159 Thriving as an Introverted Entrepreneur with Kimberly Chauvet

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Well, hello and welcome to Connect Inspire Create.

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I'm your host, carol Clegg, a progress and mindset business coach, here to help you thrive and flourish and turn those challenges into opportunities for growth.

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I'm so pleased you're here.

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Join me for the discussions that I hope will not only encourage you, but also provide the dose of inspiration that you might just need today.

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This podcast is all about giving you your weekly dose of practical strategies, motivation and insightful conversations designed to boost your business skills, personal growth and happiness.

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So, whether you're looking to find balance, say goodbye to procrastination, or just in need of a friendly nudge towards your goals, remember we're all on this journey together.

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So grab your favorite cup of something, be it coffee, tea or something else, and let's dive into this conversation today.

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Well, welcome everybody to another episode with Connect Inspire Create, and today we are going to be talking to the introverted business owners.

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So if this is you, you're going to want to listen in.

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We're going to have a wonderful conversation.

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I'm really looking forward to it, and I'm joined by my guest, kimberly Chauvet, owner and founder of Lost Art of Love, a business and life coaching service that she offers for introverted women.

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So Kimberly focuses on your mindset networking, which we're going to share, some wonderful things that she's doing in that area, and then some planning for your business, and Kimberly provides this unique aspect different way of looking at how to grow your confidence as an introvert in business.

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So welcome Kimberly.

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Thank you so much for having me.

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I'm excited to be here.

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Lovely to have you here coming to share, so I know that you share, that you're a wife and a mama to a lovely large blended family.

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What a wonderful age difference 33 to 8.

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Tell me a little bit about how that goes.

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So yeah, so when we have holidays and we have friends over and family over, it's a big party.

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It's a lot of fun.

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My eight-year-old son loves being an uncle.

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He thinks it's the coolest thing in the world.

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Because you said you're Lola, I love that Right.

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I am a Lola Right.

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Oh wonderful.

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How old are the grandkids?

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Almost three and just shy of one year.

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Okay.

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So small and little, yeah, that is wonderful.

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So I know that you've shared that you're basically a lifelong introvert, yet you've worked in corporate America.

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So how did that go?

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And are you still working in corporate America, or are you now only coaching?

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I am still working in corporate America.

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Out of college I had a bachelor's degree in English and I said what am I supposed to do with this?

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Because I don't want to teach.

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And I had a friend who had a family member that worked for a company and she said well, you can apply here.

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And never in my wildest dreams did I think back then you know, at the tender age of 22, that I would be there 28 years later.

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Wow, that's quite a journey it is.

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I'd love to ask you I mean, you've already shared some fun, interesting things but if I had to ask you, could you share three fun or just interesting things about yourself?

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Sure.

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I'd love to hear.

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Sure, so I am an avid reader.

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I am someone who typically reads two or three books at one time, so I don't stick to just one.

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I usually have something on paper or hard cover, you know, physical book in my hand.

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I always have something loaded on my Kindle, and then I love listening to books on Audible, so I have those cycling all the time I can get lost in organizing so spaces.

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So show me a messy closet and I will be in heaven.

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I will completely reorganize it, make everything neat and tidy, lose track of time and be completely satisfied when it's over.

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And then my favorite fun fact is that I am obsessed with all things the Grinch.

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The Grinch lives in my house all year round.

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It's not just a December kind of thing, he is around all the time.

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So that's fine.

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I'm sure your son must absolutely love that.

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It's funny.

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We have a rescue pup and it's just when you say that Grinch, we always joke that she's got Grinch paws because her hair sort of grows up, you know.

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And it was so funny because we took her to the farmer's market the other day and somebody came up and said, oh mommy, look at her Grinch Paws.

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And I was, like somebody else calls them Grinch Paws.

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They love it.

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Yeah, we have Grinch Paws in our house, perfect.

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All year round.

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So I know, before we jump into the topic, I'm just going to ask you one little question that I just love where this comes from people's hearts when they answer this.

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But if you had to think for a moment, who's been the kindest to you in your life?

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probably, I would say, my mom, something special that comes to mind she was a single mom most of my life and she always made sure that she knew that we were loved.

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Yeah, a solid basis for a child, which is beautiful, so thank you, thank you for sharing that.

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So I know our topic today is being an introvert, and there's one question in there that I can certainly relate to.

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So I'm going to love to hear a little more on that introvert and extrovert combination.

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But let's start off with defining an introvert for others, to kind of go do I fit into this category, right?

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How do you, how would you explain that?

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My favorite way to explain what if you're an introvert or not, how to determine it is where you're getting your energy from.

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So are you someone who gains energy by being around other people, and the longer you're with them, the more the excited you get, the more you're like you want to keep going, you want to stay out longer, you want to do more things, or are you the kind of person who you can be around people, but in order for you to really recharge your battery, you need to spend some time alone, and it doesn't necessarily have to be alone and quiet, like there's plenty of introverts that put their ear pods in and, you know, pump up the music and they're by themselves.

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But that's how they regain their energy is by having alone time.

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So I think the pandemic was a huge indicator of who's an introvert and who's an extrovert, right, because our extroverts were itching to get out of the house.

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I can't do this anymore and the introverts are like this is the best I get to be home.

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Yeah, yeah, no, so important.

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Um, I think you know.

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But now we'd look at a whole different topic.

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Because if you, you talk about being in business and you're, you're coaching introverts in business, you know how, how, how, where do you go with that when you're wanting to start a business and and you've got to get out there and do some networking?

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Um, yeah, how do you get comfortable?

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How do you recharge your batteries, how do you balance?

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Yeah, this, you know, being a solopreneur, entrepreneur, whatever you want to call, it and interacting, putting yourself out there.

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Yeah, I think the secret to my success is being very intentional with the actions I'm going to take, and that's what I coach other women on as well.

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So know what it is that you want to get out of a conversation or an interaction or an event that you're attending.

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Be really thoughtful about.

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I'm looking to find someone to help me with marketing, so I'm going to hone in on who in this room is a marketing expert that I can connect with.

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And I also like to take the pressure off myself a little bit and think about who do I want to be able to help.

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So not just about me and going out I need, but who in my network could I connect with somebody else in this room?

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And those are my, my two main points that I that I look for when I'm, when I'm attending something or having to go to something where there's a lot of people, I intentionally think about what I want.

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I target those two people, one that can help me and one that can help somebody else and then I give myself the grace to leave.

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Yeah.

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That's enough.

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I came for what I intended to do, as long as it's not the type of you know situation where you have to stay right, you want to leave in the middle of someone giving a presentation.

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But if it's just like a general open networking, there's no reason that you have to stay for two hours if you satisfied what your intention was within the first 45 minutes.

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Yeah, and when you set that intention before you go, do you sort of sit down and journal with that?

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Do you just give yourself some space to make some notes, because I think that is important.

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You don't want to be driving there and then sort of going, well, what am I going for?

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Right, right, I like to tell my ladies that are in business to look at who's coming to that event.

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You can usually ask, you know, can you show me the attendee list so that I can look at an advance?

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If I'm a, if I'm a business owner and I maybe I'm a professional makeup artist and everybody attending this meeting, this session, is a financial advisor, might not be the best fit for me, right?

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So maybe I don't want to commit to going to that.

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So do as much preparation as you can in advance find out about the event, find out about the attendees and, before you go, obviously you know who am I going to connect with and who do I want to listen for, so that I can connect them with someone else in my network, right?

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That's, yeah, perfect advice.

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So this is going to bring me to the part that you know.

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People often think of introverts being unfriendly.

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They don't want to be around others.

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What other false assumptions do people have about introverts?

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yeah, so, uh, those are two big ones that they're, you know, uh, mistaken for being, um, not relatable, or somebody who doesn't like to have fun, um, automatically assume that an introvert is someone who is shy, which is two totally different things, right, yeah.

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And it probably ties into confidence.

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When you think shyness and confidence.

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There's not a fair label to put on an introvert.

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It is not.

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It is not.

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People often assume that because you're introverted, it means that you don't like to give presentations or speak in public.

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That's not necessarily the case, right, you know a lot of introverts I know can give presentations to 500 people, but they have difficulty in the one on one conversation the one-on-one conversation and, as you say, it's just that recognizing which is going to bring me to this next question of how can you be both an introvert and an extrovert and how do you balance that?

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Yeah, so I think your true nature is either one or the other, but you can portray the characteristics of the opposite when it's necessary.

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And it's really about honoring yourself and making sure that you're giving back to yourself the time that you need in order to regain the energy that you had put forward by doing the opposite thing.

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So, as an introvert, if you're going to a networking event, it's going to take a lot out of you, so make sure you're honoring yourself by having some downtime after that event is over.

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Don't schedule yourself back to back to back to back, because you're not going to be effective at the end of that day, whereas if you're yeah, if you're an extrovert, you want to make sure that you constantly have activity and that you're doing things, but it doesn't mean that you don't need time to rest either.

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Right, exactly, yeah.

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And recognize that, because that's also burnout.

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So I'd love to ask you just some tips that you might share with the audience on balancing work and personal life and so that you can have a balance.

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What do?

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you do that works for you.

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So I'm a huge planner Like that's a part of just my personality, and so I really like to use time blocking in my calendar.

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I'll make sure that I'm putting in time for self-care.

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Um, I'm very much a schedule driven person, so if it's in my calendar I will do it Right, and I try to limit the number of particular like human interactions in one day, if I at all can.

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I mean, of course there's some days that you know things are just going to slip out of your control.

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But for the most part, like okay, on Wednesdays I have three networking meetings, so I try not to add any additional networking meetings on Wednesdays because that's my full day.

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And then on Thursdays I tend to keep the day a little quieter to give myself some time to recover.

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I love that.

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I do something similar and I call it theming the days of your week, and then I like to revisit that, perhaps every quarter and change it up a little bit, but that's just because it gets a bit boring.

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And then, as you say, I call it white space, to allow some white space on your calendar that you can.

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You know something fun and exciting pops up and you want to do something, or that you do.

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You just need some time alone or, as you said, to listen to music or to plan or you know whatever whatever comes your way.

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So I would love to ask you because before we jumped on to start recording, we were talking about where people can find you, how they can work with you, and I will make sure to have your website available.

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And then you also have a Facebook community, which just sounds wonderful a group of like-minded women you said that are there to support and cheer you on.

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So I will make sure to have that link in the show notes so people can join your Facebook group.

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But then we spoke about Meetup and I was like you're sharing Meetup with me, so what are you presenting?

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You know, workshops or seminars.

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And then you said no, this is speed networking with over 800 people, so tell us more about it and where people will find that.

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So I started a group on meetupcom and it's called the introverted women's group and I have over 800 women in right now and three times a month I host speed networking.

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I host once a month, usually a midday session for women business owners.

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I have an evening session for women business owners and then I also host an evening session just for introverted women for an opportunity for them to meet other women.

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They know they already have something in common, right, because they're introverts.

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But it's just an opportunity for you to get to meet other people who are going to be like-minded, like you are a chance to share more about yourself, a chance for women business owners to connect with each other.

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Maybe they're great referral partners, maybe they are a potential client for the person that they're talking to.

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But the way that I like to facilitate it is I have the women pre-register on Zoom, so I'll get their name, their email address and then their business and we go into the Zoom all together and then I'll put them in breakout rooms.

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So you get 10 minutes in a breakout room with one to two other women and then we switch until we run out of time or we've run through all of the people that are there At the end of the session.

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Then I will email out all of the contact information, because if you're going to build a relationship with a person, it takes more than 10 minutes right, right, absolutely.

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That is fantastic.

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And is there a charge?

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There is no charge.

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That is my way of giving back to the women in business and women in community.

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That is so important because, as women in business and often working alone at home, it's so important to be able to have other people to brainstorm with and to connect with, and just to be able to.

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There's somebody else walking the same path.

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Right right, that is super, so I'll put that link in the show notes as well.

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And, kimberly, if we just had to wrap up our conversation today, what is something that you'd love people to take away?

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You need to remember to honor yourself first and really appreciate who you are as an introvert, those superpowers that you have, those powers of introspection, those powers of really, you know, being a great listener, being someone who maybe sees things that other people don't because you spent so much time listening and you're able to provide perhaps different ideas or different things.

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But you know, most of all, take care of yourself.

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I think that's the number one most important Take care of yourself, and if you're taking care of yourself and making sure that you're honoring who you are and what your needs are, then your opportunities are endless.

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Beautiful, yeah so important.

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Well, thank you for sharing with five listeners today and to those that are listening to this episode.

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I know that you're going to find some valuable tidbits to share, and so I do.

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I ask you to share this episode and you can connect with me on LinkedIn, carolclaguecom, and I thank you once again.

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If this has encouraged you, I invite you to find a fresh way to connect or inspire somebody else this week or create that's going to bring a sense of joy into your world.

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And, as your host, I am a coach for coaches.

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I am your business mentor and accountability coach, guiding women coaches to take action.

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Positive Intelligence is the coaching program that I use.

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So do come and ask me about my 12-week Flourish and Grow program to master your mindset and elevate your overall happiness and build some lifelong powerful habits.

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Feel free to reach out.

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I am here to support you on the journey.

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So until the next time, take care.