Episode 302 – Unstoppable Business to Profit Coach with Carrie Wallis
I love having the opportunity to talk with coaches on Unstoppable Mindset, especially when they have come to what they do because of their own life experiences. Carrie Wallis is such a person. Born in England Carrie grew up in a home where she was told that her job was to get married and to have children. She rebelled at this and ended up in the corporate world. She did marry and start a family eventually and left the corporate environment. However, she understood that for her there was more to life than being a mom.
She started her own business which, as she says, was at first mainly a hobby. When her husband died of cancer she knew she had to take running her own business more seriously and make it into an entity that would support her family. She did that.
Trauma wasn’t done with Carrie. Several years after Carrie’s husband passed she was diagnosed with the same cancer he had. She worked hard to do all she could to beat cancer and she did so. Her efforts helped her realize how better to help her clients by showing them how to turn negatives into positive outcomes. Who better than Carrie since she went through life challenges and is the better for it.
Carrie offers us many suggestions and thoughts during our time on this episode. She has many positive and relevant things to say and I suspect you will find ideas here that you will find helpful to you.
About the Guest:
Carrie is a best-selling author, certified in multiple coaching streams: Life, Emotional Intelligence, Resilience, Quantum Release, a qualified counsellor, professional speaker and educator. She has spoken at the ICF business development conference, the Australian Counselling Association’s state-wide conferences, Voices of Women and numerous other influential summits and podcasts. Carrie has been supporting healers, heart-centered entrepreneurs and coaches find the confidence to build their businesses to profit for over20 years. Having overcome several traumatic events in her life Carrie is an expert in knowing how to transform negative events into positive outcomes and how to generate profitable marketing.. An English woman living in Australia, when not serving her clients, you’ll find Carrie kayaking on the rivers of NSW, bushwalking or enjoying a glass of fine wine while playing board games with her beloved adult-children and husband
Ways to connect with Carrie:
Website: https://enlightenusolutions.com
Link for gift offering on podcast: https://enlightenusolutions.com/7-ways-to-attract-high-quality-clients
Youtube: https://youtube.com/@carriewallis
FB: https://facebook.com/confident-prosperity
LI: https://linkedin.com/in/carrie-wallis
About the Host:
Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.
Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children’s Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association’s 2012 Hero Dog Awards.
https://michaelhingson.com
https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/
https://twitter.com/mhingson
https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/
accessiBe Links
https://accessibe.com/
https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe
https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/
https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/
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Transcription Notes:
Michael Hingson ** 00:00
Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I’m Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that’s a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we’re happy to meet you and to have you here with us.
Michael Hingson ** 01:21
Well and a gracious Hello to all of you, wherever you happen to be. I am your host, Mike hHngson, and this is unstoppable mindset. Today we get to chat with Carrie Wallis, and Carrie is a coach. She’s a best selling author, she’s a speaker and, oh my gosh, all sorts of stuff, and a person with a lot of life experience, which is, I think, what makes the work that she does so invaluable, because she knows what she’s talking about, because she’s been there and done that. And I know so many people who don’t tend to work out of anything other than theory. So it’s nice to have people who really have experience and can bring that to the forefront of what they work on and what they deal with. So I am always excited when we get to do that. So Carrie, I also should say that Carrie and I met through one of the patapalooza programs. You’ve heard me talk about pada Palooza before. It’s a program that is put on by Cheryl, Kimberly, Crowe and Michelle Abraham. And those two ladies put together a program for people who are podcasters, who want to be podcasters, or people who want to be interviewed by podcasters. And actually, we just recently completed pot of Palooza number 11, but I met our guest, Carrie, at a previous pot of Palooza, and we finally were able to make connections, because she’s a very busy person. So Carrie, after all of that, welcome to unstoppable mindset.
Carrie Wallis ** 02:57
Thank you, Mike. It’s an absolute pleasure and honor to be here. I love your work, and I love the title of this podcast, unstoppable mindset, because isn’t that what it’s all about? Let’s be unstoppable. I love it
Michael Hingson ** 03:13
well, and our goal is to show people that they can be more unstoppable than they think they can. And all too often people give up, and all too often, they don’t really spend the time thinking about it. They react and don’t think so. It is a it’s a problem, and the result of that is that they become very fearful. Things happen that they don’t expect. They’re afraid of them. And I think it was Mark Twain, among others, who said, like over 90% of the things that we’re afraid of never really happen, and we’re only afraid about them, because all we do is, what if, and we don’t really ponder and think and and exercise our own brains. Boy, is that true when we hear politicians talk, at least around here today, and all of it weld over, yeah, and you know, it, it’s, it isn’t one, it’s all of them we should really analyze for ourselves and then make choices. But that’s another story. I’ve written a book that will be published in August, called Live like a guide dog, true stories from a blind man and his dogs about being brave, overcoming adversity and walking in faith. And the whole idea behind the book is that I use lessons I learned from eight guide dogs and my wife service dog Fantasia. I use lessons that I’ve learned from them to talk about controlling fear and recognizing that in reality, you can learn to control fear and use it as a powerful tool, rather than letting it overwhelm or, as I put it, blind to you, and we really need to learn to to to take more control over how we deal with things. And I’m sure that’s something that you talk about as a coach, I mean the various kinds of coaching things that you do. But let’s, let’s start at the early. Early world, if you will. So tell us about the the younger Carrie and the early Carrie.
Carrie Wallis ** 05:05
Wow. While the early Carrie was a very timid, very shy, very nervous girl, young woman, the experience growing up was I had parents, very typical of their generation, who had this belief that the role of a woman was in the home. To my father, at one point, actually said to me, your job is really my aspiration for you is to get married and have children and look after us as we age. You won’t be surprised to hear that I rebelled against that, that role that was put upon me so that that was the early me, very timid, very shy, very little confidence. And it’s taken a long time to work through that.
Michael Hingson ** 05:57
Well, it’s, yeah, it’s very unfortunate. I mean, the reality is that there are differences between men and women, and those things show up in various ways. But to just categorize women as you’re supposed to get married and have children and now the taking care of us, I wish I had kids, because I tell everyone just, you know, as your children grow up, remember to remind them that their job is to support you in your old age. But
Carrie Wallis ** 06:25
that’s, but that’s I’ve made a point of telling, yeah, and I’ve made a point of saying to my children, that is not your job.
Michael Hingson ** 06:34
Ah, no, they’re supposed to support you as you get older. You know, they’re supposed to become rich enough to be able to do that is the whole point. It’s all about. If they’re not working hard enough to get rich enough to do that, work harder. But it’s fun to tease about that, which is, of course, what I’m really doing. But you know, it’s like when my wife and I were married, we decided not to have children. She was in a wheelchair her whole life, and she just thought it would be a little bit too much of a challenge to have kids and be in and she’d have to be in bed a whole lot of pregnancies just because of her situation. And so we said that we wouldn’t have children, but we would spoil nieces and nephews, because at the end of the day we could just kick them out and shoot them home.
Carrie Wallis ** 07:24
That’s the easy route. Yeah, yeah, that was it, but,
Michael Hingson ** 07:27
but the nieces and nephews turned out really well, but they’re not going to support me, so oh well, that’s okay, but they’re they’re good, they all grew up to be really good kids and now good adult. So it works out so you you were very timid and and had to work through a lot of that. What changed all of that? Oh my gosh. Or are you still timid?
Carrie Wallis ** 07:52
No, not at all. Not, not at all. I’ve learned how to step into my power. Maybe it might be helpful if I just give a little bit of my story. Sure, I found very early on, in my early 20s, that there are tools that you can learn that help you develop in my case, I learned how to communicate more effectively. I had a very lucrative position as a head of it in the corporate world. So in a business sense, I was very confident knew what I was doing, because I could learn it in the private world. Things were a little bit different. And I left that world, that corporate world, when we started our family, because I’d been a Lach key kid, and I hated coming home to a cold and empty house, and I didn’t want that for my children, so I decided to leave the corporate world to be an at home mum, and because of that conditioning in my childhood. I didn’t just want to be an at home mom, and I love being a mom, but I did need something else for me, so I started my own business, building on what I learned in terms of how I can how I built my confidence and learned to speak my truth and get my message out there in the IT world. And you can imagine, in those days, and we’re talking about the 80s and 90s, the IT world was heavily male dominated. In fact, I can remember many, many meetings where I was the only, the only woman, and then we’d have a coffee break, and all the gents would disappear, and then we’d come back to the meeting, and decisions had been made that I wasn’t party to because, of course, I couldn’t join them in the gents facilities. So it was quite an interesting experience, and it was through those experiences that I learned. Learned to speak up, and I learned to speak my truth and hold my power and hold my place, and I took that into my own business because I wanted to support others, particularly women, but men too, to recognize that they can be unstoppable, that they can find the power within them. And there are certain techniques and processes, obviously, that I work through with my clients.
Michael Hingson ** 10:28
When did you when did you leave the corporate world? It
Carrie Wallis ** 10:32
was back at the end of the 90s, when we started our family. Yeah.
Michael Hingson ** 10:36
So what was the business that you started? Is that still the business that you have.
Carrie Wallis ** 10:41
It initially was a network marketing franchise, which was really a kind of like plunging into an ice cold bucket. It was not given, what I’ve just said about my timidity. You really had to be upfront, yeah, in that, in that world. So it was a real shock to my system. I learned a lot, I disliked a lot, and I evolved from that into deciding to coach people. I became qualified as a coach, and during that qualification, I realized that a lot of coaches have great skills, but they struggle to market themselves. I’m also a qualified counselor, and it’s the same most help professions have excellent skills, but they are timid, dare I say, nervous, in terms of marketing themselves and finding clients. And I believe very strongly that everybody deserves to be able to access the support that they need when they need it, and to do that quality coaches and counselors and healers and help professionals need to be able to market themselves in a way that their ideal clients can find them. So I tapped into my IT background and what was then the evolving world of the internet, and helped started to help coaches and help professionals to find clients, and that’s what my business is still today.
Michael Hingson ** 12:14
When my first book was published, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog in the triumph of trust at Ground Zero. Even then, I was told that we had to do a lot of the work to sell the book, that it isn’t all going to be the publisher, and that didn’t concern me, but at the same time, I thought, Well, why are why are we working with a publisher if they’re not going to do some work. Well, they did do a lot of work, but what I found was that what it really ultimately meant was we had to work as a team. So I did do a lot of marketing. I did do a lot to make the book visible. They did arrange tours and speaking engaged, some speaking engagements and things like that, but we worked together as a team, but I had to be a part of the team to market it, and I know that a lot of people don’t. I’ve been over the past few years, taking some courses regarding podcasting and other things, more to remember things that I’ve known for a while, but also to learn some some new things about podcasting. And one of the messages that consistently comes up is, as you’re doing things with your podcast, especially if you want to monetize it, and I don’t, because we do have some sponsors, but if you want to monetize it, or if you want to make courses or you want to coach, you need to recognize that you shouldn’t be afraid to ask for money. You shouldn’t be afraid to value what you’re doing. And so many people just had no concept of how to do that, absolutely,
Carrie Wallis ** 13:59
absolutely, and in fact, heart centered coaches, healers, counselors, hire me to help them craft a message that is going to resonate and engage their audience and lead to sales. And a big part of this process and the work that I do is yes, the marketing and the marketing strategy side of things. It’s also that internal world. Because the reason a lot of people struggle to market their services and ask for the sale is because of internal blocks that they have. There’s kind of an internal barrier that somehow asking for money, asking for somebody to work with you, inviting them is somehow sleazy, and it’s all in how you do it. And the work that I do is very much about having a natural conversation, and I call it nurturing to. A sale, and it’s a big part of the process that I teach, because most amazing coaches struggle to make a profit, and it breaks my heart, because the world needs them, and it’s because they’re unsure how to connect with their audience in a way that makes the audience want to buy, because they doubt their ability to succeed, so I help them build lists of buyers and break free from those shackles of debt and doubt. And the bottom line is that I help people close 50% of their sales calls with confidence.
Michael Hingson ** 15:36
I as a public speaker, of course, am asked constantly, well, what do you charge? And I also know that when I began speaking publicly, my wife and I decided that we were going to do it, and I was going to do it because selling life and selling choice and selling inspiration and positive thinking is a whole lot more fun than selling computer hardware, which is what I had been doing in the World Trade Center, or managing a computer hardware sales force. So selling life and philosophy is a lot more rewarding. But I also decided I wasn’t going to try to sell for the absolute highest number that I could possibly get every time that I wanted to not be what I had seen a lot of speakers do, which is they want to just charge the ultimate amount that they can get. They make life very difficult for the people who hire them to speak. I had I asked one person where I went to speak once, what’s the most difficult speaker you ever had? And he told me that there was a woman who they signed and they agreed to the contract, so they had to follow through. She insisted that in the green room there had to be a brand new crystal champagne flute full of pink M and Ms. And I see and I know that some people do that to test people. I believe there is something to be said for trust. And so when people ask me for a fee, I will tell them, This is what I would like, but I’ll work with your budget, and sometimes they still say, well, then, you know, with what you’re asking, we just couldn’t afford that, I said, but you haven’t told me what your budget is, and we work through it. And I I do point out I can’t I have to make a living. It’s got to be a career. So I can’t do it for 500 bucks or 1000 bucks, especially traveling across country, it would cost more to go there, and you wouldn’t want that. So we work it out. But I’m also not opposed to and have no qualms about trying to earn a significant amount of money. And so when the pandemic hit, when everything stopped, and then my wife became ill in 2022 I didn’t really travel and speak for three years, so we’re getting back into it now, and I’m finding that people are responding very well when they get a speaker who they really feel wants to work with them. And in fact, I think I’ve gotten on some of these events more than I thought I was going to get, which is great.
Carrie Wallis ** 18:22
That’s amazing, and that’s the thing I mean. What I find is that there really are two issues. One is this internal view that many people hold of sales, sales and marketing are very often considered sleazy words when they don’t have to be, no they absolutely don’t have to be. It’s a natural process. And there’s two factors that influence that I found over the years. One is a lack of knowledge in terms of the tools that you can use in marketing. Marketing can be very confusing. There’s a huge range of different options, and certainly in my early days of the business, after the network marketing, I was incredibly happy. Our family was very young. We were just enjoying life. There was a lot of love, there was a lot of laughter, and my business, really at that point, was little more than a hobby, until everything changed, and that’s when my husband was diagnosed with cancer, and one short year later, he was dead, and I found myself without an inheritance. My children were still young. My business was little more than a hobby, and oh boy, I had to turn things around. And I had to turn things around really fast. And I realized that one of the issues was that the marketing that I had been doing. Was very scattered. I would try a little bit of this, a little bit of that, any I was very much jumping on any new shiny object that came into my sphere of awareness, and trying this. And that just does not work. Here’s the thing, Mike, all marketing works, what you need to do. And what I discovered rapidly, because I had to, I was in that position, that I had to turn things around or face going back to the corporate world, which was something I bad I would never do. I had to, had to find clients, and find a way to have a consistent stream of clients. And I realized that one of the issues, because there are so many options, people don’t know what to focus on. They all work, but they might not all work for you, correct? So a key piece that I’ve discovered that’s missing from a lot of marketing, marketing programs, marketing trainings, is this missing piece, and that missing piece is what I call your marketing personality. You need to identify what’s right for you. And I’ll give you a story of one of my clients, Monica, when I first met her, she was using Instagram. She was creating Instagram reels to attract clients, not getting much success with it. And she told me that she actually hated making these reels, so what she ended up doing was finding any excuse under the sun not to do them. So they were very sporadic. Sometimes some weeks she would post, some weeks she wouldn’t so there was inconsistency. She hated it. She was uncomfortable on camera, and that, of course, came across and pushed people away. What we realized is that that strategy was not right for her when she went through my marketing personality assessment and identified the strategy that was right for the woman that she was. She managed to turn things around, and within just a few weeks, she signed on her first new client in a year, and has gone on to have a consistent stream of leads and enroll new clients every week. So a key piece is identifying your marketing personality. I’m sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say, Am I saying that Instagram reels don’t work? No, I’m simply saying that, for Monica, they didn’t work because they didn’t fit her personality, and that’s the key.
Michael Hingson ** 22:43
So what was the strategy that you ended up working with her to create?
Carrie Wallis ** 22:47
Monica? Yeah, for Monica, she was very much. She loved writing. So for Monica, her strategy was blogging, and we developed a way to consistently generate leads from her blog. We talked, and she was able to promote her blog so that she got eyes on the blog, and from that, she generated leads. And it was a strategy that fit and suited her perfectly.
Michael Hingson ** 23:11
Yeah, which, which makes perfect sense, and you’re right, not everything works for everyone, but the other part about it is you gotta try, and you have to recognize that if you don’t try and you don’t put yourself out there, you’re never gonna find what works for you, and certainly working with people like you helps with that a lot. But the reality is that you shouldn’t be afraid to sell yourself. And I use that term very deliberately, because I don’t regard sales in any way as sleazy. Oh, there are sleazy sales people, but that’s, again, the same thing. It’s the person. It’s not the concept. Exactly. That’s what people have to recognize.
Carrie Wallis ** 23:58
Yeah, 100% Mike, I agree with you, and yes, I agree that we need to try and put yourself out there. I would also encourage you find your marketing personality, because that’s going to save you a lot of heartache and a lot of wasted time and effort. And does it mean that there’s only one strategy that will work for what every one person? No, not at all. Often, there’s multiple strategies, but if you don’t start from that point of understanding what’s right for you, then you can waste an awful lot of time, an awful lot of money, and dent what is often a limited confidence or low confidence to start with. And that point, I totally agree that sales isn’t sleazy at all. Sales is quite natural. Sales is simply taking action. And I use the word invite you invite people to take that next step with you. And when you do it in that way, and you have that natural conversation, and you have confidence in what you’re saying. And how you’re saying it, then you are going to draw people to you. And that’s really the second big part of success for any solo business, any business actually, you need to know your marketing. You need to have a marketing strategy that’s going to work for you, yes. And the second key part is you need to have the confidence to implement it. So I agree, if trying different strategies gives you confidence, then go for it. Yeah,
Michael Hingson ** 25:30
I one of the things that that I like to do, and I’m really driving it pretty hard, is when I send out emails to people saying, I am where you have a conference. Are you the right person would love to talk with you about it? If we get responses and they happen to include a phone number, I will call because I really think email overall is impersonal, and although it’s it’s important, and it is a significant part of what works for me, talking to somebody on the phone is, for me, always, really the thing that works the best because, for example, somebody emails back and says, Yeah, we’d love to explore you coming and speaking. What’s your fee? Of course, that happens all the time, and I am trying to work out ways to get people to know me better as I explain what my fee is. If I have to do it an email, but if I get a chance and can speak with them on the phone, that is what I’d prefer to do, because then when they ask me what my speaking fee is, I say, Well, let me tell you what I’d really like and what I love to say is, Hillary Clinton got $250,000 for speaking to Goldman Sachs in 2016 and I think I speak better than she does. And people laugh. And I say, see you doing what everybody does. Nobody takes me seriously, but, you know, I take it, but I say, No seriously, and then we talk about it, but I like to get to know people, and they still may not decide that I’m the person for them. It does happen, but having a conversation, I think is for me, very important, because I’m very comfortable talking to people, and I know that if they get to know the kind of person I am, even if it isn’t the right decision for this year or for the particular conference theme they have, I will be remembered, and and it works pretty well, and about 75% of the time I am able to have a phone conversation. I had one person today. We corresponded earlier in the week or late last week, and I said, Can we he? And he said the same thing. And I said, Can we chat? And he said, and I’m going to email back to me this morning, I’d really like to know something about your fee before we take the time to talk. And I know that if I just say this is what I would like, but I work with budgets. I’m not really giving enough information for people to be drawn a little bit more into my personality. And so I actually cracked it, crafted a different email to him, and I said up front, the same thing that I said that this is what I would like, but I work with budgets. But let me tell you why I say that. And then I actually gave them a series of of comments about how my wife and I decided why we do what we do, and why we craft the whole process of working with budgets, because not everyone can can do the same thing, and it’s all about getting me to be known by him a little bit better. And when that works, and I hope it will, then at least we’ll be able to have more of a conversation. Whether it goes anywhere, we’ll see
Carrie Wallis ** 29:00
absolutely yeah. And I love, I love what you say there about conversation. And here’s the thing, Mike, the the key I believe, to successful business is having a conversation initially, with complete strangers. Now that may sound a little bit strange, let me explain, from what I discovered, all the work that I’ve done, and certainly that work in the early years, and I took a gazillion marketing qualifications, certified as a copywriter in digital marketing, and what I discovered is that there really are just three pillars to profitable marketing, and the first one of those is connection, which is the point that you were talking about there Mike, and connection doesn’t just have to be through a verbal conversation. And this is the point that I think a lot of people miss, that you can have connection. You can have a conversation. And even without the spoken word, right? That’s what a successful marketing strategy is. And there are a ton of different ways to do that, but you need to create that connection. And I just, if I may, use a story that I just absolutely love and I was which explains really what connection is and why it’s so important. I was reading an article a little while back about a maple tree farm in Hamilton, Ontario, and this the farm owner, named Anne, was struggling because the maple trees weren’t reaching maturity, and she believed that it was because of connection. Let me explain a little bit more. The trees on her farm, There’s a fungus called mycelium that grows in the ground between the roots of trees. It acts as a conduit for nutrients and water. Mycelium also has the ability to withdraw toxins from the soil, turning them into usable nutrients. And the issue that Anne was having was that although her farm was surrounded by forests, the trees on her farm, the roots and the all important mycelium, were not able to connect with the roots on the trees of the surrounding forest, because there were roads, there was a network of roads blocking that all important connection. And it occurred to me, it’s exactly the way that it is for many business owners, coaches, healers, counselors, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, you’re surrounded by your ideal clients, unless you can connect with them in a meaningful way, you’re going to just be just like those trees on Anne’s maple tree farm. You’re going to struggle to build a successful business.
Michael Hingson ** 31:58
Did she do something to fix the problem. She struggled
Carrie Wallis ** 32:03
because she had the network of roads which she had no control over. What she did, she found other ways to add more mycelium and nutrients into the trees for her on her farm, so that they reach maturation. But the point of this, well, the point, yeah, the point of the story is, find a way in your marketing to generate natural connections with your audience. Have that conversation. And as I say, my book title, from strangers to clients, kind of says it all. The conversation has to start with strangers. How do you have a conversation with strangers? Well, that’s where marketing comes in. It may be social media, it may be blogging, it may be Instagrams, it may be YouTube, it may be using Search Engine Optimization. There’s a ton of different ways. That’s why you need to identify your marketing personality. There are ways to have that conversation, invite people into your world, so that then, through the medium of email, you can continue that conversation, right? Many, many people use email as a one way, a kind of push, which is, as you said, there, Mike, it’s that’s impersonal. There is a way that you can use and I teach my clients how to make their emails a two way conversation, right, so that it builds on the connection that was started when they were a stranger. They come into your world. You strengthen and deepen that connection. They begin to know you, they begin to love you. And most importantly, trust that you are the right person to help them with whatever the issue is that they’re struggling with.
Michael Hingson ** 33:52
It’s all about trust. And the other side of it is that as a speaker, I also have a responsibility to work with a client who says, I’m not sure whether you fit. Here’s why, and for me to recognize when what I can offer works and when it doesn’t. And I’ve had situations where people say, this is what we do. Can you provide a talk that speaks to that, and if it is really so totally something that is foreign to me, that I’m capable of saying, I think not, here’s what I can do. Does that fit into your conference? And it may or may not, and I have actually ended up giving speeches to very industry specific conferences where they said, but all we ever have are industry specific people. And I’ve said things like and how excited do people get? What do you do to make them leave and remember the conference? Or. Um, something I’ve done a number of times is okay you have industry specific conferences, and you talk about all these things within your industry. What do you do to make sure that people with disabilities are involved? What do you do to talk about employing blind people and other people with disabilities and other things to make people think and sometimes that’s been a very positive thing, and sometimes it hasn’t been that’s okay, though. It does always cause people, at least to think a little bit more
Carrie Wallis ** 35:27
Absolutely. And I think you hit the nail on the head there, Mike, that for me, the foundation to profit is relationship, genuine relationships, and that has to be built on trust. That has to be built on honesty and integrity. And if you act in a way that is honest and in tech in Integrity with your values, then you’re going to build genuine relationships, and you’ll draw people to you. And the final piece, if you like, is this confidence piece, because you need to be doing that with confidence. And if you think about it, why is confidence so important? I was going to ask it’s a great question. It’s it’s critical. Think about it. Imagine this, would you rather be talking with somebody who is so nervous and insecure and lacks confidence that they have to focus on themselves the whole time and seek to prove themselves often at your expense. Or would you rather talk to somebody who was confident and comfortable in their own skin, in who they are, having an honest evaluation of themselves, not saying that they think that they’re perfect. That’s something else entirely, called arrogance, not talking about that at all. What I’m talking about is somebody who’s so comfortable and recognize themselves for who they are confident and can convey themselves in a confident way so that their focus can be entirely on you and your problems, cheer leading you, supporting you. Who would you rather work with? I think for most people, it’s going to be the second person, hey,
Michael Hingson ** 37:27
oh, I think so, by the way. And I told you my story about the University of New Hampshire and the guy with the pink M M’s. My response to him was, well, I would never ask for that, because I believe I’m a guest. On the other hand, if cheese and crackers show up, I’ll share them with you. And what’s funny is they did show up, and we all sat around and had cheese and crackers before I spoke. So it was great, but, you know, I I didn’t need them, but they were good, so it’s okay. And you know, it’s it is all about confidence? Is there one single factor that you think is more involved in promoting an individual’s confidence?
Carrie Wallis ** 38:10
It’s a great question. And the answer is, there are many, many, many factors that impact a person’s confidence. And to really understand this, we need to understand the universal model of communication. Do you see what actually happens is, are what we think about the world, the views that we were talking about, how people view sales and marketing as difficult and sometimes sleazy. Those views stem from a whole range of different things. It might be comments that your parents have made. It might be experiences that you had as a child, experiences that you’ve had growing up, words that people have said. If you’ve grown up in an environment where you’re told you’re never going to amount to anything, then chances are, you have a belief that you’re unworthy, that you’re it’s going to be difficult. You’re going to have to work hard. If you’ve grown up in an environment where you’ve been told any any money that you earn is only worth it if you work incredibly hard, chances are that’s what you’re going to be doing. So your beliefs that you hold about yourself, about the world around you, your values. These all form what we call filters on the information that we receive, and they have a significant impact on our confidence, because if those filters are telling us that you have to work extremely hard, that you’re unworthy of success, that you’re never going to amount to anything, then guess where your confidence is going to be? Rock bottom. Rock bottom. Absolutely. So there’s a lot of factors that feature in how confident somebody is. So the key is to identify. What those factors are. I call it my 3r process. You need to recognize what those filters are. How you filter information around you, because those filters determine what information you take in see. In any one given moment, there’s a gazillion bits of information around us, but in that same moment, our brain can only process tiny, tiny fraction of that. So how does the brain decide what information to take in? Well, that is based on the filters that you have, which comes from those beliefs, those values, your life experiences, etc, etc. And the key to this. The reason why this is so important is because understanding what those filters are. Those filters create a picture in your mind of a situation. So if you believe that it’s going to be hard to sell your services, that’s the picture that you have. That picture will impact your state, and that will impact how you behave. So if you think it’s going to be hard to sell your services, it will be. It’s going to be exactly. It’s like Henry Ford said all those years ago. Whether you believe you can or you believe you can’t, you’re probably right, and it’s 100% true, it’s
Michael Hingson ** 41:25
the same thing that when you come to a fork in the road, take it, you know, but you’re absolutely right. And Henry Ford was right. I was blessed. I was born two months premature, and I was in a pure oxygen environment, in an incubator for a while, and that caused the retina not to develop properly. But my parents didn’t discover that I was blind until about four months of age, but when they decided that I had to be examined to find out, and it turned out, I was blind, the first thing the doctor said was, send him to a home. Don’t keep him because no blind child can ever grow up to be a member of society and be productive in any way, shape or form, and he’ll suck up all the love that you have for your older son. So you really shouldn’t keep him around. And my parents said absolutely not. He’s going to grow up to do whatever he chooses to do, and they brought me up with that kind of environment, so I was blessed. And I know a lot of people who are not, but my parents were so far ahead of so many things by doing that. Yeah,
Carrie Wallis ** 42:33
you incredibly, incredibly lucky. And I had I shared that my husband died of cancer five years after he died, I was diagnosed with exactly the same form of cancer that had killed him. Can imagine the impact that that had on my children. They were still young in their early teens at that point, and cancer had a really interesting impact for me. I shared that I started off very timid, very shy. Wouldn’t really say boo to a goose. Worked through that by learning the techniques I learned what I needed to do in the world of it, so that I had confidence that I could do it, and then the communication skills to be able to speak my truth what happened when I had cancer, and particularly through 18 months of chemo and radiation and I lost all my hair. Is that my confidence took a massive hit, because I was thinking, Well, geez, if, if people see me, they’re going to think she can’t look after herself. How can she help us? So the confidence absolutely my confidence absolutely plummeted, and then it really hit me. It was kind of like a wet fish slapping me across the face. I had this realization that deep down, I still held this belief that I was unworthy of success, and that’s why, although I turned my business around when my husband died, and it certainly achieved success. It kind of was, was like a feast and famine. I’d have success, and then it would fall back. I’d earn good income, and then it would fall back. Some months I’d have $8,000 days, and other months would be, you know, maybe I’d struggle to have a 800 Buck days, $800 days. And I realized that this it was deeply embedded, this sense of unworthiness. And it wasn’t until I applied and realized and worked through these 3r that I was able to get rid of that deeply held, deeply rooted belief that I was unworthy of success, and from there, my business is absolutely skyrocketed.
Michael Hingson ** 44:46
And so what are the three R’s? Well, they are
Carrie Wallis ** 44:50
the first one recognize we’ve been talking about that recognize those filters that you have, the values that you hold. The second one is to release a. Here’s the thing, most coaching, most counseling, most therapy, type work, most help type work. Works at the conscious level. If you don’t believe you’re worthy, believe you’re worthy, well, that’s just too simplistic, and life isn’t like that. What you need to do is get really deep into the unconscious mind, because that’s actually what controls 90% of what you’re doing. See, when we’re born, our conscious mind and our unconscious mind are in alignment. And it’s kind of like, I like to think of it as a freshly turned rich soil. And it’s experiences that you have that those seeds of doubt get sown these and those seeds get watered and they grow into beliefs and these weeds of doubt and disbelief and those values that you hold about yourself and what you think about yourself, all those factors that we were talking about earlier, they the weeds grow and strengthen, and the roots entangle, and it’s just like if you’re gardening. And I’m not a gardener, but I have a colleague who’s very keen gardener, and she tells me, if you cut a weed off at the surface, it’s going to come back. And that’s what happens with most coaching. It cuts off the weed of disbelief, that value of you know, I’m not worthy, I’m sales is going to be hard, all those thoughts that you have, all those beliefs that you have, but they’re going to come back. It’s not going to be sustainable. What you need to do, and the second R is release. You need to release from the root. It’s like plucking the weed out from the root and all the entangled weeds. So you really need to get down deep into where and there’s often a chain of events and a sequence of situations that create that deep rooted, deep seated belief. And the release process that uses quantum physics, quantum release process actually gets down and really plucks those weeds out from the root. Once you’ve done that, the third are you’re able to reclaim. You can reclaim your identity, because you see what happens Mike is from all those weeds of disbelief, those negative values that people develop about themselves, we put masks on I know I did, and they’re protective. I put layer upon layer of masks to protect ourselves. If somebody’s telling you you’re not going to amount to much, you need to do something to protect yourself. So the third R is reclaim through getting right down to the root of these issues, plucking out from the root so that you can really identify and find out who you really are, your authentic self, if you like. And when you do that, you’re then able to implement those three pillars for profit, for your marketing, which is connection, which is the one we’ve talked about. The second is clarity. And the third, of course, is confidence, which is what we’re talking about here.
Michael Hingson ** 48:32
You said something earlier. I can’t resist asking you about what happens when you say boo to a goose.
Carrie Wallis ** 48:42
I don’t goose? What do you think? I’ve
Michael Hingson ** 48:45
never heard that before.
Carrie Wallis ** 48:47
Maybe that’s an English phrase. It is, but that’s okay, but
Michael Hingson ** 48:51
I don’t know. Geese are pretty stubborn. We actually had a Canadian gray lag goose that lived in our area when we lived in Northern California, and silver thought he was a duck. Every day we would feed the ducks. We had bread. And one day I was doing this after we moved in, and suddenly there was this larger beak that joined, and nobody ran away in a turn. And I called my wife. I called Karen, who came to the door in her wheelchair, and she said, there’s a goose there. Well, it turns out he was very used to people, and he was very friendly. I would never want to say boo to him, because I wouldn’t want to scare him or anything like that. But he was very friendly, and he ate bread with everyone else, and was was very nice. And lived for several years with us, and I think eventually passed away, because when we met him, he was 18, but I’ve never said boo to a goose, so I don’t know that’s interesting,
Carrie Wallis ** 49:48
isn’t it? That’s the point, isn’t it? Many people would be so timid and so worried about the consequences of saying boo to said goose. Yeah, and.
Michael Hingson ** 49:59
Instant, yeah, well, this goose loved to get petted, and so when he was eating and all that, if I had an empty hand, I’d pet some of the ducks and I’d pet him, and he was very happy with it. And then we lived in an area where there were a lot of lagoons that connected all the homes and pathways and waterways between the lagoons. And whenever he came by, he honked, and we all talked to him so but that was a good experience. But I know that there are a lot of geese that are not necessarily so friendly, but
Carrie Wallis ** 50:32
you saying that, Mike just reminds me of a quote from Albert Einstein, and I’m not probably going to remember it exactly, but it was along the lines a fish are great swimmers. If you tell a fish that it has to climb a tree, it’s going to spend its life thinking it’s stupid. Now, I know I’ve misquoted that, but you
Michael Hingson ** 50:56
get but I know what you’re saying. Yeah. Well, it’s like he also said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing every time and expecting something different to happen. Absolutely. I might have to go find some geese and say boo, just to see what we get. Let me know. I was going to ask you about quantum release, because you you use that in in your bio, and tell me a little bit more about what that is,
Carrie Wallis ** 51:26
that it’s a very deep process. And this is where I am
Michael Hingson ** 51:30
being having a master’s degree in physics. It fascinates me. Go ahead, beautiful.
Carrie Wallis ** 51:36
The this is where I differ from many, coaches, because I ask the questions that go deeper. I ask the questions that other coaches don’t ask. The whole process goes deeper. And as I was saying earlier, you need to not just work at the conscious level, at the thoughts that you have that’s that’s too simplistic and it’s not going to stick. You need to get deep into the unconscious mind and the quantum release process. And I’m not going to give all my secrets away. No, no, don’t do that. That’s That’s what that process does. It uses a process known as reverse mirroring, and in doing that, it releases the hold that the mind has on emotions that are holding you back, beliefs that you have and the most importantly, decisions that you’ve made about yourself as a result of those beliefs. Got it?
Michael Hingson ** 52:32
Well, tell me what’s one thing that you wish you had known that you know now. Oh my God, know when you started Yes, either way of saying, Bucha goose,
Carrie Wallis ** 52:46
there’s many, I think the key just bringing it back to marketing, specifically the one thing that I wish I had known when I started out, and particularly in those Early days when I was struggling after my husband died, was the importance of your marketing message. You need to be clear yourself what your marketing message is. And there’s a lot of components that we don’t have time to go into today that make up that message. But you need a clear message, and it needs to be consistent throughout all of your marketing. And of course, that leads into the three pillars that I’ve talked about, that all important connection, building that relationship. And it all starts with your message. Have a message that resonates with your audience, engages your audience, lets them know you, so that they can love you, and as we were saying, trust that you’re the right person to help them. So that’s really what I wish I’d known then my message was very scattered. So yes, get a marketing message that is clear, because everything else will stem from that.
Michael Hingson ** 54:07
So it’s a growth process in every sense of the word. We were married 40 years when my wife passed away in November of 2022 and it was amazing to me the things that people started to say, things like, Well, are you going to move from where you are? Because this was your your house together, and she’s not here now, and you need to move on. And the immediate reaction I had was, maybe I should be angry at all these people, but then what kicked in as soon as I thought that was no, you have to make decisions, but you don’t need to be angry at people just because their perception is a little bit different. And I said, for example, no, I don’t need to move on. What I need to do is to move forward, because if I move on, I’m going to forget about Karen, and I will never forget about Karen after 40 years of marriage, and that’s when I also adopted. The the philosophy that she is watching, and if I ever misbehave, I’m going to hear about it, so I gotta be a good kid, but, but moving on isn’t right. Moving forward is absolutely correct. And when people talk about moving and going to a different home, I say, Do you know how hard it is to move? And I have a 3.95% mortgage rate. Why would I want to move? We built this house. This is our house, and it’s as much a testament to to her as it is to me, and we have solar and so many things that make this a very comfortable place. I would be the wrong thing to move, but it’s interesting the perceptions that people suddenly get when something like you lose a spouse happen.
Carrie Wallis ** 55:44
Absolutely, absolutely. It’s the reason I learned counseling, actually, and qualified as a specialist grief counselor, because of my experience and struggling to cope with my own grief and to support my children through their grief. And there’s a lot of MIS talk and misnomers around what grief is, and it never leaves you. You grow around it.
Michael Hingson ** 56:10
Yeah, exactly right. Karen is always going to be here. 40 years of marriage and memories is a wonderful thing, and I can never object to that, and it’s all about the relationship and the trust that the two of us had together, absolutely, and that’s an honor that I take very seriously by any standard. What? How would you define success?
Carrie Wallis ** 56:40
Success? It’s a it’s an interesting word, isn’t it? And I think if you asked 100 people, you’d get 100 different definitions of success. For me, success means choice, because I know so many people, and certainly clients, when they first come to me, are struggling, feeling trapped. Very often they’re in jobs that they dislike and they want to get out of them, and yet they don’t know how to So success, to me, is choice, empowered choice, and to make an empowered choice, you need to what I was saying earlier, know your true identity, know you are at your core, so that the choices that you make are going to be the right ones for you. So that’s how I would define success.
Michael Hingson ** 57:36
Do you find that you said something interesting, that that I’m just a little curious about people might, for example, really dislike their job and they want something different. Do you find that when you work with people, sometimes they come to realize, well, maybe it’s really not such a bad job. It’s my attitude that needs adjusting.
Carrie Wallis ** 57:53
It’s often the people that are drawn to me are people that have a burning desire to support others through health professions, coaches, counselors, healers, etc, and they want to have the freedom that running their own business gives. Those are the people that I tend to attract. So generally, they’re stuck in jobs. They’re working for someone
Michael Hingson ** 58:18
else. Yeah, and okay, that makes, makes perfect sense, and but you’re able to guide them. And hopefully, as part of that, you’re able to guide them that if they’re going to make a transition, there’s a process and a way to do that absolutely, because you don’t, you don’t want to burn bridges either.
Carrie Wallis ** 58:36
No, absolutely. And the key is the points that we’ve been saying, and the pillars of marketing, profitable marketing, which leads to a profitable business, of course, a connection, clarity. You need to know what your message is. That comes back to that message point, the point about messaging I was saying earlier, know your marketing personality, implement all the steps, the steps, there’s a process, and have the confidence really go inwards so that the confidence you have is unshakable. I’ll just share quickly a story that really emphasizes this point, that I was talking to a colleague who went to a motivational weekend by a very, very globally famous individual, and I’m not going to say, say their name, and she came away from this weekend, and yes, she was motivated, and she was Whoa, yes, this is great. I’m, I’m, it’s worked. I’m, I’m energized. I and she got into action. And then about a week, maybe a week and a half later, her her old patterns started to return. Her old habits took over, and she realized, and it emphasizes what I was talking about earlier, that you can’t just change something at the surface level. It needs to be deep in the unconscious mind to be able to have that COVID. Confidence that’s going to be unshakable and move you forward continuously. So very much. And I’m thinking of one of my clients, Susan, who, when she first came to me, her boss was probably a tyrant. Is Not, not too, not too harsh, a word, I think, to describe her, from what Susan was telling me, she hated her job. She felt really tough. She loved what she did. She just hated doing it for this organization, and she Yeah, she tried moving jobs, and she realized that what was really true for her was running her own business. And so through the work that we did, which was mostly for Susan, all about confidence and getting into that deep unconscious mind, so that she believed that she actually could do it by herself, and she’s gone on, and she now has a multi million dollar business. So, yeah, very, very important. Well,
Michael Hingson ** 1:00:57
you talked about that motivational person, that very famous person, you know, that person does, I’m sure, help a lot of people, and maybe, if nothing else, with your client, after a week when some of the old patterns started to return, at the same time, she started to think about that, and so she came to You, and you are able to work through it. But, yeah, motivational speakers oftentimes, you know, you can only do so much in the weekend. And it’s, it’s really a matter of going further, but at the same time, that’s not the end all. It still is really up to you to to make the change. It’s, it’s, you know, the old psychology joke, how many people does it take to change a light bulb? And the answer is, none. The light bulb has really got to want to change absolutely right? And that really is the point. So even if the motivational speaker or person got her to think about it more, then that was a blessing.
Carrie Wallis ** 1:02:04
Well, I think you’re right. I think the key to any change is awareness. And we have, you know, the cycle of change, and it starts with something. It can be a big thing. It can be a small thing, but for somebody to want to change, there’s got to be something in their life that’s not working, and the second step is for them to realize and recognize what that is, and as you say, want to change absolutely critical so and she Yes, she’s got some useful strategies that she’s been able to apply with the deep work that she’s done so that it’s that combination, but it all starts from awareness 100% Yeah,
Michael Hingson ** 1:02:47
well, this has been super and I’m glad we did it, and we should probably do another one in the future if you’d like to do that. But this, I think was wonderful. I learned a lot, and I hope that everybody listening has learned a lot because you’ve offered a lot of good nuggets of wisdom that that really can help people to recognize, in various ways, how they can be more unstoppable than they think they can.
Carrie Wallis ** 1:03:14
Absolutely it’s been a delight. Well, I want
Michael Hingson ** 1:03:18
to thank you for for being here, and I want to thank you all for listening. This has been absolutely a pleasure for me, and I’m honored that you listened wherever you are. Please. We’d love to hear from you. If you want to comment about what Carrie and I talked about today, please do so you can reach me through email. At Michael H, I m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H i at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, I, B, e.com, or you can also go to my podcast page, which is w, w, w, dot Michael hingson.com/podcast, and Michael Hinkson is spelled M, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, S o, n, again.com/podcast, and wherever you’re listening, please give us a five star rating. We value your ratings, and we love five star ratings, so please do that and let us know your thoughts. Carrie, if people want to reach out to you, how do they do that?
Carrie Wallis ** 1:04:15
Absolutely, I think you’re going to put some links below. We are the podcast, you can find me on my website, which is enlighten you solutions.com. E n, l, I G, H t, e n, U S, o l, u t, I O N, s.com, and there’s a gift that I’m delighted to offer your listeners Mike, called seven ways to attract high quality clients. And I believe the link will be below the podcast. You can find me on YouTube as well. If you go to at Carrie Wallace, youtube.com/at, Carrie Wallace, all running together, C, a double R, i e, w, a double L, I S, you’ll find me there, and there’s my email and contact details. I’m on link. In, and I’m on Facebook as well. If you search my name, if you Google my name, you’ll see the book, and you’ll see all the links.
Michael Hingson ** 1:05:06
Well, super and again, I really am glad that you’re here. I’m very disappointed that you didn’t have a gift about how to say Bucha goose, but that’s maybe I’ll write one. We’re going to get fixated on that, aren’t we? You are. Oh yeah, that was but it was so much fun. But I want to thank you for being here and again. Thank you all for listening with Carrie, especially thank you for being here and talking with us for so long and giving us so much of your time.
Carrie Wallis ** 1:05:31
You’re very welcome. It’s been an absolute pleasure. Mike, thank
Michael Hingson ** 1:05:39
You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you’ll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you’re on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you’re there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.