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Episode 30 is a little bit different – but don’t worry, it’s not too far outside the box.
In this episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on – myself! I’m answering one of my most frequently asked questions – why I became a coach, and what my journey to time management coaching looked like. Plus I’ll turn the tables and treat myself a bit like one of my interview guests and share the exact tools I use to run my business and stay on top of family life.
So – as you all know, my name is Anna and I’m a time management coach. But I haven’t always been a time management coach and podcast host. In fact – I spent about a decade in the high stakes, 24/7 world of crisis communication and government affairs before becoming a coach and my first real job was on a political campaign.
Since I get questions from time to time about how I got into this, that’s what I’m telling you about in today’s episode. How I took myself from 24/7 crazy, to the coaching life and all the crazy twists and turns along the way.
My Life & Business Toolbox
But first – let’s talk tools.
Right now – my husband Scott, little girl Camilla, pup Penelope and I live in a Southern small town called Mandeville about 45 minutes above New Orleans. Across the lake on the Northshore, if you know the geography.
Millie is a full blown toddler, and Scott has a really erratic work schedule. I work from home in my blue and white home office and we haven’t had childcare since mid-March, although I did spend almost the entire month of April in my hometown of Winnfield, Louisiana living with my parents while Scott was away on a very extended Covid-19-related work assignment.
My Daily Planners
When Millie and I left for Winnfield, I packed what felt like our whole house, and that included bringing a lot of stuff from my office. Even my printer and my second monitor. My paper planner was definitely in that box – I use a Dapper Desk planner from Simplified by Emily Ley. In addition to writing out my short daily to-do list in my Dapper Desk, I’m also really into Brendon Burchard’s High Performance Planner right now because of the daily writing prompts.
With questions like:
One thing I can get excited about today is… and Someone who needs me on my A-game today is…., the High Performance planner is great for days when I need to find my focus before tackling big projects.
I Love Trello.
In the digital world – I can’t live without Trello. Seriously – Trello is my first stop after i rev up my laptop each morning. And if you’re not familiar. Trello is a digital collaboration tool – aka a project management platform. A lot of teams use it to coordinate work, but I use it as a solo business owner who wears all the hats – and it helps me keep track of basically everything in my life.
I have a board called Start Here where my current 1 to 3 projects live, so I can stay focused on just those projects, plus a list for each day of the week. I don’t keep just one single to-do list from day to day. I keep multiple project lists, and move specific to-dos to specific days of the week, depending on how much time I have available.
I have a board called Company Guidebook – which is where all of my business details live. From links to affiliate programs, to screenshots of testimonials, to my business tax ID number and links to my client tracking document and my business expenses. My company guidebook board is like having a personal assistant, CFO and a COO in digital form.
I have a board specifically for the podcast called Podcast Workflow, where ideas for solo shows and interviews live, plus my workflows for every single podcast episode. I’ve got a solo show workflow, and an interview workflow, and if it weren’t for Trello I’d be reinventing the wheel every single week. It seriously saves me SO much time.
I could go on and on about Trello, but I’ll start wrapping up this Trello love fest. In addition to the boards I mentioned, I have one called Home Base that houses all of our family details – it’s really come in handy because Scott can pull it up on his phone if he needs to while he’s out on work projects.
I have a Client Dashboard, I have a board called Scratch Pad that houses tons of ideas, an editorial calendar, a launch planner, A board for Meals & Menus. I just love it.
And I should mention, all of my one-on-one time management clients get access to my entire Trello board template library, full of boards just like the ones I’ve created for myself to customize with their own info. Like I said – I’m not into reinventing the wheel, and my clients shouldn’t have to either.
Other Can’t-Live-Without Business Tools
In addition to Trello – my business is G Suite all the way. Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive. Scott and I both use Google Calendar, so we send appointments to each other with work schedules, babysitter info and anything we need to know about as a family.
My website is Squarespace, I use Flodesk to send blast emails, Planoly to schedule Instagram posts, and Buffer to schedule LinkedIn posts. Scheduling posts in batches is such a time-saver. My favorite graphic design tool is Canva, and I’m a big fan of the templates that Ciera Holzenthal of Ciera Design created for me.
Other Favorite Tools & Subscription Services
Other tools and things that make our life easier or help us save time in other areas of life: we’re big fans of Shipt for grocery delivery, I have razors and shaving cream delivered once a month from Billie, my clean beauty go-to is BeautyCounter and Camilla loves her playkit subscription from Lovevery.
We don’t have everything in our lives on some kind of automated subscription service, but we do try to find ways to make our lives easier where we can. After so many years of doing things the hard way, – and I know we all have our own version of what the hard way looks like – but we definitely try to find ways to bring the work smarter, not harder concept to our home life.
My Unexpected Path to Becoming a Coach
But figuring out what would work best for us – from tools in my business, to routines for our family – takes time, experimentation and trial and error. Just like my journey to become a coach definitely was not a straight line from point A to point B.
In fact, the first time someone mentioned that I should consider becoming a life coach, I thought they were crazy. I didn’t feel like I had my life together at all – and I thought life coaches just did yoga or meditated or something. I wasn’t really sure but I didn’t think it was for me. I might not have had my life together, but I was a serious professional, after all.
I really clung to that whole idea that a life coach couldn’t also be a serious professional. It just felt fluffy to me – and I say that with no offense whatsoever meant to any life coaches who are listening. I just didn’t know any better.
The Unexpected Leadership Conference That Changed Everything
I have, however, had an interest in leadership and productivity for quite some time. I think I went to my first leadership conference as a 12 year old – it was called Made for Excellence and it was through the National FFA Organization – aka Future Farmers of America (yes, I was a member of the FFA and yes I showed a pig at the state fair, and yes I’ll save that story for another day), but it was the first time I’d ever taken a personality assessment outside of a quiz in CosmoGirl or TeenBeat, and it was the first time I really thought that I could be a leader of some sort.
Anyway, a few years ago – after I’d walked away from my decade long career in crisis communication and governmental affairs – I was trying to figure out what to do next. I knew there had to be a way to take my background in communications and my love for leadership and turn that into something. I just didn’t know what. At the time I was trying to do communications – I was consulting for marketing firms, doing social media for political candidates – and calligraphy. I was applying for jobs too, just in case. It was a weird mix.
The Unexpected Email in my Spam Folder That Changed Everything
One day, very randomly – I found an email in my spam folder of all places about an upcoming Myers Briggs certification program coming to New Orleans. And yes – it was a real email that had just landed in my spam folder. I’d learned about the MBTI in college taking a leadership development course and thought it would be fun to get certified to give the Myers Briggs. I didn’t really know what I would do with it, but it seemed like a Hey – why not moment.
Sidenote – the Myers Briggs is a personality assessment, similar to the 16 personalities test you’ve probably seen on the internet. The results are 4 letters, E or I, N or S, T or F, P or J – and they represent your preferences in different areas of life – like where you get your energy, how you make decisions, and how you see the world.
So I signed up. Got certified, and I remember that – when someone asked me what I planned to do with my certification, I blurted out, “I just really want to help women figure out time management. I don’t know how – or what it would look like, but that’s what I want to do.” But I didn’t think of myself as a future coach. In fact, on the last day of the certification training, we were asked to break into groups based on how we planned to use the MBTI. There was a group of coaches, a group of HR professionals, and then a third group who either wasn’t sure or didn’t fit into coaching or HR. I sat with the third group of randoms, definitely not the coaches.
The Unexpected Facebook Post That Changed Everything
But I started to feel kind of curious about this whole coaching thing. The coaches I met at the training didn’t seem like hippy dippy weirdos. They seemed pretty normal, and yeah – even like serious professionals. So because, I don’t know – because I’m me, I created a Facebook group so all of us classmates could stay in touch. Then, A few weeks after the training wrapped, one of my classmates – a coach named Elizabeth – posted in the facebook group, offering free coaching sessions in order to get some additional hours before sitting for a coaching exam.
I wonder what I’d be doing right now had I not created that Facebook group so we could stay in touch.
The Unexpected Free Coaching Call That Changed Everything
I gladly took her up on the offer, and used our call as an opportunity to talk through my interest in coaching and understand a bit more about it. During our session – Elizabeth helped me realize that my trepidation about coaching was mainly because I was afraid of what people would think about me. That I had spent so much of my career in big jobs with fancy titles, doing quote very important things unquote – that I was afraid that my family and friends would think less of me for becoming a coach. On that very call – I made peace with what I wanted to pursue vs. what other people would think about me, and felt a very big internal shift take place.
Seriously – in one call, I experienced the power of coaching and walked away with an entirely new perspective on what exactly coaching is and how it has the power to change your perspective in big ways. It wasn’t hippy dippy – at least, it didn’t have to be, and it wasn’t just for high powered executives in high rise buildings.
I can absolutely credit that single, free coaching session with Elizabeth as being a major turning point in my life. After that call, I started to gradually let go of my concern about what other people would think of me as I pursued what was right for me, and I began to realize just how much control I had over my own life, as opposed to just letting life happen to me.
Less than a month after my coaching call with Elizabeth, I started coaching school and loved every minute of it. Our lessons were all virtual, and we’d cover a specific topic, or aspect of coaching and then engage in practice coaching sessions. In my very first practice coaching session, where the entire class listened in – I helped one of my classmates come to a decision about how to find care for her elderly parents living in India. I knew nothing about elder care, or India – but by asking powerful questions, I helped her find the clarity she needed to make a decision. It was amazing. And I don’t mean I was amazing, I mean the power of coaching through active listening and purposeful questions was amazing.
No Regrets.
Now – the road from finishing coach training to now wasn’t sunshine and roses and easy living. After finishing coach training in spring of 18, I was offered an opportunity to run a statewide political campaign. And I took it. No regrets. Then I was offered an amazing job that I would have KILLED for if it’d come my way just 6 months earlier when I had a different mindset. I turned it down. No regrets. Then I found out I was pregnant with Camilla the exact same day I launched my leadership development blog. Definitely no regrets there. I continued doing marketing work for clients – overseeing the production of promo videos, doing PR and social media consulting. I didn’t come to the decision to call myself a Time Management Coach until more than a year after finishing my last coach training class. And – spoiler alert, that realization – and major turning point happened while working with a coach in our very first session together.
About 4 months after Camilla was born and I was ready to ease back into working again, I knew I’d need help to get things going, especially because it felt like I was starting from scratch. Not to mention feeling like a brand new version of myself as a brand new mom. So I reached out to a local coach I followed on Instagram, and we started working together.
Could I have come to the conclusion on my own that I should focus on time management? Probably. Especially when I look back on that MBTI training when I told someone I just wanted to help women with time management. But here’s where I’ll admit that I was actually afraid to call myself a time management coach. I was afraid that no one would want help with time management, and that it was too narrow of a focus. And I might have stewed over that, and gone back and forth, and made pros and cons lists for a whole lot longer, had I not been called out on my fears.
The Benefits to Working With a Coach
But – that’s part of working with a coach. You get faster results, because you’re working with an unbiased sounding board who gives you intense accountability. They shine a light on things you can’t see, your blind spots, and they help you think through and work through why you feel a certain way about certain things. A lot of times it’s fear based, or based on some false belief you have about yourself or something you’re facing. And then you create action steps and make them happen. And then you make progress, and then you make more progress.
Now – more than a year later, I’ve been so honored to walk beside so many of my own time management coaching clients in different cities, with different job titles representing different industries, who have trusted me to help them create a life that’s always felt out of reach.
I don’t have any regrets about the time I spent in crisis communications and government affairs. The job hopping, the job quitting. The time I spent trying different things to figure out what would work. The mistakes.
I know that all of those experiences happened for a reason – even if that reason is to tell my story to a client who is struggling with what to do next in their career, or trying to create order out of chaos at home. I love the phrase – your test is your testimony, and I remembered thinking – the day I walked out of my full time job at a cool place with a cool title for the very last time, exhilarated but totally terrified about what was going to happen next – I remember thinking in that moment, one day I’m going to tell this story. I don’t know when, I don’t know who will be listening, – but I have to believe that it will make a difference for someone.
That’s my story about becoming a coach. It was in some ways very unexpected, and I certainly didn’t get it right the first time. Like most good things, it’s taken time, lots of intentionality and help from other coaches to clarify my vision, create actionable next steps and stay accountable to the progress that I’ve committed to. I know that throughout the rest of my career, I’ll continue to refine my processes and my approach.
One thing I know for sure, after all I’ve experienced – there is no such thing as perfect conditions, and if you wait until you feel absolutely ready to do something, you’ll be waiting forever. Sometimes you have to just take the first step, and then the next, figure it out, and see what happens. The space between point A and point B might not be a straight line, but it’s so much better than standing still and staying stuck.
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