"The single most important thing I would share with any entrepreneur is to build a business that works for you."
Meet Becky Morrison – a Lawyer turned Happiness Coach turned best-selling Author – who’s here to show you that you can be a straight talking traditionally successful woman whilst meeting your happiest self. Becky is on a mission to help other unhappy high achievers untangle their lives and discover what ingredients make a recipe for their happiness!
Think Brene Brown meets Miranda Hobbes, with her first book The Happiness Recipe under her belt, published April 2021, Becky Morrison is changing the status quo when it comes to what we think we ‘should’ be and do, to be happy in today’s modern world. And she comes fully qualified as a Wellesley College and Georgetown University graduate joining impressive Alumni graduates including Hilary Clinton to Nora Ephron. That’s alongside becoming a Certified Executive Coach from the University of California, Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute. Becky not only comes with the life experience but the credentials to back her wisdom.
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Table of Contents
Thank you for joining us, please introduce yourself to our readers.
Becky Morrison: I’m Becky Morrison – I’m a mom, wife and Lawyer turned Happiness & Leadership Coach and best-selling Author of The Happiness Recipe. I spent nearly two decades working in law and finance and now I help high-achievers define and go after their unique recipe for happiness.
To get us started, Can you tell our readers what does your company solve differently in the crowded marketplace? Give an example or share a story.
Becky Morrison: Well, there are certainly a lot of coaches out there. I think there are a couple of things that make me different. First, you aren’t going to find many people who go from Lawyer to Happiness Coach. Having spent nearly 15 years working in various roles in large law firms, I am uniquely situated to understand what it means to have achieved a lot and still be wondering: where is the happiness?
I’ve lived the very issues I coach on and I’ve spent decades managing people through them – I simply took that experience and turned it in to the framework for my best-selling book The Happiness Recipe and now I use it to help others. Second, and perhaps most importantly, I coach, teach and write with the knowledge that to live happier does NOT require radically transforming your circumstances. Many people believe that to find the happiness they seek, they need to ditch what they’ve built and start all over. That’s simply not the case. My approach begins with finding ways to be as happy as possible where you are today and building your happiness from there – rather than trying to escape your unhappiness.
While your company is growing, what are some of the challenges you face? Hiring? Tech development? Raising capital? Branding? Tell us more about the journey.
Becky Morrison: The biggest challenge I’ve faced as my business has grown is knowing when to seek additional support. I am a self-described high-achiever who loves to learn new things. Throw me into a new situation and that means I am ready to dive in and figure things out – and there’s not much I’ve found in life that I can’t figure out. As the leader of a company, and frankly in life, I’ve learned that just because I can do things, doesn’t mean I should do them. There are times that even though it might be fun to learn something new it is better and more efficient to seek out someone who already knows the space and getting their expertise so I can grow and move faster. This has happened with branding, with tech and with public relations/marketing.
Everyone has a different story, what influenced your decision to be an entrepreneur, what would you have done differently?
Becky Morrison: I grew up thinking that success meant working your way up the ladder in a corporate setting. I didn’t see entrepreneurship as a viable opportunity for me until I left the more corporate world of big law firm employment for a much smaller, and more entrepreneurial investment firm. Very quickly it became clear to me that I liked working somewhere that my actions and decisions had immediate impact – something that is rare in a larger corporate structure. I also learned that for me, the upsides of this environment, outweighed the potential risk and downsides. Sometimes I wish that I had figured out that entrepreneurship was a match for me much sooner, but I also acknowledge that my 15+ years of corporate experience prepared me to work with the kinds of clients I work with today.
Now for the main focus of this interview: what qualities or characteristics do women entrepreneurs have that make them great leaders? Please share some examples.
Becky Morrison:
I’m going to answer this question with something a little more general – because I think these characteristics make people – not just women – great entrepreneurs and leaders.
Saying no – Often being a leader, especially as an entrepreneur, can be a little bit like operating in the wild west. You’ve got a million demands on your time, attention and resources. It’s up to you to control which ones get your energy – nobody else is going to do it for you. Taking that control inevitably requires saying no. Maybe it’s someone asking for a discount, advice or more flexibility that you just can’t give. Maybe it’s someone asking for time or another meeting that just isn’t related to your top priorities. Knowing when to say no and then being able to do it is critically important to being able to build a happy life as an entrepreneur.
Intuition – Good leaders know that they have knowledge that they’ve learned over years of experience and study and that they also have intuition. They have a notion that isn’t brain-based about what the right decision is. Leaders who have a relationship with their intuition are, in my experience, more efficient, less stressed, and better at making decisions. Chances are you have heard your intuition in the past – maybe something just felt right or wrong. But if you aren’t clear on where your intuitive guidance is coming from think about a recent time that you made a great decision – one that worked out super well – and ask yourself how did that decision feel in your body? What did your gut tell you? What did your heart tell you? What emotions did you feel when you made it?
Listening – I might be biased in favor of listening as a critical skill because I am truly a coach at heart, but a coaching session is not the only place where being a skilled listener pays off. As an entrepreneur you need to able to listen to what your clients are saying – and what they aren’t. You also need to be able to listen to what others in your industry are saying, how they are positioning themselves and what is working for them and what isn’t. You need to be able to listen the people who aren’t buying what you’re selling – they’ve got possibly the most important data. Finally, you need to be able to listen to how people are talking about your work, leadership, or product outside of their interactions with you. If you’re not listening, you’re missing out on important data. In fact, while I think being able to clearly communicate about your work is important, listening is by far the most important communication skill for any leader.
What are some of the biggest challenges you still see women face while conducting business, compared to their male counterparts? What would you like to see change, and how would you make it happen?
Becky Morrison: There are plenty of ways I could answer this question, but I want to speak to the women who are parents and entrepreneurs. I think the biggest challenge I see is that our society, particularly in the United States, is still oriented in a way that many women bear a disproportionate part of the household load compared to their male partners and counterparts. Some of this just happens by inertia.
I would encourage anyone managing a life and a business to take a careful look at what is on their plate (including their mental load) and to consider where they can ask for additional support – from their partner if they have one or from other sources (family, friends, outsourced). I know so many women who think they need to be superwoman to be successful. I am here to tell you that you don’t need to be a superhero to be able to be successful. I promise. Trust me, I’m a recovering superhero wannabe. You can’t actually do it all at the same time – and you don’t need to in order to be either successful or happy.
With all of your experience as a business leader, what is the most important thing you can tell fellow entrepreneurs that you’d like to share with aspiring women entrepreneurs?
Becky Morrison: The single most important thing I would share with any entrepreneur is to build a business that works for you. That requires knowing what you need and what matters most to you in this season of your life and doing more of that and less of the rest.
Many of the people I work with – entrepreneurs and career professionals alike – have built a life around their work. I would encourage you instead, to think about how you can build a business around the life you need in this season and the life you want to have in future seasons. For some people this might mean fast growth right now, and a slower pace later. For others it might be a slow build with acceleration in a future season. And for still others it might be slow and steady through and through. Bottom line, identify your top priority in this season, and build a business that allows you to honor it.
What do you plan on tackling during 2022? Share your goals and battles you expect to face.
Becky Morrison: This year for me is really about more of the same – I want to keep teaching, speaking, coaching and writing about happiness topics. 2021 was a breakout year. I published my book, I began speaking and teaching the material on a much wider scale. And I found my rhythm in my coaching business. I don’t have crazy growth aspirations for 2022. Rather I’m hoping to be able to truly enjoy what I have already built. I think society tells us that to be viable and successful we always must be growing. While momentum matters, we don’t need to be on a never-ending escalator of more. It is possible to keep the momentum by just doing what is already working and to be in a season of engaged enjoyment – that’s where I hope to spend most of 2022.
How do you keep learning? Podcast? Books? Audiobooks? Videos? Share some of your greatest sources of inspiration? Share an impactful story.
Becky Morrison: I’m a knowledge junkie. I tend to do most of my learning through videos and books – but I also like a podcast here and there. Because I work from home and travel way less than I used to, my consumption of audio-only formats has decreased. I often have several books going at the same time which I think helps me make connections between material that otherwise wouldn’t get made.
For example, I am currently reading The Burnout Epidemic by Jennifer Moss and Payoff by Dan Ariely. Payoff talks about Dan’s research on motivation and, as you can imagine, motivation plays a role in burnout. Based on reading these two books at the same time, I’ve begun to put together a framework for how to lead people in a way that increases their motivation (according to the science) and, therefore, could decrease their chance for burnout. It’s little connections like that that get me fired up for the work that I do.
I’m sure our readers will be very thankful for the insights you have shared. Where can our readers follow up with you?
Becky Morrison: To find out more about my work visit my website: https://www.untanglehappiness.com/ or you may connect with on: https://www.instagram.com/the.butterfly.society/ and https://www.linkedin.com/in/beckymorrisonbfs/
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Becky Morrison for taking the time to do this interview and share her knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Becky Morrison or her company, you can do it through her – Linkedin Page
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