Hello friendly faces! It’s that time of the week! We’re back with a new Chicago North Shore Moms spotlight brought to you in part by Mary Gifford of Gifford Law. This week, we’re shining the spotlight on the wonderful Deerfield mom of two and female founder, Lindsay Levin!
Lindsay Levin is the heart and brains behind Lindsay Levin Coaching & Consulting, where she specializes in guiding individuals and employers in becoming more intentional & successful at work. Lindsay is your go-to when it comes to that question of “should I stay or should I go,” where she expertly navigates reasonable pathways towards finding peace with these decisions. “Remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally,” Lindsay explains. Hailing from Deerfield, now where she nurtures her family roots, Lindsay’s journey is as captivating as it is inspiring. Lindsay is patient, kind, warm and a super quick thinker. With a background in Workplace Wellbeing, she has decades of experience to share. So grab your coffee (or wine) and join us as we learn more about Lindsay’s world of inner strength and intentionality. Welcome, Lindsay!
Hi Lindsay! Please introduce yourself. Where are you from originally? What city do you live in now? What brought you here?
Hi! I’m Lindsay Levin, founder of Lindsay Levin Coaching & Consulting. I grew up in Deerfield and never planned to move back, but here I am!
After having our first child, my husband and I realized the importance and value of having grandparents and family around as we raise our kids. (Let us not forget that it has only been about 100 years since humans have been living in single family homes! We were designed to have a “village!”) So we looked for a home in the North Shore because both of our parents were here. And just happened to find the right one in Deerfield. We have a 13 year old son and a 10 year old daughter. And 2 adorable French Bulldogs.
Your mantra?
Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable or it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. – Eckhart Tolle
This is the inspiration behind all the work I do…helping others pick the right option for their work situation and then, equally important, making it happen.
What are your favorite North Shore places, spaces and eats to frequent?
My favorite restaurants are Libertad in Skokie and Bluegrass in Highland Park. The Bananas Foster in the giant martini glass at Bluegrass is my favorite dessert. I get it every year on my birthday!
What gets you through a tough day?
My podcasts! Armchair Expert, Hidden Brain and Freakonomics Radio.
Let’s get down to business. Please introduce your business, Lindsay Levin Coaching & Consulting.
My business has recently undergone an evolution; Lindsay Levin Coaching & Consulting was formerly Lindsay Levin Transformational Coaching. I am no longer a transformational coach, rather I am a work coach & consultant. The best most concise way to describe what I do is that I help people be more intentional & successful with the time & energy they put into work.
How does your previous career experience play into this new role?
After graduating from school with a business degree, I spent the first decade of my career at a large HR consulting firm helping companies improve the health & productivity of their employees.
My next position involved creating a new, national practice from the ground up for a corporate wellness company. The practice thrived, and over time my role naturally evolved into employee management and leadership, where I coached employees to achieve their potential and find more success and fulfillment in their work.
In early 2020 I was ready for a midlife change. I loved what I was doing but was burnt out from the corporate life. So I quit my job, became a certified coach, and started my own business so I could help people achieve their personal goals, instead of professional goals.
But many of the clients I was attracting were looking for support in their professional lives. And I was also being approached by employers to help coach their employees in the workplace.
So after a few years, and some healing from my corporate burnout, I decided to merge all of my experience together as a Work Coach & Consultant. Now I am having the biggest impact on people’s lives yet. And I’m loving every minute of it!
What is the coaching process like from start to finish and typically how long, or how many sessions with you does this take?
All my coaching is done remotely, over the phone, not on video. My experience after many years of managing and coaching people remotely is that the voice gives us the greatest insight into a person’s emotions. My ear is tuned to the voice and I am able to hear the inner knowing vs inner resistance of the individual through it. If you’re interested, this is backed up by research also. It surprises a lot of people in this post-COVID video conference era, even my clients. But they realize soon into our work that it is best for them to not be staring at a screen or looking at another person when they are trying to be their most honest, vulnerable selves.
The cadence and timeline is unique to every person. I have had people where one call is all they needed. And others who are still with me after multiple years because they have found that the same patterns that are affecting them at work are affecting them at home. But for most, it is somewhere between 2-6 months.
For people who need decision support, I usually work with them until they figure out/find/start the right job. This is often weekly. Through our work, many of them realize limiting beliefs that have contributed to them feeling stuck in the first place. And those types of clients sometimes ask me to stay with them on a monthly basis or something as they ease into the new job to make sure they aren’t falling back into limiting patterns.
For people who want performance support, it usually starts out weekly and then after a month or so it moves to every other week. Then monthly, until they feel confident that these new ways of thinking and acting are pretty solid.
What has been the hardest part of being a small business owner?
Marketing myself! Which is why I’m grateful to Chicago North Shore Moms for this platform. 🙂
What has been the most rewarding aspect of owning your own business?
That’s easy! The outcomes for my clients…
Here are ‘resistance to leaving a job’ examples of three different clients who are so much happier with their work situation (and lives) now that they finally left their job:
- One person who came to me had a new job offer with a competitor and wanted to leave on a good note with their current employer. This person was stuck on how to approach it and was having a tough time getting over the fear of letting her old boss down.
- One had been at her job for over 15 years and was close friends with her boss. She had been trying to quit for the last few years.
- One was in a toxic work situation and it was affecting her health and ability to take care of her family. But she was so scared to quit without having another job lined up. Even though she realistically had no real chance of doing a proper job search while in her current position.
Here are some ‘finding the right job based on your current life situation’ examples:
- A mom who had been staying home with her children for years wanted me to help her find a job. But it was clear as soon as we started working together that she really didn’t want to start working, and it wasn’t what was best for her and her family…for now! (NOTE: These two words are very important when I’m working with clients because so many people are too worried about the far-off future that they overlook what is best in the present or short term.) She realized she was only doing this because she felt like she SHOULD be working since her kids were in full time school now.
- A female executive had been let go from her job and had been unemployed for over a year for the first time in her life. She was stuck and depressed. She realized through our work that being an executive just wasn’t working for her health and her family because she hadn’t been showing up at work or in life the way she wanted to. So we worked together to help her find, and take, a non-executive position (as hard as that was from an ego perspective) …for now!
Here is a ‘performance support’ example:
- An individual’s boss gave her feedback that she was too anxious and buttoned up and needed to relax more before she could promote her to the next level. Through our work, she figured out that she was showing up this way because she was fired unexpectedly from her first job out of school after getting all positive feedback on her initial reviews. And once she had this awareness and we did the work to help her realize that she IS safe now, she started showing up very differently and has been quite successful since.
Here is a ‘conflict resolution’ example:
- An employer hired me for because the leaders of their three main departments could not get along with each other and it was affecting their ability to collaborate and produce results for the company. While there were some personal issues involved, I identified quickly that the root issue was that there weren’t any standard operating procedures in place to help manage expectations, roles, and responsibilities. So they were stepping on each other toes, which led to finger pointing and animosity. I helped create and implement some standard operating procedures, including a standing weekly phone call to decrease the miscommunication and misleading assumptions happening via email. This situation is common in small companies going through the growth stage. Sometimes you don’t realize you need standard operating procedures until you REALLY need them!
That’s a wrap… for now! How can we get in touch with you?
If there is anyone in your life that complains about their work a lot (Spouse? Best friend? Sibling?), please tell them to call me! I can help you help them! Connect with me on LinkedIn and Instagram and reach out: Call/text 312.961.4812 or email [email protected].
About our Meet of Mom Sponsor
A very heartfelt thank you to CNSMoms’ Meet a Mom sponsor, Lake Forest mom of three and owner of Gifford Law, a solo Estate Planning Firm (wills and trusts). Mary, we appreciate your support of local moms in our North Shore communities! Learn more about Mary by visiting her Meet a Mom spotlight here! Contact Mary directly here: [email protected].
