Hi there. Good morning. My name is Brian Dowdy. I am the founder of be and Broom and the creator of the self leadership principles, which is what I am here to chat with you all about today.So I would love, we only have 20 minutes together and I promise you, they're going to um they're gonna cut me off right at 20 minutes. If you have any questions, if there's anything I can answer for you, if you have feedback, I would just be so excited uh to see you in the chat. So, self leadership principles. What is that? What does that mean? And why are we here? So, um self leadership principles I created out of um out of a need that I saw. So I, when I first became an entrepreneur back in 2018, I was a sales coach and I taught new entrepreneurs how to sell. And I put about 200 women, a really robust year long coaching program. And some of those women would go through that program and they would go on to build, you know, I have, I think one client who currently is like this close to a million dollars. Uh Three years later. Right. So we had some clients go on to make a million dollars. We have some clients that go on to make three or $400,000 a year. And we had some clients who were barely able to make their investment back in the program.

And then for a long time, I thought it was not me. I thought that was my fault. I wasn't a good coach. I wasn't providing them with the resources. Why was this woman able to have success? And this woman wasn't right. Um But what I learned was that it was not so much the curriculum or the access because they all had access to the same curriculum, they had access to the same coaching, they had access to the same resources. So why was one woman able to go on and make almost a million dollars and another woman um totally stuck, right? Not even able to make her investment back. And what that came back down to, um at least it might experience was her relationship with herself, right? And it's really, really important as we embark on our careers or in businesses that we have a really solid relationship with ourselves because we have to lead ourselves first before we can lead others. If we want somebody else to follow us, to respect us, to trust us, to see us, to follow us to uh be influenced by us. We first have to do that with ourselves. And so I'm gonna walk you through these six principles. I'm gonna walk you through the very quickly. Um, but the good news is, is we do have an ebook that I can leave you with, that you're able to download the principles.

Um, and a lot of other ways that you can continue to interact with me if you have questions around that. So I would love to hear for those of you if you want to pop in the chat, um where you're, where you're tuning in from what um what you do for a living. So I can just kind of cater some of my um examples to you. So if you feel comfortable sharing, I'd love to see that. Um But otherwise, let's get into the self leadership principles. So principle number one is self trust. We have been taughtt especially as women our entire lives to trust other people. We have been taught to trust the education system. We have been taught to trust our parents. We have been taught to trust. Uh you know, the society's prescription of success, we have been taught to trust. Uh You know, what the, what the career path should look like for each one of us, right? We have been told, this is how you attain success. This is how you climb the ladder in your career. This is how you're successful. So we have Northern Kentucky, Northern Kentucky, which is amazing. Tuning in from France. So cool. Um Washington DC. This is so exciting. Fantastic.

So you guys know this because you're smart, you're educated, you have great careers that a lot of what we put our trust and our faith in is outside of ourselves, right? We trust that if we just follow the steps, you know, we'll get where we want to go. But what that leads to is often a lack of trust with ourselves, right? So the first thing that we have to do in a self leadership perspective is we have to learn to trust ourselves. We have to learn to trust our ideas, we have to learn to trust. You know, when there's a feeling in your gut about that person that you're considering hiring and you're like, oh, this just isn't a good fit. We have to learn to trust that, right? When we're like, hey, I have this really amazing idea. We have to learn to like write it down and share it with your organization, right? We have to learn to trust ourselves first because we want our, our employer to trust us, right? We want um our families to trust us, but we first have to trust ourselves. So how do we build self trust? The first thing that we do is we learn to listen to ourselves, right? Those ideas that are rolling around in your brain, they're good. I promise, write them down, spend time by yourself thinking about what do I think? What do I feel? Not, what is my job? Tell me I should do what is, you know, what's my to do list say? But like, what do I really think and feel?

And when you start to spend time by yourself and with yourself, you're gonna start to build that trust. Um, I hate that this is the truth, but especially for us as women. Um, you know, the, the only person that, that we've lied to more on the planet or there's nobody we've lied to more on the planet than ourselves, right? We have a tendency to break from to ourselves often. So we have to start making and keeping commitments to ourselves. So whether it is the morning walk, you promised yourself, you would go on whether it was the four things on your to do list, you said you were gonna get done today, whether it was that follow up email that you promised you were going to send, whether it was that, you know, employee review that you said you were going to do, make commitments and keep them start small and get bigger.

And that's how we start to build that self trust muscle, but it really starts with spending time with ourselves and committing to ourselves, making commitments to ourselves. The second thing that we need to do to, to self lead is the self-awareness, right? Uh What's really amazing you guys, like I said, I'm just so impressed and so excited with who's here and who's part of this conversation. And, and for those of you that just hopped on, please, you know, interact. I want to hear from you. If you have questions as I'm talking, I know that I talk fast and I'm talking even faster today because they told me they're shutting me off in 20 minutes and I wanna make sure I get all the goodness um, out of our time together today. Um Catherine student in from the UK is so fun. Um So self awareness, right? It's really being aware of, of who you truly are as a human and I don't know about you. But in the trajectory of my career, I sort of felt like I lost my identity. So I had a, a 15 year corporate career before I became an entrepreneur, um selling marketing and advertising, what is now called the more tech industry. So selling marketing technology. And um you know, I was just going along, I was just going through the motions every single day.

I was just kind of taking life as it came at me. And what I didn't really have was the strong sense of self awareness. What are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? What do I really want? What's important to me in life? I was just going through every single day. Some days I felt if I was lucky just to frigging survive. And um when I learned that Hey, if I actually stop, like I said, in self trust, spend time with myself, build this self awareness about who am I? Who do I wanna be? What are my goals? How do I show up in the world and how do those things stack up with who I'm actually being today? And I learned that those two things were very separate, they were very, very different. So I had to have that self awareness of, OK, well, I'm saying that I want this in my career, but I'm doing this or I'm saying I want, I want to move to this. I want to relocate from here to here, but I'm not taking any of these steps to do that, right? So really owning that self awareness of what do I even want, who do I want to be? How do I want to advance my career? I, the biggest thing that I can tell you as women leaders in, in technology spaces in these roles that you all are in um is really being aware of. What do you want? What does your parents think that you should want?

What does your boss say the next step in your career is? But what do I want? And what action steps am I willing to take to get there? And that self awareness is gonna tell you, am I on the right path? Right? So for me, my corporate career was not the path, but I had to ask myself these tough questions to realize that I wasn't on the right path, right? I had to actually, you know, really think through, um you know, who I wanted to be and what that looked like. So the first thing we have to do is we have to build that trust with ourselves, right? Make commitments um with ourselves and keep them. And then we really start to have to ask ourselves the question, who am I? Who do I wanna be? How, how can I get where I want to go and what steps am I taking together? Right? So that self trust, self awareness. The third one is personal responsibility, right? Personal responsibility is really the idea that you are personally responsible for the results in your life. You are personally responsible. Are you in a job that you love? Are you in a job that you hate? Are you in a relationship that you love? Are you in a relationship that you hate? Are you living in a city that you love or are you living in a city that you hate?

But really owning the personal responsibility of I get to create this and this is my life. This is my career and I am old responsible for whether it goes well or whether it goes poorly and really owning that. And I don't want you to own this. Please hear me on this. I'm not asking you to own this from the perspective of I want you to beat yourself up and I want you to feel like garbage because you live in a city you don't love or maybe you're working for a company that you're not super happy um to work for. Right. And, and I hate to say that out loud, but it's true. Right. So many people are oftentimes working for companies or working for organizations that are not um that they don't feel good about that. They don't love. So what I want us to talk about is take that personal responsibility um and take that personal responsibility. I love this. Savannah says, I feel like I can't get through imposter syndrome to think about what I want or who I am any advice. Oh Savannah, I love that question. Thank you for your vulnerability and asking it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Um The first thing I would tell you is to just sit down and think and don't judge your answers. Kelly says the same. Yes, don't judge your answers, right?

So what I'm I'm guessing is happening for you, Savannah is as you sit down and think about what you want. You're, you've got a whole lot of outside influence. You're like, well, I really want to grow this way but you know, there's never been a woman in that role before or I really want this way. But the guy who has that job is like gonna be in it until he dies. So there's never going to be an opportunity for me or I really want this role, but I don't have enough experience to get there, right? Is that some of what's coming up for you as you think about who you are and where you wanna go? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. But I want you to write down what you want if like there was no judgment just really think about if there was no judgment if there's no judgment. Um Yes, OK, Sarah says yes, thank you so much. So Sarah's question was, I feel like I can't get through imposter syndrome to think about what I, what I who I am is what she said. And then Kelly said same. So yes, Sarah, thank you for that. So yeah, when we have this imposter syndrome so often, um it's because we are worried about outside circumstances.

So the exercise of really getting to know yourself is take out all the judgment, take out all of the judgment, all of the reasons why you think you can't and just say that there is no, there is no judgment here. What, what am I, who do I wanna be? How do I want to show up in the world and really start from there without judgment. And then if you're feeling really brave, write down what the judgments are, right? So if you're like, OK, well, I really want that role but you know, I don't have any experience and start asking yourself your question questions. Is that true? Is it really true? Um The manager will never die. Sandra says it's true. Right. But think about it, is it really true that I don't have the experience because sometimes the answers, yes. Sometimes the answers. No. Right. I, I have a friend right now who is a leadership coach and she's been coaching for 15 years and she feels like she doesn't have the experience because she wasn't in a hospital as a career coach. She was a career coach in a university. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Right. Like you have plenty of experience. It's just not in, not in a hospital, it was in education, right? It was in um higher education. So as a career coach and a counselor in a, in a university, right?

So see the difference, it's like you do genuinely have the experience just maybe not in this space. But when we start to list what the judgments are, oftentimes, Savannah, we will uh we will learn that those judgments actually aren't true. They are oftentimes stories that we're telling ourselves um about them. And if they are genuinely true, I don't have the experience, then the next question is how do I get the experience that I need? Um And then really start to get curious instead of judgment. So when it comes to imposter syndrome, for me, it's always about curiosity versus judgment, right? So we're not judging ourselves because we think we don't have experience or we don't know enough or we're not smart enough or whatever story you're telling yourself and ask, is that true?

And wonder why? I think that I wonder where that story is coming from. I wonder what I am myself, whose voice is in my head when I hear those things because oftentimes it's not yours. Right. Oftentimes it's a story that you were told in high school and you decided that you wanted to be a, you know, a software engineer and people were like, girls aren't software engineers, right? But it's not your voice, it's somebody else's voice. And to me that's where imposter syndrome comes from. So I love, love, love that question. Thank you so much, Savanna and keep them coming guys, I will answer them as I can. Um Katie says so true. So true, right? That voice is often not her own. So I'm gonna keep going. Um The next thing I'm gonna talk about. So we've talked about 33 steps of self leadership and guys, I'm gonna leave you with an ebook that breaks down this whole thing. So I know I'm bouncing around but I, I wanna make sure that I serve you well today. So that's my goal. Um But the, the fourth, so, so we've talked about self trust, self-awareness, personal responsibility. Now we're gonna talk about self concept. So self concept actually comes from the psychology world and it's what do you believe about yourself. This is where imposter syndrome comes in. Right?

Savanna is, what do you believe about your, if you believe I'm not good enough, if you believe I'm not smart enough, if you believe I'm never going to get to where I wanna go. It will be true. Right. But on the reverse side, if you believe I might not have the experience yet, but I'm willing to go get it or I am willing to, I'm really smart and I can learn, I can learn all sorts of new things. Right? Look what I've accomplished so far, right? So what stories do you tell yourself about yourself? That's your self concept. So I'll tell you a specific story. So I grew up in sales. That was my thing. And when I started my sales career at the age of 21 in Orlando Florida selling a radio advertising. Um I was the youngest woman on the team, um by about 15 years. And so I was always the baby, right? I was always the newbie. I was the rookie, um, whatever that looked like. Right. And I told myself that for a very long time, like probably about five years longer than I should have been career. I wore the, the badge of newbie of rookie for long period. That, that like my, my production was not of a rookie, it was not of a newbie, but it was how I was showing up because I kept telling myself the story that I was the newbie. I was the rookie.

I was showing that kind of helpless and that's what I got. Right. But once I started realizing that I'm not new anymore, I am not a rookie. I'm just really good at this. I know how to do this. I know how to put really great campaigns together for my clients. I know how to serve people really well. Um in doing that, you know, I realized that I could step into that role in a big way. So self concept is what is the story that you were telling about yourself? This is a really great journal exercise is put it on the piece of paper and like current self and desired self, right? So currently, what do you say yourself? Right? Not smart enough, not good enough, don't know enough, need more education. Um Still too new, not experienced enough. Um stuck all those different things that you tell yourself, right? And, and this, this comes from all of us, right? That I don't know if there's a time in life where this goes away. Um But that's it. And then I want you on the other side of that piece of paper, what do you want to believe about yourself? Do you want to believe that you are amazing that you're smart that you get every job that you apply for that people love working with you. You get amazing results that your boss is always blown away by the work that you do.

That you always show up as the best version of yourself that you are a really great leader that people love working for you, that people love working with you, that your clients think you're amazing. If you serve clients, if you're, if you're touch, actually touching the client or your team thinks you're amazing or your coworkers, right? Because that's really when it comes to personal responsibility, right? Self concept is what you want to believe about yourself because when you believe it, other people will believe it, right? And so our final two, our final two self leadership principles are emotional intelligence and growth mindset. And I'm gonna talk about them together in the essence of time.

Um So emotional intelligence is really understanding the power that we have over our emotions, right? So many of us feel like we don't have a lot of control. That person was rude to me. I'm angry, that person cut me off in traffic. I'm mad. That person called me a bad name. And um I'm hurt and we think that we have no control over those emotions. Emotional intelligence is actually being aware of your own emotions, knowing that you have control over those emotions and how you react to them, but also being aware of other people's emotions, right? Because so often we are so driven by our emotions that we wind up with really distorted concepts of ourselves and of other people, right? So impostor syndrome going back to Savannah is really great question. Imposter syndrome is often just a misunderstanding, a misjudgment of ourselves, right?

So this idea that emotional intelligence is really being aware enough to know it like OK, II I, I'm really kind of angry right now but I'm, I'm pissed off because this guy cut me off in traffic. But that's really why I'm mad. I'm mad because I'm driving to a job I really don't enjoy or I'm mad because you know, my kids didn't do what I asked them to do this morning. I'm not mad about the person who cut me off in traffic, but really being aware of that is going to make you a better employee. It's gonna make you a better leader, it's gonna make you a better team member. All of those different things is really understanding that you fully control your emotions and how you react to them. And that ties directly into growth mindset, which is principle number six, which is the idea that, you know, we always get to change. We always get to grow. If we don't like where we are, we can change it, right? We can learn something new, we can try something new, we can experience something different in life if we choose to. We're not stuck. You guys are so smart, you're so brilliant. Just reading your job descriptions of the comments are a little intimidating, right? As somebody who runs like a women's leadership organization over here on the internet, right?

But it is so easy to feel like, oh, well, I'm stuck or I have to buy my time or all of those different things. But I really want you to encourage with a growth mindset, with the idea that I can always grow, I can always learn, I can always achieve whatever it is. I desire to achieve. If I'm willing to put in the steps to make it happen, that is the true magic of the growth mindset. So like I said, they are 100% going to cut me off right at um 50 minutes after the hour. So I have three minutes to answer any questions. I'm also going to give you guys a link. I'm popping it in here right now. Um Let me know if you guys can see this. I'm passing it to everyone. It's uncensored, consulting.com/leadership, um uncensored consulting.com/leadership. You can download a copy of the self leadership principles.

Um And Sandra says, oh, Anne said, OK, Anne says the best session for me today. Oh, I'm so excited. Thank you, Sandra says your presentation. Um inspired me to jump from my seat and start to be active to become the person I wanna be. Thank, thank you, Sandra racist. Thank you. It worked. Thank you. This session was amazing. Amazing session. Oh my gosh, you guys, I'm so excited. Just remember that you are smart that you are strong, that you are driven and that your skills are so needed in this world and really trust yourself to um to put it out there. However, that works for you, right? Whatever it is that you want to go after just stepping into that most confident version of yourself, the version of you that already has the job, the promotion, the income, the team, whatever you're going after work to become her every single day. Um And that's where the magic really, really happens. So thank you so much. Um For Zenna says, this is going to help me grow my start up. I love that. So guys, um Yes, Marsha says, I feel like you addressed this session just for me. I'm dropping the link again. It's uncensored, consulting.com/um leadership, uncensored consulting.com/leadership to download that free book. Um Thank you so much, Jennifer said she said two back to back great sessions. Um You guys are amazing. Thank you for the work that you do.

Thank you for showing up for women in tech. It's really powerful. Um And we need more and more brave, exciting women like you. So thank you for your time. Thank you for being here. I hope you all have an amazing week. Um And I will see you all or I may not see you all, but I hope I see you in our email list. We have a great Facebook group. So thank you Lizabeth. Um Thank you, Catherine Far Zona. Thank you. Have a good one, guys. Take care.