IAM954- Mentor Helps Female Coaches Break the Glass Ceiling

Christina is a Marketing and mindset mentor for the ambitious female coach who is ready to break the glass ceiling, accelerate their growth, build a purpose-driven & profitable online business without sacrificing their wellness. Christina focuses on Clarity, Confidence, and Application. She health and fitness advocate, coffer lover and success story junkie that's passionate about seeing others break the glass ceiling and live a life by design.

• CEO Hack: Taking a break on the last week of the month to focus on my business and vision
• CEO Nugget: (i) Never dim your light (ii) Lead yourself first
• CEO Defined: Chief energy officer, having time freedom and being internally happy

Website: http://www.christinasergnese.com/

Freebie: https://christinasergnese.newzenler.com/f/creating-your-signature-offer-that-sells

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[00:00:24.69] – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

[00:00:53.89] – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gress from the I AM CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Christina Sergnese of christinacernese.com. Christina, it's awesome to have you on the show.

[00:01:03.29] – Christina Sergnese

It's so amazing to be here. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:05.59] – Gresham Harkless

Definitely. Super excited to have you on. And before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Christina so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. Christina is a marketing and mindset mentor for ambitious female coaches who are ready to break the glass ceiling, accelerate their growth, and build a purpose-driven and profitable online business without sacrificing their wellness. Christina focuses on clarity, confidence, and application. She is a health and fitness advocate, coffee lover, and success story junkie that's passionate about seeing others break the glass ceiling and live a life by design. Christina, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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[00:01:38.79] – Christina Sergnese

I'm ready.

[00:01:39.59] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, let's do it then. So to kick everything off, I want to rewind the clock a little bit, and hear a little bit more on how you got started. Could you take us through your CEO story so that you get started with all the awesome work you're doing?

[00:01:48.40] – Christina Sergnese

Yeah. Absolutely. So I had quite the journey. I'm a teacher at heart and a lifelong student. So helping people is something that naturally came to me. So I always prided myself in seeing the best in everything. I'm such an optimistic person, and it depends on who you ask. I could be annoyingly over-optimistic. When I was eighteen, I wanted to explore the idea of being a life coach, but I thought, what do I know about life? Like, who could I possibly help? Like, I've barely done life myself.

So that idea completely went, to the back burner, and I just went through the motions. I worked in MLMs, and various sales jobs, a hundred percent commission, it was my way of being able to help people reach their goals, but also of mine of being an entrepreneur. And I had my parents well, particularly my mom. My parents are both entrepreneurs, so I feel like it's just in my blood. And I had my mom that was always, like, get a corporate job, get a corporate job, get a job with pension and benefits and all of this.

And, of course, I didn't listen until one day kind of unintentionally, I landed a job in corporate, ironically enough, in sales, and it was in digital sales and marketing. So clearly have a huge passion for sales, and connecting with people. So at this moment, I was selling online digital real estate across Canada, and I was in charge of a million-dollar book of business. With my, like, natural ability to build relationships, being relentless in my pursuit, and delivering great customer service, I became an award-winning sales consultant, which led me to industry awards. I sort up the corporate ladder to a senior sales manager in about a year and a half, where I was developing, managing, and training my team of eleven to with to to sales success.

And I was responsible for seven million at this time. So after a department shutdown, the entire inside sales team was laid off, which thankfully I survived. I got moved into a campaign manager where I learned the other side of the business. So I was doing ads, and content marketing for these businesses across Canada. But I knew I wanted more. I knew I was meant for more, and I went on a self-discovery journey. I discovered the online coaching world, but at this time, I had a wedding planning business.

And I was working with coaches. I had a life coach, and I discovered that I could package up my fourteen years of sales experience, and digital marketing, and help others in the coaching world grow their business. So it was a say no more moment. I closed down the doors. I pivoted over. I finally found my footing, and now my mission is to help the ambitious coach who's not afraid to break the rules define their version of success because I don't feel like there's one way to do business.

So I help them, like, amplify their voice, become unapologetic so that they can reach their big picture goals, but in a way that they're hustling with purpose. So they're not sacrificing their health or their relationships. And that was the main reason that I started my business is that I always wanted to live a better life because I believe that we can be, do, and have it all. So it just took me these motions to kinda find my purpose in our world. And so here I am, and I just really couldn't be more grateful, to be here and be able to give back all of my knowledge and skills to to others.

[00:05:04.19] – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I appreciate that. I think so many times in life, we think that things will just come to us. I guess they do to some degree, but I love it because what resonated with me and your story is it's getting an opportunity to go out and try different things and then realizing, like, where you're at and all the awesome work you're doing is a kinda it sounds like a culmination of all the experiences and things you've been able to have. So it's not as if all those actions and things that you've taken haven't led and helped you with the clients that you work with now.

[00:05:28.69] – Christina Sergnese

Yeah. Exactly. I dabbled all over the place and just gained experience, and, it was just definitely, I guess, I had to go through the whirlwind and the roller coaster of, like, finding my purpose. And, yeah, everything was just able to be taken because I'm like, I didn't go through all of this for nothing. So I took it all in and now kinda package it up and something that I help my clients with.

[00:05:50.00] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. And especially, I think when so many times we forget about business, it's all about kinda like the people business and having that opportunity to connect and have different experiences and those shared stories. I think that brings us closer together. But I think on an even deeper level as you spoke to, it helps us to serve on a better level because sometimes we have been in another person's shoes, so we can help them to get to where they wanna be. Yeah. And so I know you touched on a little bit on how you do that. Could you take us through a little bit more on how that process works and how you serve the clients you work with?

[00:06:13.80] – Christina Sergnese

Yeah. So I served, two segments. I serve the new aspiring coach, the one that's making me be anywhere from zero dollars to 1-2k and is looking to, go to those five k months. And so I do that in a twelve-week intimate group program container, which is called my Social Sales Academy SSA, and it's actually, we just launched it, just started, this week. So I'm super excited about that. So what I do is I help them refine their niche, discover their purpose, but also refine their niche, put a coaching container together, and then tell them how to market it. So I do the mindset work, the the strategy, the messaging, and the sales aspect.

So how to grow a highly targeted following and then how do turn those browsers into buyers? And then the second segment is the coach who is making around those 5k months but is looking for more consistency and to make a bigger impact and income. So what I do is I help them create their strategic product suite, launch new offers, and help them make a bigger impact and income by having more going to a one-to-many model.

[00:07:18.39] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. That's huge, especially in this day and age with the different ways by which you can have a bigger impact by doing the same actions, by reaching more people. I love that you are that first that second set, I should say, with the tools to be able to do that, but also the people that are just getting started and trying to figure out, how to take things to an entirely different level.

And I love again, how the experience that you have tied into how you're serving and working with the clients because I think so many times when you're getting started or maybe even reach, I guess, where we sometimes think, our top is or where we're capped out at, there's always another level. And sometimes just asking for help and be able to lean on other people is a great way to do that.

[00:07:55.80] – Christina Sergnese

Yeah. Absolutely. I do because a lot of the new coaches I work with come to me and be like, I wanna make 10k in ninety days. It's like, okay. Well, like, it's not impossible, but the fact that you haven't signed a client yet, you gotta walk before you run. And being an entrepreneur, we're visionaries. We want we want the big picture. We want it all. We wanted it yesterday. But it's that one step at a time, and you're gradually going to grow. Like, you can accelerate and, like, collapse time, but it's one foot forward.

[00:08:21.89] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. And I think so many times we forget about and try to skip over the process because we have those great ambitions where we wanna help out so many people. But I love too that you also it sounds like and correct me if I'm wrong. You said that, you help people to reach success without sacrificing their health and sacrificing so many things. So I think so many times when you get to that mountain, whatever that mountain looks like, you feel like you've lost everything as a result of trying to do that. And I love that alignment of not thinking either or, but both and how exactly you help people to do that.

[00:08:51.00] – Christina Sergnese

Yeah. Because I came with that mentality too. Like, coming from an entrepreneurial family, my parents worked all the time. So I'm like, okay. More hustle, more money.

[00:08:58.29] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely

[00:08:58.70] – Christina Sergnese

But it's not at all like that. It's being very strategic and working things in the pocket of your time. But either, you know, staying in your zone and focusing on, like, the bigger picture building activities rather than the things that don't typically matter in the early stages. And then as you grow, your business grows, you outsource and you stay in your zone. So, I came from that, like, twenty-four-seven hustle.

I'm a workaholic type of personality, so I could be doing this all day, but it's and it's that fear of okay. But more success equals more work, but it's not. So it's kind of shattering that and redefining what it means to you and creating a better structure and boundary so you're not sacrificing your health and your relationships. So I feel like people are afraid of success for those reasons, some of the reasons anyway.

[00:09:48.10] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. That makes so much sense. And I appreciate you for sharing that because I think, there are a lot of top types of people that are listening to this, including me. And a lot of times, we can understand and relate to the idea where if feel like we roll up our sleeves and we work those extra hours, that will result in where we're gonna be. But sometimes, like we said we sacrifice what we're ultimately hoping to try to do, or sometimes it doesn't take rolling up your sleeves more.

Sometimes it just takes being more strategic and thinking, outside the box or shattering those glass ceilings as you talked about as well. And so, would you consider that to be what I call your secret sauce, the thing you feel kinda sets you apart? Is it that ability to have an experience that also can equip so many people with the information and knowledge on how to do that? Or what do you feel sets you apart in McShane?

[00:10:29.79] – Christina Sergnese

Yeah. I would say it's that you're learning the foundation, you're learning the rules, and that's part of the earlier process that I do teach my clients, but then there becomes a point in time where you gotta break those rules and build your version of it. And I think that I would say that would be, like, my secret sauce is being able to have it all without having to sacrifice everything.

[00:10:51.50] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

[00:11:02.50] – Christina Sergnese

So something that it was really hard for me to implement this. It was something that was, taught, by my first-ever coach, her model. So she actually and I took it on was the three weeks on, one week off. Not completely off. I mean, I'm not there yet, but I'll do, like, the three weeks on where I'm working in and on my business. But the last week of every month, no client calls, like, no meetings, no nothing. I'm just it's just my business and my vision, and that's it. So that has been something that I've implemented, and it was a game changer for me. So I would say that a great CEO hack is three weeks on and one week off.

[00:11:41.20] – Gresham Harkless

I love that hack. So I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client, or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

[00:11:52.60] – Christina Sergnese

Yeah. Something I always yeah. I would tell my younger self and would tell all my clients and always say, never dim your light because you're too worried about triggering other people, or worried about stepping into your power and making that impact. So I would say the biggest words of wisdom would be to always lead yourself first because you are your biggest client. And when you are putting yourself first, you're filling up that cup, you're aligning your vibration to what you really wanna attract, you'll start attracting that. So I would say never dim your light and just lead yourself first.

[00:12:28.10] – Gresham Harkless

And, now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So what does being a CEO mean to you, Christina?

[00:12:37.89] – Christina Sergnese

This was the one that I was like, oh, I don't know how I'm gonna answer this one. It was like pump sweaty. I'm like, I don't know what to say. Because, when I think about it, it means so many different things to me, and it goes well beyond, the title of, you know, being a CEO. I always think of, am I leading with heart? Am I inspiring others? Am I being true to myself and, like, staying, in integrity with my actions to reach these goals? And I take radical responsibility for my results because no one else is responsible for them.

So and that's in both life and business and not just in the results of, like, the outputs with the inputs, but also, like, your mindset. Mindset is so, so important, and it's how you act when times get hard. I always say it's all about the bounce back, not the setback. And it's like, how are you handling those situations when they come? So I think with being a CEO and, like, a visionary, it's, I believe someone said this on your podcast, chief or chief energy officer.

[00:13:40.20] – Gresham Harkless

Yes.

[00:13:40.79] – Christina Sergnese

And I'm like, oh, that just, like, summed it right up and nailed it. I'm like, I am going to use that and give credit where credit's due, of course. But I'm like, I love that because it's what you wanna be known for. It's what are you bringing to the table. What's your energy, like, going in because that's what people are gonna follow? It's, you know, having that greater impact, that significance of wanting to help people, which is, like, my greater mission, but also what you're standing for and,  what you want to is I truly believe it's who you become in the process because people are gonna follow that are gonna follow your vision, are gonna follow that energy.

But also being a CEO, to me would be having that time freedom and being internally happy because what's the point of having this, like, you know, seven-figure business if you're unhappy or have no time to use the money? Like,  what's the point? So, I love the chief energy officer. And it brings the energy and others will follow.

[00:14:38.20] – Gresham Harkless

Appreciate that, Christina, and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and, of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

[00:14:50.39] – Christina Sergnese

Yeah. I think I alluded to this a little bit earlier, and something that I think is so important because there's no one-way ticket to success. It's not linear. The marketing strategy the strategy is is simple, but it really does come down to your mindset, to accountability, to being your biggest cheerleader, but also learning when it's okay to break the rules since there is no rule to business and success. So I would say always do what your heart desires and that calling because if it's in you, it's for you, and it might be time to, you know, break those rules and shatter some glass ceilings.

[00:15:32.20] – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I appreciate that. And for people that wanna get a hold of you, what's the best way for them to do that?

[00:15:36.29] – Christina Sergnese

Yeah. The best way is Instagram. It's where I hang out so you can find me. I guess it'll be linked in the show notes. It's Christina Sergnese. And, yeah, come say hi. I love connecting with others, and, I would love to connect with more people.

[00:15:49.70] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Like, Christina said we'll have the links and information in the show notes to make it even easier. But I appreciate that. You know, a reminder as well too. I think so many times when we see success, we always wanna emulate success, and we try to do all the steps that somebody is doing to be there. And I often say, like, if we run our race, we never lose.

And I think so many times if we get into somebody else's lane or try to do what they're doing again, robbing ourselves, robbing the society and the world all around us. So I love that you said that sometimes when you run your race, you have to follow those steps, but you have to also know when to break those steps, break those rules, and and create what is calling within. So I truly appreciate you for reminding us of that, for doing that, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

[00:16:29.10] – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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