Are You Leading Your Life, or is Your Life Leading You?

Jen Ingram: 00:00:04

Welcome to A Whole Lotta Shift Podcast, the podcast for multi passionate women with an entrepreneurial spirit, where we provide inspiration, motivation, and education to help you shift away from all the shoulds and supposed to choose to what's truly possible for you in your business and your life. All on your own terms. You ready, girl? Let's make shift happen.

Jen Ingram: 00:00:32

Hello, and welcome to Episode One. I am so excited to be here with all of you. And so if you are listening today, thank you, thank you for coming along on this journey. I have been wanting to launch a podcast for probably years. But I got really serious about it in 2022, and started planning it out planning out a launch, really taking into consideration what I wanted it to look like and feel like and what I wanted to be able to create for other women. And I am just so happy to finally be here. So a whole lot of shift is for the multi passionate woman who is maybe a solopreneur, or a side Hustler, or maybe to leader in her corporate career who's thinking about leaving the corporate hustle to do something on her own. That's for the woman who's looking to grow into the best version of herself that she could be, while breaking all the generational curses along the way, while creating generational wealth held so much more. And finally doing things on her own terms. This is for the woman who is tired of living this life full of all the supposed tos and shoulds. And all these standards that frankly, none of us can really live up to. And honestly, it's all bullshit. All the standards that say you have to go to school, you have to have a career certain way, you have to be apparent a certain way. And by a certain age, and you have to get married or you don't or all of those things. This is a show about coming into your own, having the hat awakening, or as I like to refer to it that Fuck this shit moment where you've finally just say, Yeah, I'm not doing that anymore. And you take life in your own hands, and you become the leader of your own fucking life. And the beauty of it all is for those of you have had that entrepreneurial spirit, since you were a kid, one that was in the lemonade stand as a kid, the one who was selling stickers on the playground, or whatever else.

Jen Ingram: 00:03:09

The beauty of it all is you get to use that business as the vehicle to become that version of yourself that you've always wanted to be. And that's what I'm here to help you do. Along the way, I'm going to be bringing on guests that are going to help inspire you, motivate you, and educate you on not only how to become the best version of yourself, but help you really take the next steps in your business and in your journey so that you can truly achieve all the things that you never dreamed possible. Maybe it's the things that you've journaled about or thought about or been told, you know, you could do this and never quite believed it was something possible for you. I'm here to help make that happen for you. And to help guide you through that. I have so many guests lined up that you are all going to love. But most importantly, we're gonna freak and have fun along the way. So one of my favorite things to do is to play two truths and a lie. I feel like you learned so much about somebody. So we're gonna be playing games like that, and so many other things on the podcast. It doesn't end there. It doesn't just stop with the podcast. I hope that you'll also join me in my Facebook group, a whole lot of shift. There we're going to have a lot of behind the scenes action. We'll have some some coffee chats with some of our guests to kind of dive a little deeper into what they do and who they are and how it all came to be. I wanted this podcast to be something that you could listen to while you're on your daily hot girl walk or something that you can listen to while you're commuting in the car, or, honestly, just working on anything in your business, and you needed a little bit of inspiration and motivation to help keep you going. So I wanted it to be fun and engaging. But I also want a place for you to land a community where we can cheer each other on, where we can help support each other, hold each other accountable, and so much more.

Jen Ingram: 00:05:30

So, if what you listen to in the podcast does help create some inspiration and motivation and education, for you, and the version of yourself that you're wanting to become, please do me a favor, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share. That is the best way to help others just like you truly live the life they never dreamed possible. And that's what we all really want. So little bit of background about me, I'm originally from California, my parents moved to the Midwest when I was a teenager. And even though I always swore that the day I turned 18, I would leave the Midwest and go back to California. I never did something just kept me here. Maybe it was the cost of living. I'm not sure. But here I am. And I found myself like so many other women just kind of going along, marking all the checkboxes in life, whether that be school, career, marriage, children, owning a home, all the things that we think we're supposed to check in all the boxes along the way, thinking that that's going to bring us what we ultimately want, only to wake up one day and realize, yeah, it's really not anything, every body, and everything else is somehow in charge of our life and what we do and how we do it, and why we do it. And frankly, it's it's exhausting, it's exhausting to keep up with all of it. And it's not even who you are. It doesn't even bring you joy to wake up every day and go someplace where you don't even get to authentically be you and show up only is you. throughout my adult life, I had this constant push and pull, while the go getter in me would hustle hard in corporate America, I would get burned out honestly, frustrated, all the things I would take some time venture off on my own. I've done freelancing a few times throughout my life, side gigs, all of that. And time and time again, the fears, judgments, whatever we want to call them from family, friends, society, the pressure of it all, to go back and fit the mold, whatever that is just kept nagging at me. And I would find myself time and time again, in a situation where I didn't even want to be. I was sitting in a job where I was constantly being restructured into a different role doing things that I didn't even necessarily want to do in departments, I didn't want to be working with people I didn't want to be working with on a company's mission that I maybe didn't even want to participate in, right. And finally, one day, I had had enough, I was just living this life of all the supposed to use. And I didn't realize I was eating and drinking my life away. I wasn't happy with myself with my body, my mental state, I wasn't happy with my career, it wasn't happy with my income. I wasn't happy with who I was being as a parent, I'm not gonna say I was a bad parent, but I knew I could be more I knew I could be better. And I knew I could be a better example for my kid. And at the end of the day, that was all that I really wanted. And I knew that becoming the best version of myself was what was going to help me get all these things I really wanted. I kind of woke up one day and said, just not doing this anymore. And I set up a five year plan because that's what we all hear we're supposed to do, right? Like what do you what do you want in the next five years? Somebody asked me that I remember thinking, Am I allowed to say I don't want to be here.

Jen Ingram: 00:10:00

I didn't even know if I was allowed to answer it that way. So tired of asking for permission of who I wanted to be and what I wanted to do. So I finally let it all go. But I did set up that five year plan. But I got it all done in two and a half years. And as I embarked on that journey, one of the things that I realized was that not only is the path not linear, by any means. But when I finally just started doing what I wanted to do, for me, everything else just started coming into place, I finally started taking ownership of my own physical health. And while I remember thinking, initially, I just want to feel better. Yeah, sure, I want to look better, but it really was about I wanted to feel better. And I wanted to show up more confidently in whatever it was that I was doing. I wanted to be able to walk into any room and speak my own truth with absolute confidence. And there was something about taking my health back into my own hands, that I felt, would really help me to do that. And that was exactly what happened. I just started showing up. And what started out is showing up to the gym a couple of times a week turned into four, maybe sometimes five times a week started showing up into me really taking care of my eating habits, limiting my drinking, and everything else started to fall into place. The confidence shift happened right now I was starting to be able to walk into a room and speak confidently for myself, I started showing up. And once again, when my job wanted to just shuffle me into some other role in some other department that I didn't even want to be a part of, I now have the confidence to say not only, no, but here's what I will do. And here's the price that I will do it with. Because I'm starting to see my own worth. And it's more than being told by somebody else, what to do and how to live and who to be.

Jen Ingram: 00:12:30

Everything changed after that. My life, my career, my income, my health, all of it. So you're going to see throughout this podcast that one of the common themes that I do share with others is how to take care of yourself, how to take care of your health, because, truthfully, that's where so much of it starts. But the other truth that I started to figure out was that you don't have to have all of your shit together, you don't have to have all your ducks in a perfect little row, in order to finally just start living life on your own terms. You don't have to have everything perfectly together to start building a business to start creating something for yourself. And I also want to say, if you're here, because you simply thought about going out on your own. But you're still honestly just feeling like you could be more in your career, you want to start showing up as a big ol Baker leader. I want to speak to that too. Because one of the things that I learned is that the path to owning your own business is not linear. And I sorry, if I'm repeating myself, I think I may have already said that a couple times in this episode. But it's not like you're just going to quit your job one day and boom, you've got this, this business that's just making you all the income that you ever dreamed up. Now, for some people that happens. So I don't want to say that that's impossible, because anything is possible. But for a lot of folks, sometimes it starts off as a side hustle. Sometimes it means that you do need to make you do need to level up in your career first, so that you could perhaps have a role that offers more autonomy and better income, so that you can put more physical and mental energy into that side hustle and really build it from the ground up before you decide to leave corporate America. That's exactly what I did. And so many others as well. So even if you're sitting here feeling like Well, gosh, you know, a job would be amazing, but right now, I just need out of where I'm at. That's okay. I'm so glad you're here and I hope that you'll stick along through this ride and through this podcast and And that you'll take in some of the tips and advice and everything else that we're going to be bringing to you. Because it's, it's absolutely possible.

Jen Ingram: 00:15:11

The last thing that I want to share with all of you is that you get to do all of this on your own terms. Listen, I know there's a lot of people out there, there are a lot of mentors out there. There are coaches out there. There's a lot of people out there saying, Do this conduct your business in this way, if you're going to launch a business, it has to be done in this fashion in this manner, this time. Here's the deal. Yes, there are a lot of people who have had a lot of success, doing things using a certain formula. But at the end of the day, that formula has to work for you. At the end of the day, you are a very unique individual, you have unique need, you have unique desires. And you got to do what's meant to work for you putting this very podcast together, I did the complete opposite of what my podcast coach told me I needed to do. So first, you need to record a trailer and then you need to record an intro and then an outro. But first, you got to write all that out. And then you can start recording episodes. And I just, I sat there stuck for the longest time. And pretty soon I just said, what if? What if I don't write it all out? What if I don't start with an intro and an outro? And a trailer? What if I just fucking record an episode and hit the record button? What would happen? And guess what? Yo, what the fuck happened? I suddenly had like six episodes recorded and the intro or outro and trailer came to me in a Saturday afternoon. Like it was no big deal after sitting there stuck for months. So listen, if you're needing some kind of permission, slip or ticket to do something in your own way, and to tell all the other gurus out there to take a hike because you know how to roll up your sleeves and figure shit out for yourself because you know who you are. This is your permission slip to do just that. Okay? It's not always going to be exactly how all the experts say that it should be. And that's what I'm here to help inspire you to do is to become the leader of your life. Start making that shift, and figuring out how to use your business and your dream as the vehicle to become the best version of yourself and the person you've always dreamed of being. So thank you for joining me in this journey. I'm so glad you're here. And if you haven't already, be sure to join us in a whole lot of shift podcast Facebook group, because there's going to be a lot going on in there. And I cannot wait to see all of you along for the ride.