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Reaching True Success by Focusing on Your Foundation with Ian Lobas

About Ian R. Lobas

My name is Ian R. Lobas and I am a professional Realtor with Keller Williams Gateway in White Marsh, MD. I’ve had a vested interest in real estate from a young age, and I bring a wealth of experience in sales, marketing, and negotiation to my clients. I’ve been consistently ranked as a top sales agent due to the detailed focus I put into my core values. The values I rely heavily on are energy, effort, education and passion. These help me best serve and create long-lasting client relationships.

Prior to my career in real estate, I worked at an international shipping and custom brokerage business. In this role, I gained valuable experience in negotiation and transaction management, sales team management, cargo logistics & operations, marketing, advertising, and import/export complex international contracts. I’m committed to taking my past experience and using it for the benefits of my clients now and in the future. I would love the opportunity to help you buy or sell in Baltimore today.

As a Full-time, full-service REALTOR, I specialize in Residential Purchase and Sales, New Home Sales, Luxury Condos, Luxury Homes, Investment Properties, Waterfront, Renovation/Rehab, Property Staging/Decoration.

Energy and effort make the difference! For the most in-depth information and exceptional experience, call me today!

Check out my TV Commercial for National Association of Realtors!

 

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The Impact & Influence Our Moms Have On Us With Caterina Rando

 

Mother’s Day is as good a time as any other to look back on how our mothers impacted and influenced us as a person and how our relationships with them defined who we are right now. Join Moneeka Sawyer and her dear friend, Caterina Rando, as they trade touching stories of their dear mothers who propelled them to the brilliant and powerful women that they are now. Caterina is a business transformation coach who passionately serves women leaders on a mission, with a 25-years track record in educating and empowering audiences. She attributes much of her success, not only in coaching but also in real estate, to her mother’s influence. Learn why she and Moneeka both consider themselves to be a version 2.0 of their respective mothers and why that is such a good thing.

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The Impact & Influence Our Moms Have On Us With Caterina Rando

I am excited to welcome to the show a dear friend of mine, Caterina Rando. Caterina is a business transformation coach who passionately serves women leaders on a mission. Her over 25 years of educating and empowering audiences and groups makes her truly masterful at providing a ton of value. She shares how to be loud and proud about the value you bring in order to serve more people and make your businesses thrive with speaking, workshops, group programs, and retreats. Ladies, I want to put in a personal note that Caterina is one of my personal coaches. She and I met years ago. I finally ended up in one of her speaking retreats and programs. We got much closer and I have to say she’s had a huge impact on my life, my business. She’s a big reason why I’m speaking to you. I want all of us to be grateful that she’s here with us. Caterina, how are you?

Moneeka, I am wonderful. Thank you for that fabulous introduction. It is my honor and privilege to watch you do your thing with so much bliss.

When I was talking to Caterina and she was using this word bliss, every other coach would get glassy-eyed. They look at me like, “What the heck? I can’t relate to that word.” Caterina has a term called Blissing, which is when we hear something we love we go, “Bing, bing, bing.” Someone that uses the word blissing is someone I need in my life. 

I sometimes talk about you to a client. I say, “I’ve got this client, Moneeka Sawyer. Have you met her?” You’re always in your bliss. Sometimes women in business, they’re focused on different things and they’re stressing about them and I say, “Bring in your bliss.” You are a role model for bliss, my friend, for sure.

Thank you, Caterina. I’m honored that you say that. I know they’re one of the many things that Caterina and I have in common is our relationship with our moms and the huge impact that our mothers have had on our lives. Since this is the Mother’s Day episode, I wanted to share with you in honor of all of those mothers out there that have impacted our lives in many ways, they take care of us, feed us and love us. Not only do they feed our bellies, they feed our souls and our minds and encourage and inspire us to be the best women that we can be. I want to honor our moms and I thought there was no better person for me to have this conversation with than with Caterina. Caterina, could you start by telling us a little bit about your story and your relationship with your mom?

I’m an Italian-American. My grandparents came most of them through Ellis Island and I was raised in an Italian-American household, West Coast Italian though, not East Coast Italian. There’s a difference. My grandfather was a shoemaker and my other grandfather owned a grocery store. My mother came from a home where education was emphasized. My mother was the first person in her community to go to college and she became a school teacher. I share that because some of the things that you would think about your favorite school teacher are present with my mom. She was the mom that would be excited whenever a child would come to the door, selling candy or selling something.

Not only would she instantly open her wallet, but she would also lean down, say hello and tell them how proud she was of them and what a great job she was doing. Her bliss was being a school teacher and working with children. Also, my household, my dad too, were generous and working-class people, living in a regular house, in a regular neighborhood and still, Moneeka, I was taught that there’s always money to help someone whatever it is and whatever the ask was, the answer was always yes. That is something that I continue in my life and was great modeling for an attitude of abundance and generosity.

I know you are all about positivity, integrity, generosity, and community. I can see that it came from your family. One of the things that strike me, another thing that we have in common is this immigrant mindset in a way that our parents came with deep cultural, traditional roots of how a family is supposed to look, what a mom, dad, family, and community look like. Some of those traditions we’ve had to break away from as younger women because we have to evolve and progress and not everything served us. Some of that was valuable in creating a foundation of love and stability so that we could then step to the next step in our power and strength. No matter what tradition says, both your mom and my mom stepped into their power regardless of what culture might have said and sometimes because of what culture might’ve said, wouldn’t you say? 

Our mothers don’t just feed our bellies. They feed our souls and minds and inspire us to be the best women that we can be. Share on X

One thing I want to say is that in my family, and the immigrants, they didn’t call it entrepreneurialism, but that’s what immigrants did. They started businesses. Many of them started businesses because there was a lot of discrimination in the workforce. Not just against immigrants, but as we know, also against women. In my household growing up, my dad had this phrase for my mom. He called it a scheme, which was his term for whatever my mom’s brilliant idea was.

I’m not sure how I feel about that.

That’s the thing, Moneeka, you’ve heard me talk about brilliant ideas syndrome. His perspective was making fun of it but from my perspective, it’s awesome and amazing because it was her brilliant ideas. She wrote a children’s book. She came up with these chocolate chips, Italiano with a touch of Galliano. She started, and she did it for many years, an Italian novelty business for all the Italian fairs around the country. She had hats and t-shirts that she would sell wholesale. She’s had many ideas over the years. The most prolific and profitable was real estate, which I know we’ll talk about.

The thing for me was that I always saw my mom having fun with her ideas. She never got an idea and left it at the idea stage. She would do it. She would write the book. She produced the cookies. She has the novelty business on the side. She didn’t stay in the idea stage. That’s what a lot of people do with their ideas and their dreams. They stay in the idea stage. I’m glad that my mother never did that because you know me, Moneeka, I’m all about action. That comes from being raised in a household where it was a fun thing to pursue your ideas.

It wasn’t a scary thing. It’s interesting because, in my household, we came as immigrants educated in India, where my parent’s degrees weren’t recognized here in the United States. It’s a little bit of a different immigrant experience, but what is funny and in common is that they were still entrepreneurs. My mom’s a doctor, my dad’s an engineer and they had these jobs. They felt limited. They needed to do the things that they needed to do for their families, but they felt limited and both of them, the second they could become entrepreneurs, they did that. To me, it was inspiring also because like you, I got to watch them take their idea and create something brand new out of it. My mom became a doctor at a time when girls didn’t go to medical school in India. She was told many times that she wasn’t going to be able to do it.

She wasn’t smart enough, women don’t do that, and you should get married, all of this stuff. She went to medical school against the odds and then came to the United States and her medical degree is not recognized. She goes to the whole thing again. She educates herself. She goes through the internship, but the second she was able to open her own clinic and treat people in the way that she wanted to, that wasn’t dictated by a hospital, that’s what she did and she did it well. She had all these ideas of the people she wanted to help, the conversations she wanted to have and the difference she was going to make and she did it. Like you, I’ve had that experience that great ideas are awesome, but nothing happens until you take action. I got to watch my parents do that.

That is modeling for us not to be hesitant. “What if it doesn’t work out?” I don’t even think about that because I know that I can figure it out, whatever it is and because sometimes it’s fun. You’ve been on retreats with me and when I started retreats, it was like, “Let’s do a retreat.” It wasn’t a strategy for something as it was a great idea to pursue. That’s the thing. It is fun to pursue your ideas and not be attached to a particular outcome. In the process, we learn a lot about ourselves and we grow tremendously. I’m grateful that was my modeling growing up.

Every once in a while, someone will say to me, “You are like your mother.” I’m like, “I know.” I picked up all that’s good and much that’s not good. I’m 2.0 of my mom. I love that because when we have a model that we can emulate, the excitement about creating a business and something new as women, we saw it on her mom’s they birthed us. We have the capacity to birth, not just people, but businesses and full experience.

 

I do consider it a compliment when someone says I’m like my mother. The other thing is my mother can talk to anybody and she’s a voracious reader. She knows a little bit about a huge variety of topics. She reads things to read them, to learn about a new topic. I’ve always admired that about her, her ability to talk to anybody. It’s the ability to listen and express that you’re genuinely interested because the truth is, she is genuinely interested and that’s something else that I’ve learned from her. It’s great to be like our mothers and, as you say, be creating our path and be the 2.0 version.

I know that a lot of your path around real estate started because of your mom. Could you tell me a little bit more about that and what her experience was?

When my grandfather passed away when I was young and my grandfather left my mom the house that he lived in, which was two flats. He left her a triplex down the block. She has turned that into quite the fempire of real estate by continuing to upgrade and leverage this one to buy that one. If I could share her real estate philosophy, she’s got two things. I didn’t discuss this with her, so there might be more. She doesn’t know that I’m talking about her. The first thing is and for whatever reason, she likes to buy corners. The other thing is my mom. She’s 88. I don’t know if she ever had a license, but she never drove our whole life. As a school teacher, she walked to work about 30 blocks East of our house. She walked to work every day and she walked home. She always liked to be able to walk by her buildings with the exception of one.

She has all of her buildings in the neighborhood so that she can walk by them and do a personal inspection. Those are two things. She has commercial and residential property. I’m going to say one more thing that is part of her philosophy. She always has her properties under market for rent. Whatever the rent is, she goes lower to ensure that she has a high occupancy rate. I can tell you that over the many years, she’s had a high occupancy rate. She does give everybody a gift at the beginning of the year. I’m not sure if it’s Christmas. She’s a loving and customer care heart-centered person, and that is reflected in her landlordship as well.

Those were all philosophies of my own, by the way. I’m not within 30 blocks for every property and I certainly don’t go walk by them and visit them much, but I do like to keep them close in case there’s something that comes up I can drive. Close for me is 15, 20-minute drive. How many properties did she end up leveraging those three flats into?

I would say, maybe eight. Some of them are big buildings with lots of units. Some of them are the building of that are centers in San Francisco own that with my mom. There are several other buildings with multiple units. There’s one building with a bar and a restaurant in it and a couple of restaurants one with some units and a restaurant. There’s a variety of multiuse properties and residential unit buildings.

Does she still have them all?

Yes.

We may not get to pick them, but our mothers are some of the greatest mentors we will ever have in our lives. Share on X

Does she manage them herself?

For many years, my dad was the property manager. My sister’s boyfriend is the property manager. He’s also a successful plumber, but he does this on the side. It’s good because you do need support and a good team.

That was going to be my next question. Did she have any support in this or were she doing it all of her own? That’s great that your dad is supporting her in that way. Did she have any mentors that taught her? Did she learn it from books or on her own? What was her journey like?

I don’t think she ever took a class. I don’t think she ever had a mentor, which is interesting. She figured it out but the other thing is that she always picked people that she trusted and she would get to know them. She rewarded loyalty by having the same gentleman who was doing all her real estate deals for her and a company that helped her with all the financing. As you teach, as I teach, find your good partners and work with them over and over. Trust, integrity, and good communication are key ingredients that you want from any of your partners and that’s what I saw with my mom. That’s part of what I focus on in my business with my vendors and teach my clients.

It’s interesting because people frequently talk about real estate is being a numbers business. If the numbers work by the property, you will make money. One of the things that I say over and over again is that the numbers have to work. That is true, but that’s not where the business stops. The true magic happens in the relationships. The relationships with your vendors, business partners, or with your tenants. One of the reasons women are good at this is because we have an intuitive sense. Not all of us, I don’t want to be segregational in any way here and not to say that men don’t have this too, but this is one of our superpowers. As women, we love the relationship. We put a lot of value on those relationships. We put a lot of energy into them and in the real estate business and in your business that pays off.

Also, that intuitive part, we have this intuition. Your mom needed to have tenants that she trusted and that she liked and she took the time to get to know them. I do that same thing, which is why my tenants stay with me for 10, 12, 15 years. I don’t have turnovers. Ladies, this is what I’m trying to say. Caterina is talking about her mom and her mom has demonstrated she’s a perfect example of what a woman in real estate can look like. Many of you sometimes think, “This is hard. There’s too much to learn. There are many shiny objects, many opportunities.” Sometimes it can get confusing, and instead think of real estate as the most intuitive business in the world. Caterina’s mom inherited property. Did she know much about real estate when she got those? 

Not to my knowledge.

She inherited some property. She’s like, “This is cool, and I’ve got some houses. Let me put people there.” She did it and she moved forward. She engaged the support of her husband and later her children. This is what we can do as women and it’s not that hard. Making money in real estate is not that hard. It can be surprisingly simple, not always easy. There are all these challenges. Anything in life worth having is going to have challenges. That’s where your bliss techniques come in. Notice how she flowed into it the way women flow through our lives if you open yourself to that. Would you agree with me on that? 

 

I would say that she flowed, but she worked it. What I mean by that is that often she would find tenants herself. Because she walked in the neighborhood, she would use the neighborhood and if she liked somebody, she would say, “Do you know somebody?” Even the commercial properties, when a restaurant was leaving, she would find the restaurant to go in to replace them or when she bought a building, if it needed tenants, she would work her network as you know how to do. I’m a big proponent of, she would work her network to make it happen and the tenants that met her tenant criteria. She would describe it as a lot of fun. She seemed to have a lot of fun doing her real estate. That’s how I got started.

I don’t think of this flow as not working. A flow is a way to work. If we can work it, we should work it in a way that feels blissful and fun. That’s what I meant by flow. Not that we don’t work it, but she loved the networking. That was the network, that was her skill. That’s what she did to make her business thrive. That’s more of what I meant there.

I told you, she’s 88. She takes a walk every day. If I need to know what’s going on in the neighborhood, I ask my mom anything new and exciting in the neighborhood. Because she walks, many of the people in the neighborhood would know her. She talks to the store owner’s property over there. She’s in the know because she walks the neighborhood. That has been part of the fun for her too.

What were you going to say next?

I was going to say that in watching my mom do her thing and loving it for many years, one day I was someplace with a friend and we played the CASHFLOW game. I came home to my mom and I said, “Mom, I want to be a real estate mogul like you.” This was many years ago. She came to me a month later and she said, “Caterina, if you can come up with $15,000, we can put a down payment on this building.” That was the building that we have our center in San Francisco. I had to borrow $10,000 of that $15,000. Whatever it takes to get started, I was happy to get started. I’ve done deals that have not worked out, but it’s all a part of the learning process and a few thousand dollar lessons here or there is okay because it’s important to be in the game of real estate if you want to get ahead in real estate. If somebody doesn’t have a mom like mine or yours, that’s what you’re here for is to be supporting them as their blissful mentor.

It’s important for people to pick mentors. It’s not about the success of the mentor. It’s about the values by which the mentor lives their life and runs their business. The reason why you’re a great real estate mentor, and I’ve been honored to come to your classes is because of the values by which you run your life and your business and its integrity. The whole thing about bliss, I want to be as blissful as you when I’m doing any deal. If I want more bliss in my life, then I want a mentor that has that bliss value down, which I feel you do. I wanted to say that because I’m a business mentor, I see a lot of people that tell me their sad stories about picking mentors that weren’t the right match for them. That’s the missing piece that they’re often missing looking at the values of the mentor. They’re looking at their success.

I’ve made that mistake myself, going for the business idea rather than the underlying values. As I’m getting older and I’ve made that mistake enough, I’m able to see and peg. I’m paying more attention to my gut. When my gut says, “No, I don’t like that person,” but you still give them the money because you think they’re going to make your business thrive. Now, I’m much more if I don’t feel it, if I don’t feel that our values are synchronous, I won’t do it no matter how good their pitch is.

Sometimes I find the better the pitch, the worst it is because if you got massive value, you don’t need as good of a pitch because everybody’s raving about you. Sometimes when the pitch is good, that’s all they got is the pitch.

It’s interesting, I’ve never heard you say that.

There is never enough love and acknowledgment to thank our mothers for the amazing things they have done for us. Share on X

I don’t know if I’ve ever said it before but I’m thinking of some situations and because I know how to make an offer, but I don’t feel necessarily that I’m the master of a pitch. Like you were saying, it’s about because I have great relationships, a great word of mouth and great raves that the business constant continues to flow and grow regardless of not having a phenomenal pitch.

The other thing that I appreciate about you and this is important when you’re looking for a mentor. Our moms were given to us as mentors that we didn’t get to pick, but often we’re out there, I feel lucky that one that I got, but not everybody feels that lucky. That’s the truth or they feel lucky in many ways, but not necessarily in business. When you’re picking a mentor, the other thing to know is the longevity of that mentor. Maybe they haven’t been in your life for a long time, but they should have seen the cycles of the economy. They should be mature enough not to overpromise based on a lack of knowledge. I’ve been through three big dip cycles in real estate. You’ve been through many cycles as a speaker. That’s one other thing because it also adds to the integrity of that mentor because they can say, “I’ve been through this stuff. I can support you through it.” This is what’s possible for you or all of us.

It is the job I feel of mentors to hold a bigger vision for their clients. The other thing, which I know you’re good at, people doesn’t understand often the value of some encouragement. A little encouragement from someone you respect can be volumes and massive support for people. It’s not about the skills and the super tips. It is about our mentors, genuinely caring about us and throwing in some love like our moms did and that’s encouragement. My mom and my father are always encouraging me with anything I do feel like, “I can do whatever I want to do and if it doesn’t work out, that’s okay, because I’ll be fine.” A lot of that encouragement that we need, even as adults, is important from a mentor, but also to recognize that we can create it for ourselves, but it’s even better when it comes from someone we respect and admire.

That’s important in our business relationships with your vendors, with your tenants. I send my tenants notes to say, “Thank you for always paying on time. Thank you for being the person that I want in my home.” It’s good on many levels. I tell all of my vendors, “Thank you for doing such a good job.” It shows up everywhere and that is that love that we’ve seen from our moms. Could you give us maybe one, tip, strategy and a piece of advice you’d like to leave all the ladies with on this Mother’s Day episode? 

One of the things is if your mom is still around, make sure that you’re expressing your gratitude to her, not only on Mother’s Day but on a regular basis. I never have a conversation with my mother or father that doesn’t end with I love you. I always look for things to appreciate and to articulate them. I thank them many times for their love and support over my 55 years. Even though I’ve thanked them for that many times, I continue to do it because none of us can have too much love and acknowledgment in our life. My parents were older. As people get older, it’s even more important that they are reminded of how amazing they are and of the amazing things that they have done. That’s what I would say. There’s never enough love, acknowledgment hugs, etc.

This conversation has been good, Caterina. Thank you for joining me. 

Thank you for the invitation. I can’t wait for my mom to read. She doesn’t know that I’m talking about her so I can’t wait.

You have to tell me what she says. Ladies, thank you for joining Caterina and I on this special Mother’s Day episode. It’s nice to have you here. You know how much I appreciate you and I look forward to seeing you next time. Until then remember, goals without action are just dreams. Get out there, take action, and create the life your heart deeply desires. I’ll see you next time. Bye.

 

Important Links

• Caterina Rando

 

About Caterina Rando

Caterina Rando is on a mission to teach, mentor, and support women to be themselves, do their thing, serve their people and massively monetize their mastery. She shows women entrepreneurs how to be loud and proud about the value they bring in order to make their businesses thrive. Her clients grow, shine, expand, open themselves up to new possibilities, and take their businesses further than ever before. Caterina is all about, positivity, integrity, generosity, community, and providing massive value while uplifting others.

She is a sought-after-speaker, event producer, and author. Her latest book is the ABCs of Public Speaking. Her book, Learn to Think Differently, from Watkins Publishing is published in over thirteen countries and several languages.

Caterina is the founder of The Thriving Women in Business Giving Community. This group of big-hearted women, raise money for women and girls education and entrepreneurship training. She wants women to know that they do not have to wait until they are wealthy or retired before they can embrace philanthropy. This is the clear message in the Women’s Giving Circle Guide, a book she co-authored with C.J. Hayden.

Caterina is also the founder of the Thriving Women in Business Center, located in San Francisco. This is an attractive and warm place for women to come and do their workshops. Caterina’s plan is to open more centers throughout northern California.

Caterina is recognized for her special way of infusing business with making a difference. She has received the Extraordinary Woman Award from Developing Alliances. The American Businesswomen Association bestowed on her the Woman of Distinction Award and she has also received the Limitless Woman Award from the Limitless Woman Conference.

 

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Impact & Influence Our Moms Have on Us with Caterina Rando

Caterina Rando, is a business transformation coach who passionately serves women leaders on a mission. Her over twenty-five years of educating and empowering audiences and groups, makes her truly masterful at providing a ton of value. She shares how to be loud and proud about the value you bring in order to serve more people and make your businesses thrive with speaking, workshops, group programs and retreats.

Caterina is all about, positivity, integrity, generosity, community and providing massive value while uplifting others. She is a sought-after-speaker, event producer and a prolific author her books include: Learn to Think Differently, from Watkins Publishing, released in over thirteen countries and several languages, A Women’s Guide To Starting a Giving Circle and her latest book, the ABCs of Public Speaking which quickly hit #1 in four Amazon best-seller categories.

Caterina is also, the founder of The The Thriving Women in Business Center in San Francisco, a place for women to gather and host workshops. Plus she also started the Thriving Women in Business Giving Community which raises money for women and girls education and entrepreneurship training

Today is our Mother’s day show.  Yesterday was Mothers day and today I want to honor how much our moms contribute to our lives in so many ways.  In this episode Caterina and I talked about the impact and influence our amazing moms have had on us.

In this episode, we discuss:

• How our mothers influenced us from a young age
• How their courage led us to transformation
• How there are lessons in everything

To see this program in video on Roku go to RealEstateInvesting4Women.com

To watch the EXTRA portion of this show go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com

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Learn how to create a consistent income stream by only working 5 hours a month the Blissful Investor Way.

Grab my FREE guide at http://www.BlissfulInvestor.com

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Optimize Your Bliss Even Now! With Dr. Maegan Renee & Francois Braine-Bonnaire

 

It’s a challenge to keep sane with all the toxicity in the world that surrounds us, pandemic or no pandemic. Tune in to this episode to learn how you can practice self-care, optimize your bliss and achieve a balanced and stress-free life. Joining Moneeka Sawyer for this is the power couple of life optimization, Francois Braine-Bonnaire and Dr. Maegan Renee, co-founders of ToBeOptimized.com. Between the two of them, Francois and Maegan possess a wealth of knowledge and experience in counseling, consulting and life coaching. Among other specializations, they are also experts on social media detox, for which they have created a method and written a book, both of which are covered in this episode.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Optimize Your Bliss Even Now! With Dr. Maegan Renee & Francois Braine-Bonnaire

We have our wonderful friend, Francois Braine-Bonnaire, and his incredibly lovely wife, Dr. Maegan Renee. Dr. Maegan Renee is a Licensed Professional Counselor and holds a PhD in Counselor Education and Supervision. She is the Owner of M.R. Counseling and Consulting and Cofounder of ToBeOptimized.com. She has presented on topics of mental health at national conferences around the country. She has publications on topics such as social isolation, early childhood mental health, and social media detox. She has many years of experience in the field of counseling, working with children, adolescents and adults. She also is the social-emotional coordinator for Florida Atlantic University.

Francois is a real estate investor and an international serial entrepreneur and certified life coach. Born and raised in Paris, France, he holds dual French and American citizenship. He is the Cofounder of ToBeOptimized.com and co-author of 21 Day Social Media Detox Journal with Dr. Maegan Renee. He’s also a contributing author of the book, Real Estate Investing for Women: Expert Conversations to Increase Wealth and Happiness the Blissful Way with me.

With the Turnkey Real Estate business founded in 2010, that continues to grow. He has helped more than 200 families from 15 countries around the world to successfully invest in more than 600 rental properties in the United States. He has a passion for helping people through both real estate investment and life coaching. He comes from a place of the heart. I love this transition that he’s making to also help with life coaching, because you could tell, even when he was talking about investing, he’s about empowering people to make their blissful lives possible. Welcome back, Francois and it’s nice to meet you, Maegan, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Moneeka. It’s great to be here and meet you as well.

Maegan, could you tell us about who you are and how you’ve gotten to where you are?

I am born and raised in Alabama. I grew up in a small rural town and grew up to two parents who worked at a blue jean factory. Growing up, we did not have a lot of resources, and the school I attended did not have counseling resources. It was quite a challenging experience that molded who I am. I’ll be talking about how I got on the path of counseling. When I was in school, I experienced a lot of bullying, low self-esteem. I don’t know that many people escape middle school without those experiences. With those adversities, I decided one day, “I wanted an education.” I was the first in my family to get a college education. I knew I wanted to help youth, teens, and adults that had gone through experiences similar to my own or other adversities in life. I started volunteering at a young age, working with individuals through therapeutic horseback riding. My path went into Special Education Counseling and my PhD in Counseling because I wanted to give back on a larger scale and work with our future counselors and training them.

I went through a huge amount of bullying also. My sister-in-law is blonde, gorgeous, tall, she was one of the popular kids, which I never had the benefit of. I had a conversation with her and she said to me, “High school was hard because I never felt like I fit in.” Even the popular kids have this same issue. It shows up differently in our lives, but it still shows up. I was a colored person in a white community. I got bullied because of that, but we’ve all had these experiences and it’s valuable. This work as adults. Success cannot happen unless we feel supported and we are able to lift our own self-esteem and because of that history for all of us, sometimes it becomes a little difficult. The work you are doing is important. Talk to me about that piece, mental health in business and in life. Why and how can that be important?

I like to use an analogy that seems to reach a lot of people when it comes to mental health and self-care. For some people, they almost feel guilty about self-care and doing things that are for them. I like to talk about the fact that when you get on an airplane, one of the first things they do, when they talk about the emergency procedures, they say, “If there is a need for a mask, put the mask on yourself. Because if you pass out, you’re not going to be able to help the person closest to you.” It’s like that in mental health and self-care too. If you’re not taking care of yourself first, then you’re not going to be able to take care of those closest to you. When we can reframe it that way, especially for women, we can realize that, “This is an act of self-kindness to myself, but also to those I’m closest with.”

Maegan, I love that analogy. One of the things that’s interesting about that is everybody uses it. I’ve heard that ten times on my show. Why? Because it’s relevant. Ladies, this analogy is given because it’s real. What happens is we hear that and we go, “Yes.” Instead of saying that, hear us. Your self-care is not selfish. It’s one of the most selfless things that you can do because it empowers you then to take care of the people that you care about most. You can give from an empty cup. Many of us women discover this, we can get from an empty cup, but only for so long, we collapse and we become a burden on the people we love. None of us ever want to do that. Keep yourself lifted and filled up so that you never become a burden on the people you most want to take care of. It’s imperative that you take care of yourself and that you get your oxygen first. In social distancing, many of us are going crazy. Let’s talk about self-care and how to keep ourselves sane in this circumstance and environment.

If you're not taking care of yourself first, then you're not going to be able to take care of those closest to you. Share on X

There are many things you can do. First of all, getting in touch with a life coach. Many are offering virtual counseling sessions. Telehealth is not a brand-new thing, but it has not been utilized in the way it’s being utilized now. I can speak about virtual counseling because I’ve done it before. Francois has done virtual life coaching. I feel that people can establish an authentic relationship with the person they’re working with even through Zoom or phone calls. People are feeling such a lack of control in their lives. If you are a perfectionist, if you are a hard worker, this does not go well. I can’t control imperfectionism.

Pausing for a moment and thinking about the things you can control, what are the areas in your life you have some control over? For example, what time do you wake up? That’s important. What did you eat for breakfast? How you’re spending your time throughout the day? Are you creating a schedule for yourself? Are you building in time to stop working? Are you putting some boundaries around work? It’s hard to do. For example saying, “At 5:00 on this day, I’m going to stop and that’s my time to go have a bubble bath or listen to my favorite podcasts or go on a walk.” It’s important to pay attention to what you have control of and how your boundaries are surrounding work, especially in working from home.

We can’t control what’s happening out there in the world, but we can always control how we choose to respond. This is a theory or concept and you grounded that beautifully about these are specific steps and there in choose bliss also. Your morning routine is imperative. I’m guilty of this also. I’m crazy about my husband. I love every moment that I get with him. When he’s home, I’m completely distracted. I want to sleep-in in the morning. I want to cuddle more, reading later at night. We have this beautiful life, but the reality is that we can have a beautiful life without disrupting everything else. He’s re-implemented his workout schedule at 7:00 in the morning. I’ve reimplemented my morning routine. It changes life to feeling like it’s more in control. I love being in the flow, but unless you put some boundaries around your work life, that flow starts to feel not as yummy. It starts to feel like interference and even you can start to resent it.

It is time to ground our work-life since we’re at home. Ground that so that then we do have yummy time with our lovely partners or our children or doing those things that we want. The morning routine is such a key part of that. When you wake up, make sure you do eat breakfast, make sure you do get those workouts in, plan time with your spouse. Even though David and I are in each other’s faces all the time, we still have a date night every single week. That’s the night that we do something special. I do dinner in a nicer way, I have a tablecloth, we watch a movie. Doing those things is important. The other thing that I wanted to touch on is this idea of getting counseling remotely.

Much of the time we think that we have to go into an office and we can’t do that. This whole idea of doing things on Zoom or the phone can feel uncomfortable. I see it all the time in my own coaching practice. Once you do the first one, especially when you’re talking to someone like Maegan or Francois who are kind and open, you’ll feel their energy right through the video. Once you have that connection, you do it once, you can then pursue it further and it can help to support your life. Like with anything else, the action is the key until you take that first step, nothing else happens. Make sure that you identify the things that are going to support you and then take action towards pursuing them.

Looking at that with the life coach perspective, I would say that even when we are experiencing, keeping in mind something that can be the backbone of your wellbeing is your life balance. For those who are not super familiar with the concept of life balance, it’s the fact of considering that in your life, you have seven different key compartments in your life. Those being your social and your family relationships. That’s one. One would be everything related to your career and/or education aspirations. Number three will be money and personal finance. Number four would be mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Number five would be health and leisure. Number six would be everything related to your daily life responsibilities, which are important. Number seven is contribution and giving back to society as you do well, Moneeka.

If someone is focusing because it’s all about work or money. Chances are that by doing so that this person is going to neglect. Also, come back to the amount of ease our lives, like personal life, personal relationship, staying in shape in order to get rid of stress, any physical activities, having a romance life. When if you focus on one compact amount of your life, your life is going to be unbalanced. Without a doubt, it’s going to be extremely detrimental to your wellbeing, but also to your success in general. Even during the specific circumstance we are going through, it is possible to keep your life balance in a good way to dedicate the amount of time that each compact amount of your life needs to feel well to succeed in your life.

I got a text from a close friend of mine and he said to me, “I’m at home.” The kids, one of them is at college and one of them is staying with her mom. He’s alone in the house and he runs his own business. He’s working 14 to 16 hours a day because he’s got all this time. For the first two weeks, he was like, “I got all this time. I can get caught up.” After four weeks of doing that, he wrote to me, “Something has to give, I’m feeling hollow.” As excited as we are about our work and our mission and whatever it is that we want to be doing out there in the world. It’s only one piece of who you are. Immediately, I wrote back to him to start running again.

He loves to run. It makes his heart sing. Get out there and start running. It’s something you can still do. Create some Zoom connections, whether it’s a therapist or what about, we’re doing game nights on Zoom every Thursday night, come join our game night. Have Zoom conversations with your parents or FaceTime. Maybe you can help them figure out the technology. Create some interactions that will fill you up because they’re important. They’re such a big piece of who we are and they take a little bit of time. They take your mind off of the work and they put you back into being a human being rather than a working machine.

 

People would benefit from limiting their exposure to the news. Figure out the day and make sure you’re checking a reliable source. Another thing is we can connect, not just through social media. A lot of people think, “If I’m on Instagram or Facebook, I’m going to have those genuine connections with my friends or family.” Those are passive interactions. Not only that, it also increases your exposure to sometimes false news about the pandemic and what’s going on. You can’t control what you’re seeing unless you’re removing people that you don’t like their feeds. A more active way to get engaged is to schedule a happy hour with your friends, schedule a game night, you go play Yahtzee over Zoom.

I used to be part of a lot of these happiness groups. I’m known as Miss Bliss. Everybody wanted me in their group when this whole thing started. The conversation was all about the news and what is feeling bad and, “My kids are freaking out.” Eventually, I would say something to the effect of as global leaders, we are responsible for the global conversation. That global conversation needs to be uplifting. There’s plenty pulling us down. Let’s focus more on what’s going right than what’s going wrong. I got kicked out of most of those groups. That’s okay. I’m still part of a couple of them.

I want to be part of groups that are engaged in the uplifting of our lives. One of the key factors that I say over again, watch the news once a day, you need to be aware and vigilant so that you know what you need to be doing. You also need to stay positive and blissful. How do you do that? When you’re watching the news, take the pieces that support you and let go of all those pieces that create drama and upset because that drama and upset serves no purpose. It brings you down and brings it into your home. Instead, take what serves you, take what’s important for you to know. For me, I do want to know the numbers in Santa Clara County because it makes me feel good that they’re going down, but when they were going up, I wasn’t checking that. My husband gives me an executive summary. Make sure that whatever you’re taking in serves you in what you’re trying to create in your life. If I can say, try to create bliss, it’s much more fun than fear.

I love that you have this perspective that in some ways, we can control what we’re focusing on and thinking about that. That aligns with what both Francois and I do when we’re working with individuals, it practices what’s called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. You can’t change the situation always, but you can change certain ways you view it. For example, taking what you can from the news that serves you and trying to let go of that doesn’t.

For many people, seeing somebody with a mask on, when they go to the grocery store, they’re walking down the street can be very scary and frightening. People have this thought of, “This is scary and this is so bad.” What if we reframed it and said, “Look at all these people trying to take care of their health and protect others. Look at us all coming together as a community to not think about ourselves, but I’m putting a mask on because there may be a person who’s more susceptible to this.” That’s a beautiful reframe that you’re still acknowledging the reality of the situation, but you’re taking a more blissful view on it.

I went to the grocery store and we realized that afterward, I was full of anger. I could visualize, it was like black, gooey, horrible anger that was completely taking over. What I was noticing is that I was wearing a mask because it was important to me that if I’m a carrier that I do not infect anybody else, but only 50% of the people in the grocery store were wearing masks. This is a place that we have to go to, we need to eat. Only 50% of the people are taking responsibility for whether they’re spreading or not. It filled me with anger because I’m about social consciousness. I sat with that and I thought, “What can I do about this?”

Instead of being a victim and being angry, I went on Amazon and I bought myself a full-face mask. What this does is it keeps my eyes, nose and mouth protected. I can’t send anything out but now, I’m also protecting myself so nobody can infect me. Certainly, if they’re standing closer than six feet, they cough on my back or whatever, I’m still exposed. The most important part is my face. It looks weird and people look at me strangely, but it empowered me in a place of being angry and victimized.

It empowered me, “I’m not angry, I’m protected.” I can stand as an example in a safe way or wherever I am of taking care of myself. I moved from anger to empowerment. As you’re out there and you’re seeing this and you’re feeling, “I’m scared.” It is a scary time, but we can reframe every piece of that experience to empower ourselves to feel better and it’s supercritical because I was focusing on the 50% that was not wearing the mask, I should and can focus on 50% that is, and it’s increasing all the time.

We’re seeing a great increase and people seem to be taking things more seriously. That’s a beautiful thing to see that people are being more socially aware.

You can't change the situation always, but you can change certain way you view it. Share on X

I would say that we can look at the situation in two different ways. It’s extremely helpful. I love to see everyday people being more respectful of what’s going on by being more self-conscious and protecting not only themselves but others. It’s evolving in a good way.

When we go into EXTRA, I want to do a deep dive into behavioral cognitive psychology. It’s one of my go-to, so I can’t wait for that conversation. Can you give some real specific tips that people can use to improve the bliss in their lives?

It’s a wonderful opportunity to keep on learning. We are all stuck at home with too much time in our hands. A life lesson that I’ve seen for all times, keep on your learning, all your lifelong, you can read books, you can listen to podcasts. With Dr. Maegan Renee, we have started to take online classes on different topics. It could be topics in which you want to become an expert in or it can be a brand-new topic, something you don’t know anything about because it’s rewarding to be always joyous and to keep on learning. It’s helpful to spend some time because we have too much time on our hands, but also, that’s something we should keep after what’s going on to keep on using our brain and in my opinion, that’s a wonderful recipe for wellbeing, but also for success.

It’s fun to do these things together. If you can’t, you can still do it on Zoom with somebody, but learning how to make homemade salsa. I have a few tips too. One, gratitude journal. There’s a lot out there that you can order online there. I love the One-Minute Gratitude Journal. It’s literally one minute, there are a lot of us who are and have busy schedules. There are also five-minute journals. You can create your own. There are apps out there, but I’d encourage people to step away from the screen and to write down or draw a picture or get creative, take a picture of something that makes you happy and to have that moment of gratitude and to start your day off that way.

Practicing with self-compassion. We are good at giving compassion to others, “You made a mistake? It’s okay. I made a mistake, let me beat myself up for half-an-hour mentally.” There is some great information out there. There are some great leaders in this field. A lot of people wonder like, “What is self-compassion?” It’s not self-pity, nor self-esteem, it’s acknowledging that you are human and you are going to have experiences that are not ideal, that are difficult and acknowledging that as a human, there are other humans that are going through this suffering with you.

You’re not isolated in this experience and being forgiving of yourself, especially keeping in mind, it’s not the time to be the perfect parent, spouse and employee. We’re living under conditions that nobody has all the answers to or knows exactly how to navigate. Putting undue pressure on yourself to perform better in any of those areas is not practicing self-compassion. It could be valuable to take a step back and say, “Am I being kind to myself? Am I talking to myself the way I would talk to a friend or am I being a lot harsher? If I am, maybe I need to try practicing talking to myself as though I would a friend or a partner.”

We are allowing grace for each other. I love the beauty of schedules are getting mixed up. Things are going weird all around us. We’re allowing grace for each other but we’re not as much allowing grace for ourselves. I love the way that you said that compassion for yourself is not weakness, nor selfish, it’s grace. It’s the same grace that every human being deserves and you deserve it too. Whether are you getting it from anybody else is irrelevant. It’s important that you give it to yourself. Are there any other tips you’d like to offer before we sign off on this part of the show?

I would say that on ToBeOptimized.com, one of our products besides counseling and life coaching is this Social Media Detox. That’s something very important because indeed that social media platform is engineered for you to get totally addicted to it. There’s no other word and to spend a lot of time on that. We wrote this journal in order to help people to go through the journey of making better boundaries with social media, but also, quitting for a long period of time or quitting forever, or using it in a better way. That’s something special. We are proud of it. We have done it ourselves. The benefits of not using our using social media, a component of your business, sleeping better, less anxiety, no social side comparison, they are complex. It’s beneficial.

What I wanted to offer to your audience is something special is that if people are visiting our website ToBeOptimized.com, they will be able to access the Journal that they can structure. It’s affordable. It’s $25 and they can buy it for themselves or their children or their best friend or even the employees. If you consider that you have no problem with boundaries with social media, that’s wonderful, but we are 100% sure that you know someone who has a problem with social media. You can buy the Journal and if you do that, we will offer a 30-minute free session with either Dr. Meagan Renee for the consulting part or if people want to work on life coaching, that would be with me.

 

We consider it to be optimized. There is no better investment than an investment in yourself. $25 and you get more than $100 value that you could use for you or for the people you love. Social Media Detox is a good start to optimize the life balance and because it’s taking so much time that you are not going to give to something else. If some people among your audience interested in starting the journey of consulting or life coaching, we are happy to offer that to them.

If you’re thinking about, “I need a little bit of support around this or that,” this is an amazing opportunity for you to take advantage of some time with some heartfelt professionals. Thank you for that, Maegan and Francois. That website again is ToBeOptimized.com. Thank you for all that you’ve offered in this portion of the show. It’s been fun.

Thank you for having us. It’s always a pleasure.

It’s fun for us too. It’s something we look forward to.

In EXTRA, we’re going to be talking about behavioral cognitive therapy and it’s a tool that I use all the time to stay blissful. You’ve got to check this out. Please subscribe to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com. You get the first seven days for free. You can go out there and hear all this juicy stuff. If you decide that you love it, you can stay in it. If not, at least you’ve got some good deep dive tips to improve your bliss. Thank you for joining us for this portion of the show. Remember, bliss is your birthright. Choose to live your bliss every single day. I’ll see you next time. Bye.

 

Important Links

• M.R. Counseling and Consulting
• ToBeOptimized.com
• 21 Day Social Media Detox Journal
• Real Estate Investing for Women: Expert Conversations to Increase Wealth and Happiness the Blissful Way
• One-Minute Gratitude Journal
• RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com

 

About Dr. Maegan Renee

Dr. Maegan Renee is a licensed professional counselor and holds a PhD in Counselor Education & Supervision. She is the owner of M.R. Counseling and Consulting and co-founder of www.ToBeOptimized.com. She has presented on topics of mental health at national conferences around the country. She has publications on topics such as social isolation, early childhood mental health, and social media detox. Dr. Renee has 11 years of experience in the field of counseling working with children, adolescents, and adults.

 

 

About Francois Braine-Bonnaire

Francois Braine-Bonnaire is a real-estate investor, an international serial entrepreneur, and certified life coach. Born and raised in Paris (France), Francois holds dual French and American Citizenship. He is the co-founder of www.ToBeOptimized.com and co-author of a: “21 Day Social Media Detox Journal” with Dr. Maegan Renee. He is also a contributing author of the book: “Real Estate Investing for Women: Expert Conversations to Increase Wealth and Happiness the Blissful Way” with me (Moneeka Sawyer). With a turnkey real estate business founded in 2010 that continues to grow, Francois has helped more than 200 families from 15 countries around the world to successfully invest in more than 600 rental properties in the USA. Francois has a passion for helping people through both real-estate investments and life coaching.

 

• Here’s How »

• https://blissfulinvestor.com/
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Facebook

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Social Tightening While Social Distancing With Thom Singer

 

We think of social distancing as a necessary health protocol now that we are facing a pandemic, but the term can be misleading when it comes to human relationships. As we are all forced to physically distance from each other, the need for social connection – for “social tightening”– becomes all the more acute. Author, podcast host, content creator and growth leadership speaker, Thom Singer coined this term to remind people that we need to have to connect with the people in our lives, now more than ever. In this conversation with Moneeka Sawyer, Thom explains the epidemic of loneliness that has been going on ever since before the pandemic, how physical distancing has been exacerbating it, and how we can take action and make the effort to have real interactions beyond social media likes and blanket emails.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Social Tightening While Social Distancing With Thom Singer

I am excited to welcome to the show my friend, Thom Singer. He is an advisor to executives, a speaker, and a content creator. After a successful career in sales and marketing, he became a growth leadership speaker in 2009. A decade later, he has brought his high energy presentations and action-oriented content to over 950 audiences. He is the author of twelve books and is the host of two podcasts, The Cool Things Entrepreneurs Do, which I have been on and the Digital Enterprise Society Podcast. On these shows, he has interviewed over 550 business leaders and others with a focus on discovering how the most successful people get farther across the gap between potential and results. He and his wife make their home in Austin, Texas, and are the parents of two highly spirited daughters. Thom, how are you?

I am great because I’m here on your show.

We had so much fun on your show. I can’t wait to see what happens here. Ladies, one of the things I wanted to tell you about Thom is he is a very compassionate person. He’s very business-focused, but he brings compassion in his heart to the business. He’s got this blog that he writes and it’s on ThomSinger.com. He writes these amazing articles about how to stay connected, how to bring your heart to business as well as a lot of different topics. One of the articles that he wrote one day, and I loved it, was about a term he’s coined called Social Tightening. With what everybody is going through with the Coronavirus, I wanted to talk specifically about that and how we can help our relationships to thrive and fill our hearts back up if we’re feeling lonely. Thom, talked to me a little bit about social tightening. Let’s start by defining it.

This term, social distancing started coming up on all the newscasts and all the articles that you read because this was going to be the way that we were going to flatten the curve and be able to stop this virus. Some people were stepping up going, “Social distancing doesn’t right. It’s physical distancing. People need to keep socially connected.” I started calling it social tightening as you social distance or as you physically distance. Long before this started, going back many years, there’s been an epidemic of loneliness that has been under the radar in our society.

A gentleman by the name of Dr. Vivek Murthy, who was the nineteenth surgeon general under President Barack Obama, when he was doing research and going out and talking to people about this big opioid crisis that we face in the country, an underlying thing he discovered was this whole epidemic of loneliness. He wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review. It spoke to me because I go out and teach people how to connect, but there are always people at conferences who don’t feel connected to that conference, to their coworkers, etc. Long before we had to stay at home, there were already 20% of our population felt lonely. I got concerned that this is going to get worse however long we have to do this.

We were at the airport down in San Diego after the New Media Summit. When you’re at a conference, one of the things that you talk about is this whole idea of social media versus networking. Could you tell me a little bit about what you told me then? That is so impacted me.

I think that we have forgotten over the last decade that a link, a share, or follow does not equal a human relationship. Just because you’re connected to someone on Twitter, doesn’t mean they ever log on and look at anything you say, it used to be. I talked to a person who worked in technology years ago and he said, “Email is a best-effort communication tool. Just because I send you an email, I don’t know if it got there. I don’t know if you ever read it. Even if you open it, I don’t know if you read it.” As much as we rely on email, it’s always stuck on me that it’s only a best-effort communication tool. Social media then came in, and everybody’s broadcasting everything. Everything is on Twitter. They’re going live to all their friends and they’re putting up fancy pictures of them making Kardashian faces or whatever.

The problem is that once I put something on Facebook or whatever medium, I assume that everyone who knows me has seen it, but there are two problems. That person may have paid no attention or the algorithm of LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter decides who sees what we post. It’s only 10% of the people who follow you. A couple of years ago, before the algorithms had even taken over, I was talking to a friend of mine from high school and I said to her, “How’s Lisa,” who is her best friend from high school. She went, “Thanks for asking. She goes into this whole thing.” I was like, “What are you talking about?” “Lisa’s dead. She had been killed in a hiking accident three weeks earlier.” I was like, “I had no idea.” She went, “It was all over social media.”

I had been on a European vacation and didn’t check Facebook for two weeks. When I had logged on, it had all died down amongst all of our friends. I never knew. Nobody ever thought to call, to email, or text because it was put on Facebook. That was years ago. I learned right away that that is worse than a best-effort communication. That’s a crap communication. We think that social media is networking, but we have no idea if it’s landing with anybody as opposed to if you’re face-to-face and we have a conversation in the bar. I’m pretty sure you heard me if we’re standing there. We can’t treat them as the same thing. We have to get back to this whole idea of personal interaction with people, whether it’s digital or live. My motto through this whole Corona crisis has been, “More personal/less broadcast.”

Let’s talk specifically about social tightening. What that means and what are some strategies we can use to get closer?

While we’re living in this era, it’s going to be with us for a while. Now, we’re all on lockdown, but soon it might be partial lockdown. We’re working from home. Let’s look at coworkers. There’s office culture. There are things that happen. Billy always takes the big coffee mug. They aren’t happening, but that also means that we’re not having real interactions. We need to make an effort. We have to be intentional of where we are putting our intention and attention when it comes to the people in our lives. With coworkers, there’s probably a team meeting where everybody’s on Zoom and they might be a Slack channel or a group email, but that doesn’t mean that Mary Lou and I are having a conversation. We need to take a little bit of time to reach out one-to-one to our coworkers.

The same thing is true with our friends, with our extended family. The same thing is true with our clients. How many newsletters have you gotten in your email inbox since the Coronavirus started? Mine has gone up unscientifically by five times. I get 100 newsletters a day, where people are telling me to check the CDC website and wash my hands. That’s great, but my local pet store didn’t need to be the one to tell me that. We’re having all of this broadcast and everybody thinks, “What’s important to people COVID, so that is the title.”

Maybe if my doctor or if the White House sent me something, but I don’t need that from my accounting firm. We need to broadcast less, especially about things we’re not experts about and have one-to-one communication, which means you’re going to have to take the time to send an individual email, an individual text, make a phone call, reach people, and leave a message. Whatever that says, “Moneeka, I was thinking about you and your show is such a delight for everybody as we’re going through these rough times. It brings bliss to people. Thanks for doing that.” That’s personal. If I send an email to every podcaster I know and go, “Keep up the good work. Podcast like crazy,” you probably won’t even open it much less understand that I was saying, “You’re an important part of this solution.”

As you said those two things, one of them made my eyes well up with tears and gratitude and the other one was, “Yes, I heard that.” It is an emotional reaction. I don’t know if you felt what that difference was like, but it’s true. My email box has ballooned from 1,000 emails a day to 3,000 emails a day.

During this crisis, we need to make an effort at having real interactions with the people in our lives. Share on X

It is 3 to 5 times more is what’s happening.

I can’t keep up with it all. It is so much more as falling through the cracks. I feel like I’m working harder, feeling less satisfied. There’s this weird thing. Instead of being part of the problem, which it is now, it becomes part of the solution. Make someone’s email box, inbox their friend again. Whether you do email or not, and I’m not encouraging that, I love the idea of doing texting, personal phone calls, even to leave a message. On Facebook, you can do Messenger. You can still direct message all of them on Facebook, on Instagram, LinkedIn, whatever you’re using. You can do personal stuff. I am getting personal stuff there.

I did get a message on Instagram as to what you said, Thom. They’re like, “Thank goodness that you’ve pivoted and done a little bit more about Bliss. We need that.” It was good feedback for me and it keeps me going and it keeps juiced. What can we do for each other? You’re taking a look at the whole balance of it because you’re business-focused. In our families, with our friends and in business, how can we pivot with all of those people? You gave us all an exercise while we were at the New Media Summit. Can you tell us about that? I’ve been doing it. You told us to send five personal messages a day.

I’ve narrowed it down since then to three because five freaks people out. I’ve been telling everybody to reach out every single day to three people because there’s a thing called the Dunbar curve. Some of your readers may have learned of it. It was a series of research done many years ago and people have tried to dispute it. I don’t care if somebody thinks, “That’s been disproven.” The concept of it is awesome and that is we can only have about 150 people who were friendly with. You have your inner circle of about five. You then have maybe your friends that are about fifteen, but your community can only be about 150 people. Where if I were to say their name, you would be able to tell me who their children are and where their children went to school, etc.

The argument has been made over the last years and that’s been expanded. Social media allows it to be bigger. I had somebody say, “My extended community is 30,000.” That’s crap. If it is, then you’re the outlier. Using 150 people who can be in your circle of friends and associates, and they took this back to ancient times. Villages used to be about 150 people. When the village would get larger, it would split in half. Some people would move away because it gets too big to handle. Your personal brain is wired for about 150 people. I don’t care if you’re in sales, if you have online courses, or if you have a podcast, you might have a mailing list with 5,000 or 50,000 or more people on it, but you don’t know who those people are.

During this crisis, blanket mailing people you don’t know isn’t what those people need. I don’t care how brilliant you think you are. They don’t need another newsletter from you. However, the 150 people who know you, know your kids’ names, not because they’ve heard you say it on a show. Because they’ve had dinner at your home or your paying clients or past clients, you’re a coach, the people you used to coach who you were part of their life for a year on that monthly call. Those people probably need to hear from you. If you narrow it down to, “Who are my 150?” You could follow up with all of them every month by doing 3 to 5 a day.

In 30 days, that could be 150.

Some people might say, “My list is smaller.” Some people list is bigger, then put a little thing, who are my 150 favorite people? Those are the people who need to hear from you and to get that email saying, “I was thinking about you and I care.” Those are the people who are going to say, “Wow.” A lot of people scrape emails from the National Speakers Association and they think they’re so smart because they’ll email like, “I have this product I sell to speakers.” We all go into back-channel talk going. “Does anybody hear from this?” “I never heard from him before.” “I got the same email now.” We know when it’s a random thing trying to sound personal. You scraped my email off a website, I get it.

However, if I know you or you’re one of my college fraternity brothers and you reach out and say, “I realized that the speaking and meetings business has been hit harder. I was thinking about that. You’re my only friend as a professional speaker. My heart goes out to you. I hope your family’s okay.” Am I going to stop and feel as a human? Yes and that happened. The fraternity brother I haven’t talked to in years said I was reading something about what’s happened to the meetings industry. “You make your living speaking. I had never thought about that. You’re the only person I know who makes their living that way. I want you to know I care.” That’s what we need more of.

It’s because there is a way in the old world. When we didn’t have so much contact with each other, through social media, email, and all of that stuff, we used to write letters. We used to send each other notes. When the phone came along, we used to make phone calls. A lot of that has gone away for a lot of reasons. Part of it is we’re overwhelmed with all the things that we’re supposed to be doing and that’s expected of us socially. The other piece is we’ve also got comfortable not having to do those things. Some of the things that I’m loving it. I’m getting personal cards from people with pretty pictures that make me feel good, the phone calls, and the texts. These sorts of things, “Moneeka, I was thinking about you.”

The handwritten note is valuable. Imagine if a client’s got a handwritten note that said, “I want you to know that I’m here for you when the world returns to normal.” It is not trying to sell anything, just helping and checking in. Helping and checking in is the new selling. If you want to be remembered when the economy comes back, don’t be cramming down by my coaching program. I have been doing that, but I want to go back to something you said because it’s a perfect analogy. Let’s go back 15, 20 years before we had email and before everything was a broadcast. We used to have broadcast companies like CBS and NBC and the radio stations. Humans had to be personal because we couldn’t broadcast to everybody, but there was one-way people did use to broadcast and that was The Christmas Letter.

You will get a Christmas card and somebody had typed out a letter, “Dear blank,” and they would handwrite your name into it. They then would photocopy both sides, maybe with some clip art of a Santa Claus and a tree. They would go through and they would broadcast their year. “We were so fortunate. We went to the Grand Canyon. My husband won the trip to Hawaii and we got to go there. Our room had a view of the diamond bed.” Who loved getting Christmas letters? Not very many people because they weren’t personal. They never talked about your true life. It would say like, “This year, my son Johnny found a way to get free lodging.” That translated to Johnny’s in prison, but nobody ever wrote that Johnny was in prison and they flowered it up. Johnny’s got free lodging for 3 to 5.

I still do get Christmas letters. It is rare. I get three a year. What’s comical about that is, in the old days, I used to be like, “I felt like I was reading a report.” I had to read everybody’s stories so that I could keep up with everybody. It felt like an obligation.

It is a form of novelty, that handwritten note that says, “Hey.” Even if it’s a typed email that says something personal, I can tell if something is cut and paste. I was at a conference one time and while on the plane, I was sitting with a bunch of people from the conference and all of us got emails at once that said, “Dear insert name,” The mail merge didn’t work. They sent a 1,000 people a note addressed to dear insert name. In the middle of it, it said, “As you know, insert a name.” They had too many mail merges to make it sound personal and all it did was prove that it wasn’t personal at all because the mail merge failed. Let’s go back to the real thing, “Dear Moneeka, it was so much fun to be with you in San Diego, sharing the cab to the airport and having dinner together before our flights. I laughed so hard. I hope we can stay in touch.” It means so much more than some mass-produced broadcast.

 

It is like, “It is nice to meet you at the New Media Summit. You were light in the room. I look forward to keeping in touch.”

I got to paste that to everybody.

I got about 50 of them.

You were the light in the room, maybe all of those were personal. I got them too. I thought I was the light in the room.

I am jealous. I have to share the stage with you. That’s such good tips. Let’s talk a little bit about some connecting inside our homes. This is what’s happening. We’re all stuck together. We look at each other and initially, we’re like, “I get all this time with you. This is amazing.” By now, we’re like, “Could you go to another room?”

There is a woman who posted a meme that says, “This man is the love of my life. I now want to kill him.”

It doesn’t mean that we all love each other. It’s just we’re wanting to get back to our more normal rhythm, but because we’re in the same space, that does not mean we’re connecting. Let’s talk about how to connect and how to disconnect? How to create the space and then how to create the love? It’s like a dance where we have to create this wave in and out. Talk a little bit about that.

I am talking from personal experience. I have two daughters. One of them is out of college and engaged to be married and lives in Chicago. She and her fiancé were supposed to be married on May 16. That date has been changed, thanks to Coronavirus. Their wedding is temporarily postponed. In addition to spending fourteen months of their lives planning a dream wedding, they are sequestered in a 700 square foot apartment in a high-rise where there are no common areas open. You have to stay in your own apartment and a city there in Chicago on full lockdown. My future son-in-law, his job has moved home. He has an important job and he’s working 8 to 10 hours a day. My daughter has to stay out of his way because he’s got to use this brain for what he’s working on. He’s a mathematician.

She has got 100 square feet to hide and her job has been canceled. One of the things we did is every week, we’ve been having a Zoom dinner with them. We open up a Zoom room. They come in, they make dinner. We are ready at 6:30 and the five of us sit down and have dinner together. That has been a great way to keep in touch with extended family. In fact, I’m wondering why we haven’t done this forever. We get to have a meal. We, as humans, we love to break bread and we’re able to talk and laugh. My wife, my younger daughter, and my son-in-law say, “It’s just like dinner around the table because my oldest daughter and I are big talkers and they can’t get a word in edgewise.”

They said, “It’s like being in a restaurant with you. Thom and Jackie are stealing the conversation.” I’m not sure I’m proud of that, but that’s what they said. It was real is the point within our mini-society here inside the house. With our eighteen-year-old, I have a high school senior. I have commented that at least she likes her parents because we are on lockdown, but my wife and I are very different. We both still have some semblances of jobs we have to run. We both work for ourselves. We’re not sure how much money we’re making, but we’ve got things to do, but we operate differently. I go into my office. She has her office. She has taken to wearing headphones and listening to music or a book on tape when she’s not working. If she doesn’t want me to be like, “I thought that, that, that.” I’m much more of an extrovert and she is much more of an introvert.

We’ve agreed if she needs introvert time, were headphones and music, or whatever because otherwise, I’ll come in and start going, “Guess what I just read online.” We’ve set up that parameter, but being an extrovert, I can’t go forever without human contact. I’ve been hosting a happy hour in my Zoom room. I’ve been inviting people to come, get their beverage of choice, and log on with me in Zoom. I’ve been hosting anywhere from 8 to 12 people. I do a little bit of standup comedy and so in Austin, I’ve been hosting the only ongoing virtual open mic night for the local comics. I get about eighteen people for an hour and a half every Tuesday night. What’s funny is a lot of them are young and single and live alone. They stay after it’s over. They’re like, “Do we have to hang up?”

Yes, I’m a grownup who wants to go to bed now because it is 10:30, but it’s just doing that. Within my daughter and my wife, we’ve sat down and had dinner together every night. We make dinner. I guess once we had a restaurant catered in, but every night we make dinner and everybody comes and sits at the table. Even if it’s twenty minutes, we have that human connection time. I think the long answer to your question, there’s a lot of ways to do it, but you have to have some structure and you have to appreciate, “She’s an extrovert. She needs to be left alone.” “He’s an introvert. He needs some human interaction, even if it’s his friends online.” “She’s eighteen. What a nightmare to be stuck with your parents for months.”

There is compassion for what everybody is going through. I have trouble with this and I’ve had to pay attention to this is dinner time with David. We used to go out to dinner. We created that as a pattern because when we would get home, he was interested in looking at the mail and I knew that there was all this cleaning that needed to do. There was all this stuff that distracted us. We started just going out to dinner every night, which was great.

That doesn’t sound bougie at all. We hit all the restaurants in Northern California. Only Sunday through Saturday.

Building relationships, both personally and professionally, doesn't happen by accident. You have to be intentional about it. Share on X

I am grateful for the life I’m allowed to live.

I was going to add in, when you don’t have to send two children to super bougie colleges, you can eat it as many restaurants as you want. I bet you and David couldn’t outspend the cost in decades of educating two children.

We are like it in what we’re able to do. We’re noticing it, and believe you and me. Where I was headed with this is that we’re at home, we have dinner time, and we are very committed to eating together. We’re both tempted to poke at the phones. We’re tempted to run over and do something in the kitchen or attempted to turn over the laundry. There are all these things. We have to force ourselves to sit down, even if we have nothing to say because we’re both exhausted from the day and be together.

It is funny because the first couple of weeks we were like, “This is so much fun. There was so much to talk about.” The next week, it was like, “Hey.” We’re starting to get back into that old world, like having a conversation over dinner when we didn’t have everything on our phone. Everything interesting was not on our phones. We found each other interesting. We are doing that again. It’s just funny how we evolve and to set expectations on how we’re going to connect. Sometimes people think, “Connections should be organic and fluid.”

If we left it to organic and fluid, then a lot of people would never find the business success that they find. Networking and building relationships that matter, both personally and professionally, doesn’t happen by accident. I speak at a lot of conferences and there’s a lot of meeting planners that say, “What are you doing to encourage great connections?” People come to conferences for two reasons. Remember when we used to go to conferences, people used to go into a ballroom, but the thing is sometimes meeting planners are like, “We’ve got a sponsor for an open bar.” Booze is not a network.

That is not a social lubricant like we think it is. In order to do this, you have to learn the number one thing I teach people is you ask other people questions and then listen when they talk. I know that sounds shocking, but it does. Within your family, we establish this years ago when the cell phone, the smartphone first came out and that was no phones at the table. Whether we’re in a restaurant or we’re in our house, no screens at the table have been a family motto. I’ll be honest, we’ve been a little bit lax because we are around each other all day. At dinner, if somebody was to pick up a phone, we probably wouldn’t go, “No screens at the table.”

No screens mean just no phones, no iPods, no laptops, no TV, nothing.

We’ve had the TV on during dinner more than usual, but it is a new rule. My 23 years old was commenting that we were letting the eighteen-year-old have a glass of wine. She’s like, “That’s different rules than when I was a high school senior.” I was like, “Coronavirus.”

The main point is to understand that it’s not just that in business that we have to pay attention to building relationships, in our personal lives, we do too. It’s more important than ever because we’re spending so much time together. We are spending time together does not mean connection. It’s not quality time necessarily. Most of the time, it’s just time. We need to figure out how to have that quality interaction within our own homes, in our environment so that we can stay connected. Otherwise, what will happen is that you’re going to be surrounded by all these people that you love and you’re going to go back to feeling lonely, separated, and isolated.

You feel lonely in a group. It happens all the time.

It is because people aren’t connecting.

The other thing we have to do is realize different people are going through different things. As a person who travels 100-plus nights a year, being home for months on end, there’s like this, “I’m going a little bit stir crazy.” Whereas my wife, who’s a pretty serious introvert. Having me gone 100-nights a year is causing her to go a little bit stir crazy because I’m right there. I don’t pick up after myself the way it wouldn’t happen if I was gone. I think you have to take into effect, how is this affecting her? Not just me. We also have a high school senior. The news is not covering this well enough. There’s a couple of little stories here and there about brides getting married on their iPad, socially distance from their fiance.

My daughter and her fiancé chose to postpone until the fall, which hopefully it will happen then, but they’re not covering these major life events like weddings, high school graduations, and college graduations. There are many major life events that are being swept under the rug. I don’t think as a society, we’re giving them enough attention. In our house, I’ve tried to ask my daughter, “How are you feeling about this? How are you about this?” She got accepted into her first-choice college. She has a Facebook group with some other students who are new.

She has this community and it’s been a little exciting. She’s making some new friends there, they’re doing some Skype, and some Zoom and stuff like that, but I’m like, “How do you feel at school doesn’t start in the fall?” Her answer was, “We’re not talking about that yet. We’re not going there.” These are things that I don’t think as a society, we’re doing a good enough job of saying, “I have to work from home. My speaking events are canceled. My income is cut to nothing.” There’s a lot of that being covered out there, but there’s not a lot about, what about these people who have nonmonetary major life events? How are we honoring these people? I don’t know that we’re doing a good job of it.

 

I don’t know if you know this, but I have two sets of my show. There’s the free show, which is this piece and then we’ve got EXTRA. There’s another article I want to talk to you about an extra. We’re going to finish the show in a moment, but I’m going to spring this on you and let my audience know what’s coming next.

I love things that are extra.

In EXTRA, I want to talk about the article that you wrote and I’ll admit, I haven’t read it, but it is about if you’re wealthy, how to be compassionate for those who are not. I’m excited about that topic. We’ll talk about that next, but first, let everybody know how they can get in touch with you and hear more of your amazing advice.

ThomSinger.com or Thom Singer on all the social media.

Thank you, Thom. This conversation has been wonderful. It’s filled me up. Thank you so much for joining us. Ladies, thank you for joining Thom and me for this portion of the show. If you are subscribed to EXTRA stay tuned. We’ve got more. If you’re not, please do go sign up at RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com. If you’re leaving us, thank you so much for joining us. I look forward to seeing you on the next show. Until then, remember, bliss is your birthright. Choose to live your bliss every single day. I’ll see you next time. Bye.

 

 Important Links

• The Cool Things Entrepreneurs Do
• Digital Enterprise Society Podcast
• ThomSinger.com
• Thom Singer – Facebook
• RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com

 

About Thom Singer

Thom Singer is an advisor to executives, a speaker and content creator. After a successful career in sales and marketing, he became a growth leadership speaker in 2009. A decade later he has brought his high energy presentations and action-oriented content to over 950 audiences.

He is the author of 12 books and is the host of two podcasts, “Cool Things Entrepreneurs Do”  and “The Digital Enterprise Society Podcast”.  On these shows he has interviewed over 550 business leaders and others with a focus on discovering how the most successful people get farther across the gap between potential and results.

He and his wife make their home in Austin, Texas and are the parents of two highly-spirited daughters.

We talk about what Thom calls Social tightening…it’s important, no matter whether we are social distancing, networking, or building a business, to remember that we always need to stay connected.  Thom gives us some great ideas on how we can do that effectively and lovingly.

 

• Here’s How »

• https://blissfulinvestor.com/
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