757: Coaching Call: Is Your Network Your Net Worth?

0:01Okay, I have been on this ruthless pursuit to purge any clothes that I'm not actually wearing. Like if I haven't reached for it in months, it's got to go. I am trying to be really intentional about what I bring into my closet right now, which means I am only buying pieces that I know I will actually wear and use. Revolve just gets it though. I'm literally wearing my brown Autry sneakers from there right now and my new suede purse. It fits my laptop in it. So it's basically a fancy shoulder bag that works for everything. I love finding pieces like that. Things that look good, but also work hard for my actual life.

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1:15So happy shopping. When I've invested to be in rooms with people that I admire or people that are leading the way or people that are ahead of me on the path, building connections with people that are also willing to invest in that and see the value in it brings a different level of commitment. Hey, my name is Jenna Kutcher and I am obsessed with all things business, marketing numbers, and helping you to navigate both the messy and the magical seasons of this thing called life. I'm a small town mama who took a$300 camera, grew a successful photo biz, and now I work from home and run a seven figure online business.

1:52I teach you the tried and true secrets to building a career you adore. Shy away from the real talk? No way. Money, hardship, growth, loss, and marketing are all topics we discuss here. Think of this as your one-stop shop for happy hour with a gal pal mixed with business school. Pull up a seat, make sure you're cozy and get ready to be challenged and encouraged while you learn. This is the Gold Digger podcast. Raise your hand if you want to reach a wider audience, create a bigger impact and grow your business. I'm going to guess that your hand is in the air and I have just the advice for you. This episode is a coaching session I had with Nicole Guanzara, who's an early career development strategist and a bilingual immigrant from Zimbabwe.

2:33She has over a decade of early career development and higher education experience. And now Nicole is on a mission to empower students and early career professionals to find their fit in higher education and fulfilling careers through coaching, tailored workshops, and programs. Having transitioned to being a business owner two and a half years ago, Nicole's unique blend of warmth, energy, and engaging voice is her special sauce. You get to experience it firsthand today. I knew I loved her when she came to our coaching session, ready to take notes, take action, and reach her biggest goals. You are about to get a front row seat to our conversation about how to leverage digital products, email lists, and networking for strategic growth.

3:16If you, like Nicole, are set on effectively reaching a wider your audience and creating impactful content that resonates with your audience while trying to juggle all the things, including motherhood, you are going to get so much value out of this session. Speaking of you, if you would like to be featured in a future coaching episode of the Gold Digger podcast, be sure to join the Gold Digger Insiders Facebook group. We've linked it up in the episode description and show notes for you. Jump inside of that group. This is where you can be connected to do your own coaching session, I will be periodically asking for volunteers to jump on the show, ask me questions, get mentored, and help other listeners.

3:57And of course, you get to be on your favorite podcast of all time. So join the Gold Digger Insiders Facebook group, and maybe we'll get to hit record together soon. Without further ado, let's dive into my coaching session with Nicole. Ooh, growing pains hurt. And when you're a marketer trying to generate leads for your brand new business, you know the pain all too well. Thankfully, there's HubSpot for Startups, a special program that gives startups discounts on HubSpot and so much more. But first, let's talk about the platform. The platform that unites your entire front office from marketing to sales to support.

4:35The platform that streamlines your support tickets, generates more leads and increases sales. The platform that scales right along with you. Oh, and don't even get me started on the educational articles, industry reports, videos, tips, templates, literally everything founders need to help scale. HubSpot for startups has it all. So get ready to build a brand everyone loves and make your startup growing pains a thing of the past. Visit hubspot.com slash startups to see how much you can save. That's hubspot.com slash startups. I am so excited for today. We brought back our Gold Digger coaching sessions.

5:14And I am with a very, very special woman today. So Nicole, welcome to the Gold Digger podcast. Thank you, Jenna. It is an absolute dream come true to be here with you. Thank you for having me. Oh my gosh. Yes. Okay. Give us the landscape of kind of where you're finding yourself in your business and entrepreneurship, even in your season of life, just so that we kind of have the foundation laid as we dive into some of the amazing questions that you prepared? Absolutely. In this season of life, I find myself as a mama to two littles, a wife, an early career development strategist, and a women's ministry leader, because I can't get enough of doing all the things, right?

6:00And I've been running my company, Education Advancement Consulting, for two and a half years now. It was born out of the pandemic with a newborn and a toddler, as so many women did to take the leap to spend more time with their kids. And on a day-to-day basis right now, I find myself talking to either career development offices, inclusion and diversity offices, first-generation offices on college campuses about how are they helping their students navigate that path from college to career with the least amount of stress possible. So we talk a lot about career wellness? How are you managing your professional development, your mental well-being, as well as financial literacy so that you are at your best when you advocate for yourself for what's next?

6:50Amazing. So basically you're a consultant. Is that how you would describe what you're doing? Absolutely. Yes. Awesome. And who is your like dream client? Like when you get an email coming in, who is it that you like love to work with? When I get an email, Now, I would love to work with career development offices on a university campus specifically. So more B2B, not B2C. B2B. Got it. Yes. B2B has been working really well for me. I love that. Amazing. Okay. Let's dive on in to your questions and we'll kind of let the path go. And if I have any follow-up questions, I'll drop them as we go. Okay. Sounds great.

7:32So Jenna, you and I are in similar seasons of motherhood, right? With littles at home, balancing everything between yuck at home sometimes and trying to figure out how to squeeze in meeting times, TV time, whatever it is. And I just want to know, right? I'm thinking of the Jenna who turned a$300 camera into a work from home seven figure business. how did you manage that balance as you were growing your business? Because it probably took a village. It didn't come overnight. So I'd love to know, how did you manage that work-life balance? Yeah. I mean, we were laughing before we got on air because my family got hit with the crazy flu bug.

8:19And it's just yesterday as I was going to bed after a day of just like disaster in our household of laundry and taking care of everybody. It made me like think so much of how grateful I am to be an entrepreneur and have the flexibility to, you know, at the drop of a hat, pick up my daughter from school and, you know, take care of cancel things and things like that. And like, that is so wrapped in privilege that like, we even have the capacity to be flexible in that way when life happens, because guess what life is going to happen. And balance is such a tricky thing for me because I feel like women, I don't ever hear men talk about balance.

8:58Do you ever hear men talk about balance? It's such a funny thing when you think about it. And I feel like balance has been ingrained in us as women that we have to juggle it all and keep all the balls in the air at all the times and do it all beautifully while smiling. Right. Right. And it's just like not possible. And I remember when I was studying some like language from my book and I looked at the word balance and balance is a moment that isn't meant to be maintained. And so it's funny that we approach balance as this like state where we're like, we just want to be in balance all the time. It's a moment.

9:35Like you can be in balance for one moment and the next moment be out of it. And so I've had to really figure out which seasons are for like hustling and where the business is coming a little bit more first and which seasons are for parenthood. And I will say that the majority of the last five years of being a mom, it's been, the scales have been tipped to motherhood, but I am able to do that because I had already been an entrepreneur for so long. When I think about you starting your business, you're still relatively new two and a half years into it, also raising kids, you don't necessarily have the bandwidth to be like, I'm going to press the brakes because the gas pedal is still getting pushed down.

10:15Right. Right. And so for me, like I've been so fortunate, my husband stays at home. Like we have the ultimate flexibility to be able to do these things. It's not possible for everyone. It's not realistic for most people. And so what I want to encourage people to do is to not say, well, this is what I have to do in order to achieve balance, but to just have a level of awareness and consciousness around the choices you're making on a day-to-day basis. Is this where you are needed most right now? Is it your business? Is it your babies? Is it your life? What is it? And I think that when we raise our level of consciousness, we stop feeling that like self-deprecating, like, oh, I didn't get done what I should have, or I wasn't as present as I should have.

11:00And you are just more conscious and aware of like, this is where I put my energy and time today. And this was the best place for it. And so that's what I would encourage because my story is not going to be like yours and not going to be like anyone else's. Our stories are so unique, but I think that the biggest thing for me when it comes to balance is really just an awareness and consciousness of where I'm choosing to put my time and energy and allowing that to just be what it is. And so I think that can kind of help because when we're feeling out of balance, it's usually just that we're not really going into where we're spending that with a level of consciousness.

11:39Does that make any sense? It makes a lot of sense when, especially when you're, I'm holding onto you saying it's a moment, right? It's not a constant state of being it's a moment. And so by choosing what to focus on in that moment. And what, what matters. So I know for these few hours while the kids are at school, what I'm choosing to focus on is my business and growing my business. But when pickup happens, or I get a call in the middle of the day, like last week, two times, I just forgot to pack their lunch and had to run it over to school. And I didn't have to tell anybody. I just picked my myself up and took it to school because I have that flexibility.

12:24And that's what mattered in that moment because I can do that. And that's what's valuable. My kids need to eat. So I appreciate that you say the moment and then just focusing on what matters in that moment. Because I tend to mix it all up and no one's happy. Yes. And that's, there's no worse feeling than going to bed after working hard all day, whether it's in mom mode or work mode and going to bed and being like, what did I even get done? That is like the worst feeling when you were like, I was running around with a chicken and it's head cut off. And I still can't even tell you what I did. And so it's like, when you have that level of awareness, you're like, okay, and this is what mattered today.

13:02And this is what I did today. And like, rest easy. You earned it. Go to bed. I love that. And actually this takes me, it makes me want to just kind of dive deeper into that because you mentioned you have an incredibly supportive husband, right? And you're able to also be flexible when you need to in mom mode. And what does that look like in work mode? Because I saw the selfie on your blog with this beautiful group of women behind you, this team. Can you just share what that balance looks like at work? Because I know these seven figures are not just made with you doing all the things all the time.

13:47Yes. I have the most amazing team. And what's so interesting. And for so many people listening, I think there is such intimidation around being responsible for paying other people, right? Especially when you're starting out and you're not totally certain. And so my team has been built very slowly over time. And what is so interesting, what I love about my team is that we have such incredible boundaries. And I think that when you think about balance and a desire for it, boundaries have to go hand in hand. And so we have really strict rules around how we communicate, the time that we communicate, how we approach each other, the conversations.

14:25And so even this morning when I got online, I had messages of like, how are the kids? Is everyone feeling better after this flu? Like, how are you? It wasn't like, here's what you got to do today. Or here's what I need from you. It was like human first, work second. And I think that that's super powerful in every communication. And it's so funny because I learned so much of this from my right hand gal, Marissa, because she's so beautiful with our communication. And oftentimes, once I open my laptop, my brain goes straight to work where I could just fire off work questions. So often I will type out the work questions and then I will go backspace to the beginning and say, good morning.

15:00I hope you got good sleep. How are you doing today? Here's what I need. And so it's been this like beautiful reminder of kind of even mixing like the masculine and feminine energy of like, a lot of times when I go into work mode, I'm like, let's just get it done. Let's go, like go pedal to the metal. And then I try to be like very like soft and gentle with my kids and my husband. And so figuring out that balance there, but what's beautiful with my team is that they have so much ownership around what they do and how they do it. And so we've kind of gotten into a place where like we ideate together the first 10%, 80 % is usually completed by the person doing the task.

15:42And then the last 10 % is again, going back to that original vision, doing the review and things like that. And so it takes a lot of like loosening the grip, letting go of control, which so many of us have a problem with and also just lust, right? What, what resonates with you in that? You know, it's, it's the letting go, right. And of control. I heard somebody the other day say, my business is growing because, you know, I can, I used to do 70 % of the work and I would outsource 30%, but I was still doing so much. So now I have built a team of people that are experts in the space. So I can have the calls when necessary.

16:25And then I immediately outsource the work itself to the rest of the team. And I want to do, I'm still in the, I want to do the 70%. I know I have no business doing the 70%. But so that really resonates with me, letting go because you're hiring this person because of their expertise, because of what they bring to the table, right? I think of even just right now, my experience with Christy, who has been phenomenal, by the way, her communication, how warmth comes across. And I love that that's a reflection of you and who you are, and that's coming across in your team. So it even speaks to the synergies you all have.

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19:17One thing I think that's so interesting and I'd be so curious if you started to just pay attention because you said you are doing the 70 % and honestly, I think it's beautiful for founders to do every piece of the work at some point, right? Like I can still do every single thing that happens in my business, I don't want to. And I'm not the most qualified to do most of those things. And I think a lot of times the resistance in like loosening the grip and letting go of control comes because we're worried that we're going to let go of the things that we love the most or the things that light us up.

19:52And so I would just be so curious if you started to pay attention to the things that you dread, the things that you keep putting off, the things that you grumble about. Those are the things where you can start to let go of those pieces, knowing that somebody else loves doing that. My support person, her name is Steph. She has been with me, I think for seven or eight years, which being in a support role like that for that amount of time is incredible. And she is so good at it. And I would hate to answer support tickets. I would just hate it. That would like be like my worst job ever. And so the fact that she enjoys it and it gives her energy and she like shows up every single day and has done so for years and years and years, like it's just a reminder of like the things we don't like, someone else likes them.

20:43And so it kind of helps like the loosening of the grip in that way where you can still hold on to the parts that you love that require you that you give that like special sauce to. But then if you just even start making a little list of what lights me up and what drains me, you might start to see trends and places where somebody else could step in to help. So that maybe you go to like 60-40 and then 50-50. And when you get more freed up, you might even find different things that light you up that you hadn't even considered before. I'm going to make that list because there's some things that are floating that I need to put down and just, you know, put on a list that I need to put away and give to someone else.

21:24And I'm actually finding that some of my village is intervening at this point and saying, Hey, can I do this? I can do it. Yeah. Can I do this for you? Right. Because they also know I'm not in a stage where I can pay all the people and do all the things, right. There's so much, you know, you, you remember, and I'm sure you're still, and you are still very mindful of that, but especially in the beginning where every single dollar means a whole lot. It still does now, I'm sure, because you're still accountable. But that initial stage of, I can't just decide on a whim, or I've done it and it's burned me or whatever else.

22:04So I'm starting to see my village kind of intervene and say, okay, well, I can help you with this. I can help you with that. And I say, oh, you know what? Great. I actually don't like doing that. And it's stopping me from recording this thing. It's stopping me from publishing the podcast I should have a year ago. You know, so I got to be doing this. I love it. Yes. Okay. So I think just to wrap around that loop, we talked about the work, we talked about the people, how are you leveraging your network? I've loved seeing the deep connection and collaboration and what seems like friendship as well with the queen herself, Amy Porterfield.

22:46Oh my gosh. I've seen social posts of like retreats with some really, really cool people in your industry. And I know that didn't happen overnight. So can you tell me a little bit about how you started leveraging your network? Yeah, I love this. And I love that you were bringing this up too, because I think entrepreneurship can be so lonely, like so crazy lonely. Right. And I think too, when we're starting out and you were maybe battling like imposter syndrome and all these doubts and questions and like imagining you with two little ones, starting a business and trying to like build relationships, like friendships are hard at this stage of life.

23:24They take a lot of effort and energy, which a lot of times us tired moms don't have to give, right? So I'm just like bowing down to you that this is even a question. What's so interesting is like, you can go and find friends in Facebook communities. Like we have the amazing gold digger podcast, Facebook insiders group. It's like 60 ,000 people. That's a place where you can find relationships. But what I have really learned and seen over and over and over again, and I can literally draw like a line in the sand of like before and after is that when I've invested to be in rooms with people that I admire or people that are leading the way or people that are ahead of me on the path, building connections with people that are also willing to invest in that and see the value in it brings a different level of commitment.

24:11And I have had so many times where there's like an amazing group of women and they're like, let's do like a monthly zoom call and we'll all connect. We'll talk about business and life and all these things. And when there's no buy-in, no one really shows up. It's like you have to put your skin in the game. And so for me, joining a mastermind years ago, when I was at a really pivotal place in my career, I was still a wedding photographer, solely a wedding photographer, thinking about getting into online courses and podcasting and stuff. I made a really significant investment, which isn't always possible at the beginning, but something to put on your vision board for a few years from now is like, what rooms do I want to be in?

24:51What's so interesting is, is that investment has built so many amazing relationships that are now free relationships, right? Like being in that room developed these deeper relationships with people who are also at a similar place and stage and also willing to invest in like seeing how valuable relationships are. What's also interesting and something that I want to say is that as you start to build relationships with other people, you can really start to see a chasm between the people who are exactly as you want them to like, as you believe they are and people who have like personas. And I just say like, pay attention to every bit of it and listen to your gut.

25:31And I think that we have a gift as women. I think men have intuition too, but I think we as women have a deeper internal knowing that we can tap into. And I will say like, I have a pretty good gut on me of just like initial feelings and energy of like, Oh, I really like this person. Or, you know, I think they have really great values and they live into those and they are who they say they are. And there's also been people who like, when you peek behind the curtain, you're like, Nope, that is not it. Like that does not resonate. That is not what I want for my life or my community. And so that's so interesting.

26:08And it was funny because like you said, Amy Porterfield, like we are best friends. Like we talk all day long. We talk about everything. Like I'm talking about everything. And it's been one of those relationships where like every day we're sending like five minute voice memos to each other. I feel like she's like the VP of my company and I'm hers because we know so much. And I think that that just takes time. And again, like I was her student first. And then I was like determined, like, I'm going to be her best student. I'm going to show up to every live she does. She's going to notice me in the comments.