 I'm really happy to be here with Heather Lakatos. She is a member and helper in my ABC client program. And Heather, it's great to be with you. I'm excited about what we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna talk about the systems that you're creating in your business. I think that'll be inspirational for others to hear. It's other solopreneurs like yourself. And so I wanna give you a chance to practice your introduction. We have been working on this and I'd love to have you share it with the group. Okay, great. Thanks, George. My name is Heather Lakatos and I'm a career breakthrough strategist who works with professionals whose work just isn't working for them anymore. Nice, nice. And say more about that because before we get into more of the system stuff, what does career breakthrough mean for you? And also, how might your work be a little different or a lot different than if there's such a thing as a typical career consultant or coach? Yeah, no, that's a good question. So from me, career breakthrough means really finding that work that really fulfills you, that just lights up your soul and that you really, really, really wanna do. You know, I heard about people throughout my career that wake up in the morning and just can't wait to get to work and I'm like, yeah, that was never my job. And so it's really interesting to meet people like that, to interact with people like that and to understand what it is that how they got plugged into that. And so that's what I really work with people on is to figure out what it is that really motivates them, what it is that they're really looking for, and then just to try and match up how they're wired and what they're interested in with work that will fulfill them. And so that's what career breakthrough means to me. I spent 20 odd years in corporate and various roles. I was in technical, I was in managerial roles. I'm a chemical engineer by background, which is kinda different, I guess, for an entrepreneur. But I found a couple healing modalities later in my career and that's what I moved into into working those healing modalities and into traditional coaching, combined the two and hence, I'm a career breakthrough specialist. And do you wanna name a couple of those healing modalities? I mean, if you feel it's relevant. Yeah, so I'm working on my ICF coaching certification. So that's kinda traditional for coaches. And I'm also an NLP practitioner. I also am an advanced practitioner for EFT tapping, which is kinda that self-applied acupressure that you hear, I know Pink is one of the people who use it, you see ball failures using it all the time in the dugout. And then I also practice another modality called tapas acupressure technique, which is kinda like a cousin of EFT, but it's way gentler. Nice, nice, love it. All right, well, let's get into talking about systems, operations, your background, but applied to your solopreneurship business now. So, yeah, I mean, tell us about kind of what systems you have been setting up and how you're liking it, how's it working out for you? I know there's a lot we could talk about, but you could start with any of the systems that come to mind for you. Okay, well, I guess before I get into kinda what I'm doing, let me get into why I'm attracted to working with systems. So having been in corporate, my last 10, 15 years was in what's called commissioning and startup. So we were kinda like the test pilots for new facilities. You'd build a new offshore facility, somebody had to go out and test it, make sure everything worked, and then someone had to go start it up, and that was kinda primarily my background. And so I appreciated the need for really good procedures and systems and kinda responsibilities. And as I started transitioning into my career, cause in 2017 is when I officially started my business and I've been kinda slowly building it ever since, I realized if I was gonna be a solopreneur, I needed to have good systems in place so I didn't get frazzled and go crazy and really could show up in the right way and serve my clients while maintaining a corporate career. And so what attracted me to your world, George, was kinda the whole idea of systems. And so since I've been in the ABC program, I've implemented a pretty structured nutcaring system where I've got a good repository for kinda the people that I'm contacting, that I'm working with, that I am building relationships with and collaborations with. And so that's been working really well. That was actually the first course I ever took with you, right as I was leaving corporate. I'm also currently working on, I spent the first probably four months of ABC working on my calendar because I tried to have a daily routine, like a morning routine and end of day routine, and I failed miserably. And what I realized was I didn't have my time containers structured right. And so I spent a lot of time actually, because I'm visual, like with colored pencils and paper, kinda coming up with my calendar saying, okay, well, these are the hours that I wanna have for billable work. These are the hours that I wanna have for kinda more business development work. These are the hours that I need to clean my house, cook, do all kinda the family things. And these are the hours that I wanna have just for me and just to relax and provide self-care for myself and things of that sort. So it took a couple of months to really understand to get that flow in place. And then once I had that established, then I was able to better set up like a morning routine and kind of a transition between business and personal routine and then a couple other self-care routines throughout the day. My, I'm still working on that and transitioning from work to self-care routine, but I was always better than that in corporate. So that's part of my learning journey is I'm aware of it, I'm working on it, probably will be a lifelong endeavor, but that's okay. Some of the other systems that I'm setting up are a lot of kinda just nuts and bolts business checklists. I'm currently working on a writing workflow checklist as far as how do I develop my ideas for content? How do I capture them? How do I have them in various stages of doneness because I'm the kind of person that George hates. If you look at my desktop, you'll probably see like no real estate because there's all kinds of little files everywhere and stuff like that, so that some people really cringe at that, but it's kinda how I file things, right? So how to take those ideas and file them in a more intelligent manner in various states of doneness. How do I kind of flange them up with what I'm interested in, interested in talking about, interested in developing as a product or a program for my clients? So that's one that I'm actively working on right now. I'm also working- And before you keep going, I mean, we have some things I wanna dive into here, I think for the audience will be interested too. So one is you started to talk about the net caring and I wanna just pause there for a moment. And okay, so tell us how the system that you've developed is helping with your net caring versus before. Well, first of all, I think some people watching this might need a refresher on what net caring is. So I'd love to hear if you wanna share your perspective about net caring, what does it mean for you? And secondly, how is the system helping you with net caring versus before? So to me, net caring is kind of a way of doing intelligent networking and by building relationships. When I was in corporate, my last job I was a corporate subject matter expert. And so I actively built relationships with people in strategic places in engineering and in the center and certain leadership roles and things of that sort, because I knew from our area, if you will in operations readiness, we needed to have advocates in certain places or we needed to have help or we might need to cross collaborate on different initiatives as the corporation dreamed up ideas and threw them at us. And so I had a, I guess kind of a spreadsheet that I used to kind of keep track of people and kind of notes and just worked on building those relationships and always had an active meeting on calendars to go have coffee or lunch or whatever with folks. And during COVID, we did a lot of virtual coffees and lynchings and things of that sort. So moving into my own practice, what I've, what I'm using net caring for here is to go through and maintain relationships that I have with folks in corporate who are advocates for my work, who I know will be interested in career work and money work and kind of unblocking and things of that sort. And then also working on introductions and meeting new people who might be good collaborators, might be good kind of advocates who might be similar enough to what I do to where we could kind of team up and cross promote. So that's what I'm using net caring for now. Also being kind of, you know, more of the, one of the healing modalities, there's things that, you know, I'm probably not best to work on. So I'm working on developing, you know, kind of my Rolodex, I guess if you will of kind of like, you know, local providers, doctors, psychologists, you know, folks who I need to refer people out to. So that's kind of what I'm using net caring for right now. Nice, I love it, love it. And then let's move into the calendar that you've developed. The lot of people who work with me are working on the calendaring and there are varying degrees of application of this. Meaning some people are like, they, you know, understandably they, you know, you get excited about this possibility. What if I had this ideal calendar like George has and George follows and look at his business. And I really, I live by the calendar. And of course I keep evolving it too. I mean, this is very clear. It's like it's not just a one and done like for the rest of my life. No, I mean, I change it as often as once every month or sometimes twice a month, I might make little adjustments like, oh, this is actually better going forward. But I follow my calendar as best I can. I sometimes adjust things by the day as needed. Like, you know what, I'm gonna do more of this but it's like everything has a placeholder in the week. But anyway, so people get excited, they jump in and then they fail miserably sometimes because it's too much, too fast for their system and for their mind body system. And I'm just curious, maybe because you've been in corporate and operations and systems for a long time, maybe it's more, do you feel like that background allows you to apply a more structured and strategic calendar and schedule for your work slash life? Do you think you have an advantage for that from that? I think so. And I was also in construction for the last 15 years of my career. So any schedule you built was always wrong. And so for me, understanding that the calendar is gonna kinda ebb and flow is normal because in construction, depending upon whether parts show up, what the weather's like offshore, whether there's a strike going on in the country or whatever, the calendar is gonna change. And so redoing the calendar pretty regularly was part of my world in construction, both for me personally being offshore as well as my teams that I worked with. So I don't feel any hesitation about having a good structured ideal calendar because this is the vision and I know it's gonna change because reality is gonna happen. And that's kind of the second law of thermodynamics. There's always kind of chaos going on behind the scenes and that's just kind of the way it is. And so yeah, so I have a pretty good structure as far as how I wanna do work. And each day I'll go through and kind of update things as I need to, depending upon client load, what's going on in my life, what's going to my personal life, interests, because I'm the kind of person I could work 12 hours a day on something and forget to eat and I like to deep dive. And so I do have long stretches of time that they're labeled billable hours. And so depending on what I'm working on, I might work only on a program, I might work only on a marketing piece or I might say, you know what, I need to do a lot of kind of business cleanup. And so that's how I use my calendar. I'm not as precise as you are as far as having, this hour is this and this hour is that, but I do have kind of general guidelines and then very actively manage it. That's great to hear, yeah. And absolutely I always encourage people to make the count, your calendar is your loyal assistant who reminds you of what your past wise self scheduled for your future self, which is the current self now. And so it's like we wanna be respectful of our past wise self and of our loyal assistant and be friendly towards it, you know, and respected and do the best we can. Now, so common question with regards to calendaring, people have, especially those of us in this world of authentic business, a lot of heart-based people who are idealists and shall we say hippies at heart, whom I say, well, and so I wanna hear what you have to say about, oh, I scheduled for this today, but I don't feel like it today. I just don't feel like it. And I'm not creative today is, I think the lack of confidence is very tricky because it makes the mind create all kinds of very reasonable excuses. Anyway, so how do you deal with that? How do you deal with the fact that, okay, calendar says this today, more or less, I know you have a lot of leeway in what feels in there, but not feeling like it. How do you approach that yourself? I just do it anyway. I mean, that's what we did in operations. I mean, if you didn't feel like going offshore, guess what, you were gonna go offshore. So you better show up at a heliport so you can chop her out. That's just kinda how it was rolled, yeah. I love the simplicity of that answer because it's such a stark reality to, there are many aspects of our society that run based on people like with you and your background. It's like, you don't feel like it, society's gotta run, whether it's protecting the country or making sure people don't aren't in danger from this operation standpoint or, you know. You got gasoline for the car? Yeah, right, right. But now that you're in your own business, you're your own boss, and it's so much easier because, oh, it's not life and death now. If I don't do my content today or how do you save more about that? That's a good question. What I look for is if I'm really actively putting something off, I'll look for what the resistance is because there's usually gonna be some kind of fear or a lack of skills or knowledge that's underlying it. And so I give myself grace if I put off something once, especially if something comes up at home and whatnot. But two or three times it's like, eh, let's look at that. Sometimes I'll go talk to a trusted friend or a coach and say, okay, I'm having a hard time doing X, you know, what's here if I can't, you know, resolve the problem on my own. So I usually look for resistance though. There's gonna be something in there that needs to be looked at. I like that, yes. There is a way through and because if it's still our vision, if it's our dream, our goal, there's a way through, always, always. And it is life and death. I mean, it's a life and death of your dream. That's right. I mean, if people aren't, you know, if something isn't necessarily gonna burn down in your house, but if you continue not showing up for yourself your dream, you need to nurture your dream and keep that flame going, right? I love that. It's the tricky part is that it's so easy to say, well, today I'm not feeling it. Well, then tomorrow you're not gonna feel it either. And probably the next year you're probably not gonna, and then it's like, oh, I've lost three days and that makes a difference to how soon our dream is manifested and realized. Okay, so let's keep going. Are there any other systems? I know you had talked about the writing, but we don't have a lot of time left. So I wanna give you a chance to talk about any other systems or any other priorities that you wanna address before we talk about your work a bit more. Yeah, I guess the one thing that I'm really working on right now in my business is video. Cause I know I've been told by coaches, by you, George, you really need to be on video. I'm like, all right, I'll take the feedback. Yes, there's a lot of resistance there. Yes, I'm working through it. I've worked 80%, but I probably have another 20% to go. But I changed my backdrop recently. This used to be a beautiful bookshelf, and so that's all changed. But it was quite a lot to look at because of all the books and the way that it was shaped and everything. Yeah, so I've been working on that. So I'm moving toward video because that's kind of the next thing that I wanna experiment with as part of ABC. You always say experiment with different kinds of content. I've always been a writer, so writing isn't necessarily traumatic or whatever, but video, I used to teach a lot when I was in corporate or give workshops and things of that sort. So talking isn't necessarily a challenge, but the idea of just me and a camera and no one on the other side, and I'm still working into that one. Yeah, absolutely. You also worked on your lighting speaking of video, so it's wonderful. And of course, you got your headset so your sound is good. Okay, well, those who are watching this, follow Heather's, I don't know if we're gonna be able to give a YouTube link or some other social media, I'm sure, but follow Heather and watch out for her videos. And if you don't see them, you ping our, hey, Heather, I'm looking forward to your videos. That's right, where are you? Yeah, yeah, where are you? In terms of the writing, I know a lot of people watching this are also working on their writing habit, writing consistency. Tell us about what's in two minutes, what you've done with your writing system and how is that helping you? Do you wanna offer any tip or two in terms of creating that system? Yeah, I guess as far as writing, I just kind of launched off the deep end in March, I gave myself a deadline and I posted every day for a month and I was so burned out, just because I didn't have a good way to have ideas, catalog ideas, you know, I describe my desktop already to you. And so I stepped back and said, okay, well, this obviously didn't work because I crashed and burned, don't wanna do that again. So I set up a system where I've got a place to kind of put my inspiration posts, if you will, you know, kind of my copywriting, I would call it a swipe file. And then I've got another system called Obsidian where I've got my different ideas collected. Obsidian, Obsidian, like the stone, yeah. Like the stone, yeah. And it's software, right? Yeah, it's software and it's kind of like a mind map bubbly thing and I'm pretty visual. And so I really like the bubbles because when I'm going in and actually wanting to develop a piece of content, I, to me, that's not something I need to schedule. I need to just go, this bubble, this bubble. And so that's kind of how I'm currently progressing that. It took a while to kind of get all the pieces in place because I would get one piece done. I'm like, okay, I'm still missing this, still missing this. And so I feel like I've got things well organized for myself and I'm tweeting again. So I'm excited about that. Nice, excellent. Well, tell us about the offers you have for your clients. What does, tell us about one or two of them, are your favorites? Okay, so I have a full career system where I work with folks over roughly a nine week program where we go through and kind of deep dive into career blocks and things of that sort. There's also another program that I relaunch that I'm pretty excited about called a money healing program. And this applies for both professionals as well as entrepreneurs where we work together to uncover those subconscious or early money blocks that were programmed into you. And so in that kind of work, we work to kind of understand your relationship to money. And then we work to kind of start clearing those blocks through whatever modality seems appropriate. So those are kind of the two active programs I have right now that I'm really excited about. Yeah, awesome. So if you wanna get in touch with you, what's the best way, where should they follow you on social media? Yeah. Okay, so my website is careerbreakthroughsystem.com and I think the link will be below. I'm on Twitter, Texas Career Coach. I'm also on LinkedIn. And so I think the links will also be below as well. Yeah, awesome, excellent. Thank you so much, Heather, for the work that you do and all the tips you share today and the inspiration of just how you're doing this and showing all of us and demonstrating that for us. So I look forward to our next interview and yeah, thank you so much. Thank you, George, I appreciate it. Thanks.