290-SYB-Monica-Young.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

290-SYB-Monica-Young.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Carol Cox:
How can you increase the leads that you get at your presentations? Listen to this on your coaching call with one of our clients, Monica Young, on this episode of the Speaking Your Brand podcast. More and more women are making an impact by starting businesses running for office and speaking up for what matters. With my background as a TV political analyst, entrepreneur and speaker, I interview and coach purpose driven women to shape their brands, grow their companies, and become recognized as influencers in their field. This is Speaking Your Brand, your place to learn how to persuasively communicate your message to your audience. Hi there and welcome to the Speaking Your Man podcast. I’m your host, Carol Cox. One of the best reasons to be a speaker is to increase brand awareness for your business and to generate leads and clients, especially as social media gets noisier and the algorithms make it harder for our content to be seen. Being a speaker standing in front of an audience, whether in person or virtually with the built in credibility and authority and attention that comes from that is an incredible opportunity to connect with potential clients and take them to the next step on their buying journey with you. However, what I see happen a lot is that speakers provide too much content, especially too much training content in their lead generation presentations, which makes it less likely that they will get the leads that they want.

Carol Cox:
This episode is an honor coaching call from one of our Thought Leader Academy clients, Monica Young, as she pivots from training content to thought leadership in her presentations. Monica is our productivity consultant and CEO of My Productive Biz and she has a framework around do less, accomplish more. And she’s been presenting this framework and her workshop style presentations both virtually and in person, especially over the past couple of months. And I know that Monica had an incredible opportunity to focus her content to increase the number of leads that she’s getting from her presentations, because she’s a great speaker and she has a really valuable insights to share with her audience. You’re going to hear us talk through pinpointing her offer and her ideal client and why we start there using our signature talk canvas framework to lay out her content in the three acts, the types of questions to ask her particular audience. Integrating her personal story as the bridge from Act One to act two focusing more on changing the audience’s understanding of productivity rather than giving them more things to do. Using the feedback form for lead generation and Monica’s experience in the Thought Leader Academy. If you would like to hear more about our Signature Talk Canvas framework, go back to episodes to Episode 288.

Carol Cox:
I walk through our framework and how you can use it yourself with those three acts. And then last week’s episode was all about how to increase your speaker fees. So there’s different types of speaking that most of us do. We will do free speaking or maybe lower price speaking specifically for lead generation. And so that’s what you’re going to hear in this on our coaching call. And then of course, there’s a speaking that we get directly paid for, whether it’s keynotes, workshops and other types of presentations. And that’s what I covered on last week’s episode. If you would like to apply for our Thought Leader Academy, you can get all the details and submit your application as SpeakingYourBrand.com/academy. In the SpeakingYourBrand.com/academy. Our next start date is August 30th, 2022. So it’s coming up in just a couple of weeks. Get your application in as soon as possible because of the next step is we schedule a 30 minute zoom call with you to talk through your goals, what you want to achieve, and if the Thought Leader Academy is the best fit for you again, get all the details. Submit your application today as Speaking Your Brand, IMG Academy. Now let’s get on with the show. Welcome to the Speaking Your Brand podcast.

Monica Young:
Monica Hi. Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Carol Cox:
I am too. Thank you for being willing to do an on air coaching call and I really want this to be useful to you and dare I say fun for us to have and then obviously useful to the listeners. So thank you for being willing to do this before we dive into what we’re going to focus on today, which is how you can increase the number of leads that you’re getting at your presentations. Monica, tell us about the business that you run and the types of speaking that you’ve been doing.

Monica Young:
Sure. So I’m a productivity consultant, which basically means I’m a business coach and I specialize in productivity and time management. And I work with small business owners and or their teams. The speaking that I have been doing for probably 30 years, the entire time that I have owned and operated different businesses, has been workshops and trainings. I’m definitely one of what you call the expert trainer, and so I’ve always done workshops and trainings and before I started thought leadership, I had scheduled quite a few engagements, but they were all designed around my workshops that were workshops and trainings. And I’ve really been trying to follow the principles to, to do less of the teaching and training and more of the thought leadership. But that’s kind of where I’ve been up to the. So moving forward, I’m focusing more on the thought leadership, but it’s really hard to get out of the teaching and training because that’s who I am. It’s what I do.

Carol Cox:
And Monica, I know that you took our speaker archetype quiz and you got the fabulous facilitator, which I’m sure it was no surprise.

Monica Young:
Yes. I was like, Yeah, that’s pretty much it.

Carol Cox:
Okay, so but now you know that you definitely have that skill set down to a T, you’ve been doing it for a really long time. You’re great at it. And for you and for the listeners, there’s nothing wrong with doing workshops and trainings. Asterix If you’re getting paid well to do them. And I think what I see happens a lot is that we go and present at conferences, at business groups, chambers of commerce, women’s networking groups, what have you. And we’re there to increase our brand awareness or the awareness of our business and to generate leads and potential clients from those those presentations. Yet we are over indexing on the workshop training aspect of it, basically for free or for very low pay, which ends up actually hurting us because we’re then don’t get the leads and clients because we’ve done so much content in those free sessions.

Monica Young:
Yes, I actually did a workshop last week and the facilitator emailed me afterwards and he said, Hey, can I get a copy of your workbook? One of the guys wants to share it with his team. I was like. Case, the whole purpose. So, yes, I’m giving away too much information.

Carol Cox:
And so, Monica, that’s what I want to focus on in our time together today. So Thought Leader is working with us. You know, that we present our signature talk canvas framework and it has a three act structure to it. Towards the end of Act three is the call to action or the offer that you want to make to the audience, especially when you’re doing that, that business building, lead generation type of talk? What is the offer you want to present? Because in just one single offer, one offer per presentation, because then we’re going to back up your content to lead the audience to understand why that offer is a great fit to solve the problem that they have. So Monica, we think about the services that you do in your business. Let’s talk about what that offer looks like and then who is the buyer? Who is the client who actually makes the buying decision?

Monica Young:
Ideally the work that I want and we’ll back up to the offer from here. But the work that I want to be doing with my clients and what I have found works the best with my clients is to have a CEO day where we spend the full day together. We do a brain dump, we download, we strategize, we come up with their plan for the year, their strategy, their automations and systems. We do. We just knock it all out in one day and then they spend three months with me for implementation. And so they’ve got the guidance, the support, the accountability in that three month period. And most of my clients don’t need more than that. I love the combination of the CEO day and the three months of implementation to develop the habits and the new systems that they’re putting into place.

Carol Cox:
Perfect. So the buyer then is the CEO? Yes. So the CEO day plus the three month implementation and what types of businesses, what sizes of businesses tend to be the type of CEO who would purchase this.

Monica Young:
So I typically work with service based businesses, whether it’s personal services or professional services. I love working with 5 to 25 employees. That’s kind of the sweet spot. I’ve I have done trainings and workshops and worked with teams up to 250, but I really like that sweet spot of 5 to 25 because I feel like that’s where the business owners are still really hands on and they’re having trouble delegating and creating systems and letting go. So it’s a really good place to bring me in.

Carol Cox:
And are most of these businesses that you’re working with, are they still meeting or working in person? Like as we’re coming out of the pandemic, maybe they went remote for a period of time, but are they the types of businesses that would primarily be working in person?

Monica Young:
It’s interesting. I think a lot of the personal services, of course, are still meeting in person, the professional services. So like legal, financial insurance, all of that arena, they’re doing a lot more either hybrid or remote work. So it’s I’ve had a combination.

Carol Cox:
And so with the CEO Day, would you physically go to them whether they’re they’re working at an office or working at a home office, or would you be doing this virtually with them?

Monica Young:
I prefer to work with them in person. I like to be kind of hands on with just diving in there, but I can do it virtually as well. But I do prefer in person.

Carol Cox:
Okay, perfect. So we got the CEO day plus a three months of implementation. And you mentioned that it seems to be because this is for a CEO, this is not for a manager level or even like say like a practitioner, like someone who’s doing kind of a particular job in the business. So this is the CEO. They have a lot of hats that they’re wearing, a lot of responsibilities that they have delegation you mention what are the particular pain points and these that they have, how do they get to the trigger point where they’re like, I can’t keep doing this anymore? The way I’ve been doing it.

Monica Young:
The two phrases I hear the most are, I have too much to do and not enough time. And the biggest one is I just can’t get caught up. I just need to get caught up and I need a day to get caught up. And that’s where the CEO day came from. But usually the trigger is they’ve either lost an employee or a team member or they’ve lost a client or prospect because that the overwhelm of trying to do all the things and trying to wear all the hats, all of that overwhelm, they’re just not operating at their full capacity and their full potential. And so usually something to that point or yeah, it’s usually a client or a team member that they’ve lost because of their disorganization.

Carol Cox:
Okay, that’s really powerful because as human beings, we have an aversion to loss. We, we like to gain things, so we’re gaining time. Gaining organization is important. But then we also have to make sure that we talk a little bit about what what they have already lost or what they could lose.

Monica Young:
I just thought of one more. I’m so sorry. So, team member, client or family, they got in trouble for being on their phone on vacation or laptop on vacation. That’s usually a big trigger because their spouse or their family will say, this has got to change. And so that’s another big trigger.

Carol Cox:
Also perfect. And Monica, what do they say to themselves, the CEO say to themselves as far as why? They don’t have enough time. Why they’re so overwhelmed, why they’re disorganized. What is that kind of like iceberg? What’s above the surface of the iceberg that they’re seeing that they would say is the problem?

Monica Young:
Gosh, that’s a great question. Their knee jerk reaction is, I just don’t have enough time, you know, too much to do, not enough time. But what is causing that is just either business is growing and it’s growing fast. A lot of business owners aren’t actually taught how to run a business even if they’ve gone to business school. Nobody can teach you the reality of the day to day of running a business. And so we figure things out on the fly. We hold it together with Band-Aids and duct tape, and we’re just dreading the day that the wheels fall off. And so I think a lot of times it’s that they’ve been holding it together with the Band-Aids and the duct tape, and they’ve taken it as far as they can on their own. And they’ve reached capacity, mental, physical, emotional time. They’re just at capacity. There’s too many things wringing and digging and blinking. There’s too many distractions, there’s too many interruptions, and usually it’s coming from a good place. Their business is growing and it’s growing quickly, but it’s just creating all of those distractions and they’re not equipped to deal with it because they can’t seem to get caught up. It’s the productivity conundrum. How am I supposed to get stuff done when I can’t get stuff done?

Carol Cox:
Okay, perfect. I’m glad you mentioned productivity because we’re going to come back to that word in just a moment and how they understand it for themselves. So I mentioned, like, if we had this iceberg, what’s above the surface that they can see is that they just don’t have enough time. They have so many tasks, they have so many responsibilities. They have some team members. They’re probably delegating, maybe not delegating as much or as well as they could. Maybe they’re not focused on the right activities and their business like there are so many things that are going on underneath the surface, the bottom of the iceberg. That’s where you, Monica, as the expert in the space and then as the speaker, you’re going to reveal to them, show them like, here’s actually what’s going on for you and here’s how productivity has been maybe misunderstood and here’s a better way. And then this is going to be your better way. So what’s underneath the surface?

Monica Young:
They’re trying to do too much. They are doing a lot of shoulds because that’s the way it’s always been done. That’s the way their competitors do it. That’s the way their marketing coach taught them or a podcast. They heard it on a podcast. I should be doing all of these things and a lot of times they don’t embrace what’s really essential and necessary and important and fun for them. But ultimately it’s they’re trying to do too many things.

Carol Cox:
This leads perfectly then, Monica, to your approach to productivity, which.

Monica Young:
Is do less, accomplish more.

Carol Cox:
And this is kind of what you’re going to show them. The tension here is that we think productivity is checking more things off of our list. And also for a lot of CEOs, entrepreneurs, the reason we like entrepreneurship is where high achieving we we tend to get a lot of stuff done. We’re very good at execution. We think of a lot of ideas. So we think of all those ideas and then they get added to our to do list, right? And then so we want to keep checking those things off and then we quote unquote feel productive. But then, Monica, how would you shift our understanding of productivity?

Monica Young:
Yeah, just because you’re getting stuff done doesn’t mean that you’re being productive. It doesn’t mean that you’re getting the right things done. Traditionally, people think of productivity as getting more done. It’s How can I be more efficient? How can I do more things with my time? How can I be exponential in the work that I’m doing? And it’s all about more and more and more. And so the shift and how I rethink productivity is really just filtering out the fluff, embracing the essentials, and how do you do less and make more impact with that?

Carol Cox:
Okay, perfect. Now that we have set up who your buyer is, the offer that you’re going to present to them, we’ve identified their goals, the problems that they see, that they have, the problems underneath the surface, which is really misunderstanding what productivity means and kind of how productivity is almost causing their dysfunction. No, that’s like cultural understanding of productivity that we all have. Like it’s not their it’s not their fault that they have. This understanding is what our what society has taught us. But then it has it has created these issues for them. And so, Monica, I was you had sent me before this some outlines and some slide decks of some of the presentations you’ve been you’ve been giving. And they are excellent trainings. They are excellent workshops, value packed, very clear, very step by step, very helpful to the people who go through them. Here’s the thing about selling to CEOs and to executives, whether they’re entrepreneurs or in corporate, is that they are not typically the doers, the practitioners within a business. So as speakers, if we’re doing our presentations, whether they’re for lead generation or even for keynotes, and we’re giving a lot of practitioner advice, so do these three things, do these six things, what happens to that CEO sitting in the audience?

Monica Young:
So now probably.

Carol Cox:
Well, these are not. They think, Oh, I have more things I have to add to my to do list now. Yeah. When I’m already maxed out, I already feel like I don’t have enough time. And so for the practitioners, you know, the workers coming in in their twenties, they they need those tips because that’s where that’s the learning period for them in the workplace. The CEOs now, they need this mindset shift, this new understanding of why the things haven’t been working and what’s possible instead. And this is where your process, Monica, and your framework and your thought leadership comes in. So imagine that you’re at the lead generation presentation. You have CEOs sitting in the audience and you talk to them about you validate their problems that they’re having too much to do. Don’t know how to get it all done. Lots of things like half the state competitive in the marketplace have to service our clients have to think of new marketing strategies have to sell all these things are responsible for. So you validate what they’re going through. You ask some questions about what productivity means to them, how they are productive. Like how do what do they consider to be a productive day or productive? We get them to talk about it and then give them some scenarios of, Well, what would it look like if you were only allowed to check off three things a day and like and and see what they would say? And now you’re building a conversation that’s going to shift their understanding of what productivity means. How does that sound so far?

Monica Young:
Good. I feel like I’ve been clo. I’ve been like on the edge of that, but I haven’t been quite there. And you just put into words perfectly the transition that I need to make. So I appreciate that.

Carol Cox:
I know that for you, Monica, and I’ve been through this, too, and I know our listeners have, is that we feel like in our presentations that we have to give like these specific steps that people can take. Otherwise they’re going to be disappointed in having shown up for that. But then I. So then I would ask back to you, Monica, if you think about some of the presentations that you’ve been in as an audience member, what has made the most impact on you as you’ve been going through them.

Monica Young:
Stories.

Carol Cox:
And why?

Monica Young:
Because they’re relatable. I can see myself in them and kind of figure how it applies to me.

Carol Cox:
I guess so. Monica, in your business right now, do you feel like you are doing the do less approach yourself? And if you are successfully doing it now, what does that look like? And if you hadn’t in the past, like what? What led you to figure out that this is what you need to do for yourself?

Monica Young:
So I was born to be a productivity and organizing expert. That’s just who I am, is what I do naturally. No matter where I am or what I do, I’m always organizing and looking for systems and patterns and routines. So it’s just something I’ve always done naturally. And I always thought, especially as a productivity consultant, that I was pretty darn organized, but it really kicked me in the butt the last two years. I had a medical I’m calling it my medical adventure. Long story short, I was really sick during COVID. I got sick February before COVID hit here in March for about a year and a half before I got a diagnosis, had a surgery, and then still was sick when another six months before a diagnosis. So really about two years where I can barely function, I can barely get out of bed. And I really had only about two or 3 hours a day that I could process information and communicate and get things done. But I still had a business to run. I still had a team, I still had clients. And so I originally was like, Oh, I’m just going to figure out how to squeeze what I was doing in a six or eight hour day into a two hour day, and so revisited all of my systems and my organizing principles and productivity.

Monica Young:
And then it was like, Oh yeah, that’s, that’s not going to work. You can’t this no matter how productive you are, you can’t fit six or 8 hours into a two hour day. And so I really that was where I was kind of like, oh, I have to do less. I have to filter out the fluff and really get it down to the essentials and the necessities of how to serve my clients, serve my team, pay my medical bills. And so it was this whole new level of getting stuff done for me and productivity where it’s always efficient, now I’m super productive. And even though now I’m functioning better and I’ve learned how to manage my medical issues, I still am trying to keep to where I’m only focusing on my essentials for 2 to 3 hours a day. And then anything else I do is bonus points.

Carol Cox:
That is such an incredible story, Monica, and so helpful for the people in the audience to hear that because they because they very much can relate to it, even if they didn’t have an added medical situation. But maybe there have been times in their business where for a week they couldn’t do the stuff that they needed to because of family issues or other things that are going on, or maybe just a vacation. Like maybe they just wanted to take time off and and they couldn’t figure out how to actually make that happen. I see that story, Monica, kind of at. Towards the end of Act One. So we kind of we set up Act One in your talk with validating the problems that the audience is facing, the goals that they have, and then getting them to talk about what does productivity mean to them, what does it look like, what is being productive look like to them? And then you segue way into well, being productive used to for me, me like getting all these things done right 6 to 8 hours a day. And then this happened. So I had to figure out how to do 2 hours instead of six.

Carol Cox:
And then you can ask the audience, if you only had 2 hours a day to work on your business, what would be the things that only you could do and and that would have to get done to keep the business moving. And then that can start like having some realizations for them as far as what is it that they really need to be doing? And now you can then go into Act two. So Act two is like your main content. That’s where you can talk about the do less, accomplish more framework and kind of like explain to them why this idea of doing less actually is much more productive for you and better for you, better for your business and so on. And then instead of giving them the step by step of Go do these things because they don’t want to, they don’t want to do them and they don’t have time to do them. They need to hire you because you need to come in and do it with them with your expert guidance so they can do it faster because CEOs want results, but they want accelerated results for themselves.

Monica Young:
Yeah, and that’s the whole point of the CEO day is. Yes, I see where we’re going.

Carol Cox:
Yes. Okay. So then act two, you kind of present this idea of and so it’s more of it’s still your framework, but it’s not it’s not going through step by step of your framework and what they should do. This is more of your kind of thought leadership of what productivity could be. Right? This idea of doing less and accomplishing more. So you go through that, share some client examples, and if you can give real client names if you want to, you can do composite clients so that they can visualize in their mind what a CEO day looks like, because they’ll be much more likely to want to buy it if they can start imagining you coming into their office. So, you know, I was working with this client. She ran her own law firm and we went in and we did this, this and this. And then for the next three months, like, you just kind of paint the picture and then, of course, what the results were for her afterwards. So kind of pepper that into act two can think about maybe three key points that you want to share with the audience in act two related to this idea of doing less. You could talk about I mean, these could be big picture things you could talk about like hustle culture and how that’s contributed to our understanding of productivity. You could talk about the as high achievers.

Carol Cox:
Why? It’s hard for us to think that doing less like validates our accomplishments because we write. Like, that’s the kind of stuff I want you to dig into with them. And then maybe the third. The third thing is something related to, well, we could go back to the top, which is the 2 hours. If you only had 2 to 3 hours a day, what are those things that you would need to focus on? So kind of do that the main content in Act Two and then as you get into Act three, that’s those are the next steps for the audience. So audience, you just heard kind of this new understanding of productivity. So the next step for you is to do X, Y, Z, so on your own, go do these things. Now I know you’re really busy, which is right, which is what we just talked about. So if you would like to accelerate this and get expert guidance so that it can get done quickly and that you don’t keep putting it off so you can get those results sooner, we can do a CEO today together. Here’s what it looks like. I had this feed the feedback forms there on your table. Go ahead and fill that out. Check that off at the end and then we’ll set up a time to for a consultation call.

Monica Young:
That sounds good. So I did have one question. As you were going through that, you said to present the less framework and tell the stories. Would you do like say with a L means and then a story about that and then the E and then a story? Or would you do the less really quick overview and then share a couple of different stories? Is there a suggested way to do that.

Carol Cox:
For for the type of presentation that I just described for you, Monica, I would do just an overview of the lease acronym. Just give them what each letter stands for and kind of like a sentence or two as far as what it means. And then do a couple of client stories that encompass the whole acronym.

Monica Young:
That’s what I was thinking. I just wanted to make sure I was clear on that. Another thing that you mentioned, the feedback form, which I absolutely love. I’ve been using a version of yours that you gave us in the Thought Leadership Academy, and I love it. One of the things is the free download, and so I previously had something called the Productive Environment Scorecard, and that’s worked great, but it’s kind of for one of my different talks. It’s more for one of my workshops for something like this. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for what a great download or opt in would be?

Carol Cox:
Yeah, this is a good question, Monica, because I also think about your buyer, which is the CEOs and they probably don’t need one more thing again, one more thing to go and do or one more thing to go and download. And in that case, you may not need to have a free offer for them. They may not be the type of buyer who necessarily wants to get on someone’s email list or is going to necessarily buy from being on your email list so you don’t have to do an email opt in. What I would rather you do, Monica, is get those feedback forms with people who want to do the console calls with you and even book console calls. They’re on the spot on your on the calendar, on your phone while you’re talking to people who come up to you afterwards and are interested.

Monica Young:
I’ll take that.

Carol Cox:
Yeah.

Monica Young:
Yeah, that’s much better than too often.

Carol Cox:
Yeah. Because also these people, they’re probably like, we’re CEOs of our businesses. We know how busy that we get. And yes, I’ll sign up for people’s email list and I have every intention of reading them or responding or what have you. But we know we get busy, other CEOs get busy, and so it may not be the most effective buying channel. Now, what you could do, Monica, now, if you are doing a workshop for pay, now these buyers, these CEOs, they may do the CEO day package with you. And you could suggest to them that you could come in and do a workshop training for their employees on productivity for pay, and then you can provide a lot more of these worksheets and resources for them.

Monica Young:
That makes.

Carol Cox:
Sense. As far as an email opt in, I would say if you really wanted to do one, as you know and as the listeners know, we just did launch this quiz last month. The Speaker Archetype Quiz I have. I really like it. It’s quick to do. It only takes a few minutes for someone to do. People love to learn, learn about themselves, figure out what they are. And it’s a goldmine of data because not only do you get the result that they ended up with, but you get you see every answer that they selected for every question so you know which answer they chose. And then you can target them in your or mentioned things in your call or what have you. So that is something that you can consider doing. And what other questions do you have?

Monica Young:
Monika I don’t know. I mean, I think we did a lot.

Carol Cox:
We did do a lot. We did a lot in 27 minutes.

Monica Young:
Yes. I think we just covered my entire new signature talk, so I’m pretty good.

Carol Cox:
Okay. Well, and I encourage you to go try it out somewhere and know that it’s good to feel a little uncomfortable for you because you’re going to wonder, well, where’s where’s all the media content? Like, where’s all the stuff that I’m supposed to be giving them? And I’m just encouraging you to try it. I’m a big experimenter. I’m always willing to try new things. So I have comparison versus version A versus version be tried a few times, see what happens, and then just keep adjusting it. What has been your experience so far in the Thought Leader Academy? Because you’re going to you’ll graduate in about another month or so. At the time of this recording, what has the experience been like?

Monica Young:
I want to cry. I don’t want to leave. You can’t kick me out. No, it’s amazing. So first of all, just the education and the thought leadership and the challenging us to do things a little bit differently and to broaden our adventures a little bit. And then the camaraderie between the women in the group has been amazing. Everybody is willing to provide feedback and hop on a call and listen to parts of your talk and help the nest. And I just think the education, the inspiration, the leadership and the connection and collaboration, it’s just been amazing. I could not have asked for anything better. And it’s definitely even though I have been teaching more of the training and workshops, it’s elevated those and even those have been exponentially better than it was before thought leadership. So I just I could go on all day and I’m going to cry if you kick me out.

Carol Cox:
So, Monica, it’s been a joy to have you. I appreciate how much you have supported the other women and you are the queen of the memes and the gifts like you have the the funniest ones that you post and the multi networks. So I always get a laugh above those.

Monica Young:
Yeah, I crack myself up. I’m like, I’m the funniest person I know.

Carol Cox:
We might as well think that about ourselves. Right. All right. So let me ask you the questions that we’re asking now as we end our podcast interviews is what is a favorite book that you would recommend?

Monica Young:
You know? And speaking of funny, I love Jensen Arrow and her. You’re a badass series because especially in productivity, things are very like organizational and check off your lists and very like administrative and and I tend to lean more of that way. So I seek out funny, especially when I’m looking for education and inspiration. So I loved Insincere. She’s just so funny.

Carol Cox:
And I know I looked at your slides and you do have humor in your slides and I really will. I want to see more of this humor come out in your stories and in your content. Monica and I just had just had this memory of our console call back in. I think it was April or May for the Thought Leader Academy. And you were talking about your fitness background, and I think you mentioned Hans and Franz.

Monica Young:
Oh, my gosh. Yes.

Carol Cox:
Please. Are the listeners about Hans and Franz in case there are two.

Monica Young:
Young icons, and Franz were from Saturday Night Live and they were like bodybuilders and their their sweat pants and sweatshirt, their grace, rocky sweat sweatpants and sweatshirts were stuffed with towels or something. But they’re here to pump you up, was their key phrase. And so actually I didn’t use them when I was in fitness. It was when I started with productivity. I had organized my office and then leverage your leadership. And then it was like, I need something for productivity. And it was like. Well, your productivity. And so I did my entire sales page for productivity on a fitness theme. It’s actually on my website now. I took off the hands and fronds, but it was, I’m here to pump you up in your productivity. So again, I think I’m hilarious. I know I’m so silly, but it’s just, you know, you got to have some fun.

Carol Cox:
Yeah, you definitely, definitely need to. All right. Thank you for sharing that next question. Favorite TEDTalk.

Monica Young:
Okay, so there is a woman named Carrie Thomas and her talk is called from Clutter Clarity. It’s a fantastic talk she has. I checked a couple of days ago and she had 995,000 views, which is pretty amazing. And she’s a friend of mine. She’s one of my colleagues. And so even though there’s some other ones that I could call out because I actually know her as a human being, I know somebody who’s done a TEDTalk who has almost a million views. It’s just so inspiring to me and it’s a great talk. I mean, she’s fantastic, but I think that’s my favorite just because it helps me to see that it’s it’s a realistic goal and it’s something that I could possibly do someday.

Carol Cox:
Oh, that’s a great one, monica, thank you. And a favorite quote.

Monica Young:
Oh, gosh. Sheryl Sandberg from Facebook. She said, I want every little girl who’s told she’s bossy to be told. Instead, she has leadership skills. And I love that because I was told my entire childhood that I was bossy and I hated it. And, you know, I was trying to help people. I was trying to lead. But when you’re young, you don’t process that and you don’t and you’re just told you’re bossy and so you feel like it’s bad. And then you keep your mouth shut and you hide in a corner and you don’t raise your hand. And it’s awful. And so I just adore that quote because it kind of reframed my entire childhood for me. I was like, Oh, yeah, I wasn’t bossy, I wasn’t bad. I was a leader who knew? So it just reframed my entire childhood. And I just that that quote really sticks with me, right?

Carol Cox:
Because what boy has been called bossy doesn’t happen. No. Know he has natural leadership qualities.

Monica Young:
Um hum. Yeah, exactly.

Carol Cox:
Monica, please tell listeners where they can connect with you, your website. And also, I think you mostly hang out on LinkedIn, correct?

Monica Young:
Yes. My website is my productive biz. Biz and I in theory hang out a lot on LinkedIn. I am making a commitment and I’m doing it live right here to be on LinkedIn more frequently and sharing. We talked about in our group sharing productivity, power ups, so little 2 to 3 minute tips here and there. I’m not going to do like big long talks on productivity because that defeats the whole purpose. But I’ll be in there offering productivity, power ups weekly. So starting in August.

Carol Cox:
Fantastic. And for those of you listening, if you want to find out your speaker archetype, you can take our free quiz as Speaking Your Brand slash quiz. And if you would like to apply for our Thought Leader Academy, like the one that Monica is in right now, you can get all the details and submit your application as SpeakingYourBrand.com/academy and then Speaking Your Brand IMG Academy. Monica, thank you so much for coming on the Speaking Your Brand podcast.

Monica Young:
Thank you so much for having me and the amazing coaching you just did. I’m ready to go rewrite my talk now, so I’m so excited.

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