Episode 233: You Can Be a Great Mom and Build Big Things | Amanda Foust | Coach & Creator of the Highest Potential Planner
Amanda Foust is a certified coach, marketing agency founder, and creator of the Highest Potential Planner. She joins Kara for a candid conversation about mindset coaching for women, building multiple businesses while parenting four kids, and what it takes to wake up to your life - and take bold action. They dive into personal development for women, redefining success, and the power of intentional habits. Amanda shares how her coaching practice and agency have evolved, why relationships are everything in entrepreneurship, and how she uses her own planner to align with purpose. This is an inspiring interview full of practical insights on career development, leadership, and choosing a purpose-driven path.
“It’s time to Wake Up To Your Life. Too many people are sleeping on the great life that is waiting for them.”
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Follow along using the Transcript
00:00 – Coaching, Curiosity, and the Power of Relationships
04:30 – Creating the Highest Potential Planner
05:30 – Delegation, ROI, and Finding the Right Support
11:20 – Childhood Clues: Amanda’s Entrepreneurial Roots
14:00 – Discovering Coaching as a Career Path
18:20 – How Coaching Transformed Her Parenting
21:30 – Wake Up to Your Life: Amanda’s New Mission
24:45 – Lessons From Running a Relational Marketing Agency
28:50 – Letting Go of a Misaligned Client
32:00 – Building Businesses From the Midwest
34:10 – Habits, Growth, and Intentional Living
37:30 – What It Means to Be a Powerful Lady
I am a huge proponent of if you don't know if I'm someone who does. And so that's pretty much what I did the entire time of developing the planner was I didn't know a manufacturer that I could trust, but I knew someone who did, so I reached out to them and I didn't know necessarily how to design and Adobe, but I knew someone who did, so I hired them.
That's Amanda Faust. I'm Kara Duffy, and this is The Powerful Ladies Podcast.
Welcome to The Powerful Ladies Podcast. Thank you for having me. I love it when guests refer future guests. And Julie, as soon as she finished her episode, was like you have. To talk to Amanda. She, I'm gonna literally quote what she said for her submission. She runs a su, super successful copywriting and social media agency while parenting four kids, three of whom are adopted.
She retired. Her husband, she's amazing, and she's a coach. Aww, that's so sweet. So that is a lot on your plates. Before we jump in and start talking about all those things. Let's tell everybody your name, where you are in the world, and if there's anything else you're up to that I missed.
Yeah, so my name's Amanda Faust.
I live about an hour outside of Indianapolis, Indiana. And what was the other question?
Anything that you're up to that I missed that we didn't give you in that little intro?
Yeah. No, I. My husband's an entrepreneur too, so we both do that. And I homeschool one of my kids, so just really busy around here.
But I always like to say I'm intentionally full instead of busy, because it's all with intentions
yeah. And it's a great segue, jumping right into the planner that you have. What is this planner? Where did it come from, and how has it changed your life, let alone anyone else who's used it?
Yeah, so I'm the founder of the highest Potential Planner, and it would never, I never stood out to do a planner, but I loved planners. I was definitely one of those people that had tried all the planners for a while. Like early in my motherhood, I had this job working for a website for moms, and I did copy for them in content creation as one of my clientele.
And so I. I got sent planners to try all the time, like these companies would send planners and say, Hey, will you try this out and feature it on your website so moms can have these planners? And so I was like, yeah, this is a great gig. I get free stuff, I get to write about it. It's great. And since planners were one of those things, I got to try out so many and I realized that there were some good ones for sure, but none of them had everything I wanted.
And I felt like they were either, they either took too long to fill out where I felt like I had to. I just couldn't maintain it, or they just didn't go deep enough. So it would just be like a calendar to-do list. That's it. And I really love to be intentional with my time. And so I found the High Performance Planner, which is from Brennan Burchard, and he's who I'm certified through as a coach.
And so I would often recommend that planner because I'm like he's who I'm certified from. He obviously know, knows what he is talking about, and so I would recommend this and people would buy it all the time. Through my recommendation. Then I had somebody tell me I had multiple people tell me it just took them too long to do.
They couldn't maintain it. But then I had another person say, why don't you have your own planner? You get all these people to buy his pointer. And I'm still a huge fan of Bernard Baard for sure. But. They're like, you should be making money off of this. And I'm like, you're right. I could, and I've done enough with planners, I'll just create my own.
So it was really important to me that it could do a couple things. One is that somebody could fill it out in five minutes in the morning, and the other one is that it had a balance of being really like intentional with tasks and that checklist, but also with mindset and making sure that you were able to define success, define how you wanna feel.
I think long term and short term in one sitting. And again, just do it all in a really quick morning routine. So that's what I did.
And people often think about making a planner, like it's a fiscal thing, like where's it gonna get printed? How's it get managed? Was that the easiest part for you?
Was designing it and getting it ready? The harder part was finding the logistics harder in this process.
Yeah, so one lucky thing is that I'm all about relationships especially in entrepreneurship 'cause it can be pretty lonely. And I am a huge proponent of, if you don't know, find someone who does.
And so that's pretty much what I did the entire time of developing the planner was I didn't know a manufacturer that I could trust, but I knew someone who did. So I reached out to them and I didn't know necessarily how to design in Adobe, but I knew someone who did. So I. But hire them. There's a book by Dan Sullivan called Who Not How, and it always talks about like you don't need to know the how if you know the who.
And so I'm, that's what I did is I had it in my head and I made sure I got the who's around me to make it happen.
Let's dive into that a little bit more because I think that's really juicy. I also a big proponent of telling my clients to delegate everything that's not in their zone of genius and to build.
Their team, whether it's actual employees or freelancers or mentors, all the things that we need. There's been a couple conflicts coming up when I've been talking to clients about that because they're like, great, I wanna delegate this. It's not my zone of genius. I hate it. I don't wanna do it. And I'm like, okay, you don't get anything really for free.
Like when you do, it's like amazing miracle. And I'm trying to prepare them to say finding your who to delegate to does require either. Time to invest in them, to train them if whether they're a volunteer or entry level person, or it requires making the investment. How do you decide when to make the investment to delegate into one of your who's.
No, that's a really good question. So a few of the examples I gave with the planner were not a financial investment. Now, the person who did the Adobe design was definitely a financial investment, but the person who just recommended a man manufacturer connected me to them All. That was just from a relationship where I've served them really well.
And then when I have a question, they served me and I think there's kind of two parts to your question. One is that like when you go in and you're meeting somebody and you are just thinking, how can I provide value to them? How can I serve them with no agenda whatsoever? You may not ever need something from that person for years to come, but when you do, they remember.
Oh, she did this for me. She served me, and then they often will provide that back. So just leaving like little, I always say like planting little seeds of value for those situations where you may not have the money or time to invest in something, but you maybe did years ago and it's coming back. So that's one way.
As far as the financial and time investment, I would say making sure that people use this phrase a lot and I have a love hate relationship, but it's the ROI, right? Like the return on investment. Sometimes I don't like that because I think that people define it. Wrong in some ways. Like they think that return on investment needs to be immediate.
They measure it wrong. So it's not always a healthy perspective, but in some ways it is. And so being able to define what would this, what would success look like for me to hire this person? What would I need to make in return? What time do it, should I save in return? Being able to define that really clearly and making sure you're on the same page as the person you're trying to hire is really important when it comes to making that hiring decision.
I wanna jump all the way back to 8-year-old you. Where were you in the world and did she imagine that this is a life that you would have today?
It's funny you say that. I have an 8-year-old and I was just sitting with him on the couch the other day. And I, he was talking about what he wanted to be when he grew up, and he was like, I don't know what I wanna be.
And I said, you know what? It's totally fine because what I am, I didn't even know existed in the world at eight years old. What I do for a living was not even on my radar at eight because it, it wasn't a thing like doing digital marketing online and coaching and doing all that. Coaching might have started to be a thing, but not to the extent it is now.
And 8-year-old me thought that I would do something more in like music and being a teacher. I wanted to be a music teacher. But then I look back and I see patterns leading up to what I do now that I just didn't know. And like I was the person always trying to like sell things and make money and that kind of thing.
In the, I remember being at school and I was in fifth grade, so I wasn't eight, so I was probably closer to 10 or 11. I remember trying to sell things outta my locker for, to people that I thought they, they would want and making trades and like talking on the playground about stuff and just I don't know, just selling really.
I wasn't really about the money, it was just like the challenge I think that I was drawn to. Let's, people at that age don't even have money really. So it was only like a dollar here, 50 cents here, but it was more just wow, like I created something that somebody wanted, or I found something that somebody wanted, in some ways I was marketing then, but then I also was always the person that people came to, to talk through their problems or their frustrations or things like that. And coaching was a natural piece as well. Even being that little,
I think it's so amazing and it shows up time and time again that the easiest way to make money is doing what you do without thinking about it.
And so the sooner we can find what is that thing that you can, how do we just get you paid for who you are as a natural human? It makes such a shift. And people talk about is it an alignment? I'm like, it's not even like an alignment question, it's just a exactly what you said. What do your friends call you for?
What do you do on a Saturday? 'cause you can't help yourself. Yeah. There's the things that we have that are so valuable, we usually don't give any credit to because they're. So obvious to us.
No, it's so true. I was also going back to fifth grade again. I don't know, I think fifth, I have two fifth graders, so I think that's why fifth grade's on my mind.
But I remember I was telling my husband recently, we got assigned something in fifth grade and it was just to write a paragraph of like persuading someone to do something. That's all it was. It's like, how do you persuade someone? Quick paragraph. I ended up writing a whole commercial. I had a jingle. I presented it in front of the entire class.
Like I just, I went like way above the call, but it was because it was natural to me. I was like, I know exactly what to do. And was that a form of marketing in a way? Like a jingle? All the things, people remembered it. So it's just fun to, to look back on younger you where you didn't even know.
'cause that, to your point, it was just a natural part. Yeah.
And that's a, I crack up about when people get so paralyzed to sell. Because I'm like let's just go back to when you were 16 and you were convincing your parents to do something that you knew they would say no to. Like you showed up with an entire objections and responses list, like you, it was going to happen.
I'm like, that's all it is. That's so good. I love that. So when you, how did you get into the coaching journey? I know you said that you were working with Brendan in his program, but was there an aha moment in your life where you said, I need to be a coach, or that, that sounds really interesting to me. Or did it just one day you're like, oh, like I didn't know that was an option.
To answer the question both. So in college I was looking for a part-time job, like every college student, right? And our, the university I went to actually had a coaching department and they offered free coaching to students, which I was like, what? And I, sorry, I'm like stumbling. But I was so excited to hear that and I couldn't believe that people weren't using it.
They were saying I like went to sign up. I thought there'd be like a waiting list if everybody had the option to do this. And they were saying how nobody was really taking 'em up on it yet, and they wanted help spreading the word. And so I'm like, okay, I would love to experience what coaching is.
And so I was a client and got coached. I was actually trying to figure out, I was almost through a degree in elementary education. The only other thing I had to do was student teaching. So I did everything. I actually ended up. You have to test in to become a teacher at my university, you can't just take the classes and get good grades, like you have to apply to be one.
And I got like the top score of anyone they'd ever had. So if anything, yeah, it's one of those things I forget about because I never pursued it, but I was like, you think that would be, oh my gosh, this is it. I need to do it. And it was weird because I didn't have that feeling when I found that out.
When they said I, I got the top score instead of being excited, I was like. I don't think I even wanna do this. Yes. Like I don't think I wanna be a teacher, which was so bizarre. 'cause I thought I wanted to be a teacher and so I went to get coached and I was like, Hey, this, I just got this top score. This should be making me feel amazing.
I don't, I'm actually realizing I don't even wanna teach and I don't know what I wanna do. And they coached me and I ended up deciding on a leadership degree and I minored in education 'cause mine as well. I had everything. But through that process, I just remember thinking less about what I was learning about myself, which I was learning a lot about myself, but instead thinking more about, wait.
This is a job, like someone's just talking me through life and asking me questions and getting me to be curious and learn about myself. And I was like, I wanna be in mass seat. Like I wanna do what they're doing. And the person actually who coached me at the time ended up developing a whole certification program on her own through the university at first and then on her own after.
And I did that. That was my first certification. She called me up and was when she had it and said, I want you to do this because you had expressed interest when you were my client, and I want you to be one of the first ones. So I was in her first cohort. And then I ended up coaching people and realizing that I needed to level up because I was working with high performers, not knowing that was even a thing.
I didn't know what a high performer was. I didn't know that terminology, but I was working and attracting people who were like flying through my program. I was like, okay, they're like at a different level than I am, so how could I be their coach at this point? And so I went and got certified through Brennan Burchard and Upleveled all of my training at that point and just keep continuing to learn.
How has being a coach changed your life in unexpected ways?
Yeah, that's a great question. So I would say being a coach, changing my life, honestly, the first thing that comes to mind is my parenting. I know that might sound like a weird response. Yeah. But it's totally transformed the way I parent, or what, I guess I was a coach before I parented, but it's transformed the way I viewed parenting and when I became one, I was like able to really apply what I knew as a coach to the way that I show up for my kids.
And just equipping them for their adult life. I think so many times we parent our kids as kids, which, they do need to be kids, but we forget that like we're raising adults. Like I don't wanna raise kids who get into the world and don't know how to have emotional reg regulation or don't know who they are or don't have an identity or, all the things that we, or at least I went through.
And I had great parents, but they just didn't know what to do in that area. I just love being able to apply what I learned to them and watching them learn and hopefully be set up for more success than I was.
It's amazing how many things I've learned through coaching and all the other things I'm sure you love too, like the habits and neuroscience and all the things that Yeah, all those things create success paths essentially, and there's so many of them that just aren't taught anywhere. Like I think maybe now EQ is being discussed in school, but there's so many things for adulthood that, and to your point, just being great humans that aren't in traditional curriculums anywhere that I just, we're missing such an opportunity to allow people to figure out what they want, I know I'm speaking to someone who's in the same seat I'm in, often of just wishing people could find that happiness. 'cause either not being happy or being bored or not appreciating, like all the mindset things are limiting so many people and it's, you can't turn off the coach processing.
So watching other politicians on TV or this or that, you're like. They just need a coach. Oh my gosh.
All the time. I love reality tv, which sounds so ridiculous. My husband's like, why do you watch this? You don't seem like the person who likes reality tv. I said, because, it's not all reality, but a lot of it is compared to other shows, and I said, I'm just fascinated by what these people need to work on in their lives, or the lack of self awareness or all these things.
As a coach, it's just funny.
And so many great places to pull content for. I'm sure your social media, because everyone else is watching it too. And you're like this, I had that experience recently watching the Bear. And there was such a beautiful, like employee coaching experience in an episode that I was telling everyone.
I'm like, when you're curious how to ask people to stand in extraordinary, go watch this episode. And they were like, really? From the show? I'm like, yes. So for everyone listening, it's the Forks episode in season two. Go, you could just watch that episode alone in a vacuum. And it's so valuable to see it in play.
Something that's hard for me, and I'm curious if this is for you as well. It is so hard to let people settle for less than their greatness. How do you manage that and keep your sanity and create that space for honestly yourself almost
more than them? I love this question, and this actually leads to a new thing I've been doing in my coaching business.
So for a while I was called High Performance Insider because. High performance coaching is what I did, and insider was you're an insider. Join my insider group. That kind of thing. Then things have just naturally morphed and I realized like, what is the biggest thing that pains me when it comes to coaching?
And it's what you just said. It's watching people not live up to their highest potential. It's watching people, what I've been referring to as they aren't awake to their life, they're asleep. And it kills me because I'm like, there's so much I feel like God's given me a gift to be able to see in people.
What they don't see in themselves yet. Yes. And call it out. And there's other people, yeah, there's other people who have that gift too. And it's a gift and a curse, right? Because the gift is, you're like, come on. Like, how do you not see this? It's there. It's so there. And then the other part is like when they don't see it and they choose to stay asleep.
It's just painful to watch and see. Yeah, so I haven't fully grasped studying the boundary and not getting so wrapped up in it with, especially with people I love. But I've definitely been. Called to talk more about waking up to your life, and that's been my new slogan. Instead of High Performance Insider, it's gonna be Wake Up To Your Life.
We've been doing a rebrand behind the scenes and all that, which is super exciting, but I just think that's what it is. It's like we all have the ability, we all have the capacity to be who we were created to be, but if we're asleep, we can't do it.
Yeah. Yeah. It's the, I totally agree. The blessing, the curse, and I, I got goosebumps when you're talking about that because it's one of those it's like almost a superpower and other people don't get it and it's what allows us to be able to just go right to the thing. Yeah. And for some people that's really unnerving because, so like how did you know? Yeah.
I'm like, it's not a psychic power. It's written all over everything in your life. Yeah. You just can't see it. It's like another language or like a different color in the spectrum of light. And I had to, I find I had to catch myself in romantic relationships 'cause it's so easy for me to see the potential in someone and to believe what they, who they wanna be.
And I'm like, hold on, are they actually doing this in reality? If I jumped ahead to being like, oh, I'm so in love with the greatness that you could be. But wait, where are you right now? I don't even know if you're cooked yet. Are you prepared? Are you going in the oven? I can't. I need to come back to that step for me when it's like personal.
But seeing that allows me to help my clients so much more. 'cause it's uncomfortable for them sometimes because they can't fool you or I, 'cause we'll see it. And that's what they want us to do, but they also hate that's what we do at the same time.
Absolutely. That's one one thing that Brendan Burchard says a lot is he always says you are paid to push.
And that really helps me because for so long I could see it, like you said, but I was like a afraid of losing relationships. Like what would happen if I actually spoke, what I saw, what would happen if I sh if I called someone out? Being able to put the coach hat on and being paid to do it is a completely different thing.
'cause I'm like I'm paid to push. If I sit here and just let them talk and try to BS me and I know that it's none of what they're saying is true, it's more of what they wanna believe, but it's not actually real, then I'm actually hurting them in the long run and hurting this coaching relationship.
So I, I've learned to just speak it and love and. Sometimes it lands, sometimes it takes a few weeks and then they come back and they're like, okay. But anyway, it's that intuition.
Exactly. And that makes me also wanna ask about your marketing business. So as a business coach, I partner with a lot of marketing agencies and it's really fun to tag team to really up level a business.
Were you in marketing first or coaching first? And how did the marketing side of your pile of entrepreneurship come to be?
Yeah, honestly, they both started around the same time I started in writing, so marketing. Writing's a form of marketing, right? But I was just in that little bubble of, I could write, I could persuade, and that was about it.
And then I just love learning. Like I'm just a collector of knowledge all the time. And so I'm like what if I could do this? And what if I could do that? And then it was the who's right? I can't, but I know this person who could do this and maybe they could work for me. And then. We became a full blown marketing agency in eight years.
I stayed home with my kids until they went to school and my goal, I think it was 2020, my goal was to be able to go full-time when my youngest went to school full-time. And that happened and that was when the marketing agency really blew up. Before it was just had some clients here there did pretty well with the time I had, but I just didn't have a lot of time.
So once we actually put it out there in the world and I was able to work full time, that blew up. And then my coaching business kind of had to take a. A pause I've always coached, but. Just couldn't take on as many because I was like, oh, okay, we're doing this. Everything that happened naturally and organically, I didn't push the marketing agency.
In fact, it's a joke among me and my team. We're like, we don't even market ourselves hardly. And we're agency, but but we're a relational marketing agency. And so the difference there is that we've grown through relationships. And with that, you don't really have to put yourself out there to the masses because you just tap into the audiences of your connections and network.
They do it for you. So that's what's happened with us, is our clients put us out there and we're always booked up and maybe we'll start marketing ourselves more, but we haven't needed to a whole lot. Yeah,
no I think that's great. And it's such a good example of how many businesses don't need all the marketing tools.
I think it's so easy to get overwhelmed that you need all the things in marketing to get where you wanna go next. And you don't like, I always think it's direct selling first relationships first.
And then you start layering on like how to talk to strangers in the most effective way. And it just breaks my heart seeing how stuck especially small business owners are thinking that they have to have the Instagram and the email sequences and the sales funnels and all these things, and you're like whoa.
All each of those requires such a comprehensive strategy and an ideally an expert. And to tie this back into the coaching side, yeah, I've been giving a lot of coaching to my like marketing agency clients lately about really stepping into being the expert that they are. And you said, the you're paid to push.
Yeah. And encouraging them to also. Push back on their clients to allow them both the space to do what they're hired to do, but also knowing that the strategy that they've made is actually the most effective way to make their clients happy. How do you balance that? Push pull of making a client happy but knowing like you probably know better than they do 'cause they hired you on how to get there and they're resistant to something because of who knows what happens.
Yeah.
I actually have a story if that's okay?
Yeah, please. I think it answers your question, but I think it's also gonna provide some additional things too. We had a client that was like one of our biggest clients for my agency, and it was a retainer client. So every single month, they paid us a certain amount to run their marketing.
And they weren't our biggest, but they were one of our biggest. And I was really attached to 'em too. Still to this day, love who runs the company, love the company, but it just wasn't aligning. There was these expectations, but yet I felt like our hands were always tied. They were like, we want these results, but you're not allowed to change the website.
You're not allowed to do this. You're not allowed. And they wouldn't use those words directly, but they would always like put obstacles in the way. And I was like, I don't know how you think we're gonna be able to do this if we can't do these other things. And it was getting to the point where I was like, it's hurting us to not be able to get results.
It's hurting our relationship. 'cause again, I loved this company, I loved the owner, and I didn't, relationships are so important to me. Then I'm like, it's not worth getting to the point that it's irredeemable. And I made the decision very like spontaneously, but also it was spontaneous, but also it had been building a little bit without me wanting to acknowledge it.
And I let them go. And I went to my team and I was like, I'm doing this. I hope I have your support. This is gonna be rocky for maybe a month or so for us to replace this client, but I think it's best and you're just gonna have to trust me. And of course they all did. But but that was a really hard decision to make and I think that sometimes we.
I actually was playing a game with my son and it was a Chinese Checkers game, and he, I don't know if you've ever played Chinese checkers, but you have to jump around and he jumped backwards at one point. This was the day before I made this decision. It does go with the story. Backwards. And I said, why did you do that?
You're going backwards. And he said, mom, sometimes you have to go backwards so you can launch further the next time. And his, he is eight years old. And I was like, oh my gosh. That's it. And that's when I. I made that decision, so I'm like, we're gonna feel like we're going backwards, letting this client go, who also has connections and also, was in my mind, gonna be a really great thing in the future.
I'm like, but in order to launch even further and fulfill our dreams as an agency, and we've gotta go backwards for a second. And we did. And it was the best thing ever for our company. So I definitely think like living in alignment and doing the things that feel right to you, even if it looks weird to other people.
I had a lot of people questioning in that decision that were close to me. Yeah. And I was like, just trust me. It's the right thing. And it was yeah. Yeah. I hope that answers your question.
It, it totally does because I think that because you have the training and the. Natural abilities as a coach, like you were able to approach your clients and your own business in a very different way.
Because there's so much scarcity mindset that people have. There's, sorry, Siri decided to jump in and join the conversation. I never understand when she just shows up. There's just scarcity mindset. Normally there is wanting to be liked and the people pleasing that shows up and. The attached versus committed approach to clients so often where business owners so often turn over their business to their clients and don't realize it.
And I wish more clients or or just more business owners, they're usually my clients, but I wish more business owners would just be selfish.
And like we think selfish is a bad word, but if we're selfish about how we wanna use our time and who we wanna work with and how things have to go. It actually gives us so much more freedom and clarity for everybody else who we're interacting with.
And so many of the jams we get ourself in are 'cause we weren't being honest and we weren't being selfish about it. So I'm glad that you chose yourself and your business over your client and trusted yourself. Like everyone gets those, yellow, then orange, then red flags, and. You're like, oh, but they're paying and they're consistent and they're nice.
We should keep going. And you're like, oh my gosh. I believe in what
they do. And what if I leave? Will they be able to succeed? What's gonna happen? Not to say I was, everything, but when you're the marketing company, you're oh, it's gonna happen. Yeah. And you care.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think honestly, it's actually funny too because from a team standpoint, I was so worried that they were gonna think I was making a bad business decision. Just because on paper it probably did look like a bad business decision. Yeah. But it was neat to see that they rallied and they were like, no, this actually makes us trust you even more because you have our best interest at heart, not just the clients.
And I was like. Okay. You learn in those moments too. How your team sees you. Did you grow up outside
of
Indianapolis? I didn't. Yeah, outside, but actually an even smaller town than I'm in now, I grew up in, yeah.
What advantages do you think you have by being in Indiana and running these businesses from there?
What did, I've never thought about this question. Gimme a second. So growing up in Indiana, it's not like the coolest place in the world. I think we, I think every person in Indiana even agrees on that, but we. I feel like community is a big aspect of who we are because we haven't, we don't have the big cities. Any enough, it's a big city. But other than that, it's not like we have a bunch here.
We aren't super fast paced. Like we're a lot more just small town vibes of caring about your neighbors, knowing what's going on with the people down the street, being able to recognize everybody that you see everywhere you go. And I think that really helped me. Be able to even though you know a lot of different people, everyone's still different.
So I've been able to learn how to interact with all types of people and it wasn't just put your head down and work hard and get where you're going, like the city life is, or certain areas in the us which there's nothing totally wrong with that, but instead it was more like. It's slower where it's let's have a conversation.
Let's get to know each other. I wanna check, let's check in, let's send cards to each other in the mail on special occasions. Or even just to let you know I'm thinking about you. Like it's just it's relational. And that's what I do now is relational living. And it's fascinating how many people, 'cause I work with people all over the us it's fascinating how many people don't have that.
And don't even understand that. And so it's one of those things where we joke oh, Indiana, it's not a fun place to live. Nobody wants to come here. But at the same time, it's like we have things that a lot of states don't get to experience. And that's that small town community feel.
And so many people are craving that and looking for that.
I think that there's a lot of over justification for trading that out for something else. When it shifts everything. I do an exercise with clients about building out all the people they know and how are they gonna take advantage of their network. In a positive, loving way to go, where's next?
Mutually beneficial. Exactly. And it's so uncomfortable for people to have to like reengage relationships and I'm like, guys, they're just, go make a new friend. We're making this such, so much pressure. I'm like, don't what's, have the most casual conversation possible. Go be curious. What are they up to?
How can you help? Go be curious. I love that. It's
curiosity.
Yeah, it's just it. Most people wanna help each other. Most people want more connection and relationships. Most people need help their own of some kind. So go make some friends and go make some cool shit. Like it's way more fun that way than all the anxiety we put on ourselves about having to work with people, which I think is the best part what we do.
But it's interesting how it makes some people have so much anxiety based on whatever they think it's going to lead to.
Yeah, absolutely.
You have lots of really great tips on your current website. I know you're doing a rebrand. So what are one of your five tips about habits that you just wish people knew?
If you could give people one advice, listening. What's that advice?
One tip. Oh my goodness. First of all, my website's gonna look similar. It's just gonna have a different logo and, colors. But as far as the tip goes for habits, I actually heard this recently, and I'm gonna butcher this quote, so it may be something I need to look up if I do butcher it.
But I was talking about how it's not just about like repetitive action, which is a habit, right? Like you repeat it over and over, but it's about upleveling, each iteration of that repetitive act habit. And so basically what I got from that, and that wasn't the exact quote, but what I got from that is so many times we think I just need to do the same thing over and be consistent.
And it's yes, that is a habit, but at the same time, you should be growing in your habits and upleveling your habits. Not just staying stagnant in your habits. So I would say being able to observe like what are, what's working in your life and what's not. So what habits do you even need to develop?
But then maybe there's a habit that has been working for a long time, but how can you uplevel that? How can you create a new iteration of that habit so that you can grow? 'Cause I think some, I know for me, I spent so many years because I'm a habits coach, developing my habits and forgetting that there's new levels that I'm just missing out on
yeah. And I think that's so easy to see when we look at working out where we don't see it the same way in other habits, like if you do the same workout for the same time period at the gym every day, you'll plateau. Yeah.
And we know that. But we don't think about that in anything else we do. Yeah. In our lives.
Yeah. Even just like in, for a while, even just in the conversations with my kids or my husband, it was like I, I wanted to have a habit of being present with them, but then that presence. Started to just be like the same questions and boring and just, and it's how can I be more intentional?
Or how can I, to your point earlier, get more curious about my kids and my husband? And the habit stays the same of being present, but like that level of presence, is what I tweak.
Yeah. No, I love that. When you hear the words powerful and ladies independently versus next to each other, what is their de definition and does it change when they are next to each other?
Okay. Gimme a second on that one too. Sure.
So my initial response would be that it doesn't change, actually, I think there's a time in my life where it ha it, I would've been a different answer as far as seeing
them together.
But what was the other part of that question?
What is powerful and ladies mean to you?
Okay.
I feel like for me, everyone has a different form of power. I think many times we hear the word powerful and we think, I, I'm not that, or I am, that it's one of the other, right? Oh yeah, I'm powerful, or, oh, I'm not powerful. But we haven't actually defined what that looks like for ourselves.
And so realizing that powerful. It is really just being true to who you are and being confident in who you are and waking up to who you are is powerful. And so as long as those things are happening, it can, A powerful lady looks different and can come in a variety of different forms, in my opinion.
We also ask everybody on the podcast where you put yourself on the powerful Lady scale. If zero is average everyday human and 10 is the most powerful lady you can imagine, where would you put yourself today and on an average day?
Yeah. So I like that because I have, I'm all about like living out my future self in the now.
So even though. I'd like to be a 10, maybe I'm more of like a seven or eight on the, on average, but I definitely am always pursuing, living out my future in the now. And so I actually don't, I don't have an answer to that, but it's making me curious and it's making me wanna think about that more.
Yeah. Yeah. Because it's like, why are we waiting to live the version of our most powerful self when we could be living it now? And what does that version look like,
and what does it mean to be powerful when you're still evolving and cooking and becoming like we haven't become the greatest version of ourselves no matter what we have or haven't achieved or how we're measuring it.
So it's also how can you be powerful right now exactly as you are.
I love that. Yeah. I ask myself the question regularly, if I were living my best version of myself in the now, what? What decision would I make right now? What action would I take right now? What thought would I have? I try to do that, but I love adding in.
If I were living the most powerful version of myself right now, what would that look like? Yeah.
I love to hear what you come up with For everybody that wants to follow you, find you, support you, where can they find all the things to connect with you?
So I guess three different ways. I'm mostly on Instagram, so Amanda, KKAY, Faust, F-O-U-S-T.
And then if you're looking to check out my coaching or my planner, that's at high performance insider.com. And then for my marketing, it's hg collective.co.
Amazing. We've also been asking everyone, what do you need? How can we help? What is on your to-do list or your to manifest list? This is a big, powerful group and I really do believe, as you opened up our conversation, that we never know who has the key that we're looking for next.
So what do you want? How can we help? I love that
question. I love the collaborative approach you have. So I would say the first thing that comes to mind is I for several years, did a lot of speaking and I hold back on that this year. And so now I'm ramping up to doing some more speaking and there, there's a couple reasons I love speaking.
One is I just love that, like in-person approach and connection that can happen really before and after speaking engagement. And then also my planner. Is something that always does really well when I'm speaking and I wanna get that out into the world more and more. And it's fun to be able to like show physically, show people and answer their questions and get to do that.
So speaking is definitely something that I'm looking to do more and more.
Okay, perfect. I might have some options for you that we can talk about right after this. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time today. It really has been such a pleasure to meet you, and I really do think there's so many ways that we can collaborate and support each other, so I'm excited to see where that goes.
And just, I wanna acknowledge you for who you are for people. I know how isolating and. Overwhelming. It can also feel to be holding this coach space and to be holding greatness for people and just, you're not alone. And I feel that too. And thank you for being side by side trying to change the world together.
Yeah. Thank you so much. And thank you for having this space for people to be able to come and show their power and encouraging that power in other people as well. So I appreciate that.
All the links to connect with Amanda High Performance Insider, her Awakening Yourself Program, and HG collective.co are in her show notes@thepowerfulladies.com. Please subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening, and leave us a rating and review. Come join us on Instagram at Powerful Ladies, and if you're looking to connect directly with me, visit kara duffy.com or Kara Duffy on Instagram.
I'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Until then, I hope you're taking on being powerful in your life. Go be awesome and up to something you love.
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Instagram: @amandakayfoust
Website: highperformanceinsider.com
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Email: amanda@highperformanceinsider.com
The Highest Potential Planner
High Performance Insider Coaching Call
Created and hosted by Kara Duffy
Audio Engineering & Editing by Jordan Duffy
Production by Amanda Kass
Graphic design by Anna Olinova
Music by Joakim Karud
