0:00:00 - Joanna
Welcome to the Her First podcast. Her First is a podcast to help online business owners, coaches and creators gain the confidence needed to build a successful business while creating sustainable lifestyle balance. We are here to help you prioritize yourself in your business and life. In this episode, we're going to be interviewing the founder of Therapy that Works, Dr. Diane Gehart. Diane has worked with nearly 250,000 clients as a therapist or supervisor and put that knowledge of professional training into over 12 books. She's also the only person to write leading textbooks in both counseling and family therapy theories. We're so excited to have Diane on this episode and talk about her journey in building a successful online business. Let's get started, hi, Diane. Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to have you here for our listeners.
Michelle and I met Diane when we were at Kajabi Hero Live, the same place. We met each other. Kajabi is a tool that actually all three of us use in our businesses. It's a tool where you can build, create and sell online courses and learn how to sell your knowledge, and we met there. The conference was all about learning how to grow, scale your business, bring in really great strategies, and we connected just meeting up. One of the social events, had dinner and kind of were buddies throughout the whole conference, sitting together, eating together. It was a total blast getting to know her and her business. And when we started this podcast, Michelle and I were brainstorming who could we possibly invite to have? And the first person I thought of was Diane.
0:01:40 - Michelle
Absolutely, Diane. It was so great to connect with you at the conference and we actually just the even before the conference started, that first night we went to dinner and you really just struck me as having this real attunement and your demonstration of knowledge and experience in your field showed we were kind of picking out personality quirks and traits and you were sharing that with me and, oh, do you do this? Oh, yeah, you're definitely. I can't even remember INTP.
I remember we did the Myers-Briggs, yeah, so I was really taken aback by that and I'm really into all of that personality development and understanding yourself and being conscious and aware. So it was really beautiful to have you kind of point those things out to me and have that reflection as a part of our just getting to meet you. Oh my God, thank you.
0:02:30 - Michelle
I'd forgotten all about that night, at least that part of it. Yes, that's what one way to meet people started telling them what their personalities and I like their personalities right.
0:02:38 - Joanna
I'm a little bit of a like. I'm a little obsessed with personality quizzes and types. I know them all. I know all of mine. It's just so, it's so fun Can help you in your business too. So I've got a list of questions to ask you. We might not get through them all. I really just want to hear more of your story and have a conversation between the three of us of the ups and downs of starting a business, how you take care of yourself, what you've done that's successful, what you've done that's not so successful, and learn more about you. So, Diane, why don't we get started with you telling our listeners just a little bit more about yourself?
0:03:16 - Diane
Absolutely God. There are lots of little dimensions, but I think we'll start with. I've been a psychotherapist family therapist for 30 years. I've been a full-time professor of psychotherapy, so I do research, I write all around what works in psychotherapy, and so that's kind of where I started. So I'm also an author.
I've done, I've written, several books, and I am a single mom of two boys, 14 and 10. And I do 99% of the parenting because their dad lives on the East Coast and I'm on the West Coast so and I'm a karate mom very important and it is testing week this week. So, yeah, so I and I've always had my full-time position as an academic. I've always had a small part-time private practice, and I have been an author for the last 30 years as well. I've always had multiple kind of balls in the air. I've always been a person who I don't count the hours how many you know hours. I work for a week, but I'm pretty busy, I stay pretty busy, and I do a lot. I love what I do, though, and I think that's part of what is really key to all of this is loving what you do, and I'm just so passionate, you know, about what I get to do? I just love writing, I love teaching, and so yeah, that's kind of a thing.
0:04:37 - Joanna
That's awesome. Thanks for sharing. I'm also one of those people that works a lot of hours and I was actually talking to my husband about this this morning and he was like you know, it's really not fair for you. I think you get hit on both sides of criticism. Where some people I meet, they're like oh you're crazy, you work so much, you're always working, you're always thinking of work. And then some people don't think I work very much and because I work from home, I'm like literally wearing sweatpants right now under this top, like because I don't have to leave the house to do my job. So I kind of get both perceptions of me some people thinking I'm a workaholic and some people thinking I just like sit around making TikTok videos all day.
0:05:24 - Michelle
Yeah, I think that perception from the outside can go both ways and it sounds like, Diane, you have a lot going on juggling. Joanna, you can definitely relate to this as well. Being a mother is balancing that work, showing up business, you know, professional accolades, as well as publishing and author lifestyle. There's so much there and, Joanna, I think that you've juggled and handled a lot of those different things you've done over time as well, all while being a mom. That really, really, you know, puts the pressure on in terms of balance and what I feel like sometimes those external perspectives are and how people are looking in on that, and that'll change how you perceive yourself and how you perceive the experience of what you're doing and navigating that. So kudos to both of you, because I am not a mother and I can't even imagine like I. You know I did the best that I can on my own with my husband and my two dogs, but that is a whole other world of handling and managing and balance that takes a lot of time and attention.
0:06:28 - Joanna
Yeah, so, Diane, you're, we've established your mom a psychotherapist, an author, a professor, all of those things. So what made you decide to build an online course, like what brought that idea to your head?
0:06:44 - Diane
God, that's a good question. You know it's funny. I will tell you that 10 years ago, one of my major mentors said Diane, stop writing books, do online courses. I'm like, well, I don't know how to do that, I need to make a job. And you know, I'm like, oh Bill, it's so much work, dude, and I just couldn't see how it was going to work. And then the pandemic hit and I mean I am running at that time. Well, first of all, I'm a single mom homeschooling. Well, at the same time, I am running a large family therapy graduate program with like 200 students in the field. My major right-hand person who helps me.
She was on sabbaticals for like most of the nine months first nine months of the pandemic and we're having to transition everyone onto online and all my faculty 30 faculty none of my students weren't allowed to do online therapy. My faculty weren't allowed to teach online and boom, we were suddenly all online. And at the beginning of the pandemic, I'm like you can't teach psychotherapy online, we'll never have online courses, and so, but we all got forced to do it. I ended up like literally spending that whole. I mean, I was working 12, 14 hours a day. It was insane. But like, how, the how, how do we do this? I mean, bleep, how do we do this? And so we started doing it. Yeah, this works. This is really possible to teach these skills online. Because I didn't believe it was gonna be possible and so somehow that is how I got started and somehow, when they're God, I'm gonna have to even go back and think about this. But somehow in there got the idea to do an online mentoring course and I had one of the things I'm very thankful to myself my mentor, who told me to teach online courses years ago. I had started. He had got me doing a mailing list years and I mean like 10, 20 years before, and I used it once every couple of years and there are about four or five times. I was gonna stop paying a Weber for a whole of this mailing list I had, but I think there were probably 5,000 people over the years. They mostly came in through my textbooks to get the reforms that go with my textbook. So I had started that and I had this list of probably about 5,000 people and that was my first course and once I got started and teaching, I mean.
So being in a university is like there's so many rules. There's so many regulations. There's so many things I have to do. When I got to teach these online courses, I was like God, I don't know if they grade anyone. I just couldn't teach them. It's so much fun.
My students weren't like, well, the paper have to be what's gonna be on the test. I'm sorry for those of you students who ask those questions. That like takes all of the joy out of our work and in these online courses I just people just wanted to. They asked me good questions like how do I do this? How do I solve this problem, you know, and so I just enjoyed the teaching so much without having the university context, because it was truly about the learning and not about like jumping through all the darn hoops, both for me and my students, because I had to jump through the zillion hoops and I had to cover this, you know, and so many meetings and my students have to like do X, y, z so we can get them a grade, and like getting rid of the shackles of the rules, for both faculty and students were just so liberating. So that was my first course and I believe that was in fall 2020.
0:10:13 - Joanna
That's amazing. That's such a great story. One thing that kind of really struck me from what you said is that the pandemic happened right and when the pandemic happened, a lot changed for online learning like a lot changed. And I was working for another company at the time during the pandemic and we were selling, we kind of created and sold courses to help students with the AP exams the advanced placement exams students need to pass to like get college credit for those courses. And the pandemic happened and that company changed overnight because all of a sudden the demand for a completely online way to prepare for those courses shot up. Our email list grew by like 40,000 in a week. Like it was insane.
0:11:07 - Joanna
It was absolutely insane. We were the first company the AP exams. They changed how they were going to administer the test because of the pandemic. We were the first company to come up with a course that met the requirements of the new exam and it just skyrocketed this company to being on the map and I hear so many stories of people in online learning who were able to take the sort of negative of the pandemic right, who were able to take the negatives of the pandemic and how it changed learning and build businesses off of it. So it was amazing for you to have that foresight, to say this has changed and I can actually build my business off of this change.
0:11:56 - Michelle
Yeah, capitalizing on that, and I also want to point out, Diane, that you had had sort of this background building on top of it.
I think, for those listening, sometimes it can feel like we aren't in the same place, we're not seeing the same success rate or we're comparing ourselves to others in the online space and what they've been able to accomplish.
But with your background of teaching, educating, already being in the space, understanding what the need was, understanding what people were looking for and then having this almost forced opportunity upon them to transition, really built a beautiful breeding ground for you to see that success in creating and delivering an online course.
I think it's awesome that sometimes, almost you stumble into what you're doing. It wasn't intentional, you knew about it, it was something that you were aware of, but that really propelled what you were able to accomplish and what you were able to do and then have it be really fulfilling and joyful. Like you said, the experience of it was just that much more meaningful because it was a shift in the way the education is typically administered outside of the university setting, outside of a structured setting. So, keeping in mind, as you're listening, that if you feel like, oh well, I'm not as far along as I want to be by now. My course didn't launch the way that I wanted it to, or I'm comparing myself to these other large and, as we'll talk about on the podcast in the future, some of these really large launches, knowing that everyone has a little bit of a different background and we're all coming from different experiences and we're bringing those experiences that are unique to us and fueling whatever it is that we're doing.
0:13:31 - Joanna
No one's ever starting from scratch, so just keeping that in mind, yeah, I also love that you launched with a mailing list Like that is so cool. I talk to clients all the time and type it in decease parole. Type it in We'll build sales pages, and then it comes to like we have to get people to that sales page and Figuring out how to drive traffic is such an important part to selling an online course. And a lot of people don't think about mailing. They think about, you know, paid ads or traffic from social media or they think, well, I'm gonna put this sales page or this website out there and people will just come, they'll just find that right. But you had a really interesting strategy to get yourself there and I'd love to learn a little bit more about what your experience was when you got that first sale. When did it come in? How did you feel like? What was that experience like?
0:14:27 - Diane
oh my gosh. I mean, it was totally thrilling and I do remember with my, I think with my first launch, I was just shocked like, oh my god, this is, this is working, we're gonna have this class, and it was really a Mind-blowing, in a way, to be able to create something like this Online. I think that's what you know, but it is. This is like this realization. You're like, oh my god, this is so exciting, this is incredible. Look at all these people signing up and the energy was just so magical. But yeah, it's just yeah, and you get that first sale, that first day of sales at first launch week. I did a launch week, you know, as it was a live course, and so it's just like, oh my god, people are signing up and you kind of get addicted. You like to like, keep refreshing the page to see, oh, my god, there's another one.
0:15:17 - Joanna
That's another one.
0:15:18 - Diane
It's a lot of fun.
0:15:19 - Joanna
My daughter's been begging me to start a YouTube channel and, and so I let her. I don't know how much she's gonna listen to this one day in her older age and be like mom, why did you tell the story? But I think she's six, right, so we're not gonna like really go hard on YouTube, but we did a video. We went to Sesame Place and we did this video. You know, put it up, put it on, and Every day we look at the views and like we're at 61 views on her first YouTube video, which is, you know, not a ton of views, but but she's Thrilled, she's like 61 views, like she's just so excited that people are interacting with, with her content. It's fascinating, could you?
0:16:04 - Michelle
imagine if we brought that kind of like childhood Mindset to the things that we did and just applauded and celebrated every little win and every little accomplishment.
I think that as we evolve into adulthood and I'm sure that you have so many thoughts on this, Diane from the Psychological perspective, which probably we won't get into today but we spend so much time berating ourselves or being frustrated with ourselves or being hard on ourselves, putting this pressure and Something so simple as getting another sign up on your email list, being able to make a small sale here or there, or just getting a little win with one of your audience members. We do not celebrate that enough and I think it's so important to bring in that perspective that may has. Every single time you get another little view, it's like, yes, that's an accomplishment, that's success, I'm gonna celebrate it and I'm gonna be in the gratitude and the experience of what it feels like to Enjoy this process, not just reach for oh, I want a thousand views, or I want six thousand views, and it's not enough until I get there. Or I want to make this many sales, and it's not enough until I get there. So I love that. Thank you for sharing that story of mine.
0:17:10 - Joanna
And actually you know, when you did your first lunch, you were fresh through a fresh through a fresh. How often now Do you refresh your Kajabi data to see your new students Like? What's your process with that?
0:17:21 - Diane
Well, I think you know, most times when I log into Kajabi it is one of the first things that I notice and keep an eye on and I try not to get overly. It's excited or depressed. I try to practice a little Buddhist equanimity. It's gonna ebb, it's gonna flow, because I do have. I have some classes that are kind of evergreen and then I have other classes that, where I do launches. So both work and for me awesome.
0:17:49 - Joanna
So it sounds like you've built sort of a multi-stage Ecosystem in your course. You have courses that you live launch, that have specific dates, specific times that they're meeting and some that are more evergreen. How did you develop that strategy?
0:18:04 - Diane
and so I started with the live courses and, and so that is how I started. And then I you know, as you record I got savvier as I went along and I learned how to do a lie and Then cut out part of it and make it a standalone, you know. So it could be evergreen, and so I've gotten much savvier. As almost every live course I'm pulling something out that's gonna still, you know, remain evergreen. But I started with the live to build the relationship. I still like every course. I teach it. I like to teach it entirely live. The first time.
I just recently launched a new course called beyond the hour. It's for psychotherapists or coaches to create online content, and I'd said you know what? I'm gonna teach the whole thing live, with the plan that next time three quarters of that's gonna be Pre-recorded. But I like the feedback, because I think that feedback is really important, because if you just create something and you're not getting lots of Interactive feedback, you don't know what pieces are missing. So I love to start everything live and then I start creating some of the online portions, and so that's just kind of been my strategy to create things to make sure that what I'm creating Really works for my target audience. So I always start live, and then it becomes when I know it works. Then I Make it evergreen.
0:19:22 - Michelle
Yeah, and I think we discount that experience of Getting the feedback and interacting with our customers and interacting with those people that were essentially making the course and product, for I see a lot of people in the online space who typically will create a product in a vacuum or in isolation Before they've even tested it on the market or before they've even connected with those people who are going to purchase it.
They put all this time and energy into the back end and then they go to launch and they have a failed launch. I've done that before and so I think, recognizing that there's so much value in being able to connect and get the feedback along the way In order to see the success that you want to see, not just in your marketing and sales, but actually having it be a very valuable product for those that you're working with as well- yeah, and if you build that sort of relationship with your customers, with your students, they'll start to tell you what to make next too, you know like they'll Tell you the idea for the next course, the next product and what they need, which is the best market research you could possibly have, right, absolutely absolutely.
0:20:25 - Joanna
So, Diane, if you were to start completely over, all of a sudden you're back before the pandemic, you're starting your course. Can you tell us what you would do exactly the same. These were the things I did right when I get started. I would definitely do them again.
0:20:40 - Diane
Okay. So I think the things I would definitely do is, you know, to really love what I was creating, because I, I love what I'm teaching, I love what I'm doing. I bring a ton of passion to it. I think the other thing I like about how I work and I think this is this is something I also try to teach in my own students is, you know, I come up with idea, I explore it, I do my research, I can survey, you know, market whatever, but once I decide what I'm doing, I commit to it and I, I'm gonna follow it through to the end. And so and I don't let myself get sidetracked, like on, you know, finding the hero image for a class, I will allow myself 30 to 60 minutes to find it, because I'm the type of you go searching forever for the perfect image and so, like, for example, for my first class, you know I do.
I remember the day I created the landing page for that. I took a whole Sunday and at a certain point I'm like this is the best image I've got time to find and I'm just gonna move forward. And I think that's one of the reasons I've been very productive is I don't try to make it perfect. I try to make it good enough. 95 percent is good enough and I really focus on having a high quality product. You know, and I may not have the perfect image that I was hoping for. I just did fine, you know, but it was good enough. I can launch with this hero image. It's good, move forward, cheap, writing the rest of your landing page.
So that's one of the things I also think I do well is that I've and I've found ways to be very efficient In creating a lot. So I'm I I've real myself in when I sometimes want to go play with x, y or z and I'm like what is just the most efficient thing? I've started this, I'm gonna finish it. If it doesn't work, I'll figure something else out. But I don't second guess and stop and recreate, and I see a lot of the people I've mentored. They, they stop and they want to redo something different and they change their mind after month and pick one thing. Take your time to pick what it is, but then execute it to the end, learn from it and then then you get to do something else.
0:22:42 - Michelle
So one of the questions that's coming up for me that I want to ask you Is the confidence in the belief that comes with that, because I think that so many of us get stuck in questioning and we are trying to look for the perfect image. We want to re-film something multiple times. Oh, it's not good enough, we're not going to put it out. So I hear that you are experiencing this good enough Feeling and you're not worried necessarily about getting it perfect.
Now I also think that the way in which you've been efficient with your time has to do with being pulled in so many different directions.
Right the time in which, in the container in which you allow yourself to do something, it will take up that amount of time. So, whether that's 30 minutes, three days a month, it will take that amount of time, and so often we give ourselves too much time to do something and we put it off, we procrastinate, we get distracted or unfocused. So I would love to learn a little bit more about how you felt, like your confidence and almost like an inherent belief in what you were doing. How is that something that you established? Was it something that you created over the course of your tenure as a professor and everything that you're doing. You just truly believed in it? Or did it come from, from something else that you've done, a demonstration of your work in which you really felt like I have something to offer? I believe in what I'm doing and I know that what I'm doing is going to make a difference in people's lives.
0:24:08 - Diane
Both of those. I do believe in what I've. You know, part of it is I've been doing this for a while and so and I have seen what I do really works. The name of my therapy approach is therapy that works, and that's kind of my I'll cry do what works. And so I think there is having the life and professional experience to know what I'm doing works, so that but I think a lot of people have that, and there certainly are moments where I self-ing guess what's going on. And it does help that I do have a full-time job.
And this has been like I'm trying this, I'm trying to build this. You know I'm doing the best I can. So I practice a lot of mindfulness and I have a lot of spiritual practices and you know I just, and so there comes this like inner peace. I am doing the best I can. I want to try this. I'm going to just see what happens and I will accept whatever comes from this right and I'm going to learn from it rather than, like I don't know, go beat myself up or something like that.
Psychologically afterwards it's like not everything I've done has been totally magical and you know, perfect, there's been lots of like how I really got this for. Okay, what happened, what didn't happen, you know what should have happened and being, I think, getting to a point in life where you are, like, willing to admit when you make a mistake and you're going to learn to move on from it, and I think once you cross that bridge in your mind, both personally and professionally, you have this whole range of freedom that you don't have if you're still trying to make it all perfect.
0:25:48 - Michelle
You know in your mind yeah, not questioning your self worth, your sense of value.
I think that this comes sometimes with this space, especially as you're creating a personal brand and identity online, as most online businesses are right, you're putting yourself into a space in which you're showing up as vulnerable. You're sharing pieces of you and pieces of your life and pieces of your experience that you wouldn't normally share, but it's the way in which you connect with your audience, and so, knowing that if you put something out there, it's not a reflection of your value or your worth if it isn't received well or if people don't pay attention right away, it's a matter of looking at it like you said, Diane what worked, what didn't work, how can I tweak this? How can I change this? And what are the tasks, actions, execution, strategies in which I can change, as opposed to I got to go all the way back to the drawing board, I got to start over, or this isn't good enough, I'm not good enough, and all of the internal stories that we have that go along with that sometimes. Yeah, absolutely.
0:26:51 - Joanna
You know, my background, before I became a business owner has been in the corporate world, and the problem that you're talking about of like being obsessed with perfection, going back and forth about a sentence on a landing page, a hero image those kinds of things kill products Like I've seen, amazing things never see the light of day because of this need for making it perfect. And it's funny because you know, as a marketer in the situation, a lot of times it's actually the marketing and creative teams that can hold things back because they want things to be perfect. But my theory has always been get it in the world, test it. You can always change that sentence, you can always change that hero image, you can always adjust the offer, but if it never gets into the world, no one's ever going to buy it. No one's ever going to.
Whether it's a YouTube video, a TikTok video, a social post, of course, and whatever, a podcast, whatever it is, if you never put it in the world, no one will ever see it. And how is that better, like? How is that actually better? It isn't, you know, and that's a hard thing, I think, though, to get over, especially if you're a perfectionist. It's your brand, it's your face. But at the end of the day, you know, if it's not out there, if it's not published, no one's going to see it?
0:28:17 - Diane
Yeah, absolutely, you just got. You have to get out there.
0:28:20 - Joanna
So, the opposite of the question I asked, I want to learn a little bit about maybe some of your mistakes. You clearly have a very successful course, business, a very successful career, even with everything that you're doing, but if you started over what's something you would do differently?
0:28:38 - Diane
Well, I certainly would have started 10 years ago and listened to my mentor 10 years ago. At least, I never deleted the email list you told me to create, but I never used.
0:28:48 - Joanna
That part right.
0:28:50 - Diane
I actually started on Thinkific.
Because I wasn't because it was cheaper at the time. I'm sure it probably still is today. And so I started on Thinkific because I wasn't sure I didn't want to pay what a Kajabi was asking me to pay. And then like, literally it was within four to six months. I'm like I got to move to Kajabi and then I had to move everything over to Kajabi and I had to keep ThinkEffect classes open for a year Because I'd given everyone a year on ThinkEffect and then they'd lose their progress and so it cost me like a couple thousand dollars. It was an expensive little mistake. So I'm a huge.
I can do lots of commercials for Kajabi Because I was like, yeah, that was, yeah, the hundred bucks a month I was saving, or 80 bucks a month I was saving. It was not worth it. So that was one of it, One of the issues. Let's see, you know, I think I did in the beginning kind of partner, some people where it didn't end up working out. So that's always, you know, finding the right assistant has been challenging and you know, and so I'm very being here, being cautious about how I, who I ask for help, how we work together, clarifying all of that, Because that certainly I had some bumps in the road actually a couple bumps in the road. Finding the right help In terms of what I would do different. Yeah, that's sometimes hard. You know, hindsight is always 20-20. Sometimes you can't prevent it all.
You know, there's not necessarily a magic answer. Those are some of the things I would definitely do different.
0:30:22 - Joanna
Yeah, that's so interesting. One of the things for my business and in general, I can be very cautious about spending money Like you. You think, oh, I can save money here I will. But nine times out of 10, when I've made the like lower budget choice, it always comes back. I should have just spent the money on the right thing, the right tool the first time. Like. I've learned that lesson way too many times in my life and we'll probably keep learning that lesson, thinking, oh, feel cheaper, that's better, but like it always isn't the answer.
0:30:56 - Michelle
I think, investing in the right tools from the get-go. I mean even this podcast we just, you know, talked about. We wanted the right equipment to portray the right look and feel for what we're trying to accomplish. That being said, I do think that there's a lot to a lot to validating your offer, validating what it is that you're doing, before you go big and invest.
There are a lot of people who maybe are just starting out, or they're working full time, they're thinking about launching an online course business, or they're thinking about bridging into this industry in some way, and some of the feedback that you'll get is like, oh, just buy the software, get all this, buy these things, because, I mean, there's a lot of tools that come along with having an online presence and, yes, you want to invest in the quality once you actually start to make that decision.
But I would also say it's really, really important if someone just has an idea right now and they haven't validated it, or you want to be a coach and you're not coaching yet, it's much better to get yourself out there to test and to try without all the fluff, because what happens is, I think, sometimes then they get in over their heads.
And then Kajabi I love and we love, but it also takes setup and it takes time and it takes energy and it takes learning that experience. And if you spend too much time in the back end and not a tough time validating your offer and getting out in front of people and doing what it is that you wanted to do, then that's not going to be positive. So, Diane, you're coming from this experience of having a validated offer, something that you've been doing in the real world in person, and then you were launching and bridging that into the online space. So if you are listening and feel like, oh well, I have to get all this really expensive software in order to be perceived as successful or be perceived in a certain way, you don't need that just yet. It takes smaller steps along the way in order to get there, but when you are ready to invest, definitely go with the quality one.
0:32:48 - Joanna
That makes a lot of sense and you can validate that offer through in-person experiences or through something like a YouTube channel, a TikTok channel, starting a blog that doesn't have the weight of a whole course building software.
You can start in those ways. Starting a YouTube channel essentially is free. You can these days get a decent video with your phone if you have a modern, current year or in the past couple of years cell phone. They have nice cameras. I was like you can yet start it on YouTube for free, which is a great way to start understanding what people want to hear and listen to. So I know we talked earlier in this conversation. Diane, you have a lot going on. You have a full-time job, you're an author, you have kids that you do a lot of the parenting the majority of the parenting. How do you balance it all? How do you make it all work?
0:33:47 - Diane
Well, that is a good question. It is day to day. This summer it's been week to week, oh my God. But how do I make it all work? I think I'm very clear on my priorities and I put those things in first so I take care of my health. I meditate at least 10 minutes a day. I often will do 30 minutes if I can. I mean, I love to meditate.
Mindfulness is a whole area of my specialty, specialty but I meditate every morning. I make that a priority and I exercise every morning for at least half an hour. I mean, there's some days there was one day this week I could just get 20 minutes in, but I just ran up hill, all the hills in my neighborhood, like it's 20 minutes, it's like you know. I get the most out of those 20 minutes that I can. So I'm very good about exercising. I meditate, I eat very healthy. So I prep everything. You know, one time a week I'll make all my. The worst thing is the snacks and lunch and middle of the work day, because I don't want to stop to eat like it all has to be ready to go. So I'm very, you know, make sure I eat healthy and I make sure I get my seven to eight hours of sleep every night. So I'm I really I call these the five pillars of, you know, wellness.
In my one of my classes I teach that you've got to have the physiological foundations for mental and physical well-being and that that is in there, it is locked in, it is automatic. I've been working on it for years and I love to teach mini habits and these are mini habits like that have just grown, so it's I don't have. That doesn't take a lot of discipline. It does take discipline of sitting down and organizing my 20 things I need to get done beginning of the day. I tend to just dive in the worst habit I have in my dive into my emails. I'm just like I can get off course. So I'm working on that. I always have something I'm working on.
And then my relationships with my kids are a huge priority for me. So when you know when they're in school, there I do two different drop offs and my god, that was a painful life transition because for all this time they've been across the street and literally you know they could get up at 730 and we could be to school at eight o'clock because it's literally I walk my driveway and the school drive across the street, beautiful. But in the morning I make sure my kids, you know, get a hot breakfast and I get them to school, you know, take care of their lunch or whatever, and I connect with them, you know, at the beginning of the day and at night, you know, I make sure that we always sit down as a family and we talk about our days. And then I always have spent, you know, as a working mom all these years, even when they were from the time they were infants to the time their teenagers nailed, you know, I spend after dinner. We always have an hour of quality family time where I am tuned in to my kids, you know. They know I'm present Some children's a lot of karate practice recently, but hey, you know, I'm there for them, making sure they level up and so, and you know, all the way into right now, my teenage son reads his brother and me a book every night. So it's pretty hilarious. He wouldn't let me. He made me stop reading at a certain point, but now he reads to us. So we sit there and reread through all of these, you know great teenage stories. I'm like what's the next chapter of our room? I'm excited too. So we have a real kind of, you know, strong family culture around all of that.
I will be quite honest, because it was the middle of pandemic I was working create, I mean, every client in my private practice I'd ever seen in the last 30 years wanted to, course, come back and see me, and now they all could, because we could do Telehealth. And then, you know, the university hours were double, triple my normal. And then, in the middle of all this, though, my kids schools are, of course, falling apart, and the you know public districts around here did not weather the pandemic very well, and so, you know, it's one of the things that happened in the pandemic. You know, when I decided to do these online courses, I actually sat down with my kids and I said, hey, mommy has an opportunity to start a business here. It will be my fourth job. It's a joke about that, but you know that means on the weekends I'm going to be a lot less fun because I'm going to be teaching my classes on the weekend. I'll be creating my classes on the weekend, and you know I use that money to send them to schools that were functional. Quite frankly, is what I use that money for. So when I said I'm doing this for your schooling, so we can get you into some of the nicer schools around here, so you have stability through this pandemic, and I'm, you know, so thankful and I still look back I'm glad I did it because they've done well. So that's another way. So I, you know, I talk with my kids about it. So there, I work long days, even on the weekends, and but then there's times that we play, you know, and I make sure that when I'm, you know, Friday nights, man at my house I'm telling you, this started during the pandemic DoorDash comes, delivers dinner.
You know we watch a movie or we play a game or we hop in the pool, but it is like we don't do anything on Friday, I think it invitations from you know, other people were like no, Friday nights movie night. We're like we got this thing we do and and so we have, you know, we have these rituals. We do that really keep our relationships strong and like make sure I take a really nice summer vacation with them where I turn everything off, I can, I can unplug and I unplug and we just play for a week, week and a half, oh, and they get 100% of me, and so I feel like I make sure that our relationships are strong, you know, with my kids, yeah, so that's another way. I think like I keep the balance, and so, and I mean another thing is like I have a calendar that is rainbow colored oh my God. Oh, but if you saw my, sometimes I look at my calendar and I'm like, oh, my God.
And when I run out of doctor's office and they want to schedule and appoint me, you know, a few weeks in the future, this is often what I say like God, oh my God, oh wow.
0:39:24 - Michelle
I'm like everything okay, I'm like so many things, yeah, schedule yeah.
0:39:30 - Diane
But I do schedule carefully and I follow it.
0:39:33 - Michelle
Sounds like you have a lot of really great habits in place. You started even first with what are the priorities to you, what do you value with your life and with your time, and then dictating how you're spending that time and investing the energy and even the resources and where that's important to you. And notice you know as you're listening, that Diane didn't mention I only work four hours a week. I only get six hour work days in. There's nothing that she's done to carve out an intentionally large amount of space.
Meditation and mindfulness can find its way into 10 minutes at a time, maybe up to 30 minutes, but the importance of the relationships that you have, you know, specifically with your kids, and the future that you're creating, not just for yourself but for them, is what's taking a priority and a precedent here. So, even though you're investing all this time and energy into work, into your patients and clients, into this new course business and building this online presence, which is huge, you're still carving out the time and space for sleep, for nourishment, for mindfulness, for activity and for relationships and the health of what it means to connect with people. So finding the ways in which it works for you, I think, is so important and, as her first, you know, putting yourself first in business and life looks like how you're taking care of yourself so that you can then supply or put into place those things for others that you need to do. The way in which you take care of your sons by putting them into schools, is you taking the time and investing the energy to build the financial resources in order to do that. So it's kind of finding that balance between what it means for you to show up for yourself in your life and then how that ripple effect creates this beautiful energy and growth for those people that you truly care about in your life.
So if someone listening felt like they were kind of drowning in it all, if they felt like they were juggling too much and, instead of feeling what I'm getting from you, of the sense of like, yeah, I got a lot going on, but I feel calm, I feel grounded, I feel supported, I feel like I'm on the right path, I feel like I'm doing the things that I need to do. I have these habits in place. I have this lifestyle that I've created that supports what it is that I'm working on. If someone felt like they didn't have that yet, are there any words of advice that you could give them that can help them get on the path?
0:41:57 - Diane
Absolutely, you know. I think what you need to do is just look at how you're spending, you know, every minute of your day or your week, and really ask yourself, you know, does that reflect your priorities? So I will be totally honest, I rarely see a movie unless it's one that three of us were watching on Friday night and people are like, oh, you got to watch this. And I'm like, yeah, when my kids go to college I'll watch movies again. You know, it isn't. It is. You know, I feel my kids are a little sleep. Or watching a movie I feel like sleep every time.
As soon as I had my first kid 14 years ago, I haven't watched movies. So with my friends, you know, I have found that actually a phone call For me to connect with my friends. I just need the time to really have a good conversation and I've learned that oftentimes we'll just do it over Zoom or over the phone, rather than driving out, finding a restaurant, doing that whole thing. I can connect with my best friends in 15 minutes on the phone, versus if I'm waiting to carve out two to four hours to go meet them and go shopping, go to lunch, and that's nice, but that is one of the things that I've had to squeeze into smaller chunks. So it's really making sure that you've really thought about and analyzed and prioritized your true priorities, because other things like scrolling social media, watching TV and movies and all that stuff that can just expand to take huge amounts of time, energy and even money away from your true priorities in life.
0:43:29 - Michelle
Yeah, and that's exactly where I start all of my clients as a time audit, because we don't realize all the ways in which we're giving away our time, we're giving away our energy, we're giving away our power and, like you said, even resources to these things that are defraying us or getting us distracted from what truly matters to us. What are those priorities? What is it that we really want and how is that showing up in our lives? And our time is a reflection of those investments. Our time is demonstrating to us what we care about and how we're investing that care into those things that we're doing. So if you wanna start anywhere, I think that's a beautiful place to start assess your time.
0:44:08 - Joanna
And very smooth transition. Speaking of time, we are coming close to the end of our time for this podcast. It makes me think that we may need to think about scheduling a part two where we dig into those five pillars, because I think that that might be a really fascinating thing to talk about some more. I'd love to know, Diane, do you have any sort of parting words, final thoughts that you'd like to share about your story, about how you manage all of this with our listeners?
0:44:42 - Diane
Well, I think it really helps to get your your goal really clear, your priorities really clear and you want to do something that you really have passion for doing, because you can spend a lot of time doing it and it ebbs and it flows. And there are gonna be times that are tough when you doubt yourself or what you're doing and is this gonna work and have I messed up? And there has to be a real motivation. That's more than just making money or I don't want to have a 95 job. You have to have a really deep passion for why you're doing this and for me it's giving my kids a better life, but giving me a better life and in terms of creating a business that I love, that allows me to teach in the way I want to teach. It allows me to do things I couldn't otherwise do, and that's what keeps me moving and motivated through the difficult times, the feeling overwhelmed and stressed at times.
It's really having a deep inner passion for why you are doing this and to commit to it like 110%. So if you're just sort of like 60%, 75% and oh well, you know my friends are in town this weekend and I'm gonna go hang out with them and ta-ta-ta-ta-ta and you just kind of let every little thing that bump in the road. If you let every little bump in the road, whether it's positive or negative, knock you off course. You know it's really hard to be successful.
0:46:13 - Joanna
Thank you for sharing that. That was really inspiring. So if our listeners want to keep up with you, follow your journey, learn more about the amazing things that you do. Where can they find you?
0:46:25 - Diane
Well, there are lots of places. Actually, I do have a YouTube channel With more than 61 subscribers very exciting. When I hit that 61, though, I'm right there with your daughter. So, youtube channel, I think it's Diane Gehart PhD, it's G-E-H-A-R-T. I have a website for kind of general audience which is Diane Gehart, that's D-I-A-N-E-G-E-H-A-R-T dot com. And then, for those who are professionals, I do have my Therapy that Works Institute, which is also online therapythatworksinstitute.com, and I'm hoping in the near future to have a Ted talk to tell you all about. So I'm working on that and yeah, very exciting.
0:47:04 - Joanna
That's amazing. I can't wait for that Ted talk. That'll be amazing. I will be watching it definitely involved in that. Thank you so like. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us today. I learned a lot. I feel inspired. My biggest takeaway was just that I'm so glad we invited you to be here. I think that you really embody a lot about what her first is about. You have really created a life for yourself that you love.
You're building a business, you're being a dedicated and great mom and creating this world that is really for you and, on top of that, you're helping others right. You're giving into your training others, you're sharing your knowledge with the world and it's truly inspiring. Thank you.
0:47:58 - Michelle
Yeah, I can just feel this wealth of experience and knowledge and care and compassion that you bring to what you do when you speak about it and I know that we didn't even talk about this, really but the work that you do Ripple Effect is changing the lives of so many people, not just those that you're teaching and educating, but every single person that they work with is then feeling the benefit of everything that you bring to the table. So I think what you're doing is very powerful, and if I were to share my biggest takeaway from today, it's really just honing in on the priorities for yourself and letting that determine how you show up in the world. So really understanding and tuning into what does it mean to you to be successful? What does it mean to you to demonstrate a sense of care and compassion for those people that you love? What does it mean to show up academically or in your profession or as a business owner? What do you want out of that?
What are the priorities and how can you then let that dictate the choices that you make, the actions that you take and what you do in your life? Because if you ground into that, then you're not looking for the external validation. You're not looking to the pressures that you're gonna consistently feel, you're not feeding into the distractions, like you said, of just oh, this is what's coming up, so I'm gonna react to that. I'm gonna respond to these things. You can find this kind of internal compass and let that guide you along your path and have that be so much more grounded, aligned and in conjunction with your purpose than anything else. So when you do that, it seems that a lot of the pieces of your life that you might feel aren't controlled, aren't perfect, then those will kind of start to fall into place.
0:49:50 - Diane
Absolutely.
0:49:52 - Joanna
Amazing. Well, if you check out the show notes for this episode, we will link Diane's website, her YouTube channel so if you want to reach out to her, learn more about what she's doing, you can connect with her on her own accounts. Thank you for tuning in. Make sure you subscribe to her first and leave us a review. What is one thing you can do today to prioritize you first in business and in life?
