[SAM CARVALHO] Welcome to the Marketing a Practice podcast with me, Sam Carvalho, where you’ll discover everything you need to know about marketing and branding your business. To find out more about how I can help you brand new business visit www.practiceofthepractice.com/branding. If you’d like to see some examples of my design work, be sure to follow me on Instagram at Samantha Carvalho Design. Ryane Lecesne is the master your mindset coach. Since 2012, Ryane has coached nearly 1000 high-achieving women, specializing in the unique needs of high-achieving black women to advance their professional dreams by overcoming and healing from the self-limiting mindsets of imposter syndrome and perfectionism. Her coaching process is evidence-based, holistic, transformational, and proven to be instrumental in helping high-achieving women professionally advance. When Ryane’s not coaching or with her nose in a personal development plus leadership book, she’s the wife of a very loving and supportive super and mommy to a very special one. She’s a proud member of the Links Incorporated, an Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated, and a graduate of Spelman College and Georgetown University. Hi Ryane, thanks so much for joining us today. [RYANE LECESNE] Hi, Sam. Thank you. Thank you to your listeners. It’s really a privilege and a pleasure to be on your show. Thank you so much. [SAM] So as we always do with every guest that we feature on the Marketing and Practice Podcast, can you share with us a bit about your story and how you got to where you’re now? [RYANE] Yes, absolutely. Thank you. So where did, where does my story begin? I’ll say I’ll give two sort of points, touch points. One is I think that really what my business is and the purpose, the focus, the vision, mission of my business, it’s actually the combination of both of my parents true interests. Both of my parents are very interested in the way that the mind works and supporting individuals, particularly women and particularly black women, really thrive. I say that because so many people’s businesses and practices really do stem from a very core part of who they are, it’s like a real representation of them. So I add that sort of as like the nest that my business lives in. I’ll say, where did my individual shoot come from, like, where did I have that maybe entrepreneurial seizure where I came in to my place of work and I looked around as Michael Gerber. If you have not, if anyone out there has not picked up Michael Gerber, the E-myth, it is, we’ll talk about that a lot probably today, that is one of the best business books for small business that I’ve ever read. It has been game changing. It’s called the E-Myth. He talks about most small business owners come into their place of work one day and they look around and they have what he calls an entrepreneurial seizure. They look at their boss and they look at the management and they say, I could do this, I could do this better, I could do this more effective and they have an entrepreneurial seizure, and they decide that day that they’re going to quit their job and they’re going to go create what they think is going to be a business and what they generally quickly. What I quickly found out was I created a crazy, crazy, crazy job for myself that was run by a crazy, crazy person, who had all kinds of self-limiting beliefs, who didn’t know how to run a business, not by fault of her own. I had never run a business, I’d never done any of this before but I learned, and I I say that too, to say that anyone can learn to run a business. So how did I get into this? Intersection, I was in my early 30’s, it was 2012, and I had, I was in graduate school and I wanted very strongly, a strong desire to start a community of women that like part of the community I was in where we were talking about professional development, we were talking about mindset, and I had this like strong desire to have this sort of around books that I was reading and sort of just like this self-help group. I called it Inspire Sunday Brunch. Then over a course of a couple of years, it had turned into a hobby. I’d done a number of events and at different lenses and these kinds of things and it began to give me a platform to talk about the leadership and talk about mindset and growth and development. Then I had this entrepreneurial seizure. At the same time I had this entrepreneurial seizure, when I say that I was also in a career that I very much loved, was very passionate about, but I had outgrown. I didn’t realize it then, then it felt like I was undervalued, underappreciated overworked, and less and less being appreciated. Well in hindsight what that means for me is that someone has outgrown where they are, that where they have ascended to is no longer something that the environment can understand because they have outgrown that space. So that was where, that was another intersection. So I’ve got this intersection of Inspire Sunday Brunch intersection of this entrepreneurial seizure also the intersection of the first time I was introduced to coaching, and it was game-changing. I had just graduated from Georgetown, so this is 2015 or 14 maybe, where this intersection is. I was a graduate, but I was able to take a class on career development and a coach walked in, her name is Sonny Lovett, and she asked this very powerful question. She said, do you talk to yourself as if you are your own best friend? It was like, jaw dropping because no, I don’t, I almost didn’t even realize how judgmental I was until that question was asked. But also the power of that question unlocked like the vision of Inspire. It was like, oh my gosh, this is who and what inspire is supposed to be. I’m like a coach. It was like a definition for the work I was meant to be doing. It was a platform in terms of a system for the business, a grounding for the business. So from that point forward, I went back to Georgetown to get my coaching certificate and from there, learned to build a coaching business [THERAPY NOTES] Is managing your practice stressing you out? Try Therapy Notes. It makes notes, billing, scheduling, and tele-health a whole lot easier. Check it out and you will quickly see why it’s the highest rated EHR on Trustpilot with over 1000 verified customer views and an average customer rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars. You’ll notice the difference from the first day you sign up for a trial. They offer live phone support seven days a week so when you have questions, you can quickly reach out to someone who can help. You are never wasting your time looking for answers. If you’re coming from another EHR, they make the transition really easy. Therapy Notes will import your clients’ demographic data free of charge during your trial so you can get going right away. Use the promo code [JOE], J-O-E to get the first three free months to try Therapy Notes for free, no strings attached. Remember, telehealth is included with every subscription free. Make 2022 the best year yet with Therapy Notes. [SAM CARVALHO] Amazing, amazing. So can you share with us what the impact is of the confidence killers imposter syndrome, imper perfectionism on high achieving women’s ability to advance their professional dreams? [RYANE] Absolutely. I’m actually going to add a third one in there. From the very beginning of my practice, I’ve actually talked about this third one. Funny enough, the third one is called distractionism and I was given the advice at one point, well, maybe in your marketing, the third one, it’s hard to remember what it is, distraction, and it is distracting. Well, this is the thing, it’s really, really important to add so I’m going to just throw that in there. So there’s really a trifecta effect that I see in my practice. When I say I see in my practice, my practice is truly a reflection of me. These are mindsets that were, and can continue to be if and when I am not mindful. But these three mindsets are something that I have had to battle with, the eight step process, the advanced accelerator process I put together, the three energies that we’ll be talking about, I’m sure that we’ll talk about. These are all things I have created out of necessity for how to really maneuver through my own life and accomplish my own dreams through that what I do with my clients. So the three mindsets are one, imposter syndrome, and that is a mindset that you can look up. It has a clinical definition to it. The essence of imposter syndrome is this idea that regardless of someone’s background, meaning regardless of their education, their experience, their titles, all of the things, they have a deep-seated belief, a feeling, a thought process that says, I am not enough, not enough, meaning I’m going to be caught not knowing. Somebody’s going to know that my file somehow slid through. I don’t know what happened but I got really lucky and everybody’s going to find out at some point in time that I don’t know. So they’re both because they’re high achieving and they’re doing the things. They’re like triple working. They’re working to do the work because you got to work to do the work because they’ve, they’re getting where they’re going, they are getting themselves there, but there’s this false belief of how they’re getting there. There’s this sense of like, it’s not my work that’s actually doing it so there’s a devaluing of self, a devaluing of work, a devaluing of can I really do it on my own? But then there’s also a hiding, a masking of like, please don’t catch me. So there’s like a triple fear that’s there. Then there is this idea of perfectionism, which is a twin, or even just another facet of the mindset and perfectionism. Many people want to say, well, I certainly don’t have perfectionism because I don’t show up perfectly or like, my life isn’t perfect but that’s really not perfectionism. Perfectionism at the core is a very strong-held belief that unless I am, or my product is, my idea is ready, unless it’s perfect, unless it’s correct, unless it’s right, I can’t share it. So this person has a tendency to feel like they’re constantly getting ready to get ready. Like, how’s that project going? Oh, I’m still working on it, just whittling away. What happens in the background for this person is it whittles up their self-esteem because there’s an ongoing record that says it’s not enough, it’s not enough, it’s not right. It’s not perfect. Don’t say it. Put your hand down. What are they going to think? What are they going to say? It’s not right. You’re not ready. So it’s that layer of fear is really about protecting one’s vulnerability of w not wanting to get caught, not in the same way of someone’s going to catch me as I’m not supposed to be here, I’m an imposter, but it’s, I’m not perfect enough, I’m not enough to fill this space. Similar, but different distraction is a term that I have coined in my practice. It is what I feel. It is what I see. I’m going to give a little bit of a personal story here only because I feel it’s important on several levels and because it’s actually what I’m going through right now. So we have moved as a family three times in five years. We’ve had a baby, we’ve endured the pandemic, we moved right before the pandemic where we knew no one, so we spent 16 months just the three of us, my husband, myself, and a little one. It was tough running a business. So this is all very, quite, quite current. We moved again over the summer, showing up for all the things, I do all the things, I’m high achiever, I do all the things that we do. I started to notice that in the move I could normally keep at bay as distraction because of my systems. Because in a house where you have to have systems like where your keys, you put them there so that you can remember where they are. Well, in a new house that’s even bigger, you don’t have any more systems. So you begin to notice how vulnerable you are when you don’t have systems.. So my nervous system went berserk because I couldn’t literally find my keys. I’ve got to get my daughter to school and it’s eight o’clock and I can’t find my keys. I can’t find my keys, I’m so distracted, I’m noticing I’m like overwhelmingly distracted. Not remember distraction’s proud of my mindset that I coach on so it’s relevant and this feeling had been up until this super heightened point. It had felt like I just can’t seem to do consistently the small little things that I know I can do, but I just can’t seem to make myself do them over and over and over again. When you have a business, it’s about those small little things. It’s not really about my high class coaching. I mean, that’s that for my clients, but for my business, it’s about all the little intricate details that I as a solo entrepreneur have to do. That’s literally hard for me, hard for me. But I had created systems and all the things to manage. So now I’m at a point where my life systems are bazurk and I am feeling it. I am aware of it. Across my email ticker comes email promotion from another coach who’s selling something. It says, ADHD coach makes blah, blah, blah. It’s like a divine breadcrumb. Oh my goodness. Could this be, could this be what’s happening? Is this possible? Like, I had never, I come from a family, which we say that not in just like to make fun, but sort of like claiming I was born in 1979, I’m 43. So ADHD was something that was relevant in education. I wasn’t even, I was a teacher. It was something that was relevant, something that I identified with, but not something that I knew enough about to really, other than sort of cast away, like, oh, maybe it’s that to really take value and understanding. Anyway, I did this deep dive, this was just August, this was just weeks ago, I did this deep dive into this understanding all that to say, I am in the midst of seeking a diagnosis for what I have been experiencing. The psychiatrist said, distraction. That’s fascinating because here I was as a social scientist, my background in sociology, I’m in the work, I see this, and I don’t have enough clinical definition to say, oh yes, this is what is. I still don’t, I still don’t. That’s not my lane, but I know what I know and I know what I experienced and it’s very interesting that I called it distraction because that’s what it feels like. It kicks in un unknowingly before all of this context. It kicked in where things in the business would feel very difficult, like every day trying to do social media posting every day or the every day, every day having to do. So I would find myself distracted, like over here on a project that could seem important, but not the priority. That’s what my clients tend to do. In your business, it’s only you. You’re the only manager. So it can be very easy to slide into a sub priority or slide into learning more, or slide into perfecting your craft more, or slide into, I mean, my goodness, all of the slides. So if it’s difficult for someone to think linearly and to say like, oh logic models are easy for me, that’s okay. Well then great. Your systems are probably already shored up. But if that’s hard for you, then you get support, support is needed. Support is needed. I’m going to pause. [SAM] Thanks again to Therapy Notes for sponsoring this episode. Remember to use the promo code, [JOE], that’s [J-O-E] to get three free months to try out Therapy Notes for free, no strengths attached. Thanks for listening to the Marketing a Practice podcast. If you need help with branding your business, whether it be a new logo, rebrand, or you simply want some print flyer designed head on over to www.practiceofthepractice.com/branding. If you’d like to see some examples of my design work, be sure to follow me on Instagram at Samantha Carvalho Design. Finally, please subscribe, rate, and review this podcast on iTunes if you like what you’ve heard. Talk to you soon. This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards 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 any other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.