Believing in Your Visionary Ideas

Kris Plachy: Hey, welcome to Leadership is Feminine. Thank you for joining me this week. We're going to be a quick one. I am coming to you from Boston. I'm actually here and have been leading my Sage Visionary think tank for the last two days here at gorgeous Newberry, One Newberry. It's a beautiful hotel right on the corner of Arlington and Newberry across from the Boston Common.

If you don't know a lot about Boston, it's an incredible town. It's where I was born, so I always feel a certain sense of pride about being here and being affiliated with this town. I just love it here and would love to come back. And I will.

And so what I thought I would do though today is just cover something that I just talked to my Sage clients about. You know, I know a lot of people wonder what we do in Sage. And you know what, I'll share a little bit about what we did today and I hope it will help you. If you're not familiar with Sage, Sage is a think tank. It's something that I've created about three years ago to focus exclusively on women who are leading multi million dollar teams.

Most of our clients are female founders. We have a few that are C-suite leaders and that's fine. What we need to do in Sage is, what we focus on is, working with women who are making the strategic and tactical sort of decisions for their organization and have really the final responsibility for a lot of the success of their business.

And we work through the challenges that come with that growth, the personal growth that's asked of you, the transformation that's required of you to go through that process and do it well. Every time we get together, we do a little bit about you and a little bit about you as a leader and maybe even a little bit about the team.

This time around, I've been thinking a lot about believing in believing, right? Being able to believe in something that you want to believe, which I know sounds a little tongue twistery, but it isn't, right? Like, I think there's a lot of things that we wish we believed about ourselves, about our possibilities, about our lives, about what we could create, but we don't quite believe it.

So we did talk a lot about that this week and how everything that especially, all that all of us have in our lives, started somewhere with an idea. Our ideas as leaders are the source material for everything we have. That everything we build, that everything we realize, the people that we have, the, the, all of it, it's all the source material, those ideas.

And so we did an exercise today where I asked them to work in groups and to reflect on what they think so far are some of their, the three biggest, most impactful ideas that they've had, either as leaders in their business, on their teams, you know, with their revenue, what were the biggest ideas that they think they've had?

And so that was super cool to listen to, first of all, all these very fabulous ideas. And then I asked them, You know, we've, I mean, all of it, we've had people rebrand their businesses, develop new products, buy businesses, write books, restructure their companies, partner with certain people. Anyway, so many great things that people have done, that my Sage clients have done to achieve the level of success that they have both in their business and in their life.

And it's very powerful, I think, to look at the significance of just one idea. That when I decided to rebrand my business, that rebranding helped me make multi-millions of dollars in my company, hire hundreds of people, like, have that kind of impact just because I had this idea.

The fuel of your business, the fuel of your life will always begin with what you think about. I think that for a lot of women, we don't tune into enough of our ideas. We dismiss them. We think they'll be too hard. Most women, not all, but most women think that when they have a really cool idea, they immediately start thinking about how much work it will be, and they don't want to do all the work.

They haven't really decided to leverage other people yet, like to go in all consciously on that and what that means. So we think about what other people will think about the idea. There's just a lot of reasons why a lot of ideas, as I said, get left on the cutting room floor.

So then I asked them to reflect on, so if these are your top three right now that you could come up with, where were you, or who were you with, what were you doing, when you have this idea? And so that was super interesting too, right? I was sitting in my office. I was in a meeting with my leadership team. I was having a conversation with my husband. I met a guy at a conference and he said, you should do this. I was alone. I was on a walk. I was driving home from work. I was in a hotel that I, I do once a year where I go and I lock myself in and I just, I think and I plan and I brainstorm.

What was interesting is that it sort of ended up being like three categories. They were either with someone else, sort of ideating, pontificating, brainstorming. They're alone, like in their office or in hotel rooms. So their ideating came from some quiet time on their own. Or someone told them they should. And someone said, "Hey, this is something you could do." "Hey, have you thought about this? You could do this." It wasn't just that someone said it. It was that they believed them, right?

Someone said, "Hey, you should write a book about that." and they believed them. And so they did. Someone said, "Hey, you should create this other thing." And they believed them. So they did.

So what we were talking about is what is the, what is the environment and the energy for you that stimulates some powerful thinking. Knowing that, it doesn't mean that that's always what it needs to be, but knowing that is super cool to know, right?

So for one, my, for my one client who said she goes away and she has this private time in her and she goes to a hotel and she just sort of removes herself, she knows. Like, that's important, not just because it's important to me and it helps me think and all the things, but the ideas I come with make a lot of money and help me build my business and help me establish the company that I have to be more of a leader in whatever it is that we do.

So it isn't just about what it's for you. And women are too quick to be dismissive of what we need because it feels selfish. When the truth is, when you allow your ideas to expand and have potential and have energy and get fuel, don't you change the lives of other people? Don't you have a broader impact through economic resources, through time resources, through the services that you produce and put in the world?

And yet so many women who lead companies don't invest in their own thinking. They spend too much time executing, sitting in the weeds, telling people what to do, being in the tactics.

I have a lot more I'm going to keep talking about with this. I wanted to just give you a little bit today to think about. I think that we need to think differently about what we believe, about who we are, and what our potential is, as women who have ideas.

If you identify as a woman who has visionary thinking, meaning you have ideas that other people don't, you see things. You know, the way I like to think about being a visionary, this is a sort of visual interpretation for me of vision, is there's a problem or an issue or something that's happening. And to me, it's like a circle and it's- if any of you are like Avengers fans, it's like a Doctor Strange time circle. So it's all the problem and everything. It's all staticky and active and has a lot of energy and life in it. It's a circle and it's always moving and it's very, it's very dynamic, right? We can get very distracted by the circle. Right. But what is in the center of that circle is very clear. It's a pathway forward.

So if we use the Dr. Strange example, like you can see what is through the circle, you can see to the other side. But if you're only focusing on the scratchy, noisy, staticky part, you don't see that.

I think that visionaries can see through the noise, they see through to the other side. And so they see the way forward. But sometimes that way forward requires really difficult things, really difficult decisions, really difficult conversation, really unexpected or unknown levels of relationships and answers that we don't have. We can see it, but we don't know how. And so we leave that part that- we leave that vision. We leave that idea on the floor, on the cutting room floor. We don't pursue it.

But you've heard me say it. I think women are going to solve the problems of the world. And we have got to start to believe in our own beliefs. We have got to start to believe in our own ideas and we have to start to believe in our own visions.

And what we see is possible and support one another with that and build ecosystems that support that and trust and indulge and allow our ideas to have air to breathe. And know that if we're better when we talk to people or if we're better when we have time alone or if we're better when we go into environments where we meet other people and they say, "Hey, you know what you should do?" And you believe them, whatever that is, do more of it because we need you- in your brain and your eyesight and your mind sight and what you see.

The ideas that come to you are beautiful, magical little clusters of fairies and I don't even know. Like we just can't dismiss how vital our ideas are. And I think one of the best things you could do is look at what are the ideas that you've had that have had the biggest impact on your life and on your business and on your time and on your revenue and on your team and give yourself some credit and then ask yourself, where was I?

What was I doing? Who was I with when this idea came to me? People will say, I remember exactly when I thought this. I remember exactly when this came to me. It was the weirdest thing. I was doing this. Sometimes it's not weird. I was in my office looking at my calendar. I was in my office reading email, right? What is that?

Tell yourself the truth. Acknowledge it. And let yourself feel proud of what you've already accomplished.

I'm so glad I had a chance to talk to you today. If you want to learn more about working with me in the Sage program, then go to thevisionary.ceo and go to the Sage section. We have a little application.

Oop, there's a Boston horn. That's fun. Right at the end, we have a little Sage section, you can fill out an application and request a consultation. And I would love to meet with you.

And hey, the next few weeks, I'm going to be doing a new series. And it's going to be some interviews that I've done with women who have sold their businesses. And it is awesome. Awesome. The conversations are awesome. And there is one thing came up in every single other interview. And it doesn't surprise me that it came up, but I didn't expect it to come up so much in every single interview.

So if you are a woman who runs her own company, please listen, because one of the things that we have to do better is teach one another what we need to know about the potential and the possibilities that are available to us if we want to sell. I don't think there's enough of those conversations happening for female entrepreneurs. So I want to be a part of that and contribute to that.

So that will be coming up here after this week. Thanks for tuning in today. Talk to you next time.

Remember that I asked you to be a part of my Catalyst podcast event, where I'm inviting you to become a visionary Catalyst, share the podcast link with women that you know. And as soon as you hit 20 shared links, clicks on those, we can measure that. I'm going to give you one of my bonus digital courses.

Go to thevisionary.ceo/catalyst. Get yourself registered. Grab the podcast link. Super easy, and please share it with women that you know that are leading in the world, because I'd love to be able to impact 20 million women. I know that when women feel more confident in who they are as leaders. It changes who they are in their lives.

Let's help women live and lead on their own terms. I can't wait to see how many clicks we get. Let's get it.