Episode 238: Why We Keep Abandoning Ourselves (and How to Stop) | Andrea Owen | Bestselling Author & Coach
Why is it so hard to choose ourselves - even when we know it’s the right thing to do? Andrea Owen, bestselling author of How to Stop Feeling Like Shit and Make Some Noise, joins Kara to unpack what’s really behind self-abandonment, the cost of ignoring our intuition, and how to start setting better boundaries. In this honest, funny, and empowering episode, Kara and Andrea talk about how our culture teaches women to put everyone else first, why self-compassion is more effective than self-criticism, and what it actually looks like to build a life you’re proud of.
“You can change your life and be very kind to yourself. No one bullies themself into more success or better health. Self-compassion will take you farther than you ever knew. ”
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Follow along using the Transcript
Chapters:
(00:03:15) Meet Andrea Owen: Author, Speaker, and Women’s Coach
(00:04:05) Why We Ignore Intuition and Choose Self-Abandonment
(00:06:20) How Culture Teaches Women to Put Others First
(00:10:50) Listening to Intuition and Learning to Trust Yourself
(00:14:00) The Role of Coaching in Identity and Transformation
(00:17:55) Boundaries, Resentment, and Emotional Labor
(00:21:20) Why Self-Compassion Works Better Than Tough Love
(00:26:40) What to Do When Your Relationships Aren’t Growing
(00:31:35) How to Tell When It’s Time to Walk Away
(00:34:50) Entrepreneurship, Success, and Self-Worth
(00:44:40) Creating Safety and Living Intentionally
(00:50:10) What Andrea’s Rebuilding and Kara’s Final Reflection
What our intuition is telling us is going to require us to make a major change. It's going to require us to have a hard conversation. It's gonna require us to have a boundary. It's going to require us to hurt someone else's feelings to disappoint someone else. And instead of doing that. We disappoint ourselves over and over
again.
That's Andrea Owen. I'm Kara Duffy, and this is The Powerful Ladies Podcast.
Thank you so much for being on the podcast today. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. I have had you on my wishlist. Forget. Since 2020. Okay. Right after I read my first book of yours and I was like, we have to talk to this person. Not only is this book. I picked it up off the shelf because I liked the title and it was a, which one?
Pretty cover which one? Had a set feeling like shit, I love the circles on the cover. I like that. It exactly what it said. I like that it swore because we just need the real talk sometimes. Exactly. And to my team, I was like, I wanna talk to her. She knows what she's talking about. And I'm a yes.
Thank you. So thank you for finally being here. And since then you've written a lot of books. You have a lot of author accolades, so I do brag more about you. Let's tell everyone your name, where you are in the world and what you do besides write books.
I'm Andrea Owen. I'm originally from San Diego, was there for 36 years, but I've called North Carolina home for almost a decade now, and I am also a mom, and I am in the middle of a divorce.
My second one, as we record this, I'm soon to be not a wife anymore, but I am very experienced with it. I think I'm gonna retire from wiping after this one. Tried it. It was great, but I'm done. And what else? Yeah, I love taking care of myself as best I can and talking about the things that no one wants to talk about.
And you're also a speaker and a coach. Yeah, I about that. It's hard when you're a badass, you forget some of the things. It just all run together. Yes. Like I talk about this in 1800 ways, so whatever box you wanna call that. And I love how honest you are about your journey of becoming the author and speaker that you are today.
For those who don't know. I'm just gonna summarize from your little clip on your website. You had a pivotal life moment when you found out your first husband was cheating on you and got your neighbor pregnant.
That is like the, it puts Vander plump to shame.
I don't watch that show so that I, but I've heard there's lots of drama, which both, makes me sad that my life was like that.
And also yeah, I get it. This was also right around the time he and I were having the conversation to conceive our first child. We'd been together for 13 years at that point, and we had been married for a few. And I was 30. So it's like right around the time everybody's like settling down, having babies.
And that happened. So it completely flipped my life upside down.
Yeah, I totally get that. My last relationship ended right when we were talking about starting the IVF process.
And realizing, oh, you're not actually gonna do any of the things. Okay. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. I think we don't talk enough as humans and definitely not as women about how hard it can be to choose ourselves.
And the habit that most of us many of us have of not choosing ourselves and somehow feeling like that's comfortable and normal. Because essentially that's what we are taught. We are doing what was sold to us as girls and women. And I'm sorry to jump in like when you're not even done, but like I get on my soapbox about this both because it's so common with the women that come to me for coaching as well as my own experience.
Like we grew up in a culture that. Not only taught us, but praised us for putting other people's comfort and needs before our own. And especially, if I'm speaking to people who are in heterosexual relationships, it's especially common for women to do that with their male partners. And this is not to blame and shame men.
They grew up in the same culture that we did. That made that, the way we do it, using air quotes over here. And so we grow up and we are in our thirties and forties and beyond. And feel wait a minute. I'm doing what I was told. And so to do anything else, to do anything other than selfa abandon feels impossible.
Yeah. And so it's the learning of that, which is such a process and I think for many of us, a lifelong journey of unraveling the way of just not putting ourselves last.
And for me it's really closely tied to not quitting. That same logic I grew up as an athlete, it was a college athlete.
It's like you don't give up, you keep going. You just work harder. You just give more. You mean like in a relationship specifically? Yeah. Like how that translates back. And also I think in so many, even in businesses, like I work with so many clients who. Realize that they should give up their business.
Let it go, move on, completely transform it. And there's so much shame around quitting something that you caused or you at one point wanted. And it's just also another example of not listening to ourselves and paying attention. When you started listening to yourself, how did your life change? I
also want to make it very clear that I always heard that voice.
I just never acted on it. So I was listening, but it was if, and if you're my age, you might remember answering machines. And how we act, and we can do the same thing with voicemail, but with answering machines. Like the machine would be there in the, in your house and you would hear someone talking on the what would now be voicemail and you would screen it and that's how you would screen the calls.
I think a lot of us do that with our intuition. We're like, I hear you, and. Like you, you might be an important person in my life, whatever you're saying might be important, but I don't feel like acting on this right now. I don't feel like picking up the phone and I think that we do that so much when.
Our intuition is what our intuition is telling us is going to require us to make a major change. It's going to require us to have a hard conversation. It's gonna require us to have a boundary. It's going to require us to hurt someone else's feelings to disappoint someone else. And instead of doing that because it's so uncomfortable and we're just not ready, we disappoint ourselves over and over again.
And I also wanna emphasize that. I think we also get to a place where we realize that we do that and then we beat ourselves up for doing it. Yeah. And as many times it's not safe for people to make whatever decision or change in their life that, that they know that they need to make. And many times you're just not ready.
One of the things that's been, that I've been working on my entire adult life, but especially right now, is trusting the timing of my life. It's so hard and oh man.
Girl. Especially I'm so impatient. I'm like no, I want it and I want it now. And why do I have to wait? Like I, I get very uch salt about Oh yeah, the timing of my life.
Yeah. I wanna put in now Daddy. Yeah, I want, I decided to go back to grad school and I'm 48 PS and the program doesn't even start until a year from now. And that's just not good enough. And I'm like, I'm gonna beef. 51 when I graduate, and a wise friend of mine who has a few years on me, she said, you know what, you're gonna turn 51 regardless, so you know you're gonna turn 51 with or without a master's degree.
So just. Just be patient. I'm like, oh, yeah. So it's that screening of our intuition that we do over and over again. We get used to doing that. And, but at the same time, as I point that out to people listening I also want you to be very gentle with yourself that you do that. Again, that's what you've been taught.
It's what's become comfortable. So now is the time to do whatever steps you need to take to, to stop doing it. And we can talk about that.
No, for sure. I'd love to and I. We hear that voice and we ignore it for good things and for bad. Like the number of entrepreneurs I've talked to who said, oh, I knew for years and I just wasn't doing it, wasn't doing it.
I also think it's so interesting that so often when. We feel like we're in a pivotal moment and you ask someone what do you need? What do you want? What should you do? And the everyone's first response is often, I don't know. And I now I will, call out my clients. Say, if you're saying, I don't know, it probably means that you just don't like what you already know and you're hoping another version shows up.
Yeah. What I might also ask in that moment, and I've had many of clients say that too is I'll take a few steps back and I'll say, listen, because I'm a pretty assertive coach. That's what people come to me for, because I will point out the things like, oftentimes the things that they're not saying, but I'll ask them if you knew that, I would never push you to do anything scary.
If you knew we could just talk about it and leave it over there. What would be the scariest thing that your intuition is telling you? I love that question. Question. We don't have to talk about it after you say it out loud. ' cause then it often comes out
And how, what a great space to be creating for them to say it and not have to do something about it because it, everyone is in some capacity, aware of the power of manifesting today, or, mindful thoughts and you're like, oh, once I say it, what am I releasing? Once I
say it out loud, it gets so real and it sometimes it just takes the pressure off to be able to do that. But. I don't know.
And then some clients, they will say something out loud that comes out of their mouth so naturally and you're like, okay. And then they'll follow it up with another sentence, an excuse or whatever it is. And so I always, coaches we catch onto those things.
Yeah. It's really hard to hide.
Yeah.
Before we get back to like how people can work through that. What type of clients do you love working with? Because I think right now everyone's Ooh, I wanna work with Andrea. Like what kind of client should I be for her?
Yeah. I work best with women who are, I do take the occasional man every once in a while if it's the right fit.
But I work with women who typically. On the outside, like their bio and resume looks amazing. Like on the outside they're great on paper. They have typically done well in their career. They've gotten to a place where they are happy with that and maybe wanna move forward or leave corporate to start their own business or whatever it is.
And I do work with some entrepreneurs. But their interpersonal relationships are struggling. What I mean by that is they have a really hard time setting any kind of boundaries. Again, they put everyone before themselves, but they make it look really easy and no one would know. Yeah. But inside they have a lot of resentments and they're just getting more and more pissed off.
And they also don't have time to put themselves first. They've created a life for themselves where it's gonna take some major adjusting and major boundary setting to make any changes. And also they really struggle. Some of them really struggle with organization and things like that, but it's just that, it's that boundary setting and most of them don't even know.
Is important about the way they live their life. They know something is missing and they can give me a list of things that they want less of, but they don't know what it is that they want more of 'cause they've never been given the opportunity to explore it. And so we spend some time there. And you know what it really comes down to, everyone brings a little bit of a different primary focus, but it comes down to a handful of things time and time again that they bring.
And it's that boundaries, hard conversations. That they don't know what to say, let alone have the courage to do it. So we work on that as well as figuring out what it is that is important about the way they live their life. And then the third one is the strength of their relationships, because your happiness and fulfillment.
There's a direct correlation between that and the health of your relationships. And sometimes there's relationships they need to let go of. Sometimes it's relationships they need to nurture more. Many times it's a partnership that they either need to make a big ask about doing some kind of counseling or that they want to explore, leaving, and just need that like unbiased coaching.
So those are like the three main things that, that women struggle with, that they, that we. That we work on.
I recently did a training with parts, the positivity and resiliency training that a friend of mine was doing, and they had an exercise about exploring who really is your community. It was the most frustrating exercise I have ever done, and I get excited now because there's I'm sure like you, there's been so many things that we've done and been a part of and so when you get an exercise that triggers you, you're like, Ooh.
We found the door. Yeah. And it was so interesting to go through and really look at which relationships were balanced, which ones were not. Who could you call at 2:00 AM who could you call at this time? And it was so interesting to really look at on paper the reality of. What your community is and the people you can count on versus how we run around through life all day.
Distracted. It's been so eye-opening and such an interesting journey the past six-ish months, and it's one of the few personal development trainings I've done where I left. Less happy than when I started, but I knew it was like it was the right way to be. Like For the greater good of you.
Yes. Yeah. Yes.
Yeah. I've been there after many therapy sessions. Yeah. I notice this a lot when my kids, when I went through the whole birthing process of both of my children my kids are 16 and my daughter's just about to be 14. And when I won't get into the details of that 'cause I'm a little bit of a birth junkie, but when they were born, that made me realize how much especially women need community, especially when you are pregnant and giving birth and have small babies, how much we need each other and how incredibly difficult it is and how diminishing it is on our mental health to not have other women around us and try to do all of this many times by ourselves.
And so it's it is one of those things that I think in the modern world we really struggle with, and again, it's affecting our mental health. I think long-term studies are going to really be eyeopening around this, especially I feel. I have feelings around this for my children's generation and hope that things change.
But no, you're right. And that's why I think it's the health of our relationships is so important to nurture and it takes a lot of effort. And one, one complaint that I hear my clients say a lot is I get so frustrated that I have to be the one to take the steps to do this. Why can't they do it?
And my answer is because they're not the seeker. Yeah. Is it unfair? A hundred percent. A hundred percent and you have the right to feel whatever it is that you feel that it doesn't feel reciprocal and you are the one doing the heavy lifting, but here you are, you can either choose to be mad about it and and not do anything because you're like, I want them to come to me.
Or you can be the one to start the process
being the bigger person. It doesn't matter how old you are, you hit a. Relationship or a thing where you're, you have to talk yourself through it no matter how much work you've done.
Yeah. I think in that instance, I don't know if it's a case of being the bigger person as it is, as being just the fire starter, oh, I like that. The one to do it. And I also wanna say this too, because I think many of us go through our lives where we keep circling back to the same person or persons that we keep hoping they're gonna show up for us. And we go through like a really difficult time and we're in agony and we pick up the phone and we call our mom or our best friend from childhood and they keep showing up the way that isn't, doesn't work for us.
And maybe we even had a conversation with them. It's I love that you support me and I would also love it if you showed up X, Y, and Z and they continuously disappoint us. That place. I've held so many women in that place because it is less painful for us to hold on to hope that they will change rather than accept that they have shown us a pattern, that they have received feedback about it and they aren't either incapable or unwilling to show up for you the way that you wanna be supported.
It hurts more to accept that and not. Continue to try to knock on that door over and over again. It hurts more to do that than to hold out hope that they will change. And so I just wanna acknowledge that 'cause it's super common.
And I think having done that in my own life, once you accept it, even though it is.
Not at all what you want to do. It's amazing to me how things move out of your way once you do you don't realize how much mental space you're giving it. You don't realize all the psychological things that it's holding you in the same place.
Getting s. I'm a keeper. Once someone is in the circle, they're usually in.
And the good and bad of being a coach is like seeing the possibility of someone. But whenever I have let someone go, that wasn't supposed to be in my life anymore. Especially significant people.
Yeah.
It's like everyone come six months later, people are like, what have you done? You're a different human now.
And it's oh, I just let a person go. That's, I went through a massive morning phase. Yeah. Yes. Just grieving it. So for somebody who's in a space where they know they're at a crossroads, they know they need to take actions, they don't want to or choose themselves, how would you encourage them to walk through that process?
Yeah, I think there are many ways to do it. Y I know a lot of people do it themselves, and they do that by listening to podcasts like this one or mine. And they might follow the experts that they see on there that resonate with them. They can read books and maybe take like online courses and things like that, or work with a therapist and or a coach.
I think if you have the resources to do marrying those two relationships. Is, I think, essential. I rarely work with a client where I feel like, oh, they're okay without therapy. Like the vast majority of them IE if they're not working with a therapist, I end up referring them to work simultaneously with me and a therapist.
But both, and they serve different purposes and I just, I think one of the. Most important steps is creating that primary focus for you. If there's anything you and I have said here or over the last, 20 minutes or anywhere else that resonates with them, maybe they listen to somebody who is an expert on a, on abandonment issues and they're like, okay, that's the thing that's holding me back.
So talk to your therapist about that. I think having that primary focus and the results that you wanna achieve and ps. I would say like at least 25, 30% of my clients, when they come to me with their intake packet, we have to adjust their expectations because I'm like, 'cause they'll be like, I wanna walk away from our coach-client relationship, having no self-doubt anymore and like all the confidence and I'm like.
I'm all for a lofty moonshot goal. I'm not gonna tell you, you won't ever have it. However, let's be realistic, and then I explain, what success actually looks like. Ps it includes still having moments of self-doubt. You just recognize it very fast and you can move forward.
But yeah, knowing what your primary focus are and the results are that you want so that when you hire a therapist or coach you, you both have a map.
It's, do you also find that you have clients that come to you and you wanna move their goals farther along?
Yes. Especially women. The amount of undermining ourselves that we do. And I do it to myself as well. Yeah, my short answer is yes.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, I think it's really interesting the where we push and where we hold back with ourselves and yeah. It's just, it's so it tells you so much about a person Yeah.
Of like where they're putting themselves on the different metrics and what they want, we were talking briefly before we started about how. What makes me crazy as a coach is knowing what's possible for somebody and being like, it's not crossing the ocean, it's taking one inch forward.
Come on, you can do it. There's a lot of, convincing someone to move one inch when they've already made so much progress themselves.
Yeah.
And I, I. I think it's so fascinating how we can paralyze ourselves for the smallest movement but yet make goals that are so lofty and big at the same time.
When, and this is also why I love watching shrinking, because how he like wants to shake his clients. I so relate with, have you seen that TV show? I haven't. But you're like the third person that's told me about it. It's so good. It's like a full. Laughing hysterically, crying hysterically, like it takes you through everything and it's just so beautifully done.
But for anyone who holds space for people to be their greatness, I think it's a really relatable show. So when you're in that space of working with somebody, how do you manage? Meeting them wherever they are. And also being their champion to go as far as farther than they imagined that they can.
Yeah. That's one of the cornerstones of coaching that I think I was blessed with. It came naturally to me. Like I call myself a professional hype girl. I've been a cheerleader forever, both literally and figuratively, and. What I learned before I became a coach, I was a, I was in the fitness industry as well.
That's what my undergrad is in. And what I realized in being a personal trainer is that you cannot want it more than your clients.
Yeah.
And part of what I've learned with being a coach is that it's one thing to be, to champion them and be their cheerleader and their hype girl. It's another thing to actually show them what's possible and paint the vision for them.
They need to set that agenda first. I can't make up what it is that you want, like you can tell me what you want and then I can call you out on the smallness of it and we can go from there. But this is something that isn't, that doesn't just happen like in one conversation, in one session.
This is something that happens over time, over and over again. And as a coach, and this, I think this just comes in my human relationships too. It's like I have to remind myself like. They don't see what's in my head. Like I have to articulate it for them over and over again so they can hear it and see it from someone that they trust, and hopefully we've, I've built that level of trust with them.
But it's such a gift to be able to walk with someone through that. I don't. I don't take that lightly. Like I sit in reverence with them about their life, and it's just, I could go on and on about it, but I'm, I'm actually writing brand new copy for my website. I update it every few years.
And one of the things I say on there is I can guarantee you one thing about this life. The only thing I can guarantee you is that you're going to die. You are, so am I. We all are. And so when you're 80 or 90 years old, if you are lucky enough to get to that place and be healthy enough to be able to reflect on your life, what kind of stories do you wanna tell?
Do you want to be able to list all of your regrets and have that list be longer than the things that you tried to do? I'm not even gonna say. A list of your successes because like we all have like failures and things like that, anyway, it's another thing I can get up on my,
on any
of that.
I love having a list of what we actually want to do. And you mentioned it earlier that most people don't spend time asking themselves, what do I want? Why do I live here? Yeah. Like we, we stop asking why in the really small things about life, and it shifts our trajectory in so many different ways because we didn't make an intentional choice.
Or we stopped making intentional choices, I honestly wanna bring this back to just you in your life of how have you made intentional choices and what has surprised you about the journey since you started being more intentional?
Yeah. There's so many things and I think that I always like to acknowledge where people might be too, that's relatable and it what it comes down.
The first thing I wanna say is what it comes down to a lot of time is safety. We tend to, as humans, we tend to do what we feel is safe. And it's one thing to get super motivated and pumped. And when my marriage, my first marriage fell apart and, and then right after that I dated someone who was a con man.
That's what it was. And. Conned me out of a lot of money. And it was just if you saw the Tinder swindler, it was similar to that. Slightly less dramatic, but so many similarities. And I decided to take like radical responsibility for my life. And that's when I found coaching. And that movie, the Secret had just come out based on the book.
And so I was primed and ready to change my life and I did. A couple years after that, I got sober. I, I got remarried and I had a couple kids, and then I fell back into safety and. In many ways, I was very intentional about my friendships. I was very intentional about my physical health. I was very intentional about my education, and I finished my bachelor's degree and I was very intentional about my career, which was a huge success.
But I definitely fell into that place of safety in terms of my marriage. And I do think that it was a matter of. I wanna say this because I wanna say this because I think some people can relate. It was and like I said, we're in the middle of undoing it and I will never say anything bad about this person that I was married to with for 16 years.
And I do think though we can get into those places of being in a partnership where you're doing life side by side. And especially when you have small children and you forget to turn towards each other or maybe you don't forget, but it just becomes easier not to. And you can go along in this relationship and screen those calls of your intuition.
It's I don't wanna hear it. It's gonna be too hard to do the thing that I think I probably should or to have that conversation. I know I probably should. And then it gets to a point where, for some of us, like we have a physical breakdown where our BO body starts to tell us like. You ain't listening, and so we're gonna communicate with you in a different way and we can lose track of the fact that we have been unintentional.
But in a way, we have been intentional because, I think for many of us too, we intuitively know that we're making a decision that isn't right for us, but we're willing to accept the consequences for a period of time. And it all brings me back to that level of safety. And for some people it's very real safety, like that they just, they like their life might be in danger if they make a decision.
That was not the case for me. So I just, I went off on a little side. Side note, just to sort to, to paint a picture of what somebody might be going through. And I think that we can tend to beat ourselves for staying in relationships for longer than the expiration date and things like that. But it's never too late to start over again.
You're gonna be 51 no matter what, or however old you're gonna be. You're gonna be 75 no matter what. So I just, I do think that what a lot of what I'm saying is coming back to is self-compassion because I don't know about you or your listeners, like I do a pretty good job of beating myself up and that was one of the things that early on in my personal development career, just for myself, that I have done some heavy lifting and that intention.
Has changed my life because yes, you can still change your life and be very kind to yourself. No one bullies themself into more success. No one bullies themself into, better health or nutrition or more success in their business. Or self-compassion will take you farther than you ever knew.
Yeah, and for me, I realized that it wasn't always like negative self-talk, it was just really aggressive grading, self grading.
And I was like, why? Why am I being that asshole teacher who, yeah. No one gets an A. Like this is so why not me? Yeah, exactly. If we go back to 8-year-old, you would, she have imagined that this is where your life has gone and this is who you are today?
Yeah.
It's funny. I love that question. First of all, that was third grade and I had the worst Bob of my life. I had that. I am, I'm 48. I was born 1975, so remember that page boy? Oh yeah, the Dutch boy. Yeah. I had that, but probably like probably, I've always. Had this big personality and like a lot of energy, and so I would be pleasantly surprised.
When people ask me like, oh, did your, did you expect your life to be here? Oh, I have far exceeded my expectations. Like I'm the youngest of five and I, my siblings are all half siblings from my parents' previous marriages. By the time they got to me, my parents were older when I was born and they did a great job raising me.
I don't wanna say otherwise, but they were good luck with life. There weren't a whole lot of high expectations in terms of college or my career. They're like, get a job in retail, you'll be fine. So sales, whatever. And to be here with three traditionally published books in 19 languages, and to have spoken up on stages in front of thousands of people, like I'm not my 8-year-old self isn't surprised that's what I'm doing.
I think she's pleasantly excited that's how big it got.
Yeah. We never dream as big as we're capable of.
No. I was just gonna have some like regular job and have a family like that. That was the prize for me. And this goes back to the relationships and like staying in ones that are not serving us.
I definitely fell victim to, to our culture of being picked. Like I just wanted. A nice handsome man to pick me and that was all. That was it. That was the prize. And I think back and I'm like, what the actual fuck? My daughter's about to be 14. And if and if she articulated that was her dream, I would feel like I have failed you as a mother.
If that's like part of her dream cool, but there's so much more to life. Yeah.
So that's, there's that too. When you think of the words powerful and ladies, do their definitions change when they're on their own versus next to each other?
Totally. Like I remember, so I used to run a lot and my hips and knees have retired from that.
But I remember one time I was running and I had this sort of vision slash metaphor that came to me of, what if I was running a marathon and it was like this all women marathon and somebody tripped and fell. Would we all leave her behind or step on her and no, like we would stop and pick her up and help her.
And and then I was like crying on my run when I, I saw this metaphor unfold in my mind and. We are so much more powerful in numbers when we lift each other up and don't get me started on internalized misogyny, 'cause I, there's a I wrote about that in my third book because there's that stereotype of, oh, women are just inherently catty and competitive.
I'm like, oh, actually not. Yes, there's some research that shows that, but for the most part, no. It's culture. It's been put on us. But no I, my short answer is I absolutely think that we are more powerful when we lift each other up.
Yeah, we ask everyone where they put themselves in our powerful at scale.
If zero is average everyday human, and 10 is the most powerful human you can imagine, where would you put yourself today versus an average day? So I'm gonna answer
this. Maybe not the way that you asked me, but I think it depends on if I, if a few things are happening, if I am the basics, am I getting enough sleep?
Am I getting enough water? Am I putting food in my body that my body really needs? The other thing is, am I leaning on the women in my life who have proven over and over again that they, that I can trust them and that they will show up for me and also. Am I connecting in some way to spiritual slash higher power, whatever you wanna call it, something bigger than myself.
And I, I hesitate to say that, 'cause some people. It's just I don't know, myself included, but the more I lean on that, the more strength, patience, peace I have. Even in my worst days, like I'll be honest, like recently I've gone through some dark night of the soul days as I navigate my way through this second divorce and the days that I just take it one hour at a time and reach out to my community and, lean on that. Higher power are the days where there is a small sense of peace over me that I know that it's going to be okay.
Did
I answer the question?
Yes.
Okay.
You did. I really think I just need to give all those clips to a psychologist to tell me what came back after hundreds and hundreds of episodes.
'cause it's so interesting to me how some people are such hard graders. Some people are like, I'm a 22. Some people, there's context to it, but it's really interesting to see who just answers it versus hold on, like I need to process this and explain it. It's. I did not expect it to be the most interesting question that comes up the list.
It's an interesting, and I'm
not at all surprised that you get all kinds of answers.
When you look at where you have taken your business and stepped into an entrepreneurial space that I don't think you are imagining when you started. What are you proud of and what has surprised you the most?
So I started.
I officially launched your Kickass Life, which the business is still called that in 2010. So this was, that's like dinosaur era in terms of online internet, especially like online life coaching. There was a very small handful of, especially women who had, who'd come before me.
Marie Forleo had just started, like she hadn't even started B-School yet back then. And. I think I'm the most proud of not listening to the advice. When people told me not to swear, they told me not to be so open and transparent and vulnerable about my life and let me be clear that I was doing it from.
A little bit of an unhealthy place because I started a blog in oh seven and I just was like, if I don't tell this story, I might die. So I was talking about my eating disorder, I was talking about my failed first marriage. I was talking about all these really difficult things in my life just because I grew up as the seeker and like kind of the black sheep in the family, where I'm like, is nobody gonna talk about the elephant in the room because it's right over there?
And my family was like, shh. No. And I always felt like the one who might die if we don't talk about the hard things. So I kept doing that in oh 7, 0 8, 0 9 20 10, et cetera, and I was rewarded handsomely even when people told me not to do it. So I'm proud that I did not listen to that advice. And then, what was the other part of the question?
What am I most surprised by? Yes. God, nothing surprises me anymore. Yeah, for the sake of transparency, because I don't know any other way to be. I'm a terrible marketer. Like I know what to do, but I don't do it. Like I'm not great at selling. I'm really great on camera. I can entertain the shit out of anybody for a long time.
I can riff on most topics, but when it comes to all of the things that we're supposed to do, like the lead magnets and the, oh my God. Do as I say it, not as I do. 'cause I can tell you exactly what to do, but do I do it? No. Yeah.
No it's not great. It's wild. When people, I'm a business coach, when people come to me and they're like, wait, you have a business coach?
I'm like, yeah. Of course, because I can tell you how to make a multimillion dollar business, but I will not do the exact things I tell you unless someone else is reminding me to do it. Yeah. Because I'm so focused on you and what's over here. And like I'll go to my coach and be like, I just helped somebody launch an $80,000 a month course.
Why
isn't mine working? And she's did you put any time and effort into it? Did you hire people? I'm like, okay, fine. Yes, I know the answer. Bye.
Yeah.
I never feel more dumb. 'Cause we don't, especially I think in a coaching space, when you're always giving outwardly
It's the same, it's like what we were talking about before, just like being a female.
It's oh, did I block off time to actually work on my own business? Yeah. Or did I delegate it? Because, let's be honest I think people skip over an entrepreneurship that you have to do so much work on yourself to be successful. Oh, totally.
And I wanna pause for a moment and say something here because i've gotten to the place now as we're having this conversation in 2023. I know that my lack of marketing isn't about my own. Lack of self-confidence or, more work I need to do on myself. I, my online business manager, she's been with me for 10 years and she has said to me, she's Andrea, it's just not your style.
Yeah. It's just not your style. Because when I think about having an $80,000 a month membership community, I know the work that needs to go into that, and I would rather pull my teeth out with dirty, rusty pliers one by one than do that work. Yeah. I have left so much money on the table. Year after year, and I don't regret it.
I don't, no, because I don't wanna do all of the shit that is involved with that. I can teach you how to do it, and I pray to God that you actually want to do it and understand the work that's involved because I don't wanna do it. And now it's interesting that I am, I'm going through this divorce now and it's forced me to really look at my business and I am burning it all down and I'm taking I'm pivoting.
And like I'm going to grad school to get my license to be an LPC and I'm gonna go work in in an adjacent field. And am I probably going to screw up marketing over there a little bit? Probably. But I know I'm gonna be damn good at it. And I'm gonna make enough money that it, I am. I had a business coach once that told me, she's Andrea, I've never met anyone who's so good at manifesting exactly what it is that she needs and nothing more.
So she's you can manifest more. You're powerful at it. And I'm like, oh, okay. If I have the energy I'll, and I have at times, like I've had amazing years. I've had amazing years. Yeah. But anyway, all that to say. If you're listening to this and that's, you don't beat yourself up if it's just entrepreneurship is not for everyone.
It's not and I think there are certain parts of it that I'm really great at and others that I'm not. And as long as I can pay my bills and go on some fun vacations and get my kids what they want, I'm good. I'm, okay.
And that's one of the illusions that I hate about some of the very masculine approaches to small business or entrepreneurship. It's like you don't need to build an empire and 10 x everything in order to have a thriving, happy life. It's thank you. We'll talk about sales goals. And I'm like how much do you want? How much do you need? Exactly. It's like you don't need to keep going.
One of my things is like how it's easier than we think. Like you can double your business without selling your soul, but at what point is enough and what do you need and why are you doing it? Like just to hit the new sales goal. It's where's the money going? Are you doing it to give it to all the dogs?
Like why are we chasing this number?
Yeah. It's. All of those things are important to get clear on, and I'm glad you mentioned that. And I just think that like right around 20 14, 20 15, there was this explosion of business coaches and also the whole thing of that it, it became. A necessary thing to make six figures and now it's seven figures.
If you don't have a seven figure business, you're shit. And I just, I don't buy into that. I did for a little bit and then I was like, this feels disgusting. This feels like I've been wearing the same underwear for 10 days. Get this off of me. Get out.
That is such a good analogy of like how it just came to me, icky.
It's. I'm sorry. No, it's perfect because you really know what that feels like. You're like, oh God, no. Even two days in a row is bad, but no. Yeah, no, it feels 10 days. I remember off topic, but aligned to what you just said, I had this book I was given in college called like the Badass Girls Rock Guide to the Open Road.
And it
had all these ridiculous tips in it of like how to make road trips work. And one of the tips was about like flipping your underwear inside out so you could keep going and not feel disgusting. I have done that before though, in my thoughts
of desperation.
Yeah, it's it was just one of those ridiculous things.
We have gone in a lot of different places, so for people who love you, wanna connect with you, follow you, support you on, wherever this journey goes, find your books, what are all the places that people can support, find and follow you.
So Andrea owen.com is the best way to do that, and I still, even though it's not scalable, here's another way that I've left money on the table.
I still love one-on-one more than anything. And if people wanna work with me, there's an application there on my coaching page. So just andrea owen.com And I'm hey, Andrea Owen on all social platforms, and my podcast is called Make Some Noise.
And your books are available everywhere and through your website, everywhere
books are sold.
Yeah, they should be. Yeah. Especially, obviously on Amazon and their favorite bookstore, Barnes and Noble, audible, all that.
Amazing. The last thing that we've been asking everyone this year is, what do you need? What's on your wishlist? What's on your to manifest list? How can we help you? This is a powerful, connected community that, like you said, likes to pick each other up when we're all running marathons together.
I love dms on Instagram. I love getting them from people. Please bear with me 'cause a lot of them, go to my spam folder. But I will get back to you and it is me that reads them. My team very rarely logs into my Instagram account unless I need them to. If you wanna reply to one of my Instagram stories, if you wanna just send me a DM and say that you heard me here, I'm happy to reply.
Thank you so much for your time today and for, checking off one of my wishlist guests that I've been on for a couple of years. So thank you so much. Oh, I hope I lived up to the hype.
All the links to connect with Andrea, her coaching and her books earn her show notes@thepowerfulladies.com. Please subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening and come join us on Instagram at Powerful Ladies. If you're looking to connect directly with me, visit kara duffy.com or Kara Duffy on Instagram.
I'll be back next week at the brand new episode and a new amazing guest. 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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Created and hosted by Kara Duffy
Audio Engineering & Editing by Jordan Duffy
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Music by Joakim Karud
