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Colleen Hauk - Speaker Trainer Author

104: Do Moms Need to Choose Between Career and Family? – Colleen Hauk

 

Colleen Hauk spent 15 years in the corporate landscape, specializing in training and leading sales teams. Her development skills were honed when she experienced first-hand the negative effects of poor leadership and lack of self-care. She transformed the culture from toxic to thriving and, after suffering her own breaking point, she altered her circumstances and developed successful methods for a healthy, holistic life. Colleen is now a speaker, trainer, and co-author of two books – the bestseller, Women Who Ignite and Why Didn’t Anybody Tell Me This Sh!t Before. She trains and coaches elite performers on her techniques to ‘have it all’ without losing it all.

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

  • Common challenges that moms face working outside the home
  • Why Colleen transitioned to starting her own business. 
  • Practical tips to help families stay organized during the week. 
  • How to give your children the power of choice.

“Empowered to Rise” by David Trotter – available on Amazon now!

Create beautiful, engaging social media in 5 minutes a day – www.RiseUpCreatives.com

Connect with Colleen:

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Interview Transcript

Colleen, thanks so much for taking some time to hang with me today. I appreciate it.

Thank you for having me, David. Excited to be here.

One of the things that I know you’re passionate about is helping women experience both a successful corporate career, or career in any context, and also excel in their family life. As you work with women and speak in that corporate environment, what are some of the greatest challenges that you face and other women face in working in a corporate environment and job?

I would say the first big one is really just, how do you continue to drive professionally while having these other personal responsibilities? Because me, like most people, when you first started out in your career, that was your primary focus. You had limited responsibilities.

No kids yet.

Right, right.

All the time in the world.

Absolutely. I remember my first career, I’d get into work early, I’d leave late. I’d hit the gym, come home, microwave a dinner, and sit on the couch in my one-bedroom apartment and watch Friends all by myself, right?

Sure.

All I needed to really focus on was work. Most people, that’s how they started. So along comes, whether it’s purchasing a home, or falling in love, or kids, or for some people now it’s just taking care of ageing parents alongside of their corporate career.

Or a high-need dog.

I have high maintenance cats, so I’ll just throw that out there. You went to college to learn how to do your career but did you go take some kind of course on how do you deal with all of this stuff, right?

Yeah.

It’s really just, “Hey, this is how I’ve been functioning for my first ten, fifteen years in adulthood, and now all of these other things have been put in front of me. How do I navigate that? How do I still be successful professionally with all of these other,” I’m going to say, “Responsibilities, and loves, and passions, and everything else?” So it’s just the knowing, how in the world do I do that? It comes down, because it’s time. We only have a finite number of minutes or hours in the day, so it’s not like we can create new time to accommodate that.

Right.

So that’s one of the big ones. I would say the other big challenge then is, “Okay, I’ve got that. How do I do that?” Most people are searching for flexibility within their corporate career. I found, and I continue to see this as a challenge with a lot of women and men, is flexibility isn’t just about what company you work for, it comes down to specifically who your manager is.

Ah, okay. Because you could work anywhere and have a really good manager or a really not so good manager.

Absolutely. So at any given time in my corporate career, in fifteen years, one of the companies I was with was for over eleven of those years, the majority of my time.

Okay.

I found that my flexibility or my ability to say, “Hey, I’m leaving on time today because I want to go work out.” Or, “I’d like to work from home on Fridays because I travel the majority of the week and I want to be able to see my kids on Friday mornings.” That all depended upon who my specific manager was or who their senior leader was.

Even within the same company at any given time, I might be feeling, “Gosh, the corporate culture is low and we don’t have any flexibility. We have to have butts in seats.” Then I could speak to a peer of mine across the country in another office and she has the complete different perspective. I find that that is true in a lot of mid to large size companies.

Yeah.

Where that flexibility really just comes down to the individual manager. It could be challenging.

Yeah, that absolutely makes sense. For you, over the course of your fifteen years, was there a point where it just go to be too much for you and your family? Take me into that. I know you travelled a lot in your job. Take me into that. Right out of college, I worked three years in corporate. That was way more than enough for me. That was a lot. I was chained to that desk. I worked for a paper distribution company. It was The Office, basically.

It was a paper distribution company and I was in charge of a group of people that bought paper, that put it in warehouses across the nation. Boy, I got baptized into corporate life early. I got out after three years, I found out that it wasn’t for me. But a lot of people, I find in our entrepreneurial obsessed world, corporate life gets bashed on quite a bit. Yet corporations are a backbone of a lot of what’s happening in America, and so many people work in corporate jobs. And a lot of people love their corporate job because they’re wired that way. No corporate bashing here.

No.

But at the same time, there was a challenging experience that you had in your life. Walk us through that.

Yeah, and I will share, I love corporate. Even as I become an entrepreneur and do my business of coaching, and speaking, and training full-time now, I specifically most enjoy working with corporate.

Right.

That’s my jam.

You serve corporations and people that work in corporations. You love it. Yeah, of course.

Yeah, absolutely. It’s funny, I was an elementary school teacher when I first got out of college. I made that transition after six years into corporate and everybody would ask me, “Why is teaching so bad?” I’m like, “No, look. It’s not that teaching is bad.” Or your point, it’s not that corporate is bad, it just wasn’t the right fit for me at that time.

There you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It’s always about, what’s the right fit? I was so focused on my career. I was down that path. Right before going into 2013, so basically setting me up for 2013, I was offered a promotion. It was the promotion I really wanted. I was flying high, and I was so high that when my boss was sitting there offering me this position, I wasn’t listening to anything he said other than I got this promotion.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So I overlooked the fact that this promotion also came with somebody else’s nearly full book of business. I was in sales, so I was going to keep ninety percent of my current role.

Wow.

Take over ninety percent of somebody else’s current role and become a people manager, not just an individual contributor. I was oblivious. I didn’t pay attention and I said yes to this. So I went into 2013 essentially running almost two people’s nearly full-time book of business and I refused to fail. I won’t fail my manager, my peers, my clients. So in order to be able to do that job, I just stopped sleeping.

Oh, man.

I was literally sleeping about four hours every night.

No way.

Yes. I don’t know if you’ve ever done that but it essentially turns you into being drunk. You’re physically intoxicated.

Every night you’re only getting four hours?

Yes. I would be excited if I got five.

You’re staying up super later doing paperwork, and Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoints, and phone calls, and flying places, and all of that stuff. Then doing whatever…

Then taking a nap, as I called it, in the middle of the night. Then I would be back up again doing the same thing. It was a combination of, it was the job, plus I was still wanting to be wife, and mom, and take care of everything else. But nobody in my corporate job had a clue that I was only sleeping a few hours. I hid it. I showed up and gave one hundred percent of my energy to my job.

That’s a lot of undereye makeup.

A lot, and a lot of coffee. I knew what time my local Starbucks opened. I was there with the delivery trucks, before.

Yeah, yeah.

But the problem was, I was giving everything to my job. Which meant me and my family were literally getting my leftovers. I did that for thirteen months, and finally one day I was at work, that night I was supposed to be going to a holiday party. It was for a networking group. I had served on the committee. I was so looking forward to this party because it was literally like the first time I was going to do something for myself, social, go hang out with a bunch of women, have a glass of wine. Just not work.

Sure, sure.

Actually have some fun. Which I had coined “fun” being the working mom’s F-word, because I wasn’t having any of it. So I, of course, got sucked into needing to finish something late that night and I essentially missed the holiday party. That sounds so trivial in isolation, but within context of what had been going on, it just happened to be the thing that broke it all. I found myself that night just sitting all alone in the darkness of the office and crying. Saying, “This is it. I have to quit.” But I was the primary breadwinner of my family.

Okay.

I was the one who was finally supporting, so as much as I thought, “I need to quit,” I knew, “How am I going to do that?” But I couldn’t see how could I possibly continue working without feeling like I wasn’t drowning every day, or be scared out of my mind that my husband Matt, wouldn’t pack up our kids and just leave me because of how awful I was at home. So that was my breaking point.

So you were bringing all of this stress home, and your kids, I know they’re still a bit young now, so they were younger elementary at the time?

Yes, Reese was four, Ethan was seven, and Jordan was nineteen at the time.

Okay.

I was bringing it home. I often share that I would get to the door of our house, and on the other side I would hear Matt with our kids, laughing, having this fun-filled evening.

Was he a stay-at-home dad at the time?

At the time my husband ran his business from home.

Okay.

So he was home most often, yes.

Okay.

But it was like as soon as I barely opened the door, it was silent. Matt later shared with me, “The moment you walked in, we were on high alert.” Because I just would come in on a rampage, noticing a sock in the middle of the family room floor. I just had nothing. I couldn’t show up for them. I wouldn’t show up for them.

No margin, no grace, because it had all been spent.

Correct. Yep.

Yeah, that is so hard. Obviously you’re now coaching, and speaking, and doing all kinds of amazing things around the country, but did you make that transition outright after that? How did you make your transition?

I’m so glad you asked that, David, because I did not. That night in my office when I knew something has to change. When I went through this whole, “I have to quit, but I can’t quit.” It was essentially something has to change. I remembered that my girlfriend had become a coach herself, and I texted her and said, “I’m hiring you to help me.” Literally three weeks later, we were on our first call.

It was through that process that I realized that the problems I was facing were things I was choosing. That I was blaming my boss for giving me this promotion. How ridiculous does that sound? I’m blaming my boss for promoting me. Blaming my husband because he gets to roll downstairs to start his day and I have to commute and travel everywhere. Anyhow, I recognized it really was about me.

So I went through a process to re-figure out what my priorities and make these changes and shifts, so that I could learn to live what I now call is, living the ‘and life’. Where you can continue to have a professional career and a fulfilling extraordinary personal life. But I ended up staying at that corporate job for four more years. It was not a, this is all corporate’s fault, I hated corporate, that was not my intention. I just needed to figure out me. How do I make this work?

Yeah, and how did you make it work? Did you continue to only sleep four hours a night or did you make shifts and changes?

Yeah. The very first thing that I started to do, which was completely out of my comfort zone, was meditate. It was my coach’s advice. I was corporate. I was black and white, “What do you mean?” When she said meditate, I’m picturing a bunch of long-haired hippies sitting cross-legged in a grassy field. There’s no way I’m going to meditate, but I did.

What I ended up doing was, I would meditate each morning for about five minutes and I would just ask myself the question, “What makes me happy?” I know we throw this word “happiness” around a little more frivolous than we should, but at the time really what I was trying to do was uncover what got me excited. What was going to bring me pure joy? I literally asked myself that one question every morning for about three weeks.

The surface stuff came up, right? My husband, my kids, all of the things we would naturally think about. But what really happened for me was, I started to recognize, when do I feel most alive? When am I most excited at my job? When am I most excited at home? It was all centered around when I’m able to help coach or train somebody. When I see that they have a problem, I work through a process with them and I see the light go off that they have the answer.

Sure.

So what I did was, I just figured out, how can I do more of that within my current job? Because my job hadn’t changed, I was still in my same role. It was just, how do I slowly start to integrate the thing that gets me excited to at least feel better in the meantime?

Sure.

Then that became apparent to my management, which got me into a better role where I was able to not work as much. The other thing was, is I did, I asked to work from home on Friday’s. Something I should have done from the get-go had I been listening to what this job description was. But I started asking for things that would help either give me more time at home, give me a couple extra hours of sleep during the week. I started being more cognizant about the things that I could do to make a change.

As you talked and worked with this coach, one of things I’m hearing you say is you got clear on the things that made you feel alive. It sounds like you began to integrate those things into your work without even asking if you could. You just found ways to be able to do that. Is that right?

Absolutely. It’s funny, when I’m training with companies, I oftentimes will hear from employees, “I want this to change but we have to wait for the top-down.” I get it. Certain aspects, there are certain big policy changes that would need to happen from the top-down, but I’m a believer of start from where you are. That you absolutely have control and choice over the things that are in your surroundings.

So while I wasn’t going completely off the rails and saying, “Oh, I’m now going to work in our training department.” I wasn’t going crazy. It was just any opportunity I had to raise my hand and say, “There’s this taskforce that would align with what I love.” Or build out a little bit more of my time to coach, at the time, my one direct report. Could I do a little bit more coaching with that person through the week versus locked in my office working on a PowerPoint presentation?

Again, it wasn’t off the charts that I was just creating a new job description. It was just finding little ways to integrate. I absolutely believe that because I did that, that two things happened. One, my energy and my pure excitement and enthusiasm for my job and my company started to really shift. Secondly, those little things I was doing was making an impact on other people and my management saw that. I believe those are the things that led to me getting my next promotion that much quicker than it would have happened if I hadn’t done those things.

Now this term “working mom”, that’s a scary term for me. Obviously all moms work, so when I say that, I want to say it with a caveat here. All moms work. Maybe it’s a work outside the home mom. These days you can work inside the home mom with a job. Anyway, there are women that have a job, full or part-time outside the home, and still take on as statistics show, a large part if not the majority of the domestic responsibilities. You have some tips that can help us.

They’re some simple things, but oftentimes things that are just like, “Yeah, I’m just not doing that. That could help me in a really tremendous way.” If people want to get these tips, they can go to your website. They’re called “Five Working Mom Tips to Stop Feeling Crazy Busy”. But I want to hear some from you, break some of these down for us. One of things you talk about is nightly planning. So if I’m a woman who’s got a job. Obviously I’m excelling in my career, I’m working hard, but also perhaps I’ve got kids. I’ve got all these activities, maybe I’ve got a partner. What does nightly planning look like?

Yes. Yes. For me, I start the week prior. Essentially I’m kind of starting the month prior. Every month I’m looking ahead, what are some of the big activities, the big things that are going on? Whether that’s professional or personal related. I start building out a master list of things. I’m just a planner ahead. So some of the master things, especially if you’re going on a big trip or you have a big event where you need two, three weeks’ worth.

So from there, I’m breaking it out for the week. On Sunday’s I sit down and I look ahead at the week and think, “Okay, where can I start to fit in some of these things that I need to do?” Then absolutely every single night, I’m looking to the next day. There’s this notion of, you can have a to-do list, but unless it actually gets plugged into your calendar and timeslots, the likelihood of it getting done is going to diminish. So I literally take my to-do list and I plug those things as appointments into my calendar. So I am already setting myself up to say, “This is the time I’m going to work on this or I’m going to do this.”

Do that on paper or is in your phone or computer app? How does it work?

Almost everywhere. I’m a little compulsive, David, when it comes to that. In my corporate job, we worked off of Outlook. Everything was in Outlook, then I just synced my phone to that, both professional and personal calendar. But there’s a couple of things that I do. One, it’s absolutely in my phone because we all live with our phone. It’s our minicomputer that’s with us, so it’s there. That’s usually just holding the space for a lot of my bigger appointments or meetings and calls. I kind of went back to old-school paper, having a calendar. I like to write in pencil. There’s just something about putting that pencil to paper. It’s almost like an art, where I’m drawing this out for myself.

Do you write in cursive?

I don’t. I write in printing. But that’s the elementary school teacher coming out of me, writing in printing. So I do, I look ahead at the next day and I block everything out in thirty minutes. I’m literally putting times in there when I’m cooking breakfast for the kids, or I’m exercising, or I’ve got this call, or when I need to drive to this appointment. I’m literally looking at those things.

Certainly, I like to say I am structured on paper but I’m flexible in mind. So I set myself up structured on that paper but I know stuff is going to happen that’s going to be out of my control; an emergency, a client can’t make it to a call. There’s always things that are going to happen, so I try to stay flexible in mind. That’s why, even though I do an outline of a plan on Sunday’s, it’s important for me to do it every night to make those fine tune adjustments because things are going to shift or a project takes longer than you anticipate, right? Yeah.

One of the other tools that you have is, you call it the whiteboard.

Yes.

I love whiteboards. I love big sticky note pads. Tell me, what are you doing with this whiteboard?

Yes, so the whiteboard has become the thing that I thought was the simplest thing ever but all of my clients and my friends swear by this. The whiteboard is the one thing that changed their life. You know how the simple things for us seem silly?

Yeah.

So I actually started with the whiteboard when I became a mom to my stepson, Jordan. So that is, oh goodness, fifteen, sixteen years ago. Literally, we use the whiteboard to this day. It’s in our kitchen. It’s taking what’s on my phone or my paper calendar and just doing big picture for the week. It’s for the week. I’m very specific about that. I do not like monthly calendar whiteboards. It’s for the week.

That’s where each person in our family has a different color pen and it’s written out what activities are happening for the day. If my daughter has musical theater lessons, or my son has baseball, or my husband has a late work meeting, I’m travelling out of town for speaking, that’s all on there. Then the big piece is then, in a different color, for us it’s a bright orange, it’s what our dinner is going to be that night.

So that’s the other thing I do on Sundays, when I’m looking ahead at the week, I plan out what our dinners are going to be. I do that based upon what activities are happening that night or if I’m out of town. Then that way I do all of my grocery shopping on Sunday, so that we have all of the essentials. It allows us, number one, to eat more nutritiously, more cost-effective. Also then, we’re not scrambling or stressed. “What do I do? I don’t have this. I need to make an extra trip to the grocery store.” It runs smooth in the evening time, which with our age kids, with the activities and my husband I, we both work full-time outside of our parent job. It just allows us a little more peace of mind and peace for our family as well.

Yeah. Yeah, that is so hard. Especially if you have two partners with kids, that communication of, “Wait, I thought you were taking them.” “No, no, no. It was on your list.” But just to have it all there in one place, that sounds super simple. You do that every Sunday?

Every Sunday. Saturdays sometimes. It just depends on my weekend.

The weekend.

Saturday or Sunday. Yeah, the weekend.

Yeah.

It allows for the kids too — this is something that I heard from my client, is that when they started integrating the whiteboard, it then became more of a family communication center. So the kids could even start to participate and see what was going on with mom or dad, or what are we having for dinner? Or in some of my clients cases, then their kids wanted to start being the ones that were planning what they were going to have for dinner one or two nights a week or what family outing they might take that Saturday. So it just became a communication center for families to really just get more involved and feel that organization and planning process. It starts the kids really young on that.

We’re in a different season of life with our kids being sixteen and one, twenty, at college. She’s at college in the same town where we live. One of the things that we asked her was, “Can you just print out your school schedule? When are your classes during the day?” We have that up on the refrigerator. I know it sounds weird but it’s kind of fun to look over and go, “Oh, she’s in class right now.”

Yes.

“What is she learning right now?” Or, “Oh, okay. She’s free. I’ll text her and say hello.” Or, “Maybe she’s got the flexibility to have dinner tonight with us.” So even just your kid’s calendar on the refrigerator, or schedule, can be fun too.

I love that. I love that, David. Yes, absolutely.

You also talk about time triggers. What are those?

Tell me specifically.

You talk about time triggers where you set an alarm or alert.

Oh, alarms, alerts.

Something to get you going.

Yes, yes. In that context, yes, because I use triggers in other capacities as well. But time triggers, yes. So people think I’m crazy, I have about twenty plus alarms on my phone. It’s just because my phone is with me constantly.

Twenty every day?

Now I do know there are apps and other things that can blend calendars, and alerts, and reminders, and notes, absolutely. I’m still a little bit old school. I love the simplicity of just being able to open my calendar and alarms right within the convenience of the apps that are on my phone. So I’m not a good person to recommend these other really cool apps. I do know they exist but I’m old school with my alarms.

Because here’s the deal, we function in a way that we need to maximize our time because there’s only those so many minutes, we can’t create new time. I want to make sure that when I’m working on a project, or I’m on a call, I’m doing anything professionally or even personally with time with my family, that I am one hundred percent focused on that particular thing at hand. So I set alarms to alert me when it’s time to get ready to leave or go do something different. For me, because I do run my business from home, I need to pick up my daughter from school every day. Well, I don’t want to be constantly checking the clock.

“Is it time?” “Is it time?” “Is it time?”

No, that’s such a distraction. So I know my alarm is set every weekday at a certain time that it’s time for me to leave to go pick her up.

So good.

The same thing happens at home. There’s an alarm set for when it’s time to get ready for my kids different practices, or classes, or what not. So when we’re home together, again, I’m not checking the clock. I’m focused on the time with them. The alarm will tell us, “Hey, it’s now time. We’ve got five minutes, we’re leaving out the door.” I even do that down to a few minutes. If I know I’ve got a call, I’ve got everything set up but I’ve got three minutes to spare, I’ll set the timer for three minutes so I can maybe do something quick. Not lose track of time, but capitalize on those three minutes.

I do the exact same thing. I should do it probably based on calendared events, maybe I could do it within the calendar of my phone. But I will literally pick up my phone, hold it down and say, “Set an alarm for X time.” Because I get distracted. I get so focused on another project, and like you said, I don’t want to have to be thinking about it. Every time I’m looking over at the clock, it’s distracting me and I’m maximizing that time. I do the exact same thing and it creates peace in me. By setting that alarm, it creates peace because I don’t have to worry about it then.

Absolutely. I never remember what the data is about every time you’re distracted by something, how much more time it takes you to get re-engaged. If it’s five minutes, fifteen minutes, I never remember. But I know it’s more than I want to actually be spending. I want to be using that time to be engaged in whatever it is. Yeah, so anything reoccurring in my life has an alarm set. It’s the simplest thing to do.

So good. All right, and last one is kids choice.

Oh, this is one of my favorites.

Okay.

When I was a new mom, the kids were starting to go into elementary school and start having school plays, or the church play, all of these different things happening. It seems like every single week there’s a class party or their performance, something. I travelled quite a bit for work, so I was starting to have that quote/unquote “working mom guilt”, and/or I was making myself crazy trying to cram in all of my work so I could leave early to try to get to some event.

I finally just starting asking my children individually. Every time one of their activities came up, I would say, “Would you like me to be there for this?” It’s crazy how many things they could care less about. My kids now at their age, they’re not ten, thirteen, and then my stepson Jordan is twenty-five, out of the house. But my daughter Reese, who’s ten now, almost eleven. She’s like, “Mom, by the way, that performance next Friday, please do not come to school. It’s the dumbest thing.”

It’s more like she gets it. My kids, we’re so open in our communication, they understand how to prioritize, and how to stay focused, and how to use their time wisely, right? So they get it. She knows she’d much rather have me be at something else of hers versus this. So I highly encourage parents who work outside of the home, start asking your kids. Stop driving yourself crazy trying to get to everything when your kid may not even actually care that you’re there.

That is so true.

Yeah.

That is so true. Wow. You’ve given us a lot of practical tips but you also mention that working mom guilt. We’ve got a lot of moms that are listening that may be having that, whether they even have a full-time job outside of the house or not, they might be feeling guilt about all kinds of things. How would you encourage them in this moment?

Yeah. First, it’s trying to get to the root of where the guilt is coming from. Is it guilt because you feel your kids are thinking you’re not there? Look, there’s data to prove that kids, especially working moms, they tend to earn higher salaries as an adult. So reframing, “Okay, my kids are seeing me work, that’s a positive. I’m setting them up for success.” So starting to shift that mindset.

Or is the guilt because you’re comparing yourself or you think other parents who don’t work are comparing you to them? It’s like, okay, that’s on them. You need to get over it. I’m sorry, that’s your own peace of mind. If other people are having issues, they’re comparing, that’s on them, that’s not on you. I believe first of all, again, it’s where is that guilt coming from? Most of the time it’s coming from somewhere external. Really just shifting the focus on, what are the benefits? There’s so many benefits to being a parent who’s working outside of the home.

Are you communicating that with your children? So if the working mom guilt is because you’re worried about not giving every minute to your children, are you having conversations with them about what’s going on in your life and what’s going on for you? When I pick up my daughter from school, Reese, she always asks me after we talk about her day. She’s like, “So Mom, how was your day? What did you do?” It really changes things.

I’m a believer, this is my own personal belief, that my number one job as a parent, outside of keeping my children safe, is to raise them to become independent adults. That’s my personal belief, and I know that one of the ways I’m doing that is by having outside interests, whether that’s through work. For a couple of reasons. One, it means that I’m not spending every waking moment with my kids. They have learned how to be independent because they don’t have mom next to them at their side all of the time. Then they also see that I have personal interests, and hobbies, and passions, and so it’s setting them up to do the same. Yeah, that’s what I would offer, David.

Wonderful. You serve people in lots of different ways through your business. One, you have weekly videos on Facebook and YouTube. You also speak at corporate events, and you have a coaching or a membership program. Can you tell us a little bit about that and who that might be best suited for?

Yes. The membership program is called The Five Star Society. I started that primarily for women in corporate who may or may not be a mom per se, because everybody has something else outside of their professional world. But it is a monthly program where we get together live on a video call. Where I’m giving them a different topic, doing some training. But then the majority of the call really is what we call co-mentoring. It’s an opportunity for everybody to ask questions and give their professional advice, and share their experiences. So it’s a wonderful community experience. Yes, that’s called The Five Star Society.

Then I do offer, yes, you mentioned the weekly videos. All of this is really easily accessible on my website, but the weekly videos, you can actually sign up to have those delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday. The videos are two to three minutes on either a parenting tip, or leadership, or just anything when it comes to professional and personal success.

All of that is available at your website, www.colleenhauk.com, which we will put in the show notes of course. People can swipe up on their phone and click the link. Colleen, great stuff. You’re making a huge difference int he world. You are.

Thank you.

It’s just so good.

Thank you.

You’re just taking the challenging experiences that you’ve had and helping other people have breakthroughs so they can be successful in their corporate careers, and we need that. My wife is a kindergarten teacher for seventeen years, so she sees the parents who are fragmented in their daily life, and stressed, and overwhelmed, it shows up in her classrooms.

Yes.

So ultimately, you’re not only helping these women and men in their careers, but you’re helping generations. Literally you’re helping generations be more at peace, more integrated, more fully present by the work that you’re doing. That is so powerful, so thank you.

Thank you, David. Thank you for saying that. I hadn’t even necessarily thought that far in advance. When I hit that breaking point in my office, I thought I would have to choose one or the other; work or personal family. That has been my enemy. I just never, ever want anyone to think they have to choose one or the other. That they truly can have both. They can live this ‘and life’, and have financial independence, and have personal fulfillment. I appreciate you inviting me on and giving me the space to share my story and my tips in hopes of helping people see they can live the ‘and life’, and thank you for sharing that for generations to come.

Awesome. All right, www.colleenhauk.com. We will get everybody there and they can learn more about your weekly videos, the membership program, and the opportunity for them to even invite you to be a part of speaking at a corporate event. Thanks so much.

Thank you, David.

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