252: Introducing the NEW Leading Lady Business Hub

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.

Hi there, leading ladies, and welcome to today’s episode.

I have something pretty exciting that I wanna share with you today, because for the past year, I’ve been working with the amazing Jen Howat (she’s one of our new 2025 Leading Lady Ambassadors) to create something that I believe will truly change the way women in business navigate their entrepreneurial journey.

This has definitely been a labor of love, and I’m thrilled to finally tell you all about it. What I’m talking about is the new Leading Lady Business Hub. This is an online membership designed to support women at any stage of their business journey. Whether you’re just getting started, you’re a seasoned entrepreneur, or you’re looking to scale or streamline, the Hub is for you.

I know that if you’ve been following me on social media, Instagram, or in my Facebook group, you might have seen that I’ve dropped a few hints about it here and there, but ladies, it’s finally here. We actually did a soft launch recently, and we are officially opening the doors to all of you on April 26th.

I can’t wait for you to see what we’ve created. Over the last few weeks, I have learned so much from the women who are already in there participating, showing up, asking questions, and using all the resources, about just how powerful and impactful this Hub will be to the members who join us. But before I tell you more about what you can expect, I wanna share the why behind creating the Hub in the first place.

The Early Days of My Business

When I think back to the early days of my business, I can’t help but remember how overwhelming it was. If you read my book, Take the Lead, or if you’ve followed me for any amount of time, maybe you’ve picked up that I started my first business when I was 22 years old, ten days before I gave birth to my first child.

I was juggling so many different roles and responsibilities, trying to build a business I could scale while managing everything else in my life. I felt like I was drowning at times. Most of the time, I felt like I was drowning. I realized that there wasn’t a single place that understood the real challenges I was facing.

I felt very alone in what I was doing. I needed a resource that didn’t just talk about business strategy, but also understood the personal side of running a business, like balancing work, family, and everything in between. I worked my tail off searching for the tools and support I needed to break things down and make them manageable, but nothing out there seemed to really fit what I needed.

There was no one-stop place that gave me direction and practical, actionable tools. Everything felt disjointed, and I was left feeling like I was always a step behind.

I was very lucky in that my husband had a lot of experience running a small business. He had been in business for quite some time, and he ended up being my greatest mentor and supporter through this. But our businesses were very different, and he approached business as a man. He works in construction. I was building a business in childcare, very nurturing, very caring, and we didn’t always see eye to eye on things.

So when I couldn’t go to him for how I was feeling or what I was envisioning, I did a lot of reading on my own. I read a lot of blogs. I talked with moms. I took into consideration what I needed as a mom from that business. Thankfully, the business was childcare. My child was in the program, so I was building my business from the perspective of an educator and the heart of a mom, what a mom would need in that business.

Trial, Error, and Isolation

But I ran into a lot of dead ends. I would hire web developers that couldn’t quite capture what I needed, and I spent a lot of money on marketing and things that I thought were gonna get my business out there, but didn’t really hit the mark. I had to do things a lot by trial and error. It was frustrating and very isolating.

Like I said, I felt very alone a lot of the time as I was building a business and also being a new mom. As a new mom, that can be very isolating in itself. But I don’t think I knew anybody that was a new mom and a new business owner, so I did feel very lonely and very lost a lot of the time.

Over the years, I learned a lot. I tried a lot. I failed a lot, and I tried again. But the most important lesson I’ve learned through all of this is that thriving in your business cannot happen if you’re just surviving in life.

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Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Leading Lady podcast. I’m Heidi Schmidt, Leading Lady Ambassador, and owner of Heidi Schmidt Creative, a content marketing and social media marketing agency. I help reduce the overwhelm of marketing for business owners like you, and I would love to connect. Reach out to me at www.heidijschmidt.com, or on Instagram @heidischmidtcreative.

Surviving Instead of Thriving

Even going through business several years in, I was feeling very burnt out, very tapped out, stretched too thin. Again, I talk a lot about this in my book, Take the Lead, but I wasn’t thriving. I was barely surviving. My marriage was falling apart. I didn’t feel like I was being a good mom. I didn’t have friendships that really built me up or inspired me or supported me.

I found myself engaging in just a lot of toxic behaviors and self-sabotaging. What I learned is to be successful in business, we really need to feel supported in all areas of our lives. You can have business strategies and processes and systems, but if you’re not taking care of yourself, your health and your wellness, your mental wellness, if you don’t have relationships that support you or places where you can be vulnerable and raw and messy, you’re not going to survive.

You’re just going through the motions, and I think this is where a lot of businesses fail.

Why I Created the Leading Lady Business Hub

So that’s why I created the Leading Lady Business Hub. I wanted it to be a place I wish existed when I was struggling. It’s a space for high-achieving women to find tools, strategies, and support to scale their businesses, all while maintaining balance in their personal lives.

We don’t have to choose between sanity and scaling, okay? You can be successful in business and still have work-life balance. Whether you’re new to business, a seasoned pro, or you’re looking to expand, the Hub is loaded with resources, expert guidance, and a community of women who get it. I’ve invited the Leading Lady Ambassadors as the experts in this community to share the tools, resources, experiences, and wisdom that they have.

They’re vetted. Like I said, I’ve gone through a lot of trial and error finding the right person for the job in so much of what I’ve had to outsource in my business as I’ve grown and scaled. But also finding the right experts to support me in other areas of my life, like health and wellness, mental wellness, balance, spirituality.

We’re whole people. We’re not just what we do. We’re not just what we produce. Someone once said to me, “We’re not human doings, we’re human beings.” And so the idea that you can build your business just focusing on business operations, visibility, finances, the marketing piece, the customer experience, the product, without taking into consideration who you are, the person running the business behind the scenes, the face of the business, the person doing all the things in your business, that you’re not taking care of that person, yourself. Ultimately, you’re not going to achieve sustainable success.

Start With the Strategic Planning Wheel

So before we open our doors, I want to give you something that can start making an impact today. If you haven’t already, head over to my website and download the Strategic Planning Wheel. Actually, I’m gonna drop the link in the show notes. But this is a tool that I created to help you audit your life and business.

I’ve done other episodes about this tool before, so if you’ve already done it, you’re already off to a great start. But if you haven’t done it, this simple tool helps you pinpoint the areas where you’re thriving and the areas where you need more support. When you download the tool, you’ll get a series of emails that walks you through how to use it so that you can go through this audit yourself.

But I’m always available if you want to talk it through and have some guidance on how to use this tool and really create an action plan so that you can implement it. I use this wheel with all of my clients, and I promise it is a game changer all on its own. It helps you gain clarity and direction, but you do it, and then when the Hub opens, you’ll be ready to dive right in with focus.

So again, I’ll drop it in the show notes, and you can download it today, and I encourage you to do a quick audit on your life and your business to see where you could use a little more satisfaction. The wheel breaks it down into your financial satisfaction, your business operations, your visibility (which is your messaging and your marketing), your customer experience, and the products and services that you offer.

But then it also talks about your personal and professional development, your relationships, both social and intimate relationships, and your health and wellness. It just really helps you kind of zoom out and look at who you are as a whole person in and outside of your business.

I am so excited to welcome you all into the Leading Lady Business Hub when it does open on April 26th. So I just encourage you to stay tuned for more episodes where I’ll share even more details about what’s going on inside the Hub and how it can support you. This is a little bit shorter of an episode. I wanted to just make this announcement that this is coming and just give you insight as to why it was created.

You Don’t Have to Do This Alone

We were not meant to do business alone, and that is a lesson that I had to learn early on in my business. Everything I’ve done in Leading Lady has been from the perspective of what I needed, as I have had over 20 years as an entrepreneur, a mother, a wife, and a community member. All the things, managing, balancing all of those different roles.

So I hope that if you’re listening to this, your takeaway is that you don’t have to do this alone. The Hub is created to make coaching and tools and resources and access to experts accessible and affordable. So until then, until it’s open, I hope you take a moment for yourself, download the Strategic Planning Wheel, and get ready to transform your business and your life.

Thanks for listening. Like I said, I do read and respond to every email that’s sent to me, so if this is a tool that you’re ready to start and you’re looking forward to joining the Hub, shoot me a message. Let me know how I can be a support to you, and what specific tools and resources you’re looking for.

And let me just remind you that we’re here, and that you don’t have to do this alone. Until next time, take the lead.

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 be able 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.