Why Female Entrepreneurs Struggle with Support

Kris Plachy: Hey, welcome to the podcast. Let's talk about the vital need to learn how to be supported. Let's go.

Hey, listen. Here's the thing. Buck up. This will probably be the worst sound quality podcast you've ever listened to from me, and I decided I didn't care. I'm out of breath. And you might hear noise in the background and that's because I am on a walk in Hawaii and of course whenever I'm on a walk in Hawaii, I get all these great ideas. Not so much ideas. I feel like it's like information just comes together and it makes sense. I think it's a better way to say that. And so, I wanted to make this recording now because it's all so congealed and I think it will be useful, especially as we go into another bright shiny year.

So let's talk about support and let's talk about you as a woman. I've been working with people for so many years on how to lead teams and be better leaders and and I developed a deep knowing long time ago that leadership really is an inside job. And I know that we know that. I'm not the first to think that. That's long time coming. But what has alluded me and has really gnawed at me for quite some time is: what are those essential internal compass insights that you need to develop in order to be a confident, competent, consistent, happy woman who's leading her own business?

Because I think there's a lot of people who still wanna teach you mechanisms for success, tactics for success, and I don't begrudge. I think it's all necessary. I just also know that it doesn't matter if you learn all the tactics in the world, if you learn how to read all the spreadsheets in the world, if you understand all the accounting in the world, none of that matters if you haven't really done the work and really developed into a woman who internalizes all of that insight and that information and makes it mean something for her and her business.

So today I wanna talk about support because I've been talking to my own clients about this. I have an all-in program that I started here in January for my current clients, which is a year-long pure accountability group. We meet twice a month live, and then we're doing quarterly in-persons. Cuz I just know, like, people need that. I need that. And also I wanted something different than, "Let's talk about Rhonda in accounting" is our expression that we use in my company all the time. And there's a place for that in the lab.

So I've been talking to my all online clients and my sage clients about support. And having been here in Hawaii and leading another retreat, it was very obvious again that, as women, we have so much ambition and so many things we wanna create in the world. So many ideas, so many wisdom whispers as I call them. So when we sit here in Hawaii, we ideate, we think about what we really wanna create. I have gone in the 12 years that I've done this, from making these massive lists of things I wanna accomplish down to one. I know how squirrely my brain is, and I also know that the only way to actually achieve anything is to build an infrastructure around it.

We are too dependent on ourselves. We are too dependent on our own ability to manifest something. And when you started that out small and little and with little things like getting the business going, there was a way for you to do that, and you could touch all the parts of your business, right? But now that your business is bigger, you can't do that, and yet you're still dreaming and scheming and ideating as though you can. And you can't.

What I've realized and congealed for me is how much we talk about what we want in our lives and what we wanna create in our business, but we do not simultaneously ask, "Okay, so what's the support I'm gonna need to make that happen? Who else can I leverage to help me make that happen? How can I outsource that to make that happen?" I'm sure these are questions that you have never, in many ways, asked yourself.

I think I've referenced this before, but I was having this conversation with Tanya Dalton, who's a genius, and we were just texting back and forth about time change. And I was annoyed cuz I hate it and so does she. And so I said, "I think we should write a letter. Who do we talk to about how dark it gets now early?" And her reply was so CEO, it was, "Oh, how about we outsource that?" I was like, how would we outsource that? So what do we need to outsource?"

Now, there's a hitch here, love, and here's the hitch. The hitch is that in order to even ask yourself who or what can I leverage to support me to achieve this? You have to believe, first of all, that support exists. You have to believe that there are other people, resources in the world who can be depended on. You have to believe that your idea can be carried forward by other people. You have to believe that you are worthy of being supported.

And I think then, there's some big ass questions for you to think about because if you're anything like most of the women I know, you say lots of pretty things about asking for help but you don't do it. You don't trust help. You don't know who to ask. You don't believe that they will. You feel guilty if you ask.

You think your idea, since it's yours, you should be the one who puts it in the world. You don't think about asking for support, and I really do believe this is truly at the core of why so many women like you continue in such a negative spiral with your business. Because you don't understand how to truly put yourself in a position of vulnerability and ask for help, and then direct that help to achieve the result you have in mind. Am I right? I would love to know if I'm right, you need to tell me. Email us and let us know, or post a review. If you haven't done that in a while, I'd love to see a review.

But here's the thing, this is an achievable process that you can go through. You can learn how to trust, how to ask, how to leverage the talent of others without feeling guilt, especially when it comes to things that you really don't like to do. This is all doable. Okay? And the women who I've worked with through How to CEO and through the lab, it's so fun to watch them soar in their lives and business when they get this.

I was just leading a virtual retreat yesterday for my current clients and one of the women who was there when she first started with me, she was like under $2 million, I think. I don't even know. I think like just barely over a million. And yesterday she just casually mentions that she's gonna be closing in on $5 million. And I don't think money's the holy grail. I love money and I love a lifestyle that we can all build for ourselves by doing the work that we love in the world. But to me, money is never a target that I find compelling. What I find compelling is who you become, and then it's amazing what happens when you become her. You make the money.

So whatever your target is I don't begrudge anybody anything like if that works for you, get it. But it is not a mistake that so many of the women that we work with end up soaring financially, and it's because they learn the absolute real need and gain the skill to ask for the support that's required to grow the business and grow your life.

And so the exercise I would give you today after this podcast, I'm gonna give you a little assignment, is I really want you to be honest with yourself, and I want you to make a list of just about everything that you do on a consistent, regular, basis. And, or, that you also now want to add into that. Okay? So just everything, whatever it is, make the bed, do the laundry, call the clients, write the copy, support my top clients, whatever it is, make this whole list. And then I want you to ask yourself, "Is it reasonable to assume that there is someone else on the planet who could do this for me? Is it reasonable to assume that there's someone else on the planet who could do this for me and that they could maybe be better at it?"

You know that I started working with an assistant about three years ago. Heather, shout out to Heather. She's amazing, and she comes to my house three days a week, and takes better care of my home than I do. She comes and she helps with laundry. She sorts through things every time she comes. Something else is organized, like the drawers or the pantry or my closet or my husband's closet. I think I've talked about in the past, like when I have a necklace that's tangled, my response to a tangled necklace is to throw it away because it might as well be dead to me. Like, I cannot resolve that. And so one day I just said, "Hey, you're not any good at this, are you?" And she said, "Oh my God, I love doing that." And I was like, "What, love untangling necklaces? Oh my God, you were so my person." And so she untangles my necklaces and she enjoys it.

Now, do you see that if I had thought that everybody thought about that like me, I would've never asked. And she loves organizing. She loves all the little things. Do you know what she did for me this year? She decorated my house for Christmas and I didn't even ask her to. I had just gotten all this stuff out and I didn't have time to decorate and she did, and I didn't feel bad about that at all. Now I could hear if you love decorating for Christmas, don't delegate that. You wouldn't ask somebody else to do that. I just want a decorated house. I don't really care if I'm the one who does it.

So anyway, I just want you to make this list and I want you to be so brutally honest with yourself. Because love, in order to be the CEO of your business and the CEO of your life, you have got to do the work of being willing to ask for and seek out support, and you have got to do the work of allowing people to support you. And you can't do one without the other. So it doesn't do any good to ask for support if then you're not allowing people to do it because they're gonna make mistakes and they're not gonna do it the way you want right away. And if you're too controlling and too difficult, you shoo the support away.

Or if you're too permissive and passive, then you're paying for support, but you're not really getting what you want. So it's a dance. Yeah. It is a dance, and I think we stay in the swirl of what's the right way to be and that prevents us from moving forward. So give this all some thought as I'm slightly out of breath now, as I've been walking a long time.

So your ability to ask for support, accept support, and work through what support really looks like. That's what we're talking about. All right, so give it some thought. Make the list, be honest with yourself. Because the truth is you can likely find someone who can do all those things that don't bring you joy.

And I should say this right before I finish. It's not gonna be as expensive as you think. I really do think that's the other thing that people say is "Oh, I can't afford it. I can't afford support". I really want you to decide that maybe that's not true. Because I want you to think about two things. First of all, what are we talking about here, right? Some of this stuff you're paying somebody $18, $20 an hour, maybe $25 for what? A few hours a week? And then the other things that might be more impactful to the business. If you are not doing them, what are you doing? Where are you spending your money? Where are you spending your time? Because if you are investing your time generating more revenue, this is a win-win in a heartbeat.

Okay, and then the last thing I would say is: what will other people say? "Yeah, but Kris, what would other people say if they found out I had someone come to my house and untangle my necklaces and make my bed?" And what would they say, love? Cause I know what I would say. I would say, "You get it, mama. Let's go. You're badass. I love how you're taking care of yourself. I love how you're supporting yourself."

And I'm gonna take a wild guess that you and I would make good friends and that because we would support each other. And anyone in your life who's "Ugh, God, really? That must be nice. Ugh. Really? How do you handle it when people touch your stuff? Oh, how do you handle someone in your house? How do you deal with someone writing copy that you think is so terrible?" You know what we say to those people? Nothing. We keep going. We let them have their thoughts and we focus on our own. And we focus on building a community of women who are cheering for us, not looking for ways to remind us that we should be passive beings in our own life.

Okay, all right. Go get it.

Hey. Are you ready to go all in on you as the gorgeous, powerful woman and CEO that you are? Whether you're running a company that's at $400,000 a year or $4 million a year, or more, I know that there are practices that you probably need to advance in order to get the results that you need in your business. And those practices that we tend to ignore the most are the practices that have to deal with the people.

So if you're ready to step up and really claim the voice that you have as a woman who leads, and really lead that team as a feminine CEO, I would love to work with you in our program. Go to krisplachy.com/ceo and learn all about what's going on with us right now and get started with us this year.
<p align="left">This is the year, love. Let's do it.</p>