Makena: Welcome, everyone. Go ahead, Gigi.  

Gigi: Yeah. Welcome, everyone. We’re excited to be here and to do another live coaching. So, sit back and enjoy, Makena.  

Makena: I will say with these live coachings, if you’re listening on audio only, great. That’s a fabulous way to listen. We will often say things like, when we see someone light up – that’s great. 

But if you have an interest in really watching what we’re doing here, you may want to check out the podcast on YouTube. It is available there under “Way of the Muse”. So, let’s dive in.  

Gigi: Yeah. All right. You were sharing a little bit about where you’ve been, what’s going on in your life.  

Lisa: From a career point of view, my career has always been in the corporate world. So, working for PLCs as a sales and marketing manager, and then my life took a shift a couple of years ago when my daughter gave birth to her son, he was four months old, and she became very seriously ill and was in the hospital for quite a long time.

I ended up leaving my job to support Megan and help my son-in-law look after the little baby, so things really shifted. At the time, I had just commenced studying to become a nutrition coach. 

Since then, I’ve continued to study nutrition coaching, and I have now qualified. I’m currently working part-time doing marketing for a company and also helping look after my grandson, who’s now coming up to two. My daughter is back to health, which is brilliant. 

My son and daughter-in-law, who lost a baby late in pregnancy, have recently had a little boy. I’m spending a lot of time involved with them.  Because they have now gone on a very happy journey, which is lovely. 

What I’m struggling with now is that I’ve qualified and trained to be a coach, and I know all the tools, but I’m really struggling to find my confidence back and my motivation to press forward with my business. 

I feel like over the last year or so, I’ve lost myself because I’ve been supporting other people. I no longer do the job that I was doing for many years. Now, I’m trying to find a way to find myself again. 

I have really thought long and hard about coaching and why I began training to be a coach. It’s something that I’d really love to do. So, it’s in nutrition, and I feel it’s a really important thing to get the message out there about good nutrition and how it really supports our health and our lifestyle. 

I’m really looking for some guidance or some support as to how I can get my confidence back and motivation to really try and push my business forward now to find time for myself.  

Gigi: That’s a lot. You’ve been through a lot. I think to be patient with yourself and kind to yourself too. I see there’s definitely a lot of curiosity about your business. 

I’ll just say talking about the experiences you’ve been having in your life often, life is this up-and-down cycle. When we go into something where there is, especially with our families, it’s a very close and intimate thing. When there are challenges, now that you’re having a little space, what’s so important is you’ve got to see what enlivens you. 

So, you know, if you listen to our podcast, we talk a lot about aliveness. And so, first of all, I would say the confidence in your business, one way it will come is by you doing some things for you for a while.  

Lisa: Okay.  

Gigi: Because you’ve been giving and the batteries, they get depleted, and then it’s very hard to see. It’s hard to see what you want or how you want it. And like you said, you went out of your corporate job, you went into a completely different life in terms of helping people, and in that kind of lost yourself in there.  

To find yourself again, you have to do some things that you love. What do you love doing? What energizes you?  

Lisa: I’m a trained yoga teacher, and I absolutely love yoga, but I found that that fell to one side. That is something that I have recently picked up for my self-practice.  

I really love that. I love putting the mat out and just sitting on the mat. It makes me feel in this moment, in this cocoon where it’s just me and my mat. That is something that I have been really trying to focus on.  I love that.  That makes me feel happy. 

I love being out in nature as well. I live in a beautiful area in Surrey County, not far from London. It’s very green and beautiful. 

I also really love helping people. In the past, even when I was working full-time, I did a number of years where I was a volunteer community first responder. I would go out on our 999 calls—911 for you—to addresses within the local area where I live to get there before the paramedics did to offer support. I love that feeling of helping people and reassuring people. 

Whilst I probably don’t feel I’m particularly doing that at the moment, apart from my family, that does make me light up.  

Gigi: Do you have a good community? Do you have a community of friends?  

Lisa: Yes, I do. I have lots of nice friends of various ages.  

Gigi: Do you do things with your friends?

Lisa: Yes, I do.  

Gigi: A lot of light there.  

Lisa: We often meet up, and Simon and I are very, very close. We spend a lot of time with each other and our friends.  

Gigi: What do you see, Makena?  

Makena: I saw a lot of light with yoga, a lot of light with being outside, and especially with your friends, with getting out with people. 

It’s not that I didn’t see light with the helping people. Maybe there was a little more emotion there as well. So, it’s just a different quality. 

I think, too, maybe there’s a new way of helping people, which is also through your business.  

Gigi: You’ve started the yoga again, you said?  

Lisa: I’ve started my self-practice again on a regular basis. Maybe something that I would consider is getting back into running classes and actually teaching. But at the minute, I feel quite happy getting back into my practice and nurturing myself through yoga at the moment, rather than running yoga classes.  

Gigi: The nurturing of yourself is really important. Like you said, nurturing is… you want to really think about what makes you unwind and then fills you with energy.

And I have a feeling that, like me, when I work with people, I get a lot of energy. I think you’re going to be the same as you build your practice. 

But again, because of your style, it’s so important that you give, give, give and find ways to make nurturing yourself the priority. 

It needs to shift from nurturing everyone else to nurturing you first because when you nurture yourself, you’ll have so much more energy, clarity, and vision on how to be of service to other people. Do you get that?  

Lisa: Yeah, I do. And I feel, I think because of the situation, I kind of threw myself into supporting my daughter and my son and their families. And then it continued and continued, and then you don’t set boundaries before you know it. For the other people, it becomes a norm. And you may feel undervalued, not purposely, I don’t believe, but…  

You feel as if they don’t necessarily value your time and consider what you would like to spend all your time doing, which is not always the case.  

Gigi: Do you know the saying, “Familiarity breeds contempt?”  

Lisa: Yes.  

Gigi: It’s a little bit true. Like you said, unless you set some boundaries and clear… And so that’s too, I think, to go to your families because you’ve been so supportive and just say, “I love you so much. And I really feel that I need 90 days or six months to really focus on myself for a while. I can maybe do this a little bit here, this little bit here, but I need this time so I can rebuild my batteries and everything.”  

Makena: I would really see in that conversation is first to get clear on what would feel good for you there. If you do want to continue supporting, really go in and say, “You know what, it would feel really good for me to help out one day a week or to do this.” 

So, you go in there, like Gigi said, first just sharing how much you’ve enjoyed supporting them and love them. And then saying, “I’d love to take this time, really focus on me for a little while. Here’s how I’d love to continue supporting you and the kids and being with my grandbabies. how does that sound to you?”

Lisa: Yeah, that’s really nice, actually. I hadn’t thought, actually, when you said there about, perhaps going and saying, “I would like to spend three months or six months just working on me.” 

It’s actually really nice because it doesn’t feel like you’re saying, “I’m not going to be there so much forever. It’s just while I, yeah, just have to spend this time to rebuild.”

Gigi: It’s really, it’s extremely important, especially because you are starting a new business. You’re going to need the emotional… we love our families, and I love my kids, but the emotional as a mother, if you have two children…  

Lisa: I’ve actually got three. I’ve got another son.  

Gigi: Then you feel a little pulled by if you get so involved in their life, you also feel everything about their life. Sometimes it’s good to actually be outside of it because you can even be more helpful. You see that you can actually be present in terms of a guide for them.  

Lisa: I agree. I think as well, with mobile phones and WhatsApp videos, it can sometimes feel like you’re every part of their life. I’m very close, me and my husband are very close to all the children, and which is lovely. Sometimes you just need that space. You don’t need to know everything that’s going on in their day every single day.  

Makena: If you bring it to them with a clear… like, if there is still a way you’d like to be involved or help out so much too. Then if you tell that to them, first, you frame it and take this time for you, which they’re going to want that for you. 

Then you share, this is how I’d like to still be involved. Then they don’t feel like they did something wrong or whatever. It gives them a really clear way to go. “Of course, we’d love that for you.” 

Gigi: Yeah. So that’s first. Then the next piece with your business is once you claim that… if yoga is your lifeline right now in terms of nurturing them, really immerse yourself there and then start to see working on your business. If you’re going to do that three days a week, or you have to see how often are you going to do it? 

Then you look and see what are the things that you’re going to do to take action. Then you make that a fun experience for you. 

We have something called the self-doubt switch that Makena will send to you, and you can do it. It’s a wonderful PDF that you go through, and you read the story of how I really helped Makena with this when she was feeling insecure and feeling like “I don’t have value to offer. Is this going to work?” 

I talked with her, and then she had that written out, and she had a beautiful meditation that you can listen to to start to really shift the way you feel there.  

Makena: For those of you listening in, we will provide that as a resource in the show notes. So, if you are curious about doing this yourself, go to the show notes as well.  

Gigi: Yeah. But tell us about your business. I looked at your website. It’s beautiful.  

Lisa: Great. I aim to do it predominantly online. I think that one good thing that’s come out of the pandemic is that people can do this type of thing now, as it probably wasn’t thought of much before. 

I think this is one other aspect that I need to think about in my business. Sometimes I get quite confusing messages when you read up about how to start the business, whether you hone in on a specific niche. 

Ideally, I want to work with people who are suffering from chronic long-term illnesses, which could be really helpful if they looked at their nutrition and their lifestyle. My daughter bizarrely became very sick. She developed a gallstone when she was pregnant, and they didn’t pick it up, it moved, and it blocked the duct from her pancreas, and she ended up with pancreatitis. I knew nothing about the pancreas before she got sick, and I had no idea it could make people so dangerously sick and life-threatening. 

Things to try and support people who are then living with maybe long-term chronic issues and supporting them in the way that I now support my daughter so she can keep her pancreas as healthy as possible. That’s my real aim, is to find those people, of which I feel that there are many.

I think with the Western diet that we have and the chronic problem with obesity, there are so many people living with chronic illnesses that are making their lives pretty miserable. So, to try and support those types of people, it’s really my passion.  

Gigi: That’s such a value. If you think about it, this is what in the self-doubt switch you’ll see, is that when people go, “Oh, do I have anything to share?” 

You have to shift it to, “Oh my gosh, you know, this is not about me. It’s about what I have to share.” 

If you bring one thing to someone and they make a shift in their life, it makes a huge difference. Little things go so far. 

Especially when it comes to nutrition and health, it’s not always a matter of taking things out. I would say it’s more of adding things in. How can people start to add more healthy things in?  

So, how are you marketing your business or getting it out there? What are you doing?  

Lisa: At the minute, and this is another thing that I’m stuck with. I’ve spent time designing my website. So, I did it all. I’ve done that. 

I’ve got an Instagram account. I’ve made a Facebook account. I’m now potentially looking to sign up for a business coach who supports coaches with their marketing because that’s one thing that I’ve been really stuck at. 

I think I’ve qualified, and I really love the course. I really enjoyed it. I did lots of case studies that I was marked on. I enjoyed all that. 

And then I qualified and then was left with, “Will anyone want to listen to me?” 

Then also how, from a digital marketing point of view, that’s not really my background. So, I’ve been trying to teach myself how to do that, but I’ve gotten to the point where I think I need a bit more support because it’s taken me such a long time to learn how to do digital marketing. Basically, it’s very time-consuming trying to teach yourself things.  

Makena: Yeah. I’m curious… With the business side, when you talked and shared your story just now, the main thing to know about business when you start to build your business… 

I think many people who step into coaching and sometimes into other types of entrepreneurship don’t realize there’s the business side of whatever it is you do, whether that’s coaching or whatever. You have a product or a service, and then there’s the business side, like you’re talking about, and they are two different things. 

And so, I love that you’re leaning in to really ask, “Okay, how do I have this coaching skillset? How do I learn this business skillset?” 

Most of the time, when people hit that point, they are overwhelmed by the many different ways they can build a business. I don’t know if you’re sitting there, but for many people, it’s overwhelming. 

They go, “Wait a second. Is it this thing or this thing? Should I be focused on Instagram, or should I be over here doing this, or should I be out speaking?” 

The important thing is that, again, all of our work ties back to aliveness. This is when I stepped out of my work in online marketing for all those years and really wanted to step into coaching. 

At first, I developed a business program, and that was because I saw so many people in the online marketing space, coaches, speakers, and authors. They would come to me and they would say, “I think I should do, at that time, it was like video series. I think I should have a video series.” 

And I would say, “Great. Well, do you… is that something you’re curious about? Are you, even if you’re scared, do you have a curiosity about being on video?” 

“Oh no, not at all.” 

And I would say, “Well, that’s interesting. Why do you think you should do a video series?” 

“Well, because everybody else is doing it.” 

So, when I stepped into coaching and started on the business side, my passion was to integrate the aliveness and alignment pieces of Gigi’s method with what I grew up with, and she mentored me in the strategy piece. 

Why I share all that because there is no one-size-fits-all. You have to really look and see where your curiosity is. Are you really strongly interested in growing online? 

If so, is there a certain platform or a certain direction that you have a strong pull to that you’re interested in, or do you really think that’s the direction? 

I will say that when you shared your story about your daughter, that’s a powerful story. I immediately saw you either speaking on podcasts, like being interviewed on podcasts, or speaking in front of live groups. You could also find ways to do that more online, sharing your story through video content, or whatever it might be. 

But those were the two things that popped into my mind first. I’m just curious if you kind of tune into the different directions. Let’s say, being interviewed on podcasts, let’s say speaking in front of maybe some small live groups or going more like the Instagram route or something like that. Is there something immediately that feels like, “Ooh, even if it’s scary, it has energy for you?”  

Lisa: I think… yeah. I think actually speaking to people…that’s one other avenue that I’ve thought about, is trying to get out there and find places where I can speak to audiences about things that I’ve experienced, not just my daughter, but my own health as well, which is, I’ve massively helped through my own nutrition, the things that I learned while I was studying. 

But I think, yeah, that excites me. 

What doesn’t excite me is making loads of Instagram posts. I’m not a designer, but I can talk, and I’ve got… I think I have a story to tell. I’ve learned lots of things about nutrition that I can relate to people who want to hear them. 

So, yeah, I’m probably going down those avenues.  

Makena: I see that very strongly for you. When you shared your story, I saw you again, speaking in front of an audience and maybe also being interviewed on podcasts. 

So, that clears so much up because what I see people do otherwise is they go out, and they go, “Well, everybody’s online marketing, right? I need to be going and doing…” 

There are stages in business too. But when you’re at the very beginning stage, you want to pick one or two marketing avenues and really dive into those. And a lot of times, they can be offline or largely offline for people, right? 

It can be through your warm network. It can be through speaking or hosting small live events or something like that. So, that is what I would really consider leaning into as a starting point.  

Gigi: Okay. Yeah. And if you like videos, instead of creating posts, you could do all your posts could be videos, couldn’t they? 

You could just get one header done, a nice one, maybe two options, and farm that out to Fiverr or get somebody on Fiverr or one of those platforms. Then you could just do a video or show things in your kitchen. 

Like Makena said. You go to what’s fun for you. What brings you alive?  

Makena: And I would really think about your social media then, like Gigi said, what would be easy and fun for you? And then think about it in less of a place. Like, how do I get clients through social media? Because it doesn’t sound like that’s where the energy is right now. Instead, think I’m going to be going out and speaking, I think, through probably maybe hospitals even, or different avenues. 

You probably know a lot of places where you could get in front of these kinds of people from your own experiences. You could develop a speech or a little workshop, and it could be interactive if you want. And then there’s a way to make an invitation at the end for people to maybe have a free call with you. 

So, there’s a whole strategy around that side of things and how you can bring people in. But then you think about your social media more as, okay, “I’m going to be out speaking. And what if people go look me up online?” You have a beautiful website already. “What if they look me up on social media? I’d love to have some things there for them to be able to dive deeper with me, learn a little bit, maybe get to know more of my story or whatever it is that you think,” 

Like when you were going through this with your daughter if you had met someone, they had told you, given a speech, and then you had gone and looked them up on social media, what would you have loved to see? And that’s what you create. 

Get to know that person, build trust with them, and be curious about coming in and working with them. That’s all you have to think about. So, there’s no need for some certain strategy there.  

Lisa: That’s amazing. It does. It makes perfect sense. And just hearing you say that makes me suddenly feel excited to go away and do something like that.

Makena: You light up a lot. 

Lisa: It’s amazing when sometimes you feel so bogged down, you don’t know which way to go. You almost get in a panic. Then you don’t do anything because you’re panicking, and your brain’s full of all these ideas, and you don’t know what to try first. 

It’s great that I’ve been able to express that and that you’ve given me that advice. Thank you.  

Gigi: I’m sure we can clip out this coaching, too, and share it with you.  

Keep it simple. Like Makena said, one or two things and just keep it consistent. Because that’s what you want to do. 

If it’s where you’re strong and where you have curiosity and you feel alive, it’s going to be so much fun for you. And that’s going to attract. 

I’m a game person. You can ask all the women in my mastermind, everything. I’m always creating games, and my games are always 90-day games. So, you say, you know, I’m really going to do this for the next 90 days, whatever you choose, and in that, you’ll feel so much stronger and prouder. You’ll start to attract by doing that.  

Lisa: Brilliant.  

Gigi: Is that helpful?

Lisa: Very helpful. Thank you.  

Gigi: Any other questions or comments or…?  

Lisa: I don’t think so. I kind of feel like you’ve unlocked something and given me just some motivation to go in. 

I can see now that I just need to focus on things that make me feel alive and excited to talk about and do rather than maybe comparing myself to other people online and thinking I should be doing that. But it doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel like it aligns with my values, but I should. Should I be doing that anyway and then not? 

So, yeah, that’s been really helpful. Thank you.  

Gigi: You’re welcome. Thank you for being so open and receptive too.  

Makena: We always love to ask at the end of a session, what are you taking away? What’s clearer now, or what have you gotten today?

Lisa: I’m going to have a conversation with my family and set some clear boundaries, definitely. I think that will hugely help me because I think it will take away that, I guess, underlying resentment that’s been making me feel quite angry and frustrated. 

So, I’m going to do that. 

Then, I’m going to write a plan of places where I can go to speak to people. I’m also going to try and do some videos just to talk about my story, really. I think that’s probably the best place to start and put it out there. So, yeah, there are some really good things for me to go away and do.  

Makena: And remember yoga, taking care of you, nurturing you. 

Lisa: Yeah, I’m going to continue with my yoga. I think at the moment, every day, I need to get on my mat, even if it’s just for 10 minutes, just to give me that space. Yeah, it’s like a magic mat. You stand on it, and it makes you feel nice.  

Makena: There are two quick last things. When you talk about yoga, I can see you sitting on your mat. I have a visual of it because of the way you describe it. And it’s such a beautiful visual. 

What it brings to mind for me is that you are your own case study. As you are going out to start to support these people, the journey you’ve just been on, and that you continue to be on in terms of being someone also supporting people going through this, but also for the people who are going through it. 

Right now, the way you nurture yourself is like you’re doing it for you, but you’re also doing it for this bigger reason of you’re about to go really start coaching and supporting people, and they’re very much going to need to be nurturing and caring for themselves. 

So, it’s one of the beautiful things about being a coach is that you get to anything that you are going through and experiencing, you get to sort of do it for you and for this bigger reason and have this broader perspective of… and sort of even pay attention to, like, “as I’m going through this, what am I struggling with? What’s really working for me?” Have that kind of awareness as you’re going through it. 

The other thing I wanted to say is the word “boundaries.” I would maybe see if there’s a different word that fits because often the word “boundaries,” when we think about that, people use that word a lot, is it think that boundary is something between that keeps something out. 

Instead, it might be maybe it’s “parameters” for how you and your family are interacting, or you’re there with your grandkids or whatever you want to call it. You can see what word fits for you, but you may just want to play with what would be a different word.  

Gigi: Rituals. That’s what I was going to say, when you go to them, come from a place of gratitude? If you say “I so appreciate the opportunity that I’ve had to be so close with your families and be here and help. I just really feel I want to take some time for myself and get strong again. I’d love to on Wednesday nights take the kids, you guys do date night.” or whatever it is. And you put structure to it, in that it becomes like a ritual in your family. 

Then you set it up. Makena’s so right on this. When people talk about boundaries, there’s often something underneath that can feel a little negative. So, you want to go into it with clarity about what you want, sharing what you want, and also being grateful and acknowledging. 

Makena: Like Gigi said, it’s about creating your family rhythms and rituals. What is the rhythm of your family? What are the rituals you have together? 

Feel the energy of that versus saying, “I need to put boundaries in place.”

Lisa: Yeah, it’s such a different energy. Different energy.  

Makena: So, we can close on that.  

Lisa: That’s so much nicer and so much more fitting for me and my family because we are all very close and love each other a lot.  

Gigi: I see that.  Absolutely.  All right. Well, thank you so much for giving us this opportunity.  

Lisa: Thank you very much.  

Gigi: All right, everyone. Good luck to you! Write to us and let us know how it’s going.  

Lisa: Yes, I will. Definitely. 

Makena: If you are listening or watching and you’re curious about doing an on-air coaching session in the future, you can go to wayofthemuse.com/onair and apply. 

Thank you, everyone. See you next time.