If you’re seeing this right now, or listening to this episode, you’re a leader. You don’t have to be the CEO of a business or the head of any department. If you can lead yourself and are self aware, have a growth mindset, and have some personal responsibility, you are already a leader.
As this week’s podcast guest says, you can lead from anywhere in the room. And that room can be at home, in your church, in your community, or in your role in business.
This week we’re talking more about what this looks like in the online business world, what a real measure of business success looks like, and how to do that in a way that’s not your typical launch-and-funnels cycle.
If you’re ready to nurture your business by creating a better relationship with yourself, this is the episode to listen to.
Mentioned in This Episode Podcast
- Follow Ryann on Instagram and TikTok
- Join the free Be in the Room Facebook group
- Connect with Ryann on LinkedIn
- Self Leadership Principles Free eBook
- Subscribe to Ryann’s YouTube channel
- Schedule a call with me
- Connect with me on LinkedIn
- Follow me on Instagram
About Ryann Dowdy
Since 2005, Ryann has sat in front of hundreds of business owners to develop marketing plans and taught thousands of sales reps, business owners, and entrepreneurs how to sell. She discovered the reason that some clients were wildly successful and others were not came down to one thing: True Self Leadership.
There are 6 principles that, when truly mastered, give both individuals and companies access to unlimited business and career growth: Self Trust. Personal Responsibility. Self Awareness. Self Concept. Emotional Intelligence. And Growth Mindset.
As the Creator of the Self Leadership Principles – Ryann partners with individuals and companies to take an inside out approach to business growth.
Ryann has been featured in Forbes, NBC, FOX, Associated Press, The Daily Dispatcher, International Business Times, Market Watch, Morning Dispatcher, NY Headline, Street Insider, Think Business Today, and hundreds of additional publications.
Transcript
Abby Herman 0:08
Hey there, and welcome to episode 247 of The Content Experiment Podcast, a podcast for service driven business owners who know that content is important. But there’s so much more to marketing and business growth. Here we talk about showing up for your audience in a way that they want to hear and in a way that’s sustainable for you. This might mean publishing a weekly podcast or blog, but it also means paying attention to your email list, leveraging other people’s audiences, building relationships, and getting over the limiting mindsets that often hit when we’re reaching for the next level in our business.
Abby Herman 0:43
I’m Abby Herman, content strategist and podcast manager for business owners who want to make their marketing feel easier and more streamlined, so they can get back to serving their clients and making those sales. I’ll show you how, or I’ll do it for you while you do business in a way that works for you. I can help by supporting you through building a content and marketing strategy, taking care of the podcast management for you or giving you the tools and resources to take this on yourself. As a business owner, you are a leader, I don’t care if you’re brand new here or have been around for a while, whether you’re making $5,000 a year, or $500,000 a year, whether you have a team or are working solo, just by the sheer fact that you took the step to start a business, you are a leader and you have a message to share with others. This week, we’re talking with Ryann Dowdy about leadership and built into relationship with yourself so that you can be the leader that you want to be and that others around you want. I hope that you’ll listen. Here’s more about Ryann.
Abby Herman 1:50
Since 2005, Ryann has sat in front of hundreds of business owners to develop marketing plans and taught 1000s of sales reps, business owners and entrepreneurs how to sell she discovered the reason that some clients were wildly successful, and others were not came down to one thing true self leadership. There are six principles that when truly mastered, give both individuals and companies access to unlimited business and career growth. And we go into these principles in the episode. As the creator of the self leadership principles, Ryann, partners, with individuals and companies to take an inside out approach to business growth. Listen in for more, you will not be disappointed. Hi, Ryann, thank you so much for joining me. I’m super excited to chat today about leadership.
Ryann Dowdy 2:39
Awesome. Well, I’m excited to be here. It has to be a fun conversation.
Abby Herman 2:42
Yeah, so I’ve already introduced you. But I want to hear from you. In your words. What do you do? And who you Who do you do it for?
Ryann Dowdy 2:50
Yeah, so I run a women’s leadership community called be in the room. And we have created a safe space for women leaders to come together to have an open, honest and vulnerable conversation about the you know, ups and downs of being a woman in business. So who do we do it for clearly women leaders, but we don’t identify leadership by job title, right? So we believe you can lead from any seat in the room. And so we believe leadership is somebody who is whether you’re running a company, whether you’re running a team, whether you’re a solopreneur, doing your own your own thing, it’s really about how you conduct yourself and your clients and your people and your team will look to you as somebody to make decisions to guide them, and to help them get where they want to go.
Abby Herman 3:35
And what does that look like to like how do you work with clients and and add tacking on to that? How does the way that you work with your clients help you to live the lifestyle that you want?
Ryann Dowdy 3:46
Yeah, absolutely. So I’ll answer the first question that leads to the second one because there’s separate so how do we work with clients? So we are a, a membership community. So with two levels of membership, we have a mastermind level and a membership level. We very intentionally avoid using the word networking organization. And we do that Abby because most people I learned I grew up in sales and a 15 year corporate career in sales. Networking was what I did for a living. But I learned when I became an entrepreneur, that when you say networking, to most women, it like completely, it means something different, right? It’s not good. It’s not positive. It’s slimy. It’s passing.
Abby Herman 4:21
Yeah, it’s passing out business cards and not getting to know anybody.
Ryann Dowdy 4:25
It’s very surface level. It’s very what’s in it for me. And so we’ve avoided using that term intentionally which is why I refer to us as a leadership community. But but you know, we said we do four key things inside of our space. We work on personal development, becoming the best version of yourself every day. Professional Development, right? How do we get better at our jobs or careers? We build our networks, but not by way of, you know, passing business cards. And then ultimately, we we’ve created that safety, that vulnerability. That space to be open. Honest, we talked about like taking off here. Baskin really being that true aspersion to yourself. So, like, so we have two membership levels, one is a little bit more connection focused. And then our mastermind level is more collaborative peer to peer education. Pure strategic advisory board style, is that we serve a host of women, we host events. And we just started planting local communities, which we’re really excited about, and partnering with local women to do that. And then how does my business support my life and my lifestyle. So I am on iteration number three of my business since I left corporate America, so I left corporate America in June of 2019. When I left, I was growing a sales coaching business. So I was helping new entrepreneurs learn to sell in a way that felt good to them. In all of that, I wound up starting a second business with my then business coach, where we started training sales teams for entrepreneurs. And ultimately, I decided to pause my to stop it wasn’t gonna pause it was we stopped enrolling people into my offer. And I became the full time CEO of that business, and got into got into that partnership, huge values, misalignment, a lot of really not awesome things happening behind the scenes. That led me to leaving that partnership. And the reason that that’s important is because I just kept creating the same thing over and over again, what I created in my corporate career, what I created in my first business that I created in my second business was something that appeared very externally successful, something that generated cash, something that was exciting and fun, but did not honor my calendar or my values in any way. Right. So I was working around the clock, I often tell the story in my social sellers Academy days where I was on the floor in my shower, crying. Because I had a team of eight I had a payroll, I had a business partner who I learned was not who I thought she was as a person. I mean, there was just a lot of things happening behind the scenes. And I was completely alone. And I was like, How do I keep winding up in these situations. And so be in the room, I’m actually in the process, 14 months later of still retraining myself to own my calendar for it to be okay to not have every hour of my day, booked in some capacity, to not having to be really busy, to not having to be on all the time for my clients to be successful. Like I feel like I’m still very much relearning that after almost 40 years of my life, you know, looking at it differently. So how does it support that we’re getting closer and closer to that every day, but ultimately, you know, taking out one on one services and promising a deliverable. And all of those things gave me a lot of space to breathe and like must be on all the time.
Abby Herman 7:35
Yes. I think that society tells us that we should our life should look a certain way. Well, I know not that I think that society selflessness, I know that our life should look a certain way, we should be a certain way our schedule should look a certain way. And if we’re not doing that, then we’re doing it wrong. And I think that a lot of people, you talked about vulnerability, and being really open and authentic. And I think that people in social media, you know, we see the highlight reel, we see the quote unquote, success, whatever that means, because it can mean a different thing for pretty much everybody. And we’re not seeing what’s behind the scenes, we’re not seeing the struggle and the reworking of the calendar. Because I mean, I do I do the same thing. And I I’m obsessed with my Google Calendar, I have an episode that was published a couple weeks ago about my Google Calendar, and I use full focus planner also. And I really, really structure my time so that I can put in some time for myself and so that I block out my workouts I block out I call it Abby time, you know, where I’m just not going to commit to anything during certain times of the day or the week or the month or whatever. So I love that you’re working on that. And then you’re doing that. And then I think it’s constantly a work in progress, especially if like as your life changes. I mean, I don’t know if you have kids, but when I when my daughter was at home, my daughter’s 20 now, but when she was at home, it was like, you know, I wanted to work around her schedule, and I wanted to be available to her when she was here. And I mean, let’s be real. She’s 20 I’m meeting her in about an hour to help her with her car. It still happens, but I can do that like because I’ve got it figured into my calendar.
Ryann Dowdy 9:25
Yeah, I love that. Yeah, my kids are my son just turned six and my my daughter is three and a half. So we are in you know, the season of pure chaos around here. Yeah. But yeah, so I do I work traditional hours because that’s when they’re out of house, right? That’s when Davis is in school, and all those different things. So, but I still it’s like, I don’t have to be at my desk at eight o’clock. Like there’s nobody clocking me for that. And I to this day, I still like I’ll be at my kitchen table, like having a cup of coffee. Just kind of like sitting there thinking and it’ll be like 840 I should do something like but your first meeting my first meeting is typically They aren’t until 930 or 10. So there was no more for me, but it was still that just urge to like, go do something. It’s time.
Abby Herman 10:06
Yeah, it’s so weird how that just keeps carrying over. Because I still feel I mean, I’m 10 years into doing this full time. And I still feel that way. Shouldn’t you know, I wish I wish I didn’t. We’ll so you talk about something called self leadership. And I want to dig into that and talk about what that means. Can you share what that means? And I know that you have a group of principles all around leadership. Let’s let’s talk about that.
Ryann Dowdy 10:34
Yeah. So the self leadership principles are principles that I developed Abby after leaving my coaching business. So you know, I had a blueprint, we called it the 100k sales method, I wrote a best selling book about it, right? Where it was like, This is how you go out get from zero to 100k, as the business owner, and when I looked at my students, and I looked, I basically break them into thirds, right, there was a third that like, took it ran with it killed, it crushed, it hit on balls, right? There was a second goals who took it? Did what you know, they were making some money. And then there was like a third of people who just did not thrive at all in what we were teaching. And I really started thinking, what was the difference? They all had access to the same materials, they all had access to the same coaching, they all had access to all of the things. Why was this person successful? And why was this person not? And it almost all came down to their relationship with themselves. And so after asking myself that question over and over again, we basically distilled, I distilled the self leadership principles down to six terms, all terms that you’ve heard, all things that you’ve done, but I’ve really kind of struck, constructed them in a way that helps us to start improving our relationship with ourselves. Because, again, I think you can lead from any seat in the room, and the only way that we can be true leaders and our clients can trust us and our teams can trust us and our you know, the people who look to us, and trust us as if we first trust ourselves, right, we have to lead ourselves first, before we can lead other people. And so that’s why we have these six principles to their self trust, personal responsibility, self awareness, self concept, emotional intelligence, and emotional intelligence and growth mindset. And so they’re six principles that are really about improving your relationship with yourself so that you can perform however you desire to perform in your life and in your business.
Abby Herman 12:15
Yeah, I would I want to talk about each of them individually. But before we do that, I would love to know what you mean by we can lead from any seat in the room.
Ryann Dowdy 12:26
Yeah. So we very much grew up at least I very much grew up in a world where you know, leadership had a very authoritative style to it, they call it transactional. Leadership is what you would read about in a textbook, right? Where it was, like, I tell you what to do, you do what you’re told you report to me a very hierarchical, traditional leadership model. And that’s how I grew up in my corporate career was that’s what leadership looked like, for me if there was a person in charge, and there was maybe one or two people under that. And then there were the rest of us doing the work, right. And, you know, we were told that person’s leader and you’re not, but like, that’s, that’s not true, right? Like you can leave when I leave from any seat in the room, it doesn’t matter, your job title, doesn’t matter how much money you’re making in your business, it doesn’t matter. You know, whether you are a solopreneur, with a VA, or you know, running a company with 10, employees, everybody has things that they bring to the table that position them as leaders. And so I think that we are often waiting for the title, the money, the opportunity to lead, but we’re actually, like I said, leading from any seat in the room. So that’s how I would describe that.
Abby Herman 13:27
Yeah, I totally agree. I think that that’s definitely how I grew up, you know. And the truth is, I mean, a very traditional business type world. I mean, that’s how my parents grew up. That’s how my dad who was a business owner, that’s, you know, maybe not necessarily how he led his business. But I feel like that’s just that was just kind of the culture and kind of what I got out of all of it, and to no fault of anyone. But that was reality in the 80s, and 90s. And I entered the workforce in the mid 90s, for the first time, so or as a college graduate, I entered the workforce at that point. And that’s definitely what I saw. So I’m very happy to see like people in here of people who are trying to change that, and tried to really empower people to speak up and to be leader. So thank you for that. So can we talk about each of the leadership principles quickly, and just kind of run through what they, you know, what they’re all about? So like, self trust was the first one you mentioned? What what is that?
Ryann Dowdy 14:30
It is really, you know, simply put, so I always talk about like, what the definition of trust, right? And it really is, the belief in somebody else’s ability is the abbreviated version, right? And we so often believe in a lot of other people’s abilities, but we have we have a hard time believing in ourself. Right? So self trust is really learning to trust yourself to trust your intuition to trust your ideas, to trust you know, the the plan of action that you put together to trust that you can achieve the goal that you want to achieve, right. So all of those things All under that self trust. And it really comes back to, you know, one of the things that I say when I present on this, I have a huge slide that basically says like, the only, you know, the person that we lied to the most in life is ourselves. Right? And so if anyone treated us frankly, the way that we treat ourselves, it wouldn’t be a good relationship, right off your friends would be like, what do you what are you doing? Like, why are you still in that relationship? It’s not healthy. So we have the somewhat unhealthy, you know, the inner critic, the inner voice, who, you know, tells us that we’re fat, lazy, and never gonna amount to anything. And then there’s, you know, the conscious part of our brain that’s like, No, I’m amazing, right? So self trust is, is learning to kind of bridge that gap, right to have that relationship with yourself in a meaningful way. And so we have to start there, because, again, you know, we have to lead ourselves before anybody else can lead us. We have to like ourselves before anybody else go, I guess.
Abby Herman 15:53
Yes, absolutely. All right. And I think that segues really nicely into personal responsibility, because you get that to me, I feel like you get that self trust, when you hold yourself accountable. And you’re personally responsible for your life, your body, your everything.
Ryann Dowdy 16:11
Yep, you’ve nailed it. To me, it is that it is personal responsibility. But I’m always really careful when I’m talking to high achievers, that this is not personal responsibility. And like the control weak Control Freak way, is first. Again, it’s always like, I know you’re excited, because I just told you, you’re in charge. And that’s exactly where I want to be. But it’s not controlling the inside, it’s the or the outside, it’s the inside, right? Personal Responsibility is is being responsible for yourself, right? Talk about your thoughts, feelings, and your actions, right. Those are the things that’s what you have control over. So to me personal responsibility is really owning that those things that you have control over and really letting go of that idea of being a victim and not in a shame, the victim kind of way. But some of you know, I went through most of my life thinking it was just happening to me, it was until somebody told me like No, no, like you have a say here is when things really radically changed for me. So personal responsibility is that same I use that word radical, that radical responsibility that if I don’t like it, the only person who’s going to change it as me, you know, if I’m not getting what I want out of a situation, the only thing I can change is me because we are taught well, if I could just change that person, right? And I saw this coaching new entrepreneurs, I’m just gonna choose a different ideal clients. Because if the ideal client had more money, right, everyone’s like, I’m gonna serve, and you’re pretty much they don’t have any money. People are always thinking, like, you know, if my ideal client was different than I could sell my stuff, you know, if I didn’t, to me, it’s like, no, that means you’re changing the outside, not the inside. And so that’s to me what personal responsibility means.
Abby Herman 17:43
I love that. And self awareness is the next one. So I feel like you have to be like, aware of, of all of the things if you’re going to do the the self trust and personal responsibility, right?
Ryann Dowdy 17:55
Yeah, self awareness is to me again, that that relationship with yourself, but really knowing like, your strengths, your weaknesses, who you are as a person, and just being really aware of your stories of the excuses that we make. So it’s really again, just layers on Okay, first, I’m learning to, you know, actually like this human. And now I’m learning I’m in charge. And now I’m really figuring out the nuances right like that, that self awareness. So I will use a specific example for you. When I was in corporate America, I would have identified as a control freak, right? Like, I was juggling all the plates, I had a demanding job. I had a newborn I had, you know, we were active in our church, we, we have a really big family. We like to play sports, we had a big group of friends, and I was, you know, balancing all the plates. And I thought it was a big deal, because I but it was like it was it was survival mode for me. You know, I was controlling all the plates, because it was the only way I knew how to get from day to day to day to survive. And then when I finally became an entrepreneur, my business started to grow. And I learned about outsourcing and delegation and having a team. It was like, this whole new relationship with myself. When I like, once I started letting go of those things. I’m like, No, I’m not a control freak. In fact, I only care about what I care about, and all this other stuff. I don’t care about it as well. So before we hit record, Abby asked me, she was like, Oh, you’re from Kansas City. You know, the chiefs won the Super Bowl. How do you feel about that? And I’m like, I don’t really care. I mean, I’m excited. It’s fun, you know, Kansas City. I love Kansas City with my whole heart and like what it creates in our community I really enjoy. But like, football every Sunday was one of the things that I was like, It’s fun, it’s on my house, I enjoy it. But like my husband, agonized over like whether Patrick mahomes is gonna be able to play with high ankle sprain. And I was like, I got stuck to that, like, that cannot be what I focus my attention on. But that’s my own self awareness. Right? Like, I know, like, I can’t spend my energy there because my energy is doing this. So I learned and becoming an entrepreneur and delegating that I’m not at all a control freak Control Freak was just, it was what I was doing to survive. But once he learned to ask for help, and get support and get rid of the things that he wasn’t doing, I care about what I care about every Now, so you don’t know how many how fun?
Abby Herman 20:01
Well, and I feel like that’s why we hire people to support us to write. I mean, we hire people, because we don’t want to do certain things in our business, we want to do what we want to do. We, for me, you know, I want to help people with their podcasts, I want to help people with content, I do not want to be the person to load all of that stuff to somebody’s website, or somebody’s social media. That’s why I have support in my business so that that can get done. And I don’t have to be the one to do it every once in a while have to do it, because she’s on vacation or whatever. But that is not something that I care about.
Ryann Dowdy 20:37
Myself, people hire support, whether it’s you will always talk about envy in the room, we talk about supporting the business in our careers and support at home, we hire support, but then we care about how the support gets it done. And I’ll give you a personal example for this. So in our home, my husband stays home with our kids. While I joke, he doesn’t stand with our kids, my kids go to school full time. So my husband, we call him the project manager and I am the Project God bless him. But you know, I used to when this all first started, we were trying to you know, read figure out our roles. And, you know, Kevin took over doing all the laundry, except for mine. I do my own laundry, but he does the kids laundry and everything else. He’s the most inefficient laundry Doer on the planet, right? He’ll tell me like, I’m doing laundry. And I’m like, that’s weird. I was just in George’s room. And her hamper is still in her closet, though. I forgot to grab it. And I’m like, right. But in the beginning, I would try to control the way he did the laundry. And at the end of the day, now I’m like, I don’t I don’t care. Did the laundry get done? Did it get done the way I wanted to get done? No. But is it done? And but I realized that we do that we do that in our businesses, right? We’re like, We want somebody to do this for us. But then we want to micromanage them when we do it. You know, we want somebody to, you know, help us at home with their kids, but we don’t like the way that they kept their appetizers. Right. Like, it’s really letting go of those types of things. I think that’s harder than harder than we realize for a lot of people.
Abby Herman 21:52
Yeah, I agree. Letting go is difficult once that has that transition has been made? Yes. And we come to the realize that we don’t need to micromanage then. Yeah, it feels a whole lot better. I agree. Okay, so the fourth leadership principle is self concept. Talk to us about that.
Ryann Dowdy 22:10
So self concept is like the deep rooted kind of subconscious story of who we think we are. Right? So we see ourselves as lucky if we see ourselves as the person who always gets the short end of the stick. If we see ourselves as the person who always gets cheated. If we see ourselves as the person who’s always average, right? Like that creates our self concept. On the flip side, that creates our reality. On the flip side, if we see ourselves as somebody who always wins, who things always work out for them, for they’re always in the right place at the right time. You know, this, that person just appears so lucky. Everything always goes so well. Right? So self concept is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. Right? And again, this goes all the way back, I stacked them up the way that I did someone intentionally is, you know that that judgment of ourselves around those different things like oh, well, I set a goal to hit a million dollars. I don’t know, I just made that up in my business. But I didn’t hit it. Of course I didn’t. I was never going to hit that. Like Who the hell do you think you are to make a million dollars, right? Like that’s your self concept that that mean girl in your brain, I named mine Regina on purpose. But that mean girl in your brain, you know, she is she is telling you something like that is your self concept. Like, of course you didn’t lose another pound this week. Remember, you overindulge at the Super Bowl party. Right? Of course, you didn’t get out of bed and workout this morning, You’re so lazy, you know, like that is your self concept that all creates a story that you tell about yourself. And so if you don’t like it, it’s your job to rewrite it. And so that’s really what that fourth principle is about is really understanding what are those stories and they’re buried, right? They’re not obvious, because we would never in a million years old, that part of ourselves, we would, you know, doesn’t feel good. But it’s also conscious and it’s running our lives.
Abby Herman 23:52
Well, and it’s we’re so used to it to write we’re so used to the stories that we tell ourselves that it’s hard to it’s hard to stop and recognize that we’re telling ourselves those things, if those things came out of our mouths to someone else, we would be able to see the hurt on them and understand that what we’re saying is not accurate or not nice. And so yeah, but saying those things that we say to ourselves, it’s so hard.
Ryann Dowdy 24:19
Yeah, it’s so hard but I mean, we always say the first step is awareness because like you said, if we really sat down and thought about what’s that dialogue and you write it down exactly what you just said, you’re like, oh, shoot, like I would never say that to another human. But then that self concept is then really changing that and intentionally you know, it’s actually happening on on tick tock right now the the new year there was the whole Lucky girl, the lucky girl syndrome, and if you’ve heard about this, but there’s a sound that went viral about Lucky girl syndrome and it again is that story, you tell yourself that everything works out for me. I get everything I desire. I’m so lucky. It’s way more eloquent than that on Tik Tok, but that’s the story, but it is literally what Lucky girl syndrome is about if you’ve seen the trend is is about changing your self concept to the person So who gets everything she wants, needs and desires for the person who is, you know, respected and loved and all of the things that we claim, you know, that we want. So that’s really what some concepts about is understanding the first and then understanding what we do first and then really changing that intentionally.
Abby Herman 25:17
Hmm. Interesting. Yeah, I refuse to get on Tik Tok. So I don’t know the lucky girls. I will do some Googling. But I refuse that this goes back to the the personal responsibility and like making sure that to make space for myself. I do not go on tick tock because I know what will happen if I do. It will not be pretty.
Ryann Dowdy 25:40
You’re still if you’re still on Instagram. I’m sure it’s trickled over in the real
Abby Herman 25:43
Yeah, yeah. I yeah, as I see some things on reels too. I see a lot of TiC TOCs. Unreal. So alright, so talk to us about emotional intelligence and growth mindset. The last two of the leadership principles.
Ryann Dowdy 25:54
Yeah, so motional intelligence is just that, right? Really, again, understanding and being tuned into our emotions, it ties in very beautifully to self awareness. And, and that self concept, right, like, so really understanding our emotions, where they come from, and they don’t always get to drive, right, like, not every emotion, that you are, your brain and your body serve you and you don’t have to react to them. Right? Emotional Intelligence is really to me, you know, understanding our emotions and understanding that we get to choose and manage our own emotions, and then more so as leaders, the ability to understand and the the emotions around us, right. So it’s really just being kind of tuned in. Again, this is another reason why I think that women make such excellent leaders is we tend to be a little bit more emotionally tuned in to the emotions of others. But that’s really to me what emotional intelligence is understanding your emotions, understanding what they mean, understanding the power that we have over them. And then of course, you know, understanding and respecting the emotions of the people around us.
Abby Herman 27:00
Yes. And then a growth mindset piece.
Ryann Dowdy 27:03
Yeah. And the growth mindset is, is just that idea of, you know, I don’t know if you’ve read the book. It’s actually funny. I’ve really only skimmed the book called Mindset by Carol Dweck, where she talks about this growth mindsets, and there’s fixed mindsets. And growth mindset is the idea that, you know, we are constantly we are constantly growing, right? We always we get better we do better, we improve the relations with ourselves, we improve relations with others, the whole I don’t know why it’s kind of Stargate comes to mind like you’re, you’re not a tree, you can move. Like, that’s what’s coming. That’s what my brain is showing me right now is this tree like, growth mindset is the idea. If you don’t like it, change it. Right? If you don’t like it, do something different, you are not a fixed being you can become whatever you want. So this is, you know, follows down the train of abundance and in money, and all of those different things, but also in relationships, and health and all of that, like wherever you’re sitting right now, you do not have to stay there if you choose not to. And that’s really what growth mindsets about me.
Abby Herman 28:02
So you’ve mentioned before how you stacked all of these principles very intentionally. And I can see, as we’ve been talking, I can kind of envision, like the growth from self trust, you start with self trust, and you move your way to growth mindset. So can you share a little bit about like, where these ideas came from, and how they translate into growing as a business, our owner and developing yourself as a as a leader?
Ryann Dowdy 28:32
Yeah, so I have been kind of I share about my business partnership that went south, I share about that very often. So that led me to kind of going on my own little bit of a spiritual journey. Understanding why I kept recreating these businesses and situations and circumstances that were not serving me, is really where my study started. So it’s July of 20, Gosh, 21, as when I started working with my mentor, and just fell down the rabbit hole of all things, personal development, right? Because I’ve been doing the professional development thing I read till I was blue in the face, right? Every podcast, every book, every YouTube video, right? It was all about how do I become better at sales? How do I become better at marketing? How do I become better and all these things, and that was great, but I had to do like the inner work. So that’s really where it started. And so it was just, I mean, I’ve probably read, you know, 200 books and listened to every podcast under the sun, that, you know, go everything from like way far into the Wu into the very practical and back again, and to me, it was really like, what, what parts of those did I want to pull together in a way to walk people through right, like you said, how they really stack on top of one another. And so that’s where they came from. That’s why I often tell people like they are not original concepts, they are not new. But when we really start to study them in a way to your question of like, how does this impact us as business owners, it’s going to really improve that relationship with ourselves, and really learning to be that best version of ourselves. So it’d be in the room we say that our mission is to build a movement of women of action who rebel against the status quo, and build a life as Success on their own terms. And when you have a really rock solid relationship with yourself, right? When you trust yourself, when you know that you you have total responsibility when you’re super self aware, and you know what you’re good at what you’re not good at, when you’ve, you know, started rewriting that self concept when you’ve really become in tune with your emotions, and then you realize you can become whoever you want to be. Like, that’s where the magic happens for us as business owners, right? If we don’t like the way our businesses, we can fix it, you know, it takes for me, it’s all about taking back our power, because when the power is outside of us, right, when it’s that person, that idea, that promo, that strategy, that this that that like, so that’s helpless place in the world to be in right puts you on the floor, and you’re showered in tears, it’s not a great place to be, right. But for me, it’s taking back that power and really putting it you know, taking that that locus of control and putting it back inside of you, because that’s why we all became business owners, right? We wanted I mean, I were talking about this before we hit record, right? Because you wanted time, freedom, location, freedom, money, freedom, whatever it is you are going for, right? But there’s no freedom if we are chained to all the things outside of us.
Abby Herman 31:03
Okay, so that completely set me up perfectly for a question that I wanted to ask you, which we’re going to skip over a couple of things. But I really want to get to this. And then if we have time, we’ll come back. But so you mentioned like having the power and you know, doing things that are not necessarily following along with what everybody says you should be doing, or that everybody, quote, unquote, everyone is doing. So how do we end and you know, to me, that is having all the funnels perfectly aligned to doing all of the ads, you know, you know, doing all of the things that were quote unquote, supposed to do or should do. And I and I talk about it a little bit myself, too, like, I think it is important to have something out there to be putting yourself out there to have some sort of content so that people can understand who you are, and what you stand for, and all of that. But how can we do it differently? What are some different things where we can take back the power for ourselves, and do things to grow our business so that we can align with those leadership principles that you talked about, and align with our own schedule and who we want to be in what we want to be?
Ryann Dowdy 32:13
Right 110% And you just hit it goes, it all goes back to alignment, right? The whole concept of doing things differently, is doing things in alignment for you. And it’s like I said, it’s ultimately why I wanted walking away from from sales coaching all together was this idea that my blueprint works for me what I teach, it worked for me, it worked for about a third of my students, it worked okay, you know, but it doesn’t work for everybody because it feels out of alignment, right? Like, I’m big on go talk to people, you know, I say that conversations equals relationships and relationships equals clients. That’s kind of the formula that we taught. I like to talk to people I like to learn about people. I’m a great question asker. And we’re really good at connecting the dots. Those are things I’m great at, you may not be right. So somebody else, you know, might be like, Oh, no, the thought of having to like sit and have a one to one conversation with another human makes me so anxious. Right? So my methodology isn’t gonna work for you. Right? And so, you know, it’s figuring out what of everything that is out there being taught right now, my belief is that it works, right? You want to run a challenge. It works. You want to run webinars, it works. You like funnels, it works. If you don’t want to have a website and do any of that, and you prefer to network in person and grow your business that way. It works, right? Whatever you choose to do that is alignment with you will work. And that’s what we mean by doing things differently. And asking yourself, Why am I doing this? Right? Like I learned to, I learned to live lunch. That was how I grew up in business, I live washed my face off, I made a million dollars in two years. Like it worked for me. I loved doing it until I didn’t. And then you know, of course then it was that was when the iOS broke down. And everyone was like, the ads and this and this and this and that, like launches, stopped working, like launches didn’t stop working for everybody. They look they start to working for the people that they felt out of alignment for. Right. And so because there’s still some people live watching their faces off making a ton of money, right? Like, there’s still people running webinars, there’s still people, you know, cold DMing and cold emailing and cold call and all of the things that you hate and don’t want to do, somebody else is doing them to a wild level of success. And so for me, doing things differently means doing what you want to do, because you want to do it. So I’m gonna give you a specific example. We are running a webinar, it will be like my first webinar two years at my community director program, and I’ve been so resistant to doing a webinar because I didn’t want to do a webinar, the way most people teach webinars, right, false urgency, you know, it’s worth $10 billion, but I’m giving it to you for 12. Like none of that feels good to me at all. And so someone just said something so simple to me and they were like you know, if you want to call it something different than a webinar, you can but like you’re damn good at teaching people and people really like you. Why would you not get on camera and sell them something that you feel so strongly in your heart that they need? Just because you don’t like the way that guy teaches webinars and I was like hold Ah, you’re absolutely that’s what I’ve been doing. You know, I’ve been like, I don’t want to because I don’t want to do it that way. But I can do a webinar, and not do any of those things. First create false urgency and tell you it’s worth more than a day, isn’t it? I can do all of those things, and still be wildly successful doing webinars. So that’s what we’re gonna do.
Abby Herman 35:16
Yes, I love that I’m big into doing what works for you doing the thing that works for you. I mean, people talk about putting out content on a weekly basis. Yeah, I do. That works for me. And it may not work for other people, I have a client who we publish something every other week for her, because that’s what works for her. That is she’s creating videos, you know, so there’s time investment for her. So we’re doing what works for her. And yeah, that’s exactly what you have to do. It’s really hard, though, I will say it is really hard to look at the high highlight reels on social media. And to not think I really should be doing that. God, I wish that I had time to do that, oh, I wish I had somebody on my team who could help support me by doing that, it’s really, really hard to kind of turn it off. I spend much more time on personal social media than I do on business social media these days, just because, you know, for that exact reason that it is so hard to shut that off. So if you have any tips on how to do that, I would love to hear and I’m sure listeners would love to hear too.
Ryann Dowdy 36:24
Yeah. For me, I think it’s, I still very much play on social media, eight sounds. So it comes back to the self leadership principles. And you did not see me up for that I would not have told you that was my answer at the beginning of this. But that’s what it is, right? When you have such a strong trust in yourself, when you’re so self aware. And you know, it’s really easy to be like, Oh, she’s killing that. But that is just not for me, there’s no way in hell, I’d be able to pull that off, right? Like you can do both of those things. At the same time. So for me, it’s strengthening that relationship with yourself and getting really clear on what you want. And staying rooted in that. Right? Like, if you’re rooted in this idea of I only want to work three days a week. Oh, but that person is doing that thing. And that like so cool. Like, does that person work three days a week? No? Cool, right? It can look really cool. But it doesn’t fit into your value system. It doesn’t fit into what you want to create for yourself. So it all comes back to having that relationship with yourself so that you know what you want. So you can look at that other thing that somebody else is doing and be like, Oh, they’re crushing it and not feel compelled to go do it? Because you know what you want?
Abby Herman 37:29
Yes. I love that. That’s and you have a like a downloadable that where people can get the principles. So if if you’re listening, and you didn’t get them all written down in time, because you’re driving or running or whatever, where can people find that the self leadership principles? Downloadable?
Ryann Dowdy 37:49
Sure, it’s uncensoredconsulting.com/leadership.
Abby Herman 37:53
Okay, perfect. And I’ll make sure that I put that in the show notes. So I want to wrap up, but before I do, I want to because you gave so much great information. I love it. And I’m gonna grab that ebook as well. Like, as we as I was listening to your talk through each of the principles, I was like, yes, yes, yes, I need to, I need all of this. And I need a written reminder of it as well. So if listeners were only able to take away two actionable things, two things that they could go and take action on right now. Whether it’s literal action or mental action, what would you hope that they were to take away?
Ryann Dowdy 38:31
Sure. So I’m gonna give you one literal, and one mental. So hopefully, that’ll be helpful. The the mental one is working on that relationship with yourself, like prioritizing your relationship with yourself. Like you would prioritize a relationship with a partner, like go back to, you know, any relationship in your life, where in the beginning, it was new and fun and exciting, and you couldn’t wait to talk to that person again. And you know, all the other things like I want you to go there in that relationship with yourself. Right? So that’s the first thing I tell you, like, if you feel really, and I know it sounds silly, because that does that mean, but like, if you don’t, if any of the things we talked about today started, like pulling on you a little bit, then it’s time to work on the relationship with yourself. And you can do that through you know, Abby makes time for Abby time, right? Like, for me, my walk, my daily walk is my relationship with me. I call it my feel good walk my only job and that like 30 to 30 to 60 minutes every day is to feel good. Like, this is not about you know, crying into your journal, if that’s not your jam, like find the way that serves you to have a relationship with you. And then the more tangible thing I would have you do is I would have you evaluate how you spend your time and your energy. And think about where is this not aligned with where I want to go? You know, are you running ads when you don’t want to be right? Are you only doing organic marketing? Because somebody told you if you can’t do organic why there’s no way for you to you know, whatever it is, whatever BS story you’re telling yourself somewhere go there. eliminate those things or find ways to fix them, or at least put an action plan in place create awareness. So for me, I really like to like go through my calendar and look at, oh, wow, last week, I spent a lot of time on this, this and this, like, I cannot do that anymore. That does not serve me. So that’s my more actionable thing for you. If you feel the lack of control with your time and your energy, go back, and like what what does not belong here. And it’ll be really interesting what comes up for you and do it often because it will change. Right? Like seasons of life, it will change what’s going on what you’re promoting what you’re doing, it will change. So this is not a one and done exercise, but like constantly evaluating where am i doing things I do not enjoy in my life and in my business, and how can I clean those up? Meaning Can I change the way I’m doing them? Can I outsource them to somebody else? Are they actually moving the needle in any way, shape? Or form? Why is this here? And really think that stuff through?
Abby Herman 40:50
Yeah. And just to tack on to that. So that’s something that I do on a weekly basis, every Friday for the week that I’m just finishing up for every Sunday for the previous week, I go through and I look and see, what did I accomplish? What did I do? What do I need to do differently? And I sit down to do it. And I’m like, blank, I have no idea what happened in the past week. And so I do take notes, I do what you do I look I look at my calendar, I review what are the appointments that I had, I look at notes that I wrote down on the last week, because otherwise, like I can’t do it based on for me, I can’t do it based on well, how do I think it went I need to look at literally how it went in order to remember, you know, at least I have to have it all written down. So but I also say I’m old, so I don’t have the memory I want to add
Ryann Dowdy 41:47
time is just so weird. I’m like was that last week or three weeks? Yes. I never know. So that’s
Abby Herman 41:53
same. Me too. Well, Ryan, this has been so amazing. So helpful. Can you share with listeners how to find you? Like where do you like to hang out online? What’s your favorite platform? And any other links that you want to share on one patient? Be sure to include them in the show notes too.
Speaker 2 42:11
Yeah, absolutely. So like Abby said, you definitely want to check out the self leadership principles ebook. So that’s uncensoredconsulting.com/slash leadership. We also have a website be in the room.org is all your information about being in the room, which is our women’s leadership community. I spend most of my time on Facebook. I’m a Facebook girl. So we have a Facebook group called me in the room. I also now have a fancy new creator profile so you can connect over there. However you desire. We also spend time on LinkedIn. And Ryann Dowdy over there and on Instagram won’t be in the room official. So in order Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram are the best.
Abby Herman 42:46
Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate it. And I’m looking forward to grabbing that ebook. Awesome. Thanks, Abby. I just love Ryan’s leadership principles and how they really build on one another. Hopefully you could hear that in our conversation how you can layer these on top of one another. And yes, I believe that prioritizing your relationship with yourself is probably the most important part of building and growing your leadership and frankly, living a great life. And I personally believe that this prioritizing of your relationship with yourself is probably one of the most difficult things to do, especially since we’re all pulled in so many directions all the time. All the resources that Ryann talked about will be included in the show notes. Be sure to check those out. If you found value in what you learned here today. Be sure to share it on social media. Take a screenshot of the episode on your phone and share it on Instagram stories. You can tag me at the content experiment and Ryann at be in the room official or head over to LinkedIn and connect with us there. Be sure to tell us that you found us on the podcast when you can send to that connection invite. The more you share this podcast with others the more we can get it into the hands and earbuds of more business owners just like you who need to hear the message that they are not alone. Until next time, take care.
