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BRX Pro Tip: Power Connectors Do This Twice a Year

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BRX Pro Tips
BRX Pro Tip: Power Connectors Do This Twice a Year
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BRX Pro Tip: Power Connectors Do This Twice a Year

Stone Payton : Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton, Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, you talk a lot about power connectors. What’s a power connector and what are some of the disciplines that one should try to follow if that’s what they want to become and remain?

Lee Kantor : Yeah. So a power connector to me is a person that goes out of their way to kind of bring people together. And, you know, one of the luxuries of our business is we get to meet so many different people and so many different people every single day. And a lot of those people are doing really cool things, and they just don’t know about other people that are also doing cool things. And because of where we sit in the community, we get to meet kind of this really diverse, large variety of people in all kinds of walks of life. So, we know tons of people in a variety of places.

Lee Kantor : So a power connector, in order to leverage all of those resources that they have, I believe a couple of times a year they should be going through like their LinkedIn contacts and very deliberately sort them into groups. And then the groups that they should be sorting them into are this kind of, number one, the people who matter most to them. Who are they – who are these people that are really kind of the linchpin connections you have in your network? Who are these people that you really do care the most about and maybe generate the most revenue from, or are super important to you? Maybe they refer a lot of people to you.

Lee Kantor : Whatever the case, these people matter the most to you, so put them in a pile and then go through that list, and then think about ways that you can be connecting with them more. You know, what is a way that you can really serve this group a little bit more? Who else can you be connecting them with that might be beneficial? What other thing can you be doing for these people to just let them know that, number one, you appreciate them and that you’re thinking of them, and you’re trying to figure out ways that you can help them get the outcome that they desire? You should have a mindful communication strategy to connect, provide value, and check in with all of those folks who matter the most to you. You should be doing this regularly and you should be doing it mindfully.

Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier with Breaking Through Consulting & Coaching

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High Velocity Radio
Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier with Breaking Through Consulting & Coaching
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Clara-Lucia-Jaramillo-CarrierClara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier with Breaking Through Consulting & Coaching, has spent over 25 years as a strategist, communicator, coach, and leadership trainer.

She holds a Master of Arts in Transformational Leadership and Coaching and two graduate certificates, one in emotional intelligence and another in transformational coaching.

Clara Lucia also has a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) certification from the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and received recognition from the Graduate School Alliance for Education in Coaching.

Clara Lucia is a proud Colombian American who offers her coaching and leadership training in English and Spanish. Breaking-Through-Consulting-logo

Clara Lucia recognizes a growing need for more humanity in today’s world. Throughout her career and education in the for-profit and nonprofit sectors, she has realized that embracing our imperfect humanity is crucial to nurturing essential qualities like kindness, humility, fulfillment, and servant leadership in the workplace.

Her work focuses on helping reconnect individuals and organizations with their humanity (body, mind, and heart) by acknowledging their personal love, awakening their purpose, activating their positive mindset, and unlocking their inner potential.

Connect with Clara Lucia on LinkedIn and Instagram.

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 breaking through consulting and coaching. Clara Lucia. How are you?

Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier: Oh, hi, Stone, how are you? I’m doing well. Super excited to be here in the show.

Stone Payton: Well, I know this is going to be a fun and informative conversation. I got a ton of questions, but before I even go there, maybe just describe for for me and our listeners mission. Purpose. What are you what are you really out there trying to do for folks, Clara?

Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier: Yeah, absolutely. So it’s really simple. My purpose is to awaken the humanity in the marketplace. In other words, work with people to remind them about, um, the fact that they are imperfect human beings and that they have an incredible amount of influence over themselves and other people. And how can we just make this world a little better if we own that truth about being human beings?

Stone Payton: So I have to know, what was the journey like to get here? I bet it wasn’t a straight line, was it?

Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier: No, it was kind of convoluted, very, um, satisfying at moments. Super fulfilling and kind of messy at times. So I am originally from Colombia, and that’s Colombia with a big O in South America. So I’m a proud Latina. And I came here to the US in 1999, which seems kind of like a century ago. And one of the things that I kept kind of realizing is my desire to fit in. My desire to feel part of something greater than myself, to have a sense of belonging and contribution. And throughout my experiences and relationships, I realized that sometimes that’s not so easy. And the the limitations on our own self-critic inside, it’s almost that judging voice that limits you from creating those sentiments for yourself and others. And your mindset can really dictate how you go through life and what you learned and what you don’t. And that has taken me all the way back to really the foundational piece about my humanity Is unless I can’t. Unless I can accept radically accept that I am an imperfect human being. I’m not going to be able to have the impact that I can. And when I am able to recognize that in myself, it’s a little bit easier for me to present that invitation to other people and really help them succeed.

Stone Payton: And so now you’re bringing this work to serve other people. Uh, tell us a little bit about the work. What does it look like? Is it a lot of one on one exchanges? Is it group coaching and or what all is it?

Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier: Yeah, absolutely. So there’s a combination of things. One on one interactions and specifically coaching sessions with people are kind of my go to. And during those coaching sessions, there’s kind of a focus on what I call the three superpowers, and that is our personal love, our purpose and our positive mindset. Those are three things that every human being can one acknowledge and awaken to really live more fulfilling and satisfying lives and careers. So that’s the one on one. And then there’s another side of things, which includes group leadership and training opportunities, where I really have an opportunity to come into an organization or a team and understand what are some of the things that they’re doing well, and what are some of the barriers to where they want to get towards. And once I have that sense of an assessment per se, I then create and I designed trainings that are speaking to some of those solutions that they can implement individually and as a group. And the last piece is speaking engagements. And by these I mean really opportunities to hear a bit of a fresh Perspective, someone that has been in similar situations of hardship and, you know, trying to kind of belong and fit in and someone that can relate to their experiences as human beings. And at the end of the day, it’s really my intent is to bring a little bit more hope and a few things that people could consider to do differently so they can go about their lives with a sense of, you know, clarity and ownership about how powerful they are and how they can really own what they want. Life and career to be for them.

Stone Payton: So when you first started speaking professionally, was that a little bit intimidating or did you take to it pretty easy?

Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier: Oh, it still is. I mean, it’s I can describe how I feel and what sensations I feel in my body. You know, it’s the butterflies. It’s your stomach. Kind of like shrinking. Is your heartbeat racing? And to me, those are all signals that one I deeply care about what I do. I have a strong belief in, again, the power of what I teach and what I offer to others. And three, you know, it reminds me of my aliveness and it allows me to feel and be present in that moment. Right? So there’s there’s certain things that, you know, I do to prepare for it. Um, and one of the biggest learnings is, as opposed to pretending that I have it all figured out and in control is to name the fact that I’m nervous and it’s to name, you know, that dynamic of, you know, caring so much that I really want to do a good job and bringing that to the front, um, so that everybody understands that I’m as human as they are.

Stone Payton: So it seems to me the work that you do individually, and maybe even more so in groups, is the kind of work that can live on beyond you, uh, contributing to the process. Is that accurate? I mean, once you’ve gone in there and opened minds and hearts to some of these concepts and ideas that work can live on well beyond you being there, can it?

Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier: So that’s that’s the idea, right? Like, I think, um, we only are given one life, at least as we know it in the here and now. And it is up to me to choose what I’m doing with it. And once I realize that, you know, again, my purpose was to awaken the humanity in others. I have dedicated myself to learning and growing and getting, you know, certifications and getting equipped with the tools so that I can be of support. And at the end of the day, you know, Stone, I want to look back, you know, when I’m in the end of this walk through this life and really feel at peace with a sense of accomplishment on one following that yearning for contribution and making a difference and to, you know, be at peace that I that I did it um, that I went for it, that I took a risk as an entrepreneur, that I left corporate America on the side, and that I decided to give it my very best attempt to be good at what I do, and to do it in a way that is transformative for myself and for others. So it is part of my legacy. And, you know, I have a 19 year old son right now who has kind of been a little bit of a witness, and I want to make sure that he knows that that he sees myself, you know, acknowledging my imperfections and seeking to to get, um, better and seeking to be excellent and to do all of that because I have a sense of purpose, um, to use this one life to make a difference and a contribution. And the same thing goes with the people that I come across with.

Stone Payton: So the transition from the corporate arena, which I’m operating under the impression at one point probably got probably got really good at it, pretty comfortable. And then you jump off the ledge into this entrepreneurial world. Like, was it tough early on getting clients, you know, all that kind of stuff?

Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier: Absolutely. I mean, it’s, um, it’s it’s one life changing decision that I do not regret. I mean, leaving corporate America, um, and at that point, you know, so and I want to be super transparent with the audience is, you know, my managers were asking more out of me, and there was really nothing else I could give them. So it became very clear that perhaps a win win was to part ways. And it was a really hard, um, reality. I mean, I felt like the the world under my feet was shaken to the core, and there was a lot of fear. There was a lot of unknown. And thankfully, I had the support of my family and my husband specifically at that point. And what I kept telling myself was, what is the worst that can happen? And the worst that can happen is that I wouldn’t succeed as an entrepreneur and I would find another job. So I kind of put all my energy and focus on, on on the why behind that idea of, you know, being my own boss and managing my own. Time and again, it all became very crystal clear to me when I came up with the name of Breaking Through consulting and now coaching, and if I may take just a few seconds. It was it was a very vivid experience. I was doing tryouts with my son in a soccer, um, tournament, and I was just mesmerized and mesmerized about looking at all these little kids trying to excel and trying to show up and shine, you know. And how much effort they were putting behind it. And I realize we all have a way of wanting to break through something, to make it through a challenge, make it through circumstances to become, you know, from good to great or like we’re always trying to break through something either a limiting belief, a difficulty, our own self-reflection of ourselves. And then I it hit me, right? Like what I was trying to do at that point was to breaking through as an entrepreneur and being my own, you know, business owner. And that’s where the name comes from.

Stone Payton: Well, I can see very clearly how rewarding it must be as a client to achieve these kinds of breakthroughs. How much fun it must be for you to help your clients do that. But it seems like you’ve come full circle. You had those challenges in the corporate arena in the latter part of your career there, and now you’re busy about embedding purpose in their business operations and in their everyday life and culture. That’s got to feel great.

Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier: Oh, it’s I mean, it’s I wouldn’t want to have it any other way. It’s, um, a practice that I have chosen, and I have the privilege of actually choosing, um, to do so, and it’s very fulfilling. And I think it it really hit me when I found my purpose in life. And I purpose is a very pivotal aspect of the support that I offer to my clients, because your purpose is not a nice statement that you would cut out from somewhere. And I put it on a plaque or on a wall. Your purpose is something that you find within. So one you want to you want to be not only self-aware, but you want to own the story of your life and the story of your life. Include, you know, the good, the bad, and the ugly and the Beautiful. It’s all part of, you know what makes you you and owning that part of the story or every part of the story, I should say, is what directs you to finding that purpose. So purpose is an inside job. It comes from within. And when you can clearly see that and feel it because it’s actually a gut reaction once you find it. I mean, it changes everything because every goal, every, um, focus that you have is going to actually be towards making that purpose a reality in the here and now.

Stone Payton: So I know how much more I enjoy hanging out with people in a professional or personal environment with what I’ll characterize as a positive mindset. You know, they’re upbeat, they have high energy. And I think I can extrapolate that to how that could have a very positive effect in the in the work environment. What I don’t have the first clue about, and maybe your clients don’t either initially is how do you get there? If you if you don’t have a positive mindset or there’s areas of your life where you don’t, man, that’s going to be a a challenging journey. But it sounds like maybe you’ve cracked the code a little bit in helping them get there.

Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier: It’s a it’s a great question. And what I appreciate about what you’re asking me this stone is because, you know, when when I meet my clients, first of all, they are they have success in their lives, right? Like, they have some, you know, good achievements and a sense of caring. And, you know, their lives are going okay. When I start kind of asking them questions about what their yearnings are, about what the you know, what is meaningful to them, what are some of the values and some of those limitations that they have. Right. What are some of the ideas or absolute truths that you have been living by that may be becoming a barrier nowadays. And when we start kind of actually taking the time to stop and reflect on that, reflect perhaps on how did you become the person that you become and understanding a little bit about your past and those relationships that you established with your caregivers? You you start to actually understand that everything is connected and you know, your your mindset is a beautiful gift that you were created with from design, right? You were created with these beautiful mind. And what we don’t know a lot about is that there’s different parts of your mind, and we are mostly controlled by your survival brain. And in survival mode, we don’t think clearly. We are very reactive and our mindset, it’s almost at the mercy of that need to achieve and succeed and, you know, just keep going.

Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier: Almost on automatic pilot. There’s also another part which is kind of your other side of your brain, where there’s a very special wisdom within. And when we learn how to awaken that wisdom, then we start understanding that we actually can be managing that survival brain, and we can do certain things to decrease that. And that’s when our mindset shifts from thoughts about from thoughts like, I can’t. This is too hard or this is not for me. Towards other, more empowering thoughts that include things like, hey, this might be hard, but I’m going to give it a try anyway. Or I’ve done that before, but now I’m going to do it with a different spin and see what happens. So suddenly you are awakened to the realm of possibilities, as opposed to being kind of in the dark and with a very fixated mindset that includes what we call stinking thinking and negative thoughts. So it’s it’s it’s work, right? Because this doesn’t come automatically. You need to be consciously, um, wanting to awaken that side of your brain. And when you do, you actually start seeing that there’s a change and that small victories can help you be more in a way to, you know, in, in. I don’t like the word control, but you can be more in the driving seat, the driver’s seat, as opposed to being in the copilot with, with no say or with no control at all.

Stone Payton: So I don’t know which one comes first, but it sounds to me like a positive mindset can impact and improve mental toughness, mental fitness. But mental toughness, mental fitness can make your mindset that much more. Is it like this virtuous circle once you get it rolling right?

Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier: It is. And if there’s a takeaway about these topic of mindset, um, and this comes from the live school of coaching, um, is, you know, the, the, the fact that your thoughts are the ones who impact your feelings and then your feelings dictate how you act or how you behave. So in other words, if your thoughts are negative and if you wake up every morning saying to yourself, this is going to be a hard day, I don’t have enough money, enough resources. When I get to the office, people are going to be dependent on me and I have to do it all over again. Then you’re going to feel very disheartened and and disbelieved, and your actions are going to be reflective of that. So you’re going to be scattered, you’re going to be overwhelmed, you’re going to be stressed out. And then at the end, what do you think the results are going to be?

Stone Payton: Right. Not good.

Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier: Right? Not good. And then you’re going to bring back that home. And guess who’s going to be the punching bag.

Stone Payton: Mhm. Yeah.

Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier: Right. Your family. So again unless you do something to consciously change the script that you’ve been living by. Nothing will change. And you will just have wishing thoughts that something magically will happen and it never will. And then you’ll be focused on that mindset. And it’s it’s the cycle and it’s your self-fulfilling prophecy. Wherever your mind is, wherever your, your, your energy focus is on, that’s what your reality is going to be.

Stone Payton: You mentioned early in the conversation, I believe, the idea of love. And you may have even said personal love, self-love. And I kind of I log that in because I knew I wanted to ask you to speak a little bit more to that.

Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier: Yeah. This this was something that became very important to me when I was doing my own personal growth, which I continue to do, um, up until this date. But it was very vivid when I realized that unless I focus on myself, unless I start fulfilling my own needs, unless I honor my emotions, and unless I put my own well-being in first place, I’m not going to be able to serve others from a place of abundance, grace, and contribution. So this is tied back to my growing up years as a Latina, um, little girl growing up in in Colombia, in the Catholic faith, and with, uh, my dad having the final say in a lot of things. I believe that my only way to find my mattering and belonging was to serving others and pleasing others, despite my very own needs and feelings. And that helped me survive, and that helped me become a very kind and compassionate person, until those things became the reason why people will be dependent on me. So I created codependency very quickly, and it felt really good because it gave me a sense of superiority, actually, as opposed to the realization that I needed to help people and teach people how to fish as opposed to fishing for them.

Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier: And that created liberation. And suddenly the burden feelings of caring for the world were a little bit light lighter, and I started to then focus on me, my development, my growth, my healing process. And that’s when personal love, which is something I mean, it’s self love, but I call it personal love because it starts with you. It starts with you looking at the mirror and accepting your whole self with the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful. It’s accepting yourself and validating yourself and affirming yourself over and over so that then you can understand what it is to be those things for other people. So personal love is, I like to say, is, you know, to ask the question, would you date yourself? Would you go in a couple of dates with yourself, and how long could you stand being with yourself? And if the answer is yes, awesome, you probably will end up marrying yourself at one point. If it’s no, then great. What are you going to do about it? So that you can start being more accepting and loving and compassionate towards yourself?

Stone Payton: That is such an important message. The mental image I was building as you were describing, was remembering when you get on the airplane and they tell you if the oxygen mask drops, put put it on yourself first. I love that.

Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier: Yes, yes. Great connection stone. Great connection. And again, um, it could be part of your cultural background. It could be part of the rules and the beliefs that you heard from your caregivers growing up. It could be part of, you know, society and the things that we believed were absolute truths, all of all of that dictate, you know, the way that we relate to ourselves and the regard that we have or not for who we are as individuals. And I think the opportunity, especially nowadays in this Complicated world that we live in is unless you focus on yourself, unless you seek to, you know, to to seek your your own healing, your development, you’re not going to be able to be as an effective leader and influence on others because you’re trying to then complete or justify the unfinished business that you have through those relationships at work and at home with friends and family.

Stone Payton: Now, are you providing all of these services, if desired, in English and Spanish?

Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier: Yes. Which is which is I think it’s such a I don’t know, I like to say that it’s kind of a unique part of of who I am. And it’s not only the language, but it’s, it’s the cultural piece that it’s so important. So all of these, you know, you know, services and the support that I provide. Um, when you do it in just the language, Spanish. But when you do it from a place of relating to that person in terms of the nuances of a culture, um, it takes a very profound meaning and the person is more likely to feel heard, seen and valued from that perspective, because there’s a sense of understanding that creates closeness and proximity.

Stone Payton: So when you’re not busy helping people and organizations achieve these breakthroughs, what do you do for For fun? Do you have any hobbies that we might surprise us?

Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier: Haha, yeah. You know, I think, I think one of my hobbies is, um, I am a writer. I like to write. I actually have a very short book, um, out there around purpose. Um, so I like to write, I like to paint, I do acrylics on canvases, and I have a few things that I’ve created lately. Um, and you know what? Funny that you say that. One of the things that I’m challenging myself more and more is to take risks and to really practice what I teach, which one of the things is, you know, how do I embrace my fear and make it my friend so that I can then do what I would say was impossible otherwise? And over the weekend, one of the the things that I did was I jumped into Lake Michigan at, uh, like very cold right now.

Speaker4: Oh, yeah. Whoa.

Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier: So I did a cold plunge, and and the reason why I did it is because I wanted to manage my fear as a way to propel me forward in doing something spooky and scary, and as a way for me to really allow my fear to show up and flow through my body and through my experience at that moment. And it was incredibly satisfying. And I realized that what I teach, which is, you know, the notion that we’re so much capable than what we think we’re so much lovable than what we give us credit. We have so much to offer out there than our limitations. And it’s just it just proved that that’s that’s that’s a fact.

Stone Payton: I just absolutely love that you are at once transparent, vulnerable, authentic. And you, you eat your own cooking, as my dad would say, right.

Speaker4: I love that.

Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier: I love that notion. Yeah. It’s, you know, it’s it’s it’s interesting that you say that. And I appreciate it because I’m proud of, you know, where where I am. I’m proud of the journey that I’ve been. And I’m very proud about the resources and the time and the investment and the energy that I have put behind what I offer. Um, and I and I practice it, I teach it, I live by it. Um, it’s not perfect, but that’s okay. And one of the things that I, you know, that is still continues to be a little bit of a struggle is I know that what I sell, what I offer, it’s really hard to sell because generally people think that these are soft skills and that they’re not as relevant or important into not only the business setting or the marketplace, but in general in life. And I want to challenge that belief, because unless you invest in the well-being of your people, unless you invest, invest in your own development, you’re going to keep having the same results over and over. And our emotions, our humanity. All of that is what the world needs more of. If we were able to own that again, the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful, we would have different conversations at work. We would have different engagements at work. And unless we actually focus on that, nothing is going to change. So we’ve been living life, um, a lot from kind of like the data driven kind of the, the proving and the points and the logic side of things. I think we have overvalued that. And it is time to bring some of those other gifts that we were given to create more balance and again, to awaken to the reality that humanity, it’s it’s who we are.

Stone Payton: And when you do take that, that leap and pursue that kind of breakthrough. They’re certainly valuable. Value there individually. But man, there’s genuine bottom line value to the organization. That’s the.

Speaker4: It does. Yeah it.

Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier: Does. So again unless you. Unless you focus within. Unless you are actually ready as a leader, as a business owner, as a company CEO or whatever. Um, to really pay attention to your people and to what’s happening in them and with them. And unless you get curious to understand why and how can you become more of a support and less than a judge or, um, a critic, nothing will change and your bottom line will remain the same. And there’s, you know, there’s there’s ways to guarantee success, right? I mean, and I want to point this out because it’s it’s important to all of those who have or think they have the title of leaders. And, you know, dictators work. They bring results to the table. They make people do things right. The problem with that is that it’s not sustainable. And then at the end of the day, people break. And when your people break, you’re going to be facing a very cruel reality and you’re going to be alone and on your own. So the idea of really becoming leaders who are human, who are understanding, who are curious, who are there to really understand the needs of their people and to engage with them as human beings. If you’re if you’re not doing that, you’re missing out.

Stone Payton: You have already shared so much. But I know we’re we’re looking at a very deep well here. So I’m going to ask anyway before we wrap, if maybe you could share a little bit of advice or a pro tip on, uh, on producing better results in less time in the context of some of these topics that we’ve talked about. And guys, uh, I’ll tell you, the number one pro tip is if any of this is striking a chord with you, and I know it has to be, just reach out and have a conversation with Clara. But between now and then, let’s, uh, let’s leave them with a little piece of advice they can chew on.

Speaker4: Yeah.

Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier: No, I appreciate that, Stone. And I appreciate the opportunity. Um, you know, I guess, you know, the one thing that I. That I ask or that I’m inviting you to do is when was the last time that you stop and created some space for you to reflect on something that means something to you? Um, if that is your business, when was the last time that you stopped and thought about the reason? The purpose behind your business? What is what is it that you want to, at the end of your walk in this life, have as a Our legacy that you leave behind. When was the last time that you stopped and reflected on the kind of relationships that you want around you, that you want to create for you? When was the last time that you shared positive acknowledgment for someone you love or you admire? And when was the last time that you looked? You look at yourself in the mirror and you were pleased with what you see. And if the answer to these questions are a little convoluted, that’s okay. That means that there’s opportunity for you to be more conscious and more present in the here and now to think about those things.

Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier: And maybe you won’t have one answer right away, but allow yourself to reflect. Reflect on the life that you have now. Reflect on the job, the career, the relationships that you have right now, and give yourself some space to feel, to feel how you feel about those. And if you think that those are satisfying. Awesome. Keep doing what you’re doing. And if, on the other hand, you feel a little puzzled, a little uncertain, and even uncomfortable, that’s wonderful. Give yourself a space to go deeper and find out what is it that you need to do differently to be more satisfied. And what a coach can do. And in this case, what I do through my breaking through coaching program is precisely that. It’s to in a in a non-judgmental space, accompanying you in an incredible journey to discover what’s possible to unlock your three superpowers personal of purpose and positive mindset, and to help you live more fulfilling lives and more fulfilling careers.

Speaker4: So what’s the best way for.

Stone Payton: Our listeners to learn more about your work? Connect with with you. Let’s give them some coordinates so they can continue to to tap into your work.

Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier: Yeah, absolutely. You can find me on my website. Start breaking through.com. You can send me a personal email at Clara. Clara dot carrier c a r r I e r at start breaking through.com. Or you can find me on LinkedIn at Clara Lucia, or you can find me on Facebook as well. All of these information and social media handles are on my website.

Stone Payton: Clara, it has been an absolute delight visiting you with you this afternoon. Oh my gracious, you’re your insight, your perspective, your enthusiasm, your your authenticity and transparency. And then when I ask you for a pro tip, I don’t get a fortune cookie message. I get real depth that we can all benefit from. You are an absolute delight. Thank you so much for visiting with us this afternoon.

Clara Lucia Jaramillo-Carrier: Thank you, Stone for the opportunity. Thank you to you and the organization for really giving us space for us, small business owner, to shine our light and to share the reasons why we do what we do. So kudos to you for paying attention to us out here, and to creating a space for us to shine through. Thank you.

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

 

Relationship Coach Tereza Bansky

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High Velocity Radio
Relationship Coach Tereza Bansky
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Tereza-BanskyTereza Bansky is relationship coach, HR professional with leadership background and enthusiastic change ambassador. Originally from the Czech Republic, she now lives in Seattle, Washington.

In her career she worked in ambitious, results-oriented corporate environments and European startups for two decades. Coca-Cola, Merck, Air Bank or Bonami.cz are some examples to name where Tereza held HR leadership roles and helped those organizations to shape their people strategy, develop talents, build their company culture and drive change. Today, she is primarily coaching individuals and provides HR consulting to smaller organizations and start-ups across the globe.

As a coach she works with diverse clients. For her background, she is often found by HR professionals and first-time managers to support their career growth and leadership development or by people in career transition. Despite this, Tereza´s passion and expertise are in relationship coaching and her special niche is to help people impacted by infidelity. She helps clients navigate the complex, difficult, and emotional situations around affairs.

Her personal experience with a decade-long affair has given her deep empathy for the diverse emotions and challenges faced by everyone involved in such complex relationships. When coaching, Tereza is grounded in empathy for client´s situation, confidentiality, commitment to their growth and no judgment.

Tereza is Associate Certified Coach, ACC with the Internatinal Coaching Federation (ICF) and Certified Co-Active Professional Coach, CPCC (Best Coach & Leadership Training Programs – Co-Active Training Institute). She holds a Master´s degree in HR management and Adult Education from Komensky University in Prague.

To mention some interesting facts from her private life, Tereza dedicated her first 20 years of her life to ballet with the aim of becoming a professional dancer. When she did, she changed her career path. She has 17 years younger brother who significantly influenced her life, now playing NHL.

In addition to Prague and Seattle, she lived in New Zealand. Change and adaptation is part of her DNA. She loves movement, outdoor adventure, psychology, theatre, yoga, gastronomy, time with her husband and road trips.

Connect with Tereza on LinkedIn and at terezabansky.com.

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 going to enjoy this one. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast relationship coach, HR professional and enthusiastic Change ambassador, Tereza Bansky. How are you?

Tereza Bansky: Hi Stone, I’m doing very well. How about you?

Stone Payton: I am doing great and I’ve really been looking forward to this conversation. Tereza, I have a list of questions. I’m sure we won’t get to them all, but before we even start there, I have to say I really think you may be our first and only relationship coach. So I’m interested in mission. Purpose. How are you out there? Really? Trying to to help people.

Tereza Bansky: My pleasure to be here. Thank you. Um, yeah. I’m a relationship coach with a long career in human resources, helping people, working with people. Um, supporting them to thrive. And, um, you know, I learned that relationship really matters, and they strengthening our quality of life and have direct impact on our happiness. And, I don’t know, it just ended up and it found my heart found into being a relationship coach. And I really enjoy being in with my clients and support them to, um, live a better relationships. Be happier. Be more comfortable. Be themselves. And I have a special niche which is helping people who are impacted by infidelity in their life to find a way out and have a life they really want to have.

Stone Payton: I would think that that would be a very difficult time for everyone involved. That seems like it would be a real challenge. How do you how do people even find you? I mean, can you do traditional sales and marketing type stuff or is it people you get referred? How does that work?

Tereza Bansky: Um, yeah. People involved in affair usually don’t share, uh, very publicly. They are not very vocal about that, obviously. Um, but people search on internet, what other stories are what help others and I’m sharing publicly. I’m in media and I’m I send some, um, blog and, you know, sharing some experience so people can find me online. But the most often source of my clients are through referral. So you are in a difficult situation. You share with your best friend and they help you to give a tip. Okay, there is someone. Ask for help. Go to professional if it’s coach or therapist. So, uh, most often I’m found by clients through referrals.

Stone Payton: Now, do you feel or has it been your observation that infidelity is more common now than it was ten years ago? 20 years ago? Or or do we know? Really?

Tereza Bansky: I don’t have data about it, but my honest opinion is it’s not different from the past. Uh, affairs. Been here always, and most probably will be in the future. What I observe now is that we talk about it a little bit more so I can access more information, more data. You hear more stories. There is lots of literature on the market and a lot of courses that help people to go out. I think it’s more vocal. It’s more normalized. Uh, but infidelity was here forever.

Stone Payton: Yeah, I suspect you’re right about that. So what can a person expect in working with you? What does that look like? Mm.

Tereza Bansky: Um. It’s never the same. Buy customized approaches and actually create a process together with my clients. My potential clients have three 30 minute session to get to know me, uh, experience my style, ask any question and check if I might be the right partner for them. If that clicks, we start to design our alliance. Um, we set up goals and we jump in. We start to work. So, um, when I’m coaching, my priority is to first create a safe space, safe environment for clients to be really comfortable, to deeply dive in and start exploring and make step by step actions. I’m often curious, sometimes provoking, um, but I seek to understand where clients are stuck with their perspective or stuck with emotions that hold them back. And I love to challenge them to, um, really go out of the comfort zone, um, which that complex relationship is itself. But I love my clients to find a little tiny step even further that it’s getting them closer to what they really want to move on, but they need to be ready. Um, there’s lots of tools. It depends. Some tools I don’t use with some clients, and I use the other ones with others. But, uh, my favorite tool is embodiment. Our bodies are pretty smart, and I help my clients to understand their body more and listen to their body response. Seek intuition. And, you know, if you are in love or in complex, difficult relationship that is painful. We use a lot our head, our mind, our rational thinking, but, um, it’s usually confusing, and we need to get connected with our body to understand what we really want.

Stone Payton: So do some topics come up in these conversations more than others, or are there some topics you almost always know are going to find their way into the conversation?

Tereza Bansky: Mm. You know, clients in affair have something in common. So it’s always about relationship and difficult relationship. But yes there are some similarities. Typical example can be you know, I’m married. I fell in love with somebody else. I’m completely stumped about what I want and what to do. This is usual start of our conversation or, um, someone reach out like, you know, I experience affair. I ended it because it was right thing to do. But, you know, it’s still hard. Not happy. Um, I don’t have my energy, so they need help to still process the whole situation and maybe change some things in their life to be happy again in their relationship.

Stone Payton: I wonder? It’s probably a pretty long list, but I’m going to ask anyway. Just in general, what brings people into affairs like why?

Tereza Bansky: Mm. It’s a very good question, Stone. Um, and I don’t have a simple answer, but I’m learning from my clients that affairs are the result of dysfunctional relationship, or it’s a symptom of something. And my role is to help my clients to understand what is behind the symptom, what they want, what they need, what is missing in their life that brings them to fire. And I’m learning from the stories that it often doesn’t relate to their primary relationship. It’s just about them. If I give you an example, like one of my clients, male in his 30s, he’s married to kids. He has quite peaceful marriage, and he fell in love with his colleague at work. Very simple common scenario. He felt super guilty about what he is doing. He knew it was wrong and he’s risking a lot. He was 100% sure he didn’t want to leave his wife and her family. Still, he wasn’t able to end this parallel relationship, felt completely alone, lost under the pressure of the dilemma. And that was the moment he reached out. He found me and we started to explore, explore what his new partner represents for him, how he feels with her, what he admires about her, and really deep work on.

Tereza Bansky: Of exploration. And he mentioned he first noticed her when she was presenting her trip to India, and about her climbing experience to base camp somewhere in a high in mountains. Long story short, she represented what he always dreamt of and he never tried. His dream was to mountaineer and climb high mountains on expedition. It represents for him some kind of freedom, courage, a sense of pride, values that he didn’t honor in his primary relationship. Not on purpose, but he found out it was very important and it was missing in his life. Of course, he liked, um, the body shape, uh, his girlfriend. And he found very easy to connect one with each other. But he fell in love to her because she had something he was missing in his life, and he never tried to build for himself. And just this understanding was a breaking point for him to understand himself and understanding about his needs. And we could start to, you know, considering small steps and action that he could integrate in his life, in his primary relationship, to feel, feel himself and feel more free, proud, courageous, um, and not to seek it outside of his primary relationship and family. So it’s just a simple example.

Stone Payton: No, that’s such an important insight because I think maybe like many, I guess I was attaching most of it to. Physical attraction, and it sounds like that so often that’s really not the the main thing. Is it interesting?

Tereza Bansky: It’s not because if it’s just a physical thing, we most probably find a different solution or we change partners often. But what holds us in a fair and parallel relationship is the connection. We get really close, we get emotionally involved, and this is why it’s so difficult to cut it off, to leave that, uh, that relationship.

Stone Payton: Yeah. So do you find yourself working with the other person, the the betrayed partner, I guess. Is that the right term? The the other person? Maybe not. At the same time, I don’t know. I’ll ask that question too, if you ever work with a couple. But do you talk about working with the the betrayed partner, if that’s the right term? Mm.

Tereza Bansky: Uh, I do, I work with disloyal partners, betrayed ones, but also with the third parties, not with all together, but with individuals. Sometimes I work with couples with the primary partners, but it has a special condition. But speaking about betrayed partners, um, how we work together again, it depends on what the intention of the client is. Generally, I help clients to process the incredible amount of emotions that is there. You know, there is pain, there is betrayal, sadness, disappointment, jealously, anger. There is a lot. And and I’m trying to lead my clients to understand that such experience requires, um, complete redesign of their relationship. Because if they want to, if they want to stay together after affair, it’s not possible to continue from the point before the affair started. Technically, such relationship end, and both partners needs to be willing to build a new relationship with the strong foundation. Rebuild trust. Renew intimacy. Greater meaning. But first, betrayed partner needs to process all the pain and emotions that are coming with that situation.

Stone Payton: And then you mentioned you also do some work or are available to work with the third party. Again, not all together. That would be a reality show. But but the the the the third party, there’s there’s work to be done there too isn’t there.

Tereza Bansky: Mm. Yeah. Thank you for bringing this topic. Um, it’s not often, uh, to talk about the third one’s. Usually all the conversations are focused on the primary couple, but being involved in an affair for, uh, as a third party, it’s usually the same amount of stress. Like for the primary couple. Yeah. Um, being third is not something you usually plan or desire. It just happens. It happens very quickly. Um, typically deep connection appears. High attraction between partners. Desire support partners starts to be like, really feel seen. Understood. They get fresh energy and just feel alive, you know? And it’s sexy. You have, you know, I have the right energy. You are alive. And it’s magic formula to keep going in that relationship. Complex relationship. Even your mind knows it’s not right. It doesn’t go in the right direction. There is a lot of troubles, pain, risks and mistress or lover quickly desire to be on the first place in the relationship and build the primary relationship together. Build own family. Being on a first place. Going for vacation together. Spending. Spend Christmas together, you know. And it’s not possible. So it sometimes takes months. Um, uh, and even years of waiting and those third parties get stuck and just depending on what, what their partner do, they completely stop to live their own life. And of course, it has a terrible impact on their self-esteem. Um, they face loneliness, jealously, sadness, helplessness. It’s, you know, there’s a lot to be, um, working on, to go through, and when such client decides they want to leave the relationship. We are creating together a vision. What is next? What is their vision for their life? What they want and I support them to do a small steps towards this vision.

Stone Payton: So at this point in your career, what are you finding the most rewarding? What do you really enjoy about the work?

Tereza Bansky: Um, I learned I can’t have attachment to what is the expected result to be if they are happy together or if they divorce, if they find a new partner, if they make it work or not. It’s up to my client, and I make it very clear and transparent from the beginning that, um, The result is my client’s responsibility. Mm. Uh, I own the protest, and I lead them through the process, but the result is up to them. My definition of success is progression. So as soon as my client is doing progress, I know I’m doing a good job. And it can mean whatever, depending on the goal from where we are starting with the client.

Stone Payton: So for you personally, um, hobbies, passions outside the scope of your work, what do you do when you’re not doing this kind of work that you really enjoy?

Tereza Bansky: Mm. Um, I’m still a HR professional, so I have projects really working with the companies as in-house HR, so it’s the professional part. But myself, I love being outdoor. I’m really adventurous. Uh, hiking, camping, uh, being outdoors, starting trying a new sports and new activities, I love yoga. It’s my kind of spirituality and, um, my body care. I do every month, at least 20 minutes. I need to stretch my body. Otherwise, uh, my body is really not happy. Um, yeah. And I honor friendships. I’m happily married, so it takes some time to take care of my, uh, partnership. And I love to spend time with my partner. What else? Yeah, I live in Seattle right now, but my roots are back home in the Czech Republic, so I travel often. Oh, please. Yeah. Busy life. Actually.

Stone Payton: It sounds like you’re living your best life. Okay, before we wrap up, uh, what tips or recommendations might you have for our listeners who are involved in or impacted by infidelity. And look, guys, the number one pro tip I can give you is if that’s where you find yourself right now, reach out and have a conversation with Tereza. Uh, but prior to that, uh, some things that they should be thinking about or doing or reading, let’s leave them with a little something to think about.

Tereza Bansky: Mm. Um, you know, as a coach, I don’t provide advice to my clients. Uh, I lead them to find their own answers and make decisions about what is best for them, because I don’t know what is best for them. I just create space to to find out. But generally speaking, uh, my advice for our listeners and people who are trapped in this complex relationship, Uh, ask for help. Seek professional. It might be coach. It might be therapist who can support you. And just getting outside perspective and having trustful partner, you can really share whatever is on your mind without judgment, without, uh, opinion, what is right and what is not. It’s it’s really, really I can see with my clients how they feel. They are not alone. So my tip would be don’t wait too long. Uh, asking for help because these situations don’t pass very quickly. And if, if, if if there is a saboteur voice, it will. It’s really a saboteur voice. And, uh, these relationships can be very painful. So don’t stay too long in, uh, in on a, on a place and Just keep asking yourself about what’s going on, how you feel, what you need, what, um, what do you desire if you are happy or not? And be very honest to yourself. It can be a great starting point even without having someone, some professional, being on a journey with you.

Stone Payton: Well, I think that is great advice. What’s the best way for our listeners to connect with you and learn more about your work, or maybe have that conversation with you?

Tereza Bansky: Uh, the easiest way is to to visit my website, it’s Thereza Bansky. Com. Tereza t e r e z a b a n s k y.com or visit my LinkedIn. Happy to speak up.

Stone Payton: Well, Tereza, this has been an incredibly informative conversation. Thank you for sharing your expertise and your story. I have no doubt that you’ve definitely helped me in this conversation, and I would be willing to bet quite a few others. Thank you so much for investing the the time to share your your story and your insight and your perspective with us today.

Tereza Bansky: Thank you, Stone, for having me. It was a pleasure and have a great day. Bye.

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

 

Roberta Bensky with Bensky Consulting

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High Velocity Radio
Roberta Bensky with Bensky Consulting
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Roberta-BenskyRoberta Bensky is a certified professional development coach and management consultant, accredited as a Gestalt Professional Certified Coach (GPCC™) with the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland and as an Associate Certified Coach (ACC) with the International Coaching Federation.

She brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to her coaching practice, with over 20 years of management experience in international organizations such as the World Bank, OECD, Norwegian Red Cross, and Norwegian Refugee Council. And, having lived and worked in diverse cultures across the US, Canada, France, Norway, India, and Sri Lanka, she offers a unique global perspective to her clients.

When she’s not working, you’ll likely find her on her bike.

Connect with Roberta 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 morning. This is going to be a good one. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with the Bensky Consulting LLC, the lady herself, Roberta Bensky. How are you?

Roberta Bensky: Well, I’m doing well. We’ve got a beautiful day here, and that always makes things easier. And I’m so pleased to be talking to you, Stone.

Stone Payton: Oh, we’re going to have so much fun and learn a great deal. I think a good place to start would be if you could share with me and our listeners mission. Purpose? What are you really out there trying to do for folks, Roberta?

Roberta Bensky: Well, a couple of things. I am a professional development coach, so what I’m really trying to do is to help people become themselves. Um, I’ve worked with a lot of leaders who ended up in leadership because it was just a hierarchical move, and they had a very low level of self-awareness, which I think is so key to being a good, empathetic and strong leader. And so as a coach, my mission is to bring people to themselves. Um, you know, there’s a I’m a gestalt, uh, gestalt coach, and there’s something called the paradoxical theory of change, which was put forward by, um, a gestalt psychologist, Arnold Bowser. And he says that genuine change occurs when you become who you are and not something that you’re trying to be. And so my mission is to help leaders and, uh, others in, uh, in professional settings to become more of who they are.

Stone Payton: So tell us a little bit about the the journey to becoming a coach. My experience has been when I’ve asked this question before, that it’s rarely a straight line. Yeah.

Roberta Bensky: Well, I actually tried to put together a straight line. And if you’ll just bear with me and don’t roll your eyes. Um, I’ve decided that it started when I was 11 years old, and I, we moved to Canada, and I had missed half a year of beginning French. And so in order to catch me up, they sent a woman to my home at 11 years old, a French tutor, to catch me up, and she was French and working with her. I decided I wanted to be French, not just learn French, but be French. And 20 years later, I actually accepted a job with an international organization in Paris, and I moved there and spent a while trying to be French. And of course it never really works. After a few reels, after a few years, I kind of realized that instead of being French, I needed to be me in France. And that was such a revelation. And as I was working in this international organization, I. I climbed up the ladder, I became a manager, and I had very little experience managing managing people. I knew about managing projects, but not people. And I also noticed that many of my peers around me were also struggling with being a manager. And so it was kind of through that that I thought, well, what is a good manager? And through reading books and talking in quality circles, I realized that it’s really about knowing oneself and being oneself in a variety of contexts. So instead of being French, I was me. In France, I moved to Norway instead of being Norwegian. I was me and Norway, but I did have to adapt to a variety of contexts. And I think for me it was about how leaders and managers can become the very best, and it is being themselves in a variety of contexts.

Stone Payton: So walk us through what the work looks like on both sides of the table. I guess I’d be interested in hearing. Is it is it conversation? Is it one on one? Is it group kind of stuff or a little bit of all of that?

Roberta Bensky: Well, it’s all of that. I mean, I’m a gestalt coach, and what that means is I’ve integrated some of the tenets of Gestalt therapy into the coaching practice, and that’s what I studied. So I work with individuals. There are, um, coaches who work with groups. That’s another area of training which I intend to pursue in the next year or so. Um, and so I work with individuals for the most part. Now, there are a couple of different types of coaches. One, when I was studying, there were about two thirds of the cohort that were internal coaches, meaning that they were working within an organization, often within the HR department, and they were also learning how to be a coach and coach their colleagues. And then there were those of us like me, who were external coaches, meaning that we did not work for any organization. And we’re trying to create a business where we help individuals at any kind of all different kinds of professional levels, um, to, to be the best that they can be. So a session with an individual, for me, first of all, it’s a it’s a one hour session. It usually starts with a recognition that there are two of us in a space, and that the client may be coming from a particularly busy, maybe a stressful point. And so I usually ask my clients, is there something you’d like to do to come into this space and sometimes it’s a breathing exercise. Sometimes clients need to stand up and move around a bit, and sometimes people want to get right into it.

Roberta Bensky: So in in Gestalt coaching there’s no hierarchy. So my job as a coach is to let the client and to facilitate the client to do what they need to do. So once that is over and the the client feels like they’re in the space and I often participate with them, especially if it’s a breathing exercise. So we’re both in this space. The first thing I ask is, so what’s on your mind? Or it might also be what’s taking your energy at the moment. Gestalt coaching deals primarily with the here and now, so we’re not looking back on what’s your experience as a leader? What have you done in the past? What would you like to change. But we’re looking at is what’s going on here and now. And it often is related back to history. It can be related back to family. It can be related back to adolescence, many things. But as a gestalt coach, my my job is to bring the client into the here and now. So if they’re talking about something that might have happened in their childhood, I’d say so how does that affect you in your work right now? And that’s what we work on. Um, and so there’s also a structure to each session. There’s a, um, we start with a kind of contracting an agreement, um, where the client can define what they want to work on in the session.

Roberta Bensky: The client also defines how they will measure success at the end of a session. That is the contracting phase. And as a coach, my job is to make sure that we stick to that contract. And I do that by checking in about halfway through the session, asking the client, so how are we doing? How do you feel about what you started out wanting to talk about and where we are now? Sometimes the theme changes, and so it’s also my job to say I feel like that. The change, the theme has changed a bit here. Is this your experience? And then we do a recontracting. Um, totally. Again, up to the client and then towards the end, with about 15, 15 minutes left, it’s my job to bring the session to a good close. And that means that there is a final check in to say, okay, so this is what we’ve talked about. What are some of the key takeaways for you? I would also ask clients to identify some actions that they can take between now and the next time that we meet, because there is also an accountability element. Um, I would also ask them, so if this is what you’d like to do, what could get in the way of you doing it? What would be obstacles? And if there are obstacles, how would you mitigate those? And then we end with just a, you know, anything else you’d like to add. And we end right on time. That’s my job.

Stone Payton: Well it at once. It sounds simple at some level, but incredibly powerful to just meet people where they are and work on what they want to, what they want to work on. Huh?

Roberta Bensky: Absolutely. And you know, the client is in the the client is in control. The client is in charge. Um, what I’ve learned is a methodology that will help ask certain questions, um, reflect on perhaps movements or a change in a person’s body language and reflect that back to them and say, you know, I’ve just noticed a change. Do you want to talk about that? What’s going on? Um, Gestalt coaching also deals a lot with, um, with the physical being. So there is as a coach, my job is to, um, to acknowledge and to observe change in breathing, physical movement, etc., because often a client is not aware of that, but there’s a very powerful message involved in that. So as a coach, I might point that out to the client. Otherwise, the client is the one that you know, that decides and determines how a session goes. It’s my job just to ask probing, open questions and to observe.

Stone Payton: You touched on earlier in the conversation this idea of self-awareness. And when it’s lacking, um, maybe you’re not anywhere near your best. Can you speak more to this this concept of self-awareness and what you’ve seen in your practice regarding the the power of it once you can unleash it?

Roberta Bensky: Yeah. Well, first of all, I want to say that self-awareness is something that I work on all the time. And as a coach, it’s even more important for me to work on that. And I have a mentor coach, for example, so that I’m working on this continuously. So self-awareness is about knowing who you are And how who you are affects what you do. So as a leader, if you find that you have patterns where you are unable to deal with certain conflicts at work, there may be a pattern where, um, you are getting feedback that is, you know, room for improvement. The idea is, is that by knowing who you are, you’ll understand why that is happening, and only through that can you change it. Um, you know, I’ve been in a lot of training courses and I’ve read a lot of books where the the message I’ve taken away is do this, do that, be this, be that. And it never really worked for me. And what has worked is when I bring more of myself into what I, what I’m doing and when I’m working with. And, you know, we hear a lot of people talking about being one’s authentic self. And it’s so important for a leader and a manager to demonstrate how self-awareness can go a long way into reaching goals and objectives and being a good communicator. And by doing so, the managers that they’re bringing up in an organization have a very powerful model to to work after.

Stone Payton: So in your experience to date, and you’re clearly a very well established practitioner, how does the whole sales and marketing thing work? Like how do you get the the, the new business and the opportunity to do this work?

Roberta Bensky: Oh, it is so hard, Stone. And it’s one of the, one of the things that I, I didn’t think it would be easy. I thought it would be, um, a little more straightforward. So as I mentioned, there are internal coaches and external coaches, and I think external coaches have great advantages and also great challenges. So as an external coach, you know, we can take clients in all different walks of life, uh, all different places in their life. Um, but as an external coach, we also have to be looking after business. Now, I thought that knowing what I know about management, and I have been a manager and I have been a leader, and then mixing that with a methodology of coaching that I know and can see really helps people. I thought, well, you know, that’s my business and I would like to make a living doing that. And it’s proven much more challenging than I imagined. Um, coaching, first of all, coaching is often a medium term engagement. It’s very different from a therapeutic engagement where therapy can often last years and years. Coaching is very goal oriented and very objective oriented. And so it’s more of a medium term engagement, meaning that there’s a very high turnaround of of clients. So you’re constantly looking or I’m constantly looking for for new clients.

Roberta Bensky: Um, I also realized that, you know, learning, having a, having gone through, um, the education necessary and then having coached a certain number of hours to get accreditation from not only the Gestalt Institute, but also from the kind of gold standard International Coaching Federation. I thought once I had the first level of coaching, um, that meant a lot, and it really did. It’s 100 hours of coaching, it’s, um, 60 hours of education. And then there’s a very challenging test. But that really doesn’t stand for much, especially in a context, um, where there are a lot of high achievers in, uh, in a place, for example, I live in Washington DC. Um, these are very high achievers people, extremely well Well-educated, a lot of competition, and a lot of organizations that I know of are looking for at least the second of three levels of accreditation, and it’s a bit of a, of a, um, carrot and, and um, uh, what is the other thing? It’s a bit of a carrot and stick. Thank you. Um, where in order to get accreditation, you need to have coaching hours. In order to have coaching hours, you need accreditation. So this is something that I’m managing all the time. Um, and of course, the coaching hours, um, there can be a certain percentage that is pro bono, which is really nice to be able to have that opportunity, but most of them have to be paid coaching hours, which is also a bit of a challenge.

Roberta Bensky: Uh, so when I was doing my practicum during my, um, during my training, it seemed fairly easy to get, um, to get clients. And that was because I had a, you know, a sliding scale. It was, you know, clients could pay as little as a dollar. The point was for me to get practice and to to work with people who were willing to, you know, kind of take a bet on me as a student. Um, after my accreditation, I thought, well, now people are going to be, you know, knocking on my door, banging it down, wanting me, and it’s just not happening. Um, first of all, there’s a lot of competition in the Washington, DC area. There’s a lot of need, but a lot of competition. And so I’m really struggling with the business side. Um, I know that there are kind of network. I’ve been I’ve been given a lot of advice, and one piece of advice I got very early on from a coach was, you are not going to be able to make a living doing this.

Roberta Bensky: And I remember when the coach told me that I felt kind of a my stomach just fell and I thought, that’s not that’s not what I’m looking for and it’s not possible. And, you know, throughout our lives, we often have people who will tell us what we can’t do. And what I’m looking for is people who will tell me how to do what I want to do. So I am determined to make a living from this, a modest living. And it may mean that I’m also doing, you know, a side gig, which is which is what I’m doing right now to, to get an income. Um, but I’m struggling in the, the, the coaching education. They give a very, very superficial overview of marketing. And I think then it’s kind of everyone to their own. I also think that as people who are, um, you know, kind of concerned with individuals growth and, um, and helping them, we’re probably not the most business savvy people in the world. Um, so, you know, I need to, to learn about, you know, the business. I need to learn what I can do with myself and being myself that feels comfortable to engage more clients. And I’m struggling with that.

Stone Payton: So you mentioned a little while ago, I think, that you have a coach as well. You have you have mentors, you have people that you go to. And as you continue on this journey, don’t you?

Roberta Bensky: I do. I have a mentor coach. She’s fantastic. I sought her out. Um, she has a slightly different path and training than I, um, but, you know, if I’m coaching, I want to be a better coach. And to be a better coach. I want to be better at being coached. Uh, and so having a mentor coach, first of all, it’s a requirement for, um, you know, going to the next level in the International Coaching Federation’s accreditation. But it’s also so important to have someone where I have a safe space, especially if I have a challenging client. I want to, you know, talk to someone and say, you know, this is challenging for me. Um, can can we can we talk through this? Can you help me to understand this? And as my mentor coach, that’s exactly what she does. So it’s a huge benefit to me. And I also learn more about coaching from the way that she coaches.

Stone Payton: So what’s next for you? I think you mentioned that you might be looking at having some sort of structure for group coaching or using some, some additional mechanisms from, from the one on one. Is that accurate?

Roberta Bensky: Well, the group coaching is another level of education. And it’s it’s so interesting interesting to me. You know, I’ve spent most of my career working in, um, international organizations that work with development and humanitarian assistance. And I know that coaching would be so helpful to people in these kinds of environments, especially in the humanitarian field, because people reach high burnout and, you know, they’re often back at headquarters after being out in the field for for some time and to have a group to coach to talk through some of the things that they’ve been through and to help them become better at being a director out in the field or an administrative leader out in the field. I think it would be so helpful. And so I do want to get accreditation with group coaching on the individual side. I’m hoping that I can become a little bit more savvy in the business, go to a few more networking events. You know, there are local chapters of the International Coaching Federation. Um, I belong to the one in Northern Virginia. There’s also one in DC that I will, um, join and see about making some contacts. Networking is not me being me.

Roberta Bensky: It’s not something that comes naturally for me. So it’s something that pushes me a little bit out of my comfort zone, and if it can help raise my own awareness about how best to to, um, to experience and to market my skills, then I’m very willing to, to try that. So I’m under constant construction. Um, the individual clients, a lot of it is word of mouth. People that I have, um, coached have, uh, sent me very nice testimonials which are up on my website. Um, and just trying to get noticed a bit more locally, um, doing more pro bono coaching. Um, you know, here in Washington DC, there’s been a recent spate of of layoffs of federal workers, and the coaching community has really jumped into action. And they’ve, um, started a kind of community where we can offer pro bono services to federal workers who are needing to to regroup and to figure out what their next steps are. Um, having thought that the federal job was something that was long term and that they had committed their, their professional lives to. So it’s just doing more of the same.

Stone Payton: What a marvelous phrase and idea under constant construction. I’m going to steal that. I love that.

Roberta Bensky: You’re welcome to it. I think we’re all under constant construction. And, you know, if we ever stop being under construction, then I think that’s where there’s a problem.

Stone Payton: Well, you’ve been remarkably candid and transparent about some of the challenges, and clearly you’re working through them. On the other side of the coin, what are you finding the most rewarding about the work these days? What’s what’s the most fun about it for you?

Roberta Bensky: It is so incredibly powerful to see how individuals can change in a very short period of time, and that they do it themselves. So, you know, initially I know a lot about Gestalt therapy. I’ve been in therapy at different times in my life, and there’s much more of a hierarchy. There’s a therapist who’s kind of the expert, and you go to them with with problems and they help you work through them. And I found, you know, just incredibly good things coming out of my work in therapy. But as a coach, it’s almost the opposite of what a therapist does. It’s someone who sits back, doesn’t react, listens a lot, and learning those skills was such a challenge for me. And when I see that when I do that, it works and people come to their own conclusions and they realize the power in themselves, it is incredibly gratifying. We also have fun. You know, these are these are people who have, you know, challenges in life. And they they need to laugh every now and then. Um, the The Gestalt coaching also works a lot with experimentation, and so I may propose an experiment to a client. And if they accept to do it, that can also be incredibly powerful. So being an observer of the power that people have to know themselves and to change is so rewarding.

Stone Payton: So I’m going to switch gears on you for a moment, if I might. What what, uh, interests? Hobbies? Pursuits. What do you do when you’re not coaching that you really enjoy?

Roberta Bensky: I well, I do have a job as an editor. I work with an international organization, um, editing documents to make them clear and concise and to make sure that the messages are messages come out. Um, a lot of times, people who work in these organizations, they’re economists, engineers and and being succinct is not their greatest, um, asset. So I help with that, I help making the message clearer. And then when I’m not doing that, I am on my bike. I started writing about six years ago and I have done many rides. I’m not a fast rider. I’m not a racing, but I have great fun going on rides around the DC area. There are some really good trails here. I’ve been outside of the country. I rode from London to Paris with a friend of mine over six days, and this is just remarkable. And, you know, being on a bike is it’s a little bit like, like coaching. And that I am in a space that is such a safe space for me and such a rich, um, thoughtful space that I just love being there. So I am on my bike as often as I can.

Stone Payton: Well, and I have to believe when you give yourself an opportunity to do something like that in a completely different space. Fully immerse yourself in that. That when you emerge from that and come back to the work. I gotta believe it makes you even a better practitioner.

Roberta Bensky: You think I would think anything that is that is involves self care. It makes me a better practitioner. So it can be something physical. It can be something emotional, it can be something spiritual. You know, being under construction means that you know you’re building. And this is one way that I build a way to meet my clients where they are by being where I am.

Stone Payton: Yeah. Before we wrap, let’s leave our listeners, if we could, with a pro tip for producing better results in less time within the context of this conversation. And look, guys, you know, I’m thinking the number one pro tip here is reach out and have a conversation with Roberta. But, uh, between now and then, let’s leave them with a little something to to chew on. Roberta.

Roberta Bensky: Yeah, well, thank you for that stone. Um, my my pro tip is, um, it’s a couple of things. One is, uh, you know, people will tell you no, but there are people who will tell you. Yes, or they will tell you, um, let’s look at that and let me help. And so find those people. Find your champions. Um, and the other thing is for me, never stop, uh, learning. Never stop constructing yourself. Never stop building. Um, and then finally, the thing that is so difficult for most of us to do is to listen, listen, listen, listen.

Stone Payton: What’s the best way for our listeners to continue to tap into your work and and stay connected to you?

Roberta Bensky: Well, I do have a website. Uh, it’s bensky consulting.com. Um, I also am on LinkedIn. Roberta Bensky and, uh, people can find me there and they can find me on my website. I would be very happy to have a conversation with people, talk a little bit more about, um, what we can do together and see if there’s a good fit.

Stone Payton: Roberta, it has been an absolute delight having you on the broadcast this morning. Thank you for for your insight.

Roberta Bensky: You’re welcome. It’s been my pleasure. I’ve enjoyed this and I’ve learned a lot, too. Thank you.

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

 

BRX Pro Tip: Perfection is an Excuse for Not Taking Action

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BRX Pro Tips
BRX Pro Tip: Perfection is an Excuse for Not Taking Action
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BRX Pro Tip: Perfection is an Excuse for Not Taking Action

Stone Payton: And we are back with BRX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, I think our experience has been and we’ve shared this with many people in our family, in our business family, in our circle, perfection really can’t be and, often, is an excuse for not taking action.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. There’s only a few businesses that require perfection. If you’re a rocket scientist or a surgeon, I can understand the goal of perfection. But for most people, perfection is just an excuse for not taking action. Good enough is usually good enough to take some sort of action. And you got to kind of put this fear aside or this excuse aside and really take action and learn. I think at first you should take massive action. It’s not even like let’s kind of just throw our hat over the fence. I think you got to jump over the fence.

Lee Kantor: But because most of what we do does not require perfection, it’s just not necessary to be perfect in pretty much anything. So, I think you’re much better served by just trying something, see where improvement can be made, improve it, try again, improve it again, and just keep rinsing and repeating.

Lee Kantor: Perfection only exists in your mind. It doesn’t exist in the real world. Once your idea is real and it’s in the wild, all of a sudden lots of things are going to be impacting it. There’s going to be a lot of chaos kind of pounding on that idea. And then, you’re going to learn. And then, you’re going to see issues, you’re going to see problems, you’re going to see opportunities that you could not have anticipated when you were just dreaming about this thing.

Lee Kantor: So, fix all the stuff. Leverage all the stuff that has bubbled up. And just focus on constant improvement. To me, constant improvement is a hundred, a thousand, a million times better than perfection. If you have the mindset of always trying to make it better, you don’t have to worry about perfection. It’s going to be good enough.

From Comedy to Connection: Dani Klein Modisett’s Journey with Laughter on Call

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Women in Motion
From Comedy to Connection: Dani Klein Modisett’s Journey with Laughter on Call
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On this episode of Women in Motion, Lee Kantor is joined by Dani Klein Modisett, CEO and founder of Laughter on Call. Dani shares her journey from comedian to entrepreneur, inspired by her mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s. Her organization uses laughter to foster connection and well-being, particularly in healthcare and corporate settings. Dani discusses the challenges and successes of adapting her services during the COVID-19 pandemic, emphasizing the importance of humor in leadership and team dynamics.

Dani-Klein-ModisettDani Klein Modisett is the Founder/CEO of the award-winning company bringing comic relief to those facing Alzheimer’s, Laughter On Call.

LOC was launched to help her mother who became depressed facing the disease. In the ensuing 6 years the company has grown to help all people feeling isolated.

To date it has trained thousands of caregivers and worked with over 600 companies around the world including META, Amazon, Capital One, Bristol Myers and FEMA.

LOC has been featured in The Washington Post, The London Times, The NY Times and AARP Magazine. Dani is also a comedian/actor and author of the books, “Afterbirth: stories you won’t read in a parenting magazine (St. Martin’s Press) “Take My Spouse, Please.” (Penguin Random House) a part-memoir, part how-to for creating shared laughter to keep your marriage happy and healthy.

Dani taught Stand-Up at UCLA for 10 years and has coached keynote speakers, business leaders, and Congressional candidates to use more humor in their communication. She has been a keynote speaker at Women’s Business Enterprise National Council, Dartmouth Entrepreneur Forum, CALA, ICAA and UCLA. Laughter-on-Call-logo

She has run workshops at Stanford, MIT, Columbia, Duke’s Fuqua and Harvard Business School where Laughter On Call is currently a case study.

Her writing has appeared in AARP, NY Times, LA Times, Parents Magazine and many websites. Her many podcast appearances include Stanford’s “When I’m 64,” and “The Tony Robbins Podcast.”

Before becoming an entrepreneur, Dani was an actor who appeared on Broadway and many TV shows including “Law & Order,” “The Lottery,” and “Las Vegas,” for NBC. She was listed in Forbes 50>50 in 2023.

Connect with Dani on LinkedIn and Facebook.

Music Provided by M PATH MUSIC

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios, it’s time for Women In Motion. Brought to you by WBEC-West. Join forces. Succeed together. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of Women In Motion and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, WBEC-West. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Women In Motion, we have Dani Klein Modisett, and she is the CEO and Founder of Laughter On Call. Welcome.

Dani Klein Modisett: Thank you so much. What a treat to be here, Lee. Thank you.

Lee Kantor: Well, I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Laughter On Call. How are you serving folks?

Dani Klein Modisett: Oh, great. So, our whole mission is to break barriers and build bonds one laugh at a time. So, just to explain what that means, we’re all about collaborative interaction with a focus on human connection. We actually launched in the healthcare space because the company was created when my mother had Alzheimer’s. I know, hard to believe, but, yes, she did.

Dani Klein Modisett: And, really, I was a comedian for 20 years and taught stand-up at UCLA for ten. But when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, she became depressed and I couldn’t make her laugh. And I felt really guilty about it because I’d moved to Los Angeles. And I had the idea to hire a comedian, not her daughter, to make her laugh, and it worked. So, we kind of have grown from there. I hired the comedian and my mother started eating again and joining in her community. And I was like, “Oh, wow. This really has to be everywhere.” So, that’s how we launched.

Dani Klein Modisett: We were working with people in the senior world, with people with Alzheimer’s. And then, I started training caregivers in simple comedian’s tools to create connection. And then, COVID hit, so we had to move virtual to keep even seeing our people because seniors were the most vulnerable population. And I created something called Lunchtime Laughter, and it met Monday through Friday from 12:00 to 12:30. It was open to the public, and very quickly, perfectly lucid people were showing up who were feeling isolated in a global pandemic, and wanted to feel connection and the unique experience that laughter delivers of dopamine and endorphins and connection.

Dani Klein Modisett: And so, from there, I started talking to people in HR who were also dealing with isolation, which, of course, we were uniquely qualified to help with. And now, we’re all over the place, Lee. We’re all around the world helping. We continue to help seniors, absolutely, that’s in our soul. And we also work with corporations for team building and morale boosting and bringing more collaboration and creativity. And we’ve worked with over 600 companies, so including Microsoft and Amazon and Capital One. Everybody needs to laugh.

Lee Kantor: So, now, can you talk a little bit about the journey from being a comedian? Like was your intention when you started was to be primarily a professional comedian and use comedy as, you know, kind of your livelihood?

Dani Klein Modisett: Oh, interesting. You mean in my life?

Lee Kantor: In your life prior to the business.

Dani Klein Modisett: Oh, awesome question. Yes. So, I was actually an actor back when you called it actress. And some of you may recognize me from Law and Order. And I did a couple of Broadway tours, and then I came to LA and I was doing TV, and they stick you in a trailer, and I was like, “I want live”. So, I took a class at UCLA in stand-up. It was a present from a boyfriend, frankly. And I loved it. And so, that’s where the comedian – because I was working as a waitress and people were like, “You’re so funny, why are you working as a waitress?” And I was like, “I don’t know.” So, I started doing stand-up, so that’s where the stand-up piece of me developed.

Dani Klein Modisett: And then, I had children. I didn’t want to be in clubs. So, I started writing books, articles and books, and I wrote a book about laughter and marriage called Take My Spouse, Please, which actually is about staying. It sounds like it’s not, but it is. It’s about using the principles and tools of comedy to have a happier marriage. And so, it’s all kind of grown out of that.

Dani Klein Modisett: So, yes, my mission, even unconsciously as a kid, was to help people by getting them to laugh together so we can feel connected to each other. So, yeah, that’s the backstory.

Lee Kantor: So then, at some point you saw the value of making people laugh, and then it sounds like you’ve almost taken a scientific approach of, hey, there’s a way to leverage laughter to help people, not at a club necessarily, or on a stage, but to help people laugh in maybe nontraditional laughing environments.

Dani Klein Modisett: Exactly. No, that’s exactly right. And there is science behind it. I myself am not a scientist, but I do rely on all the studies that are done about the benefits, physical and mental, of laughter itself. Again, something that I took for granted. I know that you feel better after you laugh, but I didn’t understand the specifics, which are feel good hormones are released, there’s an endorphin release, serotonin uptick, dopamine is released, and more oxygen to all the organs too.

Dani Klein Modisett: So, there’s a reason why you feel better. People feel better when they laugh, and that’s just the physical aspect. Mentally, we feel a sense of connection immediately. Like you trust people when you laugh with them, and you feel a sense of belonging, and it breaks through isolation. And then, in terms of this cognitive decline, it’s great help with agitation.

Dani Klein Modisett: So, yes, it was like I had this instinct as a human and then realized that there were lots of studies, ever growing studies about the value of laughter and the healing power. I don’t like to use healing with Alzheimer’s because we’re not there, obviously, in any arena are we healing. But in terms of mitigating the isolation that that disease brings, it’s very, very valuable.

Lee Kantor: So, when you hired the comedian for your mother and you saw the benefits, you know, viscerally and right before your eyes, is that where kind of a light bulb went off and said, hey, maybe there’s a business here, maybe I can offer this to other organizations? Because the transition from, wow, that was a nice thing I did for my mom to now you have a business, like you said, with hundreds of companies that have experienced what you offer.

Dani Klein Modisett: Right. So great. So, actually, the business moment really was the moment when I saw my mother laugh with the comedian. And because I know that there’s an exponentially growing number of families and people facing Alzheimer’s, and I could see that comedians were uniquely gifted to create this connection. So, actually, it was in that moment that I was like, “Oh, gosh. I’m going to have to do this because this could employ comedians and make a difference in people’s lives.”

Dani Klein Modisett: So, I think the interesting or the unexpected evolution was that how relevant – I never could have anticipated that we’d have a global pandemic and that isolation would become this global problem, like feelings of isolation, so I didn’t know at the time that that’s where we were going. But, absolutely, having had the experience of isolation from illness, it was highly transferable to the isolation that people were feeling and continue to feel, frankly, loneliness being a very big issue to be a solution, I think, is the word you use. Yes, a solution.

Lee Kantor: So then, once you had this happen, did you go to the place where your mom was and say, “Hey, we should do this regularly”? Or how did you start, you know, kind of getting into sales mode to make this an offering and a service and how did that kind of evolve?

Dani Klein Modisett: That’s such a great question because I did actually go to where my mother was. That’s where I taught my first caregiver workshop. Because I had a few comedians working – and I don’t mind mentioning their name because I really love this company, Silverado. They’re all about turning fear into love, which was so on point for me because people are so afraid of the illness and they really believe in bringing love – and so they asked me, they’re like, “Wait a minute. We’re seeing what the comedians are doing, can you come up with training for our staff to create a culture where it’s okay to laugh and there’s levity and connection?”

Dani Klein Modisett: And so, I took my course from UCLA and I adapted it, and so that became something that I absolutely am in sales mode, I guess you would say. So, it’s eight tools for self-care and creating connection through all stages of cognition. So that definitely became a specific service that I still teach everywhere. I teach families. I teach communities. I teach hospitals. So, other than the one-on-one, that was the initial service offering.

Dani Klein Modisett: And then, as we’ve grown into the corporate space, we have multiple offerings like Laughter for Leadership, Yes, And Solution for Team Building. There’s a number of services that we offer depending on what a company needs.

Lee Kantor: And so, now, what does the sales conversation look like when you’re talking to an organization? What’s the pain they’re having right before they are like, “Oh. I better call Dani and her team”?

Dani Klein Modisett: Oh. So, one of the biggest challenges post-COVID is that we’re still in hybrid environments, so that’s a big one. So, you have people that maybe never even see each other. And we’ve done a lot of work internationally, in fact, with teams in India and teams in Ireland, and three people in Wisconsin, I always say because everybody has somebody in Wisconsin. And the idea that you can bring these people together to laugh, to create connection, because once people laugh together, they’re that much more comfortable reaching out to each other and sharing ideas, and so that’s a big one.

Dani Klein Modisett: There’s generational challenges in businesses because you have millennials and you have older people and younger. And so, being able to create human connection regardless of your status, regardless of your culture or gender, we really span across any culture that needs to create a stronger culture of collaboration. A lot of C words, but collaboration, innovation, team building, morale boosting. We’ve kicked off a lot of all hands events where people want to feel excited about the future and working together. That’s what we’re able to deliver.

Lee Kantor: And you don’t get pushback with, “Oh, comedy? This is work. This is serious.” Like there’s no —

Dani Klein Modisett: Oh, absolutely, Lee. And more than getting pushback about that, which we have gotten occasionally, it’s, “Oh. I won’t be taken seriously as a leader if I make people laugh.” And there are studies simply that’s not true. Leaders with a sense of humor are 27 percent more motivating than not. So, leaders who can access humor – but let me be very clear about this, it’s not any humor, it’s not aggressive humor, it’s not sarcasm. We travel specifically in affiliative humor.

Dani Klein Modisett: So, anyone who wants a little scholarly insight, you can look up affiliative humor, but it’s very much like the word it’s derived from. So, it’s about affiliation. It’s humor that makes people feel good. So, there’s no putdown humor. It’s really about kind of poking fun at the human condition, like where we all meet as humans. And that’s a really important distinction. We make that at the top of anything we do. We are a laughing with company, never a laughing at company. We even have like a move on phrase, if somebody says something in an interactive improv exercise and somebody throws something out snarky, we will say, “Okay. New choice. New choice. Let’s move on.”

Dani Klein Modisett: So, we really are invested in everybody feeling safe and seen and heard. That’s the value of what we’re delivering.

Lee Kantor: Now, is that a training challenge on your part to get comedians to follow the rules like that? Because, you know, comedians aren’t exactly follow the rules kind of people.

Dani Klein Modisett: Oh, my goodness. You are right, except there is a big distinction between stand-up comedians and improv comedians. So, as we’ve established, I came from stand-up, and some of the improv rules were a big adjustment to me, which, one of them is like make your partner look good. That’s like an improv rule, which is like, I don’t know, I never felt that way backstage at a comedy. I’m doing stand-up. So, I love that one, building on each other’s ideas, Yes, And is a really big principle.

Dani Klein Modisett: So, in answer to your question, I hire mostly improv people now because, also, we’re working internationally and working in cognitive decline. So, the comedy, we don’t come in and entertain. I mean, we will. We just did an event where we will if that’s what the client wants. But really it’s about engaging people. So, pop culture references and cynical side jokes, that’s not going to achieve what we want.

Dani Klein Modisett: But the improv tools are really, really valuable, like accepting imperfection, saying Yes, And, these kinds of tools. Which literally that is a phrase, Yes, And, you’re saying those words. And what it really says is I hear you and have you thought about this? So, getting people who have that kind of experience that’s so generous and expansive and actually yields identifiable results in corporate cultures, those are the people that work for me.

Dani Klein Modisett: So, once in a while at stand-up will approach and they have to have a very special background. If they had a grandparent with Alzheimer’s or worked for a senior community, it’s a certain type of personality that is drawn to comedy that is generous and kind, and those are the comedians. So, I do train. Obviously, there’s training for sure. But out of the gate, your approach has to be one of kindness and generosity.

Lee Kantor: So, now you have this community of comedians that you give side hustles to help?

Dani Klein Modisett: Yes. Are you finding that funny? I heard you laugh.

Lee Kantor: Well, I mean, I think it’s great because, I mean, it’s a very difficult industry to break into.

Dani Klein Modisett: Exactly. Well, that was that moment with my mother where I was like, “Wait a minute. I could actually employ a lot of people who need work.” So, yes, the answer is yes. We have people all over the country. We have people in Canada. And it’s really fantastic. We run them through the training, we tell them all the principles, and then they’re on their own. We work virtually and in-person.

Dani Klein Modisett: So, for instance, this week we were in SoHo in New York City, and simultaneously at a senior community in Los Angeles, which is so heartwarming. I have like a head of senior, Nikki Ghisel. She’s a brilliant comedian and the best of what we do. So, we have things running simultaneously.

Lee Kantor: So, why was it important for you to become part of the WBEC-West community?

Dani Klein Modisett: Oh, my goodness. That was such a stroke of luck. That was crazy. I was looking to get the WOSB certification, and then stumbled on WBENC and the whole world of WBENC, and I love it. I’m a huge fan. I was a speaker at the national conference for WBENC last year and I’ve done many, many of their workshops. And I just think it’s an amazing alternate universe of passionate women with crazy ideas like mine, who are committed and really want to learn, and really want to get either their product or their service out in the world. So, it’s so wonderful to have like-minded women and the infrastructure that WBEC-West supports, and all the WBENC organizations around the country. Yeah, it was a wonderful stroke of luck. Love it.

Lee Kantor: So, is there a story you can share about your work that maybe illustrates the power of this type of training and this type of interaction with corporations or the seniors? You don’t have to name the name of the company, but maybe talk about why.

Dani Klein Modisett: I have a great story. I have a great story. But I do have to say the F word in order for the story to land.

Lee Kantor: You have to? I don’t know if that’s going to work.

Dani Klein Modisett: Oh, okay. Then, I don’t have to. Can I say eff?

Lee Kantor: Yes.

Dani Klein Modisett: Okay. Okay. I’ll say eff and it’s just as funny. Okay. So, the point is that I had an investor. I was very fortunate to have an investor to launch. And then, her money people changed and so I had to go and meet with them. And at the time, we were not profitable so that was going to be – it wasn’t an easy conversation to have. I was anxious about it.

Dani Klein Modisett: So, this is when we first went virtual, and this was early in COVID. People really didn’t know how to use Zoom like we all do now. And it was a Happier Hour. That’s one of our services is something called a Happier Hour, and it’s highly interactive, super fun. There’s a warm-up at the top. We introduce this is going to be silly. And we’re doing an event for, like, maybe 100.

Dani Klein Modisett: And so, this woman comes on and she has like a beer, because it’s a Happier Hour so they were drinking. And she just looks around and she’s like, “What in the actual eff is this?” And everyone started laughing and they were like like, “Sarah, you’re not muted. You’re not muted.” And so, it was really, really funny. I thought it was really funny. I think that’s like found art. Some of my people were a little concerned, but I thought it was super, super funny.

Dani Klein Modisett: So, meeting with the financial people, I tell them the story, full committed — fully committed and they start laughing because it’s funny, because it was human error. And then, they started to tell me about the challenges they were having in their company and how hard it was to get people to come into the office, and the absence of mentorship and their concerns about the future of the company because of this.

Dani Klein Modisett: And I think that was the most brilliant example of what’s possible when you get people laughing. Like it was a little bit cold in the room, and then I told that story, and suddenly we all laughed together. We had an experience of accepting imperfection and human frailty and then the doors were open.

Dani Klein Modisett: And there’s this belief that, you know, if you want to get people listening, get them laughing first. And I just think that was such an amazing example of that. So, that’s one of my favorite stories about the use of laughter.

Lee Kantor: So, what do you need more of? How can we help you? Do you need more clients? Do you need more funding? Do you need more comedians? What do you need?

Dani Klein Modisett: Oh, thank you for asking. We just need more clients. Like, we’ve been really boosting our lead situation because we have wonderful testimonials, we have video, we have wonderful programing that really makes a difference. And we just need more people to know about us, so that’s what I’ve been focused on. So, if you know anyone who needs some collaboration, having any tension or transitioning, maybe hybrid, you know, a lot of companies even gave up their commercial space, so anybody in that circumstance.

Dani Klein Modisett: And then, I do a lot of coaching also. Just personally, I do a lot of executive coaching, leadership, laughter for leadership, people who want to be more approachable, have their ideas land more fully and have some courage to present some vulnerability, because that’s a big tool for leadership, to be able to presence your vulnerability in a crafted way. So, yeah, that’s what we’re available for and super eager and all of that.

Lee Kantor: So, if somebody is interested in learning more, what’s the website? What’s the best way to connect?

Dani Klein Modisett: Oh, the best way to connect is to go to laughteroncall.com or @laughteroncall on all social media. And you can also reach me, Dani, D-A-N-I, @laughteroncall.com and @danikleinmodisett on all social, and we will get right back to you.

Lee Kantor: Well, Dani, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Dani Klein Modisett: Thank you, Lee. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor, we’ll see you all next time on Women In Motion.

 

BRX Pro Tip: How BRX Helps You Own Your Backyard

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BRX Pro Tip: How BRX Helps You Own Your Backyard
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BRX Pro Tip: How BRX Helps You Own Your Backyard

Stone Payton: Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, it’s been some years now, but one of our clients in a show concept strategy session, the light bulb kind of went off for him and he said, “This thing, it really helps you own your backyard.” Can you kind of describe what he meant by that and how Business RadioX really does help you own your backyard?

Lee Kantor: Yeah. Owning your backyard is so important for most professional service providers. You know, it’d be great if they can get clients from all over the planet, the world’s big and there’s eight billion people and all that. But for most people, they just need to have a couple more clients each year near them, you know, in their neighborhood, in their town, in their city.

Lee Kantor: So, what could you be doing to own your backyard? Business RadioX, partnering with Business RadioX, being a studio partner, and/or sponsoring a show is a great way to do that if you want to build that brand ubiquity without spending a fortune on advertising. If you want to differentiate yourself from all your competition without spending ad dollars and hoping somebody contacts you, then you should be getting ahold of your Business RadioX studio partner in your market or becoming a Business RadioX studio partner.

Lee Kantor: We have shown hundreds of professional service providers how to be a big fish in a small pond by being the official business storyteller in their community. They instantly become mega connectors. They instantly become the go-to resource who knows everyone who matters most to them in their market. They have that secret weapon that helps them accelerate and build relationships with the hard to reach business leaders they need to know. And they become an indispensable resource for the ecosystem that they serve.

Lee Kantor: Business RadioX works best for the challenger brand that’s tired of being a best kept secret, and they don’t have the massive ad budget that their deep pocketed market leader has. That person should be contacting Business RadioX because we can help them stand out, serve the people that matter most to them, and grow their business in an elegant, unique, impactful way.

Personal Development + Mindset Coach Nicole Comis

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Personal Development + Mindset Coach Nicole Comis
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HighVelocityRadio031325pic2Nicole 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 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 and 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 personal development and mindset coach Nicole Comis. How are you?

Nicole Comis: I’m so good, Stone, and thank you for having me.

Stone Payton: Well, it’s exciting to have you in studio. I know we reached out to you because we specifically wanted to have you come share your story. And typically this particular series we’ve been doing virtually, and we learned that, you know what? We don’t have to do that. We’re close enough. We can go into the studio. So it’s a delight to have you here. I got a ton of questions, so we probably won’t get to them all, but let’s start with just describing a little bit about mission purpose. How are you out there trying to help folks?

Nicole Comis: Oh my goodness. Well, I mean, my purpose really is to help people live their best lives, whatever that looks like for them. You know, um, so many driven professionals tend to focus on their business or their career, and they put on hold the things that matter most. They they sacrifice their relationships and their health. And I really want to help people live their best life with every area of life, their careers, their business, their their relationships and their health and their confidence. All of it.

Stone Payton: Wow, that sounds like noble. Just true work, if you can get it. Yeah. What’s, uh. What was that career path like? How did you end up doing this?

Nicole Comis: So I started in the mortgage business. Um, it.

Stone Payton: Makes perfect sense.

Nicole Comis: Yes. So similar. Right? But I was in the mortgage business. I was probably two years in, and I watched a very good friend of mine and coworker completely transform in front of me. And this is 2003. So coaching was not a common thing. And I didn’t know what she was doing, but I didn’t care because I just wanted whatever it was. And so she was working with a coach. And so I started working with my first coach and it completely changed my life. I used to be that girl that looked in the mirror, and all I saw was everything that was wrong with me. And coaching helped me develop my confidence. It helped me work through challenges I was having at work and in my career relationships, and I became a better version of myself. And fast forward to 2008, the housing market crash happened and so did my happiness and my career and my income and my identity. And so for years I struggled trying to get that love and passion that I once had for my career back five years, to be exact. And it just wasn’t happening. And so I reached out to another coach of a friend of mine and two sessions in, she started laughing and she goes, Nicole, you want to be a coach with your life? And I’m like, you’re right, I do. And I enrolled in a coach training program, and a couple of weeks later, I quit my job and went all in on coaching.

Stone Payton: Wow, man. I applaud you for jumping off the Or, at least from my perspective, that feels like jumping off the cliff.

Nicole Comis: Oh, it felt like jumping for sure.

Stone Payton: Man. Making that transition, it had to be intimidating. It had to be scary. But you made you did a couple things. You got your inspiration or your maybe partially permission to go try this from someone who was a coach and and you went and got some formal training, it sounds like. Oh, speak to that a little bit.

Nicole Comis: So I went through a incredibly intense one year training program where we met in person once a month, Saturday and Sunday, ten 12 hour days. Wow. Incredibly intense and awesome. And we also worked with a coach to work on our stuff to grow as a person and, you know, work through the challenges we’re having in our lives and achieve goals that we wanted to achieve. And, um, so I went through that program and it’s a ICF International Coach Federation.

Stone Payton: Well, I’ve been hearing about this because I’ve been talking to a lot of coaches. That’s right. Yes.

Nicole Comis: So the International Coach Federation is our governing body for coaching. And it really is the, you know, the the standard for coaching. And so it is a the school that I went through, it was credentialed through them. And so then I went through that program. I got certified through the ICF afterwards. So I went on to earn that credentialing, and then I stayed on as a mentor coach the second year.

Stone Payton: Oh, wow.

Nicole Comis: It’s kind of like grad school of coaching. When you teach somebody, you you learn more, you know, and it takes you deeper. So that’s my original training. And then three and a half years ago, I, I kind of started nerding out on the mind and found how powerful our subconscious mind is. And so I went on to get certified as a master practitioner of neuro linguistic programing, hypnotherapy and timeline therapy. So yeah, it’s pretty cool.

Stone Payton: This gal has the street grid. So, uh, not to try to go through the whole curriculum by any means, but what are some of the skills or disciplines or strategies? What’s an example of a couple of things that you you go and you learn and you practice. I’m in I’m assuming a relatively safe environment. Oh, yeah. And when you’re going through this IVF thing or something like it.

Nicole Comis: Oh yeah. So they have um, we would get, you know, we would coach other participants.

Stone Payton: Oh, so you’re getting real flight time to practice all of these things.

Nicole Comis: And then the trainers would grade you.

Stone Payton: Oh, my.

Nicole Comis: Yeah. So it was a little intimidating, but it was incredible because you learned. You learned. You learn by doing, not by reading, you know. And so they really pride themselves on making the best of the best. And so, um, you know, active listening is huge. Um, following the client’s agenda, not your own agenda. Right. So, um, you know, asking, you know, questions, um, you know, accountability. All of those things were part of our training.

Stone Payton: Yeah. Wow.

Stone Payton: So you mentioned earlier in the conversation, uh, people have a tendency sometimes, maybe often, to hold themselves back. I’m interested in hearing you speak more to that, and why you didn’t hold yourself back when you saw when you were taking this opportunity.

Nicole Comis: Yeah. So you mean when I. When I took the opportunity to quit my job after.

Stone Payton: Yes. That seems like the perfect opportunity to hold oneself back.

Nicole Comis: Oh, yes. Well, you know what happens for me, and I tell this to my clients, too, is when you get really clear on your vision, you start making decisions aligned with your vision and your values. Right? And I made the decision that I wanted to be a coach, and I felt like it was out of integrity for me to continue to work for somebody else and pretend that I was all in. Right. And so I knew that I could be all in on, you know, growing as a coach and starting to build my coaching practice. Or I can go out and still sell mortgages, but it would be very hard to do both. At least. Both. Well.

Nicole Comis: And I loved the boss that I worked for. I worked I worked for him for 13 years. He had opened a an incredible mortgage company, and I really valued my relationship with him and everybody in the company. And I didn’t feel like it was fair for me to go become a coach and go through this training and start building a coaching business and not be, you know, 100% for him, too.

Stone Payton: And there are apparently, uh, well, I guess you’d call them specialties within this. I mean, within this, um, discipline. And you really gravitated more and more to mindset. I think you, you mentioned speak more to that, if you will. And if there is an element and I suspect there is of the subconscious, the impact the subconscious has on the decisions we’re making, the words we’re saying, the actions we’re taking.

Nicole Comis: Yeah. So we you know, my big thing is personal development and mindset. I believe that when you focus on growing as a person and becoming the best version of you, everything else takes off. So I had a client who, um, hired me after five years of owning his business. He had taken his business from to $1 million, and he, you know, worked all of the time. He slept at the office, all of that. He hired me and we started working together. And five years later, his business was worth $10 million.

Stone Payton: Wow.

Nicole Comis: Yeah. And he said that he contributes that to taking care of his health and wellbeing, working on his mindset. Just all of the personal development stuff, because you can only take your business as far as you’re willing to go, right? And you can your business can only be as good as you are. So that’s my belief, is that when you work on the person, the rest falls into place. Especially the mindset because our unconscious mind or a subconscious controls 90 to 95% of everything we do. That’s where our beliefs are, our fears, our values. Um, that’s where we our habits are. Everything starts at the subconscious level.

Stone Payton: It seems to a layperson like me, or at least this layperson, that that would be. I don’t find that difficult to to believe at all. Um, but it sounds intimidating. It sounds like like it would be very difficult to tap into that and much less shift it.

Nicole Comis: Okay. So let me normalize it for you.

Nicole Comis: So tapping into your subconscious isn’t like, um, being in trance, right? It’s not like I’ve got a little.

Stone Payton: Like the watch going back and forth, right? Right, right, right.

Nicole Comis: You’re getting very sleepy. Um, so what it really is, is about, you know, um, think about a number from 1 to 100. What’s the first number that popped into your head?

Stone Payton: Uh, 50 for me.

Nicole Comis: Was it the very first number, or did your conscious mind get involved in the first number? Was something else, and then your conscious mind said, oh, no, this one.

Stone Payton: Actually probably 61, because that’s how old I am. Yeah.

Nicole Comis: Well. And so what happens is what our, our unconscious mind is always that first answer.

Stone Payton: Ah.

Nicole Comis: Then our conscious mind gets involved and starts saying, no, no, no, that’s not the right one. Say this instead.

Stone Payton: And so that’s what I said right here in front of God and everybody. And on air I said 50, but really.

Nicole Comis: 61 was the first one.

Stone Payton: And maybe because that’s been on my brain a little bit, that I’m 61 years old and I need to be getting a lot more done a lot faster. No. You’re perfect. You look great. I got all these stuff. You’re really helping me tap into this stuff right now. This is real world.

Nicole Comis: Real world. Yeah. So, I mean, and so when I work with my clients, I. I pay attention more to what they’re saying underneath the the story, if that makes sense.

Stone Payton: Well, it makes sense, but what a tremendous skill. Oh my gracious, to be able to read beneath the between the lines and underneath the story, man. Yeah.

Nicole Comis: It’s cool. It’s really cool.

Stone Payton: So what does that look like? Is it as simple? And I don’t mean to to to say that it’s less than when I use the word simple. Is it as simple though the mental image I have of just, you know, you and I sitting here and having a conversation, I got to believe there’s some structure, some discipline, some rigor to what you’re walking me through. But my experience of it may be a lot of just conversation.

Nicole Comis: Yes, it’s definitely conversation. Okay. And I, I don’t do anything that’s not fun. So I like to laugh and I like to have a good time. And so what what it really comes down to is that we can unpack the, the deep stuff and still have fun in the process. So, you know, some people think that coaching can be, you know, really hard work. And sure, it’s it’s powerful work, but I don’t think it has to be hard. It doesn’t have to be painful. Right. And so when I work with my clients, you know, I, I just keep asking questions to go deeper and deeper and deeper. So it is it’s just like you and I talking right now, except instead of you asking me questions, I’m asking you questions. And, you know, I’ll just keep asking questions to go deeper and deeper into what’s going on.

Stone Payton: Well, you’ve touched on an important point. I think it was another interview, I think that I had where the the lady was trying to describe the difference between a consultant and a coach. Uh, and there really is quite a distinction on the coaching side of things. It’s much more about sort of letting that person, well, you I’ll let you articulate it. Yeah.

Nicole Comis: Yeah. Well, so with coaching, we believe we’re partners. It’s two equals two coming together. Right for the same goal. My goal is my client’s goal. And, you know, with consulting, you have a superior somebody who’s an expert in right, marketing, right, or business development. And that person’s going to tell you what you need to do. Where I believe that you have the answers inside of you. There’s just some gook in the way that we got to clear out and really help you discover what those answers are. Does that make sense?

Stone Payton: It makes a lot of sense. So the work mostly with individuals or with teams, or is it several individuals in an organization? And then in the second part of that question is can you achieve some kind of like, uh, capability transfer, like you’re leaving them with coaching skills that they can at least model if not replicate?

Nicole Comis: Oh, sure. I mean, they definitely can model. You know, that’s how we learn. I mean, you think about a child learning to walk or to eat, right? They pay attention to, you know, your kids or their parents, you know. Um, we learn by modeling. And so and that’s actually one of the reasons why they thought it was so important for us to have coaches. And my coach training program is because it’s another way for us to learn how to coach is by being coached. Right? So, you know, and then, you know, there’s always pointers that I give, um, whether it’s in relationship or, you know, to employees or, you know, different things like that. Um, but mostly, you know, there’s a little bit of training that happens. There’s, you know, consulting a little bit. But for the most part, it’s about helping the clients discover the answers inside of them.

Stone Payton: So, um, partially answering for a very selfish reason. In my role here in Business RadioX, a big part of my responsibility is to go out and recruit and initially train someone to run a Business RadioX studio. Right. And I am a bit of a subject matter expert in that you know how to get set up, how to really help people and make money. And so I’m thinking in the early going, I’m not coaching, I’m mentoring, I’m training that kind of. But, you know, once they’ve been at it a year or two and they’re really they really are peers that I should be wearing more of a coaching hat and probably get a lot better at at least exercising some of the, the, the disciplines that you do. Right.

Nicole Comis: Well, it depends on what what outcome you’re looking for. Yeah, right. It’s like, well what’s the intention behind that? Is it, you know, because my suspicion is that there’s still that mentor that you get to be to these people.

Stone Payton: Mhm.

Nicole Comis: Um, and you know, you can bounce back and forth. Right. You can be a mentor. And then some conversations might be a little bit more coaching conversations, some may be more consulting conversations. And you can flow between them. Um, to me coaching is just about, you know, you know, for you anyway, it’s about getting clear on what the person wants and what’s the outcome that they’re looking for.

Stone Payton: Okay, but but a professional coach, someone who is in your capacity, you’re in that other role. 100% of the time. Oh, I got the idea a moment ago when you were talking about asking the right questions and helping them uncover and tap in. I would think you could not stay only limited to, you know, Stone and running a studio in stone and trying to scale the network. You probably have to talk about the whole stone, right? Like the. Is that is that accurate?

Nicole Comis: Yeah, I talk about ask.

Stone Payton: I should say ask about the whole stone. Right. See, I’m learning like he can be taught.

Nicole Comis: You can be taught. So yes, with my work, all of my clients create goals for their business. Most of my clients are business owners or executives. So they create career goals. They create relationship goals, health and well-being goals, and personal development goals and then whatever other goals that they want to create. Because I believe that you’re a whole person. You’re not just one part of whatever area you want to work on. So they’re integrated you, you know, and the thing I tell my clients all the time is that your health and wellbeing is the foundation of everything you do and everything you don’t do. So how do you treat your body? Everything you don’t? Yes. Everything you don’t do. And relationships are literally programed for connection, right? So, you know, making sure that those two areas are a priority is so important for people who have big things they want to accomplish in their career.

Stone Payton: Okay, I want to go back to this idea of subconscious and having the subconscious work for me instead of me, instead of me. Maybe I’m trying to be too controlling instead of me working for, um, for it, but, uh, I mean, do you ever run into any resistance or raised eyebrows when you start to talk about, you know, the subconscious having that much of an impact? And if so, how do you get people past that initial bristling with it? And maybe you don’t? I could just see maybe a raised eyebrow from hearing again. I don’t know.

Nicole Comis: I do my best to try and normalize things for people and and to meet them where they’re at. So in the work that I do, all of my clients get a breakthrough session, which is a full day intensive. I usually split into two half days, where we unpack a specific problem or area of life that they want to focus on, and we unpack limiting beliefs and fears and negative emotions and inner conflict and values and all all the stuff that’s underneath. So what I really tell people is that we’re going to work through and unpack those roadblocks that are there to the thing that you want, right. Because there’s a gap between where we are to what we want. And one of those things that we get to address are the unconscious roadblocks. And so, you know, people tend to say, I’m willing to do it right. Like, okay, you know, and.

Stone Payton: By the time they’re willing to come to you and write you a check, they’ve they’ve moved in that direction to some degree that they’re willing to try something. Right. Because.

Nicole Comis: Yeah. Well, and also it’s not you know, it’s not it’s also the language that you use. Right. So, you know, meeting people where they’re at. So I may say, have you ever heard of the subconscious? We start there. Right. So then we talk about that a little bit, you know, a lot of a lot more people than you think are familiar with the, you know, the subconscious. Okay. Um, you know, our habits. So if you think about driving, you consciously learned how to drive. But now when you drive, you don’t think about.

Stone Payton: It, right?

Nicole Comis: That’s your subconscious. It’s it’s as simple as that. Right. So it’s teaching them that we’re just going to unpack what those things are for them.

Stone Payton: So at this point in your career, what are you finding the most rewarding? What’s the most fun about it these days for you?

Nicole Comis: Oh, I love watching people transform. I mean, it’s the coolest thing to. I had a client say to me not that long ago. It was actually a Instagram post that she she posted to her friend saying, it is so cool how my mind works now. I am a totally different person, I think different. I’m kinder to myself and she’s like, my mind is so different than it used to be and that’s just so cool, right? Having people build up their confidence and trust themselves more and and hit goals that they never thought that they could hit. You know, it’s just really cool to watch them get the life that they want to live.

Stone Payton: That has to feel incredibly good. You must sleep very well at night knowing that you’re really putting you’re putting a dent in the universe. Uh, you’ve been at this long enough now, and I can just hear it in your in your voice and see it in your eyes. I’m sure you’re well past this, but I want to talk about the business side of running a coaching practice, particularly in the early, I’m going to say years because I don’t I’m not sure you can pull it off in months of something as simple and straightforward as going out and getting your first handful of clients. And then it may be how that may be quite a bit be quite different these days. Yeah, yeah.

Nicole Comis: Well, you know, I was trained to be a really great coach. I was not trained to be a marketing expert.

Stone Payton: Oh, yeah.

Nicole Comis: And when you own a business, you wear all of those hats. You need to be a, you know, CFO and a, you know, marketing expert and the, you know, the admin and all of the things. And, um, to me, that was the hardest part, specifically the marketing, because my brain doesn’t work naturally like that. I was a numbers girl. I am a numbers girl. You know that. I was always problem solving. Right, right. And so, you know, that was that was the biggest challenge for me was the marketing piece and things with marketing, especially with social media change so quickly that trying to stay on top of that and being the best coach I can be and, you know, learning all these other things, it’s it’s a challenge.

Stone Payton: Yeah, I’ll bet, I’ll bet it is. So at this point, though, you probably my experience has been nothing sells like doing good work. Yes. So that probably.

Nicole Comis: Word of mouth.

Stone Payton: I have that track record behind you. But but I do feel for people who who, uh, you know, initially when they’re coming into this profession or really any professional services provider kind of, uh, profession, I think a lot of them struggle with it. Mhm. Yeah.

Nicole Comis: Yeah, absolutely.

Stone Payton: But here again you didn’t let it hold you back, right?

Nicole Comis: I don’t know if it’s stubbornness or determination. No, no, it’s definitely. This is my purpose, you know? And when you feel it in your heart. And I’ll be completely transparent. Last March, my whole business crashed.

Stone Payton: Oh, really?

Nicole Comis: Yeah. So I it just so happened I had several clients complete at the same time. Um, I had one client who stayed, but his business partner and him broke up, and so he couldn’t afford to pay me for two months. So it was just bizarre. And I questioned everything. You know, I, I was very I was in a hard place and, um, thank God for my mom, you know, because she was she was my rock, and, um, and I needed to step back and really assess what I was doing. And it actually is why I decided that I am incorporating a breakthrough in every single, you know, coaching relationship that I have, because I believe that that’s the missing piece for any of the work. You know, we can consciously go after goals and achieve things, but if we don’t change how we think, it’s going to take a lot of effort. And, um, kind of in a way, self-manipulation, you know, and so it takes so much effort and work to go after those goals if you don’t change how you think. And so I decided, you know, that to me, that’s my purpose is really helping people change their thoughts and their, you know, their beliefs and really become stronger mindset wise. And so I now incorporate that into all of the work that I do. And I also realized that my purpose, what I, where I thrive is being with people I don’t I don’t thrive behind a computer screen. I don’t, you know, writing blog posts or social media posts. It doesn’t excite me. It doesn’t bring me joy. And it’s not. It just doesn’t work for me. And so I got out there and I started developing relationships and doing more networking, and I feel better than I have felt in years.

Stone Payton: Oh that’s fantastic. Well, shout out to mom and kudos to you. We’ve got like a half a dozen examples of you living into this work that you’re trying to bring to bring to other people. Uh, I don’t want to hit on it too hard because it sounds like you’ve you’ve figured out a way to navigate yourself, certainly. And others through, uh, any initial trepidation. But what would you say is the most prevalent misunderstanding, misconception, preconceived notion about coaching in general? And certainly, you know, mindset and personal development coaching. Do you run into some of the same stuff?

Nicole Comis: I think that there’s with coaching, they you know, some people think that you’re going to give them advice, you’re going to fix things for them. And you know, and that’s one of the hard things. You know, I for me, anyway, is that there? You don’t have to be a credentialed coach to go out there and say, I’m a coach. And so there’s life coaches out there who have no education, no training, no credentialing, you know, executive coach, same thing. Right. All different kinds of coaches who out there and just saying I’m a coach. And they may be there might be coaches who are amazing and awesome. And then there’s other coaches who are out there saying, okay, what you need to do is X, Y, and Z. What happens is if I told you what you needed to do, if you’re not on board with it, it just it doesn’t it doesn’t work. I once had a coach who told me, you know, Nicole, you need to get out and you need to do Facebook Live three times a week. And she went through this whole list of all these things I needed to do to to grow my business. I got off the phone, I’m like, yep, I don’t want to do any of them. Whereas if I asked you, you know. Hey, well, what have you tried before? I could have asked. Have you ever thought of Facebook Live? I heard that like it was amazing. And then we would have a conversation and unpack. Maybe why you wouldn’t want to do that? And what would be more aligned with where you are and who you are.

Stone Payton: Because to your point, if it’s not going to happen, if there’s yeah.

Nicole Comis: It’s not going to happen.

Stone Payton: It’s not going to happen. Hey, I’m going to switch gears on you here for just a minute. Uh, interest, hobbies outside the scope of the work we’re talking about. Most of my listeners know that I like to hunt, fish and travel. Yeah. Uh, what’s your thing outside the scope of this work?

Nicole Comis: Oh, my. Um, I love music, I love music, um, I love music, live music. I have two little nephews. Well, well, they’re not that little anymore. Nine and seven, and, um, they’re my favorite people in the world. Oh, and I have a 25 year old nephew, too, who’s pretty awesome. But he, you know, he’s too cool to hang out with me.

Stone Payton: Sure.

Nicole Comis: So, um, you know, hanging out with them is so fun. Um, I, I moved here. I told you before we started that I moved here, um, in April of 2020, and my whole family’s together for the first time since 1992. And I love family barbecues and birthday celebrations and Sunday dinners, and that’s. That’s cool.

Stone Payton: I want all of you to know this is a very authentic answer. So because I know this, before we came on here, we did a sound check and I asked her what she was going to do this weekend. And she said, I’m going to go watch my nephews play soccer. That’s right. So this is real. You’re getting the real Nicole here. She’s not making this stuff up. Yeah. No, I could tell how I could just see it in your eyes and hear it in your voice and how much you enjoy being with family. And it sounds like two very bright stars in your life. Are these nephews?

Nicole Comis: Yes. Well, three.

Stone Payton: 303.

Nicole Comis: Just the 25 year old is, you.

Stone Payton: Know, okay, too.

Nicole Comis: Cool for me.

Stone Payton: We’ll give him some props.

Nicole Comis: That’s right.

Stone Payton: Oh my gracious. Well, listen, before we wrap, I would love to if we could leave our listeners with 1 or 2 pro tips kind of tied to what we’ve been talking about. I’ll frame it up as, you know, producing better results in less time. But maybe specifically with respect to this, you know, trying to get our arms around this mindset personal development thing. So and look gang, the number one pro tip reach out and have a conversation with Nicole. Yes that’s what I did. I tell them all the time. Look you want to talk to some really smart, passionate people and get some good counsel? Get yourself a radio show, right. Just.

Nicole Comis: Oh. That’s great.

Stone Payton: But no, that’s my number one. Pro tip is reach out and talk to Nicole. But let’s give them something to chew on between now and then.

Nicole Comis: Yeah. So, you know, circling back to last March when when everything went upside down in my business, one of the things and I believe it’s because of all the work that I did, it was painful. It was one of the most painful experiences I’ve had in a long time, since before the housing market crashed when I was in the mortgage business. The thing that kept me going was that I. I didn’t know why it was happening and like I said, it was painful, but I knew it was happening for me, that it was something better was on the other side, and that I needed to take a step back and assess where what I was doing and what was aligned with my heart. And to me, that trust is what puts I mean, it is so powerful when you can trust that your life is turning out the way it’s meant to. That you just need to reassess.

Stone Payton: Wow. Talk about breakthrough. If if one can reach a point where they genuinely believe that what’s happening externally from the world is is not happening to me. It’s happening for me. Wow. You talk about a mindset shift. Yeah, that’s a goal. That’s a that’s a pearl right there, babe.

Nicole Comis: Yeah.

Stone Payton: So what’s next for you? And how can we help? Is there a book in you? Is there the Nicole methodology is there.

Nicole Comis: The pressure is.

Stone Payton: On the Nicole certification process.

Nicole Comis: You know, right now I am just focusing on one on one clients. And, um, I there is a online program that might be in the future. It’s just not not there yet. Um, don’t.

Stone Payton: Let it hold you back.

Nicole Comis: No, no. It won’t. It’s just I have to wrap my head around it because I believe true transformation happens in one on one conversations. Yeah, yeah. However, a very intelligent young woman who is part of one of my networking friends said to me, there are people who want your work, who just aren’t ready to go to that one on one place yet. So, you know, give them a little something. We need a little something. So so that’s in my that’s in the back of my mind. And I’m processing that and seeing what that’s going to look like. But I think that’s that’s something that I’ll probably come out maybe next quarter.

Stone Payton: Well I hope if and when you do that and I have every confidence that you will because I don’t think you’ll let anything hold you back. I hope you’ll let us know, and I hope you’ll stay connected with us and let us continue to to follow your story.

Nicole Comis: I would love that.

Stone Payton: Thank you. So what’s the best way for our listeners to tap into your work and connect with you? Whatever coordinates are appropriate, but let’s give them a way to do that.

Nicole Comis: Sure. I think the easiest way is to go to my website at Nicole Combs Coaching.com, and all of my socials are on there too. Instagram, Facebook. Um, but my website is, is where, where it’s all at.

Stone Payton: That’s right. Because we don’t like the social as much. I think we uncovered that in the stone coaching session that we did. What’s the website one more time, Nicole.

Nicole Comis: Com’s Coaching.com.

Stone Payton: Nicole. It has been an absolute delight visiting with you this afternoon. You are a breath of fresh air. You’re inspiring. You have such a marvelous perspective. I took copious notes. Amazing. And you and I are definitely going to stay connected. Well, well beyond this. Thank you so much. The work you’re doing is so important and we sure appreciate you.

Nicole Comis: Oh thank you.

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

 

BRX Pro Tip: What is Your Prospecting Strategy?

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BRX Pro Tip: What is Your Prospecting Strategy?
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BRX Pro Tip: What is Your Prospecting Strategy?

Stone Payton: And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. Today’s question, Lee, what is your prospecting strategy?

Lee Kantor: Yeah. I think a good prospecting strategy has some fundamental things that I’d like to discuss here. One is a clear understanding of who that ideal client is. Number one, you have to know who that person is and you have to know where they hang out. And once you kind of determine that and you get a handle of, okay, these are my ideal clients, this is where they hang out, now I have to come up with some sort of elegant and effective way to meet them in order to build a relationship.

Lee Kantor: And then, once I have that way to meet them and they’re into kind of my database or they’re into my circle, I have to have a way to keep following up with them over time. And there are so many automated solutions to that. And then once you have that going and they become a client, you have to figure out a way to get referrals and/or testimonials from them as well.

Lee Kantor: So, if you have a prospecting strategy that gives you that clear understanding of your ideal client, you identify where they hang out, you have a way to communicate with them in order to build a relationship, and then you have a way to move them into sharing their success with other people and/or helping you get referrals, then I think you have the fundamentals of a good prospecting strategy.

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