And Action! ENGAGEMENT! CONFIDENCE! JOY!- This Feels Right.

Have you ever wanted to influence others to shift their behaviors, ideas, or actions without playing power trip games? If so, listen for the next hour. Welcome to TFR, This Feels Right, with your host, Joel Silverstone. You'll learn the tools and concepts to influence others with everyone involved maintaining their respect and understanding so it doesn't seem like it's all one way. Now, here is Joel Silverstone.

Hello, hello, and welcome to TFR. This feels right. Before we jump in, I'm going to check in with our first guest. And Rob, I'm, I'm so— I apologize in advance. Whenever I hear your name, I'm just dying to announce it like a baseball player. I know you're into hockey, but I just have to, I just have to get it out of my system. And now batting number 32, 32, Rob, Rob Catalano.

At least you got it right, not Catalinato, who is the Blue Jays player. But how's it going?

Good. How are you feeling today?

Oh, I'm feeling amazing. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, absolutely. Terrific. Well, and I'm your host, Joel Silverstone. And for over 20 years, I have been helping people in business and sometimes in life to be more influential using their communication skills. In other words, they're able to influence without being manipulative. So they're able to speak to the emotions and the logic to get engagement and action from the other people. And emotions, well, that is our first instinct. That's our reactions, our gut instinct. It's that point where we ask ourselves, hmm, does this feel right? Well, listeners, you are in the right place if you want to learn from leaders, coaches, speakers who are going to be sharing their examples and perspectives on how they've been able to influence and shift behaviors, ideas, and actions and not be manipulative. Today's show, we've got Rob Catalano and we've got Jennifer Trask. With Rob, we are going to be speaking about feedback and recognition, why it is so important and it's not a yearly thing. We're also going to be speaking, Rob, with Rob about workplace missions versus the passions in businesses. Jennifer will be speaking about finding the joy in your work as an entrepreneur and also in how you sell your own brand and clarity and confidence as well in how to get what you want. So let's start with Rob Catalano, our first guest. Rob is the Chief Engagement Officer at WorkTango. WorkTango is a company that leverages technology to improve engagement and performance practices. He's also a co-founder at Innovate Work, which is a forum and event for HR and business leaders. Also a 2019 Top Global Employee Engagement Influencer and a speaker. We met in fact at Disrupt HR Ottawa where we were both speaking. So, let me just pause here, Robb. Is this correct? Are these your— is this what you've been up to?

Yeah, this is all correct, all accurate.

Great! So, before we jump in, we're going to talk about employee engagement and recognition and missions versus passion. Before we jump And I know you're a big music fan. In fact, I believe you played in a band as you were going through your earlier years. So Rob, favorite rock song?

So I mean, I grew up listening to Metallica. I was a huge fan, why I started playing guitar. And literally the best song of all time, in my opinion, is the song One by Metallica. I'm not— I just saw points for Metallica come up, so I'm not sure what that is on my screen. But yeah, it's interesting. I'm not like an introvert in terms of One, but the song Sounds good.

I'm not really familiar with Metallica. What was their most popular song?

That was probably one of their most popular, but I guess Enter Sandman was the one that got them to fame.

Right.

That's the one that I know. Yeah. For me, it's Sweet Child O' Mine by Guns N' Roses.

Nice. I actually just saw— maybe a couple of years ago, they were in Toronto, and I got to see, not with Slash, but Axl on stage. And it was kind of a blast from the past. It was awesome.

Yeah, how was he? Was he— he's sort of in and out, isn't he?

Yeah, I mean, besides his infamous, let's show up an hour late and start a concert at 11, he was pretty awesome, especially if you grew up listening to them.

Yeah, you know, I thought about going to see it, but I was like, hmm, maybe I'll just keep the idea of Guns N' Roses more so in my mind versus possibly seeing it live.

Yeah, I know, 55-year-old Axl is a little different than his heyday.

That's right, yeah. Well, good. Robb, let's talk about engagement. Now, if we go on to the WorkTango site, we see giving employees a voice and your leaders actionable insight. And I think one of the mantras of you and WorkTango is keeping the employee voice alive. Is this correct?

Yeah, I spent a lot of time working with organizations from an HR and leadership perspective. And one of the things that people were challenged with was enjoying their work on a day-to-day basis where they spend more of their waking hours. So it's really around making sure you give employees a voice, but leverage that to make changes and build better employee experiences.

Yeah. And so the idea of this also is that for leaders to be able to then have some actionable feedback to be able to give to and not just guessing or waiting for those annual performance reviews.

Yeah, that's exactly it. I think we're so frustrated or heard frustration when employees, companies would hear the voice of employees, maybe in an annual survey or an annual performance review. It would take months to get that data if it ever got to leaders. And then by that time, things change. Employee sentiments are different. And also engagement happens at the leadership level. It doesn't happen at the HR level, for example. So it was really meant to start getting that insight to the right people that can have an influence on engagement and performance of their teams, which were the leaders.

Yeah, because I think the challenge— and correct me if you're wrong— what I see is that leaders are often hesitant Like they're not really coaches. So feedback becomes this sort of monster, for lack of a better word, as to how to approach it. And they don't want to sort of sever the relationship. So having some of these actionable insights gives them some direction?

Yeah, I think the way we do it is our platform will actually recommend actions for those individual leaders based on the feedback they're getting. Or they can kind of search themselves if there's something they're interested in, which is a little more powerful than an organization say, this is what we expect every leader to do, because every leader is different. So it's meant to be a little more personalized as opposed to a one-size-fits-all recommended action, let's say.

Now, how do you— what has been the response? Like, what are people sort of saying to you? Are you maybe in confidence? Are they saying, you know, thank you, this has been really helpful? Or are they, you know, what kind of feedback are you getting that would be interesting?

Yes, I think there's a lot of positivity in terms of the feedback we're getting. One is just the accountability of leaders, right? If you think about companies, they'll do an annual engagement survey and they don't check in for 365 days later. There's really no accountability for leaders to do anything different. So this frequency and real-time aspect of it adds that level of accountability at a leadership level. So people are seeing movement, they're seeing action actually take place. So that's one part of what we hear a lot about. The second is just the experience itself. I mean, I don't know if you remember, and then you're, you know, as an employee, I'm sure you filled out 100-question surveys or poor technology, and it was just something that was painful. And a lot of people like more of the modern thing that people are used to in their consumer world, bringing that into the workplace.

Yeah, for employees, the biggest challenge is the anonymity, that they feel lost, and when they do fill out these surveys, Even just like as a customer, is my voice really being heard? So if I was in that situation, I would like to know that I'm actually having an effect on the organization, I'm having an effect on the culture, which I think is going to be so important.

Yeah, and I think that's why companies like ours exist, right? It's this third-party, full confidentiality. There's no ability to individualize what someone says, so you get real feedback at the end of the day. And that's a really powerful way to motivate leaders in an organization to make an impact or really just, again, improve that experience. So we get that a lot. There's always, you know, people are concerned whether that's, whether people are going to be able to see that feedback. In some cases, it's not anonymous, you know, if you're doing things like performance check-ins. But that is a big important thing of what we do. We actually call it our employee promise, right? There's no way that that data is going to get to anyone in your organization.

Yeah. You know, which is so important for safety because, One of the keys for safety is that they want to know that what they're doing is that they're not putting themselves at risk. And that's a certain level of anonymity gives you that really safety to actually say what's on your mind versus what you think people want to say or what they want to hear.

Yeah, and what's interesting is we've even tried to take it to another level. Too often when employees are giving feedback on a survey, for example, it kind of sits there. You don't know what the— you may see a comment that is really scary and negative, but you can't do anything about it. We've actually taken it to the next level to actually interact with those comments and still keep it completely confidential. So there's a way to dig a little deeper. But to your point, it's really important to get that feedback. And it's hard to get in those one-on-one discussions or open forums.

Yeah, for sure. You know, I mean, because, you know, same thing as myself working as a third party. And I'll come in and I'll work with someone. What they share with you, their challenges, their hopes, their dreams, their opinions, is going to be very different than what they would actually share with their manager because there's this sort of fear of a reprisal. So I could see definitely value in that. So let me ask you this now. Let's talk about recognition. So how does that work? Because when we think giving feedback and we think maybe there's lots of negative language in this. So how is recognition being used in this?

Yeah, so I think it's funny. A lot of the conversation you started with was about influence and how organizations or leaders do that. And recognition, I found, is a really good way. to amplify what's important in an organization. So if you think you have specific behaviors, values, whatever you're trying to accomplish in a company, and you leverage recognition as a way to identify, you know, what the impact is of that person's actions, that resonates with people, right? What gets recognized gets repeated. And it's funny, we talk about influence as being, you know, what someone does, but it's beyond the action, right? It's the motivation of what the impact of that action was.

Mm-hmm.

Recognition really drives that home. We always used to talk about when you're recognizing someone, make sure you don't just say thank you, but be very specific about what the action was and what the impact was. That's when people start understanding what they're doing every day and how that influences the organization or whatever you're trying to accomplish. It's a powerful way companies are leveraging it in their organizations.

When we think of coaching, and I know you're a big sports fan, Rob, so I'll use the sports analogy. When you're thinking sports and you You're a hockey player and you did something out there and the coach just says, hey, good job. It's like, whatever. But when they say, hey, good job, very specifically when you did your dingle dangle there and you deked out that guy.

The dingle dangle, I like that.

I don't know what it's called. I play hockey and my kids play hockey, but I can't think of the proper terms. I'll just go with dingle dangle. Yeah, but as you're saying, it's being specific. And it's amazing that organizations haven't picked up on that, that when we want to give recognition, it's not just a high five or like a thumbs up or good job. It's very specifically, what did that individual do that created an impact, created a change, or even just a small step that they took? And that— and as we know now from neuroscience, that actually triggers chemicals in the brain. It triggers our oxytocin. We feel cared for. And as you said, if we want to have that repeated behavior, it then triggers that dopamine, which is the It's kind of funny.

A lot of things we're talking about, I kind of pull together in full circle. When organizations are a little more frequent in giving feedback or having performance conversations, and you relate it to a sports analogy, think about it. I always talk about if— I have nieces that play soccer. If they went and played a whole game and never got feedback, they would never get better. It doesn't have to be positive and recognition. It can also be constructive as well.

Yeah.

I always use the example using hockey. I was going to say Babcock, so I almost messed that up. But Sheldon Keefe, he doesn't get feedback at the end of the playoffs or regular season or after each game or even after each period. It's every shift, every play. And when we think about using that sports analogy internally, if we can have that level of feedback communication more frequently as opposed to once a year having this process, then it really influences employees in terms of Conducting the behaviors that are going to be successful for the company.

It's because it's all related to the behaviors. Again, my background is also in acting. So the director is going to give you notes almost on every line so that you can really see what's working and what can be better. And it's that sort of attention to detail and fine-tuning. So much outside of business, in the arts and in sports, where people do give very specific feedback, constructive and positive.

Yeah, Joel, I have to admit I've never tried acting, but I always hear about what are you supposed to do with your hands? Like, what do you do with them when you're doing this stuff?

You do whatever comes natural, but you don't want to put them in your pockets.

Okay.

As uncomfortable as it is, you just leave your hands by your side and hopefully they'll have a mind on its own. But, you know, but this is good because it's actually— you stop thinking about your hands when you're really focused on your intention versus your objective. So when you're so into the moment that you're not paying attention to what your body is doing anymore.

All right. I'll keep that in mind when I get on a stage somewhere.

Well, this is a good segue because this is where we do take our little acting break, if you want. We call it improv or improve your communication style. So Rob, we're going to do a little improv exercise that is tied around being able to be better at influencing using a communication style. So let me just check in. Are you up for it?

So for anyone listening, Joel said we're going to do this improv thing. It's pretty scary, I'm not going to lie. I have no idea what's coming, but I'm up for the challenge, man. Let's do this.

All right, terrific. Way to go. Well, listen, you do have an arts background. You played music all the time. I'm sure there was a lot of improv in there.

I'll take it, sure.

Why not?

I'll take music for $100. All right, done. Let's pretend that I also work at Work Tango.

Okay.

And we are trying to plan our annual summer picnic day, thanking all the employees kind of thing.

All right.

So I'm working with you. I'm your partner at Work Tango. You are going to try to brainstorm some ideas with me. You're going to come up with some ideas of what we could do for this annual retreat. And just so you know, Rob, I'm always going to answer with yes, but as I begin the answer.

All right. Sounds good.

All right.

Whenever you're ready.

Let's do it.

You start us off.

Oh, what advice would I give you or what would we talk about?

Yeah.

Like, so what would we do for— how would we plan an annual retreat? So in other words, you know, let's rent a space at Toronto Island. Let's rent the yacht club, you know, whatever you'd like.

All right, cool. So I think what I'd start with is understanding what success looks like.

What's the outcome of this retreat and this day with Yes, but that is so tiring to always think of that. People just want to have fun. That's the outcome.

Yeah, so I think it's a combination of things. It's not only, you know, having people together to conduct business outcomes or understand what, you know, what the outcome is going to be. But you bring up a good point. If we want people to have fun, we should add an element of some, you know, connectivity or activities throughout the course of the day.

Yes, but Rob, can't we just speak in plain language here? Let's, let's just do bowling or something like that. Let's not make it bigger than it is.

Yeah, well, we're assuming that we know what everyone wants. Why don't we ask the employees what they feel would be the most value in the day and then we could use data to make better decisions?

All right. I'm going to pause you right here. We're going to do it again, Robb. And you're doing great. We're going to go back in time. We're going to start all over again. And this time, I'm always going to answer with yes, and. So, don't change anything. Stick to what you were saying and doing. But I'm always going to answer now with yes, and. All right, here we go.

So starting from the beginning, yes, we're gonna conduct this summer picnic. Actually, we're doing a ski day, so we're gonna do the ski day. It's coming up soon, and our goal is to just get everyone together and connect and really focus on, you know, kind of connectivity with the team. But, you know, what do you think is— we need to decide and understand what employees want out of this day and what success really looks like for us.

Yes, and Rob, you are so on the ball. It's not just, you know, here's what you're going to do. Let's find out what's important to everybody and what people would like to see out of that. Absolutely agreed.

Awesome. And that was really easy. Thanks, man. Do you want me to keep going? Like, I feel like I already got you sold.

OK, great. Good. And scene then.

Bravo!

I don't know how I did. I'm not going to lie. But that was fun.

Well, there's no lose in this. That's the beauty of this game. You can never do wrong. There's no lose. Where were your hands during all this?

Actually, just like, just together clenched in my lap, to be honest.

Okay. How did you feel when I was yes-butting you?

I mean, it's more confrontational. It's like, but, you know, is there something else or you're missing something? And the and just felt a little more Like you were building on the idea, like we were doing this together. One confrontational, one more connected.

Absolutely. So this is, you know, congratulations, you just did your first improv acting exercise and it's called Yes, And. So that's exactly what the idea is, that Yes, And is that when 2 people come together, especially in improv, when somebody makes an offer, before you dismiss it or judge it or, you know, knock it down, you say Yes, And to it and find ways to be collaborative. Maybe it's not the way you want to go, but it's about how can I collaborate with this before I dismiss the idea. So it was a good tie-in to the feedback that we were saying, which is you want to give constructive feedback. You want to give positive feedback. It's about being collaborative and having that yes, and mindset versus a yes, but when reacting to feedback.

Okay. Did I fail because after your yes, and, I didn't do anything?

No, that's great because that's exactly— the title of the show is called This Feels Right, Rob. So that's the thing. It felt right for you at that point. There was no need to keep pushing your agenda. You felt that we were collaborating and there was engagement and you didn't have to be working so hard anymore.

Love it. This is going to be the best ski day ever.

Absolutely. So speaking of the ski day and the company, let's talk about Work Tango. I mean, you're the Chief Engagement Officer there. And one of the things that I found interesting about Work Tango is that you don't have a mission statement, but you have more— it's around the idea of passion. So can you tell me a bit more about that?

Yeah. I always like sharing a quick summary of how I got there. It adds a little more color to it, but I started as a marketer. That's what I studied. That's what I went to school for, and then all these understanding the motivations of people and why they buy things. Literally, when I got into the workplace, I was like, well, really, who cares about why people buy a purse or shoes? I was more interested in why people are motivated at work and what drives them to actually show up every day. And then when you start— and then I worked for, you know, kind of an HR technology company for many years that was helping organizations just build better work experiences. So immediately the focus, the passion— I don't talk at marketing events. I'm very focused from an HR perspective. It's something I was really passionate about. And then what happened is that company, you know, after 11 years got bought by a large organization that wasn't really aligned to, you know, what we had built originally at the company. It was about something else. So literally, it was, I'm going to leave that experience, start up something new. Instead of having a mission, which ends in most companies, I guess a mission in general ends, we wanted to have something that lived a little longer, so we developed our passion. That passion was to improve work lives. If you can envision it, work is in parentheses. The idea is people spend most of their waking time at work, so how do we just help companies improve lives of their employees?

Right.

in a more broader scale. That's what we call our passion statement. When we're hiring new employees, what we talk about internally all the time is, if your eyes light up for that, this is going to be the right place for you. We want people to be aligned to something much bigger than the tasks and their job descriptions they have every day.

Well, this ties in so nicely to what we were just talking about, what to do with your hands, which is an actor's job is not to have an objective. I must kill this person at the end of the scene, or I must make this person fall in love with me at the end of the scene. It's about the intention, the small moments. So it's exactly what you're saying around the passion, which is to improve work lives. So it's those beats. It's those minutes that goes through each day. And it's not to help people understand Excel better or, as you said before, to get people to buy more shoes.

Yeah. And actually, it's interesting. As you were saying that, I was thinking about— The discussion earlier about influence being more than actions. If you tell an employee to do something specific or conduct a task, in itself, the task really means nothing. But, if it's tied to that passion of improving work lives for our customers or being very customer-focused, now there's something behind it. It's less this, I'm influencing you by telling you what to do. It's more that people feel more motivated and influenced based on what the outcomes are going to be.

There's my soundbite. There's my new soundbite for the show.

What was that? I don't even know what you said now.

Well, it's that people are not going to do a task if you just tell them to do a task, but if they understand what the motivation is behind the task, then they're— it's like as Dan Pink says, you're not just putting the carrot in front of them. They're doing it autonomously. They're doing it for themselves because they want to do it. They see the reason. They see the passion for it.

Yeah, and I love Dan's whole kind of autonomy combined with the purpose and then master something you're doing. I really like that structure.

Yeah, absolutely. Actually, in Dan Pink's selling book, I can't remember what it's called, something about selling, he talks a lot about that he also took a lot of improv classes as a way to understand the mindset of that.

Interesting. Now I know what my new 2020 New Year's resolution is, take some improv classes.

More than happy to help.

Yeah, thanks. We'll take that offline, Joel.

Absolutely. All right, Rob. We're going down to our final 2 minutes. I want to thank you for your time. But before we sign off and wrap this up, where can we find out more about Worktango and what's coming up next for the Rob Catalano Enterprises?

If you wanted to find us online, worktango.com, or you can find me, Rob Catalano, on all the social media channels. In terms of what's next, obviously, you're always doing what you can to innovate and grow a company. But some of the other things I'm doing outside of WorkTango is just really meant to build the community together of HR and leaders in Toronto and beyond. I think about 6 other cities this year. We started this community called Innovate Work that you'd mentioned at the beginning. It's really just meant to bring people together, so a lot of new events, ways to connect, ways to educate and inspire each other. I'm really excited for that above and beyond what we're doing at WorkTango.

Yeah. Kudos to you for starting up this community of Innovate Work. Really, it's due time that employees and leaders find a way to be able to communicate and really be motivated towards working a common purpose.

Yeah, we're waving the same flag. I love it.

Rock on! Thank you so much, Rob. And just so you know, by the way, I'm a Montreal Canadiens fan.

Oh, it's 8 losses in a row. This is challenging.

Sorry to hear.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I actually told my kids I think I might switch over to the Leafs because I'm tired of being the loser.

I'm actually headed— every year, me and a bunch of buddies end up in Montreal to watch the Leafs and Habs, and some of them are Habs fans. So I'm looking forward to that in a couple of weeks.

Oh, yeah. Enjoy. I will too. Rob, thank you so much for your time today. This has been terrific. Please, we're going to have a commercial break, and we'll be right back with Jennifer Trask. Become our friend on Facebook. Post your thoughts about our shows and network on our timeline. Visit facebook.com/voiceamerica.

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Welcome back to part 2 of our show, to TFR: This Feels Right. Before we jump in, let's check in with Jennifer Trask. Jennifer, how are you feeling today?

Amazing! Thank you.

Excellent, excellent. Well, again, I'm your host, Joel Silverstone. And for over 20 years, I've been helping people in business and sometimes in life to be more influential using their communication skills, to influence without being manipulative, to be able to use that emotions and logic to get engagement from others. So listeners, again, thank you for joining us. You're in the right place if you want to learn from leaders and coaches and speakers who are going to be sharing their examples and perspectives on how they've been able to influence, shift behaviors, ideas, and actions. actions and not be manipulative. We just spoke with Rob Catalano, Chief Engagement Officer from Work Tango. We were talking about feedback and recognition and workplace missions versus passions. And now, we've got Jennifer Trask and we'll be speaking about finding the joy in your work, confidence, clarity, that entrepreneur mindset. Jennifer Trask is celebrating 10 years.

Woo-hoo!

Woo-hoo!

Congratulations! As Jennifer Trask Enterprises, as a business advisor, coach, and she helps driven entrepreneurs get the results. She's also the creator of the Joyous Journey, which is a community that helps those entrepreneurs really build their business and find the joy in what they're doing. And then also really exciting is I've got right here the envelope for the Best Life Coach of the Year 2019 voted by the Toronto Star readers. Let's find out who the winner is.

Oh my goodness.

Opening the envelope, and it's Jennifer Trask! Congratulations!

Wow, that's awesome. Thank you so much.

So Jennifer, is this correct? Is this what you've been up to?

Yes, that's a roundabout correct.

So let's, let's go, let's go back 10 years. Let's go back to the, the previous decade.

How did you start this Well, the short version, I suppose, was I, about 13 years ago, I was working in the corporate world and I really didn't like it. After about 7 or 8 months, I sort of had it, my job down pat. And I actually remember as well, I had asked my boss at the time, you know, I want to work in the marketing department. I was a sales rep and I said I want to work in the marketing department. like, how would I get there for one of the brands? It's a large multinational corporation. And he said, well, you know, first you'd have to work here for a year, and then you do this job for a year, and that job, that job. Anyways, it was 5 jobs, 5 years to get to a job I may or may not like. And I thought, this does not sound like a good deal to me.

Hmm.

And so I ended up leaving and going back to MBA school. And it was there that I went to this sort of self-help event with a bunch of speakers and it was my first self-help kind of event and it's definitely my first time seeing big-name speakers and when the keynote speaker came out, the whole place went up. It was in a stadium and I also was very mesmerized and what I was mesmerized with was his ability to get so many people excited about living their best life. And I just thought, wow. And I, there was, it was one of those moments that I'll, I'll just never forget. And that was the moment that I knew I wanted to speak and I wanted to spend my life helping other people make their lives better.

Yeah. And I think what's also interesting, you know, and you shared this with me, is that when you first started, You didn't have the referrals. You didn't have the big quotes. You built a business starting off with trust.

Yeah. What happened was, well, originally I actually had a business before I started consulting. I had a network marketing business and that— so I was doing— I was getting to know a lot of entrepreneurs in the community and I was learning social media to try to grow my business. business and it wasn't working, but I was telling my entrepreneur friends like, oh, I'm learning this, this, this, and it was working for their businesses. And I thought, hmm, this is interesting.

Yeah.

And what I started doing was doing workshops and I was just going on, you know, just honesty because I knew what I was learning was working and it would work for others. Now, in hindsight, I know why it didn't work for me, but I didn't at the time. But anyways, and then I ended up getting consulting clients, and that happened because I was demonstrating the knowledge that I had. And I also didn't try to pretend, oh, I have all these case studies, because I didn't.

Right.

But I was priced accordingly, you know, as to someone who was newer, so that it was, you know, People were willing to take a chance on it.

Yeah, which, you know, again, I, I'll say this, I think that's the soundbite for my show. This feels right because this is exactly what influencing without manipulation is, is A, you have to have, uh, competency, you have to have some knowledge, you have to have some, some logic, some facts, some examples to, to demonstrate. Uh, and the second part of that is that, well, everybody can do that. But what they sometimes lack is how do they connect with the other person. So what you're saying is they could see the honesty that people are willing to take the chance because basically it felt right.

Exactly.

So let's go over to entrepreneurs now. Now you've built a business for 10 years where you are basically helping entrepreneurs really bring those 2 things together. Being an entrepreneur is obviously very, very challenging because you're kind of alone.

Yes.

You don't get— yeah, you don't— there's not a lot of feedback. So you're, I guess, as an entrepreneur, you're often questioning yourself, am I doing the right thing?

Yes.

So how are you helping them? You know, clarity, I think, is one of the big pillars, right?

Yeah, the biggest thing that I do with clients is working on clarity, confidence, and strategic direction. And so I think the big, you know, the most important thing any entrepreneur needs above all else is confidence because you just can't achieve big things without really believing in yourself and thus taking action. But that does begin with clarity because oftentimes people are unclear about how they're going to get to where they want to go. Sometimes they're not even sure where they really want to go. They just know they want to go somewhere else.

Yeah.

Right? Yeah.

Kind of funny but true.

It's true. Well, you know, this is good because, you know, for our audience, it's not just about whether that you are an entrepreneur because in this day and age, so many people, what I'm seeing in organizations, they have to be able to sell their own brand.

Yes.

They have to get noticed. So being this clarity, can you talk a little bit more about that? Because I think that is— not what I think. I'm quite sure that without clarity, it's very difficult to get to confidence because confidence is so abstract. I don't think you ever wake up and go, today is the day I am going to conquer everybody. I'm feeling so darn confident. But that clarity, what are some tips around that or ideas?

Yeah, I— well, I guess the first thing is I always feel you need to be clear on who you really are, and this does tie in with confidence. But I'll give you an example. I think the easiest way to explain it is through an example.

Okay.

Okay, so I was working with a client who her confidence was very low.

Mm-hmm.

And she knew she— she knew the big, big vision, but— and that's really wonderful. Sometimes you can know the big vision like that, the vision that would take 5 to 10 years to create.

Mm-hmm.

But even the vision of sort of the next year, like what, what has to happen in the next year to make that happen, wasn't clear. And one of the reasons it wasn't clear is because her confidence was so low that it was just muddled and she couldn't see the next steps.

Right.

And so I took her through an exercise. I really like this exercise. This is a— this is a clarity and confidence exercise where, you know, I'd asked her— I knew a few things about her life because we were newer working together, but, you know, I had asked her about kind of how she be's in the world, and I knew things about her situation and whatever.

Mm-hmm.

She was exuding wonderful characteristics of both a leader and as a human being, but she wasn't giving herself credit. Like, she more thought, well, of course I do these things, because, you know, like for example, taking care of her mother who was ill and having to fly to see her. And so, you know, and all these types of things. And, and there were other things, and even from her past. So a lot of things people don't give themselves credit for, things they have already accomplished.

Right.

And what did it take? What— who did you have to be to make those things happen? And, and so what happens is, when people— if you don't deliberately practice your confidence, it, it will not deliberately grow. And also then it, it creates confusion and lack of clarity when you're trying to do something bigger.

Mm-hmm.

So what I would say to everyone is one of the first things to get clear on who you are, because then when you realize, oh my God, I am amazing. I am a leader. I do get things done. I do care about people. I can make things happen when I really commit myself. That creates, if you will, it's sort of like there's a darkness and that sort of starts to open the window to let the light in.

Mm-hmm.

And then you can begin to see more clarity because you feel better. And so you got— you just go back through your life and you go, okay, what are some of the things I accomplished? Or who are the people that I've helped? Or how am I being in the world? And you'll realize, okay, yeah, I really am exuding these wonderful characteristics. So the clarity on who you really are is the first thing you need to discover in terms of clarity.

If you want to be able to influence other people and you want to be able to get what you want, it does start with exactly what you're saying, which is a deep self-awareness of— and not focusing on your negatives. It's always like, oh, I'm too short, or I'm not smart enough, or whatever that might be. But it's really, it's, you know, what do you, what do you bring? What do you— and when you look back, as you said, at your accomplishments, and I've Personally, actually, I've started this little exercise for myself where at the end of the day, I jot down everything I accomplished today.

Right.

You do. You lose track of everything that you really accomplished.

Yes.

Oh my God, look at this. I went to work out and I sent that email off and I posted this or whatever that might be. Or I spent quality time with my wife or I watched my Kipley Hour. Whatever that might be, those are the accomplishments. That's, I think, what you're saying is you start to realize who you are and maybe how others can start to see you and how you could help them see you.

Yeah, oftentimes, you know, I do this exercise with clients and I'll say, I want you to put a post on Facebook and ask people what they think your top 5 qualities are. A lot of people are hesitant to do that, but when they start doing it, it's quite extraordinary. then they'll start to see patterns. And, and, and I think we've been trained as a society, you know, you know, don't think too much of yourself or this or that. But the truth is that that's not always helpful, because if you want to be an influencer for good in any capacity, Mm-hmm. you have to be confident. And the only way to be confident is to accept Yeah, no, it's true.

It's true. It's— you nailed it, Jennifer, because we are so confused about being conceited versus being— I'm— it's not just— yeah, confidence.

Yeah.

Because confidence is really— is— I'm— yeah, like you said, the person's flying out to look after the mother. So this is— so I'm confident because Because I'm actually genuinely a caring person. I'm actually a— I'm a genuine empathetic person. So that starts with that. It's not, look at me, I could bench press 350.

No, but, but even so, let's say you could bench press 350. Okay, so that means you are committed, right? You are focused. You are a visionary. You get things done. You are persistent. Like, in order To be able to do something like that, you, you have an amazing amount of qualities that are excellent.

I, I can't bench press 350, but—

Well, neither can I, so.

I think my best quality is that I'm able to detect if a restaurant's going to be good or not from the outside. I think that's—

Oh, that's a good quality to have. It's always useful.

I think that's my, my special skill. I go, oh yeah, that, that place would be good for pizza. That one, no, not so much. I could just sense it. That's a great mindset. Well, on this light note, let's take a little fun break here to improve your communication style and then we're going to come back and I'd like to just talk a little bit about your dad, about some of the life lessons that you were able to take from him as you go forward in your business. Again, just talk a little bit more about the confidence piece and then we'll find out a little bit more about how to find out about Jennifer. Let's take a little bit more of an improv, improve your communication style break here. We're going to do a really easy one. Jennifer, are you up to doing a little improv, improve your communication style break?

Sure, bye. As I'm in Newfoundland right now, that's what we say here.

What's the expression?

It's sure bye.

Sure bye.

Yeah, it's improper English, but it's Newfoundland speak.

Would you spell that as like sure and then bye, B-Y?

Yeah.

Okay, sure bye. All right, great. I'm going to borrow that from now on.

Oh, sure bye.

Yeah, the only thing, I've never been to Newfoundland. All I know is screech is from Newfoundland.

It's terrible.

It's basically moonshine, right?

Well, something like that. It's very, very harsh rum, but yes.

Oh dear.

Okay, uh, this is really easy. This is— this ex— this little exercise is called, uh, last letter, first letter. So what will happen is we're going to do a little story. Okay, um, you'll start us off and you're going to say a, a sentence. I'll give you the title of the story, and as you say that sentence, whatever that sentence ends with— so let's say the last word was holidays— then I have to take that last letter, S, and start the first sentence. So it'd have to be something starting with an S.

Oh my God.

Okay.

I'm going to apologize in advance for this. I don't know what's going to happen.

Well, this is good. Maybe you're going to find out a new quality about yourself.

Okay, maybe I have a new strength or not, who knows.

Sure buy, here we go. Okay, uh, here's the, here's the title for the story, uh, uh, Newfoundland Is Beautiful in the Summer. That's the title for the story.

Okay.

All right, so you're gonna start us off with a, with a sentence, uh, and we're gonna try to keep it to a story using last letter, first letter.

Okay. In Newfoundland during the summer, you'll see clothes hanging out on the line next to the ocean.

Nobody can miss it because the colors are so vibrant.

True story. Full stop.

You bet. And scene.

There we go.

If anyone doesn't know anything about Newfoundland, there we go. They just learned why Newfoundland is so beautiful in the summer. Everybody hangs their clothes out and it's very colorful with the little colorful homes. There we go. We just learned something. True story.

Oh, that's hilarious.

How did you feel?

Oh, fine. I feel like I cheated with true story. But it was— that is a true story, and it's also another Newfoundland slang term.

There we go. So we— it's a learning lesson. We had a little bit of fun. And, you know, the point of this is that, you know, in the same way that we should be listening to ourselves, as she says, you know, who you really are, to really be able to listen to ourselves, is to take that pause. The stakes are high. The stakes were high, right? You were doing the sex size. You know there's people listening. You're a little bit nervous. Stakes are high. And it's kind of the same thing that what you're saying about being able to listen to ourselves. is that we should make the stakes high and really take the time to really be able to go through this exercise, as you said, the top 5 qualities, and really give some thought as to who you are because confidence is so important if we want to be more engaging and be able to influence others without being able to— without being manipulative and to feel comfortable about who we are.

Yes.

Speaking of that then, you wrote a great story about your dad that you had shared. Jennifer, you do such a good job of really showing so much vulnerability in the posts that you share in your blogs. I think that goes a long way to, again, to people trusting and having that feeling of honesty about you. One of the things that stood out for me when you wrote the article about your dad was that the most important thing to him was bringing out the best in people. Yeah.

Yes.

You know, tell us a little bit more about that and maybe how that affected you.

Well, growing up, so Dad was an accountant by trade, and then his company, the company that he was working for closed down. And he then became an entrepreneur, ended up employing over 400 people. And Dad was also the president of the '99 Canada Winter Games, which was held in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, where I'm from. And so he was the head of the committee that was responsible for thousands of volunteers. It was the first most profitable Canada Games in, I don't know, decades, I think, and raising tens of millions of dollars. And, and so Dad had a lot of great qualities and was very influential in our community and our province. So when you grow up in a household with someone like that, they— well, people rub off on you, right?

Yeah.

And what's interesting is 6— well, it'll be 6 and a half going on 7 years this summer, Dad passed away really suddenly and unexpectedly. And When he did, he was in the hospital and I went— I knew he had these warm and fuzzy files— folders, he'd call them— and he had kept cards and things like that over the years from us kids, from colleagues, from people he mentored that meant things to him. And I went through them to bring some to the hospital and I noticed a trend, and particularly from the people he had mentored and who'd worked for him.

Mm-hmm.

And the theme of all of these cards and letters throughout the years was, thank you for believing in me.

Hmm.

And I thought about that as I reflected on being his daughter and also watching what he had achieved in his life, which he— you know, he grew up basically in poverty, and so he had really changed his reality and circumstances. for good. And it, you know, I realized— and Dad had talked to me about this before, but, you know, sometimes you need time to go by to be able to look back and reflect and really see things. And this was a full circle moment where I realized, you know, this is how Dad was able to get so many people on board. Like, you know, your podcast is about influence, and he— That was one of his best qualities. He knew how to influence people into action and he used it for good of everyone. And the way he did it, one of the biggest ways he did it was helping people see the greatness within them. He always spoke to people from where he saw them, not from where they were. And when I, you know, as I began my journey into entrepreneurship and you learn how to be a better leader and that really does start with yourself. But you, I realized that this was something that is innate in me. Like when I talk to an entrepreneur and they're like, do you think that I can do this? I'm like, of course you can do this. You know, it's the first thing that I'll say.

Yeah.

And you never, you never look at— well, I mean, I never, and Dad didn't do this either, look at people at where they are. I go, okay, you want to create this? Let's make this happen. Let's utilize all the resources that you have, internal and external, and we'll just manifest the rest and it'll be great. So, and that is like a gift that I think Dad gave me by being an example.

Thank you so much for sharing that, and I'm sorry to hear that, you Your dad was obviously a wonderful person. I'm sorry to hear that he passed away like that. But, you know, the takeaway from the story, and it's so important, is bring out the best in people. And that's— when you have that intention going forward, it really changes the dynamics of the conversation. And it's also about, again, going back to your point, Jennifer, about looking at how do we bring out the best in ourselves.

Yes. So Jennifer, with our last 30 seconds, where can we find out more about Uh, well, you can go to my website, jennifer-trass.com, and I'm also on Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn.

Terrific. Thank you so much, Jennifer, and thank you everyone for joining us on TFR. And if you have any comments or questions, you can reach out to me, Joel Silverstone, on LinkedIn or on my website, joelsilverstone.com. Thank you very much.

Excuse me.

Thank you very much, everybody, and we'll see you next week on TFR.

This feels Thank you for tuning in to TFR, This Feels Right. Please join host Joel Silverstone for another edition next Friday morning at 7 AM Pacific Time and 10 AM Eastern Time on the Voice America Business Channel. We'll talk again soon. Thanks again for listening to the preceding program.