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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!

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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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How to Stop Being Afraid of Standing Out with Alicia Couri

Episode 61

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

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

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

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

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

Alicia Couri Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia Couri:  That turned out great, yes.

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

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

[Off-topic conversation]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrea:  Wow that’s a lot.

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

Andrea:  And such a small percentage.

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

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

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

Andrea:  Because of the Australian accent at that point?

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

Andrea:  Yes, interesting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia Couri:  Absolutely, absolutely!

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

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

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

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

Andrea:  So big!

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

Andrea:  I like that tags.

Alicia Couri:  Yeah, your tags.

Andrea:  That’s good.

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

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

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

Alicia Couri:  …in something, exactly.

Andrea:  Yeah, yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia Couri:  Right.

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

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

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

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

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

Andrea:  Oh yeah.

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

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

Alicia Couri:  A little tongue tied.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia Couri:  Exactly!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia Couri:  Perfect!

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

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

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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!

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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!

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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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How Your Attention and Energy Can Change the Game with Neen James

Episode 53

Neen James is a speaker, entrepreneur, and the author of Attention Pays. Neen’s client list has included companies like Viacom, Comcast, Paramount Pictures, Johnson & Johnson, and more! However, Neen also loves working directly with thought-leaders who want to share their ideas with the world in a unique way.

In this episode, Neen discusses how she decided to center her message around the concept of paying attention, how she got the word out initially about her message, the three we pay attention, why you need to own your uniqueness, how to maintain momentum when you’ve been sharing the same message for a while, how to leverage your book long after it’s been launched, what a habit loop is and how you can break it, and 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.

Neen James 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 Neen James.  Neen is a speaker and entrepreneur who works in the corporate space and does some amazing things with her speaking and her writing.  She just came out with a book, Attention Pays.  So I’m really looking forward to diving into this book with Neen and just discussing your leadership in this area, Neen.  I’m so thrilled to have you.

Neen James:  G’day!  What a treat to be on your show.  I was so looking forward to have time together today.

Andrea:  Me too.  OK, so Neen, can you start by just giving the audiences a little bit more of a clue as to what you do on a day-to-day basis or for your career?

Neen James:  So I grew up in a corporate business in Australia.  So I worked in retail banking telecommunications in the oil industry.  You got to imagine, Andrea, I worked in Australia, right?  So I have this fabulous corporate background, but as an expert, I’m obsessed with getting the world to pay attention.  I think that when we pay attention, Andrea, companies make more money and we have better relationships.

I have the privilege of working with really cool clients whether it’s media companies, like Comcast, Viacom, Paramount Pictures, or maybe pharmaceutical, you know, Johnson & Johnson.  There are so many cool corporate people that I get to work with but occasionally I have the privilege of working with thought leaders.  I want to take their ideas and share them with the world in a very unique way.  I know that you have a lot of listeners like that.

So I love this opportunity to be able to solve some of the challenges.  For example, people that are in positions of leadership, they may have a message but they’re just not a 100% sure on how to articulate that to be able to grab someone’s attention and then keep it.  Or maybe they have people in their team who wants getting everything done before focusing on the most important things.  Or maybe, there are people that are out who want to be able to create attention-grabbing strategies for their company, their product or services and I fix that.

So generally I’m hired as the keynote speaker for a large corporate events or sometimes I go and work with leadership teams and do their retreats.

The reason I do what I do, Andrea, is I just want the world to pay attention because I think when we do that, we create this significant moments that matter.  So there is no day in the life of Neen James, not one day is similar.  It could be me still sitting here and my work out gear after I have worked with my personal trainer by FaceTime or me on a stage in front of a thousand people in some fabulous hotel and then everything in between.  It’s those late nights at the airport.  It’s trying to do business in a cab in Uber or a lift.  That is what so fascinating about this career that I’ve chosen, Andrea, there’s no day in the life of Neen James, not one day is the same anyway.

Andrea:  So do you love that variety?

Neen James:  Oh my gosh, I crave that variety.  I am not a person who’s good with routine and I learned that very quickly in career.  My ideation productivity is crazy.  But I’m a fantastic person to have in a brainstorming meeting but when it comes to the execution of all those ideas, I love handing them over to someone else.

So one thing I learned is I was a really great project manager to a point.  So I could brainstorm the projects, scope it out, create the budget, get consensus from everyone, you name it and I could do it.  But when it came to having to do like weekly reports or the routine of the projects, I had to have people in my team who are brilliant at it.

Even to this day, I have surrounded myself who are brilliant, people are brilliant at detail and execution and so that allows me the freedom to have a routine thing.  I’m a kind of personality that needs to be constantly challenged, constantly looking for something new, change, evolution and transforming something.  And there are people who are brilliant at execution, logistics.  So I have some really brilliant people around me like that.  I have some clients who do that kind of work.  So I think you just got to find what you’re good at.

Andrea:  Yeah, that’s really encouraging to people like me who are like you.

Neen James:  Yeah.

Andrea:  Yes, it is.  It is fun to be able to…if you’re an activator, you like to start things but you’re not great at following up.  It’s wonderful and it’s so encouraging to know that there are people who do that and who can take it all the way to the finish line.

Neen James:  You also need to make sure that you’ve realized not a single thing, like when I ran my first marathon, I realized…and by the way, I’ve never ran in my life so that was like stupid thing to do.  I started running and then I did my first marathon within like five months.  It was crazy but here’s what I love, running a marathon is not an individual sport.  It’s a team sport, right?

So what I realized was while I’m maybe being a person who actually steps to cross the finish line to use your analogy, it was really a team of people that got me there.  My running mate, my sister, my husband, my physiotherapist, and my doctor; you know like there were gazillion of people, not to mention that there were clients waiting at the finish line.  That’s crazy to me but what it showed me was, we don’t do these things on our own.  I always believed that success comes when there is a really cool group of people around you and that has always been my experience.

Andrea:  OK, so I want to start talking about this message, Attention Pays, because one of the things that fascinates is how people decide on the message.  I know that this is something that you’re brilliant at but this message and throughout the book, you touched on a number of different sub points, like leadership, personal branding, productivity, and even the environment.

Neen James:  Uh-hmmm, yeah.

Andrea:  So how did you decide that it’s really the attention piece that you wanted to focus on as sort of the front runner of these messages or the umbrella message?

Neen James:  Yeah, I was always known for my work and productivity.  So Andrea, I had a reputation in corporate.  I was the person who could be given a project that might be like…one of my projects. it was like 10 months behind.  It has to be delivered in two months.  I had to raise $10 million and I literally had two months to do it and it was just me.

I remember, I have always been given these projects where I could get things done.  It was something I had a reputation for.  I didn’t even really understand that was important until I decided to leave the corporate world and then people were always asking me “How did you do that?  How did you get things done?”

And I thought “Oh my goodness, surely people get this.”  I think what happened, Andrea, is when things are intuitive to you, you just take for granted that you’re really good, like with your singing, right?  You kind of almost assumed that because singing comes naturally to you, you don’t think other people know how to sing too because it’s a gift you have.  So productivity was definitely a gift that I had.

I realized the world needed to be able to get more done.  My big learning came when I realized you can’t manage time but you can manage your attention.  That’s what led me down this path to really explore.  If it’s not about time management, we don’t really have a time management crisis, we have an attention crisis.  So then I set about to try and solve “How do we get people to start to truly pay attention?”

I mean, think about it, Andrea, our parents tell us to pay attention, our teachers tell us to pay attention.  It’s so annoying when people tell us to pay attention.  We hear it all the time and yet, we don’t always pay attention to the right people, the right things, or even the right way.  That’s really what made me pursue this so it was interesting to me.

I don’t know if you know a fabulous speaker by the name of Mark Sanborn, but Mark Sanborn is a dear friend and a phenomenal speaker.  He has written gazillions of books including the Fred Factor, which is a fantastic book.  But Mark and I were sitting in his office and I was getting very frustrated with where I was in my career.  I had hired him for some advice and so I got to spend some time with him.  He has a brilliant program for speakers who want to really elevate what they’re doing.

And so I was sitting in his boardroom and he said “Look, what is this really about?”  I was so frustrated, Andrea.  I was like “Arrgghh, I just want the world to pay attention.”  He said “I know it, because that’s what you’re all about.”  And I was like “Oh man.”  So it was that conversation with Mark where we really came up with this whole clever framing of Attention Pays, instead of Pay Attention.  I will always remember sitting at that table with him.  He’s been a huge influence in my career and he’s a very dear friend.

Thought leaders are notorious for this, if you want to be a thought leader or if you are a thought leader, often, you’re so close to your own content that sometimes it’s hard for us to see it ourselves, right?  So think about your hair stylist. She can’t color her own hair as well as she might be able to call someone who’s sitting in her chair.  I think for me, I needed someone brilliant like Mark Sanborn to see the big picture for me and really force me to think about what was the most important to me.

What I had realized too through my whole career, I knew I how to get attention.  I knew how to give attention and I think those two things are very different but they’re vital.  So as a thought leader, you need attention for the message that you have for the world and so you need clever ways to not just get attention but to keep people’s attention in a time where everyone is so distracted.

Andrea:  Yes, absolutely!  You chose this concept, Attention Pays, which is really clever, then how did you figure out how to communicate this message in a way to decision makers so that they understood that they needed to have you come speak about it or to come help their teams with it?

Neen James:  My brain is this freakish place.  It’s kind of like crazy town up there and one of the things that happened to me is when I start listening to a thought leader or an information expert about the intellectual property, I see a contextual model in my brain.  I’ve always done it.  I don’t know why it is and that’s a little scary.  So I start to draw shapes in my mind and I think to myself “How would I sort that in different way so that people could remember it more.

So I’m a huge advocate for contextual models and I believe if you can have a great contextual model that demonstrates your intellectual property.  It commercializes your intellectual property so much greater because it helps other people see the value of yout ideas in a way that makes commercial sense.

Now, having grown up in corporate, I totally understand that corporates are about making money, full stop, period, end of story, that’s it.  So if you have a great idea, it doesn’t matter how great your idea is, if a company cannot understand how that’s going to contribute to their bottom line then all you have is a really great idea.

So what I’ve learned was in order for me to commercialize attention, I have to be able to tie back to how companies would make greater profits if they started paying attention to their existing clients so that they could get the upsale if they could pay attention to new clients, so they could attract the kind of clients they want.  So from a customer service and experience’s view, it makes commercial sense.

But I took it further to say, it’s not just about _____, it’s about to the team.  If you really want to attract attention in an organization, you’ve got to be able to grab their attention and keep them so that they want to be able to work with you.  So it’s about talent retention as well.  And then I also realized, because I’m Australian, I don’t know if this is just an Aussie thing or it’s a “me” thing, but Australians are very environmental way.  And because we have a small country, we protect our planet, we recycle, we do all these things that I just assumed everyone did until I moved to the US.

You know, when I walk into the grocery store and everything was like triple wrapped in plastic and at that point, Australia banned plastic bags, we’re talking like 15 years ago now.   So I think that for me, it’s also about paying attention to the planet.  The way that I’ve sorted the books is I really think we pay attention in three ways, Andrea.

I think it’s personally that’s one way to pay attention and personal attention is all about who deserves your attention, right?  So that’s being very thoughtful.  Professionally, it’s about what deserves your attention.  That’s about being productive.  That’s about getting the right things done.  And then globally, it’s about how you pay attention in the world and that’s very much about being responsible and being a contributor in our planet.

So if you think about attention personal, professional, and global and obviously I have a contextual model for that that’s really where I started.  I started with the contextual model and then I started to unpack my intellectual property under those guidelines.  What that does is makes it super easy for the reader to understand it.  So there’s the visual of the contextual model and there’s also the strategies for the person who wants to have the application and execution.

So I think thought leaders need to consider, do they have a contextual model for their intellectual property because if they do, they’ll definitely make more money from that.  But if it’s just great idea you have in your head or that you’re sharing a speech, blog, or a podcast, until you can make it easy for people to process, it’s just sometimes, because people’s attention is very split, you’re not going to be able to keep their attention, right?  So unless you have a really cool way to grab that person who wants to see it in one page, that makes a big difference.

Andrea:  I love contextual model as well and I’ve read up on some of the things that you published about them and enjoyed that section in your book as well.  I know that contextual models help people not just…they help people process it because it hits on so many different areas of the brain.

Neen James:  Uh-hmm that’s exactly, right.  Yeah.

Andrea:  So it really reaches people at a deeper level in a quicker level and they’re able to apply it more quickly.  But I’m curious, on a practical level when it comes to somebody who has a contextual model, how do you decide what to share from stage either for free or in a big setting versus how much to share in your book or with clients?

Neen James:  So I have an abundance mentality and I think you know that about me.  I give steps away and people are going to rip you up.  That’s going to happen.  Let me give you an example, one of my books is called Folding Time:  How to Achieve Twice As Much in Half the Time.  That book was published way back in, I want to say, like 2014 or 2015.  One of the things that I have in this book is, obviously, a contextual model.

So in the book it makes sense to be like a PDF that also it could go on a slide deck which is animated which could go on the website, which could also be unpacked because every chapter is just basically on text model.  When I’m on stage, I draw the model with my body using my hand gestures and then what I do is then I reveal the animated model or I do it at the same time.

So you can use models in very clever ways.  You can use them and draw them with your body as you’re explaining a really key concept to your audience.  You could use it in a blog and then you could unpack what that means in the blog.  You could describe it in a podcast.  You could even say to people, “What I’d like you to do is draw a Venn diagram with three circles.  Now, in the first circle, I’d like you to write the word, Time, and in the second circle, the word Attention, do you know what I mean?

Andrea:  Yeah.

Neen James:  So you can actually share with people how do you want them to use the model as well.  Something I’m widely known for is I always ask for a big pad of paper to be on stage.  Now, that could be in front of thousand people and every time the meeting planner assists me, no one will see it.  I’d say, “I know, that’s not for your benefit, it’s for mine.”  So because I pull people from the audience all the time that’s another thing I’ve become very known for, it’s because I want to create this facilitated experience with my audience.

So I’ll pull someone like you out at the audience.  I’ll ask you some questions or play it on the stage and then I’d be like “Is this your contextual model?”  And then the audience goes crazy and it’s the only magic trick I have.  But because my brain thinks that way, it’s easy for me to do it in public.  It’s easy for me to do it in private when I work with people on their message.

I have a call coming up where a founder of a brand created by agency is about to a launch and they’ve hired me to be able to create a contextual model that would be very essential in their messaging and essential on their website.  And here’s the other thing that’s really powerful, Andrea, is in every proposal I ever have to submit, if I’m submitting a speaker proposal or someone wants to ask about my services, my model is always included in my proposal.

Here’s one of the things that’s important for thought leaders to consider is because you are the only person who can articulate that model the best way, but it shows you have _____ of intellectual property.  It shows that you have really thought about the offering you have for the world.  So I cannot rave enough of how important the contextual model is.

Andrea:  That’s so good.  OK, so you don’t believe that there is a point at which you could share too much on the front end so that people don’t end up hiring you because you sort of giving it away.

Neen James:  Oh honey, there will always be like DIY, right?  So there’s always going to be DIY people, do-it-yourself, and that’s great.  Give them the tools.  Let them go for it, right?  And then there’s going to be people who would never be able to replace your energy.  So for example, all the meeting planners call me that energizer bunny – you know, the Duracell pink bunny, that’s so me and that’s what they’re paying for.  They’re hiring me to bring in energy to the environment, to the conference where I kick it off and create this really fun environment where everyone feels like “OK, I can do this,” right?

While I look little and I sound like I’m 5, then I can show them stuff like contextual models and go “Oh, and by the way, I’m kinda smart.”  And I think that that’s a lovely contrast when you consider what you’re doing for your audience is my only job is to stand in service at that audience.  So for me, I will do whatever they need at that moment in time.  If they need me to give them the model, you bet I will.  If they want take further on my slides.  I don’t care if they want a PDF from me, I’ll happily give it to them.

I think we need to have this place of abundance.  You will never be replaced if they want that life in person experience or they want your brain to coach them or mentor them.  No one will ever be able to do that, not a PDFs is going to ever do that for you; however, the PDF will show the value and I do believe not everyone is always in a financial place where they can afford someone like me, and so I’ll give them as much as they can to do it themselves.

If they get stuck and then they want my help then that’s another conversation to be had.  But I think as a thought leader, we have to have a role value and we have to deliver enormous value so that people literally want to just hire you and it doesn’t matter what your price is.

Andrea:  OK, so have you always felt this confident about your message and about yourself on stage and the value that you’re offering?  I love to ask this question of my guest, but where does your confidence come from?

Neen James:  Oh good Lord, no.  I have not always felt this confident and _____ they have, oh for goodness sake that’s so not true.  Seriously, like I still have like self-doubt, I’m like “What on earth am I doing?”  I remember when I sent a manuscript off to the publisher.  I pressed the send button and I was like “Oh man, what if they don’t like it.”  Oh honey, I think everyone has that.  Look, I’m as human if not more so, than everyone else.

But here’s what I do believe in.  I do believe that each of us as thought leader has a calling that is on your life.  You can call it something that doesn’t sound as woo-woo if that’s important to you, but for me, a big reason why I do this work is because the feedback I get, when people read the book and say “I had to put it down because I wanted to pay attention to my wife.”  Or “I had to put it down because I decided that I need to spend more time with my team.”

All the things they’re telling me that they’re doing as a result of listening to me in a speech or maybe they have read the book or maybe they listen to a podcast like this, that to me means that I’ve stepped in into my calling.  I’m doing what I mean to do on this planet.

So I think for me, that’s where my confidence comes from and you know, I once heard and I wish I know the author of it, but I heard someone say once, “You can’t be nervous when you stand in service.”  So my job has always been…I’ve always had that belief that my only job is to stand in service.  You know, I have this amazing performance coaches.  I work with Michael and Amy Port, and every month, I invest time with them.  They’re helping me to be better speaker on stage, because they come from an acting background so they’re brilliant people.  They’re great people, very accomplished as you know but they are truly the best in the in the business I’ve ever seen.

So I worked with them and what I realized was Neen James does not work with the script.  I can’t work with the script.  My brain is not wired to work with the script.  We have tried to work with the script and it just didn’t work and I was losing my confidence and Michael explained that I was looking to like…it was too sweet.  He could tell when I would step into the part of my brain that I was like “Oh no, I’m supposed to say this.”

But what we’re able to was what I’m really brilliant at is creating an environment for the people in the room, facilitating that experience.  So we decided to elevate all of that, Andrea, and what that does is I’m stepping into stuff that’s so easy for me.  It was so much fun and they’re still learning at the same time but it’s not a traditional way that other speakers might work.

When you think about the fact that you’re trying to encourage people to find their voice in their life, as you say, then this was the way that we find my voice.  My voice is not changing for them.  So I’m still going to sound like a Minion but it still works, right?

Andrea:  Oh come on.

Neen James:  So that’s another thing that you’re probably aware of.  As soon as I step on stage, I talk about my height, my voice, my accent.  We get it out.  It’s in the first two minutes to move on.  So I think too that sometimes the confidence comes from owning those things about you that are very unique.  So for me, I don’t apologize at all because they’re part of who I am and that’s one of the things that the meeting planners remembered.  It’s one of the things that the audience loves and treasures.

So for thought leaders, you know, I really want to encourage you, don’t be like anyone else.  Find the uniqueness that is truly yours and leverage that because that’s help people to remember the experience of you and you’ll be more confident when you step into that place.

Andrea:  Oh yes, leverage your uniqueness, and that can be difficult.  I mean, it can be because sometimes it feels a little intimidating or you feel like you should be something that everybody else expects you to be and you’re taking a pretty big leap of faith to step out and be you.

Neen James:  It’s true.  And then the other day, like because the book has launched, you know we launched…I think we sold like 6500 copies the first few days.  I mean, it was crazy.  I was very proud of that.  We came in number one, the best new release on Amazon.  That was so very exciting to me.  And then stupid me when I read book reviews for an old book that I had written years ago and some guys wrote, “Oh she sounds like a Minion, which is why I _____.”

It’s really quite enough that kind of review and it had nothing to do with my writing.  It has nothing to do with the intellectual property.  It was just that he didn’t like my voice.  I was like “Oh my gosh that’s amazing.”  That’s tough, like it could throw me for a loop.  I remember reaching out to some friends going “How do you do with these kinds of people?”  So I think we all get our confidence from that by the way, you know what I mean?

Andrea:  Yeah.

Neen James:  So those types of things that like “Oh man, what am I doing?  Why is this happening?”  So sometimes because as thought leaders, especially if you have this message for the world and you’re very driven as a leader, what happens is there’s a place of a vulnerability that occurs, right?  So when you step in the world and say, I stand for this, and then you write a book about it, “Oh good Lord,” right?

So you write a book for that and you are opening up your heart and putting it down in a platter _____ about the world.  It is an incredibly vulnerable thing whether you do a podcast like you, whether you write a blog, whether you write a book; you’re putting your ideas into the world.  When you do that, it’s a place of vulnerability but I don’t think people understand.  I think speaking is one of the most vulnerable things that you can do.  You stand on a stage and share with the world what you think and standing in service to people.  That’s a very vulnerable thing and yet, you have to have the confidence to be able to do it.

Andrea:  You know, I know that you’re friends with Elizabeth Marshall.

Neen James:  Oh I love that woman! If you’re listening to this podcast, stop what you’re doing and go and call Elizabeth Marshall.

Andrea:  I need to have her on here for sure.  I know that one of the things that she talks about is making sure that you continue to market your book after you put it out.  This is something that’s difficult and that’s difficult for me and we’re talking about follow through and execution before.  So when you’re somebody that kind of has a lot of energy on the front end and it’s harder to get all the way to the end of the finish line on your marathon, I think it’s the same way with a book or with a message in general.  It’s so easy to want to just start a new one.  So do you have any thoughts about where you’re at?  I mean, you’re just starting this launch, I mean really, it still a start in just a month or so.  But how do you keep going with the same message for quite a while?

Neen James:  Well, fortunately for me I had Liz Marshall and I had her in the process like the need to hire her because she’s brilliant and she knows the industry and she knows the _____.  But one of the beautiful things she said to me was, we’re talking about relationships, and I was talking to her about the fact that I felt like I was calling in every favor I possibly had in getting people to write testimonials and buy books.  And then now, I’m begging people to write Amazon reviews, like I felt like I was literally calling in every favor.

She said to me, you know, just be really conscious that this is a long term relationship game, it’s not about the launch.  It was a beautiful reminder that I think every author needs to start because it can be very consuming, the launch.  Now, the launch has happened and it was literally only two weeks ago and at the time, I was listening to this some amazing _____ but it was very, very fresh to me.  But as soon as it was launched, I went into an Evergreen Marketing Strategy.

So I hired a fantastic guy by the name of _____ and I have been building this phenomenal Evergreen Marketing Strategy.  So one of the things we talked about is yes, the book is launched and that’s great.  Now, I have to be very intelligent about actively leveraging all of the work that I put into the book.  Because that’s very easy to a point, Andrea, once you hand the manuscript in, I was like “OK great, that’s one major chunk of a project and then it launches.  “Well that’s great too,” right?

But then if you have published it with the tradition publishing, you couldn’t earn back your worth.  So you know, we all get these lovely words to _____.  That’s just funny, it’s doesn’t mean anything.  So I’m very conscious about you know to earn back very quickly.  And then I think for me, it’s very much about thinking, “Who do I need to get this book in front of?”  So it changes the way that I market.

I think it’s one of things that I would suggest the thought leaders if you’re considering publishing, whether it’s self-publishing, hybrid publishing, or traditional publishing; all of them have their own benefits.  All of them have their own drawbacks.  Determine a launch strategy for sure, but put more attention and energy into the Evergreen Book Marketing Strategy so you’re doing something every day to move your book closer to its goals.

Andrea:  OK, let’s just bring this down like my personal own experiences.  So I think my struggle has been with this, number one, I self-publish and so I don’t have the royalty issue.  I was really paying back my own family _____.

Neen James:  That’s more pressure than a publisher.

Andrea:  Well, it can be, it can be, or it can’t.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be so I don’t feel that responsibility.  I felt a responsibility to get it out but then it was kind of…and there’s a little bit of me that is a little bit like “What do I use it for me now?”

Neen James:  Ahhh, well then definitely _____ the different things that I know that I _____.

Andrea:  Yeah.  Do you have any thoughts about how…and I think I would also put out there too that I think that there’s also…and the reason I’m bringing this up for me is not just to get some advice from you, but also because I think that there’s a lot of people that struggle with this and that is that you continue to make yourself vulnerable by continuing to put it out there.  If you put it out there and then you take it away then you’re sort of like “Well, I tried.  I created it.  I did my best and now I’m gonna hide.”

Neen James:  What’s that thing in Sunday school that they used to teach and I thought that the phrase was something like “Don’t hide your light under a bushel,” or something like that.

Andrea:  Yes, yes.

Neen James:  That’s what makes me think of.  See, doing this way and then you have this beautiful product that you’re proud of when it was printed and yet, you know, you’re like “Huh, I’m exhausted.”  That’s the challenge too, right?  It’s the exhaustion that comes from getting it too the place where it’s in the world.  I think you have to fall in love with the product again.

So one of the things that I did was I handed the manuscript in in the fall of last year, but the book didn’t actually come out officially, you know, I got my hands on the very first copy in the beginning of last month.  I literally…I remember, I sat and read my own book and that sounds so self-absorbed…

Andrea:  Oh no!

Neen James:  And I was like “Oh my God, I love the story.  Oh my gosh, I forgot I write that.  Oh I love that,” right?  So what’s happens between handing manuscript in, or in your case going to print production, it is that you worked so hard to pull up this particular project.  And maybe it’s not book, maybe it’s a speech, maybe it’s a blog you’ve been thinking about it, maybe it’s finally launching a podcast you wanted into the world, or it’s finally designing a training workshop, whatever it is that you release into the world.  When I sat and read it, I was like “You know, I really like that.”

Here’s just some quick ideas of ways that I think you can leverage books.  If you have particular case studies that you’ve written about, you definitely reach out and make sure that it gets into the right hands of the person that you wrote about.  If you are looking to book speeches from it, be very deliberate.  I have a particular financial goal and number of speeches I want to achieve as a result of publishing this book and I’m going to track every single one of those.

I also think that it’s a very powerful way to be able to serve the world and thinking through, you know. so Melissa Agnes has a great new book called Crisis Ready.  It’s a phenomenal book and would make the most brilliant curriculum for universities and anyone in academia and schools.  It’s just such a fantastic book on how to build that invincible brand.

So I think what she’s really good at is understanding who she wrote the book for, and then think about, would your book be a great curriculum for someone?  And if so, how would you make that happen?  Some of my clients have done this, they bought the book in bulk and then they put something on it.  So for example, women in cable and television, this is in association for women who are cable and television obviously.

So one of my clients put copies for everyone and then put a sticker of _____.  It’s just really lovely.  So there are ways that you can also leverage the book and then for me, it is the required handouts.

So if I ever do a contextual modeling session with someone or with an organization, I ask that everyone has read that section in advance.  Now, you can also use it during your speech or your training workshop and you just make it required reading or required resource and so that’s another way to be able to move the book.

But I also think that the book can, you know, find its way into the hands of people which is quite serendipitous, right?  So you may meet someone and you might be talking about your particular type of expertise and then you invite them and say “Hey, may I send you a copy of my book.”  I never assume people want the book, by the way.  That’s another thing.  I think thought leaders get so obsessed with their _____ that they think like the whole world wants it.

I know myself, like I literally have a _____ sitting behind me that needs to be read, still there are books every time my friend publishes book, obviously.  But then people send me books all the time which is very lovely.  But if they know where the book was in my reading cue, it might be a little discouraging.  So I always ask permission.  I just say “Hey, would you like a copy of my book?  If so, I’ll be delighted to send you a copy.”  Don’t _____ they have to say yes.

Andrea:  Oh those are some great tips.

Neen James:  Yeah.  We just need to think about how do you cleverly leverage your book.  And then also think about, not just the book but you know, my book is about attention so, obviously, I’ve got to be a little bit more clever.  We had some special packaging design.  We had stickers design.  Inside the cover when I saw in it, we have this little like lipstick kisses that I stick on it.  Stupid stuff but, you know, I thought of as many different things that I could to grab someone’s attention.

And then if I worried about anyone, because the book cover is red, as you know I bought those little red sticky Post-It notes that kind of a little, I don’t know if what kind of sticky notes there.  But they’re little things like tabs and then if I mention anyone, I made sure, I put a red tab beside that section of the book so it grabbed their attention so they go straight to that page.

So rather than saying “Hey, I featured you on page 82,” I tabbed page 82 and then they would go find it themselves.  So there are little ways that you can also think about, you know, what is the role your book serves in the world and how could you leverage that and how can you get it in more hands.  You know, some people book sales are their aspirations.  For others, it is used _____ and for others, it might be just a really expensive business pad.  You have to decide what the role is of the book and then leverage it accordingly.

Andrea:  OK, so you’re so good with these tips, and so before we sign off, I want to go back to some of the ones that you gave in your book specifically.  One of the things that you talked about was the habit loop.  So when you were talking about it, you were also explaining how to break the habit of essentially checking your phone too often or those types of things.  So would you mind sharing with us about the habit loop on how we can break habits that are not healthy?

Neen James:  Well, think about what a habit loop really mean.  If you really want to change your brain, if you really want to change your habits, if you really want to change your focus, it’s not just the matter of saying “Oh, I’m gonna stop doing that.”  It doesn’t really work like that, right?  Which you’ve got to think about this; number one, you got to identify what are those attention triggers that are negative, the things that are really damaging.  Maybe it’s your relationships, maybe they’re damaging your productivity, or maybe you’re not getting goals that you really want.

So the first thing you’re going to do is definitely identify those negative triggers then you’ve got to take responsibility to make a change so that you can get rid of those triggers.  That might mean the simplicity of turning your cell phone completely off or putting it in a folder or putting it in your glovebox so you don’t actually drive and text at the same time.  You got to think about what that means, right?

And then what you got to do is once you do that, you got to then replace that with a new behavior.  So you have a new habit.  For example, when you get in to your car, if you put your phone in your bag if you’re a woman or in the glove compartment maybe, then that’s the new habit that you’re creating, right?  You’re breaking the negative habit of texting while driving and you’re creating a new habit.  So every time, you get into the car, your brain associates that activity with that.  When you think about this new habit, in order for this to new behavior to become a habit, you got to keep doing it.

Did you ever hear that stupid saying that it takes 21 days to form a new habit?  It’s not true.  It’s so not true, and so many speakers including myself, unfortunately, I believed it until I actually did some research and they said, the true amount of time that they find that it takes to create a new habit is actually 66 days.  That’s very different to 21, right?  So it’s about identifying the negative habit, it’s about making sure that you then create a new behavior.  And once you have that new behavior in place is that you keep repeating that that’s the habit.  Make sense?

Andrea:  Yes, and to the influencer listening, there are so many…I mean, dozens and dozens and dozens of like specific ideas and examples that she gives in this book so you really need to get Attention Pays and let’s give them one more, shall we?  What about the 90-day promotional strategy?  I really, really love this.  I think that people need to think about this because it doesn’t matter whether you’re working for yourself or someone else.  You can be intentional about your personal brand, and so tell us about that 90-day promotional strategy that mentioned.

Neen James:   Well, everybody knows that we have a personal brand.  That’s not kind of new to all of the people who are listening to your podcast because you unpacked this so beautifully in your book.  People know the importance of the fact that you are a product then you got to treat yourself like a product as well.  But I also believe that when you think about it, like say for example…I think what you’re referencing is that, you want to be able to create…

Andrea:  It’s on page 66.

Need James:  I exactly knew where it is, believe me.  It’s like when you have a career plan…now, I say that confidently but that’s not a hundred century.  But this one I do know, when I was looking in my career early in banking, I realized that the people that were getting promoted were getting the attention because they were getting things done.  So here’s what I decided to do, I decided that I will have what you’re calling what we have in the book called, the 90-Day Fulfillment Promotional Strategies.  I decided, it would take me 90 days.

So basically, I would think 90 days is going to take me to learn the job then it’s going to take me another 90 days to master the job and it’s going to take me another 90 days to find my successor so that within 12 months, I could be promoted.  So three months to learn it, three months to master it, three months to find my successor and then within 12 months, I’ll be promoted.

Now, if you track my _____ you can actually see the _____ in banking.  I was promoted on leverage every 10 months.  As thought leaders influences leaders in our community, we have to look at our plans and think “What am I gonna achieve in this 90 days and then what am I gonna to evolve that in the next 90 days,” because I think we can our head around 90 days.  But people that are doing five year plans, huh, so much can change.

So what I’m trying to get my client to do is think about how can you accelerate your commercial strategy, and it could be for example, if you don’t work for someone else, maybe you’re not looking to get promoted inside the company if you’re not corporate.  If you’re an entrepreneur, I look at my business in 90 days cycle.  So every 90 days, I’m developing a new marketing strategy, a new message so that I’m constantly looking at the different modalities of the work that I do and how that can be received.

I could get my head around 90 days because you can also see a shift in behavior in 90 days, right?  So yeah, the 90-day strategy was something that I was notorious for in my corporate career.  I had a mentoring program for executives and I cancelled them to look at the same thing, because as leaders we also have to train our successor and I think that’s a gift many of us have.

So in corporate, we are always training the next person who takes our role and if you don’t do that, you can’t get promoted.  As an entrepreneur, we need to know what is our succession plan or what is the plan for our practice or our business so that you have that next-level thinking that allows you to decide how you’re going to take your vacation, what’s going to happen if you, you know, if something happens to your health.  We have to have succession plans and the ways.

Andrea:  Alright, Neen, this has been so great.  Thank you so much for taking time to be with us today and share just abundantly in your words from your wisdom, your brilliance, your experience and your energy.  Thank you for the inspiration as well.  We really, just really appreciate your time with us today.

Neen James:  It was my absolute privilege and thank you for everything that you’re doing in the world to help people find that voice so they can be that most amazing version of themselves.

Andrea:  OK, so Neen, where should people look to find more of Neen?

Neen James:  The good thing for me is there’s only one Neen James online.  So if you just Google it, neenjames.com, you will find me.  That’s the easiest way and you can follow me on Twitter or you can see my adventures in Instagram or you can find out so many free resources at neenjames.com.

Andrea:  Hmmm and YouTube channel as well.

Neen James:  Oh yeah, hundreds of videos, literally hundreds of videos there for free.

Andrea:  Yes, great!  Well, thank you so much, Neen

Neen James:  My absolute pleasure.  Thanks for letting me serve your listeners.

 

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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.

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Your Three Audiences and How to Speak to Them

Episode 45

Have you ever been unsure of how much of your personal life and world views you should share with your audience; especially on social media?

When I first began putting my voice out into world publicly on social media, I found myself deleting a lot of posts because I never knew if I was sharing too much of my personal life. It was confusing and overwhelming. Over time, I was able to find the balance between sharing enough to allow my audience to connect with me while not sharing so much that it scared them away.

In this episode, I’ll help you find a little more clarity around this topic by breaking down the three main types of audiences you have and how to best communicate with each one so you can know exactly what to share and what to hold back depending on who you’re sharing your voice of influence with.

 

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! Do you ever feel nervous about putting your voice out there? Maybe you have an opinion or a thought about something that you really feel like you need to share, and maybe it’s even like burning inside of you, but you’re not really sure if you should share it.

This can happen in many different contexts. The easiest one to talk about would probably the social media. When do we post something on Facebook and when do we not and how do we decide, “Am I going to talk about this really cool thing that happen with my family and seem like I’m bragging? Or am I going to share this really hard thing that happened to me then I sound like I’m complaining?”

It’s really easy to get confused about whether or not we should share things. And so some people just totally back out at the game, others of us kind of explore it and experiment and then oftentimes end up feeling confused or even regretting posting things. There have been many times when I have deleted a post. I put something out there and I delete it real quick, especially when I first started trying to leave intentionally a digital footprints. I did a lot of deleting at first.

Now, I have a better sense of what I want to share, at what point in time, and I have a better sense of the context that I’m working with. So it’s a little bit different now than it was.

I’m going to share with you some of the things that I’ve learned about sharing in contexts and understanding your audience when it comes to sharing your own personal world view. This can apply to social media or can apply to your relationships. It can apply to where you work or your community whatever that community might be.

I’m going to be talking about this in terms of having an ideal audience, an ideal customer and that sort of thing. When I say that, I want you to know that it’s just a way to talk about this. It’s not just about whether or not you’re selling something but if you’re selling something this is very important. Even if you’re not, even if you are simply wanting to spread your world view, to share your world view, because it’s important enough that you believe that it needs to get out there, most likely, you’re wanting people to adapt that world view.

You’re essentially selling your world view. You’re wanting somebody to buy in even if it’s not something they actually pay for. You’re wanting to buy in of their hearts. I think that’s what message-driven leadership is all about anytime, and we have to be really careful with how we handle that topic, with how we handle the way that we market our message or share our message.

But we also need to understand that there is a sense of buy in that we’re looking for if we’re going to share this. I mean, why else would you share? You’re looking to be a part of the discussion and even if you’re willing and open to change yourself, even if you’re wanting to be a part of that dialogue, you’re still wanting to have some buy in into your own world view.

So you’re learning influence, you’re wanting impact, or you’re wanting to make a difference with your message then there is a sense of like needing that ideal person. Who is that ideal person who needs this message? So we’re talking about that ideal person in that term of ideal customer or ICA (Ideal Customer Avatar). A lot of times that’s the three letters that people use to kind of describe this person. The person who is the most perfect person who needs what you have, who is ready to buy it, and ready to buy in and truly does.

It’s those people that I think ultimately we are seeking to find with whatever kind of message we’re sharing. So, as we discuss this today that’s what we’re talking about whether this applies to you as somebody who is in business or somebody who is a leader who is wanting buy in to your concepts, to world view, to your point of view. That’s what we’re talking about.

All right! So here’s the problem, so we know that what we’re ultimately seeking is buy in. It’s that person who’s going to actually pay for our services or that person who is really going to come onboard with our point of view, whether that’d be ours or combined point of view, we’re looking for that buy in. We want this. We want to move forward with our message in a way that’s going to make a difference in people’s lives.

But the problem is, it’s hard to know when to share what. It’s hard to know who wants to hear what I have to say and who doesn’t, or when is it appropriate for me to say something that I really feel passionate about and when should I hold back legitimately or the even deeper problem is when we wonder whether or not what we have to say really matters in the first place. Does it ultimately matter? Am I worthy of sharing this message or is it going to actually make a difference in anybody else’s life?

But here’s the thing, when it comes to having a point of view, having a world view, we don’t live an isolation. There’s a reason why we live in community. There’s a reason why we have conversations and dialogue, it’s because we need to hear other people’s point of view and we need to share our own point of view to be able to help contribute to this respectful dialogue that could help us move forward as human beings.

We need each other and your voice does matter. What you have to say does matter. But we have to be careful about how we do that, about the context in which we share our point of view. We need to be savvy. We need to think about “what is it exactly that I’m dealing with here? Who am I talking to? What is it that I really want to say? Will this message get in a way of another message that it’s more important?” These are really important things to identify and to have a sense and to have an idea about what’s going on.

So what I have learned over the past few years of putting my voice out there and trying to figure this out for myself is that there are basically three groups of people that we have to talk to. Now, you could nuance this into many different groups for sure, and every individual is different. But this will give you an opportunity to think about these three basic groups of people that you will come in contact with when it comes to wanting to share your point of view, and how you would share what you would share.

When it comes to somebody who is in business, some of those questions are “Well, what do I sell and what do I give away for free?” That’s a very hard question. It’s not super easy. But there are some basic ideas that we can grasp unto that are really helpful when it comes to making that decision.

OK, so there are three different basic groups of people that you’re speaking to, whether you’re talking about social media or living your life and sharing your point of view. You’re either going to be talking to somebody who does not share your world view or your point of view who maybe you’re wanting to in a sense convert to your point of view. You’re wanting to convince them, to entice them, compel them, or to influence them to believe something or to think something differently than they already do.

Those people, you could sort of say are “the unconverted.” That’s one way to put it. I’ve heard Angelique Rewers use that word and I think it’s a good way to put it. They’re the people who have not converted to your particular way of thinking, to your point of view, your message. Those people, you’re going to talk to differently than you would talk to the people who have already adapted your world view or who share your world view or your point of view.

So, there are the people who do not share your world view and then there are the people who do share your world view. There’s people fewer of those people, so there’s generally going to be a lot of people who do not share your world view, fewer people who share your world view and then even fewer people who you are specifically called to help in a specific kind of way based on that world view.

So, those people, those people who you are called to serve in a very specific way, those people who’d be your ideal customer, your ICA, or if you want to think of it in terms of just your ideal audience, the person who is the perfect fit for your message and what you have to offer. They’re hungry for it. They have a need for it. They’re willing to pay for it or to buy in to it in some sort of way. So these are the three groups.

Now, when you think about it, let’s take this back to social media. When you think about it in terms of social media, you’ve got the broad audience of people who may or may not share your world view when you go into Facebook. Now, when you go on to Twitter, you’re talking to a lot of people who may or may not share your world view.

Maybe they just want to see pictures of your kids whatsoever growing up then you post something about your world view with a staunch on something and that person looks at it and says “Wait a second, I just wanna see pictures of their kids but now they’re preaching to me and I don’t agree with them. I’m just not gonna pay attention to them anymore.”

Pretty soon, you do not show up on their news feed because they do not click to like your post so they didn’t comment on it or that sort of thing because that’s how the algorithm are set up. You have to actually engage with somebody to see their stuffs show up on their news feed. This is the way it is right now and the ways is going to continue to be because it’s based on the consumer and what the consumer wants. The algorithms know based on what you click on and like and that sort of thing.

So, if you want to continue to have a voice with people who do not necessarily agree with you then Facebook might not be the place to say something with a very staunch opinion or to just do it every once in a great while. Because when you’re talking to people who do not already share your world view, remember that you’re talking to them in a different way than you’ll be talking to a close friend who definitely does share your world view.

So, when you think about what you’re going to share in particular in this public settings on your news feed, commenting on somebody else’s post that sort of thing, or if you’re in a public setting in a real life version of that, you know, in conversation with other people and meeting that sort of thing. When you are trying to convert somebody to your way of thinking or you’re trying to compel them to consider what you have to say, you speak differently to that person. You give more of the why. You share why this is important. You share stories about why this world view is important to consider. You share statistics about why somebody should consider this world view or this point of view. You share questions and engage people in conversation about this particular point of view.

In this conversation, you can still share your ideas back and forth but you’re listening as well, and it’s a very important part of a respectful dialogue. So when you’re talking to that general public, those people who may not share your world view, you’re sharing why your world view or your point of view is worth considering.   Then if you have a business and if you’re looking to draw people into the next level of with you, the next level of intimacy with you and your brand then you would be asking them to join a Facebook group or subscribe to your email list.

This is a step closer to you and to intimacy with you and these people then are people that do share your world view. They are saying “I want to hear from you more often. I want to have more of a conversation about this topic.” They’re not turning you off and then going to do something else. They’re may be trying to decide but at least, you’ve got some sort of buy in from them to commit to your email list even for a short time or your Facebook group or that sort of thing.

In real life, this would be like “Come to my church, or come to Rotary, or come this particular service organization where you will then be a part of the group. You’re going to be a part of the group and you’re a part of the group because you share this world view of service or you share this world view of this religious institution.

When you do that and when people start to say “Okay, I wanna test this out and try out,” maybe they’ll try it out _____, they’ll come for a little bit and then they’ll decide whether or not they’re going to stay and adapt this world view or not and contribute to this particular group or not. So you have this second level of intimacy where there’s a group now or tribe of sorts.

In that tribe, you can speak a little more freely, assuming that those people who are there already agree with your point of view. Those people don’t need to be necessarily converted, if you will, but they are here because they already agree. Of course, there could be some overlap and they might not totally agree but if they’ll come, they’re probably expecting to hear messages that assume that they agree with what you’re saying.

You can nuance those to be kind of careful about that but in general the idea is that these people have said “Yes, I do want to hear more. This is about me. This is the way I wanna think. I wanna learn more about this.” So you can speak more freely with more of your passion perhaps, more of that energy or conviction in your voice about how important this is, whatever this message is.

Then the next level would be that ideal customer avatar, that ICA, or your ideal audience. That person who wants to take it even a step further, they want to not only adapt this world view, they want to apply it to their lives in some way or they want to apply it to their business or they believe that what you have to say is that they’re in alignment with what you’re saying about your world view.

So now they want to work with you to help them apply that in some way to their lives and this is where you get into the how. So before with that unconverted group, with the people who don’t necessarily share your world view, you’re sharing a lot of why this world view or this point of view is important or why it’s something to consider, why you should consider converting to this point of view. Then they come into this closer circle of people who is more like a tribe and those people are saying “Yeah, I pretty much agree with this world view, tell me more.”

So you’re educating them and in going deeper with the why, you’re maybe dabbling in some of the how but then you go into this inner circle, the people who are truly there to really put the pedal to the metal and make some real changes. Those are people who have maybe an urgent need. Maybe there’s a sense of desperation or desire or I don’t know just a real sense of conviction that they really want to take this to the next level and they’re willing to do something significant to get there.

This could be going from that Facebook group if we’re talking about the online presence, Facebook group to buying a product. You have now a product that you want to sell or coaching program that you want to sell and these people they’re saying, “Yeah, I wanna learn from this person. I wanna learn how to apply all this to my life because they’re the person that I agree with. I agree with their voice. I like their voice and the way that they speak to my life. I want to follow them down this path to take it even further. I want them to be the ones who teach me how to apply this to my life.

That’s what you do with that closer, that inner circle kind of ideal audience, those ideal customers. In a context of a live context, we went from those who aren’t in church, to those who are in church or the service organization if you want to say that to then many of leadership position or in-dept bible study or something like this where there is something that requires a lot more from them.

This can even be a way for them to take their point of view and apply it to life in a way that they are really turning into somebody who knows more about it and who can help others and then turn them into evangelists, if you will. When I say evangelist, I’m talking about going back and sharing more of this world view to other people that they’re comfortable with or whatever.

This is about spreading a message, isn’t it? When you’re talking to those people in that context of the Facebook like the whole public Facebook situation, those people aren’t people that you can train and rise up and go out and start spreading your message. I say your message, I’m assuming that your message is a bigger message than just you.

But they’re not the people that you kind of do that with then you bring people into the Facebook group or the next level of intimacy with you. And at that point, they are saying “Yes, tell me more. Yes, convince more. Yes, you can sell me on this idea or this program that you have that’s going to help me to apply this to my life,” and then you get to that point with those few people who really want what you have to offer.

They want to buy that offering or buy in to that offering “Yes, I wanna serve on that committee,” or “Yes, I want to make this such a big part of my life that it’s something that I do in every little aspect of my life,” or “Yes, I want to buy that coaching program because I wanna work with you and learn more about this particular subject that you’re teaching about or that you’re coaching me through. I wanna get better and I want you be the person to do that.”

With those people, those inner circle people, those people that your ideal audience you get to see so much more. This is where you get to pull the curtain back and say “This is what’s really going on.” It’s not like you’ve been deceiving anybody along this process of course, not of your voice of influence. But if you get to this point, you share more. There is more to be shared. You could be offering a service of some kind. I’m talking about a message-driven service, right?

So if you have something you’re wanting to share or a message you’re wanting to share then you’re going to be able to use your voice in a more powerful and direct kind of way with those people who really have said “I’m buying in. Please. Yes, tell me.” So your voice can shift with the context and the audience that you’re speaking to. Your voice does not need to be your exact feelings all the time.

In fact, you can soften your voice in certain contexts because you want to share a little message without offending people knowing that you’re sharing this message with a broad audience. You’re wanting people to think about this thing, but you’re going to soften it in tone because you also don’t want them to stumble on the fact that you might be really adamant about your thoughts.

The other day our kids did something, it was in school, but they participated in an activity that we paid for and I thought that it would be really fun for them. I thought they would really enjoy it. But they got home that day and were very upset about their experience that day and they ended up not doing as many activities as we thought they would. In particular, they felt like they were being annoying to the people that were in charge.

This can happen all the time. I mean, these parents, I can say this, I have definitely over done my fair share of comments that make my kids probably feel like they’re just an annoyance to me. I have certainly done this, but I’ve also learned that that’s not helpful for them and then actually so demeaning to them and my kids know. They sense that. They sense when you and me, when anybody doesn’t care. They sense when you’re annoyed with them instead of delighting in them.

Kids, adults, we all want to be delighted in. We don’t want to be annoying to people. The kids, so often, because they’re in these groups and they’re expected to be quiet and that sort of thing. They feel like it’s a constant dread of “You’re so annoying. You’re so annoying.”

This day in particular, I was really kind of frustrated that that is the communication that my kids felt. So I thought “You know what, I wanna say something about this.” But I didn’t want to say something that would be really offensive. I didn’t want implicate anybody. In general, I wanted to say, “Please don’t act like kids are so annoying to you all the time. Please delight in them.”

So what I did on Facebook, this is just an example. I wrote something along the lines of kids can tell when you appreciate them or something like this. But they also can tell when you’re just annoyed by them. Let’s breathe life into our kids. I just wanted to share this short little thing to get people to think about it.

I was hoping maybe just a few people would see it and say, “You know what, today, I’m not gonna act annoyed with these kids. I’m going to smile at them. I’m going to try to remember that I have the power to breathe life into them by smiling at them or by not acting annoyed, by dealing with behavior without placing judgment on them whatever it might be.”

By I soften all of that with “Let’s breathe life into our kids.” I didn’t share details but I still said something that was very true and because I did that, that really softened the tone. I had a very strong opinion at this but I didn’t want to come off as being accusatory. Who knows anybody just looking at that could be like “Oh my goodness, is she talking about me?” I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to make it about me as well.

So when you put yourself in there instead of just telling people, you should do this, as though you are on a pedestal of some kind. You’ve got it figured out and they don’t and now you need to tell them that’s really annoying to hear in that context because people haven’t given you that kind of permission. When you get to that inner circle of people who are your ideal person and they know you, you know them; you have a connection, a relationship.

That relationship can handle more of the power in your voice. It can handle more of that conviction. It can handle more of the directives that you might have to offer. In fact if somebody has paid you to coach them, they’re looking for your advice. They’re saying “Please give me your advice. Do not hold back your advice, I need it. That’s what I’m paying you.”

There is a huge difference between that person and then that general audience of people. So you can soften your tone. But as these people come in and draw near and closer to you, you can become more clear and more transparent with the actual emotion in your voice and that sort of thing.

So even here with the podcast, this I would consider to be that second level, because if you’re out on Facebook or whatever maybe you’re seeing me and that’s one thing. But to commit to listening to this podcast is a completely different level of engagement with me.

So, I speak more freely with you here than I do on social media. I get more specific and I’m really still though I’m talking about the why and I’m adding a little bit of the how. If you’re to work with me or purchase a program of mine or that sort of thing, then you would get an even more clear version of what I have to share because you have said, I want to hear more from you. I want you to help me with my personal brand strategy, to help me figure out who I am and very really super clear about my identity and be super self aware so that I can share that authentically in the world and know how to do this.

So this is just how this works. These are these three basic groups of people. There’s this outer layer, those people who do not necessarily share your world view, you have to soften your tone. Every once in a while, you can come out and say something really strong, but if you do not soften your tone a little bit, more than likely, people are going to turn you off and that’s fine.

If you’re very divisive, if you’re like “You know what, I really want to know exactly who’s in and who’s out.” You can do that. You can draw a very clear line in the sand and say “Either you’re on this side or that side and I only wanna talk to people on this side,” then you end up screaming at the people on the other side and that’s what very often ends up happening or you can completely ignore the people on the other side.

But if you do not want to just draw a clear line in the sand, if you really do want to spread a message and evangelize it essentially. It means taking that message out and sharing it with others and seeing if they want to come onboard, if they want to buy in and if they want to come closer. If you’re doing that then there are these three different groups. And yes, you can soften your message when you’re at on top, when you’re talking to people on that public kind of level. It doesn’t mean you lie, it just means you soften.

If you haven’t heard of me say before “You can be real without baring all.” So no matter what you do, be authentic, be real, and speak the truth of what you’re trying to say. Be authentic in your self-expression but you don’t have to be completely transparent and you can apply tactics like softening in order to draw people in further. Not because you’re lying, not because you’re manipulating, but because you’re inviting.

You’re saying, “This is what I have to say in general, would you like to hear more? Because if you want to hear more, come closer,” and that’s what you keep doing. You just keep inviting people to come closer. As they come closer, you speak with more conviction andmaybe perhaps more power and then those people turn around and start spreading the message as well.

So friend, do not be afraid of softening your tone in that outer layer of conversation and then don’t be afraid of continuing to make it a more clear and strong point of view as people come closer and make your voice matter more!

 

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