Unlock Tangible Business Results While Sharing Your Message with Angelique Rewers

Episode 116

Angelique Rewers is the CEO of The Corporate Agent and she is “the undisputed champion at helping small businesses land big clients” according to Inc. Magazine.

Having successfully navigated all sides of the corporate buying table for two decades, Angelique and her team have taught thousands of small businesses, including mine, across 72 countries worldwide how to secure 5, 6, and 7-figure corporate contracts. Angelique has been featured by Huffington Post, Forbes, Inc., Lucky, Washington Post, Entrepreneur, CBS, and more.

In this episode, Angelique talks about why people feel compelled to listen to her even when they don’t really care about her message, the bullying Angelique faced both as a child and as an adult that she’s had to overcome, how she’s transformed over the past few years to get to a place where she’s not concerned about what others think of her, the importance of realizing that we always have a choice and control over our actions, why business is going to save the world, the importance of fitting your message into a keyhole in the beginning, the advice she has for those wanting to have a voice of influence, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

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Angelique Rewers Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

 

Transcript

Hey, Hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  I am so thrilled to have with us today Angelique Rewers.  She is the CEO of The Corporate Agent.  She is “the undisputed champion at helping small businesses land big clients” according to Inc. Magazine.  Having successfully navigated all sides of the corporate buying table for two decades, Angelique and her team have taught thousands of small businesses, including me, across 72 countries worldwide how to secure 5-, 6- and 7- figure corporate contracts.  Angelique has been featured by Huffington Post, Forbes, Inc., Lucky, Washington Post, Entrepreneur, CBS, and more.

Andrea:  Angelique, it is so fun to have you on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Angelique Rewers:  It’s fun to be here.  I know so much about the amazing work that you do in the world, Andrea, and so, it’s genuinely an honor.

Andrea:  Well, let me just start by setting it up that I am one of your clients and the reason that is the case is because when I was at a speaking conference, you happened to be there.  I had no idea who you were.  I didn’t really have any idea of what was going on in the corporate space for speaking.  But when I saw you up on stage, I saw somebody that was really powerful, confident, ambitious, and I thought, “I want to hear what she has to say.”  So, when you had a breakout session, I went to your breakout session.  No interest in your topic whatsoever.  It was you that I was drawn to.  And I think that that is really significant for our listeners today because I do think that it is like people sort of draw people to themselves.

Angelique Rewers:  Yeah.

Andrea:  What is your take on that?

Angelique Rewers:  You know, we actually hear that all the time. People, at conferences, will say “I had no interest in working with corporate clients.  I didn’t think that that was something that I wanted to do.  But you maybe had three minutes, Angelique, on the main stage before your session, or you were on a panel before your session and I was going to skip your session and go check email back in my room.  But after hearing a few minutes, I had a sit in on your session.”

And so I think there are two lessons in that.  I think the first; I mean, this podcast is about the voice of influence. If you want to influence others, you need to have conviction and energy in your message.  It’s electric.  It’s magnetic.  And so people, all the time, they say that they want to hear what I have to say, even if they don’t really give a crap about my topic, because, “You believe in it so much, and there’s just something about it that is inspiring, and I want to be a part of it.”

So, I think if you’re looking to gain influence in the world, you need to not be a wet dishrag.  You need to have conviction.  You need to have energy.  You need to care.  There needs to be a fire in your eyes.  When people look in your eyes, they need to see that something is going on in there because then they want to be a part of it.  Even if they don’t want to be a part of it, they just want to be around you.  That’s number one.

The second lesson for me that’s in it is that when you are out, whether you’re on a podcast or you are speaking in an event or you’re writing articles, if what you’re teaching, Andrea, has integrity and truth in it, it can be infinitely applicable to other fields and industries.  And so people will come to our session, even if they don’t necessarily want to work with corporate, but they’re like “Angelique, the stuff you’re teaching, I can use it in my business anyway because it makes sense.”

There is a degree of, “Oh my gosh, what this woman is saying is legitimate and it is like a breath of fresh air.  So even though I’m not going to sell to corporate, I’m still gonna use what she’s saying in whatever marketing field I’m in.” So, I think if you can make your strategies universal in some ways and then have that fire in you when you’re communicating it, you’re going to gain a lot more influence in your message.

Andrea:  All right.  So where did that come from for you?  What is the fire?  What do you really care about?

Angelique Rewers:  Yeah, people actually ask me this all the time, and in fact, you and I have both been on podcasts on Mindset and you’ve had Mindset guests on and so this comes up a lot.  I think that it’s twofold for me.  I do think that people are born with a degree of fire in their belly.  So, you know, I was kind of a spitfire at five years, four years old, or three years old.  You know, I’ve been a spitfire since I landed on this earth.

Andrea:  I could totally believe all this.

Angelique Rewers:  So, in kindergarten there was a school play.  Now this was when you could still call them Christmas plays.  They didn’t have to be sort of like generic, so it was the Christmas play.  And so they were having these different parts, and they wanted a few kids from each of the grades.  And I went up to my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Persigan-Risick, and I said, “I want to be the narrator.”  And she looked at me and she said, “But Angel, you don’t know how to read.”  And I said, “Well, I’ll just learn tonight.”  And she was just like, “Uhm.”  And so, I’m like, “I want to be the narrator.”

And so she gave me the script for the entire school play and I took it home.  And the next morning I came in, and I went to the audition, and I knew how to read the whole damn thing, and I got the part of narrator at five years old of my school play.  And I thought I was the shit narrating the school play.  Like, I even remember my outfit down to my red velvet skirt, you know. And so there is a part of it that I think you’re born with.  But the other part of it comes from finding something that you care about that isn’t manufactured, that you genuinely care about it.  And I think for me it’s a confluence of caring about business owners.

I care about people in that I don’t like to see people holding back.  I pushed people really to the edge, edge, edge of even beyond their comfort zone because we have one life, so we know.  The clock is ticking.  It’s almost to me like a football match or something where it’s a game, and the clock is ticking, and it’s like, “Well, you better leave it on the field because that’s it.”

So, I care about just getting people out there and doing something with their life. And the place that I’ve chosen as my inflection point of that is by taking these people who are woke and pushing them kind of to really get out of their comfort zone, go into companies, change companies from the inside out because companies change the world.  Not government, not nonprofits, really business is the language of this planet.

So, if I can sort of take this conscious, woke group of people, get them inside these companies, we can really make a difference in this world.  And it’s the place that I think my gifts best serve.  And that’s I guess the last piece of it.  It should be something you care about, but your gifts should align with it.  So it’s somewhere you can really make a difference.  And for me, I speak the language of sales.  I speak the language of marketing, so it’s where I think I can make the biggest difference.

Andrea:  Hmm.  Okay, I’m going to come back to why you think that companies change the world.  But first, let’s stick with the girl that, you know, just learned how to read overnight or memorized or whatever you did to make it happen.  As somebody with that kind of ambition that you always had, that’s like a really bright fire.  Has it ever been dimmed? I mean, have you ever gone through a point where “Gosh, it was smothered” or you know, you felt like you couldn’t be that person?

Angelique Rewers:  Oh, yeah.

Andrea:  Okay.

Angelique Rewers:  Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.  I mean, I’m in middle school, so that was kind of who I was all the way up until the seventh grade.  And I know we all kind of have the seventh-grade story.  You know, for me in the seventh grade, things were kind of tough at home.  My mom and I were living with my grandparents. My mom was trying to save up to be able to buy a home, and so we were living in this really tiny little house.  I was sharing a bedroom with my mom.  You know, here I am at twelve, I guess, twelve or thirteen, and I’m sharing a bedroom with my mom.  Can you imagine like, just remember your twelve-year-old self.  We have one bathroom in the house.  I mean this is a teeny, teeny, tiny little house.

And I went to a very, very rough middle school, and I was there because, ironically, they had the program for the gifted and talented kids in this particular school, which was one of like the roughest middle schools that there were in the area.  So, but I had to go there to be part of the gifted and talented program.  So, it was sort of a trade-off.  At any rate, the other girls really did not like that bright fire so much.  As the expression goes, the tallest nail gets the hammer, and so they actually formed a club called Kids against Angelique Rewers, KAAR.

They had a logo. They had buttons. They had what’s called a slambook, which is where they write horrible things about you.  They had meetings.  They had a schedule of who would bully me in between each and every class because we would change periods, you know, from science to math. And they would knock me down, they would punch me, they would push me in the lockers, they’d tear up my homework, they would threaten me.  At one point, the worst was when I was dragged by my hair in the hallway.  I mean, really, really brutal stuff.

And so this went on and on and on and on, and it was really almost a two year kind of situation.  It finally came to an end when I finally spoke up for myself, but I was embarrassed to go to the teachers.  I was embarrassed to go to the guidance counselors.  I hid it from my family.  It finally got addressed, but, boy, it stayed with me for a really long time.  And it probably took until… it was really in 2009 that I had an adult bullying experience, which by the way, I think adults today are almost worse than middle schoolers.

We have just gotten ourselves into a situation in this world where we just tolerate so much bullying online that it’s just unbelievable.  So, anyways, so I had an adult bullying experience, and then I realized I had come full circle.  And so in 2010, I decided to kind of step back into the light.  So that means that from thirteen until twenty-seven, so fourteen years, I sort of hid, and then you know, around twenty-seven, twenty-eight, I started to come back out again.  And then it’s been every year since then, it’s been another step into the light, another step into the light.  And in the last couple of years, I really did kind of go through a transformation of “The hell with it, here I am, World.”  So, but yeah, it really lasts a long time, Andrea.

Andrea:  You know, I have seen that transformation in you in the last couple of years because that’s how long I’ve been around you and your programs.  And I was wondering if you would want to tell us a little bit about that.  It seems like there’s been this fire that’s been lit under you, that’s even greater and you were already doing so much.  You already had such big vision and then something happened or some sort of transformation.  Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Angelique Rewers:  Yeah, I think it was definitely the sort of perfect storm of a few things coming together.  You know, one is age, right?  So, I’m in my forties now and so you become, I think, just increasingly aware of the speed of time as you get older and you’re watching your kids grow up so fast before your eyes.  My twins now are ten.  I’m like, “How did this happen?”  So there’s definitely the age-time thing.  Another piece of it is a couple of years ago, I did do some work, which I recommend that people do, on their shadow side from a mindset perspective.  And I did some shadow side work and that was really liberating to just accept all of who you are.

When you really get to the point that you genuinely accept 100 percent of who you are and you connect in with spirit and really everything you do is between you and spirit, whether you want to call it source, God, you know, universe, whatever works for you.  When you accept all of yourself, and then you connect into your mission and your purpose, if you believe in that.  You know, for me, I do, you’d go “Well, it really doesn’t matter what other humans think about me so much.  This is really between me, my soul and God and you know, what I’m doing on that front.”  And then the other piece of it is I started to put myself in rooms with people like Richard Branson.

So, I’ve been part of the Virgin Unite efforts.  I went to South Africa with Virgin Unite.  I went to Sir Richard Branson’s wildlife reserve in South Africa and spent four days with him, you know, on game drives. And then went to Necker Island and heard from people all around the world who are changing the world.  We’re not often allowed to mention who was there, but these are world leaders who’ve brought wars to an end.  I mean, people literally who’ve brought wars to an end.

And so you put yourself in rooms like that, and you just realize that there’s no difference per se between, I mean, sure everybody has a different talent or a different IQ and et cetera, but at the end of the day, we’re all the same.  We all have the same immense, infinite potential. I think that those things all come together and you just, you know, you make a decision of “Am I gonna let the genie out of the bottle or am I not?”  And I think that the saddest thing is how many people go to their grave really never even coming close to their potential.

Andrea:  Hmm.  What do you suppose is that factor that helped you to see that you really wanted, first of all, that there was a genie in the bottle and then second of all, that you were going to release it?

Angelique Rewers:  I mean, I have to say, I’m very fortunate because even though I grew up in a very low-income household in a blue-collar town, where most people don’t go anywhere, I had the most loving family, I really did.  And my great grandmother, my grandmother and my mother, very matriarchal family and I’m an only child and an only grandchild.  And so there was definitely a lot of support for me as a kid to really go for it.  My grandmother always said, “Go, go do it.  Whatever you want to do, go.”  You know, that was always my word, “Go.”  And she also really understood some universal laws, even though she didn’t know that they were universal laws.

So, she would say things to me like, “Be very careful what you wish for because in this family we create it overnight.”  And so she really understood the power of manifesting and how when we got really clear as women in our family, things would happen.  So, I had some of that going on.  And I think the other thing, Andrea, is just I think everybody has the ability to make the choice.  I mean, I think anybody listening to your podcast right now can go look in the mirror and say, “Am I happy with what I’ve accomplished in my life?  Where am I holding back and do I want more?”  And that’s really it.  I mean, at the end of the day, you just have to kind of go literally have a conversation with yourself and choose.

Andrea:  It seems to me that it’s a choice that almost has to be made more than once.  Maybe there’s like this really big moment where you choose, but maybe there are successions of choices too.  Do you see that for yourself?

Angelique Rewers:  Yeah, well, I think what it is, I think, one, there’s the choice.  I think, one, there’s a choice of how you just want to show up in life in general.  Like, there’s that moment that you make that choice in your life of “I’m going to show up a certain way in life.”  But then there are daily choices that we have to make as to whether or not, you know, we’re really going to do it.  So, I think there is that sort of like universal undercurrent that’s going on in our life, but then everyday we’re given a choice.

And just in the last week, I’ve had probably four of those choices in just the last week.  So, I was in Prague, I was speaking at an international conference.  It was a conference that was really five years in the making for us to land one of those speaking opportunities because it’s that competitive to get there.  So, we kept applying and kept applying and kept applying.

And so this year it was in Prague.  I was thrilled to go and as I was rushing over to the conference center for my session, I wanted to get there for like an hour before, but I was walking over and I could feel like natural nerves.  Anytime we speak, we all get, you know, our adrenaline kind of goes… when we are in a heightened state of stress though, we can’t do our best work, you know.

So, I was walking over, and I stopped and I went to the bridge, which overlooked, you know, downtown Prague and there’s those historic buildings, that beautiful scenery.  And I just took 10 minutes to get present and ask myself what I wanted my session to be like and how I want it to show up in that session.  And I decided I was going to leave it all on the stage, if you will.  That this was going to be a session where I could truly enjoy how far I’ve come, being in Prague, being at this conference. And I was just going to really savor the moment.

And so I had that choice in that moment.  I had another choice when I was at the airport and by 30 flipping seconds…  I mean, I had been traveling for 24 straight hours, it was a nightmare to get back.  And I was in New York City.  I hadn’t had any sleep the night before.  My flight was supposed to leave for San Diego because I was supposed to speak at another conference in San Diego, and by 30 seconds I missed being able to check-in for my flight and checked a bag.  And in that moment, I said to the gate agent, “You know what, just give me a ticket to go home. I’m done.  I’m so tired,  I haven’t slept in 24 hours.  I’m done.”

And so she started looking for a flight for me to come home and then it was like, she found something.  I said, “You know what, that’s not the right choice.  Find me another flight.  It won’t be direct, but you know, find me another first-class seat.  I don’t care what cities you have to put me through.  Get me to San Diego.”  But there was a moment of, “I just want to fucking go home because I’ve been traveling for 24 hours.  I’m dirty. I’m tired.  I’m hungry.  I have a migraine.  I just want to go home.”  And then I was like, “No, I don’t.  I want to go to San Diego and a little bit of sleep will fix this.  And that’s where I’m supposed to be with AT&T and Comcast presenting at this conference with veterans.”

So, we’re presented with these choices all the time every day.  And we’re human, we’re going to have lousy days.  So, you just have to constantly ask yourself, you know, what are you choosing.

Andrea:  Hmm.  Why is business going to change the world?

Angelique Rewers:   Well, we’ve seen it ever since the printing press, right? We actually saw it with the Catholic Church and monks who recreated the Bible, which, you know, church really was kind of like the first business, I mean, in terms of organization and organizational structure and, you know, them creating copies upon copies upon copies.  And we saw it with the printing press.  We saw it with Ford in creating the automobile and how the automobile completely changed our societies, and people moved out of certain areas, and we created suburbs because of that.

We’ve seen it with the internet.  We’ve seen it with mobile communication.  We’re about to see it again with AI and with autonomous vehicles and frankly, even flying vehicles, we’re starting to see it with drones.  You know, business continues to innovate.  Those innovations, despite some of the most repressed societies, you know, really the only country that has completely kept out technology successfully really is North Korea.  I mean, you know, they’ve done the best job of kind of keeping business out, keeping technology out.

But beyond that, technology and innovation and developments constantly cross, you know, any imaginary border we draw on a map. And it creates connectivity, and it creates a shared experience that just like the written word created shared experience.  The automobile created shared experience.  The internet created shared experience.  Technologies like this are changing the world. So, business creates innovations and innovations change society.

We are in a situation right now where we look at the ethical dilemmas that Twitter and Facebook are facing.  We look at the ethical dilemmas that companies like we work are facing.  Even, you know, companies in California who are facing these awful fires and how are they going to respond to that?  We need to get plastics out of the world.  And so how are companies going to respond to that?  So, you know, really companies are what make the world go round.

Every single thing that impacts our daily life, there’s a company behind it, unless we’re in some of the most remote parts of the world.  So, the more we can shift the thought process and the scarcity mindset that drives so many of these poor decisions that companies make, and in addition to that, most people are employed by companies. And so the way that people feel every day, the World Health Organization declared this year that burnout is a global epidemic.  So the world is drowning in burnout, that affects all of us.

So, we have to really make some changes.  And the best way to do that is to take people who are really consciously aware and help guide this.  And so our mission at The Corporate Agent is to really show people how to do that.  But the only way to do it is to actually be able to sell your services, like you have to be able to get into these companies.  You can have the best mission in the world.  You can have the biggest heart and the most brilliant idea.  But if you don’t know how to get to decision makers and get influenced with them and get them to listen to you and buy your products and your services, then you can’t change diddly-squat.

Andrea:  Exactly. Totally.  I think that that is so important, especially, I know that for a long time I felt like I had a message, and then it became evident that I was going to need a way to fund the message.  And that’s what started having me go down the path of business.  And actually, honestly what really has been fascinating for me is seeing myself really be able to start to stretch into other areas of myself that I didn’t know I could do, you know, like to be the CEO of a company, to actually build a business, to have people that are on my team and working with me and coalescing underneath of a mission and a vision and making sure that, you know, all those things, I’m like, “Whoa, wait a second, this stuff is really fun.  This is good.”

Angelique Rewers:  It is fun. It is really fun.  And you know, when we build businesses and we build them from the place that you’re building them, you know, that’s also an impact on the world.  I think one of the things that’s been amazing about you, Andrea, is that you have a message, and then you realize that you have to find a keyhole for your message, and you’ve been really willing to find that keyhole.  You know, there are so many people out there who have a message, but they’re not willing to find a way for that message to fit into the market so that the message can have an impact.

If you’re just shouting out to the world and nobody’s receiving that message, what good is it?  And so you have to shape your key to fit a keyhole and then that unlocks opportunity.  And it’s this strange paradox because people have a big message and one of the things we do at The Corporate Agent, as you know, is we help them take that big message and actually bring it into just one key that they can unlock a door.  Because if you just have this, you know, huge message that nobody knows what to do with, then what good is that?

And you’ve been such an amazing, you know, you really have taken that and run with it.  And as a result, companies are benefiting from your message right now.   People are benefiting from this podcast that you do and you haven’t lost your message. Even though you’ve brought it into a tangible way for companies to implement, you’re still focused on this voice of influence.  And so sometimes when you first, you know, people hear us talk about it, you can even talk to this.  Like sometimes it’s like, “Wait, you want my message to fit into this little box,” but only for a short time, only to get you momentum and then you can let the genie back out of the bottle.

Andrea:  I think that’s really important.  And one of the things that I believe in is that the mission or the purpose that one has is generally something that’s beneath the surface.  So, it’s a concept. Like for me, it’s connecting people’s expertise with the need in the world, “Okay, you could do a lot of different stuff with that.”  And so that frees me up to be able to say “yes” when you tell me to go in a certain direction and say, “Okay, I will try that because I can trust your expertise, and yet still have it fit within the paradigm of my purpose as I see it.”  So, I think that’s really important for your clients because it can easily feel like the purpose has to be a specific thing or a specific teaching, that sort of thing.  Do you see that?

Angelique Rewers:  Yeah, I do.  And I think people are always afraid of sort of losing their purpose when they start making it tangible in the world.  And the opposite is true.  It’s like when you make your concept of that idea that you’re talking about like, you know, that concept that you have, when you start making it tangible that people can do something with it… it just evolves into something beautiful.  But too many people, we call it sometimes loving the baby.  Like, they just love the baby so much about this idea that they have, but they don’t know how to then bring that out into the world in a way that actually has an impact, or that people know what to do with it.

We can all be Marianne Williamson, you know what I mean?  Most people aren’t just going to be a philosopher, and I think that’s kind of the danger when people have a message, they can fall into the trap of just being a philosopher versus understanding how to actually effect change in the world.

Andrea:  Okay, so I had a question for you that, I don’t want to forget to ask this, because it kind of goes back to what we were talking about before, ties into what we’re headed towards.  When one sort of steps into the fullness of who they are… okay, that’s the way I put it, the way you put it, what was that… you know letting the light or the genie out of the bottle, when one does that, I think that it can feel like all of a sudden, even in narrowing down your message, it can feel like you’re cutting things out.  You can feel like you’re cutting people out.

Angelique Rewers:  Yeah.

Andrea:   And that can be really hard for somebody that’s particularly sensitive and empathetic.  Has it felt like that to you ever, and I mean, does it ever feel lonely?

Angelique Rewers:  Well, I think those are probably two different questions.  So I’ll take them, you know, maybe one at a time.  The first is that when you’re clarifying your message, assuming you want to be a business owner, you want to be an entrepreneur or you’re working in a company that, you know, trying to make headway somewhere. You can certainly try to empty the ocean with a soup spoon but you’re not going to get very far.  So, I’m just very pragmatic about the whole thing.

If you look at anybody who’s had a world changing mission, they didn’t start with a world changing mission.  Sir Richard Branson is great example.  You know, he just decided in the beginning just to change the record industry, right?  That’s all he wanted to do was change the record label industry with Virgin Records. And then he was like, you know what, he sold that so he could change the airline industry all because he had a bad day not being able to get a flight somewhere.  And so that’s where he started.  And now he’s at a point that he can pick up a phone and talk to almost any world leader.  He did just pick one inflection point.

Oprah started on the radio in Baltimore where I grew up.  She was on the local news WJZ-13.  You know, I remember watching her on like 5 o’clock news.  That’s where she started.  So, you know, I think that we all see these sort of finished products today of these people who are just out there, just so huge, big followings and people aren’t willing to realize that people judge us based on what we’ve accomplished, not on what we dreamed up in our head.

And so you have to have to do stuff, you have to actually make something happen and then you make something else happen and then make something else happen.  I’m not very empathetic around this idea of, “Well, I don’t want to cut anybody yet.”  I’m like, “Well, do you want your mission out there or not?”  Because it’s like, “Do you want to be right about this or do you want to be rich?”  And rich in impact, not necessarily rich in money, but do you want to be right or rich?  And most people want to be rich with impact, rich with significance, rich with, you know, really having a legacy.

So to do that, you’d have to just be practical about it.  It’s like, “Well, get over it,” you know, like, this is what it takes.  This is how it works for almost everybody.  And then in terms of does it ever feel lonely?  I mean, I personally don’t ever feel that my business is lonely or that, you know, I do think that one of the things that people don’t understand about having a successful business, and I can only imagine as you get more and more successful, like I can only imagine… I mean, I’ve spent time with Richard Branson.  I’ve seen the people that he puts around him.  He certainly doesn’t ever seem lonely.

I think the man probably would love to absolutely have maybe a little bit more alone time than he does.  But you know, even he’s part of the Elders and if you don’t know about the Elders, you should look that up.  It’s an amazing thing that he put together with some just amazing people on this earth, people like Desmond Tutu and others.  But I don’t find it lonely, Andrea, because number one, I have an amazing family.  I just have just the most amazing, supportive husband who is my high school sweetheart. We’ve been together more years than we’ve been alive, if that makes sense.

So, you know, over twenty-seven years we’ve been together now.  I have two amazing twin boys who are ten.  I have a really supportive mom.  I have close friends, and I have the most, and I really do believe this, like I have the most amazing community of clients that I think any person out there who’s in the small business space, who has a community of small business owners that they serve, without question.  I think I have the most loving, high integrity, heart-centered… I don’t want to use the word loyal but like just the love in our community, the respect in our community.

I think if, there was some tragedy that happened and you know, I lost my home or whatever, I would have hundreds of clients who would be like, “Angelique, come stay on my sofa.”  Like, “The door is open,” and I think because they feel the love that we pour into them and how transparent we are with them.  And so there’s just like, “I don’t feel lonely at all.”  I mean, Andrea, if I felt like I didn’t have somebody to call, you know, I could pick up the phone and you would talk to me. I just feel just constantly, just a bubble of love around me all the time, even if I’m having a bad day.  I just have this incredible vortex of love.

Andrea:  I can attest to that.  I put something in our Facebook group this week.  Every once in a while I feel the need to reach out and say, “Oh, hey, does anybody else ever feel like this?”  And I had maybe four people reach out to say, “Do you want to talk?”  People that really know what they’re talking about and so it’s absolutely true.  I think though, at some point, did you ever have to recognize that you are going to be spending more time with this kind of person than people that you were with?

Angelique Rewers:  Oh yeah.  Yeah.

Andrea:  That’s a hard thing for people to kind of move through, I think.

Angelique Rewers:  Yeah, you know, I think it is for some people, I’m kind of a loner.  I’m an only child and I think that probably contributes to it. And there were no cousins.  You know, my mom was an only child, so I was an only child.  There weren’t a lot of others around.  And I’ve always been kind of a loner in a way, even though I always have like these amazing people around me.  So, I’m also a very independent person.  I think probably two of my greatest values are independence and intelligence.  Like those are two things I value greatly.  So for me, I empathize with those who feel that way.  I personally didn’t experience it, because I’m actually an introvert, I think.

So, I can imagine that for some folks when they start to change their life, there are people in your life, you really have to, you either distance yourself from where you are or sometimes it’s not even like this conscious uncoupling.  It’s just you don’t have as much in common with them anymore.  And that’s just a natural part of transition.  I mean, we do that our whole life, though.  You know, as we grew up, you know, as soon as we get to high school and we look back and the kids we were friends with when we were in elementary school, they’re in the same school, but we don’t talk to them anymore.  You know, we change and we evolve.

I think it’s a good thing and I think, as we get older, we get to make decisions about people who are toxic or who are sort of energy vampires and we have to make decisions about that.  It can actually be very freeing, like, “Oh my gosh, this is great.  I get a choice in this.  I don’t have to spend so much time with this person who’s really draining and doesn’t respect, you know, my choices.”   So, I think it can actually be really empowering if you choose.  Let me say this and then you can ask me another question, but I think that people forget that we have a choice, the emotions that we assign to something that’s happening in our life.

So we can assign that it feels bad to let go of a relationship or we can assign that it feels good and empowering and you know, exhilarating to let go of a relationship.  We’re constantly making those choices.  We think that we’re just a victim of emotion and that’s not the case.  We actually can make choices about what we’re feeling.

Andrea:  Hmm.  And I think when people have somebody like you to look to who say, “You’re gonna survive, it’s okay.  Keep moving.  This is sort of the light that you’re moving towards.”  I think it’s easier for people to be able to do that.

Angelique Rewers: Yeah, it is.  Well, and you know, it’s interesting that you use the word survive because I think that there’s a moment where people who are in business, there’s actually a shift that happens in entrepreneurial maturity where what feels like a survival energy gets replaced by a “Isn’t this journey amazing?”  Like, “Isn’t this fascinating what’s happening right now?”  And there’s a moment where there’s, sort of, instead of feeling like “I have to survive this,” there’s a new wave that washes over you of, “Oh, I don’t actually have to attach a survival energy to this.  I can actually choose that this is exhilarating; strap on my seatbelt, this roller coaster is fun!”

And you’ve seen that picture that I actually show of me on the roller coaster, the ten different times, and how I was on that roller coaster and I was screaming bloody murder and I was having this miserable experience.  And then I got off and I saw that picture, and I saw everybody else on the same exact roller coaster having a good time.  And I realized in that moment that I decided that I had to survive that roller coaster with my kids.  Everyone else chose to strap in and laugh their way through the roller coaster.  It was the exact same roller coaster, but I was in survival mode and everyone else was in this sort of exhilarated, “Oh my gosh, the wind is whipping through my hair” mode.

And so really what I would say to people, Andrea, so, I do encourage people that “You are going to make it through,” but more importantly what I want them to hear is that, “Choose it to be a different experience.”  You know, choose it not to be survival.  Choose it to be like, “I signed up to be an entrepreneur, and I am doing it, and this is amazing.  And anybody else would be so scared about this and I am badass, and I’m going to just do it.”  And, like, choose that experience.  And we get to choose that every day.  That goes back to what we started with, which is, you know, it’s constantly that choice of the life experience that we’re going to have.  And what I want more than anything I think is for people to be conscious of what they’re choosing.

Andrea:  Hmm.  I love that.  I love it so much.  I know exactly what you’re talking about, and I think it’s a hard choice for me personally, I am more empathetic.  I do struggle with all these things a little bit more maybe, but I have found the same thing to be true.  Okay, so for the listener, you need to know that Angelique, as much as we talked about mindset and experience and influence and that sort of thing, Angelique is really truly an expert in influencing when it comes to sales conversations and business ownership as a small business owner and all those things.

So, Angelique, I know that you have a conference coming up.  Every once in a while you do webinars.  And if anybody really wants to hear your expertise and see that in play and your strategic mindset play, that is a really great place to see that happen.  Can you tell us a little bit about what’s coming up?

Angelique Rewers:  Yeah, absolutely.  So, our website is thecorporateagent.com and as Andrea said, you know, we’ve been talking in this podcast today about the idea that you can have a big mission and a big message, but there has to be a way that you make it tangible and bring it into the world.  And the way that we bring it into the world is by teaching small business owners how to win big clients.  And sometimes those are the really big brands like Starbucks, Facebook, GE, Delta, and Bank of America and all of those.  And sometimes it’s colleges and universities, or government agencies, or mid-market companies, or even a big small enterprise in your backyard.

And so we teach small business owners how to get in front of those organizations, where to start, what to deliver, and how to close those sales, and how to keep those clients for the long term so that they keep buying from you.  So that’s really the tangible way that I bring my message into the world.  And so we do, we have some great trainings coming up in early December.  We’re going to be doing some complimentary trainings via Zoom online.  So, if you go to our website, thecorporateagent.com, if you download one of our resources on there, there some free swipe copy and things like that, then you’ll get on our list and you’ll know about it.

The other thing you need to know about is once a year we do a conference called the Real Deal.  It’s three days of us teaching business owners really how to be empowered in their marketing and their sales in the B2B space.  If they’re marketing to those B2B clients, those corporate clients.  It’s an unbelievable three days, it’s just so full of energy.  People leave walking on air because it’s a combination of just so much content.  They’re always just like, “This is incredible, this doesn’t feel like a conference; this is like a master’s degree in three days.”  But also it’s fun, it’s on the beach in Fort Lauderdale, and the community is unbelievable, and people just feel like “Where is this community been my whole entrepreneurial life?”

So, the event is called the Real Deal and the website is realdealevent.com.  You can also get to it through thecorporateagent.com; it says at the top of the page Real Deal. We would love to see you there.  People have literally come into that event thinking that they were going to go back and get a job because it just got too hard for them trying to figure out how to make their business work.  And they have walked out of there three days later already winning new clients because they knew what they were doing and they were sending emails and getting their business going again.

So it has literally saved people.  One person, and I hope to interview him soon, came to me and said, “Angelique, you literally saved my life because I was about to go get a job and I knew that if I got a job…” and he wasn’t being facetious, he said “It was going to kill me.  I would have had a heart attack.  I was going to have to be on antidepressants.  It literally was like going to just ruin my body because that’s how badly I didn’t want to do it.  I was getting so overwhelmed with depression, stress and you taught me how to fix it in three days.”

So it’s an amazing event, so if you do sell to corporate clients and you’re tired of trying to figure out these content strategies that were never designed for corporate clients to begin with, come spend three days with us and it’ll change your life.  It’ll be the best three days you’ve ever spent at a business conference.

Andrea:  I would agree with that.  We went to the Real Deal in 2018 and it was electric.  It really was.  There was, like you said, so much content, but then at the same time being around the people, meeting people and finding out what they’re doing.  And so if you are in the space, it’s where you need to be.  No doubt about it.

Angelique Rewers:  Well, thank you for that.  It’s so much fun too, it’s really great.  And this year, we’re on the beach in Fort Lauderdale, literally on the beach.  So, in June in Fort Lauderdale, it’s absolutely beautiful, and I’m all about energy and environment.  Like I have to be in beautiful space, like I’m just so impacted by that.  So for us to just find a venue that was so bright and airy, overlooking the ocean, which just felt really good and expansive and, you know, we use the ocean as a metaphor all the time because there is such an ocean of opportunity for people out there.  So it just felt very much in alignment.

Andrea:  Angelique, what tip or a piece of advice would you like to leave with the listener about, you know, the listener who wants to have a voice of influence?

Angelique Rewers:  Say yes, say yes.  People say “no” way too often and I know we’re told to say “no” to, you know… and you should say, you know, we all have to set boundaries.  You know, don’t take on yet another volunteer project at the school when you’re the only person volunteering for the third grade.  But say “yes” to your dream.  Say “yes” to your purpose.  Say “yes” to the experiences that are aligned with your vision.  Don’t say “I’m not ready for that yet.”  Take that out of your vocabulary.  Never again say, “I’m not ready.”  That’s ridiculous.  You were literally born ready.

So just say “yes” to things that are aligned with your vision.  At the end of the day, that’s the secret of people who are successful.  They say “no” to the stuff that is not in alignment and they say “yes” to all the things that are in alignment.  And they don’t give themselves these interdependencies, or “I’m not ready” crap and they don’t say, “Well, I can’t do that because…”  They say, “How can I make this work?”  And they say, “Yes,” that’s what they do.  And so that would really be, you know, my final words of advice, start saying “yes” to your vision and show up every day saying, “yes.”

Andrea:  Hmm.  Let that genie out of the bottle.

Angelique Rewers:  Let that genie out of the bottle.

Andrea:  I love it.  Thank you so much for sharing your voice of influence with our listeners.  Thank you for your impact on my life, on my business.  I’m truly grateful!

Angelique Rewers: Thank you!

How to Stop Being Afraid of Standing Out with Alicia Couri

Episode 61

Alicia Couri is a dynamic empowerment speaker, author, and personal branding expert who shares her message of how overcoming low self-esteem and lack of self-confidence has created massive opportunities that influence, transform, and impact lives.

Alicia’s books focus on self-development and self-care and, while simple, are incredibly profound.  Her mission is to influence, educate, inspire, and entertain with audacious confidence and to help her clients do the same with a strong personal brand.

In this episode, Alicia discusses why the core of her message is focused around confidence, the difference it makes for the world if people are confident, how to gain confidence, why we shouldn’t look for external validation to boost our confidence, the three P’s of personal branding, and so much more!

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Alicia Couri Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.

Today, I have with me, Alicia Couri, a dynamic empowerment speaker, author, and personal branding expert who shares her message of how overcoming low self-esteem and lack of self-confidence has creative massive opportunities that influence, transform, and impact lives.

I personally benefited from Alicia’s abilities with personal branding especially in the area of hair and makeup recently at an event that I spoke at.  So I’m excited to share her with you today.  Her books focused on self-development and self-care and they’re really fun reads and they’re both very simple but profound.  Her mission is to influence, educate, inspire, and entertain with audacious confidence and she helps her clients do so with a strong personal brand.

Alicia how wonderful is it to have you here today on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Alicia Couri:  Thank you so much!  I really appreciate how you introduced me.  That is so wonderful and I appreciated the opportunity to work with you recently.  Thank you so much!

Andrea:  Yes.  It was so fun. You were a delight.  You were very encouraging and I liked how I looked so that’s so great too.

Alicia Couri:  That turned out great, yes.

Andrea:  It’s nice to know that somebody professional has done the hair and makeup thing before you go up onstage.

Alicia Couri:  It makes a world of difference.  It certainly does.

[Off-topic conversation]

Andrea:  So Alicia what is the core of your message?  Tell us about what drives you in your message?

Alicia Couri:  In the introduction, you talked about me overcoming low self-esteem and low self-worth.  So the core of my message is really focused around confidence because everything that we do starts with being confident and it starts with having that confidence within yourself.  So for me that is such a staple and such a vital part of life so that is really what drives me.

Andrea:  What is it about that then?  I want to hear about your story then because it sounds like you have a pretty good story about why this is personal for you?

Alicia Couri:  Absolutely!  You know, I was born in Trinidad and I grew up in Australia.

Andrea:  You grew up in Australia but you don’t have n accent now?

Alicia Couri:  OK, so that’s part of my story.

Andrea:  OK, good.  I want to hear it.

Alicia Couri:  That’s also part of my story, because I was one of three black children in an entire school of 700 to 800 kids and so…

Andrea:  Wow that’s a lot.

Alicia Couri:  Yes, it was a really big school because it went from a kindergarten all the way through 12th grade.

Andrea:  And such a small percentage.

Alicia Couri:  And it was just one was a native Aborigines and other was my sister.  So it was three of us in the whole school that I’ve ever seen that were dark, at least as dark as we were.  So I got a lot of stares.  I got a lot of questions and as a 5 year old getting questions about your skin color and where you from and your accent and why do you talk like this and all of that, it was intimidating because I didn’t have the answers.  I didn’t know why my skin was different color than theirs.  I couldn’t answer that question intelligently, and so it has caused me as a rambunctious, really outspoken, outgoing little girl to become shy and kind of introverted.

It completely changed my personality.  It changed how I was.  I wanted to blend in.  I didn’t want to standout.  I wanted to be just like everybody else but the minute I look at myself, I knew I was like everybody else that I was around.  So later on in life, I realized that what impact that had on me, because when you’re in it you don’t realize what’s happening, but as I tried to step out and do things, I would realize that I would shy away and I would want to be in the background and I wouldn’t step up and I wouldn’t speak up and I couldn’t figure out why wouldn’t do these things.

So later on when we moved back to Trinidad, I looked like everybody else so I can fit in but the minute I open my mouth to speak, heads would turn again and people start asking questions and they start wanting to know “Can you say these words?  Can you say that word?”  So I started feeling self-conscious about even speaking.

Andrea:  Because of the Australian accent at that point?

Alicia Couri:  Because of the Australian accent.  Yeah, a heavy thick Australian accent from this little girl.  So my way of fixing that was “Let me just speak in a way that is clear and enunciate and so that people cannot identify me by an accent anymore.”  So that’s kind of why I speak the way I speak because I just didn’t want people to ask me where I was from and now I got it all the time because nobody could picture where I’m from.  I always hear say “Hey, where you from.  I detect something but I don’t know what it is.”

Andrea:  Yes, interesting.

Alicia Couri:  So yeah that’s kind of my story and so that’s why I so strongly believe in confidence because it erodes who you are if you don’t have it.  It erodes your worth, your value, your self-esteem, your ability to really go out and shine at the highest level that you can possibly achieve.  So that’s what I want for people to be able to realize.

Andrea:  OK, so what difference does it make then in the world if people are confident?  Why does this matter?

Alicia Couri:  Well, it matters, especially if you’re in business, it matters how you value yourself.  It matters how you show up.  It matters how you perform.  For instance, we love to watch world events and Dancing with the Stars and all these really great reality shows that are based in competition, say like Dancing with the Stars for instance.

When you put someone out of their elements and so you take someone who has never done ballroom dancing before and now you’re training them to ballroom dance and you see the process that they go through and how the lack of confidence at the beginning really holds them back from giving it their all to when they reached probably the semi finals or the finals and then you see that change in not just the way they danced but the attitude that they have when they danced because now they’ve got it.  Now, they’re confident in their steps that they’re taking and they’re no longer holding back.

So when you live in a world that you’re not holding back, that you’re actually giving it your all because now you’re sure of what you’re doing, you’re confident in what you do, it makes not just a difference in your performance but it makes a difference in your clients and customers in how they receive it.  They are able to celebrate it with you when you do a great job.  They’re able to be the beneficiaries of that great job, so I think it’s really important.

Andrea:  And it totally levels up what you can offer it seems like.

Alicia Couri:  Absolutely, absolutely!

Andrea:  Yeah.  OK, so how does someone become confident?  I’ve asked a lot of people on this podcast you know, “Have you always been confident, because they come across so confident.  And they’re like “Oh no,” and they kind of go back and then, “No way, I’ve always been confident.”  But I think that a lot of people are sitting there looking at people who looked confident and saying, “Gosh, I wish I was like them but I don’t really know how to get from here to there.”  So what do you tell people about that?

Alicia Couri:  So that is a really great question because so many times, people think there’s a formula to getting confident but we really have to start looking back at why you think you’re not confident or why you believe you can’t do this because sometimes it’s a universal belief that some people are born confident and others aren’t.  And so if you have bought into that universal belief then you’re always going to think that you can never be confident enough.

So think back to really what that seed that was planted that made you feel like either you couldn’t do something or you weren’t confident enough or you didn’t have enough skills, education, or whatever it is.  So for me when I looked back at my childhood and I recognized that it was that time in my life when I felt that I wanted to disappear then I can kind of shift back and I can say “Well, you know, that was my reality as a child, that’s not my reality now.”  So I don’t have to bring that baggage with me everywhere I go.  I am a choice now that I’m aware that that is where I came from, I am now a choice.

I think we even spoke about this when I was doing your hair and makeup that we can choose in this moment now how we are going to be.  So that kind of can get you out this idea that you think that you’re not confident enough or you think that you can’t do a good job is recognizing where it came from, being able to now make a different decision because now you’re a choice because you’re aware of where it came from and then just choosing it.  The other thing is recognizing where your skills, your talents, your gifts, and your abilities lie.

Andrea:  So big!

Alicia Couri:  Yeah, your talents, your abilities, your gifts, and your skills.

Andrea:  I like that tags.

Alicia Couri:  Yeah, your tags.

Andrea:  That’s good.

Alicia Couri:  If you know where your tags are, if you know that I am really good at this that is where you’ll shine and that is where you’ll be confident.  When I started doing makeup, it was a passion of mine.  It was something I love doing but I didn’t have all the skills yet, but because I love and I enjoy doing it and I was encouraged by the people around me that I was doing a good job, I got more training and more training until I felt that “You know what, I believe that in any situation, I can make this work.”

So I don’t need to know what everybody looks like before they sit in my chair because I understand now, you know face shape.  There’s a certain understanding of the technical aspect of it but I also know that I have a natural gift for it.  So I rely on my natural gift and I rely on the skill set that I’ve developed.  And so I’m confident when someone sits on my chair that I can do a good job for them.

Andrea:  I really like that you’re pulling up both the internal belief and where it came from as well as the need to develop the skills and to sort of level up where you’re already gifted because I think it’s definitely not enough to just say that I’m more confident.  Confidence has to be grounded in something…

Alicia Couri:  …in something, exactly.

Andrea:  Yeah, yeah.

Alicia Couri:  Absolutely, absolutely.  Too many times, especially young women looked externally at everything.  You know, beauty was a big, big thing for me because I spent a long time not believing in my own beauty, again came from my childhood and not seeing a representation of what I look like as beauty in the world in the 70’s.  There weren’t really people on TV or in magazines that were portrayed with my skin color, my nose, or my lips.  It was more, blonde, blue eyed, light skinned.

My concept of beauty was cute because of my surroundings and I had to figure out what beauty really meant to me.  So when so many young girls are looking externally for validation and they’re looking externally for things to identify with, it erodes their confidence because they no longer have confidence in themselves but they’re trying to be like the image that they see out there.  And it’s really important to develop your own concept of beauty and confidence and all those things for yourself and then like you said, make it tangible and then match the inside of what you’re now believing for yourself and then make it tangible.

If you’re going to use, for instance makeup, don’t make up yourself to hide yourself or try to alter your features to look like something else, but use makeup to enhance.  Say, “You know what, I love my lips and I am going to put on this bright red lipstick because it makes my lips just look juicy and beautiful.”  So you know, instead of underlying your lips so that they look thin and more acceptable.  So trying to build and develop confidence in yourself comes from the internal but also you have to add the external to it but don’t add the external as a way to mask, hide, or alter who you are.

Andrea:  Hmmm.  OK, so I love that you just said that we need to find that within instead of basing it on other people and getting approval and basing our idea of beauty or whatever _____ that we’re trying to set for ourselves basing that on somebody else or something else outside of ourselves.  But how do we do that, really?  I think it’s hard to get those images or those expectations out of your head and kind of comeback inside to yourself to find those answers.

So, Alicia, how did that work for you?  Let’s use beauty as an example because you’ve used it.  So how did you decide what was beautiful for you and what made you beautiful when you didn’t have representation in media and you didn’t see people like yourself out there _____ this beautiful?  How did you find that for yourself and how do you recommend that other people look within to find some of those things?

Alicia Couri:  It took me a long time!  It certainly did because I did not like looking in the mirror.  I did not like my picture taken and if you look at my Facebook page or my Instagram page, you would never believe that in a million years because there are selfies everywhere, but honestly, I was hiding myself.  I would hide myself and people would say, “Oh you so pretty.”  “You’re so beautiful.”  I couldn’t receive it.  I couldn’t accept it.  I would just politely say, “Oh thank you,” but inside I was like “What are they looking at?”

But it took me a while to kind of make the shift and so what shifted for me was to start seeing myself differently.  I had to actually start looking differently at myself in the mirror.  I had to take pictures of myself and stop criticizing myself and putting myself down and looking for the beauty.  When I would look in the mirror, instead of saying, you know, pimples or oh my gosh, my nose is this way, you know, just finding everything that was wrong, I looked in the mirror and I thought, “You know what, you’re not too shabby today.”  You know, I have _____ a little bit of a compliment, “Not too shabby today.”

And then I started taking pictures of myself which is something I really didn’t do. When I started taking more and more pictures, I started to see myself differently because I looked at myself objectively as if it wasn’t me I was looking at.  I thought, “If I didn’t know this person would I think she was pretty?”  And I would look at each picture saying, “Yes, she’s got beautiful eyes and she’s got red lips.  Her face shape is very good.”  You know, just start picking little things and looking at different features and saying, “Yeah, she’s kind of pretty.”

Andrea:  Yeah and just are ____, I mean, you’re gorgeous.  So yeah, I can’t even imagine not realizing that, but it’s so interesting that you took the time and energy and effort to do that because I think a lot of us don’t put the extra time and energy into that kind of reflection and to that kind of awareness.  You know awareness of taking the picture and then reflecting on it and saying, “OK, what do I see here?”

I think we can do the same thing with other areas of our lives that we’re trying to grow in and or become more confident in but yeah, we don’t.  It takes so much effort or decision or permission or something to actually do that.  So what was inside of you or what’s outside of you, I don’t know what kind of got you to that point where you said “You know what, this is worth the time, this is worth the effort to take my pictures and start thinking about this and overcome this issue from myself?”

Alicia Couri:  I was just tired of not feeling great about myself because there are so many people always telling you something about you that you’re _____ and all the stuff and you don’t see it then what are you missing?  So I thought and really wondering, why am I always shying away from the spotlight?  When people say, “Oh my gosh you make a great speaker.”  “Oh my gosh you will do great camera work.”  And I kept denying that from myself and I finally said, “Why do I keep denying my potential just because I don’t see it?”  But obviously, other people were seeing it.

So let me stop denying my potential.  Let me stop denying and saying, “Oh no, I’m trying to be polite or trying to be humble.”  You know, people think that’s humility when it’s false humility.  It’s really pride.  It’s not really humility, “Oh no, not me.”  So I really started looking at that and saying “Well, maybe I can speak in front of people and what will it take for me to stand in front of an audience and deliver a message without falling apart.”

And I thought, “You know, if I stand in front of an audience and I was nervous, what’s wrong with that?”  And I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with that.  Nothing was wrong with that you’re standing in front of people.  OK, so my voice shakes, so if my voice shakes what’s wrong with that?  Will people make fun of me?  Maybe, but will I get my message across?  Yes!  OK, so just start trying, just start doing and the more I did, the more stepped out and I did, the more confident I became and the more proficient I became and the less judgmental I became of myself and the less critical of myself.

So I didn’t do it right.  I didn’t do it perfectly and I think that is another thing that does not go well with confidence is perfection, because if you think that you have to do everything perfect, and if you think that you cannot mess up or make a mistake then you will never get to that confident place in yourself because you’re always going to be afraid you’re going to mess up.

So I didn’t do it perfectly.  You know, I have my radio show and sometimes, I look back at the radio show and I think “What was I thinking?”  “Oh my gosh.”  But people comments and they say how much fun they had listening to the show or how much they gained and as a matter of fact my last guest, she was talking about the opportunity for it’s about everyone else instead of about you.  So when you start thinking what I have to share can be a value to someone else then you think less of yourself and all the things that you think are wrong with you because now you are in service to someone else.

Andrea:  Yes.  Yes, love that!  One of my recent guests, Neen James, said, it’s hard to be nervous when you’re standing in service.  That’s the way she puts it.

Alicia Couri:  Right.

Andrea:  And I remember distinctly a point in my life when I was getting up to speak and I thought, “I got to love these people more than I fear them, more than I fear their judgment, more than I fear messing up in front of them.  I got to love them more than that because if I do, I’ll be OK.”

Alicia Couri:  Right and all the ums and the ahs and you know it happens and that shows we figure real.  You know, there are some speaking programs that are trying to cut all those things out of you, kind of try to slap it out of you and I don’t necessarily feel that it needs to be taken completely out of you.  Yes, it can be curtailed a little bit so that your message isn’t modeled in the umhs and the umhs and the umhs.

So there is a balance that some of those things can be removed a little bit but you don’t want to be robotic.  You don’t want to be too stiff when you’re delivering something to someone, when you’re in service to someone because you want them to be able to feel you.  You want them to able to experience what you’re sharing with them in that moment and if you slip off here and there then it’s fine, at least that’s my philosophy.

Andrea:  I totally agree with you because I think that people get so obsessed with that sort of thing that they do, they lose their voice.  They lose who they really are in that like you’re talking about.  People can’t really feel me if I’m there trying to do a perfect job because I’m not truly connecting with them.  I’m not connected to my message because I’m so worried about it.

Alicia Couri:  Oh yeah that can really mess with your confidence too because if you don’t have it down exactly correct, perfectly then you don’t feel as powerful in that moment.

Andrea:  Oh yeah.

Alicia Couri:  But if you can let it go and just say whatever it is it is and I have a strong message inside of me and I’m just going to let it out, not that rehearsal isn’t important.  Rehearsal is a very important part of it but don’t get so locked into your script that you’re not making that connection.

Andrea:  Yeah and even your story or your message in general, even if you’re having a conversation with somebody if you’re not connected to it in that moment.  If you’re trying to make sure that it doesn’t get lost, I think that’s something that is definitely even frustrating for me at times.  If I’m not totally clear in what I’m trying to say, I get flustered.

Alicia Couri:  A little tongue tied.

Andrea:  Yeah and then I used to just give up and that doesn’t do anything for the person that you’re talking to and it definitely doesn’t serve your message at all.  So having a sense of what it is ahead of time is helpful.

Alicia, you also talked about personal branding and I remember when you’re doing my hair and makeup, I asked you, “what is your perspective?”  What is your points of view on personal branding and would you share that with us now because that is something that we talked about a lot here and I think it definitely ties into awareness of who we are so that we can build that confidence.  So what is your point of view on personal branding?

Alicia Couri:  I talk about the three P’s to personal branding; Posture, which is about building a solid core and the core, of the C in core is confidence so that is your foundation to your posture, so posture.  And in building your core, we have confidence how you’re oriented which is what you believe and what you value.  We talk about your results and your relevance to your industry and what your education and your experiences have been.  So that is core, you know, anytime I talk to anybody about core, those are the things that I’m referring to.

And then Presentation that’s the second P, which is so important.  When it comes to presentation, most people when they hear about branding, they think about presentation.  They think about your logo and your colors and your image and those things.  What is your website look like?  What is your business card look like?  So that is part of presentation but an important part of presentation as well is your performance, how do you actually provide your service to people and your story, your copy, all those things that represent you in your presentation.

So we want to make sure that everything in that part of your brand and the presentation of your brand is consistent.  You have a consistent message and you have a consistent look about you, not a cut and paste.  It’s not like your wearing the same thing all the time.  You know, every time people see, like “Yeah, I’m in my brand,” but everything has the same feel.  Everything has the same flow.  If you have a particular font that you use for your brand, you’re always using that font so that people get used to seeing that in your brand, people get used to seeing your brand colors in your presentation.

Most of the time when I speak, people know I’m going to show up in red.  When I’m on camera, they know I’m going to show up in red.  So people just come to know me in red and in red lipstick, so they have just kind of embrace that part of my brand.

Andrea:  Which is awesome because it’s like the opposite of holding back.

Alicia Couri:  Exactly!

Andrea:  It’s like you’re saying, “Now, I’m standing out and I’m not afraid to stand out, here I am!”  I love that!

Alicia Couri:  It’s so funny, I did a media interview sometime ago, not too long ago and one of the notes that they sent me, the producers, “Don’t wear bright red.”  And I’m like “She don’t know who she’s talking to.”  Of course, I’m gonna wear red.  Are you kidding me?”  So you just have to fix the lights and the tone and everything when I get there.

You know, some people says, better to ask _____ information.  But I did actually send them a picture of my dress ahead of time because I want to be respectful and they said, “No that’s fine.  It will work.”  Even though they said, I guess people wear this really crazy bright red that mess with the camera.

But anyway, when I have instructions like that, I try to be respectful of it and I send them ahead of time and if they really say no then I might tone down the shade or wear something different.  It’s not a big deal to me, but most of the time, yeah I’m in red.

So then the last P is Positioning and I think sometimes we don’t really pay attention to how we’re positioned in our brand.  Are we speaking to the right people?  Are we in front of our target audience?  Are we positioning ourselves as an authority?  Do we have these pieces in our marketing like media?  I need to get some of this myself some articles.  I need to do more writing and get some more articles in magazines.  And how you’re positioning yourself to be considered the expert in what you do, to be considered a leader in your industry, to be considered a thought leader.  Are you really positioning yourself correctly?  Another thing that people don’t really think about in positioning is who is coaching and mentoring you.  What sort of groups do you belong to?  Are you positioned correctly in those things?

So those are my three P’s for branding and that’s how I look at it.  I know there are so many people who do branding out there.  Everybody has their own unique point of view on how you should brand yourself.  So again, position yourself correctly, find the right person that you believe can develop your brand for your and make it stand out.

Andrea:  So how does, Positioning, Posture, and Presentation; how did these things relate to your core message of confidence then?

Alice Couri:  Well, branding relates to my core message of confidence as a whole because finding your unique quality, finding what’s unique about you, what stands out about you and then being able to highlight that and having the opportunity to really to really allow that to shine is it can only come when you’re confident within yourself because then you’ll keep holding something back, like red for instance.

I did not even think red was my color because for two years, my graphic artist and I were trying to figure out my logo.  We’re trying to figure out my colors and everything that I came up with, she kept telling me, “Nope, I don’t see that.  Nope that’s not right.”  I wasn’t feeling it in and she wasn’t feeling it.

And then I did a photo shoot that was really just impromptu.  I really wasn’t expecting to do it so I looked in my closet.  I pulled out a top that was red.  I pulled out a dress that was gold that I had never worn and I said, “OK, I’m going to do this photo shoot and I’m bringing these three things with me, a black shirt, a red top, and this gold dress.

When I finished the photo shoot, I got the pictures, that red and that gold were just like, you know like when the light shines down from heaven and when I looked at the _____.  So it was just really by chance that I found those colors for my brand.  Sometimes, it will happen that way.  And because I had ran from red so much in my life, the only reason I picked that red top was because of the cuts.  I’m a stylist so I help people with their wardrobe.  It’s part of their brand.  I do a lot of image styling for people’s hair and makeup and wardrobe.

So the cuts of that top was really why I grabbed it because it was a very a flattering cut, not for the color.  So it’s very interesting that the color was the thing that actually stood out more in those photos and that’s what made people comment more.

Andrea:  Alright, Alicia, so what of all from today’s talk, what do you really hope that the listener would take with them this week?  What nugget do you want them to remember?

Alicia Couri:  Oh that is so great!  What I really want people to remember is that any point in time, they can choose to be more confident.  They can choose who they are in that moment.  You can make a decision to, let’s say climb Mount Everest for instance, that would not be me but let’s say you make a decision, “By next year this time, I want to climb Mount Everest.”  You can choose to not train and then last minute try to get yourself up to _____ or you can choose to do a little bit everyday to get to that goal.

But if you choose to do something every day to get to that goal, there’s a second decision that you have to make and you have to choose who you are being in that moment.  Are you going to be the person that procrastinates or you’re going to be the person that gets up and continues to march towards your goal?  Are you going to show up ready to work and give your best and your all, or are you going to phone it in?

You have the ability to make those decisions, to choose that action and then choose who you’re going to be in that moment.  When I was cast as a lead in a movie that’s filming down here, I thought to myself, I could choose to read the part and acted out the way I think it should be acted out or I can choose to actually put myself in this character and live this character and give a performance that is not comfortable for me, Alicia, but will fit and suit this character.

So I had to make that decision because I had never acted before and I’m doing this movie.  I’m casting this movie and I’m like “Well, how do I do this?”  I had to make the decision who am I going to be.  Am I going to be the person that they say, “Oh yeah, nice job,” and then cast somebody else or am I really going to turn into an actor and become this person?

And so that’s kind of the job that you have when you’re building your confidence, “Am I just going to phone it in and act the part or am really going to become who I meant to be?  Am going to become this person that I visualize that is awesome, great, wonderful, and everybody loves and it’s totally authentic to you because it’s coming from within from inside of you from within and it’s not coming from anything external.  So you choose who’s going to bubble up from me inside of you and show up on the outside.

Andrea:  Hmm love it!  OK, Alicia, I know that you have a free download for people, so can you tell us a about that?

Alicia Couri:  Absolutely!  It’s my first book.  Again, I didn’t know that I was going to write a book.  It’s the first book that I wrote and it’s called Your Signature Style:  Unlocking the Confidence, Style and Influence of the Savvy CEO, and also talked a little bit about my journey that I mentioned earlier from Australia and some of those struggles.

One of the most impactful chapters in that book is chapter 2 when we talked about overcoming fears and how to release step out and not consider the fear but do it, do what you need to do and do it in a very great way.  So I love chapter 2, so hopefully, you will enjoy chapter 2 as well.

Andrea:  How can we find that?  We’ll definitely link to it in a show notes, is that sufficient or do you want to give out another link?

Alicia Couri:  You can link it in the show notes and they can also go to my website, it’s www.aliciacouri.com and there will be a link to the book.  I know it’s available for a limited time since it is on Amazon.  I do make it available anytime I do a radio show, television show, or podcast.  I make it available for the listeners and the viewers.

So if you can go to my website, the download will be there but it will only be there for a limited time.

Andrea:  Gotcha!  OK and we’ll have it in the show notes at least for that limited time.

Alright, thank you so much, Alicia.  It was so great to _____ with you today and hear how you came into your own voice of influence.  We have so much in common and I’m just really grateful and I want to thank you for your voice of influence in the world.

Alicia Couri:  Thank you!  There are two things I want to say about what you just said, I know we’re _____, but one is that it’s so important when start sharing your voice and your story how much you realize how many people can relate to what you’re going through and so anytime you have an opportunity to share your journey with someone and how you’ve overcome and some of the tools and tips that you have, it is a value because they’re also going through some of that and they can benefit from what you have to share.

I’m also launching a podcast soon, so look out for that.

Andrea:  Yes that’s right and once that’s all ready to go and everything, we’ll definitely put that in the show notes as well.

Alicia Couri:  Perfect!

Andrea:  Awesome and yes good luck with that.  That’s exciting.  Alright, thank you so much, Alicia, and we’ll see you soon.

Alicia Couri:  I appreciate it.  Thank you, Andrea!

How to Make & Keep Your Message Relevant with Joe Calloway

Episode 58

There are new businesses, thought leaders, influencers, coaches, consultants, you name it coming onto the scene every single day. So, how you can stand out and make sure your business, and voice, is relevant in a crowded marketplace? This week’s guest is going to tell us exactly that!

Joe Calloway works with leaders to help make great companies even better. He is a business author and conducts interactive sessions with leaders on how they can better simplify, focus, and execute in their businesses. Joe is also a partner in The Disruption Lab; which is a consulting group that helps companies with innovation and transformation.

In this episode, Joe talks about differentiating yourself by creating genuine value for your clients or customers, why he believes his influence is greater in smaller settings, why he takes a collaborative approach to his work, why just being different from your competition isn’t enough, the simple way to get the marketplace to “beat a path to your door,” how simplifying something is more difficult that it being complicated, and so much more!

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Joe Calloway Voice of Influence Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

Hey, hey! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!

Today, I have with me Joe Calloway. I’m so thrilled to have him because he works with leaders to help make great companies even better. He’s a business author and conducts interactive sessions with leaders on how they can better simplify, focus, and execute in their businesses.

Joe is also a partner in the Disruption Lab, which is a consulting group that helps companies with innovation and transformation. Oh, all these words that I love. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife, Annette and her daughters, Jessica, and Kate.

Joe, welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!

Joe Calloway: Hey, Andrea, thank you so much for having me!

Andrea: So what would you say is the core of the message that you have in your business with your voice of influence, what are you trying to get across to the world or to leaders?

Joe Calloway: Yeah, I think that if I boil it down, it would be about value, how differentiate about creating genuine value for your clients or customers. And with leaders, it’s how do they create value as being a place to work for their employees and then also how do you lift that team of employees so that the entire organization is creating value. That’s mostly, as you said in the introduction, I mostly work with leadership groups now, which I love doing. It’s funny, after doing this forever; I’m really having more fun now than I think I ever had.

Andrea: Why is that?

Joe Calloway: You know, I think I’m like a bowling ball that bounces around and finally gets in the grove. I think I’ve got my grove on. I’m doing a message that I enjoy and that message continually evolves and changes. It has to, because I’m talking with businesses and business changes all the time. I’ve also gone from, I used to give speeches, I mean I would give a speech to 10,000 people or 5,000 people and it was made you in all the talking and the spotlight was on me and I really got sick of it.

Oddly enough, I got bored with it. And now, I prefer to say, I do conversations. I work with much smaller groups and it’s very conversational and, to tell you the truth, I have more meaningful influence. So I’m having more fun. I’m working with groups that I love to work with and I’m doing it in a style, in a format that’s fun for me.

Andrea: Hmm, yeah. I love those smaller groups where you can really go back and forth. So you feel like your influence is greater in this smaller setting because why?

Joe Calloway: I think because it truly does lend itself to that word that you used which was conversation. The group I’m going to be working with tomorrow is about 60 people and it’s going to be a very much a roll-up your sleeves and I’ll talk then I’ll give them something to work on and then we will talk together about what they came up with.

Here’s the coolest thing that I’ve discovered, Andrea, I think I’d do my best to work and I give them the most value in terms of my ideas in what I’ve learned when I’m responding to something that they just said as opposed to me going on with my outline, which I do. But I kind of set the stage for the conversation and it’s in that conversation that I think I have the greatest impact.

Andrea: It sounds to me like you’re talking about a difference between content and insight. Because content, it seems like we can share that and then they have to go and apply it, but with insight you’re able to offer something that’s specific to them in their situation.

Joe Calloway: Yeah, it is that, and I’ll tell you something interesting about this speaking business, a lot of people start out and they really just kind of do and book reports. They’re talking about what other people have said or written, which is fine. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. And then a lot of times, the next day, you start digging out the information on your own. But sometimes where your career leads you, and this is where I’m think and hope I am now, is the people that I work with they’re saying, “Well, Joe, what do you think? What do you believe about this? What’s your opinion about this?

You know, it takes some years and some going around the truck a few times to build up the credibility to, I think, legitimately have that kind of bliss with credibility and I hope I have accomplished that. But it’s that give and take of “Here’s what I think, what do you guys think?” And tomorrow I’m going to be doing a lot of that. I’m going to be saying, “Look, everybody in this room an experienced leader, what do think in addition to what I think?” So I think the combination of those opinions and those insights gives all of us greater insight.

Andrea: Hmm love it! I know that you are all about this collaborative environment and I’m curious if that sort of always been an important thing to you, you know, this bringing value, creating value and doing it with this collaborative environment? Is it personal to you in any kind of way?

Joe Calloway: You know it’s interesting. It’s funny; I just made a short promotional video, just a couple of minutes about how I work. The word that I focused on was exactly the word that you just used, which was collaborative. And what I say is I’m very collaborative in the way that I work, not just in the decision itself but I’m very collaborative before the event or the meeting because I want to know what’s going on with them.

It doesn’t happen much anymore but every now and then _____ would say, “Joe, just come in and do your thing.” And I’m thinking, I don’t know what my thing is until I know what’s going on with you guys.” I have some sort of contexts so that this really has some meaning for you guys. Yeah, it’s personal in a couple of ways. One way that it’s personal is that I simply find it personally much more satisfying for me to make it about them. Because a lot of times, we’ve all set and listen to people and we’re thinking, “OK, this is interesting and this is all well and good.” But I don’t really see how it applies to me.

The reaction that I want because it’s more fun and, because duh, it’s good for my business, the reaction that I want is for them to be thinking, “My gosh, I can do what he’s talking about and it makes all the sense in the world for me to do that. So I’m gonna go tomorrow and start doing that.”

So I do try to make it personal in just that way of working, the really highly customized messaging. Andrea, it’s just more fun for me because I get bored if I do the same thing over and over. I’ve got a very low threshold for boredom. I think it’s a double edge sword. It’s a blessing and a curse. But anyway, it’s the way I’m wired. So yeah, I like to make the messaging as personally relevant, and that’s another I think key word, as relevant as I can possibly make it.

Andrea: OK, so we’re talking about differentiation and that’s a big piece of your message. What kind of suggestions or what approach do you have to differentiation?

Joe Calloway: There are a lot of people out there and a lot of businesses that are falling into a trap. You look at the root of the word differentiation and the root of it is different, and yet, I think it’s a mistake for people to sit down and say, “OK everybody, we’ve got to be different. We’ve got to be different in the competition and if we’re different then we’ll do better.” Look, everybody can put on a funny hat and that will make you different. The best different and the only different that matters is to be better.

If you got a restaurant, you can be different through some sort of gimmick but that’s going to wear off. But if you’re different because you’re better, because the food is better, because the value is better, because your service is better, you know, just go down the list. If you’re different because you’re better that’s the wisest thing. Oh my gosh, what was it? I cannot take credit for this. I read it on the website of some company, who I would love to credit them but I simply can’t remember who it was. But it said, bells and buzzers wear off, value never dies.

So for me, that’s not key, key, key point on differentiation. Look, in every aspect of everything that you do and how you serve your particular market, how can you be better? How can you improve on that?

Andrea: OK, so value meaning improving what you have and making sure that what you offer is something of value to the other person. I’m assuming that’s what you’re talking about.

Joe Calloway: Yeah, it is. I tell you what, in business today more and more that’s getting to the point. Here’s a question that I post to my clients a lot, I’d say, “Something’s gonna put you out of business in the next five years, maybe the next three years or maybe quicker than that. Something will put you out of business, meaning the way you exist today. Now the question is, is somebody else gonna put you out of business or are you gonna put you out of business?”

Andrea: Right.

Joe Calloway: By moving on to be the next thing that you need to be or the next iteration or the next state of evolution for your business so that you can better serve whoever your market is because the market changes all the time. I mean, it just constantly changes and we all have to get better.

So a lot of differentiation is rooted in, what do we need to change? What do we need to start doing that we’re not doing? What do we need to be better at that we’re already doing? And this could be the biggest one, what do we need to start doing? That’s a tough one, Andrea. It could be that you say, “Well, everything is working. I’m not gonna start doing anything,” and that’s a trap. You’ve got to be one step ahead and figure out how you need to change because if you don’t, the market is going to tell you and it may tell you in a very unpleasant way.

Andrea: So, let’s say you have a couple of, maybe three or four leaders in a room that they realize that they need to stay on top of this. But how did they decide which things to target or is there…

Joe Calloway: Great question. That’s a great, great question. Let me tell you, there are a lot of big companies _____, you mentioned the Disruption Lab that I’m a partner in, we’re working with some very big corporations. But what we’re doing is taking a couple of people and working with them in their assignment from their employers, from that corporation is you need to think like a startup. We need to have part of this company thinking very entrepreneurially.

And the nature of a startup is you say, “OK, here’s the product or service based on what you wanna do, what you think has value, or what you think people will pay for it.” Here’s the product or service that I’m going to set up and then you put it out there and guess what, the market is going to give you some information and you’re going to say, “Oops, I think maybe we need to change course.”

And maybe then you’ll need to change course again and again or maybe you need to say the market is telling us, they’re not interested in this. We need to start over. But the nature of starting something new, and you have to look at it this way, is it’s largely a learning process. Now, where do we find these areas of opportunity? Here’s a really good place to look, what can you make easier for people to do? What can you make easier for people to buy? Look, at least I have a couple of examples.

Andrea: I love this by the way.

Joe Calloway: Say that again?

Andrea: I love this, what can we do to make things easier.” Keep it going.

Joe Calloway: Think about this, why is Amazon such a name of success and such a master in the marketplace? Because they made it so easy to buy anything, I mean anything particularly an Amazon Prime member, which more and more people are all the time, you press one button and you own it. It’s getting to the point where pretty soon, you’ll press the button and in 10 minutes a drone will be outside your front door with whatever that you just bought.

OK, look at the company that everybody’s sites is being the poster company for disruption, Uber. What did Uber do? They made it easier to get a ride. So if you can figure out an easier, simpler way to do almost anything, the market place as the old saying goes will be a path to your door.

Andrea: Hmmm love that! OK, so I know another thing that you talked about, it’s kind of related to easier is simpler and simplifying, which you have very, very eloquently stated in videos and in your website things about how being complicated is easier than simplifying. So talk to us about these concepts.

Joe Calloway: Yeah, I think in the video on my website. I don’t know where this word comes from. But I said, any knuckle head can make something complicated which is true. Listen, I will have a room full of anybody, but certainly if I’ve got a room for the leaders, I’ll say this, I’ll say, “Raise your hand if you frequently have this thought that the audience you know I think were making this way more complicated than it needs to be.” And Andrea, every hand in the room goes up every single time. We all make it, meaning pretty much everything more complicated than it needs to be.

I challenged them by saying, “Look, if you’re a leader,” but really this applies to anybody, “but certainly if you’re a leader, I would challenge you that one of your core responsibilities is to simplify the complicated.” I’ll give you a great example. I was working with a nonprofit 30 years ago. They were wanting to rethink their purpose in how to go about creating more value to their marketplace as a nonprofit. Well, they had a three paragraphs statement of purpose. It was kind of a vision statement. Three paragraphs and the paragraphs were kind of long, this is here we are and this is what we do.

So I charged them with boiling that down to the absolute essence of what it meant? Now, this was a nonprofit that works with young women, with girls in all sorts of ways helping them better themselves. What they boiled that three paragraph statement down to was three words and the words were, We Empower Girls. And they were so fired up over tapping into that _____ that in months and months later they said, it’s the most empowering thing for ourselves that we ever did was to simplify that goofy, complicated mission vision purpose statement.

So yes, simplification is kind of like making it easy but that’s a great thing for anybody to do in their business. Well, I tell people, go back and simplify. They say, “Simplify what?” And my answer is “Everything, everything that you can possibly simplify, simplify it.”

Andrea: Here’s what I have gotten…I have had some frustrations with this area and I’ve seen this a lot in working with other people who were trying to simplify their messaging. That is just doing it down to those few words like you’re talking about without becoming too abstract or confusing.

Joe Calloway: Yeah, because you sure don’t want to be confusing. You know, the first mission I think in a lot of communication, and this applies to your employees, to your customers; is number one, they have to understand to what you’re talking about. They have to get it. My gosh, I looked at my own website, this was about four years ago and I just look at it through my hands up and I thought, “You can’t even tell what business I’m in from this thing. This is so convoluted, so abstract, and so complicated.”

I’ve kind of boiled it down to, for me, I can have three paragraphs describing what I did and I boiled it down to, “I help leaders make great companies even better.” That opens up a question, which is how do you that? How does that work? But that’s fine. On the front end, at least I w ant them to get that he works with leaders to make their companies better. They may not want that. I may not be a good match for them. That’s fine, that’s okay. I don’t want to be working with the wrong people and they don’t want to be working with me.

So you bring at such a great point. You bring at such a great point because if there’s not clarity and that you know when I talk about simplicity, the very next step in that is to create clarity and that leads to the next step, which is so that you can create focus on what matters most and what’s most important. The winners are not the people that do the most things, the winners are the people that do the most important things and do them extremely well and with great consistency.

Andrea: And they choose the most important things based on how they have simplified…I mean, how do they choose?

Joe Calloway: Yeah, I generally look at a couple of things. The things that are most important to me are the things that will help me create the greatest value for my clients coupled with that will help my business grow. And then the third element which is that is something that I want to do because listen, Andrea, I have been caught in the trap so many times.

I mean, this is classic because I’m constantly telling people not to do this and I was the guilty as one in the room. I’ll put it this way, don’t get stuck doing something that you’re really good at but that you don’t want to do. I have gotten stuck doing things that I did well and there was a market for it and I didn’t want to do it. It wasn’t fun. It didn’t make me happy but I was really good at it and it was making money. So I got caught in that dumbo trap and it’s hard. It’s hard to give up something that’s working.

Andrea: Oh definitely!

Joe Calloway: It’s taking me a long time but I’m starting to get the hang of it.

Andrea: And so the reason why you shouldn’t get stuck in it is?

Joe Calloway: Well, you know, a couple of things, you could get stuck in anything particularly today. You’re putting yourself at some point in the future, and probably the fairly near future, and this goes back what I was talking about earlier, if you get stuck in anything, you’re going to go out of business or your business is little by little going to go away.

The other thing is, and I’ll go back to the very personal _____ of it which is, I mean, come on, what’s worth paying the price of doing something that you can’t stand to do. Listen, I understand the real world, there are people that have jobs they don’t love. It drives me crazy when I hear people say, “Oh you have to be patient about your job. You have to love your job and if you don’t then you’re a loser.” Well, wait a minute. There are some people that have to support families and they got to have a job and it may not be the job of their dreams. Come on, that’s just real life and that’s about responsibility.

Having said that, I am a great proponent of doing whatever it is that you can do to bring fulfillment into your life and joy into your life anyway you can and for some people that means what they do after work, away from work. But certainly for an entrepreneur, for somebody that has their own business, come on, we’ve got a leeway to try things.

The trick is, it maybe something you want to do but there’s another part of the formula. Is there anybody willing to pay you to do it? And there a lot of people that say, “Well, all I have to do is be patient about what I’m doing and I’ll be a success.” Yeah, if there’s anybody that wants to pay you to do it, you will be but it could be you’re passionate about what you do and nobody has the least interest in giving you the credit cards for you to do it so that’s a problem. That’s an indication you might need to shift a little bit.

Andrea: So I’m still curious about the simplicity thing because I interviewed your friend, Colby Juvenville, in episode 51 and he and I were talking about how it’s hard for him to simplify or not necessarily simplify, because I might be talking about two different things, but I want to see how they fit together for you.

Joe Calloway: Sure!

Andrea: But I’m similar to him in that. It’s easy for me to get a lot of plates going and I kind of enjoy spinning plates. I kind of enjoy having a variety of things going on and going on in my head sometimes. But then, it does, I think, become a problem when it comes to trying to simplify the message about what is the market message or the brand message or whatever because of so many different things.

How do people who are kind of on that creative spectrum of, we’d like all over the place a little bit but at the same time there’s this necessary piece of needing to simplify in order to communicate and actually grow something?

Joe Calloway: Yeah a couple of everything, and number one, I saw that you interviewed Colby. Colby is great. I like Colby a lot. He’s a smart, smart guy and great of what he does. You’re talking to somebody who loves nothing more than the next idea. Oh my gosh, I’m like the classic. I’m like a dog, squirrel. I mean, I’ll have a great idea and I’ll start to execute it but then I look up and go, “Oh but here’s a new shiny idea over there and I wanna do that too.”

So for me simplification partly means discipline about understanding the difference between a true opportunity and a distraction. I would never advice anybody to not try new things. And if you are wired such that you love to have, as you said a lot of different plates spinning, great, do that. There are people that are at their most productive when they are doing it.

Go back to Amazon. Oh my gosh, Amazon is getting into healthcare. Amazon is going to be into everything eventually and yet, Amazon still has to have some sort of unifying vision that makes all of these pieces work together. And I go back to what Amazon does; everything that Amazon gets into, they get into it to make something simpler or to make something easier, to make it easier to buy stuff, or to make it simpler to access healthcare.

So you can have a lot of different things going on but you still have to simplify in your mind to the point that you can keep up with at all, that you can manage at all. As you said, and this is really important, simplify to the marketplace so that they get it what your brand is about. Because if they look at your brand and go, “I can’t figure out what she does, she’s all over the map.” That’s not good for business.

For me, I do a few different things but it’s all now around effective leadership. And so I try to simplify the value of proposition but my delivery system, the way I deliver that value can take any number of different forms.

Andrea: Oh I like that. So simplify the value of proposition in what you’re saying what you offer but you can offer it in many different ways.

Joe Calloway: Yeah, exactly!

Andrea: Yeah, I love that. Oh this is so good. I’m so happy that you’re here, Joe. And I am curious, if you were to take this conversation we’ve been having and pull out something that you really think that somebody who has or wants to have a voice of influence. They want to make their voice matter more for a cause or inside of their business as a leader or even as a speaker, consultant; what piece of influence or advice you have around how they can make their voice matter for today?

Joe Calloway: There are a number of things that comes to mind and I just go to, I mean I have to do that, Andrea. I’ve been in business a very long time. I’ve got to work on those elements that you’ve just sited all the time for me to stay in business because the business I’m in has gotten way more competitive over the last few years. A lot more people doing it now, and my competitors, I hear people say, “I’m so good. I don’t really have any competition.” I think, “Gosh, what’s life like in that planet because on my planet, I’ve got tons of competition and they’re so good.”

I mean, these leaders are so good at what they do. I have to constantly stay on top of it. So a couple of things about creating value and truly being a voice of influence and one of them is this is to be 100% you. You know it’s funny, I don’t do so much anymore but I used to work with executives on giving more effective presentations. The main thing I have to do with them was get them out of their heads about giving a speech.

And I would say, please don’t give a speech, don’t ever, ever, ever give a speech just talk to them. You’ve got something that you feel is important to say and if you don’t, you shouldn’t be up in front of them in the first place, but if you do have something to say that’s important just talk to them. You’re not supposed to be in a particular way. You’re supposed to be you, 100% you, because people sense that and if they sense that you are fully present and if it’s truly coming from your heart with what you’re telling them then you’re going to have more impact.

I do think there’s a lot to be said for what we’ve been talking about in terms of getting clarity yourself on what you’re core message is. I’m not saying, it needs to be just one thing but you’re core messaging. I’ll put it that way, because if we don’t have clarity on it then nobody else is going to have clarity on it. And another part is listening and listening on the front end.

I can’t do a presentation unless I feel like I have absolute clarity on who I’m talking to, what their concerns are and what’s _____ for them. I’ve been relate my message to that. It doesn’t mean that I write something brand new just to suit them. That strikes me as kind of faking it.

And here’s the other thing, sometimes I find out that I’m not the right match and I want to know that, because my gosh, any of us that have been in front of the audience and we got that realization of, “Uh uh, I really shouldn’t be in front of these people.” So I want to know on the front in, “Am I the right match and how can my message match up with their concerns? How can I be relevant in such a way that truly creates value?”

Andrea: Being relevant with and also being 100% you.

Joe Calloway: Yeah.

Andrea: Great, I love that! Well, thank you so much, Joe. I really appreciate you taking time to be with us today in sharing so much wisdom and so much inspiration for us as we move forward with our own voice of influence. Thank you for your voice in the world.

Joe Calloway: Well this is…can we go this again tomorrow?

Andrea: I love that.

Joe Calloway: This is fun. Thank you so much for having me. Listen, I don’t ever ask people to agree with me but I hope that what I say at least provokes a thought or two. If I’m a catalyst for people thinking about what they do and what they want to do and what they should do then I’m happy. I hope we were a catalyst at least.

Andrea: I’m sure. I know that that is the case so thank you so much!

 

 

END

 

Find Your Message & Superpower in the Voice of Influence Academy

Episode 29 with Linette Bumford

Do you ever feel like you just know you’re feeling a tug on your heart to offer more of yourself to the world in some way, but you’re not sure what it is? A year ago, Linette Bumford came to the first iteration of the Voice of Influence Academy (at the time called the Core Message Course) with that feeling.

She knew she wanted to write a book but she wasn’t entirely sure of the message. Through her own exploration and with a little assistance from different aspects of the course, she came to truly own the gifts of her personality and gain a clearer sense of her core message and how to use it.

It allowed me to take really difficult things captive and own them and not look at them like scars but swords. And at the end, that little spark will be an unstoppable fire. When I was done with the class, I was unstoppable.

Linette Bumford is a Jesus Follower, Wife, and Mother. She is an ambitious, focused, and determined thought leader. A veteran of the USAF, MBA graduate, trusted advisor in her profession, and author. Linette drives excellence, confidence, and high quality standards to every aspect of her personal and professional life. She is passionate about inspiring others to invite failure to seek wisdom, live with vibrant boldness, and to achieve their dreams and goals through practical and real action.
Linette’s awe-inspiring story of finding humility, unwavering perseverance, and the tenacious determination in spite of overwhelming obstacles is expected to release in 2018 in her book called Getting There: An Inspirational Guide to Navigate Life with Unstoppable Perseverance. She lives in Maryland with her husband, daughter, and their dog Titan.

You can find Linette at www.linettebumford.com.

Sign up for the “How to Focus & Infuse Contagious Passion in your Message as a Personal Brand” Master Class by clicking here.

Learn more about the Voice of Influence Academy here.

Full Transcript

Linette Bumford: For a long time I was trying to figure out what I wanted to say and there’s so much in my history that I thought “Well, do you just start with one thing and maybe do a series and whatever?” But when I was going through the Core Message class and kind of making the transition from working fulltime to part time, I was going through a couple of different things.

I had surgery on my wrist, which stopped me from writing for a little while and everyone just keeps on asking me because there were so much going on. They were like “How are you doing?” How’s your wrist? How’s this and how’s that?” And the words “I’m getting there. I’m getting there and I’m getting.” I think we say that so kind of haphazardly where I was like “Yeah, I’m getting there.” I really start to think about what that means, you know what it that means when you’re getting there.

So I thought, “OK, let me break that down a little bit.” And really I think it’s a couple of different things but for me it’s that journey of life. We all have an ultimate destination but what is getting there really look like. There are these two words, getting there means you’re getting, which is the act of doing something, right? Either obtaining it or moving through, but it’s an actionable word and that was when I think that I was passionate about with my message was having an actionable thing, you know doing something with your faith.

I was talking to my husband this morning and I was like “You know, I think as I prepare to go on a mission trip in January and preparing to do a testimony. And I think “Oh testimony of my life where you’re getting up in a puppet and sharing some crazy story.” But I do really think about what my testimony was and early on in my life, I was a believer but it was until later on in my life that I became a follower of Jesus, you know what I mean?

Andrea: Hmmm

Linette Bumford: And it was kind of breaking all of that down, so it was believing in something with no action but then later on following Jesus which was actually putting my faith and my trust in Jesus to where I can actually do something about it. So “Getting There” to me is a journey of using inspirational stories but also just some practical every day signs to help us navigate through whatever life turning us because the Bible says we’re going to go through stuff. We’re going to be faced with challenges but it’s about navigating through those with the everyday practical signs that God puts in front of us. Yeah, I’m really so excited about it. I know it took me around six to eight months to get to a certain point but it’s just flowing so easily and I’m so excited!

Andrea: Oh good! What do you think it’s taking you to get to that point where you’re in the flow?

Linette Bumford: I think for me, it was trying different things, right? Again, it was going down to a certain path like if I was inspired by something, I was saying “Alright, let me take that. Let me see how that fixed.” I think we had this conversation before; you try different things on to see how they fit. And sometimes we’re like “Huh, this looks good but it’s kind of uncomfortable.”

And so it’s jeans or that outfit where you’re like “Oh this is so cute but really not for me,” or then I would do something else and it was too simple where I was like “Well, this doesn’t really accentuate certain parts of my story.” And it was just continuing to try different things and at the end of the day, I thought you know getting back to that authenticity like “What is it about me?”

I actually started asking people. I was like “Why do you ask me? When you think of me, what goes through your mind?” And sometimes it was asking for that real honesty from people that you trusted and I really appreciate getting that feedback because it gave me things to literally, I would put sticky notes on my wall and I would look back.

Sometimes you have to take a step back and I would look and say “OK.” It would almost form by itself. You know, I pray a lot. I would pray over the words or the feelings and just putting all that out there and asking God, “OK, God, what did you make me for? Why did you make me this way?”

I think one of the key aspects was going through the Fascinate Assessment. I told you this, it was when I took that assessment and I read through that, it put it altogether and I was like “Yup, that’s me, ” and then it forced me to own it. I could no longer look at those characteristics and not completely own them and then it gave me permission. I felt like it gave me permission and then I was like “Alright, this is my outfit.”

It’s like superheroes like Captain America is not Spiderman and Wonder Woman…they are made a certain way. They all have that superhero commonality but they all were given specific gifts. And I think in any of their stories, I think they were confused about what’s happening. We are all are confused by what’s happening to us but it’s when we come into our gifts that I think is when we truly blossom and we can fully be utilized by God with confidence.

That was my biggest thing. You wouldn’t know that probably in my professional life because I had all kinds of confidence over there. But I think in my personal life, I didn’t feel like I have the confidence to own what God had done in my life that it would mean anything. When I say that it would mean anything outside of what it was doing for me, right?

Andrea: Exactly, yes!

Linette Bumford: I was like “Yeah, this is great that God has hold me through so many different things and it has been the fuel that has helped me succeed or helped maybe a couple of people here and there that I could actually be used for a greater good maybe. Because I think sometimes we take our faith and we take our struggles and we put them on a box and we put this puzzle together and we’re like “Oh great, what a beautiful picture. Now, I see what that was all about. OK, put it back on the box and maybe we want something else.”

We don’t really say that “Wait a minute, you can put that puzzle together, you can frame it and other people can be inspired by it.” So I think that just again growing in my faith and really praying about what God wanting me to do. I think I mentioned it to you before this book concept of sharing my story if you will was something I thought about 10 or 12 years ago, but it just sat there. I was like “Yeah, OK, sure.”

But I got to tell you and I’ve said this probably a hundred times, just the cover of your book alone was all it took for me to go like “OK, God, I hear you.” Like I had been frozen in that area of my life for that whole time like God said “You’re gonna do this. But I just wouldn’t let Him thaw that part of me, you know what I mean?

And it was so profound that I told someone recently at work you know and they were like “What made you want to write a book?’ And I said “The fire inside of me and the inspiration if you will of the Holy Spirit was so strong that I felt like if I didn’t that it felt like I’d be doing something wrong.” I almost felt disobedient for not following rather than fearful of not succeeding, you know what I’m saying?

Andrea: Yeah!

Linette Bumford: Don’t you think because they’re like “What if you fail?” I’m like “If I don’t do this it will be a failure.” So it’s not about how successful it will be, it’s about doing what I’ve been called to do out of obedience to what the Lord has done for me. Then it became where I was like “Well, I have to do it. No, turning back now.”

You know, it was holding myself accountable to that for once because sometimes I’ll dream big dreams but I won’t hold myself or let people hold me accountable. But this was the big dream that I said “Alright, this is super real.” I started reading books, “OK, how do I do this?” Because that’s what I do, I’ll go learn. And so one of the first books that I read was You Have to Start Talking About this and Not Shut Up, like you have to talk, talk, and talk and tell anyone who would listen and you tell them because that will keep you from just putting it back on the shelf.

Andrea: Yeah, so who did you talk about it with? Was that a significant part of your accountability then?

Linette Bumford: Yes, absolutely! Neighbors, friends, community group, church and then obviously, I had to make a huge shift at work. I mean, the moment I sit down with boss that’s when it became really real.

Andrea: At what point did you sit down with your boss and what did you tell him?

Linette Bumford: Probably the day after I saw you book cover.

Andrea: Wow!

Linette Bumford: I’m telling you, if I didn’t take action immediately then I don’t know if I would be where I am today. Like it was one of those things that God said “OK, you’ve already gone down these paths where you’ve worked for me and not done anything. You already know what’s gonna happen if you don’t take action immediately.”

So I knew that I had to verbalize it immediately. If it wasn’t the next day, it was definitely within a couple of days that I sat down and I said…I didn’t say I’m going to quit my job but I went to my boss and said “I had such a disturbing, like it was a positive disturbing feeling in my soul.” I was like “I don’t know what this looks like, I will get back to you but I just need to tell you that something is going to change very soon.”

He was receptive and he completely understood and I said “I’ll get back to you in a couple of days but I just wanna let you know that I’m strongly concentrating a change in what I’m doing right now.” After I kind of wrapped my mind around things, you know, I had some good conversation with my husband then we realized that this book and me writing was definitely something God was putting in my heart. It was just too strong to ignore. I think it was a week later when I said “Hey, I can’t do this, what I’m doing fulltime, anymore.”

He was fully prepared I think emotionally to be like “OK, good luck with that.” But God immediately showed up so quickly to be able to work part time. You don’t have to know the whole journey to know what it looks like, you just have to take the next step.

And I think what I try to tell people is you don’t have to know what the whole journey is going to look like; you just have to take the next step. You just have to put one out there. I think I’ve mentioned this once before. There was a scene in a very old movie that I used to watch as a kid called the Labyrinth and they have to get across this really disgusting moat or something and these rocks come up from underneath just as they’re staying, right?

But they had to have faith as they kept moving that those rocks are going continue, otherwise, they could be stuck out there in the middle, right? Or how are they going to do that and I think that’s how we feel, right? I’m going to be stuck out there in the middle with no way out but that’s just how God is. He’s like “Get out of the boat. Don’t worry about the storm. Don’t worry about the waves, just step out of the boat.”

And in those moments, it’s still really hard for me to explain people I’m like “It’s inexplicable.” It literally feels like God is right there. This massive force is just in you and in the moment and I think that’s all the things that we see that’s what inspires us that’s what get us excited.

Andrea: Oh yeah, it’s so empowering. I mean, I that weird vulnerable sense. It’s in your weakness, this is when I’m strong and it’s like that when you are totally vulnerable and you’re totally putting yourself in that place where you’re about ready to fall but you’re stepping out in faith that’s when all of a sudden, you feel so strong. But you know that that power doesn’t come from you which makes it even more reliable.

Linette Bumford: It’s ridiculous. Again, it’s so hard to explain but you did a very good job there. I think our minds and the world and things around us tell us like it’s about finding that self fuel if you will. But I’m like “You don’t have to do that because then you’re relying solely on yourself and that is the limited resource or anything. There’s not enough of you.” And I think it’s in that sense when God shows up and says “You don’t have to do any of this by yourself.”

Andrea: Have you seen Wonder Woman yet?

Linette Bumford: I haven’t.

Andrea: OK, you totally should. You’re going to love it.

Linette Bumford: I know.

Andrea: What I love about it is that it’s not teaching me anything, it’s just giving me imagery for things that I already know to be true. One of those things is that like she knows inside from a very early age. You’ll see it in her eyes when she was a little girl. She knows that she’s meant to do something really big. She’s got it in her.

Linette Bumford: Oh yes!

Andrea: But as she grows up every battle that she fights, she kind of like owns herself a little bit more and realizes her own power a little bit more. And every time and every battle was bigger and it was more intense too as she gets older. I just think of that it’s so incredible. If we don’t get into the fight if we don’t go into battle, we won’t know the kind of power that we have.

Linette Bumford: Right. Again, going through like I bring up the Fascinate Assessment because it really helped me. When I did the assessment and I was the maestro, it talked about this confidence. And I thought “Where does confidence come from? Where do people just know that they can do a thing?” Sometimes it’s practice, something as simple as riding a bike, right? How do kids get that confidence of riding a bike with those training gears? Well, it’s because they’ve done it over and over and over and then they just know. Well, I’ve been there. I’ve done that.

I thought about that, even in that sense this like of kind of conductor, this maestro; more times than not, they’ve been in those seats. They know what those folks are looking for. They know the different parts of the orchestra or they already know how to play multiple instruments themselves or things like that. They’ve experienced what they people who are looking to them for leadership, they’ve been there. They’ve been in their shoes and that confidence comes from, like you said, being in the battle, being a part of those experiences so that you speak form a place of truth.

I’ve seen people, I’ve listened to different speakers, and even some pastors like they speak truth but not from place of experience. And there’s a difference when you can speak to someone with truth and the experience because it brings so much more power. Like I’m not just telling you what the Bible says, I’m not just telling you what these folks said, I’m not just telling you what you already know from the truth, I’m telling you because I have been in that battle, I have done that thing.

When I’m at work and someone asks me to do something like give this speech or presentation and I don’t know the content, I am funky mess out there. You know, I’m scared. I’m nervous. I’m shaking. I’m stumbling and I don’t know what I’m trying to say because I don’t understand the content you know what I mean? I’m like “I don’t know what I’m saying up here. I can’t speak to you confidently about something I know nothing about nor should I be,” you know what I mean?

Andrea: Yeah!

Linette Bumford: About a year ago, I’ve done a presentation and I knew every detail. I knew what the people in the audience were going to think. I knew what they were going through. I knew they were going to think I was crazy. I knew how much work it was, but I was so confident because I was like “We’ve been there. We did that. We went down the wrong roads. We tried everything. This is wherever we came up with.”

After that session, I remember just kind of like walking away and finding a quiet space and I just kind of smile you know like “Did I just do that?” It was that place that said “yes” because you were speaking from a place of confidence. And so again when everything came together after I took the Fascinate Assessment, I realized that God was just asking me to speak from a place of my experience not talk to people about things I could not relate to, you know, maybe that’s for another day. He probably asks more experiences lined up for me and at that time I can speak from that place, but it’s about just owning the battles I’ve already been through and sharing the truth and love, right?

Like in sharing truth and I do have ways sometimes of being a little too forward or direct with people, but at the same time, you know I think that’s why my girlfriend who I asked I said “You know, why do you come to me?” And she said “Because if I really want the real truth, I know you’ll give it to me.” And I was like “OK,” it was a common theme with anyone I spoke to.

Andrea: Oh yeah. The whole point of the Core Message course, the one you took and the academy that I’m trying to make now that I’m excited about, I mean, the whole point is to get down to that, like to get down to that work and say it. Don’t try to talk in generalities, number one. And number two, don’t try to say something…again, we care about a lot of different things. How do you decide what you’re going to actually end up focusing on? I’m so convinced that it has to do with our experience.

Linette Bumford: It does. I absolutely 200% agree with you and I think for me, it was mapping out my experiences. Even that, I told you that it was one of the hardest things I had and I was like “Oh gosh where to start,” you know. And it doesn’t mean like “Oh, if I don’t have dozens and dozens of experiences that I still can speak from that place, you might have one thing that is very important to you that’s OK. You own that one thing and go with it that’s it. You don’t have to have many obstacles. You can have just one.” Like you were saying, you might believe in the broader sense.

Again, going back to the kind of superhero like they all believe in good but how they achieve and support and defines good is in different ways and always that you got to be everything for everybody. And again, it’s going back to what are you? I’ve got good friends, they are the heart. They are the encouragers and sometimes I get jealous because I’m like “I’m so not made that way. I wish I could be like that.”

But then I have to remind myself that they aren’t like me you know what I mean? And they probably in these certain characters speak about me and I tell them I’m like “I wanna do that.” They would probably see the things in reverse so I can admire what God is doing in them and in those gifts and somehow encourage that to them and in turn, it’s kind of like this reciprocation. Their encouragement or their gifts helps me continue to be the way God made me. Once you get that, it’s such a freeing feeling.

There’s no more comparison because I don’t compare myself to that encourager, that heart, or that person who’s always serving. I’m like “God, made me this way so that I can serve in my capacity.” And that’s kind of hard sometimes, we try to do everything and be everything. But even at work, I was realizing that I was only giving about 10% to things and I didn’t feel like I was really doing a very good job even though they were saying I was doing a really good job, I was like “I don’t really feel that way though.”

I know I’m doing a good job when I can really give at least half of myself to something. But to really pour yourself into something that you absolutely passionately believe in, I think is when we really feel what success looks like. You know what does success looks like? Success is a feeling and it’s when you know you really poured your heart and soul into something and then it’s realized.

Andrea: I like that definition of success. Going back to your superhero comparison, the other thing about those superheroes with their suits and stuff, if you see Captain America’s suit and his shield and you know you can rely on him in battle. You see the Black Widow and you know what she’s going to be able to do in battle and what you should, you know how to rely on her in battle. That’s what I see in personal branding.

We throw on that superhero, those suits, anything that’s going to magnify, those characteristics about ourselves that make us you know, “This is what you can come to me for. This is who I am so that you know.” When I first started about hearing branding, immediately my mind went to the mask that we put on trying to be for other people or whatever and I’m like “I’m sure that it can be that, of course it can.” But just like life, I mean if you’re going to be authentic, I mean you can either throw on a mask or you can throw on your superhero suit but it’s an actual magnification of who you are.

Linette Bumford: That’s very true. I think it kind of goes back to what I was saying before, like when you put your mask on, if it’s not your suit, because you can just imagine putting the Hulk in the Captain America, it’s going to be uncomfortable and it’s going to look awkward.

Andrea: And nobody believes you.

Linette Bumford: And nobody believes you. Imagine seeing this you’d be like “Something is just not right here.” You know what I mean? You’re going to feel that. That’s what uncomfortable is for? That’s what those feelings are for. They are a gauge, right? They are a radar for you to be like “Something about this is not right so I’m gonna just not pay attention.” You’re not going to listen what they have to say and so that’s what happens when people are not authentic with you, your heart and your soul know that.

I could see that in other people and then I begin to think “Wow, the reality is I do that too.” I am not authentic with people. I either act the same way or I would say certain things because I thought that’s what they wanted to hear. It’s exhausting. I was tired. I was like “Yeah, I’m not just gonna do this anymore.” It’s just too exhausting. I think of what this saying is but it’s like you know people who lie, they have to keep up with the lie.

Andrea: Yeah. Right, right!

Linette Bumford: You have to keep up with, “What did I tell so and so? Who was I for them? And who was I for…” This is what you get, you know what I mean? I am a work in progress. I did this and I have done this. We all see this but I think we just don’t show it. And I started doing this to other folks at work and saying, “You know what I really don’t like to be angry like that. I’m really sorry, I’m just making it known that that was struggle for me.”

It invited other people to run kind of examine themselves and if they were contributing to my struggle or also hold me accountable. Again, once I started verbalizing those things, it gave me room to grow. It gave me permission to be authentic.

Andrea: Yeah, you didn’t have to be perfect. You weren’t holding yourself to this perfection standard.

Linette Bumford: Exactly! It doesn’t mean that I don’t have a message. You know it doesn’t mean that I can’t still be used. It so easy to just get down on yourself and I’m like “Yeah, actually that’s exactly who I am because if you want to follow perfection, follow Jesus, don’t follow me. I am not perfection. If you wanna see what transformation looks like, if you wanna know what change looks like, if you wanna know what struggle looks like, you can follow me all day.”

Andrea: That is awesome!

Linette Bumford: “If you want to know what it looks like for real give me a call,” you know what I mean? I talked about this a little bit in my book but you know there’s this point in my life in which I really made a significant change. I just said “OK, I’m going to follow, I’m gonna take actions to follow Jesus.” Shortly thereafter, the next chapter is called “Road Work” ahead because there’s a lot of stuff in my life and it is dirty. It’s is ugly. It is bumpy. It is inconvenient, all of that.

But as He does that, He was also laying down new road that’s smoother and easier, you know like He says “My yoke is easy and it’s beautiful and it’s new.” I read a quote not too long ago and it said something like a success and whatever comes from hard work, no excuses. It’s work and if you think it’s not then what you’re after is probably not sustainable and what you’re going to get is not sustainable. I refinished the table recently and I used a lot of analogies, I apologized. But I can’t say, I really refinished it, I just painted over it.

Everyone kind of asked me “Did you strip it? Did you send it and did you do this?” I was like “No, I slashed a page on it.” “Why would I go through all that trouble?” But then I thought about it because the reality is that’s only going to last so long. Eventually, the pain doesn’t have anything to really hold on to you. And then I thought “Well, when I get that point, I’ll just throw it away.” But it did keep me thinking about, sometimes you have to strip it. You have to save it down in order for what you’re going to lay down for it to last and then you have to pull away the olds in order to lay down the new for it to really last the long haul.

Andrea: Totally true. Oh that’s great! I love the picture. I don’t know where you at now and where you headed and what do you need?

Linette Bumford: I need another five hours in the clock, right? Right now, I am in full transition or post-transition. I’m working part time and it’s been an amazing experience. So many people come alongside and just supported and it’s one of those decisions that it was a little scary at first. But the way God showed up through opportunities and connecting me with other people and other writers, I have a coach who is helping me right now. She’s amazing. Her name is Renee Fisher, she’s amazing.

Again, everyone needs kind of guidance like I’m going down this path and it’s something I’ve never done. So she has really helped to keep me motivated. Sometimes we want to do things by ourselves because we’re like “OK, I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna do it alone.” And I read something from, again another great blog, Jeff Goins had put article out and it was about doing this in community. We’re not called to do this alone.

And again, it goes back to the superhero thing. Sometimes, they gather together to fight that battle, right? You got a combined forces and that was a little bit difficult for me. You know, I had my reservations but I trust it that God has been showing up in the process. Anyway, so I’m working on the book actively. We are looking for early spring of 2018, which would be awesome. And I’m probably going to be going into maybe more of like a pre-marketing phase of things. It’s weird but it’s so real because you know it takes time.

Sometimes I think some things happen for people very quickly. You know, I am still at work and it’s interesting. I think you said something the other day or it was only message that you said in the academy you know. Early on in the process, I thought “OK, well, I’m gonna have to completely give up my career in order to do this thing.” And then I thought “Well, maybe I’m doing this for now to help me be better in what I do as a career, or it doesn’t mean you have to always give up one thing to do something else. It maybe you need to slow down in one area in order to build the authenticity of where God is taking you.”

And I see that in a sense of, you know, I was struggling out to really be a leader. I felt like in different ways, I was a manager and I was a leader. I was like hitting the ceiling like almost like an emotional or like a growth ceiling. I met with my mentor and he said to me, “You have to do this. You have to go part time; you have to go follow this dream, this feeling inside of you.” And I was like “What? You’re the same one who mentors to like keep growing.”

And he said “Doing that will make you a better leader if you decide to comeback.” And I thought “Wow, OK.” So I table that and I thought “Well, that’s pretty powerful.” Sometimes you have to step to decide. You have to go and dig up an area in order for all of you to move forward and then he said “And when you get there, you just turnaround and help someone else do things.”

And I thought “OK,” and it was after that conversation that I’d really, really like I made the decisions anyway. I hope that that make sense. But yeah, I think I was excited and open. I think at this point, I don’t have it all figured out but I’m open and initially, I was like “Oh my gosh, I got to learn about social media. I got to learn about this and God said “No, you don’t. Nope, you just need to tell your story and I will help you when the time is right to get to those other points.” I was like “I’m just gonna focus on what God has put on my heart and tell the story that He has done in my life.”

Andrea: Yeah, it’s like that. Going back to your analogy about taking the step like you can’t take all the steps at once.

Linette Bumford: I’m not just the next-step kind of person. I mean, sometimes I do those huge leaps of faith, right? And those are exciting too but you can’t leave that everywhere. You have to say “Just take a step,” and I think this was another thing I heard early on and I was like just the torch bearer, right? We talked about this early on.

When you’re in a dark cave and you have a torch, it doesn’t light up the entire cave or all the ways out, it just gives you enough light to get a few feet ahead. And we just have to trust that that God is that light for us our relationship with Jesus is to have just enough faith to take the next step and not fear the failure.

I think of it like a maze, right? We try to figure out this maze and we go a certain direction and it’s a dead end. Well, things happen along the way, right? So it’s about what you experience along the path and to me that makes the light brighter, like in video games, you go down this level and you gather up you know whether it’s trinkets or whether it’s coin. And then you go down a certain path and you gather things for the rest of your trip.

And then you’ll come across another obstacle where you’re going to another path and you go “OK, I need a hammer for that, you know, I need this little trinket.” I just kind of think about things in that way like that’s what our life is about. We go down certain paths to obtain certain experiences and certain nuggets of wisdom so that it can be used later on in the journey. And it doesn’t mean that it’s going to be there forever, it’s just now you have it, you’re going to need it, right?

I think that’s why they exist; you’re going to need it for something, just hold on to it. And when the time is right, you’ll know when to reach into your little wisdom pouch, pull it out whether it’s for someone else or for you to sustain you through a hard time. That’s really what it’s all about, right?

Andrea: So when you took the Core Message course, it was basically a three-month period. I thought that it would be a 5-week deal but I realized very quickly that you guys were like “Woo, wait a second this is a lot more to process than I have time for in one week at a time and it made total sense as we kept going.”

So I tried to take all of what you guys were saying then I also listened to some other people who know a lot of people say they want to make changes or they want to figure stuff out for themselves. They want to find their things. They want to find their passion but they need accountability and that sort of thing.

I thought all this together seems to me like what people really need is they need bite size things to chew on for a period of time and over a period of time. That’s the reason why I went with 6-month program because I thought what would be the most transformational thing I think would be a coaching program for six months.

And if I could just disseminate the information a month at a time with a module at a time, something for people to focus on for one month and then move on to the next thing that maybe would make more sense. So that’s the reason why you guys and your feedback was so helpful to me in deciding what to do here.

Linette Bumford: Again, it has taken me all this time, but life had to happen. I had to let things call today or culture. I had to let those things happen in order for God to show up like when we want to do the fast diet. Oh well, it’s going to happen but it’s not going to sustain you, you know what I mean? So yeah, I think it’s progress and I think that’s really a good observation on your part.

Andrea: So who do you think should consider doing this program?

Linette Bumford: You know, I don’t want to speak for everybody but what I’ll do is I’ll speak for myself. I knew I had something inside of me. I knew that I was being called to something. The question was what was the thing? What made me me? Not made me different, didn’t make me special, right? I mean, I am different and I am special. We are all different and especial. We are who we are, right? But what was it about me that I needed to own but what was it that made Linette Linette, and it was my experience. It came down to figuring out what it was about my experience and then what was it that I had to say, I guess.

It’s great to just tell people “Yeah, I’ve been through a lot of stuff. You wanna hear about it? Here it goes.” But what was the purpose in all of that and then finding a way to own it? So being creative is sometimes an agonizing process. You taught me about the six stages of creativity, like there’s a very agonizing stuff in there where you’re like “Huh, this is just too hard.” You know, I want to go to the easy thing, the thing that I know how to do right.

But if you look at yourself in the mirror and you’re like “I’m ignoring something. I’m ignoring the gut feeling. I’m ignoring my heart. I’m pushing something aside,” and you are getting frustrated by that and you know that there’s that thing inside of you, take the class. Don’t try to figure out what it is before the class because the course is going to pull it out of you. I’m just saying. It will pull out of you. It pulled it out of me in a way that I just never imagined but don’t try to figure it out.

Again, I’ll plan this out, I’ll figure it out, or I’ll go into the class. I’ll be the superstar. I’ll be the teacher’s pet like that’s all we do, right? We try to over analyze it and I did it. I said “No, I’m just sure; I’ll sign up for that. I don’t know what the heck I’m doing.” I said it from the very beginning. I was like “I haven’t had any clue, but I’m open and that’s all you have to do.”

So if you’re feeling it and your heart flutters when you think about whatever it is and you just have no idea how to wrap your mind around it, take the class. It’s going to help you bring structures to the chaos. It’s going to bring clarity where there’s fog. It will help you own you. I think sometimes we let the story or our experiences own us and take us captive but it allows us to take those things captive.

Andrea: Amen! Oh my gosh that’s the perfect way to put that. Yes, yes, I just got goose bumps all over my body and I’m even crying because that is so what I want for people. That is so what I want for people.

Linette Bumford: I’m telling you that as a student and I love that at the academy, yes, it did that for me.

Andrea: Oh so cool!

Linette Bumford: It allowed me to take really difficult things captive and own them and not look at them like scars but sword and at the end like just that little spark, it will be an unstoppable fire when you’re done. When I was done with the class, I was unstoppable.

Andrea: Yes!

Linette Bumford: I still don’t have any idea what I was doing but I was unstoppable.

Andrea: Exactly! It’s like the internal positioning like that “OK, there are still stuffs to be done but I’m ready to go.”

Linette Bumford: I’m determined and I’m energized and I’m going to keep going. And having that fuel, I want to get there and that is my story. We’re all getting there, right? So yeah, I want to get there. I’m going to do it. You know, people come to me and they’re like “You’re so audacious.” And I’m like “Why not? How do you live with yourself going what if?” I’m like “No, I’m not a what if-er, I’m a why not-ter, because I have a hard time with the what ifs.”

I have more regrets, not with what I did but it’s what I didn’t do. I’ve learned that failure, I almost chase it now. I’m like “Bring it on.” And something that may seem small for us could be huge for someone else. We never know when that’s going to inspire greatness to someone else, right?

Andrea:   Totally!

Linette Bumford: So yeah, if you’re feeling the thing, if you’re feeling anything, if you’re hearing this and you are like “Yes, yes” then take a class, just take it. I had a hard time believing that words are not going to show up and really help you own and take your personality and take whatever your name is and whoever you are, take that captive. And sometimes that’s all you need. You just need to have permission to take your life captive and sort of your life taking you captive.

Andrea: Awesome! Thank you so much for your generous endorsement and for sharing your own story and feedback along the way. And yeah, I’m excited for you and where you’re headed. I have another friend who said to me before “You know, it just seems like we’re not supposed to know where we’re getting to because it could just overwhelm us like we just don’t know and maybe we can’t handle that right now and I think of that with you for sure like who knows. I just don’t know but it’s some place, I’m pretty sure. Some place special.

Linette Bumford: Yeah. I hope I’m going somewhere. I know I am.

Andrea: Yeah, absolutely!

Linette Bumford: And again I write about the goal, the goal, the goal but even through the process, I’ve had to learn to appreciate the journey and pulling over and taking it all in because it’s so easy to get somewhere. I still do this when I’m driving around, like “I gotta go, I gotta go. I’m late, I’m late.” But I was just missing it and I’m still learning. I’m a work in progress but you know I’m learning to just slow down and just enjoy the little things because God is everywhere and He’s everything and He wants us to like the arrival, right? The arrival, the steps along the way, or the “Mile Markers” you want to call them. He wants us to get there but He also wants us to get there happily, does that make sense?

Once you get there gradually, like “God, I finally arrived. What a trip!” How many people have come home like “Oh it was traffic. There was this.” “I’m so sorry that your trip here was so exhausting.” We want to arrive like that. He wants us to arrive happily like “I’m so excited to be here. Let me tell you all these things we didn’t plan but it happened along the way?”

How difference that would make when we interact with people? I thought these amazing things that I just didn’t plan but happens along the way and how awesome it were. Even things like getting a flat tire or bad weather or whatever. If we can just look at them as God’s way of slowing us down and just appreciating those things.

Andrea: Well, thank you, Linette!

Linette Bumford: Welcome! Thank you for having me. I’m so excited to help with the academy. I mean just watching you of what it was about a year now, right? It was last August that I began to see you progressing and succeeding and the fire that you continue to have to help people. I’m excited to see how God continues to move in your abilities to help us find our voice.

 

END

Your Mess Can Become Your Message

Episode 16 with Megan Swanson, Miss Nebraska 2014

A 24-year old CEO, Singer, and International Speaker from Omaha, Nebraska, Megan Swanson is a real go-getter.

As a former Miss Nebraska, having represented her state at the Miss America 2015 pageant, Megan is passionate about equipping young individuals. During her year, she traveled 40,000 miles, speaking to tens of thousands of individuals regarding her platform of Spiritual, Physical, Emotional, and Financial Wellness. After her year as Miss Nebraska, Megan realized there was still MUCH work to be done- and her pageant coaching firm “Powerhouse Pageantry” was born, equipping young pageant women all over the United States to win in their interviews and on stage questions.

Megan now travels the country speaking, coaching, and performing her music.

She can be found on all social media outlets @megan_swanson, or at go.mspageantcoach.com

Listen here, on iTunes or Stitcher.

Also, grab the summary of the first 15 podcast guests:

Tips & Strategies for Emerging Thought Leaders and Message-Driven Creatives: Volume 1

 

 

Finding the Real Power in Your Message

Voice Studio 14

In this episode, Andrea discusses the importance of connecting deeply and personally with the message you’re wanting to get across. People connect more to your transformed vulnerability than your natural ability…trust me.

Mentioned in this episode:

Thank you for rating and reviewing the Voice of Influence podcast wherever you listen! Your voice matters.

Listen & Subscribe Below, on iTunes or Stitcher

How Good Businesses Can Build Influence

Episode 03 of the Voice of Influence Podcast

Mentioned in this episode:

Listen here (press the play button below) or find us on iTunes and Stitcher.

Transcript

(This is an approximate transcript.) Adrienne Dorison is a business consultant, podcast host, and the founder of Good Businesses Do Good, who helps entrepreneurs get focused and strategic so that they can be more profitable and sustainable in way less time. She is a LEAN business expert who believes in generosity, relationship building and doing less, better. Adrienne loves dog, cookies, Crossfit, and long-distance triathlons.

Andrea: Adrienne, it’s so good to have you here on the Voice of Influence Podcast.

Adrienne: Thank you for having me. I love hearing my own bio read back. That’s me!

Andrea: Yeah, I do love those things.

Adrienne: Yeah, I do love cookies and Crossfit and dogs. I’m excited to be here.

Andrea: Do you have any long-distance triathlons that you’re training for right now?

Adrienne: No. I need to sign up for one. It’s one of those things where I don’t just like pay the fees and sign up then I keep putting it off. So I need to pick a race and get training that’s what I need to do. I think it’s like most things in life right? Like we just keep procrastinating or putting it off until we invest and book a date.

Andrea: I agree. I agree. Yeah, my husband is signed up for the Boulder Half Ironman. So I don’t know. Adrienne: That’s hilly, I bet.

Andrea: I think not too bad. Anyway, it will be fun.

Adrienne: Well, I live in Florida so…

Andrea: A little more hilly maybe. It’s kind of on like a flatter ground I think, but it still yeah, it’s kind of fun. So Adrienne, I asked you if you have taken the Fascinate Assessment before and you said you had, so I’m curious when you’ve done that before.

Adrienne: You know, it’s really funny, because I know you know Amy Porterfield, and she had Sally on her podcast and that’s when I first took the assessment, was once I heard Sally on Amy Porterfield podcast and I was like “Oh this is interesting, I’m gonna go to that test.”  I got my responses back, my assessment back and I was like “Maybe my husband watch this video,” He was like “Oh my God!” I’m like “This is me.” He was like “Yeah, that’s exactly you.”

Andrea: So fun and I told you previously, you’re the Ace which is alert plus power which is what my daughter is. Yeah, she’s 10 so I’m like “Oh, I’ve got a picture of what her personality might be like as an adult.”

Adrienne: It’s crazy that like within here now. Did you see change overtime? I’m so curious.

Andrea: I definitely see it in here. Yes and her favorite words are plan and organize. Does that sound familiar?

Adrienne: Yes.

Andrea: A little bit maybe? Well, anyway, it’s fun. So I’m curious about you. Do you feel like your voice in a way that other people perceive you, the way that you interact in the world – are those sorts of things, things that have the way that you are now, do you think that that’s you have been since you were a kid too?

Adrienne: No. I would say that…I had a pretty traumatic experience in my childhood like growing up with my mother at first. She was alcoholic and lived in an abuse at home and so I think that like at aged 10, I probably was not the A’s in terms of how the world perceives me now. I feel like I’ve definitely evolved into being more confident and more comfortable with sharing who I really am and being okay with that as well as like having a voice at all.

Because when I lived in that home, it was not okay to speak up or have thoughts and emotions. And now maybe because of that experience, I’ve actually shifted. I’m like swung to the other side of the pendulum, right? Now, I do have a voice and I’m not going to not talk about these things anymore, right? So I would say I had taken it up that time, it would not have been the Ace. So it’s just interesting like I want to follow back up in 20 years and I’ll ask what your daughter if she’s still that way because I definitely evolved as a person.

And I always wonder the same thing with Myers-Briggs. I am like “Am I still the same personality type as I was 10 years ago?” And I don’t think I am and it’s so interesting. And I think if I’ve taken a couple years from now, I’ll maybe even be a little bit…I don’t know, a little bit more different, possibly evolving in that voice and getting more comfortable and confident in it in who we are as we learn what it is.

Andrea: Right. I think that’s the key is understanding that there is, I don’t like the potential for our voice is different than how far we’ve taken it so far. And as we continue to grow and experience these new areas of our lives that it does seemed to really expand. But I don’t know that it’s necessarily changes who we are in the beginning. Maybe it really does sort of just swell, you know. As we mature, those different parts of us are able to come out in different ways too. But yeah, I do think you can look like a different person for sure. So that’s really interesting!

Adrienne: And maybe it’s more of the peeling back of the layers, which I think I’ve done a lot of. And you’re right like maybe that’s more of a swelling. Maybe it’s more of like the allowing at this point of my life for those things to lead versus suffocating them as I was told to do as a child. And maybe, you know, like most children aren’t told to suffocate those things, which is great like they shouldn’t be, but maybe this was always who I was. And as our influences start to permeate us, we start only saying and using our voice that we think we should use versus what we actually feel and know is our truth.

I know it’s just an interesting time in the world right now. And I think that the political climate can have an environmental and the social climate can have an influence on how you’re using your voice and what layers of that onion are being peeled back and kind of like what knife is being stuck into them that you’re more willing to show the real truth and actually use the voice that you’ve always had but maybe even didn’t know until these things start to trigger it.

Andrea: So when you look back on your life then, do you remember or recall any particular triggers that really started to peel back those layers for you or release that in you?

Adrienne: And I think about like current circumstances right now because that’s like what’s most obvious to me. Like the election, I think definitely shook me a little bit. I think a lot of people, a lot a bit so that’s been something that I’m exploring a lot of my own beliefs a lot more and trying to get educated as long as using my voice in a more powerful way. Because I think in the past, I felt like I didn’t know enough, so I wouldn’t say anything about anything, right?

Andrea: Right.

Adrienne: Then really understanding my not saying anything was real tolerance of the things that I didn’t believe in. And I was like “Oh, I mean not using my voice; I’m actually supporting the other side.” So being more proactive about that has definitely…I feel like there’s more of a sense of urgency right now as well as I’ve built this platform. So I feel the person responsible to use it.

So that’s like a big ownership thing that I feel. As well as like I would say at certain times of my life, I’ve gone through like some religious experiences that caused me to challenge my own thoughts and beliefs and speak up more vocally and use my voice around those things as well as like shapes my voice, right? Because I was actually questioning myself versus taking things at face value, which helps me understands what that voice was even more. I think when we take things at face value, we’re just using societal voice versus our own voice.

And it’s really easy to get trapped up into that especially with how noisy the world is to be like “Oh, is that what want? Is that what I believe? Or is that what’s easy to believe or what someone else told me I should believe. And when I really peel back those layers, it’s not actually what I believe because now I have the energy, the time, and the space and the knowledge to go and search out like what I really believe the truth is or my truth is. I feel like that’s a deep yet, non-specific answer.

Andrea: No, that’s okay. I think that this podcast and I, in general, tends to be a little bit both of those things.

Adrienne: I mean that’s broad but…

Andrea: Yeah, yeah that’s okay. I love this kind of conversation because I think we are all kind of trying to feel our way through it all and to hear how other people are gruffling with their own voice, and how to use their platforms is really important. I think the person listening right now is somebody who does or wants to have more of a Voice of Influence of some kind. And so I’m curious for you and your platforms. Why don’t you tell us a little bit more about what you’re doing and your platform is based on?

Adrienne: So my platform specifically is helping people grow their businesses so that they can then give back to the world in more meaningful ways. So I talk about earn more to give more because I think it’s like really unique points in the world right now. There’s global internet economy that we have access to that we can create limitless income for ourselves. We can create our own businesses. There are more entrepreneurs now than there have ever been. By 2020, there will be like this crazy amount – forgot the numbers right on the top of my head.

But there’s going to be a crazy amount of entrepreneurs continuing to enter the world in the economy like leaving corporations, leaving jobs and moving towards starting their own businesses. So we have this potential to earn more money. So #1 – We have to embrace that. We have to be okay with that. There are so many people, women specifically, that are uncomfortable with earning more money and that’s a problem, because if you want to have a major impact in the world, we know that money is a large part of that.

So first of all, we need to get comfortable with earning more money and we need to know how to actually do that, right? So that’s the first piece of what I help people with. It’s like getting comfortable with that wealth creation at a mindset level and then strategically knowing how to do that in people’s businesses. And then to give more peace, so I have this side of my business called Good Businesses Do Good, because I truly believe that good people with good money do good things, right?

So let’s be part of an opportunity that we have to change the world much more quickly than we have ever had the opportunity to do in the past, because we now can control a lot of that money and where it’s going. So let’s use our wealth creation for more good. So instead of just building a business that supports your own personal lifestyle, which you can still have, I have this big calling and mission on my heart to show people that the hunger, the motivation that keeps you going is actually having the cause outside of yourself that impacts the world in a meaningful way.

So giving back generously whether that’s through your financial side of your business or through your time or through your energy or through your gifts, etc, so that we can really change the world much more quickly. But I think that we have to have both sides of the equation like the earning more and then the giving more. And with those powers combined, it sounds like Captain Planet..we really do have, not just an opportunity but like I said, the personal responsibility to use our businesses positively.

There are tons of studies that to show that businesses that actually do good, give back to socially, environmentally, responsible causes, they do better. Like people want to invest their money in those companies, so why not be one of those companies? Why not meet your personal needs in your life and then your lifestyle but then also use your business to support other causes around the world.

And by doing that, you’re actually also helping your customers make a decision to work with you because that’s something that a lot of people use to decide when they’re choosing between Company A, Company B, and Company C; is this company doing good things with the money we’re investing in them? So you get to help them align with their values by also showing what your values are and helping them make a decision because they want to invest their money in good businesses. So let’s be a good business and let’s show the world who is good businesses are.

Andrea: That is really powerful stuff. And I think that for me, it was about a year ago when I started to really kind of shift my own mindset on this. I kind of come from a ministry background so my thought was always, you know, that I would never make any money and that I probably shouldn’t. And because if I was starting to help people that I shouldn’t try to profit from them or whatever, so it’s just never even entered my mind that I was a business woman of any sense. And so I wrote a book and I decided, I needed to sell it in order to get a message out. I actually had to do some marketing.

And what I realized was, I ended up taking BSchool, and what I realized was that actually I could give maybe this message out even further and I was going to have to build a platform. I was going to have to get those email addresses and all those sorts of things that you kind of need to be able to do to get a real message out into the world beyond your kind of immediate location. And so that’s when it started to kind of shift for me that “Wait a second, maybe I have something professional to offer to besides just a message.”

And so I had to be going to do some digging but I think that a lot of people do good in their hearts, you know, they want to do good, they want to help people, they deal with a lot of guilt around this idea of making money. They feel like they shouldn’t. So how do you help people to see beyond that guilt?

Adrienne: Uh-hmm. I mean, it’s a huge emotion and attached to money for some reason, right? Whether that’s from your childhood or from something that someone told you at some point in their life or from religion that you’re part of that or maybe believes that or you’ve just created that assumption from something in your past. But I think that if you really do believe in the work that you do or the message that you have to share and you believe that can serve and support other people, then it is your personal responsibility to share it with more people.

And by you feeling guilty about making more money, you aren’t able to help as many people as you may want to. So there is money rotating around this world, energetically being exchanged between people and wouldn’t you rather that be in the hands of people that are going to do good things with it, right? Because there are people that need the service or the product or the offer that you provide. And if they don’t buy it from you, they’re probably going to go buy it from someone else. So if you feel guilty receiving that money someone else does not. And so that’s why I think the earning more, yes this is important but then the giving more means that now you have c

ontrol to say “Okay, I earned more and now I feel it’s my personal responsibility to go back and do what I really feel is on my heart to change the world in a bigger way.” So that doesn’t mean we need to be directly through product or service that you provide. So many people that I have spoken to, you know, whether it’s related to their business or career, I’ve heard a lot of people like what I used to be really involved in a church felt like they weren’t doing God’s work if they weren’t in ministries. I’m like “What can you do… #1: Given these gifts or you’re selling this product or service for a reason like it does directly help someone in some way.

But then what can you be personally responsible for after that to then do what’s been placed upon your heart, right? Whether that’s investing that money into an organization that you really want to support or to a nonprofit or spending your time and energy with people that need love and caring and whatever it is, there’s no reason to feel guilty about making more money if you truly believe in giving back in a positive ways. And I think that actually freeze you up to give back in more meaningful and positive ways when you are earning more money. And so actually if you’re not doing people a disservice, you should feel guilty about not making more money.

This is how I get my people because they don’t want to feel guilty about not serving, about not giving their gifts to the world. You know, what I always knew is that if I wasn’t paid for the work that I do, I would have to go back to a job. If I’m not paid for the work that I do going back to the job doesn’t help the people that I know I can serve directly through my work, but it also put at risk for this bigger mission of Good Businesses Do Good and how I financially giving back to other causes. I can do that as greatly if I have to get a job, right?

So I need to be paid to do this if I want to continue to do this and if I want to reach more people doing this. So I think that there’s a huge disconnect for people that are feeling guilty with what impact they could be having if they went through some of those emotions and really understood them a little bit better, right? So it’s easy to say on a podcast but really going back and like digging, I’m like “Why do you feel guilty about making more money? What is it about money that has attached guilt to it in making money, right? Do you believe that rich people don’t do good things with money and why? Some of the most wealthy people on the planet are doing some of the greatest, most charitable, most selfless and acts of giving that I’ve ever seen, so why not want to be part of that?

Andrea: Yeah that’s really interesting. I was thinking about the person listening who might have that message that they’re wanting to get out. They might be where I was maybe a year or two ago where it feels like this message is the thing. And this is what I need to do when I need to get this message out by writing or speaking or whatever it might be. But that message of itself may not be something that would make money.

Adrienne: It’s not monetized or monetizable.

Andrea: Right, right. So how did they look at? Is there a way for them to create a business either around that message or do you recommend that people do it outside of the message and that the message is the give back?

Adrienne: I think it depends on looking at a business specifically and saying “Is there really nothing here we could monetize?” I think that’s very rare with a message, and so usually that’s just like a personal block that you’re having that you can’t see it because you’re too close to it. It’s too easy for you which is something that comes up a lot for people when they have a specific gift or skill set or expertise. They don’t see the value as much because it comes so naturally for them, whereas other people would absolutely be willing to pay you for that specific expertise, right?

So that would involve like you or maybe just asking someone else to really give you an outside perspective and someone with much expertise on this, could this be monetizable? How could we monetize this? Get creative with how you monetize this. One of my mentors, Jadah Sellner always talks about the cash project and the heart project, right? So for some people, you have this heart project that really isn’t monetized or don’t want to monetize it at all. And in order for that heart project to be able to be moved forward and have the impact that you want to have, you actually do need to hang on to the cash project.

Whether that is a different business or a different component of your business or a job like whatever those things are that will actually provide you with the financial stability and security that you need to push the heart project forward maybe until you understand how to monetize the heart project. So I would say like don’t throw out that cash project yet until you figure out how to move that heart project forward in a way that have the impact that you wanted to have or you’re able to monetize it in a way that it feels really good. Because again, in this current online technological economy that we live in, people can actually and are just monetizing followers.

So if you’re able to create the impact that you wanted and have a really powerful message to share, you could absolutely monetize it if you work on that heart project piece of just getting people onboard with this idea in creating a large following or a large audience for it that had your back. That’s monetizable, right? Even if you don’t directly see that yet, something that’s like not been available to us before.

Andrea: Right. Yeah, I found myself just being incredibly grateful that I’m where I’m at right now in this time and history, I guess. Because it seems like it’s a pivotal moment in history as well, like you said there’s going to be even more entrepreneurs in the next few years. But right now, there still aren’t, you know, we’re still building on that building the momentum thing. So yeah it really feels exciting.

Adrienne: I mean, when you think about it, because we’re early adaptors, even though entrepreneurship has been a thing and has been a growing trend for probably the last three or four decades.   It still pretty new, because when you think about the majority of your like in real-life circle, if you’ve left a job or if you have a side business, you are the minority, right? And I think that that will start to shift for over the next few to 10 years in a much more drastic way. I mean, even kids were making millions of dollar on YouTube. That’s going to be the new norm in the next 10 years.

Andrea: Yeah, I don’t know how many people would find that normal but I hear what you’re saying.

Adrienne: Yeah, just like entrepreneurship in general, like it’s being more accessible and normal for that to be how people make their living and share a message and monetize their life or their message or the service or expertise that they have. So we are like new and still share that with friends or people at my job “Oh you’re the first?” I’m like “There are few other people that do, but they’re always like super intrigue, right? Like “How do you make money?” Like “What is that look like?” “How did you do that?” Because people don’t like and not in my online circle and when we’re on this online circles, we forget that like “That’s not really normal world yet.”

Andrea: So true. So Adrienne how did you get started then in this online business world.

Adrienne: Yeah, so this is another thing that my mentor  Jadah Sellner asked me. She calls and asked me “What’s your daily drug so I’ll get through the online space.” Because usually because once you find that person, what happens is like you ripple effect to my client this other you know like snowballs and you find that you find these other people. So I started to think back to that when she asked me that question and like “What was my gateway drug?” And my daily drug was actually Dave Ramsey.

But it started with Dave Ramsey because I went to Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University which is how I got out of $48,000 of debt in six months. So that was the turning point for me to start like really cleaning up my financial life and money mindset and really doing that work. And I didn’t have a side business at that time but during that time when I was working through his program, I started the side business just for fun because I felt like suffocated at my job and I was blogging and talking about that. And then I stumbled on to Dave Ramsey to Jon Acuff and I read his book, Quitter, and then I found …

Andrea: Umm good one.

Adrienne: Finally, and then I quit my job and then I stumbled upon Jeff Goins and I read his book The Art of Work, and I interviewed him. And then the ripple effect, the snowball continue to happen and continue to like “Oh you know, Jeff interviews need to, you know, this other person.” And then I was introduced to Chalene Johnson and then I found this person.

So once you stumbled upon like one of those people that can open the gateway, I feel like they’re usually connected to other people and that’s how I kind of found my way to this world. But I started by really trying to get my financial ducks in order and growing the side business and helped me pay off that debt really quickly and helped me really find what I’ve really wanted to do and then I was able to leave my job and start doing this fulltime about six months after I first started.

Andrea: You recently shared an episode on your podcast, you have a couple of different podcasts currently but your main podcast – you shared about a Dear Diary episode where you were discussing the fact that hadn’t been as consistently with your content. You’re taking kind of a sit back, reevaluating, trying to figure out what you want to do for this year. So I’m really interested in the voice aspect of this. How did you decide whether or not to share this process, the fact that you were in process, with your followers rather than maybe faking it until you figured it out and then you start with your new message or you start with your new, you know whatever. Why did you decide to go ahead and be vulnerable, or in a sense vulnerable, and share that you don’t have it all together right now?

Adrienne: Yeah. This is such a good and timely question because I’m still going through this, but I’m sharing the actual process. And I just aired a new episode on The School Self-Mastery, which is the podcast that you’re talking about. I was kind of making follow up to that Dear Diary. It’s a great episode, which I continue to kind of go through this again peeling back the layers like really open book process. And I sent an email to list which was well-received by some people and then I actually gotten some negative feedback around this sharing this process and you sharing this voice.

Andrea: Really?

Adrienne: Yeah, which is why I bring it up because I think it’s a really interesting conversation to have, right? I’m really processing this as you asked this question because I haven’t answered this question before. “Why I’m actually doing this? Why not just air some old content or just power through and do some posts.” I actually have recorded episodes in the drawer like in the bank that I haven’t aired and I’m not airing them. I could be doing that, so why do this instead of that and instead of being silent because there’s been weeks and weeks where I’ve read just silent and then I reappear and say like “Here’s what’s going on.”

And the reason is because it felt so uncomfortable like I felt like I was hiding a secret from my husband or my bestfriends, because I felt such a close relationship with my audience. And because I’ve really made it part of my business and my mission to be an open book with them and to tell them like “Hey, I’m gonna be on this ride with you.” It might be a couple of steps ahead of some people. It might be right next to some people.

Some people might be ahead of me but they just like following me in terms of the content that I put out there. I want to be on this right with you and that means showing up and talking about this even when I don’t know what to say, and even when I’m feeling inconsistent or feeling like I’m not sure with the message is meant to be. Or that I don’t have it all figured out because I just feel like I was trying, like when I would record an episode and I wasn’t saying all those things, I just couldn’t do the episode.

“How do I hide this from them? How do I not talk about this? How do I just keep putting out content that doesn’t really bring the main thing that’s going on for me to the table?” So I almost just feel like I couldn’t escape recording and not sharing what was going on and will I lose followers? Absolutely. But I’ll gain more of the right ones and people I think trust that more and they relate to that because that’s how a lot of people being like “You know what, thanks for saying that because I felt like that too.” Or “I’m not knowing how to express what’s going on.” Or “I felt like it wasn’t okay for me to express that that what’s going on for me because of what I’ve built so far, or what I’ve been talking about so far, so thanks for opening up that door for me, right?

And really what this is is permission to self express and that’s the greatest freedom that we have #1: (I’m American citizen, right?) As American citizen as human beings is that freedom to self express and I think that most people where they want freedom, they say they want freedom. They want financial security of course and that provides some freedom. But really, what we’re saying is we want freedom to express ourselves. We felt so suffocated maybe in this corporate world or all over this place.

And I created a business at a certain point that I wasn’t giving myself permission to self express and I’m like “Well, I’m not doing that that I’m really just creating another job for myself, for my values and freedom and self expression as one of my highest value that I have to open with that conversation.” So yeah there’s been some negative backlash in terms of, you know, what I wrote yesterday saying “I need to be real with you.” And when I got a response back “No, you don’t. You don’t need to be real with us. You need to just keep doing what you do like putting out content, why tell us this.”

And I was just like “Wow, that’s actually maybe something I needed to hear because it fires me up even more that I have [crosstalk] and then I will not and then I will not be suffocated by other people not wanting me to share that story. And this for me comes back to childhood and not being able to use my voice, and not being able to say the things I wanted to say if I was self expressing in a way that I wanted to. And over the past years when my business has gained more popularity and like, you know, I’m searchable online. I’m not like famous or anything. But I’m searchable online and people can find me which means that my biological mother has found me on the inter webs.

Again, from birth having that childlike feeling of someone saying “Don’t share this story. You can’t talk about this.” It completely reminds me of why I need to share the story and why I need to talk about these things and why I do have responsibility to myself and to the people I serve to use that voice and self-express, right? And I think that that just has been coming up for me like so much more clearly that I just felt like I owed it to my audience and it almost felt like a big exhale to talk about it. So that’s kind of like a little bit of the behind-the-scenes on like using that voice in a way that feels a little bit messy right now to be honest.

Andrea: Yeah. You know, Adrienne, you really struck me as someone who longs for authentic connection with other people. Obviously, not just fake but also deep authentic connection and it sounds like what you’re doing by being honest and being both authentic and transparent about your experience right now with your business and with your message, you are sort of offering a filter to people and saying, “Look, this is what I’m really going for here, really wanting this kind of connection with you. So if you’re not interested that’s okay, but this is me and this what I want.”

And I have a feeling that you’re going to find or that most people are going to really appreciate and do really appreciate the transparency that you’re offering because they can relate more to it. And I feel that they can relate to you and then the people who don’t are typically just afraid of their own stuff.

Adrienne: Right and they don’t have to listen. That’s the beauty of me being able to share that message. And I think there’s this just something, you know, we teach what we need to learn. I had a client I was talking to yesterday and she was talking about how it takes hours and hours to write and email to her lists. And I said “You know how long it took me to write my email this morning to my email list?” I said “It took me about 10 minutes.” And I said “You know why, because I wasn’t filtering myself. I just wrote it and I didn’t care.”

The reason it’s taking you so long to write that authentic feeling email because you’re not being authentic, right? She was in tears because she was afraid. She was afraid to talk about the things that she really wants to say. She’s afraid to say the things that are really on her mind right now because of the pressure to make something super valuable. Oh my God like if one more person tells you like “Make sure, you bring out some valuable content, right? Don’t put anything else that’s not valuable.”

And to be honest I’ve said that a million times. And I’m like “Oh my gosh, I have to release that pressure off myself too because who am I to say what some others going to find valuable from this or not. I just need to self-express and the people who are going to need it at that moment or going to get it or people who don’t, will just leave and move on for the day. No worries. But the more we filter, the less we get to self-express and actually the less value we provide because we’re trying to self filter and gauge what other people are going to find valuable or useful. And I’m like “What did you just get something out there?”

Let other people decide what they value and feel it useful because truthfully, I don’t know if this has happened to you, but every time get out there and share a message what I think is going to be the most valuable piece never really is, right? If someone comes back and they’re like “Oh my God, you said this one line that was so impactful for me.” And I’m like “I said that, right? Okay, if that’s what what you got from it, that’s what you were meant to get from it.” But if I continue to filter, they may never get those things because I’m just siding what they need to have as most valuable, right?

Andrea: You know there are two things that makes me think of that. I know we’re kind of running low on time here, but I think #1 – People are valuable inherently and the idea of connecting with another person is invaluable. It is so hard to find that, and so I think that that is valuable for sure. But then the other part is that I think that because you’re taking the time back and you said you stepped away from producing more content and that sort of thing. You were wanting to sort of take a step back and really reevaluate. And I think what that means is that you really know who you are. You’re trying to know who you are.

I think a lot of people don’t already know that, and they don’t take the time to go there. And so then when it comes to just turning on and just figure their heart and just pouring out their 10-minute email, they don’t how because they don’t even know what they want. They don’t know who they are. So Influencer who’s listening, know you are. Take that time back or step back like Adrienne is doing and feel free to be able to do the digging that you need to do so that you’re in touch with who you are and what you think and what you want to say. So that when you do come to that email or that conversation, it’s automatically more authentic because you already are who you are and you’re not having to fake it or try to come up with something.

Adrienne: Uh-huh. And I think a lot of us know who we are and again, we filter that because we’re afraid of what other people would think about who you really are, right?

Andrea: Yeah.

Adrienne: And so it’s like, you’re right taking that set back and say…you know, sometimes just writing for the sake of writing versus writing for a purpose or for someone else can be very really helpful to figure that out. It’s like, “What would you say if no one was going to read it, you just write that out.” And that’s like one of the exercises that I do and another exercise that is super helpful that I have recently picked up from Jess Lively is writing to your intuition and asking your intuition questions and then allowing that intuition to write back to you.

You could ask your intuition like who am I really and just see what comes up for you because it would probably be really insightful and interesting and you just need listen and not try to judge it, because that’s what immediately going to come up. But you just listen and didn’t judge that or didn’t allow the external noise to tell you what you should be or what you should write or what you should do which is very heavy and distracting in online space, so you need to take that time with self to figure that out for sure.

Andrea: So good! Adrienne, I am so glad that you took some time today to be with us and share your story, share your heart, share your message, your voice with us. I’m glad that you’re out there doing that in the world and I hope more and more people do it because of your example.

Adrienne: Well, thank you! It was super fun to be here. This is a really awesome discussion and I think even just thinking them out how to find that voice even more like having discussions, you know, sometimes this is where or some of that comes out and you’re like “Huh, did I just say that that was really good, right?” Like “I never thought about that or that’s a really good question, let me think a moment to think about that.” And so I love doing podcast and this is one of the reasons. It’s like really help me understand what that voice is so this is reciprocated like the value is totally here for me too, so thank you so much!

Andrea: Awesome! All right, will talk to you later Adrienne.

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