Paradigm U. Podcast
Paradigm U. Podcast
162: Bringing on a Partner. What We've Learned.
Join Lisa & April as they share what they've learned the past 6 months as a partnership grew and evolved.
Bringing on a partner can feel intimidating, so Lisa & April share intimate details to help you decide if a partnership is right for you.
This episode offers a peak into where they're headed in 2024 and a beautiful reflection on where they've been.
Get DEEPER with April, Lisa & The ParadigmU Team. Connect with Us HERE.
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Welcome to the Paradigm you Podcast.
Speaker 2:You're listening to the Paradigm you Podcast. You're about to start transforming your life by growing your mind and expanding your paradigms. Here we'll cover real life topics, just like the stuff you'd share with a good friend. This podcast will serve up topics that weigh on our hearts and keep us up at night, whether it's navigating parenthood and becoming an adult, or wayfinding, personal development, marriage and money. You, my friend, are in the right place. I'm glad you're here.
Speaker 3:All right, welcome to the Paradigm you Podcast. Lisa and I are here today to round out 2023, as we reflect on how our partnership has come full circle in the past six months. You know we started out about six months ago, about halfway through 2023. But, quite frankly, we started this journey far sooner or far longer than in what was it June or July, Lisa.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, we kicked off, I think officially in June.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but this has been coming for a while and brewing for a while, so it wasn't a surprise when we were ready to go. It was go time. But on today's episode, we want to share with you, our listeners, all of you, all around the world. Lisa, can we actually just do a shout out? Yes, we have some really, really dedicated listeners in some amazing countries all around the world and I just want to say thank you to everybody who's listening. It's so fun to see and to look up some of these towns and countries.
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely. We are so grateful for you listeners and please keep listening because on my bucket list moving forward, I really do think we need to like travel and take this on the road. That'll be fun.
Speaker 3:All right. So on this week's podcast, we are going to end the year on a high note, and that is reflecting on where our partnership hit, the journey where we've gotten. So, lisa, tell me a little bit about what do you think when you reflect on our partnership, what are your thoughts? What are your?
Speaker 4:reflections, so many great thoughts and reflections, but you know, the first real main takeaway that comes to mind is just the big fear of ruining our friendship on any level.
Speaker 4:It just was something that I was adamant that I did not want to have happen, and you're such an important person in my life personally and it was so exciting, as you've already mentioned, that we've known that we were going to work together at some point in our life. We just weren't clear on when. So when the opportunity presented itself, it seemed like, yep, absolutely, let's just kind of clear the air and make sure we are good, because number one priority is always going to be my friendship with you. So you know, and I think that's a common theme that people have, especially solopreneurs, other coaches, consultants, freelancers there's so many great opportunities to partner, to expand, to have community with someone on a regular basis and not just always go it alone. But I do think there's a big fear attached to it, and for us to be able to recognize that and equally start working through that in hindsight was super empowering and, dare I say, almost laughable now, because I feel like it's brought us closer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if our listeners have some of that fear as well. You know, for years I've had that fear with partnerships. Years ago, actually, I had gotten the feedback or the advice don't partner with somebody unless you absolutely have to, and I find that interesting. Yeah, that was, you know, early on in my first business goes and you know, for the longest time I really fought that and then what happened was quite a few years ago I found the opportunity to partner with my first investment partnership and we did that strategically because we each brought different, unique things to the table, and I think what I've learned is that when you find those right people that bring unique things, that compliment the other person, it's a game changer. You can go so much farther and faster and bigger and better that it just changes everything, and I feel like that was the same for us.
Speaker 4:Absolutely, and I would. I would also say that you can, by extension of what you shared you, you can make a bigger impact on the people you serve and on the world in general, and that, I think, is what's so exciting for me.
Speaker 3:I won't lie to our listeners. It's been a learning curve, especially for the two of us, because we we did have such a beautiful relationship prior to deciding to partner. We did.
Speaker 4:Wait, where are you going with this? Well, we did, but you're making it sound like we don't anymore. Oh no.
Speaker 3:I totally, I love you. I'm so joking with you.
Speaker 4:Now you're getting in my head. You should see your face.
Speaker 3:I'm like wait what? But no, honestly, you know what I think is the coolest part, lisa, is that we've been able to shine a light on where the other one excels. And also I don't know if you can say the same, but I know for me it's been really, really a beautiful gift to have somebody who I respect and I adore, and I think is brilliant to call me out on my crap. Yeah, because when you're a solopreneur, when you're working on things on your own, you can hide in that or get lost in it.
Speaker 3:But when you have somebody who holds you accountable and can call you out and be like hold on, yeah, yeah, are you showing up as your best version of yourself? Ooh, you can't hide from that. I can't hide from you.
Speaker 4:No, no, you can try, and absolutely vice versa. I do think, going into a partnership, it is critical to have some of these foundational questions and really vet each other out, based on what you said before. But I do believe that is part of what has always made our relationship great and we're seeing it become very fruitful on the business side, which is, we can ask each other the hard questions and it's not personal for us, right Like I don't take it personally when you call me out on stuff, I think, while she loves me enough to call me out to let me grow, and that's pretty cool.
Speaker 3:Oh, I do love you enough to let you grow. It's been really fun. You know, listeners, I will say that this is probably more of a vulnerable and intimate conversation and podcast than we've for some of the other ones, because we're really pulling back the curtain and we're being honest with you about the adventures and the challenges and everything in between that we've navigated for the past six months. And, interestingly, you know, we asked you on one of the previous episodes who did you intend to be when you started 2023? And how are you rounding out the year? And it's it's fun to ask ourselves those exact same questions.
Speaker 3:We don't just speak to you and then say, good luck, you guys got to figure this out. We're walking alongside you on this journey, and one of the things that I had set my intentions on at the beginning of this year was to align myself with people that I could collaborate with to help me grow and step into that next level of myself. And boy, I will tell you, it was terribly intimidating when Lisa and I decided to sign on to do this together, and we're still working through a lot of the unknowns and we're still figuring out a lot of things, but I can tell you that, with open communication and also knowing what you want out of the relationship and also celebrating what you can bring to the relationship, it's been really fun and the coolest part just really quick and then I will totally hand it over to you.
Speaker 3:But the coolest part, you guys, is I get to see this beautifully brilliant woman shining so bright. I get to watch her speaking to people in our Elevate Group coaching cohort and just witnessing her amazing skill sets, and that, I think, has probably been my favorite thing.
Speaker 4:You are amazing and you're going to make me cry. Thank you for that. I'm receiving it all and equally, it's been amazing for me to sit back and just see how amazing you are with strategy and coaching and connecting with people. You have this deep innate ability that you clearly have honed through years and years of training and expertise and it's so cool to see how that radiates and just the frequency and the energy that you bring. So I appreciate everything you bring and I equally feel like I'm reflecting you right, like I feel like we got some energetic reflection going on here.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, thank you. I appreciate that. You know one of the other things. If you are listening and you're like, ooh, maybe on 2024, maybe that's my year to partner and to link my harness with someone so I can go farther and faster and have a bigger impact than I could if I was on my own, here's what I can tell you. You have to know yourself and you have to know where you want to go and what you want to do. But, equally, one of the cool gifts that I think was unexpected for me was this opportunity to lean on each other. When life gets hard, life gets busy, you know, when you're going alone, the buck stops with you, and so for us, we have young kids. So if we have a kid that's homesick, for example, or if we have something that happens in our personal life, if we were doing this on our own, everything would pause, yeah, but when we link our harnesses and we can lean on each other, it allows us to keep going.
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:You were talking about white space the other day. And I think this partnership has also created that. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I would say that's one of the biggest takeaways. As you were, you transitioned us into it so beautifully this idea of white space and in marketing language, white space is a term that's used especially amongst if you're selling to female females at all, or female entrepreneurs, white space becomes a critical component to your overall design because, as women, we like things that have a little white space. But there's also this idea you can take that philosophy and apply it, overlay it in your life or in your business and really just allow for space. Not everything needs to be scheduled back to back to back to back to back. You don't have to cram more in, and I felt like, to a lot of degree, that's what's happening with solopreneurs.
Speaker 4:People are wanting to do more and be more and grow more, and that's amazing, and I think there's so much dreams and visions that can be actualized. But I do believe in what I've seen with our partnership and, equally, just taking a completely different approach to business through our partnership. White space, this idea of allowing yourself to breathe, allowing yourself to have a little bit of extra time, really is what's going to catapult you forward. It's learning how to do less better. It's learning how to be in this messy middle. We don't have all the answers for every single piece of the direction of the business moving forward, but we have the critical ones and we're in it and we're figuring it out right. We're in the arena, as Brené Brown likes to talk about, and we're fighting to figure it out together.
Speaker 3:So this idea of white space and really taking action to find the answers, I find just so refreshing to have, to your point, a partner alongside you know, Leigh, it's cool that you say that, because I don't know if you remember this, but a couple years ago and gosh, I wouldn't be surprised if it was like 2019, maybe 2020, I was in a rough spot and at the end of the year I said I'm going to go on a little quiet retreat on my own and I am going to just map out my whole year, and so I had bought a big calendar for the whole year. Do you remember this?
Speaker 4:Yes, I just love you and your calendars. It's just so much joy.
Speaker 3:Yes, I do. Yeah, and what I the cool part was I think I don't remember if we had zoomed together or what we had done, but I feel like we were kind of along the same journey or we were kind of mapping out our year together in parallel, because we weren't partners back then. But one of the cool parts that I think you were the one who actually nudged me to do this, because I was at a season of life where I needed to do a lot of healing, yeah, but I was also a recovering overdoer and I was trying to figure out where did this?
Speaker 3:how does this all work? And so I very clearly remember mapping out on my year calendar, actually putting posts on certain days and saying this is the day that I'm going to go to Reiki, this is the day I'm going to just take a personal day. And I did that for the whole year and I knew like, ok, well, for Reiki, for example, I like to do that at least once a quarter. So I went through the whole year and picked out those days in December for the next year and I will tell you, having the white space carved out. For the whole year, I did vacation days, I did everything that allowed me. When I look back at that following year, it must have been the winter of 2020, because it was 2021. I had so much more productive time and so many more things that I was able to accomplish, and I still was able to guard all of that downtime, and so that's so, yeah, and that was all you.
Speaker 4:Oh well, I'm so glad you know. I think what's so interesting about us is you, as you've shared with listeners over the years, or, from that overdoer perspective, I'm definitely the over-thinker Right. So like I will sit and I will think and think and think and think and think as opposed to doing. And so for me, I had a my white space. That I had created was, I believe it was the winter or the fall of 2018. And I took a weekend away up north and it was just me and just the north woods in fall.
Speaker 4:There's no Wi-Fi and I can't remember if I shared with listeners that's kind of when I had an identity crisis in a grocery store because I didn't even know what to buy, because I was only buying for myself. But I'm sharing this with the listeners because I created white space, time away just to be alone with me in the woods for an entire weekend, and that's where things started to really open up for me with the direction of my life moving forward. But carving that out on a daily basis, especially for the overdoers, like you did, april, is such a great, great approach.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you. You know we obviously we want you to be thoughtful and intentional with how you're taking action, but sometimes taking action includes carving out that time and guarding it really really well, because it can be easy, especially if you're not in partnership, to just say I'll just do this, I'll just take this on. I met somebody this past week where they're an online entrepreneur and they work every night after their kids are put to bed until this midnight. They said, yep, I work anytime I can get my kids to bed. I just I stay up as late as I need to and I usually just fall asleep like working out stuff and I'm like cool, my friend, you might burn out pretty quick if you keep going at that pace.
Speaker 2:I've been there.
Speaker 3:I've done that. But you know, on the opposite side of taking this white space and carving it out and guarding it, I think it's also important to take action intentionally, and that's something that I'm really proud of us the past few months that we did. You know, we were just kind of getting started, as in our partnership, and we knew what we wanted to do, we knew the impact that we wanted to make, but did we have all the answers? No way. But I can tell you we found a lot more answers by taking action and getting started than just over sinking it.
Speaker 4:Absolutely. I vividly remember having a meeting with you and we were both just like we got to just jump in because and we knew that we knew we needed to just jump in to find more answers. And I do want to circle back to taking a little bit of white space, because as entrepreneurs especially, or as moms who are just so extra busy this time of year you know we need to start reframing and owning the fact and this is something that I love about how we are operating our business that the powerful pause, taking that downtime, taking that white space, is an action for your business or for your life goals, whatever they are. And I don't know where in our culture, the hustle and grind and where that narrative took over, as if to say that's the only way to do life and be successful. Because we're here to tell you that's actually not.
Speaker 4:And, to your point, april, it's the fastest way to burn out. So, coming into the partnership and going, wait a second, I've burned out, I've burned my business down at least twice. I don't want to be that person anymore. So who's this new person, who's this new Lisa going to be that we can intentionally build, make impact and all the things we want to accomplish. But first and foremost, put the relationship center focus and take action without burning out and putting those powerful pauses in the middle.
Speaker 3:You know, something else that I think it's important that we share is that oftentimes, when we come together for team meetings and we're working on a project, or we're working on forecasting or whatever it is, I feel like the theme is how can we make this easy? Yes, it's such a great question. How can you make whatever you're working on easy?
Speaker 4:Yes, what's the easiest way to accomplish what we're trying to do? Yeah, how can this next decision be easy?
Speaker 3:We come back to that question all the time and you know, it's something that I think I bump up against. I probably fight, I guess maybe more than you, because I'm like no, we have to do it this way, this is how it's supposed to be done. Quote, unquote supposed to. And you know when you were saying about. You don't know where the hustle came from and how important it's been to take this powerful pause that we've been advocating for. It's cool that you say that, because years ago, when this podcast first started, you were one of my first interviews. You remember that and you were two, yeah, and you were talking about the powerful pause that you were taking in that moment.
Speaker 4:Oh, that's wild. I'm gonna have to re-listen to that.
Speaker 3:It was cool, but that was the first time that I had ever really thought about it from that lens. And now, years later, we're talking about it and we're seeing the impact that taking a pause, taking care of yourself, recalibrating, re-grounding yourself and your vision, grounding your nervous system, all of it that all has a pivotal impact on your business, absolutely. We just want to advocate for you to do it, absolutely.
Speaker 4:It's been such a great year, such a great six months together, six months, six months doing this, and I feel like, you know, we're just getting started and I'm so excited for what we've learned and how we're, you know, equally adapting and the intentional decisions we're making for the new year. So it's all just such a great energy, great time.
Speaker 3:It is yeah, and one of the things that we've decided for this podcast is we'd like to create more white space for our listeners. Yes, Because it's easy to get caught up in the doing, and sometimes that doing even is ooh. I got to stay up to date on listening to all the podcasts for people. I need to, you know, be reading and collecting all of the content that's out and available to me. But because we love you so much and we respect all of our listeners and all of our followers, we actually have decided that we'd like to create more white space for you in the new year. We are excited to roll that out and explain a little bit more about that next year.
Speaker 4:Ooh that's going to be great. I'm so excited that's going to be such a pivotal shift for everyone to not only experience but also embrace and apply in your own life and business.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're very excited to roll this out for you guys. So, on that note, I think it's important that we invite you to take some time over the next few days, as you're wrapping up 2023, to reflect on your year, if you haven't done so, and ask yourself what went well, what are the things that I'd like to recalibrate and what are the lessons that I learned this year, because that's what we're working on right now. We're paying attention to what are those lessons that we had the opportunity to learn, and how will we take all of this information and overlay it into the new year?
Speaker 4:2024 is really a year of taking action, and so we're excited to be on that journey with you.
Speaker 3:On that note, we want to just say thank you. Thank you for a wonderful year, thank you for supporting Lisa and I as we have navigated this partnership and thank you for supporting this podcast, as it's taken a completely new role and a new identity. The second half of 2023. And we want to thank you in advance for going with us on this journey of 2024. I think it's going to be an incredibly beautiful and wild ride and we are so grateful to have you alongside us. On that note, it is closing time. Cheers to good karma.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to this entire podcast. I hope this episode has left you feeling curious and inspired. This podcast is intended to create expansion in your life through unique stories and shared experiences, and if you enjoy today's episode, I have a request. I'd like to ask you to share this podcast with your friends and family. I bet they'd enjoy it just as much as you have. And, if you found value, please share this on your social media outlets. That is good karma in action, my friends. All right, it is now closing time. Cheers to good karma and the power to choose joy. If you like this, tell your friends.