Leading with Values in a Divided World

[00:00:00] Are you ready to grow from stressed out solopreneur to confident CEO? You're in the right place. I'm your host, Racheal Cook, and I've spent the last 15 years helping women entrepreneurs to sustainably scale their life first business. If you're serious about building a more sustainable business, it's time to put the strategy systems and support in place to make it happen.

Join me each week for candid conversations about stepping into your role as CEO. The hard lessons learned along the way and practical profitable strategies to grow a life first business without hustle and burnout. Hey there CEOs, Racheal Cook here, founder of the CEO Collective and host of the Promote Yourself to CEO podcast.

And welcome back, strap in, lock in. We are going to have a challenging conversation today because we are in a world right now where there is tons of uncertainty. There is a ton of polarization and honestly, it [00:01:00] feels like another dumpster fire. It is another dumpster fire. You remember back in the pandemic when we had all of the 2020 dumpster fire memes going around?

We never left the dumpster fire. It has been ongoing for years now and it's only become more and more and more amplified. The reality is. Since the pandemic and even leading up to it, I would, I would honestly say in 2016, it was such a big eye awakening moment that so many people could even elect this guy.

It was so eye opening because it showed you how much hate there is in this world and how many people are willing to put themselves before caring for their neighbor. And it's infuriating to me. So I want to talk about it and I want to talk about what we as small business owners can do as we are navigating this because I don't know about you, [00:02:00] but I don't have a trust fund.

My husband is a stay at home dad, so it's not like he's out there with some big job bringing in a lot of money. And that means I have no choice but to keep showing up and doing the work that I am doing. And I know for a fact that a lot of my clients are the same way. Their business is their livelihood, and we can't just not run our businesses because the world is a dumpster fire.

We can't just not go out there and do our work because craziness is happening all around of us. So what do we do? Let's talk about it. So the first thing I want you to know is that this is not normal. This, this time we're living in right now, this is not normal. This is the end of a very long cycle of That is now crumbling.

We are now watching what happens when corporate greed and hyper [00:03:00] capitalism has been allowed to exist, has been allowed to exploit the general public and create this incredible inequality of wealth. We are seeing the results of that. We are seeing the results of what happens when that whole rugged American individualism is left unchecked to the point where we no longer care about the collective.

We no longer care about community. We no longer care about our neighbors. And we are seeing what happens when people are just not tolerant. of anybody that doesn't believe exactly what they believe. And I want to be very clear. When I'm talking about what's going on in the world right now, I'm not talking just about politics.

I'm talking about the way we are as a society right now. Just so hyper polarized and divided. It is terrifying. But the reality [00:04:00] is, we are watching the status quo fall apart. We are watching the old way of running a business fall apart. We are watching the old way of leadership completely falling apart.

And finally, more and more and more people are waking up and paying attention and realizing that it can't just work for a few people at the top. It has got to work for all of us. So these times are not normal. And we have to be so aware of that and embrace this growth edge, embrace the discomfort in figuring out how you want to show up as a small business owner, as a leader in your community, and how you want to take a stand with your small business.

So something I heard about recently, and I'm scrolling up on my laptop here, Something I heard recently, I was scrolling on TikTok and listening to some different contributors, um, talking about hyper normalization. Because [00:05:00] this is the world we're in right now, where so many people are completely triggered by this onslaught of just insanity, insanity, insanity, hitting us in the news all the time, new executive orders coming out, new things being taken down, Elon Musk is suddenly all over our personal information, like, It is, it's bad y'all.

It's really bad. But we are expected to show up and work. We're expected to show up and go to school. We're expected to show up as if this is all normal. It's not normal. But they are creating the state of hyper normalization. So, hyper normalization, just a, Quick little snippet, and I'm going to link up the TikTok video where I found out about this.

Um, is a concept from the late Soviet Union, when everything was clearly failing. Government was failing, the economy was failing, everything was clearly failing. But people couldn't imagine [00:06:00] anything other than the status quo. So, they just felt disempowered, and like they couldn't change things.

Hypernormalization is what happens when we continuously have just lived through so much of this. Can you imagine what would have happened 10 years ago, 20 years ago, if what was happening right now had happened? People would have been outraged. It would have been shut down so fast. But we have been slowly worn down.

We have been slowly worn down over the last eight years, since 2016. 2016 was a big indicator that we were gonna see a whole lot of people who were unhappy and who were angry, but instead of looking at how we could collectively fix it, they wanted to look for someone to blame. And they got behind MAGA.

And then, 2020, the pandemic hit, and [00:07:00] again, we were put into this collective traumatic experience. And we were so worn down by it because this was something most people never experienced in their lifetime, right? We were so worn down from the pandemic, from the months and months we stayed at home, from all of that uncertainty.

I helped so many small business owners get through that time trying to figure out how do they keep their doors open? How do they transition their brick and mortar business online? How do they? Keep their clients. And a lot of people lost their businesses during that time. It was incredibly stressful.

We're seeing hyper normalization in schools, right? I cannot imagine, and I talk to my kids all the time, my twins are freshmen in high school, my youngest is in sixth grade in middle school, and they've never, they've never had a time going to school where they didn't do lock and hide drills. Where there wasn't a threat of a school shooter.[00:08:00]

It has become so normalized that there was a stabbing at one of my kids high schools, and a kid almost died. Now keep in mind, these high schools now all have a single point of entry. Everyone has to go through that single point of entry. They have resource officers in every single school. They have weapon scanners in every single school.

They have done so much because we have normalized. that gun violence is going to happen in schools. We've done everything except talk about how do we get guns out of, out of our communities. We've done everything but gun control or smart, you know, common sense gun control. And that's what's happened is it's all become so hyper normalized.

All of these things that are clearly not okay. All of these systems that are failing us and it's clearly not okay. But no one can imagine the status quo changing. [00:09:00] No one can imagine a new vision of what's possible. And so over time, we have just gotten beat down. They have exhausted us on purpose. They have exhausted us on purpose in order to maintain power, in order to keep us divided, and in order to wear us down so that we won't resist.

When the world is a dumpster fire, so that we won't resist what's happening right now. Well, I'm here to tell you, for me, personally, I have always been an activist my entire life. If you did not know this about me, I have been an activist my entire life. My mother was in a car accident in 1987. A tractor trailer hit the side of her minivan.

putting her in a coma for three months and in the hospital for the next two years, where she had to relearn everything as a result of her traumatic brain injury and partial paralysis. And when that happened, when she finally came home, um, in, let's see, she woke up from her coma [00:10:00] in 1987. She came home about a year and a half later and got very involved.

And if you ever heard about the Capitol Crawl that happened in 1990, it was a massive disability rights protest that happened in Washington, D. C. where disabled people from all over the country came together and literally marched on the Capitol to fight for disabled rights. And the American with Disabilities Act was signed that year.

And I was there. I was there as a kid. Now, as a, as a kid who was, I was probably in second grade when we were at this march. Did I understand what was going on? Not really. I remember being there with my mom and my dad. I remember we walked in this huge parade, it felt like. And my sisters and I, we were little, right?

I was probably seven. I think my sisters were probably five and three. So I was four when my mom got hurt and my sisters were two and eight months old. [00:11:00] But I just remember running around the National Mall. chasing squirrels, having fun, didn't really understand what was happening. But that was not the first protest that my mom took us to.

That was not the first time we went to D. C. to talk about disabled rights. Um, and I've been there when my mom testified to Congress about disability and brain injury and her accident and the story of her accident. So I've always had this. It's activism in me. It's been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.

And I think this is important to share because I know so many of my community also have been drawn to some level of activism for some cause they care about. It could have been activism for the environment. It could have been activism for women's rights. It could have been a million other things that you were out there talking about, sharing about, organizing about.

And for me, my business [00:12:00] is my activism. There is no separating my, my activism and my values from my business. The reason I work with women entrepreneurs is because I believe so strongly in women and because I believe that we have to fight. for every single thing we have right now, and we cannot take it for granted.

So you will always hear from me, always hear from me, about women's rights, because we've already had them threatened, we've already had them stripped away, and just like they were able to reverse Roe vs. Wade, they could reverse so many rights that we have right now. It was not that long ago that we got the right to open a bank account without our husband or a male relative's signature on it.

It was not that long ago that we were able to apply for a business loan without a male co signer. It was not that long ago. It really wasn't. [00:13:00] And there are so many people out there who want to see us not in business. Because they believe our place is in the home and that the only way a woman can contribute is by being a wife and a mother.

And I strongly disagree with that. Just so we're clear, I'm always going to fight for our rights. I'm always going to fight for our, our freedom and our independence. Because even if you want to be a stay at home wife and mother, And I'm, if that's what you want, I am happy for you. Great. Do that. But I also want to protect you.

I want to protect your ability to have financial independence. I want to protect you from putting up with things like marital rape that was accepted up until what, 30 years ago. That was not that long ago. A lot of the rights that we take for granted now were very recent. And there are [00:14:00] people that want to reverse them.

There are people who want to reverse no fault divorce. Because that is a way they can trap women into, basically, subservitude. So there's my little rant real quick, about why my activism is always going to be a part of my business, how it informs my values, and what to expect from me, because I'm about to get a lot louder about this.

You're going to hear a lot more from me about standing up. And if you want to hear even more, You know, I'm not going to cover everything I care about on Promote Yourself to CEO. I'm going to talk specifically more about issues that impact women and that impact women in business. But I do share a lot on my stories over on Instagram.

So if things are coming up in the news and you want to follow along and hear from me there. I share a lot more about other things that I am trying to support, um, messages that I'm getting behind and amplifying voices of people who are actively [00:15:00] organizing around these issues. But how does this impact us as small business owners?

So let's talk about a few things that are really apparent right now, and I think we need to keep in mind. Because again, this hyper normalization. This hyper normalization has convinced so many of us, because it has beaten us down, that this is just the way it is, and there's not much we can do about it.

It has convinced us that we are powerless, and we can't fight against the status quo. The status quo is broken. It's been broken for a very long time. An incredibly long time. It's not normal, and it's not okay, and we need to call it out. We need to call it out for what it is. It is not okay, and we should not be going backwards.

So let's talk about the first thing we need to think about as small business owners, and that is standing in your values. If you're a small business owner and you are not explicitly clear about what your values are in your business, then you are [00:16:00] complicit with your silence. That's the, that's the end of the story, right?

If you are not being explicitly clear, then you are complicit. We saw this start to show up during the Black Lives Matter movement. And I talked about this, I did a live a few weeks ago on Instagram. And we saw in the Black Lives Matter movement, remember when everybody was putting the black squares up on the Instagram?

And we saw so many people starting to ask the leaders, the mentors, the people they paid thousands of dollars to for business support, ask like, how do I handle this? How do I navigate this? And they were shut down and told, this is not the space for that. This is business only. But we exist in the context of everything else going on around us.

And so while it might be easy for Somebody to say, well, we're not going to talk about that here. The reality is for a lot of people that is very much part of [00:17:00] their business. You know, it could be very easy for me as a privileged white woman to say, Black Lives Matter doesn't impact me personally. So we're not going to talk about it in this space.

But the reality is. And I can, you know, ignore it very easily, but black women can't. And I'm here to stand for all women, all women. And that includes black women and indigenous women and Asian American women and every other woman out there. So it is part of the conversation. And I think this is where we're starting to see people speak up, right?

We're starting to see now people are voting with their dollars. And if you are not explicitly clear. about where you stand. If you're not explicitly clear about your values, then they are going to assume that you aren't with them. So currently we are seeing huge protests. Um, there has been a huge push right now to roll back all the DEI [00:18:00] in the government and the federal government pushes for organizations and companies and corporations to roll back DEI.

And let's talk about Target and Costco. So I don't know about you, but I, I used to love Target. I have not been there in over a month. But I used to love Target. I would always go to Target if I needed stuff for my home, for my family, whatever. But they announced they were going to roll back their DEI initiatives.

And then they started pulling products off the shelf. They used to have a huge push for bringing in black owned businesses into the store. And I especially remember going into like the beauty section or things like that and seeing, you know, all these Black owned makeup brands, and that was a huge push for them to give shelf space to Black owned businesses.

Well, they started rolling back their DEI policies, taking it down off their website, and guess what? There's a boycott against Target right now, and I [00:19:00] just heard that now their own shareholders are suing them because they were not aware that rolling back DEI was going to create a boycott. And so now the leopards are eating their face, right?

They didn't realize that people would stay home and not spend money at Target. Where are they spending their money? Well, I don't know about you, but I'm going to Costco. I love Costco. Costco is an incredible brand. Talk about a values driven brand. Costco said, no, we are keeping our DEI. Um, in fact, it's a critical part of who we are and what we do and what we stand for.

And then they announced that they're going to raise their minimum pay to 32 an hour for employees, which was just kind of like way to go Costco. So we started seeing so many people talking about go get a Costco membership, go buy things from Costco. We started seeing a ton [00:20:00] of conversation around Costco because they're standing up for what they believe and they're standing up for people.

I saw a clip of, um, Reverend Al Sharpton walking a huge crowd of like a hundred people into a Costco to say, Thank you, we support you. Thank you for supporting us. So we are seeing, very loudly, that if you are not explicitly clear with your values, people are not going to spend money with you. If they have a choice between a business that is being silent and a business that is actively amplifying causes that are important to them, actively talking about issues that are impacting the people that work there and the people in their communities, people aren't going to shop with businesses that are not aligned with their values.

So I know that it's easy to feel like, well, nobody really cares about what my values are. People do [00:21:00] care. People care. And it's because we want to do business with people that we trust. We want to do business with businesses that we know are not exploiting other people. They're not exploiting their team.

They're not exploiting their clients and customers. We want to do business with people who have aligned values, who are shaking up the status quo and saying, No, that is not the world we want to live in anymore. We are creating a new path forward and they're being disruptive about it. So I encourage you to think about what are the most important values for you in your business.

Now inside of the CEO Collective, we have a whole training that we have licensed from Erica Corday and India Jackson at Paws on the Play. They also teach this as a standalone workshop called From Implicit to Explicit, all about identifying your core values. And I want to be really clear that your values [00:22:00] For your business, they do overlap with your personal values, but they're not a hundred percent the same.

And the reason is as a business, you can't fight every battle, right? It's just like in messaging and marketing. You have to have a clear message. You have to have a clear point of view. If you're fighting against everything, it can get a little muddied, right? So for example, in my business, I work exclusively with women, so I'm going to talk about women's issues.

I'm going to talk about women's rights. I'm going to talk about things that impact women. I'm going to talk about things that impact women in business. But there are things that I personally value, that I personally want to fight for, that might actually dilute my message with my business. So for example, environmentalism.

I am extremely passionate about saving this environment and fighting climate change. Again, this was wired into me. My grandfather started VIMS, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. He sat on every presidential advisory [00:23:00] board to get things like the Clean Air and Water Acts passed in the 70s. So fighting for the environment is something that comes very, very naturally to me.

But if I'm trying to fight every single battle publicly, it can get really exhausting and overwhelming for me, but also really exhausting and overwhelming for my community and my clients. So I'm not going to make that my primary battle that I'm fighting, right? That's not the biggest issue on the table when it comes to my small business, but I have my client Gabby Day, who is a product based business and she's talking about clean beauty products.

The environment is very much a part of her business. She talks about having refillable, recyclable packaging. She talks about having a closed loop refill process. All of that makes so much sense within the context of her business as something that she can fight for. So I share this because I think often we feel like Well, if I'm going to be a values based business, then I have to put every single [00:24:00] value I have out there.

And I think that can actually be really overwhelming to do and to take action on. And it can also muddy the waters a bit. So I just want you to think about like your top values. What are maybe your top three? What are your top three values you want to make explicitly clear to your clients and your community?

For us, life before business, we're here to build life first businesses because we believe that having more freedom and more flexibility is going to empower women in so many different ways. We believe in women we trust because we believe women are the future. And women are here actively working to change the status quo.

We're actively working to destroy the patriarchy. We're actively working to reverse this hyper capitalism where only a few people win at the expense of everyone else, right? And we believe that [00:25:00] we are stronger together. We believe in collaboration and community versus competition. So those are our top three big values that we stand for here at the CEO collective.

And we have some other internalized values around how we run our business, but just by being explicitly clear, people start to understand who we are and you know whether we are the right place for them. They know that we've got their back when they come here to work with us. So I want to encourage you to really be thinking about what you want to focus on in your business and what values you're going to stand behind.

Because, again, your silence is going to repel people because they will assume that you agree with the opposition. That you agree what they don't want to see anymore in this world. If you are not actively standing up right now [00:26:00] to fight for our rights, then we assume that you're okay with women losing their rights right now.

And that's the honest truth. And I'm really, really tired as a woman in the entrepreneurship and small business space of watching people who have been able to grow incredibly successful businesses, but they are not leveraging the platforms they have built To advocate for the communities whose backs have built their wealth.

Whose backs have built their business. And trust me, a lot of the leaders in this space are complicit right now. They are. They're not standing up for the people who have paid them money. They're not standing up for the people who have worked for them. And that, to me, is exploitation. Okay. Let's shift gears.

The next thing that I want you to focus on when the world is a dumpster fire [00:27:00] is protecting your peace. And so I know this might feel like a huge, you know, sharp right turn after talking about, talking about your values and standing in your values and advocating for what you believe. But protecting your peace is even more important now than ever before.

The reason that hyper normalization is occurring right now, is because they have worn us down. The reason hypernormalization is working right now is because people's nervous systems are so absolutely fried, they are so exhausted from the onslaught of constant bad news, that they are in either fight or flight, freeze, or fawn.

We've all heard these terms, right? Fight or flight is when you are in panic mode. You are reactive. Instead of being cool, calm, and collected, grounded, able to thoughtfully respond, you are triggered constantly and you are [00:28:00] constantly knee jerk reaction to everything. And that's a terrible place to run a business from.

That is panic, right? That is like running around like a chicken with your head cut off, feeling like there's nothing you can do. It's very disempowering and it's exhausting long term, which leads us to the other side, which is where people freeze. And this is where I start to see people, you can only be in fight or flight for so long.

Before you're not able to do a whole lot and you're frozen and you're not doing anything. So, how do we make sure that we are protecting our peace? How do we make sure we are managing our nervous system? As the CEO of your business and your life, I want you to know that the more you learn about this, the more you learn how to regulate your nervous system, the easier it will be for you to be resilient.

Okay. So it might sound counterintuitive that you need to rest and you need to [00:29:00] prioritize rest as a part of this strategy, as a part of navigating the world being a dumpster fire again. But really, we have to. We have to prioritize the basics of taking care of ourself again. You have to put your oxygen mask on first.

And that means making sure you're getting real rest, you're getting good quality sleep, make sure you're fueling yourself. To keep on going, make sure you're hydrating the basics, right? Making sure you're taking care of your physical self, making sure you're taking care of your emotional self, making sure you're taking care of your spiritual self.

All of those allow you to be more resilient. And when you're more resilient as a leader, instead of getting triggered by every new thing that hits your newsfeed, by every new update coming your way, you're able to take in that information and process it. and respond thoughtfully. and take your time and understand what you want to do without having that knee jerk panicked [00:30:00] reaction.

So, it's really, really important for us to manage our nervous systems and increase our capacity, increase our resilience. There's a ton of information out there now. There's a, this is a big conversation in general, managing your nervous system. But here's a few things I'm doing and I encourage you to steal these ideas.

First, stop doom scrolling. Stop doom scrolling. If you are doom scrolling, then you are in freeze mode. Okay. If you are doom scrolling for hours every day, check your screen time on your phone, y'all. You are in freeze mode. You are in functional freeze. And that probably means you're able to get some of your work done, but then you get home or you shut down your computer and You are not present the rest of the day.

So doom scrolling is not helping you. It's actually hurting you It is making you more numb and it is again contributing to this hyper normalization So instead of doom scrolling, [00:31:00] I want you to choose how you're going to stay informed. That is not 24 7 news. I love that Aaron guy on TikTok, but I can't handle any more breaking news, okay?

I need, like, once a day, spending 15 minutes, where I can get the news that I need from the sources that I trust, and then I can be done with that, okay? We are not meant to be in a 24 hour news cycle. This is not normal. Our nervous systems are not geared up for this and it is incredibly harmful. So I encourage everyone instead of getting your news just from social, which is full of fake news, basically it's, you know, we've already seen Facebook has pulled fact checking.

A lot of it is, you know, this crazy game of telephone. Instead, choose some sources. And subscribe to them, whether it's newsletters, there's a couple great newsletters that I am following right now and I'm following them instead of social because it is less triggering to my [00:32:00] nervous system to read it than to listen to it and watch, you know, nonstop videos.

Find newsletters, read a couple newspapers, you know, choose the ones that are the sources you actually trust. And if there's some podcasts you like to listen to, maybe that, but don't get hooked into doom scrolling. Be very careful about who you're getting your news from and make sure these are sources you actually trust.

Let's get out of this collective game of telephone where there's just wild rumors and so and so said this, so and so did that. Let's start getting it from real journalists who are fact checking and who are making sure that what they are reporting is accurate. Okay, it is harmful to plug into the craziness in social media and online.

The rumors are incredibly harmful. The speed at which it's coming at us is incredibly harmful. I'll also say just curate your [00:33:00] content consumption in general. Um, this is something that helps me so much is to actually go through and make sure I'm not following people who are contributing to the noise.

Unfollow, block as much as you need to. If there are You know, content creators coming up that are making you more stressed out. Stop following them. Make sure you're following people who you trust and make sure that they actually can back it up with sources. Then make sure you're resting and there's a lot of different kinds of rest that I want you to think about.

Okay, rest is revolutionary and this is a conversation we're gonna have a whole lot here. on Promote Yourself to CEO. My clients know this because we talk about it constantly. There is rest where you're actually, you know, sleeping, taking a nap, but we're talking about other types of rest too. And some of the rest that I really enjoy, creative rest.

What do [00:34:00] you need to do to engage in some sort of creative outlet? I have been doing flower arrangements for my home. Every week I go and get flowers and then I come home and arrange them and it is an hour that I am just enjoying something. I am working with my hands and it is very calming and very relaxing.

I'm working on a paint by number and I absolutely love it. It's maybe an hour. Every once in a while, every couple of days, I'll sit down and fill in a little bit more. But again, it's very calming to your nervous system. Very relaxing. In fact, I just saw some research that shared that creativity and anxiety, um, cancel each other out.

So you can't be creative when you're anxious, but you reduce your anxiety when you're being creative. So think about that. Think about how can you be creative, do something with your hands. I love music, and I can tell you I have watched Wicked about a dozen times, singing at the top of my lungs. I have put on playlists in my house, [00:35:00] and have been cleaning the kitchen, just singing as loud as I can.

And that is incredibly regulating to your nervous system. Singing, dance, art, these are very human things that bring us back to ourselves. And they are very grounding for us. Instead of constantly being in our heads and letting that anxiety just start to spin, finding another outlet to discharge some energy and to bring you back to yourself.

I encourage you to think about how you can slow things down. We have to be very attuned to how we are every day. So slow things down. How can you remove friction in your life? How can you remove frustration on a day to day basis? For me, it starts with a very slow morning routine. I have a very slow morning routine.

I journal, I read, I pull a tarot card, I talk with my kids as they get ready for school, and I [00:36:00] take my time. before I get into my work. And then when I wrap up work, I slow down again. I put on music, pour a glass of wine, and I am relaxed and ready to be present with my kids and my family. So how can you slow down?

For me right now, also with the chronic health issues that I am juggling, I've also committed to only doing like one big thing a day. I can't tackle a massive to do list anymore. I don't have the, um, physical energy to do it. So, I've decided that if I can tackle one big thing a day, that's all I need to require of myself.

And that also requires me to simplify and streamline. Instead of saying yes to everything, I'm being more discerning. Instead of trying to get a massive to do list done, I'm getting really clear about what the biggest priority is. Right now. And maybe that means I move a little bit slower. I'm not achieving the goal [00:37:00] as fast, but it means that I'm taking care of myself in this process.

Right? And slow is actually very revolutionary right now. We are in a world where they want to keep speeding it up and speeding it up to the point where it is not possible for humans to comprehend what is happening because it's coming at us so fast. Slowing down gives you perspective. Slowing down gives you resources.

Slowing down gives you a lot of resiliency. So I encourage you to slow down and simplify. And I also encourage you to think about the boundaries you need to reinforce right now. This is another huge conversation I'm having with my clients a lot because a lot of us were raised to say yes to everybody else, to be people pleasers, to not rock the boat.

But right now, if you need to protect your peace, That means you need stronger boundaries, too. And what is the boundaries you need to put in place? How do you need to protect your [00:38:00] time? How do you need to protect your energy? How do you need to make sure that you are first on the to do list to take care of?

What boundaries do you need to put in place? The final big thing about navigating the world as a business owner right now, when it is a dumpster fire, is to get into community. It's to get into community. Being an entrepreneur can be very isolating. And I know this from my own experience, but I also know talking to my clients that a lot of them don't have other entrepreneurs or small business owners in their life.

In fact, it's not uncommon for many of my clients to come into the collective or to come into our CEO retreat and feel like for the first time they're surrounded by other like minded women. And I think it's so crucially important because If you feel like you're alone and no one else is going through what you're going through, it is a very [00:39:00] isolating place to be.

And it then is very easy to listen to the voices in your head that are telling you Oh, just be quiet. Don't stand up for what you believe. Don't rock the boat. Don't, don't rail against the status quo. It's really easy because you feel like you're alone, but we are not alone. We are stronger together. We are stronger together.

And there's a couple of reasons community is so incredibly important. One, just knowing you're not alone, but two, co regulation is a big one. In fact, I learned this from one of my clients. When we were hosting a CEO retreat, I end up with a lot of therapists as clients, which is kind of funny to me. I did a couple podcast interviews, um, for therapists.

And so I had one of my clients, Christy Pearl, who is a trauma therapist. And I was saying, you know, I don't know what it is, but when we all come together, it is like the best feeling. Like everybody leaves. Feeling grounded, feeling connected, feeling like [00:40:00] hopeful. Even during these crazy times, we all leave feeling hopeful and inspired and uplifted by each other.

And she was like, you know why that is? It's because you're co regulating. Because we're seeing each other, and we're holding space for each other, and we're allowing each other to process what's going on in our lives, in our minds, in our businesses, in our families. And that pulls us out of fight or flight.

It allows us to exist in that space of resilience. And I was like, Oh my gosh, that is so incredibly true. And it is the biggest reason why I will always have an in person CEO retreat because there is something magical that happens. We love zoom. We love doing the virtual side of everything in the business and in the CEO collective.

But there is something really magical when you get in a room with other women who are there not just for themselves, but they're there for for the collective. So you aren't alone. Build the village that [00:41:00] you need. Okay? If you're a small business owner, you need a small business village. If you're a parent, you need a parenting village.

If you are a caregiver, you need a caregiver village. Like you are not alone. You're not the only one going through the things you're going through. There are other people out there and you need them as much as they need you. I was listening to an episode of Brene Brown's podcast probably a year or two ago and she was interviewing Esther Perel.

And, I mean, these are two podcasts I listen to a lot, Brene Brown and Esther Perel. And Esther Perel was sharing, they were talking about AI, but they had reframed it into artificial intimacy. And Esther said something to the effect of it caught her attention that she could have hundreds of thousands of followers, but no one to come feed her cat.

And it hit me because I was like, how many of us feel like that? Like, we don't have someone we can call when something has [00:42:00] happened. We don't have someone we can reach out to for support. We have to start rebuilding the community. We have to start rebuilding the village. And yes, you can pay to get the village.

I get that. Everybody who's a small business owner says, Well, just pay the housekeeper, pay the babysitter, pay those people. Yes, that's true. But you also need the village of emotional support. We cannot do these things alone, especially now. The only way we're going to break free from the status quo, it's not going to be individually, it's going to be collectively.

And I think that's where I want to wrap up. This conversation, because the reality is when things are happening in the world like they are right now, when we are watching the fall of hyper capitalism, we are in the death rattle of the patriarchy. They are fighting tooth and nail to keep it. And watch them.

They are fighting so [00:43:00] hard to convince everybody that what we need to do is to stay separated, to stay in fear, to be polarized, to look for someone else to blame, right? They are driving the wedges between everybody. And the only way we're going to get through this, the only way we're going to break the status quo and break this paradigm and create a new way forward is to let go of the hyper individualism.

We need to let go of the hyper individualism and we need to start realizing that Freedom does not come from one of us being free. It comes from all of us being free It comes from all of us supporting each other if your business is only about you making a million dollars then people aren't going to be excited about that.

It's about what do we all gain out of this? How do we all bring our talents and bring our gifts and bring [00:44:00] our perspectives to the table and collectively all rise, okay? We've got to let go of this rugged individualism because it is actually incredibly toxic and it is causing our society to fracture apart.

It has created a society where exploitation is okay, where in the small business space we see people on one hand talking about how they have built this multi million dollar business and on the other hand talking about how they have found virtual assistants for a couple dollars an hour. We can't do this anymore.

This is not the way forward. We have to collectively take care of one another. We have to get into community, okay? Alright, that's my little rant for today. I hope that helps you to think about values driven leadership, to think about protecting your peace, to think about getting in community. And know that we will get through this.

[00:45:00] We will get on the other side of this. Keep going. Keep going. And if you're starting to feel like I can't talk about my business. I can't do what I'm doing because it's, you know, we can't promote ourselves right now. We can't do our marketing right now. You can't do your marketing right now if you don't want your business to exist.

I encourage you to keep going. I encourage you to keep going. Because we need you. We need your gifts. We need your talents. and we need your contribution. Acknowledge what's going on in the world. Don't be afraid to stand up for what you believe and align your business with your values. Step into leadership.

Really claim the title CEO for yourself. Promote yourself to CEO of your life and business and stand up for it. All right. Thank you so much for [00:46:00] this conversation. I can't wait to hear your insights and ahas. Please communicate with me. Let me know what else you want me to dive deeper into and I will see you in the next episode.