Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - #176: The Way To Harness Constructive Criticism For MASSIVE Growth with Heather!

Episode Date: December 22, 2021

In This Episode You Will Learn About:  The importance of feedback Using reviews and testimonials to grow Giving context to your audience  Resources: Overcome Your Villains is Available NOW! Order here: https://overcomeyourvillains.com  If you haven't yet, get my first book Confidence Creator Show Notes:  There is no tool more powerful for your business than constructive criticism. It can be scary to receive but I welcome you to step into that fear! Feedback is imperative to growth. Your audience knows what they want and what they like. So LISTEN! And use a discerning ear to determine what to take and what to leave. You can’t please everyone BUT you can always use the voices of your trusted community to catapult to all new heights. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals. We'll overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my close-up. Hi, and welcome back. I'm so excited. You're back here with me this week. Okay, you know how important reviews and ratings are, right? We live in a review and rating world. If you are not asking for reviews of your work, you are missing a huge opportunity. the next time somebody offers up positive feedback on a job well done, ask them if they could please go to your LinkedIn wall and leave you a review. It really is helpful. And I'll tell you,

it gives you credibility and people will always put more emphasis on what other people are saying about you, people that have done business with you. So it definitely is a great way for you to build credibility. And you're allowing somebody else to do something nice for you, which can be a real gift. They probably will be really happy that you ask them to, to do it because they're trying to thank you for being the great person that you are. Okay. So to that end, I'm always reading the reviews that you leave. So if you're leaving a review on Amazon of my new book, I'm always reading it. If you're leaving a review of this show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever, I'm always reading it and always grateful. So I want to mention a review that just came in this week,

and I want to dive into it for a couple of reasons. Number one, I want to say thank you. I'm super grateful for feedback. The only way any of us get better is when someone takes the time to offer feedback, whether that be constructive criticism, perspective, insight, or just sharing thoughts, right? It's really helpful. And people can choose to react to feedback or potentially grow from it. I'm hoping that I'm growing. That's the goal. Okay, that's where I'm coming at this from today. And I thought about it. I'll read the review to you in a second and share it with you and hopefully get your insight on what you think about it. But I'm trying to not react to this.

I'm trying to respond in a thoughtful way. And there's some constructive criticism here, which again, I appreciate. There's plenty of things I could do better. And I'm sure there's a million things on my show that I could improve upon. And I won't know that I could unless someone points it out to me. So I'm taking this constructive criticism in that regard. Also, at the same time, I'm remembering that people don't always know what's going on behind the scenes. So maybe me giving a little bit more context would be helpful.

So that's how I'm approaching this. Okay, here we go. Ratings and reviews of creating confidence with Heather Monaghan. That's me. Okay, here we go. And this came in from Sage SC. Thank you so much, Sage, SC. I appreciate your feedback.

And I appreciate you taking the time to actually write this review. It means the world to me. Okay, four out of five stars, and it says good. I'm in a situation at work where I can head into the fear and newness or cower. Head into the fear. Stepping into fear is always the right answer. Okay, that's just my two cents there. Thanks for reminding me to dive into the fear, Heather.

Woo! My only criticism is every episode feels like an ad for Heather's book. Promote it, yes. But I find myself getting annoyed because it comes across as very self-serving and over the top. Okay, a couple of things that I want to address there. Thank you for your feedback, Sage, SCA. I totally appreciate it. Okay, first of all, I don't promote the book on my interview episodes.

I only promote my new book on my solo episodes. So on Tuesdays, if you want to be sure, never to hear me promote my book, tune into any episode on a Tuesday, any of my interviews. I am 100% focused on the person I'm interviewing and I am not promoting anything of mine. So that would be just one way to sidestep ever hearing me promote the book again. Again, if it upsets you, if you don't like it, totally get it. That's option number one. Just tune in to the Tuesday episodes.

Okay, I do promote the book on my solo episodes right now. And I'll also share that I launched my podcast in 2019, and I did not promote anything on my podcast for at least over a year or even a year and a half, right? So it's only been very recently that I've started promoting the book because I signed a deal with Harper Collins leadership, and one of the reasons they signed with me was because of my podcast, and I need to sell books. And the book is amazing and has already helped so many people that I'm doing a disservice if I don't share it with people. So I, and that's sort of how I approach sales, and I want to share this insight into sales. I truly believe it is not my job

to be so presumptuous to decide for someone else if my book is for them or not, but it is my job, once I've created something that I believe in, that I know can help people solve problems and make their lives better and help them overcome adversity and give them the tools to do that, it's my job to make sure they know about it. And we live in a really noisy world where there is messaging coming at everyone from every direction possible that it can be overwhelming. I've had people, I feel like I talk about my book so much, and I have people that have commented on a LinkedIn post. I literally post about my book every single day for the past six weeks on LinkedIn. And this week will mention, oh my gosh, I didn't know you wrote a book and I'm scratching my head.

I didn't write a book. Number one, I wrote two books. Or the same thing happens with this show, by the way. I'll get people commenting on social media. Do you still have a podcast? I'm like, what are you talking about? I promoted every week on air, right? Every week on social media, I promote whoever, whatever guest I have on.

Okay. So that's just to give you a little color that one person might feel like, and that person might be consuming more, seeing more of my content than other people are, right? And these other people are missing it for whatever reason. But we don't have control over who sees what. I remember when I went on Gary V's show the Gary Vee audio experience, he said to me that one thing he wanted me to do was to start posting more, you know, go in all in. I was posting once a day back then.

He told me to start posting six to ten times. a day. And he told me, he wrote a whole book about this, which is called Jab, Jab, Right Hook. And it's about create content, create content, and then pepper people with what you're selling. So his strategy is something that I think about in the back of my mind. He's light years ahead of me, right? This guy has been where I want to go. He is incredibly successful in an arena that I've only been in for a couple of years. And so, to me, he's a good person to take direction from. But then, of course, I want to hear what Sage SC has to say. So I want to explain a little bit of the why here so that everybody understands my situation

and what it's like with a podcast and what it's like working for yourself when you haven't. I'm a rookie at being an entrepreneur. I'm a rookie podcast host. I'm a rookie author. You know, all of these things are relatively new to me since I got fired at the end of 2017. Okay, so, and I'm not making excuses for it. I'm just sharing with you where I'm at because sometimes people think that I'm super successful in this whole entrepreneurial space. I am not there yet, right? Especially because the pandemic,

that set me back quite a bit because a lot of my income was coming from live in-person events. That's what my greatest revenue stream has been since I've been working for myself. And when live events disappeared, that meant my money disappeared too. So, okay, let's back it up even a little bit further. I was very successful in my early 20s as an equity partner in the radio business, made a lot of money. I lost that when I went through a not so great divorce. Fast forward to, I made my way back up in corporate America, made it to the C-sweep, had a lot of revenue coming in again. Things were going well. Obviously, during that time, I had my child. I bought a condo in Miami on the water. Basically, I built a lifestyle that was in line with the income that I was making, right? It was an

expensive lifestyle is making really good money. Then I got fired unexpectedly. Now, of course, I had 401k and savings and whatnot. I had been smart about what I was doing, but when I made that decision to go all in and take that risk and leap of faith to start over as a beginner and go to work for myself, I had to create that runway for me to find success. The difference would have been had I gone and stayed in corporate America, gone to a different industry and started over as a senior vice president or of sales or a chief revenue officer, something in line with what I was doing. I wouldn't be starting over as a complete beginner. I'd be starting over to a new company, a new industry, and I'd have to learn the products and systems, but I already knew how to lead teams sell and drive revenue.

I said scratch everything I'm starting over from ground zero. So knowing there's going to be a longer runway for me to find success, or, you know, potentially, but probably. And there's a has been. And again, I didn't anticipate a global pandemic that probably would have changed my decision, you know, knowing how much more challenging it would have been. I wouldn't have leaned so far into the speaking business knowing that it was going to disappear overnight. And listen, this is not just me, right? I have a friend that owns a huge speaker bureau. He told me they had to lay 40% of their employees off over the last year and a half. So it's just been hard for everybody in different situations and different industries, and it is where it is. So,

So to that end, you know, I was basically living off of my savings during this time. And this was completely unexpected, right? So then I launched my virtual speaking. Then I landed my board seat. Then I, you know, started doing consulting. Right. I was trying to reinvent myself in different ways to drive revenue and find ways to pay the bills until I knew that eventually the speaking business would come back.

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You need to reach out to them. You need to follow up with them. You need to pitch them on coming on your show. You need to have a pipeline of people that you're out aggressively pitching and pursuing to get on. Then you need to coordinate dates and schedules. Sometimes you have to cancel things so that you can accommodate a guest. You have to research the guests.

You have to spend hours watching them on other shows, watching their TED talks, reading their books, consuming their content so you can deliver a valuable interview for your audience. You need to look at data, what's working, what's working, what's. It's not working. Do people like the solo episodes? Do they just like the interview episodes? Which topics do they want covered? You need to engage with your audience and community. You have to be responding to their ratings and reviews like we are today. You have to comment back when they DM you and ask you questions. Then production comes in and your producer gets involved and editing gets involved and sound issues and there's a whole lot of things that go on behind the scenes that

maybe not everyone realizes. So the point I'm trying to make is that having a podcast, it takes a lot of time, right? I could have never had a podcast when I was working in corporate America. I just didn't have the bandwidth at the time. So now my job, instead of working a job in corporate America, I work for myself, which means I have this podcast. I write books currently for HarperCollins leadership. I have my speaking business, which 90% of it still is operating virtually. which is a fraction of the compensation that you get when you're in person, right? I have a consulting business, which I'm trying to juggle all these different things to gauge where is that next right move.

What should I lean into? Where can I extrapolate revenue the fastest that's still delivering value for others? So basically, over time, the platform that I have is free content, which this show, creating confidence with Heather Monaghan, is free content. Then I have my post on social media, which that takes a lot of time and bandwidth each week as well. But I create content on the daily on social media, and that's free content as well. But then my paid content is I have a paid video course. I have my paid books.

I have my paid coaching programs. I have my paid consulting and I have my paid keynotes. So to make a long story longer, just trying to give you the backside. here of what goes on. You know, one of the vehicles like Gary Vaynerchuk shares in his book, Jab Jab, Right Hook, you know, it's about creating free content and then converting the community that you build with the free content into the paid model. Now, there are some options here, and I'm super interested in your feedback. There is, and one option is to have a freemium product, which this is like traditional radio, right? You have a radio show, you run ads in it, and then you

promote your live events where your sponsors are really paying you to show up. Same thing with the podcast, right? So you run ads to recoup the expenses that you put into the podcast. Then you go to grow the show so that at some point it becomes a profit center for you. We're not there yet, guys. One day we will be like Caitlin Bristow and have millions of downloads an episode. We're not quite there yet. Or there's another way to look at it, which is a paid model. And there's a number of different platforms now that allow for an host podcast. Basically, what it would be is it would be a monthly fee that people would pay to access this show with no ads, no promotion. So basically, you opting in to say, I love the content, I want the content, but I don't want to listen to the

book promotion. I don't want to listen to an ad about an insurance company. Strip all that out, and instead I'll pay whatever, it's going to be $10 a month to sign up for the paid offering. So that's another model to go to that gets rid of all of the promotions, advertisements, and shoutouts for my book, right? So again, this is how I make money now as an entrepreneur is through how I spend my time during my week. I love producing the show. I love having a show, but I also need to pay bills, and I'm not a nonprofit company.

So again, just trying to give you a little bit of background into why on my solo episodes, I have been promoting overcome your villains. I also want you to know that sales is near and dear to my heart. And like I mentioned, I feel like if I'm not sharing some of the great things that I've created, I'm doing people a disservice. That is truth. So I'm interested to know, would you want me to create a paid subscription model that would strip all the ads and all the promotions out?

Or do you think just stay the course with what we've got and when I have the solo episodes and I include my book promotion, you're fine with that? Love to hear from you. Please either hit me up at Heather Monaghan.com, shoot me a DM on any social media, or like Sage S.C, leave a review and give me your honest feedback. I'd love to hear from it. No one gets better unless they hear feedback from their community. So it would mean the world to me. Okay. And thank you, Sage S.C., for leaving me the review. I really truly appreciate that. Okay, so a couple of things that are going on right now. I was just told by LinkedIn. It's my two-year anniversary of my TEDx Boca Raton. I have to tell you this is so crazy, still to this day, since getting fired, the scariest thing that I've done was give that TEDx talk. And I know that people might not believe that because I have done some scary, crazy things since I've been out of my own. But for whatever reason, stepping into that tiny little red circle with all that pressure I had on myself that I wanted to give the best speech I've ever given, it's not like a normal speech. It's very controlled. you're directed. So it was very out of my comfort zone, out of my familiar zone. And it just frankly

was really scary. So it was kind of funny seeing this reminder that two years ago was when I had recorded and given my TEDx talk so much has happened in the last two years that I would have never been able to forecast. But one of the amazing things is that I was just named top 50 keynote speaker for 22 by real leaders. And to add to the scary things, they in turn went, Once they announced us, they reached out to me and asked me if I would do a virtual keynote, a virtual keynote for all of their CEOs, their audience and their community is full of thousands of CEOs from all over our country. And they were asking the number one challenge that CEOs are facing right now is from the real leaders' perspective and the conversations they're having with their CEOs is that CEOs are losing good people and in fear of losing more good people. So one of the things they wanted us to address, they invited myself and four other speakers from the top 50 keynote speaker list to do this virtual event is to address this issue of how can CEOs engage and retain great talent in 2022 and beyond and what does that look like. So this is not a topic that I have spoken on very much recently.

However, I can pull from my past in corporate America and lean on that experience, which I'm going to do. I'm actually working on this talk this weekend. And I'm excited for this talk. It's going to be an opportunity to expose myself and my messaging to a new audience. I typically speak for salespeople. I typically speak for MLM companies. I'm speaking for women's events. I'm speaking for more from an employee side.

And now I'm speaking for the CEO side. So anytime you do something a little unique and different, you're stepping into that uncomfortable. You're stepping into that fear. and I'm choosing to see fear as a green light that means go. I hope you're with me. Okay, so, oh, a new business model came up this week. Super interesting. One of my clients that hired me a month ago to do a virtual event, they're based in California, had called me, they were so sweet and sent me so many gifts after the event, just so thoughtful. And I had called them to thank them. Anyhow, we've been communicating back and forth. And this woman told me,

oh, your name is getting around California. People want to hire you for events, but they want you to come on site possibly. What would your pricing look like? Well, I end up getting on the phone with her. We were talking about a couple of different options, what it would look like if they booked me for multiple events in one day versus just a single event versus just what would the cost be for virtual. And as we're talking, I said, I always want to understand as much as I can about the other person situation. I said, well, what other speakers are they looking at or considering? And she said, Bray Brown. And Bray Brown, just for anyone who doesn't know her, she was ranked, I believe, number two on the top 50 list. I'm number 24. Quite a bit of gap there, right? So she's at the height of her game, and I've been told she's booked out for the entire year 2022. I've also been

told that she commands a $250,000 60-minute keynote fee, much more than I'm currently charging. So I want to dive more into that topic. I want to understand more. So I said, well, How are they looking at her if what I'm being told is true, she's booked out solid for the next year, and if they're concerned about what my fee is, how are they paying her $250,000? And she said, let me find out. She calls me back and says, you're not going to believe this. Apparently, Brunee Brown has teams of people that are essentially, I don't know the name that she uses, but basically junior versions of her, people that she's trained that now are her own army of representatives

that take her messaging to go to events at a much smaller cost. And I thought, what an interesting model. This is truly seeing how you can drive revenue from a different way that I certainly had not thought of. She's now mobilized teams of people under her brand, under her name. She's getting a commission off every single one of them. And she's booked solid. So she's pushing all the inquiries to this next level underneath her at, a much smaller price point for clients who couldn't afford her. Brilliant.

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Well, ironically, over the. during the pandemic, there's two different women that I was working with in regards to teaching them around keynote speeches, virtual speeches, and working with them pretty closely. Wouldn't you know this week I get an inquiry from an insurance company wanting to know what my rates are for a virtual keynote speech in January? I respond and asked them for the date to see if I was available. Anyways, it wasn't going to work out. They didn't have enough budget to cover my fee and the date didn't work.

I was already booked. So I offered the solution that I had now been aware of the Bray Brown offers. And I said, listen, but I do have a more junior speaker who does come in line with your budget would be able to do it. The date would work. And I've been working with her for over a year. I am 100 percent confident. She'll do a fantastic job for you. She's within your budget.

I think this is a great fit. And they said yes. So it's just so interesting. The more we pick our head up and speak to different people around what business is. models are working for them and asking good questions, the more we can potentially evolve and innovate in our business, especially in a way like this where we're teaching people something, and then that becomes a new long-term potential revenue stream where we don't have to be hands-on.

I love that. The more things that I don't have to be hands-on myself every single day, the greater it is for my company and my business. Okay, so then I want to share this interesting. there's two stories that happened this week that when something shows up in my life a couple of times in the same week, I feel like I have to share it with you that this is, you know, the universe reminding me this is sort of important. Okay. So here's what happened. I've been spinning. I'm a maniac about going spinning. And if you haven't done it, oh my gosh, you've got to do it in Miami because SoulCycle now took our spin class outdoors on top of a roof, which has been amazing. I love it. And they just let us back outside. Again, there's only one downside to that. And that downside is that when it rains, it presents a problem because there's a lot of electrical equipment around the music. The headsets, you know, and some issues for the team and the support staff there with rain and the bikes and whatnot. So it was funny.

We've only been back out for a little over a week. And I received an email one day this week that said something to the effect of Heather. Just wanted to let you know it went to everyone who was in the class. It looks like we have rain. if you would like to be canceled out of this class, we will refund your bike now, or you can try to come and play it by ear, but basically it doesn't look good. And because of the electrical situation we have with the sound systems, we will have to shut the class down if the rain goes on past a few minutes, don't want to waste your time and have you come here if it's not going to work. Basically, it felt like they were trying to talk us into don't come that this is not a good idea. I went because I literally lived. three minutes away from the outside spin studio. So I looked out my window. It looked great outside.

I didn't think it looked like it was going to rain. So I just said, forget it. I'm going. And thank goodness I did because it actually didn't rain, which was ironic and welcome to Miami. That's the irony of Miami. So I go to the spin studio. The spin instructor was very flustered. And I said, what's wrong?

And she said, there's no one here. This is so bizarre. And I said, oh, that's because they sent an email out to everybody basically telling them not to come, you know, because they didn't want anyone to be upset that it rained. She was furious because obviously she's there regardless. She wants a full, fun, in class, a lot of energy. She probably gets compensated on the number of people that come also, rewarding the behaviors that we want, right?

Get your class filled up, get people excited, and you make more money. So she was really frustrated and upset, and it was very obvious. Well, anyways, the class was fine. I think there was three people in the class. There was usually, I don't know, 60. And still, we had a great time. We had a great class. And that was a wrap.

Well, a couple days later, I look out the window and it's raining a little bit. I don't receive the email. And I thought, that's interesting. Okay, I'm going to class. I go to class. Everyone showed up for class, and it starts raining. So they make an announcement. We want to have this class.

You're all here. And the studio is packed. We want to have this class. Everyone's here. We're going to find a way to make it work until we can't. But let's give it a shot. So everyone agreed. All right, let's do our best and see how it goes.

and about 10 minutes and it really started downpouring. And the staff was so smart and figured out how to get this tarp out and cover all of the equipment, the actual, essentially the DJ hub of, you know, what's happening outside. They were able to cover it and hold it down for a few minutes until the really hard rain passed, right? They figured out some type of a solution. It might not have been ideal or perfect, but it worked. and the class started going crazy because people didn't want to give up and get off their bikes at this point. And it's 80 degrees out in Miami when it started raining, it was actually nice, right? And then a rainbow came out after.

And then it stopped raining and the rain was done for the day. And then everyone was just the energy was off the charts. Okay, so here's what that taught me or reminded me is that we can decide ahead of time how something's going to go, the way that the Spin Studio decided it was going to rain, decided people would be upset, didn't want to have upset clients, so they sent out the, why don't you cancel now email, which backfired because it didn't rain, or they cannot send the email, you know, like our own situations, we can decide we don't know what the outcome will be, invite people to come to the class, see that there's an issue, say, okay, we're in the middle of a little bit of a mess. We don't know how it's going to pan out.

Let's move forward with our best solutions that we can to try to figure something out some kind of a makeshift solution in hopes that it might work and see what happens. And it ended up that that messy middle made that the best class of the week. People were going crazy screaming, best class yet. And it was just so interesting to me that we can't forecast or predict what's going to happen next, how people are going to respond. We just need to move forward with the right attitude, the best attitude possible searching for solutions. And it also reminded me that that middle part is just messy. And it's not always this clear lit path that we think things will be. We have to step into the messy, step into the unknown, slip and fall in the rain a little bit to find out maybe that is the best path for us to be on.

but that middle is going to be messy. And that reminds me of, you know, going out on my own and not going back to corporate America and how many messy middles I've been in and the setbacks for me, like the pandemic and losing the in-person events. And even now, it's so interesting, I was thinking today that at the end of 2020, I was so excited for 2021. I don't know if you were like me with this, that I thought, okay, this whole pandemic is going to end and we're going to be back to normal and live in-person events and, you know, going out with people and having fun. And I was so excited. And then Delta crushed that for a window of time. All in-person events were canceled again. And it really impacted my business negatively again. And I had not

predicted that. So then I'm really cautious to get super optimistic because of that. And now here came this new variant Omnacrom or whatever it's called. And now suddenly we're starting to see some things shut down again. So I do know I'm positive. I'm so positive that in the future, we will be 100% back again to live events because far too many people are over sitting at home, myself included. However, I do also know that there's going to be an adjustment period around it and we are finding other solutions like virtual, which I'm grateful for. I do love doing my virtual events and the feedback's amazing and offers me an opportunity to get better and drive income from home, but I really love the in-person. And if you're like me, you know, the messy

middle is about showing up, finding solutions, accepting that it's going to be messy and keep moving on. And that's exactly what I'm doing today. That's what I hope you're doing as well. And I was also reminded the same funny situation. This is my last story that I'll let you go. But, okay, I was doing a charity event this past week. And the day of the event, the woman in charge, called me and said, I need you to speak about the future tonight. I had never given a speech about the future. So this is right where the middle became really messy for me. If I'm going to be confident and show up as the best version of myself, I want to practice things ahead of time. There was no way I was getting any practice because I just found out day of. I had a pack day,

plus I had to get myself to the event, which was almost two hours away from where I live. There was just no way I was going to be able to write and practice a new speech. So I thought, I thought, okay, I'm in the messy middle, I've just got to look for solutions. What can I do? And I thought, you know what? Go on YouTube and look at the best speeches of all time. Something will give you inspiration. So that's what I did.

I viewed three different of the best keynote speeches of all time. And the Martin Luther King, I have a dream speech came up. And that's probably the most amazing speech in the world, right? So I watch it. I'm blown away. And I'm thinking to myself, I love how he brought in the possibility, right, with this, I have a dream. And I thought maybe for my speech about the future, I can turn this into my own version of something like that, where I talk about the challenges. I talk about, you know,

the villains people are having in their life and the pandemic being a villain and being, you know, stuck at home or being in a toxic work environment or facing fear or whatever challenges people are having. And then I talk about what the future can look like if and when you overcome your villains. And so that was the talk that I sketched out, really. I just, you know, kind of created an outline around it, but thinking about that I have a dream MLK speech and how powerful and beautiful it was. And I did my best to bring that to life. And the middle was very messy, right? I had no idea how it was going to pan out. But when I actually got there and gave it, it was super powerful. And they loved it. And so I actually got a recording of it. And I'm going to

use that now to remind myself the next time that I'm in that messy middle and I don't know how things are going to turn out. Trust myself, trust my instinct, and just show up as that best version of who we are and things will work out, just like they did at SoulCycle in the rain this week. So here's to you in that messy middle, stepping into that fear, trusting yourself and going for it. Until next week, I hope you're creating your confidence. You know I will be too. And If you can, share the show. It helps so much. Tag me, and I will always repost, and thank you there.