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

Carol Cox:
Get ready for a powerful conversation about what's in your way is your way to your thought leadership with my guest Betsy Jordan on this episode of the Speaking Your Brand podcast.

Carol Cox:
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.

Carol Cox:
Welcome to the Speaking Your Brand podcast. I'm your host, Carol Cox. We are wrapping up a series that we've been doing with women who've been in our Thought Leader Academy. And last week, we held our graduation call for the latest group to go through the academy. These women had spent the past four months working on their thought leadership projects and their signature talks. And you've met a few of them in the past few weeks Marisol Erlacher, Chanta Wilkinson, and Cyndi Shifrel. And today you're going to meet Betsy Jordyn. What I love about the graduation calls is that each of the women deliver a short speech using what they learned about speechwriting and storytelling. And their speeches are so good they incorporated immersive storytelling, humor, emotion, props, vulnerability, suspense, music, video. We were laughing, we were crying. We were on the edge of our seats, waiting for them to tell us more of their story.

Carol Cox:
They did such an amazing job. It's really one of the favorite calls that we do with them, so I am so proud of them. Congratulations to the women who just finished and a huge thanks to our outstanding coaches Diane Diaz, Marie, Feedback and Joy Spencer. As I mentioned, my guest in today's episode is Betsy Jordan, who went through our Thought Leader Academy earlier this year. And on that graduation call, Betsy shared in her speech about her journey through the program. And when she got to this part of her speech, it stopped me in my tracks. Here's what she said, and I quote What I thought was in my way to my thought. Leadership was the way to my thought leadership. What I feel crippled me actually qualifies me for the message that I want to deliver to others. And when she said that, I just stopped and I just knew that that was she said it was going to be so critical, so foundational, so elemental to what we think about when we think about developing our thought leadership message. And so since then, Betsy and I have had many conversations about what it means to be a thought leader. So I asked her to come on the podcast today to talk about her own experiences developing into a thought leader. And she also has a really insightful model that she's developed around adulthood maturity. And so we get into the details of that. We talk about normalizing our experiences and flaws and releasing shame, any shame that we may have around our story.

Carol Cox:
We talk about the feminist power of owning and telling our story, the differences between the hero's journey and the heroines journey. We also talk about the role of loss, grief and suffering and developing into an authentic thought leader. And I share my own realization around this in the midst of our conversation. Like, literally, it was just a thought that came into my mind as Betsy and I were talking. As you listen to this episode, think for yourself. If there's something you have within yourself, that could be the way to your thought leadership message, especially if it feels like it's what's holding you back. If you like to experience this kind of transformation that the women in our Thought Leader Academy experience, be sure you're on our interest list for the thought leader. Academy enrollment will be opening very soon, again in September. And so you're not going to want to miss it go to speaking your brand academy you that speaking your brand academy our thought leader academy is a four month program and you get both one on one coaching in the weekly live group calls on Zoom. So you get training and support and feedback on creating your thought, leadership message and platform, creating your signature talk, both a story driven keynote, TEDx style talk, as well as a signature talk for lead generation and brand awareness. You also work on your delivery, both in-person delivery and video delivery, and your visibility plan and revenue from speaking.

Carol Cox:
It really is a comprehensive curriculum that we take you through during those four months and during those graduation speeches, woman after woman said that it was the community of women in addition to the training, in addition to the coaching that really made the difference for them. And that along with creating their signature talk and all of the tangible benefits that they got, it was really a boost and confidence in seeing themselves as a thought leader. By the time they were done, they could say to themselves with confidence, I am a thought leader and I want that for you too. This is why our mission is speaking. Your brand is to champion and amplify women's voices, especially diverse women's voices. To make sure that women are getting their messages, getting their stories, getting their voices out there as speakers and as thought leaders. We would love to have you part of the program. It is a small group, 10 to 12 women. We like to keep a small and intimate because there really is a safe, trusted space for you to play with your ideas, for you to identify what that core personal story is for you, where your thought leadership message lies again, so to speak, in your brand academy to get all the details and to get on the interest list. Now let's get on with the show. Welcome to the podcast, Betsy.

Betsy Jordyn:
Hi. Thank you for having me.

Carol Cox:
Well, I'm excited to have you on. Betsy, you were a client in our Thought Leader Academy that ran from November of 2020 through March of 2021. So you graduated then and we've gotten to know each other better even since then, because you've been in our monthly membership, our Thought Leader Collective as well. And I actually got to meet you in person because you live about 30 minutes from where I live in Orlando. So that was fun. And we have kind of been talking about these different ideas around thought, leadership and branding and positioning. So I really wanted you to come on the podcast so that you could share some of your expertise and insights because you have a very impressive background in marketing and in positioning. And I know you help your clients with that now. So before we dig into kind of the nitty gritty of that, Betsy, can you give us an overview of your background and how you got to where you are today with your company?

Betsy Jordyn:
So thank you for saying I have an impressive background in marketing because I didn't really come out of marketing. So my background is actually an organization development. So I started my career first in HR and then I went into organization development consulting and I spent about eight years or so as an internal consultant at Disney before I made that big leap that a lot of people I'm sure want to make, which is to leave corporate and start my own business. So that was fun. And I started a consulting business, but it took me, it took me a long time to realize, like, I didn't really start the right business. I'd been wanting to work with people more one on one. And I've always had this I don't know, I guess you could call it a quirk, you can call it a strength. Whichever way you want to look at it is I really like to kind of draw out of people like what they're amazing at and package it. And what got really interesting is that what I discovered that what people were coming to me for was what I was actually monetizing. So I took an even bigger leap and I pivoted my business to be more in alignment with this part. And so the, the thing I love is helping people that in between point, you know, that crossroads between like I have a career or a business I should have. And then there's the one I really want and helping them realize, you know, what you how you're built is what you're supposed to be. So then the marketing just became a natural progression because it's just an expression to me. Marketing is just a way of serving people you haven't met yet. And so that's where I started working on digging in and learning how to do that, building websites. So I kind of fell into marketing rather than like, Oh, I have an impressive background, but thank you for saying that.

Carol Cox:
Well, you obviously have a natural inclination for it. You're very good at copyrighting and you're very good at expressing that, which is unique about either yourself or your clients that you work with. And I know because I have experienced that from you. So I want to go into what something that you said about many of us and many of the clients that you work with start businesses that they think that they should have. And then at some point they realize that it's not working or something's going on with it. And so why is it that we start businesses that we think we should have, but yet aren't the ones that we really want?

Betsy Jordyn:
Huh? That's a thousand question, a lot of reasons. So I think that there's different points in time. You know, like when you're let's say you're in your thirties or your twenties and entrepreneurship is your first thing out, you may not know yourself well enough, you may not know your gifts, you may not your strengths. So you're going to go try and do lots of things. And I think that that's a really important part of business ownership is that you have to look at success not as a straight line, but more like an ice skater. You know, like an ice skater moves forward going side to side. So there's no no problem, no harm, no foul. If you put something out there, the market responds and then you pivot. It's really different. Then I'm using fear to make my decisions for me, you know? So it's usually depends on who's in the driver's seat, is it? Hey, I'm going to do the best I can. I'm going to go with what I know and then I'll pivot later and I'll figure it out. Or I'm really too afraid of really going after what I really want because I don't trust it. That there's something about like work is it has to suck or we have to, you know, like I look at it as kind of like we have our strengths and they're all your rank order.

Betsy Jordyn:
I'm in a different way. And then you have like you have your favorite gifts and your favorite things that feel so natural to you. And then you have the next tier. So the next tier is like you have to work a little harder and but they're not out all the time. But the gifts are here. But when people compliment you and they say, Oh my God, you're so great at this, you're like, Oh, it's nothing. I can't possibly monetize this because this is way too easy for me. This is way too fun. This is way too decadent. I have to discount it in some way. So there's something about that. But then. Career people, we got a much, much harder because we have been rewarded our whole career and everybody tells us this is what we should have. This is what we're supposed to do. Like if you've been on TV and you've been a political commentator and you have all of this ability, and why in the world would you ever not pursue more a curt TV career and coach people and guide them on their thought leadership? That's just crazy talk. And, you know, the little voice is like, but that sounds a lot more fun, you know? But everyone's like, But you had it all. You've you've made.

Carol Cox:
It. So for people who are listening right now and they're like, Well, I don't really know, like, what that thing is for me. Like maybe they, they have natural gifts because we all do, but they haven't figured out what they are or they they, you know, they feel a little muddled. Do you have any suggestions for them?

Betsy Jordyn:
I would say number one is you have the answers and they're within you. So you have to go dig in mine for them. You don't have to go create them. So you don't have to like make it up. You don't have to figure it out. So when it comes to the passion, the passion part, again, is not what you love, it's what you hate. Nine times out of ten, what you want to do and the issues you want to be against is serving a younger version of you. So you want to heal yourself by helping other people in the same ways in which you've been wounded. So my guess is not to put you on the spot, but I imagine that you're concerned about women taking up space and having a voice comes from your own experience, in your own transformation, and you don't want to see anybody else struggle. I mean, I'm not I don't want to put words in your mouth. But is that accurate?

Carol Cox:
Yes. And this is something that I'm still digging into based on our last the last recent conversation that we had about that and kind of looking back to see like where exactly did this originate from and how did that inform me growing up?

Betsy Jordyn:
Well, and even being in the Thought Leader Academy, one of the most impactful, profound moments was the first session where everybody went around and told their stories and how their stories related to their thought leadership and what they wanted. And for me, in that moment, it gave a lot of permission to say, you know what? What I thought crippled me, qualified me, you know, like what I what I really want to do and the change I want to see in the world is I can relate to it. And all the women, it's like there must be a correlation between high achieving women and thought leadership and stories, you know, like struggle, struggle or the ability to process, struggle, high achievement and the thought leaders like, is there a possibility that somebody can be a true thought leader without processing and having connection and a depth of a story that's that people can relate to in some sort of way? So your passion is all found in that. So it's doing a little bit of mining throughout your life and saying, Well, what are the themes of my life? So that would be to figure out what you should do, who you should serve this. And then when you discover like, Well, what is in the flow, I'll tell you, my go to that works 100% of the time from a branding standpoint is I ask people, what did you play with and how did you play with it? Go back and look at your toys.

Betsy Jordyn:
You know, when I look at my kids, my daughter is now 19 and she's one who wants to be a marine biologist. And she just got a job as an educator at SeaWorld. And she loves her job. Loves her job. And when I think about her favorite toy when she was two, I got her a picture book like an Encyclopedia of Animals. And there was like this picture with this really awful looking shark that had blood all over it. And I try to flip through it. I'm like, Oh, my sweet little baby's not going to like it. And she kept flipping back and she stared at that. That that is the one toy, the one thing. And what does she do now is she spouts off shark facts for a living. Oh, my God. You know, you've never seen anybody in heaven. You know, my younger daughter, whenever we'd go to the toy store, she wouldn't take one animal out or one stuffed animal, a bunch of them, and then she'd do something with them, like, okay, so this is my little leader, you know? So you just pay attention to that 100% of the time. What did you play with and how did you play with it? I'll tell you everything you need to know.

Carol Cox:
That's such a great question. A great thing to start with. Betsy, I think this is how you said it in your graduation speech for Theater Academy, you realized that what was in your way to your thought leadership was actually was your way to your thought leadership. So tell me a little bit about like what the realization that you had regarding that and what was in your way to your thought leadership that you that you realize what is actually that was your thought leadership.

Betsy Jordyn:
I always felt like I had to get my crap together before I could be a thought leader. Like I had to get everything all figured out, you know, because I made I made some really great choices in my career. I did so many great things with my career, and I could look at all my career choices and it's like, Yes, I'm super proud of my personal life. Not so much, you know? And so there was like this huge fear of like, well, if I go out on a bigger stage, somebody's going to find out that I don't have all my crap together, that I don't have. I didn't have all my life together. I'm a single parent, you know, I've gone through divorces, so there was more than one, you know. So I was like, Oh, my gosh, I'm going to figure this out. There's people like I'm going to get found out. And then through the process of going through the Thought Leadership Academy and really clarifying my core story, that it kind of helps and seeing other people in the group share their core story, I help normalize it for me that I wasn't alone and that perhaps if I told the story of like, I don't have all my crap together. Yes, there's this podcast out there about my 0 to 300000 story, but people don't know the other story of how I started that business while I was on the lam from some some guy who was trying to take all my money and he was a little bit nutty and, you know, and I built that's how I built my business.

Betsy Jordyn:
Like, I started my business with a laptop on a chair because I couldn't afford a desk at the time. I had $200 in the bank and I had a grandmother who had died, and she was this entrepreneur from the forties. And I threw my money into my business. And that's the real story of how it got started, you know. So that's my story. And that's what I figured out in the Thought Leadership Academy. And the container that you created is I don't have to be ashamed over that because there's an opportunity where it will be paid forward. So what's in my way is the way kind of like we talked about Monica Lewinsky. I was really inspired when I see how she is on social media and her TEDx talk and that's somebody let me talk about somebody who had a really difficult, super shame inducing story and oh my gosh, what she's been able to do with it is unbelievable. So it's like, well, we're all flawed. We're all we're all flawed. I'm flawed. And it took me that's where that's the power of your thought. Leader Academy. I'll just tell you that you got a lot of things that are amazing at speaking your brand, but the power of the Thought Leader Academy of normalizing this stuff for other people and and transforming what feels like something bad into something good is just, you know, kudos to you and Diane for what you created.

Carol Cox:
Oh, well, thank you, Betsy. And I'm so glad that you got that out of it. And it reminds me of back in the 1970s with the second wave feminist movement, they did these consciousness raising circles where women would get together in other women's homes and talk about issues like what they were getting paid about abortions, about lack of child care, about their their husbands and their their home life. And then it was at that point that they realized that they weren't alone, that what they were experiencing as women was not they weren't like crazy, you know, there wasn't something wrong with them. This was this commonality based on the society in which they lived. And so that's really I've taken that premise into the work we do in the Thought Leader Academy and into our events like our summit to normalize these things, to let women know like we all have these experiences, none of us is perfect. We've all had these varying degrees of struggle. And that is through, like you said, is through that and sharing. That is actually how we end up being more relatable to the women and men who are watching us, and then they can take that as inspiration and action going forward.

Betsy Jordyn:
And I want to add another thing to that is we become more relatable, but when we release that part of that shame, then we become more powerful. Like then our voice becomes stronger because we're not carrying that fear of like, I don't want to be found out. It's like, Well, who cares if somebody finds out at this point, you know, all right, I've already told my story, you know, and the world didn't die or I didn't die. You know, the world didn't open up and I didn't crawl into a hole, you know, I didn't get sucked in. And I think that's the other ancillary benefit of that, if I may add that.

Carol Cox:
Yes. And it reminds me, Betsy, I know that we are we both love Hamilton. The musical and at the very last song is about who tells your story. And Eliza is singing in and about, you know, builds a Washington monument for George Washington. And then obviously she tells Alexander Hamilton's story and builds the orphanage and all of that. But I think about this idea, like, who tells your story? And as women, when we claim our own story and we choose to tell it, we are owning our story. And then we have the power with that story versus letting someone else unmask us or something where we feel that shame of that possibility of that happening.

Betsy Jordyn:
I think that's a great point, you know, is that we get to own our story and we get to tell how it is like Bernie Brown talks about is people have to earn the right to our story and what we choose to tell our story. I think that's interesting, too, from a feminist standpoint is, you know why we have the MeToo movement, you know that like I don't think the here I think the hero's journey separate the heroine's journey distinct from the heroines journey. And I believe my my little theory in the heroines journey is we go together, you know, women don't go off on the heroines journey. That's why we love Wicked and Frozen. That's why little girls go crazy over it is because they go on the journey and a pair, you know, you go together. And if we go together and I think that's what the story does and the collective that maybe when we go out in the world, it has that other impact. But when we do it in the Thought Leader Academy or in the Thought Leader Collective, we do that thing where we're going together and now we're all supporting each other's heroines journey, not heroine. Heroin journey.

Carol Cox:
Yes, a little bit different.

Betsy Jordyn:
Clarify. You know, I know there's consciousness raising circles, but not that kind.

Carol Cox:
Hey, maybe I. Maybe that's the next thing. You never know.

Betsy Jordyn:
You know? You never know. Michael Pollan might have a thought on that one.

Carol Cox:
All right, Betsy, let me know this. This is great. I say do the same thing when I say heroin. No heroin story. It's almost the English is such a weird language. All right. It is. So, Betsy, let me since you mentioned about Monica Lewinsky and I know that this had come up in a previous conversation because we were talking about the the four stages that you've identified as like people and even organizations are in one of these four stages. And then for some of us, like, we want to we want to keep going through the stages, but it's work to go through these stages. So can you just give us an overview of these stages and kind of what what they mean and what the work is to kind of keep going through them?

Betsy Jordyn:
Basically, the idea of stages, so you picture it like we obviously know what stages are of maturity for kids. You know, you go from infant to toddler, you know, to child nightmare, preteen teen, you know, on all of that, you can clearly see I just made it through the preteen and I'm in the teen. There's a similar stages that go through adulthood, you know. So we have like the first stage and I kind of compare it more like to the butterfly. So the first stage is give to get kind of stage. So it's sort of like the butterfly begins. Life is like a little larva, you know. So it's like it's all about the egg. And the egg gets its nutrients from being around whatever plant it's on. Similarly, we start off life maybe in your twenties is you're somebody who gets your sense of esteem from outside of you and but your focus on your own self esteem and you get your power from outside of you, you know. But at some point you grab a hold of an expertise or you grab a hold of of something that you're great at, and then you move into what I would call stage two, which is that got to give stage. So this is where a lot of high achieving people wind up and and where it's you get your power from outside. So you still get your power from your status symbols and from your corner office and your bank size. And but you're now you're starting to be more outward in a seeming other people, leading other people.

Betsy Jordyn:
So that's a great phase until it stops being a great phase. But that's the caterpillar phase. Eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, consume, consume, consume. This is the stage that everything and at least the American society says is you've had it all. And then somewhere between stage two and stage three is where you decide there has to be more. And so stage three is where you move into what I would say got nothing to give. So this is that inward journey. So this is where I would call it the cocoon phase, which is a delightful phase where you're trying to get your power from within and you're also working through really getting true esteem and love from within like that. You really believe that that head to heart like I'm loved, I'm loved. And this is where all the hard work is. This is where the heroes and the heroines journey takes place is where you start sloughing off the false self and the false persona, and you have to do all that shadow work. And what I love about the Butterfly that I think is super interesting is that when the butterfly goes into the cocoon, all the adult templates are in the butterfly, but in the cocoon it literally digests itself of everything but that adult template of the butterfly so digests itself inside the cocoon. So all of the excrement becomes these beautiful wings, but the butterfly is not getting out, even though it has wings without the struggle against the cocoon, you know.

Betsy Jordyn:
So once the butterfly goes to the struggle out and finally gets out, then you move into the fourth phase, which is the got nothing to lose phase. So now your power is internalized and now you're of authentic service to the world. So to me, authentic authenticity isn't a style, but a stage. So it's stuff that you have to go through and you have to do the work, you know, and the work is, is letting go of that false self and that ego does not die an easy death. So that's where most people resist. So you really ask so this goes back to your first question is, well, why do people build the business that they should do versus that they want to do? And it's like, well, if you depends is your ego the one who's in control? Because otherwise you're going to create a stage two business, which is all about achievement, achievement, achievement. So you may try to take wings and try to tape them on you, you know, but they don't really fly all that well. You know, you kind of like fake it. You know, these are those businesses where it's like, you know, you too can manifest $1,000,000. You know, like you too can manifest like all of this success without a lot of work, you know, that kind of thing where it does not ring true. So you can fake it or you can just do the work.

Betsy Jordyn:
Like my client, who I was mentioning, how he got from being an executive to having a coaching business is he did the work, so he took a little bit of time and it's not like you have to do it exactly his way. But he took time when he went through his coaching program and a certification. He did a lot of inner work. You know, and he really put to to death the things that weren't true of who he thought he was supposed to be. He grieved his losses like he had, you know, had to grieve the loss of a marriage. He lost his mother. He had to do a lot of grieving. And that's the that's the hard work. I mean, if you want to know, like, what's my real work? My real work was is I had a lot of cocoon work. That's what took me so long. But the other side, this is why I have my butterfly, my tattoo, you know, the other side is there's a certain amount of freedom. The thing that I love about the butterfly is they immediately regenerates. And all they do when they get out of the cocoon is they regenerate themselves and then they participate in the ecosystem. And that's all they do. And they're pretty as they go along. So, you know, as women, we get to be pretty too. But you have to go through the cocoon and the cocoon is no fun.

Carol Cox:
And that's why many people just choose not to and they'll stay in stage two. Yes. And I know we had chatted before about some examples of people who have evolved as stage four. And so like Monica Lewinsky, Martin Luther King Jr, even President Joe Biden, you talked to a little bit about him and like how you see him as stage four.

Betsy Jordyn:
I would say Joe Biden. I would say Obama. I think it's Oprah for sure. You know, it's like it's people, Bernie Brown, Elizabeth Gilbert, you know, you could see the people who do the work. They are not operating out of fear, you know, and you can't fake it, that you can operate out of fear. You operate out of vision. Like what I love about Joe Biden. You could say whatever you want about his policies or what have you, but you can't say anything about this is not a man who's whose character is honed through suffering, you know. So he he was forced in the crucible very, very young when he lost his his wife and his daughter at a very young age. And then he lost his son. And you see the difference in him on even as he was taking taking his his oath of office, that it's you know, that you know, that Beau was right there. You know, you could feel it. I think this is why I love The Lion King musical so much. Another musical that's so great. But you picture like what Simba went through, you know, in terms of like becoming a stage four leader is he had gone through all of that suffering, but the real work was when he had to go and confront Scar. That was the work. I mean, it was super sad when he was Acuna starting out, you know, with Puma and Timon. But when Rafiki came along and said, you know, you're more than you've become and and then he had a confront scar.

Betsy Jordyn:
But you look at the look at his face, especially if you see the Broadway version, you know, as he climbs up the crest of pride rock. And, you know, he's a different kind of leader than he would have been if he didn't go through the suffering. He wouldn't have been the same kind of leader. And then you see the reward. So some of the stuff with the stage for people and the stage for leaders is what are the rewards? Well, there's balance in the there's balance. There's peace, there's harmony. You know, there's you know, you can't you can't be a stage for a person and surround yourself on a conflicted kind of world. You know, you can't be reactive. You know, how do you know you have a stage four person? They have the widest perspective in the room and they're always considering everybody's point of view. And that's why Joe Biden is constantly looking for the collaboration. He's like, We don't have time to not consider everybody having a place at the table. You know, that's what you've read. If you read Obama's biography, you know, it's you see that he's making decisions through the filters of what's in everybody's best interest. And that's all he does versus some other leaders that we worked with that want to divide. And everybody doesn't have a voice. There's no way that is not a stage for a person that's actually a stage one person, not even stage two person.

Carol Cox:
Yeah, that's a great description, Betsy. Thank you for that. And I know that also this idea about a thought leader and thought leadership being about what you've lived, not just what you know, because a lot you know, a lot of us are we're experts in what we do. We're experts in marketing or experts in consulting on certain things with companies or in accounting or finance or law or whatever it happens to be. But then but that's like all in the head. It's like all the learnings that we've, we've absorbed a knowledge, we've absorbed this idea of thought. Leadership is what have you lived like? This suffering is certainly a part of it. And then how have you worked through that? And you mentioned about grief and loss with yourself and then with that client that you mentioned. And it reminded me I never had put this together that back in 2013. Yeah, 2013. So my husband and I had, we had just moved like within central Florida, but from one place to another. And that move brought up a lot of stuff because I went through a lot of boxes that I had not gone through in a decade or more.

Carol Cox:
Right. Because they just spent sitting in storage and I found a lot of letters from my dad was that he had written to me and I had written to him and I hadn't read them again and probably since he had died in 1995. So this was 2013. What is that 18 years later? And I realized at that time that I had not really processed that lost like and I just had taken it, compartmentalized it in the back of. My mind, like, I'm not going to deal with this, I'm just going to move on with my life because I just can't handle this. So I went to a therapist at the time in 2013 to to basically go through the grieving process, because I recognize I needed to do that. And so then speaking, your brand came about a year and a half later, and I feel like that doing that process helped. I still have much more work to do, but I think I needed that process and that closure to give myself a perspective on what else I could do with my life and the business that I wanted.

Betsy Jordyn:
Wow, that's really powerful. It's really powerful. I wonder sometimes going to the earlier questions like when we build careers that we should have versus the one that we want is you might have been transitioning from your shared career to the one to career because you're trying to please somebody else. I was just talking to a friend of mine who's an actress, and she wants to leave the business and she wants to become an entrepreneur, actually. And she's been very successful. Her children are very successful. And she was saying, like, what's been really hard for her? It's been hard for her to say no because she hasn't been happy for a while. And she traces it back to when her dad left her when she was four years old. She made a commitment to herself that she was going to become famous and that her dad would finally be proud of her. And, you know, her dad had passed before she started thinking right before this entrepreneurial business that she was thinking about. And it's like, well, there's there's this phantom parent I can't please anymore. And I would say from my experience, that's what happened when my dad died, is I lost my love for consulting. I love consulting, but I realized like a big reason why I was a consultant is I wanted to get because my dad was not the strongest man in the world and I was trying to get these male leaders to not up and do what's right by the organization.

Betsy Jordyn:
You know, and I think that that's not that unusual, is that there's this other storyline that's active that we don't even know is active. And I think it's that's where it's like in the stage three work is there's grief work, there's trauma work. For me, there was a lot of trauma that I didn't I had to work through, you know, and there's a lot of a lot of storylines that you have just to have to let go of. I don't believe that we can write our story. I don't believe that you could rewrite your own ending. I mean, if I did that, I wouldn't have you know, it's like what I got out of this other side of my life is so much better than I would ever would have written. You know, like, I've got this amazing person now in my life, and, you know, he's better than I ever dreamed of. I have a great relationship with you that we're, you know, like, if I would have crafted this, you know, that's not part, but it's the only thing is, is you got to let go the old narrative so that the new one, the real one, gets to emerge.

Betsy Jordyn:
The I don't believe I believe that we have to do things according to who we are and what our design is. So we happen to have this narrative, we happen to have this one. And I think for you and this sad like it's really sad. But you you got a chance to put to rest an old narrative and then the new one emerge. And then probably as you're going to take speaking your brand to the next level, it's going to be another one. And I think that's what holds a lot of people back actually, is these narratives around who they think they should be. And there's a lot of power to them. And the you and I both like that body keeps score book and it's not in your cognitive brain and you're never going to think your way out of it. You're never going to you're never going to affirm your way to your dream business or to success. You're never going to extort small your way. You know, I'm good enough, smart enough. You know it's never going to happen. You got to get the belief in your heart. And that's I'm really sorry that you had to go through that. But it seemed like the best thing and the worst thing were the same thing.

Carol Cox:
Yes. And it and it was for me, it has shaped who I am. And I believe it has helped to shape me, to help the women who come into my life, you know, in various aspects. So I take it as that. But thank you. All right, Betsy. So I thank you for sharing about the stages and I find that so valuable. I'd like to think about going through this process and that for so many of us, like we think, yes, like our natural gifts come easy to us and then we can translate that into the business that we build to make to make that aspect of the business easy. But this transition from stage two to 3 to 4 does it sounds like it's not it's usually not easy for people to go through. And that's where a lot of the work has to happen. If we want to proceed through the stages for our own personal development, much less the impact that we can have on others.

Betsy Jordyn:
It's hard, but not hurt, you know, like not not arduous in a way. Like it doesn't have to be as hard. So one of the things that I am really passionate about in my business is I feel like I sort of trick people to go through from stage three to stage four, but we do it in an actual learning way by going through building your business. Like I don't think it has to be done where you just sit in therapy and you're navel gazing, you cry all day long. It's like that because that's not how heroes grow. Like, you know, you know how the hero's gross through trial and error, success and failures and through having allies. So if you have a mentor, you have. And allies and then you just do things. So I feel like with with that one client I mentioned, it was through building his business that we were able, you know, we we elongated his timeline, but it was wrestling through different things like what what do I really want, you know, and how do I decide what's important to me in my priorities in my life right now? Like, take a minute and you figure that out. So I always tell my clients, go slow to go fast so that you can do this work, but it doesn't have to be like, I'm building business or I'm building my career over here. I'm building my speaking. I'm trying to get visibility strategies. I'm doing this over here and I got this personal work over here. It doesn't have to be this way. It could be one and the same. So as you wrestle through putting your picture on your home page, you know, process, why or what's holding you back, you know, as you're working through a website copy, you know, like, well, why can't you loosen your tongue? Or if you're working on your signature talk, you know, and you're, you know, like, I'm sure you deal with this all the time.

Betsy Jordyn:
It's like, okay, I really want to do a TED talk. How do I go about doing it? And then your clients are like, Oh my God, I'm so overwhelmed. I have no idea. This is so much only people like you, Carol, can do TED talks and it's like, Well, no, let's just fill out your application, you know, or just do this. Just do this one teeny tiny step, you know. And as you the courage is courage is basically doing what you know, you should do. The lack of courage is knowing what you should do and not doing it, you know. So it's like it's not it's not absence of fear. And I think that this whole process of of healing yourself, achieving that wholeness and having a business and a life that you love is all one in the same. And it does not have to be a separate process. And it does not I'm not an advocate of sitting forever and talk therapy because it'll never work, not alone. Like if you don't have any idea the contours of your story, you got to go to talk therapy. If you know the contours of your story, you got to like pick other other modalities that are far more efficient. I'm a huge fan of EMDR. If anybody has ever heard of that one, it's way more efficient, it's more body based, and it'll move things out faster. So go for that one. But your real world, real work is going out and risking, trying and trying again.

Carol Cox:
Yes, putting yourself out there even even when it feels scary to do so and having the courage to do that. Yes. Well, Betsy, I think that's a great place for us to wrap up for today. So where can listeners connect with you and find you? And I know you have a podcast that you're launching as well.

Betsy Jordyn:
I am is one of my big outcomes from the Thought Leadership Academy is I am launching a new podcast. It's called Enough Already. So that podcast is all about helping consultants, coaches and change agents get off the sidelines and start making a difference. So it's got a lot of actionable inspiration is the goal for this one? I also have a YouTube channel that has more like tutorial videos and that kind of thing. So you could just look look me up on my name. It's Betsy Jordan with a Y, not an A support. Betsy Jordan with an eye out there is getting all my emails and people are visiting her website do Betsy Jordan with a y or on my website. I got a brand spanking new website about to launch. I'm super excited about because this is the first time I actually really invested at your urging to get a real photo shoot and do the whole kit and caboodle. So I'm really excited. So it's WW Betsy Jordan with a Y dot com is the other place so those are the place you can find me and of course on LinkedIn.

Carol Cox:
Fantastic. Betsy Well, I'll make sure to put all those links in the show notes so that listeners can easily find them there. I thank you so much for coming on the Speaking Your Brand podcast.

Betsy Jordyn:
Thank you so much for having me.

Carol Cox:
Thank you again to Betsy for coming on the podcast. Be sure to connect with her on her website. Her new website is live now Betsy Jordan dot com find her on LinkedIn and also go over and follow her new podcast called Enough Already. And next week's episode is the solo episode and I'm going to talk about my realization of what's in my way. So this episode title was called What's in Your Way is Your Way to Your Thought Leadership. So I'm going to talk about what I have realized is in my way, which is my way to my thought leadership. So make sure to subscribe or follow this podcast if you haven't already. So you don't miss next week's episode as well as future ones. And don't forget to get all the details and to join the interest list for our thought leader. Academy enrollment is opening again very soon. Good at speaking your brand academy until next time. Thanks for listening.

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