Kris Safarova  00:59

Welcome to the strategy skills podcast. I’m your host, Kris Safarova, and this episode is sponsored by strategy training.com if you want to strengthen your strategy skills, you can get the overall approach used in well managed strategy studies at f, i, r, M, S consulting.com forward slash overall approach. You can also get McKinsey and BCG winning resume at firms consulting.com forward slash resume. PDF, and that is a resume that got offers from both of those firms. And lastly, you can get access to Episode One of how to build a consulting practice at firms, consulting.com forward slash build. And today, we have with us Lynn Smith, who is a former anchor for NBC News, CNN, headline news, she now helps fortune 500 executives, thought leaders and entrepreneurs to become better communicators, something all of us need to strive for.

Lynn Smith  01:53

Lynn, welcome, Hi. Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here.

Kris Safarova  01:57

I will go right into it, because we have only now together a little bit less than that, and I want to share with our listeners as much as possible to help them become better communicators. So I know that you talk a lot about the brain bully, so let’s start there. What do you want to share with us about what we need to know about brain bullying?

Lynn Smith  02:16

Well, first, I’ll define for your listeners and viewers, what is a brain bully? It’s that inner saboteur, the inner critic. It’s that voice in our head that’s saying to us, you’re not good enough, or nobody wants to hear from you. Or what if you say the wrong thing and everything is terrible, or what if I freeze and forget everything? It was a term that was born from my work with, as you say, fortune 500 CEOs, where I was tasked with helping them become what we like to call magnetic communicators. So these are communicators that when you open your mouth, people just lean in to hear what you’re having to say, or when you walk into a room, people turn their head and look at you because you’re magnetic. And what we found was, no matter how much tactical information we gave them, like, here’s how you talk in sound bites, here’s how you drill down your message, we would get the same result. And it was because what they’re saying is a symptom, and their problems of saying um, and so and all of that is a symptom. The actual disease is their fear, fear of saying the wrong thing, fear of being found out, fears, fears, fears, and it was so pervasive that we had to call it for what it was those thoughts in their minds that were hindering them from becoming magnetic, and the brain bully was the easiest way for us to describe it, because we all know a bully, right? Someone that’s just sabotaging and trying to push us down, and we’re doing it subconsciously or consciously. And then when we started beating that brain bully, and we have an entire framework around how to beat your brain bully, when we started doing that, that’s when we saw them change in their communication patterns. So we saw the ums fall off, the repeating yourself, the you know, going on and on and on and on. That was fixed when we addressed the fears that they had and they didn’t even really know that that was what was stopping them in the first place.

Kris Safarova  04:20

Do you remember when you encountered your brain bully for the first time in professional settings?

Lynn Smith  04:26

Let’s start with the first time that I encountered the brain bully in childhood. Because oftentimes our brain bullies rooted in experiences in childhood, and so when I was nine years old, I was in class, and we were learning states on a map, and my teacher said, What’s this state? And pointed to Louisiana, but the abbreviation was LA, so he’s like, which is this state? And I confidently raised my hand, and I was like, Los Angeles, and the entire room erupted laughing at me. And the teacher even laughed at me. I was like, Lynn, it’s Louisiana. And so in that moment, we learn speaking up comes with consequences, and there’s a part of our brain, and there’s research behind this part of our brain that stores that memory. So whenever we get back into a high stakes communication situation, the brain remembers that memory in high definition, so it sends all of the warning signals like, hey, this could be a dangerous situation for you. So your inner critic comes up and it’s like everyone’s gonna laugh at you. And so I point that out, because if you’re watching this episode and you’re thinking, Yeah, I’ve got a brain bully. I would challenge you to go back to maybe something in childhood that maybe exposed a vulnerability for you that then led to this narrative that you have kept with you throughout your work and your career. And so once I started getting into the news business, which is a historically very critical industry, the brain bully consistently came up. It wasn’t like one time, right? When I first got into the news business, I was told I’d never make it. There’s no way I’m going to make it on TV. That was told by my first direct news director, and so the brain bully obviously feeds on that, and I was always going back into a situation being like, I’m never going to make it in this right. So I had to create strategies throughout my career to overcome that narrative and put the correct narrative in place in order to keep pushing forward, and that’s what I now teach executives.

Kris Safarova  06:45

Do you remember the day when you made tremendous progress in dealing with your brain?

Lynn Smith  06:51

Bully, yes, I would say I had an incident that made progress and birthed the method to beat your brain fully. So what many people don’t know about me or realize is that I used to have a very crippling fear of public speaking, and it was very unexpected for people, because I was a news anchor and I spoke to the public for a living, but that’s a very different skill set to speak on a stage with 800 people or 80 people, than it is to sit in a studio and have your camera as your crutch and that you only have to look into a camera lens for others that is flipped where they can speak to a crowd of 50 or 5000 and when they’re put in front of a camera, they freeze. So I was giving a keynote speech, and my brain just literally left my body like I forget. I forgot everything I was going to say, and my mouth turned to cotton, and my hands started shaking, and I literally had to stop in the middle of it and say, I’m so sorry I’m failing at this. Let’s move to Q and A. And in that moment, I had a choice to either say, okay, the keynote speaking is not for me, or I am going to just keep going. And I hired a keynote coach, and I put myself back out there, but it was in essential piece was beating my brain bully. Because the reason that that happened was my brain bully was saying to me, nobody wants to hear from you like you’re not even on TV anymore. And so it spiraled into what happened when I actually learned how to beat the brain bully is when I was able to get back on stage, go out and actually do a good job at it. And so the goal is always taking this information to then go do what it is that you want to accomplish, whether that’s keynote speaking or publishing a book, or speaking in television or going on podcasts, whatever it is, the thing that typically is stopping people is that brain bully, and that’s what we work to help people overcome.

Kris Safarova  09:11

So can you take us to that moment on stage and you realizing you cannot continue with your speech, maybe you don’t remember what you wanted to say, and it is brave to say, let’s just go to Q and A as well. Some people just walk off. So

Lynn Smith  09:25

in hindsight, I wish I would have, like, faked a medical emergency, pretended to faint or something, because in that moment you are panicking. You are thinking to yourself, my worst case scenario is happening right now. You look at the numbers, I think it’s something like 80% of people fear public speaking more than death, and it’s for that very reason. We are afraid of being exposed, or we are afraid of people being like this person has no idea what they’re doing, and so, yes. In that moment, I was flooded with all of the physical reactions that come with panic, right? That’s where the cotton mouth came from, the shaky hands, and I was in staring in this sea of faces who were so pained for me. You know, the thing that we forget about public speaking is that your audience wants you to do really well. There’s no one in the audience that’s like, I hope this person bombs. And so I was just looking at all of their faces, and they’re like, Oh, honey. And it’s the first thing that came to mind of just pulling the rip cord and saying, I’ve got to stop this freight train. It’s going straight into a brick wall. And the first thing that came to mind was just, guys, I’m sorry I’m failing at this, like, just ask me questions. And they did, they asked questions, and I got through those still a shaky voice. And then when we wrapped up, I had several people come up to me, and they just one gave me a hug. He was a waiter at the venue that we were I was speaking at, and he gave me a hug and said, I don’t think you understand how much I needed to see that today. And the lesson in that for me was people don’t want perfection. They want resiliency. They want to see people overcome. And in his mind, that was an indication that this news anchor that probably looks like she’s got it all together and is polished, and all of these things that can happen to someone like me, because he probably struggles with that. And I had a woman that emailed me a few weeks after and she was like, You were an inspiration you didn’t intend to be. And so the reminder is our worst case scenario, the biggest fail I think I’ve have had, can be the path to your successes. It birthed the brain bully method, which is now a integral part of my coaching. It birthed the keynote speaking career that I have. It birthed a theme of my upcoming TEDx that I’m going to be doing. And so if you take anything away, it’s you’re so afraid of failure. But what if our failures were actually what lined up our successes so they can become exciting and like that’s a totally foreign concept for any of us to think about. What if we looked at failure as awesome, because it’s informing and leading us down the right path to success. That’s my goal in everything that I do. When a failure comes across my plate, which inevitably is going to happen, it’s like, great. This means I’m one step closer to the

Kris Safarova  13:10

success. I think what really was helpful for people as well was that they were looking at you at the beginning of the speech and thinking, I can never do that, or I can never do other things related to speaking, because this person was on TV, I never would be able to do it, even if I trained every day for 100 years. And then they see you also struggling, and they realize that you succeeded despite all the limitations, and they can do that as well.

Lynn Smith  13:37

Yes, and that presence, presence, how you show up, is not about perfection, and that humans don’t want perfection, like the audience doesn’t want perfection. They want authentic you, and so many of the executives that I work with, they’ll script out every single word. This is before we start working together. This is why they come to me, because they keep hitting their head against the wall. They’re like, I script out every word, but I come off as robotic, or they just spend hours and hours and hours memorizing and practicing, but they’re getting the same result. And the big revelation that they all have when they come and start working with me is it has nothing to do with your prep, it has nothing to do with your ability. Has it doesn’t even have anything to do with what you’re saying. It has everything to do with your mental game, with what’s happening in your mind and in your head. And if I were on this podcast right now, and I was thinking to myself, are people gonna like this? Does this sound right? Is this going I would be saying things like, um, so I would be rambling. Thing, but the clarity and communication comes from this overused word called confidence. And confidence is the belief that you can do anything despite any circumstances. Arrogance is just the belief that you’re good at everything. When we are truly confident and we’re out of our own head and out of our own way. That’s when we show up and we’re able to connect to an audience. So even though I was terrible on stage, I was able to connect with that audience based on how I handled the failure that I didn’t just walk off and hang my head and hide and that, I think, can be a lesson for all of us and how we approach perceived failures in our lives.

Kris Safarova  15:51

Li, so can you give advice to someone who is struggling with that bully in their mind? What can they do? Where can they

Lynn Smith  15:58

start? Awareness, awareness, awareness. So I just want you to begin with being aware that this is something that really is sabotaging either your communications or your physical presence. You know how we show up and stand and when you walk into a room, what’s the energy that you’re bringing into that room. How are you commanding simply just with your presence, not even speaking, and the awareness that’s what’s holding you back in that is absolutely step one. And if you begin to try and understand where it’s coming from. Where did it first start? Just like you asked me the question, when did you first hear the brain bully in your professional life? But I wanted to start in childhood, so that people realize it’s usually rooted somewhere in childhood. And so after the awareness piece, we take people through our signature programs, and it’s our proprietary brain bully method, and that’s how we take them through the actual four step method in getting over your brain bully once and for all, it’s not silencing your brain bully that’s really important, because your brain is simply doing what it was wired to do, which is protect us from perceived danger. It just doesn’t know that your keynote or your big conversation that you’re having with even a partner isn’t a threat. It’s not a saber toothed Tiger that’s going to eat you alive. But our prehistoric minds simply are given data that informs it that this is a dangerous situation, protect me from it. So we’ve got to control alt, delete our prehistoric code in our mind. That’s what we work with people to do. We reset that code so that we’re feeding the mind appropriate information and data that will allow them to be confident, calm and clear communicators.

Kris Safarova  18:05

Lin, so you mentioned you had a fear of public speaking. Tell us. How did you end up being an Anka, what made you want to do it?

Lynn Smith  18:16

I sort of fell into the on camera side of it. So what I wanted to do was storytelling. I loved information, like my kindergarten report cards that Lynn asks too many questions. I just was curious, and I wanted to understand everything and then share it with audiences. So storytelling was the first place for that, I studied journalism. I anchored the college newscast, and I decided ultimately not to go into news initially, because I didn’t want to go to a small market. I wanted to be a big city girl, so I got an internship in Los Angeles, right out of school, and then I was in NBC page. So if you know the page program at NBC, it’s kind of the tour guide of NBC, where you seat people at the Tonight Show, and you give tours of the studios. And I had my first day of work on September 10, 2001 so very quickly, the whole world shut down after September 11, and we were shuffled to executives offices to work as assistants, because they didn’t have any need for us to do tours, because that didn’t exist. So I ended up being an assistant to a number of executives at NBC entertainment, which was the time of my life, we got to read scripts for shows that were being considered like the office, which was not even fully baked yet. It was pitched to NBC executives during those years. So we got to read all of the initial episodes for that. And, you know, sat in the. Office when Donald Trump first met with NBC executives for the apprentice, which was a surreal moment now, obviously looking back with where everything landed on that regard. And after many years being an assistant to all of those executives, we ended up moving to New York and started my career at the today show as a producer. So I was doing segments, writing them, handing them off to anchors, and they would, you know, read the scripts. And my executive producer was like, Have you ever thought about doing on air yourself? And so they sent me to Hartford, Connecticut, where I was told I’d never make it in TV, and then Philadelphia, where they gave me a little boot camp training that I’m going to be writing about in a future book, of all of the different fails that I had along the way, as I learned the art of effective communication and eventually landed back in New York and the network side, and so I had a Bit of a non traditional path to becoming an anchor, but it was all very rooted in my understanding of how to be authentic on camera and how to connect to the audience through a black lens, which is not a natural skill set, and then how to share stories in a compelling way in a short amount of time that will move audiences, and that’s the reality of TV news anchoring is you’re inviting an anchor into your home each day because you trust them, or you don’t, you don’t watch. And so my goal was always, how do I earn the trust of the audience? And so while it was an untraditional path, it gave me nearly two decades of experience that I now use in my coaching and in my programs in order to guide people into the same path, just not on a news program, but in the boardroom on television, if you’re having to make appearances on podcasts, on stages wherever your high stakes communication event might be Lynn,

Kris Safarova  22:01

do you remember the first time you were on camera live?

Lynn Smith  22:05

Yes, I wish I could forget it. There are two memories that really stick out. One is the first time I was live in Hartford, Connecticut. It was the daylight saving segment. They put me on something very safe, because live television and somebody that is not trained in a minute and a half reporting, which is all you have time, mostly when you’re doing a live shot, which is a reporter standing outside of something, and you hold a microphone, and you’re like reporting live outside of wherever. And I got through it. It wasn’t great by any means, but I got through it because it was a really simple segment, and we live to see another day. Well, I get to Philadelphia, and I had not done a live breaking news segment yet, which is the reason they sent me into local in the first place. Like you’ve got a run and gun, you’ve got to stand in front of burning buildings, you’ve got to report on crime, all of those things. So they hired me as a consumer reporter, and they thought that was probably safer. I had a great background, obviously, as a today show producer, so I’d produce great segments, and then I’d front them, but they’d be all lifestyle and consumer. So it’s very easy. Well, my first day on the job, I get a call that there was a stabbing at a high school, and I’m the closest reporter there is to it, and we’ve got to get you live for the four o’clock show. It was like three. So they send me over there. I was a bumbling idiot on television. I think I called it a shooting instead of a stabbing. And some people might be listening and being like, well, that’s Lynn, why you go to a small market and make your mistakes there and not in the fourth market, largest market in the country, to which I say, I disagree. I think I picked myself up pretty quickly. Learned fast, and I didn’t want to go to a small market and learn from people that didn’t know what they were doing, and that’s why they’re in a small market. I wanted to learn from the best. So when I got off that live shot, which again, total disaster, my photographer Chuck Williams, who used to be Brian Williams photographer, no relation, but he still is one of my favorite people, because he took me under his wing and taught me a lot. He pulled me off to the side and he said, Listen, it’s not going to be the last time something like this happens to you, but I just have to tell you, you’ve got all the ingredients to bake a great cake. You’ve just got to learn how to put all those ingredients together. And it was exactly what I needed to hear, in the sense that I could visualize. This is an art. It’s a skill set that you have to learn. It’s not anything that you’ve ever done before, but I have all the pieces of what I need to do, and as long as I can learn how to put all those pieces together. Like, we can be good at this, and that’s what we learned how to do. I learned how to put the pieces together and the recipe for being effective. And so when I was leaving the news business, I was like, This is what I’m going to do. I’m going to reverse engineer. What it took for me to go from bumbling idiot on television to national news anchor with my own show and reverse engineer that method to now teach it to executives, entrepreneurs, subject matter experts that are needing to do the same on whatever platform they want to dominate, even their social media accounts. Because however you’re showing up, is the billboard for your business, and it’s saying everything before you even say a word. A billboard doesn’t speak to you, but it says everything that you need to know about somebody’s brand. Same is true for your website. Same is true for your social page. Same is true for when you show up for a zoom call. So when I get it now on sales calls and I’m being sold. I have people that it takes them three minutes to get into a headspace or delivery of anything, and I’m like, I’m already checked out. You’ve lost me. Because we have research behind how quickly people make a decision about you, and it is 1/10 of a second. 1/10 of a second is what the brain uses to decide the perception of somebody else. I was shocked by that because I needed to find research to back up what I have, which is the three to 30 rule, you have three seconds to get me to like you, 30 seconds to get me to trust you. So we got to say something really compelling within 30 seconds, and it actually is way more before that. It’s a 10th of a second. So when you’re showing up on camera instantly, you want to project the energy that you want the other person to feel.

Kris Safarova  26:56

Lynn, and as you were figuring out how to put together that cake. So it’s really good cake. What were some of the key things that really surprised you?

Lynn Smith  27:06

I would say it’s how difficult it is to drill down information. So I say drill down, not dumb down information. Oftentimes, what I find when I’m working with executives is that they have teams. They have communication teams that give them just piles and piles of stuff. So if they’re going to go into an investor call, it’s just prep material for days. And so often they’re just studying all of this information, memorizing so much data, well, we found that was actually holding them back. That wasn’t helping. So I took what it was that allowed me to tell a story in a minute 30 on live television, and how I crafted my questions for guests when I was interviewing them on live TV, and created our proprietary framework to drilling down your information so that you properly prepare for high stakes communications, so that you’re not over preparing or under preparing. We like to call it the Goldilocks effect, that you are preparing in the smartest way possible to get the best outcome based on the way that we drill down information and not dumb it down. And that was something that took me years to understand and perfect, because I wanted to be able to pack in all of the information I’m like. But they need to know this, but they need to know this. And my and my editors would be like they don’t, because there’s not enough time for that. That’s filler the brain needs to get a hook. Give me the takeaway. Button it up, and then I’ll understand we often hear in marketing, if you market to everyone, you market to no one. Well in communication, it’s if you communicate everything, you communicate nothing. And so we have to be so intentional about how we drill down our information as to not over communicate or under communicate for our audience. We get them just right.

Kris Safarova  29:18

What were some of the key mistakes you were making initially when you were trying to put together what you need to say in those one and a half minutes

Lynn Smith  29:27

scripting like scripting out what I was going to say. It’s very hard, you know, I spent years and years and years before I became good at reading a teleprompter. It’s such an unusual skill. And anybody that you stick in front of a teleprompter and put up a script on there, they are going to sound like they’re reading out of a phone book. And yes, we work with people to get them into the space, but it takes years of practice to get really good at it. So in the beginning, I was scripting out every single word. That I was going to say, and either trying to memorize it or getting it into a teleprompter. And what I found was that that isn’t what moves people. They don’t want the words to be perfect. They want the delivery to be authentic, the emotion to be captured, and then the connection to them to be made. And when I threw the scripts out and I began bullet pointing the big takeaways that I want based on the framework that we lay out, once I started doing that, that’s when everything just started to flow. The words came out clearer. The takeaways were really intact, and the audience was captivated. That’s what they want. They just want to feel like they are captivated. And anyone who is preparing for a high stakes communications event, I say, Do not script it. Do not script it. Instead, create those bullet points, prepare properly, and drill down your message in a way that will allow for the audience to truly connect to it.

Kris Safarova  31:08

Did you have to go through certain type of training before you could go on TV?

Lynn Smith  31:14

No. TV is a little bit challenging, like there’s no version of what I do for upcoming news anchors. We actually had a conversation. One of my friends who’s still a news anchor was like, you should have an on air talent development program for those that want to either become podcast hosts or become news anchors. I haven’t created that yet, so I could just apply what I do for executives to that, but I didn’t have any formal training, even in journalism school. It was more about making sure that you gather facts, present them in the ethical way, make sure you’re sourcing things in an ethical way. There’s not much on the delivery piece of it. So I, like so many of my clients that come to me, struggled with connection and authenticity and making sure that everything worked well and in sync once. I mean, we’re talking nearly two decades of lived experience that goes into what it is that I teach. So it was a bunch of trial and error. Once I got to the network at NBC, what they did have me go through formal training on was voice coaching, so how to properly project, how to have that voice that turns into something like this when you’re reading a script, so it sounds like a news anchor. Those are the types of things that they worked with us on with a professional voice coach, which was a fascinating experience. And I was just enamored by what he did, because it’s truly an art. But other than that, no, I it was basically you figure it out and figure out how to be good or you’re not going to be successful in this business,

Kris Safarova  33:01

and of course, voice coaching is a big part of it. When you were going through that training with a voice coach, what would you say? Two three key things he or she told you that made the biggest difference for you?

Lynn Smith  33:15

I think it’s where you’re speaking from. So a lot of people speak from their chest, and much of it is from your belly. Like the projection is more from your diaphragm than it is from your chest. And so when you’re trying to project in this way, you know you’re speaking of theater people, it’s so much coming from your abdomen. And so that was something that I was very fascinated by. And I would say a second thing is in cadence. And so when I’m working with executives and they say I talk too fast, like, well, first, where is that coming from? That’s always my question. Where do you think that’s coming from? Because the answer informs me a lot. It’s either because I’m so nervous, that’s the brain bully, or it’s something very tactical, like I’m worried I’m not going to get everything in in time. And depending on what the answer to that question is, we have a strategy in order to realign you that will slow you down. And what they taught me in voice coaching was the power of enunciation that will break up your sentences, just in the same way pauses do. And that power of enunciation just as you see me deliver it right now. If I were talking like this and the cadence would be like this, then the delivery is very boring. But if I am giving you this and I am talking to you with this, that’s something that hits you over the head. And so I always like to switch it out for people so that they can see the difference between the two. But if you’re ever watching some. Video on TV, and you’re like, oh my gosh, they’re so boring. It’s energy and it’s enunciation and cadence that oftentimes is the suck for people when they’re watching someone, they’re like, this person’s terrible television.

Kris Safarova  35:13

Can you tell us more about energy? What do you mean by energy?

Lynn Smith  35:16

Yes, first of all, everything is energy. So we are energy, and we also have complete control over our energy, right? So this is now, you know physics, this is not me, but it’s been packaged in a very Woo, woo, modern messaging that you know manifestation and energy, frequencies and vibrations and all of that has been dismissed as woo, woo for many, because you know me, think I’m working with Fortune 500 companies, right? They’re not looking for somebody to come in and be like, manifest your outcome. They and I warn them when I start getting into the energy space of Listen, this is going to seem Woo, woo, but remember that all of this is science. This isn’t Lynn’s opinion. When we vibrate at a higher frequency, when we bring our energy up, and we’re vibrating in this way based on our thoughts and our delivery and for our physical presence, the the things that vibrate towards us meet us at that same energy when we are vibrating at a lower frequency. Maybe we’re really frustrated or angry or disappointed or burnt out, all those things that keep us vibrating at a lower energy we know based on physics that things meet us at that energetic field. So if we are surrounding ourselves by negative people, we are going to have negative experiences, which is why the most successful people out there say you are who you surround yourself with. Same is true in business. If we are vibrating at the energy of like, oh my gosh, I’m gonna screw this up. I’m so overwhelmed I can’t do this. Oh my gosh, then the outcome is going to be meeting us at that same chaotic energy level. So some of the most important things to do before high stakes communications events are checking where that energy level is at and recalibrating the energy if you find it to be in a state that you don’t want to have the energy met at. So if you don’t want your event to be chaotic and filled with negative energy. Take some steps to actually fix that and change it. When you are at your best, when you are delivering at peak performance, you’re vibrating up here, and this new state of awareness around that, I hope now that people can think of it in a way that’s not kind of Instagram ish, right? You come across those, it’s the Lion’s Gate portal and all of those things. Once you start shifting your mindset around the science and the truth behind energy, then you can begin to show up in a totally different way. And that’s how you become magnetic. People are drawn to you. They want to do business with you. They want to hear from you. They want to select you for the stage. And this is all what it is that we have our business around. How do we help you become known for greatness? Because people that reach out to me are the people that are saying, How come I’m looking up at my TV, and I see somebody that has way less experience than me, and they’re appearing in TV, or I listened to a podcast the other day, and somebody that has no idea what they were talking about was asked to be on this podcast. Why aren’t they asking me? And it’s because you haven’t yet articulated your value. So no one knows that it even exists, and that’s the big truth, you can have the greatest talent, you can have the greatest idea you can have the best team. But if you don’t communicate it effectively, it doesn’t exist. It’s as if it’s in a vacuum, and only you are the one that hears it. How

Kris Safarova  39:20

do you make sure that your energy at a high enough frequency?

Lynn Smith  39:26

I check myself through each emotion. So I’ll give you a great example for this. I was booked to do a TEDx in TEDx arena. I posted on this in my social pages. So it’s out there that this happened. I just want to give you this as an example of a process that I go through when something energetically could drag me down. So I was booked TEDx Reno is like the Harvard of TEDx events. I’ve always dreamed of doing a TEDx, especially because of my fear of public speaking that I’ve over. Com, and I want that to be something that inspires other people to to face their fears and know that it’s possible to overcome them. Because if I’m able to go from a bumbling mess and a total disaster at a keynote to the red dot, you can do the same thing. So I’m over the moon that this was booked. We get an email 30 days before the event is supposed to happen, and it says we have made the incredibly devastating call of having to cancel TEDx Reno because we had four sponsors that withdrew, and it’s impossible to find the amount of funding that’s needed. And when I read that, I mean, it hasn’t happened in their 17 years of hosting this event. And when I read that made my heart just sank, and I let myself be disappointed for a minute, but I stopped myself in the spiral that could have been wait weeks and days and all the things of how disappointing that is. And I don’t want to dismiss when disappointment happens. Yes, we can be disappointed, but it’s what do we do with the disappointment? How do we react to it? And so as I was experiencing the disappointment, I reframed the thought, from, there goes my dream, there goes everything, to I am going to get on a TEDx stage. I’m going to do this. And so I began immediately reaching out to TEDx events. And I said, I have a TEDx Ready Talk. I was accepted at Reno. They were going to write us recommendations from Reno so that these places knew. And I’d say, we reached out, I don’t know, maybe 50 different events that were happening. And all it takes is one. Yes, let’s remember that, because I’ve gotten rejections all throughout my career. So it only takes one, and within two weeks, I had my TEDx booked, which I didn’t advertise that I have it booked on Instagram, because I don’t want to have to if worst case scenario happened, but because I was able to not pretend I wasn’t disappointed. Surely I was, but because I was able to check my energy from, let’s just wallow in this disappointment, to I’m going to take actions where I have control, then that’s what led to the outcome that I got, which was meeting me at the same energetic frequency that I was putting out there. I guarantee, had I handled it differently, even if I would have reached out to all of those places, the energy that I had in that email would have been different. I would have, you know, maybe I’m rambling on and I’m saying here, this is just so devastating, like, please, please help me. But instead, I was like, I’m a firm believer that this talk is meant for a different stage, because that’s things happen for a reason, and I hope it’s your stage. And so it’s just, I share that story so that people realize when we think we’ve failed, there’s the opportunity to shift the outcome. We are very much so creators as humans for outcomes, and we know that our thoughts shape our outcomes. That’s what the reticular activating system is. And if you want to deep dive into this, like this is what we do in our programs, we go into the actual science behind our thoughts becoming our outcomes. And when I was able to show up in that way, I got the outcome that I wanted. Now I will preface this with I spent years and years and years having to learn that this was reality. So I was very oftentimes vibrating in a frequency that was meeting me with negativity. But now I’ve shifted the way I live, and it’s shifted the opportunities that come to

Kris Safarova  44:17

me and do you do anything on a day to day basis to ensure that you don’t go down in terms of your frequency level.

Lynn Smith  44:24

When I feel like it’s starting to go there is when I know I have to do some gut checks. So yesterday, another good example, I had a negative interaction with somebody, and it put me in kind of like a not great feeling space, and so I had to actively take myself through my own method. And that’s the whole thing is, like, I don’t claim to have a method that makes me cured of any thing that comes up in. In a challenging situation, but I will say I know how it works, so I can take myself through it and I can get the outcome that I’m looking for. So that reset my my day, and then by the end of the day, I was able to get back to the energy that I wanted to be able to have for my kids. I notice a big you know, this is separate from the executive work, but I’m a mom to two little boys, and I know when I show up chaotic and I’m overwhelmed, they meet me at that frequency, like they are the perfect example of this in action. When I’m calm and relaxed, they’re like, Hey, Mom, you want to go jump on the trampoline? Yeah, totally. Let’s go do that. And it’s really the impetus of why I wrote the children’s book. Just keep going. That is behind me. All of the principles that we’ve talked about today have to do with big kids, all of us as grown ups that fall back into that state when we’re children of being scared, being afraid, worried that the worst case scenario is going to happen. What if, when we were young, we knew that fear and failure and hard times was actually the path to our destination, which is our successes. So in this book, which I wrote just as much for us as I did for our kids, it’s our reminder. Just put one foot in front of the other. Breathe, take deep breaths in and out. Visualize what you want. All of the physical strategies I use with executives, I drilled down into a message that was succinct enough for a six year old, because imagine if we grew up and embraced failure and when safe, embraced fear and put one foot in front of the other, we would be raising the future leader, the resilient leader, so that I’m not getting a CEO who is saying to me, I’m afraid I’m going to say the wrong thing, and the stock price is going to go down like that. That’s a legitimate fear, but if he was healthy as a child in facing fears that wouldn’t be detrimental, that wouldn’t be catastrophic. And so catastrophizing in our minds oftentimes leads to the outcome that we’re trying to avoid. And so this book is hopefully the guide that will enable the leaders to not even need me in the future. I’m writing my way out of a job, but I wanted children to be able to have the same skill set that I teach executives,

Kris Safarova  47:48

of course. And the last question with a few minutes we have left for someone listening to us right now, and they heard you talking about annunciation, and they want to improve how they enunciate. What are some of the things they can do on a weekly or daily basis to improve enunciation?

Lynn Smith  48:07

Well, I love when people go back and they watch videos of themselves, and I would encourage you to do it in a couple of different ways. Watch it with the sound off, so that you can see and be really, be heightened to your body language, and then watch it with the sound on, with the body language and the sound. And then turn the video off and just listen to the sound, because all the senses interpret your video in different ways, what you hear, what you see, that’s interpreted in different ways. So it will allow you to identify some of the challenges that you’re struggling with. Is it that you may be hunched over or you talk too fast, so identification of what your greatest communication challenges are, is the first step. It’s kind of like we go to the doctor, we do all the tests, and so that’s the diagnosis of your communication style. And then once you identify what those skills are, that’s what we do. We help people through them, through our frameworks and through our methodology. And we do that for online training. We do that in one on one coaching. We do that for workshops for corporations. And it’s really wonderful to see the transformation when somebody’s really credible but they’re forgettable, like they’ve got this amazing expertise, but you’re kind of like, I don’t even remember what that person’s name was. And when they transform their communication, that they are not only unforgettable, but it’s like I need to follow this person to wherever they go. That’s the magnetic piece of it. The transformation is remarkable, and that I have one client that went she left big tech, started a consulting firm and hired me. To figure out how to be compelling in sales and in stages and on TV. And she not only just got a six figure advance for her book, but she now can man six figures for public speaking, and she was offered $2 million for her brand, her personal brand. It’s remarkable what the value is of effective communication, and it’s actually a hard skill, even though many people consider it a soft skill.

Kris Safarova  50:30

Lynn, and just quick follow up, I was specifically asking about annunciation. They have maybe one way that someone can improve their annunciation

Lynn Smith  50:39

Well, and that’s why I say it’s identifying what it is that you’re struggling with. Like, if enunciation is the biggest thing that you’re struggling with, how are you hitting the points? How are you enunciating? There’s you literally have to start practicing your enunciation. So hitting those words that are super powerful and making sure you understand, where are you struggling with that? Like, is it because you’re speaking too fast? Is it because you are low energy? But you can’t figure out how to fix it until you diagnose what the source of the problem is,

Kris Safarova  51:14

of course. Lynn, thank you so much. Where can our listeners learn more about you? Anything you want to share.

Lynn Smith  51:21

Thank you for having me. My website’s Lynn smith.com I’m on all social medias at Lynn Smith TV, and then the children’s book, just keep going is on sale now, and you can buy it wherever you buy children’s books and read more about the book at just keep going book.com

Kris Safarova  51:37

Lynn, thank you so much again for being here for everything you said. And this episode is sponsored by strategy training.com you can get the overall approach used in well managed strategy studies at firms consulting.com forward slash overall approach. You can also get McKinsey and BCG winning resume, which is a resume that got offers from both of those firms. And you can get it at firms consulting.com forward slash, raising my PDF, and you can also get access to the first episode of how to build a consulting practice level one at firms consulting.com forward slash, build. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I’m looking forward to connect with you all next time.