Ep 341: The Power of Boring Magic with Annie Croner

Annie Croner is the founder and CEO of Whole Assistant, an online platform & community, formed to provide a positive place where assistants can go to transform their lives and level up their careers.

In this spotlight episode of Annie’s show, The Whole Assistant Podcast, she talks about the power of boring magic.

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ABOUT ANNIE

Annie Croner is an executive assistant coach, trainer, and strategic thinker. She loves to help her clients unlock their badassery, and revolutionize their careers.

Over her 20 year career as an executive assistant, Annie worked for boutique companies across multiple industries including accounting, marketing, nonprofit, and private wealth management. Working in a variety of settings has led to a diverse understanding of the assistant role and the many challenges that often come with it.

Annie is passionate about helping those in support roles show up more strategically and garner the respect of their executives, colleagues, and key stakeholders without sacrificing their mental health and well-being.

Annie lives in Denver, Colorado where she enjoys green smoothies, her family, and an occasional evening of Latin dancing. To learn more about Annie, please visit WholeAssistant.com.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Jeremy Burrows 0:00
Hey, friends, it’s Jeremy Burrows, host of The Leader Assistant Podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Today, I’m excited to highlight an episode from my friend Annie croner’s podcast called Whole Assistant. And I really think you should check out her show at wholeassistant.com or look it up on your favorite podcast platform. Again, Annie Croner podcast called Whole Assistant today, I am spotlighting one of Annie’s episodes from the Whole Assistant Podcast, and I’m excited to spotlight several episodes over the coming months. So I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you check out wholeassistant.com to learn more about Annie and her great podcast,

Podcast Intro 0:47
The Leader Assistant Podcast exists to encourage and Challenge assistants to become confident, Game Changing leader assistants, you

Annie Croner 1:00
you. Okay, on to the topic for today, and that topic is the power of boring magic. So I want to kind of share what I mean by boring magic. I have been doing a lot of work on my health, and I know I’ve shared in past episodes that I have hired a personal trainer. He’s at my house one day a week, and I have to say that I don’t like working out. It’s hard to stretch myself in that way. I do like the accountability of having a personal trainer one day at my house. I really wanted somebody to be able to guide me to make sure I would wasn’t going to hurt myself. I’ve got some deficiencies on my left side due to a former injury, and I just wanted to make sure that I was going to hurt myself. And every time he comes over, he’ll say something like, like, last week, we were working on single leg squats, and he told me, Well, you just don’t want to do two rounds for the rest of your life. And I looked him square in the end, I’m like, What are you talking about? Of course, talking about? Of course, I only want to do two rounds of single leg squats for the rest of my life. Like, why would I want to do any more than that? And I think that there’s something really profound about doing the boring thing that will create the end result that you want. And so boring magic is that is doing the boring, mundane thing now in order to create what what feels like magic for yourself later. So I have been working with my personal trainer for the last six months, at least at this point now, and I’m beginning to see some shifts in my in my body composition. I feel really strong. I have my left foot turned in due to that muscle deficiency, and now it’s straighter because I’ve literally been working those muscles consistently. And there’s just something really beautiful about that, and really beautiful about investing in your future self now to reap the reward, and there have been so many seemingly inconsequential steps to kind of get here, and I’m still in process. Guys I had I was telling my mom, my mom’s in town for the weekend, and I was telling her that I still have some weight I’d like to use lose, even though I’m building all this muscle, I really haven’t lost any weight, and I feel like I’m trading maybe some fat for some muscle, and that feels really good, but I also know that there are some things I can do to kind of optimize my health. And I’m a sugar addict, not a sugar addict, but I definitely have a sweet tooth, and so I’ve really done a lot to unravel that. So I’m going to be even cutting back on sweets even more. And so just talking about my plan of action moving forward to take this health journey to the next level, now that I have kind of built up some strength, and now it’s time to kick it up a notch, I think that it’s also good to know in terms of boring magic, the little steps that I’ve taken in order to get here, and things like getting up out of my bed at 5am to go for a walk, or getting up really early to work out in my basement, or not eating the donut, or not eating the sugar, or not having the glass of wine by myself in the evenings, right? And the thing is that those things seem inconsequential in the moment. They seem like they aren’t going to impact anything in the moment. And so what we do is we give in to the instant gratification instead of delaying our gratification and investing in our future self. I also understand that this can be incredibly boring. It’s incredibly boring to get up and work out every single day, not every single day. I try and name for five days a week. It’s really boring to get up and do the work, and I’m beginning to reap the benefits. I’m beginning to see the fruit of that labor, and I often see this with executive assistants when it comes to things like creating systems. But here’s the deal, the little things are. What build trust with your executive. They truly are when you think your executive isn’t looking that’s when you should be showing up for yourself from a place of integrity and also holding to what you said you would do so, doing what you say you’re going to do when you say you’re going to do it, creating those systems for your long term success, showing up on time, taking accountability for your actions, all good things that will develop trust with your executive. Yet as we’re walking through life and as we are confronted with these things in the moment, they seem boring, they seem dull, but the boring things are where the magic happens, actually creating systems for yourself so that you’re creating that dependability for your brain. You’re also like optimizing everything. You’re optimizing your time management. You’re optimizing how you show up. You are systematically showing up in a way that will serve you and serve your executive. What is good for your executive and what is good for that relationship is often good for you, too, but we often downplay and minimize that, and we often minimize creating the systems, because we’re so busy playing whack a mole that to slow down long enough to create the systems. Seems boring, it seems trite, it seems inconsequential. But I am telling you as someone who actually took the time to build out her systems, took the time to really make sure that she was showing up strategically in every sense of the word. Your systems are really, really, really key to developing that trust with your executive and so I think that we need to pay attention to what can create boring magic for ourselves. And I think that by doing the boring thing, it’s often the thing that will create the most magic down the road for us. I’m looking back now over these last few months, and I’m looking at pictures prior to when I started this journey of working out and building muscle and everything. And I am kind of in awe at how strong I am. Now, I really feel like I could go skiing, whereas before I felt like my left foot would turn in and it would be a disaster and I would fall I’m really feeling like I could probably go for a run now and not hurt myself. The way I was able to create that for myself was by doing the boring magic. And I think that there are oftentimes some things that get in the way of the boring magic, right? Like, we just want that instant gratification, but if you’re actually able to delay that gratification, there are so many amazing benefits. And the byproducts of creating your boring magic are self trust. I mean, my self trust has grown exponentially since I started, like making sure that I was getting up to work out. I now trust that I’m just gonna do it. It’s not even a question in my brain whether or not I’m gonna get up and work out. It’s just a knowing. But that took several months to develop, but I kept trying and I kept failing. I’m not saying I didn’t fail. I’m not saying I didn’t sleep in when I meant to get up. I’m not saying that that never happened. But what I am saying is that by getting up and having an imperfect workout and maybe doing one or two rounds and not all three, or whatever the case may be, I may have set out to do a certain amount and not miss, not hit that mark, but that self trust will begin to develop in you like it did in me, and this is true in our work lives as well. By building trust with your executive you also build trust with yourself, yourself, because you know that you’ve got your own back regardless of the outcome. You know that you got your own back regardless of whether or not the system works, that you’re going to go back and iterate. You are creating baselines for yourself and building up from there. And you do what you say you’re going to do when you say you’re going to do it, instead of being all wishy washy about it, and so really showing up for yourself in that way, imperfectly at first and then getting better and better and better at it is a great way to foster self trust. It’s an excellent byproduct of creating boring magic for yourself. Another byproduct of creating your own boring magic is that your confidence will grow and you’ll begin to see yourself grow in ways that you hadn’t considered or anticipated. I often like to think about confidence as a interesting byproduct of working with someone, one on one, or even in my group programs. It’s really fascinating to watch, because I’ll be working with someone and their confidence will be really low, and they’ll fill out the fact the effect of their circumstances, and we start working together, and the confidence is an excellent byproduct of what we work on, which is showing up more strategically for yourself, showing up more strategically for your executive building the mindset that you need to give you long term success and confidence kind of comes along for the journey. It’s so fun to see. It’s one of my favorite things about doing what I do. Another byproduct of creating your own magic is that you will begin to see yourself as someone who doesn’t quit, you begin to trust and rely on your ability to never quit until you get the result that you want. And as someone who has done a lot of personal growth work over the last six years and who has relentlessly pursued a. Um, coaching executive assistants, growing my business, and that sort of thing. There was a time where I’m like, Oh my gosh, I don’t know if I can do this. And now I can’t see myself doing anything else. I really, really can’t I love what I do. I love pouring into executive assistants. I love pouring into you all. I love recording these podcasts. I love hearing your transformation from this podcast alone, let alone my pay programs. It is so much fun to see just all the growth that has come from not quitting. And so now I see myself as someone who will never quit anything that I ever set my mind to, because I haven’t given up. Now I’m not going to say that I never wanted to give up. There have been days where I’ve laid on my couch and my husband like, where are you? I’m like, I’m on the couch. He’s like, what’s the matter? I’m like, I quit. And he’s like, You can’t quit. I’m like, I know I’m just having a down day.

Annie Croner 10:52
But that’s the beauty of really tapping into the boring magic, showing up consistently again and again and again and showing up in integrity again and again and again, and doing the boring things that we don’t want to do, to create and foster trust with our executives and to create and foster trust with ourselves, whether it’s working out, whether it’s your eating habits, whether it’s creating systems at work, whether it’s showing up on time to work, whatever it is you say you’re going to do, man, there are some amazing, amazing benefits for creating boring magic. And I would encourage you, if you’re feeling down about a goal that you’ve may have had in the past, if you’re feeling down about maybe something that you’ve tried in the past and failed miserably at, don’t give up. Create some boring magic for yourself. Start small and see if that doesn’t take you far. And don’t downplay the small decisions you make every day, because they create who you are long term. They really, really do. So that is what I have for you guys today. Be intentional, be whole. That is all for now.