Episode 353: The Workplace Performance Expert Henna Pryor

Welcome to another episode of the Above the Business podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we have Hena Pryor. Hena was the number one top producer and leader at a $2 billion staffing firm for over 14 years before becoming a top-rated global keynote speaker. I think you're going to definitely pick that up. She is an incredible speaker, but so energetic and personable, easy to connect with. I really love this conversation with Hena. She recently is the author of a fantastic book that I encourage you to pick up, Good Awkward, which was actually endorsed by NFL quarterback Russell Wilson and former Harvard Business Review editor Karen Dillon, and was also named a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year. She's also a 2x TEDx speaker. We talk about all things around awkwardness in small business and entrepreneurship. We talk about the difference between being online and then connecting in the real world. I really loved the fact that we came at this conversation from so many different angles, and I really do— but it served me, and she has won one-liner in here that you're going to really love that certainly spoke to me that I'm going to end up putting in my log of lessons learned. So without further ado, here's my wonderful conversation with Hannah Prior. Hannah Prior, welcome to the Above the Business podcast.

Thank you for having me. Can't wait to talk to you.

I'm excited about it. So background and origin story, love to kind of go back and hear people's journeys about where they started, where they've been, and how they got to where they are today. So why don't you take us on your journey?

Great. So my professional journey, I have to start way back. We gotta, we gotta hit rewind because I think it informs where things ended up. I am a firstborn of immigrant parents. My mom is from Pakistan, my dad is from India, and they were raised overseas. They came here when they got married, and I'm firstborn in the US. What does that have to do with my professional journey? I think it actually has quite a lot to do with it because, you know, I had parents who didn't come to the country with a lot. I was watching them really build from scratch their own dreams, you know, their own businesses. And in my case, they had— they were small business owners themselves. I actually followed more of a traditional path. So achievement-oriented family. I went for the straight A's. I wanted to be the star student, got the good college, got great grades there, got the good job. So my first job out of college was actually at Ernst Young. I worked for a large Big Four public accounting firm. For a few years. Shiny, prestigious, lots of name recognition. I did not like it. I did not enjoy it. I am not meant to be an auditor. You can probably tell in my personality that accountant is not necessarily what I was made to do on this earth.

Yeah.

But I did that for a few years, which led to pivot number one in my career. Pivot number one was actually to professional executive search and staffing. So I went and worked for a $2 billion staffing firm on the direct hire side. So I was working with both leaders, clients, and prospective candidates, matching dream jobs, dream companies with dream candidates. And I did that for 14 years, actually found a real natural knack in that industry. Um, staffing is sales. I was in sales for 14 years. I was 100% commissions and found I loved it. I loved the consultative nature. I never felt like I was selling a day in my life. I felt like I was relationship building. I felt like I was advising. And in that career, I found something that I really enjoyed and frankly had some gifts in. But after 14 years of that, I kind of looked up and thought, all right, I'm doing it. I'm good at it. What's next? Right? Like, I, I had this itch. I knew I was meant for something more. And to accelerate the story, a number of my clients had said to me, Hannah, you're our staffing partner, but we really ought to pay you for all the executive coaching and advising that you do for us. And I'm thinking, oh, do I? I don't even know what that is. What is executive coaching? So I went and got certified in executive coaching just out of curiosity. Wasn't sure what I was gonna do with it. Immediately fell in love, which created my last and final pivot so far, number 3, which is, um, sorry, number 2 rather, 2 and a half, which is to start my own company. I say 2 and a half because I pivoted career, but I also pivoted working model, which was I went into business for myself. Um, that was 2019. In early 2020, I launched in earnest. Started as an executive coach, still do a little bit of that, but now it's 99% keynote speaking, workshops, breakouts, and authorship. And it's been on a wild ride ever since.

Oh, that's fantastic. Well, I have to ask you, when I was doing some research before we got started, so what is your favorite chocolate? I see that you're a big chocolate holic.

Okay. No, this is a great question. And in fact, because it's my favorite, I have some next to me at all times. So here's one that I I do not want people to sleep on. So I love fancy chocolate, artisan chocolate, but I also love a Twix, right? So I'm, I'm chocolate, you know, universal here. I'm not super specific, but there is a chocolate that is incredible and not expensive. So Thrive Market. Okay. So for those who can't see the video, there's an online grocer called Thrive Market and they make their Thrive Market brand organic chocolate truffles. Do not sleep on these, my friend. They are inexpensive, but they taste like your finest fanciest bean-to-bar chocolate. So I just nibble on these all day. In fact, there's a second box behind this one just out of view. So these, these are my favorite.

Okay. All right. So that was a weird segue. That wasn't just completely random. It may to our audience feel that way. But here's why I asked that question. Yeah, I think before we hit record, you and I were talking about that. Because so many things have moved online, that people have struggled to be able to connect in the real world with difficult conversations, etc. And one of the things that I noticed whenever I was researching you and the topics that we would discuss is that you have made yourself very uniquely you. Like, you are authentically you is what I mean by that. There's no— there's like, you put on there that you love Chocolate, as an example, and it creates this opportunity to get to know you at a certain level. I mean, I'm wearing Masters gear. People know to listen to the podcast, I'm a big golfer. I love basketball, love my kids' sports, I love Auburn collegiate athletics, etc. So there's things that are about who I am. Just talk about the importance of being and putting the real version of yourself out there, number one. And then number two, that I think that would be a transition into this idea of the difficulty of going from the digital world into in-person?

Sure. So question number 1 is this seems like an obvious thing we should all know to do, right? Show up authentically. But what most business owners and entrepreneurs get caught up in is obviously a business is not gonna be successful if people don't like what we're putting out there. They don't like the version of us that they see. If we are our business, right? Speakers, authors, coaches, Mentors, advisors, it's even more challenging because the business often gets tangled up in the us, right?

Yeah.

Even when there's a product service solution-based business, we need people to like it in order to purchase it. Now that said, what that leads to sometimes dangerously is this level of performing. And so one of the studies I cite in my book is about the dangers of catering. Oftentimes when we are either new to a job new to entrepreneurship, new to sales, whatever it may be, we try a little too hard to cater to the people that we're trying to serve because we think that's gonna get us better results. But there's actually a brilliant study out of Harvard by Francesca Gino and her team that studies, uh, entrepreneurs who are pitching to investors. And what they actually found is that those entrepreneurs who catered to the investors, meaning they tried to present what they thought the investors would like, actually were 3 times less likely to get the funding than those who came in sort of raw edges, stumbles, fumbles, fully expressed and fully themselves. Now that shocks people because they're like, you know, are we saying don't prepare? Of course not. Know your audience, know what you're doing, but understand that people can now increasingly sniff out a performative version of you. And so it's really, it's not about, you know, Bradley, in your case, I don't think you woke up this morning and said, you know what? I need people to think I'm real authentic, so I'm gonna wear this shirt or I'm gonna think about my hat. In fact, it's the opposite. It's thinking less about it. It's just leaning into whatever your natural thing is and trusting that if you are respectful and mindful of what you do, you're not being, you know, rude. Then largely these are things that make people feel connected to you. So it's taking away that little shell that we put on of performance because not only is it not really worth our energy and effort, it's actually not helping our business either. The, the data supports that it's not helping.

You know, I, I think that's so good because I wanted to draw a distinction between the overt obvious lying that you're taking a picture in front of your McLaren and you don't own the McLaren. That's actually not what I'm talking— was not what I was referring to. Clearly that is happening. Yes, of course. But it's more about not presenting the full authentic version of just who you are. And I think you're so right about, you know, just caring less about it versus how am I being perceived, the image, so to speak, about it. And I'm, you know, so square something up for me though, because I, I'm curious around this, is How do I then— because you mentioned it, but I think there's a nuance here and I just would love to kind of bring it together— is how do I pay attention to what the audience, the boardroom— I was obviously speaking to Fatini about that just a little bit ago— in, in that setting.

Yeah.

Seeing what they want. But then you being uniquely myself, whether it's that or the audience that you're speaking to, and maybe whenever you're going and speaking to a conference the group that's organizing that, right? And figuring out who their audience is and what the message is and tailoring yourself, but yet uniquely being still you. Like, I'm trying to square, kind of square those two circles up to say, I'm going to see what the audience wants, but I'm at the same time still going to be uniquely myself. Does this make sense?

Yes. Yeah. And I'm going to answer the question from a reverse angle because when we're thinking about this perception. So I wanna maybe use a couple definitions to help frame this conversation. What my expertise is on, what my book was on was, you know, the emotion of awkwardness is if I don't show up a certain way, it's going to make me feel like X because I'm worried I'm gonna get it wrong. You know, awkwardness is tied to approval. If I don't look like I know what I'm talking about, if they feel like I'm unprepared, I'm gonna feel embarrassed by that. I'm gonna feel awkward about that. What I wanna maybe say here first to answer your question is Awkwardness is not the same as ineptitude.

Hmm.

These are not the same things. So when we talk about obstacles to authenticity, because that word authenticity, you and I both know it is getting tossed around like a tennis ball these days, right? Yeah. This is just the word and everyone hears it and yes, we should be more authentic at work. And I can't tell you how many people say to me, yes, great. How come that feels easier to say than it is to actually do? What does it actually mean? What does it look like? The emotion of awkwardness is a barrier to authenticity. Okay, what if I bring my whole self, bring all of it, and they're like, nope, that's not what we were expecting, or this wasn't, you know, what, what we find palatable, this isn't what we approve of, then we feel a certain way about it. It's a social emotion. Too many people confuse awkwardness with ineptitude. Ineptitude implies being deficient in a certain skill. Or not having competence in a certain area. So what I am not suggesting, please don't do this, is showing up to a boardroom meeting or showing up in front of an audience for a pitch conversation and not having done your homework and not having been prepared. I want you to have done your homework. I want you to have been prepared. I want you to know that person's pain points. I would like you to know a little bit about their business. We are not talking ineptitude. What we are talking about is there will likely be a moment in that conversation where something goes sideways. Somebody says something you didn't expect. They asked you something you weren't prepared for. So actually, I'll make this very real. I was in a, a keynote recently, and at the end, I don't always do Q&A, but I had an opportunity to do some Q&A, and somebody asked me a question on something for which I am perceived to be the expert, and I had no idea. I had no idea. So situations like that invite the emotion of awkwardness of, okay, you know, I, I'm supposed to be perceived as X, And now I look like, why? Embracing that emotion, embracing the non-performative version in that moment doesn't mean doubling down on my ineptitude. Oh man, I'm an idiot. I should know that. No, no, we're not gonna do that. True authenticity in that moment looks like, you know, I'll be honest, I'm standing up here and I am supposed to be the expert on this, but the truth is in this moment, I have an idea of what I wanna say, but I don't have full confidence in that answer without spending a little bit more time on the research. So in order to not give you a half-baked answer, I'm gonna actually put a pin in that. I'm gonna collect everybody's information after this session and make sure I give you an answer that I feel 100% confident in. And then if I feel bold enough, I might say, here's what I'm thinking, but let me back this up with the research and let you know for sure. That's an authentic answer. That doesn't make me sound inept. It doesn't make me sound like an idiot. That's just the truth. That's a real thing. But even that, people sometimes struggle to come at with their, their whole self.

It reminded me, and I had to, I had to look it up real quick to, uh, because I lost his name, but Simon Sinek has did a, uh, he was on, I think, Stephen Bartlett's Diary of a CEO podcast, and he was talking about, to your point, he was given a keynote, and he's, you know, I don't know what he garners in a keynote, but a lot. And he was giving a keynote, something he's done many, many times, about a topic he knows well, knows well. I'm sure it was maybe Start With Why or something like that. And he completely lost his train of thought.

Yeah, I've seen this. Yeah.

Have you seen this?

Uh-huh.

And I think somebody from the audience said, like, he was like, what was I talking about? Right? And he talked about embracing the vulnerability of that. Right? So he clearly, I'm sure he did this research and prepared and knew that, but he got lost in that. And I think that vulnerability in those type of situations and that awkwardness, you can begin to embrace it. I love the distinction between that and ineptitude, awkwardness versus ineptitude. You know, you come across as you have such a palatable energy about you, like you have such an energy through a Zoom, let alone on stage. Do you find yourself, self, still in awkward situations? And how do you, how do we, because you seem like somebody who would never find yourself in an awkward situation. I mean, and I mean that as a compliment.

Yeah, no, constantly. And it honestly, it makes you laugh when people say that because whatever perceived polish or confidence people see now is years of practice and honestly learning how to shake off the shackles of approval that were over my ankles for most of my life. I mean, I, I have cared deeply. So, you know, those who can't see me and they're just hearing me, I'm of South Asian descent. I mentioned that my parents were Pakistani and Indian. There is an expression that I grew up with, and if you have any South Asian listeners, they'll probably know it, which is, "Lo kyaa kenge?" which translates to, "What will other people think? What will the community think?" And so growing up, every decision I made, the major I chose, the man I married, everything for a while was filtered through this lens of not what brings you joy, Hannah, what will other people think? So I deeply deeply cared what other people thought. Anything that threatened awkwardness or embarrassment, I avoided like the plague for a really, really, really long time. And it took years of me finally realizing that every choice I made was a choice. So by avoiding this situation over here, I was choosing something else over there. You know, inaction is a choice. Everything is a choice. And so I had to really start to untangle those messages. I still get it wrong constantly. But here's what's interesting about the emotion of awkwardness. The emotion, the emotion that I now embrace, or let's, let's say the brand of confidence that you now see, I like to think of it as awkward confidence. I am not always polished. In fact, I am rare. I, I, it's easier for me to be polished in these business settings because I've practiced to see me around my friends when I'm less articulate, less careful. None, none whatsoever. But we think of people who appear very confident as, oh, they're cool, they're calm, they're collected, they're flawless. Yes, sometimes. But the people that we see as most confident are actually the ones that can flub, and their comeback rate is lightning fast. Example, my opening story in the book is Jennifer Lawrence, the actress at the Oscars. She tripped on her dress on the way up to the stage to collect her trophy. Now, this is in front of millions of viewers. She's at the most glamorous event on all of television, and she gets up on stage and immediately says, you know, you're all just clapping because I fell and that's embarrassing, but thank you. Right? She owns it immediately, and she's beloved around the world as confident, as charming, as disarming. This is true of everyone. I share a story in my book about after the pandemic, I had my first meeting with a leader after a long time, right? We hadn't all convened in a while, and I'm sales pitching him. I'm giving him 15 minutes of my finest pitching. I've been in sales for 15 years. I know what I'm doing. He puts his hand up and I'm like, Hannah's nailing it, you know, high five. And I high five the guy and he literally says, I'll never forget it. He says to me, Hannah, my hand was up because I was trying to get you to stop. I was like, oh God, oh dear God, right? Like blood is draining out of me. And I had two choices in that moment. I could have sat there and let the blood continue to make my face beet red and burning hot, or I could own the moment. And so thanks to my own research, I knew that the quicker I could own the moment, the more confident I would appear.

Woo.

That's embarrassing. I really misread that one. I thought you were going for the high five. You know, cringe. Let's move on from that. We laughed, his shoulder fell, my shoulders fell, and we moved on. In fact, I would argue that we were even more bonded as a result of that experience. And so confidence isn't flawlessness. Confidence these days is just being able to own our entire humanity, including the less glamorous blender parts. But thank you for thinking I'm flawless. I am not, even though you didn't say that, but I'm definitely not.

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Two, two things that stood out to me. I about choked on my drink when I heard you say letting the shackles of approval go. I was like, oh my goodness, what a one-liner. I am putting that. I have a log of lessons learned that I have, they're one-liners, quotes, et cetera, that I learned throughout the year. That is going in the 2024 log of lessons learned. That is fantastic. Second thing, and I'll come back around to that because I've got a question around, um, identity as a business owner, entrepreneur, and performance. But before I get there, one thing that, um, in my small group, somebody, one, one of the men in my small group shared with me about a year, maybe 2 years ago, is this saying, I can be. And so in other words, if somebody says, you know, Bradley, you come across as confident, I can be. So when you said sometimes, I was thinking to myself, I can be confident, I can do this, I can do that. And I can also be very not confident. I can be extroverted at times. And then I think a lot of people would be very surprised about I can be very incredibly introverted. My social tank is done and I need to get away from everybody and everything to be able to recharge. And so that I can be has been helpful to me. So I want to wrap back around to performance, because when it—

when—

and that kind of came from the shackles of approval, is that sometimes the business owner has in their own head, his or her head, about what they need to be achieving— business revenue targets, the first time you cross a million, the first time you hit X amount of dollars in premium, maybe you win industry awards. There is both an internal thing that I need to do it to satisfy my own expectations, but also, let's be real, there is external things that people are looking at is that if I don't achieve this, I don't qualify for this, I don't do these things, I don't have my picture on the PowerPoint slide at the industry conference. Then I'm a loser. I'm a loser. And so how do we square up— again, it just happens to come up twice now— square up this idea of wanting more, wanting to always continue to grow personally and professionally, yet at the same time not being driven by what other people think?

Great question. So I'll say two angles come to mind here. Number one is, I think you started to allude to it, which is prioritizing and celebrating the right things. And that distills down to process over outcome, right? If you're committed to the process, if you control the controllables in your business and execute at a high level of excellence, the outcomes will come. That said though, I think the second thing, which is maybe less talked about in the professional development spheres, especially in the entrepreneurial spheres, is we are now living in an attention economy. Being relentlessly committed to an A+ process isn't enough. We, there's a lot of people who are relentlessly committed to process and they fall into a sea of other people who are relentlessly committed to process. So in an attention economy where there's a lot of noise, I think this is part of where the authenticity comes back in. You know, people hear that, but authenticity by definition doesn't mean homogeneity, meaning we're not all authentically the same. That's kind of not the point. And so one of my early coaches, I remember when we were fleshing out keynote topics, but I think that this applies to even business ideas, is give people something they desire. There's no demand for it. You're wasting your time, right? Give people something to desire. But this is the part that I think is interesting. Are you willing to do it via a means they didn't expect? Or even if it's a means that they expect, are you willing to deliver the idea, market the idea, sell the idea via a means they didn't expect? And it's those of us that are willing to just be a little bit different in our approach, not a 90-degree, not a 180, even a little bit different in our approach. My personal take is these are the people that will stand out. These are the people that are going to rise above the fray, rise above the noise, and actually get paid a bit of attention to. But willingness to be a little bit different means inviting the people that may not like it, right? The very virtue of being a little bit different is you're disrupting the status quo. And there's a lot of people who like the status quo. The big, you know, takeaway here is, guess what? That has nothing to do with you. Whether they approve of the way you've done it has nothing to do with you. And if you get real caught up in that, it's, you know, fish dead in the water. I, uh, I constantly get feedback forms after keynotes, and there are, you know, 95, 98% of people saying, this was so fresh, this was such a breath of fresh air, this was something different. And then there's always a percentage of, this was a little too, too avant-garde for me, this was a little too— right? Stop trying to please everyone. If you are trying to stand out in a noisy marketplace, you have to be willing to zig a little bit while everyone else is zagging. And just know, be prepared mentally and physically that that will sometimes feel at odds with our social acceptance desires as human beings. But if we try to please everybody, we please nobody. So we have to be willing to stand out a little bit.

I think it's great. And then I want to take it to the extreme side too, because there's a, there's a few people, both, um, global figures that present themselves this way. But then I think in our own individual lives, there's a few people that we could probably point to that have such an arrogance, have gone so far into, I don't give a damn what you think. Excuse my language on that. But like, you know, and it's like, well, God, that's not, that's not, that's not what we're talking about either. That's going too far to a point of like, you're, you're so like, I don't care, I'm gonna do me. Type thing, that, that puts off people too much too. So, you know, thoughts on that?

Yes. No, I have strong thoughts on this. In fact, you know, in the spirit of time, I will humbly point people to my second TEDx, which is, is there such a thing as good bragging? The new way to brag in the modern world. But the themes of that really apply to what you're saying here. When we think of people who are arrogant entrepreneurs, business owners, or frankly anyone, leaders, are arrogant, we tend to think of people who are hyperfocused on solo validation. It's look at me, look at what I've done, look at, you know, the, the accomplishments that I have and look at how, how much I care zero for other people. It's the me show. But those who share their wins broadly, they enroll other people in, they have conviction. What they tend to do, whether we realize it or not, is something in the talk I refer to it as social celebration. Which is here, why this is, this is why this is good for all of us. This is why taking this approach is gonna help us all lift. When it becomes the, I'm only sticking my stake this far in the ground to make myself feel different. I'm not saying be different for the sake of being different, but if what you're doing a little bit differently helps serve the mission, helps create more impact, helps enroll more people into your idea that in some way, shape, or form is going to do good. For your industry, then that approach, you can be proud of the differences. You can be proud of the things, but it's what it boils down to is intention. There's two actions that can happen from two very different people that look the same from a behavior standpoint. But if one clearly has the intention just to prop themselves up alone, that solo validation, and one has the intention to say, hey, we're gonna look at this a little differently. This idea might seem, you know, rogue, but here's why we're doing it. Here's the impact on all of us. Then even though the actions may be the same, the intentions are different and we tend to absorb them very, very differently.

That's so true. I happen to know someone that in a particular sport is fairly well known, and I say that because of my connection to them is totally random. We're not friends. I don't have his number. I just know who he is and I've been around him maybe 4 times. Okay, so not very many times. And because of his connections, you know that he knows people. Okay, he just, just given what he is, but you cannot be around him for 5 minutes that he has not name-dropped 12 people. And just, and you're like, I get it, I know you know these people, I know that you know President Bush, right? Like, I, I get it, you don't have to say these things. And it becomes exhausting in an opposite of good branding, it's a bragging, it's dropping names all the time. Because I think the intention is off to what your point is, is what I was thinking.

Exactly. It's the intention. And then to circle back to what we mentioned before, it starts to feel like a performance, right? If they're so focused on naming those names, then what you start to feel, whether you're conscious of it or not, is this person is not present in this conversation.

Right.

This person is performing for me right now. They're actually not interested or curious or here with me in the conversation. They're just very excited to rattle off this list of names. And so I think it's a combination of those two things, the intention and the performance that we can start to sniff out.

Yeah, that's good. How did you come up with— talk to me about the genesis of the book Good Awkward, the book title itself first. And then let's walk people through maybe just a 30,000-foot view of the book structure, et cetera.

Sure. So, um, you know, besides my own, we, we kind of touched on my origin story. I, you know, I was immigrant kid, felt awkward all the time. My clothes were different, my food was different. You know, there was a lot of things that were part of my upbringing that created these emotions. And I think once I got to college, I thought, okay, I've dealt with that emotion, right? Like, I, I feel like I, I've sort of found my people at this point. But then the funniest thing happened. I entered my professional career and it, every inflection point, every growth point, every transition point, that dirty little feeling came back again. I was like, oh, now more people are watching. I feel awkward again. Nope. Now I'm afraid I'm gonna get it wrong. Oh, I'm gonna embarrass myself. Every growth point, that emotion came back. And I remember the thing that catalyzed the book really early on is our Queen Brené Brown, you know, kind of revered in the professional development space. She would, at the end of her podcast episodes and at the end of her interviews, she started to coin this little tagline. She would say, stay awkward, brave, and kind. That became one of her taglines. And I remember hearing it and thinking, brave, yes, I know that's important. Kind, my parents taught me that one. Stay awkward. Clearly, Miss Brené, you were not raised as a Pakistani kid in the US. Right? Like, you I don't wanna stay awkward. I've been trying to avoid this my whole life. And I just realized that no one had done a proper deep dive on this specific emotion of social discomfort as it relates to the workplace. Yeah. And increasingly now, you know, I would say even just as I was writing the book, the research was starting to pour out. Um, this is not in the book because it's new research, but it just came out. US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy just returned from a research trip to the UK where he was studying young adults. And he found that young adults, teens and young adults, are actually now struggling to have conversations in the physical world because they are so used to living their lives online. Hmm. And so when I think about awkwardness, I think about our social fitness. Our social muscles are atrophying, are weakening. And this is not just young adults. This is folks that now work in hybrid environments, whether they're entrepreneurs, business owners who work with their customers hybrid, We don't have the same proximity in our structures that we used to, which means we're losing the natural friction, the natural messiness that comes with constantly being around each other in real life, which is creating even more weakening of this social muscle. So just more and more, you know, since there's a lot of really, really powerful research and data in the book and a lot of stories and real life examples, but even since its pub date, which was only 6 months ago, I'm seeing more and more studies come out about the decline in our social fitness. And I think as entrepreneurs and business owners, it's really important that we double down on this particular skill because this is something that AI will not do for you. And so we need to actually get very intentional about that.

Yeah, that's true. Can't AI human relationships and community, that's for sure. Yeah.

Nope.

You know, one of the things, um, that I loved from your website that I really picked up on and beforehand, and it really has stuck with me personally and will stick with me after this conversation, is there's a slide of— from you speaking, the slides behind you— and it says, "It's impossible to get better at anything and look good at the same time." And there are so many times that I have been with one of my coaches, I've been in a room or an environment with someone, they have shown a slide that one of my masterminds I'm a part of, these, these two partners, they are in the software tech space and these guys are so incredibly creative. The things that they like, their, their Google Slide decks are so beautiful. I mean, I'm like, I didn't even know you could do some of those things on Google Slides. This is incredible. And I'm looking at mine and I'm looking at theirs I'm like, how do you do that? I don't know how you do that, right? And they make— they start to make things look so beautiful and easy. And so I think that there's been times— and this is leading to my question— is that when I've looked at somebody like that, that's just a specific tactical example about somebody's Google Slides, right? And I think, I can never get there. I just can't ever get there. As many times as they say, look, we didn't either. We didn't either. I mean, we remember the first times we even used Google Slides and it was messy and it was this and it was that and all these kind of things. And they leaned into it and they worked through it and then they got to where they are. They didn't— they were not born at, you know, and then at 12 years old they're editing Google Slides like, that's just not how it works. And so can you just speak to the fact of like, at times getting better at something is leaning in and, and it being awkward and it being messy and it being not the way it want it to be, but that's how we actually end up getting there.

Yeah, I think that there's two things that come to mind there. First of all, it's, you know, our shared friend Jake Thompson often uses this language of it's not me versus them, it's me versus me. Yeah, right. It has to be me versus me. And I am as human as the next person. I will occasionally look at some other speaker's, you know, speaker reel or some other author's book, and I'm like, dang, you know, like, I wish I did that. That's so good. I remember Jake, you know, bless him. He, when he got a copy of my book, he's like, oh, I wish mine, like, I know, I wish I did this. I did that. That's human. And I think it's actually healthy for us to have people, friends that we admire, certain things that they've done. It, it inspires us to push harder, to do better, to be more innovative, to, to compete, right? These are not bad things, but if we get hooked into the constant, me versus them, me versus them, then that becomes damaging and it actually becomes a crutch. It becomes paralyzing. It makes us not wanna do anything because the target keeps moving. So then it has to be twofold. Me versus me. Have I improved since last year? Do my slides look better than last year? If not, let me at least try to improve one thing. Maybe it's fonts, formatting, photos, whatever. And then the second thing in, and I encourage this towards the end of my book, is Take this bird's eye view every now and then. If we think about all of our little, you know, missing components or things that we're doing sloppy, messy, blundery right now, we could literally put a laser focus on that and not see anything else. But if we bird's eye view to, remember that content I created a year ago, right? Remember that first talk I gave and how messy it was and how I had to read my slides word for word? And it's just perspective, right? Of how far we've come. But You know, that's, that's daily work. That is daily work to remind myself me versus me, because I think it's healthy to aspire to a better, you know, level of production of quality of slide. It's unhealthy when I get so fixated on it that I stop celebrating what I have done and what I'm capable of doing. So just know how you're doing it, I think, is number 1. The second thing I would say on this is just Part of improvement on anything, anything, and I try not to speak in absolutes, but truly anything is doing it in a way or going at it in a way where a little bit of mess or failure is likely to be a byproduct. I don't know, truly, think of any discipline, skiing, speaking, writing. I don't know any author whose first draft is the one that was published. I don't know any skier who went on a black diamond on the first try. This is part of the process. And in certain disciplines, we remember that very acutely. Sports, of course, that's part of, you know, falling down. Yeah. Speaking, sure, you're gonna stumble every now and then. But then on our day to day, we don't give ourselves the same grace. We're like, nope, perfection the first time. That's it. And so just daily self-talk reminding yourself, this is part of the process. This is part of the process. Blunders are natural. Looking a little messy along the way is natural. Ask the person you admire most if they nailed it the first time. I guarantee you the answer is no. And I think one of our greatest opportunities as a society right now, back to this digital world we all live in, is creating space for these conversations. One of the things I coach, you know, business owners and leaders on is at the top of a meeting for 5 minutes, share your cracked egg stories. Times this past week, this past month that you thought something was gonna go one way and it definitely went the other way, right? Mistake, misstep, blunder. Share your bad idea brainstorms. Everybody deliberately come up with an idea in this meeting that's likely to be very unrealistic. No good. And they're like, well, why do we do that? Because the ideas that tend to follow when you do exercises like this are more creative, more generative. People are less likely to brush their mistakes under the rug because when we don't bring spaces for these conversations, we tend to, as humans, feel like it's just us. I'm the only one struggling this much. So more than ever, since we're not watching each other do these things, we have to create spaces where we talk about them.

You know, I think this is an area that I'm going to change the way I run our weekly team meetings, our weekly business reviews. I— we start off with the very first thing we start off is clear outcomes. So we say, hey, for this next hour, what is the clear outcome? Okay, so we give everybody about 90 seconds to write down, I really need to cover this, I need to cover this, cover this. Okay, so we got that out of the way of the clear outcome of the meeting, and then we can do wins and progress. And this is where I was thinking, celebrate the wins, celebrate the progress. Yes, for sure. And I think right after that, I think I'm going to add in, where did you fail last week?

Yeah, where, where did an egg, egg get cracked? Absolutely.

And that, Greg, is a great way to put that. And I think I may do that with my kids as well, to celebrate the stumbling towards the good things versus always celebrating wins. Which, by the way, I, I think if you don't celebrate wins at all, then you're not going to see them, right? And especially business and entrepreneurship is full of a lot of failures, and so we can fixate too much on those. But also, I think it's the I think it's the framing of the celebration of the cracked egg and saying, okay, well, what did we learn from it? I think it's fantastic. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think, you know, again, I agree with you. Celebrating wins is important. You know, that breeds momentum. But at the same time, it's funny. I'll have conversations with other aspiring speakers who I say this with full gratitude and all the humility I can muster. If you look at my social media, I am killing it. Like, I am on a tear. And I tried to launch a mastermind a couple of months ago. I did it last year. It filled up lightning fast. This past one, bustola. Now, to be fair, I probably didn't give it much attention and nurture it the way I did last time. But this one, womp womp, big flop. I kind of quietly just closed it and was like, not going to do it this time. But I tell people that and they're like, really? Really? I'm like, oh, you've gotten this perception that everything I touch is gold for some reason. Like, no, ma'am, definitely not. And they out of all the cool things we talk about, that's what sticks with them. And I'm like, this is what's missing because we don't have regular spaces to share these conversations. Yeah, we actually need to manufacture them. We need to create them.

That's so true. There is somebody I really look up to, and at this point in his career, everything he seems to touch, it's like million-dollar business in 12 months, another million-dollar business in 12 months. That one hit an 8-figure run rate in 2 years. And you're like, What in the world? But what's endearing about him is that I know his backstory and I know that was— that one failed, that one failed, that one failed, that one failed. Then he started to just knock them off because he learned the skills that it takes. And so, yeah, I think that's actually really true because conversely, there are some people that I know, it's like, man, have they ever had a setback? I mean, is it just been a rocket ship since the beginning?

Yeah.

You know, and if so, and they write that book, I'm not reading that book, right?

Yeah, exactly. No. In fact, some of your previous guests, Jake Thompson, Fotini Akonomopoulos, and then our friends Colin Henderson, the 4 of us will meet, you know, every now and then and do exactly this. What is sucking? What are we struggling with? Like, find spaces where you can do that if you don't have them already.

Yeah, I think that's wonderful. Hena, this has been great. People wanna connect with you, find out about you, your book, speaking. Where would you point them to?

Um, I am Hena Prior on all the socials. LinkedIn is my primary playground, but also Instagram, henaprior.com, and the book is called Good Awkward. It's on Amazon, at Barnes Noble, everywhere books are sold. And, uh, always happy to link up with new friends. So make it awkward and say hello. I invite you.

I love it. All right, last question. What does above the business or being above the business mean to you?

Oof, I love this question. Being above the business is very present to me right now because I have been in the weeds of my business way too much. So being above the business to me me, it means being willing, having the courage to zoom out and figuring out if the direction that you're going is still the direction that you intended to go. And, you know, I'm, I have a bias for action. I will do, do, do. I will hustle as hard as anybody can possibly muster until I sometimes get there. And I'm like, wait, is this what I was doing? Is this what I wanted? Is this— was this the end goal? So getting above the business, I think, is really having the courage to slow down and do a directional check. Is this still where I want to go? Is this still where I'm headed? And making adjustments that support that.

That's fantastic. What a great answer. Hannah, thank you so much. Hope to have you back on in the future.

Thank you. This was a blast. Thank you for having me.

Thank you. I've been so fortunate to get to connect with and hear so many different people on the podcast over the last 4 years. And there are a few people that really stand out with their energy that they bring that is really infectious, even if it's over through a camera over Zoom. And Hena is one of those. But it's not just the energy. There's so much depth and substance and so many different one-liners that I took away. Dropping the shackles of approval certainly was one that I connected with. There's no question about it. But I also think that whenever she was even sharing her own, from her own story, her vulnerability about things that haven't gone the way that they— she wants them to go, like the mastermind that she openly shared about It's made me want to continue to also share in the right context certain things, whether it's in business or personal as well. Again, maybe it's on the podcast, maybe it's not, but I think hopefully that opens and allows you to maybe even share with your team and in your small groups and in your study groups and in your masterminds, not just the posturing and the positioning and the things that you're doing well, And there's, as she said, there's even good bragging, like how, how to brag in a way or be able to talk about your accomplishments in a way that actually draw people closer to you than to push you— push them away. And I think that also the part where we talked about, or she mentioned, process over outcome resonated with me as well. And then the last one that she gave credit to Jake Thompson about, but me versus me, using other people. We, before we hit record, I was briefly talking to Hannah about, you know, her book and the book launch and how she did that. And I look at her press kit page on our website and I look at the book And it's like, wow, that's so well done. And it's inspiring, right? I don't look at that as competition in any way because I want to be able to do that. And so then, how was the process she went through? Did she go on a writing retreat? Did she write it over the course of 2 years? What was her process like? And she may share it, and I may say, oh, that's not going to work for me. But it also may be something where it's like, you know what, I think that actually may work. That's a little detail that actually is really helpful. So I thought I'd share that with, with you. Those were some of my key thoughts and takeaways that were incredibly helpful from this interview with Hannah. As always, shout out to our podcast partners, Autopilot Recruiting, Coach P Consulting, Club Capital. And Today app. If you're looking for a place to be able to have all your bonus, your compensation plans, WordTracks, and get away from just all of the different spreadsheets that you have. And I love a good spreadsheet for sure, but there's definitely times where having a software where your, your team can be able to put in their sales, calculate their bonuses, their compensation, but also use as they're having conversations with prospective customers, look no further than TodayApp. Go to todayapppro.com. Let them know whenever you submit a request, by the way, that you've heard about them on the Above the Business podcast. todayapppro.com. We just finished up tax season. If you had some surprises, didn't get the numbers you were looking for, maybe, maybe you didn't have surprises at tax time, but possibly your numbers were not exactly where they needed to be. Maybe the year over year growth and the profitability numbers were just not exactly where you want them to be, but you want to begin to kind of set some forecasts in place to make certain changes and slowly inch your profitability up over time, as well as being able to stay on top of your taxes. Club Capital can help. Go to club.capital and book a no obligation demo, club. Capital. I love the idea of the build the, build the team and the team builds the business. Build the team and the team builds the business. But that means you got to start with building the team. You want to build the team with A-players. But how do you do that? One of the hardest parts— I mean, people have heard all the time, recruit, recruit every day, right? Be recruiting, always be recruiting, right? You've heard that. But that gets hard to put into an overall system. What does that actually look like? Some of you have a big enough team to be able to have dedicated people on your team to do that. But even if you do, and many of you may or may not, but even if you do have that, Autopilot Recruiting can step in and can be a better, more cost-effective way. And they're experts in being able to source candidates, do some of the initial interviews, filter them through, go through some assessments. Then turn over to somebody on your team much more quality candidates. So go to autopilotrecruiting.com, autopilotrecruiting.com. Now, I've known David for a long time, and one of the things I really love about David is that he is always able to be able to share the things that are working behind the scenes, which may mean that also some things that they were doing before aren't working. And so you get a peek behind the true nuts and bolts of the business, not just sometimes the high-level theoretical things, which are helpful for sure, but they're not always the kind of things where, you know, how do I implement that? Well, both for you and your team, twice a week calls and a once, once a month business owner only call. David can help. Go to coachpconsulting.com and let David know you heard about him. On the Above the Business podcast. All right, everyone, love that interview with Hannah. Go check out her book, Good Awkward. Until next episode, lead well.