Do you ever feel like your instincts are leading you down a different path than others in your field? Have you questioned whether your unique approach is “right” simply because it doesn’t match the norm? In this episode of Leadership is Feminine, host Kris Plachy draws inspiration from a recent conversation with a client who, like so many trailblazing women, is choosing to follow her own vision in business—even when it means going against the grain.

Diving into the realities of blazing your own trail, Kris captures the complexities of being a woman who doesn’t conform to traditional expectations in her industry. She examines how trailblazing women often face doubt, rejection, and even isolation, as they make decisions that may look unconventional or “wrong” to others. Whether you’re taking bold steps to create something new or stepping away from business practices that no longer serve you, this episode encourages you to honor your vision.

Kris highlights that the journey of a trailblazer is filled with ups and downs—grappling with societal pressures, personal insecurities, and limiting beliefs. But she reminds us that this path, though challenging, is also incredibly rewarding. By standing firm in their choices, these women not only break barriers but also pave the way for others. In Kris’s words, "The path of a trailblazing woman is to wrangle doubt and fear and rejection and jealousy and feeling ostracized.”

Join Kris in celebrating the courage and resilience of trailblazing women. This episode is a reminder that you’re not alone in following a vision others may not fully understand. If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re “doing it wrong” simply because you’re doing it differently, this episode will inspire you to keep going, to embrace your instincts, and to continue carving out a path that’s uniquely yours.

Key Takeaways From This Episode

1. Definition of a Trailblazer and the Challenges They Face

2. Personal Experiences and Observations: Kris shares personal experiences and what she has seen among her clients when it comes to stepping outside the norm.

3. Handling Isolation and Doubt as a Trailblazer: Dealing with negative feedback and the influence of societal norms.

4. Encouragement and Support for Trailblazing Women

5. The Importance of Community, Self-Belief, and Holding On to the Vision

Contact Information and Recommended Resources

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Transcript

Kris Plachy:
Hey, welcome to Leadership is Feminine. I'm Kris Plachy and I am your host. And I'm doing something funky today because, you know, it's on, it's on theme. Today we're going to talk about being a trailblazing woman. And I'm recording it in black and white because. Why not? Because I can, darn it. Trying to keep the,

Kris Plachy:
The people who censor the podcast, if they're swear words will keep them out. Okay, so, yeah, so I'm trying a black and white video. Why not? Why do we have to make everything in color? Is that a rule? There's so many rules for women. So, as is always the case of most of my podcasts, this one is born out of a conversation I've been having with a client on Voxer. If you guys don't know what Voxer is, I highly recommend you check it out. I think there's a lot of people who love, like Marco Polo, which is like, you can send each other videos. Voxer is you just voice record. Right.

Kris Plachy:
Which I know you can do texting, too, but there's something different about it. Voxing. It's like a walkie talkie. It's how I do all my coaching with my clients. It has proven to be a rich and valuable resource because it's so available and so fast. And even though it's asynchronous, I think it actually gives, especially those of us who are verbal processors, like that extra minute you need to think about what you want to say before you start talking. And I don't know, it's a business, a game changer for the- for my clients and for me as a coach, because I can be so available without interrupting your schedule, without having to book one on ones.

Kris Plachy:
You know, oftentimes I would do private coaching. That's what I used to do, all of it. And even recently, you know, doing group coaching. It's like this appointed time. "Okay, we're going to talk at this time." And sometimes we don't have anything we need to talk about at that time. And so then if we don't have anything to talk about at that time. Okay, Hi.

Kris Plachy:
Right. So I kind of love that Voxer just meets you right when you need it. And so far, you know, my Sage program has grown from originally four or five women to now 24 women, and it's still not an issue. So I love that. I love all of it.Okay, so today I want to talk about Trailblazing Women, and I want to talk about this really from a mindset perspective. I want to talk through what I've been working with one of my clients on and see if it resonates for you. You know, the majority of the women I work with now are in my Sage program.

Kris Plachy:
And a Sage is a woman who has achieved a level of distinction in the profession that she's in and the space that she's in, the industry that she's in. She has built a multi million dollar business. She's very successful and regarded in her world. Doesn't mean she's famous. It just means that people in the world that she's in know who she is. And there's, there is a unique isolation that comes with being a woman who blazes forward. My clients are running all different kinds of businesses. Physicians, healthcare, architecture, interior design trades, wholesale types of products, you name it.

Kris Plachy:
I have very few coaches actually that are in my Sage program. There's a few people that are trained coaches, but very few that are actually running coaching businesses. Most of my clients are service providers and most of them have some sort of brick and mortar establishment. All this to say one of the core elements that they all share is being a trailblazer, being someone who is willing to do something differently in the space that she's in than other women or than other people, period. Not even women. And so the conversation that I'm specifically referring to is a conversation that I've been having with a client who is that woman. She has made some decisions about how she wants to run her business and what she wants to do in her business that is different from other people who do the same kind of business. And because she's chosen to eliminate sort of an ongoing part of her business that a lot of other people that do this do.

Kris Plachy:
She refers those people. She refers that kind of her business. So it would kind of be like - this isn't even not a not thing, it's a true thing. Like, I don't really work with women anymore who are just kind of starting to figure out their business. I don't do that anymore. If it's your first kind of hire, I don't really do that. Not because I don't want to be helpful, but because that's not where I focus and it's not actually where I'm probably the best.

Kris Plachy:
So those women, I'm going to refer them to the right woman, to the right colleague, to the right partner that I have to work with. So that's her dynamic right now. She's made a decision. There are certain things in her business she's not going to do anymore. And so she's going to refer those out and great. This is good news for them. They're getting people from her.

Kris Plachy:
Right. So just this past weekend, she got some feedback and she's not quite sure how to, how to field it. But there was a, she believes, a little bit of an intonation in the feedback, which was, "Hey, thanks for all those referrals for that part of the business you don't want to do anymore." It was a little snarky and it lit up for her, what I think lights up for so many of us, which is there was, I think, jealousy in the feedback and in the thank you.

Kris Plachy:
I mean, here are these men who are kind of getting her, like, her turndowns, like what she doesn't want to do anymore. So it's good business for them, but it's business that other people like her and them would never turn down. It's bread and butter business. Why would you turn this down? And so in her mind, there's a lot of thought process, like, "I'm doing it wrong. I'm not following the rules. I should be doing it..." Right? And I think there's a lot of us as women who are running our businesses and following an intuition, we're following a vision.

Kris Plachy:
We're following what we know is right. And there's not a lot of people doing that. Not a lot of people in the world that we're in, doing it the way that we want. The way that we want to do it. I say this about myself a lot.

Kris Plachy:
You know, people have given me a hard time over the years. I could probably have thousands and thousands and thousands of clients, but there were certain things I just was never really willing to do. And I have a vision for what my business looks like, and I've stuck with it, which is a level of intimacy and connection with my clients. That's just what I've always wanted. And so I've stuck with it. And I haven't, I haven't changed that. But that doesn't mean I've been given some feedback based on it.

Kris Plachy:
And it certainly doesn't mean I haven't doubted myself. So the, you know, the path of a trailblazing woman is to wrangle doubt and fear and rejection and jealousy and feeling ostracized, maybe feeling like people just don't get you. There is a real isolation that comes with it. I mean, in and of itself, if you're a trailblazer, right, you are literally creating a trail where there isn't one. That's the point. You're a trail blazer. You blaze the trail and then people will follow, right? But after someone goes first, whoever comes after, it just is never doesn't feel quite as hard for them.

Kris Plachy:
And all of, there's so much packed in for women around being different. I mean, if you're running a million dollar business, you're already part of such a small group of women. Two million women, excuse me, 2% of female entrepreneurs run businesses over seven figures. So you're already in this tiny little percentage of people. And then there's the challenge that we know, all of us know, all of us who are female entrepreneurs know if we don't have a community of girlfriends in our neighborhood, in our town that are also entrepreneurs running seven figure businesses, we know even just to have conversations with other women is incredibly challenging. Sometimes there is a gap of understanding and it is not on purpose, it's just not, right? Like, I think I've mentioned this on my podcast before. We'll go to parties in town every now and then. I don't go very often anymore, to be honest.

Kris Plachy:
My husband and I are both business owners and people inevitably will ask him, how's the business going? Right? And it's just so fascinating to- there's just not a lot of inquiry. "Oh, that's so brave of you. That's so great that you're an entrepreneur. That's so awesome." It just doesn't come up when they talk to me about my business. It's like I have a little hobby, this little life coaching thing. I guess I don't even know what they think it is.

Kris Plachy:
It's fascinating. Like, no. I run, you know, anyway, whatever. So when my clients present with the challenges that inevitably come with the feedback or the personal, just their own limiting thoughts about who they are when they are making decisions that are counter to what their industry says, what those who come before them have done, what the standard practice is, it lights up all of the other things that I think we struggle with, which is feeling isolated, feeling like we don't fit in, feeling like other people don't get us. And then that leads us down some paths of "I'm doing it wrong, I must not be right. This, this must be... I'm going to fail. I'm going to... I'm going to lose money, my business." All the fears.

Kris Plachy:
And that's generally rooted when you talk to so many women. When I talk to my clients, you know, most of my clients are deeply deep people pleasers. They have lived experience where they were ostracized for having different ways of thinking. They didn't maybe fit in in their family, or they had a hard time making friends in school, or they went further than people in their family. And so people have sort of iced them out. A lot of my clients and women I know get iced out by girlfriends in the towns that they live in because they start to live a different life because they've built a really successful business.

Kris Plachy:
They have really nice homes, or they get housekeepers, or they drive a new car. I was talking with a client not long ago about her fancy new light fixtures that she was, you know, getting a little grief about. And so we, this all gets very triggered. And so as we were sitting there, if you're listening to this, and you tend to be someone who has a big vision and it isn't one that anybody's done before, this is what we need from you, and we need this from you more than ever. We need trailblazing women. We need women who are emboldened to believe in themselves before anybody else does. We need you to go first.

Kris Plachy:
And I'm a little worried that, I think that some of the challenges that have erupted because of the recent election are going to put some brakes on people, maybe a little. And I understand that. I just want to remind you that there are communities of women where it is, where we encourage you to be the maverick, and that we hold space for you to believe in things that don't make any sense. Because your only job when you have a vision that you haven't realized yet is to believe in it. How you will achieve that will present itself with every little lily pad that you step on. But who the heck knows sometimes what the next one is? But for sure, the other people in your industry, in your profession, in your world, who would never step out and do it differently, who like the status quo and like to benefit from that and like to have the same day every day of their lives, that they're perfectly happy with that existence, they're going to always have something to say about the woman who stands in the front and does something differently, especially the woman.

Kris Plachy:
And so, if you just needed to hear it today, I wanted to just remind you, trailblazer, you've got this, and there's a lot of us out here, and we're rooting for you and we're cheering for you, and we will help you peel back the layers of some of those stinky belief systems that make you want to shrink and hide when you get a little bit of a challenge from the outside world. Those people will always exist. And the truth is, your doubts and fears might always exist because you're a human being. You need a place to work out your worry. You need a place to think through what's going on. You need a place to be able to respond, to collect yourself and then respond. You need to know that you're not alone.

Kris Plachy:
None of us do this alone. But trailblazing women are unique. We hold a special place in the world, and I think we should all hang out because we're really quite fun. We get to the point really quickly. We talk about things that matter. You don't have to be the smartest woman in the room anymore, and you certainly don't have to pretend to not be a smart woman anymore. Wouldn't it be nice? And isn't it nice when you're surrounded by other trailblazing women who have so much respect for what you do and what you've already done and what you want to do? So you go be you, mama, and if you need some extra support, send me an email and let's talk, because I bet I could help you. Talk to you soon.