Best Way to Succeed in Business

Episode 928: Best Way to Succeed in Business, with Kathy Caprino

Best way to succeed in business? Join this discussion with Kathy Caprino on how she defines the best way to succeed in business.

Kathy Caprino, M.A. is an international career, executive and leadership coach on the best way to succeed in business, writer, speaker and trainer dedicated to the advancement of women in business. She is a former corporate Vice President, trained marriage and family therapist, seasoned coach and the author of Breakdown, Breakthrough. Kathy is also the Founder of Ellia Communications, Inc., a premier career coaching and consulting firm which offers career and leadership development programs including the Amazing Career Project online course, her Finding Brave podcast, and the Amazing Career Certification training for coaches. Kathy is a leading contributor on Forbes, Thrive Global and LinkedIn, a TEDx and keynote speaker, and a top media source on careers, leadership, and women’s issues.

For more info, visit kathycaprino.com and connect with Kathy on Twitter, FB, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.

What you will learn from this episode about the best way to succeed in business:

• How career crisis after career crisis led Kathy to realize she urgently needed a change, and how she realized her focus and passion was to help professional women achieve the best way to succeed in business
• Why professional expectations and attitude expectations differ between men and women
• Kathy shares insights from her interview with Susan Sobbott, President of American Express OPEN, on how men and women need different things to succeed in business
• How Kathy defines “power gaps” and why many women struggle to speak about how they stand out and what their special skills and talents are
• Kathy defines her seven power gaps and explains why each is a problem that many women in business experience
• Why it is important to recognize your talents and abilities that will contribute to achieving the best way to succeed in business, rather than being modest
• Why scary experiences are an opportunity to grow and strengthen yourself and should be embraced rather than avoided
• Why the blocks and challenges you experience now are often a result of past trauma that you experienced at an earlier point in your life

Resources:

• Website: https://kathycaprino.com
• Podcast: https://findingbrave.org
• Kathy Caprino’s article on Susan Sobbott: https://bit.ly/3ctRcwQ
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/FindingBraveToday/
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/kathycaprino/
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/ellia-communications/
• Twitter: @kathycaprino
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/kathycaprino/
• The best way to succeed in business is to slow down and breathe

Additional Resources:

• Sell With Authority by Drew McLellan and Stephen Woessner: https://amzn.to/39y7x13
• Predictive ROI Free Resource Library: https://predictiveroi.com/resources/
• Stephen Woessner’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stephenwoessner/
• Listen to a similar podcast about the best way to succeed in business from Predictive ROI

 

 

Best Way to Succeed in Business: Full Episode Transcript

 

Get ready to find your recipe for success from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.

 

Good morning. I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI and your host for Onward Nation, where I interview today’s top business owners so we can learn their recipe for success, how they built and how they skilled their business. In fact, my team at Predictive ROI well, you know, we’ve been talking about it for a while now. We’re constantly rebuilding and scaling our free resources library on Predictive ROI outcomes.

 

So you can download free and practical guides for everything from search engine optimization to how to use LinkedIn to generate leads. How to use the Trojan horse’s sales strategy. How to build out your client avatar brand new handbook. Culture values. It’s all there. These are all successful strategies we’ve compiled from the brilliant insights, the smarts of our very generous guests.

 

Just go to Predictiveroi.com/resources, and whatever your request, we will send it right to your inbox. 

 

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Best Way to Succeed in Business: Kathy Caprino’s Introduction

 

Before we welcome today’s very special guest, Kathy Caprino. I want to share some additional context. And Judy Robinette, if you happen to be listening. Thank you, my dear friend, for making this introduction. But Onward Nation, if you have ever said to yourself, you know what I want more, I want different, I want better.

 

Well, then this conversation with Kathy is for you because she is all about not just creating impact, but she’s all about internal power. She’s all about being able to access external power. She’s all about being able to. Then once you have it, to embrace it, Onward Nation, to embrace the power and not feel guilty about that. To actually embrace what you’ve been blessed to have, to help you build and scale your business.

 

She is a senior contributor at Forbes. She’s a TEDx speaker. She’s a contributor to Thrive Global and of course, on LinkedIn. She’s the author of the brilliant book Breakdown Breakthrough. She’s working on another book that’s going to come out next year entitled Close Your Power Gap. She’s a career executive leadership coach, and she’s dedicated to the advancement of women in business.

 

So without further ado, welcome to you Onward Nation, Kathy.

 

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Best Way to Succeed in Business: Kathy’s Path and Journey

 

Oh, I’m so happy to be here, Steve. And thank you and hello, Onward Nation. Wow, you guys are rocking it. 920 episodes. Here we are. It has been a fabulous journey. Wow. The learning and the giving. It is just so inspirational. So somebody, once asked me, like, what do you think you’ll ever stop?

 

And I’m like, why would I get like, what a funny question, right? You know, it’s like, I get to hang out with smart people like Kathy. It’s like going to school multiple times a week. I mean, why would I not do that? I feel the same way. I think I’m on episode 75 on my podcast. Or maybe it’ll be a few more episodes when this comes out, but I regularly tear up and cry.

 

Absolutely. You know, I’m so moved and changed and I have my ideas challenged right there on the call. It is like school life. School. Yeah, absolutely. And I never want to stop learning. Your bio is impressive. What the work that you do, with women in business is beyond inspiring, in fact, to call it inspiring. It just doesn’t feel like enough to call it that.

 

That’s kind of you. Well, it’s true, so. But, it’s only a portion of your story to take us behind the curtain, Kathy, and tell us more about you, your path, your journey. And then we’ll dive in. Awesome. All right. Here it is. I had an 18 year corporate career in marketing. And, on the outside, it was successful, made a lot of money.

 

Global initiatives manage staff, but on the inside it was not successful. And when I hit 40 and I’m 59 now, I can’t believe how that time flies. Those bumps turned into a full blown crisis. What am I talking about? Gender discrimination, sexual harassment, zero work life balance, chronic illness. I had something called an infection of the trachea. Trachea itis.

 

Who’s ever heard of such a thing? For years. Every three months, I would be in so much pain in my throat, lose my voice. So sick. I was not in the fabric of my little kids’ lives. They’re 21 and 24 now. It was a mess. Plus narcissistic colleagues and bosses. And I didn’t even know what narcissism was. But I swear to you, all of it wasn’t as bad as waking up every day saying, is this what I’m going to be doing with my life?

 

It felt so meaningless and purposeless. You know, having children was an amazing part, but that wasn’t everything for me. I wanted to be a contributor, a professional. So the part of the story that really applies to what I’m doing now is I tried to get help. I saw a therapist, I saw a career counselor. So we’re talking about a lot of years ago. I knew I was in trouble when after the $1,000 assessment test, the guy comes out and says, well, the tests show you’re in the right job, you’re in the right fit.

 

And I’m like, oh my God, let me poke my eye out with the stick. So I didn’t do anything. And that’s lesson number 100. You know, one of 10 million. If you don’t do anything to change the crisis you’re in, it’s only going to get really worse. And it did. And so I bought a bigger house. That was my answer.

 

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Best Way to Succeed in Business: Becoming Who You Want To Be

 

All right, let’s move to a more affluent area. My husband at the time was a famous jazz percussionist. He still is. So I thought he was creative. And I’m the moneybags. That’s how I saw myself. One month after moving into that home was nine over 11, and one month later I was laid off and I had been promised by the president, stay and buy the biggest house you can.

 

Our company had kind of a mortgage division because you have an amazing career and I got laid off a month later and it was so devastating to me. Stephen I had a little breakdown. Like, I can’t return to corporate life. I feel so abused. I feel so out of control. And I’m in my therapist’s office. And he said, I’ve said this 10,000 times.

 

I know from where you sit, it’s the worst crisis you’ve ever faced. But from where I sit, it’s the first moment you can choose who you want to be. Wow. World. Wow. And he said, who do you want to be? And I love this question because my mind went completely blank as all my clients who I ask, what do you really want to be?

 

They say, I don’t know. I said, I don’t know, but I want to be you. And he said, what does that mean to you? What a great coaching question. What does that mean? And I said, I want to help people, not hurt people and be hurt. That’s what came out of my mouth. And from that minute he said, look, I’ve known you two years.

 

I think you might make a great therapist. And so what’s so interesting is when you’re really open, sometimes it’s just one conversation that will totally transform your life. And I became a therapist, a marriage and family therapist, got the masters, loved every minute of the training. What happened, however, and this is all about small business. I put all my eggs in that basket and then as I started doing it, rape, incest, pedophilia, suicidality, drug addiction, attempted murder.

 

One guy, his mother calls, he’s not coming in. He’s in jail. He tried to kill him. What am I doing? And the pivotal moment about four years after being a therapist, my client called up and said, I’m driving my car right now, and I’m going to kill myself. I’m going to wrap my car around a tree. And Stephen, I said to myself in, you know, the split millisecond.

 

I’m not equipped for this and I don’t want this in this can’t be my life snapped out of it helped her. She’s much better now. But I said to my husband, I don’t want to be a therapist anymore. Really? $30,000 masters. What now? But I had found coaching, and what I noticed was I’d have all sorts of issues. Depression. 

 

But when professional women would be on the calendar. I would love it. Yeah. And I had this special way, like a shortcut, because I’d been there and I knew what they were going through. So I started to say, I don’t know what’s going on here. It looks like an epidemic of challenges for professional women. I don’t know what to do, but I want to bring solutions to the table.

 

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Best Way to Succeed in Business: Getting To Know About Professional Challenges

 

So from that minute on and I had done market research and corporate life, I began to research and I started to write my book, Break Down, Break Through in this wonderful editorial consultant said, you know, this is fine, this book, but it’s not your big idea. And you need to research, and I can be very egotistical. Like, what?

 

What do you mean? I need to research? I know everything about professional challenges. Well, how ridiculous, and I didn’t, and I interviewed 100 women across the country and they taught me so much about what a professional crisis is for women and how we overcome it. So that was book one. Now it’s 13 years of working with over 15,000 women and being in the media and writing on Forbes and interviewing brilliant people like you.

 

And I do feel like, one of my talents is I can take chaos and create a curriculum from it, distill down what is the most important thing we have to know here. So, you know, my latest, as you mentioned, is I really believe women because of how we’re trained, not because of how we come out of the chute, but societal cultural training in our family, training about what it is to be a woman.

 

We shun power. We don’t embrace it. We’re afraid of it, in part because we’re punished when we have it. I mean, every woman you’ll ever speak to who is powerful has been called a bit when your colleague over here is getting promoted for that same behavior. And this is not to bash men, you know, you are a prime example of wonderful, inspiring men who are role models and leaders.

 

But there is the feeling like they’re swimming upstream societally. Right. And which on the flip side of that, that that male counterpart might be looked at. Oh, shrewd, decisive, ruthless business owner. Whereas the flip side doesn’t hold true for a woman or if those same words are used, they mean something different and they’re not flattering.

 

Right? And that’s not fair. Obviously. I did a Forbes interview with the behavioral science guys, Joseph Granny and David Maxfield, and they had a video of a woman saying the exact same words as a man. And it was I don’t agree with the direction this board is going. And both men and women viewed her competency and value. It dropped massively and he’s dropped a little.

 

So we don’t even like forceful men. But yeah, so this is you know, we live in a patriarchal society. And again, this is not to bash men, but we have to understand that we think women should be vulnerable, submissive, humble, accommodating. And the flip side is we think men should be strong, assertive, not vulnerable, not weak. And that’s crushing for men too.

 

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Best Way to Succeed in Business: Daily Challenges of Female Entrepreneurs

 

Absolutely. So, let’s think about it. Let me ask you, put your business owner hat on here for a second. You know, so your therapist hat on here for a second. So let’s talk about from your perspective you mentioned an epidemic of challenges. When you think of the woman business owner, what are some of those unique challenges that she has to face every single day?

 

And the reason why I’m asking you this is, you know, in our pre-interview chat, I mentioned to you women business owners, we have them in droves here Onward Nation. About 60 or 70% of our audience happen to be rocking awesome women business owners. So I think that your perspectives here in the trenches are going to be so helpful for our audience.

 

Awesome. So I’m not just making this up. I did an interview at one time, I believe her name was Susan Starbuck, who is Amex Open’s president. Okay. And I asked her, what’s the difference between male and female entrepreneurs? And I couldn’t wait. And she said, there’s a number of differences. And if you have show notes, I can link to this.

 

Yeah, absolutely. That’ll be awesome, she said. Number one, the reason men start businesses is to make money. The reason women do it is because it’s tied somehow to their story, meaning purpose. Number two, when you ask a man in his business, do you think you’re capable of scaling this? Usually the men say 100%. Usually the women say, I’m not sure, I don’t know.

 

Number three, if you ask a man, how are you with the numbers? Are you comfortable with many small business owners who are men, come out of finance or come out of some degree of running a business of some capacity, and that maybe that’s changed now since I interviewed or five years ago. But what I see is women say I’m not comfortable with the numbers, and there’s a few other differences.

 

What I’ve seen is what we’re going to talk about. I think probably my challenge is number one, boundaries. Saying no, making the hard decisions about who to hire, who to go with. You know, one thing I want to share with women, there is so much guru expertise out there that is such, it’s such not guru expertise.

 

Insert beep sound right there. Yeah. And Bleep and you have to know yourself and you have to listen to what this person is saying, male or female. And I’ve listened to bad advice. I’ve listened to advice that goes against who I really am. For instance, I’m really good one on one and I needed to scale that. If I want a business that’s going to approach a million, I don’t want to just be doing one on one.

 

And that’s one of the biggest mistakes I made. But I listen to people saying, get out of it completely, do a completely passive income program. They don’t work for me. I need to be somehow involved. And it isn’t me being egotistical. Yeah, you think you need to be involved in that? So much of this cookie cutter advice is terrible.

 

But you need to be strong to say, you know, I know he’s saying that and he has a million followers and he says he’s making 5 million, but I don’t feel right about it. But a lot of that is lying so we know that, right? They’re not bringing that home. You know, in most of those big houses and cars and boats and all of that, those are rented Onward Nation.

 

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Best Way to Succeed in Business: Engagement Can Be the Key to Success

 

Right? Right. So one is boundaries that I know where you end and I begin and I know what is right for me. And I’m going to listen to what you have to say and incorporate it in a way that’s authentic. I think we need strength with that. And I think scaling is challenging for women. I’ve heard many women say delegating is and it’s really hard for me.

 

So it’s only been this year that I’ve found the right hand person. Here’s another problem. I think a lot of women are fantastic, engages. And, you know, part of how I built 912,000 followers on LinkedIn is I engage with almost everybody who writes a comment. I envy it, but I can’t keep it up. And that’s a boundary problem.

 

I feel like I’m letting someone down if I’m not responding to every couple. I can’t have 30,000 likes or, you know, 400 comments. I can’t be in there at two in the morning writing to everybody. But I’m all worked up about am I letting people down? And the engagement was what helped me be successful. I really believe these are more typically female problems.

 

What do you think? I don’t disagree that they’re more prevalent for a woman business owner. And then I think that we could also put it into the category of people who actually care, are people who have empathy, people who are compassionate, people who want to create impact and not out of greed, but because they actually really care about their audience and they care about their customers and so forth.

 

And I would hope that I’m in that category even though I’m a male. And so I think it is about, you know, somebody being consciously aware that it’s not about me as the business owner, and it’s about me serving our Onward Nation audience, or about me serving or Predictive ROI clients. How can we double down this year to be a better service to them?

 

And it doesn’t have to do with me, you know, riding around the Mediterranean on a super awesome boat. It’s not about me at all. It’s about them. I love that, and I think we were mentioning before, I always knew that if I’m going to do this, I’m not cheap to work with privately and my programs aren’t cheap. I always knew I didn’t just want to serve wealthy people.

 

What am I doing that doesn’t work for me, for someone else? Fine. So, I also am so committed to having a plethora of free and low cost resources that can transform people, because my value is not just wealthy people. I want to serve wealthy women. So I think part of this is you have to understand.

 

And can I push back a little on the comment you made? Steve, I think I know how you meant it, but I do think we have to look at what is a good life. What is success on my terms? Oh yeah, and if I do so in that way it is about you. It is business. So, you know, if you’re killing yourself, doing it in a way that, you know, and I’ve been there where I’m all of a sudden so busy, there’s no possible way I can do this.

 

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Best Way to Succeed in Business: Naming Your Business

 

Well, something has to change. I see your point with that. And so just, you know, because you and I didn’t chat about this in our pre-interview in the green room. So Predictive ROI am I in every single one of my teammates? We have about 20 team members who are predictive.

 

What I would tell you is that from day one, I never, ever wanted to create a company that was the Stephen Woessner show ever. It was always 100% about the team, always. And so when I think about the business that we’re creating. Sure. Do I get some benefit from that?

 

Because I own the joint. Of course I get that. But for me, at my core it is always about the team and how the team can grow and so forth. And we grow through serving our clients and through serving our audience and all of that. So just an additional layer of content and another.

 

Can I add another layer on that? Sure. I interviewed a fellow, on my podcast who said, if you name your company your name, usually you want the attention for and I didn’t like that because and so I’m hoping this is helpful, Onward Nation. When I first started my business, I wanted to call it Leah Communication’s Leah for the word she, the French word meaning Elle.

 

And it’s named after my kids, Julia and Elliott, so I wanted to name it something I adore. Awesome. And I called it communications. Not because it’s funny, I wasn’t even a writer then. So a lot of people are like, aren’t you a coach? Why is it called that? But I was learning at the time. You can’t not communicate.

 

Everything is communication. So I loved it. You know, I probably would do things differently now. But what happened was it started to revolve around the brand of Catholic Reno. And I never had come out of the chute wanting that. I always thought it was not going to be me, but as you know, my website is Kathy Caprino now, and it has turned into, you know, information and products that come pretty much from Kathy Caprino.

 

But I want people to acknowledge that that doesn’t mean you’re all egotistical and a narcissist, and it’s all got to be about you. Amen. Do you agree with that? I do agree with it. 

 

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Best Way to Succeed in Business: Having A Succession Plan

 

And so part of our business strategy with Predictive and why it was and Stephen Woessner and associates was because we were building a company that at some point, and we’re still on this trajectory that at some point we would sell the business and I didn’t want to have a five year out as an indentured servant by the acquiring company.

 

I wanted to make sure that we had a succession plan in place. I have a business partner that we have a leadership team. We have a process and so forth. So that is why that acquiring company, hopefully at some point in ten years is what our map is that they would be able to buy a Predictive Stephen Lee’s and it isn’t the Stephen Woessner show ever, because I have an incredible team.

 

And the reality is, I don’t do much client work. I have the good fortune to be able to hang out with super smart people like Kathy, because I have an incredible team of experts who do all this stuff. So and that’s and that’s 100% by design. Love that, love it. What a beautiful vision. Well, you know, and it certainly isn’t all, you know, unicorns running through the meadows and rainbows and all of that.

 

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Best Way to Succeed in Business: Closing Your Power Gaps

 

But, so let’s talk about your book. This coming out now, you know, close your power gap and thank you. And the reason why I say that is because, you know, when you and I were again in the pre-interview in the green room, we were talking about internal power, external power, embracing power.

 

And then being able to understand that when you have the power, that’s okay. To have it, because that gives you the ability to create impact. You shouldn’t feel guilty about that. So let’s start to kind of slice that apart. Let’s talk about the gaps first. And then we’ll kind of go a little bit deeper there.

 

So what are the gaps that you see? All right. So here they are. And let me just say it’s not okay to have power. It’s essential to have power. So you know I’m really asking not to give you permission ladies I’m saying you got to go get it and feel it. So the first is gap number one.

 

I don’t recognize my nature. I don’t recognize my talents, abilities and accomplishments. What I mean by that is I have something called a career path assessment. Okay. It’s 11 pages of questions I wish someone had asked me. And when I look at this assessment, I can tell in about ten minutes more about your career than you know about your career.

 

Really? And there’s a question: how do you stand out? What are your special talents? I can’t tell you. How many women? Can’t they leave it blank? Really? And they will say they’ll have a private session with me and say, I don’t really know what I’m good at. And then they will have just said the functions that they performed in their jobs.

 

I’m a project manager. I brought in $5 million in new revenue. I revitalize fading. I’m like, those are your skills. Those are how you stand out. And they’ll say, but I don’t know that I’m special. We are all special. Every one of us. We’re all a thumbprint. So that’s number one. You have something interesting to say about this, though?

 

In a minute. Number two is communicating from fear, not strength. Okay. And before I go forward, the first chapter of the book is what your childhood taught you to be unless you unlearned it. Period. Full stop. So where did we learn to communicate from fear? Well, a lot of it. There’s a lot of narcissism in the world today, and a lot of us say that 10% of the population has either borderline personality disorder or narcissist personal narcissistic personality disorder, or both.

 

Wow. Well, I even believe the number is much higher because narcissists don’t tend to get therapy and diagnosis. But even if it’s 10% of the population, that’s more into the adult children of narcissists. And so many of us, including women, are raised that you can’t speak up powerfully, that you’re going to get punished, that you’re going to get sidelined or you’ve had a bad experience where you did speak up and it didn’t go well.

 

So that’s number two. Number three is reluctance to ask for what you deserve. You know, the study that made me fall off my chair is they looked at MBA students and 57% of male MBA students right out of school negotiated their first salary. Only 7% of women did well right off the bat. You’re hundreds of thousands of dollars behind in your career, but it’s not just jobs and promotions.

 

I would like this plum assignment. I would like to be transferred to another department. You know, we don’t ask numbers for isolating from influential support. The research shows that men are more naturally talented at this, that they look at not just a mentor, but who’s got the power in the organization. And they go right there. Women are not looking at that as much, but we have to get influential support.

 

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Best Way to Succeed in Business: Keep Going Despite The Setbacks

 

The person who, when you’re not in the room, is going to say, Stephen’s your guy, Kathy’s your woman, but we don’t know how to do that. Number five is acquiescing instead of saying, stop the behavior that’s wrong, that is going on around you, to you or to others. You know, I mentioned in the green room, I had an email from, senior VP that was downright right off the bat, sexual harassment.

 

And I deleted it before I left. The company would you? I know you and I talked about this a little bit. Did you, in looking back on that, delete it was one of the reasons you deleted it, because you were embarrassed that you had even received it? No, it wasn’t that. It was. It was a shame.

 

Yeah. That I was waiting till after being laid off that I was going to swoop around and Yeah. Okay. But why was I feeling ashamed? The HR people wouldn’t have supported me. The president at the time wouldn’t have supported me. Why am I feeling shame that I didn’t take this guy on so. Oh my gosh, people, we women, we and men, we have to say stop.

 

And the best way is to go see a lawyer outside your company. And people are like, I’m not litigious, I don’t want to say, I’m not saying sue. I’m saying speak to a lawyer about this is what’s happening with me. I feel like I feel like something’s really off and nobody has the right to treat somebody else like that.

 

Oh, come on. But we don’t. It’s so systemic. We did. I really didn’t know what was happening to me. What is this? I really didn’t understand. Oh it’s hard, number six is wow. And this is what I want to share. Number six is losing sight of your most thrilling dream for your life. And I want to tell you, I mean, I got to tell you, number seven.

 

That means you knew what you wanted. You knew you wanted to be, you know, a bestselling author. You knew you wanted to write a screenplay. You knew you wanted to start a business. But life happened. You have kids, you have a big house. And then we lose sight of that. We just give up on it.

 

And then three decades later, we look back on it and say, why don’t I ever do that thing right? And it’s so far away from me, and I’ll never be able to have it. Number. I’m choking up. Number seven is allowing the past to define and affect you still. And the real word is trauma. And many of us have had it in our childhoods, in early adult life, in our work life.

 

And it’s affecting us more than we know. So what’s interesting is I believe that number one is the most common with women, because I work with women on their LinkedIn profiles, on their resumes and how they talk about themselves in interviews and how they see themselves. And to me, they don’t understand how great they are. But I just released a survey and, on the first day, 200 people took it.

 

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Best Way to Succeed in Business: Creating Reasons for You to Be Hired

 

The number one is losing sight of your thrilling dream. That’s the most prevalent for people so far. So I think what that says is we don’t recognize that. We don’t recognize how great we are. I mean, the average person doesn’t walk around knowing that they don’t know that they’re talented and gifted, but they do know I’m not living the life I came here to live.

 

That okay, so that hit me like a ton of bricks, especially because then when we’re thinking about a business owner who. So gap number one, I don’t recognize my talents and abilities and everything that gets bundled into that. I mean, I sit here now, I just put like my marketing hat on and I’m like, well, if you’re a business owner and you have to all be about differentiation, competitive advantage and all of that kind of stuff, how do you not just get blended in with the crowd if you haven’t mastered how to get out of gap one?

 

And I’ll even say it in women. All right, let’s talk about your personal brand, because I train coaches as well. You have to talk about how you’re different. There’s a million coaches out there. So I will say and I’ve said it in talks and, you know, live. Look, when someone says to me and I, this is not bragging, I hope you feel that way.

 

If someone says to me, why should we hire you? I’ll say there’s four reasons. Number one, I had a high level corporate career. I’ve lived what that is. Number two, I’ve studied women’s issues and written a book about it. Number three, I’m a trained therapist and I go deeper than the average coach. Number four, I’m an entrepreneur and I have lived everything that an entrepreneur does wrong.

 

So I’ll say to the audience, do you feel like that’s bragging? And it’s a good one, the woman raised your hand and said, yes. And we all laughed. I’m like, oh gosh, that wasn’t the answer. I wanted to. I said, why does that feel like bragging? She goes, because I was trained and raised by my family. You don’t talk about yourself, which is perfect.

 

A perfect segue, but it’s fact. It’s, you know, accurate, it’s not accurate. And I talk about in my Ted talk, time to brave up, write down the 20 facts of you, what you have done that is irrefutable, that’s measurable that no one can say, well, why doesn’t she think she’s so hot? It’s irrefutable that I’ve done these things.

 

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Best Way to Succeed in Business: How To Square Up With Gap One

 

So the cool thing about being really clear about your gifts is it’s a filter if you don’t want that. I was a VP or that I’m a trained therapist. Then you’ll move on to another coach, right? So it’s so important that you can say these things and not think like, oh, I sound like I’m bragging. So how does somebody square with gap one?

 

How does somebody like it? Because my guess is you made a lot of connections with our organization, business owners who were thinking, oh, I have these gaps. So how does somebody what’s the right word to say? Like fix it. Fill it? Like how close the gap? I mean, how does somebody do that? So, you know, this is where working one on one, it really is very effective in that I can sense because I’ve had all these challenges I can sense where you’re gapped.

 

Okay. And you know I’ve interviewed Tony Robbins on down. Everyone’s gapped. Even if you’re, trillionaire I can feel their gaps. So, but if number one is, I don’t recognize. What I’d love you to do is take my free career path assessment. Okay? And when you get to what? What are you talented at? And you can’t answer it?

 

Go back and look at every job you’ve ever done, what you did, what you loved and what you hated, what you loved. You were probably pretty good at and what you loved and what you were recognized for is probably what you’re great at. Although we can be very great at skills we hate to use, I was good at managing a pal.

 

I hate it. So what we do want to separate and I think you should, as a small business owner, look at what you love to do. Look at what you’re great at, what you love doing and what you don’t want to do anymore. So for instance, for me, I need to know. Well, let me give you a perfect example, okay.

 

Running a retreat with international bestselling author Lauren Ashburn, who sees angels. We sent out an email. She’s in Ireland. She sent out one email and the things sold out in less than 24 hours. 25 women were talking. I’m taking or going to Ireland. Well, here’s what I realized. I am very good at orchestrating the details of a trip to Ireland within a retreat.

 

I do not like orchestrating the details. I can’t stand orchestrating the details, so I will never do it like this again. Ever. So what we want to understand is not just what we’re great at, but what makes the time fly, what makes us feel like we’re alive. We’re here where we’re meant to be. And I feel that’s what you want to leverage in your business.

 

I don’t mean you have to do it yourself, but you want to leverage how you’re magically of service. What do you think, Stephen? I don’t disagree with that, at all. But as you were going through that, I was thinking, okay, maybe this is just sort of, trans. Apparently this is how my brain works.

 

Yeah, there’s. You were sharing that. I’m thinking, okay, what’s the skill there? What’s the skill there? What’s the skill there? Like, how do I do that? How do I do that? How do you do what? When were you thinking that? When I was speaking, When? When we’re talking about, like, being able to truly identify the talents and abilities I like, where I like where you went off.

 

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Best Way to Succeed in Business: Kathy’s Career Path Before

 

We can go back to your career of when you did something really great and then when that felt good. But not only that, you did it great, but that it also felt good doing it like your piano example. And so it is that the exercise like to really that’s one that’s the first exercise.

 

There’s many things that are okay. Here’s another one. I really believe that who you were at 16 is who you are now. So you say that’s not true. My mother and father suppressed me. They made me become an engineer. And I’m really a singer. But if I look at myself at 16, okay, I was a strong communicator. I was in English, you know, I read books, I was a good writer.

 

I was a journalist, I was a singer. So I was a performer. I knew I was passionate about figuring out why people do what they do. My dad was a scientist, said, good Lord, you’re always trying to figure out what people do, why they do it. Number 416 year old Stephen would come to me, boys and girls, can I talk to you?

 

And they’d come over. Wow. And they would. They would ask me, look, we’re thinking of running away. My boyfriend and I or whatever, or I don’t know how to talk to this girl. And I would say to my mom, I’m 16. Why are they asking me these questions? But I think even then I had a therapeutic ear somehow.

 

Clearly that was me and I did want to make a big impact. I felt like I had a mission, but I, you know, I didn’t put it in those terms at age 16. When I look at the jobs that I had for 18 years that I hated, they didn’t tap into any of that. When I look at the work I do now that I love, it taps into all of that.

 

Absolutely. So I do believe now that doesn’t mean if you play, I’m a singer and I still sing and I’ve made a little money singing, I’ve sung backup for Liza Minnelli in a big, you know, Sony recording. I whatever. That doesn’t mean you’re going to make a living doing that. There’s things that are passionate that you love, that remain hobbies and need to remain hobbies.

 

I don’t enjoy getting paid to sing at your wedding, you know what I mean? So we do. It’s not just, oh, I was a great drummer. I’m going to be a drummer. There’s more teasing out. But I really do believe that. Who? You were young. Your gifts were apparent. Unless you were really suppressed. What do you think? I think this is interesting.

 

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Best Way to Succeed in Business: Always Do The Thing That You Wanted in Life

 

Well, interesting from. Well, one, when you said the 16, I immediately thought, well, boy, I hope that’s not true for me. What is it? But am I right? Were there some gifts that emerged when you were young? So what do you love now? Oh, for sure. I think maybe I was just a bit of a late bloomer.

 

At 16, I was a train wreck. At 18, I was an airman in the Air Force, and and and and was given all of the structure, the systems, the recipe, the discipline, all of that I still carry forward to today. So really like 18, that’s a better time frame for me. It was.

 

Yeah. So 18 to 20 were very formative years for me. Wow. That laid the foundation to what benefits me. Still. Plus my wife and I got married at 21. I was a freshly minted 21 year old, and she had just turned 21. Still married today, you know, 26 years later.

 

Thanks. And, but that really set the stage for me. I want to say, though, Steve, and even the fact that you would say to yourself. I’m a train wreck, I gotta get something fixed here. Yeah, that’s not everybody. So even though you had the pension to do that? Systems, organization, structure rules.

 

You were drawn to that after being a train wreck. That’s who you were. Yeah, I was, I was drawn to one. I wanted to serve, first. And, you know, my uncle had, you know, my uncle before me had served in Vietnam. My grandfather, his dad, had served in World War two. So there was just it was just part of that as well.

 

And I just wanted to serve. So, you know, through it, though I would have, you know, done that anyway, it was also a pathway to education. I mean, just it just was and because of my service, I got four college degrees out of it. So, you know, it was awesome. But look at that. Who you are today.

 

You want to serve. You love your podcast because it’s education, right? It is you. It is without a doubt. Without a doubt. It also showed me, you know, when I look at some of the gaps and I think of communicating for fear not strength, I’m like, okay, obviously fear is a part of that. Three, you know, reluctance to ask for what you deserve.

 

You could argue that fear is part of that. Isolating, from influential support. There’s a fear and reluctance to not do what should be done. And that’s one of the things the service helped me get over really quickly. And that was fear. And I worked in a dangerous job. I worked in nuclear missile silos.

 

And there’s no room for being timid. And so I came to grips with all the things I hated in this world. I hated spiders, snakes and bombs and so you embody. Can I riff on it? Yeah. So many women say to me, I hear what you’re saying, Kathy, but I’m afraid to do it.

 

I’m like, so what? I don’t say it meanly, but what I say to do is go do the thing today, this year, this month that you can say, if I can do that, I can do anything. And when I look at the pivotal moments, like doing therapy for the first time in front of a board of people watching me through a two way mirror, I literally in my internship, I literally said, I’m either going to have a heart attack or pass out.

 

I’m not going to have to get through this hour. I literally thought I might be having a heart attack. And, you know, did I do perfectly? No. Did I make mistakes? Yes. But I passed that program with distinction. And I realized that if I can do that, I can do anything. And then the next one was TV.

 

I said I wanted to be on TV, and the first thing that was called was Fox business. And they didn’t give me any time there. Like, we have an opening in two hours. Can you get dressed and come to Fairfield University studio? And for two hours, I literally thought I was going to drive off the road and not have to make it.

 

Please God, let the car break down. But I did it. And then I said, if I didn’t, even I had it recorded and I didn’t even want to look at it. I don’t think I looked at it for two weeks and then I looked at it went okay. It was okay. Do the thing that makes you say bombs, spiders and snakes if I can do that.

 

What is starting a podcast? What is pitching? You know, venture capitalist. What is getting funded? Nothing. Agree. My business partner and I talk about this often. There was a dance in the summer of 1992 when, when I, myself and my team chief got called out to a missile silo. Lema nine, to be exact.

 

And was the name of the silo or the number of the silo. And because we thought the or at least every indication was from Ellsworth Air Force Base, and that’s why we had to go. Was that the missile silo inside the silo underground was on fire. And as you might imagine, a fire inside a nuclear missile silo.

 

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Best Way to Succeed in Business: Example of Closing The Gap

 

Not an awesome recipe for success. And so, you know, we drove out there and we did what we needed to do, and it was totally scary. And, you know, because we nearly died and all of that. And so there are days when I say to my business partner, is this worse than the day when I had to run into a burning nuclear missile silo?

 

Is this worse than that? No. Okay. I think I’m going to be alright. Wow. That’s what I’m talking about, right? Give yourself those experiences that you think I’m probably going to die. I’m probably going to. Right? This is going to be so hard and scary to me that I don’t know that I can make it through to those.

 

That’s what confidence people are like. I’m not confident. No you’re not. You’re probably not confident enough. But you will be so. So when I look at gap number six, like losing sight of your most thrilling dream for your life, so what? How does somebody close that gap? Is it? Is it they have to get over the fear, or maybe the guilt that they didn’t accomplish what they wanted to get?

 

Like, how does somebody close that gap? Right. So I’m going to use one client in my Amazing Career Project course from a while ago, who is a perfect example. I see this. So she’d been working for 20 years. She was the primary breadwinner. She had a dream too. I want to change it. So it’s not identifying to start a travel business that was connected with food.

 

And here she is. She’s the primary breadwinner. She’s 40. Whatever. What am I going to do, Chuck my marketing job and go do that? Kathy. So what I teach people is we want to look at the essence versus the form. What most people who want to change do is they glom onto the form. I want to be a rockstar.

 

I want to quit everything and run a travel business. And because the form looks so absurdly out of reach, they never get out of the gate. So with her, it took the course of 16 weeks. It took nine weeks for her to stop being such a skeptic that she could embrace something that would be more exciting than this marketing work that she was doing.

 

Because she was done. She just didn’t want to believe it, didn’t believe in herself, didn’t believe she had talent. But there was a breakthrough moment where she said, wait a minute, I think I finally get what you mean. I could just take one step towards this. I could lead one travel group to Italy just once, and it turns out she’d done it before.

 

It took nine weeks to even hear that she had a travel blog. Amazing. The whole group was like, what? So what you want to do is break it down to a step that you’re leveraging that vision, but you’re not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It’s a tiny thing. Here’s another example. People say to me, oh my gosh, you’re writing a book.

 

I want to write a book. And I’ll say, awesome, what are you writing? I’m not writing anything. You can’t write a book if you’re not writing anything. Write a word, write a sentence, write your journal, write an article, write a blog. Come on. People like I call them natural goals. You’re not going to go from I’ve never written a word to a book.

 

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Best Way to Succeed in Business: Creating Natural Goals For Yourself

 

Create natural goals for yourself. Okay, I’ll start with an article. Does that make sense? Is that practical enough? I think it is practical enough because, you know, the whole analogy of you don’t eat an elephant, right? You use you, you know, bite by bite, whatever metaphor you want to use. In, when people have said to me too, it’s like, oh, it must be easy to write a book because you’re a writer.

 

And actually, I’m not a writer. I’m not a creative writer. I’m a technical writer. I’m a step by step kind of guy. I’m a process oriented guy. But I don’t sit down and just write for the love of writing. I have friends who do that, but that’s not me. So if somebody like me, who’s not a writer, can write three books, you can.

 

If you just start. That’s right. I even write something like 15,000 words per post, and I do five of them a month. Wow. I’m a writer. Yes. Writing a book when I start to write a chapter. Oh, I think I got to do the laundry. The dog needs to go out. Oh, my gosh, I really have to watch that news item again.

 

I can not start writing a chapter. Interesting. It’s hard because you have to take everything that’s in your head and put it out and then go, oh my gosh, it’s hard. So when I look at gap seven, allowing the past to define and affect you still like that, that really feels like, wow, there’s some like that really feels like therapy to me.

 

Like really having to square with whatever that was that still got you off kilter today. Like how does somebody start to do that? So here’s a wonderful tip. So, you know, this was me in that, I adore my parents. Dad passed away and my mom, 94. But what I grew up with was your Greek mom.

 

You can’t challenge yourself because it went very badly. I didn’t mean to get hit, but mom would go into her room and shut me out. I grew up not being able to challenge anything. Imagine. I mean, here I’m writing about feminism, and we’re and I’m getting my tush kicked. So what you do is when you say, I don’t think I can do that, I can’t, you know, look at where your boundaries are being violated.

 

Look at where you’re feeling beleaguered and you can’t speak up. Look at where you’re suppressed. And then I want you to answer this question. How old is this feeling? Like everybody says, it’s from childhood. It’s from childhood or a traumatic event that scarred you. Like, I thought I was, you know, going to be promoted. And instead they called me in and fired me.

 

That’s trauma. No, it’s not going into a missile silo, but, it’s post-traumatic stress. Sometimes, you know? So I want you to look at how old is this feeling? And, you know, the therapist in me says this when we are wondering, why do I do this? It sucks a lot of energy away from being able to move, overcome it.

 

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Best Way to Succeed in Business: The Feeling of Being Loved

 

So figure out why you do it. And usually it’s as simple. I just got off a call an hour ago. Wow. I didn’t know what narcissistic narcissism was, but I couldn’t challenge my mother. Oh, so I’d say, well, how did that look? And she, you know, some people have said, my dad said, I’m stupid. Oh, like I said, I didn’t, you know, I wouldn’t believe really how abusive a lot of people’s childhoods were.

 

But, you know, it had to be his rules. And so we’re not blaming mom and dad, but we are looking with eyes wide open. What message did I get? What role did I play? I was a good girl. I was the black sheep. The role you played is the role you’re playing now. So yeah. So what role did you play, Stephen? 

 

You know, therapy on. Yeah, I know and you know, I was saying this to my wife actually the other day, you know, all I’ve ever wanted was to have normal relationships with my parents and my parents divorced and were separated for, you know, a few years. They got remarried because of me.

 

So they’ve been, you know, married, divorced twice, and just a really toxic relationship between the two of them. And so I found myself often in the middle, like, always in the middle idiot or you mean. Right. And then I have a very loving Greek family on my mom’s side and a loving German family on my father’s side.

 

Then I was in the middle there for time and attention because of my divorced parents. And I said to Christine the other day, I said, I wish. And even still as an adult, you know, there’s those kinds of traps to kind of pull you back. And I’ve said to her, I’m so tired of that being my story.

 

I’m so tired of being in the middle of my story. And then part of that is the need to feel loved, you know, versus dealing with the feeling of kind of abandonment and how that plays out. As a business owner, sometimes I have a difficult time having difficult conversations, not avoiding conflict or whatever.

 

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Best Way to Succeed in Business: How Career Therapy Can Help

 

I don’t have issues with that, but it’s like it’s just I don’t want to hurt somebody’s feelings. I want to be of service. A lot of that to me, I think, is linked back to struggles and childhood of just wanting to have everything equalized and everybody get along. I mean, you’ve nailed it that the reality I mean, you’re aware of it.

 

Most people can immediately go there. And so there’s work to be done. And as you know, in some ways it’s career therapy. But if someone really needs therapy, I send them to a therapeutic provider. But it’s so true that the role that you played, and I believe we signed up for it, I do. I don’t know, that’s another story, but, the role that you played is the role you’re playing.

 

And often it involves boundaries. It involves I’m afraid that people won’t like me if I step out of that role. I’m afraid that love and respect will be withheld. So you want to go back and say just what you did, Stephen, how old was this? Why did I do it? What did I get from doing it?

 

And is it serving me now? Right. And I think as a business owner, we have to think about those things, you know, in cap number seven, allowing the passage to find an effect. You still. Are there things in your past Onward Nation, whether it’s family, whether it’s career, whether it’s whatever those situations were, and being analytical about it and like we’re behaving in a way today, like it’s ingrained in our DNA for a reason.

 

And then if we’re not courageously seeking out the influential support or not, you know, communicating from strength and we’re communicating from fear, it’s like, well, why is that? And then how do we close that gap? Because we can’t be a better business owner. We can’t step into our power and create impact if we don’t square with those things.

 

Right? Catholics 100% right. And in your case, and in mine, I was the good girl. Not causing my parents any trouble. Always doing the right thing. And I call it. I’m going to leave you with this idea: perfectionistic over function or someone who is doing more than is appropriate, necessary and healthy and trying to get an A-plus in all of it.

 

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Best Way to Succeed in Business: The Whole World Shifts

 

Every single woman who comes to me is a Pio. I’m a recovering Pio. When you’re a perfectionistic over function, you’re not going to succeed in business. It’s going to go very badly because you’re going to have to do some things less well than you’re going to have to delegate. You can’t do it all. 

 

So, you look at these traits, how I got there and, you know, for me, the mediator or, always the good girl, what happens is it’s extremely hard for me to have the hard conversations, to fire a provider, to fire a contractor, to tell a client you will not send me another email like that, or we will end this program and you will not get a refund. Hard. But right? Right. And boy, the thing is, when you do the thing that scares you, that is the right thing. The whole world shifts. When I wrote to my client after he was abusing me and saying it was my fault, I really meant it. You’re going away and you’re not getting a refund and I’m done, he wrote back.

 

I read my email again to you and I’m so ashamed. Thank you. And he never treated me like that again. We had a wonderful conclusion. So the whole world changes when you close your power gaps and your business thrives. It’s been such a great conversation as I knew it would, and onward. And I hope that you found all of the insights super, super helpful from Kathy.

 

Kathy, I know we covered a lot, but before we go, before we close out and say goodbye, any any final advice, anything you think we might have missed in that? Please tell Onward Nation business owners how best to connect with you. 

 

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Best Way to Succeed in Business: How to Connect with Kathy

 

Thank you. Stephen, this is what I want to leave you with. You are amazing and you have a big mission in the world.

 

Don’t doubt it, don’t doubt it. But now you’ve got to do the brave heart finding brave. I call this my podcast. Do the brave work to honor your amazingness and be of service in the way you dream the world needs you. Don’t just do it for you. The world needs you. And to find more about me, KathyCaprino.com and FindingBrave.org is my podcast.

 

I hope everyone is well served. There’s an assessments page with tons of free stuff. I’d love to connect with me on LinkedIn. That’s my happy place and Twitter and Instagram. Good lord, I’m trying to learn Instagram. What is a story? I don’t get it. How do you make the emoji work? You know, it’s so fun, but what you really made impacts LinkedIn.

 

Did I hear you say almost a million connections? 912,000. Holy money today cheers you so much, Onward Nation. You’re so lucky to have Steve. And as your guide. Well, you are very kind. Well, thank you for saying yes. And, onward. No matter how many notes you took seriously or how often you go back and re-listen to Kathy’s words of wisdom, which I sure hope that you do.

 

The key is you need to take these power gaps. You need to take her advice. You need to take her insights and expertise and start to close them. And yeah, it doesn’t happen overnight. And yes, it’s really hard work to do it. But the other side of doing it is so awesome. And Kathy, I am so very grateful that our mutual friend Judy Robinette thought to make the introduction and, thank you for saying yes and coming on to the show to be our mentor and guide.

 

It was a delight having you here, my friend. You. And please come on my show soon, Stephen, I absolutely will. All right. We’ll talk about that in a minute. Thanks, everybody. Thank you Stephen. Have a great day. 

 

This episode is complete. So head over to OnwardNation.com for show notes and more food to fuel your ambition. Continue to find your recipe for success here at Onward Nation.

 

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