178 | Unlocking Your Leadership Potential with Elizabeth Hartke of the Luminary Leadership Company
You have one of the most important things required to be an entrepreneur - leadership! Liz is here to help you unlock it!
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE HERE:
In this conversation, Dani & Liz talk about what leadership really is, how Liz prioritizes her schedule with things that light her up, the importance of carving out blank space to think and so much more! This was such an amazing conversation and we know you are going to leave with some amazing tactical tips that you can immediately implement!
Liz Hartke is a Forbes featured international Business Leadership Advisor and Founder of the Luminary Leadership Company. Known for her work equipping entrepreneurs to scale their businesses for freedom and prosperity, Liz and her husband Michael practice what they preach homeschooling and soaking up life with their 4 kids from their hobby farm.
Connect with Liz:
@elizhartke
https://go.luminaryleadershipco.com/focused
Key Takeaways:
The Role of Leadership in Entrepreneurship
Many entrepreneurs tend to focus solely on business strategies, but Elizabeth emphasizes that the level of leadership you embody directly affects your business's success.
Leadership isn't just about holding a position; it's about a willingness to grow, align with your purpose, and continually develop personally and professionally.
The Importance of Self-Leadership
Elizabeth highlights the significance of self-leadership, where you lead yourself before leading others.
Self-leadership involves understanding your strengths (fire starters) and weaknesses (fire snuffers) and dedicating time in your schedule for activities that energize and inspire you.
Crafting a Visionary Schedule
To transition from focusing on tasks to fostering innovation and growth, create a visionary schedule.
Dedicate specific time slots for activities that align with your zone of genius and ignite your passion.
Reserve time for contemplation, reflection, and envisioning the future without distractions.
Balancing Consumption and Creation
Avoid overconsumption of external content. While learning is essential, excessive consumption can hinder your creativity and innovative thinking.
Use your visionary time to cultivate your thoughts, revisit past notes and ideas, and envision your long-term goals.
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transcript
[00:00:00] Danielle Wiebe: Welcome Liz to the podcast. I'm so happy to have you here today.
[00:00:04] Liz Harke: Thanks for having me, Danielle. I'm excited to be with you.
[00:00:06] Danielle Wiebe: Can you share a little bit about yourself, your business, and also how did you get into
[00:00:12] Liz Harke: entrepreneurship? Yeah, so I run the Luminary Leadership Company. That's our family owned business.
[00:00:19] Liz Harke: My husband and I are in it. We have four little kids, so they're a little young yet, but they do participate in events and help us behind the scenes, which is really fun. And we support and equip entrepreneurs at multiple different stages of business to. Really tap in and unlock their full potential and build and scale their businesses for more freedom and prosperity.
[00:00:40] Liz Harke: So not just more money for money's sake or, launching the next thing, but really leveraging leadership to tap into the next level of possibility and alignment with, you know, what they're called to do in life. And I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. So my dad recently retired in the seventies from his small business.
[00:00:58] Liz Harke: My mom is still running [00:01:00] her. Uh, I worked in my grandfather's law office in the inner city. I worked in my uncle's chiropractic office. So I'm very, just, I was entrenched in it. And I feel like sometimes when you're entrenched in something as a kid, you want to springboard in the opposite direction, which I tried.
[00:01:17] Liz Harke: I tried to go into corporate, climb the corporate ladder. And within, you know, months, I felt like I was suffocating. And I worked in that for a few years before I started my own business, which looked very different from what. It is today. I was actually going around Boston, going to the bars and pitching myself as, um, someone that could take on their marketing in the liquor industry.
[00:01:42] Liz Harke: So my business is nothing like it once was, but. I had my roots in marketing and still do a lot of that today.
[00:01:50] Danielle Wiebe: Amazing. I feel like this has been a common thread in the last few people that I've spoken with that entrepreneurship runs in the [00:02:00] family. I think that's so interesting. My family is also entrepreneurial.
[00:02:05] Danielle Wiebe: So I, I feel like it's so interesting how like generations just like breed entrepreneurship. And it's like you said, Maybe you try to get away from it, but you always kind of come back around. So I love that. Um, I would love to learn a little bit more about what you do with entrepreneurs when it comes to leadership, because that is such a huge topic.
[00:02:27] Danielle Wiebe: And I would love for you to dive into like, what is leadership? What do you think holds entrepreneurs back when it comes to getting to that next level? And how does that relate to leadership?
[00:02:40] Liz Harke: I think our comfort zone as entrepreneurs is to look for what's the next thing we have to do to grow the business or to find success or to make more money.
[00:02:47] Liz Harke: And all of that's very relevant. I mean, that's what I've done for over 10 years coaching people and mentoring my clients in the next marketing strategy. That's going to help them make more money or bring in more leads or the next [00:03:00] offer. That's going to put them on the map or build residual income and all of those things are amazing.
[00:03:05] Liz Harke: But what I found in the first five, six years of business was my clients would get capped by the level of their leadership. They could have any strategy on the table. We all have access to a bajillion strategies, many of them for free on the internet, right? Yeah, but we can only take it as far as the leader that we are.
[00:03:26] Liz Harke: Aligned with and tapped into personally. So I started to shift things when I experienced it myself, realizing and getting frustrated because I would buy the courses and I would do the trainings and I would hire the coaches. And I still felt like I'd either hit financial plateaus or I'd get little peaks, but then I'd fall down into these valleys where it's like, well, I just can't sustain the success.
[00:03:51] Liz Harke: And I started to learn more about leadership and. In reading about it and studying other leaders, I saw a common [00:04:00] thread that those leaders were investing as much time into who they had to become as they were investing in what they had to do. Many of them were investing even more. And when I say investing, I don't necessarily mean financially.
[00:04:12] Liz Harke: I mean time, focus, energy. So, I started to study that and started to apply that. And that was where I felt like I really uncorked possibility in my business. And then I realized, man, I have to bring this to my clients. I have to bring this to the people I'm serving. I have to bring this to the podcast. And we rebranded the entire company because we realized my company was scaling up.
[00:04:36] Liz Harke: Which I still do all of that, right? I'm still teaching scaling principles, but I didn't want my clients to scale at the expense of the things that matter most, right? Because I saw a lot of people that were making a lot of money, but they were miserable or making a lot of money, but it came at the expense of their health or their marriage or being a present parent or feeling like they were living according to [00:05:00] what they were actually called to do in this life.
[00:05:02] Liz Harke: So, I really started to shift gears to say, all right, I'm going to teach you these business principles that will blow the top off of profitability and, and possibility, but we're going to make sure that we're upleveling who you need to be in order to get there. So people think that leadership is a really esoteric idea.
[00:05:20] Liz Harke: They think, okay, um, how do you become a leader? Is it a position? Is it amount of time in what you do? Is it how you're viewed or seen? Uh, is it your influence? Some of those things, but really it's. Willingness to heed the call that's placed on your heart and chip away at the things that hold us back from getting there.
[00:05:41] Liz Harke: And you can make leadership a really tangible process. It can be everything from your habits to the your habits of thought, because mindset is just Your habits of thought, um, how you spend your time, the amount of margin that you create in your day for contemplation and [00:06:00] reflection and vision. So leadership is a, it's kind of a, it's a wide birth of different things, but I would say it's, it's who you are and who you are becoming.
[00:06:09] Liz Harke: You're forever a student and a humility to accept that studenthood for the long haul is a big part of it.
[00:06:16] Danielle Wiebe: Mm. Yeah. I think that's so important because, You're right. I think there can be this almost addiction to trying different strategies or trying different ways of growing your business or like the next hack that's going to help you to scale to the next level.
[00:06:32] Danielle Wiebe: And I think that I love what you said about, you know, investing in who you are becoming and how that actually relates to your business. I think that even for, for me, when I think of leadership, And I don't know if you get this often, but you think about how you're leading other people. But what I was hearing you talk about more was kind of how you're leading yourself.
[00:06:57] Danielle Wiebe: So can you talk about that a little bit? And [00:07:00] what's your perspective on that?
[00:07:01] Liz Harke: Yeah, that's a great question. I think that people probably do think of it mostly of leading others, and that's true.
[00:07:06] Liz Harke: Your influence on other people is absolutely a critical part of leadership when you have a team, when you have clients, when you have a following, whatever it might be, it's how you're influencing them. But I think that... Can be popularity sometimes, right? We see it all the time with influencers or people with a big following.
[00:07:24] Liz Harke: They're able to influence those people, whether it's to purchase things or to do things or to say things or dress a certain way or whatever it might be. But it doesn't necessarily make that person a leader. I think leadership starts with self leadership and the humility to know that you, there's a lot of growth to be had no matter what level you're at.
[00:07:43] Liz Harke: I'll never forget, I was introduced to this. Concept of leadership in a bigger way. I think it was about 12 years ago when I started reading John Maxwell. I had a mentor of mine hand me a John Maxwell book and say, okay, this is, this is how you're really going to get to your, the levels that you're seeking to achieve in [00:08:00] business.
[00:08:00] Liz Harke: And I'm like, this isn't telling me anything about marketing. This isn't telling me anything about, you know, how to launch my next offer, how to sign bigger clients or get bigger deals or get funding or anything. I'm like, this isn't business, but I started to study it. And what was interesting to me, 11 years later, a friend of mine called me and she said, Hey, you got to come down.
[00:08:25] Liz Harke: Then you got to fly down to Oklahoma. We're hosting an event with John Maxwell. I've seen him speak so many times, you know, my hero in the world of leadership. And she's like, no, trust me, you got to be here. So I went and I ended up meeting him and having a conversation and then we ended up collaborating.
[00:08:43] Liz Harke: And then he invited me to breakfast and I'm sitting across the table from my mentor and what struck me. Was this guy who's written 88 books over 80 of which are bestsellers, he's, you know, obviously multi multi million dollar earner, [00:09:00] he's in his late 70s. He's seen every success possible. He's sitting across the table from me a peon in comparison.
[00:09:09] Liz Harke: To what he's constantly asking me questions. He's asking me how we're building out this program that we're launching soon. He's asking me how I work with my clients on specific struggles they're having in their business. He's asking me about how, why we did the website the way we did. He's asking me questions, how, um, a certain talk he saw me do, you know, why did I act that way?
[00:09:34] Liz Harke: He was. 70 something years old, uh, bestseller, top of his industry, asking questions. He's still a student. There's never an end to leadership. He's the guru on leadership, yet he's asking questions. He's still learning. He's still trying to grow. He's still trying to understand how he can better and how he can improve.
[00:09:56] Liz Harke: And I think that's one of the key pieces of it. It is that seeing [00:10:00] other people and seeing opportunities to learn from those other people and to grow. Yeah, because so off I see clients or some of my mastermind members there, let's say for example, they're experiencing a financial plateau. This happened to me back in 2015 where I was just jammed at the 250, 000 a year mark and it was driving me bonkers because no matter what I did, I couldn't seem to break through and I'd try to hustle to get more clients and I would do more work and I'd pitch myself and it just wasn't happening.
[00:10:33] Liz Harke: And that was the year that I was. I first joined a mastermind where I was exposed to other people who were holding up the mirror for me and challenging me and saying, I don't think their gap is how you do your sales calls. I think it's how you view yourself as you're doing your sales because of all these things I had never thought.
[00:10:54] Liz Harke: And that next year was the year that I broke into my first seven figure year and have grown ever since. So [00:11:00] I think sometimes. We blocks or our gaps are strategic and what I would argue is oftentimes those blocks and those gaps are, strategic leadership, like who we need to be and what do we need to tactically do in the world of leadership in order to grow and break through?
[00:11:18] Danielle Wiebe: Hmm. Yeah. I think what I want to take out of what you just said that I think is so key is how you view yourself. What are, what's like a tactical step someone can take if they know that they struggle with that, if they know that they are, they know they're capping themselves out when it comes to the growth of their business, and they can recognize, because as you just shared that, I think, I can definitely relate to that.
[00:11:48] Danielle Wiebe: I'm sure a lot of the listeners can relate to that of the way that we view ourselves or maybe the, insecurities that we have or whatever that might be. What are some tactical [00:12:00] steps and what do you share with, with your clients when it comes to breaking free from that?
[00:12:06] Liz Harke: A lot of us are really good at looking at our weaknesses and our tendency probably, you know, rooted in how we were raised in the school system is how do we improve our weaknesses? We have to be well rounded because we hyper focus on those weaknesses and we spend so much time, money, energy trying to improve those weaknesses.
[00:12:24] Liz Harke: Take for me, for example, I've never been organized. So I spent years investing in different systems and Trainings and reading books on like how to become a more organized person all the while. If I had really known myself and leaned in and started to understand where my gifts were, I could have been doubling down on things that were profit producing, you know, purpose, engaging behaviors, but I was so focused on the wrong things because I was insecure about the fact that I'd see other.
[00:12:55] Liz Harke: Leaders are entrepreneurs that seem to have it all together. Are they, their calendar was so [00:13:00] beautifully outlined or, you know, everything was perfect. So I teach this process of understanding your fire snuffers and your fire starters. Okay. So one is going to totally zap your energy and the other one's going to fuel your energy.
[00:13:14] Liz Harke: And this is a leadership principle where when we focus on. And do, do, do, because we like to be productive. It feels really good to check boxes and to feel like we're moving things forward and we're, we're getting projects done. Sometimes we are on this hamster wheel of just living in our to do list. I say like living in the weeds of your business.
[00:13:35] Liz Harke: And we think, okay, if I just keep going, if I just keep getting through these to dos, if I work hard and I, enough time passes, eventually I'll achieve what I'm supposed to achieve, or I'll be seen as the leader I'm, I want to be, or I'll make the money I want to make, or I'll have the freedom I want to have.
[00:13:51] Liz Harke: When in reality, all it's really doing, it's a wheel. We're just staying on that, the to do list. It never, we never trip away at it and we keep. Going and going and going. [00:14:00] And many of those things on the to do list are what I would consider a fire snuffer. It's stuff that's not in our zone of genius. It's not in our sweet spot.
[00:14:07] Liz Harke: Maybe it's stuff that's in those weaknesses that we're hyper focusing on, like trying to get to inbox zero because you know, so and so said we should, should, but it's not our natural tendency. So we spend all this time trying to just keep up with that or the tasks. But then the leader might say, okay, what makes me come alive?
[00:14:25] Liz Harke: What are my giftings that when I do them, it fuels me with. Boundless energy. I could do them all day. It's like when people talk about being, um, in flow, or there are many different ways you might hear it taught. It's the things that it's not necessarily that you're the absolute best at them. Like maybe someone's not the best writer, but when they're writing, it's like everything just flows.
[00:14:49] Liz Harke: They're just, they come to life. They know that they're pouring their gifts out into the world. Part of leadership from a tactical perspective is does your schedule [00:15:00] show you. Aligning your time more with your fire starters, the things that make you come alive, because those are the things that are going to drive profitability because they're, they're fueled by passion and purpose and focus versus your schedule, where your, your day starts by you opening up your phone and answering messages in your email or in your social media, or going into Slack and communicating with your team or whatever it might be, where you're just getting on that Hamster wheel of things that snuff your energy and they take your time and you think you're being productive where productivity really comes from the white space or the margin.
[00:15:40] Liz Harke: In your calendar that is specifically dedicated and designed for the things that light you up and not enough people lean in to the latter. Um, and I've found for me, I have equal amounts of time of the stuff that has to be done because I'm a small business owner and I don't have the luxury of sitting back and letting like a bunch of [00:16:00] minions just do everything.
[00:16:01] Liz Harke: I, I still have to do tasks and things that have to move forward in the business. I am just as intentional, if not more intentional, about time dedicated specifically to the things that I don't necessarily get to check a box, but I'm, it's challenging me and it's helped, it's crafting me into the leader I need to be to take on the next challenge that I'm facing or to step into the next level of success that I'm seeking.
[00:16:28] Danielle Wiebe: Hmm. I love that. Super tangible. Thank you for sharing it sharing about that and and putting it into those kind of perspectives. I would love to hear your thoughts on if someone is thinking. Or they're recognizing, wow, I'm spending all my time in Firestoppers and hardly any of my time in Firestarters.
[00:16:52] Danielle Wiebe: How do you start to make that transition? Like, how do you start to, does it, does it start with how, just how you are managing your schedule? [00:17:00] How do people start to, once they've recognized that that is an issue for them, what would you suggest as like their
[00:17:08] Liz Harke: first steps? So there are a couple of things you can do.
[00:17:12] Liz Harke: One is the proof is in the pudding. So if I do this with my clients all the time, they'll tell me, you know, we'll identify what those things are for them, what their zone of genius is, and then I'll ask them to upload their calendar. And that's where it all hits the fan because there's almost no evidence of the fact that they are dedicated to the craft and they're dedicated to growth.
[00:17:32] Liz Harke: They're dedicated to getting stuff done. And getting stuff done will help you maintain. But we have a conversation then about the idea of playing defense or playing small and playing to win. When you're playing defense, if you ever see, you know, I grew up watching basketball and if you see a team that's in the lead and they have a big lead at halftime, sometimes they'll go into the second half trying to protect that lead because they [00:18:00] have something worth protecting.
[00:18:01] Liz Harke: Right. Right. And what happens is. The losing team goes into the locker room and has a conversation at halftime of, we're coming out guns blazing, like we are going to win this thing, we're putting everything we have into winning. And you start to see that deficit decrease in the second half, because one team, the losing team, is now playing to win, while the other team is playing to maintain what is.
[00:18:23] Liz Harke: And we do that all the time when we're just in the task mode and doing things. So the first step I would take with, you know, whether it's my mastermind members or my clients or whatever it might be is let's rework the calendar because that's something really tangible. It's in black and white. We can adjust it.
[00:18:41] Liz Harke: We have control over it. So it starts by saying, all right, what piece of each every day. Are you carving out for that margin? Are you carving out for the things that might not be something that you check off the list or a project that gets done this week, but it's the thing that's going to help you innovate and grow.
[00:18:59] Liz Harke: Let's take writing a [00:19:00] book, for example. It's hard to write a book because you write every day and it doesn't produce a dime for you in the process of writing that book, right? You don't check it off your list because most people don't write an entire book in a day. It's something you're dedicated to over and over and over again.
[00:19:17] Liz Harke: The culmination of that effort and if it's something that makes you come alive and it starts to help you innovate new ideas and create and feel like you're in your zone of genius and you're inspired one that inspiration is going to bleed into everything you do in a positive way, but to eventually there will be a book.
[00:19:36] Liz Harke: And that book will get published and now we're gonna, we're boosting into another level of success and possibility because we're doing something that's outside of that hamster wheel of the crap that we do all day, every day. So, yes, I think the first piece is the schedule. One thing that I do is I have time allotted every day that is, There are no cell phones, no access to team, um, no, um, [00:20:00] internet access.
[00:20:00] Liz Harke: I will put everything in airplane mode, put the phone away, and I am in visionary mode. Usually it's me and a whiteboard because that's where I like to create. And that allows it, like, there's no agenda going into it. I'm not going into it saying like, Oh, I'm mapping out this course or something like that, where it's really specific.
[00:20:18] Liz Harke: You need time to contemplate. Leaders are constantly reflecting on what was, and they're envisioning what's upcoming. They're seeing possibility. They see things that other people cannot see. So. It is the schedule, but then it's what you do in that time in the schedule. Also every Friday afternoon, the second half of the day is completely blocked.
[00:20:40] Liz Harke: There are nothing on that calendar that's going to get in the way of my leadership time. It's like innovation time. It's creation time. Um, it's. An opportunity for me to get inspired because how I'm closing out that week is going to be the determining factor of how I kick off the next one and that's, that's a cycle we get into sometimes we're closing out the [00:21:00] week, trying to power through as many to do as we can.
[00:21:03] Liz Harke: And do you ever get that feeling where you end, let's say a Friday. And you're like, Oh, I didn't get it all done. And you end with that like crappy feeling of I'm, I'm still behind. Like next week, Monday, I got to jump right back into the junk. And instead of ending that, imagine if you ended that week inspired, you've closed the loop.
[00:21:21] Liz Harke: So you don't go into a weekend with your family, feeling stressed or agitated. And you start the next week with this inspiration of how blessed you are to do what you do. And you have a clear vision of where you're going and you get to galvanize your team around that vision and the people and the movement that you're creating.
[00:21:36] Liz Harke: It's a completely different energy that you bring to the table. And the end result is going to be different and how fast you grow and tap into your next level of success. You don't want to just these blips on the radar of little successes. People lived in beast and. Feast or famine in their business, what if they're getting the clients, if they're launching the courses, it's exhausting, but there are ways that you can grow and then your [00:22:00] dips, they don't, they don't go back down again, you've hit a new height, and you grow from that height and you grow from that height.
[00:22:06] Liz Harke: Most people don't operate that way because. They don't embrace leadership. They don't even think of it as something that they want to embrace because it's not immediate gratification. It's an ongoing pursuit, the same way health is. You don't get to do a, uh, a specific meal plan or eat something healthy once and be like, all right, I'm good for the next 50 years.
[00:22:25] Liz Harke: This is an ongoing commitment to your health, right? It's the same thing with leadership. And most people don't want to make ongoing commitments. They want the thing now. And they want to feel good now they want to check the box now they want to do the launch and make the money now, even though they might fall from grace right after because they haven't yet established that strong foundation.
[00:22:43] Danielle Wiebe: That's so good. What you're saying about having . This blank space of when you're, when you're in visionary mode, when you are coming up with ideas or inspiration. Does that look like learning as well?
[00:22:56] Liz Harke: So we live in an era where we have access to everything. [00:23:00] Meaning, you know, every free moment we can fill it with learning and growth. And I think that can be a really powerful thing, but it also can be a detriment to us. I went through this season a couple years ago where Every free moment I had, I was consuming.
[00:23:15] Liz Harke: I was consuming, but it was all great stuff. It was all learning and evolving and growth. I was, if you know, I had my lineup of marketing podcasts and business podcasts and leadership podcasts and health podcasts, like anything that was helping me evolve into something better. And I was consuming, consuming, consuming.
[00:23:32] Liz Harke: And so if I was in the car, if I was cooking dinner, if I was, Going for a walk. I was taking it in, but I started to understand at some point. Wow. I am no longer in tune or in touch with any of my own thoughts. I am being fed every single thought that's coming in and it's skewing. My own creativity and it's my skewing my own innovation.
[00:23:56] Liz Harke: And I think that was a huge turning point in leadership for me [00:24:00] when I realized that you can, you can actually set yourself back in your growth potential by consuming what everybody else has to say all the time, instead of having this true margin and white space. To think your own thoughts.
[00:24:14] Liz Harke: So when I carve out that time in the calendar, Danielle, I don't, that's not my learning time. I do have other times dedicated to that. Or like, maybe I'll, if I'm driving to the grocery store or something like that, I'll, I'll still turn on a podcast. But I won't, that has no place in this specific visionary leadership time for me.
[00:24:37] Liz Harke: I, that time is dedicated to my own thoughts and my own writing. So during that time. I'll do a couple different things. I will go through past notes, because how often do we take notes or write down ideas, but then they just collect dust in a notebook. So I go back to those things and I refresh my mind and I fine tune those thoughts and it builds on itself.
[00:24:57] Liz Harke: So now I'll, like, I'm producing [00:25:00] so much more content because I'm Actually creating and cultivating my own thoughts, which I wasn't doing previously. I will also spend time in innovation of the future vision. We have both for our business and our team and our company and what we're creating, I really, when I'm feeling depleted or exhausted, or I have been in the to do's too much, I know I'm disconnected from my mission and my vision, and it's time for me to come back to that.
[00:25:27] Liz Harke: So I'm looking three, five, 10 years out. And that, that's like. Straight caffeine into my veins. I get so... I've done so that falls into that time, or if I'm navigating a struggle, you know, I, I think I'm a very, uh, hot headed person. So like when something happens that frustrates me or is a challenge that I can't overcome the emotions totally bubbling out.
[00:25:52] Liz Harke: So in this time that's dedicated for margin and space. I might start to flesh out that problem from a less, less [00:26:00] emotional space. I start to think about, all right, well, how could this play out? Or how would the leader in me handle this versus the person who wants to like rip someone's head off handle this.
[00:26:09] Liz Harke: So there's not a, a perfect formula for it aside from the fact that no, I don't. Use that time for learning. I don't do other people's courses or anything during that time. I do do other people's courses. I do work with coaches. I do all those. I have mentors in my life. I read other people's books, but it's not, I have more time.
[00:26:29] Liz Harke: That's me time. My own thoughts, cultivating my own thoughts, sitting with my own thoughts, filing my own thoughts. Because I, when you start to. Put these things into buckets, you start to see like, wow, I'm, I'm kind of creating a framework around this, or I'm, I'm creating, this could be a book idea, or this could be 10 different podcast episodes.
[00:26:48] Liz Harke: And, and you just start to become more prolific in the work that you're doing when you, you give yourself the space to actually think.
[00:26:56] Danielle Wiebe: That's so good. I love that you [00:27:00] have that specific time and something that really stood out to me was going over your own notes. I was like, man, I'm going to make a note about that.
[00:27:09] Danielle Wiebe: It's because you're so right. I have, I mean, the notes on my phone, I have, you know, random notebooks that I have so much of my thoughts and, you know, if I go to a conference or if I'm listening to something and I'll jot it down. But you're so right. Like, when do we actually go back and reread? What we've written down because obviously we wrote it down for a reason.
[00:27:32] Danielle Wiebe: It stuck out to us. So thank you for sharing that. And I think that's so powerful. I think that's a really tangible thing that, people can take away from this episode is carve out that blank space in your calendar to think. And, yeah, I just think that's so game changing. And I think too, that will really help so many people with the stress and anxiety that I think a lot of us feel where it's like, it just feels go, go, go all the time.
[00:27:59] Danielle Wiebe: We [00:28:00] have our phones with us all the time. We're always there. It's just noise everywhere. Right. And so I think if we carve out that space and be alone with our own thoughts, I know sometimes it's almost like a scary thought of like, if I'm alone with my own thoughts, what's going to happen, but it's so powerful.
[00:28:18] Danielle Wiebe: Thank you for so much for sharing. . I have one last question for you.
[00:28:21] Danielle Wiebe: What are you the most proud of, of your entrepreneurship? Entrepreneurial
[00:28:24] Liz Harke: journey so far. Aside from just, I, I think I've had some time to reflect lately because we just had our fourth baby and I was, um, I took what I call the visionary leadership sabbatical. So I was still working in my business and thankfully have a business with several passive and residual income streams.
[00:28:46] Liz Harke: So I didn't have to be, you know, Selling actively or on social media and our business was still growing. And during that time, it was basically one long piece of margin in my calendar to create [00:29:00] and to think and to envision and plan and to lead my team. And it was really powerful. And what struck me that I guess I never really thought much of was just my resilience through the process of the last 12 years of being in business of it's never even.
[00:29:17] Liz Harke: You know, I got, I got a piece of advice when I got married of like, never put the D word on the table, like divorces, you just don't, it's not, you don't put it on the table and it's not an option. You'll find another way. And I feel the same way about my business. Although my business has evolved multiple different times and it doesn't look the same way it looked, you know, many years ago, it.
[00:29:40] Liz Harke: It never, there was never a, it never even crossed my mind that I would walk away from this life and that I would not climb the next mountain or the next mountain range. And probably tied for that pride in that or joy around that [00:30:00] is how we've integrated our family into our business with four young kids and you have two under two, you know, you get it.
[00:30:06] Liz Harke: It's really hard to feel like you're. Quote, striking a balance. And I think when I realized it's not about a balance, it's about an integration. It's about bringing them into the fray and making our business, a classroom for them. And that so many of my life's lessons and the wisdom that I've learned over the years was sitting at the conference table as my mom was talking to clients or going.
[00:30:27] Liz Harke: You know, out to meetings with my dad or witnessing how my grandfather treated his clients or how my uncle worked with his patients like that was probably my greatest teacher so that that too is up there with the resilience is just how we've integrated our family into our business and it's all become one.
[00:30:47] Danielle Wiebe: Oh, that's so beautiful and encouraging for people like me, building my business with two young, young kids and, um, a lot of our listeners are moms. So thank you so much for that. I really appreciate that [00:31:00] perspective. Can you tell people where they can find you and connect with you? Tell us all the places.
[00:31:06] Danielle Wiebe: Yes,
[00:31:06] Liz Harke: for sure. So I would love to serve your people over on the Luminary Leadership Podcast if they want to come subscribe and let us know that they're tuning in. And then we, I actually have a gift for your listeners. Something that, you know, when I'm in these I never want to give the illusion that I've figured it out.
[00:31:27] Liz Harke: I constantly am coming back to the tools and resources that I've created over the years that have served me through really tough times. And one of those things I've realized is when we lack clarity, we lack confidence. When we lack confidence, we're not casting a vision and we're not taking action. So a tool that I created a while ago.
[00:31:45] Liz Harke: It's called focused entrepreneur, and I've used it with all my really high level clients and I use it. I've gifted it to people along the way, and it's made such a difference. And I come back to it at least quarterly, sometimes more if I'm going through a rough patch. So I'd be happy to share that with all of your [00:32:00] listeners at luminaryleadershipco.
[00:32:02] Liz Harke: com forward slash focused past tense F O C U S E D. And, um, they can download that for free. And it's just. That's a tool or a workbook they can keep with them and leverage anytime they need more clarity or they want more focus or they want to tap into whatever's next. So
[00:32:20] Danielle Wiebe: good. Okay. I'll definitely put all those links in the show notes.
[00:32:24] Danielle Wiebe: Thank you so much for sharing that. Thank you for being on the podcast, Liz. I'm so honored to have this conversation with you and it was just so encouraging. So thank you. And also very excited to have you a part of our passion to profit. challenge happening for anyone listening who wants to join us for that and you can have a conversation in the chat, ask, ask those questions there.
[00:32:49] Danielle Wiebe: So come join us for that, but thank you so much for your time. I appreciate you so much.
[00:32:55] Liz Harke: Thank you for having me. And I'm so pumped for your event. I think it's so amazing that you're doing this [00:33:00] for people. It's something that, um, having that evidence of how other people are doing it is going to help people, propel people forward more quickly.
[00:33:07] Liz Harke: So it's amazing. I'm
[00:33:09] Danielle Wiebe: so excited. We have some incredible, well, of course you included, we have some incredibly inspiring speakers joining us. So I can't wait.