267: Celebrate Your Success: Fan Favorite Replay

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.

Reflections on the New Year and Leading Lady Events

Hi there, leading ladies, and welcome to today’s episode. I’m actually really excited to share my message today. I am coming off several days of events—it’s just been a Leading Lady event-palooza of networking, education meetings, get-togethers, social events, mastermind calls. It’s been nonstop Leading Lady, and that was to be expected, especially since I kicked off the new year with a vacation with my family. I knew I was coming back to a lot happening. I wasn’t expecting the big snowstorm that hit our region, but while it was a little disruptive to our schedule, I am thankful that it gave me a little bit of a buffer as I then found myself right smack in the middle of all these events and commitments we had been planning for the new year.

The 2024 Ambassador Program

A huge intention I have for 2024 is really amping up my Ambassador Program. The ambassadors are experts in specific industries that I have personally worked with and feel 1000% confident sharing as resources to my clients and to the larger Leading Lady community. These women have been integral in my personal and professional growth and development, and I know they hold the same standard of excellence. I can confidently refer them to others, knowing it will be beneficial for all.

I’ve personally worked with each of these ambassadors for this year and continue to work with them. Many have been ambassadors for many years. We had every single ambassador return for 2024 and added a new ambassador, Gala McCray with Two Arrows Admin—she does bookkeeping and accounting services and is really fantastic. I’ve known her for a long time. My goal for 2024 was to fine-tune the Leading Lady Ambassador program and make sure that not only were we providing resources for the larger community, but also nourishing each other and our businesses by participating in a mastermind together. We go through business strategy, personal and professional goals, finances, relationships, revenue streams—just all the things to support each other in business.

With that mastermind, we also wanted to be sure we were visible to the larger Leading Lady community and providing quality resources. Two big things we implemented for 2024 are: first, offering free and open networking to all. We hosted our first one today (this will air next week), at the end of January. It was absolutely fantastic. I’m buzzing with excitement, energy, and the positive connections we made. Women in business and leadership joined us—maybe they’re not ready to be collective members or aren’t sure, but they were able to come for two hours of networking. It was an electric, positive energy of connection, really embodying what it means to be women supporting women in business and leadership.

We’ll be getting together quarterly, offering these networking events hosted and led by ambassadors. The first one today was hosted by Erin Harrigan and Julie Campbell, and they really knocked it out of the park.

Leadership Series and Workshops

The second thing the ambassadors are hosting this year is the Leadership Series. I’m kicking that off tomorrow with the Vision Board Workshop. If you’re hearing this and thinking, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I missed it,” don’t worry—we have a jam-packed year of amazing workshops and events you can participate in, either face-to-face if you’re local to Annapolis, Maryland, or virtually. Regardless of where you’re located, you’ll be able to tune in, dial in, or watch the replay and gain access to these incredible resources and workshops.

I’m excited about these initiatives. I feel like I’ve been dreaming and envisioning this for years. While 2023 was a year of rest, reflection, and healing, 2024 is all about action. My word for 2024 is “gentle,” meaning I’m not forcing anything—I’m letting things flow. As Gen Z might call it, I’m in my “soft girl era,” tapping into what feels good, what is intuitive, and allowing these dreams and visions to flow in a beautiful, gentle way. I could not be happier about how this is all coming together.

Celebrating Success

At today’s networking event, Julie and Erin asked all attendees to share and celebrate their success or what they’re looking forward to in 2024. I love that they kicked off the event with celebrating success and setting yourself up for a successful year. Starting with celebration is an invitation to pause and take inventory of what’s going well. It’s so easy to step into the new year and immediately jump into goal setting—what’s next to achieve, what’s on the to-do list to crush. As high-achieving women, it’s innate to plan and set goals.

But when we invite ourselves and each other to celebrate, it’s an invitation to pause and reflect on what’s going well. I love that we started the networking event with that—it gave us a moment to say, “I’m not going to announce my next goal; I’m going to share what’s going well, what I’m celebrating.” As we went around the room, all the women celebrated various things in their personal and professional lives. I was towards the end of the group and just sat back, listening to these women celebrate themselves and each other. I started to feel a quiet calmness run through me—not eager to share, but washed over with extreme gratitude to be sitting in a room with incredible, powerful, successful women, gathering at the beginning of the year.

Many had never met before, but everyone immediately stepped into the culture and energy of being a Leading Lady—celebrating the woman next to her.

Building Community and Full Circle Moments

When it came to my turn to share, I had a much different answer than I expected. Having time to listen to everyone, I surprised myself. I shared that when I started my first company in 2004, I was a young mom—a brand new mom. I started my first company ten days before my daughter was born. I was young, scared, green, a total newbie, and didn’t understand anything about business. I didn’t even aspire to be a business owner; it just unfolded, and opportunity presented itself. I took it, but I didn’t have much support, people didn’t take me seriously, and I didn’t have a network or peer group that understood the challenges of being a woman business owner or a new business owner.

It took me a long time to find my people—a lot of experiences finding the wrong people, making mistakes, publicly falling, many bloopers, feeling lonely, lost, isolated, like I was out on an island. Listening to all the women share, I was overcome with joy and gratitude that not only did I find my community—I built it. I built the community, and these women were coming together, experiencing something I desperately wanted for myself 20 years ago.

It was a powerful reflection—a profound moment when you realize everything you dreamed for is right there, happening before your eyes. We don’t often recognize those moments, but to sit in that moment and realize, “This is exactly what I wanted, what I dreamt of 20 years ago, what my heart needed, what my visions told me,” and to sit back and say, “I thought of this, I wanted it, I worked for it, and here it is, and I am celebrating that,” was so powerful. It took my breath away. I was proud, thankful, joyful to experience that and know that I did it.

This podcast episode isn’t a “look at me, I’m so successful,” but more of sitting back and realizing, “Holy cow, this is exactly where I wished I would be, and here I am, living in the moment I dreamed of.” So, before you announce your big goals for 2024, before you look ahead to what’s next, I’m inviting you to sit back, look at your life, count your blessings, and ask: Is this the life you dreamed about? Is it what you wanted? Is this everything you worked for? How are you feeling in this moment? How are you celebrating that you are where you are?

Maybe you’re not exactly where you want to be yet, but instead of thinking about how much farther you have to go, I’m inviting you to sit and say, “Look how far I’ve come,” and celebrate all you’ve done, all you’ve worked for, all you’ve endured, all you’ve experienced. Trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be in this moment.

That was powerful for me. Thank you to the Leading Lady Ambassadors, Erin Harrigan and Julie Campbell, for starting that conversation, for kicking us off with talking about our values, virtues, and celebrations—counting what’s going well in our lives and how far we’ve come. I’m thankful I chose to set these networking events up as ambassador-led. It gave me an opportunity to be a participant in my own community, to sit back and not lead or plan, but fully participate in what they had planned for this morning. It was exactly what I needed.

Advice to My Younger Self and Invitation to Listeners

When I think back to 21-year-old Anne, I think about what that young woman needed and what could have helped her through that time. I feel proud that 42-year-old Alice Ann has this community and that it’s helping other women, regardless of where they are in their leadership or entrepreneurship journey. There was something I knew I needed, and I have worked diligently to create and provide that space for others who could benefit as well. It’s full circle.

My takeaway and invitation to you today is to take a few minutes and celebrate how far you’ve come. If you want to share, post on social media, in the comments of this podcast link, send me a review, or send me an email—I do read and respond to every message. I would love to hear you celebrate how far you’ve come, and I would love to celebrate with you and hold space to continue to champion you. I hope this resonates with you. 2024 is looking good, feeling good, and I can’t wait to share all that we have going on and all that the ambassadors and I will continue to put out there.

Thanks for tuning in for another episode of the Leading Lady podcast. You can find all of the links and information mentioned in this episode at www.leadinglady-coaching.com. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to follow the show so you don’t miss any future episodes. And while you’re there, it would mean the world to me if you would take a few seconds and leave me an honest review. This will allow me to help other high-achieving women find inspiration, connection, and develop strategies to live and lead with purpose and intention. See you here next week.