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BRX Pro Tip: Action Over Aspiration

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BRX Pro Tips
BRX Pro Tip: Action Over Aspiration
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BRX Pro Tip: Action Over Aspiration

Stone Payton: Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, as you know, and probably the vast majority of our listeners know, action is a core value at the Business RadioX network. Speak a little bit more to that, if you would.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, I think, a lot of times, people spend too much time on kind of these big dreams, these big goals, and that’s what they kind of spend a lot of mental energy on instead of taking, you know, specific actions. So, you know, big goals are important. It’s important to have that kind of mountain you want to climb because they give us vision, motivation and things to strive for. But to be real about anything, a goal without action is, like they say, just a dream. And in order to make that dream come true, you have to take specific action, and you have to take relentless, specific action. If you spend too much time thinking about a huge goal, I think that, a lot of times, people feel overwhelmed and it’s so big they don’t even know where to start.

Lee Kantor: So, the place to start always is start small somewhere, and then just start taking steps. So, if the first thing you do is work backwards from the goal. Like, what’s the thing I have to do the day before the goal is done? And you just keep backing out. What do I have to do until you get to today? What do I have to do today? And if you can break it down into small, clear steps, then, all of a sudden, you’re going to have clarity. Then, you’re going to have things that you can be doing today, and tomorrow, and the next day.

Lee Kantor: And action is what fuels progress. Action is the thing that leads to real results. And it’s much better, instead of saying, you know, “I want to make $1 million,” a better goal is, “I’m going to contact five prospects.” And then, don’t worry about the million dollars. Worry about contacting five prospects every day. And if you do that every day, then you’re going to get to the million dollars. So, I think it’s a better play to have actionable, small goals that you can accomplish every single day, some action step that you can take every single day, rather than some big aspirational goal that is too general, and too broad, and that it can feel overwhelming.

Transforming Leadership: From Fear to Empowerment in Times of Change

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High Velocity Radio
Transforming Leadership: From Fear to Empowerment in Times of Change
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Mindy-VailMindy Vail is a keynote speaker, author, and consultant specializing in transformative leadership and change management. With over 25 years of experience, Mindy specializes in guiding leaders and organizations through the complexities of growth, resilience, and strategic realignment.

A former educator and corporate executive, she combines deep expertise in change management with a globally informed perspective, having lived and worked in Asia, Europe, and North America.

Mindy’s approach focuses on actionable insights and sustainable shifts in mindset, fostering adaptability and collaboration in dynamic environments. As a Prosci Certified Change Management Practitioner, Certified Hogan Leadership and Positive Intelligence Coach, she empowers emerging and seasoned leaders to embrace change, enhance team dynamics, and align vision, mission, and values with tangible outcomes.

Known for her relatable and engaging presentation style, Mindy is committed to helping individuals and teams unlock their full potential. Her book, The MindShift Effect, is a testament to her dedication to inspiring resilience and positive change across diverse industries.

Connect with Mindy on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • The biggest obstacles leaders face when driving organizational change, and how they can overcome them
  • Challenges women face in leadership roles today, and how businesses can create more inclusive and empowering environments
  • How executives and business owners can develop the agility and resilience needed to adapt to market shifts, AI advancements, and global disruptions
  • Why feedback is often mishandled, and how leaders can foster a culture where feedback fuels growth rather than fear
  • What skills and mindsets businesses should cultivate in their rising leaders to ensure long-term success
  • Strategies leaders can use to get employees on board with major changes and create a culture of adaptability

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. This is going to be a good one. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast keynote speaker, author, and consultant, Mindy Vail. How are you?

Mindy Vail: I’m great. Stone, thank you so much for having me.

Stone Payton: Well, the pleasure is all mine. I’ve really been looking forward to this conversation. Let’s start. Maybe tell us a little bit about your practice and what you’re really out there trying to do for folks. Mindy.

Mindy Vail: Yeah. Thank you. I am a consultant, as you said in the intro. I’ve authored the book The Mindshift effect, and I help leaders navigate change through their organization, whether it be small or large, mergers or acquisitions, and help them lead their teams through the tough times of change. And we have a lot going on right now. I mostly focus on the HR world, which is being blasted by, um, all kinds of changes right now, and just trying to keep up with it can feel overwhelming. And so I step in and try to help those teams navigate that.

Stone Payton: Well, I gotta say, as a sales and marketing guy earlier in my career, I got to believe, uh, choosing the practice of helping people navigate change. I don’t think you’re ever going to be out of work, Mindy.

Mindy Vail: No, no. You’re right. Absolutely right.

Stone Payton: Oh my goodness. So what do you what are you running into? What are you finding these days, anyway? Are some of the the biggest challenges or obstacles that are that leaders are facing in, uh, when they’re trying to, to navigate this new terrain.

Mindy Vail: Yeah. It’s mostly it boils down to fear. Um, fear of just uncertainty, not knowing what the future holds. And it can be fear of job security. It can be, um, fear of just not knowing what’s going to happen next. And so I think that that puts us in a very uncomfortable situation and mindset of, you know, we’d like to have control over things. We like to know what the next step is. And very few people flourish in a state of fear. Very few people. So that’s the number one thing I’ve been seeing recently is just an underlying this current of fear.

Stone Payton: When I’m operating under the impression that, yes, there’s so much going in our world here in this country anyway, that there’s got to be plenty of that. But that must happen, you know, when there’s a downsizing or a major technology upgrade or a merger or acquisition. I mean, that’s that’s probably happens a great deal, doesn’t it?

Mindy Vail: All the time. All the time? Absolutely. And before I left, um, the position I was in, I was up with a company in the northwest for almost ten years, and we had an acquisition from a Canadian company, and then we merged with, um, sister companies underneath that umbrella. And it created quite a bit of uncertainty, and it was very difficult. And that happens all the time. I see organizations who are combining cultures that are very different, and they’re having to work under this new system that is very unfamiliar to them. And so there’s going to be resistance, there’s going to be communication gaps, there’s going to be leadership misalignment. There’s going to be some change fatigue that happens. And so all of those you mix into one pot, and it’s the ingredients for kind of a messy situation if you allow it to be.

Stone Payton: So you mentioned that one specific set of experiences. What is the full backstory? What? Tell us a little bit about your journey to coming to this line of work.

Mindy Vail: Yeah, yeah, I would love to. It’s a little unorthodox, but I love it for that reason. I was a high school English teacher for 17 years in the Denver metro area, and then I left public education and the family and I moved out to the Pacific Northwest, where I took on a position just as a e learning curriculum development, um, training manager, and then kind of worked my way up and became an executive VP of culture and employee engagement, and was able to work with strategic communications and HR learning and development, and really got to see a different side of the world, from public education to corporate exec. And, so it’s been a little different as far as career path goes. But it’s worked. And that’s really what I, um, promote in my consulting and my speaking is it’s never too late to try something new. And things are constantly shifting. And if you’re willing to step into that fear and uncertainty, that’s half the battle. And I think that’s where I’ve flourished. I don’t love change, but I accept it as a reality. And I and I try to roll with it as best I can.

Stone Payton: Now, are you finding that certain types of leaders or certain segments of people within organizations? Well, I’ll just pick one, like women like do. Let’s just say women. Do they have challenges that are unique to to women in leadership and change? And maybe there are other groups that aren’t coming to mind right now?

Mindy Vail: Yeah, absolutely. And I appreciate you bringing that up. I do a lot of work with women in particular. I work with women owned industries, and I do a lot of my workshops with women groups. There are still biases and stereotypes alive and well, and we have to accept that those are still there. We often face scrutiny on competence versus likability. We’re constantly trying to balance what it is to be in charge without being aggressive or deemed other names that I won’t say us right, and we still have a lack of representation in those higher roles and positions in companies. And so we don’t have the same level of mentorship and role models as maybe men do. Um, I think that we still face work life integration pressures. We, we we’re a lot to everyone. And so we have to somehow balance our lives, our personal lives, with our professional lives, while still holding our identity true and not losing ourselves within everybody else. So yeah, I definitely think the women in Leadership is is top of mind for me in particular.

Stone Payton: Okay, let’s talk about me for a minute. It’s my show.

Mindy Vail: Yeah, yeah, let’s do it.

Stone Payton: No. With respect to this question, actually. So I’m the number two guy in a pretty successful media company. I’ve made a comfortable living for a lot of years. So, you know, I’m fairly well-to-do, middle aged white guy. I would like to think that I’m not biased or prejudiced, but it occurs to me, though, that sometimes, um, we can create preconceived notions, biases, um, and not even be fully aware of it. So I wanted to get your opinion on that to see how accurate you think that might be. And then more importantly, okay, look, Stone, you could impact a lot of lives. What what could should you be doing to be more in, in passive and empowered? Some of these folks that feel like maybe they, they, uh, are, uh, you know, digging out of a little bit of a hole.

Mindy Vail: Yeah. And and stone, let me just hats off to you for just saying that out loud, that you do accept that, you know, you are in a situation where you are grateful for what you have and self-awareness. I preach this all the time. Good leaders are self-aware. Good leaders can say the things that bad leaders don’t say of, yeah, I accept that I am this way, and I accept that I may have unconscious biases and I respect that 100%. Um, we all have unconscious biases. That’s the thing. Like if you say you don’t, you haven’t done enough research, right? Because it’s how our brains work, and we’re influenced by our background and our experiences, our culture, our upbringings. And we have these mental shortcuts that go to immediate assumptions. And they’re not always negative. That’s the thing. But it is real. They’re often limiting. Even if they’re not negative, they’re often limiting. And I write about that in my book. And I think for someone like you asking that question, that’s where the conversation starts. We acknowledge and we educate ourselves. We help to be an ally. We amplify underrepresented voices. We listen with the intent to understand, not with the intent to immediately respond with our opinion. And that’s really tough sometimes because we think we know the answer. But if we just listen with the intent to Tend to understand. We can learn so much more. Um, and I would just say call out those biases and microaggressions that we see because they’re everywhere. And it doesn’t have to be embarrassing. It’s really just how our brain works of yeah, I just I noticed this and I’d like to address it. Let’s talk about it. So I appreciate you asking that question. I think that’s that’s amazing. Very respectful.

Stone Payton: Well, it’s interesting that you bring up this, uh, this concept of genuinely listening. I was, uh, on an interview. It was just a few days ago with, with another very well established coach, and we and we, we started talking about the difference between, uh, listening and waiting, as in, just let them get done talking so I can say my thing.

Mindy Vail: Yeah. It’s so hard to write. It’s so hard. Because when we’re in a conversation, we want people, especially when we’re a leader and we’re and we’re running the show. We want people to see that we know what we’re doing. We want people to perceive us as competent. And so with that comes this responsibility to share our knowledge. But sometimes we just need to sit back and listen. Truly listen. And for me, I’ve had to train myself over the years to what you just said, to wait to pause and reflect on. Is this a beneficial, purposeful place for me to insert my opinion, a comment, or a statement? And that’s really hard to do. But you can train yourself to do it, and you find that not only do you learn so much more, but you’re really showing respect for the other person and giving them space to be something in that moment that maybe they haven’t had a chance to do.

Stone Payton: Speaking of training yourself, is there a master key or a set of disciplines or process for getting good at this topic? You mentioned earlier in the conversation of of embracing uncertainty.

Mindy Vail: For me, Stone, I really advocate taking time for yourself, truly for yourself. Um, whether that be meditation, I, I meditate, I also go for walks in nature. Um, I have a little bit of a hippie side to me, but you do not have to be a hippie to do these things, right. To get out and get fresh air by yourself. Um, maybe take a walk every day to the same area and notice something different every day. And then meditate. Think about those things that are consuming you and figure out how you can compartmentalize them and prioritize them in a better way than what you’re doing. Organize your life. I think exercising is always good, and talking to others who share in your passion is really helpful too.

Stone Payton: So what are you finding the most rewarding about the work? What are you enjoying the most these days at this point in your career?

Mindy Vail: I love when people are able to notice something different about themselves and how they process information, or how people perceive them. I love when that when that light turns on, and I was able to just be a catalyst to get them there. I love when there’s that self-awareness spark of energy of, oh my gosh, I never actually realized that’s what I do. And now I see it, and I can change it so that I can lead better or I can speak with more confidence. Or I can listen to understand more than I have before. Those are the moments. And this comes back from years of teaching too. That’s what I loved about being in the classroom, of seeing those aha moments. That’s what’s rewarding for me.

Stone Payton: So let’s go back to that, that transition from the teaching. And then, you know, now you’re in business. You’re out there practicing your craft, but you’ve also got to run a business. Was it tough in the early days like just the just getting the business like this whole sales and marketing aspect of things or did that come pretty easy?

Mindy Vail: No, it was it was tough. It was tough. First off, leaving teaching and then moving into the corporate world, it was tough just to learn all the acronyms and the business acumen. But like that was a whole beast in and of itself, right? You know, they had three pages of acronyms and I was just overwhelmed trying to learn the new terminology. Um, but you you get the hang of it. It’s it’s assimilating yourself into a foreign language and a foreign country, and you just do it over time, and and it becomes easier. Um, then shifting from being with a team of people who I relied on every day and respected and absolutely just loved collaborating with to being my own boss, working for myself by myself, that was different. That took me a little bit longer because I loved that team aspect. I still miss it, but I found the rewards that come with working for myself as well. And so yeah, it took me a long time. It was like a definitely a culture shock. I won’t lie, it definitely took months. And writing the book was part of that journey to really put down all of the things I was passionate about, and reminded myself that this is exactly where I need to be doing what I love.

Stone Payton: Well, I definitely want to talk about the book in a moment. I’m interested to know the structure and the content and how people can use it and all that. But, um, initially my one of my questions is just the process of committing your ideas to paper. What was that process like for you to actually sit down and craft a book?

Mindy Vail: It was unexpected. I did not sit down with the intention to write the book. I have an advantage because I was an English teacher. I have always loved writing. That’s been one of my passions, and yet I’ve never shared it in a public venue. So when I was part of a pretty major layoff, I really had the opportunity to sit down and just journal and it became really what is now the book. I started talking through this by myself on paper of what it takes to be a great leader versus a not great leader. To be very frank, just, you know, why leaders suck and why they don’t. Um, and so I started really digging into it. And I’m like, God, I really do love the neuropsychology behind all of this. And I love digging into the whys and the hows and how people respond to different behaviors and personality traits. So before you know it, I said, you know what? I’m just going to try it. I may what do I have to lose to try to write it? And I did, and it was one of the more rewarding processes I think I’ve put myself through.

Stone Payton: I would imagine, and I know your book has been successful and helped a lot of people, but I would imagine, if nothing else, investing the time and energy to commit your ideas to paper like that. Uh, I bet you it helped you solidify and crystallize your own thinking on a lot of topics and probably made you that much better of of a practitioner. Yeah.

Mindy Vail: Yeah, I would like to think so, Stone. I really think that it helps. Like anytime you can put something in writing or teach others about it, you really know what it is you’re talking about, right? It does solidify the content. And it really helped me organize all of the thoughts that were in my head at the time. But I just couldn’t compartmentalize everything because there was an emotional aspect to it as well. And yeah, I would like to think that it has made me a better practitioner.

Stone Payton: Yeah. So talk about some of the key topics covered in the book, and maybe a little bit about the structure and how how one can get the most out of it.

Mindy Vail: Yeah, I wrote it with the intent to just share my thoughts with other leaders who were either struggling to get to that next phase in their career or to the beginning leader like an emerging leader. I was able to build out and run emerging leader programs, which were super rewarding. And so this book really has that in mind. It’s structured so that you take one chapter at a time, you process it, you digest it, you think through it. And then there’s those reflective questions of, okay, just stop. Just stop right now. Just pause. Like we were saying, read and then pause. Listen and then pause and then really reflect. Where are you with this information so far in your day to day career? How are you putting this into practice? How is it working for you? How is it not working for you? And then put the book to the side and then come back to it later and do another chapter? So it’s not it’s structured in a way that’s not meant to be ingested all at once. And I’m all about bite sized learning. That’s the way we process and retain information most effectively. And so that’s how I have it structured.

Stone Payton: This strikes me that the way it’s structured and the way you described using it, it strikes me as being very helpful for an individual. But I wonder if it wouldn’t really lend itself to like a group of execs or a group of emerging leaders. And we go and we read the chapter, and then we get together and we kind of talk about what we took away from it and how we tried to apply some stuff that worked. Does it lend itself to that kind of group, peer to peer exchange at all?

Mindy Vail: You are in my brain 100%. It does. It is. It’s really that’s how I approach teaching and learning of you individually, taking information. And then you come together with other people who are going kind of through that same journey as you, and you talk about it, you discuss it and you dig in.

Stone Payton: So what are some of the we won’t try to do the whole book here. We’ll make sure people know how to get their hands on it. But what are some some key topics that really stand out for you or you feel like? You know, I this is something that comes up all the time, and I know people are going to want to at least read through this and try to apply some of this material.

Mindy Vail: Some of the topics that I start with are. What you really opened this conversation with is recognizing your biases, and really getting into why you think the way you do about the world around you. And then I get into kind of the neuropsychology of change, the things that we don’t often think about because our brain is just on automatic pilot, and then how that really impacts the decision making. Um, I talk a lot about how we get to true innovation. We’re always as companies, you know, that’s one of the big core values, is we want to be the innovators. But what does that really mean? And how is that tied to successful change? I talk a lot about strategic planning and when we have our vision and mission and values, what does that really mean to building a culture that lives and breathes those things? How do we get there? We can’t just put it on a poster and make it come alive. We have to do a lot of behind the scenes work to get there. And then I also talk about just embracing, having a growth mindset and how to do that. When you feel kind of trapped, maybe in a job you’re not flourishing in, maybe you’re having disagreements with coworkers. Maybe you just don’t love the culture. How do you then embrace a growth mindset and move out of that discomfort to a place where you’re going to flourish?

Stone Payton: I want to talk about this values thing because you’ve struck a chord in me, because I’ve spent my share of time in boardrooms and in corporate halls over the, over the years, and I’ve seen some pretty nice looking posters, you know, with the, with the acrostic spells out the values and right and that kind of thing. But it strikes me that it is clearly another thing to get not only that directly tied, clearly tied to where we’re going and why in the plan, but, uh, yeah, that, that that’s that’s a bridge. Not everybody crosses real well, do they?

Mindy Vail: Um, it’s so true. And I think we, we I, at least as a consultant, have seen this time and time again. The missing link is the leadership team. The leadership team must embrace and model expected behaviors that they want their team to exhibit. When we just send out, let’s just say an employee engagement survey and everyone gets the survey except the leadership team. There’s a break. That bridge will collapse. And so I always advocate when when I’m working with an organization to start with the leadership team first. Dig into how do they see themselves. Where are their gaps? Where are their opportunities? Where are their strengths? And then let’s talk about how are we going to build as an organization knowing that we have ultimate responsibility as leaders.

Stone Payton: And when it comes to to managing change in an organization of any real size and complexity, I got to believe no matter how well you plan, you’re going to run into some resistance, at least initially. Can you speak to some strategies for that? Well, first of all, just check me here. Am I accurate? Even if everybody or a lot of critical mass is on board in the early going that, you know, maybe that level of optimism is a little bit naive. And then when they really do take that computer program away that I’ve mastered over the last ten years now, I’m not happy. Does that kind of happen? Like later on they figure out more stuff that okay, now I’m ready to resist.

Mindy Vail: Absolutely does. And I’m a I’m a pro side change management practitioner and I use the Adkar model. Are you familiar with Adkar?

Stone Payton: I don’t think so, no.

Mindy Vail: Okay. This is going to this is going to be good for you then. Stone, I’m so glad you asked this question. The Adkar model a k a it’s you start with the need for change. The awareness of do employees know why you’re changing? Whatever it is you’re changing? If it’s a software program, do they understand? Have you communicated effectively as to why are you even changing this in the first place? Right. Because a lot of people, to your point, will say, I’ve been using this for 20 years. Why do I need to change? It works fine. Don’t fix what’s not broken. So you have to tackle that that a the awareness and then that desire of do people want to do it? And if they don’t want to do it because you have not communicated clearly the why behind it, the what’s in it for them? Chances are the resistance is going to really stall you right there. And then you have to teach them how to change. You have to implement really effective, good, solid training that is ongoing, not just a one stop shop. It’s a it’s an ongoing training development and then ability to implement required skills and behaviors of teaching them that this is this is not going away. We’re all going to model the expected behavior. We’re all going to use the training tools we put out there. We’re going to continue to communicate really clear, effective messaging and then reinforcing it. The are of ADR of to sustain that change over the long run. We’re not just going to drop it because we see that a lot. We we implement a change, we do all of the work and then no one ever talks about it again. And we get into this belief that, oh, well, they’re just never going to follow through on anything. We’re just going to stop paying attention to all these changes they’re putting in place. When we follow the add car model. It’s really effective.

Stone Payton: Well, I bet it is. It’s certainly it’s it seems like a very helpful framework to me just to get my arms around the whole thing. And it strikes me that it would be almost impossible to, to overcommunicate all the way through just to communicate, communicate, communicate. Because I suspect if you don’t, other people will fill in the blanks themselves. Maybe not.

Mindy Vail: Do they write their own narrative, don’t they? Yes, yes. And then oftentimes it’s at the beginning when we forget to communicate. And so as leaders, we’re already ten steps ahead because we’ve had all these meetings leading up to the communication. And then we just expect everyone to jump on board with us because they should be as excited as we are, but they haven’t been in all the conversations. And so when we get resistance, we’re offended as to like, why aren’t they jumping on board? We don’t get it.

Stone Payton: All right. I’m going to switch gears on you for a minute if I can. Well, you kind of touched on it because you you revealed that you may have a little bit of hippie in you, but I’m just curious. Hobbies, pursuits, interests, passions outside the scope of your of your work. What do you enjoy doing when you’re not doing this?

Mindy Vail: Yeah, so I do. I am in the Pacific Northwest, like I mentioned. So I do love hiking. I love being outside. We have gorgeous area up here, um, in Washington. And then I also have my own podcast that I just launched with a friend of mine. Um, it’s called Together To and we’re really setting that up to empower women in particular, like we talked about earlier, to really just embrace who they are and be able to set healthier boundaries for themselves to live their best life. And so I’m really excited about that. That’s that’s just like a side project that we just started and it’s super fun.

Stone Payton: So are you already capturing some content? Have you started?

Mindy Vail: We are. Yeah, we had our first our our launch was two weeks ago and we’re going to go every other week. And yeah, it’s super exciting.

Stone Payton: Oh fantastic. We’ll definitely continue to follow that aspect of the of the story. And I just can tell from having an opportunity to have a phone call with you a few weeks ago and now in this, in this exchange here, you, uh, you’re going to thoroughly enjoy it and you’re going to genuinely help a lot of folks with that. So congratulations.

Mindy Vail: Thank you so much. I really hope that that it proves to be true. Yes. Thank you.

Stone Payton: Yeah. Hey, listen, before we wrap, I would love to leave our listeners, uh, with a little bit of counsel advice. I call it a pro tip, but I’d kind of like it. And I guess the frame for that, for me, would be when it comes to producing better results in less time, but maybe related to some of what we’ve talked about. And look guys, the number one pro tip, uh, is reach out and uh, tap into Mindy’s work and maybe set up a conversation with Mindy or somebody on her team, but to to sate them between now and then, uh, let’s leave them a little something to chew on. Mindy.

Mindy Vail: I would say my tip is to invest in yourself. Invest in yourself. Whether that be coaching, whether that be therapy, whether that be just better, healthier lifestyles. Um, I honestly think that when we invest in ourselves, when we carve out deliberate time to just learn who we are, what our own core values are, what it is we want out of life, what’s bringing us down. It goes so far in our daily interactions with others, whether it be at home or at work. Invest in yourself.

Stone Payton: Amen and well said. All right. What’s the best way for our folks to do just that? Tap into your work. Um, maybe have a conversation with you. Definitely want to get them, uh, connected to this, uh, podcast, give them an opportunity to, for to have access to the book. So let’s leave them with some coordinates to make that happen easily.

Mindy Vail: Fantastic. Yeah. They can reach me at. Uh, Mindy and then Vail, like Vail, Colorado. Mindy. Vail. Com. And I’m on LinkedIn. Mindy Vail as well. And same thing, uh, with the podcast. It’s a little bit separate from that because it’s a little more fun and a little more lighthearted. And that’s together to podcast. And that’s also on LinkedIn. You can find that on my Mindy Vail profile.

Stone Payton: What a delight. Mindy. I have thoroughly enjoyed the conversation, I oversold it. I told you we’d have about a 15 minute conversation. We’ve gone well beyond that because I am so thoroughly enjoying it. I’ve learned a ton. I know our listeners will as well. Thank you for what you’re doing. Thank you for your insight, your perspective, your enthusiasm. And keep up the the good work. We sincerely appreciate you.

Mindy Vail: Thank you Stone, I appreciate you having me and getting to share my passion. And I love your energy as well. So this has been great for me too.

Stone Payton: My pleasure. All right, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Mindy Vail, and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you in the fast lane.

 

BRX Pro Tip: Client Retention is More Important Than Client Acquisition

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BRX Pro Tip: Client Retention is More Important Than Client Acquisition
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BRX Pro Tip: Client Retention is More Important Than Client Acquisition

Stone Payton: And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, client retention is so fundamental and critical to a business’s long term sustainable success but say more.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, I think this is an area that people don’t invest enough time on. They spend so much time on getting that new client that they’re not really investing the time and energy necessary to keep a client. And just keeping your client for one more cycle, it can make a huge difference in the amount of revenue that a business coach or a professional service provider makes in any given year. So, I would recommend investing a lot more time and energy on client retention.

Lee Kantor: You know, part of the reason is that the real profit in your business is going to come from people and clients you already have. Client retention is the key to any type of long-term success because that means you have sustainable revenue, and you have easier growth. Just think about it. It costs less to retain a client than it is to acquire a new one. Just from that standpoint, you don’t have to spend new money resigning a client than you would of getting a brand-new person to become a client.

Lee Kantor: Number two, loyal clients spend more with you over time because they already know, like, and trust you. So, you’re already there in their minds for a lot of the stuff, so you’re going to be able to make more money over time, and you might be able to upsell them, you might be able to get more referrals from them, or they may even give you ideas of more services you could provide.

Lee Kantor: Number three, I just said it a little bit, but more referrals, word-of-mouth referrals. Satisfied clients don’t just stay, they bring you more business. They recommend you to others. That means you’re getting higher quality leads with no marketing cost. So, just that by itself is making you more money more efficiently. And new clients grow your business. Loyal clients sustain your business. Focus on retention. You’ll not only increase your profits, but you’re going to build a business that thrives for years and years to come.

Amy Palmer with Soldiers’ Angels

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Beyond the Uniform
Amy Palmer with Soldiers' Angels
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Amy-Palmer-SoldiersAngels-CherylEndresAmy Palmer is the President & CEO of Soldiers’ Angels, a national nonprofit dedicated to supporting service members, veterans, and their families.

When she took the helm in 2013, the organization was on the brink of closure. Within two years, Amy led a powerful turnaround, transforming it into one of the most respected and efficient military nonprofits in the country.

Under her leadership, Soldiers’ Angels has served over 7.5 million individuals and earned top ratings from Charity Navigator, GreatNonprofits, and Candid. Soliders-Angels-logo-CherylEndres

In her conversation with Trisha Stetzel, Amy—herself a veteran and military spouse—shared the journey of rebuilding and expanding Soldiers’ Angels. She highlighted the organization’s vital programs, including monthly food distributions, hygiene support for hospitalized veterans, and housing kits for homeless veterans.

Amy also emphasized the growing need for donations, volunteers, and new board members in Houston and Corpus Christi. Looking ahead, she revealed plans to grow their food distribution efforts by 50% in 2025 and encouraged listeners to learn more or get involved at SoldiersAngels.org.

Connect with Amy on LinkedIn.

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Trisha Stetzel: Trisha Stetzel here, bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio. It is my pleasure to bring this guest on the show today. She was introduced to me through a mutual contact. Barrett. Uh, and I, he must have known we’re, like soul sisters or something. You have. You do such amazing work. So, Amy Palmer with Soldiers Angels. Welcome to the show.

Amy Palmer: Thank you. Thank you for having me today. We’re excited for the opportunity.

Trisha Stetzel: Well, I’m excited that you’re here today to talk about Soldiers Angels. Before we get to that, though, Amy, can you tell us a little bit about you?

Amy Palmer: Sure. So I grew up in a small town big house. Um, which is a lot of the reason I know people join the military. Um, you know, I have ten brothers and sisters and wanted to find a way to get through college and pay for college, so I joined the Air Force. Um, I was injured, um, during the Gulf War and had to have back surgery. So I was, um, medically discharged and, um, but remained a military spouse and spent the next 20 years, um, with a military spouse as well. Um, and so, you know, it’s great, uh, great opportunities. Um, one of the things I found as I was getting out of the military, when you’re notified of a med board, you a lot of times don’t have a lot of time to prepare. So I think when they notified me it was about a six week time frame, I was, um, going to be discharged. And, you know, being a dual income family at the time, we were able to support it. But, you know, the thought crossed my mind if if I was the primary breadwinner, what would I do right now? And so, um, you know, it made me think about all of those people in those same situations and and how do we help them. And so that’s where I ended up. I’m working in the military and veteran nonprofit space and have been in it ever since, so about 21 years now.

Trisha Stetzel: Fantastic. So, Amy, I hope you like dogs for anybody who’s watching the video. Yes, I have one that I’m babysitting because she’s got bad allergies right now. If you’re only listening, you’re missing the show. Uh, thank you for sharing that, Amy. And, uh, I think you and I are. We definitely have more in common as we continue to have conversations, because I, too, am a veteran and married to a veteran mother of a veteran daughter of a veteran. So I understand exactly where that that gut comes from, uh, and wanting to serve. So let’s dive into Soldiers angels. Tell me more about the organization.

Amy Palmer: Soldiers angels is a national nonprofit. We provide aid, comfort, and resources to our service members and veterans and their families. Um, our organization was actually started by General Patton’s Peyton’s family when one of the patents was deployed to Iraq, um, during the initial invasion of Iraq. So Patty Patton was busy sending him care packages and, um, during the early days, you know, they didn’t hear from the from family members. And so she just kept sending and sending and sending. She was one of those mothers that we all, um, screech about who called the commander because she hadn’t heard from him. And yeah, you know how that goes in the military. So I’m sure he was teased for the next six years after that. But she finally got Ahold of his unit and his commander, and he said, oh, your son is the luckiest man in Iraq. He’s been getting all these care packages, but he’s been sharing them with others. And so he she finally was able to talk to him and he said, keep sending them. You know, I’m sharing with friends. So, uh, Patty created a website where people could go on and adopt and support a deployed service member, which you can still do. Now. You can go there.

Amy Palmer: See, we have about 500 service members waiting for adoption that have just recently registered, that are deployed, um, in combat support, you know, vicinity. So areas, um, that had previously supported combat operations, um, and so they can register so you can go and search by branch of service, gender, home state and find a service member that you want to send care packages and cards and letters to during the course of their deployment. Um, over the first ten years, we had over 180,000 volunteers come through and register and adopt service members. Um, since then we’ve expanded, you know, deployments have drawn down and, uh, we added some other things people could do by mail, because a lot of our volunteers are scattered all over the US and even in foreign countries, and they’re used to doing things by mail. So we added virtual baby showers, a holiday Adopt-a-family program, a program for caregivers of post-9-11 wounded, ill and injured called Women of Valor. So those are all opportunities that are still done completely by mail where people can volunteer. And then we also created opportunities in the local VA’s Bas and bases and guard and reserve centers where people can do local support as well. Wow.

Trisha Stetzel: That you have taken an organization that was focused on one thing and really expanded the way you’re serving, uh, our active duty military. Thank you for being so amazing and continuing the service through this organization. Um, where I heard you say something about the the VA’s. And I know that your organization has concentration in particular areas in Texas. We talk a little bit more about the service that you’re giving back to, um, the VA.

Amy Palmer: Absolutely. And, you know, when we started a market, we try to grow those sites to be large enough where they can get all of the services that we offer. And so, for instance, in San Antonio, um, we offer our food distributions once a month. So drive through food distributions. We’re adding some food pantries in the area for for veterans and active duty and guard reservists as well. Um, we have transportation services where, um, we do Uber, Lyft, Greyhound, you know, if they’re, um, needing to get there and they can’t afford to. Um, we do, of course, bus first. But, you know, if they have a compromised immune system and they need Uber, Lyft, or if it’s after hours we use those services. Um, we do VA cafeteria vouchers for veterans who can’t afford to eat in the cafeteria and are there for appointments. Um, we do box lunches for, um, homeless and low income veterans for, you know, after hours that are nonperishable. Um, we do patient visits, donuts and coffee, all sorts of great things. So in in our full service facilities like San Antonio, Houston, we’re actually growing to that level. Um, we do luncheons and dinners, donuts and coffee. Um, at the VA, you know, right in the atrium. Um, we work at the Community Resource and Referral Center and, and help stock their, um, pantry area where they feed homeless veterans lunch every day. So we’re expanding Houston to grow that to those things. But there’s a lot of opportunities. But but even in areas like corpus and other areas that may not have a full fledged hospital, a lot of them do have VA clinics or even VA vet centers. And so we’re able to provide support in those locations as well. So while it may not be a hospital, there’s still opportunities for people to volunteer locally and serve veterans.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. That’s lovely. I know that monetary donations are always important to organizations. So, um, just assuming that that’s important to your organization. Yes. If if someone wants to give, they certainly can. I’d really like to focus on volunteers and then roll into, uh, maybe board opportunities as well. So as a volunteer, someone who wants to serve with soldiers, angels, what can they do or what is out there for them and how do they find you?

Amy Palmer: Um, yeah, that’s a great point. And and as you mentioned, with donations and that’s assumed that all charities need those. Um, the great thing about us is especially like with our food programs, we can feed someone at a very low cost because of the way we source it and using resources. And so, like, we can feed a family for a week for about $15, where if somebody gave us in kind, you know, it wouldn’t have the same impact. So of course, um, cash contributions are amazing. Um, there are so many great volunteer opportunities. Um, you know, and as companies have come back from Covid, like, the whole dynamic has shifted of what a company looks like. And, you know, a lot of people work virtually. Um, and they may be scattered across the country now, um, where they migrated, you know, their kids lived in another city, like my son lives in Dallas. And so, you know, having the opportunity to go there and work virtually, you know, I know people have kind of scattered. Um, and some are back in the office. So I’ve seen a lot of kind of mixed companies now, but we have a lot of opportunities for both. We have the local opportunities in the local areas, but then we also have a lot of the virtual ones where they do everything you know by mail. They register on our website and create a volunteer profile, and then they can do any of those sorts of things. They can write a letter, um, they can bake for deployed, like there’s so many opportunities. Um, so it’s great for businesses that want to engage their employees. But it’s hard because they’re, you know, some of them are here and some of them are scattered, like, we can do that in kind of a one stop shop fashion, which is great for our companies.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, fantastic. So if someone is interested in volunteering, Amy, how do they get started?

Amy Palmer: So they just go to our website at Soldiers Angels org and click the volunteer button. They’ll create a profile, but that profile is good for everything, whether that’s local things in their area, whether that’s virtual opportunities or any of our campaigns where like right now, our sock drive, if they want to do socks like all that’s through that same profile. So, um, so it’ll take them a minute to get that set up, but it’ll be worth it because they can do any of those sorts of services with soldiers angels at um at the on the volunteer tab at Soldiers Angels. Org.

Trisha Stetzel: Beautiful. So anybody who’s listening and wants to get involved with soldiers angels, it’s very simple. Go to the website Soldiers angels and go to the volunteer tab. Right. Uh, and fill out the form and you can get started that way. And there’s so many opportunities for you to volunteer with this organization. I’d like to shift to the next level, which is board opportunities. I understand that soldiers angels may have opportunities, uh, open for board needing board members. So can we talk about that?

Amy Palmer: Yes, absolutely. Um, you know, we are always recruiting new board members. Um, you know, we’d like to have a new, healthy perspective and some turnover and, you know, different folks geographically. Um, and in different, you know, spheres of influence and expertise. So, um, we have elections twice a year. We have the next round coming up in June at our annual meeting. So it’s a great time for people to be candidates for the board. And people often ask, you know, what are you looking for? We’re looking for people that could serve in any capacity. Um, you know, geographically, location is great. Um, and we don’t have anybody in in most of those areas. Of course, we have a couple folks in San Antonio, but no board members in Houston or Corpus or any of those locations, so we’d love to consider them. Um, and we have different committees. Each board member will serve on a committee. So there’s always a place for everybody of different kind of backgrounds. Um, whether they’re veterans and active duty, that’s great, but they don’t have to be. We’re about 5050 and board membership, but we have, you know, marketing committee, fundraising, finance, um, strategic planning. So I think there’s a place for everybody to fit in. But the great thing about soldiers, angels and our board service is really impact a lot of lives and, and develop programs that, you know, change the world.

Amy Palmer: You know not and I mean, there’s a lot to be said for local nonprofits as well as national nonprofits. But but the impact nationally is really great. And so, you know, as we expand and grow food programs, for instance, you know, those are decisions that the board makes that that’s the direction we’re heading based on the need. And so really you get to make do a lot that really influences people and to really make a difference. So if anybody’s interested in board membership, they can reach out to us. Um, like they can email info at Soldiers angels.org like information info at Soldiers angels.org um and uh we or go to the contact us form on the website. Those all get filtered back to me. Um, we have a committee who will vet the candidates, um, in advance and have conversations with them and then present them to the board. But, um, we have a great board, very active, love serving people, love serving veterans and and active duty service members. So, um, it’s a great opportunity and we’d love to have some additional folks if anybody’s interested. And it’s, you know, on their hearts to do something like that.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. Amazing. And you guys heard that those of you listening from Houston, we’re looking for some board members from Houston as well as corpus. So if you’re interested, shoot that note over to Amy and her team at info at Soldiers Angels. Dot. Okay, now that we have all of that out of the way, I’m very curious, Amy, how your service in the military, the time that you spent in the military and even as a military spouse really set you up for success running this organization.

Amy Palmer: Um, you know, I think two ways I think understanding the space is important. And, um, and while not everybody that works here, you know, has that connection, they all have a passion for doing it. Um, but knowing how the system works is really good. And being there myself, you know, going through the med board process, going through a VA disability claim and a VA disability appeal and um, and VA appointments and medical care and all that stuff is really great. Um, because it really has helped me understand the needs of of people and also help them navigate the system. Um, but it also helps helps me communicate with leaders in the military and VA, um, world about the needs of this population and how we can continue to serve them. Um, but I also think, you know, it has to run like a business. And that’s one of the changes that we made. Um, when you know, the the focus on the war efforts in the media and the public eye, you know, was on decline. You know, how do we change the organization to be more professionalized? You know, it started as people with just with a passion for serving, but without the skill to do, um, you know, all of the other components. And so, you know, it’s for us, it was really important to be able to do that. Um, but, um, you know, it’s amazing to be able to serve so many veterans and so many military families, but also run a business.

Amy Palmer: And, you know, it’s hard when you have to make shifts and make changes and professionalize staff and, um, and bring on people with a skill set, um, a different skill set, you know, but it is important to treat it like a business and have that business mentality. And even for board membership, you know, we want people that don’t always agree with me. You know, we want people. And sometimes I’m like, oh, that board member. But that’s good. That’s what you’re looking for. And you know, you need to treat it like a business. We have money. Well, how best do we use this money to serve the most people and make the biggest difference? Um, how do we, um, not conflict with others and just, you know, serve in our lane? Um, you know, we don’t want to compete when someone’s doing it great and doing a great job. How do we partner with them to do that better? And so a lot of it is really the business aspect of it. And I think in the early days, you know, there was less of that, but I think more so now, and people just really treating it like a business. And sometimes we have to make tough business decisions. Um, and, um, but, you know, I love it. Um, to be able to combine the business with the service is really great. And, you know, it makes all the hours and the time you put into it worth it.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. I, I everything that you said coming straight like pulling at my heart because nonprofits often run just to serve. And if we don’t treat them like businesses, then we don’t have the, um, materials that we need to serve the purpose that we opened that nonprofit for in the first place. So I love that. And by the way, just putting a little, you know, uh, feeler out there for board members, again, that have some business acumen because it is important to bring people who have business acumen onto a board of directors or board for, um, the nonprofit space as well. All right. So, Amy, has there been a, um, particular success story recent or maybe in the past of soldiers angels.

Amy Palmer: Yeah, that’s why I love it here. Um, there’s like, this seems like one every day of something different and unique. In a way. We are changing someone’s life. Um, you know, a couple of things. Um, in one of our offices, we have a veteran intern that’s been with us a long time. Who was who? I was there when he first started. Very shy. Was, like, scared to death to go into a room where there were other people not even presenting, just being in that space as a representative of soldiers, angels. And we did the Daytona 500. We did a food distribution, a pop up with Kroger Racing Team and JFK racing. Um, and he was on a bullhorn saying, start your engines and all that. And I’m like, wow, like, this is a changed person. And he went from, you know, a veteran that was like really down and out to just a changed human being. And so it was so crazy to be at that event and see him. And I’m like, wow, I can’t believe how much you have changed and grown, you know? And it was just it was awesome to see. Um, but at that same event, you know, we it was a pop up distribution. We’ve never done one in Daytona before. Um, we did one at the Daytona Beach VA clinic, which is actually a really new clinic, a beautiful clinic. And, um, so we don’t have relationships with these veterans like we do in a lot of the other markets where they know us by name.

Amy Palmer: But we had a veteran come through that had a brain injury, and he recently had a brain bleed. And as a result of that, he was having migraines and flashbacks and nightmares. Um, and he went through the line and telling one of our volunteers that he was going to kill himself. And, um, we, you know, of course, after getting him his food, we’re like, okay, you know, what can we do here? And and she convinced him to go inside and get help. And so the VA came, you know, we had VA staff there, of course, in their parking lot. They came and they took him, and they did what they needed to do to get him the care he needed. Um, which is great, you know. Suicide prevention is not our number one focus. But everything we do hopefully is, is a factor in that. And we do ask those questions, you know, when they apply for programs and food and, you know, our transportation and those things. But, you know, to see it actually played out in someone, um, was really great because, you know, we didn’t just provide food for him. Hopefully we changed the trajectory of his life, um, in that one moment. And so, um, you know, those are the stories that make you want to continue to do what you do.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. And even though you’re staying in your lane, as you mentioned earlier, and supporting these soldiers or these veterans in a particular way, you still have connections. And that’s the beauty of your organization is all of the connections that you have. So, Amy, as we get to the back half of our conversation, what does 2025 look like for soldiers angels? What’s your big goal this year?

Amy Palmer: Great question and we’re very excited about it. We’re actually. Our goal is to grow our food programs by 50% over last year, which is a big goal. Um, but we have increased um, the number of via cafeteria vouchers were distributing to VA’s. Um, the number of VA’s eligible to receive those to issue to veterans, um, box lunches are growing our food um program. So, um, in addition to the sites that do monthly food distributions, we actually just added Cincinnati, Ohio. Um, last month was the first month, um, we took over that food distribution in Cincinnati at the VA there. We’re adding DC in June, um, which is awesome. And, um, but but we’re adding pantries as well. So we’re, we’re setting up some food pantries. We’re, um, adding a food pantry in Charlotte, North Carolina. Um, we just added one in Detroit with the Detroit Pistons that was funded by the Detroit Pistons, which is awesome. And, um, and they’re actually building out the space even for us, which is really great for the pantry. So, um, our food programs are growing. Um, and even the pop up ones like we did in Daytona, we are doing, um, several NASCAR races with Kroger Racing and JFK racing this year. So, um, we’ll be doing the Fort Worth race at, um, there. We’ll be doing a pop up food distribution and another area. So so it is a lofty goal to increase it by 50%, but we’re well on our way with these various events. And food insecurity is such a huge issue. Um, not just among veterans, but also active duty and guard and reservists. Um, and so being able to provide food is really a way that we can make a big difference.

Amy Palmer: Um, and not just food, you know, like with a service member or this veteran that was suicidal. Um, we also ask them, have you recently appealed your VA claim, or when was the last time you did it? Because a lot of the older veterans don’t feel like they deserve it, and they see amputees and think they need it much worse than I do. But I always tell them, let the VA decide that you know that’s not your job to decide. You just do the paperwork and let them do it. And whether you use a service agency, whether you use a for profit accredited, like we can help them figure out what’s best for them based on their situation. Um, but we definitely are always encouraging, especially the older veterans who may have not ever done that or may have not looked at it in 30 years to do that. Because that one thing, if especially a veteran that’s living on Social Security, that could double their income. And, and a lot of cases will change the path of them needing food and other assistance. And really, that’s the ultimate goal. And so, um, but also finding them other resources that they need mental health, a service dog, a a vehicle, you know, we can connect them to those agencies and those resources in Houston. Combined arms is one of our most amazing partners. Who has that network that helps them navigate those things. And so we can get them down the path of finding out, like, what’s the root of the food insecurity needs?

Trisha Stetzel: Okay, so last question before we close today, those that are listening, how can they help you meet that goal of increasing that food distribution by 50%?

Amy Palmer: Um, of course, as I mentioned up front, cash is important because we’re able to feed them a lot more effectively and cost effectively than than what someone could do if they sent us, you know, canned foods and things. Um, gift cards are always great. We use those a lot of times for for veterans and needs. Um, our VA cafeteria vouchers are $8, which gives them a warm meal in the VA cafeteria. So, you know, if people wanted to support a number of those, even if they said, I would like to fund 100 of those for 100 veterans in our market, that would be great. Um, there’s also so many opportunities to volunteer to serve food in San Antonio. We have the drive thru distribution in Houston. We work at the Krcc, the community resource center, where they feed homeless veterans downtown. Every day they feed them lunch. Some days they don’t have it, and they’re making peanut butter and jelly for them. And we really want them. And and a lot of the VA staff actually paying for those things out of their own pockets just to be able to feed them. And so those are things we want to do is make sure that they have the tools to feed them and give them something warm. So we brought them some new appliances and things, you know, some, you know, air fryer and a and a pizza oven and those things so that they can serve those veterans better. But there’s opportunities to volunteer in those settings and, and even opportunities to volunteer where we may not have a pantry and could start one because someone stepped up to do it. So, um, there’s so many opportunities to help us increase that, um, food number, um, really greatly. We do hope to add food distributions in Houston. And so hopefully that’s coming. But you know, again having the volunteers there is really important. And even, you know, corpus and other locations, um, we could have food pantries in those vet centers and VA clinics and things as well.

Trisha Stetzel: Fantastic, Amy. It has been such a pleasure having you on today, and thank you for serving and thank you for serving after you’ve served to serve others. I think that’s just beautiful.

Amy Palmer: Thank you as well. And thank you for everybody listening and for everybody that is a veteran. Thank you for your service as well.

Trisha Stetzel: And anybody who would like to connect with Amy, her team or even soldiers angels, please go visit soldiers angels org. And again, if you’re interested in serving on the board you can send an email to info at dot. Amy, thank you again. I appreciate you being here with me.

Amy Palmer: Thank you.

Trisha Stetzel: That’s all the time we have for today’s show. Join us next time for another exciting episode of Houston Business Radio. Until then, stay tuned, stay inspired, and keep thriving in the Houston business community.

 

Danna Olivo with MarketAtomy LLC

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HBR-Marketatomy-Feature
Houston Business Radio
Danna Olivo with MarketAtomy LLC
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MarketAtomy-HOR-DannaOlivoMarketAtomy

Danna-OlivoDanna Olivo is a government contracting specialist with over 35 years of experience in the Architectural, Engineering, Construction (AEC), technology, and green energy sectors.

She’s a trusted advisor in federal and state procurement, known for her strategic leadership in business development, market research, and international expansion—particularly guiding firms through complex contracts tied to global events like the World Cup and Olympics.

In her discussion with Trisha Stetzel, Danna shared insights on business strategy, marketing, and her unique Market Anatomy framework—drawing parallels between market dynamics and the human body.

She opened up about overcoming self-doubt and the power of authenticity in business, and offered valuable advice on navigating the government contracting space, especially for veteran and disabled-veteran-owned small businesses. Danna also highlighted a major win: helping a client secure a contract with NASA.

Connect with Danna on LinkedIn.

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Trisha Stetzel: Hello, Houston. Trisha Stetzel here for another episode of Houston Business Radio. It is my pleasure today to introduce you to my new friend Danna Olivo with Market Academy. She is the CEO of this business. Danna, I’m so excited to have you on the show today.

Danna Olivo : Oh, Trisha, I appreciate it. I’m really excited. Excited to be here, to be talking about what we’re going to be talking about.

Trisha Stetzel: So yes, absolutely. We’re going to tackle some really good stuff today. A little bit of mindset and a little bit of like deconstruction of this particular space that some people are a little afraid to work in. Right. So it’s going to be fun. So Danna, tell us a little bit more about you as we get started.

Danna Olivo : Well, you know, myself personally, I am a business strategist. I work with small and medium businesses. I my background is in marketing, business development and strategic planning. Um, for more than 35 years, I’ve worked within the architectural, engineering, construction and technology markets. Um, I have worked both locally and internationally down in Brazil. So it kind of gives you a little bit of, uh, background as far as where my experience comes from. And as we get farther into our show, you’ll understand why. Um, you know, I have gone in the direction that I have. So.

Trisha Stetzel: Absolutely. So another interesting thing I’d like to talk about is the name of your business. So Market Academy and its Market Academy. By the way, for those of you who want to go check it out. Danna, tell me a little bit more about this name of your business.

Danna Olivo : Well, you know, it started back in 2012. I was down in Brazil working as a strategist for the World Cup games and the Summer Olympic Games. Um, matching companies here from the United States to companies in Brazil. This was during the recession. Okay. So, um, and when, uh, and I had a major accident down in Brazil that laid me up for a little while. And when I came back to the United States, I had several of my colleagues and everything that had to start their own businesses because they lost work. And they would come to me and they said, Danna, I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong. I’m bleeding money, you know? I need to make some some changes with my business. Well, in the process of talking to them and understand I’m in recuperation, I’m going through surgeries, but they’re coming to me, you know. And so in the process of talking to them, it became really obvious that these were good business people in the sense which they they had good products and services, but didn’t know how to build a business around those products or services. And in an effort to explain to them in a language that they understood, I developed what’s called the Market Academy concept marketing anatomy or the anatomy of marketing. Mhm. And it’s built around the human body. And what the purpose was, was to identify and show them where the heart of the body is your soul.

Danna Olivo : It’s it’s your your passion. It’s your love. It’s, you know, it’s why and who you are. Well, in business, the heart of your business is your passion. It’s why you do what you do. You know where where that passion comes from. Also in the body. The brain has everything that’s needed to keep the heart going, right? Well, in the business, in the brain of the business is the playbook. It’s your systems. It’s your processes. It’s everything that you need to help that business grow around your product or service offering. So in the human body, can the heart operate without the brain? No. So this is where I explain to them, you need everything in place, the brain and the heart of your business working cohesively to push your message, your clear message through the channels. Marketing channels which are the veins of the body to the body, which is your target market. But keep in mind, the soul of the business is you. And so by explaining to them and then breaking that down into different areas that they needed to focus on to build those processes and systems, they finally realized, oh, yeah, I hadn’t thought about that, you know. So that’s where Market Atomy came about. Okay.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that. It makes it so simple. The way you break it down, you need all of these things to be functioning together.

Danna Olivo : Right?

Trisha Stetzel: To make it whole.

Danna Olivo : Right, right, right. And as a strategist, you know, when I’m working with small and medium businesses, that is so critical is to put it in terms that they understand because a lot of them did not go to school for business or marketing like I did, or what you might have gone to school for. A lot of them just started their business, or they are tradesmen or something like that. So you have to be able to explain this to them in a language they understand that is not talking down to them. And that’s that’s where I pride, um, what we do at Market Academy is the fact that we come in where I’ve been there, I’ve done that. I know exactly what you’re going through, and I can help you.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, I love that. Without judgment.

Danna Olivo : Without judgment? Yes. No, definitely.

Trisha Stetzel: Because I’ve been there before. Absolutely. So, Danna, you’ve given some a little, you know, kind of peek into you had a life altering event which really set this new business into motion because people needed something, and that’s usually how things work. But there’s some other things that come into play here. I think as business owners, I talked to so many small and medium business owners that have some of these self-sabotaging beliefs around their businesses. So can you talk a little more around how those things that we tell ourselves, or that we’re thinking can keep us from receiving what we deserve?

Danna Olivo : Right. Well, you know, and and this was a critical turning point for me. And unfortunately, it did not happen until after I was 50 years old, you know. Um, but for years, you know, I had hit bottom and had to rebuild, you know, to the point where I have a tattoo on my back of a phoenix to remind myself, okay, I’m always going to rise up out of the ashes because I’ve always believed I could do whatever I put my mind to. And this is the same thing with what had happened down in Brazil. Okay. We were doing very well. And then all of a sudden, this accident happens. That lays me up for over a year. Um. And, um. And then what happened was working with my psychiatrist, my counselors and stuff like that. I came to realize it. They pointed out the fact that the reason I kept failing was because of the fact that even though I believed I could do anything I wanted, where I was fighting was right before I crossed over and had to deliver. All right, I would believe, and I’d be promoting and saying, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this. And then I get to a point where I have to cross over and deliver, and then something would happen. And usually it was something that I had done, or it was something that, you know, I don’t know what it was, But what we figured out was the fact that I was self-sabotaging myself because I didn’t. I felt like I was going to be found out to be a, um, you know, false or, you know, just, you know, just not not true to what I was teaching. Yeah. Which wasn’t the case. But in my mind, I was thinking, okay, I’m not good enough for this. So when it comes to delivering, I didn’t want them to find out that I was a fraud or something. Does that make sense?

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. It does. I think a lot of us struggle with that. Right? The identification of are we in the right place, doing the right things? Are we capable? Are we good enough? And I think we oftentimes we ask those questions of ourselves. So what’s the rest of the story, Danna, how you were able to overcome Calm this space, right? This barrier between believing and actually receiving what you desired.

Danna Olivo : Well, while I was going through this and it took less than two weeks for me to do this, I wrote my fifth book. Okay. And it’s still in the editing. I’m still kind of flushing it out in my mind, but it’s written. It’s been edited by, you know, the professionals and everything. But I want to make sure. But basically it talks about the fact that my entire life this has been going on, you know, I’ve had a very strong belief system, but somehow I was always self-sabotaging. So what I did was, um, I’ve got a sign right in front of me that says believe and receive. Okay. And by doing that, I keep reminding myself that I can do it. I’m not fake. And I’ve had people come up to me and tell me, you know, I’ll tell you a story. I had a gentleman who was also a strategist. Um, but he was one of the higher end. I don’t want to say he was a higher end. He was your traditional strategist, which went to college, you know, for business strategy and everything. And, um, we were on a panel together. And after the panel got done, um, he looked at me and he says, Dan, we need to go. We need to go have some lunch. And I’m thinking to myself again, this self-sabotaging behavior. I’m thinking, oh, what the hell did I say wrong this time? You know that type? You know, when I had my accident in Brazil, in the ambulance, when it finally dawned on me, the first thing I said to myself is, Danna, what did you do this time?

Speaker4: Oh, goodness.

Danna Olivo : So these are things that, you know. But anyway, Harry, when he you know, when he told me, he says we need to go have lunch. I said, okay. You know, we go and we sit down. He looks at me and says, you know your poop. And I said, he’s a good old Oklahoma boy, okay. And I said, huh? And he looked at me and says, you know what you’re talking about. And I looked at him and I said, Harry, I said, you know, that means a lot to me coming from you. You know, because I had a lot of respect for him. He says, no. He says, you know as much, if not more, than any of us on that panel. The difference is in the way that you deliver it. And that was a turning point for me in a lot of things. You know, his understanding. Yes. I’m not going to I’m not going to compare myself to other strategists out there. I can’t compare myself to other marketers or anything like that. You know, when you’re in business, that credibility and that vulnerability speaks louder than any marketing you can do.

Speaker4: Yeah.

Trisha Stetzel: Absolutely. So thank you for, uh, for sharing that story. And, you know, I think so many of us coming back to so many of us do struggle with that, right? We’re we’re telling ourselves one thing, but do we actually believe it? And I love the idea of being vulnerable and building credibility and just being you and not trying to be someone else, or compare yourself to others who are out there. All right. So we’re about halfway through, and I want to give folks an opportunity to connect with you. If they’re already interested, they maybe they want to learn more about Brazil, or maybe they want to learn more about these self-sabotaging beliefs or ways that they can overcome them. What is the best way to connect with you, Danna?

Danna Olivo : They can connect with me, um, through, um, market Academy.com they can email me at Danna a Olivo at market Academy.com. Or they can go to my calendar link, which you’re going to put into the show notes, and you can actually set up an appointment to talk with me and that’s free of charge. So by clicking on that 1 to 1 meeting for my calendar, you actually will get 60 minutes of my time.

Speaker4: Wow. That’s fantastic.

Trisha Stetzel: Thank you Danna. That’s amazing. Yeah. You guys, it’s in the show notes. So if you’re sitting at your computer listening or watching right now, just point and click. It’s really easy to set up a 60 minute conversation with Danna to find out more about her and about Market Academy, uh, and the type of work that she’s doing. So, Danna, I’d like to leave the mindset conversation just a little bit and move towards government contracting. I know some of you out there listening are like, oh, that’s such a hard space to play in. And I think many of us have that, um, that idea in our head, like, I want to go pursue government contracting, but it sounds so hard and there’s so much red tape. So can we talk about all of that stuff? Like, what do you think is keeping our business owners from pursuing government contracting?

Speaker4: Fear. Fear. Yeah. Okay.

Danna Olivo : Okay. Um, you know, uh, I’ve been doing government contracting for over 35 years. Coming from the architectural engineering construction market, um, mostly on the commercial side. And whenever you go after these government contracts, um, what we call request for proposals, you know, things like that. Whenever you’re going after government contracting, there’s a lot of red tape, a lot of regulations and things like that. And what you have to keep in mind is the fact that they are dealing with our taxpayer dollars. So a lot of these regulations and everything are designed so that they can respond Spond to where our tax dollars are going. So with that being said. Going after government contracting is no different than going after private business. If you’re a small or medium business owner, you know that you have to create relationships with with the people that you want to do business with and ultimately build that relationship so that you can actually work with them. It’s the same thing with government. The difference between working on the private sector and the government sector is finding those people who are the decision makers within government contracting. And one thing to keep in mind, the government does not produce or do anything.

Speaker4: Okay.

Danna Olivo : They work with what’s called prime contractors. They’ll hire your large firms or your medium firms, or even your small firms to produce or to, you know, provide the products or services that they need. And so understanding the process that’s, that’s needed in order to go after these, these programs is critical. You know, I have um, several webinar, uh, educational webinars or informational webinars that I do. And one of them is called Breaking Barriers into Government Contracting. And if you want to find out when my next presentation will be on that, simply schedule a time on my calendar or reach out to me, and I’ll be glad to let you know the next time I’m going to be presenting that. But what breaking barriers into government contracting does is I actually explain what the process is that the government goes through in order to find the people to fulfill their needs, you know, the procurement Process. But we also talk about the money flow from federal on down to municipal. You know, and and, you know, by the time federal disperses its money down to. The state and then the state disperses down to county and then to municipal. You know, it’s it’s like working with your 401 K or or unemployment. Let’s look at your unemployment check. It only covers a small portion. Right. So therefore at the county side and the municipal side, that’s why the, the the city and municipal, you know, governments go out and they have they get their tax dollars, they get all of these fees, which helps pay for what needs to be done. So understanding this process helps to understand when you’re going after these projects where that money’s coming from.

Speaker4: Okay.

Danna Olivo : Okay.

Speaker4: Yeah.

Trisha Stetzel: So it sounds so complicated.

Speaker4: It is. It it sounds.

Danna Olivo : Complicated. And it’s a lot to take in. It’s like drinking through a fire hose. When you sit down. And as a strategist, what I do is I work with these companies to coach and mentor them through the entire process.

Speaker4: Wow.

Danna Olivo : What I do, I help them get their certifications. I help them get, you know, um, registered as vendors. You know, there’s a lot of things that have to be done. But having somebody who understands the process is critical.

Speaker4: Absolutely.

Trisha Stetzel: We all need a Danna in our corner so that we can get through the red tape. Right. And I know I have I think I told you this before, uh, when we had our discovery conversation. I have a lot of veterans who are business owners that listen to this show. So any particular piece of advice for those veteran business owners out there?

Danna Olivo : Well, definitely, when it comes to being a veteran, disabled or not disabled or whatever, having that veteran status puts you into a prime position for getting some of these contracts as long as you have are showing up properly. Okay. What that means is you are registered, you know, and everything else. Now the minority status is a veteran or a disabled veteran. You know, um, in a small business that always puts you in a prime position. Um, the other thing to keep in mind, and I wanted to touch on this, everything that’s going on right now with the federal government. Okay. What, you know, Doge and what, you know, the tariffs and everything else. Everybody is up in arms about what’s happening on the federal side. And I’m currently putting a presentation together, an informational session together, talking about what we could expect. But when you look at the 4 or 5 areas that that President Trump and is is concentrating on the tariffs, Doge, everything else. The reasoning behind it makes solid business sense. Makes solid business sense with what they’re doing. How they’re doing it is another story. All right. And I’m not going to speak to whether I agree or disagree or anything like that. But to keep in mind, we’ve needed this reasoning behind doing these for a long time. And what’s going to happen now is on the small medium business side, when we’re going after contracts, the tariffs are going to force things back to the United States.

Speaker4: Okay.

Danna Olivo : So therefore small businesses won’t have to compete with the lower rates. They’re going to be able to compete on a more level field.

Speaker4: Mhm.

Danna Olivo : And then the other thing to keep in mind. Is with Doge. Ultimately, once this all Ferris you know, gets taken care of or whatever, we’re going to be dealing with a smaller government entity. And in order for them to be able to handle everything, they’re going to have to introduce some kind of streamlined processes, leadership processes, you know, all of this to make it so that they can still fulfill what needs to be done for us as citizens at a government level. What’s that going to do? It’s going to open up more leadership, more agile, you know, systems, processes and things like that to do training. So it’s going to open up more stuff, you know. So there’s there’s some positives that come out of what’s happening federally. But there’s also some negatives. It’s not going to be ironed out. We’re not going to really start seeing any um. Responses or actions or positive responses, probably for another, you know, 10 to 12 months, it’s going to take that long for it to really start coming out, I think.

Trisha Stetzel: So what I’m hearing, Danna, is that there are still opportunities out there to do business with the with the government. There are and it there may be more down the road and an easier way to get there. In the meantime, those of us who don’t know what in the world we’re doing when it comes to government contracting, we have to get in touch with Danna. So one more time, Danna, tell people where to go to to find your contact information or how to connect with you.

Danna Olivo : You can connect with me through my email, which is Danna, at academy.com or schedule a time on my calendar, uh, through the link that’s going to be in the session notes. Um, I don’t give out my phone number, primarily because I get so much spam call that I have it. If your phone number is not programed in my phone, it goes straight to voicemail. If you want to leave a voicemail for me to call you back, I’ll call you back.

Speaker4: But to do that.

Trisha Stetzel: Well, the easiest way is just to connect with you either through your website, email, or just go directly to your calendly link. It is there and they can just book some time with you. So as we finish up today, thank you, by the way, for such a great conversation around two things that I think are really hitting home with people right now. But I’d love to hear a success story either your own or someone that you’ve worked with.

Speaker4: Oh goodness.

Danna Olivo : Well my own. Um, I would say the the biggest success I have is just what I’ve, you know, realized about myself as far as the self-sabotaging behaviors and being able to get through with that. Um, so but as far as business is concerned, because I am concentrating a great deal more on the government side rather than the private side. Doesn’t mean I’m not doing the private, but the focus right now is on government. I’ve been able to get one of my customers into Nassau here in Florida. Okay. At the Space Coast. And then also, I am currently working since I’ve been putting out my, um, um, breaking Barriers presentation. My my Breaking Barriers speak speech. I am closing, on average, 60% more than what I was when, you know, because it comes back to that vulnerability and credibility by doing my speeches first. They see and hear, okay, I know what I’m talking about.

Speaker4: Yeah.

Danna Olivo : And then I leave it up to them to reach out to me in order. And, and I do a great deal through my calendar because I love talking to people, and I love just handing out information that will help them make decisions. And getting into government contracting is not hard. It is not hard. It the federal side does have a long lead time. The local side is a shorter lead time. But you know the the bottom line is you have to develop relationships.

Speaker4: And.

Trisha Stetzel: And have Danna in your corner. I’m just.

Speaker4: Saying. Thank you. Trisha.

Trisha Stetzel: Oh, you’re very welcome. Thank you so much for being with me today. Fantastic conversation for our listeners. Everything that you need in order to connect with Danna is in the show notes. You can just point and click, or if you happen to be in your car, you may have to come back and grab the recordings so that you can connect with her on her calendly link and book some time with her. Thank you so much for offering an hour to anyone who’s listening. That is very special. We appreciate that so much and appreciate you being on.

Speaker4: Yes.

Danna Olivo : And also anybody who books on my calendar, I have a special gift for them.

Trisha Stetzel: Oh, a special gift. We love.

Speaker4: Special gifts. So Deanna, thank you so much.

Trisha Stetzel: Deanna Olivo with Market Academy LLC. I appreciate your time today, and maybe we’ll have to have you back on to tell more of your story.

Speaker4: Yes. No, definitely, definitely.

Danna Olivo : Thank you.

Trisha Stetzel: You’re very welcome. And that’s all the time we have for today’s show. Join us next time for another episode of Houston Business Radio. Until then, stay tuned, stay inspired, and keep thriving in the Houston business community.

 

From Stuck to Unstoppable: How Coaching Can Change Your Life

by

Greater Perimeter Business Radio
Greater Perimeter Business Radio
From Stuck to Unstoppable: How Coaching Can Change Your Life
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In this episode of Greater Perimeter Business Radio, Ramzi Daklouche talks with Nicole Comis, a professional certified coach specializing in personal transformation. Nicole shares her journey from the mortgage industry to coaching, emphasizing the significant role of the subconscious mind in feeling “stuck.” They discuss the importance of clarity in attracting the right clients, building authentic relationships, and overcoming subconscious barriers. Nicole offers practical advice for self-discovery and highlights the value of having a coach.

Nicole-Comis-Coaching-logo

Nicole-ComisNicole Comis is not your average coach—she’s a powerhouse of transformation.

As a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) accredited by the International Coach Federation (ICF) and a Master Coach in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Time Line Therapy®, and Hypnotherapy, she helps high achievers break free from the unconscious patterns keeping them stuck.

With years of deep coaching experience and extensive training, Nicole has mastered guiding professionals and business leaders toward incredible transformation. Nicole helps her clients gain the clarity, confidence, and courage to think bigger, push past self-imposed limits, and create a life that truly excites them.

Whether it’s scaling their career, building a thriving business, or finally prioritizing their happiness and fulfillment, she helps them achieve more than they imagined. Her clients come to her for career growth, leadership development, and personal fulfillment, but they leave with a radical shift in how they see themselves and their future.

Nicole’s coaching transforms not just what her clients do but who they become.

Connect with Nicole on LinkedIn and Facebook.

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Greater Perimeter. It’s time for Greater Perimeter Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Ramzi Daklouche: Welcome to another episode of the Business RadioX show where we shine a light on the people, the strategies and the transformations that are moving business forward in Atlanta and beyond. I’m your host, Ramzi Daklouche, with VR Business Sales of Atlanta, where we help business owners transition to their next chapter. Whether they’re ready to sell, expand, or plan for the future, you can reach us at. World.com. Or by calling 678478675. If you’re curious about what your business is worth, we’re happy to have a conversation. Today’s guest someone who works on a different kind of transition. The one that happens on the inside. Nicole Comis is not your average coach. She is a powerhouse of transformation, A professional certified coach, PCC through the International Coach Federation and Master Practitioner of NLP and certified in time line therapy and hypnotherapy. Nicole helps high achievers and entrepreneurs break through the subconscious patterns that keep them playing small and unlock the clarity, confidence and courage to finally go after their big goals. Her work is not just about business success, it’s about who you become along the way. Nicole, welcome to the show. We are thrilled to have you.

Nicole Comis: Oh, thank you for having me.

Ramzi Daklouche: You know what? I did all this presentation. Most of it. I don’t even know what it is. So I hope you can shine a light on what you do. But before we start this, let’s start with your journey. What led you into coaching and transformational work?

Nicole Comis: Yeah, so I started working with my first coach in 2003. I was I had an incredibly successful career in the mortgage business, and I, um, a coworker and very good friend of mine started working with a coach, and I watched her transform in front of my eyes. And at the time I didn’t know what she was doing, but I didn’t care. I just wanted whatever it was. And I worked with my very first coach and it completely changed my life. So fast forward to 2008 and the housing market crash happened. Well, so did my career and my identity. I was really unhappy for about five years, trying to figure out what was next for me and try to reinvent my life. I tried to find that love and passion that I used to have for my career, and after five years of being unhappy, I finally decided to become a coach.

Ramzi Daklouche: So what was that moment before? Before the crash? Before all this, I said, you know what? This is something I could do. I mean, everybody has that aha moment that keeps in the back of your mind thinking, this is what my path should look like.

Nicole Comis: Yeah. You know, it’s funny, I my very favorite part of my job in the mortgage business was everything I didn’t get paid for. So it was really coaching my clients. It was coaching them, educating them, supporting them in creating goals for their finances and helping them structure their mortgage so it was compatible with their future goals. And you know, it’s funny, when I became a coach, my mom said to me, she’s like, Nicole, you really have always been a coach. She’s like, you were always that person that your friends came to for, you know, to talk about their problems or to work through different challenges they were having. And you always came with an open mind. And so realistically, I feel like being a coach was kind of in my DNA.

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah, I think it’s natural people that are coaches and I’ve been I’ve done that before, uh, are not curious about people that really have this, uh, curiosity that makes them want to ask that next question and not afraid to ask the next question. And it’s genuine usually. So. And I see coaches that would never be successful because they just don’t have that. They’re in it for the and it’s not only a business, it’s really you got to be curious about the people.

Nicole Comis: Absolutely. And your heart has to be in the right place, you know? Yeah. And not, you know, it can’t be what I think is right. It has to be helping the client discover what’s right for them.

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you specialize in helping high achievers get unstuck. How does the subconscious mind play a role in the in the stuck feeling?

Nicole Comis: Oh, so our subconscious is where our programing is. So it’s our beliefs, our values, our negative emotions, our, um. Ah.

Ramzi Daklouche: Everything that holds you back.

Nicole Comis: Yeah. Well, it’s it’s everything. Everything that we see. So imagine your prescription glasses. Right? Your prescription glasses work for you. That’s how you can see the world clearly, right? Now, if I were to put on your prescription, I would see the world differently, right? Right. So you see the world through your beliefs. I see the world through my beliefs and my values and my history. And so when somebody is stuck, it’s likely something in their subconscious programing.

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah. So why do you think so many smart, driven professionals put their biggest dreams on the back burner?

Nicole Comis: Fear. Fear. Overwhelm.

Ramzi Daklouche: Is that what they get stuck with? Fear.

Nicole Comis: A lot of times, you know, and it could be fear of anything. It could be fear of rejection, of failure, of, um, you know, it could be fear of what other people will think.

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah.

Nicole Comis: You know, um, a lot of people also get caught in living in autopilot. They made a decision to go after a goal, and then they started going after that goal, and they pushed everything else to the side.

Ramzi Daklouche: No balance.

Nicole Comis: No balance. Or, you know, they wake up in the morning and it’s they get up, they take a shower, they go to work. They work ten hours. They come home, they eat, probably work some more, go to bed, wash and repeat. Right? And it’s the same cycle. And then six months, six years down the road, they’re wondering, how the heck did I get here?

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah, but that’s not just for business. That’s for life in general. Right?

Nicole Comis: I mean.

Ramzi Daklouche: Yes, I know people that are trying to, for example, lose weight, right? And they lose the first 5 or 6 pounds and they stop and they think they’re just not doing them. It’s a fear of they don’t know what. What is it going to take them to lose that next ten or next five or whatever it is. So same thing in relationships, right? They they have it good and then they really screw it up after that. So what’s the I mean, is there something visual that people could do or. I don’t know, like what can they do? What advice do you have people that are stuck in stuck in fear, right.

Nicole Comis: Yeah.

Ramzi Daklouche: Meanwhile because they start but they don’t know how to continue.

Nicole Comis: Sometimes for sure. So, um, you know, through coaching, you know, or self discovery. Right. So really looking at what are what are your thoughts. Right. So let’s say there’s something that you want to go after and you notice that you’re stopping. Start asking yourself questions, right? Like, um, what are what are the thoughts that I’m, I’m having? What are the emotions that I’m having? And be curious about what’s happening in your mind.

Ramzi Daklouche: And I don’t think that a coach can really figure out that every time you have that thought, you got to put it aside. It’s easier said than done, right? Even for me. And I listen to a lot of people and read a lot. Sometimes it’s very difficult to say, okay, stop thinking about this. You can’t control it. Just keep moving forward. Keep moving forward so well.

Nicole Comis: And that’s why I have a coach, right? Because.

Ramzi Daklouche: Oh wow. That’s interesting.

Nicole Comis: Yeah. Well, I can’t see what’s you know what I can’t see. Right. It’s like I’m in a box. And so you need somebody else to look at, you know, and see the things that you can’t see.

Ramzi Daklouche: You’re stuck in your own whirlwind, I call it.

Nicole Comis: Sure. Or your own. Your own crap.

Ramzi Daklouche: Crap. That’s a technical word.

Speaker4: I think that’s very good.

Ramzi Daklouche: What are some of the common internal patterns you see holding, you know, entrepreneurs, small business owners back? Um, besides overanalyzing.

Nicole Comis: Overanalyzing for sure. Right. We all do that. Um, I think, you know, also it’s it’s losing that fulfillment in life. Yeah. So many people, um, you know, especially driven professionals, are so focused on their career that they put their personal life on the back burner. And eventually that catches up. You know, our health and wellbeing is the foundation of everything we do and everything we don’t do. So how do we treat our body, mind and spirit? Relationships are we’re literally programed for for connection, right. So it is fuel to our goals. So if we’re not taking care of our relationships and we’re not taking care of our health and wellbeing, it’s almost like driving a car with, you know, little gas in it. It’s running on fumes and eventually it’s going to stop. Right? So if you can fulfill yourself with, you know, fulfilling relationships and taking care of your health and well-being, it’s like putting gas in a car. It helps you with those big goals.

Ramzi Daklouche: So in your business, you also have to help them with structuring the day.

Nicole Comis: Well, I you know, it’s really up to the client, right? So with coaching true coaching is different than consulting, right? Consulting is when you tell somebody what to do. Somebody would come to me for maybe being a marketing expert, a marketing consultant would say, here are the things you need to do to grow your business. Whereas coaching is more about helping the client discover the answers inside of them. So if during every coaching session, we spend a few minutes catching up and then I ask my clients, what would you like to get out of today? All of my coaching sessions are driven by the client, not by me.

Ramzi Daklouche: Okay.

Nicole Comis: So it really is up to the client’s, you know, decision. And it’s it’s based on their goals and what’s important to them in that moment.

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah. Do you without mentioning, of course, names, but do you have an example of someone who had a big vision but needed support clearing their mind?

Nicole Comis: Sure. Um, I had a client who came to me, and he had been, um, in his business for about five years, and he built his company to $1 million. He had spent nights sleeping at the office to get it to $1 million. Right. And he hired me because he wanted more. More support with relationships and continuing to grow his business. And so five years later, his company was worth $10 million. He got married. He built a team. He took vacations. He took care of his health and well-being. So he wasn’t able to see that him, you know, working, you know, all these hours and painting. Spending all of his focus on his business was actually not supporting him in his true goals. And so we worked together and, um, you know, he did focus on personal development and all of that great stuff. And he grew both personally and professionally because of that.

Ramzi Daklouche: That’s awesome. I think there’s a lot of business professionals that probably could use that where they get stuck, or they really are their own worst enemy. They get in their own way and and help like this can be incredible to them.

Nicole Comis: Yeah.

Ramzi Daklouche: So you cover a lot of modalities. Nlp timeline therapy. Hypnotherapy. How do you integrate all these into a session?

Nicole Comis: Yeah. So, um, traditional coaching is more about what’s happening, say, in the conscious brain, right? What are your goals? You know, what do you want to achieve? Going. You know what’s going on in your day to day life. Whereas the subconscious mind is the NLP, which is neuro linguistic programing. So the study of your brain or the language of your brain. Hypnotherapy and timeline therapy. So what happens is all of my clients get breakthrough sessions, which is a full day intensive where we we dive into a specific problem or area of life. And so let’s say the main challenge that they’re having is in relationships or in finances or with confidence. We will spend that intensive focusing on that. We unpack all of that. What’s happening at the the subconscious level or with the unconscious mind. And we get those limiting beliefs and the negative emotions and the inner conflict and the values and all of that. And then we use the tools like hypnotherapy, Neurolinguistic programing and timeline therapy to release them at the unconscious level and install positive beliefs aligned with the goals that they want. One. And so that is really where the unconscious mind work comes in. And then once they’ve done that, we can based on what the client’s goals are during our weekly coaching sessions, let’s say a limiting belief comes up. We can work on unpacking that and then releasing it through those techniques as well.

Ramzi Daklouche: Can they? This is just a question that I have. Can they? Because as a business person, to take any time away from what I do because I think my time is very valuable and nothing else can get in the way. Can they take that and say, you know what, this is the return on investment I got because I spent time with Nicole.

Nicole Comis: Heck yeah. I mean, you know, a client five years made his company to $1 million. Five years later, it was worth ten. What do you think that ROI is? Well, right. So. And, you know, I work with my clients one hour a week, and I work with them remotely because they are busy, right? So they pick up the phone, or we jump on a zoom call and we spend one hour together, and then they’re on with their day. And of course, there’s always, you know, things to work on in between sessions, whether it’s journaling or, you know, making time in their day to work out or, you know, um, having conversations, that type of thing. Um, but it’s incredibly important. Working on you is the best investment you could ever make for you, for you personally and for your business, because you can only take your business as far as you’re willing to go yourself.

Ramzi Daklouche: And you got to structure yourself really, really well. And this is probably the hardest stuff for entrepreneurs is how do you structure yourself? How do you get the how do you get the help right. Because big corporation think Coca-Cola, think Apple. They really have executive coaches for the executives, right? I’ve had that before in my life. But as you get your own entrepreneur, you are it. You should be. You’re expected to do everything for the company yourself, right? Yes. From mopping the floor all the way to board, meeting with yourself. Right. But there’s no one really helping you through that journey, not coaching you for business and how to manage your business, technical aspects of your business, but actually how to really stay in touch with you and how to manage yourself so great. What sets you apart from other therapists and other executive coaches? It sounds to me like what you do is brain massage.

Speaker4: That’s how I.

Ramzi Daklouche: I don’t know if that’s a trademark word or not, but it should be kind of brain massage, which is really good, right?

Nicole Comis: Yeah. Well, when there’s so many things that sets me apart, you know, one, it’s my, you know, me as a person, right? My story, my personality. Um, I also like to bring a lot of fun into coaching, because I don’t think it has to be painful to experience, you know, to unpack the stuff that’s holding you back. We get to have fun in the process. Um, but also, you know, unlike a lot of coaches, I integrate the conscious mind and the subconscious into the work I do because that’s where I believe true Transformation comes. The other thing is, is that there’s a lot of coaches out there now who are delivering programs. So it’s a lot of hands off, kind of do it yourself type of programs. Yeah, I don’t believe I mean, sure, I, you know, I have goals of one day doing that more of where it’s something to support people who can’t afford to work with me to get some, you know, transformation. But I believe true transformation happens one on one. It happens when I can sit with you. You have a safe space to unpack whatever is happening in your head, in your heart, in your life, and you know you can be vulnerable and share things and say things that you’ve never even said out loud before.

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah. You know what you just said about coaching online or programs? I think it’s just overdone in my point of view right now. And maybe it’s generational. I’m a generation where I get the most out of a time with a person on a one on one, or getting to know them in person, not on zoom. I prefer to have these moments where we are really talking and getting to know each other without any, you know, interruption of a phone or the second screen, getting an email on it, or a program. Right. Including not just, you know, a business coaching, but also workout coaching. There’s a lot of it right now where, you know, you find a coach and they charge you X amount of money a month, but you still are. It’s a program that’s going to send you once a week or once a I don’t know how that works generationally. Maybe it does not work for me at all. Maybe just me. Also, it doesn’t work at all.

Nicole Comis: Well, and I do think that there’s some benefits, right? So somebody who can’t afford to hire a coach if they’re going to be committed to doing the work that’s going to get at least get them started, right? So and, you know, I think that there also gets to be some flexibility because there are people who are, you know, so, you know, stuck in the I only want to work with a coach in person and that can hold them back too, because, you know, if you think about it like if I had an office, let’s say it would take you 30 minutes to drive to me, find parking, then 30 minutes to get back to your office. There’s two hours out of your day versus just jumping on a phone call and having that session and moving on with your day.

Speaker4: Right?

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah, yeah. So how, um, you know, uh, how do people find you typically. Is it and this is really helping because part of this program is to really help small businesses, entrepreneurs with ideas on how to, if they’re stuck with referrals, if they’re stuck with, you know, marketing all this stuff. How do you find customers? Is it referrals online? Is it speaking events? I mean what is your best? And again, you have to go back to thinking, okay, there are entrepreneurs out there listening first year some second year, some ten year. So everybody different place in their journey, right?

Speaker4: Yes.

Ramzi Daklouche: What’s your what’s your best way to do that?

Nicole Comis: Well, I think I think it’s all of the above. Right? Like, I feel like you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket, right? But I also do believe in the power of networking and building relationships. I’m a relationship person, right? I mean, well, coaching is all about relationships, right?

Ramzi Daklouche: It’s. Or you die.

Speaker4: Yeah.

Nicole Comis: Absolutely. And when I was in the mortgage business, it was the same. I’m all about building relationships. I want to get to know you. I want to get to know, um, your clients. I want to be able to find out. How can I help you? And so I believe networking is one of the best ways to. And building relationships is one of the best ways to build a business.

Ramzi Daklouche: And networking is a strange word for a lot of people. We hear it’s overused. But do you have any specific networking? You know, I know you go to groups and all this stuff, but what’s the best way to network? Like, you know, networking on purpose, let’s call it. Do you have any kind of nuggets for these entrepreneurs on how to network on purpose?

Nicole Comis: Um, well, you know, I think anything that you do could be considered networking. It’s all about building relationships. And so getting out there and, you know, I’m part of a group called the Amicable Divorce Network, right? Which is a bunch of divorce attorneys and financial advisors and people that are helping people through divorce. And so, you know, being intentional about getting to know those people in that group and their businesses. And then I’m also part of, um, you know, I’ve been part of Chamber of Commerce for years and years and years. And so, you know, it’s it’s all about building relationships with the people in the room.

Ramzi Daklouche: And it’s how much time you put into it.

Speaker4: Yeah.

Ramzi Daklouche: Not just coming to church once a week and saying, okay, well, I went to the chamber meeting or whatever. It’s actually putting time into spending time with them one on one, all this stuff to help you with that because they get to know you on a personal level.

Nicole Comis: Yeah. Quality time.

Ramzi Daklouche: What’s the most effective way to attract aligned clients? To make sure you get the right clients for you?

Nicole Comis: It starts with getting really clear on who you want to work with.

Ramzi Daklouche: Hallelujah. I talk to a lot of. I was waiting for this. I was I talked to a lot of coaches. So what do you do? I help companies grow. How? And, you know, whatever they need. No no no no. Be clear, be clear. How can I help you? If you don’t know exactly what is it you’re good at? You can’t be good at everything.

Speaker4: No.

Ramzi Daklouche: Right. So. So you got to be clear. So I love the clarity that you just said that. You really have to find that in the client you have, or else you can’t take them as a client. It’ll be a disservice to you and a disservice to them.

Nicole Comis: Absolutely.

Ramzi Daklouche: To take them to the client. Uh, for coaches, consultants and service based pros who don’t love selling. What advice would you give on building a business in an authentic way?

Nicole Comis: Shift your mindset. It’s not about selling. It’s about building relationships and offering a service that truly helps other people.

Ramzi Daklouche: Find a solution. Whenever you talk to somebody, just help them find a solution, right? It doesn’t matter if it’s going to pay you today or tomorrow, but they remember you for helping them with whatever solution you can give them, right?

Nicole Comis: Right. Well, and the reality is, every entrepreneur is a salesperson, right? And so if they have a nasty taste in their mouth about what a salesperson means, they need to be able to shift that mindset and think of it more as in providing a service, helping somebody out. And sales isn’t a dirty little word anymore. It’s not like, you know, the used car salesman that we heard, you know, see in our minds from long, long, long ago. It’s really, you know, about building relationships and helping the other person. If you believe in what you’re selling or you believe in the service you’re providing, share it with the world. Old.

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah. Nicole, it’s interesting you say this because I used to train huge groups of people sales a long time ago for different companies that I manage or, you know, as a consultant. And it’s always give me one job in the world that doesn’t require you to sell, right. And there is not. And you born being a salesperson when you’re a little kid, when you’re asking for something and your parents say no to you, everything you do to get that thing, that’s called networking and selling. So for people that still don’t believe that you’re selling all the time, even if you try and go out on a date that’s selling, even if you’re priest that is selling. Right. So every profession I can’t find a doctors, surgeons, everything takes selling. It just depends on the on how you do it. And some of it needs more networking, some of it less networking. But you just are always selling.

Speaker4: So yes.

Nicole Comis: Building rapport first and foremost, connecting with the person and then selling.

Speaker4: Yep.

Ramzi Daklouche: So if someone listening today feels they’re not fully showing up in their business or leadership, what’s one action they can take to start shifting that today?

Nicole Comis: I believe it starts with getting clear clarity on what it is. Your vision is what it is. You want your business and your life to look like in the future. So depending on where you’re at, where you feel comfortable, think about a 1 to 5 year goal. Three years might be the sweet spot and write out what you want your business to look like three years from now, five years from now. And spend some time with your heart first, you know, and and try to get out of your head and imagine I had a magic wand and you created the most amazing business. It was perfect for you in every way. What does it look like?

Ramzi Daklouche: So dream. Yeah, yeah. Dream about your business. What’s it going to look like? Just your business.

Nicole Comis: Well, no. But also your your life, right. Because you. If you are a business owner, your business is connected. And to be real, every single one of us, our lives are interconnected, right? It’s it’s they’re integrated. And so your relationships are connected to your, your business in some way or your career in some way, because you don’t leave your, your business at home when you get, you know, when you’re out with your friends or you’re on a date or you’re coming home to your spouse or your children. It comes with you. So how does your business align with what you want for your life?

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah, and I want to add one more thing to this that I believe is true. And it may sound, uh, materialistic, but it really is not. So part of dreaming or part of understanding where you want to go with your business, with your life, is having a something you look up to, right? For example, I want this bigger house on the beach or I want this, uh, you know, supercar, whatever. You could dream about that because whatever you come up with, a business will help you achieve that as well. So. So you don’t go out and buy it on credit forever, right? But if you dream about even financial, it’s okay to dream financial as well.

Speaker4: And you should.

Ramzi Daklouche: You should dream financial because it’s not just, oh, I want more time. Okay. More time comes if you if you’re more comfortable. Right. So thinking about all that stuff before you kind of start putting pen on paper, like what is my dream? And you know, I’m going to get there. So now what does my company needs to get me there?

Nicole Comis: Yeah. And think about all avenues of it. What does your team look like? You know who’s supporting you? Um, what are your customers look like? What are what do you want your customers to say about you? All of that gets to be part of your vision.

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting you say this because I dream so much about the company where I’m taking it, and we’ve been, you know, extremely successful and blessed with what we’re getting that my own family is joining the company now. My kids are joining the company because they see the dream. They hear it. They haven’t really seen like the the nuances of working in this business. But they feel it. They see it. They hear it in our voices that are joining the company now. That’s all continue to support us.

Nicole Comis: So and I would say the most important thing with that dreaming and that vision is put it on paper, share it.

Speaker4: Well share.

Nicole Comis: It too. But also put.

Speaker4: It on paper. Absolutely.

Nicole Comis: Because when you put it on paper, it becomes real.

Speaker4: Yeah.

Nicole Comis: And then you take that vision and you break it down into achievable goals.

Ramzi Daklouche: Absolutely. What is the biggest mindset between people of stuck and people that can actually see the future?

Nicole Comis: Well, that’s a I mean, there could be many things, but I think one of the biggest is having a growth mindset versus a fixed. A growth mindset. A positive mindset versus a closed or negative mindset.

Ramzi Daklouche: Or get help. Call Nicole. Let me tell you why. Because a lot of people like they may have a dream, but they get stuck somewhere. Oh for sure. Or or their subconscious become their worst enemy. Say, you know what? You don’t deserve this. Or you just can’t do this, or.

Nicole Comis: That’s not possible.

Ramzi Daklouche: Why are you looking at this? It’s not you at all. Like, oh my God, why would you even do that? Right. You’re supposed to work 14 or 15 hours. Yeah. And though outside they may say stuff, very positive things. The inside of them can really hold them back. And that happens not just in business, in life in general.

Nicole Comis: Oh, absolutely.

Ramzi Daklouche: So.

Nicole Comis: Well. And it’s so important to have that person, whether it’s me or another coach or, you know, an incredibly open minded, trusted friend, to talk about those big goals that you have. You know, I have a client that this week or a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about his goals for the future, and he owns a construction company and we were talking about he is partners in a bar, and we got really big on his vision about five years from now. And he doesn’t just want to own a construction company and a bar. He wants to own five bars, laundromats, a construction company. He wants he sees like the enterprise. Right. And he is managing these different, these different entities, and he’s got a team supporting him. It was because we were able to go in deeper, and I was able to ask questions that he wouldn’t have thought of himself, that he was able to come up with that.

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah. That’s amazing. So talking about that dream for five years, what does Nicole Gomez look like in her coaching in the next five years?

Nicole Comis: Oh, it’s very similar to where I am now because I love what I do. I believe in one on one work. Um, you know, for me, it’s, you know, ten clients is a sweet spot for me with a couple additional breakthroughs every month. I also have a program. It’s a life transformation program, which includes a personal retreat. So it would be me and the client away for two and a half days where we really dive in deep into, you know, their goals and their life and the things that they want to achieve. And then, um, it’s in a fun location. So whether it’s in, you know, Tampa or, you know, um, South Carolina, right. Like we’re going to have two and a half days where we can spend some time on our health and well-being, as well as goals and working through any blocks that are showing up.

Ramzi Daklouche: That’s incredible. Um, wow. That’s actually fantastic. So there’s no, uh, Nicole Gomez franchise. And.

Nicole Comis: You know, one, Nicole Combs is plenty for the world.

Ramzi Daklouche: One nickel is plenty for the world. Okay, now I’m going to. There’s a, you know, three rapid fire questions. Okay. A morning routine must have.

Nicole Comis: Oh, water. I drink a big glass of water when I first wake up in the morning. And I think because we get dehydrated in the middle of the night, it’s so important for our brains to drink water. But I have a whole morning routine working out, whether it’s yoga or going for a early, early bird. Yeah, I tend to get up around six five.

Ramzi Daklouche: Oh, that’s not an early bird to me.

Nicole Comis: That’s not early for, you.

Ramzi Daklouche: Know.

Nicole Comis: For. Oh, boy, that is early. That’s still last night. Yeah.

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah.

Nicole Comis: Four, four. Wow.

Ramzi Daklouche: Five at the gym.

Nicole Comis: Good for you.

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah. It’s been like this for years. It’s the curse. Actually, I don’t know if it’s good.

Nicole Comis: No, it’s a good thing. It’s a very good thing.

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah. Wow. Okay. Uh, favorite quote or book you say that shaped your journey?

Nicole Comis: Oh, how do you pick one?

Ramzi Daklouche: Latest one. I can tell you mine. Go ahead.

Nicole Comis: Um, well, I would say the best way to predict the future is to create it.

Ramzi Daklouche: Oh. Very nice. I don’t have a quote. I have a book.

Nicole Comis: Okay.

Ramzi Daklouche: What’s that? Buy back your time.

Nicole Comis: Oh.

Ramzi Daklouche: It’s incredible. It really changed my perspective on how I look at my calendar and how I give myself free time for me, in the past six months, I would say. Okay. All right. What’s something most people don’t know about you?

Nicole Comis: Oh, that’s tough, because I’m an open book. Oh, okay. I’m a beauty school dropout.

Ramzi Daklouche: Like the movie grease. Can you sing the song School Dropout?

Speaker5: Yes, I could. I won’t, but I could.

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah. Wow. Uh, beauty school dropout. That’s interesting. And you went into mortgage and then coaching.

Nicole Comis: I actually was in the restaurant business. And then mortgages and then coaching.

Ramzi Daklouche: Very interesting. How can people get in touch with you or learn more about what you work?

Speaker5: Yeah.

Nicole Comis: So the easiest way is to go to my website Nicole m Omice Coaching.com. And all of my socials are there as well.

Ramzi Daklouche: Is that how they can connect with you? Yes, but the best thing to do is to go through your website.

Speaker5: Yeah.

Nicole Comis: Or you can find me on Instagram or Facebook, but it’s probably easiest just to go straight to my website.

Ramzi Daklouche: Very good. What are something that people should know about you but they don’t know anything about it?

Nicole Comis: What should people know besides that? I’m awesome. No, I’m just kidding. Um, what should people know about me? But they don’t. Well, I don’t know. It’s that people that don’t know this. But I have a huge heart. Um. I just want to see people win and succeed and live their best life.

Ramzi Daklouche: Well, that comes through through your coaching, so. And everything you said. So, Nicole, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it. Pleasure talking to you.

Speaker5: You too.

 

About Your Host

Ramzi Daklouche is Principal at VR Business Sales. His mission is to facilitate seamless transitions for business owners looking to sell or scale. The organization’s four-decade legacy in managing transactions, from modest enterprises to extensive mergers, resonates with his expertise in mergers and acquisitions. Our collaborative approach consistently unlocks the true value of businesses, ensuring sellers’ peace of mind throughout the process.

His journey began when he left corporate world to venture into the challenging realm of entrepreneurship. After running their own business for several years and earning accolades for their dedication to service and quality, he decided to establish VR Business Sales Mergers and Acquisitions Atlanta. Their mission is to provide unmatched value through transparency, security, diversity, service, and experience.

At VR Business Sales Mergers and Acquisitions Atlanta, they empower business owners and buyers with clear, honest guidance and exceptional service throughout every step of the transaction process. While their office is based in Atlanta, they offer their services nationally and globally, embracing diversity and engaging with a broad spectrum of communities and businesses.

With decades of industry expertise, they aim to build lasting relationships based on trust and excellence, enabling their clients to achieve their business goals with confidence and peace of mind. Whether they are transitioning from owning their business or moving toward ownership, they’re here to support every step of the way, navigating the vibrant landscape of Atlanta’s business community and National & Global markets for remarkable success.

Connect with Ramzi on LinkedIn.

BRX Pro Tip: Don’t be a Commodity

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BRX Pro Tips
BRX Pro Tip: Don't be a Commodity
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BRX Pro Tip: Don’t be a Commodity

Stone Payton: And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, you know what a huge believer I am in positioning and establishing your value ideally before you even really begin to substantially engage with someone. And a core tenet of that is you don’t be a commodity.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. There’s something that Seth Godin wrote a long time ago that it really resonated with me. He goes, “Accept no substitutes is the opposite of you can pick anyone and wear anyone.” So, if people just see you as just another business, they’re going to compare you based on price, generic services or just kind of whatever the industry calls it. That’s what makes a business a commodity. That means you’re replaceable. That means you’re competing in a race to the bottom when it comes to pricing. You have to be able to position yourself as something unique, valuable, and indispensable.

Lee Kantor: If you do that, then clients are going to seek you out specifically and happily pay you for what you do. If you want people to choose you instead of shopping around, you have to make it impossible for them to compare you to anyone else. That means the more unique, the more specialized, and the more personally branded you are, then you’re going to be able to shift in the mind of your client from being a commodity to being an in-demand thought leader. So, spend some time elevating yourself above the commodities in your industry and be one of one, not one of many.

The Art of Active Listening: Elevating Your Leadership Game

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High Velocity Radio
The Art of Active Listening: Elevating Your Leadership Game
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In this episode of High Velocity Radio, Stone Payton is joined by Jane Bishop, a dedicated coach and leadership expert. Jane shares her diverse career journey, spanning academia, corporate consulting, and solopreneurship, which informs her coaching approach. The discussion delves into the distinctions between coaching, counseling, mentoring, and consulting, emphasizing active listening and powerful questioning. Jane highlights the importance of self-leadership and emotional intelligence for effective leadership. She also addresses the challenges of marketing coaching services and offers a pro tip on understanding core values.

Jane-BishopJane Bishop is a self-proclaimed unplanned entrepreneur that founded Take The Next Step to empower others to go for their “it!” She positively interrupts other’s space to help them stop, pause and think so they move forward as she uses tools/methods of coaching, training and speaking.

Jane uses her experience and expertise from her background that includes academic/athletic at the small college level, corporate, non-profit and business owner to help entrepreneurs, business owners and team leaders co-create a path to develop and/or strengthen their self-leadership skills.

Jane is known for making it all about the other person and has been described as “unexpected” and “refreshing.” As a lifelong learner, she continues to learn new skills and techniques. She holds academic degrees from three institutions, the ICF Coach Credential, and multiple certifications.

One of her favorite quotes is by John Mason: “You were born an original. Don’t die a copy.” It describes her personal approach to life as well as her desire to empower more “originals.”

Connect with Jane on LinkedIn and follow Take The Next Step on Facebook.

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. You guys are in for a real treat. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Take the Next Step, Jane Bishop. How are you?

Jane Bishop: Well, Stone, thank you for having me to have a conversation with you today.

Stone Payton: Well, I have really been looking forward to this conversation. I got a lot of questions and I don’t know, we might not get to them all, but let’s, uh, let’s start by maybe if you could describe for me and our listeners mission. Purpose. What are you really out there trying to do for folks, Jane.

Jane Bishop: The great question, Stone. I really am passionate about empowering others to go for their IT, whatever they’re looking for at a season in life, at a point in life, at a career, and helping them understand that a lot of times they have everything they need or most everything they need within them. They either don’t know it or they don’t know how to pull it out. But helping them realize that, identify it, and really be able to stand on their story and make a difference in their sphere of influence.

Stone Payton: So tell us a little bit about your journey. How did you find yourself doing this kind of work?

Jane Bishop: So I’ll give you the CliffsNotes version. I have been blessed and fortunate to be in three different career contexts The Academic Athletic Arena, where I was coaching and teaching on a small college level. Then the corporate sector where I was using my gifts and skills with the strategic development, consulting, coaching, training. And then now as an unplanned solopreneur. So I’m where I am today simply because that’s how my life has evolved.

Stone Payton: So I saw a phrase in the, the, the pre-show preparation that I did. And at first I thought it was a typo. And then I thought, you know what? This isn’t a typo. She is using this word. She’s using it for a reason. And you were talking about the coach approach to Leadering. Can you speak more to more to that?

Jane Bishop: Leadering. Well, I think maybe there was a little typo there that I did not catch, but a coach approach to leading and or leadership. That is a great way for people to learn how to better connect with other stone, and it’s using five basic coaching skills that those of us who are professional and credentialed coaches use. Anybody can learn, anybody can use and begin using that approach to conversations and connecting with people. And it is amazing what happens as a result of that. A coaching colleague of mine likes to put it this way in saying it’s like having a conversation on steroids.

Stone Payton: Okay, so there are coaching competencies that can make someone a far more effective leader. That’s funny. So it really was a typo. I like that word though. I’m going to start saying leader. It’s like an action word right.

Jane Bishop: Hey you know and and since I gave you that typo, I’ll use it too. So we can both use it. So how’s how’s your leadering go going today? I think that’s a great see, I love stuff like that.

Stone Payton: I do too, I do too, but look. Yeah, say more about this because it’s the, the, the things that you’ve learned as a professional coach. Those competencies, those skills, those discipline, that rigor, those really do dovetail right into what it takes to to be a good leader and, and generate results with and through the, the voluntary cooperation and effort of other people, doesn’t it?

Jane Bishop: Yes, yes it does. And connecting with people is different than communicating. You can communicate. You can offload information all day, but it doesn’t always connect with the person or the people around to really connect. It’s understanding what is valuable to that person and where the two of you can intersect, or the group of you can intersect. And I’ll just I’ll just give you a little freebie here. The five basic coaching skills that I teach in a, in a workshop that I do are all around listening, asking powerful questions. It’s about aligning to the language that that person is using. You know what’s important to them. You know, picking up and listening on that brainstorming and then finding a way to support, you know, in terms of what you’re hearing. But the two basic ones, the listening and the powerful questions. If if people would practice, learn and practice and hone those skills and didn’t do anything else, stone it, it would be phenomenal. What incredible results would be experienced?

Stone Payton: I don’t remember exactly who it was, but I’ve been blessed with a lot of mentors throughout my career. And he did a great job in like this workshop, really painting the picture and the distinction between listening and waiting. Right? Those are two different things, aren’t they?

Jane Bishop: Yes yes, yes. Well, you know, listening. I don’t know what the what what your mentor did, but listening is, is not hearing. Hearing is that auditory function. We hear sounds and we pick up way, you know, sound waves and different tones if we are listening. Basically what we’re doing, we are all in with that person or that group. We are listening for what they’re saying, for what they’re not saying. We’re focused. We’re not looking around and distracted. We are involved in in their words and understanding where they’re coming from. So it is an all in process.

Stone Payton: So are you working with individuals, teams? Uh, who are you? Who are you working with these days?

Jane Bishop: Yes. Uh, both. As a matter of fact, I work with I have individual coaching clients. I work with teams and groups on a lot of communication and leadership. Under the umbrella of what are some essentials for high performing teams, and it all comes out of how we lead ourselves, because how you and I lead ourselves, how well we do that is really going to determine how effective we are in leading others.

Stone Payton: Well, that’s an interesting perspective. Say more about this because, well, the positive aspect of that, what I find in empowering and inspiring about that is maybe that I do have some degree of control, right? If I start working on leading myself, say more about that.

Jane Bishop: Trying to think of a good, good metaphor, because I think metaphors are an important if if we are if we’re driving a car. I don’t know that this is the best metaphor, but it’s the one that comes up. But if we’re driving a car, we are in control of that car in terms of where it goes. You know, the acceleration, the braking and the changing of the gears. To some degree, though, the car also has its control mechanism because it it functions and everything works together in the engine and all the components. However, how well those components work together is really dependent on how well we care for those components in the inner workings of the car and then how we use those components, how hard we brake, how quickly we accelerate those types of dynamics. Same can hold true to ourselves. We must take care of our internal components physical, mental, social, spiritual and then handle those in a way so that they are used effectively.

Stone Payton: Well, I think it’s a marvelous metaphor. And then to me, it extends for where my mind went was, yeah, we have some control over that immediate environment, but we have to leverage that to adapt and respond to some things we don’t have control over, like the guy in front of us and the guy behind us.

Jane Bishop: Right. Exactly, exactly. So if you’re if if you haven’t taken care of your car and you need new brakes and all of a sudden you have to hit the brakes and they’re not there, what’s going to happen potentially.

Stone Payton: Now, do you make a distinction in your work? Because I know some do between these different things mentoring, consulting, counseling, coaching, the there’s do you make some distinctions between those things?

Jane Bishop: Yes, yes. There are there are distinctions. Stone. That’s a great that’s a great insight from your side. And I appreciate you bringing that up, because a lot of people think that that counseling is coaching and coaching is counseling and consulting is coaching. And here’s the basic distinctions between those disciplines. Consulting is when I go into your organization or your team and you you have issues or you’ve identified that something’s not right, but you don’t know what it is. So I do an assessment. I do all that it takes to get involved, to put together a plan. And I hand that off to you and I say, here’s the plan based on my knowledge, based on my assessment. It’s up to you to work the plan. That’s what consultants do. Counselors will work with you to resolve something from generally our past that is holding us back from moving forward or leading forward, as I like to call it, effectively in our lives. So we have to put some closure to to whatever that is in our past experiences that we just haven’t reconciled. So counseling the discipline of counseling and therapy helps with that. Mentoring is where we come alongside somebody and we act as a guide and we ask questions, but we always but we also invest and impart what we have learned along the way our lessons learned, our hard knocks, things that we got knocked down and had to learn to to get back up. And then coaching is where the client, let’s say you and I were you were you and I were in a coaching coach relationship and you were the client. You are definitely in the driver’s seat, stone. My job is not to take over the wheel and tell you where to go. My job is to watch and listen and observe and ask questions, and then occasionally nudge you to keep you from going off in the ditch. So it’s helping. It’s listening and asking those good, powerful questions so that your wheels begin to turn in your brain and put some things together that perhaps you haven’t thought about.

Stone Payton: Well, yeah. Then those are very different, um, roles and. Right. And functions. And you’ve chosen to gravitate for the most part to coaching, I take it.

Jane Bishop: Yes. That that is my, you know, coach’s the one difference in the distinction in the counseling and the therapy discipline and the coaching profession. Therapists are required to have a license, a credential. There’s certain types of certifications that they are required to go to through, to accomplish, to, to be known as a legitimate therapist. Coaches do not have to do that. How? It’s. However, if you want a legitimate coach, they’re going to be a credentialed or a professional coach that has that coach specific training. Because here’s what happens. Sometimes people say, oh, I’ve got this great coach. They tell me everything I’m supposed to do. Well, okay, then they’re either being a consultant or a mentor. They’re not really being a true coach, because that means you’re not having to think about it. So you want to be disciplined in your experience and your knowledge base, even in the coaching profession, as you do in the other professions.

Stone Payton: Well, and you made the financial and time and energy investment in yourself and in the profession to become a credentialed coach with, um, the International Coaching Federation. Say a little bit about that experience.

Jane Bishop: Yes. The International Coach Federation is is a global organization that is one of the most widely Recognized for coaching, credentialing, and coaching membership. And there’s a certain standards. Any of us who are credentialed through that organization, there are certain coach specific training that we have to do initially, and then there are continuing coaching credits every three years that have to be taken to renew our credential. If a person wants to renew it. There are professional standards, ethical standards, learning support systems. So it is a it’s a good organization, even though a lot of people have not heard about it. And it it’s a guide. It a lot of people will find coaches through that organization because they know they’re they’re credible.

Stone Payton: So at this point in your career, you know, you’ve been at this a while now, what are you finding the most rewarding about the about the work. What do you enjoy the most these days?

Jane Bishop: One of the things I enjoy the most about coaching is when that person or that group has that aha moment and the expression, the energy, the excitement that starts showing up, and they start realizing and putting pieces together of a puzzle that they already had, they just didn’t know where the connecting points were. I love that.

Stone Payton: So how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a coach? Like how do you get the the new business?

Jane Bishop: Well, that’s a very challenging part of coaching for most coaches. I you know, I tell it like it is.

Stone Payton: Yeah.

Jane Bishop: There are a lot of business models in the in the coaching world. Some will use the business model of creating funnels to attract people to be able to disseminate information. Others will you speaking to get in front of groups to make themselves known? It really depends on the coach as to what model they use. The key to any model though, that that they try to use in sales and marketing is are two things from my experience and observation. Number one, there’s got to be a marketing plan. You can’t just say, okay, I’m a coach, everybody come now who wants to, you know, pull some things out of them, here I am. That doesn’t work. There’s got to be a plan. And number two, that marketing plan must align with who you are. Just because somebody else is doing, or it’s the hottest and latest thing on the market, does not mean it’s for you. When solopreneurs and entrepreneurs or anybody, but specifically in that I’ll just key in on those two, start trying to grab everything that comes across their path because they think that’s going to get them where they want to go, and yet it’s out of alignment with who they are. It does not end well.

Stone Payton: So what do you enjoy doing when you’re when you’re not engaged in coaching? Anything that you kind of nerd out about that doesn’t have anything to do with the work?

Jane Bishop: You know, I, I enjoy having conversations with people, wherever that may be. On on the High Velocity, uh, podcast with the Great Stone Payton or whether it’s in line, the the local grocery store. I enjoy reading. I enjoy movies, I enjoy my yard work, I find aspects, I simply enjoy life, and I enjoy connecting with people where I am. I love to travel. I haven’t had an opportunity to do that for several years for for family reasons, but I hope to get back to that, you know, at some point in the future.

Stone Payton: Well, I think that’s marvelous. And I. I don’t know if this has been your experience or not. I may have shared with you before we came on air. For example, uh, some family members and I are going to Greece in a few weeks from when we’re doing this on air conversation, and we’ll enjoy the heck out of it, of course. But I find personally when I do that, I honestly believe with all my heart I feel like I come back a better practitioner. I feel like I come back better equipped to serve than before I left. Yes. Do you find that? Yeah.

Jane Bishop: That’s that’s very, very important. I will, I will say I don’t know your your thinking or your rationale behind the name of your podcast, High Velocity. I’d be interested in knowing what that is. Going back to your question about when you get away, you come back feeling refreshed. Yeah. If we want to maintain high velocity, in other words, be the best we can be. And to use your words to have better results in less time, we have to build in those those breaks in life. Now it could be three seconds, or it could be three hours, or it could be, you know, three weeks. However, the key is consistently doing that. We can’t go at high velocity and high octane 100% of the time without stopping to tend it along the way. So your trip that you’re doing with your family and and going to have that refreshment and that reset is is huge.

Stone Payton: I agree, and that’s a marvelous way to wrap the conversation. I was going to specifically ask you for a pro tip around producing better results in less time, and I think you just laid it on us. But I’ll give you a chance. Is there another piece of advice you might leave our listeners with? Just something to chew? You know, something to chew on and be thinking about with respect to coaching internally, getting some, getting some coaching help, engaging a coach, anything around around your body of work. Just some some things to consider or think about before we wrap.

Jane Bishop: Thank you for that opportunity, Stone. I would encourage the listeners to be very clear about the core of who they are. And I’ll the acronym of Core is your character, your operating system, your beliefs, your value system, your relationships. Are they healthy relationships or are they toxic relationships? And then the E of core is your emotional intelligence. Identifying those components within you keeps your core strong. Like our physical core that supports every part of our body so that we stay in alignment so that we can be positioned consistently to lead ourselves well, which leads others well, which creates a whole team of people in high velocity function which is better results in less time.

Stone Payton: I am so glad that I asked, and I’m even more glad that we recorded this conversation. That is marvelous. What’s the best way for our listeners to tap into your work and, you know, maybe have a conversation with you? Let’s leave them with some coordinates so they can do that.

Jane Bishop: Sure. I give anybody a free coaching conversation so you can give you the two things. You can find me at Jane Bishop Live.com or or Jane Bishop Dot. I’ve got two different places there, but I’ll just do the Jane Bishop live. That’s easier because you can get to the other one that way. And then you can find me on LinkedIn. Simply Jane Bishop, real simple. Gives you some information about the leadership. You’ll find my phone number on all of those two places. You can call me. I do answer my phone, and if I’m not available, leave a message and I will call you back. I realize that’s a little atypical in this day and time, but that’s how I roll.

Stone Payton: Oh, marvelous. Jane, it has been an absolute delight having you on the broadcast this afternoon. You’re clearly doing really important work and genuinely serving so many. Thank you. We sure appreciate you.

Jane Bishop: Oh, well, thank you for having me and allowing me a little glimpse into stone and all that you’ve got going. So you just you just keep up that high velocity and keep leading forward.

Stone Payton: I’ll sure do it. All right, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Jane Bishop, with Take the Next Step. And everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you in the fast lane.

 

Coaching for Success: Uncovering Blind Spots and Achieving Leadership Goals

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High Velocity Radio
High Velocity Radio
Coaching for Success: Uncovering Blind Spots and Achieving Leadership Goals
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In this episode of the High Velocity Radio Show, Roshmi Dalal, Director of Executive Coaching and Leadership Services at Weaver, joins host Stone Payton. Roshmi shares her journey from CPA to leadership coach, emphasizing the importance of emotional intelligence and mental fitness in effective leadership. She discusses her role in launching Weaver’s new coaching practice, which includes individualized and team coaching, emotional intelligence training, and well-being coaching. The conversation highlights the value of coaching in personal and professional development, the significance of trust in coaching relationships, and practical tips for enhancing leadership skills.

Roshmi-DalalRoshmi Dalal, Director of Executive Coaching & Leadership Solutions at Weaver, is a Professional Certified Coach (PCC), CPA, and Mindfulness specialist, dedicated to coaching leaders and individuals to improve their Emotional Intelligence (EQ) and empowering them to make positive behavioral changes to unlock their greatest potential.

With years of experience in high-stress, corporate roles and over 500 hours of coaching clients globally, she has successfully helped people overcome an array of challenges, including their insecurities and negative thought patterns, imposter syndrome, burn out, conflict avoidance, procrastination, career/life transitions, health challenges and more.

Roshmi’s coaching methodology includes extensive positive and emotional intelligence training, a strengths based approach, resilience and accountability tools and mindfulness mastery, which all empower her clients towards achieving their goals and desired outcomes.

Connect with Roshmi on LinkedIn.

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. This is going to be a good one. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast Director of Executive Coaching and Leadership Services at Weaver, Roshmi Dalal. How are you?

Roshmi Dalal: I’m doing good, Stone. So happy to be here with you today.

Stone Payton: Well, it’s a delight to have you on the show. Tell us a little bit about your role at Weaver and what you find yourself doing these days inside that organization.

Roshmi Dalal: Yeah, I’m very excited to talk about that. So we at Weaver, um, are launching our newest practice in leadership and executive coaching services. Um, so these will these services will involve individualized coaching team coaching. We’re going to, you know, offer some emotional intelligence training. I know that’s really in trend these days in addition to wellbeing coaching. Um, any any challenges with succession planning or even outplacement services? Um, and we have our very own, um, coach training program that we are offering our clients. So yes, I am the director of these external services for our firm. We are a CPA firm that offers audit, tax and, uh, consulting services.

Stone Payton: Well, it sounds like good work if you can get it. Tell tell us a little bit about the journey. How did you find your yourself on this path?

Roshmi Dalal: Yeah, that it is quite the journey because, um, I, you know, started my career as a CPA. So it’s it’s like it’s all coming, you know, to one big circle now with this position I’m in. Um, so I started my, my career as a CPA. Oh, gosh. About 25 years ago. Um, coming out of the University of Texas at Austin. Um, and, uh, leaping into the world of the big four public accounting firms. One very famous kind of actually infamous, infamous known as Arthur Andersen is where I started my career. Um, and I was there for almost five years with, um, another infamous client called Enron being, uh, my main client over there. And, you know, early this was very early on in my career that, you know, I experienced, um, such a curveball as both companies, as you know, went went down in the early 2000. Um, and we had promising careers. Um, my husband and I actually both worked for these companies, and we we just saw it all come to an end within five years of being at these firms. Um, so from there, I went on to work for an oil and gas company called Occidental, and I continued on providing or, you know, servicing in accounting, finance and specifically in Sarbanes-Oxley at the time, which was very hot off the press due to the situation at Arthur Andersen and Enron. Um, I became their technical accounting lead. And then life happened. Stone um, we started to experience some, uh, personal setbacks, which caused me to take a break from my career in, um, in oil and gas accounting for a bit.

Roshmi Dalal: We started a family at the same time. And our our extended family, um, meaning our parents really experienced some health issues that I had to take a break for and be and be a caretaker? Essentially. Um, for a few years. Um, so as I was experiencing those setbacks, I was, you know, kind of exploring my own personal growth at the time and noticing how much I, you know, had to turn to mental fitness tools. You know, essentially, that’s what I call them to recover and jump back, uh, and move on from these setbacks, whether they were health as they were, my parents both had, um, serious health issues that I was trying to combat or, again, with my career. Any other area I was noticing myself in those instances and how I was recovering, and I was taking the help of meditation practices, mindfulness tools, all to kind of help me move on from these setbacks. Um, I did try to go back during this time to my accounting career. And, you know, as we all believe in destiny would have it. It just wasn’t working out because I was a caretaker for a few years. Doing both was, you know, very, very hard on our families and was difficult to find a part time situation that would accommodate that. Well, lo and behold, we, um, experienced loss, uh, due to those health issues. And, um, we also experienced devastation from our home being flooded in Hurricane Harvey in 2017. And once again, instead of spiraling because of those setbacks, we did something very, um, out of the ordinary.

Roshmi Dalal: We took a position to go to the other side of the world, to the Middle East, and work for Saudi Aramco. Um, that was certainly a a brave leap of faith, uh, from some of the, again, challenges that we faced here back at home in Houston. But we just saw some real possibilities for our career as well as for our family. And it was in the Middle East where, um, I was assigned to come up with a positive mental wellbeing program for a sizable oil and gas company. And it was there that I discovered the world of coaching, and I was coaching on the job without even knowing I was a coach at the time. And, um, and, and because of, you know, the world becoming more virtual at the time, this was soon after, uh, the pandemic hit. I was able to start my own global coaching practice, um, in the Middle East and, um, service clients at large oil companies that were in leadership roles as well as the community over there. Uh, that was going through so much progress, um, with males and females being on, you know, the same page or on the same plane, rather both at work and in, um, in, in the In the local communities. Um, and then, uh, I took my practice back here in Houston. We moved back a few years ago and resumed my, um, private practice and then got, uh, an exciting opportunity to work for, for Weaver and launch their external coaching practice, which is what I’m doing right now.

Stone Payton: It’s never a straight line, is it?

Roshmi Dalal: But that’s what makes life so interesting, I think.

Stone Payton: But what a tremendous amount of, uh, street cred you must have in your day to day work. Are you finding that mental fitness resilience that it’s analogous to physical fitness in that you really can impact it with some discipline, some rigor? There are ways to to increase this. Yes.

Roshmi Dalal: Yes, 100%. I mean, I do believe and through my own personal and professional setbacks and challenges that, you know, we are in power of our destiny in a way. Um, as long as we can get out of our own heads, as long as we don’t allow ourselves to spiral in response to major setbacks and challenges, and these mental fitness tools and practices that I was so privileged to have by my side when practiced regularly and with intention, can definitely help you with that resilience that’s needed. Um, whether it’s a, you know, decision that you’re having to make in a leadership role or, again, whether it’s something personal that you’re trying to recover from, such as a loss of a loved one. Um, you know, when practice regularly, it can do so much, uh, in terms of that recovery, in terms of seeing the possibilities ahead even when things seem so bad. Um, so I, I draw huge parallels to physical fitness, as you mentioned. Um, and it of course it depends on the size of the challenge, but the more regular we are with our mental fitness practices, uh, the easier we’re able to hand handle the challenges, no matter the size.

Stone Payton: So with that, as an overarching framework, what are some other key topics or practice areas that you find yourself working with, with people and teams on? Or there are a few that just are almost always part of the process for you guys.

Roshmi Dalal: A lot of clients come to me for just developing their emotional intelligence. And emotional intelligence covers so many competencies. You know, uh, self-awareness, emotional self-awareness, self-control, self-confidence, um, growing initiative, flexibility. Um, again, that resilience. Empathy. Very key to emotional intelligence. Um, and, you know, all these competencies, uh, are used in leadership, um, in, at on executive roles as they’re managing teams, as they’re, um, you know, trying they’re challenged with, uh, a merger or acquisition bankruptcy, um, trying to, uh, engage their clients, retain them, trying to develop productivity tools, uh, time management tools for their employees. So, you know, all of these, um, emotional intelligence, um, tools are being used to address client needs in the areas that I, that I work in.

Stone Payton: And the people you’re working with, I’m operating under the impression. I mean, these are they’re in high stress, high stakes roles, right? I mean, this could have a heck of an impact on the everything from mental fitness to bottom line, right?

Roshmi Dalal: Oh, yes. Absolutely. I mean, you know, there’s strategic planning involved. There’s high stake decision making with lots of stakeholders involved. Um, communication is so key. So, yes, uh, depending on the challenge, of course, all these areas of development are needed in, in, you know, highly, uh, high profile leadership roles. I’ve seen it with, with my own clients.

Stone Payton: So I think you mentioned earlier a phrase like, you know, I have clients who come to me or to us for this or for that. And I was kind of thinking, man, it would be great if they are coming to you. And it must be tremendous value in having them engage in the work. But is that sometimes a challenge? Because I can think that there it would. There are people in my life. Let’s let’s put it that way. I can only speak to what I observe. That boy, I really feel like they would benefit from something like this, but I don’t know that they would be real quick to come to any. Like how do you get the new clients new the new business?

Roshmi Dalal: Now, that’s a great question, Stone, because often people don’t realize that they have the need, right? Or it’s difficult for them to talk about. And, um, you know, I’m a big believer in listening to to to the, the challenges that my prospects have, uh, before trying to offer what I, you know, what I can do for them. So being a very keen listener and really trying to take a deep dive on what someone’s needs are, I think are extremely important, um, for them to build awareness on, you know, how we as a service provider and coaching can help them. Um, and of course, we take the help of assessments as well. Um, I have emotional intelligence assessments that I offer. Um, I’m trained in Harrison, which is a very robust leadership, um, assessment where people understand, again, at a deeper level, you know, where are they? What are their own roadblocks? Where, where how are they getting in their own way of progress? You know, the famous saying, our minds can be our best friends, but they can be our worst enemies. And a lot of times, these assessments are a great indicator on helping people figure out, um, you know, what they can do for themselves to, to get ahead.

Stone Payton: I could see where some of the people that you’re working with, maybe many of the people would feel feel alone. I don’t maybe even like you got people aiming at you. But I can see in leading an organization of any real size and complexity feeling that way. And then I can also see the person really kind of getting down on themselves when it doesn’t go right. I mean, you’re dealing with all of these dynamics at once, I suspect.

Roshmi Dalal: Leadership roles as as you can imagine, are different from management roles, traditional management roles. I mean, you are, as a leader, having to really, you know, um, address those curveballs that are coming at you a mile a minute at the same time, uh, with very, very deep consequences if if those decisions are not made right. And so, um, there is there is so much to, uh, you know, there’s so many benefits of developing oneself by the time you get to that point, um, to be able to handle a company in distress, you know, or a company that’s restructuring, um, or going through, um, major growth even, you know, how do you take that company in the right direction in a way that’s, um, calm and effective and influential, inspiring as well for, you know, your employees.

Stone Payton: So what’s the most rewarding thing about the work for you these days? What do you what are you enjoying the most at this point in your practice and your career?

Roshmi Dalal: Well, I think, you know, taking my clients through the journey of coaching can once again just reveal so many blind spots that they didn’t know they had in their, um, in their own way of thinking. And I think, you know, taking that deep dive with them to really understand, um, their past to some extent. Of course, as coaches, we don’t go into their past as much. But but to really understand the present level, um, in a much more deeper level is impactful for them to make the changes that they want to make and seeing them make those changes and get closer to achieving their goals for me is is absolutely rewarding. I mean, that’s why I entered this profession and to begin with, um, I’m so, uh, fulfilled as I offer this trusted, uh, quiet space for my clients to do the deep reflection that they do and to, you know, lay out their their action steps to get closer to achieving their desired outcomes has been very rewarding for me as a coach to see.

Stone Payton: Well, I’m glad you mentioned, uh, a trusted space, because I was thinking, as you were talking the level of trust, the depth of relationship that you must have to cultivate for the to to really help these folks as much as possible. I mean, they have they have got to feel safe when they’re engaging in this learning, don’t they?

Roshmi Dalal: Oh, that level of safety is one of the most important things to build that, you know, trust, uh, and vulnerability, um, you know, in this coaching relationship, I start, uh, with six months of coaching to begin, and we meet twice a month. And believe me, the first few months, I would say, yeah, we’re just getting to know each other. You know, we’re just continuing to explore one another and, um, get those very uncomfortable, get to those very uncomfortable places. Um, that that’s not easy to always talk about, you know, looking at patterns and for myself, making observations. But even being able to be very transparent as we go along in our coaching, it just takes time and trust and, um, again, creating that safe space in our coaching relationship. But that can lead to phenomenal results.

Stone Payton: Well, I suspect there’s tremendous value if your clients choose to take advantage of it That in watching you model behaviors, maybe even strategies and tactics and tools to build trust because, wow, how much more powerful might they be as a leader if they take some of what they see you doing inside their organization? Yeah.

Roshmi Dalal: What a great point. You just made, stone. Um, that’s really that’s a lot of what happens during our coaching conversations. We marry each other in a way. And so it is important for me to show that empathy that that leader wants to grow in for his or her team. You know, it is important for me to show active listening where I’m completely present to, to what my client is telling me versus being distracted on the phone or trying to do something else. Um, again, if that client wants to work on his or her presence and productivity. Um, so yes, as we are engaging in these conversations, I am doing my best to model and project the behaviors that my client wants to see and develop.

Stone Payton: So do you run into I got I’m going to call them myths, misconceptions, just preconceived notions about what this work is. You know, maybe early in the in the in the course of engaging with people, do you find that you have to kind of educate through or work around to sometimes people have some pretty, um, off the mark ideas about things like mindfulness and, and mental fitness and emotional intelligence and these kind of things.

Roshmi Dalal: Oh yes, there is always misconceptions. Sometimes, as you know, the the mindfulness. And these areas are perceived as being woo woo, you know, uh, by many. Um, but, you know, I, I take the time and I think it’s important for coaches to do this to to clarify, first of all, the coaching tools that I use and the meaning behind them and what they’re able to bring for my clients when I do demonstrate, for example, mindfulness practices during the coaching sessions, I do it with permission. First of all, I ask my clients for permission to to engage in these practices, and then I love to explore what those practices did for them so that, you know, it’s not just a one sided approach. They’re receiving it and feeling the difference. Um, and then I, I want to ask them, has their, uh, perception of these tools change? And nine out of ten times it’s a resounding yes. Um, they see the impact, they see how calming the effect is. They see the clarity that it brings in their, um, approach to thinking and decision making and and most of all, they see the long term resilience that they gain from doing these practices regularly. And of course, the emotional intelligence competencies that they’re building over time. So, um, again, early on, I do like to clarify, you know, a little more about what these practices do, will bring them, will do for them and what they’re all about and how they’re relevant to our coaching. I also try to clarify what coaching is in general and how it’s different from therapy and mentoring and counseling, because many times when I do have a client that wants to work with me, they want to know the answers. They want advice, um, specifically if they’re in the same area of business, which is the finance industry, you know, if they’re CPAs that are wanting to develop that emotional intelligence. And, um, of course, my answer to them is, is that coaching is not advice. It’s about us engaging in a series of thought provoking questions and conversation that helps allow for you to bring the best solutions to your challenges.

Stone Payton: Well, this brings me back. I don’t want to dismiss this at all, because it’s kind of a I don’t know, revelation may be strong, but it’s certainly opening my eyes to this this idea of capability transfer and thinking about return on investment from having senior leadership participate in something like this. But with this capability transfer, I’m going to call it for right now, whether it’s conscious or not. I mean, that could have an exponential impact on going like the, you know, like the ripples in the pond thing when I get back to my ranch. Right?

Roshmi Dalal: Yes. Are you referring to the ROI, the return on investment? Yeah.

Stone Payton: Coaching to me, you know, and like, I’m. I’m the number two guy in a pretty successful media company, right? So if I’m in there working with you. We’re working through some of my challenges. I’m building that trust. I’m watching you model that behavior. I’m practicing on these skills in a safe environment. And, um, you know, I could certainly have other people in the organization come to you as well. But now we’ve got a we’ve got me going back to the ranch Business RadioX and behaving this way and being a model for people in my world, that’s a a multiple return. It seems to me like.

Roshmi Dalal: Yes. And, you know, to kind of corroborate that, to back that up, you know, we encourage our clients to do 360 reviews with their with their teams, you know, do a set before the coaching, do a set after the coaching so they can really realize from the feedback, the changes that their teams are experiencing, um, with their leadership. So there are definite return on investment numbers to back this work up. Um with improving leadership competencies, uh, for our clients.

Stone Payton: All right, I’m gonna switch gears on you for a moment, if I could. I am genuinely interested, and I think our listeners will be, too. Uh, hobbies, pursuits, interests outside the scope of your work, anything you have a tendency to nerd out about or really enjoy that doesn’t have anything to do with any of this?

Roshmi Dalal: Well, I am a very extroverted social person, so I, number one, love people. And, uh, I, I love just, um, you know, engaging in all kinds of, uh, clubs, like book clubs. I love to read. I love to discuss books. Um, sometimes they’re on coaching since it is a place of passion for me. And sometimes they’re on various topics. Um, I am quite the spiritual person, so I love topics on spirituality. I enjoy, um, teaching yoga. That’s one of my passions and mindfulness. Um, and it again brings me closer to that spiritual path that I, you know, um, take very seriously. I love children, so I teach Sunday school, and, uh, I love, you know, being able to engage with kids. I love traveling in the Middle East. We got to travel quite a bit, just being geographically in a very central location. Um, and of course, my family is number one. I’ve got two teenagers, 19 and almost 17, who I adore and would love to spend every waking minute with if I could. So I’m very grateful I have a very full life in addition to this, um, wonderful job that I have at Weaver.

Stone Payton: Well, I find you remarkably calm and evenly keeled for a mother of two teenagers. So, uh, congratulations on that.

Roshmi Dalal: I’ve had lots of tests there, so.

Stone Payton: Hey, before we wrap, I’d love to leave our listeners with a pro tip for producing better results in less time. But, you know, in the context of of this conversation, whether it’s, it’s, uh, their own development or trying to look at their organization and look, gang. The number one pro tip is reach out and have a conversation with me or someone on the team. But let’s give them a little something, whether it’s something to read or to think about. Uh, let’s leave them with a pro tip.

Roshmi Dalal: Yes, absolutely. You know, I go back to we are often the ones that get in our own ways. So instead of looking at challenges as just being external, whether it’s in your professional or even personal life, um, take a deep dive and look into developing your own self, you know, building that self-awareness, taking that pause. More importantly, when you are faced with a challenge and, you know, doing some reflection on what is what is it that that it continues to get in the in your own way regarding your thought patterns? And what are some neat ways that you can help change that with the help of a coach or someone that could hold that trusted space for you as we work on ourselves? I believe in so many more possibilities, and I think we deserve to give ourselves that pause and do that reflection and work on ourselves as we move forward in our lives.

Stone Payton: I think that’s marvelous, counsel. All right. What’s the best way for our listeners to continue to tap into your work, maybe have that conversation with you or someone on your team. Let’s give them some coordinates to do that.

Roshmi Dalal: Yes, absolutely. Please do check out our company website at Weaver. Com and specifically, if, um, anyone wants to reach out to me, shoot me an email at roshmi. That’s spelled r o I dot. I’d a l a l at Weaver Comm.

Stone Payton: Rosemead. Thank you so much for investing the time to visit with us this afternoon. Thank you for your insight, your perspective, and thank you for the work you’re doing. It is so important and impacting so many and we are sincerely grateful.

Roshmi Dalal: O Stone, this was so much fun. I really appreciate the opportunity and time you’ve given me to talk about a topic I absolutely love.

Stone Payton: My pleasure. All right, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Roshmi Dulal with Weaver and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you in the fast lane.

 

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