(upbeat music) - Welcome to Convo's On Confidence, the podcast that gives listeners a window into the lives of some of the most confident people on the planet. Join me, your host, Bridget McGowan, as I have conversations to reveal the secrets to my guests' confidence. As an award-winning international professional speaker, an award-winning author, and an award-winning publisher, I sit down with go-getters from All Walksfly, backgrounds, and professions. They took the risks, they made the tough choices, and they pursued the opportunities, and now they encourage you to confidently do the same. Welcome to Convo's On Confidence. (upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to today's episode of Convo's On Confidence. I am your host, Bridget McGowan. Now, a quick note. I noticed the last time I recorded an episode, I think I said my name was Bridget McGowan Hawkins, and if you're a regular listener, you're probably thinking to yourself, what's going on with this girl? Does she get married? Does she get divorced? Does she know her name? Does she not know her name? Let me tell you very quickly. My legal name is Bridget McGowan Hawkins has been since July 1 of 2006, but here's the deal. When I became a full-time professional speaker, people would introduce me, and they would call me Bridget Hawkins. No, that's not my name. And it annoys me when people do that, 'cause I've never called myself Bridget Hawkins. They would call me Bridget Hawkins McGowan. No, that's not my name. They would screw it up. So I said, you know what? I am going to make it easy for everyone. So when I am a speaker on stage, my name, my professional name, if you will, or my stage name is my maiden name, because everybody knows that name, Bridget McGowan. But sometimes I'll flub it up. If I'm doing stuff, I mean, my legal, official name, what my government name, as they say, is Bridget McGowan Hawkins. So I apologize if I confuse anybody out there in podcast land. Now, with that out of the way, I am excited to share the microphone with Michelle Baker today. Michelle, welcome to the show. - Hello, Bridget McGowan Hawkins. I am so glad to be here on the show today. - Hey, if you want to get, yeah. - Look, I'm a full name to you. (laughing) - Well, I'm glad I didn't tell you my middle name, because you seem like one of those types that are, yeah, that'll fit that whole name out there. You remember back in the day when you were in trouble, because you got your whole, the whole name. - Your whole name, Michelle Renee Baker? Oh God, your whole, oh God. That's hard. Okay. - Well, Michelle, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you on the show. You know, you have just been doing all kinds of amazing work all around the globe. And it was a recent post on LinkedIn where I just slapped myself and I said, Michelle, because you're the post on LinkedIn just screened confidence. And I made it, let me reach out. I said, my goodness. You've got to be on the show. So tell everybody what you do and how this confidence in you shows up in what you do. - Yes, well, thank you. The post was a recent post is Where's Michelle? And I put on all the places that I'll be going over the next, it's about six weeks that I will be going to New York and Detroit, Germany and Jamaica. So for speaking, and yeah. So I'm known as the chief confidence igniter. That's my moniker. My gift is igniting confidence and my passion is translating the perception of chaos into a practical and profitable confidence. And I do that for teams, organizations and individuals. And what that basically means is to help people see that whatever your reality is, it's simply your mentality. It's simply the story you've been telling yourself. So how do we create a new story so that you can have a more fulfilling, abundant, you know, profitable, productive environment in your life. And that's not just for the workplace. That's life, 'cause you're one whole entire person. And so you bring that person to the workspace. - Now tell me what kinds of professionals you work with. For as organizations. So I've been blessed that I have stayed on this vein of, you know, the confidence and the imposter syndrome work that I do for the last, I'd say about three or four years. And so now I'm having a joy of working with companies like Dynler and Ford. So I'll be working with Ford Motor Company for their women of, they have a women of Ford with Bosch. I've worked with Wobtech, which is a, you know, a Fortune 500 railway company. So just some enterprise organizations and then some, you know, what they call them small businesses that are not necessarily small, but they're smaller than the enterprise. So within those organizations, the work I do is most as often around women. How I got started was I spoke at a conference, women in trucking and that's how I started working 'cause some of the sponsors were the Fortune 500. So UPS's and companies like that. And I, wherever I went, I just gave my all and I built a name and a reputation. So this is what I'm known for. And anyone I've ever spoken for, you call them and they'll tell you, right? I tell people, I don't brag, I just do good work. I don't get home. Whoever I am given the opportunity to hold the mic in front of an audience, my commitment is that audience is gonna walk away better than they ever thought possible. - You know, a lot of times people will kind of, poo poo, the sound of the words small business. But let me clarify for everyone listening, the SBA, the Small Business Administration, the United States Small Business Administration defines a small business as an independent business having fewer than 500 employees. - Exactly. - So if you are, you're walking around with 400 employees. Yes, you are considering small business, but at the same time, ain't nothing small about that. - Yeah, exactly. And that's what, when I say that, because I work in trucking and transportation, tech. So when you're working in a trucking organization, many of them are a women run or women owned, those are, they're pretty massive businesses. - Now, it, I am going to assume, takes some level of confidence to be able to approach these companies like Daimler, like Ford Motor Company, like I could go on down the line. Where did the confidence come from? How did you say, this is what I'm going to do? And I know this isn't an overnight process either. Before we started the recording, we had this lovely conversation about knowledge versus experience. And I was sitting over here screaming and pulling my hair out. And you're like, "Bridget, put your hair back in, girl." And then we say the difference between knowledge and experience. So tell me, how did confidence play a role in you just saying, I'm working with these companies and I'm going to bring about a difference? - Well, one, I would, they approach me. So I spoke at a conference. So it's one of those, they call them, as a speaker, there are what we call lead generating opportunities. So there are places where you speak. I encourage you for them to be in your backyard. So you can drive there over there without expending a lot of money, right? And you go, and your goal is when I speak there, I follow up and follow through. Now, this didn't always happen because I was nervous at some point. And as a speaker, there were times where, you know, you didn't capture everything. So I will tell, one of the tools I use is talk-a-dot. So it actually is a QR code. So this is really transform my business, talk-a-dot.com. So TA, L-K-A-D-O-T.com. And if you use it, please give me credit for it. And they have a 30 day free trial. It's game-changing when you put a QR code up and you don't worry, you engage the audience to fill it out. So now I have all the contact information to follow up and follow through and really leverage that speaking opportunity and turning into more clients and more income. Now, having said that before talk-a-dot, it was that you needed to approach them. You still wanna talk to people and approach people because not everybody's gonna be in your breakout and everybody's gonna fill out the form, not everybody's gonna walk up to you. So if you know and you look at, you're going to speak somewhere and you look at all the sponsors, you decide before you go, who do you wanna work with? When you set the intention, you will be amazed. They will either be in your breakout, they will bump into you at lunch, you will meet them standing at a table. It is baffling to me at this point. The clarity of what I call in, what I attract to me, but that didn't always happen because I would not, I would think I wasn't ready. I didn't know enough. I hadn't spoke enough, right? I wasn't big enough. And that's the fear. So it's the relentless pursuit that, and the understanding that you don't have to get it right. You don't need to be thinking you need to have all of this or be something is what stops you from receiving whatever it is that's gonna build your speaking brand and your business. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it 'cause you just don't understand. We've been taught and because there's so much coaching out there that tells us, that it promises us success, that we do things when the actual success can never, true success is bought with failure. If you want, the people who are the most successful in any industry, they purchase that with failure. Multiple, probably mind numbing failure for people who are looking up at them, right? And that's it because what happens is when you actually experience the know repeatedly, it stops bothering you and it opens. So once the know no longer bothers you, once the fear rejection, once the fear what they're gonna say, once the fear of them, what's gonna happen, once the fear getting it wrong, once you can remove that from the equation, it's amazing what opens up for you. And your only way to remove that is you as an, if you can't buy that, no one can tell you how. They can tell you, they can tell you and until you take the action, it's not removed. - Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. People can tell you the how but until you put it in place, until you put it into action, until you implement it and put in the reps, not until then when you see results, changes, transformation, before we got all we were talking about, you can go to a trainer and that trainer can teach you how to do sit ups and push ups. And then you leave that session and you're like, well, great, I know how to do sit ups, I know how to do push ups. Why don't I have a six pack and why don't I have guns? Well, you just learned how, you have not put in the reps. - Exactly. - And so it goes for anything else, tell me how long? How many years had you been putting in the reps to get to where you are now? - Well, it's interesting. I mean, from the very first time I spoke, seriously, I tell people at the very first time I spoke as a professional speaker was October, it was October of 2000 and either 13 or 14, I have to look back. And I got a standing ovation, right? So I've had multiple standing ovation at this point. It wasn't the fact that I wasn't skilled and gifted, it was a fact that I needed to build belief in myself so that I could receive the opportunities that were coming, right? So everyone else was telling me, and this is where confidence is, is that internal belief that what you're doing, that you are good enough, because no one can make you believe in yourself, right? These are the things that I'm teaching people on a constant ongoing basis, right? You can get all the accolades. So that's external, what I'm imparting on people is that without your internal calibration for what you're doing and understanding and having that internal clarity, it doesn't matter what happens outside of you, 'cause what happens outside of you will always change. It can change in a drop of a hat. People go to work and they're laid off. Most of the population, what I think they said about, what 50%, if not more of the population, is two paychecks away from homeless, right? Right now, the where we are in our economy. So, and especially entrepreneurs or business owners, how long would it take you as a speaker right before you or dead broke? So seriously, anything external, right? I've had deals that were amazing and they were a lot, and I got a little lazy, right? 'Cause I knew it was coming and I was like, "Eh, right, taught me a lesson. "You must prime that pipeline every day." Every day, make a call, every day, send an email, every day, do a follow-up. I got it, like I heard it, but until I experienced that, which took me under where I'm best friends with my banker. Like, yeah, you know, I know I got these overdrafts coming in, but could you help us, help us to start out? 'Cause you know. (laughing) And that, again, the failure, the experience, the first time it happened, I was crying. By the time I was coming out of it, it's just like, okay, so what are we gonna do? Who are we gonna call, how are we gonna create? Like, it changes you, and that's the resilience. That's what's absolutely mandatory. For a speaking career, you must be resilient. - Well, and I'm going to say this. We've all heard it. The fortune is in the follow-up. Especially as a business owner and as an entrepreneur, you've heard it so much. - Oh, so much. - I recognize that not all of my listeners, are business owners or entrepreneurs. So let me just kind of break it down and tell you the fortune is in the follow-up whether you're a fifth grader at the local elementary school or whether you're in a accountant down at whatever agency or wherever. You don't have to be a business owner to understand the fortune is in the follow-up. Here's what I mean. I've had situations that I know you have to, Michelle, where you get the feedback. Everybody's happy. You've got all these warm leads. You reach out to them. Some might respond. A lot don't. Some might book a call. Several don't even open the email message. - There you go. - But what if you email them again? What if this happened to me the other day? A lady and I were scheduled to have a call at 2 p.m. Pacific. I call, no, no, no, that on Zoom, we had a Zoom link. She didn't show up. I know calls run over, people are late, no big deal. About three minutes after, I decided to email her with the link. Hey, here's the link. Looking forward to seeing you on Zoom. Few minutes, nothing. I decided to call, nothing. I had never done this before, Michelle. I decided to text her. Do you know she immediately called me and said, "I am so glad you text me." For one, I had to run out and I couldn't get on Zoom. Two, I noticed a miss call, but my phone was on silent or something like that. Only because you text me and it buzzed my watch did I catch your message and now I'm on the phone with you. I mean, you know, I'm paraphrasing or what have you. But only because I tried several touch points, the fortunate in the follow-up, sent a proposal due to hear back in the day now, blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada. When it comes to people who are not business owners, let's say you're a kid and you're asking a teacher to give you an extension on an assignment or to give you some flexibility with an assignment or something like that. You ask one time, you don't get any kind of response. Go again and again and again. The fortunate in the follow-up is akin to the squeaky, will gets the oil. - Yeah. - We're not saying be a pest, but it's that follow-up and that remaining front of mind for people that will lead to the opportunities, that will lead to what it is you're looking for, that will lead to the next door opening for you. So you don't just have to be a business owner, I shouldn't use just. You don't have to be a business owner or an entrepreneur or a solo-preneur or a professional speaker to understand, embrace and believe in the fortune is in the follow-up. Don't do one touch point and oh, I never got a response. Okay, well, call 'em again. Don't do one touch point. Oh, they never said anything to my text message or my email. Okay, I'm again. Until you get a no, the opportunity is still alive. And then even when you get that no as you were talking about earlier, Michelle, as I said in a conversation with another guest, Dr. Chantel Link, no stands for no next opportunity. Keep telling yourself with each one of those, until like you were saying you got enough of those no's, until you're okay with it and you keep moving. Tell me this, is this what you always wanted to do and be? Oh, God, no. See, when I was a kid, I actually wanted to be a guy in a college. So I remember I got a microscope and I remember I went to a high school, a high school for, it was gifted, like one of those charter schools. And we were raised in a very urban area. And I remember doing cadaver when I was like around 15 years old. Yeah, I remember I was the president of the school 'cause it was all, we were from all over the entire district. And I was a freshman and I was still, I was the president and I was just really gifted and talented. There was just things that were transpiring in my household that just didn't foster that outcome. I was just to help people simple math, alcoholic men, my mother's second husband and alcoholic men, just didn't lead to good math, right? I had three businesses when I was 13, just really a gifted and talented child. There was no mentorship, no guidance, no caring, no affirmation. This is why I'm just really talented at what I do is because I realize the people who come in my path, the organizations that work with me, have a real desire to nurture people. And they understand the nurturing that you will thrive because you create a blossoming, a blooming of possibility that exists in every human being with the nurturing. So no, this is not always what I wanted to do, right? So after being incarcerated at 20, I worked and I worked my way up till I ended up in sales and then I did pharmaceuticals and medical devices and biotech, and I thought that I wanted to thrive and rise in those organizations. And I found myself with all the, at that point, a house trappings, like I had everything materialistically, yet I was empty. And the thing that brought me the most joy at that time was the work I did within the churches I was always a part of. Wherever I lived, I worked with women who had gone through just really difficult backgrounds, like the first ministry I went through, women who had been through abuse and struggle, trauma, just homeless, you know. So I've had it all, homeless, old drugs, old like I've done like so many things that had created such a sense of shame and embarrassment. And I've learned nothing to be ashamed of, just who I was at the time. I did the best for who I was at the time. And so my ability and to navigate and be at a juncture where I literally heard, I heard, like within myself, what I was meant to do. And once I heard it, I just followed. You know, like you can call it God, universe divine, Buddha, sarsala, whatever you wanna call it. But once I heard the clarity of I call it call my voice God and I'm, you know, and I just said, you know, I could look at my life and see the trajectory that had been changed. Like whenever I followed the voice, I could clearly see at one point where it took me versus when I did what I wanted, when I lived the egotistical selfish life of not being patient and just wanting, wanting that immediate mic, that immediate result. I wanted to feel good versus growth. It was feeling good in the moment versus experiencing the growth to very different places. - Yes, yes. I heard you say that you found joy in working with people in the charge at one point. - Mm-hmm. - I was going to ask you this. - Women's men, specifically women's ministries that I worked in. - Yes. - And that's why I work, a lot of the work I do now is with, through the DEI, 85% of where I'm hired is through DEI to work with their women's initiatives. - Makes sense, makes sense. - I'll have a ERG or a BRG that's related to women and that's where I get through most of my work. - What connections would you draw between doing what brings you joy and building upon your confidence? - Well, well, one, so the confidence in the manner that I teach it is actually a sense of, it's a sense of a love of self. And that's how I discovered constant confidence is when I did the things that I loved, I started to discover that I really didn't care when nobody else thought. Like when I was aligned with my purposeful self, and again, so, you know, your higher power, when you tap into that, when you actually slow down and understand what it is you're called and you find something that's matter and more meaningful, something that is bigger than your current circumstances, 'cause it's gotta pull you out and through the circumstances. And you follow that. It literally, what it does is it stops. So I could go back into, so my background being, you know, Christian, so you could be, you know, I've met people who have different backgrounds and they're similar. They have their own little sayings, right? So minds is if God, he that is in me that's greater than anything in the world, right? If he before me, who can stand again? So I literally started to understand once I followed that, what's calling me to a greater purpose, you just the mere flesh and blood mortal. If you're not helping me to build what I'm called to do, why am I wasting time listening to you? And that's so what happens is as you feed the vision of who you are becoming, the gift you are becoming, right? And that's the confidence. Be confident enough to understand that you're a gift. Like I work on being a gift 'cause a gift is reciprocal. Most people work on getting something. So getting is one way, that's all about you, getting. It's one way and it never fills. If your focus is to get more clients, to get more money, to get, get, get, you will never be full and you will always be taking. Whereas other ways, if you determine what your gift is, your voice, the voice that you have as a speaker, what that gift is and give of it, right? And you give it as it's been given to you, the source doesn't run out so you don't. And it's so much more fulfilling and it's so much more easeful, right? There's not a scarcity. The getting, you know, getting has scarcity. Whereas giving is infinite. - You took me to church. You took all of us to church. I'm over here like you. (laughs) - Well, that's the confidence that when I am imparting and working with people and I'm giving the opportunity for an extended period of time to work with someone around confidence or work with a team or ordinance, well, confidence, that's the commitment that I have with them is to embody a different way of being. - What is one thing anyone listening can do today right now to be more confident? - To start your day in gratitude. To start your day in gratitude for the day. So what people don't understand is that your day is only gonna go the way you say it's gonna go. So when you wake up and what most of the population does is wake up and they look at social media. So all that does is you're looking at someone else's highlight reel and judging yourself. So you're judging your insights how you feel by what somebody else looks like they have. And so that creates an insecurity and an insufficiency. So you go into lack and insecurity. You look at your emails and you're calendar, now you don't have enough time. You've got all this stuff, you have to need the author should be doing. So you will start your day in scarcity. Whatever state you start your day, you've already dictated the outcome. It is almost virtually impossible to start in that state and to go into abundance. You must start an abundance and say thank you. Like I look at my calendar the night before. So when I wake up, I don't touch anything that is gonna derail me from fortifying my state. When I say my state, I'm talking about my emotions, my spirit, my vision, everything I'm doing, first thing in the morning is dictating that today is gonna be the best Tuesday I've ever had. Because see, this is right now in this moment of time, it's the only Tuesday that exists. So I can still have a great next Tuesday and a great one after that and a great one after that. But today, this is the best Tuesday I've ever had. - And Michelle, something else. I got this from the book, The Secret. Express gratitude throughout the day. - Yes. - With every step you take as you're walking through a parking lot, say thank you. - Yes. - With every step as you're walking through the grocery stores that you're walking through the department store, wherever you are, say thank you. And express that gratitude. I don't care any little thing that any person does, the clerk, the post office person, the woman, express that gratitude. Before you even finish the sentence, I knew you were going to say gratitude. Before you even finished it, I knew that's what you were going to say. - Yes. - Oh my goodness, you got me all over here in a tizzy. - Yeah, and I was just gonna, and so the bonus, if you wanna truly tap into really transformation, 'cause what most of the population does is they're grateful for what they deem as good, and then they're not grateful for what they deem as bad. And so-- - Your adversity is your advantage. So even the bad, think about it could be worse, but it's not, thank goodness. - Right, so what I teach people is that you don't know. What, you don't know why you're experiencing what you're experiencing. When you understand that, and you started to say thank you, what you're doing is you're creating a belief that everything works out for you, right? There's a biblical, say everything works in your favor. So what people fail to do is to say thank you. So what they keep creating is the problem. So if they have a challenge with a person, the next time they connect or meet or email or talk to that person, they will experience that the same problem because they're not being grateful. They're not understanding. When you say thank you for anything that you're experiencing, like it was, I learned it from Ivana Yang's life. I always mess up her name. - He's a-- - Yama, Iama, Vansan. - Thank you. See, I butcher that woman's name. If you're listening to this, I promise. But I've given you credit. Life is a lesson or a blessing. When you learn the lesson, so anything that challenges you, that causes difficulty, that causes angst, that causes problems, that doesn't work out the way you want it to, that's quote-unquote on favor or bad. It is the opportunity to refine and define your character. You only grow your character through difficult times. So when you say thank you instead of complaining, when you complain, you remain in the problem. You see stuck in the problem. When you praise be raised and praise is just saying thank you. When you say thank you, I don't know why this is happening, and I know it's for my good, you will get the lesson. It may not be right now, and you will always get the lesson, and you will be blessed for it. - That fantastic point. I want to make a quick point about social media, and then I have one last question for you before we wrap up. I want listeners to recognize this. As you're scrolling through social media, you'll see one person where they just landed in Greece. You see someone else where they just secured this amazing contract. You'll see someone else where they just decided to launch their five star podcast. And it feels like all of these people are doing all of these amazing things and little you aren't doing anything. Recognize that you're multiplying all of this. If you scroll through and you see 10, 15, 20 people doing amazing things, you feel like you should be doing just as much. You, your oneself should be doing all of these 15, 20 things you just scroll through and saw on your timeline over the course of the last few seconds. You're setting yourself up to feel like you're not confident, you're not doing things, you're not making it happen. But recognize those were like 15, 20 individual people. But you're lumping it all together cumulatively, thinking you should subconsciously be doing all of that because if you're not, then you're not accomplishing anything. And that's just not true. Stop comparing yourself. Don't let that be the first thing you do in the morning times, express that gratitude. Okay, I just had to throw that out there because we will get overwhelmed and consumed with looking all at all these different people's accounts. And then subconsciously thinking that that should be us. Last question for you. Complete this sentence for me. Being confident means. - Loving yourself. (laughing) I love it. - That's all, confidence to me is that's what it is. It's loving yourself. I mean, it's loving yourself enough to know that you're enough. - There we have it. - There we have it. - Yeah, so if I was to say, it's loving yourself to know you're enough. When you're confident, you will make the call. You will go to the place. You'll follow up. You'll follow through. You'll ask the question. You'll have the conversation. - Yeah. - It's loving yourself to know you're enough. Right now in this moment, the only time that exists for any human being is right now. If you're listening to this, the only time that exists is now. Who are you right now? You're always right now in this moment enough. We're just not raised to believe that. So this is something that for most of the population must be acquired. - You're awesome. You're awesome. Listen, thank you so much, Michelle Renee Baker. It has been an absolute pleasure to talk with you as always and to the listeners. Thank you for tuning in to Condo's On Confidence. Until next time, I am Bridget McGowan. Thank you. (upbeat music) - Thank you for listening to today's episode of Condo's On Confidence. For more strategies on how to be more confident in everything you say and do, pick up a copy of the award-winning book, Show Up and Show Out. 52 communication habits to make you even more unforgettable by yours truly, Bridget McGowan. It's available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever you love to purchase your books. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
