Ep. 53 LIVE COACHING with Michelle Villalobos, Superstar Activator

What do you prefer? Villalobos.

No, no. Villalobos. My mother once heard me on the phone saying Villalobos, and she got very upset. She said, that is not your name. Your name is Villalobos. You say it with pride.

Villa Lobos. Villa Lobos. Awesome. Take two.

Okay.

Go, Darren.

All right, so here we are. Take two. Mark, this is new ground for unforgettable presentations podcast. I know sometimes people are curious. What's it? This woman, Michelle, she is amazing. She's in the million dollar speakers club and she came to our chapter and just the knowledge and what she has and what she's done, I was impressed, but I was just toying around with the idea. I said, michelle, there's a couple stories that a couple tweaks here or there, and she was open to it. She was hungry. And I said, hey, you're a superstar already. Would you be open to be coaching live on a podcast? She's like, of course. Her confidence is amazing. Mark, I'm going to let you pronounce her last name because I've been working on it and failing.

Well, I am flat excited and I can't wait for us to spend some time with the incredible Michelle Villalobos.

You got it. That was it.

Villalobos.

Bam.

Anyone can give a presentation. Few deliver unforgettable presentations. What's the difference? You're about to find out. Welcome to the unforgettable presentations podcast with hosts, world champion speakers and coaches, Mark Brown. Mark Brown.

Your life tells a story, and there's someone out there who needs to hear it.

And Darren Lacroix. And Darren Lacroix.

Stage time. Stage time. Stage time.

Ready for some powerful presentation, Ahas. Let's dive right in.

Darren. I never thought I'd practice Spanish on the podcast, so I'm gonna say it right. This Michelle Villalobos.

Nice.

I think I got it right. Michelle, welcome to the unforgettable presentations podcast. Darren, she's here at your invitation, having seen her at your Las Vegas NSA chapter. And you got really jazzed about this, man. Why?

Well, it's one thing to help an emerging speaker, which is good, which I love. It's another thing to help a pro, but when you can actually help a superstar get even better, that's awes. So, Michelle, welcome. How did Mark do on your name first? Let's get that right.

He nailed it. Villalobos. Perfect.

Villobos.

Mark.

Yes.

Nice. And when we sit down behind the coach's curtain, if you will. Mark, why don't you ask the questions? I know, Michelle you sent this ahead of time. But before you can get coach, we've got to understand, as a coach, where are you trying to go? What's your background? Who's your audience? We can't coach unless you plug into the GPS the destination that you're looking for, Mark.

Well, I agree. And very often we gotta think of our target audience and who is gonna hear this. Now, Michelle, you have a broad audience base, and I do know a strong following for women. And I often ask my clients when they're working on a story and a message they wanna really deliver with passion. I said, well, you know, think of a child in your life. You may not be a parent, but you may have somebody who's important to you. A niece, a nephew. And if you were, you knew you were gonna die tomorrow. What one message would you want to leave with that child if you had but one chance to deliver that message? And you have several messages, I'm sure. But in your case, what would that one message be? I'm just curious.

Well, it all comes back in my life and in my work to one word, and that's alignment. And specifically, it is about aligning everything that you do in your life with who you really are, what you really care about, and what you're really here to do on the planet. In my own life, for example, I did a lot of things because I thought I should do them, because other people expected me to do them. And ultimately, that led me down a path of a lot of success on the outside and a lack of fulfillment on the inside. And it wasn't until I started to bring together into alignment my inner world and desires and beliefs and values within with my outer experience, that life became joyful and beautiful and truly successful.

That's awesome. And very often I found also the stories that we tell generally connect with our main themes and our main messages. And the stories that you tell, I'm sure, do the same thing. I love the idea of fulfillment and alignment. So let me ask you this, Michelle. In your broad experience, who is your basic target audience, if any?

So generally, my audience tend to be women. About 80, 90% of my clients end up being women. And they are what I call superstars. So women who are looking to make an impact in the world do work that's meaningful, makes a difference. They want to grow. They want to spread their message and their mission far and wide. And they tend to be overachievers. They tend to get caught up in the doing of things and sometimes can forget about slowing down and getting back to Their core, their essence, their values, and all the things that really matter because they can get caught up in trying to achieve more.

So I would think that part of the way you connect with your audience is through the use of stories. Is that correct?

Yeah, absolutely.

And no doubt your life is full of all kinds of stories that you want to make sure you connect with them and connect, share with them what you have. I'm sure every story you tell has a goal, has an objective, has a place you want to get, especially for these ladies who are overachievers, to really make them see who they can be through your experience. So in terms of your story style, you tend to talk about experiences. What else do you talk about in your stories generally?

Yeah, their experiences. I have a lot of different stories. And I'll be honest, like, part of my issue is that I forget my stories. I don't actually keep track of them. So this is why, even coming up with today's story, I was like, what story can I work on? Well, there's this one that I pretty much always tell and I'd love to fine tune it, but I'm picking up stories all day, every day. Then I'll use them for a day or two and then I'll forget them or a week or two and. And then they're gone so bad.

That's a cool thing. When you're on the hot seat, all of a sudden people just self coach. We're just sitting here. We're only figureheads. But one thing for Michelle, for you, and for everyone listening, one of the things we always recommend is start a story file. Yeah, like just simple word document, Evernote. Ed Tate uses Evernote, whatever format works for you. But here's the key. Don't make it work. Don't make it write out the whole story. Just give yourself a couple bullet points of what was said, dialogue, what saw in that moment to remind you of the story. And if you have an outcome idea. So again, just jot it down, put it on a post it, and then add it to your story file. Add it to your story file.

I have an Evernote system, Michelle, that I have folders for travel experiences and as a kid, what happened. So you can just find a simple way. But the key is, you said I get these stories and then I forget them. Keep a story file. It'll drive you forward and you imply that you have a story you pretty much always tell. It's like that, Michelle Villalobo's signature. What kind of concerns do you have regarding the story that you would want to work on.

I just wanna make it better. I feel like it's got good bones and it already gets a laugh every time. So I know it and it lands for people. Cause I do an evaluation after I speak and I ask what story or concept stood out the most to you. And people always say, the Eugenia story. That's the one that they always remember.

Well, Mark, let's not give away what is the message or what is the goal. And by the way, Mark, just remember we're coaches. Like, just because she's a superstar, you don't have to go easy on her. That's why she's a superstar. You're like, oh, I'm sure all of your stories have goals and I'm sure. Are you sure? Come on.

This isn't.

What. You weren't this nice to me?

She's a whole lot better looking than you, Darren. She is.

She's beautiful. She's stunning. And that's why if you're just listening, you're missing out. Go check out the YouTube version. But Michelle, So why don't you just tell the story. We're going to give you a really quick little intro here, but just go ahead and tell the story and then we'll dissect it, we'll ask you questions about it. So here we go. So let's start with audience applause.

My best friend in college, her name is Eugenia Kim and you may have heard of her actually because she's a little bit famous. We went to college together and I was the good student, I was the overachiever. And Eugenia, although brilliant and she was a pre med major and she, you know, had great, she had great grades and she was one of the few people ever in the history of Dartmouth College to get an A citation in organic chemistry, which is unheard of. She was one of those people that was so brilliant. She had trouble with the day to day easy stuff like crossing a street or paying a parking ticket. And so Eugenia and I made this very unlikely odd couple. I was the kind of the mother in the relationship and Eugenia was kind of like the genius child in the relationship. So we did this for four years where she took all the classes that I took, she used all my notes, I would coach her on all the tests and she basically ended up doing the same major as me so that she wouldn't have to do all that much work. So when we graduated from college, of course, this kind of codependency that we had built, we decided to move to New York City together. And again, I got the job. She kind of was a little bit all over the place. And she struggled in New York City in the beginning to kind of find her way, as did I. And so I ended up actually leaving. And I was more worried about leaving Eugenia than I was worried about anything else. I was like, what is Eugenia going to do without me to guide her and to drive her around and to do all these things for her? And she was worried, too. But I left New York City, and right before leaving, the two of us got together and we did one last thing together. We took a course. We took courses at nyu. I took a filmmaking course, and Eugenia took a hat making course. Well, about four months into the course she had, her final project was to make a hat at the end of her course. And she was wearing the hat down in soho when a famous Hollywood actress saw her with the hat on, fell in love with the hat and asked her where she could buy one. And so Eugenia Kim told her that she'd made it herself and maybe she could make one for her, too. And the famous actress said, sure, and by the way, I can introduce you to my friend who owns a boutique down in soho, and maybe they'll buy your hats. Well, I left New York City and Eugenia started designing hats. One thing led to another, and the soho boutique took on her hats, and she started getting clients. Jennifer Lopez wore one of her hats to the Latin Grammys. And Eugenia became a big celebrity overnight, became a famous hat designer and built and ultimately a multimillion dollar business making hats. And so 12, 13 years later, I invited Eugenia to come to my women's success summit so that I could interview her about how she' built this incredibly effective, successful, money making business when she could barely cross the street by herself. When I left her in New York City, and so she came down to Miami, we sat on a sofa together, and I have this picture of us that I'd love to share. This is the picture of me interviewing her on stage and what she's talking about in this picture. The question that I had asked her was, Eugenia, what do you do all day? And Eugenia started going on and on about how she spends her days shopping, going to museums, getting ideas for hats, being creative, buying fabrics and buttons and things to put on her hats. And I said, eugenia, you don't go to the office who does all the work. She's like, no, I have a whole team that does that for me. My office manager, she doesn't like it when I come in because she says I mess everything up. They like it when I'm out of the office doing my thing, being creative. And this is my face while she's telling me now this is actually my bitch face, as you can see, because I was at the same time realizing that I did not have a team. I didn't have a multimillion dollar business. I had no support. Nobody was telling me to stay out of the office. In fact, I was the one doing everything in my office. And what I realized is that Eugenia had built an entire business, a multimillion dollar business, around her strengths, around her gifts, and surrounded herself with people to support her. Where I had built a business where I did everything, where I was indispensable, and I was the go to person for everything in the business. Because I was so good at doing things and organized and responsible and achievement oriented. I had created a. Basically, I had enslaved myself in my business. And that was the big aha moment I had. And I literally, that same day, at the end of this event, I finished this event, and somebody came over and handed me a plastic bag full of 600 business cards from this event that I had put together where I'd done everything in the business. They'd given me this plastic bag full of business cards, and I could just imagine myself spending hours in front of my computer scanning these business cards in and fixing them one by one myself. And I said, no way. And I kid you not, about two minutes before somebody handed me this bag full of business cards, a girl runs up to me. She says, michelle, Michelle, thank you so much. This event was so great for me. I've just decided to start my virtual assistant business. Can I help you with anything? And I looked at these cards and I was like, here. And that was the beginning of me learning to scale my business and starting to make an intentional effort to align my business with the work that I do best instead of the things that I can do or feel like I should do or other people want me to do.

All right, I have to admit, I've.

Told that story before. Much better, but I was really nervous.

Well, thank you for bringing your courage and nervousness. And we get it because we've seen stories that we've told which we're on it. It's different when you're feeding through a lens, so don't worry about that. We appreciate, but you get the essence of it. Of course. That's why we're here. All right, Mark, do you want to start?

Do I Have to.

No, you don't.

I was wondering where the point was going to go boom between the eyes. And you used a line in this presentation, Michelle, I'm going to go to the back, to the end. You said I had enslaved myself. And I thought for the audience, you would let that line drop and then ping the audience. Do you ever feel like you're a slave to your business?

Yes.

It's a key emotional connection.

Absolutely. Let them feel that right away. So now one of my mantras is, your story is about you, but it's for your audience.

Yes.

So that question now becomes theirs. Are you enslaved by your business? They should feel so gosh darn jealous that someone came and took 600 business cards from you that they now think, for me to be aligned with my purpose and my focus, what do I need to be free from or unshackled from? So you gotta create an atmosphere where they feel that is for them. And I begin at the back because that hit me the hardest, because that's that landing place. Are you enslaved by your business? What do you need to do differently? Starting today, it took you 30 seconds to make a decision to say here. You said one word here. So make that about the audience, and then give yourself some time to let that sink. And hopefully you'll see an audience in person. You'll see their eyes and you'll see the light bulbs go off or you'll see the poke to the neighbor, like, oh, my gosh, wow. And they take notes. Small point. I'll use that one. We'll go back and forth. Darren, your turn. I'm serving to you.

Yeah, Michelle. And for everyone listening to here's one of the cool things is it's a great story for your audience because if we go back, they're overachievers. They don't slow down. So that's one of the reasons this resonates with them. But we can definitely make it stronger for sure. And, Mark, I'm going to offer you to piggyback on this or agree or disagree. One of the things I would do is near the beginning, let us see Eugenia. You don't paint a picture of what she looks like at the beginning. So whenever we have characters, we want to see them and feel them. And I think you spent a little too much time on the backstory of we want to know it, but I think you spent maybe two and a half minutes on that. And it could have been 60 seconds.

One minute.

Yeah, because it's a cool backstory. But to get to it, and to make the punch go deeper, we've got to see what's distracting. So it's tough. And it's like. But that's how I always tell it. That's the tough part. It's like, you gotta relearn your story. So I would say, let us see her and feel her. So I still want that just maybe a little tighter version of how can you succinctly get across that? She was the brain, you are the mom.

She's like a beautiful mind. I could call it like that.

Yeah. But let us visually see her. If you've ever. If you've seen Eugenia, she stands this tall. She's got this beautiful black hair.

Well, actually, it's funny that you say that, because usually when I tell the story, one of the things the story that I tell is like, well, you can imagine Eugenia, she's slightly hunched over and walks a little funny because freshman year we went sledding on cafeteria trays and she broke her back and had to be airlifted to Pennsylvania to get back surgery. She almost never walked again. So she has this. I don't know if that would be part of it.

So you met at Dartmouth or before then, freshman year, and you were the odd couple. You were there four years. You said she chose to do your major because it was easy. Again, I wasn't clear what the major was. I wasn't clear why somebody with a scientific brilliant brain would choose to do something else. Was it because.

Yeah, she started doing pre med, and then it was just. It's a lot of work, but she's brilliant. But she didn't want to do it anymore, so she took my classes. She's like, oh, maybe I'll take psychology with you. And then I'm the one that had to handle all the rats when we did all the experiments.

Okay, so when you said you took my classes, I didn't know what that was. And I've discovered, Michelle, there's sometimes power and contrast. So if we see somebody with a great scientific mind who chooses to do hat design, that contrast in how we view them is also in itself interesting. And how she took this quote, unquote, scientific mind, applied an artistic approach, and that transformed her life, her career, her future. So the contrast in what we expect and what they become can also be a valuable tool. Who she is.

Well, what's interesting, too, is that her story is parallel. She just figured it out earlier because her parents were hard. They're Korean, and they pressured her to do pre med and do all the things like her sister's a doctor. So Eugenia went into school with that sort of thing, and then she liberated herself early on.

Does she knew she was creative early on, you're saying?

I don't think she realized it officially until maybe senior year when she started doing the Delta Delta Delta newsletter. And she started being really creative with that. And her writing is really funny. She's like Einstein smart, so smart, so creative, so visionary that a confining job like a doctor or something was too strict for her. You know what I mean?

Well, I'll let Darren respond to this as well, but what I just heard is behind that little piece about Eugenia. I'm hearing that sometimes within us there are gifts, talents, abilities that don't manifest because we're following someone else's idea of who we should be. Whereas deep inside here is this amazing millenary designer hat maker who you didn't see because she was a smart one, the science one. That was what she did. But who she really was on the inside. How many people do you meet in your work, Michelle, who are doing everyone a job, a career, but Eugenia is inside waiting to come out. And when that Eugenia comes out, look at the result. That could be something. I didn't see that until.

Really either.

But see, they're parts of a character and a situation. If we dig a little bit deeper, we get the aha. That would make sense. All these years through college, she had that seed that was planted, and it only got watered when she was away from home with her crazy friend Michelle.

And away from me. No, because I kept her down, too. Right. I was keeping her confined as well. That's part of the story. And I hope that came through that. Like, here I was thinking I was the adult or whatever, and here was this beautiful gift inside of her that didn't come out until I left.

Yeah. I think it'd be helpful to really magnify the depths of the truth that that was there all along, and it has to finally come out. Darren.

Yeah, I think. And also because you do longer trainings, you could tell this story up front, and later on in the day, you can go back and dissect that little piece. Let's go back to Eugenia. What was it that stopped her? Me. Me. I was the one. Because I was trying to protect her, yet I stifled her creativity.

Nice line.

So you can't necessarily get all. It's a great story with many points, but when you give your keynote or your trainings, you can almost tell another story where you're Dissecting and pulling out all the. Because each time you tell it, it's got to just have one overriding point, and then you can share another piece of it with one overriding point and then share another piece of it with one. But you can't say, so here's what I learned. This, this, and this. From this one story, we're not going to remember it.

As Darren says, Eugenia could, in effect, be a sort of anchor to a specific presentation. As your talk unfolds, as your. As your speech develops and goes through to the end, the audience eventually learns two or three life lessons from your time with Eugenia. As Darren says, part of the story brought this point out. You go along, and then something else comes out, the creativity. Then the third part, being enslaved to our businesses. As all these lessons come from Eugenia's life, but not just one situation. It's her life. And her life parallels the lessons that you want to impart and taught by a third party who didn't even know she was teaching them.

Right?

Right. She's a guru. And not knowing.

Darren, I love your authenticity when you talk about your bitch face and you show it, but that's what connects you. Michelle, I know you know this, but for everyone listening, the fact that she's that transparent and tells the story, if you haven't seen the picture, if you're listening to the podcast, it's this beautiful couch. She's Eugenia just sitting there telling her story. And Michelle is over there like, mmm, scowling. That's the only way to get that across audibly. Michelle, here's one observation. Because there's so much to this and there's so many ideas popping up, one of the phrases, one of the terms that we've learned is what's your foundational phrase? So each time you have that story, what's that phrase that we remember that we take away? So you said that after people mention the Eugenia story, they say, your bitch face. Your bitch face. Okay, but here's what I would love them to. Let's go one more where they say something to the effect of I need to say here more. Okay. Because it's your bitch face. Yes. Thank you. But it's. What do I need? What's the lesson for me? I need to say hear more. So we call it a foundational phrase. Each great story should have that phrase that encapsulates what you're trying to get across. That is 10 words or fewer that they walk away with that phrase in their head because it's not about what happens in that moment. It's when three days, three weeks, three months later, when they get back to their office and they get the 600 business cards that now they say, I want to be successful here, here.

I can see the wheels turning in Michelle's brain right now.

Now I'm thinking like, here might be a little bit too short. Maybe not, but it could be like, here, I give this to you or I give this up, or I let this go or something like that.

Here kind of wants, like, by the.

Way, I trust you.

And what we say is, you're the CEO of your speech. We're just hired consultants, if you will. That's what I'm adamant about. But what we suggest is try it and see if it becomes sticky, and then try it with the longer phrase and see what you start getting. We're not the ultimate judge. We're just. You've told this story, you've lived this story. We're just the outsiders that are trained in this, that say, how about this? Forgive my adamancy. But when you can say it in a word, but it's the gesture or the body movement that goes with it. And then the smile on your face, Michelle, when you go, I know everyone watching can't see. See my face. But if you're watching the YouTube, when all of a sudden the revelation hits you.

Here, here.

So you're first. We need to see the emotional shift that the first reaction is. That one, you're like, oh, crap, there goes five days out of my life to enter 600 cards. We need to see that thought and then see the revelation hit you and then see the joy. It's like a mini story just in that little moment. Does that make sense? One of the tools, just listening of other possibilities. One of the tools that Mark and I like as a tool for creating a foundational phrase is rhymer.com where you put in words and it gives you all the words that rhyme. So one of the other sticky words that you have is enslave.

Brave.

Yeah, you gotta be. If you feeling enslaved, you've gotta be brave. You gotta be brave.

Something like that.

If you remain enslaved, you'll go right to your grave.

Your grave.

And again, these are dorky. I'm a dorkable. But play with it until you get that one that goes, bam, that's it. So you got to play with dorky ones. So that's enslave. And then what if it was here?

That's a lot of rhymes. And rhymer gives you 1 syllable, 2 syllable, 3 syllable, 4 syllable rhymes. It can really get out of control.

Like feel.

The fear is you look for a rhyming phrase and you come up with a. There'll be a rhythm to it, there'll be feel, it'll be catchy, it'll be sticky, and it'll be very effective. And if you couple the action, you know, when you say, here, it's fine, but the face changes the action, you get to a point in your story. Michelle, I can almost guarantee, is it. Darren T. Said, almost guarantee. You get to a point in your presentation, you could say, not say it, just do it. And the audience gets it. When a thread runs through a presentation or a story, that's what happens. The audience will eventually see it and it'll just connect. Yep, I'm releasing it, I'm letting it go. I'm letting somebody else do this for me. And I'm now free to be creative and I'm now liberated to walk in my purpose, and I'm now more fully aligned because I don't have to deal with it anymore. Thank you, Eugenia.

Darren, two quick thoughts. One is you could just. Again being playful, Michelle. Forgive my dorkiness. By the way, if you're listening to podcasts and you hear typing, that's Michelle taking notes.

Oh, my God, I forgot.

No, no, no, no, it's great.

That's great.

We want you to. We want you to take notes. I just want the audience to know that we were still respecting them. And. And you're taking notes, which is a good thing. So it could even be, forgive this, but you could even be, when you're trying to not be enslaved anymore, when you feel fear or you're gonna feel fear right before you say here, here. So that's one idea. Like, just remind them. It's. It's scary. They're making a change in their life that they need to make another idea. And again, you got to see what works for Michelle. Mark. I think of Ed Tate, when Ed Tate gets the audience to do something. So after you say that line, you could say to the audience, okay, turn to the person right to you and say, here. Turn the person left of you and say here. Just getting them to do that. And then what's going to happen after on break and in the hallways is, I need to say here more. Then it becomes about them. Mark.

Now I gotta agree. Because part of what you do so well, Michelle, is when you connect with these audiences, I see the evidence. You get the hugs in the hallway, you get the thank yous because they get the aha's and the revelations and just the act of having them stand and hand their burden to the person next to them. They're physically involved in that action. It almost prompts them to then do so when they get back to their place of business. It's subtle, but it really is very effective. They find themselves going here. And when you use the facial expression and the contrast, the before and the after and the relief you felt, draw on that emotion you felt that day. And when you relive that emotion, it'll come through when you deliver the presentation and you will meet those individuals who are going to say, I got to figure out how I get to say here to somebody else. I mean, this is potentially. It already is very effective. I can envision individuals really taking action in response to the way you tell the story. I go back to what Darren said earlier. I forget who it was. Darren says, you want to get there quicker. So the setup has to be tight enough to let us see Eugenia in college and then to understand the relationship you had and more clearly. See, when you say I was the mom, it wasn't clear to us that. That it meant you were sifling your creativity. We gotta clarify that so we can see what you did, how she transformed, and then the wonderful envy you felt at the end of the day when she was doing all this with her hands free, and you're like, I want to do what she does. How do you do that?

Yeah, you got to plant that seed of being a little overbearing, how hard you were. Go ahead. Now, in the seed of being protective, like, no, no, no, don't do that. Or whatever, in your way, succinctly, but that way you can call back to it better if the seeds planted better. And one other idea, too, is. I don't remember exactly how you said it, but set up the fact that you were. But set up the fact that you were so excited to be on the stage with this amazing woman and what she's done, and so give us that joy. And then set the scene. You know, here we are in this beautiful white leather couch. Before we see the picture, that way we picture the white couch. Okay. Just like I want to picture her hat. I don't remember if you said the color of that first hat, but mention the color of the hat. We are visual story listeners. We need you to use our love language, if you will, that way we see the scene. And I know we're tight with time here, but, Mark, do you have anything else before we kind of Wrap this up.

Yeah. One more thing. I put a star next to this. Use the phrase that she built her business around her gifts and her strengths. One time in the story. A line like that. Are you building your business around your gifts and your strengths, or are you busy doing you ask your audience that question. So when you have powerful lines, I Recommend using them 2, 3 times in the presentation, not just in the story. Call back to them. Building around your gifts and her strengths. Or are you being slaved by the day? Are you being enslaved by the day to day? Those lines combined can be really powerful to rattle your audience's chain. And, you know, you don't want to make them always feel comfortable. You want to rattle their chain. So think about how you can use those kinds of phrases to go back to the audience, not just tell a story, but make it meaningful to them as well.

Darren, you could also ask the question after the story. What are your 600 business cards?

What's holding you back?

What is that? Where do you have to say here more often?

What's enslaving you?

These are just ideas. Again, Michelle, thank you so much for letting us do this. I love working with superstars. Because, Mark, maybe since we've never done this before, maybe we even do a part two where we invite Michelle back after she's reinvented this story and let's see what changes she's made and what she hears after the fact. So, Michelle, if you're willing to, we'd love to have you back and kind of see part two, the conclusion, the epilogue, if you will.

Yeah, I'd love to know what your thoughts are. Now, Michelle, anything you picked up that was really helpful to you today?

Oh, my God, all of it. This is so good. I want to go through all my stories with you guys. This is amazing. Specifically the part about the pausing after I'd enslaved myself in my business and then asking, are you enslaved by your business? Right. And like, hello, I know better. Right. And so absolutely turning it back to them. The fact that this here was so powerful never dawned on me. Never thought that that was a powerful moment. And in fact, I have drawn it out before where I've. Where I've received the cards, and I make a face, and I'm like, oh, right, because I had the flu that day. I was on massive doses of theraflu. Yeah, I forgot that part of the story.

It is a part of the.

Michelle, we want to. Oh, my goodness. See the context. I'll say this clearly. Get this, Michelle. Context promotes the contrast. Now, you're feeling lousy, you're feeling terrible, you're all stuffed up. You get this done and you're trying to be happy. And I got 600 and you're envisioning I gotta scan 600. Have you ever had to scan 600 business cards? I'm thinking, are you kidding me? And all of a sudden, this young girl who I've known so and so, and she was all bubbly. Michelle, I can't listen. I'm a brand new listen. Can I help you? What?

Here.

But take us through the emotions of it. All of a sudden you're sick, you're bedraggled, you're dying. And this one offer to help lifts you. The shackles fall off, you're no longer enslaved because you said one word, you said here. You can do so much with it. Okay, one more thing that jumped out at you before we close today. Michelle. She's still typing. You can hear it?

Yes. I'm sorry, I keep forgetting to mute myself.

Don't worry.

This is good. This is real.

This is why we're here.

Love it. One more thing that popped up that popped at you real quick.

Oh, at me. Okay. Sorry, I thought you were going to tell me. Another thing that popped out at you.

No, asking you.

The other piece is that having this phrase, this foundational phrase I give, you know, the here and. Or something else. And the rhyming is so great. I mean, I already have like a whole bunch of rhymes. Oh, you know, I have the. When you decide to say here, the solution will appear.

Or you could say. Or you could flip it. Put the other part first. The solution will appear after I decide to say here. After you say here.

When you finally say here.

And in that case, here becomes the punch word, as in the last word in a sentence one day. Remember, we like to use. We call punch words and punch phrases. Like someone asked me to do a voiceover for him recently and he was saying, book Mark Brown for your next event. And I told him, no, I'm going to redo that for your next event. Book Mark Brown. So they hear the punch phrase. Yeah, they hear your name last. So a punch word. Punch phrase. And we learned that from Fripp. It's so powerful. And when you do that, they'll see themselves in that moment having that similar experience. This has been a joy for me to be a part of this. I'm loving this. Thank you.

I do too. Thank you.

And Michelle, what would you say to another pro who is thinking about, should I get coached? Is it worth it. What would you say?

Oh my gosh. Well, first of all, like, I believe in coaching myself. I invest in it. And in fact, when I started investing in coaching is when my business really took off. I'm a huge believer and if look what we did in 20 or 30 minutes, imagine what you could do over the course of a year. So absolutely, I highly recommend this.

Well, thanks for being with us. Thanks for having the courage. And seriously, let us know if you want to come back and tell us how the story has changed and even more importantly, what you hear for comments after. If the comments after have changed, instead of just saying that story about your friend, it's here's what I'm going to do. Like that's a huge. So thanks for having the courage.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

If you're listening to this, we're having a conference coming up September 1st and 2nd called Game Changers. If you want to join us for that, we got Ford Sakes, Mark Brown, Ed Tate, Jennifer Joseph Lear who owns a speaker's bureau, and even maybe Mark Eaton, NBA all star. So it's our one event we do a year. We get all the faculty together. So check out stage time alone. Michelle, if people want to get a hold of you, where would they go?

They would probably just start with my main website. Everything comes from there. So superstaractivator.com all right star.

Activator.com so much better when he says sorry. All right. Hey Michelle, thanks for being with us. We hope this has been helpful and for you listening this podcast, we hope this has been helpful for you. There's such a power in coaching. They unlock what you can't unlock yourself. They see things you can't see yourself. Mark Brown, Take us home friends.

It's wonderful to help people. We all continue to learn, we all continue to grow and if we do that, I can guarantee you will be unforgettable. See you next week.

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