The Visionary Woman Podcast
The Visionary Woman Podcast
Visionary Convos Part 1 (Freedom Sessions CHICAGO)
Welcome to the Visionary Woman Podcast! Get ready for a truly special treat! In March, I had the incredible opportunity to host one of my Freedom Sessions in Chicago. These creatively curated events provide an intimate connection with both the local community and fellow attendees. It is an inspirational time of workshops, storytelling, live music, local vendors and in depth conversations.
During this exceptional event, I had the honor of hosting and participating in a visionary panel conversation alongside amazing professional and inspirational women. We delved into what it truly means to be a visionary woman, overcoming obstacles, and fearlessly pursuing your dreams. The energy and joy were palpable, and I'm confident that you'll have just as much fun listening to this incredible discussion. Enjoy Part 1 of this awesome conversation and stay tuned for Part 2 coming soon!
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Don't put your dreams to bed. You've done that enough. Now it's time to stir them up. This is your friend and host, Kirstie Fleur, with the Visionary Woman podcast, and I love resourcing the Visionary Woman, the creative, the artist, the business owner, the risk taker, and on this show we will talk about what it means to get out of your own way and take your dreams to the next level. Join the conversation.
Speaker 2:All right. So we are going to have a panel discussion. So I'm going to introduce our panelists real quick. For us, we have Mrs. Tamara. She just spoke to us, so you know I don't think we need it. She just spoke. We have Ms Renita, her book is for sale over there.
Speaker 2:We have Mrs. Liv and we have Mrs. Kirstie. All four are entrepreneurs, all four are business women who have been in the game for quite a while. All four have wisdom to share with you and all four are ready to answer your questions about what it means to be an entrepreneur, what it means to follow your goals, face resistance all the questions. So we're going to specifically discuss and explore what it means to be a Visionary Woman. We're going to discuss the purpose and power of community. We're going to highlight strategies and steps to move forward in vision. We're going to have an open discussion about the struggles that women have to overcome and just a reminder that this is a safe space so we can have an authentic conversation about struggles, fears, dreams, victories, all of that stuff.
Speaker 2:So remember, if you have questions, this is the time to answer. I know some questions have been submitted and we are going to start with this first question. We're going to have one to two people answer. This first question is what does it mean to be a Visionary Woman? And as you answer, I'm going to pass you the mic If you can share a bit about your current area in life. You know what you're doing right now, who you are. Give a brief little introduction, hey everybody.
Speaker 3:Are you guys having a good time? Good, good. My name is Liv Peterson. I am Overflow Afterdark's event producer downstairs. I work here in Entronuity, in this space with Moxie and so many other amazing women, and for me what it means to be a Visionary Woman is to know yourself. I think that unless you truly know yourself and who you are and and confident in that, you are not able to look forward and have that vision without knowing yourself. So for me, it's to know thyself first. That's the first step in being a visionary woman.
Speaker 1:Well, she said it all there. Folks, we can go home. My name is Kirstie, Go team! What it means to be a visionary woman for me is someone who has sight, it's vision, you have foresight, you, you're looking out into the future. You're also not afraid to be somebody who innovates and pioneers and does something that hasn't been done before. Yeah, you, like the eagle that Tamar talks about, you got to have that, that high vision and to see come on now, the golden one they got to be the right one can't be any eagle, apparently.
Speaker 1:You know. There we go, there we go. That's what I got guys also a visionary woman shirt over there, go get it.
Speaker 2:What are some challenges visionary women face and obstacles they have to overcome?
Speaker 4:Hey guys, I'm Renita Alexander. I am the founder of leadership unlocked, and I do leadership, training and development, and it's, you know, it all stemmed from my experience in the military. Everything I learned about leadership I learned in the military. But I would say Tamar said something and I jotted this down. So one of the obstacles. She said something that was so crucial when we get the vision, our dream, we have to believe it. Right, we have to believe it, and there's so, you know, so many times so many things get in the way. But I think, you know, when we have that faith, when we know who we are to your point from an early age, that's when we can tap into it and when we don't allow those things, you know, like what we may have been socialized to believe as women. Right, I grew up in the South and what I was told as a young person is that this agreement was disrespect. Now, imagine Coming into the Air Force. I'm the officer, I'm a lieutenant, right, and I'm running things.
Speaker 3:I'm in charge.
Speaker 4:You know I had to unlearn that. I had to, you know, understand that I was expected to speak out and sometimes when I spoke out it was in disagreement to what was being said in the space, right? And so I think, let go of all of those things that you know may have been you, you may have been socialized to believe that keep you from moving forward into what it is that you're supposed to be.
Speaker 2:What are the strategies that women can implement to move towards their visions being fulfilled?
Speaker 5:When I tell you I just did, I just did. I just did that acronym Like within the last 48 hours, like seriously. I'm always trying to figure out the best way to remember something, so when I create acronyms for stuff, I can remember it. You have to follow the formula. So a lot of people say I want good credit. You know, I really wish I had good credit. You have to have. There's a formula. Anybody that follows the formula can increase their credit score in six months and dramatically change it within 12 months. It's a formula.
Speaker 5:And when I see people all the time for years talking about how much they want to lose weight, do you really want to lose? There's a formula. There's a formula. And so when you don't follow the formula, you're gonna get what you get. Perfect example I tried to cook my husband's grandmother biscuits without watching them, without looking at the recipe, and a recipe called for one third of the butter flavored crisco, don't judge me and I put in six. I put in six. I put in three times as much as I was supposed to six thirds. So when I tell you, when I tell you them biscuits looked good but it was nothing but grease, I follow every other thing in the recipe I remembered, except the amount of oil that I needed.
Speaker 5:You cannot bypass the formula for getting what you need to get done. You can have everything perfect and miss one thing, and anybody that code or do anything, do balance sheet. If it's off a penny, no, it's wrong. You have to find it. You have to find those weaknesses, you have to find those idiosyncrasies. You have to find those things that are keeping you from progressing. And it's not about your credit score, it's about your spending habits. And that means you have to take personal accountability for how you spend money, how you save money, how you pay your debt. You can't just say I want a good credit score, don't work like that, but so many of us want to. Just, I want a great relationship. But you got a nasty attitude and you still heard from the last person that hurt you, so now you taking that on him. But I don't know. Nobody wants to deal with you. But you want a great relationship.
Speaker 5:There's a formula for that. Go to therapy, practice self care, learn how to communicate. Some people feel just listen, and I am guilty, we all guilty, but you can't say how much you really want something and not put a formula in place. There is books on almost everything that you want to do in life, if you want to start investing, if you want to buy a new car, if you want to buy a house, if you want to heal from past hurts and childhood trauma. There is a formula. Follow the formula. And that's not just Eagle. Eagle is for it's for business and for a person. Business and personal success, you know, kind of together.
Speaker 5:But you really have to get to a place where you sick of yourself, you sick of the results that you put in out, you sick of not being able to accomplish and achieve what you've always said. Some of y'all have been writing y'all book. For 20 years I've been writing. Now I'm writing six books at the same time. Am I going to write the book or not? So just follow the formula, you'll be just fine. But until here you're not, you're not going to be fine.
Speaker 4:I just want to add so you said something that was really important, and that is that self-reflection right, and that is figuring out why, Asking yourself, why am I not moving forward? Because sometimes it is it's usually you're the common denominator.
Speaker 4:It's sometimes it's something external, but it's mostly you. It's mostly internal. Sometimes it's an external belief. I talked about the whole disagreement thing that I've internalized, that you've internalized, but it's mostly you. Now I don't want to discount any of the obstacles that we face as women, as black women right, they are out there, but there's a lot of people that are doing things that they've dreamed about, that they've had vision for. Right, They've not allowed those external obstacles to stop them.
Speaker 5:Let's talk about vision, because my mother had a vision that got healed to her from cancer, and so all did you. She had a vision that before she, even before she even had it. So when the cancer came she already knew that she was going to beat it. Even when a doctor told her she had three months to live, she already had the vision. And so she could have said the doc, god was wrong, the doctors is right. This all look.
Speaker 5:My mother looked like a little Tibet monk. She had no eyebrows. She gained about 60 pounds. She shrunk and seemed like she got shorter. When she had cancer she looked completely different than she. My mother is fine, fine y'all. She got the vision. She got the vision but, like Renita said, she believed the vision and then she acted out everything that she needed to do, not to help God but through faith, open and change the atmosphere of what her outcome was going to be. And so, instead of all that flapping, you know she was soaring through cancer and it was hard, but she had a piece. She wouldn't stay with her mom for months. Everybody was taking care of she was spoiled. I think she was milk in the cancer. I think she was milking it. I mean, I was laughing. I love you.
Speaker 2:So what role does community or your tribe play in being a woman of vision, and why is it essential?
Speaker 3:I think that true community calls for accountability and when you are in isolation, there's no accountability. So you can do or say or believe whatever you want. But I think that when you are in community, when you are lying to yourself and believing lies that you know, you've told yourself and internalized, you have people that know you to call out your BS. You have people that say, no, that's not true, this is what I see in you and they help you remember that. They help you remember that. But when you're isolated, it's just you constantly digging yourself into that dark place.
Speaker 5:And you can also. You can also. You can also be in community and be self-deceiving and still have nobody hold you accountable. And that's when you become in positions of power, when you have influence. You've been intimidating or you've proven yourself to be narcissistic and have narcissistic tendencies where, like me, nobody could tell you anything. So that's not always a good thing and I've said that many times here on stage in a positive way, but you have to.
Speaker 5:Really that has negatively impacted me also to where people see who I am. They know I'm going to have a opinion. They know I'm going to have a voice. They know I'm going to talk the loudest and I'm going to be funny and probably make an example out of some. Who wants that? Nobody wants that. And so when I had to unlearn a lot of stuff or the way that I treated people when I was younger and the way that you know I could knock people out at work, like you really have to learn how to use different tools in order to bring people into your spaces and build true community, because accountability sometimes comes as disrespect, but is it? But everybody, look, you feel like you're being disrespected, but people telling you real facts, but that's because we don't know who we are, yeah, or we try to hide behind who we really are.
Speaker 4:Because we talk about being authentic. You talked about. You know I might hit somebody, but is that who you really are at your core? Is that who you really are at your core. You know we talk about. I can't show up authentically. Well, who is that? What does that mean, right? What do you want to do that you feel like you can't do? You know, and it's an intentional is it going to get you what you want? Is it is an alignment with your vision for yourself, right?
Speaker 1:I have one thing to add. With friendships especially, you know, I mean at all stages of your life, but especially when you're in leadership, who you are around can really dictate your success. You have people in your corner who are jealous of you or who are constantly pulling you down or making disparaging comments, and you know you're like is that a compliment or was that an insult? I can't, really. I can't decipher what just happened here. But we keep those people in our corner because we're like well, you know I don't know if some of us are believers, some of us are like we think it's noble, we think it's cute, you know, we think we're doing the God thing or we're doing what's right, because we keep people around us who are tearing us down or who are not healthy for us or who are toxic.
Speaker 1:We might have our little jokes. That's my toxic friend, girl. You don't need a toxic friend. You need to remove the toxic friend so that you can continue thriving and growing in your life. And that's the part we talked about soul health. Go in there and do the work. When you do the work on your soul, you realize you need different people, different, like we said, accountability. You need different people, different women, different leaders around you so that you can grow. So your community, your friendships, they matter.
Speaker 2:So my personal follow up question would be what constitutes a healthy tribe? Diversity?
Speaker 5:Diversity and thought. For sure, diversity and thought. A lot of times people gravitate to what's familiar and what's most like them, and that's a disaster. So you and all your toxic friends just be toxic together. And then you got the one person that's saying that becomes the butt of all of the jokes, you know, because nobody else wants to recognize that she was right. But we all just going to be wrong and stay wrong, you know. And then she stopped coming around, so you lost somebody to add value to your tribe. But now your tribe is completely unhealthy.
Speaker 5:When they were trying to sow seeds of, you know, healthy community. So you know the healthy community looks like a healthy body. What are you putting into it? What you putting into your body is what you is, dictates how healthy you're going to be. Who's pouring into you? Who's feeding your thirst for companionship, for a relationship, for a community? Who's pouring into you?
Speaker 5:And this came to a point, and I know a lot of my strong friends, my sister friend Candice, right here. We like fire and fire. It's not even fire. Maybe we might like be fire and hot grease together, and my husband's called us personality twins. So when we have to have people around us that are much more docile and present. And you know, and we laugh and we can't think of a word different, different, somebody that's going to stop the fight and not encourage the fight. You know, at the restaurant, when the food come back cold, so just you know, you guys, everything is fine, I'll talk to the server and all right, you talk to them Is that they come back.
Speaker 5:So you just, that's not healthy to have a friendship or somebody in your tribe that's always on edge. You know that you always have to walk on eggshells around. You know, here she come, here she come. Is she really a part of your tribe? Such and such going to be there. We're going to have a good time. We can't. Is she a part of your tribe or not? I'll help you. No, but at least be honest. But you need to, you need to be. You need to see what you're putting into your tribe is exactly what you're going to get out of it.
Speaker 4:And I just want to add to that you know that diversity is the diversity of age. As a more seasoned woman here I I love having younger friends, you know, like my little sister right here, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4:And so you know, just having that you know different age groups, I think is also important. You know older friends, younger friends you know. So find you somebody that's been around for a little while. Right, they may know some things. I know some things.
Speaker 5:And they don't have to be like a mother, because it's not like a mother to me, it's something completely different. Everybody's like a mother, figure you know, no, a true friend and a peer with a huge age difference.
Speaker 2:All right, we have some questions from the audience here. What was the biggest struggle or obstacle you face during your entrepreneurship journey? How did you overcome it? What steps did you take?
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, the coins to start your own business. You know, raising capital, raising funds, it is a huge at every, every part of the journey, depending on what you're doing and if you have big vision, you have a big dream. Sometimes you're trying to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars, trying to pay for your staff and all kinds of things. So that was a huge part of it for us. Like the initial stages, it's like it's extremely exciting to be dreaming. You're like oh, I got the business name, I formed the entity, all the things you telling everybody oh, I got a business. What do you do? I don't really know, girl, but I got a business, I got a business. We ain't got no money, but we got a business. You know, but when? Look, wow, but yeah, that for me. I'm thinking about it.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening and joining the conversation today here on the Visionary Women Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to join our growing community, the FF Social Club, please comment, like and subscribe so that you can be updated on our upcoming episode and more happening over at Freedomfleur. com. To catch the latest from me and to access amazing resources for visionaries just like yourself, please visit me on the web at www. kirstiefleur. com. . Thanks again for hanging out with me and I'll see you next time. Until then, don't forget to be visionary visioning.