Hello, my friends, and welcome to this episode of Leadership is Feminine. I'm thrilled that you're here. I have something I want to talk with you about that is actually inspired by one of my clients. And I always love that. I'm a big fan when my clients help me see things differently. And so I'm going to be sharing some wisdom that came direct out of a Voxer conversation that I had with a client this week. Before I get into that, I wanted to let you know, back in January, I ran a live program called Believe! One Month to Believe, One Year to Achieve. I have since taken the 10 videos that I created for that program and written a book called Believe.

It's full of reflective questions. And also we took all of the coaching calls that we had and compiled them into an entire chapter in the book so you can kind of read through, like, what people presented with and how I coach them through it. It's all names have been changed to protect the innocent. But I'm really proud of this work. You know, I know there are so many of us who want to achieve things in our lives, but we just don't. There are those things that elude us, right? Like, why has this been so hard for me? And so Believe is my attempt at helping you really think about believing in things differently, why it's more challenging, why some things are harder than others, and how to move through that. So if you have big goals for this year, or maybe you just have one that is really important to you and you want to arm yourself with as much as you can, I really want to invite you to go grab this series. There's 10 videos plus the digital book.

When we sold this as a live program, it was $1297. And we're making the entire thing available right now for $397. So go to TheVisionary.CEO/believe. You'll find the information there and you can access it. Could be yours, a part of your library. And I think you'll really find some very powerful lessons that make your brain go, huh, I hadn't thought about it that way. And it might just be the thing that you need to get you to the next level of that big goal or that achievement or that sense of who you are that you want to believe in and then achieve. So that's my invitation for that.

Secondly, next week, I think we will be dropping the first episode of a special series that I'm going to be doing as a podcast called The Well Resourced Woman. This is a body of work that I have been working on since the retreat I went on earlier in January. But we're going to do it a little differently. You're going to get the first episode here on Leadership is Feminine and then we're going to actually have the balance of the series in a private podcast. It's not there's nothing to pay to access it, but you do have to opt in for it. So pay attention to that when we do that. If you want to listen to all the rest of the episodes for the Well Resourced Woman, I think you're going to really find it interesting. Interesting.

I'm approaching, you know, after working with so many women for so long, like there's these hallmarks of, of what I see women achieve that really buy them. And I don't mean buy as in financially, although that could be true too. But buy them agency and freedom in a way that I see other women struggle. And this body of work is my attempt at helping you see that and learn what you can learn for yourself, be a well-resourced woman. So be on the lookout for that. So what I want to talk with you about this week is something that one of my clients said. So she's a physician and in the current climate that we're in with a lot of the reductions in federal funding and so forth, a lot of large hospitals, small hospitals and so many other organizations, not just hospitals, are affected deeply. And so she was explaining to me that she'd had a conversation with her staff about what they know now and what they don't know.

And you know, there's a lot of, there are some elements to how things are flowing right now for some business owners and for some business leaders, not all that feels a little bit of that ambiguity that we felt when Covid was starting to brew, right? Like, what's, what's this going to mean? And then of course, right, that Friday the 13th, March 13th, it like kablam, right? Shut down. I certainly don't anticipate anything like that, but I do know that we are experiencing different effects within different industries and parts of the country and parts of the world. And so what I thought was so powerful about what she said, she was debriefing me on the conversation that she had with her leadership team about where they are and what her vision is and how she's holding vision based on the current circumstance. And she said, you know, we're just going to be at the ready. And I thought, huh? At the ready. And so I replied to her and I said, you know, I love that. I love that at the ready. So it gave me pause.

What does that mean to me to be at the ready? Right? Because I work with women in all sorts of industries, and it's very likely that some of the clients that I could be working with might be deeply affected by some of the, I don't know, the tariffs or the federal cuts or the federal staff cuts or the funding or. I don't know. I don't know. That's. I sit here sitting with you saying, I don't know. And I think most of us would say the same, at least yet. And it might actually be better, I don't know. But I want to be at the ready.

And so I've thought about, like, okay, what is at the ready mean? And to me, I think in, like, buckets, right? So at the ready, financially, are we. Are we stable financially as a business? Do we have some savings? Are we vesting or are we spending in a way that makes sense right now? Are we paying for things right now that don't make sense? Are we investing in parts of the business that are vital? So I've been looking at that, and we've talked about very silly things like software that we're using. Do we need to use this? Is this necessary? Are we at the ready? Are we. Are we pivoting in. I know a lot of people don't like that word, but I don't care. Are we pivoting in a way that helps us be like, to me, you know, I've. You know, I play pickleball. So my pickleball instructor doesn't want me on my toes, and he doesn't want me on my heels.

He wants me on the ball, balls of my feet. And the reason that he teaches us that is because from the balls of your feet, you can spring in either direction. You can go back, you can go forward. If you're too far on your toes, you're two over. You're two of your skis, right? Two over your feet. And if you're too wedged into your heels, you can't move fast enough. And so that, to me, is sort of that metaphor that I have in my head, too, about what if I'm at the ready, teamwise, Are you at the ready? Do you have the people you need? Have you been tolerating someone on the team for too long? Are you dealing with low performance in a way that you can't accept, especially if things change? Are you nimble when it comes to the team? Does your team have strength in it, competence in it? Are they Aligned with you. So we look at our finances, we look at our team.

I think you look at your plan, your schedule. One of my clients and I had a conversation a month ago that was, you know, she normally builds her whole annual plan. Well, so much of her plan is based on federal grants. So she decided, I'm going to look at each month. I can't look at the year. I need to look at each month. And each month we make decisions based on the month, not on the year. So what does that plan look like to you? Resources in general? Are you at the ready? Are you well rested? Are you working more than you should? This comes back to team.

What does your schedule look like? Are you over committing yourself? Are you so over committed that you're not able to look at just the things I told you? I just mentioned finance team. If you're the CEO of your business, your role is to ensure that the business thrives. Do we need to do a quick, you know, at the ready audit? And if you were to do an at the ready audit for your business, what is that? And you don't have to do that alone. Engage your leadership team. Do it together. Where are we not positioned well to move if we have to move to change, if we have to change. Do we have to actually have that conversation with people and say, we have to be ready? Change could come and it could come fast. This is what we're going to do.

This is what we have in place to deal with that. So I just loved it. Are you at the ready? I. I know I can probably expound on this even more. I would also invite you to think about that with your family. Are there going to be things that you might anticipate for your family? I don't know. I don't, I don't even mean that in the climate that we're in. I just mean in general.

Are you at the ready? Is your family ready? If all of a sudden you can't communicate, like, it's just little things that I find. I think about that. Oh yeah, no, I think we could do that better. Am I at the ready? You know, my husband and I are doing all our trust stuff again. It's like getting that all back and sort of relooked at. Yeah, good, good idea to do that. A friend of my mom's who's in her 90s just recently became, got injured and then lost a lot of her mental function as a result. And she had nothing and she has a lot of money.

She was not at the ready, which ended up Hurting her because the hospital and the nursing home and nobody could get paid. And the. So, you know, are you at the ready? Are the people in your life at the ready? I don't know. Let's just think about things like that. Like, if you have a house in the middle of, like, a part of the world that could be near fire, we are. Are we at the ready? I think about, like, oh, we probably should have sprinklers on our roof. We're not ready. Probably.

So anyway, I just wanted to give that to you, not to stress you out. I hope it didn't, because I loved the way she said it. It was very soothing. Like, resolute, sort of like, no, we're just going to be at the ready. And so it might be just worth it for you to sit tomorrow with your cup of coffee or the. Or even right now, if you're listening while you're putting your makeup on or whatever. What would be at the ready? You're at the ready, like, checklist for your business, for your life, for your family, where, you know, it's like, no, no, I'm good. I'm at the ready.

So to my client, who I will keep you anonymous for your own protection, which is so silly. I'm making that up. But I want to thank her because I just loved it. And I think it demons when this is what I told her. That demonstrates leadership. We may not know a lot, which is true most of the time, but we can know if we're ready, if our team is ready, if our business is ready, if our structure is ready, if our processes are ready. We can know if we're ready. So I leave you with that.

I'll talk to you again next time. Thanks for tuning in. Hey, don't forget that review. Thanks.