Empower Your Inner Superpower: Overcoming Barriers as a Woman Entrepreneur with Dr. Diane Mueller

How do we set up our days for success? How do we change our mind when we get to our bank statement at the end of the month? And we're like, wow, either I lost money or I didn't gain as much money as I thought. And it can really play these mental games. So how do we get out of our mental trap? How do we keep our vision of the future? That sort of thing. And then the final one is confidence. And I just have one confidence module. It's an express module. So it's fairly short, but it's really going through like how we actually gain confidence as female entrepreneurs. Cause so many times I had, find people won't do something because they're not confident in it, but yet we need to do that thing in order to get the confidence. So those are module. And then within all of them, I also focus on pleasure, on hormones, on dopamine, on oxytocin, on how to not just have 90 day business goals, but how to make sure we're also having 90 day pleasure goals. Welcome to super entrepreneurs podcast. Today we have with us, Dr. Diane Mueller. Diane is a founder of Femme Meets Fortune, which teaches women entrepreneurs how to accelerate the growth of their companies by building enterprises. They genuinely enjoy running rather than ones that run their lives. Welcome to our show, Dr. Diane. Thank you, Shahid. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. My pleasure is great to have you. I see that you're helping people. I love that. What was the experience like what happened in your life that got you involved with helping other women? Yes. So many things that we wind up as far as doing as entrepreneurs, it's like our own struggle that lead us to helping other people. That's what I'm looking for. Yes. Yeah. Essentially when I graduated from medical school, I went to naturopathic medical school and got a double doctorate in holistic medicine. And when I graduated, one of the things that I was not prepared for is there's not really jobs available for people in my type of niche. There's just not a lot of opportunities. You basically have to be an entrepreneur. So I had $500,000 of medical school debt, credit card debt that I've been using to pay my living expenses. And then came the debt collector. So I call it my rice and beans year. And it was basically a year of living so frugally. I was trying to eat on $25 a week. So hence the name of the rice and beans year, that was the staple of my diet. And it was a really scary time. Every single month, I did not know if my lights were going to get turned off and I had all of this knowledge and all of this education and did not know what to do. So I climbed out of that very dark, intense, full and very scary times. And got my business to a point where some of the statistics that I find say that it's in the top 4% of businesses in the United States, that business has been sold. I now own other businesses. So it's been this process since then of creation, of learning, of trialing, of taking business courses, of just a lot of trial and error to pull myself out. So I'm really passionate about just helping women have a better system than I did. Also having a way of doing this without being so overwhelmed because it's so easy to feel like we need to be in this state of pushing and rushing all the time. And yeah, there's times for that. But the overwhelm sometimes is really where I see so many people struggling with the cortisol rays, the stress response, and the brain doesn't work correctly because we're stressed because we're overwhelmed. We can't think creatively. So that's why in addition to supporting women from the business side of things, I also talk a lot about pleasure, about stress, about mindset, about all these different things that are really designed to get our brain into a higher producing state. There is a struggle, right? Like even in business, we all get into business for that time and money freedom. To create a better lifestyle. But then we soon find out how difficult it is. And then we start feeling overwhelmed with everything. There's just so many hats we wear and it gets to a point where we don't know what to do. And it gets really heavy. It gets heavy on your soul. It gets heavy on everything. And then to find that ability to bring that medium into your life where you can do your business with calmness and think more clearly, like you mentioned, you definitely become a lot more creative and then you make it fun. Yeah. You know, it's really interesting. And one of the reasons I focus on women is just because I know women and some of the medical perspectives around women and estrogen and progesterone on the female brain is that one of the things that, that women have this say silver coin, it's like for better or worse type of scenarios, humans, we all have these things, but for women, the effect of estrogen and progesterone on the brain is that it causes women to have this very wide awareness. This is why a woman can get old and women that are listening probably can relate to this, get home for a vacation. And all of a sudden it's like you walk in the door and you notice that the dishes weren't done and there's a dirt on the floor and the laundry has to be done. And it's like, everything is talking at once. Men, like the testosterone impacts on the brain is allows a man to be a little bit more focused than women. And both of these types of awareness he's had their, their positives and their negatives. This is why it's so great to be working together. I think for the woman, there's a book out there and I'm blanking on the author's name at this moment, but it's called the rushing woman's syndrome. And the author really goes into this whole phenomenon that happens because of everything that the woman takes in at one time. And the way to really modulate that is really to get the cortisol down is really to get the hormones balance so that we can actually show up. And what we see when we go into pleasure and we talk about pleasure type of activities, we actually see that oxytocin raises on the brain. When oxytocin raises, we can think more creatively about our problem. We can come into focus more. And we also see that when we seek pleasure types of activities, we see dopamine raise in our brain and we see dopamine raise in our brain that allows us to have motivation and these stamina to work on our work through those whole days. And so it's one of these things where it's, it's so easy when we realize as entrepreneurs that we have to do all these things. And in the beginning, it's like, well, we go from like, maybe having a job if we had a standard job and having a few tasks to basically managing basically the job sake duties that would be distributed in a larger corporation among hundreds or thousands of people. And so when that happens, it's really easy for this overwhelm to kick in and it's really easy to not make time for pleasure. It's really easy to not make time for these sorts of things and just be like, I have to power through. I have to do the work and the kids at the carpool or whatever else you're doing. But when we actually take that time and we set that time away from a mindset perspective to sink into pleasure, to sink into oxytocin, to get that dopamine, it not only allows us to be better at work, but it actually allows us to enjoy the process of really building and scaling a business. Because as anybody that's listening to this, and I know like this is not easy stuff, right? There's these really hard days and you mentioned, oh, it's a better lifestyle that we oftentimes seek out as entrepreneurs. We want to get into this better lifestyle. And what so commonly happens is that we wind up being so busy for all the tasks at hand. And maybe what we were looking for is like more time with our family. And I think as entrepreneurs, we have to be careful to come back to that. Why? Because it can be really easy. And like the busyness of it all to actually move further away from that time bowl instead of closer to getting time back, like you mentioned. Can you share some steps that people can follow women entrepreneurs, for example, what could they do immediately to get some help? Yeah. A couple of things on my website, you'll find a clarity quiz. Definitely go check that out because the purpose of that is to really give you a sense of where you're not clear about places in your business and getting more clear because that helps from an overwhelmed perspective. And one of the first exercises I give people in this situation, like you're talking about is basically, I call it the boxes exercise. And in the boxes, you just basically draw, take a piece of paper, draw a bunch of like squares or rectangles. And what you want to do in that particular exercise is inside every box, write a different task that you do. And you want to write literally everything down. So if you have an office building and you're responsible for taking out the trash from your office, if you don't have a cleaner at your office building, for example, you want to write down those, you know, those types of tasks. If you are checking the mail, you want to write that down. And the purpose of this is to really start seeing like the number of different tasks you have, and then you can start color coding them and being like, OK, what are the tasks that are the least, most important that you do? That would be the easiest to hire, the easiest to train. And oftentimes these are the lower cost to hire and train. And sometimes by doing this, what you wind up finding is, OK, if there's some of these boxes that are, say, a lower brain power task, you don't have to do them. You can keep your brain on the higher power task. And when the first thing you start to say is, can I even hire out a couple hours a week at these very, the lower, say, brain power types of tasks in order for you to start getting time back? But having that level of awareness by doing the boxes activity, it's like when you really break down to like down to the level of taking out the trash or checking the mail, it becomes like no wonder, no wonder you're overwhelmed. So then you can start looking at either hiring some of those lower cost types of tasks out, even if it winds up being a couple hours a week, a hundred dollars a month, start really small depending upon where you're at. And then from there, the other thing you can do is you can become more organized and really see, because oftentimes we're doing all these tasks because it feels like we have to do these things as an entrepreneur. We have to really get things off the ground. But then oftentimes, sometimes we do this type of exercise. We become aware of, oh, certain things that I'm doing are actually not that important to bringing in more revenue, to helping more people. And with that being the goal, it's like maybe those can wait until you can hire a person, you know, until you can hire help. And so that allows you to see more clearly and granularly what you're doing, what you can let go of, what you can hire out, even if it's just, like I said, small amount of money so that you can really then start getting time back and focus more of your efforts on the things that matter to your business the most. That's a wonderful share. Thank you so much for that. It's all about that self-awareness. This exercise will allow someone to actually see the time they're spending. Yeah. To make it better. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's wonderful. Exactly. Do you recommend a specific morning routine to women that they should do to calm things down? I love this question so much because I have a lot of opinions about this. I see so many people so excited about this exact morning routine and okay, you do this and you do that and you do that. That's the recipe for success. And they always ask that question too. Really? It's something people always want to know. What do you do in the morning? Yeah. The biggest thing I think is don't overthink it. And my personal feeling, it is different for everybody. There is a book, The Power of When, that I really enjoy. It goes through the uniqueness of circadian rhythm for different humans. So it talks about some people in this. It brings it back to hunter-gatherer days. A lot of theory, but it really goes to this concept of the power of when. Got it. Thank you. Yeah. And it goes through these hunter-gatherer types of days where it's okay. You have some people in the tribe that had to stay up all night and guard the camp and other people were getting up at four in the morning and other people, they had their shift at noon. And so explains that from this theory of maybe that's why some people's circadian rhythms are really set. So it's like they wake up naturally at four or they're better at eight or they're better. They don't actually get started in their brain. Their brain doesn't turn on until noon and they actually do their best work late in the day. A lot of how I recommend people structuring their day is really less about a perfect morning routine and more about understanding when does your brain work the best? When does your brain work the worst? Like for me, my brain turns on super hot and heavy in the morning. So like I love getting up and going straight into work. Other people need this long ramp before their brain is working well and it's better for them to wake up to do movement right away. That sort of thing. I definitely recommend basic stuff of getting up, having a full glass of water, the body gets dehydrated during the night, thinking about a couple of things you're excited about your day just to get you in that frame of mind. But other than those like couple basic things of get your mind oriented to the day, drink some water and hydrate, the rest I really find is like bio individuality and really think around like setting up your day where the uniqueness of when you're thriving and when you're the most say filled up in your brain, when your brain feels like it has the most energy, that's when you want to bring your hardest work, exercise, working out, moving. These are all really important things for the body, for the mindset, for stress. But movement, like do that. You can't do that when your brain is like, you feel like your brain is at its low in the day, right? So if your brain starts your day and you're like, wow, my brain does not turn on right away, then you might be somebody that would have a, maybe a longer morning routine, getting exercise out in the morning, out of the way in the morning. These sorts of things, because you need that time for your brain to really turn on. So I would say the biggest thing is stay away from this like hyper focus on the morning routine has to be this exact perfect way for success. I just don't really buy into that. And as a doctor, I just see medically the difference between the individuality of the human. So when we're really looking to maximize our best selves, how we're going to set up our structure of our day and how we're going to have our morning routine is very different depending upon your unique needs. In summary is it's always recommended to experiment and find your spot. Correct. Yeah. And pay attention, keep a journal just like, okay, times that you felt like. Your brain was the most functioning, right? If you keep a journal, like, is that the same time every day? It's like your brain highest that two to four, that's the case. And your goal is to say that protect that time period of whenever your brain works best, as much as you can protect that time period with your life of what you need to do to clear out your life during that time period, because that's when you're going to be the most productive. And yeah, pay attention to what do you feel? If you wake up and you exercise right away, do you feel good? Then if you exercise at five o'clock at night, you feel good. Then there's a, that's a lunch break thing, whatever it is, pay attention to when you orient these things and when you put them in the day where you actually most productive, have the most energy, those sorts of things. Nice. So can you share with us once a entrepreneur signs up with you and that you've gone through the paperwork, everything is done, and then you start work with them that first day when you meet with them, what does that look like? What do you do? Yeah, thank you. So there's lots of different ways you can work with me. So some people just choose to go through my online educational curriculums, but if you actually are looking for more like one-on-one type of work, which is what I believe you're asking me about here. So that one-on-one work is really like a strategy session. And we start that strategy section on the call that we do after the application. So it'll work with me from a business coaching perspective. It is a, it is an application process. And on that first call, I get a sense of, okay, where are you going? Can I support you and getting you there? Are you going to be coachable? Are we going to work well together? Are we philosophically aligned with where, how you want this to look? That sort of thing. And then we put together that first day. It's basically like a roadmap and that roadmap is our priority list. And that's part of what we're doing in that application process is I'm generating that priority list based upon what you're telling me about your business, your stats, those types of things. And so it's going to be very different on the, in the one-on-one work from one individual to a next, because you're going to be at different points of your business, but it's really to lay out the roadmap of, okay, first couple of weeks of working together, this is your main focus. This is our main goal. Next couple of weeks, this is your main focus. This is our goal. And we go through and some of it will depend upon where you're at. So step-by-step process. Step-by-step process. Yeah. And that part, that part's very individualized. I do have group calls that we do as well. The group calls are really great because when you hear questions that other people have and everybody helps each other solve each other's problems. And the one-on-one coaching, you also get the advantage of being in that, the group calls as a added bonus too. Excellent. And the course that you have, can you outline it? What it does for a person? Yeah, I actually have five courses. So I have five courses in, in three different say categories. So the three categories I focus on one is clarity. Another is commitment and another is confident clarity, commitment, and confidence. And so clarity is really going through a lot more of the true business, the things that we would label as business. So it's really going through things like, okay, do you know your numbers? Do you know your lead flow? Do you need your, do you need, do you know your funnel? Do you know how many people are coming in? Do you know when you're going to basically get to a point where because of your pricing, you're going to run out of time. And are you charging enough that when you run out of time, you're going to be able to hire your replacement. So we really look at some of those foundational things to make sure like you are actually set up for a business that can literally scale. And then we go through things. How do you create your doppelganger? How do you set your systems up into place? We go through different applications and technology tools you can use. So it's really that foundational standpoint that some people enter into that program at different points in their knowledge of business, but pretty much everybody that I have go through there is always saying, okay, here I found the missing links of what the parts that they were missing. So that's clarity. And I have a, I have actually two clarity courses. One is most people get through in about three months. The other course is a mini course. I call it the express clarity course. And most people get through that one in a week or two. So it's just the top two nuggets from the bigger course or in the smaller one. And then the commitment. So I have two commitment modules, again, the larger one and a smaller one and express one. And that's a lot about mindset. So some of what I'm talking about, even here in the conversation of like morning routine, how do we set up our days for success? How do we change our mind when we get to our bank statement at the end of the month and we're like, wow, either I lost money or I didn't gain as much money as I thought, and it can really play these mental games. So how do we get out of our mental trap? How do we keep our vision of the future? That sort of thing. And then the final one is confidence. And I just have one confidence module. It's an express module, so it's fairly short. But it's really going through like how we actually gain confidence as female entrepreneurs, because so many times I had find people won't do something because they're not confident in it, but yet we need to do that thing in order to get the confidence. So those are the modules. And then within all of them, I also focus on pleasure on hormones, on dopamine, on oxytocin, on how to not just have 90 day business goals, but how to make sure we're also having 90 day pleasure goals, for example. Got it. Breaking that down is so important because there's so many of us that are not paying attention to that foundation. And just like when you build a house, you want to make sure your foundation is done right before you start looking at windows and doors and knowing all mindset, the foundation, like the core foundation, all of these are super important, but they're overlooked. Yeah. And that's where I find like we can get out of overwhelm so much easier too, is we know that foundation, we know. Our numbers, like the biggest thing I tell people, cause I, I run into so many women that are just not very excited about knowing their numbers and setting that up and maybe you fall into that category, maybe you don't, but the way to motivate to that, to actually getting oriented to your numbers is actually orienting as your numbers or your lifeblood of how you stay out of overwhelm, because when you know your numbers, that's, that's basically your ticket to say, okay, for the next month or the next time period that we're setting aside, you can have a crystal clear focus on your number one, most important job and number one part of that is like the weakest part of your business to focus on, to get it back up and going. And when you know that, like that's where you can get out of overwhelm because you can stop chasing all the things and say, okay, right now, laser focus, this is the number one thing that I have to put the most time, effort and energy to get to that next phase. And then we start working on the other things, but it's a level of clarity that without that we don't have. Yeah. I come across it a lot as well. When it's not something that they want to see because they feel that the numbers aren't where they want them to be. And when we see if the numbers are low, it just kills our ambition for the next month. What we do is we help people change the outside in paradigm to inside out paradigm. Once you're inside out, then it doesn't matter what's happening. You're not focused on the results. You just know where you are and you feel really good. And whatever fluctuations are happening on the outside, you know, where you're headed, you have that faith, right? It makes a big difference. It makes a huge difference. And every entrepreneur I think has like ups and downs and good months and bad months and my worst month, I lost $30,000. I know there's a lot of entrepreneurs that have lost a lot more than that. So I feel very fortunate that was my worst month, but pulling $30,000 out of my savings. And that was when I was 10 years in business and that was like COVID and things took a turn in the industry. And it's just one of those things that we just never know. So how do we get ourselves out of those really challenging months where, Oh my gosh, I worked so hard and I actually have to take money out of my savings to keep my staff. But the next month I actually had one of the best months that I had at that point so far. So that's the high and low. We have to stay internally. I think like you're saying to the longterm goal. Yes. Awesome. That's amazing stuff that you shared today. Dr. Diane, can you share with us what you feel your innermost superpower is that got you to this point in your life? Yeah. Thank you for that question. I talk a lot about the inner superpower in my, my book and these fortunate. Yep. I love that so much. So my inner superpower that I talk about is excitement and I have a tendency and ability. I'm a very easily excitable person. I can get very loud and boisterous and bubbly. But what happens when I'm on stage, when I'm talking to people is that I get people excited about the change. I get people excited to join my business. I get people excited to be part of the community I've created. And it's interesting because like so many times throughout my life, people would tell me that this excitement that I have is quote unquote too much. I was too excited to do this. And so that's one of the things I talk about in my book. And it sounds like you share some of this as well as where I'm like, oftentimes what people are saying are, is your too much is actually your superpower is that thing that is making you different than the rest of the world. So if you've been told you're too much of something, I would definitely analyze that as maybe that's your superpower. That's great. I think it is because you basically inject the kind of energy that the people are looking for when you share that excitement because they wait a minute, there's a way here, let's go. So it's great. It is a superpower. Good for you, Diane. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on our show today. It was great talking to you and sharing your message and I'm sure it added value. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for having me. You're welcome audience. Thanks again for joining us, being part of our show. You heard Diane, you know, that part where she's talking about foundation, knowing your data, being comfortable with where you are right now, and just know you're so much better than the numbers that you see right now. You have to make that belief within that you can do a lot more in your life. And you make that a solid belief, faith, complete faith, complete faith. And you just go day by day, moment by moment and enjoying every present moment and just enjoying the ride and the journey. And you will get there. Just don't give up. All right.