Episode# 038: Goal Mapping + Building a Business with Amber Lilyestrom
This girl is a business coach, brand strategist, author, speaker, and now friend! Amber Lilly-strum is a transformational branding strategist and business coach, author and speaker. She has been featured by Entrepreneur, Mentorbox and Working Mother Magazine and is the host of The Amber Lilyestrom Show podcast. She is the creator of the Ignite Your Soul Summit annual live event in Portsmouth, NH and multiple life-changing online programs. She helps entrepreneurs turn their passions into heart-centered brands and thriving businesses.
Amber's mission is to empower women to position themselves as sought-after experts and thought leaders through the creation of an online brand presence. Her transformational mindset work sets her apart in an industry focused on a strategy-first, inner work later approach. She’s worked with thousands of women worldwide building a seven-figure business from home. PLEASE check out her work!
Tell us more about yourself, Amber! As a wife, mother, what you love, all the good stuff.
Thank you! I have been in business as an entrepreneur for the last five years and I launched my business on the heels of a near death experience that I went through during my daughter's birth. I stopped breathing on the operating room table during the c-section and I had my own just total spiritual awakening, just an invitation to change the way that I was doing things in my life. And it was also an opportunity to just get massive clarity that was super divinely gifted and guided. I think it's important to note that I say often I tell this story that we get feathers on our path, right? That kind of like tap us and say, hey girl, you might want to think about moving in a different direction.
This isn't really super aligned with the path for your life that you've kind of envisioned for yourself. And then sometimes we get a brick after the feather. If we don't listen to the feather, then we kind of get smacked over the head with a brick and something might happen. We get in a little car accident or you know, just little things happen that just feel they feel pretty devastating and frustrating, but they don't completely knock us off our path. And we just think, oh, it's this thing that's, that's happened and I just need to deal with this now rather than recognizing the synchronicity and the symbolism of what's happening to us on our journey. And then the last part is when we don't listen and I don't want this to sound too ominous, but I know people listening to this are probably nodding their heads and saying, girl, yeah, tell me the last part.
Cause I think I got that. It's the Mack truck. And for me the near death experience really was my Mack truck moment. And it was this opportunity to wake up and to step on the path of what I knew I wanted to do. I was bursting at the seams, I was writing this little blog and people were commenting and loving this blog that I was doing and I was building all this stuff in the background, but I wasn't doing anything with it. And I was staying in this track and I had the story in these beliefs that I had to stay in my corporate job, which at the time I was the associate athletic director for marketing and strategic initiatives at the University of New Hampshire. I had grown over the last 10 years leading up to that moment from marketing coordinator who had no benefits and a $20,000 a year salary up to having a much bigger salary and becoming the person who was going to be the president of all sport marketing professionals in the country.
So I had a lot of upward mobility and I had been working really hard. I was teaching at the university. I was getting promoted every two years in that achievement system. I was really killing it, but I was also killing myself in the process and I wasn't living in alignment with what my soul's calling really was. And so I had this experience and it gave me the invitation on the other side to have, obviously massive clarity, but also now three and a half months of maternity leave, which I had never experienced stopping ever before in my life. I had been a division one athlete before that. And in order to achieve that goal, I literally had to always be running. And in the process of that I developed an eating disorder. So that kept me running and over-exercising and I just didn't know other mode than go.
And so I had these three and a half months to really do a lot of deep soul searching to become a mother, to figure out how to take care of a baby. And my entire world just completely did a 180 and it shifted on his access. And when I went back to work, I just knew that this wasn't what I was supposed to be doing now. And it was time. And so I opened myself up leading into 2014 to receiving guidance and clarity and coaching and programs and the things that I needed to learn from the people who are already doing it really well in order to embark on this journey myself. And so by the time I did that, ani, our daughter was eight months old and I walked away from my corporate career with one client and it was a big leap of faith, but it was the right one.
And I knew it. I knew it in my bones. And I also knew that it was going to be the catalyst that pushed me to take the action I needed to take, which I was safe in my job. I didn't have to take action. But once I gave my notice, I had to take action. I had four clients by the time I left a month later. And then I was the most free I'd ever felt in my whole life. I had gone from working 40 to 60 hours a week, sometimes more depending on what events we had on the weekends and on the nights to now working during the nap time hustle, which was the only time that I had.
And because I was so good at getting things done and I was, I just took all of the skills and all the things that I learned there and utilize them in the career that I created for myself. And you know, it's now been five years since then. We retired my husband in 2017 from his police career and we've helped just thousands of women, you know, and families all over the world to come home to themselves to create a life and a business because we don't have a life. If we don't, we don't have a business. If we don't have a life, right. That changed things for them that allow them to really step into more of what it is they desire across the board, not just in their career but as mothers, as partners, as a borning souls, you know, within ourselves and getting to know ourselves and have a more intimate relationship with self as well.
What would you speak into those people that, that are tearing behind between the brick and the Mack truck and they are starting to do the things, but they're not like turning it into something monetized or structured or an actual business?
Can I ask people to do a little quick exercise? So if you're in a place that's safe to close your eyes, I want to ask our listeners to do that.
So the invitation is to think about where you are right now on your path and with what you are, what's beating in your heart and what it is you're desiring really deeply and to just visualize what you know that maybe is a secret that nobody else knows about or maybe just your closest people do, or maybe you have a coach and they know about it, but just that highest version and vision of yourself. Just to see that crystal clear. And I know if you're listening to this podcast, then you have that. You do have that vision and it's okay to be afraid of it. And so what I want to ask you now is to think about one year from now, if you continue doing things exactly the way you're doing them in this moment, continuing to keep that blog secret, continuing to just jot down in your journals and not get things out into the world, continuing to map out the perfect course or the perfect live event experience, but not actually book the venue or launched the course or work with a coach or whomever is going to help you do that.
How does your life look one year from now without taking any additional action? What does it feel like in your heart one year from now keeping all these things under wraps, this thing that's ready to burst inside of you? Just feel into that energy, feel, whatever that is and just embrace that for a moment. It's okay if it feels bad.
Okay. Now we're going to just fast forward from there. Let's go like five years out from there. So total now of six years from where you are today, you have not done anything to move forth on this path. You are still keeping it under wraps. Perhaps by this point you've quit, you've gotten another corporate job or some sort of side household that isn't really fulfilling. You just go there for a minute. What does that feel like? I urge you to do the math on how much older your child will be. That's usually really helpful from a context perspective.
Six years out from now, how old were you? One of your kids be, how old were your dog be? How old will you be six years from now and you have not taken action on the thing you're desiring so deeply. What does that feel like in your body? Okay, take a breath in. Let it out. Okay, so you got that. Now we're going to do this faster. I want you to rewind to right now, right where your feet are. You just experienced a glimpse into a future that you do not desire. You don't want to feel that way. You don't want your body to feel that way. You don't want all the things that come with that. Now, let's ask you one year from now, starting today, the day you listen to this podcast going forward, you are taking action. You are sharing that blog post.
You're putting it out on social media. You are inviting people to that event. You are hiring that coach that you know you need to work with in order to take action. You're getting on the plane to go to the places you need to go to. Whatever it is. You're getting your numbers calculated with your partner to make sure you know what your number is for what your business needs to earn in order to achieve that freedom. You are so desiring. You're doing it. You are doing it. Okay, one year from now, how do you feel in your body? What has changed? What is different? How do you feel when you look in the mirror? What are you excited about? Perfect. Now, let's fast forward five years from there. Six years from today, how old are you now? How old are your kids? What do your kids see when they see you six years from today? Having taken that action and continue to sustain that action into evolve and to grow and expand and shift into the next version of you. Oh my goodness. What do you feel like in your physical body? What does that energy, how alive do you feel?
Who are you connected with now that you could have never even imagined? Just dip into the richness of your friendships, your bonds, the knowingness of yourself, and celebrate it and ground that feeling into your body right now. If you can put your hand on your heart and feel into that in this moment, lock that emotion in and recognize that your decision on the day you listened to this podcast was the catalyst for you to change the whole course of history for yourself, your family, and this beautiful life that you're getting to live. Take another breath in. Let it out.