Inspiring Business Executives to Create Riches!

But so to give you a little bit of background so you actually know where I'm coming from as far as, okay, so why did this person come up with this shedding the corporate bitch thing and so forth and so on. So what we're going to talk about today comes from what I learned not only in the 25 years in corporate as a corporate executive, I was a chief knowledge officer for a Fortune 500 company, Until I was fired in 2008. Not knowing why, or understanding why, or actually believing why, I went on kind of my own personal staycation journey to really understand how did I just lose a 25-year career that paid me very well, big job, big position, global, blah blah blah. And I found myself on the ground of my dog park having runs with Charlie at the time he was about 4. And I found myself bawling my eyes out because I— it all of a sudden came to me that for so many years I was that ultimate corporate tyrant. I was that person who loved to kind of whip you, you know, be a bully, and kind of demand respect as opposed to command it. So all of a sudden I realized, and I have to use the word, so I apologize, but I all of a sudden realized of what a bitch I was. But why? I come from a family of 14. I had 12 brothers and, or 11 brothers and sisters. Non-dysfunctional family out of Philadelphia. Woo-hoo, Philly. And I had to kind of say, what in the world led me down this path? What I discovered was this, and I've been teaching and coaching and speaking about it for the last 8 years, since 2008, and that is this: anyone who lashes out, call them a bully, call them a witch, call them a bitch, whatever you want to call them, it's not about them as a person, and it's not certainly about kind of hurting or demonizing somebody else. It really is about the insecurities, intimidations, fears, negativities, and angst or doubt that we're feeling about ourselves that cause us to lash out. So the first tip I'll give you is the next time you look at someone who gives you attitude, who gives you issue, who gives you some bullying or some very aggressive tactics, have pity on them. 'Cause they're obviously dealing with something that I call bitches that causes them to lash out in such a way. All right, so let's fast forward. How did this all of a sudden become something that I can teach, educate, coach on? Mindset is key when it comes to anything we do in life. But more importantly, what I really discovered is in 2008 when I left corporate, and I knew I was never going back. I paved a path for myself knowing that unless I got my head on straight, unless I really was confident and secure and bold and— forget about the gregarious, that comes, you know, that just comes naturally. But I knew that until I got my mind under control, it wouldn't matter how skilled I was. It wouldn't matter how smart, how creative, how ambitious. It wouldn't matter because if I stand in fear or intimidation or doubt that results in procrastination— come on, business owners, you know these things happen to us, right? I knew that I would not be able to achieve what I wanted to to achieve. So how does this relate to you, and then, and what can you do? Well, it relates to you because, I mean, come on, show of hands, men, women, doesn't matter, show of hands, who gets stuck at times? Who gets stuck? Who gets insecure? Who doesn't move forward with something because they don't like rejection? Come on, there's a sales guy in here, and I can tell you he's going to know that that number should be much higher. Right? We all have them. And I don't care if you're 20 or 70, if you are male or female, if you've been in corporate or been on your own, it really doesn't matter. We all at some point, some of us short period of times, others for like 25 years, don't ever really address them. Now it's not to say that once you address what I call those bitches, fears, insecurities, doubts, negativities, angst, whatever you want to call them. It doesn't mean that they go away. What it means is that you gain confidence, you gain certainty, you gain focus, you gain clarity. Who wants all that? Who wants all that? You know, you gain such certainty about what it is that you're doing that I'm here to tell you that 7 years ago, standing up here, as much of a show-off and gregarious as I am, I was scared to death. Because I cared about what every one of you thought about me. Today, quite honestly, I don't. I want you to think of me as educated, I want you to think that I'm sharing and I'm able to educate and inspire and motivate you, but I can't control that. You can't control what your buyers, what your prospective clients, what your friends, your family think about you. The only thing you can do is be the best you and then just live your life as you, right? Who agrees with that? Who gets that? Male, female, I don't care. Come on, guys, you know. It's funny because most of my my speaking engagements are men. I, they're positioned to have women, but a lot of them, men come. We all have the times where we just need to kind of dig deep. I call it excavation. So I realized for myself that I needed to kind of go on this journey and figure out how do I get through this? Because again, one day, I'm over here, for instance, writing my screenplay. I'm over here, I'm feeling great, I'm getting all this woohoo from people, and then the next day I'm like, oh God, I don't want to, you know, my coach is like, it's been 3 months, why aren't you sending it out? Oh, well, I still have editing to do. She's like, no you don't. I don't want rejection. So now I have to deal with that, right? So it's not that it goes away, it's just that you learn how to address it and push through it and then move on from it. Make sense? So how can you do that? Because again, we have the bitches, we all know what those are now. But the riches, think about it. The riches is not only that confidence we talked about, the confidence, the energy, the focus, the determination, the persistence, the results. We all want results, right? We're in business. We need results. If you aren't getting the results, you need to think about why that is. And it's not because somebody else, it's not because the customer. You all have fabulous businesses and I made note of every single one of them. But if you're not getting the results from them that you want, then you need to see the gentleman back there that helps you from a selling perspective. And trust me, I even— I still have those challenges in positioning myself to where I know that people are gonna just open up their wallet, but that's where you wanna get to. But it's not because you don't have a good product. Every one of you have a good product. So if you're not getting the results, it could be the fact that something's holding you back. Some limiting belief is holding you back. I happen to call them bitches in my world. Make sense? So the other riches are whatever you determine and set the goals are. Financial, personal, spiritual, relationship-wise, health and fitness. Oh, that's my biggest challenge right now. I so want to get fit, and yet I have a block going on that I just don't want to get into the gym and spend time in the gym. So I'm working on that. But yet, if you ask me and talk to me about all my business activity right now, oh, it is gangbusters. But at the same time, it's not always that way. So if you want the riches, not only the emotional stuff, the confidence, blah, blah, but the results that come with it, then I discovered in my journey that I actually went through a process very much like if you went through phases of divorce or death, and I call it my Shift to Riches Formula. And it wasn't something actually that I kind of made up because it was good marketing. It was something because I actually started working from day one in 2010 when I decided to write this book. I wrote the book as an apology, taking responsibility and accountability for the person that I was for 25 years. My intention was to write the book, self-publish it, send it out to 100 people and be done. And yet the next thing I know, I'm being asked to speak to them about Well, what about, you know, I deal with this type of issue when it comes to dealing with cancers. We talked about that earlier. Dealing with cancer, dealing with divorce, dealing with a breakup, dealing with coming out of the closet, dealing with being overweight, being too skinny, whatever your bitch is. And I realized I had to do something about it. So I took the book and I started delving into the Shift to Riches formula, which really is this. Self-awareness is key when it comes to your mindset. If you want to shift successes in your life, you have to get your head on straight. So you first have to discover what is it that I want, what is it that I don't want, why. I call it find your why spot. Why do you want what you want? What should you be doing? What shouldn't you be doing? What do you want to be doing? What do you don't want to be doing? There's a whole series of self-discovery questions you'd be asking. You ask them of yourselves? I'm getting some nods. Then as part of that discovery is you need to then say, okay, I need to set goals around what it is that I want. So how many of you set goals? Raise your hand. Keep them up. Set goals. Well-defined metric goals. Okay, I'll talk to you, Bernadette Boas. Okay, keep your hands up. How many of you have them written down? Drop them if you don't. How many of you have action plans against those every day? You look at your goals, you define actions against those goals. Wow, this is awesome. Okay, and then how many of you act on them and then measure, track, and assess against them? Okay, then put your hand down. Okay, so that's typically what happens, although I have to say, congratulations, because this is the biggest crowd. Well, we had a speaker at the last meeting who taught us how to do that. Sweet. Hey, that's okay, because I, you know, I don't have time to go into it, but I don't go anywhere without this. This is mine. This is my goal setting, and I have a personal journal that then I dump all my all my junk in. Well, because my dad used to call it a free therapist, and I believe in journaling as a free therapist. Dump whatever is going on in your life— good, bad, indifferent— get it out of your head and onto a piece of paper. And that, when it comes to goal setting, is an absolute must. If you want to achieve and succeed in the life, you have to get it out of your head and on a piece of paper. And as a business coach and consultant, I I can't tell you how many of my clients will be like, "Oh, I have balls. I have balls." "Great, show them to me." "What do you mean show them to you?" "I want to see them. Where are they, on a piece of paper?" "Uh, well, I haven't gotten there yet." So get it out of your head it's on a piece of paper. Okay, so then when you discover things, you're going to discover things that you like and don't like. And you have to be honest about it. I had to sit there and actually admit and feel shamed ashamed, feel embarrassed, feel humiliated, feel angry at myself about the fact of how I operated for 25 years. Then I had to kind of confront that. So I discovered it, and then I had to confront it. Good, bad, or indifferent. So you confront your