085: Morra Aarons-Mele - How to Network and Show up While Being An Introverted Leader

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing, but you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective, and really well done? I think docsa talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent, and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have. Talk to Docs of Talent and you won't be disappointed. Go to docsatant.com Bill G Again, that's doxataalent.com Bill G One more time. Doxatalent.com Bill G Check it out Today, leaders come in all shapes, sizes, colors and styles. We each all have strengths and weaknesses and yet there are certain things that we have to do. So leaders lead people, we lead initiatives, and those things involve people. So there's a certain aspect that we have to do to put out and interact with the world around us and the people in it. And yet some of us are introverts and some of us are extroverts. An introvert is someone who recovers their energy in retreat and in small places and needs that personal space. An extrovert continues to find energy being in and around other people. So if you find keeping up the public face, the presence, the human side to take some energy away from you, today's show will be all about how to find find your way, how to find the path that works for you and find the approach, the ways to recover, the ways to manage your presence and truly enjoy your leadership. So keep listening. Hello and welcome again to the Scaling Up Business Podcast. I'm your host, growth coach Bill Gallagher. On the show with me today is Maura Ahrens Mealy and she's going to talk all about being an introvert entrepreneur. And I so I met Maura at kind of a book tour party in the Bay Area and I thought she was interesting and brilliant and had a lot to share with her folks. And it picked to resonate with me because I'm a total introvert, although lots of folks don't realize it because I do public speaking, things like that. And I know a lot of the folks that we work with are introverts and oftentimes we have to pretend to be really extroverted or find a way to speak out and connect with other folks because of our role and what matters to us. And yet in our heart we're introverts. So if that's you, I think you're going to enjoy our conversation with Maura Mora. Welcome to the show.

Hi. Great to be here.

So you're in Boston today?

Yeah, I am. That's where I live.

So you guys got to know Maura. She's a very accomplished person. So she's the founder of this Women Online and she has done work with all kinds of extraordinary people on and for and things with folks like Obama and Malala. And there's a lot more that I could say and more that I don't even know, but I think you're going to get that this is a woman who's got something to share. So welcome again to the show.

Hi.

So I think it'd be great if you just give us a little bit of your background in your own words. How do you come to this? So she's the author of a book, Hiding in the Bathroom, which is where we connected. And it's this introverts roadmap to getting out there and the tips and tools for dealing with that and being effective as an entrepreneur. So how do you come to write this book? What led you to do it? Tell us your story.

The origin of this book is that I'm part of a women's entrepreneurship group. And around New Year's 2016, we were all setting our resolutions and I said that I wanted to grow my business but not travel and not go out at night. That was the goal that I set for myself because I realized I hate networking. I have a lot of travel anxiety. So even though I'm a consultant and I fly almost every week, getting on a plane is really hard for me. And I really just I'm an introvert. I work at home, alone in a home office, and I'm very, very happy that way. I've written a ton on how to build an intentional business, how to build a business that you can call it slow growth or managed growth or I just call it intentional. That is the very opposite of sort of the rocket ship Silicon Valley X multiplier business that we think is the only thing that is successful. But I wanted to grow my business, but I wanted to do it on my terms. So I started listing out all the ways that I've actually built my business while working mostly in my yoga pants, in my home office or in bed. And people seemed really into it. You know, it's something that we don't talk about. We have endless conversations, TED talks, networking events, I call them, like crush it seminars from leaders who just tell us to never eat lunch alone, always get out there, always say yes. And a lot of us aren't built that way. Even if we wanted to crush it every day and get out there, we might be introverted. So it really zaps our energy. I have social anxiety, so walking into a room, and certainly a room full of prospects or strangers fills me with panic and dread. Some of us are just hermits. We really like a lot of space and time to think and process. And there isn't a roadmap for people like us. And I think that's a shame. So I decided to write one.

So I was intrigued when I saw our mutual friend Joanna Bloor.

She's such an extrovert.

She is. She really is. And my wife is super extroverted. So I looked at that and I'm like, yeah, I'm really introverted, yet I'm a public speaker and I'm on the road continually. I'm working with teams and things like that. For me, it's that I do my thing and then I sort of retreat to either myself, my own time, or a few sort of close people. That's almost the same, sort of that close, connected. My wife and family are the place that I want to retreat to. And I'm drained at the end of a day with a team and that kind of thing. And at the end of the day of the team, I want some sort of personal chill time with no demand of my attention. But also, this is really funny, this is way too candid, but I just want to hear that I did a really good job. I, like, want to be adored for a minute. I want to flip through the comments and find the good ones in the eval sheets and whatever it is and just focus on those for a minute.

Oh my God. See, I can't even ever read them. I get too anxious.

I want to be validated. I want to be validated, right? Like, not my parking, my person. And so that's how it looks for me. And I notice a lot of folks like when I'm working with. So, you know, our audience and our people are focused on scaling up, right? They want to scale up their business for any number of reasons. It could be to prove their third grade teacher wrong or because they think that their product or service is going to change the world. There's lots of different motivations for it, but they have a desire to scale up and they know their leadership style has to scale and the process has to change and evolve. And yet they all deal with the things they love. And don't love. And many of them are like us in different flavors, right?

Well, that's right. I mean, some of the world's most successful people are introverts. Introversion is just about energy. It is a total myth that introverts are all shy, that they're quiet, that they're wallflowers. I think sometimes introversion is confused with social anxiety. You know, I've been on radio shows where the host has said, well, you can't be introverted. You're funny and you make eye and you crack jokes like no. Many introverts are the most famous actors and comedians that we know. We get up there on stage and kill it. But we need to manage our energy, right? We then need to take it down. We need to have time alone. I think that many, many introverts actually really need to build in a schedule where they have a lot of thinking time alone, time where they actually need to reduce external stimuli like lights. I hear fluorescent lights a lot when I talk to people about things that really set them off. Noise. When you walk into your hotel room and it's 6am and still dark outside, but CNN is blaring on one screen and the music is blaring in the lobby and you're like, oh, my God, I can't. You're probably an introvert. So introversion is not at all about social skills or ambition. It's about managing your energy. The thing that I just want to say is, you know, I'm all for people who scale up. And, you know, God bless you, your audience, if you all want to scale up. I have met so many people over the years in the many because, like you, I'm on the road giving talks and working with people who scale up for the wrong reasons or who in their heart do not want to scale up but think that's what they need to do, whether it's because their coach told them or their accountant tells them or their wife tells them or it's sexy. You know, One of the most popular things I ever wrote was an article in the Wall Street Journal which was about what I call entrepreneurship porn. And this isn't about being an introvert or an extrovert, but I think it's something really important. Our culture is obsessed with entrepreneurship. We are obsessed with scale. And I just want to say that you can be a really profitable and successful and groundbreaking business person and not achieve superstar scale status. And I think that's legit. And so one of the things I encourage people to think is what's motivating me to grow and scale and to really be tough on that validation.

So our audience is focused on scale, but I think understanding what scale and why and what aspects to scale, it's not always top line. It could be impact, it could be profit, it could be cash. There's a variety of places somebody's interested in growth in our world. And there are some people who choose off. There's one guy that I work with that's pretty much an introvert. And he really saw that what he wanted was out of the whole thing. And yet he wanted to scale his business to provide a return on investment and provide for his financial future, for his security, for his family and so on. And so we began to work on his leaving the succession plan for the company and transitioning him out of the. The leader role to the owner. So he has an ownership role. And we've got somebody else who really wanted to step forward. I don't know if she's an introvert or not, but in his case, his introversion led him to not wanting to have that key central role. Right.

But he found a creative and excellent solution. I mean, that's awesome.

I think each of us. So a lot of times when I'm talking with someone about that evolution, we're going to. And I think you make this point, right? What matters to you? What role do you want to play? What's comfortable, what's uncomfortable, and can we find a path or a way? Right.

Well, and tuning in. I mean, I have a great quote from a therapist in the book who says most people show up in her office because they haven't tuned in or paid any attention over the years. And so eventually their psyche and their body starts sending them all these signals like help, help, emergency. And they're just not paying attention. The reason I love the example of your colleague and your client who you were talking about is it sounds like he tuned in and he realized that something was making him unhappy, violating his boundaries. Right. Whether he wanted more time, whether he wanted more space, whether he didn't want to be on a plane all the time, whether he didn't want to be dealing with management issues and team building issues, which can be very taxing, frankly, for introverts. They are for anyone, frankly. And so, you know, I think that it's also really important. And one of the exercises I take readers through in the book is really tuning in, which for a lot of us, especially those of us who are overachievers and who have been achieving since we were five years old, right. And you know, who you are is to take a moment and say, is this what I want? Am I happy? You know, I have people in the book who sort of look up and I get reader mail all the time. You know, I graduated from a great law school. I'm sitting here, I'm a first year associate in a giant law firm in New York City. I look up at the walls, I sit under the fluorescent lights and I think, oh my God, how did I get here? Now that's someone who really is all of a sudden tuning in and thinking, this job is violating every boundary I have. I cannot do it. But what I would say is it's very tempting to say, well, I'm just going to quit and go start a yoga studio, right? Which is like the narrative that we want to follow. No, you know, if you're an introvert and your job is violating your boundaries because you're sitting in an open plan office and there's too much stimulation or people won't leave you alone or you need space.

I love your phone just rang when people won't leave you alone, that's just fantastic.

I know, Please, it's probably my town calling to tell me we're going to have a snow emergency, you know, is to think, well, wait a minute, could I do the same job that I do but just do it differently? Right. Could I work in a different office environment? Could I work from home sometimes? Could I take away some of the management duties so I don't feel so taxed? I think that it's really, really important. And this is no matter what level of your career you're at, or if you're an entrepreneur, you work in a large organization to think about, you know, is my job making me unhappy in a way that I have control over? Because it's about, I don't like the fluorescent lights or I need some alone time or I don't want to be on a plane all the time. You know, like more simple fixes than sometimes we think about.

Tell us about the process that you apply for. So you talk about tune in and you didn't say it explicitly, but you're talking about tuning in to yourself. What do you want? What do you need?

Right, Yep, absolutely. Tuning into yourself. And also in a realistic way. You know, I mean, I think that many of us, you know, when we tune in and we realize, I don't want to be a corporate lawyer or I don't want to run this company anymore, I need a succession plan or, you know, for me, I quit nine Jobs very, very quickly. I kept bouncing from job to job because I just was not happy in office environments. You know, sometimes situations force you to tune in, but then you also have to think about, well, okay, but what do I have to do? I have to earn a living or, you know, I spent all this money getting a law degree. I don't want to give it up. I actually like practicing law. For me, I quit nine jobs and I was determined because I thought I hated what I did. I was going to go to social work school and be a social worker, which was a total 180 from everything I had trained for and worked for 10 years advancing in corporate America for. But I was that unhappy at my job. Luckily, circumstance intervened and I realized I actually liked what I had trained to do. I just needed to do it on my terms. I needed to not show up in an office all day and not deal with co workers all day and not have to go to networking events all the time. So it's about tuning in, thinking about what you want, what motivates you, what you cannot give up, which for most of us is an income. Right. And various other things, and then figuring out how you can make the changes to your life and your schedule that will keep you and sustain you.

Yeah. So for me, it was always a lot about schedule. And my own personal office has been a retreat for many years, so wherever the office happened to be. And I've had about three different offices over the last 22 years, which I guess is not that many compared to a lot of folks. But I always have a couch and a comfy chair and there's a place to sort of retreat, reflect, and digest as well. And I'm happy to invite people in, but then. But my office is not the open plan. I'm not sitting out with everyone, which I've been criticized for before. But I'm like, yeah, it just doesn't work for me. I need to separate sometimes.

That's right. And I think, honestly being able to say that. And again, this is an issue of privilege and position in your life and even sometimes gender. You know, women often will get criticized if their office is too homey, because sometimes people think they're not serious enough. I'm not. Yeah. So, I mean, I think that it's also understanding, you know, the realities. But I do dream of a world where we are able to have more of a work day and a work environment that suits our temperament and we don't get punished for it. Like, I would love people to make partner, even though they worked from home one day a week because they work really well by themselves at home. But you just, you don't hear these stories enough.

I think that evolution is key. I think about that with our teams. I lead multiple day planning and strategy sessions with teams is one of the key things we do. And then when I think about, okay, we're a couple days in, we're going to have a dinner together. So I always like to give people an hour or two to go back to their room to handle phone calls, to use the bathroom, to take their shoes off for a minute or whatever, because I know that a good number of people in the room need something like that. And so we're designing in the diversity. And I know the folks that don't need it will go straight to the bar, the coffee shop or whatever, and they'll keep talking to everyone else. And I'm like, oh, geez, I just need to go away. So it's a different mindset and it's easy to look at the other and go, there's something wrong with you or there's something wrong with. With me. We're all wired differently to say that whenever something seems different. But in our case, there's a number of tools we use and I wonder what you recommend. So we'll use the Gallup strengths tools and we'll run the full 34 on people and have them notice as much as their top 5 and 10 as we notice their bottom 5 or bottom whatever and start to notice things that they don't need to work so hard at or try to be like including and harmony. And those are pretty low on my scale. I hate a committee and I hate. But I let other people have that role because I realize it's important in a larger context to some people. We also use love and Loathe where we ask people to consider their regular job. What do they love doing, what do they hate doing? And then. And is there some way they could give up something that they hate doing or redesign that, let somebody else do it, delegate it, abdicate some cases it's simply saying, look, this is a good thing to get done and it's never getting done by me. And I just want to be straight with everyone. I'm not doing this and I'm not even giving it away. I'm just not managing it. That's very powerful kind of communication. So probably love, loathe. And the strengths are probably. Are probably the two key tools we use for that self awareness. We also do though, like one page personal planning, where we ask people to consider their life far in the future and then map back to today.

How.

They got there, what's important to them, across things. But it's all that kind of inquiry. I wonder what are the tools, process methods you use for this self discovery and self inquiry that then lead you to the strategies?

I'm not big on fancy tools. I think that there are many out there and everyone has their own. I do think that one of the things that's really important is that I think that intention setting is extremely important and vision setting is very important. But I'm a big believer in more pedestrian vision setting. You know, my vision is that I like Mondays, that I don't dread Mondays, that Sunday night blues don't exist for me because going back to work just means going down to my home office, you know, having control and like. Exactly. And so I think I encourage people to actually think of a vision that works for them in the everyday and to think about when I go to work, whatever that means, and I sit at my desk, how do I feel? Do I feel like I want to escape or am I happy to be there? It is equally important that you enjoy your work in the day to day than that you have a big shiny goal that you want to achieve in 20 years. Not for everyone. Some people are so extremely driven and God again, God bless them. But for many of us, especially for those of us who feel things in Technicolor, as my friend Christina Wallace says, and who really need to manage our energy and our emotions, we really need to be much more practical about our life in the day to day. So that's, that's where I'm at. And you know, the funniest thing is when I. One of the top questions I get is this sort of introvert, extrovert yin and Yang issue, which you sort of referenced with the love and loathe. Can I give this role to someone else on my team? I think it's important that people talk about their personality types, whether they're sales partners or their life partners. I can't even tell you how many calls I get from dating partners or husbands or wives who say I'm an introvert. My wife's an extrovert. I always want to stay home, she always wants to go out, help, you know, and then the sales version of that is I'm really extroverted. So I want to sell in one way, I want to nurture my clients in one way, whereas my more introverted counterpart wants to nurture her clients in another way. How do we speak the same language? Right. Like, these are all things that in this true spirit of diversity and inclusion, we should all be talking about.

You know, it's funny, I notice as you speak about that the natural inclination we all have to validate or invalidate to bring a moral kind of perspective to something. My way is the right way, their way is the wrong way. Of course, I think what your. What our conversation, what your book reveals is that it's what works for you and then finding how to make you work in the world around you. Right. So why don't you take us through just a little bit of the coping strategy or the flow that you think is important for an introvert trying to deal with the world?

Well, that's a big question.

Well, you spoke to it a little bit as we were getting ready for the show where you began and how you end up, like, your sort of key steps.

I mean, I think, again, it comes back to managing your energy. And the most happy introverts that I know, whether they're, you know, wanting to become CEO of a giant company or just, you know, run a small business or somewhere in between, really understand the interplay between managing their energy and their calendar. I am obsessed with calendaring, but I would encourage any listener who's listening to this and thinking, you know, I always thought I was an extrovert because I'm really good at public speaking or I'm great at sales, or I, you know, lead a big team. But, wow, do I feel so tired and irritable at the end of the day? You know, many of us, we sort of get coached into being more extroverted because that can be the norm, certainly in business, when it's not our true temperament. So if you think this might be, you start being more critical about your calendar, start building in protected time, start thinking about the conditions in which you feel energized and those in which you feel drained. And again, this has nothing to do with your ambition. You could be, you know, an introvert like me working from your home office and be extremely ambitious. This is one of the oldest stereotypes that exists, and I want to change it. But my parting wisdom to people, and it's very basic but powerful, is, is to think about managing your time and your energy differently.

Right? Paying attention to what works for you and having it work for you so that you're operating not in a way that drains you of your energy, but you're restored and you can flow naturally with the environment. Right.

Well, and also, it's funny, I had A middle school teacher actually recently say to me, God, I'm an introvert and I teach middle school. And then I'm so drained when I come home that my own children, I'm like, leave me alone. What do I do? And so I think that the other thing is that your day and your energy and your schedule is holistic. We all have lives. So my mentor, Callie Yost, who's sort of my career coach and mentor, will always say, make sure your calendar is realistic. It's not only about work. Right. And so you have to manage your energy 24 hours a day, not just for the 10 or whatever, 12 that you're at work.

Yeah, I think that's really key. So you're thinking about going back, right? To my own thing Again, just reflecting on what you say, I am really fulfilled by my work and at the end of it, I'm drained. So I plan in that recovery time after successive days, I do things to take care of myself and manage my energy, to recover, to prepare in the morning. And the way I go about it is not the same way that everybody goes about it. Right. We all have a little bit different approach.

I mean, you know, I interviewed an executive recruiter who has a really innovative style. You know, she has an incredibly high growth technical recruiting firm. She. And you think, right, executive recruiting, right. You're on the phone, you're having lunch. So what she does is she does two hours in the morning of hardcore client interaction phone calls and then two hours in the afternoon. And then in between then is meeting with her team and doing admin stuff, which she does not find as draining. And she can do in a quieter and she doesn't have to perform as much. And so I thought that was a really cool approach. Right. She works a traditional schedule, but it's that really draining client stuff. That's two hours in the morning, two hours in the afternoon.

Right. And she might love that stuff. Right?

She loves it. She just can't do it for 10 hours.

Yeah. There's a thing when I go lead a big team session on the first day, I'll usually take an Uber there. So if I'm going to go do something on the peninsula here, and I live in the San Francisco East Bay hills, and that could be over an hour in route. And if I have to drive that whole way, I'll start the day sort of frazzled by the interaction with all the other people in the other cars. So I usually take an Uber. 50, 60 bucks gets me quite a long ways. And then my day is totally different. But I've even taken, I can recall taking an Uber a couple times last year where the fare was over $100. Right. But when you consider then that I'm sitting with a team of like 18 people for two days, the way that I start my day, I'm sitting in the back, I'm looking at my email, I'm, I'm on the phone, I'm doing whatever the hell I feel like doing or listening to music or anything. I start the day then in a completely different space. Then at the end of the day before the team dinner, I have a few minutes to myself. After the team, there's these rest and recovery kinds of things that feel good to me and then I'm able to go do that. I wouldn't not want to do the 18 person session for two days. That makes me feel like I climbed a mountain. But after climbing the mountain, I just need to take care of myself. That's the recovery piece, I think. As you point out, we've all got that yours is hiding in the bathroom.

It is, it's self care. Five minutes in the bathroom during a cocktail event or networking event or speaking event or client off site or whatever is restorative. That's all it is. It's sort of that alone time and breathing and just not having to perform.

There's five kids in my family, two parents, right? And so to be in that kind of environment as a kid, there were many times where I'm like, okay, my shower, bath, bathroom time, was that personal time? Lock the door. No, nobody can come in. Go to hell.

That's right. It's a safe space.

Say it's the personal space. Especially if you, you didn't have a room. And then today the version of it is my office, I close the door. It means don't come in. It means leave me alone. So I think the thing that I hear in our conversation that I get from your book is you got to figure out who you are, what matters to you, what's negotiable, what's non negotiable, what are your boundaries and what are the things that you could change in your environment to make your work, your leadership and your organization work better and whatever it is for you. Just know that everybody on your team has similar kinds of things. And the more you can encourage people to find that tempo and that thing that works for them, you've got a whole team that can work better together.

Yeah, absolutely. And later, I also delve into how to build a social media brand when you're not that social. How to build a sales pipeline without networking, you know in a typical way. How to negotiate like yourself and finally how to get out there when you really have to.

That's brilliant. So the book and the website hidinginthebathroom.com youm can go on Amazon and buy it now or you can go to the website hidinginthebathroom.com and you can go way deeper on all of this. I want to thank you so much more and Aaron's Mele for being on the show and for sharing us the strategies for introversion and and dealing. Thanks again and reminder to all of our listeners if you'd like the guide to scaling up. You want to know the tools that we use and the methods we use for getting teams aligned and working together. Well, we've got a whole intro to scaling up, instructions and agenda for helping your team to be in Scaling up and a lot of the tools that we use@scalingupbusiness.com so go to scalingupbusiness.com as well as you can get our shows and blog posts every week right there. So thanks again everyone. Talk to you next time. Well I hope that was valuable and you find some ways to expand and grow your leadership and find more comfort and joy in your work. Thanks to our show producer Nai Obaid. Our audio production by Potfly Productions Our show is edited by Albert Burge. Show notes are written by Ain Kodina and proofreading by Tim McGowan. If you got some value from the show today, please share share it with someone else and let us know what you loved. Thanks for listening and keep scaling up. Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our Scoreboard software. Powered by Align, it's the official software for Scaling up. With Scoreboard, you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals in real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app you can rest easy knowing the Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software, it's what I actually use to manage growth in our Scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with Scoreboard by Align. To try it now go to aligntoday.com Bill G One more time aligntoday.com Bill G that's aligntoday.com Bill G Check it out and try it now.