The Power of Duality with Lilly Darling

Join me for an inspiring conversation with Lilly Darling, CEO of Anchor Wave and a powerhouse in the digital marketing realm. Known for her visionary leadership and commitment to collaboration, Lilly embodies strength, determination, and a profound belief in the power of duality. In this episode, we delve into her journey, exploring the insights and wisdom she has to offer—both professionally and personally. Whether you're an aspiring leader or simply seeking motivation, Lilly's multifaceted approach will leave you inspired and ready to embrace your own path. Tune in and discover how positivity and collaboration can transform your life and career!

Website: https://anchorwave.com/

Transcript

Theresa Cesare: 0:06

Hey guys. Welcome to Heart to Talk the podcast. I am the host and creator Theresa Cesare My intention for this podcast is to deliver to you wisdom, inspiration, and consciousness. Through solo episodes and conversations amongst insightful people. It is my greatest honor to bring to you talks that come from the.

0:32

Welcome amazing listeners. Today we have the honor of speaking with Lily Darling, the CEO of AnchorWave, a renowned digital marketing agency. She is a powerhouse in the world of digital marketing, a leader with a vision and a true advocate for collaboration and positivity. Lily is a multifaceted individual embodying strength, determination, and a profound belief in the power of duality. In this episode, we'll dive into her story and discuss the wisdom and insights she has to offer us both personal and professionally. Get ready to be inspired and motivated. As we welcome the remarkable Lily Darling to the show. Wow. If you could just get an intro to every time you stepped in a room. I want to do an intro for you now I am just so excited to be here and be able to just share time with you because I think we could have a million conversations and I'm excited to have this one. Behind that intro is a lot of years. So yay for, for a lot of years and a lot of different experiences. I'm grateful for all that. So I did grow up in Alaska and then I came to Tucson. So I like to say it was 180 degree turn because truly that Makes sense for our temperatures and also just the extreme contrast in life growing up there, but coming to coming to the U of a, was really the, the reason for that change I was. Half an artist and half had this business mind. Was very much interested in the art side and also in commerce. so chose marketing and design as my degree path, which led me to a number of different agency positions, mostly. Back in that day, it was logos, business cards, print design, but as time went on, the internet was born, took over, started to grow. And that became one of the central places that people really started to think about when, when they thought about branding or marketing or business or design. And so 14 years ago, I began at anchor wave and started as a project coordinator, which means that I would help clients from the beginning to the launch of their websites. and grew and grew and grew in that role and in exposure to all the different facets of, of marketing through different, experiences, five different positions at the company ultimately four years ago. The owners decided to start a new business. They still own the company, but handed the baton of CEO to me. That was also 2020. And I don't know if you remember what happened then, but there was a lot of changes. And so we actually, the full team went remote. so I took on that role of being CEO as well as leading the team into this remote digitally connected, as we like to call it, workspace. So we've got a team of 20 individuals, all different, styles and all different types of talents and skills. Thank you for walking us through that. And did you ever imagine at the beginning of this journey that you would become CEO? I mean, cause how many people want to flex that title? Like CEO, I mean, that's incredible. Such an accomplishment. Thank you. You know, it's, it's funny when it strikes you in different times and places. I will say as my kids have reflected it to me, Oh, CEO, it sounds different. Then, then in different times, whenever I'm introduced, cause it feels so kind of organic. Now there's a tiny part of me that I think it feels so much. At home in my core that maybe I did dream of it, but never said that, or actually articulated the thought, at the forefront. I had owned a branding firm before that. And when you own a business, it's all on you to do all the things, right? So when I very first started at anchor wave, I thought this is great. I can go and do my nine to five and I don't even have to have an email on my phone. I go in, I do my thing and then I'm done. But it grew and grew. And I think that's probably just an innate part of me. I'm always thinking, innovating, creating, want to expand and want to grow. So it seems like a very natural progression to. To be able to then touch all kinds of different areas of the business and be able to work with these amazing humans in a, in a leading, in a coaching, capacity, as well as influence the results for our clients. Let's pivot for both professional and personal. You say that your current season has given you the opportunity to curate your life. You say that your superpower in progress is duality. Tell us about this. Well, this gosh, the duality piece has been a theme. And this is where I kind of harken back to both the extreme change from Alaska to Arizona, right? You've got these two different sides. And then I've got this. Artistic side and business side. And I'll tell you at the U of a, if you go from the Eller school of business over to the design college, like it's night and day, there's just two different worlds. So it's kind of felt like. I was being forced to like, choose the one path. Right. And what is your final decision? And it was always feeling like they were in combat with one another. Choose one, choose the other, right? If you choose option a, you're going to lose out on option B. And so many times in life, you're not actually choosing one or the other. Actually, you have the choice to have both of those happen at the same time. So whether it's a point of choice, Or whether that's just the reality, there can be two things that are true at the same time. So I, I have a couple examples of, of that. And it goes back to the intro of that question, which is this recent season of life has had so much change. And, and I, I do use the term identity a lot because I think we're always developing that and our identity is always changing. And I know the reason I love you cause you're, you talk about how, what do you want to attract? You know, what is your energy? Bringing you to next. Well, how do you want to change and grow your identity? What do you, what do you want to be reflecting out to the world? Um, and so thinking about that fact that we've got a choice to bring in curate, it's kind of like this, the artistic side, if I was to have my life via museum, what would I want on the wall? You know, what, what beautiful piece do I want people to see when they enter in, right? What kind of experience would I want someone to have? What kind of experience do I want to have in that back room of my mind? You know? So thinking about like, we really have choices in how we. Put things into our lives. And sometimes they take a lot of work to put them into our lives. sometimes we have to extract things out, you know, of our lives that are not bringing peace. And so in my own personal life, there's been significant shifts, some of which have been really positive and growth. And some of which, changes in relationship and intimate relationships that you felt had so much of your identity pinned to it. And then needing to reinvent in a way, who am I and what is my identity? So that. Has given me the ability to kind of take back that power and say, I'm making choices to curate what I have in my life. And also sometimes you don't have control over every single thing and you need to find a way to not, to not just resist. So Two that are two that come to mind being strong and being vulnerable. I think sometimes when tough seasons happen in our lives, you can make a choice to, be strong and power through and just get what you get what you want. That's one, that's one choice and it can feel invigorating. But you find that you kind of tighten up and even as I'm saying this, I'm like, you know, shrinking my shoulders and tightening my fist. Cause like to be strong, you have to, almost contract and just muscle your way through. But oftentimes the thing that's going to help you grow and expand is by having some vulnerability, opening up, releasing, saying, this actually hurts. I'm feeling a little bit raw right now, but that is being strong. So whenever I say it, I kind of put both of my hands as I can. Be strong, hold that in one hand. I'm feeling strong. I'm going to hold strong to my boundaries, or I'm going to make a strong decision. And in the other hand, here, I have this vulnerability of, I'm still going to feel the feelings. I'm still gonna maybe even, allow someone to see me being weak or not, fully like excited in that moment. I'm feeling just more vulnerable. So both of those things, Are actually happening concurrently, but allowing both of those things to happen at the same time is the thing that, you know, brings about the next stage of, of life brings about that greater amount of peace and it's the kind of life that I want to live. So it is curating that experience. I find it everywhere. And whether you think of it or not, you're trying to always do this balancing, kind of act. But sometimes it's, deciding that there's only one thing that can be present. Two things that are oftentimes very different can be very true at the same time. You can't actually be, happy and sad simultaneously. And so, not feeling like you are, like it's too much of a contrast or that you're like that. You're being inauthentic, or lying to yourself. Like those things are just big and you can hold them in and have that space, for both of those at the same time. I love that. I could personally relate where I've been embracing duality as well as a power because I tend to, and many people, right? Like I've got to push through. I cannot show that I'm upset, but it's, been such a game changer in my personal journey to honor my real feelings because if you don't, it'll come up somewhere. So tell us about how you educate and coach others. Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's one of my favorite things. And I think not only just myself, but I think it was handed down anchor wave is a very educational based company. And in fact, the company that was started four years by the owners as an addition to that is a coaching company. So we coach agencies across the world to do what anchor wave does. So, not only that. But I think one of the leading things that we do with our clients is to reduce the jargon. Marketing is a very jargon heavy. Tech is very jargon heavy. People can use that to their advantage to sound smart or to make someone else feel dumb, which is worse in my opinion. And so we really took the stance of, we want to reduce the amount of jargon, bring things down to their base elements and be able to explain them. Because I truly believe when business leaders are empowered to, understand what their options are, they make better decisions for themselves. And then ultimately they grow and they're more successful. Right. And that's the same thing with, with leading a team is that if I want to grow into my next level of influence and next professional, career or new expansive things that I'm doing, there's going to be some things that I'm doing right now that I need to let go of. Right. So I'm always like looking at what do I need to hand off? What do I need to say no to, or what do I need to Teach someone else to do that. I've already mastered, but they're stepping into right. So education as a way of constantly growing myself, to reach for the next level. But also saying, what are the things that someone else could step into? and there's a balance of. Really being aware of where people are raising their hands. We just going to use that phrase a lot. Where am I seeing that this person is raising their hand to do something or where do they light up? You know, what do they really thrive in doing? And, and values are a part of that. Their own personal work style are a part of that, but you can start to pick up where are they raising their hand, where are they lighting up? And how can I give them that educational opportunity to learn the skill that's around that? and more and more lately, I think people will show you when they're really in the zone. You can just kind of tell. And I think if you're brave enough to say, maybe I don't have a role for that right now, but we can start to give experience and exposure to that type of work. And then all of that collectively can create a role or create the next level in their career opportunity too. So. Love it so much. All right. So I learned that you spent some time. It's in Goshen, Uganda. What an adventure. Tell us about it and the inspiration behind it. Yes, so I like to say I've got my daughter who's twenty and my son who is seventeen and then I have sixty five other kids. Oh wow, that's great. And they, they, you know. They've grown in number. Originally about 14, 15 years ago, I, came in contact with this organization and at that time there were a handful of kids, in Burundi. So Burundi is actually a very small country near Congo. And these kids, did not. Have the fortunate life circumstance of having caretakers, having parents. There was a lot of strife in the area at that time, an attack on a UN camp that had happened. And that area of the world, has a number of challenges. We'll just call it that. Actually, the funny thing about the story is that prior to being exposed to that group and that organization, I had created a fundraiser, to raise money using art again, bumper stickers to kind of sell these different bumper stickers, to kind of increase your impact and be able to communicate a message. So I had created the fundraiser first, and then met them. The group. And so when we met, it was like, Oh my gosh, this is just like such a match and so made my first trip to Africa at that point in time, just to kind of do more of like a, a scouting. Uh, I also was really into photography at the time as well. So kind of do a scout, make sure it was legit. Take photos and just a thousand percent fell in love. And it was, I don't know, one of the experiences in my life where you just know, beyond knowing, beyond knowing, beyond knowing that that was meant to be, that that was, a purpose of, of almost my life, to have, to have met these kids. So fast forward, my gosh, there's probably like. 12 documentaries and a lot of episodes of things that have happened in that timeline. But, those kids that originally met are now, nearly 20 years old. I've been able to travel with my daughter twice. She's the real photographer now. So she, facilitates a lot of that work in videography and, just grow with these kids and see their lives change and see the educational opportunities expand. And now kind of Being at this young adult phase, which is a beautiful time and confusing time, but like, what are you going to do with the rest of your life? And you have your, your whole life ahead of you. Not without a lot of duality, I will say a lot of heartbreak and a lot of beauty coming out of that, a lot of resilience, despite some like impossible daunting situations. But I will say, navigating that and going along with the changes and, being there, to just. Provide a light show them that somebody sees them, has been the biggest gift in my life. And I will say, I have received a thousand times more than I have ever really been able to contribute. So I just go and, bring bubbles and play soccer. And, that is that in and of itself, it feels like a simple contribution, but I think, what they've been able to give. Back to us and demonstrate in terms of real perseverance and, and love. Is yeah, I could talk about that forever. It sounds so inspiring and brave it's pretty courageous. It initially, I will tell you, gosh, I still remember being in the Uber on the way to the airport the very first time because I had up in a very conservative Baptist church, and I remember them talking about missionaries going to Africa who would send their, this, this sounds crazy now. I mean, I don't know. Say it out loud. send their coffin with them on trips because, not because of fear of, of people necessarily, but. Of just life there and mosquitoes or, or anything else that could come against you. So I did have that kind of in the very historical, you know, corners of my mind. and so it felt, It felt brave at that point, but there's chaos everywhere, and if you're going to live your life that way, thinking about that, there could be, detriment, you're going to shrink your possibilities, and there's stuff that happens on our street corners here. So for me, I wasn't looking at it as, as a dangerous thing any more than, than driving on the freeway. You know, I, I just kind of had that mindset of like, there can be things that are, that are scary anywhere you go. And, the good outweighs the bad and, I'm going to choose to look at the, at the good and not let the, let the fear kind of, overwhelm the opportunity. It's still there. You know, that's another thing that you got to hold the duality is sometimes you're scared and you do it anyway. So it was this, the scary was, you know, has been there in times. But the light just absolutely overwhelms the dark. I love that you mention that because talk about duality for me, that's been the theme. I feel like I'm in the chapter of I'm scared and I'm doing it anyway. And I think that's the truth behind anything amazing It's when you're willing to just be one of the brave ones. And I think a lot of people, you know, glorify, glamorize the other side of anything you want to create, do, or be, but underneath it, truth be told, make impact on yourself and others. It breaks down into just like even your own physical response, like, just like getting up on stage or doing a podcast, I'm sure for the first couple of times, your, your stomach is tight or you feel like you might throw up or your hands are sweating and like, just to go through that physical part, not only the mental part of like, what if I fail and what if I suck, there's all that you have to have a toughness to get through those. does get easier, but you have to be willing to suck at first, you have to be willing to like get bad feedback at first, or whatever it feels like you're not going to ever do anything new and feel like you're an expert at, at the beginning. So you have to have that toughness of, I'm going to get through being uncomfortable. And then, hopefully it gets a little easier and a little easier and your, your tummy is not quite so tight at knots, you know? But having it there and just realizing that's not a sign to stop, it's just a, I'm going to, I'm going to buckle down. I'm going to, get through this and then I'll get to that next level. Absolutely love that. you Are known for your commitment to collaboration and authentic. I love the word authentic positivity. And I like your phrase, if you want to go fast, Go alone. If you want to go far, go together. Tell us about the impact on ourselves and the world. When we move in that mindset, you know, the willingness to see another person, as A unique individual who's had their own collection of experiences who's made them what they are, or their choices, ultimately like bring them to, to where they are. And there are so many good things about that, that I guess I've just had the experience of knowing that they hold. A piece of the answer. I can't possibly have the entire answer. And if I think I let my ego say that I've got everything, I'm going to miss out, because I know that the people around me have a part of the answer, have a piece of the puzzle. And so that gives me the interest to allow space for that piece of the puzzle. So come forward and I've had the experience of over and over seeing that when you hear all of those different pieces and then you land on an answer or then you land on a strategy or then you land on a product or whatever it is that you're, that you're building, you are going to create something that's more stable. that is more robust. It's been thought about in a number of different ways rather than if I just started the, the solution myself and thought, Oh, I could see it. I know exactly what we're gonna do here. I'm just gonna go. It might actually be faster. Like, I might be able to, like, write it out or put it out to the market quickly. But then I'm gonna. Learn those lessons later on down the track, and it's going to take me more time to recover. So getting that collective input, allowing people to be who they are authentically, and holding space to hear that and then and then taking a little bit more time up front. There's some time investment in sitting down and having a meeting and brainstorming and allowing that space for that authentic information, those pieces of the puzzle to come forward. A lot of business owners are fast. They talk fast. I tend to talk a little bit. They want to go fast. You know, they want the solution now, you know, the, the clock is running and I get that. And so it's hard for us to slow down a little bit and say, we need this space at the beginning. We need to allow these different pieces to come forward. We need to allow the time to understand, you know, the value of this person's authentic perspective that they're going to bring to the table. And I'm willing. Okay. Even though it's very different to listen to it, you know, and a lot of space for that. And then I think, Once you have a few of those experiences, you recognize that was worth it. It was worth it to slow down the beginning to go farther and more stable and without as much pain, you know, once things actually do get moving. so that's why I love that quote. When we were in the office, we, we. Plastered all of our inspirational quotes on the bathroom wall. So the bathroom became this little oasis refuge, but that one was front and center and has always been my favorite and has proven itself time and time again, you know, in teams and in the company and even in friendships, you know, in, in, in relationships with other people. If you only rely on yourself, sure, you'll, you might be able to make a quick decision, but it's not gonna. Yeah. Have the cool, you know, input and context of, of doing that relationship together. And then, and then going to the next action or stuff together. I love that. I'm going to now dive into the closing traditional questions. So the first one, what is your favorite book? So my favorite book and then talked about all the Brene Brown, uh, inputs. And I listened to podcasts and, dare to lead, I think, has been the most transformational for me, personally, and then also in the company, from first reading it and then recommending it to our directors and leadership. And now it's on our kind of required leading reading list, because it really does bring together so much of that research. We've had people, like I mentioned, we've got, you know, engineering minded people and programming minded. What I love about Brene and that book in particular, you have the research and, and the quality and the quantitative data, but then you bring in this qualitative component of it that feels very human too. So the merge of like both sides of your brain again, duality of like your left and your right coming together and being like, this is a great way to embrace both of those. So dare to lead is the. Is the short answer. And it's been very transformational. I love it. I'm adding it to my list I'm excited to read that. All right. And the final question, do you have a favorite affirmation or mantra you use to stay empowered? I am capable. And so I think it speaks to like, no matter what happens, I've got the resources and what I need to be response able, like able to respond, to whatever kind of comes my way. There is work in, in terms of being able to feel that that's true in terms of I'm capable, you know, whatever comes my way, I've got the resources and what I need, or I can ask for them, to be able to respond. and I believe, you know, feels a little bit more of like the energetic, kind of component. I truly, I do believe in my bones, the best will come out of this. And if it's tough, there's going to be a lesson. And if there's good, then I can soak in that and enjoy it. So those, are my go to, I am capable. And I believe you on a daily basis,

Theresa Cesare: 23:07

thank you so much for tuning into this episode. Please download, rate, subscribe, and share this podcast. Also, be sure to visit my theresacesare.com to check out my inspirational merch, connect to my social accounts, and much more may you continue to be filled with wisdom, inspiration, and consciousness. Otherwise, friends, I will be back in two weeks for another episode of Heart to.