INBOUND Bold Talks: Alexandra Jamieson "Stepping into Stronger Female Leadership"

Thank you. Hi. Thanks. So I was just telling everyone that I totally scrapped my talk and this is the only slide that I'm going to be using. Yes, and I like that. I think of myself as the nice, juicy filling in between Brene Brown and Amy Schumer. And while I'm going to be energetically speaking to the women in the audience, I am also speaking to and for the men in the audience. And I love men. I have my man in the audience. Bob, my fiance is here. Very excited. He's talking tomorrow. You should go see him, too. I want to talk about why women in leadership as an idea is important, what the problems are for more of us getting into leadership, how we can honor the feminine. And I'm going to take you through some exercises, so you might want to put your stuff down. It'll only take a minute for us to get to that point, but you're going to be standing up, I warn you. I was a professional vegan for quite a long time. And towards the beginning of my professional veganism, which, by the way, was the right choice, my body needed it. It healed me. It was fantastic. And then at the beginning of this adventure into food and healing, I met this guy. I picked him up in a bar, I'll be honest, and we fell in love. And we ended up making a movie together called Supersize Me. Did anybody see Supersize Me? Okay, so I was the vegan chef, girlfriend in the background rolling her eyes as my then boyfriend ate nothing but McDonald's for a month and got very, very sick. And that movie allowed us. It was like lightning in a bottle. We went on Oprah. We went to the Oscars. It was fantastic. And I became professionally vegan and wrote three vegan cookbooks and had this brand as a vegan expert. Worked great for me in my mid-20s. Then I got to my mid-30s. I don't know if anybody told you this, but your body changes as you get older. And I was also going through a divorce from said co creator of Super Size Me. Had a little boy, a lot of stress, and my body started to fall apart again. So this diet that had helped me in my mid-20s was now not working so well. My hormones were a disaster. I was exhausted, I was anemic, and I started craving meat. Yay. Yes. We'll have bacon later. Now, in marketing, I believe they call what happened next a shit show where I had to thank God for Brene Brown's book Daring Greatly. It was literally my bible. As I was going through this struggle Trying to come to terms with the fact that I was now secretly eating meat and hawking my three vegan cookbooks. But what I began to realize was that what I was hiding was a lot of food shame and body shame. That what I needed as just a human being had changed, and that didn't make me a bad person. And that I had to learn to listen to my body. And this is where this whole next eight minutes is going, that when we listen to our. Our bodies, whether you're male or female or somewhere in between or outside of it doesn't matter. Your body is what makes you you. And when I talk about women in leadership, we have to address the, you know, the weird gorilla, elephant in the room that we're talking about physical and chemical differences, that, yes, the female body is what makes female leadership different and sometimes complicated. And we have to learn how to honor that and listen to it. So I'm going to ask you all to stand up as I talk with you. I just want you all to do what I call the Wonder Woman pose. Now, the reason why we're doing this, it works for men and for women, and you just want your chest a little bit out and your head a little bit raised. We're going to do this for about two minutes. And why we're doing this is because this is actually raising your testosterone for women. That's especially powerful. And there's a whole TED Talk on this. I did not invent this, but I use it and I share it with women, especially because when we're in a leadership role or trying to step into leadership, we have trouble with the balance between competence and confidence. We're very competent. We know what we're talking about. We're smart, we're skilled. We have tools, we have experience. But we don't feel confident enough to interrupt, to say our opinion, to lead the charge. So I recommend doing this Wonder Woman superhero pose for a couple of minutes before every meeting, before every tough conversation. Skip directly to chapter eight in my book Women, Food, and Desire to talk more about this. But it also helps with the female libido, which I also believe is a very powerful aspect of being a female leader. It's really acknowledging and honoring all aspects of who you are. All right, we just hit two minutes. Perfect. Sit down. I wish I could do a spit test and show you all and test your testosterone levels and show you how powerful that was. But do that before you have your next meeting, before you have your next big conversation. You're going to stand up again in a Minute. So don't get your notes up now. What was challenging for me? Changing my brand in full view of the world, saying, hey, guys, I'm no longer vegan, and watching half of my newsletter list unsubscribe and having thousands of people flame me online. Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of negative comments, death threats because I was now eating meat to help heal my physical imbalances. It's very challenging for us to be authentic when, as women, our number one secret shame, as Brene Brown pointed out yesterday, is body and appearance shame. So this helps us ameliorate that a little bit. But how do we begin to actually listen to our bodies and feel that authenticity? As Runa was so beautifully pointing out, how do we listen? How do we be authentic? How do you hear this inside? What's going on? When we women, one of our strengths is also our Achilles heel. We're so good at figuring out what everybody else needs, Right? We are psychic. Well, we think we're psychic. Sometimes we are, and sometimes we're just mind reading and going crazy places. But we read the energy of a room so well. We know what other people need before they need. They know it themselves. But all of that gets in the way of us hearing our own truth. So I want to take you through another exercise. Go ahead and stand up again. We're getting a little bit more saucy. I want you to put your hands on your hips. We're just going to do a little figure eight with your hips. And this is just loosening up this part of your body. I know you guys are having to turn sideways. I appreciate you playing. It's okay. You're doing great. Looks good. We tend to hold a lot of tension right here. All right, we suck it in. We don't want anything flapping over the side of anywhere. But there's so much happening in here, especially in the female body. It's your digestive system. It's your emotional brain. Your gut brain has as many neurotransmitters as your head. The brain in your head does. When we are tight there, when we have this scourge of digestive issues, ibs, gluten intolerance, leaky gut. We have so much stress here. We need to start loosening this part of our body up and stop hating and holding in our physical self so much, helping to loosen up that physical shame that Brene Brown was talking about. It really takes getting into your body. All right, go ahead and sit down again. Thank you for playing along. So how can we consistently check in with ourselves, check in with our bodies. Listening to our copy cravings might actually be one avenue into it. And that's what I go into. Further into this, you know, again, women, food and desire. It's the book. It's in the bookstore. Go get it. It's awesome. There you go. Listening to our bodies is actually done by listening to your cravings. What does your body want? And Brene talks about this again in her new book, Rising Strong. I feel like I'm hawking her book more than I am mine. That's okay. She talks about learning to sit with your emotions, sit with your physical self as a way of being authentic. Well, how do you do that? How do you sit with and listen to. I've tried meditation. Believe me, I'm not that good at it. Sitting in silence just makes me crazy. But I can listen to what my body is asking for. That's why I take people through a lot of physical exercises and I talk about play and pleasure a lot. Because we humans learn when we play, when we take the judgment out of it, it's about having fun and being engaged and seeing what happens next. It's like one big improv class. So when you can be physically in your body and listen to yourself, loosen up your gut a bit and really hear what your physical self is saying. A gut feeling about someone, nervous knots about something, butterflies in your stomach, that's all information. That's all ways that your body is talking to you. But again, the feminine in leadership has been downplayed. Emotion in leadership, listening to yourself, which is your body, has been downplayed and set aside. I think it's time that we start listening more to that and honoring our cravings and following our desires. Even if it's for chocolate, even if it's for the mocha frappolaticino at three o' clock every day, whatever it is that you want, get curious, ask, what is my body wanting right now? Why am I, Am I having an emotion? Am I nervous? There seems to be no place for that in business, in marketing. But marketing is about story, right? It's about authenticity. So we have to be able to do that for ourselves first if we're going to be able to do that for the company or the product that we represent. I think as marketers, as salespeople, it's our responsibility to be solid in ourselves and honor what it is that we need so that we can honestly come to someone and say, this is what I believe. This is what I want. Do you want to engage with me about this and they believe you. When you've done that work, when you've done that inquiry, and you're way more attractive and interesting to be with and talk with and develop a relationship with, when you have that confidence, when you have that play and sass in your energy, people respond to it. I'm so glad to have had a chance to talk with you all. Thank you so much. Appreciate your time.