#16 | Building Faith-Based Businesses With Brooke Thomas

Today’s guest is a mindset master, podcast host, and lifestyle coach – Brooke Thomas seemingly does it all. Here is a cheat sheet if you want to learn more about Brooke.

The Many Hats Brooke Wears (5:15)

Brooke is a full-time entrepreneur, faith-based business coach, healthy lifestyle expert and a mother! I find balancing work and life to be tough and I don’t have any kids yet so the fact that Brooke has all of this on her plate and be a mom is amazing.

The first thing I wanted to dig into was exactly how Brooke fits everything in? Her biggest secret to juggling it all is waking up early. And not just when the sun rises…I’m talking 4 am when it still pitch dark. She swears by this practice as it gives her time to reflect and have a fresh, grounding start each morning.

Challenge: Can we try waking up a little bit earlier tomorrow? How about waking up just 15 minutes earlier and getting our minds in a better place before we tackle the day?

The Importance of Accepting Good Help (10:30)

Brooke is all about delegation, which includes delegating to her kids. I loved Brooke’s insight that sometimes women in business get stuck, angry or bitter because they are doing everything. Her suggestion, hire someone to help or outsource to family members who can pitch in.

If you’re tight on cash Brooke offered the solution of a service trade. Perhaps there is something you can offer that someone else needs and vise versa. If you run a marketing company and someone else runs a social media company could you offer to work on each others businesses for free?

Brooke digs in and explains how she makes this work in her own life in such an elegant way. Food for thought as I think about the last half of the year!

Easy Tips to Work on Mindset (16:45)

Brooke touched on something I am very guilty of. Social media and using my phone first thing in the morning. Brooke suggests to put the phone aside and work on getting your mind right to help set you up for the rest of the day.

While we’ve all heard it before it’s a good reminder to know that our words have power. Brooke is a strong believer that in order to have the right things come out of our mouths, we need to have the right thoughts. If you think negative thoughts this will lead you say negative things about yourself or others. To help focus on positive thoughts, listen to uplifting things whether it’s music, bible versus or podcasts.

“You were born for this moment,” has been something Brooke has said over and over again in the past couple months. Throughout the pandemic Brooke has focused on being a beacon of hope and light. I loved her advice of, “Don’t be attached to the outcome, be attached to the moment.” A reminder we all need now and in the coming months.

How Do You Let Go of Attachment? (25:15)

Brooke believes in the law of the harvest: plant good seeds, water them and the harvest will always come. While we don’t always know when the harvest will come we have to believe that it will. We also need to keep in mind that because we’re all on different paths our outcomes may look different.

One of my favorite things Brooke mentioned is having convictions as strong as steel so you don’t bend on the bad days. Repeating “strong as steel” is something I want to start incorporating in my self talk!

Challenge: Ask yourself why are you doing what you’re doing? What are your convictions?

Biggest Failure (33:00)

It was refreshing to hear that Brooke’s biggest failure was not hiring the right person. I have been guilty of hiring companies or vendors in the past who weren’t the best fit. Brooke’s advice of being picky on purpose is important. Your business is your business and you need to hire someone who works well with you no matter how long it takes to find them!

Brooke’s Advice for Supporting An Entrepreneurial Spouse (37:30)

1. Make time for a date night once a week. You need to make sure that you’re supporting each other and having fun together. (Also, make sure to talk about more than business on these dates!)

2. Sharing responsibilities. It’s okay to swap roles and responsibilities depending on the needs of your family. Brooke recommends implementing this by getting a huge post-it note and having each partner write what they think their roles are. Then rate these tasks, 1 – 5. 1 means you hate doing it and 5 means you love doing it. Anything under 3 you should either swap with the other person (if it ranks highly for them) or delegate to a third party. This way each of you are doing things you actually enjoy doing.

Teaching an Abundance Mindset To Kids (41:40)

Brooke believes in “giving goals” and this is something her and her husband try to instill in their children. They give 10% of their income to charities each year. She made a conscious choice to involve her children in this process from a young age so they’re aware of these goals and can celebrate as a family when achieving them.

Caffeine speed round (46:30)

• Best app/program you’ve started using lately? LastPass and Amare

• What is the best gift you’ve given yourself or done for yourself in the last year?  Business conferences that challenge her. She also makes time for faith-based female trips to strength her bond with her girlfriends.

• Favorite Podcast/Newsletter/Resource/person that you learn from? Patrice Washington, Brodie Pierson, Lisa Bevere

• What is one thing everyone should try THIS WEEK? Compliment somebody, it’s easy and free! Also when catching yourself eating something like ice cream or pizza, eat celery instead. Enjoy that pizza or ice cream but then grab some celery to balance it out.

• What’s one thing you want to get better at? Researching what it is she needs and why so when she checks in with employees she can know more about how the areas of business they’re helping her with.

You can connect with Brooke via her Website, Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn.

Next week’s guest is Jim Kwik. Jim is going to be talking with us about improving your memory, speed reading, eating for a healthier mind and how to learn faster than you ever have before! Hope to see you there.