2221 - An Inspiring Journey from Speech Anxiety to Communication Coach with Scott Ramey

0:05Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, influencers, influencers, and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt-in required where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments.

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1:05With us right now, it's Scott Ramey. Scott, you are the founder of the Scott Ramey Group. You're found on the web at thescottraamey.com. Scott, thank you for joining us. Thanks, Josh. I appreciate you having me. Excited to be here. Absolutely. Yeah, as we get, oh yeah, yeah, sure. As we get started with this, listen, before we get into your superpowers, which I'm very excited to talk about, because I think you have a message that is going to appeal to a lot of folks. And I'm hoping maybe you can share some great tips during our conversation on the topic of conversation communication. Before we get into that, Scott, what have you been doing for fun lately that's not work-related?

1:41Oh, my gosh. So Michelle and I, my wife, are empty nesters. And so we tried to find a TV series that intrigues us both, which is not the easiest of tasks. But the one that we're really into right now is Mobland. Have you seen this? You know, my COO just yesterday was talking about it. And what a all-star cast. Let me see here. She just, yeah, Pierce Brosnan, Helen Mirren, and Tom Hardy. Oh, come on. How could that be bad? It's amazing. And Guy Ritchie is the one who directed it. So it's brilliant. And we've been totally geeking out on it. And it's one of those that gets, the episodes get released once a week.

2:21So you can't binge watch it. and we've been loving it. Are they in there? So I'm just looking it up right now. Drama crime. Is this the, this looks like the first season? It is the first season. Okay. Okay. Great. And it is streaming on Paramount Plus. All right. So to my friends who are following along, got it all looked up for you. This looks fantastic. All right. So you are right now, it's 10 episodes and it looks like, okay. Hey, you are just, you are winding down here. I think the show seven just released, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, yeah. So you got three more episodes as of today. All right.

2:59Well, as of what we're recording tonight are the final three episodes of Andor for me. Oh, okay. I'll have to check that out. Thankfully, I've got a flight tomorrow. So I anticipate binging all three on the flight and catching up. Well, Scott, let's talk about the work that you do. because I think that what you do is so universal and so valuable. Do you mind maybe explaining your superpowers in your own words? Yeah, so I'm happy to. And again, thank you for having me, Josh. I'm really excited about this conversation. So I subscribe to Rory Vaden from Brand Builders Group. I hired them when I became an entrepreneur to help me kind of develop my message, if you will.

3:39They call it brand DNA, captivating content, et cetera. But what Rory says is you're most uniquely positioned to help the person that you want were. And so when I think back to my career, I spent three decades in corporate America, small town, Indiana kid, former division one athlete. One of the things that I really struggled with significantly early in my career was speech anxiety. You know, anytime I found the spotlight was on me, I would kind of shrink and crumble in a very horrible way, which ultimately ended up just with extreme sweat, frankly, is embarrassing sweat. As I started to get more confidence and get more clarity into whom I was, it became what my biggest weakness became one of my biggest strengths.

4:21So when I launched my business, I'm like, you know what, who could I serve and who could I serve quickly and more of a mission-driven, purpose-driven idea. So I started my business by focusing on communication. And communication for me is really anytime we're trying to convince someone of anyone or persuade or influence. So I found that unclear conversations weren't transitioning into meaningful conversations. And I saw it over and over again. So as I, you know, I ended up my, I ended my corporate career at the executive vice president level. I've run large teams, but I saw my, the earlier version of myself almost everywhere through my corporate career.

4:59So as I started to work past the anxiety and the panic, specifically the panic of still working through the anxiety part of my life, I started to see individuals like me, my earlier version of myself everywhere. So I'm helping individuals turn conversations into meaningful conversations, and I've created a way to do that, and it's been successful. So I find myself working with sales leaders, leaders, CEOs, managers, salespeople. I cover the whole gamut. Scott, for you personally, and maybe this is a pattern that you've seen with clients that you work with. Where do you typically see the biggest breakthroughs?

5:42And I'm talking specifically when there's almost like a moment of clarity that either came to you or with a client. Is there a particular exercise or realization that you think, like you see that that's a very common combination? Yeah, that there's always a breakthrough with everyone I work through. So whether it's in a one-on-one or group setting. What I would say the problem we uncover through the process is this idea of misalignment. We're trying to perform rather than be perfect and perform to please rather than being truly who we are at the core of who we are. And it happens every single time, Josh.

6:22Every single client I work with, there's a breakthrough moment. I see it. I feel it. It's when they're like, oh, wow, I don't need to say that because that's not what I mean. That's not who I am. That's not what I feel. And those moments then transition and free us up to be who we are and confidence starts to pour into us. It's remarkable to see happen in real time. Well, so how does one get there? So again, if I'm hearing you correctly, it's this realization that, and I'll tell you, like, I think I came to a similar, and I was thinking of my own experience of when I've had breakthroughs in my ability to, you know, just be comfortable in my own skin.

7:05Because I found that when I was able to get comfortable with myself and just trust myself that whatever comes out is going to be fine. I learned that somewhere through my year of taking improv classes and, you know, feeling like this pressure that I would put on myself in advance and my brain would be saying, okay, think of the right thing to say, think of the right thing to say. And then I would say it. And then my brain would spend so much time thinking about the right thing to say, I would do it. And then my brain would spend so much time rehashing what I just said. And like, oh, that wasn't the perfect thing that that was taking up so much bandwidth that for whatever reason, I felt like when I was able to let go of those two energies of something coming out of my mouth and I just relaxed, you know, I'm not going to say I'm, you know, incredibly clever, but at least it felt so much more freeing.

8:09And I felt because I felt so much more comfortable in that moment, I would say that, you know, it felt like my skills increased considerably around that period. And compared to anything else I tried, that one moment, I think, was the biggest kind of where I experienced kind of a short form upgrade in that moment. I think that's beautiful. And I think that's exactly what I'm trying to accomplish with the people I work with and the teams I work with. Let me put it in perspective for you. I'm very proud of the success I had as a corporate leader. Very, very proud. But it really wasn't until, so I'm 53.

8:44It was not until two, it was just over two years ago where I had a conversation with my daughter who happened to be experiencing a very difficult time at college. She was a Division I soccer player. She was struggling. She had just left a sports psychologist. A sports psychologist was recommending some either antidepressants or anti-anxiety meds. and no one up to that point in my entire family other than my wife knew that I had been living with anxiety most of my life almost my entire life and so before I called our oldest daughter Aubrey and she's perfectly comfortable with me sharing this story we've talked about it um I thought what was she need what does she need to hear in this moment where she's up against it and she's really trying to figure out who she is and what her identity is and what she stands for what does she believe in all these challenges that she was facing because it just wasn't about the sports psychologist, it was about her happiness and her identity.

9:33She was in a really not an ideal situation. I called her, and I shared with her for the first time ever, Josh, ever, I shared with anyone that I had been living with anxiety. Even that, at 51-ish years old, it freed me up to really understand who I really was. When I think about this, we all want to perform and we all look to perform. We all want to do a great job, but it's really that performance, the pressure to perform that caves us in from time to time. That maybe we push a little harder into that sales call, or we maybe not say really what's on our mind if we're the CEO and a leader, but maybe we feel like we want to say what their team needs to hear or wants to hear, not necessarily what they need to hear, I should say.

10:20But all of that pressure just builds and builds and builds. So when I created my framework, like, where do we start? And we start with, we got to name the pressure, name the mask that we're wearing. I wore a mask of confidence and, and polish and precision for my entire career. It didn't hurt me. And from a perform, from a, from a, just a title perspective and compensation standpoint, but what it did was it really limited what I could bring to the table. And when I started my venture to help others, I realized is that I want to provide people with freedom and peace and clarity and conviction to be themselves.

10:58So whether you're selling or presenting or just communicating to influence, whatever it might be, you really need to name what that mask is that you're wearing and why you're wearing that mask. And why is it preventing you from the success that you want to? We talked, you know, when you at the open, you said, what are you geeking out on? That's not business related. I shared with you mob land what i'm really geeking out in is 10x is is easier than 2x sure and that that concept in and of itself is just absolutely blowing my mind and i don't know why it took me so long to come around i'm sure a lot of your listeners are already been there yeah that's inhesively it's like you it's not we need to pull ourselves to the future that we want and it's showing up real not showing up with a mask yeah you could completely completely uh scott let's give our friend that's listening right now, let's give them something that they can do, practical, something that they could work on, an exercise that you think might be helpful for a vast majority of leaders who are oftentimes, you know, they find themselves in the spotlight and they don't want to choke.

12:00They don't, you know, maybe they want to just kind of get free from some of the anxiety on the front and back side of that. What are some, maybe an exercise or something that you would recommend that they could do today that could help start, they could start making progress toward eliminating some of that fear? Yeah. So I think there's two ways I'll tackle this if it's okay, Josh. The first is who am I? Yeah. Who am I? And then what do I say? That's what it always comes down to is like, who am I? What do I want to project? And what am I going to say? So let's think about who I am. I would say, draw three columns on a sheet of paper, draw two lines and create three columns on a sheet of paper.

12:37The first question in the first column is what what I project. What is it that I project in the first column? The second column is what is it that I'm protecting? What do I protect or what it protects, excuse me, and then what it costs me in the third column. And I think if you start to answer that question, you start to get really clear about who am I and what am I trying to do and what am I masking? Because that's really the nature of how do I want to show up is like, I need to determine who I'm going to be. The mask that protects us, the thing that we think protects us is actually the one this connects us.

13:10And what I've seen time and time again, working with leaders who are raising money, for example, if they're early founder, early stage founders, what I've always found is that it's not technical expertise that's preventing them from getting the quote unquote pitch right. It's who they really are and what they want to project that's hurting them. And so oftentimes they're not bringing their full self to the table. They're bringing a version of themselves that doesn't align with who they really are and what they're trying to accomplish. And so the irony of that, if you're trying to raise money as an example, is that you're trying to convince someone to trust you, but you haven't figured out how to trust yourself.

13:49And so that first exercise, what you present to survive, what you're trying to preserve, and what it's actually doing to you is really an important step, I think, to figure out. then you can put together what you need to say, which is how do I create a communication roadmap that's clear, it's concise, it's compelling, and that people want to actually buy from me or do business with me. Yeah. You know, Scott, one thing that immediately comes to mind too, like if I were asked that question, I think getting a great understanding of the spotlight effect, I think really also eliminates a lot of pressure.

14:27In reality, people just don't care much about you. They really don't. Like, it's whatever you think people are thinking about when, you know, when they think of you. They're not. Everyone is way too worried about themselves and what their anxieties are to think much of you. And that sounds cold and callous until you realize just how liberating that is. Any thoughts on that? No, I would agree. I mean, I think the other thing is too, is what we are so, to your point, we are so centered and focused on ourselves that we create pressure on ourselves. But if we actually realize it's nothing, has nothing to do with us at all, that when it's no longer about us, the pressure is no longer on us.

15:09and we put the energy towards those individuals or people that we're sitting across from in that moment, and that I'm here to provide value, not to convince you or to sell you or to somehow trick you. I think that's the thing I've seen over and over again, is that when we're not showing up with alignment of who we are, then we feel like we need to convince people. If we just show up, Josh, if I'm trying to sell you something, here are the facts. This is the problem I solved. This is how, like, take it or leave it. Yeah. Really. That's, I mean, I want to provide you value, but I don't, I don't need to, I don't want to convince you because I think you're going to regret it.

15:46Yeah, completely. I'll just say from my perspective. So I work as a fractional CRO. So a lot of times I'm working with founder led sales, you know, CEOs that are doing sales. I can tell you this. It's like those who evolve or graduate to that energy that day, when they graduate to that energy is the day that sales become so much easier. When you realize it is not your job to convince anyone, that's up to them. Your job is just to be helpful and be of service, be a good person, shine brightly. And those who resonate with you, great. Those who don't, okay. There are an infinite number of buyers out there in the world.

16:29So really, again, that perspective along with it, I just think is just so freeing. Thank you for sharing that. Scott, we just have a few minutes. If I could just, if I could just fill that point for just a second, if you don't mind, that's the law of vibration. And it's, it's the difference between a scarcity mindset and abundance mindset. And this is something, again, it's just been like slapped me upside the head when I'm, as I go through 10 X, like that's all about an abundance mindset versus scarcity. And what I, and again, I raised hundreds of billions of dollars, my organizations and teams.

16:58And I personally over my career, hundreds of billions of dollars. And I always found that when people were pressing, they were losing. Always. And so you free people up by really getting clear about the message, make sure it's tight, it's clear, getting them clear about their expectations and who they are, and showing up as themselves. I know the word now is authentic, but showing up as themselves, unencumbered, not fearful, and in an abundance mindset. Bob Proctor, who I love, his meditations. He says, if you can, if you can create it in your head, you can create in your hand. I mean, that's the bottom line.

17:33It's like, we're, we're bringing so much to the table in the sales process and these conversations, even from a leadership standpoint that we're, we're not believable because we're performing. We're not connecting. Scott, in just a couple of minutes, we have left. I want to share, have you share how you work with folks. Your website is the scottraimey.com. What does, like, how do people engage you? What are your services? It's really two ways, workshop format with teams or one-on-one intensives for individuals. Wow. What happens when you're working with teams? Oh my goodness. Well, you have major cognitions across the board.

18:13So you, not only do you see individuals break through, but you start to see teams break through. And then when we start to communicate authentically and as ourselves, then we start to really understand what and who the other person is. And so that by extension, you're creating an entirely different dynamic within your team, because not only are you going through the struggle together to learn how to communicate more effectively, and you're in it together. But you're also understanding what other people's weaknesses are, which creates vulnerability, which creates oxytocin and all these beautiful things start to happen and the whole rhythm of the team changes.

18:43But more as importantly, is you have this idea of one voice, many echoes that we start to get consistent about how we communicate and the messaging becomes more consistent. So now we have a framework we all use. We're all singing from the same hymnal, so to speak. We do it in our own unique way with our own unique style, but now we have trust and collaboration at a different level because we've kind of been through it together. I mean, my workshops in a good way expose the vulnerabilities that we have and in a great way transforms people and they realize that they're capable of so much more. You think about all of the conflict that could be avoided if we were all, you know, able to learn just a little bit more about, you know, how to communicate better with other people, how to communicate more clearly the intent of our heart.

19:36I think most of us don't mean to cause more damage than we sometimes cause with our words or language or tone. And, you know, these these skills are like any other skill that you could learn playing an instrument or, you know, getting good at something, you know, being able to deescalate and yet still advocate for yourself and set, you know, firm and healthy boundaries, you know, while you're working toward resolution with with other people. I mean, these are just so crazy valuable. Scott, for someone who's listening to our conversation and they've now pulled up your website, what would you recommend their next step be?

20:16I would say book a free call to chat. If you're having challenges, if your team dynamic isn't where it needs to be, if you're overwhelmed, if you're feeling that you're not aligned personally and professionally, if you're stuck, book a free call. It's really that simple. My whole intent, Josh, is to provide value and to help leaders who find themselves in a situation where I found him, which was completely misaligned. And what I found is that there's a way to get happy. And the way to get happy is to go through my process and the steps. And then, you know, communication is a thread that is through the entire leadership process that I've developed.

20:53Yeah. Scott Ramey, your website is thescottraamey.com, of which you're the founder. Scott, it's been a great conversation. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Josh. Appreciate it.

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