Well, hello there and welcome to this week of the podcast. As we get ready for summer, I wanna talk with you about rest, real rest. So let's get started.

Hello everyone, and welcome to Leadership Is Feminine. I am Kris Plachy and I am thrilled that you're here. If you're new, welcome. And if you have been a longtime listener, as I always say, thank you for tuning in. Today I wanna talk with you about rest.

So, full disclosure, as I've mentioned on many of my podcasts, it's been a, it's been a go for me. All good. Just a busy, busy, busy, busy time. We've made a lot of changes in the business and I've also made a lot of changes in my life. I've sold the home that we raised our kids in. We rented that. We bought this beautiful home, which I love, but of course it's a new home and it doesn't have a backyard and it didn't have any of it. It's a lot of decisions to make.

My twins are graduating from high school in four days. Just that there's so many things that go on, I'm sure. And I'm kind of one of those moms who never knows anything. I just never know what's going on. So don't judge me. I've always said to myself like, "How can I be a successful business person and be such a terrible, like mom manager? Cuz I'm really bad at it." But nonetheless, I'm making it.

And I'm really looking forward to when my kids aren't in school anymore and I don't have to worry about being late on paying for something, or ugh, God, ordering something. Does anybody else relate to that? I feel like it's just me. Anyway, so family coming into town, kids, then we got graduation trips, and then we've got getting them ready to move in and do all the things.

So I'm sure you can all relate to that on top of everything else, right? When you're running your own business, there's all the other things that go on with running a business, and each one of us has varying degrees of what that is. So I was talking to my CFO today and we were talking about a lot of things and she said, "What about rest?" She said, "What about rest?"

And I said, "Yeah, I need some rest. I think that's in order."

And she said, "Well, what would that look like?"

And I have some general ideas. We've already started moving the business in some directions to support that, but I thought, "Well, if it's relevant to me, it's likely relevant to someone else tuning in here on this podcast."

And so I thought maybe we should talk about having, what I wrote down as, the detox summer, a summer of rest, a summer of eliminating parts of what we do that block our ability to rest, that stir up exhaustion, overwhelm, time suck. Okay, so we're gonna call this the summer of detox. Summer we detoxed our over-commitment. And our- or maybe we could say it the summer, we detoxed saying yes, and we allowed ourself more nos. How about that?

So here's what I did. I wrote down what are some things that we could detox from? And there's some of the obvious, right? Like maybe you wanna detox stuff for your body, sugar and alcohol. Okay, good to know. Maybe you want to detox commitments in your life, right? You don't wanna go to the annual Memorial Day thing, or the 4th of July thing, or the whatever. You just, "I'm detoxing. I'm not participating in something that I have participated in simply because I've believed that I should."

So I wrote down, people, decisions, partners, conversations, and a bunch of other things that I'm gonna go through with you. The first thing on my list that I wanna detox from is Zoom. I don't know that everybody else feels the same way I do. I need a Zoom detox. We were joking about this on my call today. I'm like, I need to stop feeling like I need to buy new shirts so I can look cute on Zoom call. I bought Invisalign because of Zoom, because I was so sick of looking at my bottom teeth.

I think that Zoom has, in many ways, served us so well, in a time when we all couldn't get together, at least we could get on a Zoom call and we could look at humans and we could, you know, have a glass of wine or have a meeting or have a cup of coffee. And we felt like we were together. And for all intents and purposes, we are together, but we're not together energetically. We're just there on a TV screen. And what I noticed for me is it just is exhausting. And I'm a total extrovert. I love people, but I don't love it as a platform.

And now I think what's happened is we've, to many degrees, I'm saying this about myself, I think we've gotten lazy with how we engage with people because it's always just Zoom calls, instead of making the efforts to go be with one another. And I'm worried a little bit about the world. I know myself and I like to be with people, not just the people that I love, my family, but everybody. So Zoom is on my detox list and I'm gonna explain more about what we're doing about that here in the future. I want you to think about this for yourself, and you can make your own list, right? When I say the 'summer of detox', radically detoxing in your life to create more space for rest, what is that for you?

People. Who are the people that we just need to put in the detox room? These are not people that we're gonna engage with anymore. These are clients, these are friends, these are family members, these are partners that we share time and space with, vendors that you're tired of using and not getting the results that you want. These are employees. Who in your life do you need to have that conversation with so that you can detox?

You have an unhealthy relationship, all of us have at least one, and that unhealthy relationship is so not good for you, and ultimately it isn't serving you to maintain it. If you're honest with yourself, what are the decisions that you need to detox from or get done? You need to make them, make the decisions, get all unmade decisions finished so that we can detox.

I was having this conversation with my team this morning. I want all the decisions made for how this business is gonna run for the summer, by the end of May. I don't wanna have to make more decisions for three months. I wanna break. I want the business to operate. I wanna plan. I want it to put it all in place, but it's not gonna be me making decisions for the next 90 days.

What do you think about that? What happens in your brain when I say that? What conversations need to happen? I would imagine there's at least one conversation that you're hiding from. You need to take a minute, figure out how to have it and let it go. Let that toxicity of the unsaid words leave your body. It's time. It's exhausting to carry around unspoken conversations.

I also wanna invite you to do a consideration for your detox of over controlling, over perfecting, over supporting, and overthinking. Where are you over controlling? Hyper controlling. You are trying to make it all work perfectly and you might be driving people crazy. My clients and I talk about this a lot. I'm sure a lot of people have heard this; what if B minus was enough? Especially this summer? What would happen?

Over perfecting. That's when somebody does something, you don't think it's good enough, so you go back in and you fix it, and you don't even ask them to do it. You just do it yourself, or you expect it of yourself. What if we just detox that? Let's just let it go. There's no such thing as perfection. Who cares if there's a typo in the email? Let's move along.

The fact that we are so hard on ourselves and then on one another is debilitating you. Over supporting. I think this goes without saying, what would happen if you spent the next 90 days letting other people take care of themselves? Let's make sure the kids are fed, but how about instead of anticipating everybody's needs and inserting yourself, you waited, or you told them, "Hey, listen, I'm gonna let you know that I am here if you need something. But I'm not gonna solicit your needs. I'm gonna take care of myself."

Overthinking. Overthinking we know causes a lot of paralysis. It causes the lack of decision making, which I've already referred to. Like, we just perseverate, perseverate, perseverate. It's very common for business owners and entrepreneurs, visionaries, because you have so many ideas. Let the ideas come out of you. But let's decide we're gonna have a summer where we don't have to act on everything that we think about. Let's make a folder. I use my 'remarkable of thoughts' and just catalog them, let them be there, but they don't need immediate action.

What else? What else would you like to detox yourself with? And then what would be your strategy for detox? So I've thought a lot about like, "What would it be for me if I, assuming all of these elements, I just decide, okay, I'm gonna detox from all of this. I'm gonna let it all go. What am I gonna do? Because of course, I'm used to being, being busy and having things to do. So what am I gonna do?"

Well, things I know for sure. I'm gonna have a massage every week in my house. I'm going to travel with my kids. I'm going to work with my private clients. I'm going to probably work more on my house. In fact, that's not probably. I'm going to write a book in me that needs time. I'm gonna trust that it will work and that I can detox from these things and the earth won't stop. And it won't all fall apart.

Because what your business and your family needs more than anything is a woman who's rested, can show herself grace and love. Because that version of you I know you know she's better. At least for me, I can say just because I'm so in the throes of it, this version of me, I mean, I'm making it, but it's rougher for me, and I think it's rougher for other people. And I think it's normal that we have to admit that, that there are seasons in our lives where we really do take on a lot and that's normal as part of living. And then- but we have to be able to put a cog in the wheel at some point and say, "Yeah, okay, good. Yep. Need a break." Which is part of why we all decided we wanted to be entrepreneurs. Right? Some of that freedom.

You know, I've been telling you that we're changing up How To CEO. We have officially sort of sunset that. But the good news is, is it's not the core work of How To CEO. The goal of How To CEO, to help you really step into that version of who you are as a CEO, that work is continuing. So that's not gone forever. Just that iteration is. And we've replaced it and we're doing a little bit of a soft rollout right now, but I'm gonna give you a little overview so you understand.

But this really does stem from the concept of a Zoom detox because here's what I've learned about my clients that we work with: you are all incredibly busy, just like me and you register for things with the ever very, very pressing important 'yes, I will' intention of being on the calls, and being there live and taking it all in. But life gets in the way, mama, more times than not. And then what ends up happening is you end up using that against yourself. Because you didn't show up as much as you wanted to.

And I also believe that just that commitment could be rough. And as we're coming into summer, I'm thinking about myself, I'm thinking about you. I'm thinking about what I watch as the pattern of how most of us operate. We have summer. Most of us have a lot of commitments going on in the summer, whether it's personal commitments, cuz we love to do things in the summer, or we have young kids or whatever it is.

Summer tends to be like, "Yay, it's summer!" But it's not like summer when you were in fourth grade. It's summer and there's a heck of a lot to do. As entrepreneurs we go through the summer and then we hit the first week or so after Labor Day and we're like, "Holy crap, there's only three and a half months after the year! Gah!" it's this intensity. And so, be really thoughtful and prepared for a fourth quarter without having to have all the time commitment, that often comes with signing up with a "program".

So here's what we've decided to do. We know that there is this, elegant core of concepts, practices that you need to have to make sure that your team is thriving. It's how you make sure you bring the right people in. It's how you make sure you're having the conversations you need to have. It's making sure that you're terminating, and you're moving people outta your business who shouldn't be there. We've gotta stop holding on for people for as long as we are. It's, it's debilitating your business. Tell me I'm not right.

We need to think about how you wanna congeal this team. What kind of roles do you need? You know, the elements are critical for making sure that you've gotten the team ready, so that you can have a strong finish for the year. So what if, instead of feeling like you had to be in a program, instead you think about it this way. We have basically taken all of the concepts that we know you need most.

So I've been teaching and coaching leaders for over 25 years, and I can promise you I've narrowed this thing down. There's a lot you can learn, but there's a finite piece of leadership and management that you must know, and we have now distilled that. So what we've done is we've made, at our CEO boutique, so if you go to thevisionary.CEO/store.

You can go to the boutique, and we have a couple things you're gonna find there. The first one is the kickstart bundle. And what we've done with Kickstart is we have taken basically all those core concepts - how to establish team performance expectations, how to hold people accountable, how to set expectations, how to build out team roles - all of that is required if you're gonna build a team. Or rebuild a team that thrives.

We've also included in that your hiring clinic. So this is all the things from how to even know if you're ready to hire, how to figure out who to hire, what is an employee niche, all of that, all the way down to how to onboard a brand new employee.

We've also included the whole module series called team design, which is how to assess every performer, every person in your business to determine how best to go forward to improve their performance or help them get even better. Okay?

So we're putting together what we know is gonna make the biggest impact on your ability to thrive. And we're also throwing into that how to deal with difficult people. Because I know that every single person listening to this podcast has difficult people in their lives, and that's gonna help you with your detox. How do you move through these relationships, whether they're at work, they're your employee, they're your mother-in-law, they're your friend. How do you make this go? And how do you show up in that relationship in a way that you express yourself the best way possible?

So all of that we're putting in there because this, to me, is the vital part of what you need to know. Is there more you could learn? Always. This is it. So we've created as a kickstart. And when you do the kickstart, now what we're gonna give you is instead of telling you to come to a Zoom call on such and such a day, we're gonna invite you to participate in our brand new CEO Hotline.

And the CEO Hotline we're calling, is under the program that we call The Advisory and you can contact the hotline, leave a message. It's basically a Voxer platform, if you've used boxer, and we will reply to you within, hopefully by the end of every business day. That's the goal. I don't see why we won't be able to do that. You can Vox us and say, "Hey, I have this employee, her name's Coco, and she's been late 12 times. And every time I talk to her about it, she has a new excuse. And I really need her because it was really hard to find someone to do take this job, but she just keeps being late and I don't know how to make her get here on time. Can you help me?"

And then guess what's gonna happen? We're gonna help you. And then what we're doing, if you stay in the advisory, is we're actually going to make all of those recordings into our private podcast. So if you're in the advisory, not only will you benefit from direct live feedback from us, but you'll also get to hear some of the questions the other people are asking, and get the replies that we give them.

We're stupid excited about it because, I don't know about you, like I think of all the questions I have for my coach when I'm on a walk. I don't think of them at 10 o'clock when I'm supposed to have a Zoom call. Oftentimes we'll get on a call, she'll be like, "What do you wanna talk about?"

And I'm like, "I dunno." But when I was on a walk yesterday, I knew, and that's why I love that she uses Voxer because I can Vox her when I think of it, and then she gets back to me when she can.

You follow? You need more support than what you're getting. I know that's true, and that's what we wanna provide you. So when you register for the Kickstart, you are gonna get four weeks of our hotline included, and normally it's $800 a month, so we're including that in the kickstart.

Now, the other option is maybe you just need help with hiring. Well, you can just buy a clinic on hiring. Maybe you just wanna know what are those five key things that you must do to have a high performing team. You can just purchase that. Maybe you just wanna do the team audit. You can just get that. You don't have to get the kickstart. You can do the little modules.

But we're encouraging you to, because then you get to try the advisory and then you get support over the summer and you don't have to come to a Zoom call. Hence, the Zoom detox. I would like nothing more. See, here's the thing. I was talking about this with my CFO again today. We were talking about my clients that I've worked with. Now, I have a lot of clients I've worked with for well over two years, three years, four years, and I can tell you with a hundred percent accuracy, they're all making more money.

Why? Because they're investing in themselves and they're doing some things that are harder. Now, is everything easier? No. Cause leading is like parenting. There's always a new one around the corner that you didn't anticipate, right? But I know that if we can help you get the mess that you're wrangling in your business, cleaned up with your team, it's gonna change your confidence. It's gonna change your decision making. It's gonna change the vision that you have, in terms of how confident you are in your ability to deliver on it. So much will happen when you invest in yourself.

And so what I'd love is by the end of this year, you're looking back and saying, "Whew, that was a good six months. I'm so glad I invest in myself." Because you were able to really pull home what you wanted to do. It's a weird time right now. Market's a little funky, right? Like, everybody's thinking about what they wanna do and maybe doing things a little differently. And I'm no exception. So I'd love for you to join me.

Why not? What have you gotta lose? I think it'd be so cool if we could Vox each other. That's the thing about the podcast that's the hardest for me is, I don't get to talk to any of you. I just know you're listening to me. So think of Voxing as like a private podcast between you and I, or you and Michelle, or you and someone else on my team.

It's gonna be all of us rotating in and out Vox. So you have all these little private podcasts just for you, just for your question. I think it's super cool. I'm super excited. You should really try it.

So to learn more, like I said, just go to thevisionary.CEO/store and you'll see all the details. If you're not on our subscriber list, please make sure you get on there. I think you can do that anywhere at this point, or you can just go to the website and register for a kickstart. It's a really reasonable price point. We have it set up for three payments, if it's easier for you. And like I said, it's including The Advisory, which I just, I'm so jazzed about, you guys. I really, really hope that you test it out. I think you're gonna find it really, really useful.

So thank you for tuning in today. We'll talk again next time.

Hey, do you love this podcast? If you do, why don't you head over to the Moxie Sage. It's my new platform to share all my ideas at a deeper level. I'm super excited about it. I call it my playground, and for now, I'm going to be sharing both public and private content, written content, some videos, and I'm also going to be hosting a private podcast to my paid subscribers for the Moxie Sage.

If you wanna learn more, go to thevisionary.ceo/moxie. It'll take you right there. And then you can decide if you wanna join me once a week for an article or if you'd like to be a paid subscriber, and get all the behind the scenes and fun new things that I'm putting together.

I'll see you there.