Building Resilience at Any Age

0:28Hey, small business owners. AI today. You ready to shift from overwhelmed to confidence? Head on over to dtm.world slash own it. dtm.world slash own it.

0:51Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. This is John Jantz and my guest today is Lynn Smith. She is a nationally recognized television news anchor, keynote speaker, media consultant, and founder of Ryland Media. She's helped thousands of professionals find and use their voices on camera, in the boardroom, and beyond. And we're going to talk about her new book, Just Keep Going, which draws on her own journey through career pivots, setbacks, reinventions, to offer a blueprint for resilience, mindset and forward momentum in working life. So welcome to the show. John, thanks for having me.

1:27All right. So first I have to ask, what inspired you to use a small mouse to tell the story of resilience? Originally, actually, it was a child. And this book went through so many different iterations and rejections. And it's actually perfectly named Just Keep Going because throughout the process of writing it, I could have just said, you know what, this is really hard. I think I'm just going to quit. And maybe this isn't for me. And I just kept going. And so instead of saying this stinks and everyone hates it, I made tweaks to it. And one of it was turning the character into a mouse. And I chose a mouse because I feel that they have in story time this like underdog feel to it.

2:15You know, it's like the little one that you just want to kind of root for. And then along the way, Mouse encounters friends from a deer to a bear to an owl. And Lauren, who did the illustrations, just knocked it out of the park with beautiful ways of bringing this to a magical and whimsical life. And so I wanted these characters to be the most relatable for children. Right. They're the least intimidated by animals. and so messages tend to land easier when they come from animals and so I think it was a great transformation for us to make with the manuscript well I'm thinking mice in my youth there was you had Tom and Jerry and you had Mighty Mouse and you know exactly all the Disney characters history of course Mickey Mouse well how could we forget so a long history of being in children's or at least in cartoons.

3:08So you mentioned, of course, the book struggle that you had, Just Keep Going. But how'd you land on that as really the central message for, I'm sure that became as an afterthought, you know, in the struggle you had with the book, but you went into it with that central message. How and why'd you land on that? It came from the three words that were sent to me when I was in a really dark place in my life. It was in my early thirties. And I had a friend from college that just texted me those three words, just keep going. It wasn't, you're going to be okay. It wasn't, things are going to work out, which is our go-to when people are having a hard time and you're like, no, I'm not going to be okay.

3:44Things are not going to work out. But the three words of just keep going was exactly what I needed to hear. And so I did. And then I continued to have great times and not so great times, just like we all do in life. And that phrase got me through a lot. And so I wanted to bring that concept to young minds because it's certainly what I do when I'm working with executives. I show them how to overcome their fears so that they can just keep going. And I thought, well, why am I doing this with 47-year-olds or 57-year-olds or 67? Why am I not doing this with seven-year-olds so that we don't have to get into the boardroom and be so paralyzed by those fears that we have?

4:24Yeah. So, I mean, the lessons in this book, yes, you've written this for a young audience, but the lessons in this really do. I mean, a lot of my listeners are entrepreneurs and resilience is probably one of the core characteristics of a successful entrepreneur. Do you feel like you limit the message a little bit because somebody looks at that cover and says, oh, well, that's not for me. Well, I think that it's for, is there somebody that is an entrepreneur with no children that's going to buy the book? No, probably not, unless they read children's books for themselves. It's for the entrepreneur that has their little one that they want to be able to instill this message that they've so brilliantly embraced because you can't survive as an entrepreneur without it.

5:09And so I think myself as a recovering W-2, what I like to call myself, and now an entrepreneur that I hope my children will become because I think it's the greatest path in your career that you can have. and it does take a certain mindset. And there's a reason why in life, there are two types of people. There are ones that need to be sort of told what to do and those that can take on the risk and the responsibility of not only doing, but also telling their team how to execute their vision. So can we raise those many entrepreneurs? I think we can. So I've written seven books myself. I think my longest book topped out at slightly over 100 ,000 words.

5:56Was it hard writing a book that doesn't have that many words? Great question, because I'm in the process of writing a nonfiction. Spoiler alert, there will be a version of a Just Keep Going for Grownups. The challenge wasn't the amount of words. It was the way that you distill down a very complex topic like resilience, courage, bravery, and took years for me to accomplish. So everyone talks about their nonfiction books, which you being an author, you know this very well. It can take up to two years to write a book, the time that it takes to write a thousand words. But it took just as long to write 40 pages because there were so many different iterations and it helped me grow as a writer.

6:40I'm used to writing four minute television segments where I hook them and I give them twists and turns and then I button it up. And I can't write like that. So I grew as a writer through that process. And what we landed on, I'm confident, helps children understand in not a you be resilient kind of a way, but it takes them on the journey where they realize that they can just keep going through their fears and they can get to their destinations. I'm curious, you know, children's books of the illustrations quite often tell a great deal of the story. How was that having such an important collaborator, really?

7:15You know, not just to mention the beautiful art, but that it helped tell the story. Oh, and Lauren Gallagos, who is the illustrator, who I didn't choose because the publisher chooses it, and I could not be happier. Because to your point, what she did with the illustrations was she brought to light the emotion. So when Mouse is feeling overwhelmed, you see this cloud around him with jagged edges, and it slowly dissipates over time. And the whimsical idea of breathing in and out, and his ears up when he breathes in look like he's about to float away. And when they're down, it looks like they actually move.

7:50I mean, only an artist can do that. And what I did, you know, because I've been asked the question, was it hard to let go of your story and hand it over to somebody else to bring it to life? I, what I learned throughout my career is you find the best of the best and then you trust them because they're the expert. And maybe you've learned that you didn't find the best of the best and then you move on to the next thing and you lose a little bit of money. We know as entrepreneurs, how many vendors did we hire? and we've just, it's like, okay, there's another 10 grand out the window. This was, it truly was the best and best out there.

8:23And I just trusted her expertise. So there are a lot of very adult themes in this book. Reframing adversity, for example, a lot of, you know, a lot of adults really have trouble with that. How do you bring that something that's that complex and make it, you know, not, I hate the term, dumb it down because that's not what you're doing. No, it's drilling down to that audience. Understand, yeah. So how do you take something that is really hard for, you know, full adults, grown adults to understand and make it something that a seven-year-old, as you mentioned, understand? Throughout the book, Mouse starts in a forest and he's trying to get home and he encounters a animal along the way through each challenge he faces.

9:08So in some cases, it's sometimes Mouse has big feelings and that makes him scared. and a friend will come along and say, have you tried taking a deep breath in and taking a deep breath out? Oh, that helps. I'll just keep going. And he gets to his next scene, which is sometimes mouse is frustrated because someone won't share. Have you tried jumping up and down? Oh, that helps. And just keep going. And throughout each vignette, there are different physical techniques that are very simple that kids understand. And so when my kids read it, they're the best test market, right? And that's what I did before the manuscript ever was finalized.

9:47I was like, does my six-year-old like this? And they were reading it and then they'd get off the couch and they'd start jumping up and down. Or they know this because I put it in the book because this is what we do when I say, take a deep breath in and they're like, take a deep breath out. And so it is not you are overcoming adversity, which is what we would say to an adult. it is leading them to the water through these magical scenes. And then at the end, he gets to his house and he realizes that putting one foot in front of the other, taking deep breaths helped him to get to where he wants to be.

10:26And the ultimate, okay, we nailed it on the messaging was my now six-year-old, who's my youngest, my six-year-old at the time, who is now nine is my oldest. That was my test market when I was writing this. But my six-year-old now said to me at the start of school, he said, mom, can we bring your book into the class? And I said, well, why? And he's like, well, George just started at our school and he doesn't know anyone. And I think he's scared. And I was like, yeah, okay. They get it. They get it because that's the situation that they can relate to. And I said to him, you're being a deer, you know, because the deer is one of the friends in the book.

11:06And so it's like, can we teach them how to be the other animal that might help the mouse out there because I think there's a mouse in all of us. Hey, small business owners. Let me ask you a quick question. Is your marketing actually working for you or just working you over? If you're tired of chasing random tactics and want real clarity, it's time for a strategy first approach. At Ductite Marketing, we help you build a marketing system you own, one that fits your business and finally puts you in control. No more chaos, no more guesswork, just a roadmap you trust powered by smart strategy and let's face it, a little help from AI today.

11:44You ready to shift from overwhelmed to confidence? Head on over to dtm.world slash own it. dtm.world slash own it. Yeah. So speaking of that, while this is not purely autobiographical, I'm wondering how much you've had some reinventions in your career. I'm wondering how much of this you feel like is autobiographical. Yeah. And I don't even know that word reinvention because that almost makes it sound like there's a restart to it. I would say more of a development of where I went with my career. So I was a news anchor for 15 years, felt the news business was no longer how I could serve. and so I wanted to reverse engineer what helped me to feel like I'm talking to you when you're sitting in your living room and like, oh, I know her.

12:35I like her. I want to spend time with her. How do I teach that to executives that are struggling with the boardroom or the presentation that they're giving? And so when I made that transition, were there just keep going moments? Of course, I was starting from scratch as an entrepreneur. I mean, John, I didn't even know how to do an Excel worksheet. You know, I read glass for a living. I didn't know how to do any of these things. I didn't even know what the term scale meant. Like, what does it mean to scale was an actual Google search? And what I had to do along the way was just keep going. You'll fail.

13:11I have bad business partnerships, bad decisions, bad people that came through. All of it's happened. It's going to happen again. We know this to be the case. what do we do when it happens? We just keep going. Again, I find myself keep going back to adults on this because it's so relevant. But how much do you think self-awareness plays a role in being able to just keep going? Rather than like the world's against me, I'm a failure, I'm this, how much of it is, no, this was supposed to happen, for example? I think the reason that you keep going back to the adult piece is because we as adults, the things that we're struggling with are often rooted in childhood.

13:54So when I'm working with executives and I uncover for them the reality that what they're struggling with, which is their communication, is not actually their problem. Their problem is their fear. Am I going to say the wrong thing? Are people going to like this? Do I sound smart? That's what we fix first. And then I teach them the tactical. And whenever I'm digging through the fear piece, I always ask the question, where do you think that comes from? And inevitably, and we're talking hundreds of executives that we've tested this with, and these are Fortune 500 CEOs in many cases, always goes back to childhood.

14:32Well, you know, I was a latchkey kid and I had to sort of figure out things on my own or, you know, I had a very critical mother or whatever it was, it somewhere rooted back in childhood. And so much of this book, I wrote for the parent reading it to their child as much as I wrote for the child. So as you've mentioned, you're a parent and then obviously I'm sure there are going to be a lot of teachers that see your book. How do you think adults then can model that just keep going kind of mindset in their own lives for those who might be paying attention? Yeah, I do recall they hear every word you say and see everything you do, whether you know it.

15:12Oh, gosh, I could be so hard to myself for that reality because I'm learning how much that's true and how many times I have screwed up. And I am not a parenting expert, but I do host a parenting podcast. So I've talked to a lot of parenting experts and they helped me to change the way that I present to my children. And I say, well, they say, and I'm believing if I'm doing it 70 % of the time, then we're good. They'll forget the other 30. But what I have done is I've welcomed them into my failures. So I shared with them throughout the book process. You know what? Someone rejected the book again.

15:54Oh, I'm disappointed. But you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to do something that, you know, they said that maybe this could be worked on. So I'm going to go and do you want to help me? Like I brought them into the process so they could see me pushing through rejection and perceived failure. And then things like I've had my son when he was nervous about a game. What if I don't win? Right. Instead of, you know, get out there, you know, win. Right. That's what we teach our kids. Get first place. And then you are on the sidelines and these parents are going crazy. And what does that teach our kids?

16:28Like, oh, my gosh, wait, the stakes are really high. my mom and dad are on the sidelines. Like they're screaming at me to just do better. And instead it's like, you know, I was, cause this did happen to me when I was in middle school, I got cut from every single team. And instead of sulking, I went to camps during the summer and I tried practicing every single second that I could. And the next year I made the team. And so I share that with them of like, if you don't, what are you going to do about it? Are are you going to keep going and practice and get better? Because that's entrepreneurship, right?

17:02You get knocked down and you don't get pushed out. So have you, I'm sure in your consulting, you've developed some frameworks and some tools and there are some things that you mentioned in this book, breathing, asking for help, shaking it off. Do you envision some worksheets or things that could be used in the class or used by families? Yeah, we actually have an educator and a parent guide that we have on the website for the book. And we did that because we wanted this to be the starting point. We wanted this to spark greater conversations with your children. So in the guide, it's definition of brave.

17:41What is the definition of courage? What does it mean to fail? And then question prompts. Like, have you ever felt like you failed at something? What did that feel like? And what does it mean to be brave? and how can you be a friend to somebody that might be struggling? And then at the end of the guide, it's a worry journal. And this was from another parenting expert that shared with me the importance of writing kids' feelings down. And I started it with my boys. And now my son will say, Mom, can you go get my worry journal? So we put that at the end so that they have a place where they can write down the feelings, the big feelings that we address at the beginning of the book.

18:21Mouse sometimes has big feelings. And I use that word specifically because I have a big feeling kid. So I have a big feeling, big reaction kid. And sometimes we're big feeling adults, right? We react bigger than maybe we need to because of our emotion. And so, yes, in my frameworks, what we work through are beating the brain bully, which is our inner critic, and having the Goldilocks effect of preparation so that we walk into communications with the right messaging. All of those things are the big concepts. We just want to teach our kids, what does it mean to be brave? What does it mean to have courage?

19:00So you mentioned already that you're working on a book that uses the same, really to use in your consulting, right? The same message. But do you ever envision a series of books? Maybe it'll depend on how well this sells, right? Do you ever envision a series of books that, you know, you have a whole group of emotional lessons that you could probably tackle? Well, from your mouth to the skies. Yes, of course. That's the dream for every author that your message resonates and that it develops and it continues. And that's what I would love to be able to do with this book. I, you know, as you say, you've written, you said eight books, is that right?

19:38Seven. Yeah. And when you're an author and you just feel like your content evolves and you want to share your frameworks and your IP with as many people as possible, because that's how you make an impact, right? Especially as a business owner. So, all right, the hardest question, I saved the hardest question for the last. Maybe it's not the hardest question. Was there a time in your life, career or not career related, that you had to just keep going? Gosh, I could give you hundreds of examples, right? I'll give you a great story for TV news. So I was a producer at the Today Show and they approached me when I had appeared in one of the segments and they said, have you ever thought about doing on air?

20:20Well, the skills of being great on camera are not natural for most people. And that was true for me. So they sent me to Hartford, Connecticut to cut my teeth, get a reel. And then they sent me to Philadelphia for a little bootcamp and local. And so it was my first day on the job. I was supposed to be a consumer reporter because clearly I could write great pieces. I was at the Today Show, but they needed me to be on tape so that they could train me to be great on camera. And the first day on the job, I was sent to a breaking news stabbing at a school. And I had never reported breaking news. I was a disaster.

20:58I bumbled through it. I said the wrong name. I said the wrong weapon. This is why people say that you should cut your teeth in a small market. We could have a whole nother podcast in my disagreement with that statement. That being said, it was humiliating. It was on live television. It wasn't the last time something embarrassing on TV happened, but I continuously choose throughout my career and in my life to just keep going and not have those failures stop me from what I want to accomplish. And I hope that this book inspires your children to do the same. Well, again, Lynn, I appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast.

21:37Is there some place you'd invite people to find out more about you, your work, and obviously just keep going? John, it was great to be with you. my work with executives is lindsmith.com where you can learn all about what we do. And then the book is justkeepgoingbook.com. It is out on September 30th, but available for presale, whatever you love to buy your books. Awesome. Congratulations. And I appreciate you stopping by. Maybe we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.