Despite being underrepresented, the truth is, women can thrive, excel, and lead. Their resilience, creativity, and determination often outshine the barriers they face.
In this empowering episode, our guest, Rhonda Skallan founder of Spark Alchemy, is here to prove just that. She shares valuable insights and strategies on how women can not only survive but thrive in these challenging environments. Rhonda’s passion lies in empowering women to not just join the conversation but to lead it with confidence and authority. Through her work, she ensures that women have a seat at the table and are equipped to make impactful contributions.
Listen in as we discuss typical male-dominated industries, the experience of women in these fields, leadership barriers, and the power of building supportive networks. Tune in now and empower yourself to rise above limitations!
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Taking Their Seat: Women Leading in Male-Dominated Industry with Rhonda Skallan
Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Now, we all have our dreams, we all have our passions, we all have what we want out of life, and, hopefully, some of the episodes you’ve already listened to is giving you a good idea of how to figure out what it is that you actually want. But once you figure out what it is you actually want, there’s many different barriers that can get in our way. Nothing is really that easy, especially developing a life that’s a little bit outside the box or outside of what’s expected. Some of these barriers could take the form of feeling like you don’t belong, feeling like you don’t really have the right to communicate. So, today, my guest is Rhonda Skallan. She is the founder of Spark Alchemy and she helps women in male-dominated industries.
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Rhonda, welcome to the program.
Thank you, thank you, and thank you so much for having me here today. I really appreciate it, Stephen.
Well, thank you so much for taking the time out to talk to me and my audience today. So, first of all, I want to start off by asking what is a typical male-dominated industry and what does that feel like for some of your clients?
That’s a great question because most industries are male dominated. My background tends to specifically be in construction, technology, finance as well as education, healthcare, and entertainment, and I would say all of those have a healthy dose of male dominance, especially when you think about combining them. So doing healthcare construction and technology construction. I decided I could go ahead and double down on that male dominance in a couple of those industries.
Now, are there industries that are female dominant or are there industries that are balanced, that have found a way to kind of work through some of this?
I really haven’t seen a balanced industry as much as maybe some female-dominated industries, maybe in the younger children, preschool, elementary-type education spaces, some of the service spaces of retail, sales, things like that, but I really haven’t seen a balance as much as I’ve seen one or the other. I will say what I know from some of the research that I’ve done with the Bureau of Labor Statistics for Women, the only industries where women make more money than men tend to be in childcare or those type of service-oriented businesses, which are also some of the lowest paying businesses.
Now, you also talk a lot about how a woman feels in a male-dominated industry. Are there any industries out there that just the percentages work out one way but do a better job of preventing making people feel like outsiders, like a woman in construction versus technology versus a finance industry?
Maybe healthcare, where you’re dealing with a lot of more traditional nurses, especially pediatric healthcare, which I have a pretty strong exposure to. I think, at some point, there are more women on the main work side so maybe 85 percent of women are workers, but as you crawl up the leadership ladder, it really does start to become more male dominated again.
But do any of them do a better job than the other ones of when the women do crawl up the leadership ladder, making them feel less out of place, like just from your work with your clients and how they often feel in some of these boardrooms and stuff like that? Is there a way to culturally set it up so that people that are in a different group, whether it be gender or race or anything like that, but I know you specify on gender, not feel so out of place even though they’re still kind of in the minority? Is that possible? Is that something that anyone’s doing well?
As far as individual companies or industries, no, I think it’s more on an individual basis. So, as women start to move up and building relationships with sponsors and really building relationships with men to help them.
That was a lot of helps but you get what I’m saying.
I think we can follow that.
I think that the more we can have women helping men help them, they can start to break down those barriers that have been something that have stopped it and there are going to be times where you run into men who don’t want to help you, the best thing to do is ignore that because trying to change people just is exhausting and doesn’t really work so find the people who want to help you and work with those people. That’s how you can get up that ladder and really start to make that difference and get where you want to go in your career.
Now, let’s start with the experience of your clients. I’m sure there’s plenty of listeners out there that are 100 percent familiar with this experience so if it resonates with you, that’s great, but what does that experience feel like for your typical client in one of these industries?
A lot of times, women are wondering what they’re doing wrong, wondering why they’re putting in so much effort, feel like they’re doing everything that they’re told to do, feel like following all the directions, following all the advice, following the mentor, and they’re still sitting there not moving up, not getting the new role, not getting the recognition, not getting the respect. So, a lot of times, it’s really wondering, “What am I doing wrong? I’m doing everything.” You’re also wondering why you feel like you’re running circles around other people and they seem to be getting the rewards and you don’t, and so you feel underappreciated, you feel not seen, you feel left out. Those are some of the big things that I think the women are experiencing. There’s continual things where you’ll get spoken over in a meeting, somebody else will take your idea and get credit for it. Those things are also pretty common, but I think, ultimately, that feeling inside of you of, “What am I doing wrong? Why is it not working?” that’s probably the thing that resonates the most with my clients.
Why am I being passed over for job assignments? Why am I being passed over for promotions, raises, kind of like staying stagnant when they really want to be moving up. Do your clients tend to be women that have a desire to move up, that have thought out, “Okay, I want to move up because of this, this, and that”?
Sometimes. Sometimes it’s about moving up, sometimes it’s about transitioning even into a parallel role. Lots of times, it’s about just the transformation of getting the next experience and moving up is often an answer in that but sometimes it’s just moving to a bigger project and it’s not necessarily a ladder climb as much as it’s an experiential climb. So, wondering how to get that next experience, wondering how to get recognized, those are the things where that transformational experience is really what they’re looking for.
And then do you work with your clients on figuring out what it is that they want or do you tend to work with people who have already gone through that process, say, through a different coach or a different program, “I figured out what I want, now I need to do the relationship building,” that you’re talking about?
So I’m going to answer that question by talking a little bit about how Spark Alchemy came about. It was very interesting coming up with the company itself because alchemy is that seemingly magical process of transformation or creation or both and when you start getting into the historics around the magic of it, you have to sit back and remind yourself that magic is just science that we haven’t proven yet.
And I think that people are trying to find that transformation creation piece of themselves and that’s what I help them with. Click To TweetSo they may come from previous experience with other coaches but, generally speaking, I’m starting with where do they want to go and a lot of self-discovery around who they are and how to uncover that journey for themselves. And when I created Spark Alchemy, if you think about even finding your perfect relationship, you have to ask yourself, “Is that magic? Is that science? Is that luck?” That’s the same with the relationship of yourself. How do we find that internal genuine self-discovery piece and is that magic, science, combination? Do you do it with blood tests or do you do it with a psychic reading or do you do it with every tool out there? So, really, in helping women in this transformative journey, guiding them in finding that space of where they want to go and how they want to go there and what masks they want to take off and what masks they want to keep on as they’re going through this journey.
And what prompted you to start Spark Alchemy? What prompted you to decide that this was what business you want to bring to the world?
My incredible passion for helping women. Click To Tweet
After being in the business world for so long and being a person who really embraces who I am, I wanted to help other women with that. I know what it’s like to sit in the room and not know what am I doing wrong and when I left my last corporate job, I spent a lot of time really sitting down saying, “All right, do I wanna go back to the world of working for another company and having that nine to five, whatever you want to call it?” and my answer was no. I value freedom and I think most women value freedom and we fought really hard for it and so how do I help them get that in their career journeys in a way that allows them to be successful in whatever role they want to play.
When you first started it, when you first decided, “I’m not going back to the nine to five, I’m gonna do Spark Alchemy, I’m gonna help women,” what were you feeling at that moment? Were you feeling a little bit of nervousness? What propelled you through to see it through to success?
Yeah. I think entrepreneurialism always has a little bit of nervousness with it and I’m not sure if it goes away. I still have it all the time. So, yes, definitely, it’s interesting, if you do a list of pros and cons for a W-2 job or work-for-yourself job, I think you have equal pros and cons on all of the above. So it’s just a matter of which ones are more pertinent at that point in your life. And so, for me, at this point, there was more passion to deal with the pros and cons of working for myself than there was of going back to the nine to five working for somebody else. So definitely a lot of fear, definitely just cons of the insecurities, the where’s the money going to come from, how do I take care of these things that society tells me I need to take care of, so that still happens all the time and then I have to remind myself, guess what, I don’t have to do performance evals ever again.
That’s an important point, kind of wrapped up in a joke, but we do commonly, whenever we take on a new endeavor and whether it be entrepreneurship or even just trying to move up in a company or try to move to a parallel role, periodically, we’re going to encounter frustration, sometimes it takes a little while to get noticed, whether it be a business or whether it be a parallel role, it takes a little while for that role to actually present itself and for you to get accepted for it so we need to kind of go back to that foundational why, and every once in a while caught up in the details of, “Okay, why is this not working? Was is that one working? What do I have to do?” is like, “Okay, I need to reconnect with that why.” Did you have a practice around that?
Well, my daily practice includes morning meditations. I love to take a three-mile walk every day and get some outside time and really clear my head and I usually do that before my first meeting of the day and it does not matter what the weather is, my three-mile walk takes priority. I think once I start to feel that why am I doing this, I have a couple practices of trying to release the thought and focus on why, like you said, I’m doing it. And when I think about helping women and I think about the journey, the beauty of talking to women and helping them on their journey and helping them get where they want to go, just seeing that, it’s probably equivalent to what maybe a parent sees with a child, as far as that awesome feeling of uplifting.
Some of the best things in life are at least not in the realm of instant gratification. They take a little bit of work, they take a little bit of effort. And so if you live your life fully according to whatever is going to bring you that instant gratification at this moment, it might feel good temporarily, that pure satisfaction, and this goes out for anyone out there starting your businesses or embarking on your journeys, wherever they’re going, is that feeling at the end is so much more special knowing how much uncertainty you endured or how many setbacks you endured or how much work you actually put into it.
I absolutely agree, and when you think about instant gratification but you think about some of the things you’re most proud of, I would guarantee as you look back, it’s not something that happened right away. I was thinking about this. There was a big snowstorm recently and when you get caught outside in a snowstorm and you’re walking around, at that point in time, you’re wondering, “What am I doing out here? Why am I out here? How did I get stuck in this place of hiking?” So let’s say you’re taking a hike and it starts snowing and you’re getting really cold and you’re wondering what’s going on, but when you finish that night and you’re sitting in front of the fireplace with a cup of hot tea and some marshmallows, you’re literally looking back on, “Wow, I kicked butt today!” and you feel so proud of what you accomplished, when at that time while you were doing it, you’re like, “What the heck, my feet are cold, my hands are cold. What am I doing?” But when you look back, you’re like, “Wow, look at what I did.”
It does take time and it takes some output for us to truly feel gratitude. Click To TweetAnd that’s another practice is to write gratitude every day and I do that in several of my journals and definitely, on Mondays, I have a practice where I write for five minutes on what I’m grateful for for the last week, and then on my day planner, there’s a place to write three gratitudes and I generally try to come up with at least three things that aren’t always the same.
You ever have those days where it’s hard to come up with gratitudes?
Oh, yeah, and then I usually lean back on the same. Yes, I’m grateful for my husband, yes, I’m grateful for my house, yes, I’m grateful for my three cats. But I know when I write those that I probably need to dig deeper. And so one of the things that I like to do is at the end of the day touch back.
Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense because one of my easiest gratitude days was a day that I was bicycling up in the mountains last May, there’s a new trail along Highway 91 that connects Copper Mountain to Leadville to kind of building a trail parallel to the highway, I was on that trail, just looking at the main mountains, and in May in the mountains, you still have a lot of snow everywhere, it’s like this beautiful experience, and I was like overflowing with gratitude about things, like I’m just gracious to even have legs that work and have a sense of smell that still works and all that stuff like that. But then, yeah, you get that day where, depending on what situation you’re in, and probably for a lot of your clients where it’s tough to feel gratitude, where it’s just like, “Oh, my God, I can’t believe someone else got that promotion again,” or, “I can’t believe someone else got whatever recognition, assignment, and I’m just stuck in the same place I was three years ago, even though I’ve been putting in 55-, 60-hour weeks on the reg,” at that point, do you advise your clients on finding ways to show gratitude, even though they still have a point about where they deserve to be or what they should be doing on their journey?
Yes, and I think, at that point, a lot they need to be grateful for is their own strength to get through what they’re going through. The other thing that can really help move you is your curiosity, being grateful for your curiosity of wondering, “What can I do different? What is going on? How can I change this?” I mean, there is a point where we get to the proverbial end of our rope, and when we get there, being grateful that we got there because that actually means a transition is coming, a transformation is coming, a growth moment is coming, and sometimes it takes a long while before you decide, “Okay, I’ve really had enough,” but the gratitude of getting there means you’re now ready to do something different. And so taking that curiosity and being grateful for that is something that you can really start to work with. And I think with my clients, a lot of working with, “I’m ready for what’s next, I’m ready for what’s different,” involves them getting to that level of frustration and burnout and just that curiosity of what’s next and how do I get out of this cycle, because the spinning cycle, it’s interesting, you sometimes think of life as like a sine wave, you go up, you go down, you go up, you go down. I actually think of it more like a spiral, you go up, you come down, you go up, you come down, but the more you go up, every down you have is not as down as the very down because you’re going up like a big spiral. So, if you can start to realize that your downs are just part of your next going up and that you aren’t going as far down, then you can start those transformations and really ride that spiral in a way that allows you to reach your next apex and reach the top and you can also ride the down to know it’s not going to go as far down anymore and it’s going to go back up.
So, obviously, that’s a very good scenario. I think I’ve seen scenarios where people do start spiraling downwards as well. I mean, I’m sure none of your clients or maybe some of your clients had been in that and then they start spiraling upwards. If someone is spiraling downwards and they’re at one of those down points where it’s lower than the one before, lower than the one before, what’s the best thing to do at that point?
Call me.
If anyone listening is there, do you have a good contact method for you?
Yes, if you can go to my website, you can get on my calendar for a 30-minute call at any point in time. There is that, yes. You could also direct message me through LinkedIn and I’ll definitely respond. When you start going down and you feel like you’re going down, down, down, it is time to break the cycle. It is time to let’s practice some self-care, let’s do a big break, and I honestly would say, for me, it’s almost like you go through life breaking twigs but when that’s happening, it’s time to break a pretty big twig. I would get out an axe and say let’s break the log, because you’re going down and it’s getting painful and we want to break that. We really do want to be able to say, okay, you’re going down, down, down, that’s not working so let’s crack this open and find out where you want to be and what’s holding you where you are because it’s not healthy and it’s not what’s keeping you moving in the right direction for yourself, which is why you’re spinning down so let’s break that open and really peel back those internal layers. Who is that inner critic? What are these masks that you’re wearing that you need to get rid of? And I believe that we are who we are and that’s what gets us through our experiences. So there’s a lot of theory that you gain character from your experiences. I actually think you have your character and it gets you through those experiences. So, let’s open this back up and say, okay, your character is screaming, saying, “Hello, we need to get to the other side of this,” and let’s open back up and say what does that look like so that we can embrace your genuine self and get past the spiral into what’s next. And, sometimes, there will be things you don’t like. Quitting your job is usually one of the big ones. I don’t tell my clients to quit their jobs but sometimes it does happen, they decide that it’s time for something different, but those transitions that come up are what your character is trying to get you to do.
And you talk about breaking twigs, so I’m not going to state what exactly they are but I’m sure a lot of people have ideas about all the other twigs in their lives, certain relationships, certain obligations, certain types of organizations, associations that oftentimes end up also needing to be broken in some capacity because you have to let go of something in order to make the space to bring something else into your life.
And it’s a process and it’s a dirty journey. I mean, I always think the way you get to clear water is by muddying the water to begin with. If you’re trying to get to something in the bottom of the river, you muddy the water until you get to that stone in the bottom, and then when you finally do dig it out and you let it settle, the water becomes clear again, but it took muddying the water to get there.
And now I just kind of want to find a day to have like a quiet day like outside in the meadow at a pond springtime, it’s the time of year where everyone is kind of itching to do some of those outdoor activities in nature. I know you talked before the podcast about your gardening.
We’re so ready to start gardening and I have to keep reminding myself it’s March, because every year in Colorado, the spring is so erratic and you’re like, “Oh, it’s gonna snow. Oh, it’s sunny,” and you really want to start early and it is so hard to wait because if you plant things too early in Colorado, you will kill them.
Yeah. Oh, for sure. I mean, I have all my plants inside, from seedlings ready to go out at the end of April. I have my kale and cilantro and some of that like real cold weather stuff on the ground —
Snow peas.
Yeah, yeah, that type of stuff. I mean, they’re called snow peas for a reason, right?
And the snow peas already went down. They went down on St. Patrick’s Day. But it is one of those things, and Colorado plays with you that way. It’s like, “Oh, it’s gonna be 60 degrees for the next week,” and if you do it, you will regret it. And it has taken years of learning when can I put things out, what can I put out, how can I do that, and there’s gardening sites and things like that to listen to but, ultimately, it’s our own journey of gardening that we’ve really practiced and tried and killed and grown and been successful and not successful. And, again, that’s about that instant gratification. When you try really hard to get it out early because you’re like, “Okay, I want this,” you’ll end up disappointed. Your tomatoes will die.
For sure. And the other thing you told me earlier today was that you’ve already read 80 books this year.
I have. So this has been a unique year. I broke my ankle in the third week of January and if you may remember, I mentioned that I love to walk three miles today so that got shelved and it was my right ankle so I couldn’t drive anywhere so I kind of was put on lockdown for eight weeks. So anytime I wasn’t working, I was reading and I was cruising through about a book a day in the evenings and not be able to expend my energy like I normally do, I did a lot of reading. So I have gotten up to about 80 books so far this year, and plenty of fiction, plenty of nonfiction and I love to read. Also, it’s really easy to read when there’s not much good stuff on TV.
One of the things I talk about in some of my screen time addiction programming as well as just a general idea of instant gratification is that when you’re sitting on your couch, pressing that On button on the television is oftentimes the easiest thing you can do. Feels like it follows the same paradigm where you press the On button, you get instant gratification, but as you said, especially this particular year, there’s just not that much good stuff on so you’re either going to watch an old rerun of something you’ve already seen or watch something that’s kind of mid and, at that point, your reward is just not that much compared to reading. Even if you can finish a book in a day or even less than a day, it’s still a little bit outside of that instant gratification in the sense that you have to put in the effort to actually read the words, consume them, read through the book. It’s definitely more effort than turning the television on.
Yeah, and, I mean, I would say too, I’ve done a couple of audiobooks over this time period and I used my hands to crochet some baby blankets, I have some friends that are having children, and it was a great way for me to double down and listen to a book and crochet some blankets so that was really fun while you’re sitting there with your foot elevated on the couch. Did a couple of puzzles the same way. So I am trying to do productive things with my time. I did just get out of my boot last week so I am very excited to say that I’m starting to try and get my walk back up, getting outside a little bit every day, made it around a five blocks, I’m not quite back to three miles but I’m getting there.
You’re probably not back to three miles yet, yeah.
But I’m getting there. So, yeah, it’s been that type of time. And I also feel like it’s interesting, when you break your leg and you can’t go forward, it really slowed down my forward momentum but I feel like that was something that the universe was saying, “You need to sit down and you need to focus and you need to wait and you need to get some clarity.” So, listening to myself, that was another reason. It was like, no, slow down, sit down, you don’t really have a choice. And if I was ignoring all the signs before, I had to get out a big axe and crack open that branch and say, “Okay, what’s going on?” And if it happened because I broke my foot, that’s definitely how it happened.
Yeah, there’s a saying like the body keeps score, I think it’s a name of a book, maybe you read it, given how many books you’ve read.
I have not but I have heard of it.
But the idea that when something’s out of balance in your life, something’s going to happen to push you in that direction, whether it be some sort of illness, if the body is like just tired of being run on little rest or whether it be some of the situations that you have with your clients when their inner character, as you put it, are just screaming out, “Hey, this is not right, you need to do something different.”
And we forget to listen. We’re this go, go, go society, like you said with instant gratification, but we’re also going all the time. We have this go 50, 60, 70, 80 hours a week. We have this put our children in six sports, each parent’s running around doing things outside of work and then you’re getting up at work and then you’re maybe sleeping four to six hours a night and then you’re eating whatever you can get your hands on. Sometimes you’re eating healthy, sometimes you’re not. But our whole go, go, go society is not something that we are necessarily designed to do —
Yes.
— as people, and as we’ve tried to evolve to that, I believe we’ve started losing track of our own true natures and losing track of that genuine self that we need to be successful. And while this feeds better performance, does it really?
I believe they call it like the great resignation or something, and a lot of people were like, “I’m just done,” and I will say, a lot of women left the workforce and have not come back since the 2020 year.
Yeah, I remember when I heard about the great resignation, I always consider that a big 2021 term, that’s the year I heard it the most, and I do remember reading that more women were leaving the workforce than men. What do you think is happening? Because one of the questions I often get about the great resignation or anything like that is what are all these people doing if they’re all checking out, especially from some like maybe more traditionally minded people?
Do we think they’re sitting at home watching bad TV eating chocolate? No.
But that’s the stereotype. I mean, that —
That’s the stereotype —
— in the minds of a lot of people, right?
Yeah, it really is. I think a lot of people just decided that they were kind of done with the lack of freedoms and I think they either found another job or they started their own jobs. I think a lot of people decided there was enough need to do the things that they wanted to do. And, sometimes, maybe women have decided it’s better to stay home and support the family but I don’t think that’s really a big thing. I haven’t met a lot of people that aren’t doing something. Now, maybe they’re locked in their house, that’s why I haven’t met them, but I’m out a lot and I would assume you are too and I’m meeting a lot of people who’ve left the big, bad world of, “Oh, I can’t do that anymore.” There’s something different too about men and women in that men are driven by testosterone and women are driven by oxytocin, this is just biology and basic, and the cortisol environment that the nine-to-five world has really pushed in this working industrial information age that we’ve been in, that really pushes more on the testosterone drive than on the oxytocin drive.
And so what actually is starting to come out is about 80 percent of women are starting to suffer from autoimmune issues because of trying to live with that cortisol push for the last 50 years.
And now does that also apply to some other aspects of our work culture? Because we talk about this nine to five, which I’m actually really hopeful more and more people are questioning now, but also when I think of a standard corporate culture of, “Okay, we’re gonna measure your performance and we’re gonna track metrics and everything’s number,” that whole design, even the way we try to motivate employees, primarily salary increase, but a lot of companies, it’s still somewhat of a fear-based if you don’t cut it, you’re fired type of motivation technique.
I’m hoping that we’re starting to take back some of that power. I’m hoping that as the world keeps moving, that the people are starting to take the power from the leaders. When I think of the great resignation, I think that was a symbolism of we are tired of doing what you say and not being able to have the lives that we need. I think with a lot of things that are happening, I mean, if you believe in astrology and you’re watching the whole change of Pluto moving into Aquarius, I think there’s a lot of symbolism and change that’s happening, I think we’re definitely shifting from an information society, so we’ve moved from industrial to information to whatever we want to call what’s next, but I do think we’re starting to move more into a feeling society as well and self-respect, what I’m capable of. Some people can really get a lot done in three hours at home and why should they spend two hours in traffic and eight hours in an office stuck in a water cooler, disturbed all day long? There’s just a lot, and trying to evaluate metrics, in my opinion, if people aren’t getting their jobs done and you need to evaluate from something like a metric by seeing them in the office, then you’re not actually a very good leader. You should be able to know that people are getting their jobs done by their output, not necessarily by seeing them sitting at their desk eight hours a day.
And so your initiative to help more women elevate to that level, do you think that initiative is going to help realize that future in a way based on what you had just said around the oxytocin versus testosterone but more kind of the setup that, okay, if we had better representation in some of these decision-making positions, I’m not paraphrasing exactly from your website but that’s pretty much what I feel like you’re getting at, that’ll help us in this whole process of trying to move our work culture forward into something that’s, and I just want to say more human, because one of the things I feel about rigid working hours is that it’s not really that human, not every person has the same circadian rhythm, not every person does their best work starting at eight, ending at five with a 45-minute lunch break, right?
Right, absolutely, 100 percent. I do think it’s going to make a difference. We’ve seen the statistics and the research on when women are on boards, when women are in the C-suite, how it does affect the bottom line in a very positive way. It’s still not something that’s completely embraced and accepted and it’s still not something that we’re seeing people in droves just say, “Okay, let’s bring women, let’s bring women,” and I don’t know if that’s the competition factor, I don’t know if that’s the fear factor, but
I do believe that as we start to understand humans more and we start to understand all the pieces and parts that go with that, it will make a big difference. Click To TweetThe simplicity of what you said with the different rhythms, even if you think of male energy cycles and female energy cycles, men actually run through all energy cycles in a 24-hour period. Women, it’s a 28-day period, and that’s literally because of hormones. And that’s not something that is anybody to blame for but there are times when women are just raging productive and then there’s times where it’s like, “Look, I’m tired and I need to sit down.” Men get that as well but it’s usually in a 24-hour cycle. And which 24-hour cycle? Are you a night person? Are you a morning person? Are you an afternoon person? And we don’t respect that as a society from the industrial age and we’ve got to start doing that if we want to see what’s next. If we keep doing what we’re doing, we’re breaking people and they’re leaving the workforce and they’re leaving really good jobs and they’re starting their own thing and they’re going to start making a difference in their own way, because they’ve decided, “I’m gonna go do it my way. Screw you.”
Yeah, I love that too because we are all different people, and I feel like the world I grew up in, I feel like, by the time my childhood was already starting to fall apart, even though most people weren’t realizing it, the world I grew up in was very much a one size fits all. I call it living by the script. You go to school, you get good grades, you go to a good college, you get that degree, then you get that job, then you move up the ladder, and you buy that house with the 2.5 bathrooms, blah, blah, blah, and that’s not really respecting the diversity of humanity, even beyond the things that people often talk about the most commonly, race, gender, and generational groups, nowadays, but it’s that diversity of how we want to live our lives. I mean, if everyone was the same person, the world will be pretty boring.
It would be. I think, what was discovered, Stephen, was by living that script, people at their core were not happy. There was no joy. They were not fulfilled. So now we’ve got addiction, sleeplessness, overeating, all these different things that are happening, and then causing health issues. I mean, look at the different heart disease, cancers, all those things.
Because while people are living this program of the script, they’re not experiencing any joy and, because of that, their own body is starting to turn on them. Click To Tweet
Their bodies and their minds —
And their minds, correct.
I’m here and I want to say I have nothing bad to say about anyone that is on an antidepressant but the number of people, the percentage of the population that’s on an antidepressant right now has to alarm you, if you actually stop and think about it. There’s no way to think about it without being like something is not right.
And this started many years ago but watching the amount of medicine that children were put on and watching the different things that were happening. I mean, I grew up in the age where I was told to go play outside and don’t come home ’til it was dark. There were no cell phones or anything like that so nobody was keeping track of me. But now, I just think that we’re trying so hard and I feel bad for the children and when I look at the suicide rates that have gone up in the last five years, it’s tragic, and we have to start fixing these problems. And I agree with you, the mental health issues, we keep focusing on physical health and we keep ignoring mental health, and I think even in my business for women, we’re not focusing on soul care, that’s one of the things I like to call it, is let’s focus on the soul and let’s focus on caring for that and include mental, physical, emotional, but let’s really get to that soul care and I think that the more we can focus on that as people, the more we can start making these changes.
Yeah. One of the things I really hope is that there’s some structural changes that need to happen around giving people the space for that. And even, we talked about the great resignation, one of the situations that I see quite a bit is someone that’s just like, “I’m driving for Uber until I can figure out what I need to do,” and I just want to say that there’s nothing wrong with that and there’s nothing wrong with having that season of your life, whether it be Uber, whether it be DoorDash, whether it be whatever people refer to as the gig economy. We’re probably thankful that those things exist that give people the opportunity to do something like that just to keep themselves afloat until next vision comes and says, “Oh, I’m gonna do this next.”
I have to admit, in my 20s, I had a stint of waiting tables, which I would call the gig economy at that point in time. It was a great time to process and great time to figure out next steps. And when I’m in between script jobs, as you like to call them, there was a lot of times I was like, “I’ll just go wait tables for a while so I can figure out what I wanna do with my life,” and I think that that’s important. I think that that’s where we get to step back and figure out what is it that we’re wanting and how do I get there. And I love being a guide on that journey and with my experience in six different industries and 30 years in corporate America and all those things that I’ve been doing and just my passion for learning and more coaching certifications than you can shake a stick at, I love guiding people on their journey to be able to be like, okay, what is it that your soul wants and how do I help you get that? How do I help you reach that point where you’re excited to get out of bed in the morning and you’re dancing and you’re ready to go to work and you’re singing in the shower, whatever that looks like — isn’t singing in the shower fun? That’s one of my favorite things to do.
I know, that Becky G song was amazing, right? That’s some ways back.
Yes. So, I think though that it really is important that we get that chance to know who we are inside and to appreciate that person, that part of us, and let it shine.
And then final question and you can opt to not give anything away if you want but you talk about training women on how to help men help them. So, for any women listening, what’s the first thing they should be thinking on?
So men know how to help men because that’s who they are and that’s the way our society has been for a long time now. So listening to figure out what it is that is their strength to help you and how their language is because you’re going to have to speak in their language for them to help you because, otherwise, they can’t translate what you’re saying.
And then, for the men out there listening, having a woman in their lives that has already reached out that they want to help, what should they be thinking on?
I think for men, this gets a little more complicated in that they actually have to be able to talk and be transparent. They need to be able to say what they’re thinking and feeling, even if it’s uncomfortable and trust that woman who’s listening can take the information and help reflect it back in a way to get help. So, that’s one of the things I think that’s really important is to build a trusting relationship, but to trust, you’re going to have to let down some of your old patterns of self-protection and things like that and you need to be able to share truth and hope that the person you’re sharing with will be able to use the information for both of your goods, not in a painful way. And I will say this, most people have made it this long in their lives being hurt and you’ve survived every day, so try the trust because if it hurts, you’ll probably still survive.
I love that message to finish up on. If it hurts, you’ll probably still survive. We’ve all survived something. And also, hopefully, we can build more of these relationships because the more time we spend in our own little bubbles, the more divided we become and I think we’ve seen a little bit too much of that. So, Rhonda, thank you so much for joining us today on Action’s Antidotes, sharing your story once again. Is it spark-alchemy.com, right?
Correct, spark-alchemy.
Spark-alchemy.com, any women out there listening, wanting to work with Rhonda, but either way, thank you so much. And thank you to everyone out there listening, for taking the time to hear it, to hear another one of these amazing stories and hopefully you’re on your journey, you’re accepting yourself as being in the spot on your journey where you are and you’re also giving yourself the time and the space without the constant distractions to listen to some of your inner character and some of your even spiritual guides in telling you what it is that you need to be thinking about and doing.
Thank you so much. I really appreciate taking the time with you today.
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About Rhonda Skallan
From her early days selling nightcrawlers in the Smoky Mountains to managing multi-billion dollar projects, her path was shaped by unwavering determination. Educated at Virginia Tech and Regis University, she truly came into her own facing real-world challenges, proving her mettle as a formidable woman in male-dominated fields.
With a career spanning healthcare, entertainment, technology, and construction, she has consistently broken barriers and navigated complex dynamics with resilience. Proudly self-described as a “badass” both in her professional and personal life, she stands as a testament to tenacity.
Outside the professional sphere, she is a nationally recognized speaker and the visionary behind “Construction with a Touch of Grace,” advocating for women in industries where they are often outnumbered but always standout. An avid theater lover and photographer, she devours over 70 books a year and enjoys diving into art projects.
She has witnessed the extraordinary power of a community of women driven by shared goals and aspirations. This understanding sparked the creation of her coaching program, built on the premise that no woman should navigate ambition and doubt alone. By uniting, they can leverage their collective strength to forge paths of confidence and empowerment.
Her mission extends to women leading in any male-dominated environment, from boardrooms to construction sites. Her goal is to elevate their voices, ensuring they are heard and valued.
In the world of power industries, she believes women are not just participants but pivotal game-changers ready to redefine norms and reshape landscapes.