Ep #96: My Vision

Want to have it all? Well, the best day to get started is today. Welcome to Love Your Living. A podcast for ambitious women who want to take their life and business to a whole new level of success. I’m Brooke Keeling, multiple six-figure business owner, passionate entrepreneur, and your host. Welcome to another episode of the Love Your Living podcast.

Hey, everyone. Brooke Keeling here with the Love Your Living podcast. I’m super excited to be here with all of you as always, but I am especially excited and feeling so energized by all the love that you guys have been giving. The communication, and connection, and excitement around our Love Your Living world and community has been really, really awesome.

So, thank you for showing up. I’ve loved getting to know more of you, and your businesses, and your struggles, and what it allows me to do is create some really fun content and share some of my experiences too. That’s exactly what we’re going to be doing. We have an awesome challenge coming up to get more clients no matter what niche you’re in.

We’re not going to be talking about that, but creating and attracting more of your ideal clients in a very classy way, maybe with integrity. So, creating clients within your business with integrity and feeling good about it, feeling good about creating more momentum and connecting with more people that you really truly want to serve. Really excited about that. That’s going to be a really fun five-day challenge. So, come along with us on that.

Anyways, what I want to talk to you guys about today is creating a vision for your life. I’ve talked about this many times, but I haven’t really shared my vision with you guys. So, I think that there’s so much power in there. It’s so important to understand what it is that you’re working towards. What vision do you have for your life and your business?

Rather than just asking you and teaching you how to find that through a series of questions, or work, or whatever, I’m going to share with you guys what my current vision is in my business and in my life. Now, this has evolved over a period of time, and the reason why I’m sharing it with you guys too is because I think sometimes for me, I’ve noticed this with reading.

I’ve been reading a lot lately, getting back in the habit of just picking up the book whenever I can through my busy world, and I find that I can relate to a concept if it’s told from a story standpoint. So, how someone else has applied it to their own life, or how they’re using it, or what it looks like for them. Being able to see an example or hearing a story about a certain concept is so much easier for me to wrap my mind around it and apply it to my own world.

That’s the purpose of me sharing with you guys today, is hopefully, by the end of it, you can start asking yourself some questions about what is truly important in your life, in your business. What are some of the things maybe that you need to start doing, and thinking about, or thinking differently about, and what that means for you?

For me, my story started almost nine years ago now. I think nine years ago is when I started in real estate. This summer it’ll be nine years. When I first started in that whole journey, I had very different goals than I have today. That’s the beauty of goals. That’s the beauty of growth, is that we think sometimes that we know or we have to know all of the answers.

We have to have it all figured out. We need to know exactly what our life looks like. We need to know exactly where we’re going to live, exactly when we’re going to have kids, how that’s going to look. Are we sending them to daycare? Are we having a nanny? How are we going to afford it? What does the timing look like?

All of the things. What’s the school district that we’re in? How old will I be? What space do I need in between these different things? How much money am I going to be making? All of these things that we feel like we have to know the answer, and sometimes when we get so caught up in the thinking and the planning of it, we don’t get to actually doing it.

The beauty of having gone through so many different phases already that I want to share with you guys is that it truly is not about the destination. I used to be someone that planned all of these things. I would have anxiety attacks over the timing of what happens when, and when the perfect time was, and but how did it all play out?

I needed to know all of the details, and I would get so stressed out about it, and it didn’t even matter in the end because it’s like getting out of your own way. Your life is going to unfold the way that it needs to unfold, and sometimes when we look at our success or our goals, and we think, “Okay, I need to get there, and then I’ll be happy. I’ll be content.”

Usually, that’s not the case. You want to go to the next level, but almost always, what you set out to do does not look like what you set out to do in the end. It doesn’t unfold the way that you wanted. Some way or another, you’re going to get there.

You’re going to come to that version or even maybe a better version of that, but being open to how it needs to unfold is such a powerful lesson that I’ve learned, is just releasing the reigns of the control. Saying, “This is what I want. I don’t know how this is going to happen. I don’t know necessarily all the details that are involved in this, but this is what I’m working towards right now.”

So, when I started out in my real estate business, I’ve told this before, but my goal was I wanted to be able to supplement some income while I was raising a family. I wanted my husband to be the main breadwinner. I wanted him to work his very safe job that he got a great paycheck at, and he had really incredible benefits, and all of that. I wanted him to stay there. We had that piece of the puzzle together.

We bought a house. We had that piece of the puzzle together. I wanted to be able to make X amount, maybe $25,000 a year, and be able to stay at home with my kids. Raise my kids, do the laundry, do the house, be the stay at home mom. That was my dream. That was my goal.

Then I thought too, okay, maybe in three years I would make $50,000. Maybe eventually someday, if I wanted or if I could do it while I was doing the other things, I would make $100,000. Well, that was like my end all be all, and I did that before kids. I also did that well within 10 years. I did it within like the first two years.

So, then it’s like, “Okay, well now what’s next?” That whole story unfolding, I got so obsessed with making money and feeling successful that my self-worth was tied to that success. Everything that I was doing in my worthiness was tied to the business that I was doing.

So, of course, I was hustling, I was grinding, I was doing all of those things until eventually I was like, “For what? Why am I working so hard? For what? I have the income that I thought I would never have, but now what? Can I have kids and also continue to grow? Do I always have to be working this hard in my business?”

I started to become unhappy and resentful of some of the things, and also, I had to rediscover what made myself happy. That was my whole dive into life coaching, which I’m so grateful for because I’ve learned so much from then. Since then too, I’ve continued to invest in coaching. I’ve continued to invest in masterminds. I’ve continued to seek out people that are doing the same things as me or at a higher level than me.

What that has allowed me to see is that there are so many other ways of doing things. There’s so much more that I can grow. Being in my little circle, this is where your friendships, your circle, your network is so incredibly powerful because if I would’ve stayed in my own little safe zone, or stayed within the community that I was in, that I felt incredibly successful around, I would have just continued to hustle and grind it out.

Instead, I started seeking other ways, and it took me a while because I thought I was a failure. There were certain things that were starting to dip that I didn’t like to see dip because it was attached to my worth, or what I thought my friendships, or whatever it may be, but then I slowly started to realize there’s something even bigger, and I would have never known that.

I would have never known that there’s other ways to do business if I wouldn’t have started seeking some of this additional help and just seeking something bigger than what I had there that wasn’t just direct success or a six-figure income.

When I started to see that, I started investing. I went to all of Tony Robbins’ courses, Life Mastery, and Wealth Mastery, and Date with Destiny, and all of those events, and learning about him, seeing this multi-billionaire up on the stage, and hearing him talk about all the different business ventures that he has while he’s still doing other things, and saying, “I show up at these different companies twice a year.”

There was an eye opener there of how to run a business when I was stuck in this place of like, “How could I possibly continue working this hard forever and also have a family, or also have this?” So, I started looking at how do I build a team, which was really fucking hard. How do I step out a little bit more? How do I become a leader? How do I hire? How do I manage? How do I create processes and systems?

All of those things were really freaking hard as I evolved into the business and the person that I am today, and I would not have done half of those things if I had not been surrounded by other people that had done it before me, or that we’re doing something bigger because those people made me feel like I was playing so small, and it continues.

Every single day, I look around, and who I’m surrounding myself with makes such an impact in what I’m choosing to do in my day-to-day life. I could go find hundreds of people that would make me feel so good about where I’m at and probably be the biggest player in the room by this afternoon, but that’s not what I want.

I want people that are going to push me and be willing to go through the fires and the storms of building something bigger, something greater within themselves and within their businesses. So, for me and my vision, it’s continued to evolve. Right now, where I’m at my business, I’ve talked about where I was three years ago with having kids and not feeling like, “Hmm, can I be a mom? Can I also be a business owner?”

Since then, I’ve had two kids, and I’ve added two more businesses to my plate, and stepping back into my world now, maternity leave is so incredibly powerful because it had forced me to get out. I had to get out of my business, and quite frankly, I didn’t really give a shit at the time. When you are in the full haze of being a mom, like I just released everything that I possibly could think about and worry about because I didn’t have the mental capacity and energy to think about all of the things that I thought about on a daily basis.

I said this with my daughter. I’ll say it again with my son. I figured it was coming with my son. I was like eyes wide open watching for all of the gifts that would come, and the learning lessons, and the growth opportunities, and just allowing myself to completely check out, but I could come back with a new perspective.

Coming back in, I came in like swinging. I was ready to hit the ground running. Let’s get my schedule time blocked out. Let’s get everything high efficiency. These are what our goals are. We did all of our goal setting and planning at the beginning of the year or the end of the year, and that’s not really what has happened since I’ve stepped back in.

What I’ve realized as I have stepped back in is one, I do still need a lot of work within my real estate business in order for me to create more of what it is that I want in my vision. What I also learned through this whole process is even some of the things that I thought were really good, the focuses that

I had that were really good, team dynamics that I thought were really good. The things that I thought were really set, they need a little bit more attention, and I don’t see those things as a failure. I see them as an opportunity for growth, and it’s changed my perspective in terms of what I want for my business.

Even from three months ago, I’m starting to feel like I want something different for my business, and I’m open to allowing those feelings come up, and me getting really curious about them, and figuring out how can I make that more of my reality.

So, my vision right now, I run three businesses, and I have two kids that I fully want to be present for. I want to be able to say, “I’m going to take you on a field trip,” when they go to school. I want to be the one if I want to, to drop them off at school and pick them up at three o’clock, and still be able to run incredibly successful businesses.

What that means for me is I have to have the courage to let go of even more. I need to leverage my time on a whole new level. I need to monetize my business on a whole new level. I have to let go of more, even more, in my business in order to continue to grow and lead my team at a higher level. I think that this is one of the biggest lessons that so many business owners have, especially when you’re invested in your people.

One of the biggest, the biggest gifts that I have had along my whole journey is this shift of serving myself to serving others. I was not born into all of the opportunity, and the success, and the money that I have created in my life. I had to create that. I have so much love. I have an incredible family, but I wasn’t given what I have right now or even a jumpstart to it. I had love.

So, when I look at when I started, it was very, very, very money focused because I saw money as a sense of freedom, and I still do. I want my daughter to make her own money. I don’t ever want her to be dependent on a husband, or a man, or significant other to pay for what she wants in her life, her dreams, her experiences, anything.

There’s such a sense of freedom within my marriage, within my life, within my businesses, knowing that I’m responsible. I’m responsible for shit hitting the fan, and I take full responsibility, and I’m responsible for being able to create literally anything that I want to create in my life.

It’s no one else’s job to do that. It’s no one else’s job to make me happy. It’s no one else’s job to make me successful. It’s no one else’s job to make me feel worthy. It’s no one else’s job to allow me to say yes to something, to create more of what I want in my life. Only I can do that, and I’m very, very fully aware of that.

However, a few years ago, there started to become this shift. So as I hired really top performers, I started to not feel like I needed to be the best on the team, that my numbers needed to be the highest in terms of production, that I always constantly had to be the one, the number one.

I started giving that power and seeing other people grow underneath me, and that has been the biggest reward and shift that I’ve seen within the last couple of years in my business. I have found that I have this passion and love for not only creating businesses and opportunities, but I love supporting people.

The biggest problem that I’ve had recently is that I can’t support people to the level and the capacity that I want to because I’m too into all of the shit in my business. So, if things start to go downward or downward spiral, it’s like I’m jumping into the fire with them.

I think that that’s incredible to be able to do as a leader, but it’s also a very fine line because when we are in the trenches with them, we’re not able to see what’s really happening and what really needs to be done, but we want to support our people. We want them to know like, “Hey, I’m in the trenches with you. I’m here army crawling through it. I’m your partner. We’re going after all of this together.”

I think that there’s something still that I can be doing within my businesses to allow me to take everyone to a higher level. But with everyone going to a higher level again, I have to start levitating at a higher level, and that’s scary to me because I don’t want people to think that I don’t care, or I’m not there, or this isn’t my problem. I want to be there with them. So, it’s just leading from a different place and learning that.

Within my vision, I want to be able to come into strategy meetings and having my people come to me and saying, “These are the best ideas, or this is a new strategy that I found. What do you think?” Coming to me and saying, “What do you think of these things?”

I want to be able to have incredible ideas and go and be part of really big masterminds where I can bring these ideas and processes home and implement into my own business with my incredible teams. I want to have my own brick and mortar. I have brick and mortar business currently. I have an actual office space that I can go to that my team works out of here within our real estate world, and some of my Love Your Living team too.

Also, my investment team, they work out of business, but I want to purchase my own space. I don’t want to rent it anymore. I want to build up our investment practice and portfolio. I want to learn commercial real estate, so we have all of the tools in our tool belt and really working more on the investment side of our business than residential side of our business, especially within real estate.

I also want to build out and travel more with my Love Your Living brand. I want to write a book. I want to do so many things, and in order to do some of these things, and lead at a higher level, and be able to produce incredible content and new programs, new groups to lead high level mastermind, I can’t be in the nitty gritty of some of the things that I’m doing right now.

It’s not even me saying, “Oh, I can’t do this. I need to focus on these things right now.” It’s become the point now in my business where I literally can’t do it. I can’t get through all of my emails and all of the things that my teams need from me, plus all of the things that my clients need from me, and feel like I’m serving everyone to the level that I want to serve them with where I’m at right now.

That is me realizing and accepting this is where I’m at, and also knowing where I want to go. So, having that vision of where you want to go, and saying, “Okay, this is where I am at. What are the things that we need to do?” Sometimes this is the hardest question to ask ourselves, and to get clear on, and be comfortable with taking the blinders off, is really being honest with ourselves with where we’re at in our lives.

So many of us have these big dreams and these big aspirations, or we hide behind a certain level of success, or situation, circumstance, life, Instagram, social. We hide behind the personas of everything that we’re putting out.

It can be a Band-Aid to our own mind of being like, “Oh, everything is so great,” but really sitting down and thinking, “What do I want in my life? What do I want? Do I want to run a team? Do I want to run a seven-figure business? Am I content with a lower income and not working as much, or do I want to work more? What are my goals?”

There’s no right or wrong answer to this question, and my answers and my goals are going to be different than yours are. It’s just having clarity in what it is that we truly want, and then being able to say, “Okay, this is my willingness to go and get it.” Because here’s the thing. I talk with a lot of people. I talk with a lot of women that are in business.

I have a lot of incredible clients and team members, and when I can sit down and do goal setting and understand what someone’s goals are, I wholeheartedly believe that anybody can do anything if you put your mind to it, and if you’re willing to do the work.

But what starts to happen is we set these big goals because it looks so great, and the end result looks so great, and you can think all day long like, “This is so amazing. This is what I want to achieve in my life,” but when it comes down to doing the workday today, we’re not willing to do what’s necessary.

So, understanding where you’re at currently, if you don’t like it, it’s even better, and that’s okay. It’s a beautiful thing. This is where I’m at, and I’m going to continue to grow, but this is what I want, and this is who I want to become. This is what I want in my life. This is the vision that I have for my life, and how willing are you to do the work that it takes?

When I stepped back into real estate, or when I stepped back into my businesses period, after I went on maternity leave, I knew in my mind, I was like, “Look, this is going to be a tough six months. The next six months, they’re going to be busy. I have big goals. I’m willing to do the work. I know that I’m going to be tired, but I don’t want to put my goals on the back burner.”

Now, I could very easily say, “You know what? Why don’t we just play a little bit more even keel this year and say, ‘These are what our goals are. They’re very doable within reach. I’m going to step out. These are the smaller things that we’re going to focus on, and next year, we’ll start tapping into some of these bigger things’”?

But honestly, that’s just not my personality. For me, it’s just figuring out how can I support myself in these bigger ventures, and what is the work that is going to be needed of just me? So, when I go back in and I dive in, I’m 100% in, and then it’s just figuring out what more is needed from there. What other support? What are we missing? What’s feasible? As a human being, what’s feasible?

Here’s a perfect example of this as well. We were talking about this within my real estate business recently, and one of my team members said, “I want to feel really accomplished by the time that I leave,” because she has really great boundaries between her work hours and her personal life. I have become the same way.

For me, I want to know from 7:00 to 4:00, I have done my best. I have hit the ground running. I have rocked out so much shit. I feel very accomplished, and I feel good at the end of the day of the things that needed to get done, and I got them done because at 4:00 p.m., I shift over into mommy mode.

Although there’s definitely some times where I’m wrapping things up, or maybe I’m on my emails a little bit, or I jump on at night to finish up some projects that didn’t get done. I don’t love doing this, but it’s been a necessity of some days, but my big thing when that timer goes off and I’m in mom mode, I want to be fully present for my kids.

It’s one of the things that I want to feel very strongly about, but I also am so grateful that I’m able to do work that I love, and go after my own dreams, and also be a mom because I appreciate them individually so much more. When I get to go to work, I love doing the work that I get to do. It’s not just a nonstop thing like it was prior to having kids.

Then when I check out and I’m in mom mode, I know that my kids are going to be grown in the blink of an eye, and I don’t want to miss that. I don’t want to miss a single thing. I want to see those smiles. I want to remember the conversations. I want to remember their songs. I want to remember their snuggles.

It’s so important to me to be able to be present in those moments too, and not allow my work to just completely spill over, and the stress and the anxiety sometimes that we have within a fast paced world, and big growth opportunities to consume my life. That’s a practice in and of itself as well.

Another one of the things that I say every single day is a healthy mind and body is a healthy business. Truly knowing that we have to take care of our minds and our bodies too, so that we don’t become diseased with stress, and anxiety, and all of the things that just build, and build, and build, and build, and build onto themselves when we are going through some shit in our businesses, and being able to see the beauty in our life too.

My vision, my big picture vision, where I’m at right now in my business and in my life, which will likely be a completely different vision a couple of years from now, is living in my house completely renovated, which we’re doing right now, working with some of the contractors that I work with on a regular basis, being able to lead my team at yet a higher level.

For me, I want to be independent. I want to create my own business space. I want to buy a commercial building so that I can have my own unique experience. I want my businesses to be an experience. I want to invest in more income properties. I want to grow my investment business. I want to learn commercial real estate.

All of these different things that create more layers into my business, I want to be able to lead on that higher level, again, so that I’m levitating above and being able to coach my coaches, being able to coach my mentors, and being able to step out more of the day-to-day, and support people on a higher level, and helping everything expand.

That’s my vision, and I’ve known that vision for a while, and for me, it’s just this clarity of coming back in and being honest with myself about where my attention is being spent, what are the tasks that I should be doing, what are the tasks that I should be delegating? Being able to release that, give it up.

What I’ve found when I do that too, here’s a big secret, usually, I will hold on to something so freaking stupid for weeks at a time because I’m not getting to the task. Then eventually, I’m like, “Do you think maybe you could help me with this?” Literally, within my inbox five minutes later, it’s done. It’s so dumb the things that we hold on to sometimes when we could just ask for help from other people.

So, back to my question for you. What is your vision? What do you want to create in your life? Get really, really, really clear on it. You can feel it. You can sense it. You can see what your day-to-day looks like, and how you feel from your day-to-day, and who you’re surrounded by, and what type of work that you’re doing, and what type of joy that brings into your life.

One of the easiest ways, if you don’t quite know what your vision is yet, is start paying attention to what brings you joy each and every day. What makes you feel good and what brings you joy in the different things that you’re doing in your world? Start doing more of those things. Not waiting until. Start doing more of those things.

The other thing that I really want you to sit down and think about and look at is where you’re at. Where are you currently at? It is now March 2020. We are about to enter into quarter two already, Q2, of 2020. Where are you at? What were your goals at the beginning of the year? Are you on track to hit those goals?

Maybe you’ve exceeded them, and you need new goals or bigger goals. Where are you at in your life, in your business? Where are you at, and where do you want to go? Then it’s bridging that gap. What are you willing to do in order to get there? Are you willing to do the hard things?

Because I promise you, there’s going to be hard things. There’s going to be things that you don’t like to do. There’s going to be things that don’t spark joy in your life doing them, but that’s the training. That’s what you need to go through in order to get to the other side of what those big goals are.

So, I really hope that you found some little nuggets in this podcast, and can take a step back, and think really big, and think about what your vision is for your life, and what needs to be done. What are some of the things that you can start thinking about and doing in your life that’s going to start manifesting and creating some of those outcomes slowly, and remembering too that you don’t have to have it all figured out.

You don’t have to have all of the answers figured out as to how it’s all going to happen. I don’t know how all of the things are going to happen in my world. I don’t know how I’m going to get a book deal. I don’t know how I’m going to fund the commercial properties that I want to fund. I don’t know even how to do commercial real estate right now.

I don’t know some of these things, but I know that it’s something that intrigues me, and I know the more that I just tap into that curiosity, I’m going to find my way through it. But the very first step to this is having a vision for your future, having a vision of what your life looks like, what you want it to look like, understanding where you’re at, where you’re going and what you’re willing to do to get there, and believing in yourself too.

I will leave you guys with that. I hope you have a phenomenal week. I’d love to hear from you. You’re always welcome to share your visions with me. You can message them, you can email them to me, also, just know, watch for what we’re doing. We’re doing so many fun things. I’d love to have you guys come along with us.

To team up with me to grow and scale your business to multiple six figures and seven figures while creating a life that you absolutely love. Head on over to LoveYourLivingOnline.com/application. I want to hear from you. I want to hear your goals, your dreams, your aspirations, and how I can help get you there. LoveYourLivingOnline.com/application. You can also check out this link in the show notes. I cannot wait to hear from you.