Theresa: I throw them a cold water of reality at the very beginning and say, I love you as a human. I'm sure you're amazing, divine emanation. And this is a sales and marketing business. You are like an SKU on your forehead. If you do not understand what your value proposition is in the marketplace and that you can clearly articulate it anytime, anywhere to anyone, you will not be successful in this business.
Austin: I feel like every time I see you, it reminds me how non seriously I take my attire. Because you just are always stylish, and big hats and accessories, how to do style. I only speak the language of a black t-shirt. And so I just really respect that about a person. My mom is that way. She's somebody that really cares about making sure that her look is on point wherever she goes. And I know the effort that goes into that and the thinking required. She also just loves it. So it's joyful for her. It's not just work, but I know that it is not something that just happens, right?
Theresa: No, no, it's a process. Thank you.
Austin: So yeah. Why do you like fashion? What is it about style that gets you?
Theresa: Well, it's an expression of my personality. It is expression of the mood that I'm having that day. It is an expression of my brand, I think. And I also think it's just important when you're on the screen. You wanna be able to make an impression. You wanna be able to go like, hey, look at me. Here, I'm right here. Here I am. So, and frankly, in the world in which we live, I wanna be a blast of color. I wanna be able to be like, here we go.
Austin: You bring some sparkle to the world.
Theresa: I got some goodness. I got some good mojo. I won most enthusiastic in second grade and I'm gonna keep doing it. I'm gonna keep being that person.
Austin: Nice. Yeah, that really set the tone for your life, I bet. That's great.
Theresa: I had a license plate that I just gave to my niece, that I had, Got Mojo.
Austin: That's so funny. Got mojo. Okay.
Theresa: I had a license, yeah, Got Mojo. So this is, the fashion, it's an extension of that. I got mojo on my clothes too.
Austin: That's so good. Well, and I think that to do it in a virtual environment especially says something, 'cause you could do sweats and a t-shirt every day. And I'm talking to myself here. You could not take it seriously, but at that point, at minimum, you're just blending in with most people who also just don't care because it's virtual. But also, yeah, it says something about the way you look at life if you wake up and put yourself together every day. It's the same idea as wake up and make your bed first thing in the morning. It's like some type of daily discipline that's focused on taking care of yourself. It's just good for you, I think, just objectively. So, but it's easy to fall out of that and to not prioritize those little things, I think. So anyways, maybe that's the deeper thing I respect about your style. Yeah, also differentiation is good. So, and that's fun.
Theresa: Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thanks.
Austin: Sure. Sometimes when I book a guest for the show, there's this moment I have of how do I make sure that we take whatever abstract concept that a system is meant to help do or work for somebody in somebody's business? It's really difficult sometimes to try to thread that together with somebody. And you think in terms of models and systems. You're wired in the same way that I'm maybe wired, I think. So I just know that we're gonna be able to get into some fun stuff with you on the show. And we were talking before we started recording, you listeners, and I thought for certain that I had had Theresa on the show before. And so I was just expecting a round two for everybody. So this is a real treat to realize that this is Theresa's first time on the show. This should be her third time on the show. Okay. But for everybody that does not know you yet, can we just take five seconds, and or longer, and just have you bio yourself? Who are you? What do you do? What has given you the reputation that you have in this industry that we're in?
Theresa: Absolutely. So I am Theresa Rose. I am a certified speaking professional. I am a strategic advisor to thought leaders. I am an expert in creating cocktail napkin clarity for brands and businesses. I am the creator of something magical called the Boardroom Within that I'm excited to talk with you about. And I'm an all-around great gal. So.
Austin: Okay, nice. It's good. Thank you. I can attest. I second that. Yeah, that's great. And yeah, you've built so many cool models. The cocktail napkin one I feel like is one of my favorites ever, because we're always looking for a way to give somebody an aha moment, a wow moment, as quickly as possible in a conversation. 'Cause as soon as you've earned that, you've earned their attention and people will pay attention. So if you can get a wow moment early on in the conversation with somebody, then probably you've just made a friend. And your whole concept behind the cocktail napkin clarity is something that has a physicality to it and that can create that aha moment for somebody right away, which I just think is awesome. And so I wish, there's a lot of people just listening to this that can't see. Otherwise maybe we try to get fancy with it and have you draw one out real time. But can you help people understand what that means, what cocktail napkin clarity means, and how you do that with somebody on the fly?
Theresa: Yeah, absolutely. Well, when you think about a cocktail napkin, that it's the best technology in the world because it's always available. That you can find a scrap of paper or a cocktail napkin somewhere, right? No matter where you are. You can be on an airplane, you can be in a golf cart, you can be at a spa, you can be anywhere, a conference, anywhere you can find a cocktail napkin somewhere. And that's what makes it so genius. And that little piece of real estate is so potent because when you can doodle your brilliance on a cocktail napkin in a way that can crystallize your genius, or whatever it is that you are offering to the world, in a way that gives you that two seconds of an opportunity to share yourself with whoever it is that you're talking to, and be able to doodle that and share it in that conversation, that cocktail napkin clarity enables you to optimize that opportunity when it takes place.
Theresa: And I like to give the great example of Simon Sinek's TEDx that catapulted him to superstardom, of the why, how, what three concentric circles that he did on an Office Depot flip chart in a dungeon, TEDx Puget Sound, that looks like just a big piece of, it's a big flip chart that's, I would say, just an oversized cocktail napkin. That idea is when you can draw something, you can sell it. And he drew this brilliant idea and he sold it to many, many, many, many people. So I take this idea and say, how can we crystallize our brilliance down to a place where we can draw it on a cocktail napkin? Because when you can do that, you can have your marketing available to yourself anywhere, anytime, that you can market to anyone. And I have my handouts in all of my speaking as cocktail napkins. And I think that you can build empires off of a cocktail napkin. And that's what I've used for years as part of my brand.
Austin: The angle is just brilliant. And it really speaks to a skill that any entrepreneur has to have at multiple levels. But the 30-second elevator pitch. How do you communicate something verbally, quickly, that speaks to value and gets somebody interested enough to continue the conversation in that short of a time? That is a really tricky thing to do, period.
Austin: And then the contextual model piece, which is how do you capture what you do into a visual illustration of it? Probably that's simple enough for you to be able to build it out on the fly, right? If you have a visual, but it's 80 steps long, that's not helpful. So it's gotta be really simple. And so the ability, yeah, to have the cocktail napkin conversation, as it were, means that you've threaded together at least the verbal ability to clearly communicate what it is that you do, and have the visual illustration to be able to back it up and help people understand it and keep them engaged in the explanation of it. And so, anyways, yeah, it just feels like if you're physically present with somebody, giving somebody that experience of drawing it out in and of itself can be such a powerful thing. Forget how effective or valuable your actual offer is. Just that experience is a fun experience to participate in. So good.
Theresa: Right. And one other thing too, Austin, that I think is important about cocktail napkin clarity isn't just the fact that it can be drawn in a small space. The reason why I called it cocktail napkin clarity is the idea that it fundamentally implies that it is in a social environment. And marketing and sales are dance partners in success. It isn't just about marketing. It's about marketing and sales. So when people think about what is it gonna take for me to be successful in my career and my business, it isn't just about having proper positioning. It isn't just about having a fancy website. It isn't just about having great systems. It isn't just about having all the right words and all of the bells and whistles. You gotta have conversations. You need to be connecting with people. You need to be opening up your mouth and making relationships. And so cocktail napkin clarity, I said those words because I wanted to infer that you were in an environment where you were going to relate to other people and that you were going to be in connection with them and be able to have that sort of communion and convey that information to another person, i.e. having that conversation so that the deal could be made. Not just market, but market and sell.
Austin: Yeah. So good. And there's ways to do that in the virtual environment too. I think that you can have that experience with somebody in a Zoom call. I don't think it's, obviously not the same as being physically present with somebody, but Taylorr and I, anybody who has an iPad, right? You can connect your iPad to your laptop in real time and just draw on the notes app on your iPad if you have an Apple Pencil. And that's technology that almost everybody already has sitting on their desk, and plugging that into Zoom is like a two-second process. So anybody could start drawing things in a Zoom call pretty easily, or with a few hundred dollar investment for your business to buy an iPad and Apple Pencil. But yeah, and then live in a conversation, now you can be giving somebody a visual while you're talking to them, and similar effect, right?
Theresa: For sure. I use a reMarkable. I literally just had this at my last sales call. I had a ninety minute conversation with someone, and it was very clear very early on that she was completely confused about who she was and what she was doing, as are most people who are running their own businesses and are building it on their own ideas, because they are far too close to the information to see themselves clearly.
Theresa: So as we're having this conversation, I was sharing with her my framework. And science says that the human brain takes in information, 90% of it is taken in visually. That's what my second TEDx talk talks about, is that 90% of the information that we take in, we take in visually. So as I do this, I have it on my reMarkable and I doodle it. Look how ugly that is. That is fogly. Okay, that's not just ugly, that's fugly. But it doesn't matter because she gets the point. She understood what I was talking about when she saw this. And so I can do this in this kind of a way, but I could also, it's plugged into my, it's on the cloud, in the cloud, so I can, if I want to, show her that and share this with her, and then send this doodle to her as part of the follow-up of the system. And I can connect it to the record of the conversation and make sure, and which I do, by the way, when I have the...
Austin: Now we're in CRM land. Let's go.
Theresa: Yeah baby, yeah baby, because it does, it's like I want to be able to share with, I want to remember that I had this conversation with her, number one. And I want to be able to record the doodles that I make with these people, because sometimes when I have my one-on-ones virtually with people, and I doodle the frameworks that I do, I wanna be able to log them into the record. And it's very easy for me to do. I just upload it right up into the notes, part of their record. And it's really lovely to be able to just look right back and see the note right there visually.
Austin: So good. Yeah. Well then it's not only good for them to have the visual illustration of it because it helps their learning, but also it's gotta be simultaneously making it easier for you to remember them and the conversation that you had and what their deal is, because now you've got a visual for yourself. You're tapping into your own psychological circuit there as well as theirs, which is brilliant.
Theresa: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, it is. It's lovely. I totally dig it. It's like my favorite thing in the world to do.
Austin: Yeah, it's fun to see you do it live too. For anybody that's involved in the National Speakers Association that goes to their events, Theresa has a booth sometimes, and she'll sit down and do a cocktail napkin about you right there on the spot. And it's a blast. It's magical to watch. So for those of you that go to the shows, go talk to Theresa.
Austin: So we've talked about this microcosm at this point of how you've systemized at least this one part of the process, right? Because everybody, take a step back for a second here. You just described a system. There's a human being, at least one, you and the person that you're talking to. There's a tool that is being used, which is a cocktail napkin and a pen. And there's a process that's being followed, which is you are engaging in dialogue, giving yourself an in to draw this model out, drawing the model out and walking them through it as they go, and then giving them some type of out to talk to us about that thing, right? So it's like a mini sales conversation that's playing out right there. So you got a process. People, tech and process. Those three things coming together, you got yourself a system. So everybody listening to the episode, you're already walking away with a system. If you can figure out how to do what Theresa just said, or if you go work with Theresa so she can help you figure out what your model could look like, then yeah, you've got yourself a new thing that you can do anytime you're having an initial conversation, which is rad.
Austin: You don't stop with that microcosm though. You've taken the same premise, I think, in a lot of ways, of clarifying things, and looked at the operational side of the business as well as the marketing side of the business. Is that a fair way to phrase that?
Theresa: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Absolutely. I clarify their brand and clarify their business. Those are the two ways in which I support people.
Austin: Let's go. Okay. So walk us through your psychology around how you clarify the business. What does that mean? What is being clarified? Why are people already not clear with their business? Give me the lay of the land. If you're talking to a person for the very first time who has never considered making their business a more intentional, organized, machine-like thing than the chaotic space that they always have existed in, which is most of the people you and I work with, how are you helping them see the problem? I guess is maybe the question.
Theresa: Sure. So imagine somebody comes up to me and they are brand new, okay, and they just say, I'm starting this business from scratch. I don't know anything about anything. And I want to tell my story, or I wanna be a speaker, I wanna be successful. I say there's two parts you need to be clear on first. Clarifying your brand, clarifying your business. And then I get them really, really, I throw them a cold water of reality at the very beginning and say, I love you as a human. I'm sure you're amazing, divine emanation. And this is a sales and marketing business. You are like an SKU on your forehead. If you do not understand that you need to very clearly understand what your value proposition is in the marketplace, and that you can clearly articulate it anytime, anywhere to anyone, you will not be successful in this business. So that you need to embrace this understanding. So get there first, right? So getting through that is number one.
Theresa: So what my job is, is I'm like a cleropist. I'm like a clarifying business therapist. I'm gonna help them get there, right? So we're gonna clarify your brand first, and then we're gonna clarify the business that supports that brand, the whole business that supports that brand. So the brand part first is the cocktail napkin clarity. We're gonna get that framework for you, right? And I go through a process to do that, the crystallization process to do that. And there's various steps that I do to digest their content that already exists and distill it down to various themes, and then design a framework that represents that. So that exists. And there's tools that you use to do that, where there's shapes that are more effective than others. Alliteration is always helpful. I'm a big fan of having it have anywhere from three to nine words, and there's just tools of the trade that you want to be able to have, right? I'm not a big fan of acronyms. Nobody cares about the acronym but the person who's using them, right? We want to be able to have something that's helpful. Labels, not phrases, not a bunch of sentences, literally labels. Like what's ingredients in your soup, right? It's just ingredients. That's what you're building. It's like ingredients. So that's what your cocktail napkin is. That's what you get first. Crystallizing your brand. Get your cocktail napkin clarity.
Theresa: Once you get that, now we're going to crystallize or clarify your business. So now that's a different framework. And it took me months to create this framework, and that is what I call the Boardroom Within. So I have a business management background. Okay. I went to school for business management. I have a background working for a Fortune 100 company. I've been in business my whole life. I grew up with an entrepreneurial mother. I have just worked lots and lots and lots in various roles in business. And what I noticed being in this business is most of the people that I work with, most of our colleagues, they don't know business. They don't know business. And so I wanted to create a framework that would teach them about business in the most essential way. And I also wanted to create a framework that took into account the lessons learned that I have learned about the failures that I have experienced in my own business, that would help them so that they wouldn't experience the same failures that I have. Okay.
Theresa: So I created this Boardroom Within. And the idea is that each and every one of us, and by the way, this totally transcends the speaking business. This is what I speak on to organizations of all different, this is the decision-making framework that can be utilized for any type of organization. I'm just applying it to the speaking business right now. So this Boardroom Within is in our heads. And imagine there is an inner chairperson who is really running the business. Okay. And this inner chairperson has a little boardroom in our heads. And there's six leaders around this table. And these six leaders are trying to run your speaking business for the big leader, the inner chairperson, who's really the one that's wanting to be successful. That's the person that's walking up to you and going, hey, I wanted to start this business, is the inner chair. And so this inner chair says, I want this business to be run.
Theresa: So he or she or they are asking these six leaders inside to help me run this business. So there's a CEO who says, where are we going? Right? The CEO is the visionary. They're the ones that are going, I wanna speak about this, and I wanna do this, and I wanna go here, and I wanna do this. And they got lots of ideas. They're the idea person. They never run out of ideas. Then the next step is the, and I've named them too, by the way.
Austin: Okay. Do we get to know their names?
Theresa: Victor. Victor is the CEO. Victorious, like I'm gonna be the victor. I'm gonna get there, right? So Victor is the one who's the strategist. He, or she, they, we all have, this is in, no gender, right? So.
Austin: Just as a quick aside, this reminds me so much of the visual that that movie Inside Out gives us of the emotions inside of the head, right? I can just imagine these different parts of my brain as these personified Victor and whoever else, and then I'm arguing around the table and Anger's head going off. And anyways, yeah. So it makes me think about that.
Theresa: That's exactly what it's like. That's exactly what it's like, I think. That's probably telling you a bit about me. But it's like there's Victor, who's like, I want to go here, right? This is where I want to go. And imagine what a CEO is like, right? This is where we're gonna go.
Austin: Taylorr Payne, my business partner. He's that person. Let's go. We're going that way.
Theresa: Yes. Let's go here. We're going here. We're going here right now, right? Then the CFO, Rich, is the money person, the chief financial officer, is right next to Rich, or right next to Victor. And he is saying, does this make sense financially? Now, this is an important one. This is the one that says the numbers have to make sense. What you're saying, where we're going, is this viable? So is the vision that you're teeing up for us viable? Does it actually make sense? Does the two plus two plus two equals six? Does it actually make sense? And I'll tell you what, there's a lot of people in this industry, they don't look at that. They don't look at that. And I'm saying it right up there in the front of the line. Okay. I went many, many years in my whole life as somebody who has a traumatized CFO inside, because of my own background, that I did not, and continue to work on the fact that I have a strained relationship with my inner CFO. And so I am working with that to harmonize that, right? So CFO is the counterbalance, viability and vision.
Theresa: Once you get that figured out, then you bring in your inner CMO, Sharon, 'cause she loves sharing this and sharing that, right? And her goal is resonance, okay? And that is, does this truly connect? Does this truly connect to the marketplace? Right? And this is all about consistent clarity creates connection. Consistent clarity creates connection. This is where the cocktail napkin comes in. So the clarity is the cocktail napkin. And the consistency over and over and over again creates the connection to the people that you want to send it out to, right? Are you seeing what I'm laying down here? Okay, so you've got the CEO.
Austin: You're also just taking your own medicine.
Theresa: Exactly. The CEO says where we're going. The CFO says, does this make sense financially, viability? And the resonance, the CMO says, are we resonating with the marketplace? Great. We got it going on. We're doing it. Now we pop over to the other side of the boardroom table in our own heads. Okay. Now we're over to the CRO, the chief relationship officer slash chief revenue officer. That's Hunter. Okay. Hunter is all about commitment. He is asking, are we moving forward? He's all about that nothing moves forward without a conversation. You can have your messaging down pat, you can have your revenue model down pat, but if you are not opening your mouth and having conversations with people and sharing them with your strategic partners, with your clients, with your target audiences, with your opportunities, it doesn't matter. You got to have conversations. The money is in the conversation. So Hunter is about the sale. Okay. So that is his role.
Theresa: Then, this is where you're gonna love this. The next step is the CIO, chief information officer, inner chief information officer, Link. Link is all about asking, is there an easier way? Is there an easier way? Because if you have your inner CEO that came up with a clear direction, because direction comes first, and your inner CFO that has said the numbers have to make sense, and your inner CMO that has said consistent clarity creates connection, and your inner CRO that says nothing moves forward without a conversation, if all four of those inner C-suite leaders are all yes, yes, yes, yes, guess what's gonna happen? You are gonna have alignment. And what's gonna happen is, if you do not have your ducks in a row, it is gonna break down at the systems level. So your inner CIO is gonna go, the brakes are gonna go on, and Link is gonna show up strong and hard in your head, waking you up at two o'clock in the morning with nightmares and saying, I can't sleep because I am so freaked out because I'm actually getting what I want.
Theresa: Because if you're having the conversations, if Hunter is having the conversations, you're gonna be closing deals. You're gonna be closing deals. Okay. Because all of those things are in alignment. You will not be able to handle, you will not be able to handle the amount of opportunity that is opening up to you. So Link's responsibility then is simple. Systems reduce friction is his mantra. So he's all about ease. What can I do to make this easier? Okay. Then the last seat is the inner COO, which is Flow.
Austin: Nah, yeah. We love that.
Theresa: She's about efficiency. She, sorry, Link is about efficiency. Flow is about consistency. She wants it to be, can we keep this going? Can we keep this going? Because yeah, we can do it, but the whole key here, Austin, is we want to keep it going, not just do it once.
Austin: That's a business. Not a flash in the pan.
Theresa: Exactly. Exactly.
Austin: Yeah, repeatable.
Theresa: Repeatable, repeatable. It's not just about doing it once. It's about continuing to do it. And Flow, our inner COO, is about can we keep this going. She is about putting the processes in place, the people in place, the performance metrics in place. Do we have it in place so we can keep this puppy going? So it is aligning your inner C-suite, all of these six leaders together working in harmony, so that we can have that seventh inner chairperson finally get the vision that they truly want, to succeed.
Austin: Yeah, so good. I think most people just are not, and myself included, this, very generally. It's so easy to get caught up in either the grind of running the business, or the vision of what we're trying to create, or the anxiety of things not working out the way that we want them to. So easy to get down any of those rabbit holes, and because of that, not pay attention to the fairly logical, structured process that you've just described, taking business ideas through, right? Because what you've done is brilliant in that you've personified it. We've given the ability to put a face to a concept, which just plays beautifully into human psychology. So I love that.
Austin: But to take a step back for a second here, right? It's like you just need all of those angles to operate a business. There's a reason why there are genuinely humans that sit in those seats for a big company, because having that back and forth is just so important. And I'm like, I'd be blown away if this isn't something that you've at least advised people to do. But couldn't you take this concept, and you have to have the right context and information and the clarity, you can't just start with this, but if you have the proper foundation, couldn't you plug all of that into something like Chat and then literally talk to a board and have it feedback ideas? And have you ever worked in that way with your clients, to help them build an interactive thing that can help you process ideas through those different lenses?
Theresa: For sure. So what I do with my, how I work with people is, first of all, I've trained my own, right, AI to understand all of this stuff, right? So they know all of my avatars very, very well. And I do the prep work with my VIP days and my crystallizations so that we already have those plans in place for my clients. But then what I will do is say, we're going to sit in each of these seats. We are going to sit in each of these seats so that you understand them. And then how do we train your systems so that you can run your business in this way? How can you train your AIs to treat it like a board? Right, the last call that I was on, she had already named her own inner C-suite board with these ideas, and started to, it's really exciting for me to see this, where people are already starting to see these six perspectives and dialoguing with them and working with them. Now the key is though, here's the rub though that I see, Austin, is we still have a challenge, I believe, that AI doesn't fix. And that is that they are mechanistic sycophants.
Austin: Mechanistic sycophants. What a label. Okay, yeah, unpack that for us.
Theresa: AIs are paid to blow sunshine. Claude is paid. Claude's very smart. Chat's very smart. Gemini's very smart. They're smarter than me. But they're mechanistic sycophants. At the end of the day, they're going to agree with you. They're going to tell you what you want to hear. And you want a counterpart, someone trusted and knowledgeable to be a counterpart when you're growing something. Because if you don't, you can get lost in the spin of yes sir, yes ma'am. And then when you get lost in the spin of the yes sir, yes ma'am, you lose perspective. And that, I think, is the big danger of doing it by yourself and only doing it on the machines.
Austin: Makes sense. You need counter positions. You need somebody to argue with you.
Theresa: Your foil. You need a human foil that will poke and prod. And if I'm not getting into some difficult conversation at least once a week, I'm not doing my job. So I have to have some difficult conversation. Something, I will tick somebody off once a week, or I'm not having enough conversations. Really, seriously. If I'm only having shiny happy conversations, I'm not having enough conversations, because that is my role, is to have, there should be something that I'm tweaking somebody somehow. I'm not just being a disruptor. I'm not just saying stuff just to tick people off. But there should be something that I'm pushing against an edge of your own comfort, right? And making you think that you hadn't thought of before. And I've just seen it. I've seen it in my own AI, where it's said something that I'm like, wait, you're not seeing this in a way that is real. It's not real, it's not true, it's just not real what you're saying. So that's where the human will never be, or I don't want to say never, because never's a very long time. But right now, the human still needs to be here to see reality. Right.
Austin: Yeah, for sure. Chat, Claude, all of these things have a way of smoothing stuff out too. And just like with a person, a business doesn't want to be completely smoothed out. Having some rough edges is a good thing. And I've heard this recently out of bureau people. I've heard this from marketing and branding experts and all sorts of folks. But having something that's a little bit controversial about you can be a really powerful marketing thing. Because you want a group of people to deeply agree. And then you want some people that deeply disagree, so that conversation is being had. Because are we being risky enough with our topics, with the things that we take a stand against, that we push up against, right? If you just agree with everything and you're just the least adversarial that you possibly can be, there's just nothing that's that interesting about you.
Austin: So yeah, and I think this is one of the downsides that can happen with AI too, is it can just smooth out ideas. You want something to be a little bit controversial, to poke at something that's maybe not completely agreed upon. Because that's what makes somebody a thought leader. If you're not having those ideas that push what everybody already assumes, then you're not a thought leader. You're just talking. So yeah.
Theresa: Exactly. And it's not curious. It's not curious. That's the other thing that AI isn't. It's not curious. It's a great synthesizer, it's a great processor, but it's not curious. It'll ask that one question on the bottom to keep you going, because it doesn't want to lose you, but it's not really curious. Right. And that's what a human will do. And so I caution people against one hundred percent just going all in and just, like, I'm just gonna manage it through AI. No, try to keep the value of finding someone who can be your strategic counterpart, be in the mix of it, so you can keep your competitive edge.
Austin: Yeah, I think that's beautiful. Just, I think as a whole, something that I'm reminded of in this conversation that I just really appreciate about you is that you just look at this whole thing so intentionally. It's really easy, I think, for somebody to become an entrepreneur, especially if they're just starting out. I'm not really talking to the mature business owners that are listening right now, but when you're starting out, it's so easy to just feel like either you're obsessed with the outcome. The only thing that matters to you is that you're gonna make all the money, or you're gonna stand on a million stages, or whatever the thing that's driving you is. We become so focused on that that we just forget all of the nuance of running a business in pursuit of that one thing. And we just make stupid decisions sometimes. Again, I'm speaking for personal experience. I've done this. My fourth business that I've started, and most of them fail at that point.
Austin: We're like, you need nuance to operate. You can't just go off of vibes and referrals. There requires some intentionality to be in business. And there's a lot of it that's just not that fun. That inner CFO, right? Nobody wants to be honest and deal with the money stuff. It's just not where people's joy is. I want to be doing the thing, or making money, or enjoying the time that I've gained by making the money, or whatever it is, right? But the entrepreneurial vision for most people is not staring at an Excel spreadsheet trying to determine if you can get break-even on this idea that you have. But you have to, if you're gonna win in business. You don't get to ignore those pieces, you just have to learn how to deal with them.
Austin: So, anyways, I think, yeah, one of the main things I love about your whole message here is that, regardless of whether or not you want to deal with this, you have to deal with these things when you're in business. And ignoring them is just gonna create pain. And so what you've allowed people to do with the Boardroom Within concept here is to just identify those parts of themselves that need some attention if they're going to be successful as a business owner. There's just some intentionality there that's otherwise missing.
Theresa: Exactly. And what I've done to make sure that I give myself attention to this, because I am naturally, I feed off of being an inner CEO, CMO, and CRO. That's who I love to be, right? Naturally. I don't want to lose sight of the others. And I just this week felt the pain of not being my inner COO. I literally did. I almost lost a very big client yesterday because I whiffed it, because I was too busy being a Hunter and not enough being a Flow. Okay. It's just plain and simple. And I could feel it. I knew Flow was knocking on me at two o'clock, and she's like, you have not gotten your SOPs done. You have not gotten your SOPs done. You have not, and you should. And I knew it, but I just, I'll do it tomorrow. Fiddly D, I'll do it tomorrow, I'll do it tomorrow. Well, tomorrow came. Okay. Tomorrow came and I wasn't prepared, and a client was gonna go away and I had to recover. And it was painful, and I had to eat some crow, and I didn't like it at all. Okay.
Theresa: And it's like you feel the pain now or later if you do not balance this out, right? And that pain can come in the form of losing clients, that pain can come in the form of physical anxiety. It can come in lots of different ways if you do not align your inner C-suite.
Theresa: So what I do to try to keep in greater harmony for myself personally is two things. Number one, I have in my Asana project management tool a task every week, recurring, that says sit in each seat at least one hour a week. And it literally just reminds me to sit in each seat. And I have tasks to do that. So I will sit in the CEO seat and look at my strategic plan, quarterly plan, and go, how am I doing with my quarterly plan? Am I, look at my seven things that I said I was gonna do. And even just that, for a half hour or for an hour, if I'm looking at that, and I'll go, I could do that thing. And that one thing will move the needle forward, right? CFO, the one that I hate, right? Sit in that seat for one hour. I will look at that and I will cancel a subscription to something that I don't need. I will look at some expense. I will look at whatever, right? I will do the thing I don't like. I will go into QuickBooks and do the thing I don't like. And I will make more money when I do the thing. I will send the invoice. I will do the thing.
Theresa: And CIO, I'll give you a perfect example about SpeakerFlow. Okay. So sit in the CIO seat. Sit in the CIO seat. What am I gonna do? Well, I could just crank out a bunch of quick little emails to do blah blah blah blah blah to follow up on Influence leads. No, sit in the seat. Sit in the seat. Hunter just wants me to crank out the emails because he wants the deals done. I'm sitting in Link's seat right now. Okay, Link wants it done. Right, because Link wants it done easier long term, right? So when I'm sitting in Link's seat for the hour, I went into my SpeakerFlow. I went in, I wrote my template, my follow-up. I did the nice thing. I took the extra few minutes. I did the blah blah blah. I made it pretty. I did all the things that I needed to do. And voila, it got done in the right way. I did the right tags, right? I did the things that made it nice. I made sure that the right fields, where it was, the source, event, what event? NSA Influence 26. Did I do the right open activities, task, follow-up? Did the things. And it's those few little moments where I sat in that. So that's the first thing I do, is Asana every week, recurring task.
Theresa: Second thing I do, my Google Calendar. So my Google Calendar, I label my appointments by seat color. COO, client activity. CMO, when I go do a marketing thing like this, this would be a CMO task, right? So there's different things. Going to one of your, like a lunch and learn, when you're teaching us stuff, I'll put that under a...
Austin: SpeakerFlow sessions.
Theresa: SpeakerFlow sessions. I'll do it as a CIO, like I'm learning, right? So I'll look at my calendar then by color every week, every month, every quarter, do a scan and go, which one am I missing? Which one am I not feeding? So using systems to help me sit in those seats, and not just look at a pretty framework and go, yeah, this is a good idea, but actually manage myself to make sure that I'm sitting in these seats and living this and running my business like this.
Austin: Well, I really love that you just take your own medicine, Theresa. So everybody, please go check Theresa's stuff out. Theresa, you're a giver too. I'm sure you've got something that people can just go get for free and have it change their lives. Is there something you want to point people to?
Theresa: I do. I have a giveaway at my website, What's Missing in My Thinking. Go to theresarose.com, and if you're wondering how to spell my name, it also looks like "there's a rose" dot com.
Austin: Wow, cool. "There's a rose" dot com.
Theresa: Doesn't that blow your mind? "There's a rose" dot com.
Austin: All right, cool. Go there, folks. Thanks for coming on, Theresa. Bye.
Theresa: Thank you, Austin. Bye bye.
