IAM1570 – Life Coach Helps Women Tap Their Inner Wisdom and Live Their Purpose

Freda is an ICF-certified life coach and owner and CEO of YBeU Life Coaching for Women. Freda started YBeU as her labor of love after retiring last year from her dream job as a senior counterterrorism executive at the CIA where she coached teams of women in high-stakes jobs to trust their gut, take smart chances and be the best version of themselves. She loves continuing to help women in all stages of life to ignite their passion, live their purpose, and make a difference. She is based in Virginia but works with clients across the country in virtual coaching sessions. You can also find her coaching tips and tricks on Instagram, Facebook, and Linked In as well as on AskHer.com where she is an expert answering any and all life coaching questions.

• CEO Story: Freda fulfilled her dream job serving in the government as a senior counterterrorism executive. When she felt it was becoming a comfort zone, a sign she needed to seek out new challenges. When she left, she kind of missed meeting the teams she had, mentoring and coaching them, to trust their guts. Rewarding for her to see these women blossom and become confident. Serving and helping these women in service, which she is so passionate about, was why YBeU was created. It was to help others find that passion they have and make a difference.
• Business Service: Seeing clients in person, especially in the Virginia area and mostly in the virtual space. Helping clients to tap into their inner wisdom to clarify what is it that they really want.
• Secret Sauce: Always learning. Life experience as a professional intelligence officer.
• CEO Hack: Scheduling and keeping the schedule. Using Microsoft Outlook.
• CEO Nugget: If you have an idea for a business or service just do it, and just do it scared if you have to. If you wait for the perfect time, it’s never gonna happen.
• CEO Defined: The epitome of freedom and independence to do things your way. Setting up the roles and defining the vision.

Website: www.ybeulifecoaching.com

Instagram: ybeulifecoaching.ig

Facebook: ybeulifecoaching

Linkedin: freda-scheuer-ybeu-life-coaching-for-women

askher.com

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00:29- Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share precisely the information you're searching for. This is the I Am CEO Podcast.

00:57 – Gresham Harkless

Hello, this is Gresh from the I Am CEO Podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today, Afreda Shoy. Why are you Life Coaching for Women Freda, it's great to have you on the show.

01:08 – Freda Scheuer

Hey there Gresh. Thanks so much. Great to be here.

01:11 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I'm super excited to have you on and talk about all the awesome things that you're doing. Of course, before we jump into the conversation, I want to read a little bit more about Freda so you can hear about some of those awesome things. Freda is an ICF-certified life Coach and owner of CEO and CEO of YBeU Life Coaching for Women.

Freda started YBeU as her labor of love after retiring last year from her dream job as a senior counterterrorism executive at CIA where she coached teams of women in high-stakes jobs to trust their gut, take smart chances, and be the best version of themselves she could. She loves to continue to help women in all stages of life to ignite their passion, live their purpose, and make a difference.

She is based in Virginia, but works with clients across the country in virtual coaching sessions you can find her coaching tips and tricks on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn as well as askher.com where she is an expert answering all life coaching questions. Freda, again, excited to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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02:08 – Freda Scheuer

I'm ready. Let's do it.

02:10 – Gresham Harkless

Let's get it started then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit here a little bit more on how you got started. What I call your CEO story.

02:18 – Freda Scheuer

Great. Yeah. Well, honestly, I think that I started YBU as a necessity, like so many, I guess ideas popped up when I was in government, as you mentioned, in my dream job, I joined the counterterrorism center at the CIA. Shortly after it was stood up after I finished graduate school where I was really studying terrorism. It was all I ever wanted to do. That was, gosh, back at a time when you had all these airplanes being hijacked, embassies were being blown up, Americans were being kidnapped, and I thought, oh my gosh, this is a threat that this country is really not prepared to confront. Getting that job at the CIA was everything to me.

Becoming a senior counterterrorism expert, being able to sort of hunt down terrorists and disrupt plots, I mean, it was a dream job, the best job ever. It was a real pleasure and a privilege, not only to serve my country but to do something I was passionate about and to do something that I felt made a difference. At a certain point, I really felt like I'd been doing this, I love it, but I knew it like the back of my hand. It was becoming sort of a comfort zone and kind of a, I don't know, a little clue to me that maybe it was time to sort of seek out new challenges, different challenges for my Chapter Two.

I started thinking about my job, and when I left it, what would I sort of miss most about it? A lot of folks, it was really the people involved, right? They make the difference. Specifically, what I really loved was leading the teams that I had which, for whatever reason, were comprised largely of women. When counterterrorism first became a mission for the CIA, it was not one that was widely embraced by the male-dominated operations officers at the time. For whatever reason, a lot of females were really drawn to this new mission, right into the cause.

I loved being able to mentor them and coach them to start to trust their guts. We were working in some pretty high-stakes jobs and investigations and missions to learn to trust your gut, to learn how to take smart risks, and to learn that it's better to swing and miss than not swing at all. We got to do something here. Let's make it happen. It was so rewarding to watch these women really blossom, really become more confident, really just go on themselves to become senior leaders and to kind of live their purpose and make a difference.

I thought, gosh, maybe I could do this as a professional life coach. During the pandemic, I thought, okay, I'm not in my office 16 hours a day anymore or anything crazy. I took that time to get certified as a life coach to really learn the tradecraft. There is a good bit of tradecraft. I was surprised. It isn't just telling people what to do, as I expected. It was a lot of tradecraft, a lot of learning how to be a good listener, and learning the professional ethics behind it. I thought gosh if I could work with other women in envisioning who would I serve?

It would be great if I could help those other women do what I think I did in my career, which was really follow something, do something that I'm passionate about, that I felt was my purpose, and that made a difference. And so that's really how YBU was created. I wanted to really ask that question, why are you? I'll tell you why. Because you are unique in all the world. You were created for a reason. There is some purpose out there meant for you. There is a passion that you have. Let's find that. Let's. Let's help you make a difference and that's really how it started.

06:17 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. Well, I truly appreciate you sharing your story and I love it. First of all, thank you again for your service and all the awesome things you're doing. But I love how your service was able to kind of combine with that passion that you had, and those two things were able to come together. I think that a lot of times we think that it sometimes is either or, but when you're able to see and hear someone that is able to do both and to do both in alignment, then it really makes it more realistic and I think something that we can all kind of lean more into.

06:46 – Freda Scheuer

Yes. No, thank you. I felt blessed that it came together for me. So many people don't get to do anything that they studied in school or that they had dreamed about doing. I felt really fortunate and so I love helping other women try to. Try to do the same thing.

07:00 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. So, absolutely love that. I know we touched on it a little bit, but I wanted to drill down a little bit more and hear how you're working with your clients. Could you take us through how that works and how you're serving the clients you work with?

07:10 – Freda Scheuer

Sure, yeah. Yeah. So I see clients in person as I can if you're in my part of Virginia, the Blue Ridge. But mostly I see them virtually on a Zoom call or FaceTime, or sometimes even just a voice chat if they prefer that. The sessions usually take place once a week or sometimes every other week up to the client. Really the clients sometimes are surprised because they think that I'm going to come to these sessions and I'm just going to wave a magic wand and I'm going to solve all their problems and tell them what to do.

It actually couldn't be farther from the truth. In a life coaching session, a life coach will certainly never tell you what to do. But I think that what we can do and what I try to do is deliver something that's even more powerful and that is helping you, the client, again, tap into that, your own inner wisdom to clarify what is it that you really want and figure out what are those obstacles holding you back, really kind of helping you get to the root of what are their stories in your head? What's that about? How can we kind of get to the root of that and replace that with positive self-talk to figure out a realistic way ahead to achieve what we want?

The only outcome I want is what you're seeking. What is your goal and how can I help you achieve it? We do that, by really asking those powerful questions. My clients are super high-achieving, impactful, successful women, but they're out to be even better. They want to be the best version of themselves. So that's, that's who I work with. No one needs a life coach, but I think almost anyone can benefit.

08:56- Gresham Harkless

Absolutely love that. So what would you consider to be what I like to call your secret sauce? Might be something that you ask your clients as well too. YBeU, what do you think is your secret sauce? The thing that you feel sets you apart and makes you unique.

09:07 – Freda Scheuer

I bring to the table as a life coach the professional certification. I'm always learning and trying to be better, for sure. I think I took the time to really learn that tradecraft, which was important to me. But I think what makes me stand out as a life coach is that life experience. As a professional intelligence officer. I know what it's like to be the only woman in the room and to be afraid of what if I raise my hand and get this wrong to step outside of my comfort zone.

But I do think that by talking about my professional experience, knowing what it's like to do it, scared, I can inspire some women who are in similar situations in high stakes, high-pressure jobs to reach out and tap into some of that experience.

09:56 – Gresham Harkless

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?

10:09 – Freda Scheuer

So this might sound like self-evident to a lot of folks who know way more about business than I do, which is almost everyone. However, scheduling and keeping a schedule was the most important thing I think I learned in my first year as a solopreneur and CEO. It sounds kind of again self-evident, but I really spent my whole career, like a lot of other executives do, having somebody hand me a card every day saying, here's where you need to be, here's the schedule.

The schedule was very much dictated by the government that I served the organization, certain meetings upon meetings or certain investigations and having to travel. A lot of it wasn't planned and I was very used to always being on the go but not ever being in charge of my own schedule. I'm embarrassed to say that when I did sit down and try to start figuring things out by myself with the schedule online, I would get pop-up messages like hey, those shoes you were looking at at Nordstrom, they're on sale now. I'd be like, oh really? I would click on it. I did.

I would be like 90 minutes later, hey, like you can't do that, you have to. So I thought, okay, clearly I have to come up with some idea here. All I used was Outlook. I am not a very high-tech person. I look at Outlook and I put everything that I have to do that day, every phone call, every follow-up email errand like it has to be on my schedule or it doesn't get done. If it pops up during the day and it's not on the schedule, not going to happen. It'll have to wait till it can find a place there. So that would be definitely the one hack is make a schedule. It's important and it's, yeah, definitely something that's helped me.

11:59 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. So what would you consider to be what I like to call a CEO nugget? So this is a little bit more word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell your favorite client or if you happen to be a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

12:13 – Freda Scheuer

I think what I tell clients a lot and what I would tell new CEOs is, what if you have an idea for a business or A service, just do it and just do it. Scared if you have to. I love it. I love that expression. If you wait for the time when you feel prepared or quote-unquote, the right time. So many clients come to me and say, well when I move next year and after I finish my degree I quit this job. If you're waiting for the perfect time, it's. It's never going to happen. If I waited for the perfect time to establish you, it would still be an idea in my head. When I launched it, I had no idea about social media.

Obviously, that's not something that we did at the agency. I had to hire my best friend's son in college to come sit down with me and say, what the heck is Instagram again? How do I do this? There's never a perfect time to just do it. If you have an idea and you're really committed and it's your passion, just make it happen. Just jump in. You can always tweak it, you can learn, you can evolve, but just do it. Just take that chance and just do it, and things will start to fall into place. That's definitely, I think, would be my little nugget.

13:28 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, absolutely. Just do it and just do it. Scared. Absolutely love that. So what would you consider to be the answer to my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO? We're holding out different, quote-unquote, CEOs on the show. So, Freda, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:43- Freda Scheuer

The epitome of freedom and independence to do things my way. I think people who aren't CEOs live a life and have a career, a career that you love, but you really never get to define the roles or the vision. As a CEO, for one brief shining moment, you get to define that vision and you get to set up the rules for how you're going to get there. It's really, for the first time, complete, really complete freedom to be able to do that. It also is sort of carte blanche, as we talked about earlier, to do it yourself, your way.

Like it or lump it or, if you win, you lose, whatever. You're doing it exactly your way. You're no longer constrained by anybody else's rules or ideas. You have the vision, you have the roles. It's kind of all you. It's really, it's scary and it's intoxicating and it's amazing. I'm surprised. I love it as much as I do, but that's really kind of the difference for me is that, yeah, it's kind of all you at this point.

15:00 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love that definition and that perspective and of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I wanted to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course how best people can get all of you to find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

15:17 – Freda Scheuer

Excellent. Yes, as you mentioned, Gresh, I am on Instagram Facebook, and LinkedIn and I try really hard to put a lot of coaching tips there for folks who can't come on to one-on-one sessions with me. You'll always find some good tips and tricks there. Also if you look at the website ybulifecoaching.com I have a weekly sort of newsletter. It's only once a week. There's no crazy spam with more kind of one-to-one sort of life coaching tips.

Of course, you can also book a discovery call which is absolutely free and has no obligation. If you just want to learn more about like what the heck is life coaching, how can I benefit? Does this make sense? Are we a good fit? Absolutely. I would urge you to at least give it, give it a try.

16:06 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely and to make it even easier, we're going to have the links and information that show notes as well. So everybody can click through and find out all the awesome things that you're doing. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:16 – Freda Scheuer

Thank you so much, Gresh. Pleasure.

16:18 – 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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