Discover Your Golden Idea: How To Build Your Personal Brand And Shape Your Destiny Featuring Susan Gilbert - I Love Marketing Episode #422

We don't know what the future is. We just know that we have to go into it with what the vision is that we have for it, that we've prepared for it. And we're going to take that risk to see if it turns out to be our destiny.

If you'd like to join world renowned entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network event or want to learn more about Genius network, go to geniusnetwork.com Susan Gilbert. She's going to help you uncover your golden idea. She's a best selling author, business visionary and founder of Messengers on a Mission who is here to help you write and publish the book you'll be remembered for. So using a transformative process that goes beyond interviews, she helps entrepreneurs like yourselves dig below the surface to uncover your golden idea, your unique genius code to uncover the most emotionally compelling idea that will express your true voice and create a legacy that lives on forever. So your book is a gift that can make a real difference. Don't let it stay inside of you. So share your unique message with the world is what Susan shares with us. So please help me in welcoming Dean Jackson and Susan Gilbert.

Being a messenger on a mission sounds like a pretty good calling right there.

Thank you.

Tell me about that. How did that come about?

We're all a part of all the things that we have been and lived and learned in our lives. And what happened with the land of I can is that here I'm thinking it's a gift book that women will buy for themselves and they'll give to other women. And that did happen, but somebody gave a copy of it to a woman by the name of Elaine Fink. She was the executive director for the leadership academy that was overseeing all the schools, the principals leading the Principals of the 250 schools in San Diego. And she had a big move and change that she was going to initiate that particular year. So she bought 250 copies of the book to gift to each principal at their first in house conference. The principals took those books back into the schools and the schools every year would order 20, 30, 40 more books. Twenty, 30, 40 more books. Until I asked them, I said, what are you doing with these books? And they said, oh, we use it for character development in the elementary schools.

Oh, wow, Dean.

I could have died. So at that point and I would have left my mark in the world.

Yeah.

And that's another piece of this puzzle about being a messenger on a mission. Because I believe that messengers like there's a calling that we get once we get the calling as a messenger we can accept the calling, and then we take that calling out into the world. So messengers can get the calling and not do anything with it.

Right.

Or they can get the calling and say, okay, um, I accept it. But, you know, not really take it out to the masses, because that's really what we want to do. We want to help as many people. We want to serve as many people as we can in the world. And when I started to go to work online, I'm like, I can help anybody anywhere in the world. There are no boundaries anymore in Cloudlandia.

We're all everywhere all at once.

Yes.

We're all everywhere all at once. And you can. Everybody's got a one to one connection to everybody, and there's nobody stopping you from reaching anybody. I mean, it's just such an amazing thing. Even 20 years ago, we couldn't have dreamed that this was possible. Susan, how long was it from there till you were being drawn into. Please tell us what you did. Show us how to do what you.

Yes.

Did there.

Yeah. The book was published in the year 2000, the land of ICANN. We all know what happened shortly thereafter with September 11th. And interestingly, one of the chapters, the last, where there's the land of apathy, the land of fear, the land of sorrow, in the land of ashes. Before we arrive at the land of I can, we can skip any of those lands. Sometimes we have to go back through those lands multiple times. But once we know what the land of I Can looks like and feels like and knows that the land of I Can lives inside of each and every one of us.

Yes.

Then we. It's the powers in the knowing. So when September 11th happened, people were circulating the land of I Can around the land like the sorrow, the land of ashes as an. As a book of empowerment. And it was about that time, so maybe 2003, where people were saying, look what you've done. Can you help me? The bigger picture for me is to tap into what I call the golden idea. And it's really not always evident because gold is not at the surface level. Right. You got to keep chipping away and chipping away and chipping away.

Yeah.

And as I work with someone and we get into really the heart and soul of what that person wants to do in the world and how they want to. Who they want to help, who they want to serve, then to me, it's the personal brand that happens. And that personal brand. I'll give you an example in just a moment. To me, I help them write a book because you know, you're in the book world. There's nothing that is a vehicle for a message like a book.

Right.

So taking that brand and then writing a book to support that brand really is the foundational part. And in all honesty, if that gold has been found and if the person is willing to show up and carry that message, there really isn't a whole lot else you need to do other than just keep doing it. Risk plus vision equals destiny. I had to be willing to take a risk. When I left small town Pennsylvania. I had to be willing to risk leaving a corporate job that paid very well to go open up a cafe chain that I knew nothing about how to do. We have to be willing to take a risk. But it's not. It's not a risk like, oh, I think I'll walk off the end of this mountain and see if I survive it. There has to be a vision of what you see this risk unfolding into.

Have you heard Dan Sullivan's concept about the four C's about.

Oh, absolutely. Yes.

And that I'll just say quickly because people think it's scary to take a risk. But Dan said that he learned in. In the military, in boot camp that the. His commanding officer, they were at doing a training with live, live grenades. And they asked is everybody, Is anybody afraid? And Dan raised his hand and said, I'm afraid. And they. Nobody else did. And the officer said, well, Dan's the only one who's telling the truth and it's okay to be afraid. There's a difference between fear and courage. Fear is peeing your pants and courage is doing what you need to do with wet pants.

Absolutely. I love that. I mean, look at you. See my lion behind me here? It can be a cowardly lion or you can be a courageous lion.

Right.

Anytime we move outside our comfort zone.

Yeah.

Like the grenade.

Yeah.

We're going to feel fear.

Right.

And we need to call on the courage.

Yes. So how do you start with somebody? What does it take to reinvent yourself as a visionary? I wonder if people have a sense of that there's a message that they've been getting the call but not really taking it seriously or wondering if that's the call.

If you've got that feeling. Sometimes you're spot on. Sometimes they come to me with an idea. And then the mining is what makes it unique. What makes you different. We know what the message is. We know who the audience is that you want to reach. But how do we bring more of you as an individual into this for other People, they don't know, they just know that they were put on this earth to do more than what they've been doing. And they want to make a difference. They want to make a difference, they want to create a legacy in both cases to get to the real you, who we are. So we want to get into the DNA of the person. And it's always, what are you passionate about? I'm passionate about animals. I'm passionate about walking in the woods. I'm passionate about pushing my own barriers, you know, and trying to. Okay, if I run a 10k, can I run a half marathon? Okay, if I do a half marathon, can I do a marathon? We don't know what the future is. We just know that we have to go into it with what the vision is that we have for it, that we've prepared for it and we're going to take that risk to see if it turns out to be our destiny. When I'm working with someone, that's what we're looking for. When we're quiet and we are tapped in to our inner knowing, that's where the genius code is.

Do you know what's so sad now is how difficult it is to find that those moments because we are overtaken with our phones. I think about that. I've been thinking about that a lot since 2007 when the iPhone came out and we have the Internet with us at all times. This migration to Cloudlandia comes with it. That, that's our passport to Cloudlandia. We are existing in this Cloudlandia through the portal of our, our iPhone. And it's so difficult to put that down and draw ourselves away from it.

Yes.

We don't have any moments of silence. We're filling those moments with TikTok and with, you know, things that are no matter what, if you've got five minutes for something it's filled with. There's never an opportunity to be bored. There's never an opportunity where your attention. Yeah, but isn't 100% engaged.

It is within us to set boundaries.

Yeah.

It is within us to say for the next hour I'm not going to pick up this phone. Yes, for the next hour I'm dare.

You to try that shower. How many people have tried that even today? I know the value of being quiet and being still and I have to. I routinely block off 50 minute blocks where I am away from the phone. But if I ever thought of having a day or a morning without my phone, it almost like there's a voice inside of you. If I say I'm going to go to the cafe or I'm going to go out for a drive. My mind is saying well you should probably take your phone just in case you know you need it or something happened. It's like for your personal safety you'd want to. There's never a moment where we are off the grid, you know.

Is it do you feel and I'm speaking for myself as I'm hearing you talk. Is it kind of like a fear of missing out? Like fear of missing a phone call? I don't.

I don't really care that I miss out. It's that I think that cellularly we're. That's the way we're. We're just compulsively drawn to it that these notifications you.

Yeah.

Anything. We're so used to having a thought. I've been. I have a courtyard right outside here in my house and when I go out there, what I do is I leave my phone in the house. Okay, that's good door so I can go out there. I've got a separate timer out there so I don't need to know. But I've made the decision that I'm going for 50 minutes to think to journal to. It's the only way I can get things done. But if I get two or three of those blocks during a day that is a gold star deck.

I'm certainly plugged in. But I have my boundaries. Like I don't take a call past 6:00 in the evening. Yeah, I don't with few exceptions don't take a call even if I'm working with someone in Europe before 6:00am Right. You know there are certain things that are just because otherwise there isn't time for the things like walks and playing with the puppy dogs and things that aren't phone oriented then I'm leaving out those things and the phone is taking over for me.

What would be the message that you want that you most want to get across today for people?

Thank you for asking that Dean. You can probably almost guess what it's going to be. But my final message would be if you feel a calling, if you feel you have something to share with the world, do it. My husband died at 28 and my mother was 51. When I reached the age of 28 and realized that's how old my husband was when he passed away. When I reached the age of 51 and I realized, wow, my mom was really young. I mean we don't have finite time on the planet. I could get in the car and go up to pick up groceries and you know, be hit by a car this afternoon. We don't know what's in our future. So what do we want to leave? What message is inside of us?

Yeah.

That we want to share with the world.

If you're going to deliver a message, you're going to do that hopefully that what you're doing is you're building a community of people that resonate with this message. You're just the, the, you know, messenger.

You're the messenger.

You're the messenger of it. Right, exactly that when you're, when the message is received so much. That's why I'm such a fan of, you know, self appointment is really the biggest thing that I think people have to overcome is this idea that there's no grand committee waiting to appoint you to the position of messenger. It's a self appointed role with a lifetime. With a lifetime term. There's no term limits. There's no limits on the number of people you can deliver your message to. You're 100% able to do it at your as big as you can. You can do it. But the idea that the. Even it's a living thing too. If you're a messenger you've got to be open that the message is going to evolve and the message is going to take on a life of its own as other people get touched by it and inspired by it.

The trend right now is to do a book that's maybe 125 pages.

Yeah.

Five to seven chapters.

Yeah.

We're as you were mentioning earlier Dean with using the phone and being connected to the phone and we're, we're time constrained in these days and we don't want to have to wade through several hundred pages to get the message.

Look at the book as just the. Here's what we're talking about and here's the big picture of this. And then join us. We're each evolving this.

Yes.

Every week, you know.

Yeah.

And the community keeps building and building and building and that's where. Yeah. There's no, there's no rules anymore. You know, it's not, we're definitely not carving them in stone. Right. With tablets you can have a one of one book now.

Yes.

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