She Talks Business Lisa Larter

Be the Best You Can Be  
Joining us this week on She Talks Business is a very special guest, Phil Holberton. He is an incredible example of how mental agility can help you overcome some of the biggest physical and mental challenges you face in life. 
 
With many decades of specialized expertise in strategic planning, business development, operations, and executive coaching for senior executives, business owners, and CEOs, he has consistently stayed at the forefront of his field. He has successfully guided and developed senior management teams in various companies, a testament to his ability to drive organizational growth and success through effective leadership.
 
Stop Comparing Yourself
After suffering from a massive seizure, Phil shares with us how he grew the most in his own mental agility. He went from doing basic stretches and needing help getting up and down from the floor in the gym to doing 90-pound weighted goblet squats in just five years. 
His physical shape now is in the top one-half of 1% of people his age, but the way Phil achieved that is not by aiming to be in the top 1% but by focusing on being the healthiest version of himself he can be. 
 
3 Steps to Better Mental Agility 
Phil believes mental agility is preparing yourself to be the best you can be. You're setting yourself up to live your life well and handle whatever is thrown at you. 
There are 3 things he does to be on his A-game: get enough sleep, eat well, and exercise. 
 
Be Who You Want To Be 
Habits and routines set you up for success and get you ready to face the day, but they also help you become who you want to be. 
Mental agility is about mindset and how you react to different challenges and situations. Prepare yourself by adopting healthy habits for your body, and you'll achieve the mental agility you want in your mind. 
 
We have a great discussion where we focus on continuing to learn and being open and vulnerable to grow as a leader and as a person. I know you'll find some great inspiration and takeaways from this episode, so be sure to share it on social media or with a friend! 
 
What’s In This Episode Managing sleep, diet, and exercise for mental agility
Commitment to continuous learning and personal development
Benefits of openness and vulnerability in peer groups
Impact of personal attributes on leadership and performance
Promotion of Positive Company Culture
 
What To Do Next Visit lisalarter.com/e156 for all resources from this episode.

It's Hardwired Into You.  
If you've ever felt defeated, like you shouldn't have even started your business or taken on that project, or maybe you just can't get over grief in your personal life, then you need to listen to this week's special guest, Richard Citrin, an expert on resilience. Richard views and talks about resilience in a way I hadn't considered before, where resilience isn't a skill to acquire but rather a muscle all of us already possess. We discuss how to practice growing this resilience muscle and how to overcome and prepare for those challenging situations life inevitably throws at us. 
Richard Citron is a psychologist, business entrepreneur, and corporate healthcare leader with a PhD and an MBA. He helps people successfully navigate challenging seasons in their lives. Richard helps his clients learn the essential lessons and opportunities for growth in wins or failures in their lives. Richard's study of resilience and leadership prepared him to advise and support global and local, corporate and nonprofit organizations, educators, medical professionals, and individuals to find their most extraordinary talents and use them for their success and to better the world. 
The 4 Components of Resilience 
When considering resilience in terms of human behavior and how we address stressful situations,  Richard considers it our ability to effectively plan for, navigate successfully in real-time, and bounce forward from challenging and difficult events, so we learn and grow from them. 
Practical Tips to Do More Than Survive  
Richard and his wife lost two adult children in a relatively short timeframe, so they know personally what it's like to face grief and embrace resilience. Richard's advice when it comes to feeling like you're only surviving is to embrace your community and get professional help. Let your friends, family, and everyone else in your support system help you and don't isolate yourself. Getting professional help, such as therapy, will also help you understand your mental state more and help you move toward a healthier, manageable balance of emotions. 
The silver bullet for resilience and overcoming extreme emotions is mindset, Richard says. Prepare for adversity by having a positive mindset and intentionally spending time doing what makes you happy. 
I am so grateful to Richard and his wife for overcoming their tragedy and finding ways to help others deal with tragedies and challenges in their own lives. If this episode was insightful and eye-opening to you, please leave us a review and share it with those who may need it right now. 
 
What’s In This Episode Anticipating and preparing for triggers 
Handling overwhelming life changes 
Surviving as a critical aspect of resilience
Community and professional support 
Importance of mindset 
 
What To Do Next Visit lisalarter.com/e155 for all resources from this episode.

From Directionless to Navigating Deserts & Frozen Tundra  
This might be the best episode we've ever done of She Talks Business. I'm stoked to have special guest and old friend Ray Zahab on the show to talk about his incredible transformation from a pack-a-day smoker to an ultra-distance runner and explorer. We even dive into how he applied the same mindset he had around transforming his life the first time to how he approached battling cancer. 
Who is Ray Zahab? 
Let me tell you a little bit about Ray. He is a Canadian explorer, an ultra-distance runner, and the founder of the nonprofit Impossible to Possible. In addition to being an adventurer, author, youth advocate, and runner, Ray speaks around the world. He has appeared on several talk and news programs and in print media globally. He continues today with life as an adventurer and as a volunteer. With Impossible to Possible, his first race would begin a lifelong journey of discovery and learning that some of the greatest barriers to achieving our goals are the ones we put upon ourselves. By breaking these down, Ray has learned that we are all capable of achieving truly extraordinary things.
The Catalyst 
On the show, I ask Ray what the spark was that inspired him to go from sitting on his couch day after day to believing he could run across the Sahara Desert. Like most of us, Ray saw someone, his brother, who seemed happier and doing well in his life, and Ray wanted to feel good, confident, and passionate just like his brother. He started doing what his brother was doing. He got in shape. He started racing mountain bikes and running, and then, after a few years of trying new things, he started doing and winning ultramarathons. And that's how he found his sport. 
This idea of wanting what someone else has is something I see all the time with business owners who align themselves with coaches and advisors. The hardest thing to do once you've found your role model is to commit to doing what needs to be done to accomplish the same goals. 
Explorer Mindset = Entrepreneurial Mindset
You will be so inspired by our conversations about motivation, resilience, the importance of continuing to learn, and Ray's views on mindset and limitations. This episode is really, really interesting because we go from Ray overcoming dissatisfaction in his everyday life to learning how to navigate life with cancer and undergoing cancer treatments to the mindset needed to undergo and keep going on an expedition. It's just really fascinating, inspiring stuff! 
I know you'll find this episode as incredible as I did, so please give it a listen and then share it with your people!  
 
What’s In This Episode Ray's journey from being a pack-a-day smoker to an adventurous ultra-marathon runner
Redefining human potential and limitations
Ray’s approach to staying active during chemotherapy
Importance of remaining humble and open-minded for personal growth
The entrepreneurial spirit is believing that with enough time and effort, you will succeed 
 
What To Do Next Visit lisalarter.com/e154 for all resources from this episode.

Women Lead Differently In the Best Way Possible   
Our special guest on She Talks Business this week has had a profound impact on some of the most accomplished female entrepreneurs of our time, guiding them to reach new heights in their businesses. 
We are incredibly lucky to have Kris Plachy on the show,  as she is busy doing so many amazing things and is in such high demand.
She does so many great things, including being the founder of The Visionary CEO and the host of the "Leadership is Feminine" podcast. 
Kris has supported powerful women in generating millions of dollars by hiring, leading, and firing hundreds of team members and navigating countless difficult moments, circumstances, and conversations. 
 
Which Qualities Make the Best Leaders? 
To start the show, we discuss which traits women have that make them exceptional leaders. If you think about it, leaders are usually described as powerful and authoritative with a lot of gravitas, but I want you to think about the leader you've admired most in your own experience. 
More than likely, they weren't the stern, demanding, and commanding figures we picture when we think of leaders. The best leaders cultivate culture; they listen to us, support our efforts, and make us feel motivated and excited to do well. And do you know who excels at creating that kind of environment? Women. 
 
Define Your Mission, Vision, & Values 
Hiring, firing, and running your team will get infinitely easier once you clearly define your expectations—your mission, vision, and values—within your business. Identifying your values then helps you define each team member's roles and expected performance. By aligning your team with those qualities and goals, you are aligning yourself and your team for success in achieving your next milestone. 
 
Your Team Members Are Not Your Allies 
In this episode, we also dive into the challenges women must overcome to lead their teams effectively and to keep their goals in focus. 
These challenges include having difficult conversations with team members who may be underperforming or are no longer the right fit. Another common struggle is women finding allies on their team. 
Discussing your roadblocks with someone for their perspective is important, but your allies are not your employees. Your allies will be mentors and third parties with an outside perspective of your business who, more than likely, have already done what you're aiming to do. 
I think you're really going to enjoy this episode! Kris gives you great, actionable tips on how to be more comfortable with difficult conversations and how to approach them with confidence. 
Be sure to subscribe and share this episode if it is valuable to you! 
 
What’s In This Episode Common challenges faced by women leaders 
How to have difficult conversations 
The importance of defining your business’s mission, vision, & values 
Monetize intellectual property
 
What To Do Next Visit lisalarter.com/e153 for all resources from this episode.

Heal Your Mind to Heal Your Business  
This week, we're talking with special guest Annie Wright, LMFT, a psychotherapist, about relational trauma and mental wellness and how it affects your business. 
 Annie founded and runs Evergreen Counseling, a boutique trauma-informed therapy center in Berkeley, California, where she practices therapy and oversees a staff of 20 trauma therapists. In addition to her direct clinical work, she runs an online course called Hard Families Good Boundaries. This transformative video-based program helps folks deal more effectively with the difficult family members who may be in their lives—I'm sure we all have some of those. 
She is also a published mental health author, with her opinions appearing in Business Insider, Forbes, NBC, the Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, and more. 
Every bit of Annie's work in the world, her clinical work, the center she founded, the courses she runs, and every article she writes is designed to support ambitious, upwardly mobile women from relational trauma backgrounds.
We talk about mental health, emotional dysregulation, the importance of business owners having a healthy mental perspective, and how to recognize when they might need additional support. 
In this episode, Annie and I have a great conversation about relational trauma and how two people can experience the same relational trauma and have two very different experiences and outcomes. We then discuss resilience and what you can do to create more resilience in your life. 
Finally, we wrap up the show by talking about the impact of mobile devices on your mental health. 
I hope you enjoy this episode—I think it's really important because one of the best things you can do for yourself as a business owner is to really understand your own mental health. 
The more healthy and well you are from a mental health perspective, the better equipped you are to serve your customers, support your team, and take care of yourself.
 
What’s In This Episode How to identify when you should try therapy 
Defining relational trauma and identifying its effects 
How to become more resilient 
The importance of sleep, limited screen time, and exercise to our mental wellness
 
What To Do Next Visit lisalarter.com/e152 for all resources from this episode.

Sharpen Your Business Systems for Success  
This week on She Talks Business, I’ll be recording the second “My Take” series where I will give you my opinion and what I took away from my most recent read. We’ll be talking about Nick Sonnenberg’s Come Up for Air: How Teams Can Leverage Systems and Tools to Stop Drowning in Work. 
 
The short version: This is excellent. It’s a fantastic, super smart book. I highly recommend you read it and apply its principles to your team. 
 
Essentially, this whole book is about doing more efficient work so you can literally come up for air. This includes taking your communication and separating it between internal and external, taking your planning for projects and ensuring that you have the right work management tools, and then taking your resources and making sure you have an efficient knowledge base and the right process management tools. 
 
Your Business is Only as Effective as Your Systems 
I open the episode with Dr. W. Edward Deming’s 94% Rule, which basically says 94% of the results you experience in your business all stem from your processes and systems, not the individuals making up your team. 
When operating in your business and setting up systems for your team, there is a tendency to outgrow your system or identify how a system isn’t working the way you’d hoped. Instead of reassessing and starting from scratch with a new system, we tend to put bandaids and make exceptions so we can continue using this already established but not very effective system. 
What really needs to happen, and Nick really sheds light on this, is we need to assess all of our systems in their entirety to ensure that they are serving their purpose and making your life and your team’s life easier. 
 
CPR: Communication, Planning, Resources
Nick Sonnenberg's CPR framework lays the foundation for categorizing and optimizing business processes. Breaking down internal and external communication, streamlining planning tools, and effectively managing resources can prevent your team from "drowning in work." This method strategically simplifies processes, enabling teams to focus on what they do best: driving the business forward.
 
Effective Systems Improve Your Culture 
I even argue that good systems not only increase efficiency and your team’s bandwidth but they can also enhance your company's culture. Clear guidelines can reduce frustration and allow employees to focus on their work without unnecessary interruptions or too much time trying to find what they need to do their work. Effective systems show your team that you value their time and well-being and that you want to make it as easy as possible for them to succeed. 
 
Nick’s book, Come Up For Air, helps you figure out your communication processes,  your project management system, and how to manage your resources. It even goes into how to better your onboarding and shows you how to buy back time with more efficient systems. It’s an excellent book that will have you setting your team and your business up for success. 
 
I hope this take was useful for you and that you grab your own copy. If you do, be sure to tag me and Nick on social media so we know you were inspired by this episode. 
 
What’s In This Episode The 94% Rule by W. Edwards Deming states most workplace results are due to systems and processes, not individual efforts.
Defaulting to temporary solutions rather than evaluating the system as a whole cuts down on efficiency.
CPR stands for Communication, Planning, and Resources.
“Stop the scavenger hunt" for information by implementing effective systems that cut down on time and increase productivity. 
 
What To Do Next Visit lisalarter.com/e151 for all resources from this episode.