It's Time to Make Yourself a Priority and Make Some Noise with Andrea Owen: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Finding Founders. Today, we're pulling a timeless EO Fire episode from the archives, so the giveaway may not be active. And we'll be breaking down why it's time to make yourself a priority and make some noise. To drop these value bombs, I brought Andrea Owen into EO Fire Studios. Andrea is a global speaker, certified Daring Way facilitator, host of Make Some Noise podcast, and the best-selling author of three books, including Make Some Noise.

0:39And today, Fire Nation, we'll be dropping some value bombs on thinking of someone who you admire. Ask yourself what the person you admire would do in that situation where you're hesitating and run with it. Also, get curious with what your conditioning is versus what your truth is, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Andrea and our sponsors. The Product Boss, hosted by Jacqueline and Mina, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. The Product Boss helps you take your physical product sales and strategy to the next level to create your dream life with episodes like, Can I Have a Successful Product Business as a Side Hustle?

1:17Listen to The Product Boss wherever you get your podcasts. I remember that state of constant overwhelm with my ever-growing to-do list too. My solution, hire a VA and start delegating. Learn how to optimize your time with Belay CEO's latest book, Rise Up and Lead Well, where she shares the exact framework she has used with her own assistant to maximize productivity. Text FIRE, that's F-I-R-E, to 55123 to get your free copy. Andrea, say what's up to FIRE Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Hello, John. I hope I don't get a lot of hate for this.

1:57And I made a TikTok about it and I got mixed results. I don't believe that you have to have an elaborate morning routine to be successful. It works for some people, but I get up in the morning, I get on my phone. Sometimes I scroll through social media. Sometimes I even check my email. I drink my coffee and then that's mostly it. What I like to say is what works for you works for you. And for you, whenever like people like to tell me advice and stuff like this, like let me get a little controversial while you know while you're getting a little controversial is like when a a obviously overweight person tells me how i should be working out i don't like you know question them at all i just eventually look back after they're done and i say well how's that working out for you like how's that working out for you and that's just a question because like that's working out for them not very well but how's your morning routine working out for you obviously is working out pretty well which we're gonna be getting into because it's allowing you Andrea, to make some noise.

2:57Now, we all have goals. Your goal is to empower women and give them unshakable confidence. How did you accomplish this in your book, Make Some Noise? Well, to be more specific, I always like to say I like to help women empower themselves. And some might say that that's just semantics, but I do think that there's a difference because I don't want people to have to rely on me forever, whether they read my books or they become a private client. I want them to be able to gather the tools to be able to go out on their own and, you know, sort of leave the nest of personal development here and there.

3:31But the main theme of my latest work is around looking at the conditioning that not just women were given, but men too. I mean, culturally, it's not easy for anyone with the stereotypes and the kind of traditional gender roles that we've all still adopted in 2021. And what I want people to walk away with is just to really get curious about what is your conditioning versus what is your truth, because very often they are two different things. What is your conditioning? What is your truth? Let's talk about a specific example about people spending their lives playing small. So many people, they're on like the last days of their life.

4:15And there's a great book about this. I mentioned a few times on this show, which is the five biggest regrets of the dying. and one of those regrets is that they played small. They played by other people's rules. They didn't just grasp the opportunity that life gives all of us when they had the chance. And now, frankly, it's too late, which is why that's a really sad book, but I hope it slaps some people into reality. So you do believe that a lot of people do spend their lives playing small. And so how do we get out of this rut and make some noise? I wanna say too, for the record, I am not excluded from that list.

4:47there are still times where I find myself playing small. And sometimes it's because of circumstances that are happening like a pandemic or like illness or something like that. So I don't, I don't want to make people feel like they have to be 100 % on the gas pedal all the time. I just don't think that's sustainable for anyone. But the kind of main message around this is going back to that question that we were just talking about. You know, if you look at what is my conditioning versus what is my truth and unpack that. So for example, if, you know, what, what do you make up that will happen if you play bigger, if you ask for the sale, if you pitch 100 potential clients and for some people, you know, for the men listening, it might be their conditioning tells them that they have to make a certain amount of money to be valued, to be admired, to be successful.

5:37And for women, it might be that they have to make everyone else comfortable. Like don't, don't make too much noise. Don't ask for the sale. Don't pitch too much because it's going to look opportunistic. You know, people don't like really ambitious and powerful women. So that's what I'm asking people to look at because that really can sort of point to why you're playing small. Sometimes it's not about the strategy. Like you can have all the strategy in the world and of course that's important and we all want that. But if you're not doing this internal work to unpack and unlearn all this BS that all of us to some extent have received growing up, then it's going to continue to come around and bite you in the butt.

6:14Now, is there an example you use in your book or just one that comes to mind about this specific topic that we're talking about? So Fire Nation can really kind of start to put some areas and topics and generalizations into focus here. So I grew up on the tennis court. Since the age of three, I mostly played with my dad. Both my parents were avid tennis players. And if anyone has grown up playing a particular sport or maybe you were, you know, in the band or something, it becomes part of your identity, right? Like you get in community with these people and it becomes such a big part of my life.

6:47And I was about to start high school and it just kind of made sense that I would try out for the freshman tennis team. And my dad dropped me off and I was standing there looking through the chain link fence at these other girls warming up. and I had this overwhelming fear of what if I lose in front of my parents? You know, I had never been on like a competitive team before. I thought, what if I let down my entire team? What if I let down my doubles partner? And I decided to not try out. So I called my dad. I had to walk to the payphone because this was back in 1989 when we still had payphones and I told him to come pick me up.

7:21And not only did I not try out John, but I completely quit tennis. I totally quit because I was too afraid of failure. I didn't have the self-confidence to literally walk into the tennis court, step into my comfort zone or step out of my comfort zone, if you will, to make that leap. And it became one of the biggest regrets of my life. And, you know, my conditioning told me, and this is interesting too, because my parents were never ultra competitive. They never pushed me and said, you have to be the best. You have to be, you know, an Olympic athlete or anything like that. But it was just this sort of perfectionism that I took on that I had to be the best or I was going to let down people and disappoint them.

8:01And so that's what I ask people to look at is, you know, what are these actual fears that you have and where did they come from? Because if you can look at where did they come from, then you can better understand yourself and also have a healthy dose of self-compassion. And actually, I ended up coming back to my dad actually died in 2016 and my stepmom gave me his tennis rackets and I made it back out onto the tennis court and it was emotional and dramatic, but it just because it was, you know, the thing that me and my dad had, but it's also never too late to go after the things that you regret.

8:36Cause I know, isn't that part of one of those five regrets of the dying is, you know, like not, not going after the things that they wanted to do. A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's, it's not too late. I was 41 or 42 when I went back out on the tennis court and I was terrified and it ended up being a lot of fun. Well, this is kind of a little off topic, but I will say for anybody that loves tennis and it sounds like you enjoy it to some level, there's a new Netflix documentary and it's called Untold Stories. It's like a series of different ones, but the one that's specific to what you're talking about with tennis and kind of like getting back out on the court, it's called Breaking point and it's about marty fish which a lot of people that don't follow tennis that closely has never heard of but he actually was the number one men's u.s tennis player for a couple years and man it's fascinating especially with this whole conversation that we've been having in the olympics around simone biles and what she went through he went through something almost identical and it was much less accepted at that time not that it's even super accepted now but much, much less so like back in 20, I think it was like 10 or 12 when that happens.

9:44So really fascinating if you want to get a little bit of a deep dive about that. I'm writing it on a post-it. You're going to love it. You're going to really thank me. And then all the Untold series are amazing. There's one on Caitlyn Jenner, which is fantastic. And one that's called Malice of the Palace. But anyways, I want to get back to self-sabotage because it is so frequent, both in work and relationships. I mean, people self-sabotage when it comes to their job, they don't even realize it. And then they're like, what happened? And they do the same thing, relationships, start a great relationship.

10:13Then they're like, why did I do that to sabotage this relationship? Give some examples about how you deal with the self-sabotage topic in your book, Make Some Noise. Yeah, self-sabotage is a little bit complicated. And generally speaking, many times there's a secondary gain that we're getting from sabotaging ourselves. We're getting something out of it, even if it's not serving us. And even in the long run, if it makes us uncomfortable and if I'm going to go a level deeper, I highly encourage people to go to therapy, especially if you're self-sabotaging in your relationships. Because when we're talking about our romantic relationships and even to some extent our friendships, we tend to attract and tolerate what we're used to.

10:57and if I may just dive into relationships for just a second there's a great book called you may have even mentioned it on your show before getting the love you want by harv hendrix and he also wrote one and that's for people in relationships he also wrote one for people who are single called I think it's keeping the love you shoot I'm gonna get it wrong keeping the love you need or something like that and in in getting the love you want he his theory is that we all have what he calls an imago. It's sort of this persona that we unconsciously make up as we grow up that is the personification of our primary caregivers, the good and bad, the negative and the positive.

11:35So when we get older and we start entering romantic relationships, we meet someone and we sort of kind of like the Terminator. Remember when there was like a screen in his eyes and he would like go through this criteria like, is this my enemy? So we do that with potential partners. And the more they match up to our imago, the more attracted we are to them. That's why you hear people say, I can't believe I am in a relationship with someone who's exactly like my mother or exactly like my father. And what we're doing is we're trying to heal our childhood wounds through our partner. And we don't know this is happening.

12:13And it seems so illogical, but it's sort of in some ways a trauma response. So I highly recommend that book because even if you're in a relationship where you realize you're doing that, there is hope and we just can't put that responsibility on our partner. So that aside, this is why sometimes we self-sabotage in relationships and we find ourselves in the same scenarios over and over and at work. And so, you know, my short answer is, is go to therapy because sometimes it's, it's a much deeper issue and sometimes it's just habitual. Sometimes like if it's, if it's something like eating right, You know, we buy the vegetables and we plan on juicing.

12:50We buy the expensive juicer at Costco and the vegetables go bad. Sometimes we've just gotten into a habit of ordering Chipotle from DoorDash and we need to break the habit. There are great books out there about how to break just these regular habits that we have. And the last thing I want to say about it is to ask yourself, what are you really avoiding? Because sometimes we're avoiding success. I know that I have been in that place. As an entrepreneur who has a high risk tolerance, which I think most of us do, most people listening do have some extent of a high risk tolerance, there's still a part of me that is afraid of success.

13:28And I think for women especially, it can be a little bit more nuanced because of sustainability. A lot of times we are the primary caregiver of our children. And so that work-life balance can be incredibly daunting, as well as just the thought of, okay, I cracked six figures finally in my business. How am I going to top that next year? How am I going to top next quarter? It's always the growth and the scaling of a business can just feel like it's worlds away. And so we self-sabotage because we want to stay more so in a place that's comfortable. Fire Nation, all the magic happens outside of your comfort zone.

14:08Please remember that. So if you want magic in your life, get out of your comfort zone. We're going to talk vulnerability. We're going to talk money and more when we get back from thanking our sponsors. We all want the same things for our business. More leads, faster sales, and better insights so we can serve our customers at the highest level. One thing we all don't want, to waste time and money trying to figure these things out. So what's the solution? A CRM that's easy to set up and customize sounds too good to be true, right? But this CRM exists and it's called HubSpot. What sets HubSpot apart is that it's easy to use and integrate instead of wasting days or even months trying to figure everything out.

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15:16That's HubSpot.com. What's one thing we all wish we had more of? Time. I remember that state of constant overwhelm with my ever-growing to-do list too. So what did I do? I hired a VA and started to delegate. Lucky for you, our friends at Belay know the demands on business owners all too well, and they're here to help. Belay has highly vetted talent to help you with the numerous tasks you have on your plate. And because they've been helping business leaders like you for over a decade, they really know their stuff. Belay intentionally pairs clients with US-based fractional virtual assistants. I'm talking talent that can handle all of your administrative tasks so you have the time and energy to grow your business and to help you get started.

15:55Belay is offering Fire Nation their ebook, Rise Up and Lead Well for free. In this ebook, Belay's CEO provides the framework she's used with her own assistant to maximize productivity and strike the work-life balance we all deserve. Learn how to optimize your time with an assistant today. Just text FIRE, that's F-I-R-E to 55123 to get your free copy. Andrea, we're back and you are incredibly open and vulnerable with your audience. Share one of your favorite examples of you being vulnerable with your audience. And is this something that you would recommend other people do? Not for everyone. And I do think it's not for every business.

16:37I do think that millennials and Gen Z, they care about where they're putting their support. They care about where they're putting their money. So if that's your customer base, it might be something that you think about just about where you stand on certain social issues. But I don't think that every business owner needs to share their story. I honestly, John, like I did it on accident. So I started blogging back in 2007 and started telling my story because I was dying to tell someone. I was out of an abusive relationship. It was emotionally abusive and mentally awful. And my husband actually had an affair with our neighbor and got her pregnant because he didn't want to tell me he wanted a divorce.

17:19So he just went and did that instead. And then I ended up in a relationship with someone who I thought was Mr. Right. He lied about having cancer to cover up his opioid addiction. And then I was pregnant with his child and we broke up. So I had this like 18 months of just disaster zone relationships. And that's when I decided to change my life. And I started blogging about it in 07, 08, not really thinking anybody would read it. And I started getting a following on Twitter and thought, okay, I'm onto something. And this was before everybody was talking about vulnerability. And, and I, so I did not do it as a marketing strategy.

17:52It was truly organic. And what I realized is this is really part of my personality. And I don't encourage people to do it who feel like they need to be more private and they're, or they're just not ready. Then, then you don't have to. And also I, I think that it can be dangerous to sort of heal out loud. Like you have to do your own private work, whatever kind of support that you feel that you need to get. That's incredibly important because sometimes if we're always sort of using our platform to tell our story, we can bypass doing the real work inside. And that can be really unhelpful. I was going to use more choice words, but yeah, that can end up and disaster.

18:40Thank you all of the mothers and fathers driving with our kids right now. Love your choice of words. So we appreciate that. I know there might be little ears listening. You know, speaking of like things that people don't like talking about, you know, and just in general is money. So you believe, and I obviously agree as well, I've been publishing monthly income reports for 96 months in a row. So I believe for a long time as well, that we need to learn how to start talking about money because you see this silence about money as a huge problem. Expound upon that. Yes, I think that it's, you know, and I don't mean to genderize everything, but I think when it comes to certain topics, there is nuance and uniqueness.

19:23And for women, it's still an issue. I mean, Pew Research Center just did some research back in 2016, which wasn't all that long ago. and they asked Americans how they rated and how they felt about certain words as they relate to men versus women. And it was, it was a bunch of different words like compassion and, um, powerful, ambitious, and the words powerful that that word powerful, just for an example, men rated that word. Um, no, sorry. All of the people rated the word powerful, 92 % positive for men and 62 % negative for women. Wow. And I know, right? In 2016, like that was only five years ago.

20:08And money is power. I mean, they're completely connected. And I think that still today, and Fidelity did research when they asked women about how comfortable are you talking about investing? How comfortable are you just in taking the action of investing? And the results are dismal. Women are really great at running households, at being in leadership positions, but we are still lagging behind when it comes to having this conversation about money, when it comes to having this conversation about getting out of debt and investing. And that's what I want to start talking about. I love talking about money because I know that we as women need to do more of it and also learning about investing.

20:46When I was in my 20s, I thought that people who had financial advisors, they were all rich and I definitely wasn't. So I thought that was for other people, other rich people. And that's not the case. Like we need to, I get fired up about this. I'm like sweating over here. I just, and also like, we don't really have great role models. Like when I was younger, the only person in movies or TV that I knew of who was a self-made millionaire was Cruella DeVille. Like, honestly, I cannot think of another one who wasn't, you know, if she was rich, she was either the widow or a wife or a daughter of a rich man.

21:25And Cruella DeVille, are you kidding? Like not exactly the role model. Right. It'd be like if Scrooge McDuck was the only rich male. And so, and some people might say like, oh, it's just a Disney movie. Is it that big of a deal? And like, whether it is or whether it isn't, like, I believe that these types of things shape us and you can't be what you can't see. And for little girls, and it's, you know, I don't know what the exact stats are, but a few years ago, it was only 3 % of venture capital was going to women. And this is a real issue. And if we want to close the gap, we need to start with conversations.

21:59You can't fix something you can't talk about. So many things here, Fire Nation, that I really hope you're understanding when it comes to this topic. And I really hope that a few things we've talked about here today thus far is opening up some doors and some new avenues for you. And I want to end with a bang, which is how is not making noise costing us when it comes to our career? Oh my gosh, it's costing us money. Obviously it's costing us promotions, better projects, better networking opportunities. And my, my big fat opinion on this is that we need to both look under the surface at our conditioning and why we hold back so we can unlearn it as well as we, We also need to learn better communication skills when it comes to negotiating and setting boundaries, which is another conversation for another time.

22:47Andrea, I want one big takeaway from you. I want you to end this on a high note with one big takeaway that you want to make sure Fire Nation really gets from everything that we talked about here today. Let us know where you want us to go to pick up our copy of Make Some Noise and any call to action you have for us. And then we'll say goodbye. AndreaOwen.com slash noise. They can find all the bonuses. There's a 65-page free workbook that goes with the book because I ask over 250 questions of the reader in the book. And there's all kinds of great freebies in there. AndreaOwen.com slash noise. Fire Nation, you're the average.

23:26Of the five people you spend the most time with, you've been hanging out with A-O and J-L-D today, so keep up the heat. And head over to EOFire.com. Type Andrea, A-N-D-R-E-A. In the search bar, her show notes page will pop up with everything that we've been talking about here today. And Andrea, what is that one thing, that one key takeaway you want Fire Nation to walk away with? I would love for them to think of something, think of someone that they admire, whether it's a fictional character. For me, it's Cha-Cha de Gregorio from the movie Grease because she had so much confidence. And who is that person, whether they're fictional or real, and ask yourself when you hesitate, what would, you know, what would JLD do?

24:06What would Jack Gregorio do in this situation where you're hesitating and run with it? You know, to go off topic again real quick, it's still on topic, but have you seen the movie The Heights yet? No. It's Lin-Manuel's new movie, you know, the guy who did Hamilton. And there are multiple very, very strong and powerful women in that movie. Like very powerful. You are just going to have me glued to the TV for the rest of the week with all these great suggestions. Thank you. That's all I do. You know, come on now. Andrea thank you so much for sharing your truth your knowledge your value with fire nation today for that we salute you and we will catch you on the flip side Thanks for having me The product boss hosted by Jacqueline and mina is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals The product boss helps you take your physical product sales and strategy to the next level to create your dream life with episodes Like can I have a successful product business as a side hustle?

25:00Listen to The Product Boss wherever you get your podcasts. I remember that state of constant overwhelm with my ever-growing to-do list too. My solution, hire a VA and start delegating. Learn how to optimize your time with Belay CEO's latest book, Rise Up and Lead Well, where she shares the exact framework she has used with her own assistant to maximize productivity. Text FIRE, that's F-I-R-E, 255123 to get your free copy.

25:30Thank you.