Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / Life’s a Pitch: Overcoming Fear & Amplifying Impact with Tami Reiss

Transcript

Life’s a Pitch: Overcoming Fear & Amplifying Impact with Tami Reiss · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:04
  I would ask them, like, what do you have to lose, right?
• 0:07
  Like you can either lose the next five, 10 years of your life in this dead end job or something new could happen.
• 0:15
  Today we sit down with Tammy Reese, a former tech industry executive turned CEO, keynote speaker and executive coach.
• 0:24
  Tammy opens up about her journey from climbing the corporate ladder in product management to to discovering her true passion, helping leaders unlock their potential.
• 0:33
  After Covid forced a career pivot, Tammy embraced entrepreneurship, building her own executive coaching business and eventually expanding her reach to workshops and keynote speaking.
• 0:45
  We'll talk with Tammy about the challenges of leaving the steady comfort of a W2 role, navigating self doubt, finding clients, and the scary but exhilarating leap into entrepreneurship.
• 0:57
  Tammy also shares thoughtful strategies for anyone.
• 1:00
  That feels stuck in an unfulfilling role.
• 1:03
  And discusses how learning, leadership and influence skills can open doors both personally and professionally.
• 1:10
  You'll hear actionable advice on influence, leadership and making career transitions, plus why deputizing your team could unlock growth for everyone.
• 1:22
  As always, if you found value from.
• 1:24
  This content, please like and subscribe.
• 1:26
  All right, Tammy Reese, welcome to Beyond Fulfillment.
• 1:30
  Thanks for having me.
• 1:31
  Happy to be here.
• 1:32
  Yes, we're happy to have you.
• 1:34
  And your.
• 1:34
  Your handle is Tammy from Miami because.
• 1:38
  You bring the heat.
• 1:38
  So yeah, excited to.
• 1:41
  I gotta be honest, I wish that was actually my handle.
• 1:43
  I'm just Tammy Reese practically everywhere because TamifromMiami.com is owned by somebody else and so she doesn't do much with it.
• 1:50
  But I'm just Tammy Reese.
• 1:52
  If you can spell it right, either Tammy or Reese or both, you'll find me.
• 1:57
  Okay, got that.
• 2:00
  And Tammy, you are the CEO of the Leader within.
• 2:04
  And so you are a keynote speaker and an executive coach, a corporate trainer, all of those things.
• 2:10
  And you've got quite an interesting story as to how you became an entrepreneur.
• 2:16
  So if you would for the audience, can you let us know how you got started?
• 2:20
  Sure.
• 2:21
  I spent around 15 years in product management, which is a strategy position at tech companies.
• 2:26
  Worked my way up the ladder and my last position was called CPO in Residence at Insight Partners, which meant that I was working with the 150 at the time portfolio companies, helping them excel at what they do, working
• 2:42
  with very top CEOs, Chief Product Officers, chief Technology officers, you name a C title person I was working with that sort of people and I loved what I was doing, but there were lots of other things I had
• 2:55
  to do other than just work directly with them.
• 2:59
  When I first jumped into podcasting, I had no idea what I was doing.
• 3:04
  I relied heavily on my sales background to do cold outreach and get guests.
• 3:09
  But let's be honest, that strategy isn't sustainable for everyone.
• 3:13
  And it's why we see so many podcasters quit before they get any traction.
• 3:18
  If I had it all to do over again, I joined podmatch right from the start.
• 3:24
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• 3:27
  Their AI driven matching doesn't just find any guests, it finds the right guests.
• 3:32
  No more chasing, just high quality, authentic connections and top tier support.
• 3:37
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• 3:43
  Just click the link below and start matching today.
• 3:47
  And I recognize that that was my favorite part of my job.
• 3:50
  And I think a lot of entrepreneurs find that slice of what they're doing that makes them so happy that it gets them excited to wake up in the morning.
• 3:58
  And on that basis, I bought productleadercoach.com while I was still W2 employed.
• 4:05
  I was just like, this is gonna be my next chapter.
• 4:07
  Whenever this awesome chapter ends, that's what's next.
• 4:10
  And so, thanks to Covid, that chapter ended and I hung up my own shingle.
• 4:20
  I worked as an executive coach for the last four years.
• 4:23
  I've had fantastic clients.
• 4:25
  I've watched them transform into really exceptional leaders.
• 4:29
  And what I've realized is that I want to have more impact, I want to have more scale.
• 4:34
  And so that's why I'm now taking on bigger audiences through workshops and, and keynote speaking.
• 4:40
  Because I believe the sort of advice I was providing to the executives I was coaching are things that everyone should learn.
• 4:47
  And the earlier you learn them, the higher you run.
• 4:50
  And that's what.
• 4:51
  Okay, all right, all right.
• 4:53
  So you're a W2 employee.
• 4:58
  You find this slice of the job that you absolutely love in terms of working with C level executives and really helping them evolve and get better.
• 5:07
  Right.
• 5:08
  And you make this plan to.
• 5:10
  To become a coach.
• 5:12
  Right.
• 5:12
  You buy the domain.
• 5:13
  Right.
• 5:13
  While you're still employed, Covid hits.
• 5:15
  You have the opportunity.
• 5:17
  So what was it like making that leap from W2 to kind of to.
• 5:22
  To full time entrepreneur?
• 5:25
  Well, so luckily, the choice to leave W2 wasn't entirely mine.
• 5:30
  I would have done it eventually, but the consultancy I was working with decided they didn't want to be a consultancy anymore.
• 5:37
  They actually offered me the opportunity to be CEO of it and I said, no, I've done that.
• 5:42
  I don't love doing that.
• 5:44
  I prefer to be out on my own.
• 5:47
  And so that was part of it.
• 5:51
  I could have Applied for jobs.
• 5:52
  There was a job that on paper was exactly the job I would have wanted three years prior.
• 6:00
  It was a VP of product at a high growth company based in Amsterdam.
• 6:05
  They had an office in Miami.
• 6:06
  I would have to do international travel.
• 6:09
  I would have had a team around 50.
• 6:12
  It was this awesome, awesome opportunity.
• 6:14
  But because I had a six month old at home and was pregnant with my next, it was unattractive.
• 6:21
  And I had this realization that work and life in that former way wasn't going to be balanced for me anymore.
• 6:29
  And it wasn't a way to continue having a happy marriage.
• 6:33
  And it wasn't a way to be the kind of mom I wanted to be.
• 6:36
  And it's not that I don't travel.
• 6:37
  Let me be clear.
• 6:38
  I travel a lot.
• 6:39
  But being on phone calls at 5am with Europe every day, which I had been doing as their consultant, wasn't something I wanted to continue doing.
• 6:48
  And so even though it was this ideal job for Tammy of, you know, 19, like 20, 2019 or something, it wasn't what was attractive anymore.
• 7:01
  And so I think a lot of times entrepreneurship comes from a place of shifting your mindset because something in your world has shifted.
• 7:10
  Okay, all right.
• 7:11
  So when you, when you finally go out on your own and you do, you, you start building this company, what do you say?
• 7:19
  Scared?
• 7:20
  Yeah.
• 7:21
  Okay, well, yeah.
• 7:22
  What was that like?
• 7:23
  I mean, I was scared that nobody would hire me.
• 7:26
  I think that coaching is a really one on one experience.
• 7:30
  And yes, when inside partners or the consultancies were shipping me out, I was working under their brand.
• 7:38
  And so would I be able to thrive under my own brand?
• 7:42
  Would the intellectual property stuck in this brain be attractive towards others?
• 7:48
  I was scared as to pricing because nowadays I get paid something like $850 an hour, if not more, if I'm speaking.
• 7:56
  But back then I was like, can I charge $250 an hour?
• 8:02
  Like, is that okay?
• 8:03
  And my first, like, few pitches just went too easy.
• 8:08
  And I was like, I am not charging enough.
• 8:10
  And so I just kept slowly increasing my prices until there was enough friction and that I also felt like my time was being valued.
• 8:18
  But it's hard to find that first set of clients.
• 8:22
  I think most entrepreneurs will tell you that their business goes through referrals.
• 8:26
  So that first set of clients, where are they coming from?
• 8:30
  And how can you be referred into new people when you don't have a quote, unquote, perfect track record yet because it's a new thing, you're a new brand.
• 8:39
  And so that was scary.
• 8:42
  Okay.
• 8:43
  And so you launch, you have this fear, but you do it anyway.
• 8:47
  And then what happens next?
• 8:50
  Well, I signed my first few clients and I started meeting with them.
• 8:53
  And I could see the impact I was having.
• 8:56
  That was.
• 8:57
  It's like a drug to me, you know, that, like, watching the people I work with have revelations, have moments of clarity in what they should do that will open doors for them.
• 9:11
  I watched people get promotions.
• 9:13
  I watched people be more successful in their careers and feel better about their workday, feel more in control of what was happening.
• 9:22
  And that felt really good.
• 9:24
  And so I kept finding more people to help.
• 9:29
  Okay.
• 9:29
  Yeah, and you brought up a interesting point.
• 9:32
  I just want to get your perspective on this, too, especially for the audience, because so often.
• 9:36
  Right.
• 9:37
  We hear about people being unfulfilled at work and just going through the motions and the quiet quitting and leading to, you know, all these other negative side effects with addiction and all this stuff to kind of cope with,
• 9:53
  I guess, that not being in the right position.
• 9:56
  I mean, how.
• 9:57
  What do you see as the major challenges that people have in terms of finding the right work that really fulfills them?
• 10:04
  I think sometimes people just get comfortable to a certain degree, and they don't want to be challenged, but then they realize they do want to be challenged because there's a scariness to taking on new responsibilities that you might
• 10:17
  fail.
• 10:18
  There's always that chance that you're not going to do well in this next thing.
• 10:23
  But if you don't grow, you get bored.
• 10:26
  And so there's like this comfort, but boredom that happens.
• 10:30
  And then there's a lot of jobs out there that unfortunately, there's poor leaders.
• 10:36
  And those leaders are still in a command control mindset where they tell people what to do.
• 10:41
  They don't give people an idea of how that's connected towards a larger vision.
• 10:46
  They don't do what I encourage, which is to influence people, which means to get them motivated and inspired to take action, as opposed to feel like they're being told to do something.
• 10:57
  And so I think a lot of people are afraid to leave because it's a paycheck and it puts a roof over your head and it puts food on your table.
• 11:04
  And those are really valuable things.
• 11:06
  I want to be clear, like, there is nothing wrong by staying for staying in a job when that's the case.
• 11:12
  But if it's deteriorating your relationships, right.
• 11:16
  If you're bringing that angst home and frustration home, that's not a great place to be either.
• 11:23
  So I think that people don't necessarily recognize the balances that are happening, or even that there's opportunities that may be better for them inside their own companies.
• 11:35
  I don't always say people have to quit, right?
• 11:38
  Whether that's becoming an entrepreneur or moving on to a new company.
• 11:41
  But you have to take a chance on you and be willing to bet on yourself that you're worthy and and capable of doing something more before anyone else will.
• 11:51
  And the most easy place to do that is the place where people already trust you and like you in your job.
• 11:57
  Right.
• 11:57
  You're a known entity there.
• 11:59
  You have a depth of knowledge of the business, of the customers, and therefore giving you different and new responsibilities which may be more exciting to you, that give you a more creative outlet, that give you more management responsibilities.
• 12:12
  Whatever it is that's going to boost your enthusiasm for what you're doing, that's a great place to start, is raising your hand and asking for more.
• 12:22
  That's going to fulfill you better.
• 12:27
  Okay.
• 12:28
  Yeah.
• 12:28
  All right.
• 12:29
  So you land these first few clients, you see the impact you're having, you build momentum, you build confidence.
• 12:36
  You're certainly enjoying it.
• 12:37
  And then where did you go from there?
• 12:39
  So I did that for three, four years, and a number of my clients had started bringing me in to run workshops for their teams, whether that was on influence or communication or other things related to strategy, visioning, exercises.
• 12:55
  And I realized a few different things.
• 12:59
  Number one, the advice I was giving the executives was probably even more valuable to people who weren't because they could then start using those skills, those tools, earlier on in their career and have higher impact.
• 13:17
  Also, I recognize that so often the advice I would give to one of my clients would be to deputize someone.
• 13:24
  I don't believe in delegation as much as I believe in deputizing.
• 13:27
  And when you deputize someone, it means you teach them how to do the.
• 13:30
  Thing and then they own it.
• 13:32
  It's like they're.
• 13:33
  When they're in a room, it's as if you're in the room, you don't have to be there.
• 13:37
  And so many of my clients said, I don't have anybody on my team that I can do that with.
• 13:44
  No one on my team is skilled enough and has enough political capital and enough social capital and knows how to work within the organization in ways that they will be successful without me.
• 13:55
  And so it became very clear to me that if I didn't start helping out middle managers or people in the middle of their careers, improve these influence skills, improve these leadership skills, the executives were also just going to
• 14:08
  continue to Be crunched for time and unable to let go of the things that they needed to so that they could focus on the things only they could do.
• 14:18
  And so it was a lot of different things.
• 14:21
  And I love helping people.
• 14:24
  And so the groups of people I help, it's a one to many versus a one to one.
• 14:30
  And that brings a bigger smile to my face.
• 14:33
  Okay.
• 14:34
  A lot to get in there to there.
• 14:36
  So when you talk about deputize versus delegate and then you're saying the executives felt like they didn't have the caliber of talent to truly deputize and then therefore, like the training of like that middle management group is, is
• 14:51
  really what got them to that level, is that is what you're saying?
• 14:55
  Because if, if you have people on your team who are waiting for you to make decisions at all times and they don't feel confident enough in their ability to make choices or that they'll be followed through, or they
• 15:07
  don't know how to encourage people from other teams.
• 15:10
  Because everything is a team project nowadays.
• 15:13
  Everything involves people from other teams.
• 15:16
  Whether or not you call them resources or people, they're still.
• 15:19
  You gotta do a whole bunch of coordination and a whole bunch of asking and begging sometimes.
• 15:24
  But if you can't do that well, you won't be successful.
• 15:31
  And thus the executive can't have you do things that they would do.
• 15:35
  You can't have someone run a meeting if they don't have meeting running skills.
• 15:40
  You can't have someone go to an office, a remote office, and represent the company instead of you, the executive doing that unless they understand how to navigate cultural norms in different places.
• 15:55
  There are a lot of executive level skills that we don't teach very often.
• 16:00
  We don't talk about how do you act more confident in your written and verbal communication.
• 16:06
  Executive presence is this fuzzy thing that people hear about that they might be missing and they're not really sure how to get it.
• 16:15
  And I want to help make that easier for people, help people understand.
• 16:21
  What does it mean to have executive presence?
• 16:23
  What does it mean to be speaking confidently and communicating confidently?
• 16:26
  What does it mean to have leadership energy or leadership skills?
• 16:30
  What does it mean to gain influence and to help everyone get more people to follow them, to be inspired and motivated to act on their behalf, to get more people around an organization or.
• 16:46
  Your family or your friends willing to say, yeah, I believe in that idea from this other person and I'm going to give my time, my energy, my social capital towards someone else's something.
• 16:58
  Because we do that every day, every single one of us gives our energy towards something else, Whether it's school or a team or our partner or our job, our bosses, we give our energy to make them successful.
• 17:15
  So how do we make other people want to do the same for us?
• 17:18
  And that's what leadership influence is really about.
• 17:21
  And it's equally impactful on trying to get a promotion as it is on trying to get your partner to go to Greece for your anniversary or your mother in law to have Christmas at your house this year.
• 17:33
  It's all about how do you talk to other people in a way that helps them recognize that their prior mind shift needs a little bit of shifting, their mindset needs a little bit of shifting, and that if they
• 17:45
  shifted towards whatever it is that you're looking towards, not only will you benefit, but they will benefit too.
• 17:53
  Okay, all right.
• 17:58
  And so you shifted to the one to one to one to many model in terms of speaking on stages.
• 18:05
  You also wrote a book, you do workshops.
• 18:09
  What was that transition like for you?
• 18:12
  Given it, you know, you'd done the one to one coaching for so long.
• 18:16
  What was it like transitioning to a speaker speaker, an author, workshop leader, in terms of what, what growth did you have to.
• 18:24
  You have to make so much growth?
• 18:26
  I'm still in the middle of it.
• 18:27
  So first of all, my, you know, ideal customer profile entirely shifted because when you're doing one to one, that person is betting on you and they know that whatever you give them is what they're going to be in
• 18:40
  control of.
• 18:41
  When a learning and development person hires you to come in and do a leadership or an influence training for their team, they're betting on you.
• 18:51
  They're putting their, you know, gravitas on the line with you.
• 18:56
  And so how can I help those people have faith that I'm going to be effective at helping their teams, helping their conference, helping their workshop be effective so that people leave the room excited, motivated to take action, that
• 19:18
  they've been scribbling notes and that they walk up to the organizers and say, this was a great event.
• 19:24
  I learned so much.
• 19:25
  I can't wait to take this back.
• 19:27
  Or this was a great training.
• 19:29
  Everything I learned here is so important to my everyday work.
• 19:33
  And so I started to have to change from the individual stories I would talk about of how I helped individuals to how I helped groups.
• 19:41
  And I had to do more video, so much more video, so many more podcasts so that people could hear me speak and know them relatively eloquent and know that I bring this Miami energy because the written word, my
• 19:57
  blog Posts don't communicate that.
• 19:59
  And if you see me on a podcast that you're looking at or listening to and you see me on YouTube or on a video on LinkedIn, you get the impression, oh, copy.
• 20:08
  If Tammy showed up at my office, people would be energized, people would be excited, people would feel like there's a connection because she has that naturally, in a way that other people are just dull and boring.
• 20:23
  And so I'm not dull and boring.
• 20:25
  And I just have to really dive into that.
• 20:28
  I produced a website for myself, like tammyrese.com and people looked at it and they said, there's nothing in here.
• 20:35
  That's Tammy from Miami.
• 20:37
  This is too corporate.
• 20:38
  And I said, well, that's who I'm trying to appeal to.
• 20:41
  And they said, yeah, but if a corporation's hiring you, they're not looking for boring, they're looking for you.
• 20:49
  They're looking for the color, they're looking for the brightness and the energy you bring, all of the insights that are corporate.
• 20:56
  But this is you.
• 20:58
  And you have to make it be more about you.
• 20:59
  And so that's been a really big shift for me because coaching, I was much more behind the scenes.
• 21:05
  And so now I'm front and center and I have to show people what if you're putting me front and center is going to look like.
• 21:13
  Okay.
• 21:15
  And you know, you made the shift, right?
• 21:18
  You had this, you had this, this desire to, to impact people.
• 21:24
  You had the opportunity, you made the leap, you pushed through the fear, you built a successful business.
• 21:30
  You're still growing it.
• 21:31
  So many people out there, right, in a corporate job or in a line of work that maybe they're not doing what they want and they have these desires.
• 21:40
  But so often we see people, they don't take the action, they don't go for what they want and they're held back by fear, right?
• 21:48
  For, you know, just to, to put it all in a nutshell, I mean, what would you say to those folks too, where they want, they have a desire to impact, but they just, something's holding them back.
• 21:58
  They feel stuck.
• 22:00
  So first of all, ask them, like, what do you have to lose, right?
• 22:03
  Like you can either lose the next five, 10 years of your life in this dead end job or something new could happen.
• 22:11
  What are you actually afraid of happening that could be so bad?
• 22:15
  And then how do you de risk that?
• 22:17
  So as I mentioned, my clients were already hiring me to do workshops.
• 22:22
  There were companies already hiring me to do workshops.
• 22:25
  So this is more of a, hey, focus shift.
• 22:28
  Not Brand new.
• 22:29
  I've never done this before.
• 22:31
  I am confident enough in the responses I get when I give workshops that I could do this.
• 22:36
  So go do it right.
• 22:39
  I have a client who was.
• 22:40
  Had a product somewhere, and he bought a cheese shop because he was really excited about cheese.
• 22:47
  But the way he entered into that was that he started to go to cheese tastings and he started to learn more about the culture between sheep and goat and milk and all of these other things.
• 22:56
  He actually went to like cheese academy once he bought it from the former owner.
• 23:01
  But that was a big shift from having a tech job really secure to owning a cheese shop, like retail in the food space.
• 23:13
  But he was excited about it, and so he learned more and more about it.
• 23:19
  He learned about the.
• 23:20
  The business metrics, he learned about what kind of options there were, and he started doing it like he went to the shop.
• 23:28
  He watched the people long before he talked about buying the business.
• 23:33
  You know, and so I think a lot of it comes from understanding what you're afraid of, understanding what those risks are and figuring out what can you do, what actions can you take that are lower risk, that help
• 23:47
  you minimize the big risk.
• 23:50
  So if I was public speaking, how do you just start talking at Rotary clubs or something else where no one's really, like, the standards are low, but you have the opportunity to have impact.
• 24:03
  If you're thinking about switching careers into sales, try selling something like get cut co ops or something like, you can do that.
• 24:11
  It's a very low cost to get started with Cutco or whatever it is.
• 24:15
  Like one of these pyramid schemes of sort of work on your sales skills.
• 24:19
  See, see if you feel okay being rejected with the door closing in your face time after time after time again.
• 24:26
  And anything else.
• 24:28
  If you want to become a writer, start writing, right?
• 24:31
  If you want to start a podcast, start the podcast.
• 24:33
  It's.
• 24:34
  It's not an expensive venture to start, and that's a great way to learn about how different people are doing things.
• 24:39
  Also, like, start a podcast about cheese and see who you can start talking to, see what you'll learn.
• 24:46
  And so that general concept, okay, sounds.
• 24:51
  Like taking action even before you're, quote, ready in terms of just getting in motion, getting momentum, doing the thing.
• 24:58
  And then the, you know, if you do the thing you fear, the death of fear is certain.
• 25:03
  Is that, is that fair to say.
• 25:05
  Is don't do the thing you fear.
• 25:06
  Do something close to the thing you fear so that thing you fear is less scary.
• 25:12
  Like, how do you start dipping your toe in the water?
• 25:16
  So that you're like, oh, the water isn't so cold.
• 25:19
  What's that?
• 25:19
  When I take my foot out of the water, it can get dry.
• 25:21
  I know how to reverse this.
• 25:23
  And when you take those smaller steps, rather than ripping the band aid off, you could be more confident in diving it.
• 25:34
  Okay.
• 25:35
  All right.
• 25:36
  And so, Tammy, for.
• 25:37
  For companies that are potentially looking to.
• 25:39
  To bring you in or people that potentially could hire, talk about what you do present day, in terms of the workshops you have, the corporate trainings you have, and what value you offer to different businesses out there.
• 25:52
  So either the keynote or the workshop has the same name.
• 25:54
  It's called Life's a Pitch, because I believe everything we're doing is a pitch, and I teach people how to do that, how to influence other people.
• 26:04
  And so in the workshops, it's much more interactive.
• 26:07
  We're talking about groups of 10 to 30 people working through the content, working through the experience, interviewing each other, having muscle, building in real time of the skills associated with influence, which I call mapping your influence.
• 26:23
  And as a keynote, I deliver the content in a way that's designed to be edutainment, in that you're gonna enjoy it, you're gonna laugh, you're gonna hear some stories, and you're gonna hear at least the basics of what
• 26:38
  you need to do so that you could then download the document from the QR code or whatever and start doing it at home or at work.
• 26:48
  But different vibes, different levels of interaction, but same end result, which is people who walk away knowing more about how to get someone else on their side at home, at work, with their friends, etc, and that is a
• 27:10
  gift.
• 27:11
  It's such a gift.
• 27:14
  Okay.
• 27:15
  All right.
• 27:15
  And, Tammy, if people want to reach out to you and learn more about what you do or potentially hire you, what's the best way that people can find you online?
• 27:23
  Tammy Reese, tamirse.com T A M I spelled like Miami R E I S S.
• 27:29
  And you can find me pretty much it.
• 27:32
  Okay, we'll link all that in the show notes for everyone.
• 27:35
  Thank you so much.
• 27:36
  Yeah.
• 27:36
  And, Tammy, thank you so much for taking the time to be here and sharing all this valuable wisdom from your journey with our listeners.
• 27:42
  We greatly appreciate it.
• 27:43
  My pleasure.