Lauren Nicole Peters | Time Management, Creativity, and Bringing Joy To Work

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And now your host, Joel, Mark Harris Harris

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, this is your host Joel Mark Harris. Today we are interviewing a good friend of mine, Lauren Nicole Peters, who is a coach that focuses on female entrepreneurs. She has a new masterclass and course out, and it’s ‘Yourperfectweek.com. She focuses on time management productivity and bringing joy into the workplace.

And I think we talk a lot about all these, but specifically what most fascinates me is the joy aspect. Because a lot of entrepreneurs, they have a tough time and they feel like it should be a slog. And that it’s always hustling and working 24/7 and there’s not a lot of joy in the actual process of building your business but Lauren teaches us how you can do that, how you can still make a lot of money, how you can have a great business, but also do it while having fun, which is really why we do it in the first place.

Right. so a great conversation. Lauren is such an amazing coach. She teaches me so much every time I talked to her. I learn a ton, so I know you will enjoy this episode.

Lauren, thank you so much for being on the show today. I know we’ve had this, podcast in the works for some time now so it’s amazing to actually get it, get it going and into fruition.

Lauren: Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Joel: I want to start, you’ve created this masterclass and these courses. Can you tell us a little bit about them and why did you decide to create them?

Lauren: Yes. So I am running a course all year. This is going to be my signature course. It’s mainly for female entrepreneurs who need help shifting their outlook and their relationship around time and how time works in their life. We hit on topics such as boundaries, productivity, planning a week. Planning their business and how that works with how they need to plan their self-care as well.

My main focus is helping female entrepreneurs in that world. The secondary thing that I offer, and this is the free stuff, the monthly masterclasses. I wanted a way for women to come in and experience this type of work. If they were thinking about joining the course at any point, they can experience the monthly masterclasses for free in my private community.

Last month’s masterclass was around planning for 2021 and clearing a lot of what happened in 2020. Because I could see that a lot of my clients were already bringing in the energies and the thoughts of 2020 into their 2021. And I was like, Oh no, we’re not doing that. So that was December’s masterclass and January’s masterclass.

We’re actually in the middle of it right now. It’s a three-day long one. Accessing the energy of joy and applying that back into our businesses. A lot of my clients were going into 2021, really excited and then dropping back down into doubt and fear and resentment and some hopelessness around their business.

And that’s normal. And. It’s normal every now and then, but it’s not normal as a default state. So this masterclass is helping the women get back up into that new, new energy. And we’ve got a schedule for the next three months of amazing masterclasses as well.

Joel: That’s super exciting. You talk about joy and joy doesn’t come up in our depression entrepreneurship very often. It seems to me there’s that mentality of the hustle there, side hustle. I think Gary Vee was the first to really make that popular and I guess the whole point of the hustle is it it’s not supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be grinding.

It’s supposed to be difficult and hard, but you seem to take a very different approach that what you do should be joyful. Why, why is joy so important then? How do you manifest that?

Lauren: That’s a great question. So for me, this is more of a personal virtue. Not necessarily something that I think all entrepreneurs need to do for their life, but for the women, who are attracted to what I talk about and how I live my life.

The way that I need to live my life is I need to find joy. I need to follow my desires and I have had so much pushback around that virtue. I have a business partner. I’ve had business partners in the past where joy wasn’t necessarily a virtue that was shared. And there were oftentimes where I would have conversations with my business partners and even some peers and mentors where they were like, yeah, it’s not going to feel joyful all the time.

And I know that I don’t try to make it joyful all the time. But I do want to honor. And I honor in this work that when I access energies of joy when I access this childlike excitement for what I’m working on, things just fall into place. A lot easier things, things flow a lot more. I have more space in my life and from the outside.

Because I’m an entrepreneur, you could look at my story and say, wow, you know, it’s taking you a long time to really get to the place that you want to get to. That’s what I think inside of my own head sometimes, but I would rather take longer to experience quote, unquote, success, as long as I’m doing it in a way that feels good for me, there are always days where I wake up and I feel like crap. And I have my processes to get back into my joy.

Joel: Can you talk about those processes? Because I think that’d be very helpful.

Lauren: Yeah, man, this is chicken me. A long time to figure out how to do, because we’re all built differently, right? Like the way that I process feeling like crap and feeling better is going to be a lot different from other people.

But hopefully me sharing this can help somebody engineer their own way. And I use the word engineer because I really am that person particular about how different each one of us is. And that’s why when I’m helping a woman plan her perfect week, we engineer how that needs to be based off of who she is.

So. Let’s pretend I just woke up in my bed and I’m feeling like crap. And some days, you know, when I’m in the dream world, I’m very active in my dreams. I lucid dream every single night. I’m just one of those people. And so depending on the dream, I can wake up feeling so sad or so happy. And my dreams really determined a lot of the days how I wake up.

So when I wake up, what I do is I process out a lot of what that dream was. I sometimes I’ll do prayer. Sometimes I’ll do affirmations and sometimes I’ll just be with that feeling. So if I have a feeling of sadness or a little bit of. Non-motivated feeling I’ll just be with that. And then I’ll let that process for a certain amount of time.

The biggest thing here is that I trust myself that I’m not wasting time when I’m doing this process because the second I start to resist it is when I start to waste time. so I let myself process that stuff pretty naturally. And it doesn’t normally take any longer than five to 10 minutes for me. And then what happens is my brain and my body starts to wake up.

And starts to come online. And then I remember some really powerful affirmations that are relevant to me right now. And then I remember what I’ve got on my plans for today. And half the time I’ll have a very strict plan and my calendar and the other half of the time, I won’t have anything planned because to me that’s a plan too.

and then by the time I get up out of bed, I get up when I feel clear, And of course there are days where I get up and I might not feel as clear, but those days are less and less as I continue to do these processes for myself. The biggest theme here, the biggest theme in your question, and in the answer to that is self-trust and it takes a while.

It’s a process to learn how to trust yourself when you’re not feeling so good. And to trust yourself that you’ve got the tools and that. You know, spiritually, you are given the tools to be able to process a bad moment and turn it into a good one. I hope that makes sense.

Joel: Yeah, no, totally. Something that really resonated with me was the fact that you, you know, you’re not wasting time by doing this, that you know, for me.

And I’m sure like for a lot of people out there, there’s so much stuff on your to-do list and. Just to close your eyes, be with yourself for a little bit. That for me, it’s incredibly hard because I’m always like, Oh, I’m wasting time. This is not what I should be doing and I should be doing, you know, XYZ and so I think it’s really important that, that self-trust, Is, is incredible. And to, to know that this is what you should be doing this moment. can you, moving, I guess, on to productivity, can you tell us a little bit about what challenges you see for other entrepreneurs and how to overcome them?

Lauren: Yeah. The biggest one, I was doing a podcast yesterday and they, the woman asked me that famous question at the end. Like if there was one thing you could leave our listeners with, and I’ll just state that right now, because it needs to be said when thinking about productivity and getting things done and working towards the vision that you have as an entrepreneur, there’s this thing that we do.

When things don’t seem to be working in our favors, we automatically make ourselves wrong for it. So one of the biggest challenges I notice is us and including me, making ourselves wrong, when something looks like it’s not going the way we want it to. And so I have an outlook on all of this is that when we make ourselves wrong, I don’t want us to do that, but it can.

It doesn’t need to be a moment where we’re like, I don’t know what to do. We can use it as a moment where it’s an indicator that we might be trying to accomplish something in a way that’s not natural to us. And so what I left people with yesterday on that podcast was don’t make yourself wrong for it.

Just understand that for some things you might not yet have a manual for how you need to do it. And so it really allows us to shift our perspective to there’s something wrong with me. I’m not doing this wrong, I’m wrong. I need to figure out a way. And if I don’t then it’s existentially worse than what I just said.

You know? No, that the other side of this perspective is that you are figuring out how you need to do it. You are built in a certain way, and if it’s not working for you in this moment, either one, you need to keep being consistent at it. And wait until you get the results you want, or number two, pivot and approach your challenge in a very different way based off of how you would do it.

Not necessarily how you think someone else would do it, because I know that you know, this, Joel, we’ve talked about this before. Like just because another entrepreneur has shown success in a certain approach does not mean that we are going to get that same success with that same approach.

Joel: Hmm, I think that’s super powerful. So how does one figure out their own path? Because it’s, it’s hard because all we have are these huge examples of successful entrepreneurs who have done this or that. How does one know what path that they should follow and, and really be certain that this is the place that they should be.

Lauren: Yeah. And the big wide world of entrepreneurship I want to honor, and I highly respect those, those people that you’re mentioning. Gary V. Grant Cardone, you know, trying to think of some amazing women entrepreneurs out there. And there are plenty. And everybody listening to this, I know that, you know, this. They created success in a way that worked for them. And they had to pivot so many times to get it to work. That is just the journey when you choose entrepreneurship.

So that is good. It is no different for you. You are no different. These are normal people who work their booties off to get to the top, the quote unquote, top, right? Is that even the kind of top we want? That’s a good question. But at the end of the day, you’re asking how. How do we figure out our own way?

First of all, it’s to know that this entire process is what we’re saying yes to. We’re not saying yes to the outcome. If you prioritize saying yes to the outcome, rather than the process, then that’s just going to make for a really stressful journey. So number one: fall in love with the process that you said yes to in entrepreneurship.

Number two, be really committed to getting to know yourself. One of the biggest things that I love to talk to my clients about is like, who are you really? Who are you really like? Who are you beneath? These marketing funnels? Who are you beneath the Facebook Lives? And is this, is this actually working for you?

Lauren: Sorry. I remember what I was talking about. Okay. let me make my screen bigger. Okay. So I asked them, who are you? Who are you really? Who are you beneath the marketing funnels? Who are you beneath the Facebook lives? Like, is this something that you actually want to be doing?

Is this working for you? And if it’s not working for you, then let’s figure out a different way to do it. It’s not like we don’t need to start at the business level. Like, what are all the things I need to do to make this work? I start at the human level, the soul level. Who are you? And how do you need to do things?

To make everything in front of you flourish. And so, like I said, the first thing is to just remember that you are here to fall in love with the process. And number two, you are here to know yourself and trust yourself. So get to know who you are, how you need to do things and trust yourself and the way that you process things outside of you, inside of you and just, you know, be committed to that journey.

Joel: I want to talk about your process because you started out, you’ve got, I think you’ve got a super interesting journey that a lot of people can learn something from you started out designing cell phones, if I believe, and then moving into the app space and tech, before really jumping into coaching. Can you talk a little bit about how you started and the journey along the way?

Lauren: Oh, my gosh, you have such good questions, Joel. So I love that you remember that about me. That’s so cool. Okay. So I graduated in 2009 with an undergrad in a major called industrial design for anyone who doesn’t know what that is, it is the aesthetic and the ergonomic design of how people. Use and perceive and enjoy products, physical products.

So phones, medical equipment, toys, furniture, fashion, think of anything that’s physical, right. But industrial design over the years has transformed into being able to design for the digital world as well. And that’s more called interaction design or experience design. And then when you go higher at a business level, And a customer experience level it’s called service design.

and as you can see, there’s just little different pockets of the design world that I’ve always loved and been a part of. So my first. My first contract job slash internship. I was working at Vtech T and T in Hong Kong, designing phones. And these are, these are actually landline phones.

Joel: Wow.

Lauren: Yeah, you could still, I go to Walmart and see a phone that I use.

Oh, wow. I think that’s really cool. Normally family, the product life cycle of like a product will only last three to six years on a shelf and then they get rid of it. But this one has been like, 12 years still living. Super cool. So, at some point in the design world, I realized I’m designing products that are ultimately going to end up in a landfill and, well, that’s fine for some designers.

It just wasn’t fine for me. I didn’t want to contribute to creating crap. You know, like this stuff someday is not going to be used. Where is it going to end up? I found a common denominator in all of the stuff that I’ve always loved to do. And in industrial design, there’s an area in that world where they call market research or customer research or design research.

And I loved it. I loved going into people’s homes, workplaces asking them questions about what was working, what was not working with their life and really helping them find and design solutions that would make their life and their wellbeing so much better. So with that, I left the design world. I even went into the ad agency world and did communications design experience design for awhile.

Got a lot of good experience, but I left that world and I’m like, at the end of the day, I love helping people. And I love helping people solve problems to make their lives and their businesses better. So six years ago I left the corporate world and I went into coaching. And since then, I’ve balanced my time between life coaching, business, coaching, branding strategy.

And. Now today I work primarily with female entrepreneurs to help them design kind of engineer, who they are, engineer their schedules engineer, their time, as well as their business plans at the same time.

Joel: Can you talk a little bit about your boss that you had that? Because I think this is a super fascinating and probably horrifying story for you, but I think it’s one that my listeners will.

Probably have some sort of aspect of it resonate with them. And that’s how your boss used to, force you, I suppose, is the word forced you to text him every day at nine, am your schedule in 15 minutes increments and what you learned from that?

Lauren: Oh, my goodness. So I’ll go back in time a little further than that.

So one of the things I’ve always been good at is time management. And I realized that in college, I, I had back to back studios and design school and design school. They are ruthless with the amount of projects they have. You do. Like they don’t care that you’ve got 10 other classes in 10 other projects and 10 other deadlines.

It doesn’t matter. But what I would notice is how stressed out everyone else was around me and like how they’re like, I just can’t get this done. I don’t know what I’m going to have time. Blah, blah. And I was like, I just, I didn’t get it. I’d wake up. I’d work on homework a little bit. I’d go to the cafe, hang out with some friends, go back home.

If I felt like working on homework, I do a little bit more of it. Then I go out, I read a book that touched on my homework again. Then a week later, I realized my thing is due in an hour, I’ve got like 15 more minutes to work on. It might as well finish it up. Right. I finished it. I turned it in, get an a, I realized after college I’m like, what I was doing was not normal. It was not the norm.

Joel: I was going to say, I wish I had that. I wish I could do that for sure, but I’m definitely on the other spectrum. So, super interesting listening to you. Talk about it.

Lauren: Yeah. However, I’m not the same when it comes to writing papers and taking like standardized tests. I’m not that kind of person. I’ve never been that kind of person, but when it comes to creativity and projects, this is one of the reasons why I went to design schools because design school was made for the way I was built. And if I were to go and get an MBA or become a doctor. The way that school was made was not for me. It wasn’t, I would have struggled the whole time and well, I would probably be a great doctor.

I wasn’t willing to go through that kind of education that I would feel like I would be pushing a Boulder up a Hill the whole time, you know, so I realized after grad school, while there’s something really special here in the way that I manage my time and the way that I trust that things will get done.

So I paid attention to that. fast forward, jeez, seven years I enter into a company in an executive position and the CEO of the company, very rigid personality. in many ways he requested. And I guess at the expense of my salary and my position at the company, he demanded that I, that every morning I texted him before 9:00 AM.

What my schedule was from 9:00 AM to 7:00 PM. And every one of my team, which at the time was about five people. He wanted me to text him 15-minute increments of everything that we were doing throughout the day. And when I first heard him say this, I’m like, you are absolutely insane. This is impossible, but I did it.

I figured out how to do it. And I made it happen for, you know, I don’t know, six months it’s kind of blurry. but I made it happen. It didn’t mean he was happy. You know, he would find several places in the schedule where he’s like, I don’t want you to work on that, change this. And then it would change the whole day.

And it’s just, you know, I got a bootcamp in learning about timing. And focus and tracking people and tracking performance of people and tracking businesses performance, and watching us lose money with how inefficient we were being with our tracking of performance. I’m sure you can figure out what’s going on right now.

When I left this company, I looked back and I was like, wow, I was good at time management before, but now I understand what works and what does it frickin work and what works. And what does it work from a human perspective, but also from a team perspective, a resources perspective and a business success perspective.

So while that time of my life was very challenging, very rewarding in some ways, and also felt like hell on some days in hindsight, I’m really glad I went through it because you know, I can look at anybody’s schedule in anyone’s business plan right now and tell you exactly why it’s not working. As it relates to who they are as a person.

Joel: Yeah. There’s so many things we could go over. I think what I want to talk about is so for a company, right, that was trying to track every little thing and, and just failing at it. What are some takeaways that, that you learned and how that, how thing, how, I guess people companies can do things differently.

Lauren: Well, it depends first on, who’s listening to this episode, right? Do you have a business that it’s just you and an assistant, maybe you’re you got $150,000 in revenue per year. Your take home might not be that much, or are you a seven figure business owner? Your take home is a lot more comfortable or you eight figures, right?

Like you just got to ask yourself where you are in your business, because the larger, the business gets generally the more you have to track. Right? So just larger themes that I had as a takeaway is that number one, simplicity is always best. And if you, as a business owner recognizes that simplicity is not a part of your systems and not a part of your values and not a part of your business, then find someone get help so that they can get you out of that forest and into.

A world of simplicity because things work better when they’re simple, but simplicity is not created by accident. Simplicity must be created intentionally. So it’s almost like we’ve got to build our businesses with a little bit of chaos and allow that to happen and grow. But at some point, we have to pull back and recreate a more simple and more, more useful structure to what our businesses.

Have turned into, so that’s the biggest one, the secondary one, the secondary theme that I would ask entrepreneurs to pay attention to is not just simplicity, but also dollars also. Like where are you putting your money? Where and how is that relating to how you’re using your time? Right. A lot of people say time equals money.

I don’t say that too often. It’s a fact, right? Like if you’re spending too much time on your emails when an assistant could be going through your emails with templates in a fraction of the time, that’s always going to save you more money and allow you to put more of your focus into higher-paying hours.

Right. That’s always going to be a fact, but just. Be really intimate with your money and where your money’s going and how much time you’re spending on certain things. And if you can take a little dip in profit temporarily to train someone to do things that you should not be doing in the long run. It’s going to pay off.

Joel: So before, the podcast, we were talking about creativity and how important it is, you know, I think this is also probably related to the chaos of business, but there are things that. Seem like they’re not a good use of time. And I think creativity is one. Chaos may be another, but do we schedule, or should you schedule times where you just can, you can explore that creativity or explore the chaos and not feel so rigid and so that you, like you have to do these things.

Lauren: Yeah. I think a lot of your listeners, we talked about this are the creator types. Content creators, visionaries, people who, who don’t mind getting a lot of the work done, but who need a lot of time for creative space, whether you’re working with your hands or whether you’re thinking about something. Right?

So for those types of people, this is tough to think about it this way. For me, what I really need to get into a creative groove. Sometimes I need to not schedule something. For three days straight now for the entrepreneur type, who is like, I’m getting so much stuff done. They’re like, there’s no way I’m taking three days to not schedule anything, especially if you’ve got kids, especially if you’ve got, you know, sports, fill in the blank for all the other things that you probably have got to do.

But engineer this in a way you need to. One thing I recommend is just it’s it’s not going to be easy at first because it is against, it is completely against the way that we like to think things are going to be efficient in our business by like constantly working on them, going down the to-do list that never-ending to do list and getting things done.

One by one that is not sustainable, that will not get you to have the space to think creatively, to think of better solutions. And so whoever’s listening to this. I would ask you if you think something is a waste of time first, I just want to challenge you and say, are you looking at it wrong? Could there be a different way that you’re looking at this, this waste of time activity?

It could this activity such as taking three days of space. Be an actual benefit to you, your, your self-nourishment, your brainpower and your business in the long run. And like I mentioned a minute ago when we were talking about simplicity, like simplicity doesn’t happen by accident, but creativity.

Doesn’t always happen by accident either. Like we have to create, we have to do the hard thing goal against our better judgment and schedule out the time we got to do the hard thing and we got to do the thing that doesn’t make sense sometimes. And we got to make the time for our brain and our body to just be an intuitive space being creative space.

And so, you know, you don’t have to. You don’t have to create three hours every week. You can do three hours or three days every week, three days per month, you could start there. but it for the creator type it is required.

Joel: And how so first off, I think such good advice there such so many amazing nuggets that people can take away.

So thank you so much for sharing. and then, so I want to talk about your creative process. And specifically, as you know, we have been, we’ve connected through Facebook a lot of times, and I always see you’re creating you, videos, new content on. you know, social media, primarily on Facebook. So that’s where I see you.

How do you think about that and how do you think that helps with, with building any sort of business or entrepreneurship in general?

Lauren: My process, well, Jeez. I have a very intimate relationship with my creative process. And one, one of the things is that I don’t expect anyone to understand whatsoever why I do what I do.

So here’s how I’ll try to explain this. I’ve got a big memo pad over here that has my big income goal for the year. What things I offer in my business that could contribute to that income. Right. I’m not rigid about how it needs to come in or when, but I know when I’m launching my programs, I know when I’m launching my masterclasses, I know that.

I want five women on my team by the end of the year. So you can start to see, like, if I have any compass whatsoever for my creative process, it’s these little milestones, these little anchors throughout my year. So if I have a certain income goal for the year, I don’t, for me personally, I don’t need to make any chunk of that by any time.

I just know that when I’m launching. Four times this year, my course, I want 18 women in that course. Every time let’s say one month I’ll get 12 women in another month. I might have 25 women. I’ll cap it at 25, but on average I want 18. This is the thing that is guiding me weekly and guiding me daily. But this is what I needed.

Right? Like there were other ways and I was telling you this before our podcast. I was trying before, like, Oh, I’m going to be the 20 K per month entrepreneur, 20 K per month. I’m going to do it right now. That kind of goal doesn’t work for me. It creates, I create pressure on myself. Every month when I have that kind of goal, that kind of goal is not wrong.

It just doesn’t work for me right now. So what I’m trying this year and what I actually really truly believe is going to work for me and happen, right. I have to have a belief and a self-trust there that I am going to launch four times this year. I’m going to fill my program with amazing women. I am going to do a masterclass every month, whether I’m feeling it or not.

So with that. With that plan over there. That’s my compass. Now, if we go and look at my weeks, you know, you said, I see you on Facebook. I see you talking about your masterclass, talking about your posts and your content, talking about your course, what those are led by are the fact that I’ve got a course launching on February 1st.

That’s my priority. Right? I prioritize what I want to talk about in public. Most of what you’ll see me talking about is my course and content geared towards that course. I have a secondary priority, which is my masterclass. You will hear me talking about my masterclass one week before I launch it. And while I’m doing it, that’s about it.

So that’s my intention there. Now, along the lines of the makeup. So for anyone who doesn’t know my brand yet, you know, even though I do planning and productivity, I love helping women glow and feel beautiful and radiant. So I also sell makeup as well as part of my brand. It’s more like a tertiary thing.

I don’t really push it. It’s just something I love it’s me, you know? So I’ve got that as one of my tertiary equals. So what that means is I want to do a makeup class once a month in my Facebook group. Now that isn’t as prioritized as my course launches. So, you know, if there’s one month where I can’t do a makeup class, I’ll consider pushing it aside for a masterclass or something like that.

So you’re getting an inside look at how I think about like what I’m going to do and when, but normally. When you see me posting online, that’s what I’m thinking about. What’s the primary thing I need to focus on here. What’s the secondary and the tertiary. And normally I don’t have any more than three when it comes to this business because I have another business and that business is primary in and of itself. I’m working on that all the time as well. so does that answer your question?

Joel: Yes it does very thoroughly. Thank you. so you focus primarily on women. Is there a difference between men entrepreneurs and female entrepreneurs?

Lauren: Yes. And I’m going to get my hand slapped for this one from a lot of people.

Joel: That’s your space here?

Lauren: You know, even if it’s a dangerous space, I’ll be like, bring it, bring it back. Yeah. yes and no, but mainly yes, in my world, because we are all capable of doing whatever we want, right. At the end of the day. What men can do. I know that women can do, if men put in a certain amount of energy, they can do what we do.

If we put in a certain amount of energy, we can do what they do. Right. And that’s a very binary perspective. I get that. So in my world, I work primarily with females because I found a little niche where a lot of the productivity systems out there were created. From a very masculine way of creating things.

And when I say masculine and feminine, I’m not talking about gender anymore, not talking about biological gender, I’m talking about energy. So. Inside of all of us, we have energies. We have more masculine energies, more feminine energies in how we express ourselves. Right. If we go and paint something, that’s a more feminine energy activity.

If we go and nurture our children, it’s a more feminine energy activity. If we go and chop some wood, if we go and kill an animal like in hunting. That’s a very masculine energy activity, right? You find women hunting, you find men caring for their children. That’s all I’m talking about when I say masculine and feminine energy here.

So when you, you go and look at modern productivity systems and ways of planning. It’s inherently masculine planning is inherently like a masculine activity. However, when I have seen women go in and plan their lives and plan their businesses, it’s almost like the masculine energy is all that’s present and the feminine energy and the feminine ways of supporting this type of planning just completely gets ignored.

So for me, you can’t have a strong masculine. Without a strong, feminine, masculine needs to be supported by feminine, feminine needs to be supported by masculine. You just need both of them. Right? And so I saw these women using these very masculine types of planning systems, but then ignoring their self-care ignoring the fact that you can’t control everything and you can’t know what is going to happen when it’s going to happen.

And so there’s this higher version of like a feminine energy trust. Trust in ourselves, trust in the universe. Trust in God that there’s a divine order here. There is a more feminine way of processing our emotions when something doesn’t get done in the way we want it to. So there’s this whole feminine energy world that needs to be included on the planning side when it comes to being.

A woman and men need this too, but I’m deciding to focus on women. Here’s the last thing I’ll say men are primarily like from a primal level, more built to go and hunt and women on a primal level are more built to gather. We are the child-bearing gender, right? So the way that our attention span and the way that we focus on things is very different, depending on a man and a woman, right?

Like a man is so good at what we call single focus awareness. One thing after the other one thing at a time when you’re in the car and your wife is trying to talk to you, and you’re just trying to get to the fricking destination. It’s like, please just stop talking to me. I’m like trying to get something done right now.

Joel, you’re laughing like crazy right now. All right. And then for women, you’ve got four kids running around and you’re focusing on something, but you also know what each of your four kids is doing, even though you can’t see them. That’s what we call diffuse awareness. So for women, the way that we pay attention to information.

In our world is very different from how men usually pay attention to information. And like I said, it’s not like women can’t be single-focused and men can’t be diffused awareness. It’s just more at the like primal level of our instincts. Right. So that said, The planning system that I have in my course for women really pays attention to the fact that we were built with more of a diffuse awareness at our natural state.

So when we are sitting at a computer and trying to single focus and get stuff done, one after the other, it can be very draining for a female. It could be very draining for a woman if she’s not also reinforcing the more feminine side of living at the same time in which all of my clients, when they come to me are not doing that.

Joel: That’s awesome. yeah, I think that kinda, I guess, because the workforce, a lot of it is, you know, Passed down through male domination. And I really do think that these feminine attributes are super important. how does especially males, but how does one cultivate those attributes when we are, so, you know, where we’re told to just, you know, focus on a single task and get this task done, and that’s all that you should focus on right away when there’s so much more that we should be aware of.

Lauren: So for females or males, I’m trying to, yeah.

Joel: I think for selfish reasons, for myself, a male where we’re not told to cultivate these feelings, we’re told that we need to get them done. We need to be highly productive. We need to cultivate these male attributes as you call them. but I think you bring a super good point that these female attributes are, you know, I think they’re.

As important in the males and, and, you know, in, men who are working in the workforce as they are with females who were working in the workforce. so hopefully that’s, does that kind of clarify

Lauren: things a little bit? Yeah. I’ll, I’ll try to answer. it’s harder for me to speak for males. Because I don’t live in a world where, you know, I’m on a primal level, I’m built to attack the thing to conquer the thing, to dominate the thing.

Right. and then again, if I were to answer that question, you know, I would need to know how the man was brought up. Right? Like, was the man brought up with a strong father figure who was like, this is how. I want to teach you how to be a man or was the man brought up from a very caring, nurturing mother figure who showed more of how to be an emotional man, right? I don’t know if I can answer your question as far as how to help men.

Joel:  You worked in the tech space, which is very male-dominated. So I think that a lot of those attributes were in the tech space. So how did you deal with that sort of perspective and trying to bring the feminine side to a very male-dominated industry?

Lauren: It’s a good question.  I brought masculine energy. I brought alpha masculine energy when I was in that world. And it was killing me so slowly. Right. I couldn’t take enough bubble baths to get me to feel good about any of that. Right. You get women who are like, I’m going to just go home and take a bubble bath and have a massage, but it’s just not fixing the exhaustion from showing up to work every day in masculine energy and feeling like I need to dominate the room.

That’s trying to dominate me. I’m going to show them how this is done. I’m going to make my place at the table. I honestly didn’t figure out how to start to express and embody feminine energy in that world until I almost left it. And I also think one of the reasons why I left it is because I didn’t fully know how to bring a powerful, feminine, balanced, Energy to the workplace and the place that I was working at didn’t really allow me to do that either.

It wouldn’t have allowed me and that’s essentially why I left. So I would say to anyone, any woman listening to this, like if you are around a more masculine domination type environment, It is possible to balance yourself with feminine energy and bring it to the table and have men respect you and have them work with you.

I see it everywhere. So what I would recommend is just go and find a woman or a mentor who you see actively doing that in the world. You know, I don’t know how Arianna Huffington, you know, she runs her own company similar women like that, Sarah Blakely, I don’t know how they run their businesses. I don’t know how they show up in their businesses, but I can imagine there is this beautiful, feminine way that she does go about her work. That if you’re interested in this, I would go and study. Awesome.

Joel: So I’m just going to ask a couple more questions and then we’ll wrap it up Lauren, but I mean, I’m very interested in knowing you’re such a great communicator. is that something that you have really worked on or is that something that’s been innate in? Just your personality?

Lauren: Ooh, thank you. I appreciate that. so define. Great communication. What does that mean to you?

Joel: It is succinct, but you’re a great storyteller.  It’s just really impactful whenever I listen to you, tell me that I’ll, you know, whenever I listened to you on Fayetteville, because again, Facebook, but you know, you deliver your message with such conviction, such energy, and it really always hits home.

So. I feel like that is something that you have practiced and, and it’s something that have you’ve really honed through the years, but it can also be something that you just has been with you since birth. So I’m just curious about where that comes from.

Lauren: Oh man. It’s so fun. Hearing your reflections. I think you’re right. I think you’re really spot on. There is a part of me that is just inherent in my heart. And that is being willing to have an opinion and being willing to be wrong about it. And so that allows me to be very strong. And when I do speak about things, I’m also someone who is, is really diplomatic. And when I say things and I actually do a lot of listening first, so if anyone’s listening to this and you, you’re a bad listener and you need to admit that about yourself, if you could become a better listener, it will allow you to have more conviction in the things you say.

I think because when you become a better listener, you’re inherently understanding the other people around you. And what would be useful to say rather than what you just feel like saying. I think about, what’s useful to say, being useful is a very important value of mine. The shadow side to that is that I am I’m I fear not being useful, but when I am in resource mode and feeling good about myself and good about the work I’m doing, what I say really hits home, like what you just said.

And the second part of all of that is yes, I have practiced. So we’re talking about the corporate world. We’re talking about, we’re talking about being at the head of boardrooms and dominating my way through. I have spent a lot of time on the masculine side, cultivating my masculine energy. And like using my voice to just like, make a point or tell someone that I don’t agree with what they just said and being willing to solve a problem through discussion rather than like beating someone down with it.

But years and years and years of being in a world that, you know, there was a lot of masculine energy and I got to practice what to say and when and what not to say. And when, and I think. When you’re working in a professional environment in order to be really effective with your word and your visions, you need to learn how to be succinct because people have low attention spans.

They don’t have time. They don’t have money to listen to 10 words. So figure out how to say what you want to say in three words. And that’s just survival of the fittest. I think, you know, very, very masculine perspective, but that’s needed so I’m used to consulting a lot of businesses and consulting a lot of people.

And when you consult people, you can’t confuse them with words, you have to get to the point.

Joel:  You were talking about being a great listener. And I associate that with a feminine trait. Would you agree?

Lauren: Yeah, being a great listener. That’s a great point. Joel, being a great listener. Has you receiving what’s happening in the room and if someone’s talking or showing you something, that’s the giving right. In my world the masculine energy is the giving energy and the feminine energy is the receiving energy.

So. I think it takes a lot for some people to practice being more on the receiving end.

Joel: Yeah, that was going to say it. So how does one practice that because that’s not something that is taught, you know, I think the more, again, the more masculine traits are easily taught or, you know, cutting people off or shouting or trying to dominate somebody, but actually listening and really taking, taking in.

What they have to say is, is not taught to how does, how does one cultivate that.

Lauren: I want to make sure everyone doesn’t associate masculine energy with dominating and taking and all of that. There can be very healthy side to masculine giving, which is good advice. Why is advice, helping somebody work through something.

And then the healthy version of listening is just listening and being willing to learn something new and being willing to be wrong about an opinion you might have. So that’s the more healthy side, right? Like masculine doesn’t always need to be seen as like an onion healthy taking, or like interrupting someone normal only when there’s a taking and an interrupting.

That’s just someone with control issues or insecurity issues who doesn’t. Want to be told that what they think is wrong or, Oh, but we’re not going to talk about all that. We’re talking about the healthy version of all of this. So, what your question was, how do people get into receiving mode and listen more?

Yeah. let’s see about that. So I started to talk about it a little bit. How can you be willing to be wrong about what, you know, there’s a little voice in all of our heads who is. Always assessing what’s going on around us. Who’s right. Who’s wrong. Hookah. We trust who could we not trust? Where should we go?

What color shirt should we wear? There’s always that thing going on in our head. And a lot of people are like, what thing? That, that thing, that thing that just asked, what thing, that thing in your head that’s always has something to say. if you’re interested, if anyone’s interested, there’s a beautiful book out there called the surrender experiment.

and his other book. Do you know what his other book is? No. Michael singer. I can see you. Okay. Well, we’ll have to look it up, but it’s the other book. It’s not the surrender experiment. It’s the other book that he wrote. It’s super popular. So amazing. It’s actually very short book, but that’ll talk about the little voice in your head.

Gotcha. If you can know about that voice in your head, who’s always on always listening, always judging E and you can observe that without knowing that that’s like. Everything, you can observe that and be like, Oh, okay. So I don’t have to say out loud what this thing is saying in my head. If you can be willing to be wrong about your opinions and allow another person to talk and actually be interested in the other person’s world and not so damn interested in your own world for a second, you could be the greatest leap listener this world has ever seen.

You could be the greatest listener. You could also be the greatest leader this world has ever seen because a good leader is a good listener.

Joel: Awesome. Well, I’m going to cap it off with my last stock question and this is something I ask all my guests and that is, do you, I know we were talking about books earlier, but do you have a favorite book or one that you like to gift?

Lauren: Wow. Geez. I’m looking at my wall with like,

Joel: it’s, it’s a challenging question. You don’t have to stop at one.

Lauren: You know what? I’m going to look up this book because this is probably going to be one of them. Let’s see. Michael singer, I think that’s his name. Y’all ready. Yeah. It’s called the untethered soul.

You can kind of understand by just the title of the book, what it’s going to be about being untethered. That is one book that I would recommend to all of your people, the untethered soul by Michael singer. Awesome.

Joel: Well, Lauren, thank you so much for being on the show today. I always learned so much listening from you and it’s.

Or is a great to, to interact with you, for people who want to live to learn more about your courses and your masterclass, where can they go?

Lauren: You can go to www.yourperfectweek.com. If you want an invitation to my course that I launched throughout the year. It’s. Www.yourperfectweek.com/invitation. And then you can also find me on Facebook with my full name, Lauren Nicole Peters, or on Instagram, Lauren dot Nicole dot Peters.

Joel: Well, thank you again and have a good day. Thank you for listening

Lauren: to publishing for profit,

Joel: please like, and

Lauren: subscribe on iTunes, Spotify or wherever. Yes.