Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Authenticity Is Authority: How to Build Real Influence with Jen Gottieb

Episode Date: February 17, 2026

What happens when the brand you build isn’t actually you? In this episode of Right About Now, Ryan Alford sits down with Jen Gottlieb, co-founder of Super Connector Media and one of Maxim Magazine���s Top Entrepreneurs, to explore the cost of pretending — and the power of authenticity. Jen opens up about her early career on VH1, how playing a character led her to lose alignment with herself, and why that experience shaped her approach to business, PR, and personal branding today. This conversation covers: Why authenticity is the fastest path to authority How rejection builds resilience and confidence The difference between rented credibility and owned credibility Jen’s CIA framework: Credibility, Influence, Authority Why being visible is a responsibility if you want to help people How to reframe “no” into momentum Why you should stop waiting for permission and choose yourself If you’re an entrepreneur, creator, or business leader struggling with visibility, confidence, or imposter syndrome — this episode is a must-listen. Sponsors Are you interested in effortlessly growing your bitcoin portfolio?  ↳Gemini Crypto – https://www.gemini.com/card?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=right_about_now&utm_content=host_read&_bhlid=160d7f4fc923d552d3acfd8e1b631d57799c5196 Connect with the Host & Guest Ryan Alford Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanalford Website: https://ryanisright.com Jen Gottlieb Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jen_gottlieb Company: https://superconnectormedia.com Podcast + Programs: Link in her Instagram bio If this episode resonated with you: Subscribe to Right About Now Leave a review on Apple Podcasts Share this episode with someone who needs to hear it Follow Ryan and Jen for daily insights on branding, visibility, and confidence

everybody, even the biggest rock stars in the world, have imposter syndrome. Because even the biggest people that perform for years and years in front of millions of people would come backstage and they would be so nervous to go on and be interviewed and they would come backstage and they would say to me, did I do okay? Was that good enough? I'm like, dude, you're slash. Are you asking me if you were good enough? Are you kidding?

So it was a really nice reminder to me that people are people are people. And like every time I get nervous or I feel like an imposter or I feel not good enough, everybody experiences that. It's a human condition. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over one million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping next and cash in checks?

Well, it starts right about now. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. I'm Ryan Alford, your host. excited today talking to another media person. The famous woman, she's a pretty lady, but she's a damn good business person talking to Jen Gottlie. Co-founder, Super Connector Media. What's up, Jen? What's up, Ryan? I'm super excited to be here. Media's changed so much. TV's changed and distractions and where media is on the smartphone and on social media, but reflect on those VH1 days.

The VH1 thing really happened on accident. I was an actress. I studied musical theater in college, and then I dropped out of college. I moved to New York City to study musical theater at a two-year conservatory program. Immediately after studying at the school that I was at called the American Musical

and Dramatic Academy, I booked my dream role in the Broadway national tour of the wedding singer. I played Linda the bitch that leaves Robbie Hart at the altar. In the show, she's this Lita Ford

wannabe rock star. She looks like a combination of Joan Jett and 80s Madonna like a virgin. She's just this hilarious wannabe rock star chick. I was on the road playing this character for a year,

and I get back from doing that and I see this audition for a sexy rocker chick. And I'm like, oh, I could play that part. I could play that character. I know nothing about heavy metal music. I know nothing about rock and roll. But I'm like, this is a gig. I'm an actress. I can go get this. I'm going to go land this. I needed a job. The night before the audition, I googled everything there was to know about heavy metal. Learning all the band names. I go in. Pretty much, I felt like I bombed the audition because I kind of forgot all the things that I was memorizing. They're like, what kind of music do you like? I like everything from Beyonce to Black Sabbath.

probably tell that I didn't know what the hell I was talking about. At the end of the audition, they're like, oh, Jen, I noticed at the bottom of your resume, it says that you do a great Britney Spiers impersonation. So I'm like, yeah, okay, I do. They're like, can we see your Britney? And so I do my Britney Spears impersonation. They're all laughing hysterically. It's like an uproar. Everyone finally is alive after being kind of bored with me because I didn't know what I was talking about. They call me two weeks later and they're like, we want you to be Miss Box of Junk on that metal show. And I'm like, really? They're like, yes. You made everyone. laugh. Your Britney Speir's invitation got you the role. That was the first moment in time when I learned that being my

most authentic self is always what's going to get people to lean in and pay attention. It wasn't that I knew everything about heavy metal music. It was when I finally let myself shine that actually got me the gig. I get this gig by being myself, ironically, but I immediately reverted to I have to play this version of myself that wasn't me. I had to become heavy metal gen. I wore super tight spandex pants and I cut up all these rocker shirts and I pretended I like heavy metal music even though I didn't. And before I knew it, I had this big audience of all these metal guys that thought I was like this metal girl. I had built this brand that was a lie. I got to meet all these huge rock stars. One thing that I learned about people from this experience is that everybody, even the biggest rock stars in the world, have

imposter syndrome. Because even the biggest people that perform for years and years in front of millions of people would come backstage and they would be so nervous to go on and be interviewed and they would come backstage and they would say to me, did I do okay? Is that good enough? I'm like, dude, you're slash. Are you asking me if you were good enough? Are you kidding? So it was a really nice reminder to me that people are people or people and like every time I get nervous or I feel like an imposter or I feel not good enough. Everybody experiences that. It's a human condition. I lost myself because I was playing a fake version of myself that couldn't have been further from who I really was. And when the show ended, I had to reinvent myself and start showing the world who I am.

And that was a big lesson in a lot of ways. But I'm really grateful for the time. It was fun. And It gives me a really amazing story to tell. People take it for granted that we all end up doing exactly what we plan to do. Everything looks so planned and so cordial. You being on that show and being the rocker chick and doing all those things, all that. But behind all that veil was, here's a girl who has these aspirations and you're trying to make the most of it. And it's not exactly who she is. From the outside looking in, though, it probably looked like you had everything going for it.

Everything was perfect. No one would have known that story or that instance at the time. And I think people can take from that. Everybody's an original. People have such a hard damn time living to that. Don't compare your real life to somebody else's highlight reel on social media. Because, well, it looked like I was living the life and like all these photos with all these rock stars.

I was really out of alignment. I was really lost. I was really depressed during that time because I was living a lie and I was like having an internal argument with myself all the time. Who am I? I believe when you're out of alignment in your job, you usually start to get out of alignment in your real life too. It started to all fall apart.

But publicly it looked great. I think that people have a really big fear. of being judged, of not being perfect, of not being good enough, because we spend a lot of time scrolling and comparing ourselves to other people's highlight reels. You're probably not looking at something that's completely real. I hope for that person that it is completely real, but a lot of the times we just share it the great stuff. And that's A-OK, because that's what social media is for. But we need to remember that it's not all necessarily really what's going on behind the scenes. We compare our chapter one to somebody else's chapter 20. Maybe we're just getting

started. Maybe someone watches you and they want to start a podcast and they see your huge podcast and then they start to think, I can't do that. Look at how great he is. Look at how many listeners he has, how many downloads he has. I could never get to that. But what they didn't see is you starting from square one, building it from scratch, having nobody listening to you, I'm sure, from the first one. And having to put the work in and the consistency.

And they didn't see that. We need to remember that when we find ourselves comparing and fearing judgment and fearing being imperfect and fearing starting from the beginning. Everybody starts somewhere. Beyonce started from zero. We all started from zero. You knew you were going to be a singer, Broadway, actress? I will never forget.

the moment that I knew I wanted to be on stage for the rest of my life. I was in this children's touring company where we'd get up and sing different Broadway musicals. It was always my dream to be Annie. I never got to be Annie in the actual show. Every birthday wish, I would blow out my candles. I wish to be Annie. I finally got the chance to sing one of the songs in a show where we sang a lot of different Broadway songs.

It wasn't really Annie. But I remember I was singing that song. And I remember looking out into the audience and seeing like my mom and my dad and the lights and like singing Annie. And I was just, there's nothing better than this. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Sometimes it's what you want, but sometimes it's so much better than you could have even imagined. Because what I always thought, and even throughout my entire young adulthood, auditioning for musicals,

I thought that my future was going to be singing other people's songs, reading other people's lines, being in a show where I auditioned and waited for someone to pick me and that were, you know, being on television where I recited lines and played a part. I didn't allow myself to really expand and say, well, maybe there's a different way to perform. And I remember when I quit acting and I started building my business, my parents said, Jen, are you sure you want to quit your dream? I'm like, you guys, I'm not quitting my dream. I know for sure that I'll end up back on stage. I don't know how. I don't know in what capacity, but I'm going to end up back on stage. And now that I'm a motivational speaker and I speak for a living and I get to use my own words and I get to pick myself instead of waiting for someone else to pick me. I'm on stage having those same moments that I had when I was a kid, but it's so much better and so much different. I get to help people. It's so freaking cool. But I could have never envisioned that when I was stuck in looking just inside the box of what it should be. being an actress. I didn't allow myself to expand. And now that I look backwards, when I connect the dots, I'm like, oh, wow, it was what I wanted. But it's so much better than I

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which has been huge for me when I'm trying to perfect the look of my website. We've also got built-in tools for selling, bookings, and marketing. Pretty much all the stuff you actually need once the site's live. If you're building anything right now, a side project, brand, business, whatever, Wix Harmony honestly makes it easier to get out of your own way and start making stuff happen. Go to Wix.com backslash harmony. That's Wix.com backslash harmony. Start your website today. What framed your business perspective? You're seeing your actors, multi-talented, attractive.

What do you felt like molded you as the business person? It was really a lot of getting heard no. I think that one of the most powerful tools that a successful entrepreneur can have is resiliency and the ability to be persistent even when you're getting heard no and you're getting rejected. Many people, the second that they hear no or they get rejected or the thing that they want doesn't work, they stop or they just don't like, oh, I guess this isn't for me. I'll go grocery shopping today and forget it. I'm not going to try anymore, right?

I'm going to go binge Netflix or do something else that makes me feel good because I don't want to be rejected. When I was an actress, I was a professional auditioner. I got rejected probably 10 times a day. Like no, no, no, no. So I got really, really, really good at hearing no. And no doesn't bother me anymore. As an entrepreneur when I was building my business, I got heard no all the time. I got on sales calls that I didn't close all the time, but I was resilient and persistent and I didn't stop until I got the yes. And I think that that was built inside of me from being an actress and he heard no again and again and again and being okay with that.

I think one of the most powerful tools that you can own while building a business is being best friends with the word no and being besties with rejection and being like, oh, you're rejecting me. You're saying no to me. Okay, cool. That's just going to motivate me to go for it again in another way and I'll show you. I had that mindset building my business. And so I never stopped ever. And I still don't ever stop. And I get heard no still to this day all the time when I trying to speak on big stages or I'm trying to get to the next level of my business or we fail at something or don't close a sale or one of our launches doesn't go as well as we wanted it to. I'm like, okay, watch me. I'm going to do it again. I'm going to learn from that no. I'm going to take what I learned and I'm going to put it towards the next one to make it an even bigger yes. That has framed my entrepreneurial journey in a big way.

You have to be just intrinsically driven to the next thing or how I reframe a no to a yes. You can grasp that enough if someone's trying to be an entrepreneur, how important that is, overthinking that no until, because you just convince yourself that you're not good enough or you can't make it. Like, it's just you can't live in that space. You can live in it for a few minutes. I will put my pity party in a container because you got to feel your feelings. Get yourself out of your feelings or they're going to show up in different ways and your family's got hate you because you're going to be resentful.

I'm pissed. I'm going to grieve for the next hour or I'm going to go, you know, for the rest of the day, I can be pissed off. But once I'm done being pissed off, I'm going to reflect and see what did I learn from this failure or this fuck up or this no or this rejection. I'm going to move forward with a new plan. Give yourself a container. The biggest mistake is that people are upset forever or they hold on to it or they hold resentment. That's like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies if you hold resentment towards somebody else. It's only hurting you. You got to let go and you got to move on.

So take your moment, be upset, then be like, okay, I'm done. This is my container. I'm over the container. And now I'm moving forward, looking at what I learned and how am I going to turn this no into a yes? 100%. Talk to me about your journey into PR and leading up to what you guys are doing for people. My whole that metal show portion of my life ended.

It ended with a big bang. In one week's time, the guy that I thought I was going to marry, broke up with me, kicked me out of the apartment because he was cheating on me with one of our friends. and my show got canceled. And so I went from living in this multi-million dollar apartment on the Upper West Side to living in a tiny little bedroom with a window that faced a brick wall with six other actors in an apartment. I was staring out at that brick wall and I'm like, one day I will know why this happened.

And that's all I could say. I decided in that moment that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to build a business. I didn't want to wait for somebody to pick me anymore. I wanted to choose myself. I was really into fitness. I was really into light, like healthy living. And I knew how to work out as an actress, like as a performer.

I was really good at that and I always wanted to train people. So I was like being a trainer is a great gig because I can still act and I could like make my own schedule. It's kind of like being an entrepreneur. So that was the first business that I decided to build. And I needed to rebrand myself because everybody knew me as this heavy metal chick. I was, that's who I was. I had to do a lot of rebranding and a lot of repositioning and a lot of changing the narrative.

I didn't really know anything about business or marketing, but I knew a hell of a lot about PR. I had a lot of relationships. I had a lot of people that I knew that. knew a lot about that. So I started getting featured in the media as a fitness girl. Telling the story about how I went from being on that metal show to now helping people transform their bodies and their lives. And I started getting on TV for it. I started getting into publications for it. I started amplifying and leveraging all of that media to tell a different story.

I started learning how to do that kind of by just doing it and implementing it myself. And then I met my now husband Chris. He was doing these events for entrepreneurs that connected them to the media. And I'm like, this is cool. He was teaching them how to pitch themselves, how to get themselves into the media. I saw something very cool when I looked at this vision. I was like, you're doing events. I'm really good on stage. I haven't been on stage in a long time. I know how to teach people how to do this. A lot of these people that he was teaching how to get in the media, they had a lot of mindset issues. They had a lack of confidence, fear, imposter syndrome. And I had a lot tips on how to be more confident and how to get over rejection and how to have perseverance,

how to be persistent. So we came together and we're like, let's build superconnector media and let's do PR differently. Let's lead with the mindset piece. Let's teach people how to be more confident. Let's teach people how to share their message, their real version of who they are, because I spent a long time just sharing the fake version of who I was. Let's make this a show. We started producing these events that connected entrepreneurs to the media on Fair Advantage Live in New York City. We teach thought leaders, entrepreneurs, business owners, authors, speakers, how to build profitable brands, not just by leveraging PR, but by leveraging social media, all types of media, podcasts, YouTube, and being visible and omnipresent. You nailed it. You learned your skills.

and you honed your craft and then you re-deconstructed and engineered it into a business and doing it for others, you couldn't be more right about who owns the relationships and have relationships with media. And the way you guys frame that is so important for people. I love how you're training people to build the relationships and do it for themselves on some level, but also just building those true connections one to one. We noticed that our mastermind members and the people that we were teaching were actually getting better results because they weren't renting the relationships. They weren't renting the information. They owned the information and they owned the relationships and they knew how to do it themselves. And that is real equity in yourself and in your

company when you know how to pitch and you have the people in your Rolodex to pitch too. Now you've got the power. And so these people that were helping own that power, they own that equity. They own that knowledge. And they're getting unbelievable results. And we're like, you know what? This is what we're passionate about. Not only are they getting amazing results, but they're also transforming their lives and lives with their families and their mindsets and their confidence levels. We're like, what if we took all of our energy and we took it away from the agency and we put it into our events and our trainings and our teachings and our masterminds? And we sold the agency.

That was actually taking a very profitable arm of our company and getting rid of it. And many people would say, don't fix what it's not broken. Like leave it alone. It's, you know, running. And we're like, this doesn't fill our cup. It doesn't make us happy. I like it. It's tough, but I respect the hell out of it.

Talk to me about where I get up with you, Jim. Where can we find all the deeds? and everything that's important, I get involved with everything you got going on. Just go to my Instagram. Everything's there on my link tree. You can find everything. You can find my podcast. You can find my website.

You can find how you can work with Superconnector media. At Jen underscore Gottlieb. Search for Jen Gottlieb. You'll find all the highlight clips from today plus the full episode. You know where to find me at Ryan Offer on the platform. We'll see you next time. This has been right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. Visit Ryaniswright.com for full audio and video versions of the

show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.