to get you introduced to Barbara Ann, unless I did already.
Oh yeah, that's done.
Oh yeah.
You guys met?
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Oh, that's awesome.
How was that?
It was great, great, great.
We got on great.
You know we're live, right?
But yes, I love that connection.
I really enjoyed our conversation.
We're gonna be talking more.
For sure, that's awesome.
Well, very good.
Well, let's dive right in.
Let's talk about the three resources
that you recommend for other visionary leaders out there.
What's helped you get to where you are
and have clarity for where you're going?
Okay, so the biggest, I would say, resource
is a course slash book.
It's called the Course Design Formula
and it's by Rebecca Cuevas.
It's how to teach anything to anyone online.
And I've taken her course and that's what I've used.
It's an instructional design,
but really in a way that is understandable
and easy to apply.
Well, easy.
You know, simple to apply.
Not easy necessarily.
Sure.
But it's a fantastic way to understand
how you need to organize information
in order to basically get it into someone else's head.
So it's initially about teaching online courses,
but I use it for everything that I do.
I use it to outline my book.
I use it to outline my posts, even communications.
It's a fantastic tool.
So I'll give you the link.
You can put it in the show notes or something.
Absolutely, that'd be awesome.
Okay, that's number one.
You got two more?
Yes, so there is a book that I have enjoyed immensely
and I have read it multiple times
and I have posted notes all over it.
I should pull it out to show you.
It's called Words That Change Minds
by Shelley Rose Charbet.
And it's, I think, based on NLP,
but it's, you know, taking, like,
NLP is really an interesting discipline,
but you have to basically study it for years.
It's quite an endeavor.
They overcomplicate it.
Yeah, so this is still a complicated book
to learn and apply, but it's really a simplification
and adding some concepts to it.
But really it allows you to understand people's tendencies
and how they may react to certain inputs
based on how they speak and how they, you know,
how they express themselves.
It's fascinating.
Words That Change Minds.
So that's an excellent book.
I recommend to almost everybody I meet.
Awesome.
Very, very good book.
Number three.
So number three is a tool.
It's an online tool and it's mind maps.
And I absolutely adore mind maps.
It just, it's like, it's even more useful
than journaling, I find.
You can journal even with a mind map.
It just helps you to get your thoughts together,
to organize them, to, you know, like,
figuring out the proper hierarchy between your thoughts.
You can start getting everything out
and then you put it and then you organize it
and then you realize, you know, this thing here belongs here
and it just helps you to clarify.
I mean, I use it even to clarify my to-do list, you know,
what are the big buckets?
What are the things that can go off?
So I love mind maps and I think it's not used enough.
I think that's an interesting point.
There's, if you are struggling with your own ideas
and you've never tried a mind map,
then I highly recommend giving it a try and testing it out.
There's, some of us grew up with schools
where we were blessed to like learn about
all these different methods, you know,
and so once you've, but you have to practice these
in order to see like what works for you.
But for some people, mind maps, just like Sophia said,
they really rock your mind, they open you up.
If you don't like outlines,
then you'll probably like a mind map.
I love outlines, but I know that my kids,
they very much are more creative than I am.
They like more abstract and they think clearer
when the opportunity kind of space things out.
So there's a place even for me to use them
when I'm organizing a whole ton of information
and I don't quite know what goes in what order,
a mind map is a great way to play around with it.
These concepts may sound silly and may be like,
oh my gosh, how's this applied to leadership and visionary
as well, if you have teams that are helping you build,
then it's important to know what resources
can help your teams also grow and become more effective
in ways that they can contribute to what you're doing.
So all of those are-
And your clients too, I mean,
I help people with their LinkedIn content
and I have adapted my content creation program
to work with a mind map because I was using a mind map.
So I thought, well, why not my clients?
So I subscribed them to this free mind mapping software
and then I created the whole template with all the prompts
and then they can just fill it out.
That's fantastic.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's an excellent brainstorming tool in that regard as well.
As for the NLP, we talked about
neuro-linguistic programming a little bit
and how it can be complicated.
And some people think, well, if it's complex,
it shouldn't have a place in life.
Well, algebra is complex.
So is division, so is multiplication, so is reading, right?
But life is far more complex without those tools
than it is with the right tools to be able to succeed.
So let's all look at this and say,
what can, I hope that as an audience you take in,
what is right for you?
You think, all right, what can I apply from the situation?
Today, we're gonna be talking about bringing
the joy of your craft, what you love doing,
into your marketing and how Sophie can help
with that process.
We'll be right back.
We'll dive right into that and then we'll talk about
her vision as well and where she's going from here.
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 everybody?
Welcome into another episode of Vision Pros Live.
I'm your show host, Jackson Callum,
founder and CEO of First Class Business.
And I'm excited to have Sophie Lechner on
and talk about really one of my favorite subjects
to not talk about.
And that is the subject of joy.
A lot of people struggle with that concept.
When I was young, I absolutely hated that word.
I struggled to understand and feel joy
and I didn't realize that's why I didn't like it.
And through the process of coming to appreciate happiness
and peace in general, I came to finally understand
the value of it.
A lot of you are probably like, how do you hate joy?
Like, wow, I love what I do and et cetera.
Well, I'm glad I'm there now and we wanna explore
how do we help the business owners and the leaders
and the visionaries out there gravitate towards
talking about joy or bringing in joy naturally
into their marketing.
And here's why.
Most people out there that we see are marketing
a product or a service and nobody cares.
I'm sorry, but nobody cares about your product or service.
They care about how what you do relates to them
and it has nothing to do with a product or service.
So we're gonna talk about that with Sophie.
We're gonna talk about how you can ultimately
bring this type of virtue into what it is
you're promoting out there and why it can lead
to far greater results than talking about the product
or service itself.
Before we bring Sophie on stage,
a couple of resources for you.
We have them in the form of sponsorships here.
We're gonna talk about Dave Morrow with Hard to Kill.
Hardtokill.org has an award-winning podcast
in the military, I guess sector, industry for veterans.
He's helping 100,000 veterans lose 2 million pounds
collectively through his workout programs.
He's got the world's easiest workout plan.
He's also got a community for veterans that right now
has no charge to it to join.
And he's got his Beast Body Blueprint program as well.
Dave is leading by example.
He gained some weight after he got home.
He ended up with a pretty serious bout of depression
that affected his personal life.
And he ended up finding out like he lost his identity
in the process of returning from being somebody
who protects us to being somebody who was trying
to get back into civilian society.
And he had his bounce back of course
and is able to lead the way.
He'll be at the Military Influencer Conference coming up
within a couple of weeks as well.
If you get to join that over in Georgia.
And if you know a military veteran who would benefit
from being involved with a community that understands
the struggles that they're going through,
then I highly recommend checking out Hard to Kill
and seeing what Dave's up to with that initiative.
Then we have opportunities.
I'm excited to talk about Opratianes de Trabajo
para Latinos or opportunities for Indians
and opportunities for Filipinos.
This is our own creation.
And what it is, it's a free training program
for Latinos, for people in India,
for people in the Philippines,
so that they can understand how to become
virtual assistants themselves.
And the byproduct is we certify these virtual assistants.
And then of course, people that want to work
with our virtual assistants, they can apply.
But we're very careful about how we go about that
because we see too much VA experience in the market.
What is that?
Well, we call it virtual abuse.
I see too many people not taking care of the people
that they work with, not training them,
not taking interest in their lives.
And as leaders, if you want to have great results,
take care of your people in-house.
And that's really what this program's about.
So they've been doing an awesome job of building this out.
We're starting to launch it in other countries.
You can see here, there's about 700 people in this group.
And Louisa, who's been with us for a matter of,
I want to say six weeks now, maybe eight weeks total.
She just did her first podcast interview
and her guest was Kike Inglis,
who has 900,000 subscribers on his channel.
Can you imagine that podcasters?
If your first guest that you ever interviewed
had almost a million subscribers
and what that would do for your confidence,
seeing that he enjoyed the experience and beyond.
So Kike has become a good friend of us.
We love what he's doing in terms of teaching English as well.
And we're getting more and more Latino leaders
involved in that process.
So if you have any Latin roots or association
with Central South America or the developing world,
please let us know, come get involved,
see how we can change lives.
It is amazing to take these individuals who,
many of which have never had a job in the online space.
We help them with interview skills.
We help them learn how to use the tools online.
And it is just, I mean, this is actually what I live for.
The podcast is fun.
I love hearing about Visions,
but I really love helping rest of world projects.
Speaking of, we're gonna move over
to the water project as well.
And I'll end on this and I'll do this one fastest time.
The water project, there's millions of people
who don't have access to clean drinking water.
And when I found out about that, I was like, you know what?
I need to, I wanna talk about this
because I've never been thirsty in my life.
I've never had to deal with that.
And so when I started to really ponder meditate
on the fact that these kids have to leave school
to get water or these parents have to leave work
to get water, it kind of broke my heart.
I was like, I can do more to help something like this.
And what's cool is when you donate to this project,
you get to pick the project you want to help
and they actually show you,
the water project shows you the outcome of the experience,
whether they build a sand dam or bore hole well.
So definitely consider getting involved in this.
And if you can't financially support it,
just share it with friends.
You never know who will actually be in your network
that can support it.
And if you have another cause
that you'd like to see us give back to,
please don't hesitate to drop that cause in the comments.
We've got 8 billion people to help on this world.
So why not jump in and do that?
It's amazing what it can do for you as well
in terms of feeling important, feeling valuable,
feeling your purpose.
And if you struggle with that at all,
I hope you hear my voice.
You are important, you do matter
and you can't make a big difference in this world.
So without further ado, Sophie Lechner,
welcome to Vision Pros Live.
Thank you, Jackson.
I love that you promote these causes.
They're amazing.
It is so fun too, to dive in and talk about these causes
and see the difference that it can make,
just by bringing the right people into it.
So thanks for taking a little bit of extra time
to honor that.
Maybe we'll circle back around.
As we get started, Sophie, tell me,
what is your vision for the people that you serve?
So I have become quite passionate
about helping entrepreneurs.
I have been exposed to so many entrepreneurs.
I did some coaching years ago
and saw how many entrepreneurs just lose their dream.
They lose steam because mostly of marketing
and how it is distorted
and how it really sort of eats away at their passion,
at their confidence and puts them in a place
that's not comfortable for them.
And I want to remedy that.
And I think I have found a solution to it,
which is really to embody your mission
and stay deeply connected with the reason
why you started your business.
And if you stay connected to that mission
and you're here to help people,
you can be actually doing this the whole time,
and that ends up being your marketing.
So treat your audience
as if they were your clients already.
And that's the vision I have is for entrepreneurs
who are passionate about helping others
to be able to sustainably do their business.
I love that.
That is a very interesting way of looking at
bringing the joy into the craft
and I'm gonna pick on certain industries right now.
From vape shops to real estate agents
to life insurance, policy people,
you're gonna love what you do.
You're not gonna hate what you do every day
and stick with it, maybe for a little while,
but most people are gonna find their way
out of something that they hate.
And oftentimes we end up
pretending we like something more than we do.
But I think one of the greatest red flags
is if you aren't willing to do what you're doing
for free for somebody,
and that seems like a drain on your energy
or like it's taking away from your life,
you probably have a massive misalignment
with what your purpose is and what your life calling is
and what you could be doing for people.
What are your thoughts on that, Sophie?
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Once you find that thing that you would want to do,
regardless of the circumstances,
you could just drop everything and you'd be doing this
and if you had your brothers, that's all you would do.
That's the thing that,
and people feel that passion.
They absolutely feel it.
And conversely, when you're trying to sell something
that you're not aligned with,
believe me, I know, cause I did that for years,
people feel it.
It just doesn't work.
It doesn't really come across, you know?
Yes, I've been fortunate to only do short stints
cause I couldn't tolerate it.
I mean, I could not bring myself
to represent something that I wasn't in love with
and passionate about.
But there's a choice there.
There's a choice.
We might talk more people out of their temporary visions
today than we do talk into their actual visions,
but that's kind of like the alcoholics anonymous process.
You have to become aware, right?
Or you can make a change and make a shift.
And while it seems scary,
for me, it's the most liberating process
that I ever dedicated my life to
is making sure that I've aligned myself
with what I love doing.
And I would never take that back.
Can I add something to that?
Because you know,
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm gonna switch to your vision,
but it's same thing.
Yeah, yes.
So I think, you know, being passionate
about what you do is critical.
That's what we've just talked about,
but also talking about it,
because in those years where I was, you know,
I alluded to that earlier,
where I was selling something,
but it wasn't resonating with people.
I was passionate about what I was doing,
but I left that passion at home, so to speak,
in my back pocket.
It was hidden.
I was not communicating that.
Interesting.
And I think that that was not as big a misalignment
as selling something you don't love, of course,
but it's still a form of misalignment
if you're not communicating your why,
because I think your why is really
what makes people sort of connect with you
and wanna work with you.
I'm gonna pick on authors in this case, right?
There's a lot of people launching books right now.
I've got my own books on hold
that I've been writing for years.
And part of the, one of the saddest things
that I hear authors talk about,
or not talk about, rather,
because you mentioned they leave that passion at home,
is they start to say things in life,
like, oh, you know, I want this book to get out there,
but it's okay if it's not a New York Times bestseller.
It's okay it's not a Wall Street Journal,
but the negativity that they usually bring
when they talk about the challenge of what that looks like,
it's often based in the fear
of what they don't know about the publishing process
or what they find out about how difficult it is,
or the fact that they told a friend or family member,
hey, I'm gonna write a book,
and I'm really excited about it.
And the family member says,
why would you write a book?
It's so hard, you're never gonna make any money on that.
Then they say, oh, well,
I'm not trying to make any money on that.
And they put this, they plant this seed in their heart
and in their head and their mind and say,
oh, well, that's not really that important to me.
That's baloney.
That is absolutely baloney.
Nobody publishes a book for nobody to read it.
That is not the case.
But how do we balance,
I'm curious about your thoughts on this,
I'll add mine too,
but how do we balance the belief
of I'm going to make this happen,
I'm gonna be excited to do this at my best
with the pragmatic reality that hitting the New York Times
is really hard to do.
And who do we talk to about this so that we get support
versus people who are constantly telling us,
oh, be careful, oh, you can't do that,
oh, it's not gonna work out.
How are you handling that
with your own book publishing process?
I love it, so you've given me this like billion dollar
question, right?
Like the hardest question of them all.
That is the difficult thing to do is to believe.
But again, it goes back to your mission.
If you really, really anchor yourself anytime
that something is hard into why you're doing it
and the fact that it's not for you, it's for other people,
you're able to get over all these things.
But I agree, the fear is there.
Like you talk about this New York Times bestseller
and this person who read my book,
we were on a call and they said, no, this is a great book,
I'm sure it's gonna be on the New York Times bestseller.
And I was like, you know, making these faces.
And then I thought, you know, the fear is if I say that
and then it doesn't happen, I'm gonna look silly.
That's the fear, well, at least to me, that's the fear.
A lot of people have that fear, I've been there.
I still go through that.
Yeah, and when we hear other people
who have these grand visions, there's a part of us
that says, well, you know, don't, you know,
make yourself bigger than your britches
or whatever that expression is and all this.
But there's a part of us that feels like,
oh, I wish I had that, you know, that belief,
that confidence, that belief in my vision.
And yeah, so that's part of what I talk about in my book,
those three main pillars to be able to bring the craft,
the joy of your craft into your marketing.
And one of them is movement.
And that's the hardest, I mean, mission is one thing,
there's all kinds of exercises in the book
to get your mission right and communicate
and all this message.
But the movement is really hard to get yourself out there
and just go beyond your comfort zone.
And I know I'm right in the middle of it, so.
Right.
It's very hard, it's certainly not easy.
I'm gonna drop a resource as well
in the comments, everybody, about this process,
because again, this book, Reality, and publishing the book,
this is back into access to a document called The Power Five.
And it is a story about how Jack Canfield,
Mark Victor Hansen, and how they launched
the Chicken Soup for the Soul series,
and all of the hard work they put in
to making sure that that book was successful.
And it took two years of daily dedication to amazing efforts
in order to get it to launch.
And now they're at more than, I think more than a billion,
half a billion or more than a billion published books.
That's a lot to keep track of.
But we can get the same types of results
if we learn to utilize the same systems,
the same techniques, the same opportunities,
build the same strengths, but it can be very hard.
And not all of us do have that capability.
I wanna acknowledge that it is not for everybody.
So we love your thoughts as well
on the book publishing process, if you've been through it.
But here's my greater concern with it.
I worry for all the people who end up
with less than 100 reviews on their books on Amazon,
because it looks awful from a leadership standpoint.
It's like having a TED Talk
with the least amount of reviews, right?
The least amount of views on YouTube.
You do not want to be in the ranks
of the worst TED Talks of all time.
It can be a reputation killer.
The same is true of launching a book and doing it wrong.
So make sure that you're paying attention to that
as you consider what marketing avenues you have.
And we'll take a little bit of time right now.
So instead of worrying so much about the avenues, my friends,
I hope that you realize that marketing
is kind of like the adrenaline of your launch,
of what it is that you're doing.
Sophie's talked about the joy of the craft and what you do.
Let's dive in a little bit deeper on that.
What does it mean to have joy in your craft to you, Sophie?
So for example, if you're a coach
and you want to help people with their marketing, let's say,
random example, of course.
Marketing coach, got it.
You want to help your clients when they hire you
and help them with all the wisdom you've accumulated
over the years and give them all of your best stuff.
And on the other side, the rest of the time
when you're not with your clients,
you have to do your marketing.
And that's a drag and you have to write posts
and you have to do all kinds of things.
Why is that a drag?
Well, in this person's, in the person's,
in a lot of people's world.
And what I'm saying is bringing the joy of your craft over
is that if you think in your marketing
that you are helping not just your clients,
but all the people who are there on social media
in your email subscription lists and everywhere else,
you're helping them in the same way
that you're helping your clients.
Then when you're writing a post,
it's not just like me who's gonna look at it,
how many likes am I gonna get?
There's people out there who need this information.
And when you put that love and that passion you have
for helping into that post, all of a sudden,
first of all, it's easy to write
and it's not a drag anymore.
And people feel that and recognize that.
And then you do this enough times,
people will see your expertise
and then they will wanna work with you.
Absolutely.
So they're going to wanna work with what they see
when they see that the passion flows through us
and the joy flows through us and what we do.
How do you do that in the form of a post?
So the other super important pillar of all this
I've talked about your mission is your message.
And the message is about really deeply understanding
your audience.
And you do this, obviously through market research,
through knowing your clients, excuse me,
and a lot of networking, et cetera.
And you want to understand not just their pain,
their problems, their challenges,
but also all of the beliefs that they are carrying around,
which could come from their culture, from their upbringing,
from any number of places, they have beliefs.
They have beliefs about their own problem.
They may not even know that it's a problem,
first of all, right?
They might have beliefs around the fact
that maybe it's their own fault for having this problem
and not knowing that it's something that can be fixed.
There's all kinds of beliefs that get in the way
and what you need to do in your content, in your posts,
is to address these beliefs.
And once you start doing that, people will see that
and they will recognize themselves.
They will see what they've been thinking
and understand that it was not quite right
and sort of start thinking differently.
And that's the other part of bringing the joy of your craft
because what we do in our coaching
or what we do in our work to help
is to help people get a transformation.
And you might be able to create transformations for people
that you never even met,
you're never even going to click on your posts or anything,
but they are reading your content
and they're actually being transformed,
whether they become clients or not.
You're helping them to sort of come to grips
with certain things that they're struggling with.
Okay.
So we're kind of putting the cart before the horse
a little bit in terms of marketing, and that's okay,
because this podcast is not going in a lecture order.
But there's the people,
we're talking about people who will see and benefit,
well, who will benefit from seeing the post,
but we're not yet talking about how to get that post
in front of the right people
and making sure that we have awareness already.
Let's take a look real quick.
So this is live, right?
We've got two likes on our live message,
and we've got quite a few people who've liked your post,
what is that, 30 or 10?
Somewhere in there.
And then two on this post.
It's hard to influence an audience that you don't have, right?
And I'm saying for myself included,
for all of us as entrepreneurs,
sometimes people assume that just posting on social media
ends up driving a ton of traffic
and everybody's gonna pay attention
to every single post you put out there,
even though there's tons of companies
and tons of people, millions, also creating posts online.
So what evidence is there,
what success stories can you talk about, Sophie,
of people who have implemented this process
of passionate or joyful education
that relates to their audience
and the results that have come from doing so?
Yeah, so the first result that I want to highlight
is an internal result,
is the fact that they're enjoying their marketing
and they're happy to be doing it,
and it's not a drag anymore,
and that reduces the burnout rate
of people who are entrepreneurs.
So that in terms of results-
Is there a stat behind that or is that a feeling?
Well, that's a feeling.
I don't have stats on that,
but I know that people really change their attitude.
The reason why I ask is because the statistics show
over 100 years that 96% of businesses fail within 10 years
and 4% survive.
So if there's something that is incrementally,
or even one, 2%, making the difference
in people sticking to and gaining success,
and of course we want to know what it is,
but I've seen the opposite with social media.
I've never seen anybody pay a bill with happiness,
for instance.
It doesn't discredit the value of happiness at all.
But in terms of business and learning how to grow a business,
there's more to it than that.
Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
I'd love to see the evidence in the case studies of,
all right, what are some situations
where these individuals have posted
and they've gained client traction?
And any case studies out of the opportunities.
So I like to bring the joy first,
but obviously there's results.
And the results are that over time,
they're able to gain clients.
And it's not an overnight thing with LinkedIn,
but if you apply the strategies that I talk about
and you start posting, you start with your profile
and have really a solid profile
that really shows your passion and what you do
and the results you get for your clients.
And then your content, people come to it.
And then the objective-
Well, I've heard this from 10,000 marketers,
and so has everybody else.
Yes.
Everybody's saying that.
So again, where is the evidence?
Where are the case studies?
You talk about the clients that come in and buy because of it
and the wonderful, that's all theoretical.
Where is the evidence of the companies that are doing this?
And let's look at an actual case study on it.
Mm-hmm.
Well, I can tell you about a client of mine, Janice,
who was-
Janice what?
Oh, Janice Francisco.
Okay.
So she's a consultant and she helps CEOs
to bring in more innovation into their companies.
Mm-hmm.
So the problem there was that the CEOs had,
this is all about the beliefs, right?
So they thought that they wanted more innovation
and what she had found through her market research,
do you want me to, you can just-
Yeah, go ahead.
What's the, how do you spell it or what's the-
Yeah, it's the middle one on the top there.
Middle one? Okay. Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, Janice CE.
Her CEO clients thought that they wanted their,
no, that's not it, right?
They wanted their teams to be more,
sorry, it's very hard for me to watch this
while I'm just on, sort of look away.
They wanted their teams to be more innovative
and what she had found through deep research
is that it really came down to collaboration.
And so through her content, she was able to convey that
and really talk about the different levels
of awareness of her clients
and gradually increase the relationships
that she had with her clients.
And so she eventually increased the relationships
that she was building, et cetera.
And she got several hundred thousand dollar consulting gigs
from that and really filled her pipeline
with these types of things.
That's awesome.
And so this is a link that any of you can go to
and study out what types of results is this person getting
with their process of social media.
I love that you're working with somebody who's got
decades of wisdom as well, right?
That's usually the case for my clients.
Yeah, yeah.
Right, she's not new what she does, she's established.
She comes with a whole lot of wisdom and truth
and opportunity for vulnerability
and things that an audience can truly relate to.
And that's something that I think is so important
for our audience to understand
because a lot of the people that end up launching
their visions end up hearing this general theoretical
guidance, but it's not a one size fits all.
And we end up putting people in a position
to where they hurt themselves versus putting a context
around who's ready to benefit from this,
who's ready to take off.
And if we're not careful, we end up,
people will come in with expectations
that aren't based in reality.
And we as leaders, we've gotta be the doctors
who patient comes in and says,
hey, I want a ton of Oxycontin because my neck hurts.
We have to as a doctor say, well, wait a second,
let's do the assessments and see,
is this a good idea for your situation
or are you coming in because of an addiction
to some type of external results?
It's not in your best interest.
So if anybody wants to know about more,
the case, the point that I'm making with this too,
it doesn't even just have to be Sophie's examples.
Tesla understands the value of putting joy into their craft.
Red Bull understands the value of putting joy
into their craft.
Any sports and entertainment industry is an industry
that you can follow and see how are they bringing the joy
into their crafts.
And usually wherever the eyes are flowing,
it's because the hearts have been drawn
and they feel this alignment that's incredible.
And you can do that with your brand
and with your vision,
it doesn't matter what industry you're in,
you can find a way to do just that.
So let's talk about the, let's shift gears dramatically.
What's the worst leadership experience
that you've ever had, Sophie?
Well, when I was in the corporate pharmaceutical field,
I had a manager at one point who was very manipulative
and very, I guess she felt, I don't know,
threatened all the time or something,
but she was very aggressive and just put me down
and put the people around her down
and was always promoting conflict.
And it was just a horrible ambiance in that whole team.
Like everybody was just so on edge,
all the time and she was really questioning people
and sort of undermining them
and questioning even their expense reports
and all this other stuff.
It was just, that was the worst.
It was just, yeah, putting down the people
who she worked with.
It sounds like a case of what I would call downhill
and it's just, it's just,
it's like a case of what I would call downhill doubt.
Oh yeah.
And I encourage my team members, bring doubt uphill.
The doubt's important to work through.
It's important to figure out.
But when the leader starts to doubt down at people
and bring their fears and they crush people
with these concerns, it's not something that motivates
and creates action, it's something that breeds fear.
So that is a really powerful example of what not to do.
If you're finding yourself in a position
where you are doubting or expressing doubts
to the relationships around you, no matter what relationship,
it's probably gonna leave a sour taste
with those who are trying to fit in into your life.
So get the opposite.
What's the best experience you've ever had?
Yeah, so the opposite of that,
and it's really, it has to do with trust
and trusting the people around you.
And that makes such a huge difference.
I had a manager, it was actually the one
right after this one, so it was a nice breather.
He was just giving me all the opportunities possible
for me to learn and finding just that right balance
between putting me in situations that were going
to challenge me, but at the same time
where I could grow within them
and not fail.
And I remember he actually sent me all on my own
to represent the company.
And this is one of the Fortune 50 pharma companies
at a big conference abroad in Venice actually, lovely.
And when he told me I was gonna go by myself,
so coordinating the booth and all the activities
and the speakers and the conferences, I was scared stiff,
but I did it and I grew to it.
And from there on in, I was able to do it again and again,
but the first time I was terrified.
And I said, but are you sure?
What are you doing?
But he was like, no, you can do it.
And when you can grow, you know the potential
of your team member and you can bring it out
better than they actually would know it themselves,
that's phenomenal.
That's what leadership really is.
That's amazing.
It reminds me of the reality that trust is given, not earned.
The opposite is believed in the world by most people.
But when we can step into trusting others,
allowing people with healthy boundaries, of course,
but it sounds like that leader was in a position
to where he wasn't going to be hurt no matter what happened.
And he honored the reality that allowing you to swim,
right, and to have that experience
was going to be a benefit for both of you.
So that's amazing.
The self-confidence, the deep confidence that he had
was the opposite what that other woman had was,
she was so insecure, whereas this guy was secure,
very secure in his position and in what his decisions were.
And that's what allowed him to give me some of that confidence.
I'm so glad that you said that,
because it's often easier times in situations like this
where we're evaluating does it apply to me,
where it hurts less to receive that type of feedback.
So if you find yourself doubting others,
then what I heard you just say, Sophie,
and what I also agree with is that's often
a reflection of self, that you have doubts and fears,
that you haven't overcome, which is where it's super helpful
to find people in your life who will help you resolve those
and lead with more confidence.
Speaking of, we got a shout out here that I'll bring up.
So we got Sue Ellen Sweeney,
who says, Sophie has been such a great teacher
and mentor to me as I'm finding my way on LinkedIn.
Let's talk about a live case study.
How'd you meet Sue Ellen?
And what do you guys work on together?
So Sue Ellen is actually not a client.
She's just somebody that I've been helping,
because I do that a lot.
You practice like you play, good for you.
Yeah, exactly, that's part of what I do.
So I met Sue Ellen years ago in a coaching program
that we were both in.
And as I always do in these kinds of situations,
I put in the chat, if you want to, in fact,
anybody on this call, if you want to chat with me,
we can put the link in the chat.
So I did that and Sue Ellen took me up on it.
And we talked about her profile, we talked about posting.
But it's something that I do all the time.
And if people have a question, a specific question,
I answer that specific question.
But a lot of times I just give them,
I look at where they are and I give them the next,
the best next three steps that they can take.
So the advice is not the same for everybody.
It's different for each person that I talk to.
But I look at where they are and also what they want,
but also what they're comfortable with.
And so I wouldn't recommend to someone who's ill at ease
with video that they do lives every week.
It's just, you have to take people where they are
and then help them to grow to the next thing.
And anybody who gets on a call with me
is always welcome to book another one,
soon after or six months later or a year later.
So I've had a couple of these calls with Sue Ellen
over time, over the years.
And it's taken her a little step further every time.
Awesome.
I'm gonna throw out a paradigm that's a bit controversial,
but it's one that I think that needs to be explored
by leaders on both sides of the spectrum.
One, I also love to do free work with people.
I'm a big proponent of the freemium business model
in general, and I love getting paid as well.
Both of those realities are very important.
What I don't like to do is get paid by people
who don't appreciate their own freedom.
People who want me to decide how much they pay
or what their cost is.
I don't think that the do it yourself,
done with you, done for you,
or estimate styles of business,
there's too much evidence that those fizzle out,
burn out, and do really poorly long-term.
So with individuals like Sue Ellen,
Sue Ellen has an opportunity to step up and say,
okay, I received all of this without any charge.
What am I going to do to compensate and give back
to the individual that I'm working with?
Now, I'm not throwing Sue Ellen under the bus.
I think some people could hear that and be like,
wow, he's not being fair.
We don't know Sue's circumstances.
We do know that she came on live
and that she talked in this,
but when we eat at a restaurant,
the restaurant business model is pay for the food.
And then there's a server there
and we can leave a 0% tip,
we can leave a 10% tip,
we can leave a 20% tip,
or we can do what some of the all-time rates do
and throw a $10,000 tip on there.
Nothing stops us from choosing
because we have the freedom to look at that.
And I also have people who work with me for free.
So I'm, again, once again,
this is not an attack on any individual.
This is an opportunity for all of us as leaders to evaluate
how are we as leaders choosing
what type of compensation we give
to those who provide value to us.
And so with my hosts for Vision Pros Live,
I have five co-hosts.
I don't pay them,
but they also don't pay me for the platform.
My guests, they don't pay to come on the show.
We built this,
we put a lot of money in this infrastructure.
So there's an opportunity to give back there,
but the onus, when we receive a gift from somebody else,
it's on the recipient to decide
how much am I going to value what is there?
Am I going to move forward in certain aspects or not?
And I think we all need to evaluate that and say,
how do we as business owners or leaders in our own lives
come to a decision that we're ready to invest in
those who've helped us with our growth?
What are your thoughts, Sophie?
Yeah, well, my thoughts are,
there are all kinds of currencies.
And you've talked mainly about the money one,
the one that we're all familiar with.
But there are plenty of others.
And so I would rather have,
and not over time, long-term all the time,
but I would rather have a person who is not paying me,
but is doing the things that I recommend
and is coming to my workshops and participating
and talking to others about what they've learned from me.
Like in the case of Suelen, you can see,
she made the effort to come on this podcast
and she's putting herself out there.
There's plenty of ways that are much,
that are really important as an entrepreneur.
Yes, you need to make sales, you need to make money,
but you need to have that gratification,
that fulfillment that what you're doing,
what you're recommending to people is being done,
that they remember you, that they talk about you.
So all of those different currencies
are as important as the money one,
and we can't live without them.
That's right, and it can be more important.
Go ahead.
Yeah, so everybody, it's a whole relationship.
And the important thing is the relationship.
And then in some of them, there's a money exchange,
in some of them, there's other exchanges.
It's important to realize the economy of abundance.
And that's kind of what you're alluding to,
is it's not just about the finances.
Again, that's why as leaders, we have to be willing
to recognize and understand the value that exists there.
And if that scares us, right?
If that fears, if Sue, for instance,
were to get offended by that,
or you were to get offended by that,
that's only your loss.
But meanwhile, here's Darren Hardy
with the compound effect, right?
Mr. New York Times bestseller multiple times.
And who wrote the forward?
Tony Robbins.
And when I saw that, that was the first time it dawned on me.
I was like, oh, I bet he didn't pay Tony Robbins
for that forward, even though there's plenty of people
who do pay for those boards.
And that's not a bad thing either.
But they're of the level
where they have a mutual respectful friendship.
They have their own audiences,
and they know the value of combining their audiences
to a greater degree.
They don't, Tony doesn't fear Darren Hardy
taking all of his people.
Darren Hardy doesn't fear Tony Robbins,
you know, crushing him with his power and size.
There's so many opportunities.
Chris Voss talks about this as well,
and never split the difference,
and how in negotiating, there are other types
of compensations or values and benefits
that you can get out of the relationship.
So I'm really grateful that you highlight that
and bring attention to it.
Now, if this were the last time you had the chance
to rock the mic and share a powerful lesson,
what powerful lesson can other visionaries learn
from your experience, Sophie?
I would say as early as possible,
focusing on what makes you special,
and then rock that.
A lot of people just are not so,
have not done the work of figuring out
what I call their golden thread.
So go back into their story and figure out,
okay, so why did I decide to do this here?
Why did I decide to do that at that other juncture?
What was I thinking?
What were the things that I was loving, not loving?
You know, like doing all this internal work
to really understand what drives us
and what makes us who we are,
and then just love that to death and put that out there.
I think that's really something that we all need
to learn to do as soon as possible.
I love that.
Find out what makes you special and then rock that.
That's such a cool quote.
So it is harder to do than I think oftentimes we admit.
I was in my 30s.
I finally started to do that.
All the cool things that I may have done,
all the opportunities I may have had,
most of it was living in my shadow
and being scared to come out and be myself.
And there's still elements, still elements of that.
I'm grateful for Taylor Welch who said,
and I don't think he got this verified by Michael Phelps,
but it resonated.
He said, well, Michael Phelps, for instance,
is trying to break the world record
or the new Olympians who are.
There is an element of imposter syndrome
that's probably inevitable
because they're doing something they've never done before.
And so if you're doing things that you've never done before,
there's certainly a type of fear of the unknown
that's gonna come up, but when we can learn to recognize,
okay, when are our fears of the unknown safe
and who do we have to help us, support us through this,
then we can unlock new levels of special realities
within us that we may be hiding from ourselves.
And I'd invite everybody who's listening to explore today.
I'm gonna go explore it.
Thanks to you saying this, Sophie,
what else can I do to further unlock
what is special within me
so that I can show up even better for my audience
and those who I love and serve?
So thank you for that.
I love the way Seth Gooden talks about imposter syndrome.
He says, if you've never done something before,
of course you should have imposter syndrome.
You are an imposter.
You've never done it before, so that's.
That's funny.
Accept it, right?
That makes a lot of sense.
That's so funny.
I'm going to write that down right after this.
So vision pros, those of you listening in,
down below this video, you'll see action steps
that you can take in order to get involved
with Sophie Lackner as a LinkedIn coach,
as a mentor, as an individual,
you can see she's freely giving.
And of course, don't let what I say next
prevent you from reaching out.
Honor her with the proper compensation.
Learn to do that for everybody that you contact.
But I hope you never let money or your fear of money
prevent you from connecting with somebody
who you feel drawn to connect with.
I see too many people hide from those opportunities.
So take full advantage of getting to know the mentors
that are available in your life.
And down below that, we'll also drop the resources.
If a resource really, like if that resource of words
that change minds really hits you and you're like,
man, I want to check that out, contact the author too.
Take the chance to see what it's like
to get to know these individuals.
It's amazing what can transpire in your life
when you start to talk to people who want to,
excuse me, you want to help you move it along.
And if you want to be on our show in the top right corner
where it says be our guest,
don't hesitate to apply to be on our show.
We'd love to hear your vision.
As long as you're out there doing something holistic,
you're trying to help others,
then that's something that we want to honor
and help get the word out as well for what you're up to.
We got a lot of people to help in this world.
So let's do it together.
Sophie, any final thoughts?
Oh, I've just enjoyed this conversation also
and the one we had before as well,
which I'm going to start sharing in addition to this.
Just go out there and make movement,
make a movement and make things move.
And let's rock that.
We'll see you guys in the next episode.
Take care everybody.
Bye-bye.
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 going to 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.