IAM617- Leader Helps Clients Leverage Their Fear Into Bravery

Heather Vickery is a global leader that helps you leverage your fear into intentional bravery. A celebrated public speaker and success coach, Heather inspires audiences and supports others with the tools they need to live empowered, bold, and successful lives. She’s a twice-published author and the host of The Brave Files Podcast.

• CEO Hack: (1) Book – Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box (2) App for accountability- CommitTo3
• CEO Nugget: Everything you really want is on the other side of comfortable
• CEO Defined: Delegating as much as possible so as to spend time in your zone of genius

Website: http://www.vickeryandco.com/

Instagram: @vickeryandco
Twitter:  https://twitter.com/vickeryandco?lang=en
Facebook: Vickeryandco and TheBraveFilesPodcast
Both of my books: Shift Your Focus: https://amzn.to/3489Shb
Grow Grateful: https://amzn.to/2pCfIrW

Check out one of our favorite CEO Hack’s Audible. Get your free audiobook and check out more of our favorite CEO Hacks HERE

Transcription

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place, Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I am CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Heather Vickery of Vickery and CO. Heather. It's awesome having you on the show.

Heather Vickery 0:37

It's so great to be here. It's so great to be here. I've been really looking forward to it.

Gresham Harkless 0:42

Yeah, definitely looking forward to having you on. We've had a lot of great discussions before we get started, but I wanted to introduce you first and foremost so that people can hear all the awesome things that you're doing. Heather is a global leader who helps you leverage your fear and to intentional bravery, a celebrated public speaker and success coach, Heather inspires audiences and supports others with the tools they need to live empowered, bold, and successful lives. She's a twice-published author and the host of the Brave Files podcast. Heather, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Heather Vickery 1:09

I am so ready.

Gresham Harkless 1:10

Awesome. Let's do it. So I wanted to kick everything off with what I call your CEO story to hear what led you to get started with the business and all the awesome things we're working on.

Heather Vickery 1:19

It's such a big question. Do you make that sound? Easy question. It was like a 15-minute podcast episode I could spend. Okay, so I have been an entrepreneur almost my entire adult life, I realized very quickly out of college, that while I worked incredibly well with people, I did not work well for people. And my background has been in event planning. And so after a few years of opening hotels, doing events and weddings, and doing nonprofit events, I went out on my own and ended up building one of Chicago's premier luxury event planning firms, which is no longer with us, which is a great thing, actually.

And then about about 10 years ago now. My life started to just disintegrate. I've started to live a really small fear-based life. And y'all heard me say I help people leverage their fear. I kind of lost myself there there was a lot of personal stuff involved there. Slowly but surely, I realized that I was in a marriage that was not healthy for me and in a business that was not taking me where I wanted to go. And I don't know how much I want to know this. I also realized I was married to the wrong gender, right?

So I kind of burned it all to the ground and started listening to what the universe was bringing to me and the universe multiple times a week was saying, hey, Heather, you're a coach, hey, hey, Heather, that person asked you to coach them. And that person asked you to coach them and that I'm like, so Okay, pay attention. And I started helping people then get out of fear-based decision-making, which is where I had been previously. And I launched Vickery CO, I started doing public speaking and hosting workshops, and it is just been incredible.

Gresham Harkless 3:08

Awesome. Well, I appreciate you for breaking all that down, definitely tell us your story. Because I think so many times, you know, you go through difficult periods, and a lot of things happen. And I think that sometimes we have signs of what we should be doing. And in many ways, obviously. But we don't necessarily maybe have the bravery or don't realize we have the bravery within us to be able to make those decisions and make those changes. And I think sometimes we have to hit I don't know if you would call it Rock Bottom that you went through sometimes. Okay, I didn't want to put that into your mouth. But a lot of times that happens. And that while it's super frustrating, and you know, not an exciting time, I think that does help us to propel into where we should be a lot of times and appreciate that.

Heather Vickery 3:51

Absolutely. I'll tell you I have just been listening to Leslie do Leslie Odom Jr. Are you? Are you a musical fan? So he played Aaron Burr and Hamilton an American musical and he's got a book out called failing up. And it's something I've known for a long time. But it's it's a great resource actually, where they just you know, if you're putting yourself out there, you're gonna fail. We all know that. Right? We all know that. And it feels very scary. So you do have to embrace that fear and, and trust that it's going to take you where you want to go.

Gresham Harkless 4:25

Absolutely, yeah. And you have to kind of, you know, as a whole, trust the process and in being able to do that. And I know that's definitely at the heart of everything that you're doing and everything that you're creating, could you take us through you know, everything and how exactly you're working with clients and your podcasts and all the awesome things you're doing?

Heather Vickery 4:40

Sure, there are so many things. So I created I put all my stuff together and I put together a signature program that's called our signature method. That's called the brave method. And that should not be a surprise to anybody who's listening already. But the brave stands for boundaries, reassessment and resilience, action, accountability, vulnerability, and empowerment.

And what I help people do is all the things that every other coach or every other business person would suggest you do, but within the boundaries of that, right, so how to communicate better with boundaries, how to feel more balanced and centered in your life, that doesn't mean the scales of justice, it doesn't mean you're spending half your time working on your business and half the time, with your personal life, of course, but at the end of the day, the week, the month, the year, when you check in with yourself, you feel good, you feel good about how you're spending your time, and what you're spending your time on. And then all sorts of different systems and ways to be the best successful version of yourself possible, and also, how to define what success is for you because it is different for each one of us.

Gresham Harkless 5:50

Absolutely, no, I appreciate you for breaking that down. And that's actually what I was going to ask you is that you know, the brave methodologies that you have and that you work with your clients on. Is it something that I imagined we both we all, we all have different fears, or things that have scared or scarred us, and maybe, you know, had different experiences? But we also have different goals that we want to get to. So is there a one-size-fits-all kind of approach? Or is it this methodology kind of taken to us in our own specific ways?

Heather Vickery 6:16

I absolutely 100% Do not believe there's a one-size-fits-all approach. I think any successful person I've ever encountered, or that I've coached, or worked with, has taken bits and pieces of other people's stuff to create what works best for them. So I take them through the methodology, and then we try different things. It's kind of a game, like which system is going to work best for you what boundary is going to work best for you? How do you step up?

So you know, I said, at the very beginning here that I realized I was married to the wrong gender coming out, changed my life. I, all of a sudden, people started to see me for me, and I realized that I'd been hiding from everybody. And in so doing, people can tell, they can tell when you're not your true authentic self. Right. So that vulnerability piece is really key. So what I like to work with people to do is build it the way it's going to work for you. Because that's going to be different than the way it works for anybody else.

Gresham Harkless 7:10

Yeah, absolutely. And that's why I you know, I appreciate you for telling your story and talking about, being married to the wrong gender as well, too, because I think so many times, I guess, we sometimes know who we are. But we're not always acting in that way. And we're always not necessarily vulnerable. Or maybe we're conforming or for whatever reason, it might be that we're not being in our lane and being true to ourselves.

Yeah. And I think a lot of times, and I don't know if that you find this with your clients that because you know, you've had such a powerful experience, it helps you out with clients, so much more, you're able to understand, help them feel like they're not alone because I think that's what happens a lot of times when we go through those issues?

Heather Vickery 7:46

Absolutely. You know, I like to equate it to being a new parent. And I don't know how many of your listeners are parents, but when your child does not sleep, you are convinced that you will never sleep again in your entire life. And that's just not true. But it definitely feels like you're gonna be stuck in this place for eternity. But the only constant is the only constant thing is change.

Right? So that is going to shift and it's the same for business across the board. Yeah, yes, you're right about that. I just, you know, you don't have to settle for less than but I find by the time folks come to me, they have realized that they're tolerating stuff that they don't have to accept anymore. They don't know how to get out of it. They don't know what to do about it. But they're ready to change it. And you have to be ready to change it.

Gresham Harkless 7:47

Yeah, absolutely. Because you have to put in the work a lot of time to be able to make it happen. And I work and sometimes get rid of some of the baggage or things that we have early on or have been put on us.

Heather Vickery 8:46

Absolutely. I always tell folks, that we know that we can't change anyone but ourselves. But when we change ourselves, the people around us change that is the natural order of things. So you can create major changes and shifts in every element of your life.

Gresham Harkless 9:03

Awesome. I think there's like a Gandhi quote that if you want to see the world change or something along the lines, you have to change yourself. So probably it's so powerful.

Heather Vickery 9:11

Yeah.

Gresham Harkless 9:11

Because they all start with us. And then a lot of times it starts to manifest itself in the lives of the worlds that we have. So I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And you might have already touched on this. I don't know if that's the ability to be able to get that out of people. But what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Heather Vickery 9:26

Well, I like to use the term superpower. I like a secret sauce. It works. Whenever I do a workshop a lot of companies will bring me in to do workshops as well. We talk about what everybody's superpower is. And I do believe that each and every one of us has a unique superpower that we bring to the table in a way that nobody else can. And that makes us really special. My superpower is actually being able to hear what someone says and reframe it in a way that's actionable.

So we talked about being in that stuck space, feeling like you're all alone. All of that I can hear what somebody's saying. And then reframe it and say, this is actually what I heard you say, in different words than what you said. And that's actionable. We can do something about that. And almost always people say, oh, yeah, that is what I mean, I had no idea. That's what I meant, right? So that's sort of, that's sort of my special superpower.

Gresham Harkless 10:20

Well, awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. It might be like the failing that you mentioned, but what's like an apple book or habit that makes you more effective and efficient?

Heather Vickery 10:31

A book that absolutely changed my life was in a book called Leadership and Self-deception, The Art of Getting Out of the Box. Now, I'm gonna be honest, it's maybe not written in the most wonderful way. But it's written in prose. It's like a story, very short, and easy to read. And then an app that I'm loving. Right now, the A in my brave acronym is action and accountability.

And so I have several accountability systems set up in my life, but one of them is an app called Commit to Three. And it's web-based, and an app you can get on your phone. And you can play by yourself, or you can set up a team of people and you make three firm commitments for the day, no matter what happens come hell or high water, these are the three things you're getting done.

Gresham Harkless 11:14

Absolutely. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO, nugget. So that could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. Could it be around, you know, bravery, and how exactly we can do that? Or it might even be something you might tell a client or your younger business self.

Heather Vickery 11:27

Sure. My sort of catchphrase is that everything you really want is just on the other side of uncomfortable. And there should be at least one thing you're doing every day, that feels like a stretch. And if that's not happening, you are not working at your highest potential, and you are definitely not working in your zone of genius.

Gresham Harkless 11:47

Exactly, exactly. And so now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Heather, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Heather Vickery 11:58

Yeah, so I love that question. And it was a pretty big game-changer. When I stopped treating my business like I was an employee and started treating it like I was a CEO. The buck stops here, but I cannot while I am very talented, and I can do a lot of things. I don't do a lot of things I run, I run my business, I sell my business, I coach, my people I speak the rest of it, I delegate like a motherfucker.

Gresham Harkless 12:22

Absolutely.

Heather Vickery 12:25

It's so important. So to me, a CEO means you can't do it all I had the absolute honor and privilege of seeing Barack Obama speak last March at a conference. And somebody asked him what he thought made him successful. And he said because I am never the smartest person in the room. But I always know who is. So I can't do it all. But I hire the right people who can do everything I need. And that is my MO. I have people to help me with social media and with copywriting. And in literally everything you can think of I delegate as much as possible so that I'm spending my time in my zone of genius on the things that make me a lot of money.

Gresham Harkless 13:04

Absolutely, no, I love that. And I appreciate that. And I love kind of like the quote is, you know, you always hear the phrase, you want to not be the smartest person in the room. But I think taking it a step further and knowing who is is so important. Because you can not think you're the smartest person in the room and that person who doesn't know it either. Yeah, you think they're smarter, but that knowledge of being able to do both of those is definitely going to create that success and create that kind of power for us to be in our zones and be able to create and see success.

Heather Vickery 13:34

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, it was great he was like, my job isn't to do it all. My job was to hire the people who knew how to do it all like, yes, that's my job. That's the CEO's job.

Gresham Harkless 13:44

Absolutely. Well, Heather, I truly appreciate that definition, and appreciate your time, even more. What I wanted to do was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you can let our readers and listeners know. And then of course, how best they can get a hold of you your books the podcasts, and all the awesome things you're working on. Absolutely.

Heather Vickery 13:58

Thank you for that opportunity. So we have a really great resource that we've built on it's hosted on Facebook, and it's a group called Brave on Purpose, which I think you are joining us on there. So it's a really great place to go. Where we do I push people, we have challenges, we talk about all these things, but you get to network and collaborate and grow and test things and try things and it's such a fun place to be. So I invite everybody to join us over there. One of the things that I do with clients that I think is really important is helping them build life-changing gratitude practices, which I mentioned earlier, I have a certification in positive psychology, gratitude practice is the number one way to increase your happiness, health, and well being and decrease stress, anxiety, and depression.

And so the books that I have written are books on gratitude combined with a gratitude journal. So the one for working professionals is called shift your focus. You can find it on Amazon or you can check out my website which is Vickery and co.com. If you do not have a gratitude practice, if you take nothing else I have this conversation. Start one, do you have a gratitude practice?

Gresham Harkless 15:03

I do have an app.

Heather Vickery 15:05

There you go, I want to build an app. We can talk about that.

Gresham Harkless 15:07

Yes, let's do it.

Heather Vickery 15:10

Because everybody, and it's funny that you say that I think men in general prefer to do it electronically, and women tend to like to write it out. And that's probably not the case for everybody. But as a general rule of thumb. So that is something that I highly encourage everyone and then, so my podcast is called The Brave Files, I interview people who step out of fear and into bravery in literally every element of life.

And what we know for sure, is that when we choose bravely on purpose, we choose bigger, we win bigger, and it's contagious. So these are really wonderful connective inspiring human stories. And I would love to have you all take a listen, you can find it anywhere you enjoy podcasts, you can find it right where you're listening to this one.

Gresham Harkless 15:50

Absolutely, no, I definitely appreciate that Heather, and all the awesome things that you're doing, we will definitely have the links and information in the show notes so that people can click through and make it even easier to follow you. And of course, join us. I'm assuming I'm gonna be accepted into the face.

Heather Vickery 16:05

Now, so we can't do that, right?

Gresham Harkless 16:06

Yeah, exactly, exactly. But I truly appreciate you giving us the reminder that is not the absence of fear. It's how we manage the fear in order to be successful. And I think that's a phenomenal message and phenomenal words and all the awesomeness that you're putting out into the world. So I appreciate you and I hope you have a great rest of the day.

Outro 16:22

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co CEO, I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, And leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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