Shedding the Bitch Radio - RICH Tips for Business and Life

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Your show will go live in 5 seconds. 4, 3, 2, One. Long talk radio. Oh crap. 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 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.

Well, hello everyone! Happy, happy, happy day, evening, morning, wherever you might be around the world. You are indeed listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio, and this is Bernadette Boas, and it is Rich Tip Tuesday. I'll need to get like a song or something that we can use for Bridge Tip Tuesdays, and I'll explain that in them in a minute. But I am hoping that everyone is having a glorious day. It is absolutely stunning here in Atlanta, Georgia. It has been for a few days now, uh, nice and sunny. Did get a little rain earlier today, but that's okay, um, it's passed and now the sun is out and it is actually warming up. I understand we're gonna have some sort of chill over the next couple of days, but at the same time, uh, not anywhere near what the country has been experiencing this winter. Um, and I don't know if you heard, but my sister Patricia had put out on Facebook that the Farmer's Almanac stated that we are in for still another hard month of March, maybe even worse than it was in January, February. And of course her friends and everyone kind of jumped in boohooing, you know, all of that. And yet at the same time, you know, she was right to say that the Farmer's Almanac is a heck of a lot more accurate than our meteorologist seems to have been this past winter. So, uh, if that's the case, then we just all have to just keep smiling and hope for the best when it comes to what the next 4 or 5 weeks of winter could actually be. Hey bud, nope, your bone's over there. Charlie wants to say hi, but I am, I'm happy that it's just, you know, even nice out. As long as we don't have the ice and anything around the country actually that is keeping people from really getting to their job, making a living, being able to take care of their families, staying safe. You know, we can all bear the cold, we can all dress, you know, in more layers, but at the same time, when it comes to just putting our lives at risk then that's a whole different story. So bring on whatever's coming, but at the same time, I hope the man up above just keeps it a little, little tempered, if he would. Other than that, I want to thank everyone. Thank you so much for those of you who have reached out to me and has just kind of sent your thoughts, not necessarily your prayers, although I'm grateful for those that did, but A couple weeks ago I discovered I had a couple of cancer spots. One is a basal cell, I guess they explain, on my face. And then I— but I did have an early stage melanoma on my middle of my back. So right now I am itching like crazy because I had to have them go in and take care of whatever they had to do. I don't even want to think about it. And so I have a whole line of stitches on my middle of my back, which makes it really hard for me to move around. At the same time, you'll notice if any of you watch any of the videos on YouTube or on our, uh, Shannon the Bitch channel, you'll see over the coming weeks, um, potentially, uh, something growing on my face because the cream solution that they've recommended me to use is actually going to make it look worse than what I went in complaining about. Right above my lip. So who knows, over the next several weeks you might see a beauty mark appear for when I have to go out in public or come on the video. So, or other than that, I'm just not gonna care and I'm just gonna be glad that I'm healthy. And if I'm a little distorted for a little bit, well, so be it. And I'm sure my community, like yourselves, will be very understanding. But I do want to thank all of you for all of that support and shoutouts across the various networks. It meant a great deal. Thank you so much. Alright, let's see. Rich Tip Friday is coming up on Friday, obviously, and therefore put your questions, stories, challenges out on our Shedding the Bitch Facebook page. You can send them through sheddingthebitch.com. On Twitter, on LinkedIn. People send me them, their questions, on email. You can send it to BernadetteBoas@sheddingthebitch.com. And what I do is I respond and provide you tips, advice, and tough love each and every Friday throughout the day based on the frequency of questions that I'm getting in for the week. And then once a month, typically the last Tuesday of the month like it is today, we then have Take all those Rich Tip questions and we bring them right here on the Shedding the Bitch Radio and we dive into them even further. So you can get a lot more out of our conversation today than you might have been able to from the dialogue on Facebook. All right, and so that's each and every last Tuesday of the month, and all month long I'm just taking your questions, stories, and challenges and responding to them on our Facebook page. So we have a number of questions for today, but I just— I'm shouting that out as a reminder for Friday, and as well what our program will focus on today. But before we get there, um, I do want you to check out Shedding the Bitch, our YouTube channel. There's a great number of videos, the hour-long programs and a couple-minute videos, tips, advice, and tough love in regards to business and life issues that you might be dealing with today. So that's on our YouTube channel, Shedding the Bitch. Then we just started, based on requests from people that have been following my screenwriting journey, we just set up a couple weeks ago a new Facebook page, Confessions of a Corporate Bitch, basically the movie. So it'll— it'll— I'll share with you my adventure and actually gain from you maybe some insights, ideas, character names, things things that I could be using within the screenplay. And then at the same time, I'm going to also be offering up some nice little prizes and, and rewards as we move forward. And as this screenplay kind of develops, it gets put out there, and I'll start pitching it. And keeping all of our fingers and toes crossed, uh, we actually sell it and put it onto the big screen. So, uh, you can go to You probably should be able to Google Confessions of a Corporate Bitch and find it as a Facebook fan page. If not, the URL is actually Corporate Tyrant Movie, so it's facebook.com/corporatetyrantmovie. Of course, Facebook doesn't appreciate use of typical everyday words such as bitch, in their URLs. And part of me supports them, part of me says, you know, get a grip, you know. But at the same time, that's the way it is. So check that out. I'd love for you to like it and join our conversation and dialogue as we build up that community because it's brand new. All right, I want to thank some sponsors. I've been making sure— so many people have supported supported me over the last, uh, 4 or 5 years now. And I thought two things. One, I was being asked to— for other companies to be a part of our Shedding the Bitch community and the radio show. At the same time, I wanted to do some shoutouts and thank-yous and some pay-it-forward type of opportunities for some of the people that have really been instrumental in bringing Shedding the Bitch community to you. So, Total Communications Coach, I talk about Joan Curtis a lot. She's my personal business coach, working on various things for me, basically keeping me sane. But take a look at totalcommunicationscoach.com, and it doesn't matter that she's right here in Atlanta— actually, she's up in Athens. She works all over the country, all over the world, and she could do it via phone, via Skype. A number of things you can talk to her about that. But Total Communications Coach, thank you very much for your support, as well as TSR Tax. And you'll find them also TSR Consulting, and that's Debbie Snelling, my accountant. And she just, you know, if there's somebody that you really need to feel secure with, to trust, to have someone who's very confident in what she does and how she serves her customers, then TSR Tax you definitely want to get involved with. And it's that time of year, unfortunately. So reach out to her and see how she might be able to help you. And Pena Global is a sales coaching, executive coaching company. Rica Pena is the principal and founder, and he works all over the world with small to large companies around sales coaching. So I want to thank all of our sponsors that you'll, you'll you'll see on our website, you'll see in our communications, and you'll see on our Shedding the Bitch radio page. So I think that's all of our announcements. So we're gonna get right into it. Just as a reminder, you're listening to Shedding the Bitch radio, and I am Bernadette Boas. We are taping today, which means I'll be splicing these videos, this overall video, up into each rich tip will be captured as its own and put up on our Shedding the Bitch YouTube channel. So take a look for that. So if you have an opportunity to listen to this in archive and/or you're listening live, but at the same time you want to come back to it and refer back to it and see my lovely little face, then you can always go to YouTube, our Shedding the Bitch channel, and you'll find them there. Give me till tomorrow. Just so I can kind of cut them up and do what you need to do to make them presentable. All right, okay, we have a number of questions. So being that it's Rich Tip Tuesday, one of the questions that I have been asked, and this comes up periodically— I won't say a lot, but periodically— and it'll come up when I might have thrown something out there when it comes to my speaking or training engagements that I have. And this individual was just looking for a simple tip to get over the anxiety of public speaking. And so basically that was her question, is, "I'm getting into public speaking." She didn't say whether or not she was doing it professionally or not, but she was just doing it more often. And therefore she was just saying, "I still just get very anxious." and, you know, very nervous prior to kind of stepping out in front of people. And she didn't mention small or large groups, but it really doesn't matter the number of people. Actually, some people get more nervous in smaller groups than larger groups because you become a lot more— I don't know, a lot more— I don't want to say visible, but it seems to really, really— the spotlight seems to shine on you more when you're in a small crowd, and there's an opportunity to be called out much easier in a small crowd than a large crowd. At the same time, some people get more nervous when they're talking to people that they know as opposed to talking to strangers. Um, there's that idea of making a fool out of yourself in front of your friends or family or peers as opposed to complete strangers who don't know you. Whatever your anxiety is, this is my Rich Tip to you. The more you know and the more you're comfortable with the subject matter you're speaking on, you're going to get over all that other junk, so to speak. Anxiety comes from not only insecurity or lack of confidence, but that lack of confidence can get interpreted in, in just the fact that you may not feel really comfortable with the content that you're speaking on or that you're training on. And it may not be that you're not comfortable, that you don't know it, but you just haven't practiced enough to make it natural, to make it flow. So for instance, if you want to stand up in front of a room, small or large, you need to be prepared for any situation that may happen. And in that preparation, you need to be able to come up with those solutions prior to those issues or situations happening. And with all of that, as well as knowing your content really well, you're going to, you're going to be very confident, you're going to be very secure, you're going to walk out on that stage. You may still always get butterflies because sometimes butterflies are just excitement. I love to get butterflies. It's, it's those other type of butterflies that kind of cause you to get dry in the mouth or sweaty or red in the face, or at least you think you're red in the face. So, let me step back and say, so, a number of things in regards to your preparation, your practice, and your planning. So, the 3 Ps of public speaking. Let's make it real simple. So, you prepare. And basically, preparing is you do look at every situation. You do consider everything that could go right. And everything that could go wrong. So if you're using PowerPoint presentation, for instance, or something, you know, electronics are involved, you need to plan for them failing. So what if they were to fail? What if you had a teleprompter and all of a sudden that went out and you were kind of dependent on that teleprompter? Well, you can't. You can't be dependent on anything because you need to be able to continue your conversation, continue your education, your training, regardless if you have to stand up there and just do it, you know, do it ad hoc, do it improvised, do it without any supporting backup, whether that's electronics, whether that's an extra piece of paper with your outline on it, whatever the case might be. All right, so, and it's really important because some people get very flustered. I'm trying to think of the gentleman that came on stage at a big event. Ah, darn. And he was a big guy. Came out on stage for this big event. The teleprompter, something went wrong. Maybe the backup big screen of his slides went terribly wrong. And it totally flustered him. And therefore, he kind of just said, "I can't do this," and he walked off the stage. Well, that was discussed for weeks as far as, you know, why couldn't he have X, Y, and Z? And therefore, you want to plan for that. You definitely want to be prepared and have a backup plan for yourself.

How—

what do I need to do in case any of these situations happen? And then part of the preparation as well is really getting an outline and an understanding and a grounding on your subject matter. You don't necessarily need to know it by heart, but you definitely need to have the gut of the outline memorized and kind of embedded in your soul. So again, if something should happen to anything, to your notes, to the backup slides, whatever, maybe someone sends you off topic, you're able to come back and get right back into the flow of things. And again, this takes time. It takes practice, which we'll get— we're going to get to next. But as far as finalizing the preparation, is— and the planning. So the planning is also the same type of content. You're planning for every situation, you're planning for conversation, you're planning for the questions, you're planning to deal with objections. So the preparation planning is all around the content and the situation and the environment that you're going to be in. And then you need to practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice some more. All right, and more importantly, part of that practice is even doing it live, even doing it on the stage in front of people. So meaning that you can prep, plan, and practice all you want on your own prior to the event, but really where you're going to gain confidence and overcome any of that ugly anxiety is going to be just simply doing it. I mean, I used to, I used to, as outgoing and social, and I've been training in some form or fashion or speaking in some form or fashion for 25 years. I would say over the last 4 or 5 years is when I really got comfortable with having those exciting butterflies in my stomach and then getting out in front of small or large crowds and just going for it. And I just absolutely love it and it's a lot of fun and I, you know, I no longer have that what you might be experiencing. But it takes prep, it takes planning, and it takes practice. Alright? So I hope that answered your question. And again, just do it. Just do it. And if you flutter, fluster, flop, whatever the other F's could be— we won't say the other one that rhymes with bail— but whatever they are, don't worry about it. You'll recover, the room will recover. The people will walk away, maybe say a comment or two, and then it'll be gone. So please don't allow that fear because trust me, if you are doing this professionally and you are doing this regularly, yes, you will have situations that will get in your way and it'll all depend upon how you handle it. Alright? So that was our Rich Tip regarding getting over the anxiety and the butterflies. Around public speaking. You're listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio, and this is Bernadette Boas. If you happen to have a question or a story challenge of your own that maybe you didn't get an opportunity to put out on Facebook prior to today and you're listening to this live, please feel free to call me at 1-818-572-2910. I would love to hear from you. At the same time, I'm watching the boards, and if you are online and you're listening to this and you want to go into the chat room, then feel free to, and I'm keeping an eye on it, and I'll reach out to you and pick up your question.

Okay? All right.

So the next tip, or the challenge that someone was having that they need some tips on, is what do you do when you have teammates, and sometimes they're bosses, that aren't stepping up and doing their part? And therefore, a lot of the work, a lot of the weight of whatever initiative it is that you're working on is severely impacted. And the work's getting put onto you and/or your other teammates. So what do you do? Well, let's look at this in two ways. So say you're the team member and the person not stepping up is your boss. Harder than the others. So what, what options do you have? Well, you can pull them aside and always keep in mind that they have something to gain or to lose by whatever initiative or project it is that's being worked. If they're the leader, if they're the project manager, if they're the head of this initiative and they're being measured and judged on the outcome successful delivery, timely delivery, on-budget delivery, you know, great leadership of the project or initiative or organization as a whole, then they have a lot to gain or lose. So you want to kind of pull at that emotional tug. You want to use that, and you want to basically approach them and just say, hey, Joe, Sally, You know, just because I know how important it is for this initiative to be successful for you and for the team as a whole, you know, I just want to, you know, kind of point out some observations, and I have a couple of ideas, suggestions, or, you know, things you might want to consider, and I just need to make you aware of it because I'm sure you're not gonna— you wouldn't want this to be happening. If it's about them directly that you need to address, you need to You can approach them by asking them questions about maybe something's going on personally, maybe something's going on at work, maybe something's going on on another project that is impacting this project. And you might wanna say, hey, you know, I've noticed that blah, blah, blah, is there anything I can do? Is there anything, you know, that we can make adjustments to? Understanding that if we don't get this right, if it's not delivered on time, you know, we're all gonna, you know, be screwed, so to speak. I would use those words, you don't necessarily need to use those words, but, um, so you need to kind of understand what their agenda is, what their objectives is, what their motivations are in their role, and use that as to how you approach them. But you definitely want to approach it, you definitely want to address it. You don't want to avoid it, you don't want to ignore it, you want to get it addressed. Everybody needs to be doing their part. And the second thing is that, say you're the project manager or the leader, the overall manager of the people, and the individual, whether it's the boss or the peer member, is not stepping up, that has a lot to do also with how they're galled and objected. And what I mean by that is, what are their performance measures? What are they being judged on? How are they, you know, What goals do they individually have on this project? And how are they going to be measured as to whether or not they're successful or not? Because one, if those aren't in place, you can make sure they get in place, not only for yourself but for the rest of the team. You can take that to the project manager or to the overall leader or manager of the initiative or group or team or organization and simply ask, you know, how are we all being measured and what are you going to determine to be successful? Or not successful, you know, as the outcome of this initiative. And it may raise a flag that, oh, you know what, we don't have measurements or goals or objectives set for individuals and for the overall project. And therefore, they can get addressed right then. How— and the reason why most people get away with or aren't addressed when it comes to them not stepping up is because there is nothing in place. And I was just talking to a client last week about the fact that, look at, you know, a team or group of workers. They're basically like kids, and the manager, the project manager, is the parent. And the kids are gonna, they're gonna push it as far as they can push it until mom and dad, or mom or dad, come in and put the hammer down. And if they don't have rules and standards or goals or measurements of what's making them successful or not, they're gonna push it until, until, you know, as far as they can. So therefore, you really want to make sure that there are those goals and measurements in place and that they're being reviewed and assessed and discussed individually and as a group so everyone knows what the expectations are, everyone knows what the status is, and then If there's any course corrections that need to be made, they can be made. Alright, so basically, if people aren't stepping up, one, you have to raise it up. You have to raise it up as an issue because it's impacting everybody else. If you choose not to raise it up, you choose to take on the work, you choose to just kind of brush it under the carpet, then you just need to take the hit for it because People can't help you, people can't solve the problems for you if you're not willing to address it and raise it up, even if it is your boss. And again, keep in mind, every individual—yourself, your peers, and your bosses—all have motivations and agendas, personal and professional. If you can find out what those are and what will make that individual successful achieving that agenda or motivation or objective for themselves, then you'll find the key to how you need to approach them and address difficult situations with them. Because there's no one— well, I'll take that back. Very few true leaders who have any goals or ambitions at all are gonna wanna put their success at risk, or their inability to climb the corporate ladder at risk. I don't care if it's a small company or a large company. They wanna know But if no one approaches them and no one talks to them about it, it's almost like, remember when you would, used to, used to hear that in high school, you know, the beauty queen, you know, rarely gets dates because people won't ask her because they think that she already has a lot of dates lined up. So she often at times sits at home alone. Well, it's simply because, it's simply because people are assuming that she knows and that she already has those dates, she already has things lined up, and no one's willing to step up and really kind of confirm whether or not that's true, raise up the issue, raise up the opportunity for themselves. And therefore, managers and employees are very much the same. It is the manager may not know what's going on, and therefore someone needs to raise it up, even if it's about them, even if it's an observation about their behavior. Okay? Alright, so I hope that answers your questions about what can you do regarding teammates not stepping up as your Rich Tip for today's Rich Tip Tuesday on Shedding the Bitch Radio. And you are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio. This is Bernadette Boas and I am coming to you from Atlanta, Georgia, and we are taking advantage of the last Tuesday of the month to drill into your questions, challenges, or stories that you've posted on Facebook, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, Twitter, even directly to me at BernadetteBoas@SheddingTheBitch.com. And I respond to them every Friday, typically. It's our Rich Tip Friday. And give you some tips, advice, and tough love on our Facebook page, Shedding the Bitch. And then the last Tuesday of every month, we take all of those questions, stories, and challenges and bring them right here to Shedding the Bitch Radio and dive into them a bit deeper than what we can on Facebook or Twitter. So I'm glad you're joining us, and if you do have any questions at any time, whether it's here live on the program, you can always call 1-818-572-2910. But at the same time, if you're not listening to this live, you have a question, send it through Facebook page, send it through my email, send it through sheddingthebitch.com, and I'd be more than happy to get you some actionable tips and advice that you can use immediately within your business and life regarding whatever issue you're having. And if I can't answer it directly, then I'll get my large team of resources that are out there of experts who can respond to your particular issue or challenge that you might be having. All right, so if I could read my notes, that would be a beautiful thing. Oh, all right, so Rich Tip question. It's all around, say you have your own business or say you're climbing the corporate ladder and you're looking to get more and more visibility in your company, in your industry, out in the business world. What can you do as far as joining groups and associations that you can contribute to, you could be a part of, you can build your reputation? Share your expertise. And for those of you who are prospecting for customers or clients or candidates, maybe say you're, you're a recruiter or you're in corporate and you're looking for potential hires. So how can you find the groups and associations that, that are relevant to your target market? At the same time, when you find them —because you'll find a bunch of them—what can you do to make sure that you're picking the right, you know, the right set of associations and groups to join? And then even further, she went on to ask, you know, is there an average number of groups I should be part of? It's quite a loaded question, but so let's take it one piece at a time. So whether you're in corporate or you're a business owner or work on your own and you're looking for whether it's clients, contacts, hires, it doesn't matter. How can you get visibility? How can you get your name out? How can you really contribute and become part of other associations and groups? How do you find them? How do you become part of them? Well, first off, obviously You will need to know who is your target market. What industry is it? What type of person is it? What type of company is it? If you're, you know, kind of B2C, meaning business to consumer, what does that end user, the person that is going to put money in your pocket, what do they look like? If you can identify that, are they female, are they male, are they both? Are they in a certain age bracket? Are they a certain income? Are they in a certain state or location? Are they in an industry? Are they of a certain level of revenue or number of employees? Are they, you know, do they have a certain pain point all in common? So, for instance, if you're in the weight and nutrition industry, fitness and nutrition industry, You know, and yet you might be, you know, you want to target men over the age of 50, you know, average income is $100,000 and up, so you're going after kind of the professional male who is over 50 and needs to keep in shape for any number of reasons. So, I'm going to assume if you know your target market really well, then you go and look for where they hang out. Now, how do you answer the question, where do they hang out? Well, you have to ask them. Well, how do I ask them? How do I know? Well, you can either verbally ask them, literally go out and find your demographic and have a conversation with them, have some interviews, do a focus group, post a survey out on any one of those social media sites. And ask them a few questions. If it is corporate or if it's B2B and you work with other companies, then go either out into— on Google and just Google where these people are hanging out. So conferences in the technology industry, conferences in the printing industry, in the consulting industry, conferences for company revenues of a billion and above, or that might be corporate conferences in a certain industry. You can look online and see where the group of people are kind of hanging out and spending time. Say you want to spend time on LinkedIn. Well, you know, there's hundreds and thousands of groups out there. What are the best groups to join? Well, personally, what I'll do is do the same thing. I'll look for the target market that I'm going after, and it could even be direct to the type of people I want to work with, or it could be the type of people I want to partner with and engage with and let them know that, you know, what I'm doing. So in case their customer, you know, is needing some consulting support or speaking experts, then they could, you know, be a referral source for me. So once I do that, then I go online and I look to see the active groups. And this is where she was specifically asking about, you know, there's so many, how do I choose? You really want to make sure they're active. So again, I'm in Atlanta and I can Google Atlanta women's networking groups and I'm going to get pages of them. And yet when you start drilling into them, because they're typically alphanumeric, But when you start Google— drilling into them, you'll find that rarely do they have events, or they haven't had an event in a long time. Their website's outdated. The association's very small, and that could be even, you know, on LinkedIn, it happens as well. Where LinkedIn groups, they're not active conversations going on. People aren't contributing to the conversation. People are just pushing. There aren't a lot of members to the group. I would say those three are the biggest ones. So you just want to do your homework. You want to kind of get a sphere of groups and associations that you could partner with, but then you want to do your homework and find out, are they, are they going to have the right customer for you? And I'm using the word customer loosely because it could be the fact that you just want to socialize with peers of yours, or like I said, places where you can find strategic partners or candidates or customers, and you just want to make sure that you're targeting the right groups. For instance, again, Atlanta, we have two levels of networking groups out there, very small entrepreneurial business groups, meaning, you know, the typical entrepreneurs, they're making not even $100,000 a year. And they're solopreneurs. You'll find tons of those type of networking groups if that is your target market. And then if you want anything above that, you then go to corporate and you go to the Chamber of Commerce and spend $5,000 a year to hang out with corporate people. Well, that's a big— that's a big— that's a wide area. And yet in the middle, which is, you know, even, let's say, even $1 million and above, or $1 million to $500 million, they don't hang out a lot, at least in Atlanta. It's hard to find groups that target, so you have to drill even further. You have to ask a lot of questions to a lot of people because they are out there, just not as plentiful as the entrepreneurs and certainly not as cost-prohibitive as the corporate level. So you just need to do your homework, and then you just get very, very, very selective to the number of groups and associations you join because you're not there to just simply show up and hand out business cards or show up and fill a seat or show up and hope to meet a prospect. You really want to be able to contribute and add value to that group, and therefore you are going to need to devote your time and energy into it, whether it's online or in person. So you want— you don't want to overcommit, and then you're pretty much, you know, wide and thin as opposed to narrow and deep in what you're able to give and share. Alright, so once you identify your target market very clearly and Google and do what you need to to find out what the groups and associations are where your target market hangs out, and/or your partners and your vendor opportunities, And then from there you can pick a couple, identify a couple, do your homework, make sure they're active, contributing groups, and then devote your time into them. And I would say devote your time, if not money, because some of them will require money, and that's when you really have to get smart as to where you're going to put your money. But I would devote, you know, 3 to 6 months in making sure that that group is really what— where you want to invest. A lot of the groups, especially if they if they have a fee, they will allow you to come and visit once or twice, and I would strongly recommend that before putting your money down. So there's a number of ideas for you there. All right, so as far as what do you do to kind of select groups and associations that can be very relevant and very productive for your business and/or your corporate career, Then those are my tips, advice, and tough love, and our Rich Tips for today. Alright, you're listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio and this is Bernadette Boas. It's Rich Tip Tuesday on the program and we're taking your questions, stories, or challenges that have been brought into me, whether it's on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, sheddingthebitch.com, or directly to me at bernadetteboas@sheddingthebitch.com. And providing you some tips, advice, and tough love in regards to them. Alright, let me see, what do we have? Alright, here's a Rich Tip. Oh, well, we might have just addressed this. Alright, so what to do if you aren't sure of your customer target? What to do if you're unsure of who your customer is? So, the question that was posed on Facebook, and I would pull it up and give you exact specifics, but generally the question was all around a change in target market. So, she had a target market originally and she's decided with the new year to change it up. Very much like, and this is how I responded to her, very much like what I did. I was last year, up until about May or June, I was targeting small businesses, as opposed to now I'm targeting corporate. Two very different groups, two very different targets, two very different, uh, strategies as to how you can reach them, engage with them, let alone to contract with them. So you definitely need to know very clearly of who your target market is, and therefore If you're changing up and— but you're unsure of where or how you want to change it up, then what I would suggest is simply this: think through and write down— you know I'm really big on writing everything down— but write down what was it about your other target market that wasn't working, that caused you to want to change up. And write out all the reasonings. Maybe it was that they couldn't afford to pay you, too slow to contract with you, it was a difficult group, industry, sector to penetrate. Maybe it's very competitive and you just don't have the background and the experience and therefore weren't getting the opportunities presented to you and it was just too challenging and you weren't able to kind of make headway. It could be for a number of reasons, but write them out, all right? So you then understand, kind of, you can now say, okay, so if you don't want this, what do you want? If you don't want this, what do you want? If you don't want this, what do you want? And that'll start kind of formulating a target market description for you. So maybe you do want to be paid, so you want companies that can afford you. Well, what's your fees structure and how, how much do you command for your engagements, products, or services, and what type of companies, even level of revenue, can afford you. Now be careful here because they might be able to afford you initially, but can they sustain you if that, if that's the type of business that you're in? So you answer though, you ask yourself those questions, you answer those questions for for yourself and using those initial, you know, what didn't you not like about that previous can start kind of formulating. And then what I would add to that is questions around who do you like to work with? I mean, because there are certain sectors, certain genders, certain age groups, certain, you know, kind of hobbies of individuals that some are more attracted to than others. For instance, at first, when I first started out consulting, I attracted and I really enjoyed working with male executives. And it— maybe it was from my personality, my corporate background, my polish, whatever the case might be. I always attracted men and detracted women. And then as the, you know, the years have gone on, over the past couple of years I really have been attracting more women to my practice and to the work that I do. Not only because of the subject matter, because I do have a lot of subjects that specifically target male managers, male executives, but at the same time, maybe because I've softened up, maybe because of my shedding process, maybe because of just kind of the message I'm conveying, you know, a lot more women executives are familiarizing themselves and feeling more comfortable with me than previously. So, I, you know, if I took a look at my target market, I could use all of that information to help me craft a different target market. So, in your case, think about What type of people do you like to work with? Do you like to work with the big corporate or maybe medium-sized? Do you like to work with a certain technology, a certain industry or a certain segment of an industry? Do you like to work with male-dominated companies versus female companies? Do you like to work with nonprofit versus for-profit? There's a lot of different psychographics, demographics, infographics that you can use in order to kind of picture and visualize your perfect customer, and then you can go from there. A lot of times I tend to tell people to definitely get as niched as possible in your target market, and what I mean by that is, no, you can't work for anybody and everybody because you just don't have the money and the resources and the support to do that. So, are you better with nurses? Are you better in the construction industry? Excuse me. Are you better in technology? And if technology, are you maybe a big data versus analytics, or maybe you're mobile versus— excuse me— versus energy? So there's ways to just really detail and get narrow your target market, because the more narrow you are is not going to cut you off from opportunities elsewhere, but what it's going to do is when you start messaging and marketing into that narrow market, you're going to become very visible to that narrow market. So it's almost like, would you rather be swimming in a small pond or a large pond? I mean, where are you going to be more visible if you should be drowning or if you should, you know, need help or if you should be going out, you know, wanting to fish? Where are you best suited? And it, you know, I'd rather be a small fish in a big pond than a big fish— no, wait, I'm sorry. I'd rather be a big fish in a small pond than a small pond in a big fish— in a— blah! You know what I mean. You know what I mean. So, just get narrow, get specific, picture your customer in your head, and you too can really kind of start crafting what your new target market needs to be, alright, as opposed to what you might be told or what you might think you need to do, because you want to make it sure that it's something that you want to do and it's a group that you want to work with. For instance, let me give you one more for instance on this rich tip. I personally am not attracted to the medical industry, the hospital industry, and I I've been asked multiple times to do so, and yet I know how difficult— because I've worked with one or two of them— I know how difficult it is for doctors to not only see the value in what type of consulting and coaching I do, but they're also not willing to change. They're not willing to see their own mistakes. They're not willing to see what it is that's really broken in order to fix it. And that's okay. I used to get very, very frustrated about it, but you know what, it's okay. Then they just don't need my help. They need to find somebody else, and/or someone else needs to find them. So I choose not to work in those industries. So when someone brings it up to me, I'll recommend them to somebody else. All right, okay. You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio, and this is Bernadette Boas. We are talking rich tips. On this Tuesday and basically taking all your questions, challenges, and stories from this last month and drilling into them even further than what we can do on our Rich Tip Fridays, which is each Friday, obviously, on our Facebook page, Shedding the Bitch. So start sending your questions and challenges that you might have this week as you're listening to this program and get them in and I'll address them on Friday. Okay? Alrighty, let's see. Taking credit. Hmm, so you have someone on your team and who takes credit for the things that you or someone else is doing. And this goes back to, but a little bit different actually, I'll take that back. I was going to say there's another Rich Tip video that we talked about today and it's about a team member not stepping up. In this case, it's a team member that may not be stepping up, but at the same time, they're taking the credit for something that you or someone else has done. And bottom line to that is just simply calling them out on it. Not in a public setting, not in an embarrassing, offensive setting, just simply pulling them aside and asking them, you know, what kind of contribution do you think that you've made to this, and/or, you know, you know, call them out on the fact that somebody else brought up the idea, or somebody else, you know, crafted the presentation or the proposal, or, you know, developed the plan for the strategy of their initiative, that the individual who's claiming credit did and didn't have any part of it. I mean, I was watching Working Girl the other day, and that whole movie is is based on someone taking credit at the very end, taking credit for someone else's idea and lying about it. And basically, you know, that's what it comes down to, is someone taking credit is lying, is betraying the people around them, and therefore you definitely have to get it addressed and you can't allow it to happen. And yet in business especially, a lot of times people will roll their eyes and not do anything about it. But if you strip away what that means, them taking credit, it's not something to be laughed off or just like, uh, roll your eyes, or he's always like that, or she's always like that. I mean, because basically when someone's taking credit for something, they are lying to whoever it is that they're claiming credit to. And therefore, that type of behavior has to be addressed. As a matter of fact, for any of you out there As part of Ball of Fire Consulting, I have a Leader Tip weekly that I send out, and today's happens to be around backstabbing and how to turn backstabbing into productive frontstabbing, meaning that you deal with things up front as opposed to behind someone's back. You deal with things maturely and directly and unemotionally and professionally as opposed as opposed to, you know, dealing with it through lies and betrayal. Because bottom line, that's what it is. So you can always go to Ball of Fire Consulting and sign up and you'll get that newsletter. Actually, it goes out this afternoon. But in any case, taking credit should not be tolerated. It's not something to be laughed at because when you strip it away, it's basically that individual is lying. Not just taking credit, they are lying about their contribution or their role. And that cannot be, that cannot be tolerated. Alright? And so you are listening to Shading the Bitch Radio and this is Rich Tip Tuesday. Taking your questions, challenges, and stories and providing you some tips, advice, and some tough love for you to have immediate action, have immediate things to solve problems or opportunities in your business and your life today. And so we have dealt with public speaking. Speaking today. We've dealt with teammates not stepping up, how do you, you know, how do you go about finding groups and associations you want to be joining, what to do when you aren't sure what your target market is, and then this last one is all around taking credit. So there was a lot of conversation, a lot of tips. As I said, I am taping the program, so I will splice all of this up and and present them and provide them out on our Shedding the Bits YouTube channel, should you want to be able to view them and kind of just gain maybe more clarity, more understanding from not only listening to the program but also being able to watch it and see it. And you can say hi to me. Hi! Um, but that's what we are doing today. And before we wrap up, just a reminder, Rich Tip Friday is just around the corner. Corner. I mentioned the videos on YouTube. Also, please, would love for you to like our Confessions of a Corporate Bitch movie Facebook page, basically sharing my journey in writing the script to Shedding the Corporate Bitch, which is now Confessions of Corporate Bitch. And the URL on Facebook is actually Corporate Tyrant Movie, so it's facebook.com/corporatetyrantmovie. Corporate tyrant movie. And I would love for you to join me, share your stories, give me ideas of kind of those bitchy situations that maybe you've contributed— you have been involved in, not contributed to, but been involved in. As well as, um, you know, do you have any stories that— do you have any, um, antics that might make for some good scenes in a movie? I would love to, uh You know, love to hear them and see if we can use them in any way, shape, or form. And of course, I'll be giving rewards and prizes out as we go as thank-yous for helping in keeping me sane during this, during this writing journey that I'm on. And then lastly, thank you to all of our sponsors: Total Communications Coach, TSR Tax, and Pena Global. And if you want to be any part of the Shedding the Bitch community, just feel free to reach out to me at BernadetteBoas@sheddingthebitch.com and let me know how you'd like to participate, contribute, and would love to discuss it with you. So for everybody here at Shedding the Bitch Radio, this is Bernadette Boas, and I will see you right back here next Tuesday at noon Eastern time. And I want to thank you, and I want you to all have a very rich and prosperous week, and we'll talk to you soon. Thanks, everybody.

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