"I consciously plan my time and put personal activities on my calendar" with Jackie Ghedine

Jackie Ghedine is a life and career coach, co-host of the podcast Make Your Life Magnificent with Jackie and Mimi, and the co-founder of The Resting Mind. She is a certified coach and trained at the Goal Imagery Institute specializing in neuroscience and positive psychology. Prior to becoming a coach, Jackie was Associate Publisher at AdAge where she was responsible for building new businesses, driving revenue, and leading a diverse team.

I spent my entire career in media and publishing and for the longest time, I thought I had the best job in the world. I started out as a publisher’s assistant right out of college and quickly moved into a sales position. This launched my growing career in sales and sales leadership.  I became Associate Publisher of AdAge which incorporated my love of leading and growing talent and business building. I set my sights on becoming Publisher, it was what I had always wanted, yet somehow, in the midst of wanting this career trajectory, I stopped wanting the holy grail of positions.  What used to drive me and excite me didn’t any longer and I had no idea what that meant.  The goalpost I had been striving for was no longer of interest to me.  It took me over a year to come to terms with this revelation and I made a plan to step off my career and literally do nothing. I needed to figure out what was next for me.  

After leaving AdAge I gave myself space to really analyze what I missed about what I did and what would reignite the fire in my belly for work.  At that time, I was getting calls for meetings from colleagues and industry people wanting to ask advice or bounce ideas off of me.  It was through this exploration that I had an epiphany, I missed working with talented individuals to maximize their potential. So I went back to school for coaching and launched my first coaching business and since then, I launched a second business with Mimi Bishop, another former media executive.

The Resting Mind is based out of my house on Long Island, New York. My business partner and I meet twice a week in my home where we work on developing new products, recording our podcast and creating content. The beauty of coaching is that it’s a virtual business, providing you with an opportunity to work with people across the globe. 

We started our business with a plan of what needed to happen and by when so we could mark and chart our progress. Spending time creating the roadmap was time well spent. As an entrepreneur, there is always a long list of what has to be done, especially when you’re starting out and it’s only you or two of you and you can easily get off track or worse, get paralyzed by being overwhelmed by all that has to happen. We broke down the most important aspects of the business for us which were creating our own process and proprietary tools for coaching, developing a website that spoke about the benefits of working with us and a marketing strategy.

The most effective way we raised awareness for our business has been by joining and building relationships in communities such as The Cru and Dreamers//Doers where we are connected with other women who want to support and grow each other’s businesses.  We also write guest posts on a variety of media outlets and are VIP contributors in other communities. Our philosophy is to always be ‘in service’ for people, providing ideas, insights and tools to help others and this approach is effective. 

The biggest challenges we faced when we started our business was how to construct a marketing funnel and then fill it up. It took a lot of tweaking and pivoting to gain any momentum and often times it felt like no matter what we did the business was never going to turn the corner. I had to learn to have patience with myself and the process while trusting my capabilities and what we were bringing to market. Entrepreneurship tests your patience, resilience, confidence and grit.

Staying focused as an entrepreneur was very different for me. In Corporate America, I planned everything on my calendar and worked off of a very long to-do list that wasn’t always dictated by me but by the whim of the business environment and bosses.  When I went into business for myself, this system didn’t work at all because the to-do list was long and I found myself getting overwhelmed with all that always had to be done.  Today, I stay focused by having a post-it note on my desk for every day of the week with specific tasks written for each day. It allows me to visual see what needs to happen that day only and provides flexibility to move items up a day or back a day if need be. This one small trick keeps me focused and productive.  I also have worked on self-awareness, which is the most important thing we can all do as businesswomen.  We get something called decision-fatigue from heavy thought work.  We’ve been programmed that even when we feel exhausted or dull we need to power through or lean in to get more out of ourselves. However, there’s a diminishing return when we do that leading to a decrease in our productivity and creativity. When you become self-aware you learn to give yourself breaks (short walks, meditation, etc.) to re-energize your mind and ultimately gain greater success overall.

There are two key factors that have helped us differentiate our business from other practices. We are Generation X women who want to support the Generation X women who have been either ignored for too long or who are just at their mid-career crossroads or in a mid-life malaise. Having a very pinpointed audience allows you to create products and services specific to their needs.  Also, we developed a proprietary formula that encompasses neuroscience with energy leadership so our clients can close the gap between their conscious mind (the goals they want) and their subconscious settings (their inner beliefs and thoughts). 

The most effective marketing strategy to grow our business has been creating free resources for our audience to download.  We offer a wide array of guides from The Brand of You Creative Brief (for women who want to create their personal elevator pitch) to Rediscovering Yourself (for women who have lost their identity to their jobs or being a mom and can’t remember who they are any longer). We coupled this with a closed Facebook Community called Just Gen X- The Resting Mind which has become a place for open dialogue on all the things that are keeping Gen X women up at night. We are in the group every day offering support, resources and coaching to get them to the other side.

The best piece of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs is to really understand your customer, connect with them, uncover what makes them excited and what their fears are, what they need versus what they want. It is only through knowing who they are that you can truly provide what they need versus what you want to give them and those are two very different things that need to get separated out.

My favorite book Becoming Supernatural by Dr. Joe Dispenza. This book is all about the mind/body connecting and how we can change our body with the strength of our mind. We have so much more power than we believe we do and through meditation, self-awareness and mindfulness we can change ourselves and the world around us.  It’s scientifically proven that we are all energy and how our energy impacts not only ourselves but how it stretches beyond us.

I used Trello for business which is an incredible way for me to track our projects. When you work remotely you need to have the ability to track and work on projects as if you are in the same space. Trello is a project management system that keeps everyone abreast of where a project stands.  It’s a visual organizer which is how I organize best (it’s like daily post-it notes).

It’s interesting because I don’t have a business role model. What I’ve done instead is collect ideas and thoughts from a wide array of influencers in business from Jack Welch and Tony Hsieh to Gary Vaynerchuk (I used to watch his videos on the Wine Library website before he was a marketing guru) and Rachel Hollis. I am enamored with those who can inspire greatness in others and am drawn to personalities that are big and bold. I believe it is because I’ve always been outgoing with a big voice and that wasn’t always a good thing growing up. Now, by seeing those with similar personalities, I have permission to be me. 

One of the reasons I stepped off my big career was because I had very little balance in my life and I was missing so much of real-life for my work life.  Balancing work and life has to be a conscious choice, especially since the physical lines are blurred when you work from home full time.  I consciously plan my time and put personal activities on my calendar like working out and swimming with my daughter the same way I put meetings and work on my calendar.  The trick is to respect your personal commitments the same way you respect business meetings. I have also readjusted my relationship to time to recognize it is not finite but our beliefs around time make it finite.  This shift in perspective has kept my overwhelm at bay.

My favorite way to decompress is to be outside either walking, biking or simply sitting by the pool reading. The fresh air and nature bring me peace and helps me clear my mind. 

We are planning an online coaching program over the next six months which will give a greater number of people access to our coaching practices and principles.  We feel strongly that everyone who would like to put into practice key professional and personal development tools should have access to them.  Generation X women are at a major crossroads in their lives and we want to provide them with clarity so they can grab hold of their happiness.

If you would like to connect with me and learn more, here are several ways to do that. Please feel free to email me directly at jackie@therestingmind.com.