Unlocking the Treasure Vault: The Power of Experience for Seasoned Women Entrepreneurs

In this episode of Seasoned Women, Serious Business, host Isabel Alexander delves into the unique advantages experienced women hold as entrepreneurs and leaders. Targeting women aged 45 to 75 and beyond, Isabel highlights the profound cumulative value of life experiences, emphasizing resilience, adaptability, and the importance of leveraging personal networks. She encourages listeners to tap into their 'vault' of experiences to mentor others and create a lasting legacy. The episode also recaps past discussions on wisdom, life, and the expansive vision that seasoned women can cultivate in their entrepreneurial journeys.

00:00 Introduction to Seasoned Women, Serious Business

01:36 Recap of Previous Episodes

03:00 The Power of Experience

08:11 Resilience and Adaptability

11:03 The Value of Relationships

13:15 Strategic Visioning and Long-Term Planning

16:43 Mentorship and Legacy

19:13 Conclusion and Call to Action

Crossroads Clarity Solution

Who Am I Now Book

About the Host:

 

Isabel Alexander

Your Next Business Strategist and Transformation Catalyst

 Isabel Alexander's journey from modest beginnings to global recognition epitomizes entrepreneurial resilience and innovation. With over five decades of experience spanning diverse industries, she has become a driving force in shaping economic landscapes worldwide. Noteworthy accomplishments include founding a multimillion-dollar global chemical wholesale business and earning accolades such as Canada's Top 100 Most Powerful Women.

As a mentor and advocate, Isabel empowers women entrepreneurs through initiatives like the Lift As You Climb Movement and podcasts, guiding them from startup to maturity. Serving as Chief Encore Officer of The Encore Catalyst, she dedicates herself to coaching and educating emerging entrepreneurs. Her involvement in organizations like RenegadesReinventing.com and Femme on Fire underscores her commitment to leadership and business development.

Additionally, Isabel's advisory roles with government bodies and trade associations, such as Chair of the Canadian Association of Importers & Exporters, highlight her influence in shaping trade policies and fostering international relations.

Driven by her mantra, "Lift As You Climb," Isabel embodies the ethos of mutual growth and empowerment. With dual citizenship in Canada and the United States, she values her extensive family and embraces global connections through travel and professional engagements. Isabel Alexander's narrative serves as a beacon of inspiration, illustrating how visionary leadership and strategic advising can drive global entrepreneurship and economic independence forward.

Founder:

The Encore Catalyst Facebook page ( https://www.facebook.com/TheEncoreCatalyst )

and

Chief Encore Officer, The Encore Catalyst (www.theencorecatalyst.com) – an accelerator for feminine wisdom, influence, and impact.

also

Author & Speaker ‘Who Am I Now? – Feminine Wisdom Unmasked Uncensored’ https://whoaminowbook.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isabelannalexander/

 

Thank You for Listening!

It means so much that you listened to this podcast! If you know of anyone else who might find this show valuable or entertaining, please share it on your favorite social media platform.

If you have questions about this episode, please send me an email at Hello@TheEncoreCatalyst.com

 

Subscribe to the Podcast

Receive automatic notifications when new podcast episodes are made available.

Subscribe on your favorite podcast app to keep up with the latest episodes. Links on the sidebar make it easy. Please share if you value the content.

 

Leave a Review

Every bit of feedback offered helps to make this a value-packed part of your week and suggestions are welcome.  

Ratings and reviews from listeners are used to improve the podcast. They also help others find this series in their podcast platform, so reviews are very much appreciated!

Speaker: 00:00:06

Welcome to Seasoned Women, Serious Business, the podcast for entrepreneurs

Speaker: 00:00:12

aged 45 to 75 and beyond who've changed lives, challenged status

Speaker: 00:00:18

quo, who are wise enough to want more and gutsy enough to create it.

Speaker: 00:00:23

Join me, your host, Isabel Alexander, a seasoned business owner, as

Speaker: 00:00:29

I serve up knowledge and best.

Speaker: 00:00:31

Practices for life and business, along with unfiltered wisdom from

Speaker: 00:00:36

other women entrepreneurs and leaders.

Speaker: 00:00:39

Whether you're looking to reignite your passion for your business,

Speaker: 00:00:43

unlock new ones that build your legacy or simply shake your head at the

Speaker: 00:00:48

folly of underestimating ourselves.

Speaker: 00:00:51

You are in the right place.

Speaker: 00:00:53

We're serious about business and we're serious about loving the life

Speaker: 00:00:58

that we've worked hard to create.

Speaker: 00:01:00

Stay tuned and be part of a community built on collaboration and collective

Speaker: 00:01:05

wisdom that dismisses old paradigms and celebrates vibrant women just like you

Speaker: 00:01:12

and our limitless potential at every age.

Isabel: 00:01:28

Welcome back to Seasoned Women, Serious Business, and you

Isabel: 00:01:32

know we are wise enough to want more.

Isabel: 00:01:36

If you are new to the podcast and you have not listened to our launch episodes, let

Isabel: 00:01:43

me take a moment and recap those for you.

Isabel: 00:01:45

In the beginning, we talked about more wisdom, more life, and how

Isabel: 00:01:51

celebrating our own experience is an invitation for further growth.

Isabel: 00:01:57

We are not done yet, and we have not even begun to reach our full potential.

Isabel: 00:02:05

Being a seasoned woman with a serious business is simply a

Isabel: 00:02:08

launching pad to whatever else you want more of in your life.

Isabel: 00:02:14

And I talk about that in episode 107.

Isabel: 00:02:19

Next, we talked about more than just a business and how, as a seasoned woman

Isabel: 00:02:25

with a serious business, there is so much more above the bottom line in our lives.

Isabel: 00:02:32

So much living that we are doing and still creating a vision for that going forward

Isabel: 00:02:40

The most recent episode is titled More Than Your Business Card, because that's

Isabel: 00:02:46

a reminder to all of us that we can lead, thrive, and love every stage of our life.

Isabel: 00:02:55

And oh my goodness, we have such a foundation on which to do!

Isabel: 00:03:00

Which is what brings me to today's episode topic.

Isabel: 00:03:05

And that is the power of experience and why I believe that women of a

Isabel: 00:03:13

certain age excel as entrepreneurs and leaders, not only in business,

Isabel: 00:03:19

but in every aspect of our lives.

Isabel: 00:03:23

It is true that sometimes we forget just how fucking awesome we are.

Isabel: 00:03:30

I'm here to remind us that we are not at the end of a season.

Isabel: 00:03:35

In fact, this is the beginning every single day of exciting new possibilities

Isabel: 00:03:41

for us as women, as entrepreneurs, as women with lots of seasons and experience

Isabel: 00:03:48

behind us to create whatever it is that we want more of in our future.

Isabel: 00:03:53

So why am I so certain that we, as women of a certain age, are in the

Isabel: 00:03:59

best damn place that we could be to be the leaders, the role models, the

Isabel: 00:04:06

entrepreneurs, the creators of everything, and the mentors and teachers of others?

Isabel: 00:04:13

It's very simple.

Isabel: 00:04:14

It begins at the beginning.

Isabel: 00:04:16

No matter how many seasons or years, if you think about the cumulative

Isabel: 00:04:24

lifetime value of everything that you know, have learned, even the things

Isabel: 00:04:33

that you want to forget, the hands on experience, the mistakes and the growth

Isabel: 00:04:41

that came from those, if you add this all together, it's an incredibly rich vault!

Isabel: 00:04:50

And every day, we are adding, more richness to our vault.

Isabel: 00:04:57

At the end of every single day in our lives now, with the exposure to what we're

Isabel: 00:05:02

learning, what we are learning to do, who we learn from, who we associate with, the

Isabel: 00:05:09

choices that we choose not to go forward with, those are added to our vault, and

Isabel: 00:05:17

with the power, the magnification of compound value that we have generated

Isabel: 00:05:24

in our own lives, holy frig, gals, no wonder we're a national treasure!

Isabel: 00:05:31

Seriously!

Isabel: 00:05:33

The thing is that some days we forget, I forget, and that's part of the

Isabel: 00:05:38

value of this podcast is to remind ourselves and each other; we are not

Isabel: 00:05:43

diminishing, we are not shrinking.

Isabel: 00:05:50

Now, that doesn't mean necessarily that you want to go out and build

Isabel: 00:05:55

10 new businesses or 10 times your existing business, but High Five to Ya!

Isabel: 00:06:02

if you want to!

Isabel: 00:06:03

So here we sit with that vault and if we don't open up and cash in on

Isabel: 00:06:10

some of that lifetime experience and share the wealth with others

Isabel: 00:06:15

that we can empower, It's a waste.

Isabel: 00:06:18

It's a wasted treasure.

Isabel: 00:06:20

Yes, I am passionate about this!

Isabel: 00:06:25

It needs to be shouted from the rooftops that women of a certain

Isabel: 00:06:30

age are extraordinary treasures and tapping into that will

Isabel: 00:06:37

contribute to success for others.

Isabel: 00:06:41

We are not has beens!

Isabel: 00:06:43

We are not done!

Isabel: 00:06:45

We are building on an incredibly strong foundation that we have,

Isabel: 00:06:50

over our lifetime, constructed.

Isabel: 00:06:54

By tapping into our own vault, It gives us this incredibly confident place to

Isabel: 00:07:02

stand to create a vision for our future based on the priorities that we have

Isabel: 00:07:10

become clearer about as time has gone by.

Isabel: 00:07:14

By tapping into our vault first, by leveraging what we have accumulated

Isabel: 00:07:21

over a lifetime, we're in a fabulous position now, not to have to listen to

Isabel: 00:07:26

outside voices and influences, but to stop, and look in our own vault because

Isabel: 00:07:35

we've had a lot of practice of testing and trying things that we wanted to do

Isabel: 00:07:41

and deciding if really it was as great a deal as we thought it was going to be.

Isabel: 00:07:48

And over that time, if we listen to ourselves and we reflect on, you know,

Isabel: 00:07:53

the rear view mirror of our journey as a business person, as an entrepreneur,

Isabel: 00:07:58

and as a woman at the same time, then we got clearer and clearer over the

Isabel: 00:08:04

seasons about what we liked, what we didn't like, and what we wanted more of.

Isabel: 00:08:11

The other thing that I think is so fabulous for us is that we also have

Isabel: 00:08:17

what I like to call the trampoline.

Isabel: 00:08:20

We have our own personal trampoline of resilience, because over our

Isabel: 00:08:25

lifetimes, stuff has happened.

Isabel: 00:08:27

Shit has happened.

Isabel: 00:08:29

Some stuff that turned out better than we thought it would, and some

Isabel: 00:08:33

things that were completely opposite to our desired outcome or expectation.

Isabel: 00:08:41

But here we are.

Isabel: 00:08:42

We are still standing!

Isabel: 00:08:44

So resilience, we've built that muscle over the seasons of our life.

Isabel: 00:08:51

And especially if you're a woman entrepreneur, a business owner, a leader

Isabel: 00:08:55

in any capacity, you know that resilience, being able to bounce back up after

Isabel: 00:09:02

someone or some event knocked you down.

Isabel: 00:09:06

Resilience is one of our superpowers.

Isabel: 00:09:09

And Resilience has a best friend, that best friend is called Adaptability.

Isabel: 00:09:16

You might want to salt a little bit of sense of humor in there as

Isabel: 00:09:19

well, because, come on, we know.

Isabel: 00:09:22

Yeah, sometimes you just have to laugh at the folly of something

Isabel: 00:09:26

that you've done, or something that someone else has done, and move on.

Isabel: 00:09:30

But it's the adaptability, the ability to know when to let go of the idea or

Isabel: 00:09:37

the ideal that is no longer serving you.

Isabel: 00:09:42

When we hit a wall, when we come up against that immovable object, it's

Isabel: 00:09:48

wise to slow down for a moment and reflect, when have we encountered

Isabel: 00:09:54

something like this in our prior seasons?

Isabel: 00:09:59

And how did we go over it, under it, around it, with grace and humor?

Isabel: 00:10:53

Another advantage that we have as seasoned women and is part of

Isabel: 00:10:59

our secret power of why we excel

Isabel: 00:11:03

as entrepreneurs and leaders at our age is the accumulated value of

Isabel: 00:11:13

our relationships and our networks.

Isabel: 00:11:16

Throughout our lifetime, we have either purposely curated and collected the

Isabel: 00:11:23

people that would give us the most positive influence and education and

Isabel: 00:11:30

cheerleading support that we could, or those people came into our lives And they

Isabel: 00:11:37

found enough value in who we were and what we could do for them that they stayed.

Isabel: 00:11:45

The value of our relationships is not one to be underestimated.

Isabel: 00:11:52

In fact, that needs a whole section in your lifetime vault.

Isabel: 00:11:58

And it's true, some relationships come and go.

Isabel: 00:12:02

Not all BFFs are forever, and that we grow at different times with our

Isabel: 00:12:09

relationships, so it's understandable, like the seasons, that they will change.

Isabel: 00:12:15

But never discount how much they have added to your own richness.

Isabel: 00:12:23

The other thing that I believe that we have accumulated and expanded

Isabel: 00:12:28

on in our lifetime is empathy.

Isabel: 00:12:32

As an entrepreneur, as a woman of the world, as a woman in your own community,

Isabel: 00:12:39

if you haven't learned empathy and appreciation for the diversity of

Isabel: 00:12:47

others in the world, then you probably have not succeeded in being the best

Isabel: 00:12:53

person that you could be and making the greatest contribution that you can.

Isabel: 00:12:59

Even the contrast between what someone else thinks and what you

Isabel: 00:13:04

think about a subject creates much more clarity and creates a depth

Isabel: 00:13:11

of color in our own experience.

Isabel: 00:13:15

And because, of course, we are serious about business, I can't help but use

Isabel: 00:13:22

some references here that pertain to our business vocabulary, and that's strategic

Isabel: 00:13:29

visioning and long term planning.

Isabel: 00:13:32

What I love about being this age is that surprisingly my vision has gotten

Isabel: 00:13:41

longer term than when I was younger.

Isabel: 00:13:45

I think it was that need to do everything for everybody, or at least my belief

Isabel: 00:13:50

in that, and to be always hustling and moving and trying to please everybody

Isabel: 00:13:57

and accommodate everyone else.

Isabel: 00:14:00

while, shouldering the responsibilities that I had taken on for myself.

Isabel: 00:14:07

I didn't always think too much farther out in front of me.

Isabel: 00:14:11

Oh yes, I had the strategic business plans with the one year, the three

Isabel: 00:14:15

year, the five year visioning, but now I'm looking at my life

Isabel: 00:14:20

through a much longer term lens.

Isabel: 00:14:24

It's like a telescope into infinite possibilities and I can only do that

Isabel: 00:14:31

now, I believe, because in this seasoned part of my life, I've been able to dial

Isabel: 00:14:39

it in, what's really important to me, what are my priorities, and that has

Isabel: 00:14:45

enabled me to really open up my aperture on what I want more of in my life.

Isabel: 00:14:53

And it's having that vision and also having the patience that I've had to

Isabel: 00:15:01

learn over these seasons in my life, have the patience to know that it

Isabel: 00:15:08

will unfold in the right time and that I can be so involved in the moment,

Isabel: 00:15:18

be present in my life, creating the memories, living the legacy.

Isabel: 00:15:24

I don't have to wait till that final moment, the grand finale to say,

Isabel: 00:15:30

"Oh, she was such a good person.

Isabel: 00:15:32

She lived a good life."

Isabel: 00:15:34

Instead, I am now looking at it from the perspective my vision for life is to live

Isabel: 00:15:43

my legacy while I'm here, to experience it, and to influence it, and, just like in

Isabel: 00:15:53

business, to measure my progress towards that goal, and make the adjustments along

Isabel: 00:16:03

the way to make sure that I get there.

Isabel: 00:16:07

And, I know you're like me, you probably also noticed that you keep making that

Isabel: 00:16:16

vision bigger, which is so fabulous!

Isabel: 00:16:20

That's why seasoned women really excel at being entrepreneurs and leaders because

Isabel: 00:16:27

we have the confidence, the experience, the perspective of having lived through a

Isabel: 00:16:36

lot, and now are in a position to create a new version of who we want to be.

Isabel: 00:16:43

Which leads me to another aspect of legacy and for me, that is mentorship.

Isabel: 00:16:50

We're at the front.

Isabel: 00:16:52

We are leading as seasoned women.

Isabel: 00:16:55

We're creating our own playbook as we go, because life is different.

Isabel: 00:17:01

The world is different than it ever was before.

Isabel: 00:17:04

And we are different than we have ever been before because

Isabel: 00:17:09

of the seasons we have lived.

Isabel: 00:17:12

I wish that I had more women to look up to and give me a hand up

Isabel: 00:17:18

to at m y earlier stages of life.

Isabel: 00:17:22

And so now, I want to be, I want to fulfill that role for others.

Isabel: 00:17:29

I want to be able to reach back and give a hand up to other women as they grow.

Isabel: 00:17:36

That's one of the best parts of our legacy as seasoned women, is we're

Isabel: 00:17:41

here, we have that capacity, we have that vault to share with others.

Isabel: 00:17:49

If you agree with me, because what we have already done in our lives, what

Isabel: 00:17:56

we have learned, and especially what we have learned not to do, to bring

Isabel: 00:18:04

us to this place today of establishing what's our priority, what we want more

Isabel: 00:18:12

of in life, because we have learned through time what things really don't

Isabel: 00:18:19

matter, and who doesn't matter anymore, that this makes us the best possible

Isabel: 00:18:27

teachers and mentors, then I ask you:

Isabel: 00:18:32

Why keep that a secret?

Isabel: 00:18:33

Why keep that hidden in your vault?

Isabel: 00:18:37

Who could you mentor?

Isabel: 00:18:39

Who could you help build their success ladder by sharing more

Isabel: 00:18:46

of what you have and who you are?

Isabel: 00:18:50

I know I'm going to appreciate you for that.

Isabel: 00:18:52

And I know there are so many others who will do so also.

Isabel: 00:18:56

And just keep on sharing and keep on building on that.

Isabel: 00:19:02

Let's create that wave of seasoned women sharing wisdom around the world.

Isabel: 00:19:10

Hey, you can even start by sharing this podcast.

Isabel: 00:19:14

And until next week, I hope you are having a great time thinking about

Isabel: 00:19:19

what you want more of in your life.

Isabel: 00:19:32

Thank you for spending your time with us today on Seasoned Women, Serious Business.

Isabel: 00:19:37

We really value you and are thrilled to be part of your journey.

Isabel: 00:19:42

If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe to the channel and then share it

Isabel: 00:19:47

with other women who would receive value.

Isabel: 00:19:50

Thanks to our sponsors, all episodes are available in audio, video, and

Isabel: 00:19:55

transcribed format on all major platforms.

Isabel: 00:20:00

Now, if you'd like to share your wisdom or become a co host or a

Isabel: 00:20:04

show sponsor, please reach out to me at hello at theencorecatalyst.

Isabel: 00:20:10

com or visit our website, seasonedwomenseriousbusiness.

Isabel: 00:20:15

com.

Isabel: 00:20:17

Also, I'd appreciate it if you submit questions and suggestions for future

Isabel: 00:20:22

topics and guest experts to interview.

Isabel: 00:20:26

Let's lift as we climb, magnify our impact, and create more

Isabel: 00:20:32

for ourselves and others.

Isabel: 00:20:34

Until next time, keep thriving, keep vibing, and keep living your legacy.