AMY PORTERFIELD: Hey there, Amy Porterfield here. Welcome to another episode of The Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast. Thank you so very, very much, for tuning in.
Today’s episode is all about “you” and how to take the unique qualities you already possess and use them for the greater good inside your business. You won’t have to guess which qualities your audience will respond to most favorably because I’ve got an assessment to help you figure that out. This assessment is really unique because most personality quizzes and assessments will tell you how you view the world.
However, the assessment that I have for you today will tell you how other people view you. Pretty powerful, right?
Before we get there, I want to tell you about our special guest today. My guest is Sally Hogshead. You’ve got that right, that’s her last name. Pretty amazing, right? Sally Hogshead is a world-class branding expert. Her quick rise to the top in the advertising industry was followed by numerous international awards for creative, copy writing, and branding work.
These days, she’s parlayed her understanding of what works in the advertising world into a training that hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs use to measure how people perceive them through their communication. She is the creator of Fascination Advantage Assessment, the world’s first personality assessment that measures what makes someone most engaging to others.
The science behind the assessment is behind Sally’s decade of research with 250,000 initial participants including dozens of Fortune 500 teams, hundreds of small businesses, and over 1,000 C-level executives. Her book, Fascinate: Your Seven Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation, explains the irresistible influence of fascination in the world of business and thought leadership.
By using Sally’s unique formula and tools you can now find out and capitalize on what makes you intensely valuable to others. Sally’s assessment is not free. But it is free to you if you act quickly.
Sally gave me 5,000 free assessments. If you jump to it you will be able to take this assessment and learn more about how the world sees you…for free. If you go to HowToFascinate.com/you and use the access code “amy” you will be able to take this assessment, get it for free, and then you can start capitalizing on it inside of your business.
A quick little fun fact, I’ve gotten to spend some quality time with Sally and her husband, who is just an amazing guy, when I went to Blackberry Farms for Michael Hyatt’s special retreat. There were a few of us: Jeff Walker and his lovely wife; Sally and her husband; Hobie, my husband, got to go; and, of course, Michael and his wife, Gail; and so many amazing people on Michael’s team including his lovely daughter, Megan.
We were all there at Blackberry Farms, in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. My husband is obsessed with this place. He thinks it is the most gorgeous place he has ever been. He keeps talking about going back to it. But here we were with Sally and the others and we got to really bond with each other.
I learned about Sally and her family and what she is all about. This woman is so passionate about what she does. She is like a walking encyclopedia of amazing facts about ourselves and our personalities and our value. It is so cool. Anytime you meet her in person she will want to talk about your assessment. She’s extremely giving with her time and energy and focus.
She is a fascinating woman, to say the least…pardon the pun, I didn’t really mean that but how perfect was that? She is amazing. I absolutely adore her and I think you will get immense value from this interview.
I won’t keep you any longer, but before we jump in, a quick word about our sponsor: I want to thank our sponsor today, 99Designs. I am such a huge fan of this company because they can take care of all of your graphic needs. We are talking logos, social media cover images, website graphics, and so much more. So visit www. 99Designs.com/amy and get a $99 upgrade for free.
Let’s go ahead and jump in to my extremely valuable interview with Sally Hogshead.
Amy: Sally, thank you so very much for being here with me today. I really appreciate it.
Sally: Oh Amy, I’m excited to be here with you. It’s so good to be able to hear your voice again.
Amy: Definitely. As I mentioned in the intro, we got to go to Blackberry Farm together. It was an amazing experience. But I got to see a different side of you. I had read your book and I’ve known about you. But being with you in person is a whole different ballgame for me. It was so much fun and I had to bring you on the show because I want more people to get to know you and what you’re all about. Again, thanks so much.
Sally: I appreciate it, Amy. Let’s make sure we give people all kinds of ways to learn how to be fascinating.
Amy: Exactly. That’s where I want to start. I want to start with you explaining a little bit of how you even got into this world. What you do is really unique. I don’t know anybody else who knows the kind of information you know about people. Tell me how this came about.
Sally: For the first half of my career I worked with brands. My first client was Nike. One of my next clients was BMW. I helped brands find the perfect words to describe themselves. I learned a lot about how brands can position themselves as being more effective.
For example, when the mini Cooper came to the United States I was part of the team that created that launch, the advertising campaign. One of the things we saw was when a product positions itself as being for women then it speaks very strongly to women but can sometimes be alienating to men.
If a brand speaks to being for both genders then people can be half-hearted about it. So it is really important to understand how you position yourself in the market. But nobody had really brought this idea of positioning and marketing and branding and extended it over to people.
About ten years ago I began studying how we as individuals position ourselves most effectively so that people are attracted to us and so that we can grow our businesses and can find those perfect words, just like the advertising campaigns that I did, for people to be able to understand who we are and how we add value.
Amy: So much of what you do adds immense value to copy writing. I know we are going to talk about language a lot today and the words to use and all that good stuff. But I just want to point out to everybody listening, think about your copy writing as you learn some of these new strategies we are going to teach you today. It really does make a difference. That is just a hint of what’s to come.
When we talk about fascination, I want to know from you what that really means. I read on your website that in a competitive environment the most fascinating option always wins. What does fascination mean to you and why does it always win?
Sally: Fascination is an intense focus. When you are fascinated by a person or brand you are completely consumed in that moment. You know what this feels like, this is that feeling you have when you are working on a project and it feels like you are totally in the flow. You feel creative, you feel confident, you feel focused and energized by what you are doing.
It is when you are out for drinks with a friend and the conversation is flowing and it is almost like the time flies by and you seem to be building epiphanies together in your conversation. It is also how you might think of your favorite brands, your favorite Starbucks drink, your favorite movie, your favorite book.
When you are fascinated by something your brain opens up almost like you are in love. What’s really cool is when we look at the brain in a state of fascination it lights up, literally like you are in love.
Amy: Really?
Sally: Yeah. I talked to some radiologists about this. I asked them to describe what is going on in the brain when we are fascinated. One of them described it as a form of infatuation. You know that feeling of being infatuated and wanting to connect with a person. You want to connect with them, you want to talk to them, you want to think about them and be close to them. When you are infatuated by a brand you will drive across town to buy it or will pay more money for it. You will talk about it and want to wear it and show it off.
Neurologically, what’s going on in your brain when you are fascinated, it’s almost the same experience as falling in love. If you can get your customers to fall in love with you or your clients or the person across the dinner table to get a sense of openness and connection they will be way more likely to listen to what you say and take action on what you say.
Amy: So true. I already know that some of my listeners are thinking they are screwed because they aren’t really fascinating. Right away this is something I thought because I sometimes have confidence issues and I’m wondering what’s so fascinating about me.
Then, when I learned more from you I learned that fascination is not something…What did you say, you don’t learn how to be fascinating, you unlearn boring. Is that right? Tell me more about that.
Sally: Exactly Amy. You don’t learn how to be fascinating. You unlearn boring. You’ve already been fascinating your entire life. It’s just a question of being able to identify exactly what makes you fascinating.
I’ll give you an example: There are certain products that we buy that we don’t realize we are paying a lot more money for because we have an emotional connection to it. Here in the U.S. Morton’s salt is huge. Most Americans buy Morton’s salt.
Chemically, it is the exact same salt as generic versions yet people pay 187% more for it simply because they feel an emotional connection to the Morton’s name and the logo. In a similar way, when we looked at high performers inside of companies like AT&T and GE and Cisco and entrepreneurs, what we found is the high performers don’t have a certain type of personality.
High performers specialize in one specific quality. People who are good at details are really good at details when they are high performers. They don’t try to be the cheerleader. They don’t try to be the big picture or visionary. Instead, they double down on being exceptional in that specific way.
The reality is that you are not perfect for everything but you are extraordinary in certain ways. When you can identify how other people see you at your best it becomes really easy for them to see why they should hire you, why they should fall in love with you, why they should champion for you and promote you.
In business the key, especially if you are trying to grow a business online, is for you to have a very clear idea of the areas in which you know you can confidently over deliver and don’t try to be exceptional at the rest.
Amy: I love that. I’m always telling people you can’t be everything to everyone so you’ve got to find out exactly where you want to focus. It makes such a huge difference in your business. What I love is that this podcast episode can be so geared toward how you are building your brand, what you’re saying in your business, what you’re selling, and all that good stuff.
I really do think it starts with the assessment. I talked about it a little bit in the intro but I want to dive into what this assessment’s all about, what you can learn about yourself, and then we are going to talk a little bit about mine and yours to kind of make it actionable.
Before we get there, will you talk about this assessment? I know you have been so generous to offer a special code (remember, the code is “amy”). If you go to howtofascinate.com/you and use the code “amy” the first 5,000 people will get to take the assessment for free, which is so very cool, and thank you very much for that.
Sally: Our pleasure.
Amy: So very cool. Tell me about this assessment. Why would people want to take it? What are they going to learn? Let’s set it up first.
Sally: Imagine if you had a magic mirror that could show you the qualities within you that other people are most likely to admire and respect and appreciate. In the same way, imagine if you had a focus group of people in which you took all of your greatest champions, those people who have hired you again and again, or your best friend or family members, and you asked them to describe the qualities that they love about you and that make them want to work with you and be by your side.
In the same way, I created an assessment that can measure how other people see you at your best. Have you ever done a traditional personality assessment like Myers- Briggs?
Amy: A long time ago, yeah. What do you think of those?
Sally: I think they are a lot of great assessments. I think it’s really important for you to understand how you see the world. But a traditional assessment only tells you so much. A lot of these assessments are based on psychology so they are showing you how you see the world. But they aren’t showing you the opposite, which is how the world sees you.
Amy: Oh, so good.
Sally: There’s never been a way to measure that before. Drawing upon branding and drawing upon my principles of working with world-class brands, I found you can measure how the world sees you. You can do it exactly the same way we would do with a focus group in an advertising campaign and pinpoint the exact qualities that make people most likely to value you in their life, work, and career.
Over the last decade I’ve measured almost a million people. We’ve looked at how women fascinate differently than men, how millennials fascinate different than boomers, and what we have discovered is that there are specific traits you have and how others see you.
When you know those, when you can identify them and articulate them it is a lot easier for you to show up confidently and authentically instead of trying to be all things to all people.
Amy: Okay. Here’s the deal, when you learn this information…you get back a great report that gives you all of the information you need to know in order to understand what is fascinating about you. When you get the results I’m guessing this information we’re given is where we really want to focus. We can forget about some of the other stuff and really focus on these special areas. Is that how I should approach it?
Sally: Right. You can’t be exceptional with everybody. Clients don’t hire you because you’re balanced. Clients hire you because you’re extraordinary in some way. The question is how are you naturally extraordinary? What are the qualities that you know where you can over deliver consistently?
When I started creating this body of research I found that if we can find the perfect words to describe somebody it becomes much easier for them to write their LinkedIn profile or write their marketing.
If I can, Amy, I would love to describe what we learned from you when you took the assessment.
Amy: Let’s do it.
Sally: Cool. When you took the assessment measuring how the world sees you, what we found, and it was not a surprise to me because I know you and know your brand, the number one quality that people most associate with you is trust. That means you have an advantage in the area of consistency, stability, reliability.
You don’t like to constantly reinvent the wheel. You don’t necessarily want to be in a chaotic situation. What people naturally feel as a mode of connection with you is that you bring order and stability in your relationships.
Amy: I love that. That’s definitely how I see myself. I know this is kind of how other people see me so there is a match there.
Sally: That’s your primary advantage. That means when you are going to be seen at your best, you will be using that mode of communication, the trust advantage. Your secondary advantage is prestige. That is your second highest mode of communication.
Prestige is the language of excellence. You like to be able to see how you can raise the bar. You have very high standards for yourself. When you combine the language of excellence with trust then that comes together to form your archetype.
Your archetype is named The Diplomat. The Diplomat is described with the following three words: Level headed, subtle, and capable. That means you are diplomatic in the way in which you communicate with other people. If I had bad news to deliver, Amy, I would want you to deliver it because you will be diplomatic in how you will describe it.
Let’s take a look at these three words. Can I turn the tables just a little bit and ask you a couple of questions?
Amy: Please. Let’s do it. How fun!
Sally: Let’s take these three words: Level headed, subtle, and capable. Of those three words, which would you say best describes how you are different and how you are most likely to excel?
Amy: Level headed, capable, and subtle…I think capable.
Sally: I would agree with you. Capable has a competence. It means people don’t question your ability to deliver results or to meet expectations. I am going to go through an exercise with you named The Anthem Exercise. In this exercise we are going to take your adjective, capable, and will start to round it out with what you actually deliver.
I’m going to give you three nouns that describe what you do best. Are you ready for your three nouns?
Amy: I’m ready.
Sally: The first one is communication, the second is details, and the third one is energy. Communication, details, or energy, which one describes what you do best?
Amy: Details.
Sally: Details, great! If we take the adjective which describes how the world sees you and we combine that with the noun which describes what you do best, then the combination is capable details. Let’s imagine, if you think about how you communicate in the situations where you want to play your “A” game and you want to be seen at your best, maybe you’re going into a meeting or giving a speech.
If I told you to go on stage and deliver capable details, how would that feel for you?
Amy: Really good because I feel it would allow me to do what I love to do which is kind of break things down, the how-to, the steps people have to take. I feel most comfortable in that type of environment. I don’t feel very comfortable when I have to do big picture kind of stuff because it feels a little bit elusive to me.
When you say capable details, I’m all over it.
Sally: You feel confident and certain you can deliver if I said, “Hey Amy, I really need your help. I’m working on a project and I’m just not exactly sure how to line this up and it’s feeling uncomfortable for me. Can you help me with capable details?”
You would probably be able to say, “Yes, Sally, I can totally help you with that. That’s what I do best. Come to me for capable details.” Yes?
Amy: Yes.
Sally: I am not great with capable details. For me, I would feel very stressed if somebody asked me to give a speech in which I focus on delivering capable details. It’s not that I can’t do that, it would just feel in the same way that you described that when something gets too abstract or too creative it can feel elusive to you.
If somebody said to me, “Sally, go on stage and deliver fascinating communication.” I would know that I could do this with energy. I could be fully committed. I could sink my teeth into it and that’s why my anthem is fascinating communication. The adjective that describes how I am most able to add value is fascinating and communication is what I do best.
If you and I were working on a project together here’s where it starts to get really cool. Imagine if I’m working on a project that’s going to take a lot of big picture, creative, out-of-the-box thinking at the beginning but then actually has to get executed like a launch or supporting somebody else in writing a book. I would be stronger and more fulfilled and more energized by the beginning, creative stage but would start to get lost and would become confused or disoriented and wouldn’t know exactly what the details should be and exactly how they should line up.
For you, I might be a good partner for you on something like that.
Amy: Yes, I totally see what you mean. What’s interesting, a few episodes back I talked about having a partner, Devin Duncan. Devin and I are so very different. I need him to take this assessment because I don’t know exactly what his stuff is but I can guarantee it’s different than mine.
I was going to ask you, if we want to put this assessment into action, what are some ways to do so; partnership would be one of them, looking for somebody. You are right, I couldn’t do that big picture creative of getting things started. I would really struggle with that. But if you got it started for me and said, “Okay, now you take it and run with it with the capable details,” I’m all about that.
I love how actionable that is. Something that came up while you were explaining that to me, I definitely struggle and know my audience does as well with getting down on ourselves sometimes. We wonder why we didn’t do something right or wish we were more like “this.” We might think the reason our business is struggling is because we can’t do “this” or “that.”
I am wondering, when my audience gets this assessment and starts to really dive into it, does it allow you to have a little bit more patience for yourself or allow you to give yourself a break in terms of it being something you really weren’t supposed to be doing or be good in that area or anything like that?
Sally: That’s a beautiful question. The reality is that you don’t have to change who you are. You have to become more of who you are. You don’t have to change yourself to become another Amy or to try to be more detailed or try to be more charismatic. In fact, if you try to do that you will run out of energy and will be demoralized and will ultimately become extremely discouraged in your business and life.
Instead, you need to become more of who you are and actually do it on purpose. When you understand the way in which other people see you at your best it becomes much easier for you to build your business around that. I’ll give you an example of how I’ve shaped my business around that and then let’s turn around and we’ll talk about how you have used capable details.
Details, to me, feel like getting in the weeds. That’s why I can work with spreadsheets and I can follow a very methodical plan. I can follow a script if I have to. But it sort of feels like I’m right handed and somebody asked me to draw a picture with my left hand. I could do it but it certainly wouldn’t be my best and I wouldn’t be seen in the most positive light.
I work really hard to make sure if I have to do a project that includes meticulous details I either need to have a partner or co worker or employee that can support me in that area. That’s why I tend to hire people who are really detail oriented because I understand that feels like quicksand to me.
Another way I could get around that is by making sure that if I have to do something that’s highly detail oriented I need to set extra time aside because it will take a lot of emotional energy for me to do the details. It’s not going to come effortlessly for me. I have got to set aside some time to really apply a lot of emotional and intellectual energy. It is going to be expensive on my resources, in other words.
The third option is for me to take details off the table and not even promise them in the first place. That is kind of how I’ve built a lot of my business. I don’t promise details, therefore, I don’t have to be responsible for delivering them. I know that sounds flip but I will give you a very tangible financial example.
Sometimes when I work with clients or give a speech, you know the feeling when you’re in the happy bubble and you love the client and they love you and there’s a euphoria that happens and you are high fiving and it’s so great and then you go back home and you have to do the expense report. All of the sudden it becomes about the back and forth.
You are trying to explain why you had a Cinnabon in the airport and what I realized is it was damaging my relationships for me to have to outline every single piece of minutia on the expense report. So I eliminated them. Now we have a flat fee up front. If I’m going to travel I’m not going to submit any type of expense and it allows me to focus on doing what I do best, build the relationship and create out-of-the-box ideas with and for my clients.
For you, on the other hand, adding details and building details in the core of what you deliver is going to feel really good for you. It’s going to be energizing like a wellspring. If you are going to be writing a course and helping people develop their social media, you want it to be really detailed.
You ought to have a lot of specificity in there. You want it to be meticulous and demonstrate how to do the follow through because for a lot of entrepreneurs they don’t know how to do that and that’s the problem that you are helping people solve when they come to you as clients.
Amy: Something you said really stuck out for me: When I know where I’m really strong and where my audience thinks I’m strong as well, and that’s what I really want to hit home with. I know you mentioned it, but it’s very unique. It’s not just how we see ourselves, but how our audience is seeing us and how those around us in our environment are seeing us as well. That’s huge.
I want to talk about what that means in terms of language and copy writing. But before we get there, I did an episode literally just a few weeks back about building your dream team, who you want on your team, what that team would look like and all the details involved with that.
I’m thinking that after taking an assessment like this it will be really clear to you where there might be holes in your business where you are not really strong and it will help you create that dream team. You could use this for building your team, right?
Sally: Yeah, no question. The reality is that I used to hire people who were like me because I felt a sense of chemistry with them.
Amy: Yes, me too!
Sally: My primary advantage is passion and my secondary is innovation. When you put passion an innovation together it means I get a lot of energy from being around people. I love to brainstorm and like to come up with new approaches and new ways of doing things. But I’m not really good at doing all of the details that we just talked about.
I would hire people who were like me and we had a great time but nothing ever got done. Invoices never went out.
Amy: Yes.
Sally: I finally realized the person who’s going to be the perfect compliment for you professionally might be the person that you’re not necessarily clicking with initially in the interview but they are delivering something that takes it off your shoulders and you don’t have to deliver that.
Now, when I’m hiring, of course I look at a resume and like to meet the person. But really the most important thing for me is their fascination advantage. What is that competitive advantage they have that I know when I say to them, “We have to execute, we have to implement,” what is going to be the process?
I know I’m not able to do that and I need to surround myself with people who can. That’s really the key, especially if you’re a small business. Every player on the team shouldn’t replicate each other. They should optimize each other.
Diversity isn’t just a concept that applies in the workplace. It applies in our communication styles and applies in how everybody on your team has to be able to optimize each other and fill in the holes.
Amy: That’s so good. Some people listening are building a business and things just aren’t clicking. They are not really jiving just yet. It might be they are in their first year. The first two years are usually really tough and I always say the business looks a whole lot different in the first two years than it does after that.
Other people might have been in it for a while and they aren’t necessarily loving the business they created. One question I have for you, when you take the assessment and learn you archetype, do certain archetypes fit well into certain types of businesses? Is there a certain archetype that is perfect if you are an entrepreneur but if you are another archetype you shouldn’t be an entrepreneur or anything like that?
Sally: Here is the one question you need to be asking yourself when you want to grow your business. There is one question that’s more important than any other question to grow your business…
Amy: Okay, good.
Sally: Are you ready?
Amy: I’m ready.
Sally: What is their problem for which you are the perfect solution? Let me explain what I mean by that. If the problem that you solve best, Amy, is that you deliver capable details, then how can you go find people who need capable details, people who are willing to pay a lot and go out of their way to be able to work with you?
If my anthem is fascinating communication, then I need to find people who need to understand how to fascinate their clients and customers. When you take the assessment and it describes for you how the world sees you at your best, it is easier for you to start attracting the people who most need what you have.
I’ll give you an example: I did a piece of research in which I gave women two pairs of sunglasses that were exactly the same. One pair had a Channel logo. The women were willing to pay four times more for the pair of sunglasses with the Channel logo even though they were exactly the same.
The women who wanted the Channel glasses really wanted those Channel glasses. In the same way, the people who follow you really need capable details. The more you can begin to make sure your audience understands that if you don’t have capable details bad stuff can happen and that’s a problem. If you don’t feel confident about yourself and know how to grow your business, then capable details are the perfect solution for that.
Let’s take this even a little bit deeper. If you were going to be writing about yourself in a social media profile, would it feel comfortable for you, Amy, to actually use the word details?
Amy: Yes, definitely!
Sally: So if you are somebody who delivers capable details, as you are thinking, on your LinkedIn profile, which could be so intimidating to write, would it feel natural and authentic for you to give some examples of capable details; like, “here are the sort of details you will be able to learn from working with me”?
Amy: Yes, it would flow for me. That is something that would come easy.
Sally: Yes. The more that you can deliver capable details, the more people will understand how you are different and the more that you become that very desirable option like the Channel glasses.
Let’s say you have a different type of personality. Let’s say the adjective you get from taking the assessment is a word like “motivating” or “ambitious” or “protective” or “analytical.” Whichever adjective comes back as being how the world sees you at your best, you can begin to use that language, not just from a copy writing perspective, but to position how you solve problems in a very specific way.
Once people understand the problems you solve it’s a lot easier for them to understand how and why they should work with you.
Amy: That’s a great point in that I feel when you read this assessment you do start to understand some of the language you can use. But you are also saying that you really understand how to position yourself.
Sally: Most assessments have been created on psychology. This one is based on the opposite, how the world sees you. There is another key difference. This assessment was built by a woman. Women tend to not like to be in situations in which they are directly competitive with each other.
I had a women’s studies minor at Duke University and there was a wonderful study that I remember vividly in which they took little girls and had them talk to each other. The little girls would pull their chairs up sitting opposite from each other (sitting across the table from each other).
When they gave little boys the same questions they would pull chairs up to have a conversation and the boys sat parallel to each other facing the same direction. Women like to be able to understand their differences without feeling like they are exploiting their strength.
That’s where so much of the language that exists and how we can stand out and differentiate our business can feel really uncomfortable for us as women. A lot of those words are about how we are better. Instead of focusing on how you are better, focus on how you are different.
When a brand is different in the marketplace, that is when it can start to charge a lot more money and get advocates. The key is instead of focusing on your strengths you should focus on your differences. Focus on how you are extraordinary.
We have learned, from you Amy, that capable details are going to be an area in which you are not only going to feel energized and confident, but you will be able to truly be extraordinary. You don’t want to do business the way I do. But when you have that little zone of genius then that’s when people can come back to you over and over again because you are different.
Amy: I absolutely love that. I also love what you said at the very beginning where you don’t have to learn how to be fascinating, you just want to kind of learn how to be unboring. Did I say that right? What is the saying again?
Sally: You don’t learn how to be fascinating, you have to unlearn boring.
Amy: That’s it.
Sally: You know when you were a little kid, it is so great to look at pictures of yourself when you were a little kid because your personality was already very baked in to who you are. A lot of what happens is that over time you start to acquire layers of boring. We start to dumb ourselves down or we stand in the back.
We don’t want to expose ourselves. We don’t want to speak up. This happens especially for girls around the age of 10 or 12 where they begin to shut themselves down because they don’t want to stand out. Then we go through college and start venturing into our lives. What ends up happening is that we forget the part of ourselves that was the most fascinating at the beginning.
I had a really humiliating example of this happen early in my childhood. My sister won three gold medals and a silver in the Olympics. My brother graduated from Harvard.
Amy: Geez!
Sally: I was the youngest by many years. I was so proud of my siblings but I didn’t know what my place in the family was yet. I decided I would do dance. I really wasn’t very good and I remember my dance teacher saying, “You’re not very good, Sally, but you have this certain spark.”
She gave me a solo in the dance recital and I was so psyched because I was going to be able to have my mom and dad and brother and sister all there and I was finally going to have my own area where I could shine. The music started and I went out and took my place and I could hear my dance teacher saying from behind the curtain, “Just don’t forget the steps.”
Amy: Oh gosh!
Sally: Yes. The steps immediately went out of my head and all of the choreography was gone and my mind was completely blank. I just stood there frozen not knowing what to do. I could see my mom sitting in the audience covering her mouth, feeling my pain in that moment, and the music stopped and the spotlight turned off and I just walked off.
Amy: You’re going to make me cry.
Sally: I literally never took another dance lesson ever again in my entire life. Out of that situation, it’s like I learned boring. I learned to not put myself out there. Even if you have never taken dance, even if you’ve never experienced exactly that same type of situation, we’ve all experienced it. We feel humiliated because we didn’t make the team or we didn’t pass the test or we have been rejected and have been turned down and were embarrassed in front of the classroom.
The decision we make in that moment is that we’re not going to be fascinating. The key for us, especially for women, is to be able to identify those qualities that we already have that are naturally extraordinary that you don’t have to learn. You don’t have to learn how to be fascinating, you just have to unlearn boring.
Part of my mission in doing this and part of the reason we are developing a version of this to go into schools and work in shelters with women and girls is when somebody tells you what you are already doing right it’s much easier for you to build your life around that. You don’t have to change who you are, you just have to become more of who you are.
The key here is to identify what you are already doing right and then answering how you can do more of that.
Amy: Come on. You just wrapped this up so perfectly. What a perfect ending. Thank you so very much. That is exactly why I was so excited to bring you on the show today. I wanted people to focus more on what they are doing right. I know so many listening are so hard on themselves and they beat themselves up about this or that with their business and growing their business and what it should look like and comparing themselves to others.
This is your opportunity to focus on what you’re already doing right and what people already love about you. Thank you, so much.
I want to remind everybody, go to howtofascinate.com/you and if you’re the first 5,000 to take this assessment you can use the code, “amy” and get the assessment. You will learn all about your archetype and about the different things Sally has been talking about. Really take it to heart, sit with it, read it, share it with your spouse or your friends or whoever you might want to share it with.
It’s a really cool thing. Hobie and I have talked about it over and over again. It’s really fun. I had my whole team take it so I know what they are and they know what I am. So don’t be shy to share it with everybody and encourage them to take it as well.
Sally, thank you so very much. This has truly been a treat.
Sally: Amy, I appreciate it. I appreciate the work you do. I have learned so much from you and your capable details. I love watching the way you create a message in the world that helps all of us build our own message that matters.
Amy: Thank you, that means the world to me. I cannot wait to see you, hopefully again in person, sooner than later. Thanks again.
Sally: Wonderful. Thanks Amy.
Amy: There you have it. What did you think? It is pretty powerful, right? I can’t wait for you to take the assessment and really find out how your own tribe views you based on your own communication. It’s going to be extremely powerful as you apply it to your business, your copy writing, your branding, your connection through email marketing and social media.
All of that is going to be enhanced when you know what I call your super powers, your powers that make you fascinating. I cannot wait for you to take the assessment at howtofascinate.com/you using the access code “amy”. The first 5,000 get it totally free. Thank you, Sally, so much for doing that.
Once you take the assessment I want you to share it and use social media to share it as well. In my show notes at http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/89 you can learn a little more about what to do once you’ve taken the assessment, how to share it, how to talk about it, and all that good stuff. I don’t want you to miss out. That’s a whole other conversation that Sally and I didn’t have but she sent me some information about what to do after you take the assessment and how to share it in a way that will be valuable for you and your audience.
Check out my show notes at http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/89. Before we wrap up, a final word about our sponsor: Finally, I want to thank our sponsor, 99Designs. You know when you market online it is really difficult to stand out from all of that online noise clutter. How do you do it? I think you do it through impeccable branding. That includes your logo, your social media cover images, your website, and everything in between. At 99Designs you can get anything designed in just a week for a startup- friendly price.
To give you a little something extra, when you go to www.99designs.com/amy you will get a $99 upgrade for free. That upgrade makes your design contest stand out from all of the others and bumps you to the top of the list so more designers can see your contest. So make sure to check out www.99designs.com/amy.
Thank you so very much for being here. I’m so glad you’ve tuned in. I can’t wait to see you again next week. Remember, go take the assessment. Bye for now.
