Posted on Tuesday, April 7, 2020

How I Got Started with a Brand Online

Episode 135

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

In the past couple of months, probably because of some articles that have come out and some of the opportunities that I’ve had to speak to this, I’ve gotten more questions again about, “How did you get started? What do I need to know if I would like to start a brand online, if I would like to write a book, and if I would like to get going in this thought leadership kind of space?”

So, today, as we’re near the three-year anniversary of Voice of Influence, Rosanne and I thought it would be fun to sit down and have a chat about the journey I’ve been on. Because going back and looking at that more clearly and with more detail could be helpful to somebody who is really interested in knowing how they can go on this journey for themselves.

In this episode, we discuss the timeline of my personal journey, the mindset it took to get over the hump so that I could get started, the mindset it has taken to continue plodding down this path, the immense value of bringing other expert perspectives in on your process, what you need to know to get started, what I would tell myself if I could go back six years, and more!

Take a listen to the episode!

Mentioned in this episode:

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Transcript

People of influence know that their voice matters, and they work to make it matter more. I’m Andrea Wenburg, and this is the Voice of Influence podcast.

So, today, because we’re kind of at that three-year anniversary mark of Voice of Influence, Rosanne and I thought it would be fun to sit down and just kind of have a discussion about the journey that I’ve been on. Because going back and looking at that more clearly and with more detail could be helpful to somebody who is really interested in knowing how they can go on this journey for themselves.

So, today, we are going to talk about the timeline of my personal journey, and then we’re going to dive into mindset – the mindset that it took to kind of get over the hump so that I could get started, and then the mindset that it has taken to continue to plod down this path. And plodding is sometimes how it has felt. It’s not a quick and easy journey; it is something that it’s so worth it if you feel like you really have a mission, but it is hard.

So, I applaud anybody who is feeling that call, that urge to do something and you’re ready to take that next step, so that is part of what we’ll talk about. We’ll talk about what kind of mindset and heartset, I guess, it would take to continue down a journey like that.

We also talked about the immense value of bringing other expert perspectives in on your process. There are a lot of ways that I did this – including listening to courses, and books, and podcasts, and taking courses – but one, in particular, was actually bringing Rosanne on. And I’ll share with you a little bit more about our relationship – how she and I worked together, and how helpful it has been to our process.

We’ll talk about what you need to know to get started. And then finally, if I could go back six years, what would I tell myself back then? I hope you enjoy this little journey to the past and that it might be helpful for your journey.

Here’s my conversation with Rosanne:

Rosanne: Hi, this is Rosanne Moore at Voice of Influence. I’m the Communication Specialist here, and today we’re going to be doing something a little different. I’m going to be interviewing Andrea as we’ve had a lot of questions from listeners for Andrea regarding how should someone who has a voice that they want to expand upon, a mission or vision that they want to share more widely, how does someone like that get started. And what did that journey look like for Andrea? We’re coming up on our third year anniversary of the podcast, and so that’s what we’re going to be talking about today.

Andrea: That’s right. I really can resonate with these folks. I understand where you’re coming from. If you’re somebody who is in that position where you’re like, “I feel like I’ve got something else to share.” Or “I have this message and I need to get it out into the world.” I know exactly what you’re feeling because I remember about… Rosanne, this is interesting because about I’d say almost nine years ago, I was at a gathering for young moms and a speaker came, and she spoke to us and shared about her book. And I was just like, “Ohh, I feel like I should be up there doing the same thing.” I just had the sense of like, “I need to be doing that.” And I remember going up to her afterwards and be like “How did you get started?” So, I totally understand where you’re coming if you’re somebody that’s thinking this, and that’s the reason why we really want to dive into this today.

Rosanne: So, Andrea, for you, what was the timeline of developing your vision and your company?

Andrea: That’s an interesting question, because, I mean, if it really developed over the course of the last six years or so. I’d say that I kind of knew that I wanted to speak and write and things like that all growing up. And anytime I had the opportunity to speak or to lead a small group or to provide a retreat or something like that, I would jump at that opportunity. And then I kind of got into that place where I was, you know, a stay-at-home mom. My kids were just getting to the point where I felt like I could breathe again. My daughter was in school and my son was going to preschool, and my husband and I decided, “Okay, let’s take preschool time, at least feel free to take that time to actually do some writing – to work on developing some things.”

So, I started developing things back in 2013; I was developing a curriculum called Intentional Friendship. And that’s when I went to the movie Frozen, and it just sort of catapulted me into a different level of, “Oh my gosh, I can’t just try to stay behind the scenes and offer some sort of writings without putting myself out there. I’m gonna have to really put myself out there in order to have a bigger influence.” That was 2013.

A year later, I wrote my first blog post because it took me that long to figure out what in the world I wanted to say and how I was going to say it. Right around that same time, I had a friend that said, “You really need to write a book about this – people need to hear what you have to say.” So, at that point, I kind of got the vision for writing a book, but I knew I needed to blog first. Basically, asked the question, “How I do even know what to do next? How do I do this if I’m going to write a book?”

So, I started doing a research and I found out I needed to blog first, so I started blogging. I tried to start an email list that sort of thing in 2014. By 2016… you know well because you edited my book and guided me along that journey. In August of 2016, we released Unfrozen. And then in spring of 2017 is when we started the podcast. And that was really when the vision for doing something more than an online business but also really starting to put myself out there in a bigger way, in corporate, was kind of when that was born.

Rosanne: Okay, so as someone’s hearing all of that, they may be thinking, “Wow, that feels overwhelming,” but you didn’t do that all at once. You did it in pieces. What kind of mindset and what kind of skill sets are needed for someone who’s wanting to develop a vision, who has an idea, who wants to expand their voice of influence? What do they need? What are the pieces do they need?

Andrea: Okay, I think that’s a really good designation, mindset and skill set. The first thing that someone needs to do is look at their mindset in terms of, “Do they really believe that they are called?” Do you feel called – that this is a big enough deal that you’re willing to put yourself on the line for this mission, whatever the mission might be? I would say that I didn’t know what my mission was. I felt like I was supposed to have a voice of influence; I didn’t call it that at the time. I felt like I was supposed to have that, but I didn’t know what the mission actually was.

So, whether you actually defined that yet for yourself or you just feel called, if you will, “into the unknown” as Elsa would experience in Frozen 2, you don’t even know what’s out there. You just hear the calling. If you’re feeling that way, then you need to decide now that you’re willing to do what it takes to get to the end. Because if you start there with a determination that you’re not going to let just every little, I guess, like speed bump and blockade in the road keep you from getting to that end goal, if you decide that now then that is going to benefit you throughout the whole long road ahead.

Because it is a long road, and you kind of have to say to yourself, “I am willing to play the long game. This is a big enough deal. I feel called. I’m willing to play the long game whatever gets in my path, I will navigate it. We will figure it out.” And so, I think mindset for sure when you get started. That’s a very important one.

Rosanne: The difference between a dream and a goal is intentionality – it sounds like you’re saying – and perseverance because dreams don’t just come true. They are created through hard work.

Andrea: Yeah. I think it’s a really good distinction because a dream is sort of something that would fulfill you – and that’s not bad to be fulfilled – but a goal and being intentional about a goal that is mission-oriented is way different than having a dream. There’s a whole another level of intentionality and purpose and drive that comes with that than it is to just simply have a dream thinking that, you know, “It would be fun or it would be nice if…” No, no, that’s sort of setting yourself up for a failure.

Rosanne: Yeah, and I’ve heard people coming to the end of their life often look back with regret, not over with the things that they did as much as what they didn’t do. And that’s what kind of what you’re talking about. They can’t just assume that it will come to pass because they wished it. There needs to be an actual movement.

Andrea: Rosanne, I’m really glad that you brought that up because that was actually a really big piece of my story. My mom – when she was in her late fifties, I started really noticing that she was having memory issues. And I knew that she was headed down a path that was going to be very difficult. And eventually, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and when that happened, I was in my mid-thirties. And I thought to myself, “Oh my goodness, what if…” I’m not determining that I’m going to get Alzheimer’s or anything, but I think we can take moments like that and say to ourselves, “What if that were me? If that were me in twenty years, I’ve only got twenty years. If I’m here for something, if I’m supposed to have some sort of impact in the world, I got to get on it because…”

Rosanne: You were no longer just assuming that you’d have time.

Andrea: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Now, all of a sudden, my mortality – you know, because of my mom’s situation – my own mortality was sort of in my face. And I realized that, “Oh my gosh, I don’t have time to worry about what other people think anymore.” And that was really significant. I think that if we could each do that… you know, maybe you’ve had somebody that you’ve lost. And I’m talking to you, listener, right now. Maybe you had somebody that you’ve lost. Maybe you have seen somebody else go through tragedy – you don’t have to personally go to tragedy to let that impact you.

You can look at that and say, “Oh my gosh, what if that were me,” and allow yourself to imagine it. I know that Gary Vaynerchuk is somebody that I have paid pretty close attention to over the years. He’s an entrepreneur. He’s had a lot of success, like really a lot of success. If you haven’t heard of him, go look him up. You will quickly find out. But what he often does is he pictures tragedy happening in his life so that he can sort of be grounded in why he’s still doing what he’s doing and how blessed he is that he has the opportunity today.

And I think that that is exactly what happened to me. I was like “Oh my gosh the opportunity is now. I just can’t keep putting it out there in terms of, ‘Well, someday maybe somebody will pick me to write this book or to speak at this thing.’” I mean, all of a sudden, I was like, “No, if you feel called, you have to go do the work. You have to put yourself out there to do the work.”

Rosanne: That’s a good point; that things don’t just come to us, that we have to be a part of actively moving toward what we’re called to. So, if a person has that mindset, if they’re recognizing that they’re ready and they’re willing to engage, what skills are they going to need?

Andrea: Well, I think it just depends on where you’re at in the moment. So, if you are feeling like you really want to write a book, then you need to start researching how to write a book. And I think that the tendency that I’ve seen in people who think that they want to do something, but then they don’t end up doing it… The tendency for them is to invest only so far and to sort of dabble on it for a little while and never really truly commit.

Something that my husband and I decided early on was that we were going put our, like, actual finances on the line to invest in things like coaching or invest in a course that would help me to know how to put a book on Amazon, how to sell a book. So, those were different things that kind of came up for me at the time. What’s the next thing that I need to know? I remember the very first course I bought was an online course from Michael Hyatt, and it was about getting your book published.

So, I listened to that full course and I realized, “Oh my gosh, I need a build an email list because publishers aren’t going to be interested in my book unless I have a really big email list, like tens of thousands of people.” And then to me, that made it sound like, “Okay, I’m not gonna be able to do that right away.” That seemed daunting to me. So, I decided immediately to write a book and self-publish it because I knew I wouldn’t be able to build an email list that quickly, as quickly as I wanted to for this particular book that I wanted to write. So then I said to myself, “Okay, what’s the next thing I wanted to learn?”

Rosanne: So, you were saying that for a traditional publisher that was what you would need was the big email list, the platform already built. Is that why you chose to self-publish?

Andrea: Right, and there were other options. Now, there are increasing amount of options. So, big publishers also have a division in their company where it’s essentially self-publishing with a name or an arm of their division kind of tied to it. Sometimes you pay a fee in order to get the coaching that you need or in order to have the book published so it can actually go into stores and that sort of thing, but you don’t have all of the support of a publisher to do that. So, there are a lot of different options for how you can get a book published or publish it yourself. And what I knew at that time was that I was going to go the self-publishing route.

Rosanne: So then what’s next?

Andrea: So, the next thing I decided to do was to look up, “Okay, how do I self-publish the book?” And I found Self Publishing School with Chandler Bolt and invested in that. We invested in that. And when I started that, I had one vision in mind for where I wanted to go with this book, and then I brought you on board. I think I want to talk briefly about how you got involved with Unfrozen, because I asked you to edit. I said, “Here’s about 30,000 words,” or I don’t know what I had and I was like, “Would you edit this for me?” Do you remember what it was like when I asked you that question?

Rosanne: I do. I do. Yes, because basically, you had gotten your first draft done. And it was such a relief, it was an accomplishment, but it was a first draft. So it was kind of your first brain dump on paper, and when you asked me to get involved, I thought ,“How do I both encourage you but also kind of set your sights on what we’re going to need to do – what the process is going to need to look like?” Because you were just like, “Huh, first draft done; let’s publish a book.” And I was like, “Um, actually the work has just begun.” But I couldn’t say that. Do you remember the analogy I used? What I said was, “This is kind of like you just peed on the stick and found out you’re pregnant, and you’ve got a baby, and it’s awesome, and it’s wonderful, and it is so precious and valuable; but we’ve got to give it some time to grow.”

Andrea: Yes, develop it. Yeah, yeah, before it can be birthed into the world. One thing that I want you, the listener, to know is that by bringing Rosanne on board, I really leveled up my game. It went from being something that I was just going to throw out there to being something that would be significant and have significance, both for my voice and my brand and all of that as well as for the reader.

And the reason why I asked Rosanne to help with it was because I knew that she was a good editor. She and I had taken a course together, so we had a lot of the same teachings in our minds, and I knew that she would understand my perspective. So, I trusted her, but then I also knew that she was good at what she did. And I’d given her an article previously to edit for me because I was submitting it to an online publication, and she had done that. And working with her went really well, and I was really pleased with the outcome.

And so, I knew that she both had the skills but then also had the heart and the same perspective in order to help me really level this up and that’s exactly what happened. So, I think that the big lesson, I hope that you as a listener hear from this, is whether it’s a book or whatever it might be that you’re interested in putting out there, bring people alongside you who believe in you but are also really good at what they do to help you level up your game.

Rosanne: And I think one of the things I offered you was you had so many good ideas. You had so much to say and you have so many good ideas. But for the purpose of the book, we needed to figure out, “Where do we narrow things and put our energy so that the reader can actually digest the core message of what this project needs to look like?” And I think so often with creative people – this is true for all of us, because you do the same thing for me, you know, I’ll have ideas and you act as my editor or my sounding board or whatever and you help focus – what is the core message for this project so that it’s useful to the reader or to the listener, instead of just kind of being like a scattershot that doesn’t really have the impact that we want it to have.

Andrea: Absolutely. I think, Rosanne, that’s what we do for companies too, you know.

Rosanne: It is.

Andrea: Like, when we come in and work with an executive, they have a change initiative that they’re trying to accomplish, or they’re wanting their teams to be more effective with customers or clients and developing those relationships. Oh, my goodness, it’s not that they don’t know what to do ever; it’s that there are so much on their plates that they are having hard time being able to narrow down, make decisions, think strategically, all that kind of thing. And that’s why we need other people involved in our projects, involved in our lives.

Rosanne: Right. And we lived with ideas in our own heads so much that we don’t always see the holes in how we’re communicating them. And so it takes somebody else going, “I’m not really sure what you mean there,” for us to realize, “Oh, that totally makes sense to me because I’ve been living with it for six months in my head, but I need to find a way to articulate that so that somebody who hasn’t been living with it for six months in their head can understand and get on board and see the value of it.”

And we do that. Andrea does a great job with that with companies that we work with all the time.

Andrea: Yeah, a couple of analogies that I’ve heard over the years are, “It’s pretty hard to read the label when you are inside of the bottle.” So that would be Donald Miller. And then, of course, you’ve probably heard this one before, which is, “Even the sharpest knife can’t sharpen its own blade.” I don’t know. Anyway, you actually have to have another knife there to sharpen the blade is the point. I think the other thing that really shifted for me and the trajectory of my path in bringing you on board was that I sort of submitted it to this bigger vision. Instead of saying I need to be right and I need to do what I wanted to do and utilize my own perspective to get me there, I said “Rosanne, this is the vision.”

And then we connected there. I have my hands on the air together up at the top, and that’s what I’m physically doing with my body right now – you know, hands on either side of me and then going up and then meeting in the middle. That’s where we could meet was at the level of vision. Then you’re saying to me, “Andrea, in order to get that vision, the path that you’re trying to take is not gonna get you there.” And so you could see something greater. You could see how that vision could actually come to play if we really created something beautiful and significant with that book, and that’s what we did.

And so, I think that that again for you, the listener, who is saying to yourself, “I want to create something.” You can go with your own vision and you can create your own path, but I would suggest that you actually submit to that bigger picture, that bigger vision, and that bigger mission. Because if you do that on a regular basis and you give other people the opportunity to give you input and to actually have an impact on the trajectory of where you’re headed then it changes everything and it allows you to realize that that’s not about you. It’s about your mission.

And the more that you do that and put yourself in that position to be able to take in advice, to take in perspectives… I hesitate to say that because I shouldn’t say the more that you do that, but if you do that in a way that allows you to sort of submit to that bigger vision, it’s going to make a huge difference in your trajectory.

Rosanne: I think that’s true. And for you, one of the interesting parts of your journey – and I think this probably true for a lot of people – you were initially going to bring insight. You were going to share insight. And when I read your manuscript, I realized, “This is not just insight; like you can’t produce it in a vacuum.” Like you, what your journey has been, how you gained this insight has so much more weight than if you just tossed the ideas out there.

Andrea: That’s right.

Rosanne: And so another thing that can happen when you have another person’s perspective is you may be selling yourself cheap; like you may have your idea that you want to share and you’re kind of timid about it. Our listeners may be feeling like, “I don’t know if other people will see the value in this. I’m really excited. I can’t really seem to get traction.” Part of that may be because, like, there’s a substance to you that you have to put out there – you have to be willing to be open and not protect yourself from bringing that part of you to the front to carry the weight of that idea forward.

And so having somebody else who can see the substance that’s in you and say, “Don’t sell yourself short, you have something to say. It’s important – people need to hear it. There something of value here for the world,” can really take things to a different level.

Andrea: And you know, Rosanne, I think even just fast-forwarding to when you came on board with Voice of Influence on a more regular basis… a lot of people who are entrepreneurs, they hire assistance to be able to take care of the little things. And my very first hire with Voice of Influence was you. I mean, there were some things like obviously getting this podcast out there. I work with somebody as a contractor to Britany Felix who does the editing, and then have somebody who works on the transcript – Cecilia – and then your daughter helps us out as well. You know, there are things that I did get help with immediately that I knew if I could give those to somebody else, they would be taken care of well, and then I could focus my time someplace else.

But the reason why I wanted you to come on board very quickly and early on is because I knew that you would bring that other perspective that would really further our vision or our mission in a way that would be significant. So that’s the reason why I wanted you to be that first person to bring on board as an employee essentially or a teammate in this journey because I see you as a strategic value to our company, and to me personally.

Rosanne: I have certainly enjoyed the process and working with you has been a unique experience for me because you really do – I’ve said this before, but it’s not flattery, it’s the truth and it’s something I really appreciate – you practice the culture that you teach. You do value the voices of others, and so that makes a really fun, fulfilling experience to work with you and for you. So, I appreciate that as well. Are there other skill sets that a person… that you want to bring out? We can chat forever.

Andrea: I know, I know we could. Yeah. So, if we were to go back, then… So, I think that we really covered a lot of the mindset stuff. That’s really important, and there’s always mindset stuff as you go. I think it’s important to take in those voices that are positive that are going to help you and encourage you along your path. So, that might be through podcasts. If you’re listening to this one, my guess is you like listening to podcasts; and there a lot of them out there that would be very helpful and that could give both mindset help as an encouragement as well as, you know, help with the actual skills that you need to get you where you want to go.

So, take in as much as you can. If you’re really a reader, then go for the blog post and for the transcripts. If you love listening to things… and for the books, the actual physical books where you get to read. I’m more of a listener and so I’d prefer to listen to podcasts. We listen to audio books all the time, and that’s how I do my reading, and that’s how I take in my information or I watch videos. So, take in all those voices and all the advice that you can to help you continue down that path of having a positive mindset and understanding how to embrace this journey that you’re on.

Then when we look at the skill set, every step of the way, there’s a next thing that I needed to learn. It was a little overwhelming at first. When people ask me now, “What should I do? What’s the easiest way to put up a website?” That just feels so overwhelming to folks. The thing that I had been told and that we still do… I don’t really know the best advice is on this currently. You would want to talk to or listen to somebody else that deals with this all the time, but what I did is I created a WordPress.org blog.

So, WordPress.org allows you to own your own website, which is super important. If you want WordPress.com, it’s free. That’s fine, but you don’t own your own site. And to own your own real estate online is super important. So, to have a WordPress.org website or something similar that would allow you to blog or to share videos or podcast episodes.

And then after you kind of got a website kind of figured out, you’ve got to decide which social media channels you’re going to focus on. I suggest choosing one or two just to start out with and start posting your thoughts – putting yourself out there little by little or maybe you’re somebody who likes to jump in headfirst; that’s great. I used canva.com to create images. They have lots of pictures that you can use, and they have tutorials on how to create images or video sometimes that sort of thing.

But anyway, they’re free unless you need to go deeper into their services, but Canva is a great place to learn how to do those images and to create those. And then put them on your website or put them on social media, and start putting yourself out there. You can do it on your personal page or you can create, like for Facebook, you can create a public page that is for your new brand.

And so that’s what I did. I started Andrea Joy Wenburg public page. And at the time, Facebook was at a perfect time to be able to share post and get a following and that sort of thing. It’s a little more complicated now. You should probably just follow somebody or talk to somebody who knows a lot more about the landscape of social media right now.

One the people that I would recommend following would be April Beach. She has the SweetLife podcast. And so if you’re interested in doing an online business, she is the perfect person to listen to for that. And she is kind of a little bit of a rebel, and she’ll push you out of your comfort zone in a good way. But I’ve had her here on this podcast before. So, she can give you a lot more of that kind of technical details.

But essentially, you want to find out what the next thing is that you need. You need to figure out what it is that you need, and then go find it and figure out how to do it.

Rosanne: That’s one of the nice things about the internet, isn’t it? It can be overwhelming at times to sort through all of the options, but there is a lot of information available now and even videos that will walk you through a process of how to set things up or things like that.

Andrea: That’s right. And you know, I’m a big advocate for also asking for help. That might mean that you need to pay for help. And one of the things that I learned early on was that if I pay for a little bit, I’m going to get a really cheap product. I’m going to get not a lot of help. And if I invest more into something, it’s more likely that I’m going to get a lot of out it. And so, you have to kind of decide what can you do, what are you willing to do. A lot of people want a nickel and dime starting a business.

If you thought about starting a business in your local community, you would need a building. You would need a way to payroll. You’d need an accountant. You’d need all these things you need. You’d need so many things. If you have a viable business idea, you’d go and you’d get a bank loan and you would start a business based with that. It’s not that you need to go get a bank loan to have a message out into the world, but just take that perspective a little bit. Like, if you’re running to build something significant, you might have to invest significantly. So that’s something to keep in mind.

Rosanne: How important is a business plan in this? Was that a part of what you did?

Andrea: Eventually, yes and initially, no. Initially, it was just about getting the message out. But then I started to realize that it was going to take a lot to get the message out, that I was going to need to learn a lot, and I was going to need strategy and things that didn’t come easily or quickly or cheaply. And so then it became, “Oh, I need to actually…this has to be sustainable. Somehow or another, this has to be self-sustaining. I can’t just dump a bunch of money in here and not be able to, you know, it’s not like our family charity.” I think it could be if you decide for it to be.

But for us, we wanted it to grow. We wanted it to be much, much bigger than what we could, you know, do as a family charity. So, we had to decide that we were going to invest so that we could also make money, so that it could become a self-sustaining situation. And then eventually, we decided, “You know what, we actually don’t want to just be self-sustaining. This needs to be a viable business because we want to actually hire people to be a part of it and we want to be able to give back out of the business. We want to be that big. We want to be significant and that kind of way too.”

So, what was your initial question that you just asked me, Rosanne? I feel like I got off onto a tangent.

Rosanne: No, you did fine. You did fine. I’m trying to remember what I asked. Business plan – that was what I asked.

Andrea: Oh yeah, yeah. So, if you’re looking at starting something, instead of focusing on a business plan, I think you need to start with brand strategy. And that we’ve talked a lot about a lot on this podcast already. And that has to do with knowing what your mission is, your purpose, your message; and then how you’re going to go about getting it out into the world. And that kind of work – we’ve done a lot of work with folks on that, and we can help you with that too.

Rosanne: That’s one question that we get a fair amount, isn’t it? How to choose whether or not to have a personal brand, or a more mission or company-oriented brand. Do you want to address that, just briefly?

Andrea: Sure. So, basically, I suggest to everybody that they have a personal brand anyway, because whatever you create as your personal brand is always yours. And it will be yours forever. So, it’s super important to build something that is true to who you are so that it can stick with you, and it doesn’t have to shift greatly. And what am I doing has changed a lot over the past six years but my personal brand – I’ve felt a little bit of an identity crisis with that over the years too. But I’m kind of coming back to a point where I’m like, “This is actually really consistent throughout the whole time since I started intentionally creating this personal brand.” And though Voice of Influence is its own brand, I’m sort of the face of that brand.

And so when you’re thinking about that – if you’re wanting to have like a company where there are more people involved or you’re wanting it bigger than yourself – then it’s great to have a brand name like Voice of Influence that is bigger than yourself. But somebody is going to have to be the face of that brand for it to really resonate online. That’s my personal opinion about that. I’m sure that you can find examples where that’s not the case, but they’re rare. And it’s just way easier for people to connect with a brand when there’s a personality, when there’s a person involved unless you’re really, really big company and you can create Baby Nut. Those of you who don’t know that’s the new Planters peanut icon, and Baby Nut has its own Twitter feed. It’s really fascinating. You should go check that out. You can do that. You could try that, but it’s really hard. It’s really hard, and it’s expensive to try to compete with the big brands in that way.

Rosanne: So, as we kind of pull all this together, I think you’ve given some great information and a great response to the questions that we’ve gotten. I’m just curious, as you look back on your own journey – the process, the things that you’ve learned along the way – is there anything you wish you had known at the outset or anything you wished you’ve done differently? What changes might you have made?

Andrea: I think that if there were something that I would go back and tell myself, it would be that, “You know way more than you think.” There’s so many times that people would ask me questions about what I thought about things or what I wanted to do, and I don’t know. I don’t know and I would say, “I don’t know,” all the time. And when I would get into a situation where I wanted help with something and I did maybe hire somebody to help me with strategy or, you know, something along those lines…

Other than you so, I’m not talking about you in this case, Rosanne. If you go in front of a guru kind of a person, they love to be able to have answers for people right off the top of their head. They love to be able to share their really great ideas with you, and then assume that you’re going to and apply them and assume that they’re going to work for you.

But what I found is that that’s not always the case. And I personally get really frustrated when I’m not heard – when I feel like the person that I’ve hired to help me with something has not taken the time, and I guess, humility to sit back, and listen enough and long enough to understand where I’m really coming from, and in order to be able to offer an idea or offer advice that would be super helpful and would apply to me.

Rosanne: That’s so important on so many levels, isn’t it? When we feel like someone’s trying to fix something that’s not what’s broken or tweak something that that’s not what we came for. That importance of hearing and understanding what’s really needed is so valuable.

Andrea: Yeah. And I think that one of the things I’ve seen in other people is they spend a lot of money to go work with a guru or to go work with a really good strategist, but they don’t already know what they want. They go into it not knowing what they really want. And so they haven’t communicated clearly what they’re trying to get to. And so the person who’s trying to help them gives them the answer to the question that they’ve asked or they give them the strategy that’s going to get them to the place where they said they want to go, but that’s not actually where they wanted to go in the first place.

So, I think that if you’re starting out, that is what you want to get clear on from the get-go is what you actually want – what do you actually want to accomplish because there are plenty of people out there who can tell you how to start a podcast. Do you want to start a podcast? You know, there are plenty of people out there who could tell you how to build a business based on coaching. Do you really want to be a coach? There are plenty of people who could tell you how to build a business where you can end up with maybe fifteen people on your team – a really big business, but is that a kind of business that you actually want? Or do you want to just have a personal brand kind of business?

So, I think getting to the core of what you actually want is incredibly important and to keep checking in with that, keep going back and asking yourself, “What do I really want here?” And before you work with somebody, before you spend money on working with somebody, ask that question, you know, “What do I actually want to accomplish?” And if you’re not sure of that answer, you should hire somebody to help you figure that out or even just keep asking. Have somebody else there that you know that you can trust who can keep asking you the question, “Okay, is that what you really want?”

And if you can have that voice that’s going to help you discern that as you go, it’s going to help you to make decisions more quickly and to gather the advice that you actually need to get you where you want to go.

Rosanne: So you need clarity on your vision or your mission before you can get clarity on the path to take to get there.

Andrea: Absolutely, yes. Which is why we have spent a lot of time here talking about – on the podcast – talking about personal brand strategy because that is such a big piece of knowing how to get to where you want to go.

Rosanne: Thank you, Andrea. That is so good. As we wrap this up, is there anything else you want to tell our listeners? Anything else that comes to mind that you want to leave them with?

Andrea: If your message is that important, then it’s worth batting out to figure out what it is. It’s worth wading through the chaos and just trying to figure out what the next thing is. It’s worth the effort. And if it’s not worth the effort to you, then it’s probably… you know, if you look at that long road ahead and you’re like, “I don’t know if it’s worth all that,” then I would question whether it’s worth trying in the first place. There might be a different way for you to have purpose in this world then to feel like you need to, you know, have a podcast and a book or speak or whatever it might be. Get clear on what it is that you actually want and what’s actually worth paying the price for and then go do it

Rosanne: Thank you so much, Andrea. And if today’s discussion has sparked interest in getting Andrea’s help with brand strategy or building a team that has clarity of vision and mission, get in touch with us at voiceofinfluence.net. We would love to be able to work with you.

Andrea: Thank you so much, Rosanne.

Posted on Tuesday, March 31, 2020

3 Team Needs In a Time of Traumatic Crisis

Episode 134

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

Everything happening right now has just thrown our world into the state of wondering what in the world is going on. What’s going to happen with the stock market? What’s going to happen with our businesses or our organization? Are we going to be able to maintain where we are? What’s going to happen with the health of the people around us? There’s so much that is uncertain. And we know that you want to take care of your team.

But at the same time, they still need to be productive in order to keep your organization moving forward so you don’t end up stalling out in this time of uncertainty. That’s why, in this episode, we’re talking about three things that your team really needs in a time of crisis.

Take a listen to the episode!

Mentioned in this episode:

My Book | UNFROZEN: Stop Holding Back and Release the Real You

Free Training to Improve the Efficiency of Your Voice

Transcript

People of influence know that their voice matters and they can make it matter more. This is Andrea Wenburg, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. Today, Rosanne and I are tackling the question of what does your team need at a time of crisis?

You know, everything with COVID-19 has just thrown our world into the state of wondering what in the world is going on. What’s going to happen with the stock market? What’s going to happen with our businesses or our organization? Are we going to be able to maintain where we are? What’s going to happen with the health of the people around us? There’s so much that is uncertain. And we know that you want to take care of your team – you want to care for them well,

But at the same time, they really still need to be productive in order to, you know, keep your organization moving forward and you don’t end up stalling out in this time of uncertainty. So, today, we’re going to talk about three things that your team really needs in a time of crisis.

So, Rosanne, thank you for being with me, again, today on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Rosanne: I’m looking forward to this conversation, and you and I have had a lot of discussion behind the scenes on our own about our own company. So, I’m looking forward to having the opportunity for us to share some ideas with our listeners.

Andrea: So, when we’ve been talking about this, I think one of the things that’s interesting to me, and that has really shown up for me personally, is this desire to grasp for control in the midst of uncertainty. What are your thoughts on why we do this? Why do we grasp for control?

Rosanne: Well, fear always ignites in us either a fight or flight or a freeze or fawn response, right? These are the trauma responses. And all of it comes down to trying to stop something that we don’t want to happen or that we’re afraid is going to happen, from happening. Nobody wants to feel vulnerable. And so, of course, fear makes us grasp for control, but how we respond to fear is going to make a big difference in outcomes. So, that’s what we’re talking about today.

Andrea: Right. I think one of the most important things for us to tackle here at the beginning is “Well, what happens, in a negative way, if we are grasping for control?” “What are the bad things that happen?” I mean, it certainly makes things harder for everyone when the leader is grasping for it or any other person, really.

Rosanne: Right. Yeah, so I think one thing that we have to remember is that fear in the face of uncertainty is normal. That’s a normal – especially if the uncertainty is dangerous – that’s a normal and a healthy response. Grasping for control, however, is not going to be a helpful response. The danger is, fear could very quickly cause us to make everything about ourselves.

You know, I have four children, and all of them are responding differently to the crisis, and I’m dealing with it on my own. And it’s very easy for us all to bounce off of one another at home because, when we feel afraid, we can make everything about ourselves very quickly and then everything degrades.

Andrea: Yeah, because we are trying to protect ourselves.

Rosanne: Right.

Andrea: So, it does sort of become: “How do I keep myself from being destroyed in this situation?” And when I say destroyed, it could mean a lot of different things. But that’s one of the things that people are struggling with.

Rosanne: Yeah. And the most obvious part of that, of course, is the external – trying to not have our business destroyed or our life destroyed or whatever. But what also tends to come out in situations like this is the unhealed parts of us, the unresolved parts of this that we would kind of manage in better circumstances tend to really come to the fore. So, any insecurities that we have in other areas about whether or not people respect us, or whether or not we’re going to be safe, things that have actually nothing to do with the crisis at hand, tend to bubble to the surface any time we feel this vulnerable.

Andrea: Is it possible that somebody might take advantage of me or my business?

Rosanne: Right, right. And, so, that’s another way where we can make everything about ourselves, and that’s just going to make everything harder for everybody around us. It’s not going to be solution-oriented.

Andrea: Right. And the other thing that – I’ve certainly seen this with myself is that – when I am grasping for control, it’s sort of like, you know, you picture your hands trying to grasp and you just can’t quite ever get a hold of it. Your energy and all of your resources and focus are being spent on this grasp that you’re trying to achieve, which is really impossible to achieve, at this point. So, we’re grasping, grasping, grasping, and then I realized that, “Oh my gosh, I actually cannot…I cannot actually control the situation.” And very little of the response of other people, or even, you know, there’s so much that I can’t control that I’m totally wasting my energy and my resources right now.

I think that was something that after a couple of days, maybe the initial kind of, “OK, this is what we have to do. This is what we’ve got to get done.” And then I started to notice this in myself, and I started to realize that I was really wasting a lot of time and energy on something that I really couldn’t do anything about.

Rosanne: Right. And especially when it comes to other people, like, are we calling things out of them or we’re trying to manage them? Because managing just ignites their fear, it increases their sense of lack of control, and they’re going to fight us. And then we’re just all spinning off of each other. We’re like a bunch of bumper cars, bumping off with one another.

Andrea: Yeah. And I think I think even just to take that and explain it a little bit, Rosanne, the idea of managing people is really the idea of controlling people, trying to manage their response, trying to get them to do something or get them to respond in a certain way is that idea of managing. So, it is, versus, what was the other thing that you said about that either managing or…

Rosanne: Calling out the best in them, giving them real leadership, which is believing in them. And believing that they have the capability of rising to the situation, and therefore calling that out, which is leadership.

Andrea: And we’ll get to that more as this conversation moves on for sure. When we’re to grasp for control, there is a level of trust that just starts to diminish with other people and how they feel about us. What do you think that is?

Rosanne: Well, nobody likes to have their choices taken away, right? We don’t like that. We don’t like feeling trapped. And so if we behave in ways that make other people feel even more trapped than they already feel in the situation, that’s not going to end well.

Andrea: Right. So, we know that it’s not wise, it’s not going to get you where you want to go, to grasp for control. And yet, there is this sort of…I don’t know, you do come to this point where you start to realize that “Oh my gosh, I really can’t do anything about this at all.” So, the hope is, though, that we don’t go into this sense of feeling like we don’t have any kind of agency in this situation. We still matter, your voice still matters. So, how can we get it to matter more in this situation? You know, we’re all in this together. We all know that this is a really difficult time.

Rosanne: Yeah. I think there are things that we cannot control, and we have to make peace with that. But then we’re left with the things that we can control and can be proactive about and recognizing, first of all, like you said, “We are all in this together, so we need to address it together.” We need to be together. We need to be other-focused in the middle of this and realize everybody’s having a hard time.

Andrea: You know, one of the reasons why we wanted to tackle this particular question about what people need from you or what your team really needs from you, is because we are a trauma-informed business. This is something that we know quite a bit about. So, Rosanne, you mentioned something really interesting to me earlier about the people who are used to trauma and live with PTSD; they have an interesting perspective on this. Can you share with our audience about that?

Rosanne: Yes. For one thing, resilience is learned. And so, people who have been in very nurturing environments for the most part, like everybody runs into situations that are difficult. Everybody has to overcome obstacles – that’s just a part of life, right? But there are some people for whom life has worked fairly well. They’ve worked hard. They’ve seen the benefit of their effort. They’ve had opportunities for education or for expansion of using their gifts, and life has worked pretty well for them. But then there are other people who, on a very basic level, spend a lot of time -sometimes because of the choices they’ve made, often because of things that they’ve been through that were completely out of their control, either in childhood or because of health reasons or whatever, there can be a lot of different reasons – that a person has to spend a lot of energy just managing life.

And I say, this as somebody who spent a period of time early in my life battling an autoimmune disease. And so, just basic living – the things that everybody else around me took for granted were very, very difficult for me because I wasn’t at the same starting place. And so, even though the situation resolved eventually, my health resolved eventually – I learned something from that time. That if you don’t have very basic things that other people have – we could look at Maslow’s pyramid of needs – if you are used to having to struggle for your basic physical needs, there are not the same opportunities for creativity that a person who does not have to struggle in those areas is going to be able to exhibit in good times.

However, in a crisis like this, when people who are used to being able to put all of their energy into creativity and innovation and self-fulfillment and that kind of thing, when they’re used to being able to live meeting those higher-end needs, when that gets taken away from them – it’s people who are used to having to struggle to survive who have a lot to teach you because they’ve had to do this a long time. And, so, if you can take the burden off of them in terms of making sure that they know that they have a paycheck coming, and that they’re going to be OK with their basic physical needs – those actually may be people who can offer you insight and innovation and help in ways that maybe you’ve never seen the full value that they can offer to your organization.

Those will be people who can think strategically in a crisis, because they’ve had to do that over and over and over again for whatever reason in their lives. People who have survived abusive childhoods are often very strategic thinkers because they had to be in order to survive. That’s just one other way that I’ve seen that work. And, so, people who are used to living, they’ve had at some point in their life, they had to live long-term in very traumatic circumstances. There’s a resilience that they’ve built that in ordinary times, they can look more fragile. But in a time like this, man, they have the skills, they know what to do, and they can actually be a real benefit to you at a time like this, as a leader.

Andrea: Which I think is really, really cool. It’s fascinating. And I hope that if you are somebody who has struggled with traumatic events in your life and you’ve learned how to navigate things, maybe you’re feeling a little more calm than the people around you. Then this is a really important time for you to step up and to step into that position of offering your calmness, offering your strategic thinking, and not being afraid to do that because other people might be falling apart in ways that you’re not. So, we really want to encourage you, if you’re that person.

Rosanne: Yeah. And the other thing that’s important to realize at a time like this is resilience is learned. Just like any other skill, some people might be more naturally bent in that direction than others. But I told my kids as we were sitting down, we were talking about this whole situation. Resilience is something that’s learned, and it’s learned in difficult times. And, so, the fact that you feel afraid or you feel like you’re falling apart or whatever, acknowledge the reality of that. Don’t pretend that you’re doing better than you are. Acknowledge where you are, but then recognize that: “This is where I am at the moment; but I can begin to take this apart, piece-by-piece, and I can start making positive choices. I can learn not to view this as the end.”

That’s a big part of resilience is no matter how overwhelming the situation feels in the moment, how out of control it feels in the moment – to realize seasons change. Seasons change – that’s something I say over and over to my children. Sometimes they last a very long time, but seasons change eventually. So, when you are acknowledging the depths of the grief or the fear or whatever, keep in mind also, “This is not the end. This is not the final word on this.” Seasons change – this will change.

Other generations in the past faced great trouble; every generation does to some point. I think what we’re facing right now, is going to be a very defining one in history for our generation. But we can meet it. We have the blood of those people who have survived pulsing through our veins. So, we can meet this challenge. It’s not beyond what we are made for. And so that’s something we really have to keep in mind. For leaders, that’s an important thing leaders need to call forth in themselves and in their teams.

Andrea: Mm-hmm. Absolutely, because the kind of the opposite of grasping for control is when you take a step back and you say, “You know what, I can’t be destroyed by this, ultimately. Me, as a spiritual human being, it may take my body, but it cannot destroy me.” I mean, if you’re able to have that kind of perspective that you cannot be destroyed, then you’re not going to grasp for control quite like you when you were thinking “I have to be able to manage all the details and figure all this out.” And, yes, we want to bring the best of who we are to the situation, problem-solve, and all those things. But there’s a difference between grasping for that control and allowing that sort of spirit of “I cannot be destroyed by this, but I will meet it head-on with all that I am.” There’s a difference between those two.

Rosanne: Absolutely. I mean, the reality is, all of us are going to die at some point. So we want to make wise choices, of course, we want to live as long as we can for ourselves and our families and all of that. But the reality is there is something greater beyond just the years that we have. We have the opportunity, by the time that we spend here, to leave a legacy that outlives us. And so, the person who lives this life in fear of being destroyed will not leave a positive legacy. They’ll leave a very selfish, self-oriented legacy. They will not be known for what they did for others, for the impact that they have that outlives them. They’ll have wasted their time.

And, so, it is important to use the time we have. And, obviously, we want to be responsible. We want to do healthy things; we want to make the most of extending as much of this time that we have so that we can use it well. But if we live it in fear of destruction, we’re not going to live it well. And, so, we have to think larger than that. We have to think with vision about what kind of legacy is our life creating right now, as we live.

Andrea: Mm-hmm so true. All right, so, we’re going to move into now the three things that we’ve identified as things that your team needs in this time of crisis. There are certainly other things but we want to highlight these three things as a trauma-informed company who works with leaders, who help teams to work most effectively and be the best that they can be. So, the first thing that we’ve already kind of touched on is this need to create space for people to be able to process, especially at the beginning.

Now, Roseanne, you really are our trauma specialist in this area. So, can you tell us a little bit more about why people need that space, particularly, at the very beginning? Space being permission to kind of step back and do what you need to do to process. Can you share with us why that’s a big deal?

Rosanne: Trauma overwhelms the systems. I mean, it’s a physiological reality. And, so, one of the things that you have to be willing to do when you are dealing with a traumatic situation, and, collectively as a nation and worldwide, really, because this is an unknown, there’s so much that we don’t know about how this COVID-19 is going to play out, we’re all dealing with a traumatic situation. And so, one of the things you do when you’re dealing with trauma, you get very basic. You make sure you get enough sleep. You make sure you take care of your body because what tends to happen is you’re so overwhelmed and disoriented that you kind of move from thing to thing, and you don’t do anything decisive. Your emotions are all raw, and so you have to re-ground, kind of, in your own body.

With trauma, there’s a sense of almost like your mind separating from what’s happening with you physically because what’s happening is so overwhelming that you can’t take it in. And that can play out as denial. That’s one way it can play out. It can go into depression, and you can try to kind of separate from that feeling of out of control by feeling sad. It can do a lot of different things with different people. But the way to respond to trauma, the first thing you need to do, is to give your body a chance to recover from the emotional assault. Your brain actually processes trauma as if it were a physical blow, OK?

So, you need to really take care of sleep. You need to be sure you’re staying hydrated. You need to be very gentle with yourself, not expect a lot of productivity initially. You need to get your basic systems for living in place, where are you going to be for shelter. What plan are you going to have for taking care of your family – those things are going to need to be the priority. If someone is having to switch from working at the office to working at home, they’re going to need some time to get that set up and kind of wrap their minds around it.

A lot of parents right now are not only having to juggle the difference from working at another location to moving home for work, but they’re also having to deal with the fact that their children are all of a sudden doing school at home. And I’m a homeschool mom; I can tell you what’s happening right now is not homeschooling.

I have homeschooled my children their entire – from the time my oldest son was in kindergarten – he is a senior in high school this year. What is happening right now is not typical homeschooling. If those of us who are homeschooling and used to homeschooling – who have chosen our own curriculum and have done all the things and are used to it – are struggling with this new norm of not being able to go out, of the kids not being able to do classes with other friends, co-ops activities, all of those things. We’re struggling with that. Believe me – I have great empathy for those of you who are thrown into this with curriculum that you did not choose and trying to set up technology so that teachers can teach you online. God bless them, my heart goes out to them. That is such a big challenge to have to make that kind of a switchover from a classroom setting to an online setting, just like that.

So, give yourself space right now. It’s going to be disoriented. It is not going to be highly productive. Don’t expect of yourselves or your team the same standards of productivity that you would normally expect during this time.

Andrea: Because actually processing and doing this work of giving yourself the space to sort of internally process this – and externally too perhaps – that actually is productive. It’s productive toward the end of getting to the point where you can do more for work.

Rosanne Moore: Absolutely. And I would say during this early time, if you are used to meeting with a counselor and you can do that online with your counselor, do that. If you have not previously felt the need of a counselor, you might need one now. And, so, that can be really helpful. Journaling can be extremely helpful. Just the act of putting things on paper to sort out your thoughts can be extremely helpful. But you’ve got to give yourself the mental space for your brain to come down off of that fight or flight, fawn or freeze response of trauma and to be able to settle back into logical thinking again

When you are in a trauma-based response, your body does not respond with logical thinking, it can’t. It’s a different part of the brain. So, the emotional part is turned on. The logical part is turned off. Know that with your kids too. If you’re seeing big emotions from your kids, you can’t reason them out of them right now. You have to calm the emotions before you can address logic. And so, you have to do that with yourself first.

Andrea: I wrote a lot about in my book because I had this tendency after a traumatic birth with my son, I was responding to things with anger a lot, instead of tears. And what I realized through the process of like, kind of processing all of it, and going through it and getting to the point where I found some significant healing – is that I have to allow myself to feel the sad things that come along so that they can kind of pass by. It’s sort of like waves of emotion. If I keep trying to contain these waves of emotion, it really becomes a storm inside of me.

And, so, through this whole process, I have been crying quite a bit. Not everybody is a crier, but I do cry. I cry a lot more now than I used to because I realized how beneficial it is to me. And, so, when a song comes on that reminds me of something, you know, I feel sentimental, I feel like the world is not as it should be. My son is missing out on something; my daughter’s missing out on something else. This is not the way I pictured their childhood; this is not the direction that I wanted to go with the business right now, and I had other things, as I am being confronted with those thoughts – if the emotion is coming up inside of me, I allow it to come out. And I don’t do it in front of other people for the most part, but I do find a space where I can allow that emotion to come out so that it is out. So that it has “exited the building,” if you will.

Rosanne: And it’s exiting your body as well because in tears, stress chemicals are released, and if you don’t release those, they stay in your body, and they produce a toxic load in your body that damages your health.

Andrea: Absolutely.

Rosanne: So, it’s very important that if you feel that urge to cry, find a place where you can do it. Find a place where you can do it; it’s really important.

Andrea: And then after you allow it to go, you don’t keep feeding that emotion. So, you don’t go back say, “OK, now, that felt kind of good. What else do I really feel bad about right now?” You know, you don’t want to continue to feed it, you just want to allow it to be what it is and allow it to come out and then move on. Go find something else to think about at that point. That doesn’t mean you’re in denial, it means that you have processed a moment of grief, and you’re moving on, and you’re going to get something done until you need to process the next moment of grief. So, this is another way in which we need to give space for ourselves and for our teens to be able to process especially right at the beginning.

So, Rosanne, we talked about the need for space, but teams also need truth. They need to be able to be honest about what they’re actually confronting and what we’re going to do to meet that challenge. Can you talk to us a little bit more about that?

Rosanne: Absolutely. A mark of good leadership is that you trust your team enough to be honest with them about what’s being faced, and you call them to action based on the reality of the situation. You don’t make promises that you’re not going to be able to keep, that you know can’t keep. Honestly, it’s kind of belittling when you try to hide from your team what’s happening because the message you’re sending is “I don’t believe you’re up to this.” And the reality is, if you’ve done a good job of building your team, this is an opportunity for them.

I had to apply this with my son. My oldest son, like I said, is a senior in high school this year. So, we began talking about moving – he has been part of a high school co-op, where he would go for classes two days a week, and then the rest of the time he did his assignments at home – they had to move to classes online and I fully supported that decision. And as more and more restrictions have come down in our state, one of the things that I had to say to him was: “Honey, you’re not going to be going back to co-op. You’re not going to have that for the end of your senior year. I’m sorry.”

That’s a big loss for him, but it would have hurt him worse if I had made it sound like: “Well, maybe it’s going to work out, you know.” If I had strung him along or minimized it or said, “No, we’re not going to do that. It doesn’t matter anyway because you’re getting to do stuff online.” If I’d minimized the loss, or minimized the reality of the situation, both of those things would have been unfair to him. But because I was just honest with him, and I had to say: “Look, what I can tell you is you’re not going to be going back to co-op for the rest of this year. However, this thing, we don’t know yet how long it’s going to last, how long these restrictions are going to last. But we know at some point, everybody’s going to come out again. And at that point, I promise, we will celebrate your graduation. We will find a way to celebrate your accomplishments, even though it’s not going to look like what we originally thought it was going to.”

So, it’s going to be really important for leaders right now to be honest about the situation, to be honest about what you’re confronting because of the situation. And then to be honest about what you’re doing to meet that challenge. They also need to hear that – not simply like, “Yeah, it’s really bad,” – but also, “This is what we’re doing proactively to meet this challenge, and this is what we’re asking from you in response to this challenge.”

Andrea: People need a plan. They need to know what that plan is. I mean, that’s something that my husband and his business did this week was, they took a step back and they said, “OK, what are we gonna do?” We all kind of conferred: “This is how we’re gonna handle this crisis. And at least for the time being, we know that this is the structure that we’re going to move under.” Then that was communicated to the rest of the team, and though there might be differing opinions on what should happen, at least there is clarity for people in knowing, “OK, so this is what they’ve told me that I can count on for my benefits. This is what they’ve told me I can count on for my time off if I happen to get this disease. They are doing everything they can to, you know, maintain our business and keep things moving forward.”

So, they have the need for space to process, the need for the truth so that they can confront the truth and meet it head-on. But there’s also a need to be released. Your people have a need to be released. I think one of the things that we immediately kind of do is we tend to operate in our zone of, you know, sort of our box. This is what I have been told I should do. This is my role. This is where I fit. That can be confining anytime, but especially in a time when we need to be able to think beyond where we were before. We need innovation. We need vision. So, being released to bring the best of who you are and who your team is to this situation could be a game-changer.

Rosanne, you can talk a little bit about that, and then I’ll throw in my example.

Rosanne: Yeah. So, I think it’s really important at a time like this to say, “We know what we’ve been used to. This is the situation we now have – we’re open to suggestions if you have ideas.” So, in some industries, the leadership may already have a plan, and it may be a matter of communicating, “This is how we’re asking you to pivot.” And it may be that all that you need to do releasing them from doing things the way they’re used to, you’re asking them to pivot. In some situations, a leader may need strategic ideas and it would be important to open things up and say, “You’re used to doing this. What else do you see yourself as being able to bring to the table in this situation? What other ideas do we have here?”

And I realized it depends on the role the person is playing in the company, as far as how open you’re going to be to letting them bring change ideas. But I think it’s really important to realize in times where what has been working no longer works, for whatever reason – and right now it’s external reasons – that the greatest innovation takes place. This is an opportunity. We can either see it as an absolute disaster, setback, whatever, or we can see it as an opportunity.

The other thing, I think, we have to be able to recognize is part of releasing people to bring the best, most selfless part of who they are to this challenge, is realizing there are going to be people who are grieving in the weeks ahead. They may not be sick themselves; they may have lost someone, and they’re going to be grieving. And so as a team, being released to stand beside somebody in a compassionate way and not just being frustrated by the stress of the situation, but bringing the best, most selfless part of who they are to this challenge in a very human capacity, as well as a work capacity, is going to be long-term team-building, long-term good for your company.

Andrea: Absolutely. So, when it comes to releasing people to be who they are, that is one of the bedrock themes of our business. And what we do with teams and what we do with leaders, one simple example would be when our kids came home from school, and now we’re going to be at home for a quarter of the year, longer than what we would have been. And the question became, “How are we going to do this? All of a sudden, lots of ideas popped up on the internet, on Facebook, on Pinterest, whatever about how to handle this with our kids, and there are a couple things that I took into consideration. And I think that this applies to teams as well, first of all, the stage or the situation of your team now.

So, when my kids were little, I would block out time, and I would sort of make a schedule for the whole day, or I’d make a list of things that we were going to get done every day, that sort of thing. And as they’ve grown, that has become less of an important thing for us to do, not just important, but it’s almost important that we don’t do that too much. We don’t want to over-schedule because my kids, in particular, one of them likes the schedule, one of them likes routine. One of them needs more freedom to be able to do things. So, she might need a list of things to do for the day, or we can discuss, “OK, so what are the things that would be most beneficial for your mind, body, and soul today?” But she wants the freedom to be able to accomplish those things within a broader range of time.

And she will get them done, and she will do them with joy. And she will do them with more precision and more efficiency. She’ll just do better job if she’s given the space to be able to do that. But our son, on the other hand, would prefer to know exactly what he’s expected to have the same jobs every day, to know what he’s going to be able to expect for a fun activity that day that sort of thing.

So, what I’m saying here is that we need to kind of know our teams, know the people, individuals, especially if they’re working from home now and ask them, “What do you need to be able to accomplish the things that you need to get done?” “How can I help with that? Instead of coming up with, you know, a very strict set of rules or how they’re going to be at home, instead being able to say, “What is it that you do need in order to accomplish what you’re trying to accomplish?”

And people will fight for you. They will fight for your organization. They will do the best that they can when you believe in them and when you are fighting for them. They know that. They believe that. They want the best for the organization because you want the best for them too. And when they’re given the freedom to be able to do that, they’re going to rise to the occasion.

Rosanne: Absolutely. Yeah, I have four children that I homeschool. And I have three different plans for how we do that. Two of my children basically, follow one plan. One goes to a co-op. The other has a completely different plan because we have to do what’s going to bring out the most productivity. You have to ask yourself, I think: “What is the ultimate goal that I’m trying to accomplish?” And then from there, what’s the best way to get people to achieve that?

Andrea: That’s right, because if the goal is for you to have control, then they’re not going to be able to achieve that for you.

Rosanne: Right.

Andrea: If the goal is you grasping for control, then you’re not going to get what you want. You’re just not going to get it. So, we’re saying, “Look, take a step back.” So much of this is about releasing control. It is about putting yourself in a position and a heart position in a position with your team where yes, you will bring the best of who you are. You’re going to bring your own strategy and clarity about what the new normal will be for your team and that sort of thing. But if you have that energy of grasping for control, people will feel it. And they will resist it, and they will resent it. And it is very likely that, again, it will feel like things are harder for everyone if you’re grasping for control. It will end up being energy and resources spent on things that won’t help and the level of trust in your organization with both your team and your customers, that’s going to diminish.

So what does it look like when you actually do give people the space to process and meet their need for the truth and meet their need for being released to be able to bring the best of who they are to this situation? Well, there’s a lot of really good that can come from that.

Rosanne: Absolutely. Releasing control is not abdicating leadership. We’re not suggesting that you should be passive. You want to be assertive – you just don’t want to be aggressive. Aggression is not going to help your team function well.

Andrea: Yeah. So, what do you get when you do that? Look, your team is going to be healthier and they are going to eventually be happier, perhaps even in this moment. They’re going to trust you more. They’re going to use resources more efficiently. If they’re given that space, even though you’ve given them extra space, and maybe it feels inefficient for now, eventually that’s going to come back around and really show up as efficient. People are going to bring that innovative problem-solving energy to the things that they’re doing. And ultimately, you’re going to have more goodwill with your team and with your customers. Instead of grasping for control, you release and you give people the things that they really need.

Well, we want to close off today just by saying we care about you. We are so sorry that you’re having to confront this. We’re sorry for the world. We don’t know what’s coming in the future. But we do know that we are here to do whatever we can to help you. So, if you would like to have a conversation about yourself and processing these things for yourself, or if you would like to have a conversation about how to help your team, please reach out. Go to voiceofinfluence.net, hit the contact button and send us a message. We would love to visit with you and do what we can to help you in this time of traumatic crisis.

Posted on Tuesday, March 24, 2020

How to Assemble and Engage a Global Team with Dmitriy Peregudov

Episode 133

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

You know, pulling together a team and helping them all feel like they really are a part of your organization is a difficult job as it is. But it’s even more difficult when you’re trying to do it on a global scale.

Our guest today, Dmitriy Peregudov is doing that with giftbasketsoverseas.com. He has a team where they are servicing over 200 countries worldwide with the goal to build international personal and corporate relationships through gifting.

And today’s conversation – he’s going to share with us how he has really handled that challenge of assembling a global team. He’s also going to share with us their core values and what giftbasketsoverseas.com really delivers to customers – how they use offsite meetings to develop relational connections. And let me just give you a little tip on that on the front end, they go to a different country every single time they do an offsite meeting. It’s very interesting.

And then finally, he shares two things that you really need to focus on as a business leader to have success. We will link to giftbasketsoverseas.com on our show notes but you can also find them by just typing it in your search engine. We are really, really thrilled to have Dmitriy Peregudov today on the podcast.

Take a listen to the episode!

Mentioned in this episode:

Free Training to Improve the Efficiency of Your Voice

Transcript

People of influence know that their voice matters, and they work to make it matter more. I’m Andrea Wenburg, and this is the Voice of Influence podcast.

You know, pulling together a team and helping them all feel like they really are a part of your organization is a difficult job as it is, but it’s even more difficult when you’re trying to do it on a global scale.

Our guest today, Dmitriy Peregudov, is doing that with giftbasketsoverseas.com. He has a team where they are servicing over 200 countries worldwide with the goal to build international personal and corporate relationships through gifting.

In today’s conversation, he’s going to share with us how he has really handled that challenge of assembling a global team. He’s also going to share with us their core values and what giftbasketsoverseas.com really delivers to customers, how they use offsite meetings to develop relational connections – and let me just give you a little tip on that on the front end, they go to a different country every single time they do an offsite meeting. It’s very interesting.

And then finally, he shares two things that you really need to focus on as a business leader to have success. We will link to giftbasketsoverseas.com in our show notes, but you can also find them by just typing it in your search engine. We are really, really thrilled to have Dmitriy Peregudov today on the podcast.

Here is our interview:

Andrea: All right, Dmitriy, it is great to have you here on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Dmitriy Peregudov: Thanks for having me. This is Dmitriy Peregudov, CEO of giftbasketsoverseas.com.

Andrea: Awesome! And Dmitriy, I’m curious; first of all, what is giftbasketoverseas.com?

Dmitriy Peregudov: Sure. So, giftbasketsoverseas.com is the company that delivers baskets worldwide. That’s just how the name calls it. The service area we have is around 200 countries worldwide and we work with both personal and corporate gifts for our customers in the US and overseas.

Andrea: And as I was doing my research to learn more about your company, Dmitriy, I saw that one of the key things that’s important for people to know about Gift Baskets Overseas is that your gift baskets don’t have to go through customs. You’re actually providing gifts from the country that they’re sending it to.

Dmitriy Peregudov: Absolutely. That’s one of the important parts of our business model. We do focus on local gift delivery so that it sends quickly and reliably without crossing the border, and so that recipient would never have to pay taxes or duties fees.

Andrea: So, where did this all start for you? How did you get going with Gift Baskets Overseas? Were you already in the tech space or where were you when you first started this business and why did you start?

Dmitriy Peregudov: Yeah. Well, actually, personally, you know, a software engineer at the time and had a lot of opportunities to send gifts to other countries. And I, myself, an immigrant from Russia, and I’ve got a chance to connect with my folks there as well as friends in other countries. So, I’ve got a lot of cases where I need to send gifts, and I found that to be quite difficult and cumbersome. And so, you know, one of those experiences led me to say, “Well, I’m gonna try that, you know, in several countries and see what happens.” So, my tech experience allowed me to, you know, come up with the first website, and you know, we’ve started doing it in a few countries at first and that kinda led us to the expansion.

Andrea: And you’ve been going for how long?

Dmitry Peregudov: Well, the first website was started back in 2002. That’s been more of like a flower business and flower delivery space, and the gift basket itself, that space was sort of, you know, we’ve entered into that in 2007.

Andrea: What amazes me is how you were able to build a team in 200 countries. What was that like, you know, just sort of reaching out to people, finding people, bringing them on board? Tell us a little bit about that.

Dmitriy Peregudov: Sure. So, you know, we’ve got an internal team that we call A team – the people who work for the company directly and represent the company with customers. That’s customer service team as well as order processing teams, marketing, and so on. That’s internal team. We have around seventy people today, and that group has been found through personal connections as well as some external reaching out to the right people. But, yeah, building a global team does come with challenges.

I think you asked about also, you know, deliveries network that we have, and that’s where 200 countries come into play. So, yeah, that is sort of an external team where we have, you know, other companies or other individual entrepreneurs who are looking to serve a certain area for gift baskets and flowers. And so, those are certainly also found through online connection. Today, we have a lot of choices so we need to just make sure we choose the right ones. So it’s mostly true, you know, do just some checking, and trying the particular provider ourselves that we end up selecting the best ones and working with them.

Andrea: Okay, so your internal team, are they all in Massachusetts? Is that where you’re located?

Dmitriy Peregudov: Yeah, the headquarters is in Massachusetts, but the team is actually all over the world. Internal basically means that they work for the company itself representing the brand. You know, a lot of them are initially freelancers who enjoy the work environment of remote employment and wanted to get a position to something more purposeful where they have a specific client or specific company they are working for. So that’s where it kind of began, where we started hiring freelancers to help. And then they ended up, you know, staying or focusing on us as being the main place to work or the only place to work, I would say.

And some of them are from the US, others are from Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East, and so and so. We have a team globally now sort of residing in almost all the continents of the world and in many countries.

Andrea: Hmm. So, I read that your company was on the Inc. 5000 list of Fastest-Growing Companies here in the first few years of starting your company. What were some of the really hard things that you encountered when you were first starting? What was, like, personally difficult for you?

Dmitriy Peregudov: Sure. So, I think working with people, in general, is not easy when you have people that are from different cultures and backgrounds. And those who value different things in their culture – that creates certain challenges, you know. And I, myself, being from Russia and from Europe originally and sort of growing up and professionally in the US, I got to have that mix where I could understand, you know, Western values combined with some of the Eastern European and European values. So, that helped me a bit, but you know, a lot of other people who were from neither of these two areas were different.

And also, you know, even values aside, just people are all unique, and we all have to have our own stories to tell. So that presented some challenges, especially working remotely when you haven’t personally met someone. We had a number of people who worked with us, and we never actually met them in person. So that presented its own challenges, where you have no opportunity to have a coffee break with someone or you don’t just go for a little chat so that in itself had some challenges in the beginning.

Andrea: Yeah. You mentioned the challenges of having to work with people – and getting to work – but the challenges of working with people on that global scale and from different cultures. What were some of the things that you did – tricks or principles that you lived by and still do, maybe – to help you bridge that gap and to understand different cultures and help them to acclimate to the culture of your company?

Dmitriy Peregudov: Sure. That’s a great question. Well, one of the things we’ve done is getting to know the person on a personal level and trying to learn over time what it is that drives them. And I think that helps a lot to understand whether they’d be a fit to the team. In the beginning, we didn’t really have any formal process to bring someone on board. We just kind of looked at the skill sets, and if they worked out, we just said, “All right, you know, we’re going to give you a try.” And we’ve got some limited experience with that, limited success with that where we had, you know, maybe two out of three people ended up being alright and a fit, I would say. And one out of three was really not a good thing and disastrous, I would say.

So, we were spending a lot of time in training these people and bringing them onboard and wasting about 35% of the effort, and that was a lot. Also, it took a toll on some of the trainers where you had people really coming in to train the newcomers, and they were wasting lot of their time, and that was demotivational for the next time.

So, we ended up being much more rigorous and figuring out what it is that makes a right person for the team, you know, besides the skills. And today – and for a number of years now – we’ve hired on our core values as opposed to on the skills. So that helped. While them being… flexibility that the person, you know, values. They value flexibility. We value flexibility. We want them to be flexible with us in many ways, you know. In exchange, we offer them flexibility for working from home, working from any location. If they were to be… you know, they want to go spend vacation or spend some time working elsewhere, they can.

So, a lot of those things we offer, you know, in exchange, we request that they are flexible with us. And we have number of things we want from the person; such as some hours that we want covered in addition to the normal times. And maybe sometimes when there is a hot season, we want them to stay, you know, and doing a double shift or things like that. There are a lot of things that we require that also would call for flexibility.

And the other one that the business, big one, is ownership, and I think ownership is a huge thing with us. And a lot of companies realized that over time that ownership of having someone drive themselves to achieve certain results is super important. With us, we don’t have a boss, you know, standing behind someone’s chair and tapping their shoulder to say, “Hey, how’s it going,” you know. So, we don’t have that, just kind of typical office environment isn’t there. So, we rely on these people to be self-starters and to be at least carrying their weight or more. So that’s super important for us as well.

Andrea: How do you know if somebody is a self-starter if they’re going to take ownership when you’re first interviewing them and you’re talking to them about the possibility of working for you?

Dmitriy Peregudov: That’s a great question. We don’t really know, and no one ever knows. But I think having an understanding in general if this format of work works out and if the person has done something in their personal life that shows an ownership or a certain degree of independency in their own lives – that someone, for example, who immigrated to another country and had done things on their own there, so starting up from the ground – that kind of one slice of a person that might work for us.

It works out in our favor because skillsets sometimes where you have multilingual people who have, you know, two or more languages under their belt, that sort of shows. And some of them would be immigrants, you know, naturally because they have known their own mother tongue and then they’ve immigrated to another country and they’ve learned – let’s say, someone came to Mexico and learned Spanish there and they might have picked up English on the way as well. So that would a trilingual person, you know, working in Mexico who actually originally lived in Belgium or Russia. So that may be a good candidate for us.

And other things like, you know, what other ownership criteria, you know, are the people who are not afraid for opportunities. You know, someone who’s talking to us, a company that doesn’t have an office; like, really doesn’t have a central location where people go to work, you know – and a lot of people today would find that… even today in the world where a lot of companies operate under that model – they would think, “Well, that’s kind of fishy. That’s not…” So, we want the person to be opportunistic and taking a leap of faith, and you know, trusting someone. So, we want that opportunism as well in a person, and opportunism sometimes comes hand in hand with ownership as well.

Andrea: So, what are your other core values? You mentioned flexibility and ownership. Do you mind sharing others with us?

Dmitriy Peregudov: Sure. So, customer focus is another big one for us. From the very beginning, we realized how much customer experience matters. Our customers, why they do business with us, in many ways, we are not the cheapest in service and yet, we’re often chosen against many other companies in the space because we do what we do very well. And even when some issues may happen in the field, we always cover our customers and we make sure at the end that they are satisfied.

So, we realized that after, you know… my personal experiences were quite negative when I was starting the company with the experience of using some other companies was negative and also understanding how much the deficiency exists in the space of, you know, flower and gift delivery today. If that was true back in 2002 and 2007, and it’s still true today, where a lot of companies out there exist and being created every day, but those who really can deliver on the customer promise – there’s only handful of those, and that I’m proud to say we’re one of those who are able to deliver on that.

Andrea: Well, you don’t stick around as long as you have and service as many countries as you do without good customer service because that’s pretty much all it is. Your product, of course, is important as well, but I mean, my goodness, yeah. I would think that you would hear if something didn’t turn out like somebody expected.

Dmitriy Peregudov: Absolutely. In fact, we realized that we’re not in service of delivering, you know, gift baskets or flowers – we’re actually in service of delivering emotions and connections. So that really bring us to sort of the importance of a customer interaction and that’s far above just survivability. I mean, surviving in space, that is important and that’s where some people say, “Well, I’m gonna focus on the customer so that I’m better than others.” But once you realize that, you know, you’re not really selling gifts, you’re selling relationships; you’re selling an opportunity for someone to build a relationship or to improve it. So, once you realize that that’s what you’re selling then, you know, the only thing that really matters is the customer experience with that.

Andrea: Hmm, well, that’s such a deeper purpose than being here to make money. And I’m sure that that’s the case for the people that work for the company as well. I’m guessing that you communicate that with them; that you’re here to help facilitate or help build connections and help with relationships. And that probably means something to them.

Dmitriy Peregudov: Yes. Indeed, it does. And you know, one of the slices there is that when we do bring someone over, another important part is, “What is compensation like,” and then people do ask that question. Obviously, that’s important for someone working to be compensated fairly. In the beginning, especially early on, we didn’t have a lot of funds available for compensating newcomers. And we generally hired from, you know, very fresh out of school or someone who had related experience in what we do. And so, the offering salaries were generally on the lower side.

So, oftentimes, people would join us, not because they want a high pay or not because they want to have a high personal achievement record. Sort of like, we deterred individually. So, we deter those who want to make career out of it necessarily. So, people who came in, they really sort of care about what we do and wanted to be part of it. So that really sort of took away that… those hunters who came for the money. So that helped us as well, I think.

Andrea: I can see how immigrants would be able to relate to this problem of wanting to connect overseas and being able to maintain those relationships in meaningful ways even with gifts and things like that. I love that there are so much continuity in the values. You mentioned flexibility, ownership, and customer focus. Are there others?

Dmitriy Peregudov: Sure. So, besides those, we worked on finding other values, searching the keys for what they are because we really didn’t want to make any of those up. You know, a lot of companies say, “Well, we have those values, and we’ll just put them on a poster.”

Andrea: Yeah.

Dmitriy Peregudov: For a number of years, we haven’t had any values formally decided on. But lately, you know, about four years ago, our management team got together in one of the offsite meetings. We do those every year, which I should tell you more about later. But that [was] really the time where we kind of reflected on who we are, and what is it we do, and we’ve understood that we value diversity.

And diversity is a big thing, right? Diversity of customer base – we have all kinds of customers. We have corporate and personal. We have, you know, those who prefer to order all out of the form, and those who prefer to talk to the Chatbot. We have those who just want to order by email and those who just go to the website. So, we have, like, all kinds of different customers. So, flexibility is important for us to offer to our customers, and they’ll come from different countries, so different languages, different cultures, you know, religions, sexual orientations.

So, we try to go for gifts to all those groups and being as more flexible for all the different niche groups. So, niche customer base is, you know, what comes with that flexibility. And internally, we’re also very flexible and diverse within the team. So, we have people from all over the world working for us, and also, they have different religions and all that comes with it. So when it all comes together with the trips we take, you know, people from all over the place come together once a year to one new country.

So, every year, we pick a country, and we take our team there. And that’s where we brainstorm. We learn about each other. We put little green dots in Google to faces. You know, how _____. So, we tried to kind of go away from that and say, “Well, now this green dot becomes a real person, a real face.” And we learned about each other in those corporate outings. They are sort of semiformal, semi-fun, so we really educate each other in an informal environment and that’s really the focus of those meetings.

This year, we’re planning to go to Portugal and to Columbia as well because that kind of seems the places we haven’t been to yet. We’ve got 200 countries on the map, so I’m not sure if we’re going to make it, but…

Andrea: You’re going to need quarterly meetings instead of…

Dmitriy Peregudov: Yeah. This year, we have _____, so we’re making two meetings. Usually, we do one. But this year, we’ve got exceptionally a good Christmas where we’ve got a lot of _____ during the season. So, we decided that we can afford two meetings this year, and we’re going to send people to two countries this time.

Andrea: Hmm. So, who all do you have attend that meeting?

Dmitriy Peregudov: Well, generally, it’s the management team is a core of that. And in addition to it, you know, every year we have newcomers who join the team, and they don’t know about the company enough to really fully drink our Kool-Aid. So, we need to kind of get them accustomed, sort of get them to learn about the company and about people more. So, those newcomers are first in line to be invited. Of course, once we believe that they are a good fit. Usually after two or three months, you kinda know that’s a right fit. But generally, when we hire for the holiday then after the holiday, we’ve get to keep some of the people who were hired seasonally. So that’s the time in spring when we get to keep people for good.

And if they feel like that’s a right fit for them, you know, a lot of them also realize that they may have enjoyed Christmas season, but they also have, you know, really burned out. And those who were burned out after one season, they’re not really a fit because that means it’s probably not their type of work. It’s not their cup of tea to continue. So, we end up inviting newcomers, you know, most of the management team and also some of the people who also are sort of core team.

So, generally each trip is between seventeen and twenty-two people or so. It’s a small group. We usually rent, like, a big villa or we rent a small hotel all for us. And we do stuff like educational topics – everyone brings a topic to present. And also, we have sometimes some professionals who join to present certain topics. And we meet our partners in each country. That’s a big thing as well. So, we have those who delivers for us in that country, they join us for the trip. We learn about them. They learn about us. That kind of builds those relationships as well.

Andrea: Hmm. I love this. I’m just kind of jotting notes as you’re talking about it and I’m thinking about how powerful that is for really building the team for them to be able to feel like they’re really a part of it.

Dmitriy Peregudov: It’s very important.

Andrea: Yeah. You said educational topics – do you ever do strategic planning in these meetings or is that saved for a different time?

Dmitriy Peregudov: We do. To some degree, we would have strategic meetings during the year as well. Those [are] kind of done usually after the season when we kind of look back and see what worked, what didn’t – and we continue on. Now, strategy is certainly becoming more and more important, so those meetings are quite important. Each meeting has a theme of its own. Like last year, we had a theme of Never Lose A Customer Again, and that’s a book by Joey Coleman. It’s kind of a book that we decided that we will make our bible for a year or two.

The idea of that book is, you know, several strategies of how do you centralize all the processes you have around the customer – how do you make customer focus your core competency, and what do you do to never lose a customer again.

And so there’s a process in the book that defines a hundred-day process on how not to lose a customer. So, we’ve started making changes in the company that would make us less likely to lose a customer. Of course, in reality, people do get lost is an issue for a lot of companies. But we are not an exception in saying that, you know, it’s so much more expensive to attract a new customer, and it’s so much easier to keep an existing one happy. So, once you start shifting your marketing dollars and your effort of the team to saving a customer, then you start realizing that you were wasting all these money to attract new-coming customers and you were really missing out on the golden opportunity of keeping your existing ones happy.

Andrea: Yes. It’s so much more expensive to acquire new customers, so it makes a lot of sense to spend a lot more time and effort focusing on the customers that you already have.

Dmitriy Peregudov: Exactly. And in fact, it’s actually part of the business that we have. Especially with corporate customers where a lot of our corporate clients have realized that for them to keep a relationship with their own customers up and keep loyalty of their customers and grow their relationships with their customer base is through gifting. So, what we do for them is, in a lot of ways, what we do for ourselves. So, you know, also realizing customer loyalty and keeping customers happy and also building the relationships by sending gifts, that’s what a lot of our customers understand.

You know, Christmas and year-round, they create birthday programs for their clients, for their customers and for their employees as well, so building loyalty with both employees and customers is in a lot of ways part of the strategy for other customers we service.

Andrea: Yes, of course. That makes complete sense. Dmitriy, this has been a really interesting conversation. I’m curious; when you think about the listener who’s out there wanting to lead a purposeful team, wanting to have a voice of influence, do you have any parting words for them? Any last piece of advice that you’d want to offer?

Dmitriy Peregudov: Sure. The technical and financial parts of any business owner or a CEO is oftentimes calls us to look at the numbers. And I think numbers are important, no matter what other things we have to look at. But I think the numbers will come together well and profitability will be realized if you start focusing on the right things. I think that’s what I would suggest, you know, focusing on the customer and looking at how to make it right for the customer or how to design the business around your customer – making that work will make your numbers work. And shifting more of your focus to the existing customers who have chosen you once and who have much higher chance of choosing you again really is a key to our success.

And as for the team, explain out to the team and letting them have a piece of ownership of particular area, no matter how small having someone to be heard.(26:54) In our case, it’s very important that everyone who is part of the team has a chance to voice their concerns. And we listen to our team very closely, and management team does not ignore those words. So that really makes everyone feel like they actually own part of that company and part of the process. So, I think on the team side, I recommend letting people be heard. And on the customer side focus on that and make sure that you take care of those existing customers.

Andrea: Great words of wisdom from Dmitriy. Thank you so much for taking time to be a voice of influence for our listeners today.

Dmitriy Peregudov: Thank you, Andrea. Thanks for having me.

Posted on Tuesday, March 17, 2020

How To Get Unstuck On a Project

Episode 132

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

What do you do when you’re stuck on a project?

My Communications Specialist, Rosanne Moore, is on the show to help me explain the steps that are needed to make a project a reality; especially when you’re feeling stuck.

In this episode, we discuss the common reason we get stuck on projects, the importance of understanding why your voice matter before trying to break through the barrier of being stuck when trying to share your voice, an example of how I recently felt stuck while creating a free gift for you and the method I used to help me break through that feeling of being stuck, and more!

Ten Questions to Ask Yourself to Help You Get Unstuck:

What is the name of the project you want to complete?
What is on the to-do list for the project?
What am I afraid of right now?
Why does this project matter for me and for other people?
What do I need to learn or get better at doing in order to complete the project?
If I complete this project and it fails, what will happen?
If I complete this project and it succeeds, what will happen?
What am I doing to distract myself?
What am I running from?
What is the next step I need to take?

Take a listen to the episode!

Mentioned in this episode:

Free Training to Improve the Efficiency of Your Voice

Transcript

People of influence know that their voice matters, and they work to make it matter more. I’m Andrea Wenburg, and this is the Voice of Influence podcast.

Last week, we had Chad Allen on the podcast, and he talked about what it’s like to write a book and create a book proposal. He’s particularly good at helping people create a book proposal that gets them published. And I’ve been having this conversation with some friends, recently, and colleagues, who are interested in writing a book but they feel just completely overwhelmed. They feel stuck where they are. Maybe they have some idea in their head about what a book would be. They know what the title would be, but they get stuck when it comes to actually writing the book. Maybe they work for a while and then they go back and edit and then they edit again and then they edit again.

And instead of actually getting out their first draft, which is kind of what you have to do when you’re going to write a book, and then you take that draft and you start to rework it. Instead, they get so caught up in the process of how messy it is that they’re trying to clean it up as they go. And really you can’t, you can’t clean up all projects right as you go.

But truth is that whether it’s writing a book or any other kind of creative project or even analytical projects, something that you feel stuck on, you know, if you’re at a point where you feel stuck up, most likely you’ve gone to the process where you start at the beginning and you are so excited. You’ve got some clarity – maybe you know the title of the book. You have a sense of what you want to say and you’re like “OK, this is what I wanna do.” “I’m gonna do this.” “I’m gonna write this book.” And then you start and it just comes out really messy and you go back and you edit.

And then you go back and you edit some more and pretty soon, you realize that its’ been three weeks and you’re only on paragraph six. It is so frustrating to have something that you know you want to contribute in life. You want to contribute to others but you’re not able to get it out because you feel stuck.

Well, today, Rosanne and I are going to have a little conversation about how I have learned to get past that moment of resistance, that feeling of complete overwhelm where you’re just get paralyzed and you don’t know how to move forward. So that you can actually get a project complete, get it into the world, get it to somebody else’s hand, get it complete for your house, for your home, for your life and the difference that that can make for you. Just think about the difference that would make for you if you actually got your projects complete. Getting past that overwhelm requires in emphasis on mindset, on strategy, on your skills, and then execution – just getting it done.

Today, with my conversation with Rosanne, I want to share an example of when this has happened to me recently and how I kind of got past it. Thankfully, I’m done with the project now. But it was really, really hard for a while and probably a good two weeks; I was stuck on my projects. And then finally, I took the time to do some reflection and I’m going to share with you what questions I actually ask myself and how I did this reflection so that I can move forward. You can find this reflection questions in our show notes at voiceofinfluence.net.

Now, here’s my conversation with Rosanne Moore:

What do you do when you get stuck on a project? Hi, this is Rosanne Moore, Communication Specialist at Voice of Influence. And today, Andrea and I are going to talk about the steps that are needed to make a project to reality, especially when you’re feeling stuck.

So, Andrea, what is the problem that we ran into that has this feeling stuck?

Andrea: Well, I don’t know about you, Rosanne, but for me, I get overwhelmed when I come up to a project and I’m feeling stuck. I know that that is what I’m feeling. I’m feeling overwhelmed, because sometimes I don’t really know if, you know, do I have what it takes? Do I even know what to do or how to get to the end of this project? Does that resonate with you?

Rosanne: Absolutely. And a lot of times if I’m not able to figure out quickly then I just get pressured and I pushed it aside because I feel like I’m not going to do it well anyway.

Andrea: Yeah, because we wanted to be really good. I mean, if we’re going to put a contribution of some kind, make some sort of contribution to the world, whether that’d be a book or it may be like, you know, I’m working on this free mini-course for our listeners. I have been working on that. Even just for a kid maybe it’s homework or, you know, if you’re still in school, maybe it’s homework. Sometimes, those things just feel so big that they’re overwhelming and we’re not sure exactly what to do with it.

Rosanne: Yes. I can think of a conversation I had with my children this week with a weren’t something done. And when we got to the bottom of why, it was “Because I don’t I’m gonna get an A.” And my point was, “Just get started.” I’m like, “Forget the A; just get started.”

Andrea: Yes. Yeah, I think that that’s one of the biggest things that some of us struggle with is we really want what we’re doing to be good, or we want it to be successful. But we get too stuck on that that we think that we can’t make it so and we give up like you said before. Yeah, it’s a real problem because, you know, if you’re listening to this as a voice of influence, you know that what you have to share makes a difference and it could mean something really important for somebody else.

Even if your project is to Marie Kondo your home, you don’t Marie Kondo your home all in one time. And that’s a reference too just this idea of pulling out all the things that don’t carry meaning and you don’t want to carry with you until the next phase of your life and things like these. I mean, it could be a really big project. You go through, not just room by room, to do that, you go through drawer by drawer; otherwise, it just feels completely overwhelming. So, whatever the project is, I think that it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.

Rosanne: Yeah, I think, whether, it’s something that’s household or work or school or anything that matters to us, we’re juggling so much that it is easy just to feel like life is overwhelming if we don’t immediately know what to do.

Andrea: And, you know, especially with creative projects, like writing a book.

Rosanne: Yes, yes.

Andrea: Even starting a blog or if you’re an entrepreneur, trying to figure out how to get everything off the ground, launch something.

Rosanne: Right. Or relationally, if you’re doing a project with a team and you’re not sure how to approach it in a way that’s going to be smooth, peaceful or whatever, it’s easy to get stuck there as well.

Andrea: Sure, and a lot of times we’ve seen leaders want to give up and not even bother going there with their teams when that’s just project because there’s so much that you have to offer. Your experience, your wisdom is so valuable and important to other people. And the urge that you have inside to want to complete some sort of project – there’s a reason for that. And a lot of times, it’s this resistance that we feel on the front end of things that keeps us, you know, a feeling overwhelmed and stuck. But if we can breakthrough that overwhelm and sense of resistance then we can move to the place where we’re actually getting our wisdom into the world. We’re getting that project completed so that our life will be better in some way.

Rosanne: Well, you’ve written a book and you have your own business and you work constantly with leaders who are trying to build better teams. Can you give me an example of how this has played out for you at that time when you felt overwhelmed or you didn’t know where to begin on a project?

Andrea: Yes, absolutely. And I have an actual example I want to share, but I want to also let you know that when I first, oh gosh I would say, it’s probably six or seven years ago, I was super frustrated in life because I felt like I had all of these like really good things in my head. Experiences and expertise and examples and things that I could use that I knew could turn into a message and could make a difference for others, but it all felt stuck in my head. And so it took me a lot to get over that at the very beginning and to breakthrough and be able to get to the point where I was actually putting things out into the world.

So, I want to start with that that if you are somebody who you feel like it is so overwhelming and maybe it’s a big piece of your existence right now, we’re going to talk today about breaking things down into smaller stuff to help you get past this initial kind of “Oh my goodness, this is too much, I still really want to do it though.” But I would say too, Rosanne, that, yes, I have an example of how this has played out in my life just like recently.

Rosanne: One of the things when we were talking about this as we were prepping for this episode that you said that I thought was really important was thinking in terms of how you would be different if you tap into the things that is swirling within you basically but it’s not being released right now. You talked about recognizing that you have something to offer and not letting go of that even though you feel overwhelmed about how to put it out there right now.

Andrea: Hmm. I think that’s one of the most important things to hold on to at the very beginning when you have decided that “Yes, I feel overwhelmed but I want to break through this.” It’s to start with why does this matter. You know, why does this matter that I put this out to the world? Why does this matter that I complete this project? How does this going to impact others? How does this going to impact myself and my business or my relationships? Being really clear about, essentially, your why is incredibly important at the very outset, because if you don’t have a clear reason why then you’re not going to have the courage and determination that it takes to breakthrough.

Rosanne: So, give me an example. You said, you have something recently that you had to deal with and have a breakthrough on, what was it?

Andrea: Yes. OK, so, we have been trying to put this Feedback Method course together. And what I’m talking about right now is this mini-course that is about 15-20 minutes long, just a few like three videos and we thought, “You know, this would be great things for the audience.” “Anybody in our audience could use it whether it’s because you know somebody saw me speak at a conference or hearing this on the podcast or coming to our website, they would really be able to get a lot of value out of how to give feedback.”

Rosanne: And part of the reason this is important is this is your contribution, right? A lot of people struggle with this. But this is something that you don’t struggle with. This is something that you’re not afraid of facing or going into. And so, you have something to say about this that can really be a value.

Andrea: Exactly, exactly. So, we decided like, “Let’s do this. Let this be our free gift to our audience.” And so, I was really excited about getting going on this and it was really easy for me. That was an easy part. The very beginning was really easy. I can get out the outline. I can figure out what the basic concepts are that I’m wanting to share with everybody else. But what became overwhelming is when I had to actually put it into words and I had to put it into pictures and I had to think all the logistics. And all of a sudden, I just felt like “How am I gonna get out _____with this?” “This is really, really tough.”

Rosanne: So, you really had to move from the creative vision to actually putting feet on it.

Andrea: Exactly.

Rosanne: How did you get through that process?

Andrea: So I have this little method that I use to help me breakthrough when I feel overwhelmed like this and I’d love to just share it. I think I’ll just take you through the process. Does that sound OK?

Rosanne: That sounds great.

Andrea: All right.

Rosanne: Because you got it done. Let’s just say that.

Andrea: That’s right. We got it done.

Rosanne: She knows what she’s talking about.

Andrea: That’s right. You definitely helped to do this. So, this is what I’d like to share with you and you can find this information actually on our website on the show notes. We’re just going to give you the list of questions that you can ask yourself. But what I’d like to encourage you to do is to use your journal. When you’re feeling overwhelmed like this, you know that you’re stuck, you feel that you can’t really, or even the progress that you’re trying to make isn’t getting you anywhere and you’re speeding your wheels that sort of thing.

So, the very first question on your sort of list is your project. What is the project? Just identify the project, use words. Rosanne, can you explain why it’s so important that we actually use words to describe what we’re experiencing?

Rosanne: Well, I think naming things is an important step in knowing what the creative idea means and how it matters. A lot of times, creative people can get very locked in their own minds. I think we all do that, right? And I think you’re right, I think putting words to things, naming them, and putting them on paper is an important part of unraveling the idea and making it something that’s actually viable.

Andrea: Hmm, yes. And even if you’re more analytical person than creative – I think people who tend to really analyze things can get stuck in a cycle of analysis and then the whole analysis or paralysis by analysis or whatever that’s called, they can do the same thing. So, what we’re laying out for you is just writing it down and actually setting these things for yourself will be helpful.

So, number one would be the project – just name the project. OK, so my project was the Feedback Method course. It’s this course that’s going to help people to demystify the process of how to get feedback. So, I had to think through this. I’ll make it easier for them and that sort of thing. So, the project is “What is on the to-do list?” What are the actual tasks that I need to do? So, for me, I had written down here I needed to write a script. I already made an outline. I already knew kind of what I was trying to say, but I was at this point now where I needed to write an actual script. That’s hard to do – to make slides, to record it, to create a worksheet, to upload it to the learning center and that sort of thing.

So, I had this then to-do list. It’s really important to be clear about – these are the actual steps that are coming that I’m going to need to take.

Rosanne: That’s great. So, once you got that clarity about that, what’s next?

Andrea: Well, I’ve noticed that for me a lot of times the reason why I’m resisting and feeling overwhelmed is the sense of fear. So, my question is what am I afraid of right now? And the things that I listed, I was worried that it wouldn’t be good enough. That it wouldn’t be high quality. That was one of my fears. Another fear was that I would be disappointed with the results. Then another fear that I had was that I wouldn’t complete the project, that I wouldn’t actually meet the deadline, like I was afraid of not getting it done – which was keeping me from keeping it done.

Rosanne: Yeah. And it so often like that, isn’t it? We tend to approach things like this logically. It’s as if we think if we tell ourselves what’s actually true that would change behavior, but not necessarily because what you’re putting out there is people are passionate. Were not just motivated by what is actually accurate. There are other things that are going on beneath the surface in our own hearts that can actually be holding as back and we’re not even necessarily aware of it. So, what your suggesting is that we need to get in touch with that.

Andrea: Yeah. And that what’s we kind of, you know, have dubbed the term “human dynamics.” I mean, that’s one of the pieces of the human dynamics that we help people with is to kind of understand what is going on – what is going underneath the surface. So, that fear then is really important to identify. And then the next piece of it was to ask myself “Why does this project matter?” Like you and I talked about before, Rosanne, we have to know why something matters and our why, you know, in order to get through it.

Rosanne: Yeah, because if you don’t have a vision then with every obstacle you face, you become less motivated to go back to it.

Andrea: Sure. So, I will ask myself, you know, why does this matter to other people and why does this matter to me? Why does this matter to our company? So, for others, I knew that it would matter for them because it would make the process of giving really good feedback, less intimidating. It would demystify that process. It would help people get over the overwhelm of giving feedback because a lot of time we’re afraid of having to have a confrontational conversation, either because we’re worried about the tension and the relationship or maybe we’re worried about how the other person will respond – what might happen afterwards. And there are all these things that kind of overwhelm us. And I knew that if I can just let this out, people will be able to handle those things that will alleviate their fears. And that could make a difference for a lot of things.

Rosanne: Sure. Absolutely! Yeah, because if there’s one thing we constantly have to do is deal with other people in a way that’s going to be productive – and healthy and avoiding hard conversations is not going to help with that.

Andrea: Right. Right, so we’re talking about decreasing stress and maybe help retaining employees and clients. Perhaps helping employees be happier, improving their jobs, move up. Sometimes, we have to give feedback to people who, you know, maybe it’s giving feedback to your superiors, somebody that’s, you know, your manager or something like that. And it’s important that we’re not afraid of those conversations because we need to help make each other better. We need to make our environment better so that we can do better work.

Rosanne: And if people don’t have a good plan for doing that then they tend not to do it and then growth opportunity _____.

Andrea: Right. Yep, and it’s the same thing with what we’re talking about right now with this, you know, being overwhelmed about a project. If you can go through this process, I really think that you’re going to be able to actually complete the project. So, it’s so important.

Rosanne: So, then what’s next?

Andrea: Yeah. I mean, the other piece of that is why does it matter to our company? Why does it matter to Voice of Influence that we put this out there? We know we want to do good for the world but why does it matter for us too? And for us, it has to do with growing our platform and finding out who’s really interested in what we have to share and validating our message in what we’re doing. It helps us to know that we’re on the right track.

Rosanne: Right. Right, because great ideas in isolation are not helping anybody. So, if it’s not making a difference for people then we want to know why so we can hone that message better.

Andrea: Yeah. So, here we are, we’re about halfway through this whole thing. We’re looking at – we need to know the projects. What’s on the to-do list? What are we afraid of? Why does this project matter for me? Why does it matter for other people? And then what do I really need to learn or get better at doing in order to accomplish this? Is there something, you know, we go back to that to-do list? Or is there anything on that to-do list that might be a skill that you need to grow in and learn about – research that you need to do or something like that. That’s also important to tackle – so our mindset and our strategy and/or skills.

Rosanne: And some of these skills are things, like you said, we need to learn how to grow in. But others might be things that we might need to hire out instead. I know a lot of the teams that you work with, part of the reason they have you come on board is because you offer another set of eyes and another perspective that they can’t just manufacture themselves. And so, when you work with a team and the _____ taking place, you’re bringing another skill set that they don’t have themselves and that’s OK because you’re able to offer that.

Andrea: Right. And it’s really hard to take your own messaging and clarify it more. It’s hard to take your relationships and identify what’s really going on. It’s hard to do those things for yourself when you’re kind of in the middle of it.

Rosanne: Sure.

Andrea: And so to have somebody else come in and be able to take a different perspective is important. You know, if you’re in the book writing, like last week we had Chad Allen on the podcast and he was talking about doing a book proposal. Well, I can tell you that I’m definitely going to Chad when I need help with the book proposal because he knows so much more about it than I do. And, you know, when I was writing my book, I called on you because I needed help being able to see what of my message that I’m trying to share is resonating and what makes sense and what doesn’t.

So, having that other perspective is important. But then sometimes just having somebody else to do something that you’re not good at doing, whether that’d be social media or somebody else to do, you know, the financial books or…

Rosanne: Technical skills.

Andrea: Technical skills. Sure, and stuff like that.

Rosanne: OK, so then that brings us to the final phase, right? Getting it done.

Andrea: Nope. OK, if the project fails – that’s the next question on my list. If the project fails, what’s going to happen, because a lot of times, you know, like I said, one of the big fears with my particular project was that if it fails – that’s one of my actual fears is that I would fail and so I can’t even move forward. But the real question is if I get it done and it fails then what will happen? And I needed to be very clear about this so that I understood that it wouldn’t be the end of the world if my project fails.

So, for me, the answer was, “Well, you know, I’m gonna be disappointed and I’m gonna have to try something else.” “I’m gonna have to come back to it.” And then the question is if it succeeds, what will happen? What is that vision, again, not just why does it matter but what will actually happen if it succeeds? And for me that answer had to do with being successful as a company, someday selling books and getting a book contract and things like that. So, understanding how when it fails or succeed, what that will look like. That’s super important.

Rosanne: And that’s valuable, isn’t, it to realize, to be connected what success means that it matters, that I take the steps that I take. And also to not make failure kind of sum zero, but then it’s part of the process of growth. So, if something doesn’t work out the way that we hope, it’s still material for later success – we can learn from it.

Andrea: Hmm, totally. OK, so then after that I really started to look at “Well, you know what I’m distracted.” “What am I doing to distract myself right now?” And I thought about that, “What am I doing to distract myself right now?” And I thought about that I was like “You know, sometimes I’m getting involved in the news.” “I’m overindulging in watching news programs or trying to understand different things that maybe in isn’t going to be that very helpful for me.”

Another thing that I was snoozing is playing a game on my phone to distract myself. I’m like “Why am doing this?” But I think it’s really important that we recognize that there’s a difference between just sort of relaxing and doing your normal life and then using something as a distraction.

Rosanne: And you have to ask yourself when you catch yourself doing that why – maybe that goes back to the fears again. You might want to reassess what am I afraid of that I’m avoiding.

Andrea: Totally, it could be that. And you know the next thing on the list is actually, what am I running from? What emotions am I running from? What situation am I running from? Yes, of course, there’s always the project that you’re working on. But for me, it was deeper than that. It went out further than that. For example, my daughter is turning 13 soon and I thought “Oh my goodness, I am kind of getting freak out by this milestone in her life.” Like, how will she change? How will I change? How will our relationship change? We’ll we have time with her in the next few years? All those things started flooding me, and I realize that that’s one of the issues that I’m dealing with though there isn’t direct correlation to my project – it’s impacting my project.

Rosanne: That’s a good point.

Andrea: So, then issue become “OK, now, I’m kind of thought through all these things, I have an idea of what’s going on inside of me. I have an idea of the things that I need to do. The question is – what is the actual next step that I need to take? What am I going to commit to doing next?

Rosanne: And how did you answer that?

Andrea: Well, I answered that, number one, by actually going through this process of reflecting. So, I thought “OK, there we go, that’s one checkmark on my list.” I went through the process of reflecting through this overwhelm and that’s one checkmark on my list. And then what’s next? I had to buckle down and just say, “I need more time to write that script than I thought I would and give myself the permission to do that.” So, that was my next step.

Rosanne: OK, so you’re making progress on your checklist and then what else is a part of that?

Andrea: Well, I think that the checklist itself is so important because, you know, used to tell me when I get overwhelmed. She would tell me, “Andrea, you need to write all of the things down that you need to do. Make your task list and then start actually making those physical check marks next to your list.” At first, I thought that was kind of like sillier beneath me for some reason because it just seems trivial. But then when I started to do it, when I actually got really overwhelmed with things and I actually started using a checklist and started to see those checks go, I started to realize what I’ve learned about the brain which is that the brain is that that affirmation – the actual physical visual that you have succeeded.

So, the checkmark is a nice reminder that you’ve succeeded, but so is a reward. So, if you can give yourself a reward for taking that next step, go for it – whether it’d be ice cream or, you know, a new pair of socks, or whatever it might _____ be for you.

Rosanne: A walk in the park.

Andrea: A walk in the park.

Rosanne: Yeah, so the checklist isn’t simply keeping you organized; it’s also a method of celebrating your success, isn’t it?

Andrea: Absolutely, absolutely!

Rosanne: I will admit to being one of these people who adds things to my list. If I have to do something extra that wasn’t on the list, I’ll put it on the list just so I can check it off and reward myself for getting it done.

Andrea: Boom!

Rosanne: _____

Andrea: Yeah, exactly. And the great news is that this project is complete. So, I’m thrilled because now I can say that we have something to offer the world and it can do all the things that it was designed to do.

Rosanne: So, if you’re wanting to avoid failure in terms of having ideas locked up and having this wisdom that can’t be accessed for the world and feeling chaotic and paralyzed – maybe having other people frustrated with you because you’re shut down and you’re not getting done what you need to get done. Or your company, you’re personally experiencing financial loss because you’re not accomplishing what needs to be done. If you want to avoid that and want instead to have more clarity and to make a difference, to have less stress and more motivation for the things that you know are important then go to voiceofinfluence.net and look at the course that Andrea has just finished putting together, specifically the Voice of Influence Feedback Method. It’s a free course there. And look at the show notes – we’ve got the questions that she talked about working through because they’re all right there for you.

Andrea: Absolutely! So, yeah, if you’re just looking at “I need to finish a project,” just go to the show notes. Go through this little method that will help you to break through your moment of paralysis. You can do this. But if you’re thinking to yourself, you know, that feedback is really an issue for me, we would love to have you partake in the course. It is free, so we really encourage you to participate in that and we’d love to hear about it too if you do.

I mean, really life – it doesn’t have to feel like life is happening to you. It doesn’t have to feel like your gifts, like your expertise, your wisdom is going to waste. You can show grit. You can get your contribution into the world. You can get your wisdom into the hearts of the people who work with you or who you have relationships with. It really has to do with getting over this sense of overwhelm on a project and moving forward and doing it all in love too. So, we’re really glad that you’re with us today.

Rosanne: Thanks so much, Andrea, for sharing these thoughts.

Posted on Tuesday, March 10, 2020

Getting Published as a Subject Matter Expert with Chad R. Allen

Episode 131

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

Are you one of those people that really believes you have a book in you? Or maybe you’ve written a book already. Perhaps you self-published and now you’re thinking to yourself, “You know, I really think that I need to get published next time by a traditional publisher. I’d like a book deal.” Well, today’s episode with Chad R. Allen is right up your alley.

Chad is a writing coach and the founder of Book Proposal Academy and Book Camp who’s been on the podcast before. And today, we are going to talk about a lot of things that you can really relate to if you’re a subject matter expert.

In this episode, Chad shares the three ingredients of publishing success, the importance of building a platform before you submit any proposals, how many people he recommends having on your email list by the time you send out proposals, his thoughts on ghostwriters and whether or not they work for subject matter experts, at point in the process you should start looking for an agent, the basic components of a book proposal, the value of having being part of a community of others who’re also going through this process, his biggest internal hurdle to being a voice of influence, and more!

Take a listen to the episode!

Mentioned in this episode:

Free Training to Improve the Efficiency of Your Voice

Transcript

People of influence know that their voice matters, and they work to make it matter more. I’m Andrea Wenburg, and this is the Voice of Influence podcast.

Are you one of those people that really believe that you have a book in you? Or maybe you’ve written a book already. Perhaps you self-published, and now you’re thinking to yourself, “You know, I really think that I need to get published next time by a traditional publisher.” “I’d like a book deal.”

Well, today’s episode is “Write Up Your Alley.” You’re going to get a lot out of this episode with Chad Allen.

Chad is a writing coach and the founder of Book Proposal Academy and BookCamp. And today, we are going to talk about a lot of things that you can really relate to if you’re a subject matter expert. We’re diving into that, because I’ve actually had Chad on the podcast before. He was in episode number 9; you can’t succeed as a writer until you take the first step.

It’s been two and a half years since that last episode aired and I really encourage you to go back and listen to it, because we do cover a few same things. But for the most part, we really tried to dive into what it would be like for, in particular, a subject matter expert to get published. So, what we talked about here today is the reason that he made this journey from being a managing editor at Baker Books to actually working with authors to work to help them get their work out into the world.

We talked about the three seeds or pillars of book publishing success and how those specifically apply to subject matter experts. And then we also discussed his biggest internal hurdle to being of voice of influence, which I’m pretty sure that you will be able to relate to. I think we, probably, all can in some way or another.

Chad has a ton of resources available on his website which we will link too in our show notes, as always, at voiceofinfluence.net,

Here’s my interview with Chad Allen:

Andrea: All right, Chad Allen, it is great to have you, again, on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Chad Allen: Thanks a lot for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this.

Andrea: Me too, me too. I was listening to our conversation from three years ago. It’s really two and a half years ago about right now and I was just struck by how much neat was in there and how many good things that people had to chew on after that conversation. And so, I thank you again for that and I know that today is going to be just like that was.

Chad Allen: Awesome! Well, yeah, I mean you and I, we always go into an interesting direction, so let’s see what we can do this time.

Andrea: That’s right. That’s right. OK, so the last time that we talk – well, the last time you were in the podcast, you were an editor for Baker Books. Can you tell us what has changed for you and your career since then?

Chad Allen: Yeah, big change – about a year and a half. So, in about four months, little less than that, I will have been on my own for two years. I worked in traditional publishing for about 20 years, worked at Baker for over 16 years. The last seven of which as editorial director of the Baker Books division, you know, overseeing 60 some books published a year and transitioned that out to working as a fulltime writing coach. And people hear it were like “Gee, how do you do that?” Well, it sounds much more sudden than it was. I mean, I had been blogging for writers for years and that were sort of enabled me to make a smooth transition out of corporate into working for myself. So, that’s what I’ve been doing.

Andrea: So, what is the lure or the…I don’t know, what was the draw for going out on your own and being a writing coach versus having so much influences as an editing director?

Chad Allen: Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, there are probably few different factors but the main one, I mean, the reason I started the blog in the first place was because I was feeling called, like internally, like there was this, you know, I don’t know. It is intuition. It’s God, it’s a sense of vocation, you know. You can use lots of different words to describe it. Some people might use the word God to describe it or whatever it is, like I felt this internal pull to begin serving writers on my own.

And part of that was, when I was working for Baker, I regularly had to tell writers “no.” My job was to bring books under contract, but for every book I brought into contract, I said no to 20 others. So, I was saying no a lot. I was like “I’m tired of this.” Like, I really think I can help writers. I want to say yes to them. So, my blog really became a place where I could do that. And that sense, that internal pull toward that work only increased over time because I think I enjoyed the work and because I was seeing the response from writers – people who appreciated what I was doing. And then of course, it really came to before when I started creating products that people started buying. That was real validation that I needed to move more and more in this direction.

Andrea: So, what exactly do you provide as a writing coach?

Chad Allen: Well, yeah, so this business I’ve started, full time at least, is less than two years old. So, I’m still figuring that out. I can tell you this; one of my areas of specialty is helping writers with nonfiction book proposals. That has become a real sweet spot, which of course makes sense because, you know, when I was in the traditional publishing space, I reviewed thousands of book proposals. So, when a writer told me years ago, “You know, if you could help me with writing a book proposal that would be really helpful.” My first thought was “My goodness, I’ve literally reviewed thousands of book proposals, I think I would have few things to say about how to write a good one.”

Andrea: Absolutely.

Chad Allen: And so, my first product was, of course, called Book Proposal Academy and that was kind of the beginning of my move in this direction. And now it’s just gone different ways. You know, you can still get the course but then you can also get 101 coaching with me. I provide a small-group experience now. You know, it’s a six-month experience of building a platform and writing a proposal, that’s called Book Proposal Academy Elite. But the core competency, the core service is really helping writers craft compelling book proposals.

Andrea: I think it’s interesting that the opportunity to say yes to writers is what drew you in because what I know of you and your voice, and I worked with you one-on-one as well, you are incredibly encouraging while being realistic. So, it’s like you are saying yes to writers and then you’re also _____ to writers, I think, in order to help them to actually move forward.

Chad Allen: Yeah, thank you for that. I think that’s right, and for whatever reason, that space really works for me. I don’t ever want to give writers false hope, right? Like, I don’t want to say “Oh, you’ll absolutely get a book deal.” At the same time, you know, I have a pretty good sense of what you need to do to plan a book deal, and so I can see where a writer is. I can see a path they can take toward getting to a traditional book contract. And because I can see those two things, I feel really comfortable encouraging them, guiding them, and helping them on the path to get where they ultimately want to go.

Andrea: So, do the people that work with you usually – are they pursuing a traditional book proposal or is it possible that they might go self-publishing as well?

Chad Allen: Yeah. So, I would say, I mean this isn’t scientific but I would say, at least 75 percent of the people I end up working with are interested in a traditional book deal. Many of them get one, but they all know and I told them, “If for some reason it doesn’t work out and you get tired of trying to pursue a traditional deal, don’t let your dream die, like, self-publishing is still a great option.” So, that’s how that works.

Andrea: Sure. OK, one of the ways that I wanted to take this conversation today, to kind of narrow or focus a little bit more would be on subject matter experts. People who particularly adept and understand a specific kind of subject matter within their career, their job, and they have something to say about that; sometimes their voice may not get or carry the same amount of weight that it could or maybe it should. And it seems to me that it would make sense for them to shoot for publishing getting published as an author. What are your thoughts on the subject matter expert as an author?

Chad Allen: Well, I think the first step is confidence in one’s own ability or in one’s own expertise and authority. And I remember reading Brendon Burchard’s The Millionaire Messenger, and in that book he writes – it was the first book I ever read that said, “You know what, you have expertise…” and I’m saying this now to your listener’s, you have expertise that people will gladly pay you for. When I read that, Andrea, I was like “Wait, really? Is that really true?” You know, it was like this spark of hope and that was really pivotal for me in the early days.

And so, I think that first step that is just trusting that that’s true. You have expertise, you have authority, and your guidance in your area is just extremely valuable. And I think the next step is to begin serving your audience. They’re out there. I promise you, you have a tribe. And many of your listeners may have already started building one. But if not, like just trust your tribe is out there. Begin serving them by creating content and that can come in the form of speeches, podcasts, blogs, or videos. I mean, there are lots of different ways to serve and audience.

You know, the best books are those that come organically out of the work that an author has been doing for a while, you know. So, for example, if you were to write a book called Voice of Influence, you already did the Unfrozen book, but if you want to do Voice of Influence, you know that would come from years now of doing this podcast and serving your audience with this message, with this commitment. And it would have more weight because of that work you’ve done.

So, right, I told writers “Look, don’t wait for a publisher to give you permission to serve your audience.” I mean, we have a global audience at our fingertips. It is unheard of, right? It’s amazing _____ the influence that we can have. So, start with that and then a book can come from that work.

Andrea: OK. I kind of remember you talking about maybe three pillars or something about a book proposal, am I right on that?

Chad Allen: Mm-hmm.

Andrea: OK.

Chad Allen: Yeah.

Andrea: Could you share what those were again? You did talk about it in the other episode but share with us what those are again?

Chad Allen: Well, they’re time tested. They don’t get old. They’re kind of classic, the classic three ingredients of publishing success. And this is true whether you’re self-publishing or traditional publishing – a great concept. And a publisher will sometimes refer of these as the three seeds; Concept, Crowd, and Craft. So, Concept is what’s the problem your book is solving and how do you that in a unique way. The more effectively you communicate about that, the stronger your concept is. And great concepts market themselves. That’s why they’re so important. So, start there.

And then Crowd and sometimes, you’ll hear the word platform. This is the author’s ability to reach an audience. So, one way to do that is with a podcast, you know. So, what is your ability to reach your audience – that’s your platform. That’s your ability to reach your crowd. And then Craft is pretty simple – how good a writer are you? You know, is the book written in a compelling way? When you have those three things in place then you have the makings of a book that kind of have a big impact.

Andrea: That’s great. OK, so, the concept sells itself is got to be really good. We did talk about that one a little bit more in the last episode. I think it was episode number 9 of the Voice of Influence podcast, but we’ll link to that in the show notes for sure. When it comes to crowd and craft, I’ve a couple of questions for you. So, I think that of all the things, most people are most intimidated by this idea of building a platform or creating that crowd for their work. Why is that essential and how can somebody who is busy – they’re in their expertise and working on their projects or they’re in their job all the time. They’re not thinking in terms of crowd and to aim in building a platform, why should they think about that and how did they even begin?

Chat Allen: Well, I would say, if somebody is listening to this and they’re feeling that internal pull as I did years ago and it’s not going away, then it’s important to marry that with the reality that we all have a little bit of time in about which we get to make decisions, you know. How are we going to use that a little bit of time that we have to do with us we wish. And six or seven years ago what I started doing is getting up a little earlier and putting on my backpack and walk into my neighborhood coffee shop. I mean, I still have very fond memories of doing it. And at 6:00 a.m., I’d walk into this coffee shop. The guys know Grand Rapids, it’s the Biggby on Michigan Ave., and I would go in there and I would start typing. And you know, it was just me and the keyboard doing our thing for a long time, but that is how I slowly began to build an audience.

And then you know, you meet people along the way. You can naturally seek out people who can help you start building an email list. But the thing is don’t get overwhelmed with… Sometimes, we let our fears about the future sabotage what we do in the process. And I would just encourage people, “Don’t do that, just start today what’s one thing you can do today to move yourself forward, and then when you get up tomorrow, ask the same question.” If you start with “Oh gosh, I need a thousand email subscribers,” you know and that could be really self _____. And you know, I love what Jon Acuff says “Don’t compare your middle…” Or in this case your beginning to someone else’s middle, you know. Just start, would be my advice.

Andrea: So, when it comes to actually doing a book proposal and getting published then what should people be shooting for in terms of platform on social media or in their email list? What are the actual numbers that they should be shooting for?

Chad Allen: Well, that’s a question I get a lot. You know, “What’s the number, Chad?” So, the number of I would give people is I say, “Shoot for a thousand email subscribers.” And email is really the metric that we’re using these days for the sizing of platform. Your Facebook following is important. Yeah, your Twitter following and Instagram; all of it is important. But the key metric is your email list. And by the way, there are ways of converting your Facebook followers into email subscribers, but I would shoot for a thousand.

Now, we have authors with few of them a thousand email subscribers landed book contracts. Yes, have authors with 20,000 email subscribers failed to win a contract. Yes, it’s one factor. There are three factors and it’s one. But it’s an important one and so my role if I may, shoot for a thousand. But again, don’t get overwhelmed with that in the beginning. In the beginning, just start doing the work because eventually, you know, you get there.

Andrea: OK, a thousand doesn’t seem like it’s out of, you know…

Chad Allen: Not for you, because you’ve been doing this before.

Andrea: Right, right. No, I mean, even it’s starting…I think the first number I ever heard was 10,000. So, that totally _____ out. I was like “Oh my gosh, there is no way I could get published then.” And so that’s the reason why I went with self-publishing Unfrozen in the beginning. So, it’s interesting that you’re saying a thousand.

Chad Allen: Yeah. Well, I have just seen a number of people get interest from publishers at/or even below that level. So, if you have a great concept, if your writing is compelling, if your proposal is strong, you know, let’s say you have a great marketing plan, sometimes it’s that combination of things that can help a publisher capture a vision for you and your book.

Andrea: OK, perfect. All right, so in terms of craft, some people are very comfortable writing, some people might enjoy the idea of writing, but they don’t have time. They like literally don’t have time. They’re so busy that they don’t have time to do it, to dig in and get better to their craft that sort of thing – to what extent have you seen ghostwriting work for folks like that?

Chad Allen: Works all the time, yeah. Yeah, and that’s true, some people – they have the expertise. They have the authority in a particular space, so they really are the author but they need a writer to help get the content into book form. So, I think, it’s a perfectly legitimate way to get a book into the world. And let’s face it, like if your expertise is, I don’t know, human resources and somebody else’s expertise is writing, you know, it kind of makes sense to combine the two to create the best book possible. So that would take some resources, I mean, a ghostwriter doesn’t come for free typically, but it’s a great way to get a book into the world.

Andrea: Do you recommend that if somebody wanted to go that route, do they try to find their own ghostwriter? Is that where they could start?

Chad Allen: Yeah. I think so, yeah. I mean, it wasn’t very often that we in the publishing world would…there were some cases where we really had a vision for a0. project. We knew the author had, for example, a great platform but maybe the author’s writing ability, you know, needed a little help. And so, we would go and help them find a ghostwriter. But more often than not, the projects came to us with the pair already in place. So, I would ask around. And the book you want to write, you know, in that space see who the ghostwriters are out there and start sending emails and see if see if you can buy in somebody who can help you out.

Andrea: When people starts with their book proposal, what point in the process do they start that? And should they be seeking out an agent before writing the book proposal? Is an agent even necessary?

Chad Allen: Yeah. You know, you can start your book proposal anytime. My advice is to at least get a website up and start serving, you know, audience for a while and then as you begin to develop your concept that will makes sense to work on a proposal. You learn so much about your book by just doing the work of a book proposal. In terms of agents, the larger publishers typically do not accept what they call unsolicited proposals. So, the only that you can get to hear with those larger house is with an agent. And then different agents have different submission guidelines. Some want just a query, you know, just a description of your book initially. But eventually, you will need a book for all of it. The agent is going to need a book proposal to pitch your book to publishers.

So, I always recommend, even you’re pursuing an agent who doesn’t want a proposal at the beginning, it’s a good idea to have a proposal already written so that when the agent replies and says “Yes, I wanna work with you,” you have a proposal you can send them right away because eventually you’re going need that.

Andrea: So, for those who don’t know, what are some of the basic components of a book proposal?

Chad Allen: Yes. So, there’s the cover page obviously, which is where you kind of present your title and subtitle. It sounds really simple but actually your title and subtitle encapsulate your book concept – the first C. We talked about how important that concept is. Your title and subtitle in many ways, they are your book concept. So, very simple to put a title and subtitle on a piece of paper but the process of coming up with a compelling concept takes a lot of work.

Then, I will put up the major elements – there are more than these. But the major elements are the cover page with maybe a few alternative titles and subtitles, the brief description which is a three-to- five-paragraph vision statement for your book, your bio, a table of contents and chapter by chapter synapses, your marketing plan and sometimes it gets divided into platform, and marketing plan, and then the writing sample. It’s usually about three chapters of the proposed book. So, those are the major elements of a book proposal.

Andrea: OK, so let’s see. Is there anything else that I’m missing in terms of asking, you know, what is subject matter expert, in particular, would need to consider when they’re thinking about the idea of writing in doing a book proposal?

Chad Allen: You know, you could ask a question like if someone out there is considering this but they’re nervous about trying to do it on their own, what might they do so that this isn’t quite so solitary.

Andrea: OK, got you. All right, if someone out there is thinking about doing this, they might be a little daunted by the idea of trying to tackle this on their own, what are some of the options that they have that they could do?

Chad Allen: Yeah, that’s great. So, I do think it’s really important to have a community that you’re doing this with. And so, it kind of depends on what you want to accomplish. So, if you want to start a blog, to kind of begin serving your audience, there are communities or people out there who have an interest in the same thing. And so you can search out those communities. With my friend, Jonathan Milligan, he runs Blogging your Passion. There’s a Facebook group and there’s this whole community of people who are interested on being on that journey together.

If you want to write a book and you want to be in a community of people who are trying to figure out how to write a book, I would point you to BookCamp, my own community of writers. You can go to chadrallen.com and you can find the information on BookCamp where I kind of service a coach or community of people. You know, there’s some training involved, some mentoring. You can get direct coaching from me in BookCamp, but that’s a great community. But wherever you go, think about what you want to accomplish and then search out communities either virtually or where you are locally that could support you on that journey. Because you’re absolutely right, like if you try to do this on your own, I mean, you might be a little _____ but chances are you’re going to get worn out and give up, you know. So, I don’t want to see that happen. I want to see your listeners thrive. And so, yes, listen to that impulse and go find that community of support.

Andrea: I think it’s a really good idea, because it can feel very isolating. It can feel very lonely, especially when you’re trying to kind of confront some of your own internal battles that might come up because writing can be a very strenuous thing on your own soul. Chad, when I think about that, I’m curious about you. What is one of your biggest internal hurdles to having a voice of influence for yourself?

Chad Allen: Yeah. Thank you for asking. I think it’s, in many ways, the question that we all have to answer. And I’ll tell you a little story if I could that illustrates this in my own life. Last fall, I was having lunch with an entrepreneur – he’s a little farther along than I am. His name is Bryan Harris. He’s my buddy, a friend from Tennessee. And we’re having lunch and he said, “So, what are you excited about right now?” And I said, “Well, you know, I’ve never done this before but I’m really excited about getting a small group of people together and this wouldn’t be for everybody because the price would be a little higher than it would be six months that I would coach them on writing a book proposal and building a platform.” “And we would become a community together as we do this and there’d be an _____ like halfway through and I would try to help all of these people land book deals.” “I’m really excited about that.” “But I’m nervous because I’ve never done anything like it.” And Bryan looked at me, you know, and he said “You can totally do that.” He said, “I love this idea, you can totally do that.” “You can do that by this time next month.” “You can have 10 people sign that.”

And it was like, the fact that Bryan believed in me was everything. And I went it off and sure enough, it didn’t happen as quickly as he said but I got some people signed up by then and that was enough momentum for me to carry on and it happened. And it was an incredible experience. And so, I think belief in oneself is so important. And as long as I can keep the faith, as long as I can find people like Bryan to believe in me when I’m having trouble believing in me so that I can get to live my way into that belief from own self, “I’m all right.” “I’ll do just fine.” But if I’m isolating, like we talked about before and I’m just struggling with myself talk, I don’t know. I think that’s like 70 to 80 percent of the game right there. Just believe in yourself so that’s would I would point to.

Andrea: I really appreciate that perspective because I think there have been times when I’ve heard maybe coaches or mindset gurus who would say, “It’s all about your belief in yourself.” “It’s all about that and you just need to believe in yourself.” It could just happen, like as though you could put the switch. But what you just told us that there are times when you have to rely on other people’s belief in you so that you can live into that and I also found that to be true. It helps tremendously to have outside validation, not just to make you feel better, but to actually help you believe that it’s possible.

Chad Allen: Yes. So, seek those people out, absolutely. Like even as we’re talking about, you know, Brandon Burchard did that for me in the book I read and then Bryan did it for me over lunch. And now there’s another fellow that I’m in regular communication with _____. So, it’s not always going to be the same person but I would just encourage your listeners to be ______ about looking for who that could be. Sometimes we do, we sort of to borrow the belief of others to move forward.

Andrea: Hmm. So, Chad, again, people can find you where?

Chad Allen: chadrallen.com. So that’s chadrallen.com.

Andrea: We will definitely be linking that in the show notes. And is there anything else in particular that you would like to say to our listener before we leave?

Chad Allen: You can do this, do your art, get out there, and make your difference. You know, Steve Jobs talked about making a dent in the universe and we all can do that. So, listen to that internal pull and take action – the world will be a better place if you do and you will be a better person if you do.

Andrea: Thank you so much.

Chad Allen: Thank you, Andrea.

Posted on Tuesday, March 3, 2020

Creating a Magical Experience with Jace & Holly Barraclough

Episode 130

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

Jace & Holly Barraclough are locals reporters in my town who recently did a story on me and also featured me on their Disney podcast, Navigating the Magic. If you know anything about me and my book, you know that I’m a particular fan of Frozen and Frozen II, but I also really appreciate the company of Disney, how they approach customer experience, and how they provide such an inspiration for innovation.

Holly was a cast member for Disney for a few years and she also worked at Disney Radio. So, there are several things she brings to the table when it comes to understanding how Disney was able to teach her how to be her best for the customers (aka, their “guests”). Holly also shares her take on how she went from not caring that much about Disney to loving her time working for them. We also talk about innovation and get Holly and Jace’s take on what it means to be a voice of influence.

Take a listen to the episode!

Mentioned in this episode:

Free Training to Improve the Efficiency of Your Voice

Transcript

People of influence know that their voice matters, but they work to make it matter more. I’m Andrea Wenburg, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.

One of my favorite ways to find guest for this podcast is through personal connections. I do this a lot. I’d like to hire people through personal connections. I like to create friendships and networks through personal connections, and that is one of my favorite ways to find people for the podcast. And today is one of those special occasions where I get to bring on somebody who I have met and have a personal connection with.

Our local news station recently did a story on me. And through that opportunity, I got to meet a reporter who is super fun, and she and her husband who also works at the news station have a podcast. Their podcast is called Navigating the Magic and it’s all about Disney, so fun. And if you know anything about me and my book, you know that I’m a particular fan of Frozen and Frozen II. But also, I really appreciate the company of Disney, what it stands for customer experience, and how they provide such an inspiration for innovation.

So, as we’re in this conversation, I would encourage you to really think about and hone in on what Jace and Holly believe is so especial about Disney.

Holly was actually a cast member of Disney for a few years and worked at Disney Radio. So, there are a number of things that she brings to the table when it comes to understanding how Disney was able to teach her how to be her best for the customers, for the guests that would come in. So, we’re going to be talking about customer experience and how to create special experience for others. But then also, it’s interesting to hear about Holly’s take on how she kind of went from not caring so much that much about Disney to working for them. And in the process of working for them, really fell in love with the company and with the whole Disney experience.

I don’t know about you but I want that for the people that work in my company. I want people to believe in what we do, to want to go back. And even if they’re not working to think about the things that we talked about, to dig in a little more, to experience the things that we provide. I want the people, who, not only our customers, our clients to appreciate what we have to offer, but also for the people who work for us, who work with us, the people on our team. I know that that is something that a lot of the clients that I’ve worked with really want for their team. They want their team to buy in. They want their team to believe in the mission and vision of their company, to believe that what they do matters.

So, it’s interesting to hear Holly’s take on her experience with Disney. We also touched on innovation and what it means to be innovative. And we get Holly and Jace’s take on what it means to be a voice of influence and how you can make your voice matter more.

And just a side note, they actually interviewed me for their podcast right before we did the interview for this podcast. So, you can find that interview in the show notes of this episode at voiceofinfluence.net. In that conversation, we talked about Unfrozen, my book. And, we talked about Disney and my take on a bunch of Disney related items. So, I encourage you to go listen to that one. It’s a fun, fun episode.

All right, so just so you know, the audio might be a little bit different because we’re actually doing this live and in person. So, it’s a little different than usual, but I think that you’re going to love this conversation with Jace and Holly.

Andrea: So, today, I have with me Holly and Jace from Navigating the Magic.

Jace: Hello!

Holly: Hi!

Andrea: It is so good to have you here with us on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Holly: Yeah. Thank you for having us. We loved talking to you on our podcast and we’re so excited to be a guest on your show. Thank you for having us.

Andrea: So, first of all, tell us about your podcast. How did you get started with Navigating the Magic?

Holly: Yeah, how do we get started Jace?

Jace: You know, it’s kind of funny. So, I was actually the one that was obsessed with podcasts before and, because Holly and I were really into Disney and things like that, I started listening to Disney podcasts. And I was like “These guys are talking about things that we talk about in our normal like everyday conversations anyway, why don’t we just put a microphone in front of our face and push record and have these conversations.”

Holly: Did you invent podcast? No, but I was there.

Jace: Yeah.

Holly: No, he was like one of the first people I knew that was really listening to podcasts several years ago. And he was working at a radio station at the time as an intern and they said “Hey, we know you love Disney, would you guys like to do a podcast with our podcast network?” And that’s kind of how it was born and we’ve evolved a little bit since then. But that’s how it was originally born.

And my love for Disney comes from…I used to work at Disney World as a performer for five years and then I worked at Radio Disney after I left Florida. And ever since then, I’ve just become a lifer, as I call myself a Disney lifer, and so we’ve been back several times. I’ve been to the Pixar Fest. We went to D23.

Andrea: Oh, I want to go.

Holly: Yeah, if you know D23, it’s like the Comic-Con for Disney every two years. So, we are just obsessed with Disney and, you know, as you can see from our Disney room that you’ve been in is like a throw up of Disney just everywhere of my years of working for them. So, that’s kind of how our podcast was born was his love of podcasting and my love for Disney kind of gotten married together.

Andrea: So, Jace, do you love Disney now, would you say?

Jace: So, when she kind of got introduced to Disney, she was kind of lukewarm on the whole Disney thing up until she started working for them. But for me, like my family went to Disneyland every single year as a family. Like we’re not talking a few kids, we’re talking…

Holly: Nine.

Jace: Yeah, there’s nine of us. It’s like yours, mine, and our situation, but like all of my brothers and sisters went. All of our like 20 some of our nieces and nephews, we had to have like two of those 15 passenger vans.

Holly: With no window.

Jace: Yeah, and so we would travel. In fact, we would start off in SeaWorld in San Diego and then we’d come back up and finish the trip at Disneyland for three days. When we came, we came like right or rock and roll, you know what I mean?

Andrea: Yeah, you did.

Jace: So, my love for Disney stems clear back from then, you know, plus growing up with all the movies and things like that, which Holly wasn’t able to do. But like I could rattle off, you know, the classics of the classics with anybody like that’s my jam.

Andrea: I love it. OK, so, are there any particular movies or sets of movies in Disney now that you are totally into? I mean, are you Marvel people? Are you Princess people?

Holly: Jace is huge into, I would say, Lucasfilm. So, Star Wars and the Avengers series.

Jace: I love the Avengers.

Holly: He’s always listening to different podcasts, giving them downloads. No, just kidding, but about when they’re reviewing those movies or when they’re talking about the behind the scenes, he loves the kind of the inner workings of Marvel and Avengers and Lucasfilm. And so, he is really good at that, I would say.

Jace: Yeah. And Holly is definitely more like she’s got the cast member connections, if that makes any sense. So that’s more of, you know, her point of emphasis. But I would say as far as like the movies are concerned, her favorite is Wreck-It Ralph, I think.

Holly: Oh yeah, anything animation. I mean, I think part of the reason I love Disney is just the escape from reality, right? I think that’s why a lot of people love Disney as an adult. And so, for me, I feel like the animation films give me a little bit of that escape to reality and go back to being a child again. And so, anything animated is probably one of my favorites, and they’re almost always a feel-good ending. Maybe they’re a little rough at the beginning and someone’s parents die but usually by the end of yeah…

Andrea: Usually…

Holly: Yeah, almost always, there’s some kind of message to be gleaned from them usually. And so, I would say, the animated films are some of my favorites. And I love looking for the Easter eggs, Andrea. I don’t know if you know about the Disney Easter eggs, but I love looking for the Disney Easter eggs.

Andrea: Any particular Easter eggs that you always look for?

Holly: Which ones would you say?

Jace: I think the Pizza Planet van or truck is one that we always, yeah, are always trying to find. And then in all the Pixar films, they try to incorporate, the little Pixar ball. So, even if it’s like sitting on a shelf blurred out in the corner, they always have the Pixar ball somewhere.

Holly: One of the most recent ones that we watched that came at Frozen 2, I think I counted three different Easter eggs. But _____her snowman character she builds Baymax from Big Hero 6, you know.

Andrea: Yes.

Holly: So, I noticed that. There was just a few in there that I thought “They’re really up in their game with the Easter egg thing.” If I can catch them with the naked eye and have to pass them real fast, you know. If I could see in the movie theater, they’re making this emphasis and I think that’s always a fun thing for me to look for.

Jace: Well, we always love watching the Pixar films and then going back afterwards and pointing out some of the Easter eggs that we found after doing a little bit of research. And I think Toy Story 4 has like the record for how many…

Holly: _____.

Jace: Yeah, because they go into that antique shop and that’s like where they spend most of the film. So, at almost any scene, there’s always an Easter egg of some sort.7

Holly: True.

Andrea: What do you think is so special about the Easter eggs? Why are those so special to people like you, to any of us, like what do they do for us?

Jace: Well, first of all, a lot of them are kind of _____ to other projects that some of those creators have worked on, but there’s a couple different theories that somehow Pixar, like all the Pixar movies are connected. And I think they’re trying to kind of portray like keep that little myth or whatever you want to call it ethos whatever going by doing that. So, people are like “Oh yes, I knew it. They’re a part of the same universe, this is, you know, whatever.” But then you’re totally involved somewhere in Big Hero 6 or something like that, right? And so I think that’s one of the reasons.

But also Disney understands that, I mean, they’re trying to make movies appeal to kids, right? I mean, that’s their niche but they also want to do things to keep adults engaged. And so, when the word gets out that “Hey, oh my gosh, have you heard of Easter Eggs and blah blah blah?” And they start researching it on YouTube and whatever. And so from that point on, they’re going to the movies and being like “OK, I wanna see if I could see anything,” aside from, you know “Oh, I just have to take my kid to the movie,” if that makes any sense.

Andrea: Yeah, I mean the experience that Disney provides is just out of this world. I know Holly you spent a lot of time in Disney. You have a lot of experience with the Disney experience. What’s it like as a cast member? What did you learn about how to create that experience for people?

Holly: I would say, I learned the only other companies I had worked for called me an employee or they had different ways that they treated you. And so working at Disney World, yes I was a number but I was treated next level. I started as an intern. I started on the Disney college program, so I was intern level. And even as an intern for Disney, I was treated very well. You know, they gave you a Christmas present and all these things. They had 600,000 employees at the time that I worked there with all the resorts and the parking and all the things you don’t think of that aren’t just at the park. And so I thought “Oh I’m gonna be treated like a number.”

And so, the way that the company runs of calling you a cast member, everybody has a part in the show and they say it’s the show. And so, when I would go out and perform, we had a little, I don’t know what you call, but it’s called PASS. So, PASS and it would stand for something you were supposed to do on every shift. So, when I came out and signed autographs it was P was the Pre-show, so you would do pre-show with someone. Invite them over to you, say hi to them, wave to them; that was your Pre-show. A was your Animation so you would animate something of if the ring a birthday button, “How old are you?” “Is it your birthday,” something like that.

Andrea: So you’re doing that with your hands?

Holly: Yes. Yeah, over animating, and so part of being friends with the Disney characters, you had a tryout that was, one was dance and the other was animation. They want to see how well you could be expressive with your body. And so, we would do the animation part and then the S was Sign and Share. If they had an autograph book then you would sign and share and then S will Send off of wave and say bye and then you’d send them on their way.

So, they had everything broken down and you were set up for success so that even if there was a day you felt like a number you knew what you’re supposed to be there. And everybody is a part of a show being called a cast member not an employee. And even the people that were selling the popcorn or sweeping up the floor, cleaning the bathrooms; they were part of a bigger show. And as a performer I really liked that part of everybody had a piece in this show and we’re putting on a show for the guests.

They weren’t clients or customers, they were guests in our home of Disney and we were bringing that Walt magic and, you know, paying homage to this guy who set up this huge wonderful world for us and we’re continuing his legacy.

Andrea: You know, you told me earlier that you were kind of went from being somewhat agnostic or you know like ho-hum about Disney to being involved there and growing more and more interested to the point where you’re doing a podcast about it. You stayed for a long time that to me says something about the way that Disney was able to get you to buy in. They care they cared enough about you apparently.

Holly: Yeah.

Andrea: I mean, is that part of what it was caring about you and then also being a part of a bigger story, really?

Holly: They have a huge reach and I realize Disney had their hand in everything. Their reach, their voice was so worldwide. I thought if I work for this company, think of all the opportunities that I have out there. I mean, there’s ESPN, there’s ABC. There’s so many other opportunities. Even when I left Florida and moved back to Salt Lake City to finish my degree, I got a part time job at Radio Disney. So, I continued to work for the Disney company.

And yes, before, I remember sitting in the den, which is what we call my computer room at my parents’ house. We’re sitting in the den. I got the e-mail that said “Congratulations, you have been extended an offer to be a Disney college program intern in Florida from these dates. Do you accept and write us back if you do.” I remember, I almost turned it down like that was how much I was just lukewarm about Disney, that just I didn’t love it. I just was like “I don’t know, maybe I should be responsible and finish my degree.”

And I was talking to my mom and I thought “What else in my lifetime, am I gonna be like single, unattached, no mortgage, no kids that I’m gonna be able to just go work for Disney on a whim like this.” And I thought “I gotta do it.” So, ever since then it started this ball rolling for me of wanting to be involved with them in some way or another whether it was, you know, Radio Disney or podcast going back even just as a guest or experience it from the guest side.

And because their reach and their influence is so wide, I thought “I gotta capitalize on this opportunity to then continue to maybe work for them and keep my options open, leave the company on good terms, then I do have to leave because there’s so many opportunities and baskets that Disney has their hands in that I could potentially be a part of in the future.” Because they treat you well and you get to see like insider stuff. Like there was a cast member-only event all the time. We would preview the parade the night before they come out for Halloween or we would have cast previews of a ride before it opened to the public.

So, there are so many little opportunities that gave us that I felt were so special, one of a kind, first people in the world-type things that we got to experience by working for the _____ that maybe the general population wouldn’t be able to experience. And I think that’s kind of what kept me coming back.

Andrea: So, even though you were behind the scenes, and in times at least you had, you know, you could see behind the curtain, you still were a part of the magic. You still got to experience the magic.

Holly: Yeah, even like there were several days off that I had that didn’t align with my friends, and so I would just go to the park by myself because I just loved it that much. Because I got to experience the magic but then to even go as a guest even though, you know, I was working there but if it was my day off, I would just go single right or I would just go sit and just taken on and beyond of the castle. Maybe not even do anything and just kind of chill on a bench and people watch and just, you know, smell the smells and see the sights.

And that probably sounds really weird to some people or really boring to some people but until they’ve experienced the magic of Disney and gone there, they can maybe understand why you would go to the parks by yourself, which sounds a little bit intimidating maybe. But I actually love those moments. They were the quiet moments where I could go on the Country Bear Jamboree or do the little things that maybe if I was with a group they’d be like “We wouldn’t wanna do that. That’s a waste of time or something.” And I could just go and enjoy the moment and that’s really something special. So, come my day off, I wasn’t just ready to just go home and chill I wanted to be back at the park.

Andrea: Mm-hmm. OK, so you both you both love Disney.

Holly: Yes.

Andrea: This is fun. OK, so your experience with Disney, do you ever feel like inspired creatively by Disney? Are you this creative? Do you feel inspired in that way?

Holly: You’re the most creative one here. Yes, editor at the TV station right here.

Jace: I mean, so here’s the thing is Disney has a great formula for everything they do. But the one thing I always tell people that Disney does best is making memories, right? If they can somehow rope you in to having a good time and making that, you know, a memory that you’re always going to have then you’re going to go back to the park and be like “I remember when I sat on this bench with my dad when I was a kid and we had the $15 turkey legs, right?

You’re going to go back 10 years 20 years later, sit down on the bench, buy the $25 turkey leg because you have that memory and it’s just so special to you. So, with pretty much all of my stories, I try to I try to encapsulate that formula of what is going to make this memorable not only for the viewers but the person that I’m interviewing right now. What are they going do, you know, five years from now and they’re like “I remember when I was on the news, and oh yeah I remember Jace was my reporter and gosh he did such a great job on my story.”

And then I always know when I’ve done that when a few days later I get a phone call or whatever from our station manager saying “Hey, we got an e-mail of somebody you know thanking us for sending you as the reporter to do the story. They said you did an excellent job and they really enjoyed working with you.” And so, I feel like that’s kind of the Disney in me of trying just to make those connections and make those intangibles something that they’re never going to forget.

Holly: Make those stories memorable.

Jace: Yes.

Andrea: Mm-hmm love that. I’m always very inspired by the creative process and I love the idea of being more creative but when you walk into Disney World or you go on the ride, the Carousel of Progress and you’re going around and seeing these, you know, different timeframes and different periods of time. When things change and innovation just taking shape and you think of everything that Disney brought to that and now currently brings into that and then I feel like there’s so much then that we can be inspired to do. How can we be innovative, how can we tap into that in ourselves and be inspired in that way, I think it’s just really fantastic.

Holly: Yeah, and think about like the time period, you know, the 50’s when Disneyland opened and what resources they had then versus what we have now is amazing. And I think if Walt were to see it, he would be thrilled. He is a businessman, of course, he wants the dollar, but I think what they’ve done with the innovation and the changing of the times, and he even said like “I’ll find myself getting sad when Disney closes a parade forever or they take down a ride and they’re not planning on bringing it back.”

I’ll find myself getting sad but then I go back to the quote that Walt Disney even said himself “Disneyland will never be finished. It will never be complete, it will always be changing always be evolving.” And so, I think that that was a test him of like I should be OK with it because the founder himself was OK with evolving and changing with the times and realizing and adapting to what your audience wants, what your audience needs, and what they’re relating to at your parks and your movies and so they’re adapting with the times. And I think he’d be really proud of what they’ve done and adapting with the times what they’ve done with these parks.

Jace: Well, you’ve got to think too Walt himself was an innovator. So, like he was one of the ones that wasn’t fitting the general norm at the time of, you know, the way he did business and the way that he did certain things. So, a lot of people, in fact, them trying to find investors to help with Disneyland was one of the hardest things that they had ever done. In fact, I think Walt put the mortgage of his house like in pretty much all of his investments into this just on a prayer that it was going to work out. I mean, we can see today how big the Disney Company has gotten as a result of Disneyland.

So, I think it’s kind of a lesson for all of us that, you know, sometimes you have to be that change, sometimes you have to be the person that’s innovative enough to take the first step and follow what you believe is right.

Andrea: To be an influencer, you do have to put something on the line. What do you guys see for yourselves when you think about the kind of influence you have both with the podcast and your jobs at the news station? What do you feel like is on the line for you? What at stake?

Jace: So one of the things that I think is the hardest is, I think, generally, people are afraid of the rejection or not rising to the occasion of maybe in a successful as you want it to be. And thinking, you know, when we were talking to you earlier you said I thought my book project was going to take three months and end up taking two years. And I think having that patience is something that you really kind of have to do. Like we were probably the same way of we’re going to start this podcast and immediately we’re going to get thousands of listeners and it’s going to be the greatest thing in the world. And because we’ve a podcast in our profession, we’re going to be more marketable and that sort of thing.

I don’t know that anybody’s even asked us professionally, if they even care that we have a podcast or anything like that. So, that clearly wasn’t the case. And I feel like it’s all about basically just being consistent and learning to find ways to just enjoy what you’re doing and be in that moment rather than worry about the analytics or the business side of things all the time and just kind of live, if that makes any sense.

Holly: And I think what’s on the line for us, I think, we’re really blessed at North Platte is that we get to cover the fun and fluffy stories. We get to highlight fun people in our community, and we’re not always covering death destruction and crime. When we worked in Salt Lake City that was a lot of our stories that the reporters would cover is, you know, these big investigative pieces or these you know corrupt X, Y and Z people. And so I think we’re blessed here living in middle of America, you know, there’s low crime and low, I don’t know what you’d even call it but story of that give me anxiety.

So, for me it’s a blessing because I don’t have to put myself on the line of doing a three month investigative piece like they would in Chicago or a Salt Lake or a Detroit or something where they’re investigating these, you know, big city problems. And I think living in a small town America has been a blessing for me and for my anxiety levels and that because I get to go cover the dog kissing booth at the park or for Positive Partners. Or I get to come and highlight fun people like Andrea, that are getting highlighted in national magazine.

So, I think that that’s been a blessing for me of having less that I have to put on the line. Yes, my reputation is strong one every time I do a story but in a smaller way because I get to do some of the feel-good stories that I think are like kind of good for my soul.

Andrea: Mm-hmm. OK, so besides Disney what other big influences have led you to the place where you are in a place of influence yourselves?

Holly: So, Jace I recently just got asked to be board members for the Miss Nebraska organization through the Miss America organization, formerly known as pageants but they’re now called competitions. So that’s been a little bit tricky for us to navigate, but we have found that what that does for our voice, yes, but for young women’s voices as well. Sometimes, young women at that age are feeling like they maybe don’t have a voice or they’re not being heard or their ideas are dumb or what they’re trying to do is stupid.

And so, for me, I’ve loved being a board member for the Miss Nebraska Association because we’ve been able to help those girls find their voice. And then they all have formally called the platform but now it’s called a social impact initiative where they’re going out in the community and they’re using their voice for change. We have one that we did a mock interview with that does blood drive. She was really trying to push blood donations for the blood bank. And then we have another one that’s talking about social media and bullying and how people hide behind their phones and can create fake accounts and try to bully you.

And so, them going out and speaking to schools and speaking to their community and being on newsmakers on TV and putting their voice out there has been really fun for us to be a part of helping them push their voice forward and having their ideas heard. And their ideas aren’t stupid. They’re not too small. Every little bit that they’re doing is an extra thing. Maybe someone had never even thought about getting involved in a blood drive and didn’t realize we had an American Red Cross right here in town. Just little things that they’re doing are big things because their voice is getting expanded because of that sash across their chest and crown on their head. People take them a little more seriously and that opens more doors for them and it’s a vehicle for them to go and create change in our community. So, we’ve loved being a part of Miss Nebraska, specifically.

Andrea: Yeah that’s cool. I mean, Miss Nebraska, the competition is actually here in North Platte.

Holly: Which is crazy.

Andrea: Yeah.

Holly: I’m so happy because I thought that’s maybe at Lincoln or Omaha. When I first moved here and found out it was here in our town, I was so happy. I was so happy we got that here. That’s a big deal.

Andrea: Yeah, it is, it’s special. And so what are your thoughts on how to make that competition even though we’re in North Platte, we’re not in Omaha where there’s big venues, lots of people around, you know, how to make that the best it can be for the state?

Jace: It truly is advantageous, honestly, to have it in North Platte. If you open up any of the programs, in fact when we judged a pageant or I guess a competition about a year ago in Omaha and we had a big dinner and they pulled out these boxes that had all these old programs from all the Miss Nebraska’s since the 70’s.

Holly: Back to the 70’s.

Jace: But if you open up any of them like 90 percent of the sponsors in there are from North Platte. So, it almost made sense for them to bring it up here anyway because those are the ones that are, you know, donating all the money and, you know, doing a lot of the work and things like that. So, it just made sense, but also one thing about small town Nebraska, and maybe it’s like this other places, but I know for sure it is here is when the community finds out about an event or something like this program, everybody wants to jump on board and everybody wants to be a part of what’s going on.

And I think that’s a lot harder especially kind of looking at stuff. You know, we’re from a big city in Salt Lake City and I don’t feel like, I mean, maybe it gets some backing but like not everybody wants to be involved in a bigger city. So, it’s harder to get people excited whereas you get the buzz going in a town full of 20,000 people and they’re like “Oh, yeah did you hear about this? Did you hear about this?” And it makes kind of your job almost easier because of the word of mouth, if that makes any sense.

Holly: And there’s not as many distractions as there would be in Omaha and Lincoln, there’s not a million events to go to in the town here, so when there’s events, there’s more support. And so, I think it’s smart to have it here because the town does come out in support and that high school is full.

Jace: Yeah.

Andrea: OK, so wrapping up a little bit here. When you think about having a voice of influence and what that means to you, and my guess my question is what advice do you have for somebody else who wants to have a voice of influence?

Holly: I think, we scare ourselves the most from being a voice of influence because I’ll talk to myself down more than anybody else. Like, I’ll tell myself “People don’t wanna hear what you have to say or whatever,” and nobody else would ever come up to me and say that really. I mean, unless you know they’re just being hater and hiding behind the computer. But no nobody would say to my face, “Nobody wants to hear what you have to say.” And so, I always have to just remind myself that the things that I’m saying are important and valuable to someone and maybe what I’m saying isn’t for everyone and that’s fine. And what I’m saying maybe not someone’s variety but maybe somebody needed or wanted to hear that. And so, I have to just not be the one to talk myself out of it.

It’s the same thing like when girls want to go and compete for a competition for Miss America. And they say “Oh, I don’t know or I’m not gonna try.” And I said “The judges can’t pick you if you’re sitting on the bench. If you’re not even on the stage, how can they pick you if you didn’t even go?” And so it’s the same thing for me of like “Nobody can hear my voice if I don’t try and share it.” And so for the different platforms whether it’s podcasting, TV through Miss America if I share it then people can pick and choose whether that’s something that they want to accept or consume. But for me, I did my part of putting out there what I felt like maybe somebody needed.

Jace: I think one of the scariest things for me or most alarming things for me was when we first got into TV and people were starting to recognize us, you know, around town and things like that, I felt like I always had to be on 100 percent. And not even like I was being someone that wasn’t me, but I was just afraid to show people my normal self, if that makes any sense. And as we’ve kind of gotten here and I’ve gotten more comfortable on people who have actually seen the real me, I found that more people are interested in the real Jace rather than the one that is, you know, on TV. And not that the one on TV is necessarily a lot different, but you know you can tend to be more fun and exciting and stuff like that in your personal life than you can, you know, you’re professional and I think anybody can attest to that.

And so I would definitely say it’s just basically just allowed me to, I guess, prove the point that you’re a lot more interesting and fun when you are yourself and not somebody that people expect to see on television.

Holly: Not trying to be someone that you’re hoping that they like or that you’re hoping. Because the same thing with when we judge, Jace and I have judged several competitions and then formerly pageants in Salt Lake and then now in Nebraska, and it’s the same thing. I can always tell the girls that are trying to be the girl that they think I want them to be. Or if they’re trying to copy the former Miss Nebraska and think the outgoing queen is the only one that we’ll ever pick.

So, I can always see right through them when they’re trying to tell me something that they think I want to hear where if a girl tells me an answer that doesn’t align with what I think but they’re convincing me of it and they have backup points for it then I’ll always score them high because they’re convincing me and they’re truth and they’re manifesting their truth. They’re telling me their truth and their reality even if it’s not something I agree with maybe their point is a point that I wouldn’t take, but if they back it up I will respect their voice and I will respect their opinion and still judge them well because they backed it up and gave me valid points.

And so, for seeing them in that aspect, I always like the ones that are being themselves. Even if it might create waves, not everybody likes someone who’s creating waves. But if it’s creating waves, I at least know they’re being genuine and not just giving me a cookie cutter fluffy answer that they think they want to hear.

Andrea: Mm-hmm, keep it real.

Holly: That’s right.

Andrea: Love it. OK, guys so where can the listener find your podcast and find you guys online?

Jace: So, you can find us on Instagram, Facebook at Navigating the Magic podcast.

Holly: And we’re on all of the platforms for podcasting, so wherever you like to listen to it we have it on Google Play, iTunes, Spreaker, iHeartRadio.

Jace: Spotify, iHeartRadio.

Holly: And Alexa can even find it for you. So, anywhere you find a podcast, you can find this and we love when people engage with us on our social media pages too.

Andrea: Awesome. Thank you so much for being a voice of influence for our listeners.

Jace: Thank you.

Holly: Thanks for having us, Andrea.

Posted on Tuesday, February 25, 2020

How to Prioritize and Take Back Your Calendar with Paul Casey

Episode 129

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

Paul Casey is an expert in time management and leadership and a professional speaker who has spoken for companies like McDonald’s and Subway. Through his company, Growing Forward Services, he partners with corporations and individual clients to transform their vision, habits, and lives.

In this episode, we talk about the immediate and long-term things you can do to determine what your priorities need to be, how to tell when it’s time to reevaluate those priorities, what you can do to take back your calendar, the four personality types he uses with his clients, how each type approaches important and urgent things on their to-do list differently, and his main advice for getting people to buy into your vision, which is a big piece of what we talked here at Voice of Influence.

Take a listen to the episode!

Mentioned in this episode:

Transcript

People of influence know that their voice matters, but they work to make it matter more. I’m Andrea Wenburg, and this is the Voice of Influence podcast.

Do you ever feel like your calendar is just out of control? Like, you think that you have things on your calendar in a way that it’s going to work for you, but then things come up – urgent things, fires that you need to put out – and all of a sudden, the things that you put on your calendar you have to move to a new day, put it on the back burner, and maybe it just never gets done.

Well, today, I’ve got Paul Casey on the line, and Paul is an expert in time management and leadership. Paul is a professional speaker and has spoken for McDonald’s, Subway, and a bunch of amazing companies. He, through his company Growing Forward Services, really partners with corporate and individual clients to transform their vision, habits, and their lives. And today, he’s going to share with us some very helpful advice for being more intentional with your time as a voice of influence.

We talk about the immediate and long-term things that you can do to really determine what your priorities need to be. And we talk about how those shift; it may not always be the exact same thing. So, then also, what are those specific things that you can do to take back your calendar or to make those shifts that you need to make as your priorities change? We talk about four personality types – they’re fun, very fun personality types – and how each one really approaches important and urgent things on their to-do list differently.

And then finally, he also offers a really valuable tip on how to get buy-in on your vision, which is a big piece of what we talked here at Voice of Influence. So, I hope that you enjoy this conversation with Paul Casey.

Andrea: All right, Paul Casey, it is great to have you on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Paul Casey: Super to be here, Andrea.

Andrea: Paul, tell us a little bit about what you do.

Paul Casey: Yeah. So, my mission in life is to…

Andrea: I love it. I love that you’re starting with mission because we’re so in sync with that idea of it all begins with a mission.

Paul Casey: It does, it does, yes. My mission is to equip and coach leaders and teams to spark breakthrough success. So, that’s my overarching, like, why I do what I do. And I do that through number one; leadership coaching, through team building seminars and workshops, leadership and self-leadership. Got my own little local podcast here where I interview leaders, and I’ve written a few little mini books on leadership and self-leadership.

Andrea: Okay, so, you help them spark breakthrough success. What does that mean?

Paul Casey: Well, I think that everyone inside of them has this spark that needs to be lit or maybe it’s the match that needs to be lit. And as a coach, I can come alongside them, and by asking powerful questions, really get them re-familiar with themselves through assessment tools or just sort of probing deep inside them for what they really want to do with their life, or in their business, or as an entrepreneur.

Andrea: And then it somehow breaks through? What is it breaking through?

Paul Casey: Boy, I love it. Sometimes it’s just the day to day humdrum, you know, “I don’t know if I’m making a difference. I’m going to my job. I’m going through the motions. I think I am, but I don’t know if this is my life purpose. I don’t know if this is where I should be on this team forever.” And that breakthrough happens when that insight, like, “Man, I don’t know if I need to be doing this long term,” or “Maybe I should seek that promotion,” or “Maybe I should launch a business.” It’s so fun to be on the front lines of that.

Andrea: What kinds of things do you find that have made a difference in helping people become more self-aware, that sort of thing? It sounds like you were talking about assessments and questions. Does that self-awareness then help them to understand who they are so that they can do those things? Is that what you’re saying?

Paul Casey: That’s where I start with people. I think Ian Morgan Cron – he does the Enneagram survey – he says, “Self-knowledge leads to self-awareness.” And I had never thought about it that way ‘cause I usually just start with self-awareness, but the self-knowledge piece is all those assessment tools – whether that’s Myers-Briggs or the Disc or I do the animal styles because I think that one is more fun, whether you do mapping of your aspirations… Got a whole bag of tricks that I utilize with clients until they’ve got this sort of comprehensive snapshot on them, and the client looks at that and goes, “Wow, that’s who I am. So, this is where I need to go.”

Andrea: Okay. I know that you’re known as the Calendar Guy…

Paul Casey: The Calendar Coach.

Andrea: The Calendar Coach, the Calendar Coach. Why is that? What is the Calendar Coach?

Paul Casey: Yeah, I realized that when it comes to leadership training and just your own self-leadership, we live in a context of time. And most of my clients, if not all of them, if you follow what they’re frustrated about back… you know, follow it down to its rabbit hole, you would find a time management issue somewhere there that they’re either not using their time to do their priorities, or they’re living out someone else’s script, so to speak, and they just don’t have control of their calendars. So, I thought if I try to niche in this area, it might reduce anxiety in leaders, it might give them more peace of mind that all the priorities in their life are given the focused attention they deserve.

Andrea: I love that! What are some of the ways that you do that?

Paul Casey: Well, I try to give them some structure. So, I have a little model – it’s a mouthful, but the fulcrum framework for focus – a lot of F words, but they’re all positive F words. And in this little model, it looks like a teeter-totter, which we all grew up with, which now I think they say is unsafe on playgrounds but I still liked it.

Andrea: Right.

Paul Casey: The little triangle in the middle where it balances the two sides, I like to think of that as work and life. And we’ve heard of work-life balance, I don’t know if I agree with that. It’s more like work-life rhythm or work-life integration. And a speaker I listened to years ago said, “It’s not balance. You just need to move that fulcrum, that triangle, left or right based on what you need more in your life.” Do you need more time at work, are you slacking there? Your clients have big deadlines, or you need to move more into the life side where your spouse or plus-one needs more of your time or your children need more of your time. Or you’ve got a parent that’s going into assisted living, and you’ve got to give that more of your time. So, my model is that fulcrum.

And so, my time management system is based on forming that foundation of what matters most, figure out how you’re going to work your ideal week in your calendar, then daily managing that – that’s the self-discipline part. And then trying to avoid those barriers that are going to come against your beautiful system of time management when sort of life punches you in the face, and it’s like, “Oh, that didn’t work out how I like to do it.”

Andrea: The need to re-evaluate comes to mind. You were talking about how sometimes you need to spend more time with your kids or you need to focus on them more, or you might need to focus on your work more. How do you know when it’s time to re-evaluate? Do you give people like a schedule, like you should do this on a schedule, or is there a different way that you encourage people to decide when to re-evaluate?

Paul Casey: I’d say two things; one would be to read your own gauges. We all have gauges sort of like in a cockpit or in your car on your dashboard. There are gauges that run a little hot every so often. And for me, like, I’ve got ideas all over the place as an entrepreneur. And when I go blank, like I just go dark and I have no idea, that’s the gauge for me, that’s like, “Oh my goodness, you are way into the workaholic mode, and you need to get some white space in your life, Paul, in order to get those ideas back”

Or when I’m more irritable… When I’m usually a peaceful person and I’m more irritable or you know, maybe lash out at someone I love and it’s like, “Well, that’s not me or that’s not who I wanna be.” So, reading your own gauges – everybody’s got their own gauge that they’re typically a peaceful person now they’re more angry. That would be a time to re-evaluate.

The second thing I would respond to that question by saying is you’ve got to build in these regular checkpoints. So, I have a daily preview, a weekly preview, and a monthly preview. Actually, I’ve got an annual one as well that I do use around the first of the year. They call it DWMY; daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. I love that little acronym – DWMY. So, you build in those checkpoints, and that is a time where you stop. You get to quiet and solitude, and you say, “How am I doing?”

Andrea: Yeah. I think that that makes a lot of sense. I love the metaphor of the gauges. I know that one of those for me is how much tension I’m feeling. That usually comes out in my irritability like you mentioned. If I’m irritable or feeling tense, then I know that there’s something off, and I need to take a step back and look at it.

Paul Casey: Yeah, your body’s giving you signals all the time, and that tension probably is one of those signals.

Andrea: Hmm. So, what kinds of things can people do to actually move the fulcrum?

Paul Casey: I would say the first thing – and there’s a few that really move the needle for me as I was studying this for like twenty years – and the one I always start with is have that weekly or that daily review and preview in the last half hour of your day. So, if you’re a nine-to-fiver and 4:30… I call it the 4:30 preview. And what you do during that half hour is you stop what you’re doing, sort of call the day a hard stop. If you’re an entrepreneur at home, you know, sometime before you go to bed.

And then you look at tomorrow and you decide, “What are my top three priorities for tomorrow?” If you can nail those down today, there’s help in that work-life rhythm process to say, “I’m done with today.” When you come in the morning, you’re like, “I don’t have to shift all this paperwork on my desk. I know what my big three are.” And actually, research shows that your brain works on problems while you sleep. So, sometimes you come up with great ideas that will help solve the problems of the new day while you’re sleeping. And in the shower you wake up with like, “A-ha, I’ve got the idea.” You know, it’s just such a wonderful feeling to think about like, “My brain’s been working on that while I sleep.”

So, that’s the first one would be the daily preview and that can be a super fun time… actually, it is for me; maybe I’m a nerd at this stuff – but I also use that to clean up my desk, and take all those nasty post-it notes and put them onto one list, and just basically call this day a wrap.

The second thing I would say what to do is to make appointments with yourself. This was a game-changer for me. And this is where you take your priorities, and you actually build them in your calendar as if it’s an appointment with a friend or a client. Because you would never stand up a client at a coffee shop and say, “Nope, I’m just not gonna come today.” You know, you would lose clients, you would lose your friends pretty quickly if you just sort of blew them off like that. So, why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we not respect ourselves enough to honor these priorities? So, I find that by building them into my calendar as if it’s an appointment when it pops up, I either have to dismiss it or snooze it, and I don’t want to do either. So, I just get down to work and do that thing at that appointed time.

Andrea: Oh man, calendaring time for yourself to even just think about things that you need to think about, I think, is really, really powerful for somebody who wants to be successful.

Paul Casey: Yeah. Thinking time is huge. And with my leader clients, I would say 100% of them say, “I don’t spend enough time in thinking. Like when I want to put it on my calendar, that’s what I blow off. Like, I know I need to do thinking time, but then I just blow right through that and do more urgent things instead.” But that’s where the breakthroughs actually happen is in that solitude, that quiet thinking time.

Andrea: Okay. So, people can… if they’re wanting to move the fulcrum, if they are wanting to make a shift, they know that they’ve identified that they need to do that, they need to shift in their focus or in their time – then they need to maybe check in with themselves once a day, maybe pay attention to these internal gauges. I feel like there must be something else that you do that helps people to actually shift their priority.

Paul Casey: Yeah. Actually, to back up, you’re right, I was diving right into the tips. But I would say that some of the activities that I get to do with clients… like Your One Year Vision for Your Life is a great activity to do.

Andrea: Sure.

Paul Casey: This is where people, they really wrestle with, “Well, yeah, a year from now, in 2021, I wanna be a better dad. I wanna start my own business or a second business. I just wanna be different than I am now. I’ve gotta get more hobbies into my life.” Whatever it is for them, it’s such a fun activity for them to envision out, and they’ve never taken the time to do it. That way we can back into all these strategies with, “Okay, how we gonna get there? What’s the first step that we can take in that?”

The other activity I’ll do with them on the front end is what do I need more in my life right now? I’ve got a list of probably thirty or forty words. It can be everything from affection to purpose. There’s like thirty or forty words, and I have them just circle all the things that when you look at that where you’re like, “Yes, I need more of that in my life right now.” And those are motivators that sort of tap into your drive to say, “All right, I need to get my time management under wrap in order to get this stuff.”

Andrea: Cool. Those are really great tips. So, how do you see all of this really impacting a person who wants to have a voice of influence?

Paul Casey: That in order to have a voice of influence, you’ve got to be intentional with everything you do in life. We all live in the constraints of time. We all have the same amount of hours in the day, we keep hearing that. So, how are we going to use that? It’s not the amount of time that we have in the day; it’s the intentionality that we tend to use.

So, I find that persons of influence have this… They live with this sense of intentionality, both in their personal life and in their professional life. When they go to work, they think about, “These are the things I need to keep on my radar. Development of my people, gotta keep that on my radar. The vision for the organization, gotta keep that on my radar.” And what I’ve found, Andrea, is it’s not the urgent; that becomes firefighting and that becomes exhausting. It’s the important.

And I’ll even do that little Stephen Covey graph, you know, of urgent and important. It’s called the Eisenhower Matrix. It’s a nice activity to make them think about Quadrant 2, which is the non-urgent but important quadrant. If you do those things, you move the needle forward. If you don’t do them, there’s no immediate consequence, but over time, it’s going to kick your tail. You’ve really got to put some emphasis on that.

Andrea: Yeah, I’ve had clients that have really wanted to get into that Quadrant 2 and focus on the important things, but they really struggle because it feels like everything is urgent and everything feels that it needs to be dealt with immediately, I guess. And the people that are asking them to do that, they feel responsible to or for. I found that there might be some internal stuff going on that keeps people in the urgent quadrant. Have you found that to be true?

Paul Casey: Yes, and I know that may drift even into a little bit of therapy and counseling and then coaching and mentoring.

Andrea: Right.

Paul Casey: But you’ve got to wrestle with that stuff.

Andrea: We do.

Paul Casey: Because it could be that I am making excuses for something hard that I have to do that every time I approach something hard, I’m going to find a back door or chicken exit – you know, like in the roller coaster – that I tend to take that chicken exit because I don’t want to deal with that difficult thing because I had a failure somewhere in my past. Or yeah, there’s some issue that’s holding me back.

Andrea: Another one that’s come up for me that I’ve noticed is just that desire to be liked, the desire to please people, because it seems like that is more fulfilling in the moment with those urgent things. If you can say yes right now to this person who’s in front of you, that feels better than saying no to them and saying yes to something that’s more important.

Paul Casey: Huh, that’s a good one. That’s a good one. Some of us are pleasers. Like I said, I do the personality style, the animal one. And it’s Lion, Otter, Golden Retriever, and Beaver. Yeah, the Golden Retriever style – that one is the pleaser style because they hate conflict, and so they do like exactly what you said. They just want to please other people and make everything back to harmony again. But when they say yes to all these external people and circumstances, they’re saying no to themselves and their true purpose, and then they get little resentful over time. And Golden Retrievers are usually pretty quiet, but they can turn into a volcano if they get resentful over time, like, “Man, I’m just giving my whole life away, and I haven’t said no enough.” And it really hurts their work-life balance.

Andrea: Hmm and then they become resentful and that can be really damaging. Okay, so Golden Retriever. Take us into this assessment a little bit here. What are the four different archetypes that you’re talking about? Golden Retrievers, which I think we all kind of get it now…

Paul Casey: Yeah, Golden Retriever – they’re the team players. They love to listen. They’re everybody’s best friend. People dump on them all the time, you know, with their problems because they have empathy and just stability and conscientiousness. Of course, all of our strengths have weaknesses if they’re overdone. They hate conflicts; they hate change; they’re very slow into actions, slow into decisions; and they can become a little passive-aggressive when they get pushed.

The Lion personality style is the driver. It is the bold, direct, courageous, good decision maker, action-oriented. They love metric. They love getting it done. But when their strength overdone becomes a weakness, they can be too blunt. They just blurt out stuff. They can be impulsive. They’re very impatient. They can put feelings to the side, like, “Yeah, we’ll deal with those later.” And they can become workaholics. So, they really have trouble relaxing.

And then we have the Otter personality style. I love the otters in the zoo or in the aquarium. They’re always just playing eating off their chest, you know, having a great time. These are the playful people. They love to have fun. They make smart-aleck comments a lot of the time. They’re super creative, super spontaneous. They love the start of things. They’re great salespeople. But overdone, their strength turns into weaknesses by being maybe a little flighty. They don’t like the details of jobs. They can get bored. They can talk a little too much or be on the drama train maybe a little too much.

And then we have the Beaver style. Beaver is, of course, busy as a beaver. So, they are organized, planned, structured, alphabetized, and color-coded. They’ve got systems for everything. They love a good system. They love a sexy spreadsheet, so it’s all about data and research. But their overdone strength that becomes a weakness when they can get down in the weeds too deep. When they can get too heady or intellectual, it makes people go like, “Are you okay?” They can get very critical of themselves in their own head which makes them critical and frowning on the outside of others. And they have that paralysis of analysis. So, those are the four types.

Andrea: Yeah, those are good. I mean, I love all personality assessments, total assessment junkie. But those are fun, and I think that people can probably look at that very easily and say, “This is who I am for sure.” So, for each of these different people, you talked about the Golden Retrievers and how they’re going to tend toward the urgent quadrant that we were talking about before because they’re concerned about what other people think. Do you see any particular pitfalls that you would want to point out about the Lion, Otter, the Beaver and why they would focus on the urgent?

Paul Casey: Yeah, I think the Lion because they’re all about results – if somebody comes in with a problem, they’re like, “Solve it now.” They’re like, “I don’t need this to they even go on a checklist anywhere. Like, get those people in this office right now.” I actually had a boss like that. He said, “We need to make budget cuts. We gonna cut $100,000 out of this budget right now.” And I went, “Let me go get my notes.” He closed the door and he goes, “You didn’t hear me, we’re not leaving this office until it happens.” Now, that’s a Lion on steroids, you know. It made a little scared, actually. So, they’re just so into solving it now because it’s just one more thing on their list.

The Otter deals with it because they’re super impulsive. I mean, they go into an appliance store and say, “Oh, that dryer is red. I want that one.” I mean, they won’t even think about the budget or the consumer reports of what makes a good one. They’re just impulsive, and so they’re just going to deal with it and it’s sort of fun for them like, “Hey, let’s just solve that problem now and let’s come up with a brainstorming session to solve ten things right now.” So, they don’t use a structure.

The Golden Retriever we said is the pleaser, so they’re going to say yes to everybody.

And then the Beaver – they don’t often deal with the urgent because they have systems for everything. So, that one is probably the easiest one to apply time management principles.

Andrea: Okay, that’s fun, thank you for sharing that. So, when you apply all these to leadership, to – again, having that voice of influence – what kind of advice would you give somebody who wants to have a voice of influence? And maybe they do have a voice of influence, but their calendar is just getting in the way?

Paul Casey: I think that’s what I said earlier of the vision. You got to have a vision for yourself, you got to have a vision for your team, and you got to buy-in to the vision of the organization, especially for the middle management and not the CEO. If you are the CEO, you need that vision for your business. You’ve got to keep that crystal clear in your mind, and it can’t be a binder on a shelf. It has to be in front of you at all times, because influence is only going to happen if you stay aligned with that vision that you have. Not everybody’s bought into or if it’s on your own that you have to say, “This is who I wanna be someday and this is where my business to be.”

So, that’s where time management kicks in and then you align, “What I’m going to do today and this week and this month and this quarter and this year with that vision?” And it’s pretty cool how then a year later, you wake up, you’re in a different place, a better place because of all the things you’ve put in place to get to that vision.

Andrea: Hmm, and you just mentioned getting other folks to buy into that vision. Do you have any particular tips or suggestions on how people can do that?

Paul Casey: Good segway. I just wrote a book on that, Andrea, Leading with Super-Vision. And so yeah, there are three things; you’ve got to, of course, have that vision on your own. You’ve got to craft it and you got to cast it which I think is what you’re sharing and then you got to carry it for the long term. So that casting has to be pretty strategic because in the crafting part, you’ve got to get your constituents onboard by listening. Listen, listen, listen – what are their aspirations, their dreams for this team and how does their job align with a potential vision. When you make that vision, then you got to cast it.

I would cast it very strategically. I would start with the number one influence in your company. They’re on your team. You’ve got to win that person over first. If you win that person over, it’s going to downhill from there. It will be good. Then you’ve got to win over your core team and listen, listen, listen to see if there are roadblocks. Because if you win over those closest to you, your inner circle, you’re probably not going to win over the masses – the rest of the team.

So, it feels like intrinsic circles working out. Win over the one in the core team, and then the early adaptors, and then you go out to the whole team. And by doing it systematically, I found that leaders that do that had better buy-in of the vision.

Andrea: Hmm, I love that. I love the idea of getting people to buy-in because how can one really have influence if others don’t truly buy-in. You can certainly tell people what to do, but that doesn’t mean that they have changed internally about it. So, being able to get those folks who are closest to you first to make sure that they have bought in before you move on, I think – or at least as you’re moving – definitely makes a lot of sense.

Paul Casey: You’re so right. I mean, if you don’t do that, people are going to default back to their old habits. And they’re just going to think, this is flavor-of-the-month and, “Oh, it’s gonna go away in a year. They’re gonna come up with something new.” “I’m gonna outlive this leader at this company and I can go back to the way that I want do it.” If they’re not bought in… it’s actually one of the five dysfunctions of a team, you know, that there’s no commitment then.

Andrea: So true. Okay, where can people find you and your books and your offerings?

Paul Casey: Yeah. I’m at paulcasey.org, not the paulcasey.com because that’s the professional golfer. And I’m just the duffer, so don’t go there. Paulcasey.org is where you will go to find out all of my services, specifically for time management. I’ve written a book called Maximizing Every Minute where I’ve put much of my time management hacks into that. So, you’ll see that on the site. I also have a time management online course called Restoring My Sanity. And sometimes just that gets people like, “Yes, I so want that.”

There’s entry points during the year to get in on that where I go through all these tools that’s I’ve shared with your listeners today. And then finally, I’ve got a free gift for everybody. It is a Control My Calendar Checklist if you just want to embark on this journey of getting your life back on track. And so, they can get that via takebackmycalendar.com or you can text the word “growing” to 72000. So, open a text to 72000 and text the word “growing”.

Andrea: Excellent. And does the capitalization matter on that word “growing”?

Paul Casey: No.

Andrea: Okay, fantastic. Well, this has been great. Thank you so much, Paul, for sharing how people can be more intentional with their time so that they can really have a Voice of Influence.

Paul Casey: It has been a pleasure. Keep growing forward, everyone!

Posted on Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Handle the Haters: Diving Into My Success Magazine Article

Episode 128

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

How do you handle the haters? I mean, haters gonna hate, right? So, we’ve just sort of got to shake it off. And, while I love that idea of being able to just shake it off, it can be a lot more complicated than that.

I was recently asked by Success Magazine, “How do you handle the haters?” My response is in the March/April 2020 edition of Success Magazine.

In this episode, Rosanne is going to interview me about that article, and we’re going to give a summary of the article and take a real deep dive into the three points that I made. We also use the topic of politics to explore how we could potentially get to a place where we are truly having a respectful dialogue that solves problems.

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

Success Magazine

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Transcript

People of influence know that their voice matters, and they work to make it matter more. I’m Andrea Wenburg, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.

How do you handle the haters? I mean, haters gonna hate, right? So, we just sort of gotta shake it off. I love that idea of being able to just shake it off, but it can be a lot more complicated than that.

I was recently asked by Success Magazine: “How do you handle the haters?” My response is in their March/April 2020 edition of Success Magazine.

Today, Rosanne is going to interview me about that article, and we’re going to dive a little deeper into the things that I said. In particular, we’re going to give a summary of the article and take a real deep dive on the three points that I made. I think that you’re going to find them helpful. At least, I’ve heard that they can be really helpful to folks.

And also, we actually dive into politics a little bit. Not so much specific politics but how we could potentially get to a place where we are actually having respectful dialogue that solves problems. And then Rosanne also asked me what words I have for those who might be hiding behind their computer screens and hating on others.

If you’re interested in reading the article in Success Magazine, it is or will eventually be out online. It is also in the magazine itself, which could be found wherever magazines are sold.

Here is my conversation with Rosanne:

Hi, Voice of Influence listeners! This is Rosanne Moore, I am the Voice of Influence Communications Specialist, and we’re doing things a little differently today. I’m going to get a chance to interview Andrea. She had a wonderful opportunity recently to be interviewed with Success Magazine, and we want to talk a little bit about the things that she brought up in that article, which was entitled “Handle the Haters”.

So, Andrea, because Voice of Influence is so focused on positive things, what was it like for you to address that topic?

Andrea: It was really interesting. I was kind of excited to get the question because I like being able to kind of toss things up and turn the tables a little bit, like give people a different perspective. So, the perspective that I wanted to bring to that question was instead of focusing on handling haters, focusing more on how do we handle ourselves. That maybe some of the criticism that we feel when we’re hearing other people and what they’re saying to us is actually inwardly directed; like, we are feeling that ourselves more than they are worried about hating on us.

And I think there are haters, for sure, but to me, that was my perspective and that’s what they asked for. They asked for, “What’s your story,” and I shared that my perspective on haters is that it was more about my fear of other people and what they might think or what they might reject me for or whatever than it was about actual criticism.

Rosanne Moore: That’s an interesting perspective because I’ve often noticed that online it’s very difficult to have a discussion because people seem to assume they already know what you’re saying. Unless it’s instep, lockstep with what they’re saying, they take it as criticism. And so, to hear you say that, to encourage people to look at what’s being triggered in them is an interesting perspective. Can you say more about that?

Andrea: Yeah, I mean, I think that that’s very true. It’s very hard for people to have an actual conversation like a discussion online. Especially, I think I see it on Facebook and Twitter in particular, where people… it’s sort of like the gloves are off, and we just go at each other. And a lot of times, it’s sparked from offense; like people feel offended, and so therefore they come back with an even harsher word. It would be interesting to see what would happen if we all just decided not to be offended by each other because we might actually have a conversation.

Rosanne Moore: That would be nice, right? I have tried personally to make a practice of – unless there is actual name-calling or, like, things that give clear indication of a negative tone – to try to read any kind of response, no matter what it says, in an objective tone in my head. Because I think a lot of times you’re right, we come at discussions ready to be offended or assume that the other person is angry instead of that they’re just discussing something.

Andrea: Right. I think sometimes that’s really a projection. We assume that other people are going to respond the way we would. Sometimes, it has to do with the fact that we’ve experienced this before. We’ve experienced this kind of criticism before so we’re assuming that’s what they’re doing. But sometimes, it’s because we are that critical of other people and other perspectives. And so, when we hear somebody else say that, we feel very defensive. And it’s kind of messy.

Rosanne Moore: Yeah, that’s good. I would have go back a little bit to the points that you brought out in the article in Success Magazine. Your first one was that when you’re speaking publicly, when you’re putting yourself out there to share your message, your voice of influence, that family and friends are not your audience. And that you shouldn’t target them because if they feel targeted, even though you want to influence them as well, they’re going to feel defensive and shut things down. Can you say more about that?

Andrea: Okay. So, the interesting thing about this is that Success Magazine itself their audience is people that are entrepreneurs. They’re online, they’re trying to speak, they’re trying to write, and that sort of thing. And so, it’s sort of like talking to people that are doing what I’m doing. And in that context, I think that it’s really important for people who are wanting to do the kinds of things that I’m doing to remember that their friends and family are not their audience.

Because that is true, when people feel targeted… there have been times – and I could point to probably two or three times – where I didn’t mean to target somebody, specifically, but it was close enough to the truth of some situation that actually happened that when I did talk about something or write about something that person felt like they had been targeted. And it almost ruined a relationship. Thankfully, it didn’t totally, but yeah, it was very scary.

Rosanne Moore: So, when you say target them, you’re specifically thinking, like, using examples that are too close to home, that kind of thing?

Andrea: Yeah, either examples or that the message is something that is immediately applicable to somebody that you’re very close to.

Rosanne Moore: I see.

Andrea: So, when I was writing, when I was blogging on a regular basis, I was not ahead of the game by any means. I was writing for that day, and then I would post usually that day. And so, the things that I was thinking about, stirring in my heart, whatever, were things that had been happening in that sort of immediate timeframe. And then if I would put that out there in that way, right away, it could be perceived by somebody as being about them when I didn’t necessarily mean for it to be or maybe it just looks like it, you know.

And I think there were a lot of times when I first started blogging that I really was concerned about whether or not people that I knew and loved would read what I had to say. I really wanted them to be my audience. I wanted them to support me, to care about what I had to say, to help me get this blog off the ground, that sort of thing. And until I was able to sort of surrender that, give it up, not try for that anymore, not expect that of my friends… I mean, there came a point where I said to some close friends of mine, I was like, “I would much rather you’d be my friend than my audience. I need you as my friend. I’d rather you just not read or listen to anything that I say because I want to maintain this friendship.”

And thankfully, a lot of those relationships were able to just sort of evolve, and everybody was able to sort of put that aside and not worry about, you know, being offended by what I talk about or whatever. You know, like we’re able to still have conversations around it. But that was something that felt very threatening, I think, to me and to my relationships. That was really important in that context.

Rosanne Moore: So, when you started, your intent was simply to process what was going on for you, but to others, it kind of came across as a passive-aggressive way to correct or to…

Andrea: Yeah, it could totally appear passive-aggressive.

Rosanne Moore: Yeah, that’s a good point because that could be very innocently done and cause trouble without realizing it. And I guess that goes back to the whole kind of thing we teach at Voice of Influence of knowing your audience, and realizing not just what your message is but who your listener is, and how it’s going to impact them as well.

Andrea: Absolutely. I think if I were to take this article and the things I said and apply it to our audience more broadly, I would say that is exactly it; know your audience is the first point. Is that person that you’re talking or that you’re getting criticism from, are they somebody that you really respect and you want to listen to what they have to say, and that it should impact the way that you think about things? If that’s the case, then let that be what it is and don’t call them a hater, you know. Or it could be somebody that’s maybe designed to be in your audience. Maybe they’re somebody who is on your team at work, or they are in your audience at a convention or something like this.

If you’ve touched something in them that is kind of wounded and hurt, and then they are being critical of you or hating on you online or in some sort of way even personally… The more important thing that you and I both know is that we have to stay curious in those situations and really just try to figure out what this touched in them or what was threatened in them when you said something. Because you do have sort of a responsibility to those people, you do have a responsibility to be curious about to try to understand where they’re coming from no matter what they’re saying because you want to get to the heart of it.

Rosanne Moore: And you kind of brought that out in the article when you said, “Love people more than you fear them.” That’s what you were talking about, wasn’t it?

Andrea: Yeah, definitely, that was part of it.

Rosanne Moore: Yeah, that you have to continue to be curious rather than defensive if people don’t receive what you’re saying, or they make assumptions about why you’re saying it or what you mean that don’t really fit with what you’re saying.

Andrea: Right, because they’re offended easily. And then the third category of people, I think, for knowing your audience would be the people that really might just be haters. They really are just hiding behind their computers and, you know, feeling really angry at the world. They want their voice to matter, and so they’re going to put it out there even if it does hurt somebody.

There are times when it’s okay to just let those sort of roll off and not stay curious about them. You can have compassion on people who are hateful because you know that they are hurting. There’s got to be something hurting inside of them. But that doesn’t mean you have to feel responsible for figuring out what you did wrong, and why they’re offended, and all that kind of stuff.

So, those folks, I would say, it’s okay to let those folks go and just move on. But are they somebody that’s really in your audience that you feel responsible for? Stay curious. Are they somebody that you have a lot of respect for and they’re bringing up some sort of criticism that you need to pay attention to? Pay attention to it. But if it’s somebody that’s really just kind of out on the fringes and hateful, you can’t take responsibility for everybody.

Rosanne Moore: That’s a good point, right. You also talked about, “Sometimes you have to sacrifice what you want for what you need, and that ethical influence has a cost.” What were you referring to there?

Andrea: I think that the writer of the article tweaked something that I said for the first statement there, “Sacrificing what you want for what you need.” I am trying to remember what my response actually was to that. But the main thrust of that second point is about understanding that there is a personal cost to putting yourself out there. If you’re wanting to have any kind of influence whatsoever, that means you’re not hiding under a rock on an island without anybody else around. Then you’re a person, you’re a human being, and there’s some sort of cost that you’re going to incur because of putting yourself out there.

Rosanne Moore: So, in other words, that while you may sacrifice comfort or safety or whatever… instead of maybe saying what you want for what you need, instead, you’re willing to make sacrifices to do what you believe is most important, what you’re called to do.

Andrea: Exactly. That was really more of what I was trying to get at with that point. And I didn’t have a chance to be able to say, “Oh, that wasn’t quite it,” you know, with the article.

Rosanne Moore: Right.

Andrea: And I thought, “Well, it’s not the end of the world, you know. I still got in the point about it being about coming at a personal cost.” But it really is about the mission, though. It really is about, “Okay, what am I willing to sacrifice for the mission?”

Rosanne Moore: And how do you evaluate that? What kind of things are you willing to sacrifice, and where do you draw a line and say, “No, I’m not willing to do that”?

Andrea: I think that’s a super important question. It seems to me that we need to prioritize the things that we’re willing to put on the line for our mission and what we’re not. So, for example, for me, I am willing to put myself on the line in the sense that other people are definitely going to criticize me. I’m going to have to get over that in order to continue down this path, in order to continue to have any kind of impact.

Rosanne Moore: Sure.

Andrea: So, I’m willing to sacrifice the comfort of feeling like I’m always right. I’m willing to sacrifice the comfort of feeling like everybody always agrees with me or should agree with me, knowing that that’s not going to happen. I have to sacrifice that harmony or lack of tension. There’s always going to be some kind of tension. I have to be okay with that feeling. So, there is something there that I sacrifice.

Rosanne Moore: And what kind of things are you not willing to sacrifice?

Andrea: Yeah. And I would say maybe I’d throw in with that last point just that that sometimes I’m willing to sacrifice feeling vulnerable, basically, is essentially the thing, I think, maybe. Like, I can feel vulnerable or make myself vulnerable to criticism, and that’s what I’m willing to sacrifice. What I’m not willing to sacrifice would be, I’d say, that number one, if it impacts the safety or wellbeing of my family; in particular, my children. You know, they’re vulnerable. They are vulnerable and I have to protect them.

So, you know, my husband and I have to be in conversation about what we’re willing to say about them or not say about them, or if they were to be put in the line of fire in some way, that would shift how I approach things, for sure.

Rosanne Moore: Right, right. That makes sense.

Andrea: And I’m sure that there are other things, like I wouldn’t want to sacrifice my own voice. I can sacrifice the idea of, you know, speaking to everything, “Maybe I’m not gonna speak to this thing because this other thing is more important to me.” So, I’m willing to bite my tongue here so that I can have a bigger voice there. But if I were to say I’m going to not speak the truth of what I actually believe, I’m going to actually lie… you know, being untruthful would be something I’m not willing to do.

Rosanne Moore: Right. That makes sense. Yeah, sometimes you have to keep your powder dry for the battle, where it matters most, but that’s not the same as betraying the core of who you are.

Andrea: Great way to put it.

Rosanne Moore: And it sounds like anybody in your position, anybody who’s going to have or for any of us who want to have a voice of influence, there needs to be a willingness to develop a thick skin and a tender heart at the same time.

Andrea: That’s a complicated kind of a requirement there.

Rosanne Moore: Right. Okay, so, you talked about how do you evaluate what you’re willing to sacrifice and what you’re not willing to sacrifice. Before we touched on the idea of loving people more than you fear them… when you think about what you’re sacrificing, what you’re not willing to sacrifice, when do you take in feedback from other people? When is that a sacrifice of control, then when do you draw a line and say, “No, that’s no longer helpful, and I’m not going to do that”?

Andrea: Hmm. Can you expand on what you’re saying there? What kind of example would you be talking about here?

Rosanne Moore: Well, for instance, if you’ve engaged someone and it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, you don’t have to just be open to haters. When do you decide when there’s feedback that’s valuable for you, and when do you decide, “This is a voice I don’t need to keep listening to”?

Andrea: Hmm. That’s a really interesting and complicated question, right?

Rosanne Moore: Well, let me simplify that. What’s kind of the grid for you about when you take in feedback and when you don’t?

Andrea: Well, I think that it has something to do with whether or not the other person is really doing this because they have your best in mind. If they’re just wanting to argue with you and win you over to their side of the argument, that’s just arguing with somebody. If that person seems to really care about you, and for me, you know, my mom would always tell me, “Andrea, people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care,” and that is a quote that comes from, I don’t know, Roosevelt or somebody, but it’s definitely a historical kind of… it’s been around for a while.

But the essence of that is that if people know that you have their best interests at heart then they’re more likely to take in what you have to say. They’re more likely to feel like, “Okay, let me think about what you’re just saying right now.”

Rosanne Moore: So just because they’re criticizing, they’re not haters.

Andrea: Right, right. Oh, yeah, totally. I think that that is really important with that first point of knowing your audience, so who are you listening to then, you know. Is it somebody that really cares about you and so you’re willing to take their criticism in? But how you determine whether or not that person is somebody you want to take their criticism or not… I mean, that’s hard. It’s hard to know. I mean, if they know you, if they care about you, if they’ve demonstrated that they’re for you; I think that that’s something that each of us should think about for ourselves, when do we feel most open to criticism? When do I feel most open to hearing from somebody else, and then turn the tables and say, “Well, then that’s how I need to be treating other people when I have something to say.”

Rosanne Moore: That’s an interesting point. I know I don’t have difficulty taking negative feedback if it’s done from a standpoint of exploration rather than an assumption of negative motives. f I feel like there’s a mischaracterization of…

Andrea: Of you?

Rosanne Moore: Of me or of my motives then even if they’re right about that there’s something that I need to change, it just feels yucky. It’s a lot harder to receive, and I can usually over time parse out, “All right, this is the part that’s true that I need to look at.” But I still come away, “That’s not a person I wanna hear from in the future,” because they didn’t come at it from a standpoint of assuming that my intentions were good and that I had missed the mark, you know, or I had a blind spot about something, so that’s a good point.

Andrea: I think if we’re characterizing people as being from a different side and that other side is evil… I mean, this is what’s going on with politics. A lot of people that are in politics right now or people that are listening and feeling like they’re a part of a political party… or not even just a political party, but you know, following Trump or not following Trump, whatever, it seems like that is the line right now. We either follow Trump or you don’t follow Trump. And anybody on one side of the line characterizes the people on the other side of the line as being evil and so they totally write off every single thing that they say.

Rosanne Moore: Right.

Andrea: That is not going to get us to consensus of any kind. So, how do I listen for what is really going on in the other person? Like, bringing it down outside of politics, bring it down to the actual person themselves. What does this person in front of me, who’s maybe on the other side of the line, if you’re on one side of the line or the other – some of us, you know, are trying to look at it objectively – but how do I listen for what’s really going on inside that person? What is being threatened in them that’s causing them to believe something that I don’t believe?

Rosanne Moore: And not be able to hear…

Andrea: And not be able to hear from anybody else. Yes, not be able to hear what I have to say. It’s not even worth saying it when the other person can’t hear it. So, how do I get to the heart of that person and find out what’s really going on inside of them and speak to the heart of that person instead of talking politics around the top? Because if you start at the heart, if you get to the core of a person that’s really struggling with something, or they feel threatened in some way that they’re political party or their side of the spectrum is validating for them, you have to be able to show them that you are for them. Just because you’re against, you know, maybe their political stances, you can still be for the person.

So, if we could just do that, if we could just bring it down to that personal level and to the heart, I think that we’d have a chance of actually having conversations. But as soon as we get into inflammatory statements and assuming that, “You know, the other person is x, y, and z, and I am not and so therefore, I cannot listen to anything that they have to say. I’m gonna write off everything that they have to say,” you’ve lost the conversation. You’ve totally lost any kind of influence you could have over that person or their way that they’re thinking about things.

I would just throw in there because I brought up politics – I try not to, but right now, it’s a big deal – and I think that as long as we’re using buzzwords that we’re hearing from politicians, buzzwords like corruption… Both sides are using that word and it means something different to them. It looks like something different to them. And when you use buzzwords like that – or buzzwords of fake news or whatever – if you’re using those buzzwords, you are putting yourself in a position to be written off by one side or the other and to not actually get into a real conversation. So, to take it again, like, throw out the buzzwords. Let’s get down to what is actually going on inside people. I think then we’ve got a chance.

Rosanne Moore: So, really, we can’t even have an objective discussion about issues until both sides are really willing to look at what’s going on in their own heart that makes it hard for them to hear, it sounds like.

Andrea: Yeah, there’s so much, right? There’s so much there, and I think that’s why it’s important for us to have, you know, conversations like this and conversations that are about people and what’s going on inside of them. The more that we can have those conversations, the more likely we can have conversations about policy and about politics that are actually going to do something, but as long as it’s just about that, no way. We’re not getting anywhere.

Rosanne Moore: So, do you have any words for those who do find themselves often in high conflict argument, you know, discussions. I mean, there are people who seem to spend a lot of time on the internet, or whatever, criticizing others. What would you say to someone who is in that place?

Andrea: I think that what you’re striving for, what you want, is you want your voice to matter. You want to be heard, and you want to have influence. If you’re doing that, you’re doing it because you’re trying to have some kind of influence, and I respect that. I get it. I think that’s important, and that your voice really does matter, and it should matter. The trouble lies in thinking about what the outcome is of what you’re saying. I think we all have to look at what are we really wanting out of this situation. Do I just want to feel better? Then I may as well just spew hate because that’s going to make me feel superior in the moment.

But if you want actual influence, if you want to actually see something change then you need to do the more complicated and hard work of figuring out who your audience is, what your mission is, what you’re willing to sacrifice for that, and then loving people more than you fear them so that you can come to the conversation caring about that other person. And come to that conversation in love instead of worrying about whether or not you’re right or wrong, and how superior you feel. As long as that is the goal, as long as you’re elevating yourself to feel superior, it’s going to be really hard for you to have the actual influence that I think that you really do want.

Rosanne Moore: What I’m hearing you say is to have real genuine influence, you have to lay down your lust for power – for power over, I should say. Not the power that comes from genuine strength, but the kind of power over that shuts down opposition instead of being able to do the hard work of actually influencing and persuading.

Andrea: Yes, that feeling inside where you just need to have that power to shut people down, I think that also is tied directly to that need to be right. Because there’s something really threatened in us when we’re not right when we’re found out that we’re wrong about something or that somebody else doesn’t agree with us on something, and we’re threatened at the core when that happens. And that’s why we exert more power to try to make it go away. We don’t like that feeling. But if we can sacrifice that, if we’re willing to sacrifice our need to be right, then we might have a shot at having a conversation where we get something accomplished.

Rosanne Moore That’s a great point, Andrea. Thank you so much. This has been a really rich podcast. I hope, listeners, that you’ve gotten a lot out of this. I know I have. It’s always a good reminder to me to be present in the conversations, not simply to discuss ideas but to remember there’s a real person in front of me that I need to take care of and love well in the midst of a hard conversation.

Andrea: That’s right, especially if you really want to have influence over them if you want to have influence on them and their opinions. Otherwise, go for it, just hate on people and make yourself feel better. But that’s not going to change the conversation. It’s not going to get you where you really want to go.

Rosanne Moore: Well, it goes beyond that, right? Because it’s not simply hating or not hating. Even if you’re not being hateful – if you’re trying to discuss an idea but you’re not taking care of the heart of the person in front of you – you could be right, you could be logical, you could be respectful, but they still may not hear any of that.

Andrea: Absolutely.

Rosanne Moore: Because something may be triggered in them that you need to take care of first, that may be a barrier first that you have to address before they can even receive what you’re saying in the spirit and what you’re trying to give it.

Andrea: Roseanne, that’s why you’re Communications Specialist because you’re really good at summarizing what I say, much more succinctly and powerfully so. But I thank you, thank you for giving me a chance to share these things. It was fun. It was fun to have this conversation with you with our listeners.

Rosanne Moore: It was fun. And if you enjoyed today and you want to benefit more from the wonderful services that Andrea offers to companies that have worked with us and working with human dynamics and within their company and building a culture and a climate in a business where people communicate well and serve each other well, get in touch with us at voiceofinfluence.net.

Posted on Tuesday, February 11, 2020

What to Do When You Feel Ambushed with Retired Navy SEAL Jason Redman

Episode 127

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

Have you ever felt ambushed or something unexpected comes along and throws you off course so that the rug being pulled out from underneath of your feet?

Today, we have the honor of hearing from Jason Redman. He’s a retired Navy SEAL, a wounded warrior, veterans advocate, New York Times bestselling author, and acclaimed leadership and resilience speaker.

In this episode, we’re talking about what it’s like when we feel ambushed, how to overcome those moments of real crisis in our lives, how to see an ambush coming, the practice that separates elite performers in the way they handle these ambushes and help them overcome, a fact of life that we absolutely have to accept in order to be an overcomer, why it is so important to put yourself in uncomfortable situations, and how a voice of influence can be there for others who are in crisis.

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

Transcript

People of influence know that their voice matters, and they work to make it matter more. I’m Andrea Wenburg, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.

Have you ever felt ambushed, or something unexpected comes along and throws you off course so that the rug being pulled out from underneath of your feet?

Today, we have the honor of hearing from Jason Redman. He’s a retired Navy SEAL, a wounded warrior, veteran advocates, and acclaimed leadership and resilience speaker. He’s also a New York Times bestselling author for The Trident, and we’re going to be talking about his new book Overcome.

There are a couple of things you need to know about Jason before we get going because his story is remarkable, and we really don’t talk about it in the actual interview itself. So, I’m going to share with you a little bit from his website to give you an idea of who Jason really is.

On September 13, 2007, while acting as Assault Force Commander on an operation to capture an Al Qaeda High-Value Individual, LT Redman’s Assault Team came under heavy machine gun and small arms fire, and he, along with two other teammates, were wounded in the ensuing firefight. Despite being shot twice in the arm and once in the face – as well as multiple rounds to his helmet, Night Vision Goggles, body armor, and weapon – Jason and his team fought valiantly winning the fight, ensuring everyone came home alive.

So, when he was recovering at Bethesda, he wrote a sign for his door, which actually ended up becoming a statement and symbol of wounded warriors everywhere. This sign gained national recognition and earned Lt. Redman and his family an invitation to meet President George W. Bush in the Oval Office. In fact, that original sign was on the door was signed by President Bush, and now hangs in the Wounded Ward at the National Naval Medical Center Bethesda.

Jason is going to tell you what he wrote on that sign at the end of our interview. As mentioned before, today we’re talking about what it’s like when we feel ambushed and how to overcome those moments of real crisis in our lives, when we feel like the rug is pulled out from under us, specifically, we’re going to talk about how to see an ambush coming.

Jason is going to share a practice that really separates elite performers in a way that they handle these ambushes and help them overcome. We’ll discuss one fact of life that we absolutely have to accept in order to be an overcomer. Why it is so important to put yourself in uncomfortable situations, and how a voice of influence can be there for others who are in crisis?

One more note, Jason has a fantastic TED Talk where he talks more about his actual story. I highly recommend it, and we will definitely make sure that it is located in the show notes so it’s not hard for you to find. And you can find all of this information in the show notes of voiceofinfluence.net.

Here’s our interview with Jason Redman:

Hey there, it’s Andrea! Welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. I have with me today Jason Redman. And Jason, this is such an honor to have you on our podcast today. You have quite a story, you have quite the message, and I’m excited to have you here with us today.

Jason Redman: Andrea, thank you. Thanks for having me on. Honored to be here.

Andrea: So, Jason is a retired Navy SEAL who utilizes his training and the years of expertise to guide others in leadership and resiliency. And Jason just came out with a new book called Overcome, and it’s all about how to help people survive what Jason calls “life’s ambushes.” So, we’re going to talk today about overcoming, and I’m really, really looking forward to this, Jason, because I think that this is something that we found in our business too, and that’s that people kind of come up to those times when they are ambushed or the times when they are struggling and have a hard time knowing what to do with it. And so why don’t you tell us a little bit about why you wrote Overcome?

Jason Redman: You know, it’s kind of funny, over the years, my story had gotten out there. I mean, I was injured in 2007, I finished my military career, and along that path right about the time I retired in 2013 is when my first book The Trident came out. And, you know, it is an amazing story. It is a story about a young man, me, who had failed at one point and really failed at a point that a lot of people would have given up. As a matter of fact, I know other individuals who have failed in business or have failed professionally, and sometimes we create these lies in our head that, “Oh my God, I made this mistake or I did this wrong, and nobody is going to follow me again because of this.” And I’ll be honest, I bought into some of those lies too.

But for whatever reason, both through some trusted leaders who said, “Hey, we see potential in you so, you know, you need to keep going,” and through fate and fortune and all these other things, I decided to drive forward and stick with it and really turned my career around, redeemed myself. I got myself right back up to my career being on track and getting ready to enter the whole next level of my career when suddenly I found myself severely injured, which started a whole new process of having to deal with adversity and navigating the waters of overcoming once again.

Andrea: Can you share with us even just a snippet of how you got hurt and that sort of thing? I knew, we really don’t have to dwell on that, but for those people who don’t know who you are or haven’t heard, just a little bit of the summary would be great.

Jason Redman: Yeah. In September of 2007 operating in Iraq, I was shot eight times by an enemy machine gun, including a round to the face. So, pretty devastating injuries. It took four years and forty surgeries to put me back together. I mean, I’m very blessed and lucky that I survived. It’s a tribute to my teammates. It’s a tribute to God. It’s a tribute to the doctors and nurses. And in some ways, it’s a tribute to having a strong, overcoming mindset and a will to fight because there were several times in that process where I think if I had just let go and stopped fighting, I probably would not still be here.

And all of those things go into this new book Overcome, and I know right now there’s a lot of people that are listening and that are probably thinking, “Oh my God, there’s no way I can relate to this guy. I can’t imagine what he’s been through. He’s a Navy SEAL, and he’s been shot at.” You know, but here’s the reality – and this is the premise of the book and this is why it’s relatable to anyone – everyone in life will step into a point where you’re ambushed. It might not be actual bullets or bombs going off on a battlefield, but they are the bullets and bombs going off in your life. And they can happen physically through an accident or an illness. They can happen physically to someone we love, maybe one of our kids or our spouse or a boyfriend or girlfriend. They can happen physically through sexual assault. I mean, they can happen personally through relationship damages.

And then, of course, the big one that everybody sees is the professional ones that occur through business when something unexpected comes along and just crushes our business. And all of these things come back to the one focal point that I tell people, it’s that moment when all of us think it is The End. When those The End moments come along, the overcome mindset is that defining point that enables us to say, “Okay, it may be the end, but I’m gonna keep driving forward. I’m gonna keep driving forward. I understand that, you know, it may be the end of whatever happened there, but somewhere out there, there is a new beginning. It may not be the path that I originally set out, it might not even be close to where I thought I was going to go but no matter what, I’m not gonna stay in this incident point or in this point of attack.”

And that’s everything the book is really built around. I’ll be honest, I wrote it because so many people asked me how I did what I did, how did I build that overcome mindset, and I’ll be perfectly honest; I could not answer that question in a step-by-step format before I wrote the book. So this book lays it out. It tells people how to do that.

Andrea: So, you went on a journey then to even be able to kind of look back and say, “Well, what did happen, how did I do this?

Jason Redman: Absolutely. I mean, if anybody’s read my first book, The Trident, there’s a lot of introspection in The Trident, and Overcome was similar. And there are some people who have written me and said, “Wow, I really had to look deeply at myself and come to realize…” So often, you know, we are our own worst enemies and both the lies we tell ourselves and so often people talk about wanting to change, but they take no action steps to actually do it. And I will say that this book talks about the action steps. It talks about having to get uncomfortable. It talks about how we move forward and create that long term change. How we create structure and discipline in our lives to affect the things that we want to affect. Those things are hard and they’re uncomfortable, and sometimes we have to come to grips with we haven’t made all the best decisions.

And here’s one of the biggest things that people struggle with. Oftentimes, the ambushes and the incidents we get into – not always, obviously, there are certain things like accidents and illnesses and things like that that we can never see coming – but oftentimes there is a lot of life ambushes we get into that we have what I call indicators. We saw the signs and we either procrastinated, ignored, put off, delayed, or did what all human beings do, and then suddenly we found ourselves in this situation. And, you know, we all say the same thing, “Oh my God, I never saw this coming.” But when we take several steps back, we start to go, “Wow, I really did. I knew I should have taken care of this. I knew when the doctor told me last year that I needed to take better care of my health and I needed to watch my diet, start working out and then I didn’t and suddenly I’m here in the hospital with a heart attack. The indicators were there.”

Andrea: So, is that the denial that you talk about? Is that the point of denial that people just don’t want to have to face it?

Jason Redman: Absolutely. I don’t know what it is. As human, I’m guilty. We’re all guilty. I mean, your top elite performers are guilty. The difference between the elite performers who move forward the fastest are they move from that level of denial that something’s happened or were confronted with a crisis failure, you know, have to implement some massive change incredibly quickly. They come to acceptance as fast as possible, whereas other people, you know, there’s a little bit of, “I want to ignore it. I don’t want to admit it’s a problem. If I push this off long enough, maybe it’ll fix itself.” Unfortunately, life just doesn’t work that way. I mean, it is a true statement. Most of the time, things don’t get better with time. They only get worse.

Andrea: So, in your perspective, do you think that people can develop that ability to face the problems that they’re confronted with before they get to that point of The End? Can people really change in that way do you think? Have you seen it happen?

Jason Redman: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve gotten to watch it with a lot of different people, specifically wounded warriors. I mean, before I wrote the book, I was running a nonprofit to serve wounded warriors, and we ran a program called the Overcome Academy, specifically because we were having so many veterans and combat veterans who were struggling with this transition out of the military into the civilian world. And almost all of our wounded warriors had had this, literally, real-world ambush that most of them had been in some fact or fashion.

And then the secondary ambush, which was the ending of their military career, unexpectedly, of course. So, even put that on top of whatever injuries and now disabilities they were confronting; so much across the board. It’s a really hard transition for them and so many of them were struggling in the civilian world to figure out their new path. We put together a course on, “Well, how do we analyze this, how do we understand who we are, how do we understand what our new purpose and passion is and then how do we lay out a path to get there?”

And I’ll be honest, that main part of the curriculum – and when I write about this in the book from the Overcome Academy – is really the heart and soul of what this book is. So, I do believe anybody can do it. It’s not easy. I’ll tell you, anytime we have to go through a change any time or go into a crisis, it’s never fun. But if we can be honest with ourselves and, you know, I have given people some step-by-step processes. I know you mentioned recognize where people are in denial, and I created something called the React Methodology.

So, basically, if you’re in a crisis, you follow the React Methodology to quickly; a) come to acceptance, and b) go through the steps that you can evaluate; your resources, assets, identify the right course of action, and then move forward. These are all things that can happen. And then once you do that, if we accept the second part of life which is bad things are always going to happen. You know, it’s just one of the hard facts about being human that, you know, no matter how well we plan, no matter how we try to avoid risk, I mean, just bad things sometimes happen.

And if we already have an acceptance of that – not going around and being… you know, treading on eggshells in life but just accepting, “Hey, sometimes bad things are gonna happen.” – we can be a little more proactive in our preparation to deal with them instead of being totally blindsided for those things that, you know, are coming.

Andrea: It reminds me of a quote from your book; let me see if I can find it real quick. Oh my goodness. I loved this so much. It’s at the beginning. Well, let’s see, it’s on page 143. I’m not sure which chapter that is. It’s on my computer right now. So, it’s hard to flip through it, but you said, “Everything in SEAL training is built on adapting to the unexpected. If you come in thinking that life is fair, SEAL training will beat it out of you. So many that have never been through the BUDS talk,” – I’m not exactly sure – “About how physically grueling it is…” Yeah, go ahead, go ahead, why don’t you just respond?

Jason Redman: No, no, no, no, BUDS is an acronym. It stands for Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL training. So, in the military lingo out there, BUDS is SEAL training.

Andrea: Right, okay. “So, they don’t know how grueling it is or they talk about how physically grueling it is, they are absolutely correct. But those of us that have been through it know that it is 10% physical and 90% mental. And the reason it’s 90% mental is because the SEAL training is designed to screw with your head.” But why, why is it designed to do that? I mean, it seems that what we’re talking about here is that life just can’t be fair, and it’s not going to happen like you plan it to happen.

Jason Redman: And it never will. You know, life never unfolds in this perfect plan. I don’t care what you’re doing, there’s always going to be road bumps. There’s always going to be snags along the way. A good business mentor of mine, you know, he said, “No matter how great you plan, it’s always gonna take longer, it’s gonna cost more money and it’s gonna be much more difficult than you thought it was gonna be.” He said, “It’s just the way it is.” And that is kind of the equivalent of learning to build that mindset. As humans, we seek the easier path. We want that comfortable path.

Andrea: Right.

Jason Redman: But very rarely does it work that way. And so many people who don’t put themselves in situations that are uncomfortable, sometimes really have a hard time dealing with that. So, I encourage people, do things that make you uncomfortable. SEAL training teaches you, it wants to reshape the way you think. We have a tendency to look at certain things that we’re doing and expect a certain outcome based on those circumstances, and SEAL training turns all that on its head. So, a perfect example we used to joke about, you know, so SEAL training is called BUDS. So, we used to call it BUDS’ time, you know, this distortion in the space-time continuum. And if the instructors told you, you had a minute to do something, you would get it done in like 50 seconds but they would fail you until you didn’t make it in a minute.

And then to add insult to injury, they would tell you, “Well, obviously we gave you too much time, so now you only have 45 seconds to do it.” And you would kill yourself and make it in 45 seconds, but of course, you’d fail and then they’d tell you, “Well, now you only have 30 seconds,” and you would play this game for hours. And it was the guys who couldn’t accept the fact that it is designed to be unfair. It is designed to make you fail. It is designed to make you uncomfortable and mess with your head. And if you could just come to accept, “Hey, this is gonna be hard. It’s not gonna be fair, but no matter what I just keep moving forward.” And life sometimes can be that way and that is one of the lessons that I really want to talk about in this book.

We talk about movement is life; when everything’s going wrong, keep moving. So many people when these life ambushes happen whether they’re personal, physical, professional, we have a tendency to stop moving. We have a tendency to hole up in our house, to sit on the couch, and to just shut the world out. And it is probably the worst thing we can do. It starts that downward spiral of rumination. It is incredible how much moving and getting outside and with anything you do in life can make a difference. Being around the right people, positive mindsets, all these things we talk about in the book that you can do to try, and you know, the phrase in the book is to Get Off the X, the point of that incident, the point of that crisis.

Andrea: You interview and talk to and use the examples of a lot of different people who have actually gone through this process, who have at least been able to get off the X. Can you give us an example of somebody who really had a hard time getting out of that moment and moving forward but did it?

Jason Redman: I have several examples and we talked about several of them in the book. One of the examples that we didn’t talk about quite as much, but I’m going to highlight, was a young Air Force gal. And she came into the Air Force, she became a part of the security forces and even became a sniper, and she was a marksman, and she had two separate incidents. She had an incident of sexual trauma, and then she had an incident of a suicide bomber that almost blew up while she was taking care of things. It did not go off, but it really messed with her mind and she just really struggled when she came home.

And going through our course and showing her, “Hey, you have so much potential; you have so much to give back in this world.” And to find out her new purpose, she’s an amazing artist and she started taking her arts and teaching other veterans how to use art and art therapy, and oh my gosh, she is just thriving now. She’s just doing amazing. And for so many people out there, I try and convince them the same thing. So many of the other wounded warriors that I’ve worked with that those moments, the painful points that we have, the traumatic points, the failure points, so often they become our superpower.

If you can learn to get through it and get to the other side, suddenly you realize there’s power in what you’ve been through, and people are hungry to learn from you. If you are someone that has been through sexual trauma, it is such a hard thing to deal with. It’s such a hard thing for people to talk about, but for somebody that’s on the other side, we want to hear from them. How did you do it? How are you so strong? How are you thriving now because we want to know how to navigate those hard waters that we’re having to figure out how to navigate now.

So this is where I tell people that it can truly become a superpower and your ability to communicate to others that this is how you walk that path, it becomes an incredibly empowering thing. And it actually becomes very cathartic for the individual who’s been through it and now is on the other side.

Andrea: It’s a very redemptive perspective.

Jason Redman: Yeah, it worked. Well, it worked for me and it has worked for a lot of people that I’ve worked with. And this is the last thing, and this is something that I’ve been talking about a lot. You mentioned my TED Talk. It is the heart and soul of my TED Talk. You have a choice. You have a choice in how we’re going to deal with it. I just encourage people to choose positivity over negativity. Sometimes that’s hard; I mean, we have these moments that happen in life that just destroy us, that shatter us. And sometimes it’s hard to pick up the pieces and figure out where is the new path ahead. But there is a new path ahead; we just have to figure it out, and we just have to drive forward.

And that’s why I tell people, just keep looking forward, but make that choice. You always have a choice in how you’re going to deal with what happens to you in this life. And it doesn’t have to be choosing depression, choosing the rumination, choosing to stay in that point of incident or point on the X. That’s what I tell people, you got to choose to move forward, and when you make that choice, it is amazing how far you will move and suddenly look back and go, “I can’t believe I’ve made it this far.” And then new beginnings start to develop out of it as you continue to move forward.

Andrea: I mean, that really gets at the heart of what we’re trying to accomplish here at Voice of Influence. We really believe in agency, that a person can make a decision, that their voice matters – what they do and what they say – that it matters and that you can make that decision to move forward. It’s such a powerful line. It’s such a powerful message. Was there a point for you where… maybe you can share with us that pinpoint moment where you really had to make that decision for yourself?

Jason Redman: So, I’ll say it happened three times. And the three life ambushes that I’ve been through that decision point where I made the choice.

Andrea: That would be great.

Jason Redman: So, the very first light ambush I ever went through was a pretty high-level leadership failure. And it was driven by my own ego and arrogance as a young man just making some poor decisions that culminated with a bad decision that was made on a combat mission in Afghanistan in 2005. It is the heart and soul of my book The Trident. It follows this journey, and I viewed myself as a victim when I got myself in trouble instead of looking at, you know, “Hey, you know, maybe I didn’t make all the right decisions. Maybe there’s something I can learn from this.” Instead, I was bitter. I was bitter and I just focused on, “You know, everybody’s out to get me,” and a lot of the blame and all the things a lot of us do.

It all came to this point where I was telling myself these lies that it doesn’t matter what I do, nobody’s ever going to be willing to follow me again because of the mistakes and because of everything that happened. And probably one of the best leaders I know, he offered me this advice. He said, “Jay, people will follow you if you give them a reason to.” He said, “It doesn’t matter how much you mess up. It may take years to earn back their trust but if you are consistently setting the example, people can’t help but follow people that are doing the right thing and that are leaders. It’s just the way the world works.” He said, “Stop doing what you’re doing and start focusing on moving forward and setting the example, and come back and lead.” And it was that moment where I made the choice to stop feeling sorry for myself and looking at myself as a victim and to start driving forward, so that was number one.

Number two was lying in the hospital bed after I’d been injured. And even though I’d already been through some hard things, I will tell you – for anybody out there that’s ever been severely injured and facing both disability and disfigurement or individuals who have suffered life-threatening illness where they don’t know what the outcome is going to be – it’s a very intimidating place to be. To be in the hospital with doctors and nurses rattling off all these things, not able to give you a really good prognosis, really complicated medical injuries, they can’t tell you, “This is exactly how it’s going to turn out.” Instead, they give you a myriad of options and say, “These are all the different options. How do you want to go?” So, I was struggling with all of that.

And on top of all of that, I had these individuals that started a conversation off to my side, and they started talking about what a shame that all these young men, women go off to war. We were in a military medical hospital at Bethesda, so I know it is a very overwhelming place. There’s a lot of young men and women during war who are really battered in these hospital wings, and they had a very negative outlook, and you know, “Hey, they’re never gonna be the same. They’re never gonna be able to get back out in society. They’re never gonna be able to achieve their American dream.” And I remember thinking to myself, “Man, is this my future? Is this what I have left?”

Andrea: They were really hitting you if I remember right the way you were talking about.

Jason Redman: That’s right.

Andrea: And that is a tough, tough thing to hear.

Jason Redman: That’s right. But I had a choice, and it was in that moment that I chose, “No, I’m not gonna be the victim.” I’ve gone down that path once before, you know, after I’ve made those mistakes as a leader and here’s the interesting thing I try and tell people. If I hadn’t been through that leadership failure, I don’t think it would have prepared me as well for the injuries that I sustained and knowing the path I had to walk. I had to walk this really hard path to build myself back up and through this very dark valley, but I tell people one of the greatest gifts you can have when you’re going through adversity is it will teach you and show you how to do it again in the future. So don’t shy away from it. It’s going to be hard. It’s going to suck, but someday there’ll be future adversity you encounter, and that’s what builds and overcome mindset. That’s what builds your ability to lead through those situations.

When I was lying in the hospital bed, I said, “No, I’ve walked that path once before; I’m not gonna do it again.” And this choice kind of led to a little bit of national notoriety because I wrote out this sign that I told my wife I wanted posted on my door and that nobody’s allowed to come in the room unless they read the sign. And the sign said, “Attention to all who enter here. If you’re coming into this room with sadness or sorrow, don’t bother. The wounds that I received I got in the job I love, doing it for people I love, defending the freedom of the country I deeply love. I’ll make a full recovery, and what’s full? That’s the absolute utmost physically my body has the ability to recover. And then, I’ll push that about 20 % further through sheer mental tenacity. This room you’re about to enter is a room of fun, optimism, and intense rapid re-growth. If you’re not prepared for that, go elsewhere.”

Andrea: It’s fantastic.

Jason Redman: But the great thing about that, by choosing and articulating, so not only did I choose I wasn’t going to be a victim, that I was going to drive forward with this positive mindset, I wrote it down. And now it became like a benchmark for me. It became, “Oh, well this is the bar that I set for myself and I’m gonna follow it.” So for anybody out there that is the power of choice, and you don’t know the impact it’s going to have on other people.

The third one was I got involved in a business lawsuit, and I talked about this in the book. You know, I was a young businessman and a little bit naïve, a little bit immature, and I didn’t do the things that I should have done. We talked about those indicators with ambush it’s like, “Oh my God, I never saw this coming.” Well, I did. I procrastinated. I didn’t do some of the things I should have done. I should’ve had a signed contract and all these different things. And it was a deal that kind of went south and turned into a big he said, she said situation that just evolved to, you know, kind of an ugly argument that turned into a lawsuit.

And taking care of myself over that year while I dealt with that, I wasn’t doing a very good job. And I went to the doctor in the fall of the year that it occurred, and the doctor said, “Hey dude, you know, you might be doing some good things but you’re gonna have a heart attack before forty-five if you don’t make some major changes in your health.” And heart disease runs in my family, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and all those things. So it was a wakeup call and I had to make a choice. I could’ve been in denial like so many people do, “Uhh, I’ll deal with that later, you know, maybe it won’t happen to me. What does this doctor know?” All the things, the lies that people tell me and I had to make a choice again how I was going to start taking care of myself. And I started really focusing on, you know, once again getting myself back in shape despite my injuries and the issues that I had.

So, I had to make a choice. I had to choose the positive path versus the negative path, and all of those things have had a great impact for me. And this is what I try and encourage others. It’s what I talked about in the book, how you can set yourself up for success, how we take care of ourselves so we’re proactively ready for those ambushes. You have that power, you have the power of choice.

Andrea: If you could give advice to somebody who wanted to see somebody else who’s been ambushed. Okay, we’re talking about the bystanders, the people that are on the sidelines who see that somebody else has been ambushed and they’re seeing that they’re getting stuck on the X. What advice can you give to the bystander about how they can encourage or influence or maybe they’re not supposed to at all the person who is in that position?

Jason Redman: Absolutely, give encouragement, give positive encouragement. What I encourage you not to do that I sometimes see is the negative encouragement where they’re like, “Oh well, fine if you want to lay here and die, then do it.” I watch that a lot, which I don’t know if that necessarily helps the situation. I mean, we always want to stay positive. You know, I recently had a friend that went through some dark times and, you know, I would always just, “Hey man, no matter what I’m here for you, I love you.” Because the reality is people can’t move forward until they reach that first step which is acceptance.

I’ve watched this happen several times with individuals that have been through trauma that if they are not ready and you try and drag them off the X of the point of incident, they’ll crawl back onto it. So, instead we just got encourage them. In the book, I talked about the React Methodology, use that with them, you know, “Hey, this is how we recognize. This is how we evaluate our assets so we can bring to bear to help problem. This is how we evaluate our options and outcomes.” You know, get them involved in the process, but at the end of the day, they’ve got to be willing.

So, you know, don’t give up on them. You know, definitely, I mean good friends and family will keep encouraging them. We look for different ways to try and get them off the X. We continue to evaluate what are the assets and they change over time. But hopefully, you know, the most important one is that they’re willing because that’s probably the biggest thing is that they finally; a) accept they’re in a crisis and b) they’re willing and ready to move forward and get off that X.

Andrea: That’s great advice. That’s great advice. So, okay, Jason how can people find your book and find you and just tell us about that real quick.

Jason Redman: Yeah, so Overcome is in all major booksellers. You know, Amazon, Books-A-Million, Barnes and Noble. We actually are getting ready. We’ve had a ton of people asking us for signed copies of the book, so we’re just now launching a signed version along with military challenge coins. We had a military challenge coin specifically made for the book, limited edition. We only ran a thousand coins. So when they’re gone, they’re gone. But that’s all on my website, jasonredman.com. Click on Store and the book will be there, and it’s on eBooks and you can get it, you know, Kindle and iBook. And it’s got a great audiobook, and I got to read the audiobook, so I’ve been getting a lot of great feedback on that.

Andrea: Awesome! You know, you are certainly a voice of influence in the world. I’m really, really glad that you have found a redemptive purpose in the things that you’ve gone through, that you are making a difference with the hardships that you faced the ambushes that you’ve come across and that you’re helping other people to do the same. Thank you so much. Thank you for being a voice of influence for our listeners.

Jason Redman: Andrea, awesome! I’m blessed and hey good luck to everyone out there. If you find yourself in a life ambush, get off the X. You can do it, overcome.

Andrea: All right. Thank you!

Posted on Tuesday, February 4, 2020

How Leading with Humility Impacts the Adoption of Change with Travis McNeal of Walmart

Episode 126

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

Influence by nature is about affecting change and, if you’re interested in listening to this podcast episode, my guess is that you care about how to make change come to fruition. Luckily, this week’s guest is the perfect person to help you better understand how to do just that.

Travis McNeal is the Director of Change Management and Communications for Walmart’s supply chain. Travis and I both spoke at a conference, and when I saw his presentation about this case study of change management, I said: “I need to get him on the podcast.”

In this episode, we talk about a specific example of a digital change Walmart needed to make for truck drivers and why it is so quickly adopted, the importance of training and preparing managers for change, how to communicate that to them and finally, how humility really plays a large part in the ultimate success of adoption of a change, and more!

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

Transcript

Hey, hey! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. Now, influence by nature is really about affecting some kind of change. And if you’re listening to this podcast, my guess is that you do care about that. You care about how to make change actually come to fruition.

Well, today, I’m interviewing Travis McNeal, the Director of Change Management and Communications for Walmart’s supply chain. Travis and I both spoke at a conference, and when I saw his presentation about this case study of change management, I said, “I need to get him on the podcast.”

So, we’re going to talk today about a few different things, specific examples of a digital change that they needed to make for truck drivers, specifically, and why it is so quickly adopted. We’ll also be going to talk about the importance of training and preparing managers for change, and how to communicate that to them, and finally – and perhaps more importantly – we’ll be discussing how humility really plays a large part in the ultimate success of adoption of a change.

If you haven’t already, please subscribe to the Voice of Influence podcast. We’d love to hear from our listeners. So, if you would like to give us some feedback or contact us for any reason, we have a contact form on our website, voiceofinfluence.net. That is also where you will find the show notes for today’s episode.

Now, here’s my interview with Travis McNeal:

Andrea: Travis McNeil, it is great to have you here on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Travis McNeal: Thank you. I’m happy to be here.

Andrea: You have a specific role at Walmart; would you tell us just a little bit about your position?

Travis McNeal: Sure. I run the Change Management Center of Expertise in the supply

chain organization. And Walmart is a large company, but the supply chain is what we would call a small part of the business but it still if you were to look at just the supply chain organization, it’s about a hundred and ten thousand associates and managers strong. So, it’s still a pretty large company in and of itself.

Andrea: So what is your specific role in that?

Travis McNeal: Yes. So we’re recently going through a transformation. We’ve been on this transformation journey for about two years now and it’s about a five-year journey and we’re really trying to transform the way in which our supply chain runs. And there’s around 17 programs of work that make up the supply chain strategy, and my responsibility is really twofold.

One is to work with the program leads for each one of those 17 programs of work to help ensure that they’re really thinking about all the elements of change management so that their programs can land successfully and effectively as possible. The other part is really working with the field. So, think of our distribution centers, our truck drivers, and our trucking offices, those folks. When programs are typically rolled out, it’s typically rolled out to the field.

And so the other half of my responsibility is to ensure that the leaders in the field are able to and effectively driving the programs with those who are impacted by those programs. So that would be the leading change piece, whereas on the program side it’s more of the change management piece.

Andrea: So, Travis, how did you kind of get involved in this particular piece of change management at Walmart?

Travis McNeal: I’ve been with Walmart about eight years and originally joined as part of the change management or design team, and there was a need for change management, and I’ve just slowly built up my career with Walmart. I ran the change management training and communications team for we were rolling out a large ERP program for HR, Enterprise Resource Management program and we were rolling that out internationally. I led that team for about four years.

And the thing that I felt about that team, it was great work, but it was pretty far removed from the business. So, working in supply chain, I felt like I wanted to get more involved with the business. And supply chain, they knew they were going on this transformation journey. They had fallen behind in many respects to the supply chain industry, and they needed to really reinvent themselves. That’s where I earned the right to be able to stand up a change management team and a change management practice within the supply chain organization.

Andrea: I mean, I would imagine that change is sort of a constant at Walmart, is that true?

Travis McNeal: Of course. The retail industry is in a severe upheaval right now. You’ve probably seen across, you know, news clippings here and there that several retailers are closing down. Who would have thought, you know, two years ago that Toys R Us wouldn’t be around today. So, the retail industry in itself is just under a constant state of change. And so that’s where my role really is important to really help guide the organization as they decide to go through changes.

Andrea: So when there is so much change going on, do you find that people are kind of nervous sometimes or even maybe defensive? Does anybody hold on tight to their roles and worry? Is there concern that sort of permeates the culture or are you able to kind of navigate that pretty well?

Travis McNeal: It’s a little bit of both. So any time you go through change, you know, regardless, – even through positive changes, you know – there’s this thing change management practitioners called the change curve where there’s always going to be this low point where people go through. Even if you were to get a promotion, there’s always going to come a point and time – you know, whether it’s one month, three months, six months into that new job – where you think, “Did I make the right choice?” You’re kind of learning a new role, you’re learning new people and the same is true when organizations go through large changes that the people experience that sense of loss of control, you might say, and do a little less predictability.

So that’s one of the sources that generates this resistance and people really being uncertain and very uncomfortable with some of these programs that are rolling out. And sometimes there are severe cases where you have people actively trying to thwart the goals of the program.

Andrea: What do you do to help people navigate that loss of control and unpredictability that they feel?

Travis McNeal: Yeah, that’s where the whole change of leadership piece comes into play. So, in an organization of our size, you know, we can’t have a change management person there onsite, you know, be there for each one of our hundred and ten thousand associates. And so you’ll often hear said in the change management world that sponsorship is the most important factor in successful change management, whether you’re using Prosci or whether you’re using John Kotter’s 8 Steps. Whatever, you know, change management methodology you’re using, they’ll often point to sponsorship, and that goes down to the very frontline manager.

So that’s why we have spent a fair amount of time investing in our frontline leadership to ensure that they understand the emotional toll that happens when people go through change, and then they’re included in that as well. We try to help them understand that, “What your associates experience, you’re going to experience that too. And so, before you can help your associates, you really need to come to terms with this loss of control that you might feel. So, in that way you can then in turn help your associates.”

One of the things that we’ve really tried to do is really invest in the training and preparation when we roll out programs in our managers to ensure that they understand the important role that they play in leading change within their own organization. Whether that’s leading a team of four or whether that’s leading a team of four hundred, a lot of the behaviors are going to be the same.

Andrea: So, you help them to kind of come to grips with the fact that this is going to happen, and this is how you’re going to feel. It sounds a bit like, “This is going to be painful, but we are going to be able to get to the other side.” Is there that kind of communication? “But there is this on the other side.” How do you get them to the other side?

Travis McNeal: So, first off, I think a lot of the programs that are rolled out are really good things. Things that should have happened years ago, and so there’s helping them understand, you know, not just what the other side will look like but to help them understand also what if we were to stay the same? What if we weren’t to change? You know, if we were to continue to going down this path, what might be the alternate reality? And so, we kind of try to tie the two together to say, “You know, what we can choose to change, or we can choose to stay the same,” and hear what the outcomes are for both.

We do try to spend a fair amount of time really articulating, not just the business case but just, you know, you’ll hear it say the, “What’s in it for me?”. So we really try to devote a fair amount of time to articulate, you know, what’s going to be in it for the associates and the managers. And a lot of times what you find out is that the majority of the people, regardless of your company, if you can explain it clearly the reason for the change, even if it’s a program that might be less in it for the associate or the employee, if they can see the real reasons for it – even if they don’t like it – they’ll understand it, and they’ll get it.

And there was a recent study done by Gartner that highlighted where they talked with over 400 companies and then had 300 or 50 so programs that they evaluated. That’s one of the top seven things that they learned was that, you know, associates don’t necessarily need to like it, they need to understand it. And that’s more important than actually liking the program.

Andrea: They don’t want to be just blindly led. They want to have a sense of, “OK, I get it”

Travis McNeal: Mh-hmm.

Andrea: Yeah.

Travis McNeal: Again, we find that most people in an organization, they’re smart, they get it. You know if you try to spin it in a way that might be untruthful, they’ll see through it pretty quickly. But if you can just be transparent as much as you can about why this program is in place, again if they don’t like it but they understand it, they’ll be more likely to come through on the other end feeling better about it.

Andrea: OK, so let’s talk a little bit more specifically about the change that has taken place so far. You have actually seen some digital transformation take place and led that transformation with the truck drivers, is that right?

Travis McNeal: Correct.

Andrea: Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Travis McNeal: Sure. So, we have around 8,800 truck drivers. A lot of our truck drivers, they’ve been using what’s called an onboard computer for a few years now. Sometimes the computers work, sometimes they don’t work. It’s not as reliable as it needs to be. And one of the things that we really wanted to have them do was change the way in which they record their time. Now, currently how they’d been managing what their time has been using a paper and pencil. They’re given what we call a trip sheet and they record there.

They’re given a stack of trip sheets at the start of a given day for example, and they may have three or four pieces of paper, each with a different route that they’re supposed to go on. So, the first sheet might be going from A to B, the second sheet would be going from B to C, third would be going from C to D, and D to E, and so forth. And so what they’ve done is they wanted to try to automate so that it’s not paper-pencil, because what you might find is that someone’s got to type that information out there for those drivers and so that’s being done on the back end.

And so they’ve developed a system over the past two years, an internal system, where they really tried to make it easier – just like an app on an iPhone – where a driver could very easily say, “Here’s the trip, here’s how much time it took, here’s what I’ve done, here’s where I’m going next.”

Andrea: They can see what exactly?

Travis McNeal: They can see where they are and where they need to go next. What the requirement is for the drivers is at the end of the day they really just need to review the trip, all the rest of those activities. They used to have to record on paper pencil is now automated because all that data was already there, we just weren’t capturing in the right place for the drivers. And so the drivers at the end of the day just into review all the steps that they completed throughout that day and hit OK. And if there’s anything that needs to be changed or added or removed, it’s as simple as you would deleting an email from your phone, swiping across and that activity goes away, or add it in, you simply hit the plus sign, and add in that activity.

And so that was the change that the drivers were going to go on. So we knew that some of our drivers are very technologically savvy, you might say, others not so much. So we had to design this tool and prepare the organization to the person who was the least technologically able to do that work. That makes sense?

Andrea: Oh yeah, yeah. So that it would be simple. It would be simple to adopt and I assume easy to use.

Travis McNeal: Correct. And so the team here, they did a great job really applying design thinking and really focusing on the user experience where they spent about six months really talking to drivers, taking the technology to the drivers to really help them understand, you know, when, “If this were you to have to complete this, how would it feel for you? What kind of training that you need? What kind of communication that you need?” And the drivers that they use to validate this were you might pick cross-section of the population.

So some drivers who were really good with technology and others who less good with technology to really try to understand, you know, are we capturing the technology in a way that best will suit your needs. And we clearly articulated benefits to them which for them it’s more accurate pay and pay that they can see. So there was a clear “what’s in it for me” because they had visibility to what they were being paid every single day, whereas before, they would hope that all the data they captured was correct. And at the end of the two week period then they’d start to reconcile what they were paid versus their own records.

And so this provides them visibility to what in fact they’re paid, you know, in real time and so there was a “what’s in it for me” for them as well.

Andrea: So beyond making sure that you had something that was really accurate and quality for them, just the fact that you went to the drivers – and a cross-section of drivers – to ask them their opinion, do you feel like that had an impact on the adoption as well knowing that they had a voice in it?

Travis McNeal: Yes, yes. One, because what we were able to do anticipating that drivers when they first see this tool they don’t want to hear from people in corporate office that this tool is good, they want to hear from other drivers. And so knowing that that would be the case, we actually filmed some of the drivers before they were exposed to the tool, and then after they were exposed to the tool and would ask comparison. And we created a video that was part of the rollout package, the communications package so that other drivers, as they’re being introduced to this new tool, they’re hearing other drivers, some of which they know. They know some of those drivers that were on camera and so they were able to say, “Hmm, OK if that driver feels comfortable with it, it can’t be that bad and if they’ve had input into it then I trust that this tool has been designed by drivers for drivers.”

Andrea: That’s a great way to communicate the effectiveness and the fact that this is really for you. That’s great. So where is this change going to take you in the next five years or I guess in the next three years, you said this is a five-year journey and you’re about two years into it. Where else are you going with this or that you can tell us?

Travis McNeal: Sure, sure. So what we just described was simply one small component of one of those 17 work streams. There are many other work streams and programs that are being rolled out. And I would say some of the bigger culture changes that we’re trying to drive is this zero-loss mentality. I’d say over the past, you know, in Walmart’s supply chain history, we’ve become very good firefighters in fixing problems as they arise. What we need to try to get better at doing is finding what are the root causes for those issues and that’s more of, I’d say, the four to five-year culture change journey that we’ve already barked on and we will continue to embark on. Because that’s not a shift in mindset that just happens overnight through a well-done communication, that’s something that just has to be learned and that’s more of the long term play where we can really drive the culture change. And of course, there’s several other automation programs that we’re going about to try to drive out some of the non-value added work where we can. So, that’s part of all of the larger journey.

Andrea: So the zero-loss mentality, is this overarching theme of your journey that you’re trying to embark on?

Travis McNeal: Mh-hmm.

Andrea: So, what exactly do you mean by the zero loss mentality?

Travis McNeal: One of our goals in supply chain is to put as many cases on a trailer as we possibly can. And part of the reason for doing that is, yes it saves us money, but it also is good for the environment, because if we’re putting more cases on a trailer we’re putting less trucks on the road.

Andrea: Sure.

Travis McNeal: And so one of our goals is to try to get, you know, for example throw out a number say 2,500 cases on a trailer if that’s our goal and we’re only hitting maybe 2,000 cases on a trailer, 2,500 cases is perfection. So, anything less than 2,500 cases is a loss. And so how do we identify what that loss is and find the root cause to why that loss occurs. It could be that maybe we didn’t have enough staffing, and so then you ask a question why didn’t we have enough staffing? We have high turnover. Why do we have high turnover? Well, we have managers who maybe don’t have the right skill set to engage our associates. Well, why don’t we have the managers, and so on and so on.

And so that’s really the zero-loss mentality is instead of placing the blame on people, let’s try to find out what are the things that are getting in the way. What sources of friction might exist that prevent our associates and our managers from being able to fulfill the role to be able to drive those perfect operations that we’re striving for.

Andrea: Sure, makes complete sense. OK, you said you said that you are kind of making sure that you’re working with all 17 program leads and there are all these projects going on. How do you keep it straight in your own mind and in the way that you work as the sort of the leader that’s sort of putting making sure that all of this is running smoothly?

Travis McNeal: Sure. So from the moment that the change management practice, you might say, was stood up in the supply chain organization, one of the very first things that was agreed to by the leadership was that the change management is really owned by the program lead. And so what that means is that I’m more of an adviser. And so as an adviser and coach, I don’t know that I necessarily need to keep tabs on all those different programs of work. I get into the details of each one of those programs to help prescribe to those program leads, you know, here are the recommended activities that your program needs to be able to drive adoption because that’s ultimately the goal of change management is you’re trying to drive towards adoption.

There are some new program that’s coming that needs to be adopted within the business. And so I don’t necessarily need to keep control or keep straight all the programs work. Now, I will say just by virtue of my role, I do have a high degree of awareness of each one of these programs work so I can see interdependencies and so on. But my role primarily really tries to advise each one of those program leads about what sort of change management effort is required and what sort of activities and tools we have in our toolkit that might be able to help that program be most effective in driving adoption.

Andrea: What are some of the qualities of program leads that really make them great for their position?

Travis McNeal: Certainly, a strong project management skillset I’ve found has been very effective. But one of the more important characteristics or skills that they’ve had, the more effective ones have had is their ability to influence across functional lines, because a lot of these programs have worked. Yes, we might be impacting drivers but, you know, our human resource organization certainly needs to know about what’s happening because we’re talking about how drivers are paid. Our technology team needs to be involved in some way. Our distribution centers who, in fact, are working with our drivers, they need to be aware.

And so the really good program leads are the ones who are able to not only work across functional lines but be able to understand which functional lines need to be involved and are able to identify who the key stakeholders are and what degree of engagement they need to provide going forward.

Andrea: Well, it has been one of the hardest things for you in the midst of this five-year journey; you’re in the middle of it now. I mean, has it been hard, or do you just come in and you know exactly what to do, you know exactly how to handle things, smooth sailing for you. What is it like for you?

Travis McNeal: Yes. So, as with any transformation, there’s going to be things that work or work really well and there’s going to be things that didn’t land as well as you would like. And that would be true for Walmart supply chain as well. You know, early on in the journey, we certainly rolled out one or two programs in a very short amount of time where the associates and managers just didn’t have the time needed to be able to clearly understand all those things that we described earlier, “Why are we doing this? How is this going to impact me? How is this going to benefit Walmart? How is this going to benefit me?”

So certainly, there are those where we wish we would have done a little bit better. And I’d say that one of the biggest pressures that I think is challenging for going on a journey like this is the need to transform quickly, yet at the same time do it in the right way. And there’s a balance there because there are real commitments that leaders have made, not just in supply chain but in any organization. There are real commitments that they’ve made to the business and to shareholders of what they’re going to deliver.

So, there’s that pressure, yet the pressure to try to do it right for the associates and so that’s been a defined line that I would say there’s a silver bullet just really trying to balance, you know, the speed ensuring the associates and managers are put in a position to succeed.

Andrea: Have you found any sort of shortcuts for figuring out how to balance and make that balance work?

Travis McNeal: Well, one thing that was said to me by a Smart Change Management person early on was sponsors are the ones that drive the speed of deployment. And so what that means is if you have an engaged leadership team and mid-level leadership team and frontline leadership team, you will likely drive change pretty quickly. But you know, that’s in a perfect world when you’re focusing on one program. When you’re talking about an organization has multiple priorities, you know, which one is the most important one? And that’s really, I think, the struggle and the challenge that we find ourselves in; which is the one that we really want to devote our time to?

Again, what I’ve seen is that when leaders are driving the change, you know, going back to sponsorship, there’s a high probability of it being successful. Some of the programs that I’ve been attached to where the program leader has really been engaged and really been able to generate that sponsorship at the senior leader levels and at the mid-levels, they’ve been very effective at getting their program adopted pretty quickly. I mean, we talk about the driver pay. There is a high degree of alignment and drive from sponsorship at all levels of the organization to make that one really successful.

Andrea: When you think about yourself and your own influence, do you have any kind of like, “I really want to be this person for my team,” do you have a sense of what your vision is for your own self and your own leadership?

Travis McNeal: If there’s something that I’ve found that’s helped me the most is it’s really not being dogmatic about the way we approach change management. And what I mean by that is there are many change management consulting firms leaders out there who do change management well, and oftentimes you find that they’re beholden to a specific model or methodology. But not all programs are created equal. There needs to be some degree of flexibility to be able to say, “You know what, I understand why that tool is necessary, but given the time constraints that we have, given the degree of impact that we’re gonna have this specific tool for this specific program isn’t the right one.”

And I’d say that just the humility that’s needed to be able to say, “You know what, you’re absolutely right. This tool is not right.” I think that’s something that I think is played to my advantage in helping to build the change management capabilities here in supply chain. It’s just helping really try to mold your change management tool kit to the program or not be as dogmatic about specific tools or specific methodologies.

Andrea: Yeah, that word humility is so important and not coming in with all the answers and being willing to look at the situation for what it is and take feedback from others and be able to mold it into what you need it to be. That would be super important.

Travis McNeal: Yeah, and along with that humility comes with the ability to listen too. It’s very easy to hear a conversation and think you know the right answer but, you know, being able to really peel back the onion to understand, “What really do they need? What problem are they trying to solve?” before you start prescribing what those recommendations would be.

Andrea: Travis, do you think that you’ve always been pretty good at listening and being humble and that sort of thing? Have you seen it done well? Or how did you come to this point where this is what’s most important to you and you’re leading this team?

Travis McNeal: So, I think I’ve always had a natural inclination towards it, but you certainly realize how more important it is when you don’t take the time to listen, which, you know, there have been times where I have assumed things and prescribed certain recommendations when in fact they weren’t correct. Had I done a better job listening up front and not having a specific recommendation before I really heard what the problem was, then yes, I certainly had to refund earlier time. But I think I certainly have a natural disposition towards it, but you know there are plenty of times where I’ve refund that overtime through, you know, missteps here and there.

Andrea: If you were to give some piece of advice to somebody who would like to see some sort of change happen, maybe they have a specific initiative that they need to spearhead in their company, what advice would you leave with them today for how they can be a voice of influence in the midst of change management?

Travis McNeal: Let’s say, if there’s one thing they could do is clearly align with the sponsor, you know, whoever is the person that has asked for this program, make sure there’s clear alignment between you and them to ensure that you’re solving the problem that they need solved. If there’s that misalignment then I think there’s going to be a lot of wasted time and it’s going to be frustrating because not everyone will agree. But if that sponsor clearly knows where they want to go then it’ll certainly make any discussions that happen thereafter much more easier and productive, I would say, that would be one.

I’ll give you one more thing and the last thing is that once the direction has been set, once the strategy, the program has been set, I think the main thing that we need to focus on, especially in the change management space for those who are change management practitioners, is that focus on adoption. I think it’s so easy and tempting to think about the tools that we’ve got, the change readiness assessments, the change impact assessments; all of these different tools that we have that work but those end up becoming what we strive for not necessarily adoption. You know, I’ve seen a handful of professionals who have lost sight of that at times. You know, when we’re leading a program, what we really should be focusing on is what’s it going to take to get the end user to adopt it as quickly and permanently as possible that to me should always be the focus.

Andrea: Because if they don’t… fill in the blank for me.

Travis McNeal: If they don’t then that program was stood up in place for a reason. And so if they don’t adopt, then you’re clearly not going to achieve that overall objective for that program. There’s a number that’s often thrown around in the change management world which is around 70% to 75% of programs fail to reach their targets. Well, this program could fall into that 70% to 75% bucket where they fail to reach their projected targets. But if you take the time to really focus on adoption then you’ll have a greater chance of achieving being that 25% that meet or exceed what those projections were.

Andrea: Love it! Got to get buy-in, got to get people to actually to use the thing to make the change. It actually takes people to do that. Thank you so much, Travis. Thank you for taking time to be with us today and sharing your experience with Change Management at Wal-Mart and for your voice of influence for our listeners.

Travis McNeal: Thank you for having me. It’s been great!