‘Watch your mindset as an entrepreneur. Are you falling into fear more? Or are you embracing the joy of possibility?’
Keynote speaker and executive coach Brenda Bence ranks 8th among the world’s top coaching professionals. She helps companies and business executives achieve peak performance as leaders.
‘I just decided, “I don’t know what I’m running toward, but I know what I’m running away from. And it’s time to make that shift.”’
With 19 years of experience in leadership coaching and leadership branding, Brenda offers meaningful advice to entrepreneurs to help you achieve business success. Tune in and learn about
– growth mindset in business
– importance of networking and mastermind groups
– the consultative method of influence
– outsourcing
– objective curiosity and more
You can reach out to Brenda here:
Personal website: https://www.brendabence.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendabence/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrendaBence
John: Thanks for listening today. Don’t forget to subscribe and share this episode. My guest today is keynote speaker and executive coach, Branda Bence. She is ranked number 8 of the world’s top coaching professionals, Brenda helps companies and business executives achieve peak performance as leaders. Thanks for being on the show today, Brenda.
Brenda: Oh, thank you for inviting me, John.
John: So, This is gonna be a lot of fun. Before we start, I wanted to ask you if you don’t mind sharing with the listeners. How did you get started in this industry? And, what did you do in your past life to become who you are today?
Brenda: Wow, big question. Well, let me start with the first part, which is how did I become, how did I get into this profession, how did get into this profession? I started my big corporate, big corporate career in Procter & Gamble and when you go into P&G, John. The minute you walk in you’re either being coached or you’re being taught how to be a coach and so, I just thought well all big companies are like this and I loved the coaching culture. I love being coached, I love being a coach, it just felt like a fish in the water and then, I left after many years of P&G and I went to another big corporation and they didn’t have a coaching culture. And, I thought “Oh my gosh, there’s no coaching here.” And so, I was really just I really missed it. So, I decided from my division, I had about 250 people, about a billion dollars of business. I was going to actually implement a coaching culture and I’ll tell you the truth John, within 18 months purely baked based on the coaching culture and some strategic moves. We shifted from number 3 in the market, with lower than this number 2 by 10 points, to number 1 in the market with a 25 point gap to number 2, and that’s the power of coaching. And so, when I left the big corporate world and decided to start my own business, I said “I’m going to become a coach.” And I also knew from being senior executive, it was lonely at the top and I really wanted to help senior leaders, they didn’t have to be lonely at the top and so that’s really how I’ve made my career, and that’s turned into keynote speaking and I’ve written 11 books, and yeah it’s been a journey, it’s been fun.
John: Wow, that’s amazing Brenda. If you don’t mind sharing with the listeners, how long were you in this corporate world? And, were there influences that got you started working at P&G and some of the other big, big corporations before you left it? And what triggered you to leave the world?
Brenda: Yeah. So, I got into P&G frankly coming out of Harvard, Harvard Business School, I went to HBS and as I was leaving they made us take a test, and in this test they may take a corporate like career test, Harvard did. And I’m taking this test, I had to take and it was asking all these questions about what you were you gonna be good at, what you, what you’d like to do and there’s a lot of personality test that was based on they had gone out and interviewed 2,000 of the best people in any given profession. CEO’s, marketing directors, bus drivers, chefs, you name it. 2000, and they, and you had to go in and plot your personality and they took your personality results, and they plotted them to see how well they correlated with these various positions in the world. And I knew nothing about this so, I go in for my review I had to go and they had to come and tell me my results, and the woman that looks at my results and she goes “Have you thought about marketing?” And I said “Well, I don’t know why.” And she said, she showed me the results. My results were so high they literally my dot for that was off the chart, it was physically not even on the charts. She said “I’ve never seen anything like this, you should think about marketing.” I said “Well, okay, I’ll try marketing.” So, that’s when I joined Procter & Gamble, don’t have that if I’m gonna go to marketing, I’ll go to P&G. And, love it like I was fish in the water, absolutely loved it. They allowed me to move overseas, I worked overseas with them in Europe first and then moved to Asia with them. Then, I joined another big corporation and I was managing VP International Marketing out of Asia again for, actually, Thailand at that time. So, I lived in all those places and then, I decided that bug bit me, that bug of “I really start my own business.” I wanna be incharge of my own life, I was harried executive John, I was exhausted working 24 hours a day, travelling all the time, hundreds of thousands of miles a year. I didn’t see my husband as much as I wanted, I didn’t see my family as much as I wanted and then I just decided, you know what, I don’t know what I’m running toward. I’ll be perfectly honest but I know what I’m running away from and it’s time to make that shift, and so I did. And I moved on to yeah, to starting my own business with the wing and a prayer, literally wing and a prayer, and started my business on April fool’s day of the year that I started it. Just in case it didn’t workout I could run back to the corporate world and say “Kidding! Just kidding!” So, but it worked out brilliantly and I’ve running my own business now for 19 years.
John: Wow! 19 years. So, it’s been a journey and I’m sure this is your second path of career right? From corporate to now, you know as an entrepreneur. There’s a major shift in terms of branding, marketing, your expertise but also, learning about how you to grow right? Scale and take on new clients. Like when you’re corporate you have a lot of I guess people access, resources. And now that you’re independent, it’s lonely, you don’t have the funds and resources and access of brand recognition to get started and for all the listeners who are starting their business journey. How did you pivot from learning corporate to your own brand?
Brenda: Well, I tell you the key was first of all network, network, network. Get to know people even if you’re in the corporate world, get to know as many people as possible. Why? Because then eventually that will help you later on. When I started my own business I was so busy trying to finish up my corporate job that when I literally sat on April fool’s day, starting my new, my new business and my extra bedroom with a desk that I stuck in there with a laptop right? I remember sitting there thinking, what have I done? But I knew that I had resources, I knew that I had some resources such as my network. I knew that I had people that I knew, so I reached out to everybody that I knew over the years. I’ve worked in many different locations. I’m starting my own business this is what I’m gonna focus on, I would love, I would appreciate your support. Tell people about what I can offer, I would appreciate it and it really that’s how the business started. I gave myself six months to find my first client and six days later I was finally where I was working so I mean literally I found my first clients really quickly and I feel blessed about that ever since. We’ve never ever had a slow period of time, that’s been incredible, it’s just been a beautiful trajectory upwards.
John: And, That so important too because a lot of these entrepreneurs I would say. They have a dream, they have an idea, but they have no experience or connections, or network. They just want to be in business, so they jump in without even any analysis, relationships and thought process behind it right? So you come in, coming from corporate, having dealt with so many other men you know people and coaching, and understanding what the gaps are, and the need are in the marketplace. It allowed you to position into the marketplace with a compelling USP, I’m sure that allowed you to then resonate with your network to then get your first client in six days and you’re still doing it for over 19 years
Brenda: I am and I tell you what else John is you really, if you’re gonna spend time doing anything as a new, as a new business owner. Spend time with prospective clients and I don’t trying to get them to buy from you, not at all.Use them as a focus group, use them as an opportunities and thinking about this, what’s your advice? How would recommend a going? Because when you see people, that’s called the consultative method of influence. When you go to them and say “Hey! I’m thinking about doing this.I’m not trying to sell you anything, don’t want to do that, I just want to know your point of view because I really respect you.” So, how would you go about this? What are the needs you think there are in the market? And here’s what happens, because you’ve gone to them and asked for advice and help, and just on something that’s gonna help you. They’re going to be invested in helping you. Everyone loves to be asked questions right? Never advice. So, use that as an opportunity to understand what are the needs in the market by the way the needs, very important. It’s not just functional, but emotional. What is the functional and emotional needs of that customer? Find who that perfect customer is for you and focus on the functional and the emotional needs and that’s how great brands are built. It’s because when you can, we can do all functional needs, we can all deliver specific services. It is when emotional need is being met and you nail that. That you make people feel a sense of peace, peace of mind, relief yes, relief from stress, whatever it might be that’s what they remember you for. So, it’s coming in with those responses that really hit that emotional need and that’s where you build a great brand.
John: Yeah, and I think you know, you said it perfectly because when you’re starting, you’re lonely right? but over the course of many years im sure you had influences that you respect. It could have been your parents, relatives, people that you went to school with, or seniors, managers, colleagues, people that are in your circle. You might not have worked in big corporate but you kinda knew other entrepreneurs and you saw how they were living and therefore you respected them and by reaching out to them asking them deep questions. Letting them know what your thoughts and ideas getting their perspective, gives you a sense of relief because people that at the top like, business owners are the greatest humans. I feel like they want to give and help, support people that are new, getting started because it is a difficult journey for them right? So, when you’re out there just asking, it makes them feel so much more comfortable to give and they feel obligated to this.
Brenda: Well, I think another group, I agree with you on the customer front but also you know another thing if you’re starting up another business get into a mastermind group. Get into a mastermind group you know they people who are in similar situations, not the same industry, strongly encourage that just discourage that it doesn’t work but find someone who is also trying to start a business and you can help each other see things through a different perspective. No one can ever see themselves the way others can and so, having that outside perspective is incredibly helpful, we’ve been a part of a mastermind group for many many many many years. I think like 15 years actually, the same mastermind group and they always help us look at things in a different way. They’re from a different slightly, different business, they’re from a different industry, and they are from a different geography. So their perspective is going to be very different and there’s and that doesn’t cost us a penny, we’re spending no money on it we’re just connecting frequently so that we can help each other, and it’s incredibly beneficial. So encourage people to look at that too when you’re starting out.
John: And it’s great advice because you coming from a corporate in different cultures, in different regions in the world and there’s still synergies in this entrepreneurial community right?
Brenda: Absolutely.
John: Let it be online, digital, or over phone call, over email, you know zoom meetings like this. There’s different ways to connect and now that this internet is borderless where anyone can connect anywhere. There’s abundance amount of people in similar situation that’s where you are, you just have to get yourself out there and a lot of people don’t even know it exists. Let alone trying to put it out there right?
Brenda: Exactly, and so the idea of networking, you can do that around the world. I mean if there’s anything that the last couple of years has pointed out for us is that we are all connected, and we can connect so easily with online. We can just connect and it’s such a great opportunity, I can reach out to an entrepreneur in Finland, an entrepreneur in South Africa, and we can all have connections, we can all talk this honestly, we’re gonna be experiencing much of the same issues and challenges.
John: So, I just wanted to ask you now, a little bit more about this 19 years of entrepreneurship. You mentioned you wrote 11 books, you’re you know you still have that the same drive, you know you still love what you do. Like what keeps you going? Because usually there’s ebbs and flows in this journey of entrepreneurship that’ll be very lonely, people are trying to discover themselves. They kinda rethink and revisit why they’re doing what they’re doing and what’s that end goal, their division and the ultimate why right? Like what makes you keep doing what you do?
Brenda: Yeah, you know, I get up in the morning and I can’t believe I get to do what I love and I love what I do, I mean it’s just extraordinary to me. I love coaching and I coach at the highest levels of the organizations so I’m coaching the C Suite CXO’s, I love it. I love the challenges that they face and I love working with them to give them the support and the guidance they need to really succeed at that very, those are very challenging positions and I’m honored by that and I coach people all around the world. So I’m international too, which is what I love, I love the international aspects, I love keynote address and speaking, you know you can address thousands of people at once and hopefully touch people’s lives with messages that matter and make a difference in their outcomes. And I love being an author you know someone picks up a book and you get an email in the morning and says “ You know my, oh my gosh this passage just really spoke to me.” and “Oh my gosh, this book changed my life.” I can’t think of a better job, I really cannot think of a better job. So I, why I love what I do and I can’t imagine changing it. So I don’t, and why am I those rare industries where the older you get, the better you get, and the more and the more people really want you around, so it’s a lovely industry to be in, so I say “Love what you do, absolutely love what you do.” Be willing to pivot, be willing to be flexible and the reason is I say that is where I thought this business was going to go and where it is today is quite, quite different. But it’s a beautiful evolution so, you have to be open to what’s happening in the market, be willing to flex as need be, make sure that it speaks to your heart where you going, and I’m telling you it’s a recipe for success, it really is a recipe for success.
John: That’s great advice, I wanted to ask also during those 19 years, did your avatar change? And how often were you pivoting and changing to address that? Because like you mentioned now your keynote but at the early stages you probably didn’t. How many years? And what were some of the struggles that you had to endure? Because 19 years of entrepreneurship, I’m doing it for 8 years and I feel you know, I’ve got through the first 5 and I’m just hitting good strides right now and I’m very comfortable for, with what I’m doing cause I love what I do. Supporting my team, my clients, and everything else.
Brenda: Yeah, well I start off pure branding, corporate branding, that was my expertise, that’s what I knew. And, so I really started there but I always loved leadership and I always loved coaching, and so I was trying to find a way to marry the two in a way that would speak to me into what I really loved the most. And one day, it wasn’t long after I started my business it hit me I thought leadership branding, leadership branding, personal branding first of all back then personal branding was still relatively new. So personal branding, the idea of taking the same concepts that worked in big corporations to every brand that you know and love, Nike, Starbucks, McDonald’s, whatever has six elements that define them. And those six elements you can take them and adapt them to people and so that was the first system I came up with so we’re just gonna came up with a brand of personal branding. How those six elements translated into humans can work to build a brand just like it does for household name brands, but then I said “Well I’m gonna marry that with leadership to create leadership branding.” and that’s the way people perceive, think, and feel about you as a leader. So I really got me into the leadership space, the coaching space that was marrying my two loves which was fantastic. And then, I moved it a little bit more into inspiring leadership brands like how do you, most leaders who say to me “I just wanna be more inspiring like, how do I be inspiring?” and so I really wanted to move that speaks to me too. So how do you move into the inspiring arena, inspiring leadership and branding, and that was beautiful. And now, right now I’m really shifting into it’s similarly, it’s still leadership branding but it’s more about leadership writing from the inside out and the reason I said is because so much of life is being disrupted right now John. So much of life is disruption the way we communicate, talk, eat, you know buy goods, travel, I mean everything’s changing, everything’s changing. And when the world outside of us is in a complete state of disruption, we have to disrupt as leaders either self-leaders or leaders of others. We have to disrupt the one thing inside of us that can create true positive and lasting change, and that’s the way we think. So leadership branding, strong leadership starts as an inside job first, and then shifts outside and that’s the way you handle this world that is in a constant state of shift. So that’s kinda where the, yeah it’s kinda morphed over time but every single time it morphed it felt just right. Now you asked me about my services, I started off with pure consulting, and then I’ll tell you what happened John. I got tired of needing to give all the answers, because consulting you have to come up with all the answers and it kept me up at night. What if I didn’t get the right answer for this client? So I thought you know what I really rather do is coach, because coaching is helping them come up with the right answer for them. And so I moved into, I stopped doing consulting after a few years and went straight into coaching and that naturally led into keynoting because I would coach a senior executive he’d say “Oh! I want you to address my leadership team.” or “I want you to speak at our all hands meeting.” You know with 2,000 people and it’s just yeah, it just was a natural beautiful morphing. The books came about, If I can tell this story the books came about because I was speaking on this proprietary system I’d created and another, I won’t go into whole detail but another speaker took all my stuff and presented it. Yeah, right in front of me, so I thought well if it’s that good that someone’s willing to steal my stuff right in front of me that I better get a book written quickly because this proprietary information will no longer be a proprietary unless I write this book. So I’m, I look back at him now and bless him because his the one who kicked my little you know what, to get going on writing a book. A year later I had a book out and it’s been, I’ve been writing books ever since and they’ve been translated into many languages and so it’s really, it’s fantastic, yeah.
John: That’s amazing! And were you always independent? Like, were you the sole business owner your brand? Or did you develop a team ? and how soon after that you got started? You formed that team to do a lot of the tasks that you probably dread doing.
Brenda: Yeah! Yes well, you know I went from a big corporate world where I just walked down this hall and got market research, and walked down the hall and did finance, and walked at, and they were all there for me. It did not look like that when I started my own business of course you know that. I started off right away with an assistant because I knew there was certain thing I just wanna waste time on, I really wanted to focus on the foundations. But I was super, then I got accountant and all that stuff, and I was supervising it all and I have to tell you, that was probably my biggest mistake that I didn’t outsource faster. I don’t think you need to hire a lot of people up front but in today’s gig economy my advice to entrepreneurs, outsource, outsource, outsource. Anything that you don’t love doing there will be somebody out there who loves to do it for you and it doesn’t have to cost a lot to do this too. So that, my first advice so after five years of running I think I had a team of i don’t know something like 8 people, I can’t remember at that time I actually, my husband I was looking for a good general manager. I thought if I could just find someone who’d be a really great general manager, now my husband was CFO of a major corporation as well, a big regional company. And I was sitting down talking about what kind of characteristics do we want and I suddenly realized, I think I know who would be really good at this job and so anyway, he, we started working together and that was 5 years into the business so we’ve been working together now for 14 years. Our business has changed in terms of our team, we outsource tremendously at one point in time I think we had 22 different people working for us but they were mainly gig economy folks all around the world. We did gig economy long before it was ever popular. So, we were doing that long time ago and we still do it we love it, we have people all around literally that help us, Australia, the US, India, Europe, with people all over the world helping us work hard, we can hire the best at what they do in various locations in the world. I go to sleep at night send off a task, I wake up in the morning and it’s done, so it’s a great system. So the size of the team is marked over time, yeah.
John: It’s great advice right? Because a lot of business owners think they have to do everything themselves so therefore, they’re ultra stressed, they don’t sleep well at night, they forget about like the life that they dreamt of. Wanting to achieve by getting into this new entrepreneurial journey of theirs and then after a couple of months or a year it’s not cutoff for them and they’re like “I’m gonna go back to my gig.” or get a salary right? So, what would you say to a lot of these people right? That are just starting off, I know you gave advice on this like task but a lot of people can’t afford it early right? And you know, for me I’m very lucky to have that failed background right? That was my biggest skill set coming out of starting this company. So I went out there understanding the gaps, needs, analysis, and then creating relationships and building upon what to sell them but a lot of people don’t have that skill set and therefore, they can’t even start a business because they’re analyzing everything and trying to do everything not really paying the bills.
Brenda: So, I’m gonna give advice that may surprise you. I’m gonna give the advice that I really believe that it’s better to start a business once you have a little money in your pocket. Let me tell you why. First of all, you could fail because you don’t have, you just simply don’t have the funding you need, it does cost money in the beginning to get going no matter how you do it you’re gonna have to either have you’re going to work 24 7 yourself doing stuff you hate and you’re gonna go “Why did I this? This is crazy.” I say do what you love and let other people do the stuff that they love for you. So, if but you can’t afford to pay them, the you end up doing stuff you don’t always love and you end up working so hard that you lose sight of the whole reason you did it in the first place. So, I always say, have enough money in your bank account to fund you for you know I would say a year probably just to get going for sure. I really do believe that’s important because you’ll be able to do what you love, get smart people to help you do it, and you’ll be able to take off on a trajectory that’ll be much faster than if you had to scramp, and scroll, and be careful, and you may or may not make it and then you know living paycheck to paycheck and wondering if you can pay it’s a miserable existence right? So, go in with this sense of that, I’m gonna do this for a year, I’ve got enough to cover that and have some alternatives to be aware of if you need to. But I really think the other thing is you get paid by somebody else to learn the skills you need. Don’t underestimate working in big corporations for a while, they teach you the skills you need to be able to be successful at what you wanna do and if you’re not getting them from your big corporate job then go to a big corporate job where you will learn what you need. By the time I started my own business I had done finance, accounting, administration, operations, HR, and marketing. Okay, and I went to business school where I learned general management, so I was ready to start my business. I felt I had the skill sets that I needed, well-rounded to do it. I didn’t wanna do a lot of that myself but I knew enough to be able to supervise it and I’d gotten paid on the way up to do that. So, you know I think there’s some benefits to that, I always tell entrepreneurs I know it’s really, it seems like it’s there’s a Mark Zuckerberg’s than run out right after never finished university or whatever. Most people don’t have that story so, I say make sure you have some money in the bank. Do it smartly, so that you’ll really take off.
John: And maybe, I’m gonna ask you. Going back, you know in grade school or during those university college years. Did you ever dream of like having your own kind of entrepreneurial business and being a coach? Or was there people that you kinda looked up at and said “I wanna be like them.”?
Brenda: No and no, I’ll be honest with you. I really didn’t, I had, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as coach. I remember the first time I went to a coach training, a coach training, I just loved coaching I didn’t know, I thought he was just part of your natural leadership job. I went to someone said “Oh, come to a weekend retreat on how to be a good coach.” And I remember walking out to that weekend or take totally inspired thought “I can do this, this is fantastic! ” One woman looked me and said “ So how much are you gonna charge to do this? “ and I said “ Oh! People pay for this?” seriously I had no idea and of course that’s a significant part of income at this stage. So, I think you have to , I don’t think you know I always say people who grew up in there at the age of 12 they knew they wanted to be an accountant. I’m like, I’m so glad that you do but that’s not been my story at all I had no idea what I wanted to do. In fact, John I will tell you when I was undergrad, I didn’t know what I wanted to do but I was really sure what I did not want to do and I did not wanna be in business.
John: Yeah. Yeah, that’s great! Because you’re telling the truth right? Like as you mature you become more wise, you have different perspectives, you engage in different work life experiences, encompass a lot of people along the way and by being curious or understanding like, where the gaps are? And understanding what you personally want to do. Climbing I feel is a lot of it because people have different circumstances throughout that life journey. They’re gonna have children, family potentially, you’ve got to relocate for job career or any circumstance and they’re forced into certain things. We, here in North America, UK, or Australia, western society, we have choice, we have access and resources. And I feel so privileged that, with that we already one percent of the global population of doing things to our liking like, we have access and information and choice like no one else does. And therefore, if you’re not able to do something with it focus on what you enjoy doing.
Brenda: Yeah.
John: Like if you can’t do it here, there’s no one else that you can do it like there were countries. They’re struggling to even have power right? Let alone water, fresh water.
Brenda: Yeah. No absolutely look the other thing that would say is and it sounds foundational and it’s because it’s so important is when you’re gonna do this. Too many entrepreneurs that I see, they come into it from a place of “Oh my gosh what if I fail? Oh my gosh what if it doesn’t work? Oh my gosh what if I don’t have enough funding? Oh my gosh what if I can’t find the right people?” and that is really steeped John in a foundation of fear. It’s a fear-based perspective on starting up your own business and very rarely does that work. What I espouse and what I espoused myself was coming at it from a place of possibility, joy of possibility is what I call it. The potentiality behind this business what could be. And if you look at all the great entrepreneurs in the world I guarantee you, they came at it more from a place of joy of possibility, potentiality, what could be, then the fear of “Oh but what if I fail? Oh but what if it doesn’t work out? Oh but.” right? And so really embracing that watch your mindset as an entrepreneur, are you falling into fear more? Are you moving it, allowing yourself to really embrace the joy of possibility? And the difference in outcomes is tremendous.
John: Yeah, like as an entrepreneur being optimistic, having that growth mindset, ensuring that you’re always positive, it’s very difficult when you’re struggling the whole time.
Brenda: Yeah, but I agree with you John but don’t. When I say I actually have bonus, I don’t really care for the word positive and I’ll tell you why, because it sounds like we’re going to sprinkle pink paint all over everything and it’s all gonna be better. There are gonna be challenges, but the challenges are what make us great entrepreneurs when we overcome those challenges, when we can find creative ways of getting out of it, when we can look at those challenges with objective curiosity and figure out how to solve them. They actually become the best friends that we have because they move us into a better space, they move us being able to solve problems for our clients or our customers as well. So I, I’m not a big fan of positive but I am a big fan of possibility of potentiality. Every potential “hurdle” that I’ve ever ever been faced with and there have been plenty as you can imagine in 19 years of doing this, every single one of them in hindsight was an absolute blessing. I look back and I recognize how I grew, I learned, our team got better, our, my client servicing got better, whatever every single one of them made me better. So when we can shift that mindset and perspective away from a fear-based “Oh my gosh I’m failing, this is horrible.” to a space of “Okay, so that didn’t work as we had planned.” But, how could we learn? What did we learn from that? What can we do better? How can we do it better next time? How will this shift the way we look at our strategy, our systems, our procedures, etc.? Every single time, there is not a speech that I give. There’s not one time I’ve given a speech that we don’t come back to the office, we all sit around, and we say, what went well, what didn’t go well, what can we do differently, what will we do differently next time, every single they have never given the same speech twice because of that.
John: And it’s so important to reflect right? Because in hindsight, now that I look at I wasn’t doing I was sit in sales for 10 years and every time after a sales call, I would write, I have a notebook and I would jot down pros and cons, what can have done better, what could I have improved, and what will the outcome be right? Like, what are my next steps? And by just jotting down these notes it allowed me to really analyze, get improve, and change right? The next sales call and by just doing these little little things, it allowed me to become one of the better sales traps in the whole organization that I’m part of. But these little habits you know, you gain these habits and you get better, and you improve an you try to you know not do the same mistakes that you did prior right?
Brenda: But also John I would say, it’s not just not doing the same mistakes because I agree with that but it’s also looking at what went well. You know we are often our toughest critics, we focus on what didn’t go well first but in fact say. You know every time I‘ve presented this type of thing to this type of audience it always goes over well, it’s a chance to go to the top of the mountain and look down on it from a big picture of perspective and say “Ah that’s really working well for this type of audience. Great! I’ll keep that in mind for the future.” So, it’s also it’s that balance of it’s really easy to be hard on yourself and “ Ah! I didn’t do that right, I didn’t do that right.’ “What did I do right?” and what really resonated with the audience, with the customers, with readers, yeah.
John: So, just a few more questions I wanna ask you. So, where has been the best place for you to travel to? First of all, because you’ve been a global traveler, not just for working, and for pleasure and leisure as well and then of course, where do you see yourself in the next 5 more years?
Brenda: Well let me, let me start with this so, travel my goodness. First of all you’re hitting me at a time when I have not traveled in 18 months, which is extraordinary. I’ve traveled my entire life, I’m a multi multi-million miler so, it’s such a rare thing that I have traveled to almost a hundred countries and so I really had a wonderful opportunity of traveling around the world. Favorite places, this is very difficult because I really do love every place I go to is something beautiful to experience. Favorite countries I would say probably, I love the south island of New Zealand. I’ll say that for my kiwi friends, I loved, I love going to Italy, Italy’s a lot of fun,beautiful place driving around Italy. Yeah, obviously those are probably two of my favorites, I like some off the beaten track places. Look Thailand, we have a little space there, we love going to Thailand, we used to live in Thailand so, we have a warm spot in our heart you know for Thailand as well. So, yeah it’s hard to say, we live in Singapore and we love Singapore. It’s one of our, we lived all over the world we always save the best for last because we really love living here so, it’s a beautiful place to be based as well. So, we’re just really fortunate everywhere I go, I always try to find something about the place that I really love. What’s the next 5 years look like? Oh! It’s exciting John, I can see the future and I can’t wait to be part of it. I think that the world is on a precipice of really big and exciting changes and I would love to be a part of helping to sustain people during those changes. There’s so much coming up, I’ve got tons more on the book side, book ideas, keynote speaking ideas, I’m coaching more and more. I coach across six continents, enjoying working with you know celebrities, and government officials, and it’s just, it’s just expanding and growing, and it’s exciting. But I hope that I don’t know all that’s coming because I love the joy of surprise as well when I look at the future and see what’s coming.
John: That’s amazing Brenda, it sounds so much fun and it sounds like you’re enjoying every minute of it, minute of it. From your past life to your present life and your future life right?
Brenda: That’s exactly.
John: That’s how entrepreneurship should be. Business ownership like you should be excited to get started by inspiring and doing things that you love doing. Actually helping others right? Serving others and I think you found your, you know “why” right? Like what is it, I think you hit in the nail and discovered that.
Brenda: You know the other thing I will say is and I always say this to young people in particular. “Do what you love, the money will come.” So many people sell their souls by doing things that they don’t really enjoy but it pays the bills and all that does is just zap zap all the energy that you have out of yourself. You drain yourself and you come home at the end of the day not enjoying life and that is not what we’re here for. I don’t believe that, I think we’re here to express our fullest potential to constantly growing and expanding, and developing. That’s another thing I would say for entrepreneurs, John “Invest in yourself.” It’s really easy to invest in the business, and invest in what your customers want, and your clients want. Invest in yourself and you know that, you’re an avid reader and all of that, “Invest in yourself. Learn from the best, learn from the greatest, what they do well, what they didn’t do well. What’s going to resonate with you, what doesn’t resonate with you and just cherry-pick. All the greatness that you can and then listen to your own internal, I call it the inner coach. Listen to that inner coach and then you’ll be beautifully guided to what’s exactly right for you. “Do what you love. The money will come.”
John: Yeah, great advice. You only live life once and might as well not regret any moment of it throughout that lifespan and yes there’s gonna be situations that you’re gonna face with. Everyone goes through challenges, it’s how you overcome them. What are you doing differently that will get you ahead right? Move you forward because everyone’s gonna complain, everyone’s gonna say “You have no idea what I’m going through.” Well, it’s okay everyone’s going through different challenges, no one’s living in a perfect life. It’s what are you gonna do to move yourself ahead.
Brenda: Well, I don’t underestimate John. So, one of the things I don’t really like to look at anything as a challenge, that’s just me because the truth again, remember it’s not a challenge, it’s an opportunity to shift your perspective. It really is and that sound really Pollyanna but it’s true. If you can shift your perspective I can name, I’ll give you an example. I’m Procter & Gamble moved me to Poland okay, in the mid 90’s and it was really difficult time to be living in Poland in the mid 90s. I won’t lie and I was newly single from a breakup, and it was as really really difficult time and there were times where I fought to myself, what have I done? I mean, I moved to this country, I don’t know anybody, I don’t know speak the language I don’t, it’s cold in the winter, it’s miserable cold in the winter. The business was behind by 12 weeks because they were waiting for me to arrive, it, I worked 24-7. I live by myself in a big old house it was very cold and I look back, and I laugh every time I tell that story for two reasons. Number one, I ended up in the heart of central Europe during the time when it was the burgeoning growth area of the world. I learned more from that than I could have learned in a lifetime, in other countries. Number two, 17 months after I moved there at a Sunday, little Sunday morning gathering, I met a man who grew up about a mile from where I grew up and we ended up getting married, okay. So, you know I look back at that and say if I had only looked at that experience as a challenge, I would have been miserable. If I looked at and said “Okay, I’m here. Let’s make the most of this.” I wouldn’t have been at that place on that Sunday morning, I wouldn’t have been able to grow and develop as I had. So, I think we really have to shift our perspective away from the concept of challenge into seeing it as opportunities with objective curiosity. One of my favorite things is objective curiosity, how is it going to move me forward? I can’t wait to see what this is all about.
John: Just making the most of every situation, don’t think about what you could have done differently, it’s like just live for the present. Enjoy what you have in front of you and live, and like you mentioned objective curiosity. I was born curious, right? Because I didn’t have much growing up so, I didn’t know how other people lived. So, i would always inquire, I would always try to figure out, and ask, and follow, and kinda join different group and what that allowed me to now do what I actually love, right? To do serve others, help others, have a great team that I fully support and do this which is meet some great, inspiring people that I would never have been able to meet if I didn’t reach out right? So, I really want to truly thank you, Brenda. For all the time, all the wisdom that you brought to the audience members today, hopefully you had fun. If you don’t mind leaving with maybe how the audience members can reach you, maybe if you have something that you wanna offer or if they can visit your website, and your services?
Brenda: Sure. Yeah sure John. Well, thank you! So, what a joy to talk to you. Thank you so much and I hope the listeners got a little bit of tidbits and some inspiration from this. Listen, you can reach me at brendabence.com, that’s my main website is but I’m also on all the social media platform right, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc. etc. and stuff. Feel free to reach out that way too. My latest book is out, it’s called “ The Forgotten Choice” it’s all about shifting your mindset, it’s about shifting the inside job to help you be successful on the outside. And you know for you listeners if you’d like John, I, if they send me a receipt they’ve purchased that book I will send them a complimentary companion guide, it’s full of coaching questions and exercises, and tips, and extra information. 58 pages beautifully typeset if I may say so about how to really embrace this shift in mindset that really does get where you want to go in life. So, I’m happy to offer that, free for anybody of your listeners that are interested in writing to me.
John: Amazing. Well, I’m gonna put that in the show notes, I wanna thank you again for being on this show and I look forward to connecting with you offline. So, again thank you Brenda! If you’re ever in Toronto, Canada, ring me up! Thank you.
Brenda: Sounds fabulous! Thanks, John. All the best.
