Welcome to the Rich Coach Club, the podcast that teaches you how to build your dream coaching practice and how to significantly increase your income. If you're a coach and you're determined to start making more money, this show is for you. I'm master certified life coach Susan Hyatt, and I'm psyched for you to join me on this journey.

Oh hey coaches. Do you believe me when I say the more fun you have, the more money you make? Or how about the more you relax, the more money you’ll make? I bet 98% of this listenership wants to believe it but hasn’t figured out how to embody that yet.

That’s what today’s episode is all about. I have a very special guest, Dr. Anna Garrett, who is one of my master certified Bare coaches. She’s a pharmacist, she’s an author, she’s coming back to the show for the second time because she recently said something to me during a Bare coach class call that caught my attention.

And I can’t wait for you to listen in and hear this conversation. But first, I want to give you a little update. So if you’re my friend on Facebook or you follow me on Instagram, did you know we now have a TikTok? Oh dear god in heaven.

Mallory on my team has us on TikTok. But primarily, if you’re my Facebook friend, you’ve heard me making jokes about unplugging and the digital detox experiment that I did last weekend. Or by the time you’re listening to this, I will have completed it a second time.

I recently read a couple of different books. One is called How to Break Up with Your Phone, and the other book is called 24/6, and 24/6 is by Tiffany Shlain. We will link to all that in the show notes but let me just give you a little bit of background.

I’m someone who absolutely loves the internet. I love to research things; I love to chat it up with all y’all inside the Rich Coach Club Facebook group. I love looking at beautiful accounts on Instagram, I have a ton of fun and entertainment wrapped up in the online world.

And I also have a very beautiful life offline. But I started to notice that as much as I love to run my business using Asana and Slack and GCal and Gmail and I use my smartphone to stay connected, I started to notice that my attention span was shrinking dramatically.

And I noticed this when I was chatting with Ryan, my 22-year-old son. Ryan is someone who when he was a kid, he would read at least a book a day. Cora was the same way. We’re all big readers in my house. And he said, “I just can’t sit down and read anymore.”

And I said, “You know what, I have a really hard time staying focused and reading like I used to as well.” I still read books, but it takes me longer, I find that I’m just distracted, and I started to pay attention to a lot of the information around what too much screen time is doing to our brains.

It’s scientifically proven that all of the notifications and screens we’re addicted to is creating addiction. Its constant dopamine hit with all those notifications and it’s literally changing our brains.

Now, I’m not somebody who gets too alarmed by that, but when I started noticing that I just was feeling like my boundaries were getting super blurred, in a way that they never used to, I’ve always had pretty great boundaries when it comes to most things.

And so I read this book called How to Break Up with Your Phone. And it’s a good book, I do highly recommend it. And then someone made a comment on the post about that book, they said you really should read this book, 24/6, that was the book that really helped me.

And so I read 24/6 and the premise behind it is that you take one 24-hour digital detox per week. And that means this author recommends no screens. No TV, no computer, no smartphone, no Kindle, anything with a screen on it, you’re going to take a 24-hour break.

And she recommends doing it from dinner time on a Friday night to dinner time on a Saturday night. Of course you could do it any time you wanted, but she felt like that was her shabbat. She grew up Jewish. If you have heard of or raised in a religious culture where the sabbath is protected, that really used to be something that people did. They would not work and spend time with family, or rest.

And what’s interesting is that when you look at the history of the workweek, the 40-hour workweek and having two days off on the weekend is a relatively newer phenomenon in our world and in the 24/6 book, she makes a joke that labor unions really had to lobby to get one day off. And then they started to discover people really needed it.

They would just work day after day after day with no real rights and no time off and people needed a day off. And then Henry Ford is famous for giving his people two days off, but the author makes the joke that he didn’t really have altruistic intentions necessarily. He wanted people to have two days off so that they could have free time to cruise around in their Ford automobiles, but I digress.

So we went from really advocating for having a weekend. I don’t know if any of you are Downton Abbey fans, but my favorite line of that entire series is when Maggie, she says, “What is a weekend?” But, right? We grew up, your parents probably didn’t work weekends.

And now that we have smartphones, people are working all the time and are connected all the time. And it’s just the constant interruption and the constant 24/7 connectivity that I think is draining our energy.

And so I decided that I would make it fun, like the author of 24/6, and I planned a big dinner, I of course got Scott Hyatt on board, he very quickly was like, sure, let’s do it. But his first question was, “Oh wait, you mean no TV? No Netflix either?”

And I thought that that was really funny, that we have gone so far down the road of being in front of screens so much, remember when too much TV was a huge issue? Now we don’t even consider TV as a big deal. But anyway, I’m like, no Netflix, no nothing.

So he says yes. I plan a big beautiful meal, I made a playlist, I decided that we would make a charcuterie board together. I ordered a special board. I went all out. We had dinner in the dining room with candles, we made this charcuterie board together, which was quite comical.

Because Scott just wanted to slap all the salami on the board and call it a day. He was trying to be super efficient. And I’m like, wait a minute, this is an art. I got special honeycomb, honey from Savannah Bee Company. We’re going to savor this.

So we made our charcuterie board. People kept making jokes on my Facebook about that. We made the board, we sat down and ate the board, then we cooked dinner together. We ate at the dining room table, we cleaned up.

I’m not going to lie; we had some great sex. Then we read books by the fire, it was absolutely delightful and heaven. Our phones were turned off, we do have a landline phone still, so we had alerted everyone they could call us on the landline if there was an emergency.

I let my team know, I let all y’all in Facebook land know. And then we went to bed kind of early, we got up early, we went for an amazing hike, Scott went and worked on his sports car, I read books all day, Ryan came over, we had dinner together Saturday night.

And then actually, it went by rather quickly, I have to admit. So what was interesting was that what I noticed was the compulsion to always pick up my phone. And when it wasn’t there, I thought it was fascinating how often I would turn to get it and check it.

And then also how often I would have a thought about something and think, “Oh, I want to go look that up.” And then I was like, oh. So to me it wasn’t so much dying to get back on social media as it was an eagerness to be able to research things whenever I want.

So you may notice if you give this a shot that that’s something that’s important to you too. So I made a list of things to look up later. Scott had a harder time with this than I did. I thought it was actually pretty funny that starting at about two-ish, he started checking the time and saying like, “How long are we doing this? I want to watch TV.”

And so at five o clock, he was like, “It’s five o clock, I’m turning on Netflix.” And I said, “We’re supposed to til 5:30.” So I made him wait. And then I honestly considered not turning my phone back on until Sunday, but there was a part of me that was like, okay, I need to check in, which I really didn’t need to check in.

It’s so fascinating. And so I loved it so much and I felt so refreshed not having the phone in my bedroom and using a regular alarm clock. I got much better sleep. It was just a really fascinating experiment and I still love the internet, and six days a week I want to enjoy using it.

But every Friday we’re going to do this. And I’m curious, I would love for you to email in to us, support@susanhyatt.co, or go inside the Rich Coach Club Facebook group and talk to me about your experience with this. Because I really think there’s something to this.

I noticed I was very quickly able to get back into focused reading because I wasn’t distracted, I noticed I slept better, I noticed my mood was better. I noticed throughout this past week how when I decided I was not going to check my phone notifications at all until after I was awake for at least an hour, how better my day is.

And so it’s just really interesting to observe how constant notifications can distract us, how checking in on social media without boundaries can affect our moods, and I’m really excited to share this with all y’all and to see what comes up for you. I’m going to be running contests and challenges around this and just see what comes up.

Now here’s the thing is that I do recognize that during the pandemic, many of us are homebound and do not go into an office, and maybe you live alone, and social media is your way of staying socially connected. I totally get it.

And yet, I think no matter how necessary the online world is for you, for your mental health, for your business, I do think that we could all probably have better boundaries with it. That being said, when we get in today’s interview, I think it’ll be interesting for you to hear how having a life life outside of the online space has really helped Dr. Anna Garrett enjoy life, her husband, her granddaughter, and make more money. So stay and stick around for that interview.

Okay coaches, it’s time to meet Dr. Anna Garrett. So Dr. Anna Garrett is a wife, she’s a grandma, she’s an entrepreneur, she lives in Asheville, North Carolina. We talk about how she’s now investing in real estate; she has some pretty bomb Airbnbs in the Asheville area.

She’s a pharmacist, she’s an author, she is the whole meal deal. I can’t wait for you to hear how she talks about going from over-efforting and being pretty tightly wound, to having time to golf with her husband, having a condensed work schedule, and making more money and having more joy in her life. Eat it up, coaches.

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Susan: Welcome to the podcast. Welcome back to the podcast, Dr. Anna Garrett.

Dr. Anna: Thank you. Glad to be here.

Susan: I am so delighted to have you as always. So for those of you who don’t follow along super closely, why not? But in case you don’t, Dr. Anna Garrett is one of the Bare master certified coaches in my world. She’s an amazing human, she helps women master - would you say master their hormones? She’s a pharmacist, she has a book…

Dr. Anna: I even have it right here.

Susan: It’s so good. And I actually had you - interviewed you, did a webinar with you, maybe three years ago when I entered perimenopause and was like, wait, what? This is what you do? But the reason that I invited her back to talk is because during a coach call that we had last month and talking about wrapping up 2020 and all the things, you said something that caught my attention. And do you remember what it was?

Dr. Anna: I do. I said that I had learned how to relax into my business. And you were like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Susan: Yes. She said I learned how to relax into my business. Entrepreneurs typically don’t talk about that in terms of what happened when you relaxed into your business.

Dr. Anna: Well, so I actually took a page out of your playbook and I think I first heard you say this, I don't know what the first thing I did with you was. I was in one of your masterminds a few years ago. And you said the more fun I have, the more money I make. And I was like, huh, I wonder what that would be like and how do we make that happen?

And so I’ve had my business for 10 years and I started it when I was still working full-time and then I was working part-time. And then I decided to make the leap in 2017. And I got to 2019 and I was just like, this sucks. I hate my life. And I was getting ready to turn 60 and I had all these travel plans for that particular year.

And so I actually went as far as hiring a mindset coach that I had been in another group with and we really dug into what brought me joy and how I wanted to feel. These were all concepts that I’d heard of before, but I’d never actually lived into them in any way because I’m type A, my brain is going 24/7, I’m science. That’s what I am.

So I said, well okay, this is the year we’re going to do this where I am shutting this thing down because I am not going to feel like this. So I got out my calendar and I put on all my travel. And then my second priority was spending time with my granddaughter.

So I was like, okay, I am intentionally committing to seeing her at least once a month. They live two and a half hours away. So I scheduled it all out. And then I raised the prices on my products and I just said, you know what, whatever happens is going to happen. I’m just going to relax; I’m going to know that the business is coming to me because I have shown up year after year after year and it is my turn.

I mean, I still did the things like the newsletter and I didn’t work super hard, but anyway, I have a lot of stuff to repurpose.

Susan: You have a mountain of content.

Dr. Anna: I have a mountain of content, so I used that mountain of content. And I just decided I’m not going to do anything that was not fun. So if it was not fun and it needed to be done, I was hiring somebody to do it.

Susan: This gets me so excited. I can’t wait for you to - I’ve been taking notes because I have so much to say when we’re finished. But carry on. So you scheduled all your travel first, then you scheduled time with your granddaughter, which is really - by the way, most adorable redhead on the internet streets. So cute. Now don’t y’all be sending me hate mail about how your granddaughter with red hair, okay.

Dr. Anna: We can do a page with red-headed children.

Susan: Yes. Then what you had left, the time that you had left to work with was what you ran your business with. And you also raised your prices and…

Dr. Anna: Right. I published my book in April of that year and I did a couple of book tour-y kind of things and I don’t know, I don’t know how to describe what I did because there was not a lot of doing, and that’s exactly what needed to happen. There needed to be not a lot of doing.

Because one of the things that my mindset coach and I covered was I always felt like I had to be doing something to be worthy. And that is not a very pleasant place to be. I know where it comes from, it comes from my mother. So I just was like, okay, I’m not filling up every single second of my calendar just for the sake of doing something. So I had a good year. It wasn’t my best year because this past year was my best year. So in the middle of a pandemic…

Susan: Okay wait. Okay, so you also uncovered - I actually today taught a class about what you’re talking about. So you uncovered this old family of origin rule that your worthiness comes from being productive and doing all the time. And in order for you to break that rule, you had to come up with a new rule, which is some form of the more fun I have, the more money I make.

Dr. Anna: I mean, my mother was doing tax returns until six weeks before she died.

Susan: I mean, that’s not funny but that - I understand that personality type.

Dr. Anna: She had cancer and she had moved her office home, but she was still grinding it out. And we never discussed it and maybe that was some sort of form of control for her, which knowing her, I’m sure it was. But I just - I don’t want that for myself.

I remember when I quit my full-time job in 2011, I was so afraid that I could not make this work. And every year has gotten better and better and better, but I think I finally learned to trust that the universe has got my back. And if I do my little bit and I show up, that things are going to work out. And so going into 2020, who would have known that this shit - well, apparently some people knew but they weren’t telling us.

Susan: Yeah, some people knew.

Dr. Anna: That’s a whole other story. And I remember when we got to March, and everything shut down and it was crickets for two weeks. And I was like, shit. And I just kept showing up, kept showing up. And in April, the floodgates opened, I’ve had the best year I’ve ever had.

Susan: The best year you’ve ever had in the midst of a pandemic.

Dr. Anna: In the midst of a pandemic. And a part of that may be because people are taking their health more seriously and they’re like, I’m getting on top of this stuff and I’m not putting up with it. Or it could be because everybody’s locked up in their house with their kids and their husbands. It’s like, somebody’s going to die if I don’t get these hormones sorted out.

Susan: These hormones in check. There’s going to be a real problem.

Dr. Anna: You know, whatever the reason. I don’t really care what the reason is, but it worked out. It worked out good.

Susan: Well, there’s many things that you’ve said that I think are important. One is you’ve shown up, you’ve done the work, you’ve created lots of things. I think it’s interesting. One thing that you said that was interesting to me was that you were scared in 2011 to leave your job, but every year your business has gotten better. But at the top of the interview, you talked about how you were like, I do not want to live this way.

And so what were the kinds of things - so over-efforting, overworking, what was going on in your inner world? Because your business kept growing but inside, you weren’t happy with it, you were - what was happening?

Dr. Anna: I think it was just watching my husband just at the drop of a hat say I’m going to go play golf today, do you want to come? And I’d always have to say no because I didn’t have any white space in my calendar to do that. And I was trying to do social media and things I had no business doing. That’s totally somebody else’s job to do.

I didn’t feel joy. And when I’m working with women who are really struggling to feel at home in their bodies and they feel like nothing is ever going to change and they’re just going to have to live like this forever, I better be able to project some joy because they don’t want wah-wah me. They want some hope. And when you have no joy in your business, it’s really hard to give that when you don’t have it. I just knew that something had to change.

Susan: And so you changed the old rules, you traveled, had fun, spent time - I love seeing the pictures of your granddaughter. Those are always so joy-filled. And then you ended up making more money that way. So what it strikes me as, because you’re like, I don’t even know how to describe - you embodied, body and mind, your goals.

And I think it’s important for everybody listening to really think about the trust piece that you’re describing. The trusting that what I’m doing and that is worthiness, what I’m doing is enough.

Dr. Anna: It is enough. And I get so much pleasure from hearing back from my clients who are like, I just can’t believe the difference in myself and how I feel and my relationships are better, whatever goal it is that they have for themselves as far as how they feel. There’s a lot of juice in that for me.

Susan: And also what you’re describing, I’ll have to go back and find the podcast episode where I talk about what you just described, which is schedule your motherfucking life first. You’re not saying it that way, but I’m like, schedule your life and then build your business around the lifestyle that you want to have.

Not the other way around, which many of us, myself included, sometimes find ourselves, like you’re saying, your husband’s like, hey, want to go play golf, and you look at your schedule and you’re like, fuck.

Dr. Anna: Exactly.

Susan: When am I going to play golf, right?

Dr. Anna: I have rules now. And this again came from you. I remember I wanted to interview you in my group I think and it was going to be at like, five o clock in the afternoon and you said I turn into a pumpkin at three so no thanks. And you sent me off to somebody else.

But I don’t do anything before 10 o clock, and if I can avoid it, I don’t do anything after four. And these people that want me to do some sort of interviewing on weekends, I’m like, you have lost your mind because I’m not doing that. No.

Susan: Listen, your name better be Oprah Winfrey making that kind of request.

Dr. Anna: Exactly.

Susan: Yeah, I think that it is interesting to really think about and be fierce about rules like that because it’s such a slippery slope. I mean, there are always special circumstances, right? I just made a joke. But you bet your ass if Oprah wanted to talk to me on a Saturday, I would make that happen.

But by and large, if you start saying okay to four, okay to five, then all of a sudden it’s 8pm and you’re like, why am I on this interview at 8pm? How did this happen to me? And taking your power back and saying this is the kind of lifestyle I want to live and trusting that there’s more than enough for all of us to go around during the hours that we’re available, which you have proven. You’ve proven in ’19 and ’20.

Dr. Anna: I get the occasional Australian client, which requires some maneuvering and I’m happy to do it because it’s only once in a while. But I know if I start doing things before 10 o clock in the morning, what that means is I don’t exercise. And that is my time. I don’t want to go exercise and rush home and get right to work. I want to eat breakfast, I want to take a shower, and I want to get myself ready to rock and roll. And it works. I only do client calls in the afternoons.

Susan: It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. And you - I never, let me just preface this by saying I never got an impression from you that you were wound too tight or anything like that. But seeing your energy right now, I’m like, wow, look at Dr. Anna Garrett. You are relaxed. You are relaxed. It’s beautiful.

What’s your - for 2021, do you have some of the same priorities? What are you doing in 2021 that you scheduled first? Because I have to say I just had a text exchange with Alexandra Franzen, who everybody who listens to the podcast knows, has met I think through something of mine, whether it’s offers, webinars, whatever.

She sent a group text to some of us in her group text together and she was like, I’m so proud of myself. She was like, I booked all my vacations in 2021 and some writing retreat she wants to attend herself and something else, something else. And I was like, me too bitches.

Dr. Anna: Me three.

Susan: Five, six weeks of vacation, every Friday off, all my workouts. It is three weeks off during the holidays because that’s the life I want to live and if what I have left over, like you said, has got to be enough. So for you, what you got cooking for 2021?

Dr. Anna: Well, I’m going to go to Florida for the first two weeks of February and then I am going to Myrtle Beach to work with my golf teacher. And on the end, my husband and I, I gave him for Christmas a trip to Pinehurst to play golf. So we’re going to play Pinehurst number two.

Susan: I am literally the worst golfer you have ever seen, but that’s another story.

Dr. Anna: That’s okay.

Susan: But I appreciate what people love.

Dr. Anna: And then my ass better be sitting in a villa in Italy in Positano with somebody.

Susan: We’re going. I’ve got my arm ready.

Dr. Anna: I have an autoimmune condition and you can know when group 2A rolls around, I’m going to be posting up with my sleeve rolled up. And then I go to the beach for a month every July. So this will be the fourth year that I’ve done that. And then we are going to Hawaii for two weeks for our 25th wedding anniversary in September.

Susan: Congratulations.

Dr. Anna: And that pretty much wraps up this year, but we’re already planning a trip to Patagonia in March of 2022.

Susan: That is all fun and joy-filled.

Dr. Anna: You know I went to Africa in the middle of the damn pandemic, right?

Susan: I do know. I do know. And I was delighted to see all those gorillas.

Dr. Anna: One in which passed about six inches from my ass. I didn’t see it because the guy had said turn around and crouch down, Dian Fossey style. And I’m like, so I couldn’t see where he was.

Susan: Oh my god.

Dr. Anna: So that was my surreal moment for 2020.

Susan: What a great surreal moment. I’ve had so many surreal moments in 2020 that were not as exciting as a gorilla almost biting my ass. But I am confident that 2021 is going to bring me some international travel.

Dr. Anna: If I am not in Italy, I’m going to be so pissed off.

Susan: We will. We will. I know it. I feel like we will - the regular people will get regular meaning. I did that little assessment where it tells you where you would be in line to get the vaccine, and I’m like, third from the end of the line. I’m at the end of the line, I’m fine with it. But I feel like even those of us at the end would get it, what do you think? April? May maybe?

Dr. Anna: Well, I think Biden’s going to get in there and kick ass and take names as far as getting it out there. But I’m just - and we’re going to go off on a political tangent, but the number of people who are saying they don’t want it is really surprising to me. And I actually was one of those people to start with because I’m like, warp speed, that doesn’t sound like something I’m going to be real interested in. But if it means that I can go and do the things I want to go, then by god…

Susan: Give it to me. Well, and I’ve talked to some people who were like - I don’t know anything about it, but that the type of vaccine that they had to create wasn’t that complicated of a vaccine. So when people are worried about it being rushed, it’s like, I am hopeful that they have it available, I am taking it. And I was laughing at some of the conspiracy theorists who were like, worried that they’re injecting us with…

Dr. Anna: Microchips.

Susan: Yeah, to track us. I’m like, hey, they’re already tracking your ass. Pick up your smartphone.

Dr. Anna: Back pocket, you’re good to go.

Susan: I mean, come on. So I think I’m very, very, very hopeful. I agree, I think Biden’s going to get in there and it’s going to be distributed. And I actually - well, I can’t even say it on the podcast. But I had, I can’t say how, I had some privy information about it and I knew that it was at our local hospitals well before we thought that they would be shipped and things like that. So I think they’re managing our expectations well, and I think it’ll go better hopefully than we think.

Dr. Anna: Well, my husband’s getting his second one on Thursday so he’ll be all…

Susan: That is amazing.

Dr. Anna: He’ll be all done up. Well, he works in pharmacy, and so he’s in a hospital and that’s - he’s at the top of the list. So good for him.

Susan: Amazing. Well, I thank you so much. Where can people get more joyful Dr. Anna Garrett if they want to?

Dr. Anna: They can get more joyful Anna Garrett at www.drannagarrett.com. And if they need to learn about perimenopause, they can go to www.perimenopausebook.com and find that.

Susan: Y’all want that book. Listen, if you’re 30 or above, get the freaking book.

Dr. Anna: 35 minimum. I wrote it to be the What to Expect When You’re Expecting for perimenopause because nobody’s talking about it.

Susan: Yeah, it’s great.

Dr. Anna: And a lot of clients too.

Susan: That’s a whole ‘nother podcast on why writing a book brings you clients.

Dr. Anna: It has been a game-changer for me.

Susan: That’s awesome. Well I’m so, so thrilled. Thank you so much for your time.

Dr. Anna: Well thank you for having me.

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I hope you enjoyed that interview as much as I did. And if you want to watch the video replay of it, head on over to the Rich Coach Club Facebook group and you can watch us ham it up. Also, before we say goodbye today, I want to talk about a couple of things that are available right now.

I have created something called The University for Life Coach Training. So if you are interested in helping people create their right life, reach goals, create more joy, if you think that sounds like a fun gig, you’re going to want to head on over to The University for Life Coach Training website. That URL’s in the show notes.

Over there, you’re going to find a complete curriculum. You can take a look at the roster of faculty, the classes that we’re going to teach. It’s an amazing program and not only are we out to train the best coaches in the world, we’re also doing it through a DEI lens.

So if you’re interested in becoming a coach and are interested in not doing it in an oppressive way, check out what we have to offer. Also what’s happening is something called Miracle Year. If you want to live in the miracle, if you want to create miracles, you’re also going to want to check out what we have available. Miracle Year. Go check them out.

Oh, one last thing. Are you part of The Mastermind for 2021 yet? If not, you want to have a 30-minute call with someone on my team. This is truly a once in a decade kind of offer, so go schedule your call. You can have a private one-on-one coaching session with someone on my team and determine if On the 6 or The Mastermind is the right community of women kicking ass for you. See you later.