Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - #473: CLAIM Your Space and CHANGE the Game with Heather and Melanie Borden!

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

In This Episode You Will Learn About:  How to use the tools at your fingertips to SKYROCKET your success Why the time is NOW to take control of your narrative and CHANGE the game How the only thing between you and success is the ACTION you haven’t taken yet Learn why CLOSED MOUTHS don’t get fed Resources: Join our Elevate Your Influence 8-Week Bootcamp: https://elevateyourinfluencebootcamp.com/ Website: www.humantobrand.com LinkedIn & YouTube: @​​MelanieBorden  Instagram: @humantobrand  Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/monahan Download the CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning at NetSuite.com/MONAHAN. Want to do more and spend less like Uber, 8x8, and Databricks Mosaic? Take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com/MONAHAN. Get 10% off your first Mitopure order at timeline.com/CONFIDENCE. Get 15% off your first order when you use code CONFIDENCE15 at checkout at jennikayne.com. Call my digital clone at 201-897-2553!  Visit heathermonahan.com Reach out to me on Instagram & LinkedIn Sign up for my mailing list: heathermonahan.com/mailing-list/  Overcome Your Villains is Available NOW! Order here: https://overcomeyourvillains.com  If you haven't yet, get my first book Confidence Creator Show Notes:  What’s holding you back from getting exactly what you want? That’s the question I walked away with after talking to Melanie Borden, CEO of the Borden Group. If you’re not asking for it, you’re missing out—CLOSED MOUTHS don’t get fed. Whether it’s LinkedIn, business, or life, being INTENTIONAL is the key. Melanie’s use of AI blew my mind, showing just how much more we can do with the right tools. The truth? You have EVERYTHING you need to ELEVATE, but you’ve got to step up and GRAB IT. That’s exactly why we created the Elevate Your Influence Bootcamp—to help you SHOW UP, be BOLD, and be UNAPOLOGETICALLY yourself. It’s time to stop waiting for opportunities and start creating them. Join us and take your career to the next level! If You Liked This Episode You Might Also Like These Episodes: #368: The Top Hacks To Elevate Your Influence, Attract Clients & Crush Your Goals This Year with Heather and Melanie Borden! #411: From Setbacks to BREAKTHROUGHS: Create Confidence In Any Situation With Heather! #402: Conflict into Connection: The Art of Effective Communication with Charles Duhigg Pulitzer Prize-winning Reporter & Bestselling Author

When I felt that things were shifting in my business and I wasn't getting the traction that I wanted, I realized I wasn't being specific about my offer and I wasn't saying, I'm available to work. This is how I work and this is how you can work with me. And nine times out of 10, when I go on someone's profile or from going through someone's content and they're saying it's not working, I look at them and say, it's because you're not asking for it. So always ask for what you want. You don't have to do it every day, but you should ask for what you want. Because if you don't, you're not going to get it. Come on this journey with me.

Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity, and set you up for a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my close-up. Hi and welcome back. I'm so glad you're back here with me this week. OK, so you know it's so rare that I have someone on multiple times, but today we are back on with my friend Melanie Borden.

Let me give you a little background on my girl Melanie. She's the founder and CEO of the Borden Group. She utilizes strategies and tools she developed for herself to assist founders, C-suite executives, and leaders in aligning their real life expertise with their LinkedIn presence, unlocking opportunities, and building relationships at scale. This is what she did for herself faster

than anyone I've ever seen. Her work as a marketing executive naturally led her to recognize the potential of online marketing strategies in developing both corporate and personal brand. If you don't have a personal brand, let me tell you, you need one. The truth is you already have one, but start holding the pen and taking control of it.

We're gonna get into that today. Okay, Melanie's expertise spans a range of areas, including marketing oversight, building in-house agencies, budgeting, strategic vendor utilization, enhancing digital footprints through social media, reputation management, online monetization, and managing advertising processes. She has been featured in publications such as Entrepreneur LA Weekly, Good Morning America, Daily Mail, CXO Outlook. There's so many here. I mean, I can't keep up. Wall Street Journal, that was a big one. And also Forbes Agency Council. Let me just say, Melanie, thank you for coming back on the show today. Thanks for having me back, Heather. People always want to know from you, what is the latest and greatest on LinkedIn? What do they need to be doing? Why do they need to be there? Help us cut to it.

Okay, so something that I've been seeing lately and it's constantly changing. I always tell people when you're putting out content, you want to focus on what is best for you, but also be aware of the platform and the algorithm. And it's constantly changing. And there's so many people who are talking about it. And when I say, you know, what's best for you,

meaning the times to post, et cetera. So for years, I religiously posted at 7.45 AM. I would be getting my kids ready from school, you know, doing drop-off and making sure that I'm still engaging with content at that set time. For almost three years, I did that. And then I got super busy and I said, you know what? I need to find a different time to start posting.

And at first, I was really unsure about it. And then now I've been posting consistently after 3 p.m. in the afternoon. And my posts have been performing so well and we're seeing the same thing with clients as well as video. Video has been doing really well and performing really well in LinkedIn too. And there's so much opportunity for every creator. It's like less than 5% of the people who are on the platform. It's a very low number, close to 1% that are posting.

So the opportunity is there for everyone, not just for someone who has a follower base, but literally for someone who's growing, which is probably the majority. You never perform well for me, Melanie. It's such a weird thing because my feed does well, but every time I've posted a video, it's like it's such an anomaly if it ever does well. It doesn't seem to. One of the things that I started looking at

was my analytics in terms of what topics were performing the best. And that's what I started doing the videos on. And I'll give you an example. Something that we deal with all the time. I know you deal with this too, Heather, are trolls. And we deal with this all the time. When you put yourself out on social, you have to find a way to really react and engage with people in a way that you have the best way, you know, the best way of doing it. And a lot of times people go to market and they just kind of wing it. Businesses do that, individuals do it. And my recommendation is to have a plan, have a strategy and talk about it if it's

working for you. So for me, that's the topic that works really well. For my videos, they always perform well when I talk about trolls. Whether it's a video or a static post, to look at the posts that are performing well, then look at other people in your industry who are also posting about topics that are relevant to your market.

It's interesting when you talk about haters, right? And so for myself, for a long time, when I was in corporate, I was in the C-suite. I never posted back then for fear of what other people would say, for fear of negativity coming out. And I know a lot of people listening right now to the show are thinking that like, yeah, you guys, you've made businesses out of it. I get it. But I don't want to have to go through people hating on me. And I'll tell you what I get it. But I don't want to have to go through people hating on me. And I'll tell you, what I've learned,

and I actually wrote a chapter about this in my second book, is that there is going to be negative people everywhere. If you're not getting haters, you've got a problem. It means you're not reaching enough people or you're not being your unique self. That's not for everybody. I am not vanilla. So I actually try to celebrate when

I see some haters coming my way throwing shade at me, which they do, right, they will come out and make the weirdest comments in the world. And sometimes I'll leverage that and like, highlight it to make a joke about it like, well, and here we go with people not liking what I post again, you know, I'll say something about it. I don't ever say a person's name. So I'll use it to my benefit to like keep further engagement going, or I just respectfully don't respond, right? I don't respond to negativity. But what I've learned is like,

I don't need to take it personally. I don't need to go home and cry in my soup about it because that's about them. It's not about me. And for any person that is gonna get excited about throwing negativity at someone they don't even know behind a computer screen, those aren't my people. And I'm fine with that. How do you handle when you receive negativity online? Well, it's interesting that you ask that because one of the things that I always

coach my clients through whenever they're launching their personal brand, specifically on LinkedIn, is that a couple things will happen. And most of these people do not necessarily want to be quote unquote influencers. They have a specific goal, whether they're looking to move their industry, they're looking to get into the C-suite, maybe they're looking to launch their consulting or coaching business. And I tell them the first metric that we look at is something that you're not going to see in your analytics platform on LinkedIn or another analytics platform. And that's that word of mouth metric where someone will see your post and then they'll do something. As a result, they'll text, they'll call, they'll send a message, they'll mention it in the office. Something will happen. And

to us, that's a signal that they're getting visibility, which is the ultimate goal on LinkedIn, especially when you're making this massive change in your career. Because a lot of times when someone comes to me and someone in your career, because a lot of times when someone comes to me, if someone comes to you, Heather, that's what they're looking to do. They're looking to make a change. So the only way to really make the change is to kind of roll with what comes along with it.

And there are other ways too, that you can make a splash on LinkedIn without having to post content, such as identifying what your goals are, who you wanna be working with, what industry that you want to be working in, and then reaching out to those people and connecting with them and then engaging with their content. And that's one approach that some people have who are afraid of the red flags or the red

tape that might come along with posting on LinkedIn too. So it's so interesting because people will say like, oh yeah, you guys can say that because you have followings on LinkedIn. So of course it makes sense for you, but I don't have the time to do it. Or I didn't start seven years ago, which is when I started. I understand, but if seven years ago was the right time to start, now is the only time. And I also like to go back to the example

of I started before you, however you've grown your community the same size as mine in a shorter window. Like sometimes people lose sight of that. Just because one person did one thing doesn't mean you can't do 10x that 20x that 50x that you don't know until you start showing up and trying and the other thing i would add to that is to my own question that i have just asked myself as a podcast host heather that's really impressive

the other thing i would add to that is that you know when you want to reach out to someone and you don't know today for everyone listening because i didn't know i was getting fired right you don't know what tomorrow holds you don't know if covid is coming next like you don't know I was getting fired, right? You don't know what tomorrow holds. You don't know if COVID is coming next. Like you don't know what weird, crazy thing could happen if you get fired, the whole world could change. We don't know. Set yourself up for success no matter what happens. And the one thing that you can do differently

than everyone else is elevate, raise your hand, be yourself, let the world start to get to know you. And the best way to do that, I find for business is through LinkedIn, because instead of dealing with a one-to-one conversation with everybody, I get to have a one-to-many conversation. You can have a conversation one to millions instead of having to single out individuals.

And that's how I even got into the whole concept of LinkedIn seven years ago was for my C-suite position because I couldn't find enough talented executives to come on my team. Because I thought, you know what, I'm not reaching enough people going one-to-one. I've got to start going one-to-many. And so I started elevating my presence, which had a whole domino effect in a different way that changed everything for me. But the point is this, you've got to have a profile where you show up. You've got recommendations and reviews of your work. You have a face, like you

have a profile picture. P. PS, keep it fresh. I just updated my profile picture. Like you need to change it once a year. Like you need to show up and be a real human online so that people know you're not an AI bot, which that's a whole other conversation that's happening very often right now, but show up and be that real version of you. Let people get to know you and watch how you start attracting partnership. You start attracting businesses, you start attracting clients at You start attracting cli attracting employees to y easier than chasing peopl

found that same thing wit Of course you have to be intentional with anything results. And the way that to a lot of people is thin you are a kid and you were doing chores and your parents say, save it for a rainy day. So this is your LinkedIn is the professional rainy day fund because like you said earlier,

you don't know if you're going to get fired. You don't know if you're going to lose your job. You don't know if tomorrow you're going to have massive tragedy and you're going to need to take some time off. No one knows what's next, but what you can control is how you move forward. And whenever I'm working with anyone, if they have a specific goal, right? So talent acquisition is a great way for someone to go to market on LinkedIn because they want to bring in new people and they want their forward-facing brand to be representative of the company, whether it's the CEO, whether it's the CRO, or whether it's the director of sales within the organization. And the thing is, is that if you lead that organization,

your brand goes with you. So it's always good to have that backup for yourself. So that way, no matter where you go, you have that network that you can rely on. It's also a great way to meet new people, to survey your network, to find out and just find out what's happening in whatever industry that you're in and just to talk to people because you just never know who you might meet. Yeah. And you never know what you're missing. I just remember I was in the media business for over 20 years.

I only knew the media business. I only knew people in the media business. And what I didn't realize was there was this whole speaking business, which was a multi-billion dollar business outside of my arena. We just didn't pay speakers in the arena I was in. I didn't understand there was a place where I could take my talents and skills outside of my arena and make more money if I would go put a toe in it. Right? So I luckily got fired, so I figured that out the hard way. But for anyone listening right now, you don't even know where you might have opportunity where your unique skills that could make you more money. And that's why an arena like LinkedIn is so important.

You're gonna start being exposed to people in all different industries and start learning, wait, I can do that too. And I can do better than that guy. Wait a minute, maybe I should start taking a look at that. It's really gonna open your mind to different revenue streams, different business opportunities, and different partnerships for you. Okay, one of the things that people get tripped up on,

you know this Melanie better than anyone because you work with so many clients around this point. Well, what can I post? I don't have anything. I'm not you. I don't know how to do that. I didn't get fired. I don't have some big story to tell.

What do you say to these people that feel like, I just don't know what to create. It's so common. It's definitely something I hear all the time. I know you hear it too. And it's funny that you asked that. I was on LinkedIn today and I was scrolling, just seeing what was in the feed and one of the creators in my network had posted something about every week he's posting and he's spending time every single day, certain amount of time a day, just writing.

And I thought back to myself when I first started, similarly like you, I didn't really have, not necessarily a network, but I was in one specific industry, I came from the car business. So my network was in New York, New Jersey, the tri-state area. And one of the reasons for me going on LinkedIn

was to broaden my horizons and to meet more people and to just create a name for myself. And so, but I was thinking back to when I started and I just started documenting my day to day. It was during the pandemic. It was crazy wild time. And I started following people like yourself. I started seeing what other people were doing. I was looking at what was making me feel good because it was at a time where everything was just so chaotic, which is very similar to today. The chaos really hasn't changed much in the last five years. It's just adjusted. But one of the things that I was doing regularly at my job

was meeting with all of our vendors. I was working as a VP of marketing, so I was recording all of our calls. Or the vendor was recording our calls and they would send me the recording after our meetings. And that was something that I was doing every single day. And what I didn't realize at the time was I have this treasure trove of content. I had a huge amount of content that I didn't realize that I could tap into. So for someone who's just starting, start recording your calls that you have, your meetings that you have, because nine times out of 10, you can go back to that transcript.

You can pull some of that, you can edit it, and you can turn it into something for yourself that you can use for content. So another thing you can do is introduce yourself. Reintroduce yourself. If you haven't posted on LinkedIn and you're looking to make a do is introduce yourself. You know, reintroduce yourself. If you haven't posted on LinkedIn and you're looking to make a change, introduce yourself and be specific with your offer. Are you in between jobs?

Are you looking for something new? Are you launching a business? What are you doing? And share that human side of who you are and where you've been and where you're going. That's so good. And look to different people. I look at your feed to steal ideas.

And you know it's not, I'm not stealing what you're writing. I'll get inspo from you. But you're like the master of reintroduction. And every time I see you do that, it reminds me, Heather, go do a reintroduction post. I'm not reintroducing myself as Melanie Borden. I reintroduced myself as Heather Monahan, but I'm doing it because I'm inspired by it. You know what? That did well for me. That was smart, right? Like too often, I think

people get caught up in this idea. I have to create the singular, most unique thing in the world. Let me just drop this on you, everybody right now. There has not been an original piece of creation since the Bible. Okay. Everything is a knock off the Bible since the Bible. That's how I feel about it. Right. So don't get too caught up in it. And the other example I'll give you that's more unique to today, Sarah Blakely invented Spanx. I don't think Kim Kardashian lost sleep over inventing Skims. Skims is basically Spanx, people. It's branded different, and it's set up for Kim's community.

But it's shapewear for under your clothes if you're a woman. Spanx. But no one's sitting out there saying, oh, that's terrible. They're saying, no, innovation, reinvention, new marketing, right? Like, don't get tripped up on this idea that everything has to be so incredibly original.

I'm also not suggesting you literally steal someone's feed. That's probably not a good look either. But you know what, I'll go to Alex Hermosy. Like, I have 10 people that I follow on LinkedIn all the time that I'm always scrolling and checking out what they're doing for inspiration. They're like in my arena. Alex Hermosy is one of them. And I saw this thing he did the other day. He wrote 10 years of wins, 10 years of losses. I'm paraphrasing. The post killed it. You could see it millions and millions

of views. And I'm like, Heather, that's a sign. Data doesn't lie. If Alex Hermmology could do that through the lens of his experience, Heather Monahan can do that through the lens of hers. So I said 10 wins in 10 years, 10 losses, just like he had, right. And at the end, I put thanks for the inspo and I tapped him because I don't know that anyone would know I got the idea from him, but I was just saying like, Hey, I got this idea from him. I told it through my story is so different than his right like there he's in the gym and fitness world I've been in the media world like we are not competitors, right? But I thought you know, I could add value and if this format is doing well today on the algorithm I bet it will do well for me that post killed it, right?

So get inspired by what you see working with other creators out there and reimagine it through the lifestyle and life examples of you. And that's how trends start. I mean, that's how it happens. That's how things go viral. When you see someone else who's having success and then especially giving someone credit for it, I mean, that's very nice of you.

And that's definitely something that you don't see every day. And that's exactly how you see all the different trends start that happen, whether it's on LinkedIn or Instagram or TikTok or wherever, in any form, whether it's in the actual post or music, et cetera. Yeah, just paying attention to what's out there working. Data doesn't lie. It informs you.

And you can take that information and reimagine it for your feet. OK, this is something that I love. You have really leaned into AI in a big way. And it's wow, the amount of time savings that you have, the amount of content you can pump out, the ebooks that you're doing, the calendars that you're doing. I'm blown away. But another way that you blew me away was through your daughters. And for those of you that don't know, Melanie has young daughters. And as Melanie and I create content all the time and work together in many different ways,

you know, we offer programs together, we do consulting together for companies and we podcast together and we're friends. So we're on video a lot together. I was so blown away by the example you showed me of what your daughter could do with a recording of you and I and the traction that we got off it. So I was hoping you could share with everybody

so people understand how simple it really is to create content today. I think AI is scary to a lot of people, especially those of us who have a 19 in our birth year. I think it can be intimidating. I know for myself, I really didn't start leaning into AI until last year, but really, really immersing my business in it until this year.

But there's a company whose program I love called Opus Clip. And essentially what they do is instead of going out and hiring a video editor, as many companies are trying to figure out, is this worth the investment? What are we doing? How are we going to do it? Do we need a video editor? It essentially takes all the guesswork out of everything that you're doing with video because you take an MP4 or a link to a YouTube video, you drop it into their platform, and then you set the parameters of what you want the video to be. How long do you want the video to be? Do you want AI B-roll? Do you want regular stock B-roll? Do you want to take anything out of it? And

it essentially will clip for, let's say, for example, a video that's four minutes long, it will clip 25 different videos for you. And so it's so simple. Once you get the hang of it and you just flex that muscle, it's super easy. But kids, as you know, like my kids are nine and 10, it's, they know how to are nine and 10. They know how to use ChatGPT. They know how to use Dali. And I didn't even really train them how to do it. I just said, tell it what you want to do. And the best way that I would explain any of these AI systems is you just have to treat it like an assistant.

You treat it like it's an intern, especially for those of us who run businesses and have people working for us. It's a really easy way to kind of start getting the hang of it. That was the best analogy someone ever gave me because then for me I was like, okay, I can do this. I can do AI. I can go in and I can start the prompts. And now it's really transformed it where now, as Heather knows, I mean, we can give my daughter this recording and she will turn it into 25 different clips and opus clips. And she's 10! 10 years old and creating content that we actually use. Guys, this is not something that was like a throwaway that was funny. No, we used it because it was so good, right? So literally your children can go ahead and create content for you. It's that simple through the tools that

Melanie teaches on, that Melanie exposes people to and teaches me about all the time. And I am blown away how simple creating content actually is now just from conversations. And I've seen you do the same thing with these eBooks that you've created. And if you could share with everybody a little bit about how you're pumping out eBooks for your clients now.

Yeah, no, that's a great question. So one of the things that I've learned along the way that I mentioned earlier is when you have your calls recorded and they're on something very specific and when I'm working with someone, we're building strategy and it's usually on a specific topic or I'm getting to know a client and we're having a conversation. So just like with building out LinkedIn posts, we're doing that same thing with blogs. We're doing that same thing with eBooks. We're taking recordings of calls, just like you and I are on right now, Heather. And we're taking these recordings and we're putting it into AI, then we're editing it, and then we're putting it back into AI,

and then we're editing again, and then we're putting it in, formatting it, and we have a finished piece of work. And it's something where, just as a reference, an ebook before I started using AI would take my team and I probably two to three months to complete and collectively would probably take about 30 hours. Okay. Now it will take us less than a day and collectively would probably take a total of one hour max. So it's a significant difference in the amount of manpower. And there's so much more on that topic too, from an efficiency standpoint for businesses, but it's wild. And it's so worth everyone investing into it. So really now there's no excuse for anyone. Anyone could create an ebook and guys just, you know, go to heathermonaghan.com.

I literally have not updated my ebook in years. I need to, now that you're telling me it's this easy, but I just haven't thought about it. But everybody should have an e book. And here's why guys, as you build an audience, as you build a community on social media, by showing up as yourself, raising your hand and exposing people to who you are, because people do business with people they know, like, and trust, right? So we want to show up as ourselves online as a real human, not an AI bot. And as we do that, we want to send those people back to our sphere, back to our website, back to our own proprietary tools and services, our ebook.

And so an ebook is a great conversion mechanism, whether you're going on podcasts or posting about it on social media so that you can take that audience and bring them back to your MailChimp, back to your texting community, back to your website, wherever you wanna keep that audience. The reason why I encourage this,

as much as I love all social media, any social media can choose to kick you off at any point in time, can be bought by somebody else, can shut down at any point in time, right? Like anything can happen. Again, we don't control that and we're a user, we're power users, we love it, but we also want to make sure

that we're bringing that community somewhere else so that we can offer them our services, add value to their lives, and keep that community wherever else we go. What are some of the other things that you do to help move your audience off of the social media platforms? That's a great question. And to your point about having your own audience versus the platform, I had created a LinkedIn newsletter a few years ago, and I grew it and I grew it.

And then I realized, man, I can't download all the contacts from the newsletter. And so what I started doing was trying to now post this weekly newsletter and convert them and bring them to my own website to get them on my list versus having LinkedIn on the list. So every week I have a blog that or a newsletter that goes out and we actually also format it as a blog a little bit differently. We run it through AI.

And then we also post it on human to brand.com forward slash insights, where your team can see everyone that's there, all the blog posts that are there that were written by me versus the guest posts, they're all written by AI. All of them are. And you could see how the tone is very similar to mine. I mean, it is me. We've trained it to sound like me and it's listened to me for long enough and it knows who I am and it knows the type of words I use.

But having that LinkedIn newsletter go out is definitely a way to kind of bring people to you. And I know you do the same thing. And one of the reasons I love the LinkedIn newsletter is because number one, you can send it out as a post. Then if you have your notifications on in LinkedIn, a notification goes out letting you know, Heather Monahan just posted. And then you also get an email about the newsletter too.

And you see it come through as an email directly from you. And then in that newsletter, you can have those multiple moments of conversion where you can bring them over to if you're selling a course, if you are launching a book, whatever it is, or you just wanna convert them onto your list and you're giving away this free ebook is another really great way to kind of monetize your newsletter as well. For anyone that's like, well, I don't have a book and I don't know that I ever want to write a book, that's okay.

You know what? You just might want to elevate your presence in business. You might want to elevate beyond your industry so that people can start seeing who you are. Then they're going to find different ways that they can get a hold of you and they can reach out to you to offer you jobs, to offer you partnerships, to offer you brand partners. It's incredible the opportunities that will come to you once you raise your hand and expose people to who you are and start adding value. That is the key. You don't need to know you're going to write a book in the future or look for this incredible deal down the road. Just start positioning yourself for as much success as possible. And to me, that's really about sales 101, letting people get to know, like and trust you.

And the easiest way to do that is really through LinkedIn, the way that I see it in business, it's worked incredibly well for me. It's worked incredibly well for Melanie. And so Melanie, what are some of the other big questions people are coming to you and asking you currently? One of the things I hear a lot is from women who are looking to make transitions in their career. So maybe they're looking to take the next step and apply for a C-suite position role

within their organization, or maybe they already have and they were turned down and now they're trying to figure out what the next step is and how do they position themselves on LinkedIn? Or how do they start a coaching or consulting business and manage that while still in that role while also building it in the background and where to start and how to do it? And especially if they're managing a family too, how that looks like and how they can do that. So I get a lot of questions about setting up a consulting business and what that process looks like. The other thing I hear a lot about is really just what content works best for

conversion. And I always tell people there's really four types pillars, if you will, of content that have always worked well for me, works well for my clients. I know it works well for you too, Heather, and that's educational content, right? So anything where you're teaching someone something that you were talking about for giving value. Well, you just teach them about what you do and how you do it. Because nine times out of 10,

a lot of people won't do that because they're so afraid someone's gonna steal their secrets. Well, there are no secrets because everything's already been said and done. Like you mentioned earlier about the Bible. So it's something that people want information they want to learn and that's why they're on LinkedIn is a lot of times is to learn something. Also sharing what other people say about you. So user generated content that can come from

colleagues, clients, it can come from, you know, reviews that you have, it can come from the comments section on a different social platform, it can come from emails, et cetera, letting people know who works with you and who else trusts you is a big one. Personal content, and that doesn't have to be you're sharing what you ate last night for dinner. It could be your personal perspective on your journey from being the chief growth officer to having this speaking business and being a coach.

You can share that journey and what that was like and all the in-betweens and not have to share something that's super deeply personal. Because I always say that there's a difference between personal and private and things that are private you might not want to share, but it's going to be different for everybody. And really lastly is promoting yourself. When I felt that things were shifting in my business and I wasn't getting the traction that I wanted, I realized I wasn't being specific about my offer. And I wasn't saying, I'm available to work. This is how I work. And this is how you can work with me. And nine times out of 10, when I go on someone's profile or from going through

someone's content and they're saying it's not working, I look at them and say, it's because you're not asking for it. So always ask for what you want. You don't have to do it every day, but you should ask for what you want. Because if you don't, you're not gonna get it. Oh, so good. And sales 101, a closed mouth does not get fed. Back to the Bible, that's written in the Bible.

A closed mouth does not get fed. You have to raise your hand and ask for what you want. There's many different ways to do that. My entire career has been in sales and sales leadership. I love walking people through how selling is helping. When you deny people by not sharing the value that you can bring to their life, to their business, you are harming them. They may need you more than you even know. And so often people will say, especially women, I don't want to be salesy. I don't want to hit people over the

head. Well, I'd like to flip the script on that and say then, so you want to be salesy. I don't want to hit people over the head. Well, I'd like to flip the script on that and say, then so you want to deny these people the problem that you solve? That's really kind of crappy, right? So I always give myself that talk anytime I feel like, oh, am I being too promotional? No, I need to remind myself that people have needs.

And if we don't share with them how we can solve a problem, they're not going to get their need fixed, their problem solved. That's just crappy. We need to make the world a better place. And the way we do that is bringing our light forward, our talents forward, packaging and offering those things to create solutions for others. And I remember when I first started doing this years ago on LinkedIn and sharing with people like I have a new book. I have a podcast I want you to listen to. At first, I would feel a little awkward. And then I'd start getting messages back.

Thank you so much for sharing that episode, Heather, that was awesome. It helped me right before I went into this meeting. It helped me when I was trying to get promoted. You start seeing, I'm adding value. When you offer those solutions to the wrong people, they'll fall away. That's okay, those aren't your people.

But as you continually share the things that you can teach, that you can build on, that you can help people with, you'll attract more and more of those people and help them solve their problems. So that's one of the things that we want to talk about today. We are so often asked, how can people work with us? I can't afford to work with you one on one. It's too expensive. So Melanie and I have put together a 2024 wrap up 2024

as the best way and best packaging gift for yourself. The last eight weeks of 2024, we are going to be live on Zoom in this bootcamp community, only with women. It's the first time we've ever done this, women only. Here's the things that we've heard from you and we've listened. Too often people are like, you doing a two day event,

it's an, I can't make those days or it's not enough time. So we decided to do eight weeks so that everybody can see the progress that they're making. We can hold the team accountable. We can teach and come back the next week to answer the questions so that people can work t and find ways to get the looking for, get critiqu

and turns that they need and to do it over an eight is time there to see groa there to learn new techni with two different teache coming from very differ backgrounds, having achieved very different things. Melanie's got the most incredible marketing background and marketing strategies. She's so dialed in with AI. She brings so much forward around content creation, around managing things and ideas that I have no skill

set in. And what I bring forward is my sales and sales leadership background, speaking background. And well, of course, if you didn't know, I was just named 2024 Executive Coach of the Year by real leaders. Holla at the plants. So you're going to be working with two of the best of the best in the industry. We are going to be live on Zoom with you each week. Melanie, what else are we giving our people? It's going to be really awesome because a lot of times, I know for you as well, I do one-on-one sessions with people. We have a shared working document.

There are action items. Each time there's an agenda. But a lot of times, if someone's not following up and doing a follow-up meeting, a lot of times the progress that I'm seeing is just on LinkedIn or through them updating me over time. And so being able to have that one-on-one interaction and the accountability of having each other and being able to say, okay, this is what you have to do after this week. And then the next time we meet, you will have those

items completed. And that's the hardest part. I really feel if you have so much going on and that's really the women who are going to be working with us are the ones who have it all and they're trying to juggle everything but they're also trying to progress their life forward. So when you have two other women like us who have been there done that and now we can show them and help them through all of our learnings it's's going to be a game changer for them. There's no doubt about it. And I love when we do it in the power of a collective. And guys, what I mean by that is, listen, you can go out for a run by yourself and have a good run and feel good about your workout. When you go out for a run with a team of 10 or 20 people that you run with once a week, there is this level of accountability and wanting to push yourself further to wanting

to run faster, wanting to get to the front of the pack. The power of collective builds momentum like nothing I have ever seen. And I've seen this in my mastermind groups. I've seen this in my group coaching groups. It is so much more the energy is next level versus a one on one. So not only do you get the opportunity to work with coaches who have done the things that you want to do and will teach the tips, tricks and strategies to do it faster than anybody else, but you're going to be around a group of like-minded people

who are encouraging you, who are cheering you on, who are in our private WhatsApp group together every day calling it out for you, wanting to hear what next win you have. And when you put yourself in those arenas with people who want you to win, who are cheering for you, who are champions for you and are running at a higher level with you, suddenly you are running so much faster. You've seen this too, Melanie, haven't you? Yeah, absolutely.

The other part of it too is there's so much that there is to learn, especially when you're growing your personal brand and trying to get to that next level. So as an example, how do I start and grow a podcast? How do I start and grow my LinkedIn? What am I supposed to use if I need to book a speaking engagement? Where do I start?

And maybe I don't necessarily have a budget of six figures to hire someone, but I really need someone who has been there, done that, gotten the t-shirt, which both of us have, and that way we can guide them to where they need to go. When you sign up, we're going to get you an onboarding doc to get crystal clear on your goals because that's the first step. We want you writing down exactly what it is that you want to achieve. And again, we're not talking about, you know, getting the job of your life or starting your business tomorrow. We need to build out the plan. We need to teach you the steps and tips and tricks that you need to implement in your life to make that happen.

But first, you need to get clear. You need to own it and you need to own it in front of the team. And as you do that, you are going to hold yourself accountable. We're all going to get on the same page. We're all going to be behind you. And just writing it down and sharing it amongst others is one of the most powerful steps you can do. Investing in yourself is one of the most powerful steps

you can do. When I first got fired, I invested in myself and I hired my editor for my book. And the day that I spent that money on him, I knew I was like, I'm worth this. I am worth investing in me. And I am not going to fumble around for years trying to figure out what somebody who's done something successfully 19 times has done. I'm going to pay the money so that I can leapfrog everybody else and have a book done in five months, not in five years. And that book came out five months later and went number one, Trump, Donald Trump for number one in the business biography list. And yes, I had the screenshot for that. I invested in myself again when I hired Peter economy to write my book proposal for me.

I didn't want to waste time. I knew if I wanted to land a major publishing deal, I needed a major book proposal. I spent a ton of money on that investment and I landed a huge deal with HarperCollins leadership. Investing in yourself pays, right? Investing in coaches pays. Tom Brady did not become Tom Brady on his own. He invested in coaches all along his journey. Any amazing athlete has done the same thing. Anyone who is succeeding at a very, very high level

has invested in coaches, has invested in so much more. The best investment you're ever gonna make is in yourself. Melanie, what's the site? Where does everybody go and how can they sign up and how many seats do we have? Awesome. So we have 20 seats. It is elevateyourinfluencebootcamp.com. So all the information about the eight weeks is going to be there from what to expect, deliverables, from what to expect, deliverables, frequently asked questions, etc. Always reach out to me or you if someone wants to jump on a call before making a commitment. But I have a feeling it's going to sell out pretty quickly because something like this from two people like us who have been through the trial and terror period multiple times for multiple things that we've worked on is really valuable for someone who's really serious about taking where they are in their career to the next step and even

going further beyond that so that way they know exactly you know what to do, how to do it, and they have that pathway forward. We're also going to be including a drop box, which will have all kinds of content, deliverables, templates, etc. So every single success metric that you can imagine that someone would have had, whether it's for their personal brand, for speaking for podcasting, for LinkedIn, whatever it is, it will be in there. I can't wait. It's going to be awesome. So if you want to get promoted, if you want to stop circling the drain, if you want to get excited about life again, if you want to start your own business, you want to elevate your brand, you want to switch careers, whatever it is that you want to do, we've done it. We're going to teach

you the tips and tricks to do it faster than we did. And you're going to be a part of a team that's going to be cheering you along the whole way. You want to set up 2025 for the biggest wins your career, the time to do it is now. Don't wait for Christmas to find out no one bought you the gift that you wanted. Buy yourself the gift that you need. Invest in you. Melanie and I can't wait to work with you guys. We only have 20 seats. Grab yours now. You can go to my link in the bio. You can go to Melanie's link in her bio, or you can go to the link in the notes below. Can't wait to see you. We start November 4th. Don't miss this opportunity. You can't afford to miss it. Until next time, keep creating your confidence. You know I will be. I decided to change that dynamic. I couldn't be more excited for what you're gonna hear.

Start learning and growing. Inevitably something will happen. No one succeeds alone. You don't stop and look around once in a while. You could miss it. I'm on this journey with me.