Dominince Clifton on The Coaching Corner with Dori DeCarlo on WoMRadio

0:00 She is sure, she is sure, she is strong, she is true, is true, she is brave, she is she is you. She is you, she is you, she is sure, she is true, she is strong, she is straw, she is true, is true, she is brave, is bray, she is she is you. Hello, everyone, welcome to today's Word of Mom Radio. Here on the Word of Mom Media Network. I'm your host, Dori Di Carlo, and you know we are here week after week, show after show, breaking those myths that moentrepreneurs and business women, especially those of us building our businesses from home, that we're just dabbling in between bake sales and getting our nails done. We're not. We are smart, we are savvy, and we are sharing the wisdom of women in business and in life. And I'm looking forward to bringing today's guest in because you know I love sharing fellow podcasters. Dominie Clifton's work lies at the intersection of connection, community, and change. She offers one to one coaching and to aspiring women entrepreneurs and guides them to build mission driven businesses that offer an exit from unfulfilling nine to five jobs. She also supports organizations by offering stress reduction and mindfulness services to increase well being. As a coach and somatic practitioner, she promotes an integrated approach

1:30 to transformation through the use of sound, breath, movement, and strategy. Dom is the founder of Transformation You University, move and Still and hosts the School of Healing podcast. She's also the mama of two beautiful girls who are her greatest joy. So with all that being said, Dom, welcome to Word of Mom Radio. Hi Dory, thank you so much for having me. I am looking forward to what comes out of our conversation today. Just before we hit before we had such a good chemistry and so I know this is going to be a great conversation. Me too, And I would love for you to take us on your journey that led to Transformation You University.

2:15 Yeah. So I always say that I like stumbled into entrepreneurship. I think in meeting people, I've I found that you have two types of entrepreneurs. You have the person that has always known that they were going to be an entrepreneur and they could never work for people and they just knew that. And then you have those of us that are like, we figured it out along the way. And so I was someone who never really saw entrepreneurship as a path for me. I you know, went to college, got a corporate job, did that for a few years. I realized early on that corporate wasn't necessarily the route that I wanted to go, and so after a few years, I moved to China, I traveled for a bit, and then I came back home, and I've moved into the nonprofit sector, and I found that to be a better fit for me because it made I'm an Aquarius and so we're a mission driven and nonprofit work felt more aligned to serving and impacting the community that I was a part of in the way that I desired, and so, you know, I settled into that space. I was in grant writing and fundraising and did that for a few years, did it really well, but it was never fulfilling to me, Like it was one of those things that came easily for me that I never saw myself doing. And I excelled at it in my organization, but it didn't really fulfill me or light me up. And so after doing that for a few years, I had my second daughter in September of twenty nineteen, and I decided that I was going to quit my job and have an extended maternity leave. And so in December of twenty nineteen, I stepped away from my full time job. I did not have a plan, I did not have money saved. I

3:46 was just like, I'll figure this out. I'll be out of work for six months and then I'll go back to work, and then we all know what happened three months later with COVID. Right, COVID came and shut everything down. People were now quarantining, people were being laid off, and so it wasn't a great time to be re entering the workforce, or it didn't feel like it for me. But I still needed to provide for my family. I was a mom of two, and I had a partner and a mortgage and all of the adult responsibilities that come with being an adult. And so I just decided to step into entrepreneurship and to step into coaching that was my first business, out of necessity, like I needed to pay the bills. I needed to figure things out, and it has been a wild ride. I had just celebrated my fifth anniversary of entrepreneurship in December, and looking back over the last five years and how much I've grown I'm really astonished at just the amount of growth, the rate of growth that has happened in this small time.

4:38 I had dabbled in entrepreneurship before twenty twenty, but it was always like side hustles and you know, multi level marketing sort of things. It was just like something that I kind of did on the side in addition to business as I was figuring things out. But these last five years it's been me all in, like trying to actualize this vision that God has placed on my heart and has trust met with. And it's been up and down. You know. There have been lots of wins along the way, there have been lots of lows. And starting Transformation University was really out of obedience. I tell people, like, when I first felt guided to step back in and support women in this way, I had resistance to it. I didn't really want to do it because my first experience with coaching was extremely challenging, and so I was just like, no, God, I've tried that, find someone else to do this, please, But you know, you gotta be obedient when you are being led by spirit. I'm a very faith led person, and so I started supporting women and that's the work that I do today. With Transformation University, I've essentially taken all of the lessons, the failures, the things that I've learned over five years plus of soaking up information for myself, and I'm now able to not only apply that to my business move and still but also support other women in birthing and launching their dreams for their businesses and nonprofit organizations or growing what they've already created. And so that's where Transformation University comes from, and the aim is really focusing on helping women to do the transformational work

6:10 that's necessary to hold the big vision that they have on their heart. Love that I really do because in doing the things that I do, and actually during COVID, the gift I gave to myself was getting my coaching certifications. That's what I did on my downtime, and I got certified as a business coach and a life coach, which I had been doing for years, they just didn't have certifications back then. But most importantly mindset coaching, because you know, and especially women, we talk ourselves out of our dreams so often as excited as we can get about building something, and the next sentence is, but then this could go wrong, and that can go wrong, And it's an amazing thing to me to hear people create problems for something that hasn't even happened yet.

6:53 Yeah, and it's funny that you say that I'm smiling because I was talking to a woman yesterday. I do clarity calls with women entrepreneurs just to learn about their businesses, to understand their visions, to see where there are gaps and challenges, and then to understand their goals better. And then I send a swat analysis after, which is really helpful for them because it helps them to kind of clarify what's in their heads oftentimes. And so I was doing one of those yesterday with a woman and it was literally what you said it was. She just kept she'd been through a lot, like she had experienced a lot of you know, past trauma and experiences that contributed to the version of herself that she was. But I felt like she was spending a lot of time thinking about the things that had happened in the past and like being here but waiting for the shoe to fall, like waiting for something to go wrong. And I literally had to like lovingly pause her in the midst of her sharing this story to say, hey, like, put your hands on your heart, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, like first, let's just bring your nervous system down because you're reliving these experiences right now. And then also repeat after me, I am safe, right, I am safe, and my past doesn't have to be my present, Like you get to make a decision that you're going to let things go and decide that I'm going to be focused on what needs to happen now so that I can get to the future that I envision, because we can't change the past. And so I agree with you that sometimes we look at and I this was me for a long time, Like you said, I've had to do a lot of mindset work to begin to unlearn those beliefs and those habits that were holding me back in that way. But it's such a necessary thing for

8:25 us to do that mindset work. But at some point we do have to make a decision, right that, regardless of what happened in the past or what this looked like for me last time, this is how I want to be and this is how I want to move forward, and you know, from there, just take the action consistently. Agreed and it is so important for us to reinforce that in the women that we talk to and being that sister friend because we all face challenges. That's life. You're not facing challenges, you're not doing anything, yeah, exactly. And so to create those doumbling blocks that haven't even been bored yet, yeah, is tough. And in looking at the things that you were doing, I was looking at four percent formula. I would love for you to share this and why you feel it is so effective because this is.

9:15 A topic that I'm super passionate about. So to give you just like a little bit of backstory really quickly. I've been doing this practice for five years. In March, March will be five years. So right around the time that COVID was started, I got I was meditating. There was a lot happening in my home, you know, I talked about being unemployed and there's other things that were happening. I was at a really low point in my life and I just like could not figure out how to get myself out of the situations that I was in. And then externally, COVID was happening, right so the world was falling apart, and so it was just like Jesus, I don't know what to do here. So I started meditating and praying, and I was just asking. I was just hoping for spirit to like throw me a lifeline. And one day when I was meditating, I got a download that's it. Every day for the next ninety days, focus on your mind, your body, and your spirit. And I did that for ninety days. That was you know, me being very intentional about the things that I was consuming.

10:06 Mindset wise, I started listening to inspirational content such as this podcast or instructional content, so I really started focusing on learning. I started focusing on my meditation and mindfulness so that I could become aware of my beliefs and the habits that were holding me back and recognizing the things that I needed to unlearn. So I devoted fifteen minutes a day to mindset focused work, at least fifteen. On the spiritual end, I started being more consistent about journaling and just you know, allowing myself to be still, to connect with myself and to get more clarity and direction about where I wanted to go and what I wanted my life to be like. For the first time, I was thinking about that as opposed to just kind of working the nine to five and going with the you know, going with the flow of life. And then I devoted thirty minutes to movement every single day. Physical movement, you know, yoga, going for walks outside to get fresh air, going for a swim, like just whatever my body felt like it needed. And I did that for ninety days straight, and Dorry. At the end of that ninety days, I was a completely different person. I was a completely different person from March to May, and I had no idea that I would go undergo that sort of transformation, and I wanted to share how I felt with everyone. It was like I had bottled up all of this energy, like I wish I could have bottled up all of that, and just like sold jars of it. I felt amazing.

11:22 And that's really what started me in entrepreneurship, because I was like, man, I want everyone to feel this, and I jumped into coaching and so I did that for five years. My life has changed a lot in that five years, but this practice has been consistent for me in the midst of these changs, and it's kept me grounded in the midst of separation and divorce, you know, going back to work full time at one point because I needed a pause for my mental health lots of things with co parenting. But I've had this daily practice to just bring myself back and you know, reconnect with myself. And that I started feeling guided to now start sharing this out with the world, Like you've been doing this for five years, trains from your life, It's now time to share this out. And so as I was thinking about, like, how can I share this out in a way that's easy for people to remember and that inspires them and makes them want to do this, like just try it even and I started doing the math, I was like, okay, fifteen minutes of mindset, fifteen minutes of a spiritual practice, and thirty minutes of movement, Like how much time is that?

12:19 It's an hour. So then I have a very curious brain. My brain was like, well, how much is one hour out of a twenty four hour day? And when I did the math, it's only four percent. And so what I'm sharing is that with just four percent of your day, you can make time to prioritize yourself in the mess, in the midst of the very messy, chaoticness that comes with life in the midst of being extremely busy, you can find time to dedicate one hour to yourself and it just makes everything else move and flow much easier because what happens is, over time, it increases your emotional capacity. And so the things that used to cause me to stress, worry, have anxiety and be overwhelmed like I have now I'll built almost like an armor with myself where those things don't overwhelm me the same. And it's because I have this constant practice that helps me to ground and like brings me back to myself every single day.

13:11 I am already hearing that mom saying you, I don't have an hour of day to prioritize for myself. What do you say? Yeah, So the first thing I say is that I'm also a mom. Right. I have a five year old and an eight year old, and they're very busy little people, and I'm a co parenting mom, so that means that I have them a week and my partner, my ex husband, has them for a week. So when I have them, I'm like a single mom. So I know what it's like to be busy and to be trying to balance all the things. I'm also a full time entrepreneur, and I'm managing two businesses right, and I'm very adamant about my health and monus journey, and so I have to make time for that too. So I share all that to say, I know what it means to have a very full plate, and I know because I've done it for the last five years, that it's possible to still find time to yourself. The beautiful thing about this for formula, the four percent formula, is that it doesn't have to all be done at once, So I break it up.

14:04 It gives me times during my day to like come back to myself or just a moment in a very busy day. And so maybe you do fifteen minutes of journaling when you first wake up in the morning. Surely you can find fifteen minutes, right, you do that, That's how you start your day. And then maybe in the middle of the day you pause and you know, do some physical movement, go for a walk on your lunch break, even if it's just fifteen minutes, like if you can't do thirty, something is better than nothing. And then on the car ride home, you know, from the grocery store instead of listening to gossip or you know, listening to music. You can put on a podcast like this and feed your mind. And so what I've always shared with my clients is that we have to be creative about how we find time. You can find time to listen to a podcast when you're loading the dishwasher, when you're getting dressed, when you're in the shower, and so the notion of not having time is just an excuse, honestly, because we can be creative about making time in the midst of things that we're already doing.

14:57 On that note, think of what Dominie's just said. We're going to take a quick break, say thank you to our sponsors, and we'll be back here in just a moment. On Word of Mom Radio. She is brave, she is bold, She is you, and we want to tell your story. Are you ready to share your journey with us on Word of Mom Radio. Go to wordommradio dot com and register as a guest. We want to tell your story because when you win, we all win. In twenty seventeen, Unsilenced Voices was formed to help survivors of domestic abuse and gender based violence worldwide. The organization currently serves Siri Leone, Rwanda, Ghana, and the USA. In twenty twenty two, Unsilenced Voices gifted over thirty three thousand dollars to survivors in the USA and in Siri Leone, there are over twenty six young girls who have been rescued from sex trafficking and abuse and now going through vocational training school in order to better their lives. We need your help. Donations are critical in order for us to continue our work. We also need volunteers to help with research and development. Please visit Unsilenced Voices dot org for more information.

16:22 And we're back here on Word of Mom Radio with Dominice Clifton. We're talking about Transformation University and how we got to get out of our own way. So for you, in looking at your clients and things and people that you're working with, what do you think the main obstacles are that they uses their reasons to stop taking actions for their dreams. You know. I think the first one is something that we talked about already. I think it's mindset. I think that I know that this was true for me when I started in entrepreneurship, and I had to really be intentional about working through and overcoming it. I see with other women, until you self awareness is the most important aspect of change, Like you have to be aware of where there are challenges or you know, things that you want to work on so that you can change them. And a lot of times people are not mindful and aware, right, Like we were so used to being on autopilot and thinking the same thoughts and doing the same behaviors every day and being stuck in the same routines that we are not aware of the things that we think in the negative self talk and the you know, the self doubt that we have. One of the most beautiful things that I would say the universe gifted me with was my first coaching program. So I told you, I jumped into entrepreneurship in twenty twenty and it was new for me.

17:41 I didn't know anything, and so I knew that I needed help with figuring things out. The first coaching program that I invested in like the you know, Biggest One. Up until that point, I'd done other little business programs here and there, but it was a mindset focused entrepreneurship like coaching program. So my coach and mentor was all about mindset right. He had a podcast, he still has a podcast that focuses exclusively on mindset, and so everything that he talks about is neuroplasticity and you know how to change habits and all of these things. And I was drawn to his podcast before investing in his program, and so I'd listened to him for months and been utilizing the things that he was sharing, and it was just helping to make me more aware of where I was getting stuck and how fear was holding me back.

18:24 And so joining this program as like my introduction into business coaching, I feel like was so pivotal for me because it's set the foundation. Mindset is what gets us stuck, right, Like, if we are not aware of our subconscious mind, which is it governs ninety percent of our behaviors consciously, consciously, we only have about ten percent of control. And so if you have beliefs and habits that are unresolved from your childhood or from things that happen in your past, when you try to take a leap of faith or step out and do something that is fearful to your subconscious mind, it's going to self sabotage every single time. And so it's extremely important for us to start digging into and like becoming intentional about identifying where we're getting stuck and what's holding us back, and then really recognizing that we can begin to unlearn things and build new habits.

19:16 And that's what I did, and that was really helpful, and I feel like that's where most people struggle, and because I know how important it is and how we can get stuck, I've actually incorporated mindset work into my program and that's where we start. We start with like building that foundation, because if not, like I've seen it for myself, I would have an intention, a conscious thought about I want to do this thing, go live right, Like I used to struggle with going live and having these types of conversations that would be so worried about how I was going to look and how I was going to sound and if I was going to mess up and what people were going to think. Like that was mindset work that I needed to do, and I would freeze and I would just like self sabotage and hold myself back from taking action, and I would be like, what is happening? Like I want to do this thing?

19:58 And then I started realizing, like I have fears from my childhood where you know, I was embarrassed as something happened, and like, I've held onto that memory and that's holding me back and I had to start plucking that stuff out. And so I know that was a really long explanation, but I'm so passionate about mindset because I've seen how it has impacted my life and I see how it holds other women back as well. It's an amazing thing, it really is. And again, and looking at the things that you've done and that you're doing, you've created the clear goals framework, which is anachronism. So I would love for you to share a little more about framework. Is. So, when I was feeling called to start Transformation University, I'm like a type a planner type of person. I love schedules and calendars and things being planned and organized, and so naturally I started thinking about goals and what goals I wanted to set for my business. And I had done like the twelve week year prior to so I was already thinking about that like three month structure, and I started looking yet setting smart goals. But I felt like something was missing, right, So I started doing research and trying to understand goals better. And there were a few key things that I like realized were very important in the goal setting process. So I started working on building out goals for myself based on the things that I'd learned. And as I was like writing down, Okay, this is important and that's important, I was like, man like, how can I make this into something that's easy for me to remember and dorry? I kid you not. I had like come up with like five different things that were important for like setting goals, and I put them

21:31 into chat GPT and I was like, give me like words, give me some words that could be an acronym for this. The words were like b ZW like the start of each like sentence chat GPT spit out clear. None of the words that I put in was the word clear. It was like the universe literally was like clear. So I was like clear, Like, where did that come from? No other suggestions, you know, chat GPT usually gives you more. It was that one word, and I looked at it and I was like, hmm okay. So then I was looking at the list that I've made and I started thinking, okay, well I could replace this word with that word and like playing around, So clear is now an acronym and I'll go through what that stands for but I've been I started doing this process for myself and now I share with my clients and it's like a game changing way to think about goal setting. So the C stands for your cause or your why. So when you are thinking about setting a goal, first you start with like, why is this goal important to me? Like why am I even doing this? Because that like roots you into this goal. A lot of times we think about very surface level answers, but in speaking about entrepreneurship, like it's challenging, right, And so if your only goal is like I want to make money, it's just like you know, I want to buy a boat. When it starts to get challenging, you're probably going to walk away from it because you don't have a deep enough why. Whereas for me, it's like, my why is I want to show my daughters that life can be limitless and that they can achieve their dreams.

22:56 And so when things get hard, because they inevitably will, so why my cause for why I'm doing this is so deep that I can stay motivated, like even when I don't feel like it. So that's first, right, You got to be very clear on whatever goal you're doing, big or small, why it's important to you. The next thing is the L that stands for level up, And what that essentially says is how does this goal challenge you? Right, whenever we set goals, they shouldn't be so hard that we can't accomplish them, but they should stretch us a bit and help us to step outside of our comfort zones. And so that's what that is about. And so you think about that as you're setting a goal, how does this challenge me? It cause me to level up? And then you have the E and that stands for your D game and that just means that you want to be as specific as possible about the outcome so that you know what you're working on. If you set a health and mown as goal and you say I want to lose weight, it's like, what does that even mean?

23:48 Do you want to lose two pounds? Do you want to lose five pounds? When do you want to lose that weight by? And so you're very specific on lying out and outlining that what you're working on. Now here's where the clear Goals framework is different from other goal setting frameworks. The A stands for accountability accountability, Right, So as you set this goal you're thinking about either how am I going to hold myself accountable? So maybe you have some sort of daily tracker or calendar like some way to visually measure what you're doing, or you think about who do I know in my network and tribe that I can go to to support me and hold me accountable. And what I learned in my research was that just by having an accountability partner or system identify when you set a goal, it increases your odds of success by forty percent. Forty percent, so when you start, you're almost halfway there, right, So that's really a big deal, Like thinking about, do I have a girlfriend that I can check in with weekly, Who's going to ask me what I did this week for my health and wellness journey?

24:46 Can I lean on my partner like identifying that? And then the last thing is the results, and this is how are you tracking and how are you rewarding yourself when you accomplish this thing, like thinking about that in advance, how I'm I going to celebrate that I did this thing that I didn't think was possible when I started. And so that's the clear goals framework, and you literally go through and answer those questions for each goal that you set and you think about a twelve week time span, there's a process where you think about it in twelve weeks and accomplishing that goal, and like, what actions do I need to take weekly and daily for me to make this happen. What a great way to actually start wrapping up this conversation because I can't believe how fast things go. Yeah, and accountability, It's true, you're already almost halfway there. I remember coaching one of my clients said to me, I need somebody can hold me accountable. How good are you accountability?

25:36 I said, I'm a mom, which she wasn't the kids. She goes, oh yeah, trust me, we can hold you accountable. But it's I love how you have broken this framework. I really do. So. As we're wrapping up Dominie's what would you like to leave our listeners it? And how may they reach out to you? Wow? We talked about so many things today. What's coming up for me right now is that so many of us sit on our goals and our dreams and the things that we desire, we come up with reasons why we can't do it. You know, now it's not the right time. All of these I don't know how to do it. But each of us has something that is on our hearts, like in our bellies, like we can feel it, we dream about it. It could be I want to bake and you know, start selling my God.

26:35 Like it doesn't have to be something big and you know wild, but whatever dream you have, like it deserves to be birthed, it deserves to see the light of day. I always tell people, like, right now, there's someone praying for the thing that you have that maybe you're sitting on because you're afraid. And so I would say, like, allow that dream to come to life, right, like, honor that dream. It was entrusted to you for a reason. God saw that you were the best person to bring this thing to the world. And so with that, like, yes, it's gonna be scary. Sometimes you can always start small with it. It doesn't have to be something that you just jump into, but think about what it looks like to begin to actualize that goal. You might need some accountability, right, You might need to focus on your mindset and shifting your mindset so that you can do it. But it's possible, right, It's possible. That's what I want to leave everyone with today. Like, don't be afraid to figure out how to bring this stream into the world. And as far as reaching me, my website is probably the best place you can go to dom Domrclifton dot com and there are free resources.

27:39 So the clear Goals framework is on my website. There's breathwork and meditation sessions. I'm a somatic practitioner and so those things are really helpful for my mindset work. And the last thing I'll say really quick is quickly is there's also a quiz on my homepage. It's called the Entrepreneurial Clarity Assessment, and it's a quiz for aspiring and current women entrepreneurs who are having hard time in business to identify where they're getting stuck. So it helps you to identify the patterns and behaviors and things that you're doing, and then it gives you recommendations and steps that you can begin to take today to take action to get out of that space. And so you can find that on the homepage of my website as well. I encourage you all please go take a look at this.

28:21 All of Dominie's's links are going to be live on wardofmomradio dot com and including a link to her podcast because take a listen the School of Healing podcast, You'll want to listen. So I thank you so much for taking the time to come and share your journey with us today, Domine's. Dory, thank you so much for having me. I want to be honest and say, before we came on this podcast, I was feeling a little bit like down on energy just for like things happening, and this has been so refreshing that I'm now like smiling as I jump into my day. So this was truly a gift. It worked out that it got moved to the morning for a reason, So thank you so. Much, oh my pleasure, and thank you too because I feel exactly the same way. And for all of you tuning in, thank you so much for being here with us.

29:08 We're gonna close out with our fabulous theme song from Smith's Sisters and the Sunday Drivers. So till next time, this is Dory di Carlo saying, go out and create a marvelous you. Bye for now. She is sure, she is sure, she is strong, she is strong, she is true. She is true. She is braz Bray, she is boul, she is she is you, she is you, she is you, she is, she is sure, she is sure, she is strong, she is strong, she is true, she is true, she is brave, bray, she is bol she is she is you. She is you, she is you, she is you. Sure of herself. Yes, she takes care of his powerful and strong. Yes, she knows who she is has integer eddy woman, strong and true.

29:58 You know her by name. See this woman is you. She is sure, she is strong, he is strong, she is true, is true, she is brave, she is she is you, is you, she is she is sure, she is strong, is strong, she is true, is true, she is brave, she is she is she. Is She. Adds value and hope, has proved to be brave. See it's never too late, never time to behave reaching for dreams doesn't matter. The age believes in herself, unleash from her cage. She is sure, she is sure, she is strong, is strong, she is true, is true, she is brave, she is she is you.

30:49 She is she Is sure, she is she is strong, is strong, she is true, is true, she is brave, she is she, she is you.