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280:Finding Your Purpose and Identity in Business with Wendy Gunn · Imperfect Marketing

• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Imperfect Marketing.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, kendra Korman, and today I am joined by Wendy Gunn, and I am really excited for our conversation today, because we want to talk about finding your identity and covering your expertise and purpose.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Okay, wendy, like, how did you get into this?
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: How did you start helping people find their purpose and achieve their, their God given goals?
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Well, first of all, thank you for having me, kendra.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: I'm excited to be here and I love this topic and love your podcast, so it's gonna be fun, thank you.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: A confident entrepreneur, christian entrepreneur, who feels like I'm aligned with my purpose and love.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: You know life, but I haven't always been this person and years ago I was copying friends' lives and comparing myself unfavorably and competing and coveting, and I was very obese and I was miserable, as you can imagine.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: And then one day, on Tuesday in May, I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and that changed my life.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Of course, but it changed my life in a good way and I am a walking miracle because I was diagnosed with two football-sized tumors.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: They did not think they'd caught it early and they thought it had spread, and God was at work and did so many things.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: One of the first things that he did was to get me into surgery within three days and in those three days, everyone I knew, and many who I didn't, were praying and when the surgeon went in three days later, there was only one contained tumor and it was caught early and I knew I was a walking miracle.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Either a trained professional had seen and written down the dimensions of a non-existent tumor or a miracle had been done in my life and my body.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Of course, that changed my life and I went through chemo and I've been over 20 years cancer free, praise the Lord.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Yes, but the next year.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: I was desperate to be healthier and in that desperation I lost 50 pounds.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: That was the first domino of goal achievement that took place in my life, because I thought, if God can do that in my life, he can do anything, and I began setting and achieving big goals.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Over years, I went from being disorganized to organized.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: We raised our children my husband and I have been married for over 40 years and raised our children to become adults who we like and they like us and they're walking with the Lord and we even were able to take a dream trip to Italy, all of us with miles that I'd saved up.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: And then some of my biggest goals were achieved after the age of 60, when I started my online business and I grew an email list from nothing to 12, over 12,000 in just a couple of years, with a 37% open rate and the averages, or industry averages, about 18 to 20 percent.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: So when I got had cancer, one of the things that God impressed on me was that I was different.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: My story was different from everyone else's in the world, and he gave me a passion because I recognized that that's true of you too.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: You and you and you.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: It's true for all of us, and even if we could achieve all the goals of someone else, we'd be a failure in life because we would have missed our purpose.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: And so I love talking about your identity and your purpose, and it's often your quirks that make you special, and it's not just what you like or are good at, but it's you know.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: To be real Well, no, I don't like that and I'm really not good at that and to be real and vulnerable and recognize and I love the title Imperfect Marketing, because there is no perfection, that's.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: Another thing that I was able to overcome was procrastinating perfectionism.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: And it's just there are so many, so many ties together with all of this topic, so that's that's the shorter version of how I came to be involved in this whole topic.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Topic.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: That's just a great story, so thank you so much for sharing it and sharing how you got there, because I think there's a lot of people who have had God sending them messages and maybe not as big or as direct as you have, but he's still there sending us messages, and I think that it's important to have your own personal purpose and passion, and I really liked how you talked about that, because we do have a tendency to compare ourselves to other people a lot, right.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Social media, I think, has made us even more, given us more, comparisonitis than ever before, right, and so I think knowing that you don't have to compare yourself to somebody else is huge and that there's a plan for you, which I think is great.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about helping people find their identity and their purpose.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: How do you do this?
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: What's your system?
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: Well, I love to meet people, so I talk about email list as marketing.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: That's my thing, really just asking questions, learning to ask questions, and so in my business with clients, I first have them think about your past.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: What are moments when you just felt lit up?
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: You just felt like you were, you know, way up here and immediately you will probably think of a specific time and times when you were doing something that you just felt like, ah, I could do this all day, every day, you know, 24-7.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: Actually, this is one of the things that I feel that way about.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: I absolutely love being a guest on a podcast, but people, they aren't thinking about that.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: We tend to think about the negatives, and so I really encourage people to think about what do you love, what have people told you you're good at, what have they affirmed you in?
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: And then write it down.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: And then there are many different personality tests that I recommend you delve into.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: They're not only helpful but they're fun, and, as a Christian, there are spiritual gift assessments to start there, figuring out what are you good at, what do you love.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: So that's where I begin.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: That's very good.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: I love starting with questions, because I think asking people questions, asking them to reflect, is just so, so important, and I love personality tests.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: One of the ones that I talk about all the time is CliftonStrengthFinders.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you use that one, but it revolutionized my marriage.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: My husband and I took it when we were going through our MBA program, and he is analytical.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: I am achievement oriented, I like to check things off.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: I will put things on a list just to check it off.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: He is analytical to the point where he needs to know what's going to come out of every option, and it literally I think it actually had the example of like ordering food off a menu at a restaurant.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: You haven't tasted it all, so it's harder for him to make a decision, and so that was he can order off a menu.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: Fine, you know, but it adds additional stress and additional thought process right that I don't have.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Cause I'm like let's check it off and let's go.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: And he so I didn't order for him because it didn't look right sometimes to other people on the outside.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: Nope, now I just order.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: I narrow it down or I'll order.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: I'll say this is what you want.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: We take all that stress out.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Or if we're going someplace where he's never been before, we'll pull up the menu online.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: You know, I take the stress out of it because there's just you know, that's where it is, but he slows me down and actually thinks about things and other.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: You know that have longer complications than necessarily just ordering dinner on a menu, so which is also- good, it's so important, so it works well.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Yes, but it gave me such such insight into how he worked in a way that I understood that I just didn't understand before.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: I understood that I just didn't understand before, and it's just been.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: It's amazing how much those types of tests can can help you and guide you.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: So we talk about all of that all the time.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: So let's let's talk about what holds people back, right, because we're just talking about personality tests and the differences and things like that.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: I recently had a podcast guest on who was not happy in his job and waited, and then you know he ended up getting getting laid off during COVID and found his passion and it was because there wasn't any fear holding him back anymore of leaving that secure job and things like that.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: What holds people back that you find from achieving what they want to achieve?
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: Well, you've mentioned several fear of failure and we have this false idea that we actually have control.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: We don't actually have control, but we think we do and so we.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: It's so common.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: And again, I say God, sometimes, you know, there's a whole analogy that I might share.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: But the guy who found his purpose when he lost his job which normally would be something that would be a tragedy, right, but in that case, you know, I see God doing this in my life over and over and over and over, and I am going to share this because it's just been so much a part of my understanding of my life and how God works, helped me to overcome procrastinating perfectionism, to recognize this.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: So, about every seven years actually and seven is a really important number in the Bible, but it's not exact but about every seven years God starts.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: It's a gardening metaphor.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: My husband's family are all gardeners.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: I'm not really a gardener, but gardening is a really strong again, the analogy metaphor in the Bible too.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: And when you want to have a big harvest, there are things you have to do, one of which is that field or garden, you know, the tiller comes out and the ground gets tilled up.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: Think of this as your life.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: You are the garden.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: Well, god comes in and he just rips up my life with the tiller and then he fertilizes it and the manure and you know he works it in, and so sometimes it's really, really difficult things.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: You know, one of the times was I felt like God removed everything that I loved.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: My mom passed away in that year before my brother passed away in that seven months after my mom.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: In between those two things, I suddenly had to have foot surgery, which was unexpected, and I was laid up for a long time.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: I had had a nanny job at that time, and so I found a friend who took over for me for about six weeks and I gave her very strict instructions Don't do more than my contract.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: This is what I do, don't do more.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: Well, it went like this and she unintentionally stole my job from me.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: Bam, bam, bam bam.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: And it was devastating in a lot of ways, but the soil of my heart was totally prepared then to say God, change me, changed my life.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: I was ready, I was surrendered, I was ready.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: And that's when I lost my second 50 pounds.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: So I've lost over 100 pounds total, and I was 60.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: Was I 60 or 62?
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: I was, you know.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: I mean when people say it's impossible to lose weight or it's very, very difficult, and that is the way that God has worked in my life over and over.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: But we're resistant to change.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: So what holds people back?
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: The thought that we are hanging on to security, the thought that we think we know what's going to happen next, that we have some kind of control over what's going to happen next, and to a degree we do.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: God is very gentlemanly and he doesn't, you know, force us, but we are averse to change often and some personalities, what you were talking about with your husband, my husband, he's very averse to change and I like change.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: That I think I'm in control of and I've learned again over the years that it's actually me that needs more time, that God has to repair me and it takes longer.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: So because once my husband does decide to do something, it happens so fast that it you know, if I wasn't prepared, if I hadn't been prepared it would have just totally thrown me.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: But we, just, we, yeah, we're just really reluctant, we procrastinate and we think we want it to all be perfect before we decide to go forward.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: So you know, I think that all of these things that I went through, and then you know where I felt like I was grieving, but it was preparing my heart and to be surrendered to okay, all right, I'm ready.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: I'm ready, I'll do whatever, you know, and that desperation, especially with weight loss, and that desperation, especially with weight loss, I've seen you can lose weight any way and at any time if you're desperate enough.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: That's just my theory, anyway.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: But we have to get to a place of emptying ourselves, being willing, ready, and it can take a lot of different things to make us ready for that, especially a big change.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, things happen for a reason, right?
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: Don't let fear hold you back.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: You cannot wait for perfection.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, I talk about that on this podcast all the time.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: If you're waiting for perfection, you're never getting it done and everybody else is going to beat you to market and have an audience and you're going to be, you know, sort of left off to the side because you just didn't get it done.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: And done is always almost always, I should say better than perfect, right?
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: So I think that that's that's really important to do it.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: That's really important to do it.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: So what do you recommend people do if they're interested in learning more about themselves and their passion and what tools God has given them?
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: Well, I mentioned the first steps and I really think that prayer along with that, because I really believe that God wants us to know.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: He wants us to know how you know and he wants to use us.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: And the online world and the space and business is very much relationship building and I know you talk about this a lot too.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: It's very relational and oftentimes people miss that because they forget that it's a relationship.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: And in email list building especially, I always say you're talking to one person.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: You can't think I'm talking to 12,000.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: You're talking one person opens an email and to explore who you are in.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: Well, what have I succeeded at and what do I love to do?
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: Because so many people, what do I love to do?
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: Because so many people, unfortunately, they succeed in business and they're down the road a ways and then all of a sudden they're like I hate this, I can't imagine doing this for the rest of my life, and maybe they don't even like their clients all that much because they haven't identified that person that's also their ideal client.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: So it's just so important to recognize that and be real.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: Be you, be authentically, you be genuinely caring about your people that you're going to help and really delve in.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: Take the time.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: It does take a little time.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: Take the time.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it definitely takes time to do it the right way and to get the insights that you need, which is hugely important.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: Wendy, this has been an awesome conversation.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for your time.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: I do hope that everybody watching or listening will take a few minutes and reflect on their journey and where they're at and where they're headed and what brings them joy, because life is too long and we work way too many hours to not be happy and enjoy what we do at least the majority of the time, because they do call it work for a reason.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: So it's not all fun and games, but a lot of it can be and it can pay off for a lot.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: Before I let you go, I have one question I ask all of my guests, and that is that this show core at the base that marketing is really building relationships.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: And then I think one of the biggest lessons that I've learned is just like example, in a dating relationship, you have to communicate clearly who you are and your desires.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: If you don't actually ask for the date, you have to ask and then you have to build deeper connection.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: You know connection, deeper connection and to create opportunities for deeper connection.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: But it moves at a little by little.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: You know you don't dive in and ask them to marry you when you first meet.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: Don't dive in and ask them to marry you when you first meet and to just, you know, recognize and to genuinely this is so important genuinely care about your client.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: That is going to resonate, that's going to connect.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: You know all these C words I hope will help you remember this.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: But you know the connection, the caring, the authenticity and then the creating opportunities for deeper connection, and don't forget to ask.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: Yes, do not forget to ask, because people are too busy with their own stuff to remember sometimes what you do and that you're there for them, and it is all about connections and relationships and building.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: So I think that's a really good and helpful insight that people do.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: And then I love how you said the word help, because I think looking at it as truly caring and helping takes the sales out of it.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: People don't like sales.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: People don't like sales.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: People right, that's just the way we've been for so long and I think that it's so important to think about it that way right, to think about it as helping, as guiding, as caring, and that makes it a lot easier to tell them what you do and how to work with you.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: So, wendy, thank you again, so so much I love this conversation.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: I think that there's a lot that people can get out of it, especially if they take some time to reflect, and I again, I appreciate your insights and everything with it.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: If people are looking for more from you, where should they go?
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: Well, I have a free PDF for your guests that can be found at yourhomeforgodcom slash 10 dash questions.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: It is 10 questions to identify your ideal client fast.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: And yes, if you want to get to know somebody, ask questions there you go.
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: And then if you want to connect with me more, if you've liked this and you want more, you can book a free session with me at calendlycom.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: Slash Wendy Gunn, g-u-n-n.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: Two N's slash connection.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: Perfect.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much and we'll be sure to have those links in the show notes.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: Thank you all so much for tuning in wherever you're listening or watching.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: We do appreciate it To help us out.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: It would be awesome if you would rate and subscribe wherever you're listening or watching.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Until next time, I look forward to seeing you on another episode of Imperfect Marketing.