Stories from Kristina + Breanne

  Shared by Breanne Smedley This weekend, my husband and I started working through the "36 questions that lead to love." They are sets of questions that can supposedly lead to two complete strangers falling in love after answering them.   I don’t know about all that, but I do love the questions and they sparked some great conversations between my husband and I! One of the questions was, "What is your perfect day." To my surprise, my answer started with the same thing that I do everyday. I said:   -Wake up (refreshed) at 5am and start my morning routine -Rasa coffee with coconut cream -Write out my dream statements, goals, and affirmations -Meditate -Read -Write -Workout After that, it involved a lot of fun family time, an adventure or two somewhere with water, an afternoon nap, and good food/drinks.   The first part, though…"how boring!" I thought to myself. I figured I should say something extravagant. Wake up in Paris and spend the morning sipping espres

Shared by Breanne Smedley We are on day #3 of potty training Charlee. It’s actually been a fun, eye-opening, and only semi-shitty experience so far! We are following the "potty training in 3 days" method, which has very strict and specific guidelines that we need to follow in order to actually make this happen in 3 days.   This is bootcamp style potty training...and I’m all about it. Some of the rules are intense: Ditch all the diapers (there’s no going back!) Put her in underwear. Follow her every move for three days straight. DO NOT let her out of your sight. No checking your phone, ever. No TV. Ask her every minute: "Tell me when you need to go potty." Any sign that pee or poo is imminent...put her on the pot! Pee= One M&M and sticker. Poop=Two M&MS and stickers. By the end of day one, Charlee was telling us when she needed to go, running to the potty, and doing it all herself. We did it! (We thought…)   We were following all the rules, Charlee was doing

Shared by Breanne Smedley June 19th has been circled on my calendar for the past few weeks. Every time I look at it, I get a rush of excitement and anxiety run through me. (For my teacher friends, yes, it's our last day of school for the crazy 2020 year!) But, it's also the day that I launch my next round of The Elite Competitor Program. The Mental Training program that I've developed for female athletes to help build confidence and resiliency on and off the court. I've had three groups of awesome girl athletes go through the program since January.   All experiencing unique transformations. All coming out on the other end more confident. More enabled. More skilled to take on the challenges in their sport and life. It's been nothing short of an amazing, life-giving, and inspiring process. However, I still have doubts every day that I look at that date on my calendar. I start to wonder...   "What if it was just a fluke that all these girls actually experienced th

Shared by Breanne Smedley In our spare bedroom right now, there is a large pile of things that I am anxiously waiting to haul off to a donation center. Like many, I've used some of quarantine time to deep clean and purge. Drawers of things that had just become toys for Charlee to make messes with.   Old clothes that I haven't worn in years, but never got rid of because "I paid a lot of money for them and I might wear them again SOMEDAY!" Buh-bye! Random objects that had just become part of my environment...but until now hadn't really stopped to ask myself, "Do I need that? Do I want that?"   Like the toaster oven. I haven't made toast or used it for 5 years...why do I need it? Or the 50 water glasses we've accumulated, when we use the same 3 on a weekly basis. When will we ever need that many?   While I'm waiting for a 50-person party to arrive at my house, the glasses are taking up space. In my cupboard, but also in my mind. I used to think

  Shared by Kristina Smedley When  Breanne Smedley  and I first stepped out on this Mindfluent® Leadership journey (2 years ago!), I was envisioning that we would create a philosophy, become certified coaches, and go out and find 1:1 coaching clients.   We would (hopefully) positively impact their lives and that impact would create positive ripples through their families, teams, and communities.   I wasn’t really sure how to do any of that, but it’s the model we had been exposed to. So, it’s the model we started building from.   Leadership Philosophy ✅ Professional Coaching Training ✅ Practice 1:1 Coaching ✅ Then came the part of getting 1:1 clients.   And we quickly realized that we didn’t want to spend hours upon hours going to networking events, reaching out to our network for coffee dates, asking for referrals, and more to secure one single client. Then, spending hours with just one client.   I’m not looking down on this model, because it works wonderfully for many and they are ver

  Shared by Kristina Smedley Today, Kaden enjoyed riding in his jogging stroller for the first time. It was adorable!! He was smiling, looking out at the water, and flapping his arms and legs around. Yesterday, he figured out how to pull fabric squares out of a box. And he thought it was pretty fun!!   The week before that, he learned how to (sorta) take a sip out of an open cup. And the week before that, he started to sleep through the night. Having Kaden has been the ultimate lesson in slowing down and celebrating small wins.   Every second of every day, he’s seeing new things, making new connections, and learning new skills. It’s not always something massive, but something little happens every day.   If we weren’t paying attention, we might miss some of them. If we were too wrapped up in our own worries and concerns, we wouldn’t get to celebrate his little milestones and growth.   And really, it’s not all that different in my own life, except I don’t so frequently slow down and cele

  Shared by Breanne Smedley When I worked at Jamba Juice in high school, there was a job I was assigned within the first couple weeks of working there. It seemed that all the newer hires got a turn doing it.   Dressing up in a large banana costume and dancing, running, and basically making a fool of myself along the busy street and intersection outside of the store.   As someone who doesn’t love when the attention is on me...let alone bringing it to myself by jumping around as a big yellow banana, I wasn’t too excited about this.   But, I put the thing on and made my way to the street. I told myself that it’s part of my job, that I’d probably never see these people again...and starting dancing.   I got honks. I got people shouting weird things. I saw people I knew, and hoped that they wouldn’t recognize me in a bright yellow suit.   My mom drove by once and couldn’t stop laughing. I was assigned the banana job a couple more times in the beginning of my time at Jamba (I’m sure I made bu

  Shared by Breanne Smedley It’s probably been more than that, actually. Money spent on Facebook Ads as Kristina and I try to figure out how to craft our message and grow our audience.   Money that we risked in experiments of what image would work. What message resonated the most. Who to target.   Money that we spent to get barely any leads back. Or, leads that we’d look at each other and say, "Woah, that’s not our ideal client…" We could easily chalk that up to a waste. We could easily just call it a failure and not try again.   After all, money, when you’re growing a business, doesn’t exactly flow in right away. It’s these times that I wish that old adage were actually true and money DID grow on trees.   But, it doesn’t. And, I’m glad it doesn’t, actually. Because we are taking risks. Risking with hard-earned money that came from previous risks we took in our business.   We know that without taking risks, there will never be an opportunity for anything to be gained. Anythin

  Shared by Breanne Smedley Over the past couple of days, I saw the "toddler test" floating around social media.   The concept was simple. Place a bowl of a treat in front of your toddler. Tell her that she can't eat it until you get back.   Leave for a couple minutes.   Come back and see if the 2-year-old could stand the test of patiently waiting to dig into the desired treat.   All while filming, of course. Because anyone with a toddler knows that they aren't the best truth-tellers.   (In fact, ever ask a toddler if she's poopy, when you know full well that lump in the back of her pants is a dead giveaway. Answer is "nooooooo..!" Every time. Liar!)   So, we need film evidence of what really went on while mom was gone.   The videos I saw of other toddlers doing this were hilarious.   Some waiting for a bit until they just couldn't take it anymore and devoured the whole bowl. Some sneaking just one or two candies. Some licking the contents of the bow

Shared by Breanne Smedley It’s one of my favorite Friends episodes. The one where Ross, Chandler, and Rachel are trying to maneuver a large couch up a set of stairs only to get stuck at every corner.   Meanwhile, Ross is yelling "PIVOT!!" multiple times in an effort to actually achieve their goal of getting the couch to the top.   It’s a hilarious scene, but often one I think about in terms of Kristina and I’s business. Because pivoting is what we’ve done a lot of over the past two years since we founded Mindfluent Leadership, our business that exists to enable and inspire female leaders.   Yesterday, Kristina and I did a deep dive into the business through the StoryAthlete Income Live event. We started asking some tough questions. Where are we going? How do these parts of our business align? What do we see long term? And, yet again, found ourselves like Ross at the bottom of a stairwell yelling, "PIVOT!"   This morning, though, it all started to make sense. (Funny