The Sparkling Entrepreneur Podcast → on Success Unveiled: The Lady’s Inspiring Journey

[Music] guys this is sub from the sparking entrepreneur show and today we have Judy Ryan a coach and founder and CEO of Life work systems an award-winning training and consulting company she has always been drawn to Unorthodox methods for forming authentic community and developing people into good citizens since a 1984 she has turned that interest into an obsession and then in 2002 a company our experience has been that most authority figures including executive parents and Educators and human system originally designed for survival Conformity and compliance rather than strong leadership creativity and collaboration so let’s welcome Judy Judy welcome to the show thank you so much I’m happy to be here okay so J let’s start from your journey like want inspired to become a coach and how did you get started in this profess well first of all I really didn’t actually set out to do what I’m doing it just sort of evolved but I was got very passionate about the work of Alfred Adler which was a psychiatrist and during the time of Freud and Young and the reason I did is I stumbled upon it in a parenting organization and it really started to change the way that I understood how human beings best expand into their potential I was able to raise my family in a very unconventional way and it really helped me to overcome a lot of the things that happened in my own child it and I started to see how these ways of operating could affect organizations in workplaces in schools in lots of different settings because what basically affects a human being and makes them into the best version of themselves or the worst version of themselves often begins even in early childhood but whether or not you are interrupted in childhood or you interrupted in the workplace it has to be interrupted so what my coaching is about is about really helping organizations to create the conditions of the conversations where people can move into the best versions of themselves so even though I’m a quote unquote coach I really coach organizations starting with the top leaders but also with people all through the Spectrum from CEO to Frontline staff I did that in my own family when my children by the time they were I have five children by the time they were five years old they all knew how to run a family meeting because we would have a family meeting every week and they would take turn running that meeting and one time we were invited to do that in front of a large audience of parents and teachers and we had the 5-year-old run the meeting and we asked the audience are you surprised that leadership can be developed in someone so young and they said yes because most of the time we do not draw upon a person’s power when they’re young and and we don’t draw upon it as they get older and they become thought of as a follower and not a leader so in our work we help people be leaders and followers in that family meeting I was the one that had to learn how to be a good follower instead of steamrolling a 5-year-old you know so sometimes people are good leaders and they’re not good followers and are good followers leaders so we try to help round that out awesome great like you are doing just great thing but like we were only helping training organizations or do you have any know like options for individuals who are seeking for help yes we actually have both the main thing that we do is work with a guided culture trans information process within organizations sometimes those are you know government sometimes they’re nonprofit sometimes they’re corporate sometimes they’re education but we also work at the individual level and the way we do that is we coach the organization to become mentors to one another and then we also have a division of our organization where we sell all of our training and coaching to individuals that just want to develop personally or professionally and that’s an equally valid place for people to begin to expand who they are but what is more helpful is when a whole community of people can learn how to help one another in coaching and mentoring and supporting one another and have a common language and a common set of tools to draw upon great awesome okay so like since you are getting a lot of experience in entrepreneurship as well as training and Consulting according to you what are the most important quality for a successful coach to Pro I think it’s really that a person that is coaching others is walking the talk is living from purpose like every single day I think of my purpose or Mission whatever way you want to call it which is to create a world in which all people love their wives so I’m always looking for how can I help someone love their life how can I make sure that your audience loves their life that they leave with something that allows them to feel more hope more guidance more support and how am I loving my life you know if I’m not loving my life how can I help you love your life so I think it’s really important they believe that there’s goodness because our purpose is who we are at our best so they have to believe that they There’s Hope and they have to have a path that they know has been proven that’s what I have found to be the most helpful I can speak with confidence because in my personal life I can be kind of on the shy and Reserve side but when it comes to this topic of helping people and creating a different kind of world yeah correct correct and also you have experien to talk with the people and you have already H like most of the people so it’s like natural yes it’s natural one of my kids said to me one time my youngest when she still lived at home she said I wish I had your work ethic and I said you do and she saidwhat do you mean and I said you stay up all night and play video games and she goes Mom that’s fun and I said when you’re living by purpose and values you are not feeling like you’re working I’m not watching the clock because I happen to love what I do I would wish that for everyone and I said to my daughter at that time I said that’s what I would wish for you is that you find the work that gives you passion that brings you a sense of fulfillment where you feel that you’re making the greatest contribution whatever it is even if it’s baking in a Bakery you know whatever that is make sure that it’s something that you’re excited to get up to in the morning because if you aren’t you’re not going to be able to inspire other people absolutely absolutely 100% okay so like Judy how do you approach working with your clients who are really striving to watch you B would I think what’s usually in the way is that people aren’t able to understand their own barriers and also the direction for their own Liv so they’re not mapping anything against a North star a lot of times they’re not achieving their goal because they’re starting at a place in their goal orientation that is not connected to their Vision so for example if you know your purpose and you know your core values how you want to behave to achieve that purpose and then you have a clear idea of your dreams or visions you’re much more likely to fulfill on your goals because you have alignment with them sometimes people don’t don’t fulfill their goals because they’re unaware of a barrier that’s in the way and so they might say I should or I have to I I’ll give you an example of a story of that my sister called me one time and she said I’m in this argument with my mother-in-law and I don’t really know why and I said well what’s going she goes I’m just conscious enough to think I’m probably part of the problem but I can’t see my part and I said what’s going on and she said well I agreed to do Thanksgiving for my husband’s family this year you know the Thanksgiving holiday dinner and I said so what’s the problem and she said well all I did was ask my mother-in-law when will you leave that day and she got all upset about it you know pushed back and said why do you need to know and she said my mother-in-law she’s so controlling and she’s starts going off on this and I said first of all did you want to do the Thanksgiving and she said I thought I should because I hadn’t done it in a while and that told me that she had a barrier either it was really that she wanted to say no or she wanted to say yes with some other consideration so I said I want you to go back to the moment when you made the decision and I want you to just check in and say do I really want to do this and not do it from a should and she said I realize I do want to do it but I don’t want to do it if I have to miss going over to your house for game night because on Thanksgiving we would always have game night after everybody had their meals and so I said isn’t it interesting that if you had just slowed down for a moment you would have been able to say to your in-laws hey if I can leave by a certain time I’m the one who wants to do the dinner that okay with everyone but because she didn’t slow down and check in with what she actually wanted she said yes in a way that wasn’t true to herself so I think a lot of times people don’t follow you know they don’t they may even self- sabotage their goals because they’re not taking the time to make sure that everything that they’re doing is an alignment I do that in my own life if something doesn’t fit with me loving my life I just don’t do it I I delegate it because otherwise it’s been a created misalignment in my own goals correct correct absolutely okay so like to as we are humans we have to deal with challenges difficulties problem in each and every day right and as a coach you are also helping your clients or your students or the organization that you are that how to overcome how to deal with like challenges as well as the problems so how do you stay motivated and continue grow as a coach I would say the main way is to be a student as well as a teacher a coach and a person that is coached I’ve always believed that all of us need coaches I’ve always believed that all of us need to be committed to lifelong learning I put myself in that boat as well because then I can live and speak from and teach from experience and I also am clearing my own barriers my own limiting beliefs my own fearful beliefs because we all have them we’ve all been I to have blockage you know and barriers and so if I don’t do that I don’t continue to free myself and so as I do free myself I feel equally passionate and inspired about freeing other people correct correct absolutely and it’s really important to do that because basically it comes from your mindset uh like I would say because mindset is the most important Point here yes mindset a lot of people don’t really know some things that maybe would help them undo their conditioning in their mind and so a lot of times we’re working with people on what they don’t know that they don’t know and so the mindset has to go in alignment with any tool training or you know technique a lot of people want the techniques and the tools but they haven’t shifted their mindset so absolutely true okay so let’s move some entrepreneur thing questions that since most of the marketing thing hased online so how do you take the advantage of online marketing we’re really focused on that right now because we have so much content we have interviews we have have over 250 published articles we have a published book we have tons of different individual programs we have lots of interviews we have testimonials and what we’re doing is we’re working on really helping people to get to know what the work is because a lot of times they don’t know what they don’t know so we want to bring them in through helping provide value to them in the mindset in the information and then helping them to access some of our surveys the surveys are very important because they help us understand and the individual who wants to develop personally and professionally but they also help us with the Business Leaders who want us to score and really look at all of their culture practices and what they’re dealing with in their organizations what kind of challenges are they facing what sort of desired Workforce behaviors do they want so once we can get people engaged in coming to some of our events taking some of our surveys we start to build a relationship with them and today because marketing is done through social media so we’re not sending out flyers and you know snail mail now that that’s always wrong but it’s just not the way of the world right now so we’re really building those relationships through those step through ways of providing value and really cross content for example we’re promoting a program called redirecting negative behavior because everybody has somebody in their life that drives them a little crazy and we’re really looking at how do we appeal to the person that’s having that in a romantic relationship how do we help somebody that’s having mental health issues because of the toxic people around them how do we help help somebody that’s dealing in a classroom or a home that has a child that is having behavioral problems so we’re really looking at different ways to bring people to the same Concepts and tools for how to redirect negative behavior without using harshness and Punishment and permissiveness but how do we engage them from their mindset so that’s you know part of it’s knowing and en reaching the various audiences and then helping them have little bites of things almost like you know like a little schmorgus board and then they start to really appreciate what’s there to really dive into I hope that’s answering what you best yeah yeah and also like most of the if I talk about some successful ver just like Tony Robins Mel Robins so right now they are just uh making a short form of content video which is are trending like real or YouTube sorts so what’s your thoughts on it yeah we’ve really been working on that because people are have a short attention span so we’re taking TV interviews and we’re breaking them into little short clips and really that is super helpful because it allows people to focus in on various aspects even the redirecting negative behavior that I just mentioned we’re doing a little a little short clip on how to really be in really considering emotional intelligence am I self-aware am I self-managing am I really aware of what’s going on in the relationships I have and am I able to manage them effectively that’s one little snippet we can do that in 30 seconds and really help somebody to go oh wow I don’t know if I am self-aware or maybe I’m self-aware but I don’t know how to manage certain things and which platforms you are using right now we’re primarily using LinkedIn we have over 16,000 connections that we’ve very much been able to find the right kinds of leaders that we’re connecting with but we’re getting ready to launch a whole social media marketing on uh Instagram we’ve also been advertising on said putting all of our articles out on Twitter and Facebook business Pages we’re looking at possibly doing something on Tik Tok but we’re not sure it’s a good fit for us and we’ve even considered interest so there’s a lot of ways to leverage all of the huge amount of content we have but we’re trying very hard to make sure that we’re extremely strategic about how we’re doing that so in the past when we mainly focused on working with corporations in culture transformation we were so focused on LinkedIn where now we’re appealing more to individuals and corporations and they’re everywhere they’re even on Tik Tok and Instagram and and Facebook yeah very absolutely okay so D like you know what like each and every industry right we have always some misconceptions about like each and every industry so what are some common misconception about coaching and how do you address with them future clients common misperceptions are I just doing this off top of my head but leadership development and culture mean different things to different people so the misconception is often that we’re talking about the same thing so what we’re usually and even uh the idea of what is coaching and mentoring when we work with clients on coaching and mentoring one another we’re not telling them to give each other advice so let’s say I I am a CEO let’s say you’re my Frontline staff and I’m mentoring you you could turn around and Mentor me back in my model because it’s not about status or role or tenure or how long I’ve been in the company or how high I’ve risen in the company it’s about you and I both knowing how to ask each other the right questions so that I begin to be aware when you’re asking me questions of what I need to manage if it’s a relationship if it’s a produc ity issue if it’s an engagement issue if it’s a PL a progress issue and I’m able to ask you similar questions and I’m I’m able to remind you of our organization’s purpose and core values and Visions all and and to even take time to appreciate you and recognize you but you do the same toward me do you see how there’s no need to have special expertise to do that you just have to know how to ask the right questions to support the other person in finding their answers and being able to come up with their own Solutions and so that’s a misconception misconception to me is that leadership should only be developed in the titled leaders No it should be developed in everyone just like everyone should have a cell phone nowadays another misconception is that culture is is one thing versus another in ours it’s shared power in ours it’s about people having freedom and responsibility at the same time it’s about people leaving from their true calling from purpose it’s about people learning how to think for themselves as opposed to being given all the answers so that they can lead and follow just like I told you about my 5-year-olds when they were able to lean down follow and and it’s about being holistic so people can show up as they are and not have to put on a pretend face when they go to work so a lot of misconceptions are just misperceived ideas from the past that people are holding on to so real coaching empowers somebody to not need the coach eventually yeah that’s that’s the idea yeah yeah okay you write a b about yourself then how do you name it and why oh my goodness I would probably call call it something like the path to loving your life because I think when you think of people loving their life you can picture what that looks like right I mean I don’t know your life but I can picture you with that smile that I’ve seen today and I can picture you telling happy stories to people about what you love about your life and that’s really what is my North Star and I would want people to know that there is a path to that North Star absolutely Place bath to living your life right yes loving your life loving your life great okay so D let’s wrap up this podcast but before that any final message that you want to share with our listener you know when we’re working with a year-long guided project when we get to the point where people are asked to identify their own purpose and their own core values they they kind of B at that they push back at that they’ll say things like what does this have to do with work why do I need to do this this is stupid you know because there’s something a little bit abstract about something like oh I want to help the world love their lives and it feels big and for a lot of people that’s scary for them because they haven’t been taught to trust their power and so what I would say is get aligned with that because some of the visions that I’ve written down that fit into my purpose and my values have almost come true magically it has felt that things align much more easily in my life when I’m clear about my purpose and my core values and my dreams and visions and then the goals seem to just kind of fall naturally into place so I would say get that right first yeah I remember there was a man one time he he was working on his purpose and it was he said boy if I’m doing this exercise right my purpose is to cause greatness and he he was already causing greatness he was a great ex-military person he was a great leader he’s a great father but it scared him so much he said I can’t claim that that’s something the dolly Lama does and I said who said you can’t be like the dolly lava right but he was really uncomfortable at first because a lot of us feel like what if I put my steak in the ground for that and then I fail you know I would rather put my steak in the ground and fail than not put my steak in the ground because if I put put my stake in the ground I’m going to succeed more than I’m going to fail even if I fail so I would say you know really find somebody that can help you to identify your purpose your core values and your Visions because it’s going to make what you do more likely to materialize first accept the fact that you need someone help right yes except I do I do I help a lot of people but I need help too yeah accept the fact that you need help and be excited to be a student not just a leader or a teacher of your own we all like to feel seeing heard and understood but we all need to see hear and understand other people’s wisdom any absolutely yeah I complet 100% agree okay so J let us about your Instagram Facebook LinkedIn or any social media platform like YouTube so that our audience can get you and our audience can find you and get in touch with you right now LinkedIn I would have them look up Judy Ryan or they could look up life work systems we have the 16 connections on the Judy Ryan Page so we post a lot but we post a lot on both we also have have a Judy Ryan and a life work systems Facebook page and we’ve got an Instagram account set up but we’re not posting to it yet but it will it will also be life work systems so and our Twitter handle is life work systems so it’s pretty clear all the way down the line that it’s either Judy Ryan or life work systems yeah like if someone types the life workk system then they can easily find you yes guys to make sure you follow Judy as she’s a wonderful person with great personality thank you so much it was an honor for me as well hope you have a great day thanks again Dy so that’s it I here for sub signing off and you guys have a wonderful day bye

[Music] guys