Ask Me Anything Tuesday with Bernadette Boas

Blog Talk Radio.

Hello and welcome to Shedding the Bitch Radio, where you can discuss, debate, and get advice on how to discover and shed the bitches of fear, insecurity, self-doubt, and negative mindsets so you can realize your dreams and life purpose and create and accelerate the riches you want in life. Join us here live every Tuesday at noon Eastern and dialogue with us at 818- 572-2910. You can also chat with us at blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitch or share your stories on our website at sheddingthebitch.com. Whatever the bitch is that's holding you back from living your life to the fullest, it's not worth giving up the riches in life that you deserve. So call in now and let Bernadette Boas know what's holding you back. 818-572-2910.

Good day, good day, good day everyone, and welcome to our Ask Bernadette episode of Shedding the Bitch Radio. So if you've been part of the program before, you know what it's about. This particular episode, which comes one week out of the month, specifically the first Tuesday, I take your career, business, and life questions and I answer them right here, and I drill down into them beyond what I might respond to you as soon as you might post it on Facebook or Twitter. Some people even email me through Bernadette Boas at sheddingthebitch.com. I get a lot through LinkedIn, but I also get a lot when I go out and I'm either networking or I'm doing small workshops or doing a speech of any kind, and I have an audience of which then I often get if not interactively during the show, afterwards. So if you ever should have a question, you don't want to be sitting around letting it germinate and letting it create potentially stress for you or just pure uncertainty, or maybe it even keeps you stuck. So you always have an opportunity to go to Shedding the Bitch on Facebook or Twitter, and be sure to just post it there, and I will answer it as soon as I see it., or as soon as Deborah, our social media guru who's online, as soon as she might see it, she might forward it to me as well. And then we'll bring it right here into the monthly program so we can get into it further than like a 140-character tweet or, or a Facebook post. So you have an opportunity to get the answers to your questions or get the solutions to the challenges you might be having at any time. And we definitely, definitely, definitely want to keep you moving forward to achieving your goals, right? So we're gonna take a brief break, and when we get back, we're gonna dive into these questions. And let me give you a highlight of some of the questions we're gonna be answering for you today. One is all around amping up your income or your revenue. If you have a business, what could you be doing differently? Maybe this individual feels stuck as if, you know, they're not sure what the next kind of growth element is that they should be focused on. And then we're going to be talking about values and how it pertains to not only defining your culture of your business, but even your company if you work for a company, making sure that, you know, how they're executing aligns to your values as well as the company's values. And then we're going to talk and help someone out— oh, I know this subject well— about not being paid. And I'm not talking not being paid on a timely basis, I'm talking someone's absolutely refusing or, you know, totally ignoring their obligation to payment. So we're going to talk about that and a number of other questions. And you still have an opportunity to get your question, story, or challenge addressed while we're live on the program. And you can do that by calling 1-818-572-2910. But if you miss out and you're listening to this and you thought, oh, I wish I got a chance to reach out to Bernadette and Deborah, then put it out on Facebook on our Shedding the Bitch page or on Twitter, and we will respond to you immediately, but then we may just bring it back into the program at the— for the next episode of Ask Bernadette. All right, so you have an opportunity, so get your questions answered. So we're going to take a quick break and we'll be back in about a minute 21. Talk to you in a minute.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, from insecurity and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, TSR Consulting, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate-sized clients. Go to TSRConsulting.com consulting.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium-sized businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker78@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

All right everyone, it is Bernadette Boas. And we are going to be addressing the questions that you've already sent me, or if you have one that you want to go live with and get some solutions to. And I do see a few people on the line, so I'm gonna open up the lines, and if someone has a question, you know, just kind of say, "Hey, Bernadette," and we'll take it, and if not, then we'll put you back on mute and we'll just continue our conversation, okay? So I'm going to open up the lines, and if you don't say anything, that's fine, but if you want to jump in, feel free to do so. So give me a second here. Hi, is anyone out there with a question or a challenge you're having?

Hi, yes, hi, thank you so much for taking my call.

Sure, what can I do for you?

I have this person that has been promising me a job since Fall, last fall, like September. And I don't know, it still hasn't come through, although we talk. He's very pleasant. I don't know, he has health issues, so I kind of, you know, I don't push because of that. Um, right. So, but I was wondering, like, how would you navigate that situation? Like, okay, so he has health issues, he's on the other side of the country, so it's not like I could just, you know, go have a face-to-face you know, and really do like a proper test on whether it's legit or not. I know the company is legit, but yeah, so I was just wondering how you would handle that.

Well, I— my first question would be is, what is it about the job that you've been hanging on or you've been waiting this out for as long as you have? What is it about the job, that you've been kind of anticipating?

It would be like very, um, creatively fulfilling for me and a promotion.

And is—

do you—

so this is a new job? Do you work for this company already, or it's a new— it's a new job in there for a promotion from where you are, um, in your current position, current company?

A new company that I haven't worked for, but it's like a step up, a better company, a more established company than where I'm, I'm at, right?

And field, but yeah, right, right. Okay, and are you good where you are right now?

I mean, I'm good, but this seems kind of like, you know, the carrot on the end of the stick type thing.

Uh, well, I guess I would go in multiple directions for you. One, I would go— okay, with one, I would go with, uh, of course it's great to have kind of ambitions and, and want to go after that carrot, and I would never, never, and never tell anyone not to. What I would kind of, um, have you do though is kind of let go of that opportunity a little bit to where you're not anxious and you're not kind of holding yourself back from really kind of being all in in the job that you currently have. So that would be one thing. The other thing too is, are there not other companies with similar jobs other than this one that, you know, you are— have been waiting for a response?

I see your point there.

Yeah, well, because yeah, yeah, there's two things you could do. You could, you know, and I would recommend, I, I would recommend both of them, and that would be I would not hesitate. Yes, the individual has health problems, but they also have a business to run and operate. So if it's not that individual, if it's not that individual, can you, um, can you reach into that company? Maybe even say to this individual, um, you know, I understand that you may, you know, you may be busy or whatever the case might be. Is there someone else I could be talking to in the company? Uh, or you could call the company and say, you know, I'm just following up on my— on this job application, this job opportunity. Is there someone I should be speaking to? Um, and you don't want to call out his health issues, you know, his or her health issues. At the same time, you don't want to not, not kind of be persistent because it's all about being persistent and showing up, right? And that's what we actually like to see from the people that they're hiring. So that's one aspect. The, the second aspect I would tell you is you may want to take it as a red flag. Do you want to— do you want to— putting aside his health issues, and I'm not dismissing them, but again, they have a business to run, correct? So if he's got a good candidate out there, maybe a great candidate out there in yourself, and yet he's not even responding or following up, or, or even like you said that, you know, he might not want to say, you know, that no, you don't qualify, or no, you're not getting the job. But if he is a leader of any kind in his business, that's his job. That's his job to unfortunately disappoint some people and make some people happy. So you might be looking at it red flag as well, is if, you know, if they're not responding to you, even providing you some heads up or some updates or status of the situation then it could be a red flag that may not be the best company for you, even though the job and the promotion and the more money looks good. You kind of want to read into those things as well. Does that make sense?

Excellent. Yes. Oh yeah, yeah, no, definitely. Yeah.

Oh wow.

But I would, I would continue pushing, pushing, but I would continue being a little more assertive than you are. And, uh, and then also just finding other creative ways to find a status. And then if not, I would consider moving on and looking for a similar type of position with someone else.

All right, perfect sense.

Yeah, yes. Wow, thank you.

You're welcome. Well, hang on, I'm gonna be back. Hang on. And maybe these other questions that we're going to talk about, because we are going to talk about values, and I think it might help you in your decision-making around a job as well when we talk about this one question, and I'll even address it next just so you can be part of that conversation as well. Okay?

Oh, thank you so much. Thank you.

Oh, you're, you're very welcome. Good luck, and always check back and let us know if you need anything more.

Thank you. Thank you. I greatly appreciate it.

Thank you.

You're so welcome. All right, everybody, next question. And again, it touches on our prior guest's question, and bear with me while I get you there, okay? So the next question was actually for a business owner, not necessarily someone working for a company, but this applies to both. So the initial question was a business owner is creating her business plan. And any business owner out there, I would hope you have a business plan, but that's not our conversation. One part of the business plan is asking you to get clear around the values that you hold that you would then want to embed or instill within your organization's culture. So let me break this down, because it does apply to a job as well. So if you, um, so values, let's first go there. So values, you know, honesty, excellence, integrity, accountability, innovation, quality, education. You can look up in Google lists of all the values. Each one of us have them, and yet each one of us really don't sit down to intentionally focus on what are my values. Because if you did, if you did, very much like our previous caller around, you know, how can she get more persistent, or actually more information from a company that she's applied to for a job, and I had mentioned that, well, you know, you need to think about what whether or not that behavior or those actions or lack of actions from that company may not be, you know, may not be what you're looking for in a company culture. And in this case, it's actually your values may not align to their values. So when it comes to this business owner for her business plan, she needs to decide, and any of you can sit down and say, okay, what is really important to me? I mean, must-have important to me when it comes to, um, in my business, the people I hire, the people I, um, I have as customers, the people I have as vendors, the people I partner with, the people that come onto my team. You need to understand and have a good grounding of what values are important to you, because then they act as your decision-making tool. You can remove the emotion out of anything about around your business or your job search. Because if you find, for instance, in that job question and that situation that she was having, if she found that her values were she wants, you know, an organization that's responsive, that's collaborative, that's engaging, that's communicative, that is honest, that is forthright, that is transparent— if those are her values, whether for a job or a business, then you would know that when you go to look for a job, those are the values you're looking for in that organization. If you go looking for people to hire, people to do business with, people to service your company, then you know that those values are what you need to look for in those individuals and in those services and vendors and clients and employees that you're looking for. Does that make sense? Because if you go against your values, and when you go against your values is when people get really, um, messed up. So let me get— and I use messed up for a reason. Let me give you an example recently. So Uber, all right, according to the Uber CEO and founder His values aren't, you know, sexual harassment or discrimination or gender disparity or even pay disparity. His values have nothing to do with what then his drivers are being accused of. Drivers being accused of harassing female customers and his value— oh, I'm sorry, and his employees kind of instilling a very sexually charged atmosphere within the workplace. Well, obviously he went astray from his values when he went to qualify drivers or when he went to hire employees or when he went to communicate and, and lead his managers, and which trickles down into the whole organization. Somewhere along the line, he went astray in making sure that everyone in his organization understands values. Now, on the flip side of it, Zappos— Zappos, their value, their number one value is to create happiness and collaboration and engagement and support and community. And every aspect of their business from start to finish, from customer service to the people boxing up the shoes or whatever it is that they're selling, everything that they execute against is of generating happiness and community and collaboration and creativity. So It also applies to when you're look— out there looking for a job. A lot of people I talk to that are out there searching for jobs, they're concerned about the, the position or the pay. They're not necessarily challenging whether or not the culture and the values of that culture are going to align with themselves. Like, I personally, my values regarding even going back into corporate, um, would drastically change from where they were 10 or 12 years ago because Before, I didn't care about whether or not it was a collaborative, engaging, supportive, equal, parity type of environment. All my values at the time were, was greed and, you know, competitiveness and values of just looking out for yourself. Great values, I'm not dismissing that. But so what you would want to do, whether you're looking for a job or whether you have a business and you're hiring or engaging with vendors or you're negotiating with your clients is to make sure you're only doing business with the, the type of people that have the same values as you do. All right, so that's where values is important to that business plan, because then your vision, your mission statement, your marketing, your way you go and sell, the way you go and hire, the way you go and manage your cash flow and pay your bills, which is a subject we're going to get to that definitely touches on values. That all will need to have your values threaded through all those operations and all those different functions of your business. So it's critical that you get a grounding on your values. And you can simply do that by going out and just Google for, you know, a list of values, and trust me, I did the other day, and there's tons of them. Pull off that list and sit down and just really think about what are the must-haves, what are the really want-to-haves but maybe not must-haves, what are the nice-to-have values, and build your job search, build your business around the values that mean the most to you. And don't accept companies to be working for or people to do business with if they don't align to your values.

All righty.

Okay, so we have a number of other rich tip questions to get to and, uh, during our Ask Bernadette episode. So we're going to take a break, and when we come back, we're going to talk about, ladies, the 3 challenges women are having advancing in their career. So again, for the caller that called us up front of the show, thank you so much for calling in with your question, and you may really learn something from this part as well, and maybe it'll help you handle the situation that you're currently in. So we will be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette Boas' book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, TSR Consulting, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate-sized clients. Go to TSRConsulting.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium-sized businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker78@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sharpschools.org. SheddingTheBitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to BlogTalkRadio.com/SheddingTheBitchRadio and follow the program for all the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone to Ask Bernadette on this episode of Shedding the Bitch Radio, I am taking your business, career, and life questions and providing you some tips and advice and sometimes, sometimes tough love. But all we care about here within the Shedding the Bitch community is you get the answers or the solutions to your questions and challenges and not remain stuck and not remain confused and just kind of find a little pepper of insight that might help you move forward. So let's see this question. I was so, um, I'll say impressed and honored to have been asked about, and plus it is something that a lot of women in business, and I'm talking career now, that they think about, and yet they're not quite sure where to go for the answers. So I was very happy to, uh, to take it because it means a lot to me as far as this particular question, and that is What are the 3 challenges? It could be more or less, but what are 3 challenges women are having in advancing their career and achieving their career goals? Again, ladies, this applies to any area of life, not just career, although that's where we'll focus, but it will apply to those of you in your own business or those of you that are even at home. So what are the 3 challenges you're having as women in achieving your goals. From a career perspective, they're pretty simple, and yet women have a difficult time addressing them. One is to find that mentor, to, to find a sponsor, and those two things are different. So let me break it down for you. So the challenge women are having is that they don't have a sounding board. They don't have someone that they really can kind of go and ask advisement, like our earlier caller, who can get guidance, who can kind of ask questions that they don't necessarily want to in a group or whomever and get the answers and the solutions that they need. They also hesitate to engage mentors because they're quite— they're not quite sure kind of what's in it for the other person, what's in it for the mentor. Uh, and then sponsorship, and I'm going to break the two of them down, but let me get into sponsorship. Sponsorship's different in that sponsors are there to actually advocate for you to get that next promotion or to meet that next major connection within the workplace or the industry in order to advance your career. They're specifically look— going out and advocating for your cause, so to speak, to move you to the next level. So, those two roles, mentors, which I'll say mentor/coach, and sponsors are two different things. But we're going to put them both in this first challenge. That bottom line is, ladies, you need to get people on your side. You need to find people that are supporting you, that are holding you accountable, that are guiding you and advising you to your next kind of step in your career. And at the same time, definitely then there comes a point where you want to find that advocate, that person that literally will go and say, hey, look, I'm working with Deborah Parker and she has blah, blah, blah skills and she's very talented and whatever the case might be. And I think she'd be a great addition to your team, to your company, whatever the case might be. So, little bit different, or very different, between mentors and sponsors, but the bottom line is there's someone that is in your corner supporting your goals and providing a very honest, a very transparent, a very constructive sounding board for you. And unfortunately, a lot of women whether corporate, entrepreneurial, or stay-at-home, they don't necessarily go and engage anyone in to do that. Now, you can— a lot of people will say, well, you should get a professional coach. I mean, I'm a professional coach, so I would tell you that as well. But at the same time, I've also been in situations where people have found mentors slash coach, um, that were in their own personal network and didn't have to go and, you know, kind of invest in someone. So let me go back to the point I made about women challenging or questioning or doubting someone wanting to play those roles and what, what's in it for them. Well, there's a lot. There is a great deal in it for the other person, for the person that's there to mentor you, to coach you, to sponsor you. They do it because they want to see growth, they want to see improvement, they want to reward talent. They want to help, you know, other people kind of navigate through the, you know, trials and tribulations that they might have already been through. They want to give back. They want to serve. They want to lift up or rise up other people other than themselves. So there's a lot of benefit in it for the other person. So don't hesitate because you're too insecure or you're too intimidated. To think that you're going to be putting somebody out. I mean, they're going to be honest with you if you are. If you go and— while hiring a mentor and paying for them is going to be a little bit different than if you were to go to someone within your own organization or another organization that you know of and you're asking them to provide some mentorship to you. But again, they're going to tell you, "I don't have the bandwidth right now, and therefore I won't be able to service you the way I'd like to." So you may want to consider somebody else, but that should not be your concern that causes you to not go after a mentor and/or a sponsor. Alright, so mentoring, or lack thereof of mentoring, is one challenge that women have in advancing their career. The second one would be that they don't ask for advancement in their career, so there is a degree of persistence and self-promotion and stepping up and taking the risk and asking, even if the answer is no, in order for— then now people know that you want to advance, you want to move, you want to grow. And it might not be the right time right then and there, but at the same time, you're making your goals, you're making your calls as known. And that's probably the biggest thing I see women— I hate the word fail— but where they misstep is they're expecting people to read their mind or something and not express what their goals and what their objectives and what their, you know, ambitions are. And ambitions is not a bad word. And the way I see it is you need to tell anybody and everybody what your goals and objectives are, and you need to kind of bring the people into the fold, including bosses and managers and peers, to really understand what is it going to take for you to be able to reach those goals and what do you need to be doing in order to do that. But it causes you to have to ask. You have to ask for that support. You have to ask for that mentorship. You have to ask for that raise or that promotion and not be afraid of what the answer is. Because guess what? 9.5 out of 10 times it's probably an answer you may not like, but there's a reason. There's something better waiting for, for you. If you believe in, you know, everything happens for a reason, or, you know, it all is around perfect timing— I happen to believe that— then, um, you'll be a lot less stressed if you ask and then you just kind of find kind of, uh, solutions to that response. If it's yes, woohoo! If it's no, then the next question is, okay, what do I need to be doing in order to get where I want to go? Or what am I not doing that you've been expecting that's preventing me from getting where I want to go? So there's just more questions that you have to ask in order to get where you want to go, but you have to ask.

All right.

And then the third one, ladies, And this is where we really need to work harder and better at and smarter at. All right, ladies, listen up. You have to help other ladies and other people. And I'm going to— I pull out ladies specifically because in the last week and a half, 2 weeks, I have been interviewing a lot of women around leadership and diversity type of issues. And, uh, the one thing I'm hearing, and which I've known about because it's actually, um, part of a book that I've been working on for a while, one of the things that they're highlighting, ladies, is that you're not helping each other. You're not helping other ladies. You're not helping other, um, people in your office. You're not helping even the guys. Uh, you're not, you're not, uh, serving others and in turn they'll serve you in ways that you can't even believe. Giving and receiving is what life is about. So if you want to receive the goals and the dreams and the achievements that you have for yourself and that you want for yourself, well, it can't be all about you. Now trust me, this is coming from me, right? This is coming from someone shedding the bitch, right? So I know all about it. You know, let go of only focusing on what you want and what your goals are and what you are, you know, working so hard to achieve. Let it go, relax a little bit, help the other people around you, even your peers, even those that you might perceive as competitors, even, you know, anyone that, you know, you can touch and provide your own guidance and, and advisement and support to, even as a mentor/coach. And trust me when I say that'll serve you. But sadly, I just, I just hear too often, and, and recently hearing a lot, that women are just not helping other women.

It's—

and it's Women's History Month, so maybe that's a focus that, that you'll take this particular month is focusing on helping others and specifically other women. And trust me when I say, you do that, you do that, you do that selflessly, you do that without expectation, you do that because it comes from your heart and it is something that you want to do. And I promise you, I guarantee you that you will work your way to your goals and your dreams. All right, so the 3 challenges that you're having, ladies, if you're wondering why you're not where you're supposed to be or you want to be, is mentoring. So go get one. Is, um, asking. So start asking and don't be afraid of the answer because there's just more questions that, that will get you to where you want to go. And then help others, serve others, mentor and coach and give to others. Let go of a little bit of your ambitions and your goals in support of other people achieving theirs, and it will pay you big.

All right.

Ah, okay, we're gonna take a short break, and when we come back, we have some more Ask Bernadette questions regarding your career, business, and life, and I am here to answer them. All right, we'll be right back, everybody.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. Www.wineandthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors: TSR Consulting, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate-sized clients. Go to TSRConsulting.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium-sized businesses. Email deborahparker@deborahparker78@gmail.com. @gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone to Ask Bernadette on this episode of Shedding the Bitch Radio, and I'm taking your career, business, and life questions and kind of drilling in with some tips, advice, and sometimes some tough love. All right, our next question is What do I do? This is a business owner, by the way. What do I do in order to get, uh, invoices paid by a client who just isn't responding, isn't picking up their phone, isn't, um, pretty much acknowledging anything as far as their business is concerned? And boy, is this not is this not, not, not a big issue for business owners. And you kind of forget, my being in corporate for so long, you kind of forget that those issues exist and that there's some finance department down in the basement or something who is kind of constantly making phone calls. Only until you go out on your own do you realize how much of a part collections is of business ownership. So I totally understand and sympathize with this business owner who's struggling with this. And I will also say that it's been— it's something that's gonna— my response is gonna come very personal to you because of my own experience and still going. So the choices that you have when it comes to how do you and it's not somebody who is delayed or slow. Heck, I can even be slow, um, you know, in my responsibilities, and I don't like that either. But this person is just absolutely not acknowledging, not picking up the phone. And the choices you have are this: if they have a physical location that you have access to— because obviously a lot of us work globally, so that's not probable, but if you do, then it might warrant a visit. And there's nothing, you know, nothing better to get somebody's attention than showing up face to face unannounced. That's the key part, unannounced. The second thing would be is that from a phone call perspective, if it's— if they're specifically not picking up the phone, again, this is going to be a company that's not a solopreneur, meaning they're the only person, um, if there is somebody else that you can reach in that company, of course you're not going to discuss the issue with anybody else. You're just going to kind of use them as someone else that might go tapping somebody on the shoulder going, this person's trying to reach you. Um, so there you have that option, which I've also had to use myself in the past. Uh, the other way to do it is, um, you'd be able to, uh, you'd be able to, um, uh, cite them with a collection letter. Uh, now this is getting, you know, more into the, into the legal side of it, but it, you know, you could do it yourself at first. And again, personal experience, uh, you can go and there's a number of things, a number of resources online that you can go and get some letters that you can do in a timely fashion in a certain order to be documenting what it is that you're looking for. Uh, so, you know, you could look online for that. And then you can also kind of amp it up if need be, as I also have had to do, and that is take legal action on it. Then engage a lawyer to do it themselves, um, and, uh, do those collection letters even though you've started them. A legal— a lawyer can legally then, because once they start seeing a kind of a law office stamp at the top of a letter versus your business stamp at the top of a letter, uh, that, you know, amps up the, uh, urgency, so to speak. And then sadly, if need be, you may need to take it even a step further and, um, file a suit for collections, which is beyond just your, your collection letters, and it's actually filing suit for unpaid whether it's wages, because my little situation is both employee wages as it is unpaid contract invoices. All right, so you, you know, there is a whole array of choices, but some amp up the legality of it and at the same time the cost of it. So just be sure to keep that in mind. When you do it. But it is a situation that unfortunately business owners deal with each and every day, and no one likes to be persistent, no one likes to bug, no one likes to, you know, then get even legal involved. If it's a— you have to kind of judge the value of the collections in order to then determine if you want to invest I have a kind of a decent 5-figure issue that I've been chasing, and I've been having unfortunately to take legal action on. So if you're in that same situation, then, you know, you might consider that as well. If not, then you might try all the other things that you could do without a lot of cost involved and, and see what you can work out. Even if engaging a lawyer, you might even kind of try to work out a situation where you can at least get them with their, you know, law firm stamp on it to do and help you with something without it, you know, kind of costing you an arm and a leg. Not all lawyers do anyway, so I hope that helps to round out what you— what options that you might have. And then, well, I'll end with this because I also have to kind of consider it myself, though I haven't gotten there yet. But then you kind of have to say, you know, do you need to kind of walk away from it? Now, I, you know, I personally, even if I were to walk away and never get anything paid back, there was no way I was walking away without taking action on it. That again, that goes back to what we've talked on another Rich Tip question and that is values. And my value is that people are trusting and that they, you know, owe up to their obligations and they keep their commitments and that they have integrity. So again, all this is going to come back to even go back and listen to that part on, or that question on values, because it, you're certainly, your values are all over it when it, when it comes to chasing down unpaid money. All right, I hope that was helpful. I saw a couple other questions come in and then disappear, so if you're out there listening and you want to call back in, I tend not to want to interrupt a, a question to take a phone call right away. So call back in if you have any questions or stories or challenges that you'd like to share with us. We're going to take one last quick break and then we'll wrap up with any last-minute questions that we have. All right, we'll be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch. Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors: TSR Consulting, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate size clients. Go to TSRConsulting.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium size businesses. Email deborahparker@deborahparker78@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow us on Twitter Follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

All right, we have time for one more question, and it's going to all be around kind of learning, training, development. But before we do that, let me just make sure that you're aware of our guests coming up the month of March. I had mentioned at the top of the hour is really focused on some functional skills that you can use in your career, business, or life. So it's around negotiation. What if you actually felt comfortable and didn't mind negotiating? And then we're going to talk about decision-making and what you could be doing to kind of take the emotion out of making big decisions or even small decisions that you're not typically comfortable with, um, because that's also another key skill to have in any aspect of your life. And then we're going to nail someone down to talk about selling and how you can actually enjoy it versus avoid it or run from it. All right, so we have a great lineup of guests for the month of March, so take a look on blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio or pay attention to our announcements that come out and be sure to follow the program. Go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio, follow the program, and you'll get those announcements. All right, let's dive into this last question, and it is all around, um, something I also feel dear to my heart, and that's life being a lifetime student or lifetime learning. And what exactly does that mean? So I was asked about, um, from a client, uh, last Wednesday I think it was, um, all around what kind of What ongoing personal or professional development should he be pursuing? And now that's a loaded question regardless of who you are. It really depends upon in what areas of your life do you want to enrich or enhance, or you want to learn a new skill, or you want to learn a new hobby or habit. So you really kind of need to choose that for yourself. But I think the key point of that question that he and I discussed was you should always be trying to learn and enrich and enhance yourself, no matter whether it is an obligation that you have, or responsibility, or part of your development plan in your workplace, or if it is just to enrich your life as you are on this earth for a, a good many more days and you just want to continually learn. I am a huge proponent of you know, ongoing, every day learning something new, whether that is personal or professional, whether that is, you know, even reading a new book or doing something around journaling. Or, you know, what we talked about earlier on another Rich Tip question was, you know, kind of identifying what your values is. That's a great exercise to do to kind of continue to learn about yourself. Make a list of what values are important to you. But there's, you know, tons of things. In this case, it was more based on a professional development plan, you know, and in a particular function of organization development, what kind of, you know, training could he be doing to advance his leadership and advance his knowledge around the organization development function. So just think through. I take acting lessons. Not because I intend to be an actor— actress at any point in time, but because it really kind of challenges me and, and pushes me and uncovers different aspects of who I am. So, uh, big proponent. So for the asking about what you could be doing around lifetime learning is find those things, whether it's a business, career, or life that you want to learn about, you need to learn about, you have to. I have clients that are on the cusp of some professional development challenges, meaning, you know, they have to address certain things, or they could be out of a job. So, um, if that's the case, then, you know, but you don't want to make it mandatory. You want to do it because you want to kind of always, you always want to learn, and you always want to be growing. All right, so that is our wrap-up of our Ask Bernadette episode. I'm so thrilled that you were with us. Thank you, callers. For those of you who did call in, and I'll look forward to having you right back here next week as we get into our discussions on selling, decision-making, and negotiations. So everybody, have a rich and prosperous week. Thank you for joining Ask Bernadette, and I will talk with you soon. Thanks, everybody.

Thank you for listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. Join Bernadette every Tuesday Tuesday at noon Eastern as she helps you shift your bitches to riches. And the dialogue is always going on at sheddingthebitch.com. See you next week.

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