We were lucky to catch up with Deb Penner recently and have shared our conversation below.
Deb, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Parents play a huge role in our development as youngsters and sometimes that impact follows us into adulthood and into our lives and careers. Looking back, what’s something you think you parents did right?
My parents did so many things right! But perhaps the most impactful for me as an entrepreneur and leader was to encourage me to be authentic. I’ve often said I was raised to be immune to peer pressure. My parents always validated my experiences and encouraged me to be fully myself. They taught me to release concerns over what others might say or think about me and my choices. Society still weighs in with its strictures and structures, of course, but having been raised in a home where individuality was valued has had such a freeing impact on me.
Deb, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I believe when women come home to themselves, they open the door to magic. Humanity is embarking on a time of deep healing and massive ascension. The magic that’s needed to hasten this change is authenticity. The more people who are able to recognize their unique gifts, who are living in alignment with their truest values, and who are focused on doing their purpose-driven work in the world, the faster we’ll move through these messy times and into the elevated reality that waits ahead. It’s my professional privilege to guide women on this journey, towards their authentic center where their unique magic is waiting.
I am a life coach, a professional change agent. I simplify the process of change, and anchor it in each client’s core values, so that women are able to understand what matters most to them and build a life that reflects those values. Any change, micro or macro, requires just three steps. The first is to get crystal clear on what is wanted. This means moving beyond what we’ve been told to want, the societal definition of “success.” Once a true desire is identified, it’s time to get out of the way. This means examining thoughts, beliefs, habits, emotions, and “little T” traumas that may be making action difficult or inefficient. I teach my clients various practices, including EFT/Tapping, Psych-K, journaling, meditation, inner child work, and shadow work, that help them remove roadblocks to change. Finally, we must get in gear. Action is the answer! All results come from action and aligned action, that which is generated from a managed mind and a heart-driven desire, will create the kind of results my clients are seeking.
My road to this approach has been long and winding, paralleling my own personal growth. I began working in coaching more than 15 years ago, with a focus on health and fitness coaching. I entered this field after diet and exercise allowed me to manage my mental health following a particularly challenging period in my life. In my mid-twenties, I found myself so debilitated by depression that I was regularly missing work because I simply couldn’t get out of bed. When I finally sought help from a therapist, she encouraged me to exercise. I quickly learned that this was a vital tool for symptom management, and soon added diet to the list of ways I could help myself feel better. This was my first experience in understanding that my outcomes were mine to craft. I entered health and fitness coaching to share this knowledge–that we have a much greater level of control than most people realize. My current style of coaching has developed over the last 5 years, as I’ve broadened my approach to include a greater focus on mindset and the influence of the subconscious mind and habitual thoughts.
In addition to coaching, I also host a bi-annual women’s retreat, FEnomenon. The retreat grew out of pondering the shared suffering I saw in my clients. I wondered, what is missing for women? And one of the answers that arose was community. We are missing each other, and the shared experience of common goals and mutual growth. FEnomenon is entering its third year and has become a destination retreat for southwest Montana. Each 3-day weekend retreat features 9 presentations by 7 powerful female leaders, focused on the theme “reclaiming the feminine experience.” As women, we are so often told how we can or should experience our bodies, our minds, and our lives. FEnomenon gives women the space to define and direct our own experience.
In 2022, I founded a Butte, MT based mastermind for female entrepreneurs, Queenpins. Once again, this community grew from the realization that women are lacking and craving connection. The Queenpins meet monthly in Butte for what I lovingly call “divine feminine networking.” That means we go with the flow! We have no dues, no board, no bylaws. Instead, we gather in support of one another and allow the group’s needs to be expressed organically and met in the same fashion. We may stay with a planned topic for two hours, or bounce from one Queen’s question to the next. We’ve studied using cell phones to take professional business photos, talked social media marketing, and even spent one meeting practicing accepting compliments. This year we’ve added a monthly social event, and our fempreneurs have the opportunity to connect directly with another member via random business card pairings, as well. In spite of, or perhaps because of, our lack of contrived structure, the group has enjoyed many business partnerships, referrals, and a growing member base.
Though our brothers face their own struggles and need deep healing every bit as much as women, it is my professional calling to serve my sisters. My mission is to provide women with permission, provocation, and powerful tools to find their authentic center and live joyfully from that space. My days are as full as my heart and I love creating space, inspiration, and opportunities for the women in my communities!
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Just one lesson?! So much of entrepreneurial success is unlearning. More than 90% of our thinking and decision making takes place on the unconscious level. In turn, the subconscious is filled with “lessons” it learned in early childhood, before the rational and logical aspects of our brains have come online. Many of these beliefs reflect the child-like mind that created them, and they are often limiting to us as we become adults with big dreams and audacious goals.
In particular, I’ve had to unlearn a lack mentality around money. My father is a very responsible money manager, a truth evidenced by his relatively early retirement and my parents’ ability to live very comfortably on their investments and retirement income. One of the reasons my folks are so comfortable now is because my father prioritized saving, a habit he taught me from a very early age. Pay yourself first and it’s not what you make that breaks you, it’s what you spend were common sayings in my home.
This is useful advice, and has served me well. I bought my first home at 21 and have never in my adult life been one of the more than 50% of Americans with less than $1000 in the bank (Fortune). However, this focus on saving also translated through my child-mind into a fear of spending. I’ve spent most of my life feeling like there isn’t enough money, entirely unrelated to how much I’m actually earning or have access to via savings and investments. At times in my life this has looked like owning no socks without holes while fully funding my IRA, or a willingness to buy new books (treasured in my family and in my heart), but not new bras.
In my business, it’s looked like a 4-word story: I can’t afford it. I can’t afford that training. I can’t afford a VA. I can’t afford to pay for marketing. Which can sound quite responsible. Excessive business debt has sunk many an entrepreneurial ship. But what it actually translates into is, I can’t afford growth in my business.
I’ve had to work in many ways and on many levels to unlearn this fear of spending and lack mentality around my personal and business finances. And while I’ve made significant progress (I own no sock with holes these days), this limiting belief still sneaks up on me from time to time. My husband, who is also a business owner, recently asked me how I was doing gaining new clients. I lamented my late 2022 slow down, citing our small community and the need for marketing to take me to the next level. “Why aren’t you doing what you need to reach a new market?” he asked. I can’t afford it, I replied. Gasp! There it was again, my old story.
I didn’t catch myself at the moment, but a few weeks later realized that my tired old lines had reappeared. I’d forgotten Robert Kiyosaki’s rich dad’s best advice: never say you can’t afford it. Ask how you can afford it. One of the benefits of being a life coach is the ability to avoid mind drama when you realize you’ve messed up. No shame or guilt in my game, I simply pivoted and got down to figuring out how to afford it. I’ve hired a marketing firm and know I will find the funding, and a new market, with ease.
Have you ever had to pivot?
Amongst my favorite professional hats you’ll find one with a big anti-hustle feather in it. I earned that feather. By hustling myself ill. I’m now a crusader against burnout and the do-it-all, have-it-all culture that fans the flames.
Like many entrepreneurs, I was once fully invested in hustle culture. I was always seeking more, I wore busy-ness like a toxic Girl Scout badge, and sleep was waiting until I died. I already had one successful business, so true to my hustle colors, in 2015 I added a second. This addition found me working 12-16 hours a day, seven days a week. I quickly faded from my family’s radar. I missed my sister’s wedding, my father’s 75th birthday. My husband stopped asking me to join him in social activities and travel, knowing my answer would be “sorry, babe–gotta work.” The only school dance my daughter attended where I found the time to go and take pictures was her last, senior prom. You might think these missed moments would start adding up, but I saw them as the price of success and I hustled on.
I kept pushing myself at this breakneck pace through the summer of 2017, when my hair started falling out. I continued to push as I visited doctor after doctor, seeking the cause of this mysterious symptom. Each doctor asked me if I was fatigued, and each time I replied, I don’t think so. I’m tired, I’d say. But I earn it. I earn it! Looking back I’m jaw-dropped at how naïve I was. What kind of compensation is exhaustion? Why was I invested in balding? What, exactly, was I working for?
What I truly earned was a deep lesson. It was 2019 before I admitted that I was experiencing fatigue. I had switched doctors, yet again, and my newest physician tested my pupillary reflex. When I tried to sell her my line about earning my exhaustion, she wasn’t buying. Your body is telling me you’re fatigued, she said. Your body doesn’t lie. She tested my hormones and showed me that my endocrine function would have been improved by dropping the whole system into a raging dumpster fire. My body was crying out for help. I had officially worked myself sick.
The intervening years have been full of humbling challenge and deep gratification. I have learned to truly rest, to be still or in nurturing motion with the full intention of honoring and healing my mind and body and without guilt or judgement. I have re-written my definition of myself as an athlete. I have started deep into the eyes of hustle, and seen it for the shyster that it is. I have wrested my work (and my health!) from the hands of cultural messaging, and I refuse to give it back.
Work waits now. It waits for me to sleep, to eat nourishing food, to nurture my relationships, to meditate, to heal. Surprisingly, I get as much done now working around 25 hours per week as I did working 12 hours per day. I am focused, calm, and efficient with my time. I spend time solely on things that are aligned for me, personally and professionally. And I am whole-heartedly dedicated to bringing as many professionals as I can reach with me, beyond the fire that consumes us.
Hustle is an empty promise. The point of hustle is more. To do more, so you can have more. But there’s no end to more. When you get more than you have now, you’ll have to hustle harder to get more than that. It’s a never-ending cycle, or rather a cycle with only one end, the end that I experienced. Illness, burnout, drop-out. Hustle is unsustainable. Which is why I’ve moved far away from this insatiable beast, and deep into my own awareness. It’s why I teach others what I’ve learned the hard way, how to turn their backs on hustle and turn inward to their own values and sense of purpose. I fully intend to starve hustle. Hold my kombucha and watch this.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.dropswithdeb.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dropswithdeb/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dropswithdeb
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dropswithdeb/
- Other: https://www.fenomenonretreat.com/
Image Credits
Photos titled “Deb-###” credited to Diva Digital Designs