IAM984- Coach Helps Women Break the Check to Check Cycle

Alejandra ‘Alex’ Love, MBA, CPLP® is a Coach and Trainer who works with black and brown women entrepreneurs to grow their business with less stress.

After, 10 years working as a Corporate Coach and trainer, that work just wasn’t cutting it – her true passion was in empowering women. Alex wanted to help women break the check to check cycle by transforming their talents and hobbies into real businesses they love!

And Alex Love Consulting, was born; where she is able to use a blend of traditional business acumen, lessons learned as a business owner, and her passion for empowering others to support innovators, thinkers, and visionaries in making their dreams a reality.

When asked what she does Alex simply says “I’m is in the business of helping women make a living, while living their best life!”

• CEO Hack: i) My calendar ii) Writing things down
• CEO Nugget: Do it scared, do it ugly, do it now
• CEO Defined: Surrounding yourself with people who are smarter than you and leveraging your team to make an impact

Website: http://www.askalexlove.com/

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/_askalexlove
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/alexloveconsulting

Full Interview:

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Transcription

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[00:00:13.19] – 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.

[00:00:41.00] – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I Am CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Alex Love and Alex Love Consulting. Alex, it's awesome to have you on the show.

[00:00:48.70] – Alex Love

Thank you so much. Happy to be here.

[00:00:52.29] – Gresham Harkless

Super excited to have you on. And before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Alex so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. Alex Love is an MBA CPLP and is a coach and trainer who works with black and brown women entrepreneurs to grow their businesses with less stress. After ten years of working as a corporate coach and trainer, that work wasn't just cutting it. Her true passion was in empowering women.

Alex wanted to help women break the check-to-check cycle by transforming their talents and hobbies into real businesses they love. Alex Love Consulting was born where she can use a blend of traditional business acumen, lessons learned as a business owner, and her passion for empowering others to support innovators, thinkers, and visionaries in making their dreams a reality. When asked what she does, Alex simply says, I'm in the business of helping women make a living while living their best life. Alex, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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[00:01:41.90] – Alex Love

Sure, I am.

[00:01:43.20] – Gresham Harkless
Well, let's do it then. So to kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit here a little bit more on how you guys started what I like to call your CEO story.

[00:01:51.79] – Alex Love

So, I had been working in corporate for kind of too long, honestly. And what I realized is sometimes you're working in corporate, you're building all these people, and you're building them up while your dream is kinda just sitting on the side. And I felt a little bit dispassioned by helping a lot of people who didn't necessarily look like me. To provide some context, I am first generation American, first going to college. Both of my parents were immigrants.

And I grew up in a household where all the women had multiple jobs, side hustles. My grandmother used to bake bread. Like, that was just the way that we lived. And what I realized is it is a commonality in first generation, women to have that same drive. So black and brown women have been pushing themselves and driving themselves for so long with this side hustle. What if we found a way to formalize that and build black and brown wealth? And so I was like, you know what? I'm gonna host a workshop.

And it started with a resume workshop, really helping black and brown women to figure out how to position themselves for other corporate positions. And that evolved into people saying, I don't really wanna work for anybody. So how do I, you know, make more money with this side thing so that this other thing is just the option? And Alex Love Consulting was born.

[00:03:04.80] – Gresham Harkless

I appreciate that. And it sounds like you're empowering, you know, so many people and understanding that, you know, it's not often a work ethic or any of that, you know, question. It's a question of being able to kinda understand how to do it, and it sounds like setting them up for success in the best way possible, and you sound like you've been able to do that for so many black and brown women.

And I think that that just you know, it creates, I love to use the phrase making a way out of no way because I think so many times we don't realize that there are opportunities. So I love that you're helping to make sure that comes to fruition. And so I want to drill down a little bit more, hear a little bit more about how you work with your clients. Could you take us through a little bit more about that and what that looks like?

[00:03:41.80] – Alex Love

So I have a couple of ways that I work with clients. I started traditionally just one-to-one sessions. And so I love one-to-one sessions because I get to really deep dive into, women and what they're going for. But what I realized is that one-to-one sessions can be time-consuming for, let's say, a black and brown woman who is a mother, who has multiple jobs and multiple pieces. And so what I've converted that too was from one-to-one to this kind of self-paced entrepreneurial guide. So I've developed this series of guides on how do you make, in the like, how do you make a passive income? How do you create courses? How do you, position yourself as an expert in your field so you can get more speaking engagements?

And what I realized is that, you know, sometimes women call like I said, we're super busy, but it's something you can print out and do on the train. It's digital. You can do it from your phone. And so those are kind of the two ways that I generally work with, women. It's just either one-on-one, which can be a little bit cost-prohibitive if you're just starting a business or you're just starting your side hustle. And then, cheaper, less, hands-on alternative, which is the entrepreneur guides.

And then I still offer free workshops. So sometimes I'll just be like, hey. I'm doing a workshop this month on how to build passive income or how to revamp your bio so that it gets more looks or, you know, how to improve some of your social media engagement. And so sometimes I just offer free things to the community. In addition, like, my Instagram posts are super duper informative, and I try to do episodes of some of something called Sunday School where I give people an overview of different trip trips and tips they can use to build their business.

[00:05:12.60] – Gresham Harkless

That's extremely powerful. I love the different ways by which you're you're able to do that as well. And I think that you know, I hate going back to that empowerment word, but that's what just keeps coming up to me to be able to empower people to know that they can do something. And on an even deeper level, how to do that and make that come to fruition is huge. And I imagine that you probably and I don't wanna put words in your mouth, but hear that from the clients that you work with that a lot of times they don't realize that these hobbies, these things that they love doing can be businesses and they can, you know, take it to a quote, unquote level.

[00:05:44.19] – Alex Love

Yeah. Absolutely. I think one of the things that we, as black and brown women, struggle with is this idea of, like, a, oh, but not yet, or it's not perfect, or I'm not ready. And I'm like, listen, your white counterparts are out here releasing trash, and they don't care that it's not perfect.

And so sometimes I tell people that done is better than perfect. Let's get this first version out. Let's see what it looks like. Let's see what it's sitting for, and then we can refine and make it better. And I think that when we start getting to this place of overcoming the fear that's causing us to procrastinate, we can start making this money.

[00:06:16.60] – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. And and that generational wealth that you talked about as well too because I think when we don't realize that the people that become, quote, unquote, successful are the people that put the the done better than perfect out there, and then they start to improve it from there. That's how they reach success. It's not waiting until it's perfect and then putting it out because so many times the time has passed, the opportunity has sometimes passed, and maybe we don't get that market feedback to know if it's worthwhile. So I love that you, empower people to do that.

[00:06:45.50] – Gresham Harkless

And so I want to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce. So this could be for yourself or your business or a combination of both. But what do you feel kinda sets you apart and makes you unique?

[00:06:54.69] – Alex Love

The secret sauce is, I think I think it's honesty. I am not gonna let anybody put out crap and attach my name to it. So I'm very clear about, like, oh, no. This is not good. And so I tell people, like, if you wanna be coddled or, like, you want a sugar-coated version, I'm not the coach for you. Like, I'm just gonna tell you I'm not that person. But if you want honesty that is built and designed to help you grow, I'm gonna tell you when it's like, that's not good. That's not written well. You shouldn't put this out.

And I think sometimes people think the coach is just gonna cheer them on. But I tell people, even the best players in the game, LeBron James has a coach, and he has to go to practice with everybody else even though he's LeBron James. So even if you have this brilliant idea, this brilliant concept, you gotta go practice. You have to put the work in, and you have to follow those plays if you'll be trying to strategically move this team forward. And so that's always the analogy I use. And people like, well, I don't know why I need a coach. Everybody needs a coach, bro. Jordan had a coach. Everybody needs a coach.

[00:07:52.00] – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. And I feel like it sounds like and and correct me if I'm wrong. It sounds like, that challenging that we need to be able to get better to go to that next step and that next level. Because, I always say iron sharpens iron, and I think so many times, of course, a lot of us might be the Jordans or the LeBrons of our industry and have that talent, that raw talent. But how do we incorporate that or kinda cultivate that to level up, to be better, to crush our goals, to make that impact that we can have in society? And that's where, you know, it takes a team to be able to make that happen, and it's so important you can't do it alone.

[00:08:25.89] – Alex Love

Absolutely. And, I mean, I love that iron sharpens iron because I think that, as I said, sometimes we wanna be coddled. After all, the instinct is not to hear when you're doing things that are less than perfect, but less than good. And so I think that a part of that is having women who someone who looks like you to say, Sister, I'm just trying to fix your crown. I don't want to make a scene out of it. I just want to fix your crown and help you to keep moving this work forward because that's really what my goal is. I have a young daughter. She's four, and I want her to be like, well, I can run a business.

Mommy runs a business. Like, I want people I want our our our people to move this work forward and to do it doing something they love. I don't want it to always be the rat racing, the chase. Like, we should own the big businesses that other people are trying to, work for. And so I'm trying to figure out any way to get the knowledge out there and the information out there, so that people are receptive and understanding that we can take it to the next level, but it has it requires work. It requires work.

[00:09:22.79] – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. It requires, you know, rolling up the sleeves and being able to make that happen. But I love that phrase. I'm not trying to critique you. I'm not trying to, you know, dish you. I'm trying to fix your crown and adjust the crown because I think that's so powerful when you see that, the people that challenge you are often the people that love you the most and wanna see the best for you, and they're doing it for you not out of spite, but because they want to see you progress. And I think when you can surround yourself with those people who challenge you to be better than yourselves, then you can reach an entirely different level, I think.

[00:09:54.70] – Alex Love

I agree.

[00:09:55.79] – Gresham Harkless

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

[00:10:06.39] – Alex Love

Okay. I'm gonna be honest. This is not that big of a hack. I'm obsessed with my calendar. Right? And it's really because there are so many different things happening at one time. If I didn't have a calendar and I didn't put everything in it, like, I'm telling you, if I have to write an email to someone, I put it in the calendar. Because if I don't write it, I won't build time for it. I always tell people if you write it, it's real. If you say it is a dream, you could dream about anything. Once you put it to paper, you are accountable for this thing.

And so that has been my hack. I write down everything that I want to do, whether it's digitally on a calendar, or even if it's a physical to-do list. Writing things down makes them real, and tangible, and it it holds you accountable. So that's that's my CEO hack. Write it down. That's the only way to make it real.

[00:10:52.39] – Gresham Harkless

I appreciate that hack, and there are even statistics that show that the more that you write things down, the more likely they are to come to fruition and happen. So I love that hack and it's so, so, you know, weird. Like, I think so many times we think of hacks as the biggest things in the world that we can kind of come up with, but in reality, sometimes it's the quote, unquote little things that make the most impact because when you're juggling so many things and you're trying to hold it in your head, you're maybe, at least for me, setting yourself up for success correct. For failure. it's so important to kinda put those things down so you can be more present and more aware of, like, what it is that you're doing and being in your zone of genius.

[00:11:26.10] – Alex Love

Yeah. I love that zone of genius.

[00:11:28.89] – Gresham Harkless

So I wanted 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.

[00:11:40.20] – Alex Love

I always tell them the same thing. I only have one catchphrase, and it is do it scared, do it ugly, do it now. Don't let fear of it being imperfect. Don't let fear of, like, oh, my graphics aren't excellent yet. Just do it scared, do it ugly, do it now. And the reason I say that is because I tell people Amazon, started in a garage. I look at Macy's, look at how many times Macy's has revamped their, logo, and how the time has changed. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be available, and it has to be impactful. So if we do it scared, do it ugly, do it now. We can do this. I promise.

[00:12:14.70] – Gresham Harkless

And it starts to get that momentum rolling. I love that phrase. And I think so many times, we're searching and waiting for perfect, but perfect never comes because there's always gonna be a reason why not to do something or the stars aren't gonna align that day or whatever it might be. So it's so important to just take that action to do it and continue to kinda, you know, level up from there and improve it from there. So, and I love that talking about Amazon because, around the interwebs, there's that picture of, Jeff Bezos in, like, this it's less than, you know, an exciting office that he has Amazon written on in a permanent marker. And it just reminds us that, you know, to reach success, you have to start somewhere, but you have to do it as you said so well.

[00:12:56.20] – Alex Love

Absolutely. It's just all you can do is start. If it doesn't work, you start something else. You have to start or you'll never finish. Right?

[00:13:03.79] – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. And so, I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO, and we're hoping to have different quotes-unquote CEOs on the show. So, Alex, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:13:14.79] – Alex Love

That's a good one. To me, being a CEO means surrounding yourself with people who are smarter than you, who allow you to do your work with excellence and impact the most people long term. So I don't know it all. I know that I don't know it all, but my VA is very smart. And so when I can't do things, I lean on someone else to do it because I wanna focus on impact.

So being a CEO is about making an impact and leaving a mark on the world that is positive. Like, when people talk about me, I want them to say, well, she helped me with this. She did that. She supported me in doing this thing. And I can't do that if I'm I'm spending all day, you know, sending emails and fixing PowerPoint slides and stuff like that. So leverage your team. It means leveraging your team to make a great

[00:13:59.50] – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely appreciate that. I love how that, aligns with the work that you do, you know, with your clients as well too, that reminder of not trying to do it all by yourself. Of course, even things that we know that we don't mean we should be doing them because that takes us away from making that impact and making that mark you, you know, said so well. So I truly appreciate that definition.

[00:14:19.39] – Alex Love

Awesome. I hope I hope that's useful for somebody else.

[00:14:22.39] – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. I think it puts it all in alignment. So definitely appreciate that, Alex, and I appreciate your time even more. What I want to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional we could let our readers and listeners know, and, of course, how best they can get ahold of you and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

[00:14:37.89] – Alex Love

So first of all, I'm an open book. If you have questions, hit me up on Instagram. It's at underscore ask Alex Love. And then, again, my website, ask Alexlove.com. Everything is under that name. I think that what I wanna leave people with is that I know that sometimes you hear the word CEO and you think, okay. This is glamorous. One, being a CEO is hard. Building a business is hard. But it's important to focus on the work that you're doing laying the groundwork for success.

Maybe not necessarily for you to be rich, but maybe your next generation, maybe your daughter, your son. So don't quit. Don't let fear stop you from making an impact and changing the world. So I just say keep pushing, keep trying, find the resources to get the support that you need, and don't be ashamed to ask for help. It's okay to ask for help. Those are, like, my masterful CEO tips. I hope it helps someone because I think that's what I've found most helpful in my career pathway.

[00:15:33.89] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. I appreciate that, Alex. We will have the links and information in the show notes, and I believe that that's an extremely impactful message that you left us with. And I think you brought up the word fear, you know, earlier, and I think so many times we don't realize how debilitating fear can be where we never have these gifts and we have these opportunities that are standing right in front of us, and we don't take that action to do that.

So I appreciate, you know, you sharing that with us and reminding us of that and, of course, doing it as well because it's just a reminder that we have these things that will impact our lives, but impacts our society, will impact our generations. And if we don't take that action, then none of that comes to fruition. So truly appreciate you for doing that and reminding us of that, and I hope you have a great rest of the day.

[00:16:14.20] – 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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