Erica Diamond

The full conversation with Erica Diamond, transcribed. Lightly formatted for reading.

What about identity? Who did you have to let go? I definitely let go of other people's opinions, living life for others, doing things for show. I don't give a bleep about what people say.

I've become a professional failure. What are some of the areas that you find that women struggle with? We procrastinate. So perfectionism is a lot of women.

High-achieving women are stuck to perfectionism. Time management is a problem because we don't properly budget our time. We don't know how long our tasks take us. Just make sure you're living the life that you want to be living, because when you care so much about what other people think, you make decisions that are not good for you.

Well, Erica, it's a pleasure to have you on the Montreal Entrepreneur Podcast. I look forward to our conversation, and I'm sure I'm going to learn a lot from you. I'm so excited. Thank you for having me.

You're welcome. And, uh, before we get into your story, your milestone, can you please tell us who you are and what you do. So my name is Erica Diamond. I would like to say I'm a mom first, a mom and a wife.

I am a certified life and career coach, so I'm a keynote speaker, author, podcaster, entrepreneur, retreat host— now retreat host. I really do everything in the self-care space, so I really teach women self-care strategies. You know, redefining self-care beyond the superficial is my mission, and I do workplace wellness as a keynote speaker, burnout prevention. So really everything to help men and women own their days, live in balance, and really own their success.

And men as well? And men as well. Well, my coaching, which I'll get into, my coaching practice is primarily women, but in my keynote spacing, I speak to a lot of men. Okay, good.

And before you got into wellness, take us back a little bit because you ran a successful business in your 20s. You exited from that. You won many magazine covers, prominent magazine covers. It seems like things were going great for you.

Yeah, I know that the career seems a little bit like discombobulated or disjointed. It's actually quite related. So at 24 years old, I had started my first company. I had bombed my GMATs, didn't get into MBA school, had always wanted to be an entrepreneur and said, okay, I'm 24, still living at home.

I saved up some money. So I started this company where we did promotional products, premium and incentive items like t-shirts, caps, pens, mugs in large volume. And about 2 years into this journey, we were a Profit Hot 50 company, one of Canada's 50 emerging growth companies. I was the only female CEO on the list, a top 30 under 30 entrepreneur.

Our company was growing and I was privately quite literally almost burning out. And my mom, who is a therapist— oh, do we? Yes. She said, Erica, you know, something isn't right.

I think you should get help. And I said, Mom, see me. I know. I, I mean, I wasn't sleeping, my mind was racing, I was agitated, I was showing the symptoms of— I don't want to say I was in full-blown burnout, but I was definitely teetering there.

So she's like, I'm your mom, not a good idea. I met Sandra at the gym, actually, and she became my therapist. I said, will you help me? I'm just not feeling like myself.

I know that I need some help. So she saw me, and I don't want to bore you with all the details, but But in therapy, what I had discovered with Sandra was that I loved my company, I loved what I did, I loved working. I didn't wanna stop working even though I was feeling exhausted and everything pissed me off. Like I was just not a good person then.

So she explained to me, you don't have to, you know, throw water on your flame or dull your shine. Instead, you can complement this busy, shall we say, hustle lifestyle with self-care strategies and with calming rituals. And Sandra suggested that I try yoga and meditation. And Steve became one of my non-negotiables to myself as an entrepreneur, Steve came to my house twice a week and taught me yoga and meditation.

And that quite literally, coupled with therapy, brought me back to center. It changed my life and made me realize that I can change my breath, I can bring my body to calm, I can get myself to sleep, I can do all the things to heal my body. And then in turn, that, you know, I created white space in my day, it helped my time management. I mean, it changed my life, learning how to care for myself through therapy, through meditation, through yoga.

And so self-care really became my mission almost from there. Didn't teach it yet, was just always mentoring women in business. Ended up selling that company. That company got acquired 7 years later.

And during this business, had always been mentoring women in business. That I've done all these years. Sell the company 2006. So 2006, I have one son who's 3.

I'm pregnant with another on the way. I'm at a Mommy and Me luncheon, and I meet Tracy. What do you do, Tracy? She said, I'm a blogger.

I said, what's a blogger? I'd never heard of a blogger. She said, well, you know, I kind of, I write about my life in this sort of online diary kind of format, and it's called Grumble Girl. It's kind funny.

It's just like me grumbling about the world. And I went home and I Googled blogger, and the first thing that came up was Dooce. com. And she was sharing stories of her work colleagues, and she got fired for it.

She ended up writing about all like the office stories, and she ended up getting fired. But I saw through Heather Armstrong's blog that she was making about $100,000 to $150,000 a month in ad revenue. Per month? Per month on her blog.

And I was like, ah, So I had sold my company, I was home for 3 years, I had— my entrepreneurial itch was back again. I wanted to start another business, but I didn't know what to do. And I said, oh my God, I— this blogging thing, this could be something. And I saw that there was potential, so I said, okay, I love this concept of connecting with people around the world.

I know that, yeah, there's something here. What can my blog be about? Well, I never wear makeup unless I'm working, so I wasn't going to have a beauty blog. I'm the world's worst cook, so I was not going to be like a Martha or cooking blog, so that was out.

I was not traveling anywhere with a pregnant son in my belly and one on the you know, one already at home. So I was like, travel blog, no. But I'd always loved these women. I'd always coached women in business all throughout my first business journey.

And I was so stuck at the time. I said, that's it. It's not like a niche blog, but I am going to create a blog for people like me who are stuck, who are on the fence and stuck in their life, but in all facets of their life, like in a dead-end job, loveless marriage, overweight, who are gay and living, holding that secret to themselves. I wanna have a place where everyone who's currently stuck holding secrets can come out.

We can be inspired. We'll take the leap together and we will all take the journey to truth. We're all going to get off the fence together. And that was the birth on September 11th, 2009.

com and I wrote my first blog post and I knew I was home. I was like, this is my— I don't know how I'm gonna— I'm not Heather Armstrong now at $150,000 a month in ad revenue, but this is going to be my business. I knew I wanted work-life balance. I knew I never wanted a boss.

I had never had a boss except for my first— well, my part-time jobs at school, but my first job out of McGill. And I said, I'm gonna make this my business. And why I was different was all these other bloggers were like incredibly incredible writers, but I was not a good writer. But I knew that I had the ideas.

I knew that I had a business mind first. So I knew that through my business mind and the idea of unifying and building this community of women who were on— who were stuck, I possibly could have something. And then— and those were the days of Twitter, there was no Instagram, so I'm pretty early adopter of social media. And people like Ellen DeGeneres and Denise Richards and Brooke Burke and people with millions of followers, Diane Sawyer, I mean, Gordon Ramsay, I mean, these people were retweeting my blogs, my blog posts, and it really started to spread one point we were syndicated to 2 million monthly readers, and I was monetized by Glam Media, one of the largest ad media companies.

And from there, it was just kind of a spin-off there. And from there, I was asked to audition for weekly TV for Global News. And then Women on the Fence kind of pivoted into— from this lifestyle magazine of many years to more me being at the forefront. It was no longer on the fence, like almost a decade later.

I was speaking to my friend who's like a branding expert. She's like, Erica, you're not on the fence anymore. com. You're out there, you're certified now to life and career coach.

You're getting on TV, giving expert advice. You know, I'm already certified in yoga and meditation. I'm already giving my love of helping women in life and career to coaching them, to deciding that I'm going to own the space of self-care coaching, which is everything that I knew and learned, which is my whole Thrive 360, which is mindset, body, time transformation, which we can get into. So teaching my method of self-care strategies and burnout prevention and how to own your day, be brave, be bold, own your success, and not burn out in the process, not lose yourself in the process.

com, and that's where I am today. Coaching, speaking, wrote a couple of books, had a couple of kids, still married to the same guy I'm with since I'm 19. Um, and so that's kind of like the mouthful. So I know it feels like selling products, one of my first company, to Women on the Fence, which is this lifestyle magazine, to now being sort of corporate life and career coach.

But it's, it's been an evolution. I'm turning 51. I've been doing this since I'm 24. So I'm back to my home of women.

And I mean, I never left them, but, but But to me, it feels very much in alignment. That's the word I was going to use. And how would you describe Erica at 20, like around that time, 24, 26? How would I describe Erica?

Yeah. Very hungry, very driven, very motivated, very curious. I love life. And as when I get up on the stage and I teach the science and research on happiness, when I talk about my first pillar of mindset, I'll give our listeners and viewers an interesting statistic on happiness.

So we all have a genetic set point. We are all born either a glass half full or glass half empty person. Okay. So I know that I am a glass half full person.

My cup runneth over. I'm abundant. I'm positive. I always see solutions.

I'm married to someone whose glass is pretty empty. So he will tell you, I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. So we all have this genetic set point, right? But here's what's interesting.

Everything that happens to us in our lives, the big life occurrences that could sometimes be very traumatizing— death, divorce, job loss, moving, retirement— we think these have a massive impact on our happiness. And the research shows us No, it only affects about 10% of our happiness. But you know what the other 40% that is responsible for happiness? Our thoughts, our habits, and our actions.

So everything that I teach every single day, whether it's on a stage, on TV, here in my coaching practice— how we eat, how we sleep, how we move, how we manage stress, our mindset, our boundaries, our time management— that's half of our happiness. So that means that happiness is in our own, very much in our own control. So you're, if you're asking me about how I was when I was 20, 24. I was abundant.

I was— worked very hard. The only thing I've learned in all my research is we can't continue to sustain that. Do you remember, like, when I was 19, I'd come home at 4 in the morning and then I had to open up Avenue Video? It was my weekend job.

The video store had to be there at 8:30, and so I slept maybe 3 hours, and it was great and it worked. So that 24-year-old me was awesome. She could handle it. She could not sleep.

She could do all of those things, but it didn't serve me, and I knew that it was a recipe for a So the exhaustion— the exhaustion was what drove you to that. Yeah, and no breaks. I wasn't good with boundaries. I didn't have boundaries with myself.

I didn't have boundaries with others. And so 24-year-old me was— was— had big eyes and very curious. And I'm still very curious. I still have very big eyes.

I still see the world the same. I just know how to take care of myself so that I can save my strength, that I don't burn out. I'm still very much the same. I'm still very driven.

Yeah, I'm still very yin and yang. It's so funny because because it's hard to recognize me sometimes because when I walk into a yoga studio, I'm a totally different person. I'm a completely zen, calm. I breathe again, like something transforms in me.

And I'm very much both, yet I'm very much the grinding, hustling, hardworking, manifesting my dreams, setting a goal, launching something, seeing it through. So I'm very like that. So I'm very yin and yang. And I thought this was a problem for many years.

Ah, elaborate on that. Yeah, I didn't know how to embrace both sides of me. I feel like I'm both. Both.

I am the person who speaks fast, who talks with their hands, who's full of ideas. And, and, but I'm also, I'm also very much a quiet, needs to be alone, um, needs space. I need to sleep many hours. I need to eat well.

I create a lot of white space in my calendar. I don't overtax anything, every— like, I'm very rigid with myself in that way to make sure that I'm always waking up feeling joyful, doing the things that make me happy, taking care of myself. I'm really practicing. I walk my talk.

Anyone who knows me says, like, you're the exact same person online as you are in real life as you— I'm the same. The only thing where I'm different is all those parts are me. I'm the calm person, I'm the hyper person, I'm the motivated and driven person, I'm the surrender person. I'm, I'm all of it, and I don't know why.

I just think that's who I am. And it's— you may be like, it's very exhausting to be that. It could be sometimes, but I think it's like my superpower. Yes, yes, I understand that.

And what about identity? Like, who did you have to let go? What did you have to let go? Oh, I let go, and I spoke in the Midlife Reinvention Summit this morning.

Oh, this This morning. This morning. Wow. We talked about the same thing.

What did you have to let go of to be the woman that you are now? And I definitely let go of other people's opinions, living life for others, doing things for show. I don't give a bleep about what people say. I know that at the end of the day, I'm a good person and I'm kind and I really do my best.

So I don't care if I look silly. I did it with good integrity and good honesty. If I kept caring what people were thinking, I never would've had a business the way I have today. I would've been like, people, my friends didn't even understand what a blog was.

They're like, why are you writing about your life? Life. It's so like, it's so weird. But I knew what I was doing.

I knew that I was building it for the people who needed it. My family comes first, my friends, my work. And when I do something, if it looks silly, it looks silly, but at least it's done with honesty and truth. But how did you get to that point?

Because it's like, yeah, with a lot of— you, you test, you, you fail. And again, I spoke about that this morning. Someone said, how are you resilient in midlife when things don't go your way or when you're reinventing yourself? And how, how I discovered myself, really why I feel I'm so internally strong is because of failures.

I've had failures along the way. I tried to get into school, avenues have closed on me. And so I've become, I say, a professional failure and a professional failure at failing forward. And so what I do is when something doesn't go my way, when something doesn't work out, when I don't get that thing that I was planning, when it flops, when something happens, I give myself time to like lock myself in my room and I don't shame myself and say, "Erica, like, get up.

" I don't. I wallow in it. I kick my feet. I'm very sad.

I process. I try to understand on what happened. How did I get here? And then when I'm ready, I rise like the phoenix.

I stand up and I never look back. I don't look back as to why did that happen. A lot of people, we ruminate, like, why, right? I made the wrong choice.

Why did I invest in that stock? Why did I do this? Why did I do that? I don't ever look back.

After I've processed and I understand what happened, I only move forward. And I'm so damn resilient. I stand up and I just walk to the light. I just keep moving forward.

So I've become a professional, I think, at failing and knowing how to get back up and having the— I now believe in myself that if I fall down, I will get back up. I don't know where I'm going after I get back up. I don't know. I just, I have a belief in myself.

Okay. So you embrace the identity of somebody who's going to figure it out. I embrace. I think like Marie Forleo has that expression, everything is figureoutable.

And I believe that. I believe that I'll figure it out. I'll find a way. And I believe that being brave and resilient is a a muscle, and we exercise this muscle by going out of our comfort zone.

Even no matter how small— smiling at a stranger, taking yourself out for lunch by yourself, doing things that feel uncomfortable— is how we become brave and how we build that self-belief and that self-trust in ourselves, I believe, at least for me and at least for my clients. Yeah. And you've spoken to, I don't know, thousands of women. Yeah.

What are some of the common traits you realize that we all have? We all— yeah, yeah. So I deal with a lot of, uh, high-performing professional women— lawyers, doctors, accountants, pharma, I mean, real estate— these women are killing it. And so many of them have imposter syndrome.

When we pull back the curtain on all of us, it's so interesting when they feel very safe with me. So we get to the ooey-gooey mushy of it, and so many of us still struggle to believe in ourselves. And so when we make decisions out of fear, we don't always make the best decisions for us. I see that.

I see, I see everyone, and I talk about this a lot in my, in my system and when I speak, my third pillar is time. And I see that they put everyone on their calendar. Everyone lives on their calendar, their boss, their job, their clients, their kids, their partner, the French play, ballet, everything lives on their calendar. And often they don't.

And I say that your calendar is a direct reflection of your self-respect and your self-belief. Do you have yourself on your calendar? Is there white space? Do I have your— is your movement there?

Are your hobbies there? Is your date night there? Is time in the morning there? Is sleep there?

Is are you on your own calendar? Because we don't get time. Time doesn't find us, we grab it, we create time. And if we're not starting each Sunday, each week with putting ourselves on our calendar, that's a recipe for burnout.

That means that the world gets us and we don't have enough self-belief in ourselves that we know that we matter, that we deserve time on the calendar before everyone else. At what point do they reach out to you? Is it when they're very close to the burnout? Yeah, yeah.

So I have people who are, a lot of my clients are very proactive. They wanna continue to sustain success. Stress, operate, perform, and not burn out. And so we do, I mean, I do everything from operate, I mean, my biggest, I think, flex is my operating system.

So we look at their days to see how they can trim the fat, really be most efficient with their time. And so I work with leaders, so we do a lot of time management strategy. So it's not all burnout prevention, a lot of it is, so they come to me before because they wanna continue to operate in this sort of high-functioning zone without burnout. Success without burnout, balance without burnout.

So I see those women who just want a life and career coach, an accountability partner. We see each other for an hour every 2 weeks. After each session, there is homework, and it's not homework I say for shits and giggles and for fun. This is needle-moving things.

This is using their staff, using their calendar at home, using their partners at home, you know, streamlining. This is to avoid decision fatigue. These are creating systems and processes and automations and funnels so that they can really get back their time so they can put themselves themselves. At the end of the day, it's always to put themselves back on their calendar.

I want them to create space and time for their own joy. So we do that, and then I get the woman— in full disclosure, I, I mean, I'm not a doctor, so I don't see anyone in burnout. If it's too heavy, if I meet someone and I feel that it's out of my lane or out of my scope, I will refer her to her family. I'll say, speak to your family physician.

That's not my forte, is burnout prevention, self-care strategies, productivity before you're in burnout. If you're in burnout, I can't help you. You must speak to your Doctor. Got it.

Yeah. And you said that a lot of them have imposter syndrome. Yes. Why?

Like, how? Isn't that so funny? I know. Yeah, because a lot of us— oh, it stems from so many things.

Sometimes there's childhood trauma, and someone with childhood trauma grows up and manifests to be this beautiful butterfly. And then those things from the past— if a parent told them— if they had a parent who, where they were the kid, let's say, who got a 92, 93, and they had a parent who was like, the— where's the other 7, you know, where's the other 8% 100% growing up with that feeling that they're never good enough. So they doubt themselves. I mean, there's so many different reasons why we have it, but we gotta just keep proving to ourselves over again, most of the things we worry about don't manifest.

So most of the things we're worried about and ruminating and doubting ourselves don't usually happen. So we have to talk to ourselves. I don't wanna get into, again, mindset talk, but we have these ANTs, automatic negative thoughts, all of us. You have about 6,000 to 7,000 thoughts a day.

85% of them are about the same thing. Same damn thing. We're thinking about the same thing. We are not having new thoughts.

We're thinking the same thoughts as yesterday, and most of them are negative. So we default— our brain defaults to these ants, these automatic negative thoughts. So we have to work very hard to challenge those negative thoughts and the dialogue that we keep telling ourselves day after day after day without even noticing, without even noticing. So we have to, you know, when we catch ourselves saying these shameful things to ourselves, we have to come back with the thought.

It's called— it's an anchoring exercise, and I have my clients do it. It's called thought challenging. What is the challenging thought to that limiting belief that you're sitting with? And so we start to prove to ourselves over time our brain can rewire itself.

We know this. That's why I love meditation, because we rewire our brain for more calm. Meditation quite literally rewires our brain also for more joy and abundance and calm. That's why it's part of my life.

It's part of what I teach. When I get up on a stage, I meditate with— whether I'm speaking to 50 people or 4,000 people. Everyone in the room gets to close their eyes and we get to breathe together. It's very important.

It's really— it's when someone asks me, what are the 3 things that I can do now if I feel like crap, I'm doing nothing for myself? One of them is 2 breath sequences that I teach them. So your work, you mentioned that it expresses itself in 4 ways, 4 arms you call it. Yeah.

So we have speaking, you talked about that. Coaching, you talked about that. Retreat, and we have media as well. Yeah.

So which one do you feel like is more you, like you're aligned? So they all So in 2026, I'm trying to trim the fat off my business. I'm really dialing into what I feel is my zone of genius, and that, that's kind of 4 buckets. The first one is speaking.

So I'm a full-time professional keynote speaker. I speak to companies, I speak to associations, conferences, events. I do, like I said, self-care strategies, burnout prevention, work-life balance. That's kind of my jam for speaking corporately or events.

And then coaching. From there, I usually get a lot of my one-on-one clients. I also have a big, you know, social media presence, so a lot of my clients come from LinkedIn or Instagram. So that's my one-on-one coaching, and through that I also have courses for women as well.

So if they want more of like a solo journey, watch a lesson on the go, less touch points with me, I have the courses under coaching. Next is the retreat. So I'm planning— I've done day retreats, but I'm planning my first offsite 4-day, 3-night— it's called the Reset and Thrive Retreat. It's a self-care retreat at Canyon Ranch Lenox in the Berkshires this fall, October 15th to 18th.

We're gonna wake up fall foliage morning hikes. And I created this because this is for me, this is what I would want, and this is all the women that I meet. This is all the touch points that we want: sleep, stress, nutrition, movement, boundaries, menopause. It's everything that the modern woman is facing.

And then I'm gonna do a group activation with them, yoga, journaling with my best-selling journal. We're gonna plan our fall goals, um, and they get $200 a day spa credits every single day. So it's incredible. They can do it for a massage, a wrap, a facial.

So it's luxury spa while we're using my smart methods to get them feeling well and living in abundance. And I tell them that it's a run-your-own-rhythm retreat. You can go to the lectures, you can sit under a hammock with a book all day. Whatever wellness, whatever your body is calling to you that weekend is what you should give it.

So that is the third arm. And then the fourth arm is media. I mean, I've done I have a show that's currently on Amazon Prime and it's streaming on Air Canada on the airplane. It's a yoga and wellness show.

I have the Erica Diamond Podcast. Any kind of media is kind of the fourth arm. I do a lot of media, my podcast, my show. So that's it.

I'm Erica. Speaking, coaching, retreat, and media is how I spend my time. And then my hobbies, which we talked about before, which is my drumming. But that's all part of self-care.

Yes, it is. When you find the time, when you learn the strategies, maybe by working with me, you learn how to shuffle your days around to is to make space and time for what brings you joy. So if you could close your eyes and remember the last time you've lost track of time, what brings you joy? Cooking, being outside, what is it?

So for me, it's music. I love music and I've wanted to be Sheila E my whole life, the drummer. And so last year at 50 years old, that's protected, that's guarded. I have no meetings on Tuesday from 4:30 to 5:30.

That's my drum lesson. That's my time. I leave my phone, I bang around, I bring my song of the week. Mark teaches it to me and I love it.

I love it. So, um, the hobbies are very much a part of my schedule. I call that my self-care. So do you find that sometimes those high-achieving women, they find it difficult to take that time and just do nothing?

Oh yeah, of course. They feel guilty, right? Right. They feel guilty for doing nothing.

And I keep telling them, if you're not going to take the time, your body's going to come back to you at a time that ain't going to be so damn convenient for you. And it's going to show to you if you're not listening to the little whispers, if you can't settle into the stillness and take the time and disconnect and de-empower on Sunday and go to bed early and take the evenings not to sit at your computer but to go to a movie, watch a movie, read a book, sew, knit, create something, find a hobby, find, find something that, that takes you away from a screen or that puts you with real people, it's going to come back to you. And, and sadly, we often don't do anything until we're in that. So that's why my message is really about redefining what self-care is beyond— I mean, my tagline is self-care redefine.

I'm redefining self-care beyond the superficial and making it— it's such an integral part of thriving personally and professionally that you must take the time. I want it to be a priority for every single man and woman. Specifically, I love working with women. So for every woman, because we're so multifaceted women, you know, we give birth, we have babies, we're like, we're hormonal, we're emotional, like we're like these— that's why my Thrive 360 is Thrive 360.

We are 360° comp— complex human beings. Not that men are— men are as well, but I believe that women are in a different kind of way. We have a different kind of brain. We really have to tune into these kind of different rhythms that we have.

So that's why you feel the need to take the women out of their comfort zone, try something completely new, fly them over to the US, and then to have that retreat. They're going to learn— if they're operating now in near burnout, I would love them to learn the strategies to Course, correct. Yeah, it's everything that I teach. It's going to be an epic weekend.

They're going to come back with strategies, and they're going to come back also just like a great girls' weekend. Great food, beautiful sprawling stunning property. It's just, it's going to be the ultimate reset before the fall, you know, before winter comes. Reset is so— yeah, everything.

com. It's all there. But, and I'm available for questions. We're over halfway sold out, and it's going to be so fun.

Amazing. And out of those arms, if you could just keep one that speaks or that is more aligned with you, which one would you keep? I would say speaking. You would?

Yeah, in a room, because there's nothing that I love more. My coaching is all online behind a computer. So when I'm in a room with, like I said, either 50 to 3,000 people and I'm on a stage, I've been doing it so long that I feel them. They're like, I walk around, I get into the audience, I hug them, I touch I touch them, I feel them.

There's nothing that I love more than, and it's real live coaching. I'm speaking to them, they're hearing stories, they're laughing, we're crying. I start every keynote off with a big picture of Las Vegas behind me. And I'm like, you don't realize it now.

You think we're in Toronto, you think we're in New York, we're actually in Las Vegas. We're in Vegas. And I'm like, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. So I explained to them that we're gonna create over the next 60 minutes an experience where they're gonna feel safe enough to either call out where they're struggling, to declare a space where they're going to course correct, to own where they're not— where things are not working, and they're going to make a promise to themselves to better their lives.

So some people are going to share those stories in this room, and I ask you to hold their stories in this room the same way that what happens in Vegas— we leave everything in Vegas. We leave everything in this room, and we leave, and everyone's secrets are left in the room, and nobody brings anything home. So they're not afraid to share those secrets. I never want them to be.

I never want them— and of course, always I leave my email address at the end, so not everyone is of course comfortable to disclose and share. So I always get emails after, like, I wanted to share this, but this is what I'm thinking. And so if I had to pick an arm, it would definitely be speaking, because I love connecting in real life with people in a room, walking around, talking to them, feeling them. Like, I just— I'm— I really enjoy that.

Apart from, uh, imposter syndrome, what are some of the areas that you find that women struggle with? You also talk— time management is huge. Time management, procrastination. And, and without getting into the psychobabble of procrastination, there's a whole bunch of reasons why we procrastinate.

So perfectionism is a lot. A lot of women, high-achieving women, are stuck to perfectionism. So they can't do it perfectly, they'll just— they'll sit on it and they, and they rework it and they waste so much time to getting it right. So perfectionism is a big reason why we procrastinate.

Trauma. Again, there's a lot of reasons why we stay stuck. So procrastination, I say, is like putting all your stuff like in a closet. You've closed the door, you know you have to do it, you know there's a whole closet waiting for you, but like you just, you know, close the door and you think that things will get better if you keep the door closed.

But procrastination is opening the door, letting all the toys fall out of the toy cabinet, and putting everything away one at a time. So I see a lot of women— time management is a thing, procrastination. And I actually just made a video yesterday about this. Time management is a problem because we don't properly budget our time.

So we will allocate 20 minutes for tasks that will take us an hour and 15 minutes, and we'll wonder why at the end of the day why we feel like crap. We didn't end the day on a high. We left with 8 things left on our agenda. We didn't get through our stuff, so then we're working late to catch up, and so we're always out of time.

So time management is a thing. So why? We're not realistic with our time, realistic with ourselves. So I say over the next week, set a timer.

If you know you're You're always doing the corporate budget, the this, whatever are the tasks that repeat, the file, the this, the redesigning a logo, whatever it is, making dinner, whatever. Set a timer. Learn how long things take you to do. This way you can defer to whatever.

Maybe there's something that's not an emergency. You can put it off in 2 months. Most priority tasks happen in the next few days, let's say. But be realistic with your time so that you can get through your day.

And I learned this for myself years ago, and every day ends well for me. I'm telling you. I know that sounds like every day ends well because because I'm so meticulous with my time. I know what things— how long things take.

I don't overtax my schedule. And if I have a busy day, okay, there'll be days where I'm working longer. The night before, I'm getting to bed early, I'm sleeping early, I'm doing my meditation, I'm getting up that morning, even if it's a 10-minute stretch, I'm doing something to move my body. I'm creating white space, and I'm realistic.

I know how long things take me. Took me time to learn this, but I know it. So now when I wake up to my day, that's my real day. That's not my wishful day.

' That's the spiral we get into. So we always need to grant ourselves grace and compassion as we learn new strategies. As you course correct— that's the fourth pillar, transformation— and as you change in your life, as you decide, 'I'm not going to do this anymore, I'm not going to be the yes girl, I'm going to impose boundaries,' you're going to get pushback from those around you. That's the thing about getting better, right?

Is our friends liked us when we did their carpool 5 days a week, our Boss liked us when we were working till 9:00 at night and came in on the weekends. Our partners like us to not ever ask them for help. They like to keep us in our doing mode, right? But our transformation and our boundaries are for ourselves.

And so if you get the approval of your partner saying, I noticed that you've lost weight, I noticed that you're not so tired, I noticed that you're doing well, I noticed all these wonderful things about you— so if you get the approval of those you love, wonderful. If not, your transformation is just for you. You have to be, and I say, and when I speak, I have a picture of a male cheerleader and a female cheerleader. And I said, you may not know this, but we are all going to have to be our own cheerleaders at the end of the day.

As we course correct, as we move through my 4 pillars, my method, Mindset, Body, Time Transformation. When I talk about what stress does to the body, when we talk about body, as we move through Mindset, Body, Time Transformation, as you transform and you start to learn these methods, they become a part of you. And in 66 days up to 6 months, you start changing your life because that's how long it takes to change. 21 days to form a new habit, 66 days up to 6 months about for it to become more automatic.

As you start to transform and feel better, you're better with your time, you're better with your— you're feeling better, more abundant, less stress because you're doing all the things, or you're picking and choosing what you need to do first and it's working. We have to be our own cheerleader. Our transformation is for us. And if they give you that seal of approval, great.

If not, you're doing it for you. So I always say go out there and take care of yourself like your life depends on it, because it does, you know. Because eventually, like you said, your body is going to— your body's going to ask for it if you don't give it to it at a time that maybe won't be so convenient for you. So learn how to give it little parts, little bits to yourself on the daily.

This is not a massive— I'm not telling someone to go work out. I work out, so for me, movement is a part of my 5 to 6 days a week. I work out about 35 minutes. I'm in and out.

I'm efficient with my time. I sweat, I move, I'm in and out. Half the time I'm in a bra and underwear on a yoga mat by my bed. I set it up the night before.

I pick my workout out the night before on one of my apps. It's not always at a gym. And I get up, I have my coffee, I do my meditation, my journaling, my morning, and 35 minutes, I think I'm in the shower by 7:50, I mean 7:15, and it's done. And I feel good.

If I've moved, I've started my day moving my body. For me, I like doing it in the morning because it gets my endorphins going. It gets the cortisol out of my body and it boosts my happiness hormones. So you're very like, go, go, go, Erica.

But what about women with maybe younger kids? And yeah, so this is what I say with younger kids. They're not sleeping. I say we got to lower the bar so low that we're going to fall and trip over the bar.

So my kids, I have a lot of time now because I have one son in school and one son home. So I'm very much able to pour back into myself. However, I did all these things. I also raised two young boys.

Yes, I was just as meticulous. However, I lowered the bar. So that means that there'll be days where it's just not going to happen perfectly, and you cannot look at your life as a specimen in like a, a magnifying glass. Success is not measured by the morning where either you were at the French play for school, so mommyhood got a 10, but your career took a zero because you couldn't get to the meeting, but mommyhood took a 10.

And then there are days where like you have this incredible presentation at work and you missed something for your kids. So you can't look at that and, you know, and say, this is the moment that defines my whole life. You gotta back it up. You've got to like zoom out.

Success is looked at for these young moms over time, which means every day is not going to be perfect. And when you're not sleeping, it's about survival. Like, literally, for a young mom who's working, and especially in the United States, we get, you know, maternity leave here and paternity leave. You're literally just surviving.

You're hoping you take a shower that day. I know. So we try and pick the most important things when a mom— so the most important things are always breathing. So we're making sure that they don't want to, God forbid, harm their baby, that they're not so fed up that they have to breathe.

So breathing is really important. Um, movement's important, that they try. And I, you know, we talk about some meal batching and meal prepping on the weekend when their partner's around, getting the kids involved with, you know, throwing on a pot of meat sauce, maybe making some chicken burger patties, throwing them in. So this way, during the week, you pull something out of the freezer, healthy food.

You're not running to eat garbage fast food. We do kind of the bare minimum, the basic, the survival. And they know that we're in a season. When you're in a season of newborn baby, maybe it's not the season of growth.

And we are always in different seasons. Right now I'm in my season again of growth and evolution because I feel like my kids are bigger and I have time now. Finally, I've said so to no many— no to so many things over the last 22 years of raising my kids because my family always came first. I know for maybe from external purposes it looks like I have this beautiful career, which I do, but I know that it could have looked different for me, but I chose to make it look like what it was.

I always had to work 5 different jobs. I always had these 6, 7 different revenue streams because that's how I wanted it. I didn't want to go— I knew that I probably could have made more money also going to get a job, but I wanted to work for myself. I wanted the balance.

I wanted the flexibility. Life is always a series of choices. And so now I feel like this is my season of growth because I have all the time now. I have one son in school and one son who's 22 working full-time.

So I'm trying to really embrace that. Now I'm back to not my hustle, but I'm back to a little bit like that old 26-year-old girl is kind of back, where it's really mommy. I was really in— I was in mom overwhelm for many years, no question, using my strategies, using my strategies, always using everything that I teach. But this— but we all have different seasons, so knowing the season that you're in is also important.

That's a good frame. Honoring the season you're in. Yeah, because I'm definitely return to hustle, return to abundance season. But when When I was mom, it was like, what has to be done, get done that has to be done.

Make sure that I have penciled in, like always self-care, that, you know, I've had my mommy group, my husband and I go out, I see my girlfriends, I make sure that I'm moving my body, even if it's like with a kid crawling on the floor. We don't need much. Your body doesn't need— I know that everyone's into heavy lifting. You don't need much to get your body and mind in shape.

Okay. Are you also creating like an environment for these women? Because yes, you go into their lives, you're looking at them in a 360 view, you do this, you do that, but then when you leave, maybe they can fall back into those same bad habits? How do you help them to stay grounded?

Absolutely. So that's a great question. And we all, you know, like when you're on the good path where you're sleeping, you're eating well, you feel you're exercising, you're moving, you feel good. And so the good leads to more good.

That's the same way that when we're eating like crap, we're not sleeping, we're not honoring our boundaries, we can fall off that wellness wagon. So this is what I say in the fourth step that I teach transformation. I always talk that transformation is we never arrive. You're never going to learn something from me and get to the end destination.

We are always evolving. So what happens when we start to fall off our wellness path? We were doing well, we were sleeping, we were doing all the good things, and now we're not feeling so good anymore because we're not eating— we're eating on the run, we're not eating, you know, quietly, calmly, we're eating standing up, we're not closing our computer down at a normal time at the end of the day, we're cheating ourselves, we're going down the hall, we're opening up our computer at 9 o'clock at night, we're starting to come away from ourselves. So I say the most important thing is every single day is a chance to course correct again.

And if you haven't been on that good path, we have to grant ourselves— I touched on it a little bit— we have to grant ourselves that grace, compassion, and understanding, and realize that a bad week or a bad day is not a bad month or a bad quarter or a bad year, right? Just because we're having a bad period, it doesn't mean the year's a write-off. It means that tomorrow— means that I don't like where I'm going anymore, and I'm going to start again from my step 1, mindset. Are we living in the scarcity mindset?

Are we working to that abundance mindset? What are our thoughts? We start again. Then the body— what is the stress?

Are we in acute or chronic stress? So where are those 4 pillars of my second step? What you're eating, sleeping, moving, managing stress. How am I eating?

How am I sleeping? We start right back because when we come away from ourselves, what I have found in my research is always the same. We come back to mindset, deserveability. Then the body— how are we doing in the body pillar?

And then time, number 3, that keeps us in burnout and overwhelm when we have too much on our calendar. So again, mindset, body, time, then we transform again. So if we're off the path, we grant ourselves that grace and compassion. We try again tomorrow with understanding.

We lower the bar and we come back and we start again. Mindset, body, time, and then we transform again. I like when you say you lower the bar. It's okay if you fail that day.

You fail that day. I say the bar is so low that, you know, the bar is so low today, baby, you're gonna trip over it. And that's okay. It's to give ourselves permission.

Yeah, because we have to know what season we're in. And even me, like I said, even now where I feel like I'm in a new season, I'm gonna have crap— bad things are gonna happen, crappy things. I'm not perfect. I don't always— I mean, I know what most of my tasks are, but there are days where I mess up.

Yeah, I give myself that good grace and compassion. I give myself that good self-love, and I start again tomorrow. That's amazing. If there was one last advice you want to give to the women listening, and some men, what would you tell them?

I I want to say just make sure you're living the life that you want to be living, because when you care so much about what other people think, you make decisions that are not good for you. You make good decisions for yourself when you know this is— I'm mushy and ooey and gooey and I feel this feels so right, so I'm going to be that person. I'm going to do all my acts are going to follow that so I can manifest that. So I would say just if you can, just stop caring what everyone thinks.

We're all different. We all have— just follow more of who you are, be more of who you are, and And that's the way to live in joy and passion and purpose. I would also say that cheesy slogan, I say it all the time, self-care is not selfish. It is the foundation to your growth personally and professionally.

It is the basis to everything good in your life. If you can put yourself in your schedule, in looking at your calendar over the next week, if everyone else is in there and you're not, where can you get yourself in there? Yeah. That's good.

I really like that. Well, Erica, it was a pleasure and an honor to have you on the podcast. It was an honor to finally talk to you. I'm so happy that we did this.

Thank you so much, and congrats on your beautiful show and all the incredible people and the influence you have on people. It's incredible. Thank you. Until next time.