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[JOE]:
This is the Practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sanok, session number 463.

When you’re in private practice, it can be tough to find the time to review your marketing efforts and make improvements where needed. Whether you are a seasoned clinician whose current website needs to be revamped, or a new therapist building a website for the first time, Brighter Vision is here to help. By first understanding your practice and what makes it unique, Brighter Vision’s team of developers will create you a custom website catered to your specific marketing goals. Better yet, they provide unlimited technical support to make sure it stays updated, and professional search engine optimization to make sure you rank high in online searches, all at no additional cost. To get started for $100 off, head over to brightervision.com/joe. Again, that’s brightervision.com/joe.

I don’t know why that number 463 seems to be a really big number, whereas 462, or other ones, didn’t feel that way. But it just feels like a big number. We’ve been doing this podcast for a long time now and it’s pretty awesome to have that many episodes under our belt. We have an amazing group of podcasts coming up. We’ve got Dr. Rhoberta Shaler coming up, talking about relationship help. We’ve got another one about building amazing funnels coming out on the 16th. On the 18th, we’ve got one talking about starting a group practice a year ago and now having 30 clinicians. We have another one coming up about protecting your assets, which… actually, I signed up with Doug, because, man I was just blown away at all the things we talked about. We’re going to talk about building a sales pipeline on June 25, and then selling the way you buy on the 30th of June. So, this month, we’ve got a bunch of amazing episodes coming up. So, you’re not gonna want to miss those. It’s going to be just so much impact in a short period of time. So, make sure you sign up for that; sign up or just listen. So, today we’re talking about “Is achievement taking over?”. And Jen is gonna walk us through just a number of strategies to think about “Is achievement taking over?” So, without any further ado, here’s Jen.

Today on the Practice of the Practice podcast, we have Jen Du Plessis. Jen is an international speaker, top selling author and podcast hostess. She is the founder of kinetic spark consulting and the author of Launch: How to Take Your Business to New Heights. She has extensive leadership and sales experience and today is a highly sought-after, charismatic, and inspirational international speaker and coach. She’s shared stages with Tony Robbins and Magic Johnson, has appeared on Good Morning America, SiriusXM Radio, and Voice America Radio. Jen, welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast.

[JEN]:
Thank you, Joe. I’m so excited to be here. Appreciate it.

[JOE]:
I know. It’s taken us a while; we had to reschedule because of my schedule a couple times. So, thank you for your persistence. Let me just start with that.

[JEN]:
Oh, no problem. No, you know, I think when you want to share something with the world, you’re willing to take as long as it takes, you know, wait as long as it takes, right.

[JOE]:
That’s great. Well talk a little bit… first, you’ve got a new podcast out; I want to start there, because when you told me the title of it, I just thought, this is a great place to start. So, tell me about this new podcast that just launched.

[JEN]:
Thank you. Well, it’s called Success To Significance: Life After Breaking Through Glass Ceilings, many of them. And really where it stems from is that I had a 35 year career in the financial services industry, and when I made the transition, I was still out networking, you know, and talking to people – I didn’t want to come home and sit in my new life. And someone said, what do you do? And I started to go into what I did before in success mode, right? Because I think we identify with our success and our job and our title. And as a result of that, I thought, gosh, you know, what do I do? I don’t know what I do now, but what I do know that I wanted to do, and have done now, is really make a significant impact on people using my life stories, you know, my life tragedies and successes and failures and attempts and things like that. And then I realized, gosh, we break through glass ceilings all the time, and they aren’t just financial and they’re not just for women. There’s a lot of ceilings that we break through all the time and I wanted to hear how everybody else was doing it, making that transition if they’re trying to transition or overcoming something. A colleague of the two of us, Adam, you know, losing 100 pounds. And so, I just wanted to hear everybody’s stories, and that’s what I’m doing now on that podcast and it’s very inspiring, very wonderful to hear people’s stories.

[JOE]:
Yeah. So, I know a lot of people define glass ceilings differently. How do you define that?

[JEN]:
Yeah, well, as I said, for me a glass ceiling is anytime you’re trying to get somewhere, and you look up and that ceiling, it’s holding you back. The goal is for that to become your floor later, right? And so, whatever you’re hitting up against, it might be that you’re hitting up against priority management and being able to balance your life with your family. It might be that you’re hitting up, you know, about being so busy, and you don’t have the time to hire somebody. But you should have hired them before you were too busy.

[JOE]:
Absolutely. You’re speaking my language.

[JEN]:
Yeah. So, it’s like those types of things. You know, it could be in your business, or it could be in your personal life, that you’re just up against something and you’re just not moving forward. So how do we break that ceiling, and I call it cracking the top producer code or cracking the code; it’s like, how do we crack through that ceiling and make that become your floor so that you go on to bigger and better things?

[JOE]:
So why right now is the time for you to launch this podcast? What motivated you to say, okay, this is going to be a new endeavor that I want to work on.

[JEN]:
Yeah, it’s a great question because it’s kind of twofold. One is that, you know, obviously, I’m a woman. And I’m 57. And my generation is the first generation that had these high powerful jobs that were high paying for women. This is really when executive women kind of came up, you know, and I was making over seven figures in my previous job. And so, I had all this power and everything, but I was tired. I mean, I’d done it for 35 years, and it wasn’t an easy trip. It wasn’t an easy journey for me. And I really paved the way for women in my particular industry. But I was tired, and I was bored, and I wanted something more out of life. But I couldn’t figure out what it was because when I look at my mom, the generation before, she was a stay at home mom. And the day that I went off to school, she went and found a secretary’s job, but she couldn’t wait to quit that job because she wanted to take care of my grandkids. Well, that’s not me. That’s not all my girlfriend’s, you know, we’re all moving and shaking and all that. So, we’re not going to go work at Walmart, we’re not going to work for somebody. So, it’s really that challenge of how do I move from being really successful into what really stirs me up and where my passion is today? And for me, it’s making an impact on people’s lives, right? And so, I started asking my friends, and they were like, yeah, I’m up at night about this too, because I’m so unhappy with what I’m doing, but I don’t know what else to do. And so that’s really what propelled it. And the second piece of it is, you know, I speak with Les Brown, and I wanted to make sure that I had a different message, you know, different from a tactical message that I deliver, you know, on a normal basis. So.

[JOE]:
Yeah. So, what are the things that, as you’ve kind of entered into this podcast, that you’ve discovered, that were unexpected or that have been inspiring for you during the launching of this podcast?

[JEN]:
Well, I don’t know that I’ve really, you know, discovered anything in launching this particular podcast because I have another one, you know, so for me, it was just the technicality of doing it. But I was just so excited to hear everybody else’s story. I wanted to know what’s going on in everybody else’s head. Because, am I out there by myself? Am I this little island of someone who’s going, what do I do next? We’re all going to live longer. So, it’s not like we can work a 30- or 35-year career and call it a day. We’re now, what’s next for us? And that’s where my husband really helped me in saying, you know, really honey, it’s about life after. What’s life after breaking through the ceiling? What did you learn from it? What did you glean from it? And how will it impact yourself, others around you or the world?

[JOE]:
Hmm. Now, talk a little bit about things that you have been working on before this podcast and you know, you’ve done leadership and speaking and I know that you and I are both people that really value lifestyle and choosing what lifestyle we want before we enter into different business arrangements; maybe talk about a little bit around lifestyle and business and what you’ve seen work in your own life and in some of the people that you’ve worked with.

[JEN]:
Yeah, so, yeah, I want to make a note that I [unclear] other people too, [unclear] about me, but, you know, for me, and I think you heard this story when we met, is that… I mean, to step back just a little bit, my father was an alcoholic. My mom was a verbal abuser. So, I don’t know if she perpetuated the alcohol or if the alcohol perpetuated the mouth, I’m not sure. But they were always fighting, and I was an only child and my father had a shotgun to my mother’s head. Several times. And I didn’t have anyone to cuddle up in a room with and be in that position to comfort me, except for my grandparents who lived next door and an uncle who lived there as well. And I’m one of 37 first cousins. So, there’s a bunch of us. But my uncle told me one day, you know, Jenny, you’re going to be worthless, you’re going to be just like your dad, you’re going to be an alcoholic, you’re gonna be poor, you’re going to be all these things. And he called me Jenny who ain’t got a penny. But for years, I would carry a penny in my shoe because I didn’t quite understand it. I thought it was a fun game. You know, there’s Jenny who ain’t got a penny. And I would just say, no, I have a penny. I have one really. It wasn’t till later that I really understood what he was saying to me. And the day that I came home, one of the days that I came home, I was nine years old, and my dad had a shotgun to my mom’s head. He even cocked the gun. He cocked the shotgun, and I ran, and I ran so far that I just didn’t want to hear it. And nothing happened, thank goodness, but that was the tipping point for me. That was enough is enough, I’m not going to be like this.

So, my entire life was me having to prove to everybody else that I wasn’t going to be like them. And so, I exceeded in everything. I was pre-med; I was going to be a cardiologist. And so, I went to school for medicine and went to one class and didn’t like it and somehow I changed everything, but I became an architecture… my degree’s in architectural design and construction engineering. So, it’s still the same mindset. But I exceeded in that; I became runner-up Miss Colorado; I was a state champion tennis player; I played in the Colorado Springs Symphony when I was in high school. Before quitting everything, just everything, to prove to people. But after a long life in the business I was in, which was in mortgage lending, after a long, long period in that time, probably 25-30 years, I’d had enough. I was trying to prove to everybody else and not to myself and I think that that really was a catalyst for me to say enough with the sabotage; it’s not about the money. Money was great…

[JOE]:
That ‘I had enough’ part – what happened? How’d you get to that point?

[JEN]:
Well the catalyst for that was that I was at dinner with my family, and I was outside on the phone with a client who absolutely, in air quotes, needed me more than my family, and I was walking that concrete curb tightrope you know, that balance beam that we’ve all been on, walking back and forth on the curb outside having a conversation. And I happened to look inside, and my family was laughing and enjoying life together. But it wasn’t with me, and so many times it had been without me and in fact, so many times, my daughter would say to me, you don’t remember when we were at blah and I don’t even remember being there. Because I was never present. Never. I was present with my work because I was still proving to people, and that was the catalyst that said, this is enough. I’m sabotaging everything. I’m sabotaging my health for my work, I’m sabotaging my family, I’m sabotaging my spirituality, everything, I was sabotaging. And I said, enough is enough. And that’s really when I created Lifestyle Business Mastery which we can talk about, but that’s really when I created it and said, yes, I want to be successful. But I want to be successful in a more efficient way that allows me to live a fulfilled life, you know, to work less and live more. And that’s exactly what I created.

[JOE]:
Well, I imagine that kind of achiever mindset is hard to just leave behind. What was helpful during that transition phase? Because I’m sure it wasn’t like the next day you woke up and all of a sudden lifestyle business just happened. What kind of mindsets did you have to undo, and how did you undo those?

[JEN]:
Yeah, for me, and really what I had to dig deep in was, what is the premise of my life? And so, for me, the premise of my entire existence is that a life of values adds value everywhere in your life. And I had to get down to what really drives me. And I think a lot of us when we say, what are your core values, people will say, family, and they’ll do it in a question way, right? Well, I don’t know, is that your core value? But if family is truly a core value, then why are you working till 11h30 at night? Eight days a week. You get that concept, right? Why are you doing that, and if your kids are part of your core value and they’re that important to you, then why do you push them aside and say, hey, I’m on the phone, I’m on the phone, and you’ll get to me when I’m when I’m done. And my mom had this quote later, and she didn’t live it and I didn’t live it until now, I do, but the quote is: We flatter those we scarcely know, we please the fleeting guests, but we deal many a thoughtless blow to those we love the best.

[JOE]:
Say that again.

[JEN]:
Yeah, we flatter those we scarcely know, we please the fleeting guests, but we deal many a thoughtless blow to those we love the best.

[JOE]:
And do you know who said that?

[JEN]:
My mom. I have no idea… and you know what’s funny? I’ve never looked it up. I’ll have to do it. I have no idea who said that, but someone told me it sounded like an Irish thing. You know, which is interesting. And so, I thought, that’s so true. That everybody we meet is more important than the people that we have right around us. And that for me was, I’m really doing that. I’m putting this client, you know, in your case with all your listeners, you know, patients, you’re putting them in front of your family, or your practice in front of your family. And so, I had to dig deep and figure out, kind of from the notebook, you know, what do you want, woman? What do you want? Is, what really made me happy? Truly made me happy, and I know we’ve all been in a situation where we’ve gone to dinner with friends or couples or something, and said, gosh, this was so fun. We should do it more often. And then that’s where it stops.

[JOE]:
Six months later, a year later, we should do it again.

[JEN]:
Yeah, we should. Yeah. And then nothing gets booked right?

[JOE]:
Yeah.

[JEN]:
I set out to say okay, what really fulfills me? All the way… you’re gonna die when you hear this. All the way from one of the things that I absolutely love doing, is watching ants carry food. And I think it’s so cool how they get their friends to come and they all carry it together. I don’t know how they do it. It’s just the craziest thing. But I just smile at that, right? So, if it’s watching birds, or sitting on your porch with a cup of coffee or tea, or whatever, all the way to what makes you happy with your clients and your patients, all those things. And I literally had to say, sit down and say what makes me just have that little internal smile? That little flutter in my heart, that flutter in my gut that just makes me happy, and how can I get more of it? Now my mission was, get more of what I want first, and then build my life or my business around it, rather than building my business and trying to squeeze what makes me happy in, because I won’t squeeze it in.

[JOE]:
So, what did you have to change in your life to make that happen? I mean, was that leaving a job? Was that cutting hours? Was it just the mindset you had? What practical things did you do as you’re transitioning?

[JEN]:
Yeah, it wasn’t leaving the job. It was definitely cutting hours. I had to learn how to be very efficient. And thankfully, because I have that achiever mindset, I know how to duplicate that over and over. If we look back in our lives, and anytime that we were trying to achieve a main goal, and a lot of times it goes back to high school or college, right? And how much practice we had to put in, and how much dedication and willpower and all those things and for some… and the reason why it was successful is because we had a coach, we had a teacher, we had these people around us that we as adults don’t have around us anymore. And so, we’re used to having those kinds of people and so, a lot of people say, well, I don’t want a coach or mentor, or an accountability partner, an advisor. All of those are really, really important because that’s where we all learned from the very beginning and we had these people who would help us.

And so for me, it was making sure that I was very, very clear on what I wanted, what time I wanted, and then said, okay, those go in my calendar first, you know, for example, I’m a competitive ballroom, Latin and swing dancer, and so I’m at the studio all the time, right? And so, I had to be more efficient and more effective in the hours that I worked. So, I focused, and still do focus very hard on being intentional, being laser-focused in the activities that we do. And there’s a great quote that I can’t remember who said it, but I think… I can’t remember if it was Jim Rohn, but ‘Time will ooze out into the deadline that you create’. And so, we think about, when we go on vacation, it’s amazing how much we get done. And then we think we can’t go on vacation because now we have so much work, right?

[JOE]:
Yeah. Is it Parkinson’s Law that work expands to the time given?

[JEN]:
Yeah, Parkinson’s Law. And so that was part of it, was saying, okay, I’m not going to allow my time because every day, I want to leave the office at three o’clock. And that means that instead of doing eight hours of work in nine hours, or in the eight hours, I’m going to do 12 hours of work in four. And we’re all capable of doing that when we’re very, very clear about the path to success for our business, with the passion that says, nothing is going to get in my way of getting out of this office and being able to do what I want to do. And so, I’m going on vacation every day.

[JOE]:
Well, I think what happens when you set those clear boundaries around how you’re going to use your time, is there will be things that you dropped the ball on, but clearly, those are the least important because you didn’t make time for them. And so then that’s a great opportunity to outsource, to send it to someone else, to delegate it, to eliminate it, to really figure out some of those automations instead of just saying, I need to do all of these pointless things. Maybe it’s well, why was that at the back of the list? You didn’t get it done this week because it’s not really that important.

[JEN]:
Yeah, yeah. And I think it’s twofold. You’re right. I think part of it is assessing… I call it priority management, not time management, because we can’t manage time, but we can manage our priorities. And so, let’s manage our priorities. I think that’s part of it. And then the other part is, you know, not being that white-knuckle person who feels like they have to do everything, and really assessing, do I outsource, or do I grow a team, or do I do a hybrid of it so that I can focus on what I do best in my genius zone and then go focus on what I love best in my personal life?

[JOE]:
Yeah. So, then you start teaching people how to do this more. What are some of the things that you teach people in regard to, how to live this lifestyle business mastery?

[JEN]:
Yeah. So, it starts with… I have seven strategies to help your mindset break through, and it’s just seven different questions to be asking yourself. It’s a small exercise to ask yourself so that you can get… step back and take a look at things. And this is one of the things I say all the time, is that we need to slow down in order to speed up instead of speeding up to slow down. And so, it’s taking a step back. And it’s just looking and saying, what are the boundaries that I need to create? What are my core values? Who are the people that I’m associating myself with? And are they the right people to get me to where I need to go? Because if you’re trying to climb a ladder, whether it’s a ladder of relationships or spirituality or business, you can’t get to the top rung unless you let go of the bottom. So, what are some of the habits that I have, and some of the things that are preventing me from getting to where I want to go. So, it’s kind of an assessment of that.

And then in Lifestyle Business Mastery I mentor on five different areas. And so one is clarity of message; the clarity of message that you have, and who your target market is from a business perspective, and what your brand is, and not seeing someone else do something really cool and say, now I should do it because it might not align with you. Right? It might not be successful. The second is your community; your database of clients, your database of people that you haven’t… whether it’s referral partners or actual clients or patients; are you nurturing or are you neglecting them? The third is your communication. What are you doing to create a client experience that compels people to tell others about you so that you have a revolving door of new business coming in, but a process and a system that is efficient for you and effective for them, it can’t be vice versa, it can’t be efficient for you… or not effective for you so that you can deliver it, but so that it creates that. Credibility: making sure that you’re credible in everything that you do, whether it’s designations or continuing education or the manner in which you communicate with your clients so that it is credible. And then the last is continuity, is how do you… and that’s all about the priority management. How do you duplicate this on a regular basis so that you get the traction that you need to be able to live the lifestyle that you want to?

And all of it is… The umbrella for all of it is, how do we attract clients and people, rather than chase people, because when you attract you save time, right? And when you have the systems in place, when you have a clear message, you save time; when you have a system, you save time. When you’re nurturing your community, they are attracted to you and you save time because you’re not out having to chase things. So, you can actually eliminate some of the activities and tasks and events that you go to, because you don’t need to be out chasing business. It’s coming to you and because of that, it saves you time everywhere that you’re working. The efficiencies and the credibility, now people are drawn… you become a magnet. And I just want to save time and be more efficient so I can do my work in a shorter period of time and then go live my life.

[JOE]:
Oh, that’s so awesome. Jen, if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know?

[JEN]:
Great Les Brown says this: If you’re casual about your life, your life will become a casualty. If you’re casual about your business, your business will become a casualty. So, I would say, don’t be casual. Wake up, stop walking around like you’re sleepwalking. It’s time to wake up and realize what you want in life, because those that are on their deathbed don’t talk about how much money they made, they talk about all the regrets that they had. This life is here, it’s in front of you right now, it’s for you to take. You just have to put the action in place to do it. And so, slow it down so you can speed it all up. Instead of speeding up and running around like a chicken with your head cut off to just slow down and stop.

[JOE]:
Wow, you know we have Slow Down School happening in just a couple months here. And I think that when this airs, the tickets will be ending kind of in early June, and so Slow Down School tickets are still on sale and that’s one of our tag lines, that you have to slow down to speed up. That’s why we spend two days going for hikes and getting massages and doing yoga and skipping stones on Lake Michigan and then running full tilt towards the business. So, that’s great that that’s where you landed. Jen, if people want to connect with your work, if they want to hear more about what you’re doing, listen to new podcast, what’s the best place for them to find all that?

[JEN]:
Well, obviously on the podcast, I’m sure you’ll put the links in for the podcast Success To Significance: Life After Breaking Through Glass Ceilings, and of course I think it’s indicated on different places. So, you know, Apple podcasts is probably the number one place that that’s on and, if you’re interested in going through those seven strategies to kind of get your mindset right, it would be perfect right before your event, so that people would come a little already prepared. And so, you can find that at jenduplessis.com/7strategies, and you can just pick up that PDF and just start thinking about it. Prep yourself for your slow down event and that would probably be one of the best places to start.

[JOE]:
Awesome. We will put all of those links in the show notes. Jen, thank you so much for being on the Practice of the Practice podcast.

[JEN]:
Thank you so much for having me and best wishes for you in the soaring 20s.

[JOE]:
Thank you.

So, it’s one thing to consume information; it’s a whole other thing to take some action, so head on out there and take some of Jen’s advice, get out and actually implement it. Why don’t you also head on over to brightervision.com/joe. Brighter Vision is the best website builder for therapists. They have such an amazing model. It’s a model where you pay a monthly fee and then you get everything included; all of your IT, your building of the website, I mean, these types of websites would cost thousands of dollars but you can sign up right away. Make sure that you access that deal that they’re giving, they don’t do it very frequently. So, we want to make sure that you get that deal. And when you do, make sure if you’re a Next Level Practice member, that you let them know that cos they’re gonna give you an even better deal and some extra freebies. And if you aren’t, we’re going to be opening that back up in August. And so, head on over to practiceofthepractice.com/invite to get your invite. It’s specifically for people that are starting and growing a practice, pretty much zero to 100k. So, if you’re in that beginning phase of starting your practice, it’s definitely going to be a good fit for you. So again, brightervision.com/joe. Thanks for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have an amazing day.

Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music. We really like it. This podcast is designed to provide accurate, authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.