How to Be Your Most Authentic Self in Business With Anna Zeccolo Reeves
Do you feel like all you do is work on your business, but you're not seeing the results you like? Maybe you're tired of pushing so hard and you're falling into the comparison trap and the non-stop hustle.
On this episode of the Book Your Dream Clients podcast, Anna Zeccolo is going to walk you through the process of removing your ego driven mindset of running your business to feeling more in flow and in tune with who you truly are. Because we're in the business of helping people and if we're not embracing who we truly are then we're doing our future dream clients a big disservice.
Anna Zeccolo (Zeh co lo) Reeves, CEO and founder of Tiny Chefs Inc, and Tiny Chefs Franchise, the leading and premier recreational cooking school for kids in the DC Metro area since 2007. Anna Z Coaching was established in 2021 amidst the pandemic to provide women an opportunity to gain greater clarity around their relationships with self and others. Anna is a Certified Neurolinguistic Programming Coach and Hypnotherapist, worldwide. She practices Quantum Time Technique and NLP processes and integrations with her clients. She is currently studying to obtain her Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT) Certification in Hypnotherapy.
Links: Www.annazcoaching.com and Www.tinychefs.com
Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Lindsay: Anna, thank you so much for being on the Booker dream clients podcast. I'm so happy to have you on.
[00:00:59] Anna: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
[00:01:03] Lindsay: I think we're gonna have a really fun conversation on an uplifting conversation for people who might be feeling like their.
[00:01:12] I always say, they're swimming in the sea of beige. There are so many coaches out there and the excitement of starting your business might have worn off already. And you're starting to notice all the other people who might be doing the same thing you are, and you are wondering why did you even start this?
[00:01:28] Because it seems like everyone's doing better. They're ahead. All those stories, we play in our heads, right? So I'm excited to have Anna on to offer us some tips, some practices, and maybe just a really good old shift in the mindset to help us continue moving forward. So why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and we'll get the conversation started.
[00:01:48] Anna: Awesome. Thank you so much. So my name is Anna Zelo Reeves and, and I live in the DC Metro area. And so I have three children. Ages 12 and my twins are 10 and they're all girls,
[00:02:02] Lindsay: so, oh wow. I have three kids too. yeah.
[00:02:06] Anna: Yeah. I even have a girl puppy. So Bella is here beside me. You may hear her. So what I do right now is that I own two different companies.
[00:02:15] One is a kid's cooking company had. Running for about 15 years that I developed when I was teaching kindergarten here in the, in Maryland. And the second thing I do is that I coach women and, you know, I've transitioned since I've started coaching women from conscious parenting to now really stepping into who you are as a person in me back to layers.
[00:02:40] So that's who I am in a nutshell.
[00:02:42] Lindsay: I love it. I like that. We have the three kids in common and we're, I don't have all girls. I have two girls and one boy, but we were just talking before we hit record how we like to be busy. We like to take care of other people. I think that's just instilled in who we are.
[00:02:56] And I think a lot of coaches have that as well because they. Know that they've achieved something at one point in their life. And they want to tell the world because they want the world to feel how they feel, how good they feel. And we have really big hearts and I don't want those big hearts to feel afraid to move forward because there is a voice in our head that's always going to be yapping about what are you doing?
[00:03:23] Why are you doing this? She's doing it so much better than you are. You don't have this. Constant negativity pumping through our heads, especially when everything is at our fingertips, as we're scrolling through social media and seeing what other people are up to seeing the highlight reels of their life.
[00:03:40] And we can get really caught up in beating ourselves down, beating ourselves up about it. So when. Someone is just starting. And the honeymoon phase of starting your business has a worn off and reality sets in. And they're like, maybe I should just try to mold myself into someone else because what I'm doing, isn't working.
[00:04:02] Why do you think people do that?
[00:04:05] Anna: Wow. Wow. You just said so many different things in there and I. Yeah, geez. I mean, we, most of us who venture into coaching are the nurturer type people, right? We're the carers, we're the people who we're the empaths, the intuitives mm-hmm . So I think we all have that in common and we all have that burning desire to help, to serve, to reach another human.
[00:04:30] And then luckily we take, you know, if we're smart about it, we look at our life circumstances, all the challenges, all the ups and downs, the good, the bad, the ugly, we take those. And we use that as our platform. And I think that if you know, you do not have, if you're not accessing that part of it, the, why am I doing this?
[00:04:55] You do, you are out there sort of floundering around. You don't have a purpose, so to speak, you may know that you, you wanna reach people, but you don't have a niche. You don't have, like, I talk to women, right. We're out there just sort of like, oh, I'm gonna help everybody. Mm-hmm right. Or we do niche down, but then we don't know the marketing behind it.
[00:05:16] We don't know how to reach our audience, how to attract our audience. And so we feel, you know, and it's all about how do we feel? We feel like we're not doing enough. And whatever our triggers are in our life. If you know, maybe we grew up not feeling enough, then that is going to compound that feeling even more.
[00:05:35] And then we're gonna keep floundering and floundering.
[00:05:38] Lindsay: I see with my students that they never feel like they're doing enough and they'll hear one tip over here. When strategy over here are just piling on to dos on their list and trying everything. And I always say you are a. Sitting in front of 50 glasses with a drop of water in each of them.
[00:05:58] And you can't do that. So what's your advice to someone who feels like they just, and everything they do isn't enough. And they have that mentality towards building their business.
[00:06:08] Anna: So good. So when I was growing up and I don't know if you resonate with this, but I was taught that multitasking meant that you were a superhero mm-hmm multitask, right?
[00:06:18] And I've come to realize that multitasking means you are a crazy person. You cannot give, you cannot fill those cuts up. So you need to single task, put a hundred percent effort into one thing, one glass, fill it up when you're done, move on to the next thing. And if you don't do that, then I'm fallen victim to this recently where I was, you know, getting on the track of.
[00:06:43] Of promoting myself in one way. And then all of a sudden I hear that there's another way. And then another way mm-hmm and I started to feel a sense of overwhelm, which taps into a sense of scarcity mindset. So you really have to, you know, my biggest, my biggest tip in coaching and in life is feel into your body.
[00:07:02] How do you feel ask yourself when I wake up in the morning, does it feel good to feel this way? mm-hmm and if the answer is no, then shift something. Remove something, figure out another way to take something off so that you can just focus 100% on the thing that you feel is going to generate enough revenue for you to feel good, wherever it is that you wanna be focus on.
[00:07:25] The one very thing that'll get you there.
[00:07:28] Lindsay: One of the jokes with my students is if you ask Lindsay a question, she's just gonna say, well, how does that make you feel? And, and I know that some of them can feel really disappointed when I ask them that because. They are pushing their feelings to the back burner or behind the stove because they don't care how they feel and they just wanna push, push, push.
[00:07:49] Right. And I, I usually attract the people who are into feeling. Into, you know, how they are approaching a strategy and they're okay to listen to themselves. But once in a while I have clients come in, who are like, it doesn't matter how I feel. I need to just do this because I have this idea in my head, a timeline in my head, tell me what to do.
[00:08:11] And they tie themselves up into the results. Do you see that a lot in your world as well? I
[00:08:17] Anna: lo all these questions are so directed directly to me. It's so bizarre. so bizarre. So I do see that and you know, the thing that I am, am putting out right now, because I was feeling this, this overwhelm, and I said, enough enough, I, I cannot do this any longer.
[00:08:31] And in my heart, I knew that I was marketing in the wrong way. I was going to just do it. I was just doing it wrong. Right. And I, and wrong, meaning it didn't resonate with me. It felt off. And so I said, it feels off and I've been feeling off for too long. Why am I self sabotaging myself? And so. Right now that's my goal is coming up with my plat, my content for my coaching group coaching program is all about the ways that we self sabotage because we do it in instinctually.
[00:09:02] We do it subconsciously because our bodies think that it's helping us, our minds, our subconscious mind thinks that it, what we're doing here by ignoring our feelings and just pushing on ahead and ahead and. It thinks it's helping us, but really it's a form of, of sabotaging us and getting in our way. So yeah, I resonate a lot with that.
[00:09:23] What you
[00:09:23] Lindsay: just said self-sabotage is huge because probably the majority of us have that instilled in our mind that if we're not suffering and you know, our eyes, aren't bleeding from staring at the screen, we're not working hard enough. And takes a huge shift to move your mind over to. I don't have to push so hard.
[00:09:44] I don't have to try every freaking strategy that is barked into my head. Every time I go online. Because if you're, if you are over, if you are overwhelmed right now with all of the strategies that are out there, you're always going to be overwhelmed with it. You, you literally have to pick something and keep going.
[00:10:02] Cause otherwise you're gonna, you're gonna be walking through life. With a basket that is overflowing dropping everywhere. And you can't, you can't, you're not feeling stable and you don't know where you're going, cuz you can't even see over it. And I think that's always gonna be the case. So it's always gonna be a choice.
[00:10:19] And like Anna said, when you wake up in the morning, how do you feel? And so many people don't ask themselves that because they just push and push and push and push. Yeah. I think that's just a recipe for disaster, especially if we're in the business of helping people.
[00:10:33] Anna: Absolutely. And it's, and you know, it's all about the vibrations that we put out there and we attract that back.
[00:10:40] So if we, we think in our mind, oh, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna crush it today. I'm gonna, you know, work, sit and work myself to the bone until I get this particular project done. But it's bringing your vibration down. You, you vibrating low and it doesn't feel good to vibrate low. And then what happens is we push that energy out into the universe.
[00:11:02] And it gets, it gets stuck in our bodies, right? Because a lot of what I do in my RTT therapy is whatever we're thinking in our mind vibrates out into our body, right. It creates a chemical, the body responds to that. And then the, then the body creates a chemical. Then the mind responds to that. So what we're doing when we think we're being, oh, so productive is we're actually creating these negativity loops that are getting in our way.
[00:11:28] So we're actually in our own way. , it's insane.
[00:11:31] Lindsay: Absolutely. I remember hearing a coach always say that, get out of your own way. And why do you think people decide to stand in front of themselves and not, and not move? Why do you think they choose that? The number
[00:11:44] Anna: one reason is it's a blind spot people don't they literally think that their help, the.
[00:11:49] Right. They, they come up with a strategy, a plan. And like last night I was working on on doing some Facebook ads and creating my automation and all this stuff. And I got to a point where I was like, oh, you know what? I've had enough. Like, mm-hmm, the fun is over because it's fun. I love what I do. I love creating.
[00:12:06] And when, when the fun gets, and it was like, you know, seven or eight o'clock I can't remember, but I said, I could go two more hours, but I actually don't want to mm-hmm so I'm gonna, I'm gonna put this down, but I think some people, and that's me respecting my own boundaries. That's me seeing me for who I am and saying, you know, you've been at this a bit, go find something different shift, focus, go do yoga, go lay in bed, go read a book, whatever it is you wanna do have go talk to a friend, but I think a lot of people will crush it.
[00:12:36] Right. And they'll go to that 10:00 PM because. You know, ego ego drives that. Mm-hmm mm-hmm and and the scarcity mindset of like, oh, I have to get it done if I don't get it done. Now, that means I'm behind tomorrow. Mm-hmm
[00:12:49] Lindsay: oh my gosh. That's that's so me, 10 years ago, five years ago, push, push, push stay away, put the kids to bed, go back to work and go to bed.
[00:12:59] When you don't even, you can't even understand what you're typing anymore, because then tomorrow you'll be ahead and. Here's a news flash to everyone who's running their business. You'll you're never really going to be ahead. You're never going to say, okay, I'm all done building my business, not such thing.
[00:13:16] There's no such thing. So I always say, well, what's the rush. And sometimes I hear people say, well, I'm giving myself three months to make, you know, a crazy amount of money. And if I don't do that, then I'm quitting. What do you say to people like that? Like that hurts me to hear that
[00:13:35] Anna: well, what is it that you're getting from that?
[00:13:37] Are you, I feel like that comment is ego driven also. Mm-hmm and when we live our lives with our ego driving us, then we are living our false self. So. Again, what is it that you, what's your, why is your why to make $500,000 in three months or is, I mean, what is your, why, why are you doing this? Your, I doubt you were put on this planet.
[00:14:00] To make that kind of money. And, you know, I mean, I think the money comes when you are living your sole purpose, you're living your arm. So you need to really get clear on what's your intention and then stick with that intention and maybe put it at the top of your planner every day. My, my intention is so here's my intention.
[00:14:18] My intention intention is to work, work in flow in my, at my most, or I'm sorry, in my most authentic self. So that way working in flow to me means that I'm every single thing I'm doing is something I'm obsessed with doing right. Mm-hmm, , I'm honoring the fact that I'm choosing to do tasks. And if there's something that I don't, I'm not obsessed with, then I'm probably gonna hire someone to help me with that.
[00:14:44] Mm-hmm right. Yeah.
[00:14:46] Lindsay: So being flow mm-hmm being flow and that ego is really prominent, especially when you're just starting to cuz it's, it kind of is a fake adrenaline to keep moving your business forward. False. It is false. If somebody is recognizing that, okay, maybe, maybe there is something I can change right now to.
[00:15:07] What, what are your first tips? Some first steps that people can do to try and feel a little bit, put more feeling into their business and realize that they can take it easy on themselves. And I always say, relax, enjoy the process. Trust it. Yeah. But that's really hard to hear just from somebody who the ego is just like so prominent right now, what it is your advice to them.
[00:15:29] Anna: Wow. I mean, geez, is there one thing, I mean, everything you, you just said is a thing of its own, so. I guess going inside, you know, closing your eyes, doing a little bit of breath work and really tapping into what is it, what is my intention? Why am I doing this? Because if you're saying I'm gonna give up in three months, then you are the first person that doesn't believe in yourself.
[00:15:56] Yes. You're telling the universe I'm not worthy past three months. You've got a, a, a deadline, right? You've got a, and that's not true. Right. You really just tap into who's. Who are you reaching? Who's your client? Why do you wanna reach them? Okay. And I'm not saying don't focus on the money, but then.
[00:16:17] Something I learned in my NLP course is to ha is to put out into your timeline into the future. The very thing that you desire in a very specific way that you say it, and then you put it out into, into the timeline. You drop it down, plunk it down. You put, you put some energy breaths behind it. And then when you tell the universe that it's already happened, you're picturing it.
[00:16:41] You're using all five of your senses to picture, taste it, hear what it's like to, you know, to reach your goal. And then when you do that and you just sit with it and you breathe into it and you energize through it, then all of the things start calibrating. Okay. Between now and that point to get you there, you're gonna start meeting people to that will help you.
[00:17:02] Opportunities will come up podcast, interviews, anything collaborations will come up to meet your goal. But if you just sit there in, in this state of panic and scarcity mindset and ego, you're not gonna get anything, you're gonna be spinning wheels. You're gonna get a whole bunch of frustrated. This is what you're gonna get.
[00:17:20] Lindsay: Hmm. That's so good. And I wish that everyone would realize how important your dream is and how important or near businesses and not to give it deadlines and timelines. That mean really nothing. And I know sometimes people think. Well, Lindsay, I don't have a job. And this is, this is, this literally is my timeline because I, I need to make some money in my business.
[00:17:46] And I understand that. And we had a guest on maybe last year and her advice was just get a job then. Relieve that stress. If money is your main stressor, then find something that can help you alleviate that you guys all know that I have a full time job. And that helped me build my business to where it is, but I work from home and if, if I had to leave my home to work, I wouldn't do it.
[00:18:10] I wouldn't have both, but I can have both. Then I'm grateful to have both find the, find those aching points. In your, in your life. And why are, why not only ask you why you're trying to build your business, but why are you feeling so rushed? Mm-hmm why? Why is that? And how can you help that? Just a little bit?
[00:18:28] I think that's, you know, a realistic. Tipped as well. Cuz I think we need to mesh both of those in there because that helps us kind of see what, what we can do right now to make us feel like we can make one more step forward tomorrow and one step forward the next day. Do you agree?
[00:18:45] Anna: It's having grace for yourself.
[00:18:47] That's what just came up for me. When you were saying that it's really having, and I actually, I have a lot of tattoos and I tattooed the word grace on my arm because, well,
[00:18:54] Lindsay: that's my do, my daughter's name is Gracie.
[00:18:58] Anna: resonate. oh my goodness. But that's important is to have grace for yourself. Give yourself time, preserve your energy.
[00:19:09] And really, really, again, always checking in with yourself. I will always come back to that, cuz the answers are not outside of you. If you realize everything you, everything you need is actually inside of you right now. Just need to tap into it and you can't tap into it when your mind is busy. When you've got the monkey mind going, I need to do this.
[00:19:29] This is not enough. What's the next thing. Oh my gosh. I should be reading this book. How many podcasts? This, that, this, that, this, that you, there's no room. That's not giving. That's the opposite of giving yourself grace.
[00:19:41] Lindsay: And we all fall into that. We all do. It's not like, oh, I remember that when I used to do that, I still do that once in a while.
[00:19:50] And I, I can recognize those, those symptoms, the, okay. I have way too many tabs open. I cannot focus for more than one minute on writing something. And I have to say to my myself out loud, Lindsay, take it down a notch here. You're if you're you're doing too much right now and walk away, walk away. And sometimes that lasts for a moment and sometimes it lasts for a week.
[00:20:14] So I know that I need a break. I, I don't need to do the things that I supposedly need to do right now. I can take, take some time for myself, take some time for my, with my family. There's other things that we can do. There's way more important things than building your business. And so if you're us with your business and you're putting all of this pressure on it, I always say, it's like, you guys just planted your garden and the seeds have barely been in there for long enough to germinate.
[00:20:43] Yeah. And you are standing there staring at it and yelling at it and getting frustrated. Cause it's not growing fast enough. Good.
[00:20:50] Anna: Wow. So good. And we are. Our business. So we are a walking, talking billboard and I'm, I really believe I heard this and I love it so much that how you do one thing is how you do everything.
[00:21:03] Mm. So mm-hmm . And so when I'm looking for a coach, because I have a business coach and I, you know, I had. Several several coaches through the years when I'm looking for some guidance, because we all need to be coached. Right. Mm-hmm you can't, you can't say I'm a coach and then not be, be getting coach.
[00:21:20] Right. That's just, it's, it doesn't work that way. You have to be out there. You, we all have blind spots. And so when I'm looking for that special person to help me see my blind spots in a, an area, I watch every, you know, I watch them and I see how they, you know, are they stressed? How do they speak? How do they present?
[00:21:39] How do they present? And I'm looking for the person that's going to bring me that calmness that peace mm-hmm that ease that grace so that I can lean into their strength and their power. I'm not gonna hire somebody who's frantic and you know, mm-hmm, all over the place.
[00:21:58] Lindsay: No. And that's why it's so important to be who you are because you are going to attract people.
[00:22:03] Yeah. As who you are on an Instagram live, or a, a, a video on YouTube, you're gonna attract that type of person. So if you're not being yourself, yeah. The people who are coming to you are gonna be all wrong for you. Oh, good.
[00:22:16] Anna: So good. Wow. That's a gym right there. Everyone should really hear that rewind.
[00:22:22] rewind
[00:22:23] Lindsay: the tape cause that's a good one.
[00:22:29] and I think as you grow your business, like your clients just get. More like everyone that comes in feels like your best friend, because you, me being who I am, me embracing that I am, you know, I live in a small town. I like to take things slow and I'm happy with that. And I love being home and all those little things that I didn't see as special about 10 years ago, I thought were embarrassing or boring.
[00:22:57] That's what brings in like the best people into your world. Mm-hmm . Yeah,
[00:23:02] Anna: and it, wow. That's so insane that, that you keep saying these crazy things, because I really. The, the truer. I am, the more layers I peel back in my own self. The more that I shine, the more that I show up as my most authentic self and the more I find myself in flow.
[00:23:22] And when that happens, all of a sudden people just start coming out of the woodwork and the they're seeking. Right. They're seeking me because they see you can't see something in another person. If you don't already have it in, you. So, what they see in me is actually what they see in them. And so that's so true, like you in this, and we were taught, you know, at least, you know, where in my neck of the wor woods and being a, a girl growing up to sort of dim my light and don't be too shiny.
[00:23:53] Right. Mm-hmm because that means you're
[00:23:55] Lindsay: you're you're
[00:23:56] Anna: Vain or your, you know, they didn't say in ego before, but it was like, just, don't be too. Don't be too. Don't be too. And I, I say the opposite, I say really shine the light on who you are. You've got unique talents that the next coach doesn't have. And it's, there's so many people that.
[00:24:18] Coaching in so many it's laughable. There are so many people that need coaching in so many different areas of their life. There's just not enough coaches to, to, to serve everybody. So for us to think that, you know, we can't be ourselves and we have to be like the next guy, but better. That's not self-serving and it's not serving your client.
[00:24:40] Lindsay: No. And I think that is a perfect way to wrap it up. It's not serving you and it's not serving the clients who are right around the corner waiting to see you. They can't see you when you're not being yourself. So if you really want this, you have to do it for yourself and not everyone else. And once you do that, amazing things happen.
[00:24:59] You guys just have to relax, let down your shoulders, breathe and let this grow for you. Cuz it will happen. Yeah.
[00:25:08] Anna: Wow. Beautiful. This is a great conversation.
[00:25:11] Lindsay: Definitely. Where can everyone find more about working with you, Anna?
[00:25:15] Anna: Absolutely. So my website is Anna Z coaching.com. That's the best way to find me into, you know, book a time with me just to chat.
[00:25:26] You know, maybe we, maybe we ever work together, but we chat and I help you. In advance or maybe we do work together. So
[00:25:32] Lindsay: thank you. Awesome. Yes. Thank you so much for being on. We'll put your link in the show notes and you guys go check her out and see if you resonate with her. I think I bring on guests from all over the world, all over the country who have different niches.
[00:25:45] And I think that's the beauty of, you know, Meeting people around the world, just sitting in the comfort of your car or in your home. And you can see there's so many resources out there to help you build your business and help you grow as a person as well. So thank you Anna, for being here with us.