[BIZ TIPS] BONUS EPISODE: 7 Ways to Show Up as a Leader Right Now
It feels so important right now, more than ever, to start showing up as a leader, but what are some of the initial steps it takes to do that?
In this bonus episode you will hear 7 ways to start showing up as a leader right now, whether you’re an entrepreneur, or just trying to show up as a beacon of light for people that look to you as a leader in positivity.
Theses steps truly begin and end with taking care of yourself first and foremost so you can show up powerfully and intentionally in your space.
Are you making yourself a priority?
Are you tuning into what you need most right now?
Lastly, don’t get focused and hung up on the tiny details of trying to show up “perfectly”. It’s ok to just simply stand up, share your story, thoughts and feelings from a place of being of service, and do it as the perfectly imperfect human being you are. What’s most important? That you just START.
Don’t Forget I’ll be going live on Instagram & Facebook every single day at 8am ET (Except Saturday’s, I am taking that as a me day to recharge!) until the global pandemic / quarantine / isolation is over, whenever that may be. Come join me over there!!
Questions? Comments? Want to connect and chat about this episode? You can email me at [email protected], or DM me over on Instagram @emilygoughcoach or Facebook at Emily Gough Coaching. I would absolutely love to connect with you and thank you for listening in real life and here any takeaways you had from this or other episodes!. It makes me day to see you listening to the podcast and fills me up with pure joy. Seriously. See you on the ‘gram!
If Instagram and Facebook aren’t your jam, send me a good old fashioned email! [email protected]
Are you ready? Get listening right away by clicking the link above, or if you’re more in the mood to read today keep scrolling for the full transcription of today’s episode! Let’s do this!
Hey there, welcome back to the Room to Grow podcast. This is a bonus episode that I’m dropping because I think that you’ll hopefully get a lot out of it. It’s about the 7 ways to show up as a leader right now, which is particularly important. We’ve kind of touched on that a few times on this podcast, if you are an online entrepreneur, if you’re an entrepreneur in general or if you are just trying to show up in a way that supports the people that you are trying to reach. So this was taken from one of the Instagram lives that I do every single morning at 8am. Eastern. It would be great to see you over there. You’re more than welcome to join. I go live every single morning on both Facebook over at Emily Gough Coaching and on Instagram @emilygoughcoach every morning to talk about online business, podcasting, entrepreneurship, mental health, all the things and this was one of the episodes so I hope that you enjoy it. Okay, guys. So every day at 8am. Eastern, by the way, we’re six days a week, I’m taking Saturday’s off for sleeping reasons. I need one day a week where I can just sleep in and just not have an alarm set. There’s just a lot happening at the moment and I need to make sure that I’m prioritizing my sleep. So that’s another whole thing. We’ll kind of get into that a little bit today actually. We’re going to talk about the 7 steps to show up as a leader right now and these are all about connections. So we always start with something connection related first. And I like to use the We’re Not Really Strangers deck of cards, which is super fun. So yeah, like I was saying before, if you’re just joining us, the We’re Not Really Strangers is right now offering a free 20 cards digitally that you can go check out. So that’s going to be a lot of fun. I downloaded that. I’m going to actually do one of those today and choose one of those.
Let me see here…
Okay, so the question is, what are you most excited for today? Big or small? Good question. Okay. I’m trying to visualize my calendar. I have to put everything in the calendar or I just forget everything. I have a call with a friend of mine who I met in Bali. She is in Latvia right now, like the backwoods of Latvia, she makes me laugh. But she got, like the rest of us who were traveling, she got grounded in Latvia. She’s from Latvia, but she doesn’t normally live there. So she was going back to visit family. And as soon as she got back, she left Bali right before I did. And as soon as she got back to Latvia, Latvia closed the borders. So yeah, she’s grounded there. But I adore her. She’s so lovely. And yeah, I have a call booked with her today. So that’s gonna be a lot of fun. Yeah and then I’ve got some work stuff that I’m excited about today as well. Yeah, there’s a lot happening that I can’t talk about right now. But there’s things coming down the pipeline that I can start talking about more in the next two to three weeks. But I did make one announcement yesterday which is that there is a brand new podcast dropping. So this will be in addition to the Room to Grow podcast, it is not replacing Room to Grow. We’ll go on exactly as it has business episodes, mental health, all of that. I’ve got some incredible guests coming on you guys like absolutely incredible, incredible guests. I’m so happy about the guests that are coming on. They’re just offering so much value and just amazing. But the new podcast is with one of my internet besties, who also happens to be my business coach, Sarah Swain. She’s over @businesswithsarah, if you’re an Instagram, that’s her handle, you can go check her out. She’s incredible. The woman is just a spitfire and I absolutely love it. This new podcast is gonna be called WTF is Happening. We’re just seeing a lot of things happening in the world. Not even just pandemic related, just in general, there’s a lot that I think that this situation has shone a light on for all of us that aren’t even necessarily directly related. It just made us wake up and smell the coffee about a few things, and particularly in the online business space. We were chatting in the DM’s at midnight a few weeks ago, and we were going on about this, and that, and then we’re like, what is going on here? Like, we need to start an entire second podcast about this. So there is a brand new podcast coming, it is launching next Wednesday, April 29. Super excited about this, it’s gonna be a lot of fun. I’m really, really excited to share this with you guys. Actually, that’s something else I’m excited for today is that we’re recording some of that today. So very excited. And it’s gonna be a lot of fun, unfiltered, very unfiltered. You’re gonna hear both of us as you’ve never quite heard us before. We have a lot to say clearly, we didn’t each have our own podcasts already and now we’re starting another one. Sometimes it’s fun to do a podcast with somebody else. So my first podcast for Fit & Nourished Mind was with a co host and she and I had a blast. It’s more like conversation and it can be fun to listen to the banter back and forth as the listener so yeah, gonna have a good time with that one. So very excited about that.
Okay, so let’s go on to today’s topic about how to show up as a leader. I did make some notes on this one because I want to make sure that I hit some certain points.
Okay, so how to show up as leader right now? Why is it so important? First of all, I’ve talked about this in here before, but I have said from the very beginning that this whole situation is going to separate the herd and I started seeing it the very first week. And it’s like, it’s like the dies of being cast. Because the longer you wait to step up to the plate, the harder it is going to be for you to feel like you can first of all, because then fear and mindset stuff is going to get in the way, because you’re going to see everybody else doing all the things and you’re going to feel so behind the longer you wait that it’s going to be harder and harder. On top of that, people are noticing, people are paying attention, and people are really taking note of who’s showing up, who isn’t, how people are making them feel and that’s all magnified right now because everyone has such strong emotions at the moment that it’s extra obvious how people are making them feel. So if you haven’t yet stepped up as a leader, it is not too late. You absolutely can. And we’re going to go through some things today that you need to be considering before and as you are showing up as a leader for people and showing up as a leader in general. We’re going to go into this more as we go through the points, but I think it’s just really important that when we think of showing up as a leader, I think that sometimes we get stuck in our heads that it’s like, you know, you have to show up as like the Prime Minister of a Country or like the President of the Country. That’s not what it is. You can just show up for the people who are looking to you, and if no one is looking to you yet you can create that by stepping up. So don’t feel like you need to have some massive following or, you know, a huge number of people like looking to you already and waiting for you to show up. That’s not how leaders are made. Leaders are made by stepping up even when no one is watching it. In fact, look at someone like Barack Obama and I’m not making this about politics, but when you look at someone like Barack Obama, he was relatively unknown, as far as presidential candidates go. He was definitely one of the underdogs in that whole situation for a variety of reasons, but especially because he was so not famous, not super well known. His name was not a household name. People didn’t really know who he was. And he rose to the top so quickly for a variety of reasons, but he stepped up, even though people didn’t know who he was overall. So you can’t wait for people to figure that out. People are never going to figure that out if you don’t show up anyway. You have to just see what you want and do the thing anyway, regardless of what everybody else is doing, or thinking or you know who is showing up for you right now, nobody’s going to show up for you if you don’t speak up regardless. So there’s never been a better time to show up because no one is doing anything perfectly right now, no one ever is anyway. But that’s especially obvious right now. Because we’ve never been in this situation before. We’re all kind of like bulls in China shops, like just sort of figuring this out day by day and not really knowing what the hell we’re doing. And that’s going to mean that it actually gives you permission to show up imperfectly even more than it normally would. So don’t feel like you have to wait until you have it perfect, of which there is no such thing anyway or you have to do things a certain way. There are no rules right now. There are no rules. Nobody is doing it perfectly. There’s no guidebook to this. This is the beauty of this is that you get to decide you get to decide how you do this, how you proceed in this and how you step up to the plate. So the very first thing I want to talk about in terms of showing up as a leader right now is taking care of yourself first. And I mean that in every sense of the word, like physically, mentally, emotionally, you need to be getting sleep, you need to be drinking enough water, you need to be moving your body, you need to be eating well, you need to be doing all of those things, and connecting with other humans, like just for the sake of connecting like with friends and loved ones and stuff like that. You need to be doing all of those things to take care of you first. Because if you can’t take care of you, you can’t expect to take care of anybody else. Not at all. And you will not be able to show up as the best version of yourself. When this whole thing first started, I had such bad insomnia that I was getting like three or four hours of sleep at night, and I was a bit of a wreck. There were times when I would show up on here for the live and then I would go back to bed for three hours because I just basically couldn’t function very well at all, I mean, I was functioning but not at my highest level by a longshot. And that’s super unusual for me to do that. Normally I’m a get up at 5am person, go to bed at 9pm person and I was just struggling so much with sleep that it was affecting me a lot. So I’ve managed to get that under control. Now I’m still kind of waking up in the middle of the night with all these ideas and stuff downloading but overall, I managed to get it under control. A lot of that had to do with just kind of retraining my sleep a little bit, but it’s gonna look different for everybody. My main point here is that you have to take care of you or you will not be able to show up as the best version of yourself. It’s really common thinking that self care is selfish and that you need to take care of others first is a very, very common way to feel. The thing is, is that you can’t pour from an empty cup. Like I know that there’s all kinds of these sorts of slogans around self care now it’s become so common to hear this type of thing, but I think it’s important to note that you can’t give to others and you can’t give back if you have nothing to give. So, you have all kinds of incredible gifts, you have important things to say, you have ways that you need to be showing up for people. But if you can’t show up for you, you certainly can’t show up for them. So you have to take yourself, you have to take care of yourself. First. There’s a reason why I listed this as the very first thing on this list about how to show up as a leader. You have to do this for yourself before you can do it for anyone else. So that’s super, super important to remember that one. One more point to this, obviously, taking care of yourself, it’s really important to take care of your immune system right now, obviously, too, right? I mean, there’s never been a more important time to take care of your immune system. And a lot of that comes down to things like sleep and moving your body, eating well, drinking lots of water, all of those things, as well as the mental and emotional health too. That’s why I’ve been talking about things like, making sure to actually take downtime if you’re feeling stressed. And it’s something I’m noticing for myself too, is that I’ve been spending way too much time on screens. Because some days, I’m not like a huge TV person. But some days I have been working off and on all day, and because we’re in isolation, it’s so magnified because normally I would have you know, dates with friends or something booked or going out to the gym or, and I still do work out here. So that’s obviously time away from screens, but I will be out doing other things away from screens, because that isn’t as optional. I’m like, oh, I’ll just work all the time. So that in and of itself is a problem. But then also just being on the screens all the time. And then if I get to the end of a long workday, where I’ve been working too much and my brain is fried, I feel like I can’t really be bothered to read a book because normally that would be my go to, then I’ll turn on the TV, it’s more screens. So this is kind of the struggle. And this is something I’m still struggling with as well. Don’t ever think that I have this all figured out. But that’s just something that I want you to think about. It’s tough right now. So you need to put the effort to actually call a friend, do something that’s going to take care of your mental and emotional well being as well. And that can also mean just stepping away from screens, like go for a walk, do something, have a conversation with somebody, do something that is going to get you away from the screen time and all of that and to actually connect. Okay, so first and foremost, taking care of yourself first, by far the most important part of showing up as a leader right now.
Number two, is to use your voice to speak up. And I mean that both literally and metaphorically. And a lot of times when people are starting podcasts, sometimes they’ll say to me ‘Well, I don’t. I don’t know what I would talk about’, or ‘I don’t know what I would say’. And I’m like, Listen, the best part about a podcast is that part of it is throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks. like seeing what resonates with people. And using your voice to help you find your more metaphorical voice. So how I want you to think about that is if you are maybe a little bit uncertain as to who you’re trying to speak to, or you’re trying to figure out who you can help the most, who you can serve the most, part of determining that is just showing up in the first place. That’s going to really help you to figure out what things are resonating not only with the people that you’re trying to reach but with yourself to what things feel in alignment the most for you. You won’t know that until you actually show up and until you start speaking and again when I’m saying speaking this can also mean you know written word as well, if you’re not somebody who is maybe as comfortable or as good on video,
or maybe podcasts, something like that written word is powerful too, guys, don’t forget about that just because we’re in this age of video, that isn’t for everybody. That’s not the right platform for everyone. Written word is incredibly, incredibly powerful. I feel like a lot of times it sort of gets swept under the rug these days. And writing is just as much, if not more important than ever. So again, when I’m talking about using your voice, it doesn’t have to mean your actual voice. It can mean your voice coming through words, like written words, as well. So just doing things to start to use those skills that you do possess. You have them, you just might not be using them right now. Writing is going to be a better choice for some people and I think that’s amazing. Do not forget that there’s all kinds of different ways to reach people. That’s the beauty of the world that we’re in right now is that there are so many different options available to us. And sometimes writing gets pushed aside. Writing is still just as much if not more important than it’s ever been. So make sure to focus on whatever you’re maybe feeling most most comfortable with first. And then you can always expand into other areas as you get more comfortable. But right now, it’s just about finding your voice to show up for the people who need to hear from you.
So number three, is to trust your instincts and your self. It’s very easy right now to question ourselves, because we’re in this state of uncertainty, and we’re like, Okay, what do we do? What do we talk about? Like, I don’t know if this is the right thing to say, I don’t know if this is the wrong thing to say. I want you to really kind of tune into your gut instinct on this a little bit. And you may have to get quiet and still in order to to figure that out. You might need to do some meditation, you may need to just go for a walk, to think on this. Because it is a practice, if you aren’t used to kind of tuning into that it can take time to figure that out. But overall, I want you to just trust yourself, that if you have something that you believe needs to be said, I want you to say it. I want you to say it. And again, this is going back to number two, this is part of finding your voice is to learn to trust yourself, and to learn that what you have to say is important. So I want you to start trusting yourself more. And this is going to be a process. Self trust is such an important part of anyone’s life, but especially as an entrepreneur, it’s a big deal. It’s a really big deal. So it’s a practice, and you’re going to have to spend some time figuring that out, but the only way that you’re going to be able to trust yourself is by actually just doing the thing and then realizing that however it lands, you figure it out. That’s where some self trust is built. So if you’re just sitting there thinking about self trust, it’s not really going to help you in any way. You have to actually do the thing in order to learn to trust yourself. Okay? So this is just one more encouragement to actually start to step into your power, and to start to learn to just come out with and show up the way that you know you’re capable of doing.
Number four, ask people what they need. I feel like this one is a little bit more underutilized, although not as much lately, people have been better. You want to figure out what they’re struggling with the most, and how you can help them the most, what is it that they’re having difficulty with? How can you support them? How can you help them in a really important way? And maybe if you don’t have the answer, maybe you can either find it out, or you can bring on someone who does. That’s what I do as well. I reach out to a variety of people, if somebody comes to me with a question I don’t have the answer to, which is often either research it and figure out the answer myself, or I will go to somebody that I know is an expert in that area, and be like, hey, my people need some help with this, can I get you to to come and talk to them about that, and source that for them? So ask people what they need, ask them how you can show up for them, ask them how you can better support them. That’s going to be super important here. I have stories to tell, I just don’t know if I should do comics, write a book or a podcast which leads me to doing nothing. So just pick one. You need to just pick one and just go with whatever you feel most comfortable with. I know all of them can feel a little bit uncomfortable right now. But whatever you feel most drawn to, I would go with that first and just start, you have to just start something somewhere, because that’s where the momentum piece comes in. That’s why I tell people that if you’re tired, rest, but don’t come to a complete stop because it’s a lot harder to get started when you’re coming at it from a dead stop. It’s like a car, right? Like if you’re just kind of rolling and cruising along, and then you want to get up to full speed, it’s a lot easier on the car to do it when you’re already moving slowly, then if you’re at a complete stop, so just pick one and then just start somewhere, that’s gonna be the most important part.
Okay, number five, serve, serve, serve, serve, serve and serve some more. However that’s going to look for you. You need to just start serving and start putting yourself out there. This is part of everything that we’ve already talked about; trusting yourself, putting yourself out there, using your voice, asking how you can show up for the people you are serving . And you need to continue to serve, it’s never been more important to serve than it is right now. So I’m really encouraging you to start serving your people, whoever you’re trying to speak to or reach.
Number six, have a willingness to do the work that others won’t. Again, I’m seeing this in a huge way right now and this is another big part of where the herd is separating. Be willing to put in the work right now. And part of that is going to mean letting go, maybe having expectations of what you thought this time would look like. So that’s going to play a big role in helping you to move forward and to push yourself to do the stuff that others won’t. This when you hear you know, success stories from entrepreneurs, and really from anyone. You know, like Olympic athletes. Let’s use the Olympic athletes as an example. Talent is, of course, a huge part of it, natural talent, that’s a big part of becoming an Olympic athlete. But the research is very clear that what matters more than natural talent in any field, you know sports or otherwise, is doing the work. Putting in the reps and doing the heavy lifting, that hard work over and over and over again, and persevering through that. That takes you way farther than any amount of natural talent ever will. When you look at Olympic athletes, they have reached the pinnacle of their success, because they have done the work that no one else wanted to do. So they’ve done the three or four day practices, they’ve gotten up at four in the morning for workouts, all of these things. The training is gonna look different for every Olympic athlete but my point is, they have been willing to do the work that other people would never want to bother with. So be willing to do the work that others don’t want to do right now. While everyone else is Netflix and chilling, and listen, I’m all for Netflix and chill, that’s part of taking care of yourself. Sometimes you’re gonna need to Netflix and chill and that’s fine, I’m not bashing that at all. I think that that’s great. But what are you doing with the rest of your time? And while everybody else is doing Netflix and chill, 24/7, you maybe do it a couple hours a week or something? And then what are you doing the rest of the time? How are you showing up not only for other people, but how are you showing up for yourself. If you want to be a leader, then you need to start focusing on how you’re showing up for yourself as well. Because that again, is going to build self trust. The longer you continue to put off tasks and to not do the thing and to procrastinate and tell yourself that you’re not good enough and all those things, you’re going to erode that trust further and further out. It’s like ripping off a band aid, you have to just do something. And then you can do the next thing. And then as you do more things, the next steps are going to continue to reveal themselves in sort of a natural sequence. But that will never show if you never start somewhere. So you have to just start and to be willing to do the work that other people are not willing to do.
Number seven, we’re going to wrap up with number seven. Face your fears to show up anyway. I mean I basically just said this, but this is a really important part of this is simply understanding that you’re never going to be without the fear. A lot of times we have it in our heads that if we reach a certain level, then there won’t be any more fear and then it’s fine. They’ll just keep going and and things will be all good at a certain level. Listen that’s true in the sense, okay, live video as an example. We doing a live video right now and I used to hate live video, I hated live video, I was so uncomfortable, I would sweat through all my shirts. If you go back somewhere buried on my Facebook page, it’s like my very first video I think it was a cooking demo because I used to do nutrition. And I watched it a few months ago or something. Just the look on my face is like sheer terror as I’m like, it’s hysterical. But how I got past that was I forced myself to show up for live video every day for 31 days in a row. This was a couple years ago. And after that, I was never, never bothered by live video again and look at me now, I’m doing live video every single day for an undetermined length of time. There isn’t even an end date on this. I’m just showing up everyday casually in my bathrobe with bedhead and I’ve just rolled out of bed and it’s fine and it’s rare for me even to have notes. Usually I just come on here and just talk about anything. I faced that fear and I overcame it. But the caveat to that is that I have all kinds of new fears now, not necessarily directly related to live video, but I’m just at a different level, a different stage now where I have all kinds of other fears about all kinds of other things. I got this really exciting opportunity last night on the phone, and it’s super exciting but it’s also so terrifying guys that my palms were sweating. In fact, even just thinking about it now my palms are sweating.
So please don’t ever think that when you reach a certain level that there will be no more fear. There’s just new fears. There’s always going to be fear, always. So you might as well train yourself now to start working through it and pushing past it to just start the thing as opposed to waiting for some magical day that’s never going to come when you have no fear. It’s not going to happen. What choices are you going to make today to move through the fears that you have right now so that you can continue to face the next round of fears that are going to come up inevitably, once you hit that next stage? You need to face your fears and just show up anyway, just do the thing, because it’s not going to get any easier. In fact, the longer you, you let a fear take over, and you let it get in your way, the bigger and harder it’s going to be. Think about a task that you’ve maybe been putting off, I have a couple of these right now in my business, where I’m putting off, putting off, putting them off. And then it’s almost a fear of you know, how hard it’s going to be or time involved. It’s not even necessarily a fear of showing up a certain way. There can be all kinds of different types of fears and then you do the task finally, and you’re like, wow, that wasn’t as hard as I thought. Why did I put it off for six months? and also, I thought it was going to take me three hours and it took me three minutes. I 100% had those moments more times than I can count. This is what I want you to remember about fear. That the fear itself is far worse than actually just doing the thing. That the fear of the fear is what takes over and that’s going to be so much harder than just facing it and just moving past it, and recognizing and accepting that there’s going to be more fear on the other side. But do you want to continue to face your fears and to show up the way that you know you need to be showing up? Or do you want to continue to just stay stuck and to be the exact same human that you are right now. And always have that sense of knowing that you were meant for more, but you never stepped up? That’s not how I want to live. So you have to ask yourself what you want as your next step and you have to figure out what that is. Then just step it up. You have to just step up to the plate, get past that fear and understand that there will be fear, more fear and different types of fear on the other side. But that you will have started to build up enough self trust within yourself, having faith that first round, that then you’re going to have the power within you to get to the next level, and the next, and the next, ,and just continues. It’s a forward feed cycle. So this ties all the steps back into each other:
- Number one, take care of yourself first.
- Number two is to use your voice to speak up either literal or metaphorical.
- Number three is to trust your instincts and yourself.
- Number four is to ask people what they need.
- Number five is to serve, serve and serve somewhere.
- Number six is to have a willingness to do the work that others won’t.
- Number seven is to face your fears and do it anyway.
Okay, so I hope that this has given you some sense of empowerment to simply step up in an imperfect way. Because I think this is going to really help you to start to separate from the herd and to stand out a little bit and to reach the people that I know you want to reach.
I’m going to give you a bit of a challenge to do in the next couple of days, I want you to do something that really makes you very nervous to step up as a leader in some way to put up a post, to do a do an Instagram story, like a 15 second Instagram story, do something that is going to help propel you forward, so that you can take that next step and show up as a leader. Then I want you to do it again! And I want you to do it again and again! And that consistency is going to really start to sink in and the people that you’re trying to reach are going to notice. Okay, so can you step up as a leader today? because there are people who need to hear from you.
Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. I’m so grateful you took the time and it means the absolute world to me. For any references in the episode and all show notes, be sure to jump over to roomtogrowpodcast.com, and if this episode touched your heart, it would mean so much if you would take a quick second to hit subscribe, write a review and share on social media or with someone who really needs to hear today’s message. It makes such a difference to keep this podcast going so I can continue to bring you amazing content and absolutely incredible guests. Be sure to tag me on Instagram over @emilygoughcoach so that I can thank you in real time for listening and connect with you. We’re back every Tuesday and Thursday with brand new episodes and I’m looking forward to growing with you
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