Coffee Calendars and Conversations is a time management group, accountability group, a group where women can feel safe discussing their challenges in life and a group that gathers weekly around some cool coffee shops to plan out their day to day lives. Our mission is to create a space where women can grow, support one another, dream and live out those dreams.

                So how did Coffee, Calendars and Conversations (or as I like to call it for short CCC) get started?

Coffee Calendars and Conversations was started by me, Crystal Ybarra. It was during frustrating times and the need to be held accountable to make things happen in life. Let’s rewind a bit more. A few years prior to that I was setting goals, knocking them out and really enjoyed learning about time management and what it meant in my life. I was beginning to learn how to give, take and create some sort of balance in my crazy life.  In a direct sales environment, I loved teaching goal setting and how to make the things you want to happen, happen.
                Let me take you back even further, time management became an important thought in my life when working independently. Even when I held traditional jobs, I learned that outside work where no one was telling me what to do with my time, that it was up to me to make these things happen. I’ve always used some sort of calendar or planner to write dates and important happenings down, but for a long period in my twenties, I relied solely on my memory to get to appointments (this was pre digital everything times). Looking back, I have no idea what I was thinking. In an independent position (I worked for myself) my income depended on my appointments being held to make money. I remember receiving a phone call, Are we still on for today? Oh crap! I totally forgot. Some instances, I could pull it together, rush and make them happen, but far more often, I was relieved when they cancelled, or even worse, I had to call and make excuses of why I had to reschedule. I was a total flake! This behavior started spilling into my personal life, double booking things, forgetting, and not gonna lie, even not feeling like going to an event on the day of and deciding not to go. How could I continue running my business and life this way? I was self-sabotaging and not even realizing it.

                With this behavior, sadly I began to lose clients, and began to frustrate friends and family. I really couldn’t be depended on. Years passed, and the habits were created, and I began to understand how important appointment setting, and holding was. Being in business for yourself requires a lot of effort, time, money and people you can rely on. You come to expect people to show up for you, without clients showing up to appointments, you won’t go very far. It wasn’t until I poured the last $50 I had into an event where many said they’d show up for and only one person came (which we had fun and I was so grateful to her) that I realized they were all flakes too. Honestly, I was upset, hurt, and felt so rejected. These feeling were necessary to create a movement in me. How could I blame them, it wasn’t personal and they were only exhibiting behavior that I had been exhibiting for years.

Be the change you want to see in the world. ~Ghandi.

From that moment on, I decided if I expect women, or people in general to honor their word, then I have to first be a woman of my word. I decided to say no if I knew I had no intention on coming to their events, and if I said yes, I’d better be there. Being timely was also a huge flaw of mine, and honestly still struggle with it on occasion, but It is something that I choose to work on daily. I remember a friend being so disappointed when she made dinner for a group of us and that look from her when 1 hour after dinner was ready to go, other friends still hadn’t arrived. She had limited time for a sitter and really wanted to enjoy a warm fresh meal and some conversation time. When the others showed up nearly 2 hours late for dinner, she was so hurt and explained to me how rude and inconsiderate of her time those friends were. It hit me like a bolt of lightning. All those years, I thought; what do they care if I’m late, I have a life too. It never dawned on me that I was being rude and inconsiderate too.

Fast forward as I stated above to me knocking out goals, being accountable, holding others to their words as well. Things were going great. Sure, people would still cancel on me, but in general, I decided that wasn’t stopping me and kept on going about my business. I respected my time and therefore people were respecting my time too. The foundation of calendar setting, time management was laid out. In fact, it became one of my favorite subjects to coach others on, because I had been able to transform my life using these same skills I was teaching. Color coding, scheduling, blocking out time and telling my time what it was doing instead of it telling me what to do. I loved it. But then something occurred in my life. My home-based business took a plummet due to some emotional and personal issues and I completely let go of it. I was SHOOK. I went through too much to tell, but unfortunately, I decided that I was done setting goals for the time being and done being little miss on point with everything I was doing. I needed a break, and a break is what I took. I used the word unfortunately because this decision if handled properly could have been ok. Breaks are great, breaks are necessary, but a break should have a beginning and an end, mine, had no end in sight. I was on the road to nowhere, literally. There’re quite a few stories in there, but here’s what happened in a nutshell;

I went back to work doing part time fun work, but my life was not going in a given direction anymore. I was just letting life happen to me. I had dreams, aspirations, I wanted to make a difference in the world, and now, I was just waking up, going to work, and once again, letting life pass me by and I knew it. I think a year passed by, maybe even two. Initially it was fun, not having goals, not having pressure, but like I said that needed to have an end. I became stagnant in my life. Time was passing me by and I was not accomplishing the great things I had once dreamed about.

I luckily have a very good friend Jamie. Jamie and I would meet for lunch often and she saw me through depression, and anxiety and much more. One thing about Jamie is I think she thought more of me than I was feeling for myself at them time, and because of that, I usually tried to pull myself together when we met. I wanted to be the woman she saw me as, and quite frankly I missed the woman I used to be. I had to come to realization that the old me was gone, but there was a new me waiting around the corner. Jamie and I would brainstorm. We’d take our notepads and dream away. Jamie always helped my creativity and from those dream sessions and doodling our thoughts onto paper and into each other’s mind. Something was born. We had discussed the things we missed about our time with our direct selling company and knew there was a way to create something great. We essentially created networking groups, in our heads, and knew that there was a world of women just like us out there. If we were dreaming, others were out there dreaming too. We wanted to connect women somehow.

I joined a few networking groups, had an opportunity at a place I worked at to create networking events and through dream sessions and an ambitious mind set that was reignited in me, my work was evolving too. I was moving forward in the workplace and as time passed, still yearned for more.  When I led a team of women in my business, we gathered together, scheduled appointments, made phone calls, worked together, to achieve goals and generate business. One thing I missed too, not being in a corporate or sales environment, was being fed. You know all the good stuff, the education, the stories, the inspiration. I missed that so much. To wrap it up after many attempts to join and create something, I decided to start Weekly Planning Sessions. Weekly Planning Sessions was a place where I could gather with sharp women, inspire, motivate, and get ish done. Now when I say planning, I mean, figure out what’s ahead for the week, make sure I have it all on calendar, and make myself aware of any challenges or scenarios that wee potentially coming my way.

The group grew last year we since changed the name to Coffee, Calendars, and Conversations.

This year, I decided to let it be organic, you know let it just see what it was going to do. Honestly with my heavy to-do load I couldn’t really put the time into the group. But God.. But God has had other plans. Doors have been opening, and women are coming from all over town wanting to be part of the group.

Social Media can be a bit challenging for me honestly, I’m more of a one on one personal relationship kind of person, but I am learning and willing to push more. I feel that this is just the beginning, and much more is heading our way.  Stay tuned next time as I write more about what we’re doing and where we are headed. I definitely have been listening to God and want his hand all over this group. On my next post about it, you will learn about some recent events and even hear from a few members. I’m excited and I know this was a long story, and if you’re still with me, you got a total run down of how this came to be.  I’m grateful that you are here and can’t wait to share all the fun next time.

Until then~ Continually Crystal