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The Path To Leadership
We podcast about strong leaders, loyal employees, avoiding burnout, and raising profits building strong cultures. Everyone is a leader, but the path isn't always easy. Developing critical skills to build stronger, more successful and profitable organizations.
The Path To Leadership
Finding Strength and Compassion in Entrepreneurship with Mandy Shoemaker
What if your journey from education to entrepreneurship could revolutionize memory care? Join us as we sit down with Mandy Shoemaker, an inspiring figure who has transitioned from the classroom to co-founding Prairie Elder Care and Connectivities. Discover how she, alongside her sister-in-law Michaela Gibson, identified a critical gap in memory care and responded with a unique, nature-filled environment at Prairie Farmstead in Overland Park, Kansas. Through touching anecdotes, such as resident interactions with animals, Mandy reveals the profound connections and joy her community fosters, emphasizing the significance of meaningful experiences for individuals with Alzheimer's and other cognitive challenges.
Tune in to hear Mandy's personal growth journey and the resilience required to navigate today’s post-COVID entrepreneurial landscape. Learn from her valuable strategies, including self-care practices like working with a life coach and setting boundaries, to maintain resilience and prevent burnout. Explore how embracing vulnerability and kindness, highlighted through a 31-day challenge, can transform personal and professional lives. Mandy's openness about facing fears and disappointments provides insightful lessons on compartmentalization and self-compassion, key components for anyone aspiring to growth in their entrepreneurial endeavors.
Connect with Mandy:
linkedin.com/in/mandypec
www.connectivities.us
www.prairieeldercare.com
Follow Catalyst Development on LinkedIn @catalystdevelopment and @drkatieervin
www.cdleaders.com
Learn more about Supervisor 101 at www.cdleaders.com/supervisor101
Theme music by Emma Jo https://emmajo.rocks/
Hi everyone, welcome back to the Path to Leadership. I'm really excited for my guest today, to introduce her to you all. We just recently met and probably could have sat and talked for hours and hours and hours, and so I am excited to introduce you all to Mandy. Hey, mandy, how are you? I'm great. Thanks, katie, glad to be here. Good, well, as soon as we met it was so funny because I think so often we get connected from all different people and I was like now, how did we get connected? And you were like I just randomly reached out to you. We had mutual connections, which I love. I love Kansas City, such a small big town or a big small town, and you have these circles and it's like how do I not know this person?
Mandy Shoemaker:Right, well, and then we were at the same event on Friday and saw each other like 28 times and had we never met, like we would have just passed each other and not known. You know, it's like yes.
Dr. Katie:Yeah, yeah, it was so perfect. So, um, I am so glad you reached out and connected and and um excited for this conversation. So can you introduce yourself? Who are you? What do you do? All of that good stuff.
Mandy Shoemaker:You bet? Um, so I'm Mandy Shoemaker and currently I am co-founder of Prairie Eldercare and co-founder and CEO of Connectivities. And prior to that life I was an elementary school teacher and an elementary principal. So for the first 19 or 20 years of my career, and then in the last 10 years, have been an entrepreneur. I love that.
Dr. Katie:So I am fascinated by Prairie Elder Care. Can you talk a little bit about what that is and why it's so important to you?
Mandy Shoemaker:Yeah, so my sister-in-law is an RN and she, michaela Gibson is her name, and she is serving as CEO of Prairie Elder Care now, and she's an RN and has always worked in long-term care and we, in late 2013, had been kind of sitting around at the you know family dinner table on holidays and, you know, every few months, when we would get together as a family and just talk about the things that we were doing. And both of us had big jobs I was a principal and she was director of nursing at a large community and we kind of started brainstorming on things that we could do together and as we were really looking into the senior living industry, we realized that there was just a significant gap in what's offered, particularly for memory care services, and so we founded Prairie Elder Homes in, or we opened our first home in July of 2014 and opened our fifth home in October of 2023. So the first two homes we no longer operate those homes. Those are operated by a company called Goshen. And then the three homes that we still currently own and operate are on what we call the Prairie Farmstead. So that is a very special location.
Mandy Shoemaker:The Prairie Farmstead is a. We have three homes on the property. It's a five acre property and for anybody who lives here locally in Kansas city, we're in Overland park and we are kind of modeled after the Deanna Rose children's farmstead. So we have a, we have two goats, two pigs, two sheep and a bunch of chickens that our residents have the opportunity to engage with on a daily basis. We have a huge community garden, we have a koi pond and a fishing pond. We have walking paths, a big workshop that's kind of it's a barn that kind of serves as a workshop or classroom area and so we're really able to give people just an incredible quality of life, even when their circumstances aren't great.
Dr. Katie:Yeah, I love that. I tell people I'm way over my head in everything. Alzheimer's, my um I I've shared with you when we met my. Both my grandmothers had Alzheimer's. Um, my mother-in-law has Alzheimer's and um, this is a disputed discussion that we won't go into for this. The neurologist says my mom has cognitive decline. She refuses to admit it. We won't go into all of that, but it's just hearing about all of that. I really wish my mother-in-law lived here instead of the middle of Illinois, because I just think something like that it would give her such joy to be around.
Mandy Shoemaker:It would give her such joy to be around, yeah, and even people who are like oh, my mom doesn't like animals. It's amazing how just having one of the things that's super interesting about working in a memory care setting is so. I think we talked about this my brother, who is 57, was diagnosed this year with young onset Alzheimer's, who is Michaela's husband. I mean whoo, you can't even make this kind of stuff up and he's really about mid stage because of you know, when somebody is that young, you don't think it's cognitive decline, you think it's maybe mental health or other things that that might be at play, and so, um, okay, I totally lost my train of thought. What was I saying?
Dr. Katie:About whether they like animals or not.
Mandy Shoemaker:Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, and so so you could have somebody that's my brother's age. I mean, I think the youngest person that we've ever had live at Prairie Elder Care was 57. And we have people in their hundreds and so, like last year around this time, we had somebody who was in there who was turning 100, and somebody who was 61 in the same house. So we're talking more than a generational gap and so finding connections for people in a setting like that, so the animals provide this incredible sense of novelty, so you can watch the goats jumping around and headbutting and playing, and so they're having a common, shared experience that they can connect around. Surprisingly, they love the chickens, and so I talked about the 61-year-old Last summer of 2003,.
Mandy Shoemaker:The gentleman who was 61 was holding one of our chickens. She laid an egg on his lap. Oh, I mean, like how can you not just embrace that moment for everybody there? I mean it's hilarious and for people living with dementia, those emotions, they may forget that it happened, but the emotion sticks with them for a while. So, yeah, it's a great place.
Dr. Katie:Yeah, it's amazing, and so I don't remember anything about if you mentioned Connectivities to me when we met. So what is that Sure?
Mandy Shoemaker:sure, connectivities is basically hands-on activities for social connection. We are in startup mode still, and so we originally launched in July of 2022 as a subscription box for people living with dementia that's right, and I have participated in a couple of entrepreneurial accelerator programs and so through that we learned really a better market for us was special education, and so we have gotten some good traction. And us was special education, and so we have gotten some good traction and success in special education. And so what we really do is we curate and create hands-on activities that help teachers reduce stress and save time while elevating instruction, because they it's a kit. It's kind of like HelloFresh, like a kit for teachers that they get everything. You need to do this hands-on activity with a group of students and then they can use that high quality activity as a jumping off point to address, for special education, all the different individual needs that each student has, and so the the kit actually comes with the resources to address those different needs.
Dr. Katie:Wow, that is fascinating. Well, and I'm just thinking about your, your career journey. So can you kind of walk us through that and like, how did you go from education? We're going to kind of go into that a little more too but like, what was your journey? Did you start as a teacher? Like, how did that, how did that all go?
Mandy Shoemaker:I did. I started as a teacher, um, and because I was, I mean, for me personally, I'm always very passionate about social impact and connection, and so I just felt like and I did a lot of stuff with kids growing up, you know like volunteered and taught at Vacation Bible School and at summer camps and programs and taught swimming lessons and you know, just did. I was always very kid oriented and so teacher was a good fit for me. I didn't want to sell anything. I used to tell people I was in education because I didn't want to have to sell anything for somebody else, and so now I sell things for myself, though right that I feel really passionate about the purpose of.
Mandy Shoemaker:So got a degree in sociology. What do you do with a degree? You either teach with sociology. You either get your master's in sociology and teach in higher ed, or you kind of do something else related with people. So then I got my master's in education and was a teacher, elementary school teacher, and I'm not always the kind of person that's looking at what's next. I really like change, like to change things up, and so was an educational consultant in a couple of different capacities, so had a lot of leadership training, Then got my license to be an administrator in education. So that was all out in Oregon. Actually, I'm from Kansas City, went to school in Colorado at Colorado College, then moved out to Oregon, became a teacher in Oregon and was out there for about 10 years. I was out there for 12 years, taught for about 10 years, had my first elementary principal's job out there. But if I was going to keep doing that, I needed my mom.
Dr. Katie:Yeah.
Mandy Shoemaker:I needed support from my mom with kids. I had two kids. I took my first, or still have two kids. I took my first principal's job when my youngest was three months old, so and so not having that support network. So we moved back to Kansas City in 2005.
Mandy Shoemaker:And I was a principal in Blue Valley for several years and then went to Olathe for a couple of years, and one of the things that was really a pivotal moment for me was the Sandy Hook school shooting. Um, I I was not afraid as a principal, of of a school shooter coming into my building. Like we're always prepared for crisis and you know you're kind of always, you know, you know you're gonna you might have to put your life on the line for something, right, so you just that's. That was not a hard thing for me to wrap my head around, but what I really struggled with was that one of my students could become a school shooter. Like I don't know why. That really really haunted me. There was something about that particular Sandy Hook scenario that just really struck a chord with me, and so when teachers came in with issues that were on the small side, I found myself really struggling. Like you know, I wanted them to just get over it you know, and there are
Mandy Shoemaker:sometimes the small things can really make or break your day. So I felt like you know, maybe it's time for me to look at something else, like because just my threshold was different, you know, for challenges. And so that was when Michaela and I my sister-in-law and I went into business together and I always had kind of an entrepreneurial spirit. My dad was an entrepreneur, he had a marketing and brand development company and when I was a kid and in college I would have to write a proposal for whatever you know, like that was how things were done in my family, so um, so it just kind of made a lot of sense and, um, he was actually struggling with mild cognitive impairment when Michaela and I went into business together. So that was interesting. Just added an interesting, you know, he wanted to help so bad, but was having some significant mental health issues and experiencing some cognitive decline and anyway, just kind of contributed to part of that. You know what we ended up doing together.
Mandy Shoemaker:So I said that I learned things in on a need to know basis. I would learn it when I really needed to know it. So I just kind of selfught. I joined Central Exchange, which is a great women's group, and there were some people I kind of learned about sales and marketing and there were some entrepreneur groups at that time through Central Exchange and just through my network that I was building, just had some great mentors network that I was building, just had some great mentors and um, and just kind of really wrapped, you know, learn to wrap my head around the whole business side of things. Um, and then once you get that bug, you know it's kind of hard to. I'm just uh, I'm, as I had said earlier that Michaela serves as the CEO of Prairie Eldercare and I'm really in the process of backing out of the day to day to that of that, because I'm also getting coaching, certifications and group work, some group work, certifications and things so have really been on this personal development, personal growth journey in the last few years.
Dr. Katie:So, yeah, yeah, it's fascinating too, because I I tell people you know, being an entrepreneur is not for the faint of heart. It is a grind and so much work. But the thought of not doing it, of going back to the regular corporate world, I mean I think some people are made for this and some people aren't. But I just can't imagine not running my own business ever.
Mandy Shoemaker:You know, I was meeting this morning with another, a friend that's a small business owner, and we were just talking about there's like two buckets of leaders. There are leaders who have a lot of responsibility, like maybe in the corporate world they might have a lot of people in their org chart and whatever, but have they ever been responsible for making payroll? Yeah, yeah. And when you look at, you know the whole journey of entrepreneurship and there's a difference. I mean, and I have lots of respect for solopreneurs and I'm not, and and I love working with and supporting solopreneurs, solopreneurs and I'm not, and and I love working with and supporting solopreneurs. But there's a big and and, and paying yourself too is the same, is actually pretty similar to making payroll. But when you have other people that are, I mean, you know, I've made payroll with my own funds before, yeah, yeah, you know a few times. So, um, you know you, just you, you kind of have to just it does it takes a little bit of a different breed.
Dr. Katie:Yeah, yeah, it does. And I loved being in the corporate world and I really enjoyed it and I think if I would stay in it I wouldn't know what I was missing. But yeah, it's just a whole different. I tell people I've never slept better in my life, but I've never had more pressure in my life either. But it's my pressure, it's my stress that I created.
Mandy Shoemaker:Yeah, yes, and that is something that I I had talked about like personal growth and personal development. Learning to live with uncertainty was something as an entrepreneur that I had to, something as an entrepreneur that I had to especially kind of in this. You know, I was going to say post COVID, but a friend of mine recently just said you know, we're still in COVID, so it's really this post COVID shutdown and like the impact of those of 2020. And I see the workforce shortage as being a piece of that as well, because for Prairie Eldercare, that has impacted us dramatically in terms of increase in wages and things like that and really put a whole new level of uncertainty in there for us. And so I just think, as an entrepreneur, you really do have to learn to deal with a certain level of uncertainty and not have it rule your world, because you can get pretty unhealthy pretty quick that way.
Dr. Katie:Yeah, I agree, I agree. Well, and so much of what you do, and you kind of already talked about personal growth, but personal growth and resilience are really important to you, so can you talk a little bit about that and what you do and how, how you live that?
Mandy Shoemaker:Sure, well, I do work with a life coach that has, you know, I've done lots of therapy and you know that therapy kind of helps you make peace with your past is how I see it and and life coaching, or personal development coaching, helps you make the most of your future.
Mandy Shoemaker:And so for me, it was having making that shift, of taking control of my story and learning about what are the parts of me that influence that story and what do I want my story to be and how can I live out that way, like living through that, and I think, with resilience.
Mandy Shoemaker:You mentioned that being an entrepreneur has brought this different type of pressure right and it's really easy to get burned out when you have that kind of pressure and you're looking at where does with where my emotional energy is going. So that personal development and personal growth has been learning about me, about myself and what gives me energy and what costs me energy, and so then, and not feeling shame about what costs me energy or what put me in a situation that ended up costing me whatever, but learning to kind of own you know, gosh, that part of me really ended up doing this and learning how to help ourselves navigate through those challenges and I think that resilience um is you know, when you um we talk about you know. I think one of the metaphors is you can't pour from an empty cup.
Dr. Katie:Right.
Mandy Shoemaker:Right, um, and, and one that I really like is that like of a soccer ball or a volleyball or like that, that something, a ball that serves a purpose, like that that's deflated and when one of the when a ball is deflated, it doesn't act the way it's intended to act, right. So, learning how to keep ourselves full, yeah, so that we can show up in the world the way we're really meant to show up, yeah, so, yeah, and so I think resilience is learning those strategies. What do I need, what does it take to keep me showing up in the way that I want to show up in the world? And sometimes you have to get pretty vulnerable. Even I have felt like I've had to get most vulnerable with myself, you know, and being like okay, so is this fear that's holding me back? Is there some sort of fear that's draining me and causing me to show up or act in this way? That isn't really serving me? And so what am I afraid of and how can I deal with that? And so, just getting like ultra honest with yourself.
Dr. Katie:Yeah, yeah, and that's so fascinating. I you know I I kind of do a lot of talks with women that it's okay to say no. And you know you think about all these spinning plates and it's like you know, we're always worried we're going to disappoint someone or we're not going to do this or we're not going to do that, and it's like but we can't show up full if we are doing too many things. We can't take care of other people if we're not taking care of ourselves. And that's something early in my career I really struggled with. But I tell people all the time I am super good at saying no, so ask me. And it doesn't mean I don't care about you, it just means I don't have the capacity to do it well and I want to make sure if I do it, I do it well, right?
Mandy Shoemaker:For sure, and I think one of the things that I had to really reel in in that area was just because it sounds fun and I'd really like to do it doesn't mean I should Right, right, right.
Dr. Katie:So just you know, I think Right, right right, yeah, and I think being vulnerable and being honest it's funny because my homework for my therapist right now is you know what boundaries are you okay with in certain relationships and what are the rules that are required for those boundaries Like I will do this, but once we hit this, then I'm not going to do that. And it's creating that protection and kind of and and kind of like you talked about. Like what are you afraid of? Are you afraid that you're going to disappoint yourself? Are you afraid you're going to disappoint the other person? Are you afraid you're going to disappoint people who don't know? You're, quite frankly, don't have a vote. And I think sometimes that's what, especially with this particular relationship that I'm working through is it's like well, I feel like I should do this because it's kind of an obligation, but it doesn't matter what anybody else thinks. So it's it's a unique dynamic to understand all of that.
Mandy Shoemaker:Absolutely, I totally agree. You've said disappointment several times and I will tell you, I think I think maybe we have some of the same issues. Yeah, I mean whoo, I learned when we and I mean this literally, I was brought to my knees when, through COVID at Prairie Eldercare we had our first COVID outbreak, had our first COVID outbreak and it was in one of one home. We had eight, eight capacity for eight in that home. Everybody ended up ever all eight residents got COVID and six people died.
Mandy Shoemaker:And when you think about like for me I had to process like that was the ultimate disappointment, like for these families, like we couldn't keep COVID out Right, and at the time I mean this is so, it's just I'm so glad I think we learned so much from that, so glad I think we learned so much from that.
Mandy Shoemaker:But at the time there was this list literally on Johnson County Health Department list. It was a public list of all of the facilities or communities, senior living communities that had COVID, how many COVID cases there were and how many deaths. And it's like I mean you just can't, I mean to to and and to like be put out there to be judged over something that you have zero control over was that was. It caused a lot of dysfunction for me for a while because I I had I didn't know how to deal with it. You know, um, but that was uh kind of, as I started working with my life coach, one of the major things that we really had to unpack and um and just um, it, just it is thinking about. You know, what are those things that really do bring you to your knees in that way?
Dr. Katie:Yeah, yeah. And when you quote unquote, do everything right. You know, you follow the list, you follow the guidelines and it's like you know, no matter what it is, you're doing the best you can. So Right.
Mandy Shoemaker:And then here we had had to keep families out for so long and and I mean, like I had said before, I'm just so glad that that you know. I think there was just so much, particularly in senior living. There was so much that was learned and I really hope that that will be applied moving forward, you know, so that people don't have to go through that kind of suffering again.
Dr. Katie:Yeah, yeah it's. I know I always tell people hot take, it was such a hard time, but but we did. We learned so much and I think, coming out of the the time of the lockdown, I think people discovered themselves a little more. They discovered relationships a little more. I mean, for us to have at the time, a 16 and 18-year-old who we adore to be required to be in the house with, I mean we would just, we still to this day will we'll have three hour dinners and then to just be doing that 24 seven on the back porch was just a for us. It was a time of like we kind of needed this before the kids went to college, which is sure you know, kind of a light out of the insanity that it was.
Mandy Shoemaker:Yeah, well, I am all about finding, you know, the triumphs out of our tragedies, or you know how can we find joy during challenging times, like I. Just I think that's so important. One of the things that you just said that made me, that struck a chord with me, and I think that struck a chord with me and I think I think you and I talked about this when we met but is the whole idea of connections and and how important connections are to our wellbeing. And and I think that COVID highlighted that and really gave people the opportunity to think, to reprioritize things and there's a book that came out called the Good Life, which is about the Harvard Happiness Study, and I think it came out it'll be two years ago, this January and one of the statistics that comes from that book is that the quality of our relationships when we're 50 determine the quality of our physical and emotional health when we're 80.
Mandy Shoemaker:Wow, yeah, and how that you know. So at you know I'm 54 and I'm thinking okay. So you know what is important to me in life and this phase in life, and how do I stay connected with the people that are most important to me, and how healthy are those relationships and how healthy are those relationships and what changes do I need to make in my life or my behaviors or how I show up to make sure that I'm setting myself up for success into my 80s?
Dr. Katie:right? Yeah, I had not heard that. That is amazing. Well, and Dr Michelle Robin, who is one of both of our favorite people yes, I saw her speak a few months ago for AdventHealth they have a women's program and she talked about loneliness and it is just the impact that loneliness has on people, and we're seeing it more and more these days because people are working hybrid or working from home and so they're not seeing people and they're not having connections and relationships, and that has sat with me for the longest time.
Mandy Shoemaker:Absolutely, and it really does tie back to these connections and and I think that you can have all the money in the world and be the most miserable you can be the richest person in the world and, at the same time, be the most miserable person in the world and that there is really that relationships and connections is a commodity that is, it's limitless, it's accessible to everyone and it's what determines our quality of life. I mean, that is actually really really great news life.
Dr. Katie:I mean that is actually really really great news. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's powerful. I just had to pull up because this podcast is going out October 15th but October 14th, so it's just going to be a day late, but you can still sign up. Dr Michelle Robin has a 31 days of kindness in her. Small changes, big shifts Absolutely, and that's really powerful. I mean it, just that little bit of kindness changes so much.
Mandy Shoemaker:It changes so much. And I think I've done, I've signed up for it and I've done it in the past. And I know, mixed in there is being kind to yourself too, being kind to yourself too, and I think that we have this. There's this misnomer that we should put ourselves last, and that we should, and I think, especially as women, yeah, that we're supposed to sacrifice. You know that, that, that that all of the sacrifices that we make are what make our life, what help us have a quality of life.
Mandy Shoemaker:But really, I think, even going back to resilience sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice does not leave you a fully inflated sucker ball or whatever right. And so giving ourselves permission to be kind to ourselves and to learn what we need, to be resilient and show up the way we want to show up, is not a selfish act. It's actually one of the most generous things you can do for everyone else in your life. It's like this, going back to the boundaries conversation, that you're like, oh, can this relationship survive this boundary that I need to put on it? It's like, well, this relationship is going nowhere healthy if I don't put this boundary on it. So I think it just all. It's all very tied together, isn't?
Dr. Katie:it, it is, it is. And I think, you know, as you said, as women I think men as well, I think men, you know, internalize it differently and they don't want to talk about it. And women, when we feel super safe with other women, we will talk about it. And so it's it's critically important to have those, those connections with women. But you know, as I've kind of been going through some, it's I'm very open that my mom is, is pretty sick and and the journey of that, and it's like it's okay to not be okay and it's okay to say to people like I'm not okay, and it's. It's funny when at first, well, people will be like how are you? And I'm like not great, but we're, we're plugging along, like it's not a good day today. Thanks for asking. I think it's so shocking to people because people expect us all to be like two thumbs up.
Mandy Shoemaker:Here we go, smiley face, smiley face, and that's not how we feel all the time, and I think interestingly, I was listening to a podcast this morning about. So if somebody says, you know, I'm not great, we don't have to jump right into, a lot of people have a really hard time being with someone who can admit that they're not great today and so they want to go right into. Well, how can I fix that for you? Because and it's not about that I actually want to fix that for you. It's that I want to fix that for me, because I can't tolerate being with you if you're not okay and you know. And so I think just, there's just always so much more learning to do. And so you know what, if you say, gosh, you know, not great, I've learned the best response that I can be is like wow, do you want to talk about that?
Dr. Katie:Yeah, yeah, or you know, or say you know, even like, oh my gosh, you know, is there anything? Is there any support you need? Or you know, any way, I can be here for you and for me. A lot of times it's like nope, I just need to know I'm not my best today, so yeah, and right, I'm.
Mandy Shoemaker:I'm a little dysregulated right now. This has got me a little off, but it but actually a lot of times it's really helpful to carry on. Yeah, yes, because that normalizes the. You know, that normalizes your life and whatever you're going through, you know it's okay to not be great but to still just plug on through.
Dr. Katie:Keep it moving. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it's. It's one of those skills that I think is important for people to learn to be vulnerable and to be open. And I tell people all the time you can be, you can be vulnerable and honest. You don't have to be messy Like it's, you don't need to like lay down on a couch and, you know, go into full therapy appointments, but it's, it's okay.
Mandy Shoemaker:Right. Another thing this is even this is almost a just a flipping that one of the things that I've learned is, even though I have some really hard stuff going on in my life my brother has mid stage you know Alzheimer's and he has two daughters that are 19 and 15. And I, you know, and helping my mom deal with that and all of that, even though I have all this stuff going on, I can be okay and I shouldn't feel bad about that. Yeah, it's okay for me to have a great day. Yeah, even though I have this hard stuff going on in my life, yeah, yeah, because in the past I used to feel like I had to kind of force that narrative on everybody else. So like, but it's okay, you know, like it's okay to just live with those hard things too and to be okay when other things aren't okay.
Dr. Katie:Yeah, yeah, compartmentalize them and move forward. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and you know it's interesting, as we talk about all this, and I warned you we'd we'd veer, veer a little off path, um, but I think it's such an important conversation.
Dr. Katie:I think it's so important um to to talk about this out loud. Um, and I'm just thinking about you know, your kind of your career journey and the skills that have got you to where you are today. We've talked about growth and resilience and you know, as an entrepreneur, I always I'll get ready to take notes, like what is the thing that you know now that you wish you knew when you started this journey? Is there any skills or anything that really helped you through all of?
Mandy Shoemaker:it. I would say one of the things that's really important is that all businesses have challenging times, and if your business is struggling, it doesn't mean that you aren't a successful person. It doesn't mean that you aren't a good, strong, skilled entrepreneur. And so to not equate oh, my business is going through a hard time, I must not be good enough to keep that from happening so, um, so not equating with the business and the health of the business, with my worth as a person, as an entrepreneur, um, and, and those kinds of things, and that my ups and downs and challenges as an entrepreneur do not define my worth and my worthiness as a person?
Mandy Shoemaker:Yeah, and I think that part of the entrepreneurial journey is failures, and I'm going to say having failures doesn't mean that you failed Right. And so I think it's all about how you frame those things. And, like, I'm heading into this season in my life that I could not be more excited about, and this past season of my life has been nearly unbearably challenging, sure, but I wouldn't be heading into this next season without having had that, so, so I think no situation is permanent, mm, hmm no situation is permanent, and so just keeping you know what's what's happening now is the only thing we can be sure of is that circumstances will change.
Mandy Shoemaker:Yeah, yeah, the good or for the bad, you know, but they will change.
Dr. Katie:Yeah, yeah, I, I love that and it's, it's. I mean, so much of this podcast is. I want to get the message out there that you know the path isn't straight, the path isn't easy, it's not predictable. You know, one way we thought we were going to go. Sometimes we go a different direction and we hit bumps along the way, and that's okay, absolutely yeah, yeah, well, and so that leads us beautifully to the final question that I ask everyone on every show, all right To the level you're comfortable sharing what is the biggest leadership or career misstep that you've taken?
Mandy Shoemaker:I would say living out of fear, mm-hmm yeah, fear of what my business partner's response might be, fear of what other people would think, fear of disappointing people.
Mandy Shoemaker:I think making decisions based out of fear doesn't lead us down the path of abundance, and, and so I think we're the ones who are in control of how our story is told and how our story plays out, and, rather than give power to the things that we fear or make decisions based out of fear, we need to make decisions based on where we want our story to go, how we want our story to be.
Dr. Katie:Oh, I love that. That is a perfect bow to this conversation. That is beautiful. Well, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for connecting with me. I'm so excited to continue to get to know you and to learn and grow from you and with you and all of that good stuff, so I just really appreciate you. Thanks so much. Yeah, thanks, it's been a pleasure. Great, all right, everyone. I will talk to you again next time on the next Path to Leadership. Bye everyone.
