Becoming the Visionary of Your Brand

Zahra  

Okay, well welcome to another episode of the brand collaborative. Today I am talking with Stephanie Scheller and Stephanie is one of my favorite people in San Antonio because we just always vibe about the same marketing things. We geek out on the same marketing, you know, topics, she's the only person I know that could talk forever about a brand sent with me. Yeah, there's no one like her and marketing and sales and so I'm just really excited that she's here with us today. So welcome, Stephanie. 

Stephanie  

Well, thank you. I feel like an absolute nerd now, which is absolutely the truth. I do, I go down the rabbit hole I have my I have my rabbit holes that I can get very lost in marketing and branding is definitely one of them.

Zahra  

I love it. So for those of you guys who aren't familiar with Stephanie, I just want to talk to you a little bit about who she is, before we get into the episode today. And why we've chosen this week as a week to talk about some really deep things about entrepreneurship, which is a little bit off of what we usually talked about, but it's so important. I always say, like 90% of what happens and your success and entrepreneurship is happening between your ears. And we spent so much time focusing on our fingers and what they're doing with our typing and what we're, you know, producing on the computer, but really, you know, the real work happens, in my opinion between the ears. So let me tell you a little bit about Stephanie. Stephanie Scheller is the impact authority. She studied human psychology for more than a decade and built her business from scratch to walk away from her job in less than five months. She has now worked with more than 5000 companies and is dedicated to helping small business owners understand how to create the greatest impact. Using the violin to tap into the human subconscious, Stephanie breaks down the psychology behind business growth strategies, and marketing that makes an impact to simplify implementation and accelerate growth. She is a TEDx speaker, a not one but two times bestselling author and you have a new one coming out, I believe, an award winning entrepreneur and a founder of Growth Disrupt a company that designs and produces educational events for the ADHD small business owner. In her downtime, you'll find Stephanie playing the violin out of her beloved Texas Hill county, or in the garage painting endlessly. I've seen your poor paintings are gorgeous, I love them.

Stephanie  

Thank you, this would also be one of those rabbit holes that I go down.

Zahra  

But it's awesome, so with that, I just want to get right into it. Because I think one of the coolest things about entrepreneurship today is that there isn't a straight path. You know, some of you guys know my story, I was a bio major in college like, you know, it's a very windy path and sometimes we feel like, if you don't have an MBA, you have no business doing this. So tell me about your journey and how you became an entrepreneur. 

Stephanie  

Alright, so I'm going to try and do the high level version has also been a windy path, you know, you started using college. So I went to college for equine business and facility management. So I was gonna go run a horse barn, I'm using a grand total of like two classes out of my entire, like, six figure degree. It's fantastic but so I go to I go to college for certain how to run a barn, and then I graduate, and I realize I'm not gonna be able to do that and actually pay back my student loans. So just there wasn't enough money so plan B, I get a job in San Antonio. And my original thought, I thought I got a job as like a marketing consultant, which I that was one of the classes that I fell in love with during college was marketing. And I worked with like a small business up in Ohio, like on their marketing, and I loved it. And so I get this job and I'm really excited because I'm like, oh my god, it's a marketing consulting job for small businesses. I get to go in and help small business owners craft marketing campaigns that work for them on a budget. Oh my gosh, this is gonna be awesome and like my, you know, first week on the job, I find a client who wants to work with me, my second week on the job I find a client wants to work with me. I'm like, super excited. My third week on the job, I'm doing so well. They take me out of training put me in with everyone else. And all of a sudden I realized like, oh, like the Monday morning meeting, and my boss is up there going y'all are the best sales team in San Antonio and I want you to get out there and sell sell, sell sell. I don't care if they say no, you say yes like and I'm just sitting there like shrinking and realizing oh my god. I'm the person who called my dad at dinner every every night. And oh my god, I just like I panicked and I lost my I lost it for days. Weeks actually I finally didn't have coming out of it. I ended up doing very well in that job. Primarily because I said look, I'm gonna approach this from being a consult, I'm going to consult and so I had i picked up clients I was the number two sales rep for the entire property and number two sales rep we were like the number two division in the entire country, so doing really well. Went through a couple of different roles with that company. And they were going through a lot of shifts in 2014 2013 2014. And I needed a new job so I started looking for new jobs, but I didn't really want to be an employee and my mom came to me. Well, I went to my mom crying because of all the chaos happening at the time. And she goes Steph, I'm flying out to California to learn how to be a sales trainer, come be a sales trainer with me. And I'm like, I don't know that I want to be a sales. She's like, but you're good at it, you're really good at sales. And I was like, Okay, I need something. So I flew out to California and that was the business that I built in five months, that was the end of April 2014. And I started the business start of May and at the end of August, I'd made more money part time as a sales trainer than I had working full time. And so I, you know, said goodbye, walked away from my job started building the sales training practice. And that's actually the practice that my first two books were published under Friend Power and Getting Past the Gatekeeper. And then about end of 2015 started 2016 we were one of the largest, most active sales training practices in Central Texas. And all of a sudden, I had this epiphany moment of realizing I didn't want to be a sales trainer. I would walk into the room and people be like, Oh, Stephanie she's a sales trainer and I'd be like, No, I'm not. They're like, well, you you run a sales training business, what do you do? Oh, what? And so that was when I started rather than, like, Okay, I have to do something like, this is not the business I want to build. And part of it was, because of the level I was getting to size wise, I was starting to get to talk to some big name sales trainers and understanding like, what their business models would looked like and realizing I didn't want that business model. Yes, I want to run a multimillion billion, you know, business, but I, I did not want to run a multimillion dollar sales training business. And so then I went through like about, like, almost a year of trying to figure out what do I want to be when I grow up basically, like, what is the business actually want to run. And it was fairly late in 2016, when a friend of mine looked at me, and he said, Well, Stephanie, you want to help small businesses. You already put on because we're still running sales training, because that's what paid the bills, he's like you put on these events for sales. You don't want to be a coach, because you don't have the patience to be a coach or a consultant but why don't you just like, put on events for small businesses. And my immediate reaction was held out like, I don't know if I'm allowed to say that word here. 

Zahra  

Oh yes, we use all the words here.

Stephanie  

I hate going to these events, like I told him, I said, I don't like going to these business growth events, these type of events, he's like, well then do the kind of event you want to do. And that was where it really started so 2017, we did the very first Grow Retreat and learned a lot, a lot of what we never wanted to do again, we did it again in 2018 and learned a lot again. But that was when I realized that this was this was what I wanted to do. And so in 2018, we started retiring the sales training practice, we started building up the event business, we rebranded to Grow Disrupt, and and really kind of it took a little while to fully sunlight, the sales training practice, because you know, that takes a minute there. But in by 2020, we were almost fully in the event production side and starting to really hit our groove we were we actually laugh about that now. Because it was like, January of 2020. I was like, oh my god, people finally stopped introducing me to the sales trainer like they get that I put on events now. Oh my god, this is amazing, people get what I do now. And then of course, March of 2020. And I was like, oh.

Zahra  

The universe just wanted to make sure you really wanted it. 

Stephanie  

Really, really? Oh my gosh. So we did every we had a moment of sitting there like what are we gonna do and then the short story is we were because the way we do our events because of a lot of the choices we've made already about how to do events, you know, we we never stuffed the room, we always make sure we have double capacity in the room because no one likes being in a room where you're shoulder to shoulder with the person next to you like. You can't focus on what the person on stage is saying if you're trying to like not touch the person next to you like you know. We fed people plated meals, we didn't do buffets we, we had air filters in the room because we didn't want the room to stink after lunch. Like we had all these things that were already part of our events. So we were able to keep running events all the way through the pandemic. In fact, we doubled in size, we never lost money on an event. And we achieved to sell out status while the pandemic was like all of us all like we've reached the point of our events actually starting to sell out and we have not gone back since then and so on it was a process. But there you go. 

Zahra  

So I love that. So I want to go back and kind of retouch on something you say, because I'm curious for me so I'm assuming everybody listening is curious, too. So you said, you said in your journey, you're like, I don't do events and then it was that you did? Do you think that was more of a this would be so cool if I could do it, but nobody would pay me for it or it doesn't feel like a real job. It's just something I want to do for fun? Or did it just seem like it wasn't attractive to you at all time like, what was that statement about? 

Stephanie  

That was about so the way we do our events is very different. So we do not allow our speakers to pitch on site, we pay our speakers, all of our speakers get paid. I've had speakers who have offered to speak for free, I still pay them like, I'm like, No, I'm paying you because you're gonna take this seriously. We don't do sponsors, at our events, we provide all of your food during the event we provide our swag bags are worth like $250 apiece, We provide like, there's a whole bunch of stuff that we do at our events, that's really expensive. And every time like, that's how I've always wanted to do events, but when I talked to everyone, they were like, No, you can't, that business model isn't going to work, like you're gonna have to pitch charge people, three to $5,000 for a ticket to that event in order to make money on that event and people are never gonna pay it. And so I struggled with that, like that was where it was like, I don't want to do you know, I've gone to these other events, right? It's like, the music's really loud, the room is too cold, the emcee is on stage telling you to get up and dance and jump, all of the speakers are giving you just enough content to make you feel inadequate to implement any of it because they want you to buy their product. Like they're very much I don't like most of these events and especially when I started digging into the world, and I found out that a lot of this stuff is done on purpose. Like I was told to do this stuff, they were like, you have to do pitches, you have to put the AC down so that you're wearing them down physically, put the music too loud, so you're wearing them down physically and mentally. Get them up jumping so you're wearing them down physically so that by the time you do the pitch on day two, they don't have the energy to say no. I hate that that is slightly that is messed up to like the nth degree. That's what I didn't want to do. And everyone I spoke to was like, Well, if you're going to do events, this is how you have to do them. And I was like, Well, I don't want to do those kinds of events so my reaction of I don't want to I don't like events I don't want to do events was I don't want to do that kind of event. I wanted to do my thing but I didn't think we could be profitable doing it. And it did take us a while to get into the black on the events. But it was it was mostly just I just didn't think we could actually do it because everyone said I couldn't so there you go.

Zahra  

That's amazing. I really I really liked that you thought about the intentionality of how you were going to do it. And I think there's a lot to that we had a similar experience you know where I love marketing but I love teaching marketing and I love supporting marketers. I did not want to be running social media posts like doing all your social media posts for you. That was not my dad never wasn't I was told over and over again. No, no, if you're a brand new marketing firm, like you got to sell the social media or you're gonna tank and it was a very difficult process to intentionally go in and find a way to do it without having you know, and lo and behold, it ended up paying off because now with all the overseas work and the AI, a lot of that is you know, and we had what's funny is that even when all that happened even we had to make an adjustment. But it wasn't as big of an adjustment as some of our competitors because we were already heading down that path. We just had to do it a heck of a lot faster than what we were doing it. And so but I love that you said that like it's understanding having been in that position being your own ideal client and remembering what it felt like to be on the receiving end of a pitch having that emotional surge of like I love this we're in this together this camaraderie this tribalism you know, effect only to get smacked in the face with a pitch were you reminded that no, you're not in their child you got to but you know.

Stephanie  

Yeah right you gotta drop another $20,000 to get another tribe like pay up baby. 

Zahra  

Yeah and and that's so crazy and so total sidenote, but I have been to one of your events and I have been the recipient of a swag bag and it's like being at the Academy Awards. 

Stephanie  

And they've gotten better since you've been there like they we go oh my god, we do wild stuff that

Zahra  

I love it, like totally worth the hype. 

Stephanie  

I'm putting that on the website by the way, swag bags are like the Academy Awards. It's a caviar eye cream with what is that caviar these days? It's what is it now, snail? Oh so I've heard I don't know.  Oh my god.

Zahra  

I'm ball deep in a client's market research right now.

Stephanie  

I'm just gonna let everyone in January know that if they have snails in their bag that they can come thank you for it, putting that out there now. 

Zahra  

Sorry, snail lady. Oh, God, I want to ask you something that I think so one of the things that, you know, your business is, is an events, but like, really I see what you do for people, you know, like entrepreneurs, and how even in the speakers that you choose, there is a lot of technical, you know, there's technician. But what I love about what you introduce entrepreneurs to is a mindset shift. You know, it's not always like this whole new way of thinking of the world, it's just a more refined lens. It's like, Oh, I was almost doing it right but just enough wrong to not be effective but now I get it, right. It's just kind of I don't know if any entrepreneurs ever felt that. I felt that way plenty of times, like, Oh, I see.

Stephanie  

Like the 3% change that you needed that's what always kills me, especially today. I know, I know, you're going somewhere with this, but like, you hit on like a hot button for me here. Because this is what kills me with these big events is they want you to reframe who you are that you need to change who you are, you need to change what you're doing, you need to be this other person, other thing. And like our big thing reoccurring, our theme last January was shift because and what I kept telling everyone is like you are clearly the people that come to our events are already running successful businesses. These are not startups, these are not wanter printers, these are entrepreneurs and small business owners who are running a successful business, they don't need to change everything, they just need to find the little shift, the shift to the mindset, the shift to the marketing the shift to the they don't, it's the little thing that make the big return for these guys. And in these other events sell you this, you need to be a completely different person, because that's how they sell you. That's how they justify their $20,000 coaching price tag and it just sets me off. 

Zahra  

Yep, it's 100%. We have a similar thing and marketing was very frustrating when people come to us. And they're like, Well, I was with this one agency and they told me it was all about affiliates. And then I went to a digital marketing agency, they told me it was all about social media. And so it's always you know, and it's like, Well, the truth of the matter is, is that every brand has their own unique formula for what works for them and really, what we need to look at is the data and the metrics. It's about the, it's not the Instagram sucks, it's that you're doing it, it may be that you're doing it wrong, or maybe that's not your audience. But it's not that social media doesn't work, it's not that PPC doesn't work. Obviously, they work for people, right because they're up and running, right but you can't optimize what you can't measure. And if you're doing if you're doing all these random things once and you're constantly pivoting and pivoting, and you only have one experiment once at a data for each thing, then you really don't have enough of a data set to be able to optimize anything, you just knew it worked or didn't work. And so let's get smarter about how we do that and look at where the conversion rate is lacking so we can look at that isolated piece of your campaign. You know, and but to your point, it's not about like, no, no, no, none of that was what you should have been doing. So let's just call that $40,000 you spent last year a complete waste of money. And let's just make you a $30,000 commercial and let's put $5,000 a month behind PPC without even looking at where they're going, like let's not even touch the landing page. 

Stephanie  

People, like they try and do you know, they, they're like, oh, like to your point all these agencies, they push what they're best at? And that what I don't think most of them realize is that marketing doesn't work in isolation, like doing one thing isn't going to work. You could have a $30,000 a month budget maybe if you have a $30,000 a month budget, you could make one tactic work but like, in all likelihood, you're not going to get results from just doing affiliate marketing. You're not going to get results from just doing pay per click or just doing social media. Marketing doesn't work in isolation, the pieces have to work together and to your point they need some time. But we have all these different gurus out there who are telling everyone, you know, well completely switched, change everything the other thing didn't work. And it clearly didn't work because the thing didn't work, not because it was implemented the incorrect way. 

Zahra  

Yeah, exactly. You know, and so I do to your point, you know, I love that you do that, that you provide that kind of, we don't need to blow everything up that doesn't work exactly the way we expected it to work the first time we ever tried it. And I had a great business coach that made this analogy once it No, it wasn't a business class. It was at a Tony Robbins event, he said this thing. And I instantly had this image of my son, he says, you know, it takes the average human 200 tries to walk to learn how to walk, they fall 200 times before a baby, you know, learns to walk. And it's like, what the baby doesn't say, like, after the third attempt, like screw this, you know, it's crawling for the rest of my life, like, they just stick with. And he said, and it was kind of a joking thing but I instantly, like had this memory of like, as he was talking, my brain went back to my experience with my son, and how with every fall, he just got more determined, you know, like, every time he fell on his butt, he was like looking around, like, okay, what can they use to pull me up? How can I and like, watch that he just got more intense in his effort, rather than like giving up until he slowly just didn't care anymore. And I just thought, man, how awesome that that is our biology, you know, like, that's how we're built as humans to act and respond is not to just give up on the thing that seems too hard. But to like figure out or it's like, as a race we're figure outers.

Stephanie  

I think we're trained, I know, we're way off track, you had a question you're aiming for earlier, but I drained through like school to do that. Because think about this, you get you study, you work for your grade, and then you get the grade and you don't get to change it. That's the grade you got, right and so we're kind of taught that once you've done something, it's final, like, it's you can't change it, maybe you can go back and get extra credit, but you can't change that grade. And so to me, that I know, for me, that was actually very kind of deconstructing that in my head was really helpful to realize, like, I have this idea in my head, that if I didn't succeed at something, the first time I was a failure at that, then I just didn't want to try again, because it was you know, as final. And I think that's where we you know, the way our school system is set up, we are taught that, you know, you failed, you just you just move on, like, you can't fix the grade. So just, you know, go try something else. And so I think it's backfired on us a little bit that we have gotten away from that child who would try 200 times to walk around and do you know, a whole people group who are anxious about, you know, failing because they don't fail. 

Zahra  

It's so closely tied to our identity. I feel like, you know, until we've lost our ability to be curious, instead of saying like, Huh, what the heck happened like, what, what went wrong with that campaign? It's like, the fear of me sucking it, marketing comes up, and that overtakes everything. And because I don't want that to be true, I just avoid it and put it away in a mock, don't do it. Don't touch it again instead of being curious about like, what the heck happened? Like I thought I had them why did I mess this up.

Stephanie  

Coming back to your commentary on my thing, because I think that's exactly what this is.

Zahra  

Yeah. So going back to that so you've worked with 1000s of CEOs over the years, and I and I'm so curious, in your experience, what is that mindset gap between running a business and leaving a brand? At what point because I think we've all had this moment, in our business where we feel like it's running us, you know, we did your nine to five, because no one's gonna be like, because we want a better quality of life and nobody's gonna tell us what to do. You know, all that, whatever right? Fast forward to three years later, and it feels like our business and our clients and our team, and everybody is great. 

Stephanie  

Like, I'm working 80 hours a week, but at least I have a boss.

Zahra  

And you're begging, like, please, somebody just told me what to do. So what is that bicep gap between where we find ourselves about two years in, you know, two, three years in and like where you're, hey, I'm leaving a brand now, I'm at the helm. Knowing that I failed, I'm so confident in my abilities to succeed.

Stephanie  

Wow, that's probably a very deep question maybe a little bit more than I don't know we could get all the way into that. I feel there's a lot that comes into play there, I think this idea of, you know, the way you kind of phrase that running a business leading a brand. When I hear that the first thing comes to mind, right? There's the people who are running the business like the operations of the business, right, just keeping the business running smoothly and that is an that is a skill set. And for many entrepreneurs, that is a skill set, they do need to develop, they do need to know how to run a business. However, this is where you know Gino Wickham, I don't know if you've read a lot of traction or stuff, but he talks about the visionary and the implementer because you need, you know, the implementer to run the business. But you also need the visionary to lead the brand to have the vision of where we're going to be pulling people forward. Because yeah, all of a sudden, you know, eight years in, you're working 80 hours a week, and you are making less money than you know the other person in the company who's working for you, but you're the boss. So at least like you know, your boss, right like that's winning somehow. You know, people don't take paychecks and profit. This one drives me nuts, small business owners who don't understand that you're supposed to get a paycheck in profit distributions, like they don't, they don't that doesn't register, they're like, but I get a paycheck, and I get to be my own boss, that is the reward. No, you invested in the business baby, get a good paycheck, you should get a market paycheck, you should get profit distributions. Like that's what happens if you own stock in Apple and all of a sudden, Apple sent you a letter that said, hey, stock distributions are coming up, but you need to come work at the store for a day in order to get it like you'd be like, screw you Apple.

Zahra  

But also, you were an owner in the company in two different trades, though, like,

Stephanie  

Yeah, you have you so this, this idea of not losing sight of what you're building, right, this idea of not losing sight of, hey, I get profits, I get paycheck, this is the business we're building, this is the impact we're trying to make. This is the brand we're building, this is the reputation we're building, right that's the visionary. And then there does a lot of times, most small business owners in growth mode have to be able to juggle between the two of them. And this is where it becomes very difficult and we end up getting stuck in one or the other. But the problem is without both of these, it's a yin and yang situation, the visionary is not going to get anything done. But the implementer is going to end up at that point working 80 hours a week exhausted. And just you know, breaking down on the side of the road on 1604 you know, coming up crying in December, because you know, she can't keep her head on straight. And if that wasn't like obvious, that's exactly.

Zahra  

I was on my sister's couch so slightly different story.

Stephanie  

I was crying so hard that I had to pull it like it was rush hour traffic and I was crying so hard. I couldn't see like, I was like I'm in danger on the road. And I had to pull over and I just cried and cried and cried and cried. I was so broken down that day, ended up pulling off the road going into La Cantera and going to Barnes and Noble. And I found a copy of Seth Godin's book, When to Quit and When to Stick the Dip. And that was like a huge turning point for me and realizing, okay, we can do this, but I'm not ending up here again, this is I can't do this, I have to do this. And that was when I started having to like, Okay, I have to balance between the two, I have to run the business, yes. But I also need to be leading the brand, being the leader keeping an eye on where we're going and balancing the two of them. Because there's no one else to do it at this point in the business, it's just me, I have to be both sides. And I don't know if that was fully the answer. 

Zahra  

No, it was and I love how you phrased that because it is a balance. Because you know, I always say that, being the visionary being we call it, you know, with our clients, you call it the chief visionary officer, right like, that's your role and so like, there is the and that's where we define success. But then there is who ensures success, that's your CEO, that's, you know, or your CEO, like that is a person who knows, making sure that the vision that we've dreamed of is happening in application, right. And so but it is a very difficult kind of balance to get accustomed to, because most of us have an affinity for one over the other. And the other one is like a discipline to do it like I'm an efficient person so all day I'll work on operations, SOPs, you know, data, it the visionary part is actually the harder of the two for me.

Stephanie  

So I actually think, going back to this mindset thing, I think visionary, there are people that are really, really good at the visionary side and really struggle in the operation side, absolutely. But I think there is a sense in most successful business owner realms, and I'm talking about the business owners who have actually built established successful businesses. You go on Reddit, you can find about 400,000 visionaries who all have ideas but don't want to do any of the work to implement it, okay? They don't have real businesses. But when you get into like these actual entrepreneurs, most of the people I talk with most the people I'm assuming you talk with, we've all had to be the visionary or we've all be the implementer, we've all had to get things done. And I think we have at some point in time started to devalue the value of being the visionary of being the maestro, who's looking, because we've looked at that as oh, it's just sitting on the couch daydreaming. We've looked at it as it's not as valuable because it doesn't tie directly to revenue.

Zahra  

Oh, my gosh, that is exactly it. You know, it's funny, because being in branding, it's what I do all day is I create visions for me, and I don't create them but we collaborate on these, you know, big identities. And it's so funny, though, because me being my personality type, I'm very comfortable being the integrator, right. But I have to have my business coach, pull the visionary out of me, you know, put me in that uncomfortable spot, to really be brave enough to have the courage of my convictions and like, voice them and articulate them and define success as I want it to be to create that thing that's not created, easier for me to be the critic, right like the analyzer. I'm predicting based on the visionary. But what's interesting about that is that I struggle with it very much. And I've had this conversation with a business coach, where when I sit in IDA, I feel like I'm playing hooky from school. Like it, yeah, feels like the thing I shouldn't be doing. And I was actually talking to another guest about this on the show and she was telling me, you know, her husband is a CEO of a major hospital. And that all day, he's in meetings all day and his only job is to share ideas. There is no work product, there are no reports he's responsible for, like, putting together there's no clients, he doesn't do any procedures on anybody. Like he literally his thoughts, and he gets paid multiple six figures for his thoughts and that's okay and it's acceptable, and it's understood. But yeah, as entrepreneurs, we're like, no, no, I'm not doing what they shouldn't be doing if I'm in my thoughts, if I'm ideating, if I'm collaborating, if I'm having, you know, and we've almost like led to your point, we've almost like tabooed, that as a waste of time as playing around and not working for Well, we're audio so nobody can see my air quotes, but like...

Stephanie  

They can hear it, they can hear it in that not working and the emphasis.

Zahra  

And the sarcasm in me.

Stephanie  

I know, I agree and I think I don't know if you've seen this, but one thing I noticed with myself is so I have a team, I believe you have a team as well right? So when my team is working, so I started taking Fridays are my CEO days, every Friday is my CEO days now right? I don't take meetings on Fridays, I don't do pretty much anything except to be a CEO on Fridays. And that took a while to actually take because my team would be working and all of a sudden, like Slack would start blowing up and someone's panicking. People are dealing with this and I would start to feel guilty that my team is working and I'm not again, air quotes, right? I'm doing the fun because it does feel like fun like it is fun. And there's this moment of being like, I'm getting paid to do that. Yeah, that's me at every one of our events, I'm like, Oh, my God, I get paid to sit at this event, this is so cool. But that I think that's I think that's exactly what it is like it feels like, or at least for me, that was a big one was like, feeling guilty. My team is working, they're dealing with problems. They're solving problems and I'm over here, like, like you said, playing hooky, and it felt. I felt like I wasn't being a good leader.

Zahra  

Yeah and you know, what's interesting about that is that if you look at a traditional employee, that is their goal is to love their job that much. You know what I mean? That's what they're striving for and we have it, you know, we have that capacity, we have that ability, and yet we shy away from it as if we haven't somehow earned it or as if it's somehow a sign that it's not the right thing to be doing. I think that's really interesting.

Stephanie  

I think the most powerful thing that I did for getting myself out of that was to start really focusing on getting the entire company to being that way to everyone feeling like that. 

Zahra  

We started off with like a book club Friday, you know, and so as a team, we would just like we pick a book, and we kind of go through it together. And that was a big thing for us that that it made me feel okay with it, because everybody was, quote, unquote, playing hooky was doing what they were doing. Absolutely, so leading into that, you know, we're talking a lot about this balance in the yin and yang, you know, between running the business and leading a brand so, how to talk about that visionary, and why it's so important. I think that being a visionary is the huge impact that it has because it allows you to see your business from a bird's eye view, right? And understand like, see the future of the industry see the future of your, your brand. Be able to play chess, like understand what the all the moving pieces together. And so for me, that becomes a big question of, you know, we see it a lot with the cycle of like growing your brand, scaling your brand, growing your brand, scaling your brand. And I think that one of the most critical things when I almost lost my business was, I was continuing to grow my brand over and over and over again, to the point where I was over diversified, and I wasn't scaling. And so and I couldn't see it until, you know, my top line, my sales were through the roof, the highest I've ever been, but my profitability was shrinking. Because we had over diversified and so like, talk to me a little bit about that. And how do you know when how do you advise you know, people to kind of get wrap their brain around, shifting from growing your brand to scaling it and how do you know when, when that comes around?

Stephanie  

Yeah, so I think the biggest question too, and in clarifying, right, when you talk about growing your brand, you're talking about adding different lines of revenue different streams differently, you know, you have 10 different products, like, for example, I have so many people who are like, Oh my god, Stephanie, you need to start selling we have this custom coffee blend for our events, right? And if it's so many people who are like, if you would sell this, I would buy it right I'm not gonna sell the coffee. I'm not selling I'm not a coffee company. I'm not gonna sell the coffee. Like it's not gonna happen come to my event and I will give you a bag of coffee. 

Zahra  

I want to tell you something. My husband and I our first business it was a restaurant and it would not fail like on a weekly basis, you should serve pizza here, you should serve eggrolls here. You should be the most schizophrenic restaurant ever. If you sold egg rolls, I would be here every day.

Stephanie  

Every day. Yeah, everyone's like, if you would sell your coffee, if you would sell your scent I'll buy it. I'm like, No, I'm not, I'm not a perfume company. I'm not a coffee company. I'm not selling that selling the right. But that's when we talked about growing the brands adding in these different things, right. Versus scaling is taking the one product and really increasing the sales on that. You know, so for me, I think right the Grow Retreat where we started with the Grow Retreat, you know, I think we had 10 people in the room the first year. And then we had like, 20 and then we had like, 30. And then you know, growing and growing now we have 50 and we cap it at 50 intentionally. I think to me, the question being how do you know when it's time to go from, you know, adding on to the brand growing the brand versus scaling it. I think for the most part, we actually need to start with scaling the brand. I think that's a little bit backwards in that to bring us full circle to something we were talking about earlier, right? People try a marketing tactic, it doesn't work, then they go try another one. When people do the same thing with their business, they try adding on a product or service, and it doesn't blow up the way they thought it would. So then they go try and add another one and then that one doesn't either. So then they go try and add another one. But they never got rid of the other ones because like what if someone wanted them right? So they left all those, there's now you got 18 different products that never got a really good try. I think we really need to start by establishing an aspect of the brand and scale that and then once that is stable, now you can grow. That to me, I feel is so much more, that feels you know, this is kind of a weird word to use in entrepreneurship conversation but safer. Like it's a safer way to grow your brand. It's a safer way to grow your business. You don't need to be out there pulled 40 different directions. You don't need to be out there with people knowing that you do 40 different things, you know, focus on being really good at one thing. I've had, we've had lots of people give us all kinds of ideas on all kinds of events that we should run to like oh my god, Stephanie, you need to run a Tony Robbins style event and Stephanie you need to do this kind of event. Oh my gosh, Stephanie, you should do a virtual event you should do this kind of event. We're looking at adding one event to our lineup next year. One we've been at, we were at the Grow Retreat was our primary event 2017 18 19 20. In 2020 we added the Growcation, 2020 has been the Grow Retreat and Growcation, 2021 Grow Retreat Growcation, 2022 Grow Retreat Growcation, 2023 Grow Retreat Growcation. Next year we're looking at adding this other event and then the year after we have another event we're looking to add as well. But we can do that partially because we have achieved sellout status our events sell out. So now I know that I'm going to bring in so much revenue and so much profit on the event. I know how much energy is going to be required to reach that level and so now I can actually start to say okay, like I can add something now I can grow the brand now. So it's probably, hopefully that's backwards and I don't know if you've asked that question of other people, but.

Zahra  

No and you know, what's interesting about that is that it's, it's very much the same way that we look at marketing, right? Like, the your first goal in the first year 18 months of your business is you need to have one or two marketing campaigns that you can pull out of your back pocket and run it every any point in time, and know that it's going to work, you know, so you have essentially the same sales strategy for selling out your conference like, and you've worked year over year to refine, and because you have that unlock, you can afford to like, hey, let's try running some LinkedIn ads this year and see what happens. If it bombs, it's no big deal, because we know we're gonna hit sell out from this alone. But here's, it gives you the freedom, right to take other risk yeah, because you're doing the same thing. It's kind of you know, and so, in a similar way with the business, I think that's really important to kind of talk about that, because you're 100%, like, I love the way that you phrase that. What I also think it allows you to do is problem solve, in a haven't gotten to select the wrong word to use, but in a smarter way, like in a more intelligent way. You know, we always say, my mentor says, you know, the quality of your life is determined by the quality of your questions. 

Stephanie  

Ooh, I like that.

Zahra  

Right and nd so one of the things that you're not able to do when you've got 18 different products that you've launched, once each, you know, is asking really good quality questions, right? There's no time for it. 

Stephanie  

Because you don't even know what the question is to ask. 

Zahra  

Yeah, you just kind of like and so just kind of leading into how you did. So when you first started, it was an entrepreneur retreat. And you started asking really good questions and like, through that process, you were able to find your alignment, your brand alignment, yeah, the right people, the right offer with the right brand, like was right for your identity. And then finding that like a the ADHD community of like what's missing, you know, and then become that subject matter expert, which is reverse from how a lot of people approach it, but it allows you to ask deeper and deeper questions, so that you built an offer, that is such a must have, it's created such a tremendous brand loyalty, because it's so completely solves a problem and answers a call or fills a gap, right? That you wouldn't be able to do if you had maybe tried and launched a run of the mill, pardon my French half ass, you know, products that you hadn't hadn't seen, you know, to completion. And for me, that's just such a smart way of looking at it is it's allowing you to open that door. So talk to me a little bit about that and like, how you went about that process of like, okay, if events are going to be my thing, I know, I've got a niche down to solve, like, you know, what's my point of view? What's my USP? What makes me different than Tony Robbins, and you know, all the other things out there. Talk to me about how that was for you and how you work through that.

Stephanie  

Yeah, so when we started doing these events, that's a really great question, because I think people, a lot of times we see someone who is niched down who's got things figured out we think they started there, and that usually not. So when we first started, I had a list of so the 2017 retreat, I had a very small list of things I absolutely did not want and things I absolutely wanted. So things I absolutely did not want, I did not want any pitches from the front of the room. I absolutely did not want anyone in the room who was a an asshole like I wanted good people in the room. I knew that I did want my speakers on site hanging out all day for the whole event so that people could talk to them on the breaks, have lunch with the speakers, etc. I knew that I wanted to feed my people lunch, I didn't want them to feel like they had to go run off to go get their own food and figure it out and get back in time. And I didn't want to so that was pretty much like that was the extent of the list. Like I literally the day before the event realized we didn't have like pens for people, we got no pads printed, but we didn't have pens, like I ran across the street to target and bought. Like, there was there was this very small list of things I knew I wanted and didn't want. And then we finished that event and I had a whole list of things I never wanted to do again and a couple things that I was like, hey, that worked really well. We're doing that again. Okay, speakers on site worked really well. feeding people lunch worked really well happy hour worked really well, things that didn't work. You know that we won't even go into that list, it was really long. So a lot of things that I was like we're never doing these so then we change those up. We do it again in 2018, aame thing, we get to the end of it and I'm like okay, Right now we have a whole bunch of things. I really liked the venue, what did I like about the venue? Well, I liked it, it was big and it was open, it was airy, okay, I really liked it, we served, you know, the food I liked. And so I created all these lists, these are the things I love, these are the things I didn't, we're never doing these again. And 2019 did the same thing, 2020 did the same thing and we get to the end of 2020. And 2020 is the year we doubled in size, right? So we go from like, we were not at sell out and we actually I've mentioned this a few times the 2020 growth retreat is the last event that we lost money on. So we lost money at the 2020 Grow Retreat, and then we got into the black and we stayed in the black ever since then, we've made money on a few previous events. But that was the last event we actually lost money on and so we we get to the end of 2020. And now we've done Growcation, and that was profitable. We are poised to do the Grow Retreat 2021 that's already in the black and profitable. We already are almost in the black for the rotation for 2022 at that point. So I'm looking at this and I'm like, Okay, what happened here? How did we double in size, get profitable, reach, sell out status? What happened? And I started like, it was really just a lot of analyzing and trying to figure out what exactly did I do here? And what I realized in 2021, I had this moment so I started getting on TikTok as well and like looking at videos and I ended up spiraling down ADHD talk. And I was diagnosed ADHD is a soft diagnosis. I was working with a lady and I said, Oh, I should pay you to do an ADHD diagnosis and she laughed. She goes, I don't need to do an ADHD test on you stuff, you're very ADHD. I was like, oh, okay, like that was her business was diagnosing people with with neuro divergences and so I was diagnosed. I mean, that was when I was 26 like, this was years prior, but I never really like understood this and, and all of a sudden, they start getting on Tik Tok. And I'm watching these videos, and people are talking about how they do this for their ADHD. And I'm like, wait, I do that, I do that too. Oh, my gosh, I do that too, I do this too. So all of a sudden, I had this list and I just remember, it was it was an afternoon. I don't remember exactly when it wasn't 2021 but I had a list on my desk of all the things that we're trying to figure out. What is the secret sauce? What is the secret sauce? What is the secret sauce. So I have a list on my desk of all the things that make our events special, no pitches, people sit in the room, we have a double, you know, double size occupancy, we have this we have custom music, we have custom like we have this we do this we do this is. And I was just sitting here and I was having like a zone out moment I pick up my phone and I'm like scrolling through on tick tock. And all of a sudden, there was like this, like, you could almost like see the dots connect and I realized this entire list of things we've done for our events was because of my ADHD was because I was trying to stay focused on our own events. Everything that we cut out of our events was stuff that distracted me from the content of the event. We didn't you know, everything, everything and I'm looking at and I was like, Oh, holy cow, we accidentally built the perfect event for ADHD people. Now at this point in time, I didn't realize there's a huge percentage of entrepreneurs who have ADHD I didn't have any of that information. All I just realized was like, oh my god, I accidentally event for ADHD. Oh, like this is kind of cool, but then so we didn't actually announced this I don't know if you noticed are we are shifting is up until like mid last year. 2022 is when we actually announced the shift into ADHD stuff because when I started talking to people about this, all the feedback I got was, oh my god, don't tell anyone stuff like, people don't want to be associated with that. No one's gonna go to an event that that tells the world they have ADHD like, don't tell me when your events are built. Don't Oh, my God, don't don't admit that and like these are, some of these people were like people I had, like mentors, coaches, people I had big respect for. And I was like, Oh, I didn't realize this was a thing like, okay, now we I started and now I was like, okay, so I understand that this is what I'm doing. So I started like digging and stuff that was when we started commissioning, the custom sense that we got created for our events, that is built for people with ADHD to help them focus to help them feel energized. We started doing all these things on the back end, learning about the neuro divergence, the neuroscience of the ADHD brain. But it wasn't till about mid 2022 that I finally was just like, okay, you know what, this is actually what we do. And we're just going to own it and if people decide they don't want to come to our events, they don't have to come to our events. And that's okay, like, and that was scary because, like, we just reached the sell out point, right and so now...

Zahra  

We started from scratch.

Stephanie  

Right or half of my guests not gonna come back and so like, I, we'd like we started rolling it out really softly, like just talking to people and just mentioning it and feedback was very mixed. Like, we got half the people were like, oh, and then after we were like, Oh, I love it right. And so we finally in mid 2020, I was like, Alright, this is what we're doing and so we rolled it out. And what was really interesting to me was the number of people that I thought would so the 2023 Grow Retreat was the first one that was like, full on, hey, our events are designed for people ADHD, you don't have to have ADHD to sit in the room but this is what they're designed for. And I had like a list of people in my mind that I was pretty sure we're never going to come back to one event, like they'd already bought tickets to the Grow Retreat before they knew I was going to do this. So like, they had to come back to this but like, I was the I had, there was a I'm not good at like, there was a solid list of people that I was like, they will not register for next year, they will not come back. And that's okay, I have to be okay with this and almost every single one of them, almost every single one of them came up to me pulled me aside at some point during the event and said, How did you know I have ADHD, and I said, I didn't, I didn't tell them I thought. You thought you're gonna go away and never, I was like I didn't. They were like, now I get why I love your event stuff. Now I get why I will come back to this event every year, this is my event, I will be in this room every single year. I get it because you get me and it was really, really it was really cool. It was definitely a process to get to was definitely a little bit of a scary mode and I still get I still get pushback from people who are like, well, ADHD. That's an overdiagnosed fake thing, just sit still. 

Zahra  

You know, it's funny too, because the students who said I can see the connection. So my husband has ADHD and he can't sit in any place like for a service for a you know, for more than like 10 minutes he also sciatica but he's also just fidgety by nature, right. And so he has to stand up so he's that guy that will get up from the table and stand in the back of the room. And so even just you saying that the double capacity so that their seating and standing room like that makes sense. I never thought of it that that was, you know.

Stephanie  

Well the other thing too, so a lot of ADHD people are very sensitive to so actually you can kind of see I'm actually sitting I have a fidget toy while we're talking like this is good. But like the other thing, so you think about I mean, we we've gotten so the really quick crash course in ADHD is that individuals with ADHD do not regulate dopamine production in the brain very well, which is where a lot of their executive dysfunction comes from, it's where a lot of issues with shifting from focus to create mode come from. And so we do a lot of stuff at our event to help facilitate dopamine production and regulation in the brain because you don't want to just dump a bunch of dopamine in the brain. That's just as problematic as not having any dopamine. But what will happen is because we tend to have a little bit of challenge with executive function, we can have issues like when you're sitting close to people, and you've got people are touching you, you can't focus on what's on stage, your brain gets, it gets pulled, it gets distract. So when I realized this is why we have double capacity so that people don't have to be shoulder to shoulder. This is why we do rounds of five because if you do a round of five, the whole table stays in the same conversation. If you do round of six, they'll break off into two conversations, but rounds of five the whole stable stays in the same conversation. So now because you've you've been at the table where you're trying to conversation in this Yeah, it's too hard. I don't want to break their brain like that so we put them in rounds with five, like, we set up the lighting in the room specifically to draw the eyes where we want them so that it makes it easier for them to not get distracted. We like it's the level of that...

Zahra  

That's so crazy. I'm like I'm talking about all his because he doesn't like now that you're saying this, I can see it. Like if I'm talking to him, okay, it's like if he and I are having a conversation and my son wants our attention. The thing he does is he goes and he flops on one of us, you know, like and just cuddles us and like kind of smoochies his way up to like our face so that like because you know you he's not allowed to interrupt right. And so, but like, as soon as he starts doing that, like, you know, I'll just hold my son and like pat him on the back like, you know, and rock him while we're talking to finish our conversation to come to a natural place and it doesn't bite me. But he doesn't, he's like, looking like someone flicking his ears or something like it just bugs him and he's just like, starts hyper focusing and you can see right away I've lost him like he's down the rabbit hole. But so crazy that you said that, I never consciously notice that until you said I'm like yeah, he does freak out like when Roberts trying to get into dungeon. And we're having conversation he can't give them once we touch like when he's talking to somebody's on him or touching him. It just kind of like uses that.

Stephanie  

Yeah, we are very, very attuned to physical cues. We you know, we we have subtitles, we're at our events, because people like to read along and it helps them if they get distracted, they can come back. And they can catch up on what they just missed and so now they don't, they're not their brain isn't stuck wondering what they missed. While they were distracted we have we always have quiet fidgets in our bags. So we do, we always look for what the quiet fidget so we don't want someone you know, clicking a pen, right? We don't want someone tapping their knee. All of these pieces that people don't even realize comes into play when it comes to ADHD. I mean, this is people come up to me, almost every time someone comes, a new person comes to our event, especially someone who has ADHD, and they'll come up to me about mid morning on day one, and there'll be like, I could cry, I feel like I'm home. That's awesome. It's really, it's really, and again, I would say we still have about 30% of our room, or people who like came up to me and they were like, am I not allowed to come back do have these neurodivergent CS, what I always tell people is if you've if you've really hated going to most events, if they've if it's drained you if it's exhausted, you if you have to hype yourself up to go to these events, if you find these events to be a waste of your time, if you cringe at the idea of going to an event but you know you're supposed to, because you know you're gonna get information to grow your business, these are the ones you need to try, this will change everything for you and it does.

Zahra  

And just hearing all of this, like it just brings back to focus, like to be able to come up with that degree of solution like that. It takes your focus, and it would be impossible, you know, for any small business to so completely design something product or service. It's so intuitively solution oriented and we talked about that, you know, in branding is there is the brand identity who you say you are. And then there's the brand model and and that's the brand experience, do you walk the walk? Or do you just talk the talk and integrating the the ethos and the ideology of the brand, into tangible experiences that reinforce that and are integrity with that identity? So that you're creating and so that's a big thing that we do when we do when we do brands for people is, you know, we don't? This isn't about saying honesty, integrity, and trust and loyalty are our core values. On a website somewhere, you know, with other companies, it's like, okay, well, if we see integrity, then what does it mean to believe in integrity? And then if this means integrity to us, then how do we implement this into the product into the service into the, you know, unboxing experience into SLA kind of having that integrity, and that takes focus. And so every time you split into a new product, or a new service, or a new segment, you're splitting that focus over and over again. And so just kind of going back to what you were saying about, you know, understanding the scale and being able to niche down and really, really focus that, that energy into so completely solving something, it's just kind of change, it changes the game, you know, people like I don't know why they got they went viral. That's what it is because it's like, just remarkably good. You know, it's remarkably good and that's the reality that most marketing, you know, it's not the marketing that did the job that made it viral. It's that you know, because if it was a crappy product, then it doesn't, you know, doesn't matter how great your marketing is, it's kind of right in the fall, you know. 

Stephanie  

And so I always say that marketing is only as good as the company represents, like, if you're if you can't do fulfillment, if your product is shit, sorry, you're not getting anywhere. Like I don't care how much money you have to market and perfect example of this. I was working with a client recently who was had a really solid monthly marketing budget, but they had a lot of issues happening in house a lot of issues happening in house and because of that, it didn't really matter. We had they they couldn't get things to convert when when when prospects were calling in. They could not get clients to come back like it was it doesn't doesn't matter how good your marketing is if your company if you don't live and breathe it right talk is cheap. You can say you care about integrity, I can say I care about ADHD people all I want but if I can't show that, it doesn't matter.

Zahra  

Yeah. It's not the one thing it's not the fidgets spinner that gets tossed into the swag bag. It's the intentionality of the experience from beginning everything behind. I love that. Okay, so I'm gonna go through this super quick the rapid fire questions that we always do with the industry want to get to know you. It's a fun thing that we do, but I want to go through it really quick. Because I want to talk about one more thing before we close out, I do want to get there okay, so are you are you ready? Are you ready to do?

Stephanie  

I'm ready, all right, let's go.

Zahra  

Dream vacation go. 

Stephanie  

Dream vacation is definitely a mountain top, in the snow where I get dropped off by a helicopter. The cabin is fully stocked and like gorgeously insulated so I can stay warm inside watch the snowfall. I don't have to leave the cabin for an entire week and I could just sit there in front of the fire with my husband and write on my books and read books that is my dream vacation. 

Zahra  

Follow up question what snack would you have?

Stephanie  

What snack would I have! Oh my god, all of this at my favorite is honestly like baguette and Brie like a baguette. And I will just literally that will be my entire meal sometimes is just go get a baguette and a wheel of Brie cheese.

Zahra  

I'm a big cheese fan. All right, I improve. What is your favorite way to celebrate big wins in your business.

Stephanie  

So I'm actually an ambivert. This always kind of surprises people that I'm an ambivert with introvert tendencies. My favorite way to celebrate big wins in my business is literally to go sit on I have this giant crash pillow like it's huge. And I like to go sit on my crash pillow under the sun like as the sun comes in behind me on the window. And it plays off with like in the alcohol room and so like it plays off all of the bottles of alcohol and like just kind of like sets a rainbow of colors in the room. And I like to just sit there and work on one of my my fiction books that I'm writing and just give myself that peace and space to be absolutely alone with my headphones in doing nothing else. That is my favorite way to celebrate. 

Zahra  

A lot of times the most I've ever heard I have to try that. So we talked a lot about you being an inspiration for entrepreneurs who's your inspiration?

Stephanie  

Jesse Cole, Jesse Cole Savannah bananas and what that man has accomplished, holy cow. Oh my god. 

Zahra  

Yeah, yes, yes. Cool. What book are you reading right now?

Stephanie  

So I am actually writing on three books currently and so I don't have a book that I'm in the middle of reading because I'm trying to get these books. So I don't have I finished all the books I was in the middle of and I've not allowed myself to start them because I will go read the books instead of write the books, which is how I'm still editing a book that is supposed to be going out next friday.

Zahra  

Nice. Alright, I like it. Okay, here's the doozy. What one single piece of advice would you give to an entrepreneur, entrepreneur right now, who's working their ass off but feels unfocused and is worried that they're not disciplined air quote, enough to hack it in business.

Stephanie  

My advice would be to recognize that you are doing the best you can with the resources and the knowledge you have available to yourself today so cut yourself some slack. You're working hard, you are not going to get there faster, or harder by beating yourself up for not being there already. Every single one of us is on a different path on a different road. Every single one of us has different pieces of our lives that are coming into play. We have different experiences, different knowledge, different resources. You can't compare yourself to anyone else. Learn to be comfortable and happy with yourself. Because my true belief is that you are doing the best you can with the resources and the knowledge you have available to you today. And that resource, maybe energy, maybe you feel like you could be doing better, but you're exhausted. So that means you don't have the resource to do better. So cut yourself some slack because as long as you're beating yourself up, there's a portion of your brain that is eating up energy every minute of the day for nothing other than yelling at you, and it's not helping you.

Zahra  

Stephanie, thank you so much for joining me today. We're gonna post all of your contact information in the show notes. But before I let you go, I want to talk about one final thing with you. Tell me about your pop ballad. I got into it, we all got to hear about it. Because it goes into to what you've got coming around the bend and I want people to be able to get in touch with you.

Stephanie  

So in March, or in May of this year, I went to my sister who was my technical director and at the grove retreat every year I use the violin as part of the opening keynote. It's part of how we get people to show up on time because they know Hey, stuffs gonna play the violin, it's gonna be interesting like, something's going to happen. We don't know what but it's gonna be interesting, right? So everyone shows up to see me either, you know, play or fail at the violin and so I use this, I use violin, but I can never use like a modern song. I can't use pop songs. I can't use modern songs because they're all licensed, right? So I'm always trying to find a classical song that will work for an ADHD audience that will actually be able to follow this. So I went to Susanna and I said, hey, could we write a piece for the Grow Retreat in January that sounds like a pop song. That's got a verse chorus, verse chorus, like, you know, it sounds, it's simple. It's that that people could really get into and she was like, Yeah, and so we started working on this. And then at some point, during the brainstorming sessions, one of us we, we cannot remember who but one of us looked at the other person was like, it'd be really cool. If this had lyrics. We were like, yeah, no one has to know the lyrics just as well, just like that. We were still planning to just use the song at the retreat. And so we, I go, and I write down a bunch of lyrics, and I give them to Susanna, and she starts putting them together. About two weeks later, she comes back and she goes, do you want to hear what I've got, I'm like, yeah, and she starts singing me the song that just made me cry. I was like, it was my life as an entrepreneur in a song. And I was like, Oh, my God, this is really good and I couldn't get it out of my head, she sent me the demo track, and I couldn't get out of my head. And like, we were dealing with some stuff at the time. And like, I would listen to the song and just cry, like, I was like, Okay, we have to get this actually produced, we have to put this out there. Because if this song is so impactful for me, like it's going to be impactful for other people too and so we actually started reaching out to producers and seeing if we could find one who wanted to produce it and ended up producing a full on, you know, three, almost four minute pop ballad about what it's like to be an entrepreneur and the the chance to see our sparks fly, and then, and then of course, that ballooned, like most things in my world into recording and filming an entire music video in downtown San Antonio that week. 

Zahra  

I love that. 

Stephanie  

Oh, my God, we don't have time to go to everything that we did that that music video, I'm gonna have to do like a storytime on TikTok at some point because like, no one believes me when I tell them what all happened to make. Like, that video shouldn't exist, the video should not exist. And it's the perfect example of like, hey, we had to persevere through we had to make it happen. But watch what happened when we did watch how this impacted people and it's continued racking of us on YouTube. It's on iTunes, it's on Spotify, it's on Pandora, it's out I heard music, right. It's like, it's everywhere and I'm like, oh my god, this is actually legit.

Zahra  

So what what's it called? How can we how can our listeners, where do we go?

Stephanie  

So I would recommend watch the music video because I think it does a great job telling the story. And so you would go to YouTube and you would just search for Grow Disrupt Fly, and that will pull it up. It's in the YouTube Music but if you go to the Grow Disrupt YouTube channel, you can actually see it's our most watched video on the channel. So you can actually see the music video on the channel and watch the story unfold and and then you can go get it off of iTunes or Spotify or wherever else you want to wherever he likes to get your music and actually have a copy of the song if you want.

Zahra  

I already told you this before the session, but I'm adding it to my secret jams playlist on Spotify. It's like my hype music before I could do speaking engagement, and I listened to it from my confidence. 

Stephanie  

Perfect. 

Zahra  

And you have a great retreat coming up in January and it is spots. It does have a cap so if you've got anyone interested in signing up, like yesterday would be the day to do it and where can they go to sign up for that?

Stephanie  

So there's a whole bunch of information about the event at the Grow Retreat.com Like the one and only the coolest, the best Grow Retreat on the planet, I think it's also the only one. But like, so you can go get you to see our speakers, you can see some of what makes us special. If you've listened to what I'm talking about with our events and you're like, oh, I want to experience that. I would go check that out. There is that information on the dates location while the location is hidden, you have to register in order to find out where it is. But it will be in Texas I will tell you that a then you can fill out a form on the website to apply if you would like to join us because it is an application process to get into the room.

Zahra  

Awesome. Well, I love that. You guys driving, don't freak out, it's all going to be in the show notes with links so you just have to click when you get to your destination. Thank you again, Stephanie, I had such a great time. Any final thoughts or anything I missed? I feel like I know your whole life story now. Thank you for sharing you are open and it's been fantastic because I think that there's this transparency about you. You know, and it's so necessary I think as entrepreneurs because it can get lonely to know that and to feel like you're I feel like I'd have a cup of coffee with you. 

Stephanie  

You've definitely got most of my background, my history at this point. You pulled out more out of me in one podcast that I think happened in days and weeks of knowing me.

Zahra  

I cheated because I knew before and I  knew what questions I wanted to ask that came with a plan of attack.

Stephanie  

Well, thank you for having me on, I enjoyed this. This was this was fine, but we covered a lot of ground here.

Zahra  

We sure did. 

Stephanie  

Oh, man. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for having me on, it really means a lot to me.

Zahra  

Absolutely, likewise, I appreciate you being here and thank you to everybody who is tuning in. If you found something that was incredibly helpful to you useful, share it in the comment, share it with a friend, share it with a fellow entrepreneur. Don't stop growing as entrepreneurs go check out the Grow Retreat coming up in January get your seats. I have been to this event, it is a fantastic event, tremendous growth. I mean, you're going to be in the room with people who are the subject matter experts hands down, so don't miss your chance to get in the room with some of the best minds in the business and so we will see you guys next week, thanks so much.