Business Reflections Podcast Episode #37 - Discovering Your Own Inner CEO with Raven M. Harris

Episode Transcript

Meredith Matics: Welcome to Business Reflections with your host Meredith Matics, and we are here to reflect on the business topics that are affecting you today and how you can better run your business. Today, I have Raven M. Harris. Raven, tell me a little bit about your coaching practice.  

Raven M. Harris: Sure. My coaching practice really stems from my career path and it's something I'm super grateful for. I coach high performing driven, ambitious individuals. I originally thought I wanted to be an actress because I love storytelling and performing on stages and really getting to express myself and use my imagination. In high school, I was focused all of my energy towards academics being the best, the top student. My dream really has been in alignment with being great, being excellent. How do you be the Rolls Royce, the Ritz Carlton or the 737 jet of whatever I was in or was doing. Because excellence is the standard. 

I got the opportunity to go to an Ivy league school, so super grateful for that. Throughout my career exploration, I landed in healthcare.  I was really strong in math and science, but it really wasn't something I enjoyed. It was just something I excelled in so I stuck with it. I was in the business side of healthcare so I was in the operation side. Fast forward to 2020, which is last year. Thank goodness. It's last year now. And up until this point in full transparency, I was really just going along with the motion in career and probably even life. 

It was the first Monday in March and I was the interim CEO of the hospital I worked at and the hospital I worked at was long-term acute care hospital. We admitted critically ill and medically complex patients. So I'm thinking to myself. Cool. No problem. I got this. I've been training for this. I've been in healthcare over 10 years. And then, the third week of March, the world shuts down.  

Meredith Matics: Right.  

Raven M. Harris: And COVID is now in full force. I feel like I am just like thrown into the fire with no water thrown into the ocean without a life vest, and I just remember feeling I've never seen so much fear. I've never seen so much stress. And I am encouraging, coaching, mentoring, doctors, nurses, patients, families - I have staff members who are afraid to go into rooms. This was really an eye opening moment for me, because I say with all of this death and sadness around. It really brought my dreams and my own livelihood back to the forefront. 

I thought to myself, Hey Raven, you never know what tomorrow brings. Is this the path that you want for the remainder of your life? Is this the dream? Is this excellence for you? I realized I got a clear, no. I got that like locked in for sure. It was no. I resigned from my job to follow my dreams. 

And now it is my honor to help others follow their dreams and activate their dreams. That's the name of my organization and my company now: Activate the Dream.  

Meredith Matics: Wow. Well, I want to talk to you about how we are all our own inner CEO, navigating life and careers and, activating your dreams and getting it where you want it to be. With that you believe very much in that everybody has their own personal and professional brand, so to speak within their dream. Can you explain that to me? How does that work?  

Raven M. Harris: Yeah, and I really think it starts in our mindset. Our mindset of what's possible. Our mindset and our power to shape our reality. It starts in the mind. You are the Chief Executive Officer of your life. You get to shape what you want to do with your life. Oftentimes we allow naysayers. We allow that negative, even if it's self chatter in our brains and in our minds to distract us and to take us off course of what our real dreams are. 

When you recognize that the dream, the vision, it was only given to you. Now, it's not to say that you don't need other people to help you accomplish the dream and the vision, but you have to lock in and know this is what I'm here for. This is what I love. This is what I'm interested in. 

I really believe those things are really imparted upon us as young people or as children. But we get off course due to listening to the outside noise or listening to naysayers or having that rejection, that first rejection or that second rejection. That can sometimes take us off course. 

Being the CEO of you every time you open your mouth. Every time you walk in the room, people see, you represent the brand of you and what are, what are you giving up? What are you showcasing? That's why you are the CEO of your life. You determine what you get out of this beautiful thing called life. 

Meredith Matics: Yeah, I think you bring up a lot of really interesting things to unpack right there. So the first is, is I think you bring up a great point about each of us having a unique dream or drive. People tend to think that they have to have this big, giant dramatic dream, rather than focusing on what's, kind of a smaller, but still very relevant and important dream. How do you think people can find what their dream is? 

Because I guess what I think of is a lot of people getting lost in the "my dreams to be rich" or like you were saying, my dream was just to be the best, but what is it really? How do you narrow that?  

Raven M. Harris: That goes back to clarity and what I've found and what's been super valuable for me is journaling. Journaling what do you, what do you want out of life? Why are you here? What's important to you? What's interesting to you and why. And I think again, back to feeling like, oh, I need something quote, unquote, massive, or I need to do something like what I see someone on TV doing, or some celebrity doing.  

That's when we get in the comparison trap, and that's where we get into not running our own race and not focusing and being very intentional about what's for me and what do I want to be remembered for. There's an author, his name is Dennis Waitley and he talks about your GPS. He calls it your goal positioning system. When you understand, okay, here's, what's interesting. Here's what I aspire to be. Here's what I want to have in life. That will help you.  

And how do you find that clarity? A lot of that is really visualization. Visualizing what do you want. Visualizing what type of house do you live in. What type of car do you drive? Where are you driving it to? What type of work environment are you in? What type of people are you working with? What clothing are you wearing at work? Really getting that laser focus. It's easy to get off track when you don't know where you're going. It's kind of like any road will take you when you don't know where you're going. 

And it may take time to get that clarity. It's definitely a process. But once you get clarity, then you can lock in on how to create that roadmap or that guide to get to wherever it is that you desire to be. 

Meredith Matics: I have a personal experience that relates to that. I knew very early that I wanted to work in mental health and that mental health was important to me, but I originally was on the path to be a therapist. And as much as I loved it, it took a toll on me.  With that being said, I found that my personal drive of being in mental health and bettering mental health care was really able to be applied to the revenue aspect because I was really good with the numbers and memorizing the codes and what was payable and how to do all that stuff.  

At first it felt like, oh my gosh, I've been working towards this huge dream of being a therapist and I want to be a doctor one day and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, taking that little side thing and being like, well, actually I can do this now. And this is what I want. I just want to help people in mental health. I was able to see that it didn't have to be the big, giant explosion of what I thought it was, but that rather I had a different path that was still in line with my end goal. I found a better path to the end. 

Like you're saying is like, don't just get stuck in that, thinking like, well, what have to have this? Because having the doctorate degree is the only way to be good at this. That's a great thing, but it wasn't necessarily where I was going to be the most useful.  

Raven M. Harris: I love that. I actually have a relative and I'm super proud of him. He just became a licensed funeral director. So what he does is embalm patients and also make sure that those patients have the proper going away service. And I remember him saying that he always thought that he was going to be a surgeon and he was like, now I do something differently. I'm still working on the body.  

Meredith Matics: Yeah.  

Raven M. Harris: It's just after that person is deceased now, and it's just very interesting how he's still in that arena, but it's something different. It's really great that you point out that you don't have to be like tied to one thing. You can still be doing something very similar in that arena, in that industry, in that environment. But it just show up differently than we anticipated or. So I think that's a huge takeaway to be open to things showing up in a different format or way than we had probably planned or expected.  

Meredith Matics: Yeah. I think a lot of us have one set idea of what our end goal is like, I want to help people with this and I want to get there by ABC, but realizing sometimes maybe our talents are better aligned with a slightly different one, two, three versus ABC, but it still has the same ultimate end goal. And the same focus of why do we want to do what we want to do and why are we getting up every day and doing it?  

Raven M. Harris: I think that's super important too. I remember when I was in a previous role that one of the company leaders would always say, people will do what gives them the life they love. They will stay somewhere. It was they're in a career or entrepreneurship or whatever role that is, that gives them the life they love. What you said made me think about, sometimes we hear the term work life balance when it's really more about work life integration. When you said that there was something that was wearing you out and it just didn't really fit. Your body was worn out, you probably were mentally worn out. 

What do you do that gives you that, that completeness, that wholeness and something that you still love, and it sounds like you found the best of that and that work-life integration. 

Meredith Matics: Really at the end of the day, as long as you're happy doing what you're doing. And quite frankly, nobody's dreaming of being a medical biller when they grow up. Like there's no little girl that's like sitting in their school, be a medical biller. Like, it's not a thing  

Raven M. Harris: or they don't even know what that is. I think that's probably one of the funniest things about like my growing up versus right now. It's like, I didn't even know those careers existed. I grew up knowing you could be like a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, or a police officer. It's like take your pick of those four.  

Meredith Matics: That is good point about like how so many of us go into a job. And this takes me back to even when I was working clinically, I would have patients that would come in that maybe were striving to be a doctor or something and would hit some kind of loop in their process and feel so defeated and like I'm never going to be up to anything because I wanted to be a doctor. 

But when you looked at that deeper thing of, well, why did you want to do it? Maybe it was the money you wanted a big paying job. Okay. Well maybe you could do that in sales. Maybe it's you wanted to help people in a certain way. Maybe it's this.  Narrowing that focus of like, why did you want to do what you were doing regardless if you were able to get there on that exact path, knowing that. 

I love that you help people with transitioning in careers, because I think a lot of us just kind of fall into a career initially. Going from healthcare CEO to coach may not seem like the most expected jump, but because we fall into what we fall into, but at the same time, like you do what you're going to be good at. 

Raven M. Harris: And you know what I ask people to argue you. Are you happy? I know it's a simplistic question, but are you happy?  People, their career is not in alignment with their dreams. Or, careers not in alignment with what they love and that leads to burnout. It leads to not being your best. It leads to not giving the best and being of the best service to your client and customer. Those are some of the things that internally people need to think about.  There's more to life than of course going to a job every day, Monday through Friday only to get those two days off. If you really are just unhappy and it's like, okay, well what's next. 

Or what would make me happier? What could I do to be of biggest impact and be a biggest service? And what do I want to be remembered for? When I leave a room, when I leave a job or when I leave an environment - what is the atmosphere? What is the tone that I brought to the room? I think that people attach and I struggled with this so much. I had attached my identity to my career and my accomplishments.  

Meredith Matics: I think a lot of us do. You spend so much of your time at your job, that it's hard to not attach your identity and your self-worth to that. But if it's not doing something that's somehow satisfying you or making you want to get up and go to work or be okay with those tougher days that it's just not the right fit and that's okay. Not everybody's expected to fit every mold.  

Raven M. Harris: That's powerful that you just said that. It's okay. It's okay to change. It's okay to make a shift. It's okay to say, you know what? I want to try something different. And I think so many people are afraid of change. It's the illustrious fear of the unknown like what happens if I take this leap of faith? What happens if I leave my comfort zone? On the other side of your comfort zone is your glory zone. It definitely requires courage.  

Meredith Matics: Yeah. When we talk about finding that inner purpose, finding that inner purpose can be found in a lot of various positions. How do you advise people to find that inner purpose within what others may see as a mundane job or something that's maybe less glamorous?  

Raven M. Harris: I look at that as being of service and I think sometimes we need to recognize how do we remove ego and think about, am I serving? Am I being of value to my environment, to my customer, to my job force. Oftentimes people don't recognize or realize is that you're a leader. Maybe you're not a formal leader. There's a book called "Leaders Without Titles", but you lead just like I said, when you're the CEO of you. When you come into the room, when you work in an environment, whether it's glamorous or not, you are making a statement by your actions, by your behavior. 

And are you exemplary of excellence? Are you fully committed to what you're doing and how you show up in your environment? Because it says a lot about who you are. And I think another thing that I'd like to remind people, if they're feeling like  I don't have a title, I don't manage, but you can lead without titles. You can be an informal leader and people are always watching. You never know when an opportunity will present itself. So stay ready, be ready. Be prepared, always showcase yourself as the professional, as the standard in whatever environment and whatever career you're in.  

One of the core beliefs of self-mastery and personal leadership is that extraordinary days create extraordinary months. Extraordinary months create extraordinary years and extraordinary years create an extraordinary life. 

It's what you do daily. It's the habits. It's the routine. It's the practices that you do daily. It's how you show up daily. No matter what your title is, no matter what your careers. Be excellent daily. That's how you create an extraordinary life. 

Meredith Matics: What is one piece of advice that you've received as a small business owner that you want to share with our other small business owners? 

Raven M. Harris: Excellent question. It would be invest in coaching sooner. If I could replay my first two years of entrepreneurship, because I've had some other ventures that I've tested out and try it, I would have invested in coaching sooner because I'm already highly ambitious and driven. I was thinking, oh, you know, I can do this. I can figure this stuff out. There's so many things that I was like, oh, is that how it works in the  quote unquote real world. It was one of the cases of, I didn't know what I didn't know. And I think there are so many aspects of entrepreneurship. There are highs and lows and Hills and valleys that having a coach can really help you navigate and really provide you with the guidance to overcome some of those roadblocks with more ease, with more speed and with structure. So definitely investing in coaching earlier, someone who's 10 steps ahead of you. And who's like, okay, this is how you do this. This is how you do that. Try this this time. You can try that, but that may be more difficult just with someone with that, that knowledge that you don't possess yet, because you don't have that experience of doing it yourself. 

Meredith Matics: And Raven, where can our listeners find you on social media and learn more about you?  

Raven M. Harris: I am Raven M Harris everywhere, including on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. Send me a message. I love to collaborate and connect. Definitely check out my YouTube channel. It's Reset with Raven and video podcast, stories of career transition, overcoming obstacles, mindset reset and overall just life transformation through disciplined, determination and boldness. Make sure you check out those powerful stories of reset on Reset with Raven on YouTube. 

Meredith Matics: Wonderful. Well thank you for coming on, Raven.  

Raven M. Harris: Thank you so much for having me. This was amazing. I really enjoyed myself.  

Business Reflections Podcast: Please note that these are thoughts and opinions alone. For tax advice, please see your CPA or tax advisor, tax professional for business advice and legal entities. Please see your local business, lawyer, or attorney for advice. And if you'd like to reach out to us for any topics or questions about. Any subject, any episode you can reach us podcast@maticsbilling.com. That's podcast@maticsbilling.com.    

For show notes, visit Maticsbilling.com/podcast. If you liked this episode, we want to hear from you. Please hit subscribe. Leave a review and share this episode with your friends, family, and on your social media pages. See you next time!