When Traci DeForge, a visionary entrepreneur and podcast industry trailblazer, decided it was time to hire a business coach, she expected to gain clarity on how to grow and improve her company, but she specifically chose to work with a coach who had a background as a licensed psychotherapist because her other goal was to break the patterns of self-sacrifice that were holding her back. This decision meant both the business and the business owner were about to be transformed. 

This conversation recreates that transformation and how it impacted Traci's business model, leadership style, identity as a CEO, and the future of the company.  If you have asked yourself “Why would I choose to hire a business coach who is also a licensed psychotherapist?”  This Client Success Story episode is for you.  

In this interview, we share:

• The unexpected benefits of seeking guidance from a business coach with a background in therapy.
• What can happen when you recognize the impact of clear communication and defined limits on business success?
• Overcoming challenges within your team by releasing people-pleasing and overworking tendencies most female CEOs have

If listening to Traci De Forge’s story and what partnering with me did for her and her business inspired you,  maybe it’s time you experienced my signature coaching program for female entrepreneurs and business owners, the Boss Up Breakthrough. The only way you can work with me right now is through my 1:1 coaching program., and the first step is to schedule a free 30-minute consultation right here: https://bit.ly/calendly-free-consultation

If you love this podcast, did you know that I just launched a PRIVATE PODCAST and you can listen to it from the same podcast player where you enjoy this one?  It’s called “Show Up Like a Boss” and you can grab it right here:  https://bit.ly/show-up-like-a-boss

Podcast reviews really do motivate me to keep creating this show & bringing you awesome guests and no-BS solo episodes, so if you are a regular listener and haven’t left one yet,  what are you waiting for?  

Apple: https://apple.co/2BZDFzc

Android: https://bit.ly/TDWE-podchaser

Other episodes for female entrepreneurs you might want to check out: 

Episode #152 - From Visionary to Implementer https://bit.ly/episode-blog-152

Episode #13I - 5 Types of Boundaries You Need in Business https://bit.ly/episode-blog-131

Episode #123 - Does Your Business Need You to Boss Up? https://bit.ly/episode-blog-123

Subscribe to my LinkedIn newsletter: https://bit.ly/TDWE-Newsletter

Ways to connect with our guest,  Traci De Forge:

Website: https://produceyourpodcast.com/

Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/company/produce-your-podcast/

H: Today I'm joined by my client and friend, Traci De Forge. We ended up having a very, very interesting coaching engagement because many of my clients work with me in a very focused way for just twelve weeks but Traci and I worked together over a period of nine months. She experienced many transformations in both her mindset and her business during that time. So we're here today to recapture some of the highlights of that and talk about some of the parts that were challenging as well. Thanks for joining me, Traci. I'm really looking forward to talking about this.

G: Oh, I'm always looking forward to talking to you anyway, so this is just mikes in front of us, right?

H: Exactly. So let's go back to the very beginning, we first met at a podcasting conference, and about two months later, I think we initially connected on social media and stayed in touch, and about two months later, you reached out to me. And do you remember the very specific circumstances where you thought, okay, I've been dealing with this for a while. I really connected with this person, I think she's the one to help me, and I think this is the time.

G: Yes. Well, I also want to go back to actually when I met you at the podcasting conference, because I think that that's such an important part of why I ended up reaching out with you to you. Not because it was the podcast conference and not because you were a podcaster, but that was the circumstances in which we met. But it was one of those things that when you meet somebody, you just have this immediate connection of like mindedness. And I can still picture where we were standing, who we were talking to, and the conversation that we were having and I remember thinking to myself, I like her, she's my kind of people. We're older women still got a lot going on, but meeting women that you feel that way about, sometimes, it just doesn't happen as frequently, I think. And so it was really nice to just be able to have that immediate she gets me, I get her feeling and at the time, I didn't really think so much about the idea of possibly hiring you or working with you.

But as the next 60 days evolved, I found that there were some patterns that were repeating themselves in my life and in my business, that they were bigger than pink flags, like they were red flags for me. And I thought, I really need to address these, and I really need to break down the barriers of why these keep happening. And what I recalled from meeting you outside of all of the fun, warm and fuzzy, was that you were a business coach who was also a licensed therapist, had been a licensed therapist. And that connection, in addition to the fact that I genuinely just enjoyed the chemistry I felt was a good fit for me with where I was in my business and what I needed help with.

H: I'm so glad that you decided to start this conversation by sharing that specifically, because I agree with you 100%. I think at this stage in our life, we're pretty well into our no BS zone, and you either click with someone or you don't and if you don't, you just don't make the effort. I have noticed how many fewer friends I have at this age and stage because I just don't tolerate things that I was willing to tolerate when I was younger. And I remember specifically where we were and who was near us and I thought, gosh, I hope I see her again. Now, I also think that a lot of people are confused about my background, and they think, okay, I get that you're a business strategist and a coach. I think I know what that is but you were a therapist for a really long time, so why would I hire a business coach who used to be and in many ways still thinks like a therapist, could you answer that?

G: Oh, absolutely I can, I mean, I wouldn't have had it any other way, and here's why. So I am a seeker, I am a self help junkie. I always want to grow. I always want to learn. I always want to be better. And so I've had a history in my life of seeking out business coaches, and I've also had a history in my life of going and having therapists, being in small group therapy, small women group therapeutic environments. So I've had the experience of both of those things during different challenges that I was facing in my life. I knew enough to know that just having a business coach for me, where I was in the growth acceleration phase of my business, just having a business coach, I needed some tactic, but not all tactic. I've been to enough therapists to know that what I was dealing with were some issues and some blocks and some mental mindset things that a therapist although would be helpful, wouldn't necessarily be able to solve unless they had a business acumen.

So for me, I was looking for that recipe of licensed therapist and business coach, because that was what I needed. That literal combination of peanut butter and chocolate is what I needed in order to really be able to I needed to be able to have conversations with somebody who didn't try to tell me that I was a workaholic or if they were telling me that I was a workaholic, that that was okay, but here are some tools to deal with that. And I needed someone to also be able to talk to me about the literal challenges I was facing with the semantics of the business itself that could understand and those two don't often come in one package.

H: I hardly know anybody who has the and I've also built three businesses of my own, one with my current husband, one with my past husband, and my own business. But I think most people probably don't even know that about me.

G: Well, and that was important to me, though, because sometimes you need to be able to I feel like I needed someone that could help me see both sides of what I was struggling with. And it wasn't all just the business, and it wasn't all just the mindset or barriers or blocks. They were feeding each other in a really just horrendous way.

H: And you know what, Traci, I think one of the reasons why we like each other so much and why we decided to work together for nine months is because you represent exactly the kind of person I enjoy working with most. First of all, you're not a little girl, I like working with more mature women because we've had more life experience, our critical thinking skills are more developed, but also because I know the kind of cultural conditioning that we've grown up with that tends to lean towards being overly responsible, perfectionistic, people pleasing, excessively hardworking. And even though while being a creative problem solver is a wonderful and necessary trait for an entrepreneur, sometimes it gets in our way because we've decided to do something and now, by golly, we're going to make it work. And sometimes it's something that we really should never have been doing to begin with. Or maybe it was a good idea when we started it, but it no longer fits with the direction our business is going. And overly responsible, hardworking, good girls like you and I have a really hard time letting things go, even when they don't serve us and that was definitely part of our work together.

G: It was and I think just being able to identify that was helpful. And so, like, in the context of what you're saying, for me, when I started our journey and working together, there were a couple of things that were going on in terms of our business itself. So my business is producer podcast and we're a full service production and marketing agency and that's what we do and we do it really really well. But along the path of the growth trajectory, there have been other things that because I'm creative and I'm visionary and I probably, although not technically diagnosed, probably have that ADHD thing going on. I wanted to be all things to all people all the time and if you're a DIY podcaster, I wanted you to be able to work with us. And if you wanted to manage podcasts, I wanted you to be able to work with us. And if you were a business that wanted to have a podcast to grow your business, I wanted you to work with us. But the reality was is that was a lot to take on for a team the size of mine at the time.

H: Absolutely.

G: And I was really excited about these possibilities and what all of the areas that they could and how we could perform in those areas. But what it was doing by trying to launch these other businesses within the business, if you will, was really putting a strain on our primary business of what we do really well, which is the full service production. And it also took my focus off that area of the business and as a result of that, I do not have investors, I do not have a business partner. I am 100% owner, which means I'm 100% responsible for the decisions and the finances. And so the decisions that I made leading up to when we started working together were really starting to put a strain on the business financially and it was overwhelming because I'm like, these ideas are so good, they're so viable, but at what cost? And that's, I think, where in cost is relative and this is again where I think the combination of the skill sets really come into play.

The cost of doing business, yes, that's one but the cost to your personal well being and adding an unnecessary load of stress and unnecessary financial obligations like all of this overwhelmed me at one time and I needed to unwind it and figure out what is this business, who am I in this business and what is this business really built to do? And I think that's one of the nine months that we spent together over the course of that time, I was able to get really super clear on who is produce your podcast ideal client. Where do they live? Where do they show up, how do they show up and how do we show up as a business to serve them. And that clarity is invaluable because it really has helped the growth of the business enormously. But it's also reduced a lot of the stress around, oh, we could do this or we could do that, or we could do this and we could do all of those things, don't get me wrong, but we couldn't do.

H: Oh I remember when you were trying to do them all, that was such a huge part of what your business needed and frankly, what you personally needed. Do you remember the TikTok meme? I could be brown, I could be blue, I could be violet sky. That is always the tune that would run in my head in the early months that we were working together because you and I are ideators like, if we have an idea, we immediately want to work on it, to put it into place. And you have so many good ideas but I actually believe I always say the perfect business for me is to just hatch idea babies and then let someone else raise them.

G: Let someone else raise them.

H: Yeah, but what you were doing is you're absolutely right. You are one of the OGs in the podcast production space. You are one of the first people to go into that space, to develop that space, to own that space, and to command a leadership position in that space. And because of that advantage, it was like, well, why don't we also offer services to people who don't want us to produce their podcast? They want to produce their own podcast, but I can still teach them and lead them and guide them and support them. And what about people who want to start their own mini podcast production agency? Maybe a mom at home with a couple of kids or maybe someone with aging parents and they can't work full time. But spreading yourself out over all those things in combination with the fact that you're a good girl, that you're a perfectionist, that you're a super hard worker and that as soon as you hatch an idea, you have to run with it. You were very burdened, very overextended, stressed out, not able to get the right amount of sleep, the right amount of rest, the right amount of exercise. And even I think the most important thing is the mental spaciousness to continue to bring forth your best ideas. You got to have some room in your life for that, right?

G: Right, and also, too, you really helped me look at my team, too. And I think that a lot of times it's all about the owner or what the owner is doing and the decisions that the owner is making. But the team is I always credit so much of the success of producer podcasts to our team, even though thank you, I really appreciate you acknowledging the pioneer podcasting journey that I've been on and it's been a hell of a ride and I appreciate it every day. But my team is incredibly important to me and they have been so vital to the success of producer podcast. But what was the metaphor, they were running the store, right? It was just like I was trying to be a lot more accommodating to the things that they wanted to do in situations where I was still the boss and I'm not saying that I didn't I was still acting like the boss, I was still leading like the boss.

I still was making decisions and ultimately responsible for everything, like we were saying. But I was giving a lot of leeway and accommodations to things that the team wanted because it felt good to them or it felt fun to them or it felt exciting to them and they wanted to focus on that. And it was a really big AHA for me when we were working together, when it was basically like and these are issues that I think as women business owners, we deal with in general, but then you take on top of that, that I'm Southern, I'm polite, I'm codependent, a giver, but I thought, they're so excited about this, they really want to do this, even though and I have this philosophy about when I make a decision, my head, my heart, and my gut, they all need to line up.

And I made some pretty significant investments in programs that my head, my heart, and my gut did not line up in. And that's one of the areas that we're kind of talking about here, is like, it had to get a little messy before it got clear. And ultimately, two really wonderful things I mean, two things happened, and they weren't all necessarily wonderful how they happened, but I'm happy that they happened right? That's another thing I always say. It's like I'm not always happy how things happen, but I'm happy that they happen. Ultimately, one team member is not with us anymore. Ultimately, my clarity, my directiveness, all of the boundary setting that we worked on together that I implemented, ultimately created a situation where that team member was no longer comfortable working on my team and no longer works on my team by her own choice.

And that was not something that, again, that I was happy about, but it's something that ended up happening, and I'm okay with that. The second thing is that I was able to bring in a team member, and that could not have been a better fit from top to bottom, side to side, that fits exactly the direction that I want for my business. That fits exactly the direction, has the skill set, is the right person on the bus to drive it to the next level of where I want to be. And I truly don't think I would have been able to be able to not only just create a business that was attractive for this level of person to want to come in, but also be able to have my clarity around the type of person I wanted to come in. And we worked on that together, and it's been a game changer for producer podcast.

H: I know you're making a strong point about these two things, but I want us to go even deeper because you're also humble, okay and I don't think it's just because you're a Southern. In the first case, I think because I used to say this to you all the time. When you're a creative problem solver, when you're high energy, when you are a hard worker and you take responsibility for everything. My kind of people when you've hired someone and they've been with you for a while, you get to know them and their strengths and their limitations, and you start to accommodate them and you start to work around them. And I see this with so many of the female business owners that I am lucky enough to call clients. They start to shape the job to fit the person, which means they themselves, the business owner, are picking up the slack or they're just letting things go that are genuine needs of the business and or its customers.

So we are creatively problem solving the fact that we have someone in our employee who's not actually ideal for the role, or maybe they were, but now the business has grown to a different vantage point, and they don't have the mindset and the skill set that are necessary to succeed at that level and beyond but yet we don't get rid of them. We keep accommodating them and that was something that I think for you to have reached a point where I'm not going to try to be everything to everybody. I'm not going to try to run every program just because I'm clever enough to think of them. How many times did I tell you, just because you can doesn't mean you should that should be like tattooed on your forearm right? And I'll have a matching one on mine but we just think, well, I've already done this. It's kind of like we came up with this idea that I made my bed, now I need to lie in it. And I know I heard that growing up, and you probably did too. And so we made our bed, we lied in it, and now sometimes it's not working, but it can be really hard and painful and even shameful to say.

Let's not forget that we got to bring money into the talk here but you were able to recognize that and you allowed yourself to evolve. You allowed your business to evolve and then the person who no longer fit could decide whether they were in alignment with that or not, and they chose not to. But the true game changer, the position that you created and created space for, took a risk to invest in, is the position that actually, more than any of the other things we did, transformed your business because it got you out of the kind of jack of all trades role and allowed this person to take on all of the things that you do well, but they are not your genius. So now you can do your genius work and the person you hired can do all the other stuff that was so weighing you down and stressing you out.

G: Yes and I think that it's underestimated what it takes to let that happen because if you read Business Book 101, take a course, get a coach, they're always going to say, you need to work less in your business and work more on your business and you need to delegate and all the things you need to do and all the things that you should do. And I definitely did not disagree with those things or those suggestions, but I was so immersed in the chicken and the egg, the chicken and the egg, the chicken and the egg that I couldn't literally see the chicken for the egg.

H: Exactly. You just kept making omelets.

G: Right, exactly and really tasteful beautiful omelets.

H: And fried chicken, too.

G: And chicken on the side. Gourmet coffee if you need it. And oh, you want coffee, we'll do the beans.

H: And why don't you stay the night, I'll tuck you in.

G: Yes. Bed and breakfast.

H: Perfect.

G: See, we're just creating a business model here right now. You guys can see how these sessions must have been. I wanted that part of that journey, but I just didn't literally, first of all, I didn't believe it was possible, because I just didn't feel like it was possible financially. I didn't see the light at the end of the tunnel. And if I had to get super gut wrenchingly honest, I kind of had some ego attached to but I'm doing all these things and not doing them all great, but I'm doing them all. And there's a bit of a busyness badge of honor that goes with that. But by the time I had reached out to you, I was done with my busyness badge of honor like, I was over that.

H: Were you a Girl Scout? I don't remember if I ever asked you that, were you a Girl Scout?

G: For like a minute. I'm one of those people, like, I was a Girl Scout, and then I got the badge, and then I went on to some mail. I ran a half marathon once, I never did it again.

H: One and done. One and done, just check the box because you're the busy badge of honor. I'm like, I swear to God, this is so me. I got every single badge they had, even the ones that I had no interest in, and I had to wear two sashes to hold them all.

G: Of course you did.

H: Classic overachiever, but you're absolutely right. I don't want you to gloss over this and I understand I'm interrupting, so I'm apologizing to you and everyone listening. Being able to recognize that you need to let something go, being able to recognize that you have taken on too much, you've spread yourself too thin, you've made decisions that made other people happy at your own expense, financially, emotionally, in every other way. But then to be able to allow those things to be transformed and feel the loss of the investment you made, the emotional investment you made. And, yes, the busy badge of honor, it's something you and I talked about a number of times, is that it's so much a part of our personalities to actually be really proud of spreading ourselves too thin and saying yes to everything and doing too much. It was a big part of your identity, and it was also making you miserable at the same time. And that's hard to come to terms with and then do something about but you did.

G: Right, that I think, is really where the true growth happens, is I'm always like, you have to be aware of it, but then awareness has to lead to action. And what I was aware of is that this was not something that had happened overnight. This is a pattern I had repeated in my life personally and professionally for 40 something years. Not totally 40, I don't know, let's not do the math.

H: But who's counting?

G: Yeah, exactly. But the decisions to make other people happy have dictated my life, my entire life and so that's something that and this is how my mind was always separating. It's one thing if it just affects me personally, but it's another thing if it affects me professionally. If it affects people that rely on me, that I'm responsible for in ways that's what it had to get to be a deal breaker for me, which is still kind of not even that's still challenging to say that out loud, but it was like, if it was just affecting me, I can quote, unquote, deal with that. But what I really saw is my decisions and my behaviors were starting to impact the overall success of my entire team. And that was a deal breaker for me because I'm like, no, they deserve better. We deserve better. The business deserves better. I deserve better.

H: I noticed you were last on that list.

G: Probably not necessarily in that order, well, maybe we ought to renew another nine months but it is a constant journey, right? It is and I think that that is one of the things that's so good about being able to connect with someone like you, is that sometimes we have these patterns that are repeating themselves that we're aware of, and we just don't know how to break them. But a lot of times we have these patterns that are repeating themselves that we're clueless about, and then getting that awareness is like, oh, God, you're right I had no idea. And one of the specific things I remember about our work together, which I'll share, is that I had this particular hang up about and again, we're coming back to women do a lot of self funding, women invest in themselves. A lot of times that happens through lines of credit or credit cards or things like that. And investing via credit card into my business is a sore spot for me because in a previous chapter, I had ramped up credit card, paid it off, was like an absolute, like, not doing that again. And then one of the challenges that I was facing, although not overwhelming, I could see that starting to creep up again. And I just kept hanging on to that as like this negative thing that I was doing wrong, that I was failing, that it was a crutch. I don't know, just pick a lot of you had.

H: You had a lot of shame about it.

G: Exactly, like pick a baseball bat virtually to beat yourself up with I was grabbing at it. Over the course of the nine months what was so interesting, my goal when I reached out to you was I was going to work with you and my goal was to be able to eliminate that debt. That was like I remember, and I'm going to eliminate my debt, and that's how it's going to be, and that's why I'm hiring her. Well, the debt ebbed and flowed over the course of the nine months. It reduced, it came back up again. It reduced, it came back up again and towards the end of us working together, I'll never forget this. It was like, you can't hold on to that story anymore because the number might still be the same, but it's not still the same amount. It's recycled in a way that was strategic. It was positive. It just changed my whole mindset around debt and my debt story and my money story. I'm not certainly applauding credit card debt to finance your business, but what I'm saying is that for me, I kept holding on to this. I'm not succeeding because it's still there. It's still there. But it wasn't still there in the same capacity, it was the nine months before. So much growth had happened, so much investing had happened, so much growth had happened as a result of those investments. I just kept holding on to this number, defining my success or not success and it was just something I was holding on to, to beat myself up with. It was so silly.

H: Well, it seems silly and it might even seem kind of sadistic in a way.

G: A little bit, yeah.

H: But I will tell you, Traci, and I'm sure we've talked about this at some point, many women who grew up the way we did, like A student, hardworking people, pleaser, perfectionist, lots and lots of ideas, lots of energy and action taker, risk taker. Many of us, without even being consciously aware of it, it usually comes up at some point when someone's working with me that we, on some level, believe we need to bully ourselves, to blame ourselves, to shame ourselves, to sabotage ourselves, or at the very least, refuse to applaud, cheer, celebrate, praise ourselves. Because on some level, we think that that self-flagellation is what's driving us forward.

G: Right. I know it's not your mental freedom. No, it's not and it's actually such a deterrent. It certainly doesn't serve you as an advantage. But when you're accustomed to that being your motivation, even if it's on a subconscious level, you got to get a new toolkit.

H: You need a bag of tricks because if that's all you had, is that I beat myself in order to keep myself moving, once I decide to put down the rope, whatever the stick, then who am I? And will I be as driven and ambitious and successful? Like, how will I get myself into momentum and stay there if I don't constantly kick my own ass?

G: Right, exactly, yeah and then being kicking your own ass and then seeing success on the other side of it perpetuates the willingness to kick your own ass because you see that it's working. And then if you come from a history of being self reliant and self motivated, and not always for the right reasons, but because out of necessity and survival in some cases versus just there's no real joy in that, by the way, self reliance and independence, it's not something that you really need to proclaim as, like, something. For me it's not a solution that brings me joy. It's a solution that has brought me success. But really being able to have success come in other ways is probably one of the most rewarding things about working together is like, I could be a one trick pony for a long time, but eventually that pony is just going to collapse because there's not going to be any energy or resources left to sustain it. And I really appreciate just being able to get a new set of tools in my toolkit as a result of us working together. Because those are things I can now go back to or I can play back conversations in my head that we had. Because one of the things that made me want to work with you is your directness. Because I really didn't need a lot of sugar coating and I really literally didn't have time for it either.

H: I don't have a lot of sugar, so that's a good thing.

G: And everybody's stretched for time. I'm not unique, but I just wanted tactical, I just needed what it was that you had to offer. You were direct and you didn't let me sugarcoat or bullshit either because I'm good at conversation and communication and using humor to deflect my true feelings. And you're like, yeah, no, we're not going there today. You can save that for somebody else.

H: We laughed enough but lest anyone get the impression that I'm a she devil or abusive, I think I'm pretty warm. And somebody said I'm like the perfect combination of a kick in the ass and a warm hug and I said I could live with that.

G: Yeah, like simultaneously, it's a really wonderful skill to hone, it really is. And I think the directness and the candor was what brought me in, but what kept me there was that warm hug aspect because I don't respond well to feeling bullied or tough love.

H: Or flattered either.

G: Yeah, I mean, like flattery like, yeah, great, adding zeros to my bottom line right now, and no offense, but that's what I need. But yeah, I don't do well with tough love. I don't do well with aggressive personalities and communication in that way. For me, I needed to have you be very clear which you were, but I also needed you to be warm because that's just how I respond to that combination, I guess.

H: I think it creates safety and progress and trust. I don't think we could make the hard decisions and implement the sometimes scary actions if we didn't feel safe and if we didn't have trust because you're going to have to implement things. I'm not there to see them implemented and then you're going to be dealing with the consequences. You're going to be talking to me in a matter of days, but you yourself will be taking the actions. And I think all of us you, me, everybody needs to feel safe and that they have a level of trust in the person who's guiding them forward and encouraging them to do things. I want to make sure before we are out of time, Traci, that you don't forget to bring up something really significant that happened. Because many women start their business to basically give themselves an alternative to working for others. They don't necessarily see themselves as a boss or a business owner. They just don't want to work for someone else. Typically, they don't want to work for the man but you have a slightly different goal. You love your business, and you can also imagine a future beyond this business where you are thriving in a new adventure. So selling produce your podcast, at some point when it made sense to do so, was an end goal that you very much wanted to keep available. Let's talk about what happened in that regard.

G: Yeah, so that was a crazy part of the story. One of the things that came up through all of the things that we're talking about, for me, it started out thinking, maybe I want to have an investor or maybe I want to work with VCs, angel investors. Like, I thought maybe I wanted to get some funding and then exit that way. And those conversations were just really preliminary and more of just trying to explore options for really financing options at the time, and what ultimately ended up happening out of pure circumstance, really. And because we were on the radar of some of these VCs and investors, what ended up happening was towards the end of the year last year, someone was interested, actually three different people out of the blue. I say out of the blue, I don't really believe in coincidences, but I think it's just the nature of how our business has progressed in this industry we were on the radar of people that were interested in acquiring producer podcast. And that was amazing and validating and super positive in terms of really being able to say, oh, okay, I have a business that's viable, that someone wants to purchase.

And there was one of the three felt like a really good fit and the conversations went in an accelerated pace in a really good way and I was in a situation where, although, again, head, heart, and gut, my gut told me it's too soon. All of these great things that you've put in place are just now starting to you're starting to see the ROI on them. You're starting to really benefit from all of this. We've been in business now eight years. My gut was like, it's too soon. But I thought I'll evaluate the conversation and have the conversation, and what ended up happening was I actually ended up getting an offer. And it was quite a nice offer, but it wasn't the right offer.

It wasn't the right offer for me and I have, like, zero regrets of turning it down but I must laugh that I did turn it down because it's just like, wait a second, what? But I just knew how we started this conversation about accommodating other people and people, going down paths that aren't necessarily right for you, but you feel like you may have gotten too far into it to back out type. It's so interesting how you bring this part of my story to the end of this episode, because there was a part of me that was like, well, I've already had these conversations with them. They've already seen my financials. They've made me an offer like, they want me to go to where their offices are and have these meetings.

H: I made my bed. I have to keep lying in it.

G: It's like, do we get engaged, do I need to call off the wedding? But I felt so strongly in my own power that it wasn't the right fit, it wasn't the right time, and it wasn't the right decision for me that I very politely appreciated and respected their offer, but politely declined it and haven't looked back. Like, no, would have, should have, could have, I knew saying no was the right answer for me at the time, but saying yes, it was a great learning experience. Maybe I'll say yes again or to a future offer at some point in time if that's what's right for me but it was such a great exercise to practice all of the things that we did together in one respected bundle.

H: I cannot tell you, I'm sure I told you then. I am so freaking grateful that those offers came about during the time we were working together. Because all of the things, all of the groundwork had been laid. All of the really important decisions about honing and refining your business, making strategic investments, changing your mindset, releasing your shame, all of that had happened and now it's like, are you kidding me? You have three offers now and the way you responded and the conversations we had about how does this feel to you? How do you feel about saying no? How do you feel about asking for more, dealing with negotiation, dealing with walking away when you've gotten so far into it? And I knew, it's like, she got full value from working with me. In that moment, I was literally teary. I was so proud of you. I was so happy for you and I thought you literally have been changed. You are a boss in every way, and you see yourself in that way without reservation, even to the point where if you are not being offered something that is worthy of you, you can walk away and not second guess, that's what I live for.

G: That is success

H: I think if we keep talking at this point, we will not do that justice. I think that is a full stop mic drop. So I'm just going to say thank you, I appreciate you so much and I just love watching you grow and I can't even imagine what your next act is going to be.

G: Sky's the limit. Thank you.

H: Thank you Traci.

G: This has been amazing. Just to revisit and reminisce and capture it back.

H: Okay, folks, that's a wrap. Bye.