The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Annie Harmon Helps High-Achieving Women Regain Work-Life Balance and Purpose

Starting point is 00:00:00 You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

Starting point is 00:00:41 There you go. Thanks for watching the show, my family and friends. We certainly appreciate you guys being part of the Chris Voss Show. As always, we're bringing the smartest people for the past 15 years, the CEOs, the multi-billionaires, the Pulitzer Prize winners, the White House advisors, the astronauts, all the smartest people who bring to you their stories of life, the things they've learned,

Starting point is 00:00:59 the things they've gotten through their cathartic moments, and they bring them to you and disperse them so that you can improve the quality of your life and make your life better, which is what we all want to do. Plus, you know, you might be able to skip some of the mistakes we all make. I mean, I've made a plethora of mistakes. Please do. Please learn from me instead of doing all the mistakes I did. So there you go.

Starting point is 00:01:18 We have an amazing young lady on the show with us today, Annie Harmon. She helps women who've lost confidence in themselves and feel their life has been paralyzed by conflicting priorities and insurmountable demands. There's a lot of demands going on in this life and world these days. And she helps high achieving women currently facing the breaking point because they put the needs of others before their own to create a fulfilling life purpose. So they have structure, positive interaction, and the ability to react calmly. Welcome to the show, Annie. How are you? I'm doing well, Chris. Thank you so much for having me.

Starting point is 00:01:52 Thank you. Thank you for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs. It is empowerlifechanges.com. There you go. So give us a 30,000 overview of what you do and how you do it. I help women who are high achievers and motivated to regain work-life balance.

Starting point is 00:02:17 I also have a mastermind that is starting up in April for businesses that want to become full-time businesses. So you help them do full-time businesses? Yes. And I help them learn from other businesses' mistakes so that they don't repeat mistakes themselves there you go there you go well that'll that's definitely helpful and i understand you you've got a workshop coming up that you're working on we'll get into our mastermind i guess but tell us a little bit about your journey your history how did you get into this business and and what you're doing now what

Starting point is 00:03:00 was some of your upbringing and things that influences and shape you through life? Well, I was brought up in Rochester, New York. I moved here in Delaware by DuPont, and I worked in the corporate world for 30 years. And then I decided to leave the corporate world because it just got to be too cutthroat. There's a lot of mergers going on and people weren't valued the way they used to be. And I decided to try to help women regain their life work balance as a new way of giving back and service to the world. There you go. You've got to have a good life-work balance. If not, you'll burn out and fry yourself out. Do you find that's what's happening to a lot of people, I guess?

Starting point is 00:03:54 Yes, definitely. Definitely, definitely. And it's an interesting world that goes on right now. Tell us about this mastermind project you're working on in helping other people okay it's called the phoenix visionary vault and i gave it that name because the phoenix is something coming a new like new businesses being developed and learning from established businesses how to thrive. And we're going to do branding, marketing, content creation, strategic planning, how to run a business. All those will be topics over the 12 months

Starting point is 00:04:42 that the mastermind is going to be together. There you go. And so you're going to put the Mastermind together to help women. And then, I'm sorry, did you have a date on that yet? April 1st. April 1st. Okay, so we're doing a run-up for April 1st. The Phoenix Visionary Vault.

Starting point is 00:05:00 Do I have that name correct? Yes, you do. There you go. And it'll help entrepreneurs turn a side hustle into a full-time business. Basically, this is a great age to get your own company and business going these days. Don't you think? Oh, I think so. It's an upcoming trend.

Starting point is 00:05:19 Most definitely. And I think more people want to control their life. I'm seeing a lot of people complaining about being clawed back to work. We're like, you can't work from home anymore. You got to come work for the man again. And people are like, I don't really want to go back into an office. I kind of like my firm. A little bit of an interesting play on what's going on right now.

Starting point is 00:05:39 So you've been running IT departments for 26 years in management and everything else. And I imagine, you know, I have friends right now that are our age that are running into ageism and some prejudice about, you know, they don't really want to hire older people because, you know, they don't have, I guess, maybe as far as run in the employment market as maybe younger people. And of course, they usually demand more money and value because they've learned more and they have more knowledge which i don't what seems to me like something you'd want but i don't know corporations can get greedy so there you go yeah you know working for yourself is a great way to to re-engage your life and take control of your life what are some other things

Starting point is 00:06:21 you're going to get into with the program? Well, we're going to get into creating accountability buddies so that once we learn something, we're held accountable to actually put it into place and take action on those items. Here you go. Accountability is really good. That's how i got my books written i have an accountability group for my second book that's being written now having people that are that are saying to you hey you know you you've got to take and do this etc etc is right there you go in and it's it's interesting to me that i mean it it really helps keep you on purpose if you know there's some peer pressure right peer pressure seems to be a big thing that works. It really does.

Starting point is 00:07:08 It helps a lot. And then you're going to help passionate entrepreneurs in their first three years. Tell us how that flushes out and works. Well, that's when they're in the most vulnerable state, usually 81% of businesses that start within three years fail. So what we're trying to do is create an environment where more successful businesses thrive. And that's probably a good environment to have i suppose where you know you you you understand what's going on there and everything else i i would imagine right oh yes yeah yeah let's let's see what else do we have on the on the list of things that you're working on for people

Starting point is 00:07:57 when you're coaching right now women and and and others what's the biggest thing you hear them complaining about is it work-life balance or is it other things? It's a lot of limited beliefs that women have that they are not in control of their environment, their choices in life. They feel they have to fit into social norms. And breaking free of those thought patterns is key. And I help them create boundaries, better their self-talk, and actually celebrate their wins because a lot of them feel like they haven't accomplished a lot

Starting point is 00:08:43 because they've been torn in so many different directions, being a mom, being a career person, taking care of their husband, significant other. Yeah, that can spend a lot of time for them doing those things and all that stuff. And, you know, you can get lost in all that. It's a way to spread yourself so thin. What about collaborative growth? One of the things you'll be working with are people that are open to collaborative growth. What is that and how do you apply that? Collaborative growth is when you work with a group of women so that you get accountability, you build connection, you build a platform for them to feel stable on because they'll see other women doing the

Starting point is 00:09:39 similar actions so that they feel confident. It increases their confidence and self-esteem. There you go. And self-esteem is everything. You call something called the strategic revenue expansion. What is that? Strategic revenue expansion is where you want to grow your business substantially over the course of the next year.

Starting point is 00:10:07 And you set goals at the original meeting, and then you strive to achieve those goals by strategic thinking. There you go. And so people are going to learn marketing mastery, how to understand the target audience that you want to have, effective online presence, and compelling storytelling. Learning the art of storytelling is really important, especially in business. Tell us a bit why that's so important in helping people craft their compelling messages. It is very important because that's how they get a reputation.

Starting point is 00:10:47 They brand their authority. It's important in running a business. There you go. Most definitely important in running a business. There you go. It's something that's really important, I think, to a lot of people in what they're doing and how they're doing it. You're going to talk about financial fitness and money management. Do you find a lot of people are up to par on how to budget, financial forecasting, and debt management? A lot of new businesses don't know the financial management, and they haven't set up budgets, they haven't gotten insurance, and they haven't really thought about long-term viability of their business.

Starting point is 00:11:33 They're more focused on short-term. There you go. And so learning the long-term game of it, budgeting is so important in a business and cash flow and how you do your company etc etc the other thing you talk about is content creation excellence what does that entail content is getting a rhythm of being consistent in your contact delivery and figuring out a repeating pattern of subject matter that really builds your brand. It sort of dovetails in with your brand. There's a lot of different things that go into content creation.

Starting point is 00:12:19 So there's multimedia. You teach people how to do infographics, how to make the video ads the shorts on tiktok the shorts on youtube and all that stuff etc etc yes and we'll be doing ai integration in that as well that's really important for people to do you know it's even we struggle to master it it's it's a whole new game you almost have to hire people to to handle You know, it's even weird. We struggle to master it. It's a whole new game. You almost have to hire people to handle it for you, you know, especially with the short game that's come out recently

Starting point is 00:12:50 where you have to cut up all these little shorts and put them up everywhere. And, you know, I like the long form. I mean, we've always put up the long form of the Chris Voss show. And, you know, if people want to skip through something,

Starting point is 00:13:01 they can and find the good parts they like. But it seems like the attention span of people is shorter now than ever. So they just want to get right to the meat or sometimes there's, they just want to get, you know, the, you use the salacious, you know, bits off your show to do the, the bait clicking and get people fired up and, you know, Oh, you said something controversial, you know, or turns out it's not. In fact, I see a lot of these shorts and podcasts that know, oh, you said something controversial, you know, or whatever. Turns out it's not. In fact, I see a lot of these shorts and podcasts that they're like,

Starting point is 00:13:29 they'll kick off with something controversial or bake click in the title. And they're like, yeah, we just did that to get your attention, but we're not really going to say that. And you're just like, what the hell, man? Oh, I know. The more outrageous, the more clicks they get. Yeah, yeah. And sometimes people share stuff.

Starting point is 00:13:50 With TikTok, it's really hard sometimes to figure out what works over there. I've had some friends that they just have to do outrageous stuff. We're trying to deliver something more cerebral on the Chris Voss show. So I'm not dancing around naked on the show and calling people names and, I don't know, trying to hurt people. That's not how we're going to roll over. We're going to make you smarter. Sorry, no clickbaiting. We'll make you smarter and improve the quality of your life. So if you hate us for that, well, I suppose, see your therapist. We help people with strategic brand

Starting point is 00:14:24 development, brand positioning, visual identity, customer service. Talk to us a little bit about what goes into strategic brand development. Strategic brand development is making sure, again, you're consistent in your delivery of your content, the way you dress and look and come across, all has to be branded so that you gain authority in your field. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:14:57 And being an authority, why is that important? If people don't believe you, they aren't going to follow you. They aren't going to listen to you. They may sign up for initial consults, but they don't follow through. They lose interest fast, and they aren't motivated clients. There you go. There you go. And then you help them increase their business visibility,

Starting point is 00:15:22 SEO optimization, networking and partnerships, customer testimonials and reviews. Tell us about why that's important to learn in business. Because you never want to go it alone. Having a partner or someone to collaborate with helps your business stabilize. And the SEO is website optimization so that you get seen and get visibility on the web when people do searches. And to collaborate with other businesses, you can actually find joint ventures that will help your business grow. There you go so uh seo optimization networking and partnerships you know having a coach you know you can you can go into business and try and invent all this stuff which i did when i was young because you know we were lived

Starting point is 00:16:16 in the brick and mortar world so we didn't have the internet to look stuff up so we kind of had to figure out on our own there wasn't like a whole lot of people and coaches helping us and people experienced back back when i started entrepreneurism like i didn't i didn't think So we kind of had to figure out on our own. There wasn't like a whole lot of people and coaches helping us and people experience. In fact, back when I started entrepreneurism, like I didn't, I didn't think I knew I was an entrepreneur. I was like, I'm in a business, I guess. And it's a lot of work. I didn't really sit around and be like, I'm an entrepreneur now.

Starting point is 00:16:36 You know, it's just, it was in that age. But now there's a whole lot more resources. There's a whole lot more people you can have to advise you and help you can get. And data is just, oh, my God. And then it's so much easier to start a business online as opposed to brick and mortar. I don't know why I did things the hard way. I was born in the wrong age, so screw me. Now, with the program structure, this is going to be a 12-month mastermind program.

Starting point is 00:16:58 So people are going to sign up. They're going to be in it for 12 months, getting your assistance and your stuff. What are some of the things that are going to go on every month and week to help people through the 12-month process? We're going to start out the month with a guest speaker. And then the follow-up week, we will take the action items that came out of the group meeting and assign buddies. And we'll have hot seat round table of the mastermind so that everyone gets an opportunity to speak and figure out how they're going to apply what they've learned. And then we're going to come back in the third and fourth week saying this is a progress we're making and implementing what we've come up with as our tasks for the month and then the final week

Starting point is 00:17:55 we're going to reflect on how it has impacted our roi so there's going to be weekly 60 minute calls monthly presentations with experts in the field one-on-one and group feedback for your challenges to clarify real underlying issues that you can achieve more quickly, how to stay accountable, and you're going to have a Facebook community for that. I love Facebook community groups for support like this. So unlimited introductions to resources and contacts in a way peers can expand their network and gain leverage in their life. And then shared library of processes and templates so you don't have to recreate the wheel. And what's nice, too, is you can collaborate with people and say, like, you know, anywhere in the business format of what you need, you can be like, hey, how do you guys handle hiring? How do you guys handle X, Y, Z? You know, and you can get tips and advice from people on the various ways that they do stuff and try and find the best lane if you will so there you go

Starting point is 00:18:51 yes exactly and then how are people going to how can people learn more and on board with you find out more about this program etc etc what's the best way for them to reach out to you? They can reach out to me by writing Annie at empowerlifechanges.com or they can call me at 302-615-0235. Okay. And now, aside from this big mastermind you're running, what other services do you offer on your website that people may want to take advantage of? One-on-one coaching or other things? There is one-on-one coaching and I do 45-minute sessions and I have a program called Unleash Your Inner Power. That's a 10-week course that leads people from defining their character virtues to going through limiting beliefs, dealing with boundaries,

Starting point is 00:19:58 and collaboration, and then celebration, and learning how to learn from their failures. Ah, there you go. There you go. And that's really important. Anything else we didn't cover that we need to take and pitch out for some of the stuff you're doing there? Yeah, I follow my one-on-one coaching. I follow the heroic high performance coaching model that Brian Johnson

Starting point is 00:20:28 developed in the heroic app. Oh, really? There you go. Yeah. There you go. And how do you apply that to your clients? Well, we apply it to the clients because we're helping them become their personal best. And we work on areas of energy, work and love, and really focusing on meeting their needs in each of those areas so that they come out the other side feeling energized have clear focus and love their life loving the life is important you got to enjoy your life it's life is too short when it really comes down to it so there you go well annie it's been wonderful to have you on the show give us your final thoughts tell people how onboard and reach out to you one last time, dot coms, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, great. Thank you, Chris, so much for having me on the show.

Starting point is 00:21:32 And thank you, everyone, for listening. Wherever you are, morning, evening, remotely. And you can reach me by sending an email to Annie at empowerlifechanges.com or call me at 302-615-0235. Thank you very much. Thank you, Annie, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress Chris Foss, Chris Foss, one of the TikTokity and all those places to the show. We really appreciate it. Thanks for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, Chris Foss, one of the TikTokity and all those places on the internet.

Starting point is 00:22:10 Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time.

The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Annie Harmon Helps High-Achieving Women Regain Work-Life Balance and Purpose

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