Teams with EDGE

When we're asked "how are you doing?" The polite answer is always "fine". But what do you say when asked how you are feeling?

Your body gives you a lot of signals. And when you’re stressed, those signals may show up as digestive issues, fatigue, trouble sleeping…and ultimately burnout. Lori Aikman is a Nurse Practitioner and Functional Medical Consultant. She sees clients with these symptoms every day. And she’s done with the traditional medical advice of “eat less and exercise more”.

Lori’s mission is to help female entrepreneurs and business owners align with their body’s unique needs and find a way to live their lives that makes them feel good. Health problems can be a sign that your foundation is crumbling. Lori helps clients focus on building a strong foundation so they can add on all the activities that bring them joy.

As I work with clients, I often hear things like “my team isn’t motivated,” or “I don’t know how to inspire my team.” I also sometimes hear “I can’t ask for that.” My response? How do you know? Sometimes the problem comes simply because we are not asking. This shows up as helplessness and hopelessness on both sides. So, leaders, what can you do to solve this? COMMUNICATE. Open up those lines of communication, and find the alignment with your team that you need to move forward.

Melissa Reynolds is a woman of portraits and purpose. As a women’s portrait and luxury boudoir photographer (yes you read that right), Melissa knows that sometimes you need to step out of your comfort zone to find joy.

For many of us, feeling beautiful and confident is complicated. We’re told we can look pretty, but not “too sexy.” We have body image issues, we struggle to value ourselves, we spend our time, efforts, money on others looking for external validation.

Melissa uses her photography practice to nurture and celebrate the inner self. Through her work, she challenges her clients to value themselves, give away a little control, and let who they truly are shine through. While a photo shoot doesn’t magically give you confidence, if you do the inner work, it’s a joyful celebration of who you are.

In the end, self esteem is controlling what you can control, confidence is a side effect.

Like this podcast? Give us a review on your favourite podcast app. We love to hear your feedback, and it helps others find our show.

December is a time to start thinking about the year ahead. Dreaming, goal-setting, visioning… resolutions.

We’re dreaming of a better future. We celebrate the new year with food, fireworks, and friends. Then the calendar turns and suddenly we’re in the new year. And it feels just the same as before. Our visions, our goals our dreams fade away as we continue our daily routines.

So how do you break this cycle and achieve your dreams? Listen in to find out!

With almost 20 years in the hospitality and event industry, Dallas Lombardi has directed some of the most prominent and influential hospitality teams downtown Toronto, while producing first-class events. From an early age, she was driven to be a leader. To her that meant hustling. Being strong, hard, and keeping the personal out of business. It was Dallas against the world…until it became Dallas against Dallas.

One day while out walking her dog, she was struck with a feeling of joy. It felt strange to her. And that’s when she knew something was wrong. She left the corporate world without a solid plan except that she needed to change. She wasn’t ready…but it was time.

Dallas threw her efforts into personal development and personal growth. Into developing inner leadership. If you haven’t done this work, you may think it’s selfish or simple. But in Dallas’ own words “it's fucking hard work…and more than bubble baths.” She also became a mother…and learned a whole new kind of hustle.

Now Dallas is the CEO of her own life. Through her journey, she has become a better leader. Dallas offers small business consulting, and coaching mentorship services for youth, young professionals, aspiring leaders and purpose driven individuals. Through writing and mentorship, she openly shares her journey in leadership, life and most recently, motherhood, to humanize our experiences and the things that no one talks about.

Like this podcast? Give us a review on your favourite podcast app. We love to hear your feedback, and it helps others find our show.

During times of change, it’s easy for small things to add up until you’re feeling a little, well, out of control. I find this happens to me in the fall. Your schedule changes, the weather changes, there’s a little less sunlight each day. It’s all too easy to sleep in because it’s dark. To forgo that walk because it’s cold. To put in extra hours at work.

The next thing you know you’re having trouble getting to sleep. You’re waking up in the middle of the night with your mind buzzing and whirring and you can’t lay down again. It doesn’t take too long until this feels like it is a perpetual hamster wheel. How do you get off it?

Listen in for tips on taming the cycle of urgency, restoring healthy habits, and falling back to sleep.

And if you’re awake in the middle of the night, reach out to me and set up a clarity call. I won’t answer right away – but that little step forward might help you get back to sleep again.

As a bakery owner, Lori Saitz produced a “gratitude cookie,” which became one of her top sellers. What she learned?  The world could use more gratitude. That drove her to centre her next business, Zen Rabbit, around gratitude and meditation, where Lori teaches clients how to be calm and grounded amidst the chaos in their lives.

Listen in as Ashlee and Lori talk about the power of gratitude, and how you can use it to transform your life. They talk about the power of appreciation marketing to build your business authentically, and powerful ways to show appreciation to your team.

Like this podcast? Give us a review on your favourite podcast app. We love to hear your feedback, and it helps others find our show. That’s a lot of gratitude right there!

Do you regularly check emails in meetings? Are you distracted by notifications on your phone while you are talking to your team member?

It’s easy to be distracted as a leader. I do it myself. We want to be great leaders. We want to be efficient and competent. But we’re also told a big lie – that you can multi-task, that you can do it all, that we can have an open door while doing your own work – all the time. There’s a cultural acceptance that we’re going to be distracted.

I’m here to tell you that distracted leadership only leads to poor work, overwhelm, and eventually feeling less value in our job. There are tools to reduce overwhelm. It’s up to you to identify the problem and take action to change.

You don’t need to do it alone. If you’re working all out, but just don’t seem to be getting work done…if you can’t keep up and at the same time can’t get ahead…if you’re feeling like you need change – reach out for a free coaching session to help remember what leading with ease feels like.

As leaders we want to find balance in our own lives. One important way to achieve this is to support your team in discovering their own balance. When a team member goes on parental leave, it creates a gap in the workplace, and a potential for imbalance. If not handled intentionally, the transition can be difficult for the team member (they can feel out of the loop and unappreciated) and the team (they may take on more work and burnout).

Lacey Kempinski is the Founder of Balanced Good. She works with organizations and individuals in the social profit sector to help fill parental leave vacancies. Lacey understands how helping successfully make the transition into parenthood then back into the workplace is critical for a successful organization to keep engaged, hard-working employees loyal and avoid team burnout.

You can’t fix other people. People need to fix themselves. In reality, that phrasing is off. There is no “fixing,” what it’s really about is growth. As a coach, as a leader, as a parent, there is one thing you need to know:

You can’t force other people to grow.

Instead as a leader, your role is to model behaviour, to help them see possibilities, and to take that first step.

As a coach, I get to help people create a growth plan that suits them. It’s not about my 10-step plan, it’s about listening to my clients, and nurturing that spark in them that wants to change and grow. The point at which they’re ready to take action is when the magic begins.

Fareen “Far” Samji is a 5-time Canadian Women’s Long Drive Champion, and former golf touring professional. After leaving her professional golf career behind, she began to focus on using golf to mentor professional women to increase their confidence on the links, and in life. She wrote a book called “Smashing the Grass Ceiling,” a golfing guide that teaches you how to use golf to develop meaningful relationships in the workplace.

Far believes you don’t have to come to golf with natural skill. Learning the game simply takes time and confidence. And you don’t have to be perfect to play. It’s more about how you present yourself on the links and with your group than whether you can drive a long ball down the fairway.

Whether you shy away from because of lack of time, performance anxiety, or you don’t know the rules, Far stresses that it’s important you know how to leverage golf as a social and business networking tool. Spending time on the course is a smart way to invest focused, uninterrupted time with the people who can make a difference in your career. She runs a Smashing Nines program to help women develop golf basics in a safe and supportive environment.

You can find out more about the Smashing Nines program, order Far’s book, or learn more about mentoring teens through golf at Far’s website farsamji.com.

Like this podcast? Give us a review on your favourite podcast app. We love to hear your feedback, and it helps others find our show.

Have you ever witnessed someone honking their horn angrily in traffic? Seen someone who takes to social media in rage to complain about poor customer service or a sports parent yelling angrily at an umpire for a small offense? They are showing signs of poor emotional intelligence.

This is me sometimes. You may see yourself in this as well. It happens, we are human. Too often we’re living in the “red” and “orange” zones where we are prone to stress and anger. But if you work at your skills of emotional intelligence, if you truly practice at it with an intent to get better, you CAN improve your EI. You can slip more easily into a zone of calm and creativity – the green zone where you feel safe, you learn, and grow.

Take a deep breath, find your safe space, and listen in and learn some practical tips on developing your emotional intelligence.

Kimberly Roy describes herself as a recovering perfectionist. In her self-development journey, she has been working on how her perfectionism correlates to her self-confidence. She works on her mindset every day, reminding herself that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing, and that opening yourself up to “good” helps you become unstuck and move forward.

With a lot of work, Kimberly has learned to focus on her energy levels, and cycles of feeling good and anxious, allowing herself to take advantage of times of energy, and give herself a break when she’s feeling low.

In this intimate conversation with Ashlee, Kimberly reveals how perfectionism blinded her to joy, and how letting go has allowed her to love herself with grace and compassion. Through her self-development, she feels a renewed sense of joy and accomplishment, and has more space to deeply love others in her life.

In this age of same-day delivery, texting, social media likes, and binge-watching, we have gratification delivered up daily on a platter. We’re used to it. We expect it.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of getting disappointed that you haven’t already reached the finish line. It’s easy to get stuck on the reward of the big goal and want that instant gratification. But big things take time. The finish line is always moving.

Learn more about the joy – and value – of celebrating wins. And get inspired to make celebrating wins your new habit.

Before COVID, Renee France Boudreau was a salon owner in Burlington Ontario. When COVID hit, Renee pivoted with her team as much as possible and survived the series of lock downs. During this time Renee found clarity in her business – feeling into what was bringing her joy and felt aligned and what didn’t. After a long journey, Renee and her husband completely upended their lives, quitting their jobs, selling her business and moving the family to Nova Scotia. The move, and the change in life was not easy, or comfortable. But more than a year later, Renee reflects on the energy the change sparked within her, and how her life has changed in many positive ways.

In this episode, Renee and Ashlee talk about how confidence is created when you give yourself capacity to grow, and how focusing on yourself helps you better serve others. It takes enormous bravery to make change in your life. And in the end, Renee reflects that bravery is a habit that you can practice and hone.

Listen in and find the courage to make change in your own life.

Most of us have participated in work training of some sort. Learning new software, attending conferences, learning new processes. This is generally considered “professional development,” and most companies invest money in keeping employee skills up to snuff.

Personal development is working on yourself. And while we may prioritize professional development to get ahead at work, or please our bosses, we often set personal development aside because we don’t have time, or we’re too busy.

I have focused a lot on personal development, and I’ll tell you one thing I’m completely sure about: I have gained more from my investment in personal development than in any skills training. It has helped me get unstuck and move forward, uncover my blind spots, learn to work in a new way, and become a better leader.

Retraining your brain IS possible, and you will find the effort brings you more ease and harmony in your work.

Want to learn more? Book a complementary call with Ashlee to gain clarity on the challenges you are facing.

Gone are the days of “do what I say not what I do”.  

As a leader, you may want to move up the corporate ladder, coach your team through a challenge, find more ease at work…or even be a more engaged leader at home.

But none of this is possible without self-leadership. Before you can truly pick up your team or coach them through a challenge you need to know how to pick yourself up, show yourself compassion, love, and trust.

When you show up authentically and BE the leader you want to be, your team will take note, and follow your lead. That’s what it means to be a leader, right? It’s not impossible – it just takes work. Put the tools in place to be the leader you want to be.

When you’re training for a marathon, you don’t just listen to podcasts on how to train – you show up to do the work to strengthen your body, and build the muscles you need to run the race.

When we’re trying to be better leaders, to make positive change in our behaviour, we often fall back on passive activities like listening to podcasts or reading leadership books. And hey, we’re certainly not telling you NOT to do these things. They do help.

But we need to actually do the work as well. We may hire a personal trainer to improve our body. Why not invest in coaching / training for the mind and spirit? To train and build our mental muscles?

Erin Baute is an enneagram expert and behaviorist who has worked in leadership development and behaviour change for the past 20 years. She uses the enneagram tool to help her clients fast forward their self-awareness and guide their efforts to make positive change in their lives.

Want to learn more about what an enneagram is and how it can help? Listen in to the podcast, and check out Erin’s free digital typing guide to learn more:

We talk a lot on this podcast about building loyalty. But what happens when you are a loyal employee who is let go? This happened to Robin Merle, who was fired from her company after more than 10 years of employment.

Working through her period of “disorientation,” Robin learned a lot about herself and connected with many others on the same journey. Grieving the loss of a job is not a linear journey, and it’s okay not to be okay. Ultimately, she learned to see the experience for what it was: an opportunity for change and growth. She now mentors others through the same journey.

Robin sees that there is strength in both loyalty and a “caring indifference” to work. She feels there can be “too much loyalty,” so she guides others to build a strong sense of self both inside and outside the workplace, making it easier to adapt to change and move on.

Robin Merle, CFRE has been a senior executive for billion-dollar nonprofit organizations and a veteran of the power, value, and identity wars at the top ranks. She is the author of Involuntary Exit, A Woman’s Guide to Thriving After Being Fired (She Writes Press) which received the 2021 Gold Medal Award from the Non-Fiction Authors Association and a 5-star review from Foreward.

Get your copy of Robin’s book on Amazon or via her website:

One last bonus episode until we launch season 4!!! Are you excited? We sure are. And we have a special treat for you this week. A replay of my conversation with the powerhouse Sarah Ernest. Her views are insightful, her enthusiasm infectious. What a great way to set us up for Season 4. ENJOY...and back to it with new episodes next week.

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When you begin any new project or position, you don’t have big shoes to fill…you’re bringing your own shoes.

Sarah Ernest is the Director of Philanthropy & Communications at the YWCA Hamilton. As a leader, she values and elevates the strengths of her team members rather than focusing on any weaknesses. That strength-based leadership approach helps her team channel their efforts, garnering loyalty and appreciation, while supporting retention and leadership development.

In this episode, Sarah and Ashlee talk strength-based leadership, placing trust in your team, and celebrating our collective strengths.

With over 14 years’ experience raising funds and awareness in the YWCA and YMCA movements, Sarah has held multiple roles at associations in Halifax, Silicon Valley, and Hamilton. Throughout her career, Sarah has provided leadership in fundraising of over $26 million for local charities, and has actively mentored, encouraged, and advocated for her employees, colleagues, and those most vulnerable.

We're on hiatus for the summer, but wanted to keep the encouragement and positivity going by replaying some of our favourite episodes from season 3. Watch for us to return for Season 4 on August 25. In the meantime, enjoy this special bonus repeat of my conversation with Carm Bozzo.

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We're on hiatus for the summer - watch for the launch of Season 4 on August 25. In the meantime, take some time to enjoy one of our most popular episodes from Season 3. Boundaries are a big topic - we need to think about them, plan them, set to them, and stick to them to uncover that elusive work life balance. Hope you're having a great summer.

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Setting and communicating boundaries can be a difficult exercise. Boundaries can feel restrictive and limiting. But I challenge you to think of them as freeing – as setting yourself up for success. If you can train yourself to think of boundaries as a reason you are doing something now rather than an excuse for why you are not doing something else, you can become more productive and happier in your work and personal life.

We're on hiatus for the summer, so we're sending out this special bonus repeat of Ashlee's conversation with Lianne Kim. Don't miss out on the special offer for Lianne's book - if you want to build a Joyful Business, this offer is not to be missed!

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Lianne Kim is a Business Coach, and founder of Mamas & Co, a community for mama entrepreneurs. She also the host of the wildly popular podcast 'The Business of Thinking Big' and the author of the bestselling book 'Building a Joyful Business'.  Lianne helps female entrepreneurs shift from a mindset of being a “good employee” to recognizing they are thought leaders who can find joy – and profit – in running their own business. In this episode Lianne and Ashlee talk about the joys and pains of leadership, giving and receiving feedback, and how we can become joyful leaders. It’s not always easy, but it is possible. 

Does the word “change” intimidate you? Are you afraid of failure, judgement, the unknown? If you’re unhappy, you may need to look inward to find the steps you need to take to evolve and grow.

Melissa Gilller is the CEO and Founder of Life with Soul. She’s dedicated to teaching ambitious and driven women to identify their fears, their patterns and their energy leaks in order to create balance, alignment and a life of intention. She knows that sustainable change doesn’t happen in an instant.

In this episode, Ashlee and Melissa talk about self-leadership. We’re naturally conditioned to be tough on ourselves. If we can look inwards for leadership, and be kinder to ourselves, everything can shift. Instead fearing change, ask yourself a simple question: "how can I," to begin to see the possibilities for growth.

The key is to be curious about your feelings – the positive, negative, and neutral. To understand what we feel and learn how we can make positive change in our lives.

When you’re feeling stuck or overwhelmed, it’s easy to look across the fence and see greener grass. You may make a move to a new job thinking things will be better than where you are. But often you find yourself in the same situation. The grass isn’t different. It’s just a different yard.

Why? Because you’re bringing your same bad habits with you. Listen in as we discuss how to make a successfully move to a new job, position, or even personal relationship. You need to actively create the change you want to see.

Hugo Menard is interested in the mind-body relationship, and how we can make lasting improvements to our lives with little conscious effort by tending to our subconscious. We have experienced a few tumultuous years. While we may want to ignore our problems or make them go away, they will exist as triggers until we deal with them. It takes an inner, gentle, step-by-step process to move beyond the stress, and be okay with negative experiences.

In this episode, Hugo and Ashlee have a wide ranging conversation about the body/mind disconnect, taming our negative subconscious beliefs, and how you can make subconscious change…and it can feel good.

Whether you work in a corporate job or are an entrepreneur, leadership can feel like being in a fishbowl. Everyone is looking to you…and everyone is looking at you to see how you will react. It’s okay to be human, it’s okay to have a bad day. Trust is hard to build and easy to fracture, but if you show you are human, apologize honestly when you have made a mistake and always leave room to grow, you’ll find your team will respond in kind.

Tania Moraes is a serial entrepreneur and multi-passionate creative strategist, best-selling author, and host of the Reflections of a Warrior Podcast. A series of "yes" ventures led Tania to fuse her passion for creativity, holistic healing, photography, and writing and birth what is now known as Warrior Life Creative Co -- a creative agency with a full global team of 6 team members. Each member works in their zone of genius to create an ALL-IN-ONE immersive agency and mentorship experience for heart-inspired entrepreneurs and brands.

Follow Tania:
Instagram: @warriorlifecreative
Facebook: Tania Jane Moraes-Vaz

When you begin any new project or position, you don’t have big shoes to fill…you’re bringing your own shoes.

Sarah Ernest is the Director of Philanthropy & Communications at the YWCA Hamilton. As a leader, she values and elevates the strengths of her team members rather than focusing on any weaknesses. That strength-based leadership approach helps her team channel their efforts, garnering loyalty and appreciation, while supporting retention and leadership development.

In this episode, Sarah and Ashlee talk strength-based leadership, placing trust in your team, and celebrating our collective strengths.

With over 14 years’ experience raising funds and awareness in the YWCA and YMCA movements, Sarah has held multiple roles at associations in Halifax, Silicon Valley, and Hamilton. Throughout her career, Sarah has provided leadership in fundraising of over $26 million for local charities, and has actively mentored, encouraged, and advocated for her employees, colleagues, and those most vulnerable.

No one loves having a difficult conversation. Leaders perhaps least of all. In fact, even the thought of having a difficult conversation can increase our stress levels.

Over the years, I’ve honed the art of difficult conversations simply by having them, learning from them, and getting better each time. While having difficult conversations may never become easy for you, with these tips, hopefully having difficult conversations will become a little easier.

Julia Swaigen didn’t set out to be a leader; she fell into it. About 3 years ago, she founded Attuned Families, a child and family therapy and parent coaching practice in Toronto. Her business grew quickly, she hired more therapists, before she knew it, she found she had unintentionally become a leader.

Despite falling into leadership, Julia approaches leadership intentionally. Her company has a values document that she reviews with all new team members, and she ensures that she and her team live by those values. She openly discusses boundaries with her team – both hers and theirs – and does her best to respect them. She recognizes that therapy work can be challenging both mentally and emotionally, so she makes sure her team takes time for self care.

In this episode, Ashlee and Julia talk about the challenges and rewards of intentional leadership. How being a leaders is trying to do the best for your clients and the best for your team every day.

Heads up – Attuned Families is coming to Prince Edward County on Wednesday June, 8 2022

They will be providing live in person support to families in Eastern Ontario. If you are looking to bring greater consciousness and clarity to your parenting, or you are parenting a child with ADHD, Anxiety, Autism, or who is highly sensitive, you’ll want to attend the seminar.

Decision-fatigue is a hot topic right now. Probably because so many of us are feeling it. When you are overwhelmed and burnt out, it’s difficult to know when, or how, to start. Sometimes just taking that first step is all you need.

Brittany Stinson is a business strategist who accelerates the growth and impact of missional entrepreneurs by organizing their projects and creating custom strategies. She works with solopreneurs with almost no budget to 6-figure projects and best-selling book launches.

In this episode Ashlee talks to Brittany about decision fatigue, reaching out to others to help make decisions, and how you can release yourself from the cycle of overwhelm and fatigue.

Many leaders come to me saying, “I just want my team to be happy,” or “I don’t know how to make Joe happy.” There’s a sense that we all should be happy all the time. And if we’re not, well then something must be wrong – with us, or with the situation we’re in.

Leaders feel their job is to make their teams happy. Teams, in part, may feel their leaders’ job is to make them happy. It’s a potential recipe for dissatisfaction and burnout on both sides.

Your responsibility as a leader is not to make everyone happy…It’s to create an environment where happiness and productivity can exist and thrive.

There’s no perfect recipe for success. Even if you watch what someone else does and follow in their footsteps, your end result will taste a little different. And that’s okay. You be you.

Britteney Ofodile helps women level up their businesses, show up as their authentic selves, and align it all to their driven purpose. She takes the energy, drive, and passion from 20 years in corporate America to dig deep into business performance. With Britteny, there’s no quick fixes or band-aid solutions. She gets to the root of her clients’ problems so they can face what comes next with confidence.

In this episode, Ashlee and Britteney (with a special guest appearance from Britteney’s one year-old daughter) talk about the servant leader, diversity of thought, building a culture of trust, and building an unselfish mindset. To approach leadership as a learning process that takes time.

Britteny loves to connect with other entrepreneurs, so feel free to message her for a Zoom coffee!

Lianne Kim is a Business Coach, and founder of Mamas & Co, a community for mama entrepreneurs. She also the host of the wildly popular podcast 'The Business of Thinking Big' and the author of the bestselling book 'Building a Joyful Business'.

Lianne helps female entrepreneurs shift from a mindset of being a “good employee” to recognizing they are thought leaders who can find joy – and profit – in running their own business. In this episode Lianne and Ashlee talk about the joys and pains of leadership, giving and receiving feedback, and how we can become joyful leaders. It’s not always easy, but it is possible.

Everyone has an AHA moment now and then. They can be as small as realizing your feet hurt because there is a pebble in your shoe to a life-changing realization. I recently faced 3 minutes in an ice bath – and I had a big AHA moment about how I face resistance in my life.

Listen in to find out more.

Jenny Schlueter is a Certified Hypnotherapist and Breathwork Facilitator. She works with clients to help them dig deeper into the root causes of their stress or problems and learn to listen to the person they trust them most – themselves.

Jenny believes that when you stop, take time to be present, and turn off the analytical part of your brain, you learn to trust your intuition. When that happens, it helps you find peace, clarity, and purpose. You can find it easier to tackle day to day life simply by taking time and relaxing your mind.

If you’re interested in learning more, Jenny has a podcast, Mind Your Subconscious, and offers events and masterclasses on hypnotherapy and breathwork.

I recently spent some time away at a leadership retreat with many other small business owners and solopreneurs. When talking to my peers, one theme was clear: many of them deeply felt the loneliness of leadership.  As a leader, you can be surrounded by people … and still feel alone.  We carry a burden of responsibility – to keep our business running, to keep our team happy, to keep our team employed, to ensure their work goes well. What’s left in our tank?

It's hard to be creative, to lead and inspire, when you have nothing left to give. What can you do to feed yourself as a leader, and drive your joy and passion?

Join our monthly meetups where we discuss the joys and pitfalls of leadership…and support each other to find our leadership/life balance.

We are hardwired to see the negative, and we tell ourselves stories to reinforce those negative beliefs. Shelley Bosworth wants us to disrupt those thoughts, and reframe the script to shift in another direction. It can be uncomfortable to see the positive. Focusing on the negative makes us feel like we’re protecting ourselves.

If we want more, we need to become uncomfortable, confront our limiting beliefs, and begin focusing on becoming the person we want to be. Change can feel overwhelming, but the journey can ultimately be rewarding…and life-altering. It’s okay to have fear – just move beyond it, dig into your courage, and take the first step.

Shelley Bosworth is a business mindset coach who helps women in business get out of their heads, and out of their own way to achieve their goals. She’s on a mission to help women understand the power of their mindset in the goal and inspire and empower them to believe and achieve.

Helena Lucia says that as human beings, we need three things to feel safe: context, choice, connection. And during the last two years, all three have been sorely lacking in our lives. We have no context to deal with a global pandemic, our choices on how we can live our lives has been limited, and we’ve lost connections through isolation and working from home. If you’re feeling burned out, it’s no wonder.

Helena understands that a big sign of burnout is when we have a hard time doing things that used to be easy. She says this is a sign your body is pulling back and trying to make you slow down to protect you. There’s no shame in it. The key is to recognize the signs, and focus on what you can do to heal.

Helena Lucia is a trauma-informed money coach and founder of SISU Journey, where she teaches that money is so much more than math, and healing the money wound is so much more than mindset work. She’s also the host of SISU Journey podcast: Science and Stories of Resilience.

Setting and communicating boundaries can be a difficult exercise. Boundaries can feel restrictive and limiting. But I challenge you to think of them as freeing – as setting yourself up for success. If you can train yourself to think of boundaries as a reason you are doing something now rather than an excuse for why you are not doing something else, you can become more productive and happier in your work and personal life.

We need help. We have people around us who want to help. Why can it be so hard to ask – or even accept – help? In his bestselling book “HumanKind,” Brad Aronson explores the world of difference that even the smallest acts of kindness can make. At work, celebrating small acts of kindness can do more to boost morale than a bonus. And as leaders, learning to accept help can bring you ease and joy.

We all need a little more kindness in our lives right now. I highly recommend picking up a copy of Brad’s book. It’s available online (go to Brad’s website or search Brad Aronson HumanKind) and all author royalties go to Big Brothers Big Sisters.

Spending money is like spending time. What’s most important is how you currently spend it, how you want to spend it, then spending it on what is important to you. Heidi Rumohr knows that more than 40% of Canadians lose sleep over their finances. If you’re a business owner, you may be worried about your cash flow. Your employees may also be less productive if they’re stressed about debt.

The solution isn’t always making more money (though it would be nice, wouldn’t it?) It can be as simple as reminding employees (and yourself) to take advantage of the benefits of benefits, or arranging a workshop on finances to help you feel like you have more control.

We're taking a break before launching Season 3 on March 10. In the meantime enjoy this bonus repeat episode of my conversation with Melva Holt, the "Management Maven".

In this episode, Melva and I discuss the importance of developing leadership talent within your organization, and  how you can become the type of manager you wish you had to lead your team and thrive.

We're taking a break before launching Season 3 on March 10. In the meantime enjoy this bonus repeat episode of my conversation with Alex Gilbert (she/her) of Cape-Able Consulting.

In this episode, we discuss how the need to negotiate accommodations has become commonplace during the Covid pandemic, and how seeing and understanding the whole person both helps us connect, AND be more productive and happier at work.

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February is the month of love – a great time to focus on your client relationships. Have you ever worked with a business that has a great sales process, but terrible delivery? How does that make you feel? You’re promised so much up front, but you don’t get what you expect in the end. Are you going to give that company a 5-star rating? Referrals? Likely not.  

Referrals are the golden ticket to business success. It’s a sale without as much effort on your part. If you are not getting referrals from your current clients, it’s time to ask yourself WHY. And to make a plan that helps show your clients a little love.  

Morgan Ruff spent 20+ years working in the environmental field. She found herself lost and broken down. Instead of giving up, she learned to cultivate hope and joy from within to become a stronger leader and a stronger person. In this episode Ashlee and Morgan discuss the practice and power of gratitude, and how learning to be truly grateful can help nourish your confidence as a leader...and in life.