Program 213 – The Look and Feel of Success


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Starting the conversation…

What does “success” for the company look like to you?

Host: Jessica Dewell
Panelists:  Nathalie Gregg, Katherine McGraw Patterson

What You Will Hear:

The fear that women will be afraid to ask.

Emotional elements of success are tied to personal and business goals.

Don’t take things for granted.

The way we approach situations: feel to do, act to plan, begin with the end in mind.

Steps to achieve our goals.

Lessons that helped define what success looks like.

Friendly versus friends in business.

Show up with purposeful action.

Know what to do so you can shape what you will get.

Reciprocity is two skills: receiving and giving.

Success must be whole – it is measurable too.

Every decision begins with vision, mission, values.

Avoid getting stuck by letting go.

Habits that indicate  low self awareness.

Do the work.

It is BOLD to get clear about the look and feel of success.

Notable and Quotable:

Nathalie Gregg 2:44
My deepest fear is that one day little girls will grow up to become women and are afraid to act. Growing up in small time USA and my mother told me women are to be seen and not heard. This is no more. No more will we be afraid to sit at the table. No more will we be afraid to raise our hand. And no more, will we be afraid to negotiate our salaries. And as I become fearless, I will empower others to do the same.

Jess Dewell 5:40
I have to tell you, when it comes to success in general, it’s automatically a downhill run, as soon as we take things for granted.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 6:24
If you’re doing things that align with your goals, everything else seems to come much more easily. But that downhill slide is like when you lose track of that what you wanted to achieve or what you wanted to feel. That’s when you feel start to get that downhill slide and nothing is in alignment, and you’re doing things every day. And it starts to feel like a slog, because it’s not directly tied to that feeling that you want to achieve.

Nathalie Gregg 7:23
I begin with the end in mind, I always ask what the team wants the end results to be? And then how do we reverse engineer, based upon where you are now? How do you want it to look? How do you want it to feel? How do you want to experience it?

Katherine McGraw Patterson 10:35
That alignment piece is so huge, because feeling like you’re on the right path and feeling like you’re in alignment with those things that make you excited, is so key to getting up every day and doing the hard work of entrepreneurship.

Nathalie Gregg 13:12
In order to take the brand to the next level, I realized that I had to build a larger network, with people who had the same alignment, also the same interests, and all the same interests as far as collaboration. Because the existing network only got me to a certain place.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 15:09
Building that network is a real challenge, and doing it in a smart way, and not just going out and making friends, The networking thing for sure., getting that under you is really, really important.

Jess Dewell 15:49
I go to networking events to actually further on objective. Because I have friends, I have a family, I have a lot of volunteer work, I have all of these things. I don’t want go make friends at a networking event. No offense, all you awesome people, you will become friendly with me. I would love to know about everything there is to know about you. But I don’t want to be your friend just at this networking event. I want to know, will you do business with me? Will I do business with you? Do we know people that we can each of us do business with. And I struggle with that because a lot of the networking groups that I go to, and a lot of the events that I go to, it’s all about that friendship piece. It is not about actually stepping up and going, “you are this really amazing person with this great product, and this great idea, what can I do to help you?” or “Wow, I need that myself.’

Jess Dewell 16:49
A lot of us are lonely, whether we’re on a larger team, or we’re in our own space.

Jess Dewell 17:20
When we network, there’s a purpose. That if we don’t network with a purpose, if we don’t engage with a purpose, if we don’t show up to every place that we go to, with our definition of personal and professional success in mind, we’re missing the boat.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 17:50
With women in particular, you know, we’re so relationship based, which is our strength, but it can also be a real weakness when it comes to business.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 18:01
When I go to networking events, I have a reason for being there. These are the types of people that I want to connect wit. This is what type of one on one I want to come out of this event.

Nathalie Gregg 19:10
If I tend to networking event, then I’m there for a purpose. If I’m hanging out with my girlfriends, and I’m there for that purpose, to hang out with my girlfriends and to have fun. And I think we as women need to understand, it’s okay if we decide that we need to do this, and do this for this particular purpose at this particular time. It doesn’t necessarily have to be an integration.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 20:37
If your clientele is on Facebook, if you’re not a b2b, then absolutely, go at it on Facebook, but don’t friend, every single person that you mee. Direct them to your business page. You should have a business page,. Besides, the fact is that it’s against Facebook’s rules of engagement to use your private page as a business platform.

Jess Dewell 22:06
It’s easy to want to be liked so much, that we forget our purpose of every action that we’re taking.

Jess Dewell 22:32
When you practice taking a pause, and then saying yes, this will further me toward my goals, the faster you get, the faster you get, the faster you get. And then, it’s like of course I know what to say yes to, we’ll figure out how to do it, not a problem.

Jess Dewell 22:46
We have to build a habit, we have to build a habit of a pause, so that we have the chance to think and take purposeful action.

Jess Dewell 22:53
If I have to go to networking events, then what am I going to do there? I’ve decided to speak, how am I going to make those contacts to actually get those speaking engagements? I want that next promotion, here’s what I need to know for other people to see that I know, so when I apply for that, and I started talking about it, and I start asking for it, there’s alignment in somebody else’s perception of me. And those are the types of things that go into success, that it’s easy to talk about what we don’t do. But when we incorporate these, it sets us apart.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 25:51
We’re socialized to take care of everybody else and to put ourselves last. And so we’re the queens of multitasking. But we have a zone of genius. And then there’s stuff that we’re not so great that. And by keeping the control of everything by not asking for help, we’re actually limiting our own success.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 26:20
If I bring in the right resources, and I can create a collaborative team of experts in what they do, and everybody’s in their zone of genius, I come out looking amazing, because not only did I get it done, but I got it done in a way that shines a light on other people.

Jess Dewell 27:25
There’s a law of reciprocity out there. And if we’re not getting what we want, maybe we need to evaluate how we receive.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 28:11
We are all in business. It doesn’t matter how much it fulfills you emotionally, it doesn’t matter how much passion you have for what you’re doing. You are in business, ultimately to make money. Now, it doesn’t always have to be a lot of money, but it has to be some money. Otherwise, you’ve just got a hobby.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 28:30
Having that call to action, having those closing conversations, are real challenge.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 28:42
We can go out there with an open heart and give and give and give and give. But until we ask, people don’t think about “Oh, wait, she needs clients too.”

Katherine McGraw Patterson 28:56
We’re just handing out value left and right. But if we don’t stop and say, “Oh, yeah, I have a programmer. Oh, yeah, I’m taking clients.” People aren’t smart. They don’t make those leaps in judgment unless you tell them what you want them to do. And I want you to engage me and give me money. That’s why I have a business. So, you have to find ways to do that. You can’t just assume that people will know that you’re looking for that type of engagement.

Jess Dewell 30:00
So when I think of success, I think of what it feels like, what it looks like, and the experience of it. Then this other piece of “Can I measure it? Do I see more engagement? Do I see less errors in the team? Do I see more collaboration versus everybody working in their own path.” So there are things that I can see and measure.

Jess Dewell 30:37
A critical element of success for me is how do we quantify it, whether it’s a direct measure, or an indirect measure. And the length of time that we would like to see some sort of a result.

Nathalie Gregg 32:02
Even though I’m focused on peak performance, humans still have to do the work.

Nathalie Gregg 32:09
I can’t block out everything else, I must be grateful, I must show gratitude, I must give them grace, you know, all those things as part of this project management process.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 32:57
We are human and we are emotional creatures. And so, understanding what your secretary wants to achieve in her job, she has goals and objectives and vision for herself and her job.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 33:30
That’s when the disengagement happens, and the turnover happens, is when you’re not really connecting everybody’s corporate position to their own personal goals. And certainly, as a business owner, connecting to your personal goals.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 33:48
We’ve all had jobs where we were making amazing money. And we were like, “I don’t want to go to work today,” because they weren’t connecting what we needed as that emotional creature to the outcome, which was the patient check in what we are achieving our job.

Nathalie Gregg 34:19
Jobs are like relationships. Sometimes you have to kiss a lot of frogs to get to the prince.

Jess Dewell 35:59
There are a couple of reasons cut loose. We might not like it. More importantly, we may have achieved what we needed to achieve. And now it’s time to let it go.

Nathalie Gregg 36:28
A lot of times our past performance will not get us to our new performance.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 37:15
Something might have brought you joy at some point, and you sat in that, and you’ve sat in it so long, it’s no longer joyful. It’s just comfort. It’s just your safe place. And so now you have to set a new challenge and a new thing to achieve, to get that feeling of joy again.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 40:35
I feel better about having those enormous things on my list, than a million little things that aren’t going to get me anywhere.

Jess Dewell 42:20
Maybe it’s just me, but I have to tell you, all you men out there, and this is a big accolade to my husband, I’m like, “How do you do that? How do not care as much as you don’t care?” And I don’t mean that in a bad way. I mean that in a “Please teach me how to do that” way.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 47:34
Entrepreneurs fall into the comparison trap, and then compare their step three to somebody else’s step 20.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 47:53
I always say, there’s no right answer, there’s only the right answer for you and your business, because everybody’s vision of success is completely different. So you can’t borrow somebody else’s success plan and expect it to work for you. You have a different client, you have a different product, you have different motivations.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 48:13
It seems like this big asked to figure out what it is that you’re doing. But once you do, it’s such a peaceful, exciting, energizing place to be, because you’re no longer comparing yourself to somebody else, or engaging in marketing or products or pricing that doesn’t serve you. Because you’re so clear on what it is you’re hoping to achieve, that you can align everything in your business, your systems, your networking, your market, everything comes from that vision of success. And what it is that it means to you uniquely, as opposed to the next life coach or next accountant or next, whoever is sitting at the table next to you at a networking event who has, you know, the same job. Because you’re to completely different people.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 49:37
For some people, it’s easier to just work for somebody else, because they don’t have the thing that you need to do entrepreneurship. And that’s okay, not everybody has to be a business owner.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 49:59
Don’t compare yourself or your success to somebody else’s success, and don’t borrow somebody else’s vision for you because it’ll never work.

Nathalie Gregg 50:58
People can smell you being inauthentic a mile away. And it never works. Crash and burn.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 51:41
You walk into a networking event or you walk into a business event, you can see those people who have their shit together. Like you can tell who in that room is so in alignment with their vision of success and what they need to do. People are intimidated by people like that. It’s that fearlessness. You’ve got nothing on me, I know exactly who I am and what I need to do.

Katherine McGraw Patterson 52:07
It’s an aura of success that surrounds you when you go certain about what it is that you want to achieve and how you’re going to get there. Maybe not how you’re going to get there, but how you’re going to try to get there.

Resources:

Tags:

collaboration, vision, values, purposeful action, boundaries, emotional intelligence, achieve, prioritize

What does “success” for the company look like to you?

Deciding for yourself what success looks like increases confidence in what and how you prioritize. This knowledge assists in communications across the board. The way we collectively understand and share organizational values has a direct impact on achievement. To discuss the look and feel of success, Jess Dewell hosts panelists Nathalie Gregg, a change agent, and Kathrine McGraw Patterson, a brand and business strategist.

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