In this conversation, Amy Evans shares her journey of launching a podcast and the personal growth that accompanied it. She emphasizes the importance of embracing imperfection, listening to one's heart, and the transformative power of coaching. Amy discusses overcoming personal barriers, the significance of daily practices for recharge, and how to challenge fear by reframing it. Her insights are aimed at empowering listeners to take action in their own lives, regardless of the obstacles they face.
Help overcoming fear to step into your power. Everyone struggles with self-doubt and fears that are real and imagined.
References:
Suzanne Wistrick, Energy Healing of Atlanta
Best On Demand Personal Development
GrowthDay*
https://www.growthday.com/?via=amyevans
NOTE: I receive a referral fee from Growth Day. I've been using Growth Day every day for the past 3 months- it's made a positive impact on my productivity, alignment to my why and ability to move the "some day" list to some thing that is actually happening.
Takeaways
Transcript:
Amy Evans (00:03)
Hey everybody, welcome to the show. I am so delighted to have you with me today. Thank you for tuning in. So here's what we're gonna talk about. Here's what you're gonna get out of today. this episode.
is actually the 10th episode of the Women in Sales Leadership Podcast. And why is that significant? Well, it's a nice, beautiful number, 10. Also happens to be the day of my birthday, coincidence. What I wanted to give you today was a journey of what it's been like since I started to have this
idea of creating a podcast and how I did it, what happened, and most importantly, the lessons that I did not anticipate learning along the way. And I think you're going to find it interesting. Thank you for being here. Okay. So today, what have I learned since starting the Women in Sales Leadership podcast? These are things I hope you can take with you wherever you are in your journey today. So
Here we go. Number one, just start. If you have been waiting to do something or wanting to do something or dreaming of doing something, you know the only day that you have to do it, the only day that actually exists, it's this one, right now, today. Don't let that freak you out. Don't let that freak you out, but it should freak you out just a little bit.
Getting started is exactly that. It's a start. It's a mental commitment to get going on something that you want to do. And when I was starting this podcast and wanted to start it, I didn't even know quite exactly yet what the podcast was going to be about. It was not clear in my mind. In fact, it wasn't clear at all. So.
Getting started doesn't mean that everything's all perfectly baked out and you have this like perfect vision of what it's gonna be and how it's gonna look, whatever it is that you wanna do. All you gotta have is that desire and that pull, if you will, by the universe to do something that is in your heart. And once you just start the rest of it,
it figures itself out, I promise you. So, just start. So I got started, and in that, I got some help, and yet again, I knew I needed help, I didn't know how to start a podcast, I didn't know anything about it. man, I looked at YouTube, I looked at the internet, I looked at all this stuff, and I was just like, give me a break, I don't have forever.
to figure this out and plus if I give myself too long, I'll lose interest and I'll move on or I'll decide it's too hard and I'll move on. So what happened for me instead,
Amy Evans (03:22)
So what happened for me instead?
was I decided I needed to get help, okay?
I don't know how many of you feel like I feel about getting help, but it's just not how I was raised, okay? And not because I didn't have a happy childhood or amazing family because I had all those things. But I was not raised to ask for help. I was raised to figure stuff out and get stuff done, right?
just like you figure stuff out and get stuff done. And getting help or asking for help or admitting I need help, I'll just come straight up and tell you I suck at it. I'm awful. I'm really awful. And this is something I am working on for myself. In fact, I have a coach and we talked about this specifically and that's a whole nother conversation of the episode of focused on.
asking for help and running experiments of doing it and understanding the story that you're telling yourself for the reasons that you aren't asking for help. But forget all that. We're talking about the podcast. And I asked for help. So I knew a woman, Alison Hare. she introduced herself to me. She sought me out over a year and a half ago.
She spent a lot of time building relationship with me and she's a remarkable human being and so impressive. She runs her own consulting company, coaching company, and she also on the side, she has her own podcast called The Late Learner, which has evolved and grown as she has evolved and grown. And she happened to have a course, a coaching course on
launching your own podcast. And I thought, okay, can, Allison can help me. It was like the universe kind of just put Allison there for me a year before I even decided to do anything with it. So I reached out to Allison and I was kind of sputtering around in circles, figuring out exactly what I wanted to do in our conversation. Then I finally told her, said, hey, I really want to start a podcast. Can you help me? And she just dove right in.
and she had an excellent program and I made an investment. Another thing that has been something that's been a growing opportunity for me is to give myself permission to make investments in me, right? I'm a mother.
I was the breadwinner for my family. When I was married, I was the breadwinner. In fact, I was the sole provider. I was taking care of everybody. And I took care of myself. I wasn't a complete and total disaster, but I was a mild, mostly disaster disaster.
Amy Evans (06:40)
investing in myself was something that I always struggled with. Like, my gosh, Lord, even getting my nails done was somehow this inner conflict of like, should I be spending money like this on myself? mean, here I was, successful senior sales executive at one the largest software companies in the world, and I am like,
giving myself crap over should I get my nails done or not? Come on. Anyway, this gives you a sense of the mindset that I was carrying around with me. I made the investment. I hired Allison and she took me through this really powerful course and I was dedicated to doing it. I was like, this is what I'm doing. I don't know what it's gonna look like. I don't know anything other than I'm called to do this.
And through that evolution, this podcast was born. She helped me get refined on what I wanted to call it, which is the very self-explanatory Women in Sales Leadership podcast. She helped me get clear on the mission, which is to empower women and connect them with their stories and inspire women to support each other.
to inspire each other and ideally inspire other women to grow in their leadership or become a leader. There aren't enough women in sales leadership out there today. Some of you know the stats, some of you may not, but what's fantastic is that in the round, in the world of sales, 50 % of salespeople are women. That's fabulous, great. But where you get into sales leadership,
is a real disparity. Those numbers get to be more like 30 % of sales leaders are women. And there's an opportunity to improve that. I'm committed to that. so get, just start, get help. That's what we've covered so far. So, and then the other thing is I'm evolving the podcast and some of you can look back if you ever were, noticed some of these early things. Like you just gotta put it out there.
Nothing is perfect the first time you take a whack at it. Think about it. Every time you learned something in your life, you had to fall down, you had to skin your knees, you had to make mistakes, bump around in the dark, fill in whatever colloquialism here fits your personal preference, and it's gonna be messy. We as women are
Typically not messy. We don't enjoy being messy. We were not rewarded for being messy. We were not praised for being messy. We were praised for being perfect. Perfect, perfect, perfect all the time. Must be perfect, must be better than the boys, must be pleasant, must be perfect. Well, you know what? When you're creating something new, it's never gonna be perfect. When you're learning something new, it's never gonna be perfect.
So I had to put stuff out there. So I will never forget putting out the first episode and it took me, my gosh, I think it took me like a day and a half just to put the episode out. I don't have a production team, folks. It's me, myself, and I currently. Maybe someday that'll change, but this is my passion project, so it's by me, from me, for you. And you gotta be just willing to put it out there.
when you're trying something new. Don't worry about looking perfect. Because here's the reality. Nobody's really looking at you. They really aren't. There might be a few people watching you, maybe. But you know what most people are just really concerned with? Themselves, naturally, right? That's normal human behavior, okay? So the other thing that I learned in this journey was, my god, I felt so stupid so many times.
and so, gosh, uncomfortable, uncomfortable.
Isn't that the phrase that everybody says, like, growth happens when you're uncomfortable. If you're not uncomfortable, you're not growing. these are wonderful things to say, but when's the last time you really got yourself uncomfortable?
and you got yourself uncomfortable because you said you were gonna do something, you said publicly you were gonna do it, and then, ooh, you're now on the hook to do it, and not only do it, but do something you've never done before in your life, right? You've never done something before in your life. Should it scare you? I don't know, maybe. What's the worst thing that could possibly happen? Eh.
I put out a podcast, nobody listens to it. I tried an experiment and it failed, right?
I tried an experiment and maybe it failed. That was the worst thing that could have happened. I would have spent some time building this thing. I would have spent some money hiring the amazing Alison Hare to help me out. And I would have wasted some time and some money. my goodness, how much time and money have I wasted my whole life doing things I didn't even care about? I'll just confess right now, it's been a lot. But this I cared about. And so...
I've really just figured out that the only person I'm doing this for is one person.
I'm doing it, if I can make a difference for one person, then that's good enough for me. And if happens to be more people, more women that benefit, wow, I'm totally winning, totally winning. Okay. So be willing to feel and look stupid when you're trying something new. And it's okay. All you're doing is running experiments.
Okay, so what else did I learn? I really learned a lot about listening to my heart. And I didn't really get the power of listening to my heart until, like it's always been there, right? Like your heart's always there, you know. There's certain decisions that you have in your life or you're approached with options.
You're approached with people and situations and you call it your gut, your heart, whatever you want to call it, listening to that. The heart is different than the gut though when you're looking at decisions and you're looking at following something. And I didn't get into that distinction until earlier this year when I was working with
an energy therapist. my goodness, I didn't anticipate I was going to be talking about this, but I will. So here we go. I was working with this phenomenal energy therapist in Atlanta, Georgia. Her name is Suzanne Wistrick. Suzanne Wistrick. my goodness. I'd never done anything like this before. Chakras, energy healing. I had no idea what this stuff was. I didn't understand it.
I wasn't sure if I believed in it, yet I was called. I felt some calling to find this out. was going through my divorce at the time. was going through, if anybody's gone through this kind of stuff, there's all these steps. Very stressful the whole thing is. And it's very difficult to remain grounded emotionally. Difficult to remain grounded mentally.
and physically even grounded in yourself and keep yourself in a place of calm and presence and patience, which is what I needed for myself and my own well-being and also for my children. Anyway, so I found Suzanne Wistrick and I worked with Suzanne, again, you're hearing a theme of investing in yourself. I worked with Suzanne and she is just,
You talk about people that she would recommend to everybody you know, she's on the list. And I don't get anything out of recommending her services anyway. But Suzanne taught me, taught me how to meditate and how to really meditate and put my awareness into my heart. And when you put your awareness into your heart, there's this saying that the heart never lies. And what that means is
that the heart never lies, right? Like you are, that is the single source of truth. There's no other influence other than the core of your being, your energetic, know, spiritual self centered right in your heart, wherever your spiritual beliefs may or may not be. She taught me how to do this meditation and so when I meditated and I listened to my heart, I felt called to create this as,
chance to be creative out in the world too and create something. I always thought I was going to be a rock star ladies and you know I guess I can claim to be a rock star. I feel like a rock star. I really do because I feel like I'm rock star in a lot of things they do. I'm a rock star friend. I'm an amazing daughter. I feel most days I'm rocking it at being a mom but some days I'm not great. You some days I need work too. Anyway she taught me how to follow my heart so
know, following my heart was a big part of the learnings that I had in going through this journey of a podcast. And if you're at a place where you're not sure what to do or you're trying to make a big decision for yourself and evaluate it for you, is this right for me or do I want to do this or what do I need to take action on? Whatever that question might be.
You can Google all kinds of meditations that help you get access to your heart. And those will help you just get some clarity. Get some clarity. I think we all need clarity every day. I certainly do. So I've hired, in my story I've hired two coaches already along the way. One that helped me on like a personal project that I had called.
get divorced as peacefully as possible, which was a personal project, and another project called Launch a Podcast. if you're hesitating, hmm, if you're hesitating, it's okay, because it's normal to hesitate. We all hesitate, it's fine. But if you want to do something, or take on something for you,
You don't have to do it alone. You don't.
There is somebody out there who has done what you want to do. There's somebody out there who can help you navigate your unique situation or your unique dream or your unique challenge and help you work through it. We are communal beings. We are social beings. We exist to help each other.
That's the whole purpose of human beings is to help one another survive and get through. So coaching can really matter. One thing I thought would happen when I started this podcast and I didn't understand how truly amazing it would be and like life changing it would be and really fill up my bucket, like fill me up, like fulfilled. When is the last time you were fulfilled? It had been a while for me.
I'll be honest, by my work, by something I was working on, true fulfillment, joy, like wow, so fun. I'm having fun, legit fun. And that was the chance to just get to meet these ladies and hear their stories. Some of them I've become friends with and we're in communication frequently talking. Others...
You know what? I don't need to be friends with them every single day. You know what? I'm going to hold a space in my heart for them for forever because I know their story and where they came from and they had the audacity to get in a public forum and share about themselves, right? To be bold and set aside fear and be willing to offer something for you all.
That's really powerful, those connections.
Let's see, the last thing I'll hit on, I've got two more actually, I might as well tell you all of them. That's what I'm here for, right? So the one that I'm working on right now that's getting better and better for me, and I've hired another coach. I've hired a high performance coach now. Because I had had my energy coach at the beginning of the year, I had my podcast coach in the kind of middle of the year, and.
What I've learned about myself is that I do my best work when I have a coach.
I never used to have a coach as a sales leader, ever. I was the one doing the coaching, and in fact, I coach people today, and I absolutely love it. It's remarkable. I get so much joy in working with the folks that come to me and work with me for coaching. But I have my own coach, because if I'm going to be a vitamin for somebody else, I've to take my own vitamins and fill myself up.
So my coach has me working on this thing that has just been a stumbling block for me like my whole life. And people who may know me would listen to this and they would laugh. But in my heart, right, where the truth is all the time, I know it's true. So the thing is this, I do not like planning my work.
I don't like planning my schedule.
What is that about? Because if you want me to plan a vacation, my gosh, folks, I could share some itineraries of some absolute killer trips that I've planned for my family and for my friends. And I mean, it's everything from the curated great place to stay in budget, right? The great place to stay, the restaurant.
and the place to go after the restaurant that's within walking distance for drinks or dancing or whatever and you know when it was with my kids and we went out to Sedona right before I moved like normal people do go on vacation right before they move you know I have this amazing ability to plan and I love it I get a lot of joy out of planning a vacation but when it comes time to sit down
and plan my calendar. Like, take everything I want to get done.
map it out into the week, there is just something in my body that just kind of, or it's not my body, it's really all in my head. It revolts against this. I don't want to be controlled, I don't want to have to do that. What the hell, I don't know. But here's the thing I'll tell you, just like exercising, just like eating right, just like not drinking alcohol, when you do those things, my gosh, the results are amazing.
So this is what I'm working on. The experiment that I'm running now is making a commitment. and here I am out here putting it out here for y'all. So great, I have got to do this now. Thank you, self. Anyway, making a commitment to plan my week. I'm experimenting with what works. It's either Sunday night.
or first thing on Monday morning and I like carve out an hour on Monday morning to plan it out.
The difference of planning your week and taking your time to look at all that to do, I have these task lists that I put in, I use Google Tasks. So I put all my tasks in there, like all the random to do, so try to get them off my brain, because otherwise my brain is, you know, have this tallying list of a whole bunch of stuff to do. And I schedule it. Everybody calls it time blocking, that's fine, great. Well, when are you gonna time block? Well, you gotta plan. You gotta plan your schedule, time block.
So this is a tool that I'm taking on a practice, a habit that I'm taking on doing that's come out of my high performance coaching that I'm getting from Growth Day, which is Brendan Bruchard's organization. I'll offer this one quickly. If you don't know Growth Day or
haven't heard about it. It's like having a coach in your pocket on your phone whenever you need it, like on demand coaching, and then more importantly, a 10 to 15 minute motivational pep talk every single day, every single day in this app called Growth Day.
I began using this tool, let's see, about three months ago. And I can't think of a day when I don't use this thing. Everything from I log in, I listen to the daily fire, which is Brendan Bouchard. If you don't know Brendan, go look him up. He's one of the foremost personal development gurus, thought leaders, experts out there. I get a daily fire from Brendan.
And then I do my journaling for the day in this app. And my goodness, it's been remarkable. It's been remarkable. Some of the best investment I've made in myself in doing this thing. If you're curious, I do have an affiliate link. I'll put it down in the show notes, but you don't have to have that. You can just go to growthday.com, check it out. I think they give you like a week free and see if you like it.
It's been hugely powerful for me, especially When you are just running so hard you're trying to figure out how the hell would I fit another thing into my life? But I need something to help me and I want something to help me just Have a different perspective Leaders need coaching to leaders need coaching to
So the last three things I'll give you, one is something that you might just look at me and laugh and that's okay, but it's been a game changer in my productivity. And that is being willing to schedule a, not lunch, this is not lunch, this is a 30 minute meditation slash nap.
in my day every day. And I do this every day somewhere. It's usually about two o'clock, but if I've got to run the carpool that week, or if I don't have to run the carpool, it's three o'clock. So between two and three, I have it on my calendar, and I am laying down on my couch, and I'm setting a timer on my phone.
And I close my eyes and I lay down. And sometimes I meditate. Sometimes I just lay there and just relax and kind of fall into a little bit of a light nap. Never get fully asleep, but just a little bit asleep. And what I have noticed is when I wake up from that little sweet little nap, I am ready to rock and roll for another three hours. I don't get run down.
I'm not cranky, I'm not anxious, I'm fresh, I'm focused, and I can be present, which is what our people need from us, to be fresh, focused, and present at all times. So if you consider, by the time you hit about two or three o'clock in the afternoon, your brain has been working for many hours already with no recharge. It's like plugging your phone back in again.
We need to be plugged back in again and the way that our brains recharge, we all know, is sleep. So anyway, I offer that to you. Give yourself permission, try it out. Run an experiment. Try it for a day. Do it once. Do it once. See how goes. You gotta set the timer though. You don't wanna fall all the way asleep. You wanna just get that nice little recharge, get back up, and get ready to rock. In fact, I took a nap just a few minutes before I got on this recording. So the last two things I'm gonna ask you to...
to take away from today. And this is what I kept telling myself the whole time that I was building this podcast. And going through the transformation that I've had going on for really the past two years. And that is.
There are no rules. The rules that you've been living by were made up by somebody else. Most of them.
So if there are no rules, and you can get access to your heart, and you can get help to get done what you want to get done.
What could you possibly do? I think it's pretty much anything. Pretty much anything. And then the last one I'll leave you with, and this is one that I have to ask myself a lot, especially when I'm bumping up against a wall of fear, which just happens. mean, it's gonna be there. You can't escape it. It's just gonna be there. And what I've learned is how do you get better?
How do you acknowledge it? What I've noticed about me is when I am afraid, I become a very nasty, ugly, mean, grumpy person. I'm short, I have a short temper, I think nasty thoughts, and my gosh, mean about other people, it's like the worst version of me. It's so ugly and terrible. And anytime I catch myself, because that's what I have to do, have to.
and like seeing myself like what why do you feel so crummy why are you acting like such a jerk
Typically I'm afraid of something. I have some sort of fear that's percolating in my brain and it's just getting me all worked up. And so this is the question that I ask myself to help me snap out of it if I can. It usually works. that is, first off I like to journal about it, but this is the question.
You know, if you don't have time to journal, you don't have time for that. You've got so much going on. What's the worst thing that could possibly happen? That's the question. What's the worst thing that could possibly happen? And when you break that down for yourself of the worst thing that could possibly happen, almost always, whatever thing that is scaring you kind of gets cut down to size.
of perspective and becomes most times something that you can actually face and deal with and do so in a way that isn't driven by this
angst and anger and lizard brain reaction.
So there you have it. Those are the things that I've learned since launching this podcast. There are so many more things to come. We have wonderful guests. For those of you who have been with us since the very beginning, I am humbled by you. If this is your first time listening to the Women in Sales Leadership podcast, I am so glad you spent some time with us today and with me. If you want to share this podcast with a friend,
Please do that. Take a second on the app that you're using to listen and forward it to somebody you know. They might get something out of it, right? If you even just send that person the message, whether they listen to this show or not, they're gonna feel love and connection from you. And I think we all need more love and connection, especially right now, more than ever.
I you have a fantastic day. Be good. Stay well.