Welcome to the first Super Soulie Feature. Super Soulies are members of Soul-Full Success who have been in the community for one year or more. Connections are what make Soul-Full Success so special. I’m delighted to introduce you to these Super Soulies – and perhaps someday you will be a Super Soulie too!
Allison: Well, hello everybody. Welcome to The Better Life Better Work Show. This is Cara Wykowski. Cara has been a long-time multi, you’ve done a lot of things that I’ve offered. You’ve been in Masterminds, and you come to retreats and you definitely come to Camp Star Heart. You are a leader and a mover and shaker in our community. You’re creating, and building, and running your own businesses. She is coming up, this fall, will be a two-year member of Soul-Full Success. She’s what we call Super Soulie when you’ve been a Soulie for over a year, you get Super Soulie status. Then we’re going to have this whole new level of, I don’t know what we’d we’ll call it but Super Duper Soulie Status, like once you’ve been in for two years. Cara, let me tell you who Cara is for me and then we’ll do a little bio intro.
Allison: Cara is bold adornment on the outside that reflects bold living on the inside. She is juicy, human, sales bad ass, edge walker, tender heart, fierce mama, and sexy siren sister. I just made all that up right now. But it is, that’s who you are for me. Cara is also the owner and founder, I don’t know what title you give yourself, of My Girlfriend Voice. All her contact connection information will be in the show notes. But, Cara, why don’t you tell us a little bit about you and what you want our audience to know.
Cara: Well, thank you, Allison. I’m so honored to be the first one in this new series you’re putting together. I have to laugh because I thought you said old adornment instead of bold adornment.
Allison: Bold.
Cara: But it’s a perfect segue into I have become a specialist in the inner critic. My Girlfriend Voice is all about the opposite of your inner critic. I’ll get to that more, but more about who I am. I’m still figuring that out. Last year, well, two years ago, the Camp Star Heart theme was the Too Much Woman. I always knew I was a Too Much Woman. But this year’s focus was Becoming. I love to feel that I’m in this metamorphosis, this evolution, and that life keeps getting better. I live in Northern California. I am a mother of two grown sons. Single. I am coming to grips with my sensuality and have a burlesque performance on October 3rd, I’d love for you to come.
Allison: Yay!
Cara: I’m a lifelong learner. I am eager for information and I’m eager for community and collaboration. Yet, so many times I felt like I was an outsider, that nobody got me. That I was weird, and weird is saying it nicely. But that’s who I am.
Allison: I checked out over here that we had a business call today and I was like, “We’re all weirdos in this group. I love it.” To be weird is good.
Cara: Yes.
Allison: The rebels and the mavericks and the people that just stand out. But, you’re right, a lot of times in the world, in the bland Wonder Bread world, we don’t really fit in. You all will see Cara on the social media shares and stuff. But if you’re listening directly on a podcast, you won’t be able to see her darling image and style. That’s why I said bold outer embodiment. The first thing when I think of you I think of those juicy red lips. I have so tried to do bold lipstick, and it’s hilarious. It ends up all over my teeth.
Allison: But you, your glasses and your hair, you really adorn your body and your style as a part of your artistic expression. I see that evolving and changing, too. That’s just, to me, the outside reflects the inside. I’m able to see your insides through that. Be sure, if you don’t know Cara, find a way to get your visual eyes on her juiciness. I always am like, “Cara, if you ever want to be a stylist, I will be your first client.”
Cara: That’s funny because I was at one of my favorite resale shops, which style does not have to come at top dollar, by the way.
Allison: Right.
Cara: I was at a resale shop on Friday and there was this amazing jacket, and it didn’t fit me. I eyed the other women in the store and I walked over and I said, “This would be fabulous on you. Would you just try it?” “Oh, it’s too bold. It’s too much, blah, blah.” I go, “Just try it and see how it feels.” She put it on and it was just like she felt so empowered wearing a little bit of color and pattern. She bought the damn jacket.
Allison: Oh, so cute.
Cara: She said, “Are you a stylist?” I said, “No, well, maybe.” So I am going to go back and do a style event for the resale shop just to help customers try something different. Do something a little bit bolder. Repurpose clothing so that we’re doing something good for the world, too.
Allison: I love that. I think as a coach we talked about somewhere when you were beginning to form your offerings and ideas because you are also in corporate sales, but you straddle both of these worlds really well. You use your life coaching and My Girlfriend world to nourish your corporate world, and you do really well in corporate sales. You’ve won awards and all this other stuff. But you use this, you didn’t say, “Oh, I’ll do that when.” You’re doing both and at the same time. That’s very inspiring. I remember talking to you one time thinking that would be a really good class, or workshop, or retreat, where you incorporated style embodiment into things like My Girlfriend Voice, and inner critic, and the life coaching part of it. I used to do art stuff but style is one of your arts.
Cara: Yes, definitely. That straddling the two worlds, I find very interesting. My mindset originally was that it wasn’t possible, that I needed to dress like I worked in corporate America. I work in the biotech arena, it’s male-dominated. It’s very analytical and serious. Yet, if I wasn’t expressing who I am, I was really doing myself a disservice.
Cara: It all started out by wearing bold jewelry. And it gave something for them to ask me a question about that was an ice breaker. So the jewelry, I always started wearing bold lips maybe five years ago when I got divorced. I was always self-conscious about my mouth. I felt like my lips were too big. Now, I can hardly not wear bold lips. If I wear a neutral lip, I feel like I’m invisible. It’s so funny how things evolve.
Cara: But I think you’re onto something. How our inner critic gets in the way of doing anything outside of our comfort zone. It can be as simple as how we dress and just changing little things can make you feel so much more empowered. When I have a big presentation, I wear pretty bra and underwear under my clothes as my superpower source, my kryptonite. Nobody knows but me, but it certainly makes me feel much more empowered.
Allison: I love that. Will you share a little bit? You said you’re divorced. Who were you before you got set free?
Cara: Excuse me, let me take a sip. I’m a girl from Michigan that ended up in California for work in 1987. I was wanting the big city life, yet I crave nature. A lot of the Midwestern values and work ethic have come with me. But I still have this craving for international flavors and people and diversity. Living in the Bay Area is perfect for me. I love Oakland. I have a degree in biochemistry. My corporate job, as I mentioned, is very analytical. I have this empathy, or I’m able to read people and see people, see their energy, but it was something I could never talk about because that just might be crazy.
Cara: I married at 26, had two babies right away. I was a stay-at-home Mom for four years, but it really wasn’t satisfying my soul. Of course, I had tremendous guilt. What a gift to be able to stay at home but that’s not what I wanted. I wanted to be productive and intellectually satisfied. Went back to work when my kids were two and four. But I changed my career so that I could work from home, so that I had more access to their schedules. I could take them to school. I could be there for plays and whatnot.
Cara: My ex-husband ran his own law practice. His career is really his first wife, and I was his third, I would say. I was attracted to him because he was a really strong, confident man. It turned out that I think I grew up during the marriage realizing that I was all of that and that I had picked the wrong person to be partnered with. We had very different definitions of what marriage and partnership and parenting is all about.
Cara: After 18 years of marriage, I was hating who I was. I didn’t even recognize myself anymore. I decided that I was going to leave home. I had rented a little furnished apartment very close to the house. I was going to take the summer to get back in touch with who I am. We never lived together again. And started therapy, but it became clearer and clearer that we couldn’t salvage the marriage. There are times when I beat myself up that I didn’t have the courage to make a change sooner, and what damage I may have done to my sons and all of that. Divorce, there’s never a good time.
Allison: Right.
Cara: However, I forgive myself. I did the best that I could with what I had at the time. But having struggled with a deep depression, it really gave me clarity on the other side, and appreciation and gratitude and courage that I was the only one responsible for my happiness. I couldn’t blame anyone or anything else. It took several years to get divorced. It’ll be five years this September. I call it my liberation. Life hasn’t been better.
Allison: Well, that’s one of the, it’s another outer embodiment. I think there are so many, I love middle age. I call it a midlife reawakening. It’s not a midlife crisis. Most of the people in my world are really figuring out who they are. I have just been in love with you since I met you.
Cara: Aww.
Allison: It only gets better and better. How did you, what prompted you, you’re in this biomedical sales, doing an amazing job. You can feel empathic toward other people’s energy and hearts. Then how did My Girlfriend Voice come about?
Cara: Well, I mentioned that I had a clinical depression in 2009. I didn’t know it was depression at first, but I was not, I was isolating myself and not able to leave the house because I was crying all the time, or I was raging. I was either a puddle of tears or a big angry ball of fire. Thank goodness my therapist suggested that I have an evaluation as UCSF by a psychiatrist because I probably needed to consider medication. You call for one of these appointments and they’re like, “Well, it’s going to be several weeks.” That is not ideal for someone who’s in this situation, but it’s part of the medical system the way it is today.
Cara: But, luckily, I hung in there and was evaluated by a team. One of the things they told me I had to do was go to a depression class. I’m like, I can think of nothing worse than sitting around with other depressed people, however, it probably saved my life. Because there were six or eight other women. We were all from dramatically different circumstances. We learned coping skills. We learned that we weren’t broken, or maybe we broke open to reawaken. That there wasn’t anything shameful about mental health, or having a mental health crisis.
Cara: One of the things, well, there were several things that I learned that I had to incorporate to stay healthy. One was moving your body. Even if it’s dancing in the kitchen, move your body. Another thing was do something for someone else that you’re not related to, or responsible for. Don’t keep doing, we say, “Oh, well I’m taking care of my family.” I’m taking care of them to the exclusion of taking care of myself. I started volunteer work.
Cara: The third thing was write it down. I didn’t want to journal, it had to look pretty. I had the wrong definition in my mind of what journaling was. Once I started to write things on paper, it got it out of my head. Then I could sleep better. Or it would eliminate some of the panic I was feeling during the day if I just wrote out some questions and then answered them. I quickly found the power of writing.
Cara: I started a blog called My Girlfriend Voice in 2011. It’s funny because I didn’t even use my real name, initially, and then, later on, started using my name because I want to live an authentic life, so why call myself something else. Putting your words out into the atmosphere, you never know who’s going to be touched. That wasn’t the point. The point was it was part of my accountability program for staying healthy. It just made me feel good.
Cara: Now that social media is such a part of our lives, I think I’ve transferred some of my blogging energy to my daily posts on Facebook and Instagram but there will be the message from someone that they read my words and, “Thank you.” Or, “Can I ask how to get support?” I help them get support. Or somebody will say, “I’m so glad I’m not alone.” That’s just priceless.
Allison: It’s all worth it.
Cara: When someone gives you that.
Allison: For me, I mean-
Cara: Absolutely.
Allison: It’s another kind of connection. It’s another kind of me, too. We’re not alone. Recognizing that the human. It’s another kind of me too, we’re not alone, and recognizing that the human condition … Isn’t it funny, social media can give us so much of false [inaudible 00:00:02:07], but it also gives these little touch points of like, oh, they are human behind that screen. I find that it’s easier, I mean not easier, but my social media world has been more real than the pretense in the real life before social media came in. I don’t know just [crosstalk 00:02:31].
Cara: Absolutely.
Allison: It’s changing, and we are no longer standing for hiding our true selves, at least you and I aren’t.
Cara: Right.
Allison: We’re putting ourselves in a world where it’s okay. I remember being at Varion’s retreat in January and I don’t know if you, somebody was Facetiming and you kind of came by. I can’t remember exactly who it was, but somebody was Facetiming, a family member or something. I don’t know if it was Facetiming. They were like, “Oh my gosh, you’re with My Girlfriend Voice.” We realized you had a fan out there.
Cara: That’s right.
Allison: You’re hadn’t even really launched, you had been writing and stuff, but you hadn’t had any offerings yet. But you’d been creating and sharing and all this other stuff, and we realized you had a fan, someone recognized you over the shoulder of somebody. I love that moment.
Cara: Yes, definitely, and I have a groupie now too.
Allison: Tell me about your groupie.
Cara: Well it’s funny because there’s competition to who was really my first groupie. Beth Incorvati says she’s my first groupie, but yeah I’ll get these messages from people that that’ll be like, “whatever you do, I’m trying to do at home too. How does this lipstick look on me?” Or one woman said, “I incorporated thank goodness I’m fabulous Friday,” which is something I do every Friday to celebrate something about myself because we never do that, right, we celebrate everybody else. She incorporated it as a practice in her office. She is in the hospitality industry. She makes everybody go around the table and say something fabulous about themselves. I was like, wow, that’s something I would’ve never thought happened.
Allison: Oh fun.
Cara: So yeah.
Allison: I may have to change celebration Fridays to, what is it, thank-
Cara: It’s Thank Goodness I’m Fabulous Friday.
Allison: Thank goodness.
Cara: Yes, TGIFF.
Allison: TGIFF, sponsored by Cara.
Cara: That’s right.
Allison: From Girlfriend Voice.
Cara: That’s right because there’s something so good about the word fabulous. It’s like I have arrived. Yeah.
Allison: Well and that’s the other thing, I teach energy too. The energy of celebration really helps counteract the energies of the critic. I don’t know about you, my critic has never gone away. It’s certainly not center stage anymore, but I love the personification of the voices in our head. I’ve always taught that as a coach because I feel like our brains do really well when we have these concrete separations. But I just, I don’t even know what I’m saying. I love the personification of it and I hear that. Oh, it was the celebrations. To me, when we are willing to celebrate … I think that’s another thing. We’ve been told somewhere along the way that we shouldn’t be bragging.
Cara: Right.
Allison: To me, the energy of thank god I’m fabulous, or thank goodness I’m fabulous or celebrating ourselves is really a sacred honoring. It’s not a thing of low vibe pride. It’s high vibe pride. It’s useful and it does counteract the inner voices of shame, blame, and guilt.
Cara: Right. Now I believe that the inner critic will never go away. It’s a primal voice that over time can start to run your life, and so there are strategies that you can use to minimize. As you said, your inner critic’s not calling the shots anymore. I hear my inner critic, and I have a few different personas. My biggest inner critic looks like Mrs. Doubtfire. She smells very powdery, old lady. She knows everything, yet she has not lived outside of her house. So yeah. I call her no Nona because she’s always saying no, not now, not now.
Allison: Nona.
Cara: Don’t voice your opinion. Don’t say that. Yeah, I think … Once you separate yourself, you’re able to be more objective and believe that that voice isn’t you, that voice isn’t truth, and then have a dialogue. Yeah.
Allison: You recently had a very important, powerful and vulnerable article published on a nationally syndicated website. Did Nona show up when you were about to do that?
Cara: Nona and her whole team showed up when I was about ready to do that. The article you’re referencing is my story of being the mother of a heroin addict. What I wanted people to know is, first of all, what it feels like, and even though I look like this and I’m positive most of the time, I’m still carrying around a broken heart and I’m grieving someone who’s still alive. People don’t want to ask me about my son because it’s uncomfortable. It’s a taboo subject. They don’t want to upset me. But I feel like if you don’t ask, you don’t care. And I’m seeing other families broken apart by not having these conversations. So I put it out there and I pressed the button faster than Nona could say no to send it, and it was published in about six hours. So Nona had no time to say you better take that down, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
When the article was published, they used my full name, first name, last name, where I thought they would call it My Girlfriend Voice. I did have a little panic there because my work people don’t know this story. Yeah, I work in an industry where we develop drugs for clinical trials, yet my son is suffering from the abuse of drugs. That’s another hurdle that I straddled.
Allison: It’s the paradox of life.
Cara: It’s the [crosstalk 00:09:09].
Allison: I mean that’s such a metaphor.
Cara: It absolutely is. And there were, I would say 90% of the comments were positive, as in me too, thank you, we need to have more conversation. There were some very nasty comments, but it didn’t bother me. I am amazed that it didn’t bother me because first of all, I respect that everyone has the right to an opinion. Now, some of their opinions were stupid, but I’m not going to call somebody stupid because that takes away my power. I didn’t give them any of my energy except for saying things like, “I hope your heart will open and you’ll find compassion.”
The one that sticks with me was “addiction is a form of population control.” For someone to say that, I know they’re not right, and let some sort of compassion find them. I just can’t be angry about it, but it is a sad, sad statement when somebody says that.
Allison: It is a very sad statement.
Cara: Yeah. And so-
Allison: Well and you were-
Go ahead.
Cara: I was going to say, so I’m going to continue … It’s like I’m learning and leading at the same time. There are days when the sadness overwhelms me. I still grieve my divorce. I’ve lost both parents now. I mean they died. I’ve lost friends. I’ve decided to end relationships with girlfriends that weren’t healthy. There are days when that sadness does really overwhelm me, and I sit with it and I don’t like it, but I sit with it because there’s learning there and I just want to honor all emotions.
Allison: Yeah. Well, and I thought that that-
Cara: There’s nothing wrong with it.
Allison: That piece too was you weren’t just sharing your story, you were also saying this is what I need from the people that love me, and you’re saying I want you to ask me how I’m doing and how my son is doing. You are opening the door for people to have imperfect conversations with you instead of shoving. It’s like I’m going to, this is my whole life and you are … I just talked about this in the last episode of ways we deal with turbulence. One of them is to feel good, but one of them is to feel bad, learn how to feel bad.
Cara: Right.
Allison: And then reach out and connect. That’s one of the things I love about our group and our community of people is that there is so much love and welcoming. Not just tolerance, but love and welcoming of our human conditions. That is seen as just as brilliant as our outer achievements.
Cara: Absolutely.
Allison: Yeah.
Cara: Absolutely. I mean if you don’t know how to lose, you won’t appreciate a win. If you don’t know how to feel bad, you’re excluding the ability to feel really good. It’s just an expansion of your heart. That’s what I love about the group is that there is a, I feel like it’s a support network. There is a net underneath all of us. Nobody falls through the cracks. You are recognized for where you are today. Like I’m on the slow path to developing my coaching business full time. I still put work in every day on My Girlfriend Voice, yet it’s not going to be full time for me for another five years.
There are people who I could easily compare myself to and say, oh, “Mandy Lido, she’s got it all,” but Mandy is just like us. You know, we still struggle with insecurity and doubt, and she would be the first person there to pick me up if I fell. Well, after you obviously.
Allison: Well, but that’s what I love is when I, especially … You have done other programs of mine and been in masterminds, and you’ve taken classes, and we’ve done coaching and stuff together. When I switched almost two years ago, so it’s definitely 18, somewhere in between 18 and two years, the whole purpose was to create a different kind of support. It was meant to be just as deep and wide without being expensive, but I also wanted it, I was like I don’t want to just have six people on a call. I want there to be a network. What y’all didn’t hear was in our pre-chat, Cara had just had an energy session with another member that lives in London, right. I love seeing y’all, I call it cross-pollination, that you all not only sometimes give an exchange as gifts, but other times y’all are exchanging work. Y’all are paying each other for the services. A lot of people are really afraid of letting other people promote.
In my mind, I’m like there’s enough business for us all. What I really love is that we do have this strong network of mostly women and a few men who support each other and all different industries, all different levels. It is a place for soulful life [crosstalk 00:14:52]-
Cara: Yeah, and you don’t have to be on the track to be a life coach to be in this group.
Allison: No.
Cara: That’s what’s also amazing is that these principles that we’re learning and practicing apply to every relationship, every career. Yeah, it’s about being able to be authentic. I also did your Share Your Heart, Show Your Work program.
Allison: I love that class.
Cara: That’s when I got, I started to get more comfortable showing more of my thoughts to a larger group of people. I just love that I can reach out and say “who has experience with this,” or Marcia and Tiffany and I have virtual coffees every other Wednesday.
Allison: Oh fun.
Cara: And I see Jen when she comes down to from Portland, and of course Christina lives here, we can get together and brainstorm. Yeah. I just have such a network of experts at my fingertips.
Allison: I love that.
Cara: And they’re not just experts, they’re sisters. They really feel like the good kind of sisters where they feel for you, they support you. They also would say no, pull it back, or don’t go out of the house like that, or they wouldn’t let you fall in a pit just because.
Allison: I also want-
Cara: Yeah, it’s just so amazing.
Allison: โฆto clap and honor you for, as I sit there and listen to those connections … The way Soulful Success works is there’s more calls than you could ever attend. It’s more like a community center. If you had a local community center, you wouldn’t go to everything on their calendar. You’re actually really good at picking and choosing what works for you. You don’t show up to every single call, but what I noticed that you do do is when there’s an in-person event, you come. That’s one of the ways … Camp Star Heart is a fee, but like this October we’re having … There’s no fee for me, like I don’t charge. We just all self-pay for the place we stay. It’s something only my members can get.
But like you came last October and built relationships. You came at Camp Star Heart and built relationships, and so this is not just an online world. When you’re … I call it you’re giving to yourself. It was the same thing when I came back from Varian’s and you are at Varian’s retreat also, one of my teams was like women, and men, but women especially go to live events. Like you all pay for this for your kid and for that. It is, those are … I don’t want to make this into a man-woman thing, but in the past I’ve seen like men play golf. They invest thousands in golf memberships, and they travel, and they do all this other stuff.
It’s not for recreation. There is recreation there, but the bonds that are built, and the conversations. That’s what I see beginning to happen in Soulful Success. What I love is that if I died today, officially the program would go away, but the bonds and the support wouldn’t. That’s what I wanted to create was our own little, not little, but our own growing and it’s like an amoeba, right, or it’s organic, it’s pulsating right, like this organic group of people around the world that share. That are very different, in very different businesses and in very different places, but they all have some of the same … They’re growth minded. They want some version of spirit or soul, like that sixth sensory experience matters. Smart as … I don’t know that I remember that that was your degree. I remember having a girlfriend that literally was a rocket scientist. She’d joke and she’d be like, “I’m a rocket scientist.” People would say, “oh no.” And she goes, “No, for real, I’m a rocket scientist and I consult for NASA.”
Cara: Oh Wow.
Allison: But it just … I don’t know. Let me ask you, what keeps you, because you’ve been, like you’ve been hanging around, and it’s not just Alison, but it’s the group of people that we together attract. What keeps you coming back?
Cara: Well, I want to comment first on the in-person gatherings because humans need connection.
Allison: Yes, we do.
Cara: And you need connection with the people who support your growth. We all have girlfriends at home, but my girlfriends are not the ones that are going to help me elevate to who I’m becoming. I find that at these events. I also can get uncomfortable with some of the exercises. My girlfriends are not going to make me uncomfortable, but that’s where growth is, at the edge of my comfort zone. Having exposure to Kendra Cunov – Oh my gosh, that was just amazing.
Your question is what keeps me coming back. The ever-evolving group, yet even though the number of people increases, there’s an intimacy in the group and there’s also safety. I don’t think you mentioned the advantage of safety with your group and also at these live events where it is a container that is safe to really be yourself. A lot of us have not had practice doing that. There are people who are more of the voyeur, and people who are bold participators, and it’s all okay.
I rarely can touch one of the live groups because of my work schedule, but I love being able to go back to the archives. I love seeing the comments. When I watch the replay, I can see a lot of the comments. I just, I don’t know, it’s just like I’m so drawn to people who are evolving.
Allison: I like that, I’m so drawn to people who are evolving.
Cara: Right.
Allison: I mean that’s [crosstalk 00:21:19].
Cara: And your price makes me … You know I can do other things because this is a very affordable program. Yeah, like we met at Varian’s program in January and I think you’re going to the next one too.
Allison: I’m going to Mexico too. But I loved, I was looking at your website again and I remember chatting with you when it first came out and you hired RKA.
Cara: That’s right.
Allison: And she just took our expert class, and it was so fun. That’s the other thing too, like for a practical level, what I’m excited about is because I’m investing similarly for myself, and I’m used to just like you are investing in large sums of money, and so now the budget has been reallocated and we can, instead of having to do all the pieces of our business because we’re spending less on our safety net and our touch point coaching, then we can spend more on other experiences or implementation in our business.
Cara: Right.
Allison: And so I’m able to hire out things that I always had to do myself that were difficult. Now I can hire somebody. It’s like, why did I didn’t think of that before. I’m not going to shut it because it was all perfect, but I just appreciate, I appreciate how you use it that it works for you. That’s something I’m always teaching members because some do. There are some people that are completely voyeurs and watchers and have never shown their face or commented, every once in a while I get a message from them. Then there are people that show up to everything and in between. What I like is grown ass men and women who are, we call it “deciders” I’m a decider, who decide what works for them because I am not an accountability coach. You don’t need, what I love is your Girlfriend Voice and your inner critic and all those little personifications are your own accountability. I’m here to support and nurture you guys listening to and trusting yourself.
Enough about the program, we love that. We want you to come and join if you feel like it’s a fit, but I want to hear what is next for My Girlfriend Voice.
Cara: Ooh, that’s good. Well, I decided that it was time to have some one on one clients.
Allison: Yay!
Cara: I want to only have three clients though this summer because this is my first round of one on one coaching and I want to give all of myself to those clients. I also have to balance that with all of my other responsibilities. I’m offering 12 weeks of one on one coaching. So if anyone’s interested, they can reach out to me about that. There is not an agenda. You set the agenda and I help you work on that because I could tell you should work on, but you know that’s just not going to work in the long term. I have to hear it from you what you want to work on. The topics that are popular are expanding my comfort zone, being vivacious and bold, a lot of inner critic work, and building your girlfriend voice. How do I even find my girlfriend voice? Those are some of the things that we’ll talk about.
What I learned from you is not to be afraid to share your content, and so you will see more and more content coming out from me, the ability to participate in a little webinar, worksheets. I don’t know exactly how it’s going to form, but by September you’re going to see a lot more content coming your way for free. At some point, I will have retreats or at least day-long programs where we can get together. I’d really like to explore style and sensuality for the over 50 woman, or maybe over 40 woman.
Allison: I love it.
Cara: You are not too old to be sensual. Yeah.
Allison: Oh I love it. Oh gosh, Cara. Y’all, I’ve gotten to see Cara grow inside and out, and it’s so fun to see. One of the things, as I remember it, and I’ve been watching you since … When you took Share Your Heart, Show Your Work, you’re learning behind the scenes so you can grow this My Girlfriend Voice slowly. Then you started, you put your first offering out there. You put your first group programs out there. You’ve been actually being really consistent with your content, which is something that we teach in Share Your Heart, Show Your Work, that the consistency builds credibility. I think that’s why it was so fun to recognize that you have groupies and fans. The groupies know you, but the fans just know your social media.
Cara: Right.
Allison: It establishes authority. Then as you sit here and I say what’s coming up next, and you with, y’all can’t see her affect, she is here, she’s got her emerald green and it has like turquoise sleeves, and she has a turquoise necklace, and her red lips with just a hint of, it’s not an orange-red, but it’s not purple either, and she’s got her big bold glasses and our gorgeous Cara white streak in her hair. But as she’s sitting here telling you all of you I’m going to be offering one on one coaching and it’s my first round, and the confidence you have, it reminds me of when I very first, when I was in real estate and Money Selling Mom was my very first client. She says, “You’ve never sold one and I’ve never bought one. Let’s go figure this out.”
I tell people this day, especially newer, whatever your business is, like nobody cares how long you’ve been doing it. All they care is that they feel heard and resonate. So I just want to admire you for your … I mean that makes me want to run to you, right. Oh, I can’t wait for this stuff to be out more and more. So yes, we will definitely @mygirlfriendvoice on Instagram, My Girlfriend Voice on Facebook, MyGirlfriendVoice.com is how you can find her website and sign up to stay informed with the things that she’s offering. We’ll put all of that in the show notes. I’m just really excited to see you bringing this stuff out into the world.
Cara: And you know another thing I learned from you Alison, is my inner critic said this work’s already been done. There are too many people out there offering this type of coaching. But, nobody’s doing it with my voice and my way. I’ve just had to turn down the volume on that inner critic message that I won’t have anything important to say, or you don’t have a PhD, or you are not a licensed therapist. But yeah, I do feel like I have something to offer and can’t wait. Can’t wait for the next steps.
Allison: There’s only one Cara. There is only one you. There is no mistaking that. I’m going to steal Isabel Tierney’s line. She said it about me once, but I’ll say it about you. It’s like “I don’t even know what the fuck she’s doing. I just know I want to be in the room when she does.” If you’re in a room, I want to be in that room with you. I just really appreciate all that you bring to our room and the permission that you give. I love seeing you connect and collaborate with these other women. I know that you, and men. I know that you tried to connect with Nemo when he was in town. I don’t know if that ever happened, but just-
Cara: No.
Allison: I mean that’s the thing. We all can use each other, that language sounds weird, but it is not good to be alone. It is good to have one another across this globe.
Let me do a couple of quick fires and then we’ll wrap up. I’m going to ask you better life and better work. Let’s start with better work. What is one for better work from Cara Wykoski?
Cara: Better work is only have three things on your to-do list at a time.
Allison: Perfect. One for better life?
Cara: Besides eyebrow pencil and a good bra, that makes the biggest difference all right, better life is be sure to listen to your intuition. Your gut will not steer you wrong. Essentially your intuition is your girlfriend voice, and that is where truth resides. If that voice is harsh, it is your inner critic. If it’s loving and supportive and truthful, it’s your intuition, your girlfriend voice. Don’t minimize that, marginalize it, trust it. That’s my living philosophy.
Allison: I have no doubt that at whatever speed you want My Girlfriend Voice to grow because that right there, because you are teaching people to trust themselves and how to listen to themselves versus you’re a formula, that is what we need. I’m so excited that you’re officially been in the marketplace, since the beginning of the year, but that you’re in the marketplace and you’re offering these three spots for people this summer. Thank you for spending time with me on the podcast today.
Cara: Honored.
Allison: We’ll see everybody next week.
Cara: Kisses.
Connect with Cara at My Girlfriend Voice
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MyGirlfriendVoice/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mygirlfriendvoice/
Cara’s story on Love What Matters
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