831 Mimi Bishop & Jackie Ghedline:

Jackie Ghedline:

I think a lot of the reasons why new business fails is because  the people want to stay in the box there because it’s where they’re comfortable. if that’s the case, then you either need a partner who will do the things that you’re uncomfortable with or you need to go back to corporate where you can stay in your lane.

Mimi Bishop:

Jackie and I met for what we call as an innocent cup of coffee. We just, not only hit it off, we had the spark of an idea that we thought could fit really well together.

What we didn’t realize is two things. One is just how much we complimented one another personally. Where Jackie has been called the microwave, I’ve been called the slow cooker. We balance one another out in ways we could not have anticipated when we had that first innocent cup of coffee.

Sometimes the very best things start with an innocent cup of coffee, and in this case a successful business partnership between two former corporate executives turned coaches to help 40+ genX women build wealth and succeed as entrepreneurs and leaders.

Mimi Bishop and Jackie Ghedline share their entrepreneurial journey and practical tips including how to leverage relational, linguistic and emotional intelligence to succeed as a leader.

MELINDA

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m a 5-time serial entrepreneur and the CEO and founder of Podopolo, the AI-powered interactive app revolutionizing podcast discovery and discussion and making podcasting profitable for creators. I’d like to invite you to take a minute, download Podopolo from either app store, listen to the rest of this episode there, create and share your favorite short snippet with our viral clip sharing tool across social media or messaging app, and join the conversation with your questions, perspectives, experiences, and advice … Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together.

Today we meet two inspiring entrepreneurs who partnered up to change the game for women in business and leadership. Mimi Bishop and Jackie Ghedline (Guh-deen) are two of a kind, with a shared mission to help women build wealth, lead confidently, and refuse to accept the unacceptable. They are the co-founders of Modern Gen X Woman and MGXW Consulting, both former senior corporate executives turned certified coaches, Jackie the former Associate Publisher at AdAge and Mimi the former Vice President of Marketing at a division of News Corporation where she led messaging strategy and content creation. They host the Modern GenX Woman and have been featured on NBC’s Today, Business Insider, Entrepreneur, Forbes, Wired and Fast Company.

Mimi and Jackie will be here in a moment, and first,

I know you love podcasts as much as I do, so what if you had an app that magically connected you to the exact right listens around what interests and inspires you and your friends – without having to lift a finger?  Podopolo’s AI powered recommendations and social clip sharing are just a few things that make it different from all the other podcast apps out there. Download Podopolo now – it’s free in both app stores – and if you have a podcast, get it featured on our home discover screen for free and access time-saving ways to grow your reach and revenue. That’s Podopolo.

Business leadership used to be all about top-down decision-making, rigid hierarchy, and conformity. It’s a military-inspired and archetypically masculine structure and it’s changing fast to one more balanced by feminine skills – transparent communication, agility and adaptability, change management, and collaboration.

In this new paradigm, women are natural born leaders when they step into that feminine power.

Today we break down what it takes for women to leverage what Mimi Bishop and Jackie Ghedline describe as emotional, relational and linguistic intelligence.

Mimi and Jackie are the co-founders of Modern GenX Woman where they leverage their successful corporate leadership backgrounds as coaches trained in multiple methodologies across neuroscience, positive psychology, and energy leadership to help 40+ GenX women become confident leaders and wealth builders.

We talk practical tips, including how to leverage their Resting Mind methodology, and much more.

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Mimi Bishop and Jackie Ghedline (Guh-deen) and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo so you can clip and share your favorite moments and we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

Melinda Wittstock:

Mimi and Jackie, welcome to Wings.

Mimi Bishop:

Hi, Melinda. We’re so thrilled to be here. Thank you for having us.

Jackie Ghedline:

We’re excited.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, I’m excited too. I want to start at the beginning. What made you both entrepreneurs? What’s your entrepreneurial origination story, if you will?

Jackie Ghedline:

This is Jackie. People confuse us all the time. So, if we call each other our wrong names, don’t be surprised. But, this is Jackie. True story.

Mimi Bishop:

We’ve done that before.

Jackie Ghedline:

I, actually, spent my entire career in media and publishing, and most recently was the associate publisher of Adage. And, really loved what I was doing. I had a five-year-old at the time, and she was in kindergarten. And, she really started struggling in school. There were two specific instances that made me wake up and realize that the path I was on wasn’t going to be suitable for sustainability as a mom, for what I wanted to do.

The first story was my daughter was in kindergarten and we went to school for Mother’s Day. And, they had to fill out this paperwork and it said, “When my mom likes to do this with me. What I like to do with my mom.” And then, the question. So, my daughter is up there reading it, and then the question was, “When I’m sick, my mom…” and she put, “brings me to grandma’s.” That was the first indication that, eek, maybe I’m not making the right choices all the time. So, I just decided that I didn’t want to do what I was doing any longer at the pace, and I knew that downshifting wasn’t part of who I was.

So, I stepped off and decided to go back to school for coaching. Because, when I looked at what I was missing, it was really maximizing individual potential. So, I went back to school for coaching and slowly started my coaching practice with clients and one-on-one work. It’s been a very hard journey because there was a lot to learn.

Jackie Ghedline:

But, it also was, Melinda, like an MBA in business that I learned and got all on my own. I feel so grateful for those experiences and those learnings and really grateful for where we are. It takes time and it’s worth every bit of the journey.

Melinda Wittstock:

Before we get to Mimi’s story, Jackie, I don’t know an entrepreneur that hasn’t had a hard journey. Because, it’s hard.

Jackie Ghedline:

Right. It’s really hard.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s really hard. We can demystify or de-stigmatize a lot of that and we’ll get into what you learned along the way. There are so many women who go into entrepreneurship because they need that flexibility. More often than not, women on this podcast, their journeys coincide with them either having children or their children get to a certain age. Mimi, let’s go into your origination story, and then we’ll come back to some of these themes.

Mimi Bishop:

Like Jackie, I was in media. I had a big job at a division of News Corporation and was in the media industry for about 25 years. Then I had two family tragedies that happened within a span of 10 years of one another. I lost two siblings. First, my sister. And, the way I dealt with this was I overworked. I was just working till 11 o’clock at night and really became a workaholic. Then almost 10 years to the month, my brother suddenly passed away. That was truly a wakeup call for me where I was like, you know what… At this point, I was vice president of marketing. I knew I didn’t want to get to the next level, although I thought I wanted to until this happened. It just set me on a journey of exploration and personal development.

I became aware of all the other opportunities that were available to me, including coaching, including personal development, including online business. It sparked a passion in me. I started a side hustle on the side, this is pre Jackie. And, just really started to explore what life could look like as I started to leave corporate and figure out what that exit ramp looked like. Then, as luck would have it, there were layoffs and packages and that kind of thing happening at our organization. I grabbed it and hit the ground running building my business. Of course, as you know, like Jackie said, then there’s a whole other PhD in learning and self-development when you become an entrepreneur. But, that is how I made the shift from a traditional corporate career to being an entrepreneur.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, I’m so sorry to hear your story about [inaudible 00:05:16] things.

Mimi Bishop:

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. It was one of those things where, as difficult as it was, it was also a real turning point where I really realized how fragile life is. I knew that, as hard as it is, sometimes you just have to do what you know that you need to do. That’s what really gave me the extra dive to do what I did.

Melinda Wittstock:

These things that happen that make you think, whether it’s a tragedy or whether it’s just being a mom, that make you think, okay, what’s actually really important.

Mimi Bishop:

Right. Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

And, how can I do what’s actually meaningful to me? There are a lot of women who get to a certain place in that corporate ladder that’s very structured, very… inspires workaholism. It can be fulfilling, but there’s that proverbial glass ceiling. And, the glass ceiling could literally be you just not getting promoted. But, it’s also an internal glass ceiling of like, oh-

Mimi Bishop:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

… this isn’t really for me. Just on that corporate piece, sometimes it can be difficult to transition from a corporate environment to an entrepreneurial one. What were some of your biggest surprises or ahas where you might have thought, “Oh, this couldn’t be too much different,” but then it’s really different?

Mimi Bishop:

I think the lack of routine. I was very surprised by that. I had a very long commute. My day was very structured because my day was so filled with the commute, the work, the commute back, and there wasn’t that much room for flexibility. I thought that I would love that. In turn, I found it very disorienting in the beginning. This sounds so silly, but I worked in New York City, so if I needed to go to the cash machine, I would walk up to the cash machine. Now, I needed to get in my car and drive to the cash machine.

It was just an odd kind of thing. Those little things really threw me for a loop. Also, just the collaboration. It’s really all on you now, in the beginning, to start this new way of working and supporting yourself in a way, also, that was new to me in a lot of ways. I was a newer coach. I was new at business coaching at the time. And, while I was in corporate for 25 years, I really knew what I was doing, you’re really starting from scratch again. That can feel very jarring.

Melinda Wittstock:

It can be lonely a little bit as well.

Mimi Bishop:

Yes. Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

This whole self-starter thing, this is why when anyone goes into business, just having that burning mission desire, you need this inner pilot light without those structures to keep you going.

Mimi Bishop:

Without a doubt. Also, to keep you pushing when you have the disappointments. Because, Melinda, as you know, for every step forward, there’s a step back.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, yes. Instantly.

Mimi Bishop:

[inaudible 00:08:33] I think where there’s a lot of disillusionment that you will start this business and it’ll be flourishing and you will have no problems. That’s the opposite. It takes so much elbow grease and it takes a lot of courage and a lot of grit to get things up. A lot of times, hearing the word no and being rejected and putting yourself out there. Those are difficult. Knowing that that’s really what you’re signing up for can be an eye-opener.

Melinda Wittstock:

It really is. Because, there’s so many areas in which, in entrepreneurship, you’re putting yourself out there. It’s not only just from marketing to sales to just getting the courage up, I think, for a lot of women to go have their photos taken or their website, do the videos or just some of these things where you’ve got to get over a whole bunch of inner mindset blocks. I’ve seen so many women say, “Okay, I’ll do the photos, or I’ll start doing my TikToks or my reels or whatever when I’ve lost 10 pounds,” or those sorts of things. Then the sales, not taking it personally when there’s a no. Taking it as a-

Mimi Bishop:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

… and learning. Then there’s all kinds of other stuff. I mean, I’m just not even scratching the surface there with some of the things that go wrong.

Mimi Bishop:

Oh, you can’t even imagine. Driving three hours to a meeting that’s been canceled because someone’s flight didn’t arrive. All kinds of crazy things. These are the things that happen.

Melinda Wittstock:

A hundred percent. Then, of course, this other aspect of it too, especially, for entrepreneurs that are building a team. You’re taking on a tremendous personal risk to build your business. But, if you go into it thinking that people are going to thank you for that…

Mimi Bishop:

No.

Melinda Wittstock:

[inaudible 00:10:22] sure. But…

Mimi Bishop:

No. There’s also a certain point, I think, where people start to believe you’re insane. Why don’t you just go back to work? It’s so much easier. You’re like, “No, no, I see the vision. I know this will happen.” And, people are… Your accountant, your lawyer, whatever. I think you should just pack it up.

Melinda Wittstock:

Someday, I think of all my five businesses, Podopolo right now, someday, upon success, there’s the story of what really happened.

Mimi Bishop:

Right?

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes.

Mimi Bishop:

Behind the curtain.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes.

Jackie Ghedline:

We’ll show you what happened in Oz. I love that.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s getting to be quite a big book. Because, there are so many things beyond your control. I think my biggest lesson as an entrepreneur going into it where you think you can control a lot more than you can. Ultimately, the only thing you can really control is how you navigate through all the things you can’t control. Because, so many women have… a perfectionist gene where it’s like we want to be in control. But entrepreneurship is a lot of dis-attaching from that on an emotional or spiritual level even. What was that like for you? Did both of you or either of you have that kind of issue of needing to figure out how to let go or not control every aspect of your business?

Jackie Ghedline:

Oh, absolutely. We laugh because Mimi and I were both perfectionists. We work a lot with Gen X. I believe that this Gen X trait, it’s a very specific Gen X trait. I think it infiltrates lots of other generations. But, specifically for Gen X because we were told we can have I t all. You can have it all. You can do everything you want to do. We’ve confused that with do it all and do it all beautifully and perfectly.

We laugh. When we launched our podcast, modern Gen X Woman, almost three years ago, we wrote the podcast and then we actually recorded the podcast four times because we thought in our minds it had to be perfect. We got so frustrated, we literally almost threw away the entire business because the podcast wasn’t perfect. We, together, learned the lesson that trying to be perfect is actually only going to make both of us unhappy.

But, it took us almost blowing up the business and saying, “We don’t want to do this,” to recognize that. Because, we were so used to… It’s easier to be perfect when you only have one thing to be perfect at. I was in sales and I was in business development and business building teams, so I was really, really good, almost perfect. But, now, I had to be perfect in marketing and Excel and lives, all of these things that we didn’t have to be perfect in. So, just letting go of that and recognizing that it’s the imperfections, especially nowadays, that connects you to people. It’s not the perfectionist part. It’s not listening to the podcast and saying, “Oh, that’s perfectly edited. There’s no ums.” It is about being imperfect because that’s the real you. If you want to connect as an entrepreneur, as a human, that really is more beautiful. That’s the gift you give people, I think.

Mimi Bishop:

This is Mimi. I will add to it, also, there’s a risk in the perfectionism because very often we can feel, as entrepreneurs, that we’re doing work and we’re busy when we are busy just making things perfect and it’s the wrong things. You are the person that has to go out there and be making the money. So, that always needs to be the priority and that needs to be the majority of your day is the marketing and the sales. Very often, that can feel very uncomfortable for people. So, they would rather sit in the details of the perfectionism because it feels a lot safer. How I know this is because I used to be that person. You have to really learn to let those things go so that you can free up the time to do the things that are important, which is always to be driving revenue into the business.

Melinda Wittstock:

A hundred percent. It feels so much more comfortable to be planning for the sale.

Mimi Bishop:

Yes. Oh, believe me. I love that. That’s my thing. But, yeah, it’s like you’ve got to be out there.

Jackie Ghedline:

Thank goodness for me. This is why the partnership works.

Mimi Bishop:

That’s true. That’s true. But, I’ve gotten a lot better at it, you have to admit.

Jackie Ghedline:

Oh, absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s so interesting how much entrepreneurship really is just about getting outside your comfort zone. I’ve seen so many people say this, if you’re comfortable, your business is probably not growing. With each stage of business growth, there’s a different level of discomfort because you’re called on to do so many different things. From the founder, when it’s just you and you’re trying to do everything, and then now you suddenly have a team, that takes a lot more of your time and adds a layer of complexity. You can’t be doing as much and you just, all through, depending on the type of business and the business model, you’re actually being called on to be different at different phases of the business growth. Personally, I’ve just come to terms with things are… If I’m uncomfortable a little bit, just a little bit outside of my comfort zone, we’re progressing.

Mimi Bishop:

Yes, I completely agree.

Jackie Ghedline:

It’s so funny because we realize that as we are trying to recognize I want to be uncomfortable because I know I’m growing, but I’m just still going to stay in this box. I think a lot of the reasons why new business fails is because the people want to stay in the box. They just want to stay there because it’s where they’re comfortable. I think that’s fine. But, I do think that if that’s the case, then you either need a partner who will do the things that you’re uncomfortable with or you need to go back to corporate where you can stay in your lane. Being an entrepreneur is about being dropped in the middle of the autobahn where everybody’s going a hundred plus miles an hour in both directions, and you’ve got to figure it out. That’s entrepreneurship.

Melinda Wittstock:

So true. This is a perfect segue into how you two met and became partners.

Mimi Bishop:

This is a really funny story. We have a good friend in common. I met this woman when we were right out of college. We started our careers on the first day and we became fast friends. Then she went on to another company and Jackie was her boss. I would always hear Jackie this, Jackie that, and she just adored Jackie. She loved working with her. The funny thing was Jackie was hearing the same thing about me, Mimi this, Mimi that. So, Jackie had stepped off the corporate career first, and then I stepped off a few years later. And, Jackie said, “Would you make an introduction to Mimi because I’ve heard so much about her.” So, Jackie and I met for what we call as an innocent cup of coffee. We just, not only hit it off, we had the spark of an idea that we thought could fit really well together.

It just really started taking off from that point where we had this idea for really a coaching methodology, marrying our backgrounds. What we didn’t realize is two things. One is just how much we complimented one another personally. Where Jackie has been called the microwave, I’ve been called the slow cooker. We balance one another out in ways we could not have anticipated when we had that first innocent cup of coffee. That, I attribute to luck really.

Melinda Wittstock:

Absolutely.

Mimi Bishop:

Those are things that you really need to think about when you are looking for a partner. Because, it’s truly a marriage. You have to trust that person really with your life and be open and honest and be able to hold space for that person when they’re going through a difficult time. Because, your personal life does play a part. And, know what you’re good at, know what you need to lean on the other person for. It’s all of those things put into one.

Jackie Ghedline:

I want to add something that will make you laugh, Melinda. The funniest part about this story is that Mimi is an introvert. On top of being opposite in lots of ways, she’s an introvert and I’m an extrovert. She almost canceled the coffee because the thought of meeting someone live at a coffee shot sent her into hives.

Mimi Bishop:

I was like, “Oh, I have to do this.” Yes.

Jackie Ghedline:

By her coming out of her comfort zone, we launched this empire. That, to me, is a great example of sometimes you just have to do things that are going to make you uncomfortable. Because-

Melinda Wittstock:

Great example.

Jackie Ghedline:

… you never know what’s going to be on the other side of that. We wouldn’t be here today if Mimi leaned more into her fear.

Mimi Bishop:

Yeah. That is true. The other tiny piece I love to add because it’s just comical to me, is I sat behind Jackie in an industry event about five years before any of this happened, and she stood out to me because I loved what she was wearing. I would’ve never known, in a million years, that this woman was really going to be my other half. So, it’s just funny.

Melinda Wittstock:

I love this. I mean, I can see… Just listening to you guys talk and how you finish each other’s sentences and your energy is so in alignment, it’s obviously an amazing partnership. It’s where you take chocolate and peanut butter and a Reese’s kind of thing happens.

Mimi Bishop:

I love that.

Jackie Ghedline:

Which is Mimi’s favorite and my favorite ever.

Mimi Bishop:

I was just talking about that before we got on the podcast. Very appropriate.

Jackie Ghedline:

Talk about energy.

Mimi Bishop:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

When you’re a sole founder, as I am and have been in all my businesses, There can be a certain loneliness because you don’t have that person to just bounce things off of, that’s sort of the other side of you. I think this is one of the reasons why a lot of venture capitalists tend to only invest in companies that have two co-founders, for that reason. So, I have to find my mentorship from our board chairman or our board of advisors or whatever, because they can’t be the employees.

Mimi Bishop:

Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, it’s sort of a different alignment there.

Mimi Bishop:

Yes. Another thing I will add is it really does help push you out of your comfort zone. Because, sometimes there are things I really just don’t want to do because it feels so scary or risky. And, I know it’s just not about me. It really means the health of our business and it means I need to be the equal support to my partner. Having that partner by your side, not only does it give you a little bit more… You know someone has your back, but also at the same time, it’s someone that gives you the little push to do the things that maybe-

Melinda Wittstock:

[inaudible 00:21:43] responsibility.

Mimi Bishop:

… maybe you wouldn’t want to do or would figure out a way to wiggle out of it.

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. But, the art here though is that both of you are in alignment on mission, but you both have different skills that are common to this entry. So, getting both of those things where you’re different enough from each other that there’s an added value, but similar enough that you can work together in a unified way, that’s easier said than done.

Jackie Ghedline:

It is like a marriage where we learned how to work together and give each other space to process things in the way we both need to process them. Because, we even process things differently. I’m an external processor. I like to talk through things. After I talk through it, I’ll say, “I know you need to digest it or I know you need to marinate on it, so you go and process that.” But, it takes nuance. Also, it feeds into the work that we do, which is how do you become a much better listener, to listen and to acknowledge and to validate, and then give somebody space to be who they are. I think if everybody could do that in their lives, in their work as humans, the world would be so much better. But, it does start close to home. Then how do you trickle that out?

Melinda Wittstock:

Let’s get into the Gen X woman. How is the Gen X woman different from the baby boomer woman or the Gen Z woman? What are the specific things that we grapple with particularly in entrepreneurship?

Jackie Ghedline:

Sure. A few things are really key. Gen X was the generation that was told they could have it all. They have all this pressure to show up and drive their career. Then a couple of things, they thought that they had to be quiet and put their heads down. Because, the boomers were like, “You don’t rock the boat. You get your golden watch. What do you mean you’re leaving your job after a couple of years? You should be staying. You need to be loyal.” So, there are a couple of traits around Gen X women that are incredible. Resilience, independence, hardworking. Those are incredible traits that differentiate us. However, those are also the traits that have hurt us in our career in some aspects because we confuse resilience, which is something happens to someone in our family, we can get up and we can be the one to take the torch forward and to make stuff happen.

But, we also then say, “Oh, I know my boss is toxic and verbally abusive, but I’m resilient.” We confused what resilience meant and we’ve silently waited to be tapped on the shoulder to be promoted instead of being vocal about what we deserve. So, our generation, I think, has had to teeter between these two things. But, I also think Gen X is the generation that is shifting everything. All of these big shifts that are happening in life are happening through Gen Xers. The Me Too movement was started by a Gen Xer. The menopause movement was started by a Gen Xer. The midlife movement started by a Gen Xer. I think that we are also the right generation to start pivoting everything.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, exactly. I mean, it’s so interesting. I wonder, when we’re thinking about these different generations and the different context in which we come up and thinking about younger women right now and their context and what they’re grappling with, does everybody have to go through this, I’ll call it a sheroes journey? Do you know? Instead of the hero’s journey. Or, can younger women really learn and absorb from the things that we’ve gone through?

Mimi Bishop:

I think that each generation paves the way for the next generation. When I think about the boomer generation, they really started to open the door that there was a lot more possibility for what women could do in the workforce than, say, my mother’s generation, where it was either you were a nurse, you were a secretary, or a teacher. Those were really the three things. I think the boomers really started to broaden that. I think that Gen Xers were able to then really add this ability to start to go up the ranks to really show our areas of expertise, our resilience, how we could work hard.

But, I think at the same time, what we’re passing to the next generation is you don’t have to do it with your mouth shut necessarily. You can be an equal. One of the things that we feel so strongly about at Modern Gen X Woman is closing the wage gap. It expands, it gets even wider as we get older. Essentially, you’re getting paid less for more skills and more knowledge. That’s something Gen Xers are really starting to get vocal about, that it’s unacceptable. That’s really part of our mission at Modern Gen X Woman. I believe that’s something we’re passing now to the next generation where they can continue to do that work and maybe Gen Z will not have to deal with the issue as much as we have.

Jackie Ghedline:

Yeah. I want to add to that too. Because, I think it’s a fascinating phenomenon. Melinda, I’m curious to see if you are hearing this. But, when I did a TEDx talk and I walked in and I was on the docket with five other women, which was incredible, and one man. And, I was the oldest one by about 25 years. I mean, there were 25 year old, 20 year old’s. I think the oldest woman was 30. Women were getting up and talking and doing their TEDx talk. I was astonished and proud for that generation, but very reflective of what capabilities I thought I had at 25. I do think that the younger generation is much more self-aware, much more confident, and much more vocal than the generations that came before them.

Melinda Wittstock:

I just look at my daughter who’s 20 and I see that, the self-awareness-

Jackie Ghedline:

Amazing.

Melinda Wittstock:

… in particular, which I didn’t have. I just thought… I was just one of those, I look back, I cringe a little bit. There was a lot that was good about me in my twenties. But, I just thought there wasn’t anything that I couldn’t do. I had all this confidence, but it was like a brash kind of confidence. You know what I mean?

Jackie Ghedline:

Mm-hmm.

Melinda Wittstock:

It needed to be tempered a little bit. There are other women that I see that just don’t feel… are the opposite. Of not feeling they deserve it or somehow… I don’t know. It manifests in all kinds of different ways. I don’t think it’s a conscious thought. I think it’s often a subconscious thing that keeps us from going big.

Jackie Ghedline:

It absolutely is. It’s that cognitive dissonance. Because, we can’t always see what that big looks like or how we’re really going to get there. So, we just stay small. If women and men, if anybody can close that gap between, what we always say, where you want to be consciously and where you believe you can be subconsciously, the more you can close the gap, the closer you can get to your alternate goals. But, you do need to be aware of that cognitive dissonance and start doing the work to unravel that

Melinda Wittstock:

I imagine this is a really big part of the coaching work that you do. I mean, I know so many business coaches. And, in the end, they just say, “So, really, are you coaching business or are you coaching mindset?” I guess really, ultimately-

Mimi Bishop:

Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

… it’s the mindset that’s going to dictate a lot of that success in business. Take me through your methodology a little bit in terms of where… From the things that women are working on the most, where you see the biggest problems, the biggest changes in the before and after relative to what you’re coaching.

Mimi Bishop:

This is such a great question. The first thing I’ll start with, and I kind of touched on this a little bit in our origin story, which is the methodology and the core of everything we do, which is what we call the resting mind formula. This is a combination of awareness, positive psychology, energy, and habits. This is a methodology that really informs all of the frameworks of all of the coaching we do, whether it be business coaching, career coaching, or the leadership training we do in corporate.

From there, we will work with women one-on-one either in professional development, Jackie handles our executive leadership training one-on-one. I handle working with a lot of our women who are leaving corporate and starting their businesses. So, I will help them set the foundation of their business and then start to scale it. Then from a leadership perspective, we spend a lot of time in corporate working with their ERGs or their leadership and development teams, working on things like emotional intelligence, relational intelligence, and linguistic intelligence.

Melinda Wittstock:

Now, break these things down for me, these various forms of intelligence. I’m so intrigued by this. Start with emotional intelligence. A lot of people know what that is.

Jackie Ghedline:

A lot of people know what it is, but… They know the concept. I think that when you really dig into, what it is and what people think it is may be a little bit different. Or, at least the way we teach it. Emotional intelligence is always where we start because emotional intelligence is about self-reflection. It is about understanding yourself and understanding and regulating your emotions. If you think about everything that we do, every choice that we make is tied to our thoughts and our thoughts then trigger our emotion. Everything that we need to do is we need to be aware of the emotion that we are feeling or the emotion that’s coming up. We need to regulate that so that we can take the right action.

Before we as humans can do anything from a leadership perspective, I can’t lead people unless I am emotionally… Unless I have emotional intelligence. Because, if something goes wrong and I’m going to fly off the handle, you are not going to get relational intelligence, and you definitely don’t have linguistic intelligence. It really starts there. And then, it feeds down into what we call relational intelligence, which is how do you relate to others. In this world of inclusion, it’s not enough to say to someone who may be of a different race or a different religion and may feel like an outsider, to say, “Hey, come to lunch with us.” That’s not inclusion. What inclusion is, is building a real relationship and understanding their thoughts and giving everyone space to share their ideas and for everyone to be curious about those ideas and their thoughts and their feedback and their concepts and processes. So, the relational intelligence is if you can build trust by providing space, asking questions the right way, building that likability factor with people, then you can then build a collaborative team environment.

And then, it all feeds into the linguistic intelligence, which is how do you talk to people? What words are you choosing? What words should you never choose? We have a list of words that we train on that people should never use, including-

Melinda Wittstock:

What are some of those words?

Jackie Ghedline:

Some of those words are should.

Melinda Wittstock:

Should.

Jackie Ghedline:

Should. You should never say should. Another word is why. If you have a question, you just never ask why. Because, what happens when you ask why is it automatically triggers someone’s fight or flight. When you trigger someone’s fight or flight, they shut down. Anything that you say after that is immediately going to be disregarded because they’re going to feel like you’re blaming them.

Melinda Wittstock:

My goodness. I say why all the… I’m always so curious. I’m always asking why. Oops.

Jackie Ghedline:

Yeah. Instead of asking why you can ask, “I’d love to learn a little bit more about what brought you to that? Or, what was the baseline? What is the root of that? Or, can you tell me more? Just shifting that because why can be taken as curious, but most of the time it’s taken like I have to defend my position. That’s a natural state. Another one is you. If you and I were working together and you missed a deadline, there was a deadline that was missed, if I came in and I said to you, “Why weren’t you able to get this project to me on time?” you are automatically on the defensive. But, if I said, “What could we have done to support you so that we could have moved this project together?” that feels really good.

So, it’s really about knowing the linguistic, the languages and the words. And, the other part of the linguistic intelligence as we train on the SCARF model, which is a model that was developed by David Rock, who started the Neuroscience Leadership Institute. He talks about if you want people to relate, you can’t trigger these five things. The SCARF is status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness. Everything we do is training on how do you make sure that you aren’t treating people unfairly or that you are creating certainty, even in uncertain times. And, how do you go about doing that? It is a process, and it’s an amazing transformation that we see with people because they then become aware of how they communicate, what they’re saying, the words they’re using. And, that becomes the new habit as opposed to the why did you, which automatically makes everyone feel like they have to hire a defense lawyer so they don’t get fired.

Melinda Wittstock:

Okay. I can see the applicability of this from sales and marketing right through to hiring and managing a team. How do you get the best out of your team?

Jackie Ghedline:

Yes.

Mimi Bishop:

Yes.

Jackie Ghedline:

Even for entrepreneurs, think about when you are meeting people and you’re trying to… People buy on who they know, like and trust. As entrepreneurs, we need to build that automatic trust and likability factor. The words that we choose are very, very important to how we get people to relate to us. Are we reading the room? Are we recognizing when someone shuts down or are we just talking? Are we listening? Are we asking questions that are getting to the heart of what they’re saying and are we giving them space?

Or, are we just going in with our own objective? As you know for entrepreneurs, they want to go in there and they want to tell them why they’re the smartest people in the room, and the other person on the other side of the desk is like, “Oh, great.” It really is… It’s something that could be used at every facet of, not only the business world, but just as humans. You think about the conversations you have with a spouse. It’s how we should be communicating, but so many of us are on autopilot and don’t think through how we communicate.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. This is very, very true. Because, I don’t think we’re even conscious. I think women apologize a lot as well. Sorry, but… Or-

Mimi Bishop:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

… I just want to… which is sort of minimizing. I mean, there’s a whole bunch of things. Just even using words like but or however sometimes put people on the defensive as well.

Jackie Ghedline:

Yes.

Mimi Bishop:

Yes.

Jackie Ghedline:

We always say and. That’s a great point and here’s how I think about that. Here’s the other side of the coin. Because, you just want people to feel validated. Nobody wants to hear but as if everything that they said was invalidated.

Mimi Bishop:

Right. And then, that shoe is going to drop.

Jackie Ghedline:

Validate and acknowledge always.

Melinda Wittstock:

You also have a proprietary formula called the resting mind. Now, this is energy, neuroscience, habit, and whatnot. Tell me a little bit more about that. How did you come to it? What does it [inaudible 00:38:10]

Jackie Ghedline:

Sure.

Mimi Bishop:

When we first met that day, Jackie and I were sharing our backgrounds, our coaching backgrounds. We went to different institutions to get certified. And, Jackie’s background is in neuroscience and positive psychology, and mine is in energy leadership. That’s when we started to have this conversation. We thought, “Well, what could combining the two of them look like? And, how could we start to create a framework or methodology to create sustainable change for people?”

Digging deeper, we realized, you know what, everything really starts with awareness. What would happen then if we combine that with energy leadership, which essentially is really emotional regulation. Energy, in a lot of ways translates to your emotions and how you’re feeling. If you can regulate that and really enforce it with positive psychology and neuroscience, and we know that repetition, by the way, of habits is what really embeds things, what could that look like? So, from that framework, we started to create different tools that we work with, with our clients, to help them achieve different objectives.

Melinda Wittstock:

This is really important. I mean, I love the idea of the resting mind only because mine is very rarely resting, even though I meditate.

Jackie Ghedline:

Same.

Mimi Bishop:

Me too.

Melinda Wittstock:

Because, you’re always thinking about your business. It’s like you’re always there. It’s hard to turn it off.

Mimi Bishop:

That’s right. You’re always thinking about it. But, don’t forget, also, your subconscious mind is always going no matter what. I think it’s something like, what is it, seven or 8% or 5% of our… We’re only aware of, I think, 5% of our thoughts.

Jackie Ghedline:

Of our day.

Mimi Bishop:

Of our day. 95% of our day is coming from our subconscious. When we actively practice this formula, we’re really optimizing the way we think and optimizing our subconscious. As a result, the things we are working toward are optimized because we are taking action from this higher level place where there are less blocks, there’s less self-sabotage, less procrastination, all those kinds of things, which will play in when we’re really not attuned to what our subconscious is set to.

Melinda Wittstock:

For years, I spent a while just trying to figure out what is going on in my subconscious, trying to unearth these things. And then, came to the conclusion, “Well, do I really need to know or should I just do a blanket kind of clearing.” [inaudible 00:40:53] Whatever’s in there that’s not helping, I officially let it go. I don’t need to know about it. I don’t need to investigate it, which might keep me there.

Mimi Bishop:

Right. Exactly. That’s a great point. You’re like resetting the entire operating system.

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. Clean slate.

Jackie Ghedline:

Delete all the contacts and everything.

Mimi Bishop:

Sometimes you just got to do that. I get it.

Jackie Ghedline:

It’s true. Everyone has to deal with… approach it the way that they need to approach it. It’s not about going back and healing traumas. But, it’s about understanding, when this happens, I’m feeling this in my body or I’m getting upset. I don’t want to get upset or I’m thinking, “This is frustrating for me. Frustrating is not a good place. So, what’s a better way that I could think about this?” Well, instead of being frustrated, could I be concerned? Could I be curious? It’s even about shifting the language we use internally about how we’re feeling so that that energy gets lighter. Because, then we take a step from that lighter energy. We’ve all had those days where something really bad happens and all of a sudden everything after that is really bad-

Mimi Bishop:

Downhill.

Jackie Ghedline:

All goes downhill. In those situations, if you don’t purposely regroup and reconnect and reset your mind or your energy, then you are going to take action from that heightened place, which is going to lead you to more heightened places. That’s the beauty of it. It doesn’t always have to be meditation, but that awareness of that can then… Then you can do everything you can to bring it down.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. This is so important. Well, a big part of entrepreneurial success is being able to be resilient, bouncing back.

Jackie Ghedline:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

And, a great frame of mind and great energy despite. That is really… Yeah, that’s the whole game or holy grail.

Jackie Ghedline:

That’s the holy grail.

Melinda Wittstock:

[inaudible 00:42:47].

Jackie Ghedline:

It’s funny, Melinda, because we think about this all the time. This is not about you not falling. We all fall. If you’re an entrepreneur, we’re going to fall. We’re going to fail. What this does when we do this kind of work is it sets us to be able to bounce back bigger. This is how we operate in everything. If you are going to build your marketing, if you’re going to build your business strategy, it’s about how do we go into that action? If we make a mistake, we know we’re going to dip, but we don’t want to stay down there that long. The work that you do will allow you to have that resilience, come back quicker.

Melinda Wittstock:

What are some of the changes that you’ve seen in your clients that go through this whole process with you? What’s the before and after?

Mimi Bishop:

Two different things that come to mind for me is with our entrepreneurial clients, this confidence that they start to build in themselves and what they’re doing and putting themselves out there and talking about themselves, that is one of the biggest mindset challenges I find that people come to me with, that they struggle with that.

Then from the career and the professional side, working one-on-one. I’ll let Jackie speak to the teams. But, working one-on-one, they really understand their self-worth, and they really no longer will accept low salary. They are willing to raise their hands, speak their point of view much more confidently, ask for what they want in terms of raises, feel really confident to negotiate. We’ve had clients, one client, she increased her salary, I think it was within a two year period, to the tune of like $60,000. It was tremendous.

That was because she really started to build the awareness, felt much more confident in her abilities and started… She jumped jobs a couple of times and then, also, was really able to advocate for herself in roles. This was a big difference. When she first came to us, she was a wreck. On Sunday nights, she’d be a mess, worrying about the week ahead, feeling like she was overwhelmed by the people she worked with and not able to… having a hard time navigating what was going on in the workplace. This was a tremendous difference.

Jackie Ghedline:

From the team perspective, what we’re seeing is leadership has completely changed. That patriarchal, militant, hierarchical way of leading doesn’t work. Lots of people are still leading that way because that’s how they’ve learned to lead. What we are seeing is teams going from feeling very disjointed, from feeling unheard, from feeling as though there is a disconnect between what they are supposed to do, what is expected of them, to really feeling cohesive.

We’re changing teams to be able to connect in a different way, human first. And, also, to train leaders to understand how to be clear and communicate the expectations of each individual of the team as well as the team as a whole, how to make sure that you are coaching through this. One-on-one shouldn’t be about tell me what you did over the last 10 weeks or three weeks, depending on how long it’s been. We go through processes for how to make those more powerful. So, it becomes a much deeper and richer team relationship where profitability increases, revenues increase, productivity increase, because everyone feels heard and everyone feels safe. That’s really what that comes down to.

Melinda Wittstock:

A hundred percent. I want to make sure that people know the best way to find you both and work with you. But, of course, also listen to your podcast.

Mimi Bishop:

There are a couple of ways. The first is our podcast, Modern Gen X Woman. The second is we are both on LinkedIn, Mimi Bishop and Jackie Ghedline. We also have a Facebook community called Modern Gen X Woman. And, we have a manifesto called the Modern Gen X Woman Manifesto. They can get it by going to our website, moderngenxwoman.com/manifesto.

Jackie Ghedline:

Because, we love being Gen X, but being modern Gen X is so much better.

Melinda Wittstock:

I want to invite everybody to make sure they follow your podcast on Podopolo as well.

Mimi Bishop:

We’re there. We’re there.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. We can keep the conversation going on the episode comments page of this podcast and whatnot as well if anyone has any questions or whatever. But, I feel like I could talk to you guys for a lot longer.

Mimi Bishop:

I feel that way too. We felt that way instantly when we first met you, Melinda.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, it’s amazing. Well, I’m just going to really come clean about my age. I am Gen X, technically, but I’m on the upper reaches of Gen X. I’m just saying.

Jackie Ghedline:

Well, it’s funny because… Thank you for sharing that because one of the things that we really believe that women should own their age without apologizing. That’s not always easy for women. I’m 51 and I feel very lucky to be as successful as I am and as happy as I am at 51. If something’s not working for me, I feel like I could figure it out on how to change it. I think that’s the most exciting thing about this time in our lives, is really stepping into and getting clarity around what we want, what makes us happy, and then going for it.

Mimi Bishop:

Yeah. I’ll just add that I’m 54. I know that midlife brings up a lot of issues for a lot of women. It could be really hard. We are here to tell you that you can turn things around, that we are here in community to help you do that. This can be a really special time in your life.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s actually the best, in a way. I like to say that it’s like your energy levels and your wisdom start to really be aligned. You start out with energy and less wisdom, and then by the time you’re very ancient, you get a lot of wisdom and maybe less in the physical energy. But, I think women are really coming to their own in entrepreneurship in their fifties.

Mimi Bishop:

I think so too.

Melinda Wittstock:

And, actually, into their sixties as well. If you look at female leaders of nations and whatnot, they’re in their sixties and seventies. That’s when they’re really crushing it. I remember watching my aunt Bea, who was Canada’s first female stockbroker.

Jackie Ghedline:

What? That’s awesome.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. She didn’t get going until she was in her fifties.

Mimi Bishop:

I love that.

Melinda Wittstock:

She was crushing it in her eighties. She actually-

Mimi Bishop:

I love it.

Melinda Wittstock:

In her era, she had to actually lie about her age because she would’ve been forced to retire. But, she was their biggest producer and she was like 82 and nobody knew it. Nobody knew she was that old.

Mimi Bishop:

That is amazing.

Jackie Ghedline:

Well, that’s where you get that spun from, that drive, that energy to still continue a many time over serial, true serial entrepreneur. It came from someplace.

Melinda Wittstock:

The only way she could succeed was to create her own clientele. So, she found divorced women and widowed women who weren’t being served by any stockbrokers, and she built this massive business for herself.

Mimi Bishop:

I love it.

Jackie Ghedline:

Well, that story’s so important too. Because, again, there was probably a group of women that were negated because of their age or because of their-

Mimi Bishop:

Status.

Jackie Ghedline:

… or what society deemed, and she’s like, “Uh-huh, I’m going to make up money and I’m going to make them money by supporting them.” To me, that’s the beauty of it, is let’s not disregard people because of anything. But, really, that is the true inclusion of where we’re going as a culture.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, a hundred percent. Well, look, I want to thank you both, Mimi and Jackie, for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Mimi Bishop:

Thank you, Melinda.

Jackie Ghedline:

We are soaring high after this incredible conversation. Thank you.

Melinda Wittstock:

This is one of the things that I love about podcasting the best is there’s just all these amazing conversations. It’s great for all the listeners who learn so much.

Melinda Wittstock:

I always get something out of it.

Jackie Ghedline:

I do too. It doesn’t feel as lonely. That’s the thing too, is the entrepreneurship can feel lonely. So, doesn’t feel as lonely when you listen to other people’s stories and hear how they’re doing it and learn from them and say, “Oh, that’s my journey too. And, you got through it.” That’s the beauty of what podcasting does. And, it hasn’t even reached where it’s going.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh no, I know. Tell me about it. I think it’s where blogging was in like 2006, personally.

Jackie Ghedline:

Yeah, I agree.

Mimi Bishop:

We agree. It’s exciting.

Melinda Wittstock:

All right. Well, look, have a wonderful day. Thank you so much for joining us on [inaudible 00:51:54]

Mimi Bishop:

You too, Melinda.

Jackie Ghedline:

Thank you for having us, Melinda.