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Why We Need to Understand Trauma and Coercive Control with Dr. Debra Wingfield

Episode 147

Dr. Debra Wingfield Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Dr. Debra Wingfield is an Author, Speaker, and Trainer for family abuse prevention and intervention treatment.  She practiced counseling for 25 years with domestic abuse victims, offenders, adults, and children from all types of dysfunctional family systems. She’s also provided family court advocacy since 1993 and would love to be able to train those within the court system about trauma.

In this episode, Debra shares what the courts miss in cases of domestic abuse due to not being sufficiently trauma-informed, the societal impact that misconceptions about abuse can have, what it means for the rest of society if we don’t actually address these misconceptions and have the correct understanding about trauma, the difference between parenting with coercive control and parenting in a healthy way, and so much more.

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Transcript

All right, so today I have with me Debra Wingfield.  She is an author, speaker, and trainer for family abuse prevention and intervention treatment.  She practiced counseling for twenty-five years with domestic abuse victims, offenders, adults, and children from all types of dysfunctional family systems, and she’s provided family court advocacy since 1993.  She would love to be able to train those within the court system about trauma.

So, in our conversation, one of the things that we talk about is what the courts miss in cases of domestic abuse because they are not sufficiently trauma-informed.  She also talks about the societal impact that misconceptions about abuse can have; so what it means for the rest of society if we don’t actually address these and have the correct understanding about trauma.  And then we also talk about the difference between parenting with coercive control and parenting in a healthy way.

There’s a lot to be gained from this episode, and I really look forward to you hearing.  Enjoy!

Andrea:  All right!  Debra Wingfield, it is great to have you on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Thank you, Andrea.  I’m honored to be here.

Andrea:  Would you tell us a little bit about what you do and why you do it?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Okay.  Well, I have been working in the field of abuse and working with trauma survivors for over forty-five years now in my career.  And I’ve worked with children.  I’ve worked with adults.  I’ve worked with teenagers.  And in all of that work what I found is that the dynamics that are connected with domestic abuse and coercive control have lifelong impacts on the individuals involved in that.  So, I have, over the years, gone from actually being a therapist and doing the groundwork there to now being more of an educator.  I have an online training center where I actually train people to understand the dynamics of domestic abuse and coercive control as well as how to actually help people – whether it’s survivors or it’s the abusers, how to work with them and help them go through a change process that will help them heal.

Andrea:  Hmm.  Who tends to be the people that you help with that?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Right now, I’m partnered with a program called Called Peace Ministries.  I’m training advocates for their program to work within the church system as well as in the community to actually be there and available for survivors who are coming out of relationships where they’ve been abused or they’ve been coercively controlled.  And to help them get through the court system as well as they can based on a very broken court system that we’re working with right now, to protect their children, to keep their children as safe as they can.

And I know you have some questions about the court system.  So one of the other things that I do is I actually serve as an advocate for survivors that are going through the family court.  And as I’m doing my work with them, I’m also teaching others to do that same work because that’s a legacy that I want to be leaving behind is that we’re creating an army.  And that army is to go out there into the communities around the world and we are international at this point and educating so that people understand more about, not only the dynamics, but the impacts and how that impacts us in society and how it can have lifetime impacts on those who are abused.

Andrea:  Do you do some of this training with professionals within the court system somehow?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  That’s my dream.  I would like to be working with some of the professionals that work in the court system.  At this point and time, they consider their training that they get through their degree programs as sufficient for the work that they’re doing.  And we know that through the research, we’ve been able to show that their lack of training in their degree programs actually contributes to more harm to children on down the line.

Andrea:  There are a few different questions that come to mind.  Well, first of all, you’ve been in this, it sounds like you said for forty-five years; you’ve been working with children, adults, teens in various ways.  How have you sort of sustained that work, that mission and the energy that it takes to continue that mission?  I’m sure it has to be somewhat discouraging a lot of times.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  You’re right, Andrea.  There are times when it is discouraging.  However, when I see someone who is able to come through their healing and get on the other side and really make a solid life for themselves, that keeps me moving forward.  We had a tragedy the first of this year.  My granddaughter overdosed, and I had gotten into working in the family court system because she had lost her son to her abuser, and that’s what took her down that downward spiral into using drugs because she just never felt like she had an opportunity to be a part of her son’s life.  So, I have dedicated the remainder of my years that I can do this work to her and her legacy and for my great-grandchildren.  She left two children behind.

Andrea:   I’m really, really sorry to hear about your granddaughter, Debra.  Yeah, that is tragic, and I’m so sorry to hear about the disservice, the harm that the court system ended up causing for her life and the lives of the people in your family.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Well, thank you.  It’s not been easy.  We’re making adjustments as we go along.

Andrea:  Yeah.  So, when it comes to the court system then, what are some things that you feel like need to change?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  I really think the courts need to be trained in trauma-informed processes because they miss what’s going on with the survivor in courts.  Survivors tend to have a lot of anxiety in court and over an abundance of anxiety to what the courts are normally used to when someone comes in before a judge.  First of all, they know nothing about the court system.  They’ve never been, for the most part, involved in anything like this.  So, it’s very unfamiliar, and not only the courts but the attorneys really need to have a strong understanding of the kind of clients that they’re working with, who don’t know how to express what’s gone on in a marriage where they have been coercively controlled by their partner.

And as a result of that, very often what we see is judges will discount what mothers say.  They won’t believe them.  And mothers tell the truth 98% of the time in court, and judges tend to just gloss over that and buy into the charm of the abuser.  And the abuser convinces the judge that, “Oh, I was involved with the children’s lives and I did all these things with the children,” when in fact it’s the opposite.  The mother has been left to do all of that.  And then the father comes in and says, “Well, I should have at least 50% custody of my children or 50% parenting time.”  And we are changing; the language is changing across the country from custody to parenting time.

Custody actually implies a sense of ownership, and abusers capitalize on that.  That’s what they’re looking for is to own the victim, to own the children.  They’re property to them.  And when children are with their abusive parent, they may be being covertly abused, which means it’s just kind of under the surface or they don’t understand how they’re being manipulated.  But then they go back to their mother who is trying to continue to maintain the discipline, to maintain the family rules that have been set up for how their family works.  And the children balk at that because they’re basically with the other parent 50% of the time who’s playing the Disneyland parent.

So, let’s put in a couple of statistics here, so I don’t have to try to keep this gender-neutral because it’s not gender-neutral.  We know that one out of every four women has been abused by their partner at some point in their relationship and that abuse is very off and ongoing.  So, children are also experiencing that.  The research now that talks about how children experience the coercive control that’s being exerted on their mother actually has long term impacts on them as well.

Andrea:  Like what?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Like, we see health impacts in middle age.  And I don’t know if you’re familiar with the ACE study, the Adverse Childhood Experiences study.

Andrea:  No, I’m not.  Please, tell us.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Okay, the ACE Study was developed by Dr. Vincent Felitti in San Diego.  He was a physician in Kaiser Permanente out there, and he had set up a program for his patients who had problems with obesity.  And what he wanted to do was he wanted to make sure that they were losing weight, and keeping that weight off, and getting healthier because he comes from a prevention standpoint.  And over time, those patients who had enrolled in that program started dropping out or started regaining their weight, and he was concerned about what is causing this. And with that, he brought in their social scientists to interview the patients.  And what he found was there were ten factors that happened during their childhood, and of those ten factors, one was witnessing mother being treated violently.  Seven of those factors have to do with physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect.

Andrea:  That they personally experienced?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  That they personally experienced.  And we’re talking about a population of people that are middle-income people; they’re not low-income, they’re not higher income.  They tend to be more middle income.  And he repeated the study in other states and then around the world and kept getting the same results, that history of one to four or more of those ten factors actually resulted in midlife onset of chronic physical illnesses.  So, heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer, diabetes, having had a teen pregnancy, substance abuse, and the list goes on.  And you can actually look at the ACE study on the Centers for Disease Control website.  And on that website, there are multiple research studies that have come about.

And it was such a phenomenal study and opened up the eyes of the Centers for Disease Control so much that they changed their whole focus on how they address child abuse.  So, instead of addressing child abuse as, “We’ve got to stop the abusers,” what they saw is you’ve got to start when children are in the womb, actually, and moving forward and create safe, stable, nurturing families.  And the effort of the CDC in their violence prevention unit now is completely the opposite of what it was prior to this study in 1998.

We’re still having people catch up with the fact that this study is out there.  We’re having people still needing to catch up with all the research that has come as a result of that study that helps us understand that we have to stop children from witnessing a parent being abused.  We have to stop children from being abused.  We have to teach empathy skills when children are young enough that it carries over into adulthood so that for them hurting someone else is no longer an option.  And whether that hurt is an emotional hurt or a physical hurt, we have to stop that.  And the way that we do that is we have to do education.  And part of what I do as an educator is I talk about the prevention side as much as I talk about what is the problem and how do you identify the problem.  So, I know that was a long answer.

Andrea:  That’s okay.  This is really interesting.  I’ll be back in just a second.

Okay, so we have to catch up with this.  So it makes sense.  We’ve got to catch up with the research that’s already been done on this.  So, there’s health impacts, long-term health impacts.  What other kinds of societal impacts are there that kind of stem from the fact that the court system isn’t taken care of, as it isn’t trauma-informed that children are seeing and experiencing abuse?  How does that really impact not just those people and the people around them but then also society at large?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  So, from the standpoint of society, what we’re looking at is some of these children who do not get the help that they need from the courts – the courts do not operate very quickly and very timely – and I have seen children who have basically thrown away their education.  They coast through school, and the schools get upset and schools suspend them, schools exclude them permanently from a school district and they have to be moved into another school district because they have never learned emotional control.  So, we actually have literature that talks about children who are emotionally dis-controlled or dysregulated, and what we need to do to help them with that.

And children who come out of situations where they’ve witnessed their mother being abused or coercively controlled, where they’ve also been abused themselves, they get into trying to address their own trauma and trying to heal from it, and instead they act it out.  So, they end up in our juvenile court system.  They end up never going to college, working at jobs way beneath their intellectual capabilities.  They become abusers.

And one of the things that we do know is that boys who are exposed to witnessing coercive control, witnessing domestic abuse, actually have a greater chance of becoming abusers in their own relationships and continuing this intergenerational cycle of abuse in their families.  What we see between the ages of six to ten is they’re learning from the abuser how to treat women and beyond that.  Then they turn that around and they start treating their mothers that way until we run into situations where the guardians ad litem in the court system say, “Well, maybe this child needs to just go live with dad.  Maybe that’s the problem.  The problem is that they just aren’t getting along with Mother.”

Andrea:  And Mom can’t control them at this point, probably.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Right.

Andrea:  Because they’re trying to control the mom.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Mhm.  And then they go and live with Dad.  Well, Dad just teaches them to be better at their abuse.  And then these children start blowing off their lives because Dad doesn’t hold them to the same level of accountability that Mother does for getting their schoolwork done, for staying involved in activities, for doing the things that build good, strong, healthy adults.  What they do is Dad says, “Oh, I got a buddy.  Let’s go play video games together.  Let’s go hang out together.  Let’s go do…” whatever Dad believes is going to keep that child locked into him and be the fun person, the fun parent, and then portray the mother as the rigid, structured parent when all she’s doing is carrying out what they had agreed to do during their marriage as far as how to raise their children.

And at that point in time, he’s undermining everything that Mother is doing to where, finally, Mother goes to the court and says, “I can’t keep this child in my home, and he’s gonna have to go live with his dad.”  And the court says, “Okay, we’re gonna let him live with his dad and he needs to go to counseling so that he can learn to be a better person because that is supporting whatever he’s doing.”  When they’re with Dad, Dad undermines the counseling or never gets them to counseling.

I have a case like that where the court has ordered the father to put the son in counseling.  He had a psychological evaluation that the dad put off and put off and put off for well over a year that the court had ordered.  And now he’s about to age out of the high school system and probably will drop out on his 17th birthday and never complete high school.  And his therapy that he’s been in has only been happening for maybe three to four months now.  Dad is facing contempt of court with the judge to the point where he’s facing jail time and fines.  And the dad says, “I don’t think it’s gonna happen.  I don’t think the judge will do this to me.”

And so, what is the message to this child?  What is the message to multiple children in these situations when Dad doesn’t hold them accountable because Dad wants a buddy?  Dad is going to do whatever he can to take the children away from Mother because he’s mad because she had the audacity to leave him and to stop being abused.  That’s the bottom line.

Andrea:  Debra, what can we do or what do you feel like it would take to really…  If we were to move forward in an idealistic way, what would it take to disrupt the way that things are in the court system so that we actually see the impacts lessen – the impacts of trauma lessen – and people in more healthy environments?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  It’s going to take a huge revamp of the court system.  And I know that the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges is slowly chipping away at this.  It’s going to take a much more massive movement to have something happen dramatically.  I know of a judge in California who actually was following the dictates of what the judges taught her to do in these cases and sent the child to live with the abuser.  And when the child was murdered by the abusive father, she felt so harmed as a judge by what she had been taught that she actually resigned her judgeship because she could no longer carry out what her fellow judges were teaching her and saying she had to do.

So, there’s movements across the country to make these kinds of changes in the court system.  The Center for Judicial Excellence out in California, Kathleen Russell has led them a very strong movement in California where they’ve done audits on the courts out there to show where the courts have not done a good job.  But we need millions of dollars to do audits across the country on the court system.  Joan Meier with DV LEAP out of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., has just completed a study of cases that were available where Mother claimed domestic violence or child abuse and Father gained at least 50% custody or more.

So, you know, we have little pockets.  This issue gets pushed underneath the surface because many people think domestic violence is physical abuse, is a physical injury – and that’s incorrect.  Domestic abuse is coercive control.  And if you look at the Power and Control Wheel that was developed by the Duluth Project out of Duluth, Minnesota, what you will find is there’s a wheel – it’s called the Power and Control Wheel – and there are eight spokes inside that wheel.  And every one of those spokes inside that wheel are coercive control – whether it’s financial abuse, using the children, using male privilege, threats, intimidation, emotional abuse – and on the outside of that wheel is physical and sexual violence.

So, what everyone goes through is, “Oh, well, there was no physical abuse.  You didn’t file a police report.  There’s no medical reports.”  And, so, therefore, the judge determines that there’s no domestic violence and does not use that part of the statute to make their ruling about parenting time.  When in actuality, what the judges need to be looking at is all of those spokes inside that wheel and addressing how all of those spokes inside that wheel were used as a way to coercively control.  I’m going to use the women because we know more women are abused in relationships than men.  The women are cut off from expressing that.

So, one of the things that I teach is stay away from saying the word “abuse” in court.  Instead, describe the behaviors of the abuser.  Describe how you were pulled out of your educational program when you became involved with a relationship with this abuser and that he convinced you that you wouldn’t need that because he was going to take care of you.  Describe how you were the parent who had to stay home with the children and homeschool the children instead of pursuing your career because someone had to do it.  And so he said you were to do that, so he isolated you from your home, sometimes even isolating from the homeschool community.

And as we go around that wheel, we can find examples of that happening on a very frequent basis in that relationship.  And then because I’m working with Called to Peace Ministries now, I’m getting more and more people coming to me who have been spiritually abused by the way that the abuser uses the church against her.  And I’m not going to do the quotes here.  I’ll just stay away from that because I come from a secular perspective.  But we do know that the churches are creating great harm to women in these relationships by saying, “Oh, you have to reconcile.”  “You have to forgive.”  “You can’t divorce.”  And that in itself is coercive control.  So, how do we change all of this?  We have to change our whole mentality around domestic abuse and coercive control.

They’ve done it in the United Kingdom and are working on it, I know, in Australia.  But in the United Kingdom in December of 2015, a law went into effect that actually criminalized coercive control.  So, all these dynamics inside that Power and Control Wheel have been criminalized.  And they have made arrests.  Yeah, they have made arrests and convicted people, and there’s a five-year prison sentence that goes with that.  So, we have to look at coercive control as a captivity crime in this country.

Andrea:  That’s a huge shift.  That is a huge shift.  That would be disrupting to not just the court system and churches but even schools.  I mean, I looked it up while you were talking about it because I’ve not seen this before, but using coercion and threats to get somebody to comply…  I mean, that can happen in a school pretty easily.  It’s using intimidation, you know, things like that.  It makes a lot of sense that we would be careful around these things and not use them and that we would criminalize them.  It is such a huge, huge shift.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  It is, and that’s why it takes so long to create that kind of shift.  Evan Stark put this together so well in his book on coercive control.  And he explains exactly what it is – it’s a condition of unfreedom.  The abuser has taken away the freedom of choice, the freedom of being their own person from the victim.  So, in our program, we teach empowerment.  We teach our advocates how to use empowerment with trauma-informed processes with the survivors and that’s so important because survivors need to finally take back their personhood, to take back their identity that has been stolen from them by the abuser.

Andrea:  How do you help people to see the difference between empowerment and helping people to take back their identity, that sort of thing… or maybe not even a difference.  I’m going back to the idea of schooling or parenting, when of course there is a certain amount of needing to kind of guide a child to make the right decisions and things like this.  So, what’s a healthy expression of parenting and schooling and that sort of thing versus the unhealthy way of approaching it with coercive control?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Okay, so a healthy way of parenting – and this is how I parented my daughter – is using logical and natural consequences.  This comes out of some of the early research in parenting, and one of the things that is the hallmark of that is giving children autonomy to make choices.  So, I’ll give you an example, and this is a true story with my daughter.  I had called her in, she was out riding her bike, and I called her in to set the table for dinner.  And she comes to the door and she, you know, in that whiny voice that kids use, “Oh, Mom, I just want to be outside riding my bike with my friends.”  And I said, “Well, you can do that.  However, if you choose to do that before you set the table, then the bike is mine for a week.  Now what do you want to do?”  And she said, “I’ll set the table.”

Now, I have been doing that with her from the time that she was very young.  She was about three or four years old, and I stumbled across this whole piece about logical and natural consequences.  And as a result of that, she learned that she had to make good choices.  That’s an empowerment piece.  When we work with survivors, we help them look at different options so they make the choice.  We don’t tell them what to do.  That’s what abusers do.  We say, you know, “You can look at it from this standpoint or this standpoint or even a third standpoint, if it’s there.  What do you want to do?”  And that helps them make their own choices.

The other thing is that we believe the survivor.  We don’t question her story about what happened to her.  That’s her experience, and we want to be there for her.  So, if it’s okay with you, I want to give a little plug here for our training program.

Andrea:  Oh, yeah, absolutely.  So, tell us about where people can find information about you and your trainings.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Okay.  I have a website.  It’s called houseofpeacepubs.com, and there are links there to the advocacy training program where someone can find out information about the program.  We start a class about once a month.  We do a class over four weeks.  So, it kind of comes out over every month.  Sometimes, it rolls over into the next month.  But we end about mid-December with our twelve courses so that everyone has the holiday season off, and then we start usually the first full week in January again.

Andrea:  And this is a series of twelve courses, is that what you’re saying?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Yes, there’s twelve courses.  People can join the course at any time and go through the sequence of twelve courses.  So, we are in our second year now.  And we are close to having 200 people who have taken one or more of our courses.

Andrea:  That’s great!

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  So, another thing to look at on my website if people want to know more about coercive control and the impacts of coercive control and how to work with that in the family court system, I have a book that I’ve written that can be found on the products link on that website.  It’s called Eyes Wide Open: Help! with Control Freak Co-Parents.  And it explains all the different types of coercive control that I’ve identified through the research, through talking with survivors and through working with survivors.  So, you know, people are welcome to go and check that out and see if they have questions.  They can contact me through info@houseofpeacepubs.com if they have any questions, they want to know more.

Andrea:  That sounds great.  Debra, we’ll make sure to include links to everything you mentioned in our show notes on our website, too, so that would make it easy for people to come and find at voiceofinfluence.net.

Debra, thank you so much for sharing your experience and expertise with us here and your passion to see things change.  I hope that in the midst of all the unrest that we’re all experiencing kind of right now that perhaps some good will come of this for race relations but also for just this issue of coercive control in general, and specifically also for people who are experiencing it in the court systems and in their families.  So, thank you for all the work that you’re doing and for being a Voice of Influence our audience today.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Oh, you’re welcome, Andrea, and thank you for having me on your show!

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How to Talk About Racism Online and with Kids with Lucretia Berry

Episode 144

Lucretia Berry Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Last week, we brought you part one of a two-part series about the myths around abuse and coercive control.

We had originally planned to release the second part of that series this week, however, we decided that given the events of the past few weeks, in particular, how things really escalated this week around the issues of racial injustice, we decided instead to release this interview with Lucretia Berry.

Lucretia is the creator of Brownicity, an anti-race/ism curriculum specialist, a writer for in(Courage).me, the author of What LIES Between Us Journal & Guide: Fostering First Steps Toward Racial Healing, a TED Talker, and a Senior Consultant for The American Dream Game. She received her Ph.D. in Education (Curriculum & Instruction) from Iowa State University.

In this episode, Lucretia shares why she created Brownicity and how it helps those at the beginning of their anti-racism journey, how the protests are about more than the recent deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, how racism and racial injustice extends beyond police brutality, her response to those feeling overwhelmed and unsure of what to say or how to show up for others right now, why you can just jump on the bandwagon and follow along with things you see happening on social media, how she is discussing racism and anti-racism in her own multi-ethnic family, and more.

Take a listen to the episode!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

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Transcript

Hey there!  It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  Last week, we were set to kick off a series on understanding power structures.  And we began that series with a conversation that is actually a two-part conversation about the myths around abuse and coercive control.  So, we offered seven myths, and then we have seven more to share.  But we decided that given the events of the past few weeks – in particular, how things really escalated this week around the issues of racial injustice, social injustice, and the rioting and everything – we decided that we were going to go ahead.  

We had this interview with Lucretia planned, and rather than pushing it to where we were going to put it in the series, we decided to pull it right up to the front.  So, the rest of those myths will be posted next week as our next episode.

And today, I have with me Lucretia Berry from Brownicity.  Lucretia, well, she’s going to tell you a little bit more about herself and how she started this organization and what she does with it, but I love their tagline and I want to share it with you; “Many Hues, One Humanity.”  In researching for this interview with Lucretia, one of the things that I ran across was her example of just how everybody is just a different shade of brown.  It’s not like we’re, you know, white and brown and black, but we’re really all a different shade of brown and we are one humanity.

So, how can we, as voices of influence, have some sort of impact in this conversation?  What should we be doing?  What should I be doing with myself?  What should I be saying online or with others?  How do we have this conversation in a way that it’s really productive and not hurtful?  I know a lot of times we get frustrated because we’re wanting to contribute to a conversation like this, and we try but then we find out, “Oh, shoot, I said the wrong thing.”  And then we feel stupid, and we go hide back under our shell.

Well, I want to encourage you that Lucretia is going to have some words for you today that will be very helpful.  And the main thrust of this conversation is that it’s not just about jumping on a bandwagon right now.  It’s not just about declaring that we’re not racist.  It’s about going on a journey of deprogramming the inherent racism that we grew up with, the way that the world works, and understanding how we got to where we are now.  Instead of writing it off, taking it in, listening, admitting that maybe, I don’t know everything.  Maybe my perspective is limited and it’s important for me to listen.

So, I’m really, really honored to provide you with this conversation with Lucretia Berry.

Andrea:  All right.  So, Lucretia Berry is the creator of brownicity.com, a contributor for incourage.me, and a TED and Q Ideas speaker at TED Charlotte.  As a wife, mom of three and former college professor, her passion for racial healing led her to author What LIES Between Us:  Fostering First Steps Toward Racial Healing.

Lucretia, I’m really, really grateful that we had this conversation scheduled and that we’re here today.  I’m honored to have you, and would you tell us a little bit more about what you do with your organization, Brownicity?

Dr. Lucretia Berry:  Well, thank you for having me in.  Oh, my goodness, what timing this is because we scheduled this a while ago, a long time ago.

Brownicity – our tagline is “Many Hues, One Humanity”.  And as you said, I think because I am a former college professor – my doctorate is in education, curriculum, and instruction – I think I was literally designed to be a teacher, even though I didn’t want to become a teacher because of… we don’t really pay teachers or appreciate teachers.  I think after COVID, we do now.  But we didn’t before so I didn’t have aspirations to be a teacher, but just naturally, you know, I do love to teach.

So, Brownicity is more heavily focused on equipping and liberating people through making quality education around anti-racism literacy accessible.  So, for example, currently, you know, you can probably take a college course if you’re a college student.  If there are organizations in your community where you can do a workshop or something like that, those are available.  But what I was finding with lots of my friends, especially parents, moms, and regular everyday people are not policymakers or working at a corporation where they would get some type of diversity training… they didn’t have a touch point or access to some structured education.

And for the most part, it’s left up to people to educate themselves.  So, the good thing about that right now is that there are a lot of books now.  I would say like five years ago or so, not really.  Not a lot of like, you know, read it yourself and you can maybe figure this out yourself.  So, I put in… you know, like scaffolded education in place, and I started teaching… or I should say we, because it’s a group of us – so we just started teaching like in our communities.  Our first official “we’re doing this” type of… it was a woman who lived in a neighborhood who said, “I have a big house, I have lots of neighbors, and I’m going to invite them into my house.  Can you please come and teach my neighborhood?”  “Yes!”

Andrea:  Right.

Dr. Lucretia Berry:  So, we go into churches.  Ultimately, I was asked to come into a school.  So, I packaged this curriculum or this kind of foundational course; it’s called What LIES Between Us, Journal & Guide: Fostering First Step Toward Racial Healing.  Because in my experience of doing this work, and attending workshops and meetings and kind of community-organized efforts is that people who are new to the conversation and even the idea of, you know, anti-racism… there weren’t a lot of resources for people who are new.  And so much of the good content, I believe, is for people who are already kind of on the journey.

So, there’s already this understanding that what race and racism actually are, like, they’re constructs, they’re not biological.  Well, the beginner, you know, doesn’t really know that and hasn’t been immersed in that understanding.  So, I wanted to create something, or I did create something that kind of takes the beginner and gives them a foundational understanding – here are definitions, here are terms, here’s how race was created as a construct and it’s not biological.  And then this is how the narratives been shaped and formed and fit into policies or policies shaped narratives.  This is how we’ve cultivated this over the years, and then this is the lens you have to have to be able to analyze these structures and institutions, and then here’s the lens you have to have to analyze yourself.

So, when people start there, then they’re able to move forward with more clarity and more urgency and wherever they decide to take their, you know, fundamental anti-racism education.  So, I am African-American.  My husband is white American.  We actually met doing this type of work together in a church, and we became great friends and then ultimately got married.  So, we’ve always been kind of immersed in awareness and consciousness, and have been active and intentional and hungry to learn more, to be a part of disrupting and dismantling kind of the systems, policies, behaviors, and beliefs that are in place that continue to move us…  They continue to keep us in the flow collectively, in the flow of racism.

So, we’ve been intentional and active about how to disrupt that flow or how to create an anti-racism flow, and therefore we’ve just been very vocal with our children.  And even before we had children, we talked about, “What is our framework for talking about racial dynamics in this country with our multi-ethnic children,” because it’s going to be a different education or different conversation than what my husband had growing up in Iowa in a white family.  And it’s going to be different than what I had growing up in the south in North Carolina in a black family.  So, again, we’ve had to do the work and figure some things out.  And yeah, I just told you all those things.

Andrea:  Thank you!

Dr. Lucretia Berry:  And here we are.

Andrea:  That’s perfect!  I think that lays a really solid foundation for the rest of our conversation because everybody has a better idea of where you’re coming from.  And I really appreciate the fact that Brownicity focuses, at least, gives the beginner the opportunity to understand this perspective and to understand the dynamics that are at play right now – not just right now, but all the time.  And because I think that, you know, we are having this conversation… usually, you know, it takes us a couple of weeks, at least or sometimes a couple of months after we have an interview before we release it.  And we’re having this conversation a couple of days before we release it because of everything that’s been going on lately.

I mean, the response to the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, have certainly spotlighted injustice and triggered a national or international conversation about systemic injustice that people of color experience.  So, I want to ask you, from your point of view, what is the message that we all should be hearing right now?

Dr. Lucretia Berry:  Okay, so what we should be hearing is we have a deficit and we have been complicit with our deficit in loving, caring about, and offering opportunity to all of our citizens equally or in a way that treats everyone with the humanity in which they deserve to be treated.  So, you know, it’s unfortunate that it takes these types of tragedies to see the kind of the perpetual, ongoing, rampant systems that have been set in place, right, and secured and sustained for a long time because these are just like some outcomes and it’s just a few outcomes.  But, you know, we have people dying every day.

And I don’t mean dying, like, at the hands of police brutality.  I’m saying like, you know, African-Americans get less significant healthcare, or ghettoized – pushed into ghetto housing or displaced.  And, so, I think what we should be hearing now is there is a problem and it’s not going to go away until we actually address it, until we actually fix it and correct it.  And I hope people are hearing that it’s time to really understand the problem because it’s real.  So, it’s not made up.  This isn’t like an anecdotal, you know, every now and then this happens.  We have just been flowing in this stream and so fish have been dying.  And, so, I hope people are understanding, “Okay, now it’s time to look at the water and not simply look at the fish.  Let’s take a look at this water, let’s sample this water, and then let’s begin to detox this water.”

And many of us have been taught that the water is fine, you know, and our frameworks for even perceiving the water… it’s like you have a framework that allows you to perceive that the water is fine.  So, again, we need to look at the water and we also need to look at our lenses, through which we are offered this reality because our lenses have been skewed and our water is toxic, so as a result, you know, we see…

And now, in this day and age, we can film all of these things versus a few years ago, when something would happen that was overt like this… because again, racism unfolds and it impacts every single day in institutional ways, and in representation and exclusion, and all those things.  These are just cases that we are seeing that are so overt and flagrant that it grabs you and makes you see what has been happening for hundreds of years, or the seeds we’ve sown for hundreds of years.

Andrea:  And the protests have certainly grabbed.  I mean, it makes sense to me that it has taken even these voices rising up, even though, you know, nobody wants to see destruction.  At the same time, there’s been this awakening too, “Oh my gosh they’re really serious.  What’s going on?”  I think that there are people that are saying, “Okay, so what are we supposed to do here?”  And there’s this post kind of being copied and pasted and going around Facebook about, you know, “What am I supposed to do?  Like, if I’m silent, this happens; if I speak up, this happens; if I am trying to spread positivity, this happens,” and so on.

And I know the other day, the Blackout Tuesday, you know, there was a lot of concern about the hashtag.  If we use the #BlackLivesMatter with that particular picture then all of the other things that are being talked about with BlackLivesMatter gets pushed down in the newsfeeds and whatnot.  And I think that people are confused and frustrated thinking, “Wait a second, I’m trying to help.  Oh no, I screwed it up again.”

So, when people are wanting to help, they want to be good fellow humans, but they’re feeling caught off-guard and not really sure what to say or do.  What do you want to say to us?

Dr. Lucretia Berry:   I think, of course, people feel the pain or they are feeling the pain.  Like maybe they haven’t before to this degree, but I am realizing that people are feeling the pain of this time right now to a greater degree and saying you know, “What can I do?”  So, what happens is we want to react and, of course, social media is created for that, right?  It’s inherent in, you know, its design to say, “This is what I’m doing right now, and this is what we should be doing right now.”  So, what I would suggest – and have been suggesting for like five years – is that we don’t have these reactions that haven’t been thought-out, but instead that we become or we start or we maintain a journey that is anti-racism or anti-racist.  So, we make it a way of life and you begin by learning.

So, if I could have my way, I would say, “Okay, the rest of 2020 is canceled,” right?  And can everybody just make some time, take some time – maybe it’s not all day every day, but maybe it’s an hour a day, or thirty minutes a day, or fifteen minutes a day, an hour a week – to build your anti-racism literacy, to build your muscles and get immersed in anti-racism and anti-racism literacy.  Like, become a part of the movement because things are going to happen.  But that way, you already have things in your toolkit, you know, you already know how to flow.

So, here’s an example.  I woke up on Tuesday, and I kept seeing all these black squares, and I’m like, “Uh, what is happening?”  So, I go and figure this out, research this out, like, “What is this?”  And sure enough, of course, I have teachers, so I went to a person that I follow and then she explained why we shouldn’t be doing that because, yes, it was the hashtag interfering with the actual information that the BlackLivesMatter hashtag needed to be communicated.  So, I’m like, “Okay.”  So, immediately then I go and tell people that I knew, and I’m like, “Okay, you can do the blackout, but don’t use the hashtag.”

But you see that’s because I’m more, you know, immersed and on this flow, so I’m like, “Okay, careful, you know, carefully tread.”  Especially if it’s something that’s new like that.

Andrea:  Instead of jumping on with the bandwagon, whatever it might be, do a little research make sure you’re doing it right.

Dr. Lucretia Berry:  Right, you want to do that, but yeah, when you say jump on the bandwagon, so again, that’s not really anti-racist work, right?  That’s just, you know, reacting.  And yes, we can react, but I would like people to put more time into like the deeper work.  I saw that as well with the safety pin, and someone said, “Oh, should I wear this safety pin to show, you know, my allyship?”  And I’m like, “No, that’s performative.”  To me, it feels like you wanting to put on that safety pin is more about you being, like, seen as safe, but it really doesn’t do anything for black and brown bodies.  It really doesn’t do anything to then counter the flow – I’m going to keep going back to that analogy – it doesn’t do anything to counter the flow that we’re in.

And I want to do things or put my time and effort into what will actually disrupt this flow.  And that’s how I’ve led or that’s how I’ve moved in what I do, like, “Well, I don’t want to, you know, just do this.  Yes, I can do some things that show my support.”  So, as an educator, I’m like, “Okay, wherever I can possibly go to educate and to get people to turn their brains on and to be activated.”  That’s my activism is to activate these brains.  

So, we’re not just mindlessly participating and going in the flow.

Andrea:  So, what I’m hearing you say is that it’s not so much about this very moment… it is about this moment in that, you know, if we can be more sensitive to what’s going on and try to join the conversation in a very thoughtful and you know, somewhat researched way.  That’s a good thing, to share your heart and that sort of thing, maybe.  But the bigger issue here is that we should all be really going on this journey in committing to going on a journey of anti-racism in our own kind of reflecting, I would assume.

I mean, it seems to me like a lot of the work is on our own awareness and self-reflection on how this all has really been integrated into our own lives without us even realizing it.  Because I think part of what’s going on and what I’m hearing and certainly what I felt at times is, “Well, I’m not racist.  I don’t want anybody to think that I’m racist.”  And so we put up our black square, which I think that’s good and I did too.

But I can see, though, that it is so important…  This is how I’ve been in imagining it, and I want you to tell me if I’m right or wrong here.  But it seems that if I’m going to post something, I should also or if I’m going to say, “Wow, that was really thoughtful.”  I mean, I posted something from a friend, reposted her reflections on white privilege, and she’s also an interracial marriage but she’s white.  And it was just so powerful, and it really helped me to understand a new level of white privilege.

So, instead of just reposting and saying, “Wow, this is really powerful,” the real things I should be sharing or the thing that’s more powerful is if I share why it was so powerful to me.  What is changing in me when I read this?  Because if I’m vulnerably saying, “I didn’t understand this part,” then that’s allowing other people to be able to say, “Oh, wait a second, maybe I don’t understand it either.”

Okay, talk to me.  Tell me, Lucretia, am I anywhere close on this?

Dr. Lucretia Berry:  That is so good, because when white people are showing vulnerability in terms of this transformation, like if something moved you, transformed you, you didn’t know or it’s like, “I thought I knew, and then I learned.  I thought I knew and then I learned, please come learn with me.”  Being, “I’m not racist,” isn’t good enough.  I’m not racist either, you see, what I’m saying?  I’m not racist either, but there are still racist systems in place.

So, we have to do this work of dismantling these systems, the outward systems and the systems inside.  We still have racist wiring in our brains.  And the whole, “I’m not racist,” it needs to be thrown out, like throw that out.  And what people need to say, “I’m becoming anti-racist,” or “I am on a journey,” or “I am on an anti racism journey,” because that means there’s a constant, like, peeling back the layers and questioning everything.

So, I’m just going to view it just simple.  You know, so when you really understand that there are systems and forces and influences in place and it’s not just, “Well, I’m a product of my heart or whatever, you know, or my morals.”  I know there are things that that are in place – forces and narratives and stories – that have shaped how we see ourselves in relation to how we see people who are not, maybe, in our same racial category and social economic class, all of that.

But when you understand that, then you can be an active part of changing the narrative or speaking up.  Like, for example, I know right now the focus is on the violence committed by police officers.  But I, as an educator, would dare to say that, you know, of course, the violence starts early on.  How much violence do we teach in American history that is approved violence against native peoples, you know?  Even violence against the British because, you know, Americans or the United States or the colonies wanted to be free.  Now, that is kind of an approved violence; they wanted liberation.

So, you know, we have to look at what we’ve been taught and what the stories are depositing, you know, in us and how these stories are shaping us.  We needed racial categories so that we can be okay with the violence against enslaved Africans.  Oh, but again, you know, we have holes in history.  So a part of that, you know, doing this work is committing to this journey so you begin to, like on a daily basis, you are challenging what you thought, what you know, you know, this whole neutrality of everything and you know, racial inequality is just normal.  And, you know, that’s not the case.  It’s all been very intentional.

Andrea:  So, Lucretia, you’re really an expert, especially with talking about race and anti-racism, this journey with children, and I’m looking forward to looking at your materials on that.  But how are you talking about the current issues in your own family right now?

Dr. Lucretia Berry:  Right.  So, again, the beauty of already being on the journey… and I just want to encourage everyone like, you know, racism is going to spew things at you.  You can pretend that that’s not the case, but I need people to see anti-racism literacy or anti-racism education is like parenting preparation.  Just like something else you would put in your toolkit, just like a parent would prepare themselves to be able to talk to their children about sex and things like that.

And anti-racism education and literacy is not an accusation that you’re racist or something like that.  It means that you understand where we are and the opportunities that we have to equip our children and ourselves to do better.  So, I say all that to say, in our family that is a multi-ethnic family, we went about addressing… first giving our children, of course, permission and normalizing conversations about skin tone because children see color, right?  I know people say children see race, but really because they don’t know the racial categories when they’re babies or when they’re little, they see that people are different colors or skin tones.

So, that’s how we talked about it in our family because talking about people specifically, or only I should say, only in racial categories would feel like our family was two parts or three parts of a whole and that’s not the case.  We are one whole; you know, our children have mom and a dad like everybody else, and so that’s how we chose to frame our conversation.  And actually, it was my daughter at four years old who said it.  She was like, “Mommy, you’re dark brown.  I’m medium brown. Daddy is light brown.”  And she is correct and we talked to her about melanin, and why Daddy’s ancestors had less melanin, why Mommy’s ancestors had more melanin.  Yeah, so we give them language, and we give them permission.

And so talking about what people look like is already normal.  So, there’s no discomfort there.  And then maybe about five or six, as they’re about to, you know, head out to kindergarten and to be out in the world more than they’re with me.  Then we explained race, how racial categories were constructed, and you know, people will put in this hierarchy and why historically.  And I know some people, you know, especially white people, think that that’s going to destroy their child or it’s taking away their innocence.  It is actually equipping your child, and you shouldn’t deprive them of the reality that we live in.  That’s what my TED Talk is about, actually.  So, if people want to listen to the TED Talk, you just google Lucretia Berry TED Talk, and I talk about that, how our Children Will Light Up the World If We Don’t Keep in the Dark.

Andrea:  Love that.

Dr. Lucretia Berry:  Thank you.  So, once they already understood race and the history of race, and yes, like they got upset, but that just means that they’re healthy because they should.  It means that they’re hardwired for love, so injustice pained them and it should.  I would be concerned if I told them that and they go, “Oh, okay,” and walk away.  Like, “Oh my gosh, we need to call somebody,” right?  But that’s okay, that is totally healthy.  And then as things come up on the news… and we don’t turn off our television, you know.  They know everything that is happening, and they watch me and my husband, you know, me and their dad talk about it.  Like we literally talk about it at the dinner table, we show our sorrow, they see that.  Like, it’s okay to be upset.

When they’re upset about certain things that happen at school, you know… they go to a school that is predominantly white and yeah, they know that their peers, their white peers, their parents aren’t having these conversations with them.  And they are not obligated to parent their peers, but they at least are way ahead in terms of understanding racial dynamics and in our world.

So, when they say something like… like one of my children, she was upset that there was only one brown boy in her class.  And she said, “That’s not fair.  There should be more brown boys in the class.”  And she’s our little outspoken one, and so I think she would probably go to school and stage a revolt.  But because it’s a normal conversation, I just explained to her about redlining and housing historically, and how people, schools, where they’re situated and depending on your neighborhood, and that’s who attends your school.  I said, “We can move someplace else in our city where the neighborhood or the community have more African-Americans or people of color or brown people,” I said, “then there’ll be lots have brown boys in the class.:  But she just said, “Oh, okay.”

She just needed that understanding, and then she was fine and went on about her day.  You see, children are not simply sponges, they are negotiating and meaning-making on a daily basis about everything.  And by seven years old, they have already observed how racial hierarchies work in the United States.  You might not hear them talking about it at your home, but that’s because you haven’t been talking about it at your home, and you haven’t given them language.  Oh, but when they go to school, they do.

Andrea:  Then they’ll get the language.

Dr. Lucretia Berry:  Well, they talk about it, and they don’t talk about it in healthy ways.

Andrea:  Right.

Dr. Lucretia Berry:  So I have loved the school where my kids go to.  They have hired me as a consultant for the teachers.  And I get to go in and give the kids language, and then it’s amazing how the kids who have the language and understanding have healthier conversations.  And then I also teach a high school course on anti-racism literacy, it’s an elective.  And again, people have conversations with my students and they are blown away how they can articulate what has happened, what is happening, and how to create something better.

Andrea:  Lucretia, how can people connect with you in your work and actually, you know, have that be a part of their own journey in this process for themselves and their own families?

Dr. Lucretia Berry:  So, I have created… well, first of all, I would love to come everywhere and teach and talk to people.  But I’m a mom, I have smaller kids and so I’m staying put for now.  So until then, I created a… Brownicity has an online learning community.  And we just launched it in the fall, so it currently now has, I want to say, six or so courses in there.  We do the courses live so if you can attend live, you do.  If you can’t, it’s recorded, and then it’s just in there for when you can get to it.  It’s a membership, so currently, it’s $10 a month or you can pay $110 for the whole year.  But it’s for people who need ongoing support and who need the education.  We have… like, I teach there, we have guest teachers and authors.  It’s a great space for people who want to be on the journey.

And, so again, you enroll and it’s there for you.  Currently, we have a class – one of our starter classes – called What LIES Between Us.  So, we’re going to do that virtually live on Tuesday, June 16th through July 14th.  So, they can go on the website and all that information is there.  But you know, when people want resources from me, I put everything there.  The resource library is free; you don’t have to be a member to access the resource library.  If you want to do What LIES Between US study on your own, you can buy the guide book from Amazon.  And that resource library is free, but other than that, everything is in the online membership.  We have schools use it for professional development.  I just have created a space because I care about people’s learning journey, because I know it can be traumatizing.

Andrea:  It can be tough, for sure.

Dr. Lucretia Berry:  Yeah, it’s traumatizing.

Andrea:  Anytime you look at what’s underneath of whatever we are and whoever we are and the way that we interact in the world… I mean, anytime you look underneath that it can be a little difficult.  So, thank you for providing that space, Lucretia for your voice of influence in the world, and for being here and helping us know as Voice of Influence listeners how to really respond in this moment of the world.  And we appreciate your voice of influence here today.

Dr. Lucretia Berry:  I am so honored to be here.  Thank you so much for inviting me.  Thank you for making this space available, and thank you for amplifying my voice and Brownicity’s voice

Andrea:   Hmm, absolutely.  And just so everybody knows, everything will be in the show notes.  So, any links or things that Lucretia mentioned, we’ll definitely have those there all in one spot if you would like to be checking that out.

So, thank you so much, Lucretia!

Dr. Lucretia Berry: Thank you!

Posted on

17 Strategic Things A Business Can Do During a Slow-Down or Shut-Down Due to COVID-19

Bonus Episode

 

Free Training to Improve the Efficiency of Your Voice

People generally don’t enjoy giving or receiving feedback, which leads to poor results as well as confusion, frustration, and resentment. Feedback conversations don’t have to feel confrontational or be unproductive. This training will help you be clear, calm, and get great results for you and the person on the other side of the table. [Click here] to transform your feedback method in less than 30 minutes!

 

 

 

 

Some work can be done from home, but some cannot. Whether your industry is currently taking a hit or you are taking “social distancing” seriously as a business, it’s time to start looking for any opportunity this disruption might offer. Here are 17 things that could move the needle for service-based, hands-on businesses that shut down or slow down during the COVID-19 outbreak.

1. Catch up on paperwork.

2. Take a close look around your building and make a list of things that you need to or would like to change. What is broken? What doesn’t fit your brand? What small changes could be made to make a difference in how your employees, patients, or customers experience your brand?

3. Hold a strategic planning meeting via teleconference. Be sure to include a clear action plan at the end!

4. Review and revamp processes and systems such as: client intake and outtake, business development, communications, paperwork, customer experience, customer service talking points, etc.

5. Analyze a typical day for wasted time and energy, then make a plan for implementing changes.

6. Organize your online cloud storage.

7. Write an article you could use for content marketing now or in the future.

8. Create and hold an educational webinar for current clients, customers, or patients.

9. Listen to business and leadership podcasts or books. Take notes and make a list of actions you will take based on what you learn.

10. Survey your team with a Google Form. What’s working? What’s not working? What ideas do they have to improve the business? What ideas do they have for work they could create for themselves in this time of social distance?

11. Have 1:1 conversations with people on your team. How are things going for them personally? Where are they now and where do they want to go?

12. Provide an online workshop connected to a personality/strengths assessment to help your team work better with each other.

13. Create and provide online leadership training in small increments (short videos/audio).

14. Have small groups or individuals review research and report back to the group via teleconference.

15. Give each person a stipend for an online course or book, then ask them to report back to the group with slides in Google docs.

16. Have everyone read a book or listen to a podcast and then create a discussion around it that would propel the group forward.

17. Find a way your team can work together to help your community.

Keep a running list of ideas for what you and your team could do but you haven’t had time to do. Ask your team for their input, then decide: “What things can others do and which of these things do I need to do?”

Posted on

How Different Generations Influence One Another at Work with Porschia Parker

Episode 114

Porschia Parker is the founder and CEO of Fly High Coaching and the Millennial Performance Institute. She is a Certified Professional Coach, an Associate Certified Coach, and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Certified Practitioner. Porschia also has experience as a director and business consultant helping companies unlock millions of dollars in potential. Porschia has a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Georgia and she serves as a Career Contributor for BioSpace and has been featured in FlexJobs, Levo, iOFFICE, and the Rochester Business Journal.

In this episode, Porschia talks about the main differences between the different generations in the workplace today, what companies can do to help millennials stay longer than the average of three years, the importance understanding the backgrounds of the different generations you’re working with, why you need to listen more than you talk in order to get your ideas heard, what we can likely expect from generation Z employees once they enter the workforce, and so much more!

Millennial Performance Institute

Fly High Coaching

Glassdoor

Harvard Business Review | Are Companies About to Have a Gen X Retention Problem?

 

Transcript

Hey, Hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the voice of influence podcast, where we explore the intersection of human dynamics, communication, and service.  If you’re interested in growing your own voice of influence or the influence of those on your team, check us out at voiceofinfluence.net and connect to us to talk.  We love talking.

So, today, I have with me Porschia Parker.  Porschia is the founder and CEO of Fly High Coaching and the Millennial Performance Institute.  She is a Certified Professional Coach, an Associate Certified Coach, and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Certified Practitioner. Porschia also has experience as a director and business consultant helping companies unlock millions of dollars in potential.  Porschia has a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Georgia and she serves as a Career Contributor for BioSpace and has been featured in FlexJobs, Levo, iOFFICE and the Rochester Business Journal.

Andrea:  Porschia, welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.

Porschia Parker: Thank you so much for having me, Andrea.

Andrea:  All right, so a Porschia and I met each other at an event about a year and a half ago. When thinking about what kinds of things we wanted to tackle on the Voice of Influence podcast, we have certainly address this before, but generational communication and influence, I think it’s a really interesting thing for us to talk about intergenerational.  And Porschia is particularly adept and experienced in helping companies really be able to understand the millennial generation and how to talk intergenerationally.  So, Porschia, let’s talk just first what are some of the main differences that you see between the generations that are in the workplace today?

Porschia Parker:  Yeah, great question, Andrea.  So, I guess if we’ll start with millennials, because you know that’s what I am obviously, you probably picked that up from the millennial performance Institute.  When it comes to illennials, talking about millennials is kind of become a hot topic within the last few years or so.  And, you know, all of these buzzwords, Gen X or baby boomer really kind of commonplace now, but when we think about some of the differences, millennials really value authenticity and having a connection.

And I know you’re all about, you know, the voice and how different people influence each other throughout the organization.  And this is really different when it comes to talking about authenticity and a connection, because in the past if we look at other generations, we’ll say baby boomers for example and authoritative management style is what, you know, was commonplace when they were, you know, first coming into the workforce.  And that’s what they are more accustomed to.  Meaning, “Hey, I’m the CEO, I’m the executive, I’m the manager.  You listened to me.  It’s very directive.  I tell you what to do.”

Millennials are a little different.  They feel like in general, and you know, we’re using generalities here.  There are obviously exceptions to all of these rules, but in general, a lot of millennials aren’t as preoccupied with some of those established titles and structures.  And they believe that they should have a voice like everyone else.  And Gen-Xers that I didn’t touch on, they’re the sandwich generation in between millennials, but right after the baby boomers, they’re generally seen as more of the long ranger type, adaptable to different types of environments.

But when it comes to sheer number, a lot of times people kind of forget to talk about Gen-Xers because there’s a smaller population of Gen-Xers in the workforce.  So that’s, I think, kind of just high level a little bit about the different generations and when it comes to communication, there might be some noticeable differences there.

Andrea:  I found that that interesting when you mentioned baby boomers and talking about the authoritative management style.  My interpretation of some of the conversation that I have heard around this intergenerational communication is that baby boomers tend to be almost a little afraid or maybe even Gen-Xers a little afraid of the millennial generation.  Almost like they’re the crazy teenagers that adults are afraid they can’t control.

Porschia Parker:  Yeah.  I think that’s very accurate.  And I have obviously worked with a lot of baby boomers and Gen-Xers around coming up with a strategy.  For example, one of the most common ones is an employee engagement strategy to kind of curb some of the turnover that’s common with millennial employees.  And yes, you’re right, the idea of, “Hey, let’s wrangle them in,” so to speak and kind of get them in line and in control so that, you know, business can go on as usual.

Andrea:  OK, so is that effective?  Is it effective to try to control them?

Porschia Parker:  It depends on your definition of control.

Andrea:  Sure.

Porschia Parker:  But in short, I would say no.  A lot of millennials like I mentioned that authenticity, they want to be a part of the conversation, they want transparency.  It’s a very big thing that I know you cover some times.  So, really the whole hard line and to try to control them usually does not work.  Across the board, across generations, the tenure and, you know, time that people are employed has drastically reduced.   Most people in general, newly hired employees are going to work for their organizations for about three years at this point.  And so, a lot of times, you know, trying to control certain things only speed up that process in terms of employees exiting your organization.

Andrea:  In your experience then is there a way or is there a successful sort of tactic or type of culture that tends to keep millennials longer than three years at a time?

Porschia Parker:  Yeah, there are a few things that companies can do.  So, really promoting collaboration and so working in small groups. A lot of millennials were used to working in teams and in groups, you know, from elementary school.  So, having a more collaborative communication style, some companies, and you might see this, they have completely revamped their workspaces.  There’s an organization that I’ve, you know, done some podcasts for and they’re all about kind of this actual physical space that you work in.  So, more open environments, free flowing.

You probably have seen some of the offices now that don’t even have dedicated offices.  It’s like you come in and you work from wherever.  And all of that helps to kind of promote collaboration across different teams in different business functions.  So that’s one thing. But also in general, a lot of millennials are looking for mentoring and coaching and when that professional development is provided by the employer that improves employee engagement and the length of time that a millennial employee will stay with their organization as well.  Because they feel as though, you know, the company is really investing in them in their career growth and that’s important for most millennials as well.

And then also, the other main component to this is to have access to professional growth opportunities.  And it’s funny, Andrea, I was actually reading a study last month and I wrote an actual newsletter article on it for our audience, and it was looking at the professional growth of millennials in terms of rates of promotion versus Gen-Xers. And what it showed was millennials have a really high, they place a high priority on being promoted and that we can talk a lot about, but student loan debt, coming of age in the recession, and all of these sorts of things have kind of driven millennials to focus on finances and getting promoted and making more money so to speak.

So, if you promote from within and have opportunities for that that’s going to be really appealing to millennials.  But in the study I was telling you about, they were showing that now a lot of baby boomers actually are not retiring.  A lot of them are continuing to work well into their 60s and beyond.  And so what this has created is an environment where the baby boomers, a lot of them are still executives, they have not retired and don’t plan to retire.  The millennials, because they’ve gotten a lot of, you know, some people think attention and focus, they’ve been promoted at rates faster than Gen-Xers.

And so a lot of Gen-Xers even in the last two to three years have not been promoted at the rates that millennials have.  And so this study was really interesting because it was kind of looking at, you know, the interplay between all of the generations in the workforce, what’s going on and you know, just kind of really analyzing it.

Andrea:  Hmm.  That’s really interesting.  Do you mind sharing with us the resource where you got that article?

Porschia Parker: I can, I don’t want to say the wrong thing.  So can I…

Andrea:  We will just include it in the show notes.

Porschia Parker: Exactly.  I will definitely send it to you right after the call.  I don’t want to quote the wrong thing.

Andrea:  Perfect.  No problem. So when it comes to baby boomers, Gen-Xers wanting to have influence on millennials, wanting to have them, you know, whether it be a stay in the environment or change the way that they’re handling things, how does somebody who comes from a different kind of really culture almost, it’s almost like a whole another culture that baby boomers grew up in versus the millennial generation.  So when you’re coming from that so much of a difference there, be able to kind of like grapple with the fact that it’s not about what a millennial should be but about what they are and now I have to deal with that.  It just seems like that might be part of the issue that people are kind of grappling with.

Porschia Parker:  Right, right, very good point.   I think it comes down to understanding and understanding that others are coming from a different perspective, perhaps a different background, different environment.  And when you understand the environment that, you know a potential employee or subordinate is coming from, it’s easier to be able to relate and find some common ground with them.

A lot of it I think is mindset, like you were saying before, if someone just comes at it from the perspective of, “Oh, this is a rowdy teenager or this person is like my kid,” because you know, a lot of millennials are actually the older ones are in their  mid 30s at this point.  And so, you know, we still have baby boomers that are, “Oh, that’s like my kid. That’s like my daughter’s age,” even though this person is, you know, 35.  So, I think really understanding the environment.

One easy way to kind of do that at a high level is to think when they study generations, most generations are defined by some piece of technology.  So for baby boomers, that piece of technology was the television.  The television was new.  People were, you know, exploring, you know, all of the shows and that was a new mode of disseminating information.

Gen-Xers were defined roughly by the computer.  So, you know, Silicon Valley, the computer is the new thing, you know, understanding how computers can really help you throughout your life.  Millennials, their piece of technology that they’re mostly defined is the internet.  And so, you know, the speed of the internet, the connection so to speak virtually, those different aspects of the internet when we think about millennials and some of their preferences, it actually defines a lot of things about them.

So, for example, sometimes people say, “Oh my gosh, they want everything so fast.”  I partnered with a lot of people in recruiting and one thing I hear a lot is of is, you know, in an interview, this millennial candidate that I put in front of a client said, “Well, hey, can I become a manager in two years?”  You know, almost kind of expecting that speed of the internet, right, to kind of translate to other areas of their career and of their life. So, just at a high level, if we think about environmental changes being different, technology being different, I think that is one way to start framing the conversation of kind of understanding how people come from, you know, different backgrounds in what was influential to them and how that might affect their decision making moving forward.

Andrea:  When you’re looking at how to help people from different generations communicate with one another.  You know, let’s take the millennials perspective; you’re wanting to be promoted, you’re wanting to push an initiative through that you’ve see is really important.  What kinds of things do you encourage them to do in order to speak to these other generations and potentially have influence?

Porschia Parker:  Yeah, great question.  So, this is actually the same thing that I encourage everyone to do, millennials included. I think listening more than you talk, especially in the workplace, is going to help you get so much more insight into other people.  And I think, you know, you’re specialists in this, Andrea, but I think a lot of times people are so focused on getting their point across, you know, staying their piece, so to speak, that they aren’t really aware of the other perspectives and other, you know, differing points of view or ways of doing things.

So, the first thing that I recommend for millennials but also anyone is to listen more.  If you have an idea that you think could improve efficiency or productivity in some way, listen.  Ask some questions about why the current status quo is what it is and take some notes and be open, because sometimes people are also listening with the perspective of “Oh, this is dumb or this is stupid. I could do it better.”  And after that, you know, introducing your new idea in a way that doesn’t necessarily kind of cut down or demean, you know, how the current process is.

So, a lot of times with millennials, they could sometimes, you know, not be as open to, you know, the previous way of doing things and just come in quickly and think that they know better.  And so that’s I think one thing that could really be highlighted.

Andrea:  But really it sounds like you’re talking about genuine curiosity.

Porschia Parker: Yeah, absolutely.

Andrea:  Because if somebody is genuinely curious, they’re going to be open to having that conversation to, you know, listening and introducing an idea that is potentially disruptive, but in a way that will maybe be based on the listening that you have just encouraged them to do, maybe then they can frame it in a way that they look, I see where it, why you’ve done it like this in the past, but maybe in the future.  This is another perspective.  I love that. OK, so that’s from the millennial perspective.  Let’s look at this from a Gen X or the baby boomer perspective, even if they’re the same two things that you would have them do, how does that look different for them?

Porschia Parker:  Yeah.  So this, you know, actually I think is a good, I could incorporate a good story here, Andrea. So, when I originally started my business, I was working with mostly individuals and a company that I’d worked with previously for a consulting firm.  They asked me, “Well, hey, do you do coaching and consulting for companies?”  And I said, “Sure!”  And jumped right in and did a time management workshop for them.  But while I was in right after that workshop, I’d say, I started picking up on it during the workshop.

But after the workshop, one of the managing partners pulled me to the side and he was a Gen-Xer or is a Gen-Xer or I should say and he starts venting to me about a millennial employee.  And this particular employee had gone on Glassdoor and had given the firm one of those average types of ratings on Glassdoor.  He was able to figure out who it was and he was shocked because he said, “You know, Porschia, I see this employee multiple times a week.  She’s never said any of this to me.  She’s never said any of this to her direct manager.  How does she feel comfortable just putting this online?”

This was probably in about 2014 so this was a while ago.  Glassdoor wasn’t as, you know, big as it is now, but that was really kind of my light bulb moment, Andrea, when I noticed that one, you know, kind of these differences in opinion were really along generational lines but also how the communication was different.  So this Gen-Xer, who was firm managing partner, he would’ve never gone online and communicated something to strangers right out on the internet and felt comfortable doing that.  But the millennial employee did and had never discussed it.

And so he thought it was kind of like a violation of trust that instead of speaking with him and the rest of the management team, they would go and put this online.  And so I think that’s a good example to kind of highlight preferences and communication, one, but also how different things can possibly be addressed.  So when it came to that firm particularly, you know, it was kind of touchy because as with Glassdoor, a lot of it is anonymous.  So, you know, confronting someone like, “Hey, I know you did this and I know you put this up there online about us,” could be really accusatory and come across, you know, pretty negative.

But in that case, and in most cases, I like to say that those types of instances let you know that people have opinions and they don’t feel comfortable sharing them in a public forum, so really looking at communication between management and their direct reports.  Openness throughout the organization are really important, so maybe that’s an opportunity to change your performance review system or change the amount of communication that manage _____ with their team.

Maybe they should be having one on one meetings or phone calls with their team members just to kind of see how things are going.  Or perhaps more company-wide meetings if it’s a smaller company to where it’s a literal open forum where people are encouraged to speak up in front of a group.  You know, it could look different depending on the size of the organization and how it’s structured.  But I think that that’s honestly kind of a cry for someone wanting to be heard, wanting to be listened to and just going in their preferred way of doing that, which can be different among generations.

Andrea:  Hmm.  It sounds a little bit like, you know, by providing those ways of coming to talk to the management or the leadership that it’s giving them permission.  It’s saying, I really do want to hear from you and I’m not only going to say that I’m going to provide you the opportunity instead of expecting you to take the initiative to do it, which might be kind of difficult to do, but it sounds like it’s really, really helpful when it comes to some, a millennial deciding, “Well, am I just gonna post this on Glassdoor or am I going to go actually have a conversation with somebody who really seems like they care.”

Porschia Parker:  Exactly.

Andrea:  Have you in the course of all this work that you do with intergenerationally, and I know that even though you’ve focused on millennials, do you have any insights into the next generation that’s coming up, Gen Z?

Porschia Parker:  Yes.  So there’s a lot of study going on about Gen Z.  The people who do a lot of the generational research, they tend to make a lot of observations until the generation kind of comes of age.  And so prior to that, a lot of it is fluid.  So we’re talking about a lot of, you know, preteens and younger and then some teenagers as well. So, there’s still kind of, you know, forming their opinions and their preferences. But yes, in general, they’ve done a lot of comparisons between Gen Z and the millennial generation and there are, you know, some similarities and some differences.

Obviously, the technology piece is that been even more I guess integrated into the lives of those individuals that are Gen-Zers in terms of, you know, the whole idea of having to wait for something is foreign.  I saw something not too long ago, but even with Gen-Zers, those teenagers, you know, working to get their license, it’s a lot lower because some Gen-Zers say, “Well, why do I need a license?  There’s Uber for that.  There’s Lyft for that.”  “Why do I need to drive a car?”

Andrea:  There will be cars that will drive themselves here in two years.

Porschia Parker:  Exactly.  So that whole mindset is a little different, you know, having things on demand.  Who needs to walk out and go get your own takeout, someone will bring that to you.  So, a lot of things in terms of speed are actually seen as faster and more instant than millennials.  And I’ve also read something more recently that said Gen-Zers tend to be even more financially conservative than millennials because they’ve seen the millennials to, you know, student loan debt is a huge issue and a driver for a lot of things.

So a lot of Gen-Zers are wondering, do I really even want to go and get saddled with all of this student loan debt from college in that traditional education model.  So yeah, there are a lot of comparisons and contrast being made right now.

Andrea:  It’s really fascinating.  I mean, I have a couple of them in my house, so I understand.  So I’m going to ask a couple more questions, but this is one of the last one I promise.  I just feel like we could talk about this for a long time.  Is there a forum, like an online forum in which you recommend that people communicate with millennials and even Gen-Zers, but in particular millennials, to kind of be able to close feedback loops quicker because it sounds like part of the problem could be, “I’m really busy.”  “I’m an executive, I’m really busy.”  Or “I’m a leader.”   “I’m a team leader.  My team is having a hard time hearing back from me.”  They don’t like the fact that they have to wait for answers, but they also maybe need answers quickly.  Do you have any practical tips on how to handle that?

Porschia Parker: Yeah, I think a lot of it also depends on the organization and kind of _____, you know, what that set up is like in general.  And you made me think of another distinction that a lot of companies are having to make, but a lot of people have like, you know, instant messenger kind of chat options in their CRM systems, customer relationship management systems.  There other kind of internal systems have some type of chat feature as opposed to email.

And so I’ve heard a lot of companies have, you know, conversations on what should be an email versus what should be a chat or casual communication avenue.  But yeah, there are a lot of, you know, just for lack of better words say chat or instant messaging platforms that can help you kind of get answers quicker than an email or waiting for a meeting or things like that.

I would say though, I think if someone has a feeling or a suspicion that something is going on in person or having a virtual meeting where you’re using, you know, your camera through your computer, I think there’s still a lot of value in that just to see people and to get a feel for what’s not being said, right?  And that made me think of something else.  And another critique that I hear a lot of times from recruiters and managers is they sometimes feel like the millennials have trouble with the in person communication.  They’d prefer to just chat or text or email because it might feel safer for some of them who haven’t done as much communicating in person.

And so when I work with millennials, specifically, sometimes we talk a bit about the in person communication and being more comfortable with having conversations that might be considered difficult in person.  So I know I kind of added a little bit there, but it made me think of a few other things.

Andrea:  Yeah, no, it’s very important.  Thank you. What is one final sort of tip that you would like to offer for intergenerational communication influence in particular?

Porschia Parker:  Yeah.  I think starting with a level of respect and it sounds really basic and almost kind of like “Hey doesn’t everyone do that?” But they don’t.  And similar to what I was mentioning about listening, coming from a perspective where you are respecting people, whether they be 30, 40 years older than you or 30, 40 years younger than you is really, I think, the place that everyone can start.  And also knowing that, you know, yes, we’ve talked a bit about generations as a group and as a whole, but everyone’s not the same.  Just because someone is, you know, 68 doesn’t mean that they can’t use technology.  And you know, just because someone is 28, you know, doesn’t mean that they know everything about all social media channels.  So, I’m not necessarily generalizing to the point where you think you’ve got it all figured out.

Andrea:  Hmm.  Very good Porschia, if somebody wanted to get in touch with you, how, how should they do that?

Porschia Parker:  Yes.  So, we’ve got actually two websites you can check us out if you want specifically to know more about the millennial aspect and focusing mostly on intergenerational communication.  Our website is millennialpi.com.  And also our other website is fly/highcoaching.com.  You can find information about us on both of those platforms.

Andrea:  Great.  And we’ll make sure to link those websites into our show notes on our websites.  So, Porschia, thank you so much for coming here today and sharing your voice of influence with our listeners.

Porschia Parker:  Thank you so much for having me, Andrea.  I really, really enjoyed chatting with you.

 

 

 

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How to Break Out of the Spin Cycle of Self-Criticism with Barbara Churchill

Episode 73

Barbara Churchill is a sought-after master-certifiedexecutive leadership coach who specializes in working with emerging and seniorlevel leaders and entrepreneurs. She is particularly passionate aboutempowering women to embrace their leadership skills and step into morechallenging roles.

In this episode, you’ll hear why trusting our intuition is at the core her message for the world, how a teacher’s negative words in middle school influenced her career path for decades, how to determine which negative thoughts are untrue, what you can do to manage your critical voice, why you need to give a name and character to your inner critic, how to get out of your head and into your heart, and so much more!

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

Barbara Churchill Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

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

Transcript

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

 

Today, I have with me Barbara Churchill.  She is a sought-after master certified executive leadership coach, specializing in emerging and senior level leaders as well as entrepreneurs.  She is particularly passionate about empowering women to embrace their leadership skills and step into more challenging roles.  And I just want to tell you before we get started that her energy is so invigorating and Barbara is just an exciting person to be around.  She really reaches in and helps people kind of spark to life.

Andrea:  So, Barbara, I am just thrilled to have you here today on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Barbara Churchill:  Oh, Andrea, you’re so great!  Thank you so much for your kind words.  I’m excited to be here.  What a fun thing you and I are going to be doing.

Andrea:  This is awesome!  OK, so Barbara, why don’t you share just briefly, what would you say is kind of the core of your message, something that’s kind of driving you and in terms of messaging?

Barbara Churchill:  Oh man and I’m such a chatter.  I’ll try to be brief.  Here’s the gig, you got to trust yourself, period, end of statement.  We need to slow down, listen, and turn within, and trust that inner wisdom that we all have.  I mean, we keep looking outside of ourselves to find the answers and social media does not help.  So we’ve got everything we need right now to be successful.  We absolutely know what’s best for us if we would slow down enough t o listen.

Andrea:  Hmm, interesting.  I really liked that.  So where does this message come from for you, like why this particular one?

Barbara Churchill:  Well, for most of my life, I struggled with a lot of self doubt, you know, that we all have that inner critical voice that tells us that we’re not smart enough or we’re not talented enough or we’re not good enough, you know.  And man, did I listen to that, because no one was telling me that there was anything different.

And I remember, when I was, God, I think it was like eighth grade, I had an eighth grade English teacher and she told me that I was not creative and I was not a good writer.  And I figured, “Okay, she’s in authority.”  I mean she’s a teacher, she should know, right?  And was in such emotional pain after that because I had kind of crafted my entire life, I thought I was going to go be an elementary school teacher.  Well, you can’t do that if you’re not creative.  I mean, this is what I was telling myself, “Well I can’t do that, so I’ve got to figure something else out, “and I didn’t have it and it stayed with me.

That messaging stayed with me for decades and it completely influenced my career path and my ability to create content and the work that I do.  You know, how I looked at myself, and I allowed all of those thoughts to hold me back from going after some of my goals and dreams.  And so when I learned about this critical voice that’s in our head, you know, what it was and how I could manage it and quiet it down, and more importantly, how I could connect with that other voice that one of my intuition, you know that inner wisdom piece.  I mean, it completely changed my life.

So it’s not that we’re never going to have another negative thought.  I think mantras are great.  I think positive thinking is great.  It’s our brains are hardwired.  Science has shown that our brains are hardwired with this negativity.  What we need to do is learn how to manage these thoughts and understand that they aren’t true.  It’s just our reptilian brain doing its thing.  And as long as we can manage those thoughts, we aren’t crippled by them.  And then learning how to tap into that inner wisdom whenever you need it is a crucial skill.

That’s what I really trained my leaders to do is, you know, because great leadership has to do with intuition.  You know, the pain of a child and all that, you know, transforms your whole career when I’ve learned all of this stuff.

Andrea:  So when you say certain thoughts aren’t true, which thoughts exactly are you talking about?  I recognize that sometimes when we are like some of the things that we think that are negative, like negative doesn’t always necessarily mean false.  So which ones are the false ones?

Barbara Churchill:  Well the ones that are all about you and your not measuring up to something, because the inner critic voice is all about keeping you small, keeping you safe, keeping you from coming outside of the box.  Well that’s not what life is, right?  We’re meant to be exploring and experiencing life as fully as we can.  And that inner critic voice keeps us from doing the things that we know we’re meant to do, from getting those goals, from going after that next job, achieving our dreams, or from trying something new.

You can look and notice your thoughts.  You can tell when it’s your inner critic if your thoughts are all negative, all about the problem.  They’re problem based.  They’re talking about you not being enough and you’re not smart enough, don’t try that, who do you think you are; those kinds of thoughts.

Andrea:   Problem based are like solution based?

Barbara Churchill:  Yes.  Yeah, instead of solution focus, instead of being curious, you know.  You can tell when it’s the real inner wisdom piece coming out, when you’re thinking of something and saying, “Well, I wonder if we tried it this way,” or “I’m curious what would happen if this?” Or “Hey, I don’t know if I’m going to get this job or not, but I’m going for it.”  When it’s based in the solution then that’s the real you, that’s the voice you want to be listening to.  When it’s based in a problem that’s your inner critic voice and you’re just going to go into the spin.

Andrea:  Hmm, I like that.  Do you think that a lot of the leaders that you’ve worked with, do they tend to have these thoughts?  Are these thoughts kind of coming from an original place where somebody has said something to them at some point like your teacher did?  I mean, is that part of why?  I know it’s part of why, but I guess I’m wondering if a lot of these thoughts do originally kind of come from other people?

Barbara Churchill:  Well, they do because, you know, you think about it, when you’re a little kid.  Think about yourself as a little kid 4, 5, or 6 years old.  You are out there just living life, you know, happy looking at things.  You’re not sitting here thinking, “I wonder if I’m good enough to play in the sandbox.  I wonder if I’m good enough to swing on that swing set.  I’m wondering if I’m good enough.”  You’re not thinking that, you’re just swinging to go, “Yeah, let’s go,” you know.  “Push me so I can go higher,” right?  I mean there’s nothing there.

So this was all learned behavior.  We look at Barbie dolls and little girls are like, “Oh, I’m comparing myself now.  I’m supposed to look like that.”  You know, we get this messaging from society.  We get it from our own parents and relatives and friends, their limiting beliefs.  They come into us and we’re a sponge as children.  We just learn everything and we take it as the truth.

And I’ll never forget when I taught my kids about this critical voice, my oldest son started to cry.  He was in high school and he said, “Mom, I thought everything I thought was the truth.”

Andrea:  Wow!

Barbara Churchill:  And it’s so powerful to understand that just because you think it doesn’t make it true to get more curious.

Andrea:  That’s interesting.

Barbara Churchill:   Yeah, yeah and I see that in my corporate space.  Let me tell you, the further up you go, and sometimes it’s called the imposter complex, I’m sure you might have heard of that.  Your listeners might have heard of that, you know the “Oh my God, I don’t know what I’m doing in the CEO role.  Someday they’re gonna figure it out.  They’re gonna figure out that I don’t know what I’m doing.”

And it comes across differently between men and women.  Women, they want to be prepared in the meeting.  So what they do is they bring all of their notes.  You know, they’ve got a stack of books they bring into the meeting and what they don’t realize is that they look like they’re unprepared.  The perception is, “Oh my God, what is she got in her hands?”  Men come to that, they have their phone, they will wing it and it looks very, very different.  So the same thoughts are going through their minds, but how it manifests, you know, to the outside world are very different.  But I’ll tell you, this critical voice never goes away, but it’s the learning how to manage it. That’s really the key.  It’s really, really the key.

Andrea:  OK, alright.  Awesome!  So now we know that this critical voices there that it’s not necessarily true.  What are like maybe three or four things that you suggest that people do to manage that voice?

Barbara Churchill:  Well, first and foremost, you have to start noticing and paying attention to what’s going on in your brain.  And I know that that sounds like “What, what do you mean notice what’s going on in my brain?”  But we have over 60,000 thoughts a day.  We’re not paying attention to what’s happening in there and it’s kind of a crazy place and at least mine is.

Andrea:  _____.

Barbara Churchill:  I mean, you find yourself thinking the oddest things.  And so when you start to notice just by the fact that you’re noticing what’s happening in your brain, it starts to separate you from the thought because we believe everything that’s happening in there.  And it’s not true.  You know, if I said to you, “Oh my gosh, elephants are pink.”  “Well, it’s a thought.  It’s not true unless I spray paint them,” right?  So we start noticing what’s happening, noticing what we’re doing.  When I am doing this, what thoughts are getting triggered?

When I think about presenting to the board, what thoughts are getting triggered?  What am I starting to think about that?  “Oh my God, you have to prepare.  You’re not prepared for that.  It’s going to take a lot of overtime.  You’re really not skilled enough for that.”  Are we going down that spin?  Start noticing and then you start asking, “All right, let’s pick one of those thoughts and ask, is it a hundred percent true?  Not just partially true, is it 100 percent true?”  The flip side of that is if it’s not 100 percent true, it is false by the very nature of not being 100 percent true.

So a lot of what we’re thinking we find is our critical voice in our head, and we’re kind of waiting through that and picking the good stuff and realizing how much garbage is really in there.  That’s powerful to just notice because now you’re paying attention, now you’re awake.

Andrea:  Totally!

Barbara Churchill:  And then yeah, discerning which is this thought is, is it problem based?  And if it is, okay, that’s my inner critic and I know it’s automatically false or is it solution focused?  Oh, that’s who I want to play with.  That’s the real me.  Those are great thoughts that I want to keep thinking and nurture and then you know.  So just by doing those three things, noticing, asking if it’s 100 percent true and then categorizing which is it, problem based or solution focused, gives you so much power.

I mean you can save yourself an enormous amount of stress and pain when you start making decisions based on that positive voice, that knowing voice because we all know more than we think we do our experience.  We bring so much into the workspace, so much of our personal lives or experiences or knowledge and our intuition.  That’s that voice of wisdom, that inner voice.

I mean we’ve all had those times in our lives where we just knew what to do.  We really didn’t have, you know, a design, but we’re like, “Yeah, we had a gut feel,” right?  Trust your gut.  That’s where it comes from and we have to start trusting that more, listening to that more rather than the other stuff.

Andrea:  I’m going to come back to that, but first what would you say to somebody who when they start to hear that critical voice and they become aware that this is, “Oh, this is the critical voice, wait a second,” and then they go down another path that isn’t solution based.  It’s actually even more critical because they’re criticizing themselves for being critical.  You know what I mean?  So what would you say to that person?

Barbara Churchill:  I am a big believer in pattern interruption.  So I coach my clients when they start to hear in their heads, “Oh my God, I’m doing the spin cycle.”  That’s what I call it, the spin cycle.  We’re just going down.  We’re just going down, down.  Alright, we either have to clap.  We have to say the word stop out loud.  We have to do something that snaps are brain out of that pattern.

Now if you’re in an elevator, you’re not going to just go stop or clap your hands or people would think you’re strange.  But that’s what I do.  I will do something, “Stop, stop talking.  Stop, stop listening.  Stop, this is true.  Stand up and walk around your desk, shake it off.”  You have to interrupt that pattern; otherwise, your brain is just going to go on autopilot.  It’s like a hamster in a wheel and then you go back to, “OK, what do I know is true?  What do I know is true?  I’m criticizing myself for criticizing.  Isn’t that hysterical?”  Start to be fascinated by your brain and what’s going on in there.

When you get curious, it lightens your load.  No one ever felt really heavy or defeated or negative by being curious.  Well, that’s curious.  You know, it’s a fun word to even say.  It’s a fun feeling to be curious and wonder because there’s all possibilities in that.  “Well, look at my brain go.”

I just did this with a client yesterday.  She was telling me how she was very convicted and how she couldn’t do a particular thing.  She couldn’t make this one phone call.  She’s an entrepreneur, very successful, but she couldn’t make this one phone cal.  And I said, “Wow, are you listening to your brain?  Isn’t it fascinating how totally committed to this story you are?  That’s fascinating.  It’s totally not true because clearly you can pick up a phone, you’re able to do it right and dial the number and speak, but look at your brain go.”  And it separates it from us as people.  It’s just our brain.  It’s that computer in our head that’s just going on autopilot.  Somebody programmed that interestingly today, didn’t they?  Wow!”

Pull yourself away from it.  Stop taking yourself so seriously.  I mean, I laugh a lot.  I laugh a lot at myself because you know; it’s hysterical what’s happening in my head.  I just go, “Wow, look at you gal,” and then you can real yourself in.  “Alright, what do I really want to be thinking?  What’s really true for me?”  And now we’re clicked in to the real you because all of this other stuff is fear and that is fear talking.

I teach my clients a lot of tools and it’s so fun when they get it and so we can use it in our sessions.  I teach them to make a character out of their inner critic, really go deep with it and name it.  My inner critic happens to be named Sharon.  I hope no one’s listening as named Sharon, please don’t take offense.  But you know, if we characterize it so that we can visualize it, well we can send them off you know.

This gal I was talking about yesterday, she named hers Bitty and Bitty loves cheesecake.  She loved to eat cheesecake.  So I said, “You know what, I think Bitty needs a whole cheesecake to herself because you and I have work to do.  Bitty has gotten in to this call and we’ve got stuff to do, let’s send her off.”  So we know.  “OK, visualize there she goes, fork in hand.  She’s gonna go eat cheesecake now.”  I’m in a deal you know.  Let’s game on do the work.

Andrea:  Alright, so I get this.  But I also, at the same time, know that there are some people that are going into, “What, Bitty, what?  Characterize the, you know, whatever.”  Can you explain why that works?

Barbara Churchill:  It removes you, the person from your thought.  It separates that.

Andrea:  Yeah.

Barbara Churchill:  And we need to separate that because we take our thoughts so literally, we take them as truth.  So if I’m thinking about myself that I am not good enough, I don’t know enough, I’m going to feel so awful.  I’m going to believe that.  It’s going to influence my behavior and my behavior is going to influence the results that I get in my life.

Andrea:  Yeah.

Barbara Churchill:  And so if I just change how I’m thinking and realize that my thoughts are just thoughts, I can believe them or not.  It’s my choice.  There’s a lot of power in that and I think that most of us just are on autopilot and we don’t realize that we can really control it.  It’s not about just thinking happy thoughts.  It’s not all unicorns and rainbows, right?  It’s about owning the power that you have to change your thinking because I do things now that I never would have done based on the fact that I understand when my inner critic has entered the room.  “Okay, what’s happening?  Am I stretching myself?  Ah, look at her go.  She’s coming in to save me.  Guess what?  I’ve got this.  No worries.”

Andrea:  Interesting!

Barbara Churchill:  Yeah, by separating you from that messaging that’s the first step.  We really need to create that divide so you know you are not your thoughts.

Andrea:  I think that’s a really important message.  I mean, I know like even when you said don’t take yourself so seriously, I’ve heard that all my life, Barbara.  All my life, I was hearing that.  I was like, what do you mean?  Like I am a serious person, you know, that didn’t help me t just not take myself seriously.  But I think to have someone like you there who can say it’s about this.  I didn’t want to play the games.  I didn’t want to play those kinds of games that you’re talking about playing and I would call those like that’s what I would have called them.

But I think that like you said with the pattern interruption, if you don’t try something new, you’re going to end up down the same road that you are all the time.  I love that.  And so why not try it.  If you know the whole don’t take yourself so seriously, yeah, yeah, you’re tied to your identity.  I get it.  I was too, as a serious person.

But if you do give yourself like this a chance, you know, I’m talking to the audience right now, the person that’s listening.  You know; give yourself a chance to interrupt those thoughts.  And even though you are a serious person, you don’t have to if you are, you don’t have to go down this spiral that Barbara is talking about all the time.  You can interrupt it.  It’s OK if you play a few games because our brains really do need, I mean, I just didn’t realize Barbara how my brain worked.  I didn’t get it.

And so to have someone like you there to say and to tell your son, you know, the thoughts you’re thinking aren’t necessarily true and to have that be like, “Oh my gosh,” like that because I know for me, I felt like my thoughts were me.  Like just the mind is so tied in my identity.

Barbara Churchill:  And there’s such a freedom.  I mean, there is science behind this, right?  There’s absolute science behind this for all you serious people.  And serious people, just because you’re a serious person doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun and doesn’t mean that you can’t change things and you know all of that.  Yes, be a serious person.  We need serious people.  We need serious people who understand that they are not their thoughts.  We need everybody to figure that out, right?

Andrea:  Right.

Barbara Churchill:  But there’s a freedom in that.  There’s a freedom in understanding that, “Yeah, I am not tied to this.  I am not what I think all the time.  I can choose what I want to think and believe because a belief is just a thought we’ve been thinking for a long long time.  A lot of times our beliefs are not our own.  They were given to us by our parents and society and our friends and sometimes they aren’t useful anymore and we find that we’re behaving in a way and we think, “Well, you know what, that’s not in alignment with who I am anymore.  What is that belief?  Will do I even believe that anymore?”  It’s a great thing to question.

Andrea:  And how’s that working for you?

Barbara Churchill:  Yeah, I mean if it isn’t working for you, well, let’s get rid of it.  We don’t have to, you know, agonize over it.  We don’t have to be in pain.  We can say, “Yeah, you know what, that doesn’t work for me anymore.  What would I like to replace it with?  What feels better?  What’s more in alignment with who I am?”  “Oh, OK.”  So we choose that.  Sometimes we make things too hard.

Andrea:  And I think you said who I am and again, like I said before, I think I thought that I was these thoughts.  So who I am or who I could be like the better version of me, I think.  You know the version that’s alive, the version that is free and happy.  You know, there is that side of people that they may not realize if they are serious, going back to that serious person.  But there is that version of you.  What could it be like if you were like that too?  And I think that that’s important to know, to live into the person that you want to be, not just who you think you are now.

Barbara Churchill:  Yeah and redefining who you are.  Maybe your definition of who you are is old and is out of date because you took somebody else’s definition or this was your definition from when you were 22.

Andrea:  Right.

Barbara Churchill:  Well, trust me.  I’m not 22 anymore and I have certainly redefined who I am over and over and over again.  And it isn’t about always feeling happy either.  Well, we’re just going to pick positive thoughts and always feel happy because that’s not realistic.  That’s not who we are.  There are times in our lives when we’re going to be sad and it’s good to feel that, right?  If we love someone so much and we lose them after a long life, like a parent, we’re going to be sad.  Well, if we weren’t sad, if we weren’t willing to be sad then we wouldn’t have been willing to love that deeply in the first place.

So there are feelings that were going to have, you know, our thoughts create our feelings.  I’m getting way too deep, but our thoughts create our feelings and we get to choose these thoughts.  And let’s just make sure that they’re the ones that we really want in there so that they create the kind of feelings that we want to have; positive, difficult, whatever.  Let’s make sure we’re understanding where those thoughts are coming from.  Are they really serving me?  And if not, man, I’ve got the power to change those.  That’s an amazing thing.

Andrea:  OK, so I love that you talk about going, you know, like kind of using your gut a little bit more.  And this is something else that I’m going to tie back into that serious person, because I get them, I guess.  And because I think there are probably a few listening or just anybody, have you ever said to people, and I’ve heard this for myself, but have you ever said to people like you’re so in your head right now then you’re just stuck in your head.

And that’s been something that I have, at times I’ve been like, “Well, OK.”  I’ve heard that from a number of people.  So I’ve asked a number of people and so I’m going to ask you too now, Barbara.  What do you mean by that and how do you get from your head to your gut if that’s where you’re headed or your heart?  And how do you know that that’s the right place to be at that time?

Barbara Churchill:  Ah, these are such good questions.  So there are thinkers and there are feelers.  And thinkers clearly based on the name of them are in their head most of the time.  They’re thinkers, they’re cerebral, and that’s great.  There’s nothing wrong with that at all.  And there are feelers, and they make decisions based on emotion more often than not rather than data or information or anything like that.  And so feelers, and I’m going to be making broad strokes, OK, so bear with me, feelers have a bit of an easier time tapping into that intuition because it’s based in your body.  It’s that feeling when they say trust your gut, it actually is a feeling in your lower abdomen area, right?  That’s your gut.

And people who are more cerebral and count on data and facts have more difficult time making that connection because they are in their heads more.  That’s what that means.  You’re thinking, you’re not utilizing the feelings in your body.  You’re not in touch with your body.  So for those people who are more thinkers, I invite you to start to notice where do you feel things in your body, start the connection between your thoughts and your feelings because one creates the other.

So for example, if you are having a scenario, if you close your eyes, you’ve got a scenario, you’re going to be interviewing for a senior VP job, OK?  What is the thought that you have about that?  And it might be, “Oh, I’m not sure if I’m really ready for that yet.  I’m pretty nervous about it.”  OK, if I just speak from that, that means I’m in my head.  Now, I want you to connect that, where in your body does nervous show up?  When you are thinking this, I want you to feel the nervous.  Where does that show up for you?  Typically for people, it is in their abdomen area.  You know some have it in their chest there might be tightness.

But typically, nervousness is in their abdomen area.  And then I asked them, “And what does that feel like?  Can you describe that for me?”  And it may be a fluttering, it may be a zing of electricity, you know something around that.  So when I’m working with serious people, I really work with trying to connect their head to their body so that they can speak from that and they can learn how to feel into these things.

And then we talk about going a little bit deeper and quieting those thoughts because when our brain has over 60,000 thoughts a day, it’s tough to discern, where is the inner wisdom voice because that voice is pretty calm and collected and knowing.  The inner critic voice can be loud and shouting and derogatory and all of that.  And it’s tough to hear the inner wisdom through all that noise.  Does that help?

Andrea:  Yeah, yeah.  I think one of the questions that tends to really help me too, it’s just what do you want.  What do you really want and that seems to also help me to kind of move from problem solving, trying to figure out the answer sort of thing to a desire, which seems to be more about the gut, I think, than the head.  Yeah that’s so good.

Barbara Churchill:  Yeah and when we don’t worry about the how’s, if we’re trying to solve something and we just say, “OK, let’s not worry about how we get there.  What’s the end results?  What do we want to happen?”  Great question, right?  And that’s it.  “OK, so then how might we get there?”  Now we’re in curiosity mode.  Now, we’re in possibility, now we’re in.  Well, I wonder if we could do this or we could do that.  Now we’re like in a whiteboard, right?  We’re just throwing stuff against the wall.  It makes it so much easier, takes the pressure off because we’re just experimenting.

Andrea:  Yeah and it’s solution-focused, like you said.  I love that.  That’s great.  So, Barbara, if you could leave the audience with some power packed point at the end here.  You know, you care about them.  I know you do.  You’re such a passionate and loving person.  What would you want them to hear today to leave them with?

Barbara Churchill:  I want you to just understand that you are not your thoughts.  Just start getting curious about how your brain works and what’s going on in there, you know.  I mean, it’s an interesting place and it’s got a lot of stuff going on, so start noticing it.  Notice when you’re doing some critical thinking, what’s happening?  What kinds of things are you doing to trigger that?  Notice when you’re having some really great thoughts and what things are you doing to trigger those thoughts, right?  And that how that feels in your body, just start really getting to know what’s going on in that amazing and fascinating brain of yours and don’t judge it.  Just notice, “Wow, that’s amazing.  That’s curious,” right?  Start to get curious, because then you can decide what thoughts do I want to keep, what thoughts do I want to throw away.  That noticing, I’m telling you, it’s extremely powerful.

Andrea:  Hmm.  Alright, so how can the listener find and connect with you if they’re a little intrigued by all of this conversation, Barbara, and who you are, your voice.

Barbara Churchill:  They can find me at barbarachurchill.com.  They can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram; all sorts of things in terms of social media.  But yeah, barbarachurchill.com and Churchill is spelled CHURCHILL.

Andrea:  And was there something you were wanting to share with the audience?

Barbara Churchill:  OK, so you can reach me at barbarachurchill.com, and something that I would really love to give away is something that I offer people who connect with me.  It’s a 60-minute laser-focused call on what’s happening in your world and how can we work together in that 60 minutes.  It’s a powerful hour.  Let me tell you, how can we work together to make some shifts?  Shift your mindset, shift your results, and shift the actions that you’re taking.  I promise, bold, bold decisions, bold actions and bold results, 60 minutes.  So barbarabhurchill.com, you can find the information on it there.  I would love to connect with them.

Andrea:  Awesome!  Thank you for your generosity and thank you for being here today, Barbara, I really appreciate it!  And really, am grateful for your Voice of Influence in the world.

Barbara Churchill:  Oh, thank you so much!  It’s my pleasure.  I loved it!

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The Tether Ball High Performance Strategy

Voice Studio 31

In this Voice Studio episode Andrea shares the Teacher Ball high performance strategy.

Mentioned in this episode:
Episode 31: Find Your Why and Get Stuff Done

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How to be a Strong, Female Voice in Business with Amy Porterfield

Episode 28

Amy is an online marketing expert and educator and the host of the top-ranked podcast, Online Marketing Made Easy. Amy has worked with mega brands like Harley-Davidson Motorcycles and Peak Performance Coach, Tony Robbins, where she oversaw the content development team and collaborated on ground-breaking online marketing campaigns. Through her bestselling marketing courses, thriving social media community and popular podcast, Amy inspires a grounded, tangible and self-affirming sense of “Wow! I really can do this” for over 250,000 online entrepreneurs. She proves that by moving away from “step-by-step” and into “action-by-action”, even the newest online entrepreneurs can bypass overwhelm and self-doubt, and instead generate exciting momentum as they move closer to building a life and business they love.

You can find Amy and her offerings at www.amyporterfield.com.

Sign up for the Nail Your Elevator Pitch Challenge (or the wait list) here:

 

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

Transcript

Andrea: Welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast, Amy Porterfield!

Amy Porterfield: Well, thank you so much for having me. I’m delighted to be here!

Andrea: Well, it is definitely an honor. I definitely consider you to be one of my biggest online mentors for this business building, message sharing process, and I am so grateful to you for all the things that you’ve taught me. So it’s great to have you.

Amy Porterfield: Well, it’s always nice and I truly mean this to have a student that dives in and does the work and it’s so obvious that you do that. You’re a little go-getter so I wish I had a million of you inside of my courses, so thanks for having me again.

Andrea: Well, we’ve already introduced what you have done in the past a little bit. Why don’t you give us a snap shot of what you’re doing today.

Amy Porterfield: Oh yeah, I’d love to. So in my business today, what I do is I create online training courses, digital courses. And specifically for my business, they are around this building and course creation and webinars. So I put together the courses and then I do online launches or evergreen launches, which means I prerecord all of the promotional pieces and I run Facebook ads to the prerecorded content to sell my courses. So I do evergreen and live launches and that primarily is the only way I make money in my business.

I don’t do small group coaching or consulting or any kind of service-based business. And the only other thing in my business that is a big piece is I will promote a few of my partners program so like B-School is one of those. You’re familiar with that so I’ll promote B-School because I went to the program. I’m a huge fan. I had a lot of success with it, so I’ll promote that to my audience. But the bulk of my revenue comes from digital courses.

Andrea: I’m really wondering, when you first started, when you got going with your own business, were you thinking about it in terms of personal brand business or was it just something that kind of happened as you got going?

Amy Porterfield: It really was something that happened as I got going, but at the time back then, I don’t think I was savvy enough to know “Am I going to do a personal brand business, or am I going to do more of a general brand that I’m not the face of the business?” I think at the time when I was just leaving corporate, I thought “Well, I wanna teach and so I’m just a one-woman show at this point so I guess I’m gonna be the face of this.” And it really was more into that but it wasn’t an incredibly thoughtful decision because you don’t know what you don’t know. So I was very new to all of this just starting out.

Andrea: I know that you’ve mentioned before that you’re an introvert, so was that a difficult thing for you to do, to put you as the face of your brand or was that something that you could kind of accept by the time you got to that point?

Amy Porterfield: You know it was difficult. So coming out of corporate, I think I have to mention, I work for Peak Performance Coach Tony Robbins, which meant that he was this literally this huge guy. But more so he has this huge presence. He still does today. So he was, obviously the face of the business, he was front center onstage literally. I used to travel to the events and support the content he would do onstage.

So that was my model and I never wanted to be that front and center. I was very comfortable behind the curtain, behind the computer screen and I felt pretty good there. And then I realized, if I wanted to create this business, you know, social media was a big part of it. I had to put face out there; even putting my picture on social media was a big deal to me. I just had never had never had to do that before working in corporate.

So I started my own Facebook page and my own Twitter page outside of corporate and I’m thinking “Oh my God, people are gonna think I’m crazy.” What am I doing? I’ve never not been attached to somebody else being my boss.” So there was a lot of trepidation there. I was worried about what my past coworkers would think or my friends. I was worried about someone saying “Who are you to be doing that?”

So there was a lot of that worry that as an introvert, there was a lot of “Wait a second, I have to put a video out of myself?” I hated that thought. I still struggle with video all these years later. So I think we all just kind of have our challenges and that’s one for me. But a million percent, it was very difficult being an introvert and having to be so front center with the personal brand. I wanted it so bad that I moved past the fear but the fear never went away. I just kind of said “Hi, I see you there,” and I just kept going.

Andrea: So you said you wanted it so bad. What was it that you were wanting? What was the motivating factor?

Amy Porterfield: I wanted to be my own boss more than anything. So I was so tired of my hours, my efforts, my decisions, my creativity being dictated by somebody else. Now, I have an amazing job with Tony Robbins. So it’s not too bad having your time dictated by this amazing man who had so much great content that I got to play around in as the content director. So I got to work with some great, great content and with some great people.

However, there’s still came a time that I thought “I wanna do this on my own and I don’t want to answer to anybody else.” And it felt like there’s like rebel soul came up inside me that said like “It is your time.” Now, when that rebel soul started to talking like “It’s your time,” and I’m thinking “What are you talking about. I’ve never ever done anything out on my own.” It took me a good year to take the leap and actually go for it and ease into it, but I’m so glad I listen to it even though it means no sense at the time.

Andrea: So you had that drive to move forward. Is that something that you’ve always had? I mean, you landed a job with Tony Robbins of all people. What draw you to seek that? Have you always had that kind of aspirational goals for yourself?

Amy Porterfield: Great question. So no, is the short answer. But a little bit of the longer answer is I never ever thought about being an entrepreneur. It was never even in my mind. I like structure. I like following the rules and for a long time, I like answering to somebody because a little bit of a show up in the sense that I like to do a good job and say “Look, what I’ve done.” And I like those words of affirmation.

So when you’re in corporate and everyone’s like “Look at her, she’s doing a great job.” I really enjoy that so I never had that sense of, “I wanna be an entrepreneur when I grow up.” Or “I wanna create a business or do this or do that.” Never at all, and so what’s interesting is that that was never part of the plan. However, I’ve always been a leader, just ever since a little girl. I mean as a little girl, I think they call me bossy.

But from there as I grew up, I was always in a leadership in student government. I was captain of the cheerleading squad. I like to call the shots in that respect and so looking back, I know how I got here with that type of drive. I always wanted to be the best. I always got good grades. I always wanted to be the leader. And so some of that definitely has played a part of “I wanted to run my own business” but I didn’t know it until way into being in a corporate for a long time and in my early 30’s actually.

Andrea: Yeah. I can really relate to that because for me, when I decided to take B-School because I was writing a book and I just wanted to know how to market it. And so it occurred to me while I was in B-School, “Oh if I wanted to do something with this, maybe I need to do something more with this,” and so just the idea of having my own business really came then. And as we got going through the process, you in particular because I’ve really dove into all the things that you had to offer through that experience, it was this dawning revelation that “Oh my goodness, this is what I made for.”

Amy Porterfield: And isn’t that interesting that just comes to you like all of a sudden if you really listen to your inner gut saying like “This is what it supposed to be about,” and you listen, it’s very truth-telling in a way that I just never knew until I got a little bit quiet and trusted my gut in that respect. But I got to say this really quickly speaking of B-School, you and I kind of getting to know each other even more and sharing insights and thoughts, is because I did this contest with B-School. And I asked people “Hey, if you got a great idea for a bonus.” So just put in together a big promotional launch and I wanted to do a great bonus.

So I went to my B-Schoolers and said “Does anyone have a great idea for a bonus that you think would be valuable?” And we got so many responses like probably 50 or 60 people with great ideas. But I chose yours and it was all around the profit plan reality check, diving into your profit, how you’re making money, what are your expenses look like, how are you evaluating this, and how are you planning for this. That idea would have never came about if it weren’t for your amazing bonus idea, which I know that whole area is actually a big strength of yours, right?

Andrea: Yeah. Through that process of being in your group and having interactions with other people, I really noticed that the questions that I was drawn to answer had to do with who people are and how that can translate into a business for people. And I’ve just so drawn to those conversations and then as I would hear people talk that have these great aspirations and noble ideas even a noble message. But I could tell that it wasn’t going to go anywhere if they didn’t really figure out how they’re going to monetize it and all these things that I had never thought before, honestly like it was just crazy. When you made that contest offer, I looked at my husband because he was with me. I looked at my husband; I’m like “Oh my goodness. This is so me. I’m gonna nail this.” And I worked my tail off.

Amy Porterfield: You nailed it! This might be a little bit off topic but I feel but I feel like this is so important for people that are building their brands, they need to hear this. And that is so many times in my business, I’ve had whims along the way because I’ve gone the extra mile. So for instance I was speaking on Michael Hyatt’s stage. I hired a speaking coach. We put the whole presentation together over a series of months. I got on stage and I killed it more so than I ever would if I didn’t spend the time and that created this beautiful relationship with me and Michael.

In your situation, a lot of people submitted bonus ideas with a few different sentences and maybe a little paragraphs, oh not you. You definitely spelled out the entire thing. You showed me where I could show up and give a little tough love because you knew my personality and you know how I like to do things. You gave me examples. You gave me stories and you made me a video to go along with it. And so there’s something that you said about people that would go the extra mile because now you and I have this great friendship. We know each other. We talked to each other about our businesses, like it go so much further when I feel like people are making that effort and I think that’s overlooked.

Andrea: Yeah and I think it’s also really cool when you can be something that just arises out of you, you know. Like you said, it just turned into something that’s really natural and you never know where it might go.

Amy Porterfield: So true, so very true.

Andrea: OK, so now I’ve got to ask you this because this is something I have a little bit of an issue with. I’ve always kind of struggled with a little bit and that’s just my voice as a woman and especially as a woman leader. So as you started in this online business space or actually, I don’t really care what you want to talk about, I’m curious. What is it like for you to be a woman leader and to find your voice both in your corporate experience maybe and then how it’s really come to the point right now where I see you and you’re just on such a different level at this point, right? You know your stuff. You know your voice. You’re really comfortable even though you still feel fear at times; you seem to just conquer it because you’re not going to let it get in your way and that sort of thing. So I’m curious, tell me about the development of that voice for you particularly as a woman?

Amy Porterfield: That’s another good question, I love this. So it has definitely evolved. If I go back into how I was raised. I was raised by a really strict father who always had the last word and actually had the only word. You never ever talk back or show a lot of emotion. I love my dad dearly but that is truly how I was raised. And so coming from that and then getting into the business world where in my industry, you know, there’s a lot of man. There are a very few women doing this kind of thing and so I definitely was more quiet in the beginning. And I had a sense that the men that were doing that before me, they were all knowing. And I didn’t really have an opinion because I was scared to have a voice. I was very new and very few women. So there was a lot more fear in the beginning and I was a lot quieter.

However, because I can draw from wanting to always be a leader, I had this self confidence that was hidden deep down, and I recently listened to a podcast episode of Brooke Castillo. She had a podcast I love and I was listening to it and she was talking about self-confidence. And she was saying that self-confidence comes before you actually do anything. So confidence comes from knowing that no matter what’s going to happen, no matter what emotion comes up or feeling comes up that you know that you can tackle it and that you can move beyond it.

And looking back, I did have that self-confidence that I thought “Well, no matter what happens, I know I’m strong enough to move past this.” So I just started speaking up a little more and little more. What the difference then what I did then and what some of the men were doing is I got into the content. I found my sweet spot. So I would teach step-by-step where a lot of the men in my industry kind of just give me over it and talking about the big picture, the big fat numbers, and how much money they were making in. All the really good sexy stuff but no one was slowing down enough to say, “Okay, here’s exactly how you do it.”

So I found my little sweet spot and I found more confidence in that and my voice got louder and louder. And I never was mousy about speaking up as I grew in my business. So I think it was a total evolution and I will say, it is intimidating when most of the big shot influencers, especially when I was starting out, were men. That did make me very nervous but I was able to just kind step-by-step, I love baby steps, I found my voice over the years.

Andrea: Yes and there’s no question about it. I purchased other online courses about different things and yours always standout as being so much more in depth and clear and easy to follow. It’s just so much easier to get to the end result that you’re promising than anything else that I’ve really participated in. OK, so I know that you were in Mastermind or maybe it wasn’t Mastermind, it was with Marie Forleo for a while…

Amy Porterfield: Yeah.

Andrea: Yeah, it was the Mastermind?

Amy Porterfield: Yeah that’s what we call it.

Andrea: Were all those people in there women and what was helpful to be around other women at that time?

Amy Porterfield: Yes. So for two years, I was in this live, I called it live because we would meet in person four times a year Mastermind like you said with Marie Forleo. It was called Rich, Happy, and Hot. OK, the name pretty much fails me because at that time I wasn’t rich. I wasn’t happy, I was just leaving corporate. And hot, well, I didn’t look at the mirror and sees that so that was a little bit tough. But I did it anyway and for two years, we would, like I said, meet in person and they were women from all different industries and all different levels of business.

Some didn’t even have a business yet. Some had been in it for five to ten years and then I was just starting out as well. So it was really good for me to see other women doing what I was doing further along than me or a little bit behind me and also I learned from Tony Robbins that you’ve got to surround yourself with people doing bigger and better things than you so you can strive and move forward and there was that element. I love that. Marie had done so much of what I wanted to do in my business.

So it was so important that I was around these really powerful women that were driving things forward. So that made a huge impact in my life but also at that same time, we would do hot seats and Marie typically was the leader because it was her Mastermind. So I get in the hot seat and every time I have to admit it, it was the early years I’d played small. And I’d say something like “Well, I wanna do a launch but not a big launch. I’m wanna do a video or I’m not gonna put myself out there like that. I’ll just gonna send a few emails.” And then this woman, Marie, who had gone before me and who had done amazing things said “There you are, you’re going to show up in a really big way.”

And I think surrounding ourselves with other women who have gone before us and will challenge us and will call us on our BS and say, “That ain’t gonna happen.” That was a pivotal moment for me when she said “Don’t play small and if you’re planning to play small, please get out, you’re wasting our time.” She didn’t say it like that but I’m sensitive so that’s what I heard. So I think we need to surround ourselves with people that would be honest with us and it’s hard to find that group but it’s worth looking for.

Andrea: Hmmm yes! OK so I love how you target both the very practical things that practical needs of your students and like you said, step-by-step and here’s how you do it, and you lay it out. But at the same time, you also had such empathy for your students and really care and you bring that heart. I’ve only been around for a couple of years now with you, so I’m curious about beforehand, have you always addressed the heart of people when you’re also talking about their step-by-step process? Is that something that you’ve always done?

Amy Porterfield: I’m so glad you asked this because it’s something that I felt called to do more so than ever. And what I noticed in at online marketing space especially among women, but there are some gentlemen that are doing it as well is that they are authentically becoming more transparent. Like we heard the word authenticity, transparency, and genuine; we hear it all the time. But there are some people out there that are really showing up in that space talking about their struggles, their stories, their triumphs in a way that there’s real truth behind them, like “Look, what it took to get here.”

And they’re talking about their every day struggles as well and I gravitate toward that. Over the last year, I looked at someone and I’m like “Are you kidding me?” Like I have great friend, Mary Hyatt, and she is a body-positivity acceptance kind of niche. And she appeared on Instagram in her underwear and bra and that is the cover of her online training program. There’s a bunch of women, all different shapes and sizes, there she is my dear friend in her bra and underwear looking beautiful, but she doesn’t have that typical size to a body, like she’s putting out her authentic self.

And I looked at that and I thought “I know that Mary didn’t think even a year ago, yet alone three or four years ago that she be on Instagram in her bra and underwear. And in that moment, I thought “You never know where honesty and the real stuff will take you.” And so I decided I wanted to me more like that. So I started to infuse more compassion in the things I was talking about, more heart, and more honesty. I know the struggle. I know what it takes to get there. I know the fears and the lack of confidence. I’ve lived it and I haven’t talked about it enough, so let’s do that.

And just recently, it’s interesting you’re bringing this up now, one thing I never talked about is my weight. I’m embarrassed by my weight and I’ve been a lot thinner in this industry when I first started out and it’s like a topic that… it’s funny, you’ll see me. You’ll all know what I look like but I still just want to pretend like it’s not struggle that I face. And so because I wanted to change the way I talk about things, I don’t need a platform to talk about my weight in the sense that I’m not changing my business. I’m still all about list-building, course creation or webinars but I did one podcast episode and it was just me solo on my own podcast, and usually my podcast like 45 minutes. It was only 9 minutes and it’s not even out yet but it’s me saying “Here’s a challenge that I face, it’s my weight.”

And I talked about the fact that I always say I don’t love video but in my darkest and most truthful hour, I don’t like video because I don’t like looking overweight on camera, and so I just put it out there. The audio wasn’t to teach a big lesson and show my audience what to do instead; I just need to say it out loud so that there’s less shame and embarrassment around it. And then of course, I can’t help myself, I’ve got to say “And if you have something like that I want to invite you to be more open about it as well.” But just hearing myself saying it literally took some of the shame away, because let’s not be shameful about any of our insecurities or weaknesses or challenges. We’ve got to own it. So thank you for the opportunity to talk about this. I wasn’t planning on it but it kind of lend itself to exactly your question around that but I think we all have to have more heart in our marketing in a way that we feel good about sharing. We don’t have to be over the top or too mushy if we’re not that way, but there’s a way to be honest in the marketing that you do.

Andrea: Yes. Oh Amy that’s so powerful. I think that people oftentimes have a hard time finding the balance between the head and the heart. I think you mentioned this before but I definitely agree with you that you kind of have to have dealt with the heart a little bit before you start to share it real publicly. You don’t want to just throw out something out there before you’re ready or before you accomplished, you know, maybe gotten ahead on it a little bit. But for you to come out and be able to say that and bring something out of the dark and into the light and then show us that there hasn’t have to be shame around that. I mean, that is super empowering to the rest of us for sure.

Amy Porterfield: I love that and there was a fear and I talked a few friends about it, like I don’t want my strength as a marketing expert and trainer to be diminished by me being vulnerable around these topics which happens to be weight for me. And so I was nervous that this is going to make me look weak. And so I had to have some reassurance from some of my peers, which is so important to have that small circle around you that they could read what I wanted to say and say “No, that doesn’t make you look more weak, and yes, I do need to be honest about this or whatever.”

So I had to do some consulting with some peers of mine in the industry because you make a great point. I couldn’t just come out there and just vomit like “I’m struggling with my weight. I’m so unhappy. This is so horrible, goodbye!” Like that is offering no value to you or anybody else. So I did need to process it a little bit. I’m still deep in it, like I’m thinner because of it but I see what you’re saying that you got to process it a little bit and make sure that you know why you’re doing it. That was another thing.

Before I put it out there, I kept asking myself “Why I am doing this?” Part of it was selfishly, I wanted to eliminate that shame and the other part is I want audience to feel comfortable doing the same. But I got clear about that. I wasn’t doing it for likes or people to like me more in general or anything like that. But I need to be honest with myself before I did it. So yeah, I totally, I’m with you there.

Andrea: Yeah, I mean I wrote a memoir and I didn’t plan on it. I didn’t plan on sharing inner thoughts and feelings with the world. But as I got going, I realized that this is going to communicate something totally different to people in a totally different way and if I were just to outline it for them and give them the step-by-step because sometimes a step-by-step is important. But it’s not really reaching and touching the heart, it’s not as effective. It doesn’t do the transformational work that you wanted to do and so I love that you have moved more into this transparencies space, I kudos to you for having the courage to do that.

Amy Porterfield: Thank you!

Andrea: Have you noticed the difference in engagement with your students because of that?

Amy Porterfield: So it’s just happened. I didn’t put the episode out yet, however, I have noticed that when I get on video, especially with my private Facebook groups with my students, I am more at ease, just a little bit but it was very apparent. And I know that when I’m more at ease, I am more willing to share with my audience and accept and listen and all good stuff. So I can’t imagine it’s not going to make a difference.

Andrea: Yes, and I’m wondering too about just in general as you have shared more heart, has that changed the relationship with your audience?

Amy Porterfield: Yes, yes definitely. I feel that they have a sense that I’m their friend. Although, we’ve never met, when I met in person with people, more often than not, I will hear them say, I feel like you could be my bestfriend. And I know what that feels like with my people that I follow and feel really connected to and so that’s what I live for. I live for the fact that they have that connection. So 100%, they feel like that they know me. They love when I talk about with my mistakes because I’m more human to them, so yes 100%.

Andrea: We’re really dwelling on this voice stuff that I’m loving this. I have a couple more questions that I actually came from some of your students and one of those questions has to do with fear. How do you handle it now versus how you handled it maybe 10 years ago or five years ago?

Amy Porterfield: So how do I handle, say that again?

Andrea: How do you handle fear? Like if you have fear, soft out, you just now told us what you’re doing now which is more being transparent about it. How has that changed over the years?

Amy Porterfield: Before, I would let it consumed me to be quite honest so I’d be fearful. And what would happen is that it would stop me from experimenting in my business or taking big chances and so I played it really safe in the beginning. And here’s what happened, for the first two years in my business when I left corporate, I was doing social media marketing for big businesses as my own business.

So I was in the trenches working on their social media, posting for them, doing analytics all that good stuff. And I hated it and I was so fearful that I won’t be able to make money on my own that I wouldn’t have enough customers or have business model that didn’t work. I wanted to create online training program but I was so fearful because I didn’t know how to do it that I started to just take a bunch of clients for social media. So my fear led to building a business when leaving corporate for two years that I hated. I didn’t like having a bunch of clients. I didn’t like the business I created but my fear was driving my decisions I was making.

I’m not happy and this is why I left corporate, this isn’t worth it. The hours were longer. The pay wasn’t as good. There was no security in it and I didn’t like the people I was working with and so that’s finally when I said, “Okay, I see the fear. I hear the fear but I’m going to do it anyway.” And that’s when I let go all of my clients and started creating my online training programs. I’m still not sure that’s going to work out but I was just so tired of letting that fear drive me. So it stayed with me for the first two years of leaving corporate.

Andrea: Do you think that you’ve gotten more courageous as you confronted your fears?

Amy Porterfield: Oh yeah. It was like every time I would do it in spite of the fear, I would grow more as an entrepreneur, every single time. So now, I’m working on some stuff in my business and some things might not go as I had I hoped or planned and I’m fearful of that because they’re new things, new experiences. I’m very fearful in the sense I could feel the fear right now just talking about it and thinking about it. I could feel it kind of bubbly enough inside me.

And when I do, this is so very true because I was talking to my husband about this, I tell myself, no matter what happens, no matter the feelings that come up, the emotions come up, the circumstances of whatever happens, I know I can rise above up. It might not be pretty for a while. I might be in the fetal position for a little bit but I know based on my track record, I will be fine and that’s the cool thing about slowly but surely pushing past that fear. All of those little wins are evidence that you are going to be okay even if it’s a little tough for a while.

Andrea: So good. Let’s move in to talking a little bit more about strategy and tactics and this stuff that you really dive into so well on your own podcast and all of your trainings and things. I definitely want to make sure we touch on this before we’re done because this is your specialty. What do you say are the most important building blocks? If somebody is going to use their own personal brand or even if it’s not a personal brand but somehow they’re building a business around themselves, what are the things that you feel like are really important to understand or know about yourself so that you can move forward?

Amy Porterfield: One of the things that you want to understand about yourself in order to move forward, did I get the question right?

Andrea: [34:43]

Amy Porterfield: OK so a few things that you want to get really clear about is number #1, who is your ideal avatar? Who do you want to speak to and importantly, who do you want to ultimately work with, because getting clear about who you’re marketing to kind of like one of the biggest steps that you really need to figure out. You don’t have to have it all figured out but you got to start somewhere. And so getting that done on paper and saying “This is who I want to attract,” is one of those things that you just need to know in order to start building your business.

Another thing is you got to be clear on your messaging. So who is it that you want to talk to and what do you want to talk about? What do you want to stand for? What do you believe in? What do you love to teach because you know you can get people results, whether it’d be physical results or results in their business or their mindset or whatever it might be. You’ve got have a message that leads to something that will improve their life. And then from there, I think it’s also important that you start to think about what you want to sell.

So you might have not figured this out yet. A lot of my students don’t. They’re just building their list and putting out great value to attract that avatar but eventually sooner than later, I’d like to see you put a stake in the ground and say “This is what I want to sell.” And then you can decide from there on how do you want to package it? Do you want to do live workshops, masterminds, digital courses, live events, whatever that is? First, get clear on what is it? What kind of information or physical product do you want to sell and then we can talk about how you kind of wrap it all. But these are things that are important for you to consider because they really dictate the type of business model you want to create.

Andrea: And you mentioned building an email list and I know that this is such a foundational part of what you talk about. What exactly does that mean and why is it so important?

Amy Porterfield: Yes. So I would say that the energy of your business is directly tied to the strength of your email list. And the reason you need email list, which are just people signing up let’s say for your newsletter or for a really great freebie or checklist then get on your email list and then you start nurturing that relationship by communicating with them let’s say on a weekly basis. The reason why that email list is such a huge asset in your business is that you basically own it and you get to control it. Facebook changes tomorrow and algorithm changes and none of your stuff is getting seen.

Instagram is constantly changing right now because they’re growing so rapidly. They could change something and it totally takes away from the strategies you had in place. You never know. Never build your business on top of social media. I see social media as icing on the cake. But my foundation is what I sell and who I’m selling to, and who I’m selling to is my email lists. So I would never have a success of building a multimillion dollar business without my email list. That is cool response to my promotions the most.

They might see in on social media but with an email come and says “Here’s the link to buy now.” It’s way more powerful in email than it will ever be on social media, so you really do want make it a priority to focus on this building.


Andrea: Yes. When you do build your email list, you kind of guide people through a process from there. You don’t just send an email every once a while and throw something at every once in a while. You have a meticulous plan that guides people through process, to the point where they know whether or not they want to buy something from you. And that’s been really inspiring for me because I hate the idea of selling. I absolutely hate it and I think a lot of people do. But at the same time, when you look at it, you know when you’re offering something to somebody that could help them and it definitely changes things. Do you have any suggestions for us if we are looking at selling? Whys is it the people are so happy to buy from you?

Amy Porterfield: Hmmm, why are they so happy to buy from me? OK, so here’s a few things. I am very intentional with my marketing in general but also with my promotions, and so I think that people are willing to buy because I am not pushing the product or whatever it is I have in front of them in a way that they feel like “Oh my gosh, this feels aggressive,” because I don’t like that kind of marketing either. So what I mean by that is I ease into my marketing just like I ease in everything else I do in my life. So that means that I might start out with a really great blog post with a great freebie kind of get in their feet wet around the topic that I want to sell.

And then from there, I’m inviting them to a webinar and on the webinar, I give, give, give before I ask anything in return. And I think it’s important to remember. I have this motto when I do a webinar because on all my webinar I sell but on my webinar, I had this motto that says no matter if they buy or not, they walk away today feeling excited, inspired, and driven to take action no matter if they buy or not.

And so if I’m coming from a place of total service knowing that not everyone’s going to buy but I want them to walk away feeling really, really good about what they just learned that come across as trust and affinity with my audience. So I really do believe that it’s a mindset kind of thing. Give more than you take. And I always say I’ve got to earn the opportunity to ask for somebody to buy something and the important thing is giving great impeccable free content again and again and again just like you’re doing on this podcast. You give, give, give and when it’s time for you to say “I’ve got something incredible for you to check out, your audience is listening.

Andrea: Is that something that you kind of did naturally or did you figure that model out on your own? Or is it something that gleaned from other people along the way?

Amy Porterfield: I want. I definitely, you know, I would come back to Tony Robbins because he taught me so much about being an entrepreneur. But he also taught me that you want to model the best of the best, not copy them but model what they’re doing. There’s no need to reinvent the wheels especially in the market I’m in. It’s oversaturated anyway. People are doing a lot of stuff here.

And so because of that, I would watch Michael Hyatt, Marie Foleo, and some others in the industry that I knew were doing great things and I love their style and never felt like they were too pushy and so I studied. I made a big study of what are they doing. How are they saying it. When are they saying it. So I became a student of the type of marketing that felt good to me and I modeled it then I kind of made up my own.

Andrea: Yeah that’s some really good advice. You also seem to really get focused on not offering too many different things like I think you mentioned before to just have three offerings. Don’t have these whole smorgasbords of things you could pick from and maybe it’s not just three but you get really focused. Why is focus so important when it comes to your strategy for your product offering?

Amy Porterfield: You know a lot of people are chasing the next shiny thing and it’s so easy to say “You wanna do this, you wanna do that.” I have a good girlfriend that I watch her, and she’s not making the kind of money she wants to make and she has an audience. She has an email list and she is constantly changing directions, “I wanna do this. I wanna do that. What about this? I wanna create this.” And nothing gets completed and so I understand why that happens. I truly do, but I feel like the secret to success here is that you commit to something and you get to the finish line.

There are five things right now that I would love to be working on my business. But I’m not even entertaining the idea until I reach my commitment of finishing this program that I’m redoing. I’m literally down to like three videos but I can’t move on because I give myself my word and my team my word. And so quite honestly, my students are waiting for it. I’ve talked about it too much. That’s another thing. If you really want to hold yourself accountable and get really focused, tell your audience what you’re doing. And if you’re a person of integrity which I’m assuming you are, you’re not going to be away from that.

These things that I’m doing, I’m redoing a program, I told my audience “Who’s going to be out there?” And quite honestly, I said I’m going to be out there a little sooner than I was able to do. So now, I’m really committed to get it done because I actually miss the small deadline. So share with your audience, it will keep you more accountable. But I do feel that it’s just one thing at a time get to completion and that’s where confidence comes in as well and then when completed that “Alright, here I go.” There’s major momentum in that.

Andrea: Yes, yes. That’s something I definitely took away from you. OK this has been amazing. If you could just say one thing to the person that’s listening, and some of the people listening might already thinking about doing something. They might be doing something on their own. They might have their business or thinking about doing a business. There might be also some people in the audience who actually have some really amazing expertise in their job but maybe they toyed with this idea of doing something different. What would you have to say to them about what it’s like or why you would encourage them to explore the idea of becoming an entrepreneur?

Amy Porterfield: I would say that I don’t think you’ve ever experienced true freedom in your creativity, in your time, in your effort until you are the one calling the shots. And I also know it’s not for everybody. I have some friends that would hate being an entrepreneur because there’s more uncertainties. It’s a little bit scary at times when you’re just starting out. However, if you have that desire to call the shots and you don’t want to answer to anybody and you want complete freedom with your creativity.

And one more thing, you want to build a lifestyle that you absolutely love. I believe when you do entrepreneurialship right that the sky is the limit. You do get to free that life that you want. It’s funny a lot of the time there’s something is going kind of tough in my business, I’ll complain to my husband, Hobie, and I’ll say “Uh, I’ve got to record one more video and I’m gonna be working till 11:00 o’clock tonight. And he’ll say “You should talk to your boss about that.” And I realized, “Wait a second. I’m creating a silly deadline.” And is like “What am I doing?” And it puts me right back into “I’m calling the shots and I’m not working ‘til 11:00 o’clock tonight.”

So anyway, it really comes back to freedom and creativity and really owning your lifestyle however you want it to be. And I do believe that you are held back in corporate in that sense. So if you have those desires, I really hope that anybody listening is going to at least explore them.

Andrea: Alright, Amy. So if people are wanting to find you, it’s not going to be difficult but where would you like to direct them?

Amy Porterfield: Thanks a lot for asking. I’m at amyporterfield.com, and my podcast is Online Marketing Made Easy.

Andrea: Thank you so much for being here today and thank you for your voice of influence in my own life and my business and the ripple effects that that has in other people not just me but all of your students and the people that they serve as well.

Amy Porterfield: Oh I’m so very happy to be here. I’m so glad we have found each other and we are friends and I hope this little podcast audio makes its way that people I’ve seen away that makes a big impact. So thanks again!

 

END

 

 

 

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How to Use Your Perspective to Help Shift a Global Conversation with Wes Gay

Episode 26

Wes Gay is a writer, entrepreneur, and marketing consultant. He is a StoryBrand Certified Copywriter and Guide, helping businesses clarify their marketing message and strengthen their position in the marketplace. As a regular contributor to Forbes.com, he discovers how millennials change the workplace. He lives with his wife and two young sons in the suburbs of Atlanta, GA.

In this episode we discuss:

  • How to learn from a situation even when you feel pigeon holed in it
  • The not-so-complicated way to bridge any generation or relational gap in your company or life
  • How to use your perspective to help shift a global conversation
  • STORYBRAND book
  • UNFROZEN book
  • Find a special gift for you from Wes at www.wesgay.com/voi

 

Transcript

Hey, hey! It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. Today, I have Wes Gay on the line. He’s somebody that has actually helped me with my own copy, which means the words that I’m using to try to figure out what it is exactly that I’m trying to say I do. I will talk about that a little bit more later.

Andrea: But Wes, it’s good to have you on the Voice of Influence podcast!

Wes Gay: Thanks, Andrea. I remember, it was five or six months ago when you and I first met and worked together. You already had the ideas for this podcast so it’s been really fun to watch and the last couple of months as it’s grown and you’ve got such great traction and had such great feedback. So I’m really excited for you. I’m glad to be on today.

Andrea: Well, thank you, and I appreciate your voice of influence for me. I always really appreciate that. That’s one of the things that I love about starting the podcast. I don’t know how long this will go. But so far, I’ve pretty much interviewed people that really have had an impact on me. So I’m just really glad that we could connect today. So Wes, why don’t you tell the listeners what exactly you’re up to? What are the different facets of your job, your career right now?

Wes Gay: Sure. So it really breaks down into three lanes, is the best way I can think to describe it. The first one is, and this is actually how Andrea and I met, through an organization called StoryBrand. I’m one of their certified copywriters as well as one of the certified guides. That means I help business owners and leaders and influential folks like Andrea use seven basic principles of storytelling to create a clear message so that they can resonate better with their customers and ultimately grow their business.

I’ve done it with both profit organizations in the billion-dollar range even down to, all the way, including different nonprofits, established ones and ones that have just launched out. So that’s the bulk of what I do, spending a lot of time on the phone or on video calls or helping people work, what exactly is their message? What are they trying to communicate? And how do we do it better so that they can help more people and serve more folks with the good products or services that they offer. So that’s the Lane One.

Lane Two, I am a Forbes.com contributor. I’m one of the paid writers for the Under 30 section, which means I specifically cover millennials. Typically, when I say the word millennials, I can just feel everybody’s eyes rolling. They’re like, “Oh gosh, we’re talking about millennials again.” I just sense it.

But what I specifically talk about is millennials in the workplace, how it’s kind of shifted the nature of workplace culture and benefits. I’ve talked to a lot of really interesting millennials who are leading some really interesting companies and doing great work. So that’s Lane Two.

Lane Three then is speaking. And the reason I separate Lane Three is because sometimes I speak on the marketing and the messaging side. Sometimes I speak on the millennials side. It just depends on who the audience is and what’s they’re asking for. But those are the three lanes or the three primary things that I do really every day.

Andrea: So do you see a connection or what is the connection for you between StoryBrand and the millennial message? Do you have a connection there in your mind?

Wes Gay: Yeah, it is. Rarely do those two lanes overlap. Nobody is really calling me to do StoryBrand for millennials, which is fine because it’s such a hard thing to do, because millennials are the largest generation in history. They’re the most diverse generation in history. So to try to pinpoint them down to any one overarching stereotype is impossible.

Andrea: Nobody wants to be thrown into a box like that.

Wes Gay: No, nobody does.

Andrea: Especially millennials.

Wes Gay: Oh gosh, you’re not kidding. I’m right in the middle of them so I get it. To me, the way it overlaps is StoryBrand is very consumer-focused. So what I’m trying to do is help people use a framework to create a clear message to communicate to their consumers, because that’s how they grow their company. Now, in the Forbes side, what I’m discovering is that companies needed to do a better job, and they’re doing a better job of communicating their story to their employees.

So at the end of the day, it’s two different side of storytelling. It’s an external story. What are we telling the people who we want to buy our product or services? And then it’s also an internal story. What do we want the story of our company to be so that we can engage, specifically millennials, because that’s what I talk about, but it’s also because this is the largest generation in history. It already represents a third of the American workforce. It will represent half of the American workforce in just a few years.

One of the individuals I’ve gone and talked to is the Chief Human Resources officer at Hilton. They have 350,000 employees worldwide. And Hilton projects within the next three years that 75% of the entire workforce will be millennial. That’s unheard of to have that many people… I mean, I’m from public school so I’m a little slow in doing that kind of math. I have to use my calculator.

That’s over 260,000 people who are going to be within a 20-years span and age. So how does Hilton communicate who they are and tell their stories and company in a way that engages and really recruits and retains the top talent so that they can continue to grow their company? So it’s two different sides of the story, one is internal and one is external.

Andrea: Thank you for tying all that altogether.

Wes Gay: You’re welcome.

Andrea: Okay. So I do want to come back to StoryBrand because that’s how I got connected with you in the first place, and I’m definitely a fan. But also part of this podcast, the reason why we’re doing it is because I want people to know that people that are in the space of “I’m doing what I feel called to do based on my gifting,” which is where you’re at right now. How did you get to that point?

Because so many of us grew up thinking that we needed to go to college and then we needed to go get a job. And then we kind of get stuck in this rut of being in maybe a job that doesn’t fit, or that sort of thing. Or maybe we feel a different kind of calling in our lives. So I’m really curious, Wes, what was the switch for you? When did you start moving in this direction?

Wes Gay: The general answer is by accident. I’m not one of these guys who’s like, “Hey, you can take my course to follow me to your dream career path.” I have no any idea what that is. So my journey is pretty simple. My dad has been a worship pastor in Southern Baptist Churches for about 35 years, and he’s still doing it. He’s probably going to step into eternity as soon as the choir special is done one Sunday. That’s probably how he’s going to go. My mom said on Easter Sunday, he looked at his Apple watch after the choir sang and his heart was like 108 or something crazy, because he just gets so excited about that.

So I grew up in that world. I grew up in church. I went to a Christian college. I started working in churches while in college and then after that I spent about 10 or 11 years working in churches and nonprofits in all kinds of roles. But they typically wound up in marketing and communications even though I have a music undergrad degree, which is totally pointless. I’m never going to get paid to do music ever again, but I’m one of those people who has a degree.

So I started, I thought, “Well, this is where I feel I’m good at.” I’ve always known the church world and I’ve always lived in that space. Then when I was in college, I was in a couple of music groups, scholarship groups that performed in churches all over the southeast, really. So we were in some of the biggest churches every weekend.

So that’s the world I was very familiar with and I thought, “Well, I need to go serve the local church.” So I left college, started working for a nonprofit about a year then went and served. Got involved with the local church doing marketing and communications, because that’s just where my mind went and that’s just was my natural bend.

Andrea: How did you know that? How did you know that your mind just went there?

Wes Gay: I just did. Like for me, it was a bit intuitive. And you talk about millennials getting pigeonholed. I got pigeonholed a lot because my dad… we grew up in a small churches, so when I was in like eighth grade, as I say I was voluntold into media ministry because my dad was over that. He’s the music guy. So I started doing the media production stuff in like eighth grade.

And I’ve always been interested. I’m a tech guy. I love gizmos and gadgets and all that stuff. So I always just had a natural bend for it. So what wound up happening a lot is, early on, I got stuck in this media role of production. So like how do you plan a service? How do you make sure the lights are working? Get the sound right, and all this really highly technical stuff that I knew how to do.

But for me it was one of those things that I could do it but I would be exhausted and just completely wiped out when I got done. And it wasn’t interesting day to day. I just dreaded when I had to go do it. I could do it, and I do pretty good at it, I just hated it. So I got pigeonholed in that space and tried to get out.

So one of the ways, I ended up going to another church, eventually, and doing a similar thing – media. Then I kind of took over communications. Because, again, just for whatever reason, my natural kind of bent is towards how do you communicate things. How do you make things clear? I’m not really a fluff guy so when you talk about in the space of copywriting, I’m way more in the direct response space. I’m just not with the fluff. And so we just drive right at it.

So I would notice anytime I would preach or anytime I would lead a marketing meeting or communications meeting, people would always affirm me. But when I would do production, when I would run a video shoot, when I would plan a Sunday service, when I would get graphics done, ,all that kind of stuff, they would always compliment the product.

Andrea: Oh, I like that. It’s a really interesting observation.

Wes Gay: So I realized, like the last church I was at, I was the media guy but we went over a year without a senior pastor. We run about 1500 on Sundays. So like in most the churches, the Sunday after Thanksgiving when nobody is there anyway. So I’m like, “Well, somebody’s gotta preach because we still have to have church. Hey, Wes, you’re here why don’t…” They go “Wes that was a great video,” or, “That looks great,” or, “That XYZ was great. I really appreciate that.”

I started to realize that dichotomy of, okay, the things that people are personally affirming me on or the things that actually energize me, I can do them all day long. Yeah, I’m tired but I’m not drained, and those are two are different things. So once I started to realize that more and more, I thought, well, this is actually what I’m pretty good at. I began to get really comfortable with it and say, you know what? Because I’m good at this, I also am not good at these things, and started to delineate where I’m good and where I’m not.

Andrea: Okay, you were pigeonholed into doing media and what not. Did you ever feel guilt over the fact that you didn’t want to do that? Because I think some people do. I think some people are like, “Oh I’m in this thing. I’m doing this way. I’m doing the right thing. I’m supposed to be here, but I really don’t want to be here, but I should be here because…” And they kind of end up with really a martyr kind of complex, “I shouldn’t enjoy what I’m doing.”

Wes Gay: I never felt that way. I always felt frustrated because, again, I thought I’m doing the things I feel like I’m supposed to be doing, or I feel like I’m taking the steps I’m supposed to take. I’m just making the progress I think I should make. So like in the middle of all that, in January of 2014, I started doing Seminary Online, thinking what if I get a masters degree? That will help me break out of this rut of the media guy and tech boy who everybody thinks all I can contribute is changing batteries on a microphone, or I’m the guy that gets yelled at on Sunday, or beat up Monday morning because the guitar was too loud or whatever.

So I thought, that’s not me at all. I don’t enjoy that. And my personality is not bent to really thrive in that environment. I went to seminary distance degree for two years, and really flew through it. I thought, well, this is the next step. But I just kept getting frustrated. And I would be told by different leadership, “Hey, if you do these things then you can move in the roles that are better fit for you.”

Again, in the comparison trap of 2017 and before with social media, I’d see all these friends of mine, they were doing what they wanted to do. This is exactly what they say it in college that they were going to go do now they’re doing it. So for me, it was more like frustration and annoyance in like, “Why not me?” I didn’t really ever feel guilty about it. I just got annoyed with it.

Which ultimately led to, we had a really… unfortunately, for your listeners who don’t know this, there’s a lot of bad experiences that can happen in churches, and we had a really bad one in the church staff, which put me on an opportunity to take a different path, and say, “Okay, God, where are we going next? What is our next step? Where do we need to go?” That eventually led us to StoryBrand.

I’ve been reading down on Miller’s books for 15 years, or whenever Blue Like Jazz first came out. In fact, when clients do a video call with me now, I’ve actually got two of his books on the shelf behind me. It was pure accident, but I realized that one day when I was on a client call.

But I’ve always been a fan of his work, always been a fan of his writing. I was a big fan of the StoryBrand process when I started hearing about it even when I was on the church staff. Then I went and I thought, you know what? I think this is the next step.

So I took the plunge, made the investment in a copywriter certification and that’s opened up doors I would never even imagine. I mean, sometimes I sit back and go, “This is a little ridiculous because I’m a guy with a church background from the seminary and I got, literally, one of my clients is like $1.4 billion-a-year company, and they’re asking me all kinds of marketing questions. And they’ve got people who have been at some of the top brands on the planet on their marketing team. They’re looking at me like I’m the expert. So I now have to be the expert.

So it’s crazy how it’s… and again, I’m not going to run Facebook ads and say, “Here are seven steps to find your true path for life,” because I don’t know. I’m still kind of in the middle of that myself. But to see how it’s pivoted and even my church experience is a huge asset to me now in the space I’m in. And you know, as you were growing up, when you’re in that space, you’re very much on the frontline, so to speak.

You’re constantly dealing with people, but you’re also serving people and helping people and that’s kind of your bend. So it’s that mindset and mentality that’s so natural for me, because that’s the world I came out of, it’s been a huge asset for me in the marketing space. Whether and regardless of faith background, it’s just the mentality of how you approach and serve.

So one thing I would tell your audience is, if you’re frustrated in where you are now because you don’t really feel like that’s where you’re supposed to be, at least figure out what can you take away from where you are now and what are you learning that can help you in the future. For me, it was how do I interact with and approach and deal and serve my clients? That’s a lot of my perspective on that comes from by background in the church.

Now, could I go back to that one day? Not production, heaven help me. Nobody wants to pay me money to do that anymore. But it’s that mentality and kind of those things that I learned, and all that process that I think really has helped me get to where I am on the journey today.

Andrea: You know, I see a thread and I had a theory before I started this podcast, but I definitely see the thread that people are often drawn to and are able to move down a path toward perhaps their calling after something really difficult happens. A lot of times, it’s that pain point that really moves them and gives them that permission or sets them on that path where they’re like, “No. No. Now, I need to really figure this out.” It sounds like it happened to you too.

Wes Gay: It did. And where I’m at now, I’m only 30, I turned 30 a few months ago, and I said for years, even right out of college, I was serving in a nonprofit that worked with a lot of churches all over the country. And even at 22/23 I thought, you know what? One day, I wanna be able to serve a lot of churches, because I grew up in it. I’ve seen the good, bad, and the ugly. I mean, I know all sides of it and I thought, I wanna be in a place… But like most people, I thought, well, I’m not old enough yet. Like the people who are doing that are in their 40’s, 50’s and 60’s. I’m 22/23.

So now, I have the opportunity to be of a voice of influence to people who are older than me. But because of my experience already and the things I’ve gone through and the things I’ve kind of watched and observations and some opportunities I’ve been able to have so, already, I’m now able to do that much sooner than I ever thought I would.

So for those of your audience who’s younger, I would say two things. One, don’t discredit where you’re at in your own journey because you can be more influential than you realize. And two, and I was going to say this earlier, everybody gets frustrated in your 20’s. So it’s not a uniquely millennial problem. Everybody who’s ever been in their 20’s have been frustrated about their life and career at some point.

But what I finally realized one day is that, I was about like 25/26. Lord willing, with good health, I’ve probably got 40, 45, or more years of fulltime work in me easy, maybe longer because I don’t know that I could really be fully retired. That sounds miserable and boring to me. So I thought at that point, I have almost double of what I’ve lived so far left in potential working years. So if I don’t hit that job in a year or so that I really want, I’m okay. Like I’ve got 40 or 50 more years to figure this out, so I just need to calm down and just keep pushing forward and then keep taking opportunities where they come.

Andrea: Sounds good advice for yourself.

Wes Gay: Yeah.

Andrea: So Wes, how long ago was it that you went to the StoryBrand workshop? Because I think now we should probably give some context for that and explain even what StoryBrand is.

Wes Gay: Yeah. I went to StoryBrand with what they call the copywriter certification in late October 2016. I didn’t realize that I actually had been a copywriter. I just didn’t realize that’s what I did. The easiest way to define a copywriter was the definition for over a little hundred years ago which says, “You’re a salesman in print.” What that means is you’re trying to write words, write phrases and create a message that will sell somebody on something.

So like in the churches, I was trying to sell people on the ideas that we were talking about, whether in sermons, or I was trying to sell people the idea of coming to our events, or getting involved in our small groups, or whatever it was. I was trying to convince them of something by what I was writing. So I already had that skill set. I just didn’t realize, I didn’t have a way to define it.

So I went to the copywriter workshop because people were going to StoryBrand and saying, “Hey, I now know what my company’s message is. I know how to talk to my customers. I’m just not a good writer. And when I write it, it sounds terrible, so can you help me?” So they created a certification.

StoryBrand, I guess like you said to give a context to that is a workshop created by a guy named Donald Miller. He’s got six or seven, I should know the number. It’s six or seven New York Times Bestselling Books under his belt. He’s been a writer for 15 or 20 years. His stuff is great. In fact, one of my favorite books of all time, and he doesn’t pay me to say this, but one of my favorite books of all time is called A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Have you read that one?

Andrea: I haven’t read that one.

Wes Gay: It actually points to the origins of StoryBrand if you read it. It’s fascinating and such a well-written book. It will really change your perspective on a lot of life. I read it seven or eight years ago. But anyway, StoryBrand takes the seven basic principles of storytelling and walks businesses and leaders through it to create a clear message where your customer is the focus of your marketing so that you can tell them that you can communicate how you solve the problems that they face.

So an easy example is think of all these dumb infomercials that are on TV. When they talk about the features and benefits, it’s always about, “Are you frustrated by X? Are you tired of shedding tears when you chop an onion?” Well, yeah I am, actually. “Well, we have the No-Tears Onion Chopper Matic 3000,” and you’re like, “I need the No-Tears Onion Chopper Matic 3000 now because I don’t wanna shed tears when I cut onions, because I shouldn’t have to.” Because they’re now marketing in a way that it says, “This is a problem I have. They understand my problem and they can fix my problem.” That’s when customers engage.

I help companies take their message and turn it into websites and email copy and other marketing collateral they need. Then fast forward to April 2017, I became one of the first StoryBrand certified guides. So I’m one of about 35 folks that StoryBrand has spent about five days in Nashville, Tennessee. StoryBrand has certified us to be able to work as coaches and consultants with people who have either gone through StoryBrand or just familiar with it.

So I’ve got one lady, for example, who’s doing weight loss coaching for busy career women. I’ve got one client that does high-end security camera installs in the southeast. I’ve got clients covering all the spectrum, but what I do is I literally just walk them through these basic principles and we just keep talking about it and try to find and dig into as much as clarity as we can to help them find the message that’s going to resonate best with their audience. Because what I want to do deep down is I want to help good people tell better stories so that they can grow their business and be more generous with the ones around them.

I don’t want to help jerks. I almost helped a jerk a few months ago and didn’t realize it, until about a week ago. I found out the guy he actually hired told me that the guy I thought I was going to work with turned out to be a jerk. I was like, “Well, I’m glad I didn’t work with him because then I’d wasted my time and that wouldn’t have really fulfilled my purpose. I wanna help good people tell better stories so they can grow their business and be more generous with the ones around them.”

Andrea: That’s good. I like your…what do you call that? For me, I would call that a core message, but I mean…

Wes Gay: Yeah. Simon Sinek calls it your ‘why’ or your purpose or your vision, and that’s not something I started with. I think sometimes, we get in this mood of, “If I’m gonna do something, I’ve got to define my purpose from Day 1.” I didn’t. And finally, it was like six, seven months in, I thought, I don’t know that I’ve ever done this. So I sat down one day and started thinking about why do I like doing this so much. Not like the actual work itself but deeper than that. What is it I’m most excited about when I do this every day? And that’s what I came up with.

Andrea: Yeah, I like that a lot. So how does that phrase or that sentence help you? What does it do for you in the way that you approach your business and life?

Wes Gay: So in my business, I want to work with good people. I feel like I’m pretty good at sensing who’s somebody I really want to spend time talking to, because in my work, I spend a lot of time talking to my clients. So I want to have somebody who’s really good at what they do and they’re great people, like they’re somebody I’d want to have lunch with or somebody I’d want to hang out with for a little bit. The old Road Trip Test. Do you want to take a 4 or more hour road trip with them?

And then how do I help them tell a better story. They’ve got a good product, they’ve got a good service, they’ve got a good message, they’ve got a good opportunity but they just need a little help getting across the line. They have it in them, I just need to help them get to where they want to go. When you do that well then you’re able to grow your business, and I tell people all the time, like this is going to sound so basic, boring, whatever. Sometimes people think it sounds bad. But some people think when I say this, they think it’s not good. And really what my job is is to help people make money, period.

And I tell people that sometimes and they’re taken aback, especially people with faith backgrounds. Like it’s not a bad thing to make money, it’s what you do with it is what matters. What I want to do is help people make more money so they can be more generous with those around them, whether it’s generous to their employees, whether it’s generous with their family, generous with their friends, generous with charitable organizations that’s what it is, because that’s what I want in my own life. I want to be able to give more and help those around me more than I could in the past. So if I can grow my business by telling about our story then I can be more generous with those in my life.

Andrea: Yeah, it’s like there’s an immediate goal, which is making more money, but it has a greater purpose in order to be able to be more generous.

Wes Gay: Yeah. And money is not a bad thing. Money just gives you opportunities, opportunities to do good stuff or opportunities to do bad stuff. Money is amoral. It’s just what you do with it is what makes it good or bad.

Andrea: Why do people come to you to work with you about this? I mean, are most of the people that you work with, are they people that have already gone through the StoryBrand program? Now, that you’re a certified guide, you can just teach them the process as well?

Wes Gay: Yeah, so people who I typically work with are somewhat… maybe they’ve gone through the StoryBrand workshop or they’re somewhat familiar with it. So for example, Donald Miller in the StoryBrand process is really well known in the Dave Ramsey circles with the EntreLeadership and all that.

So I work with a few people who are familiar with the StoryBrand but haven’t gone through it. So I kind of walk them through it. I don’t actually teach them the seven principles but I’ll help them create the message they need by just asking them a ton of questions. I mean, I spent two hours on a video call last week with a lawyer in Texas talking about his practice. And I don’t know… all my understanding of the legal industry is when I used to watch Law and Order marathons, so it’s not accurate at all.

But I had to dive into his business, his customers, people he serves, how he grows his business, what his message is, what’s resonates, all the stuff. So now I’m going to create some messaging for him that would then turn into a website. Just about everybody I work with has either gone through StoryBrand or is familiar with it in some way. I’ve decided, and I’ve gotten really comfortable with saying, you know what? I’m just not going to work with people who aren’t familiar with it, because I have to explain to them the value of it.

Andrea: Right, you don’t want to sell it.

Wes Gay: I don’t. And the beauty of it is the StoryBrand has done so much marketing with their podcast and some of the other things, a lot of the kinds of people I want to work with are already familiar with it.

Like Donald Miller talked about StoryBrand in an event in May with a 100,000 people simulcast worldwide. There’s plenty of people in that space who are going to come and need somebody. If they talk to me, that’s probably the kind of person I want to work with because they’re going to be a good person. They’re not going to be like trying to sell… I don’t know. I’m trying to think of something that’s not good. They’re not trying to sell more drugs or not trying to sell you, traffic more guns across the border. Like they’re doing good work and they’ve got good solutions that people need that can help their lives and I can help them do that.

Andrea: That’s exactly the reason why I came to you because I took the StoryBrand course about two years ago now. My husband and I went down to Nashville and we went through the whole thing. At that time, I really was totally and clear about what my message even was. I think that was something that I didn’t realize that I needed to clarify before coming to the process, before coming to the framework. I didn’t even know exactly what my calling was or what I was trying to accomplish. So for the next year and a half…well, I actually used the StoryBrand framework to help me write my book. That was helpful.

Wes Gay: Yeah. Great book, by the way. I read on a plane to LA earlier this year, and that was great.

Andrea: Thank you so much! It really means a lot to me that you took the time to do that. I don’t know why, but I still feel surprised when people say that they’ve read it. Isn’t that funny?

Wes Gay: You should because it’s really good.

Andrea: Thank you. I think it was better because I had gone through this process, because I had an idea of the StoryBrand elements. So I think that that really made a difference. But then it really became a question for me what is it exactly that I’m trying to accomplish here? What is my “why”? What is my core message? And what am I really trying to help people do, and all that sort of thing?

So that’s when I came to you. I had an idea of something. We kind of worked it through. Then I thought we had something and then you came back to me a couple of weeks later and said, “I read your book. I think you need to change things a little bit and focus more on this writing thing.” I was like, oh man, I really appreciated that feedback and just the process and working with you. So thank you for that.

Wes Gay: You’re welcome.

Andrea: So how did you get involved in Forbes? How did you get to the point where you’re actually writing for them?

Wes Gay: So I first heard from Forbes a little over a year ago. I got an email from one of their editors at the Under 30 section and they had just launched the Under 30 section to focus on millennials six months before. So I had written a few pieces for a blog site that’s somewhat popular. The young lady who runs it is pretty influential in the millennial conversation nationally.

So I’d written a few things there. They had seen my work and said, “Hey, would you write a guest post?” And I thought, well, that is the easiest yes of all time. So I did and then I wrote another one, and then it opened to more conversations about being one of their contributors because they were trying to build that section up and were looking for contributors.

So I think I brought a little bit different perspective. I’m not the typical voice in the millennial conversation. Most people who are millennials like me will say, “You know, millennials is the greatest generation ever and old people are dumb and just get out of the way because you messed everything up and we’re just going to fix it all.” Just like “I’m a millennial. Hear me roar,” kind of thing which is complete and utter nonsense.

And then you have the other end of the spectrum who tends to be the older crowd who says, “Well, you bunch of kids just sit down. You’re terrible. You just clean, you just wipe, you just polish your participation trophies and sit down.”

Well, that’s not really true either. We fall more in the middle and so I tend to be a bit of a contrarian voice to a lot of the nonsense that’s out there. I know some of your listeners who are business leaders and business owners and managers and all that. You’ve probably read millions, seemingly, articles about millennials and most of them are just fluff.

Andrea: And what is fluff about them?

Wes Gay: It’s bad data. That’s the biggest one. Everybody has got a study they can cite, but most of the studies, when you actually read them, are incomplete or inaccurate. I read one a few months ago in a really reputable business site. The headline said, “Millennials would delete the phone app instead of SnapChat.” And I thought, well, that’s not true. Let me read it.

So I read the article and the actual data said like a third of millennials 18-24, so college students, use SnapChat more than their phone app. So if they had to delete one or the other, they would delete SnapChat. I thought well, that is completely and utterly misleading. And any leader who just sees that headline thinks they need to go all-in on the SnapChat strategy, for example, to reach millennials when they’re just talking about college students. They’re not talking about those of us who have kids and who’ve had to test drive a minivan.

You know, 50 million millennials in this country are between 27 and 37, so everything that comes with that stage of life going into your 30’s is who the millennials really are, more so than anything else now. And so a lot of it is people I know. It’s just basically is that they’re to get clicks, they’re trying to drive traffic, they’re trying to be the next big thing to something to go viral, and a lot of it is not just true.

When I talk to leaders in companies, what’s said online is not what they believe. It’s also not what they see in their own companies. These are not like Mom & Pop shops of eight people. These are companies of 10, 20, 50, 100, 400,000 people who are telling me this. So when it comes to generational issues, a lot of it is overplayed, a lot of it is nonsense. What we’ve done is we’ve confused what I call these principles of humanities, like everybody struggles with entitlement.

If you go back to the gospels in the Bible, in what had James and John asked Jesus in the last days of His life, “Hey, Jesus, which one of us gets to sit at your right hand?” If that doesn’t reek of entitlement, I don’t what does. A participation trophy for Little League is not entitlement. So that’s part of the problem. I think for too long we’ve had the wrong conversation and nobody is changing the conversation yet, but it’s starting to shift.

I think what we’re seeing in the millennial conversation is people are getting more clear on what they’re actually talking about. They’re realizing a lot of it is nonsense and a lot of it is just really, really unhelpful. I think data is great because a lot of the stuff I write is driven on data, but it’s good data from valid sources. It’s not like Jimmy Dandy’s Jerky Shop saying, “52% of millennials prefer beef jerky.” Well, yeah, he’s trying to sell beef jerky, so of course he’s going to say that.

Some of the most reputable organizations in the world are saying, “Hey, we’ve surveyed tens of thousands of people, here’s the data we’ve come back with.” Okay, that makes sense. So again, I feel like I’m going back to high school, just check your sources. That’s the biggest thing _____ when reading about millennials.

Andrea: Right. That’s really interesting. I think that there are a number of people listening, so the Influencer that’s listening right now is probably somebody who wants to dig into a conversation and wants to see a conversation shift, like you’re talking about wanting to see this millennial conversation shift. How do you see your voice contributing to the shift of that and what kind of advice would you have for other people that are wanting to shift conversations?

Wes Gay: Yeah, I can only speak from my perspective. So my perspective is not that of a millennial living in… and I live in Atlanta, Georgia. So I’m not living in midtown Atlanta in a loft taking Uber everywhere and not owning a car. I live in the suburbs. We have a fenced-in yard. We have a dog. We have two kids. We drive SUVs. So I can only speak from my perspective, So because of where I sit, and I understand it’s an incomplete view, but I also understand in my specific instance, I can speak from where I sit because it is a rapidly expanding perspective for my generation.

So I can start talking about these things and point out things and people go, “Oh, yeah, you’re right.” There is a big difference between older and younger millennials, for example. A lot of older millennials now are parents, so we are different. Half of our phones have apps that are like kids’ books and drawing games and racing games and farm animal games and all that as opposed to the latest social media network that’s out.

So what I’ve done is I have decided, okay, this is where I sit. This is what I see is based on where I live every single day. So because I understand I have that lens, I just start talking to through that lens. What happens is, inevitably, you’re going to attract people who already feel what you’re saying. They just don’t have the way necessarily to say it. You’re giving them the language from your voice, you’re literally putting words in their mouth to help them understand what they’re seeing and the frustrations they have.

I do this thing every now and then on Facebook where I’ll have a statement that says, “Younger millennial” and then some goofy thing that somebody in their early 20’s says. And I’ll say “Older millennial” this is what somebody in their 30’s would say. For example, a younger millennials says, “I have 10 pairs of fake glasses because it helps me with my Instagram image.” An older millennial says, “Hey, did you know Costco now has their own brand of contacts?” Which is what I said about three months ago when I “discovered” Costco had their own brand of contacts, I was really excited how cheap they were.

So I’ve gotten countless messages from people, which started as a joke. I did it almost every week. Where people are engaging with that and they’re resonating with it because it’s helping them process and understand things from their own perspective in a way that they didn’t know how to say it. So I would say, if you’re trying to shift the conversation, I would love to say, first, make sure that conversation is shifting. I have verified my perspective with other people that I respect who are also in this space who say, “Yeah, I do see these trends happening.”

Then also Facebook is the best way on the planet to test those ideas. You don’t have to go on to blog. You don’t have to on to a bunch of content. Start putting some things on your Facebook posts a couple of times a week to kind of share your perspective as you’re trying to shift the conversation and see what conversation happens around your voice and around your perspective and then go from there.

If people are resonating with it, if people are engaging with it, if people are saying, “Yeah, you know, you’re right.” If you’re getting direct messages, private messages that say, “You know what, I really appreciate you saying that because that’s exactly what I felt. I thought I was the only one who felt that way, or I didn’t necessarily know how to say it.” So that’s where I would start. Just start giving little drops of your opinion or your perspective on Facebook and then see how it resonates with people and the more it resonates then see how you can expand that conversation, whether through a blog or a YouTube channel or whatever it is.

Andrea: That’s great advice, because I can definitely attest to the fact that I also, that’s exactly how I got started in, truly, Facebook. It was the exactly same thing. I was like, well, I’m just going to start throwing out some ideas on Facebook and just see how this lands. And start actually putting my voice out there in a way. Even though it was just an experiment, it still was really hard for me. And I don’t know that it is for everybody, but for me it was a little intimidating, because if I put my voice out there, what are people going to think, and that sort of thing. But the more that I had people messaging me and saying things like, “Oh my goodness, I’ve never been able to say it like that but that’s exactly what I was thinking.”

Wes Gay: Yeah, because if you are an Influencer, you’re helping people live better, do better, be better, whatever it is. How are you trying to help them by the problem you solve for yourself or the problems that you can’t solve based on your skills and experience?

Facebook is great way because it’s a community of people that you should know, unless you’ve added friends you don’t know. But it’s people who are going to probably support you. You’re not going to get bombarded with a ton of trolls. And it’s people who are going to be honest and say, “Yeah, that makes total sense,” or “I get it.” The best part is it’s free. You can do it anywhere.

I mean, Facebook is a great testing ground to make sure that your perspective and how… like if you what to shift the conversation, to make sure that that is a conversation that is indeed shifting and you’re going to be one of the ones leading that direction.

Andrea: I like that a lot. Okay, so one last question about the millennial thing. I’ve heard about this generation crossover…

Wes Gay: I’ve heard people call them “cuspers”. My favorite one is people who say like me, born in the ‘80s, we call ourselves Generation Oregon Trail, because we played the game as kids. But I’ve read all that kind of stuff. What it really boils down to is we have played up the generational distinctions a little too much. Again, it goes back to there are certain things that everybody wants because they’re human, but the difference with millennials that nobody has really quantified well is how technology has changed everything, and how the sheer size of the generation has changed everything.

For example, Generation X, there’s like 60 to 65 million people in that generation so the generation out from millennials. Depending who you read, there’s anywhere between 85 and 92 million millennials in the U.S. So literally, you’re talking anywhere from 20 to 32 million people difference between back-to-back generations. All of those people hit the workforce about the same time as with the millennials. So you have these massive waves so problems get magnified, right?

So if you have a light rain in your house, you don’t have any idea you have a roof leak. But when you have a massive thunderstorm, you know really fast when you have a leak. So millennials hit the workplace, it’s more like a thunderstorm because there’s so many at one time. So that’s the numbers game. And then technology has changed everything too. I mean, we know the digital world has changed our lives but what we forget is that we grow up in a middle school, high school, and college with the device that came out 10 years ago called the iPhone and where we said, “Hey, you can tell the world everything that’s going on in your life. Do Facebook and Twitter. They’re still brand new. Nobody will understand it yet. So just live your life.” And we did and we lived out the immaturity of our adolescence before the world. And then it shaped us as a generation in ways that I don’t think anybody has really seen the full impacts yet.

But yeah, I’ve read about generational crossover. Again, I think part of me that’s the cynical side of me says it’s somebody trying to drive clicks and drive traffic. But I do think there’s some validity there because anybody that I’ve talked to who’s over 30 for Forbes, they’ve all been like, “Well, I’m not really sure if I’m a millennial. I just don’t know. I just can’t…” You know, they give me that runaround. Because most of the millennial conversation is about a 23-year-old selling essential oils in a coffee shop, not like 34-year-old marketing director or senior vice president, or whatever.

Andrea: Yeah. It seems like everybody is wanting an answer to why people are the way that they are.

Wes Gay: Good luck!

Andrea: And they’re always looking for something like this generation gap and what not to explain things. Then I think we often then just sort of push away the actual mess of trying to understand the other person. So we just kind of put it in these categories. But if we were to dig down and just ask how are we, like you said, there’s these fundamental things that we want as human beings. And if we can tap into those and speak to those then we’re going to be able to speak to anybody.

Wes Gay: Yeah, if you want to solve the generation problem at your workplace, or with anybody you know that’s of a different generation, spend $10, take them to lunch, and just get to know them. It’s that simple. It really is.

Andrea: Yeah. Oh, that’s good. Well, Wes, thank you so much for taking time to share your story and your expertise with us here today. Where can the Influencers listening find you?

Wes Gay: You can go to my website. It’s wesgay.com. And if they go to wesgay.com/voi, that’s for Voice of Influence, I’ll have some more information about StoryBrand and then also a special offer for your listeners as well to help them clarify the message so that they can increase their influence.

Andrea: That’s awesome! Thank you so much for that. And we can find you on Twitter and Facebook, I know.

Wes Gay: Yeah. You can find me on Twitter, it’s just @wesgay. I’m totally unoriginal. And then I’m on Facebook. I think I’m facebook.com/wesgay. On LinkedIn, I’m Wes Gay. On Instagram, I’m Wes Gay. And I’m not on SnapChat. So there you go.

Andrea: Not on SnapChat. Okay. Perfect.

Wes Gay: I tried it, got tired of it.

Andrea: All right. Well, thank you so much!

Wes Gay: You’re welcome.

 

END

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How to Monetize Your Expertise for a Portfolio Career

Episode 25 with Dorie Clark on Personal Branding

Dorie Clark is an adjunct professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the author of Entrepreneurial You, Reinventing You and Stand Out, which was named the #1 Leadership Book of 2015 by Inc. magazine. A former presidential campaign spokeswoman, the New York Times described her as an “expert at self-reinvention and helping others make changes in their lives.” A frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, she consults and speaks for clients including Google, Microsoft, and the World Bank. You can download her free Entrepreneurial You self-assessment workbook and learn more at dorieclark.com/entrepreneur.

Download your free and simple personal brand strategy guide called

“Focus Your Brand DIY.”

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


Transcript

Andrea: So I want to tell you something before we really get going here to kind of set you and the listeners up why I was so excited to have you on the Voice of Influence podcast. Toward the beginning of this year, in 2017, I was working and developing my podcast concept and I was really struggling to decide on a title, a focus, an audience, and all of that. So that’s when I stumbled on an article written by Dorie Clark in Forbes, and it really spoke to me. And so that day, the very day that I saw that, I actually went to your website. I dove in. I downloaded your 40-page workbook and then when I got your audio version of Stand Out and then spent the rest of the day walking and listening to that book.

Dorie Clark: Wow!

Andrea: Yeah, I really dove in. But I remember watching the tiles on the floor of the mall while I was walking because it was cold. So I remember looking at these tiles and just thinking to myself “What am I gonna do?” And I’m eating up your content and then all of a sudden, you said something that really resonated with me. You said that I could land two different areas of expertise together to come up with a really good standout kind of concept and that’s when it hit me. And so three months later, I started this Voice of Influence podcast combining my expertise as a vocal coach like an actual singing coach and teacher with this idea of communication and personal branding. So I just thank you very much for your influence on the Voice of Influence podcast itself.

Dorie Clark: That is super meta! I really appreciate you sharing that story. That’s awesome! I love your background too because I often will tell people how important it is to get vocal training and you know, it’s so hard and so frustrating sometimes. We all know how important oral communication is as a means of branding yourself and literally getting your ideas. And there are people who just cannot seem to be able to raise their voice to a sufficient level to even be heard in meetings. It’s like the very minimum that a person needs to have this is just literally to be heard and they have not got the diaphragm, breathing thing down. And they’re like “Well, I can’t just do it?” And I’m like “No, you can and you need to freakin’ do something about it now.”

Andrea: Yes, yes! There’s a great clip from Sister Act II or even Sister Act I, it isn’t like the best movie to talk about. But it was such a great clip and there was this kid who was hardly singing at all and then she kind of helped him find his voice and then all of a sudden he just started bursting out and found it. I think that there is something really unique and interesting about each voice.

And every time I hear somebody in particular singing, let’s say, but also somebody that may have expertise or message and they’re playing it down or they have this inner projection of their voice instead of really projecting their voice, it just kills me. And I’m like “I hear what could be but you’re just not quite there yet.” I think that’s one of the reasons why I resonate so much with you and your work because I think you really are helping people to find that.

Dorie Clark: Well, thank you. I appreciate it. That’s awesome and definitely it sounds like you’re doing that as well.

Andrea: OK, so before we dive into the book and all that other stuff, I would like to ask you about you. Why don’t you tell us and tell the influencer listening what is it that you do and how did you kind of get to where you are right now?

Dorie Clark: Well, to make a somewhat elaborate story short, these days, I mostly write business books and then travel around and speak and consult and coach around them. And so I started my entrepreneurial career doing marketing strategy consulting mostly for companies. But my work has really shifted over throughout the years to working primarily with individual professionals helping them establish their brand as thought leaders in the market place.

And so my newest book, Entrepreneurial You, is in many ways what I view is the culmination of that which is once you have kind of repositioned yourself into where you want to be, once you have established yourself as being an expert in your field, how do you then make money from it? How do you make it sustainable? How do you actually turn it into a real legitimate career? And so that is what I explored in an Entrepreneurial You.

Andrea: Yeah and you’ve written a trilogy of books now about creating, developing, monetizing a personal brand in this expertise. Why don’t you set us up with what those other books are and what they are about?

Dorie Clark: Yeah, definitely! So my first book is called Reinventing You. It’s kind of the first step, because for a lot of people you’re not necessarily in the place that you want to be professionally. You may have a different aspiration whether that is getting yourself promoted to a different level or maybe changed in companies, maybe changed in careers altogether. And you have to work and try to reposition yourself strategically. So Reinventing You is about how to work that process to get where you want to go.

And then the next step of course is once you’re in the vicinity, once you’re kind of in the right place, you need to really get known in your field. You have to figure out how to establish yourself as being one of the very best in your company or in your business. That is what enables you to come in premium pricing. That’s what enables people to seek you out instead of having to constantly be knocking on people’s doors and asking for business literally or metaphorically, and so that’s what I covered in my second book Stand Out. And then as I mentioned Entrepreneurial You is my newest and that is really how to monetize your expertise and create multiple income streams off your business.

Andrea: And when it comes to personal branding, do you also talk about people who are in a company, maybe they already have a job but they still need to have a personal brand?

Dorie Clark: Yeah for sure. I think this is a really important area because it’s oftentimes a neglected one. People sometimes assumed that if they are not themselves entrepreneurs, they don’t have to worry about personal branding because their company brand will just carry them. And they’re maybe true up to a certain point but it’s getting less and less true, number one – because you’re going to be dealing with clients, with even coworkers who are all around the world. They’re not necessarily going to know you just from being around the office with you.

So they will get to know you by reputation before they ever get to know you as an individual. And so getting cognizant of what your reputation is and whether it reflects what you wanted to be as an important step. The other thing of course, the other unfortunate reality is a lot of times, jobs don’t last forever. And so if you’re relying on your company to do all the thinking about your brand and just handle that for you that may turn out to unfortunately be a little bit misguided at a certain point.

Andrea: I feel like having a personal brand and understanding kind of that going to that process really helps people to kind of define who they are and what they want to be about. I mean, it seems to me that it’s about more than other people’s perception is also about what you want to express and what you want like a purpose, your purpose and your direction you want to take in life. I mean, have you found that with the clients that you worked with and the people that have been impacted by your books?

Dorie Clark: Yeah for sure. I mean, you know the background that I come out of actually is not a business background. I was a philosophy major as an undergrad and my graduate work was in theology. So I’m very preoccupied with questions of meaning and how people figure out who they are and who they want to be in the world, so personal brand is really just the business application of that.

Andrea: Yeah I just think it’s really…it definitely helped me because I’m I’ve also always just been consumed with my own why’s and what I’m doing and what direction going to. When I started to dive into of what is my personal brand, I don’t know if there’s something really intentional about that that made it more of a priority and gave me a clear picture and gave me a clear direction I think.

Dorie Clark: Yeah that’s awesome. That’s all it should be.

Andrea: Yeah. OK what drives you now with your business? What’s your why?

Dorie Clark: Ha ha! We’re just cutting right to the big picture here.

Andrea: Sorry. Well, we’re just talking about meaning, right?

Dorie Clark: Yeah, exactly. Let’s bring it, yeah.

Andrea: We dive. We dive in the Voice of Influence podcast. We dive in!

Dorie Clark: Yeah, we do. Awesome! You know the really what is what is exciting for me is the fact that you know, I think we all know people who are, you know, they’re good at what they do, right? They’re talented. They have so many to contribute. They’re smart and yet, they are not necessarily succeeding the way that they should. And I would argue that in a lot of ways the reason that that is the case is that in the modern era, the ways that people make money are actually very different.

They’ve changed substantially over the past two decades and this is this is what I talked about in Entrepreneurial You but there has been a shift from making money from something directly from something to making money because of something. And the clearest example that I can say of that is that I started my career as a journalist and that’s a pretty simple business model, right? You’re a journalist so you write articles and then you get paid for the articles, boom! That’s the business model that anyone can understand.

But nowadays, the tricky part is that there’s hardly any journalists left, you know, 40% of journalist have lost their jobs in the United States over the past 15 years. I mean, it’s just this wholesale decimation and the market constantly has gotten worse and so publications are paying you a little of a wage to write anything. If you were continuing to try to do the same business model like “Oh, I’ll write an article, I’ll get paid for it.” You’d be in a really bad shape because they would say “No, do it for free.” Or “No, do it for $20.” And you can’t make a living that way.

However, if you are a little bit crafty, if you decide to make money because of something rather than from something, you can actually do much better. And so in my case, I actually still spend a substantial amount of my time writing articles, you know, doing literally the same thing that I started my career doing, except now I don’t get paid for them. But instead of that being a tragedy, that’s actually an opportunity because I have found other ways to monetize around them through speaking and consulting and things like that.

And I am now able to make a lot more money than I would have had I nearly been paid a couple of hundred bucks for an article. So it’s just helping people understand that shift which is not necessarily intuitive. But once you are able to crack the code, it opens up a lot of possibilities and enables good people to really get their voice heard effectively.

Andrea: Yeah, I love in a prologue when you talked about your why for the book and you said “You can be talented and well-regarded but unless you’re very deliberate about the choices you make, you may end up earning little for your efforts.” And then you went on to say “Learning to make money from your expertise is just a different skill set.” I think that that what you offer through this book is so much to the person who does have expertise. But yeah, they feel like a fool when it comes to trying to make money with it other than in an entrepreneurial sense.

Dorie Clark: Yes, yes exactly. It’s really an entirely different skill set and I think a lot of people just don’t realize how different it is and then they get upset at themselves for not necessarily being able to crack the code. They don’t realize that it’s not something you necessarily would know intuitively. You have to study it. You have to learn about it and that’s really what I try to do with Entrepreneurial You is to create a kind of roadmap for people to follow to make that process easier.

Andrea: Definitely! You know, I could have started to deep dive into all of this space a few years ago or just like a couple of years ago. And I’ve heard about most of the people that you wrote about in your book and most of the ways of monetizing but it took a lot of effort from you to even come across these people and those ideas. So the fact that you put them all in one spot is incredibly valuable to somebody like me or somebody who’s just starting out, either one whether we’ve been in it for a while or we’re just starting out to be able to see a big picture of the landscape of what we could do.

And I think that that is also, I don’t know, it’s just really valuable I think to the person that’s struggling. OK, so in chapter I, you set up the reader to realize how important it is to have more than one income stream and you likened it to having a diversified portfolio and I love this comparison. So why don’t you just explain to us what is a portfolio career?

Dorie Clark: Yeah. So a portfolio career is really just kind of a way of thinking about making money from doing a variety of different things. So instead of the kind of old school, here’s a job, this is what you do, period, a portfolio career is somebody who has multiple things going on. I mean, in my case, my version of the portfolio career is making money through writing plus doing business school teaching plus consulting plus coaching plus doing online courses, etc, etc.

But even if someone has a fulltime day job, they can still begin to create a portfolio career for themselves. It’s a thing that I would encourage heartily because it provides more security for yourself and it could just be a thing that you do once a week or once a month. You know, it’s taking on if you have some expertise, taking on a coaching client on the side or maybe it starting to investigate something that’s of interest to you whether that’s crafting on Etsy, or you know tinkering around and trying to figure out how to develop an iPhone app. There’s a lot of different ways you can do that but if you start to be able to create multiple income stream for yourself based on your expertise, it just insulates you again to risk a little bit more and it open you up to new opportunities.

Andrea: Do you want to list some of them?

Dorie Clark: Sure! Yeah, yeah absolutely!

Andrea: So what are some of those income streams that you write about in a book?

Dorie Clark: Yeah. So in writing Entrepreneurial You, of course there’s an infinite number of potential income streams that the people could do so. I certainly didn’t cover them all but I wanted to provide a sense for people about possibilities that they could undertake that don’t require a lot of capital especially. You know, these are not possibilities where you need to go get a loan from the bank or you have to put your life savings into it. These are all things that you can start doing, basically today or tomorrow snap your fingers and if you decide that you want to learn about it and approach it earnestly, you can dive in and do it.

So some examples would be; coaching, consulting, or doing public speaking. You could start to organize events, you know, you won’t necessarily say “Oh yeah immediately rent a stadium and do a 5000-person event.” But you know, for instance last year for the first time, I pulled together a 10-person Mastermind event and I did it in the conference room in my building and you know, it was low expenses and very low key but high value for the participants and something that brought me some money as well. So that was a really great example and a really great possibility.

If they’re interested in online thing, they could start creating an online community or they could for instance work to monetize a podcast like this or a blog. So there’s a wide range of options of what might be of interest to people.

Andrea: Yeah. There was one in particular that really caught my attention and I actually wrote in a column, brilliant, because I’ve heard most people but I hadn’t heard about the Mastermind Talks and that was such a compelling story. Would you mind sharing that because I think that sometimes we just need to think outside the box and realize that you just never know it could be possible?

Dorie Clark: Yeah, definitely. This is a pretty clever example of somebody who really took what might seem to be an impossible situation and turned it into something pretty cool. So there’s a guy names Jason Gaignard who lives in Canada. And a few years ago, Tim Ferriss, the well-known author was releasing his book. I think it was the 4-Hour Chef. Anyway, he was looking to get bulk sales for the book so that it could hit the best seller list. And he put out an email that if someone bought 4000 copies of his book that he would do two free speaking engagements for that person. The cost for this is about $80,000 – very, very expensive.

Jason, number one did not have $80,000 and number two, he didn’t have any idea of where he would have Tim Ferriss speak. It’s not like you run a company and is like “Oh yeah, you know, we have a conference next year, you could speak at our conference.” He had no idea but he saw that opportunity and he said “You know what, this is a great opportunity. I don’t even know what I’m gonna do with it but I can do something amazing with it.”

So he said yes to it. He had about two days to get the money. So hustled around to his friends and finally had a wealthy friend that agreed to loan him the money and then he was about trying to figure out what the heck he would do with it. And so he ultimately stumbled on was that he would create a conference which he ultimately called Mastermind Talks and he realized that he couldn’t afford to have lots of speakers. I mean, it practically broken him just to have Tim Ferris, but he realized Tim Ferris is a popular guy. He’s a guy that a lot of people want to hang out with.

And so he thought “Wait a minute, if I have Tim Ferris, I could probably get lots of other people for free just because they want to hang out with Tim Ferris.” And so he essentially used Tim Ferris as bait and he invited all of Tim Ferris’ friends and they’re like “Yeah sure, I’ll come.” He did like a competition. So it wasn’t totally free, there was a chance. There’s a chance, you know, with all these people who were very expensive speakers that if they were voted the number #1 speaker that they would win I think $30,000. But the vast majority of course didn’t go home with that and ended up speaking for free.

But it was a very clever way of solving a difficult problem. You know, you might say “Well, I don’t have any money for speakers; therefore, I can’t possibly have an event. But Jason looked at those constraints and came up with something very different that no one else would have.

Andrea: Hmm and he didn’t just try to pack a stadium with that either.

Dorie Clark: Yeah that’s right. That was the other really interesting. Instead of going for the maximum quantity of people, he decided that he wanted it to have a very intimate event, which is you know frankly a kind of risky move because it’s always a lot easier to get you know, a bunch of people who pay a $100 or $500 or something as compared to people who would put down $300, $4000, or $5000. But he limited the event so that it became very kind of elite and exclusive feeling and he did phone interviews with the people. He said he returned about $40,000 worth of people’s admission fees because after talking to them on the phone, he decided they weren’t a fit. So he just sent it back.

But he limited it up to a 150 people who would attend this conference and tried to create a stellar experience for everyone. And he told me that that his goal with it is that if you really good job the first time and you record it, you get testimonials so that other people can see how great it is, he said at that point, you really never have to market it again because it essentially markets itself. And so he has repeated the event multiple times, I think they’re on maybe the fourth, the fifth year now and he continues to keep it a very small. He’s constantly reinventing it, doing it in a new location every year but he was really able to create a very powerful brand out of this.

Andrea:   So what would takeaways be for us when we’re thinking about, you know, we can’t think out of the box. But then we hear story like this “Whew, wait a second, there’s so much opportunities out there. It’s limitless.” What kinds of suggestions do you have for us when we’re thinking and trying to be innovative or thinking outside the box in terms of how to monetize something or how to make money with our expertise then?

Dorie Clark: Yeah. Well, I do some teaching around innovation and one of the common frames that they use in terms of how to teach people to think in an innovative fashion is to reframe “we can’t” to “we can if.” And I think that that’s a really useful framing because it is true. Under the present circumstances and under the present assumptions, it maybe a 100% accurate that you cannot do a certain thing but that just kind of lead to passivity. It’s like “Okay, that’s the reality.”

But the truth is people can change their reality all the time and what’s the more interesting question to ask is “we can if” that means what circumstances would have to be changed in order for this to be possible. And if you can figure out which variables need to be tweaked, some of them may prove to be impossible; others may prove to be far more malleable than you might imagine.

And so in the case of Jason, “Well you know we can’t have a conference because can’t afford speakers.” “Well, okay, we can have topnotch speakers if we can find a way other than money to make it valuable for them to come.” What might be more valuable to them than money? “Oh, they all wanna be BFF’s with Tim Ferris. If we can give them Tim Ferris then maybe that would be worth the $10,000 or, $20,000 or $30,000 that they would normally get to them.”

Andrea: So good! I love that advice and one of the income streams that you talked about is this JV partnerships. I think it’s a really interesting concepts and I know that you talked about your own experience with sharing other people’s products with your audience. I’ve been thinking about people who have a lot of charisma, people who may have a lot of connections, but they’re not necessarily wanting to write a book or share their expertise per se, but yet it seems that they would be able to monetize their connections and their gifts in this way by using that JV partnership concept. So would you mind sharing a little bit more about?

Dorie Clark: Yeah absolutely! So JV of course stands for “joint venture” and it’s basically just a wave that you can earn a certain commission by referring people to a product or service that somebody buys. It’s really kind of a win-win situation because when it’s done right, you are sending people to a person that you like and respect. That you would want to recommend regardless and they are getting a client that they otherwise would not have gotten.

And so as a result, this is especially prominent in digital products because of course there’s no marginal cost increase in selling additional ones. If I have an online course, it’s not like it costs me more effort for having a 101 customers as opposed to a 100, because I’ve already made the digital course. So therefore, you can often have a really generous affiliate commissions, usually anywhere from 30% to 50%. It really is great because it’s a new customer for me. It’s money for you and we’re supporting each other.

So the real trick of course though is making sure that it really is symbiotic that you’re promoting somebody that you do in fact respect. And once you make that introduction to your clients, you know that person will treat them right. That they have high-quality products, that the service experience will be good, and that they’re not going bombard somebody with 110,000 emails a day, etc, etc. There’s a lot of adding that goes into the process but if you’re comfortable with that and you can do that, it really can become positive.

Andrea: Yeah, and I would say it’s a probably a win-win. Really, because it’s a win for the client or customer as well because they were introduced to something that they can really benefit from.

Dorie Clark: Yeah, it’s true. I mean definitely hear it from folks all the time that thanked me for introducing them to some author that they were not familiar with before.

Andrea: Uh-hmm, I can definitely attest to that for sure. OK so Entrepreneurial You is not just a list of ideas, and not just a list of stories that back up those ideas. But you also get really practical and you share things specific things like how much to charge for things. Like ideas about where the market is right now. I was thinking in particular about speaking because I’ve gotten that question before too, like what do I charge or how do I know how much to charge?

And I’ve wondered that at times when I was starting too and so I’ve really appreciate that first of all. I just want people to know that they’re going to get a lot more than just some ideas but some really…you got really practical. But why was that important for you to include? How did you decide that you were not going to share ideas but you’re going to get really specific?

Dorie Clark: Well, you know part the process for me of writing Entrepreneurial You really sprang from conversations that I had in the course of developing an online learning program that I worked on last year called the Recognized Expert course. I have built up this really lovely community about a 150 people at this point who have been through the course. In many ways, it’s kind of a learning lab for me because the things that they want to know, the things that they’re curious about are things that I realized a lot of people are.

And so oftentimes, it’s you know some initial questions that might be basic but are really not basic in the sense that they’re not talked about a lot, like how much do you charge for things. There’s a lot of secrecy. I mean, this is something that I wanted to really breakdown in the course of writing Entrepreneurial You. There’s a lot of secrecy in our culture about money and about you know how do you earn money? And how much do you earn and how much do you ask for something?

And I really came to realize that the more things are not talked about, the more it perpetuates inequality because people just do not have good information. And when they don’t have good information, they don’t know what the market value of something is and they’re not able to ask for what they really deserve. And so I figured, the more we can shine some daylight on it, the better off more people will be.

Andrea: Thank you. I think that’s just really helpful. It’s really helpful for me and it’s helpful for other people that are going to read this and say, “Oh man, finally somebody is just saying what they’re charging or saying what I could do.” And that just empowering for sure because I think we stumble on that concept or the actual naming of a price. And it becomes this block that I don’t even know what I can do and so I don’t even know if I can offer it you know. So that’s great.

Dorie Clark: Yeah, thank you. I’m so glad they resonated.

Andrea: Yeah. I also really appreciated your “try this” section of the book where you really breakdown the concepts into these actionable steps for the reader. So thank you for that as well. And I’m also curious, how much of your writing process was sort of designated to coming with these action steps. Did you do it as you went? I mean, as a fellow author, I’m curious. Did you do it as you went or did you do it when you’re done and how much work was that?

Dorie Clark: Yeah. So creating the “try this” section was certainly an important part of the book for me. It was something that I did while I was writing the chapters and it’s something that I became really aware of with my first book, Reinventing You. When I created the first draft of Reinventing You, I did not have a “try this” section and my editor said to me “Hey, we think you should do this you know with sort of pointers for people.” And I was skeptical I’m like “Oh, I don’t know. Do we really need that? Would anybody really use that?” But you know, it was my first book so I did it because they told me to.

And then like in the years since that book has come out, I heard from so many people that that was the part they liked and appreciated the most was having this kind of “try this” bullet points where it was very specific suggestions about what they could do. That I realized “Oh this is not some afterthought. This is actually one of the most important pieces and I just wasn’t clawed into it.” So I took it really seriously in my next book Stand out and then again with Entrepreneurial You. I decided “OK, if people are really using this, I’m gonna put a lot of effort into trying to make them good and make them useful.”

And in fact, I ended up creating a free giveaway which is this 88-question Entrepreneurial You Self-Assessment, which takes all of the questions or almost all of the questions you know the ones that are at the back of each section and chapter and put it into a PDF document where there’s line and space for people to write things out. So you can really use it like a workbook and a way to take these ideas and questions and apply them to your own life. So if any listeners who are interested in that, they can download it for free at dorieclark.com/entrepreneur

Andrea: Yes, and we’ll definitely include that the show notes because that’s something like I said before that was helpful to me from Stand Out, so yeah. OK, so now I’ve got another question. This isn’t necessarily about Entrepreneurial You; this is going to go back to something that I heard you talked about. I’m not sure where it was that I heard you talked about this. But it really made an impact on me and I think that there are people in the audience who are really message-driven. They might be really talented but they’re not really sure how to choose their topic or how to specialize.

And you talked about one time the difference between, I think it was the difference between being a specialist and being a generalist. Would you explain what the difference is there and I think you said that you’re a generalist, so I would love to hear more about what that looks like for somebody who’s trying to figure this out for themselves?

Dorie Clark: Yeah, definitely. I think there’s a lot of cultural pressure in the business world for people to specialize. That’s a kind of standard advice that you almost always get is “Oh, well you need to take a specialty. You’re not just a marketing consultant, you’re a nonprofit social media marketing consultant,” you know or something like that. On one end, that is not a bad advice because if you are very specialized, it becomes immediately clear who your customers are and by extension where you can go to find them.

It’s a lot easier, you say “Oh I’m trying to do social media for nonprofit as you probably go to this and this nonprofit conference and this social media conference and I’ll be good.”

So it is easier in many ways. But the truth is there are some people, and I count myself among them, that just don’t like to operate that way. You know, maybe it’s making by far for ourselves, I don’t know but I never wanted to artificially choose something and then just specialize in that. And so for that situation what I did instead is I essentially decided “Alright, I’m gonna let the market dictate this.”

I think this is actually a pretty good way of doing it because for anything the market almost always knows better than we do about what would be desirable. And so my version was I essentially created a lot of small bets, a lot of sort of small experiments. In my case, these were blog posts, and I would just write about a variety of different topics and see what seem to resonate with people, what’s getting the most views, what’s getting the most shares, or what’s getting the most engagements.

And it happened that an early post that I wrote for the Harvard Business Review called How To Reinvent Your Personal Brand was one that did seem to get a lot of traction and a lot of engagement and HBR noticed and they asked me to expand it into a magazine article and then eventually that turned into my first book, Reinventing You. But it was not something that I consciously picked in a top down fashion. I never said “Oh I’m gonna write a book about reinvention. That’s my strategy.” It was something that arose organically from being one of dozens of different things that I tried.

Andrea: Yeah. I think that advice was so helpful to me I think in particular. But I think it’s a really important thing for anybody to do when they’re trying to figure out what they’re going to be all about, what their focus is, or at least what their brand is and what they’re showing to the world. Because they’re going to end up still bringing all their other expertise into whatever they end up doing, but yeah, I really appreciated that designation. I felt affinity with you in that and it made me feel less alone and less crazy for not knowing what my specialty was going to be, and not wanting to niche down.

Dorie Clark: That’s awesome!

Andrea: Well, Dorie, I’m so grateful to you for your time here today and for this book and for these trilogy of books that you have offered the world. We’ve already mentioned your website but when does Entrepreneurial You come out? I think by the time I publish this episode, it will be out and so where should people going to find it?

Dorie Clark: Yeah. Thank you so much, Andrea. So the new book is Entrepreneurial You. It is officially released October 3rd. People can grab that on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, you know many different independent bookstores. And if they want to get that Entrepreneurial You Self-Assessment that I mentioned for free, they can get that workbook at dorieclark.com/entrepreneur. So I look forward to having a chance to be in touch with folks.

Andrea: Yeah. I just recommend everybody if you haven’t read the other two books just buy all three at the same time and systematically go through them because that’s an education that’s worth the small price of three books.

Dorie Clark: Excellent point, thank you.

Andrea: Way more than that, yes. Well, thank you so much, Dorie, for your voice of influence on the world and for your time with us today.

Dorie Clark: That’s great! Thanks a lot Andrea!

 

END

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Don’t Make this Common Mistake When Looking for Your Passion Voice

Voice Studio 23

In this Voice Studio episode, Andrea contrasts the difference between a passionate voice and a reactionary voice. This is an insight very few people understand but that can make a significant difference in the way you communicate.

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