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

Episode 131

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

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

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

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

Take a listen to the episode!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Free Training to Improve the Efficiency of Your Voice

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!

 

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s my interview with Chad Allen:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrea:  Absolutely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chad Allen:  Mm-hmm.

Andrea:  OK.

Chad Allen:  Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrea:  Thank you so much.

Chad Allen:  Thank you, Andrea.

Posted on

Creating a Magical Experience with Jace & Holly Barraclough

Episode 130

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

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

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

Take a listen to the episode!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Free Training to Improve the Efficiency of Your Voice

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!

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jace:  Hello!

Holly:  Hi!

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

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

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

Holly:  Yeah, how do we get started Jace?

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

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

Jace:  Yeah.

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

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

Andrea:  Oh, I want to go.

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

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

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

Holly:  Nine.

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

Holly:  With no window.

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

Andrea:  Yeah, you did.

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

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

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

Jace:  I love the Avengers.

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

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

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

Andrea:  Usually…

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

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

Holly:  Which ones would you say?

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

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

Andrea:  Yes.

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

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

Holly:  _____.

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

Holly:  True.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Holly:  Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Holly:  Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

Holly:  Make those stories memorable.

Jace:  Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Holly:  Which is crazy.

Andrea:  Yeah.

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

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

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

Holly:  Back to the 70’s.

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

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

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

Jace:  Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrea:  Mm-hmm, keep it real.

Holly:  That’s right.

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

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

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

Jace:   Spotify, iHeartRadio.

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

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

Jace:  Thank you.

Holly:  Thanks for having us, Andrea.

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How to Prioritize and Take Back Your Calendar with Paul Casey

Episode 129

Paul Casey Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

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

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

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

Take a listen to the episode!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul Casey:  Super to be here, Andrea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul Casey:  The Calendar Coach.

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

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

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

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

Andrea:  Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrea:  Sure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrea:  Right.

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

Andrea:  We do.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul Casey:  No.

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

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

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

Episode 127

Jason Redman Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

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

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

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

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

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s our interview with Jason Redman:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrea: Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrea: It’s a very redemptive perspective.

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

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

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

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

Andrea: That would be great.

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

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

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

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

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

Jason Redman: That’s right.

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

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

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

Andrea: It’s fantastic.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrea: All right. Thank you!

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

Episode 126

Travis McNeal Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

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

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

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

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

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Transcript

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

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

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

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

Now, here’s my interview with Travis McNeal:

 

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

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

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

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

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

Andrea: So what is your specific role in that?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Travis McNeal: Mh-hmm.

Andrea: Yeah.

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

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

Travis McNeal: Correct.

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

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

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

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

Andrea: They can see what exactly?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Travis McNeal: Mh-hmm.

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

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

Andrea: Sure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’ll give you one more thing and the last thing is that once the direction has been set, once the strategy, the program has been set, I think the main thing that we need to focus on, especially in the change management space for those who are change management practitioners, is that focus on adoption. I think it’s so easy and tempting to think about the tools that we’ve got, the change readiness assessments, the change impact assessments; all of these different tools that we have that work but those end up becoming what we strive for not necessarily adoption. You know, I’ve seen a handful of professionals who have lost sight of that at times. You know, when we’re leading a program, what we really should be focusing on is what’s it going to take to get the end user to adopt it as quickly and permanently as possible that to me should always be the focus.

Andrea: Because if they don’t… fill in the blank for me.

Travis McNeal: If they don’t then that program was stood up in place for a reason. And so if they don’t adopt, then you’re clearly not going to achieve that overall objective for that program. There’s a number that’s often thrown around in the change management world which is around 70% to 75% of programs fail to reach their targets. Well, this program could fall into that 70% to 75% bucket where they fail to reach their projected targets. But if you take the time to really focus on adoption then you’ll have a greater chance of achieving being that 25% that meet or exceed what those projections were.

Andrea: Love it! Got to get buy-in, got to get people to actually to use the thing to make the change. It actually takes people to do that. Thank you so much, Travis. Thank you for taking time to be with us today and sharing your experience with Change Management at Wal-Mart and for your voice of influence for our listeners.

Travis McNeal: Thank you for having me. It’s been great!

Posted on

Toxic Feedback vs. Transforming Dialogue with Jessica Van Roekel

Episode 125

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

 

Jessica Van Roekel is a writer and speaker who works directly with our clients and client teams to help them find their own voice of influence and develop that.

In this episode, we talk about why it’s important that feedback we get and give is shared in a respectful dialogue instead of a blanket statement of judgment, what she believes is a voice of influence, the importance of choosing a coach or adviser who honors your perspective and inner voice, her experience being a participant in one of the very first Voice of Influence six-month group coaching programs, why that particular program made such a difference for her, and what she loves about helping and working with clients now.

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  Today, I am interviewing somebody who is actually on the Voice of Influence team.  Jessica Van Roekel is a writer, a speaker, and she works directly with our clients and client teams to help them find their own voice of influence and develop that.

I’m really excited to introduce you to her today.  You’re going to hear the passion, love, and care that she has in her voice.  And I’m excited for you to hear what she has to say about her own journey because she shares with us her journey, and in the midst of sharing with us about her journey, we talk about why it’s important that feedback that we get and that we give is really of respectful dialogue instead of a blanket statement of judgment.

We also talk about what she believes is a voice of influence and how helping people come to their own conclusions is a big piece of it.  We talk about the importance of choosing a coach or adviser who really honors your perspective and your inner voice. She shares with us her experience from being a participant in one of the very first Voice of Influence six-month group coaching programs and why that particular program and something in that program really made a difference for her.  And then finally, we really talk about what she loves about helping and working with clients now.

Now, if you are interested in any of the things that we talk about today, and you want to dive in more – you want to learn more about Jessica, you want to learn more about how you could work with her, with Voice of Influence to help your people gain what she has gained to grow in their management skills, to grow as a leader and a person who really does have a voice of influence on your team – then we would love to talk to you more about that.  Just go to voiceofinfluence.net, go to the contact form, and you will be emailing me to let me know that you’re interested. I’d be happy to jump on a call with you and find out more about what you need and what your people are looking for, what you’re looking to develop in your team. And we’ll just sort of discuss about how we could potentially help you with that. It’s a very low-pressure conversation, and I really love hearing from listeners.

So, go over to voiceofinfluence.net, hit that contact button, and shoot me an email.  I’d love to hear from you.

All right, this is my interview with Jessica:

Andrea:  All right, Jessica, it is great to have you with me here today on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Jessica Van Roekel:  Thank you so much.  I am thrilled to be here with you.

Andrea:  Okay!  I really have been looking forward to this conversation with you because you are such a light, and you are a joyful person.  You know, I feel like we just really kind of connect, and we have this mutual passion for helping people find their voice and making a difference in the world.  You’re just such a joy to have around, so I really have been looking forward to this.

Jessica Van Roekel:   Thank you, I appreciate those sentiments.  That’s my goal in life is to connect with people and to help them find joy and to see light.  So thank you.

Andrea:  So, Jessica, let’s start with why does helping people find their voice, why does this matter to you personally.  What’s your experience with that?

Jessica Van Roekel:  My experience with helping people find their voice and why that’s important to me stems from the fact that I have always wanted to influence people.  I’ve always wanted to encourage them and to let them know that they’re heard and that they’re accepted. I’ve always tried to be open-minded and receptive of other people.  And I had an incident where a friend of mine – we’d been friends for several years – and she sent me an email stating how I wasn’t those things, and that froze me for a couple of years.

Andrea:  So the feedback that you were not who you thought you were just kind of…

Jessica Van Roekel:  The feedback that I was not who I thought I was just literally locked me.  I would go places and I would be afraid to speak up, or if I did speak up, I would run that conversation over and over in my mind for days after and think that if someone looked away while I was talking meant that what I said was wrong.  And it just sent me into this mental tailspin of really wondering, “Can I influence people? Am I influencing people? Do I even have a right to influence people?” And then at the same time feeling indignant like, “I have a right to my voice; why can’t I use my voice?  How can I use my voice in a way that is influential and why wasn’t it influential with this person?” I dealt with two simultaneous responses; afraid and indignation.

Andrea:  Let me just ask the question first and then you can answer it.  Why do you think that that bothered you so much? Why do you think her feedback specifically bothered you so much?

Jessica Van Roekel:  Because I felt like that’s who I was.  I felt like I was open-minded and grace-filled and light-filled and a good listener and an acceptor of all people, and she was telling me that I wasn’t.

Andrea:  So it was like you couldn’t trust yourself anymore?

Jessica Van Roekel:  It felt like I couldn’t trust myself anymore.  It felt like I couldn’t trust my motives. It felt like I had been misrepresenting myself my entire life.

Andrea:  Wow, so everything’s kind of just like the rug has been pulled out from under you.

Jessica Van Roekel:  Yes, yes, it felt like the rug was pulled out from under me, and I was left just disoriented.  And yet at the same time I knew that I was a good encourager, and I knew that I could influence people.  I didn’t know quite what to do with her response, so I shut down.

Andrea:  So, as you are struggling with this, what were some of the feelings that came up for you?

Jessica Van Roekel:  Doubt, doubt in my own voice, my own ability to affect positive change in people’s lives.  Distrust of other people and myself. An almost Gumby-like personality where I will form myself into the shape for this person, and I will twist myself into the shape for this other person.

  I felt indignation too because I felt like this one incident gave that person so much power over my life; whether I did or did not do, or whether I spoke up for the good of another person to encourage them.  I was afraid to encourage people. I was afraid to speak life into them. I was afraid to bring joy to them. I was afraid to connect with people because if I connected with somebody and I didn’t influence them just right, they would reject me, and I would have that rug pulled out from under my feet and land with a thud and feel broken.

Andrea:  You know, I really want to get to the fact that you did kind of get out of that.  But before we go there, what could have made the feedback something that instead of taking away that voice or making you feel like you shouldn’t speak anymore – making you feel frozen – how could that person have offered feedback in a way that would be more constructive or… yeah, what do you think about that?

Jessica Van Roekel:  I think questions rather than accusations or just blanket statements.  The problem I really believe why that bothered me so very much is the fact that I didn’t even have a chance to explain myself or to have a part of the discussion.  It was as if she had come to this decision, it was made, and I had no say in that decision. We couldn’t even have a conversation, so I couldn’t even ask questions, “Well, what did I do that caused you to come to this?”

So for me to have received a harsh message like that, [it] would have been better if we could have had a dialogue about it where instead of a blanket statement being made, “You are graceless and judgmental, ” this person could have said, “Why did you react this way?  This way made me feel this way.” And then I could have maybe had an opportunity to step back and think, “Oh, I guess I can see where that would have come across that way. Let’s talk about this.” But that didn’t happen. The decision was made. She had come to this decision, and I was not allowed into that conversation.

Andrea:  I find that really, really interesting, Jessica, because really it sounds like a judgment was passed on you.  And rather than there being this dialogue back and forth of, “Help me to grow in this,” and take your perspective and understand where you’re coming from – from both sides – just a blanket judgment was passed which then you felt…  I can see how you would feel like your voice was taken from you in that moment.

Jessica Van Roekel:  Yes, I felt, “Oh, my voice wasn’t allowed into this conversation.  There must be something that I’m doing that caused her to come to this judgment.  I don’t know what it is because we are not able to have a respectful dialogue. So maybe I just should not say anything at all.  Maybe I just need to shut my mouth and become this little church mouse in the corner.” And if you know me, you know that that’s not the type of person I am.  So, it’s really two years of an enforced cage that I put myself in, and I didn’t enjoy it.

Andrea:  Okay, so how did you get out of it?  How did you get out of this cage?  

Jessica Van Roekel:  How did I get out of the cage?  The first step was the indignation overcame the reticence that I had wrapped around myself, and I decided – or I came to the awareness – that I was allowing this one situation, this one person so much power in my life, and they weren’t even in my life anymore.  And I thought, “What am I doing?” So, I just decided, “I’m going to take baby steps.” So, I started writing. I started writing publicly. I started encouraging people again. I started trusting myself again, trusting that if I am on the wrong path I’ll just be shown, and I’ll do a redirection.  And along in that journey then it led me to meeting people like you who specialized in helping people find their voice. So then I signed up for your Voice of Influence Academy.

Andrea:  I love this story so much, and I want to talk about the Voice of Influence Academy eventually, but do you feel like you got there?  Do you feel like you got to where you want to go, or where are you at in this journey now of finding your voice and using it?

Jessica Van Roekel:  I feel like I am so far down the road.  I can talk about that incident now without feeling anger or fear.  I believe that I am making a difference in people’s lives. I hear that I am.  And the ones that don’t want to receive my influence, I don’t let that put me into that box again.  I am aware that when I let fear motivate me, I react, and I don’t have influence. But when I let love motivate me and the care and concern for others motivate me and their hearts and minds and lives, that’s what I’m most influential.

So, for me, I feel like I am much further down this and that I use my voice to influence people in a way that serves them and isn’t self-serving to myself.  I think that that can be a little bit of a rub in the fact that there have been times where I’ve influenced people, thinking, “I know, I’ve got the answer for them.”  That’s rather self-serving, and it’s rather prideful as well. I think it’s a little bit of self-serving because notice that I have the answer for them. I know what they should be doing.  I know the exact thing that’s going to make them feel better or have a different perspective or make better choices. I’m not the one that does that. I’m just a tool used so that they can come to those conclusions on their own.

Andrea:  And that is so important.  All right, so, Jessica, what do you see as a voice of influence now?  At this point in your journey and having gotten to the point where you are actually helping other people develop their own voice of influence, what do you see as a voice of influence now?

Jessica Van Roekel:  A voice of influence now, I see it as letting go of the outcome, not being responsible for the outcome.  I see it as pointing people in a direction that maybe they hadn’t really thought about before and letting them come to the conclusion on their own.  A voice of influence is not about control, a voice of influence is about affecting positive change in someone else’s life. For me, personally, it’s not about, you know, having them circle back around and tell me, “Uh, that statement, that advice you gave me, that’s exactly what I needed to hear.”  I love to hear that – and I mean, I really love to hear that – and I would love it if everybody would just come circle back around to me and say, “Jessica, I love what you had to say, it made this massive difference in my life.” Yeah, who wouldn’t want to hear that, right?

But I’m learning that I don’t need to have that to still have a voice of influence.  That I can be outward focused enough while being sure of my own inner voice that I can just influence people, and then let them take it.  It’s their life. It’s not my life to control. And if they want to come back around and tell me how that piece of advice made all the world of difference in their life, or if me taking some time out of the day to just listen to them helped them regain focus, I would love to hear that.  But I don’t have to hear that to offer my voice of influence to the world.

Andrea:  That’s so important.  That validation is certainly helpful, and I think we need a lot of it when we’re first starting.  But it seems that as we become more clear and more confident of how we interact, and how we use our voice, and our own inner voice, and using that in the world that we need that validation less and less because we’re ready, we’re confident of what we’re offering.  And it doesn’t mean that we’re right all the time, but at least we can recognize that, “Sure, there are gonna be times when I’m wrong, and as long as I’m open to this person, you know, sort of coming to their own conclusion,” as you put it, “then there’s less to own.”

Jessica Van Roekel:  Yes, yes.  And the less that we have to own, the less crushing underneath burdens that are not ours to bear.

Andrea:  And we’re not as tied to that outcome because it doesn’t have a direct effect on how we see ourselves and our value.

Jessica Van Roekel:  Yes, yes.  Now, on the flip side we could be totally callous and be like, “This is my voice, and this is how I’m gonna use it, and you can take it or leave it.”  I don’t think that’s how we need to be either. That’s just as self-serving as the other way of trying to have our fingers in every single outcome. And so there needs to be this merging of being solid and secure, and know our inner voice, and how we’ve chosen to use that interact with other people.  And not in a way that says, “This is who I am, you know, if you don’t like me you just go into that corner and just be over there.” That doesn’t serve anybody either. Just like hovering, “Okay, I gave you this piece of advice and you didn’t take it. Well, why not? You need to do what I said. What I said was the best advice you’re ever gonna receive.”  Both of those don’t serve the greater goal that I think we all have and that is to have genuine authentic influence in someone’s life.

Andrea:  I love that.  You know, something that I’ve been thinking about for a while is the way that coaches in particular – coaches or people who give advice or, you know, want to have some sort of specific influence on somebody else’s life, but I’ve seen this in coaches a lot – where they sort of end up taking away the voice of the other person instead of helping them find their own voice because they know that their way is the way that this person should go.  Whether that be, “This specific model that I use. It’s all about your mind and your mindset. It’s all about your body and the way that you feel things.” You know, each person kind of comes to the coaching or the advice-giving process with a perspective or a world view and their own personal experience.

And a lot of times what we do is we end up projecting our own experience on everybody else, and then assuming that we have the right way of doing things.  I know it always comes down to this. I’ve heard that before, “Well, it always ends up being about mindset.” I’ve heard this from people and I’m like, “But it’s not always just about mindset.”  We’re very integrated, complicated human beings, and we all need to have kind of a holistic approach to the way that we’re looking at things, but especially when we’re talking about how to guide somebody else or help them find their path when they’re looking for a way to do things.  In the end, they have to feel like they’re doing what they feel is what they should do, not just what somebody else has told them to do.

Jessica Van Roekel:  Absolutely, absolutely.  We are such unique individuals, and we can have the same goals, same priorities, or same standards; but how each of us reaches those is going to be unique to who we are, to our voice, to our past experiences, to our current life circumstances, and to our future hopes and dreams.  That all has to be taken into play when someone enters into a coaching experience.

Andrea:  Absolutely.  All right, so let’s dive into a little bit.  You actually do work with clients for Voice of Influence, and you help them to find their voice.  You help them in various ways whether it be through workshops speaking, or one-on-one conversations, group coaching; what do you specifically enjoy about working with clients?

Jessica Van Roekel:  I love walking them through their Fascinate Report.  I love hearing the excitement in their voice.

Andrea:   Let’s make sure that the listener knows what the Fascinate Report is and actually, we’ve talked about this quite a bit on the podcast before, but it’s been a while.  So, just so you know, the Fascinate Report is something that we use at scale with teams because it’s really simple to take, and it’s simple to understand people. It’s remarkably accurate, and it really focuses on one’s unique way of influencing and your voice.  So, as you were saying, you really enjoy walking people through this report.

Jessica Van Roekel:  Yes, I do a one-on-one conversation with each person that has taken this report, and we’ll spend the first few minutes just talking about the results from their report.  And it is so fun to hear them say, “I can’t believe how accurate this,” or “Wow, this describes me to a T. I can’t believe that this quick little evaluation was able to really declare and to describe who I am.”  That is really exciting to me.

And then it’s also really fun to hear them in their own voice then say, “Yeah, I’ve seen this trait happen, you know, a few weeks ago or yesterday.  This is what I’ve done,” and they’ll tell me a story about the fact that they are really creative thinkers. And so they’ll pull out their stories from their own life as an example of how this adjective or this description really fits them.  And then what we get to do is we get to take that report and then help them come up with an anthem, which an anthem is who they are when they’re at their best. What they’re going to bring to the table, it’s their adjective and their noun, and we get to come up with this.

But what I love the most is that in my last set of interviews, I had three people that had the same archetype on the Fascinate Assessment.  In the Fascinate Assessment, you have seven advantages that combine to make forty-nine different archetypes. And what was so unique is that they each came up with their own unique anthem, and I found that to be so fascinating that these three people that came up with the same archetype had their own individual anthem.  That excited me to see them come to that conclusion and say, “Okay, this is what I bring to the table. This is what my voice is in this company.”

Andrea:  That’s super exciting, and I know that people really enjoy talking with you.  So, it’s fun to hear about that. Now, let’s move to the Voice of Influence six-month group coaching program.  You were part of the first group of people or one of the first groups of people, anyway, to go through this group coaching program.  So, let’s talk about that for a minute. There are six subjects that are covered in that program. For the listeners, I just want you to know, these are the six subjects; your Purpose, your Style, your Mission, your Offering, your Strategy, and your Community.  And as we go through the program, you get a sense of all these things for yourself. You sort of define them. You apply them to your life, and then you figure out what you’re going to do about it, what is the actual practical application.

So, Jessica, when it came to you and when you first took this course that now you help lead, what was one of the subjects that really made a difference for you?

Jessica Van Roekel:  Subject to style made a huge difference for me.  That’s the subject that really kind of delved into the Fascinate Assessment, and it’s almost as if that subject… things started to coalesce.  They started to come together. All of these random thoughts that I had about myself and my past interactions with other people and why in some instances, they were successful and why in other instances, they were just a dismal failure.  And I just fell flat on my face, just splat, and other times I was like, “Wow that was amazing!” It was almost like this subject under style, it’s almost like all of a sudden, all those situations… the dots started connecting. It started connecting and that to me was super exciting.

Andrea:  Why does that matter, do you think, for a person when they want to find their voice of influence?

Jessica Van Roekel:  We often take a look at ourselves in the light of, “This is how I see the world,” and the Fascinate Assessment is different and in fact say, “This is how the world sees you.”  And sometimes, we see ourselves through a jaded lens or we see ourselves through our own past experiences, whether positive or negative, and that can cloud the judgment of ourselves.  That at times we don’t rightly render correct judgments about who we are; whether it’s someone that said that aspect of your personality is wrong, or it’s too loud, or too quiet, or we decide that for ourselves based on how we think people have responded to us.

And subject number two is mostly about your style, and how your identity and your voice and all of that works together to see that this is how people see me when I’m at my best really validated a part of my heart that wasn’t so sure was an okay part of my heart or part of myself.  And so for me, it gave me a sense of release. It gave me a sense of freedom that, “Oh, that social thing that I do, that’s okay. You mean, thinking out of the box, that’s a benefit to other people?” For me, it was just really freeing. It was like “Okay, okay, maybe this is gonna work.  Maybe if I start instead of shoving that voice in a closet where it kind of…”

You know how when you’re a kid, and you play this game with your sibling – you’re not really playing a game, you’re fighting with them – and you shove them in the closet, and then they’re trying to get out?  The person inside the closet or the bedroom door, they’re trying to pop that door open, and the other siblings on the other side just pushing that door shut. So, you hear this bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, and it’s almost like that voice, that catalyst that’s in me was on the inside of that door – bang, bang, bang – trying to get out and something – whether it was my own wrong judgment myself or maybe it was other people’s misinterpretation or misunderstanding of me or combination of all of that – was on the other side of that door trying to hold that shut.

And when I went through this subject about style, it was like that door just got busted wide open.  I’m like, “I am setting her free. It is okay. We’ll figure out all this other stuff of why I’m a flop in some situations, but for right now we’re going to teach this voice how to walk.”

Andrea:  Oh gosh, I love that.  You know, I’ve noticed with this particular assessment and working with people on it, that usually people either feel like, “Oh good I get to be released in this who I am,” or it’s, “I feel bad, I’m sort of, like, I’m bragging about myself if I admit that I am this person.”  And what’s interesting to me about this – and I’ve talked about this before on the podcast – is that both of those statements have to do with how we’re judging ourselves and each other. And we’re sort of placing a certain kind of personality, or a way of influence, or that sort of thing…

And we’re sort of placing a certain kind of personality above or below other kinds of personalities and seeing some as being more valuable, seeing others as being more problematic when in truth each one could be super valuable.  And there are things about our personalities that are problematic for everybody. One of the things that we don’t shy away from is admitting that, yes, there are some weaknesses here that you’re going to have to navigate. And the fact that this piece of your voice is a strength is also… you need to understand it can be a strength for good, or it can be a strength for hurting people.

So, to come to an awareness of, “Okay, how can I use this in a strong way that is going to actually benefit other people instead of hurting them, or hurting my cause, or whatever?”  That’s a really powerful moment for people, so it’s fun to hear you talk about your own experience with that.

Jessica Van Roekel:  Yes.  Thank you.  I just still get giddy thinking about it, and I do believe that those times when I went flop, flat on my face, you know, I know what was happening.  Double trouble creates trouble. That’s just what happens.

Andrea:  When your personality becomes so strong, and you’re motivated from more of a fear and you are insecure, or there’s stress that’s pushing you to the limits, it’s pretty hard to not come across with your strength in a negative way.

Jessica Van Roekel:  That’s right.  Every strength or every negative can be flip-flopped.

Andrea:  Yeah, so important for people to understand and see and know how to navigate that.  We’re not bound. We’re not stuck in a closet, we can emerge powerful and strong and yet also loving, and that is a huge piece of being a voice of influence.  So, in that in that six-month group coaching program, you and I were talking about how there’s sort of two different halves to this program. Can you tell the audience about the two different halves, and why that matters?

Jessica Van Roekel:  Okay, so the two different halves, the first half is really a lot of inner reflection.  It’s about diving deep into your mission, what motivates you, your style, your purpose; all of this has to be worked out internally inside first before it can be applied.  So we take the first half of the group coaching program, and we dive deep inside ourselves and really do some reflection and thinking. And then we take that information, and we move into the second half of the group coaching program where we begin to practice.  Like I said earlier, we teach our voice how to walk, and we dive through, and we figure out how we can apply our strengths in a positive way to influence others.

So, there’s strategy, and there’s how we interact with the people that we are working with.  That’s how the group program is split up. It’s inward, and then once we have that inward settled, we then move outward.

Andrea:  Yes.  And I will say that it’s not that you can’t combine the two, but that is sort of the focus.  Because this is a group coaching program, because this is a specific kind of way that we are… you know, a path that we’re guiding people down, we do focus on that inner work first.  So that is a very helpful description. Thank you for that, Jessica.

And one of the things that we focus on is strategic thinking and increasing somebody’s ability to think in terms of, “Where are we, where we’re trying to go, and then how do we get there?”  That’s one of the things that really comes out in that second half as well as, “How do we apply my voice? How does my voice impact my specific community? Whether that be these are the people that I am around and these are the different roles that I play, but these are also the roles that other people play in my life.”

And to be clear on those, so that we don’t get too confused about how we speak to whom because that matters, context matters with our voice.  And we have to understand that, yes, though we can be authentic at any point and time with anybody in any situation, we’re still very complicated, and we have the ability to really think about who we’re speaking with and how to interact with that specific person.  So, it’s important to kind of get a sense of how to apply one’s voice in different situations and different roles and contexts.

So, Jessica, as we’re wrapping up this conversation, I would like to ask you to consider and to share with the audience what is maybe one specific thing or piece of advice that you would have for somebody who really would like to have a voice of influence?

Jessica Van Roekel:  Let me just take a minute to think about that answer.  Okay, my piece of advice for someone who’s looking for a way to develop their voice of influence is to be willing to get uncomfortable to be comfortable.  And what I mean by that is that so often we shy away from doing the inner work, and we just focus on the behavior. But in order for behavior to truly change and to truly make a difference in someone else’s life, we have to know what’s going on on the inside, and that can be uncomfortable.  But uncomfortable doesn’t mean wrong or bad, it just means uncomfortable. We’re just doing some hard work. But the benefits of doing that is going to make the actionable behaviors long-lasting and influential beyond what we can really even imagine. And then secondly… can I give two pieces of advice?

Andrea:  Sure, sure!  That was great, by the way.  I love that.

Jessica Van Roekel:  Have fun.  Have fun. It’s fun to really discover the power of your voice to influence others and not in a smarmy, manipulative kind of way, but in a way that is affecting good change and good benefits for someone else, or your company, or the greater good, or whatever it is that you’re involved in.  Have fun because it’s just so much fun! That’s all. You can cut that part out, but it’s just fun.

Andrea:  No, I love it!  I love it! I don’t know that anybody’s ever said the word smarmy on the podcast before, and it just makes me smile.  That’s hilarious! I love it! So, Jessica, where can people find you? Where can they find your blog and connect with you online, specifically?

Jessica Van Roekel:  My blog is welcomegrace.com.  I couldn’t use my name because most people can’t spell it and/or pronounce it, so, welcomegrace.com.  It’s a place where I encourage others in their walk with the Lord; I am a Christian and have found that all of us have pasts or pieces of our past that want to derail our present and affect our future.  And I come from a stance where, “You know what, yes, your pasts matter. It did happen to you, but it doesn’t have to derail you.” So, I write from a place where our personal histories don’t have to define our present or determine our future.

So, I can be found there, and then I also freelance at crosswalk.com, and ibelieve.com, and then I’m on Facebook and Instagram, Jessica Van Roekel.

Andrea:  And Jessica, we’ll be sure to link to those places in our show notes.   So, you can find our show notes at voiceofinfluence.net. And at voiceofinfluence.net, you can also request information about how you can potentially have a conversation with Jessica.  We have a contact form on our website, and there you can just let us know that you’re interested in connecting with Jessica.

Maybe you’re interested in doing some coaching with Jessica or perhaps even this group coaching program for your company, you know, managers, whatever it might be, and you can message us there at voiceofinfluence.net, connect with us.  We’d be happy to schedule a call and talk with you more about those possibilities.

So, Jessica, thank you so much for being a voice of influence for our listeners today and for our clients.  We just really, really appreciate you!

Jessica Van Roekel:  Thank you so much!  It’s been a pleasure and a blast talking with you!

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How to Discern Your Calling Without Feeling Pressure (Greatest Hits) with Andrea Joy Wenburg

Episode 124

Have you ever looked at someone you admire and felt pressured to be like them, do things the way they do, or feel what they feel?

Where does this pressure come from? Yourself?

How much do you judge yourself based on what you admire about that person?

I want to help you stop the judgments and instead focus on what it is about that person that you resonate with. What is that person awakening in you?

In this episode, I’m going to provide some insights that will help you do this; including why I personally believe that comparing ourselves to others isn’t always a bad thing.

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

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

Transcript

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

Today, we’re going to be talking about Pressure, the pressure to feel like you ought to be or do something in particular that somebody else is or does or says that you should do.

I want you to imagine someone in your mind who you really admire.  You admire them for the way that they are, for who they are, or for something that they do.  I have a feeling that there’s somebody in your life that you really admire.  So just take a minute and think about them and I’ve got a question for you.

And I’ve got a question for you, first of all, what do you admire about them?  What is it that comes to mind?  You love the way that they do this.  You wish that you could do that.  You see something in their life that looks so attractive that you really wish that it could be something that you had to.

On a scale of 1to 10, how much do you judge yourself based on what you admire in this other person?  So when these things come to mind, these things that you really like about them, how much do you judge yourself based on that?

So one would be “Oh, I really don’t judge myself at all.  I’m not saying that I’m worse or better than them, I just really admire this about them.”  And then on the other side would be a 10 where you completely determine your own value based on how much you are able to do or not do the things that you admire about that person.  So my guess is that you’re somewhere in the middle, most of us are.  Hopefully you’re not too high up at the top like a 10.

But let’s just be honest with ourselves for a minute here.  How much time do you spend comparing yourself and then judging yourself based on other people in your life?  Or maybe not in your life but maybe on a podcast or in a book or online, some place, or somebody that you admire?  How much time do you spend on that?

Now, here’s the thing.  I’ve talked about some of these things that we’re going to talk about today before.  But today, I really would like to focus on taking the pressure off.  There’s so much pressure on each of us that we put on ourselves most of the time, but sometimes it comes from other people and we accept that pressure to be or do something like someone else.  And it can feel like we’re less than other people because we know that we’re not good at this particular thing.

So let’s take an example, because I realize that you may be thinking to yourself “Well, I don’t think that way,” but the truth is maybe you do.  And maybe you don’t need to listen to this episode or maybe you don’t and you should listen to this episode so that you can help others.

But think about that because we each have these people in our lives that we admire.  And I think that’s OK, because there’s a difference between admiring somebody even comparing ourselves with them.  I don’t think comparison is really the enemy because comparison can help us differentiate.  Comparison can help us to understand how we are uniquely different and how they are uniquely different and how we can work together in our differences.

So comparison in and of itself I don’t think is the problem.  What becomes a problem is when we judge ourselves or we judge other people based on that comparison.  So we start to feel bad about ourselves or we start to feel high and mighty about ourselves because we have compared ourselves to someone else.  So that’s something to really think about because comparison isn’t the enemy, judgment is.

OK, so the next piece of this is that you can admire somebody and that can turn into that self condemnation or a race to beat that person or to try to become that person or become elements of that person.  Maybe they have a really clean house and you don’t have a clean house.  And so you feel like crap all the time and you keep trying to pick your house up and you never quite get it like this other person does.

I would definitely be that person who does not clean her house very well.  I try, I try, but it’s not very often super clean or super put together.  So it would be easy for me to look at somebody’s house who is super clean or super put together.

I think, even for me, this is one thing that I noticed about myself is that I admire, really admire people whose houses are so, I think put together would be the way to put it, where they have an intentional reason for all these little things that are in their house and things have a place and they don’t have a lot of clutter and things like this.  I really admire that.  It’s something that I would like to get better off for myself.

But here’s what can happen in situations like this, we could look at that person that we admire and say “Oh man, I don’t even wanna be around that person,” or “I don’t wanna be in their house because it reminds me of how bad I am at that.”  Does that sound familiar to you at all?  Are you trying to avoid somebody because you admire them so much and it’s just feels like this is in your face all the time that you’re not what you wish you could be?  If that’s the case, I’m really sad to hear that because I don’t think it has to be like that.

I think that we can admire somebody and allow it to just be that like “Wow, I just have such an appreciation for you and what you’re able to do.  I have appreciation for this well put-together house,” without putting a lot of pressure on yourself to ever become that.  Maybe you can be inspired by it, maybe you can say “Hi, I wonder if you have any tips for me,” without feeling the pressure to become what they are, to get your house to the point at their houses.

And when I’m talking about pressure, I’m really talking about, I think you know that feeling that “Huh, I just feel like I’m supposed to be like that.  I’m not, so I feel bad about myself and so I don’t want to think about it.  I don’ wanna be around them.  I need to try harder.”  That’s pressure, and I don’t think that’s necessary.

So another way to look at this is to see people that you admire and realize that maybe they actually have tapped into something, they’re good at something that you actually do want to be good at.  I mean, not just want to.  I’m not saying you should be good at it.  I’m saying like you feel awakened when you see them do their thing.  You feel like something inside of you has just awakened, is inspired, is motivated and is saying “Huh I do want to be like that.”

So I could tell you that from my personal experience besides the house thing that through the years when I was growing up and in my young adult life, whenever I would watch a speaker onstage, I would think to myself or an author, I would think to myself “Man, I really wish I could be like that.”  I really admire them and if I did really admire somebody, I’d be feeling like “Oh gosh, why isn’t it not me up there?”  That sort of thing and that could easily turn into pressure.

It could easily turn into “Well, I need to do what they’re doing,” or I feel like such a failure because they’re younger than me and they have more success in this area.  That could easily turn into a pressure.  And that’s something that I think that we really need to turn off.

We need to take that pressure off of ourselves and say “No, I don’t need to judge myself based on my comparison with that person just because they’re younger than me, or just because they have more followers than me or they seem to have a bigger impact than I do for whatever reason.

Instead of judging yourself based on that, could you allow yourself to be awakened to what might be a calling for you?  So for me when I would see these speakers and authors and things, I would think “Oh gosh!  Oh, I really do want that!”  It was like I felt called to it.  Like I felt I really truly wanted it, not so much that I felt like I should be that or that I should have what they have but then I wanted it.

I think that when we talk about comparison as being a bad thing, the danger of that is that we start to turn off all of our abilities to think critically about how we are different and what we should be.  So instead of being honest about the fact that we have a desire, we try to turn it off because we start to feel bad.  We feel this pressure and we start to feel bad and so we turn off the comparison and we kind of know more ourselves to that comparison because we know what it has done to us in the past.

Maybe you have felt a lot of pressure.  I don’t want to feel that pressure, so I’m just going to avoid it or I’m going to _____ it.  I’m going to say, “I don’t care.”  Kids do this all the time, don’t they?  “I don’t care,” or when we’re self-critical, we try to beat people to the punch and say, “I’m an idiot.”  I’ve said that to myself before.  I try to beat people to the punch because I don’t want somebody else say that about me because I feel like I should be something different.

So we do these things that distract us from what’s truly in our hearts what might be an actual calling, a desire to actually move towards something.  So if you’re somebody, who, like me, sees people who are writing books and out there speaking or maybe an entrepreneur or maybe they are just somebody who seems like they have it together for this or that and you feel awakened to a desire inside of you.  That is different than feeling pressured to become what somebody else says.

So instead of turning it off, avoiding it off, or avoiding that person, get down to asking yourself, “What is it that I’m feeling awaken to?  What excites me about this, about where they are and what they’re doing?  What doesn’t?”  This is where you get to compare yourself.  This is where you get to do that comparison.  You’re not saying that they are better or worse than you are.  No, no, we’re not judging here.  What you’re doing is you’re doing some discerning about your own calling.

I went to this talk and this person got up there and he spoke and he just awakened something inside of me.  And for a split second, I felt bad about where I’m at right now but then I remembered that, “No, this isn’t about feeling pressured, this is about finding what I desire, finding out what I really feel called to.”

So let’s ask myself these questions, “Self, what do I feel called to then?  What is so exciting to me about what I’m seeing?  What was awakened inside of me, a desire for what?  What piece of this or what pieces of these just really energized me?  And perhaps what doesn’t?  What something about this that I’m not excited about?”

And that’s OK.  It’s OK to admit that as well, “You know what, I don’t really like that they did this because I would do it differently.”  That doesn’t mean that you’re judging them.  That means that you’re trying to figure out what your voice is, you’re trying to figure out what you are called to and then allow them to be who they are.

So a few months ago, I spoke at a conference in Las Vegas and I just had a few minutes onstage but it was so _____.  I had such a blast because I love the stage.  If you read UNFROZEN, my book, you know I love the stage.  I felt guilty about it for a long time like I shouldn’t love it.  And then I realized over the years I kind of come to terms with the fact that it’s OK for me to love being onstage.

So when I got up there in front of a 150 people or so, I just got up there and owned it.  I felt like I was owning the stage and afterwards the conference organizers had everybody do a little survey.  And so on the survey, they asked different questions like from a scale of 1 to 5, how engaging was this presenter?  From scale of 1 to 5, how much did you learn and that sort of thing.  And I got to take home all of these surveys.

So I went through and on my way home, I calculated all the responses.  And really they calculations were really high.  I actually got some really good responses between 4 and 5 for everything.  But there were a few individual responses, and one in particular, he was so critical.  One person, you could tell who did not like me.  And they didn’t feel like they learned anything because I talked about the same thing that they do.  OK, fair enough.  They did not like the way I was dressed.  We’re talking like they’re giving me a 1 or whatever.

They felt like I was acting onstage which nobody else did but they did.  You know things like these, and I was just like “Oh my goodness, this person is like really, really critical.”  And this is what I think that we do when we are comparing and judging at the same time.  I think that we look at somebody else and say, “I wouldn’t do it like that.”  And so we mark them down in our minds and that instead of saying, “This was effective,” or “This wasn’t effective for me,” or “This wasn’t effective for me but I think it would be effective to these other people.”

So if you’re in that position where you’re looking at somebody and you’re saying, “I really admire them but I really don’t like this and I really do like that.”  Well, you don’t have to put judgment on it.  You can say, “This is really effective for me.  This would be really effective for the audience I want to reach.  This would be really effective but this other thing maybe I didn’t like it and I wouldn’t do it, but maybe it would reach somebody else.”

My tendency is to always be looking for what’s effective and what’s not.  And when I watch other speakers, I’m thinking to myself “Is this perfectly put together, but is this effective?  Is it getting people where they want to go?  What about myself, is what I’m doing effective or not.”  So here’s where I’m coming back to this.  I’m coming back to comparison isn’t bad.  Comparison saying whether or not you are like somebody else and how and whatever, that’s OK as long as you’re not adding judgment to it.

But you can ask yourself what awakens desire in me and what doesn’t.  So you can let that person be that person.  You’re not saying that they should be different by doing this process of comparing and figuring out, discerning what you want to be.  You’re not saying that they should change.  You’re not judging them nor are you judging yourself.  What you’re doing is your discerning your calling and you’re saying, “Well, maybe they are called to do just what they’re doing and that’s totally fine.”  Or maybe they could up in a notch, maybe there’s some way that you can help or that somebody else can help, that’s fine.  That’s totally fine.

What I’m saying is you don’t have to feel bad about comparing yourself to other people, because if someone that you admire awakens something inside of you, something that they do or something that they say and it awakens something inside of you and you’re like “Wow, I really want that!”  This is where you’re following your heart to find you’re calling.  This is doing a little bit deeper in our work to be able to figure out what you’re really called to.

But if you look at somebody and you say, “Wow, they’re doing these amazing things, but I can admire that and not want it or not judge myself based on them on what they’re doing.”  That’s a really healthy place to be.

So when you are listening to this podcast, when you’re listening to Voice of Influence and you hear me talk about things like vision and mission and voice and understanding what your message is and things like this, this may or may not be for you.  Because there are some people in the world, who, maybe like me, long to have a certain message and a certain impact.  We long to find our calling and we’re having a hard time doing it.

When I was having a hard time doing it, I needed to get clear on all the chaos on my head.  I needed to get clear on what I most care about so that I could know how to focus my energy.  Does every single person in the world need to do that?  I don’t think so.  In fact, I think what’s important probably more than anything _____ is to know what you really care about, what standard you’re going to measure everything by.

So here’s the thing.  This is where I was thinking about this earlier, I need clarity around my message and offering.  But somebody like my husband, he needs to partner with somebody who has a message and an offering that he can relate to, that he can support, that he can get behind.

So while he may not feel like he needs a certain message or a certain offering, as long as he can feel supportive of what I’m doing, as long as he can feel like he relates to it, he agrees with it, it’s not just his values; all that sort of things then he can get behind it and help me in whatever way that we decide to move forward.  But we’re focusing in on my particular message and offering for Voice of Influence.

So there are some people in the world who really do feel like they have something they need to say in particular and they want focus, they want to know all these things.  And then there are other people who care.  They have a voice and they use their voice but they do it in a way that is supportive and get behind what other people do.

Last week, I had on the podcast Susie Hageman.  And Susie is one of these people who really cares about human trafficking and this is something that she chose to focused on because it’s a message she can get behind.  And she is not the one that’s starting this nonprofits and writing about it per se, maybe she will someday, I don’t know.  But it’s not necessarily like she is out on the front with the message, but she got behind this message, because she thought like she could and she felt like it resonated with what her values are.

That is exactly what I think we all need.  We all need to know what were our values are so that we know what we want to get behind, whether we want to get behind it or we want to come out with this message or whatever.  This is the kind of thing that I’m talking about when I say, you don’t have to be what you admire.  You can admire someone else, their gifts, their offering, their message, all that sort of thing without feeling the pressure to have one of your own, to be that particular thing that they’re talking about.

So if listening to this podcast ever makes you feel pressure, I sure hope it doesn’t.  But if it does, it’s totally OK to turn it off, because you should surround yourself with things that awaken your passion, your desire, your calling; and help you discern your calling instead of making you feel like “Oh my goodness, if I hear again about you know having a message or this or that and it just keeps bringing me down.”

I completely understand if you didn’t want to do that but I will also challenge you not to take that into the rest of your life.  Don’t take that avoidance or tendency to compare and judge.  Don’t let that come with you.  Leave the judgment.  Put it aside, whatever voices in your head from the past that are telling you should or shouldn’t be this or that, put it aside because you are so important the way that you are, how you have been created, how you had been built.  The experiences that you’ve had have really drawn out things about you that are so important.

These are critical, critical in the world and don’t ever forget that.  Please know that whenever I talk about having a message, whenever I talk about using your voice of influence, I’m not excluding anyone.  And at the same time, I’m not saying that you have to be just like anybody.  You really don’t need to be.

I think that the most important thing of this is that we really need, we desperately need to be free, free from this judgment.  So do what makes you come alive.  And yes, when it comes to passion, I talk about passion in terms of something you’re willing to pour yourself out for.

So it’s not always pretty, it’s not always happy go lucky, but it doesn’t have to be about looking at your fault all the time.  It can be about what makes you come alive.  It can be about what you want to live into, a vision for yourself and your life and your message and your calling that you want to live into that vision.  That’s a whole lot different then and expectation that puts pressure on you.

So have vision, not expectation.  Take the pressure off and go just use your voice.  It will matter more!

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How to Upskill Workers in the Age of Digital Transformation with Shefali Gupta

Episode 123

 

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

Shefali Gupta was a key player in DBS Bank’s digital transformation.  Eight years ago, they had a traditional bank, and as she’ll tell us, just recently they acquired the coveted World’s Best Digital Bank designation.

In this episode, Shefali is going to share with us how they helped their people upskill in order to be prepared for the transformation that was bound to come.

One piece of advice Shefali wanted to leave with you that did not make it into our interview is this, “Each of us might be good at something. We each need to take it upon ourselves to teach others and ask to be taught so that we can all become better.”

Mentioned in this episode:

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  So, as we well know we are in the midst of an incredible digital transformation around the world, and companies everywhere are looking at how they can ensure the safety and security of their customers as well as improve the customer experience.  But one thing that we cannot neglect when thinking about digital transformation is how this is going to impact the workers who are bound to lose their jobs over this change.

According to the World Economic Forum, estimates ranged from 2 million to 2 billion jobs lost over the next decade due to digital transformation.  So what kind of role do companies play in not only going through this transformation, but also in taking care of the workers who have got them to this point so far?

Today we’re going to speak with Shefali Gupta who was a key player in DBS Bank’s digital transformation.  Eight years ago, they had a traditional bank, and as she’ll tell us, just recently they acquired the coveted World’s Best Digital Bank designation.  But you don’t go from zero to hero without getting everybody else onboard.

Shefali is going to share with us how they helped their people upskill in order to be prepared for the transformation that was bound to come.  One piece of advice she wanted to leave with you that did not make it into our interview is this, “Each of us might be good at something.  We each need to take it upon ourselves to teach others and ask to be taught so that we can all become better.”  This is at the core of what took place at DBS Bank.  You can find the full transcript and Shefali’s LinkedIn link in our show notes at voiceofinfluence.net.

Here is my interview with Shefali Gupta:

Today, I have with me Shefali Gupta.  She is a digital and innovation leader.  And in fact, Shefali has been a part of this incredible transformation that DBS Bank has gone through in the past few years, from being just a traditional kind of bank to now being the World’s Best Digital Bank.  This is an actual award that they have won.  Congratulations, Shefali, on this accomplishment!

Shefali Gupta:  Thank you so much, Andrea.  And firstly, thank you for bringing me onto your show.  It’s seems like a great platform, and I’m really happy to talk to you, and many thanks for your wishes.  I think it’s completely teamwork, and I will accept your wishes on behalf of the entire DBS Bank.

Andrea:  Yes.  So, Shefali, what is the World’s Best Digital Bank?  What does that mean?

Shefali Gupta:  Okay, so for DBS, it meant, I would say, three broad things and maybe I could just take a minute to talk about them.  So, how we thought of being digital is number one, I mean, be digital to the core, which means getting new technology, ensuring that everybody is being very experimental in their day-to-day – whether it’s technology or product development – and do a lot of experiments, you know, as scientists will do.  And the third thing is that everybody is understanding – not just the technology folks, but everybody in the bank understands what we are doing, why we’re doing, how it’s going to help, and how can we use technology to improve our product and services and give an amazing experience to our customers.

The second thing we embarked on was looking at it from a customer angle on how we can embed ourselves in the customer journey and become a bank which is joyful.  So this word joyful came up as something, “Let’s make banking joyful.”  And the third aspect was the people aspect, which is how do we get our employees to be future ready and be digitally engaged and be completely part of the journey, so all 24,000 employees being part of our journey.  So this is the way we thought of digital.

Andrea:   So, you’re not just talking about making some changes on a website or even in the processes of how people do banking.  I mean, that in and of itself is a lot, but you’re also talking about how you brought the employees along in on this process.

Shefali Gupta:  Mhmm, absolutely.

Andrea:  So what was one of the things that your employees needed in order to be able to be a part of this process then?  What did that mean for them?

Shefali Gupta:  So, Andrea, that meant three things.  Firstly, they should be aware of the whole purpose, and see their role, and what role they are playing in the entire journey.  So, each employee should be very well aware of all the DBS vision and overall strategy that we are trying to do.  That’s one.

The second thing is every employee – and irrespective whether they are the teller or the cashier in the branch or they’re the back office team or in HR or finance – should be aware about the basic technology changes and the processes that we are looking at to revamp.  That’s the second thing.

And the third is that each of them should also be aware that they need to upskill themselves continuously to be future ready.  And maybe some of the jobs that they are doing today won’t be there, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be without a job because they would then be doing a new job which they have been trained for.  So this continuous learning, you know, process is something that they should be aware about.  So these, I think, would be the three things from an employee perspective.

Andrea:  Having a sense of purpose, knowing where they fit in the whole vision and strategy, and then everyone understanding the technology changes and being aware that they need to upskill themselves because their job might not be there when this whole thing is over, which is so important.

I am really curious about how you helped people to understand this transition because it’s gotta to be really hard for folks who have had the same job for a long time to realize that their job is going to be going away because of this digital transformation.  Was that a difficult thing for people to accept?

Shefali Gupta:  Yes, definitely.  It wasn’t easy, I would say.  And the reason for that is firstly, when you’re talking about 24,000 people, they are all kinds, so they are come from different genres.  So we add one and we have the millennials, the kids in their early 20s who have just joined us as management trainee or graduate associates.  On the other end, we had people who are, like, almost close to retirement and they are in their late 50s or 60s and who have been doing the same thing for maybe thirty, forty years already.   Plus, of course, there’s all sorts of other diverse population within the ordination of different countries.  I mean, men and women also tend to learn differently.  So it’s, like, first dealing with the mix of the employees and understanding what is it that would make each segment, you know, be more successful in upskilling themselves.  That’s one.

The second thing is that not everybody will have the same amount of interest in every topic.  So, we need to have a range of topics of skills that each one could pick and choose that they would like to upskill themselves in.  And so this was the second challenge, like, how do we ensure that we have the people understanding what is it that they should go into – a data kind of topic or they should go into UX design – and helping them get onto that was something that was, I think, the other challenge that we were facing at that point.

Andrea:  How did you help individual people when you had so many to be working with on this?  How did you help individual people make that decision for themselves, or was that something that was decided for them?

Shafali Gupta:  So we did two things.  One is basically, when I of read a lot on this topic, I actually formed a think tank on this thing by connecting with folks in different organizations, institutions, colleges, and I made my own network.  About twenty-five people, we call them Leaders and Learning.  So basically, it’s my own friendly think tank, and we would meet like once a month over a cup of coffee or a drink and discuss some of these things.  I learned a lot by bouncing of thoughts from these people and seeing what worked in other organizations.

And from there, one of the thoughts that came to me [is] that learning has to be self-driven.  So you can take the horse to the water, but you can’t force it to drink.  It’s the same thing.  So you can have the best content and the best course and the best online material, but it’s the people who need to be curious enough and self-driven to be wanting to learn on their bus rides home back or when they’re taking a train and they have an half an hour or when they are at home and they’re watching a lot of Netflix and how do you take one hour?  Okay, let’s do three hours of Netflix and one hour of, you know, learning something new, kind of a thing.

So it’s like making it more self-driven.  And secondly, looking at it from a more curiosity point of view, let’s get the people to become a bit more curious and wanting to learn on their own because they see the benefit in it for themselves.

Andrea:  Okay, so how did they decide what things to pursue, what to learn?

Shefali Gupta:  So what we did was that through various discussions internally as well as externally including with institutes.  We looked at what could be the future skills? And then we identified seven skills, which we thought are definitely something that will help them in the future.  There could be more, I mean, we started off with 25, 30, but because we didn’t want to make it too many a number, we kind of decided to keep it to seven at this point of time.

And of course we have the option to keep juggling around and changing every year, which these seven skills should be.  So we decided on seven skills and within that we got everybody to do a one-on-one on all seven for them to understand what is, for example, one of them is UX design or one of them is a customer journey mapping, or one of them is Agile.  So, they should at least understand on one-on-one.  So, we kept it simple just for them to literally just dip their toes and see what that skill is all about because it’s like, what they don’t know is they don’t know.  So, let them at least understand what it is.

And then after that we asked each of them to pick up any two.  We gave them the empowerment and the choice to pick up any two and then go deeper into them in a more engaged learning, whether it’s classroom or e-learning.  The first bit was us giving them a basket of seven and then leaving them to choose between these seven.

Andrea:  So they picked two, and then they had the opportunity to learn more based on those two.  Did you have certain classes or the e-learning or the workshops that you had for them to take or was this something that you had some options, or did they choose?  How did that work?

Shefali Gupta:  So again, the way we did was that this was really interesting.  Of course we had classroom training for some of the banking products and businesses.  We also have tie up with some of the big e-learning companies across the world so that people have enough material to choose from.

But then we went beyond that by doing two programs, one is what we call Gandalf Scholars.  So basically, we said to our employees that we would give you $1,000 credit in your salary account straight away if you tell us what is it that you want to learn and how then would you do it within a three month period.

So, all they needed to do is pick up a topic.  Like for example, somebody said, “I want to learn about dev ops,” or somebody said, “I want to learn about Agile coaching.”  We would give them the money to decide how they want to use the thousand dollars to upskill themselves externally.  They could get a personal coach for themselves, or they could sign up with a program, either university or anything that works for them.  The only question in that was that, they needed to come back and teach that same skill to at least ten other employees, and they could do that through a lunch and learn session or making a video on it.  But that’s our way in which we kind of ensured that the content is something which is relevant, taught by their own friends or peers in the office.  And that’s how it was one of the really big successes.

Andrea:  Wow!  It sounds like it would be successful.  How did they take it?  How did the people respond?

Shefali Gupta:  Well, they loved it.  We had a waitlist throughout, and we had, like, a lot of people wanting to, you know, sign up.  Because we did it in bursts of like, you know, once a quarter, and we would give it 200 people, then you would pay it for a few months and give out.  That’s how we did it.  And what was the surprise for me over here was that of course they love the learning that they did because they were empowered to choose what topic they want to learn and how they learn it.  That was a lot of empowerment with them.  And they loved that.  But what they actually really adored was the teaching.  I had so many people write to me saying that, “I love coming back and teaching my friends in the office. I didn’t realize that I could teach so well.  And after that I’ve made so many new friends, and I love the way I had to prepare for it, and I’ve learned so much more in the teach back.”

So actually, the teach back went viral, right? Like, they just loved it.  They all wanted to teach and then they kept saying, “Can we do it more times?  Is it just a ten or can I do it for, like, twenty people or can I do one more session?”  And so I think that was something which really inspired us to think deeper about this concept of peer to peer learning and realize that people want to learn with friends, like, who they know well and they are very comfortable sitting side by side and someone is teaching you something.  That’s how they want to learn and what I call peer-to-peer learning.  I think that’s going to be the way learning would be in the future.

Andrea:  Oh, that’s interesting.  Are there plans for that to continue then, or is this just a onetime kind of a situation for DBS Bank?

Shefali Gupta:  Well, of course, we have planned to continue with this.  You’re talking about Gandalf Scholars in particular or just…

Andrea:  Yeah.

Shefali Gupta:  Yeah, of course.  We are continuing that, but we’ve actually taken a step further, Andrea, by introducing another program, which is an idea that came out from here, which is called Back to School.  So this is the new, like, I would say the 2.0 of the first program where what we did was that these people who were like really loving being teachers and then that’s when that gave us the idea.  There are so many subject matter experts in any place or any organization.  Maybe they are not the senior folks, maybe they don’t shine so much because they’re doing some small projects somewhere hidden behind a desk.  But these are the people who really know our topic very well.

So we started this Back to School program, which actually has got mentioned in our current annual report.  And it’s something that I was leading and, you know, conceptualized and executed on this whole program, which is like, let’s create a school atmosphere in the office.  So we took up one entire floor and made classrooms. We had, every forty-five minutes, one session going on on very different topics.  It could be technology, it could be operations, it could be about leadership, it could be on, you know, data analytics.  I mean, a range of topics were being taught by people, subject experts from the company and employees could just pick and choose and go for any sessions.

So, clearly like a bell would ring like your class bell and then you would have people coming to class, you have a teacher who’s somebody from the office and then they learn for forty-five minutes, a really good solid session, and then they can go and attend a completely different class, maybe on profile building or performance management or you know and they could just pick and choose different topics.

They loved it.  I mean, we had like 1500 signups within three hours of opening up for registration.  Then when a class would finish and I will open the door or the facilitator would open the door and there would be like a crowd waiting outside to enter in for the next class.  It was like, people just absolutely love this, you know, and we recorded.

We video recorded many of them and made them into small bite-size YouTube kind of learning, which they could just watch in twenty minutes.  The ones who couldn’t attend a class could watch it on video then.  Then we released it like season one, season two, with like eight or ten classes each where people could actually, you know, refer to them or go back to them and listen in again.

Andrea:  Hmm.  There are so many things that I love about that.  I love how it really gave people that were already in the company an opportunity to share their expertise and to shine, really.  And then everybody else has a chance to learn from them and you were able to use it again by turning it into videos.  I mean, it sounds like a fantastic program.  Was it a one day experience then, this Back to School – did it take place in one day?

Shefali Gupta:  So first time, we did it for two days, two whole days so that people could come and go when they felt like.  I mean, sometimes people are more free in the afternoon.  Sometimes some people in banking get free post 3:00 p.m., right? After the banking cut off as branches are shut down.  So, we did it for two whole days, but the next time when we did it the second time we did it for four days, but we kept half days.   But we did it over four days, I think from Tuesday to Friday.  So it could be like, I think two days is a good number.  One feels short because it was like, you know, many people are not there or they are busy in a meeting and then they just missed the whole thing.  I think between two and three is it seems the right number of days to do this.

Andrea:  It sounds exciting, sounds exciting.  So when it came to leading this digital transformation, it sounds like this getting everybody on board, at least getting understanding, awareness, and then positive feedback or positive experience with it.  It sounds like, you know, bringing in, doing this education, helping them to see that you care about them must have made a tremendous impact on the buy-in of the whole team.

Shefali Gupta:  Yes, absolutely it did.  I mean, it helped, in overall, just collaboration.  I felt that people have become more collaborative because of everybody having the same vision.  Everybody was excited to do something different.  So teams are different units and functions are working together, like technology in business and operations with business.  So everybody is more collaborative for sure.  And the second thing is that everybody feels that they are going through a very exciting phase in their career.  I have had so many of my team members come to me saying, “This is the best year in my career,” kind of a thing.

So, because there’s lots happening and they all feel empowered that they have a chance to make a difference and not just be boring bankers, but actually be in a very exciting phase of their life and here was a chance for them to make a difference.  So, I think these two things, you know, have a collaborativeness and just maybe slight, definitely a more driven self-initiative kind of a excitement that’s built in to the company.  That’s really good.

Andrea:  So when we’re looking at this overall transition from being this more traditional kind of bank to being the World’s Best Digital Bank, could you take us back a little bit to the beginning of this process and why there was a desire or a decision to make this change and how the ball kind of got rolling?  At what point was this?  Why did it start?

Shefali Gupta:  It’s a good question.  There was a definite trigger point – and that came up, I think almost like eight years back.  So we have, you know, like a country level customer satisfaction survey, which is done by the central authorities, like the government and some of the top institutes.  So that kind of survey was done and DBS was like almost at the bottom of customer satisfaction.  That was, I think, a wakeup call.  It was all over the media.

But also we knew from our customers that they weren’t happy and there were a lot of pain points and there were a lot of noise on, “Queues are too long.”  “The processes are not friendly.”  “Staffs are rude.”  I mean, all sorts of negative.

And of course, just like the processes being very slow and everything takes too much time.  So that was how the trigger point was that boom, like, “Okay, we were lowest,” and it was like a wakeup call for us to do something about it.  And at the same time, we actually happened to have a new CEO being appointed to the company who’s extremely dynamic and extremely driven to do something really big.  And actually not just improve where we are going wrong, but to reimagine the entire way of, you know, banking is done and, you know, the position that DBS could be in the name that it could have and become a worldwide known name.  I mean, those were the kind of aspirations that our CEO came in.  So our leadership was very supportive and extremely positive and driven to do this change.  And I think that’s kind of had a good spiral effect across the company.

Andrea:  At what point were you looped in on this process and did you start to collaborate to help figure out how to move forward?

Shefali Gupta:  So I joined DBS from Citibank after being in Citibank for about fourteen years.  I joined DPS and I was in the customer experience and was handling the customer experience for the wealth management part of the business.  And then after two years of doing that, what DBS did was that they set up a separate cell, like a small team, known as the Improvement Team which was back to the CIO and the CEO of the company, which would then be the team which would drive the entire transformation in the company.

So, I was fortunate enough to be asked to join the team.  And I think that was like definitely a turning point in my career because here I got a chance to not do just my work, but actually be being in a position where I could have oversight about the whole company and be able to influence and support them in, you know, as we move forward.

So, from this team, the methodologies, tools, and the training, or even many of these programs were being rolled out from and executed across the organization.  And later on in the last few years, I became the head of strategy and planning for the technology and operations group.  And that’s how it gave me the leeway to be working with teams on upskilling the entire technology future readiness.  And those are things that I was leading once I got into even a bigger role in this particular team.

Andrea:  I’m sure that was exciting, but probably also a bit of a challenge for you personally.  What did you find to be the biggest challenge for you personally?

Shefali Gupta:  I think there were two things.  One is, I think, the containers, very high speed of learning that was needed; like there was no stopping, right?  Like every day there was something new that was happening.  So, in some sense, you always had to keep evolving yourself and stretching yourself and learning new things.  So, it’s not easy when you’ve come from doing very regular kind of jobs where you know what you have to do when you come in the morning and your day is like a set day.  Here, every day was different.  And I was thrown into new topics, new projects, new tasks like, “Okay, go help with the workforce strategy,” or “Go lead this particular thing.”

So first, I mean I think it was continuous learning, which was a personal challenge.  But after some time I started really enjoying that.  And you know, being able to take a topic and upskill myself first and then go and see how I could, you know, add value to others.

The second challenge for me, which actually became very positive towards the end, is that it’s a very matrix sort of… You are like a center cell in a huge organization.  And it’s not that everybody is reporting into you, but you still have to influence them and get them to do what you want them to do and for them to trust you.  And especially in countries where English might not be even the first language like China or Taiwan or maybe people who haven’t dealt with and who were completely new to me and I was new to them as well.

So just being able to work in a collaborative way and getting them to trust you and looking at the bigger picture and not worrying that, “Will I get the credit for it,” or “How will it help me?”  But just looking at it, “Okay, this is the right thing to do and we should do it.”  So, that’s what is really, you know, I think one of the challenges, initially I faced.  But then once I started to make the connect and get people to trust me, I really started enjoying working with very different teams and helping and supporting them in every way I could without worrying about whether it’s going to benefit them or me or, you know, who gets the brownie points.  You kind of have to stop thinking too much about that.

And that’s what has led me to now like really think of now that I’m in North America, I want to really continue doing that.  Like, just working in teams, helping them solve the problems or execute on some of their programs or just helping them think through and learn from, you know, my experiences.

Andrea:  So how did you gain their trust and be able to have influence in that situation?

Shefali Gupta:  So, I think part of the ways to gain trust was using my experience and my knowledge and skills to make a genuine value add to the work they’re doing and they saw the value of it.  That was first.

And the second thing is that what I mentioned earlier, not having expectations on what is it that I would get if I were to help them or gain their trust, but actually just doing it because it’s the right thing for the customer and for the organization.  So they saw me being like that I’m thinking not just on my personal agenda but overall the organization agenda and definitely the customer agenda.

Andrea:  So they could see that you are for the customer but also for them individually, I’m sure, because everything that you ended up bringing into play with the Gandalf Scholars and all of the upskilling that you made room for in the future that had to have a huge impact then for them to be able to feel like you were for them.

Shefali Gupta:  Yeah, absolutely.

Andrea:  Now you’d mentioned that there were some things that didn’t go so well.  What did you learn from this process?

Shefali Gupta:  Okay, I mean for me personally, the two things that I learned from here is firstly, no job is small or too big, I would think.  Anything that’s given to me, there were sometimes like even the smallest of things that I would be doing, like “Okay, we have this visitor who has come from some other country and they want to understand what we’re doing and …to us.”  So, sometimes I would say that, you know what, it’s a lot of time but then afterwards you start realizing that everything adds up, right?  Every small thing makes a difference.  It’s what you make out of a particular task or assignment and how much you can add value by doing it completely differently.  That’s my learning.

If some work is given to me or a task is given to me, there’s one way would be is, “Okay, just go on and do it as you were told to do it.”  The second way would be that: can you completely reimagine it and do it in a way which is very different and just in a much larger scale or looking at it as a much bigger picture.  So that was my first learning.

The second learning would be just be very open to people of different personalities, different age groups and, you know, different backgrounds because from every human being, there’s something that you can learn from them.

So the older folks or people who’ve been there for 30, 40 years who had a very specific way of thinking but there was so much I learned about, you know, the real way of doing control compliance, the eye for detail that they had that was really very impactful.

And from the youngsters, I work with a lot of twenty something people.  So, I have like, literally my daughter is 19 and I think half the team reporting to me was slightly above my daughter’s age.  There was so much I would learn from them, the freshness of ideas or the ability to question everything.  And just the energy which goes behind the thinking and how they work together and collaborate, so I think that was the second thing, just be open to younger, senior, junior.  It doesn’t matter.  Just try and learn what you can what that person has to bring on the table.

Andrea:  Wow, what an amazing transformation it sounds like took place not just in the company but also in you.

Shefali Gupta:  Absolutely.  Yeah.  I feel so too.

Andrea:  Hmm.  So when you think about somebody who wants to be a Voice of Influence® in their own company, what kind of advice would you give them to help navigate changes or personal challenges, especially when it comes to leading change?

Shefali Gupta:  So, I mean, I would say, three things here.  My advice would be firstly, think of a bigger purpose, a higher purpose that you are doing.  So when I was asked to look at, you know, upskilling of the employees, so one way I could have looked at it, “Okay, I’m training a bunch of people.”  The other way will look at it is that, “Okay, I’m going to ensure that these eight thousand people would have jobs even ten years from now or twenty years.”  So they would be employable or their employability is going up and hence I’m contributing to the overall sustainability of them, their families, and you know, the people around them in their communities.

So my first advice would be to whatever you’re doing, look for a higher purpose.  What is it that you would like to do that you could bring in and that you could make a bigger difference in your circle of influence or the world around you.

The second thing that I would say is that when you are doing something, it could be it in your personal life, at home or in the office, just try and always think through, “Is there a better way to do this?”  So this continuous improvement thing is something which is, you know, _____, because once you do that, you will see others also start thinking like that, that look at continuous improvement.  There’s something that, “Okay, is there something or better way to do this?”

So keep trying to pivot and improve whatever you’ve been doing, so how you have Apple go from whatever from different to 9.0, 10, and 11 or whatever.  The same way, it’s like you have to say that, “Okay, I’m gonna have a new release of new way of doing something every time.”  So that’s the kind of culture in organization you bring in then you will have people thinking on their feet all the time saying, “Okay, why should we do it the same way?  Let’s look at it differently.”

The third thing, I mean patience.  I think not all change comes overnight and that’s why we have all these problems.  Like Rome wasn’t built in a day; it does take time.  People take time to change.  So when you try and go on to a change management or a transformation journey, any organization, give it a time.  I mean, it will take time.  It’s not going to be in one year or six months.  It is a multi year journey and keep that in your mind.

Andrea:  Hmm.  Wow, well, thank you so much for sharing your voice of influence with our listeners today, Shefali.   I really appreciate it.  If somebody is interested in connecting with you or asking you a question about what you did with the work at DBS Bank, where should they find you?

Shefali Gupta:  I think LinkedIn would be a good place.  That’s something that I’m quick in my responses there. And now that I’m based in the US, like, if any of the folks want to catch up or just chat or meet up, I’m happy to be connected over there.

Andrea:  All right, well, we’ll make sure to link to your LinkedIn page in our show notes on voiceofinfluence.net.  And I thank you again so much for being here with us today.

Shefali Gupta:  Thank you, Andrea.  It was a pleasure, and I’m really happy that, you know, you’re doing this podcast and hope you much success and hope we remain friends forever.

Andrea:  Oh, thank you!

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Using YouTube to Build Influence in 2020 with Nate Woodbury

Episode 122

Nate Woodbury helps speakers and coaches leverage YouTube to grow a massive following that brings in seven figures of revenue.  He is a master of efficiency whose brain is wired to see things with a results focus and he loves sharing the secrets and strategies that he uses to get YouTube results.

In this episode, Nate discusses how he got started with YouTube, why YouTube videos get so many more views than webpages, the importance of doing keyword research before recording anything, which keywords you should be focusing on, the keyword research tool that’s completely changed his business, why authenticity is more important than video or audio quality, how YouTube isn’t a quick-fix marketing strategy, his four-month strategy for growing your YouTube video views, how thumbnails are critical in click-through rates, why your thumbnail shouldn’t have the title of video on it, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

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

Nate Woodbury Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

 

Transcript

Hey, hey! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. Today, I have with me Nate Woodbury here, and he helps speakers and coaches leverage YouTube to grow a massive following that brings in seven figures of revenue. He is a master of efficiency. His brain is wired to see things with a results focus, and he loves sharing the secrets and strategies that he uses to get YouTube results. So, today’s going to be really interesting.

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

Nate Woodbury: Yeah, happy to be here. And I like the name – influence is a big part of what I do. I love that.

Andrea: Yes, I can tell. And so, Nate, how did you get started in YouTube? Like, what’s your YouTube kind of origin story?

Nate Woodbury: Yeah, so going back about six or seven years is when I made the transition from a web design service that I used to have. As a part of website design, I also did search engine optimization and to get my clients’ websites to rank on Google, I would create this SEO page, I called them. And we’d do a whole bunch of things from link-building, and articles, and infographics that we linked on Pinterest.

Well, one thing that we put on there was a YouTube video, a how-to video, and it worked. It got these pages ranked on the top of Google, but then I noticed something. I noticed that the video itself over on YouTube was getting fifty times more views and traffic than the entire SEO page that was ranking number one on Google. And that was eye-opening for me because it was a lot of work doing what we were doing. So, I started to make a shift and just focus only on the YouTube part. You could create one piece of content and get fifty times more traffic so that’s where it began.

Andrea: Wow, that’s awesome! Okay, why is that? Why is it that people are experiencing so much more traffic through YouTube?

Nate Woodbury: Well, when people are searching online, they’re searching for something, not necessarily a company or a specific website. If they have a question – you know, how to get rid of strep throat without antibiotics or how to invest in real estate with no money – they kind of want the answer to that question, and YouTube has become a great search engine for that type of content.

So, you can create a video that answers people’s specific questions, and that’s what people are wanting to find. And you know, comparing that to website SEO, you’re trying to make your website big and relevant and compete out there. But YouTube is already big in relevance. You just create the right type of content, and YouTube gets the traffic.

Andrea: Okay, so when it comes to you helping other people to start this – let’s say that they’ve got it figured out, they want to do it – what’s the first step?

Nate Woodbury:  The first step is keyword research, and that sounds intimidating. It sounds overwhelming, but here’s to simplify it. Right now, all around the world, there are people that are searching for you; that they have questions, and you have the answers. And when you do keyword research, you can find those questions. So that’s all it is. You’re trying to find the specific questions that people are asking, and now you know what to make videos about.

And I can give you an example. My friend, Katie Gutierrez, she’s an interior designer in Miami, and one of her areas of expertise is living room design. And if she were to come up in her mind with a few video ideas, “Okay, I want to make a few videos around living room design,” she could be creative and come up with some videos that would be helpful, and we’d give them catchy titles. But instead we did keyword research together first before she started filming. We found a list of twenty really specific questions people are asking about living room design, such as how to design a living room with high ceilings, how to design a living room with large windows, or – one that I really liked – how to design a living room with a corner fireplace.

And we found twenty of these type questions. And so one, it gives her a lot more variety, a lot more ideas of videos that she could film, but it also matches the video with people that are actually searching. And so this works really well on YouTube. One other point that’s really important that I want to bring up that’s different from traditional SEO research and in marketing is I go after phrases that have low search volume intentionally. I ignore the ones that have large search volume. The reason being is the large search volume phrases have high competition.

But I think the phrase how to design a living room with a corner fireplace, I believe that has thirty searches per month on average. That’s wonderful because those thirty people are going to watch the video all the way to the end. The YouTube algorithm sees that and thinks, “Wow, this is a high performing video. Let’s find more people like these thirty that we can promote this video to.” And so YouTube starts to become my promotion engine.

Andrea: Okay, that’s very interesting. So you’re saying that it’s more important to get people to watch through the whole thing and if that higher percentage is going to make a difference in how YouTube then ends up pushing it out to more people.

Nate Woodbury: Exactly.

Andrea: Wow! Cool!

Nate Woodbury: Yeah. And if you can go after a phrase that no one else is going after then you rank instantly, and you’ll start getting traffic instantly even if it’s a person a day.

Andrea: Wow!

Nate Woodbury: Now, just one person a day, at least you’re getting that instantly as opposed to posting a video and not getting any views sort of relevant, you know.

Andrea: Sure. That makes a lot of sense. All right, so people do a keyword search, they try to figure this out, but then I’m assuming that there are some technical things that people get intimidated by. I mean, certainly has been that way for me. So, when it comes to the quality of video on YouTube, how important is that quality of video and audio?

Nate Woodbury: All right. So, quality is important, but what’s more important than quality is just authenticity, and that’s a buzzword today, that’s a buzzword. So let me kind of explain that. I can go out and spend a huge amount of money on camera equipment, on lighting and sound, on a studio, and that’s not going to guarantee a single thing, right? It’s not going to guarantee that my videos are going to go anywhere or anything. But as an example on the other end of the spectrum, I can pull out my phone, and I can just be walking down the street and just talk and just have a conversation, and that type of video is more likely to actually succeed if it’s really me and I’m just sharing advice, or I’m sharing a story and I’m really connecting with people.

So, another note on the authenticity side is you don’t need to show up as an actor. You don’t need to show up and talk in a professional voice like you’re a news anchor or like you’re giving a stage presentation. It’s just talking and having a conversation to one person. Like you’re having a conversation with one person at a time because that’s typically all that’s watching your video at a time is just one person. So, you look right into the lens of the camera and you talk to them; that will get your results.

And so if there’s specific things that you want to do to make your videos more professional or whatnot, I actually recommend against making it look like a company or corporate. Like, you don’t need to worry about putting text or graphics on the screen because a lot of times, unless you really know what you’re doing, it looks cheesy anyway.

Andrea: Sure.

Nate Woodbury: So just start simple. You’ve got an amazing camera in your pocket, and face a window so you got the light coming in on your face so you’re well lit. And you know, if you’re holding the camera, if it’s close to you, the audio is going to be pretty good. So that’s where I say start.

Andrea: Yeah. Awesome! All right, so if somebody wants to have some sort of influence, they’re wanting to have a message that gets out there and that sort of thing, they kind of have an idea of their expertise, they’ve done the keyword search… Now, you have a resource about keyword searching, is that right?

Nate Woodbury: Uh-huh.

Andrea: Let’s go ahead and tell them about that now because I don’t want to forget that one.

Nate Woodbury: Sure. Yeah, and to preface this tool, because it’s so amazing… I discovered [it] a year ago, September. Prior to that, I was using multiple tools, a couple of softwares that I paid for, the Google AdWords Keyword tool. So, I’d use one to get some data, use another one to filter it down, and use another one to improve it and expand. And it took me forever to do, and it took me like a year to train one of my assistants to be able to do it for me. Okay, so fast forward to September of 2018, and I was at a conference and the company, SEMrush, they were an exhibitor, and I’d use them before. They’ve been around a long time. I used their software back in the day when I had my SEO company.

Well, they smiled when I told them my process and what I was doing, and he pulled out the iPad and showed me this Keyword Magic Tool. And so that’s the tool that I used with Katie, the interior designer. So, if we typed in living room design and then there’s a button that says questions, so after you hit search then you hit questions, and then all the questions that… you know, the twenty that we filled narrowed it down to about living room design, just all appeared right there. So that tool basically took all the mini-steps that I was doing and just put it into one simple tool. It’s awesome!

Andrea: Wow. That’s awesome! Okay, and we’ll link to it in the show notes, how people can find it, but if you want to tell us again at the end, that’d be awesome.

Nate Woodbury: Sure.

Andrea: Do people in, like, a corporate space, people who are wanting to be a thought leader, that sort of thing… have you seen people like that who not are necessarily coaches, but maybe want to be known for their expertise; are they using YouTube?

Nate Woodbury: Well, that’s a good question. I mean, in the world of YouTube, I’m kind of a part of two different worlds. There’s the entrepreneur world, and then there’s the YouTuber world and the YouTuber world, most of the people there started YouTube as a hobby. They had another career, but as their YouTube channel grew, they actually started to make money from ad revenue. They got approached for sponsorships. They got started to be invited to speak, and then they thought, “Okay, I guess I’m a business owner. I guess I’m going to be self-employed.” And so they quit their job, and they put on the hat of entrepreneur, and that’s most of the people that are in the Youtuber category.

The world that I come from is more on the entrepreneurial side. We have our product or service and I’ve really honed in on working with coaches and speakers, those who have some type of skill set or expertise that’s what they sell through courses, or through speaking, or events, or whatnot. And I’ve helped those people leverage YouTube because really just using that keyword research process. They can find the questions that people are asking them and help them really build a large following. So does that help?

Andrea: Yeah. That’s interesting. I think I could see it being beneficial for somebody, like, in a job if they’re considering other options perhaps or if they are wanting to speak alongside what they’re doing, that sort of thing. I can see that being beneficial too, especially if you’re wanting to, I don’t know, even be able to showcase some of your expertise so that people might want you to come speak and that sort of thing.

Nate Woodbury: Well, a lot of people will do that for a hobby. You know, let’s say that somebody got a model airplane hobby, and they put it out there. Well, eventually, I’ve seen channels like that really take off to where people are funding projects, “Ooh, I want to see you make this type of an airplane or see if this will fly.” And you know, they contribute to stuff like that. The other thing that I want to mention is YouTube is a long term strategy. It’s not quick-fix marketing, and it’s great to start now rather than later.

Even if you’re not quite sure where you want to go, you think, “You know what, I really want to step into that space,” then just get started and practice and get used to being in front of the camera. Start with one episode per week, and over time you’ll see which video… you know, over let’s say three months, you’ve posted a dozen videos. You’ll be able to look back and see, “Well this one got a lot more views, likes, and comments than the others. Maybe I’ll just make a few more like that one.” And you’ll learn the ropes along the way.

Andrea: So, in podcasting… I sort of learned it this way, that you’re supposed to start with maybe your intro video and three others – excuse me, podcast episodes – so that you have a few in the bank when people start listening to you, and then you build from there. Do you do the same thing with YouTube? Do you start with a few, or do you start with one?

Nate Woodbury: Well, yeah. I mean, it makes sense if you’re launching one video, and people come to your channel, and they see that that’s your only video. I mean, I can understand the logic behind that. And I did that as well when I launched my podcast. But at the same time, content is so searchable, and my strategy is so much focused on search that I guess it’s not as emphasized. I guess the reason that it is emphasized in the podcast world is because you’re really trying to do something in the first month or two, I believe, to get picked up by iTunes as “New and Notable” or something like that. Is that right?

Andrea: Yeah, yeah. But there’s nothing like that, there’s no equivalent to that on YouTube.

Nate Woodbury: Well, I have my own formula that I figured out that’s a four-month strategy if you’d like me to share that.

Andrea: Sure, if you want to share that. We’d love to hear it.

Nate Woodbury: Okay, so this is a formula that… it’s really aggressive, and the result is that you will get a spike. So what I mean by a spike is over the four months, it’s not really exciting, you’re having gradual growth, just incremental increases of views. But then right on the four-month mark, you just have a surge of views and subscribers. So we’re talking, let’s say you’re averaging – across your channel – you’re averaging a hundred views a day, and then all of a sudden you have 10,000 views in a day and 10,000 views the next day. And then when it settles back down, you’re at a brand new baseline. Maybe your average increased up to like 600 views a day. So it’s like a six times increase.

Okay, so here’s the four ingredients. One, you’ve got to do keyword research before filming, like we talked about. And I have a video on my YouTube channel called My Leaf Strategies. So if you ever want to know that strategy in more detail, my channel is Nate Woodbury, Leaf Strategy, you’ll find that video, and that will help you how to do the keyword research before filming. And the second ingredient is you want your episodes to be ten to twelve minutes in length, and that’s an average.  You can go a little bit less than that. I’d say, you know, I recommend at least seven minutes. You can go longer than that.

My best performing video of all times is actually a twenty-minute episode. So the ten to twelve minutes is the average. The third ingredient is you want your average view duration to be 45% or higher. So, if you have a ten-minute video but people on average are only watching one minute of it, that just gives you some indications, “Okay, what do we need to do to get people to watch more?” And oftentimes there’s just some simple things you can say at the beginning to let people know why they should stay to the end.

A lot of times I’ve provided consulting to people where I watched the video – I’ve got one video in my mind – and her content was so good, and in fact, it got better and better throughout the video. And I’m just like, this is a really valuable video, but people are leaving after forty-five seconds or a minute, you know, and so if she would’ve just said, “Okay, I’m gonna give you a quick answer to my question at the beginning, then I’m going to give you the back story of why it’s important, and then I’ll share with you some strategies of how you can really implement it.” That’s the long version. The quick step here is you got to have 45% average duration or longer. And then the fourth ingredient is you’ve got to launch five episodes per week.

Andrea: Oh wow!

Nate Woodbury: So that sounds aggressive, doesn’t it?

Andrea: Yeah, yeah.

Nate Woodbury: That’s the formula. So, you do my leaf strategy – ten to twelve minutes per episode, average reiteration of 45% higher, and you’ll launch five episodes per week – at that four-month mark, you’ll have a spike. Because that’s such a high amount of work, you can get pretty discouraged two or three months in because you’re looking at your channel, thinking, “Man, I’m working really hard, and this last episode only got seven views. What’s going on here, Nate? Come on, I need a spike like you’re telling me.” But we get to that four-month mark in, and every time, when you have these four ingredients, I’ve always seen a spike.

Andrea: Wow. That’s really cool. That’s a lot of videos, for sure. And so do you have people put, like… I oftentimes will see words on the front of the video to kind of like get people’s attention maybe, I don’t know. Do you do that, or do you have people do that?

Nate Woodbury: Well, thumbnail design is extremely important.

Andrea: Yeah, thumbnail design, that’s what I’m thinking, yeah.

Nate Woodbury: Right. So custom thumbnail is critical in getting your video to perform, and once you start getting enough traffic on your videos that you can get significant stats, you can do what’s called AB testing. So, you might design an original thumbnail that you think, “Okay, I believe that this is going to create curiosity here.” And then you’ll be able to track the click-through rate and say it’s 4.87 percent click-through rate. And then, with AB testing you can design a second version and it will compare the two, and oftentimes we’re looking for an improvement, right? So, “Oh, this one bumped it up to a 7.21 click-through rate,” and so you’ll keep the alternate version. Thumbnail design is a huge… it’s critical in success on YouTube.

Andrea: And then do you use the same title that somebody would search for? You know, like the title at the bottom? Is that the same thing that you put on the thumbnail? Because I often see it’s different.

Nate Woodbury: You want it to be different because you’ll always see the title of the video with the thumbnail.

Andrea: Okay. Yeah.

Nate Woodbury: The title will always be there.

Andrea: So it’s redundant.

Nate Woodbury: Exactly. You don’t have to have texts. I often do. I’ve found that the default rule is fewer words, the better on the thumbnail, and you want to create curiosity instead of, like, telling statements. So, if I were to make a video on how to get rid of strep throat without antibiotics – that’s the title of the video – instead of saying, you know, strep throat remedy, you know, that could be some text I could put on the thumbnail.

But what I think would perform better is “secret formula” or something like this actually works – you know, put a question mark like, “This actually works?” – and I have a face that’s like, “What?” Because they’ll see the title, and then maybe I’m holding up something that… you know, one of the ingredients is garlic so maybe I’m holding up a bowl of garlic, and I’m looking at it like, “This really works?” You know, something like that would actually create… I found that to create a lot more clicks, because there’s more curiosity. They’re like, “Is that remedy in my kitchen now?”

Andrea: Yeah, yeah, that’s cool. Okay, so I think that’s one of the big challenges with marketing, in general, is how do you create that kind of intrigue that gets people to actually take a bite, to click, to try it out.

Nate Woodbury: Yeah. The cool thing is you can just start. I use Photoshop, but there’s a free tool called Canva, and Canva has YouTube thumbnail templates.

Andrea: I love Canva.

Nate Woodbury: Yeah. It’s really simple. You can just go in there, and it will automatically set up the dimensions for you, and it has some stock images and color and fonts. You can just create a thumbnail, and start, and then, you know, you’ll learn to make improvements.

Andrea: Yeah, awesome. Well, Nate, this has been so helpful. You know, you’re working with influencers all the time, so when you think about the importance of having an impact in the world of, you know, maybe your own influence that you’re wanting to have, what kind of tip or piece of advice would you like to give the influencer that is listening now?

Nate Woodbury: Well, the first thought that comes to my mind, I’m thinking of a message that my client and friend Paul Jenkins got from a lady in India. Paul had made a parenting video. I don’t remember the title of it, but he often makes videos such as How to Get Your Kids to Listen Without Yelling – you know, just great parenting topics. And the lady in India said, “I was having problems with my son. I watched your video, and I tried it, and it worked. Thank you so much.” And that just… that really impacted him, especially because, you know, we’re in Utah, and on the other side of the planet in India, somebody had watched his video, and he was able to help a mother with her son. And that’s influence. That’s influence right there.

And so my advice is you have experience, and therefore that gives you expertise. You have advice that you can share, and so simply by making a video that answer somebody’s questions and provides them that help or value, you’re giving that for free on YouTube, you are an influencer now.

Andrea: Hmm. That’s cool. All right, so, Nate, you’ve already shared with us a couple of places where people can get in touch with you and find you, but would you kind of recap that for us? And also maybe tell us a little bit about what you do to help people with their YouTube channels.

Nate Woodbury: Well, sure. So I do full production. I help with channel strategy, the topic strategy, then we’ll do the filming, have a full filming production, and editing, and launch, and thumbnail design. So, we basically do it for you. It’s expensive, okay? So it’s not a service that I really offer to the masses, but I currently have thirteen clients, and that’s what I do. Best places to find me are on YouTube at Nate Woodbury, or I do have a podcast as well, it’s Influence School.

The other thing that I just really want to emphasize is that this really works. It’s not theory. And so maybe this is bragging, but I want to share some numbers behind my largest channel, the Kris Krohn channel. He teaches real estate investing. We started that channel at zero, you know, brand new, and it’s now almost… we’re like 5,000 subscribers away from a half a million, so 500,000 subscribers. And what results that’s getting for us is about $600,000 per month in sales revenue. That channel is generating so many leads that $600,000 a month in sales. And that’s the potential.

In the world of YouTube, 500,000 is kind of small, especially for the amount of income that we’re generating. I just really want to share that just to show the opportunity on YouTube is really, really massive. I’m glad that I could be here to answer some questions and put you guys in that direction.

Andrea: Awesome! All right. Thank you so much, Nate. We appreciate you and your voice of influence in the world helping others find theirs and use it.

Nate Woodbury: Yeah, you’re welcome.

Andrea: All right. Well, we’ll talk to you soon.

Nate Woodbury: Alright. Bye, bye.

Posted on

How to Lead a 30,000 Foot-View Team Check-In

Episode 121

This week is a very special week as we’re transitioning from one decade to the next so I’m doing a special solo episode to wrap up the year and decade.

This is a time of year where a lot of companies have strategy sessions or days to review what they’ve accomplished and where they’re headed in the next year. Now, I absolutely love doing these strategy sessions with my clients, but there’s one thing I’ve noticed these companies rarely do and I would like to see that changed.

In this episode, I’m explaining why it’s crucial for companies to do periodic check-ins during the year to get a 30,000-foot view of where your company is at that time, the four main benefits of doing these check-ins, how to know when it’s time to do a check-in, and the five questions you can ask during the check-in to help your team get back into a strategic flow.

Mentioned in this episode:

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

Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

 

Transcript

Hey, hey! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. It has been a long time since we have sat down just you and me. We’ve had a lot of interviews over the past few months, and it’s good to be back. Today is a pretty special day; this week is a very special week. We are transitioning from one decade to the next. This is the time of year that companies and teams take a step back and a lot of times will do a strategy day, or they’ll take a good hard look at what they’ve accomplished and where they’re headed. This is something that I love doing with clients.

But one of the things that is missing when people do strategy days is the follow-up. Strategy day or workshop, whatever kind of change you’re trying to encourage within your team, whatever kind of initiative you’re setting forth – every once in a while after that, you still need to take a step back away from all of the grind of the day to take that 30k foot view and say, “Where are we?” So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. We’re going to talk about what I called the 30k Foot Check-in.

So, this team check-in is an opportunity for you to help your team to think more strategically again and to get back into the flow of why they’re doing what they’re doing and how you’re going to move forward. It’s a simple, simple meeting. So we’re not talking about the in-depth strategy day where you’re nailing out or hammering out a 90-day plan with all kinds of projects and things like that. Instead of that, we’re talking about a very quick check-in, maybe thirty to forty-five minutes. This is how you know that it’s time for your 30k Foot Team Check-in.

If your team is feeling disjointed or you’re sensing a lot of friction amongst the people that are on the team, this is a good time to take a step back and check in, and say, “How are we doing?” If you have recently had a workshop or a strategy day, you have been making some sort of change. You don’t want to neglect the fact that people get really annoyed if you start a project and then don’t finish it, if you start an initiative and don’t carry it through. So, if you have a workshop and there isn’t any follow-up that is built into the workshop then you definitely want to build it in for yourself. So how can you come back to the changes that you were trying to make, the conversation that you were trying to have? Well, this is one way to do it.

Another time that you might want to have a 30k Foot meeting is when a team is getting really lost in the weeds. They might be making minimal progress on their projects but the overall needle is not turning like you wanted it to. Then it’s time to take a step back and check in with the team.

There are lots of benefits of doing this, but we’re going to talk about four. The first one is that you’re giving your team a voice. By having a time to be able to step back and check in, you’re giving them the opportunity to say what is on their minds, to make a difference in the overall picture. And this is incredibly important when it comes to engagement and retention. People want to believe that their voice matters, that what they do and say matters. They want to have agency.

And when they do, when they can have agency within a dialogue – a respectful dialogue – on your team, they are going to be more likely to continue to collaborate and come to consensus on things more easily. So you want to be able to give them a voice.

But number two, there’s also the benefit of collecting actionable insights from people that you might not have already heard. So although you already have an idea of what’s going well and what’s not going well, this is a chance for them to share, and you’re going to end up finding out things that you didn’t even realize could be changed. Sometimes the smallest little things that can make the biggest difference that other people are seeing. This is a great opportunity for people to share that.

A third benefit would be that you get to develop rapport in the team and perhaps even come to consensus. Consensus isn’t always possible or necessary, but what you can come to consensus on is this idea that you are going to trust each other. So, even if you don’t have a meeting for every little thing to make sure that there is consensus on every little thing – which is, of course, impossible – if you could live under this consensus that you trust each other, and so you don’t need to have your hands in everything then that’s going to help people. And it’s going to mean a lot to them that they’re going to feel like they’re on the same team. They’re seeing the game plan. They are part of creating the game plan. It means a lot.

A fourth benefit would be to help your team think more strategically. So, a lot of us are born with personalities that are focused on the details. We like to get in there, get our hands in it, get it done, but every once in awhile, we all need to be able to step back and think more strategically which allows us to have a greater impact with what we’re doing as a team. So make adjustments where we need to make adjustments.

So, this is an opportunity for you to help teach your team how to think strategically. And if you build this into a regular rhythm in your team, you’re going to find that people are going to start thinking like this, and it is going to make a difference in how they respond to changes that need to take place, and how they respond to each other in the kind of dialogue and collaboration that they’re able to accomplish.

All right, so how do we set this meeting up? This is kind of a meeting that I would recommend that if… If you’re doing it as a follow-up to a strategy day or a workshop, I’d recommend doing it every month after that for a few months so that you have a chance to really nail the thing down – you really get it going. If not, if it’s something that’s not possible or if that’s just too much, every quarter or every half year is a great time to be able to sit down and just have this quick meeting that would be a check-in to help them to be able to see things from a bigger perspective.

So what are the questions? Here are five questions that you can use at this meeting. Question number one, what do we have to celebrate? Celebration is something that can often be neglected, especially depending on the personalities in your group. Sometimes, it just feels like we’re never quite there, and so there’s nothing to really celebrate because as soon as we make it over one hump there’s another one to shoot for. But it’s important in meetings like these to have the opportunity to sit back and say, “What do we have to celebrate? What did we really accomplish?” Sometimes, it could be an actual accomplishments or an award that sort of thing, or a goal that’s been met, or it could simply be bringing somebody else onto the team that’s been a good team member.

Question number two is what are we doing well that gets us there? So you have things to celebrate. What is it that you’ve done? What systems have you put in place? What’s the culture like that has made it that you can get to this point? What is the character of the people on a team that’s getting you there? These are important things to acknowledge.

Question number three, what challenges lie ahead? Now, it can be really tempting for some people to want to complain in a meeting like this. It is important that they understand that this is actually not an opportunity for them to complain. We’re not looking back so much as we’re looking forward when it comes to the challenges.

So, instead of looking back at the challenges that you’ve had… unless you’ve been able to accomplish something, like let’s say you’ve gotten over that challenge, you really tackled that challenge – that’s great. But if it’s something that is a complaint about somebody else, and it’s something that’s going to be a concern in the future then instead of looking back and hashing out these old arguments or old problems, instead look forward and say, “What is coming that could be a potential challenge for us?” When people start to look ahead then they can start to think about how they’re going to navigate that challenge instead of complaining about it and feeling like a victim.

So, the fourth question, in follow up to that, would be what adjustments can we make to meet these challenges?

And then finally question number five, who will do what by when? Now, we’re not really talking about project management here. But if something has come up that needs to be addressed, if there is a challenge that is coming up ahead, and you’re ready to meet that challenge with some sort of adjustment that you’re going to make, what is that adjustment? How are you going to make it? Who’s in charge? Who’s going to get the ball rolling? Do you need to have another meeting? Does somebody need to go talk to somebody? Is there some sort of document that needs to be created? Some small thing is what we’re talking about here, not that detailed 90-day plan that you might execute after a strategy day, but some small thing that you know to help you to move forward.

So these five questions are very simple, but they do take you out of the weeds. They help you bring the team out of the weeds so that instead of thinking about their day-to-day frustrations, their day-to-day tasks and activities, they’re looking at the bigger picture about why it matters. Why they matter. The mission and vision and values, you can always bring those kinds of things up on a meeting like this. How are we headed in that direction? It’s a great thing to be able to come together underneath of that and say, “Where are we, and how can we move forward with more intentionality?”

And if you come to one of these meetings and you realize that it’s time to start a new initiative, it is time for us to take a deeper dive, and you want to lead some sort of strategic planning day, shoot me an email, contact me on our contact form on voiceofinfluence.net. I would love to be able to sit down and give you some thoughts about best practices for strategy days.

Again, that’s voiceofinfluence.net. Your voice matters; now let’s make it matter more!