Michelle Pollack

On the 349th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Michelle Pollack joins the show to completely shatter your perception of the inner critic and how something as “simple” as values can truly change how you show up in your life and business. Michelle is an Executive and Leadership Coach who shares her expertise in how to give yourself permission to play bigger and live the life you desire. Follow along to find out: How Michelle was able to change the neural pathways in her brain. What to do when the “is this all there is” feeling pops up and how to step out of it.  The importance of values and how to define them for yourself.  Can you have too many values and how to prioritize values for different seasons of life?  Is there such a thing as balance?  How to LIVE within your values once you’ve actually identified them despite life’s responsibilities.  The #1 barrier to facing your own inner critic.  7 ways the inner critic could be showing up in your life. How to create awareness around your inner critic. The critical component of working through your inner critic. What’s a “why” and how do you create one? What does compassion got to do with your inner critic? Why is messy action better than no action? The reality of shifting into new identities.  How are you supposed to sit in difficult emotions? Leadership vs power: what’s the difference? How to lead with your values.  Tune into the episode by hitting play or reading the transcript below.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the  show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Michelle's website  The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM AI for Creative Entrepreneurs Podcast Full Transcript: Rob Marsh:  At some point in your business or life you've probably thought a bit about your values. What's really important to you as a human, as a copywriter, maybe as a parent or a friend or a sibling, or any of the other roles that you fill in your life. What's really important? Some of the stuff isn't easy to figure out, it takes time and deep thinking, and that's why we invited our guest for today's episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast to join us, that's Michelle Pollack, and Michelle is a leadership and mindset coach for executives. We asked her about figuring out our values, setting the right goals and dealing with the inner critic that won't leave us alone, and her answers are directly applicable to your business and success. Kira Hug:  But first, this episode is brought to you by the P7 Client Attraction Pipeline, which is our client acquisition system. And anytime we survey our community of lovely copywriters, we ask you what do you want? And you say, I need help finding clients, I need a prospecting system. So we put it together and we continue to improve and add to it so that it works for copywriters based on what's happening in the marketplace today. And inside the Pipeline Prospecting System we have over 21 pitching templates, so there's different styles you can use, different templates you can pull from based on what works for you. There are also different tools and pitch tracking templates that you can pull from so that you… It's really easy to start pitching tomorrow and you don't have to reinvent everything from scratch. And there are also a ton of other templates and tools and resources inside the system that other copywriters have used to find new clients. So, we wanted to make it really easy for you to just get up and running and find those clients, especially during weird recession times like right now, where it feels a little tricky. And so if you are looking for something like that, you can learn more at thecopywriterclub.com/p7. Okay, let's kick off our episode with Michelle. How did you end up as an executive coach slash leadership coach slash mindset coach? How did you get here? Michelle Pollack:  So I ended up where I am because I felt like crap about myself for a really long time. I thought I was going to be an actress. I went to school for acting, I was convinced I was going to be a star. In eighth grade I told everybody in my class that we were moving to Manhattan for my career. My mom got all sorts of phone calls from people, "Joanne, you're moving to New York City?" She was like, "No." I think I was testing out early iterations of manifestation, they didn't work. But that was it, I was tunnel visioned. And then I got to New York City. I mean, I did some performing after college in Chicago. I went to Northwestern, I did all the shows. And then I moved to New York and I did... I auditioned, I did some summer theater and I was on the track and I was at a callback for a national tour of Annie Get Your Gun, and I was cartwheeling across the room at the callback and I was like, "Oh my God, I don't want to cartwheel across the stage eight shows a week, this is not how I want to spend my life, I don't want to leave New York City to do that." So, I had this total crisis of identity. I had no idea what I did want to do, I just knew I didn't want to do that anymore. So, I went and I worked, first I did some interning in film and then I went and got into theater, into the producing side of things. I worked for the producers of Rent and Avenue Q, I helped to put La bohème on Broadway with Baz Lerman, and Avenue Q on Broadway. And then I ended up moving out to LA and I got into TV and I worked on shows like The Unit and The New Adventures of Old Christine with Julia Louis Dreyfus, and I worked on Without a Trace. I had this very glamorous looking life that people were like, oh my gosh, that's so sexy. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, I'm so unhappy." I was just like, I did not feel good inside. I was like, "I have all the boxes checked of all the things that I'm supposed to be doing with my life, and is this all there is? Because if it is, this isn't what I feel like I signed up for." So I just kind of started searching, I was on this constant quest to figure out what it was that was going to make me feel better about myself. I was surrounded by all these incredible people, I had friends that were on TV, I had friends that were on Broadway, I had friends that were crushing it as corporate lawyers, I had friends that were starting their own businesses. And I just was like, "There must be something decent about me because all these people like me." Can you imagine thinking that about yourself? I mean, there must be something decent about me. But that was genuinely how I felt. I was like, "Well, I'm really lucky, I'm surrounded by all these incredible people." And I knew that that was a terrible way to think, I just didn't know how to stop thinking that. And I also had this constant feeling of, there's got to be something more than this. There's got to be something more than this for me. And, I feel like I know deep down that I'm capable of way more than this, like there's more for me out there. So I just started, I went... I took an interior design class, I got certified as a yoga teacher, and this was all while I had a full-time job at CBS. And I just started exploring, and at a certain point I was like, "You know what? I can't feel this way anymore. I need somebody to help me." And I went and I started therapy. And through the work I did with my therapist, so I actually had some disordered eating issues, which she helped me to really overcome through mindset work, and I was able to... I mean, we all know it's never about the food, it has nothing to do with the food. And it was very, very largely connected to the way I was feeling about myself and what I did and my kind of meh ness about life in general. And she really helped me to change the way I thought about my body, about myself, about food, and it was all through shifting neural pathways in my brain. She taught me how to do that. And I was like, I had always thought, this is just the way I am. This is just the way I think. And all of a sudden it wasn't just the way I was and it wasn't just the way I thought. And so it started me on this journey of like, well, I want to know more about this. I want to understand this. And I would like everybody in the world to know that that's not just the way you are and it's not just the way you think. So I started just exploring more and more personal development work. While I was at CBS, I kept getting this like, "You should be a life coach. You should be a life coach." And I was like, "What the hell is a life coach? That is such a [censored 00:07:55] idea." And then lo and behold, six or seven years later I decided I was going to become a life coach. I did more and more work and I loved what I was finding, and after taking some time off to be home with my kids and feeling ready to head back into work, I dipped my toe back in entertainment. And I was like, "This isn't it. This is not it. I was right the first time around." I wasn't feeling the sense of what I now can identify as fulfillment, in my day-to-day life. So I decided to look into coaching, the idea of coaching, and as soon as I set foot, well, that's a little bit of an exaggeration, but after the first day of my first class I was like, "This is it. This is my thing. I'm in." I signed up for the whole thing, I did the entire program and that's it, I haven't looked back. And really, there was this whole part of me in that time where I was exploring that had all these ideas about different things that I wanted to do that I thought I could do, and then I just would shut myself down, I never even tried. I had like 30 million entrepreneurial ideas. I really wanted the freedom of my own career, my own business, but I just was convinced I couldn't.

Michelle Pollack, Career and Leadership Coach, discusses the role of values in aligning internal and external perspectives, overcoming resistance and obstacles, and the impact of boundaries. Learn how values support growth, ranking values, and addressing inner critics. Explore the importance of communication and setting boundaries for personal and professional growth.