Transcript Ep #211: Serve, Speak, Transform: Creating Lasting Impact From The Stage

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Well, hey, friend, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Last couple of weeks, we’ve been really talking about how to get paid by sharing your expertise. And today I want to tap into the other side of why so many of us do what we do. And that is coming from a place of service truly wanting to make an impact and inspire other people. So this episode is for you, if you are feeling more of a pull to speak because you truly want to help and inspire other people. We’re going to dive in it today and talk about how your voice truly can be the most impactful tool you have in your tool belt in order of making the change you want to see in the world. So let’s go ahead and dive in. So when I think of the word impact, I don’t know about you, but it’s become kind of overused. Now I have a special a special relationship with the word impact when I was a teen. Yeah, we’re gonna go way back for a moment. When I was a teenager, I in my junior year marketing class. So when I was like 1617 years old, I took a marketing class and frickin love that class. No surprise what I do today. But in that marketing class, one of our really big a capstone projects was we have the opportunity to work with our school district. And we were creating a summer program while they were creating it, we were going to market it. It was a summer program for underprivileged youth who didn’t have a lot of mentors didn’t have access to after school care, definitely not summer, child care for their for their families. And so the school district was creating this program over the summer for these kids. And our job in a marketing class was to name the program, create the position the program and create the marketing plan with program. But the naming part of it, that was really special. That was a lot of fun. And the word we ended up creating in this program was impact. Now I really, truly wish I had a bit more better memory because impact was an acronym. And I remember if probably actually was really lame now that I look back 20 something years later, but at the time, it really, it was really clever. But also, the word impact stood for the impact that the mentors summer camp counselors could have on these kids lives. But more importantly, it was the impact these kids would have on the community. And the word impact was something that really stuck with me at a really early age and this idea of thinking bigger thinking beyond yourself thinking about how one small act can make such a big difference for other people. It wasn’t just that moment in high school for me understanding impact. I grew up with a mom who was constantly involved in service projects. So I grew up in a church. My mom was always actively involved in church. She was always sewing quilts, sewing clothes, creating donations, volunteering, doing canning

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enough to be donated. My mom was always doing service work, always helping out those who were less fortunate than us. And honestly, if you’ve heard a little bit of my story, I mean, I had a great childhood, but we were really broke. Growing up, we didn’t have a lot of money, we were on food stamps. I remember going back to school shopping at Value Village, my dad was a truck driver, my mom was a stay at home mom, I mean, we, we were very lucky for in a lot of different ways. But also we were broke ass.

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But the idea that my mom still always came from a place of you always have something to give, you always have the capacity to help other people that was instilled in me really, really early on in my life. So moving forward. later in my career, when I became more like, who come the corporate ladder, like set the goals set the vision, I don’t ever want to be broke, I don’t ever want to be poor. I’ve always had the vision of making money. But I could never kick this idea of, yes, you can make money, but you also could improve the world around you for yourself and other people along the way. There is always room to enhance and improve the lives of other people. And if you have the ability and the capacity to do that, which my mom taught me, we all do, you have a duty to do that. So the word impact the word service, they’re

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kind of overused jargon in this online world that a lot of marketers catch on to insane impact and income and service over whatever. And I choose to believe that these words still hold a lot of weight. And I choose to believe that my audience, you’ve included my friend, you have a heart of service. And I would imagine that deep down, there is a inner battle in you. I think this is true, because it was true for me for a long time to where it feels impossible, that you truly can be kind hearted and mission driven and service focused, well, making money. Those two things in your brain are clashing. And even if you know logically that the more that you help people, the more opportunity there is for money, I would bet if you are not making the kind of money that you desire, you have an inner dialogue, fighting within you, between the clash of those two things, can you truly be of service? Can you truly be helpful? Can you truly be kind hearted and good on the inside? And truly holding that desire of helping people? Well, monetizing that well, making money? And if you’re nodding your head going, Yeah, I really do struggle with those two things. You’re in the right spot. We’re going to untangle that a bit today. No, we are not going to fix all of the thinking this is for me has been a process and journey for years and years to really untangle. And I still struggle with it some times. But my hope in today’s conversation is to raise your level of awareness of that contrast within you to raise your level of thinking for how you approach it and help you say, Okay, I don’t have to choose between the two. I can embrace the two as part of me and run a business. Well, making a great impact. So that is the name of the game. today. We’re going to tackle it.

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What was interesting, as I was preparing for this episode today, we did a little Googling, we did a little chat GPT searching, which I don’t know if I shared this on the show yet. Fun fact, I have named my chat GPT Clive. So, a lot of times I’ll be like have a meeting with Clive and I’m klaten that Clive and I we brainstorm. So I was asking Clive some questions around you know, why why is it that? Like, why is yours this dichotomy? What is this whole thing around impact that people are looking for? Like, where do people get caught up? Like, why do people want to make such an impact? Like, why is this such a topic, especially in the world that we’re in right now, specifically in this online space? Well, if you think about it in this online space, typically the people that I attract and the in the groups that you probably run through are people who have this heart and this desire to share their knowledge and expertise with others because they don’t want to hold it in there like more people needs to know about this. So they usually have and you probably do have a passion

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For a certain topic, and you feel a sense of purpose, for wanting to share this with more people, and then somewhere along the way, you probably have this little, either a Facebook ad or an internal little prompt saying, like, Could this be a business? What could I blog from this? Could I start a podcast around this, maybe the monetization piece isn’t really coming up for you or it hadn’t really come up at the beginning, you were just excited, because you were passionate about something that felt some purpose whenever you shared it with other people. So you wanted to figure out how can I share with more people? For you, the idea of impact might come from a place of wanting to raise awareness around a certain topic. So some examples that come to mind for me. So back when, when my family started our nonprofit, our nonprofit was in honor of my mom who passed away from metastasized breast cancer, a few days before my 18th birthday, and our foundation that we founded, we founded that Christmas right before it was her last Christmas present before she passed. And the Foundation came from a place of wanting to get more information out into the world. You see my mom when she was diagnosed a second time with cancer. When metastasized, she decided to and it was terminal, she decided to seek out alternative therapies for cancer care. She had done the chemo route, she’d done the radiation route. She was going that route again. But the end of the day, the doctors were saying this is terminal. So she started asking bigger questions, she found a really incredible naturopathic doctor. And that naturopath made a incredible difference in her quality of life during that time when she was really on her final six months of life. And it was things around acupuncture she was doing. Remember, as a dean, I would come home from a football game and my cheerleading uniform. Yes, fun fact, I was a cheerleader for exactly one year. My senior year in high school after having a very traumatic ankle injury. My junior year in high school, I played soccer for a very long time, and it took me out of soccer. So I decided why not become a cheerleader. So I came home with my cheerleading outfit, and I would do these castor oil packs on my mom’s liver. And I still remember the smell of that castor oil, oil with the heating pad with it. And

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I get emotional though it really brings back a lot of memories. But I have memories of this and memories of the research that the naturopathic doctor brought into my mom and the different types of things she did. And I remember at the time, this is back in 2000 2001. And holistic medicine was really viewed as hippie dippie. And out there and very taboo. And we were very fortunate that her oncologist and naturopathic doctor, they really worked together. I mean, we lived in the Portland metro area, which is way more hippie dippie than most parts of the US. So we were fortunate about that. But we spent so much time and by we I was a teenager, so not me, my my family, my older siblings and my parents, they spent so much time research and trying to find solutions and alternative medicines and complementary medicines. And what’s the difference between the two, we realized that we had spent so much time trying to sift through it and trying to understand it and trying to figure out what to trust and not trust that we lost time.

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In the time that was most precious, if that makes sense. So this idea of raising awareness coming back to the central theme of today is you might come from a place like my family did at the time of saying, We don’t want anyone else to ever waste time. We wanted to get this information out to more people. So what if we built a nonprofit organization that served as an intention of creating more awareness, more education, for women fighting breast cancer on the alternative and complementary therapies that are available to them? So we became an education and information based organization, all stemming from the idea of we wanted to raise awareness that this was an option. You might have that too. On a contrasted example, I have now I’m

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pregnant with my third child. I have shared with this over the last couple of months, I have talked very openly about wanting to be in physical, like great health for birth because I had some struggles with my first birth and with recovery from my second birth. And I knew nothing about pelvic floor strength, or pelvic floor therapy outside of the world where women just joke that when they cease, they peed or they couldn’t bounce on trampolines. And that was just a socially accepted thing. Well, there is a whole movement of educators and physicians and and coaches or whatever you want to call it right I’m probably not getting the terminology right but

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People who have a huge desire to raise more awareness and education around pelvic floor health, that might sound super specific, but thing goodness, for those people who care about that enough to create content to help people like me who need their help, but might not even know it exists. So for you, you might be coming from a place where you don’t even your topic might be so obvious to you. But you also know that your ideal person might not even realize that is a challenge. They’d say, all the time in marketing, find a problem to solve and solve it. Well, a lot of times, we’re not even aware what those problems are, or what questions to ask. So part of this impact driven mission is raising more awareness, creating more education, because you might be teaching in a space where there is very little, and people are settling with what they know, example, pelvic floor health, when you sneeze up deal with it, that’s just part of having kids and getting older. But no, there is an alternative. Wait, you don’t have to live that way. In fact, that’s not normal, healthy, physical, whatever, right? So for you, it might be coming from a place from this.

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You also might come from a place where making an impact is you really, truly enjoy teaching, and educating others. Maybe you’ve had a background in teaching, maybe you had a background where you loved leading training sessions at your old corporate job. Maybe you came from a place of volunteering, or you always raised your hand to say, hey, yak, yeah, I’d love to teach a workshop or I’d be happy to present in that meeting.

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I’m getting ready to blow my nose here for a second and also feel the need to be fully transparent.

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I get emotional thinking about these things. Also, this room is very cold.

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Maybe that scenario, I need to raise my level awareness on around temperatures and the impact of temperatures and feelings with your nasal condition. TMI nope, very on brand for this podcast. So let’s keep going. But that desire and passion to want to share your knowledge.

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Side little tangent here, we love the Sager side tangents. A couple months ago, I shared with you on the podcast that I over the last year have recently got pretty into human design. And thank you, by the way, for those of you who responded to the episode where I was like, How can I get Human Design educator to come on the show and talk a little bit more about this. So TBD, that’ll be coming in at some point, later this fall, or maybe next year, depending on this whole, you know, baby situation. But what I’ve learned and human design is my husband’s human designers, he’s a projector.

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And he

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really loves having knowledge and sharing knowledge with others. And it’s, it’s such a funny thing about him.

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It’s, I think I’ve shared this funny example, one time on the show where we were one time out at dinner with friends. And he left his cell phone in the car for some reason. And Hale was just friends do we were chatting about different things pop culture came up, and somebody referenced a band from the 90s. And my husband is he’s really good at random facts. Like he just knows a lot of really random things that really don’t matter. But like he’s just knows a lot of just very seemingly random things. And, you know, when you have that thing where you know the answer to something, it’s on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t frickin remember the word. Well, this happened to him. He’s like this 90s band. He’s like, knew it. He like couldn’t remember it. And what was hilarious is that was pretty early on in the dinner. As as the dinner is happening, I’m looking over at him. And I can tell, I can tell him not knowing the answer to that question from an hour ago is still frikkin driving him bonkers. So of course, as soon as dinner gets over to the car, get to the car, he starts the car, and he immediately before we go anywhere, he’s on his cell phone, Googling, of course, what’s the name of that band? I don’t remember what it was. But this need for knowledge. I don’t think he’s the only person in the world who was like that. But when it comes to businesses, my husband loves sharing information with other people, especially when that information is practical and relevant. Well, even when it’s not practical, and it’s not relevant. It’s just a pop culture reference. That’s, that’s his thing, too, is great tablet trivia night. But coming back to it, some of your desires to make an impact might come from a place that you truly love educating other people. Now, I’m gonna put a big asterisk on this because a lot of times and educating other people comes from a place where you want to share your knowledge with other people, but they might not be ready or wanting to hear it. They

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also might not have enough context or knowledge to be able to receive it. So we’re going to talk about that here in a moment. But these are, again, are some of the motivations for why impact might be speaking to you why you might be saying to me, it’s, I just want to make an impact in the world, I just want to be more helpful. I just want to be of service. Maybe you have the desire or that you just want to inspire other people, maybe something has happened in your life, you’ve walked through something really hard, where you’ve had a really big epiphany, or epiphany. Why is that such a funny word epiphany, me, I want to say epiphany. But it’s tough for me. Why is that? What words really weird sometimes, right? Anyways, you’ve had this big aha, or a big wake up moment, that really set the precedent for the next round of your life. And you want to inspire other people in that way. Maybe it’s a person, maybe it was an event, maybe it was something that happened, that was a catalyst for change for you. And you want to share with more people that desire to be of influence that desire to be more inspirational, more motivational to other people. That is not a selfish thing. That is not a like, weird thing. You’re not the only one. There are many of us who truly want to inspire others, who know that we have a gift that when we step up to the mic, people listen, that is a very unique and special thing. And if you’re listening to the show, I would bet that you have that quality. And if you’re second guessing yourself, or you’re wondering if you’re cut out to do this whole speaking thing, or this, becoming a personal brand, and really stepping out into a bigger spotlight, I would bet that that that insecurity of second guessing is becoming hers coming from a place where you feel guilty about that, like, if I think I’m good, or I think that I’m meant to do this, that means that I’m being ostentatious, or I’m being like all self oriented, or whatever else. And here’s the thing, there’s nothing that says you can’t make a big impact in the lives of others. Well, thinking highly of yourself. In fact, I believe that you have to think highly of yourself, in order to make a true impact on other people. Because people don’t look to you as an inspiration. If you’re constantly just second guessing yourself. Because all that does is give them permission to go well, I guess I have to second guess myself too. But when you stand proudly, when you know that you have a voice that matters when you know that you are good at what you do, and you have the confidence to step up and do it. You give people permission to do the same. Now it’s a subtle thing. But it’s a really, really important thing. In fact, I think this is one of one of the most important parts of my brand.

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Well, I know that because I hear this all the time, is people look to me, because I am confident when I stand on stage, when I get behind a mic, I’m confident there’s this thought that Well, I must be so sure in everything that I’m saying, I must know exactly what’s going to happen. And this, my friend is the fallacy. Confidence doesn’t come from knowing everything that’s going to go down. Competence comes from knowing that you will handle whatever goes down.

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And that my friend is why I am so damn confident is because I have 100% faith in myself, that no matter what happens when I step on a stage or I step up to this microphone, at the end of it, I’ll be fine. I’ll be okay. I also have faith that I know that my audience will benefit from whatever flies out of my mouth.

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Of course, I go in with a plan and having a plan that preparedness it does bring me more confidence as we talked about in last week’s episode. Preparedness doesn’t mean that you’re scripted or that you’re robotic preparedness really does help you feel more confident showing up. But confidence communicated to other people. It isn’t from having the plan competence is knowing that you’re gonna you’re gonna be fine with whatever happens. So whether the microphone craps out or somebody asks a weird question or your heel falls through the seam on the stage, it’s happened to me multiple times.

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Whatever happens, you’ll go with it. Like you’ll just flow with it. And in fact, next week we’re going to talk a little bit more about that we’re going to interview one of my students who really struggle with nerves and fears and this idea of in order for me to show up as a professional, I really have to get things scripted. You’re gonna hear her story next week. But coming back to this is confidence is really, really important piece of making a true impact.

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If you are fighting that inner confidence in any degree, we need to address it. And it’s not by you thinking like, Oh, I just need to be more scripted. If only I had the secret of all the things, no, it’s experience. And it’s yes, having the recipe for what makes great communication. It’s understanding how your audience thinks and how to tap into the psychology in a non schmucky or schmooze II or a way that’s going to be tricky. It’s if you truly want to make an impact, you have to understand how people listen to you in the first place, which brings me into what we really need to talk about.

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So this separation between impact and income, what I find whenever I have a conversation with a client, or a potential client, or if I’m talking to business owners at events, and I hear from people saying, you know, I really would love to do more speaking, I just want to I want to be of service, I want to make an impact on the world, I want to get my message out, I have the story, I have this passion, I have this purpose, all these words I’ve been using when I hear this. And whenever I asked the question, she said, a curiosity, and how will you monetize it?

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What’s interesting is I can tell in a flash and their facial expressions, their relationship with money. And that dichotomy between making money. If they feel like making money means that they can’t make an impact. You can tell by people and how they answered, you can tell by the facial expressions on the reaction to that is money taboo? Does money, remove the heart of the mission? And what’s here’s what’s really interesting, and this is the question that I really want you to pose to yourself today. And it’s this idea that, do you think that if you don’t sell, or if you don’t monetize that somehow, you don’t have to sell when you speak?

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Let me say that a different way.

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When you stand up to share your passion, when you stand up to educate an audience, when you stand up to inspire others. Do you think that that isn’t selling?

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I would argue that every single time you stand up to speak to an audience, whether it’s an audience of one or 1000s You are always selling you’re selling your ideas, whether or not that they should listen to you are you a credible authority do you have experienced for this you know, you’re talking about you’re selling your your ideas, you’re selling your your beliefs on things, they’re filtering, saying, is that actually a good idea? I’m gonna try that on for sizes that work for me. I don’t know that I believe that thing. Okay? She said that. I’m listening, but I’m not really sure here. You’re selling your ideas, you’re selling yourself. And if you have programs, you are selling your programs, even when you’re not, but I think when when people heard hear the word selling, they jumped straight through thinking like, oh, I have to be jamming my products or services down someone’s face, and that is complete BS. You are selling all the freaking time as an influencer as an information brand. As an educator, you’re selling your ideas. Back when I was in corporate, I had a team of trainers, I did not have the sales team. That’s not my job. However, we taught sales, we taught doctors how to sell hearing aids. And I’m just going to double down on this. Doctors go to school, because they want to help people.

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The last thing on their radar is figuring out how I’m going to sell patients the solution to that help doctors don’t aren’t thinking about that that’s an insurance problem. Well in audiology and the hearing care space. That’s the one individual space where I mean, our health care system is just a whole

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system in general here in the US. But audiology is typically very limited coverage, if any with hearing aids. So audiologist graduated from school, they didn’t do a clinic thinking they’re gonna do all these diagnostics and understand things. And when a brand new audiologist sits down in front of a patient to show them the proof of their hearing test.

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They’re like, well, of course they would want to get this solved. And in comes human psychology of someone going oh, but that’s not that bad. I know the paper says that but I don’t experience that. Or it’ll be fine. I was pushed down the road or that’s like way too much money to solve on something that honestly I’m fine with right now. In comes human behavioral psychology. And these audiologists are like, Oh my gosh, like how do I how do I help someone make a decision that really truly is in their best interest? Coming back

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Add to it. So I work with trainers. I work with trainers who taught these doctors. And what’s interesting is you think, well, doctors, of course, would want to learn how to do that better? No,

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no, because they didn’t want to identify as being a salesperson. So I had to teach trainers, how to be salespeople to sell the training. And I don’t mean like physically Silva training granted, we did have to sell registrations to trainings. But I met selling them the idea of even wanting to participate selling the value behind it, selling their ideas. And even when they were bought into the ideas, we would then have to get them to apply these ideas, and buy into the idea of practicing and roleplay. And putting systems into their businesses. You my friend are always selling, always selling. So what I want you to remember is, if you truly want to make an impact, you have a responsibility to learn how to sell your ideas, to learn how to sell the context of what you teach. So if you’re one of those people who are deeply passionate about your experiences, what you’ve walked through what you’ve learned, and you feel a sense of purpose, to share it with others, you still have a responsibility to teach that in a way that other people are going to get it. lest you be met with a lot of resistance. And a lot of people may like Yeah, but I don’t want to fire me or that’s so bad. I mean, you might still get those trolls, but you don’t want your ideal people that really are optimized and prime to hear your message. If they are pushing back. It means the way that we’re teaching isn’t as effective as it could be. If you are being mad to the end of the day when let’s say you do have online programs that you’re you’re teaching or maybe you do consulting services, or one on one, if you’re constantly being met with resistance with Yeah, okay, that makes sense. But I have to do X, Y, and Z. And you’re you’re getting all of these seemingly big objections, and just no one’s moving forward. And these objections seem really logical, right. And you’re like, Oh, I hate to tell you this. But it’s your message, your way that you’re structuring your ideas. It’s not effective. And even if you’re not, quote, unquote, selling your programs, if you are having people push back and resist, or tuck the information, they learned from you into a binder to come back to it one day, say, Oh, that’s such great information. Oh, that was so inspiring. Oh, your story is so great. But internally, they’re thinking, but I can’t do that because or, but that won’t work for me because or can’t, but my story is different, or just never going to do the XYZ thing. If they come up with all these excuses and reasons why they can’t. My friend, your content is not effective. And I say that with all the love in the world. But the moment that you realize that your responsibility as a motivational speaker, inspirational speaker, as an educational speaker, as a speaking as a marketing tool, speaker, your responsibility is to sell. And I do not mean sell your programs. I mean, sell your ideas said differently if we want to replace that word, if you feel more comfortable with it. Your responsibility is to effectively communicate your ideas, and information.

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That is a responsibility that you have, if you truly stand behind your statement of you want to make an impact. But standing up on a soapbox, and preaching your ideas, your best tips, your information, your education, you might think that that is some kind of like, heart lead, look at me, I’m giving, giving giving to the world. But then in secret, you’re resentful because nobody’s actually buying from you or no one’s looking at you as a thought leader, or you’re not as far along as you want to be where people are looking to speak or the results that you’re after the outcomes. They’re not what you want. There’s this pole between the two and then they become resentful, but then you show up back on your soapbox and you preach, preach, preach, preach, give, give, give, give, give

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my friend. It’s an ineffective strategy for communication. And I don’t mean to make you feel bad about it. This is not a like for you suck. Okay, so if you’re going down that little rabbit hole here, like smack, smack, smack, come back to it. The first step of understanding how to be more impactful is having the self awareness to say there is opportunity for me to grow.

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If you resist the message and say, but I just want to help people. I just want to share what I know. I just want to share what I know. You can stand behind that. But that puts this egotistical thing on you where you what you just want to do is you just want a microphone so you can talk. You don’t care who hears it.

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You don’t care what they do with it. It’s just spotlight on you microphone on you. Let me just talk, talk, talk talk, because I love talking. And we all might have those moments where we love holding the mic and just rolling with it. But if you stand on the soapbox and say, I’m here, and I have a responsibility to serve, I feel called to serve. I feel pulled to share my story with other people. I’ve had this set of experiences in my life are this really specific skill set, and I truly want to make a difference with it. If that’s you, then when you step up on that soapbox, the whole orientation changes because of instead of it up in like my memory, let me share everything. Let me tell you what, I know what it does flip things around, and then you start saying, Okay,

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if I want to share X, Y, and Z, how can I do this in a way that truly resonates with others, that truly meets people where they are, that truly makes the impact that I’m after? You see, I think the absolute secret and necessity of creating an impact on the world is having the humility to say, I need to learn how to do this in a way where it taps into my strengths and my gifts, but it also really honors the people that I want to serve. Because if you are service driven if you truly want to help others, you have to truly understand others and you have to shine the spotlight on them while holding the mic so that your message can reach them. Alright my friend if you’re going alright, I want to learn more how to do this I want to learn how to get better at this stick with me because the next couple of weeks I’m going to be sharing with you some exact case studies of three individuals who have done this swimmingly over the last one of my clients has been with me for two years and other one for a full year. Another one just joined me six months ago, I want to share with you some different stories around how business owners who have felt called to the spotlight who feel this desire to help and make an impact how they have done that by accepting how to become better communicators, and how to also monetize things along the way. So I’m we’re going to share those stories. There’ll be a lot of tactical and tangible and inspirational stories over the coming weeks, so be sure to tune in. And for the latest and greatest for how to get access to some tools and resources. To help you every step of the way. Be sure to head on over to Heather sager.com If you go to the homepage today, you can check out the latest and greatest of what we have. Right now at the time of this recording. I have a brand new guide we put out called the profitable speaking guides, you can use those tactics and strategies to monetize your efforts. But there’s also my magnetic speaking guide it’s simple phrases that you can use to really pull your audience in on your journey. So those are more subtle, those more more nuanced that you can use in every stage in every way to really improve that credibility and the impact so run over grab those will also link to a couple additional resources in the show notes if you’re ready and hungry to get started right now, and I will see you in next week’s episode. Bye, friend!