[00:00:00] Lisa: I was strong. I knew I was strong, but I didn’t realize how strong until I joined this entrepreneurship program.

[00:00:59] Hey friends. Welcome back to the milspouse mastermind show. Today. I am sharing my conversation with Lisa Carmichael. Lisa is a multi-passionate creative junkie in online education. She is married to a Navy veteran and went from stay-at-home mom to working from home, to starting her own business and becoming a published author.

[00:01:23] She has a marketing business that focuses on providing automation and duplication tips to creative entrepreneurs who want to stand out. There are competitors in our conversation. We talk about her journey as a military spouse who did not move with her spouse and how entrepreneurship was key to helping her reframe her mindset and move from feelings of inadequacy to feelings of empowerment.

[00:01:53] I’m excited to share this conversation with you before we get started today. I just want to remind you that one of the best, most important things you can do as a part of the milspouse mastermind community is share this show with somebody in your life. You can post about it in your stories.

[00:02:17] You can walk down the street and talk to it. Whatever your community looks like. There is probably someone looking for this type of content. They’re looking for something that they can plug in their earbuds. That’s going to remind them that they have a purpose, that they are not alone on this journey.

[00:02:38] And that there is a group of people ready to support them to help them thrive as a military spouse, to equip them with strategies they can use to navigate. The ups and downs of this crazy lifestyle and live and craft a life with purpose. So please think about one person in your life that would benefit from listening to this show and consider sharing this show with them.

[00:03:06] All right. Let’s dive into my conversation with Lisa Carmichael. All right. Welcome back to the show. I am so excited to be here with Lisa Carmichael today. Lisa, would you just give a hello and let us know who you are and where you’re joining from?

[00:03:21] Lisa: Well, hello, thank you so much for having me here today.

[00:03:25] I’m very excited to be here. I am in sunny, Minnesota. It’s seven degrees above zero, and we just get seven inches of snow today, some beautiful white stuff. And, um, I am a digital marketer I build and develop strong relationships. And my clients are entrepreneurs who want to stand out from their competitors and manage their reputations and legacies.

[00:03:52] So I’ve been doing this about three, three years now, and I’m working at alongside of my. At home?

[00:03:59] Christine: Well, that is the complete opposite of here in Guam, where it is, uh, mid eighties. We have been at the beach this week. And I know my husband is from Minnesota. He misses the snow. He would go back there in a heartbeat.

[00:04:13] I am loving the beach, so I’m sure he will be excited to hear that there is snow on the ground right now. Now I’ve already given everybody a little bit of your background in the intro. Can you talk about your life as a military spouse and kind of give us this background in, in what your life has looked like?

[00:04:34] Lisa: Yeah, for sure. I, um, well we kind of have two kinds of things going with the military. So my oldest son is actually on the autism spectrum and my husband will always say, you know what? I’ve never been diagnosed, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I would be diagnosed with that. Um, being in the service, my husband had, a lot of fears and a lot of things scared him.

[00:05:04] And my role as the mom and the wife was to just stay positive and build him up and build my kids up. What was unique is that my husband, we live in Minnesota. My husband is in the Navy. Well, there’s no water in Minnesota. There’s 10,000 lakes, but he served on aircraft. And so by the time I met my husband, his active duties, he was always sent other places like, you know, Pearl Harbor, um, you know, beautiful places that, um, he was like, oh, I have orders. I have to go.

[00:05:38] And I was just always the anchor here in Minnesota, but I never had the resources to reach out to other military wives. I mean, I wasn’t ombudsman for. The people that were on his, that he was associated with in the Navy. But, I never really built those strong relationships. And what I did is I reached out in a different way.

[00:06:06] I reached out to entrepreneurs because I knew that, you know, there were other people like me that were struggling kind of different, but in the same way, I’m just not in the military.

[00:06:18] Christine: We in my, my family, we move a lot. And so your story is a little bit different in that you stayed in one spot, while your husband was traveling a lot.

[00:06:28] So there was a lot of time where you are solo parenting and you’re not necessarily connected to a base, a unit. Right. And you’re still trying to figure out, you know, how do I navigate this life? Well, so what were some of the things that you were struggling with and, and what did you do to reach out.

[00:06:49] Lisa: So again, it was like reaching out feeling because I felt so alone that I didn’t have other military wives to connect with who and other women who really understood our situation because being in the military, these military people have a different way of thinking and they do what they’re told to do when, and when.

[00:07:12] When I had the opportunity to be a part of an organization for entrepreneurs through an organization called bunker labs. And that is a veterans program and it’s for veterans and military spouses. At first I was apprehensive and then I thought, you know what, I’m just going to go for it.

[00:07:33] I do deserve this. My husband’s been in the military for 38 years. I might just as well apply, put my name in there. And of course, when you know it, the application was accepted and they wanted me in the program. And that was like my really true first experience being around veterans and military. And some of them were like reservists, some.

[00:07:56] No, actually, I think I, my husband was the only one that was a veteran. The rest were Active duty or reserve. And being surrounded by these amazing entrepreneurs. I actually had go to the, it was a commitment of meeting once a week for two hours in person. And I was comfortable working from home because I did that.

[00:08:16] I figured it out when my husband would be traveling on active duty. And he would come home. Well, uh, like digress a little bit. He would come home and it would be like a disempowerment thing. Like I was the one that was in charge. You know, everything was taken care of, you know, when the air conditioner died, who replaced it, when the basement flooded, who did, who took care of that?

[00:08:41] You know, in the garage door, didn’t open who found the resource to get it fixed. So when he came back, I. I was strong. I knew I was strong, but I didn’t realize how strong until I joined this entrepreneurship program. Well, I was in the program and I was surrounded by these amazing human beings. I mean, there was one woman that was traveling around the world, creating a device for fetal development movement.

[00:09:07] And she, she was just this amazing entrepreneur. There were other two other gentlemen that were changing the real estate industry, as we know it. And on our break, I would go into the ladies restroom and I do breathing exercises asking God, like, why am I here? And then just taking deep breaths.

[00:09:26] And I remember just saying, I don’t understand. I don’t need to understand. I will be okay. And I just kept putting in for. Those positive thoughts into my mind, because I knew that I had to be strong because I had learned so much by being that, that stay at home mom, by being that mom, when my husband was traveling.

[00:09:49] Christine: So what was it that particularly drew you to this idea of entrepreneurship?

[00:09:55] Lisa: So this entrepreneur program was actually my pivot point. And I’m so glad you asked that question because three things came out of that program. The first was I created my first webinar. I had been a struggling digital marketer for two or three years with no success.

[00:10:12] And that was just my gift to push myself forward, to make this program work. The second thing that came to be was I became a published author. So one thing I had going for me is that I was keeping a journal. I was writing things down about what was. On my mind every morning. And I took that journal and I transcribed it into a book because I knew how many pages were needed to create a novel.

[00:10:43] And then the third thing was I knew that this mentorship worked for me and I wanted to share it with other entrepreneurs, that it would help them, help them build their business. And I knew that if it was going to work for the military, It could work for any entrepreneur and, you know, and this was pre COVID too.

[00:11:06] And one thing that we all knew was that going into COVID, the military knew how to take things and make the best out of the situation. You know, a lot of them had been stationed overseas and they just knew what it was that they needed to do to make things work.

[00:11:28] Christine: So as a military spouse, you’ve been a stay-at-home mom for a while, and you have this opportunity to join this program with veterans and military spouses.

What was it that drew you to that next step? When, when you’ve already spent so much time, you know, you’ve been through all of these experiences, you’ve, you’ve worked on, you know, when the basement floods and taking care of your kids and all these things, like what led you to take that leap into saying, Hey, I want to learn more about entrepreneurship. I want to learn more about marketing. What, what led to that point?

[00:12:05] Lisa: it was is that the one common denominator was me. It really was my mindset. That the whole time and even growing up, I had these negative recordings that I just wasn’t good enough. And when I finally took those journal notes and I transcribed them and I read what I was saying to myself, I realized that this had to be the pivot point where I could be better for myself and for my family, but I knew.

[00:12:40] That if I wasn’t taking care of myself and telling myself all the good things that I needed to hear, I wasn’t going to be any good to my family or anybody else or any other entrepreneur. And I really feel like until we do that deep soul searching and accept what’s happening and be okay with what’s happening.

[00:13:04] That’s when we can move forward. And I just, I maybe I’ve just always had this strong drive, the strong urge to just be in charge and being in my own boss. And that, that’s a really wonderful feeling to be able to say, you know, I’m going to do this. When I want to do this, I mean, there are some downsides because you don’t have somebody crack, crack cracking the whip behind you saying, okay, why don’t you have that done?

[00:13:32] But, um, yeah, it, it really, there’s a lot of freedom that goes with entrepreneurship and that’s really what attracts me as well as I think a lot of other entrepreneurs and, you know, onto this too, because. You know, you never know when your husband’s going to be, or your spouse is going to be called to active duty and you have to have that flexibility.

[00:13:54] You have to be the one to be able to do everything at a job.

[00:14:01] Christine: Yeah, you said so many good lessons and I kind of want to just recap that one of the things that really stood out to me is just the importance of our mindset and taking that time to be aware of what thoughts. Are going on in our brain on a regular basis.

[00:14:20] You know, what we think about is who we ultimately become. And so really having that realization that whatever thought is playing on repeat in my brain is what I’m going to begin to believe. And so we have to shift that and say, okay, let me be aware. Number one of the thoughts in my brain so that I can write.

[00:14:41] Am I dwelling on these negative thoughts? Or am I choosing to focus on more positive thoughts, more productive thoughts. More thoughts that are in alignment with who I want to be. So, you know, number one, having that awareness, number two, doing that deep dive into who am I and really getting clear on what are those things that are important to me, what really speaks to me and taking that time.

[00:15:12] Understand yourself and your drive and your skills and your passions that is so important and how that led you to this path of entrepreneurship, which I think gives this is what so many military spouses want to have that sense of doing something for themselves. Having that sense of purpose and entrepreneurship is a great outlet because as you said, it gives you that freedom, that flexibility to set your own schedule.

[00:15:42] And that obviously comes with its own set of challenges, but there is just something beautiful about Getting to be your own boss and to focus on doing the things that really light you up in serving people in a meaningful way. So what have you found in your own journey of entrepreneurship? What, what parts of this journey do you love?

[00:16:06] Lisa: You know, it’s funny as you’re repeating back to me, it’s it? I love the fact that I don’t remember all the bad. You know, as in maybe that’s advice that, you know, when you’re living and just surviving through those moments, when you get past all that, and you will, you, you forget about all the bad moments.

[00:16:32] It’s like marriage. Every morning, you wake up and you forget what happened yesterday. It’s today’s a new day and you start, you just move forward and. All of those things, all those, I mean, I can have flash flashes back of things that went wrong. I mean, I hadn’t thought about all those problems that we had for the longest time, but you just have to have the strength to dig down deep and it’s okay to cry.

[00:17:03] It’s okay to feel the pain it’s okay to, to share. When you’re stuck. And that probably was one of my biggest mistakes is that I didn’t share when I was stuck because I didn’t, I didn’t feel I had the right group of people to share with because I didn’t feel they would understand. And that’s why with this mastermind program, it makes so much sense to me that when we work together, Different all these different personalities and brains work together to create a new brain where we can help each other move forward, instead of trying to figure it out on there on our own.

[00:17:47] And if you don’t mind, I want to share just one little story. So yes, I live in Minnesota and this morning, um, I’ve been doing this. This was like my third or fourth time I’ve been doing. Cold water dip. So we have the land of 10,000 lakes. And so. I, uh, there’s a group of people and they’re so supportive.

[00:18:12] And what we do is there’s a lake in Minneapolis Lake Harriet, and we wear bathing suits and we just go in the water for like maybe five minutes at the most, but it’s one of those. Cold water therapy. It resets your system. Well, the last time I went, I was kind of hyperventilating and I was like, I just, you know, I was like, I was so in my head and the group was so supportive and they’re like, Lisa, just breathe, breathe through your nose, focus on the sun.

[00:18:44] It was sunrise, you know, just keep breathing, keep breathing. And then all of a sudden I caught on, I figured it out. And then somebody said, so you’re here with us now. And I was. Oh my God, I am, I wasn’t before. I was in. And that’s the realization that, you know, we as entrepreneurs, we get so stuck and people, we get so stuck in our head, we get lost in what should I be doing?

[00:19:11] I’m doing this wrong. I’m not breathing. I’m in this cold water, how, how can I make it better? And then you have the support that says, Hey, you’re going to be okay. And that’s the biggest makes the biggest difference in everything in life. And that’s why I feel the mentorship program that I have running has made such a difference in my life and the lives of these other entrepreneurs.

[00:19:36] Christine: I mean, I think that’s so important because we were never designed to do life alone. That’s why we talk about being better together and really hat, making sure that all of us have this community that we can rely on. Um, I know in my own journey, how important it has been to have people that are helping me that are supporting me because when you are venturing out into anything outside of your comfort zone, There is so much doubt and fear.

[00:20:07] And so many things that arise up that make you think like, am I supposed to be doing this? I’m terrible at this, all of these. Start filling your head and you have to be able to step back from that, to get out of that cycle. Or you will just give up and quit. So I would love to hear what led you into marketing and really what led you into this creation of this mastermind and what it looks like.

[00:20:36] Lisa: Definitely. So marketing, I actually did earn my degree in business and marketing and I was pregnant with my first child and my husband said, we’re not going to have kids until you have your degree. And I’m like, okay, that makes sense. Because I knew how much work it would take. So I actually, I graduated and I remember I was pregnant.

[00:20:58] I didn’t know I was pregnant at the time, but marketing just made sense to me. I mean, I had worked corporately before. My, our kids. My third one was my ticket to staying home. And after staying home, I did miss my corporate friends and my corporate world. And I knew that marketing just made sense to me. So I learned about this digital.

[00:21:25] Program. And I knew that I could work this from home. It was not an overnight success. I mean, I will be completely transparent, completely vulnerable, lots of tears, lots of struggles. Lots of me not understanding, but I just had, um, I was. But I’m that person who’s willing to take action and just keep taking baby steps until, until I figured it out, the more support I got, again, the easier it became to figuring it out.

[00:21:57] And one thing that I. I believe is that, you know, the people that helped us along the way, I’m so ready to give back. And I’m more than willing to give back to the anyone that needs help. So even like, for instance, with my book, after I wrote my book, it was just one of those things, anybody that came to me and asked me how I did it, I’m like, okay, let’s sit down.

[00:22:19] This is what you have to do. That, that, that, and I just get so much enjoyment. From helping other people that when you put that out there, it just comes back to you tenfold.

[00:22:32] Christine: Absolutely. That’s such an important lesson that we are here to serve and to use our gifts, to serve others. And when we serve, then the flood gates start opening up, but it’s, it’s not like something that you just put it out there and it’s an overnight success.

[00:22:48] It is a journey. So I love bringing people on here on the show to share their journeys because there are ups and downs, but what I want every military spouse to hear. This journey is absolutely worth it. So what would you say to military spouses who are considering starting an entrepreneurial journey?

[00:23:11] Lisa: Just reach out, start asking and ask everybody, just keep asking until you get the answers that you want, because you know, if you stop asking, you’re not you’ll, you’ll never know, and there’s never a bad question.

[00:23:26] There’s never a wrong answer and work through those fears because when you have fear, that just means you have a new lesson to learn. I’ve worked through so much fear and that’s why I’ve built a business. The way I have is because I’ve just decided I’m just going to keep working through it and plowing through fear, every chance I get, because I know that there can only be good on the other side.

[00:23:52] It’s just a mindset, like you said.

[00:23:55] Christine: Absolutely. So besides having that support, who are some of the mentors and what are some of the resources that you went to to help you on your.

[00:24:06] Lisa: So specifically for me with digital marketing, I found a mentorship program that I found that they were able to share value with me 10 times more than what I, when I put into it.

[00:24:22] And I took the longterm. So spend a lot of money. And, but being that I had a degree, I knew I didn’t have to. So I decided that I was going to learn it and I was going to learn it the right. And what I’ve done now is I’ve taken my seven top secrets that have helped me monetize and scale my business. And that those seven steps will help any entrepreneurial.

[00:24:52] Whether they’re building an online business or building just a regular business, they can use these same tips anywhere to help them, especially now, since you know, everything is so online, everything is it’s, it’s worldwide. Everything is at our fingertips. So we do have to be. Aware of what is out there online and how to use our, we need that the online skills to move our businesses forward.

[00:25:17] So anybody that has a, a business and they want to learn how to scale and monetize. Definitely all you have to do is just go to my website. It’s a free download.

[00:25:26] Christine: Okay. So tell us about where to go, where to find all of those resources and, and more about your masters. So,

[00:25:35] Lisa: if you want to follow along, I’m on my journey because I’m living life to the fullest and I’m living it on Instagram.

[00:25:41] So you can find me on Instagram socially. At least the, our Carmichael, my website is my name again, Lisa R Carmichael. And that’s where you’re going to find the free download. And it’s Lisa R carmichael.com.

[00:25:56] Christine: All right. Those links will all be in the show notes, or you can find them on our website, milspousemastermind.com.

[00:26:03] As we wrap up today. Lisa, what is one piece of advice that you would love to leave with military spouses? Be it something that you’ve learned in your journey in the military life or something that you’ve learned through entrepreneurship? What would you like military spouses to know.

[00:26:24] Lisa: I really feel that it’s important to really tap into what you believe in, in your beliefs, whether it’s, you know, you want your husband to be promoted to Admiral or, you know, you believe.

[00:26:38] That you know, in a greater universe or you believe that your digital marketing business is going to be the answer to your prayers. You know, everything starts with the belief after you have that belief comes trust. You have to trust in your belief. And if you don’t trust in what you believe, it’s, it’s, it’ll fall apart and people will see through it.

[00:27:01] And once you have those two pieces done, that’s when you can take a step back. Let go and let things take care of themselves. It’s it’s that power of attraction that you become magnetic energy, that you believe that this is going to happen. You’re you’re trusting what all the effort that you put into it will make this come true.

[00:27:24] And then instead of worrying about it, it’s time to say, you know what, it’s going to be. It’s all gonna work out. And that’s such a positive way to look on things, because if you worry, you’re just gonna want you, it’s all about control. And we don’t have, we really don’t have control. We think we do, but in the end things happen the way they happen for a reason.

[00:27:51] So just stick with, you know, believing in what you believe in and trusting in that belief and everything will work out in the.

[00:27:59] Christine: Well, thank you so much for sharing, as we say so often on this show, we can’t control what happens, but we can control what we do with what we have and what we’ve been given. And so really it comes back to this mindset component and really.

[00:28:15] Taking ownership of our thoughts, being aware of what’s going on in our brain, analyzing those thoughts and choosing a better, more productive response that we don’t let our thoughts and our feelings dictate our life, that we are being productive and really being intentional with what thoughts. We are focusing in on our brain.

[00:28:38] So thank you so much for coming on today. Um, I know people are going to love to hear more about you and connect with you. So yes, if you have not already done so head over to her website, get that free. Download. Thank you so much for coming on today. Thanks Christine. All right, friends. I hope you enjoyed this conversation.

[00:28:59] I will have all of Lisa’s links in the show notes below, or you can find them all at our website milspousemastermind.com. The thing I want to leave with you today is this idea of becoming aware of what thoughts are playing on. Repeat in your head. We can’t change the thoughts that aren’t serving us. If we don’t even know that we have them.

[00:29:23] And so one of the keys for at least it was recognizing what thoughts were not serving her so that she could start to work on those thoughts to reframe them and replace them with better, more productive. It is the thoughts that play on repeat in our heads that truly become our beliefs and that lead us to take action or to stay stuck, not taking action.

[00:29:51] So your challenge today is just to reckless. What thoughts are playing on. Repeat in your head, head over to our Facebook community. Come share with us what you noticed, what you learned from today. And don’t forget to share the show with someone in your life. I hope you have an amazing week living filled, fueled and full of joy. I’ll see you next time.