Hey you guys, welcome back to the podcast. I'm titling today's episode, The End of an Era. I'm a little emotional. I just dropped off my baby girl for the last day of preschool. She'll be going to kindergarten in the fall and I'm like a little teary. She's four turning five and I couldn't help but reflect on like this phase of my motherhood, you know, transforming now that all my kids will be in school, you know, public school. Just feels raw.
So I think it's a good time to record a podcast actually because sometimes we need to hear the rawness. I took a few notes before I hit record just because I wanted to make sure I captured all my thoughts and I actually spent some time journaling. I'm calling it The End of an Era because I feel like I'm also entering a new phase of my business. In the Gene Keys, Richard Rudd talks about these seven-year cycles and it's just interesting that I started my business a little over seven years ago.
And so seven-year cycle feels complete and I'm entering the next seven-year cycle. I started my business with a two-year-old and a baby. My baby Riley, who's now in first grade. And so my business was already kind of moving when I had Lainey, which in and of itself was a challenging and expensive time for me to like bring a new baby, being pregnant while still coaching, going through birth and postpartum while still coaching, and parenting toddlers, right?
Like I was expanded in so many ways. Makes me want to weep, like it's interesting to be here. I didn't think I would cry alone in my office. And here I am, and I think it needs to come through. And so I wanted to share some of my raw lessons through these seven years of like being a mom with babies at home and growing myself as a mom, as a business owner, as a coach, as a mentor, as a student of life. In my Instagram bio, I say like student of wisdom because I really feel like I am. I've learned so much and I have a lot of mastery.
And the more that you gain mastery, you realize how much you don't know. And parenting is like that too. I coach a lot of women who are like our moms of older kids or grandmothers. And so I love calibrating to their wisdom of like, yep, like you thought you do. The first thing that I wrote down for the raw lessons is the empty cup versus the full cup. I realized as a new mom how empty a lot of the moms that I saw were. I don't mean that in a bad way.
It's just like they were constantly depleted. They were constantly giving from empty reserves. And I realized I wanted something different for my motherhood. And when I felt empty, it truly was a signal to me that like I needed to pour into myself. One of the things that I loved about the coaching industry is that I found containers to pour into me. I've hired the coaches. I've joined the groups and the masterminds. I've taken the courses.
I've worked with private coaches and mentors so that I could be poured into. And not just for my business, but I think about the hard times in motherhood that my coaches held with me. And it makes me emotional. Like, I didn't know that's what I was getting. One of my first coaches, her name is Katie, and I'm so grateful for her. Like, she walked me through postpartum with Lainey, and I had launches and hard decisions to make in business, and I had to kind of take care of myself and my family. And she helped me hold that, and I'm so grateful.
I hired her for business, but she helped me hold my life. And I see how that happens in my own coaching containers that like, if I had to sum up what I do, I am a life coach and a business mentor. I do both of those things. And so the life coaching is a huge part of what I do, but it's also been a huge part of my own evolution that like, I've been life coached.
And the business and the parenting happening at the same time, like, I have expanded my capacity in so many ways. Some of it, it felt like I didn't have a choice. I mean, we always have a choice, but like, it's like, what am I going to do? Not feed my baby at 3 a.m.? You know, like, yeah, I'm going to wake up and I'm going to feed my baby. When Lainey needed surgery in 2023, right, like, I still had a business to run.
And it was learning how to navigate like decisions for my business, decisions for being present for her as she recovered, going to the hospital, meeting with surgeons, all of it. And I'm so grateful I wrote this distinction down, and it makes me, again, very weepy. I wrote down, business is like a faucet, but family is forever. We can turn our businesses on and off, which is such a gift. That's like one of the biggest things.
When I look back, I'm so grateful that I found a career and a profession that I can turn on and off to be the mom that I want to be. I thought I was going to be a therapist. And many of you know my stories, but in case you don't, in case you're new, welcome. I thought I was going to be a therapist. And so when I was in college thinking I was going to be a marriage and family therapist, and then I got pregnant with Tegan, who's my oldest.
And I realized I was going to need to do a practicum, which is like a 25-hour, every program is a little different. But where I was at in my program was like I was going to need to spend about 25 hours a week outside of the home at this practicum, and I had a newborn. And I was like, this is not what I want. And I didn't know that life coaching existed at that time. I didn't know all the possibilities of this industry. Holy crap.
But I'm so grateful that business is like a faucet, that I can turn on and off, and it doesn't make me bad or wrong to turn off my business faucet. I've walked through so many hard conversations with clients that they're like, I think I just need to turn the faucet down a little bit. And I'm like, do it. It's the best freedom we have, that we can turn down the faucet. We don't always have to turn it completely off, but we can scale up or scale down our working hours.
We can scale down or scale up our income, our group programs, our launches, how many private clients we have, all of it, based on what we have the capacity for, based on the life and the presence that you want to bring to your family. Business is like a faucet, but families are forever. So I always want to make myself profoundly present for my family and my kids. And I'm sad that that hasn't always been the choice that I made.
In fact, I wrote about this in my book, Quiet Wealth. When Riley was a baby, I had just signed this high-powered client that I felt, and I still feel a little shame still talking about it. Like, I still feel it in my body. I've moved on from the shame, but when I tell the story, right, like, I remember what it felt like to power through this session because I was so excited. She paid me a bunch of money. She was very successful. And I heard my baby crying, baby Riley, and I chose to stay on the call.
And I still am haunted by that choice, but it taught me so much about what real success is. And that's part of my reflection today is, like, that moment in time when I was new, I was young, and I made mistakes, like, it helps inform the choices I make now, to get my priorities straight, to make the right decision for my soul. Haven't always done that, and I'm still human, and I still have things to learn, but, like, I'm really grateful for the work that I did to get that clear.
Business is like a faucet. I can turn it on, and I can turn it off, but families are forever, right? I don't get to turn off my relationship with my kids. Some people do, and I think it haunts them, and I think it feels bad in the long run, especially if our family is a very high value for you, right? You don't want to turn off the connection you feel to your family. So, that was a huge one for me. The things that I've learned from business during this time, I wrote, the stack of skills is expansion through life versus not good enough now.
So, there's a different calibration when we're like, I'm not good enough right now. And even if that's true, it's not a good energy to bring to your business. And so, I'm thinking back when I was brand new, I could have had the thought, like, I'm just not good enough. But what I calibrated to was, like, expansion through my life. I will continue to get better. And I saw business as a stack of skills that I could learn. And I'm still learning them.
I mean, I still have ambitions that I'm still creating in the process of creating. But expansion feels different than not good enough now. Expansion is like the seed is already here. I already have the capacity within me. It's just bringing it to light. That feels different than I'm not good enough now. So, when I started my business, it's true, I was not good enough to lead a mastermind. I was not good enough to launch groups. I was not good enough to hold lots of private clients.
But I developed that through time and through experience and through mistakes. That's expansion through life. And so, when I look back, I'm so grateful for how scrappy I was, how gritty I was, how I was very self-led. So, I would put myself in rooms. I would put myself in masterminds. I would put myself in coaching containers where I was expanded and I learned the skills. And I calibrated to the coach that would help me.
And through those decisions, I've become a pretty powerful entrepreneur. And I mean power in the sense that not force, right? Power in that like I can lead myself through hard things and I'm not afraid. And I'm not afraid for my clients. And that has evolved over time. I used to be afraid in the beginning. And I used to be afraid of my clients, right? Like if they're in a scary situation, I'd be like, no, what are you doing?
And now, I'm just not afraid because I know what it's like to lead yourself through hard times. In the pits of despair. In fact, I was just talking to a past client last week. Like when you're in the pit of despair, it's like where all your personal power is developed actually. Your personal power isn't really developed in the abundant times. It's developed in the pits of despair. And so, if you are there, just know that you are expanding your personal power and your ability to move through things.
And then, in turn, it evolves your capacity to help other people move through hard things. So that you can genuinely look someone in the eye and be like, I am not afraid for you. I am not afraid for you. You can't make that up. You can't fake that, right? Like your clients have to really feel that. I've seen that in my coaching as well. Because I've moved through things myself that have felt scary. Tax bills. Client situations that were difficult.
People pushing back on boundaries. Launches that didn't go as planned. Putting myself and expanding what I've invested in that felt a little stretchy to me. So that I can hold that for my clients. Like I'm not afraid if people working with me feel like a stretch. I know what that's like and I know how good it was for me. So all of these things are compounding into the business that I have today. The next questions that I wanted to share that have been a huge aha for me.
Kind of like what I was speaking to about quiet wealth. I asked myself two questions that really changed a lot for me. Do my kids get the best of me? Does my husband get the best of me? Or do I save my best for my clients? Because this is interesting. I'm a life coach first. And so if my business and my clients get the best of me, I feel like I do a huge disservice to my own family. And so as I took Lainey to preschool this morning, it's like I am so grateful that I really feel like the last few years, I've really focused on that question. Do my kids get the best of me?
And of course I'm not perfect, but like I would say it has been my dominant intention that they get the best of me. Has it been easy? No. Is working often easier for my brain? Yes. Do I hear that from a lot of clients? Yes. Our businesses are sexy and fun and profitable and creative and potentiality driven. Parenting is not like that. But parenting is the ultimate mirror. And so I have learned more from my kids than I have in any book that I've ever read.
And many parents are like nodding their head, you know. They don't teach me that like, let's sit down and talk, mom. Like I have things to teach you. It's like what they mirror back to me about myself and my shadows and my weaknesses and my struggles so that I can use my tools to expand my capacity to serve them and to be present for them and not be triggered by them and not lash out at them. Like I wouldn't trade that for anything. In fact, one of the podcast episodes I get a lot of private feedback on.
They might not share it to their Instagram story and tag me, but they DM me is about my power struggle with Lamey. And one day maybe she'll listen to this episode and laugh because she doesn't know what's happening. But like she is very headstrong and I love that. And I don't want to dim that for her. But some of our power struggles really activates my nervous system. I want her to listen. I'm frustrated when she doesn't.
You know, she wants exactly what she wants. And as someone historically who has settled in my life where it's like, that's fine. Okay, whatever works for you. Right. It's very activating for her to be so specific and dominant about what she wants, especially if it's not what I want for her. No, we're not eating candy for breakfast. No, you're not changing clothes. We have to leave right now. Right. Like whatever it is in the pushback. And she's four.
So the pushback isn't these like massive things, but it can be very activating for me. And when I reflect on that and how much control I want in my shadow of like people pleasing and being frustrated, like if you think about human design, like my not self is frustration. And so I get very frustrated when I'm in a power struggle. And she said, I don't even know which episode it was.
But when we're in a power struggle with people, with our business, with our launches, with our tiny humans that we're parenting, the best way is to exit the power struggle. Right. You don't win a power struggle. So when I want to assert my will and there's a great book called Power Versus Force. When I force my will upon Lainey, she retaliates. She doesn't like it. It doesn't work.
Right. But when I exit the power struggle and I choose true power, which is love, nonjudgment, detachment, bliss, oneness, wholeness, unity, enlightenment, where I'm unmoved by her emotional state, not because I don't care, but because I realize like there's nothing that I can do to make her do anything in life. This is true about business, too. We can't do anything to make, to force people to buy from us, to want to be our clients, to want to pay us.
Same thing is true about my four year old who wants to change her clothes for the 15th time or who refuses to get in the car or put her shoes on or whatever. I'm, you know, go potty, whatever it is. Right. Like I cannot make her. And so when I go on the inside, one of the tools that I help my clients with is like, if you imagine your personal power is scattered throughout the room, like little flecks of golden light all over the room.
That's how it feels like when you don't have personal power. It just feels chaotic. It feels out of reach. One of the things I imagine is all these little golden flecks of light coming back into like my womb or my belly or my solar plexus. Right. Like inside of me. You can even hear it in my voice when my power is inside of me. I sound different. I sound more grounded. I sound more like me versus when I'm trying to get her to do something and all my power is outside of me and I'm trying to put it on her. It feels different.
And so this is how I teach business, too. You cannot make people do things. You can only go inside and be anchored in your own power and trust that people who are aligned with you will move. And so my work with Lainey specifically, I mean, she's fresh on my mind because she's the one that I dropped off at preschool this morning for the last time. She's taught me so much about how to stay in my power and what really is in my power.
Like, what am I going to do to her to force her to do what I want her to do? I can't. And she's very clear about that. And so I can invite her. I can speak her language. I can go almost like a completely different direction so that the energy in the room shifts for her and I. I can exit the power struggle. And the creative process that has been available because I've learned how to do that, it's not always perfect, but like it has transformed myself as a parent, as a mother, but also just like as a human being, as a woman.
And I think that those kinds of invaluable things that come from parenting, like as the parallel of my growth of business and parenting, like I am so grateful that it happened at the same time. Our kids are such a mirror, but so are our clients. So are our businesses, right? They are reflecting back to us our work. And so when I think about some of the things I've learned and some of the things I failed at.
And some of the things that I'm ashamed of, like that story about Riley crying in the crib while I coached and others, I see myself in real time evolving into something higher, into something better. And there's infinite levels. So like I still have room to grow. And that's like the beautiful part of what we do is like my growth doesn't stop just because I made it here. It's like the seven year cycle was just the first of many. Here I go. All right, like on to the next thing.
And so the other things that I made notes of are some of the cycles that have gone through my programs. I shared this in the revamp. If you were on the revamp or you want the replay, go to itsambersmith.com/revamp so that you can get the replay. But one of the things that I've learned and watched myself do is like make pivots. And so my first program, my first big program was called Pro Coach as a business coach. And it was like a mentorship for coaches who wanted to shift into selling high ticket pro coach. There was a lot of lessons that I learned.
Like I said, get the revamp so you can hear that whole story. But the Pro Coach became the Matrix and then the Matrix became what I'm now calling Lighthouse Mentorship. And it's changed and evolved. Same for my mastermind iterations. You know, my first mastermind was called the Inner Circle. And then it evolved into I guess it was the Inner Circle for a few rounds. And then it was the Miraclemind. And then it was Quiet Wealth Mastermind.
And now it's the Abundance Mastermind. And it's evolved, right? Like I've realized I want to go deep with people. So we have in-person retreats. And it's a hybrid. So it's one on one and group. And I've learned so much through things not going well, through things being close to what I wanted, but not quite. And so a lot of times what we actually need is more experience and more failures to get to where we want to go.
And that has been hard for me to really integrate and look at because it takes looking in the mirror with some humble eyes. Right. Like you have to actually see what's not working in yourself, what's being reflected back to you in your shortcomings. And you have to have the guts to make changes. And I would say like emotional intelligence, right? Like walk through people not liking the changes or being confused by the changes or really feeling like I let people down. I've had to do that before, which is uncomfortable.
In fact, early, early on, some of you will remember this time period. But I had a membership. This is a long time ago. A coaching membership that was like 30 bucks a month. And I would just like basically coach people who would come every Wednesday. And it wasn't working. All of a sudden, like the discrepancy between my private clients and the membership, like I felt a lot of drainage, like an energy leak because the price point didn't reflect the transformational coaching that I wanted to do.
And I remember someone raising their hand and she was like, I'm really upset with you. And I remember just being able to hold it. I was okay that she was upset with me. I mean, of course, I didn't like that she was upset with me and I understood why she was. I was closing the membership and like this was the access point that she could afford. And I remember just realizing like how much I had grown as a coach because I could just hold that she was upset with me and not make her wrong for being upset with me.
Like I understood and I could still coach her. I could still hold space for her. And so we have to be able to hold people's emotional response to our choices in business, too, just like parenting. And so I think the work that we have to do is like we have to walk our path and make decisions that are most aligned for us and our families and trust that the clients who get it will come with us and the clients who feel like they aren't aligned anymore will leave. And that's okay.
That's been a huge work for me, too, is I naturally am a people pleaser. So I want everyone to be happy with me. I want everyone to like me. I want everyone to be okay with my decisions. But that's not always what's in the highest good for all. And so when I've made these decisions to change or to update or to reimagine and to reintroduce projects or programs or pricing, I have to check with myself that like I'm okay if people are upset with me, not because I want them to be upset or that I'm trying to upset people. I'm not.
I'm not trying to upset people, but like I can hold space if they are, if they have a human reaction to a decision that I made that they don't agree with. But it has to come from me, right? We lead ourselves. The business has to work for me first. And this is something that we talked about in the revamp, too, is like the order of how I think about business. It has to work for me and my energy and my focus and my alignment. Then it has to work for my family.
The amount of time I work, what boundaries I have. Does this serve my family, including pricing? Does this make my family life better? Right. Is my business enhancing my family life or is it taking away from it? Which is a whole can of worms that we can open. But like I said, if you haven't watched the revamp, go watch it because I go into detail on that, too. Then after it's worked for me and my family, then I'm thinking about my ideal buyers.
So the people who are actually paying me. Then I think about my clients at large, the people who maybe follow me on social media or are listening to this podcast, but like not necessarily paying me. I still consider them ideal clients, right? Who struggle with the things that I uniquely help with. And then my audience as a whole, right? People who are kind of like dabbling my content. Maybe sometimes they listen to this podcast. Maybe sometimes they follow me on social media, but they're not really in it. And that's okay.
Like all levels are welcome. But that's the order of people that I think of when I make business decisions. And so this looks like evolution over a lifetime, which means constantly tweaking and updating and iterating. And in my human design, if you're familiar with human design, like that's very aligned with me. But even if you're not a manifesting generator, I still think you should be updating how you work with clients, your pricing, what you call your offers.
One of the things that I've walked through a few of my clients with their decision making process is like what they actually name their offers or their mastermind or their program, because even the name has an energetic code that either attracts your ideal clients or pushes them away. And so we're constantly being energetically in touch with our offers, with what's working, what you really are lit up by, what brings you energy and joy, what feels resonant to you.
Like that changes. And that's not wrong. Very, very big brands like I think of like Amazon or Target. Those are the first two that I thought of. Like it would be weird if they were constantly updating their logo or like constantly updating their products. I'm imagining like every week Target had a different vibe in the store. That would be weird.
But for coaches, especially coaches who are evolving in real time, not even just coaches, people, entrepreneurs who are evolving in real time, who are on the exponential growth curve, you're going to be updating what you do, who you do it for, your pricing, your programs at a rapid rate because you are growing at a rapid rate. And so even decisions that you made last year, especially last year, like even a year ago, you probably were a different human.
I know I was. And so when I look back through these seven years, like I'm a different human. Like if we coach together seven years ago, you weren't coached by the version of me that I exist today. I'm a very different coach. I'm a very different human. And I hope you are, too. And so even if things are similar, the energetics are different, more expanded, more grounded, more depth, which I hope for all of you that we continue the path of mastery so things are evolving in a good way, getting better, more clear, more grounded, more deep.
And so as we expand personal power through the ups and the downs, everyone wants to celebrate the ups. But what creates the ups is often the lessons that we learned in the downs. I've seen that time and time again for me, too. It's like all the lessons came through confusion and frustration and not working or not quite. That energy of like, this isn't it. Those are the times that I learned how to create what is it. And that never ends, right?
Because even where I am at today, like in the next seven years, I'm going to be like a different human again. And I'm going to look back and all the lessons that I've learned and like look at myself as I am now is like a little baby. And that's okay. That's how I look at myself seven years ago. I was like, oh, cute little baby ever. But that's like good. Like you want to be able to look back and be like, I've grown so much. And like that's the feeling that I had today is like I've grown so much.
My kids have grown so much. In fact, one of my clients, Annie, was like, I'm not getting older. My kids are getting older. And I was like, I'm going to steal that, steal that. So shout out to Annie. It's such a good quote. My kids are getting older, but I have grown. I have expanded what I know, what I've embodied, what I teach, who I can help. And that I'm really grateful for. Okay, this is a big one.
So we're going to go deep into this in my Gene Keys program called Unlock Your Abundance. If you'd like to join us, I'll make sure that the link is in the show notes. But you can find it on my Instagram, too. Unlock Your Abundance is going to be about the Gene Keys. And one of the major themes that I've gotten personally from the Gene Keys is how to transform shadows into gifts. So things that you want people not to know about you can actually be some of your strongest gifts.
It also, I think, is what you can calibrate to for people you're meant to coach or meant to mentor, because it's different when you have done the work, like you can really help someone with that thing versus someone who's read a book about it or someone who's attended a training about it. That's one level of understanding. And I would say knowledge, right? It's one thing to know about communication with clients. It's one thing to know about, you know, personal development or communication.
But it's a whole nother thing to like walk through your own experience of those things and then learning the lessons and then from a place of deep embodiment and wisdom, walk your client through it. That's mentorship. I think that's just a whole nother level of what's available in this work. It's what I think has transformed my coaching is like when I was new, a lot of what I was teaching and coaching on was stuff that I had read in a book, which, as you know, I still quote books and I still love books.
But there's a level of depth that comes from my lived experience. So when a client says my mastermind isn't filling, I'm not worried because I've been there. I know how to fill a mastermind because I've not filled masterminds before. When a client says, you know, my client doesn't want to renew and I'm in a weird space now, it's like, that's okay. I've been there, too, right? Like it's not from a conceptual place. It's from a lived place, like a cellular experience.
And I would use the word mentorship has evolved because I stayed plugged in. That's the other thing that I'm really, I guess, proud of is through the last seven years, I've never unplugged so much that like I quit until it works. That's more than a sentence to me. It is a lived choice that I have made over and over again. And when I started my business, I had a few friends that started businesses at similar times, and I've seen people quit. I've seen people unplug.
I've seen people, you know, choose something different. And I don't judge them. I get it. I've been tempted to quit when it's been really hard. But the fact that I didn't is what has truly like opened up the success that I'm now living. And so I want to share that with you, like until it works. I used to cling to that sentence when I needed faith and I needed that spiritual grit, like I'm going to do it until it works, you know, like, and I don't know.
We'll see how it goes versus now. It's just my dominant intent, like whatever I choose to move towards, whatever meaningful milestone I've chosen for myself and my business, like I will just take action. I will do the belief work until it works. And I've seen the miracles that come from that stance in life. And so if you are in a period where you're like, I don't know if this is for me, you have a choice to make. The people who make it big.
The people who are successful and it seems like it's unreal or it seems like it's not available to you. They've truly chosen until it works, when it was hard. And that's the only difference is when it got hard, when things didn't seem like they're going to work out, when they were being stretched, they inside of themselves made a commitment that they were going to be here until it works. And it wasn't proclaimed to the world, although it might have been something that they said later. I know I've said it later, but that's not how I experienced it.
I experienced it very privately until it works. It was a knowing in my own body until it works, until it works. And so when I offer my clients that process and that framework of seeing business, it's like, it's not because I think it's a fancy thing to say, or it's like the right thing to say. It's like, this is literally how I carried myself through some scary times. Right. It was like until it works, business is a stack of learnable skills. Until it works is how I'm going to learn them.
And so that's how I carried myself through some ups and downs of entrepreneurship that no one escapes that. You can learn all the things, you can be amazing at what you do, and you still have to go through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. That is the entrepreneur's refiner's fire. And especially in the wisdom economy, it's a requirement because we have to go through things to shape us into the kind of human being who can hold another human being without fear.
And until you've learned those things, like you have to allow it to shape you, not break you down, not deflate you or defeat you. But it has to be enough that you evolve your consciousness. You learn personal power. You calibrate to until it works. And business has a way of refining what needs to be refined and mirroring back to us what needs to be mirrored back for our ultimate growth and potential.
And this is the unsexy truth, especially, I think, for coaches, right? We have to be in integrity with our work. And so if you aren't embodying what you teach, like about mindset or strength or personal power, if you're not really embodying it, it will reflect that back to you so that you can embody it. One of the things that I've often said is the lesson will keep showing up for you until you show up for the lesson.
And I've watched my clients move through this, some of them quickly, but some of them, it's taken time. And for me, too. Some of the lessons I was quick to learn as a gotcha. This is it. If I learn this, I never have to go through this again. That was really powerful for me. And sometimes I miss the lesson. And so it showed up again and it showed up again. And it was like, oh, I need to really embody this.
I really need to do the work on this so that I can transcend it. And then I get to walk people through it. And that's another type of transcendence, too, is like when I help people with what I used to struggle with, not from a place of like pedestal, but from a place of like walking side by side on the path of growth and evolution, like I've got you. And when my clients look at me, I want them to know I have the integrity to walk them through whatever they're walking through.
And like that has also been humbling because some things I wasn't ready to walk them through. Like, especially early on in my journey, I was coaching them from a place of knowing in my brain, from a cerebral place, from like things that I had studied in books. And this is why wisdom is such an interesting word. Like I want to bring the wisdom to our coaching and our mentorship, not just what I've learned in the book, but from what I've lived and what I've done the work on, what I know in my soul to be true, which I feel like is a different level for me.
And so that's my reflection. And I honestly like just to kind of tie some of these things together, like I couldn't have gotten to this place as quickly as I did without parenting and business at the same time. So when I dropped Laney off, it was just like, wow, like what a ride. And I'm just getting started. I'm entering a different phase of motherhood. You know, my kids are growing up and I'm going to have more time to myself, which is interesting. I already do.
It feels like infinite possibilities again from a different place. You know, like the lessons that I want to bring to my kids are different. And the kind of mom that I am now is different than the mom that I was seven years ago, which is a good thing. We want to be growing. We want to be evolving. And so even though this is an end of an era, I'm really excited about the era that I'm walking into with all the lived experience, with all the ideas, with all the lessons, with all the little moments and slices of time that I get to bring into my body of work in business.
All that to be said, you know, if you haven't taken the time to reflect on your last seven years, please do it. I think it was really impactful for me to witness some of the things that I've learned. I mean, these are just a few of them. The last thing that I'll share that I wrote down is I am who I calibrate to. That's worth saying again, like I am who I calibrate to. One of the other big lessons that I've learned is like I'm very mindful of who I spend time with.
I'm very mindful of who I let plug into me and who I plug into. I'm very mindful of calibration. So Steve Chandler taught me this is like role reversal. It's not that I don't want to calibrate to my clients because they're not good enough. That's not really what it is. But I want to be the kind of coach and mentor that my clients want to calibrate to. Like they want my level of integrity. They want my level of abundance.
They want my level of success, which means I constantly have to be growing. So that I can pave the way for people who want to grow with me. And so I am who I calibrate to. So whether I'm calibrated to my coach, to my mentor, to a book for me, also like calibrating to God, my relationship with Jesus, my relationship with source, like however you want to think about that. That's how I think about it. Like it's so important to stay plugged into people that are calling you higher. Before I found coaching, who I calibrated to is like my friends.
And there's nothing wrong with my friends at all. They're amazing. But like, were they on the path of evolution and growth and abundance and personal power and impact, high levels of service and value in the world, high levels of consciousness and performance? Probably not. And that's okay. But now I'm very conscious of who I calibrate to because I'm also conscious of who's calibrating to me. And calibration is an interesting word because it's not about like a hierarchy. It's just like you've walked this path, you've embodied this.
And I want to learn it from you. And I've seen that mirrored back to me in many, many different ways because I coach people at different phases of business. I coach people in different ages. And it doesn't matter. It's not about age. It's not about hierarchy. It's like, what have you embodied that you can help me with, that you can hold with me? And that has changed the game for me.
And so I'm constantly plugging into people who can help me calibrate up, who can help me ascend in consciousness and performance and abundance so that I can lead my clients. And that's the game of life. That is what we are up to. That's what evolution means. We're getting better. Potential is such a beautiful word, not because it makes you not good enough now, but because potential is about possibilities.
Potential is about what you're capable of and what skills you can learn and what impact you can have and what lessons and wisdom you can bring through in your life experience for other people, but for yourself first, to make your own life better, your own family better. And that's the beautiful gift that I think I've experienced is like this work has made me better. This work has made my family life better.
And of course, that in turn has grown my business because when it's embodied, other people want it. And they might not even be able to articulate why. They just feel something from us. I just see the infinity sign, right? What I learn, I get to give back. And what other people experience, I get to learn. And it's like this beautiful give and take reciprocity of life experience, which is why I think the coaching industry is so beautiful and challenging on purpose. One of the things I learned just to parting thought, I read this in the book, The Prosperous Coach.
That book changed my business. And one of the things he said early on was like, the bar for entry in this field is low, but the bar for success is high. And that's the lived experience. That's the wisdom. That's the mirror that we have to learn the things. And so we don't need a regulation because that is it. The successful coaches who are successful in the long run. I'm talking about longevity, not people who come like a flash in the pan. Right.
Like, whoa, they're amazing or trendy. It's like people who have staying power do the work. And so if you've seen people who have been successful for a long time, like there's a level of integrity that they have achieved and created for themselves. And does that mean they're perfect? No. But I think integrity is the missing link. And integrity encompasses wisdom and humility, the student mentality, but also like mastery, embodiment. That's what we're up to.
This is the reason that I have White House mentorship. This is the work. It's not just what you know, it's what you've embodied. It's what you do, the work on yourself so that you can guide others and lead others from a place of true integrity and a level of authenticity in your soul that you know you can help. It's not this brain experience. It's a lived experience. Okay, thank you for listening. Thank you for walking through this era. Some of you have been with me a very long time. And I see you and I'm grateful for you. Some of you are new. Thank you for being here.
Some of you we've walked together in private coaching, in my masterminds. And I'm so grateful that we get to do this work together. Some of you have been past clients and you stay tuned in here. And I'm grateful for you, too. Like, I genuinely am. Thank you for your attention, for your support, for sharing your thoughts and your wins and your questions with me. It makes me better. And I'm grateful for that. Okay, I hope you have a beautiful day. Thank you for this era. I look forward to the next one. I'll see you soon.
