I’ve always said that women, especially moms, have so much power to create exponential change in the world. We’re going to talk through that concept today and get advice on how to channel our efforts in some very practical and also visionary ways. My guest Denise Brosseau created her own business teaching women how to get strategic and scale up in whatever they pursue. She wrote an amazing book called Ready to Be a Thought Leader? and I definitely recommend it for every mom out there.
Often when we hear the word thought leader we think of big-time thought leaders like the Dalai Lama or Gandhi, but I think some of the most powerful thought leadership can happen in our own families and communities! We can create a ripple effect right where we are and change the world.
Episode Highlights
- What is a thought leader, anyway?
- How to be a convener: bringing people and ideas together
- How to be an amplifier: making sure the right messages get heard
- Ways to change your situation if you don’t like where you are
- Practical ideas for moms of young kids (or older teens!) who feel lonely or disconnected
- How parents can be some of the most effective thought leaders on the planet
- Examples of what thought leaders (moms included!) have been able to achieve
- One key thing the most effective leaders always do
- How to scale up and use our power as moms to affect our neighborhood, state, country, and even the globe
- And more!
Resources We Mention
- Book: Ready to Be a Thought Leader? by Denise Brosseau
- Online Course: Becoming a Thought Leader
- ThoughtLeadershipLab.com
- MightyNetworks.com
- Switch: How to Change When Change Is Hard
- TED Talk by Denise Brosseau:
More From Wellness Mama
- 66: Vote with Your Dollars to Make (Real) Change with John Durant
- 78: How Moms Can Affect Actual Change with Big Food and Big Ag with Leah Segedie
- 85: How to Raise an Entrepreneur: Nurturing Risk Takers, Problem Solvers, & Change Makers
- 206: Your Parenting Mojo on Why We Need to Let Our Kids Take More Risks
- 291: How to Create Your Ideal Family, Career, and Life With Kion CEO Angelo Keely
- Why We Are Creating a Business Incubator for Our Kids (And How)
- My Parenting Rule to Foster Independence (& Save My Sanity)
- How to Balance Business and Family Life (& Succeed at Both)
Did you enjoy this episode? Please drop a comment below or leave a review on iTunes to let us know. We value knowing what you think and this helps other moms find the podcast as well.
[toggle title=”Read Transcript”]
Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.
This podcast episode is brought to you by Beekeeper’s Naturals, a company dedicated to protecting the bees while creating sustainably sourced bee products for our whole families. Without bees, our global food supply would collapse, so protecting the bees protects all of us. As a certified B Corp, Beekeeper’s Naturals cares deeply about the environment, about the bees, and about their employees, and their customers and consumers, which is us. If you’re new to using bee products, I personally, recommend starting with the propolis spray. And this is a delicious way to support the immune system. And if you aren’t familiar with propolis, it’s really incredible. Propolis is the substance that bees use inside the hive to fight bacteria and any other pathogen or invaders that enter the hive. In fact, even if something as large as a mouse should enter the hive, and the bees can’t get it out, they can encapsulate it in propolis to keep that from infecting the hive and creating all kinds of bacterial problems. Propolis is naturally antibacterial. It has a compound called pinocembrin that works as an antifungal, and it’s also an antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory. I personally spray it in my throat at the first sign of a tickle in my throat, or the sniffles, and I spray it on wounds and burns for faster healing. You can save 15% on propolis and all Beekeeper’s Naturals products as a listener of this podcast. To get the deal, go to beekeepersnaturals.com/wellnessmama, and use the code “wellnessmama” to save 15%.
This episode is brought to you by Wellnesse. That’s Wellnesse with an E on the end, which is my new personal care company that is dedicated to making safe and effective products from my family to your family. We started with toothpaste and hair care because these are the biggest offenders in most bathrooms, and we’re coming after the other personal care products as well. Did you know for instance that most shampoo contains harsh detergents that strip out the natural oils from the hair and leave it harder to manage over time and more dependent on extra products? We took a different approach, creating a nourishing hair food that gives your hair what it actually needs and doesn’t take away from its natural strength and beauty. In fact, it’s specifically designed to support your hair’s natural texture, natural color, and is safe for color-treated hair as well. Our shampoos contain herbs like nettle, which helps strengthen hair and reduce hair fall, leaving your hair and scalp healthier over time, and scented only with natural essential oils in a very delicate scent so that you don’t have to worry about the fragrance as well. Over time, your hair gets back to its stronger, healthier, shinier state without the need for parabens or silicone or SLS. You can check it out along with our whitening toothpaste and our full hair care bundles at wellnesse.com. An insider tip, grab an essentials bundle or try auto-ship and you will lock in a discount.
Katie: Hello, and welcome to the Wellness Mama Podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com. And today, we’re talking about women as thought leaders, and probably not in the way you might be thinking. I am here with Denise Brosseau, who is a serial entrepreneur who has developed a unique area of expertise. She is a thought leader around the area of thought leadership. She’s written a book on this called “Ready to be a Thought Leader?,” and she teaches courses on that. And the reason I wanted to have her here today is because I’ve always said that I think women, and especially moms, have a ton of power and actually creating change on a small, and eventually, a very large scale. And so, we’re gonna talk through that today, and how she works with people to create change. I think often when we hear the word thought leader we think of big-time thought leaders like the Dalai Lama, and Gandhi, or etc., when I think thought leadership can happen in our own families. It can happen in our own communities. And I’ve seen this in examples of people creating change on a societal and even a state level through small grassroots movements. And the people who started these really just having ripple effects in their communities. So today, we talk all about this. And about how we as parents can be thought leaders in our own families and how we as people can be thought leaders in our own communities. So with that let’s jump in. Denise, welcome. Thanks for being here.
Denise: I’m happy to be here, Katie.
Katie: I’m excited to chat with you today because I think this is a really important topic and one that’s gonna be really fun to talk about in relation to our audience who’s listening today. But I always love to start by hearing a little bit of the background and finding out how you got into this world and got to this place of doing what you do.
Denise: I’ve had a very eclectic career. I was not one of those who woke up after seventh grade and knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. So I started my career in the tech industry, and did a lot of software development over many years, first in marketing and then product development and then in business development. Worked at some small companies and big companies. And in the middle of that I took a little break to go to business school. And there I met a woman who made a big impact on my career as she approached me both during school and after school to talk about a project she was working on, on why were women not getting any venture capital funding? And it was honestly something I hadn’t known much about. I’d done my own business before business school, but wasn’t one where I needed venture.
And so after we both graduated, we started a new initiative in the Bay Area, in which we were focusing on how can we help women understand the value of venture capital? Why it mattered? And why scaling a business was important and how to do it. So we started in the Bay Area, with the first chapter of our organization and over the next number of years. First, I made it part-time and then I made it full-time and grew it to seven cities around the country, and also helped start the first Venture Capital Conference springboard for women entrepreneurs. And both of those initiatives were such a huge undertaking and such a wonderful experience for me to really have an impact on helping women scale their businesses.
And so, fast forward a few years later after I left my nonprofit, both of those organizations still continue today under other leadership. But I got a phone call from a friend one day and she said, “You know, Denise, how you became that thought leader in Women’s Entrepreneurship.” She said, “I wanna do that.” And I remember thinking, “I was a thought leader, like really?” That’s just not a term that I’d ever applied. But over the next few years, I helped her take her career from being completely invisible in her field to testifying in front of the U.S. Senate, recognized by the White House, headhunted by the governor to run a similar initiative across the state. And I recognize that the work I have done in Women’s Entrepreneurship, where I became this sort of accidental thought leader, or really this spokesperson for this initiative of women and venture became something I could do with others and for others in a more strategic way. What if you could have a plan? What if you wanted to understand the impact of your ideas and bring those to fruition and implement change in a much broader way, what does it really take? And so I sort of doubled down on that topic and did a lot of research, started working with a lot of people, wrote a book, started teaching at Stanford as well as online with LinkedIn Learning. And now that’s sort of my area of expertise, which is kind of not what you would have ever expected. But I’m what people teasingly call a thought leader about thought leadership.
Katie: That’s fascinating. And to like, go a little deeper on this. Can you kind of walk us through the difference between a leader and a thought leader? Like what makes the difference in that?
Denise: What I look at it as, you know, many people think a thought leader is simply somebody who just starts tweeting their big ideas. And certainly there’s a small piece of it that is true. But for me, the difference between a leader and a thought leader is that leaders are impacting the people that they can usually interact with regularly. They either have some oversight over them, so matrix organizations, some connection with these folks in their communities. They see them more often or connect with them more often, whereas thought leaders are people who are trying to compel or enroll or engage people to take their ideas and carry them beyond.
So if I influence you, and then you carry my idea to the third person, or to a whole community of people, that to me is thought leadership. So instead of one to many, it’s many to many, how do you scale ideas? How do you trickle ideas out into the world through connection points, as an influencer or through your community networks, through your online networks, through your actions and behaviors in a way that spreads change, spreads ideas? That to me is thought leadership.
Katie: Gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense, you’re able to create a change much more exponentially. And I’ve always said it with the “Wellness Mama” platform that I think moms especially are some of the most powerful people on the planet. Because not only are we raising the next generation, and we have that direct ability to impact the next generation, but we also control so much of the purchasing power in our country, and so many other metrics. And so I’ve always said, I think, like if moms really stepped into that we could create incredible change within a very short period of time. And I know that maybe moms aren’t the ones that people immediately think of when they think of leadership and thought leadership. But I think they absolutely should be and this is something that women should think about, for themselves in our own families. So from a woman’s perspective in this, what are some of those first steps that we can take, whether it be in our own families, our own communities, etc., toward becoming a thought leader and to creating that positive change?
Denise: I agree, I couldn’t agree with you more. I think it’s moms and grandmas. I mean, I think about who are the trusted, respected folks in a community? It’s mothers and grandmothers. And so if we understood the power of that platform, that trust that we’ve already got, to me this is about trust, thought leadership is all about trust and how do we spread needed ideas? How do we spread our expertise and our best practices and what’s really working? And I think about the power of mommy bloggers, that was sort of said as a catch-all or even maybe a denigration of mothers who came to the internet and yet has had exponential impact across the last, you know, 15, 20 years. And so I think that is, obviously one first step people can take is to start coming to the table with their ideas where it’s the written word, where it’s the spoken word. It’s the ability to look at the camera and say a message, or whether it’s the ability to write your ideas. Both of those are good first steps, but I like to go a little beyond that because people can be intimidated by, “Oh, I’m not quite ready for that yet.”
So I think there’s even a couple of steps before those that help to inculcate change within a community, and the first one is to really be a convener. Again, moms have a real power to be conveners around an idea. I think of all the mothers, I’ve friends of mine who have had children with some challenges in learning and have had to bring together a community of people in their community…in their school system, and then often across school systems in order to implement change in how learning is supported and alternative learning strategies and styles are supported in their school system. For me convening is a really powerful, you’re the ones that bring in the people to the table, you’re the ones setting the agenda that can bring about change, and cause ideas to spread.
And then I think a second one is to be what I call an amplifier. So taking your power of your voice and your platform and your social media to amplify the best ideas. Amplify the facts so that we get rid of these, the power of negative information to spread but instead spreading the correct information, the fact-based information, the important details rather than the gossip, and the sensationalism that often happens in a community. So I think both of those, being an amplifier of the truth and the needed information through e-mail newsletters, through connection points, and whenever you’re meeting with people. So that’s a long answer, but I think those are some of the first strategies.
Katie: Got it. That makes sense. And I love that word convene. And I always I’ve talked quite a bit on here about the importance of community and I know we’ve all heard that, you know, you’re the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. And just how important having that group and having community is for not just health but psychological health and for relationships and for so much more. And I’m curious if you have any tips for people, especially as moms it can be lonely at times, being home with kids and feeling somewhat isolated. Do you have any tips for starting that process of convening or building your own community and your own network in which you can start to spread these changes?
Denise: One of the most powerful ones I’ve seen is using some online tools like an e-mail list. Like an online community like Mighty Networks to create community connections or Nextdoor within our own communities. So I’ve had many mom friends who have started the e-mail list, the influential e-mail list in their community to bring people together for simple things. Whether it’s exchanging information or whether it is, “Hey, my kid outgrew that baby stroller, does anybody need one?” So those kinds of changes and now that we have tools like a Nextdoor, we have tools like a Mighty Network, taking it to the next level, and also bringing community together around that loneliness. “Okay, who’s gonna take the kid to the…who’s taking the kids to the pool? Let’s all go together.” Versus all of us going in isolated ways or, “Who’s gonna make a run to the grocery store this afternoon and can pick things up?”
I think in this time right now when we’re struggling with global health challenges, that the importance of those kind of e-mail lists cannot be oversold. I mean, one of my neighbors came up to me just over the weekend, and, you know, her kids take care of my cats when I’m out of town. And she came over and she said, “You know, I don’t know everybody in the neighborhood. I’ve been here five years. But what if we had an e-mail list just in our complex that connected people around supplies that we might have, health supplies that we might share?” So I think the simplicity of a simple e-mail list with maybe a spreadsheet that’s attached to it can be a connection point to, A, help solve some initial challenges that we might all be facing. But secondly, as you said, overcome some of that loneliness, overcome some of that feeling of isolation.
Katie: Gotcha. And what about like extending to within our families, I feel like moms are naturally like somewhat leaders and certainly thought leaders, within our own families and with our kids. But are there things we can do to be more intentional, more cognizant about this and to instill some of these qualities in our kids as they get older?
Denise: I think the first thing that comes to mind is the sense that we have the power to influence through the choices we make about what we converse about. Do we choose to be the one who is the wise leader, to be the one who is the sharer of the best information? Or are we the one who is backstabbing, cat fighting, whatever these terrible terms are, that I really dislike and so probably shouldn’t even be using but, you know, are we the one who is passing along the gossip? Or are we passing along the cheerleading about each other. The amplifying of what’s happening in our community, you know, pointing out what’s good and what’s positive and what’s powerful in our neighborhoods, in our communities, in our families versus all the rest, which I think it’s so easy to get down in the spirals. And also just to get down on the spirals of, you know, spending all our time talking about the traffic and the weather and our latest Netflix show, instead of talking about ideas and what’s important. And what needs to happen and what we ourselves are doing to empower and enforce new actions in our community.
I’ll give you an example of a guy that I just think is so powerful. I don’t know if you’ve heard this gentleman in LA he calls himself the Renegade Gardener. And he woke up one day and looked outside his door and he said, “You know, there’s a strip of land outside my front door and I’m gonna plant a garden there.” And rather than what I would do, plant a few flowers, he planted literally a garden, he planted fruit trees and vegetables. And the land was actually not owned by him it was the city’s land, and he gets this e-mail and it says, “Tear up your garden, that’s city land, you can’t plant there.” And he’s like, “That’s ridiculous.” And so he started a petition in his community, and he went out and got a whole bunch of people engaged in the fact that that land should be planted and we don’t have to…he lived in East LA. And he said, “There’s no grocery stores here with fresh fruits and vegetables. What if we planted in the areas that are needed?” And so he took his petition to City Hall and he got engaged with folks there. And he got them to reverse, not only the statement that…not only the letter he got, but also to turn over other land. And over time, started building gardens in abandoned lots and outside of homeless shelters and places where the community could come together to create gardens.
And I think that initiatives like that start with any individual person looking around and saying, “What can I do? What needs to happen and what can I do and who else might also care about this?” And I think moms absolutely have the power to do that. And, of course, we’re tired. And, of course, we have, you know, 1,000 things on our to-do list, but it is thinking a little bit beyond the day-to-day to-do list and thinking, what could have a broader impact. And I think moms are unbelievably connected through their kids’ schools, through community organizations that they might be part of to bring together those kinds of change.
Katie: I absolutely agree. And I love that example in LA with the gardener. Are there other examples of thought leaders that are doing this? Because I think sometimes when you hear that term, you think of, you know, like the Dalai Lama’s, or the Gandhi’s, or….
Denise: Yes, exactly you think of somebody, you’ll never be them, right. So I’ll think about this girl that I know in my community, she was doing a…I think she did a leadership program in her community. And one of the things that they asked was for her to step forward and choose a project. And so she and three or four people in her leadership program created this initiative with a local school to do some tutoring for kids who were not being able to read and write in their…when they’re 7, 8, 9 years old, because often English wasn’t their first language or they weren’t getting any attention at home. And she did work at the kindergarten level, wanted to work a little bit beyond that with the kids who had obviously missed the lessons.
And so she started it with those four or five people. And then after the leadership program was done, she continued it. And every chance she got, she would start speaking about it, she would start talking to others about it. And she herself didn’t have kids, but she wanted to feel like she was mattering to the kids in her community. And pretty quickly, she got people saying, “Well, how did you do that? What did it take?” And I think this gets to the essential element of leader to thought leader is she wrote it down. She wrote down what it took, she wrote down how she had to get approval, and how she created the lessons and how she brought it…you know, what she looked at on the internet to buy books for kids. And all of the different ways that, you know, she found the resources, whatever it was that it took, she wrote it down.
And I think the difference between a leader and a thought leader is they codify the lessons learned. They write down in a way that they can pass forward to others a technique that is working. And so she wrote it down and started almost as simple, I think it was just a Google Doc to begin with. And then pretty soon other people who started it in their schools would add things. And now I don’t know how many schools it is, 9 or 10, in the Bay Area over the last few years. And you know, it’s small and yet each child is impacted, that is an exponential change because it’s their families that are going to be better off. And their children in the future are gonna be better off, and our workplaces are gonna be better because the kids are better educated, etc., etc., etc. I think we think about each one of these things as being not enough. And yet, every change in the globe started with one small initiative.
Katie: I agree. And I’ve seen that in my own life as well, whether it’s things like community gardens, which I’ve seen women spearhead, like you mentioned, the one in LA. I’ve seen women spearhead incredible community projects like that, or where I used to live, home birth was, for instance, not legal in the state at the time, and there was this community of women that formed and that we were able to get the law changed. And to improve birthing options for women across the state that they actually had ripple effects into even how women were treated in hospitals and birth centers. And so I think, like you’ve said a couple times, women can be such powerful tools in this and especially when we shift and focus on the community and the positive and the lifting each other up. Because I see that and you probably see it as well in the online world, where it’s easy, because we all care so much about our families and our children, it’s easy to wanna defend our choices. Or I see women argue about like the little points or about things they might do differently. And I’ve always said if we could unite about the things we have in common, which is that we all wanna leave the world better for our children, and we all want our children to have every opportunity and to make the community stronger and better for them. We will be able to create ripples that completely change our communities and our country very, very quickly. And so I love that this is something that you’re actually working with people to do.
Denise: Absolutely. I remember going to my reunion and like…it was Winter women’s college and I remember going to the reunion. I don’t remember if it was my 5 year reunion or my 10 year reunion and there was such an energy in the space about comparing and, you know, sort of envying the person who stayed home with the kids versus the ones who stayed home with the kids envying the ones who were working. Or maybe shaming, blaming the ones who were doing the other, you know, “Why aren’t you working? Why aren’t you…you know, you’ve got this great education?” I don’t know, it’s just exhausting. If we can just stop with the comparing and celebrate what each one is doing and come together, as you say, around things that matter. That is going to be when we take back the globe for ourselves.
And also, I would just add to it, that rather than necessarily starting something yourself, go out and see what’s already happening. I’m somewhat frustrated at my own self and others who, when I come up with a new idea, I immediately just wanna start a new nonprofit or a new initiative or new organizations. Like, “Wait a minute, what if there’s already something happening? What if I went and added my energy to what’s already going on in my community rather than trying to create something myself from start, from scratch,” because as the truth is, there isn’t enough resources to go around. And we all need to come together to solve these global challenges whether it be fixing the need for better education of our kids, or fixing the water or the gardens in our community. We don’t need another nonprofit necessarily, we need more people coming together and even stepping into the next step.
I’ll tell you a key…and maybe to go to one of my little pet peeves here is that we tend to spend hours as moms making cookies and doing the food drives and doing the small changes. And yet women are not taking that same energy and drive around a legislative initiative that would actually change the…to have the impact in a much bigger way around whatever the causes that we’re raising that money for it to begin with. And how many times have I heard friends of mine say, “Well, yeah. I’m trying to get people, get women to donate to a candidate, or get involved in a bond drive, or whatever. And I can’t get anyone to do that.” But they’re all more than happy to spend 2 hours making cupcakes or 2 hours running a bake sale, which is gonna raise $100 versus this bond measure, which is going to raise $5 million. So I think it’s also important to take that twist in our thinking and understand that, yes, it is scary, and it isn’t something you’ve done before. And it is the first time in your community that anybody may have taken something on. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. And taking the same energy and drive that we do on the small things to the big things that can have a much more global impact. That to me is where we also want to be focusing our time and energy. Does that make sense?
Katie: That does make sense. And I’m also a big fan like you said I think…like I mentioned it a little bit before, but I think we often underestimate our ability to actually affect change within our own communities. And I really think that is actually the most effective place we can start change and then grow from there. And I think women especially are incredibly powerful tools for community change. And you’re right, we tend to default to the big sales or the volunteering and stuff. And women are great for that, women step in when there’s a need, and they help that. But if we just looked a little bit bigger, it’s not that we have to go grand scale or run for political office or do something nationwide, doing something in our own community, we actually have the power to create and effect that change on our own, especially when we unite. So I love that idea. And I think you’re right, we’re facing a lot of relatively big problems in the next couple of decades. And I think we have a unique position to be able to start to change that.
Denise: Absolutely. And my invitation is to ask around, there usually is somebody who has had some of that expertise in your community if you ask or you look around. And secondly is to don’t just focus on moms, I think this is…it’s a community challenge usually that we’re facing. And by coming together with working folks who are not moms or dads or people who are in places of power. So I served for eight years on the Housing and Human Concerns Committee in my town, and it was simply because I woke up one day and realized I had a very fine education from some of the top schools in the country. And I had a tech job with a very good salary and I could barely, barely afford to have a condo in my neighborhood. And I thought, “Okay, I thought that this was what Silicon Valley was designed for was people like me with a good education and a good job. And if I can’t afford to live here, how in the world are other people doing this?” And so I was just angry about it and confused and wanting to make a difference in that. And so found out that you can be appointed to serve on the Housing Committee in your town and I never even knew there was such a thing. I think I complained once too many times and people said, “Why don’t you go do something about it?” Which is kind of my invitation to others, stop complaining, go do something about it.
And so I served on the Housing Committee and I in my eight years there as a chair for several of those years and we built a lot of housing. And it wasn’t perfect, I learned a lot, I certainly didn’t do everything perfectly, and I had to sometimes vote against people that I cared about who wanted no more building in our neighborhoods, and wanted no more housing and wanted…you know, so the nimbyism was definitely some of my own friends who were on the other side of me at certain key votes. And I didn’t always win. My votes weren’t always the right…weren’t always accepted, of course, either for my community. But I look now I drive downtown and I see all this great housing and it’s right near transportation, and it’s…some of it is affordable because of our initiatives. And I just think that that matters to me more than any time I spend in my community, anything else I’ve done in my community, was that, getting engaged and doing my best to learn what I could and get together with others to make an impact on something that truly mattered.
Katie: Got it.
This podcast episode is brought to you by Beekeeper’s Naturals, a company dedicated to protecting the bees while creating sustainably sourced bee products for our whole families. Without bees, our global food supply would collapse, so protecting the bees protects all of us. As a certified B Corp, Beekeeper’s Naturals cares deeply about the environment, about the bees, and about their employees, and their customers and consumers, which is us. If you’re new to using bee products, I personally, recommend starting with the propolis spray. And this is a delicious way to support the immune system. And if you aren’t familiar with propolis, it’s really incredible. Propolis is the substance that bees use inside the hive to fight bacteria and any other pathogen or invaders that enter the hive. In fact, even if something as large as a mouse should enter the hive, and the bees can’t get it out, they can encapsulate it in propolis to keep that from infecting the hive and creating all kinds of bacterial problems. Propolis is naturally antibacterial. It has a compound called pinocembrin that works as an antifungal, and it’s also an antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory. I personally spray it in my throat at the first sign of a tickle in my throat, or the sniffles, and I spray it on wounds and burns for faster healing. You can save 15% on propolis and all Beekeeper’s Naturals products as a listener of this podcast. To get the deal, go to beekeepersnaturals.com/wellnessmama, and use the code “wellnessmama” to save 15%.
This episode is brought to you by Wellnesse. That’s Wellnesse with an E on the end, which is my new personal care company that is dedicated to making safe and effective products from my family to your family. We started with toothpaste and hair care because these are the biggest offenders in most bathrooms, and we’re coming after the other personal care products as well. Did you know for instance that most shampoo contains harsh detergents that strip out the natural oils from the hair and leave it harder to manage over time and more dependent on extra products? We took a different approach, creating a nourishing hair food that gives your hair what it actually needs and doesn’t take away from its natural strength and beauty. In fact, it’s specifically designed to support your hair’s natural texture, natural color, and is safe for color-treated hair as well. Our shampoos contain herbs like nettle, which helps strengthen hair and reduce hair fall, leaving your hair and scalp healthier over time, and scented only with natural essential oils in a very delicate scent so that you don’t have to worry about the fragrance as well. Over time, your hair gets back to its stronger, healthier, shinier state without the need for parabens or silicone or SLS. You can check it out along with our whitening toothpaste and our full hair care bundles at wellnesse.com. An insider tip, grab an essentials bundle or try auto-ship and you will lock in a discount.
A question I like to ask toward the end of interviews that’s a little bit related, but it might be on an entirely different subject. Is if there’s a book or a number of books that have had a really dramatic impact on your life. And if so, what are they and why?
Denise: I think the book that’s probably had the most impact on my life is a book called “Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.” And it’s a book by two gentlemen Chip and Dan Heath, two brothers, one teaches on the east coast, one teaches on the west coast. And they came together to study, how does change happen? And since that’s something that I work on every day is how do I help people impact change? How do I help people to build more influence? Their studies and what they researched around the globe about how small changes can grow into global change had a huge impact on me, because they introduced me to some very powerful ideas. I invite people who don’t have time to read the book that there’s a great explainer video on YouTube that you can watch that is just excellent about understanding all the key concepts of the book. But I think I’ve probably referred people to that book more than any other I’ve ever read. And it’s had more impact on me because of the work that I do.
And I think the second is writing a book. Taking it from the other side, like which book had the most impact? Writing a book had the most impact on me. I never expected I was gonna be a writer I just felt and I think you’ve got several books out yourself. I know how, once you start putting pen to paper, you have a lot of self-doubt and as I call it, the itty-bitty-shitty committee in your brain shows up and tells you, “You’re not good enough, who are you?” Blah, blah, blah. But if you can get beyond the perfectionism and document on paper, some of the things that you know and need to pass forward to the world I think that has an incredible power.
And honestly an incredible magic, the kinds of magic that has unfolded in my life since that book came out is untold. I made probably not a penny from the book but certainly brought in a number of incredible opportunities and certainly made money from other ways speaking and coaching and consulting since I wrote that book. But mostly for me, it’s been about the small stories, the e-mails that I get from literally around the globe of people who’ve been impacted by that book. And who understood that my blueprint that I created in the book, “Ready to Be a Thought Leader,” was really about how can you take those first steps, what are the things that you need to put in place? And I wrote it as a Guidebook and a Resource Guide for anyone who was ready to start this journey or wasn’t quite sure they were ready, but what would those next steps be? And I think that that had a huge impact on my life.
Katie: Awesome. And for people who want to continue learning from your work or follow you online, where can they find you?
Denise: Thoughtleadershiplab.com. And also on LinkedIn. I have two courses there. So I welcome people to go to LinkedIn Learning. And there’s a course based on my book, and then a new one on, how do organizations build thought leadership.
Katie: Awesome. And I know you have some videos people can watch as well, I’ll make sure those are all linked in the show notes. You’ve done a TED talk. I’ll make sure people can find all those if you guys are listening while you’re doing something else, you can find all of those links at wellnessmama.fm. But Denise, thank you for being here. I think this is, like I said, a very important topic. And I think women have a great ability, especially moms to start effecting change in these ways. And I love that you are helping people do that across the board.
Denise: I look forward to seeing how this unfolds, Katie, thank you for the time.
Katie: And thank you as always to all of you for listening and for sharing one of your most valuable assets, your time with us today. We’re so grateful that you did and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of, “The Wellness Mama Podcast.”
If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.
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