About this episode
Michele Morley opens the Yes! Women’s Network podcast with a clear mission: helping women across every phase of life feel supported instead of stuck. The network was founded by Sheila Logan almost a decade ago to serve single women and military wives, and Michele has expanded that vision into a broader community built around four pillars: faith, relationships, well-being, and finance. In this launch conversation, Michele is joined by longtime friends Jodi Lemon, a real estate expert with over 30 years of experience, and Belinda Hanks, who has spent over 20 years in the payments industry after years in pediatric healthcare. Together they unpack why women so often feel isolated in their struggles and how building on these four pillars creates a foundation that feels grounded, healthy, and connected.
Why Yes! Women’s Network Exists
The conversation starts with the origin story: Sheila Logan built Yes! Women’s Network to reach women who were single or navigating life as military spouses, giving them a way to rebuild and find support. Michele and her guests want to take that mission further, welcoming women in every stage of life, not just those facing a specific circumstance. The idea is simple: nobody should feel alone in their situation, whatever that situation looks like. By identifying shared pillars that every woman experiences in some form, the network becomes relatable across ages, backgrounds, and life stages.
Faith as a Foundation
Faith is described as the foundation that guides, strengthens, and gives purpose during difficult seasons. Whether through prayer, meditation, or personal spiritual practice, faith offers grounding when life gets hard. Belinda shares a principle she has carried since she was young:
You can’t have faith and fear at the same time, and I’ve always remembered that since I was young, and I thought, oh, isn’t that interesting that we can’t feel that faith from our spiritual being until we get away from that fear.
The takeaway is that fear often has to be addressed before faith can fully take hold, and maintaining that faith through hard seasons builds resilience over time.
Relationships That Support Growth
Jodi speaks to the value of relationships across family, marriage, friendships, and even business connections. She highlights how having a consistent friend group, like the one she plays pickleball with, provides a support system for both good days and bad ones. The group agrees that relationships can act as either an asset or a liability, and learning to recognize which is which matters for long-term well-being. Jodi references an idea she read recently:
Strong relationships don’t happen by accident, whether it is in business, marriage, or family, they’re built through trust, communication, respect, and a willingness to grow together.
That willingness to grow together, whether with a spouse, a child, or a close friend, is what keeps relationships healthy through constant change.
Well-Being Beyond the Scale
Michele reframes well-being as something bigger than fitness or a number on a scale. She describes it as encompassing emotions, confidence, and self-image, arguing that true well-being radiates outward and draws people in regardless of how someone feels about their appearance on a given day. Self-care, in this sense, is not vanity, it is the daily practice of tending to your whole self so that strength and health show up naturally in how you carry yourself and connect with others.
Rethinking Finance as Opportunity
The finance pillar moves away from strictly focusing on dollars and cents. Instead, the conversation centers on opportunity, education, and confidence. Michele explains that financial stress often comes from feeling like money controls you, rather than understanding how to make it work for you. Building financial confidence starts with recognizing personal strengths and habits, whether that is saving consistently, working hard, or building the right connections. Jodi and Belinda agree that everyone’s financial path looks different, and the goal is helping women discover what works best for their own situation rather than applying a one size fits all formula.
Building Habits Across All Four Pillars
A recurring theme throughout the episode is that daily habits, not one time efforts, are what create lasting change. Michele points out that habits formed around faith, relationships, well-being, and finance compound over time, eventually becoming part of who you are rather than something you have to force. She shares how her own habit of doing triathlons became a shared family activity with her kids, showing how personal growth in one pillar can strengthen relationships in another. The pillars are not separate silos, they work together to create a fuller, more balanced life.
Action Steps
- Identify which of the four pillars, faith, relationships, well-being, or finance, feels most out of balance right now and choose one small daily habit to strengthen it.
- Reflect on your closest relationships and determine whether they currently function as an asset or a liability in your life.
- Replace fear based thinking with a faith practice, whether prayer, meditation, or reflection, especially during a difficult season.
- Reframe your view of finance around opportunity and education rather than stress over numbers.
- Connect with a community or support system so you do not have to navigate growth alone.
Yes! Women’s Network was built on the belief that no woman should feel stuck or isolated while building her life. Michele Morley, Jodi Lemon, and Belinda Hanks show that real growth happens when faith, relationships, well-being, and finance are nurtured together, one honest conversation and one daily habit at a time.
Read the full transcript
This automated transcript has been lightly formatted for readability and may contain errors.
Welcome to Yes Women’s Network. I am Michele Morley with Yes Women’s Network, and we are launching, and we’re so excited to be here. It has been a long time coming. It feels like we’ve been in the works for over six years now, and we’re finally getting the ball rolling. And we’re so excited to be here.
You’re like the number, right? There’s all the biggest. Wow. That’d be great. Yeah, it will be.
So to give some background on what Yes Women is, it’s a network, it’s a community to bring women together in all many different facets of life. And we have four pillars that we really felt encompassed what we felt Yes Women’s Network would be about. And that would be faith, relationships, well-being, and finance. And we’re going to cover those. So I have here with me Jodi Lemon, who has been a friend for some time.
Many years. Yeah. Many years we’ve been friends. And she is a real estate expert and been involved in real estate for over 30 years. Sometimes that ages you a little bit.
The same 30 years of my… Yeah, plus or minus. In there somewhere. At least 30, yeah. Yeah, that’s awesome.
And she is a devoted mother and grandmother to a beautiful family. Yes. Yeah, a lot of fun. A lot of fun family. Yeah, I’ve actually, yeah, I started out, you know, kind of raising my kids in the younger, my younger years and started out part-time with real estate and then ended up being my full-time.
I do other things besides real estate with some crypto mining and that type of stuff, but mainly real estate’s always been my biggest and mostly affordable, you know, multi-family that type of stuff is my a little bit more of my expertise yeah yeah I love that yeah I love it I work a lot with my family too my kids are all in the estate so it’s kind of there you have them all involved yeah I love that yeah all of your different things but work together which is nice yeah for sure you love that family dynamic that brings it all in And then we have Belinda Hanks. How did I draw a blank on that? You’ve been in my life for how many years? Yeah, V is a dear friend.
So grateful to have her a part of our lives. She’s been working for my husband for over 20 years in payment space. And before that, you were in medical? Health, yeah. Yeah.
Pediatrician’s office for years. And first I raised my kids and then went to work at the pediatrician’s office. Then I ended up being single and the hours were crazy. So I went from seven o’clock at night, you know, it’s too late being a single mom. So I had to make another change in life and been in payments ever since.
That’s awesome. Perfect. So good. Oftentimes we have to make those changes don’t we yep we have our life growing stages for sure growing stages yeah you just kind of have to move through it roll through it and you can see different how different aspects of your life can you can kind of build on past experiences that help you in the next phase yeah exactly we call them gross spouters gross for sure yeah always learning and Absolutely So how about we talk about what Yes Women is about And as we address that Yes Women was founded by Sheila Logan almost a decade ago And her primary focus when she started was to address women that were single or military wives.
And she felt that there was a need to help these women and those in different aspects of life, whether to get back on their feet again or to provide a support system to military wives. And our goal is to take it a step further by incorporating women in all different phases of their life which is exciting to me because it there’s so much that life has to offer that each women at different phases right they’re right i agree totally i agree different ages different phases of your life yeah and you’re not alone and i think so often women find themselves feeling stuck in their situation, whatever it may be, that we want to create a community that offers support.
And by identifying different pillars, it becomes, I don’t know, relatable in different aspects, but it’s something that we all experience, right? Everybody needs. And so those four pillars that we’ve identified as faith and relationships and well-being and finance. Every single one of us have to. We all experience that.
We’re all in different phases of life. Something may be more prominent or prevalent in our life. But I feel like when we create a balance in those four pillars, that we feel more grounded. Healthy. Yeah, healthy.
Healthy and at peace. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Okay, so let’s talk about faith. If we talk about faith and what it is, faith is about having a foundation, right?
And it’s something that guides, strengthens, gives us purpose in our daily lives and however that looks. And each one of us will be faced with different challenges. And faith has the capacity to strengthen, to sustain, and guide us in whatever we are facing. And so when you think of that, and each one of us may look at it in different ways, whether it’s through prayer or spiritual practices, for example, meditation, or whatever your personal beliefs are, it creates a foundation and a grounding. Do you feel that that’s what it does?
Exactly. Yeah, and I’ve heard before you can’t have faith and fear at the same time, and I’ve always remembered that since I was young, and I thought, oh, isn’t that interesting that we can’t feel that faith from our spiritual being until we get away from that fear. The fear sometimes overcomes us and we have to figure out how to get out of that and have faith through it. Mm hmm. Yeah.
And I love that. True. Maintain faith during difficult seasons. Right. Exactly.
For sure. So what’s the next one? Yeah. Actually, I was, you know, I was working on relationships and stuff. And, you know, you go from, you know, family, marriage, friendships, you know, every day we’re even in our businesses, we’re working with relationships all the time, whether we’re working, you know, those special family relationships that we have.
We love our kids. We love our family. And, you know, you step outside of that a little bit. And for women, it’s so nice to have each other’s friendship, you know, the friendship that we have. Through all of those phases, different phases.
We actually are lucky enough to have a friendship group that we, you know, go play pickleball together and be able to get together. And it’s so nice to have that friendship. Yeah, that support system that you feed off of each other. And when you’re having a bad day, they can come and, you know, help you. And also you know especially our families though you know those tender feelings that we have throughout our life with our families our family members and and those are important times yeah that we go from from having you know great relationships in all aspects of our life even work relationships and stuff too Yeah Yeah Yeah So I love how it can tie into you know your relationship the different, different aspects of your life play into whether kind of an asset or a liability, per se, you know, and you have to kind of gauge that and what’s healthy for you.
And I think that that’s important that we figure out what really is a blessing. You know, those relationships can be such a blessing for us. Yeah. I read a thing the other day that said strong relationships don’t happen by accident, whether it is in business, marriage, or family, they’re built through trust, communication, respect, and a willingness to grow together. I thought that was really good.
That’s really good. And finally, those people who are willing to grow with you, you know, I mean, in marriage and a friendship and with your children, as we do, there’s constant change, right? Right. Always. Yeah.
Constantly, constantly. Yep. So that brings us to well-being. All right. When I think about well-being as a whole, it’s a help.
It’s not, I believe the conversation needs to expand from just fitness performance, getting on a scale, checking numbers. I feel that it needs to be your whole self, your emotions, your confidence, your self-image. All of that needs to combine your well-being. And we all have gone through that. You know, we all worry what we look like.
We all think we’ve got to be this Barbie or whatever, but really it comes from within. If we don’t have the talent, we feel in our own skin, we just… Getting that self-care that we need, huh? Right. Self-care in our lives.
And I think that once you figure out that well-being and follow through to the core, people can see it and feel it. It doesn’t, I mean, even if you don’t feel like you’re up to par, you leave an impression regardless. And so when you work on you and who you are, and that beauty radiates, right? And that well-being just starts to, it just happens because, and people are attracted to that. Very much.
They can feel it. Yeah. They feel like you’re healthy. Yeah. Healthy and strong.
Mm-hmm. Perfect. And then now the next one is finance. And the thing that’s so interesting about finance, it has impacted any person’s life in so many different ways, right? Right.
From when you’re a child and how your parents, you know, how they responded to their financial challenges to, you know, when you’re on your own as a college student to when then you’re married and you’re going through all of that. And by your say, a dollar to a dollar. Yeah. It impacts. McDonald’s, 99 cents, back in my day.
Yeah. Just save $1. 02 a month. Yeah, so it impacts every single one of us in differing ways, which is, you know, what can we take from each other? And that’s what I think this is about is, okay, so when you think of finance, what I want to do is move away from the concept of money.
Is it you know the dollar the figure you know as far as that goes and I want it to be more about um opportunity and thinking uh outside of that box of what finance provides um and so I mean entrepreneurship becoming more educated so that once we have more of that confidence of, oh, this is how it works for me. This is how money can work for me, rather than me feeling like, oh, I got to have it. It’s what a day is like. Yeah. Nervous feeling of, yep, when you have enough that you need, then you don’t have that upset, nervous.
And that’s, I think we can help through this. So many people that need that little bit of a financial uplift through some of the different ways that we’ll work with them in the future. Yeah. I think that’ll be… It’s not a different…
That way. Totally different. Right. Yeah. And everybody’s different.
What they like to do is different. Yeah, for sure. On what you’re good at. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
And you can magnify on that. Once you recognize what your strengths are, you can see what it is that you can offer to that kind of situation in a financial situation. Yeah. And so. One of the things that a question that was brought up a while back it said what habits have had the biggest impact on your financial success Those habits you know the habits of saving the habits of you know working hard.
And one of the, one of the best things through success, I think, is the connections that we make. Oh, for sure. You know, they matter. Yes. Yeah.
They matter. Yeah. And in every aspect, when you think of, when you look at your faith and how you, you know, like, for example, my faith and with my husband and how we’re able to build on that because we have that commonality in how we see things. And then when you look at how your well-being and what your well-being is, and when you have friendships or relationships with people, there’s the commonality, not only with your spouse. But like, for example, my kids, as a result of me doing triathlons years ago, they want to do triathlons and we do that together and it is so fun.
So it’s these habits that you form, whether through your faith, through well-being, your relationships, and through finance. It’s all about what are your habits? What are you trying to build on, right? To empower yourself and get confident. It’s a daily ritual.
Daily. But you don’t have to do it for those habits. No. You just get used to it. Yeah.
You get used to it every day. Then you’re building on those habits and it becomes a habit. Yeah. Then you feel good when you’re doing it. Yeah.
So what I think that we can point out and when we do these segments is what is it that we’re looking for? What is it that we’re going to provide so that our viewer feels like they’re part of a community that gives opportunity, that gives inspiration, that gives motivation? So what is it that we offer? So each segment, our goal is to reach those needs, right? Yes.
Yeah. That they want to come back and they feel inspired and empowered by what, instead of intimidated or stuck, we’re helping them get out of that. Exactly. Yeah, no, I’m excited. I’m excited.
With the community, building a community with all the people, you know, all the people we’re going to interview, and they’ll bring so much to the table. Each one of them, we’ve gone through, you know, those stages and picked our top five people that we’re going to interview, you know. And that would be so fun to bring them on and get their expertise and their experience that we can draw from. And all four of those different pillars and even more. It’s all about personal experience and what we can provide.
And to inspire other people that you’re not alone. Right. We’re not alone. That’s the big thing. Yeah.
When we feel like we’re in a community. Yeah. And you don’t feel alone. Yeah, I think that’s great. So when we think of that, we will offer, you know, each segment will provide experts or individuals to have something to offer.
And then the idea is that we provide clarity we provide connection and a community where people feel safe and united in a purpose that I don’t know, is fulfilling and satisfying yeah I love it it’s going to be awesome it will be so fun yeah yeah so many good women that are going to be part of it we’re our it’s exciting all the people that we have coming yeah we’ve already got a lot yep that’s gonna be great yeah lots of good connections yep and so with that when we close out we love having you here we hope that you’ll come back um and that you feel that you’re a part of something meaningful and inspiring and um We hope that’s what you gain from this.
And as a result, we create a community and you’ll join the network as far as join the newsletter. See what we’re all about. Be a part of this. You’ll love it. We love it.
Every honest conversation moves a woman forward. This is what Yes Women’s Network was built for. Faith, relationships, well-being and finance. And one community that holds you accountable and wants you to win in every aspect of life. Women rising together.
This is YES.
