Sallie Holder With The BRIMM

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Coach the Coach radio brought to you by the Business RadioX Ambassador Program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to Brxambassador.com To learn more. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a fun one today on the show, we have Sallie Holder with the brimm. Welcome, Sallie.

Sallie Holder: [00:00:43] Thank you for having me, Lee, I really appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:46] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about the brim. How are you serving, folks?

Sallie Holder: [00:00:51] Sure, the brim actually stands for Beyond Rock Middle Movement. It is a play on the word and the concept of rock middle, which is a, you know, a concept that I created when I was writing my book called Hitting Rock Middle. And it’s the idea that there is a middle place in our career and life where most people get stuck and never leave. And that growth from that middle class people find to be very difficult and often discouraged. And so I wanted to help more women within our community really elevate themselves from wherever it is that they are stuck within their businesses to a higher, more successful place.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:42] So what’s your back story? Have you always been involved in coaching?

Sallie Holder: [00:01:47] In a way, I started my career actually practicing law, and I practiced law for the third largest labor and employment law firm in the country and found myself helping employers with what I would refer to as kind of HR law, everything having to do with the employer employee relationship. And so I learned quite a bit there about, you know, how to effectively get employers and employees to work together and really was always fascinated with organizational development. So I left then practicing and became the chief operating officer of six different companies and six different industries. After that, all really focused on organizational health. And development and revenue growth and then had an opportunity from there to go into coaching female entrepreneurs, one on one found that was really my passion and then developed a real niche into revenue growth and helping them focus on understanding what drives increased revenue.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:55] So now, from a philosophical standpoint, there’s rock middle concept. It was that something that you just developed from based on your own kind of learnings? Or was this built upon someone else’s teachings?

Sallie Holder: [00:03:09] No, it was it was all based on what I really learned and experienced in my career. You know, I think a lot of us out there, probably a lot of your listeners have this same exact feeling that they followed an external model to success rate and it was what everyone else told me would create both personal success. Professional success is, you know, if I followed the, well, well-worn path. And so that’s what I did. You know, going straight from undergraduate to graduate school and law school and practicing law and earned awards and accolades and and still looked around and felt, you know, myself saying to in my head throughout, you know, all of the conversations when other people would come up to me and say, Oh my gosh, you must be so happy. I felt like I wanted to scream at them and say, No, I’m not. I’m really not. Do you know how to help me? And yet my response to them was always, Oh yes, everything’s great, right? And. And it wasn’t just because outwardly it looked great. It did not mean that it felt great internally, and I felt that real, you know, distance between what I showed the world on the outside and how I felt on the inside. And I didn’t want to live out of integrity like that any longer. And so I sought counsel for friends and relatives, other people who are successful in the business world, asking them, You know what now? And the majority of them unfortunately were telling me, This is just work. Put your head down, stick with it.

Sallie Holder: [00:04:49] You’ll get through this difficult period and you know, that’s just life. And I disagreed. You know, I said, there’s got to be something else. There’s got to be, you know, a reason why I’m experiencing this and that I ought to be able to create change from this place even if everyone else wants me to stay in this nice little box that I’ve created. I still want to make a change. And what I found is that a lot of people, when you are at rock bottom right, are absolutely wanting you to change right, they’ll come to you and say, Hey, get out of there. Let us help you. Let us give you a hand out up everything. But when you’re in rock middle right where you feel unfulfilled despite external success, no one wants you to change. No one wants to give you a hand up or out or, you know, help you in any way. They prefer that you stay exactly where you are because that is a well defined place. And and so, you know, I said to myself, if we could come up with terminology around this place, that would allow it to just be referenced. So it wasn’t so hard to explain, then maybe there would be more discussion around it. And if there’s more discussion around it, then it’s going to be more acceptable for people to create change from this place, too. And ultimately, that’s what I want is I want people to be truly fulfilled, happy and successful, and I think you can have all of those really.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:27] Now, do you think the challenge for people who are in this rock middle place is that? They’re grateful for where they are. They don’t want to curse that because they’re in some ways satisfied with where they are and they feel that it’s. Like almost asking too much of the universe to have more than this when they see so many people who don’t have what they have.

Sallie Holder: [00:06:53] I couldn’t agree more. Yes, it is, and it’s impressed upon them that you ought to be grateful for what you have and therefore you ought to simply stay there. But what I would argue is that look at what that concept has done to much of our world, right, that we have more people than ever, you know, suffering from mental health issues, depression, suicide, right? Just levels of unhappiness that we’ve never experienced as a society. So, you know, I would say that the current way hasn’t been working and that, you know, offering people a chance for you individually to be happy will only have a better effect on society that while you can be grateful for what you have created like a successful career, then you can parlay that gratitude into creating something different for yourself as well. Right. They’re not mutually exclusive concepts, right? But suddenly, because you want to create change, you are no longer grateful. Right. A plus B does not equal C. You can still remain grateful and decide to pursue something that fulfills your heart and soul. And I think when you do, then you share a level of happiness with the world that we need more people sharing, right? When you are pursuing your authentic potential and what your, you know, God given talent or whoever you believe is out there when you share what it is that you are truly meant to share with this world. There is a level of sincere joy that overflows from you that allows you to serve the world in a much better way than you sitting on your hands saying, I should just be grateful for AM.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:49] Now, are there some symptoms that you’re at rock middle? Are there some things that are happening that maybe you’re not defining as rock middle, but maybe to an outsider, it’s obviously you’re at, you’ve plateaued or you’re at some point of maybe you’re frustrated in certain areas. So are there some things in my life that’s going on that that you can help me realize, Hey, I’m at rock middle and maybe I should get a hold of the brim?

Sallie Holder: [00:09:17] Sure. That’s such a good question. I think that some things that really evidence this place of rock metal are things that you probably have experienced slightly. But what I find is the more you stay in rock metal, the more they grow. So what I’m referencing is you might have experienced a little bit of jealousy, say, as you’re on social media and watching other people write, potentially create the life that they have always wanted. You know, as that jealousy begins to turn into more into frustration and anger, right then that is a great indication that you are not living a life that’s authentic to you, right? The jealousy comes not from the place that you wish them ill, will. It’s that you envy rate and wish that you could provide the same opportunity as for yourself. And what I try to instill in the entrepreneurs that I coach is that you can you can make that choice at any point in life that you’d like to. It doesn’t matter what age your you are right this moment. And so, you know, if you’re feeling that that way, then what you’re looking for oftentimes is a permission slip to say, go for it, make the change right now. And then what they tend to counterbalance that with is, you know, well, that’s nice to say, but you know, I don’t have a plan or how would I even get started? And you know what would be my next steps? And that is exactly where we at the brim can come in to be able to guide you. We’ve been in your exact shoes. I know exactly the path to go from where you are now to creating the type of lifestyle and revenue goals that you’d like to achieve.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:15] So now how do you help your clients kind of lean more into this abundance mentality and kind of leave some of the fear mentality behind because it sounds like some people are afraid of giving up what they have, even though something better might be around the corner?

Sallie Holder: [00:11:36] Yes, absolutely. You know, I talk a lot about the fact I am I like focusing in on facts and statistics because I find those I think it must be my years practicing law, but I find those so convincing and compelling. And the fact is that your brain actually is hardwired to prevent you from taking risk. And so that always helped me to understand there was nothing wrong with me per say, right? I didn’t have some gene that prevented me from taking risks. I’m not either a risk taker or not. Right. It is a muscle that can be developed that I can practice and. And so what I like to start out with is that foundational understanding of what is prevented them from taking risks in the past and most of the time it has been, you know, their upbringing, their understanding of, you know, experiences that they have had. They deemed those experiences to teach them that risk taking is bad. And so just I, you know, if they’re doing this particular exercise on their own, which you are more than welcome to, a great way to get started is just simply to make note of, you know, times where you have concluded that taking a risk or creating change in any way led to a detrimental situation. And once we can break up again, that conclusion that taking a risk or trying to create change equals doing something bad or something bad happening to you, then we can replace that idea or thought with something that is positive, right? And interrupt that conclusion.

Sallie Holder: [00:13:28] So in actuality, the conclusion could have been that, you know, you simply didn’t have enough time available to create the type of change you were trying to create or that you didn’t have enough resources. It wasn’t that every time you go back to create change, it will always lead to something bad. It was that there were just certain pieces of the puzzle and puzzle missing at the time that can then be incorporated and included in your process so that the next time you go about creating change, it can be successful. So with reflection and analysis on the process, very often we can determine, you know what part fell, you know, fell by the wayside. And, you know, plug in the missing piece so that they can then achieve success. You know, and we go about goal setting with all of our clients at the very beginning, you know, of our work together, and it’s not a real traditional way of goal setting. I think that we have to break down our thoughts about what is achievable and what is not achievable. So we work on the mindset with regard to goal setting in in that part of our work together as well and then create a true plan of action that is then achievable, right? You know, has smart goals. It’s measurable. You can be held accountable to taking the actions to reach your respective goals.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:08] Now, I think you brought up a great point, and this is part of why I’m a big believer in journaling, because journaling allows you to kind of go back in time and assess your past and and kind of audit it and hold yourself accountable to it. And a lot of times it’s going to bubble up some facts that you might have forgotten that actually demonstrate that. There’s nothing really to fear that most of the time you make good decisions and that most of the time that things do work out and that sometimes in your mind and especially in your memory, we humans tend to remember some negative thing and give that a lot more weight than maybe some positive things that they just take for granted over time. So I think auditing and writing down and and kind of just looking at the facts like you described is a great way to allay some of those fears that are a lot of times irrational.

Sallie Holder: [00:16:08] I couldn’t agree more. You know, another great exercise is just simply drawing a T-shirt on a piece of paper, and on the left side, you write down the word facts at the top of the chart and on the right side, you write down the word feelings. And if you are to take some of those events that you concluded were, you know, negative, then put them through that analysis and ask yourself, you know, is that statement one hundred percent true? And if it is 100 percent true, meaning that there is absolutely no exception to it, right? And some of those statements could be wild things like I am not a risk taker or I am bad at business or I, you know and not good at numbers, right? People make all of these kinds of conclusions about themselves, but you cannot say any of those are one hundred percent true all of the time. I bet you can find exceptions to each one of them, and if there is one exception, it means it is nothing more than a feeling. And so if you can designate it then as a feeling and not something that is an actual fact, then you can move on from it, right? You can choose to let it go and rely solely on the facts which are much more likely to be.

Sallie Holder: [00:17:33] I learned a lesson from this particular event that I am capable of, you know, working with numbers. I simply have not done it often, right? That’s much more of the fact. So whenever I am challenging someone to begin to just open themselves up to new ideas or open themselves up to coaching, right, the fact versus feeling chart is a great way to kind of begin that process, too, because we become so entrenched in our own opinions because they we create them to protect us, right? Just as I was saying, you know, the mind wants to help you stay in your little shell and cocoon and and be protected. But that’s not what the soul wants, right? Your heart and soul wants you to explore and be free, and you know when you can kind of get a little bit more control on your mind by using a few of these tricks, then you can feel that true sense of the freedom and fulfillment that you really desire.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:39] Right? There’s a saying, I think I’m going to butcher it, but it’s like the a ship is safest in the harbor, but that’s not what ships are meant to be doing.

Sallie Holder: [00:18:48] So true, I do love that one. I haven’t heard that in quite a while, but I completely agree. I want everyone to be doing what it is that they feel they were meant to do, and I think we all have that. When you asked a moment ago about how do you know if you’re in rock middle, you know, we all have that sensation. I think when we’re not pursuing our, you know, our calling that we’re something is off right, it even can be the smallest little indication like the smallest little seed that’s planted within you. And it makes you feel like there’s a part of you that you’re not sharing with the world at all. And you just don’t know how to go about watering that seed and growing it and, you know, getting to follow the real, authentic version of you. And but there is a path there absolutely is. And if you don’t know anyone else that has done that before and created that type of change to pursue their passion from a place of success, I get that so often like, yeah, but I’m making six figures. Well, so was I right? I get it. It’s hard to leave the finances, but let me tell you, I’m wildly more successful now than I ever was practicing law. Was there a bit of a time of significant fear? Absolutely. But but when you’re doing the thing that you’re meant to do, it will always pay you back in far greater rewards than you ever will get to experience when you’re doing something outside of your own personal alignment.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:30] Now, you mentioned earlier that the brim is kind of the go-to place for women entrepreneurs. Is there a kind of a category of women entrepreneurs that this is best for? Is it for solopreneurs? Is it for small firms? Is it for large enterprises like what is kind of the sweet spot for someone to get the most out of the brim?

Sallie Holder: [00:20:53] Sure. Our sweet spot, we typically say, is the woman who is in her kind of that two to five year range in business that she’s already figured out exactly what she wants to. Do and has begun that process of creating, you know, some of her revenue streams, but she now is looking to really take it to the next level, right? Elevate it, grow it past that initial six figure mark to seven and even eight figures. And what I had previously found is there are so many people out there serving, you know, the the new entrepreneur, the one that just wants the startup or the side hustle or the hobby. And that’s fantastic if that’s what you’re looking for. But I didn’t find I couldn’t find a place for female entrepreneurs that were really looking to say, OK, I’ve already done that. I’ve done the initial things. I’ve done the initial work to, you know, create an LLC in QuickBooks and do all my different things. And now I want to really turn up the volume. How would I do that? And that is what where I find that we are the most helpful, that we’re able to help you evaluate how you got to where you are now in business and how you can then incorporate, you know, additional revenue streams, whether they’re creating passive revenue for you or how you can significantly raise your prices, how you can reach a larger audience, how you can effectively. Fly higher and delegate to a team, so and all of those things are very necessary when you are typically in that two to five year range, we are looking to to say, I want this to be a seven and eight figure business, but no one’s giving me the roadmap to make that happen. And I find that we do both through all of the, you know, programs that you get that are you have unlimited access to. But we also have weekly coaching that we do with our members as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:04] Well, if somebody wanted to learn more, maybe get a hold of the book or just check out the different offerings you have. Is there a website?

Sallie Holder: [00:23:12] Yes, it’s grow with the brim and that’s EPRI IMDB.com so they can head to that or I am always on social media. You can find me at Sally Holder and my parents just liked to throw a wrench in that. So that’s Sally old age old. So Sally Holder on Instagram or grow with the Realme.com?

Lee Kantor: [00:23:40] Good stuff. Well, Sally, congratulations on all the success. We really appreciate you coming on and sharing your story today and you’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Sallie Holder: [00:23:50] Thank you so much for the time, I appreciate you too, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:53] All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll see all next time on Coach the Coach radio.