Inclusion Inspires: Brand Building Challenge (Day 1)

Hello, my friends. Welcome. Happy Monday to all of you. It is my birthday week. I am super excited to be here. I am actually going to Let all of my challengers know where I am. I am live in our Facebook group, the Lovefluencers Assemble Facebook group. I'll tell you a little bit about that in just a second. I'm also about to go live on Instagram, uh, so we'll see how that goes. If I can do that simultaneously, that would be awesome. Um, and so I just need to write a really quick description while we have— it always takes a couple people, a couple minutes for people to join us. Um, so for the— today is the very first day of our Build, um, Build a Global Personal Brand Challenge. So it's Build Your Brand Challenge, always a little tougher to say than it is to do, but we're going to go through 21 tips and tricks and it all starts today. That means I need to go through at least 7 things in 30 minutes as we go through. We do have some VIP challengers here and we'll get to talk a little bit more after this session. We also have a workbook that is going out today to those who chose to upgrade and get our workbook. And so a lot of the activities you're going to hear me talk about today, I'm not going to have us take time and do the exercise. You're going to get an email that'll recap the questions. And for those of you who got the workbook, you're going to get this really fancy PDF that you can either print or edit directly, um, and give you a chance to look at it. Okay, um, here we go. Oh goodness, I better spell it right. Challenge Day 1. All right, let's do this. Hopefully everyone is here. Okay, so going live. All right, so I'm now live on a couple different platforms, so pardon me while I look between both of my audiences. So welcome. Today starts our First, it's like, like I said before, it is my birthday week. And every year I spend a week and I talk about things that I'm passionate about. And I actually have a couple of things I'm passionate about this year. But the first thing I want to do is really encourage, um, I want to encourage brand building, right? I want to encourage people to use their voice, not just of course, to build a business or to sell a thing, uh, sell a service, sell a product., but also just to get your ideas into the world. I think it's such an important time that we make sure that we know the tools that are available to us. You know, I'm often— some of my friends say, you know, oh my gosh, you're, you're so into tech and so into influence. And so I kind of do both, right? I use technology to build influence in the world, and I'm going to teach you my inside scoop. Like, I wrote it all down for you all, and I was like, what can I tell you that you probably won't learn anywhere else, or that you'd have to read the hundred or plus books that I have read in order for you to uncover some of these things. And I do read pretty voraciously. For those of you who don't know me, I am Noelle Russell Russell, and I am a— my day job, I am at IBM. And I realize that there are some people who don't know that company, but it's one of the oldest technology companies in the world. And I represent the AI and analytics organization at IBM. And then I also— hi, thanks for joining. Ah, here we go. I also have found that I wanted to do more than just my day job. I'm one of those people who like constantly wants to be working towards my purpose. And that's the first thing we're going to go through today, but want to go and work towards my purpose. And I'm always moving in that direction. And so one of the things that— one of the things I did was about 6 years ago, I started a company called the AI Leadership Institute, and it was all about educating boards and CEOs, C-level executives, senior executives, all about AI, um, all about automation, how to use the world's technology to better their companies. Here's the fun or interesting thing about this though, is that we— I also in the same moment, um, realized— I actually just Sunday woke up and was like, the world is changing. We are now seeing a new evolution of technology, and that technology is called Web 3.0. And I am always an advocate for diversifying the stage and diversifying the echo chambers, right, that we learn in. And so I created a community called Women of Web3. We've started a podcast. So I'll talk to you all about how I did it, how I created it. It's now a fully functioning business. We've got customers. We are producing events. I mean, It's incredible what can happen if you have not just the idea, but then all the tools you need to implement that idea and turn it into a real business online. So I'm going to share all that with you this week. Today we are going to focus on the hardest part of this process, which is really knowing who you are, right? What do you, what do you want to do? What message do you want to tell? And then be able to, you know, create a very succinct way of sharing that. So that'll be our one thing that we'll end with, our homework. Uh, tomorrow we're gonna get into the how, and this is one of my favorite days because we talk about all the vehicles that you can use to get your message into the world. Hello, you guys! Instagram's on in the house. We got Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, all of my friends. Thank you so much for joining. Um, I'm trying to keep an eye on the chat. Thank you all for joining. Good morning, Joe. Um, So grateful to have you all. If you do decide to say hello, um, if you are catching this live, you can go ahead and post #live in the comments so I know you're here. Um, if you are catching this on the replay, let us know you're in the replay and you can do #replay as well. It's so fun. I see these numbers climbing. We had about 200 people sign up for this challenge, and I am one— I am a mom of 4. I am very busy. I'm an executive at a big tech company. I have a startup. Right? I'm— I got a lot of stuff going on, so I understand. So I am all about the replay. If you are catching this on the replay, I am just as much with you in spirit regardless, because I know you've got to fit in bettering yourself anywhere you can. I remember listening to Tony Robbins, and he said, um, he, he created this term like no extra time. And what it was is like anytime you're doing something like dishes or laundry or yard work or whatever, these times when we just have to do the thing, you can use that time to listen, right? You can put on, uh, this is why I'm a huge fan of the audio modality, because someone like me who can't sit in front of YouTube and binge watch, you know, my favorite Web3 technologists talk about the stuff, I can put on my headset though. And while I'm doing dishes, while I'm making lunch, while I'm doing all the things, making dinner, doing all the things that I have to do as a mom and a caregiver and a technologist, I can listen in those times and I can dual duty and it works beautifully. So I encourage you to be, or I'm hopeful that you're encouraged by the fact that people are actually really interested in hearing what you have to say. And the more modalities you give them to engage, the better. So awesome. Hi everyone, good to see you all. Brian, what's up? Flavia, all my family. So good to see you all. Thank so much for joining. Okay, so, um, I talked about tomorrow, so we're going to talk about the how. How are you going to get your message into the world? And then on Wednesday, we're going to talk about the what. And this is what a lot of people struggle with, right? They maybe get through today and they're like, all right, I got my message, I know what I'm excited about, I know what I want to talk about. And then tomorrow they're like, okay, I, I know how, you know, I could do YouTube, I could do podcasts, right? They figure out a vehicle And then they're like, wait, how am I going to post all the time? Am I supposed to post 3 stories a day? Am I supposed to go live 3 times a week? Like, wait, what? Right. And so I'm going to give you some tools, tips, and tricks that you're going to use. We're probably going to cover more than 7 that day because it's one of my favorite days on not, not just the vehicle you're going to use to get your word out there, but the mechanism by which you'll— it'll be doable, right? And, and there's some really— I won't give away my own secrets on my own first day, but it's so exciting. All right, cool. So day 3 is the what, and then day 4 we bring it all together. And what I want to really help you do is learn to hit the publish button. This is probably the hardest thing for us to do. Most of us struggle with it, even those of us who post quite a bit. Hi, Jim, what's up? Janice is here. Frank's here. Bonito's here. All my friends, thank you guys so much for showing up. This is Awesome. So, well, the hardest thing for us to do sometimes is to do what I'm doing now. Like, oh my gosh, some of you might cringe at the idea of going live, not just once, but on 6 platforms simultaneously, right? But I've learned to enjoy it. And here's the thing, I do it in a way that's authentic to who I am. That— and Frank is here too in the audience, he does the same thing. Like, we're— we could just be ourselves. And here's the good news, those who can learn from you and want to learn from you, they will follow you. They will engage with you. They will join your challenges. They will buy your products. And those who don't will go away. I mean, that's the beauty of social media, but I'm going to teach you some very specific tips, tricks, and resources that you're going to use on Thursday in order to get that out into the world. And then on Friday, we graduate from our event. We graduate from the challenge. And I'm going to, for those of you who participate inside the Lovefluencers Assemble community, inside that Facebook group, for those of you who do your homework, I'm going to be giving away this really cool thing. I got one. Thank you, Warren. I got one. It's called a— well, it says Pod, but it's from a company called Pivo. And it's so cool. I'm using it right now. It actually tracks your movement as you're speaking. So if you're like talking on stage, you can set this up and it's like your own cameraman. So for a lot of us, we start off as solopreneurs, and building content is the hardest part. Now we can just turn on this thing and it'll track with you. Anyway, so we're— I'm going to be giving one away. Um, of course, every year I give away an Alexa device. So really exciting, um, event, but you gotta play to win, right? You've got to actually do the work, post your results, and guess what? Hit the publish button multiple times this week. It is the hardest thing about Building your brand, but guess what? Your brand doesn't exist unless you actually say things out loud in a mechanism the world can hear you. Um, and it's— yes, thank you, Frank, for saying it. It's so much easier to be yourself. So you'll notice by the end, the world actually wants our authentic selves. I know some of you will instantly be like, no, not this authentic self, but I used to think the same thing. And what I found actually though was that my people gravitated towards me. Like, you are all— of course, those of you who are here, some of you are brand new, came through the funnel and went through our website and you're just getting to know me for the first time. But when you're yourself, someone instantly knows like whether or not they're gonna do business with you or not, whether or not they're gonna follow your content or not. And they get to opt in, um, and I love that about the way that this social world has grown. So I'm going to share with you all the tips and tricks I use to keep up with it and maintain a happy, healthy life with my, you know, family, with my work. So hopefully you'll find a lot of this helpful. Okay, let's get going. Hello, my friends. Oh, this is so awesome. Okay, let's see. All right, so day 1, what are we here to do? So today, first I want to share with you the The reason that I created this challenge, and it's the second time I've done this specific challenge, totally different things, tools and tricks that I'm going to share because the world has changed since I did it last, um, but the idea was the same, which is how do we get our message into the world? And I woke up 2 and a half years ago and I got this idea for a brand called Lovefluencers. And what that meant was that I was tired, or really I was kind of concerned that when I went to Instagram, Facebook, like when I went to different places, the influencers that I saw were about things that I wasn't about. I couldn't really resonate with them. Like, they weren't, you know, like, they were a lot about money and a lot about cars and like bling and fancy clothes and like all this stuff. And I'm just not— I mean, look, I'm in a t-shirt I bought at Five Below, right? But I love it, um, and I'm proud to wear it, but I'm just not that way. And I was like, can I be an influencer? Can I do things in the world Noelle's way, uniquely Noelle. And I found out that yes, you absolutely can. There are a couple tips and tricks you can use that I'll share with you this week that will put you on a solid foundation for delivering value to your customers and doing it in a way that helps you build a solid business. But other than that, you can do all of that and be yourself, you know, be your quirky, fun, you know, caring, grateful, kindness, meditating, you know, whatever, whatever makes you you. Those are things that make me me, but whatever makes you you, you can completely embody as you move into the world of social media to promote either your business, your company that you work for. You know, you could do it as what I call an intrapreneur, someone who works for another company that's building momentum about something new, or an entrepreneur, of course, starting your own company or being part of a startup, Or you could do it because you're a philanthropist or someone who cares a lot about socioeconomic things and you just want to get a message out into the world. So this is all about that. I got this idea and that day it was the first time in my entire life that I had in my brain all the things I needed to do to build a business. All of it. I knew how to build a website. I knew how to create an email list. I knew how to create a sales funnel. I knew how to create a product. I knew how to create a value ladder. I built the whole thing, and at the end of 6 hours, by noon that day, it was all up and running. And granted, it wasn't free, so a lot of people are, you know, were strapped, uh, for cash sometimes. So I'll give you some ideas that you can use to build revenue quickly. But that business was up, and I was like, people have to know that you could build a business in a box. Like, this is possible now, and it's working. I now drive advertising, uh, to this funnel. But before I didn't, I just got online and just talked about it and drove people that way. So I'm going to share with you the— what I did to build that brand. I just launched a brand new brand called Women of Web3, and I just launched that. Again, Sundays are my idea days, right? I woke up, was like, oh my gosh, I'm doing this thing. Um, actually I think it was Friday, but I built it all out and completed it on Sunday, and I got I basically, you know, overnight really have developed a community already just because I picked an idea that was resonating with the world. So let's go ahead and get into our first thing: your why. Now, your why is an incredible, incredible thing that is really important to identify. But here's the good news, or the best news: it will constantly change. So I actually— I don't know if I brought my book with me. Oh, I might have. Yes. So I use this book and every day I write down— it's really cool because every day it asks you what your goals are and what your targets are towards that, those goals. And I am a, um, I work with Grant Cardone and Elena Cardone. I am a licensee of their content. I teach a lot of the things that they have learned and created content for. I'm a huge fan because what they have done has worked for my business and worked for the companies that I work for.. And so I'm a huge fan of them. But this planner, I mean, I could have done it in a spiral notebook, but it gave me the framing that said, hey, not just what are your goals for today, which is what I used to do, right? I'd be like, okay, what do I want to do? Which basically turned into my to-do list. Instead, I reinforce every single day what I want to do with my life and what I want to do, like, and why I want to do it.. And so I write all of my goals in the present tense, right? I want to make sure that I understand, like, what are, what do I want to do with my life? And here is the exercise I'm going to have you all do first. And again, if you registered with the challenge, you can go to inclusioninspires.com/challenge. You're going to get a PDF that you can fill in so that you can kind of write this out. It'll at least, if you did not sign up for the workbook, you'll at least get the questions so that you can go through this and spend some time in it. But the first question is like, what am I doing? Hey Brian, what's up? Um, the first— so good to see everybody. Um, but the first thing I wanted to encourage you, and, and, um, there's lots of questions about tactics and stuff. I, I see one. Oh, awesome. Thank you guys so much. Thank you. Good morning, um, and good afternoon. Uh, we also— Joe just asked about how often you should go live. Hopefully you're going to join me tomorrow because that's when we talk about our vehicles for actually taking our message to the world, um, and I'll be talking about it then. Uh, but right now the most important thing you could do is figure out— and it doesn't matter where you start, right? You could say, I want to go to the Grand Canyon, that's a life goal of mine. I, me personally, I have 3 categories for my goals. One is personal. I want to be a good parent. I want to have happy, content children. I want to take good care of my dad. I have professional goals. I want to be the most successful AI executive at IBM, meaning— and then there's targets that define what that means to me. I want to have a very successful community. I want to empower 100 women to move into technology, right? These are goals that I've identified that are more professional in nature. And then financial, right? I literally say I'm gonna— I want— I— and I put all these in the present tense, so I'll read a couple of them off to you. I'm a best-selling author. I run a multi-million dollar empire. I have strong, safe, and confident kids. I'm happily married to the man of my dreams, right? So I mean, any more vulnerable, uh, and transparent than that, I don't know how, how I could. Like, I just revealed to you, like— and that's not all of— I mean, there's, I don't know, 14 or so, right? But that gives you a sense. And I say it to myself in the morning, and then I also say it at night, right? I say it at the end of my day. I start my day with it so it frames my intention, and then I end my day with it. Most importantly, I end my day with it because I want to make sure that I'm like sealing what I set my intention on and what I executed. And honestly, at the end of the day, I'm reviewing those sub-targets, like what little things did I do to get to those goals? Did I do anything? Like being an author, that requires you— guess what? It requires you to write. I don't know how many of you know this, but you actually have to write every day. Um, and so if I don't write every day, I need to really carefully evaluate, like, why do I want to do this? So the exercise I'm going to have you do, the first question you'll get in the follow-up email for those of you who join the challenge, is an exercise called the 5 Whys. Here's why I love this exercise. It's because I actually learned it in technology. We use it to do what's called root cause analysis. So if there's a failure in a system and I'll give a shout out to my buddy Wes Groover, who actually was super huge proponent of this when I first met him and we were running production in a financial company and he was like, we need to first figure out why it happened and then keep asking why until we get to the root cause and then fix that., right? Don't fix the top thing, fix the root cause. And so this 5 Why example, what I encourage you to do is write a list, write 3 goals. You'll have more, but focus on 3 for this exercise, right? And you'll create 1 personal goal, 1 professional goal, and 1 financial goal. And then for each one of them, ask yourself why. But don't just do it once. Do it 5 times. So give you an example. I want to be an author, right? A bestselling author. Why? Because I'll be able to get on more stages. Why? Because on those stages I can influence more women and minorities to get into technology. Why? Because I want our— the software that we use every day to be more inclusive and be built for more people. Why, right? Do you get the idea? So by the end, you'll notice, like, even that last one, I'm starting to get to the root cause that I'm, I'm focused on building software that serves everyone. And when you get there and you say it out loud, like me, I'm like, I get tears in my eyes because I'm like, yes, that's me, that's what I care about, right? And it'll be different for all of us, but it starts with, I want to be a millionaire.. It starts with, I wanna write, you know, a bestselling book, and it ends with, I wanna change the world's software industry, or I wanna build schools for young children to change the pattern of whatever, whatever it is for you. It's incredibly powerful if you give it an opportunity. All right, so that's number 1. Benito, Renato. So good. Oh gosh, so good to see you all. Okay, moving on. To the next thing. All right. The next thing, ah, this is a good activity. So the next activity is who are you? Now, this is something that I encourage you— ah, good to see you all. Thank you all for joining me. If you are here and you did not catch the beginning, don't worry, it will be available on replay. You can also join the challenge and you'll get access to replays as well. It's only going to be available for the week and then it goes down on Friday night. But you can join us at inclusioninspires.com/challenge. Super fun. So the next thing is this: Who are you? And it's just a list, but it's a good list. So what you're going to do is you're literally going to take a piece of paper. And again, for those of you who have a workbook, there's a workbook with a bunch of lines on it, and it'll ask you, who are you? And this is to address all the labels you have in your life. So if you're a mom, a caregiver, a technologist. But then you dive a little deeper. Do you have a dog? Oh, I'm a pet owner. Um, I have a special needs child, so I'm a special needs parent. Um, I, you know, I'm an introvert who also has extroverted tendencies. That's a whole storyline right there, right? Whole storyline. Um, so how do we do this? How do we, how do we define the stories we tell? The first thing we have to do is really examine all the things that we are. Right? Think back as far as you can remember. Who were you as a kid? Who— what were your parents like? Right? I'm, you know, I'm the product of divorced parents. I, um, got to speak on stage as a young kid. I, um, learned to meditate when I was 6. Like, all these things form who I am. But the best part about it is that because it formed who I am, I can actually use it to tell a story. And we'll get to that exercise in just a minute. But I encourage you to write down all the labels. And I will give you an example in the, in the PDF. But write down all the labels of who you are and what, what you do. I basically think of it as like, what do people call me? There's a song for that. But what do people call me? What do I call myself? What do I have? What do I do? And what do I represent? And when I ask myself those questions, all these different roles and capabilities kind of fall out onto the page. So I encourage you to do that work because it's going to serve you as we move forward. All right. So once you do this, this kind of mental exercise and write it down, it's very important to write it down, even if you never view it again. Extremely important to write it down. Your brain treats it differently when you engage more than one sense. That's why I always, when I buy a book, I buy the hard copy, I buy the Kindle version, and I buy the audiobook, and I consume it in a bunch of different ways so that I— it, it sticks with me, right? The world is full of so much noise. I've, I use this multi-sensory, multi-modality, um, technique in order to get stuff to stick, and it works for me. Um, okay. So here is a tactical one all of you can do, and if you haven't done so already, I encourage you to do it. New, um, new vehicles for this are opening every day. But the one thing in order for you to do what this challenge is all about— build a global personal brand— is to— hi, Naya— is to stake your claim on the internet. Put a stake in the virtual cloud ground and stake your claim on the internet. And what that means is you're going to get a domain. Some of you have already done it already because you've been with me before. But if you haven't done so, go grab your domain name. And yes, I know it costs money. There are some mechanisms and ways, and if you know of any, please put them in the chat. I'm not typing right now, but it'll be part of our resources that we list out later. There's some cheap options, but this is an investment. And here is the big little— well, I don't know if it's the biggest, but one very big piece of information I want to share with you. Is that even if you don't work for another company or don't own your own company, you are the CEO of a company, and that company is you. And you are your brand, and you're your marketing officer, you are your financial officer, you are your CEO. And most importantly, your skills are your products. What you do well what you love to do. Those are your products. And I'm going to teach you over a long period of time while you get to know me all the different ways you can take what you know and turn it into a product. But this week we're just going to talk about staking your claim in the world, say, hey, I exist, and then start talking. And it, it's hard. I won't tell you it's easy, um, but it's so worth it. All right, awesome. So thank you all so much. Um, okay. I'm just keeping an eye on the question, so if, uh, thank you. Um, and if anything comes up, um, okay, so, oh, good question. So in the exercise where you're figuring out who you are, try to avoid those that are self-critical, or like that voice in your head that's like you're something you're not, um, or that is going to belittle. Like, this is an exercise of Who am I in this world and who do I want to be? Because you're going to use this to create your story archive. Here's what you could do, because I'm an optimist, so I'm always like, think, you know, I've also was raised on Monty Python, right? So I'm like, always look on the bright side of life. And not joking, like really, always look on the bright side. But if you're not looking on the bright side— hello, Michael Ann! Um, if you're always looking on the bright side of life you won't touch these areas. But guess what? This— the mischaracterizations, the things that people don't fully understand about you, the way that they see you, those are great stories to tell. So if you can identify in yourself, like, let's say someone told me, I don't know, that I wasn't technical enough, right? I don't know that I'd own that as an identity. I definitely wouldn't own it as an identity, but I might put it in what we'll talk about in just a second, my story inventory, because it's a good story to tell about how I overcame that. So great question. Thank you, Jim. All right, moving right on. Yeah, so if you are not taking notes, now's your chance. Every session is just going to be like a whole smattering of literally the decades of my life boiled down into 45 minutes. So it's going to be a rampage of really cool ideas that I've had or implemented and hopefully you'll find success with them too. Okay, so stake your claim on the internet. Get a domain name. Make it you, not your company, not your product. The reason I say this is because way back in the day, um, I was very excited about brand building, but I didn't understand this nuance. And what I ended up doing was becoming JBoss Girl. And this was, for those of you who remember, um, this is a big time. I remember walking across the street at a conference and someone yelled JBoss Girl from across the street. So my brand was working. The problem was I didn't work for JBoss forever. As a matter of fact, I only worked for JBoss for like 3 years. And when I went to the next company, um, I wasn't doing that anymore. And my entire brand was focused and like surrounded by something that I no longer did. So I encourage you in this exercise this week, you are building you, you, Inc., right? You are the CEO of your company. And that's you as a brand. So find a domain name that represents you. I've created a few. So noellesilver.com is the first domain I grabbed, and that represents my speaking side of what I do. I have noelle.ai, which maybe sounds intuitive, but it's all my AI stuff that I love to do, right? So, and now I have noellesilver.nft for all the Web3 stuff that I'm doing. So you could kind of decide what you want to do with that, right? How you, how you want to represent the world, but don't attach yourself to— even though you think your brand is everything right now, uh, Miss Skittles will, will tell us all, right? You never know. You may grow that brand, evolve out of that brand, and even sell that brand one day. So make this about you, something that's always you and what you're interested in. And what you're interested in will evolve, and your brand can evolve with it. You never lose it. Now, for those of you ladies out there who have, you know, remember you saw my goal, for those of us who have gotten married and changed our names, right? I've had to do it a couple of times. My latest name, Silver, was actually provided to me by my children. We all sat around the table and said, who's Noelle Russell Russell going to be? And who are we going to be as a family? And we all decided Silver was the name. So that's how I got my current name. It's beautiful how we can easily change that in our society. But Don't be afraid of that. I have never really lost momentum having to rebrand myself with a new last name. So not that I'm saying you'll ever need to do that— I went down a slippery slope all of a sudden— but, but don't be afraid to attach yourself to your name. Um, and even if it's like Noelle Russell Russell or your first name and middle name or first name middle initial, you know, whatever you want to do, but make sure it represents you. You Inc., uh, you incorporated, you LLC, uh, because you are the business that you're about to start promoting. All right, let's get into it. Okay, that is number 3. Number 4, my favorite, your story inventory. Let's see if I have it. I do. So your story inventory, it can be as simple as a book that looks like this that you fill in. You go and write, and it has like— I'll go to a blank page, right? It has a bunch like lines in it. It's nice. I like this because it's always handy, though some of us live with our phones and it's also always handy. I have 4 kids, so somebody else might have my phone at any time. Um, but I always have this book, and a story inventory is literally in your mind going back to as early as you can remember and start thinking about the things that have happened to you. I tend— and again, I'm an optimist— but I start with the things that were negative. Right? The things that like impacted me that I still remember. I remember having a bad dream about being abducted with my twin brother, and we were Muppets, and they were taking our Muppet like facial features off. It was terrifying. To this day I remember it. It was terrifying. Um, but it— who knows, it could become a good story one day, right? Especially if I ever get to be on Sesame Street. Please have me on Sesame Street. Um, right? Like It will later, after the Sesame Street wonderfulness, right? I will have created a hero's journey like, hey, when I was little, I had a nightmare about this, but look, it turned out okay. But these story archives are not meant to be judged. They're just meant to give you ideas on what I call the hero's journey. So that is really focusing on— and we'll talk more about this tomorrow because it's how you're going to want to craft your stories— but like, what bad thing happened What thing did you learn and how did you overcome it? It's classic. We watch— okay, I watch romantic comedies for exactly this thing, right? Girl, you know, loses job, goes into the country, and, you know, finds the man of her dreams, finds herself, and is all happy again, right? Or, or, you know, Mulan, right? Like, goes through this journey and ends up happy. We like the stories that give us comfort in the truths of the world at the end. And so what we want to do is find those arcs. And sometimes the funny thing is we look back at bad situations and we don't realize that there was an arc there, that there was a happy ending. We're the happy ending. Us being here right now, if you're watching this, that means you've overcome, overcome 100% of the things you've run into in your life because you're sitting here watching this, right? Like, we, we are overcomers by nature. But now I want you to take the time to start writing them down. And you want to write down everything— your first teacher, your first job, your first hiring manager, your first interview— and then go in and say the best of all these things, the worst of all these things, right? The first time you broke up with someone, the first time someone broke up with you. Like, these are all stories that eventually you can use to tie into what you're delivering into the world. Yes, Johanna's neighborhood, I love it. Aww, Johanna. Okay, okay, let's see, what was I— oh yeah, okay, so story inventory. So I know it's a lot of homework, don't worry, you're gonna get an email. If you don't get that email, you want that email, just go to inclusioninspires.com/challenge and you can get on the list. Okay, so story inventory, it's very different. So that's like the past, You're thinking through all of your past and finding these little stories, these little story arcs that have happened in your life. You'd be surprised how many we have and how powerful they can be. We are on number 5 of 7. Number 5 is what I, what I have. I read a book. I think his name was Matt Dix, and he is one of the best storytellers. He's won all of these— what's that place called? The Moth. He's won all these awards and Grand Slam championships for telling stories. What— it's a beautiful lifestyle that he has to be able to tell stories for a living. And one thing he had written about in one of his books was this concept of homework for life. And I use it every day and I love it. And what it means is that you also, again, in a book similar to this, or I use an Excel spreadsheet on my phone, or you could use— what's that new app? It's called— it's not new, it's called One Second a Day or something like that. One SE, um, or one— anyway, it, uh, one of our friends uses it all the time, but it documents a moment of your day, but it's random. What I'm asking you to do is be more intentional. So your homework for life, meaning from today for the rest of your life, every day at the end of your day or at the beginning, whenever you can figure it out, you're going to write a memory. From this day. One thing like, oh my gosh, I remember I did my first live of this challenge that I did on my birthday week, right? One memory. And what you'll find over time, it gives me goosebumps because I look back and I'm like, oh my gosh, I would never have remembered that. I would have never remembered that that was the day that my son learned to read, that he read by himself, because it happens. And then you go on with life and then 2 years go by or 5 or 10 years go by and it's not as crisp. It's not as crisp. But here with this Homework for Life, and they become stories in and of themselves. So you can document— Homework for Life is simply one sentence, a memory, an impactful moment from the day. And you do it every single day. And then you review it every so often and harvest it for stories you can tell. Your audience. It's beautiful, beautiful story. All right, awesome. Um, cool. Okay, I'm just going through. Um, awesome. We will move right along. Okay, um, number 6, and this is the last piece of homework. There's actually 2 parts of it. The one of the things I'm gonna ask you to do tomorrow is actually publish something to the world, and what that something will be is your backstory. Who you are and how you came to be. Now, every story you tell should be able to be told in several different ways. There should be a 30-second version. There should be a 3-minute version, a 30-minute version, and a 3-hour version. Every story— I shouldn't say that— every good story, right? Every pillar story, every story that you want to tell from a stage or in an email, right? Like, there's certain stories— we call them pillar or evergreen— or stories that we keep coming back to. And you'll hear them with authors. You'll hear them if you go— if you read an author's book and then see them on stage and then listen to their podcast. There's certain stories they go back to all the time. I do the same thing. But your backstory is who you are and how you got to this place, and it'll evolve over time. It is not the— I was born in this hospital, went to this school, right? It's not the step-by-step process of your life. It is the epiphany you want your audience to have with you. It is why you have the reason to talk about the thing you care about and talk about, right? I talk a lot about women in tech, and so my backstory often includes my journey into technology and the struggles I had, and then of course the triumphs I've had. Right, so find what— it's important to kind of marry this backstory with your why today. What is the thing that you want to do, and how does your backstory qualify you to talk about it? And it does, even if you don't see the lines today. I can certainly help you with this because sometimes you have to think through it a little bit, but the reason you have your why is because your life taught you, got you to the place where this is important to you. So it's there, we just have to harness it. So getting— jotting down your backstory. Awesome, um, that's amazing. So we already have people doing this work right now on Instagram. That's amazing. So this is such an important step, and you will continue to do this when you— if you decide to start a podcast, I encourage the first couple episodes to be your backstory. If you're going to go on Instagram for the first time, I encourage your first few stories to be your backstory, right? So the backstory, it's simply, here's my why and here's how my life got me to the point where I believed that this is what the world needs from me. So critical, so important. Um, awesome. Okay, so write down your backstory. It's going to start potentially pretty long. You're going to want to pare it down though. So here is my last tip for today. Oh, I'm almost on time. My last tip for today, which is create a simple story sentence. Like a— and I say sentence, you can make it plural sentences, 3 sentences at the most. And I'm going to give you a framework, and I've learned this from multiple sources. Tony Robbins teaches it, Dean Graziosi teaches it, um, Jen and Chris, and they're like must Be on TV boot camp, they teach it, right? But this concept is very— it's consistent. And what it means is like, how do I— if I walk into a room and someone's like, hey, what do you do, right? The last thing I want to do is say, oh, I work for IBM. Of course I do, yes. But that's not really what they're asking, right? They want to know who I am, at least a little bit. And even if they don't, it's my one opportunity in a very short period of time, 30 seconds, to tell them who I am and what I care about. And again, remember at the beginning, let them choose. Let them opt into that conversation or opt out. I often talk about women in tech, Web3, Alexa, and people opt in, people lean in. But that is the ultimate goal of this 3 sentences or less is you want what the end of that you're going to validate its effectiveness by whether people lean in to hear more about you or to hear what you have to say. And it happens again, you don't have to have a flashy story. I didn't have a flashy story when I was 25 or 30, right? It got better as I got older, as they do. But it's about the authenticity of your story. There's no higher vibration in the world energy-wise than authenticity. And this is backed by science, you can Google it, right? Authenticity is the It's even more powerful than love. Did I say that? Yes, the study confirmed that being authentic is a higher frequency. So just be yourself. But we do need to be mindful of our audience. And so a 30-second be yourself is gonna be— get you way further along in the conversation than a 3-hour backstory to someone you just met. All right, all right, awesome. So That is your final piece of homework, is to craft a sentence. So let me give you the framework as we close. The first part of this framework is you want to say, you know, I help, or I verb, you know, I help blank. So what is it? When you went into your why, what did your why guide you to do in the world? So me, I help women and people of color, right, do X so that they can Y, right? So, and that's it. I help people of color get into technology and create generational wealth so that we can build better software that serves the world. That's it. And I just made that up, right? I have lots of different— depending on where I am and who I'm talking to, I have lots of different things that I'm excited about, but I just made that up for your benefit, right? So this is what you want to be able to do though, is literally read the room. If you're in a room full of entrepreneurs, be able to in your mind craft a 30-second, what do I do, who am I here to help? And guess what? People are actually very attracted to a message that is of service. Here's who I help. Here's what I help them with, and here's the big audacious thing that I want to accomplish if I get that right. It draws people to you. Like I said, people lean in, literally, uh, when you get this right. But guess what? As with all things and everything we will do in this challenge, there's great news. Everyone starts really bad at this. It's just like walking. Or talking or, you know, life. We will start bad at this, but then as you practice and as you hone it and as you write it again and get more, you know, as you put more work into it, you'll get better. So here is— so, so the good news is there's no pressure to get it right. The pressure is to document, do the work, write it down, write it down a couple times, write it down 3 times and refine it a little bit each time. Get it down to 3 sentences. And then what I'm going to ask you to do, for those of you in the Facebook group, I want you to tell us what it is. Who are you? How do you help? What do you help with? And what's that big audacious, like, dream that you're going to achieve by doing this work? And it's a very authentic way to go and tell the world. And by the way, you could totally be selling a thing., right? This is not about, you know, being a love fluencer is not about just spreading a good message. We're building businesses, creating revenue, right? We're building lifestyles that allow us to spend time with our family. Like, this is, this is legitimate. You can be an intrapreneur inside a company or an entrepreneur and build your own company, but these ideas, this level of authenticity, will change the customers you deal with. It'll craft who does work with you. And it's magical because you end up realizing, wait, I actually love my customers, right? If you don't do this work, you end up attracting people into your, your world that don't know exactly who you are and what you believe in. And so they stick around and they end up not jiving and, and kind of pulling away from what you're trying to to. So I say be open and transparent about who you are, what you care about, what you stand for, and let your people come to you. Okay, this is not on the tip list, but the last thing I will encourage you to do is to read an article. It was written a long time ago. Oh my gosh, I don't remember his name now. Kevin something. Kevin Kelly? No, I get all my people mixed up. Anyway, you can Google it. It's called A Thousand True Fans. Seth Godin re— wrote it or republished it. What was his name? I can't remember. Anyway, if one of you remember, put it in the chat. Um, but A Thousand True Fans, and what it reminds us of is that— and some of us know this from earlier days, right? When we find something we care about, a brand we like, we go all in on that brand regardless of any rational other outcome. I'll reference the Grateful Dead, for example. If you are a Grateful Dead fan, you— it doesn't matter. You buy the t-shirt, you buy the little enamel pin, you go to every concert, you— whatever they, they put out, a coffee mug, you buy it because you love them. You literally love them. Like, you want to support them, you get value from them, right? Same thing with, you know, certain, um, other influencers in this world. I know people who love Simon Sinek, and every time he writes a book, they're like, It doesn't matter what it is, I'm buying it. Like, I'm gonna buy everything that he writes. I was that way with Dean Koontz, if you guys remember that, or he— I mean, he's still another, but right, I bought everything he wrote. It didn't matter. I wouldn't even look at the back cover. Eventually, right, I became one of his 1,000 true fans. And there is 1,000 people, 1,000 true fans for all of us. And guess what? If you can get 1,000 true fans to pay you $100 a year Can you come up with something that's valued at $100? Yes. And if you can't think of it, I will help you. A year, that 1,002 fans paying you $100, guess what? That's a living. You can live on that money, right? Um, 1,002 fans paying you $1,000, I mean, things get even better. So, Kevin Kelly, oh, was it really? Oh my gosh, I totally said that. Um, so yay, I did remember. Um, awesome. Awesome. So Kevin Kelly wrote that article. All it does is it just plants a seed in your mind that you don't need a million followers. And we're going to talk about this tomorrow. You don't need a million followers. You don't even need 100,000 or even 20,000 followers. You just need your 1,000 true fans that are gonna buy whatever you do. But in order to do that, you need to be authentic with them, transparent with them, and then you need to build value. So tomorrow we're going to talk all about how to build valuable products that represent all the work you're doing today, who you are, right? What is your why? Why are you doing this? And then of course, the stories you have to tell that reinforce why you want to change the world and the way you want to change it. And then we need to find your 1,000 true fans, and that starts tomorrow. So I hope you'll join me tomorrow, 1:00 PM Eastern time. This was super fun. I hope you enjoyed it. So much good stuff in here. I will be, for those of you in the group, you will get an email follow-up with all the things that I said, all the questions that I asked. For those of you VIPs, you're going to be getting a more formalized workbook and an exercise guide, and you'll also get a little extra time with me. So hope you enjoyed it today. This has been super fun. Yay. Thanks, Flavia. Thank you all for joining. We had about, oh my gosh, this is amazing. So many people joined today. So thank you so much. Day one, you never know. Um, but it was a huge success. So I'm so happy. Thank you for coming. Uh, thanks for all of you. We'll catch this on the replay and we'll talk tomorrow about— oh, um, really quickly. Thank you so much. Squarespace is a great place to get domains cheap. ClickFunnels, you can get domains pretty cheap, $20 a year. Um, oh, Joe said something, uh, earlier. Oh my goodness. Let me see if I can find it really quickly. Joe. Um, okay. I can't remember. But he also— you can maybe ping him. He was in the comments. You could just reply to his comment on LinkedIn. But man, this was fun. Thanks so much for joining me. And I'll see you all tomorrow, 1 o'clock. And if you want to, don't forget, you can join. You can follow me on Instagram. You'll see the posts, but you can also join inclusioninspires.com/challenge and we get 7+ more tips and tricks for how to get your message into the world, the vehicle to launch it tomorrow. Okay. I'll talk to y'all later.