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How to Discern Your Calling Without Feeling Pressure with Andrea Joy Wenburg

Episode 67

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 Small Shifts Lead to Big Transformation with Claudio Toyama

Episode 64

Claudio Toyama is committed to raising the awareness of people around the world, so they live full and fulfilled lives at work and home. He is an international bestselling author, an award-winning speaker, and the CEO of Toyama and Company; an international leadership consultancy specializing in small shifts that produce big results. Claudio has delivered projects in over 113 countries and has lived in five countries on four continents. He is also a Forbes contributor and is a featured guest on NBC and FOX; where he shares his unique experience on leadership and company culture.

In this episode, Claudio and I discuss the main message he’s putting out into the world, why his message is so important, why he chooses to help people at the core of who they really are in addition to helping with their mindset or teaching a skill, why he believes most leadership programs fail, how to balance who are with small changes that can improve your impact on those around you, and so much more!

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

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

Claudio Toyama 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 Claudio Toyama who is a committed to raising awareness of people around the world so that they live full and fulfilled lives at work and at home.  He’s an international best-selling author and award-winning speaker and the CEO of Toyoma & Co., an international leadership consultancy specializing in the small shifts that produce big results.

He has delivered projects in over 113 countries and has lived in five countries on four continents.  He is a Forbes contributor, a sought after international speaker and a featured guest on TV, including NBC and FOX, where Claudio shares his unique experience on leadership and company culture.  He lives with his daughter outside Washington, DC (USA).

Andrea:  Claudio, I’m so happy to have you here today on the Voice of Influence podcast!

Claudio Toyama:  Thank you so much for this invitation, Andrea.  Thank you very much.  I’m glad to be here.

Andrea:  And your bio didn’t mention it but you also have a book that you published, can you tell us a little bit?  The name of that book, The Samurai Samba and Vinci Way:  How to Improve Your Executive Presence, Increase Trust and Lead Your Team at a World-Class Level.  I really enjoyed reading this book and I’m excited to share and have you share more about it.

Claudio Toyama:  Yes, yes excellent!  So yeah, this book was published last year and it’s going to be a year now in October first.  It was a great thing because in the first 24 hours.  It got sold in 12 countries and now there has been 16 countries that people picked up a copy of and it’s been an amazing journey, getting a lot of positive feedback and people were saying that the message that I have is very needed message right now.

Andrea:  Alright, tell us a little bit about this message of yours.  I mean, what would you say is the core of your message that you’re trying to get out there as a message driven yourself?

Claudio Toyama:  My main message is combining the three persona, you know the persona of the Samurai, the persona of the Samba, and the persona of the Vinci.  Basically with the samurai, what I’m talking about is knowing who you are, the core.  So focusing on your core and knowing truly who you are and going for mastery at everything that you do.

In this world, we see people getting lost.  Before social media, it was the advertisement on TV.  The advertisement said, “Oh if you don’t buy this car, you’re gonna be miserable but if you buy this car, you’ll gonna be loved and everything.  If you lose weight, you’ll gonna be loved, if you don’t, you’re not.  If you’re too skinny then you’re not loved.”  So it’s always an external validation.

And my message with the Samurai is know who you truly are.  Once you have that strong core, it doesn’t matter if you’re being bombarded with different messages and even sometimes they say, “Oh no, you should lose a lot of weight,” and then sometimes they say “No, you should put on weight.”  And I was like “Oh which one do I follow?”  But if you know who you are, the core, and you’re good with yourself then it doesn’t matter what’s going on around you and it doesn’t matter because you’re going to be very very centered.

And then the Samba is the fluidity, the flexibility.  It is about going with the flow.  That one for me was much more about the adapting to different cultures and then I started seeing that that message applies everywhere.  If you go to a different place, if you go and talk to different friends, you can also be malleable and adaptable.

But why am I talking about the samurai and the samba together because if you are too rigid, you know because the samurai can have that rigidity to them.  If you’re too rigid, you’re not going to go with the flow.  But if you’re too flowy and too adaptable, you’re also going to lose yourself and you don’t know who you are any longer.

And then there’s the third element which is the Vinci, which is actually amalgamating everything that you are.  If you remember the renaissance period in Italy where they had in Florence and different parts of Italy, you have that renaissance person like Leonardo da Vinci, you know that’s where the king comes from.  He was very good at anatomy.  He was very good at painting.  He was very good at all sorts of different things and it was not just one thing.  So he was bringing his whole self to everything that he was doing and that’s why he was so successful.  That’s what I’m bringing back again is this renaissance person.  So I’m bringing it altogether.

So if you combine the Samurai, Samba, and Vinci, you have knowing who you are, the core; being very flexible and being adaptive to different cultures and different environments and at the same time amalgamating everything that you are and thinking about the future and bring the future to yourself.  So that’s the message in a not so much of a nutshell.  It’s a little bit bigger than a nutshell.

Andrea:  Oh yeah.  No, that’s alright.  It’s a big message.  It’s a worthy of some discussions.  OK, so why this message?  Where did this come from for you and how it’s personal to you?

Claudio Toyama:  As you mentioned, I have lived in many countries, so five countries so far.  I’m now living close to DC and I was one that got lost.  I was very flexible, so flexible that I wanted to become the stereotype of each one of the country that I lived in.

So I grew up in Brazil but when I went to live in Japan, I wanted to become the stereotype of the Japanese person.  And then I went to Italy and started to become the stereotype of the Italian and I went to the UK and becoming the stereotype and I was like “Who am I?  I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

There’s always change, there’s that pendulum.  So if you’re too flexible then you’re going to go all the way to the other side of the pendulum and become very rigid.  So I became very rigid and like “OK, my ideas are mine,” and like you know “Oh, this is who I am, take it or leave it.”  And I was like “It doesn’t work either.”

Andrea:  Right.

Claudio Toyama:  Also, because when you have that kind of mentality, a lot of it is because you’re getting triggered because of your past and it’s not really who you are.  You need to excavate who you really are and find yourself back again.  We know that from coaching and we know your true self needs to be excavated from all of these layers that were imposed in society, you know societal expectations and all of that.

So I went in this quest to find out who I was truly and then I was always bringing beauty into life, which is also another part of Vinci.  It’s amalgamating yourself and bringing your whole self to the equation but also it is about bringing beauty to everything that you bring to life.

That was one thing that when I moved to the US coming from European lifestyle where it’s much more about the joy of life and being in the moment.  You know these kinds of things about _____ coffee that doesn’t exist in many parts of Europe.  Coffee is meant to be a conduit for enjoying the presence of another human being with you and having the conversation.

That’s why it is so important to me because I was living that.  I became that samba.  That was too much of a samba then I became too much of a samurai and then I didn’t know how to amalgamate everything into the Vinci side of it.  So that’s where I came from kind of my personal life.

And when I was thinking about what are the characteristics of leaders in the world that are the most successful leaders, they have elements of these three.  So it’s not one or the other or another one.

Andrea:  Yeah.  When you start to talk about this with leaders, are they open to growing in this way?  Because one of the things that you pointed out in your book is that subject matter experts tend to want to go deeper in their expertise where, quite frankly, they’re just more comfortable and they had success instead of learning something new.  How do I apply this or how do I convince others or lead a team or whatever other kinds of things involved with leadership, how do people respond to this idea of going deeper and excavating their true selves and things like these?

Claudio Toyama:  Mixed reactions.  So I have people that are ready to embrace it and ready go to through this journey because it’s a journey.  It is not something that’s one and done session and “OK, you’re gonna be transformed.”  No, it’s a journey.  When you start opening that up, it is a journey that sometimes it takes years to, not necessarily working with me but sometimes this journey once you open that can of worms, it’s going to take some years for you to really find yourself and especially if I work with a number of _____ executives and they have been doing that for their whole lives.

They’re now on their 50s or they’re in their late 40s or even on their 60s, can you imagine trying to change and trying to find themselves back again at that age?  They’re very used to that, so very mixed reactions.  But if they’re ready to go on this journey, it is amazing what they see and all the patterns that they see in their lives “Oh this is why this kept happening!  Oh this is why I kept having this reaction to these things and it had nothing to do with the people that I was talking to.”

So they start seeing the pattern in their lives and then that journey becomes so interesting.  So yes, mixed reactions but if they’re willing to go through that, it’s an amazing journey.  There are bumps on the road but it’s an amazing journey.

Andrea:  Yeah.  I know how hard it can be to be the one, sometimes to even help somebody open up that can of worms.  Not that you’re wanting to put them in a where they’re uncomfortable but at the same time when people aren’t comfortable and experiencing pain, sometimes that’s when they are able to best grow and they’re most open to learning something new.  But that’s kind of hard.

I know you’ve been doing it for a very long time but when you come up against that resistance and you know that somebody is about ready to experience something difficult or remember something difficult, how do you help them or being with them and guiding them through that part of the journey, that difficult bump on the road?

Claudio Toyama:  I think it depends on who was the person engaging my services, was it that person or was it their boss because they felt that there was something missing in them.  So these are two completely different types of clients or people that I work with.  If it is that later and if it is their bosses that wanted this person to change, sometimes you cannot go that deep, sometimes they are not willing to go that deep.

They say, “Well, you know, I’ve done this my whole life.  I’ve done it this way, I’m not gonna change now.  There’s nothing in it for me right now.”  Even though there is because then it’s not just about their work, it’s about their whole self.

A lot of times, I see a pattern how they’re behaving with their children and how they’re behaving with their employees.  And it’s the same problems and they cannot see it and I go “OK, if you shift just one degree here,” you know the small shifts.  “It’s just one degree, it’s gonna be so much easier for you.”  But they’re like “Nope, this is how I’m doing and this is how it’s gonna be done.”

So it depends, yeah.  If they are the ones engaging with me then I can actually open more and I can actually talk to them and say “This is one of those moments that I said.  It was going to be a little bit difficult or it’s going to be a little bit challenging and let’s go through it.”  And the other side of me that a lot of people don’t know which is the spiritual side, so I work with a lot of energies.

A lot of times I can scan the person and see if there are some blockages on their energies and I can actually help them to release those energies.  I work on the cerebral _____ on the mind but I also work on those energy levels that a lot of times people are not even aware of but that is also influencing them.  There are certain blockages there that they are not even aware of but they are contributing to them not moving forward.  So that’s another layer that I work on as well with my clients.

Andrea:  So many, so many layers that could be addressed.  You take everything really deep.  You’re a deep person and you bring people into this conversation in your book in a real deep way and you’re inviting them to this deep transformation.  Why do you go so deep?  Is it always been something that you have done?

Have you just always kind of been really that reflective person or you know there’s other people who choose to focus on skills or to learn something new.  You just kind of knew in your mind or mindset, but you’re kind of working at it in a deeper level at that core of somebody’s being, really.  So tell me about why you do that and how that kind of started for you?

Claudio Toyama:  Yeah.  I was always this very introspective guy and I think it was a mixed of learning that and also being like that.  So I grew up in this family where we had different languages being spoken, you know it’s a different parties.  My father was Japanese.  He grew up in Japan.  My mom, you know, half Italian, half Austrian.  My daughter is blonde and people look at me and is like “You look Asian and you have this blonde daughter, how did that happen?”  You know because my mom is blonde and my ex-wife is blonde.

From an early age, I was always very introspective and always wanting to know more, because of that that mix of different cultures that we had, I was always very curious to go very deep into things.  It’s fascinating because I was always the one noticing, let’s say, the person in the corner at school, the person who’s not being paid attention to.  I was always the one going to that person and saying, “Are you OK?  Are you fine?”

So I was always that person that wanted to know more about people and wanting to get to know people.  I don’t know how to answer that question, but yes, it is innate in me.  So I’ve always have that.

Andrea:  You mentioned in your book too that there’s a lot of reasons why just focusing on leadership programs that kind of focus on those leadership skills that there’s a high failure rate in actually making the changes that they want to see happen in a person.  And the fact that there’s not a deeper connection to the material seems to be a really important piece of that.

Claudio Toyama:  Yes and it’s interesting because when you said you go very deep, thank you for acknowledging that.  And also what I like to do whenever I’m working with clients or whenever I’m having conversation is how can this person have a quick win and at the same time be on that journey, on that long journey, because I know as human beings, we love quick wins as well.

In the Japanese tradition, it can take you 30-40 years for you to be able to _____ at the ceremony because you’re going to go for mastery.  If you remember Karate Kid, you know like _____.  I was like “OK, it’s gonna take you years to perfect something.”  But for me, it’s “OK, so how can we have quick wins end go for the deep stuff as well?”

But your question about and the initial development and all that, what I always like to do is focus on who are you being when you’re doing anything.  I don’t know if you got to that part of when I was delivering an advanced negotiation skills workshop for high powered lawyers at a new World Trade Center in New York and these guys came from different parts of the world and they were all there.  Some of them have been negotiating for over 20 years these multimillion dollar contracts and I was there to deliver it in three days, three-day event negotiation skills workshop.

Andrea:  And you’re laughing because?

Claudio Toyama:  I’m laughing because I’m like “Oh my God, these guys are gonna eat me alive here, all these sharks.”  I’m going to be _____ at the end of the first half hour, let alone three days.  So I was like “OK, what kind I do?”  So what we did was to focus on who are they being when they’re negotiating and pointing out different things that they were not even aware of because they have so unconscious behaviors that they were not aware of.

So even though they had all the techniques really mastered, they were very very different when they were negotiating.  That’s why I talked about small shifts that create big results, when we did those small shifts and how they were being perceived, oh gosh that was an amazing shift, really amazing.

I just got some feedback recently from this guy that the small shifts was just putting his head down by half an inch when talking to people.  And I said, “Do you notice that it looks like you’re talking down to people?”  He was like “Huh thank you for that feedback, Claudio.  I have this _____ and in order to see you clearly and it _____.”

So it felt like he was really snobbish and just like looking down on you.  Once you start looking squared eye to the other person, people started commenting on him and everything.  It was just a half an inch of a shift, really a physical shift.  That gaze was a physical shift and how are you being perceived, who are you being when you’re doing anything.

Andrea:  Yes, yes!  I really appreciate the thoughtful way that you bring balance.  Though you are talking about deep transformational kinds of things, on one level there’s the small shifts that you’re talking about and you also brought in the idea of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  And this is something that I was recently talking with a client about as well but when you are a subject matter expert, you’re really at the top level of the Maslow’s hierarchy.  But then if you’re not addressing those deeper human means then it can easily topple over, so do you want to expand on that a little bit?

Claudio Toyama:  Yes, it’s interesting that you say that.  I would make a very similar comparison which is we are beginners.  So coming from being the expert in a subject matter and when dealing with people, we are beginners all over again.  That’s why it is so difficult for a lot of subject matter expert or for anyone for that matter to actually focus on the people side of the equation because in that realm, they don’t know anything or they know very little about it.  So they are beginners.  We are beginners in that.

To be able to say, oh I’m a beginner, for someone that gets paid to have the answers.  Can you imagine if you’re an expert in a field and you’re getting paid to know the answers and not to ask questions or to be like “Oh I don’t know anything about this, can you explain it to me.”  They have been trained to always have the answers.  So being a beginner say it again who’s like “Oh this is scary.  I don’t know if I can make it.”

Andrea:  Yeah!

Claudio Toyama:  You know, there was this guy you know, VP in an IT company.  He was the vice president of the company and was still coding with his hands.  He was still being involved in not just managing the people, he had a 100 people under him and he was still kind wasting time coding because that was what he was comfortable with.  You see that very, very often in a lot of conferences because that’s their comfort zone and just like “Oh I’m not gonna go there, people, huh scary stuff.”

As you learn your profession, as you learn to become an expert at your profession, let’s say a biochemist or whatever it is, you got to learn how to deal with people.  It’s all learned and that’s one thing that people don’t realize that it’s all learned.  You can learn about that.

Andrea:  So when you brought up the person, you mentioned to him in your book as well I think that was coding by hand as a vice president, is there any point in time that you ever recommend to somebody just don’t think the promotion?  You know, because they’re really enjoying who they are and what they’re doing or maybe you don’t recommend anything?  Do you ever think to yourself, you know, “I don’t think that they’re gonna enjoy moving on into a new position where there’s gonna be so much more required of them.”  You know, basically making them start over again with people when they really are so good with the subject matter.  What’s your take on that?

Claudio Toyama:  I ask a lot of questions on that.  You know, I have worked for some companies that now they have two different tracks.  One track is the track of managing people and dealing with people.  So they have that track of OK, so you’re going to become a manager, you’re going to become a director.  You’re going to become a vice president.  And the other track is you’re going to be an expert even more of an expert and you’re going to be a thought leader for the company and that’s the track they’re going to.

So if they have those two tracks, I ask “OK, so which one would you like to choose if you’re offered a promotion?”  And then I ask “Why is that?”  If it is out of fear of managing people then I ask if they’re willing to learn how to manage people.  If it’s out of passion about what they do that’s a different story.  Because if it’s passion then they can just go and they’re given deeper into what they’re doing.

And the other thing is for companies that don’t have those two tracks, so they have to take the promotion, otherwise, they will be you know.  Then I ask them, “Ok let’s say that you don’t want to take the promotion, what would happen in your life?  Are you gonna be ostracized?  Are you gonna be fired after a couple of years?  What is gonna happen to you?  Is the company accepting of your decision not to move onwards?”

Sometimes you see the person is not going to go anywhere because they didn’t get the promotion.  Sometimes there’s no option of not getting the promotion.  If you don’t get it then you’re going to be booted out.  So what are the consequences of not doing that?  And again, I ask the same question you know, “Are you not wanting to do it because of fear or because of any other things?”

So I ask a lot of questions to really understand where that is coming from because sometimes it’s just that they don’t know how to start knowing how to deal with people.  If that’s the case, they say “OK, we have a path and I can help you with that, or it’s not me there are other leadership coaches and leadership development people that can work with you.”  But I always ask a lot of questions to see where they are, where they’re coming from, what is really getting in the way and all of those things.  They’re so important you know.

Andrea:  It sounds like, as long as somebody is open and interested, that they can grow.

Claudio Toyama:  Yeah, it is.  If they are open, there’s so much to be done.  If they’re open there so much and that’s why when I go into different assessments to know what are their styles and to actually understand a little bit more, what can we focus on.  Again, you know the small shifts and the quick wins, what are some of the small shifts so that they can see the changes and then they get inspired to continue on the journey.

Like this guy that I was working with, an Indian guy who has been living here in the US for almost 30 years now or even over years and working with his team.  And because he would get so passionate about his subject matter, he would be like talking loud and everything and then people would get really scared and he didn’t know.

So one of the shifts was, I said “OK this is happening you know.  This is the perception of people around you.  They get really scared because you start talking really loud.”  He was like “Oh, because I’m passionate.”  I’m like “OK, but that’s not coming through.  It’s coming through that you’re either too angry or whatever it is, but there’s too much emotion.  So can you dial down a little bit more?”

He started doing that in different meetings and the feedback was immediate.  The people were like “Oh my God, you have changed!  Wow, this is really great!”  He was still being really passionate but dialing down the volume and just one small shift that was just like a big, big change.  So he was willing to go through the other changes that were needed also but he saw some positive feedback.  So that was really great.

Andrea:  I have to ask, you know, the next question then.

Claudio Toyama:  OK!

Andrea:  I love everything that you’re talking about and I think about this stuff too.  So it’s just always fun to get into a conversation with somebody else that just thought about this as much as you have.  OK, so let’s say this gentleman is too loud.  He’s very emotional when he speaks, but in what sense, and how do you know and how do you balance that with “well, this is who I am” kind of a comment or not just a comment but owning who I am and I am a passionate person?

So if somebody says “I’m a passionate person,” how do I be me but turn the volume down and when is that OK and when it’s not?  Tells us, what are your thoughts?

Claudio Toyama:  I thought a lot of about that as well because I get a lot of people that people talk really loud and they say “Because this is me take it or leave it.”  Again, going back to the samurai, “OK, so are you being adaptable?  How are you being perceived by others?  Is that the kind of perception that you want about yourself or not?”  Sometimes you want to have a big impact but you’re rubbing people off in a wrong way and the message is not going across because you’re a little too much of something.

Then also the other thing is, in this case with the guy was cultural and I also look at that but I also look at their background, what is the background of the person because sometimes they are being loud because they didn’t have a voice when they were little.  Remember that I talked about the pendulum?

Andrea:  Uh-huh.

Claudio Toyama:  They are that at that phase where they now feel that they have to be loud because that’s who I am.  If you go back to their history is because maybe they were the third child or whatever, the middle child that never got to listen to and now they feel “Oh I now have to be over the top loud because people then will hear me.”  And I was like, “Are they really hearing you or they just turning you off?”

So I ask those questions of “OK, what is the impact that you want to have and where is that coming from?”  Where is that desire of, “Oh this is who I am?”  Remember when I was talking about the different layers of societal layers, “Is that coming from you really or is that coming societal expectation or different things in your past that made you be this way?”

Andrea:  Hmmm that you’re reacting then.

Claudio Toyama:  Yes, I see that all the time.  I see that all the time and sometimes with some women as well.  Like that they have been in a very difficult marriage where the guy was just taking over and he was in command in everything.  When they get out of that marriage, they get really loud and bold but it’s not who they are.  They’re just over the other side of the pendulum and they will come back to a near ground.  I’m not saying that loud voice is a reflection of something that happened in the past but a lot of it can be.

Andrea:  Sure or a soft voice, yeah.

Claudio Toyama:  Yes, exactly.  Or soft voice like “Yes, I cannot do this.  I cannot do that,” or you know, “Who are you really.  Is it because you cannot or is it really who you are?”

Andrea:  I don’t know.  I’ve been able to handle it myself by saying you can be real without bearing all.  So it can be authentic without being completely a 100% transparent, whether that’d be the message that you’re speaking or the way that you’re presenting it.  I think you can be real without necessarily having to be the fullest version or tell the fullest version of your story.

Claudio Toyama:  Yes, I agree totally.  And for me for instance the spiritual side, a lot of times and very recently as I started talking about in professional environment because I was also feeling that “Oh my God, I’m gonna talk about being spiritual.  They’ll gonna say that I’m gonna be doing Kumbayah every single meeting.”  And it’s like “Oh we don’t want that guy in here.”

No, but the spirituality informs me and also these thing about depths because I always see, like it’s not only in this lifetime, it is also in this lifetime.  So that’s the spirituality in me as well.  What are some of the universal truth that applies to every single situation so that’s where it informs me, but I’m not going to be like bring an incense to your office you know.

Andrea:  I know exactly what you’re talking about.  OK, so I feel like we could keep talking for a long time and there are still some questions that I would love to ask about your book but I think time is kind of up.  So Claudio, what point would you like the listeners to take from this interview, just talk to them right now?  What do you want to say to them?

Claudio Toyama:  Well, I think is what I would say is life is short.  So find yourself and be yourself.  That’s the journey that I have been on and it has been an amazing journey with a lot of bumps on the road but it has been an amazing journey of finding myself and knowing who I truly am and everything.  So what I would say is yes, find voice.  Yeah, that would be the message.

Andrea:  How can the listeners find and connect with you or find your book, where would you want to point them?

Claudio Toyama:  So yes, you can connect with me, if you’re on Twitter, it’s ClaudioGT or claudiotoyama on Instagram.  If you send me a message or even on Facebook, Claudio Toyama and my website is toyamaco.com, toyama&co.  You can reach out and that would be great to hear from you.  My email address is claudio@toyamaco.com.  I look forward to hearing from your fellows.

Andrea:  I will put all those links in the show notes to make sure that people can find you on voiceofinfluence.net.  So that’s where that will be.

Claudio, thank you so much for the work that you’re doing in the world with your voice in helping others to find theirs.  I really appreciate it.

Claudio Toyama:  Yeah, thank you.  Thank you so much, Andrea!

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Uncovering Money Blocks with Eleni Anastos

Episode 63

Eleni Anastos is the CEO of Business Insights Now and she specializes in uncovering money blocks to help business owners and individuals grow and learn in ways they never thought possible in life and business. She believes making connections and cultivating relationships is what matters most; including in your relationship with money.

In this episode, you’ll learn why Eleni believes that how you do money is how you do everything, how having a scarcity mindset about money can negatively impact your finances, the importance of realizing you’re enough, the different money personality types and how to discover your money personality, how to know when it’s the right time to invest in yourself, common limiting beliefs around money and how to reframe them, and so much more!

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

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

Transcript

 

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

Today, I have with me, Eleni Anastos.  She is the CEO of Business Insights Now and specializes in uncovering money blocks.  That’s right, we’re talking about money today to help business owners and individuals grow and learn in ways that they never thought possible in life and business.

Now, aren’t you intrigued?  She believes making connections and cultivating relationships is what matters most, including your relationship with money.   Eleni has found that how you do money is how you do everything, and uncovering money blocks significantly impacts all areas of life, both personal and professional.

 

Andrea:  Eleni, I’m so happy that you’re here with us today on the Voice of Influence podcast!

Eleni Anastos:  Thank you so much, Andrea.  It’s an absolute honor and pleasure to be with you today.

Andrea:  Alright!  So what would you say then is the core of your message?

Eleni Anastos:  That money absolutely affects all of us and whether you’re an entrepreneur, you work in corporate, or you’re thinking about starting your own business; money impacts you.  It’s a part of our every day existence.  You know, you have bills to pay, you’re thinking about buying something, you’re saving for a house, yet money is often the one area that most people never want to talk about.  And I always question, if you had a better relationship with money, how would your life then be different?

Andrea:  Hmmm that’s interesting because I think that a lot of people who are kind of more message-driven were people that are thinking about the way we want to change the world and that sort of thing, money is not exactly something that we want to have to deal with.  We wish we didn’t have to deal with it and yet, I can say what you’re saying.  At some point, this is part of the problem or part of the issue.

So I’m excited to hear more about this.  Why this message?  Where did this start for you?

Eleni Anastos:  Well, I started to realize that I felt a little disconnected in thinking about money as a relationship or having a relationship with money.   I mean, if you want a rich and rewarding relationship with your spouse, with your kids, with a business partner, or with friends don’t you have to pay attention to them?  So how you can expect to have a rich and rewarding relationship with money if you don’t pay proper attention to it?

Andrea:  OK, I’m really curious, why this message for your voice?  I know that you’re a teacher a long time ago, right?

Eleni Anastos:  Yeah.  I was a teacher for many many moons.  For me, especially, you know, I was realizing that I was little uncomfortable talking about money and I had a very like close tight-knit relationship with money, almost too tight to the point where I had a scarcity mindset thinking “Oh there’s never gonna be enough to go around.”  That can have the opposite of that like when I was teaching, I was constantly over delivering.

I was giving way above and beyond; you know what I was being compensated for.  And I imagined that for people listening, they can relate to that to a degree.  I was uncomfortable talking about money.  I thought, “Wait a minute, I’m gonna have to deal with money for the rest of my life.”

And then several years ago when I wanted to start with my own business, I knew I had to get a grip on this.  I had to right the ship because if I was so uncomfortable talking about money, how could I asks for a sale?  How could I confidently state my fees?  There had to be a better way.

Then I also realized too because I was kind of stuck in that little scarcity mindset that I ended up giving things away in that sense, undervaluing myself.  I ended up just feeling miserable about it and I thought, “I can’t be the only person struggling with this.”

Andrea:  What’s the difference between wanting to give and do things for other people having sort of a generosity mindset versus having a scarcity mindset?

Eleni Anastos:  Yes.  Well, one of my mentors often said, “Do not confuse your business with your charity.”  And I’m extremely charitable and I love being able to help people when I can.  But on the flipside though when I was undervaluing myself and undercharging for my services, you know, the irony is I didn’t have the money then to help the people I wanted to help or to do for others.  So it’s a double edged sword.

So once I started placing proper value on myself and in my services then I was able to have the income to do the things to help others to donate when I wanted to.

Andrea:  Yeah.  We’ve talked about this on a podcast a couple of other times with some other guests about the idea of not realizing that you need to have a cash project in order to fund the heart projects.

Eleni Anastos:  Yes.  Yes, absolutely!  It always goes back to me to really realize, you know, I mentioned scarcity and as you did as well and I believe it was Brene Brown that said, “The opposite of scarcity is enough.”  You know, we have to start with I’m enough.  We still need to grow and learn new skills, new behaviors; but if you don’t start with “I’m enough” that’s the only way to make and begin to grow and move away from the scarcity mindset.

When I was stuck in that scarcity mindset, thinking I just wasn’t enough and practically giving away my services, it was like I ended up chasing a quick fix or I just wanted a bandage to stop the bleed.  You can’t build anything sustainable for the long haul in that headspace.

Andrea:  OK, so when you say “enough” and maybe when Brene Brown says it, but what is it that we’re trying to be enough for?

Eleni Anastos:  To realize that you have everything within you that you need.  We all need help getting somewhere.  We all need a bridge to get from where we are to where we want to be.  But it’s realizing that you’re still whole regardless of where you’re starting from.

I just thought of a client that I’ve had who, he was brilliant.  He’s extremely talented and creative but he was so afraid of talking about money.  He had such a scarcity mindset and it wasn’t until we start working together that he realized that he adapts all these beliefs from watching his parents struggle with money.  He heard things growing up, there’s never going to be enough to go around.  Money is the bad guy.  Money is evil.  It’s just something we have to deal with.

So of course when he was venturing out on his own in his own business that was all weighing on him.  Literally, the first thing he said to me when I met him was “I’m sick and tired of having to lower my fees just to get a client.”  So he was already fed up and frustrated but he didn’t really realize the depth of what was going on, how lowering his fees kept him playing small.  And he wasn’t going to ever be able to make the impact he wanted in the world to keep himself playing small.

Andrea:  You know the fact that you can be enough but also want to grow at the same time; it reminds me of something that a professor of mine said a long time ago in a seminary.  He talked about they’re being two stories a lot of times and we have to be comfortable with both stories.

There’s the story that essentially were enough or what I like to say on my end of things that “your voice matters” and it absolutely does and that’s just the way it is.  It’s just, innately, it matters but at the same time you can make it matter more.  You can grow in whatever that you’re going to grow and both stories are true.

To be able to hold those both at the same time is kind of tricky but it’s seems like it’s really important especially here when we’re talking about money and being able to say that what you’re offering or what you have is enough, while at the same time it’s OK to want to grow and want more.

Eleni Anastos:  Yes, exactly!  And again, I believe that it impacts every area of your life.  When you can start to own your worth versus being so uncomfortable, because I’ve been here.  I was so uncomfortable even talking about money, that again, imagine if you’re in your business for yourself that you could hesitate to ask for the sale or you might even apologize for your fees, or put way too much in your packages or program in what you’re being compensated for.

I had someone reached out to me that has a corporate job and he said, “Well, how did it impact me if I’m not setting my own wage?”  I said, “Do you ever find yourself over delivering above and beyond what you’re being compensated for?”

So regardless for where you’re at in life, if you’re so uncomfortable even talking about money and owning your worth, it’s going to impact you.  Then I will also question, “What other areas in your life are you not standing up for yourself or you’re uncomfortable even talking about?

Andrea:  And money illuminates some of that?

Eleni Anastos:  Yes.

Andrea:  You’d an attitude about money or whatever?

Eleni Anastos:  Yes, because when I see people being able to learn to have strategies or knowing how to value themselves and deep in their relationship with money, because we’re all hardwired to deal with money.  We all have a money personality, if you will.  And like any personality, we all have gifts and we all have challenges and there’s definitely no one that’s better than another at attracting abundance into your world, it really is about the awareness.

So you can champion your gifts or consciously navigate around your own challenges.

Andrea:  OK, money personalities.  Now, I’ve seen plenty of people become just so much more comfortable with themselves by understanding their personalities for this or their voice for that.  And based on assessment and then realizing like you just said that there’s just strengths and challenges with any of these personalities that they’re not right or wrong or whatever.  Tell us more about these money personalities because that’s something that’s really interesting and I know you had me take an assessment to help me find mine.

So can you tell us about this assessment a little bit or how you talk about personalities?

Eleni Anastos:  Yes, absolutely.  The assessment is a series of questions.  Well, the good news is, you can’t study for it and you simply can’t get any answer wrong.  It really is designed to get who you are.  So for example my top money personality is called an accumulator and I’m an inner banker and I have this very tight close-knit relationship with money and _____ that could be like match-made in heaven, you know, great!

But there’s always the challenge, the shadow side and those of us that are strong accumulators can be so tightly controlled with money that it may mean we hesitate to invest in ourselves or we block ourselves from growing.

I know many years ago when I decided that I was going to start my own coaching business, I felt the calling.  I believe I have the skills set and I knew I wanted to serve people.  But as a strong accumulator to invest five figures in something that wasn’t a car or a house or my college education that was scary.

I remember walking up with my credit card in hand and I couldn’t even break stride and I just turned right around going, “Oh there’s no way, I’m putting this much on my credit card.”  And I did some deep breathing.  I was talking to myself and I said “No, I know I mean to serve people in a bigger and better way.”  I walked up the second time.  I love the person touched the credit card but I don’t even think _____ a life could have drifted out of my hand.  I walked away a second time and I’m like “OK, Eleni what are you saying?”

And I talked to myself through it and I realized, if I didn’t invest in myself then I also wasn’t going to be able to reach the people that I wanted to help and serve.  So I walked up the third time.  I was able to release the credit card.  I admit, I think I kind of like throw up a little in my mouth but _____, so it was a success.  But now that I know how I am wired as an accumulator, I very consciously know when to invest and it’s not a matter of me throwing up in my mouth or getting so much anxiety that I can’t do it.

Andrea:  OK, so I want to know a little bit more about…you don’t have to tell me exactly what it was you’re investing in but in general it was investing in yourself in your business and being able to sell more?  What made that investment so attractive, enough that you would actually go so much against what was inside of you?  I don’t know if that’s quite the right way to put it, but what was it?

Eleni Anastos:  I completely appreciate that.  Well, you mentioned teaching and education and I know I was born a teacher.  I know that I was born to impact people in a positive way.  But at that point in my life it was time for a shift to do it in a different venue, in a different manner.  And coaching really resonated with me, doing personal coaching, working with people one-on-one and doing group programs.  An educator, it was very important to me to get certifications, to get a proper background, if you will.  Even though, I already know I had the skill set, kind of going back to the “I’m enough.”

I knew that I have a skill set for it, the raw material, if you will.  But I also wanted to have the proper certification and training to make myself the best I could be to reach the people I was suppose to reach.  Whenever I thought, “Well, if I don’t invest in myself, because as accumulators, we just love saving for the sake of saving.

We love seeing our bank accounts go higher, so the thought of putting money out there, again five figures that’s not a car or a house, it was very scary.  It was very intimidating for me but I was looking to the future.  I got myself to the point where I was making a decision from where I want it to be.  So I knew if I didn’t invest in myself, I wasn’t going to get to where I wanted to be.

Andrea:  OK, so for those of us who are interested in investing in ourselves, how do we know when it’s a good investment or not.  Do you have any advice for that sort of question or scenario?

Eleni Anastos:  Yes, because I have spoken with a lot of people that sometimes look at for example, “Oh I can’t take on that debt.”  Debt has just a negative connotation from many people and I understand that, but it’s really looking at the difference.  Because to me if you can be grateful for what it is, for example most home owners here in the US, you’re able to purchase a home.  Not many people own the outright and they have taken on technically debt for that as an investment but it’s to make their life better in some way.

So if you can sit down and look at, where do I want to be personally and professionally?  Is this going to help me get there versus am I spending an investing money just to fill a void, like feeling lonely or empty or back to the opposite of I’m not good enough.  That really is worth looking at because I worked with a lot of people that have taken on debt in their mindset is completely different, not always the same.

Some people have a lot of shame and guilt around taking on debt, but they could possibly, you know when they were younger, who knows what they heard growing up or what they witnessed growing up, because we all have a money story we grew up with.  And maybe they saw, you know, “You should never take on debt.  You should only buy what you can pay off within the end of the month or something.”  I’m not saying those are bad things, not at all.  But it’s an individual decision to invest when you know that it’s going to elevate your life.

Andrea:  I mean it’s like college.  It’s like investing in college as well.  And I know there’s plenty of people saying don’t take on debt to go college too, it’s just fine.  But when you’re investing in yourself for your business or for essentially for financial gain in the future, that’s a little different than I guess like what you said to try to fill a void or that sort of thing.

I know some people do life coaching or they do coaching around health and wellness, I think that sometimes it’s harder if it’s not directly tied to money, the investment or reward isn’t directly tied to money, it’s harder for people to invest in something that doesn’t seem to look like it has the potential to pay them back or at least _____.  So what should be considered when we’re looking at investing in something like a health program or other sorts of things that aren’t necessarily directly tied to a business?

Eleni Anastos:  My first thought immediately goes to what’s the cost of not doing this?  Like you just mentioned a health program, you know, if you want to seek out your guidance and counsel for yourself.  If something is happening in your life, you’re unhealthy, you know you need some support accountability, whatever it is, to enhance yourself basically which everything is connected.  You know one area of your life is out of alignment; eventually it’s going to affect all the other ones.

So when you look at yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, or financially; the idea is to have it all in alignment.  So for me and when I work with others, regardless if it’s not directly you’re saying “Oh investing in this is not going to turn around and put money in my bank.  But if you’re investing in something that is going to enhance your physical health, enhance your emotional health that’s going to make you better at everything else you do, right?

So the end result is yes, you will be attracting more abundance into your world and I think the bottom line is still impacted.  I have a client right now, he’s absolutely brilliant, super high IQ, wonderful man, great integrity; but he was so professionally-driven and so business-driven.  You know, 24/7 that’s all he focused on that his physical health is greatly suffering.  And until he put the proper focus on that, I mean because the other areas stopped growing, professionally he kind of hit the wall because his physical health is taken a toll.

So, you know, it’s all connected.  Eventually, it might not be an instantaneous thing so I think that’s why it’s easy to ignore.

Andrea:  Yes, yes, it doesn’t feel it’s urgent.  Like my husband, he’s a physical therapist and he likes to say that investing in something like that, investing in membership to the Y or a gym of some kind or personal trainer is way less expensive than a heart attack.

Eleni Anastos:  Exactly!

Andrea:  Both financially and emotionally.

Eleni Anastos:  Yeah.  I mean, what’s the cost of not investing in that whether, again, it’s a trainer or some kind of health program.

Andrea:  Yeah.  OK, so going back to the personalities, what are some of the different quadrants or I don’t know how it fits all into a scheme of, but what are some of the different kinds of personalities that are out there when it comes to money and why does that matter?

Eleni Anastos:  It matters individually, and especially it matters if you’re in any significant relationship; whether it’s marriage, business, or close friendship, having the awareness.  For example, you could be business partners or a married couple and you know that there’s some stress and friction between the two of you regarding money.  That’s fairly common.  But you don’t really know what’s at the roots of all of it and what’s causing it so that awareness makes the difference.

I mentioned that I’m the Accumulator that Inner Banker that has a really tight close-knit relationship with money.  The opposite of an Accumulator would be a connector.

Andrea:  Me!

Eleni Anastos:  Yeah, so that’s the inner relationship creator and they just illuminate faith and optimism which is beautiful.  And connectors generally don’t pay a lot of attention to money because that faith and optimism kind of gives them the freedom that the money is always going to be there.

Imagine if you put a connector and an accumulator together without the awareness, like a quick example if I go shopping as an accumulator, I look to the best deal always.  I want the most banks for my buck.  If I’m going to purchase and article or clothing, I will go to the clearance rack first.  I could very least look at price tags before I try anything on.

I went shopping with a friend of mine who’s a true connector.  She never looks at price tags.  She doesn’t even know the stores have clearance racks, which is just fine, and she made purchases.  Now, as an accumulator when I make purchases, I’m watching every item being wrung up.  I’m paying attention to every number.  I’m double checking their receipts before I sign.

My friend, the connector, just handed over her credit card, did not double check any numbers, didn’t listen to what they said.  And again, it’s not that I’m right and she was wrong, not at all.  But I was like clutching my chest wondering where the defibrillator was.

So imagine if you have an accumulator and a connector in business together or any close-knit relationship and you didn’t have the awareness, you could make each other crazy.

Andrea:  Sure!

Eleni Anastos:  And again, it’s not one that’s right and the other one was wrong.  It’s just having the awareness so you can synthesize each other’s gifts and consciously navigate those challenges.

Andrea:  That makes a lot of sense.  Yeah, I think my husband and I…I’m not sure if he’s an accumulator but that’s _____ for him.  I think over the years, it’s been easy for me to sort of just let him deal with the money because he pays very close attention and then I don’t have to because I really don’t want to.  But at the same time, I’ve recognized that as I started wanting to get the message out and I want to get in to this as well.

As I wanted to get the message out, I started to realize that money was playing a role.  I didn’t wanted to but it did and it was playing a role and I was continuing to spend more and more to get the message out without thinking about it and thinking about how it was impacting that.  And then it got to the point where I was asked to speak somewhere.  People don’t realize how much time and effort you spend on a speech.

And I was asked to speak somewhere and I thought “Oh gosh, if I ask for this much, will they give me a little bit less than that?”  I was just trying to figure out.  My husband said to me, “How much time are you gonna spend on that?”  And I thought, “Oh probably about a week’s worth of time.”  And I would have a babysitter for my kids because it was summer time and they were home and they were actually little then.

He helped me see realistically how much money we were going to be investing, and me, giving a speech for somebody else.  And then it became a very eye-opening about “Oh my goodness, this is expensive for us.”  It’s too much for me to ask from my family if I don’t ask the appropriate amount for speaking for an hour.

So when that happens, it was just this really big eye-opener for me and I needed to own the fact that the time that I’m spending and the effort that I’m offering is not all just for free.  It can’t be.

Eleni Anastos:  That story, I so appreciate you sharing that.

Andrea:  And what’s funny actually, let me just throw in the very tail end of that story.  Then the people asked me “What would you charge if you didn’t even know me?”  And I said a number and they said “OK” and I did it and I did it for that amount and that was just like boom, like this huge eye-opener.

Eleni Anastos:  Yay, that’s amazing!  I love it.  It’s beautiful.  How did you feel?  I’m curious when you just said that amount?

Andrea:  Well, I put it in a proposal and explained.  I didn’t explain why.  I didn’t justify the figure, I just kind of really explained why it would be a good fit and I felt a little overwhelmed about doing it but at the same time, I felt good about it.  And then actually when I gave the talk, it was just for a few people.  It was for a dozen of people, educators actually.  They handed me a check and they felt good.  I received the check and I felt good and I thought “This is a good thing.  There’s nothing wrong with this, me receiving this money.  It’s a lot of money but I invested a lot and it’s OK.  So, overall, it was just this really great learning experience for me.

Eleni Anastos:  That’s beautiful because you’re truly owning your own worth and placing a proper value on your skills, on your expertise, and what you brought to them as an individual.  That’s great, especially you know you get to decide “Is the juice worth the squeeze?”  You get to decide what your time is worth.

Now, there may be sometimes, especially where speaking is concerned or actually in anything else.  You may make a decision to do something that upfront you’re not highly compensated for but you have the potential to gain influence and gain clients from that scenario.  That’s all good too but the point is making a conscious decision not again thinking “Oh I’ve got to low ball this, I’ve got to play small” just to get in the door then we know you’re never really getting in anywhere.

Andrea:  OK, so what is your take on when somebody has a message whether they have a job with a company or there’s somebody who is an entrepreneur or at least think that they’re a writer.  If you have a message inside, why should they care about money?  How should we approach it as somebody with a message?

Eleni Anastos:  Yes, because I have heard countless people say, it’s not about the money.  Money doesn’t matter.  I think we all have heard that somewhere or we verbalized it ourselves.  But I want to go back to the reality that money is a part of your every day existence regardless of where you live or what your current life is, money is going to be a part of your every day existence.

So I think it speaks to the mindset of “I should just do this.  I should just be giving.  I should just be sharing,” almost as if that person doesn’t have a right to be compensated for sharing their gifts with the world.  I think that could be a very dangerous mindset, a very slippery slope how we’re talking to ourselves.

Andrea:  And you mentioned before this idea of playing it small.

Eleni Anastos:  Yes!

Andrea:  And that is definitely something that I can relate too.  I mean, I went through a period of like “Oh my goodness, if I don’t start charging money, I’m just going to stay here.  I’m kind of stuck in this little pool when I feel like I belong in a bigger pool.”  And so yeah, playing it small seems like a big part of it too.

Eleni Anastos:  Yes and how you speak to yourself, is it a low-value statement, is it a high-value statement?  For example, if you say that “Oh no one’s gonna pay me for what I offer,” obviously that’s very disempowering.  It’s a low-value statement.  But I always want people to ask instead of going right to the negative, “no one’s ever going to pay me for my skill,” you know, what if they could?  What if you could get the money that you want?  What if your clients will pay you for your skill, for your expertise?

Napoleon Hill’s iconic book was Think and Grow Rich.  You can’t say, _____ and grow rich, instead Think and Grow Rich.  It may sound simplistic in nature but it really is really a concerted conscious effort on how we’re talking to ourselves and to place a value on ourselves.  Because those of us that are very mission driven and want people to live their best lives, is there anything more that we want for people to be wildly successful however they choose to define that.

Andrea:  You know, I guess I’m just sharing all kinds of my personal experience here but I think that’s another piece of what was hard for me when I was starting out.  What’s been frustrating to me probably on my life is that I don’t want to go in inch deep and a mile wide.  I’d much prefer to go an inch wide and 60,000 miles deep.

What I was realizing every time was that I could only literally, I could only go so deep because they were only invested so deep and they weren’t ready to go further until they were ready to put money behind it.  And I was like “I just have to be like this.”  I don’t necessarily want to be that you need to spend more money to have more transformation.  But at the same time, it’s kind of like that sometimes because people aren’t ready to totally throw their whole selves in until they put their money in.

Eleni Anastos:  Yes, and it’s backing that up and looking at it again, this is an investment.  I don’t want to spend that money, but that’s a different mindset from investing in yourself and then what you’re demonstrating for other people is not just like I had a client.  She was absolutely lovely, creative, and a beautiful soul but so tightly around with money, so scared to even talk about money.  She could barely state her fees to clients and practically apologize for them.

In fact a couple of times, she asked for permission like “Is that OK?”  She’d state her fees, “Is that OK?”  So that completely was undervaluing herself and she was giving them all the power.  I want people to be in the driver seat for themselves.  When she realized through our work together that “Oh, you know, it was from mom that constantly said, you just get whatever you can get.  Get whatever you can get, it’s OK.  Some money is better than no money.  Bread is better than no bread.”

I mean, no disrespect to her mom because I’m sure she meant with the best possible intentions that you what you can do to earn a living.  I think that’s a great advice on many levels.  For my client, being that creative soulful entrepreneur, she realized that she was not going to be able to impact and influence people if she just keeps trying to “Oh let me just get somebody in the door, whatever it is.  I’ll low ball it.  I’ll just give this away.”  Again, going back to the _____ and playing small.

When she was able to shift her mindset and she kind of adapted this new paradigm that money really is not evil.  That’s one of the things that I find amazing all the limiting beliefs that are still out there, “You know money is evil.  There’s never enough to go around.”  In reality, money is just is, it’s neutral like anything in our world; we apply the meaning into it.  It’s just energy, you know, an exchange of one service for another.

I think when people can wrap their heads around that money is really is the energy and exchanging one service for another that put some back in the driver seat where they feel they have control of money and therefore more control in their life.  That’s what I want to see for people to not feel like money is controlling their life.  How many decisions have we made based on money or lack of money?  That gives money the power.  I do want people to take their power back.

Andrea:  OK, this is great.  What would you leave us with?  You know this person who, they care about other people and they’re not sure what they want their relationship with money to be but they know it’s not quite at the place where it probably or should be in order for them to be free from, I guess like you’re saying the power of money over them instead of them having power.  What advice would you give that message-driven leader?  What do you want to leave with them today?

Eleni Anastos:  I’d like them to think about what they want most for the people they want to serve.  It’s almost always you want them to feel empowered and you want them to feel capable of doing anything they want to do regardless of what you’re teaching them or showing them in your mission.  And the best way to do that is to do it for yourself to be that role model, to demonstrate, “This is what’s possible.  This is what it’s look like.  This is how you can live when you’re on your own worth.”  “If we don’t start with us, how can we demonstrate to others that we want to serve what’s possible?”

Andrea:  Oh so true!  Alright, well thank you so much, Eleni, for being here today.  How can people get a hold of you and even take that assessment that you’re sharing with me.

Eleni Anastos:  Yes, thank you for asking.  The website is businessinsightsnow.com and the assessment on there is called, Crack Your Money Code.  So Business Insights Now and Crack Your Money Code.  It will take you maybe 10 minutes to take and again it’s painless.  You can’t study, you can’t get anything wrong and I am happy to engage and discuss results with folks that want to take it.  So you can reach out to me through the website with any questions.

Andrea:  Awesome!  OK, we will link to that in the show notes and I just thank you again for being here today and for helping the world to get used to this idea of money and being comfortable with it in the way that we interact with it and our relationship with money, Eleni.  Have a great day!

Eleni Anastos:  Thank you so much, Andrea!

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Sell Like Crazy While Serving Others and Being Yourself with Jim Padilla

Episode 60

We’re all salespeople whether we identify as one or not. If we want to use our voice of influence in the world, we’ll need to become better salespeople and this week’s guest is here to help with that.

Jim Padilla is the Founder of Gain the Edge, a go-to guy for all things sales, and a master collaborated whose purpose is to help entrepreneurs leverage the power of collaboration to scale their businesses, so they can impact the world the way they intended.

In this episode, Jim discusses his core message, the powerful story that led Jim to create his core message and to use his powers for good, his “park bench” approach to sales, the difference between manipulation and influence, the first thing you need to say during a sales conversation, why Jim focuses more on helping people with unrelated issues than selling them his services, and so much more!

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

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

Jim Padilla 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 Jim Padilla, the founder of Gain the Edge. Jim is known in the personal development and the business coaching world as the go-to guy for all thing sales. You’ll just be able to tell by listening to his voice that he’s passionate and engaging, and you can see why he would be really good at this.

He is a master collaborator whose purpose is to help entrepreneurs leverage the power of collaboration to scale their businesses so that they can impact the world they way that they intended and Jim is known for instilling it to his sales teams, “It’s not what you say, it is who you are being when you say it.” Uh I love that!

Jim, it is so great to have you here on the Voice of Influence podcast!

Jim Padilla: Hey, Andrea, I’m super excited to be here and talk to you and just the total alignment with your brand and your vision here and just a great way to be able to share and connect.

Andrea: I’m curious how you would describe your core message because there are sales involved but you also talk a lot about this collaborative kind of atmosphere. So can you share with us, what is the core of what you are trying to get across with your voice of influence?

Jim Padilla: Yeah, you just actually hit it. The rule #1, the thread that we used to everything in our company is that who you’re being is far more impactful than what you’re saying or what you’re doing. So we’re always checking that. It’s literally something that’s get tested and checked every day.

So anytime somebody reacts in a certain way or result happens, who you were being that led to that result or who you were being that generated that response? Who were you that were constantly focused on how do we stay at or pick elevated state as a human being because from there we make incredible decisions. We make great partnerships and we inspire people boldly. Everybody operates at their best and I just find that in life that it just not how most people work.

[Off-topic conversation]

Andrea: So, who you are, how you’re being in this moment matters to everything else. I love that why that in particular…what is that have to do in sales, what is that have to do with your business? Yeah, tell me more about that? Where did this come from?

Jim Padilla: Yeah, you know, I have a pretty sorted past. My mom was 16 when I was born and she was in pretty unfortunate circumstances. So the way she responded in that situation was primarily with fear and anger. So I grew up getting abused on a pretty regular basis and pretty severely to the point that I was in a poster care at 13. I was on the streets at 16 and in jail at 19.

So it was pretty much then my first 19 to 20 years of my life spending all of my waking moments trying to figure out how to master my environment so that I can influence the people around me to feel safe around me so that they wouldn’t want to hurt me because that was my only self. That was my defense mechanism.

I was always constantly checking in on who might I’m being at the moment, who night being here, who might being there, or how am showing up to this person. It’s something that’s always being able to just regulate and it was mostly because I had to. And then you know, fast forward in 20 years and now I make a lot of money teaching other people how to master the art of the sales conversation by being able to influence the people around them to feel safe and to trust you and want to buy from you.

So we don’t focus on scripts and techniques and tactics, we focus on being-ness. We actually have a sales program called Sales Unscripted. That’s the whole focus of it. It’s all about who you’re being because everybody is selling something all day, all the time. There’s no human being on the planet that hasn’t sold something or influence their environment. It’s just you don’t do it in purpose. So we just try to help you get completely aware so that you’re doing it intentionally.

Andrea: Oh man, I love that so much. So you kind of went from…doing it as a survival mechanism to somehow turning it over the course of the years into business. When did that shift for you? Do you think it shifted or what was that transformation for you that took something that was really hard thing that you did just to survive and then turn it into something that is incredibly proactive and powerful?

Jim Padilla: Well, it’s interesting because there were actually two major shifts. One was that I learned I could do this on purpose and I could do this to my advantage but then you _____ and with the upbringing that I had and I essentially had this power that I could use to destroy people. And so I did, I build businesses. You know, I used to own a _____ company. I ran a mortgage broker shop. I’ve been an entrepreneur my whole life but I spent most of my time figuring out how to get what I needed from people by using these skills.

So I conquered a lot, made a lot, and burned a lot of bridges, learnt a lot of relationships because that was all about me. I was manipulating my environment so that I would win. Then in 2008 when the mortgage crisis hit, I was at mortgage at the time, I had put a lot of people into loan for they had no business being in because I made a lot of money doing it. And I met a woman where I coach _____ in a high school basketball team. Her grandmother came in to do loan and I put her in a loan, it was a gamble. I knew it was a high risk gamble she didn’t belong in.

So fast forward couple of months or couple of years in a gas station here in Sacramento and her mom comes up to me across the gas station and she was like, “You’re a crook, you’re the devil, and you deserve whatever comes to you.” So my mother was living in that car over there and I knew everything she said was true and accurate and right and I didn’t know what to do. Everything came flashing back, my childhood, all my skills, all the things I’ve done. And I said, “Okay, I’ve got to change who I’m being, because it didn’t get me anywhere.”

Ultimately, I made a bunch of money and end up losing it because we gambled it all the way. I filed bankruptcy and foreclosed on multiple homes. We were back down to zero. So everything I had gained through bad means, I lost. And In that moment, I was like “I have to stop. I have great skills set. I have ability to be able change people’s lives and it’s time that I start using it for others’ benefit instead of mine.”

Right at that moment, I started going to town and said, OK, all the things that I’m doing in the sales process and all the things about sales that I hate that make other feel bad, that make sales people feel bad, I stripped them all out. What was left was all the things that actually serve people and make people feel good and make me feel good. But it was all about the power serving others that leads to the outcome instead of the other way around and that’s how this whole thing got started in 2008.

Andrea: Wow, I’m in total goose bumps here. When I hear you say that in that moment with that conversation, the way that you were using it before us, manipulation, your skills, that you realized that that wasn’t the answer but it could be used for good. Did you ever have a point when you were saying to yourself, could this be used for good? Did you ever question that? Sometimes we have these really big awesome superpowers that can really look bad and feel bad and it’s hard to turn it around and see the good. But did you see that automatically or was that something you’ve ever struggled with?

Jim Padilla: I struggled with it that time. My challenge was I was this kid from the streets who didn’t have anything, who had a mother on welfare. I saw capital, money, and resources as a need. So I was like, “Well, I need to get it at any cost.” So many times, I put people in a loan and I would feel bad about it. We would get people into the mortgage loan.

We’ve shown something on the paperwork and it would still be a little bit different when they showed up to sign at the escrow. But they were irritated enough that they didn’t like it but they weren’t irritated enough that they want to start the process over so they would sign but then we would never hear from again. I never got referrals from them, follow-ups, and callback and ______ do with us and we were just you know chop chop.

But great values were high and my phone would ring all the time, I didn’t care about how I took care of these people because I have more business coming in every day. And I started watching this cycle go on. It was just like eating away and I knew I was doing stuff wrong. The real problem was, I was like in my own island because I couldn’t even share the stuff with my wife.

At the time, I was actually scheming stuffs from my own paychecks. If I had a $15,000 commission, I would bring home like 8 of it and I would take the other 7 and I would invest in some properties or do some stuff and my wife had no clue. She thought I was out doing work. I was living my own lie. I was like, “OK, how can I control this,” and it just started eating at me completely. But I just tried to ignore it because, otherwise, I just had to look at the _____ of who I was being and I don’t want to do it.

Andrea: Oh wow! OK, so how do you go from that point to the point…was there a period of kind of forgiveness and redemption? I mean, now look at your business and how much good you’re doing for people. I mean, it’s incredible to hear about all the different people that you’re helping and I know that the sales process that you have now is legit. So there’s such a huge redemption story here. But what was that in between, how did you get to that point where it was better, I mean even in those relationships or what was that like for you?

Jim Padilla: Well, unfortunately, I was not the guy who learned anything in my life the easy way. Every single lesson I’ve ever learned up until that point was always learned the hard way and including that one because ultimately what happened is my wife…our three daughters are all grown and through college and a couple of them are married now.

But at the time when they were going in college, my wife was also getting her degree and had to apply for ______. And whether you qualify or not, you have to apply. You know, we owned properties and we were debt free. And my wife was applying for loans and she was fully expecting for them to say, “Oh you don’t qualify because you make too much.”

Instead, they called us and said “Hey, we want to let you know, you’ve been declined because you have too much debt.” She was like “What are you talking about, debt?” Because I was planting the market and things aren’t going bad and I had $50,000 invested here and money invested here and I needed _____ credit cards taking cash advances to try to fraud them at these debts because we weren’t making money in the mortgage anymore because _____.

All of a sudden, we’ve got multiple six figures with credit card debt. And my wife said, “What are you talking about, we’re debt-free.” We separated. We filed a bankruptcy. We foreclosed on our homes and I was gone for a year and a half. Literally, I got an apartment. I was basically on my face broken before God every single day. I was like, “OK, I did the first 40 years my way and screwed it all up. I’m ready to do your way now.” It was just daily over and over.

Over the course of a year and a half, in 18 to 20 months, my wife started seeing a difference in me and a change in me. I was thankful because I never thought I would get her back. I was hopeful, but I never thought it would actually happen. She just decided, “Look, if we’re gonna be broken apart, we might as well be broken together.” So we started that next year.

This is why it’s so powerful in the story because it went from me being the financial ruin of our family. My oldest daughter didn’t talk to me for six years and for my wife to be able to say, “OK, we’re gonna do this together.” This really finally pulled our finances together. We never had joint account, nothing before this. I was always running my own stuff then the next year, she was a retail manager for Target _____ in corporate management, she came and said, “Jim, I’m retiring from my job and I’m gonna count on you.”

So for her to come full circle to me being the cause of the problem to now I’m being the sole support of the family. Business was huge because she had to come full circle in my character and who I was being to be able to say, “Yes, I’m in this with you.”

And then that next year, she jumped in a business with me and we did nothing but explode and go skyrocket through the roof. And now, we’ve got this amazing business, this incredible marriage and an amazing family. My daughters are back in fold. My middle daughter didn’t talk to me for about three years after all this. I officiated her wedding last year. It’s just been amazing.

Quite honestly, I wish I had a better answer for this but I’m not out conquering business. I’m just out changing lives and business comes. I promise that’s how it works. I mean, yes, we got some strategy. We’re not just throwing stuff up in the air, but our sole purpose is helping people overcome their challenges because we have overcome so many things to get where we are. There’s nothing that you can’t overcome. You just have to be totally clear on who you need to be to make it happen.

Andrea: Oh Jim, thank you so much for sharing that story. It’s so powerful. I saw Jim at a conference just recently and not just Jim, Jim and Cindy. You guys together were just adorable and powerful. You’re both very engaging, powerful and you were holding hands and all that. It’s so cool to hear the back story on how much work it took and how much brokenness it took to get to that point where now you’re living just such a triumphant kind of life.

Jim Padilla: Very much so!

Andrea: Oh man! And now the core of your message, it sounds like there’s so much about that. It’s so much about this who you are and what you’re bringing in who you’re being. So do you incorporate, I don’t know who you’re talking to if you’re talking to using this message with more than your sales team or with the people that you’re serving, but do you talk about this kind of brokenness? How does that play into the influence that you have with people and how you encourage other people to have influence?

Jim Padilla: We’ve never done a ton of marketing and visibility because we’re pretty well connected and we get great results for our clients so that’s where a lot of our business comes. But this year, we just started to start really getting visible and it’s about sharing that. We’re in a position to hold a lot of the industry accountable because we see things that are going on behind the scenes. I’m like “Look, stop doing it that way, do it this way because this is the people are seeing of you.”

But I haven’t been sharing as much of myself in that publicly and that what’s just starting to happen now. I’m actually launching a podcast next month so I want to start being able to put my message out there and start getting people in tune and holding people accountable to a higher level.

You know, Cyndi and I see ourselves as leaders of leaders. We haven’t been necessarily called to reach people one by one, we’ve been called reaching by the masses and we do that by really reaching influence centers. Most of our clients have massive reach. The more of them that we can impact, the more people we can impact indirectly through them.

Andrea: So true. I mean, if you can have an impact on their message on who they are, they’re being then that impact all these other people, absolutely! Wow! This is really powerful. How do you see this for other leaders, other message-driven leaders like yourself, people who are listening to this podcast to have a vision of some kind?

They have a message and they’re struggling with this I guess balancing or understanding when they’re being manipulative or when they’re not? So they don’t want to be manipulative because who listens to this podcast don’t. They don’t want to manipulate but they do want to influence and that line can get really blurry. Do you have any advice for people on how to differentiate their message so that it is on the side of influence and not on the side of manipulation?

Jim Padilla: It’s interesting because the skill set is the same. The mechanics are really the same thing. It’s all about the intention and this is where people have to really get honest with yourself because we all like to say, “Well, I’m not attached. I really just want to help this person. It’s not as important if I make the sale.” Is that really true? Is that really true, right?

You have to get to the place where you can separate it and say, “I want to impact the person. I want to change that life,” and then watch the results come, I’m telling you. People go, “It’s always easy for you to say, Jim. You guys make millions blah, blah, blah.” I didn’t start making money like this until I started helping people first.

Andrea: So when you’re saying helping people, does that include the sale? Or how do you look at that because I think that’s one of the struggles is we have that internal struggle, but you’re saying get honest with the fact that you do want to sell to somebody?

Jim Padilla: Right. But here’s where it comes down to, I remember you’re posting something about the super problem in the group that we’re in, here’s the key. When we talk about our problem and we talk about what people do and we talk about how we help people, if you’re selling an idea, if you’re selling a vision for something, if you want people to donate to your cause or buy your program whatever, the only thing that you should be talking about is why it matters to them because that’s what they’re going to resonate with.

Here’s an example when I was in mortgage, I wanted everybody to be able to call me to get their solutions for whatever it is. We had tons of people who would move to the area, relocate, get a loan, whatever; and I said, “Look, if you’re looking for a school, a babysitter, a place to get your oil changed, or the best restaurant to go to, call me and I’ll take care of it. I don’t want you to have to look up on things.”

So people would call me for all kinds of stuff that had nothing to do with mortgage. But because they knew I’d care about making sure they got whatever they wanted, I got referrals, I got introductions, or I get invited to barbecues. I was in the people’s community. I was part of their lives and I do the same thing in my business. I make it a point to know what everybody around me does, who does it well. If they don’t do it well, how can I help them do it well, even if they don’t hire me because I want to be able to send people to you, right?

I have all kinds of people come to me because of who we are and because of the positioning we have and I hate turning people away without a solution. So if I can’t help you or you can’t afford us for whatever it is, I want to be able to say, “Hey, look, I know exactly who can.” I don’t want to have them to go anywhere else to look. I want them to come to me and maybe we can help them solve their problem.

The people that we do that for like our best referral sources in our business have come from people that we thought never been our clients. But because they appreciate in how much we value them and respected them in the process that we weren’t trying to sell them anything. We’re trying to help them solve the problem.

Andrea: There you go. So it’s not necessarily about the sale but you’re also being honest about it and it’s ultimately about helping them solve their problem and a genuine desire to be that resource for them.

Jim Padilla: Completely, and I will make this two _____

Andrea: That’s alright. Go right ahead.

Jim Padilla: We ____ with Jesus around here.

Andrea: Yeah, so do we.

Jim Padilla: Okay. We all have gifts. We all have a very specific gift that God has given us, some of us have multiple and most people have it hidden and buried. We need to be breaking that out. All the tumultuous childhood and upbringing that I had was the greatest gift that God has given me because that I know that you can literally overcome everything and that everything is possible to go from where I came from where I am now never should have happened.

I see everybody as a finished product and most people don’t see themselves that way. So I see that’s my job to inspire people to overcome and then help equip them with a skill set to be able to make it happen. Will you just work with me on this for a second, everybody just close your eyes for just one minute and visualize just your immediate community would be like.

If everybody you personally know was doing everything to the best of their abilities, your wife, your husband, your kids, your mailman, the teachers at your kids’ school, your pastor at church, or the police officers in your community, whoever; and if everybody was literally doing their absolute best that they’re capable of, how different will your personal life be? How different with the world around you would be? That’s just in your community.

Imagine the world like that. All of a sudden, we don’t have poverty. We don’t have the crime that we do. We don’t have all of the crazy political turmoil. We literally have a political environment whereby we’re just trying to help each other. We are shining and we become the _____ change in the world as a country. This may sound altruistic but it’s possible if we can just get people there, right? That’s my big mission. That’s what I want and I know that I can impact that kind of change as I see it happen every day.

You know, I was listening to one of your earlier podcast about pain can change because it’s all about perception. It reminds of the book that I read often. I actually just read it again last week and I recommend it to all of our salesman and clients. It’s called Zen Golf by Joseph Parent. Everybody should go get that book. It literally has nothing to do with golf. It has everything to do with how you perceive your environment and it’s all about visualization. He actually calls it imaging because visualization is more about eyes. Imaging is about using all the senses to bring it in.

You can start actually seeing yourself, hearing yourself, feeling yourself in the future, in the moment as a completely processed in winning. Your mind down sees that it can happen and then you start focusing on it. It becomes the new target. It becomes reality because you’ve seen it happen in your mind. You literally recreated reality and now you have to do is just follow the steps and go make it happen. That’s exactly what we need to be doing on a daily basis. That’s what you’re doing in the sales conversation.

Before I got on this call, I visualize, “What would be the mountaintop experience for this call? How can I impact people who would read this? How can inspire Andrea? How could I just say something that people just go “Wow, that’s awesome, I can use that.”” And I do that with every call, every single call. I don’t take anybody for granted.

I have this crazy sense of self-delusion that I believe that every room I walk into is better because I’m there. The conversation I’m in is better because I’m in it. As a result, I have the most…what I said when we first talking today, I live in a dream, right? I have the most friction-free life of anybody I know because I don’t look for it. I see the best in everybody and I do everything I can to help them achieve it.

So I have this circle of people, I have everybody in my life who just, you know, even if you don’t like me, I never see it because people don’t share it because it’s no benefit. I’m not like the center of attention and the life of the party but I’m just like, “I just love people and I love life so I put it out and I get it back all day long.”

Andrea: Gosh, I love that! So Jim, pick me apart for a minute.

Jim Padilla: OK!

Andrea: Because I’m not the only one that struggles with this and this is certainly something that I’ve struggled with in the past. I’m starting to get over it. I think a lot of people out there struggle with this and that is simply just not believing that they’re going to get the sale per se or that they’re not going to have a voice.

So people who want to have a voice for example, they want to have their message make a difference, but they don’t see it happening or they don’t feel like it’s going to happen. They can’t see it. They haven’t seen it before. You know, you’re talking about this visualization and that sort of thing, how do you coach somebody over that into actually feeling like “You know what, this gonna happen and actually make it happen?”

Jim Padilla: Well that one thing that gives us integrity with ourselves. You know, we always hear the _____ fake it till you make it. It’s funny, it’s interesting but it’s _____ that the inner you knows it’s not real so he doesn’t buy it, right? So you need to get into action as fast as possible and only focus on the things that you actually accomplish, right?

Andrea: Yeah.

Jim Padilla: Because every time you’re actually accomplishing, you give yourself real true credits so now you have integrity with yourself. And you say, “Hmm, I was gonna do that and did do it and I was able to do it.” Instead of going, “Oh man, I did 80% of that wrong.” “It doesn’t matter, you did this far right?” So now, how can we do 20% right, 30% right?

You have to learn to give yourself credit in life. “Did you get the right person show up on the phone?” “Yes.” “Awesome.” Okay, maybe you didn’t close them but your messaging was right, you’re in the right ballpark. Now, we just got to focus on who _____ being that led them to believe that you weren’t the person to buy from or today wasn’t the time to buy.

Now this is the key. This is where we focused on the most is you have to stay in action. Action is going to be vital to everybody part of their success because the more you accomplished, the more integrity you have with yourself. And then when you can be standing in that place of, “I am the expert. I own my expertise even if I’ve never had a client. The reason I’m doing this is because I’m great at it and I’m passionate about serving new with it. So whether I can sell this or not, I give myself total permission to screw this up as much as I want.”

And I tell everybody, if you’re talking to people in a sales conversation, the first thing you have to owe them is the truth and that truth can be everything across the board. I’d be first and foremost, “Hey, look I’m just learning how to sell but I’m phenomenal at what I do. Please don’t let the fact that this sales conversation might be a little bit cranky because I’m kind of nervous but I’m a bad-ass coach and I absolutely know how to solve the problem. This conversation is gonna be about how do we help you figure out the problem. Now, you just give me a self permission to screw up everything.” How do you think the person on the other side of this phone is going to respond to that?

Andrea: Uh-hmm absolutely!

Jim Padilla: You’re doing great.

Andrea: They’re falling for you now.

Jim Padilla: Totally. You could _____.

Andrea: Yeah. Try being honest by not being manipulative but by being honest.

Jim Padilla: Exactly and then that honesty has to come out throughout the conversation. I literally have a contract with myself that says, if I get to a place where I have to ask myself should I ask that question, I now must ask the question. Because the only time we ask that is that when you’re nervous about asking it. And usually, those are the most important questions.

So if you’re about to call somebody else on something and you’re like, “Oh I don’t know if I should say that?” Guess what, that might be the most important question you can ask them or the most important piece of insight you can give them and you just caused them the opportunity to take that and nobody else was going to tell that to them, right? And that’s how they buy from you. It’s not about the scripting and your seven-step process, it’s about being super connected and genuine with them and being able to tap into somebody.

The thing that I get a lot when I’m in conversations is I can hear people breathing patterns, you know, you connect with people energetically, right? We are all energetic being that’s on the phone, over Zoom, whatever; we are connected. You know, maybe _____ they’re trained. If they’re going to do _____ attack with somebody with a knife to not look at the person. They’re trained to look at the crown behind the person that’s going to attack because if you’re looking at the person, they can feel you looking at them and then you blow your surprise.

It’s the same thing. You can feel and read people as long as you’re focused on them and not you. When you’re worried about losing the sale, you’re worried about not sharing the message properly, you have to abandon that. You have to abandon that because it hasn’t work for you at this point. So get rid of it and start focusing on the other person and you’ll be amazed because you’ll start hearing them, “Oh they’re talking faster, or their mood has changed.” A lot of times we missed that stuff because we’re so focused on getting to the next part of the script.

Andrea: Totally! It’s interesting because I think I can hear people just sort of settle in and their energy comes up and their rhythm is just so natural and all of a sudden they’re just being themselves, like you’re talking about, just being, how does being is. You can tell when people are motivated by fear or by love and that’s essentially what it comes down to, isn’t it?

Jim Padilla: Totally, and you know, the most enrolling thing you can ever do is being yourself. People buy you all the time; they don’t buy your stuffs. They don’t care about your stuff. They buy you because they trust you to be able to help them get what they want. So you just have to be yourself.

We’ve all experienced this. We’d be on the phone or you’re at the store, whatever and somebody was trying to sell you something and you left the conversation, you’re like, “You know, I like him but there was just something about him, I don’t know what it was.” People don’t know how to identify it but they can sure feel it. So you want them to leave going, “I don’t know what it was with that guy, but I have got find a way to work with him because I love how I feel around him.”

Andrea: Yes, yes!

Jim Padilla: And that’s what I get a lot when I’m working. When I’m talking people on the phone, people get like super inspired. I get them grounded. I get them elevated. They’re like, “Hell yes, I can do this.” People will be sadly disappointed if they listen to my sales call because it’s not a bunch of magic. It’s just me being me. I don’t have a bunch of magic formulas, I’m just totally connected to the person I’m serving and I truly don’t have any concern or the best interest in the outcome, except that I want you better at the end of the call than you were at the beginning. I want you to have crystal clarity on what it is you’re trying to accomplish, why you want to accomplish it, what’s the cause of not accomplishing it and what’s in the way?

Andrea: That was really powerful _____. Can you say it again?

Jim Padilla: Yeah.

Andrea: OK!

Jim Padilla: I call it a Park Bench approach to sales, a Park Bench Philosophy; you as a sales person, which all of you are by the way, you should be able to sit down on a park bench with a random stranger. It didn’t come through a phone, _____, random stranger on a park bench and inside of 30 minutes, you should know what they want, why they want it, what’s the cause of not getting it, and what’s in the way? That’s by having a conversation about somebody you care about.

And then you say, “Hey, I know someone that has that solution.” Or you’ll say, “Hey, I can help you with that and here’s how.” That should be your approach to everybody you talk to. It shouldn’t be about, “Let me see if they’re a good client for me.” I was like, “No, let me see how I can help you solve your problem.”

Andrea: I love that. I do and I know that that can be totally contrary to what can be talked about around these ideas of sales and sales conversation and things like that and yet, there’s something very freeing about that, isn’t there?

Jim Padilla: Yes. Yeah, because your only outcome and agenda is to help them, which is what we’re designed for. So it’s right inside all of our will house, every single one of us.

Andrea: I think that one of the difficult pieces of that is getting to that point where you see that you can help them but then having to put a price tag on your help for them. And maybe that’s a different conversation but I think that there are a lot of people that do actually struggle with this. When do you share something and just share it and help people and when do you put a price tag on what you’re offering?

Jim Padilla: Well, it’s interesting because we just started this Facebook drop-in coaching membership group and it was formed from this idea. I get on the phone with people a lot. There’s a lot of people in our industry that are seven-figure, eight-figure people and they kind of live in the castle on the hill. They’re not accessible to the average Joe and I don’t like that. I totally understand protecting your time, I absolutely get it. But I want to help as many people I can.

So I’ll jump on the phone with somebody who’s expressing that they have specific challenge, “No, I can help you with that. Let’s get on the phone for 10 minutes.” And then we do it but it’s hard for me to do that randomly. So we’ve started this whole membership group just last week and it’s like 47 bucks a month and you get a dollar for the first 30 days. The whole objective here is to just drop in and ask the question and then we can help you. It’s mostly discussed with the admin running the group. But I cannot make money on it, I’m just happy.

And then in that the more we have dialogue and you can go, “Hey, I really like the way he thinks. I like his team or I wanna work with them.” That’s when we started pulling people into something bigger. You can do the same thing. You don’t have to have membership but we can do the same thing. You know, get into groups, get into discussions online or figure out networking.

Start listening instead of talking so much and listening for people’s problem and you got to have at least this one key problem or three areas that you can speak into and say, “Hey, I can help you with that.” And just talk to him. Don’t say, I can sell you that. Just say, “I can help you with that or I know somebody who can. Let me talk to you a little bit more.” The key is when we start worrying about wasting our time, because what happens is, I promise you guys, most people who buy it for me have to pull it from me.

I’ll get on the conversation with them and I’m like “Oh this is great. Oh I’m super excited about that. Here’s how I see this working. Oh, we could totally do that. Here’s what I see you need to do.” And they’re like, “How would we do it?” “Well, here’s how we do it.” “How do we pay for that?” That’s all a lot of my conversation and it’s just because I give this genuine, 100%, sincere passion about helping people. They feel it and they see it.

So you really have to check yourself. If you’re not getting those types of responses because you’re showing up in a way that’s not you, you need to be crystal clear why do you want to help this person or do you want to help them? If not, why not? This is a place you got to do some soul searching and how can I help the most on the people.

Like the event that we were at last week when we met each other there, I had a specific objective. Over the course of two days, I wanted to connect a dozen people. So over the course of two days, I was looking for, “OK, you are a copywriter, you need copywriting, awesome!” “You’re looking for bench members over here, you’re looking for someone else to serve, awesome, let’s connect you here.”

So it has nothing to do with me. It was, how can everybody else get help and then people go “Man, Jim is awesome. He’s a great guy. He really helped me.” And you know what, it leads to referral or at least a phenomenal relationships and leads to people going…

You know, I was on interview last week and the person who was interviewing me, she said, “You know what the first time I met you three years ago were at a Mastermind group, I walked into the room and I was like “Yeah, I got a table with 10 people,” and I said, “I’m really struggling with my sales. I need some help.” She said, “All 10 people at the same time _____,” right? That’s the power of being able to serve and everybody knowing what you do.

Andrea: Oh gosh, Jim, that’s so great. What a beautiful redemption of your story and to see you living in such a…I mean, it’s not totally selfless, I mean, it’s not totally selfless. I don’t mean it be like I don’t know, but it is in the sense. It’s that just giving and desiring to help and all of that. It’s just totally different in your experience before and it’s really beautiful and it’s exciting. I’m just so happy for you and I’m happy for all the clients that you serve and the people of the world at large and for the voice of influence that you have in this area.

Jim Padilla: Thank you! Yeah, I appreciate that I honor that quietly giving my track record in the past. These last 10 years has been whole different life and the first 40 was done my way, the next 40, I wanted to do the God’s way. So that’s really what has been about. I speak a lot, I get interviewed a lot and I’m on a lot of stages and I always get one particular piece of feedback, a 100% at the time. It used to bother me because the macho male ego in me wanted to get something bigger but people always say to me, “Man, I can feel your heart,” or “I could sense so much you care.”

It used to bug me because I want them to say, “Man, you rock,” you know or whatever. But that has subsided. My ego is gone and now I valued us so much and I want people to know that I care. I’m authentic. I’m real because I stopped trying to be Jim the dad, Jim the mortgage broker, Jim the sales person, or Jim whoever. I’m just Jim now. I’m just Jim all the time. I represent time. This is me. If you don’t like this version of me that you’re hearing right now then you don’t like me because I don’t have another version.

Andrea: Hmmm love it! Alright, Jim, so how can people connect with you?

Jim Padilla: I’m in two particular resources on; one, we just talked about it with the membership group. I really recommend it if you’re looking for any kind of influence sales support. Again, it’s in the Facebook group. So basically what we have is if you go to Gain the Edge now, which is our company, gaintheedgenow.com/influence-lab.

I know it’s a mouthful, but gaintheedgenow.com/influence-lab. That’s the membership drop-in coaching group. It cost you a buck for 30 days. Ask as many questions as you want. We’ll you answer stuff. We’ll post videos for you. You can network with other people who are on the same journey, great place to just get connected and get support without having to spend a whole bunch of money on coaching.

The other thing I wanted to include is a resource that, you know, our team does a lot of back of the room sales at live events. So basically, we help people in crowded rooms make powerful decisions, which is not an easy thing to do. I did a video and a PDF on Seven Keys to Making People feel Comfortable in a one-on-one room, so did you feel like you’re alone? It’s about reading people and being able to help them feel like it’s just the two of you ____ 150 around you and you’re freaking out. That’s powerful. I don’t care where you’re at, _____ relationships in your marriage, with your team, and with your clients.

So that one is gaintheedgenow.com/sevenkeys, and that’s a download. Check in, you’ll get on a list. You can opt-out if you want after that but just get the resource, check out the video while you’re there. Check out our YouTube channel that will take you there. What you’re hearing right now, that’s what I do in my videos. It’s just me sharing whatever I can. I’m a content machine so I always have new ideas. I just try to give out as much as I can and get on our world and you get a lot.

Andrea: Love it! So Jim, thank you so much and we will definitely include all of those links in the show notes. So if you’re listening and you’re thinking, “I’ve got to get back to this,” then definitely go back to voiceofinfluence.net and you’ll find the show notes for this episode and Jim’s resources.

Thank you so much for spending time with us today, inspiring us for the way that you have really embraced this life of beauty and redemption and the way that you’re influencing others. Thank you so much!

Jim Padilla: Definitely! Thank you and just one last word to everybody, whatever it is you’re thinking that you can do your wrong, don’t make it happen. Go out and take your responsibilities. Just scale yourself up wherever you need to so that you can go out and do the work that you’ve been called to because the worlds need it. I need it. My soon-to-be grandson needs it. Go out and change people’s lives.

Andrea: Thank you, Jim!

Jim Padilla: Awesome!

 

 

 

END

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How to Respond With Grace & Power When You’re Under Pressure with Crystal Davis

Episode 59

Crystal Davis is a certified Leadership Development Coach, consultant, and speaker whose business personality and work practices are the foundation of her success.

I’m incredibly excited to introduce you to Crystal because I personally love her “voice” and the way she comes across as a voice of wisdom.

In this episode, you’ll hear how Crystal works with companies to improve their business processes to become more efficient and profitable, the organization she started to help women thrive in difficult industries, the events that led her to commute to Mexico for work every day for four years, the difference between management and leadership, the importance of not trying to emulate how others handle difficult situations, how being comfortable with who you truly are will help you find your voice, why she has her clients write a love letter to themselves, and so much more!

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

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

Crystal Davis 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 Crystal Davis, speaker, coach, and consultant whose business personality and work practices are the foundation of her success as a speaker, coach, and consultant.

I’m really excited to introduce to you to Crystal because I have gotten to know her personally.  And I love her voice, the way that she comes across as a voice of wisdom and she shares her personal story whenever she needs to but she has incredible expertise.

So, Crystal, welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!

Crystal Davis:  Thank you so much for having me and thank you for the wonderful and personal introduction.  I really do appreciate that.

Andrea:  Sure, yeah, absolutely!  So, Crystal, you got a couple of facets to what you do as a voice of influence.  You have something that you do more with corporate and then something that you do more with individuals.  Could you share with us a little bit about both of those?

Crystal Davis:  Absolutely!  About four years ago, I took the leap of faith and left my corporate job where I’ve been working for over 20 years.  I started a company called The Lean Coach, Inc. works with organizations and Fortune 500 companies and other medium and small companies to help them improve their business processes so that they can be more efficient, more productive, and more profitable.

Also, I am a certified leadership development coach, so I also help raise the level of confidence, courage, and resiliency within the leaders of the organizations that I work.  So that’s one facet.  The second facet is that I majored in industrial engineering and I spent my first 17 years out of college working in the automotive industry, which was very very good industry before the decline in 2006.  But it was very, very tough environment to work in.

Andrea:  Why is that?

Crystal Davis:  Well, I’m going to tell you about it.

Andrea:  Awesome!

Crystal Davis:  That’s part of my story, part of the Faith For Fiery Trials.

Andrea:  Go for it!

Crystal Davis:  I started actually, here recently, maybe within the last two years a women’s leadership development pillar.  I took just another niche out of leadership development and focused in originally on women working in STEM and women working in male-dominated industries.  However, since I started disrupt-HER, so it’s like a play onwards.  So instead of disruptor, it’s disrupt-HER, and just really helping women to, be able to, not only survive very challenging work environment but to, actually thrive in them and be able to change those work environments.  I’ll explain what the whole concept behind this disrupt-HER as well as doing our talk.

Andrea:  Awesome!  I know that you worked for really big companies doing amazing things and so can you give us context or do you mind sharing a little context what that was?

Crystal Davis:  Absolutely!  So I started my career as I mentioned before, in automotive and I worked for two really small tier 3 or tier 4 suppliers and what that means is that they were that far removed, so three or four tiers removed from the OEM.

Andrea:  The what?

Crystal Davis:  From the original equipment manufacturer.

Andrea:  There you go.

Crystal Davis:  Sorry about that.

Andrea:  You talk to me like a lay person.

Crystal Davis:  Then I spent majority of my career for General Motors and then at some point early in my career in General Motors span of parts division, and that company was then named Delphi.  So I worked for General Motors Delphi.  I worked for Coca-Cola refreshment and also Thermo Fisher Scientific before going on my own.

Andrea:  And in working in those places, you were helping them become more efficient and that sort of thing?  Is that part of what you’re doing?

Crystal Davis:  Yes, but later to Coca-Cola and Thermo Fisher that was my primary role.  My role in automotive span various departments, so I started out, as I mentioned before, in the engineering department.  And then I did some work in quality department, procurement, or purchasing department as well as working directly in manufacturing as a supervisor.

So I had varied experience, and supply chain also.  How can I forget that and that was probably the toughest assignment?  So anyway, I worked in supply chain.  The reason I said it was a very tough environment, first and foremost, it’s a very high-paced, very stressful environment and when mistakes are made, they are extremely costly.

So I’ll just give you an example what I mean by that.  So I was working for a tier1, Delphi was a tier 1 supplier to a General Motors, meaning there may be parts that went directly to the automobile.  If we missed a delivery, and the delivery ended up causing a delay in their manufacturing process, and this was in the 90’s, it cost $18, 000 every minute that we interrupted their production.

Andrea:  Wow!  Yeah, gotcha.  High stakes.

Crystal Davis:  High stakes, very, very high-stress environment.  Of course, you know with vehicles in consumer, just a lot of regulations, a lot of safety requirements, and a lot of quality pressures.  So it’s just a very, very tough environment.  While there were a lot of women working in the environment, it’s still operated and functioned in the manner that men like to function in the majority of leaders were men.

Andrea:  OK, the manner in which they like to function, I’d love to hear a little bit more about that.

Crystal Davis:  Yes, you know as women, we’re more collaborative.  We like to have conversation, talk things through, or balance ideas around.  Men are just very matter of fact straight to it, don’t mince words, especially under a lot of pressure _____.  So you end up taking on a lot of that or becoming intimidated by a lot of that or afraid in some instances.

I can remember a very stressful meeting where people were yelling and screaming and cursing.  And if you’re not there for that, it can really, really either change who you are to adapt to the situation or you try to become the person that mediate to situation so that you can find the different way.

So I found myself as a young engineer evolving through trying to find that safe and happy place that fit who I was and not having to take going the same mannerisms and roles but also to not become a pushover because I didn’t.  So at first, I took on that persona.

Andrea:  Uh-hmmm put on the boxing gloves kind of thing?

Crystal Davis:  Put on a boxing gloves and it’s just not…

Andrea:  And it didn’t fit right.

Crystal Davis:  Right you know.  But somehow you know that does fit right until you stay within the dysfunction that you know, “You know, this is crazy.”

Andrea:  Right.  Oh man, I hear yah.

Crystal Davis:  Yeah, and so the opportunity working in automotive was one that was really, really great as much as I talk about what I learned of how tough the environment was, it was really great.  For me, I had so much more responsibility even though I didn’t the privilege to travel the world and to work in other countries.  So it was a good overall life experience for me as well as professional in terms of developing me and expanding my breadth of knowledge way beyond just you know the engineering space that I started out in.

Andrea:  I know that you have contributed chapter two of really important book, Faith For Fiery Trials and this sounds like something that would have qualified as fiery trial?

Crystal Davis:  It was.  Absolutely it was!

Andrea:  How does the story relates to or other stories perhaps subsequently happened relates to this idea of having faith in the midst of all?

Crystal Davis:  Great question.  In the chapter of the book that I contributed to, I talked about in my stories, I always look for “What am I to learn from this experience and how is that what I’ve learned changed how I might approach situations in the future, or how I might shift my behavior to either avoid a repeat of the situation?”  I shared this a lot of my stories from my early career in this book, Faith For Fiery Trials because it was the time and period in my life where it was my first real faith walk in life.

So I was 25 years old, I was working in Gadsden, Alabama for this automotive parts manufacturer.  It was Greenfield site, we’re building a completely new plant and this particular plant was going to be nonunion.  So it meant that we were trying to model after another successful nonunion plant collaboration that had been going on for years.

Well, long story short, the people there try to unionize the facility and the company decided to move that business to Mexico.  I remember that the vice president came down from our headquarters and talked to all the engineers and the essence of this conversation was the union is trying to disrupt this facility.  We need to stay on schedule with the launch of this new product line removing the business to Mexico.

As the engineers laying up the operating processes, we don’t have the time to start new, so “You can go or you can go.”  Meaning you can go to Mexico or you can find a job elsewhere.  Then you could not apply for jobs anywhere else in the company because this is so critical for the business.  I was just so young and not married.  So I talked to my parents about it and decided to go to Mexico.  So I moved to El Paso, Texas and I crossed the border every day to work in Juarez, Mexico for four and a half years.

Andrea:  Wow that’s a long time in going across the border almost every day.

Crystal Davis:  Yes, almost every day.

Andrea:  Just every day, flat out, four and a half years.

Crystal Davis:  Just every day, yes.  And it’s so funny because when we went down there, we went for orientation, we sat in this room and they talked to us about basic stuffs like benefits and taxes and all of the different things that would apply because we were working outside of the US.  But then they also _____ and said, “So here’s what happens if we have a bomb threat on the bridge and you can’t get home.”  “What?  What I did just sign up for?”

So it was very, very interesting experience that actually, again, turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life.  Because here I am, I’m from Mississippi, I’ve moved to El Paso, Texas to the desert where there’s only one season.  The African-American percent in El Paso at the time was 2.5 and I’m working a lot of overtimes.  I’m dealing with just a lot of life-changing experience all at one time.  I don’t have family or support system there with me and I am having to cross the border where I do not speak Spanish.  I took French in high school.

So it was just a very tough time and I found a small church there that really, really got me focused on studying the bible, applying things to my life, and I found that to be my refuge with all of the stressors that I was under.  So I’m having to move, I’m moving far away from my family, I’m moving to a place that has one season, it’s brown.  And I’m used to greenery and trees and hills and water and all of that in Mississippi and I’m working under immense pressure because we also had to move the factory and I’m having to work with people who don’t speak English to keep this project off the ground and still on time.

That is why for me these stories reflect so much in terms of how my faith grew during that time because at the end of the day, it was just me and God.

Andrea:  So how did your faith impact the way that you responded in this situation do you think?

Crystal Davis:  I think that, for me initially, my faith increased because there were lots of time that I wanted to give up.  There were lots of times that I was homesick.  There were lots of times that I felt extremely undervalued on my job.  In addition to working in a male dominated space in automotive, now I’m actually working in a country where women were making stride.

Well, first of all, let me say this.  I later learned that there’s just a hierarchy of respect in Mexico no matter your gender.  So someone is considered jefe or boss, which is another level of respect that you give and how you behave _____ to say.  So that was difficult for me along with the machism that’s still around in some instances.

I can definitely say that was not the case for every man in Mexico because I have a lot of really good friends till to this day in Mexico that are men.  They’ve worked with me but that was just a very different environment.  So one of my stories that I _____ with when I’m speaking to women about being a disruptor, I was sitting in a meeting, I was the only woman in the meeting at the time.  One of my other American counterpart, he was also an engineer, was in the meeting.  He had a particular product and I had one of the larger products.

So we were in this room, in this conference room with manufacturing managers.  One of the manufacturing managers kept addressing my counterpart about my product.  So my counterpart would then in turn asked me for the answer and then communicate to this guy.  Finally, I started paying attention and I’m like “You know, why are you not talking to me, I’m sitting right here.  What’s the problem?”  I got so angry.  I was so angry and I was a hot head back then.

Andrea:  You sound totally not a hot head right now.  So you were a hot head?

Crystal Davis:  I was a hot headed because those were the mannerisms that I had picked up from the couple of years that I worked in automotive.  You got to be tough.  You got to stand your ground.

Andrea:  Yeah, and then you turned into a totally new environment where you’re trying to be this old persona.  Well, keep going.  Keep going!

Crystal Davis:  Yes, exactly.  So I was sitting there and I was literally like boiling over so much so to the point that I really just wanted to slide across the table and chalk him.  In a matter of seconds, I’m having these emotions.  I’m thinking these thoughts and I’m like “Wait a minute, I have what he needs.  So I have the power.  I just have to make sure I choose wisely how I use that power.”  And I said, “You know what, I have the information and if you want it, you will speak to me, otherwise, you won’t get it.”

Andrea:  OK, so you lead a very clear boundary about him and you said, if you respect and have this conversation with me then you’ll get what you want.  I think that boundary line is incredibly huge.  Those few seconds kind of came to you?

Crystal Davis:   Those few seconds, because I also realized that the room is watching.  I’m the only African-American in the room.  There’s a stigma about the angry black woman and I was angry.  I had a right to be angry.  This guy was not treating me like I was a human.  But that’s not the story that’s always told.  I just thank God that I was able to quickly regroup and be able to say that because had I made a choice to physically attack him or yell and scream then it really would have, I believe, change the path of my career.

Andrea:  So instead of demanding it in that manner where you would have, you know, essentially chalking or yelling, you pulled back into something where you were making it clear what the path was.  It was an invitation to speak with you and that this is the path.  So instead of demanding it, it was an invitation.

Crystal Davis:  I would say, at the end of the day, where you just said is correct, I honestly don’t know that I stated it as calmly as you just said.  So I don’t really know honestly if I gave him a choice, but I basically just let him know that I am the keeper of the information and if you don’t have enough respect for me to talk with me then you just won’t get it.

Andrea:  That’s so powerful.

Crystal Davis:  But at the end of the day, we said the same thing.  It was just an extremely emotional time for me, one where I did not feel supported.  So I went to my boss and I shared what happened that because of this whole respect for bosses and this hierarchy, my boss would not to go to back for me and he was also of Mexican descent.  And so it was just a very, very, very tough time and I found refuge in church through prayer and learning more deeply what the scriptures meant and how they applied for me and I could interpret from the scriptures.  It was just a very, very difficult time.  But it led to some of the most amazing time that I’ve had in my career.

Andrea:  And that was because…what are those amazing times?

Crystal Davis:  Well, you know, I talked about a few things in the book and I talked about the one thing that I can say about every promotion and elevation and new thing that I’ve taken on in life is that God never left me.  He always provided me with what I need or who I needed in my life.  At the same time that that was a tough environment, I experienced some of the best leaders in my life so that leader didn’t go to back for me.

There was some additional American that came to work in that region and I remember vividly the director of engineering.  These are guys who grew up in Ohio area, American-Italian descent.  The guy was a genius.  When he came in and he really started to go to back for the engineering department and he also appreciated talent and he also does not want a leader who’s going to tell you what to do.  He was going to challenge you to define what you needed and what obstacles you needed him to engage.  He would challenge you to go above and beyond.

Crystal Davis:  So I say that that was some of the best experiences I had because that was my first time ever when he came down there, to experience real leadership, not management, but leadership.  He opened doors for me.  He invited me to work on projects that were outside of the scope of my job title, if you will.  He is the one who invited me to be on a team of only seven engineers that were sent to Europe to work for a year to help them make them make some improvements in the operations, which was a bigger _____ of the headquarters, not just of Mexico.

So I got a chance to go work in Europe for a little over a year.  He’s a really, really great guy, because most people when they find your best people, they don’t want to lose them to anyone else but he was willing to say, “No, go, help, explore.  You’ve done well here.”  He was really just amazing because that just opened my eyes to so much more of the world.

Yeah, just tremendous and he gave me experiences where I could improve my skill set and learn more about diversity and inclusion and not what we talked about.  But I actually doing it because here I am in Spain, in Portugal and I am the minority there having to learn diversity and was so appreciative to people who were patient with me and who helped me during that time to just be able to live comfortably.

Andrea:  You know, Crystal, I think of that guy, that leader that came that really…it seems like he saw you.  He could see you for who you were and what you were contributing and he called that out of you and even more, really.

Crystal Davis:  Right, he did.

Andrea:  And kind of invited your voice out.  He wanted to hear your voice.  I think that’s one of the most difficult things for people when we feel like our voice doesn’t matter, when we feel like we don’t have a voice in a situation.  As women, I think a lot of times, and it might be men too, but I’ve heard it more often with women is that not feeling seen.

That situation of you in that office with this conversation taking place between these other two people and not including you, you were totally invisible in that situation.  You stood your ground in terms of saying that, “No, this is me and here I am.  If you want this information, you’re going to see me.”  And then you did have somebody that came along and saw you.  How did this change or maybe even impact the way that you approach working with individuals, with disrupt-HER?  I would imagine that you are excellent at seeing people for who they are and what they can offer.

Crystal Davis:  Absolutely, and it’s such a great question.  You’re spot on you know, I’m sure men experienced that also but women are probably most impacted or at least communicate their impact more about feeling invisible.  One way that I help all leaders but through the way that I help women is I meet them where they are.  I encourage them to learn how to operate within the authentic nature of who they are.

And then thirdly, I equip them to be confident and have the courage to be comfortable in the skin that they’re in.  So this weekend, I hosted a disrupt-HER retreat which was amazing.  I didn’t have a lot of women there.  It was a very small intimate space.  One of the women there said exactly what you said and she is a high-level executive.  She said, my entire life, I have felt invisible.  But yet, she still has been able to achieve you know, being a very high level in a very well-known company.

Andrea:  Hmm, isn’t that interesting?

Crystal Davis:  It’s very interesting, right?  And there’s one thing that people also need to recognize when you have mental health issues or depression or whether or not you just need an encouragement or some different ways to respond to situation in a workplace.  Because you know, when you look at, God bless her family with Kate Spade, someone who hasn’t acquired her level of success or financial wealth, Oh my God, she’s so successful and amazing and beautifully designed _____ but something is broken.

There were some areas in her life that she was not happy or she has suffered from depression.  You have to really separate coaching from where you need help around mental health issues.  I just wanted to say that to people but in talking right to this executive who said she felt invisible, she said part of what I have, the way that I operate is, I have to take time to…when someone says something to me that gets me off-kilter, she needs a being kind of process and then have time to respond.  But when she does _____ as she internalized and give power to what other people say.

So she said, “Crystal, sometimes I wish I could be a lot more like you, you know.  You’re very quick to respond.”  And I said, “Well, let’s be clear, you are who you are and there’s nothing wrong with how you’re made.  But what we might need to do is develop at least a scenario that you’d experience in the past.  I could tell you how I will respond but that’s not authentic to who you are.  But what need to do, we need to be able to _____ a protection, a wall that stops you from internalizing what they said so their words then don’t give power to over you.”

So that’s one way of how I help because she needs to be who she is.  She doesn’t need to act like me.  It wasn’t comfortable for me to try to take on the persona of how men were acting early in my career in automotive.  And she said and felt pressure to act like me.

Andrea:  That’s such an important point because I think so many people; they kind of look around and assumed that they should be like somebody else because they admire the ways that other person handles on thing.  It can become so pressure filled and it’s draining to try to be somebody else.  But to have somebody like you who could come alongside them and say, “But, no, this is you.  So let’s look at this from your perspective and your voice.”

And that’s what I love about this voice of influence concepts in general is that you find your voice of influence by helping other people theirs.  So for this gentlemen who helped you and kind of set you free to be you in your work environment.  I mean, he was a huge influence on you by letting you be you and now that’s what you’re passing on to somebody else.

Crystal Davis:  Absolutely!  He really was and he also taught me how to use my voice.  He was not a calm individual.  He was very intense and very high paced.

Andrea:  Because that’s his style.

Crystal Davis:  That’s his style and, while he was an influencer, he definitely could intimidate a lot of people.  But for me, what I learned from him and what I appreciated about him, he was very similar _____ said to me.  I appreciated the fact that he was going to be heard, and despite his approach, he was going to be heard.

That really, really helped me as a young engineer from that point of my career.  So this probably about 1998 before I left when I was like, “You know what, he says what’s on his mind.  He doesn’t mince words and while I’m not at his level, in terms of position, I’m going to make sure that I say what’s on my mind that I don’t mince words and that if nothing else, people will always know where I stand.”

I can honestly say that over my career, over my entire career, there were times that they got me in trouble but I could sleep at night.

Andrea:  Interesting.  Is that how you would define your voice at this point, like that not mincing words and making sure people understand where I’m at?  This is what I’m always going to bring.

Crystal Davis:  Yes.  Overtime, I’ve learned to adjust my tact.  I’m able now to speak calmly to situations.  I’m able to insert humor.  I can remember people always ask me, “Why do you laugh so much?”  And I’m like “I laugh sometimes _____ but I laugh because I’m a happy person.  While I’m happy, I’m gonna stay happy despite what’s going on.”  I remember I said, being comfortable with who you are and skin that you’re in.

Overtime, I’ve reached the point where, I am who I am.  There are behaviors that I can unlearn and learn new behaviors but I am who I am.  I have to be ultra comfortable in that and if I learn to operate in who I am and my strengths and the areas that I want to grow then I feel better and I have more to give to the world because I feel better about it.

Andrea:  OK, so when you’re working with women in particular, how are you helping them find out who they are.  You mentioned at the beginning that when you put on this persona of the male-dominated workforce around you that did it partly because you didn’t know what else you could be.  And I can totally relate to that so do you have any particular recommendations or suggestions about a woman who’s feeling fairly invisible because she has accomplished a lot.  She is good at what she does but people don’t seem to see her deep down.  Yeah, talk to me about what you would say to her.

Crystal Davis:  Right.  Definitely, there are lots of assessments that are out in the marketplace that really teach people about their cognitive skills, strengths finder, what their strengths are.  And so depending on the person and the situation that they want to resolve, I try to find an assessment that helps to give me more insight for how they behave.  It’s the first thing I do, because I have them write a love letter to themselves.

I remind them of being a young girl when you might have been giddy about a boy or a partner or whatever and the feeling that you had and what you wanted to say that person and how you wanted to tell them what you love about them.  You love their eyes or their smile or the way they make you laugh.  So you write a letter saying things, so whether that means you have to go back to a time when you love yourself or when you were unaware of all of the pressures that the world places on you.

I hear lot of women saying, “You know, I feel like I’ve lost myself.”  So I’m like “OK,” but when you were the person that you feel like you’ve lost, let’s describe her.  Let’s find out where she is.  What’s suppressing her?”

Andrea:  Do you find that women have a hard time writing a love letter about themselves?

Crystal Davis:  Most of them were very shocked when I asked them to do that, like “What?”  They were very shocked when asked them to do that and for the retreat, I did the same thing.  After I got them very comfortable with me and very comfortable with sharing amongst to other women and I told them, “You desire when you write it.  You can write it before we leave; you can write it tonight, or the next day.  But before we leave, I want you to write yourself a love letter.”  And I collected them and mail them to them at some random point in year to remind them.

Actually one of the ladies who were there, she said that she had that same experience at another retreat or similar.  It wasn’t a love letter but a similar experience.  She said that it was so amazing that when she was going through something, her letter came in the mail.

Andrea:  That’s fun.  That’s awesome!

Crystal Davis:  So that’s the second thing I do and then the third thing that I do is I try to find or develop with them a plan, a realistic plan where we can talk about equipping them in an area where they feel deficient, whether that’s increasing their own confidence, courage, resiliency whether that’s dealing with a difficult person at work or whether that’s applying for a new position or a new promotion, having a conversations with their boss about their career path or if it’s even about starting their own business.

I help them centered with self and then I help them to put together really effective plans to take a few steps that keep them pointed in the right direction and then we check in and of course we have coaching thereafter.  So like with this lady who talked about, she felt invisible and she wished she could _____ back like me.  You know, I told her that maybe one of the things we should work on is let’s talk to some different situations and I’ll create a lexicon and then you write a lexicon of what my responses would be and then you write how yours would be.

Again, it’s not about responding so that she respond negatively back to that person, but it’s about making sure that you go to that protection so that person’s words don’t have power over, you know making you feel bad or making you feel not valued or not worthy or anything that kind of stuff.

Andrea:  Hmm, interesting.  So one of my last questions here is if somebody is wanting to empower somebody else and to be that voice of influence for somebody else, not necessarily to be somebody else’s voice but to help them find theirs to release them to being more themselves, what would you leave them with? What would you want them to remember?

Crystal Davis:  The first thing that I would say to people, anyone who wants to find their voice is….

Andrea:  Well, how about the people who want to help other people?

Crystal Davis:  For people wanting to help other people find their voice is they should be transparent and be comfortable taking the risk of being super transparent.  People nowadays are inundated with information and you and I both know that the one thing that stops people from taking action is because they’re not clear.

So what I’ve learned is that people have access to information at the tips of their fingertips.  There are so many coaches out there.  There are search engines, insight papers, white papers, research; so there’s a _____ of information available to people dealing with any situation or circumstance.

But what people most relate to, at least the people I have encountered, they relate to the fact that I’m transparent and I’m able to share things that I’ve been through.  So they are looking at me as someone who has achieved the level of success and I have it altogether but I’m willing to share what I’ve been through and I’m willing to share what I’ve learned from it and I’m willing to share my success steps.

And that to me is what helps give power to the voice of influence, because you’re not coming from such a mechanical space of just knowing information and knowing approaches or tactics, you’re able to share with someone. Yes, I left a very, very well-paid job and I’ve a good position to take on the risk of starting my own business.

But here’s some of the challenges that I faced or here’s some of the things that I didn’t know I needed to think about and people kind of appreciate that level of transparency I think and welcome what you have to share because you have the story attached to it.  You have the experience attached to it.

And so if they can relate to your experience they now view you as a person that can influence how they might do things differently.  So I say to anyone, we all have stories, we all have life experiences.  We may not all have made the right decisions, but our wrong decisions and sharing it that might help someone else not make the same decision.

Andrea:  Absolutely!  That’s great.  Thank you so much for that advice, Crystal.

Crystal Davis:  You’re welcome.  I kind of just add one other thing, Andrea.

Andrea:  Absolutely!

Crystal Davis:  I studied leadership development coaching under John Maxwell organization and I love one thing that John Maxwell’s say, “Leadership is not about position, leadership is about influence.”  And so when you think about that despite whatever position you hold in an organization, in your family, or in your job, you can be a leader and you can influence other people in a very positive way and of course they should be used in a positive way.

So I think everyone can be a leader to someone else if they sought to take on responsibility.

Andrea:  I love it and do so through connecting it sounds like for being transparent and truly connecting with someone else with your story.  I love it.  Well, Crystal, tell us a little bit about the book because I want to know how people can find it.

Crystal Davis:  So the book is Faith For Fiery Trial and I believe there are a total of 20 authors who share their stories.  Some of the women have overcome illnesses, challenges on their job, or challenges in business, etcetera, etcetera.  We were asked not to only share our stories but to share the lessons that we want to share.  We want other people to learn from it.  So I think it will not only be a book 2of great stories but also a book of great advice and steps that you can take.

So the book will be launched at the end of the month, June 30th and you can follow me on forms of social media at crystalydavis and I will be selling the book also through my website.  Our hope is that the book will be picked up by major publishers and carriers.  But at the moment, we are freelancing and they can share with getting the word out because a lot of people are struggling and they need to hear these stories and they need to know that they can overcome the challenges that many of us face in life.

Andrea:  Absolutely!  So if you’re struggling, if you found yourself in that situation where the trials just keep coming, you’re feeling kind of down about it or you know somebody who is feeling that way or you want to have some inspiration and be kind of buffer your own ability to handle those situations before they even occur, go out and get this book because I think that Faith For Fiery Trials will be a really powerful book for you to really inspire you and then to equip you to be able to handle them.

So thank you so much for being with us today, Crystal, and will be sure to link all of this in the show notes for this episode.  This episode will be coming out right after your book launch so it will be a perfect timing and I hope that you’ll have a great success with it.

Crystal Davis:  Thank you so much.  And thank you so much the opportunity to share with your audience.  Like I said before, I love your title, Voice of Influence and I just love that you’re exposing other people to different ways that they can become more influential.  I love the work that you’re doing.

Andrea:  Thanks Crystal!  Alright, we’ll talk to you soon.

Crystal Davis:  Great.  Thank you!

Posted on

Find Authentic Confidence in Alcohol-Free Living with Kate Bee

Episode 56

How often do we see memes on Facebook about it being “wine o’clock” or how often do we hear references in pop culture about how alcohol is the answer to a stressful day or the perfect way to celebrate a special occasion? Today’s guest has made it her mission to change this narrative.

Kate Bee is the founder of The Sober School; where she coaches women through early sobriety and helps them navigate alcohol-free living without feeling deprived or miserable.

In this episode, Kate talks about her own journey with sobriety, her mission of trying to change the narrative around sobriety, why she tries to work with people before they’ve hit rock bottom, her tip for handling a situation where others are pressuring you to drink with them, what helps her publish her content even when she has doubts or insecurities, and so much more!

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

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

Kate Bee 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 my Kate Bee, Kate who lives in Manchester in the United Kingdom.  I’m so excited to have you and we were able to connect on this, Kate.

Kate is the founder of the Sober School where she coaches women through early sobriety and help them navigate alcohol-free living without feeling deprived or miserable, which I think is just a really interesting topic, so I’m excited to hear more about that.  And Kate, how you got into it?

So welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast, Kate!

Kate Bee:  Thank you so much.  Thank you for having me and it’s nice to talk to you.

Andrea:  Yes.  We were just discussing before we started the recording that it’s been a year in a half since we meet at Amy Porterfield’s live events in San Diego.

Kate Bee:  Yeah.  I know that was so cool.  That was such a big deal for me at the time going all the way, leaving rainy England going to sunny San Diego.  But yeah, I met lots of great people at that event including your good self, so it’s nice to catch up.

Andrea:  So Kate, could you share with the audience just a little bit more about what it is that your program is and what you’re doing right now?

Kate Bate:  Sure!  So yeah, I help women who are drinking too much to stop drinking and actually feel good about it.  So rather than feeling like it’s the end of the world and it’s an awful thing that they got no choice in, I try and inspire people and show them that alcohol-free living can actually feel really good and just be a really positive way of life.

So I’ve got a 6-week online course which I run a few times a year and I gather together a big group of women and everybody starts the course on the same day.  So you kind of get to be part of this tribe who are all going through this exact same experience.

It guides people through their first six weeks of early sobriety and really helps set them up either for an alcohol-free lifestyle or guide them through a break, because lots of people are kind of dip in their toes in the water and just want to see what it feels like to stop drinking.  Wine can make you feel really rubbish and it’s good to take a break and do it with a support of a group around you.

Andrea:  You know, this topic, when I was first introduced to you, Kate, it really intrigued me because actually I spent some time working with some folks in a recovery counseling center, not as a counselor per se, but more as like  a minister or chaplain kind of voice in that setting.  So in that setting, it felt like people were sort at the bottom of the barrel in their lives.  They just were sort hit that rock bottom and they were going through rehab really or a 12-step program.

It sounds to me like what you’re talking about here is not necessarily that 12-step program kind of thing but a little less intense.  How would you fit it into the scheme of you know, the landscape of the sort of program?

Kate Bee:  Yeah that’s a great point because one of the things I try to do is to work with people before they hits any kind of rock bottom and that’s a big part of my message is that, if alcohol is making you feel at all unhappy and miserable then you can stop and you can change that path.  You don’t have to wait until you are in rehab or you have lost your job or, you know, any of this other kind of stereotypical things that we associate with people when they really do go a bit further down that downward spiral.

So I tend to work with women who are, to the outside world, perfectly fine.  They are holding down good jobs.  They got busy lives.  Generally they got kids and you know, they make everything happens.  They get the kids to school.  They go to work.  They do good job.  They put a meal on the table at the end of the day.  Their lives to the outside world seem to be on track but they are feeling more and more rundown by the amount of alcohol that they are drinking.  I tend to deal with people just _____ who had years and years thinking that wine, beer, or whatever it is is a thing that keeping their lives together.  And now they’re just starting to think, “Actually, I think this is what is making my life so hard enough _____.”

So yeah, it is about showing people that you can stop drinking before things get really, really bad, just in the same way that you can stop using any of the drugs.  You can stop smoking before you get some kind of lung disease.  So a big part of my work is trying to change the narrative around sobriety and making it less of something that you have to do when all other options are being exhausted as a kind of punishment and more a conscious choice that you can make any time.

Andrea:  Yeah.  That’s really encouraging.  I think that a lot of people who have a message, we struggle to figure out exactly what that niche is.  And it sounds to me like you’re not necessarily saying; everybody should stop drinking, even though it might something that’s inside of you a desire to see.  You’re also not saying, if you’re at the rock bottom.  You’re speaking specifically to a certain kind of person.  From what I understand, you have a personal connection to that person, is that right?

Kate Bee:  Yeah, definitely.  I was inspired to start with the Sober School after going through something like this myself.  I was never a rock bottom alcoholic.  I was that person, you know, I showed up to work every day.  I kept things together.  The most common reaction I got when I stopped drinking with people would say to me, “But I didn’t know you had a problem.  Are you sure you need to stop drinking?”

So I was really good at hiding how alcohol affected me.  And yeah, I don’t have any dramatic stories of waking up in hospital or getting into trouble at work or anything like that.  But I was like many women.  I started drinking at a young age because it made me feel more confident.  It made me be the kind of teenager and young person that I wished I was.  You’re better at partying, better talking to boys, better at everything and then it just slowly moved from my best friend into my worst enemy.  It didn’t seem to _____ whether I had a good day or bad day whether I cheer myself up or celebrating something, I was always just drinking a bit too much and waking up feeling hang over and feeling awful.

But my problem was that when I look for help and this is kind of…I’ve only started looking for help back in 2009, 2010 and it was a while I stopped drinking in 2013.  When I was looking for help, I couldn’t find anything that applied to me.  It all seemed so extreme and it was talking about people going to rehab or going to meetings or you know talking about a kind of level of addiction that I wasn’t experiencing.  But yeah, I knew in my gut that alcohol wasn’t doing me any good at all.

So yeah, I’m really pleased I kind of took a leap of faith and did decide to quit.  Yeah, I’ve been really passionate since then about kind of saying to people; there is this middle ground between being a normal drinker and being alcoholic.  There are many shades of grey in between and it’s trying to get off the bus a bit earlier if you want to.

Andrea:  So why do you think that people need or want a program like yours, you know, that something that has some guidance to it and it sounds like some community as well.  Why do you think that people need that and don’t just…

Kate Bee:  Don’t just stop drinking?

Andrea:  Yeah.

Kate Bee:  I think it’s really because alcohol is in everything we do.  I mean, obviously, I live in England where we are particularly big drinkers.  I went with women all over the world, lots of women in the U.S. and some in Australia as well and whatever we’ve agreed on is that we seemed to be living in this very busy world while we are encouraged and it’s cool to drink on your birthday, on a wedding, on a debut’s party, or a funeral.  You think if any kind of event or gathering and the chances are this will be involved in some way.

If you’re on Facebook, the chances are you see Facebook, means all the time about Wine O’ Clock, Mommy Juice and all the stuff, because if there’s problem in life can be solve by drinking alcohol.  It’s very difficult to change your behavior when you are surrounded by those kinds of messages.  It’s cool to be sober, but also it’s not cool to be the person who can’t control their drinking.  You’re really stuck in that environment.

So one of feedback I got most from the women I work with is “Wow, I had no idea other people felt like this, because people feels so alone and they think they’re they only people who are struggling in this way.”  So yeah, it’s a funny old world really and it’s hard to stop drinking.  I often compare this actually to smoking.  I don’t know what it’s like where you are but here, smoking is not cool anymore.  Things have really changed in terms of smoking.

But I can remember not that long ago when I was at school, smoking was still a bit cool and actually I had a bit of a hard time because I don’t really like smoking.  And I think we’re still stuck in that when it comes to drinking.  We’re still pressuring people to drink and be cool and we’re questioning them when they don’t drink, which is kind of crazy.

Andrea:  Do you get that a lot.  I mean, maybe not so much now but when you first were deciding to be sober and you were out and about, did you get a lot of questions and looks and things like that?

Kate Bee:  Huh yes, absolutely!  Yeah, it’s like I have to justify myself choosing not to consume this drug, not to drink and people just can’t understand it.  I think sometimes people; they’re coming at you from a place where, perhaps they feel a little bit self-conscious about their drinking or they prefer drinking in a group and it’s a bit odd when someone changes their behavior.  Yeah, I used to get a lot of questions about it, but fortunately, now I’ve gone so far the other way, people know just _____.

Andrea:  Do you think that people feel like you’re judging them by not participating with them.  I mean, have you heard that kind of feedback or did you get that sense at all and how do you navigate that?

Kate Bee:  Yeah.  No one said that explicitly but I think that is what behind…I think that is what people feeling when they’re saying “Oh come on, come on, just have one, just join in.”  They do _____ a bit judged.  My tip for navigating that situation is always to be extremely positive _____ how you’re feeling inside.  Make it clear that you’re just taking a break from drinking or taking some time off and you’re loving it.  You’re feeling really good.  You’re really surprised how much you’re enjoying it and you’re very happy for everyone else to drink.  You’re still going to be the life and soul of the party, nothing else has changed.  Own that conversation and be really positive about it and don’t let people push you into drinking.  I would always _____ first to say that sometimes I’ve seen people bullied other people into drinking.

Andrea:  Yeah that’s probably true. You know, I was thinking about the…oh gosh, I had this thought in my head and so I’m going to add this out.  So one of the things that I hear from people and I’ve noticed is that people do seem to feel more comfortable when they have a drink in their hands and yet, you just said something about, you know, telling them that nothing’s going to change, they’re still going to be the life of the party.  Do you find that the people that come through at the Sober School that they actually are able to still tap into that person that they were like when they were drinking in the positive sense you know being more outgoing perhaps or comfortable.  Is that part of what you talked about or how do you know how they’re able to handle that?

Kate Bee:  It’s the big part of what we talked about.  First of all, people do feel more comfortable with drink in their hands.  I feel more comfortable with the drink in my hands in an alcohol-free drink.  So I say to people, get a drink and just because you’re not drinking alcohol doesn’t mean you should be empty-handed, doesn’t mean you should be drinking water or something boring, get a nice drink.  But a big thing we do on the course is to really analyze what is you think alcohol is providing for you because a lot of people fall into these habits where they think that alcohol is what is making the party fun or alcohol is what’s making them sociable and having a good time.

So we go through some exercises while we look at parties where you have perhaps not had a good time, where you have actually felt pretty bored or stuck for things to say even though you’ve been drinking loads and loads and loads.  So yeah, how does that workout?  If alcohol is the magic fun in a glass party juice type _____ then it should work every time.  We talked a bit about, you know, if you’re going to events that you can only enjoy by getting drunk with them, should you be going to these events anyway?

We’re not around for long.  We’ve got one shot at this life, we should be living it to the max in doing stuff that we genuinely enjoy creating.  A life that really is fun, not one that we have to kind of bumble through slightly drunk in order to stomach certain things, so yeah, it is an adjustment.  I’m not going to lie about that.  It feels a bit a lot you’ve lost a comfort blanket at the beginning.

But when you start really analyzing these thoughts rationally, you can get to a place where you go to a party and you do feel like your best self because you know you are.  You’re showing up.  You’re clear-headed.  You’re not going to be the boring person who’s saying the same old anecdote five times because you’re slightly drunk and you can’t remember that you said it already.  You’re going to be a good company.

Andrea:  Yeah, I like that.  OK, so Kate, I know that as with anybody who is sharing something, sharing a passionate message that they have, our voices kind of shift, morph, or mature become even sometimes more powerful.  Do you think that over the past few years that you’ve been doing this, have you felt a shift in your own voice as you’ve spoken about this, as you’ve executed the Sober School and talked to more and more people about your message?

Kate Bee:  Yeah.  I’ve been thinking about this ahead of knowing that I was going to speak to you and just kind of reflecting on how things have changed because I really think, “Yeah, things have really changed so much over the past few years.”  When I first started out, I felt very unsure of myself and _____ I would think the most often is, “Who do you think you are writing this blog, giving people this advice?  What are you doing?”  I would have these massive doubts, so unsure of myself.  I think it’s only _____ as my blog has grown and I’ve had more people follow that and really resonate with it and tell me that they like what I was saying that I became more confident and I think I will say I’ve become more confident in my own style and my own approach.

I used to get worried about offending people who had slightly different opinions on alcoholism or the best way to go about things and then I realized that that’s OK.  Actually, there is something to be said for certain people who just don’t resonate with your message rather than trying to be, you know, wanting to all people.  It is better to _____ down effectively and have your beliefs and answers stick with them.  So yeah, I feel like it’s been a long, long journey and I still have plenty of doubts now.

Andrea:  Especially when you’re first starting, but even now if you’re still having doubts at times.  What gets you passed those to actually press publish on your blog post or on your social media pages or whatever, why do you keep doing it or why did you have the courage even when you didn’t have the feedback yet?

Kate Bee:  Well, yeah.  I guess I’ve been held out slightly on that.  Before I started the Sober School, I did have another blog just on WordPress.  A kind of free WordPress and I do _____ experimented with my own voice and I I have _____ idea what resonates to the people.  I’d have some really positive feedback from people through writing that blog.  They said to me like, “I just like hearing what you’re doing and your emails always seem to come at the right time.”

So I think that gave me that confident to really go for it and think, “Well, if I helped five people with that blog, perhaps if I do my Sober School blog and work consistently and be really kind of establish myself there, I can help more people.”  That’s the thing I still come back to each today.

Every time, I write a blog, I always get an email from someone saying, “Huh, this came at just the right time.”  So I think, “OK, I helped one person.”  I think that’s what makes me keep going.  It’s a bit late in a day here in the UK, I just had a day of really struggling to write a blog post, so yes that would be one of those that I think, “OK, you got to stop worrying about this,  press publish.”

Andrea:  What kinds of things are still hard to publish?

Kate Bee:  I think probably about things that has more to do with me personally.  When I started off on this journey, I used to share a lot about me on my drinking, on my experiences.  But as more people have found out about the Sober School and my auntie knows and my cousins _____ from my mom, I sometimes really get self-conscious about the things that I’m writing, whereas, I didn’t use to think about that before.

I used to just write and I’ve been thinking about my ideal customers or readers.  I just been thinking about that and I published it with them in mind.  So something I really have to work on is that self-conscious kind of…what do you call it?  That voice that kind of saying, “Ohh do you wanna say this?”  Maybe it will come from the same place, the self-doubt, they just have a different _____ now, but yeah, sharing personal stuff is still quite a big deal for me.

Andrea:  It can put you in the line of judgment, it sounds like.

Kate Bee:  Yeah, yeah definitely because there are some parts of the recovery community online who are quite vocal about why you shouldn’t do this or you should do this.  And yeah then there are other people in my real life, who I always think “Oh what are they really thinking about me?”  I’m coming across like a very paranoid person and I’m not.

Andrea:  Well, now, you’ve come so far.  It’s clear that this is a small piece of it but it stills something that everybody deals with I think and so that’s why I asked.

Kate Bee:  Yeah, yeah.  I do feel _____ when I hear about other, you know, people who have much bigger businesses, like I’ve heard Marie Forleo and Amy Porterfield talked about self-doubt as well.  So that’s what makes me feel better.

Andrea:  Most definitely.  Yeah, the idea that somebody else could pull back or you know cast some sort of judgment on us, I think is definitely one of those things that is ever present and yet what’s telling is that you keep pressing publish.  There’s still that you care more about the message of the people that need it than you know…I call it a sacrifice.  It’s essentially saying, “You know, I’m willing to put myself on the line for this message.”  So every time you end up pushing publish, you’re just reinforcing that passion inside of you that really, that willingness to put yourself on the line for others and I think it’s a really beautiful thing.

Kate Bee:  Oh, thank you.  I appreciate that.  I used to be a reporter and a journalist before this, so I think I do still have something engrained in me that whatever happens, you have to meet the deadline and you have to publish something.

Andrea:  There you go!  I like that.  This is still along the same line of feeling a little unsettled about sharing _____ but it seems like when we talked a year and a half ago, you weren’t sure how much of that you wanted to put out there and then it continued to morph and no here you are.  I love that you’ve gotten on camera, on social media and you keep sharing ideas.  I feel like what you do is you give people that opportunity to say, “Oh, I don’t have to live like this.”  But you’re the face of that.

Kate Bee:  Yeah.  I mean, you must feel the same way; you’re the face of your business.  It’s estranged.  Yes, I am the face of my business and I have tried to be a bit more visible because my comfort zone is definitely in writing that’s what I feel comes to me most naturally.  But I will _____ from the point of view being a follower of other people.  The videos and podcasts connect with people in a way that sometimes wisdom words don’t.  So I have been trying to push myself out there and do more videos.  Sometimes I do free workshops and _____ videos.  Other times, it’s more “Hey, I’m in this place.  I’m full of these things that I want to say and let’s talk about what’s relevant here.”  But yeah, getting my face on screen is a goal for me, to do more of that this year for sure.

Andrea:  Do you do any speaking like live events?

Kate Bee:  No, I’ve never done anything actually.  That’s kind of thing that will give me sleepless nights.  I know you do that but no.

Andrea:  It’s not something that you want to do.  I understand.  If you don’t mind, I know that you took that Fascinate Assessment…

Kate Bee:  Uh-huh.

Andrea:  And you came out with your top two languages being Mystique and Passion, which is one of the most rare combinations, because mystique is about not wanting to share a lot about yourself and passion is about sharing and connecting with people.

Kate Bee:  Oh my goodness.

Andrea:  Isn’t that interesting?

Kate Bee:  I do know somebody else who is a Mystique plus Passion too, and there is this sense of depth like you exude a sense of depth and also desiring to connect and listen to other people.  So I think that it’s just your voice.  It does have a very reflective sound to it not just in a way that you in a tone that you’re speaking with but also just how you process things.  I can see how that would be such a struggle too, the desire to share but the desire to want to put the focus on other people instead of yourself.  It makes a lot of sense.

Kate Bee:  Yeah and perhaps you can help me with something because I went to a conference earlier this year.  I went back to San Diego where we met and I went to lots of different lectures.  It was for entrepreneurs in growing your business, and the last event I went to on a final day was about writing a book and becoming a self-published author.  I’ve always wanted to do something around what I do now and write about alcohol-free living.  So on a whim, I purchased this self publishing course and some sessions with a writing coach.  I paid the money _____, but I got this book commitment coming up.

As the deadline coming closer, I’m thinking..I don’t know if I can share enough with my personal story to make this book what it needs to be.  You wrote your book and what would be your advice for me given that I’m so conflicted?

Andrea:  Yes.  Well, I understand because that was not my intention when I started to write my book.  I was intending to share a little bit of pieces but not anything extensive and I ended up writing…my writing coach actually coached me and ended up finding the voice of my book needed to be on my own story.  But I don’t necessarily think that’s the case for everybody.  I know there’s a lot of people who write really good books that have a theme to them for each chapter and then they share snippets, like little stories that might illustrate the point that they’re trying to get across but not necessarily go into great depth.

But I think the book writing process itself is such a…I don’t know, transformative experience but I think specially if you have somebody alongside of you who can encourage you and help you to see what’s best.  When you start writing and you just give everything out that you possibly can and you don’t edit.  That’s the mean thing that you want to do when you first start I think is to not edit what you’re saying and you don’t want to spend a lot of time going down _____ but you do want to get out what you feel like you really want to get out and then you go back and then you say, “OK what’s effective here?”  And you push yourself a little bit but I understand too.  You don’t always want to share why you feel certain way or why you did the certain thing or…

Kate Bee:  Yeah, it’s funny isn’t it?  I just felt that once I get started, I will just end up sharing more and more.

Andrea:  Probably the case, but I wasn’t going to say that.

Kate Bee:  I thought of that assessment you got me to do, I’ve never taken anything like that before but it seemed release button.

Andrea:  Well, this has been just a really, really delightful conversation, Kate, and I would really appreciate it if you would share with the audience how they can connect with you the at the Sober School.  I think that anybody would really benefit from just seeing Kate online, on her Instagram feed or whatever.  So maybe you could share your handles and where they can find information about the Sober School.

Kate Bee:  Cool!  Thank you!  Well, I am on Instagram, I am the soberschool and that’s for everything, Facebook and Twitter.  I think Instagram and Facebook come out _____ so I’m definitely the most active there.  Yeah, if you’d like to find out more about me, read any of the blog and I’ve got a couple of free guides on my website.  I’m over at the soberschool.com.  I’ve got a free workshop that’s coming up very soon.  It’s all about reviewing where we are _____, having a bit of a research and if you want to take a break from alcohol, it’s about sharing you how to kind of kick stat that break.  So I’d be excited to share that with anyone.  It will be out very soon.

Andrea:  Great!  Well, we’ll be sure to link everything in the show notes and so I’m excited to share this interview with the listeners.  Thank you so much for your generous time with us today, Kate.

Kate Bee:  Thank you for inviting.  I really enjoyed it!  I think you’ve told me a lot about myself and given me a lot to think about, so I appreciate it.

Andrea:  Well, thank you for your service.  We’ll talk to you soon!

Posted on

Find Your MOJO Even in Hard Times with Karen Worstell

Episode 55

We all have that loud voice inside our head screaming at us to avoid doing things that make us comfortable. While this voice is just trying to protect us, we must learn how to silence this voice and not let it stop us from going after our goals or making our voices heard.

Karen Worstell went from being a mom to toddlers who couldn’t afford to buy groceries to the Chief Information Security Officer for companies like AT&T Wireless and Microsoft. Now, Karen coaches women in tech and has a consulting business around tech and risk management.

In this raw and powerful episode, Karen shares why you must make peace with the skeptic voice inside your head and listen to the whisper of your heart, her advice for maintaining your resilience when things become difficult, her mission to help companies realize they should be encouraging their employees to be their truest selves instead of forcing them to fit into a set company culture, and so much more!

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

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

Karen Worstell 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 Karen Worstell who went from being a mom of toddlers and a computer science graduate student all the way to Silicon Valley with all kinds of amazing experience to the point where she was even the chief information security officer for companies, like AT&T Wireless, Microsoft, and Russell Investments.  Now, she is doing her own consulting business around tech and Risk Management as well as coaching women in tech.

So Karen, I’m really, really excited to have you here on the podcast today.

Karen Worstell:  Oh thanks Andrea.  Thanks for having me.

Andrea:  Actually, I was introduced to Karen, I should say.  I think I might have gone up to you, Karen, to tell you that you did a good job.  But I actually heard you speak at a conference and I was so impressed with your story and your presence on stage because I looked at you and I thought “Oh my goodness, this is a classy lady.”  And you told your story then really wowed us with some of the things that you had to say.

So I wonder if you would be willing to tell us a little bit of what you share that day about that moment in time when things really changed for you, however long ago that was.

Karen Worstell:  Sure!  Well, yah, you know how we all have those events in our life that it’s usually some kind of a crisis that gives us crystal laser like focus.  Really, what I was talking about then, and I’ll just share again, when I was a mom of toddlers as you call it.  I had 2-year old and 4-year old at home and through a series of my own choices, I found myself in a situation where I was standing literally in the grocery store staring at the fruit section and it was like apples, “Where the heck are affordable apples.”

In those days, apples were $49 cents a pound.  That sounds like cheap apples because today, you can spend $3 a pound for apples.  But $49 cents a pound was the going rate at the time in the 80’s and I did not have money to buy apples and I had to go through the manager and asked him, did he have any apples that he had already pulled from the fruit stand that he could sell to me at a discount.

For me that was this moment that said, “You know what, something has got to change.  I can’t keep doing this.”  So about that time my amazing brother, Michael, who is thinker and one of my best friends.  He had a TRS-80 computer with a serial number of six.  He brought that over to my house and spread it out on the table.  It took up quite a bit of space with all of its various components at that time.  It had 64k of RAM, which I couldn’t even operate with my phone with that today.  But he put it on the table and he looked at me and he goes, “Sister, you have to learn to code.”

Now, I have never done anything with computers in my life, and I was pretty sure that if I put my fingers on the keyboard of that thing and did something wrong, it was going up in flames.  I was quite nervous about this piece of technology in my home.  He was very encouraging.  I mean, I literally put my fingers on the keyboard and typed in H-E-L-L-O, and nothing bad happened.

So with his help, I learned to this in programming and Visual Basic and I learned how to program in a language called Forth.  You don’t have much about it these days but I was really attracted to it because it was the way my brain works, which is something called Reverse Polish Notation.  It’s a technical term for the way information get pushed into the computer and then popped back out of the computer when you’re doing code writings.

So I really liked that and I did pretty well with that.  I found out that I was really good at it.  And about that time, _____ University opened up a program in computer science.  They were advertising for students.  It was a graduate program and I did have my bachelor’s degree, so I went ahead and applied and to my surprise, I got in.

When you tell the story before this, there’s just all this opposition in my head that just really exploded because it’s like “OK, mother of toddlers.  I thought you want to be a good mother, right?  How can you go to a graduate school and be a good mother and clearly you have no money,” which is true, I had no money.  And truthfully, I just didn’t do very well with math.  Hello, the computer science department is part of the math department.

So I went ahead and applied anyway.  Kind of ignoring all the voices in my head and fear factor truly because I had no idea how this was going to all play out and work.  I got accepted, and two years later, I graduated with masters in science degree and computer science.  There were tons of people helped me along the way.  After I graduated, I had a number of positions and you mentioned this CISO in Microsoft.

Twelve years after I graduated with my computer science degree, I was the CEO of a Silicon Valley startup, and it focused on technology in cybersecurity.  So it sounds like a really incredible story.  And the reason I like to share it is because it really is everybody’s story because in my experience, really, what happened there was I took it one ordinary day at a time.  It was not a smooth path whatsoever.

There were a number of really huge crises along the way, but you show up every day, just show up every day.  Sometimes it’s enough to show up and say “Whatever today deals me, I’m going to deal with.”  I have no idea how it’s going to play out tomorrow and I did truthfully didn’t think in a million years that I would ever embark on a technology career like the one that I had.

My biggest goal frankly was to be able to get a job that paid me enough to have somebody come in the house…there were two goals.  Two big, hairy, audacious goals I had in my life.  To have somebody else come in the house and scrub the toilets, like that was a big deal because I only had two.  The other one was, it was so important to me to be able to pay my bills and to be able to pay all the bills that were due in one month in the same month and not have to make the choice about, you know, “What am I gonna pay this month and what am I not gonna pay?”

So my goals were not big.  I didn’t have like _____ goal that said someday I’m going to be the, you know, have this big role.  It was just showing up in dealing with each day at a time and that’s where we went.  The thing that I look back on is that it was this kind of a whisper that was in my heart that said “You should do this.  This is the path, you should take this path.”

And I had plenty of opposition also in my head saying, “Don’t pay attention to that.  We’ll try to do around that out if we can because this sounds risky to us,” and to go ahead and say “I’m gonna follow the whisper of my heart and I don’t understand how it’s all gonna work and I can’t give anybody a plan.”  But look where it went, you know.

I think it happens multiple times in our lives for paying attention that exact same scenario.  We hear that whisper that says “This is your path, walk in it.”  And then we hear the opposition that just really fires up, the skeptic in our head that says “What, are you crazy?  We’ll give you the list of all the reasons why this won’t work.”  And that can be so discouraging and there are times when we succumb to that.

I guess that’s the reason I share this story is to say, don’t succumb to that.  If that’s the whisper of your heart then follow it, because you won’t know the whole plan.  You can’t see the future.  All you can do is _____ that big desire to go in this direction and I’m going to do it, and yes, there will be obstacles.

In fact, some time during my first year of grad school, my 2-year old developed appendicitis which is extremely rare in a 2-year old.  He nearly died.  So I took everything I had, all my computer gear which was still that TRS-80 computer which takes up a lot a room.  I took that with my suitcase, with my clothes and a modem into children’s hospital with my son and all that computer gear in his room so that I could continue to write code.  It’s just that stuff happens.  Don’t let it take you off.  Don’t let your train off the rails.  It’s going to get you where you want to go if you stick with it.

Andrea:  You know, Karen, that image of being your son’s bedside in a hospital still trying to maintain your education, it reminds me of a lot of women and how it’s easy for us to struggle with guilt over that kind of scenario.  I’m assuming that you would have felt a little bit of some of that too, I don’t know, maybe you didn’t.  If not, then please tell us how.  But how did you handle that tension between being a mom and still pursuing your path that was whispered in into your heart?

Karen Worstell:  Yeah.  That’s a great question.  I think for me, I distinguished between a couple of very important emotions.  One of them is guilt and the other one is shame.  I felt guilty about lots of things by being a mom of toddlers in grad school.  I felt shame about not being able to feed my children.  Which one was I’m going to pick?

I could say I’m doing something about this situation that I’ve gone myself in that I considered shameful.  But I had two small children who I couldn’t afford to raise and I could say “Yes, you know what, that path is gonna be difficult.”  But guilt is a lot of that is in our head, right?  The master skeptic is in my head.

Shirzad Chamine wrote a book about this.  The name of that skips me right now but I can send it to you so that you can share it with your listeners if you like.  He really talks about how all of us are completely equipped with the judge, jury, and all of the accusers in our head and they all take on very specialized roles and one of them is the master of guilt.  And that voice, it says “Boy no, other people wouldn’t be doing it this way.”  Or “You really should have handled this, don’t you think?”  I mean, “How how could you be in this situation and how could your son be so sick?”

I had taken a week off the school when my son got sick.  I took a week off and didn’t go to class and stayed home with him and he was still sick.  The doctors, the nurses, and everybody that we call over the phone and everyone we talked into in urgent care patted me on the head and said “Dear, your son has a flu,” and he sent us home.  So after seven days, my toddler was changing color.  He was so septic and I just said “That’s it, we have to take him to emergency room.”

While we drove in, we called the doctor, we said, we’re coming in.  So here’s a good guilt one for you.  I handed my limp toddler over to his pediatrician who looks at me and says “Why the hell didn’t you get in here before now?”  So yeah, a guilt.  I think, in some ways, I tend to be a little less willing to accept the guilt that other people lay on me and I’m not really sure why.  I’ll lay enough guilt on myself for a lifetime but when somebody else…I said “Excuse me, I called your office every day for a week and you told me it was the flu.”

So yeah, it’s a situation that we can sit down and say “Wow, you know, he’s right.  This is something I did totally wrong and I’m a bad mother.  I’m a bad person.”  What I can say in all honesty was “Could I have done things better, yes.”  “Does that make me a bad person?” “No.”  I’m always about learning how to do things better and I accept that.  People have always told me throughout my career, “If you did X,Y, Z you could have done that better.”  I’m like “Great, thank you.  I will do that better next time.”

I did not beat myself up over the fact that I did my best and I didn’t.  I might not have met somebody else’s standard of what was good.  I did my best and that’s all I can ask for.  That’s all anybody can ask for.

Andrea:  You know, I know that you talked about resilience and I’m wondering how resilience or how that being plays out in these kinds of scenarios with both your education and your career path and then also resilience as a mom and continuing on even when things get really hard.

What kind of advice you have for people along a similar journey who feel like they’re hearing this voice that you’re talking before but they seem to keep getting setback.  What makes somebody resilient or what kind of advice would you have for them?

Karen Worstell:  When it comes to that voice in your head the one that stops us then and attract sometimes, the best thing I can say and it’s echoed in Shirzad Chamine’s book, I think it’s positivity, intelligence or something like that is to recognize that, first of all, every single one of us has that voice in our head to some degree that is going to be the skeptic, right?

I learned to make peace with that skeptic.  The way that I describe that to people and teach that actually in one of my courses is to recognize that skeptic actually all it really wants is for you to be safe.  It wants for you in not be ever in harm’s way in any degree.  It doesn’t want you to fail.  It doesn’t want you to do anything wrong and the way for you to do nothing wrong is to do nothing, right?

So I try to just recognize that when that voice pops up in my head or that feeling in the pit of my stomach, I ask myself “Am I actually making a decision here that’s just a very dangerous decision?”  If the answer is no then I come back and say “Alright then, I will listen to this to the extent that says, what do I need to do to be smart, but I’m not gonna listen to it to extent that says stop.”

Andrea:  Hmmm great distinction.

Karen Worstell:  It’s there to keep us safe.  It’s just that we don’t exercise the part of our self.  So why is that a whisper in our heart and a skeptic screaming in our head, right?  Why is that?  It’s because the skeptic gets more exercise.  We need to learn to listen to the whispers so that the whispers speak with a loud voice.

Shirzad Chamine talks about it as if it’s stepping into your sage as opposed to stepping into your judge.  When the judge starts to get very active, they have to be very conscious and intentional about it and to say “I’m not going to give you all that exercise because my sage needs it more,” and to step into the part that says “What’s the wisdom in this.  How is this the right thing for me to do?”  Why does this make a difference to my life and why would this be so helpful?”  And to let the sage speak as opposed to the skeptic.

I think if we give that more exercise, and he has a ton of exercise about it in his book, but if we give that more exercise, we would definitely not wrestle so much with such a loud skeptical voice all the time.  Maybe we just give out way too much exercise.

Andrea:  That is a really, really great image.  I love that.  OK, so Karen, I know that eventually you stepped away from cybersecurity for a time.

Karen Worstell:  I did.

Andrea:  Can you tell us about that experience?  Why did you stepped away?  How did you end up as a chaplain of all things?

Karen Worstell:  Well, I have always, and throughout my career, I was very fortunate very early to listen to Stephen Covey in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and Principle Centered Leadership and all these other books of that organization put up.  One of the things he always talked about there was writing down your goals, what are your goals.

In 1997, and I still have the paper where I wrote this down and took that in my day timer.  I wrote a list of things that said, these are the things that I want to do in my life.  I want to write a book.  I want to lead an organization.  I want to be a chaplain.  It was on this list.  It had always been there and I think it was born out of my experience of being a caregiver of some capacity for elders when I was an adult.

This is a whole lot of the conversation that five times during my career; I either scaled back my career and I took a leave of absence so that I could care for somebody in my family with Alzheimer’s.  So I knew that that very difficult experience of doing that kind of care giving had to have a purpose and it seemed to me that at that point in time the chaplaincy was the way.

Well, fast forward to 2011 and my mother was dying from Alzheimer’s.  My sister had just been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and I was working as the chief information security officer at Russell Investment at that the time.  So in a space of about a month, my sister gets very ill, I get laid off at Russell Investments and then the next day, my mom died.

So for me, I was like “OK, I get it.  I’ve been through this before.  This is it.  This is a setback.  This is how I’m gonna do it.”  And I always have like plan A, plan B, plan B1, plan B2, plan B3.  That’s how I work.  I would always shift into the new plan.  If the first plan didn’t work out, I have to shift into the second plan and I had that.  And I couldn’t make any of those plans work, for the first time in my life, I was unable to put one foot in front of the other.  I think my grief finally was so overwhelming that I feel myself really unable to make a decision.

I love cybersecurity.  I didn’t stop loving it.  I just was like “OK, I’m gonna get back into it.  Here’s how I’m gonna get back into it.  I’m gonna take this _____ course and I’m gonna study forensic and I’m gonna get back into the forensic thing.  I had always wished I was going to expand my capabilities and all I had some time off and none of it worked.  I couldn’t make myself even take a class on a subject I had always loved.  I was like “What is up with that?”

It was really like being stuck in a rip and being able to tread water and nothing else.  I couldn’t find a way out of the water, all I could do is tread water.  And I turned down all those dates with my friends who wanted to talk with me, who wanted to talk about projects.  I was like “I can’t.  I can’t and I don’t know why I can’t, but I can’t.”

I was very frustrated by all of that and then I finally just decided, “Hey, listen to this.  You are gonna have to settle it.”  It took about a year which was extraordinary amount of time but then when I ended up doing I was talking with a friend and I said “You know, I haven’t been able to go back in the cybersecurity.  I’m not really sure what that’s all about.  I love it.  I’ve always wanted to be a chaplain.  I don’t know what’s that about, but I’m not really sure what I’m gonna do next.”  And my friend basically says “Hey, I know this person, you need to call her.  She’s the head of chaplaincy.  You need to have a conversation.”

Basically to make a long story short, I called them.  They were interviewing candidate for their incoming class.  I called her and I signed up.  They accepted me like that.  I was enrolled.  This is pretty much about three years of training and my interest was in palliative care.  I loved, loved, and loved the work with the whole different side of connecting with people.  I did about 2000 clinical hours of supervised training and class time.

I got another masters degree and started off on that and my last role was as a palliative care fellow at the VA hospital in Portland.  I truly loved the work I was doing there but more and more what I saw was the moral distress that I was witnessing not only with patients and their families but with medical staff, reminded me so much of what people in the cybersecurity industry were dealing with.

I wasn’t really sure how they characterize it or describe it but I made a decision to go back.  Because the truth is that someone gets about 15 to 30 minutes of their time when their in crisis in the hospital _____, but the bulk of the people who are really hurting who need that kind of support in order to continue their daily life are in the workplace.  And there’s this principal of proximity in chaplaincy that was in World War I where the chaplain didn’t wait in their field tent for the soldiers to come to them, they went to the _____.  That’s what I decided to do.

Out of that, our program on resilience, you know, we have a program Make Resilience Work.  We also call it MOJO Maker, but it is intended to bring the kind of resilience needed to thrive in an imperfect workplace and to be able to build your career, excel in the place where you plant it and to be able to navigate your career and your life through all the stressors that we have to deal with.  I’m mean; I’m not the only one who has kids who get sick.  But we all have to figure out how to navigate that and stay healthy and that’s what we decided to do.

Andrea:  That’s awesome!  Have you worked inside of a company around this particular, you know, bringing in your chaplaincy kind of background?  Have you found that to be a welcoming place or you mostly focusing in on the individual?

Karen Worstell:  We’re focusing on the individual right now and I just had a conversation with another missing individual who has a career in HR.  We’re looking to clear this to be able to bring a weekend intensive and to offer that to a corporate environment.  And then what we have on to back into that is a years’ worth of programming that people can access online to support them with all the things that they learned in the intensive.  We’re hoping to be able to take it there.  We haven’t done that.

I will say that one thing that I did in April, I was invited to run to a peer-to-peer sessions at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, which is a conference that attracts 40,000 cybersecurity professionals.  I’ll try to be very brief about this but what was very interesting about it was we ran a very quick exercise.  The title of the peer-to-peer session by the way was Why are Women Leaving Computing, which is a big issue for us because the number of women in Stanfield is making in progress everywhere accepting computing where its dropped off the cliff.  Nobody really knows why and I’ve been attracted to try to figure that out.

So I ran this session and I had everybody in the room, walked around the room.  I said “Walk around the room once for one minute.  We’re going to walk around the room and I want you to be yourself.”  And then I said “Walk around the room next and I want you to pick the energy that’s the opposite of yourself.  So whether you identify as a female, walk around the room as male, whatever that energy is for you that’s the opposite of what you are, I want you to walk as that.  And just take a look at the other people in the room and see how everybody was doing.”

And then the third time I had them walk around the room I said “I want you to be neutral.  Don’t be yourself but don’t be anything else either.”  What was mind boggling about that exercise; first of all, it was a great ice breaker because it made everybody uncomfortable.  So nobody had any fear speaking up after that.  The thing that was so impressive was that universally, everyone noted how much energy it took for them to try to walk around the room as something other than themselves that when they try to walk around the room as neutral, not only did it take energy, it sucked all the energy out of the room.

It basically made the room slowed down.  So people said, it made the room slowed down.  It looked like a room full of zombies.  And I said “OK, let’s think about what it’s like for people who come in to a work place with unique gifts and talents, unique life experiences.”  We hire for diversity and we have an organization full of color of every kind you can think of and we managed it all down to beige.  We tried to manage everybody the same.  That means that we have a culture where the people who are in the culture have to try to figure out what the culture is and used up a fair amount of their energy just trying to be what the culture expects.

I came away from that thinking, “This isn’t a gender issue.  This is an equal issue.”  I’ve shared that with a number of people.  I’m going to be writing some stuff about that to post on to LinkedIn and onto the RSA blog, but this is where we’re at, right?  We have beige organizations.  We have organizations where all the colors have been sucked out.

What happens is people used up all their energy trying to fit the culture and they don’t have energy left over for creativity and innovation and all the other things that we need so desperately right now, especially in cybersecurity.  We were dealing with issues that only get worse and we have to come up with some really creative ways to try to really deal with that.

The creativity is born out of a person’s feeling safe enough to express their ideas as their ideas, you see.  And if they’re so busy trying to figure out how does their organization want them to be, they’re walking around the room as something other than themselves.

Andrea:  Definitely!  It kind of goes back to that imagery that you’re using before about the person’s screaming or the judge screaming, what was it called?

Karen Worstell:  The Sage and the Judge.

Andrea:  Yeah, the judge was screaming and so then your attention is drawn to that.  You have to spend all of your time worrying about that instead of being able to listen to that voice, that other voice inside of you that’s saying “This is you, just do it.  Just be it.”  Oh it’s so good.  I love that exercise.  What a neat way to help people visualize and experience the truth of what it means to be authentic, really.

Karen Worstell: Yeah.  It took three minutes.  And I have to credit Rachael Jane Groover.  She was the one who introduced that exercise in a workshop that I attended with her.  She had 300 women in the room who were walking around trying to be neutral.  I just remember looking, “We are a room full of zombies, like there’s no differentiation, no creativity, nothing here.”  That’s what inspired that exercise.  But yeah, in three minutes, it made the point.

Andrea:  And I think you could even make that point for whether be a culture at a work place or school or a family or wherever you are when there’s this heavy expectations that drain people and make them so that they feel like they have to be something else, or they can’t be who they are.  That’s really a neat description.

Karen Worstell:  So our Make Resilience Work, what we focus on is helping people find out who they are because a lot of us have been trained not to remember right?  It’s true, right?  We have a little bit of that trained out of us.  So learn to be comfortable in your skin, in your own space unapologetic for who you are.  Understand where your path is.  What is that whisper?  Where do you want to go?

And then the third strategy is all of the tools and techniques that we can all learn to help us navigate to that place that we want to be and _____.  Now does that mean that we completely don’t ever blend in with other people?  No, it means that we make a conscious choice to fit into those places that fit us where we can really fully bring all those gifts and talents and make that contribution that everybody craves.  Everybody craves to have their work be meaningful and to matter.

We’re pretty excited about it and this is going to be…we started off with some early steps in helping people get started and people can take a look…we have three sample courses that we really want people go out and test drive and give us feedback.  So I’ll share with you a link for that so that you can try it your listeners.

Andrea:  Oh yes, absolutely!  So we’ll definitely link to this in the show notes, but do you recall what those are right now at the top of your head?  Or we just go to karen…

Karen Worstell:  Yeah, sure.  You can go to karenworstell.com.  There is a menu item there called MOJO Maker.  If you go to MOJO Maker, you’ll have the link that will take you straight _____ the website for MOJO Maker.  You can sign up for free.  We’re not going to bug you to pay later.  Really what we want to do is get people’s feedback.  We put it out there so that people can try that.  It’s three of our most important modules that will eventually be part of about 22 different modules that people can take over the course of the year if they want to.

Andrea:  So that would be www.karenworstell.com correct?

Karen Worstell:  Yeah, karenworstell.com and it will take you to…there’s a link inside there under MOJO Maker.  It will take you to the class.

Andrea:  Well, thank you Karen for spending sometimes with us today, telling us about your story and sharing your abundant wisdom and your heart for people.  I really enjoy listening to you and having this conversation with you today.  It was really, really great.

Karen Worstell:  I enjoyed it too, Andrea!  Thank you so much for having me in your show and for the chance to talk with you.

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Why Her View From Home Matters with Leslie Means

Episode 54

I want your voice to matter more and I’m absolutely thrilled to bring you a guest this week who shares this exact sentiment!

Leslie Means is a former news anchor, published children’s book author, and the co-founder and owner of Her View From Home; an online platform millions of women turn to each month for positive inspiration about parenting, marriage, relationships, and faith.

In this episode, Leslie talks about how Her View From Home started, why she says we should listen to God’s whispers, her mission to help women realize their voice does matter, how she runs a successful business from home while raising three children with her husband, the impact video has had in growing her audience, what she looks for in an article for Her View From Home, and so much more!

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

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

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6 Priceless Insights from 38 Interviews with Message-Driven Leaders

Episode 47

In this special first anniversary edition of the Voice of Influence, I decided to look back on the past year and the amazing interviews I’ve been able to share with you.

While reflecting on those interviews, it quickly stood out to me that the vast majority of them fell into one of 6 themes. It’s those themes I’ll be diving into today.

Thank you so much for being a part of this incredible journey and community. Enjoy!

Mentioned in this episode:

Previous interviews mentioned in this episode listed below:

 

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

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How to Remain an Idealist in a Harsh World

Episode 46

As an idealist, you have a vision for how you would like the world to be. Unfortunately, that vision doesn’t always come to fruition and that can be incredibly discouraging.

In my early twenties, I went through a painful experience of realizing my world wasn’t what I thought it was and it left me questioning who I even was. It led to depression and a feeling of hopelessness but I was able to find something stronger the dreams I had lost. I was able to find real joy.

In this episode, I talk about that journey and why it’s so important to embrace our pain and disappointment to help us find a stronger hold on our idealistic views, our mission, and our voice.

Mentioned in this episode:

 

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