Welcome, everybody. This is Jane Gardner, and welcome to Finding Your Purpose TV. I’m Jane Gardner. And welcome. We’re so excited today because we have another Purposeful Entrepreneur today and we’re going to be chatting with her about how she found her purpose. Her name is Dorothy Anne O’Dell, and she was born and raised in Ontario, Canada. So we have a lot in common because we’re both Canadians. We talk a lot about that right now. And she’s turned her love of books into her next career writing them and she loves to help people succeed in life. And when she’s not writing or reading, she’s helping her community. And actually remind me, Dorothy, we have to talk about your charity concept at the end. So I’ll write a note for that because it’s a really exciting one. And she’s also a life coach and speaker. And her life’s purpose is to make sure that people feel that they feel worthy and that they don’t feel unworthy. She believes every life matters and has dedicated herself to helping others overcome their own obstacles and learn to feel empowered to move forward in their life. And, Dorothy, we’re going to be talking a lot.

Let’s get ready. So, Dorothy, tell me, how did your purpose in life make you become the entrepreneur you are now? Welcome.

Thank you. Thanks for having me, Jane. It’s been an absolute pleasure getting to know you. I guess my purpose all started at the beginning of The Pandemic, and I’ve always loved helping people growing up and things like that. But I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to do that. And I wrote my first book, The Overcomer, facing challenges with faith and courage because I knew that I had a lot of challenges that I had overcome in my life, like bullying, low self esteem, abusive relationships, and family trauma. And I knew that I wasn’t the only one out there. And I also knew that in those moments when you’re going through those times that it is very challenging and that you feel very alone and sometimes you feel like you don’t matter. So I decided that my purpose was to make sure that people knew that they were heard that they mattered and that they never had to feel alone. So that’s when I came up with my purpose at the beginning of The Pandemic, wrote the book in no time at all and had it out for the world to see January of this year. And it’s been an exciting adventure. And I thought, why stop there? Help people overcome their obstacles, coach them on how to have fun, how to have some what’s the word? I’m looking for time to themselves and just really selfcare. Selfcare was key. It’s something that I never had growing up or I never took the time. Didn’t think about it. We weren’t educated in school, and I had a grandmother that said, you need to take care of your man. And it’s basically selfish to take care of you. And she’s old school and love her to death, but I didn’t know any better. So I was always giving, giving until I hit a wall. And my dad was diagnosed with cancer for the first time two and a half years ago, I met a counselor at the cancer clinic in here at Windsor. And the first question she asked me was, what about yourself? Care? And I said, there is none. I don’t have time for that. I’m planning a wedding. My dad just got cancer. Just that got diagnosed and work was insane at the time. So there was no time for me. And that’s when she said, well, you better make a time because if not, you’re going to crash and you’re going to burn hard and she was right. And I decided to put some tools into place to bring the fun back into my life because growing up there was fun and things like that. But there was also a lot of times where it was like I would call it adult times, I guess, where a lot of the time that was taken up was worried about parents that were sick, things like that. And it was a serious time. I took life way too serious, I guess, is the proper word I should use. And so growing up way too serious and being helping around the house my entire life. And I didn’t really have a lot of friends growing up. It’s funny because I talked about that this morning in a conversation with somebody else. And it was a lonely time. And I thought I hit my forties and I’m like, fun is it? And that’s been my word for the last five years. And for my I think it was my 43rd birthday. My husband says, what do you want? And I said, I just want a family balloon fight. Family is everything to me. And what better way. My birthday is in July. So it’s not like it’s cold months. So I said, that’s what we’re going to do. And everybody was receptive. We had my husband’s family over and we had a barbecue. We had a water balloon fight. And he just had some amazing fun.

Welcome, everybody. This is Jane Gardner of finding your purpose and today on Spotlight, we are talking to Adrian Starks of Connect Now Business Network. And today he is going to be talking to us about his business. And Adrian is a keynote speaker, best selling author and chief communications officer of Connect Now Business Network. His mission is to help entrepreneurs, students and organizations and teens who are feeling stuck, uninspired or unfulfilled to become their own Change makers. And he gives them tools, some tips and strategies to get out of the rut they are in and will empower them and these individuals to find opportunities within the challenges, no matter how stressful their environment maybe. Adrian lives by his supportive Changemaker philosophy that began with the desire to help others see that they can courageously make their own changes and become their own champion. Thank you, Adrian, for coming on today. And I would like to ask you before you say hello, because you can say it at the same time, how you got into your business that you're in, how you found your purpose. Oh, well, thank you so much, Jane, and thank you for the wonderful introduction, I was like is she talking about me? That's wonderful. So, yes, let's talk about how I got into my business. Oh, for a long time, even I was a little kid, I got the name Motormouth because I had the ability to speak and to capture everyone's attention. So I did quite well with that later on in the years, as we can see now. I started out speaking as a professional in public in Seattle, Washington, where I used to live, and I started doing some spoken word poetry because I was fascinated with the idea of words and wordplay and how do I inspire audiences. And that just led me into finding more things out about special orators like Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and Winston Churchill. And I started thinking to myself, wow, I really want to start speaking more in front of people. How do I do that? Well, life caught up with me and I found myself working in a call center for eight years, a medical call center. But here's the interesting thing, Jane. That call center was a calling to the center of my life, which was speaking those eight years that I was there, I wasn't very happy because it wasn't the place I wanted to be. I didn't find myself purposeful there in my own way. But what I learned was the power of communication. And I took those skills and I started going to workshops here in British Columbia on psychology and personal development. I started watching other speakers and I said to myself, I'm going to leave this call center job and I'm going to go out here in the world and I'm going to inspire people through my poetry, through my self development, through my inspiration. And what I did was I created my own purpose and that put me onto the path that I'm on now, where I work strategically with entrepreneurs and business owners and helping them create their own opportunities within their challenges. Wow. Wow. I didn't realize, who knew, that being in a call center is actually good for speaking, that it's just amazing. I mean, I can see how it would. You'd be willing to want to change your life quickly, but did you find calling people and everything really helped you understand people more and your business and at least you learn something from being there? I certainly did, Jane. What it taught me was, the best communicators are the ones who say the fewest words and they listen. So in the center, I learned very fast about I learned very fast about empathy, listening to the other person, getting the information down and then finding a way to provide assistance and to do it in a strategic way that allows me to to be on their side. So there is an interesting thing here, jane. I worked for a children's medical call center, so imagine getting parents calling in about their children. No parent really wants to bring their child to the hospital at all. So I'm getting various amounts of emotions on the phones. I had to learn how to understand people emotionally, mentally, socially. And I did not know during this time of eight years in the call center that I was actually growing into the person that I needed to be in order to get out here in the world and to speak and to help people the way that I'm doing right now. Wow. Wow, that's amazing. I know, I know empathy is very important for being successful and listening for sure. So so how do you use that in your new business? Well, it's not a new business. Maybe you could tell us how long you've been in your Connect Now Business Network, because it's a very exciting idea and concept and I'd be interested in participating. So that would be great if you could tell us how you could help me. Thank you. Simply, absolutely. So the Connect Now business network that I am a part of, I am the CCO and I am the chief communications officer. I actually do speaking within this network. And I help entrepreneurs and business owners with the power of communication. Like, what is your language sound like when you're speaking to your clients? What is your language sound like when you're speaking to yourself? I find that we really push personal development to the side. Now we say, oh yeah, personal development is good, we need that. But how many of us as entrepreneurs and business owners actually take it very seriously? And we work on ourselves 24 seven because we have to because we're connecting to our business network. We believe that you are your business and more importantly, we believe about the person behind the business. So I'd like to talk to the entrepreneurs and show them this is the language you're using if you're trying to connect with someone. Do you believe in what you're saying? Are you saying too much? Are you saying enough? Are you being very strategic about what you need to do in order to get this person some help? So that's what I work with my entrepreneurs and business owners on within the Connect Now Business Network. I help them grow and also help them look at their own challenges within their business. Oh, wow. Oh, yeah. You were mentioning that you'd like to speak about change and I can see how your business is all about change, making people more successful in their business and communicating better in their business. And I was wondering how you felt about the art of speaking as well, because I think I think it's very difficult for a lot of people to be able to speak, as you can see from me. And it's always a challenge for for some of us too. And I'd love to hear what your experience has taught you about speaking. Well, thank you, Jane. There's two things that people are afraid of, death and public speaking. So it doesn't surprise me when I hear about people that they have a little bit of a challenge with public speaking. Now the art of speaking of what you just mentioned. I love that phrase, the art of speaking. And when I want to talk about the word art, it's an acronym for me. I call it Applying Real Truth. And I'll say it again, applying real truth to what you're speaking. So in the art of speaking, it's very important for us because everyone at the end of the day is a public speaker. You speak in public all the time. But if you're going to do this professionally or if you want to speak on behalf of your business, you have to be crystal clear about what is your message, because people want to know a few things. Who are you? Why are you here and how can you help me? And if you don't know who you are, if you don't know why you're there, if you don't know how you can help them, your message is going to be very skewed. So, in the art of speaking you must be clear about what do you want to do, what is the point of the conversation, of the speech. And Jane, I talk about this a lot with people who want to get more into speaking and also my entrepreneurs and business owners who want to be more effective speakers because, here's the thing, it's not about charisma, there are a lot of great speakers and dynamic speakers out there but what makes them effective is how they deliver their message. What is the point of that message? Are you connecting with your audience, the people in front of you? If you and I are having a conversation? Am I connecting with you on a certain level? Am I talking to you in a way that you understand. I'm talking about a bunch of jargon to you about facts, information and data. At some point you're going to, you're going to be like, what is he talking about? So as a speaker, usually the least amount of words is the best. As a speaker, you have to be clear about what you are wanting your audience to do. What is the game plan? What's the action step behind this whole talk. If you're walking in a boardroom, do you know what the game plan is when you walk into that boardroom? You're walking into a classroom to your students. Do you know what the game plan is you're walking into or meet up with a client? Do you know what the game plan is, what the action step is you want that person to do? So if you know that, then the art of speaking becomes quite fun. It's like riding a bicycle. You learn about a handful of things and then after that you start learning how to have fun with it. I was wondering that that sounds great. I never thought of applying real truth when you're speaking. It would help. So that's a very interesting concept and I hope that you'll hopefully have a book on that soon, if not already. Yeah, because that is certainly a different from what, not different but I've heard that story is also good for when you're speaking because people connect to your stories. And I'm just wondering, obviously, you must use stories in your speaking as well. I would think, assuming I do stories all the time. And I wanted to talk about the power of story. You mentioned this. Two stories basically are the bridge that we connect to the person that's listening to us, because you can talk about yourself all day. You can talk about what you have, what your expertise is. But if there's not a story, some common ground that a person can on their own terms connect with you, then you're going to not resonate with that person. This is why stories are so powerful, not just in speakers, but in movies. We know that there's always a story in the movie, the underlying story, because it brings us together and more importantly, the brain, this powerful organ in our head that is designed to do two things to protect us and to serve us. It's designed to see pictures. That's how we relate our world, we see images, we understand we through sight, through smell, through sound, we have images, memories. So when a story is told, that person is actually virtualizing in their head, certain things. This is why as a speaker, when you're telling a story, it's important to put in some senses of the story. Where was it? What was it? What did it feel like? What did it smell like? What did it look like? Because when you're doing this, you're literally painting the picture for the person to review on their own. Now, when you tell the story a good way, not just ranting through a story, but you're actually in the present moment of the story that audience member, that client, whomever is in front of you, they will walk to that bridge of the story and meet you halfway. The next thing that you have to do when you tell that story to walk them over that bridge of the conversation is what is the point? And so, really, people get caught up in the story. They forget to say, what is the point of all this? So you got to make sure you have that point after the story. Yes, I was going to say that you did have already mentioned that we have to have a goal or well, know what our action step is before we start speaking. So that's great. So we we've got we can add some stories in there, but we better make sure we actually tell people what what we'd like to do. And I was wondering, you also talk about change and we haven't really talked about being a change maker in our times right now, of course, are changing quite rapidly. And it's it's just amazing what you're doing right now that you managed to adapt to the pandemic with your business and you seem to have been very successful with it. And how do you get others to understand that they can also change their story as well as our story? Jane, you are speaking my language now. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about. So here's the thing. There's one thing about change. Change is inevitable is always going to happen so that people that are watching and listening this right now, you cannot escape change. What I teach people is that you must be a courageous creator of change. Now, what I mean by this is that you have to be a person that you are willing to create your own changes within the changes. This is why I talk about the word challenge. Look at the word change. Inside of that word challenge is the word change. The reason why we have so many challenges with change is because a lot of the changes in our life, we don't see them coming and we're not prepared to deal with them in this global pandemic. There have been many people who have had who have had problems swirling all around them, but they have been unable to really adapt to the changes because they're focusing so much on what they can't change versus what they can. The greatest thing, the greatest fear is not change. The greatest fear is remaining unchanged. And when we remain unchanged, we can't grow, Jane . And I talk about growing forward when we are able to change and adapt to change, we can actually grow forward in our lives. It's important for us to understand this now that when you have a challenge, think about that word again. Challenge inside the word is change. What can you change within that challenge? There's something to be learned. There's something to adapt to, and there's something that you can gather and enhance as your own personal strength, because I believe every obstacle we can take in and we can use to our advantage. I love teaching people about change because you can want all the success you want in the world. You can want to travel. You can want to have a different , a better relationship, better health. You can have a better career. But none of that will matter if you don't change yourself. When I was in a call center for eight years, we just talked about this previously, Jane. What got me out of that call center was my willingness to change myself and expand beyond my environment. I could have been like a lot of people and just stayed there and complained about what wasn't being done right, why this environment didn't work for me, and that I don't like my job, et cetera. But I decided that if I want to change, I have to expand, I have to become better. So I started looking at possibilities. I started looking at opportunities. And I started creating my own opportunities. In this global pandemic and even in twenty, twenty one and I always say this twenty, twenty one is just four numbers when that clock strikes 12:00 a.m. You're well, I'm sorry, that's the clock strikes 12:00, you are not going to automatically just have change in your life. It's not going to happen that way. We have to understand that we change what we do during our moments here on this planet. And that's that's really what matters to us, is to be an effective change maker. And I do teach this in my workshops about how do you go about being an effective change maker, because it's more than just saying, oh, yeah, I need to change. How many times have you heard people say that or you have said that? I have said that in my previous life. I need to change change that but it never happens because change is not just a word. It's an action, an action. You know, I'm I never even thought of change being in challenge change being in the word challenge. And I'm going to steal that. And I'm not going to steal I'm going to make a meme and credit you for that. You're going to be one of my quotes everywhere, because that's that's a wonderful, wonderful analogy, because I'm sixty three and I'm, you know, I'm busy working on another company and here I am still trying to get a business on the Internet. And I love change and I love, love change. But how do you get someone who doesn't really like change? Can you actually change them with your workshop or is it is a certain personality, that kind of thing? I'm sure you're awesome and will be able to change anyone so that they actually take action on their own on changing what they have to change. Obviously, great question, great question. This is what I truly believe, we can never make someone change. However, I can provide you with the tools and strategies that can inspire you to want to change, but you've got to want too though. You can come into a workshop. You can go see a speaker. You can go anywhere and you can that person can just sprinkle you with all kinds of words of motivation, inspiration and data and facts. But if you don't have a personal motive, that which is true motivation, it's having a motive. You have to have a motive of a reason to allow someone to help you to change. So if you're coming to a workshop or coming to my event or seminar that I speak at, if you're ready and you're open to learn something new, you're going to change automatically because you are open to that. But if you're resistant to it, it's just going to be words thrown away in the wind. So we have to realize that when you want to change or you want anything to be different, you have to be open for the possibilities. And I work with multiple people when it comes to entrepreneurs, business owners. I work with students and schools. Everyone's the same. At the end of the day, when it comes to their life, everyone wants to be loved, everyone wants to feel appreciated, and everyone wants to feel like they have a meaning or purpose to life. Which is why I love this show that you've invited me on, Jane. And so when we can realize that we want these three things, but to to get those three things, you have to step into your challenges. You got to step outside of your comfort zone. That way you can see all the different things around you. We learned through personal experience that personal experience cannot happen if you're unwilling to change what you're currently doing, if you do the same thing every single day and be a creature of habit. That's fine. But you can not expect your life to be any better if you're not doing anything different. Some awesome I totally agree. That's great, I'm glad that I'm sure that's the first thing that you tell people in your workshop because, yeah, if if you're not willing to change then you'll never change. But yeah. So I wanted to speak about your podcast because I love the idea of the purpose of purposeful life. And you've just started it in twenty nineteen you were saying. So I'd love to hear how that ties into to your business and how you feel it incorporates itself into your business doing it. Thank you, yes, so the podcast is The purposeful Life show podcast. It's actually on the Connect Now podcast dot com ConnectNowpodcast.com. And this show was designed to help people from all walks of life. Now I do focus heavily on entrepreneurs and business owners because that's my passion, because I'm one. But I do have it open for people who are looking to transition maybe out of a job. I call the exit strategy. You're wanting to change something. You're wanting to go up in the upper echelons of command of your certain business. If you're just wanting to change relationships or you're wanting to change your health or anything this podcast designed to give you some tools and strategies for some breakthroughs for change in your life. And I talk about elements of self development, mindset, emotional balance. I talk about health. I talk about here's the thing. If you want a successful business, you have to know what success is. Success is not a result. Success is a process. So in this podcast, I talk about the elements of that. I bring on people who are actually very successful in what they do. I talk about what are their challenges because I want people to know that we're all human at the end of the day and it's OK to be vulnerable. That's where your strength is. You see, we live in a time now where it's information based. People are tired of the cookie cutter approach of I have it all together, I have no challenges. I'm quite successful. And so can you be. People are tired of hearing that, and they know that behind closed doors, people are still human. And I want people to see that although this person does have a challenge. I mean, have a success in their life, they still have challenges. So how do they get to where they are now? What's currently challenging them? How do they deal with challenge? I want to know what other people do in the midst of their challenges and their life and the idea, The Purposeful Life show. I chose that title because I want people to be purposeful toward their life. You see, you have to live on purpose when you get out of bed in the morning and you want to run your business a certain way. Do you have the intention of doing that or are you waking up saying, oh, I hope that today is better than yesterday and I get some people that may want to sign with me or some people that want to join my network or whomever. No, you have to get out of that bed and saying, I'm going out here to deliver some powerful things to the people in my community, into my marketplace, and I'm bringing value to the marketplace. That's the thing. The marketplace out here. Where you're working, where you want to be, they're not paying you because you're just this friendly, bubbly person, they're paying you for the value that you're bringing to it. What are you providing them with? So this podcast's of Purposeful Life show, I want people to see that people come from all walks of life and they provide value. And the key is what value can you bring to the planet? Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah, I certainly agree that you meaning just showing other entrepreneurs who are successful, who have challenges very similar to yours or mine or anyone else is really, really helps. And I'm grateful that you do that because, yeah, it's really important to do that. So I was wondering, maybe you could speak about your book Finding your Inner Champion? I think Champion, being a champion in your own life is really important. And maybe I'll just put up the little offer here just while you speak on it, just so people can write it down while you're speaking and find it. That would be great. OK, great. Thank you. So before you talk about this book, let me elaborate on the word. I know there is a lot of confusion for some people because immediately we have we have gone to the state of, well, isn't champion an athlete? Is that a winning contestant? Is that a person who is competing? Yes, that's some of it. But in actuality, a champion is is an advocate, a warrior or a defender of a cause. And you will hear it sometimes people say, well, they're a champion for this. They're champion for that. How often do you call yourself a champion, because we associate it with something that we feel is not a part of us and it actually is the champion inside of you is that person who is willing to fight for you. You see, I feel like we have to go in, we got to beard the lion at times. If for those of you who don't know what I mean by that, you've got to go in on the opponent's territory and challenge them. You've got to go inside yourself and challenge yourself to bring out that better part of you. That's what I call finding the inner champion. You got to go in and sit yourself down. And as Howard Thurman would say, he was a great mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., you've got to sit yourself down, accept your facts, and have a personal civil war between a person that you no longer want to be and the person you want to be. And that is hard to do. That's why I call it finding your inner champion, because you've got to go inside yourself. You've got to get through some rubble. You got to get through some mess because you're going to have aspects of you that you have built over time because you think that's who you are. No, that's conditioning. See, that who we really are is a person that cannot be defeated. The great Socrates, great Greek philosopher. I have him tattooed on my forearm. I love him. He said that the secret to change is to not focus your energy on fighting the old, but focus your energy on building the new, building the new means, you go in and you start finding things, aspects of yourself, things that you like, things that happen. And you start looking at these things and saying, what can I do? What can I elaborate more on? And you've got to start calling yourself out a little bit, too. So in this book, Finding Your Inner Champion, I talk about my personal experience that really rocked my world, that made me think differently about how I saw myself. Now, this is not just a, this is not a motivational story of a rah rah, I've been through this and you can do it. No, I dig deep into the aspect of what happened, why it happened. My vulnerability. What three steps did I have to do in order to get myself out of what I call the tunnel of fear? In this book, I talk about how to build up your inner champion, what that looks like, how you can use it in your business, in your personal life, it is critical that you begin to champion for yourself. We live in a time now where we're so focused on distractions around us, we're so focused on what's not happening, that we forget that all our life matters. All that matters to us is home base. What we're creating right now with our thoughts, with our feelings and with our actions. And when you find your inner champion, you will do like I did. You will leave whatever place that you're in right now that you feel that you're stuck and you will start expanding beyond that environment because you'll start creating opportunities within the challenges, because you know something a little bit different about yourself and you're using that inner champion to guide you to where you need to go. And I call it the GPS going positively somewhere. Oh, wow. I didn't realize that was how much value is in the book. I bought a copy, so I'll have to read it for sure, because that sounds like the perfect book for students and for people who are interested in and taking the leap into entrepreneurship and and for everybody, really, isn't it, just to find out who you are and what your purpose is in life and what makes you happy that that's so exciting. And I'm just blown away. I'm going to have to read that right away. So, Adrian, before we go, I'll put up the offer later. No worries for everybody to write down. But before before we go, I just want to say how awesome, awesome this has been and is there anything you want to leave us with for more wisdom before we go? That would be, I mean, you're just been blowing me away, so I'll just have to give it back to you for a few minutes and just sum up what you like to tell us. Please. Thank you so much. And I want to thank you for allowing me to be on the show. This is what I want to leave with you guys today. You're human. And you're here on this planet to do some very powerful things, but it's up to you. Part of your personal secret birthright is to leave this planet better than when you showed up. It's not about labels. It's not about what you have, it's about what you do, what you create, we are co-collaborators of creation with nature. And you have the ability right now to change your life, you have the ability right now to take steps further into enhancing yourself and enhancing your your health, your personal relationships, your career, it is up to you. Be your own changemaker. And to do that, you've got to do three things. Three things to effectively change. One is accepting change. The second is addressing change and the third is embracing change. I talk about this in one of my talks that I did last year called Growing Forward, you can go on championup.net to see that talk. Twenty twenty one is around the corner. As I mentioned before it is just four numbers. Don't get so set on the fact that while it's a new year, it's got to be better for me, get set on the fact that this is another year that I have to be on this planet and I'm going to make some good out of it because here's the thing about life. Life is risky. It's so risky, you can't get out of it alive. So if you don't learn how to effectively deal with changes, your life is going to be more of a misery than it is going to be more of a learning lesson experience, a journey. I also love talking about success because I truly believe we radiate success, don't get success and achievement mixed up. A lot of people do this. They think, well, if I've got this, I must be successful. No, it means you achieved this great job. Now what next? As human beings, we are goal driven. This is why right now, during the holidays, kids are more excited in the anticipation up to Christmas or the holidays. And you notice after the holidays or that day after they play with their toys, they open everything they're back to themselves again. And as parents, we're like, why? I just gave you everything because goal driven, they were excited. You been excited going to dinner, going out to dinner somewhere or going on a trip. Hopefully we can do this in twenty, twenty one. But then are you so excited coming back. No, because you've accomplished the goal. So as humans, we are goal driven. We are happiest when we're in pursuit of something. So let your success be about the journey of something. What is that journey for you? Along that journey, you're going to have some great challenges and I go back to what I s

Hello, this is Jane Gardner of finding your purpose, and today we're on a mission to create awareness that being self-aware of your personality and your purpose in life, can you make you more intentional in your actions and bring you more success in your business, your relationships and your life? So let's go. Welcome, everybody, to find your purpose. This is Jane Gardner and welcome. Today on our show, we have Michelle Burke of bossibly, and she aids young professionals and business leaders to become influential, influential leaders, to maintain the strength and core values, to help them create a culture of engagement which fosters predictable results and accountability. And awesome. I love this idea. So welcome, Michelle. I'm just blown away by you have coming by. So thank you for coming. And thank you, Michelle. Thank you for having me. Jane, I really appreciate it. It's great to have a chat with you today. That's great. Michelle, one of my little things that I love to do is to ask how you got to where you are and what your purpose you feel is what you're doing now and what your purpose is. So if you could give us an idea on that, Michelle, that would be great. That's my little payment back for coming on to my interview. Yeah, I would be happy to. So I have been coaching for years, even in corporate America. I love I have people coming to me for a problem, a problem. B, this is going on. Can you help me? And I think it was a couple of years ago, a former mentor of mine came to me and said, my daughter just graduated college, her master's degree. She was working with a team. She's now a leader in her own right. And he said, so she's having trouble with this team. I know. I know I can help her, but I'm her dad. That's probably going to end badly. I don't think I should be mentoring my daughter as a leader. So would you be willing to help her? And I'm like, oh, I would be honored to do that, Mike. I would love to give back in that way. And then the same. And two days later, I had a friend of mine who's a CEO of a business. She hires individuals and she said, I can attract them. I can hire them, but I can't engage them and retain them. Do you have anything in your bag of tricks that you can give me to help me? And I'm like, this is a thing within two days, three days of one another, these things are happening like there's something here. So that's how it possibly was born. Wow. Wow. Yeah. I love the idea that you're a mentor for for your friend, because I think a lot of people are just not aware of the need for having leadership training when you're hired as as a manager or a leader. And, you know, it's great that people are actually asking you. So this is amazing. Michelle, do you have an idea on maybe a story that you could tell us about one of your how you've been able to have the success that you've had with leadership training? Yeah, so it's a combination of training and coaching. And we were working with an organization right now who is scaling. And part of that scaling means that they're looking at increasing the revenue going from a two million dollar business to a ten million dollar business. And that that in of itself is tricky. When you have people that do they understand the vision, the purpose for the organization. And so this woman owned business has wonderful people on her team. However, they're not all. So let's use the boat analogy. They're all in the boat, but they're not rowing in unison. There's there's challenges, there's conflict. They're not working together. They don't understand their roles and responsibilities. And so while these they have great team members and teammates as part of this business. They're not positioned to scale. They don't have the processes in place, they don't have the roles and responsibilities delineated for the different individuals, they don't know how to handle conflict. And then they, the leaders of the business, are not showing up in a way to navigate where they should go and how they should get there. Wow. So so what when you come in to talk to them, obviously you find out what's wrong and then what's what's the first step. So they had no information on the roles and responsibilities of each of the team members. That's that's that's correct. Now it's not good. And so the first step is usually some type of assessment. Now, Jane, you and I were talking about the assessments are great. It gives you some insight to what's happening, what's happening, what's going sideways, where should they focus first? And provided they have their mission and their vision, they know where they're headed. And that and that they actually had that. They also we did a values exercise. So what is the organization's values? So do they have the right people or are they aligned with the people on the bus? Do they have the right people with the right values on the bus? Are they working with the right clients? And there were some situations where they weren't necessarily working with the right clients because quality is their number one value. And then they were doing projects for companies where those companies were cost focus and they were spending money, their own money on executing a project because quality was more important than the money for their clients. So that's a problem. So those assessments help drive what's going on in the business and where should we focus first? So what are those goals that we need to tackle and the actions? So a 90 day action plan to determine how we're going to get where we need to be and what? I mean, there's so many things you can do in a business, right? So you can't do all the things. What's going to make the most impact right now and how do you fix those things and then move further down the list? Oh, wow. So you do do a directional evaluation as well as just finding out their values and who the people are that are working there. So so how do you work getting them to prioritize and make sure that is that with the values that you use, they use to find out what direction they should go and and what happens when you help them? Like how does it increase their income and business, though? There's a few pieces to that. The first piece is the profit and payback assessment. So they take that assessment, they take a value assessment and those will help us determine what their values are, what challenges exist in their business in order for us to ascertain where we should start. That's provided that they have their vision and mission already. If they don't have that and they don't know where they're headed and why, we start there and then build the values and then determine the goals, which ultimately creates that action plan and the action plan and that that 90 day action plan, as it's measurable, it has dates. This is what you need to do in order to get where you need to go. That's that's the start of it. Yeah, that's amazing. Thank you. Because you were saying that you were able to increase million for one of your clients by working with this. What do you think really helped the most for them in their action plan to increase their income in the millions? I mean, that's an amazing case study that you have. So they're still in process. They're not they're not to 10 million. They're moving the needle, right? They're moving the needle in the right direction from two million to three. But the the way to do that, there's an amazing book. So those business owners that that need some assistance right now and there are some people like to do it on their own or some type. Sometimes they need help or they come to you or I write there's a book called Profit First. And you need to know your numbers, meaning where where are you spending your money? Do you understand your cash flow? Have you assessed what's coming in? What's going out? Are you looking at I mean, making more money is important, but it's just as important to see what you're spending it on and and how you're spending it. Should you be spending it? What is your what are your expenses look like? And have you captured that information and done the analysis to see where you need to go, what you need to cut? Are you paying yourself because so many businesses say, well, I just need more sales, I need more sales? Well, sales don't necessarily translate into profit if you're not managing your expenses. Right. I didn't realize you were that practical. That's awesome, because I'm also a practical person having and being in business with my husband. We are all the time looking at your numbers, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So this is very exciting to know that just by defining your values and finding out what the people are in your team, you can help with the communication. So what do you do with the leader? Do you do any private coaching with them as well just to make sure they're on track or have you in this specific example? What we did was have a leader, the leader, and what's working within their team, what's not working within their team. What do they see happening? Going well, going sideways, almost almost like treating it like a lessons learned current state. What's what's what's happening right now. And one of the the pieces of advice that I. Give to the business owners and I'm working with provided they have a team of people underneath them, is to ask these three questions. These three questions are game changers. The first question is and this is so let's let's assume the leader, the business owner is the CEO or let's assume they're the CEO. And let's say they have a team of eight or 10 people. The CEO can sit down one on one with each member of their team and ask these three questions. What should I start doing? What should I stop doing? And what should I continue doing? And so that then gives them information to understand. What their team may be, what they're their subordinate, what that's the team member, how they feel about what's going on in the business and if they're doing something wrong or if they're doing something right, is there some sort of pet peeve or are they bothered in some way? And if they ask this question on a regular basis, they get the information to change behavior, to change their own behavior, to get the results from the teammates that are on their team head in the right direction. Wow, that sounds great. And of course, you must make make it a safe environment for the team to get together. And well, obviously, the team and each team member and the leader would get together. Personally, I don't think they'd want to to hear any pet peeves and things in a team environment. But I'm sure you make a good environment for for all these conversations and show them to show them how to do it and make sure it's safe. Good environment for them today. I like to ask especially leadership coaches and advisors, what with the pandemic, how? Well, you know, right now, I mean, you don't really need to change what you're doing, but what are you finding in the in the time right now in terms of there must be a lot of anxiety from the leaders that you have to calm. And obviously, they've probably laid off a few people. I don't know. But you're in the environment. How's it going with leaders right now in terms of the pandemic? Have you have you been able to work with them and help them ease their fears and all that kind of thing these days? So I think there is a there's a fair amount of fear that's taking place. But that's also there's an opportunity for growth. So it's not necessarily all fear based. It depends on how you use what lens you use. I suppose there are there are individuals that are leaders that that certainly have had to to let go staff. And I've seen this done well and I've seen this done poorly. The ones that are doing it well are having if if they have an environment, a positive culture, a positive climate, and they have an environment to trust, they're able to share. So here's here's an example. One of the leaders that I've seen do this really well has said I've never been in a pandemic before. I don't know how to handle this. I'm going to do the best I can. I'm going to be open and up front with you. I am really attempting to save everybody's jobs and we are going to cut costs. We're going to minimize how much we spend in other areas in order to keep the jobs to keep you on the team. And the minute that I feel that we're going to have to do something different, I will let you know. And that's the best I can do, is keep you in the loop, keep you keep open communication and keep the trust that I have with you today. And so that's that and the opposite. What I've seen some leaders do is shut down, not communicate. They are paralyzed by the fear and they're not sharing information or they cut a team member or two without the open dialogue. And then that puts the rest of the team on notice, like, oh, maybe I got to find another job. Oh, maybe I need to go somewhere else. So I think those are two very good examples of a good way to do it and the not so good way to do it. Yeah, that's great. Those are great examples. Thank you, Michelle, because, you know, a lot of people are thinking about this right now. And certainly there's hope in the future and we'll be happy to be working later. But I'm going to finish off here with showing people your assessment and where it's located. Maybe you could. And they can also see your information about yourself. Maybe you could just mention a bit about the assessment and what it's assessing. Of course. Of course, though, this is the profit and payback assessment. And the what it is assessing is where are you at in your business? It talks about the money, the profitability of your business. It talks about vision and values, which we cover here today. It talks about your team. How, what, how how are you working with your team? Are you getting the most out of your people? And so and it also talks about your commitment to actually do anything about those areas that might be not so great in your business so that it is a what we like to call We would like to call this the you are here mall map for your business right now, if I know and a lot of people are going to all these days. But if you are in the mall and you go to the map, you have the little dot of, oh, I'm right here. So that is our way of helping businesses figure out where they're at in their business profitability and payback with their team. Oh, awesome. Awesome. Thank you, Michelle. I know. I know the time is is is about to expire and you're very busy. So thank you for coming today on this. Very illuminating for me. I appreciate you talking about the pandemic. Even though it'll be going away. There's still leadership issues when it comes to in any crisis. So thank you very much for coming. And thank you, Michelle. Thank you so much for having me, Jane. I really appreciate it. Yeah. So thank you. Thanks a lot, Michelle and next time we'll be talking more in depth about leadership with Michelle, because I've got her. I'm hoping to come back in January with me. So thank you, Michelle. You can check out Michelle's free assessment at http:// profit and payback.Com, or for those who you need to spell it, it's http colon, backslash, backslash p r o f i t a n dpay b a ck dot com. Thank you for listening. For more on finding your purpose, go to https:// finding your purpose TV dot com and you can find us on Roku and finding your purpose as well. You can find us on YouTube. Look for finding your purpose. See you there.

Hello, this is Jane Gardner of finding your purpose, and today we're on a mission to create awareness that being self-aware of your personality and your purpose in life, can you make you more intentional in your actions and bring you more success in your business, your relationships and your life? So let's go. Welcome, everybody. This is Jane Gardner of Finding Your Purpose TV, and today I'm so excited to have another purpose driven business person on Spotlight for finding your purpose TV. And today it is Patrick Reilly. Welcome, Patrick. Patrick is an executive coach and consultant with more than twenty five years of experience supporting leaders. And I'm really excited because I love talking about leadership and he's looking to develop their executive presence so people listen and learn when they speak. So welcome. Patrick, I just want to say hello. Hello, Patrick. Nice to see you. How are you? Yes, it's a great day. It looks wonderful there. That's for sure. Patrick, I'd like to know how you got to the journey where you are now talking about leadership. That would be great. Sure, you know, it's very interesting, I sort of fell into it to a certain extent, I had a business opportunity that that showed up many years ago and I was invited to work on what at the time was an extremely large organizational change and consulting project. And it was it was really the biggest thing at the time. And it was a lot, quite frankly, I would say I was in way over my head, but they needed resources and apparently I was a quick learner. So that's how literally how I got started. And the other thing I would say that I think pertains to our conversation is that even though at the time what we did was called organizational consulting, it had a lot of the elements of what we call executive coaching today. So it was kind of a blended situation. And what I would say then and what I would say now and certainly you can see it today in many ways in our current world, is how much impact quality leadership has and that when you have a quality leader or leaders, things get done, things get done. Well, the world moves ahead. People have a better, better lives in front of them. And when you have ineffective leadership, things don't go so well. The problems become worse. They multiply. And so to me, when you have someone who is leading an organization or leading pieces of an organization and when they set a good direction that people can follow, want to follow, are excited about following, you can really get a lot of good stuff done, whether it's in the government, whether it's in industry, whether it's in business, whether it's in the nonprofit arena and anything, any place in our societies where it requires more than an individual to get things done. Good leadership makes a very, very big difference. And so I'm about making a difference and helping others to make a difference. And I really find myself ideally suited as being a catalyst, if you would, to helping leaders move themselves ahead and become better at what they do. So then does that answer your question, yeah, that's that's great, that's so exciting because I love talking about leadership. I'll just tell you a quick story in that you would probably be able to know the answer to. When I was working as a drafter, I worked in an engineering firm and it was a pretty crippled environment. And I was wondering if you have any stories on how you helped leaders to do help. I mean, it's not just a leader. It's it's the whole environment and the team and the landscape there would be wonderful if you could give us a story or two or. OK, well, you know, interestingly enough, a subset of what it is that I do is I actually have a niche specialty that I practice sometimes where I work with leaders who are very good at what they do, but are not very good into relating to other people. And so there's a there's a number of occasions where I've worked with people and I have one story at the top of my head. I was working with this gentleman. He was a very effective salesperson in the technology space and he had been recruited to another company. His boss had moved there. And so he used people die for killer salespeople and he knew how to sell. He also had developed an expertise in the industry vertical that the new company had moved into. So he was brought in and he just didn't know how to talk to people in the new environment. And in fact, the very first meeting that I went to with his team at the first break, I was shocked to see a number of people scurry outside and it was warm out and they picked up their cell phones and I asked them what they were doing and they were all calling their people because of some things that he'd said and done in the meeting. And even though he got results, he got them in a way that really alienated people. And in particular, he just didn't know how to adjust to the culture in the new organization, which was much more team oriented consensus building. And I remember him saying to me quite a number of times, he said, well, this used to work where it was before. He says, I'm a senior vice president. I figure things out and make a decision and boom, we go. And he says here, it drives me nuts because I get that. And then I have to go to my bosses meeting and I have other PR executive vice presidents and they started asking me questions about this. And can you do that? And why can't we do that? And it's it's driving me out of my mind. But I'll never forget the day that. And so he is his job was on the line. So I'll never forget the day that we were having a meeting at a hotel restaurant just outside of Chicago. And I'll have to say this in a polite way, because I'm not going to use some of the words he used. They're not in the dictionary. But he said to me, he said, look, you said you mean to tell me we've talked to all these people on my team. You interview people, you use these assessments. And you mean to tell me that if I start to talk to my employees the way that I talk to my wife and daughter, that that's it. They want me to do that. If I do that and I talk like that. And so we went through this about three different times. He gave me this look and I said, yes, Mark. That's correct. And he knew because I'd been around him and I'd seen him talk to his wife and daughter. And he was very polite, very respectful, solicitous. And finally he looks at me and he goes, You're not kidding me, are you? And I said, No, I'm not kidding. You only did. But finally, he kind of got after the third time that that was it. And. Now, this part is my imagination to say this specifically, this gentleman is of color, he's African-American. I still remember his face in my mind turning red when that happened. Now, that's not possible. It's not physiologically possible. But what happened is he had this moment of epiphany and realization that. He knew how to do something. He knew how to communicate very well. He knew how to do that with his wife and daughter. I will say one part of his family and what he didn't realize and didn't know how to do was to talk in the same respectful way to the people who worked for his team. And it blew his mind and he was totally capable of it. He just didn't see that he needed to do that and that his world changed and the world of his team and the world in that part of his company changed as a result of the work we did. And so he went from being a leader that people wanted to get rid of, were irritated with or upset with, had a lot of, I'll say, nonconstructive conversations with and about when he got the idea and he started to practice speaking respectfully, the world that he inhabited changed, and he became a much more effective and impactful leader who understood his his purpose as a leader, much better. So that's one that comes to mind. Well, that's that's amazing. Well, now I'm pretty sure I mean, it's quite a compelling moment. Yes, of course. I did confess that. I do remember his face turned red, which I know is possible, but it was a signature moment. I think he realized that. That's excellent. So so what is your process, your three areas of how you talk to get the leader to start getting the team to work together with them and that kind of thing? I know, because it's all different for many different processes, so it'd be great. So there's a number of things is that one thing at inception is that all leaders need to do some work and figure out what's their leadership style, because it's not a one size fits all kind of thing. And I look like I look a clearly Caucasian male. I've got a few air-to-air on the tires, et cetera. I've worked in certain places, so which by definition means I've not worked in other places. I've had a certain background and growing up. So I have to be myself and bring what I know forward. Right. So the first thing is I have to figure out my style is and the second thing I would say is that people are always looking for direction, if you want to call it vision from their leader, which is how do we do things here? How are you going to do things? And if we follow the lead that you set, what's the payoff? What are we going to get both personally and professionally from working with you? And have you created a vision and strategy for moving forward that we want to follow? And that's going to make a difference. Most of us want to do work that makes a difference. We want to solve problems. We want to help people. If you work in a technology company building a new product that people think is cool, want to pay for us is one thing. If you work in a biotech company, those people are driven primarily by two things that they really want to advance science and they want to build products that help patients. So it's your mother, my mother, your aunt, et cetera. They want to do that. If you're in the construction business, you want to put together a building that people will use and feel good about using. Right. So if you build a hospital and you do a good job of that, you built a place that helps the doctors and the medical staff take patients and help them. Right. So people want to be engaged in work where they feel like they're learning things. They're using their best self and they're making some they're making a difference and they're making things happen. And that's what turns people on. So it's up to the leader to think about what is it? Here's a simple way of learning to think about it. What are the tasks that we are responsible for as a team? What is it my boss or the organization has given us to do? And what are the capabilities we have to get those tasks done? What's the gap between the two and how do we attend to that by either importing additional capabilities, building some new skills and capabilities so that we have the right skills and capabilities relative to the tasks. And then part of my work is as the leader is getting the team, the right team in place and getting the team to gel. So they work together and then providing this direction forward so that people seize the phrase that people use a lot today. Today's North Star is I have to articulate or depict the North Star for the teams so they know and go, wow, that's cool or that's interesting. That really looks like something I want to work towards and work on. And that's a great use of my time and energy. So that's what I think has to do. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Knowing what the vision is and what direction you're going really helps, I think, for a team and so that people don't have motivation. And yeah, you have to motivate them for sure and respect them, otherwise they won't. So I'm going to give you a tough question because I am going to talk about the pandemic. And there are a lot of companies in crises and they're all scared. And as a executive coach and consultant, I'd like to find out what you feel you could do to help a company, because, of course, they'll have to be hiring, be switching and et cetera, et cetera. So it's quite an unusual time. But I have to ask, OK, well, you would not be the first person who's asked me that question if it is ever present at the moment. Right. And so so the thing that I hear mostly is people say, well, here's part of the problem. One is it's hard to be connected now. Right. There's so much noise around and tumult that there's so many things. So there is the pandemic and then there's the economy that's faltered. And they have a lot of people who are out of work. And you have a lot of fear and anxiety. And people report that they're way more exhausted than usual. So there's so much stress that people are fatigued so that that's a piece. But what I hear are two or three prevailing themes, if you would. One is around connection. So many of us are not working together anymore. We're working remotely or some people are at the office and some people are not. And so how do you go about getting connected? Because almost no work is done today except by a team. Right. So you have to how do you get them connected? And then if you if you reference the Google study from a number of years ago, once you do that, how do you create an atmosphere, ambience of psychological safety? Because that based on the data or the research, that's the single most important factor to team productivity. People have to feel safe so they can speak up, ask questions, maybe say something that's maybe other people disagree with or may seem as a dumb idea. Right. So they have to be able to do that. The second piece is that there's a real drop in production here that not just from the leaders, but which surprised me is from the members of their teams. They just don't feel that they can get as much done. Now, some people are more productive working on their own. Some people are not. However, at the end of the day, if in order to get a product out the door to deliver a service, I have to work with you, Jane, and 12 other people just being productive on my own, is not it? So we have to find a way to bring the resources together and create the product or service in the delivery system to make that happen. So that's a that's a big piece. And then the third piece that I hear is that people have lost the edge that they have for innovation, that people are not able to quite as easily or quickly think about what's next, what can we build, how do we do that? What's the next kind of food or application or delivery service that people are going to want and that so many people are limited in that capacity right now. Now, the flip side of that is, ironically, there's always someone who profits from a downside. So a couple of things. You see that zoom, which they're doing gangbusters and peloton and home exercise equipment are doing great. And also, you see, the hardware business is is doing fabulous. Right, because people are just. Well, I. Told you earlier, I'm doing some painting on my house right now, but that's a big business and another one I have a client that's in the RV business, and believe it or not, that is one of the most booming businesses in North America at the moment because people are not able to take vacations or they're more concerned about it and they still want to take vacation. So that's a way to take a vacation, get out of the house, get away from home and be safe within your own four walls, if you would. So, yeah, that's that's wow. I mean, I think I think all they have to do is get you to speak about what's next and innovation. And they should be getting going on that because I think a lot of things are changing. But as you know, if you look at historic studies of innovation, there are a lot of it comes because there's the right set up or the context for it. Right. If you don't have the right people with the right skills and experience and you don't create an atmosphere or climate where they can think and prosper individually, collectively, there's no innovation. Right. And the world moves ahead because we're always looking for the next thing. It's just in human nature. And well, case in point, if I think about the very first Apple computer I had and the IT and the tool that I'm talking to you on today, there's there's it's like light years difference is what happens and what can happen and all that sort of stuff. So where once we get to a certain level with a with a product or service, we want the next thing felt like that. So that is that is the one answer. Yeah, that's wonderful. I didn't even think of connections being the important thing right now. I do know that obviously a lot of people are have certain companies that are doing well. But I think every company should and should get some advice from you in terms of what you know, so they don't get stuck wondering what to cover everyone. But because it's just like you, I got one hundred and sixty eight hours a week. OK, well, I think I think we'll maybe talk about your your offer to everybody. If you don't mind. I'm going to put the screen up and this is wonderful that you're here. I have a feeling you're going to be really your website's going to be just amazing and talking about all these challenges we're going to have in the next few months. And you were mentioning that you are interested in free 30 minute consult. You're welcome to look who's welcome to talk to you about that. Is this anyone who's an executive leader who is thinking that they may need to develop some insight to see things differently or better develop some new perspectives to to move their organization forward and something that we haven't touched on? I just. Yeah, please to is to me, it's an essential element. Here is what I call a development of executive presence in that. If I want you to listen to me, if I want my team to listen to me, if I want a number of vendors and suppliers and regulators and other other people in the marketplace to listen to me, I have to find a way to bring myself forward that you want to listen and that a large number of people want to listen to what I have to say. If I want to have impact as a leader. And it's not always the only element, but it is the sole element. Excuse me, but it is always an element of what it takes to get a wider audience of people to pay attention and to listen to me. And so I spent a lot of time working and studying with my mentor in this area. His name is Bob Sadler, as well as other folks. And what I found is that there are three core components that a leader has to develop for her or himself in order to. Increase their gravitas to be someone that people listen to or want to listen to, and so let me articulate that one clearly is in the language that you used. So it's in the diction and the pace of what you say. So you have to be able to say what you're saying in a way that the audience can understand it. And you have to be clear, you can't use too many words, but you have to tell the full story. So it's about. The structure and the pacing of what you say so that people want to hear what's being said. Second piece. Has to do with your body and how you use that, because a lot of our enthusiasm and energy comes through our body, even though now most of that is happening through video. Right. Or some some tool or other. And you're not seeing me in person. I'm not seeing you in person. There's still something about energy which that's something clearly that actors learn to to to use. Right. You learn how to tell a story, if you would, through your physical body. And the third piece is, is there kind of close? I see them as different. Is is some of it is the the way you use your body to deliver a message and the energy that comes from you in the delivering of that. And just if I can make fun, people sometimes will will mock people from certain cultures because they talk so much with their hands that it's distracting. On the other hand, when you just sit there and nothing moves, it's distracting in a different way. So a big piece of using myself is in a way that others want to listen or will want to listen is the words how I say them. Are they pronounced clearly and is it said at a pace where you can digest and ingested? And the second piece is the language of my body to talk about that. And the physical piece of it. So those are the three. So that's a lot of what it is that we have to work on in order to get people to. If you would, listen to a news story or a revised story so that they want to pay attention and follow our lead. Oh, wow. That's a big piece of it. Does it make sense? Yeah, that makes sense. And I didn't think of it as being that important. But you're right, a lot of times people ignore the leader when they're when they don't have a presence. So I didn't think of that. I'll think about it just like some some newscaster. And some of them are like, wow, she's interesting. And other people like her. But I'm changing the channel. Or certain actors and actresses, they get they they're in front of us, whether it's on stage or on video or TV. And they draw us in by what they say, how they interact with people, their movement of their body. And that's part of what we have to learn to do so that people want to hear the story we have. Really, that's that's it. And another aspect of it then, in terms of the words is, do you have a story? That people want to hear that makes sense to them, like the story I told you about the gentleman who worked with a number of years ago who was just wasn't very respectful to his team or his staff and that people were not following him. And so he had to learn how to speak respectfully. So that's a story that depicts for people what we're talking about. And it's in this telling of the story and the telling it of, well, that draws people in and they go, huh? Let me listen to that guy, Patrick. He's got he's got some ideas worthy of paying attention to. Right. Right. So, yeah, I didn't think of that component for leadership. So that's that's very interesting. Critical, isn't it? And yes, I still have to whether if I'm a lawyer, I have to be a good lawyer. If I'm a software developer, I have to be good at that. If I'm an engineer, it builds hospitals. I have to be good at that. So that is necessary for me to get the job. But those domain skills or expertise are not sufficient for me to be the quality leader of the people who were doing the job right. I would call it evolution of an individual as a leader. Right. So you wouldn't hire me, for example, to to to make chicken sausages for you if I didn't know something about that and I had demonstrated some expertise. And then you'd been at a barbecue somewhere and you said, wow, those are the best sausages I've ever had. Who makes them your friends? And they all go to Patrick Riley's sausage house. That's where you get them. And if you wanted to learn more about that, you would talk to me, because I would obviously have some expertise in that. But if I then said, wow, these are good and I want to build a company around quality organic chicken sausages. My role has to change over time because I have to set a direction, as I said before, I have to get the resources. I have to know about how to build a business, what you do, where the money comes from, how to manage the money. And then I have to figure out who are the people I have to hire, what positions or roles do I need for them to play, and then how do I get them to gel or coalesce or work together so that we have an efficient and effective operation? And then. If it's a business, it's not enough for me to just sell my chicken sausages to you and your five friends, I've got to make it much bigger in order for it to be economically viable for me and and all the people that work for me. So, yeah, you're obviously hungry. Yeah, I can always, always about. But I just I do want to mention and have you express I like the idea of yourself calling yourself anethnographer, because I think that's really important in the culture of teams and to understand culture for sure. So ethnography is what is is the study of culture. Right. And I say this all the time, right? So if you were to get me a little nice little airplane and drop me somewhere in the middle of China tomorrow, I would know immediately that I was in a different culture because the people would look different than I do. Right. And then also people, depending what most likely would be speaking Mandarin or some dialect thereof. And I'd go, oh, I'm I must be in China. Right. And that means by definition, that I'm not in Canada or the United States. And so the rules of the game or the norms of the culture are going to be different. The foods that people eat, the distances that people keep in public are different. The habits that are endemic to the culture are different than they would be in Canada or the United States, for example. Right. On the other hand, my opinion is that is located near Silicon Valley, outside of San Francisco, that if you plunk me into a tech company right in the morning and tech company B in the afternoon, the people might look very similar and most of them will be speaking in English and they're building technical products. On the other hand, when you sit and observe, what you notice is that the rules of the game are very different. If you spend enough time. What how people say things, what? OK, it's not OK who you talk to, how do you talk to people who are just as different as they would be between being in China or Canada? It's just that. It's a little more subtle, and so in order to be helpful as an executive coach or consultant, you actually have to become really good at what I call observational intelligence. That's my own phrase. Interestingly, it's made up, but essentially what it means is I have to be able to see hot. So when she says that. What does that mean here? How is that taken and how is that understood? I recall one time when I was introduced to the first time to work at a big health care organization, the gentleman who hired me, he stopped at the door and he said. Do you know about the nod and I said I looked and I was like, no, I thought, geez, I missed something here. And he says, Well, let me tell you about the nod. And he said, so the nod here in our organization means this, it means that you're in a meeting with me or meeting with a bunch of us and everything's great, Jane. That's terrific, Frank. That's really good, Coolio. OK, great. And then I walk out the door and I nod my head and then I make a derogatory comment. So the point being is that in that culture, not everything you see and hear is exactly what people think and feel. So you have to be able to pick up on the disparity and get clarity about what people's real thoughts and feelings are. So in order to help. A leader to effectively navigate in their environment. That's a piece of what they have to touch on. And this is also, as I said to you earlier when we were talking, is is sort of a new aspect or component of my thinking is that for leaders to be really effective in understanding the culture and understanding the ethnography, I think there's three core components that they have to know and understand and figure out how they work together. And those three things in my mind are one we've touched on, which is what are the what are the norms, attributes of the culture we're in? What are the rules of the game here? Secondly, what are the politics at play in the organization? And I don't necessarily mean that in a negative way, because I know that politics these days often has a negative meaning or connotation for folks. What does that mean? It means this. It means how do I talk to this person there to get things done? Do I have to go and speak to the people who report to her first and get them to sell her on this? Is it OK for me to speak up, given my role in a senior executive meeting or not? So to me, it's how do I go about in influence and create impact that's effective in this culture? So to me, that's the politics of it. And then the third piece, if I want to be effective, is. How do I conduct myself? And the answer is fairly simple, as I say one thing and then I do that, but how do I behave in a way that engender trust? And so when cognizant of the culture, when I'm aware of the rules of the game of politics in my organization or the organization I'm in, and how do I influence and impact and then what do I do and say to build trust so that people follow me when I put those three together. Right. Triangle of power, I can be much more effective and influential as a leader. So to me. But you. You have to observe that it's not something that you study in school, and so it requires a different kind of you could say, yes, there's some components of emotional and social intelligence. But I also would say that I would add another element that I call observational intelligence that a leader has to develop so that she or he knows how to be successful to navigate the landscape there. That's all right. It's not easy being fully facetious, but. Yeah, Sam, you help. Yes, actually, they would not be getting their money's worth when they are getting the value if I didn't help them with that. So, yes, a big I mean, if you would, the two core components of the work that I do with leaders and there are other pieces with helping them to develop your executive presence and then also increasing their awareness and ability to apply the integration of the trust to the political landscape and the culture. So. And. That requires learning some new things and then engaging in deliberate practice, so you get better at that. So the more you do those things, you have more success more often. So you're hitting the ball or in your court, you're hitting the puck better. More often. My culture, yes. So I just won. One last question. Interesting question for the norms and the culture. And some sometimes it's not working. And and so you try and assess that and then give the leader direction as to how to make it wor

Hello, this is Jane Gardner of finding your purpose, and today we're on a mission to create awareness that being self-aware of your personality and your purpose in life, can you make you more intentional in your actions and bring you more success in your business, your relationships and your life? So let's go. Welcome, everybody. This is Jane Gardner finding your purpose TV and today on finding your purpose Spotlight, we're talking to Jann Freed, PhD. Sorry, my apologies to Dr. Jan Freed, Ph.D. She was a college professor of business management and leadership. And after 30 years as a tenured professor and endowment chair, she started an encore career as a leadership development and change management consultant. And she is the author of several books and co-author of a list of five books. And her last book is Leading with Wisdom Sage Advice from One Hundred Experts, which we'll be talking about. And we'll also be talking about her new book. So, Jann, welcome. Welcome. Please just say hello and say hello.

I'm pleased to be here. And it was nice to make a connection with Jane. And thank you very much for inviting me to your show. Oh, thank you.

Thank you. Jan, one of the things that I love to talk about with people is finding their purpose. And obviously, you've been doing your purpose for a long time. So but I'd like to talk about your new purpose, which is the Leadership Development and change management consultant and how you got to that journey, because, of course, you previously were in academics. So thank you. How did that happen?

Yeah, well, it's interesting. So I fell into higher education teaching and absolutely loved it, had a lot of different courses. And but I had to drive two hours a day, an hour each way to get to my work and. When my kids graduate from college, my husband said, you know, we can afford to take a risk, you're tired of driving. And I wanted to I was at the stage of my life where I want to give back to the community. And I couldn't give back to the community where I live because I worked out of town and I couldn't give back to where I worked because I lived out of town. So I had to make a change and I have not looked back. Fortunately, I was able to teach a graduate leadership course for a different university for the past 10 years. So I kept my foot into teaching. And as a leadership development person, you know, I do workshops, I do speaking, I do some coaching. And it's really the same skill set that I enjoyed so much when I was teaching full time. So I eliminated grading papers, which is always kind of the hardest part about teaching. So I don't have to do that. And I can still use some of the same skills and I have just loved it. And so that's kind of been my journey taking really kind of taking the same skills that I like to use, but to a different audience.

Oh, wow. Yeah, that's great. And I guess you probably started writing books when you were in academics because that's probably one of the requirements. But you're now doing maybe you could tell us when you started your leadership book, Leading with Wisdom and that you're writing a new one. And what what we can claim from that.

I know that's that's good, Jane. I really started the leadership book. I was on sabbatical in two thousand or two thousand five, and my oldest son was graduating from high school and I wanted to be home more with since that was his last year home. But in order to get a sabbatical, I had a research project. So I started this project. And it's kind of interesting. I met Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, and he was speaking at a big presentation, giving a big presentation where I live. And I was able to kind of chat with him afterwards. And in talking with him, he said, give me a call. We'll talk about this, because I asked if I could be an apprentice, if I could come study under him. I said I was going to be on sabbatical and I wanted to learn from him. Would that be possible? And he said, well, I've never had anybody asked me that before. So he said, why don't you give me a call? So I called him and we had a conversation and he said, you know, you don't need to come learn from me. He said, let's just talk about what it is you want to do. So he asked me several questions and I said, well, I love to interview people. I love to you know, leadership is my focus. I had I held an endowed chair in leadership and character development. And so I said, that's my focus. I love to interview people. And he said, well, everybody's he said there are a lot of people writing leadership books and everybody's got the seven habits of this or the ten principles of that. And he said no one's really tying it together. So he said, why don't you be that person? So why don't you reach out, interview some of the top people and analyze the data and tie it together. So I set off on this journey and it says Sage advice from one hundred experts. But I really interviewed more than one hundred people. And I continue to interview people. It's just kind of a hobby. And I have a blog and I have a podcast series called Becoming a Sage. And you can learn more about that on my website. But so I started interviewing these people and that was about in twenty five and about 2010, I was now maybe nine twenty nine. I was done interviewing people basically for the book and I started analyzing the data and then I started contacting publishers. And the book was published by ATT Association for Training and Development. And each chapter is a theme that emerged out of the research. And so I'm really proud of the book because I think it's timeless, it's not it's not really what I think it's what I learned from interviewing what I think some of the top thought leaders in the field, some of these people have now are now deceased, such as Warren Benis and William Bridges, a real expert on transitions. Angelas, Arean, I integrate a lot of different areas of which I looked for experts, but I think it's timeless what I learned and we can talk more about that. So anyway, that's about sage advice from one hundred. Oh, well, yeah. So it's actually it's actually quite an older book in the in that year, you know, before what the Internet is now.

So that's awesome because some good is great. I've got that upstairs and I haven't read it yet, so I'm going to have to read it now that, you know, you have met him at this point. The phrase good to go you here. You're talking about that. Yeah, right.

Oh, yeah. It was published in 2013. But I really do think the methodology that I used and the analysis that I did, I really think it's timeless. And what's interesting, Jane, is my driving question. I had I really only had five questions and then I would probe. But my driving question was, how can I best prepare people to be the kinds of leaders needed in these uncertain times? Since the book was published, the times have only become more uncertain. So I think the time the book is even more relevant now than when it was published.

Oh, yeah, I've got the book and I haven't read it yet, so we'll be talking at another time again about the book and leadership. But but for now, maybe we could just have a quick summary of maybe well, it's some of the top tips from the leaders that you also use in your practice. Obviously, when you're doing your change management, leadership development that you've incorporated into your own training, that would be great.

Yeah, well, again, I know this is on your website, but if if listeners go to my website. Yeah, you can download my top ten tips for leading during crises and they really come out of my book. But what I would share right now is the fact that leaders during this pandemic, the critical skills or what we call the soft skills, and these are the skills that are often not taught in business schools, in business courses, you know, maybe in organizational behavior or leadership. But the soft skills are those that are hard to they're qualitative. They're not quantitative. They're I say the answers are not in the back of the book. So the soft skills are those interpersonal dynamic relationships skills. And when I'm doing workshops and courses and teaching and coaching, I emphasize that leadership is not about a position, it's not about a title, it's about a relationship. And so there is not a time when relationships and creating and cultivating and sustaining and nurturing relationships are there's not a time that's better than right now because anxiety is high emotional. Everybody's on edge, emotions are very fragile. Leaders need to pay attention to these relationships and leaders don't have to have answers. They need to just listen to what people need and reach out and check in. One of the things that I emphasize in my coaching is for leaders to just check in. You don't have to have an agenda. It doesn't have to be a meeting. Just check in and find out how are people doing, what are they willing to share? And based on what they're willing to share, then you as a leader can determine what they need. I think that's critical during during these times.

So, yeah, that's for sure. That's that's very exciting. I'm so glad that you're in a certain place that I am in terms of leadership. I think it's very important to have those those soft skills. And you're right, they don't teach it in school. I'm not sure why, but maybe you know why.

But there are forces. I mean, I when I go full time, I taught organizational behavior, which is a you know, a soft skill for leaders. But what I think is interesting and for your listeners, they can Google this. But at Stanford, there's a course called it's known as the touchy feely course, and it's in the Stanford MBA program. And it's it's like the most popular course on campus because of the reputation it has received over the years. And if your listeners Google this, if they just Google Stanford, touchy feely course, Stanford has just now their faculty are taking it on the road to corporations because those skills are so desperately needed. Right. And it's it's interesting to me that these are the skills that are lacking in the workplace right now. And when people are stressed and they're under when leaders are stressed and under anxiety and, you know, it's easy to forget that these are the skills that are needed. And if you don't feel comfortable practicing these skills, leaders are likely not to use them when they're needed most. So Stanford's taking this course on the road, and I find that very interesting. There was a recent article in The Wall Street Journal that talks about this saying,

wow, I have to check that one out for sure. I had had a discussion with people. Hopefully this isn't too I mean, you know, about culture and how there's a problem with cultural differences when you're a leader. And obviously to do leadership, you need to be able to coach them on understanding different cultures for sure. Just wondering if you could just speak briefly on that, because it's something people don't really talk about, because it's sort of.

In a way, for some right now, it's kind of interesting because, again, as you mentioned in the introduction, I taught for 30 years at an undergraduate, it was a liberal arts, small liberal arts college. And we only had undergraduate courses there. And I created a course. Now, I've been gone for 10 years. So but when I was there for twenty five years, I taught a diversity course and I called it managing and valuing cultural diversity. And then I created this whole course. And really every year when I would teach it, I would say to the students, I hope there's a year when this course is no longer needed because people just value diversity. They get it, they appreciate it. And of course, we've seen with the Black Lives Matter and women me too movement, we see where these skills are still lacking big time. Yeah. So it's kind of interesting that I taught this course for twenty five years now. What's ironic about it is these kinds of courses, people who tend to take these kinds of courses tend to already appreciate diversity. So you're kind so sometimes you're preaching to the choir for the majority of students. They love this. They love it. But in that cause, I talked about every aspect of diversity that we had, a very broad umbrella. Diversity was a broad umbrella that under this umbrella we would talk about age, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity for sure, social status. We got into look ism. Yeah, that's great. I'm forgetting that we really talked about a wide variety of disability or very important. And then I would say they had to do a lot of reading. They had to do a lot of writing, they had to journal. And on every topic, I would bring in a guest speaker because I said to the students in the syllabus, I said, I'm a white woman. I'm a straight heterosexual white woman. I cannot speak from personal experience, from all these different aspects, so I would bring in a guest speaker and sometimes two, depending on the topic for every topic. I mean, I would bring in a former student who was blind because of an accident but had a corporate job. I would bring in people using a wheelchair. I would bring in a lesbian woman and I would bring in a lesbian couple who had kids. I would bring in someone from the Jewish perspective because the college that I taught at was faith based would from a Christian tradition. So I would bring in someone from the Jewish faith, bring in a black colleague of mine from Ethiopia, bring just a whole lot of people. And students would get their eyes open because it's so easy to just look at life and look at work from their own perspective. So to me, it was a very valuable, very moving course. And I always learned something. I would bring in at least one, if not two people living with AIDS. Oh, you know, early on when I first started teaching the course, Jane, you know, the time when people thought it was a gay,, and is how our culture has evolved since then. So it was very moving. So you're right. I mean, diversity matters. And today the whole idea is get over fears, you know, and say to the students, you don't have to understand these various aspects of diversity. You may never understand it, but you have to be respectful because you're going to be working with and for people who are different than you. And the goal is how can you be fair? And I would say to the students, we all have prejudice and figure out what they are, because if you don't acknowledge them, you can't overcome them. And I say to the students, OK, I'll share mine. I said, it's been really it's been really hard for me with tattoos because I grew up when I was younger. Tattoos were not politically correct. They weren't acceptable. And and it's become like now a fashion statement or and so I said, I've had to really overcome that. I want to be fair. And I want to be I have to realize that tattoos don't matter. And so I really had to work on that. So I think when when people like myself admit to others, I mean, we're all prejudice in some way. And but we can't overcome that if we don't acknowledge it and address it and be aware of it. That's an acknowledgement. Please be aware, because the whole goal is we need to be fair. We need to be fair. So it's amazing to me that in twenty 20, in some ways we've gone backwards. Yeah. Or some people say the conversation has started again, which, which is good.

But I do have to say my husband would probably divorce me if I got myself a tattoo because he has the same prejudice on tattoos. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway so what's so exciting is that you're writing your new book and I do not know what death through a difference is, so I'd love to speak to you to speak on that chapter because that is that is so intriguing.

I would say that answer a few questions here with that question. First of all, my book I've created this concept called Breadcrumb Legacy and Bread Crumb Legacy. I often say in workshops or courses or when I'm speaking, when do we leave our legacy? And people say, well, when we leave, OK, well, what do you mean by leave? Well, when we die, when we retire, when we leave a job. And I say that's true. All of that's very true. But we're leaving it all the time. What about when we leave this meeting? What about when I leave this interview with Jane right now? I'm leaving some breadcrumbs behind for all of your listeners, for all of your everyone in your audience. I'm leaving some bread crumbs right now. And sometimes bread crumbs are positive. Sometimes they're not so positive. And so when we're aware of this, I think we live our life more intentional and more thoughtful and respectful if we care about the trail we're leaving behind. And so my book is all about Breadcrumb Legacy. I don't really have an official title yet. I'm working on the chapters, but one of the chapters is called Death Through a Different Lens. And what this is about is and really this book is an outgrowth of my last book, Leading with Wisdom, because one of my conclusions in that book is it's hard to be a good leader if you're not a good person. So I'm kind of picking up where I left off. And so this Breadcrumb Legacy book, it's really about how to be a good leader and how to be a good person. And one of the fears, big fears in life is this whole idea of death. And so I developed a leadership course based on what I was learning during my research with leading with wisdom. And one of the things that I was learning is the sages said, you know, leaders need to learn about death, dying and grief because industries are dying, companies are dying, positions are evaporating and people are dealing with a lot of grief. And what I find fascinating is during the pandemic, death has become up close and personal. I mean, we're getting death by county, by state by country, by its death is up close and personal. And we're reading about it, hearing about it. In fact, in my local state my local newspaper there featuring every Sunday, they're featuring people who have died within the state, died from coping well. So it's kind of a take on 9/11 here, remembering these people, because they're not just numbers. It's easy to just think of them as statistics and they're not statistics or people and they have families. And so this whole concept of very this whole idea of death is very personal. And so when I really did kind of a deep dive, when the sages said you need to be teaching leaders about death, dying and grief, because these are again, these are skills not taught in business courses. And they were not skills that I taught in my qualitative soft skill courses. So I started integrating them and I found out that sharing what I was learning and really teaching people about grief. And I've got exercises and assignments and activities that they had to do. But teaching them about this, I found that students twenty to twenty two year old, it really resonated with them that when I would present papers about this at conferences, academic conferences, my colleagues, my peers would say, does this really go how does this go over with twenty to twenty two year olds? Aren't they too young to get this? And I would say no, it really resonates with them. And my theory is the earlier they have. These girls are younger, they are the better off they are, they live their life differently because so and we can go into more of that for sure. Yeah. Next time you've got so many topics to talk about. This is so narrow. And that's one thing I never thought about until I turned 50. Oh, are you going to be the younger people are when they understand this, I think the better off they are. Yeah, for sure. They do things differently.

That's so great. So this is actually going to be a leadership book in that it'll be about still about your leadership and change management and everything.

Yeah, it really it's going to kind of cross over into a couple genres in terms of leadership and human development and. Your life and you had another chapter, which, of course, is intriguing, become a nobody. I'm not sure why I would want to become a nobody. So, yeah, well, it's kind of interesting that it goes along with legacy work in terms in terms of we spend basically the first half of our life becoming somebody, whether it's in school or college in our career. We really want to become a somebody who are we become? And the last half of our life is more about becoming a nobody. It's really about, you know, one of my peers in this area, she talks about the shift from goal to role or goal to soul. So like the first half of your life, it's all about goals in the second half of your life. It's all about what role do you want to play in life or or soul? What's your soul telling you to do? And so that's really about, you know, kind of what I have become a nobody is the second half of life. It's really about what can you know, what kind of impact do you have on others or are you happy now or what do you want to have one? And that's more the soul and role versus the goal anyway. Why become a nobody is really letting go of the ego. It's not all about you anymore. It's what difference are you making? Yeah. Yeah I know, I know.

A lot of time now I'm thinking about legacy and can I make a difference. And even in a small way with other, with other people. And that's why I'm doing this as well myself, because I don't have to do this but I want to I want to leave a legacy. I want to be able to change at least some people's other lives. So. Yeah, yeah. So so I'm going to we're going to probably wrap up for today. I am definitely going to have you again because we have so much to talk about. Yeah. I think next time we'll talk about your your old book. But today I just wanted to find out from you on your website, I forgot to ask you. I didn't realize you had a podcast. So what what's that about.

And yeah, I do have a podcast called Becoming a Sage. And actually I just created a private Facebook group that people want to search. It's called Becoming a Sage, and that's about creating more of a conversation with people who want to talk about positive aging, conscious aging, leading with wisdom. That's what that's about. But I have a monthly podcast where I interview some of the top thought leaders in the field of positive aging. And if they find if they subscribe to my website, they would get it. So that's once a month. And if they Googled, if they just went to jann freed with two N's and two E's , if they went to jann freed podcast, they just Googled that my previous podcast would pop up. I had a leader, actually, I had a leadership summit last summer in June, and those are posted on my YouTube site. And I was asking really some really influencers, leaders at all ages, how they think leadership is going to change based on the pandemic. Go to my YouTube channel. They just Google jann freed YouTube or go to search search for jann freed, YouTube. Each one of those interviews is listed. I interviewed Bill George, the former CEO of Medtronic in Minneapolis. I interviewed I interviewed a variety of people, some answers who write about leadership at the University of Michigan. I interviewed a whole variety of people, some of the top executive coaches, I interviewed Sally Helgason, who writes a lot about women's leadership. She has many books out. I interviewed a lot of people and I would encourage people to go to my YouTube channel then. And that really focused on leadership. How that might change during because of the. So I'm I'm staying busy just like I don't have to do this. My mission is to continue to learn and share what I'm learning with others. And I do that writing, blogging, podcasts, and, of course, consulting for sure. So if so, if anyone wants to talk to you about leadership consulting and and change management, do they just go to your website or I would go to my website. I've got a contact page. They can just send me an email and they'd be wonderful. I'd love some. Wow. Yeah. Well, I do want to say I met Jane through Givitas.com. Yeah, that's for sure. That was started by Daniel Pink and it's all about giving and helping others. And so I want to thank Jane for helping me. And I offered to help Jane in any way possible. So, yeah, we're all we've got good good vibrations. I like yeah.

I loved Daniel Pink I've got all his books, but yeah, that giving gravitas has been really good for me and getting a lot of people to volunteer for interviewing which is great. So I'd like to thank you again for coming on today and spending some time with me and we'll be spending more time for sure. So thank you very much. OK, yeah. Thank you. H

olidays. Yes. Happy holidays. Yeah.

For a copy of Dr. Jann's book, Leading with Wisdom, go to Amazon and for free copy of the top 10 Tips for leading during crisis's, go to www.jannfreed.com and you can search for her podcast becoming a sage as well. On Facebook. She has a private Facebook group. For those who would like to talk further about becoming a sage, thank you for listening. For more on finding your purpose, go to https:// finding your purpose TV.Com and you can find us on Roku and finding your purpose as well. You can find us on YouTube. Look for finding your purpose. See you there.

Hello, this is Jane Gardner of Finding your Purpose, and today we're on a mission to create awareness that being self-aware of your personality and your purpose in life, can you make you more intentional in your actions and bring you more success in your business, your relationships and your life. So let's go. Welcome, everybody, to finding your purpose, and today it's Spotlight, where we talk to purpose driven entrepreneurs. And on today's show, we're talking to Mitchell Kraus of Capital Intelligence Associates, and he's going to be talking about leveraging your wealth and to create the world you want, which sounds like a wonderful thing. Welcome, Mitchell. Please introduce yourself.

And I'm Mitchell Kraus of Capital Intelligence Associates. I'm a wealth manager here in Santa Monica, and I've been doing this for twenty seven years now and really love working with people who believe their wealth isn't just their financial wealth, that they're trying to leverage that to create a better world and a better family and everything that they're interested in besides growing rich.

Well well, Mitchell, what I like to do is to ask you how you got to where you are, how you found the purpose that is driving your business and creating your success. So could you tell us a little history about your company? That would be great. Thanks,

Mitchell. Of course, I graduated in college and found myself in a job life insurance industry, and I learned very quickly that I was good at selling life insurance, but my job was to sell it to a lot of people who didn't need it. And as a fourth generation in the financial services business, my father and I had a conversation and I went to work at a financial planning firm which really found some great passion for because I was selling life insurance to those who needed it or really I was helping individuals create financial plans and reach those financial plans. And it was very fulfilling. But what I learned is in financial planning, the end all be all is sort of helping people retire towards that retirement. And I learned that a lot of people had other goals and needs besides just building wealth so they could retire some day. That I had clients and friends who not only wanted to take care of their nest egg in their portfolio, but they want to help their family, they want to raise their kids in a socially conscious way, they wanted to help their parents more broadly. They wanted to help various organizations, whether it's their church or their local non-profit. And their wealth wasn't, in the financial sense, designed to really leverage for those causes. And then I have other clients who really cared about the world, whether it's political reasons or environmental reasons. And I've learned that through the years that people can leverage the wealth they have their financial wealth to help create maybe it's social wealth, maybe it's community wealth, cultural wealth and leverage it. Sometimes I've helped friends with build their physical, their health through through their finances and realizing where they could leverage that or even build more time. And it's really people are so concentrated on their financial wealth and trying to build the biggest portfolio possible, that looking at those issues and using their financial wealth as leverage might not build as much of a financial wealth, but will create a much more meaningful position for them.

So could you tell us a little bit more about socially responsible investing and health investing? I have not heard of health investing for your health, but of course, you know, we live in different countries. So maybe that's one of the reasons. But certainly the social and socially responsible investing, I know that I have legacies in my will, but is there other opportunities where you work?

Yes, socially responsible, responsible investing, also known as ESG investing, so environmental, social governance investing is something that's been around for hundreds of years in some ways. And early on, a lot of the Presbyterian's actually decided that they would not invest in companies that supported the slave trade. The slave trade so goes back that far hundreds of years. And I think in a more modern approach to it, there's two fold is first asking yourself, you know, if you inherited this company, would you feel good about the business they're in? Would you want to be in this business when you buy out a business like this? And for some people, that's very much environmental issues. I wouldn't want an oil drill next door. To me, it might be more on a religious issue. And I have clients who are very religious who will not invest in companies that support certain certain things that they believe are against their religion.More on a social matter that lots of clients should not invest in for profit prisons and who doesn't want to invest in GMOs. And it's not my duty to tell an individual what their purposes and what their values are, but it's to work with them, to figure out what their values are and make sure that their financial wealth matches those values and invest in companies or invest in types of investments that match those values as far as sort of physical wealth. When I talk about that, that's more of realizing that a lot of people work so hard to build these other wealth. They don't take care of their themselves and their own their physical nature, and they get into bad health. They're worrying about these things and having these conversations and helping clients realize that everything is intertwined, that if you build, you know, millions of dollars, but then have all sorts of health problems and four hundred pounds, you're not creating the world you want to live in. And so how do you take some of the wealth you're building? And let's look at ways that maybe you can afford that physical therapist or physical trainer or whatever it might be to really round yourself out as a person and to really do what is needed to help you help yourself. And then that allows you to help the world.

Wow. I didn't even think of that. I mean, I'm certainly I'm making plans for my retirement because I'm getting there soon. And there's always the possibility I have to go into a nursing home. But I didn't think of it. You can actually, you know, invest in certain companies that will help you in the future.

Certainly. And so you're thinking of understanding your wealth beyond your bank account. The part about that is, of course, you're thinking I would call you a holistic approach, actually. What would you say?

Holistic investing. And in a way, yes, I think holistic is a word that I've used a few others in the industry that work like me have used to really look at the whole person any time with me. Start before we start talking about their bank accounts and our investment accounts. We sort of talk about their values and their goals and understanding what they're trying to accomplish and what's important about money to them and understanding that will allow them allow us to figure out what needs to be done in these other areas as far as their financial wealth is concerned. A lot of my clients are more concerned with their family and how do we leverage that financial wealth to take care of their family? And for a lot of people, that's just paying for their kids college. But if you look at surveys of the wealthiest in the United States. Most really wealthy people would rather their kids inherit their values over their finances and their wealth, their financial wealth. So how do you teach your kids and your grandkids maybe your values and what's important to you? And how do they how do you help them inherit that? And I think that's part of the holistic picture.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, they definitely and I as I was mentioning, of course, I have a few legacies in my will. And I'm sure you speak a lot to your clients about leveraging their wealth in order to make the world better. And I was just wondering, so besides religious organizations, do you do a lot of research on on charities to make sure that when they are, you know, actually investing in things that it will actually help that charity? Or, you know, you must have to do a lot of research on things other than the stock market.

My expertise isn't picking the greatest charities, I'm probably better at it than most people because I do spend a lot of time thinking about it, inviting clients to know how to do that, depending on the client and their needs. Most come to me with sort of causes they care about. They really have a passion for and they know who they want to give to. And I help them leverage those gifts. So when they are looking at how much they give, how much impact, they really leverage it after taxes, how they leverage it against their portfolio, making sure that there's enough money for the organization and for them. And when a client really wants to do research, there's a lot of organizations and consultants that we help them find and hire if they have a lot of wealth and they really want to. It on a very specific cause and trying to find the best of those causes. I can find a lot of great places to start, but. Going down and interviewing charities on a big picture level, I'm pretty good at and I've done that a lot to get into the very specifics. That's not my expertise. And we believe that part of working with a client is no matter how smart I am, no matter how many designations I have, I have an Ivy League degree. There's so much more I don't know than I do now. So working with other experts, finding the people who fit the needs of our individual. Clients that can bring in whether it's tax help, whether it's again bringing in and helping them find that perfect charity to really do what they want to do and really say, you know, you give a little bit to a big charity. You're drop in the ocean, you give a huge amount to a small charity. You can. Override them and overwhelm them. So it's finding that balance of what you're trying to do, how you're trying to do it, and there's so many great organizations out there and the bigger questions I have with donors and clients is, what are you trying to accomplish? And if and that's the hardest question for most people, because they don't really know that they they want to help. Here in Los Angeles, the homeless situation, but what does that mean in asking people more and more questions? You get very, very different answers. Yeah, that's great. That's great. Could you get so detailed and in, you know, down into getting them way to use the most return for their money? Because that's obviously what I try and do, is look at all my charities and make sure that they're using, you know, less money on the administration and more for their cause. And because I want to get a better return. So. So. And then so what obviously the charity is, is how the money is, as they say, given away. But how do you get them to increase their returns and you make a plan so you create a legacy plan. What what would you say in general? You would say a legacy plan is for them because of course, the charities, the money being given away and not being made, as they say. We see when we look at any client's legacy as three main areas of concern. First is their immediate family, how they handle money, how to prepare the next generation for inheritance. How do you teach them your values? How do you take care of your parents and older generation? That's what's needed to instill in profit planning. When we have plans for each of these and we sort of create a sort of like a stoplight system here. Green is what we're accomplishing. Now, here's yellow, which is sort of the next step along the way. And red is part of the long term plan. And we try to leverage all three of the aspects to each individual to make sure they're always making progress. So the second step with the charities when we look at is sometimes to look at different assets and say, OK, these assets are a good deal now, that by giving the stock you want 30 years ago now you can get a great tax deduction and not appreciation on that sort. That means so much money or they're willing to give later on. A lot of retirement plans, by the time they get to their heirs, might be worth pennies on the dollar. But if you give that to a charity fund, death while you're alive, the charity gets every single dollar. So looking at the different situations of what you're trying to do and weighing taxes, weighing immediately versus future needs, weighing all the all what you're trying to accomplish, we're always looking to refine and create a plan, a written plan of where you are now and always trying to prove that there are so many little aspects that it's impossible to set sail on a ship across the ocean to your destination and not make little changes along the way, more little changes because the world changes, the climate changes, there could be on that ship. There could be a storm ahead of you. But also people change over time and creating. And when I ask clients about investing with their values, most people I talk to about that say this is the first time anyone's ever asked me about that. Let me think about that before I get back to you. And we create a plan to start based on them not knowing, but the more I ask them and the more they think about it, those plans change over time, so their investments will change over time. There are charities that they care about. Change over time, how they want to give and how much they're able to give changes over time, so it's a never ending process that. We love to create a financial plan with all this information, but it's almost out of date by the time we give it to a client because the world changes and they change. And that's sort of the fun part of what I do, is helping clients define who they are and what their wealth can help them create and help them be. Yeah, for sure. You have a long term relationship with them for sure, because I know with our we've had a long term relationship with our financial investor. And you're right, things change.

And so I'm going to ask the question about the pandemic and how you've managed to ease everybody's fears about what's been happening this year. And I think you have no problem doing that. It's been an interesting time. And here in the US, the market dropped huge amounts in March and then came right back.

One of the things about what I do is that we are, by nature as humans, not rational. And my job is to help people make rational decisions in irrational times. I mean, I like to describe it sort of you know, I know people who have driven home drunk and made it perfectly safe, and I have known people who've driven hands on the steering wheel at 10 and two and drove in the speed limit and some friend accidents. Bad things happen if you do the right thing and good things happen if you do the wrong thing. More often than not, you do the right thing over and over again. You'll get better long term results and study after study says you can't time the markets. You can't. You know, figure out what it's going to be at the bottom and when it's going to be at the top, and the biggest thing for me to do for a lot of my clients as far as building their financial wealth is having them do what is very uncomfortable. At the right time, because it's logically is the right thing to do statistically, the right thing to do, no matter how bad it feels, every day, it seems that a client comes to me and says the market's going to fall apart. Let's sell out now. And I can tell you a couple of my biggest regret in the industry in my 20 something years is the couple of clients who sold out during the crash of 2008 who I told them, look, be patient. They sold out in 2009 generally. And those are the people who had a really hard time recovering. Those who rode through it were unhappy, but they built that wealth from there and it continues growing and you just can't determine what that is and when the bottom from the top saw and writing through proves to be the right answer. But also with covid, I have found that many of my clients have been more and more concerned about different causes when you're talking about charities earlier and things that they thought were important before, maybe it was their university or or something in their community, they're more they're giving has changed. And they might be giving more to food banks or they might be more worried about the homeless situation. Or they might be more worried about medical research and various things that can change in this world. I know a lot of people as they've seen their communities and the people they care about at the restaurants they go to or other causes, realize that social inequity is more of a cost that they care about as they see their friends who are professionals doing just fine through the pandemic. But then to the others who are struggling to begin with struggle even more so. So the causes they care about have changed through the pandemic. And it's been a very interesting time to work with people, revisit their plans, revisit their goals, both both on a financial and on a community level to relook at those those those items and try to keep them doing what is. The rational thing to do to and not let their emotions sweep them away, which is really easy to do right now, and I think that's also a matter of them trusting you. I think I think that your relationship is the most important part with with them. And, yeah, with this time, I know it's there are polls to to help others. So it's great that you can change their plans for them so quickly and, you know, get them if they're concerned, reassure them and all that kind of thing. I know we've had a few reassurances here, but. Yeah. And just just like the cheerful driver who gets in the car accidents, I won't always do what I recommend to clients, won't always work. They need to know that. But I'm going to do for them to know that they can trust me to do what looks to be the right thing. And if I keep on doing the right thing more often than not, over the long term will get the right results. And that trust is there to keep them calm and to help them keep that final going back to the ship analogy that keep them reminded their final destination and there might be a storm along the way, there might be winds and there might be calm periods where the sails won't work. But if they keep the long view on their destination will help them get there. Wow, that's a great analogy, and if I had that analogy with my financial investor, yes, they would be really reassuring me. Thank you much. All that's that's wonderful. You've given some great things to think about because I don't think anyone ever thought about values and trust and purpose and legacy and all this when when they're thinking about money. So I hope that you will be successful and continue and remind people that they need to have legacy planning. I think that's probably the first thing they think about when they talk to you anyway. So is this you always try to do that with them? Mitchell. Yeah, you know, I think, again, when waiting for practice about 10 years ago, we legacy planning our practices very generic 10 years ago and we sort of tried to be all things to all people. And I think where we are now is that we are great advisers for a select few who have these concerns. And I'm not the right person for a lot of people. And I don't try to be the right person for everybody. I really try to find people who have things that they care about. And I get referred to people who have lots of financial wealth but don't care about much anymore. And I generally tell them to go elsewhere. And I sympathize with less financial wealth, but really want to change the world. And that's what's important to me, is working with people that I can take my skill set and really make a huge difference to them and really to those they care about because they care about.

Well, I'm so pleased that you came on today, Mitchell and that we could talk about purpose and value and legacy. I'm so pleased because sometimes it's one thing you don't think about with finances. And so I'd like to thank you for for coming on. And and I'll be putting up your information for anyone who's interested at the end of the call. So thank you, Mitchell. It's been great. Great. And you've made me hopeful, hopeful for my planning. I didn't even think about, you know what, I maybe I should actually put some of my will charities into my planning rather than just sticking them in my will. So thank you very much, Mitchell.

Thank you. I always love talking about this with people. And even if they're not the right clients, sometimes it gets them started down a road. And I've gotten calls years later saying I've run into people at a social events. And, you know, I thought you were a little off when I first met you, but I thought about what you had to say. And I really get that. And one of the great things of giving now and sort of just in your will as you get to see a sea change made from you and you know, not everybody can afford to give immediately, but if you can give a little bit and see what change you can make, it's just so much nicer than knowing that all those changes we made after you're gone, which is still very important.

Thank you, Mitchell. This has been finding your purpose TV. And thank you very much for coming on today. And I'll be showing information on how to contact you in a minute. Thank you, Mitchell.

Thank you, Jane.

For financial planning with thoughtful outcomes, because it's your legacy, you can contact Mitchell at Capital Intelligence Associates. For more on finding your purpose, go to https://finding your purposeTV. com and you can find us on Roku at finding your purpose as well. You can find us on YouTube. Look for finding your purpose. See you there.

Jane Welcome everybody. This is Jane Gardner of finding your purpose. And today I'm so excited because I'm talking to Chicke, Fitzgerald of Solutions Innovation, and her business is actually all about finding your purpose, when you're in business. And I want to thank you so much for taking the time, cause I know you're very busy, so thank you, Chicke, tell me a little bit more about, your business and, and how it all ties in to purpose. That's so exciting.

Chicke Well, Jane, and thank you, first, thank you so much for having me on. And yeah, purpose has, has been at the core of my business for some time now. I spent the first third of my career, beginning back all the way to the late seventies, with the top travel technology companies in the world. And so, the first third of my career was in corporate life with the companies that actually created the foundational technology for booking travel online. So I worked for Sabre, which birthed Travelocity, I worked for Worldspan, which was the foundational technology for Expedia and Priceline and Orbitz, and then worked for one of the largest global telecommunications companies in the world. And then in the mid nineties, I went out on my own and formed a strategic consulting firm and so spent about 10 years doing consulting. And during that time I had a real awakening of what was really important and, and I was very, very good at what I did, in the consulting world, ran a multimillion dollar consulting firm, but at the end of the day, I didn't, I didn't have joy in what I was doing and, you know, for those who can see the wall behind me, I've set up my Zoom wall to really be able to tell my story. My head is covering it a little bit is, is across, which shows that my faith is at the foundation of everything that I do. And the book that I wrote several years ago called The Game Changer, is really the story, that tells what it's like to be a tech entrepreneur, but to really be looking for what will give you long-term purpose and joy. And it, it is a, an allegorical business novel. So it's not precisely my story, but one of the nice things about being an author is that you get to tell your story as a part of the story that you tell in your book. So, Jane, what has ended up happening is after that third of my career that was focused on strategic consulting, I ended up realizing I wanted to actually build a business where I could not only make money while I slept was kind of the business premise, but also that I could give back in a really meaningful way. And we can talk about that a little bit more, but my tech company is Solutions Innovations, and we have built a game-changing technology that builds on all of that history that I've got in the travel industry.

Jane Oh, wow. I didn't realize just how, yeah, how amazing you are, because that's just amazing that you're in that technology, because that was so innovative when you were working with it, the price line and everything that it is an amazing technology. Yeah. And now you've decided you want to help businesses with, finding what their purpose is. Is that, is that correct or ?

Chicke Well, what we do is we give them, through our product, we actually give them a way to raise money for the causes that they care about. So our target clients are companies like CRM companies, calendaring companies, ticketing, and registration, events platforms, where we actually plug in our trip planning tool into their product. And then we give 10% of our revenues back to their charity of choice. So we give them a way to give back to their communities that they serve. And if our client is a nonprofit, we actually donate 25% of our revenue back to the charity.

Jane Oh, wow. That's wonderful. you were saying though, that you're also starting to focus more on individuals with your game changer or what's your game changer community all about?

Chicke Well, the game changer community has actually existed for, almost a decade. It began as a, very, narrow group called the executive girlfriends group, which was all executive women. And we've had that community for 10 years. It's where my radio shows started because we would have our weekly meeting and I would invite an author or an expert to be on the show. And the individuals that joined us, were generally part of the C-suite right within, within a company, or they had started their own companies. So many were solopreneurs and entrepreneurs. And so that community has always been about bringing together people who shared a desire to change the game. Right. So innovation at the core and not just technical innovation, but like I said, business model innovation, because what we're doing with our traveling to give product within solutions innovations has more to do with giving than it does with booking travel. But the context of, of what generates that giving is the booking of travel. So, the community was formed. I said 10 years ago, and it has now blossomed beyond just women, to also include men. And again, we've got everybody from corporate executives and CEOs, down to people who are coaches and authors and people who are solopreneurs and entrepreneurs. So, they joined as individuals very much like you would join a Facebook group or a LinkedIn group, but it is a much more engaged group. It's a much more focused group. And it, I think of it more like a round table than a podium where I am out talking to you about what I care about. Right. So allowing you to talk to one another.

Jane Wow. That's wonderful. I just, before I forget, cause I forgot to ask you, what do you do your radio show now still, or, yeah. And what's the, what's the name of the radio show I should be listening. It's called the game changer. And is it on iTunes or is it on a special network or?

Chicke It's on all of them All of the popular, show channels my primary distribution is through the C-suite radio network and, C-suite is a group that was started by Jeffrey Hayzlett, who used to be the COO of Kodak. And, I joined the hero club, which is a subset of, of, the C-suite network about a year and a half ago. And they're also a client of traveling to give. So when, when we were having face-to-face meetings before COVID, they would use our product for the attendees to get to their meetings.

Jane Oh wow. That's great. You're very, very busy lady. so I'm gonna put up the offer now and if you could just speak about, I think you've already spoken about exactly, you know, what the game changer is all about, but if you could just maybe mention, how, how we join, you know, who do we have to be to join the game changer network that would be great. Thanks.

Chicke It, well, I think I'm going to start with the book because the book is, again, it's a, a business parable and for those of you who are a bit burned out on self-help books and on business books, this is a really great alternative because it tells a story of the individuals that are a part of a company. And it tells it in the context of, at the end of a meeting that they have offsite. And we've all had those offsite meetings that we think are going to change the world, right The company's going to miraculously turn around, but, but what ends up happening in this book is the people who attend that meeting that doesn't go well, that doesn't, you know, lay the groundwork for changing the world. They all scatter and go or back to the office or out for dinner with friends, but on the way to where they're going, they listen to one of my radio shows. So it features people like Bob Burg who wrote, the go giver and a Catarina Walter who wrote. And so within the context of the book, it tells that story and it shows you that every single person needs something different to transform their company. So if you were wanting to become purpose driven, you will find one story perhaps that resonates with you on, on the game-changer books. So the offer that you put up, the book is available on Amazon, just search for the game changer and Chicke Fitzgerald. I'm assuming that you'll put a link that they can get and joining the game changer community, what I would suggest, and you've got up on the screen right now, my personal website, Chickefitzgerald.com And it, all of my, electronic presence, they all lead you to the same place. So whether you, whether you come in, because you remember my name, Chicke Fitzgerald, and go to Chickefitzgerald.com, or you go to the game changer network, which is the site for my radio shows. It will take you in and help you figure out how to join the community. And, again, I believe on your, your offer page, you've got the direct link in to join the community. And really anyone is welcome. You will be asked a couple of questions when you join the community of why do you want to be there. How do you feel like you can contribute. This is not a place to come and broadcast your offers. I mean, we get plenty of that all day long on LinkedIn. This is a place to actually get to know people discuss and to be able to really move up that engagement ladder of really building trust with people. So that if you do have an offer, if you do have something that you want to share with people that they'll listen to you, right, and that you aren't just spamming them with offers that they don't care about. Because again, I think we've all been so inundated with that. So we welcome anyone who, who feels like they do want to change their game, or they are a game changer to become a part of that community. And, again, you'll find your place. There are many different ways that you can participate. we still do have the executive girlfriends group we meet every Monday afternoon. So, again, coming into Chickefitzgerald.com guides you to everything that we're doing and the tool that we use within that website to show you all the different things you can learn is actually a product of our company.

Jane Oh, wow. Yeah. Wait, we get to try it out at the same time, that's wonderful. To think about that, because I know on LinkedIn is so hard to, to have real relationships. Yes. You have to try hard for that. And, I think going to wrap up by you celebrating about finding joy and in what you do cause I think that's what you're all about.

Chicke Well, at the end of the day, what I realized is that even though I was a gifted consultant and able to do very, very well financially at the end of the day, if you don't find joy in what you do, it's time to take a step back and figure out what it is that you want to do. And taking that step back, I realized that my true gift is in my ability to solve problems. And the name of my company Solutions is all about being able to see both the problem and the solution in the same frame. So, I take great joy in helping others find their purpose. you know, I, I do a lot of one-on-one coaching and mentoring. I still do consulting, but on a very, very limited basis, I have to really be convinced that the cause is a good one and that it resonates with me. And, again, I've got a number of companies that I'm either a member of their board or their advisory board. So, very interested in helping other entrepreneurs. So that's how I get my joy. And then of course, building products that, that really changed the game, particularly in the travel industry where I spent my entire adult life, that gives me incredible joy. And so I'm excited about rolling out our traveling to give product.

Jane Oh. So it's not rolled out yet then are, the traveling to give or you've been using it. So what do you, what do you mean rolling out You mean for a company Is that what you mean.

Chicke No, the product is actually a mature product, but we have been taking a bit of a pause because of COVID because our product relies on a healthy travel and events business.

Jane Yeah. Yeah. Actually I, I, took down my, travel website, celebrating travel test for now. Yeah. So that's, that's great. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you so much, Chicke. It sounds like you're very busy person. I'm finding that a lot of people, the way that they are are getting out there is, is advisory boards and you know, volunteering for that kind of thing. So, yeah, that's one way you can certainly, help help your community is, is with that kind of thing. So thank you very much, Chicke, for taking the time.

Chicke You're welcome,

Jane. Thank you. Great day. Bye-bye

Jane Welcome everybody. This is Jane Gardner of finding your purpose TV, and today on spotlight, where we talk to purpose-driven entrepreneurs, we have Mary Leone of diversity outreach partners, and Mary is a talent acquisition leader with a passion for diversity recruiting. And that includes people with disabilities and veterans. So, Mary, I think I'll let you talk more about the business and how you were doing that. And as I have a personal interest in finding out what your journey was and getting to where you are now.

Mary Thank you for having me on Jane. I appreciate it. I'm looking forward to this. So to tell you a little bit about my journey, back at the end of last year, I had made a decision that I wanted to find my and follow my passion. So my passion is diversity recruiting, and that includes people with disabilities as well as transitioning veterans. And what I did is I ended up leaving my company in March, right before COVID not realizing that was going to happen. I was introduced through my networking efforts to my business partner, Alan Chapman and we formed diversity outreach partners this summer. And so we're really excited. Diversity outreach partners helps companies build bridges. So for a lot of companies that do affirmative action plans, and these could be government contractors, or they could be subcontractors. A lot of times they do their affirmative action plan and they literally, they put it on the shelf and they don't look at it again until the next year. And so what we can do is we can help them with our outreach efforts and when they have gaps in their affirmative action plan for females, for people with disabilities, for veterans or minorities, we can actually actually help them build the bridge to organizations that can help them with closing those gaps. And so we can be that outreach partner and we can help them with, improving that candidate flow as well as developing those relationships with the diversity organizations. So we're pretty excited.

Jane I'm very interested in how you got to where you are today, because when you went to university, I'm sure you didn't think you'd be doing this, that you're doing now.

Mary That is a really great question. And, and that is completely true. in my last role, when I was looking for my next position, I actually got an offer from Texas instruments that I couldn't refuse, and I was offered to help them rebuild their compliance program. And at that time that was back in 2013. And, at that time they, the government was introducing some new regulations and that included a focus on people with disabilities, as well as transitioning veterans. And so those two things just, I just really fell in love with those two areas, the diversity recruiting front, I was able to help the talent acquisition or, organization. one of the things that Texas instruments does is they do quite a bit of external hiring at the campus level. And so I actually put together a very large, effort to reach out to the, the various target schools to find who are the, who are the, organizations and who are the schools that are doing the best job on the students with disabilities, as well as student veterans. And then I put together a heat map. I came up with a strategy and we started implementing. And so I just kind of fell in love with those two areas. And I knew I wanted to do diversity recruiting. And so I made the decision to, to leave the company and to, set off on my own journey. I was really looking for a large company to work for that was either focused on growing or building their program that included veterans or people with disabilities. And then I fell into this opportunity. I networked and I met my business partner, Alan, and we decided to start diversity outreach partners. So it's kind of exciting. I actually volunteer with two other organizations. One's very disability focused and one is veterans focused. And so that has helped me with, learning best practices as well. Mary I, I actually have, I'm , I have a couple of different roles in veterans organization as called Vets. The number two, and then industry and the founder actually had put it together about a year ago. We actually have overwhelmed over 20,000 followers on LinkedIn already. There's well over a hundred volunteers, in the organization as well. And every three weeks we have a networking event. And what that does is it gives the transitioning veterans an opportunity to practice networking in a safe space. There's always a high level transitioned, military person, war veteran service organization leader, to be able to share some key messages and learnings from their journey. And then what we do is we break into networking rooms and I'm one of the networking facilitators. We actually had our first military spouse event yesterday. So the, the organization isn't just focused on transitioning veterans, it also helps military spouse. It helps gold star families and it helps, other advocates as well. And so it's a great, great organization. I've met some wonderful people and, it, it really has helped me on my journey and I've, I've learned so much about, coaching people one-on-one to be able to help them achieve what they want and find their next job after they've transitioned from the military. So it's fun. I do a lot of one-on-one coaching as well through that effort.

Jane could you repeat the name of the, the veterans Is it just LinkedIn, maybe just spell it out for us just in case anyone's listening in I'm sure. Yeah. That would be great. And getting what they need, the help.

Mary Yep. It's vets V E T S the letter TWO. And then in this industry.

Jane Oh, awesome. Mary It's on LinkedIn.

Mary Yep. It's on LinkedIn and, it's, it actually is a webpage as well. And so you can go in and there are actually 40, if you can believe this 45,000 veterans service organizations that are there to help transitioning veterans. And, this organization is put together so that it can library or catalog all 45,000 of them are free for people. So think of it as a resource page, but then, another benefit is the networking meetings that we have every three weeks. And we have, we're expecting over 500 people to register for the one that comes up on Saturday. So it's a pretty big, pretty, pretty big deal and a pretty big effort. We've really touched a lot of people. Jane

Jane Wow. That's great. Yeah. So, so, so what do you do, for the actually for the companies in your business you're, you're looking at obviously starting to do that and, and what do you do for them in terms of, I mean, obviously, you know, lots of veterans because you volunteer quite a bit, so

Mary Yeah. Yeah. so it's, it's actually more of building bridges with organizations. So it's allowing that it's first of all, doing a consultation with a company to understand what are their gaps. So do they have gaps on the female side Do they have gaps for minorities. Do they have gaps for people with disabilities or veterans. And then based on that consultation and that analysis, what we do is we look at the organizations that we've already, we've already started establishing relationships with either on a national or regional or a local level. And we do introductions. We put together a plan on what makes sense for the company. So maybe they have engineers, maybe they have machine operators, maybe they have, nurses, whatever it is. We can look at our organizations and if we don't have any, then we can find new ones so that we can build those relationships for the company so that they can close those gaps. Because at this point, everybody is wanting to increase their diversity and, affirmative action. Actually, if you're, if you're following the affirmative action rules, this is one of the requirements is you need to do those outreach efforts to organizations. And if you don't get the results that you want to close those gaps, then you actually have to do new efforts. And next year you can't just do the same things year after year and not make any changes.

Jane Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. So you, you obviously, you have some experience with veterans and, you'd like to maybe talk about veterans in transition. you've already mentioned you work with, a networking organization, so, so what else do you do.

Mary Yep. I've actually reached out to several different veterans organizations, but the one that I volunteer the most and it's, you know, it's probably at least five to 10 hours a week with that's that's to industry. and, and what I, what I do on the side after I meet people at the networking events is I offer to meet with them and I do one-on-one coaching. So if somebody is in transition, maybe they're six months away from leaving the military, maybe they're 12 months and they want to try and get a handle on, target companies. They have some questions about how to interview. They have some questions about what is this type of role. Do, do you have any connections that you can introduce me to, to do an informational interview And I'm able to be able, I'm able to provide some of that information just because I've, I've done this so much in terms of coaching people through that, but I've, I've also made a lot of contacts. And so it's, it's, it's fun. I really enjoy it. And it's very fulfilling and I get a lot out of the coaching sessions as well.

Jane Wow. Yeah. And you were mentioning that you also, wanted to talk about, disability employment and, and, and definitely, you know, how we should be employing more sure.

Yeah. Mary Yep. So one of the organizations that I also volunteer with and I'm the vice chair is called disability in North Texas. And the national organization is called disability in and is three-pronged. first it encourages employers to employ and build programs that employ people with disabilities. It also has a vendor component where they have a certification program for disability owned business enterprises. And then it also has kind of a marketing component as well. The focus that we have for disability in North Texas, which is based in the Dallas Fort worth area, is to encourage more employers to, build and grow their programs, employing people with disabilities. So on a regular basis, at least once a quarter, if not more frequently, we have panelists, we have speakers, we have share best practices. We do networking. We have tours all to encourage people to share how have they been successful and what else can they do And what else can they implement Cause a lot of times, the effort for employing people with disabilities is farther behind than the veterans effort is. And so we can learn a lot of lessons from them. And so what I often tell people is you need to, you need to start someplace, so maybe you don't know where to start. Well, don't start with, you know, a list of 12 things start someplace and then build upon those successes.

Jane Oh, awesome. Yeah. And you were saying that, you're, you must have a lot of experience, you know, with your volunteering on and you can help veterans. and you've been mentioning about advisory boards. I don't know how many you're on, but it sounds like you're on a few. How do you find that as a benefit to, doing your journey on it

Mary It's, it's a way to learn more about the community. And I found the veterans community as well as the disability community to be very welcoming. And so I'm meeting more people who are in veteran service organizations that are oftentimes offering free services, either free resume reviews, free interviewing skills, training, free networking, different things like that. And so all sorts of opportunities for me to learn more about the organizations that can help the populations that I serve.

Jane Oh, wow. That's awesome. I'm sure you have the time sounds like yeah, you must. You're very experienced. I'm sure. In seeing them at the moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, what, we're going to talk about, what you're offering, to organizations. So if you don't mind, I'll just put it up for a few minutes while you speak on it and I'll be a bit rude that way, but if you could just speak on it, that'd be great.

Sure. Mary So one of the things that we found with companies is, again, they, they do their affirmative action plans and they put them on the shelf. They don't do anything with them afterwards. And part of the regulations that the OFCCP enforces as they want you to do outreach. So if you have gaps and again, it couldn't be in females, it could be minorities. It could be with veterans, or it could be with people with disabilities, you need to do outreach to diversity organizations. And so what you can do is you can come to us as diversity outreach partners, and we can help you build those bridges to the organizations. So the offer that we're, we're sharing with you today on a limited time is to have a free consultation to start that process. And if you like that process after a month, then you can sign up with us. If you've decided you want to just pursue it on your own, then you, you know, you can have the, the free consultation for the first month and then you can go, we can go our separate ways, but we'd like to be able to introduce you to our services, because again, it's for the fraction of the cost of a person, you can actually have us be your right hand of your HR organization and you can, you can use our expertise and the network that we've built of organizations to help you with that diversity outreach.

Jane Well, yeah, I mean, just from, from speaking today, I can see that you must have the connections with the veterans, you know, just from your networking and volunteering, that it would be easy for you to help anyone with their, their recruiting and hiring. Yeah.

Mary And it is actually well beyond the veterans. We do have a With organizations, both minority organizations, female organizations, as well as disability organizations.

Jane That's great. Right. Yeah. You're right. Sorry. I know that's how I remember now, but yeah, I know that there is an incentive down in the United States to do that. So that's awesome that you can do that now. Yeah. So anyway, so thank you very much. Mary, I want to, just to thank you very much for, for coming on and being on spotlights.

Mary Well, thank you. And do you have any additional questions I've really enjoyed the conversation,

Jane Yeah, no. I mean, I, I think, I think you probably know all the organizations from what I can tell for veterans, and I hope that a veteran that's listening well, well, of course, you know, contact you and can certainly contact you regardless of this, you know, the, your business, because of course you volunteer for a lot of groups that may be, and you do, you, do, you do coaching still then. And you're planning to coach all the minorities and with all the consultations.

Mary I really enjoy it. And I find that that's a passion area for me. So I'm going to continue with that effort. And, I do have quite a few people who regularly refer people over, who are either in job transition people with disabilities or veterans of those areas.

Jane Oh, awesome. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. I enjoyed our, I've enjoyed our discussion. Thanks. The veterans organizations down in United States are great and it's great that you're volunteering for those as well. That's cause you obviously enjoy it very much.

Mary I do. I do. It's a passion area for me.

Jane Oh, okay. Great. Thanks Mary.

Mary Thank you, Jane right

Jane Companies that are interested in a diversity outreach plan to expand their outreach for affirmative action plans, including one month of free service of, for initial consultation, outreach plan, design and implementation. You can email mary at  [email protected].