Curating a Community of Supportive Leaders with Madison Anaya

Welcome to the latest episode of the Joy to Lead Podcast, where I talk with Madison Anaya about finding support as a leader through curating your community. Madison is a content strategist that helps women creatives grow their businesses. In addition, she’s a speaker and podcast host of The Fearless Chase.

Last week on the show, Katie Scott of More With Money walked us through preparing our finances for the investment of hiring in the future. This week, we’re talking about burnout and support for business owners!

You’re going to love listening to Madison’s wisdom on the topics of being fearless, avoiding burn out, building community, and making mistakes.

Start listening to the episode now!

Although she’s faced some painful and challenging circumstances, she finds a way to remain joyful and fearless in the pursuit of her dreams. She’s been an inspiration to me and helps me to remember that the same fearless spirit is inside of me, and you too!

Listen to the episode to hear the full scoop. Here are a few of the really important tips Madison had to share.

Madison Anaya and The Fearless Chase

What sent Madison Anaya on “The Fearless Chase?” Her story starts out like a storybook dream. She fell in love with her middle school sweetheart and ended up marrying him. She knew the honeymoon phase couldn’t last forever, but figured it would be interrupted by disagreements around household chores or dinner options.

Much to her surprise, she and her husband found themselves on a painful journey of losing parents to cancer, losing their home to Hurrican Harvey, and watching parents divorce. Each event came within months of the one before.

What a hard hand of cards to be dealt. Madison felt like it was all too much, even for a super happy and positive person like her.

Looking for anything that would give her hope and motivation, she stumbled upon Rachel Hollis on Facebook and soon became a fan of her live videos. In them, she talked about the choice each of us has in how we will show up for our lives. And that our dreams still matter, even in the face of tragedy. Madison found the hope she was looking for.

That was the start of her fearless chase for her dreams! Madison started a podcast, worked as a virtual assistant as a side job, and eventually became a content strategist.

Madison’s 5 steps for avoiding burnout

“Avoiding burnout is all about preparing for the long game.”–Madison

As you can imagine from her backstory, Madison knows a thing or two about burnout. I asked her how we can avoid burnout. Here is her strategy that she shared with us.

Know who and whose you are. It all starts with your identity. Who are you going to root yourself in? You should be 100 percent certain of this when imposter syndrome and comparison hit you.
Remember your “why.” Reflecting on your “why” will help you to continue on the path even when you don’t know when the end date is.
Create a strategy. You may not know all the steps involved to get where you need to go, but you need to know the first three steps. This helps maintain your alignment. It also helps protect against comparison. When you’re on step three, don’t compare yourself to someone on step seven.
Be willing to take risks. You’ve been praying and prepping for this stage to come. It’s time to take the leap! When I was preparing to give my two weeks’ notice at my full-time job, I called an emergency meeting with my counselor. She told me something I’ll never forget. “If you never take a leap of faith, you’re never allowing God to move in faith.”
Have a supportive community in place. One of the biggest ways I avoid burnout is through leaning on other likeminded individuals who have similar challenges and really get it.

How to curate your community

I loved that Madison mentioned community as a key component in avoiding burnout. I think this is key in helping us last that long game. How do you go about curating a community when you don’t have one? Here are Madison’s suggestions.

Serve others the way you want to be served. If you’re wondering why people aren’t engaging, examine your own level of engagement. We’ve all heard, “Treat others how you want to be treated.” It’s a classic example of sowing and reaping. Find out how you can serve somebody else, and it will come back to you.
Make a Public Friend Announcement. I actually posted to my Instagram Stories this question. I’m starting a business. Does anybody want to be my friend and go through this together? When you’re open, honest, and vulnerable people will respond to that. Finding new friends in adulthood is hard. Be fearless and ask for friends!
Don’t underestimate the power of social media. We look at social media as a great marketing tool, and it is, but we forget that it’s social. Allow yourself to be social there. Find someone whose work you admire and reach out to them. If they don’t respond, it’s OK. Try to connect with someone else.

What else do we talk about in this episode?

One of the really amazing things about Madison is that she absolutely radiates joy and confidence, regardless of the turbulent experiences she’s gone through. Her joy appears to have blossomed from hardship. We talk about that more in-depth in this episode.

I’ve been feeling like everyone is moving so fast in 2020, and I’ve been really trying to slow down. People can get so overwhelmed by their goals, and they feel like they have to climb the entire mountain this year. Madison shares her thoughts on the power of small, incremental steps.

Lastly, we talk about some of the exciting projects that she has coming up, to include the Fearless Chase Conference which will be in Austin, Texas this September.

“Going slow. Not running off to the races like everybody else is doing. And then just stepping forward in confidence. Knowing that we will figure it out along the way. I think that perfectly sums up our entire conversation!” — Kaylan