little better, but there it is.
Uh, man, that's awesome.
Um, so yeah, we, uh, we were talking about social accounts and how it'd be
important to show your social accounts.
We might bring up your YouTube channel because I know you got some super
valuable content on there, but I was like, make sure to turn the sound off.
Um, for your YouTube stuff that way we're not fighting you in the
process of trying to interview you.
So, uh, works out.
So Victoria, you've got a, you got a very, um, extensive background in leadership
and global expertise.
You've been on a number of shows out there.
Um, what are the three resources?
What are three resources you would recommend for any other
visionary leader out there?
Which ones should we be consuming?
Uh, there are so many, so I know Jackson, you asked me for just three.
And so I will do my best to like keep it though.
Uh, so this one, I feel like it's super abused, but, uh, Simon's the next
start with why for me is a very big one.
Just always the connection to.
Let's abuse it real quick.
Ready?
I got it twice.
Yeah.
So I hope you got at least one of those signs.
Oh no, nope.
Not yet.
Someday, someday we're brothers from another mother for sure.
Uh, so I love, love that.
What I, I always talk about story storytelling and our why, and you know,
that, that, as he said, you know, people don't buy what you do.
They do why you do it.
Um, so I think that one's phenomenal.
Uh, another great resource, uh, is, um, the book radical candor by Kim Scott.
It, um, I, I've generally always been operating under that.
I didn't have, you know, the language, um, that she used until she came out with that.
But I think, um, in particular, because so many people talk about, use the word
authenticity and I think they use that as an excuse to sometimes just be a
jerk and being really direct.
Uh, and, but, but to, from, you know, being rude.
And so the way, you know, Kim talks about it is from doing it from a place of care
in compassion, um, and I think that's really necessary.
And then the next is a little bit more tactical in that I've, most of my
career has been in the world of business to business professional services where
we're selling to clients and then serving their customers or their employees.
And so there's a, it's a dual book written by, so it's, um, published by CEB
and it's the challenger sale and the challenger customer.
And the challenger sale is just understanding the, the, the people and
they're buying types and what, how to, like how to, what motivates them.
This goes back actually to Simon Sinek's, why I think actually, if you
understand the why behind people, how they're measured and success, I actually
think, but you sort of understanding those, the archetypes is important.
But the next one is in the B2B world of particular, um, the challenger customer
talks about the fact that, and this was written a number of years ago now.
So I think the number is greater.
I think at the time they said it was 5.2 buyers for every decision,
um, like contract and sale decision.
I would guess that's in the seven states now.
That's what I've experienced over the last number of years.
And so how you need to think about being strategic and intentional about
who you network with and why, and what's important to them to help secure business.
I want to gather that again.
It was 5.2 in relation to what?
Uh, purchasing.
Um, so it's not just one, like you're not selling to a single individual.
There's generally-
Meaning that like the key decision makers and the people involved in the process
that influence that purchasing decision.
There's multiple figures or people that that decision has to go through.
Yeah.
So they talk about like a heat map in an organization.
So understanding that again, there's influencers, there are the actual decision
makers, um, you know, and others that maybe even like, you know, a, um, or a
racy who's responsible, who's accountable, who do you consult, who do you inform?
Same thing around buying decisions.
And so understand all of those.
And I find particularly with larger organizations, which I'm usually
dealing with like large enterprise companies that, um, there's more and more.
It's not just the business leader and procurement.
It's finance, it's risk, it's compliance.
It's all of these other people.
It makes a lot of sense.
A lot of sense.
I started raving fans back in the day and that was monumental, pivotal to
figuring that out and opening the eyes that, wow, okay, you can't just go out
to the decision maker and have success.
But I think you're right because the world's become, you know, the
information age is well underway at this point.
And so anybody in the team has access to pretending they know how the CFO is
supposed to think, um, you know, or pretending they understand how this is
supposed to affect the HR department and beyond.
And so it creates a greater need for transparency, which creates a greater
need for inclusion and the process of decision making.
So that to me, it makes perfect sense that we are headed towards more
involvement, not less.
So I'm glad you brought that up.
That's something that I needed to meditate on and think about.
Uh, note for self.
Meanwhile, you and I met under almost an extreme radical candor experience.
Um, and so that, that was a lot of fun to me.
It almost was not a lot of fun for either one of us, but I'm very, uh, very
conscious of who comes on this show and, and how we showcase the individuals who
come on and, uh, you met me very well.
Um, even though I came in challenging pretty hard, uh, I'm
not saying, you know, hold on.
Like I get it.
You got everything out of the sun on your resume, but we're gonna, we're
gonna pull that aside and talk here.
Like, you know, person to person and, and, uh, you, you really honored me, um,
with that process and I could see.
The, um, I could see the depths of your leadership and being able to handle
that with a stranger who's got a podcast that's fairly obscure.
I mean, we're not, we're not Joe Rogan.
Um, and I don't, I don't pretend we are.
Um, so it's like, well, do I really want to take the heat or not?
Um, and go through this experience and I appreciate that you honor me with that,
but I hadn't considered the reality of radical candor being abused.
And that makes sense too.
I'm not in corporate.
I never have to deal with corporate, but I can see how with that concept, having
been, uh, put front and center for more than 10 years, naturally people are
going to use that to their advantage, which often means manipulation of, of a resource.
No, no different than my child who learns that.
Thank you.
Gets extra candy at Halloween.
We're the same way.
Oh, thank you.
Happy Halloween.
Right.
I'm going to, I'm going to rake it in.
So we tend to do things for a self-serving purpose before we start to inherently
recognize, before we start to recognize like, oh, I, it actually just feels good.
To say thank you and to be sincere.
So tell me more about that radical candor and the abuse of it.
What does that look like and the leadership world and in the day to day, uh,
efforts of trying to run and scale businesses.
It's, I see a couple of things related to it.
So the abuse of it is, you know, people who can be just jerks and I might use
different words or expletives if I were not on this podcast.
You're welcome to, but no, no, I'll keep it PC.
Uh, you know, I, I feel like, you know, so they'll be very direct
and rude in giving feedback when two things, one is I don't believe they've
built trust with the person they're giving that feedback to.
And so that, that for me is an abuse.
Like I think you, you earn the right to have that kind of conversation.
Um, if you know the individual, you have built trust.
Now you did say, Jackson, we came into when you and I met, we had a radically
candid conversation with one another.
And, and I do believe there's exceptions and I think that was, it worked.
But in the case of a performance with an employee, um, I would hope you've
actually built our relationships with someone where they believe that you
do actually come from a place of care and compassion in wanting to improve
their performance, the behavior, whatever, whatever it is you do, you
are giving coaching on.
So that's where I sit back to that.
I'm going to take you back because you, you nailed it and I don't want to close
the door on it because of the world we're in, most of the people who are
coming on our platform are podcasters or leaders who are striving to get in
the door where it's not their home.
Right.
It's not their audience and people are so sensitive.
And I think I'm going to put a little bit of a, the blame, if you will,
on Alex and Filippo.
I love Alex and he is doing so good at protecting the podcasters and getting
people together for the right reasons.
But a lot of people now feel very entitled to get on shows.
And so they're coming in and I, I was, I felt what you said.
I was like, man, that's right.
I don't have a position where these guests trust me yet.
I'm just one of the many, many, many podcasters out there and that's how
they see it and they're burning through it without looking at who's doing what.
But we have such a responsibility to protect our audiences and to make sure
our audiences get as much as possible and don't, don't end up falling in love
with somebody who's going to love bomb the heck out of them corporate style.
Then walk them off of a cliff because they're not, they don't have the corporate
executive skills to really assess.
Am I, am I following the right person or not?
So I'd love to know what do you recommend for the podcast hosts out there?
Leaders like Alex and myself, where's the fine line between making sure the
guests we have and are honoring is truly legitimately amazing at what they do.
And accidentally putting a complete fraud on stage because we didn't, we
didn't ask the hard questions that they were avoiding.
How do we do that?
Uh, that, that, that's a tough one.
I do think, I do think there are times I said, I think our early, we hadn't built
any trust, we were brand new in our conversation.
And so I do believe there, there are times it's appropriate to have those kind of
conversations where you don't yet have a relationship or trust built.
And so the second part though, and the other abuse of radical candor is
how you deliver the message and what you did exceptionally well when we had that.
Even the way in which you couch that you wanted to give me some feedback
in my opinion is, you know, the most effective way to do it.
And so I think you need to ask the tough questions.
You need to give some feedback, but how you deliver it is critically important.
So that'll be one and the other just in terms of how do you ensure you've got,
you don't have fraudsters coming on who make all kinds of great claims is, you
know, having great people on your team to help you with the research around it.
There's far too much of fakeness out there, the ability to pay for play into this
and then end of that.
What's scary is they're so easy to, those are so easy to recognize.
What's scary to me is the ones who aren't easy to, because we're, you know, we,
I think maybe I take it for granted, but the guys with the sunglasses and the
fake car behind them and the plane they don't own, like, it's so easy to add up.
I'm like, well, oh, duh.
But it's not like, those are the easy ones to get off my back.
Those are the easy ones to get off my stage.
It's the ones who are subtle.
I I'll, I'll go to the profanity sign.
If I were to invent an urban dictionary term, it would be the quiet bitch.
It would be the person who is always nice and kind to you, as long as they're
getting what they want out of it.
And the moment that they aren't, they still stay nice and kind, but they slowly
start to sabotage everything behind the scenes because they're not getting what
they want out of the experience.
And that, that can be a male that can be a female, but it, that, that type of
personality drives me crazy because people can't usually see that that person
is one of the most destructive people on the planet.
Yeah.
Uh, for so authentic is used in many, many contexts and abused and in one's
brand and how they appear is exactly how you're describing for so many.
There's this great filter that they put on for the rest of the world.
And then in IRL is my children will often text me in real life.
Uh, you know, they're very, very different.
Um, and so I encourage like, there's no different version of Victoria on screen,
off screen, digitally, um, versus in real life.
Now you and I were joking that I have like public Facebook, public Instagram.
Uh, the reality is, you know, the profanity lace tank tops that I think are funny to
wear at the gym.
I don't need clients to see.
So it's not like in the public realm, although I'm always aware it could, could
get out there and so anything I post online, but that's just, that's about,
no, your audience.
Um, but also that's the unfiltered me.
So no matter where you see me, it's the same version of Victoria.
There's nothing fake about it.
Well, it's absolutely it's like Webster's dictionary and urban dictionary.
Um, right.
There's a place and a time for it.
So Bible dictionary too, whole separate matter.
Well, thank you.
This is huge.
Uh, this is going to tee us up really well for our deep dive into abundance,
the accountability.
Um, and this is one of those concepts that concepts that truly has a global impact.
And there's different paradigms and perspectives for how it applies globally,
but these topics absolutely need to be discussed.
So we'll come right back and we'll dive into your vision.
All right.
Welcome in to vision pros live with Jackson Callum.
I'm your show host.
We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs and guest leaders who are
building fantastic visions out there.
Hey, what's up?
Welcome into another episode of vision pros live.
I am laughing because I've got two massive mistakes as a podcast.
So I'm just going to admit right out the gate.
Number one, sponsored by spelt wrong.
Forgot to tell my team about that.
Number two, the ultimate cardinal mistake for somebody who has a last name
that nobody can pronounce.
I'm like, Oh my gosh, I've got a global, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like,
I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like,
Oh my gosh, I've got a global leader and Victoria.
Hell, Palatia, Palatia, and I'm going to butcher it.
It was so bad because I've done so much research to make sure that I like know
who she is, know what she's up to and know how awesome she is.
And that slipped my mind.
So if you're, uh, if you have a tendency to be so hard on yourself, you can't
forgive yourself right now is my example moment, get over it.
We're all going to make mistakes.
I know she's going to, she's going to certainly, um, honor us with her time
and presence, but before I bring Victoria back on and we dive into abundance.
Uh, through accountability and how to leverage accountability as the means
by which you grow and scale your brands.
Um, I want to give a couple of resources in advance.
So number one is Dave Maros, hard to kill podcast.
I highly recommend it.
He is a leader in the military space and he's helping a hundred thousand
veterans collectively lose 2 million pounds in order to combat and fight
the depression that they typically go through as they come back from
their service in the armed forces.
He's an award winning podcaster and leader.
Um, and he's going to be at the military influencer expo in Georgia
here in a couple of months leading that he's also helping with the growth of
grunt style, which is a massive brand in the military space and, and this guy
truly cares about helping both civilians as well as veterans with their, their
health, he believes in feeling good, looking good, and then sorry, looking
good, feeling good, and then doing good.
And he used the Socrates quote on me to actually get me back into shape.
Um, and to start working on my shape.
And that's a big deal because I've been a skinny fat guy for a very long time.
So I highly recommend checking out how Dave can help you maximize your life.
Then on the other side, there's magic's productions with Peyton childers magic's
productions helped us with one of our events.
They, they did a broadcast style for a little bitty event in a local,
in a Brazilian restaurant and Dallas, and he brought in different camera angles
and different audio styles.
We have so much B roll footage that we can use from that event.
And here's 25 year old Peyton running that with the hospitality skills of a 45
year old veteran who's worked at James Bitterwood running restaurant.
Um, how did he learn to get so good at this while he was on the championship,
uh, video production crew for the Sam Houston university, um, football team
when, when they won their championship, he's got a ring from that.
Then he went on to do video production for the Texas Rangers.
They ended up winning the championship that year too.
So he's got like a Midas touch for championship ism.
So make sure to contact, uh, Peyton and see what he's up to and how he can help
with both podcast production as well as AV set up for your conferences.
I absolutely have enjoyed working with him to the utmost degree.
Then there's the water project.
The water project is one of those, um, causes that you may have never heard of
before these children and these communities, they don't even have
access to clean drinking water.
There's millions of people on this earth who are in that position.
And I, when I learned about that, I decided not to take it for granted that
I've never been thirsty in my life.
Um, in fact, I dove into the water project to see what they were up to.
And I saw that they treat this like a Kickstarter project.
But what's really cool is not only do you get to fund one specific community,
but they document the journey of what they actually create with it.
So if you end up giving $10 to the water project to a specific community,
you get to see the outcome of what they do with it, whether it's a sand dam
or borehole well, you get to learn about the experience, you can share
with your friends and family too.
Um, we, we, we have 8 billion people on this earth to help.
And so if I have the privilege to rock this microphone, um, I'm gonna at the
same time, use that opportunity to hopefully draw some attention for an
experience like this, these children on our screen right now, they remind me of
my kids on Christmas day, and this is just about the water they get to drink.
So we have so much opportunity to give back and do more.
If there's another cause that you would love to see us talk about and bring on,
please don't hesitate to drop that cause or link to it in the comments so we can
learn about it.
You never know the ripple effect that you'll have and what we might contribute
ourselves as well as those in our audience.
Let's pull together.
Let's help a lot of people.
Uh, for me, that's, that's what, uh, lights my fire and helps me get the most out of
life.
So without further ado, Victoria set the record straight.
How do I pronounce your last name?
Peltier Peltier.
Okay.
Victoria Peltier.
I am going to register that to my memory.
It is such an honor to have you here.
Thank you for joining me on vision pros life.
Thanks for having me.
It's great.
That's absolutely, um, diving into think about the people that you're serving.
What's your vision for those that you serve?
For those that I'm serving, I, and this is very connected to, and it's a big shift in
terms of how I used to view success and success being the vision I was, you know,
striving towards.
And for me, it's about creating in workplaces in community in the world at large, you know,
a better place, um, when I leave it than when I've come in.
And so specifically for me, uh, I think it's about creating a better place for me.
Uh, and it's funny, you talk about accountability and maybe we'll, we'll get into further
talking about metrics, you know, most businesses and incentivize certain things, think about,
you know, sales or growth, you know, the revenue profitability, um, and that drives certain
behavior.
Uh, and for me, I've shifted to my vision is creating a place where I can, I can articulate
the purpose of the organization and our clients down to the individual level, um, of those
within our organization such that it then becomes connected to their own, um, ideally
their own passions.
Certainly the values they have in terms of, you know, the organization that we're working
for and a place where they feel that they absolutely belong and they're further highly
engaged, which that in itself drives the business results.
So I look to create that vision where people, I don't expect that people are going to stay
there forever and retire like my parents' generation might have.
Um, but to make it the best place, a place where they do see that, uh, I am fiercely loyal.
It does not come, um, you know, without me managing strong performance and setting high
expectations, but they know that I deeply care.
Um, and they can trust me on that journey.
Absolutely.
And I love that you talk about metrics.
So we will definitely be circling back around to the, the healthy balance behind, you know,
what metrics matter.
How do we value metrics?
Um, what, what are we ever looking in that space?
There's, there's a lot to learn there.
Um, I'm very aware more I can learn there too.
Um, what's your vision for you personally?
What do you see for yourself on the horizon?
I, um, I have held CEO titles in the past of much smaller organizations.
I want to hold that title on a much larger scale.
I want to prove that the fortune 500 companies that I've spent much of my last 15 years,
and before that were lots of private companies, the last 15 years have been fortune 100
companies.
I want to prove that you can deliver strong business results with exactly what we're just
talking about in terms of how I want to lead in the right kind of culture.
You can do the right thing for your employees, for your customers and have amazing business
results.
So my vision is to sit with a much, much bigger, higher platform to be able to do that.
Um, I held senior roles in these companies, but I want to sit at the helm and very specifically
show that this is top down in terms of the kind of, you know, environment I want us all
to be working in.
Okay.
Um, that's a, that's definitely big.
So what, what, what are some of the dream organizations that come to mind in relation
to that?
Uh, I'd love to say some of the organizations I've worked for, I'll be careful not to name
names.
The reality, some of the companies I worked for, I believe their culture has left a lot
to be desired.
And, um, I wouldn't mind circling back at some point, um, to come and sit at the helm
of those, um, to create a very different, um, experience for them.
Now, uh, it's likely the one commonality will be, it's going to be likely a B2B professional
services.
My whole career is there.
I actually really thrive on the complexity that comes with corporate clients you're serving.
And then, um, it's either their customers or their employees that you're directly touching
in many of those, um, forget like some of the technology implementations and that kind
of thing.
Um, so it's probably going to be a global tech company or, um, a broad services company
where I can marry my passion around leadership and culture, diversity, inclusion, again,
all of the, a lot of the things around the people, um, with the products or services
that we, that we offer and also related to that vision.
I do sit on a couple of boards.
I hope to also sit on boards of publicly traded companies to also be able to influence and
hold accountable the CEO and their teams to some of what I would do as a CEO directly.
So this does need to be a fortune 100, fortune 500 company then.
It doesn't, I, it doesn't have to be Jackson.
It's, you know, on one hand, I could go and make a ton of money going into the private
equity world, into one of their portfolio companies.
And it is an avenue I'm exploring.
I've done tons of merger and acquisitions, integration, turnarounds, and been a large
scale operator of businesses.
And that plays very well into, you know, the PE world.
And I can make a lot of money as they exit in, you know, after they hold the company
for three or five or seven years maximum.
So I could do that, but the end vision, I'd love to have the platform of a really large,
publicly traded company.
You know, the private equity ones, you're, you'll make a lot of money doing it.
It's the platform I want to be able to show.
Like your listeners can go and look at my LinkedIn profile and see some of the companies
that I've worked for and highly successful blue chip companies.
But again, culturally, I think there's something lacking there.
You can, you can have strong business performance and do the right thing.
So that's the reason for eventually landing at fortune 500 publicly traded company.
So I have a much wider audience to lead from the top in the way in which I work.
I'll put first class business on your radar.
I'll throw it out there.
We'll circle back afterwards for sure.
Before we do that, going into the darkest of subjects for our show, what's the worst
leadership experience that you've ever had?
Me as a leader or me experiencing it?
Whichever, whichever experience is going to most benefit the audience.
I, one of my earliest executive leadership roles, I worked for a CEO and he had a co-founder.
I was leading almost all parts of the organ.
I was a general manager and chief operating officer.
And I discovered fraud within two members of my team.
And one of our clients and the co-founder.
And I, after discovering it, I took immediate action with the two individuals on my team,
whom I terminated immediately.
And I remember going to the CEO, my leader, and I said, like, we have to address this.
So clearly we're not going to be, you know, we'll need to think about our client and what
message we go back to their organization.
He would likely get fired for what he's done.
What I am concerned about is his co-founder, who was just kind of out there, still a little
bit of a sales person, not actively involved other than that.
And ultimately he came back to me and he said, Victoria, I'm not going to do anything.
He said, I'm not in a position to buy him out, nor am I going to ask him to step aside
from the business.
And I was shocked.
I was in my early to mid 20s, I think I was 24, 25.
Probably at this point.
And even then I knew how wrong this was and how it violated what I stood for from a values
and integrity standpoint.
And me as a very public face to the company, I led the commercial teams.
I led all of our operations.
So I ultimately left as a result of that.
And I said, I couldn't stand behind it.
But at the same time, that was tough for me.
And I actually left without a job to go to.
At the time, it meant that much to me.
And I didn't know what was next.
And I was a relatively new mother.
And I just think he had such an opportunity to be the right kind of leader and do the
right thing for me and for our business.
But then you did it.
You're the one who made that decision.
You were 25 going on 45.
You know, with a mind to catch that.
And then the, I don't know if it's alpha or behavior or just the integrity to be willing
to move on.
It reminds me of a movie called Arbitrage.
And I forget that.
Richard Greer, I believe.
And he's cheating the system financially to keep their super, super, super powerful company
And his daughter is catching the reality of what's going on.
And she's put in that situation to have to deal with it.
And I don't think the ending of the story was simple or was the right decisions were
made.
I think it was just kind of, you know, let's just kind of shove this under the rug.
But I just can't imagine how much harder it would have been to sleep had you not made
the decision you made.
And on how much that would affect your future in ways that sometimes we turn a blind eye
to as leaders.
Or we say, you know, no, no, no, I don't want to fully disrupt my life or other things.
It's not fair.
This isn't even my deal.
But I support wholeheartedly what you did.
And I'm like, man, that's cool.
That doesn't, you know, I hear that happen very often.
So what's the best leadership experience that you've ever had?
I feel really fortunate to have many as a leader of people.
But I will talk about one of the few leaders for me that I really look, I don't feel like
I have tons of like have had great mentors.
In fact, I feel like I've had lots of leaders that I look to and aspire to be nothing like.
I learned to do things differently because of what they did.
But I had one who operated with Radical Kinder with me.
Richard is his name.
And I was on a journey towards evolving my own leadership style.
I learned I had the nickname as the Iron Maiden when I was in my like mid to late 20s.
And that was a fear of being vulnerable, of sharing some of my lived experiences, of being
a young queer leader, the only one in the room.
And so I wore this mask all the time.
So I learned I had that nickname and I was on the journey to sort of pivot and be really
intentional about being much more empathetic and compassionate.
All the things we've talked about so far.
And I still wasn't yet there.
And I remember Richard said to me at one point, he said, you know, Victoria, it is okay to
be vulnerable.
We were going through like significant transformation within our organization.
And we'd acquired a few companies as well.
And it was tough.
And I think I was trying to put on this tough exterior, even though I was generally more
empathetic with our team, but I was trying to put on this very tough exterior because
there was just so much change and transformation.
And he saw that.
And just telling me to like, there's okay for there to be chinks in the armor and let
that ear guard down a little bit.
So as much as I thought I was doing better, he cared enough to tell me that I still needed
to be better.
And we are still, and that was like 20 years ago maybe.
And we're still.
And I was talking to him maybe like a month ago and told him like the power that that
brought to me.
That's awesome.
It's like a fine line between telling somebody what to do, granting permission, you know,
and just kind of like leaving it there as an opportunity for you to take.
And then you had the opportunity to kind of marinate on that and experiment with it and
take it much further maybe than you would have even had done had he tried to force it
upon you.
Or made you dive into some lesson on it.
So that's cool that it rings so loud and clear still.
If this was the last opportunity you ever had to share a powerful lesson, what powerful
lesson can other visionaries learn from your experience?
I have a favorite quote.
It's by George Adair.
And it's that everything you've ever wanted lives on the other side of fear.
And being a visionary, being the kind of what I refer to as whole human leader, the
sympathetic, vulnerable, authentic leader is uncomfortable.
And I think when you lean into the things that make you uncomfortable or that you fear,
I think is out of those situations where the growth and the bigger opportunities come.
So I tell people, step into your discomfort.
I love it.
And I got George Adair's last name spelt right.
So that was good news.
One victory in that realm today.
So all right.
So step into the discomfort.
What does that mean to you?
There's things that we do every day.
And sometimes Jackson, I think it's like they're really small things.
So for me, that early journey from Iron Maiden to now my nickname is the turtle.
I'm still very tough and resilient on the outside.
But I'm marshmallow-y on the inside.
What was uncomfortable for me was I'm super, I know this is shocking for your listeners
here, but I'm a tight personality.
I'm like very competitive.
And I'm like go, go, go.
And I was very all business all the time.
An early thing that just made me uncomfortable was to not walk into the meeting and dive
right into the business agenda.
I had to be intentional to say no, Victoria, stop for a second.
You're going to spend the first five minutes of the meeting chit-chatting, engaging with
people, talking about what their weekend was like, what did you do last night, that kind
of thing.
That was really small.
But that was not natural or comfortable for me 20 years ago.
Now it's sort of innate in who I am.
And I do it all the time.
I talk to strangers in elevators and all those things.
So that's a really simple one.
But to the one that Richard gave me, that advice on being vulnerable, that is exceptionally
uncomfortable for most.
And it can be baby steps.
Like just, hey, I don't know what I don't know.
Like just the ability to even admit that.
I think a lot of people, I think we've become very comfortable with the uncomfortable in
many respects, especially anybody who's choosing to be awesome, right?
Who's choosing to be their best self, right?
You then get used to like, oh, OK, well, you can justify if you're doing so many uncomfortable
things in life, it kind of becomes a scapegoat from saying like, oh, well, I don't need the
self-skill.
Right?
I'm doing all the hard things.
And so it's a very strange trap that as entrepreneurs, this is where knowing your blind spots comes
into play, like having a coach or having another leader that will be vulnerable with you and
making sure have I have I established a level of trust of those around me where they will
will legitimately challenge where I'm not willing to drive into what is uncomfortable.
And I do.
I think it's the very subtle things that we often overlook as entrepreneurs rather than
the blatant obvious things like, oh, eat the frog and make the 10 calls you don't want
to make.
Like that's that's kind of easy to do once you've been an executive for a long time.
But there's other things that are like shut up and listen, Jackson.
A little bit harder to do sometimes.
That's right.
OK.
So abundance via accountability.
We've kind of alluded to that a lot.
Let's give you some time to kind of dive into either that directly or if you want to steer
the ship into another another angle of what you can do to help people be unstoppable and
and be as impactful as they're meant to be.
I'll let you drive us.
Well, so I do a ton of and zero my my website, which is predominantly about my public speaking.
And I've been speaking for over 20 years, the last 12 or so professionally.
And that shift came not only because I started to get asked to do more and more speaking
engagements.
It came when I started sharing the more personal elements of my storytelling.
So I'm not just here to talk to you about facts and figures around leadership or diversity
and inclusion or whatever industry event that I'm there to speak on.
I'm there to tell you what I learned from it.
And in some cases, I talk on resilience is one of those things.
I'm going to tell you why I'm uniquely qualified.
And that means I have a very harrowing like early year story.
I was embarrassed of that.
I would not have shared that as openly as I do now.
So I speak on it to make others feel connection with their own version of whatever adversity
or challenge or if it's a leadership context or diversity context therein by sharing those
personal elements so they feel much more connected to it, but also really actionable insights
that they will take away.
What can I do to help them prove and so on from a resilience standpoint?
I talk about healthy resilience and there being like five steps that I've learned.
So I do that on public stages.
But then people want to come to me to ideally coach them one on one.
Now, I'm in transition, so I have much more capacity than I normally would to do that.
I always want to maintain like one or two people that I'm going to coach outside of the fact that I do that from a work perspective.
And I coach them on both generally personal branding because I think that's so critically important to success in,
I'll say in business, but in life generally and thinking about the broader foundational elements of personal brand versus what you do and who you do it for.
And then I also will coach on career or executive coaching to help them make that leap,
help them work through some of the things that we've talked about now, the things that they're fearful of,
even asking for that next position, talking about their value and worth as well.
So again, that's my side hustle.
Right now, it's most of what I do until I land in that next C-suite job.
But it brings me great joy and passion to do it.
It's very connected to the vision and legacy that I want to leave.
Absolutely. Speaking of TEDxMiami, tell me about that.
I'm so excited. Who knew it took so many months to get it live?
So I had been approached by TEDxMiami to be their opening speaker.
Thank you. The theme of the event was resilience.
And so, you know, it's and it was so for me, this was something I've always wanted.
So I sort of put it out there and I had said, I want them to approach me.
I'm not applying to do this. I want them to come to me, which they did.
So my goal is for it to go viral so that the main main TED stage asked me to come and speak.
So it should be live in the next couple of weeks.
And so I did talk about healthy resilience.
Yeah, you talked about it. You got invited to do it.
You didn't have to go through the application process.
I know for some of you out there, that's mind blowing.
I know for some of you, you're not like, well, like that happened. Yes, it happens.
That happens when you're building up the presence of somebody who's got something that the audience desires.
In this case, it's TEDx that desire that from Victoria.
So it says a lot about her magnetism as a leader.
If you're new to her today, you don't have to continue to stay new to her.
You've got YouTube and Instagram and all sorts of places where you can go study up and see why what's what's at depth here.
And I would say if you're the type of person who understands the value of accountability
and you're not in full abundance with your ability to magnify it, that's the opportunity.
It's it's looking at it, saying, OK, how much more can I get out of understanding all this?
So let's dive in a little bit deeper, Victoria, on that abundance via accountability that I make that up.
Did you make that up?
up what I know it's titled that we put in there.
What's that mean to you?
Well, I think you achieve abundance.
Actually, you came up with the title by the way,
so good work on that.
But that was, you know, out of our conversation.
So I once had a guest call me out and say,
that's not what my submission was about.
And I was like, oh, and there was an important preposition
that I didn't see.
That makes sense.
Okay, well, we'll cover both angles then.
But yeah, so go ahead.
You take the switch of direction you want.
I do believe you can achieve whatever you put your mind to.
But it comes with, and so I actually, accountability,
but I sign a lot of my social media posts with two hashtags.
One is unstoppable.
That's me, that's my life's philosophy.
But the other connected to accountability, no excuses.
Now, we can't always control the adversity or challenge
that comes our way.
We can change how we react or respond to it.
And we can, I'm also not saying, do not feel the emotion.
I'm an extremely emotional person.
I cry it like the Humane Society commercials.
Feel the emotion, whether visceral that it may be,
if it's anger, it could be sadness,
but then you have a choice in terms of how you're gonna
move forward and be strategic and be intentional
about how you do that.
And with that comes the accountability.
And you talked earlier about making sure you find people
to give you some perspective and give you some feedback.
So that'll be a part of it,
where you have the opportunity to have metrics.
And I'm thinking now specifically,
I'll say specifically in business,
but it can be for your podcasters around,
it's just speaking out, hey, I wanna get this many more
downloads, subscribers, all of these,
setting these goals for yourself.
And then the action that comes to drive towards that.
In my case, so for Tedx, that was a goal I said,
but a big part of that came from the strength of my brand,
not just the message I can deliver.
And that is much accountability in making
and carving time out of my calendar
to write long form posts, to make sure I'm engaging
with like others in my network,
to consistently be posting all of those things.
So you can achieve those goals or objectives, the abundance.
But-
Something we did different right there.
And I gotta highlight this for the audience
because I see too many of us being boneheaded
in how we go about this reality.
We go to our doctor and we say, great, I wanna lose weight.
So I'm gonna read 10 minutes in this book per day.
I'm gonna go jump on the trampoline with my kids,
just doing, summer salts or whatever.
And I'm gonna go ahead and, I don't know,
brush my teeth with more vigor every single day.
We come up with these really stupid ideas.
And let me reset that.
I'm gonna send as many applications as possible to TEDx.
Right?
I'm gonna try to connect with everybody
who's anybody related to TED or bother all the speakers
who've already been on TED and see if I can beg one of them
to help me get in the door and get on stage.
Right?
This is more practical than my silly analogy applies to.
I see so many entrepreneurs, leaders, visionaries,
think they understand what metrics,
what activity they need to do in order to drive the results.
But you had a really strange capacity.
You could see that, no,
it wasn't the amount of applications I submit,
the amount of people who've already been on stage
that I should bother.
You chose to do entirely different,
go entirely different route to end up on that stage.
How do entrepreneurs do that?
How do they lean into doing the right work
instead of what everybody else is saying they should do?
So yes, I took a very unique way
to land on the TEDx stage.
So my brand I've been building for a very long time.
I would state that many of the steps you spoke about,
if someone of your listeners goal is to get on TEDx,
then actually you wanna build a plan
the way you just described it.
You want to get onto the TED website,
see when all the events are in all the different cities
and therefore where there's a TEDx event.
You need to find the organizer.
It's a lot of work.
It's not a single application.
You need to find each of those organizers and pitch them.
And as you said, go that extra mile
and talk to the speakers that have already been
at those events who can maybe connect you to,
give you some insight.
So again, mine was less traditional,
but it came as a result of something
I have been extremely consistent
and held myself accountable to for two decades
around the strength of my brand
and how do I engage with my network
and stay at the forefront consistently
to be known as a thought leader
and an engaging speaker in this instance
to get on that stage.
Yeah, that is mind blowing to me
that you know that you did things completely different
and yet you can still have the capacity
to understand and honor the reality
that some people are gonna go,
I guess straight for the kill shot if you will,
straight for the common way.
My fear for them though
is that they're gonna end up sacrificing a lot of what,
they want the same type of results
that you're going to get out of it,
but they're not gonna have the same type of results
from not putting in the two decades of work.
You probably have a very strategic path
towards the popularity and virality
that you want this experience to be.
And so it's hard for me to meet people where they're at
and where they wanna be met.
When this is more about me
than this about everybody else listening right now,
just to be clear for everybody,
then when I know that what they want to get out of it
is not in correlation with where they want to be met.
You know, how do you deal with that as a leader
when you can see that the observation
of like what people are asking from you
is not in alignment with where they wanna go,
but they won't look, they won't listen.
How do you, what do you do with that?
It's tough and there comes,
go back to the phrase we started with around radical candor.
You know, I think of there was a woman
who had approached me to help her with her personal brand.
And what I realized quickly was it was to gain more clients.
She's an executive coach.
And so I push and challenge greatly,
what are your goals and objectives for doing this?
Because the strategy I'm gonna, you know,
coach you on will be different
based upon those goals and objectives.
And in this case, also the audience you're trying to attract.
And I think she thought that after like six weeks
of working with me, like she actually said,
she's like, I don't have any more clients yet.
And I remember telling her like,
it's not gonna take 20 years.
I've just been working on mine for 20 years,
but it's also not happening in six weeks
or the three month engagement
that we've currently signed up for.
Like this is a journey.
And so that came with some really tough feedback
and having to push her so hard
on what the goals and objectives are for doing this.
I have another client who says she's investing in herself
by working on her brand,
but it keeps coming back what it sounds like
is what her company wants from her in terms of sales.
I'm like, so which is it?
I said, cause again, the strategy is gonna be different.
I do think you still need to go through the similar work
around brand identity,
but the strategy for what you go out there
and the intentionality or on who you,
what content you publish,
who you engage with are different.
And since your question, Jackson,
it's about asking those tough questions
and getting people to like stare back at the person
in the mirror and figure that stuff out.
And then sometimes calling BS on what their response is.
Well, I love it.
I appreciate it.
We're not gonna get to the bottom of the barrel
of all the wisdom that you're able to share.
And I appreciate that.
I'd love to have you back.
Those of you listening in,
if you wanna get to the bottom of the barrel faster,
the best thing that you can do is reach out to Victoria
and see where she's at in her journey,
seeing, you know, sharing vulnerably where you're at,
being able to address your own BS.
And I was, we all have it.
You know, we can pretend we don't,
but we all have it in somewhere.
And that's why, again, if you think you don't,
you just got blind spots you can't see.
And so approaching a leader and looking for like,
where are mine and how do I get out of my own way
can be one of the greatest opportunities
for finding your abundance
and moving into your own opportunity
if you're on the route to greater leadership,
greater capacity.
So with that said, in the action steps below,
you'll see how to connect to Victoria.
You'll also see we put the resources on the page
and we have a call to action in the top right corner.
It says, be our guest.
If you also wanna be our guest
and come on and share your vision,
you don't have to be in the top 2%
of speakers globally like Victoria is to come on our show.
And you don't have to be Simon Sinek to come on our show
or Kim Scott, although Simon and Kim, we'd love to have you.
The rest of you too, you could be Jane Doe.
And your vision might be to be the best local plumber
that you can be and provide to your local community.
That service at top capacity.
And there's a lot of value and wisdom
in those types of individuals.
And so whatever your vision is,
don't hesitate to come and share with us.
This is a place where we would honor that.
And we look forward to seeing all of you on the next episode.
Victoria, thanks so much for being here today.
This was awesome.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision.