Stacy: Here we are. I’m back. I’m here. And the bonus of going through these periods of Uck is that it gives you perspective. And at least for me, I am like, back, baby. I am ready to go. I’m so excited. I’m so ready to lean fully into all the things that we’re doing. I’m so grateful because I was able to scale back almost entirely just to have the team structure, to have the flexibility, to have the financial flexibility to be able to do that was amazing. It’s just such a different space from where I was with my when my babies were born.

Welcome to this week’s podcast. I cannot even begin to tell you how happy I am to be back with you. If you’re on my newsletter, which you can join at staceyennis.com/join. You know, I’ve had a very rough last month I had shingles, which I’ll talk about a little bit more in a minute, and it has disrupted my ability to get back to the podcast. And so this is a much anticipated episode. I am really excited to get to give you a little bit more of an update on what’s going on with me, some of the plans that I have this coming year. And I also want to celebrate some cool things that have happened both on the team and with clients.

So let’s just dive right into this week’s episode. I want to start with a little update. I mentioned that I had shingles. We also had a pretty significant health event with one of my children as well. And so I found myself in this vortex of Uck. I’m sure you’ve been there before. You know, we have these life periods where we have the greatest plans. We have all these things we want to do. We, you know. Well, okay, I’ll speak for myself. I had just come back from a retreat. It was an amazing retreat. I went to the english countryside, and I had a really important personal aha. Around my own thinking and kind of clearing out some of that mind trash that I didn’t realize I was carrying around with myself all the time.

And so I was at this retreat, and I came back from the retreat. I was so energized, so clear. I created this entire plan for the rest of the year, was ready to present it to my team and get us all engaged and clear on the next six to nine months. So just feeling so good. And then I got shingles. Like, the day that I created the plan, I realized that I was having this pain in my. Not my chest, but my kind of ribcage area behind my rib cage. And later, when I looked in the mirror to try to figure out if there was something going on back there, I saw a rash and googled and saw that it was probably shingle. So I went straight to the hospital. I’m so glad I did that, because I didn’t know anything about shingles.

But apparently, if you have it and you can start the antiviral treatment right away, you’re in much better shape. I was able to start the antiviral treatment that same day. I was within the window, and I’m really glad that I did that, because I actually had some pretty significant complications, neurological complications from it. Neurological, not necessarily my brain, but my nervous system. Numbness blacking out. I ended up needing an MRI, all this stuff. So I’m really grateful that I had that. I guess I’m grateful that I went in because I’m a mom, and us moms don’t always take care of ourselves. But I knew something was really wrong. Shingles pain is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I didn’t realize it’s actually a nerve infection. So it starts inside of your body. The rash is along the damaged nerve, so it’s actually an internal problem.

And so it causes just this incredibly deep and excruciating pain. And the reason you take the antiviral medicine is because that pain can actually linger for months or years. The pain is gone. Now I am nearly back to myself. I started exercising this past week. It was a month ago that this happened. So as somebody who exercises every day in some capacity, whether it’s an intense workout or it’s a walk, I exercise every day. So I didn’t exercise for almost probably three and a half weeks. I didn’t even go on a walk. So I’m really grateful to be back and back on the road to health. But all this meant that I created this amazing plan. And then that day, my shingles just kind of took over my life. And then we had this health event with my daughter.

And so we ended up being on kind of a break from the podcast so much longer than Rita, who produces this podcast, and I wanted to be. We had planned on four weeks. We ended up with six weeks. But here we are. I’m back. I’m here. And the bonus of going through these periods of Uck is that it gives you perspective. And at least for me, I am like, back, baby, I am ready to go. I’m so excited. I’m so ready to lean fully into all the things that we’re doing. I’m so grateful because I was able to scale back almost entirely except for client work. So I think I only had to reschedule maybe one or two client calls when I was bedridden. But other than that, I was able to get enough energy to attend coaching calls and be present for those.

And I rested all of the other hours of the day for a couple of weeks. So just to have the team structure, to have the flexibility, to have the financial flexibility to be able to do that was amazing. It’s just such a different space from where I was with my, when my babies were born eleven and a half years ago and nine years ago, where I wasn’t even able to take with my son. I was back at work three days after he was born because my bank account needed me to. I delivered on a project and then I did rest for a couple weeks. I think I took about three weeks with each of my babies, but what a difference now to have that ability to take care of myself and take care of my kids. So I come back energized, clear, grateful.

This week, as I’m recording, I’m going to be meeting with somebody, my team, Rita, who I mentioned, who runs all our marketing. Another exciting thing that’s happening is that we are adding a new team member, which I’m really excited to share about. If you’re on my email list, if you follow me on social media, on Instagram or LinkedIn on Instagram. I’m at Stacey Ennis on LinkedIn. You can find me at Stacey Ennis as well. Follow along because I’m going to be sharing more about that. And this has a actually big component of the update that I wanted to, I should say this is a good segue into a big part of an update that I want to share. It’s not really an update, actually more of a reflection.

You know, the past few years I’ve been on this journey to grow beyond myself and grow a team. And one of the coolest things that has happened in the last couple of years is that has that has happened. And, you know, during this period of being ill and then taking care of my ill child, and I think really recognizing where my zone of excellence and genius really lies, I have really shifted really to this mindset of a collaborative experience within the business. I have been able to step fully. Fully is maybe a stretch, not fully, but I’m getting there into my role as the CEO of this business, as the person who is, yes, doing the work with clients and running idea to draft my six month program for authors, to help authors write their books in those six months.

Yes, I’m running our author influence circle community, but I’m not running it alone. I’m delivering the coaching. I’m showing up for the authors. I am talking with them, supporting them. But all of the other stuff is run by my team. And it’s amazing. It’s truly an incredible experience. And I have to celebrate that because it’s been very intentionally built. I have worked so hard over the last several years to build a team that our work together surpasses anything I could accomplish on my own. And what I found to be especially meaningful and powerful is having the focused support of this team. In the past, I always worked with very part time subcontractors, and that’s great. I mean, truly, I still have part of the team that’s part time subcontractors.

But to have a few team members who are really dedicated to our work together, they are excited. We have in our team WhatsApp a celebration. Like at least once a week. Yesterday or day before, I shared, you know, I had heard from a couple of clients who have just made it through the editing round. So our clients don’t even know, our students in the programs don’t even know, our community doesn’t even know. But we are celebrating all the time. And it’s so fun because in the past I used to, you know, I would go to my friends to celebrate how I could, but I can’t share client information. They don’t have the context. But to be able to write our team and go, hey, this is a made up name. But I. Rachel just completed her editing round and she is moving into publication.

To say that and to get shared. Excel shared, sorry, celebration around that. Like I’m even stumbling over words to explain to you how meaningful that is, not just for me, but for our clients who don’t even know but are still, I think, getting that energy when they’re with me or when they get to connect with our team. That has been really amazing, and we’re so excited to get to welcome a new business operations manager soon. This is a full time role, and I just. I’m just so excited. I’m excited to see where this is going to take our team, how many authors we can serve, how many books we can get out into the world with more support, with more people serving, supporting, rallying around the authors that we get to help. That has been so cool.

And another piece that has been really neat in our hiring process for this role has been really articulating our social equity element of the work that we do. I used to work in Dei. I ran Dei trainings. Yes, as a white woman in corporate, I ran Dei trainings. There’s a whole conversation we could have around that. I believe that it’s important as a white person to pick up that mantle and educate other white people around Dei. I don’t think that the onus should always be on people of color, people with disabilities, people in other marginalized groups. So, yes, that’s a whole tangent. I won’t go down right now, but coming out of that work and into, I was always working and publishing alongside that, but I built this part of the business. It wasn’t that. It wasn’t intentionally.

I definitely am very intentional about the work that I do and the type of people that I support. And there’s always been this requirement that the books that we work on put good into the world. Obviously, we work in the nonfiction space. I specialize in business leadership, personal development, health, wellness, and science. And then, of course, this social equity element as well. But the business has just naturally evolved to support more voices of color, more, you know, a wider variety of people from wider variety of backgrounds.

And so that’s been something that has naturally evolved, but we’re starting to articulate more within the business, and so we, as part of the hiring process, that was part of our conversation, and so, and not necessarily on hiring a diverse person, although that’s always part of our consideration, we always hire the best candidate regardless of their background. And we have a bunch of checks and balances that we go through to ensure that’s happening. But actually, in talking with the people that we interviewed about their values and their orientation to equity, to social equity, was super important to us. And so that was really exciting for me to I worked with a recruiting company and they picked, like, they saw that and heard that in how I talked about the role. And it just felt good.

It felt good to feel like the work that I’m doing is oriented around equity. And I also just want to be super clear for any clients listening to the or not clients, yes, clients, but authors, future authors, or people that might want to work with me in the future or join one of my programs or be part of the community. To me, equity doesn’t mean that we’re only supporting diverse voices. Actually. Diverse voices, let me say this again, includes white people, includes white men, includes white women. But the idea behind it is that we have a wide variety of voices being supported. And so that to me is just such an important area of focus. It does not mean that’s to the exclusion of any group at all, actually.

It means that we’re really mindful of being very inclusive and putting out inclusive work and really helping shepherd books to the market that are reaching people that maybe aren’t always being reached with messages that they’re not necessarily getting from books. So it’s just super exciting all the way around. A few other celebrations I have had a number of clients publish their books in the past year. All of them hit bestseller within the first week or so. We had four just in the first few months of the year, so that was really exciting to get to see, celebrate them. I just graduated a cohort of idea to draft my six month program. I’m running another cohort right now, and then I start another cohort in October and I am running early enrollment right now.

So if that’s something you’re interested in, just write me hellotaciannis.com dot. I’m happy to chat with you, share more, and book a call and tell you more about it if that’s something that feels really aligned. October is a really great time and I always aim to get us fully planned before the holidays. So you have just great momentum going through the holidays and into the next year. I also just this past week, as I mentioned earlier, I had several clients reach out to me to tell me they are through the editing round, I mentioned two this past week, but I’ve actually heard from three in total over the past ten days or so. So excited about that. Every stage matters and so we are celebrating you. If that’s you just know we are very excited for you.

What’s on the horizon for us as a team, as a business? Well, I am really excited to lean into coaching this year, private coaching, group coaching, and to continue to grow our beautiful and thriving author influence circle community that’s been so rich and so meaningful. And we are always looking for aligned authors to grow this rich, diverse, connected, valuable community. Again, if you’re interested in that, you can reach out to me hellos.com and I’ll be sure to include links to idea to draft and the author influence circle in the show notes so you can find links to both of those. What else is going on? Oh, the other thing that we’re working on the team is we have some co writing and ghost writing projects that one of our team members is working on. So those are really exciting.

I love seeing those come together. But I think going forward, the thing I’m most excited about is meeting you, meeting our future authors, along with the clients we’re supporting. I’m always excited about them, but I love this feeling of, I should say, and I love this feeling of who’s out there? Who are we waiting to meet? Who is listening to this right now and thinking about that next step they want to take that just makes me smile from ear to ear and gets me so excited. If that’s you, and whether you work with me or you take this step in another way, just know I’m cheering you on. Okay, what else is happening? Oh, a few personal updates as well. And then I’m going to tell you a little bit about the podcast and what’s on the horizon for the podcast.

I am still working on my book on location independence. I spent quite a bit of time in the agent seeking stage, and now I’m back into the writing process. I think I’ll finish chapter two this week as of this recording. So that is on the docket and I am making steady progress on that, which feels really good. I also had a piece come out in Katie Couric media which was wow. I grew up watching Katie Couric, so to have that piece come out on her platform was really awesome and really exciting. And it’s on our location, independent life. So it shows me that people are interested in this. They want to know more. I think also with all the wild and wooly american experience. Right now, people are really curious about their options outside of the country. So that is very cool.

And then just very personal, on the very personal side, family side. My parents are visiting soon. I am so excited. I know my mom often listens to this podcast, so mom, dad can’t wait to see you. I cannot wait for that. Living abroad, it’s very hard to be away from family and friends, and I cherish, I treasure the time that people take to come and visit me. My parents are incredible people and I feel really lucky to get to spend that time with them. My dad will be here for about ten days and then my mom’s staying actually for three and a half full weeks, staying so she can be with my kids when they start their first day of school and get a little extra time with me while they’re in school with just one one and with my husband.

So that’ll be really exciting. I cannot wait for that. Okay, the podcast. Let me tell you about what’s going on the podcast. As I mentioned, we are back. We have so many great episodes coming. I am going to be sharing an update on Portugal. I put a huge note stock together of all the things I want to share with you, the pros, the cons, the things we’re thinking about, the fact that I have citizenship on the horizon and what I’m thinking about with that, so much to share there. And I wanted to give you a very Portugal specific one so you can get all the information about that. Plus, I get so many messages from people who are, who say things like, I’m thinking about moving to Portugal. I found you on, you know, yahoo. News or Katie Couric media recently or whatever.

And so this is great. I can send this episode to them to you and give you an update on things to think about if you’re considering moving here or you’re just super curious about our life and what’s going on here. We have great guests coming up now that the podcast has been around for so long. And I realized today that I have been recording this podcast for, I think, six years. I started it when were in Thailand. The first few years were very sporadic and then I was on it every other week format and then I moved to a weekly format. So that’s a long time. And we are now getting so many pitches from people that want to be on the show, which is amazing because it lets us bring on such incredible, high quality guests.

So I am very excited to get to share with you those guests. We have some really great ones coming up have topics related to authoring the author, journey, money, living a different choice filled life. I have some really incredible guests coming that you are going to love. Your ears are going to love me, so stay tuned for those they are on the way. And I’m also going to be continuing to answer questions on the podcast, so please always feel free to send in your questions to hello@staceyannis.com and if you are still listening to this and I’ve kept your attention through all these updates, I have a favor to ask. I mentioned I have been podcasting for almost six years.

When you go to Apple Podcasts, the reviews that we have do not reflect the listenership of this show or the audience that follows me and my email list, my social media. It just doesn’t reflect the platform that I’ve built. Part of the reason for that is because reviews come in regionally. So if you’re in the US, you can only see us reviews. If you’re in Asia, you can only see asian reviews. And so it makes it difficult to get new listeners sometimes because they go and see how many people are reviewing the podcast. And if you have a moment right now, like as you’re listening to this, click on the podcast, scroll down and rate and review the podcast. You’ll see a little button with a little pen kind of mark on it that says write a review.

If you would be so generous as to leave a five star review and write, it can be just a couple sentences. Highly recommend. This podcast must listen. Love the show. Something like that. Simple, short, sweet. Truly, it will help us achieve our goals of reaching more people with the message of living a life that is beyond better. And that is really the mission of this podcast. Yes, I’m a book coach. Yes, I coach authors on their author journey. But really, my business, my lifestyle, the fact that we live in Portugal, the type of work that I do, all of that, all of it is to help inspire other people to build lives that are not just better.

You know, they’re not just a little bit above their parents or following the status quo to a t so that they can reach some predefined marker of success. All of the things that I do and put out and write about and create a record, all of it is around helping you think in a more choiceful way and make decisions that are anchored and clear and live a life that is beyond better. So if you would take a moment to leave a review for this podcast or share this episode with a friend, I will be eternally grateful. Truly, eternally grateful. So that’s it for this week. I will be back soon with a Portugal update with new episodes with all kinds of goodness. It’s all coming soon. Thank you for being on this journey with me. Thank you for listening to my update.

And if you want to share about yourself, I always love hearing from you. You can reach out to me at hello@staceyennis.com. DM me on Instagram or LinkedIn. I love hearing from you. It makes my day. I want to thank, as always, Rita Domingues for producing this fine podcast. She truly makes this possible. She keeps me accountable for recording, and she makes sure that this gets into your device so that you can listen. I hope you have a beautiful week and I will be back with you before you know it.