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Be Yourself: How To Lead With Who You Are With Colleen Biggs – Real Estate For Women

 

“I’m rubber, you’re glue. Whatever you say bounce off me and sticks to you.” This is a strong famous saying that you would say towards bullies. This saying is in fact true because people who pass judgment on you are really just troubled people too. They project all their hate towards other people. All you need to do is to be yourself and be strong. Women have been labeled by society for too long and they need to work together to destroy those labels. Join your host Moneeka Sawyer and her guest Colleen Biggs as they discuss what it means to be a strong female leader. Colleen is the founder of Lead Up for Women. She believes that life is about thriving and not simply surviving.

Learn how to accept yourself and discover your inner strength.

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Be Yourself: How To Lead With Who You Are With Colleen Biggs – Real Estate For Women

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am excited to welcome to the show, Colleen Biggs. She strives to reach all women through influence to engage the understanding that in order to have and do anything in life that you desire, you must first show up. She survived in early childhood of chaos, loss and abuse. It was through these trials that she gained the clarity to understand the magnitude of loving others unconditionally and realizing the power of community.

She is an inspiration to others by helping them realize their worth, gain clarity and show up. She believes that life is about thriving and not simply surviving. She has extensive success and experience in Corporate America for over 30 years, coaching over 300 CEOs, franchising, voluntary, national and local community service and numerous project launches.

She has served as a director for her church and organized women’s retreats and local girls camps as well as serves on several advisory boards. She loves the successful business, Lead Up for Women. Lead Up for Women is an elite community of like-minded women driven by passion, power and purpose. She has a weekly podcast and interviews powerful leaders weekly to inspire, educate and motivate on Lead Up for Women: Speak Up to Lead Up. She is an author to the number one bestselling international book, The Anatomy of Accomplishment and publishes a biweekly magazine. Colleen, welcome to the show.

Moneeka, how are you?

I’m great. It’s nice to see you.

There is and there will only be one you. How you pioneer your future is up to you. Share on X

It’s very interesting when someone reads your bio because you get to hear about all your accomplishments, but then you think back like, “Yeah.” I’ve modified my bio and I’ve done all these other amazing things since then. It’s amazing to me when we listen to someone read back what our accomplishments have been and who we are.

I feel the same way. It feels like every week. There’s something new that I would have changed or added or adjusted, but it’s also fun to see where we’ve been and where we’ve come to. It’s totally awesome. Talk to me a little bit about why this topic is so important to you.

The topic for showing up for women really leaning into who they’re meant to be is huge to me because I have seen many women for so long, including myself hide behind these shields or in these cloaks that we put on. The problem is they’re heavy. Picture yourself in this shield or a cloak, and we lock ourselves in what we would call a cage of our disbeliefs of who we think we are based on the labels that we’ve allowed others to place on us. What we haven’t realized is a handle has been on the inside the entire time, and it takes our power to turn the handle and to walk out. For me, I struggled in Corporate America because I was a very dominant personality.

I’m a very atypical personality, but I love other people and I want to help other people. Even to my own detriment sometimes, and I couldn’t deal with some of the females as I was climbing the corporate ladder that didn’t feel that way. It was all about competition and judgment. I realized that if women are going to get ahead, we want to power through, create these paths and trailblaze for women that are coming behind us, and we want to be with the women of history that make change, we must band together and help each other show up.

 

What would you say all about this showing-up thing that you would want to share with women that we could make all the difference for them?

There’s only one you. There will only ever be one you. How you pioneer your future is up to you. No one is coming to give you permission to be who it is that you want to be, and we all know who that is inside. We all know who we were meant to be and who we love to be. I say hang out with your most favorite girlfriend that makes you feel like the best you’ve ever felt.

The one that you can always be yourself around and figure out what is it about that moment that makes you feel free. Why are you holding back in the other areas of your life and not bringing her forward? Women already control the global economy. We have so much power, and I won’t even get into how much power we have over men because my husband looks at me and says, “Women have so much power over men. It’s ridiculous.”

We all know why we have so much power over men, but we just need to believe in ourselves. By women showing up, she’s raising the next generation. If she’s not giving herself permission to authentically show up as herself, she’s not giving that gift to her children to authentically show up as themselves. That’s going to be a domino effect if we’re not working on the women now to helping them show up and shine their lights bright.

You said something that was like, “We’ve got this door in our way, but the handle is on the inside.” I love this imagery of, “I can walk through, I can bring my children through, and I can bring my other women friends through.” We each have the power to open the door for ourselves, also aid those around us that we care about to open the door for and lead them through because there are no closed doors. Figuratively and for the most part, literally, there aren’t closed doors. We do have a path through if we are willing to show up.

I believe it is our responsibility to be a leader in our families, communities, businesses and careers. If we’re not leading, then who’s leading?

We’ve talked about this on this show a lot that there are a lot of women that don’t feel like they’re leaders. We all have different personalities, and some of us are very definitive leadership types. Some of us are much happier being in the backseat or the passenger seat. That’s just the personalities that we have. The truth is no matter where you show up socially or where you’re most comfortable, you are the leader of your life.

You determine if you walk through that door, when you wake up in the morning and when you go to bed, and all of these things. If you think you’re not a leader, it’s not true because you do lead yourself. I don’t want to be over-generalizing here, but women do lead in our families and in our communities. That’s a place where we shine. It’s a place where we naturally are drawn to, and it’s a place where we’re looked to for leadership. Just that idea of being the leader, leadership can show up in a lot of different ways but being the leader that you are meant to be is important. Don’t you agree?

Hang out with your most favorite friend that makes you feel like the best you've ever felt to bring out your best. Share on X

Agreed. I met a woman named Tammy in a leadership class I was in, in my community. The first thing she said was, “I’m not a leader.” She didn’t have a job, so she didn’t think she was a leader in her family because she didn’t work in the workforce. We were all like, “What?” She has become this amazing leader in our community. She’s leading her family. She’s helping lead classrooms volunteering. She didn’t understand the definition of what it was to be a leader, so she automatically assumed she wasn’t. You’re right, we lead our own lives and we need to understand how we do that without asking for anyone else’s permission because it’s our life.

Talk to me about a challenge that you’ve been through and what helped you through that?

One of the biggest challenges that I went through was trying to identify where I fit. We all go through this at one point in our life. For me, it came at that point where I became an empty nester, and I had identified as being a mom my entire life. I got married at nineteen. I started having babies at 21. I was a very young mother. I preferred it that way to this day. I still prefer it that way because I have eleven grandkids. I love having this large family and being a very young grandmother, but I identified as a mom.

I had a career. I loved my career, but I didn’t allow my children to pass through me. I allowed them to be me, like identify with me. What that caused was I had this identity as the mother, then when my children grew up and didn’t need me as much, that’s what caused a little bit of the friction because they were off getting all of their friend’s advice and all the other advice, then they grow up and move out. I was super happy when they were growing up and moving out because that’s what I prepared them for, but I do remember sitting on the couch and I looked at my husband and said, “I don’t know who I am anymore.”

It’s because I’m used to being with my kids and taking them places and identifying with my children, and I didn’t know where my place was. I think we all struggle with this. We’re not sure where to show up. I was showing up for my family every day, but we need to remember that we have to show up for us, and I neglected that for a long time. Even though I would run marathons or do things for me, I didn’t know what my favorite color was or my favorite food was. I was eating fish sticks when the kids moved out still. I don’t even like fish sticks.

I’m thinking of all of the things I was doing. I remember my kids when they were younger, I drop them off at daycare, and I would drive the whole way to work listening to Barney. I never even switched it to listen to something I wanted to on the radio, and that’s when you know you’re going that. You’re homie with your kid. Who listens to Barney that long, if anyone can do that from that long ago?

It is crucial because our children watch this more than they listen to us. The more that we’re identifying and sharing that we are an individual, “I am this woman and I’m leading in my family,” they identify that and that will help them as they get older. We need to realize that’s not being selfish. That is about showing up for your children and showing them what a leader you are.

We do model. I think that sometimes, we confuse love with a lack of boundaries. If mom becomes completely identified with me, now we’re the same person. That’s what love looks like. That’s when you take out into the world. It’s instead of I’m my own person with boundaries, a capacity to love, but that capacity to love is filled up by myself because I take good care of myself.

Those are things that a child doesn’t learn unless it’s modeled for them. Then you go out into the real world and you have adult relationships and you’re like, “I wasn’t trained in this. Love looked like this to me.” I love what you’re talking about. It is funny. We think we’re taking care of ourselves. We’re working out, we’re going and getting our spa treatments, or we’re doing our stuff. It’s not all about that stuff, although that’s fantastic and please don’t stop doing it, but who I am is the biggest key to creating that ability to show up fully.

 

The one thing that Tammy, my friend, that I said did the best thing for herself was to be part of that leadership class. It brought her the opportunities to be a leader in the community to meet other people to get more involved. That was something that she did to develop her own skills.

Tell us some advice that you got as a younger woman that you wish you had gotten and had to learn the hard way.

You talked about it a little bit in my bio. I had a pretty chaotic childhood. I didn’t get a lot of good advice. I remember my parents once said to me, and maybe you would remember this. I don’t know if your parents shared this with you. Do you remember kids at schools saying, “I’m rubber, you’re glue. Whatever you say bounces off and the mean sticks back on you?” We would use that for bullies on recess for us to say, “Whatever you’re name-calling me, it doesn’t stick on me. It goes back to you.”

As I got older and I started doing a lot of self-development studies, I realized how true that was, that as women, we need to believe that whenever anyone has judgment toward us as anything to us, it has nothing to do with us. It never had and it never will. It’s all their own self-reflection. It bounces off of us and sticks right back on them, but yet we allow it to stick on us. We walk around with labels of what we think other people think about us forever, and it just breaks you down. When in truth, that person is struggling with something going on with themselves and they’re projecting that to you.

One thing you can remember walking around that, “I’m rubber, you’re glue,” whatever you say. Whenever anyone says anything bad, you’ve got a review on your book or review on anything online, if someone shouts out a cannon because there’s a lot of keyboard warriors out there, they’re so brave. There’s no need to shoot back at them. Be the humble and the graceful one. When you notice that what they’re saying is about them, you look at the situation with a different heart and a different perspective. Now you feel full of emotion and love for that person versus feeling like they attacked me because that’s how they feel about themselves. It’s very interesting.

When someone says something about us, they’re reflecting what’s going on for them. It’s also true for us. When we are consistently saying something about other people, other things, or the way our life is working, that’s reflecting what’s going on inside of us. It’s as if our life is a movie of what’s happening inside of our mind and our body. Yes, allow people to just be themselves and not take it personally. How easy that is to say and hard it is to do, so I get that. Also, because then it releases you from the responsibility of what they’re putting on you.

The other piece is if you start to consistently see patterns in yourself. For instance, I might go through a period, and this happened as I was early in menopause. I was very irritated with rude people. There was something that was coming out of my mouth a lot, “Why was that person so rude? I can’t believe that person was rude.” I’m like, “I’m practicing my bliss practices, but they were rude.” Once I had said it 3, 4 or 5 times in the same day, I noticed, “I think everybody is rude. Maybe I’m being rude,” and so I’m like, “That’s not the person that I want to be.” It goes both ways.

You have to take responsibility for all of those things that you’re projecting on to other people too, and it’s not that you have to. It’s that you get to because then you get to be a person that’s happier. You get to see what’s going on for you and what may not be working. If you’re always saying, “That person was so great. I got such great service.” You’re walking around and everything you say is lovely. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re naive. It means that what’s going on inside of you is all of this joy. I think that that can go both ways and benefit us in both ways.

Don't allow your children to pass through you. Allow them to be you and identify with you. Share on X

Words are very powerful. Women are the worst at this and how we talk for ourselves. We need to be kinder to ourselves, we need to give ourselves grace, and we need to talk very sweet to ourselves. I do an exercise at one of my retreats where I have them write down everything that they hate about themselves. It was all the negative stuff, then they don’t know what I am going to do. I have them get up and line up, and then I say, “I want you to tell the person across from you, and you’re going to say you are, and you’re going to go through your list of every single thing.” They start crying because they would never talk that way to another person.

One of them, the first thing she said was, “You are fat.” She was like, “I’m so sorry,” and she started crying. That’s how horrible we talk to ourselves. We need to recognize that because that right there has a lot to do with how we don’t show up, how we do show up, or how we don’t give ourselves permission. We need to be kinder to ourselves.

In EXTRA, we got more, ladies. Colleen and I are going to be talking about what she does to juggle her work and family life. I know through COVID, this has been such a big issue as we’re moving out of it. It continues to be, and it’s always been an issue for women. This has never been an issue, but we’ve seen a lot of evolution also in how we look at ourselves around this.

It’s always great to have some tools to do that. She brought this up and I thought, “We haven’t had someone talk about this in-depth.” We’re going to be talking about that in EXTRA. I’m excited about that. Colleen, before we move onto our three rapid-fire questions, could you tell everybody how they can reach you?

I made it very easy for everyone so they can never forget. It’s LeadUpForWomen.com. You can find us on @LeadUpforWomen on Facebook and Instagram. I have a Lead Up for Women community that you can join. You can connect with me as @ColleenBiggs on LinkedIn, but we’re everywhere. We’re on YouTube or all over the place. We have videos constantly going, tips and tricks and workshops, and you name it. We’re constantly out there promoting our members, promoting their messages and promoting women.

Tell us about the wonderful gift you’re offering to my ladies.

I love our magazine. We do a bi-monthly magazine, and it’s written by our members for women. They write about business, leadership, lifestyle, philanthropy. Our members write the magazine, and all of the articles are from them. They’re not only giving you practical, tactical tips for you to be able to use and apply, but they’re sharing their heartfelt stories and the struggles that they’ve had through their business or their personal lives, and how they’ve overcome that. It’s very cleansing for them to write these articles.

That is LeadUpForWomen.com/claim-free-magazine.

 

On the homepage, you scroll down and you’ll see our magazine, and click Claim My Magazine.

Are you ready for our three rapid-fire questions? Give us one super tip on getting started investing in real estate.

Getting invested in real estate to me is purchasing your first rental home. That would be for me. That’s how it started for us.

What about a strategy in being successful as an investor?

The strategy of being wealthy and being an investor would be to utilize the line of the money that you’re investing to create more wealth, then take that wealth to invest to create more wealth. Not spending it, but taking that line to invest to create more wealth, and that is one of the biggest secrets.

What is one daily strategy you do that you would say contributes to your personal success?

One daily strategy that I do that contributes to my personal success is giving myself an hour of time every morning to sit down and write my gratitude, read, and educate myself no matter what that book is. I take that time for myself, and we need that every morning. That has changed my world for my personal gratitude because if you feel that you’ve already achieved something, then you achieve it. If you can think it, it must exist. That’s just how the world works. Believe it or not.

This has been so much fun. Thank you for all of you.

It’s been my pleasure.

Ladies, thank you for joining Colleen and me for this portion of the show. We are going to be talking about some good yummy stuff in EXTRA, so stay tuned. We’re going to be talking about her strategies on how to balance work and family and live a blissful life. Stay tuned for that in EXTRA. If you’re not subscribed but would like to be, go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com. You get seven days for free, so you can check it out. See if you love it. For those of you that are leaving us now, thank you so much for joining us, and I look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, remember, goals without action are just dreams, so get out there, take action and create the life your heart deeply desires. I’ll see you soon. Bye.

 

Important Links

• Lead Up for Women
• Lead Up for Women: Speak Up to Lead Up – Colleen Biggs’ Podcast
• The Anatomy of Accomplishment
• @LeadUpforWomen – Facebook
• Instagram – Lead Up For Women
• @ColleenBiggs – LinkedIn
• YouTube – Lead Up For Women
• LeadUpForWomen.com/claim-free-magazine
• RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com

 

About Colleen Biggs

Colleen Biggs strives to reach all women through influence to encourage the understanding that in order to be, have, and do anything in life that you desire, you must first Show UP!

Colleen survived an early childhood of chaos, loss, and abuse. It was through these trials that she gained the clarity to understand the magnitude of loving others unconditionally and realizing the power of community. She has extensive success and experience in Corporate America for over 30 years, coaching over 300 CEO’s, franchising, voluntary national and local community service, and numerous project launches.

She currently has a weekly podcast, Lead Up for Women: Speak Up to Lead Up, is an author to the #1 Best Selling International Book: The Anatomy of Accomplishment, published two additional Journals in 2020 and publishes a bi-monthly magazine.

 

• Here’s How »

• https://blissfulinvestor.com/
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram

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To listen to the EXTRA portion of this show go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com

To see this program in video:

Search on Roku for Real Estate Investing 4 Women or go to this link: https://blissfulinvestor.com/biroku

On YouTube go to Real Estate Investing for Women