Executive Coaching for the Real World w Catherine Fitzgerald

NOTES:

Consider how you can use your podcast to connect with potential clients and contributors, and build a support network of collaborators.: What do you think are the biggest challenges for leaders in the modern business world? There are a lot of challenges, but one of the biggest is developing trust with their team. Financial literacy is important so that people can make informed decisions about their careers and businesses. Employees who have little financial literacy often assume that the owner of a business is making all of the money, understand very little about how the company operates, and have no control over direct expenses. When companies are successful, employees are also more secure and have better lives.

TRANSCRIPT:

My podcast is called the Niche podcast. Podcast. So I can talk about anything as long as it sort of resides in a little nook and it all fits under the umbrella. My little niche umbrella. Okay, with that being said, how did we wind up here? Because we don't know each other. This is the very first time we've spoken, so that's my favorite kind of conversation. But how do we we get here exactly? Well, I think my marketing company reached out to your sister as if it were me, and she responded directly to me in messaging, and I responded directly to her and she said and I just think she said, it's not a good fit for me. And I said, I totally get that, and I appreciate that, and if there's anything I can ever do, let me know. And she said likewise. And then 20 minutes later, she said, you have to meet my brother. He does a podcast and he interviews a lot of people. And I just looked at your website and your LinkedIn, and I think he'd be really interested to talk to you. And that's how it happened. And she called me 20 minutes later and said, you know what I need? I need a commission structure. And I'm just kidding. 3s I'm very flattered to know that those types of conversations are happening behind my back, to be very honest. She's your biggest fan. She's like, oh, he introduced people, he interviews people all the time. That's really great. I have three sons and they are 22, 26 and 30, and actually 30. On Friday, I told him he was going to be my younger brother pretty soon, 2s and they are thick as thieves, so they're eight years apart, top to bottom, but they have each other's back. And I think if there is one victory for a mom, it's to have her kids love each other and have each other's back. Oh, that's good. 1s Your sister really showed me that too, and I thought I immediately love her. I can't wait to meet her. But we haven't really met either. Yeah, she's into some interesting stuff. Yeah. Now I looked at each bucket is a really cool endeavor, and now I peaked just for a few moments. But what sort of meat can you put on the bones of what it is your company does? 1s Well, it's been a long journey to here, and I jokingly say I started my coaching business five years ago, but last year I decided I need to spend the year figuring out what I want to do. Because when I first started coaching, I was certified as a great game of business coach. And while I am a big fan, it was not a fulfilling coaching experience for me, eight, because it was system, it was training, basically with a little coaching, but it was mostly training. And for me, I am a very holistic, approach person and I have a vast, varied background. And I also am really comfortable in the financial metrics as well as the heart centered part and in terms of culture and communication and leadership and all that. And I find in the world of business coaches, you're either one or the other. There's not very many that cross over. And for me, that means I have the ability to really address whatever is going on in the company and whatever the needs are. And so 2s I had many ideas about what to call myself, but all of a sudden I was working with a coach, a messaging coach, and he just summed it up one day. He goes, sure, brass tacks with heart, you know, and I thought, oh my gosh, I love that. And so that became my new name. And then we built a website around it and really the messaging around it. And I feel now it's like worse than giving birth to an elephant how long it took me. But I feel now that I have a true direction and an ideal client. And that was really meaningful for me to spend that time doing it. Who is the ideal client? 1s Generally, it is a company that has gotten to a certain level of success and they want to grow or scale, but they recognize the leadership, recognize I can't continue to do what I'm doing and get where I want to go. And they find themselves really the hub of operations. And there's a circular conversation going on every day with the people that they have report to them going, is this what you wanted? Is this right? And they're burnout frustrated. They have really good team, they love their team, but they just don't I've. 2s Give a complete answer or do the integrated correct solution. And so they find themselves frustrated and feeling like, 1s okay, give it back to me. I'll just do it myself, which never will get them out of that loop. And so 1s what I try to do is talk to them about the fact that as we we build a business, and I've done from the ground up, and I've led existing organizations that had major challenges financially and culture wise and everything else. And what we do is we build the plane while we're flying it, and because it's in the air, but it hasn't taken great altitude yet, when we make a mistake, we immediately correct because our whole life is invested in getting that plane in the air to a certain altitude. And then once we get like, okay, this concept is going to work. It's going to grow into a business, then we start to feel excited, and we start bringing people on. And then we get to this certain level and we think, I don't want to do payroll anymore. I don't want to do HR. I need a sales team. I need a supply chain. 2s They start peeling off jobs and create, if we're lucky, job descriptions. And so then people come on with the idea that this is my responsibility, and it becomes siloed. And they don't look through the landscape, at least not the same landscape as the leader. And so they see that they wake up, eat, sleep, breathe, looking through the same windshield, which is the whole business and all the intricacies, because they instinctively have learned all of that as they're adding things and building things. But their team comes in and has their desk and the view at their desk and their job description, and they want to do the right thing. They want to win. But they can't possibly collect all the knowledge that the leader has had with the little failures that he or she has instinctively integrated into the right solution. They know this works and just do what I said. But most people don't really connect the dots when you tell them what to say or what to do. They really want to think it through themselves. And so as a coach, my job is to help the leader recognize that if they're going to be the answer person, they're going to feed the beast, and they were never going to get out of that operational hub. And if they learn to be the question person and help people to learn to think through the problem and consider the negative alternatives, the reasons why they already know it's not going to work, and to think it through without. 1s Having to be the person who knows the answer. Then they come up with the answer and they go, oh, okay. And they take off. And so then you've got you're actually helping people learn to think and process within the context of where they fit in the landscape. Sure. The other piece is, I feel like our education system has really failed the kids. Starting with my generation, really, we didn't have I mean, we had home act, but it was like sewing and cooking. It was not financial literacy. And we need financial literacy in our school systems because if kids don't learn the value of money and the way money works, we're basically putting a blindfold on them and saying, hey, when you get kids, really obvious, doesn't it seems like the kind of thing a society would want people to be literate at. And it's almost like it's almost like they go out of the room. 1s It's wildly unaddressed as an elephant in the room. It's very confusing to me how it could be put in a position where and then as soon as you get them out of high school, the first thing they're trying to do is hook them up with 180 grand worth of loans when the kid doesn't know how to balance it. And they have no concern up to one account with $60 from grandbaum in it. And now the kids making one of the biggest business decisions they're probably going to make for the next several decades. Let's face it. 2s Homeownership is going to be off the table 99% of the time, if only because they're saddled with that debt. You know, I'd almost like homec to be like, here's how you start a business with $10,000. Exactly. You don't have to go to college, you know, here's how you work in a service industry. Here's how you network business to business. Here's how you, you know, talk to people professionally. Here's how you finding the right professionals to help you manage a business, along with all the sort of basic 1s skills that you should have. You should have the ability to check the work of the people that you're working with. 1s And I've gone way off on a tangent, but I just lit up when you said that. I was like, that would open so many doors if that was a real addressing actual needs. 1s Like, I just lit up and started making a list as long as my arm. To your point about how much you hit that on the head. Absolutely. And so then now let's put those people that grew up with no financial literacy training into a job in a business, and they're trying to succeed, and we have this entire 1s societal. 1s Negative connotation over the word profit. How many times have you seen people over profits? And if you want profits over people, you're evil. And one of the things I like to start out and say let's just think about a business without any profit. What does that really mean? Is it a success or is it not taking care of any people? I know that. Exactly. Is it sustainable? Absolutely not. What's a business without people generally? Unless you're a solopreneur, it's a failure. So if you're going through people with paper towels and you're not treating them well, okay, that's a whole different story. But if you are trying to be a financially successful company, it doesn't mean you don't care about your people. In fact, it means that you do because you want them to have a job and you want the company to grow so that they can grow. And that negative connotation is so misconstrued, I find mostly because people don't stop in Google. What does the word profit mean? And they think profit and revenue are the same thing. And they envision profit as the owner back in his pickup up and dumping the cash in and run into the bank number. Exactly. And the reality is, now that you've got net profit, you have the freedom to pay your bills. I mean, pay your loans. Speaking of those $180,000 loans, you have the ability to look back at the landscape and say, okay, where do we need to grow next? And where is my capital investment going to go? And yes, the owner does get profit, but he's also carrying all the liability. 1s But all the other things have to happen further first or the business doesn't grow. So paying your debt and investing in the company to grow it and all of those things are really important, and nobody talks about that. And so employees oftentimes get this entitlement. 2s Because they're looking at the top line revenue or they're looking at how much, they just surmise how much is coming in there. Because many companies don't open their books to their teams, but they know their targets are the revenue targets, but they don't know anything about the expenses or how they work. So understanding just the basics of how money flows through a business and that they have control from where they sit over the direct expenses that are spent in their department and understanding that when they save a dollar there, it goes straight to the bottom line. And when the company is secure and profitable, they are secure. So when you can build that, you know, that landscape for them to understand their role, how to make a winning decision, what's best for the company is best for them instead of the opposite sit 1s that is publicly held right now. The evil, 1s I think that people are generally everybody wants to win, everybody wants to have a good life. And so once they are armed with that information, the quality of their contribution at the company becomes invaluable and much higher quality than it was previous to them understanding this whole picture. So what that does is give them their leader confidence that okay, they're getting it. And it gives them more confidence to be innovative, to think, to be involved in the process of evolving and scaling a company instead of sitting back going, well, this is my job, this is really stupid the way we're doing this. 1s Or as my favorite analogy, because we are dealing with that tenfold here in California right now, in the mountains, when somebody's blowing snow into their neighbor's yard and burying them, it's like when you're sitting at your desk and you're doing something that is burying somebody else and not having the capacity to understand how everything connects. So I work a lot with leaders. They're building or 1s educating, leadership wise, their C suite and get the communication going well between them. And then I'll do some work with their team to help them develop that dialogue with the rest of the team. And so as far as a size medium to small, but as far as capacity, it could could be anything. And then working on culture, how do you. 1s A lot of the former successful companies are changing hands right now. The boomers are retiring somewhat reluctantly or trying to sell. And so you've got a lot of new owners, new leaders that have maybe been in the company and purchased it. But there's a culture that's different than what there is in newer businesses. I'll just say that. So you've got a culture hangover. And so it's like turning the Titanic. It takes time and consistency to create trust. But once there is trust, then you can lead a team in a whole different way. But it takes time, because in my experience, there's a lot of mindset in the past of don't think, just do what I told to do. Or here's your job description. Fulfill it, and then I'll take care of the rest. Don't worry about the big picture. And I think that really hurts all of us. Man, your voice is such a different voice than I hear, at least. And I don't study your market, but you can't be active on LinkedIn without being exposed to. 2s Coaching and all the facets that 1s exist therein. 1s I got to be honest with you. Most of the time I see messaging from that world, 2s I damn near break my neck rolling my eyes. 2s And you just spoke so much logic in a row 2s that while I'm maybe just getting exposed to a lot of sort of raw stuff, I really appreciate the fact that at least in my personal exposure, your message is a very sort of direct brass tax, if you will. And, boy, we've spoken for over ten minutes, and you have yet to 2s request a soapbox and megaphone to gain the love and trust of the organization. By letting them all know you understand how victimized they are and how none of this is their fault and how they have no ownership or agency. It's the opposite, actually. Guess what? Like, not only 1s if you take a step back and you see the ecosystem you live in, you gain a whole heck of a lot of agency because you become empowered outside of your little circle. To your point a couple of minutes ago about is the work you're doing dumping on someone else? And how does that affect the overall system? 1s The language you use is very. 2s Team oriented. And I think that's a wonderful way to have whether that's 2s a wonderful way to have a downstream effect on things like culture is to generate 1s anything that resembles a true team environment that will all sort of flow. Because then the investment isn't in your little circle, it's in the ecosystem. Very compelling 1s proposition, your elevator pitch, in contrast to what's floating around out there. Thank you. I really appreciate that. And to flip it a little bit further as far as what the bonuses for the leadership is, you're able to harness the wisdom of your team in a whole new way. And when a company is aligned and that word is overused, I will admit, but when they are all rowing in the same direction, I like to envision the crew with the oars. And when you get all the oars in the water and they're rowing in sync, you go tremendously faster and you grow in a way that is collective in terms of the whole team. It's not just the C suite that's growing, it's the whole company that's growing. Less effort. Exactly. Because there's so much less friction between the cogs in the machine or the rowers on the boat. Exactly. And 1s I do a lot of as part of my executive coaching. It often turns out that they go, I want you to work with my team. And so I'll do a workshop with the company or with the department or whatever. And generally speaking, I'll start out by saying, okay, first of all, present job excluded. I just have a question for you. How many of you have been in a situation where you're sitting at your desk and your direct supervisor comes to you and they're kind of observing you for a minute because maybe you're in the middle of something? And then you have a little interaction, and at some point they decide, hey, I was watching you do this. And if you did this, this, and this in this order, I think it would be more efficient for you. And before they got to the second this, you were going, not going to work. And I said, the message here is no one knows your job better than you. And when we look at a company, oftentimes there's a C suite conversation and there's a team conversation. There's a lot of eye rolling going on down here, and there's a lot of frustration going on up here. 4s So my thought is, let's open the communication instead of having the leadership be frustrated and think they're incapable. 1s The real thing is your charge as a leader is to develop them. And their charge is to be curious. Look bigger than where you are, understand where you are and what you contribute. And what happens is they feel valued and they are more valuable. And so that really does accelerate the boat if you're using that malogy 100%. 3s What are your business sort of development? Are you out there doing keynote stuff or I would imagine it's just a good referral model. Once you've worked with X, you're going to meet a certain pool of Y potential prospects. What does that life cycle look like in your life? I've done a fair amount of speaking in my life, although I will say I haven't really done a lot in this new brand. I just launched in December, and in November I did do a couple of keep speaking engagements under the new brand, but there was technical difficulties as we were talking about earlier, and my website was not quite up yet. It was kind of a fiasco, to be honest. I was pretty disappointed 1s with that of us. Yes, exactly. What's your wrong button? 1s But in terms of speaking public speaking, I've actually been speaking since I was a kid. I grew up in a family with my younger brother, who was five years younger, had Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and he was diagnosed when I was eight years old, and my parents were told that he would likely not make it past 18, and he in fact died when he was 18. And my mother shared that information with me in whole when I was eight years old. And of course it changed me, and it changed me in a way that absolutely my brother was my best friend, and 2s I said, okay, we're going to fix this. And so at eight years old, I decided I was going to really get him in line for a cure. And my parents of course, were totally doing that too. But we spent a lot of time at UCLA in the Jerry Lewis Neuromuscular Center. Actually, it was right before it was born. And we would just go down to their clinic, which was in the medical center. And ultimately I went to UCLA because of that experience. But, um, I was, at 16, invited to be on the National Youth Committee for MDA. And I don't, you know, I will give away my age here, but in the late seventy s, that was. 3s A very powerful fundraising group, and it was largely on the college, I recall. Yeah, I recall what a presence the muscular decision was. Yeah, exactly. And so there were about 450 kids across the country, and I say kids, they were really young adults, and I was the kid because I was 16. And I flew to phoenix for a conference, and 1s they were going through all the things that MDA does for their patients and then fundraising ideas, and it was just kind of a raw, raw couple of days in phoenix. And I was sitting in the patient services 3s session, and they went all through all the things they did, bought wheelchairs and all these things, and they went around the room because it was a small enough group to have everybody introduce themselves. And when I got the microphone, I just said, you know, I kind of told my story of my brother and everything, and nobody else in there had a family member that had it, which stunned me. I mean, what an incredible giving heart to have that many people want to do something. 2s And so I shared some of the things, like my brother's electric wheelchair would not have been possible without MBA and going to the clinics, and all the research is happening with carriers, because the type of muscular dystrophy that my brother had was x linked mother to son. So my sister and I were going through a lot of pre gene identification, a lot of experimental testing to try to figure out what is causing MB, and duchenne specifically. And duchenne is kind of parallel to lou Gehrig's disease, but it happens to children at birth. And so he was diagnosed at three, and it takes longer to really have that impact, but it's the same impact at the end of his life. He couldn't three days before he died, my I went by my, and I was newly married. My I went by my parents house to see him, and he was laying on the couch, and this tells everything. I got close to him and he said, put my arms around you, I want to give you a hug. 1s So. 4s Is a brutal disease because it does not affect the brain. It only affects the body that is and he was treated as stupid many, many times in public, and it drove me crazy, but I saw myself as his great equalizer. But so I shared that little bit at the conference, and then I got called out of the next session and taken into a room with all of the leaders of the conference and that we're not giving a workshop ah. And said and asked, would you please share what you shared as the closing comments at the conference? We'd really like you to speak. So here I'm at 16 in front of all these adults, sharing my, you know, family story. So that kind of catapulted me into leadership and speaking at a really early age. I went on to be interviewed by David Hartman for the National Telephone, and I also spoke at two of the conferences preconferences that they did for Mda's anchors. The local anchors were called together in Las Vegas to meet and greet with Jerry Lewis, and I spoke at that, and then I spoke at one in San Francisco while I was in college. And so it has always come naturally to me, and I've done a lot of fundraising, and then my jobs have really put me in positions of having to speak, not like. 1s Give talks, but introduce and tell stories around what the mission is of the nonprofits that I work for and other things. So I think speaking under my new brand is going to be a natural fit, although it is not really developed at this point. So back to your original question. How do I get clients? I jokingly say I want to be the backbone for my clients, because I want them to think when the crap hits a fan, I got to call Catherine. 3s If I work for somebody, work with someone for a period of time, whether we're under contract or not, I tell them, you're a client for life. You have my cell phone. Call me. I don't work with a ton of people. I don't have a sales funnel. I don't have an online class. I like to work with people. I'm a people person, and I want to listen to what is going on with you and then work together to find a solution that you think will work and will support you. And then I want to see it through. And when we get to that point, then we can reassess and set new goals, or we can say, hey, stay in touch, and if something happens, get back to me, because I always have your back. And I'm 60 years old. I have a plan to do this, to give back until I can't do it anymore. And I don't see myself retiring. I see myself giving. From my experience, and I've had a vast you know, I turned around a nonprofit that was a $5 million, which is not very big, but bigger than most. 60 employees, seven locations, and it was falling off a financial cliff when I got there. And in five years, in the time that I got there, I should start by saying when I took it, the executive director had left three weeks before this walked out. The accounting manager left the day I started, and the development director left two weeks later. And they had four independent audits that had not been completed. So they were four years behind on independent audits. They had 42 checking accounts, and one 1s and none of them had been reconciled. And the general account was just checks to the other 42 accounts. So we had a word federal funding, and we had 1s private foundation funding. And I was there 24 hours, just, you know, as I started, just going. 4s Had to call and beg and, you know, say, give me some time to get my arms around this. I understand where we're at, and I'll get us there. So it was a heavy lifting for about five years. And once it was righted, I decided that 2s I needed to get back to for profit. I had been in for profit in my early days. I was a regional sales manager for a marketing marketing arm of a health insurance company that was a national company. And there were 42 regional managers in the country. And there was me and one other woman, and I was 27, and she was 50 something. And 2s I had nine employees in a territory from Modesto to Bakersfield, which is the center corridor of California. So it's about three and a half hours top to bottom and about that wide. And I was on the road 35 to 40,000 miles a year going to see insurance agents and work with their clients. And so I had that for profit experience. And so when I got to the point of, okay, I have 15 board members that come in, and now they're trying to tell me how to run the agency instead of set policy, I think I need to exit. And so then I went to work for a bank, and I started a department for them, and it was the electronic payments department. And so I worked building relationships with our business clients who accepted credit and debit cards from their clients. And I built that to a point where we became an acquiring bank, which there's only maybe 70 or 80 of them. That's not really a published list, so I'm taking a wild stab at it. But those are the banks that on the back end of the transaction. When you, as a consumer, swipe your card, they collect the money from your credit card bank and then they deliver it to the merchant. So that's the transaction piece. And now today, 1s I hired a replacement and exited in August of 2018. And very amicably, I just started my coaching business and went and got certified because I really wanted to plan for the rest of the next chapter of my life. So that's a little bit of my background. Well, it's wide ranging. It's fascinating. 3s I didn't realize you were so new in the operation. So that was eye opening and well, also as the 1s approximately solopreneur that I am. 1s Made a big note of that. It was like, going to need marketing. 2s Yes. And I'm talking to marketing people right now, and I have to tell you, I have a big, 2s I guess, 2s preconceived negative connotation to lay that I want to hear that LinkedIn and all these infomercial and trying to pull people in that way, because I'm just a people person. So I am working with companies trying to narrow down 1s I want to have a presence because I want them to know that I'm real and what my thoughts are. But I don't ever want to twist somebody's arm because coaching is a voluntary experience. If you haven't chosen to be coached and you haven't got the mindset of, let's work together, then it's not a fit. And I'm not going to twist your arm, and I'm not going to tell you I had the magic potion to fix everything. I'm going to tell you, can we work together? Because it's pretty logical and simple if we break it down and we really talk about it. A lot of times I work with leaders who have a passion and have developed a business, but they never really thought they needed to be in business in terms of the financials and the liability and the insurance and all the rules and regulations, and they're just, like, over it. And the metrics of financials. 1s Are often mysterious to leaders. Not that they don't they get the financials, but they're in a leadership role. They've got an idea and the money is flowing. But the whole concept of cash flow and 3s direct expense, gross margin, all of these things and understanding and having comfort that you're making decisions from position of power, knowing the detail is a life changer. I mean it's such a stressful thing to be constantly watching them coming in and trying to figure out am I going to make payroll? That kind of thing. And so I also can help them dial that in to a point where they've got their revenue streams. If they have multiple products, let's find out which ones are profitable, how do we make them more profitable? Let's look at what that looks like in those conversations. Are you at any time recommending tools, vendors, 1s adjacent services or service providers in terms of professional services? Could be accounting? Could be accounting software? Could be CRM? Could be. I do have a connection with a software company that at this point is a start up. But it's an incredible innovation technology software that allows people to teams to come up with an idea and take it from idea to is it profitable? Is it worth investing in? And it's very transparent and all the teams can see everything that's being worked on in that process and it's designed by a neuroscientist, 1s really something. And so I make introductions but I have not monetized any of that. Those would be very legitimate types of conversations you could have in terms of. 3s Value ad to a content. Call it marketing. I think podcasting is more of a referral relationship development tool. Know what? I don't know. I don't really care who's on my website or tweeting about my stuff on Instagram. I care about the person who calls me tomorrow because their friend was just a guest on one of my clients podcasts. It's all about the real world interactions, and for my clients, it's about oftentimes it's about make a list of ten people who aren't in your phone as text. Friends from the industry who would be killer referral sources. Call them up instead of saying, hey, let's just bullshit for 90 minutes and make friends, and maybe we can do business, because that's a ludicrous opening is you're such an expert at this thing that connects us. I'd love to have you on my show. And next thing you know, they're bullshit with you for 90 minutes. Everybody's got everybody's cell phone number. They're bragging about how awesome and fun your podcast was at golf over the weekend. That's where the rubber meets the road on a podcast. 1s When people ask me questions like, well, how big of an audience can we grow? 2s I rarely end up working with those people because their value proposition is so detached from reality unless they've got an unlimited budget. If you want to talk about I mean, you're competing with TV and radio and the internet, my friend. Like, if you didn't bring seven figures, let's not get ridiculous here. Let's talk about quality, not quantity. My, you know, this sort sort of germ around that thought was, 1s what would podcasting look like as a tool for you? That doesn't make you sort of just one of those folks who 2s comes off as self aggrandizing so often when somebody's lecturing or something. And that's why I always recommend a guest. And then my next thought was, well, who's an ancillary or adjacent service? And are they a big enough company to get them to underwrite six months of podcasting for you to take their product? Because then you're still soft selling because you're not talking about yourself, you're talking about this cool emerging thing that really serves the people that you serve too. So it's not a pitch again, it's more like coaching. And people in my neck of the woods do it all the time with as opposed to saying, you need a pod podcast. It's like, let me tell you how this camera works, let me tell you why somebody should or shouldn't have it, and let me just give as much value in that sort of slice because I know there's an audience for it and. 2s In a lot of ways, it's a screening tool. It gives somebody they're either going to like me or not. 1s And I guess what, when I produce a podcast for somebody, what I can't do is make a higher percentage of the world like you. I'm going to make more people dislike you. 2s There's going to be that many more people who come across you, but as long as there's more people not liking you, that means that, you know, the bar chart is going to remain in the same shape, and there's that many people who do. And so for like, lawyers, professional consulting, relationship stuff, it's so much more information in a 32nd sound bite than there is in an About US page in terms of what's that person about. Not just what are they talking about, how are they talking about it? And 3s it's like I said, if you go at it as a referral tool, who are ten people that are either the best clients you've ever had, who, you know, all have friends who'd be great clients, or who are the ten people who offer services like yours but don't exactly step on toes? And how could you combine to offer a super fruitful media experience? But I think almost the best trick in podcasting, a new media that I'm working with today, is that if you don't make it about yourself, you can really transmit how valuable and great to work with you are. But if you make it about yourself. 3s You better be really precise about the audience you hit in the target. Like, I'm just not into selling either. 1s In fact, I go out of my way to be myself in my marketing presentations because I want people to know I cursed during conversations on the phone because I don't want that to come up two months and have them be disappointed. Like, great, I'm not for everybody. That's kind of how this helps as a screening mechanism. And I think the relationship thing, whichever avenue you take with it, like, can you find other gurus? Can you find tech solutions providers who solve the headaches that you come across? You've got potential contributing sponsors to underwrite, whatever a media effort from your end might look like, but those are all very viable. I think selling with sort of a soft sell approach and being hitched up with other parties, and you're sort of in, oh, she's the conduit. 1s She's not stalking us. Well, she most certainly is stalking you, my friends. 1s But I'm sleuth with the tip of the spear is very soft. And so I think 1s as you go through and if you ever wanted to have a brass tax conversation about what birds can be killed with the podcasting stuff, there are a number of task type stuff, keeping channels full of information. 2s Cutting up an hour and a half podcast. You just kept those channels full of information for the next month, whether it's the tall sort of shorts videos you want to get out on those things, whatever. And not saying that that's where you should then base your business or your legion. But the people who really are interested in that new person you meet at an event, they are going to Google you. And that's the instant in new. Facade as you with these associations of solutions providers or other gurus like it's that first impression, I think that has a lot to do with setting you apart as well as the fact that for the rest of 1s the existence of those people or those companies because you recorded with them and dug into their topic or let them talk about all those clips, have their name, their company name, their solution. Maybe that all leads back to you. So all those nichey little topics that you let somebody bring in they're really working for you for free and. 2s Their 1s episodes on your podcast are going to show up in Google. When they get Google, they're out beating the bushes and giving out cards and doing their thing. People google their name. There's a very good chance your episode, unless they're Elon Musk or somebody who's very, very, very industry connected, your podcast is going to be page one Google for their name and company name for the rest of their career. Wow, that's a cool trick. And so all your guests, your guest company names, the name drops that come up in an episode, whether they're software, stuff like that. Tagging all those companies on LinkedIn. I'm getting contacted. I just started using the software two weeks ago and the software company, this Riverside company, has already reached out to me on LinkedIn just because they see me tagging them in my post. So some kind of rep reached out through LinkedIn a week ago and said, hey, we'd like to talk about 2s stuff. Yeah, I got stuff to talk about with. Just in the same way that you could propose to somebody who has solutions for your well, I've got three that popped in my head. There's also a company in UK that 2s the founder is a friend of mine and I've been kind of helping, 2s what do you call it? Pro bono, but not really. I mean, just kind of a relationship. And I've been a champion for them because I think what he has developed is phenomenal. It's a software called Harkin, but not spelled the way you think it's Harkn. And it is a listening software where a larger corporation can use it to anonymously check in with their team. And 1s it's difficult for me to describe, but it is an incredible coaching internal culture builder because the leadership team, they do a daily everybody in the company does a daily 32nd check in. Where are you? Are you happy? Sad, upset? And it started out as the happy this lab, and there was a lot of pushback from people about, I don't know, happy pushback than that. Yeah. 4s Eliminated a hurdle by changing it to Harkin because it's really like, listen to your people. And 1s the software allows for people to have a wall where everybody in the company can put their stuff up there anonymously and really whatever they think is going on, and then they can have feedback like, well, what do you think we should do about it? They can continue this process, and then if it becomes like, 50 people in the company are really obsessed with this particular issue, then they say, okay, we're going to form a committee to deal with this, if you would like to be part of it, we're going to meet here at this time. And now there's safety in that because they know there's 50 people that care about this thing, and then then they invite them to innovate the solution. And there's a lot of levels, and I'm giving you, like, the, you know, the very that's very interesting. Just but it's an incredible software sure. That could I could I can imagine how the applications could sort of spider in all directions. And they haven't come really to the US. They have a few clients here, but not very many, I'll tell you. And then I have another that came to mind and actually have a meeting with him in nine minutes. Trevor Throneness, who owns a company, was getting people right, and he's changed the name. And I don't know what it is right off the top of my head, but it's a leadership development program online, and they use the different personality assessments and you know what I want to say, talent assessments. So he uses Disk as a free lead, and he has over 1000 people taking that test every single day on his website. And he called me and said, we need to talk, and so that's what we're going to do. But I've been partnering with him since he kind of started just in terms of keeping in touch and suggesting it for my companies. If they're looking for something to do, an internal all multi level leadership training program. 3s I'm looking for Trevor online right this second, but I'm not having any luck. And there were too many Trevor Harkins on LinkedIn. So it's Trevor thrownness. Oh, trevor Thrown. This harkin was the software. Harkin is the name of the other one, yeah. All right, let's look it up quick. Just so that way if I put a clip out, 1s how do you spell that, the last name? It's spelled like Throne with an E. And then Ness. 3s Okay, I'm sorry. Leadership Institute CEO. And that Senior Instructor. Yeah, I knew he changed it, but I could not remember it. 1s Piece of cake. All right, cool. Yeah, those are neat. So listen, with nine minutes left, we can wind it down. But I just wanted to if I can get off a call with someone who's got 2s a real strong case to be made for you having a soapbox and megaphone. If only because I'm really not blowing smoke at you, the way you approach this whole let's fix your organization thing. Holy mackerel. It's just a breath of fresh air, because that's the same tune is being played everywhere else, and your sounds pragmatic, functional, logical, and like you're hitting at the heart of actual problems and solving actual issues not only for the business, but for the people under the business, who by under, we're not talking about under the foot. We're talking about under the protection, under the umbrella, under the sort of family name. And if you don't see it like that, then maybe that's the place to start in changing your business. 2s Very. Thank you so much. That is so affirming. I really appreciate it. I mean, my eyes lit up, and I didn't have time for any hesitation because I didn't know if you were going to be one of the ones that I was sure I didn't want to hear from, 2s and I don't have much of a poker face, so what a relief to me that I was delighted. Thank you. Yeah. I don't want to be that 1s disgruntled employee at the end of the conference, rolling his eyes like it's well, I'm just going to tell you, you're now initiated into the bat phone community. So you have, I believe, if you don't, I'll send you an email when we hang up here, and you'll get my cell phone, and I will definitely reach out. I'm in a conversation going, yeah, I'm kind of holding my breath right now. I've talked to about 14 four different marketing people, and I've got one that just went on vacation because wait for me to make your decision. I want to talk to you when I get back 2s for your marketing. Like, no joke. Do they have a better and honestly, it's so much better. Even if they did have a better presenter than you, it's less effective when it's coming from them. So teaming up is a huge tool in, like. 2s Even people who want to do a podcast catherine and they want to do I had a guy call last week, I just want to talk. No, I need to do it. People love what I have to say. I was like, no, you've got to hire a Cohost. And that dude has to ask the question before you answer it. Because if nobody's asking you a question, nobody's going to listen to you for 10 seconds if it doesn't at least appear like you're solving a problem. And it's collaborative and let them challenge you because then you can really work through ideas and it's kind of worthless and it's a commercial, and that's not where anybody wants to be. Exactly. Consider me a sounding board. I'm at your service. Thank you, Tom. 2s If I don't hear from you soon, you're going to hear from me soon. I'll put it to you there. Well, good. I hope so. Catherine, you're sellable. Oh, gosh. Thank you, Tom. And I would love a copy of this recording so that I can really 2s I'm going to shoot you a dropbox. I'll clean up the audio, 3s I'll listen to it and see if there's anything that's even remotely close to a line that neither one of us wants to put out there. I don't think we got anywhere near that. But my job is to make people sound good and not have to think about it. So I'll send you a finished version of this. I'll create some clips for you that I think highlight sort of what your mission is that sort of are standalone for you to use anywhere you want. Oh, my gosh. Thank you. That's amazing. Well, it's a trick. That's how you turn your guests into your marketing department everywhere. Give them a whole media kit, and they're going to run around sharing the word. 2s The final thing I wanted to say is I hadn't really considered a podcast until we kind of came to this boat kind of blind. I have been on a couple and I'm my own worst critic. So I get off and like, oh, why did you say that way? But I would need a lot of handholding, is my point, in terms of how to do it right. 1s But I love that idea, and it has been back here, and it's actually certainly way easier than standing up in front of a room full of 400 people, strangers, which is also a little bit terrifying. But 1s I really appreciate your time and your encouragement. And now my last thing is when you summed up, I'm not blowing someone at you in that little section just now. Would you be okay with me using that in a clipped up form just as an audio? I never get any FaceTime or my time. I'm always the producer behind the scenes. Sure. I'll take a little spotlight. Yeah. And actually, I was in closing that thought, I was actually oh, wow. That came out fairly concise and elegant. Yes, it did. He was listening, going, oh, God, I hope he lets me use it. He's more than happy to make sure that gets hurt again. It's probably one of my conversational highlights of the month, but yeah, 100%. I'll get all those goodies to you and narrow tons of little nuggets of good stuff from you that will be usable on your instagram or whatever next week, if you so desire. Oh, thank you so much, Tom. All right. Yeah. I'm glad you didn't go. Oh, God, why did my sister waste an hour of my time? 2s Take care. All right, you'd too. Bye.