Monica Phillips: A day in the life of a leadership coach

Monica Phillips, motivational speaker, connector, coach, founder and president, Spark Plug Labs

Today I woke up at 7:42 am

The first thing I did was… Snuggle with my family. It’s Sunday.

My morning ritual includes yoga, gratitude practice, getting my son ready for school and mentally prepared to have a great day, reading news updates, championing a friend on social media, writing, and reviewing my schedule. On weekends it might also include a hockey or soccer game.

I started working at 8:30 am.

My biggest challenge was… deciding who to feature next. There are so many incredible people I meet every day and I want to share their voices and create a network where we can all thrive. I am getting better at using an editorial calendar to track all of the ideas I have though when I’m on the go I tend to put it all in my phone notes so I have lots of ideas that need to be centralized.

I celebrated…  My mom. In honor of Grandparents’ Day it is even more fun to acknowledge my mom for raising a strong independent daughter and being a fun, loving grandmother to my son. I try to find ways to let her know how amazing she is every day.

What I love most about my work is that I get to empower others to live a great life.

Did you have a plan for your day? Did it go as planned? I like to have a general outline and a visual practice of my day. It usually follows pretty closely to what I want for myself. I am also really good at rolling with change and finding new ways to adapt and grow as needed. People first, time second. When something needs to change, I will push a meeting to give priority to my family.

I want to recognize Anne Devereux Mills for being a leader and advocate for social change, to lift other women up and to live with abundance.

To commute I…. I live in the Bay Area and my commute is different every day. It is a combination of working from home in yoga pants (yes!), riding BART to San Francisco or Oakland, or driving, sometimes two hours, to other parts of the Bay Area - Marin, Palo Alto, and beyond. I use this time to listen to podcasts and audio books and am grateful to create space to learn and grow.

For lunch I ate a large salad with salmon, avocado, corn, peppers, snap peas, almonds, and all kinds of yummy garden full of goodness.

A personal activity I do just for myself is… yoga, running, paddle boarding, reading. I am not shy about taking time for myself and enjoying it.

I am passionate about completely overhauling the status quo of the workplace and championing for and advocating on behalf of women at work.

I can’t live without my family, friends, yoga, running, coaching, learning, the ocean, trees…

I went to sleep at 10:48 pm.