Embracing the Power of Your Voice with Courtney Elmer

Have you ever felt like your voice doesn't matter, or that your opinions aren't valuable?

Courtney Elmer, CEO and founder of The Effortless Life and the brain behind Podlaunch, is here to help you shatter those limiting beliefs. In our enlightening chat, she courageously shares her journey of reclaiming her voice after a thyroid cancer diagnosis, effectively turning her fear into her motivation.

This candid conversation covers our need for connection, the power of values, the evolution of business and the wisdom of journaling and expressing gratitude. It’s a testament to her grit, resilience, and the transformative power of the voice.

Tune in to this episode for a personal invitation to discover, own, and leverage the power of your unique voice.

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Transcript

Andrea Johnson: 0:02

You're listening to Stand Tall and Own it, the podcast for high performing female leaders who are ready to make an impact by discovering the safety that comes from understanding their own value and exercising their own authority. I'm your host, andrea Johnson, and I'm here to tell you it is time to just truly be you, my strong friend. It's time to Stand Tall and Own it. Hi there, friends, welcome to another episode of Stand Tall and Own it. I am your host, andrea Johnson, and I am really excited to bring you my very first guest on this whole new iteration of the podcast. Courtney Elmer is gosh, a founder and CEO of the Effortless Life. I don't know if that sounds good to you, but it sounds great to me. She also teaches people how to launch podcasts and get them in the top 100.

Andrea Johnson: 0:56

Now, before you think but I'm not a podcaster, that's okay. She didn't get there overnight and what we talk about is her journey there. We talk a whole lot in this conversation about our voice and how it matters, how the words we use matter, how the beliefs that we have about ourselves actually come across in sound and they affect how you sound to other people. She has this lovely, deep voice and it's rich. Wait till you hear it. She even mentions later on that early on in her podcasting, before she had these more solid beliefs about herself, her voice sounded a lot higher. So I'm thinking I might need to work on that, because I always feel like my voice sounds like a little kid. But either way, it was just a really authentic and beautiful conversation.

Andrea Johnson: 1:43

Now, lest you think this is only for those who are in the entrepreneur space, please don't hit the pause button and don't eject. It is not. It's about growing in who you are as a person, as a leader, as a businesswoman or as an entrepreneur. And I love the fact that she is just warm and wise and has some amazing stories to tell, because she's been through a journey, for sure. But what else I love about her is that she's also sassy, and, as somebody who uses spunky as one of my words, sassy is a great one. I cannot wait for you to meet her. You're going to want to follow her and you're going to want to learn from her. Again, her name is Courtney Elmer. Meet my new friend, courtney. Hey, courtney, welcome to the show.

Courtney Elmer: 2:27

Thank you so much for having me. I'm delighted to be here.

Andrea Johnson: 2:30

Well, guess what? You are the first guest on my new podcast.

Courtney Elmer: 2:36

I feel so special. This is such an honor. I'm excited for our conversation today.

Andrea Johnson: 2:40

Me too, and if you all aren't watching this on YouTube, she just did her own little happy dance. That was great. I knew we were going to get along. So before we get into the meat of our conversation here, if you wouldn't mind, I think that the guests always do a better job introducing themselves than I do, and I don't want to read your bio, so maybe give us in a nutshell who you are and what kind of leader you are and what you do, and set the stage for the conversation we're about to have.

Courtney Elmer: 3:08

Absolutely so. I am the CEO and founder of a company called the Effortless Life and the creator of Podlaunch, so what we do in a business sense or within the company, is we actually help leaders launch podcasts as the vehicle not only to drive traffic and sales to their business, but to use their voice to create their legacy. And that's what I am really all about, because at nine years old, my mom looked at me one day and she said Courtney, your mouth is what gets you in trouble. Go to your room. And I can remember she was always punishing me for speaking up, speaking out. I was very sassy as a nine year old and I was mouthing off to her about something. I couldn't tell you what it was, but I remember at that point in the conversation it was the moment where my voice was getting louder and louder and louder because I was trying to be heard and make my message heard and she was trying to teach me how to be respectful and how you're supposed to talk to people. And looking back now I get that. But for whatever reason, that day I internalized that message and somewhere in my brain I decided that if I was going to be punished for speaking up, it wasn't worth speaking out at all. So for the next 20 plus years I started to bend myself to fit what I thought the world wanted for me, what I thought my parents wanted for me, what I thought my friends wanted for me, my teachers, and I lost sight of who Courtney was in the process. So fast forward with me.

Courtney Elmer: 4:41

It's two days after my honeymoon, sitting in the doctor's office for a follow up visit from a sinus infection I had had a couple of weeks prior, and my doctor sits down that day and she looks me in the eye and she says Courtney, you have thyroid cancer. And she said the good news here is that it's very treatable. She said but the bad news for you is you've got this rare mutation that's very aggressive and don't see it often. You're the youngest patient I've ever had. We need to operate quickly. So I've cleared a spot for you on my surgery schedule next week. Oh, my word. I'm pretty sure my jaw hit the floor Like what is happening on the floor.

Andrea Johnson: 5:16

I knew, I mean, I knew you had cancer. I just didn't know the full story and, as someone who spent 11 years in the Johns Hopkins Cancer Center working in cancer research, it's like I worked with head and neck cancer. So this is all very oh my God. Oh. I know the ramifications of all of this. Pardon me for interrupting, but I just I love the authenticity of the story. Keep going, please. Yes.

Courtney Elmer: 5:39

So I'm there, I'm gripping my brand new husband's hand, right, the thought going through my mind and sickness, and in health, and sickness and in health. This is not quite how I saw this playing out. And fast forward, to make a very long story short through surgery, through treatment, through recovery. The thing that I never forgot was what my doctor said to me that day. And she said Courtney, one of the big risks of this surgery and the radiation is infertility, she said. But the other big risk is that you might not be able to speak again. Your vocal cords could easily be severed. When I'm there, removing your thyroid, she said and you know, the odds are that I'm very experienced at this. I don't want you to go crazy, worrying, but I have to let you know the risks.

Courtney Elmer: 6:20

And at that moment it was so ironic because, for someone who had silenced herself for 20 years, in an instant I was terrified of losing my voice. So, from that moment forward, not only was that the catalyst for me to enter the world of entrepreneurship and start my business, but it was also the moment from which I began to reclaim my voice, and I'm still in the process of reclaiming because I believe it is very much a lifelong process for all of us, but that's when I really connected to what I believe I'm here on this earth to do, which is not only to use my voice in service of others and to bring about positive, meaningful change in the world, but to help other people do the same. So, while the physical manifestation of that is us helping people launch top ranked podcasts to really give their voice that vehicle that they need to express themselves and step into their full potential and become that in demand thought leader, that's the deeper reason why I do it.

Andrea Johnson: 7:28

Okay, I have to take a breath. You know, it's so interesting when you connect with someone outside of their story and you just think this is a great person and we get along really well, and then you realize, oh my goodness, there's a reason, there's a depth to that person and there's a reason that, just like understanding everything that we experience, is there is not just our teacher, but we have to evaluate and see what it is. This is a clear understanding of you being able to look at your circumstances and say, hang on, I don't, because we can hear your voice and it's beautiful and so obviously nothing happened to it. I don't know if you struggled with it. I know a lot of thyroid cancer patients do struggle for a long time. But to know that your voice is fine and everything worked out and you just took that as I'm just not taking this credit anymore, right, I'm not doing it. So was that the point when you said you launched your business? Over how many years was that that you actually launched your business?

Courtney Elmer: 8:32

So I've been in business for about seven years and I wish that I could say that that was the moment that my life turned around and it was a complete 180 and it's all been amazing. Ever since it did not go that way. So, right after the diagnosis, which this year, I made 10 years, yay, so so great.

Courtney Elmer: 8:50

Congratulations, thank you. I went back to corporate because I was afraid. I was so afraid and so I started like this little side hustle thing. But I was never fully in and I was kind of like one foot in corporate, one foot in my business. And it wasn't till a few years later that I'm like all right, I'm all in, I'm all in. But I needed that little two to three year buffer however long it wound up being two and a half three years to just start to unearth and unpack a lot of the beliefs and the fears that I had that were holding me back to where I could even get to a point to put both feet in the boat and go for it with the business Sure and.

Andrea Johnson: 9:29

I mean, I love that you own up to the fact and that you needed that stability for a little while to figure out what you needed to do and to, because we talked about this a little bit and I'd like to dive a little deeper into the whole, uncovering your own voice. This is one of the things that I talk about. Very much is because I have now gone through what I would call a deconstruction, reconstruction in my life. It has it's colored and flavored everything, but what I've noticed is that it's a little bit like a good forest fire. We're recording this right after the Maui fires. That's not a good kind of fire, but the good forest fire where the pine cones can open up and things can. You come back three weeks later and things are already sprouting green.

Andrea Johnson: 10:17

I felt like that was kind of what needed to happen in my life and I've noticed that being able to tear down things in one area, to be able to find the solid core and to be able to build that back up to something that's beautiful and lasting, is applicable everywhere in my life. It's applicable in the way I think about my weight or the way I look, or my now almost completely gray and white hair, or even the fact that I'm an adoptive mother, because you said infertility was a possibility, and so I understand that struggle, but being able to say it applies to all these areas. But deconstructing and reconstructing is 100% about finding your own voice, and I think people lose that, especially when we're talking in the religious side, which is where mine started. So tell me a little bit about the process that you went through, kind of trying to discover your voice, because I was the kid that I mean my seventh grade science teacher threw (this is how old I am) one of those regular erasers that from a chalkboard you know, like the big black kind that you bang it and the stuff goes flying everywhere literally through beaned one across the room at me because I just was not shutting up in seventh grade.

Andrea Johnson: 11:31

Fortunately, it hit the chart with all - the elemental chart instead of me and my mother was called MotorMouth and she my mother actually said one thing to me too, that she said not everybody wants to hear your opinion, Andrea. And for me to come full circle and get to a place where I'm like I know that people turn on their podcast app to listen to my opinion, and you know people come to and when I was in corporate fortunately yours was only three or four years, mine was 24, that's a little bit longer stint I really tried to play by the rules, courtney, people come to my office and talk to me and ask my opinion. So let's talk about the kind of a few of the steps that you went through and see how they match up, because I know there are a lot of women listening who feel that same way, feel that they're not able to speak up and if they get loud then they're going to be told to be quiet, and but then if they're quiet, then oh, you're a wallflower, right? How do you deal with that? Navigating that double bond?

Courtney Elmer: 12:32

Yeah, such a good question and such a depth to that question. There's so many layers we could feel back. Sorry, it was 40 questions. No, this is good!

Courtney Elmer: 12:40

In fact, just this morning I was reading a post that a colleague of mine had put out and literally the first line was if you are not a white male, then in some ways you have likely been told to silence yourself. Like yep, that is true and so much of you know, here in the Western world or wherever you live in the world, culturally, we're taught to keep silent, not to speak up, not to express ourselves. You're too much, you're not enough. All of those messages, and you mentioned a word there that carries so much within it, and the word is opinion, and so often we give our power away to the opinions of others, and I will never forget this.

Courtney Elmer: 13:24

In the earlier days of my business one of my very first business mentors I was on a hot seat call with him and I'm rambling on about some problem in my business and he stops me midway and he just says, courtney, what's more important, someone's opinion of you or the work that you're here to do? When it came out of left field and hit me like a ton of bricks because I was like, okay, okay, that's the root of the problem. You hit the nail in the head right and I kind of like sheepishly, went off camera after that. You know no, but it was one of those moments where you just, oh, you felt like your soul was buried open because someone saw you and saw what it was that was keeping you from being you. And I always say this that you know, and for me, in my journey, what I learned and actually launching my podcast taught me this it was a lesson that I didn't expect, because I created my podcast just to connect with people like you, people listening, who I just wanted to get to know and have deeper connections with, and be able to build that trust and go deeper on topics than I could in a 200 word Instagram caption. But what it taught me was that when you take full ownership of your voice, you're able to step into the fullest expression of who you're meant to be, because your voice think about it it's like a fingerprint.

Courtney Elmer: 14:40

You know, we're always looking, especially in the online space of business, entrepreneurship, leadership. If you're someone who wants to stand out and be heard and be recognized for something, well, how do we do that, and what a lot of people do is they'll borrow other people's words. They'll show up and do these lip sync rios right. They'll let AI write the copy for them. But the thing that they're not doing is the thing that makes you stand out, which is speaking up and speaking what you believe, not what someone else says you should believe. There's a lot of layers there, but you can go in any direction you want, and we probably will.

Courtney Elmer: 15:24

Girl, I love picking this stuff apart. You know it's so deep. But for me, with my own journey, I had a voice coach along the way who, because of my background in psychology and because of all the work that I've done in the coaching space on my own beliefs, helping my clients with their beliefs, all those things that limit us I knew I wanted to do this work on my voice, because your beliefs also influence the intonation and inflection in your voice.

Courtney Elmer: 15:52

Which also influences how other people receive your voice. You know you've ever been on, let's say, a webinar, and the person is there and they're teaching and they're engaging, and they're talking in the chat and they're saying teaching you all this valuable stuff, and then they switch to the pitch and then all of a sudden it's like this weird energy and you're like what just happened?

Courtney Elmer: 16:09

They become a robot or yeah, it's palpable when they start talking faster and faster to get through the end, because they're trying to get through it. So our beliefs actually drive our voice, the sound of our voice and the way that sound is received. So there's a book that I'm gonna recommend that everyone read, okay, it is called Hidden Messages in Water. This is a book by a Japanese scientist called Masaru Imoto it's his name and one day he got the idea. He said you know, if our voice brings about a certain energy, you know we speak something positive into the world and you receive that. We all know how good it feels to be affirmed. And we speak something negative or harsh, you know my son will call me out. Mom, we do not speak with a firm voice in this family. You know, whenever my voice takes on that tone, he hears it and he calls me out on it.

Andrea Johnson: 17:03

Mine just says don't yell, Don't yell.

Courtney Elmer: 17:06

So that we receive that "negative energy through tone tonality. So he got this idea one day, kind of far out, kind of crazy, and he's like I wonder if water can receive this energy and reflect it back to us. You know, water's a reflector. You look in a pool. You see your reflection, right, water can reflect.

Courtney Elmer: 17:28

So what he did was and this is going to sound totally wild and crazy, but wait till I tell you what happened after he did this OK, so he wrote down on a sheet of paper, he wrote the words love and gratitude and he taped it around a glass bottle that had water in it.

Courtney Elmer: 17:43

Then he had a second glass bottle and he wrote the words you fool, and he taped it around that bottle. Then what he did was he took a sample of each of those bottles from the water, he froze it and then, using some really fancy, very zoomed in camera lenses, he took pictures of the ice crystals that were formed and you can Google this, you can look up hidden messages in water, masaru Imoto, and click images and see what he saw. And in the words, the water with the words that had been shown, the words love and gratitude. It was the most beautiful, intricate, perfect ice crystal you've ever seen, like a snowflake, beautiful and rich and deep. And then, when you looked at the one that took the sample of the water with the word you fool, no ice crystal formed at all. It couldn't even form. So then he was like, ok, this is kind of weird.

Andrea Johnson: 18:41

Yeah!

Courtney Elmer: 18:41

I just like am I making this up? What is this? So this experiment turned into his career, which spanned many decades, where he did all kinds of experiments with water, with exposing water to different types of music heavy metal music versus like Chopin and what that looked like. And exposing water to microwave radiation versus purified straight out of a stream in the ground and what that looked like Spoken words. He would take water into classrooms and he would have the students say "you're cute over the water and they would try it and they'd say it a couple times and that water had a few little crystals that formed. And then they would do it a bunch of times and it would have a more complete crystal that formed.

Courtney Elmer: 19:26

So in this book he walks through his research process and what this looks like and how it manifested. But what I love about it and what he really gets to the heart of, is the power of the energy, of our words and the energy that we put out into the world and that we receive through our words, through our voice, and the physical manifestation, where it wasn't just suddenly this thing. We're like yeah, yeah, ok, we put energy out. That's a little weird and woo-woo is pseudoscientific. It's not real science, right, energy, all this. But he made it tangible and he was like you can see it now and this is the power of that.

Courtney Elmer: 20:08

And so, to me, when I think about our voice and my voice coach used to say this all the time she was like Courtney, your voice is the orchestra of your heart.

Courtney Elmer: 20:19

It's the expression of your soul. It is who you are, and I'm talking about your true voice, not the voice that you've learned to speak with because of the beliefs in your mind about how you should speak or how you should show up. And if you go back and look at old videos or even listen to old podcast episodes of mine, I always say I'm like please don't do that. But if you were to do that, you would notice my voice is a good like five decibels, six decibels higher than you hear right now, and it was much more polished and like almost as if I was keeping you out because there was just some bulletproof glass that I'm like. I'm putting on this image because I want you to like me and I want to say things in such a way that makes you believe that I'm an expert, when, at the end of the day, Courtney was totally missing from that and I'll never forget. I'm born and raised right outside of New Orleans, Louisiana, so little Southern bell through and through.

Andrea Johnson: 21:17

My family's all from the Golden Triangle and in Southeast Texas, so I'm very familiar with the Bayou down there.

Courtney Elmer: 21:23

Yes, so I've never been one to have a thick Southern accent, but there are certain words that I say where you can catch up, you can hear a little twang. It used to be where that was non-existent and I remember, with the group that I was doing this voice work with, and there were moments where I would start to share my story or start to open up and, like the real Courtney, started poking through and they were like are you from the South? That before in your voice, where has that been? And it was like so authentic People can connect with that. So I know I went on a very long tangent there about the power of our voice. But this fires me up because it is so important for us as leaders to realize how much power you have in the voice that you have.

Andrea Johnson: 22:09

Well, and I think it's important to recognize that it is both the mental and psychological voice, as well as the physical voice. You know hearing. Okay, I'm gonna talk lower, but do you understand what I'm saying? I think that's what you're getting at. That it's we are, and I talked to. When I coach, I talk to women about this all the time.

Andrea Johnson: 22:32

You're not one dimensional, you're not two dimensional and you're not even three dimensional, you're like four and five dimensional, because we have a spirit, we have a mind, we have a body, we have a soul, we have all of these things make us who we are. And if you just work on one area, that's not enough, right. And if you only present one side of you to the world, that's not enough. And it's not just that they need to see more sides, you need for others to see more sides, right. So I love this going deep into that understanding of discovering your own voice, because you know, I think as little children. We have it. We have it. It's there when I talk about and I'd love to talk about core values as well, but when I talk to people about core values and my top one is freedom and people automatically, as an American, they think oh well, that means you're like Apple pie and you know all this stuff. No, that's not what it means. It means don't tell me what to think, and so it's like freedom of thought, and I was the kid. It's like ", and it wasn't so much that I didn't want to do things that pleased, it was. I don't, I want the ability and the and the um, the ownership, and and the sovereignty. I guess we could use that word um to make my own choices.

Andrea Johnson: 23:53

And so, even 20, nearly nearly 30 years into marriage, my husband has to remember that if he starts a sentence with "wouldn't you agree that? I'm like, no, that's not what we do, and he's like oh, that's right, what do you think about? Perfect, you know, and when we can discover our own voice, that gives us the ability to figure out those things like core values. And you know, that's kind of my, my main message. That's where I I've discovered I started out with intentional optimism, working from the outside in, like we do. You started with working with systems and all that working, you know. Now you're down to the voice and we'll talk about that a sec. But can we talk a second about core values, cause I know that you used to teach them as well and maybe you could share how your core values have affected or maybe aided you in figuring out that, what your voice, what truly is.

Courtney Elmer: 24:42

Yeah, One of my all time top core values is connection, always has been. Took me a while to realize it, but that is the thing that I, as a child, was always seeking and didn't always get.

Courtney Elmer: 24:59

And now, looking back, you know you can always look back as an adult and see like, oh, I get it. My parents were tired. My mom worked the night shift. She slept during the day. I had two siblings who were 18 months apart but also six years younger than me, so she was raising a toddler and a newborn, you know, at the same time, while also trying to manage a sassy seven, eight, nine, 10 year old. And seeing that now I'm like, oh, I get it.

Courtney Elmer: 25:24

She didn't have the availability to give me the connection that I was looking for and the way that I needed it. For a long time, though, I was resentful of that, I was bitter about that. So I sought that connection in other ways, and a lot of unhealthy ways too, and unhealthy in the sense that I was seeking it not, you know, in a spiritual way. You know I'm a Christian, I believe in God not seeking it from him Like the pay this is. You've already got your worth there, courtney, it's fine, you're good, right.

Courtney Elmer: 25:51

Not seeking it that way, but seeking it from other people around me, seeking it through my accomplishments the car I was driving, the amount of money I had in the bank type of clothes and bags and shoes that I had in my closet and seeking it that way and at the end of the day as I, you know, walked this journey, many ups and downs, many dark moments and through many dark valleys realized that that was at the core of it, was connection, because that's really what I was looking for, and also related to that. One day, this dawned on me that on the other side of that spectrum for me is rejection, sure, which, why I feared rejection so much and why I was so afraid to put myself out there and to say what I thought and not what I thought. Someone wanted to hear from me.

Andrea Johnson: 26:45

Or what wasn't going to get you in trouble Exactly.

Courtney Elmer: 26:48

Exactly so. That drives my business, it drives the work that I do. And you know, when I sit down on a discovery call with a potential client, you know I first they were like 30 minutes and they're like 45 minutes I'm like just block off the full hour because we're going to be here, we're going to buckle in and this is going to be the best, most mind blowing coaching conversation you've ever had, right, and by the end they're like, oh my gosh, can we work together? You know, it's one of those things, because that's me, that's who Courtney is. Courtney is the connector, yeah, and I've seen this play out manifest, you know, in my life and also with my voice, which is what I seek to do when I have conversations like this.

Courtney Elmer: 27:29

That's why, I love podcasting so much. I love being interviewed. I love interviewing others, hearing their story, because I love to connect. So it's very much a driver of all that I do.

Andrea Johnson: 27:41

Well, I think that's really nice to see how it touches everything and it helped you uncover and discover your voice. But let's also talk about you. I've just come through a business metamorphosis myself, a rebranding and kind of narrowing down of a niche, and this is kind of normal for entrepreneurs, and I want anybody out there listening or watching. It's not the only, we're not the only people who go through this right. We all kind of figure out how we want to lead, how we want to serve, how we want to show up in the world. But I'm curious to know how understanding in your voice and having your and understanding your own connection need for connection, how that manifested itself in your business metamorphosis. Because that's something that I think people need to see is that if, for some reason, you are someone who's interested in entrepreneurship, you need to see that most of us don't just set out and that's just the thing. We're really good, Right.

Courtney Elmer: 28:40

From the beginning I wish it went that way, but then sometimes I don't wish it went that way because I wouldn't have all the lessons and the a-has of learning and the growth right, All the things. So, starting out, you know when I opened my business, you're going to laugh at this, but it was literally Courtney Elmer coaching. Why would I?

Andrea Johnson: 29:46

laugh. I couldn't do that. Mine was already taken. Andrea Johnson is too common. That's what they still do.

Courtney Elmer: 29:55

I laugh, because it was like what does that even mean? Who is Courtney Elmer? What does she teach? What is she coaching on? Right, it was as general and generic as you could get and I didn't want to be a personal brand. This is really important because for me and this kind of goes back to growing up with a dad who was an entrepreneur he's in the finance space and I learned a lot about entrepreneurship through my dad the good parts and the bad, the high points and the lows and I lived that. I lived that and so for me, I knew, kind of from a logical business perspective oh no, I want to build a company that exists outside of me. Not that I ever planned to sell, but if I did, I want the business to have value and not to have value in Courtney.

Courtney Elmer: 30:39

Well, at the time, this was kind of prior to the whole explosion of like online coaches and courses and things that we've seen in recent years, especially since COVID. So this is free, all of that. And there were a few well-known names in the industry Amy Porterfield. Jena

Courtney Elmer: 30:55

Kutcher, a few names that those in the entrepreneurial space would recognize, and they were all personal brands. So what did we see

Courtney Elmer: 31:04

popping up? We saw lots of personal brands popping up, so I would hire mentors to help me build my business. I had peers and colleagues who I would talk with about my business. They were all building personal brands and they advised me to build a personal brand. They're like Courtney, your brand is nothing without you. You are the brand. You are the brand, and I was so in my head about this, Andrea.

Courtney Elmer: 31:26

It was crazy because I was like this is not the business that I want to build, but it's the one that everyone's telling me I should build to be successful. So, therefore, I'm going to follow what they're telling me to do and not do it the way that I believe I need to do it for myself and hopefully have the same success that they're having. Well, long story short, I did not have that same success five years to even pass the six figure mark. And I'm telling you working my butt off and I share that because for a lot of people, they think you open your business, you put up your website, you put your course out there, maybe you teach a webinar, you launch a podcast or something and then whoop, whoop, zero to six figures. You know in nine months or 12 months or you know, an awesome that would be awesome.

Andrea Johnson: 32:08

There'd be a whole lot more out here doing it.

Courtney Elmer: 32:11

That really would, and so, for me, my business took a lot of twists and turns. I feel as though the best way to describe this is those twists and turns were on other people's paths. Courtney, you're so good at systems, you're so good at organization. Oh my gosh, the detail. You have such an attention to detail. You should be teaching systems, you should be teaching online funnels, you should be teaching how to set all of this up and automations and all of these things, which I was good at. But if you've ever read that book, the Big Leap, Gay Hendricks who was an incredible man, by the way, I had him on the podcast. It's about six months ago or so. He's as genuine as they come and he's explaining the difference between you know your zone of excellence and your zone of genius, and I was living in that zone of excellence.

Courtney Elmer: 32:54

I was doing well, I wasn't living in my zone of genius, so there was always an emptiness there. There was always something that I was chasing that I couldn't achieve through my business Right. And so this is when, really about nine. Let's see what month are we in? 13 months ago. I'm doing the math in my head. I feel like after COVID, like time has I've lost all sense of time.

Andrea Johnson: 33:21

It means nothing. I know it means absolutely nothing.

Courtney Elmer: 33:22

So this was early last summer that I went through a period of darkness in my business that lasted a full year, and when I say darkness, you know it was that moment in the cocoon where you're like I don't know if I'm ever getting out of here. I don't know what's on the other side of this.

Courtney Elmer: 33:44

It reminds me of a book that we read to our son about the seed who was afraid to be planted, you know. And there was this seed and he lived in a drawer and he had a happy life in the drawer with the other seeds and one day the farmer's hand reached in and it grabbed him and suddenly he was thrown into this dark hole and, like the dirt was piled on top of him and he couldn't see anything and he was alone and he was afraid. But then suddenly he started to feel a change and a shift. Something new started to come up right and it became a sprout and he sprouted into this beautiful tree and it had this whole legacy and it's a really beautiful story. That's how I felt, and my podcast is called Anti-Fragile Entrepreneurship.

Courtney Elmer: 34:25

One of our core messages or pillars that our whole company stands on is this idea of anti-fragility, which simply means to grow through what you go through, to grow through those dark seasons. But I would also be lying if I didn't tell you that in that dark season I wanted to quit. I questioned everything. I questioned is this what I'm supposed to be doing? Am I supposed to continue on this path? Should I pivot? Should I stop altogether? Should I do something else? Should I just be a mom for a while and just enjoy this time with my son?

Courtney Elmer: 34:58

He's little. Do I just need to stop and pick this up down the road? I mean, every angle I examined it, and over the road I examined it and over examined it. But I stayed the course because I knew teaching what I teach and knowing what I know, having gone through some really dark seasons in my own life that that's the only way to move through the valley. Yeah Is to keep moving. A lot of people stop and they stop without realizing it and they stay in the darkness. Now you might not be moving very fast and there might be no light at the end of that tunnel and you're like, okay, I'm moving, but when?

Courtney Elmer: 35:38

I know If I get through this valley right, feeling my way, yes, but that was me for the better part of a year until, much like you with your business, it was almost like you had to take everything apart to put it back together.

Courtney Elmer: 35:51

And this year has been the year of putting it all back together. And so I've got a lot of people in my inbox lately like, okay, I have this program, you were going to join this program, you were going to do this thing, you're going to do this thing, and I'm like, not now, I'm rebuilding right now. But before we can begin to sprout and to grow and to put down those roots, we have to go through that period of dormancy and it's going to look like nothing's happening. And for a long time I felt a lot of shame around that, because in this online world where you're very visible, it's like, well, what happens if I'm not visible? I still released podcast episodes every week, but I wasn't on social media, you know, I wasn't emailing my list every week and doing all the things that I had done before, and that was embarrassing that was hard.

Courtney Elmer: 36:45

But I stayed the course and now, having reconnected with what I know to be my deeper purpose, it's really put my business in a whole new light, to where now I'm building it for me in alignment with my values, in alignment with what I want for myself and for my family, and not what someone else is telling me I need to or should be doing.

Andrea Johnson: 37:13

It doesn't mean I don't have coaches or mentors, but I don't just blindly follow now, like I used to. I'm sitting over here just a' clappin' and saying, yeah, I do that because when you know, Courtney, one of the things I talk about is we have no impact if we're living by somebody else's values, somebody else's strategy, somebody else's ideal for what we are supposed to be and we are created to be. We are created individually. We are created uniquely. We are created with God's thumbprint on our. I mean, it's just like the beauty of the individuality, and yet we are all just like you crave it. We are all created for connection and we have to do these things in ways that honor who we were created to be.

Andrea Johnson: 38:02

Otherwise, it's just going through the motions. Right, and you know, you can skate along all your life, but if you don't, actually, because nobody really enjoys doing work, nobody enjoys doing even having their own business that feels like it has no value or there's no, they don't make a difference. I've been in very large teams and very small teams and now I'm an entrepreneur and I can tell you, when I get into a time when I'm doing work that I feel like why am I doing this? And then I realize because I'm focusing on something else, what is wrong with me.

Andrea Johnson: 38:38

I'm not that person. I don't want to do that. And yes, of course, in entrepreneurship there's times when we have to do things to pay the bills or whatever, and to build our skills. But I love that you're saying no to things. I love that you're saying this is who I am and this is what I want to do, and it just really because, as we do that, it's one more example out there for the rest of us to follow, for the rest of us to say that's what I want. I want that fulfillment. I want knowing that, when I get up in the morning and I do my work, that I've done something that matters, even if it only matters to me. Right, right, because I glad you to bring this up.

Courtney Elmer: 39:15

It brings to mind a book that I read recently. I say recently. Again, time is like this was probably a year ago that I read this book, but Martin Seligman, and he is one of the fathers, the father of positive psychology, and I've studied him both in my psychology work and outside of my psychology work because I just find it fascinating. I don't really know many people who like to sit there and read through these really boring psychology texts, but I'm one of them. But I'll distill down what he's shared in this book and save you the time of having to sift through it. And he was talking about authentic happiness. What does that look like? But from a scientific perspective, how can we measure that? And one of the things he shared, this story in the book, a few stories, but this one in particular, where he had met someone who was an orderly at a hospital and this orderly would go into the patient's rooms and he would just kind of like arrange the room as he thought the patient might enjoy it. He would take down kind of the sterile hospital pictures on the wall and get some pictures from the family of who the patient was and would put those up on the wall instead, and he just found such joy in this work. And so Martin interviewed him and, having this conversation, and Martin's like, well, there's a lot of things in the world you could be doing. You know why this? Why your job? And he said and I'm going to parse his words, I don't remember exactly how he put this, but it was something to the effect of because if I can make that patient just a little more comfortable as they're nearing the end of their time here on Earth and let them know that they have value, that they're seen, that they have dignity, that brings me great joy.

Courtney Elmer: 41:04

And so in this scientific examination of what that looks like and the whole point of this chapter in the book was that you can find meaning in anything that you do, but there are also times in our lives where we find ourselves working in a job that does not give us that meaning. So we have to separate, you know, the job or the title from the meaning we think we're going to get and instead really examine which. I feel like you do this so much with your clients. I can imagine you all sitting here with these deep conversations about like, what is it that you value, that you want.

Courtney Elmer: 41:40

If you're on your deathbed and you're looking back, what do you want to be remembered for? And if it's not what you're doing right now, maybe it is time to contemplate what it would look like to make a change. I'm not saying wake up tomorrow and make a change, but think about it, start thinking about it, start entertaining that. And I just found so much inspiration in that story because it was like you know, here's this guy who's orderly at a hospital, he's cleaning bedpans, he's got the best job in the world, but yet he had so much joy in his work because it was meaningful for him.

Andrea Johnson: 42:18

Yeah, and you know a lot of times, Courtney, we bring the meaning you know Brendan Burchard talks about how we bring the joy, and so we bring the meaning to what we do. And it doesn't always mean just because we find out what brings or what would be meaningful to us, or how we can have our core values honored or we can find our voice. It doesn't mean that we have to necessarily change our job, but for sure we need to change. Yes, for sure, almost every single time Before we wrap up today. I mentioned a little earlier, I talk about and help people work through their assumptions, their beliefs and their conditioning, and we did mention that and touch on it just a bit. But I would love to know for you, was there one category you talk, you talk a lot about limiting beliefs, but is there an assumption or a belief or a specific, specific type of conditioning that you found you really had to overcome to be able to get where you are today?

Courtney Elmer: 43:15

Yes. So going back to my voice story, I would say you know your voice gets you in trouble, your mouth gets you in trouble. One day she even slapped me across the face and said "and she'd never laid a hand on me before, but that day I really got her feathers ruffled. I don't remember what it was about and that was the only time it ever happened.

Andrea Johnson: 43:33

Mine chased me around at 17 with a bar of soap and finally got it in my mouth. So I fully understand.

Courtney Elmer: 43:39

Yes, there's only time that she ever laid a hand on me like that. But it was the day that I was like what I have to say is not as important as what someone else has to say. I didn't realize that that was a belief or an assumption that I had made, right, I think it was. It was wired into belief that my voice doesn't matter. If I use my voice, I won't be loved, right, that was the belief, but the assumption was what I have to say is not as important as what someone else has to say, and that drove the bus for a long time.

Courtney Elmer: 44:10

Yeah, and it was only recently, Andrea, that I that that was brought up and brought to light. And so now I remind myself, especially before doing interviews like this or anytime, that I'm speaking and using my voice or writing an email. Right, it doesn't have to be physically speaking, but the expression through words of your voice is that what I have to say is equally important as what someone else has to say, absolutely and living in that truth and not the belief or the assumption that, well, you know someone else, their voice matters more.

Andrea Johnson: 44:50

Oh, that's a good one, and I think, I think there's a lot of women that will very much relate to that, because there are quite a few of us out there that have sassy mouths and I'm taking full ownership of it now.

Andrea Johnson: 45:04

I mean, there's a certain amount of I don't know, it's beauty that comes with a little bit of age. You go around the sun a certain amount of times you're like, you know, I don't know, I can just be sassy, it's okay, and one of the words I used to describe myself now is spunky. It just sounds a little bit nicer than sassy. So I just I just own it. That's just who I am. This has been delightful I knew it would be, and I'm very grateful to you and the wisdom that you bring and the way you work with people like me, especially other podcasters. So, for sure, where can people find you? What is the if they want to? I know I'm subscribed to your podcast, so tell us a little bit more about your podcast and how they can subscribe or where the best place is to find you.

Courtney Elmer: 45:41

Yeah. So, as I mentioned a moment ago, Anti Fragile Entrepreneurship. Doesn't matter what app you listen to your podcast on, type that in or type in my name it'll pop up. It'll pop up. What I love about the show, which we've rebranded twice now, which has been interesting part of the journey to write we've rebranded it, but now I'm like, oh, I found my home, this is it. What we discuss on the show is a lot about taking ownership of your voice, but that's not the full focus. The main focus is about how do we fail better? Because there's a lot of shows out there about leadership and entrepreneurship that are talking about success and what we need to do to be successful, and we can buy into all those other people's opinions right about what we need to do, right. At the end of the day, it's not about that and your journey of success. You're not going to find that success until you learn how to better navigate the failure, the low points, those valleys in your life.

Courtney Elmer: 46:33

Absolutely so we talk about that anti fragility but also how to apply that practically speaking to be able to grow through those dark moments and take the lessons with you, not whitewashing it and saying, oh, it's toxic positivity, this is all going to be great, you know, just go in and it's going to be wonderful. No Owning every ugly, raw aspect of what that looks like yeah, the good and the bad, yeah, and embracing it. So that's the podcast. Okay, check it out, love to have you.

Courtney Elmer: 47:04

And then, if you're listening right now and you have a podcast or you've been toying with the idea of launching one, maybe even thinking of launching one, you're like, yeah, I don't know if I'm going to have a time to keep up with that. You know, it seems like a lot of work. What if I run out of things to talk about? Right, if that's you. Or if you're the person who has a podcast, but you haven't crossed that thousand download per episode milestone and you want to grow that so that you can reach a global audience with your message and leverage better, leverage that platform to get your voice out there, to use your voice.

Courtney Elmer: 47:37

I teach a workshop every couple of weeks. It's a live workshop on how to leverage a podcast not only by getting it in the top 100 on Apple and on the podcast players, but how to use it as a platform for positive change in the world. And so this workshop is kind of unlike all the other webinars you've probably attended in the past. This is not like me teaching for 10 minutes and then pitching you for 50.

Courtney Elmer: 48:01

This is straight up value. I literally walk you through our exact framework that we've used to help over four dozen coaches and consultants launch top ranked podcasts, and there's no pitch. You know, at the end, if you want to learn how to work with me, I'll give you an invite to do that and show you how to do that. But this is just 90 minutes of value and we keep them pretty intimate on purpose. They fill up when we send out an email. I swear to you I will send out one email and they fill up overnight.

Courtney Elmer: 48:34

Run ads to these. I mean, we're going to start running some ads, but I'm like I don't even do that and it's like that's how much of a demand. And it just shows me that there are people out there who want to be heard and I love that. I want to help them. That's what I'm here to do. So if you're interested in that, go to www. anti fragile entrepreneurship. co/ workshop and you can get all the details about the date and the time for the next one that we have coming up, as well as save your seat.

Andrea Johnson: 49:01

Excellent, I'm looking forward to it myself.

Andrea Johnson: 49:06

And when you say that it's like there's over three million podcasts out there, right, so it doesn't mean that they all get a lot of downloads, but I'm not hitting a thousand downloads, you know. I mean I have lots of feedback and lots of really positive feedback, but I'm not hitting a thousand downloads yet. So for y'all listening, I'll be in that next podcast, if I can get, if I can hit the button fast enough, because if it goes fast I'll just have to do on the way and I don't say that to create some kind of false sense of urgency.

Courtney Elmer: 49:29

I say that because that's the truth. I have been floored every time we send out an email. In fact, this week's email, I was debating to even send it because it was already full just from word of mouth, and you know me doing things like this on the podcast, sharing it, places like that. So I sent out an email and like, okay, I'm opening up a few more spots, but like jump on them because you know I want to be able to get to everyone's questions at the end. That's the fun part where it's like you know, you get some face time with me and we can actually talk about your business and your goals and you know what you're looking to achieve with the podcast. And are you ready for a podcast that can bring you those things you know? Is your business ready for that influx of leads and traffic?

Andrea Johnson: 50:04

Yeah, Well, that's why I started a podcast, because somebody I was listening to said is this your next stage? And I'm like, yes, how did you know? And now she's my coach, so she's my speaking coach, so you know it's to be able to say there's ways that we can all express our voice. That may not have anything to do with becoming an entrepreneur. You know, I started my podcast long before I was an entrepreneur. So I think this is great and it's very generous and I love how just your value of understanding your voice and how helping others do that is making it so that you're just giving this away as a generous 90 minutes of your time. So, thank you, this has been great. Is there anything we left out, that you'd like to share or that we should know?

Courtney Elmer: 50:46

I want to circle back to my Japanese friend, who I respect and admire so much for this crazy, wild but amazing experiment that he did.

Courtney Elmer: 50:54

Okay, and how love and gratitude were the two things that he talked about being the most powerful ways that we can bring about change in the world.

Courtney Elmer: 51:05

Because when we can express love and when we can express gratitude, he would do a much better job of explaining what actually happens on an energetic, molecular level than we're expressing that. But the nutshell is that it can create a ripple that actually touches not just the people around you but the people beyond them. And when I think about this purely from just a cosmic level, if you will you know we're all created with a purpose. We're all put on this earth for some reason, and when we go through life and I look at life in general almost as a valley there's lots of little ups and downs along the way, but, based on my belief system, our eternal reward is at the end, and we have to go through that valley to get there. And so, when we can fully express ourselves to the degree that we can, in this life, on this plane that we live in on this earth, if you want to achieve these higher levels of consciousness, of awareness, of expression, of connection with yourself and with who you're made to be. That's how we do it.

Courtney Elmer: 52:24

We access it through love and through gratitude. And I know there's a lot of people out there who say, oh, gratitude journal and do all of this. And I'm not talking about, just like you know, adding another thing to your to-do list and writing down five things you're grateful for every night. But I'm talking about reflecting, bringing it back to where we started this conversation reflecting on the moments in your life that you are deeply grateful for and tuning in and really just feeling what that gratitude feels like. I promise you that if you do that for five minutes a day, you will change.

Courtney Elmer: 52:59

You can't not change the times that I have done, that. It resets the course of my day and I'm able to show up more authentically as me and not as the version of me that was just upset by the email that I got, or you know the thing that happened this morning and the traffic on the way to school, whatever. But it's just tapping in and tapping into that just a little bit higher state of consciousness where we can then reflect that love and gratitude back out to the world so powerful.

Andrea Johnson: 53:33

Good stuff. What a great way to end. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. This has been awesome! Good.