164: Creating Intuitive Systems for Your Coaching Practice with Mary Williams
Do I really want to coach? Do I still want to do this business thing? What does it mean if I make a shift? Many coaches hit a point in their businesses where they feel an identity crisis. To get through this and figure out what you want, we need safe spaces to openly explore our options.
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android Devices | Stitcher | RSS
Show Notes
Do I really want to coach? Do I still want to do this business thing? What does it mean if I make a shift?
Many coaches hit a point in their businesses where they feel an identity crisis. To get through this and figure out what you want, we need safe spaces to openly explore our options. Places where we can explore the logical next steps as well as our desires and visions.
Today I’m joined by Mary Williams, the founder, and CEO of Sensible Woo, where she teaches highly sensitive and neuro-divergent online business owners how to replace chaos in their backend business operations with harmonious processes and systems. I've known Mary for years, and she’s someone that I have loved collaborating with and getting to know. Her ability to blend the strategic with the intuitive is very much in line with how I coach and her approach to systems.
In this conversation, Mary and I discuss the energy shift in the online entrepreneurial space, Mary’s approach to creating a solid foundation for a business, the importance of enjoying the process, how systems can help you to reclaim your time, why we need to normalize the spiritual aspects of business, and more. Mary is an expert in creating strong systems in your business to support your operations, revenue generation, and, most importantly, life. Enjoy the conversation!
Topics covered
- Mary’s transition from consulting to coaching and how her niche audience found her
- How Mary’s coaching approach combines the practical with the spiritual
- The energy shift in the online entrepreneurial space
- How the content marketing landscape and our clients’ needs have evolved
- Mary’s 2023 philosophy on the gift of time
- Creating space for your clients to make purchase decisions in their own time
- The energetics of ethics in business
- How systems can support coaches in reclaiming their time within their businesses
- Mary’s Digital Feng Shui Framework
- The vital role intuition plays in systems work
Resources mentioned
- Mary William's Website | SensibleWoo.com
- Mary Williams on YouTube | @SensibleWoo
- Mary Williams on Facebook
- Mary Williams on Instagram @SensibleWoo
- Coach with Clarity Collective
- Coach with Clarity Podcast Facebook Group
- Connect with Me on Instagram
- Email Me: info@coachwithclarity.com
Now it’s time for you to show the world what it means to be a Coach with Clarity! Screenshot this episode and tag me on Instagram @coachwithclarity and let me know what you’re more excited to explore in future podcast episodes!
* * * * * *
Grow Your Coaching Practice! Go from idea to income in 90 days or less with the free Coach with Clarity Business Blueprint!
Want to connect further? Follow me on Instagram and continue the discussion in the Coach with Clarity Facebook group.
Want to work together? Become a Coach with Clarity Member today!
TRANSCRIPT
Well, hello, my friend. Welcome to the Coach with Clarity podcast. I am so happy you're here. My name is Lee Chaix McDonough, I'm your host and today, I am thrilled to introduce you to my very good friend and colleague, Mary Williams of Sensible Woo. Now I've known Mary for years, we both started our businesses in 2016 and I think we met shortly thereafter. And she is someone that I have absolutely loved collaborating with and getting to know. And what I really appreciate about Mary is her ability to blend the strategic with the intuitive which is very much in line with how I coach and that's what she does, too, with systems. She is an expert when it comes to creating strong systems in your business in order to support your operations, your revenue generation, and most importantly, your life. In our conversation today, we're going to be talking about a lot of things including the general state of online entrepreneurship and small business in 2023. And why systems are, I would say even more important now than they've ever been before. I just really appreciate the quiet steady wisdom Mary brings to every conversation but especially the one you are about to hear. So let's get right into it. I am so excited to welcome Mary Williams of Sensible Woo to the Coach with Clarity podcast.
* * * * * * *
Lee: Well, hello, Mary. Thank you so much for coming on the Coach with Clarity podcast.
Mary: Thanks, Lee. You know, I've been listening to you for a long time. I remember the first time I heard your podcast. I think it was the one before this one. It was back in like, 2019.
Lee: Yeah, that's about right. Yeah, that was the good old days of Work Your inner Wisdom, my very first show. Yes, which I loved that show. I learned a lot about podcasting, and it prepared me beautifully for this show, the Coach with Clarity podcast. And I was thinking about all of the people I wanted coaches to know about, the people I really wanted to connect with in 2023. And your name was at the top of my list. I love your work. I love what you do. You have so much to share. So we're going to get into that today during our interview. But before we do, for people who've not yet had the pleasure of making your acquaintance, let's start with who you are and the work you do for the world.
Mary: I don't know if it's me and my Internet connection, but I missed your question.
Lee: That is okay. I saw a little pause. So that's why we have editors. Editors, you can edit out whichever part you need to. This is the piece where just tell us a little bit about who you are and the work you do for the world.
Mary: Well, my name is Mary, and my business is Sensible Woo. And as the name would suggest, as we love around here, I like things that are both sensible and woo. I like to ride the world in between those spaces because I feel like that's where we live. I feel like as business owners, that's what we actually do. We're intuitive, but we also have to be very practical and logical about things. I've been a coach for quite some time. I don't know that I always intended to be a coach, to be honest with you. I started out, when I first left out of my corporate career into consulting. I came from the entertainment world in my corporate career, and entertainment is a very nepotistic industry. People love to hire their friends over and over. So one day people started reaching out and they're like, “Hey, are you available? Do you know somebody?” And I was like, “I am available.” And I started consulting. And I really had envisioned myself being a consultant in information management for them. I'm a librarian by trade, and so I do a lot of digital archiving and data management. And in the course of doing that, I was reading Tarot and Akashic Records on nights and weekends over the phone. And I attracted a lot of small business owners, and they would ask business questions in the middle of their reading, but they would ask about things like their launch or their software integrations because they knew about what I did during the day and I thought you guys really need a space in between. And it took a while to figure out, but it eventually grew into coaching.
Lee: I love how your niche, your audience, kind of found you in many ways. And it honed in on that sweet spot that you have between the sensible and the woo, which really resonates with me because when I work with my coaches and when I teach in my certification program, I talk a lot about the intersection between strategy and intuition. And I think it's probably something very similar for your business as well, where we do need to have the analytical, evidence based, data supported interventions, but we don't want to miss out on the magic either. And we want to make room for spirit.
Mary: We really do. And what I find is that a lot of people are doing this privately and they really find a lot of value in it, in their lives. It's the way that they make decisions. And I think the hardest part in the business journey, which we were talking about before we hit record, you and I've been doing this a long time and you have to find your audience. So my audience did find me too, but I have to find more of them. And I got to tell you, at the beginning it was very frustrating and I see more and more people writing this duality that I have carved out a niche through. And what I found over the years is that because there up until recently, haven't been a lot of places for people who get both in the same container. They bounce back and forth between super traditional business programming and then these spiritual communities and they get what they need from one and then they need a break and they go to the other and they just bounce back and forth and I saw them hopping back and forth. It's been challenging, but also really rewarding to carve out and pave a road for this in between space that it can be its own established space and we don't have to bounce back and forth because that gets exhausting. I don't know about you, but I got tired of it.
Lee: Yeah, no, I'm just sitting here nodding because I think about what I've chosen to invest in over the last seven years in my business and it has felt like one extreme or the other. Either it's that go hard, go fast business coaching, or it's like the sensitive new age kind of spiritual piece, but there hasn't really been much that incorporates both. And so I love that that is your approach. So tell me a little bit more about how you serve your clients. What kind of work do you do inside Sensible Woo?
Mary: So it's grown into a twelve month coaching container. I'll be really honest with you, there's a lot of energy shifting right now and I don't know that it will continue being a twelve month coaching container again. I feel like there's a little evolution happening there right now, so stay tuned. That's to be determined. But I really do help people with their systems. I've created a ton of templates over the years and formulas and workflows for how to tackle really getting through that initial early stage hump where it's like the Wild West. You're just producing a whole bunch of stuff because you kind of have to and then at some point you have to systematize and then things feel messy and you've got to figure out what to do with it. But the truth is, even from my corporate career days, working with large Fortune 500 companies, they go through the same thing. Instead of being a solopreneur's operation or a small business with a small team, it's a whole big organization with hundreds of employees and a whole office building. The problem is still the same. You have a lot of data, you have a lot of pieces of software. Some things are connected, some things are disjointed. And the whole point is that we can make it more efficient. It's better for the bottom line. It saves a lot of sanity points when you do it. And it helps you grow and scale in a way that allows the main mission of what your business is trying to do to actually flourish and shine and do what it's meant to do instead of being bogged down in the daily operations of just trying to make things run. So we're really trying to get out of that feeling of just trying to make things run so we actually have more bandwidth for more important things.
Lee: I want to get into what that looks like for coaches in a minute. But first I want to really lean into something you shared, which, number one, is that energy is changing not just in your business. But we were talking about this before we started recording as well, that you and I are both noticing a pretty significant energy shift in the I would say the online entrepreneurial space in particular. And I just would love to kind of explore that a bit and get your thoughts on what you're observing, what you're noticing, and maybe what we can learn from that as we move forward in 2023.
Mary: Yeah, I mean, some of it, and this is part of the spiritual part of the journey is you've got to ride it out, you've got to go through the journey, you've got to get on the ride. And if you hang out and wait for somebody to come back and tell you, you can do that, but eventually you still have to get on the ride. And I see some people hanging out in that space right now where they're just hesitating a lot. I've just started offering a new lead magnet for the year because I started a YouTube channel and I wanted to boost subscribers and so I said “Well, if you subscribe and follow me in all the places, then I'll deliver a loom reading for free,” like about a 15 minutes reading. And it's turned into this interesting market research experiment where I'm getting back a lot of data through the things people are filling out on this Google form. And a really common marker is feeling like you're at a fork in the road. Feeling a bit of an identity crisis, “Not sure, do I really want a coach? Am I a coach? Do I still want to do this business thing?” It's sort of like these unactualized dreams. “Like, what do I do with that? If I exit what does that mean for me?” There's a lot of that dialogue happening right now and I feel so much for everybody. But you and I were talking about I mean, we've both been in this a long time, so we've seen a lot of things come and go. And I've been blogging since 2010 and then shifted into the consulting and the coaching in 2016. I've seen the whole content marketing landscape go through a massive evolution in a time. You know, there were no ads on Facebook back in the day. Everything was organic. It was, it was wonderful.
Lee: Remember those days?
Mary: I want that world back sometimes. Yeah. And I just feel like we're at another sort of cycle change. Like there's just another evolutionary point happening right now. And because we can't totally predict it, I feel like what we're being asked to do is to become active participants in it. And it's an invitation. And if you choose to exit that, you can totally do that with a good feeling in your heart. But the point is to pick something that you know you really, really want. I think that point of knowing what you really, really want for coaches right now, that's the identity crisis. People are really sitting with that and there haven't been a whole lot of spaces to openly explore that in a safe way, I don't think, because a lot of the dialogue that we're still hearing, which is why I'm so glad we're talking about it on your podcast. I listen to a lot of podcasts and I watch a lot of YouTube and I subscribe to a lot of email newsletters and it's still this push to “Buy my formula. Enroll in this program. Solve your problems. If you just make more money, you'll get to the next step.” And money is important. We need to pay our bills, we need to plan for retirement. All the proper, human, logical, practical, sensible things. But we also have desires and all of us channel all the time. We get these visions and these dreams for ourselves and to have that not be given an attempt at actualization trying to stay away from the word manifestation these days, but to try to get it to that place is a bit of work. And it's also really hard to reconcile when you feel like you can't do it right now.
Lee: I am also glad we are having this conversation because I think hopefully what it does is it removes some of the stigma associated with being in that unbounded space, that space between dreams and goals and ideas before we've gotten on the ride. I think all of us have had that experience. I was going to say maybe not all, but no, I think all of us have probably had an experience of being in that in between state. It can be a really uncomfortable state to be in. So I just kind of want to acknowledge that first off. So if anyone listening is feeling that, hopefully you don't feel alone because I think we're seeing that quite a bit in the industry. And I think too, we've had some pretty big shifts happen. I mean, I think about Saturn moving into Pisces, I think about Pluto moving into Aquarius. I mean, we have some big things happening that I can't help but imagine how it's impacting not so much maybe the personal day to day, but like the collective. And so this idea that a lot we seem to be having a collective identity crisis in the online entrepreneurial space. I think, number one, we're right on time for it. Number two, it's likely a necessary part of the growth and evolution that needs to happen.
Mary: I feel that so much. To me it looks like an energetic rebalancing. You and I both really kicked off the businesses we have today in 2016. And in that time frame there was this celebrity entrepreneur culture where they had sort of a monopoly on the audiences and the followers and the size counts of things. I think we're hitting an era where it's just not sustainable. And I'm seeing so many people who have smaller lists. You've been such a great supporter of an ethos I've had about small and mighty lists and really championing that for people. And I see people and I work with them and they're having really big impact in a very localized, concentrated way. And I see audiences wanting a deeper connection with the people that they subscribe to and follow. And you don't really get that when you're just sort of in that massive follower pool. And I'm not saying that that's going to go away or anything, I don't see that happening. But the relationship we have with it is definitely changing. It's not the end all be all of the information source and training. There are people who are really helping other people. I mean, you and I both have some mutual friends in business who have helped us with our work and it's not been like the big flashy thing, but it's had really great impact with long lasting results too, which is really what we're after. For me being a systems coach, my goal is always that work that we do has a longer tail. It has a long lasting impact. It's not the flash in the pan solution. And I'm finding more and more people are starting to realize that they can't grow with these super fast, quick, sort of dopamine hit solutions.
Lee: Yes. So I so agree with you. And I remember in 2016 when I was first starting my business and trying to research and figure out where to go and who to follow, and all I could find were these big name, like, quote unquote, guru types, right? They were everywhere. It was ubiquitous. And now in 2023, I actually find personally, I now move away from that. I'm not really interested in engaging in these huge guru focused spaces. I want small, I want intimate. I want to feel connected to the person behind the program. And that's something I talk about a lot. And even people who are considering working with me get to know me, make sure that we are aligned, that our values are connected before you even consider investing in any of my programs, because that matters. That's important to me. And so if that's how I practice, that's how I would expect my clients to practice as well.
Mary: Yeah, it's so important. You asked me before we hit record what I wanted people to know. My whole philosophy walking into 2023 has been giving people the gift of time. I know because I work in the human design system with my clients, getting to know themselves as a system. And it's not a human design program, but we incorporate it in there because it's another data point, and most of us, based on our charts alone, need more time to come to decisions. Everything is very emotionally based. And, I mean, this has been a problem not just in the entrepreneurial community, but even just in a standard corporate career, sort of. Emotions aren't included in the workplace. And I'm not talking manufactured emotions when it comes to marketing materials either, but genuinely feeling good about what it is you're doing, not feeling like you've been pressured or rushed, not feeling like not being gaslit, to think that if you don't do this thing, somehow you're a loser, you're not going to get the result. But to actually get to a point where you feel in harmony with the vision you originally had for what it was you wanted to achieve, and because coaching really is a space where we're supposed to be in service of our clients, helping them reach these results, you're dealing with your emotions. You're dealing with their emotions. And people need time. I've started playing with these longer sales cycles, which to some people seem real kooky, but to me, they feel right. I'm in an emotional authority in human design, and I need time to ride the entire wave. And I got to tell you, my wave is a long one. It takes me a long time. Most of us are that authority type. It's important that we make space for it in the world. And when you look at and I've been trained in traditional sales tactics, being in a coaching zone where you're basically having a very structured sales conversation and it's designed to squeeze people into making a decision at the end and it's meant to override the emotional journey of making that choice. And I've switched into high ticket offers in the past couple of years and I like it, my clients like it, who commit to it, they're all in. But that is a big decision and I don't take the energy of money lightly. So I feel like it's really important that somebody is given the space and the grace to come to that decision naturally. And if it's not this year, then it's the next year. And if it's still not the next year, there's something else going on there and it's like, well, maybe they're better served in a different capacity and I wouldn't want to shove a square peg into a round hole for twelve months. That's uncomfortable for everybody. So the intimate environment, I completely agree with you. I think we're all craving that.
Lee: I love your approach to decision making, especially around sales, because you're right, we have been taught that we need scarcity, we need urgency, we need to push, we need to go for the sale, we need to do it now or else dot, dot, dot, we lose it. And what I have found personally is that my people need a long time to warm up to making a decision. In fact, I'm about halfway through a cohort of From Couch to Coach, which is my small group program. And there's a woman in there who I've been speaking to for years, like she's been emailing me on my radar, in my world for three or four years. And this is the first time that she has chosen to work with me in a paid capacity. And I know that a lot of my clients are like that, some of them may just need a few weeks, but some of them need a really long time. And so I think it's helpful for me to remember that this is a long game and that the seeds that I plant today may not bloom for 6 months, 12 months, 24 months, who knows? But they're still there, they're underground, they're doing their thing. And so it's my job to water, to tend to fertilize, to make sure that the soil is right for that sprout to make its way through.
Mary: Yeah, I think it's also so important. The energetics of ethics and business, I think, are really starting to rise to the surface. We're starting to see it. And there are a lot of people who will be ready in a year or two years, but emotionally or financially, one or the other, er, combo, it's not the time right now. And I cannot take money from somebody or ask them to take out a loan or to figure out something that they're not comfortable with. Now what somebody chooses to do in their wallet is their own business. That's like the number one rule of sales. So that I'm not getting involved in. But I do hear from people, they're like, “Oh, I wish I could do that this year,” because I just closed the cart and so I really wish I could have done that this year, but it's not the time. Because if you then are in fight or flight because you don't know how you're going to pay for all your bills this month, we have a huge problem. And now we're not solving business problems. We're just solving for a created trauma, really. I cannot do that.
Lee: I'm with you because not all money is good money, honestly. And if it's going to cause pain and hardship for another person, again, I don't want to get involved in their decision making. I'm not interested in being in their wallet. But if I know that this is something that they are not prepared to do financially, emotionally, energetically, I don't want to contribute to that, then I will take the offer off the table and we'll say we'll come back to this when the timing is right.
Mary: Yeah. So with you.
Lee: So I want to talk to you about this idea of time. Needing time, not just for sales, but just in general, needing time to take action in our businesses to make decisions and how systems can support that. Because that's really like again, with your background as a librarian and your experience with information management when it comes to systems, I mean, you've got it down. And so I would love to just kind of hear your perspective on how systems can support coaches in particular with not just running their business but really like reclaiming some of that time that they're looking for.
Mary: I love that you ask that in the context of time that's so brilliant because I think in the end it really does come down to time. The sort of energetic pattern that I see when people come into this space, people get a little fixated about how they're going to organize their calendar or how they're going to get through their email better. And it really is a function of time because we're seeking more time to have spaciousness for ourselves and for our families or whatever. The thing is that's important to us on any given moment. And I really feel like systems is partly the things that happens in your business, but mostly about you as an individual. One of my oldest clients, she coined this phrase and she said she was one of my first pilot students way back in the day and she was like, “Oh, this totally makes sense now it's because your first system is you.” And I think that's really where we operate from and there's a lot of other systems and operations and process coaches out there and they do really amazing things. And I think the thing that is different about what I do is it's really focused on at the core, you as an individual, you are your first system, you are the primary system. And if you as a system are not functioning, no other system is really going to work very well. So you can pick up somebody else's recommendations and formulas. You can pick up mine too. But if you as a system are in a dark night of the soul or needing some kind of extra personal assistance, then the software is still going to feel wrong, the process is still going to feel clunky. And so our goal is really, how do we get into flow in a very harmonious ecosystem? And I've tried to come up with all kinds of analogy. I love analogies, you know that. And I've tried to come up with so many over the years. And the first one that came in was I call it digital feng shui, which I still use not as much anymore, but because I come from a tech world. I love technology, and I don't know why, but my brain just computes it well. And in the early days, one of the big things I heard from people was if I close the lid on my laptop or just look in that screen, I don't know, it's like all in there somewhere and I'm out here and I just don't get it. And there just wasn't any connection. And I still honestly, to this day can't remember exactly the moment or how it happened, but I remember looking at traditional feng shui and looking at the Westernized Bhagwa map and it's drawn in a grid and the sectors were all laid out. And the first one that popped out was the fame and reputation section. And I immediately was like, that's like marketing. And then I looked at the rest of it and I was like, oh, these are all business sectors. And I was like, okay, well, if we talk about building a house, or we're going to do feng shui on our house, how would we do that in our businesses? And it's become a nice framework that helps people really sort of anchor in this year's incubator, we're really thinking of it in terms of an HGTV show. Like we're building a house. We're in month one right now because we start in April and we're recording in April, and we're literally just looking at the plot of land. We haven't even poured foundation yet. And so we're just going piece by piece. Because if you really think about a structure, so we all know how buildings function, you can't decorate it and make it look all pretty and invite people in if the whole thing is falling down or if you've got leaks in your roof or like those fake houses where the plumbing actually doesn't work. We actually have to install these things. So we operate within systems everywhere in our world, infrastructure is all around us. And learning to identify that inside of your business for your business journey, I feel like that is the difference between just sort of starting out and like, “Woohoo, let me see what happens,” all the way to like, “Okay, this is a real thing now. I actually have to build an entire functioning ecosystem of stuff that has to be able to communicate to each other. I have to be able to invite people in as guests, otherwise I can't serve them.” And it starts to change the way you look at the choices you make every day, especially during Black Friday, because. Software companies are so good at sending out these annual subscriptions. I have seen people buy so many things. Yeah. And my goal is really to help people not end up in that catch 22 where you feel real fancy because you bought the big whatever thing and you don't know what you're using it for, you don't know how to use it. And it turns out you also need like two other things in order to make it work well in your world. And then you're like what it actually costs, how much, and then you have to get into the pricing of your programs and your offers, and it turns out that you're really not covering that in the overhead. It's just like owning a house. Like if you purchase a home above market rate and you're paying on it and then it needs repairs. I see a lot of businesses operate like that, but they look real pretty if you were to take a magazine picture, they look real pretty.
Lee: Yes. That's why I love this metaphor you're using actually around building the house, because you can have a gorgeous house with all of the really nice architectural features and the crown molding inside and all of the details. But if you build that house on a weak foundation, if you have not taken the time to pour the slab and make sure that you are on solid footing, like, that house is not going, it's going to crumble, it's not going to last. And so this idea that you are your own system and you are your first system, to me feels very foundational. And to do that work and to get really clear on who you are, what your values are, what your vision is, and then create systems for you to support that and then build your business from there, that just makes so much sense. Mary, I really like that.
Mary: Thanks. It seems to be really helping people. If there's something I do well, it's analogous thinking and I try to pull them in whenever I can. I just feel like any good coach for you in your business should be kind of like that appraiser coming in. Who's really evaluating, is this a smart buy? Is this a smart buy? And the first thing that they'll do is they will assess the foundation. And it's even like in the way that you're assessed for home insurance in in taxes. You know, are you in a flood zone? Are you in a wildfire zone? Whatever. The thing is, like, everybody's business is going to have factors like that, like we do with buying a house in real life because we work in different industries and we help different kinds of audiences. And so that's just sort of like a natural part of being in the world. But how you make your decision and feel good about it is another thing. When I lived in Texas, I owned a home in Austin, and I looked at so many houses, so many houses, and there were some houses where I thought there were a couple where I thought that would be a great house, but one of them was kind of backed up to kind of like a steep hillside. And when rains come in Texas, it's real dry and then all of a sudden it's like a flood. And my appraiser was like, I just have to tell you, if it was me, this is what I see. And there was another house I actually made an offer on and then optioned out of it. And when the appraiser came in, it looked so pretty, he went into the roof and discovered that it had holes in the ridge beam because a huge hailstorm had come through years prior. And the person selling the home had taken the insurance money and didn't repair the roof. They took the money and then did something with it. There are things like that that happen in our businesses and we have to be able to assess them honestly and accurately and then make those critical choices about where do we spend our precious dollars when it comes to building. Yes, it would be really nice to say repaint, even though maybe we don't need to. But like, I really need to put on a new roof. Maybe this year I should focus on the roof.
Lee: And it's tricky because foundations and roofs are not the sexiest part of houses. We want the beautiful screened in porch. We want the lanai or whatever. Those are great. But yeah, if you've got cracks in your foundation or holes in your roof, then you're in trouble. And so part of it, too, is taking that strategic look at what do I need first? Where does my focus need to be? And then I'm curious because as I'm thinking about, all right, pulling all these systems in, operating my business, tell me how you see intuition playing into that. Because I know that intuition and spirituality is such a vital part of the work you do. How do you see that coming into play with systems work?
Mary: I find that it really has to do with that. You are your first system part. While you're walking around as coach, doing your thing, you're feeling things, you're envisioning things, all the time. I love how often I hear and see words being thrown around on podcasts or in interviews and somebody will say, “Oh yeah, the spreadsheet said all the blah blah blah, but my gut said do this and I did it. That was that idea that just shouldn't have worked. And it did. I took a big gamble, but I just knew in my heart it was right.” And we say these like there's evidence of it everywhere. And so we are operating very much through intuitive practice. Not everything is just because my metric said XYZ. And I think some of the best people we work with who help us, whether it's like our ad campaign managers or people who help us with copy or whatever, there's an intuitive gift that they have that they bring, and it's why we love working with them. They have a certain gift for things. And the best coaches, they see things in their clients. That's an intuitive aspect. And when it comes to systems, I think I just have an intuitive side around the unsexy parts. I don't know why, I just do. And somehow I'm able to help people either find the fun in it or finally make peace with that part of it. And that's what I bring. The clients who come into my world, my audience members, they are operating on a daily level where they consult their astrology forecasts and they're reading all the energy reports for the day or the week. They frequently base timing of decisions on those factors and they don't broadcast it to the world. It's just part of everyday life. And I feel like that deserves to be honored. I don't think you need to wear it on your sleeve and be like, “I'm going to be super woo woo, even though it has nothing to do with my business.” And you don't have to in order to feel good about operating in that way, but also you shouldn't feel ashamed of it or like you have to hide it or pretend like it's not happening. And I'm like, “No, it's happening, it's totally happening and we're going to let it happen here.” After being in this space for so long, building business and I just knew from other experiences I'd had that it's important that we have a space where like you and I are talking about the eclipse energy from yesterday and to have a space where you can come in and be like, “Y'all, I'm having a really hard day today and I think it's the eclipse.” That's the reason why. Maybe it's not, maybe it's not, honestly, but to be able to either joke about it or to just be able to say, this is where I'm at today, and everyone else is like, “I feel you, I feel you.”
Lee: Yeah, to be acknowledged, to be seen, to have it be normalized, that's pretty powerful. And that's why I love small communities in particular. We were talking about that too. About that when you can really connect to the person, not just the person behind the program, but the other people in the program with you to build that community. I think that is so important. My goodness. I could sit here and talk to you all day. I wish I could sit here and talk to you all day. I think this just means we have to have you back on the show in the future because this has been a wonderful conversation and I have no doubt that people are going to want to have their own conversations with you. So what's the best way to connect with you? Where can we find you?
Mary: Well, you can find me over on my website at sensiblewoo.com. And if you go to the upper right corner, there's a little link that says Free Library. So you can hop in there and poke around. I'm regularly updating it. It'll lead you to my YouTube channel, which has turned into a fun place this year. So I've been recording a lot of things in there. I started recording a monthly energy report for entrepreneurs. That's like growing quick little legs, surprised me and that's been a lot of fun. So I'm playing around with that a lot. I send a weekly newsletter so you can also subscribe. The newsletter has been a lot of fun. The latest iteration, which has been running for a few months now, every week I send a weekly reading. So you can pick from reading one or reading two. And it's a newsletter, like exclusive so people can come in there and it's all through the eyes of I am a business owner. It's not all of life. It's like no through the lens of business. Here are the things. My goal is to have as much fun with it as possible. I've gone through the dip of being super serious about business and this is all of me too. So hopefully I give evidence that you can have fun with it.
Lee: You absolutely do. I look forward to your newsletter every week, actually. I'm always excited when it hits my inbox. So definitely head to sensiblewoo.com and subscribe for that. Check out the free library. We will have links in the show notes as well. And I'm sure we'll have you back in the future. But until then, Mary, thank you so much for being a guest on the show today.
Mary: Thanks for having me. I'm so glad we got to talk on here. You've been a generous guest in my summits in the past and I just we we could probably sit and talk for hours.
Lee: I know. Well, we'll have to do that. That would be a lot of fun. Until next time.
So I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. Yet again, I had one of those moments where I hit the stop recording button. And I looked at the clock and I could not believe that we had been speaking for almost 40 minutes that just flew by for me. I hope it did for you. And I know that you are going to want to learn much more about Mary and what she offers over at sensiblewoo.com. Definitely check out that free library. It is a treasure trove of wonderful resources, you'll want to sign up for her newsletter, there's always really valuable information in there things that you can take immediate action on. And Mary is just a delight. So she's definitely someone you are going to want to get to know and connect with. So head on over to sensiblewoo.com to learn more.
I hope wherever in the world you are you are having a wonderful week, and that you will join me next week for another episode of the Coach with Clarity podcast. The best way to make that happen is to subscribe to the show or follow the show. Different podcast platforms use different words, but I guarantee wherever you're listening, there should be an option to follow or like or subscribe. Go ahead and do that and then the Coach with Clarity podcast will show up in your feed automatically every week. So join me next Monday for our next show. And until then, my name is Lee Chaix McDonough reminding you to get out there and show the world what it means to be a Coach with Clarity.