Intro: Welcome to the Masterful Coach Podcast with Molly Claire. If you're a coach who's ready to impact more lives, make more money, and create a life you love, you are in exactly the right place. Get the support you deserve as a female entrepreneur, master your coaching skills, grow your ideal business, and to honor your priorities in your personal life. Are you in? Let's get started with your host, bestselling author, and master life and business coach, Molly Claire. Molly Claire: Hey, coach, do you ever wonder what is the one thing in your business that is slowing you down? What is the problem that is most important to focus on? Coach, if you've ever asked yourself this question, this interview is for you. I loved this conversation that I had with Justine. She is amazing at what she does, helping entrepreneurs solve problems in their business, and she is so passionate about helping her clients. This was an incredible interview. I'm thrilled to bring her here to you in this conversation. Let's dive right in. All right, coaches, I'm so excited to introduce you to Justine. She's gonna be speaking more in depth in my community about this amazing work she does of helping people really identify and solve for the problems in their business. So we're gonna talk a little bit about it now. Welcome, Justine. Justine McDonald: Thank you so much, Molly. Molly Claire: So good to have you. I wanna start off with you just sharing with my coaches and my audience what it is you do and why you love it. Justine McDonald: Yeah, so I am a business coach for female entrepreneurs generally working with businesses that generate less than a million dollars in revenue per year. And I help you identify and solve for the right problem in your business. So I have a proprietary, as you spoke to, a proprietary eight step process that I walk my clients through so they can stop, you know, throwing spaghetti and money at the wall and figure out what it is that they need to do in their business to get the results that they've been looking for. Molly Claire: Yeah. I love that, because as we were talking about you going through this process with my coaches, I was thinking about how often my clients will come for coaching, right? And it's like, and I know this isn't exactly what you're speaking to, but I think it's definitely related, this idea of, you know, they're not getting the clients that they want. They're not getting enough clients from their view. And so then immediately their brain goes to, you know, "I don't know how to sell", or, "I'm not a good coach", or "I need to change my freebie". It's like their brain makes this huge assumption when it's like, if we back up, there are so many different pieces of this puzzle, so let's be careful about just like jumping to conclusions or allowing our brain to go to, "All is lost. I'm going to fail at this business." Right. Justine McDonald: Yeah, and that's actually a perfect example cuz in that example I would say, "Well, do you actually need more clients? Or do you need to nurture the ones that are there?" So, so often our brain goes to like, "This isn't working, so work more. This isn't working, work more." But sometimes it's just work more focused, more disciplined, more consistent to create those results. Molly Claire: And even, and you didn't use this word exactly, but this is like just almost a different way of saying it is like working differently, right? Like, because I do think, especially as women, we always assume that we should be doing more, that we need to do more. We take on more, and my audience listening here, and your clients generally, we're high achievers, so doing more seems to always be the solution, but it's not. Justine McDonald: Yeah, it's not the solution. And actually, what happens when we try to do more, we get less efficient with the activities that we are trying to create real results in, right? It's like putting your hands in 20 different buckets, you can't possibly get to the bottom. Can't possibly get to the bottom. And especially with coaches and in the businesses that we are in, it is all about connection. It is all about depth and authenticity. And you just can't create that. Trying to be on every platform and create every course with every new wavering, social media hack and trick. You gotta stay in your lane for a little bit, dive really deep into what's working in the business before you start branching out. Molly Claire: And I love this, and I want my listeners to think about this for just a minute, this idea that there's no shortage of things we could point to as the problem in our business, right. And certainly there are plenty of areas where we can still grow and improve, like that all exists, right? As you're listening, as you think about this, if we're trying to solve 20 problems because we think that solving all these 20 problems is gonna fix everything, think about how exhausting that is. Maybe that's how you're feeling now. And then this idea of, what if instead of giving, spreading all that energy so wide to all those 20 problems, identifying one place to put your energy, putting less, but more important energy in that space and actually solving what seems to be a pretty big problem in your business, right. Justine McDonald: Yeah. And really, we all do this, I do this, I'm sure you do this where we're so close to our business. It's our baby. It's another child to us. We're so intimately attached to our brand colors and everything that we stand for, but sometimes that puts blinders on. Molly Claire: Yes. Justine McDonald: We just need outside perspective, right? We just need somebody else. And somebody else can walk into our business and can solve something that we have been working one year, three or five years, 10 years to solve, and we simply couldn't see it because we were just too intimately connected in the business. So doing this kind of work, and what I love so much is you can get results so quickly with an outsider's perspective. And you're like, "Oh, why did I not see that? Why did I not think of it?" But it happens to all of us, but it's so transformative to have somebody come in with that outside perspective and say, "Listen, focus on this one thing. And allow yourself to build the evidence in your brain." When you put in that effort, you're gonna get the result that you're looking for. Allow yourself to build that momentum and that confidence. And it's such a beautiful thing to watch unfold. Molly Claire: Yes, and I think that, I'm imagining the freedom that your clients experience. I know that was what came to my mind as you were saying that because we think we do need to do 25 million things and sort of that freedom to say, just focus here. Just be in this space. Such a gift. Justine McDonald: For the time being, because creatively, like we wanna do more. Sure, and we will absolutely get there once you're profitable, once you're not working 12 hour days and working for free in your business, once we get you to that place of feeling like you're really on a trajectory upwards and feeling towards that peace that you really started your business to feel and get rid of the nine to five, and you've gotten away from those feelings. So once you get to that place, yeah, let's play with some new strategies, let's play with some new ideas. So, I always tell my clients, take all these ideas and put them in a brain dump document. So you don't feel like they're lost. You have your main strategy that we work on, but then take all the fun things that come up and just put them in a separate document so your nervous system can relax and be like, "I don't need to remember this. I don't need to hold it in my brain." You can clear it out, and you can just again, and training your mind. Just to go back to that one thing, clear it out, back to the one thing. And it's just training like a muscle. Molly Claire: It is training. I love that you brought that up because I know so many of you listening, it's like we have that creativity in us that, go get 'em like spirit and we wanna do this. And it can feel sometimes suffocating to use that, you know, we always hear this word constrained, like, constrained to this one thing. And so I think it's such a beautiful thing to train yourself to not extinguish all of those things. Not believe you can't do any of them, but that you're focused effort is going to this one problem that you're solving. Because I really think, I mean, I would imagine that you would've seen this to be true as well, that it's like when we can focus on doing that one thing that will open things up, that will make that shift, it actually allows more space for us to do all those creative things we wanna do. Right? Justine McDonald: Absolutely. Molly Claire: It's like the secret to unlocking that open creative space. Justine McDonald: It is like turning on a tap. Molly Claire: Yeah, this is. Justine McDonald: It is such a flow of energy and you know, you and I, we're both mothers. We have businesses, we have other businesses we wanna start, we have marriages and friendships and family and other places that we want to pour into. And so often, again, like back to that like energy, back to that being in all the buckets, you're just taking so much of your life force, and you're spreading it so thin, just trying to keep up with, what's going on on Instagram, and everyone in their their 10K months, and their a hundred K years in their first six month of business. And the reality is, is that's gonna come time is. It's gonna come for you where you can have that peace and you have that stability, but first you need that discipline and you need that focus. And I really believe this might be a little bit of a controversial thing to say, but I really believe that that whole like, just be in flow and be in ease in your business, is stopping people, from realizing that there is also work behind the scenes, consistent daily work that doesn't always feel comfortable, doesn't always feel easy and fun, building that foundation so in your future you can feel that way for yourself. Molly Claire: And I think too that sometimes. I mean, I personally see how there can be ways when you can have that flow and that openness and also, get after it and solve. And I think that when you're talking about, you know, it's keeping people from really remembering that there is work to be done and all of that. I think it's when we almost misuse that idea of allowing things to unfold. And we just decide that it puts us over here in this place where we're not really being intentional. And I don't think that's like the purpose of that idea of allowing it to unfold and being in flow. I think it's much more joined with this idea of what you're talking about. Justine McDonald: Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, there's a lot of different ways I think that you can find that information on Instagram and you can take it through a lens. But what I've found is sometimes that can hold people back from feeling like they need to start. They're waiting for the results. They're waiting for it, versus creating it for themselves and activating it within themselves and doing the mundane, and doing the things that don't feel so fun, and juicy, and playful all the time, to create that freedom, that future freedom. Molly Claire: Yes. Yes. I love that. So, one thing I wanna ask you, because when we first talked and we talked about what you were gonna teach in my community and what you were gonna speak about here, it was so clear to me by the way you were talking, that finding this one thing and focusing on it is something you are great at and something you love. So tell me, what is it about this that just lights you up? Justine McDonald: Oh, there's so many things, but I have to say, it's like imagine watching someone struggle and you can give them 5, 10, 15 minutes of your time. And their whole facial expression changes and maybe their belief in their ability to be successful has been restored and they hold themselves a little different. Maybe they're a little bit more playful or calm when they go home to their family because something has switched inside of them that was turned off for a long time. It was there when they started their business, and with each misstep, with each dollar thrown, that didn't work out the way they wanted, or with each download that they didn't activate or didn't do anything with, they got further and further from that initial belief, that initial spark that started the business. And I get to help them reactivate that. And it is the most, it's the most incredible feeling, and I've been so blessed to have so many clients trust me, with that process and walk through the uncomfortable action steps after that, with what probably feels like them is blind faith, because they haven't walked it, they haven't had that result, so they probably haven't taken the actions before. And it's changing the blueprint of their past. Molly Claire: Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh, right, because that's the thing. It's like this is a business and our business matters to us, and our business is a part of the bigger picture of our whole life. There's so much power in building a business and in the way we build a business for us personally and for really everyone around us that's connected with us. So it's a big deal. Okay. I wanna talk about what you said about these uncomfortable steps. I actually wrote a note and I flagged that. So we're going to come back to that in this topic, but I wanna take a minute and just, and speak to you as my listeners here, and noticing as Justine is talking about this, this idea that this outside awareness can be so life changing for her clients. This moment that's just a few minutes and it's like, "Oh wow, I see all of this differently." And I bring that up because I know that all of you here are coaches that really care about your clients and I know it can be easy to, when you are doing the same work all the time, to wonder if this is really helping. Is this really enough? And just remember that you being there and you listening and you doing what you do, it does have the power to impact your clients. So just please do not minimize or underestimate the power of what you do, for sure. Justine McDonald: So beautifully said. Molly Claire: Okay, so let's go back, Justine, as you were talking and I was mentioning this sigh of relief, like "This is the thing. I can just focus on this." I'm also imagining that some of that being very uncomfortable, potentially, for your clients for so many reasons. So that's what I would love to know from you, in working with your clients, what do you see them experiencing when you identify where they need to make shifts or the one shift? Justine McDonald: So what I find that most often is, it's not really the action that stops people in their tracks. That's not the fog in the pipe, it's the, it's like you said earlier, it's the thoughts and the stories that they've told themselves about the effort that they're gonna put into it, about the money that they're gonna put into it and about their ability to either create the result, or the secret sauce people don't always talk about, or is to fully receive and accept the results. And I feel like that's gonna be another moment you're gonna be like, "We gotta talk about that too." But really what's happening is they're walking through new steps and everything is outside of their comfort zone. Molly Claire: Yes. Yes. Yes, absolutely. Justine McDonald: And their mind is just freaking out like, "This is the danger zone. Get me out of here." And the work I wanna do with them is I want them to actually experience as many things outside of their comfort zone while they're working with me as they can to collapse the time between their results, while they have the accountability and support of myself and my coaching container. Molly Claire: Yeah. Justine McDonald: So they can create new results before, you know, they try and go at it on their own. Molly Claire: Yeah, as you were talking, I was thinking about, I'll just speak for myself, one of the things that's been challenging for me in building a business is - and this is always the case with us - we'll have patterns in our life personally, they go over into our business, and I am absolutely someone who is a caretaker. I have tended in my life to over function in relationships, overgive, and that could be a big problem in a business, right? And I know for me it's been teasing out where are the ways that I nurture, I give I support and where are those boundaries? And so that's something that's been challenging and uncomfortable, but is really a big key for me. And I would imagine that a lot of your clients maybe have things like that, where it's something that's maybe challenging to let go of some things in order to move the business forward. Do you come up against that much? Justine McDonald: Yeah, absolutely. I have a lot of clients who are new moms or moms of one expecting two. So rejigging their expectations of time. Rejigging their expectations of their energetic capacity is so important to become, and not only the business owner they want, but to become the kind of mother they dreamed of, you know, the day that they saw that plus sign on the pregnancy test, right? And so much of this integration of becoming this next level of yourself as you evolve in your business, I truly believe, is about allowing yourself to feel through the emotions and feel the way that you want and designing your life. Really just designing your life in a way that allows you to feel that more. And so many people are focused on the outcome, the money or the client load or whatever it is, and it's like, but you can hit a million dollars, and it doesn't mean that you're gonna feel successful. It doesn't mean you're gonna feel like you're really drawing in your purpose and that you're helping people the way that you intended when you started. So I think, you know, as clients are walking through the discomfort, we're there as coaches for accountability and new strategy, but more importantly, we're there to hold up a mirror and say, "Listen, like you can do this. This work is not for nothing, right? Like this discomfort is not for nothing. You are increasing your capacity. You're growing and shifting into this version of yourself that is at the bottom of this spreadsheet. You know, like that person, yes, that person requires this discomfort for you to really appreciate and take in all the joy when it comes." Molly Claire: Hmm. I love that. I love that. And as you're talking, it's like, I'm sure all of you listening can understand why Justine's here. It's so clear, your conviction for what you do and these messages of ideal life and business. Which, I'm just huge on that because, you know, when one of the big focus in, really across all of my programs, is talking about having that strong foundation - and earlier as you were talking about seeing 10 k months and hitting, you know, six figures and six months and all of that. I mean, and here's the deal, right? Everyone's going to move at a different pace and certainly some people will make more money and be more profitable faster than someone else. And I don't think it really matters. It's more of a testament of where each person was mentally, emotionally, skill-wise, all of it. So it really doesn't matter. And I really think you - you tell me if you have a different opinion about this, Justine - but, I think a lot of times when someone makes what we would consider a lot of money and makes it very quickly, sometimes there are actually some pretty big holes in the foundation. And there's been potentially a lot of hustle, a lot of overworking, maybe a lot of overspending, and so a lot of those businesses that you see that move so quickly, so fast, there are either holes in the foundation, or what you're not realizing is they're not even close to profitable yet. And so I bring that up because faster isn't necessarily better. And I believe, yes, you can make money now. I know my clients, you can make money now. And don't be afraid to take a minute to take a look at, solving the right problem, laying a strong foundation, your confidence, your skills, your life business balance. Because I've seen plenty of people rush to get to an income level, only to have to pause and take a step back to get a handle on things. It's just kind of how it goes. So anyway, a lot to say, but any thoughts you have to add to that? Justine McDonald: Yeah, I have. I have lots. So one of them would be vanity metrics are not cool. Don't go the route of, you know, having a hundred K months, but really spent $85,000 of that on Facebook ads. And you're actually in the hole after you pay your team. Be transparent with yourself. You don't have to be transparent on Instagram with everything that you do. But if you're gonna say that you had a hundred K month, you know, be honest that that doesn't mean you're profitable, right? Be as honest as you want people to be with you. If you find that those metrics are really impacting your ability to believe that you can do this for yourself, then give what you would give what you would like to receive. And then my other thought there was, scale back to scale up. A lot of times businesses have to go through that process, where they have grown so, so, so quickly in service - I work with service and product-based businesses. So if you are a -I work with a lot of bath and body brands - so they're making these handmade soaps in their basement and it's kind of like a kitchen production and they wanna go to more of a national production. Well, oh my goodness, there is so much involved in those gaps to get them there. And so sometimes, exactly to your point, you need to just like take a minute and ask yourself if this goal or this dream that you have, does it still align with the person that you want to become? And if it does, how do you align your actions? Not with the pressure of the outside world or the pressure of the dollars. Aligning actions with the integrity of that person that you want to be at the end of the result. Molly Claire: Yes. Okay. I'm gonna, as soon as we finish, I'm gonna listen back to this and take this in because, It's such a beautiful thing to have reinforced from the outside as many times as we can, how valuable it is for us to look inside and make sure we're in alignment. And does this still align with me? And how do I keep this aligned? Because I think, I don't know how you feel, but in my experience, that is, that's really the power in continuing on a positive path in your business and in continuing to build more strength inside. Because when we get off course and we're out of alignment, we're just, we're kind of spinning, trying to solve for what we're feeling inside, and it's never gonna get us where we wanna go. Justine McDonald: Yes. I would say positive emotionally as well as positive from a cash flow perspective. Molly Claire: Yeah. Yeah, both. Yeah. Agree. Both. Justine McDonald: Both like, the difference between someone who runs a hundred thousand dollars a year business, and a $10 million a year business is what they have done inside to build themselves up to that. The stories they tell themselves about their ability to achieve it, and how they treat themselves, how they allow others to treat them, so that work on the inside. You know, just like a house, you want good insulation, you want good electrical. The vanity doesn't really matter if what's behind the walls isn't serving you. Molly Claire: Yeah, that's right. And I love that phrase, you have to scale back to scale up. I mean, that's where I've been in my business over this last year. I grew very quickly. We had a partnership business that we then ended and so it's felt like what you said rings very true to me. And I guess what I'll say, speaking to that, to my audience, kind of going back, I always say it's never too early or too late to lay a strong foundation in your business and inside of you. Because some of you, I know you are the kind of person that's like, "I wanna check every box; legal, financial, all the things, and I'm going to do all of that before I take a step forward to earning money." And then there are other people listening that are like, "Yeah, I'm making money, I'm doing all this. What's a legal disclosure, whatever." And so no matter where you are, if you're hearing this and feeling like, "You know what? Maybe I need to make sure I have the foundational pieces, not just in a tangible sense, but internally." Just listen to that, right? And pay attention to it. Justine McDonald: Yes, absolutely. Okay. I love that. Molly Claire: as we're wrapping up here in the next little few minutes, I do wanna go back to what you pointed out about this idea of how it can actually be challenging or uncomfortable for us to accept the results. So I wanna talk about that and then just also have you share anything else with my listeners too, and then we'll wrap it up. Justine McDonald: Yeah, absolutely. So one thing, you know, we talk a lot about the fear of, of failure, right? That's a very popularized. Molly Claire: Yes. Justine McDonald: But what's coming new of age, I think, especially in the coaching world is nervous system regulation. It's certainly something I learned through being coached and my own coaching education. What tends to happen with a lot of my business owners as they start to scale, and they start to receive the results that they have had on their vision board, or they've been talking about having one day is they start to self-sabotage. And they start to take some of that money that they had promised themselves was going to go to X and they start throwing it in a different bucket. They start to stop keeping the promises that got them to the place that they are. They don't keep those promises to themselves or to their clients or to their family anymore. And their boundaries are pushed. Or for some, unfortunately, they have a break. They have an emotional break and their body does not know actually how to hold this much joy does not know how to hold this much prosperity or peace. And so it goes into a tantrum like a toddler would. Starts acting out against itself. So what I love to offer to my clients is somatic work, whether that be meditation, tapping, I've personally done EMDR and hypnotherapy. So there's lots of modalities that, you know, when I, I'll be honest, when I started coaching was like very, for like the woo people. And so like at first I was like, yeah, uh, tell my husband I'm doing breath work, but I'm not sharing that on my Instagram stories. I'm not telling anybody. And then I would, I would do breath work and I would be bawling and I would be screaming and I would be having just the most like primal release of my life. And you know, eventually I got to the point where I just couldn't keep that, I couldn't keep those modalities a secret anymore. And it is so life transformative in allowing you to increase your capacity. And I always describe it as, if you are blowing up a balloon, you're increasing that capacity. And when the air goes out, that balloon is always gonna stay stretched. It's always gonna be bigger. And so with each new breath and each new effort, you're only increasing it more. So again, it's never lost. It's always on the path to your best and brightest life. Molly Claire: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love that you brought that up because I mean, my experience has been the same. It's like I started out very cognitive, just strategy. I've tried several modalities as well, but the EFT is what I bring into my community and I, it's phenomenal. So bring in the woo-woo. It's important. It's real. And one thing I was thinking about too is, I know I've heard plenty of times in the coaching world like about getting comfortable with discomfort and being willing to feel those negative emotions. And what about being willing to feel those positive emotions that are not familiar to us, because that's just as uncomfortable, right? And so I think that kind of goes hand in hand with this idea of what you're saying. Like, if we're not ready for that, if it's not okay for us to feel that abundance, or to have abundance, then we can shut it down pretty quickly. We have amazing ways of doing that to ourselves. Justine McDonald: We do, and that's what I'll leave your, I'll leave your viewers with. My tip that I share with all of my clients on how to learn to receive. And it's a very small thing. But once you're cognitively aware of it, you can't unlearn it. And that is when, you're wearing a beautiful red shirt right now that really brightens up your face. If I said, "Molly, that color looks really great on you." We are so quick to deflect and be like, "Oh really? I didn't do my makeup this morning." Or, "Oh, oh, oh, I got this like seven years ago." "Really? You think so?" We're so quick to deflect. So the very simple tip is, before you respond, you have to pause and just say thank you, and I cannot tell you how hard that is for people. Molly Claire: I believe it. Well, when you said that to me, most of you listening, you can't see we're on video and I can see my face and my immediate reaction was to look over and think, "I'm not sure my hair looks that great this morning, though. Like, is she telling the truth? Is this real?" I. It's so crazy. Yeah. Yes. So I love that. And I would think also, I mean, thank you. And even a practice of like when we get paid from our client, like receiving anything potentially. Yeah. Justine McDonald: Absolutely. And really it is our job as women that have beautiful, compassionate hearts to leave this world better than we found it. And we can only lead that by living through the example of loving ourselves enough to go after our dreams and to allow ourselves to fail and allow ourselves to be praised and celebrated and to color outside the lines a little bit. We need that because people are watching. The next generation is watching the people ahead of us and behind us. They're all watching and every single thing you say has the ability to have an impact on someone else. Molly Claire: I love it. This has been an amazing interview. Thank you so much. I know my listeners got so much value out of this. I certainly did. So thank you. Thank you so much, so much, and we look forward to having you in the community. Tell my listeners where they can find you. Justine McDonald: Absolutely. So on Instagram, I am the Goal Chasers, and you can also find out more about a little bit more about me and my programs at teamgoalchasers.com. Molly Claire: Amazing. Perfect. And of course all of her info will be in the show notes here so you can find her there. And thanks again. Have a beautiful day. You too.

Thanks for listening to the Masterful Coach Podcast. Are you ready to build your amazing business with Molly as your coach? Check out www.mollyclaire.com to find out about Masterful Coach Foundations and the 10K Accelerator Method. It's the ultimate support for you as a coach, building your ideal life and business.