251: Behind the Scenes of a Collaborative Book: Advice from the Authors of We Lead: Volume 2 (Part 4)

Hi there. You’re listening to the Leading Lady podcast. I’m your host, AliceAnne Loftus, and I’m a certified professional coach specializing in leadership and work-life balance. I work with clients to shift their limiting beliefs, insecurities, and self-doubt. This podcast will be filled with tools and strategies to help high-achieving women like you feel connected, empowered, and in the lead of your life, both personally and professionally. Let’s transform your life starting now. Lead yourself, the rest will follow.

AliceAnne: Hi there, leading ladies, and welcome to today’s episode. I’m joined by four authors from We Lead: Volume 2. This will be closing out our author interviews, and I’ve really enjoyed doing this, getting to chat with each of the authors and learn more about their processes and their experiences of participating in the book.

And so today, I’m joined by Andrea Neville, Megan Vaughan, Dr. Sara Poldmae, and Heidi Schmidt. Ladies, if we could just go through and if you could introduce yourselves and your chapter, that would be fantastic. I’m gonna start with Dr. Sara Poldmae.

Sara: Sure. As AliceAnne said, I’m Dr. Sara Poldmae. I am a doctor of acupuncture and Chinese medicine. I am also a certified functional medicine practitioner and a yoga instructor. My chapter is “On the Brink of Burnout,” and yeah, I’m excited to be here.

AliceAnne: Yeah, thanks for joining us. Megan.

Megan: Hi. Thank you for having me. I’m Megan Vaughan. I am the owner and founder of Vaughan Cheese Counter & Bar in Rockbridge, Maryland. I’m a certified cheese professional and the author of Chapter 22, “The Best Anxiety in the World: The Freedom of Passion-Led Productivity.”

AliceAnne: Love it. Andrea.

Andrea: Hello. I’m Andrea Neville. I am a spiritual teacher working with skills as a psychic, a medium, a channel, and what I love doing is helping people grow beyond what they see right in front of their face. And to that end, I contributed Chapter 13, “Discovering the Power of Yes.”

AliceAnne: Yeah, so exciting. Thank you. And last but not least, Heidi.

Heidi: Hi. I’m Heidi Schmidt. I own Heidi Schmidt Creative. We are a social media and content marketing agency. My chapter is Chapter 2, “Building an Authentic Online Following: You Don’t Need 10,000 Followers for Online Success,” and really, it should’ve been business success. But yeah, that’s something that I’ve struggled with, and I hope people realize that you don’t need huge followings to be successful in business.

AliceAnne: Yeah. That’s definitely a lesson I’ve taken away from this, so thanks for working with me. All right, so ladies, I’m gonna go through a series of questions, and I’ve loved these interview questions because the authors have been so real and so vulnerable. What I’ve learned from this is many of us do not like writing, and so it was so funny to have 25 authors, and they’re like, “Well, I’m not really a writer, but here I am in a collaborative book.”

What Readers Can Take Away From Each Chapter

So just really looking forward to hearing what you have to say, and we’re gonna start with question number one. What are you hoping that readers take away from your chapter? Sara, we’ll start with you.

Sara: It’s a great question. I think when I initially set out, and I guess it’s true today, I just want women to know that sometimes we hit rock bottom. Sometimes we are burnt out, on the brink of burnout, or full-on burnout, and we can recover from this, and there are women around us feeling the exact same way.

So sometimes I think when we’re overwhelmed and burnt out as women, the messaging is that we need to do more, and what I realized was I needed to do a lot less and allow my body to recover.

AliceAnne: Oh, that’s powerful. That’s powerful. And I’ve worked with you, talked with you at great length about burnout. I remember coming to you last year, getting over my fear of acupuncture, and just like, “I’m exhausted, burning the candle at both ends.” And so this is a great message to share, especially with high-achieving women in business, because we kind of move towards that burnout phase as a natural tendency.

Sara: Yeah, for sure.

AliceAnne: How about you, Megan? What are you hoping people take away from your chapter?

Megan: Well, I think that it is very easy as women in any sort of business field, as entrepreneurs, to set yourself these goals and feel like you are beholden to these goals, and to feel like they’re so precious that you can’t ever change them.

And I would hope that people reading my chapter, one, know that your story is important, whatever your story is. But two, that it is okay and it is important to really look at what your goals are and not just address the path of getting there, but sometimes the goal itself could be completely different. And to not ever be afraid and not ever feel like that goal has been set in stone, to change it, because sometimes that could get you to an even better place and one that you’re much happier in pursuing.

AliceAnne: And you’re right, sometimes we get so fixated on the goal that we forget, why was this the goal?

Megan: Well, I think it can feel so natural to say, “This has been my goal. This is what I’ve wanted to do since forever, since I was a kid, since whatever.” And what if that’s not your goal anymore? I mean, I hear it even now. People ask my kids, “What do you wanna be when you grow up?” And it’s just my hope that their answer most of the time is, “I just wanna be happy. I just wanna do something I love.”

Don’t get so locked into something, even from a very young age, that you can’t change it. Doesn’t matter how far along you are in the process. You wanna change it, change it.

AliceAnne: Love that. Andrea?

Andrea: Well, perfect segue from Megan, because boy, are you speaking my language. What I hope to share from my chapter is that idea of embracing courageous change, because that’s what life is. That’s what growing is. And let me be very clear, people may hear the modalities that I use to work and put me in a box, or think this is personal or professional, and it is neither. It is all of the above.

And in each state, especially as professional women, one influences the other, and we need to take care of each aspect of ourselves in order to make that happen. And have the ability, when everything inside of us is screaming no, which sometimes happens for many different reasons, to find that place within where we know that we can take this unknown step, and then what may be the possibilities that unfold before us. It’s exciting. It’s courageous.

AliceAnne: Love that. And Heidi?

Escaping the Comparison Trap

Heidi: So there is a huge comparison trap that we all fall into as business owners. And the biggest takeaway that I hope people get from my chapter is that we need to not let vanity numbers in business define our success. I kinda tell my story about how I fell into marketing, my passion for content. But really, I found success, and I didn’t have a huge online following. So it’s about not allowing yourself to let these metrics that ultimately don’t necessarily matter define whether or not you’re successful in business.

When we get so caught up in that, especially the comparison trap, it just kinda stifles us. And when we define our own success, the world is our oyster.

AliceAnne: Do you think that that translates… I mean, just because I have teenagers and young adult kids, too, do you think that that comparison bleeds outside… I mean, now we know it bleeds outside of even just business. What we see on social media isn’t really true success. It can be fluffed.

Heidi: It’s a filter. And I have an 11-year-old son, and we’ve definitely kept him out of the social media sphere. We are trying to as best we can, because ultimately we know that, I mean, getting a little off-topic here, but there is so much detriment to not just our mental health, how we compare ourselves to others, and how we hold ourselves back because of that comparison, but also to the younger generation.

How are we defining success based on something that we know is a filter for someone else’s… You don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes in someone else’s life. It’s all a filter, and I try to remember that, and I try to tell my clients that you don’t know. Yeah, the people that have 200,000 followers, they probably got there because they have the time to post five times a day.

AliceAnne: That, or they bought them.

Heidi: Or they bought them. Exactly. You don’t know. So allowing yourself to be defined by how many followers you do or don’t have, it’s such a vanity metric. And you don’t know what the person that you’re comparing yourself to has going on.

How Writing Shaped Their Leadership Styles

AliceAnne: I love that. Thank you. So my next question, ladies, is how did writing your chapter deepen your understanding of your own leadership style? I’ll start with you, Sara.

Sara: Oh, wow, that’s a good question. I think what it made me realize is that clarity is kindness. So allowing my staff to know what I was struggling with was really, really helpful, so asking for help in areas that maybe I didn’t always need help, and explaining why, and allowing that transparency.

I think writing the book made me realize how important it was to have a team I could depend on. And also, when you’re exhausted and you’re asking things of people that you don’t usually ask, it can be clear who you can depend on, who is willing to be a team player and pick up what you may consider your slack.

So I think reflecting on just how exhausted I was, the book really helped me to look back on that time and say, “Wow, I really was…” You know. It’s really nice to be able to be like, wow, these are the people that helped pull me through, and these were the people that thankfully are no longer in my business world.

And sometimes when you’re in the midst of doing business as usual, you don’t realize it. But when you need more of people, you see who’s willing to bring their best self when you’re maybe not at your best. So that was really helpful. The book brought that to light for me.

AliceAnne: That’s powerful. Megan?

Megan: For me, writing this chapter helped to really put words to how impactful it was for me to look inwardly at what I wanted. I had been, for my whole professional life, told by everybody else what I was exceptional at, what I was real good at, and that defined my goals. And it took a crazy traumatic experience, which was the premature birth of my daughter, for me to get a major gut check, and really look at myself and say, “What do I want? Okay, maybe I’m good at all these things, but what do I want?”

And the process of writing the chapter helped me to see with greater clarity how incredibly important that was, and how needed it was to get me to a place that ultimately is making me happier than I would have been without that. Yeah, it was a wild ride, man.

AliceAnne: I love that. Your chapter, I was shaking in that chapter. You really shared some tough stuff there.

Megan: The process of writing it, really, truly, I was crying through half of the writing of it. And I found that in writing it, I was really like, “Okay, this is important and was very needed.” And it wasn’t something I realized that I needed until I started writing it.

AliceAnne: That’s usually how it goes. We go through the process and we’re like, “Ooh. That’s how I got here.”

Megan: Yeah. That’s flexing some muscles I didn’t know needed to be flexed.

AliceAnne: Andrea, how about you? How did writing your chapter deepen your understanding of your own leadership style?

Andrea: Okay. It required me, and that’s a very specific word, it required me to be vulnerable with myself. I am not one that shares my story, because my work keeps me very focused in service, and so I tend to make my story smaller, really. I keep it to myself, so to speak. So I had to get vulnerable about that. And I had to, and these are “had tos,” I’m hearing my grandma, I had to share the writing with others through this process, which healed some really old wounds.

AliceAnne: Ooh, yeah.

Andrea: And it also helped me with the way that I was approaching my business, which included my assistants, my staff, the whole thing. I took a look at it again with the fresh memory of telling my story of how overwhelming life was, how I was working three jobs, and I thought, “Oh, am I here again?”

And then that, of course, links me, in the way that I see the world, back into the patterns that we all have in our lives, and then making the conscious, courageous decision. And I do have the gift of knowing sometimes what my options are, so I know what they are in advance. I’ve seen them for years. But just because I know what may happen, what an opportunity is, it doesn’t mean that I go running to it.

So this really helped me say, “Listen, girlfriend, who are you gonna be? What type of leader are you going to be? Are you stepping into the role? Do it now or choose not to, but call it.”

AliceAnne: Own it.

Andrea: Yes.

AliceAnne: Heidi?

Heidi: For me, with my leadership style, I had always felt more like an imposter, and writing this chapter made me realize I am an expert. I have been doing this a really long time, and I have a variety of experiences that have led me to this moment and where I am. I don’t need to shy away from that expertise.

I don’t need to feel like I’m not worthy because, just like I said, I don’t have the biggest following. There are reasons for that, because I invest so much time in my clients that I neglect myself. So it gave me a sense of confidence that I didn’t realize that I was missing until I wrote it, and I was like, “Wow.”

You know when you’re writing and you think, “Why is anyone going to care? Why does my story matter?” And I had to get over that hurdle, and that was a big thing, and it kind of helped shape my own leadership. People do wanna work for me. I do have a team. They care what I think. They care what I offer them. It was kind of kicking imposter syndrome to the curb.

AliceAnne: Yeah. I hear that a lot. So often as high-achieving women, we look at what our next goal is, and it can feel so far away, and we’re like, “I’m never gonna hit that goal. I’m never gonna hit that goal.” But when we tell the story of how we got to where we currently are, we’re like, “Holy crap, I’ve done a lot. I have been through some things.”

And it’s very validating to see all of your experiences and your perspective and how that led you to where you are today. Like, wow, I really have come a long way.

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The Hardest and Most Rewarding Parts of Writing

AliceAnne: Okay. Next question as we kind of wrap this up. What was the most challenging part of writing this chapter and the most rewarding part? Sara?

Sara: I think the most challenging part is considering myself not a writer, and just finding the time to do something that does not come easily for you. It’s very easy to put it off when you have 17 other things on your plate. So I think that the time and feeling like, “Oh my gosh, I have no idea what I’m doing,” were two big ones. And then the most rewarding was finishing it. Just saying, “Okay, I did it.”

AliceAnne: I’m so glad that you were part of it. And you’re not the first. Like I said, out of 25 authors, more than half of them are like, “I’m not a writer.” And I’m like, “But now you’re a bestselling author.” So guess what? You’re a writer. Megan?

Megan: For me, the hardest part, I think, was tweaking internally how intricately linked my daughter was with this restaurant that I ran. My daughter’s name is Evelyn, and the restaurant is Eleven Madison Park. And as Andrea mentioned, having other people read this for you revealed a lot about how crisscrossed everything was for me.

Because as I wrote it all down, I sent it off to a few people to proof check, and apparently only one person caught it, which was my sister. She caught that numerous times I had actually written Evelyn Madison Park instead of Eleven Madison Park. And it clearly showed how linked together everything was for me, that I was literally screwing up the name of the restaurant with my daughter’s name.

And ultimately in tweaking it, I decided to leave one in. I don’t know if people caught that or not, but I left one in intentionally, because it was very clearly something that was sticking in my head. And so the hardest thing for me was working, while doing the process and then afterward, to kind of unravel and untangle that, to see where my work ended and my life as a mom began, right?

But then one of the most rewarding things has been hearing people’s reaction to reading it. Just the other day, someone at my restaurant was sitting and reading the chapter while she was there, ‘cause we have a number of books out for solo diners to sit and read while they’re enjoying their time with us, and she was sobbing at the table.

And I was chatting with her, and she also had a premature daughter, and she was like, “This was my story, too.” And that felt very real, and it felt like it was more than just changing my goals and writing down my story. It was hopefully putting language to a lot of people’s stories, and I’ve heard that from a lot of people, and that feels pretty awesome.

AliceAnne: Yeah. Our stories connect us. They connect us. I said this in the last interview, but I’ve had so many women read the book and say, “Gosh, I thought I was the only one. I thought I was the only one that went through that.”

I say it all the time, but in our community, you will find women that are going through, have gone through, or will go through something similar to what we’re experiencing. And it’s through sharing those stories that we realize we’re not alone, nor are we meant to be alone.

Megan: I think it’s also getting the story out there that you wish you had heard before your story was created.

AliceAnne: Yeah. Andrea, what was the most challenging part of writing this chapter and the most rewarding?

Andrea: The challenging part was writing my story in a way that reads like a story. I’m sure we all have newsletters and content and teachings and information that we’re putting out, and we’re comfortable with that. But to then try to take these memories and put them out there, which was actually quite fun for me once I let myself open up to some of these memories, was very challenging for me. So much so that I will admit the way that I had to start was backwards.

I was able to put together the practice of this. I knew what my topic was. I knew what I wanted to share with everyone without a doubt, and so I put the practice together first and then filled in the story. And I didn’t tell anyone. I hear you all saying your sisters knew, and nobody knew. So I also had to deal with that idea of having my team who knew what was going on, but feeling alone, right?

And then getting vulnerable. It was a very cathartic experience for me, and so the most rewarding part of it then became the fact that I did it. I did it. Thank you, next. Really, I have such gratitude for this opportunity and for the absolute courageous change that showed up in my life through me saying yes to this opportunity. It’s an opportunity to change my life. Can’t wait. Thank you.

AliceAnne: Heidi, most challenging, most rewarding?

Heidi: I think the most challenging part was figuring out what story I wanted to tell. I kinda knew the goal, but how do I narrow down this journey that’s brought me here to a story that’s worth telling? And also getting over that imposter syndrome, like, “Oh, no one’s gonna care about my story.” That was really challenging for me. But the most rewarding was I’m a published author.

AliceAnne: You’re a bestselling published author.

Heidi: Bestselling published author. I remember when I was a little girl, I used to just sit at my family’s computer and write stories. And when I looked back and was like, “Wow, my life brought me here, and now I’m a bestselling author,” that’s pretty powerful, to remember back to having those dreams that I always thought were impossible, or that I wasn’t good enough, and then just accomplishing that. That’s been the most rewarding.

Parting Words: Community, Confidence, and Saying Yes

AliceAnne: Yeah. Thank you for participating. Thank you for sharing your story. These books wouldn’t exist without all of you amazing authors, so thank you. Thanks for showing up for yourself and for us.

Andrea: Thank you for having us.

AliceAnne: Oh, absolutely. It wouldn’t exist without you. So as we close out, are there any parting words that you would like to leave with our listeners, other than, if you haven’t bought the book, buy the book, and if you have read the book, please leave a review? Shameless plug there, but what parting words do you have for our listeners? Sara.

Sara: I think the overarching message is that when we are riding high, or really low on the brink of burnout, we need community for both, because it’s lonely when you’re celebrating your wins alone, and it’s also lonely when you’re struggling. So don’t do it alone.

AliceAnne: Don’t do it alone. Yeah. Grab a business bestie. Find your community. Find your tribe. Find your people. Megan.

Megan: I love that so much, Sara, and also be inside yourself at the same time. It’s easy in all of our fields, all the varying fields, to rely on everybody else’s confidence. So find your besties who get you, and also be inside yourself and settle into that, because that’s pretty awesome too.

AliceAnne: Love that perspective. Dang. Andrea.

Andrea: Yeah. It was really nice to have a community of people to celebrate with, so I also concur with that. And I think just don’t be afraid to say yes, ‘cause you never know where each yes leads you.

AliceAnne: Yeah. That’s powerful. Heidi.

Heidi: I think the biggest takeaway is just have confidence in yourself. Don’t let others define your success. Thinking back, and I’m not sure this came through in my chapter, but so much of my success came from my community and the power of word-of-mouth referrals. Use your network, and let those relationships really define your success more so than anything else.

AliceAnne: Well, ladies, thank you for your time. Like I said, thanks for being in the book. Thanks for being on the podcast this morning. I appreciate you all beyond measure, so thank you.

Megan: Thank you so much. Thanks, AliceAnne.

AliceAnne: Thanks. Until next time, take the lead.

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