Episode 334: Empowering Women Leaders Through Transformational Coaching | April Diaz | Executive Coach & Leadership Developer
April Diaz is an executive coach helping leaders transform from the inside out. Working with Olympians, professional athletes, and corporate professionals, she focuses on building courage, resilience, and the personal foundations that make lasting impact possible. In this episode, Kara and April talk about why self-work is the heart of leadership, how transformation happens at both individual and group levels, and the strategies that drive real results. You’ll hear how April’s approach empowers her clients to lead with authenticity, why aligned values matter in coaching, and how you can take practical steps today to uplevel your own leadership. This episode explores transformational leadership, resilience, and the power of personal growth.
“Lead yourself holistically first. It begins and ends here.”
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Follow along using the Transcript
Chapters:
00:00 Guest Introduction: April Diaz
03:45 April's Coaching Philosophy
06:32 Holistic Leadership Approach
07:46 Challenges and Transformations
23:00 The Importance of Courage and Curiosity
25:07 Exploring Courage and Self-Perception
25:54 The Importance of Dedication and Grit
28:29 The Power of Mantras and Focus
30:24 Defining Powerful Women
31:46 Challenges of Pregnancy and Work
32:50 Describing the Ideal Client
35:55 Coaching Athletes vs. Professionals
37:04 The Importance of Seasons and Structure
41:50 Holistic Leadership and Physical Well-being
44:27 Future Goals and Community Support
48:00 Closing Remarks and Future Plans
When you expand your internal capacity, you'll naturally get different external results. The higher we go in leadership, the more we tend to focus on externals, like there's so many externals to pay attention to, but when the focus is there, the internal, just waste away.
That's transformational Executive Coach April Diaz. I'm Kara Duffy and this is The Powerful Ladies Podcast.
The world needs more transformed leaders who are doing the personal development work. Who are building strong foundations for themselves to be in their courage, resilience, and guiding others to those places as well. There is such a breakdown in leadership at all levels, and you especially see it in corporations because people are not prepared to go from. Individual contributor to managing people and leading a team. That's why I'm so happy to share with you today. April Diaz, she's an executive coach who focuses on transformational leadership at the levels of self and group, and she's producing big results for her clients. From Olympians to professional athletes to corporate professionals.
She's another guest with whom I share so many values and approaches in the coaching world, and I hope you find actions you can take today to uplevel your leadership to create anything you want in life and business. Welcome to The Powerful Ladies podcast.
Thank you, Kara, for having me.
I am excited to talk to you today. I've heard such incredible things about you. Let's tell everyone your name, where you are in the world and what you're up to.
Yeah. My name is april Diaz and I think we're practically neighbors, Kara. I live in Orange County as well. And, I'm an executive coach and a leadership developer. And, all four women in every single space.
Then I have some fun things coming up this month. Let's do it to hang out at Yes, please. I, your website and your media kit were super powerful, informative, and there's so much variety. And who is a coach and a consultant. Yeah. And executive coaching. And leadership coaching. Yeah. And I hate some of these words because agree. They don't, for people who are really doing transformational work, these terms have been so diluted. I agree. So I wanna give you a chance to really talk about, yeah. The approach you take and the transformation that you give to your clients.
Thank you for saying that. I'm actually super skeptical of the industry that I'm a part of because it feels like anyone and everyone these days can be like, I'm a coach, or I consult and I'm like, show me your receipts. Like how is it that you do what you do and where did you get trained?
And one of the things that I always tell prospective clients is you would never go see a therapist that hasn't done a full degree with lots of observational hours and all of the work, right? Like they have done the work to be able to. Show that they can serve you well, when you sit on their couch and unpack your whole story.
And I am like, you need to do the same kind of due diligence when you hire a coach or a consultant or whatever, right? It's just what are the receipts there? Yeah, I'm an executive coach because I have been an executive for a whole lot of years prior to getting into this world, and I love working specifically with female leaders that are in this space because.
For so many years, I was the only one or for sure like a super minority for a lot of years. Young white and in the executive space I was a mom like just was surrounded by a whole bunch of men whose wives were at home taking care of their kids. And I have always been such a believer in a fan that when there's more women at the table, everyone is better.
We do better work. Our organizations are served better, and so I wanted to really invest more. So I ended up getting certified and trained in all of that as a coach. I have been coached off and on for the last 20 years. My first experience with coaching professionally was in 2005, and it literally changed the trajectory of my life.
So I ac actually looked back on that moment in that year that I was working with my coach. And realize that planted a seed in me for something that I never could have imagined that I would be doing professionally. And the work that I had with Dr. Jack Groppel shifted that trajectory. Created some imagination that I didn't actually harvest for like another 10, 12 years.
But yeah, it's a. It's really fun work because it isn't about me, it's about the client. It isn't about the fact that I was an executive or that I have all of these, degrees or certifications or anything. It's really not about that. At the end of the day I have what it takes to help you in that developmental science of transformation, but it's really about the individual and the person that I'm working with.
What are examples of. Where people are at when they come to you and how they get moved in that process.
Okay. So one piece I just realized I didn't answer in that first part that you asked me is like, how do I view transformation? Or what does that look like? And for me it's all about holistic leadership.
Because I know that personally and professionally, those two worlds are combined. Like we hopped on the call and you and I just shared some personal things that are happening that impact us professionally. Like even in this moment, right? It's like those two things are not separated. They're not compartmentalized.
You cannot just remove them from one another. They inform deeply, and when they're integrated, they actually can be even more powerful. So that's the first part of the holistic nature to me. But then the second is that we are whole people and so physically, emotionally, mentally, relationally, spiritually, and in our renewal if all of those things are not being paid attention to in our life and our leadership, there's some problems that will emerge and those things like deeply impact and affect one another.
So that's the approach that I have taken. In large part because of major like. And fa pause that I've had in my own life, but also because when I have noticed, when I pay attention to those things, like it's catalytic, there's exponential impact. There's just really powerful things. So the folks that tend to find and wanna work with me, I think there's a couple of different categories.
One is they're facing a transition, whether it's self-imposed or it's others imposed and they wanna do it well. A lot of times we don't change or experience transformation because we desire to. It's oh, we better do something, or shit's gonna hit the fan. We're gonna have a major problem.
So now is the time and a transition to make that turn in a really good way. But then I'm really finding probably since COVID that there's a lot of women specifically, but men as well, that are in leadership that are going like this just level. Isn't working, it's not serving me well. There is a measure of suffering, of discontent, of status quo of it is what it is that I'm no longer willing to tolerate.
And so I, because of that, like discontent and that, ugh, there's gotta be more than that. And I really believe that there is if there's that like feeling, there absolutely is more. And it can be done with ease and lightness. And in my experience, leaders just are carrying a lot, there's a lot of pressure and there's lot of demands, expectations, responsibilities.
And so doing more feels impossible, but the desire for more feels just oh, such an emotional response. So I am really committed to helping leaders experience more without doing more and getting it with ease and myness.
I am now very clear why Sarah wanted us to be friends.
Our friends connected us.
Yeah. 'cause it's like it's, we share so many values and how we're approaching I'm working with usually business owners or CEOs and their leadership team, but it's not about, they are secondary. To the business often. And when people say how, like some people come to me for life coaching and they're like how do you do that?
You're a business coach. I'm like, it's the same thing. It's the same thing. It's the same thing because we're all people. Yes. We're able to double your business quickly 'cause we fix you. And then once you're fixed and clear, like the business stuff is is it easy? It's math, it's one plus one equals two.
It's not we're, we put the complicated parts in the wrong places. Yeah, that's right. And I don't think people realize that not only do successful people have handfuls of coaches in every area of their lives, but they also do so much work on themselves on a regular basis. Yeah. Yeah. Because the more we can know about ourselves Yeah.
The more we can create structures around us. Yeah. That. Really leave room for everything we want to happen. A hundred percent. If you could scream a message from the rooftops, what would you want to be screaming? Lead yourself holistically.
First. It begins and ends here. I also say as a dovetail all the time, when you expand your internal capacity, you'll naturally get different external results.
And I think the higher we go in leadership the more we tend to focus on externals, it's the KPIs and the goals and the metrics and the strategic plan and the team management and the policies and the procedure. There's so many externals to pay attention to, but when the focus is there, the internal just waste away.
And it, the demands externally are just shriveling and like just squeezing out what is happening internally. And so I think that there's a real opportunity, even culturally and in our society these days to switch the narrative and to switch the approach in leadership from not power over, or not externally driven, but power with and internally driven.
And that's a really big shift. Corporate is not into that. But I do think there are leaders who are like awakening and going, we are clear that other approach does not work. That's why we're having affairs and we're, hugging the wrong people at cold Coldplay concerts and spending money in weird places on the internet, like there blowing up our lives because the internal stuff is not.
Able to carry whatever's happening externally. So there's a real opportunity right now to change the future of leadership. I'm deeply committed to that. I'm gonna die on that hill because I think that it is healthier and I actually think that women will play a huge part in making that course correction and designing a different kind of future.
'cause we have seen those old ways just are no longer working. They never were working.
I think women always have a 360 approach to things. Yeah. Because we're never not allowed to. Yeah. Like we, we have to think about the food and the shelter and the community and the happiness and the doctors.
Like we have limitations. Yeah. We hold space for all of the things all the time. And so it's so easy to see how dominoes fall, how systems don't work, and. Like it just it shows up. So obviously for women of this doesn't work, but neither do these other 5,000 things right now, Uhhuh, and this is also why I think women are such good problem solvers often because you're able to see the whole system at once go micro, macro usually.
I also think that. There is such an, a step into ownership that we can all have by looking at our, like believing first and foremost that we are leaders. How much of your work do you have to like, remind people who they are to start every time.
Every 100% of the time they, I just had a conversation or received a video from a old, a client.
She's not old, she's current. But she's been a client for a while and when she first came to me, everything externally was appearing fabulous. But there were a lot of internal conversations that were not matching her external realities. One of them was she was running a half million dollar business and she didn't think that she had built it and she didn't think that.
And I was like, you are literally on the top. 1% of women owned businesses in the country. Top 1%. And she's I really haven't done anything. And I'm like, holy shit. What are you even? So there were there was mindset work there, there was like old stories from her childhood and from her upbringing.
She's a woman of color and so there was a lot of like white supremacy and patriarchy things that were happening there. She's an immigrant, so there's that's a part. There were so many different stories that she needed to rewrite the narrative for. She just, I didn't even know this, but she just told me like, she's never made more money in her business than she has in the last year.
And the focus of our work together hasn't even really been on that. There's been some secondary and tertiary things, but again, it begins from within and she is leading herself differently, holistically. And it is, it's now showing up in her p and l in a completely different way. Yeah I think we all do, and that's myself included.
I have a coach as we've talked about, I have mentors. I have just a battery of people that are outta my speed dial. And I know that, like when things are shifting for me in internally, it's just like a domino effect and the rivers start rushing.
I, and I'm sure as you know this as well, for my world, if things are not working.
I'm like, oh, okay. What do I, what am I not doing that I know to do? Yeah. What is that of integrity? Where am I being small? Where have I shifted my perspective back into scarcity, mindset, scarcity, or whatever the there's, it's so easy, like when people talk to me about their business or their own personal development, they want it to be linear.
Yeah, and I'm like, no, it is like this expanding spiral. Which means we are going to run into that line. Yeah. That cuts through that spiral at every level. That has to do with, if we don't like the word burden or whatever that money story is, like whether you are making 10 KA month in your business, or you're making a hundred KA month in your business.
The money that whatever that thing is, that groove, that neurological groove, that's a part of you, it'll get smaller, but it's gonna show up in different ways. 'Cause you have to re reexamine it and deal with it at a new level of you. Yes. Yes. And if you were scared, if you were like, oh my gosh, I can't make 10 K, I'm not worth 10 K, then you get to a hundred K, you're like.
Oh, I thought I dealt with this, but now this extra zero Uhhuh has me freaking out all over again. Yep. Second, first name is a first, but it sounds a little bit different. Yeah. And it, and we're so mean to ourselves, and we have to come back to something that we thought we handled. And I wish that people just gave ourselves like more space to say so what if we have to come back to that thing like people wouldn't be going to therapy for their, for decades. If you could deal with, that mom issue or whatever that thing is once yeah. Yeah. It we're living in the moment and we're gonna get reacted by things. Even if we get our Jedi skills where we can deal with it in one minute or one hour versus one year, like we reduce the time that we're triggered or in the impact of things, but it doesn't mean that we lose our humanity. Yeah.
Brene Brown says ask the question of her guests on her podcast. What is one lesson that the universe keeps having to teach you over and over again? And every time I hear that, I'm like.
Because it's, I think really for me it is lead yourself holistically first. And part of that is like your pain can become this platform for supernatural power. It's like the thing that you have sucked the most at, that you've struggled the most through, that you've worked the hardest on ends up being able to become the greatest point of service to someone else in the way that you can make the biggest impact.
And I just, I deeply believe your whole story matters. The more we can pay attention to that story, the more power and impact and influence it can have on others and their own story. So yeah, I just, I love that. And oh, the other thing you said, Kara, that I just wanted to clap on. Is it you talking about like the slice through the circles of learning?
Another visual that I have often is like. The ceiling that you're at right now is the floor to the next level. And so a lot of times folks come to me too because they actually feel like they're at their ceiling. And so by some intents and purposes, they know that they're killing it, but they also know that there's more potential to be experienced and lived into.
And so there's the breakthrough into the new level. But then like you feel like shit when you hit, when you break through that next level. 'cause now you're at the bottom and it feels you're freaked out because it just feels like you don't know anything anymore and you don't know where to go and you don't know how to live into this new level.
And so how do begin at this kind of new beginner's level and live into whatever that next space is. And that's really powerful. Like that beginner's mindset, that growth mindset, that like curiosity and courage that it takes to live into that place instead of. Falling back into the level that was before out of, comfort or security or whatever your thing is.
Yeah, that was another piece that I just heard that I wanted to, like excl.
No, and I'll talk about like the Alice Wonderland effect. You're too big for the house. And it's so uncomfortable when you're in that breakthrough space. Yeah. And it should be like if yeah. If you, if your head was truly busting through a roof, it would hurt.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know so many. Clients right now, like I, I really get amazed by the universal themes that show up. Yeah. And right now there are so many who are having they're truly in a level up phase because things are not working with like teams. Ooh. They're realizing that they're, they need to redo their org chart to go to the next level.
They might need to redo who is or isn't on the team. They're having, they're experiencing moments where. The people who have been their right hands Yeah. Suddenly can't go with them to the next level.
Yeah.
You know how do you transfer, like the internal work you do to who you start attracting and allowing into your space to build the support team around you?
That's a loaded question. I also have a DHD. And so like I'm hearing you and like my mind is pinging to all sorts of things. So I don't know if I'm gonna answer your question perfectly here, so feel free to push it. But the first thought that I have is when you realize that the team is no longer working the way that it needs to, your right hand needs to go, people aren't ready to go to the next level with you.
You need to reorganize the folks, et cetera. The first thing that I heard in there is grief. That's painful. And a mentor told me a long time ago life is often lived in the tension of joy and of loss, celebration, and pain. Like we just, we are holding those two tensions all the time, so it's thrilling to go to the next level.
It's thrilling to be like, okay, we can hit the next benchmark. We can expand. Mission, we can hire more people, all that kinda stuff. But then there's also the loss of what got you here isn't gonna get you there. And I love those people and I, we, what we did together meant something.
I have personally been in a season like that this year. My assistant moved on for very good reasons. Somebody that I've worked with in some business partnership that was no longer working and there's grief in that. But a lot of leaders don't know how to grief. We suck it up. We soldier on, we power up, we armor up, and we just push through and there's real consequences to not dealing with the grief.
Mainly you start repeating some of those same mistakes or you live into what was, previously working, but it isn't gonna serve you well moving forward. And also, there's just a part of you internally that shuts down and there's just big consequences to that. So that's the first kind of big bucket.
But the second is, to live with courage, which I think is maybe one of the driving. Characteristics of leaders in 2025 is courageous leadership. You really do need accountability and support to be courageous. 'cause it's scary as hell. It's very vulnerable. The criticism is gonna come, the inner conflict is gonna come, the tension, the voices that are, fighting you.
So you're gonna really need somebody that is gonna, or somebodies, that are gonna stand alongside of you and say, stay the course. Stay true to the mission. What is it that you're called to do? If you don't have that, the chances of you going back are very high. So again, I don't know that answered your beautifully loaded question, but those two things really stood out.
No, I think it does be, and like courage is one of my favorite words. Courage is curiosity. Me too. Kara. We're like sisters from another mister. I say those two words all the time. Yeah. I don't know how to live life. Yeah. Without curiosity. And I just cur like courage is something that. I don't think we realize that we are only using one five, 10% on a regular basis. And I feel like most of my job some days is just giving people permission. Like we know what we're supposed to do. We, yeah.
Yeah.
Yep. We, and there's that whole phrase of you get hit with a feather and then you get hit with a brick, and then you're gonna get hit with a truck. And most people wait to call you and I until they've been hit by the truck. Yeah. And there's so much more power if we're willing to start listening to what we know to do sooner. And trust me, having a business called Powerful Ladies, there are plenty of days that I wake up and go, no thank you. Yeah.
Don't, I didn't say anything. I'm like, who thought that wholeness was a good idea? This. Sucks. Yeah. I gotta practice what I fricking preach.
Yes. Yes. And so I have that tension on, not consistently, but like an on an ongoing basis of am I living into the what I'm preaching. Yep. And then also just like really looking at what is this courage that we're afraid to step into?
There were, there's a podcast episode that came out a couple of episodes ago that had four women who are running NGOs, who, some of them are being bombed on a regular basis. They're in all like just these women who are just doing the work anyway. Yeah. They all scored themselves a 10 outta 10.
Meanwhile, we work people every day who are like, I'm a two.
And I don't think it has to be, we're so women in particular, are so hard on ourselves. Yeah. And part of why we're hard on ourselves is because we think achieving the transformation that we wanna be in the world. Has to be hard and that drives me crazy because it's not about not working hard. Yeah.
The sooner everyone accepts that you're gonna wake up every day and work hard, things get a lot easier.
Yeah. Yeah.
But it doesn't have to be pushing things up a mountain every day for sure. It can be more about dedication and it can be more about grit, and it can be more about coming back to that courage or staying in that power that someone like you just gave them because like I just, I lose my mind sometimes about looking at people and the choices they're making and being like, why are you here? Like, why are you choosing, like just hang out in level one of the video game. Like why? Like you are so much more powerful. And we allow circumstances and stories and just most, a lot of other people to dictate what game we're gonna play.
And as frustrated as I am personally this year. What is happening in the world? What I'm so present to my the, so the golden nugget I think of this year is the more you lean into your d Lulu, the more it's real. And there's there's most people's d Lulu is gonna be good for the rest of the world.
It's not going to be destructive, dis destructive. And there's, we can have whatever we want, so why aren't we playing that game?
Yeah.
I like, I don't know how to yeah, make a little recording that people could listen to it at night so they can just get this into their subconscious, but it's yeah.
And listen, there are days that I need to hear the same message. Like I absolutely nothing makes me, I feel the dumbest ever when I leave my sessions with my coach and I go, huh? She just told me when I told 10 people this week. Okay? This is why we need coaches can't hear ourselves. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Yeah. We just need to get out of ourselves and have somebody else see what it is that we're blinded to and to invite us into that higher place. You know that better. Potential of who you've been made to be. You talked about just the craziness and the hardness of this year, and one of the things that has been really centering for me is I stole this and adopted it from Sharon McMahon.
But I have been just reciting the mantra like nonstop. I will not be distracted from my very important work. And as someone with a DHD who has lots of vision and loads of ambition and goals out the wazoo distraction can be really big. And then you throw in just social media and all of the things that are, all the headlines that are happening, and I could spend and waste entire days in the distraction.
So I chose that first part with great intention, I will not be distracted. And then from my very important work is. I don't mean it at a grandiose, like my work is so very important look at me. But it is, the work that I'm doing is very important to me and it is very important to my clients and it's very important to my family, and I don't want to forget the importance of it because when I am distracted by unimportant things, then what is very important to me gets minimized.
And so that, that mantra, that phrase for me has just simply been on repeat. When I start to go off the rails or my eyes start wandering or, I lose track in any sort of way. And again, like I, I need folks to do that for me and with me. My husband is gets an a plus on this all the time.
I have a coach, I have mentors I have a strategist, and those folks help to bring me back. What do I say is important and how do I move forward with that? Because everything else out there is gonna take my eyes off of it.
How do you define powerful and ladies, and do their definitions change when they're next to each other?
Oh, that last part I was not expecting. The only reason I think it may change is because we are so much better together. We belong together, we belong to each other. And I think when we are standing next to one another, arms locked in, it's like there is an unstoppability to that. I don't feel that way about myself individually 'cause I just know we need each other.
But certainly when we are doing that in community and with like-minded folks that are, running towards the same mission. Oh my gosh, that's so powerful. So what does powerful ladies mean to me? I think it is living into the fullness of who you've been made to be and pursuing that with everything that you've got through your lifetime.
So that's how. I think that's how I would describe what a powerful woman looks like.
Thank you. There are a lot of people who need this work, and I hate saying need because I do believe people are perfect as they are. It's about removing things, but how would you describe your dream customer? So if they're listening, they know they're for you.
I agree with you. I do not think that people have problems to be solved. I don't think that people come to me and I'm like, great, let's fix you. You are a wonder to behold and you have potential to be fulfilled. So I think that, the kind of elevator pitch that I use with folks is that I help high capacity leaders expand their influence and their impact holistically.
So that's the formal official. But I do think that there's a lot of power in those words for what type of people want to work with me. I also think, there's some distinctives that I have of I. The problem that I mainly help solve for folks is overwhelm, and women are really overwhelmed all the time with all the things we talked about earlier, like the, just the juggling of all of the things and all of the places, and keeping our eyes open and making sure that things don't fall through the crack.
That's really overwhelming. But the reason why we experience overwhelm is because of this power over dynamic that exists in the world. So there are very real systems and structures. And powerful systems that are really designed to keep women playing small in their homes, in their own spaces and to not grow out of, like the Alice Wonderland busting outta the house.
So I, I think that there's, the folks that come to me, male or female, are recognizing there is just more for me, but I don't wanna do it in the ways that it has been done or I've been told to do. So if those two things are unreconcilable, there's gotta be a third way. And so I can 100% help you with that because there is a pathway forward.
It is holistic. You will expand beyond your wildest capabilities or imagination. And you will be able to expand that influence and that impact in ways that yeah, you can't even imagine up until now. One more thing I gotta say is I was in a conversation with. A leader that I'm coaching yesterday, we had our last one-to-one coaching call.
She's wrapping up her six month executive group with me, and she said, I had no idea how much accountability and support would matter to me. She was like, I thought I was doing pretty well. And she was doing great. She had like really gotten herself out of some crisis mode stuff and out of like straight up survival and she was like, okay, I think I want some coaching now.
But she just was like, I didn't realize how small I was playing and how much more there really was for me because of the accountability and support that I've had through this group. The other women that are in that group and then the coaching that I have had. So those couple of things from a meta level and then more personal description, I think are folks that we would do really well together.
And I'm curious too, because you've coached Olympians and athletes as well as people in the professional worlds. Yeah. How do they show up differently and how do they approach what you're doing differently? 'cause I have some guesses of but I'm curious like what you've seen between the athlete.
Yeah. Who shows up to you versus the professional that shows up to you?
Yeah, it's funny coaching the athlete. 'cause I am not an athlete. It's just goes to show coaching isn't about having an expertise in a particular field. It's about the developmental science of transformation. So yeah, coaching those folks is really fun because they do know what kind of structure and support and accountability.
They need what is really helpful for them to grow. The other thing that athletes do a little bit differently than like corporate folks or leaders in other spaces is they know the value of recovery. They know that they need off seasons, that they need rest days, that they need things like cold plunges and massages in order to help their bodies recover from the intense output and performance that they're doing.
And so that has always attracted to me in the sports and athletic realm is there is a rhythm that they practice that folks in other spaces. I Summer is my favorite season out of all the four fourth fall is my fourth favorite season. So it's a really hard transition for me to go from summer to fall.
But my family was in Hawaii last week on vacation, and my husband and I were sitting on the beach together. My teenagers were all like still asleep in the bedroom, in the hotel room. And I looked at my husband and I was like, you know what? I think the older that I get, and I was turning 46 on that trip the older that I get, the more that I appreciate seasons and the more I know and wants to really get the most of every season, that seasons are four different things.
So summer is girls Gone Wild family style, it's like kids are everywhere. There's no, there's like weird structures, there's like little bursts of activity. People are sleeping in until noon. It's just, it's chaotic and wild. And we go to the beach on Fridays and I'm working in weird pockets of time, right?
It's just, it's wild. But then fall hits and it's like structure, rhythm. Everybody's getting back into a groove. Everybody's got new clothes and books and supplies for school, and there's a really different season to it. So all that to say, I think for for leaders in corporate spaces or nonprofit spaces or emerging leaders, that those kinds of leaders also know the rigor of just the ongoing.
It's it's just. The grind, really the grind. And so they know what it looks like to really work hard in those spaces and what they need most and probably can learn from those athletes or what do you know, bursts and recovery and rhythms really look like because you can't run 52 weeks a year the same.
No. And i'll tell people like, it's okay to sprint, but we can't sprint all the time. Like when does the sprint end, coming from the northeast? It's weird now living in California. Yeah, because there really aren't, we don't have seasons. And your whole life changes when the season's change, where you go to dinner, what hobbies you do, where you meet up with friends, how often, what kind of food you eat.
Yes. And. It's a interesting, it's very valuable for me to have gone from that structure. Yeah. To not, 'cause it reinforces to your point, how much structure we have to build in and the checks and balances and even something as simple as like, when are we starting this project and when is it ending?
Yeah. Otherwise we have all this hangover stuff and we're like, why are we overwhelmed? And it's you've been working on this project for 12 years. Might be one reason why. And I think too, like I, I love your perspective of whether we consider ourselves an athlete or not. We need to be taking our care of our bodies to be a hundred percent athlete for the thing we're doing.
And a hundred percent we throw stuff out the window all the time because we don't think it's productive and. It's like a core fundamental, like a hundred percent. We have to drink water, we know we have to go to sleep. How much of that we could argue, but we don't often value the other things.
I know that I have loved my schedule when I'm based in Rome, because I'll wake up and I'll leave the house by eight and I'll. Do whatever I want. Go to museums, wander around, I'm outside, meet people for coffee or lunch or whatever. I go back and I start working from like one to seven, and then we jump out and we go out to dinner.
But there's something about having the morning that's mine. Like I choose me first and I get to fill my cup first. And I've been working with my coach for. A while now about how I can build some of that in and there's, yeah, I could just move all my meetings to start at one o'clock, but that doesn't feel very effective.
But the power of like, how can I claim my morning? Yes. It's it seems so silly, but it's no, like there ha boundaries are not walls like from other people. There's sacred circles around what matters most to us and what we're up to. And I don't think we think about the sacred circle part of what we're creating in life and business enough.
I love that language. Yeah. We have a six part framework that we do with our coaching and, the first part of that framework is physical because your body is the basis for your whole life. And again, we even just hopped on this call and like you're on the struggle bus physically right now, and you are seeing like the ramifications, right?
Just how hard it is to function when your body is like breaking down and this is another conversation for another day. But I've had a pretty massive health crisis these last couple of years, and the implications on every other part of my life and leadership have been quite literally catastrophic.
And there's a recovery happening right now, but I have embodied and experienced firsthand the need to care for our bodies, and again, in a lot of corporate spaces. Our bodies are like considered 0% of the time. It's like you come into sick of your work or you come into work. If you're sick, you power through, you suck it up, you medicate the hell out of yourself in order to just keep moving.
Athletes understand that a little bit differently. You are training your body and when your body is experiencing an injury or an illness, you care for it because your body is the vehicle by which you do everything. So it is a real, feels like bass backwards way in working with folks in corporate to help reorient a value.
There's a knowledge intellectually that our bodies matter, but there's not an embedded value oftentimes. And so it can be reclaimed actually quite easily, because folks, once they get a taste of it, it's oh my gosh. Yeah. Wholeness begins in my body. It like, it starts with your, begins with your breath.
It is supported by sleep. It is fueled by food, it's maximized by movement. When I get those things right and when those are functioning in the ways that they need to, everything else is easier. And then our framework also ends with that renewal piece and it's how do you rest, recover? What is the energy space that you're looking like?
How do you process stress in a way so that you are energized and you're not exhausted and burned out? And what I have found is those two are really strategically, bookmark or bookend. Our framework and most leaders, score lowest on our assessments on those two pieces because it's everything else in the middle that we pay attention to.
And yet those things are what scaffold us, hold us up, allow us to move forward, provide that framework of that runway. Yeah, again, it's just it's a holistic approach.
This is a powerful connected community. What is something on your to-do list, wishlist, manifest list that you would like us to hold space for or maybe take an action on for you?
I love that. My dream and vision is that Azer and Co is an eight figure company in the next three to five years. Not because it's just a dream or ambition, but because of those eight figures actually represent. The shift in what leadership looks like in our country and in individual leaders.
The domino effect, the ripple effect of that is tremendous. So I just, I believe our mission demands that it's an eight figure company, so that's fun. But I think that, when there, where there is resonance in. What it is that we are doing to help shift the nature and the way that leadership functions.
I would love to connect with those folks because I know that I could both serve you really well, add a lot of value, but that it already exists within you and you are a part of that catalytic movement that needs to be just more exhibited and embodied in the spaces that you're leading.
Love that. For everybody who wants to work with you, support you figure out how to be a part of everything you're creating, where can they find, follow and support you?
Yeah. I'm on all the socials, so you can find me on LinkedIn and Instagram. But azer and co.com is probably the best place to start on our homepage. Just after that first fold, we've got a an assessment that's called the Whole Leader Snapshot. It is a snapshot of what those six parts of holistic leadership really look like for you.
How you are doing. You get customized results. It directs you to one of the frameworks that you score the lowest in, that you could use the most amount of support in. And that could instigate a journey and a points of connection of I, I'd really love to learn and explore more. So that would be my recommendation. Go to user and co.com.
We ask everyone on the podcast where you put yourself on the Powerful Lady scale. If zero is every average human, and 10 is most powerful lady you can imagine, where would you rank yourself today and on an average day? 10 in 10. With confidence. I like it. You mentioned that you have that whole leader snapshot.
I'm such a believer in people taking all the tests. Yeah. I love ems, human design strength finders. Yeah. What, like why do you love those and how do they give you insight for who you're working with?
Yeah. I am also a huge fan of assessments. We use assessments in our work in multiple ways. And we've got multiple different assessments within that we've created within our company.
But I love them because they help to define reality. You can't remove yourself. So they're not completely objective, like you're bringing your biases and your whatever degree of honesty you're gonna bring to it. But it provides a starting point and a bit of a reality check to see where are you right now, where is it that you wanna be, and then how do we get you there?
So if you are not if you're not assessing, if you're not defining reality, I mean that really is the first task of a leader anyway, right? Is to define reality. And if you have to lead yourself holistically first. It begins with the self-awareness to be able to figure out, what is that way forward. So I'm all about it.
I am so thankful that we got connected. I'm very excited to find a way to connect in real life since in real life we're right here, neighbor. Yes, exactly. But thank you for the work you're doing. Thank you for the space you're holding for people and asking people to be in their greatness. There's I feel relief with the big to-do list that we all have when there are women like you doing this work and causing the leaders that we need in the world. So thank you for what you're doing. Thank you for the impact you're having in other people. It is such needed work. It is important work. But just, yeah, thank you for choosing that mission and. Being that for other people. 'cause it's not an easy job. But it is very important. Yeah.
It's worth it. Thanks, Kara. It's been so fun to connect with you and be a part of this larger community. It's really beautiful.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share it with a friend. Head to the powerful ladies.com. We can find all the links to connect with April Ezr and Co and her programs. Come hang out with powerful ladies on Instagram at Powerful Ladies, and you can find me and all my socials@karaduffy.com.
This episode is produced by Amanda Kass, and our audio engineer is Jordan Duffy. 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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Website: ezerandco.com
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Email: april@ezerandco.com
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
