Sara Emmerson: Hey everybody. Welcome to this bonus episode of That Sounds Risky with Sara Emmerson. I'm Sarah, and I actually just finished recording a podcast with a wonderful man named Jay in London, and he, um, asked some really great questions and I thought, you know what, this could actually be interesting for me to get on here and just answer the questions that he asked me, um, for all of you to hear too. So that's what we're gonna do. It's gonna be a little Q&A with Sarah today. So, um, first question he asked me was, what does leadership mean to me? And honestly, leadership to me is creating clarity in uncertainty. That's really what it is. It's helping people to create clarity in uncertainty. And what I love doing is helping people to see the problems and the possibilities that they can't see for themselves, and then helping them to strategize beyond those. So if it's strategizing beyond the problem, we're gonna solve that problem together. And if it's strategizing through the possibility, we're gonna grow their business. We're gonna grow their, who they are as a person. We're gonna grow their peace. We're gonna grow whatever it is that they're looking to scale. And so, um, that is really what leadership

is to me. Leadership isn't about having all of the answers. But it's about having the willingness to take the step even when you don't have all of the answers. And so whether I am coaching executives or business owners or creatives, my goal is to help people take, um, the step to make better decisions and lead with confidence and create alignment between who they are now and how they're showing up and who they want to be. So leadership always starts with leading yourself first and then letting that be the overflow to your team, to your family, to everything that you want to accomplish in the future. So that was the answer to that question. I guess I have a question for any of you that are listening today. I'd love to know, what does leadership look like to you and where are you leading best? Are you leading yourself well? Are you leading your team well? I want you to really ponder that. And if not, I want you to ask yourself if you need help leading. If you do, that's what I do. I love helping people lead themselves and learn to lead those within their care, whether it's their team, their family, um, to that next level

too. The next question that Jay asked me was this: how important is mindset in success? And this is so important to me. I believe that mindset is the foundation for everything. And I coach people of many, many different faiths. But if you are somebody that reads the Bible, 2 Corinthians says, take every thought captive. And I don't know if you know this or not, but you have 90,000+ thoughts a day, and not all of them are good or true. And so I believe mindset is the foundation of everything we do. If you're a high performer, um, in coaching, um, if you're a high performer, performing athlete, if you're a, um, creative performer, whether it's a vocalist or a musician, an actor, you know how important mindset is. But most people don't have a, and most people don't have a strategy problem. They have a belief problem. They know what they need to do or what they need to accomplish. They know the outcome that they're looking for. But they also are coming in with fear, self-doubt, perfectionism, or they absolutely are operating out of other people's

unbelief or opinions, and all of that keeps them stuck. So one of the things I coach clients on all of the time is understanding that confidence doesn't come before action. Confidence comes from taking So I've seen this in my own life when I started my business. Um, the first year I, it was brand new. It was a brand new baby business. And if I looked at what that first year accomplished and I thought that that was all it could do, I would never have kept going. I had to believe in what it could become. And because of that, I now get the opportunity to have the freedom and the finances that I do and to continue to help other people grow their businesses and their mindset too. It was my willingness to keep learning and to keep growing and to keep taking risks, even when I wasn't certain of the outcome, that has given me the success today. And that's so important for other people. So that mindset has to be the foundation. Um, another question that Jay asked me was, what does sales mean to me? If you are in business, This is a conversation I'm sure you hear

often, but, um, sometimes people think that sales, um, has a bad reputation because people think that it's all about convincing somebody to do something, um, or convincing somebody to do something they don't want to do. But for me, sales is actually not bad at all. Sales to me is service. For me, sales is service, and it means helping somebody identify the gap Of where they are and where they want to be and showing them the path forward. Because as a coach, I truly believe that I can help someone create better results and have more confidence and build a healthier business and become a stronger leader and not allow them to stay stuck. And if I don't offer that to them, that's not in service. If I offer them just the opportunity to stay where they are, that's not actually— The best sales conversations don't feel like sales conversations. They feel like clarifying conversations. They feel like helpful conversations. They feel like inspiring conversations. So that's what sales means to me, is really being helpful to people, not being salesy to people. Um, another

question here. Here's, tell us about your coaching practice. Well, I work primarily with high performers. And so this means often executives, business owners, entrepreneurs, leaders, creatives, often people who have found success and have a great skill, but they also know that they're capable of more. They look at it and they say, hey, I might have plateaued, or I'm not where I want to be yet. I haven't found the strategy or the skill to get where I want to go. That is often my clientele. And through one-on-one coaching and group programs, and then also going into organizations and doing corporate leadership development, I help my clients gain clarity, increase their confidence, make decisions that are faster, and improve their communication and build businesses and lives that align with who they were created to be. Aligned with what matters most to them. I want them to love their job and their career. I don't want them to just show up because they have to. I want them to actually say, I get to do this. So one of the things I love most about coaching is watching

somebody go from feeling stuck and overwhelmed to taking action and creating momentum. Those breakthroughs for me will never get old. And even as I say that, I think of certain clients in my mind. That have had that success. If you're listening to this today, you know who you are. And I am so proud of every single one of them. Another question that Jay asked me today was for me to tell about my podcast. Um, I recently launched That Sounds Risky. And if you are listening to this today, you know that because you're listening to That Sounds Risky. And this podcast was born from a belief that many of the things that we want most in life Require us to take risks. They require us to do something scary. It's starting a business, it's changing careers, it's having a hard conversation, it's going after a dream. Sometimes it's choosing to stay in a hard situation and working it out, whether that's a job or a relationship. It's betting on yourself when you don't see the results yet, or when you don't have anyone else that will bet on you. Each episode is going to combine personal stories or lessons I've learned, coaching insights, practical tools or lessons,

and stories from other incredible riskers out there that have done this and learned, and not always learned through success, but learned through the failures too. This podcast is, it's about spending your life wondering what, not wondering what could have happened, But actually taking action to make it possible. So I don't want anyone listening to this podcast ever to sit there and have regrets for what they didn't do. I want them to have regrets only for maybe the outcomes that didn't happen the way they wanted to. And actually, I don't even want them to regret that. But I would rather them have the feeling that, oh, I wish this would have gone differently instead Instead of, I wish I would've tried that. That's a whole different level of regret, right? When we regret that we never tried something, we can't actually perfect it. But when we take the risk to make it happen, even if it doesn't go the way we wanted it to, we can actually continue to realize we're on a journey and we can tweak it. We can believe in it differently. We can strategize for it differently, and we can continue to have results for that. So. That's my hope for this podcast. If there's one

thing I've learned, it's that growth lives on the other side of risk. Remember, being ready isn't a feeling. Being ready is a choice, and That Sounds Risky.