Be the Anchor – Strategies and Support for Small Business Owners

I’m glad you’re here for this episode today. It’s a very important one that dives deeper into my topic from the last episode. My last episode was about not wasting a conflict or crisis and that may have been a cue from the universe that soon I’d need my own advice because right now I’m facing a major health scare in our family. And now that I’m in it, in the thick of it, I have more to say on this topic. I have more to offer to help guide you through times of crisis, in dealing with the personal and the business side of things.Let’s be honest right up front: managing our lives and running a business during a time of family or personal crisis is a lot. We are pulled in many different directions because we want to be there for our loved one and for our family but we also need to be there for our business. How do we deal with it if we can’t bring in that revenue? It’s really difficult and if, like me, you are used to being a leader and having answers, it can be really hard to realize that crisis doesn’t come with a timeline. And if we don’t think about how to best help ourselves we can end up sacrificing sleep and rest and movement and healthy eating and all the things we need to keep going, to keep being there for the people that need us.So in this episode I’m speaking from within a crisis, I’m going through what I’m talking about. And I want to share this perspective with you. There are different questions to ask ourselves now. What really needs our focus? What key things can I do to look after our foundation? We’re low on time so what things can we do that really get the most return on our time? And I’m speaking about the personal side of things and the business side. We can’t do everything, so what systems can we put in place to help ourselves? I’m sharing the insight that I’ve gained with you in this episode. The simple things you can do, both in your life and business, to help maximize the time you have and keep you healthy so you can deal with the crisis long-term. This episode is personal and important and I’m so glad I can share the things I’m learning with you all.Key Moments03:14 The pull between being there for loved ones and business05:37 How quickly self-care can be the first necessity sacrificed08:54 What do we prioritize in business to keep things running?When we’re low on energy, what things can be automated and what can keep going easily?How can we delegate or automate to assist everyone affected by the crisis?Why we need to maintain containers around the vitals of life: sleep, rest, health__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] I'm really excited to bring this episode to you today. I know that being a small business owner comes with wearing a lot of different hats, and one of the things that had been coming up for me over the last couple of months was clients and friends who were talking about having multiple demands on their time when a loved one was facing a health crisis, and they were really feeling like, I need to keep my business operating, and I really want to be there for my family. Now, little did I know that that episode a couple of weeks ago was going to be a snapshot and a little cue into what was coming up in my own life. Today I'm diving in. We're going one step deeper from where we were in the last episode, talking about not wasting a great crisis. Today, I want to talk about when you are in a situation and you're facing a tough time, I want to give you some resources on exactly what we can do to help navigate when we need to be there for friends or family, or maybe for yourself if you're facing a crisis in your own life that instantly takes your time and your energy and your attention. What do you do when you're trying to keep your business afloat at the same time? Welcome to the episode. Let's dive in. Kari Lotzien: [00:01:27] Hello my friends. I'm so glad you're here. In the last episode, the topic was don't waste a great crisis, and I cannot help but think that that topic was giving me a little bit of a signal and a heads-up as to what was coming. Because here I am just a few weeks later, and when I recorded that episode, I was not in the middle of a crisis. But now, looking back, as often our hindsight is 2020, it was a signal for me because here I am now, just a couple of weeks later, and our family is experiencing a pretty major crisis where we have someone in our family who's really going through a major health scare right now, and they need us to be supportive and all-in and believe in them and have hope. And let's be honest, at the same time we are trying to manage our lives and run our businesses and be there for each other and support. And I am not going to lie to you, it's a lot. And when I looked at my episode recording for today, I thought, you know what? I have more to say about this because when I'm in it, when I talked about

Friends, I’m talking about two things today that are not very popular but that help us grow more than anything else we encounter. Crisis and conflict. They sound like things we want to avoid at all costs, I know, and certainly, an unexpected crisis or hard conflict is not enjoyable. But what I want to talk about is what happens after the crisis or conflict, what we learn, what it shows us, and how we grow from these situations. There is so much positive opportunity in a good, solid, conflict or crisis.If we continually try to avoid conflict, it will return repeatedly, usually more intensely than before. So it’s a good idea to deal with it when it’s still small. Conflict carries its own lesson because it’s a clash between people or values and we need to resolve it. A crisis is an unexpected event. By its very nature, a crisis can’t be planned for. We can’t see a crisis coming. But when it arrives, we absolutely feel its impact and have to know how to get through it. And it’s how we deal with and get through both of these things that lets us learn so much of value. Are you prepared for a crisis in your business? Something that potentially takes you out of action could end your business if you aren’t prepared for such an event. And even if you’re not prepared, how you communicate with your stakeholders, staff, and customers matters a lot to how successfully you navigate the crisis. I’m going to lay out examples for you and walk you through what to look for, and what to prepare. Conflict tends to make us want to put our head in the sand but a good conflict, grounded in respect, can bring to light things that aren’t working that we can fix for the better. I’ll talk about what to look for in conflict and how not to react in the moment. Conflict and crisis, things we tend to avoid, can actually be a great benefit to our businesses.Key Moments03:08 Crisis illustrated by Steve Jobs in 200305:23 How improperly managed crisis erodes trust11:26 Defining a good conflictWe can learn a lot from Tim Cook’s story at AppleStarbucks illustrates how to manage a conflict between customers and your businessWhat are the steps we can take to prepare for crisis and conflict?__Resources discussed in this episode:“The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable” by Patrick Lencioni__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:02] Welcome to Be the Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. Hello my friends. I'm so glad you're here. Today I want to talk to you about two of what I believe to be the greatest teachers in life. A great crisis and a good, hard conflict. Now, those might not sound like things that you want to sign up for in terms of growth and development in your life. But what I want to make sure of is that you don't miss an opportunity to really grow and learn when those things come up in life. And every biography that I've read, every business book of someone who has gone on to achieve incredible things with their lives, in every single story and every single example, they have used both conflict and crisis to move towards growth. Every time. And I want to tell you more than ever that there's a different way to do this, that we can learn through flow and abundance and affirmations, and that it can be easy. And although I definitely think there is a time and a place where we want to introduce ease and we want to bring that in, I don't want you to miss the opportunity that can come from a good, solid conflict or crisis. Kari Lotzien: [00:01:54] It's like when we're squeezed by stress or tension, that it expedites our ability to learn and to really create change quickly if we take the opportunity. Now, if you don't take the opportunity, I feel like these are the things that will come back to us, and we keep learning that lesson over and over again. You've heard the phrase that, you know, when life whispers to you and kind of says, hey, you know what I think something's up here, and you don't pay attention to it, the next time that lesson comes, that conflict, that crisis comes a little bit louder and really taps you on the back. And maybe the next thing it wallops you right over the head and says, okay, I'm not playing anymore, here's how you're going to learn or not. This becomes the fork in the road. I want you to listen when it's a little bit lighter and it's a little bit easier. Now, I didn't do that. There's been so many times where I had to be walloped over the head before I actually got the les

I’m glad you’re here for an episode that may be a little bit short but is full of necessity. I want to talk about core values. A lot of businesses talk about core values, small and large businesses alike. And that’s good! Every business should have done an activity that helps define and develop its core values as a company. What I’ve been seeing lately, though, is that while it’s wonderful to hear a business declare “We stand for loyalty, transparency, and trust”, what happens if what occurs in levels of the business contradicts those values? That’s what I want to examine.It may sound harsh, or like doom and gloom when I say that stating core values that are not followed through on in actions as a business truly can be the demise of the business. Why would I say that? Core values represent things you promise to be and do as a company. If you fail to live up to those stated values, you lose integrity. You present as out of alignment and customers lose trust in everything you say and offer. That kind of loss can be catastrophic to a business.I want to give you examples of situations I’ve encountered with real business owners that demonstrate this. How does this contradiction show up? What does it look like when core values aren’t acted on in a business? Where does it usually creep in? How can that be prevented? I want you and your business to succeed so I’m going to address all those questions. I’m glad you’re joining me to dig deeper into what core values mean beyond stating them as part of a business plan. It’s so important to ask yourself how you will keep those values alive in your daily activities.Key Moments02:02 Why misalignment with core values can be the end of a business03:03 Business example of core values initially in action05:01 Follow-up example of how later actions were at odds with the stated core valuesWhy a noted misalignment of core values to actions mattersAsk what your business’s core values are and whether you are demonstrating them Look into your team and ask yourself if they’re leading or being led according to your core values__Resources discussed in this episode:Anchored Leadership Academy__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. Kari Lotzien: [00:00:38] Hello my friends. I'm so glad you're here. Today's episode is going to be a little bit short, but I feel like it has so much necessity. So I don't think that it is uncommon right now to hear businesses talk about their core values. And I think that a lot of small businesses, a lot of large businesses, can say here's what we stand for: we believe in trust, we believe in transparency, we believe in loyalty, we believe in professionalism. And that is all fine and good. And I really hope that if you haven't kind of done an activity around developing the core values of your business, that you will do that. When we think about the core values of a company, it's the same as we are personally. Our core values are there to guide our behavior, and it's the same in business. Core values aren't just something that you talk about during your team meetings, or that you put in your training manuals, or that you talk about and it's one and done. Your core values in your business should be the guide to every single thing that you do, the services that you provide, how you have your customer experience journey, how you onboard new team members, how you develop team culture. Your core values guide everything. I had a situation here in this last week that I wanted to share because I think that it highlighted this idea that we can have core values, but if we don't carry them through all aspects of our business, that it really starts to feel like we are out of our own integrity as a business. And I fully believe - this might sound like super catastrophic, but listen, that's just where I'm at today - I believe this can be the absolute demise of a company. Okay. I want to share with you about a conversation that I had with a small business owner recently. The first time that I met this small business owner, the first thing that drew me and that I noticed about this company was what an inclusive environment is. There was so much diversity in this really small business. There were people who were English as a second language. There were people who had diagnosed anxiety challenges. There were people that had all different ways of communicating and needs in this very small c

Last episode, I introduced part one of this series on living the life that you crave. I gave you background on what that means and really did deep dive into my tagline, “live the life you crave”. If you haven’t listened to Episode 31, take a quick moment now to listen and come back when you’re finished. Now, in part two, I’m going to talk about actually living that life. There are six steps I’ll share about how to create the life that you crave and then go about living it.I sometimes think about what will be said about my life when I’m gone. What impact did I have? Did I give back? Was my life one that was well lived? I believe our lives are about impact and purpose, fulfilling the reason we’re here. It’s not all about business, but about what differences we can make through our lives and businesses. So in taking action to live the life you crave, my steps are very focused on actually living and not just reaching financial goals. These steps apply even if you’re struggling, if you’re not in a successful place or if you haven’t yet found your dream or goal but are just realizing you want something new: that is your dream. Change is your dream. Moving past struggle is the life you crave at the moment.The six steps ask you to look back at where you’ve already been to recognize the obstacles you’ve already overcome. They demand that you acknowledge your dreams and goals that are about more than just fiscal milestones. They teach you to understand that when you reach a mushroom cloud of expansion, your business will become something bigger than yourself. What is the journey that you’re on? How far have you already come? What are you learning and appreciating along the way? These are key questions to focus on as you work at living the life that you crave. Key Moments05:21 Step one is to look back. Look at how far you’ve already come.11:07 Step three is asking how your dreams and goals appear. Where are you heading?18:42 When your journey becomes bigger than you, how many other lives will you impact and enrich?Process over progress means living the action of getting to your destination; enjoying the journeyHow do you live in the moments that lead you to your goal instead of just staring down the goal?Let yourself have an experience that pinpoints what you really crave__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. Kari Lotzien: [00:00:37] Hello my friends. Welcome back. This is part two in the series Live the Life You Crave. Now, if you didn't listen to the last episode, episode 31, I give you the background and we really dive deep into this phrase 'live the life you crave', which is the tagline of my business. I invite you to just reflect on that. So if you haven't listened to that episode, go back, have a quick listen, and then come back to this one, because now we're going to dig into how do you go about living the life that you crave? I'm going to talk about six steps, key ways that you can move towards truly creating the life that you crave and then living it. When I talk about living the life that you crave, I want to just review that I am talking about craving as the combined feeling of some destination, goal, project that feels like it has an energy of its own, that you are being pulled towards it, and that in the pursuit of that thing, you are becoming a better version of yourself. And likely you are also creating a ripple effect on those around you that are making your industry, your family, your community better in some way. Kari Lotzien: [00:01:59] The craving is also linked to need. I believe that when we crave something, it is closely tied to not only a desire, but there is a need for what we want to feel, appreciated, valued, we need to feel a sense of belonging. We need to feel a sense of value, that we are truly giving back. I think that when you live a life that you crave, what happens is you have this sense that your life was well lived. I think it is bigger than us, and I think that many of us can think back to a time where we've gone to a celebration of life or something like that, and you see the true celebration that, man, that was a life well lived. That person had an impact. And it doesn't have to be a global worldwide impact where they changed, you know, the face of their industry. They can have such an incredible impact on very few people, you know, people who dedicate their lives to helping the homeless or

This episode is special for me because I am talking about my tagline. Perhaps you didn’t know until right now that I have a tagline! We’ll unpack it together. My tagline is ‘Live the life you crave’. This phrase is very important to me, it holds a lot of value, and I found it through intention and focus. The important place to start in understanding it is to define what ‘crave’ actually means. I’ll do that and examine exactly what it means to live what we crave in this episode.Craving, according to the dictionary, is not just something that we want but something that we need. The definition likens it to how infants crave touch. Infants don’t just want touch, they need it in order to develop and grow. The thing we crave isn’t just an idle want, it’s something we need, something that pulls us in, something we deeply require. When you examine the cravings in your life, what are they? What do you want and need in order to thrive? What pulls you?I’m going to talk about how living the life you crave encompasses more than just work, more than just your business. If you are succeeding at work but struggling with personal relationships, then the full life that you crave is not being satisfied. What do you need to create for your life to be filled on all levels? What do you crave about living that will make you fulfilled in the moment and not just living for a future when things hopefully align? I want you to think about these questions as you move through this episode with me.Key Moments02:11 Defining the word ‘crave’05:28 Does the thing that you crave feel bigger than you? Drive you towards impacting change?11:43 Your life is made up of more than work and all the components deserve to be strongAre you struggling with personal things outside of work? Finding balance is part of what you craveWhen you live the life you crave, does it align with your values in ways that satisfy you right now?It’s vital to think about every aspect of what you crave for your life __Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. Hello my friends. I'm so glad you're here. Today is a special episode. I want to unpack my tagline with you. Live the life you crave. Now, some of you may not have realized until right now that that even was my tagline. But this phrase holds incredible value for me, and it's something that I came to with a lot of intention and focus. And as we unpack it together, I hope that it has as much power and brings you a chance to reflect and really dig in to the vision for your own life, like this phrase does for me. Let's start with, in this phrase live the life you crave, I want to start with the word crave. Because when I think about that word, I think about wanting something so much that it feels like you are pulled towards it. It's not a dream or a destination way off in the future that you feel like you have to hustle and grind and push towards, but that it feels hard. Kari Lotzien: [00:01:44] When I think of things that we crave, it's like that thing, that vision, the future, the project, the business, the family, the relationship. It has its own energy. And when I think about things that we crave, I feel like there is a pull towards them that it's almost hard to resist moving towards that thing in our future. When we talk about the word crave and being defined as something that we intensely desire, I think it falls short a little bit. And when I read the example, or the sentence that was given in the dictionary, it said 'an example of craving is teaching parents to provide the touch that infants crave'. And as I thought about this, I thought, okay, there's something here that's really important because I think craving is more than something we desire, something we want. It's something that we need. There is a partnership between how we move towards this thing that we crave. But it's paired with something that we also require. Infants don't just desire touch. Infants require it. They require touch for the development of their nervous systems. They require touch so that they learn how to respond and develop that human connection with others. This is how they develop that sense of trust and relationship. They learn to accept touch, and they learn to give touch in a healthy and caring and kind way. When we crave touch, it's not just about, oh, it would be really, really nice to have. It is part of the development of who we are. Kari Lotzi

The topic today is hitting burnout in your business. I’m not exploring burnout itself, but more accurately some of the causes and stressors in our businesses that lead to burnout. I was walking my dog earlier, thrilled that I can now have light and temperate weather after 5:00, and it got me thinking about seasons and how they affect us. There are seasons and rhythms in everything, even in business, and working with those seasons is what can help us avoid burnout. Explore that with me.Every business has a different rhythm and flow. The first months of the year are extremely busy for accountants but summer is extremely busy for wedding planners. We all know what times of year our business blossoms and fills out and when we feel more of a lull. That rhythm, if we don’t plan for it, leads to a lot of stress. It’s not the busyness of business that causes burnout, it’s the unpredictability. That’s what I want to focus on: how can we prepare for the busyness ahead of time so we avoid the last-minute stress of the sudden demands?If we follow the natural seasons and rhythms of our bodies, we sleep better, we function better, we are more productive. It’s the same with businesses. If we prepare for the seasons and rhythms of our business, we can market well ahead of time and get clients set up early for the busy time. And conversely, we can plan holidays for quiet times instead of stressing over that slowdown. How do we manage the unpredictability and make our businesses run more smoothly? How do we avoid busyness burnout? I’m going to talk about that so we can start planning for efficiency now.Key Moments01:31 Different industries have different rhythms and seasons04:40 Why we shouldn’t just “seize the day” and grind early, but work with our personal rhythms.06:20 What do customers need in each season of our business?We have the power to request change in our work so that we can align our rhythmsWe need to assess and understand the natural seasons and flow of our businessLast-minute demands and rollercoaster emotions, when not accounted for, can cause burnout__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. Kari Lotzien: [00:00:37] Hello my friends. I'm so glad you're here. I just got back from taking my dog for a walk, and I got to tell you, it was so nice to be able to get outside and not have to put on my winter coat and boots and mitt and toque to try and stay warm as I bear down in winter weather to take the dog outside. We are coming into spring. I feel like it's breathing new life into me, that I could take my dog out and enjoy the sun on my face. I am enjoying the longer days when we have daylight past 5:00 at night. It just feels amazing. And this got me to thinking about how we think about seasons and rhythms in business. And more specifically, today, I want to talk about how we can utilize seasons and rhythms to really help avoid burnout. Now I work with clients from all different industries, and what I notice is that every single industry has a rhythm and a season to it on an annual basis. So if you're in the tourism or the hospitality industry, you might find that your busy season is in the summertime when people are planning vacations and they're out and about. Kari Lotzien: [00:01:54] Or maybe you are selling recreational vehicles or boats, and that's something that people are really looking to use in the summertime. Or a lot of my business professionals are in year-end accounting, financial planning, tax preparation, all of those good things. And this is their really busy time of year where they're putting in long hours and they're just really nose to the grindstone and getting things done. Construction is another one that tends to operate in the busy times between the spring and the fall, and slows down in the winter. So the first thing that I want to just acknowledge is that every business has a rhythm that generally aligns with seasons. You'll have busy times and slow times throughout the year. But now what I want you to do is think about how does this align with your personal rhythms? Are you like me that your energy just gets slow in the wintertime? That when the sun sets at 5:00, all you want to do is go to sleep or, you know, eat warm comfort foods, but that your creative energy just isn't really there? But then maybe in the summertime, you find that that's when it comes back for you, that that's when you have more

Today I’m talking about emotional intelligence and why it’s so important for corporations and small businesses alike to invest in. I’m excited to introduce you to my guest for this conversation, David Cory. David Cory is a leadership development coach, trainer, keynote speaker, and he founded the Emotional Intelligence Training Company. David has worked around the world on the design and delivery of leadership development programs, all of which include emotional intelligence (EQ) assessment, training, and coaching. David is exactly the right person to guide us through a discussion on emotional intelligence.I love exploring where people’s business passion comes from and David is no exception. I asked him how, even though it was more than 26 years ago for him, his passion for teaching and emotional intelligence came to be. David explains his childhood love of teaching everything from outdoor skills to guitar to downhill skiing and how that led him to study education and leadership development. He came into EQ as a focus when he attended a conference from the person who established the publishing company which published the world’s first scientific assessment for emotional intelligence.There is an optimal balance, in leadership and management, between getting results and impact on people and that, according to David is where things fall apart for us. We have historically overemphasized the “getting results” part instead of relationships with people and understanding how to create an attractive workplace culture. David and I talk about how logic still involves an emotional context, where self-regard comes into developing EQ, the lack of relationship training we get in childhood, and how emotional intelligence is a skill that we can learn and don’t have to innately be born with. This conversation is so important and David has such brilliant insight to share.Key Moments06:04 The trouble with overemphasizing getting results and not examining workplace culture09:40 Why our evolution towards a greater understanding of connection needs a systematic approach12:01 This is a skill anyone can learn, it’s not a function of personalityHow emotional skills help us combat imposter syndromeWhat is the difference between a transactional interaction and a relationship?How groups and teams can work with David Cory on learning emotional intelligence__About David Cory:David Cory is a leadership development coach, trainer, keynote speaker, and consultant known for his expertise in applying the concept of emotional intelligence to individual and organizational performance improvement. With a Masters’ degree in Adult Education, Professional Certified Coach (PCC) accreditation from the International Coaching Federation (ICF), and “Master Trainer” status in emotional intelligence from MHS Inc., David founded The Emotional Intelligence Training Company (EITC) which celebrates its 26th anniversary this year. David has worked with the most progressive organizations around the world on the design and delivery of leadership development programs, all of which include EQ assessment, EQ training, and EQ coaching as the unique elements that make them cutting-edge. In addition, David has been a keynote speaker at conferences around the world, including the Harvard Medical School, the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Shanghai, and a 7-time keynote speaker at the Asia HR Congress held in Bahrain, Brunei, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur (2x) and twice virtually. David and team are the only ones to have ever created an EI course for an entire nation – the Republic of Botswana in 2013. __Resources discussed in this episode:“The Fearless Organization” by Amy C. EdmondsonBe The Anchor Episode 14: Take the Emotion Out of It and Other BS AdviceFree monthly webinars on emotional intelligence: EITC.ca/webinars__Contact David Cory:Website: EITrainingCompany.comLinkedInFacebookInstagramContact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be The Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. Kari Lotzien: [00:00:38] Welcome to Be The Anchor, the podcast. I'm so excited to introduce you to my guest today. David Cory is a leadership development coach, trainer, keynote speaker, and consultant known for his expertise in applying the concept of emotional intelligence to individual and organizational performance improvement. With a Master's degree in Adult Education, Professional Certified Coach accreditation from the International Coaching F

I’m sharing about a topic that is near and dear to my heart today, friends. I’m talking about my solid, long-term, committed relationship with procrastination. That’s right. Maybe this is something you can all identify with which is why I want to address it and shed some light on it. What is procrastination? Why do we do it? When does it show up? I have many questions about my procrastination so I’ve organized my thoughts into something I can share with you that just might resonate.Of course, the first thing I did was look up the definition of procrastination because I love research and learning. Oxford said it’s just the act of not doing something. I prefer the Britannica definition, which is to be slow or late about doing something that should be done, to delay doing something until a later time because you do not want to do it, or because you are lazy, etc.. This helped clarify my thoughts about how I define procrastination and what I think it means for those of us in business. I think it’s something slightly different.In this episode, I’m going to define what I think procrastination is and why it happens to us when it does. There are three main reasons I think we procrastinate and none of those reasons are laziness. I’m also going to tell you about the names I’ve given to my different styles of procrastination. Not all procrastination is the same or comes from the same place. Ultimately we each need to examine our own tendencies to procrastinate and understand where it comes from and how it shows up. Once we can identify where it starts, we can begin to create plans for dealing with it so we can achieve our goals. Let’s get into it. Key Moments03:45 What is procrastination? The three things I think define it.10:08 How procrastination shows up and pulls our focus from what we should be doing16:46: So what do we do about procrastination? I have some thoughts.What is “procrastisupport” and why is it a type of martyrdom associated with procrastination?The timeline of when procrastination appears matters to how we cope with itWhy learning to ask for help and having supports in place are important steps__Resources mentioned in this episode:WINTER PROGRAM ANCHORED LEADERSHIP ACADEMY__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. Kari Lotzien: [00:00:37] Hello my friends. I am so glad you're here. Today I am sharing with you a topic that is near and dear to my heart. And I have to tell you with a bit of honesty, I'm tired of myself right now. I have a solid, long-term, committed relationship with procrastination, and I wanted to share a couple of thoughts about that today because I thought maybe you do too. Now, I looked up the definition of procrastination. So there's a couple different definitions. I didn't like the Oxford one that just said it's the act of not doing something, but Britannica, the definition of procrastinate is to be slow or late about doing something that should be done, to delay doing something until a later time because you do not want to do it, or because you are lazy, etc.. And I thought, um, that doesn't really fit for me, because in most situations when I'm procrastinating, it's not because I don't want to do it or because I'm lazy. And I don't think this is true of a lot of people. So I think it's a topic worth diving into. Kari Lotzien: [00:01:53] What is procrastination then? So I agree that it's that idea that we're putting something off, that we know we need to do it, many times these things have a deadline or they have an importance to them. Things like taxes, big projects, things that we want to start, the book we want to write, all of those great intentions. But then something happens and we just keep pushing it back, pushing it back, pushing it back. Now here's the part that I don't agree with when it comes to Britannica. I don't think it's because we're lazy, I really don't, and I'll tell you that there have been times in my life where I might have called something procrastination, but it wasn't the right term. I think sometimes when we have a really big idea, a really big project - so maybe you're going to launch a course, maybe you have a new business idea, maybe you want to write that book - so it's a really big thing, I think there are times where it looks like procrastination, but it's actually marinating. Where we're sitting with an idea and we're just kind of letting it come into our thou

Today is an exciting episode because I get to introduce you to a brilliant woman I know you’ll be glad you listened to. Her name is Kim Kiel and she’s a brand voice expert, copy coach, and founder of the boutique copywriting agency Kim Kiel Copy. What Kim has is a true talent for capturing a client’s voice and writing elegant and persuasive copy. Today she shares insight on how to write great copy and how it can forge connections with your client base.When we talk about copywriting, Kim first differentiates between “copywriting” and “copyrighting”. Copy refers to the words we use to sell our products or services. And a copywriter is someone who writes that copy. Kim came to copywriting through studying environmental science with a minor in communications and then working in fundraising for the nonprofit sector. She likes applying her skills to something that benefits others. Eventually, she translated that talent for writing into her own business so her abilities could assist other business owners in sharing their unique talents with a wider circle of people. Our discussion covers so much life-changing insight. Kim reflects on why it’s important to move away from strictly formal writing into something more casual that can build a connection. She talks about how to think about what a brand voice is, how to find yours, how to get past overthinking what to write, and why great copy, like so much in business, is about forging relationships. There is so much about Kim’s advice that touches and inspires me because she gets to the heart of what small business is about. She understands why women’s voices, in particular, need to be heard and how to say what we’re thinking.Key Moments01:54 What is copy and what does it do?06:22 Why Kim believes sales is actually about service and connection07:58 How to find your brand voice Assess how you speak in person and want to be heard in writingHow can we make our message stand out among 4000 other marketing messages?Why copywriting prompts are so useful in getting your message out__About Kim Kiel:Kim is a mom of 2 Fortnight experts and wife to a gentleman who is her biggest cheerleader. Through the pandemic, they tried to become the world’s best family of ping-pong players (and failed).For 15+ years, Kim has used words to build community, create social change and raise millions for charities and small businesses. Today, she primarily works with mission-driven businesses and female consultants, coaches and changemakers. Her true purpose is amplifying the voices of female leaders and changemakers so they can achieve more impact (and revenue) and still have time to travel, hang out with the kiddos, or get cozy with Brené Brown’s newest book. Kim has a knack for instantly capturing her clients' voices. When combined with customer research, persuasion and sales psychology, the result is elegant copy that’s clear, delightful and conversion-optimized.__Resources discussed in this episode:WINTER PROGRAM ANCHORED LEADERSHIP ACADEMYKim Kiel Brand Voice workbookKim Kiel writing prompts__Contact Kim Kiel:Website: KimKiel.comPodcast: Ill CommunicationLinkedInInstagramContact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be The Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. Kari Lotzien: [00:00:37] Welcome. I'm so glad you're here. I want to introduce you to a brilliant woman this week. Her name is Kim Kiel. She is a brand voice expert, copy coach, and founder of the boutique copywriting agency Kim Kiel Copy. With 17 plus years of writing multi six figure campaigns for small businesses and nonprofits, Kim helps Gen X entrepreneurs and experts share their gifts and positive impact with the world. She has a knack for instantly capturing a client's voice and writing elegantly persuasive copy. When she's not nerding out on sales psychology in her home of Edmonton, Alberta, you can find her tromping through the Canadian wilderness with her kids or continuing her quest to find her favorite whiskey. To find out more about Kim and copywriting, tune in to her podcast, Ill Communication, on your favorite player or at www.KimKiel.com/podcast. Welcome, Kim. I'm so glad to have you. Kim Kiel: [00:01:35] Hey, Kari. Glad to be here. Kari Lotzien: [00:01:38] All right. So I want to start off by just dispelling any myths, because I often get asked when I refer to copy, people ask me what is copy anyway? Can you give us kind of just our layman's version? What is copy? Kim Kiel: [00:01:54

“How many times have you said to yourself, I just thought I’d be further by now?”That’s the question that this episode examines. Maybe you thought you’d be at a different financial stage by now or maybe you imagined you’d have a much larger team. But somehow you’re not feeling that you’re at the place you want to be or getting the results you want to get. There’s something important I want you to do when those doubts take hold: pause and realize how much you’ve accomplished to get to this point.I had this question rise for me when I reached my 250th workout. The gym I go to celebrates that, they take a picture and give you a prize, but the first thing I thought when I saw the picture was “I thought I’d look different by now”. As much as I hated having that thought, it happened. But the instructor taking the photo introduced me to the statistics that only 12% of people in Canada have a gym membership and only 1% use the membership to get to where I was that day. I was in an elite group. Now let’s apply that to your business.I’ll share small business statistics with you that will show you exactly how much you’ve accomplished just by still being here, by being in business, by surviving the last four years with your business thriving. And I’ll ask you to pause right during the episode to write down how far you’ve come. To combat the feeling that you haven’t done enough, you need to give credit to the resilience you have that’s brought you this far. How much have you overcome? Then ask yourself, what keeps you going? What is it that drives you forward? What do you want to learn to help you progress into the future? These are the things we’ll tackle together today.Key Moments03:24 Statistics on how many small businesses fail in their first, second, and third years06:04 How to pause, think about your accomplishments this far, and write them out15:12 Questions to consider about what keeps you going and what drives youConsider the statistics on small businesses and how much they contribute to hiring overallHave you found a community, a camaraderie, in a group of people with similar goals?How the Anchored Leadership Program can take you through the next phase: leadership hurdles__Resources mentioned in this episode:WINTER PROGRAM ANCHORED LEADERSHIP ACADEMYReference: Stats on how many businesses appear and disappear each yearReference: Small Business Statistics In Canada__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. Kari Lotzien: [00:00:38] Hello my friends. I'm so glad you're here. How many times have you said to yourself, I just thought I'd be further by now? Whether that's related to your business and thinking that you would be at a different stage of revenue by now, or that maybe you would have your team developed to a bigger place by now, or maybe it's related to that New Year's resolution that you made at the beginning of this year and now that we're getting closer to the end of February, you're feeling I just am not seeing the results that I thought I would have. Well, I'm with you, my friends. I just celebrated my 250th workout at my gym, and this is a big deal for a lot of people, that finding a place of consistency and showing up and doing that over an extended period of time. Kari Lotzien: [00:01:25] But here's the thing. When my gym came to me and they give you a little prize and they take a picture and they do a social media post, at first glance, when I looked at that picture, my immediate thought was, I thought I'd look different by now. Now I'm all about body positivity and I'm all about being self-accepting. And I keep telling myself, you know, it's not about the way I look, it's just that I want to be stronger and I want to age better, and I don't want my joints to hurt, and I want to be able to enjoy my life for many more decades. But that little voice of I thought I'd be farther by now kicked in so fast, and it just immediately made me feel a bit ashamed and less than. But here's what's pretty cool. The instructor that was taking the picture that day, I don't know if she saw it on my face or what came over her, but she looked at me and she said, welcome to the 1%. Pause, and I'm like, what? She said, welcome to the 1%. She said, 12% of people in Canada have a gym membership. 1% actually use them consistently over time and are where you are right now. And that made me step back a bit and go, why are you being so nast

What I want to talk about today is empathy. Specifically, I want to talk about how your empathy may be hurting your business. Possibly in ways you’ve never considered before. There are ways you may be getting in your own way through empathy. Now I’m not saying that empathy is a bad trait or in any way wrong, that’s not it. I am saying there is a time and place for empathy and to ensure empathy doesn’t lead to business decisions in ways that are detrimental to your growth.I’ve had experience, personal experience, in letting my empathy get in my way and my business suffered for it. There are three main ways that I see in which empathy can undermine your efforts for your business. One way is making scalability and how you’re going to transition to having employees more difficult. The second way is in struggling to hold others accountable and not making excuses for people. And the third way is to prevent you from charging what you’re worth. There is a lot to examine in these three issues. How do you identify if they’re problems for you? What do you do to fix them if they are?I want to talk about how you can still lead with empathy and support as important parts of your business. But if you are allowing empathy to get in the way of, say, transitioning clients to your new capable team members, or if you’re so desperate to be liked as a leader that you can’t clarify and enforce the expectations of a job, then you’re setting yourself up for failure. How can you keep empathy in mind without giving it control? How can you continue to offer top-tier service to clients without doing it all yourself? That’s what I’m going to explain in this episode.Key Moments02:15 When empathy gets in the way of scaling your business and transitioning your clients12:58 How empathy can prevent you from holding others accountable16:39 Why do we need to charge what we’re worth and not let empathy hold us back?Ask yourself if certain clients would be better served by new team members in some areasHave you been clear in communicating expectations and productivity needs?Does what you charge allow you to appreciate your team well financially?__Resources mentioned in this episode:WINTER PROGRAM ANCHORED LEADERSHIP ACADEMY__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. Kari Lotzien: [00:00:38] Hello, my friends. I'm so glad you're here. Today I want to talk to you about how empathy might be hurting your business, and specifically, how empathy may be hurting your ability to scale or grow your business. This topic is coming from a place of real vulnerability because as I took my business, I was an occupational therapist for 22 years who grew a private rehab practice and eventually went on to sell that same business that I was so proud of. Now, in these last few years, as I've come into business and leadership coaching, and I've had the opportunity to work with so many entrepreneurs in service-based businesses. So I'm talking to the psychologists, the healthcare workers, massage therapists, chiropractors, SLPs, as well as financial planning accountants, bookkeepers, any space where your service has led your business. I'm seeing a theme through all of these practices as they grow and scale, and they are coming up against the same challenges that I did over and over and over again. And I just want to openly talk about it, because I don't think that this is something that you get in traditional sales and marketing books or how to create, you know, great offers for your clients when we think about scaling. Kari Lotzien: [00:02:02] What I want to talk about today is where you might be getting in your own way. And I'm going to offer just a little bit of self-reflection because looking back I now see where my own empathy was really getting in my way. So I want to start off with like, let's just be so honest. If you are in a service-based business and if you've started off small, maybe as a solopreneur, you are hoping that maybe you could kind of get this business going as a side hustle and get some clients that would maybe pay you and pay you consistently for your services and the things that you were really interested in. Your ability to empathize, to understand what your clients needed, what their fears were, maybe where they were confused, or what information did they need? When you were able to connect with your clients or your customers in a place of empathy, it likely

A topic came up during our Anchored Leadership training that is a challenge faced by many small businesses. It’s something every business owner with a team will face sooner or later. What to do when a key member of your team leaves? Regardless of whether that person is going away temporarily, on an extended vacation or maternity leave, or they’ll be gone permanently, they got a new job or moved cities, losing a member of your team that you rely heavily on is a blow that’s difficult to overcome. So I’m going to talk about being proactive.People are transitional, they follow opportunities, ideals, and family decisions. The days of choosing one job and staying there until retirement are long gone. But just because a phenomenal person indicates they may only be with you for a short while, never shy away from hiring them. Even a short time with a phenomenal person will benefit your business. Instead, get proactive about preparing for inevitable departures. Think ahead. There are choices you can make that set your business up to do well even when someone leaves.Ask yourself if there is cross-coverage for every team member’s job. If somebody takes care of a vital aspect of your business and nobody else knows how to do it, that is a gap you need to fill. Cross-training is essential and that goes for your role as well. It’s the ability to assess what your business needs and will need in the future, and how best to alleviate client and customer concerns about team member departures that will set you up for client retention and behind-the-scenes success. How do you do that now, when things are going well? I’ll lay out key points to consider so you can think about the future needs of your business today.Key Moments02:06 Why you should hire that phenomenal talent even if their time in your business may be short03:26 All the reasons for cross-training team members07:49 Why you should encourage relationships between clients and other staffThere are ways to prepare for client retention when providers leave healthcare jobsWhen you should introduce new hires to your team and clientsHow you deal with team member departures will be closely watched by the rest of the staff__Resources mentioned in this episode:WINTER PROGRAM ANCHORED LEADERSHIP ACADEMY__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. Kari Lotzien: [00:00:38] Hello my friends. I'm so glad you're here. Today, I want to share a topic that came up during our anchored leadership training, and I recognized pretty quickly that this is a challenge that is faced by many small businesses. It's when a key member of your team leaves. Now, this can come in so many different forms. It may be that someone is going on maternity leave or taking a leave of absence due to illness or to be a caregiver for a family member. Or maybe they're leaving permanently, they got transferred or they're moving to a new community. Regardless, having to deal with transitioning employees is an inevitable part of business. And I think that we aim or we hope that we will get to a point in our business where we have a really strong, solid team where everyone knows what they're doing, they're well connected and that we'll live happily ever after. But the truth is, this is a moving target, and people have lives that are always changing. And the days of staying in a job for decades and then retiring in that said job are really something we're seeing less and less of. People are more transitional, and they will follow new opportunities. And you might have a phenomenal employee who stays with you for a very short period of time. Kari Lotzien: [00:02:05] Number one, I don't want you to ever shy away from hiring a phenomenal team member just because you think that they may not be with you that long. If they have a love of travelling or they mention that they may end up having a new opportunity, I don't think that it is ever worth not taking a chance on people, because I can tell you some of my best hires, and the people that really moved my business forward, were people that didn't stay with me long. The benefit they had to my business, I wouldn't take it back for anything. I think that there are ways that we can be proactive in how we manage this very real challenge that many small business owners face. We want to be proactive. Don't ever assume that by offering people more money, or by making them feel like they're irreplaceab

If you’ve done your strategic planning for 2024, you may have laid out some big goals, and you might be asking yourself “Is business coaching worth it?”. I’m going to be exceptionally candid with you in this episode. Business coaching is a great help but it’s not always the best investment for you and your business in certain situations. You want to ensure a return on your investment so I want to give you guidance in what to consider when thinking about a business coach and how to hire a good one when you’re ready.I understand the hesitation in hiring a business coach, when I was growing my first business, I held off on hiring a coach past the point where I should have. I have also hired a coach who seemed like a good fit but I didn’t get good value out of the relationship. For a business coach to be beneficial to you, there is a lot to consider. I’ve come up with seven steps that guide you through the whole process from conception to hiring to ensure you find the right match for your goals.The seven key points are designed to lead you on a journey of introspection to be sure you’re ready to benefit from what coaching can offer. First, ask yourself what you hope to get out of coaching. Before you try to narrow down the options in the field or interview a potential coach, know what you need. Also, do you have the time and energy to invest in coaching? Be honest. There are a lot of business coaches that charge big money and for you to get the results you want, you need to have the time to invest in what you learn from the coach. Then you have to ask yourself the hardest question: are you coachable? How do you assess that? How do you know you’ll be able to follow through on your plans? How do you narrow down the glut of options in the business coaching industry? Those questions, and more, are what this episode will help you answer.Key Moments03:30 What do you hope to get out of coaching? How can you answer this for your business?09:45 You need to find a coach who understands you and what you want from your business.14:44 How to dig in and ask a potential coach the right questions.Being coachable is a key component of the relationship, it’s a two-sided coinWill you be able to commit to putting into action the things you learn from your coach?Coaching will not save a floundering business if all your energy is devoted to keeping it afloat.__Resources mentioned in this episode:WINTER PROGRAM ANCHORED LEADERSHIP ACADEMY__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. Kari Lotzien: [00:00:37] Hello, my friends. I'm so glad you're here. You might have done your strategic planning for 2024, and you've got some big goals. And you might be wondering, is business coaching worth it? So whether you're looking at the Anchored Leadership Academy, the group training program, or maybe you're considering private coaching for your business, I want to be really clear. I do not always think that business coaching is the best investment. Today, I'm going to talk to you really openly about how I think you can use your resources with more clarity, and that if you choose to hire a coach this year or do a group training program, that you're really clear on what you want out of it, and that you're going through a process to make sure that what you're investing in is helping you to ensure that you're getting your return on your investment. I know that it's hard. As a small business owner myself, I started my business when I was in my early 20s, grew it for 22 years, and then sold. Kari Lotzien: [00:01:36] And I know myself how reluctant, number one, I was to spend money on coaching, and I held on for a really long time and didn't seek coaching when I probably should have. And then I know there's times where I hired a coach and thought that I was going to get a lot of great value out of it and I was disappointed. And there was times where I found the right fit, where I was in a place where I knew what I needed. I was able to find the person or the program that was a great fit for me at that time, and I was able to move forward and get the results that I really needed. And I think too often when we look at the coaching industry, which is so saturated, we tend to be drawn towards the shiny things that people who have the most money and the private jet and the fancy cars, and we think that, well, if they have all of those things, they must be a great business co

We entrepreneurs tend to have big dreams, big ideas, and visionary goals. Sometimes we find ourselves at the right time to set those goals into something solid. Like in January, we might decide to finally write that book or launch that course. Or when we hit a certain financial goal. What often happens, though, is that we allow other people’s criticism or skepticism to hold us back from realizing those ideas. Or we don’t plan for the goals to be achieved and they eventually fade. So today I want to talk about the productivity needed to see our dreams come to life. Author Steven Pressfield believes that the greater a task is to our soul’s evolution, the more resistance we will face in coming to achieve it. That actually gives me a sense of relief, instead of seeming daunting, because it assures me that when I encounter resistance in realizing my goal, I’m on the right path. When we encounter that resistance, it’s time to dig in and really be of service to what we dream of doing. But how? What steps can we actually take to make that happen?I’m sharing five points in a service model designed to get big dreams and big ideas out of our heads and into reality. The five steps I’ll dive deep into are clarity, self-discipline, self-regulation, narrow focus, and cluster energy tasks. These steps help define what the dream looks like in terms of moving forward and then creating habits and tasks that keep us self-motivated on the journey. We become our own best sources of discipline. We have all the steps laid out for ourselves so that we know what to accomplish daily which will bring us closer to the dream. Join me in this mini masterclass on the productivity needed to make goals a reality instead of just great ideas that we remember later and wish we’d acted on. Key Moments07:47 Achieving clarity on our big dream12:28: Self-discipline and self-regulation work hand-in-hand24:33 Narrowing focus to get rid of distractionsWhen we recognize we’re going to have to achieve our own dreams, we need to set ourselves up for successForming habits, task breakdowns, and clear goals are some keys to daily productivityWhen I say “cluster energy tasks”, what does that mean and how can we structure that?__Resources mentioned in this episode:WINTER PROGRAM ANCHORED LEADERSHIP ACADEMY“The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield“Do the Work” by Steven PressfieldAsana__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor the Podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea, big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy, and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode, so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much! Kari Lotzien: [00:01:12] Hello my friends, I'm so glad you're here. Today I want to do a mini masterclass on productivity and moving forward to create the life that you crave. Now this is my tagline and I think that there are so many of us out there. I know that my listeners are high performers. We dream big, we have big visions and big ideas, but just like everyone else, we come up against resistance. We come into times where we set those big goals, maybe you did it early in January where you thought about maybe this is the year that I'm going to cross that 6, 7 or 8 figure mark in my business. Maybe this is the year that you decided I really want to write my book. I want to speak on stages. I want to launch that course. Or maybe this is the year you decided I want to do that marathon, or this is the year that I get into the best health of my life. I have had more crazy ideas and big dreams and big goals then probably anyone that I have known. And in the beginning I would hold back. I wouldn't tell people my big dreams because they would be met with criticism, with sometimes laughter, or a lot of questions, How are you going to do that? But I think that no matter who you are, no matter what age you are, no matter where you live, I believe that dreams and visions and ideas are gifted to us, and they come through our minds and our souls with an invitation, and it is only when we are willing to do the work and accept the invitation that we get the bo

Something really successful people often do, when telling their stories of rags to riches or hardship to success, is they sort of gloss over the decade or so in between difficult struggle and amazing achievements. But it’s in that between time where the work is really done. And I think we need to hear how to actually navigate that decade or so when our business goes from brand new to an established organization. That’s what I’m talking about today. About the growth years of business. About the stages that are necessary for every business to move through.I like to think of these phases as similar to human development. We start in the infant stage, move through to childhood, then to teenage years, and finally to young adulthood. Our businesses are not that different. They start in infancy, take steps in childhood growth, become independent teens, and finally are fully grown, young adults. When we think about our businesses in this manner, it’s easy to define the stages that we need to take our business through. But how do we realize success in each stage? What are the right things to do when?Do we start right off with strong marketing and an omnipresent social media presence when we’re just in the infant phase? Or is that the time for market research and developing our customer service? When should we hire? When should our focus simply be on client experience? When should we expand our offerings? What feedback do we allow to shape our business? These are the things I talk about in today’s episode: the strategies we need to employ in each phase of business. Some things can be left until the teen phase. Some things can’t wait and need to be taken care of in infancy. Knowing when to do which thing in business, and how, is half of the journey to success. Let’s start looking at how businesses flourish like little children with the right parenting.Key Moments05:00 First step: infant phase14:24 Second step: child phase23:33 Third step: teen phaseHow do we know if we’re taking on the wrong feedback and expanding too fast?Has the ideal client for our business been identified? Who do we serve?Do we want to constantly be attracting new clients or focus on repeat business?__Resources mentioned in this episode:WINTER PROGRAM ANCHORED LEADERSHIP ACADEMYJohn Maxwell__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor the Podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea, big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy, and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode, so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much! Kari Lotzien: [00:01:13] Hello my friends. Thanks so much for being here. I love a good rags to riches story as much as the next person. I really can get so enthralled with a great novel or book or biography or podcast where someone is showcased who has gone from hardship, whether that is coming from absolutely nothing, and then building this empire of, you know, multiple 7 or 8 figures and have gone on to leave a legacy or to change their communities or give back. I can get completely enticed by a story of someone who is living on their sister's couch or battling the throes of addiction, who has then gone on to develop their own small business and then grown it to multiple seven figures and have really created a life that is sustainable and also does great things for the world. But I'm noticing that so many of these really successful people, and I say that in quotations because we're all human, and I think when we listen to the intricacies of those podcasts, you'll start to see that people are more similar, even if they have multiple 7 or 8 figures. Their fears are the same, their challenges are similar. They just come with a different package. But I think that piece that I feel is missing in a lot of these interviews, I think they give it lip service, they'll talk about, you know, I didn't get to this level of success in the last year or two. It's taken me a decade or longer. But I feel like they fast forward through what happens in those ten years to help get that traction, to build over time. And I think that there's this im

A piece of advice my grandma gave to me before my wedding is what inspired this episode. I asked her, What do you think the key is to a long-lasting marriage? And she said, Well, I think that it’s sometimes you need to not say what you’re thinking. This got me thinking about how much focus we place on speaking well, on communicating our own thoughts in speech and in writing, and on being heard. But just how much do we invest into learning how to listen well? I think listening is a key foundation in building relationships and business, and it’s what I talk about today.There are many ways we undermine what other people are communicating to us without even meaning to. Some of the ways in which we fail at listening are obvious. Interrupting is one of those obvious rude behaviors. So is talking too much, monopolizing the conversation. We understand those aren’t ideal behaviors yet we still struggle with them. And what about the less obvious ways in which we aren’t listening? Rushing people, hurrying to give advice, overtaking their story with our own. How can we truly enter into a conversation in which we speak and listen in equal measure? How do we become good listeners? Are there ways to train ourselves out of the bad habits we have that damage our listening skills? There are ways. I’m guilty of all of these things myself but I have found ways to teach myself to listen. Little things I picture or questions I ask that open people up for me to listen to. That’s what I share with you today because listening is just as important in communication as speaking. Are you ready to work on it together?Key Moments04:46 Interrupting and speaking too much07:44 Rushing someone else’s story13:02 Jumping into somebody else’s story with our ownWhat is a conversation pizza and how can it help?How do we redirect a conversation we’ve hijacked back to the original speaker?What is the objective of a conversation?__Resources mentioned in this episode:WINTER PROGRAM ANCHORED LEADERSHIP ACADEMY__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea, big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy, and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode, so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much! Kari Lotzien: [00:01:12] Hello my friends, I'm so glad you're here. Today I am sharing an episode with you that was inspired by my grandma. She is going to be 99 years old this year and was married for over 60 years. She is a long standing decades of volunteering and leadership, so I think she might know a thing or two when it comes to communication. And I remember the advice that she gave to me before my wedding. And when I asked her, what do you think the key is to a long lasting marriage? She said, Well, I think it's that sometimes you need to not say what you're thinking. And I kind of laughed. And yet here I am, more than 25 years later, and I still struggle to not always say what I'm thinking. And I'm thinking maybe this is something you struggle with too. And we could chat about it today. Because what I have noticed is that we focus a lot of energy on speaking well, on leading meetings, on public speaking, sharing our ideas in different formats, we spend so much time learning how to communicate our thoughts in writing, writing newsletters, writing ads and marketing. But how much time and investment have you given to really developing your listening skills? I have not read much about it when it comes to leadership books and management and training, and yet I think this is something that we need to come back to. I think it's one of the key foundations in building relationships and business. And it's not one that comes naturally to many of us. Kari Lotzien: [00:02:56] Something that I noticed for myself is that I tend to be a better listener with strangers or people that I don't know very well. I think this is because simply, I just don't know much about them. So there's more things that I can learn that I'm naturally interested in so it's easier for me to stay engaged, to ask more questions, and to be more

I’m putting a twist on goal setting for the new year in this episode. We are always looking for the payoff or the reward or what the destination is and we often forget to have fun in the moment of living. So while you’re setting intentions and planning for the new year, I want to set out this challenge: what goals can you set that aren’t about achievement but are simply about fun? What can you learn that’s brand new and gives you a sense of excitement?It’s the toddler or puppy sense of joy that I want you to reach for. That utterly new experience that is absolutely thrilling, full of learning, and entirely about awe. Like a toddler playing in the snow for the first time. You know exactly what I mean. We forget about experiences like that when we become adults and I want to challenge you, and myself, to find something to pour yourself into for sheer joy this year.There are three areas to consider. What can you learn that you know nothing about? What can you try that you’ve never tried before? And who can you meet that opens your world to new possibilities and ideas? It’s not about big ground-breaking things like parachuting or scuba diving. It can be something simple like taking an art class, trying a new restaurant, or inviting someone you just met to accompany you to a show. Branch out and see what you can learn, do, and see that’s brand new, just for the fun of it. Are you willing to give it a try?Key Moments04:12 The challenge: to learn something for fun with no external reward or purpose10:06 Feeling a gap in your life and intentionally finding something new to fill it13:56 Who do you want to meet? And how can you meet them?Do something you’re not entirely comfortable with but that you’re curious aboutCombat loneliness by reaching out to new peopleFind that brand new puppy joy experience__Resources mentioned in this episode:NEED LINK FOR WINTER PROGRAM ANCHORED LEADERSHIP ACADEMY__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor the podcast. I am your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea, big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot my friend. We are going to talk about everything, from big ideas to mindset and strategy, and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode, so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much! Kari Lotzien: [00:01:10] Hello my friends! Happy New Year! I hope that you had some time over the last few days or the last week to just kind of cozy up, sit back, reflect on the past year and hopefully take a pause. As we come into the new year, many of us start thinking about goals and what we want to accomplish in 2024. Kari Lotzien: [00:01:31] Whether you're the type of person that is a resolution setter, or you do your analysis and your business planning early in the new year, whatever that looks like for you, many of us who are high performers in business and in life tend to set goals, and we are constantly looking forward into I'm going to go through struggle or hardship, I'm going to focus my energy and my attention now so that I can achieve something. I can get to a reward. Whether that's in health and wellness, we're going to lose 10 pounds, we're going to run a marathon, we're going to achieve better health, eat better, lower our blood pressure, whatever that is. Or maybe you're setting big goals in your business that you want to achieve a certain revenue milestone, or you want to expand or go into a new market. All of those things are great, and I don't want to ever lose sight of the importance of setting goals and having forward motion in your life. But I want to put a little bit of a twist on it today because many of us who are that personality, myself included, we're always looking for What's the payoff? What's the reward? Where are we going? What's the destination? And sometimes we forget to have fun in the moment. So as you start to think about planning for the new year, I want to invite you along with me to set some goals around where am I going to be a beginner this year? What am I going to learn or explore? Where am I going to go? Who am I going to meet just for the fun of it? I think we get to maybe an age in our lives where we haven't been in a place of being the newbie

No, this episode has not come out a week late. I want to talk about what I believe is the most magical week of the year: the last week, between the 26th and January. I take this week to slow down, to spend time in pyjamas, being cozy and drinking tea. I put together a puzzle and read a book or watch a movie. I let go of the chaos. But I also do something else. I reflect. And that’s what I want to share with you. How you can look back and appreciate everything you accomplished.At some point during this week of rest, I turn to a ritual I developed that I love. I go through all the photos on my phone from the last year. I go right back to this day last year and look through every single photo. And while I do that, I make a list of all my favorite memories, maybe with a sentence or two about what I remember. It’s not all big flashy things, either. It’s simple things like walking my dog, my garden, a great sunset, somebody I love making a face. And I reflect on the year through the photos.We often don’t take the time, while intention setting for the new year, to actually spend time with the things that shaped us in the last year. The things that brought us joy, the fears that we conquered, the achievements we made, even the losses and grief, just the messages that life gave us. That’s the advice I have for you: to reflect. Look at what held your attention this year and what you want to give more of your attention to next year. Soak it all in. And see what you come up with.Key Moments03:44 Your past year in photos05: 44 What life really is, looking back11:06 What do you want more of next year?How looking back helps set intentions for next yearWhat words defined your last year?Cultivating gratitude for what you have before stepping into the future __Resources mentioned in this episode:Gift Guide for Small Business Owners__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor the podcast. I am your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea, big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy, and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode, so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much! Kari Lotzien: [00:01:10] It's the most wonderful time of the year. Okay, I'm not going to sing to you anymore. Some of you might be thinking that this podcast has come out a week too late. It absolutely has not. I fully believe that the last week of the year is magical. For many of us things slow down, we don't have the chaos of holidays and family and cleaning our house and doing all the things, it just slows. Kari Lotzien: [00:01:37] For a lot of us the kids are off school and we have this just space where the world just doesn't expect much of us, and I love it. My week, between kind of the 26th and early January, I spend the vast majority of my time in my pajamas, in comfy clothes, snuggled under a blanket watching movies or reading a book, drinking a cup of tea, or working on a puzzle. It's like the best thing ever. And I wanted to give you just a little, a slower podcast today. This podcast isn't about a bunch of strategies and moving forward and setting goals. We're going to get to that next week. Today I want you to just like, melt in to what this week is. This slowing down, giving yourself a space to just chill out, take a beat. I'm going to share a little bit about kind of what I do this week, because I developed this ritual a few years ago that I just think is one of the best parts of my year, to be honest with you. And I just want to share it. Maybe you want to do it too. Kari Lotzien: [00:02:51] I buy one of those 1000 piece puzzles. I only do one a year. It takes me most of the week. I'm not very good at puzzles. But it gives me something to do. Because to just sit and not have something to engage my brain and my body a little bit, I just get too distractible and fidgety. So a puzzle helps kind of keep me in one space for an extended period of time, and somehow I feel like I'm really accomplishing something when I put together a puzzle. If there's any puzzle fans out there, let me know. I put on my PJs and my slippers, I drink way too much coffee, an

I have an amazing guest to share with you, someone who will inspire your marketing journey and make you feel empowered to embrace your uniqueness. Cheryl Floris is a mother and a lifelong creative who founded Hey Sunny Studio to specifically help women in business build a thriving brand. Cheryl worked in the health and fitness industry and through being involved in bettering her own wellness, she came to understand the transformation a coach or healer could provide. But she also saw a gap in how those people were presenting themselves. So I’m talking with Cheryl all about how to market and brand your business to align with what you really want.Cheryl explains exactly why the brand identity of your business is such a key part of marketing and appealing to the clients that you want. It’s easy to just lean into what everyone else in the health and wellness industry, or in any industry, is doing but that’s not how to stand out and be noticed for who you truly are. We talk about that, about getting noticed, about what holds you back from outsourcing branding and leaning into your individuality.There are a lot of lessons to learn from my conversation with Cheryl. She shares her Three S Cycle of brand awareness, how to appeal to your ideal client, how she approaches teaching content creation, and the importance of leveraging your time. This is an inspirational and educational revelation from someone with clear passion and integrity. You need to learn how to embrace your business and brand with the passion Cheryl has, so soak up the discussion we have in this episode. Key Moments16:54 What a great designer does when developing a brand identity21:16 Why you need to always have a hand in your marketing content32:45 When fear of not wanting to alienate all potential clients keeps you from reaching your ideal clients Story, specificity, and spice - how they are the key to marketing successWhy building trust with your potential ideal clients mattersHow do you actually create 30 days of marketing content and still have a life?__About Cheryl Floris:As a mother of 2 young kids and lifelong creative, I craved a career that would allow me to have freedom in my schedule, but also fulfill the purpose I was set here to - to help women in business build a thriving brand that aligned with their lifestyle and their soul’s mission. After working in the health & fitness industry, and being involved in bettering my own wellness for over 10 years, I knew the deep transformation that a coach, healer or counsellor could provide. But there were always gaps in the businesses I worked for or with, and most of them falling under the umbrella of their brand. Whether that's connection to their visual identity, being able to pinpoint their uniqueness and leverage it, or uncovering their dream client - the gaps they had were causing friction in both their personal life and in their business. While on maternity leave with my son, I decided it was time to leverage my own strengths - creativity, systems and connection development, and my 8 years in social media marketing. Hey Sunny Studio was born and took off immediately. Since then we've been able to work with over 40 businesses to create visual identity systems, brand strategy and websites that have allowed them to grow and step into their own power as a health & wellness brand. Hey Sunny Studio Note:We will be launching our own podcast in spring 2024, and will be introducing an aligned marketing mentorship program as well! Sign up to our newsletter to be the first to know and snag a spot at beta pricing. __Resources mentioned in this episode:Gift Guide for Small Business Owners__Contact Cheryl Floris | Hey Sunny Studio:Website: HeySunnyStudio.comInstagram__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor the Podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us, to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea, big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy, and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode, so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much. Kari Lotzien: [00:01:10] All right, welcome to the podcast. I am thrilled today to introduce you to a am

Today I want to take a moment to talk about joy. Not just joy itself, but about finding joy when it’s not easy to see. Right now a lot of people, people both close and unrelated to me, are going through incredible challenges - loss of loved ones, health issues, financial struggles, not being able to meet basic needs - and coupled with what’s going on in the world, it sparks confusion and a sense of helplessness in me. How do I make a difference or find peace?You might be feeling that way too. I’m certain you can identify with the feelings of not having the answers or being able to solve things. But I have realized that sometimes we have to give up control and simply accept that we don’t always get to know the why, the how, and the way to fix things. We have to give up control. How do we do that?The advice I have for you today centers on the idea of gratitude for no reason. It’s easy to be grateful when things are going our way and we’re succeeding. But that’s not true gratitude. How can learn to be grateful, to find happiness and joy, when things aren’t going well for us? I’ll tell you how I’ve started working on it. The things I’ve focused on day to day to make sure I’m not letting life go by without some sense of gratitude. I hope this episode can help you appreciate little things that are always there so you can find bits of joy this season.Key Moments02:46 When we need to look beyond ourselves04:33 Happy for no reason07:43 One of the things I have come to be grateful forWe can be happy or unhappy for a reason, but we need to cultivate happiness for no reasonThere is power in great art and musicPets spark gratitude __Resources mentioned in this episode:Gift Guide for Small Business OwnersQuickBooks Online“Happy For No Reason” by Marci Shimoff__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea, big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy, and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode, so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much! Kari Lotzien: [00:01:10] Hello my friends. I'm so glad you're here. I want to talk today about looking for joy and in particular looking for joy when it's not super easy to find. What I noticed the last few weeks is that there are a lot of people going through hard stuff. I have friends who are facing challenges as their loved ones are passing and going through incredible challenges with their own health. I've noticed more and more people who are really struggling to meet their financial needs, their basic needs, putting food on the table, let alone planning some sort of a holiday for their families and their children. When I look at what's going on in the world, there are times where I feel both confused and helpless and I don't know how to make a difference. I don't know how to let people know that I care. And as someone who's a high performer and who really loves to solve problems, it's really challenging to find peace in those moments where you don't have the answer and you don't know what the roadmap is, and you don't know how to make things different. Kari Lotzien: [00:02:28] Today, when I thought about my episode, I thought, you know what, maybe you're feeling that way too. And maybe together I can share a little bit of the advice that I've been given over the years when things are hard, and maybe that'll help somebody today, too. What I found is that this is a time, when things are difficult, that we need to look beyond ourselves. That sometimes the answers don't lie between our own ears. As much as I like to think that if I just focus hard enough and think hard enough and do the work and put action behind it, that I can make a difference, sometimes we can't. And that acceptance that sometimes it takes more than me and sometimes I don't get to know. I don't get to know why. I don't get to have the answers. I don't get to be able to know what to do next. And those things are hard for me. Giving up control, feeling like there's a greater purpose, has not always been something that's come easily. There are people who it does, a

I am talking about something that I know all too well in this episode: feeling awkward in social settings. I’m specifically talking about holiday parties and networking events for those of us who are socially anxious and who find social events stressful and nerve-wracking. You’re not alone! I’ve found some things that help me not just survive but actually enjoy networking and parties and I’m sharing those with you. Some of you, like my spouse, are socially at ease in any situation. You can make chit-chat and strike up casual conversations without any worry at all. So this may all sound foreign to you. But if you’re one of those people who find social networking easy, hopefully, this episode will give you more insight into what some of your friends and colleagues are going through. The strategies I use to help myself through parties and events have a lot to do with preparation. I think one of the biggest things that causes social anxiety is the fear of not knowing what to say. We walk into the room and are nervous about having anything to talk about and just feel overwhelmed. I actually prepare conversation topics in advance. It might sound strange, but being prepared takes some of the anxiety away. I have a lot of advice and tips to share and I want this episode to make all of you who are socially awkward feel less alone, and to give you tools to make it through the holidays less stressed.Key Moments06:18 Creating a strategy around chit-chat and how to try it out08:37 An easy way to prepare for a party with friends10:24 How to prepare for a networking eventYou can gamify your networking goals to make it more funSet yourself an end time, you’re allowed to know in advance when you want to leaveWatch alcohol intake__Resources mentioned in this episode:Gift Guide for Small Business OwnersQuickBooks Online__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach, Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us, to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea, big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy, and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode, so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much. Kari Lotzien: [00:01:10] I'm so glad you're here. Today I want to talk about holiday parties and networking for those of you who are socially anxious or just feel awkward in social settings. This is me. I can tell you that I get stressed when I need to go to a holiday party or something that sounds like it's supposed to be fun for other people. For me, it causes me a lot of stress and I get really nervous. I don't know what I'm going to talk about. And if that's you, I wanted to do this episode, number one, so you know that you're not alone, that there is not all of these people out in the world that love to connect with other people and that we are somehow outsiders. I think there's a lot of us. And the more people that I've talked to about this, the more I have people opening up to me that they feel the same way I do. So I wanted to have this, like side conversation with you to give you maybe some ideas on how I have coped. I am not an expert at all in this area, but I feel like maybe I've got some things that might be helpful for you too. Kari Lotzien: [00:02:20] Now, I think, like many of us who feel socially anxious or awkward, somehow we connect with partners that are outgoing and sociable and that these things come naturally to them. At least, that's how it is in my life. My partner, my spouse, I don't know if he was born with it, but he is amazing when it comes to connecting with people, striking up light conversation. He knows how to blend a great story and add a little humor. I feel like I am missing that part of my brain. I tend to be a little more serious, a little more rigid, and I feel like I can't pull off this casual 'How's the weather' type conversation. Now, if you want to tell me about your deepest challenges or your biggest dreams, or the most exciting vacation you ever went on, if you want to talk to me about how worried you are about your kids, I am all there for it. Having deep conversations is much, much easier for me than this more light-hearted ch

I was listening to a podcast that was advising leaders on how to take the emotion out of delivering difficult news to employees and it got me fired up. I believe taking the emotion out of anything is taking the humanity out of connection. That’s what I’m talking about today: how to be a great leader by working with your emotions.Delivering hard news without emotion makes you come across as cold, hard, and uncaring. That’s not how you want to appear to the people who have done the hard work and their best jobs for you. We aren’t advised to take the emotion out of exciting news or joyful things, so why should we remove it from hard things? I think we do it to avoid feeling uncomfortable. Let’s talk about that.Emotions are not a gendered issue, either. All humans have emotions and leading with compassion is a human quality, not a gendered one. So join me to find out how to lead with emotion in a healthy way. What does that look like? How can we avoid explosive emotions without ignoring them entirely? How do we share our emotions in ways that allow our employees to feel safe in their own emotions as well?Key Moments03:20 How it looks when delivering hard news without emotion 05:02 Explaining ways in which emotion shows up09:40 How to manage our emotions before sharing themPartner your logical mind with your emotions before sharing newsThe importance of creating a safe space for everyone’s emotionThe dangers of being emotional to customers but closed off to employees__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea, big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy, and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode, so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much! Kari Lotzien: [00:01:10] Hello my friends. I'm so glad you're here. I am fired up a little bit again today. I was listening to a podcast, and it was talking to leaders about how to take the emotion out of delivering hard or difficult news to an employee, and it just ticked me off because I thought taking the emotion out of it is like taking the humanity out of connection. It is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, and I think we need to take this to the recycling bin. Actually, no. The trash. I don't want to ever see it again. I am so tired of hearing this idea in leadership that to be a great leader and for people to respect you, it means that you need to shut off your emotion and that you just deliver the hard news. I think it disconnects us not only from our teams and our employees, it disconnects us from our customers and from each other. And the biggest issue is I think it disconnects us from ourselves. Kari Lotzien: [00:02:17] Let me tell you more about it. I have never heard anyone say to take the emotion out of something when you are excited, or when you're joyful, or when you're sharing a win in your business. When you are fired up and things are going so well, nobody tells you to take the emotion out of it. The only time we ever hear 'take the emotion out of it' is when we're delivering difficult news, when we've had an underperforming employee, where maybe you have to lay people off, where you're telling someone that they're not doing a great job. This is when we're giving the advice to take the emotion out of it. And I think the reason we do it is because we're not comfortable, that we don't like feeling discomfort in conversations. We don't like to show that we feel anxious or fearful or maybe really frustrated or we're angry. So we're told that in those specific scenarios shut the emotion off, deliver the hard conversation, and carry on with your day. Kari Lotzien: [00:03:20] We have gone through some really tough times in business in these last few years, and a lot of people have had to lay off employees, cut back on hours, change job allocations, and we know in our hearts that people may not be really excited about these changes. What I know for sure is that when you try to deliver this type of information without any emotion, you come across as being cold, uncaring, not having compassion. An

I love to talk to female entrepreneurs who are embracing the journey. Hearing their stories is inspiring and they often share insights about entrepreneurship that may be a bit different than what we have learned in traditional leadership and business courses. So I’m thrilled today to talk with Ruby Cole-Ellis, founder of The Maby Studio and the Sylvan Lake Chamber of Commerce 2021 Businesswoman of the Year. Ruby is a powerful woman and we explore the powerful women in her family who helped shape her as we talk about generational business. Ruby’s grandmother was an entrepreneur, a businesswoman and an investor, who raised four children alone in the 60s. I can only imagine the toughness and composure she needed to succeed in a man’s world. Her ability to pivot and always move forward informed the lessons she passed on to her family. Ruby’s mother supported and encouraged all her dreams from the start, understanding that entrepreneurial drive. Generations of women encouraging each other in their goals.There are so many powerful lessons to take away from my conversation with Ruby. The importance of inspiring new generations. The vital aspect of the attitude with which you conduct business. But Ruby also leans into business from a female perspective. She listens to the external seasons and the natural cycles of a woman’s life to inform how she does business. How can we harness our cycles for success? How much are we listening to our own needs?Key Moments03:49 Learning about Ruby’s grandmother13:56 Recognizing we are mirrors and why we should reflect calm27:39 Ruby explaining rhythms and cycle syncing in businessWhy the saying “sometimes you win, sometimes you learn” from Ruby’s grandmother is so powerfulThe ability to pivot is part of successHaving it all is possible if everything is taken one step at a time, allowing for cycles__About Ruby Cole-Ellis:J. Ruby Cole-Ellis is the Owner, Founder and Principal Designer of The Maby Studio. She has almost a decade of design and management experience in Guatemala, El Salvador and Canada.Ruby holds a Bachelors in Architecture, a Master's in History and a Master's in Architecture & Design from the Francisco Marroquin University in Guatemala. She also possesses a Postgraduate Degree in Management from the University of Calgary and the IEDP ™ Designation (International Event Decorating Professional) by the QC Event School in New York. She recently earned Creative Professional “Mickey Ears” from the Disney Institute™.In late 2016, Ruby was asked to decorate a friend’s wedding. Immediately after that event, she was asked by the Bride’s sister and Maid-of-Honor to help design their upcoming weddings. Seeing the Event Decor industry as an outlet for her creative mind, Ruby founded, “Maby Rentals” on June 1, 2017. The name was inspired by her wedding’s hashtag: #maby (Matt + Ruby). In 2018, the company changed its name to, “The Maby Studio,” evoking a place where design and art are created.The Maby Studio has just celebrated its 400th Event Milestone with clients all across Central Alberta since its inception. The current Company’s Portfolio includes Weddings, Fundraisers, Baby Showers, and Anniversaries. In 2020 The Maby Studio opened its Experience Design Division which includes Corporate Events, Brand Activations and Gifting Design Services.__Contact Ruby Cole-Ellis | The Maby Studio:Website: TheMabyStudio.comLinkedInInstagramTwitter/X__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor, the Podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach, Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea, big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy, and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode, so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much. Kari Lotzien: [00:01:10] All right. Welcome to Be the Anchor. I am so excited to introduce a dear friend and just rock star entrepreneur, Ruby Cole-Ellis. Ruby Cole-Ellis is a businesswoman, designer and business coach originally from Guatemala and has lived in Canada for the last 11 years. She is passionate about women's empowerment and teaching women how to manage that work life while business partnering w

I read a study about small business owners that included the statistic that only 1 in 5 small business owners take a regular break from work when needed and that taking time off work didn’t guarantee being rested. How can that be? Today I’m diving into the topic of rest for solopreneurs and small business owners to explore what rest truly means and what type is best for our mental health.Taking the coveted long vacation away from work does not prove restful in many cases. Often we find ourselves working more ahead of the vacation so work doesn’t pile up and then scrambling to get back on top when we return. The stress doesn’t leave. We don’t truly rest. So, then, what do we do in lieu of big vacation breaks?I want to talk about three key things: business friendships, integrating rest into day-to-day work, and setting the necessary time aside to teach when delegating. In exploring these three ideas - and note I did not include taking time off as a key rest point - I have found ways to incorporate rest and increase well-being. That’s what I want to share with you today: redefining how we approach rest so that it truly becomes restful.Key Moments01:19 The study on well-being in small business10:39 The importance of business friendships14:05 What it looks like to integrate rest into your daily routineRest means stepping completely away from the phone, emails, and team issuesHalf of small business owners struggle with mental health, poor sleep, and financial worriesThe notion of active recovery can be a key component of daily rest__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor the Podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea, big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy, and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode, so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much!Kari Lotzien: [00:01:10] Hello my friends. I'm so glad you're here. I want to tell you today about a couple of studies that I came across this week. The first one is from a company called Xero, and they surveyed 4600 small business owners over seven countries, and they looked at the well-being of small business owners and different factors that were related to the sense of well-being. Now, there were some things that didn't really surprise me, such as 45% of small business owners feel stress from work invading their personal lives more than half of the time. Not a great statistic, but also not particularly surprising. They also reported that managing employee mental health reduced the business owner's well-being in 44% of cases. That supporting their employees and their team members with mental health was a challenge of the small business owner, and a lot felt they didn't have the resources or know how to best support their team members. Here was a statistic that took a bit of a twist for me. Not surprising, only 1 in 5 small business owners take a regular break from work when they need to. And they talked about just that relentless pace of a small business owner always working. And even when they were taking time off, they were also still having the challenge of being available to their business.Kari Lotzien: [00:02:52] Here was the part that I found really interesting. The ability to take time off work when needed didn't guarantee restedness. In fact, far from it. What they revealed is that in some countries, South Africa and Singapore, business owners in those countries felt rested and refreshed despite being able to take a step back from their work. Whereas in the US and Australia, what they found is even when owners were able to take regular breaks from work they didn't feel rested. Now, when I read studies like this, I always ask myself why? What's the story behind the data? And I don't know exactly what the reasons are for small business owners showing the data in this way. But when I started to think about it in my own business and what that looked like for me, I started to get curious because I think so often we are told we need to delegate, that we need to hire out, that by having team members that it'll allow us to take a break from our busi

Today I’m talking to you about becoming an anchored leader. Before you decide to skip this episode because you think it doesn’t apply to you - you’re not a boss or a CEO, you’re not in a senior management position - know that I’m actually directly talking to you. Anchored leadership is not about having a title. It’s the ability to lead from wherever you are in whatever situation you find yourself in.I have three example stories about how anchored leadership works and what it looks like in everyday life. These are not stories from Fortune 500 companies or about high-level executives, these are stories taken from everyday life situations. Anchored leadership is about finding a connection with other people, finding that true positive community, and bridging the reality of the situation with what you want the experience to become. That’s what my stories demonstrate. Anyone can be an anchored leader.I’ll answer your questions about how to approach that connected leadership mindset. What if you’re not naturally an empathic person who acts with a high EQ? Anchored leadership is a skill and anyone can learn it. This is a critical skill we’re not taught in school or in our training, but it’s one that will serve us in every area of our career and life.Key Moments02:53 Differentiating anchored leadership from negative manipulation10:58 Anchored leadership from a civilian in a car accident situation20:23 Anchored leadership isn’t about titles and a 15-year-old hockey player proves itIt’s important to understand your own feelings in a situation so you can assess those around you.What tone and feeling do you want everyone to share in the situation at hand?Find a support group to help with unpacking and learning communication skills.__Resources discussed in this episode:Anchored Leadership AcademyRemember, podcast listeners can get into Anchored Leadership Academy on an early bird rate for the first 20 people to register. 40% off with coupon code ANCHOREDVIP40 at check out.__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor:Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach, Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea, big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy, and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode, so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much!Kari Lotzien: [00:01:10] Hello my friends, I'm so glad you're here. Today I want to talk about anchored leadership. Now, if the first thought that comes to mind is, I don't think this episode applies to me, I'm not in management, I'm not a boss or a CEO, I am not in a senior level position, I am talking to you. Being an anchored leader is not about having a title. It is not about being the boss, the CEO, the coach, or the person in the most senior-level position. Anchored leadership is also not about having a specific set of education or skills in management or leadership. Anchored leadership is the ability to lead from wherever you are, and I want to highlight that if you are in an entry-level position in your company, if you're in your early 20s just starting out, or you're in a company that maybe you've been there for a while, but you're not in management, you're not in a position of being responsible for others or a team, this episode is still for you. What anchored leadership is, is simply the ability to recognize that your actions, your behavior, the way that you connect with other people has an impact on the way that they feel and the way that they act. And as an anchored leader, we are using this skill of reading other people, assessing ourselves, knowing how we show up, knowing our subtle cues, and using them intentionally for good.Kari Lotzien: [00:02:53] Okay, I want to address one key point, because you might be thinking right now that you have dealt with people who are aware of the impact they have on others, and they use things like threatening, manipulation, anger, frustration to influence others. I think we have all had a boss or a leader or a coach that makes you feel less than. Anchored leadership is about doing this in a place that leads us forward, and it does it from a place of connection and secu

You want to create raving fans out of your customers and you can! You do that by creating exceptional customer experiences. Not through discounts, giving away freebies or adding overhead to your business, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m going to tell you how to give wonderful experiences to your customers with minimal stress on your end. But that relieves maximum stress on your customer’s end.I share a story about how an appliance store made my life so much easier when my freezer died by first giving me the heads-up my fridge would be next and then by offering me a loaner fridge while I waited for my ordered replacement to arrive. They solved the cause of my stress in the moment I needed it. And that’s a key to an exceptional customer experience. How can you make your customer feel seen and how can you relieve some of their stress?Customer experience that makes the customer feel special, feel VIP, feel understood and valued, that doesn’t come through freebies and discounts. It comes from anticipating the customer’s need and making small adjustments to your service to accommodate it. Maybe you check back in with customers after three weeks of them coming to your gym. Maybe it’s a personal welcome note in a hotel room. I’m going to tell you how actually easy it is to deliver the kind of experience customers will rave about.Key Moments01:43 My appliance store customer service story09:25 How that customer experience worked to alleviate my stress14:35 An example of a brilliant resort strategy for guest roomsWhat are recurring stress points for your customers that you can alleviate?Do your customers feel individually seen?Simple things can mean the most, it doesn’t have to upend your whole company.__Resources discussed in this episode:Anchored Leadership AcademyRemember, podcast listeners can get into Anchored Leadership Academy on an early bird rate for the first 20 people to register. 40% off with coupon code ANCHOREDVIP40 at check out.__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor:Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor, the Podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea, big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy, and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode, so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much!Kari Lotzien: [00:01:10] Hello my friends. I'm so glad you're here. Today I want to talk to you about creating an exceptional customer experience. But I'm not going to talk to you about creating discounts or giving away a bunch of freebies or adding overhead to your business. The strategies I'm going to talk about today are going to add minimal stress, and are not only going to create raving fans in your business, but they're also going to make things easier on you and your team.Kari Lotzien: [00:01:43] I want to start with a story. A few weeks back, I was rushing around in the morning, running late, trying to feed the dog with one hand, load my coffee with the other, and organize some sort of breakfast that I was going to take on the road so I wasn't late for my meeting. I'm flying around thinking I'll just quickly throw together a smoothie. I reach into the freezer compartment of my fridge and my hand goes directly into this mushy, gushy, wet, disgusting soup of half frozen fruit and things that were in my freezer. Not the way I wanted to start my morning. And here's the crappy thing. I knew that freezer was going, I knew that our time was limited with our fridge. We had gone shopping for a new fridge and stove a few weeks back, because both of the appliances were starting to get quirky. The fridge was having issues maintaining a consistent temperature. We knew it was on our way out. But spending money on a new fridge and stove is really not that exciting, and it wasn't really where we wanted to be investing. So we went and looked and then we procrastinated for another couple of months until this happened. I called our local appliance store who we've dealt with before, that was where we had gone and checked out some of the fridges and stoves previously, and I said to him, I need to come in later today, what time are you guys open until

If you’re a solopreneur or a small business owner, there is an expectation that you’ll automatically want to also be CEO. Sometimes you don’t want to, though. Sometimes doing the frontline work is what you love about your business and you don’t want to step away from that. There are ways for you to keep doing what you love while also taking small moments of “CEO time”. I’m going to talk about how.The first thing to talk about is what CEO time actually means. There are three main roles in your business and it’s important to separate them: the provider role which is frontline, the admin role which is scheduling and invoicing and social media, and the CEO role. What does the CEO role look like? How do you accomplish it while keeping yourself invested in the other roles? I have advice for you. Your CEO role doesn’t need to pull you out of the frontline work that you might love. And, in fact, you might decide to include a CEO in your business down the line. But while you’re a solopreneur it’s important that you understand how to carve out that big picture visionary time every so often where your head is out of the day to day and you’re looking into the future of your business.Key Moments05:51 The three roles in business06:37 What CEO time looks like14:35 How to do effective market research as a solopreneurHow can distractions be eliminated during CEO time?Focussing on wins in business is a key part of future strategyHow a CEO type goal is very different in nature from items on a To Do list__Resources discussed in this episode:Anchored Leadership AcademyRemember, podcast listeners can get into Anchored Leadership Academy on an early bird rate for the first 20 people to register. 40% off with coupon code ANCHOREDVIP40 at check out.__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor:Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be The Anchor the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life gets stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea, big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy, and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode, so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much!Kari Lotzien: [00:01:11] Hello, my friends. I'm so glad you're here. Today I want to talk about being a CEO and a solopreneur. Most of the clients that I work with are either moving to a small team, under 10 or 20 people, or they're making that transition from being a solopreneur in their own job to starting to think of their job as more of a business. Transitioning to what does this look like long term? Where do I want it to go? This is what I call taking the CEO approach to your business. Now I started that way as well. I think one of the difficulties in the podcasts and the courses and the books that I read on entrepreneurship tend to have the philosophy that to be successful in business, you need to move toward the position of CEO in your company, and that you need to move away from working frontline in your business, delivering the service or the product, or doing that kind of frontline work. And here's the thing, I feel that there are a lot of entrepreneurs that don't want that. That their vision of why they went into business was not because they wanted to hold the CEO position in their own company. Oftentimes, it was because they wanted to deliver a product or a service in a different way that they didn't see in the marketplace. Maybe they worked for someone else, but they didn't have the freedom and flexibility that they wanted to support the lifestyle that they wanted to live. Maybe they wanted to do things a little bit of a different way, but they still were dedicated to the front line service in their business. And I think this is a challenge that a lot of us face when we really love what we do. We love working in our business. And when we listen to those types of trainings or podcasts or opinions, it feels like they just don't really get me. They don't really understand my business. I don't want to be corporate. I don't want to grow to 500 employees and multi eight figures in business.Kari Lotzien: [00:03:35] And here's the thing, you don't have to. It doesn't have to be like that. When I think about anchored leadership and being an anchor

None of us get into business anticipating disappointing clients or having disgruntled employees. We all have the best of intentions about pleasing customers and making employees feel valued in jobs they enjoy. Unfortunately, humans have different perspectives and navigating those perspectives can lead to conflict. So how do we manage conflict when it arises in our business?The first step to developing a strategy for conflict is to reflect on how you currently manage it. Do you tend to ignore conflict, hoping it will go away? Do you feel like you need to have all the answers and scramble for a solution? Or do you immediately go on the defensive? All of these are natural responses but they aren’t effective strategies. I’m going to talk about how to work past those instinctive responses to develop a more measured plan of action.Part of conflict management is getting to the root of the issue and then being willing to address it. Simply giving in to complaints only reinforces negative behavior by rewarding it. What is the complaint really about? Could it have been preemptively avoided by inviting regular feedback from customers and employees? I’m helping you with the difficult navigation of conflict, but I’m also going to help you avoid some of it by talking about strategies that deflate complaints before they become conflicts. Key Moments05:36 Avoiding conflict and other ineffective methods of dealing with it07:25 Conflict with customers18:50 Conflict with employeesHow do we manage when we’ve had a negative review?Why getting feedback, positive and negative, is so importantDo employees have all the correct expectations about their roles so they can rise and obtain raises?__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor:Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be The Anchor the Podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life gets stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea, big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy, and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode, so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much!Kari Lotzien: [00:01:10] Hello my friends, I'm so glad you're here. Today I want to talk about a bit of a sticky subject around managing conflict in your business. Now, no one went into business planning to disappoint people or have disgruntled employees. You went into business because you really thought that you could deliver a product or a service that your customers wanted, and that they valued, and that they would appreciate you for. You hired people thinking that you would treat them well, and that they would have jobs that they enjoy, and they would contribute to the growth and the success of your business. I get that. And just because you're dealing with conflict, big or small, in your business, doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. I want you to really hear that. If you are working with, serving, or have humans as part of your business, we have different perspectives. There are times where we're maybe not as responsive and we're maybe a little more reactive than we want to be. And as we're trying to just navigate this together, it can create challenge and sometimes sticky, uncomfortable situations. Now if this is happening on a repeated basis and there's a pattern to it, then maybe we want to dive into that a little bit deeper. But for the most part, I want to just talk about how you might have a strategy or a plan to navigate that conflict in your business.Kari Lotzien: [00:02:43] The first step, I think, is just pausing to take a bit of time to reflect on how you manage conflict currently. When someone shares with you that they're not that happy or they feel that they were treated poorly in your business, what's your natural reaction? And how is it working for you? So I can tell you I had a rehabilitation practice for well over 20 years. And when I first encountered conflict in my business, it was often related to cancellations, so late cancellations that came in, or people who just didn't show up for their appointments. And I got to a point where I developed a cancellation policy that if you canceled within 24 hours of your appointment, that you were charged a 50% fee. What I didn't have a plan

Do you remember the kids’ table at holiday gatherings with the family? Where perhaps too many people were crammed into too small a space so the kids were shoved to another table that felt like it wasn’t the important table to be at? That’s what inspired the idea I’m sharing with you today, the understanding of the 3 rooms we need to travel through to achieve success.The 3 rooms fit into the journey of life, of business, and of achievement. They are a series of rooms, as I envision them, that we hopefully travel through as we learn more on our journey. Not everyone will actually leave the first room. And those who make it to the second room may not leave that room either. But my hope, for myself and all of you, is that we all make it to the third room.I’ll share what each room feels like and the mindset of the people in that room. Entrepreneurs and business owners all go through every room. So the best advice I can give is to learn the lessons of each room and progress through to the next level of success. Room Three, a place of opportunity, collaboration, and conversation, is the pinnacle of the journey. What mentors can help get you there? And if you’re there, how can you bring others in? Key Moments06:07 Room One, the Kid Table room09:24 Room Two, the Room of Independence 13:12 Room Three, the Mastermind Room Do you have a mentor or can you be a mentor?Do you cling to the scarcity mindset, the belief that there’s not enough to go around?Envision a place where people listen more than speak and collaborate willingly with each other__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor:Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be The Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life gets stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much.Kari Lotzien: [00:01:11] Hello my friends. Welcome to the podcast. I'm your host, Kari Lotzien, business and leadership coach. Today I want to talk to you about an idea that I have shared with a ton of clients and friends in my life, and it's just getting so much traction, so excited to talk to you about it. I grew up in a family that there was a lot of cousins and a lot of aunts and uncles, and for holidays we would gather at my grandparents house, which was this tiny little home, and we would pack all in there and it was just loud and noisy and chaotic and things got broken and kids were fighting.Kari Lotzien: [00:01:50] But it was some of my best memories from my childhood. Although we had a kid table. I don't know if you grew up in one of those families that was really chaotic and we tried to squeeze a lot of people into a small space. Inevitably, we had this kid table, which all the kids were pushed off of the good table where the adults would sit and into the kid table, which was sometimes the coffee table, sometimes a card table, sometimes, you know, a random picnic table that was brought in from outside, dust it off and we didn't... sometimes you'd stand, sometimes you'd sit if you didn't have enough chairs. But I always felt that the kid table was the second rate table. Being one of the older cousins, I, you know, would have to look after the younger cousins, help them cut their food, help them, encourage them to eat. And I always would be watching that adult table and thinking that's where the good stuff's happening. That's where I really need to be. What age do I need to be? What are the qualifications that I can finally move my butt out of this kid table to over where the good stuff's happening? Now we can talk about how coming into adulthood is maybe not as exciting as it seems, and maybe the conversations over there were just really not as entertaining as I thought they were.Kari Lotzien: [00:03:13] But this idea of a kid table and wanting so badly to be at the adult table, I've taken it and twisted it a little bit into life, business, where we want to go and who we want to go there with. As I'm coming into some middle years, let's call them, of my life, one of the things that just keeps coming back to me is how absolutely grateful I a

I’m inviting you to join the phenomenal conversation I have with my guest today, financial planner Jillian Vukovich. Wherever you are, join us as we talk frankly about money, navigating friendships as colleagues and clients, and how being human and mental health fit into business. There’s a lot to learn.Jillian shares the very personal story of how she got into the finance industry. It’s not a place she ever imagined ending up but the way she came to it is beautiful. And who needs a financial advisor? I ask her that million-dollar question and she answers honestly. She has advice for all of us at whatever level of business we’re in.How should we teach our kids about money? What did our parents teach us? Does being vulnerable help or hinder a business relationship? These are just some of the questions Jillian and I tackle together as we discuss the ins and outs of being an entrepreneur, a woman, a business owner, and dealing with finance.Key Moments15:20 Money is fluid and psychology plays a big part in finance22:33 The pros and cons of generational financial advice38:15 Being human in businessWhat the one-third/one-third/one-third piece of advice is all aboutWhat’s the best way to manage client relationships that have also become friendships?Mental health and how it drives success and understandingAbout Jillian Vukovich:Jillian has been in the financial services industry since 2011, beginning her personal practice in 2016. Jillian specializes in assisting business owners and incorporated professionals with the growth and preservation of assets, as well as the legacy of their estate. Jillian holds the RRC and CFP designations. __Resources discussed in this episode:Anchored Leadership group coaching“Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear” by Elizabeth GilbertAnnual charity event created and run by Jillian in support of the Mustard Seed's School Lunch Program: Bowls for Bellies__Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor:Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd Contact Jillian Vukovich | IG Private Wealth Management:Website: JVIG.caLinkedInFacebookInstagram__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life gets stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us, to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode, so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much.Kari Lotzien: [00:01:10] Hello my friends. So here's how I'm picturing this is that you're headed to work. You're commuting. Maybe you're dropping your kids off or you're taking some time to just go for a walk. Well, today, I want you to invite Jillian and I to come along with you. We have recorded, I think, a phenomenal episode around business. We talk about money. We talk about navigating friendships as clients and colleagues and doing all of the the messy work in between. We talk about what it means to be human and mental health in business. I want to just invite you to listen as if you are part of the conversation. And let's just hang out together and go for a walk. So glad you're here.Kari Lotzien: [00:01:57] All right. Welcome to Be the Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business leadership coach Kari Lotzien. I am so excited to introduce my inaugural guest for the podcast. I want to introduce you to Jillian Vukovich. She is the owner of a financial planning practice, and in the last episode I talked about my advisory board, my personal advisory board, and Jillian is one of these people that holds the integrator role. We've become very close friends over the last few years, and I'm just so excited for you to meet her. Jillian, welcome. I want to start off by just letting you introduce yourself. Talk to us about your story. What kind of got you interested in owning a financial planning practice? Was there like a personal experience or a story that you can share?Jillian Vukovich: [00:02:52] Yeah. Awesome. Thanks. First and foremost for having me. This is so exciting. I'm so happy for you and for this step, this is awesome. So I never in a million years thought that I would end up in finance ever. Never. I could have told you a thousand things I would have done first. My background's in psychology. That'

Have you considered the benefits of developing an advisory board for your life? Advisory boards offer different perspectives on aspects of your business and daily life. They’re very useful. In this episode I’m talking about the different types of people who comprise an advisory board and how each can help guide you.I identify six roles for a life advisory board. Individual people who bring visionary ideas, encouragement, practical solutions, integration of logical planning, mentorship, and full stop truth telling into play when you need it. One person can’t be everything to you but an advisory board can fill all the roles you need.I’m going to explain who these people should be, how well they should know you, and how to find them. You’ll also be part of an advisory board to others in your life, so take time to figure out your own strengths and abilities. It works both ways!Key Moments1:22 What is an advisory board?4:04 Breaking down all six of the roles you need13:39 How to interview for those positions in your lifeWho do you turn to for encouragement?Who are the mentors who help you focus on priorities?Advisory boards shine a light on blind spots in the business world, that’s what they will do for you tooResources discussed in this episode:Anchored Leadership group coachingContact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd __Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much.Kari Lotzien: [00:01:10] Hello and welcome to Be the Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach, Kari Lotzien. So glad you're here. Today, I want to talk to you about developing an advisory board for your life. Now, if you haven't heard about what an advisory board is or you haven't heard that term before, let me tell you, an advisory board is typically, within an organization or a large company, they are hand-selected and then targeted for the expertise that they can bring to a team to help fill in knowledge gaps so they can help you to break into new markets or industries. They're just there for consultation, so they actually don't have what we would call voting rights like a board of directors in a company.Kari Lotzien: [00:01:56] Now, what does that have to do with life? I think that it is critical to develop your own advisory board for your life. These are a group of people just like an advisory board in a corporation that you get to hand select, that you get to build your own group that helps to be the advisors for your life. Now let's back up because many of us have family and spouses and partners and kids, employees, friends, all kinds of people who truly care about us, who are connected to our lives and truly do want what's best for us. But sometimes those relationships may have developed years ago and those people might not completely understand the goals that you have in your life right now, the things that you're ready to just let go of. Have you ever experienced someone saying to you, Oh my gosh, well, I know that you're such a this type of person, or I know that you're really good at this and you kind of cringe and go, That is just not who I am anymore. Right? This might be, you know, sometimes we run into a friend from high school or university and they'll say something and it's like, Oh, that is just, that's not who I am. Well, the same thing can happen with friendships and family members that they just don't really know or aren't aligned with where we want to be right now. Now, this doesn't mean that you need to cut those relationships or that you need to cut those people off. They can still hold a very important role in your life. This is about developing something different, like an advisory board. I feel that there are six roles in developing this team, and when you do it strategically, which I have done, it makes crazy impact on your life. Now, these are the roles.Kari Lotzien: [00:04:04] Number one. The cheerleader. This is the person that just believes in you. T

I’m on a little bit of a soapbox this episode because something has been irritating me. Do you get those emails promising huge results in very short amounts of time? Incredible gains for hardly any time investment? That’s what is on my mind so in this episode, I’m going to talk about why that’s not the way success works.High-intensity performance to get a peak result is something we know how to do, certainly, but it’s not the way to do long-term change. Athletes who do a high-intensity burn to achieve a competition goal have already put in months and years of slow and steady practice to get to that point. And that’s how progress is really made.I’m going to explain why we should focus on process goals over outcome goals. First I’m going to explain what that means so that you can really understand why slow and steady change is what wins. What do we have control over? What can we change in increments that will stay with us for long-term gain?4:31 Downsides of focusing on challenge culture intensity7:02 How to achieve stackable habits8:10 What are process goals?Life is a journey, not a destinationFocusing on the process makes the rewards more fulfillingIf you are selling quick transformation goals, check your integrityResources discussed in this episode:Anchored Leadership group coachingContact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life gets stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us, to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much.Kari Lotzien: [00:01:10] Hello my friends. Thank you so much for being here. I'm Kari Lotzien, your business and leadership coach with Be the Anchor. Today I'm getting on a little bit of a soapbox because I'm feeling a little irritated, to be honest. And it's something that's been on my mind for a really long time, that idea of challenge culture. And it is really picking my butt because what I'm finding is that my newsfeed, my email, my sales calls that I'm getting are filled with promises of short term huge results in a very short amount of time. Whether that is, you can earn six figures a month or you can make seven figures in business in your first year. You can lose 15 pounds in 14 days before you have to go to your high school reunion. Or you can change your relationship in a weekend retreat with your spouse.Kari Lotzien: [00:02:12] Here's the thing. When we have long term goals that we want to move towards that are going to change our lives, it doesn't happen through short term intense practices. It doesn't ever. Ever. We can do intensity. Our nervous systems know how to do intense. We can lift really heavy weights a few times, maybe even once. If you are someone who is experienced in the world of high performance sport, often times you will focus in your attention on perfect form. You have the ideal mindset. You've prepped your joints and your muscles so that you can do the heaviest lift you've ever done, and you do it once. You can knock out of the park that huge project at work that requires intense focus. But you can't do that for years and years. You do it for a short amount of time where you control all the other variables, you take the distraction out, you optimize the environment so that you can focus in on doing your best performance, but it's for a short period of time.Kari Lotzien: [00:03:30] When we keep doing this, when we keep coming back to intensity and we try to sustain it long term, it never works. This is the path to burnout where we do something really intently and then we fall off and we go into burnout phase and we completely shut down because our nervous system needs to recover. That's the way this happens. If you want to do that heavy lift, the way that you do it is by allowing your body a space of pure rest, of stopping before you go back to it. You don't do ten lifts and then just slowly build up and have no space in between. The way that you accomplish that big, heavy goal is you rest before and after. That's what your nervous system needs to do to recover. That's

Do you believe that in order to succeed you have to do everything in your business? Are you, as a solopreneur, afraid to ask for help? Here’s a secret: I believed and felt those same things. But there is a better way. In this episode, I’m sharing five tips I wish I knew when I started my own business. Tips that address the things we all believe and don’t need to.There’s a better way to get our business to where we want it. I know, it’s hard to let go and not be the “Chief of Everything” or to keep our business simple. But these five things I share with you will make your business life so much easier. You can start things simply and not have to offer 100 services, you can have the help you need so you can focus on what you do really well. It’s true! So let’s explore the things we believe about business that aren’t helping us and start putting five things that work into play.1:35 Things I believed that didn’t work4:30 Five things I now know that I wish I’d known earlier18:37 Reviewing what works:Don’t do everything yourselfFind people who went before youUnderstanding that you can share with others in your fieldKeep things simpleGet clear on what you really wantResources discussed in this episode:Anchored Leadership group coachingContact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor:Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd__Transcript:Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life gets stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much.Kari Lotzien: [00:01:10] Hello and welcome to Be the Anchor the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach, Kari Lotzien. I'm so glad you're here. Starting and running a new business is not for the faint of heart. We all know this as we take our idea, our vision, our dream, and turn it to something tangible in a business.Kari Lotzien: [00:01:35] I have been thinking a lot about after 22 years in business, starting as a solopreneur with not a clue about business, I was not raised in a home of entrepreneurs. I was raised with that idea that you go to university, you find your career, you work there for 40 years or longer. Find benefits. Find a pension. Retire. Live happily ever after. It wasn't until just a few months into my career when I thought, I don't think I can do it like this. I think there's a better way. And my drive, and I hear this in a lot of entrepreneurs, my drive to start a business had nothing to do with wanting to be a business owner. Maybe that's your case too. My passion came from I just saw that there could be a better way. I thought I can serve more people. I can, I believe, deliver a better service without having the constraints of a corporation or a government that is saying, this is your budget, this is what the qualifications are, and you shall not have this service unless. Now my business was in service. I ran a private rehabilitation company in Canada where let me tell you, there were no really solid private therapy clinics in rural Alberta where I lived. It was unheard of. But there was this passion in me that went, You know what? I really think this can work.Kari Lotzien: [00:03:12] And when I looked at what I would now call market research, clients were asking for it. I knew there was a demand. I thought maybe people would pay for it. I wasn't so sure and I had no experience. But I pushed through and 22 years later that business was something I was so proud of. We had developed an incredible team and I was eventually able to sell and then now continue on this journey of inspiring other entrepreneurs to bring their dreams to reality. But maybe not doing it in that hard challenge way of figuring it all out yourself like I did. I didn't go with my MBA, I didn't have a business background. I had a passion and I thought, if I build it, maybe someone will come and I don't want you to go through that same thing. So my podcast today is going to be about five things that I wish someone would have told me or that I would have known in those early years in business that I think really would have made a significant change in ho

Did you know there is something called “delegation talent?” Even more interesting is that most entrepreneurs don’t have this talent. I was surprised too. In this episode, I am talking about why it is so hard to ask for help and why business owners might be exceptionally bad at it.Luckily, this is not just a talent but a skill we can learn and develop. Even if you’re an entrepreneur who has embraced delegation a bit late in your business, embracing this skill will increase your efficiency and success. So let’s dive into why it’s tough and I will share a few tips you can use to find and retain great people that will help grow your business.If you have ever said things like “I don’t have time to train someone new” or “It’s just easier to do the work myself, good people are hard to find”, this episode is for you.1:32 Delegation Talent 3:21 The 3 reasons it is so hard to delegate8:03 3 common mistakes small business owners make when delegatingWaiting too long to delegateAssuming too much with a lack of clear communicationAll or none thinkingResources discussed in this episode:Anchored Leadership group coachinghttps://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/182414/delegating-huge-management-challenge-entrepreneurs.aspx—Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor:Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd —TranscriptKari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be The Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life gets stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy, and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much.Kari Lotzien: [00:01:11] Hello my friends. Welcome to Be The Anchor the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien, and I'm so glad you're here. I have a confession to make, and I don't think I'm alone. I am terrible at asking for help. It's been a long term thing. I think it's both contributed to my success and a lot of times gotten in the way.Kari Lotzien: [00:01:32] Well, I read a study from the Gallup poll in 2014 that says I am not alone. And if you have trouble asking for help, you probably aren't alone either. What they found is that only 1 in 4 entrepreneurs, so owners who had more than four employees, only 1 in 4 had what they called a natural delegator talent. Why is this important? Because so many of the other pieces of that study related to businesses who had leaders that were good at delegating grew faster and earned on average 33% more revenue than those who didn't. This is something worth paying attention to. Got me thinking about the skill of delegation. And so often as entrepreneurs who are beyond that initial start up phase, we hear that idea of you need to stop working in your business and you need to start working on your business. Now, for many of us who, in start up phase, this is what made you successful, being fiercely independent, learning things that you did not know before so that you could get through that initial grind of what a startup means. We get a pride with that. And often the first measure of success in business is the fact that you survived the start up phase. As you know, many businesses don't survive that first part. 46% of businesses don't survive the first five years in business. If you want to make more money and have longevity in your business, delegation is a skill set that you need.Kari Lotzien: [00:03:21] And it doesn't come naturally. I first want to just address how did we even get there? Why is this task of delegating so hard? I think, number one, the fact that many of us who have achieved a certain level of success are intelligent. We know how to find information. We know how to learn things. So we can do a lot of the different roles in our business. For me, that included everything from cleaning the floors to doing the reception, answering phones, doing my own books. I learned many things in the business and I see so many entrepreneurs at that start up phase. They're doing it all. But then sometimes we go beyond the time where it's still comfortable and we keep doing it all as we grow and we just start to feel more and more constraints on our time and then our services start to decline or fall.Kari Lotz

Does the “why” of your business still suit you? We’ve all founded our businesses on a specific passion that drives us. Sometimes, though, that reason shifts as our business grows and we change. In this episode I explore how to reassess our “why” and the reasons it’s such a useful practice.I’m Kari Lotzien, business and leadership coach, and Be the Anchor is the podcast where I discuss everything from big ideas to mindset, and sometimes just how to get through the day. Sometimes we find ourselves, years into our business, not remembering the passion we started with. This episode is me giving you permission to revisit your “why”. You can reignite your passion!If you have ever recognized a little voice inside you saying “This isn’t what I want anymore” maybe it’s time to listen to it. Let’s talk about why it’s important and how to make a positive change.2:42 Revisiting our personal why3:46 Taking time to figure out what we’re supposed to do8:38 What the big shifts in our careers tell usDo we want more time for our personal lives?Are we craving flexibility and a different schedule?What voices we should be listening toResources discussed in this episode:“Start With Why” by Simon Sinek—Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor:Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd —TranscriptKari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be The Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the sgeteas of life gets stormy and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor. If you are a dreamer, a visionary, an entrepreneur, whether you have an idea big or small, that you think might just make the world a little bit better, kinder, gentler place, you are in the right spot, my friend. We are going to talk about everything from big ideas to mindset and strategy and sometimes just how to get through the day. I don't want you to miss an episode so be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast so that we can stay connected and keep doing this journey of life together. Thanks so much.Kari Lotzien: [00:01:10] Hello and welcome to Be The Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, Kari Lotzien, and I'm so glad you're here. Have you heard the concept of 'start with why'? Many of us in business have heard this concept from Simon Sinek that leaned into that idea that business life, it's more than just going through a series of motions and actions and experiences, but it's about tying it to a greater sense of purpose.Kari Lotzien: [00:01:38] Why are we doing what we're doing? I think in service-based businesses, that concept of why does your business exist? How are you making the world a little bit better place? These are the business owners that I love working with because there's kind of a greater sense of just how are we giving back, how are we creating stronger communities? How are we giving back to that next generation? How are we improving? That's so much more than just putting money in our pockets or giving our employees a way to pay their mortgages. It's bigger than that. When I think of that idea of visiting your why, I think there's two sides to this. One, that every so often we need to come back in business and ask ourselves, Is the reason that our business exists still aligned with what our clients are asking for, what our customers want, what people really need right now. The side that I want to talk about a little bit more in-depth today is that idea of revisiting our personal why. I think for many of us, there's a perception that when we find our why, it's like finding our passion, finding our zone of genius, that answer that says, this is why you were put on this earth. This is how you're going to give back to the world. This is the thing that you were meant to do. I think it almost feels like the sky is open, this light shines down and suddenly everything becomes clear.Kari Lotzien: [00:03:18] And I think for a lot of us, it can fall short. That best case scenario is that we've had this experience maybe once or twice in our lives where we have a sense of giving back and that we're meant for something more, and that it comes with a sense of clarity and almost a calmness that falls over us in this knowingness, that this is what we were meant to do. But I think for many people, we don't have that. We don't have this sense of this is what I was meant to do, and it lasts for years. As I've been talking more with my own kids who are young adults, they're in their early 20s, there's still this sense out there that somehow when we graduate grade 12 or we leave university or we start that first job, that we need to decide what were we meant to be doing on this planet. How are we meant t

A podcast for visionaries, entrepreneurs and people who dream big. We talk about getting real with yourself, doing the hard work and we share some insights and lessons learned along the way. —Contact Kari Lotzien, Be the Anchor: Website: BeTheAnchor.caFacebook: BeTheAnchorLtdInstagram: BeTheAnchor.caLinkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.