Tara Newman:
Hey, hey there, bold leaders. Welcome to another episode of The Bold Leadership Revolution Podcast. Today I’m here with Jillian Dudek, and Jillian is the owner of the Brand Barre. She is my brand manager. She is also a member of The BRAVE Society. I have Jillian here with you, with us today for a few reasons. One, I think she has a really incredible story that needs to be told specifically right now. Her story is very similar to my story, and I think that these are the things that we need to be hearing from people. We need to know that people have gone through tough times, have faced adversity in their lives, have overcome uncertain things, and have thrived afterward.
As well as that, what I’m noticing is this trend with some of my clients where we’re hearing everybody out there right now getting a little panicky and they’re making panic decisions, they’re panic pricing, they’re panic selling if they’re on the Wall Street. There’s a lot of frenzy and frantic feelings out there, and this whole concept around pivot. You have to pivot, you have to be pivoting, pivot now before it’s too late, and I’m actually opposed to that. For someone who usually stands firmly in the middle of things, I am 100% in the anti pivot camp right now because, one, I think it’s too early to tell. I think we’re too in it right now to see how this is going to shake out. We need a little more information, and day by day we’re getting that information. So now’s not the time for wild change, now’s the time for incremental decision making.
What I’m noticing among my clients and some of the women in The BRAVE Society is that they don’t actually have to worry about that right now because they have created a habit around the CEO debrief that puts them in a feedback loop where they’re continuously and incrementally improving, shifting, even if you want to call it a pivot, but it’s a really small scale pivot each week as they review their businesses. Jillian is someone who shows up every week on these calls. I mean, I think maybe I can count on one hand how many times she’s missed a call in probably over a year, and I know that she has very diligently made this a habit for herself. So I want to introduce to you Jillian. She’s also very intuitive. She’s intuitively guided. She’s smiling at me right now. It’s true, right?
Jillian Dudek:
It is.
Tara Newman:
You’re a feeler. You’re a feeler and a sensor.
Jillian Dudek:
Yeah. So overwhelming so that it clouds out some of the analytical smartness at times, but we’re working on a balance.
Tara Newman:
Why don’t you tell us what you do now? I said you’re on my team, you’re my brand manager, which you do a phenomenal job. What do you do right now? What’s the Brand Barre?
Jillian Dudek:
The Brand Barre, it’s my business where we do brand alignment strategy and graphic design work. So it’s an incremental way of branding. So instead of these extreme makeovers every couple of years, I keep my eyes and ears and sensibility on my clients’ brands as they’re progressing and evolving, and I incrementally adjust the branding, the visuals, and perhaps even something in the strategy that needs to shift as they’re moving. So many businesses actually … especially if you’re leveraging the online space a lot, you can move quicker. You don’t have as much to update. It’s easier to update or make those shifts. So-
Tara Newman:
Yeah. I can really agree with this because what you’re basically saying is that when you have your branding done, it’s not one and done. It’s something that’s evolving as a part of your company’s ecosystem. At least that’s the way it is for me, that … and I never really feel like it’s a full on rebrand. We’re just becoming more us, is how I see it. I adore you for that and I appreciate you so much for having that position for me. You sense things that I’m trying to say and you can Intuit the energy behind it, which I also really appreciate. But that is not what you’ve always done. You’ve actually had a major pivot in your-
Jillian Dudek:
Major pivot.
Tara Newman:
… life. You used to own a brick and mortar-
Jillian Dudek:
Yes.
Tara Newman:
… dance studio.
Jillian Dudek:
Correct. Yes. Yeah, for almost a decade. I had been training before that, and teaching and choreographing. Then at the ripe age of 24, I opened my own business, and it was a great success. I absolutely loved it. But as we know, businesses are challenging, and it evolved into a time where the economy started to have some troubles. While we had hundreds of families that I saw every week, I first hand saw them all struggling to make their bills and take care of their families, and that in turn so affected our business.
Tara Newman:
Yeah. Yeah. Can you imagine right now if you owned that business, where actual businesses are closed, dance studios are closed now?
Jillian Dudek:
Absolutely. Yeah. The big difference now I think is that there’s even more … people are a lot more used to the online world and that transition to moving some classes online while … There’s an awful lot of challenges and you know people may not show up. It’s much easier to have something continuing to go forward or connect with your students. So we didn’t just teach dance classes, we were building character in these young adults and children, and to not have that connection with them during this time would be challenging. But now there’s resources available, and free resources available that you can use.
Tara Newman:
Yeah. I actually love that you see what you were doing beyond what you were actually doing.
Jillian Dudek:
Oh, for sure. Actually I-
Tara Newman:
I like that development of leadership and character and of identity that you just happen to be dancing.
Jillian Dudek:
Correct. Yeah. I say dance was the vehicle that we used to build the character and build a lasting impact because that’s the part that mattered the most. I didn’t care how high they could kick. I mean, sure, a little bit. Because when we go to competition, great, awesome. But we didn’t build those types of dancers, we were working with human beings. Some of them were with us 10, 12, 13, 14 hours every single week for 18 years, were some of my students. So it has to be about something bigger, and I’m like that with everything. It isn’t just about the thing. So even with graphic design, if I’m making a graphic, it’s not just like, “Oh, this is pretty.” It really has a purpose, and I want it to align with the right people and mean something for someone, the right someones.
Tara Newman:
Yeah. When you were going through the great recession with your dance studio, what were some of the feelings that you were having?
Jillian Dudek:
I think the biggest, when I think back to that time, I felt so alone. I’m surrounded by hundreds of people, I’m surrounded by two dozens of employees, and I was alone. That industry, unfortunately, is not very connected and supported. Naturally, there are spaces where they are, but it’s really rare. So you can connect to those people, and then the other communities that I was involved in were more local and everybody was just like they were just going along, everybody looked numbed out. Everybody was going through their own thing alone, completely alone.
Tara Newman:
Yeah. I can identify with that. When we were struggling back in that time, the way I described, it was isolated. I felt really-
Jillian Dudek:
Yes.
Tara Newman:
… really isolated. Some of it was that there weren’t these natural … there wasn’t a natural community to belong to. But the other part of that was that we felt a lot of shame.
Jillian Dudek:
Oh, yeah. You know what? That’s absolutely. You always put words to like … It was shame. After we ended up closing, I felt so shameful that I did not … I rarely left the house, and when we did, we’d go out to breakfast and we’d pick places. I would ask my guy to take us to a place that wasn’t near our community because I didn’t want to run into somebody or have that conversation where somebody is like, “Hey, how are you?” Because I knew that I would break down. I knew it would be too hard. I felt so much shame. It was constant avoidance.
Tara Newman:
Yeah. I think that’s such a great … that how are you doing question, how are you feeling question.
Jillian Dudek:
Yeah, how are you doing now? In my pajamas laying here, what do you mean?
Tara Newman:
I’m like, “I don’t think anybody really wants the answer to this.”
Jillian Dudek:
No, they don’t.
Tara Newman:
I don’t think anybody really wants to know, and so we wind up saying fine or good or whatever. I’ve even stopped doing that now, and just telling people how I feel and it’s really funny to see people’s responses to when I actually give an answer because-
Jillian Dudek:
Same.
Tara Newman:
… people aren’t expecting that. They’re expecting fine or good. Yeah, I really felt that level of isolation, both self-imposed and also just not feeling like there was a space that was inviting to me, even in my local friend groups, that would accept the fact that I wasn’t succeeding, that I was failing.
Jillian Dudek:
Yeah. Yes, it wasn’t clearly failing. You could look at it in different ways, but there’s so much weight to that.
Tara Newman:
It takes a little while to reframe that one.
Jillian Dudek:
Absolutely. We weren’t jumping into that. It was a failure, and it wasn’t just a business. These felt like a family.
Tara Newman:
Yeah. Yes.
Jillian Dudek:
They were hurt and crushed, and their kids were at home crying with the news. It wasn’t just a couple adults where you’re just like … and people are like, “You know what? Okay, I need a new CPA” No, this is where people went where they felt like this was their home too. I created this space.
Tara Newman:
You were the worthy community-
Jillian Dudek:
Yes.
Tara Newman:
… for these people.
Jillian Dudek:
And all of a sudden, it just wasn’t going to happen again, and that was … You care about these children, and I wanted to have that conversation with each one of them, but you just can’t.
Tara Newman:
How did you know when you needed to make the decision to close the doors?
Jillian Dudek:
It was when I was out of financial resources, which had not happened in a decade. We were doing great.
Tara Newman:
Yeah, money runs out.
Jillian Dudek:
I opened the doors and everything was awesome. So money runs out, and as I started to explore the option of how I acquire more money and loans … and I did. I actually looked for another facility, I worked with a builder who would do the build out, all this stuff, and I gathered all of the information because during this time, the biggest thing that set us off to a different trajectory was the fact that my landlord, even though we had been there for nearly a decade, wanted to raise our rent drastically even though there was open spaces in the building. So he was willing to let us go over taking the … and it was a high rent. Now, I know. I was 24, I didn’t know better. It was a pretty building.
As I was exploring that, what took me into that next space was the, “Okay, so I can do this, we can find the resources, but do I have the energetic capacity and the emotional bandwidth to handle doing this again, and putting this much stress?” And that was a hell no. Part of that was because I did not take care of myself well during that process and do things incrementally as opposed to … It wasn’t that I wasn’t trying. It was like driving a car that is breaking down, and you’re the only one in the car driving and you feel like all the other passengers there … I don’t know where the hell they were, but I’m driving and I’m driving 80, and I’m losing things and things are breaking down, but I just cannot stop to fix it. So by the time we got to this place, the car was broken down and I had no other choice than to stop the car and get out because it stopped on its own.
Tara Newman:
You burned out?
Jillian Dudek:
Heck yeah.
Tara Newman:
Yeah, you burned out and then you couldn’t keep going, you couldn’t keep moving forward.
Jillian Dudek:
No. It was like a resurrection if I wanted to keep going, and I wasn’t prepared for that.
Tara Newman:
Too much energy to pull you out of the hole.
Jillian Dudek:
For sure.
Tara Newman:
Yap, on top of the capital, on top of the other things that you had to deal with. Whoa! How long did it take you to recover from that? Still?
Jillian Dudek:
Well, absolutely. Yeah, still. Yeah, when you don’t have money, you don’t jump into getting help either, super well. After that, after I lost the business, I lost everything except my dog. Thank God for that, because that might’ve just sent me over the edge, and I don’t know what that edge is, but…
Tara Newman:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I hear that.
Jillian Dudek:
I was paying everything. I was paying with whatever was left, and I wasn’t that far in the hole when I watched some of these reality TV shows, and they’re like, “We were $200 million in debt,” and I’m like, “What?” I’m like, “I was $4,000 and I couldn’t figure it out,” because the other bills are so much bigger and then the income was drastically dropping. I’m like, “There isn’t a good plan here.” I could have brought it down to one … Whatever. There were so many options. None of them felt good at that moment because I had not done the work incrementally or had the support or the energetic capacity. Just wasn’t there.
Tara Newman:
I think that’s really interesting because when my husband and I went back and we did our own debrief on our business failure during that time, it was very easy for us to blame things that were outside of ourselves, it was very easy for us to blame the economy, to blame our biggest customer who decided to take all the business and go to China because it was cheaper to manufacture. We could have blamed the customer that stiffed us for $40,000. But the reality was, is that there were things that we could have taken responsibility for, especially around asking for help, and we did not ask for help. We did not, forget even putting us ourselves in a community, but we just … I’m like, “There were people who could have helped us.” We were so myopic and narrow-minded.
We had such tunnel vision because we were so afraid, but we had such tunnel vision on what was in front of us that there was nobody, we didn’t find anybody, we never asked for help saying, “Help us see a bigger picture here, help us see this, help us zoom out so we can maybe see the reality.” Or, “Can someone tell us that other business owners have been in debt, right? To $200,000 and it’s okay to be where we are,” or that other people fail or that it’s happened, right? So there was that huge part for us as well.
The two things are, one, around feeling isolated, and the one around not asking for help was actually the reason why I started The BRAVE Society, was to give people a place to do those things at what I felt was an accessible price point given you might have other things going on in your life or your business at the time.
But that I’m watching a lot of women put all this money into branding or websites or funnels or these other pieces that they feel they need to run their business, which listen, I get it these things are important too, but are completely sacrificing any investment into themselves as the leader of their business. So that was, for me, the reason why The BRAVE Society is so important for me, is because it was a positive outcome of what I had been through. What was your most positive outcome from what you had been through?
Jillian Dudek:
Oh, for sure it was my reconnection to trusting myself, my gut instinct because I had so many and there was so many people involved. For me, I had family involved, which makes it that much harder. And friends.
Tara Newman:
We did too.
Jillian Dudek:
Yeah, and I was so young but I had such great instinct. When I look back, I’m like, “I knew what had to happen to make this thing thrive even more,” and when there was things that were going wrong and I’d start to address them and got pushed back, I didn’t keep going. So it was reconnecting with that, that piece of me, which I’m so grateful for that piece, and if that had to happen for it, then so be it.
Tara Newman:
Yeah, and I know how important that is to you too, because you always say sometimes your intuition, it doesn’t have words. It’s very subtle or it’s sensation or like a feeling, and for you it’s easy for you to bypass that, but for you to get quiet, really quiet and tune into that, has been a huge lesson for you.
Jillian Dudek:
Oh, for sure. That’s why instead of working with hundreds of people every week, I decided to work by myself. It was that drastic of a change that helped me to hear that piece. I had to go with that isolated, and it served me really well because I wanted to hear it. It is so subtle. When I was told about BRAVE, I thought, “Oh, that sounds really cool. Okay, great.” Then that same person came back and was like, “No, I need you to take a look at it again,” and I read the sales page and it was a okay. I’m like, “Okay, this is a pretty big investment for me in this time in my business.” Okay, it should feel like this big huge thing. No, it wasn’t. It’s so funny because it was … that’s how it keeps coming up now that I’ve quieted down, and it was the single best investment I’ve made in myself in a long time. Maybe ever.
Tara Newman:
I think that’s really interesting because what you’re saying is that from this experience, from this failure, you’ve learned how you work even better.
Jillian Dudek:
Absolutely.
Tara Newman:
What you need to thrive, which is a more quiet experience in choosing to work by yourself and not having a team, right? Some people, like me, I like having a team, I like having a lot of people around me. I think that’s really exciting, and then I’m always like, “But listen, if you don’t want to have a team, that’s cool too,” because I think we need to create businesses that work for us. So what I’m hearing is that you’ve really started to create a business that works for you.
Jillian Dudek:
Oh, without a doubt and-
Tara Newman:
Sustainable for you.
Jillian Dudek:
Yeah, and being in the space allows me to tap into what that is, and as it evolves, I’m not locked in. I’m actually at the place now where I wanted the team. I actually love to lead, but being quiet and then entering into BRAVE has allowed me to reignite that part of me that really does like to be in leadership. Over the course of the last … a little over a year that I’ve been in it, I had to really address leading myself first, and that has been such a huge gift because you can’t lead others. I had a lot to heal and I’m still going to heal. I can still move forward at the same time. The weight isn’t as heavy anymore, and part of that is because I’m in a space where I don’t feel like these are brilliant, remarkable people to the point where I’m almost like, “I don’t know if I belong here. They’re that remarkable.”
But I’ve heard even the most successful people in there say that as well. So I’m like, “Okay, so I’m not alone.” I totally get that. But you’re sitting around this virtual table of these remarkable women, and the appreciation I have for that and the appreciation I have for them sharing what’s normal for them just normalizes it in me as well. But it doesn’t feel like I don’t have to carry that as shame. It’s just something to take care of and move on. Because these times, like we’re going through now, and the time that I experienced when I closed my business, all it did was highlight the areas that I had neglected. It wasn’t even about like, “Oh this awful thing is happening to me.” It was, “Ah, I see why it’s so important, the maintenance side of taking care of things.”
Tara Newman:
Yes. So I totally understand that. This experience in itself for you back then was a mirror for you to look at and see where you needed to actually do the work, and you brought up the word healing, so I want to jump into that because, for me, there was so much post traumatic stress from being able to go into a grocery store and buy groceries to leasing a car to just everyday life. One of the things that I believe really strongly in is that we can heal by doing our most important work. We actually can heal through our leadership. I remember when you started coming, when you first joined BRAVE, you actually coined a term, which is … Tell people what the term is.
Jillian Dudek:
Tears, the F word, and then I was like, “Let’s do this.”
Tara Newman:
Yeah. Tears, the F word, bold leadership, let’s do this.
Jillian Dudek:
Let’s do this.
Tara Newman:
Because you showed up on almost every call in the beginning crying.
Jillian Dudek:
Oh, I couldn’t talk without crying. It’s like we opened that door. Being in that space, opened the door for me. I’d be fine for the whole week, and then I get on the call and you’d ask me a question, and I was like, “Ah, here it comes.” It’s just there’s so much healing that needs to happen, and I actually did not know that what I was experiencing was trauma until you, just matter of fact, said, “Oh no, no, that’s not a fear. That’s trauma.” And I’m like, “Well.” It changed things for me because I didn’t take ownership of it anymore in a way like that was me. It was something that I experienced, and so then the real healing started to happen of like, “Wow, how do I keep putting this down and looking at it from a different view because it’s not … I don’t have to shame myself anymore?” That was a huge piece of me moving forward.
Tara Newman:
Yeah. In The BRAVE Society, I see a lot of women not know what to do when they need to heal, which is totally normal because nobody really talks about this. Let’s face it, right? There’s not a ton of people talking about this. Maybe you go to therapy, maybe some women feel ashamed about going to therapy. That happens too. What would I find is that we tend to make ourselves better wrong for the parts of us that need to find their way back to being whole again, and we opt out, and we isolate and we hide and we don’t engage with the parts of ourselves that need that healing. One of the things that I really boldly ask of the women in The BRAVE Society is to bring their whole selves to the table, to bring their whole selves to their leadership, that we can no longer lead from the neck up, which is in our heads, right? That we need to engage our body in our leadership as well. So the calls that Jillian was talking about, where she would cry, you really haven’t cried in a long time, by the way.
Jillian Dudek:
Yeah. No, just little bits if I’m touched. But, no. I can actually communicate without tears.
Tara Newman:
So those are our CEO Debrief calls that we have twice a month, and I debrief my business where I talk about what’s working, what’s not working, I ask a whole bunch of other questions of myself and I talk about them. Sometimes I just go to church on stuff, I start preaching. I’m very honest and I really, it’s my goal to really normalize what we are all experiencing, the weight of ownership, the ups and downs of ownership, because I’ve experienced all of it. I’ve experienced the lowest of lows of owning a business and the highest of highs of owning a business just like anybody else out there who is running a business. I feel that the image that gets portrayed these days on social media is only the highest of highs, and we’re not seeing everybody’s lows.
I mean, I understand that that’s not always like … you don’t always want to talk about that on social media. I don’t always want to talk about it on social media, but I am very forthcoming on these debriefs around what’s going on, and then I always try to open it up at the end for people to comment or to give an insight or to ask a question. So that’s usually where Jillian feels a little choked up. Sometimes I call on people. But what I’m noticing and what I know that you have perhaps experienced yourself is that, by going through these debriefs on a regular basis, there’s not that panic to pivot right now. You feel steady. Tell me about that.
Jillian Dudek:
I’m shocked at how steady I feel. The incremental just evaluation has made everything … It aligns with what I do and what I think is so important, which is so funny that I haven’t done that in this way. But the actually showing up and seeing you do it is huge value. So I’ve been involved in different groups or where people share their stories or what’s going on for them. But I think what’s really drastically different is, and what I feel so grounded about every we leave that call, I feel like I almost want it Monday morning, so I’m like, “I can take on the week.” Friday I’m like, “Oh my God,” but then I actually deliberately put my planning just after that call. So it works out well for me. I can work with that. But you marry all the parts that you need to run a business and you reflect on them, you share them so vulnerably, but not from a place of, “Oh, look what I’m going through.” It’s like, “Here’s what I realized, here’s how I can adjust in this,” and you’re looking back on a week or a month, you’re not looking back on, oh, the last 10 years.
It’s not a big major shift, but you gather this information and then you share all pieces of you that came to make this decision. It’s not just an analytical business mindset it’s not just mindset or emotions or everything all together. I’ve never heard anybody do it in a way that helps me bring all those pieces of myself to the table to make a decision. So modeling that has helped me to do it for myself, and then the incremental habit of doing it. I will pull out that debrief paper, and actually I have it on my iPad, and I just duplicate it. That’s probably the most duplicated thing in all of my files. I use it for everything. I use it for my health, I use it for my business, I use it for the last week in business, I use it for relationships, anything-
Tara Newman:
Yes.
Jillian Dudek:
… to just have that moment of reflection. I create PDFs for people, and I see the content that they’re putting out there and these tools. There’s so many people that ask you to ask yourself these questions, but yours are so simple, clear and deliberate that they actually produce a really solid result. I cannot say that for everything, and then that’s not … It’s just you’re so intentional in a way that works for so many people, and that we need right now. It’s not overly fluffy or … I mean, it’s so pinpointed that it makes you do the work and it’s not hard work. At least it’s not so hard.
Tara Newman:
Unless you get to the question you don’t want to answer.
Jillian Dudek:
Correct, but then you know where you need to-
Tara Newman:
Yes.
Jillian Dudek:
… address a little further.
Tara Newman:
I’ll talk about that too on the call.
Jillian Dudek:
Sure.
Tara Newman:
So I’ll be like, “I did not want to answer this question this week, so I’m going to answer it.”
Jillian Dudek:
Absolutely, yeah. Every time you’re like, “What are your wins?” I’m like, “Come on, not today.”
Tara Newman:
Don’t make me share my wins.
Jillian Dudek:
Yeah. Yes. But you’re a coach that doesn’t just give you the tools, you’re the coach that tells you why they’re important. You’ve done the research, you know why they’re important. You’ve used them in so many different arenas and different levels of leadership, and then you model it. It’s everything that comes together, it all fits, and it’s changing how I do everything.
Tara Newman:
Thank you, by the way. I think that one of the things that … One of the reasons why I wanted to do a debrief every other week where I debrief my business was because I know that people struggle sometimes with languaging things for themselves. They can feel it or maybe they think it, but they’re not sure what words to use. So I realized that a lot of people need help languaging things, or how to pull something apart and think through it, or and or they don’t know the question they need to be asking themselves, and by hearing me talk about it, they’re like, “Oh, that’s something that I should be tuning into. That’s why this is feeling off,” or what have you. So I really do my best to model that because I think it’s the modeling thing, the modeling piece that’s actually so important. Especially, I know you said sometimes, “I don’t always have the words for things.”
Jillian Dudek:
Yeah. The words, they don’t do the feeling justice. I could sit there with the soreness and I’m not going to find it, but the way you put it together, I’m like, “Yes, that’s exactly what I was feeling.” Or, “Wow, I can totally relate to that,” and then you just put it in a way that it becomes a little bit more tangible and I can assess it better and do something with it. On the debrief calls, you actually will quite frequently bring in a new question that you’ve asked yourself this week. Those are some of my favorite, because I’m like, “Oh wait, you can ask yourself more?”
Tara Newman:
Yes.
Jillian Dudek:
Look at her, breaking her own rules. I love this. And they’re so insightful. I have a notebook full of just those questions because at times they’re so poignant and gets you right to the heart of what you need. I’m like, “Ooh, I need to ask myself that this week.”
Tara Newman:
Especially right now as we’re all overwhelmed and anxious, I am sitting down to do debriefs right now or even just journal in. Listen, I’m like a pro journaler. That’s my job title, right? I’m struggling to put pen to paper and put my thoughts down on paper and to just get things out of my slightly more anxious mind, and I’m like, “I need a good question. Somebody give me a really great question.” So even yesterday the question that I asked myself … I’m actually scrolling through my journal right now. The question that I asked myself, I’ll find it. I promise. Or maybe I won’t. Yes. So the question that I asked myself to get things going, that I’m actually going to share on the debrief this week is, what is my most pressing fear? What is my most pressing fear?
Because I am. I’m feeling tightness in my chest, I’m feeling constriction in my breath and it feels … that’s what fear feels like to me. So what is happening here? What is my most pressing fear? Because I know that in the past I’ve been like, “I’m just afraid of everything,” and I’m like, “That doesn’t work. We need to talk.” We need to start naming things so we can start addressing them. So that’s definitely going to be a topic. Spoiler alert, that’s a topic on Fridays. CEO debrief is going to be probably around fear. Jillian, what has focusing on … Because one of the first couple of questions that we ask in the debrief are what are your wins? What’s working? What’s not working?
I think that these are the three questions that when you do them every week are really helping people right now to stay forward moving and to realize that the shifts that they need to make are much smaller than what they feel needs to happen. Right now is probably not the best time for to create a new revenue stream that’s going to take a little bit to get off the ground. But if you just continue to do what’s working and to put your effort and energy there, I think that’s most helpful. So how has that been helpful to you?
Jillian Dudek:
Oh, it helps me focus on what really matters. First of all, the wins question, what are your wins?
Tara Newman:
Such a hard question.
Jillian Dudek:
Yeah. I think I got into such a habit, and it’s because I was shaming myself so much that I refused to look at wins because I didn’t deserve them. And now to even look at the tiniest of tiniest of wins and appreciate it has allowed energy to shift. I notice more. Also, noticing my wins tells me what’s working. That’s a huge piece of the puzzle. When you’re running a business is to know what is working, and when you address it weekly, it’s a small change. It’s, “You know what? I need to set a new boundary on this,” and you implement and you’re good to go. You don’t have to wait until it becomes this awful thing that’s taking down your business because you addressed it at a micro level. Yeah.
Tara Newman:
Yeah. So what I want to know from you before we wrap this up, and we’re going to leave them with this, what is working for you right now?
Jillian Dudek:
What is working for me is constantly looking at building a business that fuels me and works for me in a way that has a sense of ease. It doesn’t mean it’s easy. But it’s like an innate just part of who I am, and stepping back into leading in my own life, taking full responsibility and I’m looking forward to leading others. That’s, I’m so grateful.
Tara Newman:
Yeah. You know what? I know you said this the other day, you were like you feel strong right now. The world’s wobbling around you and you feel strong, you feel steady.
Jillian Dudek:
Absolutely. It’s almost real. I doubted myself for a moment, I’m like, “No, no, I’m good.” I have what I need this time around, and a lot of that has to do with being in your world and being a part of BRAVE. If I didn’t have these tools, I wouldn’t feel so steady, and that, I’m certain of. There’s no way. If I didn’t, I would be taking on more trauma.
Tara Newman:
Yep. We’ve had some pretty real conversations too in The BRAVE Society over the last week or so between adding coffee chats and just the conversation threads and the CEO debriefs. So I really want to encourage everybody that, no matter how you’re feeling right now, if you’re feeling strong and steady or if you’re feeling fearful or maybe some scarcity is coming up for you, I really want you to know that we welcome all of you in The BRAVE Society, and we really want you to join us. Right, Jillian?
Jillian Dudek:
Absolutely.
Tara Newman:
Thanks for coming on.
Jillian Dudek:
Thank you so much.
Tara Newman:
If you enjoy the conversations we have on this show, then join us inside The BRAVE Society. BRAVE brings women from a range of industries and fields into one room for pure learning, impactful hosted training, support, and an incredible community. We do things differently in The BRAVE Society.
The conversations in the group are powerful, transformative, and incredibly valuable for business growth as well as your own leadership development. And those trainings I mentioned, some are led by me and others are peer led. The peer led trainings are paid trainings by us. It’s our way of reinvesting into the community. None of this free guest expert stuff. We support women paying women.
Inside of The BRAVE Society you will have three live calls per month. One is training and discussion focused and the other two are CEO debriefs with me in which we share our wins and insights so we can all learn from each woman in the room. Research shows that support groups are critical for the success of female leaders. The unique challenges we face as women require us to be able to hold an emotional and strategic container that allows us to foster the resiliency needed to lead in your business and your life.
When you are surrounded by a diverse group of peers, your network intelligence grows exponentially. Now, the main objection I hear from women like you is, am I good enough to take a seat at the table with these women? And let me tell you what I’ve learned over the last two years running The BRAVE Society. You are good enough.
So join us and find out for yourself.
If you found this podcast valuable, help us develop more bold leaders in the world by sharing this episode with your friends, colleagues, and other bold leaders. Also, if you haven’t done so already, please leave a review. I consider reviews like podcasts currency and it’s the one thing you can do to help us out here at The Bold Leadership Revolution HQ. We would be so grateful for it. Special thanks goes to Stacey Harris from Uncommonly More, who is the producer and editor of this podcast. Go check them out for all your digital marketing and content creation needs. Be sure to tune into the next episode to help you embrace your ambition and leave the grind behind.
Important links to share:
Listen in on CEO Debriefs and Get 10 BOLD Questions for your own debrief.
Help more Bold Leaders find this podcast by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts
