Valerie is a “recovering corporate executive on radical sabbatical,” with business leadership roles that include being a VP of marketing leading a $900 million dollar portfolio of brands, a nine-year award-winning track record at Procter & Gamble, and consulting roles for several Fortune 500 companies. Her passion is guiding executives and entrepreneurs to win the inner game of success through self-mastery. She’s a multi-award-winning, best-selling author, sought-after keynote speaker, confessed foodie.

• CEO Hack: Perception of situations
• CEO Nugget: Keeping on keeping up- no matter what, rest, rejuvenate, reshuffle, recalibrate, take a step back
• CEO Defined: Leveraging my brilliance to serve the people

Website: https://heartlycenter.com/

https://HappytoBeME.net

YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/VRSYouTube
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LivingHappytoBeME/

FULL INTERVIEW

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Transcription

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[00:00:02.20] – Intro

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.

[00:00:30.19] – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I am CEO podcast, and I have a very, very special guest on the show today. I have Valerie Shepherd of Profit Rocket Academy. Valerie, it's awesome to have you on the show.

[00:00:40.29] – Valerie Sheppard

Thank you so much, Gresham. I'm excited to be here, and I can't wait to see what I can provide to support.

[00:00:45.39] – Gresham Harkless

You a Super excited to have you on, and I know there'll be loads of great value. But before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Valerie so you could hear all the awesome things that she's been doing. And Valerie is a recovering corporate executive on Radical Sabbatical. With business leadership roles that include being a VP of marketing, leading a nine hundred million dollar portfolio of brands, a nine year award winning track record at Procter and Gamble, and consulting roles for several Fortune five hundred companies, her passion is guiding executives and entrepreneurs to win the inner game of success through self mastery. She's a multi award winning, best selling author, sought after keynote speaker, and confessed foodie. Valerie, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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[00:01:28.70] – Valerie Sheppard

I am. And I hope everyone's got some good food.

[00:01:31.70] – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. As a confessed foodie as well too, I wanted to to to hear how you got started. Could you take us through your your CEO story? We'll let you get started with all the awesome things you're working on.

[00:01:41.40] – Valerie Sheppard

Sure thing. My CEO story is all about making it through the ups and downs and still going. And my hashtag, my favorite hashtag, keep on keeping on, people. So, I have done the vice president role. I've done the brand management role. The CEO role of my own company as an entrepreneur, much harder, but also much more rewarding and a lot of fun too. And the journey just included a lot of different, experiences on the business side, mostly in marketing and, business strategy, strategic, direction setting for brands. Some of them small, some of them billion dollar brands, big businesses. A lot of fun, also a lot of pressure, a lot of different dynamics.

And for me, where I you talked in my bio, like, one of my passions is the inner game of success. And the reason it's funny, like, we teach what we need to learn, right? One of one of the reasons it's my passion is because I wasn't really good at it. And I really didn't learn some important things about intelligence and managing the self, self mastery, what I call, mastering you in your life so that you can exquisitely manage whatever your life brings your way. And so that aspect of the inner game is, where I have the most passion as a CEO and, what I'm doing in my in my company and my vision and my purpose on the planet.

[00:03:12.90] – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love that. And I don't know if you would definitely agree with this, but it it was coming to my mind when you when you're talking about your your story. And I almost sometimes feel like you're put through things in life, I mean, go through things in life so that you learn that lesson, so that sometimes, obviously, you can help yourself, you can teach yourself, but also said that that you could help so many other people. So a lot of times, you can't experience or be able to teach as well as you could if you didn't go through those things, of of, I guess, self mastery, that process to get there.

[00:03:41.90] – Valerie Sheppard

I so agree with you. That is a really key point from the inner game perspective as well, that, I didn't say this isn't my quote, but I love it. You know, life is not happening to us. It's happening the the swimming through the pitfalls, and the walk through the desert, like, whatever we wanna talk about the challenging aspects of one's life, all of those are designed to give us an opportunity to express that which is already in us, but maybe not be refined, maybe not be matured like a fine wine, maybe not being expressed and accessed in a way that we can bring the magnificence that we are out better. I feel like the the challenges in my career and in my personal expression of me were divinely given to me as an opportunity for me to do me better. And as a result me better, everything in my life gets better.

[00:04:52.69] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. And and I can imagine, like, a lot of the, you know, the listeners and and and readers that are really, you know, trying to, you know, take that next level, be their best selves, and understanding how important it is to kinda unlock the the the amazing person that we have within that sometimes we are aren't able to do it all the time. So I I love, you know, you mentioning that. I love that you do that. So, I I know I touched on a little bit when I read your bio. Can you take us through, like, how that process works? How exactly you work with the clients you serve?

[00:05:20.50] – Valerie Sheppard

Yes. I'd love to work with the clients. And, I like to do a partnership kind of arrangement in which and and you know a lot about your business, and you know a lot about where you're going. And I tend to talk to my whether they're my college students or my executive clients or the clients that I work on their businesses with. You are brilliant. I'm not your savior. What I'm here to do is to help tease out the brilliance that is already in you to manage the situations that are presenting themselves to you. And and when you think athletes have coached Michael Phelps, the most awarded, Olympic athlete of all time, had coaches. So it's really powerful to think about how much more of my brilliance could I express into what I'm doing if I had the support of an advocate and coach? So I work from a partnership perspective.

I help people see what they might be missing. Fresh eyes and you know the new eyes on the business. Boy, did you think of this? Did you think of that? So I try to encourage and inspire. I also have a thirty five year career in marketing business strategy. So I am also bringing a heap big helping of, tested and proven skill. And so, bolting that on to whatever the client has and whatever we can contribute as a, or whatever we can co create as a collaboration to, move the business in another direction. At the Profit Rocket Academy, I have this whole back engine, two and a half million dollars worth of content that can help a leader figure out things on kind of the five pillars of business success.

Getting more leads, getting more, opportunity for transaction, converting those transactions, figuring out my optimal price, and, figuring out how to, really increase my profit. Like, those are the five key things that I focus on with businesses. And then it's just a matter of helping them see maybe where there's a piece they haven't leveraged optimally and guiding them to what are the ideas, what are the ways, what's the collateral, what needs to happen for this to be optimized for your business and for your your customers, those you're on the planet to serve.

[00:07:38.60] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. It's it's very powerful. And and as you said, I think as entrepreneurs and and creatives even, like, we have something that we wanna create, we wanna build, we wanna share with the world. I think sometimes, you know, there's certain aspects of business that can, you know, come if they're not optimized as well as they could be, could block us from that opportunity to really serve to the level that we really want to do that. So I love, you know, that you you help so many people out with that and so many organizations and and and CEOs and and business owners. But I love too that that partnership piece. Because I think so many times, you know, when you're working with somebody, you want to know that you have, kind of that that co creation going on where you really have that opportunity to to really be your best self because that person also wants to see you be your best self as well too.

[00:08:23.50] – Valerie Sheppard

Yes. I mean, I've had both. I had a coach whose name we don't have to mention, but I've had a coach in my life who who, tried to inspire me using the downside risk or the negativity. So you're never gonna win that race if you can't shave two more seconds off your time. And I've also had the coaches who said, hey. Look. Imagine yourself with that medal around your neck. All it's gonna take is that we shave two seconds off your time. I have a vision for that. I wanna know how you feel about it. Let's go get it. And I felt like they were, you know, they were, like, with me. And when I'm puking on the side of the track or whatever, they're, like, they're coming over rubbing my back saying, it's okay. You knocked a quarter of a second off. And that's the kind of thing that I've wanted in my business career as well. People who are saying, hey.

I can see where you're going, and I wanna see if you consider this as a part of the option. Like, that looks like a pretty heavily roadblocked way. Are you sure you wanna keep going it down that path? And what if what if this is a possibility that is, like, worth pursuing? We won't know until we actually pursue it. And that's that's what I try to be with with my clients. I'm I can also be the hammer. Let me tell you that, Gresham. I can also come in and go, okay. I'm done talking about this. Either you implement or we're done. So it can't always be about, lovey dovey. There is a time when the tough love has to happen. And I get success, and my clients are are thriving, and so I like it.

[00:09:54.50] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. And I think that's the the true definition of even, I guess, human interaction, but definitely, obviously, of coaching is really knowing exactly what that person needs to get to that next level. Sometimes it's it's the it's the, pat on the butt. Sometimes it's the kick in the butt and understanding exactly what you're gonna do and when is necessary for you to kinda be able to reach that next level. So I love that you're, able to accomplish that. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce. And this could be for yourself or your business, but what do you feel kinda sets you apart and makes you unique?

[00:10:24.29] – Valerie Sheppard

What I'm told, there's a dynamic secret sauce that comes from two things kinda mixing together. So I have an intuitive ability, a high sense of intuitive ability around business, around especially marketing and talking to my primary consumer or target, whoever that is. Like, I have an intuitive ability to see the strategic, like, the mile high view and how it connects to tactical. And a lot of people can do one or the other. I can do both. Like, I can really make those connections. And then the other piece of that, I think that the piece in the middle between strategy and tactical execution of that strategy is integrated. And so I have tactical execution of that strategy is integrative. And so I have this ability to do this powerful integrative mind, this integrative thing with what's think innate ability to go. If that's your strategy, those tactics don't seem like they connect. And, like, but what if we did this and this? Now we're singing. So that's my secret sauce is that intuitive integrative ability to connect strategy and tactics to deliver profit.

[00:11:41.50] – Gresham Harkless

Nice. Definitely a great example of secret sauce. I wanted to, switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

[00:11:55.10] – Valerie Sheppard

I'm gonna make my CEO hack about perception and that our perception of a situation actually dictates how we experience and journey through the situation. So in order for that to happen, believe it or not, my favorite tactic so strategy is keep my perception in the positive realm no matter what I'm looking at.

[00:12:19.00] – Gresham Harkless

Mhmm.

[00:12:19.20] – Valerie Sheppard

And then one of my tactics for making that happen, believe it or not, is laughter yoga.

[00:12:23.60] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. That's incredibly powerful. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget, and that could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client. Or if you were to hop into a time machine, what might you tell your younger business self?

[00:12:39.20] – Valerie Sheppard

I think I'm going to, I've already given you my hashtag. Mhmm. Keep on keeping on, which basically means no matter what, reshuffle, reshift, recalibrate, rejuvenate, rest, take a step back, and then keep on keeping on. And I think what I wanna say is that, as a CEO, it's never about being better than the CEO to your right or to your left or if you think there's one ahead of you or one behind you. That's not what the game is about. Like, the real beauty in what you can bring to the world is in believing that you're only trying to be better than who you were ten minutes ago.

[00:13:16.70] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. So, now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different, quote, unquote, CEOs on the show. So, Valerie, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:13:32.29] – Valerie Sheppard

Being a CEO means to me, first, we have to define what CEO means, so the the letters themselves. So I was thinking about it, and I picked consciousness expressed optimally Mhmm. Which, works with who I'm, committed to being on the planet. So the divinity of me being expressed integrated with the human self. And, my whole idea of being a CEO is to leverage me, like, to leverage my consciousness, in order to be a a contribution to the greater effort of raising consciousness on the planet and having the a world that works for everyone. So that that wrapped up definition is, and myself, in order to serve the greater good.

[00:14:30.20] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Well, I truly appreciate that, Valerie. I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know, and, of course, how best they can get on to you and find out all the awesome things you're working on.

[00:14:45.29] – Valerie Sheppard

Absolutely. Thank you so much. So you can reach me at two different websites that have to do with my coaching. So profit rocket academy, all one word, dot com. That's where I work with small businesses, to help them grow their bottom lines. It's all about accelerating profit in your business as it is today and, often finding ways to do that without spending a ton of money on marketing and advertising. So that's one thing. And then to work with me as a, an executive coach, I love doing that. A lot of really, well well groomed businesses know that sometimes getting over the next hurdle is not about the business acumen. It's about inner game. And so that's valerie shepherd dot coach, v a l e r I e s h e p p a r d dot coach. Come on in. The water's fine.

[00:15:40.79] – Gresham Harkless

Exactly. Everybody's in the water, so you definitely need to come on. So, I truly appreciate that, Valerie. We will have the links and information in the show notes, but I definitely, appreciate you for reminding us of how much our success is in line with winning and and understanding and executing on that inner game and that piece and and the way that you do that and able to help out so many people doing that. So I appreciate you so much again and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

[00:16:04.10] – Valerie Sheppard

Thank you so much, Gresham. I'm honored to have been a guest on your program. Many blessings to you and your audience.

[00:16:11.10] – Outro

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.

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