Meet Carol Clegg

Carol Clegg is a small business coach specializing in mindset and accountability, partnering with midlife women. Carol's passion lies in cultivating business balance and establishing realistic goals with an effective accountability structure. A maverick entrepreneur at heart, she founded Classic Exec Marketing a decade ago, embarking on a journey to empower small business owners to share their gifts and expertise.

At present Carol integrates the transformative tools of Positive Intelligence, elevating overall well-being and contentment across all spheres of life. Her ultimate mission is to empower clients to create lifestyle businesses that include flexibility and balance, enabling them to operate from any corner of the globe. With her origins in South Africa and her current base in the USA, Carol extends her guidance globally, transforming aspirations into achievements, one step at a time.

Sometimes it seems like [a four day workweek with themes for each day of the week] works for me at least for about 60 days. And then I kind of start to go off track.  Any advice on that? 

Absolutely. It's just time to reframe it. I felt that as well. I was like, “Oh, hang on a minute. This is getting a little boring.”  So, just change it up. Okay, do something different on Mondays or simplify it, because sometimes you want to get into all the nitty gritty and like break it down into so many steps. And then that's overwhelming. So just change it up.

How do you use positive intelligence for wellbeing?  

Well, positive intelligence is something that has been on the outskirts for about two or three years, watching other people using it. Curiosity. And you know how timing sometimes is just when you're ready, you're ready?

So, I started the training with them at the beginning of the year. And it has been absolutely life changing. It's a training system and it's developed by Shirzad Chamine. He's written a book on Positive Intelligence. And there've been thousands of coaches who've now gone through the system, but it's life changing.

And the simplicity of it is it's just a three muscle operating system. What you're doing is you are looking at your negative thought patterns and needing to learn how to intercept that to say, stop, shift. And how can I look at this as a gift and bring in a different component? So it's much more complex than that, but the beauty of it is that not only do you get more calm in your own life, so that's been for the sense of well being, but then it spills out. So as I grow myself and become more calm and cope better with situations, I feel that I'm passing that on. And the instrumental thing, which is something called a PQ rep. And so this is something as short as 10 seconds.

It could be as long as five minutes. There is an association with meditation, but you're being single mindedly focused on stopping the negative thought pattern and just bringing in a sense of touch. So you could just rub your fingers gently together and just immerse yourself in that. So if you and I were sitting here now before going into a meeting, we could just be feeling our fingers getting ourselves grounded, feeling our feet, bringing ourselves back to center, and then stepping into our conversation. And then it's with a loving, joyful, happiness, as opposed to judge and feeling negative. So, there's just so much about it. I am super excited to be now sort of focusing my coaching completely on this and bringing it into the accountability side. But it's a system that you can stay with for life. So it's something that you can use.

Connect with Carol!

LinkedIn

carolclegg.com

Tools and Resources for your business

[00:00:18] Lori Highby: Hey everybody, Lori Highby here. Welcome to the Social Capital Podcast. Our show notes are found at socialcapitalpodcast. com. To you, the listener, I want you to know that I appreciate you. I'm thrilled to have you here for another episode. If there's ever anything that I can do to support you, please reach out.

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Social Capital podcast is sponsored by Keystone Click, a strategic digital marketing agency that believes in order to successfully market to your ideal customer, you have to first understand your customer. Learn more at KeystoneClick. com.

The topic of relationships ties in very closely with marketing. That's why I'm bringing on a number of marketing experts with a variety of backgrounds for you to learn and grow from.

Today's guest is Carol Clegg. She's a small business coach specializing in mindset and accountability. Partnering with midlife women, Carol's passion lies in cultivating business balance and establishing realistic goals with an effective accountability structure. A maverick entrepreneur at heart, she founded Classic Exec Marketing a decade ago, embarking on a journey to empower small business owners to share their gifts and expertise. At present, Carol integrates the transformative tools of positive intelligence, elevating overall well being and contentment across all spheres of life. Her ultimate mission is to empower clients to create lifestyle businesses that include flexibility and balance, enabling them to operate from any corner of the globe. With her origins in South Africa and her current base in the U. S., Carol extends her guidance globally, transferring aspirations into achievements one step at a time.

Carol, welcome to the show.

[00:02:14] Lori Highby: Well, fantastic, lovely bio that you have here. And you've got quite a background and experience that I'm excited to learn about. And I'm sure our listeners are as well. One of the things I want to talk about is you, you preach the theming of your days of your week and, and having a working four day work week. What are some of the benefits of that?

And if something urgent pops up on Friday, well, absolutely, I'll plan to deal with it. But just knowing that Monday to Thursday is where I will book clients, work on marketing, do whatever I'm doing. There is just a piece in that, but the theming of the days of the week comes in. I actually use Trello, which ties into, you know, I have systems in place to be productive and focused.

And I love Trello. So for visual people, I just have so much fun with the trailer boards and put beautiful pictures on them and colors and do what I, you know, want to do that's pleasing for me to look at. But within that, I put the themes of each day of the week and I break that up to a morning and an afternoon theme so that I know ahead. And, you know, one can just practice with this in a small way, starting off with, well, Mondays, I like to do this and you could just start with the whole day. I do advise blocking in some what I call white space to give you flexibility and of course downtime for yourself. But if you know ahead what your day holds, you know, when you're going to do podcast interviews, you know, when you're going to do production, you know, when you're going to do marketing.

So yeah, I just think that there is a great advantage to theming the days of your week.

[00:04:36] Carol Clegg: Absolutely. It's just time to reframe it.

I felt that as well. I was like, Oh, hang on a minute. This is getting a little boring. So just change it up. Okay, I'm going to do something different on Mondays or simplify it, because sometimes you want to get into all the nitty gritty and like break it down into so many, you know, steps. And then that's overwhelming.

And you kind of go that's yeah. So just change it up.

[00:05:16] Carol Clegg: Okay, okay, well, I just have to share. I love Mondays. It's a fresh start to the week for me. So just from a creative point of view, maybe the money stuff should go to Thursday.

Yeah, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. Okay. So what systems can you put in place to be productive and focused?

I have another board with marketing, and then I have a board when I collaborate with clients, and that is so much fun. I've had a mastermind and we've had a Trello board. And so we can each put our own links, what we're doing, hold each other accountable. So there's just so many ways that one can use Trello.

The other item that is really important to me is my Google calendar. So whatever calendar you use, you know, they say, if you don't put it on your calendar, it doesn't happen. So having a calendar, perhaps sitting with that either, you know, once at the beginning of the week, end of the week, but picking a time to kind of do an overview and go, I'll put everything into my calendar once again, the colors, I guess I just love that, but color coding, putting different colors in for different things so that, you know, and then I have these four gorgeous I can't call them whiteboards because they're glassboards.

I got them from Ikea a long time ago. And so I can just write on them, you know, with the whiteboard marker. And I love them. So I've got four boards up and they're themed differently. And yeah, so. I just think that, you know, you've got to find what works for you. So some people aren't visual and they need lists and they need things to run linear.

But definitely finding something to put in place that just helps you stay focused.

[00:07:18] Carol Clegg: Well, so positive intelligence is something that has been on the outskirts for about two or three years, watching other people using it, curiosity. And you know how timing sometimes is just when you're ready, you're ready?

So I started the training with them at the beginning of the year. And it just, it has been absolutely life changing. So it's a training system and it's developed by Shirzad Chamine. He's written a book on Positive Intelligence. And they've been thousands of coaches who've now gone through the system, but it's, it's life changing.

And the simplicity of it is it's just a three muscle operating system. So what you're doing is you are looking at your negative thought patterns and needing to learn how to intercept that to say, stop, shift. And how can I look at this as a gift and bring in a different component? So it's much more complex than that, but the beauty of it is that not only do you get more calm in your own life, so that's been for the sense of well being, but then it spills out. So as I grow myself and become more calm and cope better with situations, I feel that I'm passing that on. And the instrumental thing, which is something called a PQ rep. And so this is something as short as 10 seconds.

It could be as long as five minutes. There is an association with a to meditation, but you're being single mindedly focused on stopping the negative thought pattern and just bringing in a sense of touch. So you could just rub your fingers gently together and just immerse yourself in that. So if you and I were sitting here now before going into a meeting, we could just be feeling our fingers getting ourselves grounded, feeling our feet, bringing ourselves back to center, and then stepping into our conversation. And then it's with a loving, joyful, happiness, as opposed to judge and feeling negative or... so there's just so much about it. I am super excited to be now sort of focusing my coaching completely on this and bringing it into the accountability side. But it's a system that you can stay with for life. So it's something that you can use.

And I love that you're doing this and helping others do it too. I think it's just extremely... it is life changing, like you said. There's no other way to describe it. Besides, it just has, like it's called, it has a positive impact on not only you, but everyone that you're surrounding because you're responding differently and engaging in a different way that has a positive outcome as well.

[00:10:32] Lori Highby: Yeah, it is fascinating. All right. I'm going to switch it up to some fun questions now. So if you could go back to your 20 year old self, what would you tell yourself to do more of less of or differently with regards to your professional career?

Okay, let's do some learning from this. And I guess one thing is I would have started my business sooner. So I ended up, you know, letting everything else kind of get in the way of working for other people, which was fun along the way. You know, being a stay at home mom for a period, homeschooling my kids, which was awesome.

We also lived aboard a sailboat and cruised in the Caribbean for about six or seven years. So had this gorgeous time in our lives where we were so connected as a family, but yeah, I just think my advice to those that are sitting on the fence, start, step into it, try.

[00:11:44] Carol Clegg: Exactly. It doesn't work, you shift gears, you try something else. Yeah, it's never too late, never too late.

[00:11:58] Carol Clegg: Absolutely. Well, from a marketing aspect, what would you advise to newbies as we talk about stepping into... where to start without spending too much money?

[00:13:13] Carol Clegg: Absolutely. Yeah. I couldn't agree with you more. Identifying, I know that, you know, sort of saying identify who you're talking to a narrow down as much as you can. And I used to fight that kind of go, "Well, I want to talk to everybody," but I think it really your message isn't clear if you don't think of one person that you're talking to that you want to help and then who fits into that category.

[00:13:55] Carol Clegg: Exactly. Yeah. And I see you're a LinkedIn girl as well, which I am. So I think what I would also tie into that is decide where you're going to show up with your clients on one or two platforms. Don't be on them all, because that's exhausting.

[00:14:27] Carol Clegg: Yeah. That's what I've decided is until the end of the year, I'm kind of, because I'm in marketing, I'm connected on all the platforms, but I really want to focus on LinkedIn and just put my all into it and make that effort. Cause you know, you spoke about communities and networking and to me, if you focus in on one platform, you can start to get to know, really know the people you're talking to.

Fun question. Thank you so much for that. Carol, do you have any final words of wisdom that you'd like to leave with our listeners?

[00:15:22] Lori Highby: Yeah, I love that. Great. And you have a some resources available. Do you want to talk about that?

So I invite you if you choose to want to look into that and to see what's stopping you. And I'm happy to, once you've got your results to talk to you about that. So that's complimentary, happy to chat and explore what the saboteurs look like and how you can. Get in control of them. So you'll find everything on my website.

So thank you for that, Lori. And likewise, find me on LinkedIn.

[00:16:20] Carol Clegg: It was wonderful. Love the opportunity. Thank you.

A huge thank you to Carol for taking the time to connect with us. If you have a burning marketing or relationship question, reach out. I'd love to answer it on the show. And as mentioned before, let's connect on LinkedIn, connect with me, connect with Carol. We're definitely looking forward to hearing from you.

All right. Thanks so much. Go out there and get noticed.