Podcast Episode 337: 3 Easy Ways to Get Accountability with Your Goals Transcripts

Please note: Transcripts for the No Guilt Mom Podcast were created using AI. As a result, there may be some minor errors.

Cause I know after having failed at multiple things that the failure isn’t the worst part. The worst part is like never going after it in the first place. That’s where I have my regrets. Welcome to the no guilt mom podcast. I’m your host Joanne Crowe joined here by the lovely Bri Tucker. Yo, yo, yo, what’s up? What’s up? Trying out new ones, Bri. Huh? Yo, yo, Yes I am. You gotta, you gotta.

2025 is going to be a year of transformation for me. And you know what? Hold me accountable to that. huh. I see what you did there. Cause we’re knuckles. Yeah. Holding yourself accountable. What do you want to transform into? This is what I’m interested now. Cause I can’t hold you accountable to anything that is not clear. That I’m trying to find a new intro. I’m trying to do something new this year. I don’t know what that’ll be though.

So if anyone has any advice for Brie on new intros, you can come and give it to her in our podcast group. We have the link for you right below. That’s where you get to chat with us directly and tell us what you like and what you don’t like about the episodes. geez. For our mental health, I’ll take a work on and a compliment over, yes, suck and quit telling women to stop doing their job. And that is…

Kind of what we see in our guns sometimes. Yeah, it’s funny, it stings a bit. It doesn’t hurt me. Because first of all, okay, so here’s the difference in my opinion. So tell us what you guys think of this too. When I see things like that, I feel like that person must have a horrible, unhappy life. So needs to go and make fun of or reduce.

some woman on the internet who looks like she’s happy and maybe he can knock her down a peg to make him feel a little better. At least I think this may be how I am mentally dealing with the onslaught of comments like that. Because they are, they are increasing. Yeah, want you guys to know that, my gosh, it is possible to do that and to also have a happy partner and a happy family. You don’t have to.

JoAnn Crohn (02:14.798)

Shoot, what’s word I’m looking for? I was going to say forgate. I don’t think that’s a word. Okay, we’re opening up the Brie dictionary. You don’t have to forgate happiness. Forgate happiness? Like neglect? Negate. I think you want negate and forget, and you want to combine that. I do. That’s your made up word, I do. do. I do. You guys are really seeing behind the curtains here of Brie. I just… Yeah.

Yeah. Can I just say that the behind the curtains Brie is the best part of Brie. It is. It’s the part I get to see all the time. It’s the funnest part. Nobody wants people who are perfect. Nobody wants that. Well, the other thing is like I come with my own little translation station where people have to figure out what I’m trying to say. You know what’s really funny? So we had a birthday dinner for me at Brickyard, which is a great restaurant in Chandler. One of my favorites. my gosh. Josh and I went back this past weekend, had the gnocchi, the blue cheese gnocchi again. It’s the best dish.

Anyway, we were talking about the last time we were there, which was my birthday, and it was you and me and Shana and Josh. And he knows that you, me and Shana, we all have ADHD. And he’s like, watching your guys’ conversation made me realize I do not have ADHD. And I’m like, really? What were the factors? I’m curious now. The speed in which we could switch topics and yet know exactly where we were in the conversation was a

astounding to him. He said he was lost the entire time. Well, my husband believes he is on the spectrum as well and I will not, from my past experience working in the field of early interventional disabilities, I will not disagree with that inclination that my husband has. So I’ll have to ask him what he thinks when we have conversations. I will say, there are quite a few times where I have to pause and go, are you still with me? And he’ll be like, go back to this. Okay. Okay.

Sometimes I’ll be, okay, I know this is out of left field that I’m saying this, but here’s how I got here. You said this, so should we even think of this, so should we even think of this? And then we’re here. And that’s how we’re And there’s always a path. There’s always a path. It just works very, very quickly. It works very quickly. But today we’re not talking about ADHD, even though that’s a part of our lives forever. And I think that

JoAnn Crohn (04:28.524)

You know, noticing ADHD and noticing your tendency and how you tend to interact with the world is actually really important when you’re talking about goals because a lot of the traditional goal processes have failed me in the past. don’t work. Yeah. No. And I felt a lot of shame like, my gosh, it’s me. I can’t hit my goals. But really it’s just not meant to work with my brain. Yeah. It’s that your brain is not wired that way. Yep.

And we have a process that actually works for so many of our balance members brains. It’s a combination of what we call rainbow planning and a combination of making a dream goal as well as going for your BHAG. And we’re specifically talking today about how once you have a goal, how you can keep yourself accountable to it. And so with that, let’s get on with the show. You want mom life to be easier.

That’s our goal too. Our mission is to raise more self-sufficient and independent kids, and we’re going to have fun doing it. We’re going to help you delegate and step back. Each episode, we’ll tackle strategies for positive discipline, making our kids more responsible and making our lives better in the process. Welcome to the No Guilt Mom podcast.

JoAnn Crohn (05:52.6)

So we talked, Bri, about how we have failed at goals in the past and that we kind of, mean, you didn’t say you shamed yourself. Did you shame yourself when you didn’t? hells to the yeah. hells to the yeah. you, okay, Joanne, I shame myself for not checking one thing off of my to-do list at work. Trust me, when there are big goals and I don’t make them, I’m like, you freaking suck. But hey, and then at the same time, I swear to God,

I do have two little beans on my shoulders, one that’s like, you freaking suck, and the other one’s that, it’s okay, you’re amazing. They fight all the time. don’t know if I have the you’re amazing. I have a you’re so smart person and then I have, ooh, what’s going on over here? But when we’re talking about goals, there has been goals in my life I have not reached. I mean, that I’ve quit, that I’ve absolutely quit.

And I haven’t given myself crap about that because one of my big character traits I think I’m really good at is persistence. Like I will not make something once and I’ll go after it again and then I’ll go after it again and then I’ll go after it again. So when I drop a goal, it’s really like not aligned with anything I want to do anymore. Part of that is working in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles. I, for my whole life, I loved TV.

I loved movies. was one of those people who you could look at an actor in a movie and I could play that six degrees of Kevin Bacon game, but not for Kevin Bacon for like any single actor and connect them to like another actor. Okay. That’s a super talent. I think we need you at all of the trivia parties.

I’m not really good at it anymore because that was my interest in high school. would like see a movie and then I’d look at the entire cast list and then I would still, I still do this to some extent. I just don’t have as much time to watch as much TV and movies as I used to, but I would like follow the trail and be like, Ooh, what have they been in? What have they been in? What have they been in? And I wanted to work in that world for so, so long. And when I got my first like professional job in that world, which was working at Endeavor, a talent agency in Beverly Hills,

JoAnn Crohn (08:06.088)

now Endeavor William Morris. have dreams of being represented by them someday and like walking into that office and be like, I was an assistant here. Hello, old boss. How are you? Did you know? you’re working for me now? that’s really cool. I love it. love it. Someday. Someday, guys, mark my words, someday it’s going to happen. But I remember me and another mail room.

person. Her name is Jen. We were talking to one of the agents and I’ll mention this agent by name because I mean, it’s not a bad story, Greg Siegel. He used to be the tree at Stanford. When he went to Stanford, he was the mascot, which is a tree, guys. It’s a tree? I didn’t know Stanford’s mascot is a tree. Yes. Wow. So he was saying, you know, like most people who come into this business are gone within five years. And I heard that at the time, I’m like, not me. I’m not going to be gone within five years.

I started in 2002. I decided to leave in 2006. So I made it four years in the business. But when I decided to leave, it was just because I didn’t feel the joy of it. It was so money related. It was a bit more of a boys club now. I hope that that has changed. I mean, the Me Too movement has happened since I’ve been in Hollywood, but you know, total boys club.

Not many women I’m seeing represented in the high level CEO positions. I actually had a mentor. There was a great organization called Step Up Women’s Network, which put me with a mentor who worked at ABC. And she took me out to dinner and she was lovely, chanting. She became president of ABC. She’s amazing. I don’t know where she is now. I should look her up. But I was just in there. And when I got laid off from the company I worked for, and it was a big 20 person layoff,

And that was a small company, maybe like 60 in the whole company was a big layoff. I had no desire to go after anymore. Like I went to that one Warner Brothers interview that I talk about all the time. And after that one, I’m just like, I’m just not into this. can’t, I can’t talk about this anymore. I can’t pretend I care about it anymore. I’m like seeing people act a certain way and I just don’t want to be that way. I want more heart in my business. I want more like.

JoAnn Crohn (10:22.254)

heart in my life. And that’s when I decided to go back and be a teacher and quit the whole thing. So that was one goal I didn’t reach because I didn’t have the heart anymore in it. Yeah, I love that story because it has so much depth. Mine is more shallow. And I’m going to share mine with you guys right after this break. Okay, so I actually had two.

two goals stories and I shared them both with Joanna. I’m like, which one should I share? And we decided on this one. So there was a time when kind of like you, where I was going through like a bit of a career change. So I had started working in early intervention, early childhood, and I utterly loved that field. It was amazing. I was in it for like 10 years as a manager. Unfortunately, the nonprofit I was working for went through some major management changes and

It just made for a toxic work environment. I did not have a safe environment. I remember going to HR and HR being like, what do want me to do about it? And I’m like, stop harassing me. You’re HR, doing the job. It’s like Kentucky Fried Chicken running out of chicken. You had one job. Okay, it was a small company, it’s small nonprofit. It’s large nationally, but small here locally.

And I was just ready to get out anywhere I could go. And I went to an ill-fated grant position at a local hospital, which was amazing. I loved working there. did. But grant position, say, like just some scorn because grants aren’t always around. And I didn’t realize that. So I left a place where I thought I was going to spend my whole career, the nonprofit that I did not see getting any better. And it was awful.

Like it was awful in the sense that our manager was not a good manager, very toxic work environment. So when we lost our grant three years later and I had a two year old and a four year old turning five going into kindergarten, I was like, I’m done. I’m so tired. Like the first place I was at, I couldn’t say X, Y, and Z because I worked for this state government agency and this nonprofit. And we weren’t allowed to say this. And then I couldn’t say anything when I worked at this hospital because I couldn’t recommend other

JoAnn Crohn (12:42.124)

hospitals and I was just tired of getting like jaded. So I started my own business and it was phenomenal. Well, I didn’t exactly have the most patient partner and in his defense, when I said I wanted to start my own business, I think he was fine with the idea of me doing it for like a year. I think most people that have started a business can tell you that it’s hard to get it completely successful within a year. So I did not make it.

But I tried, I tried. I held onto that dream for three, four years. I did parent education for zero to five. I loved being my own boss and I loved being able to support others, but I didn’t have supports. Like my sister was there, she had her own business. And so when my husband at the time started like knocking on the door being like, hey,

Did you enjoy your hobby? It’s time to get back to a real nine to five. I buckled. I didn’t have what I needed to be able to stay accountable or to be able to articulate what I was doing. And so I had to let that dream die. And that was probably the biggest dream I have had, the biggest goal I have tried to do in my life. And it crashed and it was hard to come back from those. It is. Yeah. But both of us talked about reasons why.

both of our goals failed and what we learned from it. So I didn’t have the heart in it anymore. You didn’t have the support in place to support you through the hard stuff. Yep. And I think both of us can benefit actually from the last one that we’re going to share, but we’re going to share these with you in order. So the first tip we have, the easy way to get accountability for your goals. And this is something we actually do in our balance community with our value assessment is look at your values.

Look at what you hold dear to you because it is different for every single person out there. Like what I value isn’t what people that I was working with valued in the entertainment industry. Yep. And that’s where it got a little hairy for me. I didn’t want to make the most money. I just wanted to be with people and have fun and create. Yeah.

JoAnn Crohn (14:53.804)

Like, and I think that’s a big thing. think a lot of us, when we’re picking goals, we go with like what’s popular. And I don’t mean it in a bad way. It’s kind of like, okay, bear with me. This is gonna be a stretch on this metaphor. It’s kind of like trying on the season’s newest outfits. It looks really dang good on that model, that mannequin there at the storefront with all that stuff. But then when I put it on my body, why does it look like I’m wearing a potato sack? Like, I don’t get it.

And I think that’s how it is sometimes with these goals. I’ll see somebody has a goal of like, I’m going to have financial freedom by paying off all my credit cards in one year. I can do it. Or I’m going to start eating clean, that thing like foreign in my food. But that’s not like you just said, that’s not really something that gets you excited and passionate. You’re like, yeah, I’d like to eat better. It’s like we look at the outcome of the goal and we think about how we’ll feel.

when that goal is accomplished. Like eating clean, my gosh, I’ll feel so great. And people will be like, whoa, look at her. She’s completely changed how she looks. And like you think about all those outcomes, but you don’t realize the amount of time it takes when you’re actually going forward to achieve that goal. Well, not only the time, but if it’s not something that resonates with you, how are you going to keep up that motivation? Well, yeah. And what I mean by time is that, you know, it is so long.

that you are working towards it, that, the period that you accomplish it is so short, that it has to be something that really excites you during the journey and during the process, else you’re gonna give up. It’s not gonna be worth it. Right. You are exactly right. Like if you don’t have that personal tie-in, then it just isn’t. It isn’t. Like you’re fire. Come on baby, let’s get fire. Sorry. Something I learned in Hollywood,

is that I have a huge need for significance. And I have to say, like being in that job and talking to my friends back home, maybe you’re like, yes, I work in Hollywood. Even now, I mean, I bring it up all the time. Why? Because it’s cool. And I feel cool talking about it. And that I think is what initially attracted it. But then when I got into the actual business, the actual business didn’t interest me as much. Some parts of it did.

JoAnn Crohn (17:14.498)

I like talking to some of the people. Some of the people were not great, but some of the people were good. And you you just, go through that. And I think that brings us into the next thing that you need to get accountability through your goals. And we’re going to get into that right after this. The next thing that you need to get accountability through your goals is community. Yes. So important. I think that you and I were talking about that before about how you’ve started working out recently and you were doing workouts at home.

And then you started going to a Pilates studio and working out there and you forgot how much you enjoy that personal connection that community while you’re doing other people. It’s funny because like yesterday I went to Pilates and I go in the middle of the day because I find like right after lunch I tend to hit like a tired peak where I don’t even want to think and I can’t think. I’m like, might as well work out then. So I went to Pilates and I was just sitting there on my reformer before class and I’m like, so guys, like,

I’m alone in my house all day. Who wants to talk to me? Because everyone else is very quiet in their own little worlds. And I’m here being like, yeah, let me tell you a story about how I bought a hoodie for my dog. Like, it’s helpful to have other people that are either on that same journey with you or that at least have that connection. And one of the things that we noted on there is about shadowworking and meetups. And I think that’s huge. You can tell when I’m starting to get a little bit feeling lonely.

I’ll be like, hey, you want to meet up and like go work at the coffee shop in the morning, which is a lot. is Brie. Joanne, I feel like we need a whole day together where I understand exactly what you’re talking about. Like a whole day. I think part of it is I’m very visual, am I not? Yes. you can tell conversations go a whole lot smoother when we’re together in person than when we’re trying to communicate. Even on this, where we can see each other because we record everything with video.

I still get lost in translation. I do. I get lost and then I don’t know what’s happening and then I start freaking out. Well, it’s like a community is so important and like I think it bears to note that you don’t need to be working on the same goals with your community. You could just be a community who is working on your own things but are going through similar hard.

JoAnn Crohn (19:34.882)

hard things. I belong to a lot of communities of just female entrepreneurs and we don’t have the same businesses. In fact, like one of my good friends I talked to a lot of Shelby who runs Homesteading and it’s like there’s nothing really to do with parenting advice except that it is a business and it’s good to like talk with other people about that. It’s like what you were saying, it’s you just didn’t have the support around you. Yeah.

And I think that it’s also important to, like you said, you have the support you have, you have others. And I want to say the word, I want to say accountability because being able to share with somebody else the very vulnerable parts of your plans, because yes, you might not succeed in them. And saying them out loud makes that failure real, the possibility of failure real, but it also makes the possibility of having a win and a gain real.

as well. So it’s kind like that, can’t have the bad without the good. And accountability isn’t bad. It’s just about telling somebody you’re going to do something and then they help check in on you. Maybe they’ll help with brainstorming as well. There’s a lot of things you can get out of accountability. You said something that sparked something in me. said there’s a vulnerability and a failure. And I never see that.

and telling people and having accountability. I don’t ever see like having the vulnerability of failure because I know after having failed at multiple things that the failure isn’t the worst part. The worst part is like never going after it in the first place. That’s where I have my regrets, never going after it. Because if I fail, you know what? It’s like what they say, failure is one more thing to learn or one more like way to learn. there was that, yeah, but wasn’t there that thing about

Thomas Edison came up with so many ways to not build a light bulb, but only needed one way to make it work. Yeah. Well, failure, I don’t feel like I ever fail unless I give up. And even when I give up, I don’t feel like I failed because my heart wasn’t in it then. I think I see failure as such a temporary thing in such a temporary state. It’s like when we do launches here at No-Guilt Mom and we’re like, well,

JoAnn Crohn (21:50.454)

That wasn’t so great. Okay. What can we do differently this time? Okay. Let’s go after it this time. Here’s what a launch looks like behind the scenes of No Guilt Mom, just to kind of give you guys a little bit of comicalness. Cause I think you can already tell from this episode that I am very much the one who likes to stay quote unquote safe. So a launch, Joanne comes in, hits the buzzer. I got an awesome idea guys. We’re going to do X, Y, and Z.

And it’s still going lights are all going off in the back. and we’re gonna do it in three days. turns white and then starts running around for her floaties. Her whistle. Where’s my survival pack? I got to put everything on and Joanne’s still like just there like, don’t worry, we can swim in our clothes. It’s all good. Let’s just dive right into this. I’m like, it’s all good. I have a waterproof holder for my phone. mean everything works fine before I touch. the water is cold.

Right? That’s behind it. Joanne’s like, give me your hand, we’ll do it together. Then we jump and I’ve got my little floaties and I’m like, doggy paddling in the middle of the ocean and she’s just making great strides. Well, it’s one of those things where when you try something, like make it big and figure it out along the way, because that is like the fastest way to get there. And like part of me is like never, never give up, never surrender. I I could tell you like,

Never give up. podcast here is a great example of that. So like we started this podcast four years ago, right? In the middle of the pandemic, 2020, Bre had just come on No Guilt Mom. I’m like, Bre, guess what? We’re going to do a podcast. And I had never talked to her about this before anything. And she’s like, okay, okay. And it’s not the easiest thing to start a podcast and to

get people to listen to the podcast and to build a community over the podcast. like a year into the podcast, we’re like, well, we have like 3000 a month in downloads and whomp, whomp. Like it was still pretty low, but we just didn’t give up. I mean, it wasn’t any sort of like, hey, like, yeah, we have this plan. We’re going to go this, this, this, this, and that’ll get us to the destination. And I mean, we had those ideas. like, we could.

JoAnn Crohn (24:13.762)

let’s try this, let’s try this, let’s try this. And it’s like the throwing spaghetti at the wall and they don’t work and they don’t work and they don’t work and they don’t work. then finally you get like these lucky scenarios that appear for you and that leads you in the direction. But like that would have never happened if you had, if we had quit and given up. I mean, I could tell you our turning points in this podcast. The first turning point was Jess Leahy, who we talk about in actually the rerun of her episode.

how she connected us with so many people to interview really gave us some street cred there being connected by Jess Lahey. So we’re ultimately always grateful to her and Amy and Margaret from What Fresh Hell, they also appeared as life rafts for us. talked to Margaret in the lobby of the hotel down in LA where Mom 2.0 was and they were starting this ad company.

And they’re like, yeah, you need at least like 50,000 downloads. And we’re like, 5,000, womp, womp. But at least there’s a number. But they told us, hey, like, you know, here are some things we tried. Yeah. And we found a community with all that. And that community is what helped us like continue on. And that’s something that is huge. You need that support and community and just to keep going. We do. And what’s the third thing?

that we’re recommending to everybody today. Well, we talk a lot about the gap and the gain in balance. And that is, it was in a book by Dr. Benjamin Hardy. The book is actually called The Gap and the Game. But it’s basically how to keep yourself motivated through everything. Because going back to like this podcast for instance, because it’s an easy thing to talk about, because you listening to it know exactly what it is. If Bree and I had always compared ourselves,

against like the top of the charts. And we’re still not the top of the chart. We’re still working towards that. We would get deflated pretty dang quickly. We’d be like, there is no hope for us. Like we could never achieve those levels of those people. Why even try? Versus when we look back and we’re like, my gosh, we started this four years ago with like nothing and look who we’ve met since then. Look what like we’ve achieved since then. Look at like

JoAnn Crohn (26:30.722)

the people like we’ve affected since then, those two scenarios are just a choice you have to make. One, you’re thinking in gap, which is comparing yourself to everybody who’s higher than you and like this imaginary horizon. That’s really what makes you think like, like there’s no use. You keep looking at how big that gap is. Yeah. First is looking at the gain, which is how far we’ve come along and comparing it to our own growth.

And when you look at the gain, you’re like, whoa, like I never thought I would be here. Like we’ve achieved quite a lot in that short amount of time. And that’s what propels you to keep going. So look back at like your history and what you’ve overcome and where you’ve been, that’s going to give you more strength than seeing the the gap, which you will just deflate you. you need to, you need to live in the gain as much as possible.

Keep, instead of looking at how far you have to go and focusing on that part. And that’s the, mean, it’s fine to acknowledge it. It is what I, I mean, right? Cause you can’t come up with a plan if you don’t know where you need to end, but give yourself some peace. Like I looked up, do you want to know, like take a wild stab, how many podcasts there are in the United States? Ever? Like, or just the parenting category. Like how many there are?

I think I’ve seen this number. think it’s something like over 100,000. Estimation is three to four million. What? Gosh, that’s a lot of podcasts. That’s what Google gave me as I looked it up really fast. Theoretically, there’s anywhere between three to four million podcasts going on right now in the United States. If we were to look at what it would take to be number one, that is a

but we’ve been on the top 100, we’re on top 50. We are proud of that shiznit because we have worked our booties off and we have built a community and we continue to grow and to see ourselves in the game because we’re making it. So to get accountability for your goals, just keep in mind and find do your goals really align with your values and what you really want versus I use this all the time because this does not align with my values.

JoAnn Crohn (28:49.838)

Having a perfectly clean environment or house or everything perfectly under control, not aligned with my values. I am chaos and I’m accepting my chaos, it’s a fun chaos, controlled chaos, but that’s not important to me. So I will never achieve that goal. I will never achieve it. Identifying what’s important. That is huge, huge, huge. Yes. And then second, the community.

that’ll support you through all of the struggle and the challenges and also be there to celebrate with you your wins. Make sure your community is there to celebrate the wins because if they’re not, they’re a toxic community. They are. True. True that. If they won’t give you a sticker because you didn’t earn this week, then that may not be the best I mean, I can give you an example of toxic behavior like that and it comes from family, but it’s not my family. It’s one of my daughter’s friends’ families.

who she posted publicly that she goes to her grandma’s house and her grandma’s like, like, what are you getting right now in school? Like, what’s your GPA? And she’s like, it’s like a, like, like grandma said, yeah, when I, had all A’s and B’s in school, what did you have? And this person’s like, it’s like a 4.0. And grandma goes, grades aren’t that important anyways. Like, why are you so bragging about it? Like toxic.

Yes, do not fall for that community. Don’t for that community. Embracing community. And then what’s tip number three? And then live in the game. Live in the game. So if you feel like, let’s see in this episode, first of all, you were able to get through all of our squirrel, squirrel, shiny objects, tiny object. Because I feel like that kind of came.

If you’re an ADHD diagnostic tool, there is out here. If you’re able to follow that, you might have ADHD. But if you found that that sounds good and you’re like, this is what I need, that is the environment that we provide for you in Balance. We have a link in the show notes below. Yeah. But we hope that this episode brought you a lot of information, even if you don’t decide to join us in Balance. And we want to hear your goals. Come and share them with us in our podcast group.

JoAnn Crohn (31:02.178)

That link is right under here in the show notes where we get to talk with you, get to have fun conversations, come join it. And until next time, remember the best mom’s a happy mom. Take care of you. We’ll talk to you later. Thanks for stopping by.

JoAnn Crohn (00:00.11)

Cause I know after having failed at multiple things that the failure isn’t the worst part. The worst part is like never going after it in the first place. That’s where I have my regrets. Welcome to the no guilt mom podcast. I’m your host Joanne Crowe joined here by the lovely Bri Tucker. Yo, yo, yo, what’s up? What’s up? Trying out new ones, Bri. Huh? Yo, yo, Yes I am. You gotta, you gotta.

2025 is going to be a year of transformation for me. And you know what? Hold me accountable to that. huh. I see what you did there. Cause we’re knuckles. Yeah. Holding yourself accountable. What do you want to transform into? This is what I’m interested now. Cause I can’t hold you accountable to anything that is not clear. That I’m trying to find a new intro. I’m trying to do something new this year. I don’t know what that’ll be though.

So if anyone has any advice for Brie on new intros, you can come and give it to her in our podcast group. We have the link for you right below. That’s where you get to chat with us directly and tell us what you like and what you don’t like about the episodes. geez. For our mental health, I’ll take a work on and a compliment over, yes, suck and quit telling women to stop doing their job. And that is…

Kind of what we see in our guns sometimes. Yeah, it’s funny, it stings a bit. It doesn’t hurt me. Because first of all, okay, so here’s the difference in my opinion. So tell us what you guys think of this too. When I see things like that, I feel like that person must have a horrible, unhappy life. So needs to go and make fun of or reduce.

some woman on the internet who looks like she’s happy and maybe he can knock her down a peg to make him feel a little better. At least I think this may be how I am mentally dealing with the onslaught of comments like that. Because they are, they are increasing. Yeah, want you guys to know that, my gosh, it is possible to do that and to also have a happy partner and a happy family. You don’t have to.

JoAnn Crohn (02:14.798)

Shoot, what’s word I’m looking for? I was going to say forgate. I don’t think that’s a word. Okay, we’re opening up the Brie dictionary. You don’t have to forgate happiness. Forgate happiness? Like neglect? Negate. I think you want negate and forget, and you want to combine that. I do. That’s your made up word, I do. do. I do. You guys are really seeing behind the curtains here of Brie. I just… Yeah.

Yeah. Can I just say that the behind the curtains Brie is the best part of Brie. It is. It’s the part I get to see all the time. It’s the funnest part. Nobody wants people who are perfect. Nobody wants that. Well, the other thing is like I come with my own little translation station where people have to figure out what I’m trying to say. You know what’s really funny? So we had a birthday dinner for me at Brickyard, which is a great restaurant in Chandler. One of my favorites. my gosh. Josh and I went back this past weekend, had the gnocchi, the blue cheese gnocchi again. It’s the best dish.

Anyway, we were talking about the last time we were there, which was my birthday, and it was you and me and Shana and Josh. And he knows that you, me and Shana, we all have ADHD. And he’s like, watching your guys’ conversation made me realize I do not have ADHD. And I’m like, really? What were the factors? I’m curious now. The speed in which we could switch topics and yet know exactly where we were in the conversation was a

astounding to him. He said he was lost the entire time. Well, my husband believes he is on the spectrum as well and I will not, from my past experience working in the field of early interventional disabilities, I will not disagree with that inclination that my husband has. So I’ll have to ask him what he thinks when we have conversations. I will say, there are quite a few times where I have to pause and go, are you still with me? And he’ll be like, go back to this. Okay. Okay.

Sometimes I’ll be, okay, I know this is out of left field that I’m saying this, but here’s how I got here. You said this, so should we even think of this, so should we even think of this? And then we’re here. And that’s how we’re And there’s always a path. There’s always a path. It just works very, very quickly. It works very quickly. But today we’re not talking about ADHD, even though that’s a part of our lives forever. And I think that

JoAnn Crohn (04:28.524)

You know, noticing ADHD and noticing your tendency and how you tend to interact with the world is actually really important when you’re talking about goals because a lot of the traditional goal processes have failed me in the past. don’t work. Yeah. No. And I felt a lot of shame like, my gosh, it’s me. I can’t hit my goals. But really it’s just not meant to work with my brain. Yeah. It’s that your brain is not wired that way. Yep.

And we have a process that actually works for so many of our balance members brains. It’s a combination of what we call rainbow planning and a combination of making a dream goal as well as going for your BHAG. And we’re specifically talking today about how once you have a goal, how you can keep yourself accountable to it. And so with that, let’s get on with the show. You want mom life to be easier.

That’s our goal too. Our mission is to raise more self-sufficient and independent kids, and we’re going to have fun doing it. We’re going to help you delegate and step back. Each episode, we’ll tackle strategies for positive discipline, making our kids more responsible and making our lives better in the process. Welcome to the No Guilt Mom podcast.

JoAnn Crohn (05:52.6)

So we talked, Bri, about how we have failed at goals in the past and that we kind of, mean, you didn’t say you shamed yourself. Did you shame yourself when you didn’t? hells to the yeah. hells to the yeah. you, okay, Joanne, I shame myself for not checking one thing off of my to-do list at work. Trust me, when there are big goals and I don’t make them, I’m like, you freaking suck. But hey, and then at the same time, I swear to God,

I do have two little beans on my shoulders, one that’s like, you freaking suck, and the other one’s that, it’s okay, you’re amazing. They fight all the time. don’t know if I have the you’re amazing. I have a you’re so smart person and then I have, ooh, what’s going on over here? But when we’re talking about goals, there has been goals in my life I have not reached. I mean, that I’ve quit, that I’ve absolutely quit.

And I haven’t given myself crap about that because one of my big character traits I think I’m really good at is persistence. Like I will not make something once and I’ll go after it again and then I’ll go after it again and then I’ll go after it again. So when I drop a goal, it’s really like not aligned with anything I want to do anymore. Part of that is working in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles. I, for my whole life, I loved TV.

I loved movies. was one of those people who you could look at an actor in a movie and I could play that six degrees of Kevin Bacon game, but not for Kevin Bacon for like any single actor and connect them to like another actor. Okay. That’s a super talent. I think we need you at all of the trivia parties.

I’m not really good at it anymore because that was my interest in high school. would like see a movie and then I’d look at the entire cast list and then I would still, I still do this to some extent. I just don’t have as much time to watch as much TV and movies as I used to, but I would like follow the trail and be like, Ooh, what have they been in? What have they been in? What have they been in? And I wanted to work in that world for so, so long. And when I got my first like professional job in that world, which was working at Endeavor, a talent agency in Beverly Hills,

JoAnn Crohn (08:06.088)

now Endeavor William Morris. have dreams of being represented by them someday and like walking into that office and be like, I was an assistant here. Hello, old boss. How are you? Did you know? you’re working for me now? that’s really cool. I love it. love it. Someday. Someday, guys, mark my words, someday it’s going to happen. But I remember me and another mail room.

person. Her name is Jen. We were talking to one of the agents and I’ll mention this agent by name because I mean, it’s not a bad story, Greg Siegel. He used to be the tree at Stanford. When he went to Stanford, he was the mascot, which is a tree, guys. It’s a tree? I didn’t know Stanford’s mascot is a tree. Yes. Wow. So he was saying, you know, like most people who come into this business are gone within five years. And I heard that at the time, I’m like, not me. I’m not going to be gone within five years.

I started in 2002. I decided to leave in 2006. So I made it four years in the business. But when I decided to leave, it was just because I didn’t feel the joy of it. It was so money related. It was a bit more of a boys club now. I hope that that has changed. I mean, the Me Too movement has happened since I’ve been in Hollywood, but you know, total boys club.

Not many women I’m seeing represented in the high level CEO positions. I actually had a mentor. There was a great organization called Step Up Women’s Network, which put me with a mentor who worked at ABC. And she took me out to dinner and she was lovely, chanting. She became president of ABC. She’s amazing. I don’t know where she is now. I should look her up. But I was just in there. And when I got laid off from the company I worked for, and it was a big 20 person layoff,

And that was a small company, maybe like 60 in the whole company was a big layoff. I had no desire to go after anymore. Like I went to that one Warner Brothers interview that I talk about all the time. And after that one, I’m just like, I’m just not into this. can’t, I can’t talk about this anymore. I can’t pretend I care about it anymore. I’m like seeing people act a certain way and I just don’t want to be that way. I want more heart in my business. I want more like.

JoAnn Crohn (10:22.254)

heart in my life. And that’s when I decided to go back and be a teacher and quit the whole thing. So that was one goal I didn’t reach because I didn’t have the heart anymore in it. Yeah, I love that story because it has so much depth. Mine is more shallow. And I’m going to share mine with you guys right after this break. Okay, so I actually had two.

two goals stories and I shared them both with Joanna. I’m like, which one should I share? And we decided on this one. So there was a time when kind of like you, where I was going through like a bit of a career change. So I had started working in early intervention, early childhood, and I utterly loved that field. It was amazing. I was in it for like 10 years as a manager. Unfortunately, the nonprofit I was working for went through some major management changes and

It just made for a toxic work environment. I did not have a safe environment. I remember going to HR and HR being like, what do want me to do about it? And I’m like, stop harassing me. You’re HR, doing the job. It’s like Kentucky Fried Chicken running out of chicken. You had one job. Okay, it was a small company, it’s small nonprofit. It’s large nationally, but small here locally.

And I was just ready to get out anywhere I could go. And I went to an ill-fated grant position at a local hospital, which was amazing. I loved working there. did. But grant position, say, like just some scorn because grants aren’t always around. And I didn’t realize that. So I left a place where I thought I was going to spend my whole career, the nonprofit that I did not see getting any better. And it was awful.

Like it was awful in the sense that our manager was not a good manager, very toxic work environment. So when we lost our grant three years later and I had a two year old and a four year old turning five going into kindergarten, I was like, I’m done. I’m so tired. Like the first place I was at, I couldn’t say X, Y, and Z because I worked for this state government agency and this nonprofit. And we weren’t allowed to say this. And then I couldn’t say anything when I worked at this hospital because I couldn’t recommend other

JoAnn Crohn (12:42.124)

hospitals and I was just tired of getting like jaded. So I started my own business and it was phenomenal. Well, I didn’t exactly have the most patient partner and in his defense, when I said I wanted to start my own business, I think he was fine with the idea of me doing it for like a year. I think most people that have started a business can tell you that it’s hard to get it completely successful within a year. So I did not make it.

But I tried, I tried. I held onto that dream for three, four years. I did parent education for zero to five. I loved being my own boss and I loved being able to support others, but I didn’t have supports. Like my sister was there, she had her own business. And so when my husband at the time started like knocking on the door being like, hey,

Did you enjoy your hobby? It’s time to get back to a real nine to five. I buckled. I didn’t have what I needed to be able to stay accountable or to be able to articulate what I was doing. And so I had to let that dream die. And that was probably the biggest dream I have had, the biggest goal I have tried to do in my life. And it crashed and it was hard to come back from those. It is. Yeah. But both of us talked about reasons why.

both of our goals failed and what we learned from it. So I didn’t have the heart in it anymore. You didn’t have the support in place to support you through the hard stuff. Yep. And I think both of us can benefit actually from the last one that we’re going to share, but we’re going to share these with you in order. So the first tip we have, the easy way to get accountability for your goals. And this is something we actually do in our balance community with our value assessment is look at your values.

Look at what you hold dear to you because it is different for every single person out there. Like what I value isn’t what people that I was working with valued in the entertainment industry. Yep. And that’s where it got a little hairy for me. I didn’t want to make the most money. I just wanted to be with people and have fun and create. Yeah.

JoAnn Crohn (14:53.804)

Like, and I think that’s a big thing. think a lot of us, when we’re picking goals, we go with like what’s popular. And I don’t mean it in a bad way. It’s kind of like, okay, bear with me. This is gonna be a stretch on this metaphor. It’s kind of like trying on the season’s newest outfits. It looks really dang good on that model, that mannequin there at the storefront with all that stuff. But then when I put it on my body, why does it look like I’m wearing a potato sack? Like, I don’t get it.

And I think that’s how it is sometimes with these goals. I’ll see somebody has a goal of like, I’m going to have financial freedom by paying off all my credit cards in one year. I can do it. Or I’m going to start eating clean, that thing like foreign in my food. But that’s not like you just said, that’s not really something that gets you excited and passionate. You’re like, yeah, I’d like to eat better. It’s like we look at the outcome of the goal and we think about how we’ll feel.

when that goal is accomplished. Like eating clean, my gosh, I’ll feel so great. And people will be like, whoa, look at her. She’s completely changed how she looks. And like you think about all those outcomes, but you don’t realize the amount of time it takes when you’re actually going forward to achieve that goal. Well, not only the time, but if it’s not something that resonates with you, how are you going to keep up that motivation? Well, yeah. And what I mean by time is that, you know, it is so long.

that you are working towards it, that, the period that you accomplish it is so short, that it has to be something that really excites you during the journey and during the process, else you’re gonna give up. It’s not gonna be worth it. Right. You are exactly right. Like if you don’t have that personal tie-in, then it just isn’t. It isn’t. Like you’re fire. Come on baby, let’s get fire. Sorry. Something I learned in Hollywood,

is that I have a huge need for significance. And I have to say, like being in that job and talking to my friends back home, maybe you’re like, yes, I work in Hollywood. Even now, I mean, I bring it up all the time. Why? Because it’s cool. And I feel cool talking about it. And that I think is what initially attracted it. But then when I got into the actual business, the actual business didn’t interest me as much. Some parts of it did.

JoAnn Crohn (17:14.498)

I like talking to some of the people. Some of the people were not great, but some of the people were good. And you you just, go through that. And I think that brings us into the next thing that you need to get accountability through your goals. And we’re going to get into that right after this. The next thing that you need to get accountability through your goals is community. Yes. So important. I think that you and I were talking about that before about how you’ve started working out recently and you were doing workouts at home.

And then you started going to a Pilates studio and working out there and you forgot how much you enjoy that personal connection that community while you’re doing other people. It’s funny because like yesterday I went to Pilates and I go in the middle of the day because I find like right after lunch I tend to hit like a tired peak where I don’t even want to think and I can’t think. I’m like, might as well work out then. So I went to Pilates and I was just sitting there on my reformer before class and I’m like, so guys, like,

I’m alone in my house all day. Who wants to talk to me? Because everyone else is very quiet in their own little worlds. And I’m here being like, yeah, let me tell you a story about how I bought a hoodie for my dog. Like, it’s helpful to have other people that are either on that same journey with you or that at least have that connection. And one of the things that we noted on there is about shadowworking and meetups. And I think that’s huge. You can tell when I’m starting to get a little bit feeling lonely.

I’ll be like, hey, you want to meet up and like go work at the coffee shop in the morning, which is a lot. is Brie. Joanne, I feel like we need a whole day together where I understand exactly what you’re talking about. Like a whole day. I think part of it is I’m very visual, am I not? Yes. you can tell conversations go a whole lot smoother when we’re together in person than when we’re trying to communicate. Even on this, where we can see each other because we record everything with video.

I still get lost in translation. I do. I get lost and then I don’t know what’s happening and then I start freaking out. Well, it’s like a community is so important and like I think it bears to note that you don’t need to be working on the same goals with your community. You could just be a community who is working on your own things but are going through similar hard.

JoAnn Crohn (19:34.882)

hard things. I belong to a lot of communities of just female entrepreneurs and we don’t have the same businesses. In fact, like one of my good friends I talked to a lot of Shelby who runs Homesteading and it’s like there’s nothing really to do with parenting advice except that it is a business and it’s good to like talk with other people about that. It’s like what you were saying, it’s you just didn’t have the support around you. Yeah.

And I think that it’s also important to, like you said, you have the support you have, you have others. And I want to say the word, I want to say accountability because being able to share with somebody else the very vulnerable parts of your plans, because yes, you might not succeed in them. And saying them out loud makes that failure real, the possibility of failure real, but it also makes the possibility of having a win and a gain real.

as well. So it’s kind like that, can’t have the bad without the good. And accountability isn’t bad. It’s just about telling somebody you’re going to do something and then they help check in on you. Maybe they’ll help with brainstorming as well. There’s a lot of things you can get out of accountability. You said something that sparked something in me. said there’s a vulnerability and a failure. And I never see that.

and telling people and having accountability. I don’t ever see like having the vulnerability of failure because I know after having failed at multiple things that the failure isn’t the worst part. The worst part is like never going after it in the first place. That’s where I have my regrets, never going after it. Because if I fail, you know what? It’s like what they say, failure is one more thing to learn or one more like way to learn. there was that, yeah, but wasn’t there that thing about

Thomas Edison came up with so many ways to not build a light bulb, but only needed one way to make it work. Yeah. Well, failure, I don’t feel like I ever fail unless I give up. And even when I give up, I don’t feel like I failed because my heart wasn’t in it then. I think I see failure as such a temporary thing in such a temporary state. It’s like when we do launches here at No-Guilt Mom and we’re like, well,

JoAnn Crohn (21:50.454)

That wasn’t so great. Okay. What can we do differently this time? Okay. Let’s go after it this time. Here’s what a launch looks like behind the scenes of No Guilt Mom, just to kind of give you guys a little bit of comicalness. Cause I think you can already tell from this episode that I am very much the one who likes to stay quote unquote safe. So a launch, Joanne comes in, hits the buzzer. I got an awesome idea guys. We’re going to do X, Y, and Z.

And it’s still going lights are all going off in the back. and we’re gonna do it in three days. turns white and then starts running around for her floaties. Her whistle. Where’s my survival pack? I got to put everything on and Joanne’s still like just there like, don’t worry, we can swim in our clothes. It’s all good. Let’s just dive right into this. I’m like, it’s all good. I have a waterproof holder for my phone. mean everything works fine before I touch. the water is cold.

Right? That’s behind it. Joanne’s like, give me your hand, we’ll do it together. Then we jump and I’ve got my little floaties and I’m like, doggy paddling in the middle of the ocean and she’s just making great strides. Well, it’s one of those things where when you try something, like make it big and figure it out along the way, because that is like the fastest way to get there. And like part of me is like never, never give up, never surrender. I I could tell you like,

Never give up. podcast here is a great example of that. So like we started this podcast four years ago, right? In the middle of the pandemic, 2020, Bre had just come on No Guilt Mom. I’m like, Bre, guess what? We’re going to do a podcast. And I had never talked to her about this before anything. And she’s like, okay, okay. And it’s not the easiest thing to start a podcast and to

get people to listen to the podcast and to build a community over the podcast. like a year into the podcast, we’re like, well, we have like 3000 a month in downloads and whomp, whomp. Like it was still pretty low, but we just didn’t give up. I mean, it wasn’t any sort of like, hey, like, yeah, we have this plan. We’re going to go this, this, this, this, and that’ll get us to the destination. And I mean, we had those ideas. like, we could.

JoAnn Crohn (24:13.762)

let’s try this, let’s try this, let’s try this. And it’s like the throwing spaghetti at the wall and they don’t work and they don’t work and they don’t work and they don’t work. then finally you get like these lucky scenarios that appear for you and that leads you in the direction. But like that would have never happened if you had, if we had quit and given up. I mean, I could tell you our turning points in this podcast. The first turning point was Jess Leahy, who we talk about in actually the rerun of her episode.

how she connected us with so many people to interview really gave us some street cred there being connected by Jess Lahey. So we’re ultimately always grateful to her and Amy and Margaret from What Fresh Hell, they also appeared as life rafts for us. talked to Margaret in the lobby of the hotel down in LA where Mom 2.0 was and they were starting this ad company.

And they’re like, yeah, you need at least like 50,000 downloads. And we’re like, 5,000, womp, womp. But at least there’s a number. But they told us, hey, like, you know, here are some things we tried. Yeah. And we found a community with all that. And that community is what helped us like continue on. And that’s something that is huge. You need that support and community and just to keep going. We do. And what’s the third thing?

that we’re recommending to everybody today. Well, we talk a lot about the gap and the gain in balance. And that is, it was in a book by Dr. Benjamin Hardy. The book is actually called The Gap and the Game. But it’s basically how to keep yourself motivated through everything. Because going back to like this podcast for instance, because it’s an easy thing to talk about, because you listening to it know exactly what it is. If Bree and I had always compared ourselves,

against like the top of the charts. And we’re still not the top of the chart. We’re still working towards that. We would get deflated pretty dang quickly. We’d be like, there is no hope for us. Like we could never achieve those levels of those people. Why even try? Versus when we look back and we’re like, my gosh, we started this four years ago with like nothing and look who we’ve met since then. Look what like we’ve achieved since then. Look at like

JoAnn Crohn (26:30.722)

the people like we’ve affected since then, those two scenarios are just a choice you have to make. One, you’re thinking in gap, which is comparing yourself to everybody who’s higher than you and like this imaginary horizon. That’s really what makes you think like, like there’s no use. You keep looking at how big that gap is. Yeah. First is looking at the gain, which is how far we’ve come along and comparing it to our own growth.

And when you look at the gain, you’re like, whoa, like I never thought I would be here. Like we’ve achieved quite a lot in that short amount of time. And that’s what propels you to keep going. So look back at like your history and what you’ve overcome and where you’ve been, that’s going to give you more strength than seeing the the gap, which you will just deflate you. you need to, you need to live in the gain as much as possible.

Keep, instead of looking at how far you have to go and focusing on that part. And that’s the, mean, it’s fine to acknowledge it. It is what I, I mean, right? Cause you can’t come up with a plan if you don’t know where you need to end, but give yourself some peace. Like I looked up, do you want to know, like take a wild stab, how many podcasts there are in the United States? Ever? Like, or just the parenting category. Like how many there are?

I think I’ve seen this number. think it’s something like over 100,000. Estimation is three to four million. What? Gosh, that’s a lot of podcasts. That’s what Google gave me as I looked it up really fast. Theoretically, there’s anywhere between three to four million podcasts going on right now in the United States. If we were to look at what it would take to be number one, that is a

but we’ve been on the top 100, we’re on top 50. We are proud of that shiznit because we have worked our booties off and we have built a community and we continue to grow and to see ourselves in the game because we’re making it. So to get accountability for your goals, just keep in mind and find do your goals really align with your values and what you really want versus I use this all the time because this does not align with my values.

JoAnn Crohn (28:49.838)

Having a perfectly clean environment or house or everything perfectly under control, not aligned with my values. I am chaos and I’m accepting my chaos, it’s a fun chaos, controlled chaos, but that’s not important to me. So I will never achieve that goal. I will never achieve it. Identifying what’s important. That is huge, huge, huge. Yes. And then second, the community.

that’ll support you through all of the struggle and the challenges and also be there to celebrate with you your wins. Make sure your community is there to celebrate the wins because if they’re not, they’re a toxic community. They are. True. True that. If they won’t give you a sticker because you didn’t earn this week, then that may not be the best I mean, I can give you an example of toxic behavior like that and it comes from family, but it’s not my family. It’s one of my daughter’s friends’ families.

who she posted publicly that she goes to her grandma’s house and her grandma’s like, like, what are you getting right now in school? Like, what’s your GPA? And she’s like, it’s like a, like, like grandma said, yeah, when I, had all A’s and B’s in school, what did you have? And this person’s like, it’s like a 4.0. And grandma goes, grades aren’t that important anyways. Like, why are you so bragging about it? Like toxic.

Yes, do not fall for that community. Don’t for that community. Embracing community. And then what’s tip number three? And then live in the game. Live in the game. So if you feel like, let’s see in this episode, first of all, you were able to get through all of our squirrel, squirrel, shiny objects, tiny object. Because I feel like that kind of came.

If you’re an ADHD diagnostic tool, there is out here. If you’re able to follow that, you might have ADHD. But if you found that that sounds good and you’re like, this is what I need, that is the environment that we provide for you in Balance. We have a link in the show notes below. Yeah. But we hope that this episode brought you a lot of information, even if you don’t decide to join us in Balance. And we want to hear your goals. Come and share them with us in our podcast group.

JoAnn Crohn (31:02.178)

That link is right under here in the show notes where we get to talk with you, get to have fun conversations, come join it. And until next time, remember the best mom’s a happy mom. Take care of you. We’ll talk to you later.

Thanks for stopping by.