Loree Philip is a former 16-year Boeing professional turned entrepreneur. Her mission is to empower women in their careers through her work as an empowerment coach, podcast host, and the founder of weSpark, a boutique coaching and training firm that supports professional women to bet on themselves, step into their brilliance and gain the confidence to leap in their careers.

Following a successful 16-year career in the Aerospace and Defense sector, Loree followed her heart for greater freedom and impact. During her tenure at Boeing, Loree gained extensive professional expertise, having worked in the areas of Finance, Program Management, and Strategy.

By combining her coaching education with her solid corporate background, Loree delivers valuable insights and results to her clients. Loree’s credentials include an MBA and Bachelor of Science in Finance from Arizona State University, as well as an ACC International Coach Federation professional credential and certification as an Erickson Certified Professional Coach.

Loree launched a new podcast in 2023 titled Daring to Leap. Daring to Leap is a career empowerment podcast for women with a mix of career inspiration, self-development, practical advice, and stories of women taking big leaps in their careers.

Loree is currently involved in her debut book project as a contributing author. The book is titled “The Art of Connection 365 Days of Gratitude.”

Key Spots

– 04:08 – Discussion about work experience at Boeing

– 08:12 – Entrepreneurship as a journey of personal growth

– 09:24 – How entrepreneurship pushed me to grow personally and interview top industry leaders

– 10:30 – Spark Coaching and training firm for women leaders and entrepreneurs

– 14:24 – Breaking the podcast barrier: reaching episode 18 proves entrepreneurial success

– 14:27 – The power of sharing personal experience to help others

– 15:27 – The evolution of the podcast and taking down old episodes

– 15:59 – Overcoming the fear of putting yourself out there in podcasting

– 17:44 – Empowering your career: personal development and inspiring stories on the Entrepreneurs Enigma podcast

Find Loree Online

https://wesparkcoaching.com/

https://wesparkcoaching.com/daring-to-leap-podcast/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/loree-philip/

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Transcript (Provided by Castmagic.io)

Seth [00:00:00]:

Entrepreneurs Enigma is a podcast for the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, for the wins and the fails that we all face. Be entrepreneurs. How we learn from adversity. Every week, I talk to a different entrepreneur with a story to tell. I’m Seth Goldstein. Come with me on the journey. This is Entrepreneurs Enigma. Let’s get started. You. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another edition of the Entrepreneurs Enigma podcast. I’m your host, Seth. Today. I have Lori phillip. She is the host of the Daring to Leap podcast. She is the founder and coach of We Spark, a coaching consultancy out of Scottsdale, Arizona that helps women with their empowerment and career advancement. And I met Laurie in the Podcast Academy. We were both in the welcome to the Membership call, and we kind of hit it off, and we said, hey, it’s collaborating on each other’s podcasts. Hey, Lori. Welcome to the show.

Loree [00:01:11]:

Seth. Seth, so great to be on your show. And good to see you.

Seth [00:01:16]:

This is fun. We met about almost a month ago and on the what was it? The Podcast Academy welcome call. And we hit her off, and I was like, I should have her on. She has an interesting story. And that’s what we’re all about on the show. We’re all about the interesting stories, the entrepreneurial journey, and you have one, so that’s a good thing. Otherwise, I’m barking at the wrong bush here.

Loree [00:01:43]:

I do have one. We don’t have to cancel right now. We have plenty to talk about.

Seth [00:01:47]:

Here he goes. Who is Lori? How did you find your way into entrepreneurship? Were you always an entrepreneur, or has it been like an up and down battle? Has ever been a cog in the wheel, that kind of thing?

Loree [00:02:01]:

Yeah, no, I was definitely a cog in the wheel for 16 years. Oh, wow. Yeah, 16 years at Boeing. It was one of those. I got my first job right out of college at this amazing big company, and I stayed, and I just took the next job and the next job and the next job at Boeing. And I thought I would be a lifer there. 30 years is not unusual at a big company like Boeing. And something happened during the pandemic. This has actually, I think, happened to a lot of people, where you just start to realize what’s important and what’s not important in life, because people are dying, people are worrying about their health, and all of a sudden, all the corporate BS starts to feel more like BS. And like, hey, what am I doing with my life? So I definitely was a cog, and I left that full time, comfortable gig last year, actually, in July, to start my own business.

Seth [00:03:12]:

So almost a full year.

Loree [00:03:15]:

Yeah, it’s coming up.

Seth [00:03:17]:

That’s exciting. We’ll have to have a party online, do a zoom party.

Loree [00:03:20]:

Yeah, we should. That’d be fun.

Seth [00:03:22]:

That’ll be fun. That’s exciting. And so you are at Boeing for you said how many?

Loree [00:03:29]:

16 years. 16. That is a lot.

Seth [00:03:33]:

But you weren’t in the same position. You pretty much were jumping around trying different things and all that. What did you do with Boeing? What was your thing?

Loree [00:03:39]:

I started off in finance, so I have an undergrad degree in finance and then I went into program management for a few years and then I ended up in strategy. So I did strategy for our defense business. Classified eight or nine years. What’s that?

Seth [00:03:57]:

Classified.

Loree [00:03:59]:

I can’t talk about it.

Seth [00:04:01]:

I won’t dig into that though. That sounds like a lot of fun. I mean, that’s the good thing about being in a big company, is that you can do a bunch of different things. It doesn’t always get boring. Whereas at small companies I feel like some people are like, I need a change. I’ve heard this a lot. The pandemic changed a lot of things for people. If people that were comfortable in their job were like, well, what else is out there? What else can I do? Sometimes they change jobs. I went to a different business, different industry altogether. Some laughter. 16 year stint at a big fortune, what is it? Fortune 100 company?

Loree [00:04:35]:

Yeah. So it’s like Fortune 50 on the cusp. Yeah, it’s pretty big.

Seth [00:04:41]:

It’s wild. Yeah. So going to be an entrepreneur, it’s brave because you’re going from something used to be a stay, paycheck and comfortable and not as scary. Now it’s hit or miss if you actually keep the job and all that stuff. But in your mind, what is the best thing about being an entrepreneur?

Loree [00:05:02]:

So my dream of being an entrepreneur was about the freedom. I don’t have a boss, I get to decide how I spend my time, and I’m the only one to blame if I’m spending my time not doing things that are productive, but at least I get to choose, right? So when I was thinking about, okay, maybe I don’t want to be at Boeing forever, what else do I want to do? Because my value for freedom is so high, I just couldn’t see myself going to another company in a different industry or doing something like that. So I really wanted to create my own path and be in charge of my destiny in a sense. And so that’s what it is for me. Entrepreneurship is freedom and if you want to do it in your heart like, this is what I want to do, you’re going to make it happen. And so if you would have asked me three or four years ago, are you going to go start a business? I would have been like, are you crazy? No. Because I was so comfortable in that stability and you got to change things.

Seth [00:06:16]:

It wasn’t boring. It wasn’t like you were in the same position for 16 years. I mean, in a big company you can move around and you kind of entrepreneur in that idea, but you still have the safety net, whereas now, I hate to break it to you, I think you already know this. You don’t have this.

Loree [00:06:31]:

Yeah, I do know this. Yeah. I was thinking about it, reflecting a bit on it, and it’s like people who choose entrepreneurship, it’s like, not that they’re being mean to themselves, but you grow up so quickly as a person, it’s almost like you’re putting out all your baggage out there. It’s like, okay, I got to figure this out, because it’s just constantly popping up outside of your comfort zone and everything that you’re doing. And so I feel like I’ve grown as a person so much more in this last year than I did for the prior five years, to be honest.

Seth [00:07:13]:

I love that. Yeah. You adjust. And I feel like entrepreneurship, I’ve been doing this for 15 years, and it’s not a competition, of course, but it makes you grow up, and it makes you kind of think outside the box more honestly. Steal the saying from Truman. The buck stops with you. It really does. And when you think about it, it’s scary. And actually, we’ll go into that question. So being entrepreneur, there’s some good things. You get the freedom, you made the choices. All buck stops with you. What keeps you up at night? What’s the scariest thing?

Loree [00:07:52]:

Yeah, I think for me, the scariest thing was putting myself out there. So I was really comfortable in my prior role, and I was kind of like a really strong person on the team. So I’d have ideas, I’d create presentation, but I wasn’t the the person out in front leading the charge, being the face to the to the organization. And so when I switched into entrepreneurship, I thought I could do it and hide behind my computer, hide behind my class. Surprise. Yeah. So for me, getting past that fear of being seen in the spotlight was huge. And actually, that’s one of the reasons why I started my podcast, to be honest, was that I was like, okay, if I left to my own devices, I will hide, I won’t post, I won’t put myself out there. So I need to put something in place where I’m constantly showing up every single week. And that’s what the podcast was for. My own personal growth was pushing me forward with that.

Seth [00:09:08]:

It’s kind of what entrepreneurs enigma is for me is that it gets me to have an excuse to talk to people like you. I go chat, but that’s still purpose. I get to talk to you, we get to dig into what you do. We’re going to dig into what we spark does. We’re going to go into that and how you’re empowering women to kind of do what you’re doing, kind of be feel empowered to make their decisions and stuff. Maybe I would have reached out to you and we would have chatted, but I would never have gotten guy kawasaki on the program. I would never have the Go nads to ask Guy to be on the program, let alone then cram his book down my throat to read it in a weekend so I’d be prepared. That was the most nerve wracking podcast in my life. Nice world, but terrifying. So what is we spark.

Loree [00:10:01]:

Yeah, so We Spark is a coaching and training firm where we go in and we support women leaders and entrepreneurs in basically building their confidence is a big piece of it to get them to think broader about what’s possible in their career. Whether that’s if they want to stay in corporate and do the next big step or if they’re entrepreneur and they’re just holding themselves back a bit in what they want to do, just helping them move forward and get past whatever it is that’s blocking them. And in my experience, I found that a lot of it is ourselves, as much as we hate to admit it. And it’s like this double edged sword of, I don’t really want to blame myself, I want to point the finger at somebody else.

Seth [00:10:57]:

But there’s a lot of do that.

Loree [00:10:59]:

Yeah, but there’s a lot of freedom in having control. Say, you know, what if it’s something in me that I’m holding back for some reason or another and I can figure that out, I can move forward and I don’t have to rely on others to make that happen.

Seth [00:11:18]:

We’re going to take a quick break here from our sponsors and get right back to the show. I love it and you’re perfect for it because you’ve empowered yourself. I mean, in a big company, you can get lost, man, woman, they anyone can get lost in it. But I feel like women, especially recently, have had to step up and say, I have a voice. Listen to me, Roar. I mean, that’s kind of a cliche, but I’m as smart as you to any get your gun, I can do anything better. The whole saying, and I feel like you’re perfect for this position because you advocated for yourself at Boeing where anyone could get lost extremely easily. It’s a big company and now you’re doing the entrepreneur thing. And you just said you had to empower yourself to kind of realize that it’s not going to just come to me that I get out from behind the computer and be social. Honestly, I’m doing your horn here. But you’re perfect for this because you’re actually living it and then helping people live it.

Loree [00:12:27]:

And as you probably found this with your podcast, is that there’s so much power in a person’s story and a person’s lived experience. That if you share it, if you have a willingness and openness and a vulnerability and you share some of those trials and things that you’ve had to overcome with people, you have the power to help so many people learn so much without even even working with them directly because they can hear, they can get expired. From your example. Or I’ve had situations where people have reached out to me after a podcast episode and said, you know what, thank you for that. Now I don’t feel alone because whatever came up in the episode, they can relate to so much. And so I do think there’s a lot of power in supporting others with things that you’ve done yourself and there’s a lot of authenticity and credit that you get as a starting point. Like, okay, I’m going to listen to her or I’m going to listen to Seth, because they’ve been there and they kind of know what’s going on.

Seth [00:13:41]:

Absolutely. So what episode are you on?

Loree [00:13:45]:

I just released 18 today. Thanks.

Seth [00:13:50]:

So you’re past the mandatory three because everyone says that people in podcasting get to three and they’re like, I’m exhausted, I quit. So if you get past three, if you get an entrepreneurship, I think it’s three, and I think if you entrepreneurship, if you get past five years, you’re probably going to stick to it.

Loree [00:14:07]:

Yeah.

Seth [00:14:07]:

One year in your belt over there and you’re past the threshold of the podcast. So good for you. Yay.

Loree [00:14:13]:

Thank you, Seth. I actually did one of those exhausting launch weeks where I had four no. Yeah, five episodes released in the same week. Yeah, I did, but I started off with doing a lot of solo episodes with my own content. And so five episodes that first week, I was exhausted after that. I swear. I’m surprised I didn’t quit because I was like, texting everybody I know, like, hey, did you listen to this?

Seth [00:14:45]:

Hey, check this out just how it is.

Loree [00:14:48]:

Yeah.

Seth [00:14:50]:

Actually, entrepreneurs, you won’t see these old episodes, but one through ten are solo episodes of me just yapping, walking on grass in Vermont or stone in Vermont, pontificating about the entrepreneur journey. And then at eleven, I went back to my journalism roots and started interviewing people and I’m like, this is where the podcast needs to go. So episode one is actually episode eleven. There’s a little inside. It happens.

Loree [00:15:15]:

Did you take them down?

Seth [00:15:17]:

I moved to a network and I never put the other old ones up, so I kind of relaunched it on the network MPN marketing podcast network and never really released his old ones because they were rough. Even though I’ve been doing podcasting for ten years, every time you start a show, the first ones are rough.

Loree [00:15:39]:

I know, exactly. Yeah. It’s a bit intimidating if it’s just your own content because it feels like, okay, people are really going to either love it or hate it, or you’re putting yourself out there completely. It’s not just you’re collaborating with somebody else and you can kind of share that space with them. So yeah, it was a lot. I was on pins and needles releasing all my own content that first few weeks.

Seth [00:16:08]:

Yeah. What is the premise of daring to leap. And I love the album art. It’s very Saved by the Bell colors, and it’s bright fun. What’s the premise behind it?

Loree [00:16:25]:

Yeah. So Daring to Leap is about daring to bet on yourself, step into your brilliance, and leap forward in your career. So it’s a career podcast for women, but it’s a mix of personal development stories. So we’re now interviewing quite a bit of women who have made big career leaps themselves to hear their like yourself. Yeah, like me.

Seth [00:16:53]:

You went from Poeing.

Loree [00:16:54]:

Seriously, I’ll have to talk to you about that because I spent a lot of time at that plant in Ridley Park.

Seth [00:17:03]:

Yes. In the Philadelphia area.

Loree [00:17:05]:

Yeah. And so what I aim to do with the podcast, really, is career empowerment. So people come in and they listen to other people’s stories of where they were, and they hear that most people are doing something different now than where they started. It’s not unusual. And you kind of hear, okay, what did they have to get through within themselves, personally, to make that shift? And then we also talk a lot about just all kinds of personal development topics, self development. And so we’re just getting all the tools to be better in our current careers and then start planting the seeds of and maybe someday, maybe I’ll do something bigger or chase my dream.

Seth [00:18:03]:

I love that. So here’s the big question. Don’t be scared. It’s not 60 minutes. I’m not Diane Sore or Barbara Walters, may she rest in peace, but what is the most important thing to carry with you all the time? I love when people go.

Loree [00:18:23]:

The most important thing to carry with you all the time is your connection with yourself. And it’s not a physical thing, but it’s so important, because what really got me here to where I’m doing now is strengthening my connection with myself and really understanding deeply what I want, where I’m going. And that’s how you become, like, the master of your own ship, is trusting yourself enough to listen. And it’s about self love, and that’s where your confidence will come through if you start to pay attention to yourself.

Seth [00:19:07]:

That’s fantastic. Perfect answer. A plus. There you go. So, Lori, where can people find you? Online, I guess. Daring. The leap is everywhere. You can get your podcast, and if it’s not, let Lori know, and she’ll put it there, please. I looked. It’s everywhere, literally everywhere. And then we speak. LLC Where is that located? Is that we speak.

Loree [00:19:38]:

It’s Wesparkcoaching.

Seth [00:19:40]:

We Spark. Speak, Spark.

Loree [00:19:42]:

It’s fine.

Seth [00:19:43]:

You are speaking.

Loree [00:19:44]:

I am speaking.

Seth [00:19:47]:

Wesparkcoaching.com. Put all this in the show notes. You can laugh at me later. Where’s your biggest warrior hall online? Are you big on LinkedIn? Is it Twitter? Where is it?

Loree [00:20:01]:

I’m biggest right now on LinkedIn, so if you could find me there, I’d be happy to connect with anybody, any of your listeners. That’d be great.

Seth [00:20:11]:

Yeah, absolutely. Put that at the bottom of the screen right there.

Loree [00:20:15]:

That is a Magic Seth.

Seth [00:20:17]:

Isn’t that magic?

Loree [00:20:18]:

I’m so impressed with your podcasting work here.

Seth [00:20:21]:

Oh, I’m fancy schmancy. And on that note, being fancy schmancy. We’ll see everyone next time. That was a great show. If you’re enjoying entrepreneurs Enigma, please view us in the podcast directory of your choice. Every review helps other podcast listeners find our show. If you’re looking for other podcasts in the marketing space, look no further than the Marketing Podcast Network@marketingpodcast.net. You gold. Theme hopes you have enjoyed this episode. Episode this podcast is one of the many great shows on the MPN Marketing Podcast Network.