Intentional Leadership: Sustaining Focus for Female Founder Success

Welcome to Leadership is Feminine. It's me, Kris Plachy. I want to talk to you about, I know we're still in the throes of January and you guys are all probably working on your January whatever's, right? We all have our ambitiousness-nesses that we have, this first month of the year. I think one of the reasons that we enjoy, if we do enjoy that sort of freshness of a year, writing goals down, all those things as powerful people, because I know that's what you are.

There's an intentionality that it calls upon for you, that you are invited to possess this new level of intentionality. You confront things that you maybe haven't been paying attention to. You tell yourself truths you haven't been saying. You sort of put your foot down, you're, "I'm going to do this". And so you ground yourself in this wisdom of intention that I think is quite inspiring. I think that's why resolutions feel so good because we're intentional, right?

And I think if we were to confront ourselves, as we go through the year, or just with anything really, that we say we're going to do and then we don't, what happens is we become unintentional, right? We lose that. We start off with a lot of intention and then we separate from intention. And when we separate from intention, we go into sort of being unintentional in a lot of different ways or whatever area that we're going to focus on. I'll use some examples here in a second. And then we don't achieve what we said we would.

And I don't think it has anything to do with our ability to achieve what we want to achieve, that we say we want. It's more to do with that we stop being intentional, right? So I've been giving this a lot of thought and I've been really thinking about myself because I've really turned a corner in some areas of my life that I've always been sort of unintentional. Like, I've been inspired and intentional for a minute and then I'm not anymore. But now I'm very intentional. Like, I haven't lost that.

I always am intrigued by myself when things change because I think as a coach, that's part of what I do, is I notice my own behavior and I see it. There's so many people I know who struggle with similar issues, but I think where this resonates and I think is relevant to this podcast is when it comes to leadership.

You all have heard me talk and pontificate a lot on different thoughts I have about leadership, but one of the things that is the most prevalent thought that I have, one of the thoughts that I think a lot, that I wonder about and I wonder how to help about, is how to help people realize that leadership, leading people to achieve results that you don't have to physically do, requires intentionality.

And for some reason, it's like, if you look at your business, and you look at all of the things you've had to do to build a successful business, like you could make a huge list of what I know you had to figure out. You had to learn how to sell. You had to learn how to market. You had to learn how to advertise. You had to learn how to productize. You had to learn how to write or keep or create content. You had to learn how to business develop. You had to learn how to maybe do digital marketing. You had to learn how to run promotion. You had to learn how to run a building. All of the code. If you run a physical location that you had to learn to be code ready, permit ready, right?

There's so many things that you have to learn that you didn't know. But you learned that because you had to, to build the business to be where it is. You didn't have a choice- like, you knew you had to. You knew you had to figure out how to process people's payments, or you weren't going to make money, right? You knew you had to figure out if maybe it's your jam, but you had to tap into YouTube as your primary lead source, because that's where everybody that buys what you sell goes to. I don't know. You just knew you had to. So you did, right?

But then we do this weird thing when it comes to building the team to drive the success of the business. We wing it. You're winging it. You're like, "Oh, I got to hire a person. I need to hire 12 people. I need to hire a COO. I need to hire an HR director." You're like, "I got to hire," you wing it. Tell me you don't.

You don't do it with intention. It's like this weird- it stumps me and I know y'all get a little sick of my rants, but I'm fascinated that you would expect yourself to just figure that out, to white knuckle your way through that, when honestly, I think the hardest part of building on top of a successful business model is the team.

And y'all are out there like, "I'll just throw a job posting on Indeed and see what happens." And you wonder why you're frustrated, or you wonder why you know you don't have the right people, and you wonder why frustrated with yourself. And so then you keep doing stuff because you're winging it. And I think even people who have done programs with me in the past who are all inspired, they were very intentional. And then they realize, "Oh, this is going to require me to be intentional every day." And that's not fun, because there's other things that are more fun.

And also just integrating something else you're intentional about. Like, I think we ask ourselves to try it. Like, those of you who have a list of 12 new year's resolutions, there's just no way. You don't have capacity for that kind of intentionality.

You got to give yourself, I think like one or two, at least at a time. That's why we're doing sprints in my Lead Advisory. We're not doing huge strategic planning. I can't. I can't do that. I don't. I've never liked that. And I mentioned this on my previous podcast. Um, and I've always felt like a weirdo until a client said to me, "Yeah, I like shorter term goals."

And then I started studying other people who teach it too. And I'm like, "Oh, okay. I'm not alone. I like that." I like a little sprint rather than the whole kit and caboodle. it's way too much for me to think about, especially when I have so many other things to think about.

But do you set yourself up already to fail because you've already told yourself you're going to be intentional and create all these other things in your life? I don't know. I think it's a big ask. I think you have a big life already. What's the one thing that makes everything better, right? For me, it's taking care of myself. That's it. That is like a number one this year. I have little sprints I'm going to take in my business, but the only thing that is getting all my attention every day is taking care of myself.

And what does that mean to me? It means I walk. It means I work with my doctor. It means I take the medication I need to take. It means I eat the food I told myself I would eat. I take the supplements. That's enough. Like, all the things I have to remember, just that. I'm winning if I get through the day and I remembered all of the pieces just to take care of myself.

But here's what's fun. I take care of myself. I have more energy. You know what happens when I have more energy? I can figure out other things that I want to focus on. But I do think it's not willpower that you lose when you try to do something new and hard. Whether it's how you care for yourself, whether it's weight loss, whether it's working out, whether it's being responsive, and more timely in how you communicate with people.

Or maybe it's that you are going to give feedback to everybody on your team. You're going to start meeting with people more frequently. You're going to- what, I don't know, whatever it is that you've said. I don't think it's that you like, didn't have the willpower to continue. I think that you stopped being intentional. And I think part of the reason that you stopped being intentional is you are trying to be too intentional about too many things.

And I'm here to remind you that if you're running a multiple million dollar business, and you know it's not what you want it to be, and you know a lot of that has to do with the decision-making that you're making with the people that you have on the team, then maybe that's the thing that you need to get intentional about and stop winging it.

I think women have this, I've said this so many different ways, but I think that women have this weird belief about themselves. This is generalizing, but that somehow you should just be good at managing people, leading people, working with people. You should just be good at it. It's like naturally it should just come to you. And then when you don't either like it, which is most likely, when you don't like it or you're not very good at it or it's really hard, it takes a lot out of you. It's like the last thing you want to do every day. Keeps you up at night. It's the drama of your business. You actually use that against yourself and you feel shame and then you don't get intentional, right?

Which is, I'm doing this podcast on purpose because I'm starting the One Hour Leader in a couple of weeks and I want to nudge you. Because listen, Gail, I'm calling you out, right? Like, you sent me a message and said, you have a 22 year old business and you've been doing this for this long and you've been a long time listener. You're a perfect example.

One of my other clients who started with me in the fall, she's been listening to the podcast for four years. I love that you listen to the podcast, but there gets to be the point where you need to like get in a room with me. Yeah, let's do it. I promise you it will be better than just listening to my voice.My zoom machine weird AI thing just gave me a thumbs up. Does anybody notice that their zoom is doing that now? It's the strangest thing. I don't know if you guys can do that. Anyway, so I just wanted to share that with you.

So as you're going through the next couple of weeks, here's my big thing, whatever it is that you wrote down on that list, let's make sure, first of all, that the intentionality is what we're focusing on, not the willpower. Not white knuckling it. There was a reason that you wrote it down, whatever it was that you said, "I really want to accomplish these things this year", whatever that is you told yourself. What is the real reason? Ask yourself that question.

Don't hang your hat on the thing, the "drink 67 million gallons of water a day" or, don't use that. Why do I care if I drink water? Why do I care if I walk five days a week? What am I working towards? That's what we're trying to be intentional about, right? We're trying to be intentional about, in this case, self care, restorative care, promoting health for myself. Great.

Now, then I might decide, for the next 30 days, all I'm going to think about is water. I'm going to drink water. I'm going to have water everywhere I go. I'm going to have it all over my house. I'm going to walk. I'm going to walk 12 times in a day for 10 minutes. I don't know. I'm making stuff up. But instead of like, "I will do this list of things to do every day," I think that's how we set ourselves up.

Secondly, if you're running a company and you know this is the year that you have got to dig in and stop winging the leading part and start addressing the gaps so that leading becomes intentional. It's like brushing your teeth. It's the language you have to learn. Just like you had to learn how to figure all the other parts of your business out. We got to learn this one. And because once you do, no one takes it. And we don't base our leadership on the people that we have on the team right now. We learn leadership in order to always know how to lead anyone on the team.

Because people squeak in. And you think you hired that version of a person and that's not who they are, or they were that, and now they're not anymore. So leadership skill, just like sales skill, just like marketing skill, just like finance skill, just like forecasting skill, just like IT skills. Like, once you know the language of it, you can apply it over and over and over and over and over and over again. And what once felt hard, and like effort starts to feel like, "Oh no, no, this is just brushing my teeth. This is just part of what I do."

So we can't, I wrote this down, the inspiration for this podcast was something I wrote on a walk on New Year's Eve. You can't create an intentional future by continuing to take unintentional action. And it's not enough to say you want something. We have to design the framework that gets you what you want.

So, "I want to be healthy." It's great. But what is my framework? And I spouted that out to you, right? I have my system that I'm following. "I want to make double my revenue." What is the framework that will align to make that happen? Now, if you are running a multiple million dollar business and you want to increase your revenue, that doesn't happen unless you invest in how you lead, and the team that you lead. You don't build a multiple million dollar business, you don't grow a multiple million dollar business on your own initiative anymore. The people on the team are the people, to be very cheesy, that hold the key to that dream.

So I think we all have great ideas for this year. And I certainly want to help you achieve them, but I can't, if you don't come in here and work with me. Having said that, you should go to thevisionary.com and click on the One Hour Leader, if you haven't already, and, get your name on the wait list, or find out everything you need to, that we have there. You know, we're updating things as I record podcasts, they might be more updated by the time you get there. We start on January 30th.

I think you should do that. But I really want you to relook at what you've done. Now we're two weeks in, right? I think by the time this hits, this podcast will hit, we'll be two weeks into the year. And this is about when we start to feel like, well, we fizzle a little and then we get mad at ourselves. Then we start to feel embarrassed that we've already, you know, done whatever, or we stopped doing this thing, and that's okay.

Let's just reconnect with what matters the most and why- don't just look at the "drink 14 bottles of water a day". Why do you want to drink water? Double my revenue. Why do you want to double your revenue? Get connected. Do that work energetically. Feel the reason that you want it. And then let's really look at the framework that's going to make you deliver on that.

Not just a list of things to try and remember all day. So I don't think that's useful. And I think we've been setting ourselves up to fail for years. So it's not willpower, friend. It's intentionality. But if you don't get intentional with what really matters to you, you cannot achieve what you say you want through unintentional action. You'll end up somewhere. That we know, right? Everybody knows that. Unintentional action still gets you somewhere. It just may not be where you want it to be. It might be three clicks off where you hoped you would be. So let's change that. Thanks for tuning in.

So the One hour Leader Starts at the end of January 2024 (if you're listening to this two years from now), and the current offer is all available on the website. You could join the waitlist, I think, right now. I don't know if we've opened it up yet by the time you'll be listening to this.

And if you ever have questions, you just go to [email protected] to get them answered. And you can also find me on the Instagram and on LinkedIn. If you want to ask me any questions, you can do that there too. All right.

So go to thevisionary.ceo and then click on One Hour Leader and you are three quarters of the way there. All right. Talk to you next week.