaking and how I run my business, I've had people come to me and say, “Diane, how do you do all that you do and still have a life and have a family?” I’m married with two kids.  As you probably know, many different things connect to someone's success. But one of the main things is that I have really, really great virtual assistants that helped me behind the scenes. When people like these high-achieving women, business owners say, "Diane, how can I do that, too? How do you hire them? How do you train them? What do you delegate?" Then, I tell them, "Oh, well, I actually do more than just admin tasks." Because a lot of people think, "Oh, a virtual assistant does your email and calendar." Instead, I do other things, higher-level tasks and projects with them things like they're going to support my:
All these different things a busy business owner must do every day and doesn't have time to do. That's how the second business was formed. I now consult, coach, and provide virtual assistant services for the busy business owners I work with. JACK CANFIELD: You have virtual assistants you've trained and help people hire? Is that what you're saying? DIANE ROLSTON: Yeah, I share many of my systems, my processes, and how I've been doing my coaching and speaking business with my clients. Plus, I'm a podcaster. I have books, run summits, and a women's community called Dynamic Women. With all that, they say, "Okay, cool, we can just take that." It becomes straightforward for them. It's like an easy recipe to follow. It's like, A-B-C 1-2-3. I connect all the dots for them. JACK CANFIELD: It's interesting because I do a lot of consulting with entrepreneurs, usually startup people who are just starting small businesses, solo entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, whatever. They always say, "Well, what's the next thing I should do?" I say, "Hire an assistant." The best thing you can do about anything is hire an assistant. It can be a virtual assistant or someone local, whichever. But half of my staff started as interns for free as assistants in my company, got to know them, worked well, kept them around to now they move on up, whatever. But it's so important. Do you find that many people feel like they don't deserve an assistant? They don't feel worthy of it? Or do they feel like they can't afford it? DIANE ROLSTON: All of those things. All of those pieces. I think it's based on what society has drilled into them. This picture of this hard-working 80-hour-a-week solopreneur that means:
JACK CANFIELD: You're passionate about what you do. Why so passionate? Where'd that come from? DIANE ROLSTON: Great question. I want people to awaken. I want to provoke them to what's possible. I want to unleash the dynamic version of themselves. When I'm brought in to do a keynote, whether it's an opening or closing, whatever it may be, I often share one of the struggles that I had and one of the biggest learnings, which is to stop measuring your life according to your success. What happens is people do that, and then they get into this place of, "I'm only happy when I have success." But once they reach the success, they realize, "Wow, success is fleeting." Then they chase that next goal, that next high of achievement, but then they realize, "I'm not even satisfied inside." That's sad. I see it a lot in high-level, dynamic women and entrepreneurs who end up being overworked, overwhelmed, and pulled in a million directions. It's like they're on that hamster wheel, right? It's just going faster and faster and faster and faster. Eventually, they fall off. Instead, I encourage them, "Measure your life according to your satisfaction." If I were coaching you, Jack, I'd say, "Hey, let's use this tool. Let's look at all the areas of life, and what do you want in every area?" That's one of the most challenging questions people have to answer. You probably know it in your world. Most people ask, "What do you mean 'What do I want?'" To see the visual when they can score their satisfaction and ask, "In the future, what do you want in these areas?" and when they get really crystal clear on that, they go, "Oh, this is great. I can choose what I want for myself," not just what society has dictated is successful, what society has decided that just confines and defines us. I want to be able to bring that to more people. That's why donating my books and proceeds to women in shelters is important to me. JACK CANFIELD: Oh, good for you. There are a lot of people out there who say they coach people, they help them live more successful lives, whatever. I think you've answered part of this by talking about satisfaction. But what makes your work different or unique compared to all the other people who are out there doing that? DIANE ROLSTON: Yeah, you're very right, Jack. When I work with people, I give them strategies. I give them ideas. I give them a clear plan. I pull out of them what they want. But a lot of other coaches say they do that, too. I think the difference is I'm still in the game. I'm not on the sidelines. I'm doing the coaching. I'm working on myself. I am constantly like, "Okay, how can I be more satisfied," and I'm doing all the things in my business and at least overseeing them. I'm still in the game where I find many other people who don't have the experience I do, or they were doing this 10 years ago or even just a few years ago. But if you're on the sidelines, you don't know what has changed in your ideal clients' lives their businesses, with technology.  Because I'm still in it, I understand. I can relate to my clients, to the struggles they've had, to the fears they have. Because of that, I also feel it's really important that my clients get me when they hire me. They get me. They get my consulting, my coaching, my speaking. They're not going to get someone under me. That's probably part of why I have over 1000 five-star reviews on social media and other platforms. That's part of it. I think the other piece I aim for is a complete transformation. Not, "Let's have a quick fix. Let's make this happen overnight." No. I want a full transformation, an entire shift so that it can not just be in that specific situation but ripple out into other areas of life. Plus, they're a catalyst for change for others. JACK CANFIELD: Now, you alluded to one of these things earlier, but I'll ask you again: you see a lot of challenges out there in the world that people are having. What do you see as the most common challenges? How do you help people address those and overcome them? DIANE ROLSTON: Great question. It's funny because I love challenges. I grew up playing competitive sports. I have to create challenges for myself so I'm not bored. But I know you're speaking more about problems in this case, right? Obstacles that people face. When I'm coaching one-on-one, in a group program, or even in a virtual session, I often hear from these high-level women and entrepreneurs that their challenges come up. I'm going to share three challenges with you. I'm going to share some that are pretty much universal to all. The first one is that you have to balance work and life. You probably already know it isn't true, and you're like, "That's a lie." These challenges are all lies. I'll tell the lie, and then I'll tell the truth. If you're looking at work and life, they won't be balanced. The reason being is work is only one of the areas of life. We need all areas of life, so people are always like, "Well, I'm never going to be able to balance that." For me, that was an eye-opener. I'm a little bit of an A-type, recovering perfectionist. When I saw that, I went, "Ah, no wonder life's not balanced." It's not going to be. Once I started looking at my whole life, all ten areas, that helped me to allot where my time is. For my clients, I'm like, "Okay, so now what do you want in all these areas? How do you want things to be when you have that clarity? Then you'll be able to put in the right amount of time, energy, and money." That's the first lie. You spoke about the second lie earlier: you don't make enough, or you're not big enough to hire or delegate. That is such a lie. Now, maybe you know, your day one in your business, okay, like, "Let's figure out what you're going to do first." But entrepreneurs still believe they can't hire someone, as you've said. But the thing is that people are thinking, "Oh, they're too expensive." But what I found in my experience is that they're a lot less than you think they are, at least in my team. They're also very highly competent. When they're able to take things off of your shoulders, you're going to have more time, more energy, and more money. You're going to be able to increase your revenue. The coolest thing is, what if the person you hired could earn you enough money to pay for themselves? That's the clincher there. That's what we're looking for. The third challenge is something that I often see. It's usually in response to someone being offered a great opportunity. They'll say, I'm too busy to take on anything else. Now, they're too busy to take on the wrong things. They're too busy to take on the wrong things. They have time for the right things. But until they get clarity on the things they want in life, they will always say "Yes" to the wrong things and "No" to the right things. I've seen that happen with people getting kind of their dream opportunities. They have to say no because they don't have the time, the energy, or the money. That's just heartbreaking. So heartbreaking. In those moments, I want to say, "Come on, you got to do this." That is one of the final challenges that I see for people. They need clarity. JACK CANFIELD: Cool. If I was sitting here watching this, and I was what I like to call a "right fit client," someone who could benefit from what you do, I would want to work with you. It's clear because you have the knowledge, skills, insights, and experience to help people at a deep level. Do you have any parting thoughts about someone who's watching this that might encourage them or give them ideas about how they might work with you? Or why should they? DIANE ROLSTON: I hope everyone watching will grab a pen, write this down, and take it in. Because this is one of the key things that I had to learn myself, and then it's kind of a way of shifting in the people I work with. That is, you can't do it all yourself. You can't do it all yourself. Right? Jack, I want to ask you, you’ve never seen geese fly alone? No, right? They don't fly alone. They fly in a V. Now, why is that? Because they're in a flock or even a few, they're always in a V because they can fly further, faster, together. You probably know in your industry and all the great work you've done, there's such benefit to having a leader who will draft the path for you. Also, to have those around you to be able to encourage you. But what I see oftentimes, sadly, in high-level women, in entrepreneurs is that they come in that place of like, "I'm going to do it," and they get burnt out. They can't do it all. They may give up on their dream, which is sad. I'm hoping that those at home, those who are watching, think about, "Wow, okay, so what do I need? I need my flock. Where am I going to find some people around me?" That's why I created the Dynamic Women Global Club. That's why I did group coaching masterminds because of the benefit of others around you so that when you reach adversity, you can come in with the group and have them support you. You also need a good leader. Someone who can coach you through can guide you to make it much easier. I'm hoping that people stop being that lone wolf, the silo and that they embrace that more of a team mentality. JACK CANFIELD: I saw something the other day. It said, "No one ever climbed Mount Everest without a team." You can't do it alone if you really want to get to the top. It's impossible. It will never happen. First of all, thank you. You're very cool. Appreciate it. DIANE ROLSTON: Thank you very much. You are, too. JACK CANFIELD: No, it's good. I mean, you're all watching this; I will encourage you to get in touch with Diane. I think all the things you talked about, the challenges that people have, you can't do it, can't afford it, all that if you're living in that, and you probably are, you need to stop and work with her. She can help take you from where you are to where you want to be. I love that you talk about all the different areas of our life because people say, "Balance work and home." Well, work at home, there's spiritual growth, family time, hobbies, taking care of yourself, and self-nurturing. Exercise. All those things have to come into play, and having a life that can be fulfilling in all those areas of your life, which life is meant to be. Diane is someone that can help you do that. I want to encourage you to take advantage of the fact that she's available in the world, can help you, and be part of that community she talks about that can give you the support you need to fly like the geese. I love it. Alright, thanks for tuning in, everybody. Wrapping Up That’s it! Being interviewed by THE Jack Canfield feels like a huge accomplishment for me. What’s your takeaway from this interview? I’m eager to know, so leave them in the comments! P.S. Do you feel overworked, overwhelmed, and pulled in a million directions? If yes, then here’s my gift for you. Download your copy of the Key 2 Success book where you’ll learn the The 3 Dangerous Trends Professional Women Face that keep them Overworked, Overwhelmed and Pulled in a Million Directions. Read my other blogs here:
Last week, I shared the first part of this blog where I talked about the backstory of I locked in a shift in my business and what a shift means. Now, let’s continue…  Why do we want to shift our perspective and then lock it in? When you’ve done the work to get yourself into a new better place, you don't want to shift back to where you were. It is so easy to shift back into what is comfortable. If we're going to make that change, we need to do something to lock it in. Sometimes with clients, we lock in a perspective with ‘yes’ ‘no’ statements. They give you safety bumpers like in a bowling alley. Shifts can also be locked in by changing your physical environment. It can be as simple as finding a different type of flooring in your house. I’ll ask clients, “Where is there different flooring in your house? Does the room you're in go from carpet to tile? Can you jump over it like a threshold?” Jump into this new place. If we can jump into this new place, then there's that physical event that happens and the physical reminder that you have been changed. It's kind of like Joseph Campbell's Model of a Hero. The hero goes into the belly of the whale. They hear the call. They say, “Yes, I'm going to go into this shift or into this battle or into this journey to have the shift.” They have encounters and battles along the way. Then they come out. They emerge. They are shifted. They are different and in a new environment. Shifts can also be witnessed and have a ceremony. That's why for a lot of major events in life, we have a wedding ceremony with people watching to really commemorate that special shift. From some people I've talked to who did a little courthouse wedding, they said it just didn't feel the same as when they attended other people’s ceremonies and receptions. Think back to when you graduated from school or a program. For me, I graduated from university. However, I didn't go to the actual graduation because I was traveling Europe. I decided to stay after my rugby team was in Barcelona together to do a tour. I missed my commencement, which meant that I felt a little bit like it didn't happen. That the moment was not marked by walking across the stage, moving the string of my cap from one side to another or throwing it up in the air. What I did to lock in the shift: A funny story Before I share this story, think about what would be a special item or way you’d lock in a shift because if you had suggested to me how I would lock in my shift just four hours later, I never would have approved. How I locked in my shift might be something that you’d be a little repelled by because it’s not how you’d lock in your shift.  I had clarity and then a shift in how I want to market my business and my services. I was going to go from the “work-boots” into the “sparkly shoes”. I'll let you know to be completely transparent, I was crying through this epiphany with relief to have the clarity and because I felt its truth in my soul. She said to me, “I'm glad to see you're crying because making a big shift can be a scary thing. If you weren't crying, I'd be worried about you.” After this, my coach asked me, “How are you going to lock in the shift?” The next day was actually my 44th birthday, which was really cool timing, so I was thinking, “Well, I'm going to turn 44.” That was kind of the funny answer, but I didn't say it because it was already happening and was not how I was going to lock in the shift. Anyway, I sat there, and I thought, I'm going to buy red-bottom shoes (Christian Louboutin shoes). I told her, and she replied, “Well, I'm not mad about that.” We were in LA, so she said, “Okay, so we're going to Rodeo Drive tomorrow?” I was like, “Yeah, I’m buying the sparkly shoes!” She wondered, “Do you know what you’d buy?” I said, “No, I don't have any Christian Louboutin shoes. I haven’t even looked at them before. I don't know.” Then she tells me, “Go in my closet.” She had some in her closet, so I grabbed a pair. They were a pink and black pair with spikes on them. When I put them on, my energy matched the shift. I was like, “Oh, here I am in these great shoes.” The funny thing is, just five minutes before, I was blowing my nose and cleaning myself up because I had a really big cry. Now, I'm sitting super confidently in this chair with these great shoes on, these Christian Louboutin shoes, the red bottom shoes. Now, if we went back about four or five hours before that, there was talk at this mastermind of us going to Rodeo Drive shopping. They were all excited, and they turned to me because I was the only one not excited about shopping on Rodeo Drive. I've been there before. I don't really care about pretentious brands and blah, blah, blah. I thought, “I don't care. I don't care about shopping. I'm here to get the answers. I've been wanting some clarity. I want to have a shift. I want to know what I'm going to be doing. I want to have answers. I want to get what I paid for to be here at this mastermind. Not shopping.” I said, “Yeah, we can go if we get all of our work done.” This is because it was before the shift when I was still in my work boots thinking, “No, I'm only allowed to go to Rodeo Drive if I've done the work.” How interesting when she said, “What are you going to do to make the shift the lock this in?” I said, “I'm going to buy a pair of red bottom shoes.” I was excited. After I said that, I put on the shoes, and then I embodied the confidence and joy. Trying on the shoes is how I started to lock in this shift because I didn't want to slip back into this place that I was stuck in since 2019, with a lack of clarity and lack of my soul-driven path. We had a great dinner. Afterwards, in bed, I looked online and found these amazing new sparkly shoes. There was also a lot of stuff happening in my head. It was things like:
The practicality. My limiting beliefs. My old way of thinking over in the work boots was potentially going to sabotage this powerful shift. I knew I needed to do this. I needed to get them. Then the next day, after we finished a lot of our work, we headed to Rodeo Drive. The funny thing is when we arrived, there was a lineup outside the store, which I also then thought was absolutely ridiculous that we were lining up to spend a ton of money. In my head, I was like, “I don't want to be part of it.” I said, “Actually, let's just go around the rest of Rodeo Drive, and then we'll come back here.” We went around. I didn't really care about things. It kind of felt a little bit like the movie Pretty Woman. Julia Roberts is going into these stores and people aren't treating her seriously because she doesn't have any of the bags, and she's wearing her Rolex and throwing money all over the place right away. It was quite interesting, just the feeling of that. We go all the way around, and we come right back to Christian Louboutin. I walk in the door and I see my shoes, the shoes that I want, I see them. I said, “Oh, I'm going to work my way around because they're over there.” It was like they had a personality, like I personified them. The store clerk laughed and said, “Oh, she's planning her course, and she has her eyes on a pair.” I was like, “I do. I'm going to be trying some on that are over there.” I went around, and I saw a bunch of shoes that were gorgeous, but also not practical for me because if I'm wearing 100-millimeter or 120-millimeter high shoes, I can't walk around on stage for keynotes and I can't be at an event all day. Not only that, but I have had plantar fasciitis issues. Let's be real. I'm in my 40s. Every time I play soccer on turf, it hurts my feet. I'm not going to be too crazy about my shoes, but I still want them to be the sparkly shoes. I go and I try them on. I tried three pairs on. Some light pink ankle boots. I tried some white 100-millimeter shoes, and then I tried on my shoes - Hot Chick Slings in hot pink. Whether you purchase a new ring, a red blazer, a Wonder Woman costume, whatever it may be, when you put the thing on, it can help you to lock in the shift and revisit the feeling you originally had. For me, these are an investment. The funny thing is after I bought them, my coach said, “Actually, California is the worst place to buy them because we have more sales tax.” Then the practical part of me spoke up, “Yeah, I totally could have bought some shoes at an outlet and saved money.” But the key thing is, when you go to lock in a shift, the locking in needs to happen very close to when the shift happened. Otherwise, we get back into the old habits, back into the limiting beliefs, the saboteur starts to awaken and go, “Oh my gosh, they're going to be on the right path. We have to yell, be loud, and be obnoxious in order to keep them safe in this comfortable place.” You're not running from a saber-toothed tiger, right? You're not fleeing from a burning building. You're okay. You're just making a shift into what is important in your life. For me, it was crucial that I bought them the next day. It was also crucial that I had my these people with me, my coach and the other two ladies who were there. It was crucial that I had this experience at that time, that I did not leave LA and that mastermind without locking it in. Now, the cool thing is, I did then wear the shoes for when Jack Canfield interviewed me in Vegas just two days later.  I'm telling you all of this not so that you go buy red-bottom shoes. No, I'm not saying that is what has to happen for you. What I am saying is anytime you have made a shift mentally, emotionally, physically, in your perspective, whatever it may be, lock it in, it is crucial that you lock it in so that you don't slide back. You have different options of how you lock things in. But actually, I could have purchased glitter to recreate the sparkly part. I could go and buy a little sparkling jewel to clip on my shoes. I could buy a little porcelain shoe. I could go online and find a picture of sparkly shoes, print it off and stick it up. I could have a sparkly shoe painting commissioned. There are so many different things that I could have done, and you have the same options as well. What you can do I ask you right now, think about what things in your life have you been trying to stay in, but you keep shifting out of it. Is there a new role, a new habit, a new way of thinking, something that's happened in your life, and you want to stay there without going back? Lock it in. If I can be of any help in doing some perspective work, going through that in order to help you get to that new perspective, to help you to get that shift happening, and then lock it in, I'm so happy to be able to do that for you. Reach out to [email protected]. Tell me a little bit more about what I can support you with. Wrapping Up I'm curious, what was your biggest takeaway? What I hope for you is that you step into a more soul-centered or purpose driven place, that really has you feeling at your utmost best. Towards the life you were meant to live and the work you're supposed to do in the world. I'm going to do another talk on that because the shift was so strong and so amazing for me. I can see, for many of my clients too, the shift happens and even though it’s positive they freak out. They get scared, they backpedal, and they backtrack, and then they're right back where they started. I've seen that so many times, and it just breaks my heart when I know it's the right thing for them. Did these shoes cost a lot? You could think of it that way. Were they a great investment in the direction I'm going? For sure! When I was back on Zoom with my coach and her other clients, she asked, “Are you wearing the shoes right now?” I said, “No, I'm inside. I'm wearing slippers.” She says, “Put the shoes on. You're supposed to wear the shoes.” And so I did! And I keep putting them on, even just when it’s me at home! I'm in the land of sparkling shoes now, and I've locked this in, just know that while you may not be seeing outwardly the shift online, know that inwardly and behind the scenes, this stuff is happening. I already talked to you about the shift that happened to me, change is coming, and why I'm loving the word ‘provoke’. I'm also telling you about this humorous keynote that I'm developing. Just stay tuned for all of that excitement. Please know that when you engage with me, give me feedback on these different aspects, and you're part of my journey, it all really does help to keep me locked in this shift and help me to go in this direction that I know is meant for me. Thank you. Thank you for your support. If I can be of any service - Please reach out! P.S. I love going live and hanging out in my Facebook Group, the Dynamic Women Global Community, so make sure that you’re part of it - it’s free! Read my other blogs:
Have you had a really great shift, but you’re worried about slipping out of it or worse, you know that you already have?  I locked in a really big shift in my business life, and I want to share with you how you can do that too. In previous blogs, I shared about feeling stuck and how not to feel stuck anymore. I also shared about how I had that shift. Now, I’m going to talk about how you can lock in that shift for yourself. Have you ever been in a place where you didn't like where you were, and you felt stuck? Then, you found the clarity to change, but you found yourself slipping back into the old ways, the old habits, the old behaviors, or the old way of thinking? Because if your answer is yes, then read on. Backstory Back in 2019, I was looking for some clarity on what my unique positioning statement is. I kept asking:
I went to different coaches, and they were telling me, “Oh, you should be doing this” or “You should be doing that.” Nobody was actually properly pulling it out of me. I was so frustrated. It was not that I was being picky because I'm extremely decisive. It was that everything that was chosen for me didn't feel like the right fit. Maybe you've had that experience before and felt like, “This just isn't right.” You know when it is right and when it isn’t. In high school, when you try on a prom dress, you're like, “It's nice, but I'm not having that feeling.” If you've ever watched those, “Say Yes to the Dress” shows, and you see the moment that the bride puts on that dress, and she says, “This is the one”. She often has that emotional response or that really pumped up excited response. I was looking for that feeling. Now sometimes I thought, “Oh, this is just good for now. Let's just run with this.” That's kind of what happened with the Virtual Assistant Made Easy Program that I started. It felt good. There was that spark there. I knew it was a fit for my mission of helping business owners to be able to implement strategy, to be able to have some freedom in their business and not be so overwhelmed and burnt out. Also, business owners will be able to get ahead because the tech is done, and the different tasks are completed. I support them with the strategy as well as supporting the virtual assistant. However, I knew that this wasn't the soul work, the stuff I was meant to do on this planet. I was frustrated, but I never gave up hope because I had such a yearning for this clarity. I could see myself on stage in a BIGGER way! That's the thing. I could see myself on these massive stages with all these women, impacting them. I knew that it would be life-changing. I’ve had this feeling of wanting to wake up women - women who are just going through the motions and moving ahead those women who are feeling stuck, or the women who are flying under the radar because they're tired of getting attacked for standing out. They know they keep getting taken down, and they're fatigued. I have such a desire to support them that I knew I had to find the clarity. Finding my clarity Finally, I found it. When I was in LA in a coaching mastermind, with my business coach/marketing coach, and I had the shift. I had this epiphany that I've been in the work boots. Meaning that rather than being in my zone of genius, I've been in a place where I'm really good, but it's more head work. It was harder to do. If you can relate to that feeling, let me know. That feeling of, “I'm really good at this. This is going really well, but it's still not the right fit.” I'm in the work boots, and she said to me, “I think your woman is tamed, and she wants to be unleashed.” I was like, “Yes. Yes!” That for me was the answer. I had this inner knowing that, “Oh, we're on the right path here. This is it. This is the piece.” Previously in the year and I've said this in different places, podcasts, blogs, and such, that I heard our national President of CAPS (Canadian Association of Professional Speakers) say, “Speakers should only speak if they're going to persuade or provoke.” That word provoke got me really excited. I was like, “Okay, I'm really excited about this provoke, but what am I provoking? What's the thing I'm provoking?” When she said that your woman is tamed, I was like, “Yes.” We just want to bust out. She said, “I think maybe you're tamed, too.” I was like, “Yes because I'm in this work boots place, and I want to be in the sparkly shoes.” Do you feel the difference between the two? I want to go from work boots to sparkly shoes. Maybe you also have been in a specific place, and you want to shift to another place. Maybe you've had a negative perspective, and you want to go into a more positive perspective.  As we were wrapping up my coaching session, that epiphany for me was like gold. I was like, “I know it’s a two-day mastermind, but I could just be done here. But she said, “Wait a second. Before we end this, how are you going to lock in this shift tomorrow? Like when you wake up, how are you going to stay in this place of sparkly shoes, of joy, of soul work, of going back into marketing yourself as a life coach? Rather than the work boots and the business coaching, the problem-solving and the strategy? How are you going to lock in the shift?” Great questions…but first I’ll share… A shift can be in your mindset. For me, it was a shift in my business more so of, “Whoa, I'm over here, and I really think I want to be over there.” I really want to go away from marketing myself solely as a business coach to marketing myself more as a life coach. That was a complete mental shift in how I viewed my business. I've been doing life coaching since the beginning. It's been like 13 years now. But when I go to events, I speak more about coaching small business owners and virtual assistant services. It's a change, and I've been holding back on what I’m doing my new humorous keynote on. It’s not about VA services. It's not about business strategy. The shift for me was mental on how I viewed my business and my services. Maybe for you, a shift is coming from a limiting belief into a new paradigm for yourself. Limiting beliefs like,
Shifting it to,
 A shift can also happen in your perspective of a situation. Now you might think, “Well, that's a limiting belief.” No, your perspective of something. It could be one perspective that's still a positive perspective. But when you shift it to a different perspective, it allows more to happen. For example, my perspective of my business could be, “I'm a business coach, and I offer these things.” Then a new perspective could be, “Well, I'm originally a life coach, so I can offer all kinds of services.” A perspective shift might also be about a situation. For example, “I don't have many options because I've got kids at home.” On the flip side, a new perspective you could hold about that situation is, “It's amazing that I get to be home with my kids, and I also have the freedom to choose what I want to do.” It's just a different way of looking at things. It's like you put on a new set of glasses, a new way of looking at something, so you’re able to then take the blinders off and things can be opened up. Anytime I do perspective work with my clients, we look at the situation, and how they are viewing this topic. Then we try another perspective, then another one and another one. We talk about,
Then, after trying them all on again, we decide on what is the right perspective for them to hold. Now, when you make that shift, it might feel like Goldie Locks, “Oh, as we go this way, there are even better perspectives. But that one is so unbelievable that I can't take that one on. But this one feels more comfortable.” For example, it could be that you dislike someone, and your perspective is, “I hate them, I'll never be friends with them.” Then another perspective is, “We're best friends again.” That's just too far off. Maybe in the middle is, “I can be cordial to them. Maybe I'll add them to my prayers every day. Or when I see them, I'll say hi. That's it.” With the different perspectives, you can grab onto a new one. It's just like changing your clothes, “What perspective are we going to have today?” But we don't want to shift back into the old perspective. For me, the shift would be me going back to focusing specifically on business coaching, doing all my marketing towards that, all my offerings towards that, and all my speaking engagements towards that and scaling the VA services even more. Because it is easy to shift back. Why? This is comfortable. Whenever you have a perspective shift, a mental shift, a shift of some kind, you have to lock yourself into this new place. Otherwise, you're going to shift back out. It's kind of like if your body got realigned, it's so easy for us to shift back into that place of misalignment. In my next blog, I will share with you what I did to lock in that shift. P.S. The launch of the Dynamic Women Trailblazer Secrets Book is here! We’re going to have a virtual launch party, and we’d love for you to celebrate with us! Grab your free ticket here. Read my other blogs:
In my last blog, I shared the Top 5 Dynamic Women Podcast Solo Episodes of 2023. We ended the year with a total of 240 episodes released since we started in 2019! We were joined by 25 wonderful dynamic women who shared their expertise, stories, and tips on different topics that you can you in your life and business. Now, let me share with you the Top 5 Guest Episodes! I’ll count them down from 5 to the number 1 Podcasts of 2023! If you haven’t listened to them yet, then I encourage you to check them out and subscribe so you don’t miss any episodes in 2024!
Don’t miss:
Special thanks to our guests:
Don’t miss:
Are you a business owner who's trying to build a successful business? Well, how about building it to the point where you are number one in Canada? In this episode, Missy MacKintosh talks about exactly that. Don’t miss:
Top 1: DW190: Let's Get Fired Up and Be Ready to Shift with Linda Mae Edgecombe with Linda Mae Edgecombe
Listen to this episode as it will help you get fired up and be ready to shift. There you go! Those are the Top 5 Guest Episodes of 2023. Tip: Our guests shared some freebies for you! Make sure to check each episode’s show notes to grab them! You can catch the Dynamic Women Podcast on Captivate, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and other podcast streaming apps. Make sure to subscribe and leave us a review so we can help more women. When you do leave us a review, please send to [email protected] a screenshot of the review and your mailing address so that we can send you a little something in the email. ⠀⠀ If you want to be a guest in the podcast and inspire a global community of women, please email my team at [email protected]. Read my other blogs:
In 2023, the Dynamic Women Podcast celebrated its 4th anniversary! We ended the year with a total of 240 episodes released since we started in 2019! For this blog, let me share with you the Top 5 Solo Episodes of 2023. In these episodes, I share only the best tools, stories, and strategies that will help you in all areas of your life! It may be weird to have an episode all about how I lost 20 pounds. But there's a lot in this story… in this struggle. Listen as I share:
Are you sitting on a course, a product, or a service because your limiting beliefs are telling you:
Then you need to listen to this episode as I talk about:
Have you been thinking about wanting to speak to grow your business, but you’re not a professional speaker? In this episode, I talk about the three ways you can speak without being a professional speaker or having any past speaking experience. This is part of a series. This is the 1st of 4. Don’t miss:
It’s the 4th Anniversary Episode of the Dynamic Women Podcast! Today, the tables are turned as I will be interviewed by our guest podcast host, Michelle Abraham! Michelle and her team at AmplifYou helped me launch my podcast four years ago. In this episode, I answer some hard questions from Michelle. Don’t miss:
It sucks so bad when you feel stuck.... like you can't get out of the muck. No right turn showing itself. You just want to make progress, but why are you sabotaging yourself?! I went live in my Facebook Group, the Dynamic Women Global Community, and talked about ditching the stuck feeling for good. Listen to know:
That’s it! Those are the Top 5 Solo Episodes of the Dynamic Women Podcast! If you listened to these episodes or any episode, thank you. I am very grateful for the support. This 2024, I am going to continue providing you with helpful topics, so if you have any topic suggestions, feel free to reach out to my team at [email protected]. Tune in to the Dynamic Women Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Captivate, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and other podcast streaming apps. Make sure to subscribe and leave us a review so we can help more women. If you leave us a review, please send a screenshot to [email protected] with your mailing address so that we can send you a little something in the mail! Read my other blogs here:
Have you been feeling like you're a little bit off track, and you don't know which direction you should be pointing yourself to go? Maybe you've been sitting here doing a whole bunch of different tasks and you don't see how they can all be united into one path? Today, I’m going to talk about finding your North Star. What is a North Star? Metaphorically speaking, we can think of it like a symbol. A thing that acts as a life guide or a reference point for you. It's really named after the North Star, the Polaris, because it's been fixed in the northern sky and it aligns with the Earth's spinning.  Now, you don't have to remember any of that. But basically, back in the day, right back before we had all the really cool GPS systems and the technology and the electronics that we have today, sailors used to figure out which way they needed to go based on where the North Star was. You can just imagine how important it was to be able to know “Where am I?” and “Where am I going?” The concept of a North Star in personal development When we look at the North Star with your personal growth, you may just think, “Oh yeah, I have a career plan” or “I pick goals to go after” or “I have a theme for the year or word for the year.” Well, basically finding your North Star in personal development means you're figuring out what really matters to you. When you look at different aspects of your life, how are you going to point those in the right direction? It is like a symbol. It helps you make decisions, set goals, and deal with challenges with a sense of direction. It's going to give you some clarity. It's life's GPS, your soul’s GPS, maybe also your business or career’s GPS. It's your personal north star that is going to help you navigate the journey, so if you wonder, “Am I off track? Well, where's your North Star? Oh, it's back over there. Okay, I need to pivot. I need to change how I am going, make different decisions, have different goals, whatever it may be.” Picture this: maybe someone is all about making their community better. That's their North Star, like everything has to be helping their community be better. If they're doing something that's not helping their community to be better, then it's not a fit for them. Maybe their North Star is around their family and the legacy they want to leave. If they're looking at other aspects, and they're thinking, “Wow, this is not in alignment with the legacy I want to leave my family,” then it tells them, “I'm off course. I need to make some changes.” Everything they do, their decisions, actions, and goals, are all aimed at making their community better, their family better, whatever it may be, whatever that North Star is, making it better as the end result. You're probably thinking, “Okay, that sounds really cool. Yeah, maybe I want a North Star,” or “I have all these other things instead.” Well, I want to let you know that if you don't have a clear North Star in your life, it can lead to feel like you have a sense of aimlessness. You're wandering around with a lack of direction. If you have ever thought, “Oh, yeah, I've done this. I've done this. I've done this, but I haven't really felt like I've moved ahead, or I haven't really felt like there's a big alignment in what I'm doing,” then you're going to have struggles. There are going to be some potential consequences. I'm going to go through them now because that's going to tell that saboteur, “Shut up. We really need to get our North Star in place.” Then at the end, I'm going to give you those three questions that you can ask yourself to kind of get that first step towards figuring out what your North Star is. The consequences #1: Lack of focus I hear this all the time that clients and people I meet, they're like, “I’m just feeling unfocused now.” Without that North Star, you may find it challenging to focus on your specific objectives, your specific priorities. You're not going to have the drive you need to stay focused, and instead you’ll say, “Oh, whatever, I'm just going to do these other things”. When you know what your North Star is, then you can confidently say, “Okay, I’ve got to do these things. I got to do these steps because I know that this is going to get me closer to that North Star.” #2: Decision paralysis Have you ever sat there and been like, “I don't know what decision I should make.” But when you're North Star is super clear. It's your guiding light. It tells you where you should be going. It makes decision-making so much easier. There's going to be no issue with you making an aligned decision or an aligned choice. #3: Uncertainty and anxiety Sadly, a lack of a North Star may contribute to you feeling uncertain and worried about the future. Really, with no clear vision or purpose to work towards, you're going to get in that place of feeling uncomfortable with it and feeling like, “What am I doing? I don't know. I'm not sure.” You don't want to be in that place because that's when you lay awake at night, and you worry, “I don't know, am I doing the right thing? Is this a good idea for me? What should I do here?” You do get into that uncertainty, and that can cause you to have less confidence in yourself in a new path.  #4: Real difficulty in setting goals The next piece is you're going to have real difficulty in setting goals because if you're going to set meaningful and fulfilling goals, it's too hard without that overarching direction to guide your aspirations. Instead, you're down here in the everyday asking, “Okay, what am I going to do? What steps? What priorities do I have? Where do I need to focus?” If you don't have that overarching North Star to be able to guide you, it's going to be super unclear. You're not going to know which goals are a priority, and which goals you should even make, which then gets us into the next one. #5: Lack of motivation Your North Star gives you your clear purpose. It also will then create more of a passion for you. It serves as a really powerful motivator. Without it, you're really going to experience a lack of motivation and inspiration in your endeavors, your opportunities, and your goals. Lack of motivation makes it so much harder, then you have to build energy to do things, which means a delay or a complete lack of results. #6: Feeling like you’re wandering through life Life might feel like a series of random events because there's no unifying principle. When you have the North Star, it's going to lead you to a sense of accomplishment that you're hitting your milestones. Otherwise, you're going to be in that place of feeling like you're drifting. You're wandering without a purpose. When you don't have a purpose, you're also going to lack motivation. You're not going to feel that sense of urgency to get things done. You're going to be more apathetic. #7: Limited personal growth I hope you care about this one. When you have this North Star, it will help you to have continuous personal development. But without it, there will be a lack of intentional growth and self-improvement. You're not going to see the things you need in order to move forward. My North Star supporting high-level women to stop flying under the radar, to have more balanced lives and reach the success that they're wanting. I want there to be more female leaders in the world. We're only going to do that by empowering women. So one thing I did was take a stand-up comedy class. I saw how it was going to serve me in helping me give better speaking keynotes, help me with my trainings and my workshops with my clients. The quality of your personal growth will increase, rather than you paying all this money for things that aren't in alignment with your North Star and aren't going to help you to move forward in the right direction. #8: Difficulty overcoming challenges You're also going to have difficulty overcoming challenges. A guiding principle can provide strength and resilience. When you see that North Star, you're going to be like, “Okay, I can get through these challenging times.” Without that North Star, overcoming obstacles may become more challenging, more stressful, and really drain you of your time, your energy, and your peace. #9: Strained relationships You might think of this as like, “Well, this is my life and my North Star”. But really a lack of personal direction might affect your relationships with other people, as it may make it really challenging to communicate your values, aspirations, goals, and desires to them. When you have that clarity, it's going to be really easy for you to be able to explain why things are important to you and be able to make decisions in your life that would have negatively affected them, like you're not going to go partying or you're not going to go on that trip because you have other priorities and values you want to be in alignment with. #10: Reduced satisfaction and fulfillment Without a clear purpose, without the guiding principle of the North Star, there may be a reduced sense of satisfaction and fulfillment, even when you do succeed. That's why some people get to that success point, and then they go,
When you are in alignment with your North Star, when you're moving forward in the right direction, you will feel satisfaction and fulfillment. What I hope people realize is, life should be measured by satisfaction, not just success. The 5 questions Now that you’ve read those 10 consequences, I'm sure you're feeling like, “Whoa, that is a lot, Diane. This is really showing me that it's important to have a North Star.” Here are five questions you can ask yourself that are really going to help you to start to open up this exploration of figuring out what your North Star is. Another way that I talk about it in coaching is around your personal statement. Or it's your your passion. It is the main goal, your vision for your life, your mission, the movement you want to have. Finding that North Star is such a personal journey. I've taken a lot of clients through it. I just received a lovely email from a client I had years ago, who is following her North Star. In the email, she thanked me for the coaching we did that gave her confidence, helped her unlock her values and know which direction she really wanted to go in. Here are five questions you can ask yourself. With these questions, I hope you write them down and put your answers and then ask yourself again, and then write the answers and then put what else? And then write the answers and see which of the answers to these questions starts to really get into that soul place. #1: What do you really care about? You can think of all areas of life, but first look at life in general, what do you really care about? You can also think about, “What is it that fires you up?”  #2: What's important to you? If you haven't listened, watched or read yet about my journey and how my coach shifted me and how I'm going from the work boots into the sparkly shoes, the sparkly shoes for me is the soul work. It's what's really important to me. #3: What do you want to achieve in life? #4: What was the purpose of you being on Earth? #5: What's the legacy you want to leave? A way to find your North Star The Dynamic Your Program is open. This is a really great way for you to have a North Star for this year. By making that one-page plan, that dynamic life blueprint, that is your North Star for the year. If you want to talk more about, “How do I find my North Star for myself?” or “Okay, Diane, I've done the questions. I got the answers, but I really want to explore this more.” Sure, send me a message at [email protected]. We can talk about how I can support you to really lock in your North Star and give you the clarity, so you can implement the right actions into your life. Wrapping Up I’m not going to say much more about the topic. You now know what the North Star is. The importance of it and the definition of it. You also know all the different reasons why you could have negative consequences of not having a North Star, and really all the amazing benefits to having one. For this personal journey, I gave you some questions that you can use, that are really going to help you to get things started with that North Star. I'm putting together right now the topics for 2024. What do you want me to talk about? What are the things that you're struggling with? Or what are some things that you wish you could learn and ask me about? Please send them over to [email protected]. I would love to hear from you. Stay dynamic! Read my other blogs:
Happy New Year! Happy 2024! Thinking about how to start off the year on the right foot? I've got seven tips for you.  By going through these different pieces, it's going to prepare you to:
Basically, all the things you're wanting, especially after the way the past few years have been. As I go through these tips, take some notes, and write them down. I'm going to give you different tips for you to implement. Also, in case you missed it, the doors are open for the Dynamic Year Program, that’s definitely how you’re going to not only be able to set a really great foundation for 2024, but also create your dynamic blueprint. The plan includes your theme, your goals, and all the other pieces, needed to have the dynamic year that you deserve. So check it out here. Tip #1: Make yourself a priority and organize your space This is actually two-fold, and it's more about yourself and your space so that you can really get into all the other six points. The first one is to make yourself a priority - your self-care. Now is the time to be able to take care of yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally. This could include things like:
Or whatever it is to really recenter yourself. Give yourself that rest, relaxation, and recharge that is needed to start the year right. I know you've been really busy probably over the holiday season, and we want to ease in and ensure we're all set to go. Get organized is the other piece of it. Starting off the new year with a clean, organized space can really help you to feel more productive and be more focused. Take some time to declutter. You can donate a bunch of stuff or sell things off, and do a general cleaning of your home and work space. If you’re worried that, “I’ve got to get down to business, Diane, it is chaos in here!” then I have one recommendation. Go to your local store and pick up some bins or get some cardboard boxes. If your desk is a mess, throw stuff in it. If the side of your bed is a mess, throw stuff in it. Do this if you don't have the time to put things away properly right now, and you need to start working instead. Empty those spaces so that you have an opportunity to have clarity, and then set time in your calendar when you'll focus on emptying those boxes, maybe 10 minutes every day, moving forward. Tip #2: Take some time to reflect Now that you've got yourself recharged and your space ready, we want to have some time to reflect on the past year. This is something that we do in the Dynamic Year Program. I have a really amazing, proven step-by-step formula in order to take you through this. Let me just explain what it is so that you have that in your mind right now. Take some time to think about every area of your life over the past year. What worked well for you and what didn't work well for you, and you're going to use this reflection time to educate yourself. In our process, we grab the wisdom, and we do all the steps so you can use this to create your goals and priorities for the next year. Reflecting on the past year is not just about what were the good and bad things, it's more intricate about what got you there, who were you being, and what were you doing. Tip #3: Celebrate your successes Don’t just look at what went well or bad in the past year or what worked and didn’t work, and figure out what you’d do better next time. Instead, when you capture the great things that happened, spend some time to celebrate them. It's really important that we celebrate our achievements.  I see so often that high-achieving A-type of clients of mine, they're like, “Yeah, achieved that. Check. Next. Yep, achieved that. Check. Next.” They don't spend time to celebrate. If you have listened to me talk about the motivation mountain, it's so important to celebrate these successes when we're at the top of the mountain because at some point we’re going to have to run down the mountain, and then up the next one. That process can be tiring. As you go towards another goal, you can get tired, but when you celebrate your achievements, you can actually feel what it's like to be on top. You feel those moments of success, and it's going to help you to get through the hard times when you say, “I need some energy, inspiration, perseverance. I need to know I can do this.” The motivation and confidence from celebrating can help carry us to the top of the next goal. So celebrate the successes at the high points, to get through the lows. It's also going to help you feel good about your progress, and feel good about yourself. Celebrate all types of achievements, big and small. Tip #4: Set specific and achievable goals Once you've done those steps, it's time to start setting some goals. There are a few more steps that I do in the Dynamic Year Program before we make goals, like setting your theme, values, guidelines, and new paradigm, but for this I’ll share about setting specific achievable goals for the new year. Obviously, we want SMART goals. (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Bound) or I like to add the E and R as well. E is for Evaluation, and R is for Review and Redo if needed. When you make your goals, create them for all areas of your life. I use the Wheel of Life - a professional coaching tool. My wheel has 10 areas on it (If you want a copy of it, please send my team an email at [email protected] or email me at [email protected] with the subject line “Wheel of Life Please”) and that's going to help you create specific goals in every area of your life, like your career, your personal development, your health, and your relationships, etc. without going against goals in other areas. When you have clearly defined goals, SMARTER goals that are written down, it's going to give you direction, and it's also going to give you motivation. Tip #5: Reach out for support In going through all of these tips, you might have thought ‘Oh, that's a lot to do on my own’ so the next tip is to reach out for support. You shouldn't be afraid to ask for help or support. It's actually a smart thing to do. How many people out there who are in sports just try to do it all themselves? They don't. They have coaches. They have trainers. They have different people that support them, and the same goes for your goal setting. This will help you have a process for the end of the year, going into the new year, and even creating goals.  Don't be afraid to ask for help or support when you need it. Maybe it's from friends, from family, or from a professional (like me), but having someone to talk to and lean on can be so helpful in achieving your goals and staying on track. Smart people get support. How many CEOs out there are doing everything on their own? If you're a small business owner, you're probably trying to do it all on your own. But Fortune 500 companies, big companies, and successful multi-billion dollar companies have support to get things done and for strategy. Tip #6: Create a plan for achieving your goals A lot of times people make goals and that's amazing. If you write them down, they get closer to being living goals, but if you don't have a plan for your goals, you probably won't be able to achieve them. If you do, it's based on luck, or a fluke, or you're not going to be as efficient as you possibly could. Personally, I love making dynamic goals. One goal that, if planned properly, will help you achieve up to five goals. Doesn't that sound amazing? I'm all about efficiency and productivity, and that's the way to do it. I do that with my clients in the Dynamic Year Program. When you do look at your goals, how can you plan to focus on that one goal and have it help you to achieve multiple goals? It is possible. With your plan, it’s really important to break your goals down into actionable steps. A lot of times goals feel way too big, but if your goal is to make an extra $100,000 this year, and you're feeling like, “How am I ever going to do that?” Well, you're not going to do it by January, but what you could do is make $9,000 every month, that works out to an extra $2,000 a week. Could you do that? Now it's starting to sound more possible. So what are the steps and the actions to get there? Does that sound a little bit more achievable and doable? That's why we want to break them down and have a plan to get there so that in November and December, we're not in that crunch time and super stressed about not being able to get there. It's not just enough to have the goal, you need to know how to make it into actionable steps. Tip #7: Let go of negative habits and thoughts As you're going through all these steps, I'm guessing you've heard limiting beliefs, the saboteur, or little gremlin on your shoulder, saying negative things to you. My last tip is to let go of negative habits and thoughts. As you do these steps, if you hear something, write it down because if there are negative habits or thoughts that are holding you back, you have to make a special effort to let them go. If the negative thought is, “How can I ever achieve that?” Write that down. Now, you need to answer that, "How can I ever achieve that?” or “I'm not smart enough”. Okay, well, what will make you smarter? Do you need to do research? Do you need to hire someone to help you? Do you need to read a book about it? What is going to help you to get there? If you have bad habits, like procrastination, scrolling through Facebook, or any social media platform endlessly, hours at a time, or even minutes at a time when you want to be doing other things. Maybe another bad habit is not eating right, not drinking enough water, or not sleeping enough. We need to let go of these negative habits in January, so that we have a chance for the rest of the year, to be able to really push through and get everything done that we want to achieve. The key thing is, I want you to get to the end of the year and look back and say, “Wow, that was the best year ever. I thought last year was pretty good. But this year was amazing.” To get to the end of the year and have no regrets, “I was so good. I did what I wanted to do.” I know that sometimes you set certain things to do, and it doesn't pan out how you wanted it to, but there'll be other things that you’ll achieve along the way and if you are able to do these seven things, I promise you, you're going to have a better year. If you can do these things in January, even better, set some time in your calendar to be able to go through and do these. Wrapping Up I hope that these seven tips are going to help you start off the new year on a positive note. I'm trusting that by going through these tips you're going to have an even better year. Now, if you want to have a dynamic year, I encourage you to check out the Dynamic Year™ program. Come join me and a bunch of other dynamic leaders to not only coming up with your goals, but being able to properly review the year to grab the golden nuggets and create your Dynamic Life Blueprint. I have a bunch of tools in the dynamic year plan will help you as the year goes on, to make better decisions, to be more confident to have a better plan in place, and then to have quarterly check-ins throughout the year to keep you accountable. That's what the program offers. Check it out. I really would love to see you in there. Until next time, stay dynamic and have a wonderful happy new year! Take care. Read my other blogs:
It's year-end! Have you been thinking about giving back? There is a real art to it. Giving back is part of our nature. Giving, I could say more so, is part of being a woman. As this year draws to a close or if you are taking this information in at another time of year, you can still be reading and planning as to how you want to be giving back.  Importance of giving back It's always at the end of the year that I decide, “Okay, who have I not given enough to? Who are the new people or organizations and charities that I want to give to?” Now is the perfect time to do that. There is a big push for all these charities, organizations, and special services that are looking for fundraising dollars now, so they can support their budgets throughout the year, so they can:
It's important to give back because many organizations will only survive if they have donors and if they have people who are supporting them in one way or another. Giving back means that those services that are near and dear to your heart, the ones that are in alignment with your personal values, your mission, your business, or whatever it may be, can continue to do good work. If you put your dollars into Amazon, you're growing Amazon. If you put your dollars into a women's local shelter, then you're helping the people around you get the help they critically need. When we are blessed with finances, security, jobs, and business, then it is our duty to give back. I'm not going to tell you how much you have to give back. You know how much tithing you need to do. But it’s important that if we have, then we give. You may not have money to give and that's okay, but you maybe have time. All the different things you can give are:
You can also be the one who collects from others. A few things that we've done in the past is for the gala that we did for the Dynamic Women Community. I invited the women to bring pajamas, underwear, socks, and other personal products, in order to have these items available for the women in shelters, which was for Joy's Place Emergency Shelter. I have done others where it was feminine products, toothbrushes, body wash, these sorts of things for women in shelters. I've collected items that are one-use or small-use, like shampoo, conditioner, razors, mittens, and things for the women in the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver. Collecting these items could be the thing that you do. I've also collected probably two suitcases or two garbage bags full of bras, mainly used bras, that were being sent over to Africa for the women there because I heard that women who don't wear a bra are more targeted for sexual abuse, rape, and kidnapping. That appalled me and I thought if I could do one little thing it would make a big difference. I can remember dropping them off to the person who was going to bring them over. I had my daughter in her stroller and two big garbage bags of bras. There are many different ways and things you can give - like your time. Recently, with my church, my family and I helped to do a big Christmas dinner. I think it was 400 people. My job for two or three hours was serving drinks and special baked goods to the people as they came in and were waiting for their dinner. Then my job was to clean up and take down all the Christmas lights and the decorations. Then to help reset the location by bringing all the tables back and cleaning up all the garbage. That was just a one-off give back.  It's important to give back. We get it, but a lot of times, this gets forgotten, or we go to a store like Walmart and at the till we get asked, “Do you want to give $2 to Children's Hospital?” Or we go somewhere else, and we get asked, “Do you want to give $1 to this or $5 to that?” That's not how I give. Now, that's great, but a lot of times, the companies have already given, and they're looking to recoup the donation. Who to pick It's great if at the beginning of the year, you choose who to give to. I get that we're at the end of the year now, and so it's like getting it in under the deadline, but still intentionally choose who and how much to give. For me, it's always important that I give to the Cancer Society because my father passed away from cancer. That one is near and dear to my heart. I also give to MS Canada because I have a few clients dealing with it. I also believe in giving to women's shelters like Nova Vita in my hometown of Brantford because I see that we're only one decision that we've made or someone else has made for us, that would put us in need of using a women's shelter. Because I feel blessed that I haven't had to use an emergency shelter or domestic abuse services, I want to make sure that they have the resources. I give money every year. Sometimes I donate my Dynamic You book. I just feel like that is really important to me. One that my parents always gave to was The War Amps. That's the key tags where if you lose your keys, and it says on there, just put it in a mailbox and there's an agreement with the Postal Service, that they will find the owner again of the keys and give them back. I always donate because I see that also as a service. Then we're giving to BC Children's Hospital because my daughter had a hernia and had surgery there. They were so good. My son also broke his femur and he was in there. It's just really important for me to be giving back. Also giving to the SPCA, that's where we usually get our animals from. This year, we got two cats from the Langley Animal Protection Services. When we went there, we donated food to them. The “Who to pick?” is going to have to be connected to you. Do you want to give locally? I give to a women's shelter here locally. I also give to a women's shelter in my hometown. Or is it provincially/statewide? Or nationally? Or even globally? Which level are you wanting to give to? Is it something that's near and dear to your heart? Is it based on maybe some family member that was affected by a disease? Is it a service that you've used or a friend has used? Just be thinking about who you're going to pick. I know that my parents gave to a lot of different organizations, and they would allot a certain amount. It is okay that if someone asks you for a donation that you say, “I'll think about it for next year. But we've already allotted our donations for this year.” You're totally ok to do that. You don't have to donate to everyone and every organization, but when you plan it, you're going to be able to see where you want to give, and you'll be able to know how much you want to give. I know for tax purposes, it's always good to give over $20 so that you get a tax receipt, and maybe you need to write off a certain amount of money in order to reduce your tax bracket. I'm not going to go into taxes. That is not the purpose for philanthropy. Also, if you have a service that you provide, maybe an organization would give you a “gift in kind” receipt for your services or gifting of your unneeded car to a specific organization or other items for an auction. Just be thinking about that as well, since there are so many different ways to give. It doesn't just have to be money. How do you want to give? Well, we're right at the end of the year, so I encourage you just go give. Give presents where they're needed, like for different children's charities or families in need. We did a couple of hampers this year, from my soccer team and my women’s church group. At the end of the year, it's different. But going into the next year, be thinking about how you want to give. Do you want to give a monthly donation? I used to do direct deposit for my church every month. It would just automatically come out, but then I decided, instead, I would invest that money and then do a lump sum at the end of the year. Giving cash is always better because using your credit card charges the charity fees, so you're actually giving them less than you intended. Yes, you get points, but at the cost of them having the expense. Cash is great and E-transfer is even better, then you have a bit of a paper trail in case anything goes wrong. Be thinking about that as an option, or writing a cheque works well too. But at this point in the year, you're going to have to drop it off. Be thinking about that. We want to keep more money in the pocket of the charity or the organization that we're donating to. *Side note for small business owners, when you buy something from a small business owner, use cash as much as you can or debit so that they don't incur the credit card fees. Build in giving into your life If you build in giving, then it's part of your monthly budget. It's part of your goal setting. It's part of your calendar. You can plan, “I'm going to give back by donating my time to this organization at this place, and it will already be scheduled in there.” That's how you build in giving into your life. You can ask yourself:
It doesn't always have to be to charities. It could be you mentoring someone, or joining a non-paid board, a volunteer board and giving your time, energy, and connections.  It could be you donating a certain percentage of your salary or what you bring in, and it could be something you discuss with your family, “Where are we going to give and how are we going to do that as a family not just as an individual?” Build in giving into your business Last but not least is thinking about how do we build in giving into our business. Here are some options:
For my book launch of Dynamic You, we did something called the “More Than One Campaign.” I also do this when I go to big conferences. I encourage the women to buy more than one book. But that second book is left behind with me, and I donate it to a women's shelter. They buy one book for themselves, and they buy a book for a woman who maybe couldn't afford it or is now just receiving a lovely gift as she leaves the shelter on her journey for the next chapter of her life. When you build in giving into your business, you can plan the giving. You can do it in a way that makes sense for your business, both from a structural way, also from a way of announcing it. It's not around a marketing ploy. But we all know certain companies, that when you buy one of something, you know that one is going to be donated. That can be the deciding factor for a lot of people really believing in your philanthropic ways of your business and wanting to support that. You don't necessarily have to have your own foundation or your own nonprofit or your own special services, but can you align yourself with a specific organization? Can you give stage time? Can you send emails about them? Can you make social postings about them? Can you put them on your podcast so that you help to spread the word about this organization, charity, nonprofit or whatever it may be. Now, there are so many other ways you can be philanthropic in your business and in your life. I just kept it to the actual exchange of you giving your time, energy, product, or money in a kind of potentially one-off way or a way where it fits into your life and business. There are so many bigger, grander things you could do, like saying,
Whatever it is for, there is an art to giving back. The key thing is just having intention around it, and then implementing it. It doesn't have to be a lot or hard. It’s just so important, especially as women, our donation dollars count, our voice at the table makes a difference, and volunteering matters. Our ability to share our skills, and just show the younger generation the impact that we can make, not just for profit, but for good, is really important. I'm curious, if you’re already donating, who do you give to? Why is that important to you? If you're thinking about how to be more philanthropic in your life or your business, please share that. I would love for you and your journey and what you're going to implement to inspire others. P.S. Want 2024 to be your best year? The Dynamic Year™ program gives you the chance to look at the past year to capture the good, release the bad, and move forward with the golden nuggets we have uncovered. You get all the info, tools, and templates you need to benefit from the 3-Step Foundation and create your Dynamic Life Blueprint for a great year. Read my other blogs here:
In my previous blog, I talked about the times I felt stuck, what I did to ditch that feeling, and how you can find the reason why you're stuck. Now, I’ll share with you the “How Can I” Approach” and why I wanted to write about this stuck feeling topic. Go to the link below to read part one first: https://www.dianerolston.com/blog/are-you-wanting-to-ditch-the-stuck-feeling-for-good  The “How Can I” Approach This is something that I coined because I was trying to figure out how I was able to get over adversity. A lot of people say, “Here's my obstacle. Here's my problem. Here's why I'm stuck. Ho-hum is me.” I noticed that when I've faced an obstacle, after the initial annoyance I ask myself “How can I?” For example, I need to have a book in my clients’ hands in 90 days. (Go to part 1 for more info about this story.) How can I do this? I don't have enough info. How am I going to write this? I don't want to write this. How else could I write this book? I changed my approach from, “Oh, I have to write a book” to “I'm going to speak and teach the material that then gets transcribed into a book.” I started by making an outline. I put it into more of a program format. I then emailed my list and said, “Hey, I'm doing this program called Dynamic You, you're going to learn how to unleash your dynamic woman through the nine Pillars of being a dynamic woman. It's going to be a five-week course, who wants in? Here's the investment.” 25 women said they wanted to be in, which was really exciting! Now I had to have the content ready for them. Every time I tell the story, (you're getting the super basic version), people go, “Wow, I never thought of that.” But it was in one of those moments of feeling stuck, but knowing I could teach the content instead caused me to open up my thinking. Thank goodness, I had a team member and editor to support me in making this happen. Otherwise, I think it would have been too much. So for the questions, “What information do I need?” I looked at the pieces I didn't have the answers to.
I needed all of these questions answered. If your problem for feeling stuck is you don't have enough information, then you need to ask yourself,
If the problem is, “I don't know if it's the right decision?” well, how can you know if it's the right decision? Who can help you to get the answer? What can help you to know if it's the right decision? If you don't know if you have the right motivation, then, how can you know what's the right motivation? How can you figure that out? Who can help you to figure that out? If you don't have enough confidence, how can you build the confidence to do it? There have been some situations in my life where I was terrified, like calling one of my major coaches who makes multiple billions of dollars, and proposing a collaboration with him. I told people, I would do it so that I could actually make it happen. It comes down to what I mentioned earlier, “A deadline helps hold us accountable.” Put a deadline on things. But first, you have to figure out why you are stuck. Then ask, “How can I?” The questions of:
It's not just about sitting in the stuckness. It's about figuring out the solution to get out of the stuckness. It feels so heavy. It feels so hard like you are really stuck in the muck. With my health journey, I felt stuck in the muck. I actually felt hopeless. I thought, “I'm never going to be able to get myself out of this. I don't have the willpower. I know what I need to do. I just don't have the motivation to do it. I don't have the emotional bandwidth to do it. I don't want to figure it out. I need to be told what to do.” That’s why I put my money into it. I invested to make it happen. That might be what you need. One of my coaches, I joined her mastermind so that I could hear her extreme confidence and ego sometimes because I feel like I'm very heart-centered and I put people's feelings first and sometimes boundaries can get blurred. I was like, “Okay, how can I not do that anymore? How can I not have my heartstrings pulled so much that I bend too much for people?” I thought, “Who do I know who can help me with this?” It's just me being in the energy of this person. This person is like definitely like a no BS, her feelings are first, and her wants are first. I'm not going to go maybe that extreme, but it helps me to move forward. What the women in my community said “I do not have a lack of confidence or motivation. I really think I need someone to help me with the marketing piece.” ~ Sandra There you go.  When I felt stuck in my business and I just wasn't moving on something, even though I knew “I could probably figure this out” or “I have a team and someone could do this”, I just didn't want to be the one to oversee it, so I invested. At one point, I invested five grand just to have someone build out a Facebook ad, a landing page, and an email sequence. I know how to do all of that. I've done all of those things and my team can do it. But for some reason, I just wasn't doing it. I just wanted someone to take me by the hand and lead me because at that time didn't have the mental capacity to handle another thing, and that's okay. If you feel like, “I'm just not doing it, I'm just not making it happen”, okay, how can you? Maybe you have someone who actually just does it for you or someone who holds your hand to do it. I know when I first learned Facebook ads, I hired someone. I took their course. I was learning how to do it. Then I thought, “Oh, no, I need more support.” Then I hired her and we did laser sessions so I can ask specific questions. I realized I was stuck because I was unsure if it was the right decision on each little thing. Is this the right audience? Is this how I click this button here? I wanted to be able to just run that by someone. Then I realized, I'm getting the information from her, but I just don't have the time to actually put it into place. Then I said to her, “Hey, I think I need to hire you to do this for me.” She laughed and said, “I was wondering when you’re going to ask for this type of help because I see how much you have going on.” My learning curve was so big, so it was quite a funny journey that I had to go on, I'm going to learn this, then I'm going to get some extra support, and eventually I'm just like, ‘You know what, you just do it.’ Now that I have my two VAs, I've been very blessed to be able to have them just do it.
Sometimes we're just in that decision fatigue. But I'll tell you when you're stuck, and you realize what is making you stuck or you have help to realize what's making you stuck, you can then get moving. But then you have to seal the deal by making a decision. I did this by saying:
As soon as you make a decision and take that first action, the joy of this part is it builds your confidence. The confidence causes you to act again and again and again. The truth is, you will probably get stuck again, but you just go back to these steps in order to move you forward. Why I wanted to write about this stuck topic I am seeing this in so many clients right now:
There is a lot of stuckness right now. I feel like we're not flipping out of feeling stuck because we've spiraled down and almost corkscrewed our way in so deep that it feels really heavy to come out of it. It feels hard like we have to dig ourselves out, and that feeling of, “I just don't know what to do” or “I just can't do it” or “Why am I not doing it digs us even deeper?”  I wanted to be able to free more people from that stuck feeling. Let's look at more examples Here are more examples from the women in my community:
I agree. The world does feel stuck, especially with all the negativity, atrocities, and tragic events that are happening in the world. It feels really heavy.
I think it's more falling forward. You’re very welcome. I don’t want people to feel stuck.
First, just figure out what the stuckness is, and it's going to help you to move forward.
If you haven't reinvented in the past, look back and ask yourself what helped me last time to make this happen easily?
Probably hiring someone to help you with the marketing or let's go with the marketing strategy that you know, and that has worked for you in the past. Because maybe something like Facebook ads is too much of a big learning journey. Instead, going and speaking on a podcast would be helpful because you love to be in the zone helping others.
You are a thinker, so sit with it until you have a little clarity make a choice and take action and make a choice. Sometimes the action that you take can be with a little fine print that says, “I'm going to try this out for right now until it doesn't feel good anymore.”
Because you're probably focusing on it. Your attention is on it. When my knee was injured or if we get a diagnosis or something else is happening to us that is concerning, I get that it can be all-consuming. We need to consciously move away from it and put our focus and attention on something else. I went down a little bit of a rabbit hole when the whole Hamas tragedy on October 7 and I was focusing on it and focusing on it and looking at things and I had to pull myself out of it and I had to focus on the things that mattered most to me and the things that brought me joy.
Fill your life with the things that bring you joy when something else is feeling heavy so that you can start to pull yourself out. We might not be able to solve the stuckness or the problem, but what we can do is offset some of that. When we look at the Wheel of Life some areas might be low and we can't fix them. Maybe we can’t make your marriage any better right now because your partner is away for six months in another location. We can't see them so it's really hard right, and so we say, “It’s okay for now. I can't move that up. But can I focus on closeness with my friends right now, or with my other family?” We can look at the other areas to pull ourselves up. If you're stuck, don't keep yourself stuck in that place.
Okay, you want to get unstuck now. Good. Amazing. Wrapping Up To wrap up, here are some of the takeaways of the women in my community.
Yes. Because that is a loop. That is a hamster wheel that just continues on, but if you look for what is the exit out of that, that's most important.
Yeah. Sometimes that means turning things off. If you're stuck and there are things in your life that are causing more negativity, maybe there are certain people in your life, certain situations in your life, maybe you have to turn the volume down on those things a little bit. You can turn your attention away from them and instead, ask yourself what fills you up and then go do more of that. If what fills you up is crafting, hiking, or sitting around the campfire with friends, do more of the joyful stuff so that you can be in that place of feeling good, which will give you energy to be able to handle the places you feel stuck.
Take care of your energy though. As always, if you ever feel like I can support you to point out that thing that's right in front of you, or to help you work through things, it's not weak to get help. It is smart to get help. Even if you think, “I know what to do”, but you're not doing it, you're not implementing, you're not moving forward. Just like how I hired a coach for my health journey, and I hire coaches for different parts of my life, I would be, honored to serve you and work with you. I'll tell you this, too. I'm a strong, confident person. You probably have strong confident people in your life, and you could be one of them, too - A type, driven, successful. Check in on them. They could be stuck on something, and you would never know because they are suffering in silence. Because they're caring for everyone and everything in their lives. It is so appreciated when other people ask them:
Reach out to that person in your life that you've been feeling like you should reach out to, just say, “Hey, thinking about you. How are you doing?” I know it could make the world of a difference to them. P.S. Don’t miss out! Watch my next live in the Dynamic Women Global Community Facebook Group. I’ll be there answering your questions and talking about the topics that are most important to you. Read my other blogs:
Are you wanting to ditch the stuck feeling for good?  I recently went live in my Dynamic Women Global Community on Facebook and interacted with some of the members and talked about this stuck feeling. It sucks terribly when you feel like you can't get out of the muck. Maybe you have felt like that or feel like that now. There's no right turn showing itself, but you want to make progress. Then why are you sabotaging yourself? I am going to share a little bit with you about what has worked for me to get into action and find the motivation to ditch the stuck feeling for good. This is a work in progress, and I'm not giving you a one-solution-fits-all approach. I'm going to go through some of the processes I use in order to be able to get unstuck. I've had times when I've been crazy stuck for months or even years. Then I've had other times where I'm just stuck for 10 minutes. This process can be used in any of these situations, in any length of time, and in any area of life. A little backstory I host the Dynamic Women Global Community. I started the community back in 2013 to meet my need for not just surface-level networking but for a deeper connection with other women in business. I noticed that some of my clients were being looked over for their profession because other people were treating them like a sale or as less than. So I knew I wanted to create a space for women to come together and be respected. I also started this because when you’re older, it’s harder to make new friends. If you try to form a friendship with people in business by inviting them for coffee, you can seem too forward or that you want to sell to them, and it's uncomfortable. We started as a live event community. I was running it in eight different cities, so eight different locations and eight different events every single month. Now because of COVID and a bunch of other reasons, we are online. What is it to feel stuck How you know when you're stuck? If we are trying to go and do something or if we're trying to make something happen in our business or our lives, maybe it's a big goal we've had like:
…whatever it may be, you could feel that, “I'm not moving forward”, and it's horrible, and the longer you stay in that feeling of not moving forward, it’s going to start to completely erode your confidence. It's going to have you doubt yourself more. Limiting beliefs are going to come in. You have to switch yourself out of feeling stuck. You HAVE to before you get stuck there. I'm going to give you a one-size-fits-all in one regard, but it has to be customized to you. As a certified life coach and the asker of powerful questions, I'll ask you questions today as well. But if you still feel like this is not enough, I really encourage you to reach out to me by sending me an email at [email protected]. For me, I can't get unstuck a lot of times by myself, even though I'm using my own practices that I use on my clients because it's in the conversation with someone else, especially a trained professional which helps you move forward. You're feeling stuck. You're not making progress. You're not moving forward. You may feel like the right solution isn't presenting itself, or “I don't know what the next step is.” Or you might be asking yourself, “Why am I sabotaging myself? Why am I not moving forward? Why am I not doing the things I know I need to do?” In my previous blogs, I've talked about how it took me forever to be able to start my health journey. Now, in my case, I didn't have the right motivation. Maybe you're also stuck because you don't have the right motivation. When I was younger, the motivation was, “I am going to get healthy, so I look good.” Honestly, I kind of care about looking good. It wasn't happening for that reason. Am I motivated to lose weight because it's important to my health? I knew that that was true, but didn’t motivate me. I want to get healthier and lose weight so that I can fit into my clothes. Well, I wanted that, but I just kept buying bigger clothes. I was looking for the right motivation to get unstuck. Even seeing photos of myself wasn't the piece that pushed me. When I looked at photos, and I surprisingly said, “Oh my goodness. I don't know I looked like that,” that still wasn't the right motivation. I was stuck in all of these places because I hadn't done enough deep work to figure out what my motivation was. Now the universe gave it to me by injuring my knee and then talking to an orthopedic surgeon about my knee. The only thing that we could do is strengthen around the knee and lose weight.
Ask yourself right now. For what you're wanting, what is your motivation for going there? Maybe you haven't found the right motivation. Ask yourself, what is your WHY for this thing you're wanting?
When we tap into that deeper why, that creates the motivation that gets us into action. Finding the reason why you’re stuck Here are some reasons for feeling stuck which were shared by the women in my community:
Let me go into the reason why you're stuck. The one thing I do is I ask myself, “What am I stuck on? What is causing me to be stuck here?” I'm going to give an example of writing my very first book Dynamic You, which is the nine pillars of a dynamic woman. Why was I stuck on it? I was just not writing it. Here are some questions to find out WHY you are stuck: #1: “Am I stuck because I don't have enough information?” Meaning, maybe I don't know how to write a book, or I don't know what I'm going to write about. I don't know if I should self-publish. I don't know if I should go through a publishing company. I don't have enough information to move on this. When I look at Lilian's “feeling stuck on launching something new”, so this is maybe a new program or a new offering. She could ask herself, “Do I have enough information to know how to launch it, to know what I'm launching, to know the best marketing strategy for doing it, to know if my audience will actually buy it? Is there some information I need there?” Lisa says that she feels stuck about reinventing herself. Again, is there not enough information on what the next steps could be or how to get the clarity? #2: “Is this the right decision?” The next thing to ask yourself is, “Is this the right decision?” With Paula’s example about reimagining what she’s going to do for her dissertation, so she went one route and thought, “This doesn't feel like the right decision”, so now she's going a different route, and needs to ask herself, “Is this the right decision?” We can feel stuck because the right decision hasn't presented itself yet. I'll tell you, I’ve experienced being in that place of stuckness for years. Every time I thought I gained some traction, I'd have life hit me with something major, which caused me to have to pause:
Just check in with yourself and ask yourself, “Is this the right decision that I'm making?” Like for Paula, “I'm going to do my dissertation on this topic. Is this the right decision?” If you're 80% there, you just have to choose the first small step. If you are really doubting it, the only way you're going to know is to take the next step or to take a further step back. Either way, get some support to talk it through so that you can see all options because maybe your blinders are on or to have someone else say what they see in you. Because like the Les Brown quote, “When you're in the frame, you can't see the picture.” Many times I have been wondering, “I don't know what the answer is. I'm looking for it. I can't find it. What is it?” A coach has said to me, “Isn't it this? Isn't it this thing right in front of you?” and I've replied, “Ah, you're right. It totally is.” Having someone else say that to me has been so helpful. You either don't have enough information or you don't know if it's the right decision.  #3: Do I have enough confidence? The next reason why you may be stuck is that you don't have enough confidence. “Well, I don't know if I can market myself to clients because I don't know if I'm good at it enough.” Or it might be, “I'm feeling not so confident in what I'm offering.” Check in with how much confidence is there and maybe where it's lacking, you might need to have a little bolster or a little boost. #4: Are there people disagreeing? The fourth thing might be that other people are disagreeing. Lisa said, “Each time I think I find a rhythm life throws me another in a different direction, time availability, availability changes, and I have to rethink things. Makes me feel stuck thinking about reinventing again.” Maybe as she even reinvents herself, she has someone else say, “Are you sure about that?” It's really funny because even though I have already lost 40 pounds, there are still other people who are trying to tell me what I should do:
I think, “Wait a second, I've done this for six months. I've followed a coach, her plan and I'm getting crazy good results.” People are trying to get me stuck again. Now thankfully, I have enough traction and progress that other people disagreeing or giving me other ideas doesn’t phase me. I'm just like, “Whatever, not interested.” Check in on these 4 areas to see, What makes you stuck? Even just looking at what Sandra has said, she’s stuck getting clients and marketing to get more clients. I feel like that could be a confidence thing. That can also be a not enough information to know if you're doing the right steps. Maybe you don't have a plan. But she then said, “I'm happiest when I'm in the zone and helping others.” Yeah, you're in your zone of genius when you're doing the stuff you’re good at. It might be time to hire out the rest. The thing about being a business owner is we have all of these other positions we have to hold to have the business run. I love doing my videos, and recording my podcast. I love speaking to you. I love sharing this. This is my zone of genius. Me sitting behind a computer and writing a book, not what I want to be doing. That’s why my blogs comes from my videos and podcasts. (I edit the transcript that my VA has formatted for me.) Why I felt stuck writing a book I'm going to talk through my example of writing a book and how I felt stuck. I already gave the example of my health journey, and how I was stuck for a long time, and how I eventually got the right motivation. I was stuck writing a book. Why? Because my perception of writing a book was I need to sit behind a computer, and I need to type by myself and write. I did not have enough information. I didn't know there were other ways to do a book. Am I making the right decision? I knew I was making the right decision to write a book. I didn't fully have the right motivation either. Did I have enough confidence writing a book? Not really because I don't feel like I'm an amazing writer. I don't enjoy writing. It's funny because spelling was my worst skill, yet I majored in English at university as one of my majors. (I did a double major.) Then other people were saying I needed to write the book, and a lot of people were telling me that writing a book is really hard. It's not. You just need the right strategy in place. I didn't know the strategies to write a book. I didn't know the ease of writing a book. Do you know what eventually unstuck me? A deadline. I needed a deadline. Sometimes that's just the way to get you unstuck is just to make a fricking deadline for it. My deadline was kind of imposed on me. I was speaking on the phone with the organizers at a women's conference in Washington State that wanted to bring me down to open and close a big conference for women. I was jazzed. They're going to pay me my full fee, fly me in, and cover a couple nights at a hotel, all this amazing stuff. Then I realized at the time, I didn't have a visa to work in the States. I wasn't allowed really to go and speak. There was a chance I could get turned away at the border. In the last second, I said, “Okay, well, actually, I have a different idea. How about we do this where you buy enough copies of my book for everyone in the audience and we’ll have that Oprah moment, ‘You get a book, you get a book, and you get a book’. Then I'll come in and speak for free.” They were floored, “Oh, my gosh, that's so generous of you. Are you sure? We can pay your fee and buy the books.” I'm like, “No, no, no, let me do this for you.” They said, “Give us the link, and we'll go and buy them today.” I said, “Oh, I'm just re-editing it. I'll let you know when the link is live.” I hung up the phone, called my friend and said, “Well, I guess I have to write my book now.” There's a bigger, bigger version of that story, but that's the quick version. I'm telling you this because the deadline forced me to write the book. For Lilian who's feeling stuck on launching something new, you just got to put it out there and put a date on when it's happening. As soon as somebody puts money out for it, then you got to do it. In my case, I knew I had to have the book at that hotel for that big event in just 90 days. The first time I saw the book was when I opened the box in my hotel room the night before I spoke. It was exciting! For my next approach - the “How Can I” approach. I will talk about it in my next blog, so stay tuned! P.S. Have you joined the Dynamic Women Global Community? It’s a free online community for female business leaders to come together to connect, share, grow, and be inspired! Read my other blogs here:
Are you afraid or hesitant to step out of hiding and be more visible in your life?  I had the courage to stop hiding. I feel called to come and talk about how I got the courage to stop hiding. How I've been able to then reach the goal of really showing up fully as I am. It's a constant battle, I'll tell you that. I'm not always going to be able to show up fully. Sometimes, I have to muster new courage to be able to do it. Why you should care about this Why is this important? Well, not being visible is stopping you from achieving your goals. Not being visible means that you're inhibiting yourself from fully living the life that you want to live. Whether that's you hiding as a person or hiding in your business, or not being visible to the world, maybe in your relationships or in your community, it's holding you back. I know because I've been held back, and it feels crappy in these moments. But somehow through a few different ways I'll share with you, I was able to persevere. I want to share with you how I got the courage to stop hiding. What makes me want to share about this? It's because I keep meeting A-type, driven, and successful women who say things like:
You've heard of “tall poppy syndrome” or “crabs in a bucket”. Basically, the idea that when you stand out, people are going to take you down. Just look at the hate online from trolls. The cowards behind their computer screens, typing away and saying such hurtful things. My experiences Well, since I was a kid, I've been very blessed. God blessed me with skills, the ability to learn easily at school, the athleticism to play sports, and the confidence to be able to do things like public speaking and be the captain or the president of different groups. I know that I was given some innate skills, but I also worked my butt off to achieve by doing these things.
I did all of these things to be better, which then meant that I wasn't able to hang out with the other kids at lunchtime because I had a meeting or I was catching up on some work because I knew I had sports after school or clubs or something. That meant in high school, I felt left out. On the weekends, there would be parties and events happening. This was before the day of the cell phone, and so I'd sit at home on a Friday or Saturday night waiting for the phone to ring, and the phone wouldn’t ring, and I'd call people and they'd have already left to go out for the night. On a Monday, people would say, “Where were you?” Everyone thought that everyone else was inviting me out. Now, that a sad, unfortunate thing. It's not that I was bullied. But yet, I felt left out. I was called a “brown noser”. People told my friends, “Oh yeah, she's just a perfectionist and teacher's pet and all that.” But my friends really knew me. Thankfully, they spoke up for me. Then when I was invited to go and play for a boys’ soccer team, they did not accept me. When I was playing indoor with boys, and I would take the ball away from them, they would cuss me out and use very inappropriate sexual words towards me, and I've spoken about these in other blogs and podcast episodes. I'm just going through a list of these and maybe you've had some of these experiences. In high school, when I was running for student council president, there was a guy who was also running for it. He wasn't a part of anything in school, he just wanted the title. He made up lies about me which split the graduating class’ votes and forced a lot of the school to have to choose to follow him or me. Then I thought, when I won, it would go away. Nope, it just got worse. I was basically slandered in school. In my business, I've been wrongfully slandered. One of her connections told me, “She does this to people when she’s jealous of their success.” I know it was slander because the lawyer told me it was. I just chose not to put negative energy back into it. It’s sad these things happen. It could be happening to you, too! While you may not have had these specific cases, you may have felt like,
 This happens over and over again and repeatedly in moments where we don't want to speak up and we don't want to be fully ourselves and we stay hiding because it's just easier. Then we throw COVID into the mix. Well, that's hard to step out of. I totally get it if you're flying under the radar. I get why you don't want to be visible. I get why you're hiding. But we don't want to be in hiding anymore. I must keep checking myself,
Am I worried about things?
That's not even counting in the possibility of, what if this doesn't work? What if it does? I when I deliver a keynote, and women come up to me with tears in their eyes, and they say, “Oh my gosh, I felt like you were speaking directly to me. Thank you for sharing that story. Thank you for pointing out these things. I could see the emotion on you, and boy, did it change me.” And when I read comments, thank you cards, or emails that have been sent to me, and they say things like, “Diane, you've changed my life. Your program is the thing that gave me confidence. If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be where I am today.” When I'm coaching someone, and they tell me, “Diane, last week when this situation happened, I heard your voice. I heard your voice in my head. It gave me the clarity of what I had to do based on what I remember you saying.” I know these moments are life changing for my clients. This is why I am not hiding. This is why I'm visible. These moments are possible when you're stepping up, you're stepping out, you're visible, and you're doing the amazing work you're doing. Or you're not getting this response, and you're missing out on it because you're hiding. It's important that we are visible. It's important that we are visible as our unique selves. How did I get the courage to stop hiding? Because I look at the thank-you cards. I read what they say. I look at the faces of the women at my events. I know they are way more important than the crap I could face from others. Shining You have to be visible. Now to which degree are you visible? That's up to you. This is one of the pillars in the Dynamic You Program is around shining. I'm not going to go fully into it. But the first stage of shining is hiding. You're not visible at all. You're not out there. People don't know you. People don't know what's going on. Maybe based on the past few years with what's going on in your life, you are hiding. But it's hurting you because it's like the little spark has been distinguished. I've had moments where my spark has been a full-on flame. I've had other times when it’s at risk of being blown out or it already is. It's important you get to put yourself out there in a way that feels safe. You have permission to do that. I have had many opportunities that have put me out there. Things like being on podcasts, speaking on summits, being in collaborative books, and being interviewed. I was just interviewed by Jack Canfield a few weeks ago and I held a watch party for it! (If you want to watch the replay, email my team at [email protected].) It's important to put yourself out there in a way that feels safe. Maybe you're not a, “I'm going to get on stage with 20,000 people” sort of be out there. That's okay, and you're not going to be the mayor of your city. That's okay. You're maybe not going to start your own podcast, and that's okay.  Standing out for positive things is really what I mean. Which positive things? Whatever you're passionate about, whatever you're an expert in. They’re the positive things, right? I don't want you to stand out because you did something bad or because you're a bully. Stand out for the things that your clients, your customers, your family, and your friends have grown to love about you. If you're standing out because you have blue hair, and you crack really great jokes, or you stand out because you make a mean apple pie, wonderful. Stand out for positive things. Wrapping Up I hope you take what I've said and see how you can have the courage to stop hiding and know that it's a process. I go into hiding sometimes. I come back out. I go into hiding, I come back out. The key thing is going into hiding should just be to preserve your energy, so you can come out and SHINE again! P.S. Grab the Dynamic You Book to learn more about the different pillars. Then stay tuned for the Dynamic You Program! If you'd like to know when the next program is coming out where I lead you through the nine pillars of being a dynamic woman, where shining is one of them, then please email [email protected]. Read my other blogs:
Have you ever felt like you've given your power away? Maybe you didn't even know you were doing it until someone pointed it out. That happened to me recently, but you know what, you can stop giving all your power away.  What is “IT” I didn't give you specifics in this blog title because I didn't want the IT that I felt or happened to me recently to be the thing that stops you from reading. Here are some examples of what that IT could be (what we could be giving our power to). It can be:
How IT showed up in my soccer team I saw someone on my soccer team give their power away to an opponent. The person on the other team was being lippy. If you're in competitive sports, you know people try to get under your skin and when they can get under your skin, it throws you off your game because you're so focused on them and…
His can cause you to not play your game as you normally would. In walking off the field, a player on my team was really giving away her power by talking about all the things about this opponent, instead of resting and/or being in the moment of camaraderie around how well we did that first half. She was complaining. Instead of listening to the coach with the strategy for the next half, she was not just complaining, but oozing negativity, and it was starting to impact me to the point where I said, “I get it. You're frustrated. But let's leave that on the field and let's start fresh here.” How IT happened to me recently Now that's not what happened to me recently. But this is how someone in a certain situation could give away their power. Maybe you give away your power to someone who puts you down.
You give away your power, and you don't show up powerfully at that moment. What was shocking for me is the thing that I was giving my power away to on this particular morning was a piece of glass, a little bit of digital electronics, and some metal. I was giving my power away to a scale.  Now for some of you, you know that I've been on this health journey. To give you a timeline: On May 5th, I hurt my knee. I tore my lateral meniscus while playing soccer. The sport that I've played since I was probably four. I love it so much. One of the only things that we can really do for this type of injury is to strengthen the muscles around it, do physio, and lose weight. The other option is just don't play soccer anymore. For me, that's just not an option. I just love it too much, and I gave up rugby earlier than I wanted to. On June 5th, I decided that I would start working with a coach. Her name's Nicole Doumont. (If you want a personal introduction, I can give that to you. If you want to just reach out to her, just say I sent you so that she knows you're one of my connections, and she'll treat you extra special.) I started working with a coach because I believe that if we really want something in our lives, we need to work with a coach to get there. I know what to eat. I know what to do. But she had different strategies for me, accountability, support, acknowledgments, and could troubleshoot for me. She could do all of that. I started working with her, and I've been on this amazing journey where I've been just getting rid of so much weight. I'm probably down to about 40 pounds now, which is phenomenal. I'm really excited about it. I'm feeling great. I did a podcast episode on how I lost 20 pounds, but I think by the time that came out, I lost another five pounds. But anyway, just a few weeks ago, on Thursday, I had Pilates and soccer practice. Then on Friday night, I had a soccer game, and then we did a double that weekend, so back to back games. We played then on Sunday morning. At the end of Friday's game, both my calves seized muscle cramps, and I had to go off at the last minute. I was very worried that I wouldn't be able to play on Sunday. I was very scared about that like, “Oh my gosh, how can I physically do this? Can my knee handle something else, a fourth thing in such a short period of time?” It was actually great. I had an amazing game. I did so well. I was so proud of myself. Now, this is based on my limited capacity right now. I was really happy with how I did in spite of my knee. So, where did I give my power away? Well, I had started feeling great physically and athletically. I came home and I went and grabbed my kids, and we cleaned up all the leaves at the front of our house. Then I went and helped my daughter clean her room. I was high on endorphins. Life was good. I was feeling good about myself. I had hope again - hope that I could do well at soccer. Then I woke up in the morning, the scale said I gained three pounds. What? But I exercised? What? But I did all these extra things. What is going on? I am physically getting better and stronger. My knee is not inhibiting me as much. How come I gained weight? I was so pissed. I was upset. I was frustrated. At first, it was frustration and anger, and then it turned into sadness, complete sadness for how I jumped up again. There was a special number that I crossed over. It was like a goal of mine to cross over this specific number, and I got back over that number. I was really upset, and I came down and my husband was home and I hugged him and I just started crying. I went from such a high to such a low that I messaged Nicole, “I went up yesterday, and today I'm over again. Is this because I over-exercised?” and I shared about the different things. “That's the only difference from the plan. I'm still working on having more water, getting better sleep, and these have never affected my weight previously. And so what's going on? Is there a whoosh coming?” (Whoosh means a big drop) She thanked me for being open with her. This is again why it's good to have a coach so you can go and bring your mess to them. She said, “Definitely could have been overexercising.” I did actually end up missing a meal too. I didn't skip a meal on purpose. I missed a meal just based on the timing and I said, “Yeah, you know, I felt so great yesterday at soccer. Maybe it was so much soccer in the four days. I thought my knee wouldn't be good, but it was, and it gave me hope for the future.” The other thing I was proud of myself for is that our soccer coach on Friday night bought pitchers of beer and I didn't touch them. I had club soda and lime and, my team members had chicken wings and nachos and fries. I didn't have any of that. I had a salad and a burger wrapped in lettuce. I was so frustrated. It made me think (this is where we get in the screw-it mentality), “Why did I bother not having beer on Friday since I gained weight anyway?” It makes us have these doubts. When we give the power to something, it makes us doubt ourselves, potentially we’ll get off of course. One thing that she said to me was, “Don't give the scale all the power.” I said, “Don't give the scale all the power. Hell yeah!” Okay, I've snapped out of it. I realized I was giving this digital number on a piece of glass, plastic, and metal the power. Like, what the hell? I have dropped over 30 pounds. I'm feeling better. I just had an amazing weekend of sports. Give the power to the progress!  What is your IT I ask you now, what is IT for you? Where are you giving your power away?
What happens when we give up this power? It stops you from making progress. I was ready to say screw it. I was so ticked. Like what's the point, right? I got into a little pity party with myself. When you give away your power, it stops you from believing in yourself. It can take away hope. It can make you say, “Screw it.” It can make you give up. It could have pushed me to go and binge. It’s not what I would normally do. But it might make me go on to say, “I'm going to eat everything because it doesn't matter.” I’d give up on my goal. The Solution What can we do so we don't get into this place of giving away all of our power? #1: We ask ourselves, “Where do I give away my power?” Or the question could be:
Sometimes I feel like I'm dumbing myself down in rooms where people are very successful because I feel like I've still so much to learn, but so do they. I maybe don't stand in my brilliance. I don't own the successes that I've had. #2: When you figure out where you’re giving your power away, also ask yourself, “What is that costing me?” For me, if I really fed into this, this could have cost me my progress. It could have cost me a few weeks. It could have cost me this whole goal of losing weight and being able to play soccer. #3: Ask yourself, “Where do I want to put my power instead?” Hopefully, the answer is yourself. #4: The next question is, “What am I going to do about it? Now that I know this… now that I have this information, what am I going to do about it?  Wrapping Up If you're in a position of giving your power away, I really hope you have someone like Nicole - a coach or someone who can call you out and say,
I've had moments in my life where I've had people badmouth me. People talk behind my back. Not get promotions. Am I going to give that all the power? No. Have you ever had someone say “no” to you when you are trying to sell? Have you ever had someone choose to hire someone else when you know you're better? Have you ever missed out on an opportunity? Yeah, but that doesn't mean that that takes all of your power away. Instead, it should fuel you. The word coming out of your mouth is “Next”.
For me, it was “Next day”. Next day, and next day, and next day, and next day where I'm choosing to have a healthier life. Because I know it's what I want. Usually, when you give your power away, it is not for things that you want. I encourage you to take a hard look at every area of your life, every situation, every person, and ask yourself:
What I wish for you is that those around you actually boost your power and evolve your power. There's a thing that Brendon Burchard said when I was at his Experts Academy, “Power plants don't have energy, they create it.” So the same thing you can think about is maybe you feel like you don't have the power. Well, power plants don't have the power, they generate it themselves. They create it. What I encourage you to do is if you're feeling a little bit powerless, is to start generating power for yourself. Make those strong decisions. Even if it's, “What am I having for breakfast?” Rather than an energy of, “I don’t know, maybe I'll see what someone else is having.” Why don't you just decide? Tap into what you want, and choose to have that for yourself. Stop giving “it” all the power, whatever “it” is. Don't give your power away and step into what you really want. I trust that there are some points here that made sense for you. I would love to see that in a comment or if it's a little bit too personal, feel free to reach out [email protected] and let me know how this blog impacted you. P.S. A place I love to hang out, go live, and ask cool questions is my Dynamic Women Global Community Facebook Group. I’d love for you to be a part of that group! It’s free to join. :) Read my other blogs:
Coaches have coaches, and I've always believed in the power of continuous personal and professional growth. A few weeks ago, my own coach took me on a transformative journey during my visit to LA. In this blog post, I’ll share what this experience meant to me, how it happened, and where it's leading me.  How it happened My coach shifted me a few weeks ago. I feel like a new person right now, and a little bit like, finally, I'm coming into this place where I really want to be. It's not to say that the past few years or the past 12 years are not where I wanted to be. But there's been a lot of evolving. I wrote another blog called The Change is Coming, and the funny thing is I didn’t know what the change would be, only that it was coming. I hadn't been able to put my finger on exactly what it is. As someone who is A-type, driven, and decisive, this has been so frustrating and so annoying to not be able to pinpoint what it is. I've had sessions with other coaches, and we just haven't hit the nail on the head. It's been annoying, and really frustrating. When I went into this two-day mastermind in LA, I thought what I was looking for was some clarity on my 2024 strategy with my current offerings:
I wasn't looking for a personal shift, but it had to happen. As I said before, the change is coming. It is coming, and the change is feeling like it's seriously been happening since 2019. It was before COVID-19 that I felt off in a way. I was shifting but, I didn't know what that meant, that I’m changing, and there's this new thing to bring forth. But without the clarity of what it actually was, I struggled. I have this client who listened to the podcast episode of the Change is Coming, and she was so excited. In our next one-on-one session, she wanted to get the behind-the-scenes scoop, the “what was really happening” or the “what was I alluding to”. The funny thing is I didn't have the clarity.  A lot of the work I do with my clients is around three phases:
You need clarity on what you want and clarity on what that looks like. Then, when you decide that you’re going to do it, you start to build confidence with the support of me as your coach. Then, when you start to get into action, the confidence boosts even more, and the clarity comes in even clearer. When you're in action, it's exciting and great because you're moving forward toward your goal. In my case, I couldn't get into the confidence and action piece because the clarity was lacking. I've been looking for it since 2019, and I believe that it was unlocked that weekend. I knew there was something bigger for me. It all comes from this place around working with high-achieving women, high-level women, and dynamic women, and realizing that they're not happy. They're not where they want to be. Partially true for me and I’ve experienced it many times in my life as well. It was like I had a sore and a band-aid was still hanging on it. It's painful when you have a sore and still have a Band-Aid stuck to it, right? I needed the band-aid to just be ripped off, and I couldn't do it myself. It was slow and painful. It's been hurting for a long time, but I feel that my coach ripped that band-aid off. I had been talking about the past:
All this crazy stuff happened. I've been hanging on to the past. It wasn't serving me, and I'm not doing that anymore. My successes and challenges Now you may look at my life or my business, and say, “You started a whole new area of your business. You started VA Made Easy. That's super successful. You have a team of 16 Virtual Assistants now, and you're doing all these amazing things. You just got interviewed by Jack Canfield, like, how were you sucking or holding on to the past?” Now, yes, I was doing a lot of great things. But have you ever had that inkling that something's not where it needs to be? That you're not exactly in a position where you are the happiest or where it’s meant to be? I keep having these visions, and these feelings that there is something different, but I couldn't pinpoint it. Until my coach called me out. Until she said, “Diane, I think you want to go back into life coaching.” Now, this also may be shocking to you because you think, “Diane, you've always been in life coaching.” What actually happened was in the beginning, I was only doing life coaching (not business coaching). But once I started to build my coaching practice, then my speaking business, then my programs, my women's community, my books, my podcast, and so many pieces. People came to me and said, “Diane, how did you do that? Can you teach me how to do that? Can you show me? Can you guide me? Can you coach me?” I said, “Yes, yes, yes!” I always follow the excitement and the energy. I was totally in alignment with those using my core competencies of teaching, guiding, problem-solving, creativity, strategy, and showing things in another way. They were all great. But what I realized, in my 12 years of coaching, probably the last 8 years, have been 90% business strategy, consulting, and coaching, more so than just the life or women's empowerment and such. It's not to say that's bad. I love working with my clients. I just have this desire to do more in the life coaching world again and do more in women's empowerment. But I couldn't figure out what is my unique positioning statement on this. I'm not going to tell you right now what I think it might be because it's still brewing. It's like if you made a soup, or a stew, or a chili, or a curry. You can eat it right away, but it needs to sit and bubble and boil on the stove so that everything can kind of meld together, all the flavors. That's what I'm doing right now. I'm melding all the flavors together, and I'm trying it on like a new outfit: the new shoes, the new jeans, the new jacket, whatever it may be. I'm putting it on to see how it feels. I'm in that place right now. One thing that was really funny was when my coach and I started talking about the pillars of my brand, I said “Okay, it's about soul satisfaction, about being a Dynamic Woman, and the third pillar would be VA services.” My coach looked at me, and she said, “Diane, we just got you into the sparkly shoes. You got to get out of the work boots.”  That's true. I've been putting on the work boots for so long. Probably eight years, like I said. The work boots mean the analytical, the head work, the strategy, the masculine, all of this. I want to wear some sparkly shoes, meaning I want to be in a place that feels more life-giving and energetic, where I have this soul calling. Over those two days in LA, I cried a bunch of times as I was shifted. Going into this mastermind for two days I wanted to have certain outcomes, that's the analytical brain, and I realized I just needed to have this personal shift. On the second day of the mastermind, she said, “What do you want to get out of today?” I said, “If today is just about completing the shift in me, like ripping off that band-aid from being in the work boots, moving into being in the sparkly shoes. I'm good with that.” From there, I went to be interviewed by Jack Canfield, and there were a few other people I knew who were there as well. And they said, “There's something different about you.” I said, “Oh, well, I've lost now over like 32 pounds.” They said, “No, no, there's something different about your energy.” Then I shared about getting out of the work boots, about helping this high-level woman who has been tamed, helping her be wild again. They were like, “Wow, I've never heard this kind of stuff out of you. So cool!” A Team of Coaches?! I’m glad I have put together a team of experts to support me. Why do I have coaches? Because there's always work to be done. For me to be able to serve my clients well, I actually have a few coaches. I have this Business and Marketing Coach, who also will give me a good butt kick here and there. I have a Speaker Business Coach, not actually about how to tell stories, gesture during a speech and all that, but instead how to have a business in speaking. I also have a Business Foundations Coach, a business advisor, who helps me with things like organizing my business, basically things like contracts, agreements, HR stuff, all the things that I don't find fun, she's super helpful. I have a counselor that I meet for my personal life. I talk to the women's pastor at my church to help with my spiritual life. I have a health coach now, and then there are other people here and there that I tap into in order to get some coaching and get some support. I love what Oprah said, “When I became successful, I didn't stop having a coach. I just have more of them.” That's what I have. Wrapping Up I hope you see that it's not about perfection when you’re aiming for success. There will be times when you can’t stay consistently on top of everything, where you don’t have the answers, and change doesn’t feel easy (because it's not). Sometimes you just don't have the clarity, and it's frustrating, but stick with it. Get the help, like Les Brown said, “You can't see the picture when you're in the frame.” I knew that I was in this frame. So many times with coaches, it's kind of like the answer is right in front of my face, and I'm saying, “Oh, is it over here? Is it over here? I just want to know what it is.” Then people point it out to you because they can see the full picture, like my coach did. You have the opportunity to be called forth by them. It is such a blessing to have these kinds of aha moments, to have someone care about you enough to speak the hard truth and to pull you where you need to be. I felt like I had that band-aid ripped off. I felt like I was called out of the darkness, called out of this lack of energy place, and I was reignited. I've had many times in my life where this spark got extinguished, and I had to find a new spark, or I had to reignite it. What's cool about this situation is I've just been reminded about the spark I had for coaching women, high-level women, to feel enough, to be happy in their lives, to stop pushing for more, and to actually be in a place where they can be successful and fulfilled and satisfied. This has been ignited in me. This has been reopened for me, and I've been given complete permission to step fully into this. So, as I figure this out, I’ll let it simmer like a really tasty chili, you're going to get more pieces of info. I'm working on a new signature program, and I'm really pumped about it. It's going to be coming out real soon because I'm on fire about this. Stay tuned! P.S. Have you joined the Dynamic Women Global Community? It’s a free-to-join Facebook group for female business leaders to come together to connect, share, grow, and be inspired. We’d love to see you there! Read my other blogs:
This year I turned 44. In my excitement, I realized I keep learning things, so I’m doing a David Letterman’s top 10 list of things I’ve learned now that I’ve turned 44.  I want to keep these brief and bold and move you forward in life. In the comments below, let me know… Do you relate to some of these things? Are you younger or older than me, and you also relate to some of these things? Let me know when you learned them and what are some things that you learned this year at whatever age that you're at. Learning #1: Having older kids does not mean my house is any cleaner or will be cleaner. I look back at photos of my house when my kids were young, and my house was clean. Now because they can move everything around, the house is messier. I think it's also because I used to clean up after them. Now, I'm at the point where I believe they can be doing it themselves. I've got my own solution to this problem, but it is funny how my kids are 8 and 11, and I thought my house is going to be so much cleaner when they can help out. They do help out and they do have some jobs. But boy, do they have a lot of stuff. Learning #2: Speaking for five minutes on stage can be scarier than eight hours. You might think, “How is that even possible, Diane?” Well, I have done trainings that are eight hours long and full-day trainings, and I don’t freak out about it. Then in the past year I did a stand-up comedy class, and I had to do a five-minute set on stage and then for another show an eight-minute set. I'll tell you, I was so much more nervous to do that than I was to get up and do a keynote or get up and do a half day training or get up and do a full day training. The reason is there is no room for error. The punch lines and the lead-up to these jokes are so important that you land and say the right words. Otherwise, your punch line is not going to get any laughs. And with 25 jokes just a few sentences long, there was a lot to remember. Also, I was having a hard time remembering the order of the jokes and which joke came where, and if I did the joke at the wrong time, then it wouldn’t link with another joke I was doing. I do love the thrill of stand-up comedy, so I am going to continue learning how to do it and add jokes into a humorous keynote that I'm putting together. But it does scare me. Learning #3: It's important to call widows and hug them. I have a friend who was sharing with me that hugs from her daughter, son, and grandkids and massages are the only physical touch that she gets. She's not necessarily a widow, but she was sharing this with me. Then I also think of my mom, who after my dad passed away, is living alone; therefore, she doesn't have someone to talk to all day or at any point in the day at home, and she doesn't have the physical touch from my Dad anymore, and so it is important to at least call. And lots of hugs when I go visit her. I've also learned this from coaching widows and people who are alone. They miss these things. It's a simple thing. But if you have a friend in one of your groups, coworker or whatever, and you're friendly enough, maybe give them a hug, call them or message them sometimes. Learning #4: I love soccer so much that I will cry if I'm forced to give it up. I've had a rough few years. I don't know if you've heard some of the episodes of the Dynamic Women Podcast or read my other blogs where I talk about my journey with soccer, my body, how I've been injured, and I kept getting injured. I got injured back in May when I tore my lateral meniscus on the same knee that I had a reconstructive ACL. It's a bad knee. The orthopedic surgeon said, “The best is not to play. Do you do it for fun? Or do you do it for fitness?” I said, “I do it for fun. I love it so much.” He said, “Okay, well, it's your choice.” I was saying this to a teammate and friend. She said, “Maybe it's just time to give it up. Not play anymore.” I started crying. I wasn't able to answer her next question or even answer that because I was so upset because I love it so much. I think the other thing is, I was forced to retire early from rugby. I tore my ACL playing rugby. Then I did three months of physio thinking I didn't need surgery because that's what I was told. Then five minutes into the first game back after an intense three months of physio, I fully tore it. I needed surgery and didn’t get back to playing. Then it was leading up to my wedding, so didn’t play because I wanted to make sure I could walk down the aisle, then I started having kids and I just never got back into it. I'm not ready to give up soccer. With the knee injury, the other thing I realized was I'd get healthier. I'm losing weight, and eating better, so my knee has less inflammation and less pressure on it. I've learned that I will get healthier. I'm motivated to get healthier for a soccer body, not a summer body. Times have changed. My priorities have changed now that I'm 44. Learning #5: I can be at my heaviest weight and feel like I'm so far gone, and still come back from it. You may have listened to my Dynamic Women Podcast episode or my blog where I talked about how I lost weight. Now, I've lost over 35 pounds. I'm going to keep going until I'm at a healthy goal weight.  How was I able to come back? Because honestly, I was feeling like, “I don't know if I could lose this weight. I don't know if I can come back. I just don’t have the willpower or ability.” The key thing was I hired a coach. I know what to do. But I didn't have the emotional and mental bandwidth to do it. I needed accountability. I needed someone to just guide me and tell me what to do. I would just say yes, and follow the plan and tick things off and get the, “Good job, Diane.” That's what I needed. What I actually realized from that was I could eat more, exercise less, and still lose weight. Isn't that amazing? If you want to know my coach, let me know. Email me at [email protected]. Learning #6: I like online digital investing. This whole cryptocurrency, investing thing was doing my head in. My husband and I were looking at doing real estate investing in Vancouver. Just not ideal for the type of investing we wanted to be doing - flipping. Then there are stocks, bonds, puts, and all these other types of stock market investing. I use my brain all day for work, I didn’t want to stretch it at night as well. It's not in my zone of genius to understand this financial side. I didn't do any of it. But then I met a mentor. I realized I could learn to navigate this crypto world, this online investing digital world, and make good investments that are making me money because I have a great mentor. Do you know what's really weird? I have always thought, “I'm going to coach until I die. I love this so much.” But when I started getting into investing, and seeing how much was coming back to me, without me doing anything (passive income), not “Oh, I have to figure out all these businesses. I have to watch what the market is doing. I have to see if the stock is up or down and then buy low, sell high or any of that”. I didn't have to learn it. I don't have to be on top of it. I put it in. I get the interest and then decide to withdraw or compound. I then thought, “Oh, maybe I don't want to be a paid coach until I die. Maybe I want to volunteer coach instead.” Anyway, that was interesting to me. I got excited about it because I had someone to show me where to go with it. Learning #7: Sometimes you need to break up with friends, clients, or soccer teams if they're not a good fit. When I say good fit, it might have been a good fit, but things and people change, so maybe it’s not a good fit for this period of your life. I won't go into why I broke up with friends, clients, or with these teams. But I'll let you know the learning from this is that even if I make a tough decision to end a relationship, to switch teams or to fire a client, I still think about them. I still want the best for them. I grew up always thinking that everyone would be my friend, and everyone would like me, and I'd like everyone and everyone would get along. I realized it's not that way. I want it to be that way, but it's not. Doing the breaking up or limiting my time and energy has really been hard. It sits on my heart about these people. I still pray for them every week, anytime my pastor’s like, “Lift up someone who's hurting right now”. If they say someone who has physical pain, I still lift up these people even though it doesn't even relate. It's just the whole idea of lifting them up and praying for them. Not praying because I want them to be better or get better. No. Praying because it saddens me that there was a break or distance created. Learning #8: I can't wear heels anymore. At least, I'm trying. Here's a variety of reasons why I don't think I could wear heels. But I'm going to do it anyway. I wore them in my photoshoot for my birthday. I loved the power, the feeling, the sexiness, and the beauty of high heels. However, I need to go buy new ones, better ones, bigger ones.  I think what's happened is two kids (my feet widened), plantar fasciitis issues, ankle issues (yes, those are both soccer), COVID and not wearing heels (I’m out of practice). I had a client who is a personal trainer of people who do fitness competitions. When they come up to fitness competition time, she has everyone wear their heels in the house for at least 10 minutes a day because you have to build up all those ligaments in the feet and get them used to that position along with the calves. Well, I just put the shoes on and I haven't even walked a step and my foot feels in so much pain. That makes me feel old like I need orthotics in my heels, which I don't think you can do, but I wear orthotics in my shoes. That makes me feel older, and that's okay, but I'm going to have to train myself how to wear heels again and get some good ones for myself. (Since writing this I bought myself 3 comfy pairs!) Learning #9: I'm more sensitive now, and I just won't rough it. I used to backpack, stay in cheap places, get on cheap flights, and go into chaotic restaurants. I just can't do it. I can't do it. I'm not a fan of loud music, loud restaurants, loud spaces, chaotic spaces. I want to take cabs or an Uber or Lyft over public transit. I will choose better seats on a plane just to be away from people if I can, and to have a bit more space. I want hotel rooms that have kitchens so I can prep my own food and more space in the room. Ideally, a room close to the elevator and pool. I don't want to rough it anymore. My husband says, “We're not going camping because you don't like it.” I said, “Oh, I like camp fires, nature, smores, I just don't feel like sleeping on the ground because I know how my body's going to be in the morning.” That makes me think, “Yeah, I'm 44.” Learning #10: I feel most alive and like myself when I'm with my friends. When I get on here, and I write to you, I also feel like myself. This is the real me. Except when I'm with my friends for longer periods of time or more of them, I get a little edgy. I use my humor. I get into some banter pretty quick.  I picked all that up from my parents. We bantered a lot growing up. They're British and watching British TV shows. I love banter and I miss it. I feel most alive when I can be with my friends like that and just be silly, edgy, and funny. That's what I want to be like in 2024 I'm going to be bringing out a humorous, inspirational keynote, with a bit of my standup in it. That's going to be really good! I’ve already locked in a coach to help me with it. Wrapping Up Well, there are my top 10. Everything from heels to soccer to weight loss to housekeeping to investing to when I feel most like myself, so I'm curious, what have you learned over the past year? Do you relate to any of these? Let me know. Put it in the comments. P.S. I hope to see you over in the Dynamic Woman Facebook community. It’s a free-to-join community for female business leaders to come together to connect, share, grow, and be inspired. There are virtual and live events, networking, coaching, and more! 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It's really sad that I have to talk about this core problem I see in women, but if you're a woman, you need to read this because it is a very crucial piece for your happiness in life.  This probably sounds weird that the woman who is all about women’s empowerment is saying there's a problem with women. It's not what you think, and it's not even your fault, (and this happens to a lot of men too) but this is the Dynamic Women Blog, so I'm speaking to you, women. It’s important to know what you want There is a problem I see and that I have seen for a long time. I realized this when I started coaching with a coach back in 2010, and this was before I was even a coach. I realized that the core problem in women that's causing them to not be satisfied in life, not be happy, not go after what they want, not to have support from others, and really get to a point in their lives where they feel empty. It's the inability to answer a question. It's a simple question. The question is, “What do you want?” But so often, we cannot answer that question. I can remember being at an event with a lot of professional women working in corporate, and we were chatting, and I asked them, “What do you want?” They were like, “Oh, like maybe a vacation.” Some of them actually couldn't even answer. They said, “I don't know, what do you mean by, what do I want?” I said, “In life, what do you want?” Other people say, “For my kids to stay healthy”. I'm like, “No, what do YOU want? What do you want for yourself? What do you want?” They didn't know how to answer that. I could answer with at least 10 to 20 things. Now, that does not make me better. It just means that I've had this question asked of me many times and I have practiced. Most women don't. Most people don't. Now, it's not your fault. You see, what's happening is we have not often been asked what we want. Why is that? Let me go through three ways or reasons why we haven't been asked what we want and why we are not good at this question. 3 reasons why women struggle to answer the question: “What do you want?” 1. Women tend to prioritize others' needs before their own As women, we tend to be the caregivers and the nurturers. We care about everyone else before ourselves. Let's be real, are you guilty of this? Probably. We make sure everyone else is taken care of, their needs are taken care of, their wants are taken care of, and when everything else is okay, we can take care of ourselves. Let me share with you a story of something super-duper small. I'm not talking about, “What do you want in your mission and your vision and your world and your legacy?” I'm talking about, “In the day-to-day, what do you want as well?”  There are two pieces to it, the little “a” agenda (we talk about this in coaching) and the big “A” agenda. The little “a” agenda might be you're a busy mom, a busy woman, you're making sure kids are taken care of, the house is taken care of, and dinner is made after work. BUT all you want to do is go take a shower. I experienced this when my husband came home one day. We say our hellos and such, and then he disappeared. I thought, “Where did he go? That's weird because he doesn't announce where he's going.” Then I hear the shower running and I think, “Wow, must be nice. Must be nice to go take a shower. I've been waiting to take a shower.” The thing is, that was his need and his want at that exact moment, “I need to take a shower, I want to take a shower,” and so he went and took a shower. I have lots to learn from that. However, what I was feeling was, “Well, I can't take a shower yet because these things need to be picked up, the kids need to have their dinner, their homework needs to be done, and then I need to message a client back.” All these things needed to happen before I could take care of my needs. I know the question is, “What do you want?” but when we're not even taking care of our basic needs, taking a shower can be a basic need. It comes from that place of nurturing. Again, not your fault, ladies! You are hardwired to take care of others and that's why we've survived as long as we have, right? 2. There are so many things pulling you, and you don't even have time to sit with it If you have children or not, that's fine. I'll also give examples for you because you're probably super busy as well. For Moms, it may be:
For non-moms, (as well as some moms), it's things like:
It just continues on and on and on. We often get into that place of just scrolling Facebook because we want to disconnect. There are so many things pulling us that we never have time to sit with the question, “What do I want? What do I want for myself? What do I want today? What do I want in three years? What do I want in every single area of my life?” 3. We’re often not asked in the right way I think the one time we're asked is when we're younger and people say, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Then we're supposed to come up with an answer at that moment. We don't know it, and we don't know how to get there, then we feel lost. How am I seeing this in my world? Well, I've been coaching for over 12 years now. The way I see it is someone comes to me, and they'll say:
Then I asked them what really seemed to be a simple question: “What do you want?” and they said:
“What do I want?” I'm talking about, “What do I want in all 10 areas?” In general, what do you want for your life, and what do you want in all 10 areas? Then what do you want every single day? It can take time to uncover that. Wheel of Life That's when I use the professional coaching tool, the Wheel of Life - mine has 10 areas:
It's not just knowing what you want in your business or what you want in your career, but it's what you want in all of these areas as well. Oftentimes, fun and recreation just get kicked out or forgotten about. What do you want in these 10 areas? I usually start by using the wheel, and they get clarity on:
 Then we paint the picture of “What does it look like at a nine out of ten…?” In your health:
With your significant other:
With your career or your business:
I understand why this is the core problem. Knowing is half the battle. Now that you know that this is a problem, you can take this information and do something with it. So what are you going to do? Are you going to sit down with this question of “What do I want?” Are you going to get a session with a coach to help you figure this out? That's what I highly recommend. If you are thinking, “Wow, I would really love to figure out what I want in all areas. I want to achieve more, be happier, I want a clear path”, reach out to me at [email protected]. I hope that in a few years when I create more blog posts, I won’t have to do this topic of “What do I want?” I hope people can easily answer this question and I hope it’s what YOU truly want, at that deeper life satisfaction level, and not what society wants for you. For example, I hope the answer isn't only materialistic like:
I hope it's things like:
Now, I'm not going to tell you what you want. If you really want the material things, then great, but have it be the stuff at the deepest soul level that you want. Rather than the pressure to keep up with the Joneses. The pressure of “I need to have these things in order to be validated as a person, in order to fit in with my friend group.” I've cut friend groups out who were too materialistic because I knew that I couldn't be where I needed to be in my life, in my happiness, and in my worthiness. It just wasn't aligned with my values. Wrapping Up Let's not have the question, “What do I want?” be the core problem of women. But rather be the core solution, the core answer to building a foundation, a life that you love and that you get excited to wake up to. Even when you get asked at a restaurant, and you're looking at the menu, and they ask you, “What do you want?” Let's make more decisive answers rather than looking at someone else and saying, “Well, what are you having?” Because if we start to do that with small decisions, that's when we start to lose confidence, and then won’t be able to make bigger decisions for our own lives. I’m asking that you take the next few weeks to sit with this question, “Am I really doing what I want?” And outside of your responsibilities, you have obligations, you have other people in your life, you just can't do everything you want. You might say like, “Ah I want to fly to Morocco and leave everything behind.” No, you've got stuff that you value and prioritize, but over the next few weeks come up with some answers. Every moment you have an opportunity to share what you want, give a clear answer, be decisive when you share it, and confident you can achieve that. P.S. I want to help you figure out what you want. Let’s start with this FREE booklet, the “3 Simple Steps to Figure Out What You Want” Read my other blogs:
Have you been thinking about how to offer your next program, what your next product should be, and how to make big money? I'm pretty excited about this topic. It came to me just a while ago, as I was thinking about my journey starting the Virtual Assistant Made Easy Program. It made me reflect on how I've come about some of the different offerings I've had. How I put together the Dynamic Women Community and what inspired me to do it. How I made the Dynamic Women program. I wondered, how I was able to come up with the ideas? …By listening.  Why listening is important to me As a coach, part of my profession is to listen. I'm supposed to listen for the answers from the clients. Listen to them to help them figure out what the true answer for them is and to empower them. Listening is a skill that I need to have and use in coaching, at least in life coaching. In business coaching, it's more so listening and then providing the answers, advice, wisdom, and support. Listening never came necessarily naturally to me. I was the youngest in the family. With older people around, I always had to fight to be listened to, especially with two older brothers who were four and eight years older. They didn't care much about hanging out with their little sister, and I was a bit of a chatterbox because I learned to talk to get attention. 3 ways to make big money by listening There are three ways I've found where you can make big money by listening. I just want to preface this also by saying, it is not all about the money, but I'm guessing that that word being part of the title made you pay attention to this. If that's the case, then great because the benefits you're going to get from listening in are guaranteed. I've done this myself and taught it to many clients, and it’s guaranteed to help you give your clients exactly what they want. I'm going to go through the three different ways and give some examples of how this has shown up in my life and how I moved this into a business opportunity.
Even if you don't have a business, and you're in a profession, or you're thinking about a business, listen to the compliments. Some people might say, “Wow, you're so organized!” I've heard, “You've achieved so much” and “Wow, you're everywhere!” (meaning, I guess, on social media and YouTube and podcasts, etc.). Or maybe before, when I was attending a lot of in-person events, “You were everywhere.” I've had some clients say to me, even though they're older than me, it's funny, they'll say, “I want to be just like you when I grow up”, which is extremely flattering. It's also the follow-up question and asking. Here are some examples:
By you listening first to what it shared, asking the follow-up question, and then listening again, you're going to get a lot of insight as to what people value about you, and the things they potentially want to know and learn themselves. When I look at things like “You've achieved so much” and asking someone, “What do you want to achieve that I've achieved?” and they say, “Writing a book.” and then I can say, “Well, I can help you with that.” I did a 360 survey at the beginning of my career. One of the things that was said that has so much impact on me is, “You have a presence when you walk in a room.” I thought, “That's cool. What can I do with that? Is that confidence? Can I teach that? Can I teach how to have a presence? Can I also teach when it's not good to have presence or too much presence?” Listening to the compliment helps you to figure out the offering. When I heard things like “You're everywhere,” it made me realize that it’s because I have a system with my VAs, which is for social media content creation. It’s where we take a piece of anchor content, (this is what my team does for me), like a video, and we repurpose it into your YouTube, your podcast, your newsletter, your blog, and all your social posts. All these different things come from one piece of anchor content, and then get put on all the social media platforms that you want to be on. When people say, “You're everywhere,” that's how I do it. That helped me to learn what people value about what I've achieved or done or who I am, and then how I can teach that. Now, you're not always going to take everything. If someone says, “That's an amazing apple pie,” and you don’t really want to have a baking business, then you can just thank them and move on. But if you're listening for the other compliments, that could be something that's helping you to move forward in your business or in your career, and you can use that for promotions to talk about what you’ve done well. On the flip side, in your business, it might be a new offering or even just something that you share about a little bit more to bring people into your community. Lots of stuff has happened because people have said these compliments to me, like, “Oh, you're just so busy, but you've achieved so much.” (And then it gets into number two. But let me give you one final example here.) People have said to me, “You've achieved so much”, and “You have two kids, and yet you've achieved so much.” It also lets me know they value the fact that I'm also a busy mom, as well as a business owner. That's my opportunity there to think about that as a positive for marketing. I'm going to share it in some of the different pieces that I put out into the world and bring it into podcasts, YouTube videos, lives, when I meet people, my About section, and all these different pieces. That’s the first one: Listen to the compliments, and you know what, the things you should sell and offer in your business are the things that come most naturally to you. They're innate. They're easy for you to do. People keep wanting to choose things that are hard to do as the things they sell and the services and the products. Stop it. Don't do that. Leave them to the people who are passionate and have a natural gift for those pieces, and then you focus on the ones that are great for you. Being in alignment that way will make you happier. 2. Listen to Questions Oftentimes people will say:
 Another question might be what mentioned before, “How do you do it all, Diane?” I get that one quite a bit, and “How do you stay on top of everything?” As I go to answer this question, this is now again a potential for an offering. For many years I had people say, “Diane, what is a Dynamic Woman? You talk about dynamic women. You have the Dynamic Women Community. Am I a Dynamic Woman?” That is actually what sparked me to want to be able to answer that question better. Not just what it is, but how can you become one. By people asking me what's a Dynamic Woman, the Dynamic You Program was born and became a book. (Heads up! We're going to do the next cohort to Dynamic You. New and improved coming out, probably in the New Year. Be on the lookout for the launch of that or email [email protected] to get on the waitlist because space will be limited. ) Think of the questions that people ask you. Are they asking you things like, “What is the definition of this?” or “How did you do this?” These are the pieces they want to know. A lot of questions I've been getting recently are around
The questions just always come in, and it got me to the point of like, “Wow, people are hungry for this knowledge.” In these questions, you might have a small offering like a workshop, training, or a masterclass. You might have a four-part series mini-course. You could also have a full-blown program, a coaching mastermind, a book, and a speech that you give and get paid for. There are so many opportunities just by thinking, “What are the most common questions I get asked?” After going through two points you know to write down all those compliments and questions and keep a list of them. They might be from random people, your neighbor, or a mom at school pickup. It could also be someone in a networking group, once they hear what you do. It could be a client giving you a compliment. It could be from your lead who asks you a question. It might not even be related, again, to a service you already offer. It could be something different. 3. Listen to the Complaints Listen to the complaints, as well as concerns because sometimes people aren't complaining, they're just sharing with you a worry they have or some trouble they've had in the past. Here's some I recently have been getting:
These complaints are things that people don't like. They could be obstacles for them for achieving their goals, or could be obstacles for them in their life or in their business. Listen to the complaints of the people around you, because a complaint needs a solution. A concern needs a solution.  Some concerns I've had with people coming in for the Virtual Assistant Made Easy Program where I hire a virtual assistant for you from the Philippines are:
There are solutions to all of these concerns. If it's in relation to a course you already have, you can answer this in the frequently asked questions. You can talk about this in an intro event, a class, or a masterclass that you're doing. You can share it in your marketing, in a newsletter, a blog, a podcast, a YouTube video, or a story. These are all things that your ideal clients want to know. If I'm going to complain, “I'm tired!”, well, is there a reason for being tired? Probably.
Finding out again about the complaints. What is it that's really concerning them? A complaint is something that somebody doesn't want to have anymore. It's not a good thing for them, and you can probably provide the solution. What are the complaints of your ideal clients? Maybe it's some obvious things, like not enough clients. Then, what about that is hard for them? You're kind of unpacking this. If they're sharing, “Oh, I just need to have more clients. I can't get enough clients!” then ask them, “Oh, what kind of clients are you looking for and how are you currently looking for them?” or “How are you currently marketing yourself?” If you find out that they've just been going to meetings, and they're not using social media at all, then that's where a solution could be. What you should do What happens now? Well, go back to the three ways of making big money by listening, and I encourage you in your circles, listen for the compliments and write them down. I love to use the notes section on my phone as a very quick way to document these things. You can keep a note that just says, ‘Marketing’ or ‘Research’ and then put compliments, questions, and complaints. When you're working with clients, be listening. “So hey, how are you doing?” “Oh, I just have so much going on. I just got off a training. It was really intense.” “Ah, okay. Doesn't like intense training or needs a buffer time between events.” Or get curious, “Hey, what made it so intense?” “Oh, I felt like the speaker was yelling at me.” “Ah, okay. So my ideal clients don't want to be firmly talked at on a training. I need to be a certain way. Maybe if I use that talent that I have, there is going to be more opportunity.” I could sit here all day and take your profession, and match it to some compliments, questions, and complaints, but I'm curious about the ones that actually show up in your life. If you want to comment, and let me know, like your industry and some compliments, questions, concerns, or complaints that you've been hearing, let's see where the correlation is. It's like a 1-2-3.
Or it could be,
This is really great because it’s not taking any extra time. It's just in your normal day-to-day, but when you get curious, and you ask follow-up questions, that's really where the gold is. Because your ideal clients are going to give you the exact verbiage they use so that when you write your marketing, you can say, “Are you sick of being on the hamster wheel?” Because that's the words that they actually said, or “It's easier to just fly under the radar than it is to put my neck out and be confident in business meetings.” You're pulling their actual words like, “I just wish I could have people pay me on time because cash flow becomes an issue at the end of the month when they don't.” Then you'll know this is working because you'll start to hear things like, “Wow, I felt like you were speaking straight to me”. That could be through your social media, when you're on stage, when you're training something, or even when you're offering. If they just read your landing page for your offer, and they said, “Wow, I felt like you were speaking straight to me.” Isn't that amazing? You're you're going to have more people signing up with you. I've had this happen, where someone started crying during an offer, and this is the first time I had made this offer so I was very concerned that I had offended them, that I triggered something negative in them. It was a small group and I think at the time, there were only eight people and I just said, “Hey, so-and-so I noticed some emotions coming up what's up?” and they said, “This is exactly what I've been looking for.” That was about my Elite Coaching Program, (which I'm also going to be relaunching in the new year under a new name.) That's what they said, “This was exactly what I was looking for.” Do you think they hired me and bought the program? 100%. They couldn't throw their credit card at me fast enough because I was listening to them earlier. I was listening to my ideal client, and I was speaking their words. I think that is the greatest way to really serve your clients in an authentic way, in a way that actually will get them the results they want, and will have them (the word that comes to mind is clamoring to work with you. But I just like to say) gladly working with you. Where I make an offer for some of my programs, I'll get messages afterward after people have signed up saying, “Thank you so much for offering this. This is exactly what I needed. I'm really excited. I'm looking forward to working with you, thank you.” To get that type of message after people pay you for something is incredible, even before you've even done the work. Then more accolades come later is a bonus. A few things I want to share I have just a few final spots in the Virtual Assistant Made Easy Program in 2023. So if you want to do it, please email me directly at [email protected]. We also have Your Content Made Easy, which is our social media content creation that we do in-house for you, creating 12 pieces of content every single week for you in your voice and with your branding. Wrapping Up The three ways to make big money by listening works. I've been doing this in my business for over 12 years. It has helped me to produce some of the greatest programs possible because sometimes as the teacher, I can't see it through the eyes of the student. Listening gives me that insight. Also, the Les Brown quote, I say this so many times, “You can't see the picture when you're in the frame.” Many times, you and I don't know our greatness. We don't know how amazing we are until we listen to how other people compliment us and the things people ask us because they trust us as an expert on that topic. Then the complaints they share with us because they feel comfortable to share, and maybe hoping we can support them or give them a solution. If you've had a win with any of this, let me know, send it to me. I'd love to hear what's your takeaway from this blog post. I'd love to see you over in the Dynamic Woman Facebook Community. I love going live there and hanging out and asking cool questions and sharing awesome tips for your business in life. I hope to see you in there. It is free to join. Share this with a friend and until next time, stay dynamic! Read my other blogs:
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