Expand Your Fempire Podcast #94 Transcript

Confident Leadership with Betsy Clark

Welcome to Expand your Fempire with Caterina Rando, the podcast for women in business on a mission. Sharing ideas to support you to grow and thrive. Now here’s your host, Caterina Rando.

[00:00:25] Caterina Rando: Welcome back to another episode of the Expand Your Fempire Podcast. I’m your host Caterina Rando, and I am blissing to be with you today. I have a very special guest full of massive value, full of insights. The beautiful, amazing, super fun to be with Betsy Clark. Betsy, welcome welcome to the Expand Your Fempire Podcast.

[00:00:54] Betsy Clark: Caterina, thank you so much. What a great way to spend my day, with you and your audience.

[00:01:01] Caterina Rando: Thank you, I am happy to be with you. Betsy, before we dive in, I want everyone to understand what do you do today to serve women? And tell us about your journey from young gal to where you are today from an entrepreneurial perspective.

[00:01:19] Betsy Clark: Okay. I call myself a mindset chaplain, marrying the head to the heart, so that women can be confident going forward in doing what only they can do. And I love what I get to do. Helping women become leaders, step into their leadership.

[00:01:39] You know, a lot of times we don’t identify ourselves as a leader, but we know we’ve got this thing, there’s more, there’s something that we need to express. And I want to walk alongside women and encourage them to be the leader that they know that’s inside that has not been fulfilled yet. I am the person I needed 42 years ago in entrepreneurship. I started when I was 23 years old, I bought a franchise in an industry that wasn’t fashionable and in vogue. It was called weight loss. I was a weight loss coach and I bought a franchise and my father and father-in-law said “what are you, crazy? You’ve lost your marbles. No one’s going to pay you to help them lose weight.” And so it was really believing that, you know, I can support women just by walking beside them, and I didn’t know that I was a coach. This was back in 1978. I’m sharing how old I really am. And so I’ve always been a coach. I love encouraging people. I sold that franchise once I had kids and my husband and I started doing specialty wood finishes and specialty paint finishes when there was no industry. People were still calling it “fox” finishing back in the early eighties, but it was faux finishing and creating beauty with paint. And so I coached women with color. How can you feel comfortable in your own home? Because what I saw was women would get a designer who would help them with their master bedroom, and then they’d get another designer for their kitchen, and then they’d have someone do the playroom, and there were three different kinds of design. So you felt like you were in Donald Duck’s house. And giving women the courage to own their design sense, because they were the ones that lived there.

[00:03:29] Caterina Rando: You were empowering the women to step into their creativity, and know that they could do it themselves if they wanted to in part of their home.

[00:03:40] Betsy Clark: Well and to have a voice. That they would be the plumb line in their own interior design. And Caterina. That’s what I still do today. Back then I used paint. Now I just use words.

[00:03:53] Caterina Rando: Well, I have a question. Was that a franchise too? Or was that not a franchise?

[00:03:57] Betsy Clark: My husband and I just took the big old leap and we said “okay, people are going to have to use discretionary income”. And we know the power of beauty. We were both raised by artists. My husband didn’t even know he was an artist when I met him. So this was really a stretch in the unknown zone for my husband. And I just figured “you know what, if we came and we ask powerful questions, and we supported our clients through the process, how can we go wrong?”

[00:04:25] Caterina Rando: And how long were you all in that business?

[00:04:28] Betsy Clark: My husband still does it. He does specialty wood finishes. And I want to debunk that struggling artists mindset. Because you know what? It’s all in our mind. We did extremely well and, you know, sent our kids to private schools, and they both got their masters and they’re debt-free, and we were able to just believe in ourselves and trust our gut. My husband doesn’t even have a website. He doesn’t even have business cards. It’s all word of mouth. So trust is a big thing, Caterina.

[00:05:03] Caterina Rando: That is quite amazing. Now, what you’re talking about when you were talking about your clients with giving them their own design sense and letting them step into making things happen in their own home, really I like to say, you know, it doesn’t matter what business we’re in, we’re really in the empowerment business. And it sounds like you were very clear that that was your job way back when. Now there are so many things here, Betsy, for us to talk about. But would you say today that you are also in the empowerment business?

[00:05:40] Betsy Clark: Absolutely, absolutely. I love to have women who are saying “agh, what’s wrong with me?” sit with them and reframe that to “what’s right with you?” What’s right with you?

[00:05:53] Caterina Rando: What’s right with you. Let’s have all of our listeners ask themselves that question right now. What’s right with you? This is really something that I want to shine the spotlight on with you, because so often in business we’re talking about what’s working, but mostly we’re talking about what’s not working. And sometimes as we reflect on ourself, that’s where we spend too much time as well. You really want to support people with compassion. Can you talk about what that is and what that looks like in our businesses?

[00:06:26] Betsy Clark: So it’s compassion and it’s grace. Compassion says “you’re suffering, I see your suffering, how can I come and walk alongside you? I can’t take your struggle away from you, but I can support you and listen to you and love you”. And I’m a firm believer in grace, loving, accepting, and forgiving yourself. Extending grace to ourselves. You know, Caterina, if being hard on ourselves worked, we would all be further along.

[00:06:59] Caterina Rando: It’s true. It’s true. And being hard on ourselves not only doesn’t work, it puts us further and further behind. I like to say that we want to be our own best success coach, because we’re the one that’s with us 24/7. Let me ask you this. How do you support your clients to be more compassionate with themselves to have more grace with themselves?

[00:07:27] Betsy Clark: Well, for one thing is I give all my clients grace cards, and that’s available, it’s a gift I love to give community. I want women to have reminders all over the place. Here’s the part of it: love, accept, and forgive. And forgiving ourselves is difficult. Again, that gets back to the hard piece, right? And this is the most beautiful definition I’ve heard of forgiveness is letting go of the past you wish you’d had.

[00:07:57] Caterina Rando: I love that. Letting go of the past you wish you’d had. You know, I would also say it’s letting go of the future you wish you’ve had, related to things in the past, but that’s a little bit, a little bit deeper for the conversation. Okay, good. So let’s say that we are doing this, we are improving our compassion with ourselves, our grace with ourselves. Now, one of the things that can get in the way, that I know you’ve talked about Betsy, is this whole comparison thing that women do. And can you talk a little bit about what the challenge is and what the solution is for this?

[00:08:36] Betsy Clark: Okay. Thank you. You know, “comparison is the thief of joy.” That’s a Teddy Roosevelt quote. And when I read that, it was like I held onto a live wire, I’m going “oh my word, that’s right.” Because here’s the thing is we compare ourselves all the time. It is rampant in our culture. I look at social media and I have a very active social media campaign. But I kind of likened Facebook to Fakebook. It’s not the real story. And when we compare ourselves, we are comparing ourselves with what we assume to be true about you versus what we know about ourselves. That to me is a setup. Eleanor Roosevelt said “no one can make you feel inferior without your consent,” which is my favorite Eleanor Roosevelt quote. And the truth is we are always comparing ourselves to someone else, their highlight reels with our behind the scene, someone else’s senior success to our newness in business. It’s not fair. And somehow these comparisons, we believe them that it must be true. And the truth of the matter is it’s just a thought. If it’s just a thought, you just sort of pretend it’s a feather in your hand and you just blow it away. Or is it a belief? Do I believe that I’m inferior to everybody else I meet. That’s being hard on yourself.

[00:10:07] Caterina Rando: The thing is that there’s always gonna be people further along than you, and there’s always gonna be people behind you. And there’s always going to be people that vibe with you, that think you’re awesome and amazing, and there’s going to be those people that don’t think you’re so awesome and amazing. And don’t return our phone calls. And this is why you’ve heard me say, you know, there’s a lifetime supply of people to serve, right? And if Mary, Jane, or Sheila, Bob, Tom, or Evan, they don’t think you’re amazing, that’s okay! Because there’s a hundred more people and a thousand more people that do. And that’s why it is so important for us to not compare because there will always be those further along and ahead or, as you say Betsy, appearing to have it all together. And that doesn’t mean any of it is true or it’s only part of the truth. You know, some people tell you “oh, I just made, you know, a hundred thousand dollars within five minutes.” Well, they’re not telling you the five months they took to get ready for that, or whatever it is. Very, very important. So how do we have women cut it out?

[00:11:20] Betsy Clark: Well, I jokingly say you tell the mind monkeys to sit down and shut up. Because, you know what? We have these little mind monkeys in our head that just want to wreak havoc and cause us to play a smaller game. And that’s what comparison does in my estimation. We can’t throw comparison out completely. It’s a great way to evaluate and assess where we are and where we want to go. So comparison isn’t a hundred percent bad. Really what you have to look at, if I compare myself, does it move the needle forward or do I go into a downward spiral? And to me, I think it’s important that we don’t say all comparison is bad, because comparison is a fact of life. But if you find that you’re slowing down, your momentum is turning into a creep or a crawl, and you’re stepping into your power and doing the things that only you can do, well take a look. Are you watching TV that’s not helpful? Are you getting newsletters that don’t support you? Are you spending too much time on social media?

[00:12:27] My son got married a couple of years ago and I bought one of those big glam magazines. Beautiful, beautiful glossy paper. Just fantastic. And I realized by the time I went through this magazine, I really felt lower than a snake’s belly button. I’m thinking “oh man, I’m old, I’m wrinkly. I don’t know how to apply makeup. And I certainly can’t wear 95% of what’s in this magazine.” So I thought “okay, I’m going to take my little pen knife,” and I slipped all of the pictures out that made me feel less than. And there were only about 10 pages that added value to me, and it made me realize this is everywhere. So we get to consciously pick and choose where we spend our time and the things we choose to dwell on or meditate on, because we do have that ability to control our mind.

[00:13:25] Caterina Rando: Also, we have the ability to determine who we’re going to spend time with. Betsy, you and I know each other from a women’s community that we’re in, and it’s a very empowering community, and I want to make sure everyone who’s listening has communities of like-minded like-hearted women on a mission just like us, where we are getting uplifted, where we are having people remind us how amazing and fabulous and wonderful we are. Now, not all the time, and we want to make sure that we have those places where we know we’re going to be uplifted. And to pay attention, where are we going, that when we leave, just like you mentioned about the magazine, same thing with social media, same thing with clubhouse, same thing with podcasts, what are you exposing yourself to that’s bringing you down? And also in terms of where you’re spending your time as a business owner, where are you going that you’re uplifted? And where are you going where you’re feeling like “oh my God, this is a waste of my time” and don’t do it again?

[00:14:35] Betsy Clark: Yeah. And, you know, I think there’s the other piece to that too, Caterina, where self-care is a big stinking deal. We have to take responsibility for our own wellbeing. And how often have you woven things in that add to your self care? Cause your self care is going to look different than mine. It isn’t a one size fits all. But that’s imperative, because that’s how we can be resilient and bounce back when the stuff of life happens or gets in the way.

[00:15:11] Caterina Rando: And it’s going to get in the way there’s going to be challenges du jour that come up. Some days we’re more resilient because we’ve had better self care. I like to say speaking, selling, serving strategy, and self care, those are the five pillars of building our Fempire that are our job. Other people can do a lot of stuff for us, but they certainly can’t do the self care, we’ve got to put that on our plate. We can get support with self care, which is another important area for us.

[00:15:47] Betsy, so many more things to talk about, one of the things I want to shine the spotlight on with you is that you are really wanting to support your clients and women in business to expand their leadership. And you mentioned earlier that a lot of women don’t even see themselves as leaders. And I can remember that there was a time probably not too long ago when I didn’t necessarily even consider myself that, even though I’ve done many things that would be considered leadership. How does someone see themselves as a leader, and how do they amp up their leadership?

[00:16:29] Betsy Clark: That’s a great question. I think that our understanding of who we are is a really good place to start. And what is your purpose? What’s your “why”? What is that mission, the path that’s going to give you the juicy legacy that you want to leave? What’s your passion? And just because there are people that we both know who are self-declared leaders and no one’s following them. Note to self that doesn’t make you a leader. Right? So being a leader that’s worth following, I believe that it’s being a woman of integrity, someone that you can trust, who is going to bring out the best in you, to accomplish something bigger and greater than yourself.

[00:17:21] Caterina Rando: Absolutely someone who will support you to amplify your own great leadership qualities. Let’s identify though, Betsy, what are one or two or three leadership qualities that you would like to see more of your women clients amplify or embrace?

[00:17:42] Betsy Clark: So for me, there are four pillars. Gallup did research, they interviewed 10,000 followers and also leaders, and they said “what are you looking for in your leaders?” And they came up with four pillars.

[00:17:55] The first one is trust. And Stephen Covey has written, you know, “trust changes everything”. And I’m actually a proponent of that.

[00:18:04] The other one is compassion. Compassion and leadership, really? That’s news. But when we see the people who are our constituents and our followers and say “I see you’re suffering”. For instance, I didn’t go to an event that you were at because I had a family crisis come up. And the leaders that I associate with said “well yes, you have to be with your family. I see that this is a challenge. I see you. I get you”.

[00:18:32] Another pillar is stability. Have you ever had a manager or a leader who gets plan du jour? Everything changes. Yes. Is everybody on the same page? Yes, we are. You start all these initiatives and two weeks later they have a better idea and everything is topsy turvy. You don’t know whether you’re coming or you’re going? We have to create stability for those people who are following. Those people that we’re serving, our constituents and our followers.

[00:19:04] Um, and then the last one is hope. I heard on day one of COVID someone asked ” what do fear and hope have in common?” They both believe in a future that hasn’t happened yet. So what are you thinking about the future from a place of fear? Are you thinking about the future for a place of hope that things will get better? We’ve thought this together we can do bodacious incredible things.

[00:19:33] Caterina Rando: I love that. Because your perspective, your disposition makes a big difference. Betsy, you’ve given us so many great things to think about. Any final thoughts on leadership before we continue?

[00:19:49] Betsy Clark: We need women to step into their leadership. It’s time. The Dalai Lama said our help is going to come from a Western woman. And every single day I have a leadership conversation, I think “oh, is this her? Is this the woman?” It’s so exciting to me. And by playing a smaller game, it doesn’t serve anybody. Leaders come in all shapes and sizes, backgrounds. There isn’t a one size fits all to leadership. If I could leave any flavor in your listeners, you know, mouth, is we need a wide range of leaders.

[00:20:27] Caterina Rando: And what that means is, anybody that’s listening, there’s room for you. Because again, as we said, we’re not everybody’s flavor. There’s people that are going to vibe with us. There’s people that are not going to vibe with us. And of course, we’re looking for the people that we’re called to serve who vibe with us, who have the same values as us, who respect our journey, who are open to being supported by us. And there’s people that are not. And the other thing is that of course it’s not always the right time, right? Someone might vibe with us, but they may not be ready for us. Or maybe they’re ready, but for whatever reason, it’s not now. It’s going to be in the future. Betsy, you’ve got so much value. You’re such a beautiful person. How can everyone get in touch with you?

[00:21:18] Betsy Clark: They can go to my website, which is coach2strengths.com and it’s coach with the number two, and then it’s strengths, plural, dot com. One of the things I would love to offer is anybody that’s interested in getting a grace card or leads with grace or grace with power, I would love to throw some in the mail and you would look forward to getting your mail instead of just getting flyers that don’t apply. But this is something that can really turn things for you.

[00:21:48] Caterina Rando: I’m ready for my grace cards. All right! Everyone, Betsy is an amazing woman, you want to get to know. She is going to support you in expanding your leadership. We can all use some leadership expansion. We can all use moving more towards mastery with our leadership. Betsy, I’m blissing that you’ve been with us today on the Expand Your Fempire Podcast.

[00:22:14] Everyone, take one of these ideas that Betsy shared, run with it to support you, to uplift yourself, uplift your business, and uplift the lives of others through your amazing work. Bing, Bing, Bing. We will be with you next time on the Expand 

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Expand Your Fempire with Caterina Rando.