IAM656- Speaker Helps Leaders and Student Become Better Leaders

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 Dr. Nicole Rankine of the COLE Academy of Personal Growth. Nicole, it's awesome to have you on a show..

Dr. Nicole Rankine 0:40

Thank you for having me. Gresh. How are you?

Gresham Harkless 0:43

I'm doing pretty well. And I'm super excited to have you on and ready to kind of jump in. But before we do, I wanted to read a little bit more about Dr. Nicole so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. And Dr. Nicole affectionately known as Dr. Nick is the CEO of the Cole Academy of personal growth. As a certified John Maxwell team speaker, teacher and coach Dr. Nick helps leaders and students become better leaders of themselves, but most importantly themselves. And Dr. Nicole has trained leaders and students throughout the United States around the world, including Costa Rica, Kenya, South Africa and China. Dr. Nick is one of the most engaging trainers and coaches around and she truly has a sincere passion for helping people to get their next level both personally and professionally. Dr. Nick, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Dr. Nicole Rankine 1:29

Okay, I am. Thank you for having me. I'm ready.

Gresham Harkless 1:32

No problem. Super excited to have you on and I wanted to jump right in and hear a little bit more on how you got started. So can you tell us your CEO story? And what led you to start your business?

Dr. Nicole Rankine 1:41

Absolutely. Again, well, thank you, again for having me. So my journey is I'm not sure if it's like everybody else's. But it was a unique to me my background. Actually, I am a research scientist\Quality Manager. And I was in the scientists for 20-21 years. So I worked in science and public health. But I got to a point where I was hit a roadblock in life. And it was more so that okay, what am I doing? You know that asking yourself, what do I want to be when I grow up, there was something that was missing. Although on the outside of my life, I had a good career. I was growing professionally, the money was good, educational was good. So I'm outside I had a good life. But on the inside, there was something missing. There was something that was I felt void, I felt empty. And I felt that I knew that I wanted to do be and have more. And I am a woman of faith. So I took that time to kind of figure out and seek through prayer, like what is this time and season that I'm feeling, because I knew I needed to figure it out because I was going to work. And that was not vibing with me day to day. So I took that time took that journey, I joined the John Maxwell team, I was led to join the John Maxwell team where I became a certified speaker, teacher coach. And during that time, I just worked on myself worked on myself, I grew myself changed my mindset. And it was I opened myself to things that I had never experienced before. And the possibilities that were out there. And once I did that, I saw myself as a business owner, which I never saw that before. And I was at the crossroad and say, What do I do? Do I take the red pill or the blue pill? You know, do I keep on with corporate? Or do I jump out and start my own and I made my decision. And here I am.

Gresham Harkless 3:34

Awesome. I love that. And I love that you went after it, so to speak. So I think so many times we come to that kind of crossroads in life or through our journey through life. And sometimes we ignore a lot of those feelings that we have that something's not right, or we sometimes even make ourselves feel, I don't know if the right word is ungrateful, but we're not. But we shouldn't have that feeling. If everything is good, quote unquote, outside, that we should be happy. We shouldn't want to change things, but I appreciate you for one, telling your story, secondly, kind of pursuing that and going through and not, being afraid of that growth, taking that leap of faith. And then for three, helping so many other people be reminded of exactly how to do that as well.

Dr. Nicole Rankine 4:17

Yes, it was definitely a faith walk and a faith journey. And taking it wasn't easy. it wasn't an easy decision. And like you said, a lot of times we are get comfortable in our comfort zone. And it's so hard to break out of that. But I knew that if I did not there were going to be consequences, not only consequences for my own life, that I wasn't going to reach my full potential that I wasn't truly going to be using my gifts and my talents. But there are people out there that are waiting for me to get in my right position. Right and if I did not do that, then what would be the impact on their lives? So I thought about it that way and I said I have to do this. So through prayer said sacrifice we made that leap. I turned in my resignation and started the coal Academy of personal growth.

Gresham Harkless 5:00

Awesome. No, I absolutely love that. I love that perspective. I think so many times, when we're thinking about the decisions that we're making, we're just thinking about ourselves. And of course, we want to make sure that we take care of ourselves and are doing the right things, but not realizing that we're sometimes given these gifts and these talents in order to give them to the world to make the world a better place. And if we don't walk into that, and we're not walking into that, and we're not walking into the opportunities that we provide for other people, as well. So I love that.

Dr. Nicole Rankine 5:31

Absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 5:32

Awesome. So I want to hear a little bit more about your your business. Can you take us through the coal Academy and tell us exactly what you're doing for your clients?

Dr. Nicole Rankine 5:39

Yes, the coal Academy of growth. We're a professional development company, where we provide services such as leadership development, personal growth, and communication skills. So we do training, workshops, seminars, conferences, things of that nature. And then we also provide career coaching for those in need of that professional development, learning resumes, doing resumes, interviewing, and just kind of what do I want to do with my life, a lot of times we get people that are in a transition, where we're I was in life to say, what now and what's next. So that's the services that we provide, I travel a lot, I do a lot of speaking engagements as well. And like you said, in the bio, I not only work with adults, but I love my niche, and my passion is working with budding leaders, and that next generation, so I not only do leadership development for adults, I also provide those services for our next generations. And those leaders coming up.

Gresham Harkless 6:38

Yeah, I absolutely love that. And I think that I'm a big believer, I think it's in the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People have always kind of sharpening the saw, and making sure that you are continually growing and taking kind of that challenge to kind of push past that comfort zone that sometimes we can kind of get into. So I appreciate you in so many different ways for developing that opportunity for leaders, budding leaders, and, and people that just are kind of unsure what that next step might be to actually figure a way to kind of cultivate that.

Dr. Nicole Rankine 7:09

Yes.

Gresham Harkless 7:11

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I want to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce, and it could be for you personally, or your business? What what do you feel kind of sets you apart? And makes you unique?

Dr. Nicole Rankine 7:21

Great question. I think, for me, it's the understanding of personal growth and development. when when you're in school, you're taught to the hard skills, you know, you're taught math, science, social studies, all the hard skills, and technical skills that you need, but you're not taught the soft skills until it's needed later on in life. When you're an adult, you're like, how did I get here, and I'm not equip. And what I found was that, when I went through my journey, I had all my technical skills, and I thrived on that I built a whole professional life on my technical skills. But then when I got to that point where I was in that roadblock, it wasn't the technical skills that I needed. It was the soft skills that were that I needed to develop in order for me to push past and to reach my potential and to go into the things that I know that I was called to do. But nobody ever taught me that. Like, I didn't know what personal growth was, it wasn't a chorus, it wasn't a thing. So I think when I brought that into the organization, so when we're talking about developing leaders, when you think about leadership development, the first thing you think about is managing people. Being able to lead teams, being able to do conflict resolution, or problem solving is always an outward facing solution. So the difference that I have with the Cole Academy of personal growth is we focus on self leadership, we focus on the personal growth and personal development of that person, so they can be a better leader of themselves first, because we know the highest form of leadership is self leadership. So I say you can't effectively lead others if you can't effectively lead yourself. But a lot of people neglect that even as leader so they're more focused on how am I going to manage a team? How am I going to lead a team? Well, let's let's look that turn that mirror around and look at ourselves? How are you with yourself? How are you in your reflection of what it how do you know your strengths? Do you know your weaknesses? Do you know your strengths? Do you know your giftings, you know, let's look at that and develop you as a leader so you can effectively lead others and that is the focus of the coal Academy of personal growth. So that is our uniqueness. We focus on the leader first before we train them on how to lead others.

Gresham Harkless 9:40

I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So that could be like an apple book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Dr. Nicole Rankine 9:50

Well, during my journey, it was so pivotal in my life that I actually captured it in a book. So I wrote a journal and it's called adulting in my purpose, and what it did it's a journey of self discovery. And it goes through seven kinds of personal growth journeys, including self awareness, self reflection, self belief, self knowledge, self planning, self motivation. So everything that has to do with self, and I actually take myself through this on an annual basis to kind of keep me above that's kind of like my personal growth plan. And I think every year that I go through it, I expand, I learned more about myself, I learned things, I need to improve things, I need to stop doing things that I can do to make me effective more as a business owner, or just as a person in general. So I did capture that in the journal. And the journal is actually geared to millennials, that budding leadership of new entrepreneurs age group, because I realized, if I knew the stuff that I knew now, then life would have looked a little bit different. So that is one of my resources that I use now, to help me to keep moving forward in business. And just in life.

Gresham Harkless 11:08

I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO, nugget. So this is like a word of wisdom or piece of advice. Or if you can happen to that time machine or go back into one of those ages, what might you tell your younger business self?

Dr. Nicole Rankine 11:19

Again, personal growth and development, taking that time, to grow yourself and more so that I can do it? Right? A lot of times when I was at that point where I was empty, had a lot of limiting beliefs, I had a lot of self doubt, that kept me in my box that kept me into that comfort zone. Because even though I saw visually, like I'm a dreamer, and I'm a visionary, so I see myself doing big things. But then you have those doubts, you have those self belief that says, No, you can't do that, or you don't have the resources to do that, and, and who's gonna listen to you? So, you know, that process that growing myself helped me with that helped me to overcome those fears overcome those doubts. So I said, making that investment is critical, just in not only in business, when we talk about business growth, when I talk to small entrepreneurs, business owners, I tell them that your personal growth is your business growth, you and your business will never outgrow who you are, and you're gonna be able to if you want your business to grow, you have to keep growing, are you going to reach a cap, you've got to reach a threshold. And a lot of times when I was doing just your research, businesses fail within three to five years, right? That's the statistic. But when you ask yourself, what is the difference between those businesses and a business that's succeeded? The difference is mindset. Right? The challenges are the same you meet the same problems, you meet the same challenges. But do you have the right mindset? Do you have the right fortitude to overcome the fears of challenges to overcome that, to keep pushing forward? That's the only difference, right? So I would say, definitely taking the time making the investment in yourself to grow yourself and do the personal work so your business can grow. So you can grow and you can can reach your capacity and your potential.

Gresham Harkless 13:20

Definitely appreciate that. Dr. Nic. And now I wanted 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 Dr. Nick what a CEO means to you?

Dr. Nicole Rankine 13:32

Taking responsibility and taking ownership. And I say that not only as a business owner, but just for your life, knowing that you have the ability to lead your life in a direction that you desire. Alot of times, most people just accept things the way they are and roll with it go with the flow. But we have the ability, we have the giftings we have the mindset to lead our lives in a direction, making choices make doing situations, regardless of our circumstances. Alot of times it's you use as an alibi or an excuse, based on our circumstances. But even in the midst of that, we have the ability to lead our lives in a different direction. So I think being a CEO means being taking ownership and having the responsibility to lead your life in the way you desire for it to go.

Gresham Harkless 14:25

Absolutely no, I love that definition. And that perspective. And I think so many times, we can chart our course I used to say sometimes we can be artists in our lives or in our businesses where we can paint a picture that we want to paint. And we do that by taking that action to do that. And we have so many kinds of, I guess tools at our disposal to be able to make that happen. And I appreciate you for writing, you know so many of those as well too, so that we can be able to kind of be our best selves and chart our paths as much as we can. So Dr. Nick, I truly appreciate that and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do was passing the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional do you want to let our readers and listeners know? And then of course, how best they can get hold of you get a copy of everything that you're doing and see all the awesome things we're working on.

Dr. Nicole Rankine 15:00

I can be found at on social media at Dr. Nicole Rankine, my website is drnicolerankine.com. So I keep it simple. I also have the journal for anybody that's interested at use. Right now. It's on Amazon. So you can go to Amazon and pick that up. It's adulting in my purpose, the seven journals of personal growth. And that's it. Just LinkedIn. Follow me on social media. We're doing some great things. I'm also going to be working with some budding leaders coming up in the next couple of weeks. So doing some great things. So yes, follow me. And let's continue to recharge reads.

Gresham Harkless 15:55

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much Dr. Nicole. we will have the links and information in the show notes and definitely further for the workbook as well too. And of course, everything that you're doing on social media but truly appreciate your time appreciate everything that you're doing today. And that reminder for us to kind of be our best selves and continue to put in the work to in order to do that to grow ourselves individually to see it manifests in so many different ways in our lives. So, truly appreciate that and I hope you have a phenomenal day.

Outro 16:20

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 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.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai