Ep #218: Creating Demand

Hello empowered principals. Welcome to episode 218.

Welcome to The Empowered Principal Podcast, a not so typical educational resource that will teach you how to gain control of your career and get emotionally fit to lead your school and your life with joy by refining your most powerful tool, your mind. Here’s your host certified life coach Angela Kelly Robeck.

Well hello my empowered leaders and happy Tuesday. I have to say, happy belated birthday to myself. My birthday was last Tuesday. And I wish that I had thought to wish myself a happy birthday on last week’s podcast, but I didn’t. So I’m giving myself permission to say happy birthday to myself today.

I have to tell you how much I love celebrating my birthday. I celebrate it for the entire month of February. In my household, we celebrate birthdays in big and small ways. I will tell people it’s my birthday. Every time we go out for dinner, I tell them we’re celebrating my birthday for the whole month. They don’t know. I just say it’s my birthday. They’re like great. Sometimes they just say happy birthday. Sometimes we get a dessert. Sometimes not. I’m not trying to get free things, but it’s just fun to tell people hey it’s my birthday. They’ll sometimes say, “What are you doing?” Oh we’re celebrating. It’s my birthday.

So I love to tell people it’s my birthday and that we’re celebrating. It’s so much fun. I’m telling you this because I really had to teach myself how to celebrate myself, how to honor and acknowledge myself. There was a time when I hid myself from any kind of attention or celebration. I didn’t want to be seen. I liked being in the background. I didn’t like being the center of attention. I would have never been caught celebrating myself or telling others that I was celebrating myself.

I used to believe that it was selfish and obnoxious and narcissistic to be out there celebrating yourself. Like arrogant. I had a lot of negative opinions about people who celebrated themselves because I equated it to people who were arrogant or all-consuming of themselves, very egotistical, very narcissistic.

I was taught as a girl, as a young child, that it wasn’t socially appropriate to celebrate oneself, and it was considered off putting, right. It wasn’t humble. It was the opposite of that, whatever not humble is. I remember not having birthday parties as a kid. We didn’t really celebrate birthdays. We don’t celebrate holidays in my family. So we didn’t make a big deal of it. We would have a cake and a present or two and maybe my grandpa would come over and would celebrate with us as kids. We never had parties. It was never a big deal.

I can remember I did not have a birthday party until the age of 16. As I got older, I saw my friends having these more elaborate birthday parties or just having a birthday party at all. I remember turning 16. I thought I want a sweet 16. I want to have some kind of a celebration. So I had to ask my parents. I remember  being really scared. Like can I have a sleepover form my 16^th birthday?

So they said yes. I had, it wasn’t a huge group, maybe four or five girls. I remember we went bowling and we went out for pizza and then we came back. But we stayed up all night. We were giggling and just being 16. It was so much fun. We threw our sleeping bags on the floor, and we all crashed out in the living room. It was so much fun. It was one of the first experiences I had of people gathering and celebrating with me and celebrating me, my birthday. It was very profound for me.

So through the course of my life, I spent decades telling myself and others I didn’t want to be celebrated. I was diminishing the desire. I was squashing it to celebrate myself and have fun. I told people, don’t buy me presents. I don’t want a party. I don’t want to be the center of attention.

Yet as I was saying it year after year, I could feel this disappointment rising whenever my birthday would come around. I would see my birthday come and go, and nothing really happened because I had spent years telling people don’t celebrate my birthday. I don’t want to be in the spotlight. I don’t need a lot of attention. I would feel kind of sad. It almost felt like it didn’t matter. I didn’t matter. Eventually people were listening. They were not acknowledging me when I asked them not to acknowledge me. What was happening was I really wasn’t acknowledging myself.

So around the age of 40, it was actually exactly the age of 40. Before that. It was about my late 30s. I decided that if I wanted to celebrate, if I wanted to have fun in my life, if I want people to gather and celebrate me, I was going to have to be willing to celebrate myself. I needed to be honest with myself and say yes, I do want to celebrate. I want to acknowledge and celebrate my day of birth. I want to throw big parties and have people come around. I want to be the girl of the day.

So for my 40^th birthday, I threw a huge party. I rented out this mansion that had been converted into a hotel. I paid for everyone’s room. I paid for dinner. I had a full catered dinner. It was almost like a wedding reception. They had their choice of beef or salmon or vegetarian. We had desserts. We had cocktails, wine. I paid for a full on meal. Dancing. We had the works. We had access to a private bar. It was phenomenal.

Then in the morning I paid for a full course brunch meal, a brunch buffet. Everybody came down. It was so much fun. I’m telling you, it was the time of my life. I spent a lot of money on myself. I would have never even ever considered that before turning 40, not once. Now, I have no problem with it. I’m here telling you this story because celebrating ourselves is not something we are conditioned to do. We’re not taught to do it. We’re taught the opposite. We’re told to be modest and to be quiet. We’re told to let others come to us. We’re told that celebrating ourselves is arrogant and selfish.

My question is this. If we don’t celebrate ourselves and acknowledge our accomplishments, who will? When we tamp down who we are in the world and we don’t want to be acknowledged. We don’t want to be in the spotlight. We don’t want to cause a fuss. We don’t want other people fussing over us. We are the ones who suffer. Those people don’t get the experience of celebrating us. We’re not just denying our own celebration. We’re denying our loved ones and our friends and family the experience of celebrating us. People love to celebrate other people.

My love language is giving gifts to people. I absolutely love giving people gifts. I love picking them out. I love sending them to them. I love seeing their reaction. I recently just sent my coach who’s expecting her first child a gift for the baby, and it was magic. She videotaped the opening of the gift and sent it to me, and posted it in our business mastermind group. It was phenomenal. I got so much joy out of seeing her joy. That’s what we’re doing. We’re robbing people when we don’t allow them to celebrate us.

Especially as women. I’m really speaking to the ladies out there because we especially have been taught not to celebrate ourselves, not to point ourselves out. Not to enjoy who we are and that it’s our birthday or that we’ve earned a special accomplishment. Maybe we’ve got a promotion whether it’s financial or professional. Whatever it is in your life you want to celebrate, celebrate it. If you don’t celebrate it, who will?

So we are the only ones who know ourselves well enough to celebrate. We know what we’ve been through. We know what we’re capable of. In order to be celebrated by others, we have to see within us what is worth celebrating.

For my birthday this year, I made a list of 51 things because I’m 51 this year. 51 things that I am proud of myself for having done and experienced. I mean 51 is a lot of things. It took me a while. I had to go way back to being born and think about my life from the very beginning. So I just started listing all of the things big and small. Very little things to monumental things in my life.

My list got to around like 10/15, somewhere in there. I thought to myself, “Ugh, this is hard. I don’t think I’m gonna be able to think of 51 things.” I almost gave up. I was like eh ten’s good enough. Then I thought oh come on. You’ve been on the planet for 51 years. Surely you have accomplished one thing per year of your life. So I pushed myself, kept thinking about it. I got around to 30 or so, and I took a break. My brain felt exhausted. I was like I cannot do this. 30 is good. I’m gonna take a break. I went, grabbed some lunch.

When I came back and I looked at the list, all of a sudden the accomplishments started pouring out of me. I was so proud of this. Very little, tiny things to very big things. The list I actually had to modify it because I had over 51 things. On this list were things that were really fun to accomplish and things that hurt like hell to go through, but they made me stronger in the end.

So I didn’t just put down happy accomplishments, things that were fun or good memories. I put things like divorce. I went through a divorce. I’m proud of that. It made me the woman I am today. I’ve made financial poor choices that have created results I didn’t intend to create. I’m proud of those moments because it has made me stronger in my capacity to have and to make and to save money. I have a better spending plan because of my failures.

So I invite you to do the same. This could have been a whole podcast episode, but I really want to tell you the value in honoring yourself, celebrating yourself, and being proud of yourself. The reason I share this story with you is because it’s going to impact what you’re thinking about yourself in terms of creating demand, which is what I’m going to talk about today. Creating demand as a school leader so that you can create a higher demand of income, right. You can demand a higher income when you offer more value for your school.

So it all starts with this concept of you seeing yourself and acknowledging the value you have to give, the contributions you have to make, and the accomplishments that you’ve achieved. Your brain becomes more valuable the more time you spend thinking about your accomplishments and your achievements and being proud of them, being honored by them. It really does. Because when you take a moment to see all that you’ve been able to experience by investing your time and your energy and your resources, you will be inspired by yourself. You will be inspired to do more and to learn more and to grow more. You look up to you.

I was astonished when I looked at my list of 51 things. I was astonished with myself. It’s really fun to do. It isn’t easy. The brain wants to push back. It’s gonna resist, but it models to yourself that you have what it takes. You’ve done hard things. You can do them again. Every time you do them, you grow from them. It feels really good to have accomplished them. Very proud of myself.

Those 51 things went out in my email list. I sent them to my email group. If you want to be on that audience on the email group, just sign in. There’s a link in the show notes to get you signed up for the newsletter. I shared my list of 51 things, and I invite you to do the same. However old you are, make a list. It’s really, really fun.

Okay let’s dive in to earning more and creating demand, which I’m talking about because the more demand you create, the more valuable you are, the more money you can make. I’m talking about money today because I want to dispel the myth that you don’t have control over how much income you make. Okay?

So how do we create more demand? I’m going to start with this especial because we’re at the beginning of March. You need to be thinking about where you’re going to be a year from now, where you will be next year. I mentioned in January that I was going to be talking more about how to earn more in school leadership, and today’s the day.

I want to start by saying you must decide about next year right now. You need to make a decision about whether you’re going to stay in your current position or apply for a new position or take some time off or go into a new career. You’ve got to decide now. It’s the beginning of March. I know your districts are asking for that.

So you want to carve out some time to ask yourself where do I want to be one year from now? Do I want to be in this position? Do I want to be in a different position? Do I want to be making more? Do I want to be making the same? Am I good? Are things good now? If they’re great and you’re loving life and you’re feeling good, stick with that. Don’t throw out what’s working.

For many of you, you have something that you would like to experience next year, you would like to accomplish next year. You need to be thinking about next year now because if you don’t decide ahead of time, it will feel like the career is happening to you. It will feel like you are trapped or that this is just what it is. I have to go with the flow. I have to settle. Versus thinking about next year now ahead of time and determining what you want from yourself a year from now and why.

So most people don’t make this decision consciously. They do make the decision, but it’s very passive. It’s just kind of well, this is where I’m at.  This is what it is. I don’t have any options. They don’t really put any effort or energy into thinking about it. In invite you to do this work.

Most people make a decision about their careers based on how they’re feeling. Actually, everybody does that. We all make decisions based on how we’re feeling. So if you feel good in your job, you stay. If you don’t feel good in your job, you might still stay but you’re not happy or you’re actively looking outside thinking changing jobs is gonna feel better.

Now the decision of what to do with your career next year will depend on how you’re thinking about your current position. Your thoughts are what trigger how you feel, and your feelings are what impact your decisions and your actions.

So if your thoughts are all focused on what isn’t working and how awful the year has  been and how you’ve had failures and how other people aren’t doing it right. A lot of my principals will say the teachers are exhausted and they’re complaining and they’re not doing it right. You have no control over any of that, and that’s going to make you feel miserable. So if you’re focused on what isn’t working, you for sure going to be unhappy and you might feel stuck.

Last month I did a webinar on leaving school leadership to help people make a decision, stay or go but love your reasons why. Then if you’re going to go, create a plan. If you’re doing to stay, create a plan. So that’s what this is about today. You want to decide ahead of time, know what you want, get some clarity there. Get honest with yourself, get clear with yourself, and then develop a strategy. Create a plan. Know the approach you want to take moving forward.

So if you’re thinking all the thoughts that aren’t working, you’re miserable. On the contrary when you think the year’s been great, when you have the thoughts kids are making progress, teachers are doing a great job. You as a school leader feel impactful and you’re happy. You feel like you’re being productive and doing what you were meant to do. You’re having more fun leading your school when you’re thinking those thoughts. When you feel that way, you’re of course going to stay.

So what you believe to be true about your position, your school, your staff, your students, your community is going to impact your career. So be aware of what you’re thinking about this year, this current situation because it does impact next year.

The same holds true about your thoughts about yourself. What do you want to do next year? What do you want to experience next year? Do you think it’s possible to have a better year? Do you think it’s possible to have your best year ever next year? Are you anticipating that things are going to be amazing or are you spending your time worrying about what problems you might face? What you think about yourself and your capacity to create what you want to experience will impact how you in fact experience next year.

You want to start thinking about your future right now. You want to be ahead of the game on this. You want to decide ahead of time. I call this predetermining your outcome. That’s what you want for yourself ahead of time. You’re going to pre-decide what you want to experience in your future. You’re going to decide that now. Because when you decide it now, the results will catch up.

So what you’re thinking about now is going to show up six months from now. So if you’re thinking I’m having my best year yet, next year’s going to be my best year yet. Here’s all the ways I’m gonna make it my best year yet. Your best year will catch up to you, and you will have an amazing year because you’ve been thinking about it three months/six months ahead of time.

This is really, really important when it comes to creating demand and creating more money for yourself as a school leader. Because what you think is possible is limit to what you will experience. So you’ve got to expand what I call the portal of possibility. You’ve got to like push your brain to think what else is possible. How good can it get? How much can I make?

If you’ve got money drama around well I don’t wanna make any more money. I’m not really in this for the money. I beg to differ. If you weren’t in it for the money, you wouldn’t accept the paycheck. You would just come in and do it for free. My guess is that’s not true.

All of us want to make money and make more money. But the reason we want to do that is because when we’re great stewards of money, we contribute to the world. The more money we make and the more money we have, the more ability we have to create change that we want to in the world. Money is just an exchange of value, and it flows in and out of all of us. The more money you have doesn’t make you a better person or a worse person. It just gives you more authority over your life.

So I want you to consider that. If you’ve got money drama, start with that. Why is it there? Why do you not want to make more money? What do you think more money will mean? Get to work on those obstacle thoughts that you’re having.

Now if you’re a person who’s like heck yes, I want more money. I want it yesterday. I want it now. Ask yourself why. What do you think’s going to be better about your life if you have more money? You want to get really neutral about money, and you want to make more. You want to get a space where I want to make more and I’m not urgent for it. It’s not the only thing I’m thinking about in my life. Money is neutral. It has no meaning except for the meaning that your brain gives it.

I’ve done a lot of work around money and creating demand for myself because I want to give as much value as possible. I want to help as many school leaders as possible. If you’re suffering, I want to find a solution for you.

So I get to work at figuring out what’s the solution to people who want to make more money? What’s the solution to people who want to leave school leadership? What’s the solution for brand new school leaders who’ve never done this before and have no idea what they’re doing and they’re scared out of their minds? How do I help them?

Each and every one of you with different problems and coming up with solutions. That’s what I do. Because I create so much value, I get paid for that value. Then in exchange, I spend more money in my business to grow and expand the business so that I can help more people. It all becomes circular.

So do your money work, thinking about that. Predetermining your outcome for what you want and why is really, really important. So what do you want to experience? What do you want to accomplish? How much would you like to earn? How much time do you want to be working?

That’s a big asset too. Your time, your money, and your brain power, your energy. How much energy you’re putting into your work next year. What would be delicious and delightful to experience? What would make it a best year? What would that even look like? What does that mean? Define your best. What does that look like?

When you believe that next year’s going to be your best year, you’re going to start creating evidence. You’re starting to look for reasons why it is true and how it could be possible. So how is it true next year’s going to be your best year? What would it look like if it were your best year? Get very specific. What would a best year look like for you? What would be amazing to accomplish?

What do you want to be able to put on your birthday list next year that you’ve accomplished or that you’ve experienced? It doesn’t have to be some big accomplishment. It can be I went home an hour earlier everyday last year. I spent less time losing sleep. Maybe it’s I made sure I worked out three days a week or I took a walk twice a week.

Whatever it is that you would be delighted by experiencing and putting it on your list big or small, put it down. It can be about money. It can be about your time. It can be about how you spend your time. It could be cleaning up your office, organization, whatever.

Just decide what would feel good for you. What problems do you want to solve? What value would you have to offer in order to create the money that you want to create? If you were already living this best life, this best year ever, how would you feel? What would you be thinking about?

When you answer these questions, this is the work that is required for you to experience a different school leadership experience. Getting clear in your mind about what it is that you want and why you want it and what you don’t want. Creating a plan, following that plan, constraining. Not trying to solve every problem, just trying to solve one or two. If it were a best year, what would that look like? Really get clear on that.

When you believe you’re going to have your best year yet, you’re going to be energized by that belief. You’re going to feel enthusiastic and engaged. You’re going to show up differently. You’re going to offer more value as a result of that enthusiasm and joy. This, my friends, is how you make more money in your current position.

When you feel confident and you’re enjoying the job, the more value you offer to your school. When you get buys asking yourself what makes my year the best year ever? What problems am I solving in my best year ever? You’re creating higher value. The more value you have to offer, the higher you will be in demand as a school leader. Other districts will starts to notice. Your superintendent will notice. People will notice. The higher in demand you are, the higher income level you can demand. Happy principals make more money. That’s the end of her story.

When you decide ahead of time I’m going to have my best year yet. This is how I’m going to have my best year yet. This is the problem I’m going to solve. This is the timeframe in which I’m going to solve it. These are the ways in which I’m going to show up. This is how I want to feel. This is what I want to be. This is who I’m going to be. You commit to that. You’re going to find you’re working less and getting more done and being more impactful because your thoughts create the result.

Most of us think it’s the other way around. Most of us think we will enjoy the job more when we get a raise. We’ll feel more valuable when we get paid what we’re worth. We think that we’ll have our best year once we know what we’re doing and everything’s running smoothly. No. Results don’t create our emotional experience of the school year. Our emotional experience creates the results we achieve during the school year.

In order to become a principal who’s high in demand and can demand a higher income, you must see that creating demand is about the value that you create. And that value that you create is more valuable when you decide to have your best year and enjoy the process.

It plays out like this. You decide to have your best year yet. You plan out the year. You’re going to set a goal. You’re going to determine a problem you want to solve and how amazing that’s gonna feel to have accomplished it. Your gonna constrain. You’re not gonna solve it all at once. You’re gonna decide how to feel while you’re in the middle of achieving it. I call this planning for obstacles.

You’re gonna plan for the emotional obstacles that are going to come up. How are you going to handle disappointment, failure, negative feedback, doubt, uncertainty? Give yourself a plan. Know you’re not gonna just glide through with no problems. You know problems are coming, but the problems are emotional problems. I don’t wanna feel disappointed. I don’t want to fail. I don’t want to have negative feedback.

You can try and avoid those things, and you’ll fail at that too. Or you can say look, I know they’re coming. Here’s how I want to handle disappointment. Here’s how I’m gonna handle a failure. I’m not gonna beat myself up. I’m gonna give myself some grace. I’m gonna forgive myself, and I’m gonna move on. I’m going to recognize that I’m a human being who makes mistakes sometimes, right?

How are you gonna handle negative feedback? You’re gonna remember that negative feedback is simply the opinion of another person. You get to decide what you make it mean. If you’re believing what they’re saying to you, that’s your coaching work.

Then you wanna set yourself up to belief and lean into belief before you’ve achieved it. This is where it feels tricky because you’re like how can I believe in something I haven’t achieved? The belief is what creates the achievement. So you have to practice, and that’s what I do as a coach. I help you practice leaning into belief before you’ve accomplished something. Because the belief is what creates the accomplishment.

Then finally you want to give yourself time. Permission to over deliver without overworking. Give yourself grace when you fail. Another thing I highly encourage my clients is to schedule in their fun and downtime. Your job will consume as much time as you allow it to. If you put fun and downtime on your calendar, then you’ve gotta get your work done in less time because you’ve got other obligations outside of work that you’ve got to commit to, you’ve got to honor.

I started doing this with myself. I started making appointments with myself outside of school or my business now, not school. I started scheduling things that I had to go to. So I had to get my podcasts done and I had to make sure all my clients were served before a certain time. Now I’m working way less. More done, less time. I’m happier because I’m choosing to have my best year yet. The  result of this work is you have your best year yet. Then every year it just gets better and better because you’re refining this process and you know how to do it.

What I offer in coaching, the gift of this work is immeasurable because it compounds upon itself. So you learning how to create higher demand and to make more money means that you’re going to be making more and more money which will compound in your bank account, in your savings account, and in your emotional bank. In your happiness bucket. We’re going to compound happiness and compound joy and compound successes and achievements and our income as well.

All of it, it’s all interconnected. Your happiness bucket is impacted by your financial bucket and vice versa. You can’t make more money if you’re not willing to make more happiness. Emotions create results, thoughts create emotions, emotions create results. The actions that you take and the decisions that you make are always impacted by what you believe is true for you, is possible for you, and what you’re willing to experience in terms of feeling, right.

Those emotional obstacles that are gonna come up is where we shy away. Instead you’re going to have a plan ahead of time to be able to handle them. So you’ll know oh here it comes. I’m disappointed. Oh I know, here it is. I failed. Decide today. I’m going to have my best year ever next year. This is what it’s going to look like. This is what I choose to believe about it. This is what I want. This is what I don’t. This is why I love my reasons. Let’s go, all right. Have an amazing week. Happy March. Happy birthday to me to 51 years, and here’s to 51 more people. I’m just halfway there. I’m getting started. Let’s go. Happy week. Talk to you later. Bye.

If this podcast resonates with you, you have to sign up for the Empowered Principal coaching program. It’s my exclusive one to one coaching and mentorship program for school leaders who believe in possibility. This program is designed for principals who are hungry for the fastest transformation in the industry. If you want to create the best connections, impact, and legacy for yourself and your school, the Empowered Principal program was designed for you. Join me at angelakellycoaching.com/work-with-me to learn more. I’d love to support you in becoming an empowered school leader.

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