Episode 180 - Paget Keller Rhee - Leaders On Leadership
It’s not easy sitting at the top. As leaders, we must deal with many things to exact your vision and fight for your passion and purpose. Today, Paget Keller Rhee, the owner of six BeBalanced Centers, explains how to find your passion and surround yourself with people who remind you of your WHY. Her touching story with foster care reveals how she fought for her passion and purpose, but she learned when to step down from the battle. In this heartfelt conversation with Paget, she lightens the path of how self-care and mental health are important, and that is where BeBalanced Centers supports. Be inspired to climb to the top. Join Paget Keller Rhee in this inspiring episode today.
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Paget Keller Rhee - Leaders On Leadership
In this episode, I am very excited because my guest is the tremendous Paget Rhee. Paget, welcome.
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to have this conversation. When we reconnected again, I was like, "Your energy is infectious. I need that."
Thank you, Paget. Right back at you. I want to tell our audience a little bit about you. Paget is the owner of six BeBalanced Centers. She is passionate about inspiring women to live their best lives at any age by understanding hormone balance and how it affects our physical and mental health.
We all need that support.
She's a South Central person like me. We connected at a women's conference where she was there representing what she's doing. We caught up after all these years of being entrepreneurs and working to do our calling. I thought, "I have to get her after hearing all the tremendous things she's doing and get her on this show." Paget, let's get right into it because I know you're going to unpack a lot of what you're doing and what your journey has been.
My father wrote a speech called The Price of Leadership decades ago. Leadership is always such a hot topic. In it, he talks about the four prices you're going to have to pay if you are going to be a truly authentic leader and not just a leader in title only. The first thing he talked about was loneliness. We have all heard that it's lonely at the top. Can you unpack for our audiences what loneliness has meant for you throughout your very career and maybe some advice you might give to our audiences if they're in a season of loneliness?
That is so interesting. He identified that so many years ago. Everybody sometimes exalts, "It must be so great to be in charge or be the leader." You get all the recognition but you also get a lot of other things. You have to be so intentional about surrounding yourself with people who can support you when you need but you also have to become very comfortable with being uncomfortable. That's important because it is sometimes lonely at the top.
I hate to use that but I've been in leadership. As I've been looking back on some things I'm dealing with in my situation, I have learned a few things or fortified my mind and spirit with some things that get me through these challenges but when I was much younger, it was hard. I founded a nonprofit in DC when I was much younger in 1994. I didn't expect that loneliness. I was so excited and passionate. I was ready to attack the world. It did hit me because I was alone.
Nobody had the vision that I had. Nobody had caught the vision that I had caught. Even my husband didn't know what to do with me because he was not in the same place. I was starting to explore my entrepreneurial leadership spirit that had grown through college and the different opportunities that came to me. When I was a child, my teachers used to say, "I hope she will be good at something." It wasn't that I always had this energy or confidence. These opportunities presented themselves.
One of the things that became apparent loneliness was back in 1992 when I went to work for the DC Department of Recreation. I was given an opportunity to run all of the recreational day camps throughout the city. I don't know if you would understand. This is a very dangerous neighborhood. I was a young White female from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. I was the only Caucasian person on staff if I could. I was put in a very difficult situation being younger than most of the people who worked for me.
I learned so much about leadership, humility, building a team, and standing by the principles that I stood for. A lot of the people who worked under me were shocked by my expectations of them, which had not been the case in previous years. By the time we got through all of the time, we could celebrate together because they felt like they had accomplished something even though it wasn't how they had envisioned the leader of this organization being. They didn't envision a young White female coming in and trying to be in charge but I thought that we all came out with a common goal.
At the end of this period, we threw a huge community celebration throughout the city that recognized all of their hard work, which hadn't been done previously. I remember this sense of changing from me and them to, "We're together." For me, that was a life-changing moment where I felt like, "We can do hard things, bring different people together, and accomplish things together."
I felt lonely in those times. I was in neighborhoods I didn't recognize. I was pulled over by the police multiple times for being in that neighborhood because they thought I was buying drugs there. I had to keep telling them, "This is my office. I work here." That was probably the start of one of the loneliest periods and there have been many others. It is tough. You have to know your passion and find people who know your why and can remind you of that why when it gets to that tough time.
You should know your passion and find people who know your why and can remind you of that why when it gets to that tough time.
I love that you said you had caught the vision but not everybody, including your spouse or your former coworkers, caught it yet. That's such an important point for our audiences out there. It takes time. You may be lonely, and everybody has to go through a season of loneliness but if it lasts too long, then there might be a culture disconnect. It takes time for them to realize, "She is one of us. I can process where she's coming from because they don't know us. We don't know them." It is lonely. It's like making friends, "I don't have any friends. Now, I have friends because we got to know each other." I love that you said that. In the back of your mind, although you were young, did you think that eventually it would get to that? That's pretty evolved thinking as a young leader.
You're helping me unpack some of this. The idea that this could work happened in my household. My parents had adopted eight children. We had over 50-some foster kids in and out of my house. I always saw myself as not a leader of them but I wanted to expose them to new ideas that would give them the hope that they could do things differently in their lives than what they had experienced.
My parents adopted eight Vietnamese brothers and sisters. My family was always very mixed in cultures and circumstances. We didn't have a lot of money but the things that I took from that always helped me think that bringing people together is going to look strange at the beginning but wonderful in the end. When I got into that situation in DC, I knew this was going to work out and I knew they were going to love me once we figured it out. Maybe that was naive but they respected me.
It used to be that on rainy days, everybody would go home. On rainy days, we were all going to the offices to organize, prepare, plan, and work together. It wasn’t like, "Everybody is going home." It was a very different change in work culture as well for them but by the time they got done with it, they saw me there with them doing the same things with them. I do feel like it changed their perspective.
You said something important. I do agree that as leaders, we have to be prepared to allow people time to catch the vision but I also think we need to be prepared. It's such a fine balance to say when our vision isn't right. How do we judge that? There have been times when I've had to abort a mission where I was like, "I thought this was a path," but I had to be less emotional and more logical. I'm probably more emotional as you can see as I get into this. What you said is wise though. It's such a fine line. Where do you go? This path might not have been the right call and maybe I need to adjust it.
Leadership: We have to be prepared to allow people time to catch the vision.
I've done it too. You are going to see that the followers are 80% of the equation. If you get to a point where you realize, "I am not a good fit," that's very evolved as a leader to say, "I need to go someplace else." We come into these places and I've had that happen. Don't think you failed as a leader because it's a dance. If certain people are dancing to a different tune, you need to go like we expect them to leave if it's not a good fit. If there's not a value congruence or something like that, we need to go too.
That's why I tell people, "If the door is closed, kick it." I get it but you can only kick so far before you're going to break your legs off. You're meant to just knock on some doors, get the experience, and then go to another door. You were talking about foster care. No wonder you have such resilience as far as finding common ground and a way to identify. That's what true leadership is because unless they can identify with you, there's not going to be anybody in communication. I almost started crying. That's unbelievable that you got exposed to that.
I adopted my middle daughter from foster care. That's a story for later. You were talking about not kicking a door down. I had one of my best and worst experiences in DC after I left working for the Department of Recreation. I stepped down from that position. DC cut down 80% of its recreation budgets way back in the early 2000s, which created a major loss in the communities that we worked in, which were incredibly challenged communities.
There were no longer recreation centers for kids to go to and services for after school. I was passionate about finding ways to continue to provide those opportunities. First, I started volunteering at a homeless shelter. We created a program for teen homelessness. I worked with a young prostitute program in DC and spent all night in jail with young prostitutes. Those are some of my powerful memories of those opportunities.
My husband and I got married. We went to this church. My husband and I were taking turns choosing what church we would go to and trying them out as we were trying to find where we would fit. It was my husband's week to choose. He's like, "Here's one that says Lindberg Falk." I've never gone to a church with a woman pastor. This is back in 1994. I'm like, "We will try it."
We went to the church. It was a small Southern American Baptist-aligned church in the middle of Washington DC put exactly between the White House and the Capitol on Eight Street, and Eight Street at that point in time in '94 was very dangerous. There were lots of homelessness and drugs. It wasn't as it is in 2023 where it's like Disneyland. That was not like that then.
We went to the church. Afterward, the pastor invited us to lunch. My husband and I went with him and walked across the street to a little Chinese restaurant because it's right in Chinatown. I told him my vision, "My heart is to start a program for kids." I get emotional talking about it because I had this vision. I wanted to start a program that involved recreation, spiritual development, and education for kids in the community because of the loss of these recreational programs that I knew were out there.
He said to me, "Do you see this whole building?" At that time, we had a whole block-long building, four stories high. He said, "At one point in time, this building was a youth center in the '60s but we have lost funding. We don't have anyone to run it and nothing is going on." As I walked through this building, it was dilapidated. It had a full commercial kitchen and a whole dining room to seat 200 people and lots of things going on there. This is after a few conversations. He said, "We will give you that space and $5,000 of seed money. You see what you can do."
I took it. My office to start was a little broom closet. I had a desk and a phone. We didn't have computers at that point in time. I remember doing whatever I could. We grew that program, raising all of our funds. We built out a whole program called Urban Hands, which hosted mission teams from all over the country. It's another story to help them work in the city. I was able to grow fifteen sites across the city using the hands of mission teams. It grew very large.
During that time, I was in an old historic church that valued more that all of the chairs were lined up on Sunday morning for their Sunday school classes of 6 people rather than the 120 kids that I had there for a Christian concert the night before. It became difficult to continue to exact my vision there. At that point in time, across the street, they had built a very large building that housed a conservative political group. I'll not name it at this point. One day, a check arrived on my door from the president of that organization that said, "I see those kids coming in and out every day and you need to use this for your purposes." The church made me turn it around and give it back because they didn't approve of him.
Those kinds of things hurt my heart. I opened the doors and we had 120 kids within 6 days. Georgetown Law was sending volunteers. We were doing everything we could because I had to raise all the money to do everything. As it turned out in the end, we had about a $500,000 budget. What I learned from that experience is that where passion is, money will follow. I'm never worried about getting the money that I need if you're bringing passion to the project.
Where passion is, money will follow.
When you talked about knowing when to leave, that was probably one of the hardest decisions I ever made because we were successful. I was living in my purpose. We had won tons of awards in DC and were recognized in the Washington Post for all of that we were doing but I couldn't keep fighting that battle. Good things happened because when I stepped down, I found out I was pregnant with my second child.
I realized that having a two-year-old in the backseat of a car with gunshots outside of the car was probably not where I needed to be. The pastor who gave me that opportunity stepped down from the pastorate, started a separate nonprofit, and took it all over to a different place. It's all good. That is a separate nonprofit in DC. That was so hard to walk away from something that I loved.
That's going to resonate with a lot of people. I have a dear friend who called me and is stepping away from something that they did not want to do. If there's so much of a fight, we have to look at it. I can't control the outcome but all I can control is the processes, the vision, and what I am stewarding. Everything else is in God's hands. He already knew that church was going to do that to you at that date and he already had it planned for what's next.
We have to remember that as leaders. It is gut-wrenching but understand that it's going to happen once or twice. It's going to happen throughout your life. The more it happens, you realize, "That's not what I was hoping for but I know this is going to come back to me in a different form and in a more powerful way." As a leader, you get more comfortable with that.
I can't imagine at that young age having that but it's good to see too the nasty politics of infighting. We're all supposed to be in this together. When people call me brokenhearted, I'm like, "When did you ever think that people weren't self-oriented, selfish, and mean?" It's part of our nature. It's also good as a young leader to know that so you can be very balanced about the reality of humanity and what's out there and be prepared as a leader to have your heart broken but that's okay because God heals our heart and the vision takes us forward.
What I had to learn also from that situation and so many others is that I'm only responsible for showing up and being responsible for what I'm called to do. The results are in God's hands from my perspective.
People say, "Why did my husband do this?" That's between them and God. All you can do is do the best that you can do and keep moving forward. Thank you for unpacking that. You feel like you are in your home and then the season of loneliness comes again. You don't know. My friend called me and said, "I'm in a season of loneliness again where I have to go out." For the leaders out there, it happens. This is Paget and me retelling you to keep the faith because there's something unbelievable.
This is relevant. I walked away from that and stayed in touch with a lot of kids. They were teenagers. I still have relationships with a lot of the people that I worked with who were younger people at that point in time. I always have taught my mission teams that I've trained. I teach a poverty simulation course, helping people understand cycles of poverty and urban issues, and being aware that we're not that different and that we're all very similar in our experiences.
If I could share, sometimes you will get to know what you did, what you meant, and what that time you went through was worth later. It was a few years ago. As a leader, my job is to be one of the defensive linebackers where I'm giving people behind me the opportunity to live their passion as well. I do that with my staff at BeBalanced. I did that with several people in DC. There were young people who were coming a little younger than I was and saying, "I have this passion. This is what I want to do. I want to start this program. I want to do this or that."
One of those was a young gentleman from Howard University. He was supposed to become a lawyer. His mother is a judge and his father is an attorney. His purpose was to become a lawyer. He came to work in a volunteer capacity from us but had a real passion for the arts and kids in the community. He ended up wanting to start the first Christian go-go band club in DC. I don't know if you know what go-go is but go-go is a thing that's DC-related, which would be crazy if you know DC because it is dangerous. You don't want to ignite things but you also want to give people the opportunity to see how to enjoy the music that they enjoy in a safer and wholesome environment.
Leadership: Give people the opportunity to see how to enjoy a safer and more wholesome environment.
I acted like a linebacker and pushed away. I went to a lot of other African-American churches and said, "Do you want to partner with us on this?" They're like, "We don't want anything to do with it." As crazy as it might be, there was a young Christian go-go band that wanted to play. A lot of Howard University students came and led line dances and things. Everything was clean and fun but every night after 120 kids would leave on a Saturday night, I would breathe a sigh of relief that we had no issues and problems but it was challenging.
I could have walked away from that whole thing and said, "I don't want to have anything to do with that. It's too risky." Maybe that would have been the wiser thing to do but I didn't. It was successful. As it turned out, all the African-American churches started sending people. We were growing and people were loving what we were doing. We did it once a month. We ended all of that.
This gentleman turned out to marry one of the other girls who worked for us. He became a pastor. A few years ago, he received his church in Woodbridge, Virginia. I showed up to celebrate with him his opening Sunday. He wasn't expecting me. I saw his wife in the lobby and she took me to where they were praying in a circle in the sanctuary. I walked in. He embraced me and said to me, "She's the reason that I'm here." It was so honoring but what was bigger was he reached across to a very large African-American gentleman across the circle and said, "She's the reason you're here."
That gentleman came over to me and gave me the biggest bear hug. I still don't know who he is. I'm in shock. He says to me, "I was the young drummer in that go-go band that no one else would let play but you. You gave me that opportunity. I'm being ordained as a pastor in this church." That was so amazing that God would orchestrate. I know this isn't supposed to be a spiritual conversation. For me, that was so affirming to heal that wound of needing to walk away from something I felt so powerful about and to know that those seeds continued.
I would encourage anyone who is feeling that place, "Why did I have to leave this? What is next? Will what I did matter?" I've had multiple opportunities. I had a child reach out who's got a crisis in his life where his wife died unexpectedly. This was a seventeen-year-old who I felt was probably one of my first children before I had children. Those seeds were sown. Trust that what you did was the right thing and you are not responsible for the end game.
You said it's not supposed to be spiritual. Charles, my dad, always told me, "Ninety percent of growth is spiritual growth. If you don't lock in your spiritual foundation, forget it. You can build everything else up but your values, convictions, core, and what you're living for, none of it matters." I'm glad you went there because our audience knows exactly the importance of that.
The other 10% is probably the physical realm. I want to move on to the next one, weariness. My father would always say, "You get home. You're tired. There are people who should be doing what they're doing. They're not. You're picking up." As somebody who dealt with a chronic hormone imbalance where my adrenal gland was shot for about three years, I thought I was depressed. Our bodies are going back to dust. Our spirits are eternal but we still have to maintain this mortal coil. Can you talk to us about weariness, especially with the work you're doing? No matter how much you pray and all that stuff, we have to finish the race strong physically too. Unpack that for us.
Not to change from the spiritual, God has given us this body that works so well together. He never intended for us to run as we do. The Sabbath is not implemented where we're giving our bodies and our minds permission to rest. When I stepped away from the organization that I worked for in DC and moved back to Central Pennsylvania, my husband and I adopted our middle daughter from foster care. It's something I knew we were very passionate about. We had two biological children and adopted the middle one. I thought, "I worked with kids with guns, knives, and fights. I got this."
God has given us this body that works so well together, and he never intended for us to run like we do.
She took me down. She was seven at the time. I didn't understand all of her special needs as we got into it and grew. She took me to a place where physically, mentally, spiritually, and the whole thing, I didn't even myself anymore. Years ago, I was like, "I don't know who this person is." I was not sleeping. I was depressed, overweight, and all the things. I go to my doctor and say, "What's wrong?" My doctor says, "That's part of getting older. You need to relax."
Maybe the relaxing part of that was true but not explaining it to me in the way that resonated. I was like, "How am I going to relax? I have 3 kids and 2 jobs. I can't relax." I was getting up at 4:00 AM at the gym to try to do all the things. I felt terrible by myself. I felt like a failure in this realm of my world, "What is wrong with me?" I finally learned about this place called BeBalanced in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Somebody told me about it. I didn't even make an appointment. I just showed up. I was like, "I don't know what it is. I don't care what it is. I just need help."
I always said that what we did in DC was offer hope. Hope came in so many different packages like education, recreation, spiritual development, community resources, and all the things. I realize what we do at BeBalanced is offer hope. There are many women that come in a very vulnerable state as I was who don't understand that the most kind and loving thing they can do for everyone in their world, family, and kids who work for them or with them is to take care of them.
Many of us view that as selfish, "I shouldn't do that. I have a badge of honor because I've given everything that I have to everyone else." I love that but you're going to run out. You are a vessel. It's not never-ending or infinite. What I want to tell women is that BeBalanced changed my life. I lost 60 pounds in 3 months. That was not magic. That is by getting my body up and functioning. I have an amazing team. I have six centers of BeBalanced. I could not do what I do without building a team of women, empowering them, and giving them the resources to do what they do.
BeBalanced is about giving your body. God has given us a team of hormones that help with weight management, sleep, energy, depression, anxiety, stress, libido, hunger, and all the things. "I'm hungry. I'm full." Those are all hormones. We have a team inside of us. If we're not resourcing that team intentionally and not helping that team with what they need to be able to do their job, we are failing. A lot of women follow the traditional, "I'm going to work out harder and eat less."
That is not learning how to resource your body and this is a whole different episode about all of that. I learned all of that. A funny story is that I learned how to take care of myself differently. I say to mothers of daughters and mothers of sons, "Me learning to take care of myself differently also gave my daughter permission to draw boundaries around herself and realize that giving 100% of herself away to everyone around her probably is not a fair ask."
When we step back and say, "I'm going to go ahead and put this around myself," which is what I encourage our women to do in different capacities, it's okay. Everyone will still be supported. Everyone is still loved but saying, "I'm going to make this healthy meal. If you're not happy with what I'm making, I'm not making five meals. This is healthy. This is going to sustain your body. There's peanut butter and jelly over there if you need it," helps them to draw lines around themselves.
"I need twenty minutes of relaxation. I'm going to be headed to the room. When I come back, I will help with homework and do all of that but it's my time." We're always the ones that get put to the side, "The other emergencies are much more important." We are going to be an emergency soon if we don't deal with it. I was an emergency that was unable to deal with all that I had going on.
BeBalanced was something that empowered me. It also changed how my family eats. My son has always been an athlete. I learned through BeBalanced how to source an athlete and give him healthy foods. My son has cooked his food since he was in tenth grade. He is a senior at the Naval Academy. Your husband is from the Naval Academy. We have that. He's learned how to take care of his body as an athlete. He's played lacrosse at the high national level with Under Armour and the Naval Academy.
BeBalanced taught me things I didn't know about nutrition and how to source your body effectively with good supplementation, minerals, and vitamins because we have to be intentional. God has given us all that. He's made our bodies to need it and receive it. Being intentional about those things is important. Gummies are not intentional. It drives me nuts when women tell me they're taking a gummy vitamin. I'm like, "You're a big girl now." That's a whole other conversation as well.
How I got to BeBalanced though is that BeBalanced changed my life but there was only one BeBalanced in the country. At that time, my dad, my brother, and I had worked in a business together. My dad and brother owned it. It was about building log cabins all over the world, which is something a whole other story that I learned a lot of leadership from. I had to work in an all man's world. I was the only woman who designed and learned from going from working at a nonprofit in DC to learning how to manage building codes, snow loads, wind loads, and R-values. All of that was a whole change for me.
I was working in that business with my family when I came back to Central Pennsylvania. That time was 2010 when the housing bubble crumbled. We lost the business. We knew a business broker in Lancaster who was helping to franchise BeBalanced. I did this program. I didn't tell anyone I was doing it. I didn't tell my family because I was like, "Can it work? Can I do it?" I didn't know. At the same time that I was doing BeBalanced, this business broker went to my brother and my father who he knew, and said, "There's this new thing that they're franchising. You should buy it and Paget should run it."
Talk about providence. I told my parents I lost 25 pounds in the first month. They were like, "Isn't this a thing that we were introduced to?" It all came together. Long story short, we opened the first BeBalanced location and then I have six. My leadership at BeBalanced has changed from working with clients and empowering individual clients and women to empowering my team to do what they love.
Weariness was very real. I can't change the stress that's coming at me, none of us can, but what I can do is be intentional about fortifying my mind, body, and adrenals to manage it. Understand that that's a real thing. You can't expect water out of a stone. You have to infuse what your body needs to be able to give at that level. Many people say to me, "How do you run a company that has 7 Airbnbs and 6 BeBalanced, have kids, and do all these things? You must never sleep." I sleep well because I created a team internally that's doing what I need behind the scenes.
That reminds me of that Lena Horn quote, "It's not the load that breaks you down. It's the way you carry it." The one Facebook meme is we all have the same 24 hours a day as Beyoncé. How does she do it? It's because she has a team. I love that you said, "Resource your body." You hit on a very wonderful point about leadership as you're growing a business. It's no longer about you working in the business in the details but you're working on your team because that's where entrepreneurs get so burned out.
"I'm still doing everything," but you're not supposed to. Even if you're working at Walmart and you're a manager, you're no longer supposed to be doing the day-to-day stuff. You're supposed to be developing the people underneath you. That's awesome that you did that. I don't care how healthy you are or how well you're eating. You will still burn out because we're still limited physically in what we can take on.
I love that they feel good about what they're doing, that they feel empowered, and that they feel successful because that's what brings me joy. If I micromanage them and don't allow them to live into their spirit, it's not benefiting me in any way, shape, or form.
That's not leadership. Especially as an entrepreneur, you need people in line with the vision. I love that. Let's talk about abandonment. We're animal lovers. Abandonment has a very negative connotation. Fear of abandonment as a woman is a bad thing. My dad would always tell me this because I was like, "How did you get so successful?" He's like, "I have no idea. I do more in a day to contribute to my failure than my success."
He explained to me abandonment and how abandonment is to stop doing what you like and want to do in favor of what you ought and need to do. It's being very focused on what is going to get you forward, whether it's the people in your life, habits, or even what you're watching on TV in your spare time and what you're putting in your mind. With everything you have going on, how do you stay tightly bound or focused so you can pour your energies where they need to be?
I have to think about it because I've gotten pretty proficient at naturally being able to sift through priorities and what matters. It was so funny because I had this conversation with a staff person who is younger and was asking. For her, one of the things that holds a lot of mental energy is worry, "What about this or that? What are we going to do with this?" In my mind, the way I deal with it is I always have a plan B, C, and D for whatever could potentially happen.
Leadership: One of the things that holds a lot of mental energy is worrying.
I said to her, "I have learned, for example, with worry, not to allow that to enter energy in me and abandon worry because if I know that I can deal with the worst-case scenario in any particular situation that I'm thinking about, then I take it off the table and not give any mental energy to it. If that happens, anything from here to the worst-case scenario, I got it."
I've gotten good at being able to weed through it but I've also been able to give myself permission. We talk about what's on TV. Sometimes my husband says, "I can't believe you watch this. This is mindless." Sometimes I give myself permission to watch mindless things too because so many times, I feel, "I should be listening to this podcast or reading this book." Sometimes I have to give myself permission to abandon productivity for a minute and say, "Enjoy this for a minute."
Something else that came to me that is relevant is I have a lot of guilt sometimes when I should be working harder. For example, I took two weeks. I love going to Columbia. My brother lives in Columbia. We spend a lot of time in South America and Columbia. I was down there for two weeks in the summer. One day, I said to my brother, "I feel guilty. I should be going back to work."
He said to me, "That's the most ridiculous thing because you are feeling guilty for creating the life you wanted and living the life you created." I've also abandoned guilt in that too. Getting older, abandoning some of these things, and not apologizing for them, for me, became so important, "Why am I feeling guilty about this? Everything is fine. Everyone is doing what they need to do and I'm living the life I created." It was a real awakening for me.
I love that you brought up guilt because somebody called me on something once and said, "Guilt is a self-imposed emotion." It's up to me to stop putting that on myself. It's guilt, shame, anger, and all that. The fruits of the spirit are God-given but all the bad stuff is self-imposed like frustration and anger. I opt out of it. I'm so glad you said that. Remember, it all starts in the mind. This is where everything programs this beautiful thing that God gave us. We have the mind of Christ, and then it goes to our emotions, hands, behaviors, and habits.
Leadership: We have the mind of Christ. It goes to your emotions, hands, behaviors, and your habits.
I love that you said that because that's where everything begins and starts. You tell your mind, "I'm going to mute that." It always pops in but we're all going to be tempted. I was reading the book The Potential Principle by Edwin Louis Cole. It's one of my favorite books. It's an old-timey book. He says, "The only two ways the devil can attack children, brothers, and sisters in Christ are temptation and accusation." You have to be on guard for temptation and flee from that but an accusation is, "Shouldn't you be doing this?" It's like, "I'm going to mute that." That's negative self-talk or stinking thinking. We do it to ourselves way more than the world. Everybody is like, "The world is so awful." I'm like, "Do you know what's more awful?"
When we talk about hormone balance, we are doing life coaching and health coaching through this process. One day, I was so frustrated after meeting with multiple women. I did a video, put it out there, and felt like so many of us say the things to ourselves that we would not say to a stranger on the street and tell ourselves, "I never succeeded in that. I can never do that. I'm not good enough at that." I can't take it. I need women to start shifting that. "Maybe I can't do it now but I haven't learned it yet." We're still always in process. I was so sad one day feeling like so many of us talk to ourselves like we wouldn't talk to our worst enemy. It's sad.
We deny the blessing. Somebody will come from a doctor and be like, "The test came back good." They will say to me, "I still might have this." I'm like, "You killed the blessing. Stop. You got good words." Don't speak that stuff. Abandon that nonsense. What does the Bible say? Not one iota of worry can add one hour to your life. Stop it. We're post-COVID. What was more horrible than COVID? It's that negative and depressive fear and anxiety, which kills more than anything else in the world.
That's the biggest thing we need to abandon. Thank you for that. There's loneliness, awareness, and abandonment. You have unpacked the vision already. Vision is so important to you and you are so good at it. Share with us. How do you hone your vision? A lot of people are like, "I'm passionate about stuff," but passion is different than vision. Can you explain what vision means to you?
Thank you because sometimes I would say I'm not very good at that. I hope you take it anyway. I don't know if this is a conventional answer. One thing I'm good at is not being intimidated by people who are better than me and surrounding myself with an amazing team of women who have a similar passion, which helps us create a great vision. I see too many women feel threatened by their staff, "I need to keep her down here." I'll tell my clients, "You're lucky if you get to work with them. They're so much better than I am."
Surrounding myself with an amazing team of women with similar passion helps us create a great vision.
My vision comes from inspiration from my team with their ideas. All of it comes together like a puzzle to create the vision. I don't think that I'm the only one. I don't have the only vision. I'm surrounding myself with amazing women who have passion, words, ideas, and resources. That's how the vision grows. Maybe I'm not that good at vision but I'm good at surrounding myself with great people and resourcing them to a shared purpose.
A vision is shared. If it's not shared, it's just your dream. Leadership is all about everybody looking through the same lens. Sometimes it's like, "Leader, you pick the vision and then everybody else gets to see it." Your approach is the real approach. You put that beacon out and vibe with your tribe who coalesces around that. I can't put the vision in anybody. You already have your vision, passion, and intrinsic gifting from your skillset and how you grew up with the things that happened to you when you were younger but if you radiate that beacon, that's enough for the right people. That was a discerning unpacking of vision. Thank you.
Thank you. It has been fun.
We did loneliness, weariness, abandonment, and vision. Is there anything else that we haven't hit on that you would like to share with our tremendous leaders out there who are living the life, fighting the battles, and enjoying the triumphs and the heartaches too?
One thing that I've recognized is I am such a believer in servant leadership. When I was in DC, I would be down cooking meals, cleaning things, and doing whatever my staff was doing so that they could see that I was not asking them to do anything I was not willing to do. I feel that way. I've grown a little bit in a different capacity so I don't always have that ability. I am in the trenches. I'm taking appointments. There are certain times when I am taking client appointments if we're short-staffed. That's always good for me to stay in the know to understand what the staff is going through so that when I give feedback, they know that it's from a place of, "I've been there and done that." That's helpful.
I was in one of the centers. I gave two client appointments and came out with success on both of them. I was like, "What's so hard?" They laughed at me. I was joking with them. It's important though that I've had to move from servant leadership and being in the trenches with everyone to empowering those to do it. There's a book CEOs Are Stupid. We as CEOs have to learn how to know enough to be dangerous but not take on every minute detail of what our staff is doing. I have great staff who know how to do what they need to do. If I needed to do it, I would figure it out. I would probably be slower than them because I'm not doing it every day.
Leadership: As CEOs, we have to learn how to know enough to be dangerous but not take on every new detail of what our staff does.
We were having a leadership conference. One of my staff said to me, "Is that why you always ask me to do that?" I ask you to do it because number one, you could probably do it faster than I could. I'm traveling between centers and you're in front of a computer. I also don't have to know how to do everything because you all know how to do everything.
Too many leaders that I see use up too much mental capacity knowing the details of everything. I know who to call when I need certain things. I have watched and learned which of my staff are good at certain things and thrive in them, and then I ask them to do those things. I'm trying to be intentional in my team. I share my team between Dallas and Pennsylvania. Sometimes the Pennsylvania team is doing things for Dallas. We work as one organization but I know somebody loves making graphics and designs whereas someone else can do it but is drained by it. That's where I'm going.
My leadership has evolved. I'm old enough to say that because I'm recognizing how old I am as my staff is getting younger. I don't have to be in the trenches every day anymore. I just have to know that I've got great people around me who know how to pull it off when needed and they feel good about that. I praise them and catch them doing great things all the time.
Even when I'm in Dallas, people say, "How do you manage a Dallas team from Pennsylvania?" They always say, "You're always watching. I don't know how you always see." I always catch them doing great things and tell them right away that I saw it. That's how I make them feel like I'm not forever away because I care about what's happening to them, whether I'm onsite or not.
My job is to make their job easier. We have this saying among our teams that we have a team that has to be willing to tell me something I don't want to know and receive something they don't want to know. A lot of times, after we finish meetings or conversations, we will say, "Tell me something I don't want to know." I, as a leader, have to be willing and able to hear that and they, as my team, have to be willing to receive it.
That is powerful stuff. Brené Brown says that unclear is unkind. Clear is kind. We dance around stuff. I love that you talked about the evolution from servant leadership as you get older because you do realize it's about being in the trenches but then we are beyond that, not that we're better than that. There are other people who have to be at that level of servant leadership and we have to be up at this. That's part of the evolution of a leader and bringing your team up because they should be able to step into your shoes so you can go up to this transformative or transformational leadership, which is the next level up from it. What is the best way for our audiences to get ahold of you? I know they're going to want to get in touch with you.
BeBalancedCenters.com is our website. I have multiple locations in Harrisburg, Camp Hill, and York. If you're in Dallas, Frisco, and McKinney are good places to go as well. My information will be there. It's Paget.Rhee@BeBalancedCenters.com. I would love to hear from anyone. I always love to hear what people are doing, their successes, and challenges, and celebrate with them.
Speaking of vision, are there going to be more than six BeBalanced? What's on 2024 and 2025?
There are always those potentials. For me, it's about giving women the opportunity to change their lives and support their quality of life moving forward as they age. I did this when I was 45. I went through early menopause because of stress and all the things. Many women don't even know that these things are possible to be addressed naturally and strategy-wise. For me, it's about getting the word out there. We do it virtually or in person. You don't even have to be by one of our centers. We're helping you understand how to support your body. Sometimes it's mental shifts and physical strategies but it's not rocket science.
I've climbed Machu Picchu. In the last few years, I've mountain biked with my athletic son down Killington. We have done lots of fun things. I am so blessed. I wouldn't ever have done those things without BeBalanced. I do want women to check it out and understand that there are resources and even empower them so that when their doctor says, "You need another blood pressure medication. You need this or that," maybe ask the question, "What could I be doing that would eliminate the need for that?" The more medications we are on, the more our liver needs support.
Until I got to BeBalanced, I didn't think about all of these things and how they were impacting my body. We work with a lot of gut health because stress is impacting a lot of gut health. Forget about the shots. People don't understand these weight loss shots. We are a weight loss program but it's about getting your body up and functioning so it can act as it needs to with these shots. You're taking over your body's function so that when you stop doing it, your body doesn't know how to do it anymore on its own.
Take over your body's function so that when you stop doing it, your body doesn't know how to do it anymore on its own.
We are seeing more problems with people's gut health. We're very passionate about helping women. We see women whose lives are changed. Look at our reviews. Everybody is taking different things away. I had an Army vet with PTSD. When she came to us, her body was so depleted. She got back from a trip to Hawaii and came in glowing. She says, "I attribute this to changing my life." I can't even talk about how much it means to be. This is so much more than vitamins and weight loss. It is life-changing. Thank you for the opportunity.
As somebody who reclaimed their years ago, I am stronger, more active, and clearer in my thinking. Are gentlemen welcome too?
They have hormones as well, stress, and insulin. I would love to see them. We have good problems in that you're probably going to have to go off of some of the medications you're on. Your body is going to reclaim its ability and thyroid function. Do you know how many times I say to people who had hysterectomies, "Do you know why you had the hysterectomy?" "No one ever explained this to me."
This was a hormone imbalance you've been dealing with for years that could have been addressed naturally but instead, you've gone through this huge shift that has created more issues. We can't change that it happened. When I give them that a-ha moment and walk them through their story, they're like, "I wish I would have known that. I need to be more informed." That's where we get excited about women feeling empowered.
There's no amount of money in the world. The greatest wealth is health, and your spiritual health too. I am very pro-medicine once you do the hard work to get your body in check. With those three years of depression, I went through horrible sadness and gained 50 pounds. They're like, "You're getting older." I'm like, "I see women in their 70s who look hot and are on fire. Don't tell me this is part of life."
A funny story is a lot of our clients are doctors and nurses.
That's good for them because they need to represent most of all. The physician should be the one identifying that God made our bodies to be the most unbelievable things. There's something beyond that, something genetic, that triggers stress.
I'm not against Western medicine. That is not what I'm saying. There are a lot of ways that we could strategically and naturally support some of those functions. As needed, those things have to be done too. We were resourced with those options as well. I'm very interested in helping women, at least the low-hanging fruit.
Thank you again, Paget. What a beautiful, heartfelt, and top-shelf discussion on leadership. I learned so much from you. You're such an inspiration and a wealth of information. I'm truly blessed to be able to know you. Thank you for sharing with our audiences.
Thank you for having me.
You're welcome. Where would we be without our audiences? We would just be talking and nobody would be listening. To our tremendous tribe out there, thank you so much. If you like what you read, please hit the subscribe button. Do us the favor of a five-star review. That helps a lot when other people are looking for tips to pay the price of leadership and live a tremendous life. Please like or share, comment, reach out to Paget, and keep on paying the price of leadership. Thank you so much, everyone. You have a tremendous rest of the day.
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About Paget Keller Rhee
Paget Keller Rhee is the owner of 6 BeBalanced Centers, and she is passionate about inspiring women to live their best life at any age through understanding Hormone Balance and how it affects our physical and mental health!