002 | Mentors & Masterminds: Why Female Leaders Supporting Each Other is the Future - with Dawn Andrews & Rachel Archelaus

No (wo)man is an island. 

Behind every successful female leader, there’s usually a group of women who listen, advise, support, coach, and lift each other up. Female business owners often face challenges that their male counterparts don’t, and they need a supportive community to ensure their success. 

Today, I’m being interviewed by one of my little group of Business BFFs - author, artist, screenwriter, and alignment coach, Rachel Archelaus. 

Rachel has seen me at my best and at my worst, and today we’re talking about the journey that led to this podcast. 

In this episode, Rachel  and I talk about

• My childhood role models and first steps in the entertainment industry
• Why it’s essential to have a community of  business friends who’ve got your back when you’re starting or growing something
• Growing pains (and crashing and burning) when you start a business… and how to avoid some of them
• How I created a training to help women in business uncover their true leadership potential
• The story of how My Good Woman came to be

This episode at a glance:

[04:52] Why I’m so passionate about helping women find their true calling as a leader and supporting each other to rise (because each of us is extraordinary in our own way, and the world needs to see that!) 

[10:20] How my mentor and former boss, Leanne, encouraged me to work out what I was really passionate about and use that discovery to start my own thing. 

[13:48] Why it’s so much harder to run a business when you want to do everything and help everybody ( the importance of finding your niche)

[17:46] How many women tend to sit behind the scenes and work out our ideas by ourselves, stuck in our own echo chamber, doing all the work to make it “picture perfect” before going into the world and road-testing something. And why it’s actually important to talk with others, and listen, before you develop your ideas. 

[19:23] What can go wrong when women try to lead like a man: the two sides of that coin

[23:10] How my mastermind group helped me overcome a burnout - and by asking the right questions, helped me uncover what I really wanted to do. Which, in the end, led to this podcast! 

Resources and Links mentioned in this episode

• Get clarity and confidence through art at Rachel Archelaus’ Intuitive Art Academy
• Follow Rachel on Instagram
• Find camp-inspired retreats for women at Campowerment.com

More about the “My Good Woman” podcast

My Good Woman is a podcast for new and future female leaders hosted by me, Dawn Andrews! 

I’m a happily married hockey mom, proud female leader, and founder and CEO of Free Range Thinking, where we turn founders into confident CEOs with strategic consulting and leadership training.

Grab a seat at the table with me each week for candid conversations with culture-shifting, glass ceiling-busting, trailblazing women leading enterprises making a change in the world. 

We discuss what makes them tick and how they get it all done. And we share actionable strategies to help you and your team get organized - so you can focus on your co

Want to increase revenue and impact? Listen to “My Good Woman” for insights on business strategy and female leadership to scale your business. Each episode offers advice on effective communication, team building, and management. Learn to master routines and systems to boost productivity and prevent burnout. Our delegation tips and business consulting will advance your executive leadership skills and presence.

Transcript

My Good Woman
Ep. 02 | Mentors & Masterminds: Why Female Leaders Supporting Each Other is the Future - with Dawn Andrews & Rachel Archelaus 

Dawn Andrews [00:00:00]

Every superhero has an origin story. I love superheroes. I'm a marvel fan. But one thing that continues to bother me is how the transformation from ordinary high school kid to friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is essentially a solo journey. He's bitten by a spider. Falls, gets back up, masters his powers and saves the world solo. I definitely have some crash and burn stories on the way to discovering my superpowers, and I wouldn't have made it through without my community. These are the kind of stories I look forward to unearthing with my guests in future episodes. And since fair is fair, I figured I would reveal mine first. I'm a little nervous.  

Dawn Andrews [00:00:45] Hello, friends. Welcome to My Good Woman, the podcast for. 

Dawn Andrews [00:00:49] New and Future Female Leaders. I'm your host, Dawn Andrews, a happily married hockey mom and the founder and CEO of Free Range Thinking Business Strategy Consulting. Grab a seat at the table with me each week for candid conversations with culture shifting, glass, ceiling busting, trailblazing women leading impactful enterprises. We discuss what makes them tick, how they get it all done, and actionable strategies to help you lead with confidence and grow the visibility, reach and revenue of your business. We're classy, ladies, but we don't bleep the swear words. Listener discretion is advised.  

Dawn Andrews [00:01:48]

Hello, my good woman. I'm getting extra vulnerable with you. It all started on a recent call with my business BFFs, a group of seven female business owners that have been meeting for more than six years. We listen, support, coach, advise and mentor each other as we grow our businesses. More than three years ago on one of our calls, I boldly declared to my BFFs my desire to start this show now. Just weeks before I was beginning to launch, I was having self-doubt, thinking, Who am I to host a podcast about leadership? Launching something new and keeping it running can be really tough. Female business owners face extra challenges that their male counterparts don't, and they need a supportive community to ensure their success. We also need other women to look to for advice and to look up to as role models. We need to learn the details of what it really takes for people to achieve their dreams. The inside information, not just the celebrations after the dream has been achieved. Now that I have a podcast, I can share that conversation with you because I want to document what it takes to start a business, to move through fear and self-doubt and grow into a leader. Before I share it, allow me to introduce you to one of my business BFFs, Rachel Archealus. She's an author, artist, screenwriter and alignment coach and the founder of the Intuitive Art Academy, which teaches people how to have a two-way conversation with their higher selves through color. She is also a multidimensional being, but we'll get into that in another episode. I originally asked Rachel to help reveal my story, but then we really got to the heart of it and I got emotional. Let's take a listen. 

Rachel Archelaus [00:03:28] 

So, Dawn Andrews, we've known each other for many, many years in a mastermind put together by our good friend. I've heard you talk about this podcast. I've seen the results of the work that you do in various ways, but I haven't ever really gotten the whole story. So I think this will be good for your listeners and for me to learn the in front of the scenes, Dawn, and how you got here, because you are passionate about female leadership, you are passionate about founders and helping people organize and really build the foundation of their businesses, especially in the creative field. So how did you get here, Dawn? 

Dawn Andrews [00:04:10]

Well, I mean, honestly, sometimes, Rachel, I, I what I know about myself is that I tend to go where I'm most curious or most interested. My mom put me in piano lessons and was a cheerleader and was in student government and was in the marching band. But the one that ended up standing out for me was performing. The first song that I sang for an audition was Ben by Michael Jackson. It was a song I had heard on the radio, and I had to sing something. I didn't know what I was doing, but it turned out I was okay and could carry a tune. And through learning how to perform, I again was encouraged and kept being curious and kept following my interest. I grew up in a family business. My grandparents started a company and that was my first job when I was 13. And so it was these two worlds of being able to work inside a family business, especially with a grandmother that was a leader in that business, and seeing a woman be able to accomplish things and then bringing together this love of performing. After college, when I decided I didn't want to audition for anything anymore, that I didn't want to wait to be told that it was okay to do something or wait for permission. I started working behind the scenes in arts organizations, and that was the beginning of being in business, basically learning to help organizations work better, learning about the skills that I was most interested in developing and starting at the bottom, and then working my way up into ever more complex roles there. I don't know whether I took leadership opportunities, whether I was given leadership opportunities. I wouldn't characterize myself as having been a leader. 

Rachel Archelaus [00:05:49]

Well, it's starting to weave together this picture because the word that came to me when you were talking about your early years was capable. You might not have felt like a leader, but you felt capable enough to do all those different activities to hold your own in competition. You were modeled that right from your grandmother. And it it really stuck. It must have been hard for you in the entertainment industry because maybe you felt like you could handle rejection or you felt like you could hold yourself together while going through all of that. But were you seeing women even then kind of crumbling or not knowing who they were? And did you want to fight for them then? Where did that start? 

Dawn Andrews [00:06:27]

Okay. The first part of the question, I think I was a crumble, just like everybody else being in the entertainment industry, especially as a woman. And at that particular point, it was hard stuff. It's hard stuff to have creative ideas and not be able to bring them to fruition to be boxed into a particular. Roll. So did it start there? Probably a little bit, but it certainly wasn't present to me.  

Rachel Archelaus [00:06:50]

I want to go back just one more time because I notice on your LinkedIn that you went from working at a talent agency to going to director of marketing for what you said was like a collaboration with Sega Gameworks and a couple of other places. How did that go? Because I know from you that women tend not to go for jobs that they feel is even just slightly out of what they've already learned. Right. They're hesitant to step up. So how did you do that and what did you learn from that? 

Dawn Andrews [00:07:21]

When I first moved to Los Angeles, I got a job working at ICM International Creative Management, which now has been folded into another agency. At that time, they were the top talent agency in Hollywood. I was on a motion picture lit desk, which means that we were reading and reviewing scripts, looking for writers, looking for projects to develop. Finding jobs for writers in entertainment. But the biggest part of the job was listening in on all the phone calls. So I don't know how many people realize that happens in Hollywood, but chances are that whoever you're in a conversation with, there's at least one other person on the phone. And I wouldn't say that I even had an inkling then of asking for more for myself. Like I was again following curiosity. But there are lots of stories to tell about what Hollywood was like in that time period. And I received a call Who was my old boss? I went to go work with him and was his executive assistant. But it was through him and then through another one of my mentors, Leon Stables, that I started developing the next level of skills. So I started out with just a little bit of assisting in marketing and a little bit of coordinating and marketing and finding that I liked it and taking on more and more responsibility. It was a slow burn and it was these baby steps with lots of encouragement from others that helped me to start seeing the potential and the capacity and a capability in myself that others already could see from the outside. I didn't see it inside for myself. I think that's one of the reasons I'm so passionate about women in leadership and also women helping other women. Because in whatever ways and from wherever we've come from, most of us probably have a diminished understanding of how extraordinary we are. And it takes that reflection from others to be able to help that grow and develop. And I'm so thankful for the people that continue to do that. For me, I feel like I have. It's incredible to me how many women I've talked to that don't have or haven't yet had someone in their corner helping to scootch them along or reflect back to them how excellent they are. 

Rachel Archelaus [00:09:29]

Yeah. And not only just a reflection also, but that hand someone's a little bit ahead of you or a lot ahead of you holding out that hand and pulling you up because we need those models. So it really makes sense. We got to the heart of it, Dawn. You're just paying it forward. You received that from your mentors, male and female. You know, it works from both genders and all genders, you know, non-conforming genders. We're all there for each other and it really does matter and make a difference. So this is my good woman, right? So is there any other woman that stands out to you that you feel was really instrumental in you getting here? And maybe even when it came time to start your business, was there anyone there to help you with that? 

Dawn Andrews [00:10:14]

 Yeah, it's been interesting. I already mentioned LeAnn and, like, shout her name to the rooftops. I was working with her in the marketing department. The company was called Gameworks. It was a partnership between Sega Universal Studios and DreamWorks. She was my boss. The company was going through some transitions and layoffs were coming, and she pulled me aside and sat me down and said, Whatever it is that you think you can do, you should start doing that. And it wasn't like, Ooh, you're about to be laid off. You better get to it. It was a I see promise in you and you're not leveraging that, you're not using it. And that was when I started to get my training to become a coach. I actually hired a coach because I didn't know what career I wanted next. And once I hired the coach and started speaking with her, I was like, I want your job. Your job is job. That's the one. And so I ended up getting my coach training, and I started doing that after I had that conversation with LeAnn. So I was doing it nights, weekends, early mornings, etc. Around my time at work, she was part of the catalyst to get me started. Then I got laid off. I had some savings stash, so I had a little bit of runway to start, but it was pretty freaking lonely at that point. I knew how to do what I wanted to do, but I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know how to run a business, didn't know how to market, didn't know how to sell, didn't know how to talk to people because I'm introverted and I didn't want to make outgoing phone calls. And so at that point, I started turning to the University of Google. I started turning to other women that were in an online or. Coaching space. And and even though they don't even know me, they would still be considered mentors by me because I was following their lead. I was modeling what they were doing. There was a woman by the name of Ali Brown at that time.  

Rachel Archelaus [00:11:55] Yeah.  

Dawn Andrews [00:11:56]

Who had started building a mailing list in an online community and was very inspirational speaker and was talking about women building online businesses. And this is like very early days of what online businesses have become for women. And so I just like what she doing, what she emailing, what are her conversation topics? Lisa specific was another person that I followed, devoured everything that she had going on to give me some clues into what to do next. I think my first outgoing sales opportunity was literally packing up and mailing every single person that I knew. A letter saying, I've started this business, old school stamps. Stamps were involved. The USPS was involved. 

Rachel Archelaus [00:12:39] Yeah. So you just found your way listening and learning trial and error.  

Dawn Andrews [00:12:44]

Yeah. Because at that point, the only thing I really had in my pocket was being scrappy and resourceful, being more committed to running my own thing than working for somebody else. Going back to work for somebody else felt like prison and I wasn't going to do it. My grandmother being a great inspiration to me, you know, if they can do it, I can do it even in just the simplest form. 

Rachel Archelaus [00:13:06]

I love that you kept going. I mean, even people who don't want to go back to work often find themselves at an obstacle that just seems too hard. They don't know, or they have pressure from loved ones, you know, What are you doing? Come on, give it up already. So it's amazing that you kept going and that you're celebrating 22 years. And I imagine in that time you found certain topics that you liked better, certain demographics of people that you like working with better industries. So and you said you focused around four or five years in and how was that? Was that because of confidence? Was that because of just knowing more? What was that like for you?  

Dawn Andrews [00:13:48]

Every step of the way has been terrifying to some degree. I mean, just for real. There are so many times that I got frustrated, laid down, wanted to quit. It's still kind of is miraculous to me how it's progressed to this place. My very first letter, the paper letter with a stamp that I sent to say, Hey, I'm starting this new business. I claimed the title of life coach. And I basically said, If you need help with your life, I am a life coach. 

Rachel Archelaus [00:14:19] The anti me.  

Dawn Andrews [00:14:20] Yes. Could not have been like the broadest niche possible. 

Dawn Andrews [00:14:24] Which. 

Dawn Andrews [00:14:26]

By the way, is something I'm very passionate about these days when I help people like niche, niche, niche, niche, niche. I know you hate the word niche, but if you're a business owner or a new business owner that's listening, just please niche. Just please. But because it was such a broad topic, it was really difficult to market. It was difficult to figure out what to charge. It was difficult to shape what those services were. I started out, I think with it was a pay which can model or maybe even $25 a session. And a session was anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. It was a very simple start, but I did learn a lot from that. And to your point, I started to find topics and types of people, types of situations that either were more interesting to me or that I had a lot more skill and facility with. And then the beautiful thing about coaching is that a lot of the skill set is being able to leverage the brilliance of other people. You know, like we were talking about before, being able to reflect back what they already know or I didn't have to be the expert in everything. I had to be the expert in helping them see their expertise and how to use it. My first focus was starting to work with performers. I had a company called Talent Pool, and what it was meant to do was to provide business skill sets, marketing to actors, and to build a community around that. Because I understood what it felt like to go out and audition, to feel like you're on your own, to get the no's all the time, to not know anybody when you get to a new town and not know how to make connections, I wanted to ease that pain and that was my very first failed business. 

Rachel Archelaus [00:15:59] Hey, everybody has a starter business, right? 

Dawn Andrews [00:16:01]

Yeah, that was good. Training wheels, six figures in debt, lots of promise, lots of, you know, potential, and a big ole wipeout. I would classify it as a failure in that it doesn't exist anymore. But everything, everything that I got out of that because I was basically a founder, I had a technology backbone in this product and service that I was creating. I needed to go out and talk to funders and investors. I needed to figure out what the needs of my community were and how to talk to them and how to sell to them and and package up a product. Everything that I've gone on to help others with, I experienced and like got. A road rash from doing that myself. And I had no idea at the time, like after that failed and I was looking at paying all the money back for it. I would never have thought it would have provided such a foundational, relatable place for me to bring the business to where it is now. I just sat on the floor and cried looking at the bills, but I'm so thankful to to have had it because it's the empathy and specifically the skills and insight that I have from having flamed out that first time has definitely been helpful with working with the clients that I do now.  

Rachel Archelaus [00:17:18]

Yeah. So I'm sure you've analyzed that. Do you think it was listening to other people too much because you are new? Do you think it was you had an intuition about where to go and you didn't have the confidence to go there? Were you just aiming too high, too broad? Like, what do you think it was that? Or You just were meant for other things? It doesn't have to be something so specific. What do you think it was?  

Dawn Andrews [00:17:41]

I honestly think it was a combination of many of those things. One thing that I think is really interesting about it in looking back is that there was a quality that I think women have that I was flexing really hard at that time, which is I find in working with female business owners and even looking back at myself, then we sit behind the scenes with our best estimation of what a group of people or what product people need. And we work really hard in our own conversation with ourselves and our own echo, refining it and making it pretty and coming up with the brand colors and coming up with the messaging and both before we'll go out and road test it. And that was where the majority of the debt and time went was me spending all this time and in developing this community and this product when if I had just gone out and talked to 50 actors and said, Do you need this? Is this interesting to you? Is this the way you'd want it delivered if you did it either would have completely changed the model and the plan for the business and connected with its intended audience and still exist or have some version of it that exists these days. Or it would have been like, Well, that was a great idea and great intention, but the execution of it, nobody wants what you're offering. Mm hmm. I literally help women now with that challenge where they're in their own echo chamber, thinking that they've got this brilliant idea slowly, silently going into debt without ever having the confidence to test it out in the real world and see if it connects. 

Rachel Archelaus [00:19:12]

That's amazing and obviously great training in so many ways for what you do now and helping founders become CEOs. So you were a founder who became a CEO. What is another thing that you think women tend to do on that journey that you could point out here? 

Dawn Andrews [00:19:31]

It's two sides of the same coin. Either they feel like they have to lead like a man. How that translates often from women viewing men is that it turns out that it's dictatorial. That may not honestly be that man's leadership style that they see, but in the translation of, Oh, this is how men do it, so I'm going to do it like them. It loses something in the translation and they become very dictatorial. Or the flip side of the coin is they're almost too democratic. They're more concerned about everybody getting along and maintaining harmony, that it's difficult for them to either have a difficult conversation, to set a limit, to make a choice about where things are going. And they vacillate back and forth between those two things. They'll be too concerned about the harmony, and then they'll swing all the way over in the direction of dictatorial. And the experience of that for the people that they're working with that are being led by them is it's whiplash. They're not really sure who to be or how to be in relationship to doing their work and being led by that person. And then drama ensues. The productivity goes down, they become disincentivized because they're not sure what game they're playing and how to win the game that they're playing. And it's heartbreaking because I understand both sides of that coin. But if you're living in reaction and it expresses itself in either one of those ways, you're not actually leading, you're just reacting.  

Rachel Archelaus [00:20:57]

It kind of brings me to this idea of finding your center in your business with your people, but also with yourself and having known you. I know you went through a period where you needed to find your center again and find your happiness and your energy. Is there any part of that that you'd want to share with people about what you learned from that time? 

Dawn Andrews [00:21:19]

So for all y'all that are listening, Rachel and I have been in a we call ourselves Business BFFs. There's a group of seven of us that have been together for at least six years now, I think that have seen all versions of each other as we have all been on our journeys to build our businesses. What you describe, Rachel, that's an ongoing thing, like finding my center. There have definitely been. Marquee moments where you're like, Oh, this is it. You know, there's cycles of finding yourself. So the business started in 2002, and by 2017 I had grown it pretty substantially and had to work with lots of different types of people. And I kept trying to answer the question, What do you do? What does your company do and who do you do it for? The audiences were always varied because it had grown organically. I was reluctant to niche anyone that showed up at my door that I thought had an interesting or curious challenge to resolve. I was like, Yeah, I'm in, let's do that. It made it really difficult and exhausting to run the business. And into 2017, I was super burned out. I was having some health challenges, straight-up, adrenal burnout. I was talking with all of you on our BFF calls. Really lost because I couldn't continue running the business, helping whoever came to the door. And I didn't have enough energy, honestly, to even be inspired to figure out who to help, where to go. I literally was laying down on the carpet to run the business. I would get up a do my phone call and then I'd lay back down with my pillow on the floor because I was that broken and busted. I think that the version of Finding My Center then it probably had its kernels in the conversation that you and I had. I can't recommend highly enough having other women to talk to when you're running a business. Can't highly recommend that enough. Our group of women having the history of you guys seeing me in highs and lows and the trust and the insight and also the compassion and empathy, knowing that you guys had been in your versions of the same story. I don't know that I would have allowed that of somebody else, like a different group of people to dig in there with me and try and get to the core of what mattered most. But you and I had a conversation. And you being the person that. That believes. I do what I want. That's what I do. That's how I run my business. I do what I want and whatever gives me joy. But you standing in that space for me and asking me the question, what gives you joy? Where is this interesting? Where do you want to be? Was the beginning stages of, I think, what we're seeing play out now. So here we are five years later. But the kernels of it, I think, have been there all along and were dialed up the next round in those conversations that I had with you and our BF crew. 

Rachel Archelaus [00:24:15]

Yeah, I mean, asking yourself what you want. You have to have a platform of worthiness for that, but you have to feel like you deserve to have what you want. And you did. But you had to let go of a lot of resistance in order to get there, which sometimes looks like burnout. It looks like lying on the floor all day because we're letting go of so many limiting beliefs that we didn't even know we had. 

Dawn Andrews [00:24:40]

For sure it was having you and having that group of women and some other mentors here on the outside. Be that reflection back, because when you're that tired and uninspired and demotivated and and just kind of done, you don't have access to any possibility for yourself. Other people have to hold that space for you. You asked me, where do you see yourself? And I said, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Giants that I work with. And I had been blessed to have such extraordinary clients who were doing world-changing work, things that were very visible and very impactful. I felt like the person on the back of the motorcycle, and I think the reason why I was lying on the floor is because I was just done being on the back again. I had painted myself back into a corner. Finding that center. It's an ongoing process, but it's impossible to do on your own. There's no amount of even self-reflection. Self-help books, assessments. All of those things are definitely information that can be useful, but similar to someone starting their own business. Do you want to go out and road tested and get into a conversation with the world around you to see if what you're intending is actually landing and resonating? Or do you want to keep spinning like a top in your own spot, on your own until you fall over? That's where it was. 

Rachel Archelaus[00:26:03]

Yeah. And I think you just have a greater sensitivity to your feelings as well. So you're not getting so far down the track and then realizing, oh, wait, I'm on the back again. Yeah, much quicker to notice now. 

Dawn Andrews [00:26:15]

Yeah. So about being more sensitive to myself, there was a game-changing moment during the pandemic. I've worked with an organization called Campowerment for many years now as one of the teacher trainer leaders at this sleepaway camp for grown-up women. And they gave me a slot to teach. And we landed on women's leadership as the topic because I felt at that moment, nobody's coming for us. Literally humanity on the planet. Nobody's coming for us. As women in leadership, no prince is going to ride in and give us the keys to the kingdom. We need to stop waiting for permission. We need to stop waiting for access. We need to stop waiting for a seat at the table and build our own tables. All of that needs to happen. And why wasn't that happening? What was in the way? And I felt like I had a lot to say about that. I taught the initial class and as part of that I'd made something up on the end of it to say, Hey, let's get together as a group. I have more that I can teach about this. Would you like to join me instead of sitting behind the scenes trying to figure out what could this be? How could this work? I just let the women that decided this was a topic they wanted to engage on lead me. I followed their curiosity, their interest, their passion, their frustrations, and built the first iteration of the course that way. Rachel It was a revelation, and I can't believe that it took me freakin 20 years into my business to do that because all the answers that I needed were there and because I was very straightforward about it being a, a developmental course, it was a beta. I was vulnerable. I was 100% myself. All the women that participated had a stake in it. They had skin in the game and wanted to develop this with me. And that course freakin took off. It took off because I actually allowed other people in and co-created instead of feeling like I had to be pretty polished and perfect before I put anything out there. So I work with women that are incredibly accomplished, people in politics, people that are A-list celebrities, people that are leading big companies, they move quickly. And the reason they move quickly is because they don't wait for permission. They engage. They're willing to be vulnerable. They're willing to show their flaws. They're willing to ask for help. And because of that, they make big moves and big impact. And that was the first time that I think I had really felt that fully for myself, that I lived it as opposed to just theoretically could discuss it. 

Rachel Archelaus [00:28:49]

I love that that is such a good thing to end on as well. Clarity often comes through action. Like you're saying, we don't get much of that mulling around in our own heads. It's either reflected back to us through a conversation or launching something, asking for feedback, actually creating something and seeing it out in the world. And you have gone through all of these different stages in your own life learning from mentors, creating your own businesses, watching them do different things, and then finding real success beyond you. Like seeing things take off, and it's because you're willing to be yourself. You're willing to show the not perfect side of you. And I'm sure that's what people will do in your podcast. So your guests are going to be sharing really vulnerable things about themselves because you create a safe space for that because you're also willing to go there with them. So I know I'm really excited to listen to those interviews and to get to learn how these really important women in our society are making changes and standing up for themselves and showing the diversity of what we can do and who we can be. So thank you so much for creating this podcast and I'm so excited to listen to it. And is there anything else that you want to leave us with or any final questions you ask your guests? 

Dawn Andrews [00:30:14]

Who now that I'm about to ask this question and have to answer it myself, I can feel my armpits getting all sweaty. 

Rachel Archelaus [00:30:19] Perfect. 

Dawn Andrews [00:30:22]

So the parting question that I ask all of my guests is, imagine yourself you're standing in the middle of Times Square and you're looking up at all of the sparkly billboards. The biggest one is for you. What is your message that you'd like to leave on the billboard for women leaders everywhere? And now comes the awkward, long pause. 

Rachel Archelaus [00:30:44] Where you can edit it out and see that's what happened. So this is. 

Dawn Andrews [00:30:50] I think it's. You matter. 

Rachel Archelaus [00:30:52] Mm. 

Dawn Andrews [00:30:54]

And what I mean by you matter is that just by getting up and breathing. You're making an impact. There are people that are moved. There are people that are forever changed because you showed up. And it doesn't have to be anything more exceptional than that. Here's an example. I got up this morning. I was taking one of my sons to school and I have a neighbor. That has a dog. This guy has this really old pug dog that looks like a barrel with legs and snorts. And he is a really tall, slender man with this wild, big, crazy hair and these super interesting glasses and his oddly matched sweat pants shuffling out to give his dog his morning walk. We didn't actually connect and see each other eye to eye today, but I just saw him walking with his dog in his lovely morning hair, sweat pants, and it gave me so much joy. That guy has no idea that I even saw him this morning. But because he got up and he's out doing his thing, walking his dog, I was left in this really joyful place and started a lovely conversation with my son on the way to school. And I wish I had a female example to give given that we're talking about women today. But the point is, is that you matter and that just getting up with your bedhead walk in your barrel of a dog and your flip flops and ratty sweatpants, you still can be the change that the world needs to see.  

Rachel Archelaus [00:32:36]

Well, that's amazing. And thank you for showing up and doing this. 

Dawn Andrews [00:32:41]

You're welcome. Right on, sister. 

Dawn Andrews [00:32:44]

Thank you for joining us this week to view the complete shownotes and all the links mentioned in today's episode, visit mygoodwoman.com. Before you go, make sure you follow or subscribe to the podcast so you can receive fresh episodes when they drop. And if you're enjoying My Good Woman, leave us a review. And Apple Podcasts reviews are one of the major ways that Apple ranks their podcasts. So even though it only takes a few seconds, it really does make a difference. This episode was produced by me and Kathleena O'Shaughnessy. Thank you again for joining me, Dawn Andrews, and this episode of My Good Woman.