248. How to Master your KPIs and Elevate your Leadership with Veronica Romney
Hey you wild women!
Today we’re joined by leadership expert and CEO of The Rainmaker Residency, Veronica Romney. Veronica leverages her 15+ years of experience in the world of marketing to help her clients elevate their leadership skills and their results. She also hosts The Rainmaker Podcast.
As a business owner, your job is to be a present spokesperson and tell people all about what you do. However, if you’re bogged down in your marketing, this can feel impossible. Veronica emphasizes finding your right match in marketing leadership so you can create the freedom you need to do what you do best.
In this episode, you will learn about:
What Veronica is known for and what it actually means.
What business owners should avoid doing when they’re trying to scale their business.
The radical differentiator you’ll find in Veronica’s programs.
The true responsibilities of CEOs and rainmakers (and why they avoid them).
Why you need a visionary KPI and what it means when it’s decreasing.
What gets in the way of meeting your visionary KPI and how to overcome it.
How to find the platform that fits you the most authentically.
What being in your zone of genius feels like.
Why nervous energy in the pursuit of more is totally normal.
The tangible moment Veronica knew she went from proving to performance.
Why you might feel like a fraud, even after you’ve gained authority and credibility.
The most common struggle entrepreneurs face in reaching for a revenue breakthrough.
What female entrepreneurs tend to be gifted at (but shouldn’t be).
The guilt Veronica felt as a working mom and how she deconstructed that story.
What it means to be a wild woman:
Doing the thing scared, regardless of how naked and afraid you feel.
Got a minute? I would love a review! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Click here, scroll to the bottom, tap, and give me FIVE stars. Then select "Write a Review." Make sure to highlight your favorite bits.
Subscribe to level up your business!
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Connect with Veronica:
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[00:00:00] Somehow we have normalized this in the world of entrepreneurship
for us to have an incredibly toxic and arguably damaging relationship with our
communities, our followers, our leads for our business. Gotta make sure that
we're falling in line with everybody else's expectations of us in order for us to
protect our business, protect our brand, grow our bottom line. That's not
freedom to me. Hey, it's Renee. Welcome to the Into the Wild Show, the podcast
for women who want to build incredible mental strength to level up their
business and lifestyle.
[00:00:40] I'm Renee Warren, the founder of We Wild Women, author, speaker,
award winning entrepreneur, and your host. Together, we will make you
unapologetic about shining your light, growing your business, and turning you
into a wildly confident and successful leader. This is for you, the visionary, the
go getter, the entrepreneur, and for those that need a real kick in the butt to get
going and to dream bigger. Each week, I bring in leading experts and
entrepreneurs to help you take leaps in the right direction because I know the
best advice comes from someone who has successfully done it before. So are
you ready to level up?
[00:01:17] Welcome to Into the Wild. Hey, you wild women. My next guest is a
multi 6 figure business owner, digital business strategist, compelling speaker,
and the gracious host of the upcoming monetize your mind conference
happening in Calgary at the end of May. In 20 22, desperate to help people
create more choice, freedom, and independence in their lives, Sarah created
MYM, Monetizer Mind, to help people understand how to create new streams
of income, what was supposed to simply be a tactical business course turned
into a life force of its own as it attracted the most genuine heart led men and
women from across the globe. Only last year, she threw down her proverbial
gauntlet into the world of entrepreneurship because she saw a growing level of
economic disempowerment across especially, the Canadian landscape.
[00:02:07] And she launched the MYM summit that was born in a place called
Kenna I can never say this, Kananaskis, Alberta. She believes with every cell in
her being that it is the entrepreneurs of today who create the economy of
tomorrow. Yet, what makes Sarah so different is that she is helping
entrepreneurs learn how to do business the new way. So at her NYM
conference, as well as in her program, they're done with the status quo. They're
done with the corporate vibes and the stifling schedules.
[00:02:37] The new way that she is talking about is all about letting your hair
down, letting yourself be, guided by your authentic truth, led by your heart and
obviously making money. She's probably from Northern Ontario just like me
and lives with her husband Rob and a bunch of chickens and some really cute
dogs in the foothills of the Rockies. In this episode, Sarah and I go deep about
what it means to be authentic, about following your truth and your passion, and
about why it's okay to fully commit to something even if you know you're
gonna fail. Please welcome the incredible Sarah Swain. Thanks for having me,
Renee.
[00:03:15] I'm happy to be here. Happy to be back. Happy to be back. Round 8.
Literally.
[00:03:20] We tried another platform. It didn't work. So funny enough, we're
talking about grit and failure. And if something doesn't work out, you gotta keep
pushing through. And here we are.
[00:03:29] That was a fitting conversation, actually, for exactly what we're
experiencing right now. It's like things are not going according to plan, and
that's okay. Like, are we being tested? This is the test. This is the prime example
of resilience and just plowing through failure was when we tried, I think, 4
different times to actually record on Riverside, and it just didn't work.
[00:03:51] My schedule was open for the next little bit, so here we are. And
we're gonna talk about resilience and grit and powering through because you're
an incredible woman and someone that I met, as we determined, 6 years ago. I
said, do that too. Just give me the thumbs up on Zoom. I know.
[00:04:06] Don't do the peace sign. It'll do balloons. Oh, and did you do this? If
you raise your arms up, it actually does fireworks. It happened to me once
before.
[00:04:13] It was so dramatic for what we're talking about. Added effect that our
conversations don't actually need. Right? Exactly. So on Zoom, if you, like,
throw your arms up, I got these huge fireworks.
[00:04:23] I'm like, that's not how excited I am, guys. So, anyway, we tried to
regrow this episode, and I like to say that we're back. And we're talking about a
bunch of things, but here's the thing. We've talked about what it actually takes to
keep going. So you're passionate about something that happened in the world
back in 20 20.
[00:04:45] And you took the stage, really the center stage, especially in the
entrepreneurial community, to be the voice of reason for some people. Not
everybody as we know this, but for a lot of people. And you faced a lot of
criticism, but there was something in you that you're just like, this is my
message. I need to put this out into the world. How did you do that?
[00:05:04] Gosh. I look back on that because that was not a decision that was
made lightly. There is very much a risk analysis involved, especially coming off
the coattails of what I refer to as the peak of cancel culture. And the terror that
business owners and personal brands felt and were feeling at the time, and
truthfully still feel to this day, on whether or not they're safe to be able to speak
their truth if it is challenging the popular narrative. And what was really
breaking my heart is A, I felt like I was alone.
[00:05:47] People who shared thoughts and ideologies with me specifically
during that time were being quite literally taken off the internet. Platforms were
being taken down. Instagram profiles being deleted, deplatformed, YouTube
taking people down. And so it was an incredibly isolating time. And I was just
hoping that I wasn't the only person who saw what I saw, felt what I felt,
believed what I believe.
[00:06:14] And the heartbreaking part of it was knowing how damaging this
was going to continue to be And I was prepared to lose it all because that is
exactly what the temperature of the world was at the time. It was in 20 21 where
I chose to use my voice, where there was a lot of evidence out there that
suggested to me in my risk analysis that if you dare open your mouth about this,
you're done. Your business is done. Your brand is toast. Your reputation is gone.
[00:06:48] And for me personally, because my value system was being attacked.
My core values, ones that course through my blood, these are values that I'm
willing to die for. These aren't values that I I picked out of a values finding
exercise because they sound good. Like I will bet my life on these values and
they were directly under attack. And those 2 values are freedom and integrity.
[00:07:14] And so I couldn't, in any level of integrity within myself, abandon
my own integrity and pretend like I was okay with everything going on. And so
it really didn't feel like a choice for me, even with a risk analysis stating that I
was probably not making a wise move by sharing my thoughts. And so I
remember the day vividly, it was in June of 20 21. I screenshotted my little tiny
Instagram account at the time. I had 13 33 followers, and I sent it to my ops
manager because I had had team discussions.
[00:07:47] I said, Letting you know that I'm choking on my words and I cannot
live with myself another day if I don't say something. And we may not have a
business here in the future. And I got my team's blessing to do what I needed to
do because I also couldn't lead the way that I needed to lead. I felt completely
discombobulated. I couldn't show up authentically.
[00:08:08] And so everything was being compromised anyway. So I'm like,
well, I'm kind of in a damned if I do, damned if I don't type of situation. And so
I chose to speak my truth and trust fiercely that regardless of what happened,
that I was gonna be okay, that I would figure this out, that I'd be able to come
back from however bad it got. And to my surprise, the opposite started to
happen. That's not to say that I did not receive backlash and that I didn't have
people in my own community, a lot of friends.
[00:08:35] I lost a lot of people in my life in that period of time. Most of them
went silently. They just stopped talking to me. They didn't really make
themselves known on their way out the door as a lot of people do in the
comments section. But it was very lonely there for a while until my message
started finding the others.
[00:08:53] And my publishing house in particular was the 1 that I was the most
afraid of. Because what I was seeing on people's feeds suggested that there was
0 percent tolerance for people like me. And so knowing that I would be
speaking out in contradiction to my own authors, that was a big pill for me to
swallow that I had created a place for people to feel safe in sharing their truth
and sharing their stories, but I didn't feel safe to do the same in the very
community that I had built. And so all of these light bulb moments going off for
me, showing where I had misalignment in my business, showing where I had
linked arms with the wrong people in many situations, whether that's friends or
professionally speaking. And this was actually ended up being my ticket to
freedom and alignment, which is not anything that came up in my risk analysis.
[00:09:49] Looking back on that now, I'm like, this is your ticket to freedom and
alignment is being yourself and your personal brand and allowing people to
misunderstand you and trusting yourself to keep speaking the way that you
wanna speak anyway. Covering the things that you wanna cover. Running your
brand how you see fit. Being okay with not having certain brands sponsor you,
being okay with influencer deals falling through the cracks, be okay with all of
that. That's your ticket to freedom and alignment in how you do business and
who you get to do it with.
[00:10:19] So on the other side of that day in 20 21, we're now several years
past that, it's clear to me that our fear of not being able to come back from
online attacks or from people giving us unsolicited feedback on something we
may have shared, which I know you have experienced a lot too. You talk about
that with parenting. Right? It's like, I didn't ask for your opinion on the
ingredients of that thing that my kid had on the calendar. Where is this even
coming from?
[00:10:50] It's just the reality of what we're up against online. So for me, having
the grit to be able to just say, You know what? There's going to be a lot of
people who don't align with me. There's going to be a lot of people out there
who definitely do not want someone like me as their business coach. There's
going to be a lot of people out there who would not invite me to speak on their
stage if their life depended on it.
[00:11:13] And that's okay because I'm free to be myself. And I trust that if
things don't go according to plans or if I do fall victim to an attack, which
absolutely still happens from time to time, I trust myself that I'll be able to come
back from it. And to me, that's everything. And look at you came back more
powerful than ever. Yeah.
[00:11:35] And it's not like in 20 16, you would have wrote this business plan
saying, then there's gonna be a world crisis, and I'm gonna be a voice of reason.
And after that, I'm gonna be better off than where I was before that. You never
predicted this. Yeah. And it's possible that if I had to know that that's what I was
gonna be up against, I probably wouldn't quit my job either.
[00:11:56] Probably would have just stayed there in that 9 to 5 cage and be like,
Yeah. I'm just not even gonna put myself through that. I'll just stay here if I
know that's coming. So, yeah, there's absolutely no way I could have predicted
that. No.
[00:12:07] Nobody. Or the fallout of what would have happened. Now you said
previously that you were willing to lose it all. How is that an important mindset,
especially when you see the success with entrepreneurs too that are going that
are successful in life and their businesses, socially, emotionally, health wise. Is
that just like a common through line amongst these people?
[00:12:31] I believe it is. Because I think when we become so attached to 1
thing, and we put so much value in that 1 thing, or worse, we intertwine our
identity into the thing that we do, It can be colossally detrimental for people to
lose that thing or have that thing not go according to plan. And so losing the
attachment of the 1 thing that you thought was going to work really well or
something happening and unfolding the exact way that you planned it. If you're
a January planner and you have your whole year mapped out from January to
December and all of a sudden worldly things happen and your entire target
market demographic flips on its head. Everybody's priorities change.
[00:13:16] Everybody's values change. Like, there's so many things that in our
volatile world can create such upheaval. That if we're attached to any 1 thing,
then it's very difficult for us to look at all of the other possibilities and see all of
the other solutions when we're so hell bent on 1. So for me, being willing to lose
it all, I think is a powerful asset as an entrepreneur because I think true
entrepreneurs recognize that opportunities are limitless. There's no end to what
we can do as entrepreneurs.
[00:13:49] There's no end to our creativity. There's no end to the solutions that
we can bring into the marketplace. And so knowing that brings me a lot of
peace. It's like, okay, if there's 1 thing that I have going right now, doesn't work
the way that I want it to, doesn't produce the results, or maybe it gets taken
away from me in some sort of attack campaign, that's okay because I'll figure
out something else. And entrepreneurs who have that mindset, you can't break
them.
[00:14:18] You can't break them. They'll never quit. They'll never walk away
from entrepreneurship. They don't have a plan B. They don't have a, Oh, well, if
this doesn't work out, then I'll go back into corporate.
[00:14:27] There isn't that option for me, in my opinion. So for me, that's a lot
of security that I possess because it all comes from within me. And as long as
I've got me, I'm gonna be okay. So we often weave in so tight our identity to
what we do. Mhmm.
[00:14:43] Like when I had my last PR agency, I became the successful PR
agency owner that worked with funded technology companies, and that's who I
am. Because I loved the accolades. I loved the attention of being the go to
source. Now all this identity work is important because you said it yourself.
Identity isn't about what you do.
[00:15:02] It is who you are. And this reminds me of the time that I went to this
killer mastermind a couple of months ago, and I sat in a room with brilliant
minds. People whose books I read and courses I took. And I sat there thinking,
how am I gonna give these people advice on their business? Because I haven't
achieved what they've achieved.
[00:15:21] And I always say to myself, the best advice comes from those who
have successfully done it before, which is mostly true. So I sat there thinking,
why do I get to be here? Why do I deserve to be in this spot when I know there's
so many other people that should be here? And then it was actually the group
that told me the answer to that question. It was, Renee, you're not here because
of what you do.
[00:15:42] You're here because of who you are. Bingo. I was like, but I'm just
They're like, no, Renee. You're nice. You're funny.
[00:15:49] You're charismatic. People wanna be around you. There's this natural
energy you have that makes people feel better about themselves. It's a gift. So
now I connect my identity to that.
[00:15:59] And then I created standards for myself by way of saying, every
room I leave from this day going forward has to be in a better position than it
was when I arrived. And even if that means going in to grab a coffee at
Starbucks and I have a little exchange of words with the barista or I help
somebody with a kid or whatever it is, To intentionally do that, it's a little bit
hard at first, but then it just becomes second nature. My identity is now who I
am, not what I do. So that means I can do anything. I can pivot to be making the
world's best water bottles.
[00:16:30] It doesn't matter. Yeah. Because people will trust that, hey, Renee is
the girl that can do it, so she can do anything. Sarah is the woman that can speak
up about anything and she can go and crush it. What advice because I'm sure
that you coach a lot of people, especially women on this.
[00:16:43] How can you teach them to separate their identity from what they do
to who they are? For me, everything comes down to freedom. And whether or
not you are actually free within within yourself. Freedom has become a
buzzword over the past few years, but largely in the context of government
overreach. And what a lot of people are failing to recognize is that yes, we can
squawk about government this, government that, we can argue over politics.
[00:17:12] I mean, it's an age old thing, right? But let's be really honest about
the freedom that we're actually allowing ourselves to have, our birthright
freedom. So we're not talking about Bill of Rights, Charter of Rights,
legislation, law, mandates. We're not talking about any of that. We're talking
about your God given rights, your God given freedom.
[00:17:35] And are you actually allowing yourself to have that? Yes or no? How
do we know that we're not? You'll feel it in your body. You will feel it in the
people that you surround yourself in.
[00:17:50] You'll feel it in your ability to converse with others fluidly, freely,
naturally, comfortably, excitedly. The reason why I'm so convicted in this is
because I have the contrast of that now. And I think that people need to
understand the contrast in order to recognize when they're not actually giving
themselves their own freedom. Because I think most people have just
normalized playing in this pretend world of entrepreneurship and brand
protection. And what that has actually done to the person behind the scenes
when they can't speak their truth, when they can't share their thoughts, when
they can't talk about what is really hard for them, or what they're having a hard
time wrapping their head around, or if they just have something as simple as
questions that they wanna ask.
[00:18:44] If a person is not free to be in conversation with a friend about those
things, is that a friendship? Is that a healthy relationship for you to be in? No.
It's not. Yet somehow we have normalized this in the world of entrepreneurship.
[00:18:59] For us to have an incredibly toxic and arguably damaging
relationship with our communities, our followers, our leads for our business.
Gotta make sure that we're falling in line with everybody else's expectations of
us in order for us to protect our business, protect our brand, grow our bottom
line. That's not freedom to me. And I've lived in that world where I have curated
an image of myself, and I've worked very hard to maintain that image of myself.
And it came at the expense of my well-being.
[00:19:33] It came at the expense of the quality of my life. It came at the
expense of how comfortable I felt with people I was working with and
conversations I could or could not have, which bleeds into every facet of your
life. I mean, who are we kidding if we think it doesn't? And so being on the
other side of that, giving myself the gift of just being a free human being, I don't
have to become it. I just have to let myself be it.
[00:19:57] Strip away all of the stuff that's blocking me from just being it. And
then letting myself experience what that actually feels like. Anything that
becomes remotely close to not being that is like a 5 alarm fire that immediately
goes off in my radar. It's like, no, not it. There's something that's compromising
my ability to be free in this environment or with this person, or if I have to
second guess whether or not I'm safe somewhere, I am out.
[00:20:27] And I want this so badly for all entrepreneurs because I think if we
all just let ourselves, this is all it's about. It's just giving yourself permission to
just be. It's not even about the buzz of authenticity. That has become so worked
too, in my opinion. And because I don't know if people have actually done the
work on themselves to even understand who they are when it comes to being
authentic.
[00:20:50] And so that could even be a whole other conversation, but the
contrast of building a business and a brand, not letting myself have my God
given freedom, building a business and brand where my God given freedom is
at the forefront of absolutely everything I do, every person I interact with, every
word that comes out of my mouth, every contract I sign, everything. Night and
day experiences. And so I think more people do have to experience, what does it
actually feel like for you to just be in order to recognize that they're probably
not letting themselves do that right now? Katie Robby (one 50 seven): How
much of this is your intuition as well? I would say all of it.
[00:21:27] I think a lot of misalignment in business comes from either we're so
out of touch with our own intuition. We don't know what it sounds like when it's
speaking. And that could be there's too much stuff in our life. There's too much
distraction. There's too many vices devices, things, drama, crazy world stuff.
[00:21:49] It's just so much noise in our lives that we can't even hear when our
intuition is trying to communicate to us. I think that's 1 part of the issue. The
second part of the issue is maybe we can hear it, but it's telling us to do
something that makes absolutely no logical sense. It goes against everything
that we know to be true, especially when it comes to business. It's like, that
doesn't really feel very logical.
[00:22:15] And especially when I start looking at numbers and spreadsheets, it's
like, if I pull that trigger over there, those numbers are probably not gonna be
black anymore. So maybe I shouldn't do that. And so I think for the other half of
the people who can hear their intuition, are they courageous enough? Are they
self trusting enough to act on that even when everything is presenting itself in
the logical framework of our world to not be a good idea. A good idea.
[00:22:44] I wish more people would. Good idea according to who? Right?
According to Exactly. Yeah.
[00:22:55] Are you ready to take your personal brand to the next level? Do you
dream of making a bigger impact and reaching a wider audience? What about
becoming the thought leader in your industry and the authority on your topic?
Imagine having our team of world class PR strategists and writers spending an
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[00:23:33] Women who are ready to conquer the PR game and take control of
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[00:24:05] The Authority Booster Intensive isn't just about the strategy. It's
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[00:24:31] We have you complete a detailed intake form, plop all of your info
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strategy over breakfast and p r ready by dinner. So what are you waiting for? It's
time to embrace your wild side and seize the spotlight that you deserve. Head
on over to we wild women dot com forward slash v I p day to book a call with
Renee Warren.
[00:24:58] That's me, then that's at we wild women dot com forward slash v I p
day. I think of, like, taking that massive leap or a quantum leap. Every time I did
that, it cost me something. Cost me either money, time, time with my family,
freedom, I get it. But sometimes, the minor inconvenience of what happens after
you take that quantum leap is the thing that causes that incredible expansion.
[00:25:26] So I look back on, like, historically, the months that I may have been
in the red with my agency were those 1 or 2 months that preceded the quantum
leaps. And then what happened after that, 10 x, 20 x growth. Most people are
just not willing to do it because of the minor disruption it'll have in their life or
in their business. Which then compromises their ability to see the evidence that
they're actually safe to trust themselves and trust their intuition, right? If they're
not giving themselves the opportunity to just see what happens when they do
listen to that little voice, then what do they have to go on?
[00:25:58] It ends up being the outside world that starts dictating their decision
making process. Because anybody who has had the guts and the gall to be able
to say, I'm going to do this even though it makes absolutely no sense or it's
going to cost me a lot of something. You can pinpoint every single 1 of those
moments in your journey to be like, that was the thing. That was the thing that
started turning things around. That was the moment where I made that decision
that didn't make any sense.
[00:26:26] There was a big risk involved then. I can pinpoint all of them in my
journey, and I wouldn't be here today if I hadn't made all of those seemingly
small decisions that were really just a matter of trusting that there was
something else my heart was wanting me to do, and then allowing myself to just
listen to my heart, act on it, and then trust fall. Just trust fall that things are
gonna fall into place. Listening to the voice. So the voice is that made me
believe in this even more to fuller depths with I had never been into a store in
Canada, I'm assuming, called London Drugs.
[00:27:14] Okay. I know they want London Drugs? I I don't know if they're in
over I think they're big in BC. Okay. So if you're a Canadian, it's like a
shopper's drug mart.
[00:27:22] And if you're American, it's like Walgreens, but it's like on steroids. I
had never been, and I was getting my Valentine's Day gift stuff like Max's
Valentine's Day stuff for his school. And he was adamant about getting these
chupa chup suckers that come with the cards. And he goes, I was told they're at
London Drugs. And I go, I'm sure we can find them somewhere else.
[00:27:41] He goes, no. I need you to go to London Drugs to get them. Okay. I
go to London Drugs. This was on, like, Saturday.
[00:27:49] Never been in there before. My mind was blown. This is a drugstore
that has not only a cosmetic department and a grocery aisle, but an electronics
department and furniture. And I was like, they can't make up their mind, but this
place is awesome. And I'm naturally drawn to the toy aisle because I just love
getting maybe looking at something for my kids.
[00:28:09] So anyway, I go to the end of the aisle and there's this big bin of
Fortnite characters. And I didn't see that they were on sale, but but I was like,
hey, maybe I should get some of these for the boys. I'm like, you know what?
They don't really play with this stuff anymore. I'll leave it.
[00:28:22] London Drugs never been before. Really thought hard about buying
these Fortnite toys for my kids and then left. The next day, we were scrambling
bringing Noah to 1 play date and then Max to his birthday party for his buddy.
And we're like, okay. He wanted to get a gift.
[00:28:38] We already had the card, but he needed to buy the gift card. So we
had 25 minutes between drop off and birthday party to go and get the thing. So
we get the gift card and a couple of candies. He's like, that doesn't feel like
enough. And I was like, why did we need more for the gift?
[00:28:50] He's like, I don't know. I feel like we should get Micah some Fortnite
figurines. And I'm like, really? This is very random that you said this because I
happen to know where these are on the way to the party. So we go into London
Drugs, now I'm a regular, and I see these 9 dollar toys on sale for 49 cents.
[00:29:11] So he bought as many as he could. And, like, 5 bucks later, he's
happy with his present for his friend. And I was like, calling my husband, hey,
Diane. So this is how God worked for me today. I believe that it was meant to
be.
[00:29:25] I was meant to be in that store to see that bin of toys because I
needed that information the next day. And we look at this in terms of our
business and our personal life. Like another story was I remember I was having
an issue with numbers in my business and trying to fully understand them. Dan
said, hey, you should go and reach out to so and so. It was a friend of ours, and
she's really good at numbers.
[00:29:45] She could help you with these. And I was like, she's a friend of ours.
My intuition I got was like and the voice was saying, don't do it, Renee. Don't
do it. To show somebody your finances in your business is very personal, at
least in my books.
[00:29:58] And I never did it. And it turns out that we had a falling out and
we're not friends anymore. And I could only imagine what she would have
thought of or even maybe done with that information. Intuition, the voice in
your head is mostly right. I can't tell you a time when it was wrong.
[00:30:14] Me neither. You took this chance. I'd love to know, like, did you have
those whispers? Did you have that, like, feeling literal feeling in your stomach
that there's something you had to do in your life or business that was just so,
like, this was the thing? Yeah.
[00:30:27] I'll use my MYM Summit as an example of that. Because, yes, my
business absolutely catalyzed as a result of this wild strategy of just letting
myself be myself on my feed. As a result, I ended up with this booming brand
called Monetize Your Mind. And the alignment was there. It still is.
[00:30:53] It's my favorite thing. I get to work with people that just feel like
home, and it's wonderful. And about a few months into me creating this, I
remember I was in Kananaskis with my husband at the Nordic spa. And I had
that little think come into my mind being like, you should probably do a retreat
here or something. I was like, Oh, that would be funny.
[00:31:17] So I put up some polls on my Instagram story being like, Would
there be any interest to this? So there was that little nudge. There's something
here. Then I had been back in the speaking game. After many years of not, I had
canceled my own event in 20 20.
[00:31:34] It had been a while for me that I'd been on stages and started getting
invited back to being on stages. And I was like, oh, man, this is what I missed.
Because after I canceled my event in 20 20, I vowed to never host another event
again. I'm like, screw this. This is too much work.
[00:31:48] They're so freaking expensive, especially when you have to do mass
scale refunds because everything's been canceled. I'm like, this is just not worth
it. And I never thought I'd do another event again. And then I got back in the
rooms and I'm like, Oh yeah, this is what I love about events. It's the experience,
it's the feeling, especially being on stage and being able to pour into everybody.
[00:32:10] It just lights me up. Then I got the little tank back again, being like,
you need to not do retreat. You need to do a big event. Okay. I don't really know
what to do with this.
[00:32:18] And then 1 day all of a sudden intuition was like, you need to do a
big event at Canonaskis. And those 2 things collided. I was like, oh, I wonder
what it cost that event you like that. Like immediately there was the, yeah, buts
that come right on the coattail of your intuition, which will happen a hundred
percent of the time. As the intention speaks quickly.
[00:32:38] And if you're not paying attention, you'll miss it. And then only hear
the excuses of your ego. You'll only hear the fears as to why you can't, if you
miss that little. Yeah. That is coming to you.
[00:32:50] The dog comes up to you and gives you a boop. Yeah. It's like, pay
attention. Yeah. The universal boops.
[00:32:55] I love that. I'm gonna use that. So I got these universal boops and
then all of a sudden the fears were just like, No, that doesn't make any sense.
That's a large scale event. If you're going to host it at a venue of that size and at
that cost, I don't know that you've got the size of community and the reach that
you need and the influence that you need to have in order to pull something off
of that size.
[00:33:15] And so I was working with my coach Andrea at the time, and I was
like, I need to share this thought process with you here because this is what my
heart wants to do, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for me at this stage of
my business to be doing something at this scale. She would always ask me what
she called the 20000000 dollars question, which is really a heart check saying,
okay, well, if I put 20000000 dollars into your bank account tomorrow, would
you still wanna do this event? And my immediate response was, yep. Everyone
would be arriving in a helicopter if I had 20000000 dollars We're not only gonna
host this event, we're gonna, like, 10 x this thing and make it so extreme
because I would have the cash flow to do something with that Meg. Bags for all
attendees.
[00:34:00] Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And then she's like, Well, there's your answer.
So if I had have said, No, if I had a lot more money in the bank, then I probably
wouldn't. Then there's a really good test for you to figure out.
[00:34:11] Like, are you following the logic? Are you following the revenue
potential? Are you following the business rules? Are you following your heart?
And I was like, Okay.
[00:34:21] That was the confirmation I needed. My intuition was like, Oh, thank
God. She's actually listening to us this time. So I pulled the trigger on it. And
that was the best decision I've ever made in my business, aside from me using
my voice in 20 21, was to let myself host that event when the numbers
absolutely suggested I was taking a freaking significant risk here.
[00:34:46] And it ended up being the most spectacular event that I have
attended. And that was the testimony of just about everybody in that room, that
this was the event of the decade that they had come to. And there's no way to
describe what it felt like to be in that room. There's no way to describe the
experience. It was a you had to be there to understand what all of those
attendees and the speakers were referring to because you can't put it into words.
[00:35:13] And that to me is the magic. That is God at work saying like, this is
the result of you actually trusting yourself, taking a leap, listening to your heart,
even when it doesn't make any sense to do so. And now that whole thing has
become a brand of its own. So the MYM summit is a whole thing in and of
itself as a result because it made such a crash into the entrepreneurial space that
it became known over that 1 weekend. I just can't help but think if entrepreneurs
trusted themselves on those big ideas, that thing that you're intuition, like if you
just do this and you trust yourself every step of the way, even when it gets scary,
even when you're like, Oh shit, what have I done?
[00:35:58] Because I had a lot of those moments like, Woah, boy, I think I bit
off more than I could chew with this 1. This is a big commitment. There were
nights where I'm like, I'm awake at 3 o'clock in the morning, just absolutely
losing my mind being like, what the hell am I even doing? And I chose to trust
myself through those moments. I'd break up in the morning and be like, right.
[00:36:17] What's the action I need to take today in order to produce the result
that I want? Check, check, check, keep moving forward. And that's the results. I
mean, think about what would happen to people's businesses if they just chose
to take a slightly bigger leap that their heart's asking them to do, even when it
makes absolutely no logical sense, or when a lot of people are gonna look at you
and be like, who the hell does she think she is to be doing something of this
scale? Just yesterday, she was like a 1300 follower count on Instagram, not
really putting much of a dent in anything, fast forward to a couple years later
and making a big splash in the scene.
[00:36:53] That's available for everybody. That's available for all of us. Yeah.
That's available for all of us. It is.
[00:37:01] And it's not like it's gonna happen overnight. It's not like it gets
easier. Your problems are the same, and maybe there's more problems and
there's more. More. Spends our problems.
[00:37:11] There's more. But Yeah. It's less of a resistance because you're
following your passion, the things you love to do that you're know that you're
here to do, your mission in life. This is amazing. So tell us a little bit about this
event that's happening in the end of May, beginning of June this year.
[00:37:26] The way that I describe it is it's not your average business
conference. It was funny because I basically got everybody in that room for the
first conference in 20 23 by sharing that. However, I think a lot of people, when
they hear the idea of a business conference, they're gonna come in and take a
bunch of notes on strategy and how to execute on strategy. And if I just walk
away with these 10 hot tips, then I'm going to be a millionaire in no time. And
what actually ends up transpiring in that room at these events is personal
expansion that people have yet to experience even in the world of personal
development events.
[00:38:04] So there's a sense of expansion, yes, but also the experience of a
frequency that most people have never been able to tap into before, which is
enough to help people peel back the curtains on what's available for them. And
so it's less about execution and more about really stepping into yourself and
finding a deeply rooted sense of safety in what you're here to do. From that
place, you can apply the strategies all you want. That's when you become
unstoppable. That's when you're trying to apply the strategies and you don't
have the sense of safety that things feel so much unnecessarily harder than they
need to be.
[00:38:42] So it's a business event. Yes. Because the market for it absolutely is
entrepreneurs, digital business owners, personal brands, product based business
owners. And it's also going to yield an unexpected results and experience when
you're in that space. The hot mix of speakers that I curate for these events plays
a significant role.
[00:39:07] And you are obviously 1 of those speakers. So is your husband, Dan.
And Dan is my business coach. And I also have another coach that I work with
who I would say is on the total other end of the spectrum when it comes to the
masculine and same stage when they have radically different approaches to life
and business and how they move through those things as individuals, and also
the coaching and support that they provide to their clients. It's like apples to
oranges.
[00:39:44] You can't even compare the 2, but they both have a space on that
stage. And that's the well roundedness that comes with an event like this.
Because recognizing that as entrepreneurs, you get several hundred
entrepreneurs in the same room. How many personalities do you have?
Different types of learning, different belief systems, different ideologies,
different levels of comfort within themselves, how much they know themselves,
the tenure that they have in their business.
[00:40:09] They could be brand new. They could be an aspiring entrepreneur.
They could be in the game for a few decades now, and everybody has a space in
that room. Because the speakers on that stage are representative of the life and
business experience of the people in that audience. And so it's a very unique
vibe for sure, but it's how people feel in that room.
[00:40:28] When you were talking earlier about really understanding that your
identity is who you are, The identity of the MYM Summit is in how people feel
when they're there. It's not about being this hyper curated business brand and
business event, and we're kind of boxed in or imprisoned by what that means or
what people's perceptions of it is. It's like if you feel this, then you're meant to
be in this room. And that's how that's positioned. Because again, giving myself
the freedom to be able to ebb and flow, however I need to be able to do so in
that event, So long as the core of it is in creating a memory for how people feel
when they're in that room, then we can really go in any direction that we want.
[00:41:10] So maybe 30 first of June second this year, we're doing Calgary this
year. Ananaskis was year 1. It's like, we're going to the mountains. If we're
going to do this, if I'm going to do an event again, if I'm going to get back into
the scene, I'm not going to dabble with smaller scale events and go through this
year after year of just kind of little bit at a time. It's like, we're going big or I'm
not entering this scene at all.
[00:41:34] Lauren Templeton (3eight 40 seven): Calgary's got a lot of direct
flights. Yes. So if you're listening in from anywhere in Canada and US, you can
make it. Dan and I will be there. I think we're bringing the boys too.
[00:41:43] We're making a trip with it. We have kids at the last event too.
Babies, children, families. Yeah. Where can they go to find this information
online?
[00:41:51] Monetize your money dot c a slash summit. There's a whole page
there with lineup of speakers. We got Brett Kissel as our evening entertainment
on Friday night, which will be super fun. We got a VIP day on the final day
poolside, all about integration work because that's another thing about events
where it's like, yes, we learn all this stuff and then we go home, we're like, oh
my God, what do I do with all this information? So we actually moved the VIP
day to the last day so that we can focus on how do we actually integrate what
we've learned, what we've absorbed, what stood out to you.
[00:42:22] Because what stands out to 1 person in the audience could have been
completely missed by the next person because it wasn't relevant in the context
of their life entrepreneurial journey. And so, like, it was equal ways of different.
Like, going to Tony Robbins, Date with Destiny twice. 1 in 20 15 and 1 in 20
22. Mhmm.
[00:42:39] And 2 different versions of Renee. Yeah. The same information
landed on her totally different. Yeah. And it helped me grow, become the
woman that I am today.
[00:42:49] I don't know what chapter this is. 42, I guess. You go by your age.
Chapter 42. I guess.
[00:42:53] Chapter 42. The same with books too. Right? I can pick up a book
that I haven't read in years. I'm like, woah.
[00:43:00] All of a sudden, there's something else, a whole different experience
that emerges from the pages that didn't land on me the first time I read it
because I wasn't in that experience or in that type of context that it would land
on that way. So. Ashley Kehr (3eight 40 seven): So I read The Alchemist a few
times. The first time I was like, what is the buzz about this book? Read it the
second time after going through drastic personal development.
[00:43:22] And I was like, God, at this time That was power of now for me by
Eckhart Tolle. The first time I read that book, I'm like, what is this witchcraft?
Like, it just went right over my head. Like, what do you mean we are not our
thoughts? Like, what?
[00:43:35] That was mine. Like, I wanna have that experience. What is it now? I
don't get it. And then I read it again.
[00:43:39] I was like, oh. Yeah. Oh, that was simple. Okay. So 1 last question
for you.
[00:43:44] When I ask you what it means to be a wild woman, what is that to
you? Gosh. It's interesting because I think the term wild, as our society would
understand it now, would be to be the outlier, the thing that's not the norm.
When in truth, wild is actually our natural state. And so to be wild to me is
allowing ourselves to be who we are without all of the societal constructs,
without the programming, without the pressure, without the pleasing.
[00:44:14] I I don't know how we could be a wild woman and be a people
pleaser at the same time. I don't know how we could be a wild woman and
follow the status quo. At the same time, those seem really contradictory to me. I
don't know how we could be a wild woman and be so caught up in managing
our image. So to Yeah.
[00:44:33] To me, it's coming back to what's underneath all those layers that
have, to no fault of our own, built up all over us, all over our soul, our heart, our
mind, our intuition, layer after layer, just because of our worlds, the way that
we're brought up, our parents, our education systems, our friends, our peer
groups, any figure of authority. It's all just another layer. And so having the
courage to slowly peel those things away and figure out who's actually
underneath all this, be willing to meet yourself there, even if you don't like what
you see at first. Cause it's probably pretty foreign to you, if you've never really
known yourself before. And then have the courage to just grow into that.
[00:45:11] Let yourself lead with that version of you. The real version of you.
That's beautiful. People wanna go online to find you, Sarah, where can they go?
Best place is my Instagram account.
[00:45:21] It's a hot mix over there. I am Sarah Swain on Instagram. So just
know that I am a wild woman on my Instagram feed. Wild woman. Been
warned.
[00:45:31] Funny and serious and then not funny and then not serious. If you
can get a a hot mix of a hot mess, of the good side of Sarah. Well, it has been
amazing connecting. I appreciate you so much, and I look forward to seeing you
at the end of May for your summit. Thank you so much for having me, and I'll
see you in a couple months, I guess.
[00:45:55] So there you have it. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of
Into the Wild. To make this girl happy and to help reach other women who are
dreaming of starting their business, please leave us a 5 star review on iTunes
and everywhere you listen in. Also, if you wanna find me in the wild, check me
out on Instagram at renee underscore warren. That's r e n e e underscore w a r r
e n.
[00:46:24] And leaving you with 1 of my favorite tips of all time, the best
advice you could ever receive is from someone who has successfully done it
before you. Until next time, ladies. Peace out.
