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Heather Monahan: Transforming a Setback into a Bold Comeback · The Bold Lounge

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge podcast.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: My name is Leigh Burgess and I will be your host.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: If you're anything like me, you love hearing inspiring stories of people who have gone on bold journeys and made a positive impact in the world.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: This podcast is all about those kinds of stories.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Every week, we'll hear from someone who has taken a leap or embarked on an extraordinary journey.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: In addition to hearing their stories, we'll also learn about their bold growth mindset that they use to make things happen.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Whether they face challenges or doubts along the way, they persisted and ultimately achieved their goals.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: These impactful stories will leave you feeling motivated and inspired to pursue your own bold journey.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I believe everyone has a bold story waiting to be freed.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Tune in and get ready to be inspired.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Today I have Heather Monaghan.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: She is actually a fellow New Englander which I found out which is pretty fabulous and excited to share her bold journey with you through the podcast today.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Welcome, heather.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Thanks for having me.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: I'm excited to be here.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Wonderful, I thought it'd be great, since you have such a wonderful background and such a unique way of kind of coming into where you are now, if you could just do a quick introduction of yourself for us.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Sure, my career was primarily spent in the media business.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: I started in radio after college and ultimately made my way to the C-suite as a chief revenue officer, being named as one of the most influential women in radio in 2017.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: And then, in fourth quarter of that year, I was unexpectedly fired when the CEO I had worked for for 14 years became ill and he elevated his daughter to replace him.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: She fired me immediately.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: I had an 18 month non-compete non-solicit, which meant I had to start over somewhere on my own as a rookie.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: You know outside of the industry that I had expertise in, and so I took that opportunity to write and self-publish my first book Confidence Creator.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: That book trumped Donald Trump for number one in the business biography list the first week it came out and did really, really well, thank goodness, and that led me to launching.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: I Googled how do you sell books?
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: And it said speak.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: And I had been speaking for 20 years in corporate but I had never been paid, so I had no idea about the speaking business.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: So I Googled you know what are speakers making?
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: And I found out Gary Vaynerchuk was getting paid 350,000 a keynote.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: So I decided to really laser focus on the speaking business.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: I delivered my TEDx talk, which was promoted to TED and translated into five languages, and my speaking business blew up.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: Then COVID hit and everything disappeared, and so I got to start over again.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: And so then, when I started over during COVID, I became a virtual speaker, and then I became a consultant, and then I became an executive coach and all these different things that I could do from home through the computer.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: So I built out all these different pieces of my business.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: I never thought I would have Launched my podcast in 2019 and landed a board seat during all this time Signed with HarperCollins leadership.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: During this time wrote a second book, overcome your Villains.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: And here we are today.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: All right, so in a fairly short period of time.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: So, when you know, one of the things on your website which is really cool, which everyone should check out, is kind of the timeline of things that you've experienced and things that you've accomplished, and sometimes it might not feel quick to someone going through it, but with someone else on the outside looking at it's like wow, from 2017 to now, it's only been seven years, and so, in seeing some of the things that have just happened in the last seven years or the last 10 years, incredible accomplishments.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: So congratulations for that, because it takes a lot of bold moves to do many, many, many of the things that you described.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: I'm excited to jump into talking about bold with you.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: So what do you describe or what would you define bold as in your life?
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: Bold to me would mean acting from a place of courage, regardless of what other people think, moving past fear and just stepping into.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: You know whatever your intuition is telling you to do, basically disregarding what other people might tell you is possible for yourself.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Right, because it can be very limiting on many levels.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: It could be well-intended but misguided, in the sense of trying to protect you or trying to keep you from something that they may fear.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: So really listening to yourself, listening to your inner voice, really, and having the courage, regardless of what other people are thinking, to move forward and make those decisions that you need to make.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: I love that definition.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: So when you think about that definition for you, what's a moment in your trajectory that that comes up for you where you just said I'm doing it and regardless, I'm, you know, kind of shushing out or silencing the noise outside?
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: Well, as I had mentioned, I had a 20 plus track record of success years in media, in sales and sales leadership and a lot of people just saw me in that box and I ultimately did in some regards as well.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: But when I was fired, I had that non-compete.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: So I had 18 months and I, you know, I'm a single mom and I had to figure out a way to make money.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: And I thought to myself, well, I can't just be this one thing anymore.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: I can't just be this one thing anymore.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: I can't just be, you know, an executive leader in sales and sales leadership in the media business.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: Because I'm not allowed to anymore.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: I had to start over somewhere else.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: So I remember I had to let go of those labels, I had to let go of that proverbial box and ultimately reimagine myself adding value, contributing and doing something of value somewhere else.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: And so that was really the first major, bold move I made was writing my first book and self-publishing Confidence Creator, not knowing how it would do, not knowing if I'd sell one copy, not knowing if it would drive revenue, not knowing I'd never done it before.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: And anytime you start over as a beginner somewhere, you're starting over with no experience.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: It definitely was a scary move.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: My family told me not to do it.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: My sister's an attorney.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: She told me I was going to get sued, right.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: I had plenty of people coming at me telling me that I couldn't do this and I decided to listen to the one voice that really matters, and that's your own, and my inner voice told me to do it, and I'm so grateful I did.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a couple of things and I just want to unpack a little bit.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: So, one of the things I think is easy to see ourselves in a box or as a specific convention of like how we were supposed to go through our careers and our life.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: You know, for me I was in the corporate health care world very, you know, defined this is how you move up, this is how you get promoted, this is what you got to do, years of experience, all of that and for me, like becoming an entrepreneur, really in an unplanned way, it was this moment of freedom.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: I don't know how to describe it, but it felt more free.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: It definitely had scary moments and every now and then still has them, but I think, you know, for me it's not being fearless, but I think there was just this feeling of freedom when we we don't put ourself in that box.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: For our listeners and a majority of the listeners are women when they think they're in a box or maybe they don't even realize they've boxed themselves in, are there things they can do to kind of dismantle that or unpack it a little bit for themselves of like, what could I be doing besides this or in addition to this, potentially?
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: yeah, I mean there's a couple different things.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: Things, first of all, I would say notice the things people ask you about.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: When I started looking back at DMs and noticing what was it outside of just sales and sales leadership questions, what other questions people ask me about?
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: And I started seeing people were always asking me how do you overcome hardship so quickly?
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: How do you bounce back?
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: How did you break through the glass ceiling?
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: How did you do this?
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: So I started noticing all of these different questions that had nothing to do with my day job.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: Right, I thought.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: When I saw that and paid attention to it, I realized these are different revenue streams.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: I don't know exactly how they'll come to fruition yet, but when you notice what are the things people are asking you questions around, what topics there, there's a value prop there and you need to first notice it.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: It already exists.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: People are coming to you for something you just might not be paying attention to it because it's not your day job currently, and how can you turn that into a side hustle or side business or you know your own business ultimately?
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: So I would say that was one thing that I noticed that was very helpful to me in really reinventing myself.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: The other thing I would say is going back to your childhood and seeing what labels were placed on you as a kid.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: As a kid growing up, I had a sister who had perfect score in her SATs, skipped grades in school, has a PhD.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: She was always labeled the smart one.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: So I, alternatively, was labeled the social one and I recognized when I got fired.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: It was actually when I was on the Elvis Duran show.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: He said to me halfway through that interview obviously you're writing a book.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: I wasn't writing a book, but he spoke a truth, a conviction and a confidence into me in that moment that made me jump on a plane, google.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: How do you write a book and then really re-examine why is it that I think I couldn't write a book?
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: And then it was on me.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: It was because my sister had always been labeled a smart one and I wasn't.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: So I was giving power to this.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: You know label from the time I was six years old.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: It was impacting me at age 43.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: So I decided to fire the labels, drop all the labels that people have placed on me and decide it didn't have to be this or that.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: It could be and my sister could be one and I could be a smart one, right Like it didn't have to hold the power that it used to.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: So I would challenge listeners to drop the labels that you have from your childhood, rewrite a narrative and a new story that can be an and instead of an or.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: So a couple of things in there.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: Someone would say, wow, heather, you're so confident, like you come across very strong, very strong willed, like you know, to the point, and so from the particulars of that, some people may say, well, I'm not as confident as you, lee, or I'm not as confident as you, heather.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Are there things that people don't realize that they actually are very confident?
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Like I think people are bold in their quietest moments.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: I think my own bold moments, some of the ones that are the boldest, they're not on social media, they're not something I put out there, like they're things I have to either go through between my ears sometimes or you know things that I've gone through in in in private.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: So, when it comes to being confident, do you feel people might sell themselves short sometimes about being more confident?
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: Or they need to be more confident to make a decision like you've made or do some of the bold things that you've done?
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: I mean, the first thing I would say is watch your words.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: The power of your words is massive.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: It's almost larger than anything else out there.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: So if you're going to speak out loud that you're not confident, you're not going to be right.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: So I would suggest stopping doing that.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: I would suggest speaking life into things that you want, whether it be wow I'm really proud of this decision I made today, or you know what?
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: I'm going to celebrate the small victory that I had this morning.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: Instead of talking about what isn't going well for you or about your own limits, stop speaking life into that and start speaking life into the things that you want to grow and further.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: First, first and foremost and secondly, I would say a lot of people look at me with confidence in business.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: Yes, I might not be confident in my personal relationships or romantic relationships or with my faith journey years ago, right.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: So I challenge anyone listening right now to say don't just look at confidence around business.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: Look at confidence around your journey and your relationship with God, around your relationship with your significant other and your relationship as a daughter, a mother, a caretaker.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: I guarantee maybe it's your relationship with your workout and dealing with your body.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Maybe you're super confident when it comes to that.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: Confidence ebbs and flows and there's confidence in all different facets of our lives.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: So you don't have to be confident in business to say that's the only confidence.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: Look and find the area of your life or the time in your life where you did recognize you were confident in one arena and then, once you see that, you can extrapolate that to any other part of your life as well.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so really the 360 degrees of confidence and really not having a narrow definition of what it is.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: I love that Really taking, if you think of a lens, like really taking it out to see, you know the pano of it versus the closeup, you know 16, x or whatever we can do now you know.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: So you know coming out and really looking at yourself along the way when it comes to you know what you're good at.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Sometimes we nitpick of all the time of like I need to be better at, I need to be, you know, faster at.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: I need to lose weight faster.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: I need to get promoted faster.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: I need to find a husband faster, like whatever the stressor may be for someone because they could be across the board, or maybe it's all three for some, I don't know.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: That's a lot to put on ourselves and so I think you know lightening up on ourselves and giving ourselves a little bit of break and looking at the things that are going well and speaking life into things that are positive, I think is great advice.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: One of the things you talked about is someone spoke truth to something that you had not thought of, like writing your first book.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: So that is a learner's mindset, in a way of like being able to take something and I don't know.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to Google it All of us Google right and how you know what you do with that next.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: How did you transition from I'm going to write a book, I'm going to self-publish a book, which is a whole new learning, right?
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Like, how do I do that?
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: And then actually having it become a bestseller that it is and doing the things as a self-published author is very, very challenging, and most self-published authors do not make a list, a genuine list, and so you did all of those things.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Tell me how you use the learner's mindset, or even a growth mindset, to kind of go through that process of writing your first book.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: Well, I challenged myself to say I came from nothing.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: I grew up very poor in my whole life.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: People told me I could never make it to the C-suite.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: I was a woman and I grew up poor.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: There was just no way.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: And I did.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: I made it to the C-suite right, and I was very, very successful in corporate and I had checked all those boxes.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: So as I started over as a rookie entrepreneur, a rookie author, a rookie speaker, I kept leaning back on my past success and saying to myself, if I figured that out, there's nothing that can stop me over here.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: I don't know what the path looks like.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: I didn't know what the path to C-suite looked like when I started at 22.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: I had no idea, right.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: So I put myself back in.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: Okay, I remember what it was like to be a beginner at 21, 22.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: I didn't know what the future held.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: I just kept.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: I leaned in at first just to working hard and I outworked everybody in.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: That elevated me.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: Then I got to a certain level.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: I'm like I've got to be more strategic.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: I want to start educating myself, start investing in myself.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: And I just said I'm going to apply all those teachings and learnings I have to this new life right now.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: And of course, there's you don't know what you don't know, but that's the beauty.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: Oftentimes I had Sarah Blakely on my show and she talks about the reason why she was so successful is because she didn't have a set plan of.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: This is what success looks like.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: She was new in this arena of creating clothing and body products, so she re-imagined everything in such a way that she was able to become one of the most successful people in the arena.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: So look at that as your what's powerful about you unique, different, unique, different and your bouncy prop instead of what holds you back and you flip.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: Being a rookie on its head.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah one of the things she did I think early on too, and I bet you do and others who have the growth mindset is the failure isn't the end right.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: So failure is not like I can't go on or I must stop or I must not be good at.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: It was like actually valuing when things don't work and what do you learn from them, and really dissecting it almost in a way, in a way of like, well, maybe I shouldn't have gone that route or maybe I need to do it differently or maybe I need to partner with someone.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I think when we're entrepreneurs, we think we have to do it all alone, and at times we do and at times maybe we don't.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Did any of those come true for you, as you were kind of transitioning into this, really the new arena?
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: I love how you said that you know being a speaker, being an author, coming into this space.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Did you have some of those moments where you're like I just don't know?
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Or did you look at each thing that was happening maybe as like it is a stepping stone, a learning stone, to the next thing that I can do or learn about?
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: I just choose to see those failures as it's not rejection, it's redirection to something so much bigger.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: I just don't know what it is yet and so train myself to it's God's protection.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: However you want to view it, I just always say it's not rejection, it's redirection.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: That day I thought I got fired.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: I actually fired the most negative person in my life from my world and it literally set me up to take off to levels I never would have deemed possible.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: I take myself back to that moment all the time and say wait a minute.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: I was crying under a weighted blanket.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: I thought my life was over, but that was my jump point.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: So, anytime.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: Now I'm faced with and there's been countless quote unquote failures along the way over the last few years but when I face those moments, I stopped myself and say wait a minute, if that day I thought I lost everything ended up being the biggest jump point in my life.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: And today I'm sitting here feeling bad about this, thinking this is a rejection.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: Wait a minute, heather.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: You know what this is.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: This is just a redirection, something so much bigger.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: I just don't know what it is yet.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: That door just closed on me for a reason to benefit me and take me to something so much greater.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember always working with my team and at some point they'd be like we're worried about kind of what's next or what's gonna happen, or cause I was someone who and continue to be like someone who will always I just wanna do the right thing.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: I potentially will not, you know, go the way of politics at times and I'll just do the right thing, and I think that can be upsetting and I think one of the things that the team would always say is they were worried, right as a leader, that looking at you and knowing that you were kind of buffering or doing some of the things that you knew were the right thing within an organization, I think I always was like God has my back, like whatever happens, I know I can sleep at night and I'm doing the right thing, and so from that perspective, I think it was an interesting way of like even your pivot that you did, like you thought that was, and on that day I bet it was it was a very startling thing that happened to you when you get fired from a role and you know you took it and it became the biggest moment of your life to the next level of your life, and so I think we're sometimes down in it and we don't realize it.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: So, having that again, that broader picture of that, and widening the lens to kind of our world of like, you know, I can get through this and I know how to figure things out and I'll continue to just keep moving forward because that's the best direction to go.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the one thing I would add to that on the topic of worry.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: I don't remember who it was that said this, but it's a great visual that I use a lot myself.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: Anytime that you hear someone say I'm worried or aren't you worried about this, I picture this idea of someone walking around with an umbrella open, worried that there could be rain, and when you think of that, it sounds so ridiculous.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: However, that's essentially what anybody's doing.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: If you're going to sit around and worry about something that hasn't happened yet, you're literally opening an umbrella and in anticipation there's a chance it could rain.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: It makes no sense.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: So I challenge myself to see that visual anytime I hear and say worry and I'm like worrying makes no sense.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: Let's start worrying when it happens.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: Until then, I really have no interest.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: It's wasting your energy on something that you could be creating and moving forward.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so information about both of your books is in the episode notes.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: If someone is looking for an ability to, whether it's kind of, boost their confidence or regenerate it or maybe create a better path for it, you know what are the some of the takeaways from the confidence creator that you can share moments in my life and how I leverage them to create confidence and how the reader can too.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: One of the things that really worked so well for me was it seems really intimidating, when your confidence is at an all-time low, to look out five years, 10 years.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: I find it much easier to take things on in a 30-day window.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: I actually have a free ebook on my website, heathermonahancom the 30-day plan to confidence, and what I did and this is exactly what I did and it worked for me and it's worked for thousands of other people is to map out 30 days and look at very specific action steps that you can take on the daily to and they can be small things, to move yourself forward, to plan them out and then practice gratitude and stay open to possibilities and write those things down Basically like it's like a journaling over a 30 day window, and the things that I realized when I did this is incredible.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: Opportunities and things I had no idea were going to show up in my life started showing up and I was documenting them, which made me more hopeful for the next day, which made me realize I don't have to have this whole thing planned out, and that's when I had the epiphany successful people don't have it planned out, they just on themselves to know it's going to work out and they don't know how.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: They stay open to the possibility.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: And that's really.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: Things have unfolded for me and for my readers as well.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: So I think that's a helpful practice is looking at things in those 30 day windows.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, how did you come up with the concept for your second book?
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: I mean obviously your lived experience, but kind of, why a book about that?
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: So I believe data doesn't lie and always look at the data.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: So that's one of the ways social media is super helpful, as well as having a podcast.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: Like you, I get a lot of reviews and notes sent in about my show, so I pay attention to the data, I pay attention to the feedback.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: One of the things that I was asked countless times was okay, I get it, how you got fired and you did all these things, but what were the actual action steps that you took to get you here?
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: So people kind of behind the scenes, on a step-by-step, what did I do from the day I got fired until I got here now?
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: And so that was the overarching goal of this book was to give everybody the exact steps that I took in order to create these different things and move through these challenges.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: But the other was boiling everything down into a process that ultimately had been benefiting me my whole life and that really took me stepping away from everything I was doing and looking at like how did I make it to the C-suite?
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: How did I get named one of the most influential in radio?
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: How did I reinvent myself?
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: How did I become a best-selling author?
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: How did I sign with HarperCollins.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: How did I launch a speaking career?
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: How do I do all these things?
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: And when I sat back and looked at it, it was a three-step process that I use every single time I'm up against anything in my life.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: It's called BAC Belief, action and Knowledge and ultimately, the broader picture of this book is to take everybody through that three-step process and then show them on these specific entities through my life, like how I applied it and how they can apply it to their life too, to create the success and achieve the goals that they have.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: What if someone says I can't fire my villain Like I, just I, you know, I just don't know.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: That's not true.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: And that's a lie you're telling yourself or somebody else is telling you and you're accepting.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: I would thank others for their self-limiting beliefs and hand them right back to them and follow your intuition.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: You know who your villain is and you can fire them, even if it's the villain lying within your own two ears.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: You can fire that villain by retraining, rewriting those scripts.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: People will say well, it's my spouse.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: I can't get a divorce, why can't you?
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: What's more important here?
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: There's nothing more important than taking care of yourself, than investing in yourself, than making yourself your number one priority, because as you do that, you create happiness, you create a healthier lifestyle, and then you can take care of everybody and anyone in your arena, in your family, in your community, like there's no greater gift than that.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: You've got to put yourself first, and that means getting rid of your villains.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so how did you use the back method to become the speaker that you are now and be able again step into arena that you weren't in before?
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: You were totally in sales, but obviously you were still speaking.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: You were winning awards, even in sales, as a speaker, so you were good at it.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: But this is different, right, when it becomes part of your, your life and kind of part of your business.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Well, how did you use the method to do that?
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Because a lot of the things you're doing whether it's writing a book or being a speaker, getting a TEDx talk, having a podcast these are all different things people are trying to do now.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Sometimes they try to do them all at one time and you see, like different iterations and continuums of quality or habits, discipline around doing some of these things.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: But when it comes to speaking particularly, how did you use the method to step into that arena like you did?
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the biggest holdback for me was when I look at the and when anyone looks at the three step process, everybody's gonna have one thing they gravitate towards.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: For me, action has always been my bag.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: Like I take action all day long and swing for the fences.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: I have no problem with that.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, I can deal with that.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: I'm very aware of what books I'm reading.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: I spend time watching TED Talk.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: I educate myself.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: But this is where I struggled.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: So for me, looking at the three-step process, I need to look at what is the biggest holdback for me.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: It's always been my belief.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: So I start there and say, okay, I'm going to take the actions.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: I know I'll surround myself with the right knowledge, but I got to really dive into the belief.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: So, around speaking, the holdback for me was because the media industry didn't value speakers.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: They didn't hire speakers.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: I wasn't valuing myself as a speaker.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: So I had to really deconstruct that and say that's one tiny little business over here.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: Speaking is a multi-billion dollar business.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: I just wasn't aware of it.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: There are plenty of fish out there that value speakers.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: I need to start charging and so, like anything, I started small right.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: At first.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: I was speaking for free when I had been fired, I was speaking for charities, to get footage, to create a speaker reel, cause I knew that's what I needed to do.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: Then I started charging small amounts because I had to get comfortable with okay, can I deliver the value?
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: I didn't know what this whole speaking world but this is all BS, like anything.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: You just don't know it.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: Yet You're going to figure it.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: And so I had to really deconstruct that belief that there wasn't value around my speaking because I had never been paid for it before and as I took small steps at first it was 2,000 a speech, then 5,000 a speech, then 10,000.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: I started realizing the testimonials speak to what my deliverables, the feedback I'm getting from audiences is incredible Make it more about how I'm benefiting these people.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: And the more money I make, the more good I can do in the world.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: Now I can do in the world.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: Now I can charge more.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: Now I start realizing wait a minute, they're not paying me for a 60 minute keynote, they're paying me for the last 25 years of everything I've learned in sales and sales leadership, distilling it into a powerful action items in 60 minutes.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: Boy, I should be charging a lot more and that kept me forward, to take the action steps to ask for more, to pitch myself for more, to surround myself with more knowledge, to understand what other speakers were doing, what media kits did they use, what reels did they have and start acknowledging and understanding what they did and rebuilding it my business, through my light, through my lens of who I am and ultimately moving forward into the speaking business.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what I love about what you just said, it was a process and it wasn't like you, out of the gate, were like I'm going to charge $50,000 to talk, maybe that's something was a goal of yours, but you're like I need to actually give value and provide the opportunity, one for myself to learn and also to receive feedback.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: So just going through that process and you can go as quickly through that process as you would like.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: But I think it's really important for people to hear that it is a process and it isn't just like zero.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: To Gary V, you know so.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: So I just think sometimes people, whether it's impatience or whether it's maybe, maybe it's they're overconfident, or maybe it's ego or whatever could come in there.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: I think it's just people understanding it's a process.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: Would you agree that sometimes people want to go quicker than it really actually takes?
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: I want to go as fast as possible too.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, one of the things that actually Gary Vee talks about.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: This.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: You know he's like enjoy the journey.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: That's easy to say once you've made it, and I speak a lot of experience for this.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: Once I made it to the C-suite, I was able to say to everyone else enjoy the journey.
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: However, I also remember when I was coming up and struggling to pay bills as an account executive.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: I wasn't enjoying the journey and so.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: I remind myself of those situations now because I, as a rookie entrepreneur, as a first time author, I'm a beginner in all these new arenas.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: I have to give myself grace and say I'm going to support myself mentally through this.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: I'm going to.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: I know the journey sucks until you make it, and so I'm going to encourage me and remember this isn't the first time you've seen the movie Heather Like I have a lot of self-talk for myself to say did it before you can do it again.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: I'm going to encourage you during these times because that journey that come up can be really hard and of course, you want it to go as fast as possible.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: However, in the end, what you'll find out is that many times it not going too quickly saved you and actually elevated you.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: And I'll give this example.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: I just spoke two weeks ago to the largest audience I've ever spoken, for 180,000 people in Saudi Arabia, and I was not prepared to take that stage five years ago.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: I'm now.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: I wanted those big stages five years ago.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: All right, I wanted to jump from beginner to expert overnight because I thought I should be able to, but now that I look back, I'm grateful I didn't land that because that probably would have scared me right off the stage had I been on that stage five years ago.
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: Thank goodness it came when it did and thank goodness I had all these other opportunities to get up, speak and get better and become more confident to prepare myself for the largest stages.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, one question is how do you deal with the naysayers?
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: So, as you're going through a process whether you're creating a podcast, writing a book you know maybe you're in your role, you're, you know, in the corporate world, you know just working through kind of the next steps of what you want to do and be, you know, aligned with your passion and purpose.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: But you want to do something different, you want to have curiosity, you want to maybe try something different.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: What do you say to someone who just has a lot of naysayers or people who are kind of talking about all the what could happen and what bad could happen, like you said?
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, sometimes it's just people trying to protect us, right.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it's people who don't understand us and maybe shouldn't even be in the circle of us sharing things.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: So one of the things early on I learned just what I thought I learned as an entrepreneur is I don't share all of my ideas with everyone.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: Like I got very narrow in who I shared it with very quickly, because when I first came out of the gate, I was like this is what I'm thinking, this is what I'm doing, and it was like getting buckshot from different people putting holes into my ideas and I just wondered if there was a way that you approach the naysayers in your life as you do different things, even now.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: So I actually wrote a chapter about haters and then my second book, overcome your villains, because it's a real part.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: And a lot of people will say that I'm afraid to have a podcast, I'm afraid to take a stage, I'm afraid to post on social because of the hater.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: Here's the way that I decided to look at it when you start having haters come for you, that's a moment to celebrate because that means you've moved beyond your tiny sphere of influence.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: When you're just in your tiny sphere of influence at your friends, at your family, right, if people like, hey, great job, nice post.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: But when you start having people you've never met before, if we're commenting, you know this is ridiculous or you're awful, whatever crazy thing First of all that's about them, not about you, right?
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: So you need to put the focus back on who are the people who can help and allow that to propel you forward.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: Typically I celebrate when I see them coming, because I know that means I'm reaching a new, I'm extending to a larger audience, which means I'm growing, and I'm super grateful for that opportunity to help more people.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: However, I typically don't respond because I don't give gasoline to that fire, right, like my energy isn't best served that way.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: When people have so much vitriol and so much anger and upset, oftentimes they're not even thinking things through.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: They're just lashing out.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: And maybe it's because she has a sick spouse at home, maybe it's because she lost her job.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: I don't know what it is, but I know it's not about me and as you just move forward and say I'm going to do that next right thing, that is just a great reminder for me that these, these haters are acting up from a place that has nothing to do with you and you don't need to take it personally.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Stay on your assignment, because you have a role, you have a job.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: I feel like we're here to do good and to help others and to serve others.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: And you know, stay on your assignment is kind of like what I say and I've heard as well.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: I just think it's it's important that they not pull you off and again, you may need to narrow some things.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: I was more talking about inner circle versus social media, which is much more difficult to control.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: But again, and going back to kind of what we talked about maybe at the beginning, was when you share your story, when you share what you're doing, that probably inspired the majority of the people that read that quote versus the one person who wanted it a certain way.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's not about that one person.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: That one person can't stop your purpose, right?
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: So I think continuing to stay on your assignment is really, really important.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: When the naysayers pop up and they will and I remember when I had my first hater, our team said yay, it's like what are we yaying?
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: Exactly, they're like you have a hater, Like that means you've gone to the next level.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: So it was kind of exactly what you said, Although it may not feel that way when you're kind of going through the first hater, so cause it just.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: It gets easier with time.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, as a normal human being, it just kind of you know it's more about.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: It is about them, it's not about you.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: So one of the things, as we end here today, one of the things I talk about is belief, ownership, learning and designing your life, which is my bold framework.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: The ownership and accountability piece how important is being accountable to yourself?
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: Understand no one's coming to save you, no one's coming to you.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: Know, write the next story for you, to get that job, for you to write the book, to start the podcast to, to do the things to you.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: Know that people say they want to do.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: How important do you think accountability is and getting to where we need to go and having our goals achieved?
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: massive right, and that is in giving yourself deadlines.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: That's in sharing your goals with someone very special in your life that you know you can trust, that will check in with you and stop in once a week to say give me an update, what's status update on this?
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: You know I have really good friends that I share my massive goals with and we'll go for a walk at night and they'll always ask me where are we at on this, how they're like, come on, I'm like, oh gosh, I hate that you're asking me because I don't have an update right now.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: Nothing happened this week or whatever but I also love that they asked me because it keeps it alive, because maybe that week my son's been sick and I have other things going on, right, but it takes you back to wait a minute.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: You're right, I got to keep my focus Like.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: This is where I'm going and I need to keep my people in your life.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: That will hold you accountable while holding yourself accountable.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: Giving yourself deadlines, tracking your progress All of these things are critical in ultimately finding success, and I shared this with you earlier.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: I actually have a 30-day free accountability partner program on my website.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: Check it out, heathermonaghancom, and you're going to get an email from me every day for 30 days, holding you accountable to achieve your big goals and big dreams and set you up for success.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Awesome.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being on the Bold Lounge sharing your bold journey and all the moments that we can learn from and be inspired by.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the Bold Lounge podcast.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: Through the continuum of bold stories vulnerability to taking a leap you will meet more extraordinary people making a positive impact for others through their unique and important story.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: By highlighting these stories, we hope to inspire others and share the journey of those with a bold mindset.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: We hope you've enjoyed this podcast and look forward to sharing the next bold journey with you.