YouTube Channel: @dothethingformula

Hi Wende.

Hi Stacy. Happy Monday. I know.

I am so excited to do this with you. I feel like whether we talk privately or we get to do these lives, I think I get to know you more and more. And just the incredible and immense depth of the work that you do and the people that you're able to help and the impact that it can have on people and I think that's been really powerful to be able to witness.

Oh, I appreciate that. In fact, I have goosebumps because it is amazing when people can see you and in this world with all this noise, sometimes that's a little hard to find. So thank you.

Yeah. Yeah. So I'd love to. For people that don't know you, I know a lot of people in the community know you, but for anyone that doesn't know you, do you want to just share what you do and who you help and then we can get into our fun topic.

So I'm on career number four.

I started out teaching and running youth and family services for the YMCA in my home state of Maryland and then I moved to California and became part of the leadership team of a fintech startup in San Francisco, became the VP of operations. We had a hundred million dollar exit in 2003 and then I started management consulting in a boutique firm with worked with Fortune 500 with Venture backed tech startups and started a career coaching side gig 20 years ago while I was doing all the management consulting stuff and four years ago decided to move to Music city. So my LinkedIn profile says left my heart in San Francisco for life in Music City. And I am a classical musician. I have been a serious piano player since I was seven years old. I have sung classical music for 44 years and so kind of interesting. I'm in the country music capital but it's not just country music city. So I now work with four different kinds of people. So I've got the career coaching thing and that's everything from people coming out of school. I have a client right now, just graduated to a career cmo. We're going after his first CEO job and so been doing that for a long time, for 20 years. But I also work with entrepreneurs who've gotten their businesses growing off the ground using Facebook and or Instagram, getting them comfortable with LinkedIn and why LinkedIn works for them. And then I also am an ADHD coach, usually focused with tech startup founders. But a lot of my other two categories definitely fall in that camp. So definitely I said four. It's actually three. I couldn't count this morning. And that's funny because I'm a math geek. So the third is working with tech startup founders. I literally moved here in large part to work with the tech startup community here. And because life threw me a few curveballs right about the time that I moved here. And we'll talk about them later, I've just started really dialing into that community, and I'm so excited because the people I meet here are amazing. And I'm now finally launching my dinner salons that I used to throw in San Francisco. And here they're going to have a tech and music thing. So tech meets music, music meets tech. So I'm bringing together my left brain and my right brain, which is a huge part of my focus in my life right now, and bringing together my people and doing it in an amazing way, and collaborating with a tech founder here who has a great app that's going to help me manage all the things.

So as I'm listening to you tell your background, right. I'm just sitting here like, oh, my gosh, it could blow you in a way. And I'm kind of about to wanting to make a joke of, oh, underachiever, you know, kind of thing.

Done. But here's what's interesting, is I started working with you in a lot of different capacities, and it's not because of any of that.

No, it isn't, is it?

Yeah. I started working with you because, well, we were in a common group and that's how we met. But I started to see you sharing posts on Facebook.

Yeah. About.

You mentioned earlier about some things that we'll talk about it, but some things that happened. Right. And how you were feeling about it, and then I got to learn what you do, and that's when I wanted to bring you into my community, and that's what called me into you. And I think a lot of people don't realize that all of this stuff that we do, it's there. But the thing that gets us to want to be in the person's world at every moment is when we can connect to that hurt and who they are.

Yes. Yes. Should we talk about that?

Yeah, let's do that.

So, okay, so I mentioned that I got hit with some curveballs when I moved here. So the curveball was I moved here with my late husband and. And I actually had had some very serious health problems before we moved here. In fact, that's why we moved here is because I got diseases caused by mold in the house I rented for 25 years in San Francisco. So if there was anyone caregiving, it was him taking care of me. And I worked from bed when I was at my sickest build, 70 hours a week that way. So we move here. I started getting better because the house didn't have mold. And he was diagnosed with metastatic cancer. And so from fall 2020 until August 2023, I was on a caregiving journey and on a fight of our lives. And for a long time it looked like we were winning it. So what happened is I barely knew anyone here when he passed away because we moved here during COVID and I was totally focused on him and basically career coaching on the side part time and trying to learn everything I could to turn my coaching business into my full time income. So I basically had one friend.

In Nashville. And what happened that first month is I was basically not alone for one month. So the one friend showed up that night. It was her wife's 40th birthday, and she showed up and spent the night with me. She left a party of people at her house and spent the night. And then one of my absolute best friends in adult life got on a plane 12 hours after he passed away. And I had a dear neighbor who didn't even know his name, who spent time with me in between all that, starting with that friend who got on that plane. And then I have five best friends from seventh grade, and four of them are men. One woman and two of the men. And one of the women took weeks. And my sister was here the week of the burial. And I have a high school classmate who is a songwriter here in Nashville, has been here 20 years. And on the day of the burial, he showed up at my house. He was the person who answered the doors. People came. It was like having a brother here. So for that month, I just was totally supported by my community. It was amazing. And then Labor Day weekend, I was on my own in a city where I basically knew no one. And it was time to reinvent myself. And so I started thinking about the things that were most important to me 20 years ago when I met him and doing them. So I went back to singing. I had sung during a lot of our life together, but certainly hadn't sung since we'd gotten here. I'd already knew where I wanted to sing. So I reached out to the choir director and said, here's my resume of singing. Do you want me? And he's like, heck yes. When can you start? And that choir loft is my happy place. And then I had another interest. I met my first friend here through that And I started networking with people I had met during those first few years I was here now. One of my closest friends here who runs an amazing tech startup community. She and I met at a Starbucks with her kindergartener. Just amazing, amazing. Starting to really put down roots. So then I decided that I wanted to talk about this stuff on Facebook. And at first I just did it because I needed to do it. And then I started to wonder. I do marketing for my business on Facebook. I'm not sure this is such a good idea. And I thought about it, but I kept doing it. And then people started writing to me privately and saying, your posts about your grief journey are helping me. Thank you. And people would write, you know, nice things like, you're inspiring. I think they meant them. They weren't just squishy, they really meant them. But I started realizing. And then I would get 50, 75 emojis, 1525 comments. None of my content ever got stuff like that. And I thought, okay, from a practical thing, Facebook now thinks that what I write is important.

But more importantly, this was good for me. But I am a pretty private person and definitely not known for being very emotionally expressive. I am the kind of calm and clarity. Right. You know, and yeah, you've said that. And you're not alone. Right. So it was really kind of odd for me to be that expressive because I'm usually all about everybody else.

Not just in my marriage, but my whole life, everywhere, all of my relationships. And so it was interesting just sharing this journey and the different things I was doing and whatever, and seeing its impact. And it just. I'm sure it was game changing for me. I know that I healed faster and better because of that, and I know that I had impact, and that's just pretty amazing.

Yeah. And I'd love to know, when you said I needed to do it at first, you were doing it for yourself. Was it a way of processing and it helped it get out of your head?

Well, I think in part it was because I was used to a constant stream of conversation, and now that person was gone. And I didn't have a workplace I was going to, and I didn't have a ton of friends here. And the choir people are amazing, but they just met me, and most of the time we're together, we are singing. We're not talking to each other. So I think it was just. It was almost as if I was calling best friends, but instead I was writing, which is actually also historically, I was an introvert. So I would prefer to write right from the Second, I could write at a very early age. That was my preferred communication thing. So for me, writing it was just. And it was almost like writing about, okay, well, I got through this today, or this day was hard, but then this thing happened and just sharing that stuff was huge. Did that answer your question?

It totally did, yeah. It just makes me think. I love being able to process things real time, especially because I'm the same way. I used to suck in anything I could suck in. Yes.

I Achiever mode. Who has time for that? Yes.

Yeah, well. And if you're the boss of. You've been the boss of a lot of people. I had 400 people reporting to me. And back in the YMCA days, in the summertime with day camps, it was 200. My emotions were irrelevant. My job was to lead a team and get stuff done and support them if stuff was going on for them emotionally. That was my job.

So, yeah. Wow. Yeah. And then when you get to see that, you're able to process it and then share it, and then as soon as you hear someone say, oh, wow, I needed to be hear that, then all of a sudden opens the store of, wait, what?

I'm like, oh, my goodness here. I think I've been valuable in people's lives for these things, but I was letting them in on, first of all, rebuilding. I have a choir friend who at one point, I was joking on a post in the last couple of months, and I was like, I think we need Wendy 3.0 T shirts. And she's like, you should do that.

And 3.0. Obviously, I've had multiple careers, but 3.0 was before him, after him. That's where 3.0 comes.

Yeah.

So I'm still. Do the T shirts. If so, I'll send you one. Yeah.

And we titled this, this finding voice on LinkedIn. I laughed because this was like five.

Minutes before, like, what should we call this thing? What should we call.

Let's play this Doing the Thing. And so what was so perfect about this title is really what everyone is concerned about, is putting yourself out there to everyone. And you were uncomfortable sharing this on LinkedIn.

Yes, let me talk about that. So there were a couple reasons for that. So there was something about him. So he was incredibly private. He had a pseudonym by which I referred to him on Facebook. So it took several months after he passed before I ever posted a photo or referred to him by name. That's not really driving anything at this point. You know, we're almost 14 months. Yeah. I'm in a very different place at this point, very focused on my new life and really happy to be in the place I'm in. But I did want to be very conscious about how I did this on LinkedIn. Now the reality is LinkedIn changed dramatically during COVID So because people didn't have enough access to in person relationship, they needed to become more expressive online because it was their only human contact. So LinkedIn did shift a lot. And so people are often amazed. They're like, I'm a menopause coach or I'm a relationship coach. And I'm like, you're going to come to my LinkedIn profile and I'm going to interview you and it's going to be appropriate. And they're like, wow. But the reality is that I very consciously planned when I was going to do it. And then very uncharacteristic for Wendy didn't do it when I said I was going to do it, which is very not like me. So people who know me way back are like, oh my God, she didn't do it when she said she would do it. But I was going to do it the weekend of the first anniversary of his passing. And then I decided to just totally go into self care mode. That weekend I had the most amazing weekend. It was so powerful and so wonderful. So later that month I did finally start talking a little bit about it. But I am launching a podcast, as you know. And the podcast idea really came sitting in the choir loft on a Sunday morning when my amazing senior pastor was giving one of his wonderful sermons and I was totally not listening to him. And I was thinking, what could I do in a podcast that addresses all of my people, all three of my customer types.

And then added bonus if it taps into the journey I've just been through. And so podcast focused on Pivots.

Was born in the choir loft at Westminster Presbyterian Church in West End, Nashville. And so, yes, so that opening when I actually pulled the trigger and start scheduling in the process of recording different people. So I have a bunch of recordings because I am executive functioned. I'm a rare gifted person who has high executive function and that's why I love my ADHD people, because they don't and they need that from me. But the first episode is going to be me telling that story and these are going to be aired on LinkedIn. But I have started talking, there have been drips, I've done it in comments on people's posts. I've done it when I launched a series of lives on the connected network and nurturing Your network, which is a big thing I'm into these days. So that once a week I've got something on the nurtured network. And the first one of those, I talked about it. So it is now part of my LinkedIn world too.

Yeah. And so there's so many things so important about this for people to know because everyone always asks me, how do you get some people to show up to your stuff? How do you get people to buy all the stuff? Right. And we just talked about your incredible background and all the things that you do. And then it's not that it was me seeing your heart. Right. Was what?

Yes, yes.

That. And then the fact that you just shared that you weren't yet ready to put it on LinkedIn. You had to almost. It's a, you know, I teach in comfort circles. Yeah. Get it out. You put it on Facebook, it got started. You waited a while.

Yeah. Very while. Yeah. In fact, by the time I talked about it on LinkedIn, it was no longer an act. I was in such a different place. I'm no longer in active grief mode. I'm totally focused on all these things. Having, building relationships and having, creating this great life for myself. And any stressors in my life are things around that I'm not in that place I was in. And so that now it's just an integrated part of my story. But it can be helpful and I know that. And so I did really wait until I was in that place to some degree. But that wasn't conscious decision. It was just what worked for me. And so when I talk to people about, say, their LinkedIn strategy, we'll talk about, well, what's different about the audience on Facebook versus LinkedIn? My audiences are different in the two places. I have a client I worked with who is a menopause coach and like me, she comes out of tech. In fact, one of the places where she was a big time salesperson was a place where I tripled the size of the sales organization as a talent strategist. Company's now gone public. So she and I had that bond in, in common. And she gets on LinkedIn and starts talking about menopause. And she has men of the same age as menopausal women reaching out to her saying, hey, I could use some help. Can you help me?

And her network on LinkedIn is dominantly male because she was like me, the only woman in the room a lot in her tech career. And so we were like, oh, okay, it's not who you want to help. It's not the thing you studied, but can you help them? Oh, yes. Okay, well, right now we want to make some money. So let's actually go in that you have an audience on LinkedIn of 40 and 50 something men and sometimes stuff goes on in the world too at that age and you can help them. So that's an example of sometimes we just want to think about what is our audience there or what audience is there that we can cultivate and what version of you is going to show up. Because right now LinkedIn is so dominated by people using AI stuff that it's totally messed up the algorithms and it's depressing reach. And I've just had my two best weeks in a year.

Because I'm writing real stuff.

Yeah, it's almost easy now. Right. When you find a voice on LinkedIn, you're competing with the chat bots. Pretty much.

Exactly. Yeah. And I am no chatbot.

Yeah, yeah. You know, I love what you did is you were looking for the commonality with the three. Three things.

Yes.

What do they all have in common? Because face value, they don't have anything in common. Career people are not risk takers. They do not engage with your content publicly. So all the stuff that requires that is your process, that is not going to work. Then you've got your entrepreneurs who are terrified of LinkedIn. They might have a profile from when they last had a day job. And then I've got my techies and they're all over the map facing squirrels and building code and half of them have autism and almost all of them have adhd. And so they all have to pivot. Every one of those populations has had to pivot at some point.

And this is so important too, because I love finding the pattern, I love finding the commonality, because that's where the gold is. So that's why I came up with the do the thing formula was I found what was in common with all the people and I just did this yesterday. So I had already had the live scheduled with Jackie lacroix. She's a million dollar brand strategist offer. Anyway, she's amazing. I recently met her through I lean wilder and we had a live scheduled on Tuesday and I was using it as part of my wealth experiment to invite people to the find your voice challenge. And then all of a sudden I'm doing all these polls in my groups because now that my TEDx talk is over, I have some extra time, which is weird.

Yeah, there's, there's Stacy everywhere now because.

We'Re post TEDx yeah, exactly. And so now I'm like, okay, cool. I want to do some workshops, help people. I have people. My audiences are really wide. Right. I have community. I have the collaboration network, and then I have the challenge group. And so I started doing polls in each of those groups. I'm like, what do you guys want? And so it went from, I want more collaboration partners. I want people to show up to my stuff. I want to be more visible online, too. I want to date in real life. I want to have more self love. I want to get out of my comfort zone. And then the commonality with all of it is no one wants their dreams to die.

Yeah.

Dream. And so now I decided I'm doing this mini master class tomorrow where it's basically, don't let your dreams go to the graveyard because it's so powerful.

So powerful. I call it my no regrets practice. It is one of the reasons that I survived the first week. Yeah. Because we had lived the last four months as if we knew they were the last four months. And it was like, wow. I didn't know.

Yeah.

But I did all the things, and I was like, wow. And now I'm thinking about, so what impact do I want to have? What things do I want to do? What makes me happy? Who do I want to be with? All of that stuff. So I love this thing you're doing tomorrow.

Yeah. And I think it comes down to being able to. And since we talk about finding your voice. Right. Let your thoughts out of your head so then you can see the patterns. Because I don't think you could see it. I don't think you see the pivot. And I don't think I'd be able to see the dreams if we were too in our head. No.

And I will tell you, the find your voice is really powerful for me right now. And working with you in the background on that, because I've been singing, as I said, for 40 plus years. Right. And the medicines that saved my life did some damage to my vocal cords, and I had to work to rebuild them. So just last month, I auditioned for two ensembles in Nashville, and I bombed the auditions. Not because my voice, when it's working right, is not good enough, but because I got a little bit of cold and sounded like a lifelong smoker. So I'm working with this amazing friend who sings in elite choruses and sits kind of next to me in rehearsals, and we've been working on building my voice, and when I sing alone to her in our first lesson, I didn't sound Like I sound in rehearsal, I had this teeny, tiny little voice, and she said, wendy, your speaking voice is so rich and has this power. And why is it when we're alone? And then I started thinking about my voice, literally, figuratively, symbolically, what makes me want to shrink my voice, what constrains my voice. And then a couple days after I had that first lesson with her, a friend of mine is doing breathwork certification, and she needs people to get her hours to get her certificate. And then you have to fill out a form every time and tell her boss lady how well she did. Right. So I had a session with her, and the next thing we're talking about throat chakras and throat stuff. And I'm like, look at this all coming together. And you and I are talking about find your voice. And I'm literally.

Looking to find the voice that I know that I have that is Nashville Symphony chorus worthy. Wow. And getting it not just back, but letting it actually happen and making that constrained. That my beloved choir director in San Francisco, when he heard me sing once, he's like, your voice is constrained. And I thought, I think all of me is constrained. That's kind of an interesting insight. So all I'm saying is, find your voice is way bigger than people might think. And my voice lessons are way bigger than people might think.

Yeah. There's so many levels to it. I was thinking about it this morning because I think a lot of people, they'll think when you say, than finding your voice. And this is why I think it's so related to not letting your dreams.

Yes, it is.

Inside is because, well, first you have to figure out what you want. Right. What do I even want? There's so many people that have too many ideas, and so then they're trying to figure out what's the one thing they want to do. Right. And so that's your voice and what makes you actually feel alive. You put yourself out there and you're doing this thing, but then you get caught in this trap and you think, okay, now I need to be like everyone else who's doing the thing. And so then you're judging yourself or you're looking into comparison or imposter syndrome or self doubt or whatever comes up. But then you have to find your voice again. And then you reach that goal, and then all of a sudden you do it again and it keeps coming up. And so you have to almost always tap in. You always have to who you are. Yes. And none of these other and who.

You are right now because I mean, that's where Wendy 3.0 came up. Because it was like, okay, and you really. It's probably Wendy 7.0. But whatever. The point is, is what is right now Wendy, and who needs her? Who does she need? How does she show up? What is her voice now?

Yeah.

And I help my people do that. In fact, at some point, it might just boil down to, I'm the pivot coach.

Yeah.

Yeah. And that's it. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, please share for anyone that would like to know more about you, work with you, do all the things with you. How will they do that?

So three great places to find me. So on LinkedIn, I am the original Wendy Taylor on LinkedIn. I joined in April 2004. So it's LinkedIn.com in WendyTaylor. There's no numbers. I am wearing orange because, let's see here, I like orange. And then on Facebook, I was the second Wendy Taylor. So Wendy Taylor one, also orange outfit. And then on Instagram, I'm WendyTaylor8 and that currently is just food and nature photography, but that's going to change this month. So, anyway, so those are the places to find me. When you connect, send me a message, tell me that you found me here and tell me what part of the story was like, oh, my God, you're my person, so I know the best way that I can support you. Yeah.

And what do you think would be just some final advice on people finding their voice on this?

So.

You can do this on your own or you can get help from me on this, but go spend a little time on there and figure out which of your people are there. I didn't say if your people are there. I said which of your people are there? And it could be your peoples and customers. It can be your people as people who have audiences of your customers. Not that you're going to poach because that's not how this good girl plays, but referral partners, people with audiences, all of those things. People that inspire you, people that can mentor you, people that can coach you. And coaches and mentors are two different things. But all of that. And if it feels overwhelming and you need calm and clarity, then you know where to come.

Ooh, I love that. So clear. Yes. Calm and clarity. I love it. It's amazing. I love every time we get a chance to do this together.

I know. It's always so much fun.

And for those of you that would like to join, find your voice. Wendy's actually going to be joining too this round. It starts on Monday, the door is closed for it this Friday, and you just go to do the thing, find your voice dot com. And then for those of you that would like to come to the mini Master class, I'll put that link in the. Whatever.

Whatever. It'll be there.

Yeah.

And my audience, y' all are going to be seeing this at some point. So I noticed, y', all, I've only been here four years and I'm already yelling. Yeah, there you go.

Oh, my gosh. Well, all right, you guys do the thing. Don't wait for opportunity. Create it. Bye.