Flashback Episode: Pathway to Alignment | Renee Russo | Ep 209

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:00

Welcome to the Better Business, better life podcast, throwback series. My name is Debra Chantry Taylor, and I'm the host of the podcast. I'm a certified EOS implementer, a family business advisor and a business owner myself and I developed this podcast to help bring you tips and tools to help you create a better business and create a better life. For the next five episodes, though, we're revisiting some of the most inspiring, thought provoking conversations from our archives. These episodes are packed with wisdom, practical advice and stories to help you create a business that delivers better results and a better life. So whether you're hearing them for the first time or enjoying a refresher, each one offers timeless insights to help you on your journey.

Let's dive into this week's throwback episode. In this episode, we're re exploring my chat with Renee Russo. Renee shares her incredible journey towards alignment, both in life and business, and the importance of living true to your values. It's a powerful reminder that clarity and alignment can unlock doors you didn't even know were there. Let's jump back in right away.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  01:03

Welcome to another episode of Better Business, Better Life. I'm your host, Debra Chantry Taylor, and I'm passionate about helping entrepreneurs lead their ideal lives by creating better businesses.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  01:19

I'm a certified EOS implementer, an FBA credited family business advisor and a business owner myself with several business interests. I work with established business owners and their leadership teams to help them live their ideal entrepreneurial life using EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. And my guests that come onto the show are generally experts in EOS, or they're using EOS in their business, and they've used that to turn around their business.

Renee Russo  01:46

All businesses needed a methodology to actually give themselves a fighting chance of succeeding. It seemed ludicrous to me, once I knew about the operating system that any business should expect to succeed without this fabric, and I realised that 80% of businesses do fail in the first 10 years, and this is probably why. So I became an implementer, and then, after a number of years doing that and coaching implementers and really immersing myself in that journey of helping business owners and their leadership teams master the simple tools and disciplines that help them get to the next level and the next and the next.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  02:28

So today's guest is indeed a fellow certified EOS implementer. She is also a certified exit planner and Value Advisor, and she has founded a really successful business that has a life coaching system to look after your entire life, if you like both business and personal. Renee Russo is the CEO of rise up business coaching, and today she talk to you about how to live your life by your design. And what I mean by that is creating awareness that as the business owner, what you truly desire should be what's driving the business, and so how do you find out what truly is driving you? Welcome to the show, Renee. Really looking forward to chatting about this.

Renee Russo  03:07

Thank you so much, Debra. It's excited to be here.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  03:11

Yeah, I always love talking to you. So you've been on the show before. So um, listeners may have heard from you, but if they haven't, why don't you give a little bit of a background about who Renee is and what drives you.

Renee Russo  03:22

Thank you. You know it's interesting when you talk about yourself and your story as that story is informed by new data and your awareness, I find that it changes over time. And so more recently, I found myself explaining who I am and where I've come from by starting with saying that I'm an accidental entrepreneur, I started my career in an accounting firm quite obsessed with this system of double entry accounting, and I wasn't so much passionate about the numbers, but the system, the balance, The Order and the flow of data through that system, and although the accounting piece and that path was short lived, I discovered my passion for business and my real desire to help businesses succeed, and I then turned my attention to people, and thought that I would solve the problems of business with great talent, and time and time again, I would pour great talent into these businesses that would then continue to struggle.

Renee Russo  04:27

And it wasn't until I married an entrepreneur myself and moved to Canada in the midst of his startup period that I realised how much of a grind this running a business really was, how difficult it was. And over the following 10 years, through a lot of family trauma, medical trauma and a whole bunch of other things that were thrown into that in our life, we really struggled to scale the business, to grow it. I got to a point where I was frankly tired around how much the business owned. Us. And I was convinced that there had to be a better way. Surely people did not stop businesses to live a living hell. And my brother fortunately gave me a copy of traction, which I then used to self-implement poorly in the business, but it still helped. And then I realised that all businesses should have a blueprint. All businesses needed a methodology to actually give themselves a fighting chance of succeeding. It seemed ludicrous to me, once I knew about the operating system that any business should expect to succeed without this fabric, and I realised that 80% of businesses do fail in the first 10 years, and this is probably why. So I became an implementer, and then after a number of years doing that and coaching implementers and really immersing myself in that journey of helping business owners and their leadership teams master the simple tools and disciplines that help them get to the next level and the next and the next, as a few of my clients started to ask me about what it would be, what it would entail to sell their business? And I, frankly, didn't know how to answer those questions. They asked me if I would help, and I said I would figure out how.

Renee Russo  06:08

And so I went to the Exit Planning Institute and got certified to become an Exit Planning advisor to help my clients get what they want. And I started them finding myself in the owner's box having really meaningful conversations with these business owners, for many of them, for the first time around, what they really wanted and how we could then ensure that the value of the business and the state that it was left in was going to be able to generate the opportunity for them to unlock their wealth tied up in the business. And so that has then formed my you know, my passion for helping business owners to unlock their wealth. In doing that, I realised time and time again when I would ask them what they really wanted, after the sports car and the vacation home, what they really wanted, and I dug a little bit deeper below the surface they didn't know, because a long time ago, they abandoned themselves.

Renee Russo  07:03

They sacrificed everything, poured their entire self into the business, got so consumed in it, that this conversation of who am I, what do I really desire, was a past concept for them, so turning those lights back on for them and helping them to go back into values and purpose and reason for being and what they desire their life to truly look like has unlocked some of the most profound conversations. And because I'm so passionate and obsessed about systems, I became aware that just discovering that information wasn't enough that they needed a system to manage their energy and live into their life by design, it wasn't. It was almost worse to open up the conversation about what they really wanted. If I wasn't, then going to be able to empower them with a system, very much like I do in business. So I and my firm now empower our entrepreneurial clients, business owners with systems and coaching and a human centered approach to help them get what they want in life and in business.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  08:12

I can see we share very, very similar passions. It is interesting because as you were telling that story, I was sitting here thinking about when I used to run the Event Center a few years ago, and much as I loved what I did, it just became consuming. You said that you put your entire self into the business, and I absolutely did. There was nothing left over. And I think that can happen in any kind of business where you start doing what you love, you immerse yourself in it, but you lose yourself in the business, because it becomes your everything. And it was really the, you know, the wake up call for is my brother passing away and realising that I hadn't spent the time that I would have liked to have spent with him, and then mum passing away. And again, it was I didn't spend the time I would have liked to spend with my mum. And I think that was a big wake up call for me in terms of, life is too short, and much as I loved what I was doing, work is not everything. And you do, you lose your you lose yourself in that. So let's just say somebody sitting on this podcast now and listening to that and thinking, yeah, that feels a bit like me. What is the first step do you think to taking a step forward and rediscovering who you are, what you really want? Because I think we do. We get lost. We don't remember what we start, why we started it, or what we really want from it?

Renee Russo  09:23

Totally. What I found is that it's not a light switch. You can't just like, go from complete abandonment of self to now suddenly I'm all about me and what I want. It's a process time space and creating the capacity to do that, creating the room for self is something that has to be developed, and I really do think it starts with changing the way we run the business, creating space for the owner to elevate out of the day to day, to start to reclaim at least some head space for self is the first steps. So using an operating system or a simplified framework for running the business and empowering it with people, process and resources to run without you, is work that really needs to be started sooner than later, because while you're compressed inside of that business, consuming so much of your energy being an operator, it's very hard to come to a point place where you can be.

Renee Russo  10:24

Think of yourself and act as an owner, let alone a human outside of all of this. So creating space for you to elevate to the owner's box, so then you can think about what you need from the business, from a wealth creation, financial stability, and make sure it's secure as an asset is the second stage and then the third stage in that having the work doing the work around being a business owner, we need to there, understand that we are looking at through the that role as a business owner through three lenses. What do I want a need from the business? What do I require financially to live my life? And what do I desire, personally, intrinsically, what's going to motivate me to, you know, get up every day and live into my life? Those are three parts of that conversation.

And Peter Chrisman said, the founder of the concept of the master plan, says you need to have all three legs of that stool for master planning. We cannot just focus on the business or the financial has to then start to have conversations about the personal desires that work around personal discovery. It's not easy and it's not instant tenures, and there's a lot of clearing and a lot of processing and a lot of letting go that we need to do there. I definitely feel having the right professional support there, coach, guide, therapist, whoever is important, it's hard to do alone.

Renee Russo  12:07

I also think using a simple methodology is important simple tools and principles, and I've read many of the books about the things I should do, and what I struggled was with understanding how so applying kind of systems methodology like we do in the operating system for the business, it's really powerful to use a very similar approach to self-discovery, energy management, and then self realisation, as you start to build the habits to Live into your life by your design. And then third I would, I really think, is about surrounding yourself more with the people who elevate you, who you resonate with, in spending less time with the people who don't. Because when you do all three of those things with the right help you know a simple methodology and peers that elevate you, you're going to give yourself every chance to not only lean into the work, but continue the work. It's a time, space process. It's one of discovery, unlocking, sometimes unlearning, and that needs to be supported. It doesn't happen overnight, but as you start to practice that work consistently, it then starts to accelerate. So the those three pieces will help you drive more the consistency and then get more of the results.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  13:43

I think that time, space thing is really important. I mean, I think that obviously, as EOS implementers, we have a proven process that also applies that methodology. It's not like you can walk in on day one, tick a few boxes go, Yep, we're done. Magic, silver bullet, everything's fine. And yet, of course, entrepreneurs can often be impatient, because they you know, they want to get things done really quickly, and they want to run before they can even walk. And I always find that when I work with a client, it's always challenging, because in the first session, they're super excited, and they want to get their video done and launch it to the organisation and get everything. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, this is a process, and actually taking time in between the sessions is really important, because that's when you start to reflect, that's when you start to think more subconsciously about what is going on, rather than just doing. So you start to be rather than do. And I think that obviously that applies, I guess, in the in the in the bigger scheme of things, where you're looking at not only yourself, but your assets.

Renee Russo  14:37

And the one thing that people have asked me recently, what's the challenge with implementing an operating system in the business or in the owner's box or for self-application? And the hard part, and the thing that we need to be most patient with, I feel, based on my experience, is the alignment process. So. And in a team, we're kind of in the business, we're aligning human intention and actions and so forth. And, you know, in the Exit Planning, we're aligning business and personal and financial, but it would self. We are often living in a very dysregulated, disconnected way for a very, very long time, and we've normalised that. So it takes a lot of time, patience and compassion for self to do the work to come into alignment. I say head, heart, hand alignment that takes time the way I think, aligns with the way I feel, and aligns with what I take action on. And so when we do that work, aligning in the simplest form, that head, heart, hand alignment, we then don't need to try so hard energy aligns our what we desire starts to manifest, and we magnetise the things that we need in our life.

Renee Russo  16:09

Because we're in alignment, we are clear, and we are embodying that through our actions every day, the level of alignment and, oh, sorry, the level of reward and results and things we desire in our life come from taking action. And so we need to do that small amount of work every day, moving forward, taking that bias to action every single day in some time, in sometimes the smallest of ways, like simply saying, I would love to do that, but in order to honor myself today, I'm going to say I'm sorry, but no, I won't be there. Or I would love to help with that, but in order to do that, I'm going to need to sacrifice something that's really important to me. And so for today, I won't be taking that on, that's hard. We seek approval. We want validation. We want belonging. It's a saying no is very difficult because we've spent most of our life trying to be fit to fit in and be accepted. The fear of rejection around saying no often inhibits us from taking action and honoring self. Debra, my definition of freedom in its purest form, yes, freedom of time, money, relationships, purpose, all those things are great at the purest and simplest form. I believe my I would say my interpretation of freedom is choosing self over all else. In the simplest of ways, I choose me because I matter most, and if I don't matter, nothing matters. I won't get what I desire in the business, I won't have happy and fulfilling relationships. I won't have time for other passions and live into purpose because I'm not honoring myself.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  18:09

It starts here, and I think that sometimes people see that as being selfish, but it is the oxygen mask concept, isn't it? Is actually, if your cup isn't full, you can't help others. We haven't got the oxygen mask on. You cannot help others. And so it's not a selfish thing, is it? It's actually about getting very clear about how you can help.

Renee Russo  18:28

It’s funny, though, the language and misuse of language fascinates me. I get asked all the time, why don't people do Exit Planning? And I'm like, because they misunderstand what the word exit means. When you exit a building, you open the door and you go somewhere else, and usually you have a desire to go there, because you're taking the steps to that door. You open a door, you go through, and you're typically pleased with what you're doing on the other side of that door, right? It's a new beginning. It's a new space. So when people talk about exiting their business for some reason, somebody gave the world the impression that it means the end of all time. That's what people think. And I'm like, who thought that told people that?

And why on earth do people believe that I have no idea this word, selfish means your self. Ish, which means, in my interpretation, means a little bit of the time. Ish, you know, it's warm. Ish means it's a little bit warm. Yeah, right. So selfish tells me that I'm honoring myself a little bit of the time. What is wrong with that and who made that a bad thing? Why can't it be self more? I am myself more. I honor myself more. I. I think we just need to change the language. And if we can't come to terms with the word selfish, then let's take it out of the vocabulary and switch it in with I'm aware of who I am, what intrinsically motivates me. I'm conscious around how I live my life, and end of the day I the only person I answer to is myself. I honor myself in the way I think, feel and behave every day. If I said to somebody, does that make me a bad person? I don't know a single person that would say, Yeah, that makes you a really bad person. Renee, so we got the language wrong.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  20:46

That is absolutely right, and I just written that down. So that's beautiful. So selfish, a little bit me. And what's wrong with that? Let's get self more. It doesn't even mean that you are necessarily leaving the business entirely either, right? There is a way to build a business that can where you, I don't know, where you can either choose to take a different role within the business, or you can choose to sell it, or you can choose to bring on board other people that can help you. There's more than one way to exit plan is that, right?

Renee Russo  21:15

Oh yeah, it's so funny that you there's, I'm just going to play on some of the language that image mentioned there that the Exit Planning doesn't mean that I'm necessarily walking away with the business. It means that I'm planning that when I do transition, I'm going to leave this business in a better state than when I found it, because without planning. If it an intention, chances are you may not leave it in a better position than when you found it, and that's going to make it hard for the next owners to do something meaningful with it, and it's going to make it very difficult for you to extract your wealth that's locked up inside that business.

Renee Russo  22:02

So Exit Planning just gets us thinking and acting on the business now with future buyers in mind, ensuring that they will find the business attractive, that the business will be ready for a transition, and when that day comes, you're doing it as a business owner, on your terms and your timeline. You may sell a portion of the business to sign an organisation that has deep pockets and together then fully sell the business later. So we took all that two bites of the apple. You may hand it down to generation. You may do a management buyout. You might do a full divestiture to sell it outright. In all those situations, it doesn't matter what terms, what it matters most is that you have options when that day comes that you say, I am ready for a transition, and you do so, leaving the business better than when you found it and you have the opportunity to take your money out of the bank. Who would pour their life savings into a bank account expect that the value of that bank account would go down over time and they would never be able to take their money out. I don't know anybody who would do that. I therefore don't understand why any business owner wouldn't be expecting that the value of their business would need to increase over time, and at some point they're going to go to the ATM of their business and pull their money out and hand that business over to the next caretakers.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  23:43

Nice analogy. Love it. Okay, I'm going to go back a little bit in time, if I may, because, you know, this show is all about how we can build that better life through creating a better business. And you were an EOS implementer as well as an exit strategist, and you said that, you know, your brother gave you the book traction, and that kind of opened your eyes that thing you tried to self-implement. Can you share with us a little bit about you said that you, I think you're kind of the exact words that you use, but I think said poorly you self implemented poorly. And I guess I just like to understand how was self implementation for you, and why do you think of it as poorly self-implemented?

Renee Russo  24:20

Well, the first thing is, like, I love Stephen Covey's seven habits are Highly Effective People. And he talks about in that that implementing or making changes around any one of those habits will help. But when you embrace all seven in an integrated way, you get exponential results. And so when we self implemented, I didn't understand the art and science of the tools, because I wasn't working with a specialist, so I didn't understand the technicality of it. I took them at face value, read the chapter, and then started to play with it. So it was practicing. I. The tools, but I didn't understand how they worked. And so when I became an implementer, I understood how they worked. So a as a user, my ability to get the results I wanted through using the tools as they were designed went up. Also, I found that I was able, I was able to and then found my passion for teaching other people the art and science of the tools and how they are designed to work so that they could realise the rewards from using them more successfully, then they would then sustain them over time, I like to empower people. I don't like dependency. I like to educate, inspire, empower people to become their own Guru. And working with an implementer allows you, first to be the student and learn how the tools work, practice the mastery, and then you can, then the teacher can disappear, and you can become the teacher, so that you then can teach it to the next level and the next level. And that piece was missed because I was really taking the tools at face value and applying them, and I missed the education and the understanding around how they work, and I feel as an implementer, we have the beautiful opportunity to educate, teach the tools, coach the mastery of them, so they then are used effectively to get the results. Then when we graduate clients and let them go, they we're confident that they know how to teach this into the business.

.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  26:41

It's actually really true. I've been working with a self implementer for the last year now. They had self implemented for a couple of years before I came on board. And don't get me wrong, they've done a wonderful job in terms of what they knew and what they were able to do. But what Adam sort of shared with me was that by having an implementer come in, yes, he got to see how the tools were used in context. He got to see how they were sort of, you know, designed to be used. But also, I think more importantly, he said that he had the chance now to step away from being the facilitator, because in those sessions, he was being the owner and the facilitator, and it's tough to do both, right? I mean, it's not saying that you can't, but it's not an easy task to be able to be facilitating the discussion with the entire team and also be participating as a participant of that leadership team.

Renee Russo  27:26

Totally, totally. I agree with that you're already as a business owner, wearing the owners hat, the operator hat, the primary leader hat. Now you're the trying to teach and coach and all those things. It's exhausting. What I do like is that it also puts the entire team into a level playing field, where they come and they learn how to be a team, and they come into alignment, and so all people in the room get to come into that team formation, that cohesion, because nobody's being the instructor. And so I think you're absolutely right that alignment is the hardest work. Even using the poor the tools loosely is going to be beneficial, but the real work is aligning the team around the vision, adopting the tools and disciplines, putting them to use, continuing the work that the human alignment piece is the hardest part. So I feel like it's just easier to get to a place of alignment when there's a master in the room guiding you.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  28:31

And I think you mentioned something a bit early on as well. It's like in any of the three areas that you want to focus on, you need it is easier. It's not that you need to but it's easier if you have somebody to help guide you through that. You can do all of this on your own if you really, really want to, but it's going to take longer. You're not going to have that expertise. You're not going to have the outside viewpoint either to kind of challenge you on some of our thinking. That is whether we like it or not is fixed, because this is what we've been taught or brought up in a certain way. So I think the idea of having somebody in each of those areas as you progress through is really important.

Renee Russo  29:07

So important. And then you mentioned something important, also the accountability, which I think is embedded, but I do want to draw it out. I've paid personal trainers, breath coaches, like people who are telling me to do things I already know how to do. And I thought to myself, Why do I keep paying all these people and coaches? And it's because the accountability mechanism. They keep me on a cadence, and they hold me accountable to a higher state version of myself. They hold me to a higher standard. My clients joke that they're afraid of me and that, oh goodness, we can't do that. Don't tell Renee and so on and so forth. It's, I think there's a little bit of truth to it, but it's mainly that they know they're not really letting me down. They're letting themselves down. I'm just holding that standard up for them, for them to see what they're capable of, and holding them accountable to it, not just. Accountable, but I'm holding them able. I'm holding them able to rise to that higher level because I'm giving them the tools and disciplines to get there.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  30:10

And I think you write the cadence, and it's really why the level 10 meeting works, isn't it? It's because you know that when you're going into a level 10 meeting, I've got teams who, literally, the hour before the level 10 meeting, are rushing around to make sure they've got everything done, because they know they're going to be held accountable. Held accountable for it, and the cordless are the same. And, you know, I've got a personal trainer that I work with, and three times a week I know I'm going to that personal training session. There's just, I don't know, there's a cadence that it does. It helps keep things moving. I suppose otherwise, I would be a terrible procrastinator, and it would be so easy to not help hold myself accountable.

Renee Russo  30:43

Yeah, couldn't agree more.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  30:45

Okay, so tell us a little bit about your life coaching system, because I'm really fascinated to hear a little bit more about that.

Renee Russo  30:52

Yeah, just like becoming an entrepreneur, I'm building this firm. I'm an accidental creator of his life coaching system. I am a quick start, so I tend to have life slap me in the face, and then I pay attention to it and I address a problem. But when I address a problem, it's very important to me that it be done well. My dad would always say, a job's not worth doing unless it's done well. And then he would go on to say, good, better, best. Never let it rest until your good is better and your better is best. And so that's ingrained in me, so I don't do things halfway. So in 2021 my personal life fell apart when I realised I was not in the marriage that I wanted to be in. And in leaving that marriage, I lost everything, children, homes, community, money, everything. That hit me really hard, and I felt really, really hard the lowest I've ever been in my life, not my first crash, but definitely the lowest. At that point I had a business, and the only reason I could leave my marriage was because I was financially stable enough to afford to leave as an immigrant in a foreign country. The only way I could afford to get out was because I had my business.

Renee Russo  32:34

So I had to keep this business up, and one of my three children was still willing to see me. So I had to keep standing up and facing life. Though, every day I didn't want to, and it took so much energy, up to three hours in the morning, to actually get up. I was abusing my body. I wasn't taking care of myself, and at that rock bottom, I had the fortunate life interruption of saving the life of another human being, and this street person who the paramedics revived sat up with their help, and on the front of his shirt it said, It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get back up. Vince Lombardi and I had the gift of this turnaround moment to wake up and stop myself sabotaging take responsibility for the fact that I got myself into this situation, and the only person who was going to get me out was me. I read many, many self-help books, podcasts, and everybody kept telling me the things I should do to make my life better, manage my energy better, change my habits, all these things, but it was too much.

I was running on fumes, I needed to find a faster way to get myself together, and I was running the operating system in business, and so I wondered if I could pull some rules and tools and habits together from the books I read and distill this down to a practical methodology that I could use and try on myself to turn my life around. A friend said to me, Renee, what do you want to be on the other side of this? Who are you going to become? And I realised I didn't know. I also realised that I could not afford to make the same mistakes that I had made in the past, and I was aware that I had a very small amount of energy that I needed to magnify, to build, give this, get the strength to climb up this, that mountain and rise through this catastrophe. And so I started to practice the basics of energy management, mindset parameters, just five, basic habits, just five.

Renee Russo  35:12

And I pulled together different tools from different systems to create a suite of just five tools that I could use on a daily, weekly, quarterly and annual cadence to get myself in a rhythm and give myself a holistic methodology, so that I could manage my energy, learn how to be myself, deal with my old patterns and create my life by my design. I didn't know until this point, when I had no life in my mind, that actually everybody can do that. I just happen to have flatlined my life and I needed to create my design, but I realise now that anybody can create change in their lives, so long as they're willing to take responsibility for the fact that they're the main character in All the problems, that change will not happen externally.

The world won't change for you, but you can, and it starts with the way you think, then the way you behave, which then impacts the results you get. And that part really needs to be systemised so it can be sustained, so that you can build a practice of being yourself, manage your energy and live your life by your design, so much like we do with business, this simple playbook has fallen out of my own experience. People started to ask me what I was doing, and how can my life be pure hell, and I seem to be improving and moving forward. And I would tell them, I'm practicing energy management. They would ask, can you tell me more about that? And then all the people in my life who I wanted to help on the other side of COVID and moving through change, they were all wanting to be part of my world and wanted help. And I couldn't help them all, but I could give them a system. So I started to give this, deliver this, teach this to other people. And it turns out, what worked for me can work for others, for those who are ready to take responsibility, make smaller changes, even down to five minutes a day, and commit to the fact that they matter most, and even being a little bit selfish, putting yourself first a little bit of the time, can translate into real transformation.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  37:53

That's awesome. It's like, I guess it's similar to what Gino did with the business side of things, isn't it? I mean, that guy's is he looked at read all these books and went, this is all fantastic, but it's too much. How do we actually bring it down to something that's simple, that's pragmatic, that we can use on a daily basis, weekly basis, quarterly basis, annual basis, sustainable. Beautiful. Hey, thank you for sharing that. If somebody wanted to find out a bit more about what you do, how would they get in contact with you.

Renee Russo  38:22

They can email me, direct at connect@riseupbc.com or visit our website, riseupbc.com. BC means business coaching. I just happen to also live in a province called BC, but rise up bc.com there's a lot of great things coming along this year, including book, lifestyle app and a few other great things, because I want to create an opportunity for more people to engage in their personal discovery journey, energy management and access tools and resources so that they can become their own Guru. When I became a yoga teacher a very long time ago, I remember my guru said to me, her name was Shakti me, she said, I am not your guru. And I was like, Yeah, you are. That's why I came here just like, No, I'm not your guru. You are the guru today. You're the student so that you can learn how to become your own teacher, your own master of self. And I feel that with the power of a simple system and guidance plus community, people really can realise their freedom to live their life by design that is a byproduct of the inner transformation. It starts in here. It starts with that alignment we talked about before. Head, heart, hand alignment in the basic form, making sure that you matter most every day.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  40:06

Beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing. Hey, look, I've really I always enjoy our chats. I always take so much from it. I'm sure that the listeners have too. Renee, I will put those details in the podcast episode. I just want to thank you so much for being open, for being vulnerable, for sharing your story. I think you know some of the things that you have talked about, it's the reason that I kind of fell in love with the OS too, was the fact that we're not there to consult, we're not there to tell them how to do things. We're there to teach. We're there to empower. We're there to inspire. We're there to to get the team aligned, hold them accountable, facilitate those conversations, but we really want them to become the gurus. It's not about us. We're not the gurus. We're there just to share that so they then can take control of their own business and their life.

Renee Russo  40:55

Absolutely, you know that saying you teach, feed someone a fish, they'll eat for the day. You teach them to fish, and they'll live. But I also think prosper forever. This is the era for real human transformation to take place, and when people are willing to do the work with themselves, nothing but good things will come from that.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  41:26

You're right. Here's to a fantastic 2024 here's to a great year for you. I hope that you continue to thrive and prosper and flows and thank you so much for spending the time with you this morning.

Renee Russo41:38

Thank you. Debra.