Do you feel inspired? Are you thinking of something big for your life? How do you take action on your dreams?

In this episode, Heather brings in Sigrun Gudjonsdottir, award-winning business coach, international speaker, and bestselling author, as they talk about feminism, women empowerment, being inspired, thinking big, and taking action.

Sigrun Gudjonsdottir is the leading business mentor for European female online entrepreneurs, a TEDx speaker, and host of the Sigrun Show podcast. Her mission is to accelerate gender equality through female entrepreneurship.

That is why don’t miss this episode, sisters and sirs! Tune in now.

Soul Stirring Quotes:

“I never see learning or any type of experience as a waste.”
“I am gonna give myself permission to radically chase what turns me on and what I am inspired by.”
“As a woman, we get to be the architect of our lives. We get to be the architect of our businesses. We get to be the architect of what we want to experience.”
“I trusted my inspiration. I trusted that I could take action on this. That right there is a superpower that every single human on this earth, but I think women especially have to follow your heart and to just know that something incredible is gonna come out of it.”

Heather Alice: Sigrun it is so amazing to have you on the show. Thank you so much for taking time to be here.

Sigrun: Thank you for having me, Heather.

Heather Alice: Yeah. So first I wanna say this, I was reading through your incredible website and your bio, and just listening to your Ted talk and getting to know your story. And I chuckled had to, I literally laughed out loud.

You and I have a quality that in seeing you having this quality and seeing it in myself, it actually made me feel really good. I think you and I both are addicted to getting professional degrees and then not going into the field of choice.

Sigrun: Yeah, that’s very true.

Heather Alice: Yeah. So you have a master’s degree in architecture. You’ve got three master’s degrees. You are an architect, classically trained architect. I went to mas-, I got a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling, graduated and then said, absolutely not. I’m gonna stay in coaching and not therapy. So your specialty is one, you’re a lifelong learner, which I think is just brilliant and probably what makes you so incredibly successful at what you do in helping female entrepreneurs scale to six and seven figures.

So I guess where I would like to start is talk to us about your journey into, you went, you were an architect and then you had this incredible journey of becoming a CEO and an entrepreneur. So how about you tell us just a little bit about how you walked into this, because I love your story. I think it’s emblematic. And so many women can touch into that and see themselves in your journey.

Sigrun: Yeah, I think it goes all the way back to being born and raised in Iceland. I was probably believed that I could do anything. It was not that my parents were like constantly telling me I could do it, but I just felt I could do anything I wanted.

And then when I was nine years old, the first female president of Iceland got elected and she was the first female president that was democratic elected in the whole world.

Heather Alice: Whoa.

Sigrun: And the day after she got watered in, my mother took me and my sister to her house. And I just remember being in this crowd of a few hundred people, and we were cheering her on.

And I think the significance of this event became clear to me much later in life, but I think it was the starting point of really, truly believing that women can do anything. Because I saw this woman, you know, she was now the president of a country and not just that she was a woman, she was divorced.

Heather Alice: Mm.

Sigrun: She was a single mother and she had adopted a child. And I recently found out that she was the first single mother in Iceland to actually get permission at the age of 41 to adopt a child.

Heather Alice: Wow.

Sigrun: In addition to that, she had recently survived breast cancer and her opponents tried to use this against her leading up to the elections. That’s very low I find.

Heather Alice: That’s incredibly low. Shame. Ooh.

Sigrun: Yeah. Shame on you guys.

Heather Alice: If that’s what you have to do to beat her, you have absolutely no right to hold off. If that’s where you’ve gotta go. Yeah.

Sigrun: But her words were so good. She said, I’m not going to feed the nation. I’m gonna lead the nation.

Heather Alice: Incredible. Holy cow.

Sigrun: And so there was this woman and at the same time, or let’s say a few years later, there was also new political party being founded called, I don’t know the name really in English, but it was only women allowed. This is a really an interesting thing. And maybe this is the reason Iceland is number one in gender equality since over decades is of the things that happened decades ago, that women from the left to the right came together and said, we need to work together to advance gender equality and politics.

You know, I was not old enough to vote, but I read the news every day. So I followed this and this started totally to impact me in a, in ways that I cannot even fully grasp. And, so basically they decided to work together and put their political differences aside and advanced women. And I think when they started this, it was 6% women in the parliament.

And so they worked together for Over 15 years, and it was just to push the other political parties to actually put women on their, you know, agenda and, you know, allow women to fully participate in the other political parties. And so after 15 years they decided, you know, we’ve achieved their goals.

I think they finished when we had about 25% women, a parliament. Now, I think we have 40 or 50%, 40% maybe. And so they definitely pushed something forward that wouldn’t have, happened without them. And, so there was this movement going on. And then, when I was 16 years old, I had been making my clothes for a while and I was knitting and sewing and doing all the things that I saw my mother and grandmother do.

And I took everything seriously that I do. So , I always wanna be a professional if I start to do something.

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm.

Sigrun: So I thought I need to learn how to do a sewing patterns. So, I did a course with a dress maker. This were evening course. and, I was 16 years old. The other women were in their forties and fifties.

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm.

Sigrun: And I just kept quiet. I had nothing in common with these women. The age difference was huge, so that I just listened to them speak and it turned into a life-changing experience for me because they talked about all the dreams they had not fulfilled.

Heather Alice: Oh my goodness. Mm.

Sigrun: Yeah. And so week after week, I just heard about all the things they had not done. All the regrets they had. All the excuses.

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm.

Sigrun: I didn’t really see them as reasons. They got married. They had children. Oh, no time, no money. All the things that we kind of hear when we think of someone who wants to join one of our programs and doesn’t buy.

Heather Alice: Sure.

Sigrun: I was thinking of women, just, it wasn’t about, you know, it was really about that they hadn’t just followed their dreams. They put everyone else in the first seat and they were absolutely last, you know, after their husband, after the children, after the elderly parents, after their home. And they were still working. They were working full time. So, and their wishes and dreams came last.

And over these eight weeks, something started to bubble inside of me like this is not right. I don’t wanna be like these women.

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm.

Sigrun: Can I do something about this? I had all these questions in my head and I was not raised to be a feminist before, but you know, this political party and the background, and then this experience, you know, when this came together, I was like, I’m a feminist.

I want to advance gender equality. I need to do something about this. I didn’t know yet what, because I’m not a politician. I do not wanna be one. I didn’t know what I would do, but I knew instantly that this would be something that would influence me for the rest of my life.

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm.

Sigrun: And this became my why I decided not to have children. I wasn’t so interested, into kids anyway, but they, that was the number one excuse they had – children. And I’m like, well, if that’s the reason you cannot follow your dreams, I’ll not have children. Now, that’s a very naive sentence from a 16 year old, of course, later in life, I can absolutely not see this as an excuse to not follow your dreams.

Heather Alice: Either way, right. Either way.

Sigrun: It should be the reason you do it. You know, you should be a role model for your child and not do something and then later on you tell the child, well, I didn’t do this because I had you. The poor child is totally fault, you know? And I decided, not to ever let a man stop me. I felt that was another reason that came up.

Like they were married and some even said, yeah, my husband didn’t want me to do that. And I’m like, what? You know? And so I truly believe in love. My, my, my parents met when they were 13 are still happily married today.

Heather Alice: Mm.

Sigrun: And so I had this really wonderful role models in my life, but I said, my husband cannot be the one that’s gonna stop me from following my dreams.

Yeah. And last but not least, I decided I would always follow my dream. So when you said in the beginning, I have all these master’s degrees. Well, if I realized that a path I had taken was not making me happy, or I had a new idea, what I would want to do.

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm.

Sigrun: I’ve actually never had an issue switching careers or switching professions because of this decision I took early on that I would follow my dreams. And it’s interesting when I finished architecture and I’m a licensed architect, you know, I really did all the exams, even though in the last two years, I was like, thinking, mm, is this really what I wanna be doing?

And I’m like, okay, I need to finish what I start. But my mother was so disappointed. It was like, like this, I don’t know. She had this dream of me working as an architect was so happy. And then I say one day, hey, I’m not gonna pursue it. What? You’ve just wasted so many years. I’m like, I did not see it as a waste.

I never see learning or any type of experience as a waste. It’s, you know, it’s just gonna help me in different ways. I’m now, you know, deciding businesses or deciding online courses instead of houses in a, and for me, this is giving me even more creativity than if I had worked as an architect.

Heather Alice: Yeah.

Sigrun: So. Yeah. And it was, you know, in my architecture studies, I love the combination of art and science

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm.

Sigrun: and the study is fun, but I started to test out how it is to work as an architect. So during my summers, I would work for architecture office here back in Iceland. I was studying in Germany and there was so much struggle I felt. And you were always kind of fighting either with some regulators or the clients or some engineers that said you cannot do it this way or that way. And I’m like, ah, this is not as much fun as I thought and actually signing is just a few percent of your time.

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm.

Sigrun: Most of the time, you know, when you’ve done with a design, you’re just executing for months and doing details and, and yeah, this struggle, that impacted me also a lot.

 Maybe it’s the architects I was working for. It could have been their personality and how they ran their company. But it felt to me like, you know, there was a month, there was a lot of money and then were three months, no money. And then there was another month. Oh, we got the bills paid. And so it felt like this, it was a very project based business, of course.

And I’m like, I don’t like this.

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm.

Sigrun: I dunno, all kinds of things came together. And what happened at the same time? This will probably reveal my age.

Heather Alice: Let’s do it.

Sigrun: The internet came, well, the internet was there, but I got an email address at the university. I was studying in Germany and I was like, I have an email address. I can send emails. And, I started to, you know, have my first website and there were all these courses that were offered. I was at a technical university and there were a lot of courses and they offered courses on 3d. 3d programming. And I was like, oh, this is fantastic. And so I was able to do my final thesis in architecture at the computer science faculty, because it was a 3d, you know, 3d campus.

I did a 3d university campus. I designed all the campus and 3d and people could rent seminar rooms and have a white board and all these things. I have to reveal when this was, this was before the a year of 2000. It was

Heather Alice: Oh, sure.

Sigrun: Ninety-eight.

Heather Alice: Yeah. In the nineties. That’s right. Mm-hmm.

Sigrun: Yeah. So, so end of the nineties, and I couldn’t go back to architecture after having experienced this. This was way more fun and exciting.

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm.

Sigrun: And so, yeah, I just, I’ve always chosen path that, I don’t know, excites me. It doesn’t mean that I’m switching all the time. I’ve been, had my business almost for nine years now. But I think it’s important to not let outside influences or other people tell you that you should stick with something if you have no interest in it any longer.

So, that’s how I was always able to switch and have no regrets.

Heather Alice: And to be here following your passion. So three things kind of occur to me as I’ve listened to your incredible story. And thank you for sharing that. The first is you add a solid example in the president of what it could be. She was this powerful influence of like, oh my God, look at that.

Right. It’s almost like the shining star. She was the star in your life. Like, wow. Look at that. The next thing is that you also at 16 had an example of what you don’t want.

Sigrun: Yeah.

Heather Alice: So what it could be, what it could not, what you do not want. Right. And then out of that, this commitment to allow yourself.

And I think this is really, really important that you’re bringing here especially today. So we’re recording this in July of 2022. The number one thing that we can do, I think for health and wellbeing in our life in general is embrace the pivot. That’s typically thought of as a business principle, I think embrace the pivot is now just having the ability to survive life in such a, the tumultuous time that we live in.

 But I, what, I’m what I’m noticing in your story and what I think is so cool and I wanna kind of bring it to the forefront is you’ve tied pivoting to following your dream. It’s not just, I’m gonna change cuz I’m bored or I’m gonna change because whatever, or I, this is too hard. I don’t wanna do this anymore.

It’s no, no, no. I am gonna give myself permission to radically chase what turns me on and what I am inspired by because you, it sounds to me like you’re a woman who has radical trust in herself. And you don’t give yourself excuses. So I love that you’re bringing this up, that everything that you’ve done in your life has led you to here.

And it doesn’t matter if on the surface, you, you don’t see how it ties in, you know that it ties in, you know that it’s going to lead you ultimately to where you want to go. And I think that stops a lot of women from. And your, and your Ted talk, by the way is fire. You guys. I’m gonna put a link to it in the the show notes, but it’s “Be inspired, think big, and take action.” Right? So I don’t think we can be inspired and think big and take action if we aren’t giving ourself permission to say, I am actually supposed to live a life of purpose. I am supposed to live a life of passion that can include kids or not husband or not. It doesn’t matter, right?

It’s our life. As a woman, we get to be the architect of our lives. We get to be the architect of our businesses. We get to be the architect of what we want to experience. And I would love for you, if you could speak to maybe, what you see in your coaching practice with the women that you work with, what do you think today?

So it’s 2022. We have been through. You know, the feminist here, at least here in the US, you know, that really took, women claiming their right to enter into the workforce and be in the world in the sixties. You know, we’re a solid, man, what, 40 years, 40, 50 years into women, you know, really entering into the workforce.

And yet we still hold ourselves back with this.

Sigrun: Mm-hmm.

Heather Alice: So what are some of the common, what are some of the common things that you see in the clients that you work with who do have a big dream? They are wanting to say yes, but they’re having a hard time basically getting over thinking that they can’t do it right from being inspired, thinking big and taking action.

What do you, what are the common blocks to that and how can women get over them?

Sigrun: Yeah. Well, I just wrote a book. My first book. And I had to, you know, I actually spent quite some time in the book to talk about like, why some women don’t get started at all, following their dream. I tied with starting a business or even scale up a business if you have a small one.

 And I’m seeing the same excuses as when I was 16 years old.

Heather Alice: Really? Oh my goodness.

Sigrun: Yeah.

Heather Alice: I can’t because family, kids?

Sigrun: Yeah. It’s still the same reasons. And I would’ve thought we would be further by now, but you know, we are still, you know, and the pandemic even made it a little bit worse. You know, the women who could stay at home, some of them didn’t go back.

You know, if they actually just left their job, you know, because someone had to take care of the kids. There was no kindergarten or schools. So I’m seeing some of the same excuses, but I think the still the theme is, the belief in yourself.

Heather Alice: That’s right. That’s, that’s the real issue.

Sigrun: That’s the real issue. The other things are excuses.

Heather Alice: That’s why the, yeah, the logical mind. I totally agree with that. And that’s where I wanna go. Yeah, because a thousand we can talk about the leaves on the tree, or we, you know, we can talk about the leaves on the tree, or we can talk about the root issue. Like I like you.

I don’t wanna spend my time on the leaves. We can rake the leaves all day long and tomorrow there are gonna be more leaves. The leaves being problems, reasons why we can’t reasons why we shouldn’t reasons why it’s bad, we’re bad. And it’s bad if we do. I don’t really care. What I wanna do is rip the damn plan out by the root let’s rip the damn thing out so that we don’t have to rake tomorrow or the next day or ever again.

And it, I agree with you entirely. It’s the belief in ourselves. That’s, that’s the thing. And I love your story because it shows that at a very young age, you, you had it at that pivotal time, right? You were nine of an example. Why wouldn’t I believe in myself. I wouldn’t look what she did. Holy cow. She had all the odd sta stacked against her too.

So can you speak to that then? Maybe the belief in self, like what do you, what is it that why do women have such a hard time believing that it’s possible for us beyond the husband, the kids that, oh my goodness. It’s gonna be hard to balance at all. What do you think is going on there?

Sigrun: Well, if I had a really good answer to that question, I, I would probably be a billionaire and I would fix the problem instantly.

 I do think it’s a mixture of society, upbringing, generational, you know, women haven’t had access for instance, to money for a very long time. I think it’s, is it 50 years? Like it’s, it’s a really short time.

Heather Alice: That’s right. Exactly. Mm-hmm.

Sigrun: Having your own bank account, taking your own financial decisions. You know, I can see it because I live in two countries, Iceland and Switzerland. And Iceland, every person is an individual. Even if you get married, you’re individually taxed.

Heather Alice: Hmm.

Sigrun: In Switzerland. When I married my husband and I am the senior I’m three years older than him. He gets all the mail for the tax authorities.

I’m not getting any mail from the tax authorities except for my company, but not personally.

Heather Alice: Sure.

Sigrun: So you can see how societies are still like in the old hierarchy of the man being the decision maker and, you know, many countries are really, really behind, even if we think of them as modern societies.

So there are still women today that, you know, they don’t have a credit card. Oh because the husband has a credit card. Oh, I’ve never needed it. You know, it’s this and it, when you don’t have access to money and you don’t have access to all the things you need to do in your daily life. You also kind of had lower self-esteem.

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm.

Sigrun: And then there are stories around, you know, that women are not as good drivers as men and all these things like, you know, it, it just comes, I have a recent example. The, Iceland football team, football is soccer by the way. So Iceland soccer team women, they are as good as a man, if not better, the soccer team of Iceland.

But if you would go out and go on some field and there would be man, girls and boys. The girl, the boys don’t wanna play with the girls.

Heather Alice: Mm.

Sigrun: You know, it’s still even if a very gender equality society here. So there is something in the upbringing. I don’t know society. I don’t have one solution for it. Or, I don’t know.

I don’t, I don’t, I cannot fix the problem at the root, even if I would love.

Heather Alice: Sure.

Sigrun: I’m trying to fix it when the women are in their thirties, forties, fifties to come to me and they wanna start or scale their online business. And then I tackle this issue. And it is down to, as you said. So, well, before it’s down to having these role models.

So what I do is I collect endless stories from my clients. You know, I used to have full-time person even on it. And now I’m looking for another one, because constantly saying, Hey, she has a four month old baby. She started to sell sewing courses online. And within a year she was making $170,000 and then the person, another person with a four month old babies cannot use the excuse of the baby.

Heather Alice: Yeah. That, that what you just said right there, I think is super important. You know, maybe perhaps, and this is just coming to me as we’re speaking. Maybe the root solution is as simple as what the women did with those political, and I think this is what you’re trying to do in your business. It’s what so many female entrepreneurs are trying to do.

Maybe the solution is just as simple as women seeing other women do it.

Sigrun: Mm-hmm.

Heather Alice: Maybe it’s as simple as you’re just in relationship with other women, whether it’s at the peer level or a mentor level. I think you and I are both big into mentors. You know, I’m a big believer in like, why would you go bang your head up against brick wall to learn a skill when you can partner with another woman to help you learn who has been down the path, that you’re trying to learn.

I know you do that so beautifully in your business, but maybe, maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s just being in relationship ch making the decision as an individual. I don’t know, maybe I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do yet. Maybe I, maybe I’m not even sure on it, but I do know this I’m gonna surround myself with other people.

Who’ve made a commitment to walking in their purpose and taking action to do bold things in their life. Because you’re right. Like. Who’s to say that you can’t do it. And then you can’t say you can’t when other people are doing it. The second thing that just occurred to me is I think we’ve made a rocket sci.

I think we have turned being a successful business owner, particularly a successful business woman into like rocket science man. Like I think people think that like, you’ve you you’re, you’ve gotta be like elon Musk, sending people to Mars to be successful as a female entrepreneur. And you do not, it is not that complicated.

And yet we, we have this tendency to think it’s just like, holy shit, how am I gonna be able to do it? It’s like, actually, if you got a good mentor, you got clear on your dream and you were willing to take action. You had a plan to get there. You probably succeed. I actually think we. It’s way, way, way easier than we think it is.

So, yeah, I think a lot of it is just giving yourself permission to say, I’m gonna do this. And I know that I’m gonna find the harmony in my life as I move forward to do it. So I hear you. I know I have friends, clients, people, they they’ve got. I have a lady in my program. She’s got three kids. She’s a single mom.

She’s launched three Reiki kids. She, she does Reiki. She teaches Reiki and she doesn’t let anything hold her back. She’s one of the most productive people I’ve ever met in my life. I’m like, how do you do it? You know? So I think it’s through taking action and I know that’s kind of your third pillar.

Absolutely. Can you maybe speak to that part of it? Like yeah. Getting, getting beyond the excuse.

Sigrun: Yeah. Yes. So I have been teaching online business and coaching for over four years when I started to get a bit frustrated with my own students and myself. I had created a 12 month, online program. I was super proud of it.

I created 12 modules. Each module was like a course in itself. Sure. So I had these 12 courses and, people could go through it at their own pace, but I still set 12 month access because I wanted people to finish. And I had coaching calls and support in the community. Master classes, calls. And I’ve been running this program for one and a half years, and it dawned on me how few were actually doing the work.

Heather Alice: Mm.

Sigrun: And at the same time I heard I read somewhere or heard from someone that the typical completion rate in online courses was 10%. And I was like, that’s horrible.

Heather Alice: That’s yeah.

Sigrun: And I think it really was, I realized that one of my values was, was to actually have people finish. You know, you can earn a lot of money selling online courses that nobody finishes.

And I think there are a lot of people out there that probably deserve oh yeah. The value was like, I don’t want to make money that way. I wanna make money by people actually finishing what they’ve started and, they’re investing in the sales and I want them to see a return. And so I was incredibly frustrated.

This is in spring of 20 18. And, I was like, I have to do something about it. And I had this brewing in my head for a few weeks. What I could do and summer was approaching and that m ade me more worried because it’s very common in Europe to take long summer holidays. And especially if you’re a mother of young kids, your holiday is like the school holiday of the kids.

That could be six weeks or more. And I was so worried that if I didn’t. You know, they give them a kick in the butt that they would come back in September and there would be no change. There will actually be a worse spot because they wouldn’t have continued building the online business. So without knowing really what I was doing, I said, Samba, summer school is coming.

Samba was my program. Super’s online MBA. That was my old program. Summer summer school is coming. Summer. Summer school is coming. We start next week. I kind of knew what I was gonna do. I wasn’t really clear, but I knew I had to do something. And, I decided that they would create an online course. I felt that was like a tangible, realistic, and achievable project for the summer.

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm.

Sigrun: I decided that this would be 10 weeks. And, and they would figure out their ideal client. They would come up with a course and I would help them promote the courses. And so, yeah, I promoted that they would have to sign up for this. So it was a free program inside the program. Yeah. So I got half of the women to sign up and I was pretty happy about that.

And, every week I just, you know, Sunday evening I sat down and created the next module. This was a little bit like my first year in business. Sure. Now I wasn’t my fifth year of business and I was doing the same thing again, because I, I didn’t really have a Clark. Yeah. I think. What do you call unconsciously?

I knew exactly what I was doing, but on this level, you’re on the conscious level. You’re like, oh, what is happening next? Yeah. Okay. So it was clear. They had to have an ideal client. They had to come up with a course. You had to apply to participate in course. The course had to be free. People are like, why does it have to be free?

Because you need to build your email list and because I’m gonna advertise it for you.

Heather Alice: Ah.

Sigrun: And the biggest struggle women have when they’re starting out is that they have very small email lists and social media is small too, but turned out a lot of women also that have been in business for a while, were just excited about the project and participated.

So I’ve also seen people who are making seven figures and more offer free courses.

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm.

Sigrun: It’s not it’s it has got nothing to say about you. How experienced you are. You just are testing out a new idea. Let me test it out with lots of people. If I like it, then I can sell this course in the feature.

Otherwise this could be turned into a five day challenge later on or whatever. You’re like,

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm.

Sigrun: I never see anything like this as a wasted time or effort. So, and I wanted them to run the course during the program. I think this is another thing that the women don’t get going. We’ve talked about the excuses.

Yeah. That’s excuses before they decide to do something. The self believe is something that builds up, but there’s a lot of overwhelm.

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sigrun: Yeah. So that what I cost the overwhelm with my 12 modules.

Heather Alice: Yes.

Sigrun: I was, I was creating overwhelm. Well, you decided if you have overwhelm or not, but, they saw all these modules, they weren’t sure.

So that your module one, two, a three, or can I jump to module five? I said you can do it anyway. One and that’s actually worse for a lot of women. If they can make the choice, they cannot, they don’t know, like

Heather Alice: I’ve learned this the hard way. I’ve learned it the hard way. Like yeah, I hear you entirely. Yeah. Just give them a roadmap and you’re they’re good. yeah.

Sigrun: And I was like I hadn’t realized that I had not done the right things to help women in general. Like there are a lot of people that can still do it, but on average, just 10% can do the self-study version, all access programs.

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm.

Sigrun: Typical, woman, that I’m helping, likes a drip fed version. Tell me what to do every week. And that’s exactly what this summer school was. It was like every week do this, these three things, these five things and the next, and they were like, what’s happening next week. I’m not telling you.

Heather Alice: Ooh,

Sigrun: None of your bus-, none of your business.

Heather Alice: Yeah. That’s, that’s great. And they were a little bit like I have to know, I have to make plans.

Sigrun: I’m like, no, you don’t need to know. Just make sure you have time in your calendar an hour, a day. And in hindsight, when I get testimonials after afterwards, the women are like, oh, this was so relaxing. So freeing. I didn’t have to think. I just did the list that.

Heather Alice: Do you know what you’re killing me, Sigrun. Okay. This is so great. Do you know what you just reminded me of? This is exa oh, my I’m having a moment. I’m having a moment. This is exactly why I pay my personal trainer on a physical level. Yeah. Because I literally, oh my God, I never made this correlation. This is so cool. I, he asks me and I pay him a lot of money and he’s like, Heather, talk to me about like your goal.

Like, why do you keep coming back? And you know what I told him, I said, because I don’t have to think about anything. I just come in here and I do exactly what you tell me to do. And then throughout the week I do exactly. Like a, I’m like a robot. You tell me what to do and I’m gonna do it. I will do it and I will get the results and I will do what you tell me to do.

I don’t wanna have to think about it. Yeah. I think that, that, we’re onto something like if you’re listening to this and you have had a hard time with overwhelm or shiny object syndrome or decision fatigue, you know, however that comes to you that I think you’re really onto it. It’s actually relieving to have somebody say, you know what?

You don’t need to know. As a matter of fact, Just I’ll tell you next week.

Sigrun: Yeah.

Heather Alice: That’s great.

Sigrun: So by, by structuring this way, we got rid of the overwhelm, and, the other thing, the overthinking, you know, you, you, they had limited time. So I gave them, I think, one week to come up with a course idea and not just the course idea, but you have to have the name for the course and who is it for and all that stuff.

So they had fill out a form. There was a deadline to fill out the form and then there would be women in the Facebook group. 30 minutes before. And I was really like 30 minutes to go. You can still join us. Yeah. But I don’t know what my course should be about. You can cite it in five minutes. If I give you five years, it will take you five years.

If I give you five months, it will take five months. It will give you five weeks. It’ll take five hours. If you take just five minutes, you can come up with your course at end.

Heather Alice: That part. How about that part? That is so true. Like five minutes. Five months, five weeks, five years, just pick something and move forward.

Take action.

Sigrun: And there was this positive group pressure in the program. Like I wasn’t doing all the pushing. It was the other students just saying, you can do it, go for it. And so the deadlines and the deadlines were not just helping with the overthinking. I realized this actually years later, helping women take faster decisions.

This is something that a lot of women, you know, wake with decision making. When I think, well, this is tied to overthinking, but making fast decisions, not overthinking things, just like, okay, I’ve decided I move on and perfectionist not.

Heather Alice: Yeah. And I think on the decision side, what I’ve noticed and I, again, You know, shots fired over here on myself.

Right? It’s I see this in my clients, but I also witness it in myself. Right. It’s a gr it’s a practice that we all have. I think when women make decisions, like when a man, like, I look at my husband or any man that I, you know, his friends, right. They’re like they wake up in the morning and they go, I think I’m gonna play nine holes of golf today.

Or I think I’m gonna do this in my business. And they just make a decision and then they go do the thing. What they don’t do. It’s called 10 girlfriends. Storyboard it. Try to figure it out if it’s right or wrong. Think about how their inner child would feel. Think about if it’s gonna be the right thing 10 years from now. Get back on the phone with your friends, tell them all the stuff you just uncovered and then call your mom and ask her what she thinks and then call your team and ask them what they think.

What are we doing? Why we, I think as women, when we make decisions, We’re I think we, we value social connection. Like we sort of orient in the world that way as women, which is our superpower and it’s great.

Sigrun: Mm-hmm.

Heather Alice: but it really, it really, shoots us in the foot when it comes to being the executive of our lives. You don’t need anybody to approve of it. It can just be, because you say, so it’s this, this is what we’re doing because I say so , I don’t really need anyone to say yes to this or no to this. It’s just, this is what I’m gonna do because I want to do it. How about that? Yeah. So that’s all you need.

Sigrun: So, so this, this, this first time I ran this program, summer summer school, I had all this epiphanies about that intuitively.

I structured the course in a certain way, finding out later how awesome it was to help women overcome a lot of issues they have. And, and a lot of the reasons why they actually weren’t doing the thing in the first place, like why hadn’t they created online course already? They had been six months in my program.

Heather Alice: Oh, wow. Yeah.

Sigrun: I had access to all the instructions. They hadn’t done it, but under positive pressure, group pressure time, pressure. They could do it. They felt sometimes felt like, oh, you know, this deadline is looming around the corner, but in hindsight, they were like, what have I achieved here? I would never have done this except with this guidance.

So when they, courses were coming to an end, they ran this four week course within the program. I was like thinking, okay, how do I end the program? I was like, thinking we have to end it on a high note. I’m like they are gonna do an upsell. That was not even in my original idea. It was just spontaneous.

I’m like next week I’m gonna teach you how to sell. And they’re like, what? And so I taught them how to do a celebration call. I call it, you know, you bring all your participants from your free program together. Celebrate what you have achieved. Tell them what the next steps are. And here’s my offer, which solves the next step.

And people were making 10, 20, $30,000. And they had not made any money in their online business before. And of course, if someone has been in business even longer, they have can make even more money. But it was like, I love seeing this happening. It was amazing. And 124 online courses got created that first summer.

And I was exhausted because I was running this absolutely on my own. I didn’t really have a team. I had someone in the background, but I was alone teaching and coaching.

Heather Alice: Sure.

Sigrun: And so I was just like, okay, the fall is coming, I’ve done my job. And these women now can move on and I could see how this was what kick started their online business. They actually continued, you know, it didn’t become this break that I was worried about in the summer. So the following year, I started to get messages and emails. Are you doing it again? And I’m like, Ooh, I was thinking how exhausted I was. So I emailed my prior students and said, does someone wanna help me? 40 women said, yes,

Heather Alice: Holy cow.

Sigrun: Free. For free. And I picked 20, I thought 40 was a bit too much, 40 women, 20 women helped me for free. So I run it again. We had double the amount of people, 260 online courses created that summer. And, it was after that summer, I realized I have something here that is probably better than anything else I’ve created in my business.

Heather Alice: And you did it intuitively and you did it intuitively. I love that.

Sigrun: And I am just running it inside a paid program no one even know that exists. I’m hiding it. So in, the fall of September, September, 2019, I started to bring it out more. It was still a part of the 12 month program, but I started to advertise it.

And then I think was 2020 when I finally kind of like, was able to separate the two and just like, here’s my 10 week program.

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm.

Sigrun: And now, and, now we’ve had thousands of people go through it. And now I see the results of the women who went through it into 2018. And that’s another epiphany, because they are making million dollars.

Heather Alice: Mm.

Sigrun: So they were creating the first online course and you know, but this was their kickstart. Now I call actually the program kickstart oh yeah, this, this was what kicked it off. They talk about this moment as this pivotal moment where they got it. They started to believe in themselves. They be, you know, and they were able to shift, you know, become more of a professional believe in themselves as an expert, actually make some money in their business.

And then it takes a few years, of course, until you see the big, big success. Yeah. And now, and then I decided to write a book on it.

Heather Alice: Oh, I love it. And I Sigrun, I love that. You’re like, I just got up on a Sunday night and I just trusted myself. Yeah. I trusted my inspiration. I trusted that I could take action on this.

That right there is a superpower that every single human on this earth, but I think women especially have to follow your heart and to just know that something incredible is gonna come out of it and look at not only did your business, of course transform. Like, it seems like that was a massive force multiplier for you, right?

Because you went from

Sigrun: oh yeah, yeah.

Heather Alice: Yeah. Huge in your own business. But look at the look at the lives you’ve changed. And then the lives of the clients that your clients are working with that have changed. It’s just incredible how it ripples out like that. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So, so when is, is your book out?

Yes. Okay. Tell me, tell me where we can get it.

Sigrun: So, kickstart your online business. You can, get it on Amazon and you can also head over to my website, sigrun.com.

Heather Alice: Okay. There. Yeah, I love it. Okay. So, tell us what you’re excited about in your business. I know your book is here. It sounds like this initiative, you just, told us about the kickstart is like fire for your clients. And for you, tell me one thing that you’re really excited about in your business that, is just really lighting you up today. And also just, you know, doing this in the vein of being that example, right. Being in connection with other women who are on fire. Passionate and excited. What is inspiring you lately and turning you on lately in your business or in, just in life?

Sigrun: Yeah. Well, of course I’m incredibly, proud to have finally written a book. It’s been a dream since I was a child. But I also think it comes at a point, it’s still coming together. I’ve gone through a very hard time, personally and professionally, in the last nine months.

Heather Alice: Mm.

Sigrun: And, a lot of people don’t talk about that, but, I, had in a family emergency, my father was suddenly in intensive care in another country and I dropped my business and flew over there.

And this was last October. And, after two months he was in isolation and hospital. And my mother went into hospital two. I got sick too. Was not COVID, but, yeah, other, other, or other things. And, I was very worried for both my parents and I couldn’t work for two months, at the same time. My marketing director left. Well, I would’ve let her go if I, if she hadn’t left, but

Heather Alice: Mm-hmm.

Sigrun: but with her also two other team members in the marketing team left. So suddenly I was there couldn’t work because I was just consumed with my taking care of her parents and my marketing team is gone. So it was, I think months later, And now I can talk about it more clearly in my head that my energy just

Heather Alice: Yeah.

Sigrun: went away. I don’t call it burnout or depression. I don’t know. I just, I, those words didn’t come in my mind, but I say I’m incredibly low on energy for a long time afterwards. So, but I took some good decisions. I found a launch manager and in January we had a seven figure launch. Even with me being super low in energy.

The only thing I really struggled with was to go on video. Oh, can you do another video for Facebook app? And I’m like, no, no, I don’t, , I didn’t mind doing the training. So when I think I’m training my future clients , or current students, I that didn’t seem to steal as much energy, but it’s prerecorded video.

 I was like, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. So I think navigating this somehow and, and coming out on the other end. And it was interesting. When I finished my book, there was like a, I felt there was like something shutting something like, yeah, I broke my left wrist. I got COVID. There was like a. I was constantly in contact with my book coach saying like, oh, you know, another excuse why I cannot be writing.

Some of these were real reasons. Sure. Some of them, some of them were mindset. And it was interesting. I found myself on the other side of, of the women that I work with, like. There are sometimes real excuses, you know, family emergency breaking your wrist. But a lot of things that I struggled with writing this book was also mindset.

Like, you know, , I was sabot my own success. I knew exactly what I was gonna write about. I was gonna write about my program, and all these amazing success stories. And still I found it hard to sit down and write, And what has helped me also come out of this is that I saw in my team, someone who stood so strong through all of this, and, I promoted her to chief operating officer and its only a couple of weeks, but it’s a breath of fresh air when you have someone to take care of the business for you.

And so yeah. Maybe not exactly what you were asking me, but I felt it’s important to share that. Not everything is just that. And sometimes we need to celebrate coming out on the other end. There’s light at the end of the tunnel.

Heather Alice: Yeah. I think what I hear you saying is, you know, what I was asking or, you know, kind of peering into is what is inspiring you the most, you know, what, what are you on fire for?

And I think it’s really beautiful that you went into a story about how you had to break down to break through. You had to break down to go to your next level. And I really honored that. And I think it’s beautiful that you have the courage to not to share, you know, more than just the highlight reel, because let’s be honest.

If we’re going to live a life of inspired action, you are going to face those shadows. You are going to do things like break the wrist. I broke my left foot after, I went to grad back to graduate school and I broke my left foot. And two years later I broke the size point boat on my right foot, as I was launching, you know, it’s just, we do go through these things and I, I think we don’t.

We don’t share maybe, you know, it’s, it’s, there’s nothing wrong when that happens. I think we tend to think, oh my goodness. That must mean I’m out out of alignment or something is wrong. No, actually you’re, you’re probably on your way to ascending higher than you ever thought before. You know, you’re gonna create some of your best work, maybe when you’re going through that process.

So, I’m just excited for everybody here to hear your incredible story. You are a ferocious advocate for women Sigrun. Thank you so much. Believe it or not, I’m not far behind you on the, Hey, I just got an email address in the nineties situation. so it was wonder you say that like, I remember when email came out and we were all like, oh my God, what’s this like email thing?

Like, it’s a mail, but it’s electric. What does the E stand for? Oh, El electronic. Okay. yeah. So, I, I just, I love that it, it provides so much context for, we have, we have more resources than ever before. Maybe not as many as we could have as women, but we have more than ever before, as women to stand up and we can have it.

We really can have it all, if we give ourself permission to do it our way, and you’re, you are a shining example of that. So thank you for everything. I’m gonna have show notes to your book and to your website. Please go check Sigrun out. Her work is amazing. Her mastermind’s amazing. And really all of her programs are so thank you, Sigrun.

Sigrun: Thank you for having me, Heather.