EP 263: Turning Your Values Into Action With Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Coach Erica Courdae

EP 263: Turning Your Values Into Action With Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Coach Erica Courdae

Feb 4, 2020 | , ,

But today, my guest is Erica Courdae, the founder of Silver Immersion, a Baltimore-area hair and makeup business, as well as a diversity, equity, and inclusion coach.

She’s also the host of Pause On The Play, a podcast where she shares insight and expertise on fulfilling your values for diversity and inclusion in your business.

I met Erica at She Podcasts Live! in Atlanta last October and I knew she’d be a perfect fit to kick off this month on leadership.

Erica and I talk about the frustrating origin story of her first business and whether she’s always been someone willing to speak up and share her truth.

We also talk about how she models her values for her team members and the clients they service—and why that’s a key part of how she leads. Plus, we talk about why she ventured into the world of coaching and how she settled on diversity, equity, and inclusion as her specialty.

This is a great episode to listen to if you’ve felt the call to bring your own values into your business more concretely but don’t know where to start or how to lead the change.

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EP 256: Discovering What You Need From Your Business With BrainSpace Optimized Founder Hailey Thomas

EP 256: Discovering What You Need From Your Business With BrainSpace Optimized Founder Hailey Thomas

Dec 17, 2019 | , , ,

Today’s guest mentioned early on in our conversation that she found herself taking the work that came to her, growing her capacity to be able to bring in *more* work, and never really stopping to ask herself how she was designing her business.

Her name is Hailey Thomas and she’s the founder of BrainSpace Optimized, where she helps entrepreneurs plan, execute, and complete projects in 90 days or less.

Unfortunately, Hailey suffered a big, personal loss that made her rethink the way she’d been doing business to that point.

We talk about how her tunnel vision led her to skipping her initial grief, why she let go of her clients and contractors, and how she started to process what she truly needed from her life and business.

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EP 253: Discovering The Joy of Missing Out With Inkwell Press Founder Tonya Dalton

EP 253: Discovering The Joy of Missing Out With Inkwell Press Founder Tonya Dalton

Dec 3, 2019 | ,

Our self-talk keeps us on the edge, always wondering if we’re good enough, smart enough, or tough enough.

Tonya Dalton would like us to know there’s another way. In fact, Tonya has worked hard to rewrite her own stories, clean up her own self-talk, and embrace the joy of missing out.

Tonya Dalton is the author of The Joy of Missing Out and the founder of Inkwell Press. She’s also the host of the hit podcast, The Productivity Paradox.

I wanted to talk with Tonya about how embracing the joy of missing out has transformed her own self-talk as an entrepreneur. We chat about the glorification of busy in today’s culture, the litmus tests we subject ourselves to, how we can rewrite stories that aren’t serving us, and how Tonya actively chooses what she wants to miss out on so she can embrace more of what she really wants out of life and business.

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EP 246: Learning From Your Mistakes With Leadership Developer & LMFT Rebecca Ching

EP 246: Learning From Your Mistakes With Leadership Developer & LMFT Rebecca Ching

Oct 29, 2019 | , ,

I spoke with one of my oldest business friends, Rebecca Ching, about some of the mistakes she made when she took a huge leap forward in her therapy business and opened a multidisciplinary brick & mortar practice. Today, Rebecca is both the founder of Potentia Therapy and an Integrated Leadership Coach helping entrepreneurs and leaders navigate the complexities of leadership today.

Rebecca shares both the errors in her execution and the errors in her thinking that led to some difficult years.

She also gets into some deep reflection around her personal identity and sense of worthiness that really resonated with me. For many of us self-described “achievers,” making a mistake or failing at a venture isn’t just a set back—it rocks us to our core.

If that’s you too, I think you’ll especially appreciate this conversation.

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EP 245: Coaching Yourself To Stick With It With Original Impulse Founder Cynthia Morris

EP 245: Coaching Yourself To Stick With It With Original Impulse Founder Cynthia Morris

Oct 22, 2019 | , ,

Cynthia Morris is the founder of Original Impulse. She coaches writers, artists and entrepreneurs to get out of their own way so they can finish projects that matter. She’s also the author of The Busy Woman’s Guide To Writing A World-Changing Book.

Cynthia and I talk about her 20 year journey of business ownership, creative exploration, and coaching. I ask her about the lessons she’s learned along the way and how she’s kept the business going for over 2 decades.

Pay close attention to the commitment she made to taking risks and the willingness to do the hard creative work she asks her clients to do.

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EP 242: Embracing Uncertainty To Grow Your Business With Co-Creating Inclusion Founder Alethea Fitzpatrick

EP 242: Embracing Uncertainty To Grow Your Business With Co-Creating Inclusion Founder Alethea Fitzpatrick

Oct 8, 2019 | ,

Alethea is the founder of Co-Creating Inclusion, a diversity, equity, and inclusion consulting firm with a mission to shift culture and drive equity through workshop facilitation, leadership development, and business integration.

But Alethea has also been the founder of a host of other ventures!

To continue our focus on resilience and entrepreneurship, I wanted to talk with Alethea about the long and winding journey she’s taken to get to where she is now. Because where she is now is authentic, organic growth and a whole new level of success doing work that is incredibly important to her (and to the world).

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EP 241: Finishing What You Start With Start Finishing Author Charlie Gilkey

EP 241: Finishing What You Start With Start Finishing Author Charlie Gilkey

Oct 3, 2019 | ,

Today, I invited my dear friend Charlie Gilkey back on the show to talk about the subject of his new book, Start Finishing: How To Go From Idea To Done. It’s perfect for this month we’re spending on resilience.

You see, Start Finishing, sounds like a book on productivity—and it is. But it’s the kind of productivity book that only a philosopher could write. And this is the kind of interview on productivity, decision-making, planning, and doing your best work that only a philosopher could give.

If you don’t know Charlie already, let me give you a bit of background. Charlie is a PhD candidate in philosophy at the University of Nebraska. He was a logistics officer in the Army National Guard and was deployed in Iraq. He’s now the co-founder & CEO of Productive Flourishing, which helps people build better businesses through strategic planning, system development, self-mastery, and personal effectiveness.

I wanted to find out what resilience has to do with the way we do—or do not—complete the projects that we start and the goals we half-heartedly commit to.

My conversation with Charlie certainly provided some answers to that question—and a whole lot more.

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Tara McMullin

Tara McMullin

Host of What Works

Tara is a podcaster, small business community leader, and speaker. She’s been helping small business owners find what works for them for over a decade. Her goal is to push past the hype and facilitate candid conversations about doing business in the New Economy.