670 Marla Diann:

Knowing and accepting your own true value is as much a predictor of entrepreneurial success as any skill you master gradually or product you create. Yet my guest today Marla Diann says most women have a limiting subconscious blueprint about the value of what we create with a negative “money story” on top of it all – so today we dig deep into the relationship between women and money, and how we must approach businesses differently leveraging our feminine power to succeed.

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m a 5-time serial entrepreneur and founder-CEO of the social podcast app Podopolo, and I’d love to invite you to listen to Wings there and take the conversation further with me and my guests. And because our Wings mission is all about women lifting as we climb, we love it when you share the love and share an episode with a friend so she can advance her business and her dreams.

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who has been transforming lives and businesses of creative entrepreneurs the last 13 years as an international success coach, business strategist and transformational artist. Marla Diann learned the lessons she now teaches along the way in her 22-year career in entertainment PR, operating her own company serving celebrities as well as visual and performing artists.

Do you ever find yourself underpricing your services? Overdelivering on your promises? Not watching your numbers or being on top of your finances?

Money and the pursuit of it – even the language around it – is infused with archetypal masculine energy – and my guest on Wings today – Marla Diann – says this alienates or intimidates a lot of women, at least subconsciously. Today we talk about our relationship with money, how our innate feminine energy can conflict with it, unless we find a new way that leverages the feminine and balances the right amount of masculine.

Marla Diann, the owner of Marla Diann Mentoring International, works with female founders of all generations and she says she sees the same pattern in 99% of all her female clients, a pattern she said she lived herself until a huge epiphany that took her to Italy for a month and taught her to live her joy.

She says when you live in the moment in your true passion and joy the money follows. So listen on to learn exactly how and why … because Marla has been a successful entrepreneur for 32 years, with two companies spanning entertainment PR, talent management, and now business coaching, personal growth and spirituality, professional development and personal branding.

She says her spiritual and lifestyle coaching clients seek adventure, more play, more fun, and more creativity in their life. They desire clarity in their life purpose, leadership abilities, and spiritual growth. Her new lifestyle division is all about cultivating more consistent JOY in life.

A graduate of Tony Robbins Mastery University, a member of The Divine Living Community with her mentor Gina DeVee, and a 7-year member of eWomenNetwork, Marla is also certified as a coach in the Money Breakthrough Method™ and Sacred Money Archetype™ helping to create transformational money habits, behaviors, and mindset.

Be sure to join Marla and me after the episode on Podopolo where you can share your perspectives and ask Marla for her advice. Now let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Marla Diann.

Melinda Wittstock:

Marla, welcome to Wings.

Marla Diann:

Thank you so much. So, thrilled to be here.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, I want to start with your brand tagline, because it’s beautiful. “Stand for your worth and dignity.” Interviewing so many hundreds of women on this podcast and as a five time serial entrepreneur myself, it so resonates with me that women struggle with their sense of their own personal value. How does that stand in the way from them really scaling big vibrant businesses?

Marla Diann:

Oh my goodness. Yes, yes, and yes. It’s a global challenge, for sure. And I always say it’s no fault of anybody’s. Meaning, women were never, for the most part. And I know there’s some that don’t fit this, but for the most part, most women were not taught how to be powerful with money. We weren’t raised to be powerful with money.

The core of my money legacy, money transformation coaching has everything to do with transforming that money story, as in their habits, their behaviors and their mindset. Their belief systems around that was imprinted upon them. [inaudible 00:01:41] during childhood.

So, whatever mom, dad, caregiver, whoever raised you, how they felt, fought, acted, behaved around money, imprinted upon us. When I was raised in the ’60s and ’70s. It is not different now. I’ve gotten millennials as clients and a little bit older. They all have a similar upbringing, and that is women were not taught how to be powerful with money, because we typically have been living in a not good, not bad, just is a very masculine-oriented society.

The language of money, and financials, and numbers, and being in connection with your numbers, and stocks, and real estate, all of that. If it’s not spoken in a language that women understand, because we operate very differently with money than men and process it very differently than men, not good, not bad, just different, we’re going to look cross-eyed at that. We’re going to shy away from looking at bank accounts. We’re going to shy away from having empowering money conversations, because we don’t understand our value and our worth, and that is probably 99% of all the women I coach, entrepreneurs.

That’s their challenge is that they don’t charge enough. They cave in and give discounts, and they avoid conversations around money. I go in and transform that to a whole new belief system that’s actually true to who they are prior to getting imprinted. Does it make sense?

Melinda Wittstock:

This is fascinating, because when we talk about money as opposed to men talking about money, what are the major differences? How do we see it as opposed to how they see it?

Marla Diann:

Yeah, sure. It all goes to and it weaves into another topic to that. I coach kind of collaboratively with this money topic and that is our masculine, feminine energies, if you are, the platform of masculine, feminine. Okay. Men, it’s the way they’re wired. Again, just different. They’re wired to be linear, practical, functional. They’re the giving, we’re the receiving. They’re results oriented, they’re goal setting. It’s functional, systems, it’s strategic. So, they speak in those terms where we are wired for connection, intuition, creativity, emotion, playfulness, gratitude, faith, all of those. And I call them the feminine arts. It’s how we’re wired.

So, if somebody talks to us and tries to explain, “Here’s a financial statement. Here’s stocks. Here’s numbers.” We’re going to go, “What?” It’s not a language that we are natural to. So, when I’m coaching women, I am literally acknowledging in their language how they’re feeling about money, how they feel about their self-worth. Community. Women are about community, and gathering, and giving back, if you will. Making a difference. Men do, but that’s not one of their natural traits.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, when we start businesses, do we tend to be motivated by different goals, I guess, than men? I mean, I’m picking up on what you said about men being very linear, and women being a little bit more systems oriented. Just even the business models we create can often be quite different.

Marla Diann:

Yeah. So, this is very good. Speaking about different goals, this is how I differentiate this for women. I call it my Creative Achievement Formula. Here it is. Desires plus goals equals result. And here’s the thing that’s gone on in our society, and there is a difference. Is that we only look at goals are masculine, desires are feminine. And we have not honored our desires as women. We go immediately, because the society uses the language. “What’s your goals? What’s your goals for 2022, et cetera?” But what needs to happen is women honoring first what is the desire that’s going to drive and inspire the goals to get done.

Melinda Wittstock:

Say you have a goal that you’re going to transform an industry. Say for the type of entrepreneur that I am, where I create disruptive business models that they’re hard businesses, right? I’m just going to take on the entire media industry and kind of turn that upside down. Okay. Big, big, big things. All my companies have been like that personally.

And much to my frustration, I see a lot of women holding back from that kind of swing for the fences business. But when I think of my goals, I think of like, “Why I am in business to begin with?” And it’s like to change behaviors. It’s to improve the world. The social impact mission of the company. To create a great team and a great culture. And in doing all of those things, the money flows, which it does.

Now, we do have all these kind of targets like we’re going to hit these numericals in Q1, Q2, Q3, et cetera.

Marla Diann:

Of course.

Melinda Wittstock:

But the underlying reason, I guess, can be different or different subconsciously.

Marla Diann:

It actually can be very conscious. This is good what you’re pointing out. This is what I call the masterful blend of the masculine and feminine, because we need both. We’ve got to have the strategies, the systems, the money making, the doing. But what’s going to fuel for women is their desires. And a lot of times how I define it, the desires are things that are in their heart they’ve wanted for a long time, but they’ve put it on the shelf because they’ve had to do the driving, the goal setting, et cetera.

When we don’t have the desire … So, let me give you an example. In 2017, I completely changed and transformed [inaudible 00:09:10], because I finally honored my desire to live and work here in Italy. For 20 years, Melinda, I had wanted to have a lifestyle. In fact, Frances Mayes, the author of Under the Tuscan Sun and many, many, many other books was kind of my muse. “Okay. I’m a writer. Wow. She is living in the United States and has that beautiful villa, Bramasole, in Cortana, Italy, and she lives between both places.” I go, “I want that life.”

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. I see. Our desire is this certain life that our business is going to get us. But you’re saying that we’re not focusing so much on the desire, we’re focusing on the goal to get …

Marla Diann:

Goals.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. There’s a misalignment.

Marla Diann:

That is exactly right. Our language is desire. That’s the feminine of life. Our desires, our dreams. “Oh my God, I’d love to have that type of lifestyle or that type of relationship.” Or whatever it happens to be, or that home in the hills of Tuscany. That’s a desire for women that’s going to fuel them to then, “Got it. Okay. Got to bring in this amount of revenues. Got to hit that goal. Need to do that.” There’s a missing piece in the formula for women. Because it’s all [crosstalk 00:10:42].

Melinda Wittstock:

I see. Because if you just say to a woman, “Okay. So, she’s going to build a seven figure business or an eight figure business.” And just focusing on the number, it’s not enough for her, but it would be for a man.

Marla Diann:

Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:

When we mold ourselves into the masculine language, we’re leaving part of ourselves behind.

Marla Diann:

Bingo. A huge part of that. That’s what I mean by having a masterful blend of the masculine and feminine, and know when you’re living too often, working too often in the masculine. Because what happens for women when we’re so into this “massive action” mentality, which I am so not for. I’m for inspired action, not massive action, because massive action causes us to just be focused on the masculine, getting it done, the doing, the doing.

The feminine is the receiving. The masculine is the doing, doing. And what we do is we hit burnout, because our heart shut down, our intuition shuts down. All of our natural assets of being feminine, which is our power, shuts down because we’re in our head all day long. We’re in our head all day long. Not in our heart, not in our intuition.

An opposite example of that, and again, it’s part of my Creative Achievement Formula, which is self care, number one. Self-care along the way to the goal. So, if you’ve been working two full days, three full days and realize, “Okay, I don’t think I had a lot of energy today after the third day.” It’s because you haven’t leaned back. You haven’t done self-care.

You haven’t stopped and said, “You know what? I’m going to stop right now, and I’m going to go hug my child. I’m going to go take a walk in the park. I don’t care what needs to be done right now, I need to do some self-care to fill the well back up. I need to go listen to a podcast. I need to read a positive book, meditate. I don’t care what it is.”

To help bring back into the center. Because that’s exactly what happened to me, which why I created the Creative Achievement Formula was because I hit burnout at nine years of being in the coaching industry. Nine years, it was 2017, and I was so burned out from all the masculine, the systems, and the marketing, and the funnels, and you name it. That I hit this wall and I went, “What are my dreams?” And I want to make money with joy. I want to make money and it feels hard, and it feels like a big hustle all the time.

And I hired my coach who I’ve been with for four years now. And that’s when she pulled out of me in our intensive coaching session. It was about a four-hour session. And she pulled out of me that dream about me wanting to go live and work in Italy and here. And 45 days later, because we planned the whole thing. She goes, “You’re going to Florence, Italy for a month.” I said, “What?” She says, “You’re going to go to Florence, Italy for a month. Can you leave in about a week?” I said, “No.” I said, “Well, give me some time to put it all together.” I said, “But I’ll go.”

Sure enough, 45 days later, I took off. It was the end of July 2017. And I took off for Rome in Florence, Italy and had the time of my life and completely changed everything from the inside out. I did the dream and came back and completely restructured how I operated. I restructured my business. I only did things that brought me joy. I no longer did what I was supposed to do and only chose that, which brought me joy and that which was in my genius zone.

And I streamlined everything to only do those items that also served well to my clients. That was the desire, and that’s what goes on is when we live in our masculine too much. In our head, in our linear, in our logical, get it done, make the money. We will burn out, and we will shut down, and we don’t even know it.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. I can’t tell you how many women that I’ve interviewed on this podcast that have had that experience. It’s kind of our own Shero’s Journey where somewhere in their 30s, 40s, or 50s, the burnout happens. Because we have lived that, what I call, a life of “should’s”. What you were saying, what you’re supposed to do.

And you fit yourself into this thing and you’re doing all the right things. You’re working really, really hard and you’re having success. But if there’s no joy in that, it stops you. Not only can your business not scale, but you start to lose the very reason, the very joy and the business, and that affects all aspects of the business.

And I think in that masculine doing, becoming a human doing, women often also leave themselves behind like they’re the last person. We go into service for everybody else except ourselves. That’s also part of the burnout.

Marla Diann:

Yeah, that’s it. That’s the whole point of this is I am validating and we need to support each other, all of us women. We need to validate our needs as a woman, which is self-care. Men, they’re cool with going, going, going, going. It’s okay. I have some men clients and I require them to do self-care because you know what, behind the scenes, I’m coaching some amazing creative men and they’re really burned out. I’m giving them permission just as I do my women, which is the bigger percentage of my clients.

Yes, that’s exactly the point is our society, bless the society, it’s so masculine. God forbid, we should make it okay to slow down and just receive. Be in receiving mode. Stop the doing for a half a day. Be in receiving mode, and that’s where then obviously the manifestation comes in, and universal law, and being able to see that, which you want already completed because you’re going to be in receiving mode with connection with your higher power.

Melinda Wittstock:

This is so critical, I think, to all life, whether you’re in business or not. The difference between a happy life and not. I guess in terms of the steps, is there actually really knowing what it is that you desire? I mean, because some people don’t actually know that. They’re still in that life of “should’s”. Like I’m told that I should want this house, this car, this kind of … Whatever it is for people. Or this kind of stability, or whatever it is that they’ve grown up, or they see on Instagram, they’re supposed to like. I don’t know, whatever it is. But aren’t really necessarily in touch with what’s actually in their heart, what they do actually want. Of all the people that you coach, how many people of your clients start with you and they actually really know what’s in their heart’s desire?

Marla Diann:

Most of them don’t. That’s why I created this is I learned from …

Melinda Wittstock:

How sad is that? How sad is that?

Marla Diann:

It’s sad. It’s sad.

Melinda Wittstock:

To not know at all.

Marla Diann:

It’s sad. Yeah. I learned some of this, obviously, from my coach. Thank God for her. And then I’m paying it forward, but that is correct is that every woman that I coach, because they weren’t trained, taught, talked to, it’s not talked about. It’s kind of diminished. Oh, yeah, desires. Isn’t that nice? You all get to that when. And I’m making that first and foremost.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. So, it ends up being a destination rather than just being part of the thing right from the beginning.

Marla Diann:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

If I burn out, if I do all these things, someday I’ll have this thing that I don’t even know if I want, right?

Marla Diann:

It is exactly that. Speaking to hopefully have what I want, when you use the metric of joy. The first two metrics, several of them and I touch this, is that the first two metrics to decide if something is worthy of your time and your attention is, does it bring you joy? Does it excite you? And number two, is it in your zone of genius? If it’s not a rating of five, of a rating one to five, don’t do it. Four [crosstalk 00:20:48].

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. If it has to get done, it doesn’t mean that you have to do it. This is one of the things that comes up so often where women think we have to do it all to have it all. And that’s just not true. Maybe it has to get done. Someone has to be their head in the Excel spreadsheet, someone has to be fixing links.

Marla Diann:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. And maybe those things are things that you would rather watch paint dry on a wall. That doesn’t mean that there’s somebody else in the world who loves to do that, and who is aligned on your mission for the business, that would do it better than you and free you up. Because this gets into the other thing too where women tend to hire far too late and look at team members as an expense rather than an investment.

Marla Diann:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

And hence, you get stuck in this thing. I mean, it can get done, but it doesn’t have to be done by you. I remember there was this really funny day where this was really driven home to me. I had five priorities on my list and I operate my day with an inspiration list rather than a to-do list. It generates from my morning meditation. It wasn’t always like this for me.

When I’m really 100% in practice with this, it’s miraculous. So, in this one day from my meditation, I was like, “These are the five things that I should really be focused on today.” And they sort of ordered themselves into a priority, like one, two, three, four, and five. And for whatever reason, I found myself working on priorities two, three, four and five, and they weren’t getting anywhere. Like no matter what I did, they weren’t moving. And I realized halfway through the day like, “Oh gosh, I’m not really working on priority number one.”

When I changed my attention to really focus on priority number one, miraculously, two, three, four, and five all resolved without any effort of my own. It was a profound realization like, “Oh gosh, it doesn’t have to be a result of my specific effort, or management, or anything. They just got done.”

Marla Diann:

Yep. That’s exactly right.

Melinda Wittstock:

How interesting is that, right? I mean, getting into the specifics of where women struggle to hire, say, the right people, or hire early enough, or hire even the right people. I can see how that’s linked to, say, if you’re not in touch with your dream, but even if you are in touch with your dream, if you still think somehow you need to be the one doing it, you’ll be your own roadblock.

Marla Diann:

Well, that is true. Let me say something about the delegation, what you were talking about. You don’t have to do what somebody else can. That is when I talked about the joy and the genius, meaning the two top metrics. That’s exactly a leverage formula is if it doesn’t bring you joy, if it’s not in your zone of genius, you delegate the rest to those that it is their genius.

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly.

Marla Diann:

Just like you said. This is kind of fun. It’s my acronym for ADD. Automate, delegate or delete. That’s it. You’re correct. As women, we have this thing about, “Oh no, we have to do it ourselves.” That’s the mindset. “I don’t have enough money.” Well, it’s an investment, it’s not an expense. It’s an investment. It’s going to help you make more money, because you’ll be able to spend more time on the higher payoff activities, which is your genius. Your genius is on. So, yeah, we’re on the same page with that.

I think what you’re trying to do is connect the dots between knowing your desire. Knowing your desire is going to help you bring on the right team members. Is that what you’re talking about?

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, yes. In essence, you know what you ultimately want. You know the life that you want to be living and say, “Now, you’re at the point where you actually understand what your genius actually is.” What you love to do that nobody else can do. What you love to do, but maybe somebody else could do as well, or maybe even better than you, but you still like to do it. What you hate doing, but you can do. And then what you’re really bad at doing.

I think of it sort of in a four square like that.

Melinda Wittstock:

I have an app business.

Melinda Wittstock:

But that doesn’t mean that I’m doing all the coding myself.

Marla Diann:

Correct.

Melinda Wittstock:

But I know what I need and I know the type of people I need and I know what results they to drive.

Marla Diann:

And this is something I take my clients through all the time is we identify their genius, their zone of genius. I take them through Gay Hendricks book, The Big Leap.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, I love The Big Leap. That book was fundamental to me. Read it some years back, and it’s huge, and I give it to all my team members.

Marla Diann:

Yes. It’s part of my correct with my entrepreneurs so that we can identify what their zone of genius. And I love Gay Hendricks, which is anything the guy writes. Yes. Once you are clear on what if you will lose top five talents that are in your zone of genius, it’s that much easier who you need to hire. Who are you going to hire to do the rest of the stuff? Because you should not be doing that, nor do you want to.

Between going back to those two metrics … I mean, I live and breathe by if it doesn’t bring me joy and it’s not in my zone of genius, with a few exceptions here and there. I mean, yeah, I’m going to be caught sending out whatever email or what have you. But for the most part, it’s all given to my team. That gives you clear lines to go, “Okay, I’m not supposed to do that. This is what brings me the most joy, what’s in that genius talent. My highest payoff activities, what’s comes most natural to me, what puts me into my happy place, all those things.”

Melinda Wittstock:

So, if we’re best at receiving, and yet we have to go make sales, market the business, set up the systems, hold people to account for results, all those things that do have to happen in a business.

Marla Diann:

Correct.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. It’s a very, very interesting thing, because I think a lot of people who hear that, yes, receiving, manifesting, they’re in that first stage of the law of attraction or the vision board, and affirmations, and visualizing, but don’t necessarily or aren’t able to necessarily connect that to taking action.

I’m intrigued by this massive action because you do need to be in action, but you’re saying essentially be in action on the things that are in your zone of genius and have the other things that have to be in action in the business. In other people’s zone of genius.

Marla Diann:

That’s correct. And I replaced massive action with inspired action.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes. Yeah. You’re taking the actions that are aligned with your genius.

Marla Diann:

Aligned With your genius, aligned with joy.

Melinda Wittstock:

That bring you joy.

Marla Diann:

What brings you joy, and you surround yourself with the team members that need to do the rest. Setting up your sales page and setting up your marketing for that. If you have a sales team of one, two, whatever, and/or if it’s you. Especially if you’re in the first few years of a business, it’s going to be you that’s doing the sales. Sales is one of my geniuses. I love doing it.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, this is something that I wanted to talk to you about because the way women sell is different, I think, than the way men sell.

Marla Diann:

Yeah. For sure.

Melinda Wittstock:

I’m curious about how the receiving piece comes in there, because I think we’re best when we’re essentially helping people solve their problems. When we think of sales in that way, you reset the sort of paradigm that you’re providing value to them. And the money is simply an exchange of value. Once you know that, because I think a lot of women go into sales, like someone is doing them a favor or their …

Marla Diann:

[crosstalk 00:30:55].

Melinda Wittstock:

By buying your product. You know what I mean? And right there is the nugget of not valuing yourself.

Marla Diann:

Correct. Yeah. That’s definitely all part of the money stuff, because what happens is when you … As we were talking earlier, when you transform your relationship with money, the result is you do understand your value. You do understand your worth. And as a result of that, and this is kind of my key phrase, do never allow anyone else’s money story. Everyone walks around with a money story.

When you’re in that conversation around money, as in selling, the only responsibility you have in that is serving them to make a decision and owning your worth and your value. Nothing else. Their money story, if there’s objections, et cetera, it’s usually money stuff. That’s their money story. That has no jurisdiction over your value and who you are and what you offer. Does that make sense?

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, completely.

Marla Diann:

Yeah. As you’re talking with people and you’re owning that worth and that value, because you have transformed that relationship with money, got rid of the fear, and the worry, and the doubt, and the lack, and the shame and all of that stuff around money is that you can better serve them to have them see, if you will, the transformation that they’re about to begin with you. I mean, you know this. You’re selling the transformation, you’re not selling the process.

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. I mean, so many entrepreneurs, I mean, men and women do this. Certainly in the tech or products based where, “Oh my thing, it does this, it does that. It does this, it does that. It does this, it does that.” Okay.

Marla Diann:

Yeah. Okay.

Melinda Wittstock:

Fantastic. Okay. What is the transformation? What is the gap between, say, where a potential customer is now and where they’ll be as a result of using whatever it is that you’ve created and being able to paint that picture and that transformation and be able to deliver it?

In a way, when we come at it, as we are assisting people … I think we’re so hardwired as women to serve other people, to help other people, to make other people feel happy, to make everyone else feel happy. That’s actually quite a powerful thing when applied to sales if done correctly in alignment with the feminine … What did you call it before? The feminine art or the feminine …

Marla Diann:

The feminine arts. Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. The feminine arts where we’re in alignment there. We can sell, but so many of our role models, and coaches, and all the people that we watch with successful funnels and all these million dollar launches or whatever are not necessarily doing it that way. So, we try and fit ourselves into a male paradigm there, and it doesn’t work.

Marla Diann:

That’s it. That’s exactly it.

Melinda Wittstock:

I see a lot of women doing this too. We see this all over the Internet. The guy standing next to a rented Lamborghini. You too can have this if you’re like me. They’ve had their million dollar launch, but you don’t actually know that didn’t cost them $999,000.909 to have that launch. There’s certain people out there and most of them are men, are all about the hustle and grind. You don’t get it done or whatever. And I see so many women thinking that’s the way to do it.

Marla Diann:

That’s correct. The inefficient way to help a woman succeed. That’s a man’s way. That’s not a woman’s way. Yeah. When you’re in the sales scenario, the important thing to remember is that pricing begins with your own money relationship and what you unconsciously feel that you’re worth. And the strategy, if you will, to remain firm on your pricing, as I mentioned, is knowing your worth. Knowing what you’re offering once you’ve gotten rid of all the old belief systems, if you will.

And again, helping that particular person that you’re talking with or persons in the sales scenario is that, yeah, you are there to assist them in seeing, living, closing the gap of where they are to where they want to be and what is that transformation, whatever that service happens to be.

Melinda Wittstock:

Absolutely right. I found myself doing this for a while earlier in my career in a previous business of mine that was doing basically enterprise technology sales and it was a complicated sale. It took a long time.

I found myself often just actually skipping a step and not actually asking for the sale. It was a really kind of weird thing. And one of my mentors told me that I was to go out for the next month, and just my goal was to get as many no’s as possible. Literally, that was the objective to get lots of nos. And to get a no, you would actually have to ask for the sale.

Melinda Wittstock:

And I found those no’s … I was sort of liberated. It’s like, “Oh, it’s okay to get a no? Okay. Okay, good. Okay. So, I’m just going to go get a bunch of nos.” And I was sort of like given weirdly permission to do that. And it was liberating because I started asking for the sale. I started getting lots of sales. I started getting lots of no’s turned to yeses pretty quickly.

Marla Diann:

What was it that you feel attributed to that?

Melinda Wittstock:

I think it was probably somewhere underneath on some sort of subconscious level of fear of failure, or a fear of not achieving. Like the fear of not getting the sale. I perceive it this way. It could have been something else, but was holding me back for whatever reason for actually asking.

Marla Diann:

So, what shifted to then the sales happening?

Melinda Wittstock:

Having permission to get a no. That it was okay. It wasn’t really a personal thing. It wasn’t tied to my self worth, or my self value, or whatever. That it was okay to get a no. And in fact, go out and get 100 nos. Seriously, it was a board chairman of my company. Get 100 no’s in the next week.

Marla Diann:

Yeah. That will work. There are additional sales systems. The one that I coach for my coaching business, I do and I coach. It’s the qualification and I know you know this. It’s qualifying. The time you get to a discovery call, an actual lengthy discovery call, they have qualified themself in the first couple steps.

Melinda Wittstock:

That is so vital. Because otherwise, you’re just wasting your time and then it does become demoralizing, because you’re trying to sell a product to somebody that’s just not interested or just not qualified.

You have to really know your customers. The best sales people are really great listeners, and that’s something that women are actually really good. So, when we use our intuition and our empathy, we’re able to discern that really quickly as long as we’re using those skills.

Marla Diann:

That’s right. Yeah. I look at it as relational selling versus transactional selling. Relational, as we all know, you build like a trust factor through the process of your sales system versus transactional. “Just here, go click on here. Here’s the page. Go buy.”

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, it occurs to me something else actually at the root of that is I was, I think, afraid of the no, because I wanted to be liked.

Marla Diann:

Interesting.

Melinda Wittstock:

And I think we’re acculturated as women to want to always be accepted. I think one of our deepest fears is being cast out of the tribe, or not liked, or oh my God, the B word. Or being too ambitious or being seen to be too ambitious. It’s all those sorts of things that hold us back. And often in the context with other women as well.

I’m curious about your perspective on this. When a woman is selling to a woman and the other woman also has a money story that if they believe their worth is low, they don’t necessarily want to pay the full value. I found over my lifetime, it’s easier often to sell to men. Men will pay more.

Marla Diann:

That’s a very, very good point. That is true. I mean, I will say it’s much, much easier to sell to men.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s so true. Because they don’t have all this hang up about money. It’s like, “Oh, that’s what it costs? Oh, okay.”

Marla Diann:

Yeah. 100%. We’ve built a business primarily for women. And that’s why I got certified years ago in the whole money transformation topic because of that, because of my own. I had to change my own money relationship before I could even coach it.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, yeah. This is so interesting, because we all have these deep rooted money stories and they could come from anywhere. They could have come from the television shows we watched when we were little kids. We might think that if you have a lot of money … You saw a lot of female characters on shows. The really rich ones were also really nasty, or manipulative, or bitchy. You don’t want to be seen as that person and you equate that with sales, say, for instance. That goes in your subconscious. Or your parents argued about money or money didn’t bring them happiness I don’t know, whatever the story is. Those things are so deeply embedded in us.

One of the things we talk about so often on this podcast, one of the reasons I launched the podcast is that I see a lot of women playing a small game because there’s almost not a fear of failure. It’s more like a fear of success. Because if I’m really successful, I’m making a lot of money, are other women going to like me? Are men going to be intimidated by me? Am I going to have a man? I mean, it’s literally like rooted in a lot of that stuff.

Marla Diann:

Yeah. Have you heard of the saying, the tall poppy syndrome?

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, totally. Yes. Absolutely. And it’s real. I think it’s receding. I’m in my 50s. I see that there is a difference now from before.

Actually, what it was really was a real scarcity that only a few women could succeed, so women were competing with each other for the scraps. I’m curious what you think of how prevalent that still is wired into our subconscious in business, where it prevents women from doing deals with each other, or really, really lifting each other up or helping each other.

Marla Diann:

Yeah. I think we’ve come a long way.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, I think so too. I think it is really changing. I think there’s still remnants of it, but less and less, thank God.

Marla Diann:

Yeah. Way less. That’s right. And it’s because of people like you and I, and the thousands of others of your listeners that are also coaches and such. The collective consciousness is very, very different today than it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago. Yeah. I think we’re way better about supporting each other women. I mean, look at the communities, look at your community, look at all the different communities of women. Yes. Is that it’s more prevalent that we’re in support of each other and that we are celebrating each other than …

Melinda Wittstock:

But I remember, though, selling a retreat that we do, which is associated with this podcast for women who’ve built seven, eight, nine figure businesses, some high six figure, different phases. Some of them serial entrepreneurs, having sold a business onto the next gig or whatever. And in our sales language for a little while, we were saying, “Come to this retreat. We can all play a bigger game.”

And when I use the phrase play a bigger game, I noticed in a lot of even very successful women, this look of sort of split second of dread in their eyes, because it triggered them. “Oh, if I’m playing a bigger game …” I finally came to understand this, because I started asking about it. What’s scary about a bigger game?

And at the root of it was something we were talking about earlier on this podcast is that if I’m playing bigger, it means I have to be doing more. It means that I’m going to be burning out. Right?

Marla Diann:

Yep.

Melinda Wittstock:

The missing thing was, “Yeah. What we’ve also been talking about was the leverage.” When you read statistics that only 3% of women entrepreneurs make it to seven figures, what is that thing that’s holding us back from playing, I guess for lack of better words, a bigger game?

Marla Diann:

Well, it’s that whole permission in the language and the understanding of us women. The play a bigger game, it’s masculine. It’s a masculine sentence just like massive action.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. That’s right. So, it was a masculine sentence. That’s really interesting, because it is like that.

Marla Diann:

It is.

Melinda Wittstock:

It is like that, and that’s so much my world is certainly in the technology space where we raise venture capital, which is very, very difficult for women founders to get.

For the businesses that actually qualify for venture funding, and these are businesses that stand a chance of being billion dollar companies like unicorns, highly scalable businesses, you don’t even qualify to be in the conversation unless you have that potential. Of the businesses that have that potential that are run by women, still only get 2% of the venture money.

You find yourself trying to fit into this very masculine language around venture, which you kind of have to do, but there’s a disconnect. And I’m fascinated with getting to the root of what the issue is that prevent women from playing bigger in those bigger, scalable technology companies, for instance. Why Instagram … It primarily is for women and yet it’s completely run by men, right?

Marla Diann:

Yep.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s hard because you are working in a paradigm that you did not create. Those words and phrases and how you have to behave in your investor meetings and whatnot. It’s almost demanded of you that you fit into that, but it’s hard because it’s not the way we’re wired.

Marla Diann:

That’s right. Well, it’s very hard. I know you know this, there are many seven, eight figure women that are investors and they are willing to talk to other women with businesses that they’re looking at potentially investing in. I mean, that’s kind of my immediate response to that is, “Okay, there’s other options. There’s other options.” But it is hard in especially the tech space. Oh my gosh. It’s all masculine. All masculine.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s interesting navigating that where more women are getting funded, but it’s interesting, because you see the rise of all these female run venture firms. And I swear to God, I don’t know a woman founder that’s even got a meeting with any of those. The only investors who want to talk to us are men.

Marla Diann:

Interesting.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s bizarre.

Marla Diann:

Yeah. Is that what you found?

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Marla Diann:

Interesting.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, 100% of the time. And it’s like, “Why is that?” It’s very curious. I think there are certain businesses where, yeah, it’s definitely easier for women. They’re more adaptable for exactly what you’re describing. And then there’s other ones where in the case of Podopolo, our whole interactive podcasting platform where our team is very diverse. I mean, obviously, we have a lot of men on our team in the tech space where it’s beginning to change, but applying all these principles as the CEO and founder of a company like that with a team of 22 now and all the things that we’re doing.

Being exactly as you are describing, working from inspiration, doing that as a leader, it’s allowed me to create an amazing culture. A great team and a business model that’s very friend from the way most men would approach it. But still, when it comes to the funding, you are more likely to … Just even the questions you get asked. Just very, very different. So, you find yourself having to speak the language.

Marla Diann:

Yeah. I mean, that’s just a standard. We’re never going to do away with that nor do we want to.

Melinda Wittstock:

It does come down to what you’re saying about the blend of the masculine and feminine. Being in balance with those two things. And we’re talking really about the archetypal masculine and feminine in that. So, just to define it, I think you did earlier in our conversation, the masculine linear. Like really in action, in pursuit. Go out, get the wildebeest, bring it back. The woman more in inspiration, in receiving, in intuition, in empathy. And when you combine those skills, I think you’re unbeatable.

Marla Diann:

That’s right. That’s right. There is no gender. This is not a gender category. It’s just a way to identify the two different … And I call them energies and purposes. We have to have both. It’s a must. I mean, men and their genius. Oh my gosh, the ones that are on your team, they’re doing their fabulous genius in technology. I could never do what they do. Please, keep doing it. You’re amazing. Right?

Melinda Wittstock:

What’s interesting, though, is that there’s so many women who are really amazing at coding, but they don’t fit into the culture that’s been created around it.

Marla Diann:

Oh, interesting.

Melinda Wittstock:

A lot of women really, really talented, but hit a glass ceiling there in a profound way. So, it’s really hard. I’m always looking for female coders, but it’s hard to find them.

Marla Diann:

It’s hard to find them. Wow. Okay. That’s a whole other world I am not involved in, which is technology. I use it and I respect it. Interesting.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. It is really interesting. I think even something like the internet, which is in essence, just sort of the feminine concept.

Marla Diann:

Yeah. It is. It’s about connection.

Melinda Wittstock:

Totally.

Marla Diann:

It’s about connection. It’s a feminine. In fact, when social media first came on the landscape, and that’s how I entered into coaching because I had spent 20 years as an entertainment publicist.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, okay. Oh, great.

Marla Diann:

Yeah. I was in PR. The easiest segue for me, it was a long story, but to cut it short, is the easiest way for me to segue, kind of my lowest hanging fruit type of business, because it wasn’t going to be my second business. My first one was in entertainment PR. Is to take what I was doing, which was personal branding for celebrities, and visual and performing artists, and coach entrepreneurs in 2008 when nobody knew how to do this with the exception of my managers. Entrepreneurs had to turn themselves into a brand and monetize that on social media.

I became that social media expert when no one else knew how to monetize Facebook. I was one of the early adopters. Yes, that social media. As I was teaching this like, “How do you use Facebook? And how do you monetize it?” I would talk about social media is a feminine model. That’s about connection. It’s about relationships. Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

Completely right. And yet, there’s relatively few women actually in the higher levels of innovation or founding those, those big unicorns. I’m on my path to do that. That is definitely a playing bigger kind of business for sure.

Marla Diann:

Well, I’m so glad you’re doing that. I’m so glad to …

Melinda Wittstock:

Somebody has to.

Marla Diann:

[crosstalk 00:54:46] you got to do, but I’m so glad you’re taking the lead in that. Oh my gosh.

Melinda Wittstock:

Put my hand up. I think back to a previous startup of mine and actually a venture conversation. I had built one of the first ever crowdsourcing apps and platforms that was actually in around kind of news and content creation way, way back 2010, 2011 with algorithms that would actually authenticate the validity, the relevance, and reliability of crowdsourced content. Like, “What could you trust or not?”

So, talk about real bleeding edge kind of startup, but we had 500,000 users. Bootstrapped, little bit of angel money. We had cracked the mobile UI like when Facebook was still struggling with it. I mean, we were way ahead of the game.

I remember talking to a VC who had funded an early investor into Twitter and he listened to the pitch, and everything, and all our traction, and all the people using it and everything. He said, “Well, this is great, Melinda, somebody is going to do it.” I am doing it.

Marla Diann:

Yeah. What was the statement?

Melinda Wittstock:

I was like, “Is there a reason why you wouldn’t invest in this? I mean, we’re hitting all the benchmarks. We have all the milestones, everything that would qualify us.” And he’s like, “Well, we invest based on pattern recognition.” And my first response, “Well, that’s so interesting, because we use pattern recognition algorithms in the technology”. And he’s like, “No. My point is that we invest based on pattern recognition.” I was thinking to myself, “Oh, I see. Okay. So, let’s see. I don’t fit the pattern. What is it about me?”

I went through this mental checklist of, “Well, I didn’t invent the technology in my garage because I don’t have one. I didn’t drop out of MIT or Stanford. Let’s see. I’ve been a major media executive. I’ve built teams, I’ve done all these things. I don’t eat ramen noodles, because they’re full of carbs.” I go down the checklist. “I’m not wearing a hoodie right now.”

Marla Diann:

Oh my God.

Melinda Wittstock:

“All right. Okay. I’m a woman. I see.”

Marla Diann:

Is that what he was basically saying you are a woman?

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes. Absolutely. Not the pattern, because the pattern was a 20 something drop out from MIT, Harvard, or Stanford literally in a garage.

Marla Diann:

No way.

Melinda Wittstock:

When women come into technology, generally, they come into it later in life. So, not in their 20s after having sort of attempted to disrupt or innovate within larger corporations with tremendous domain expertise. Therefore, a different understanding of an industry, and how an industry could be disrupted, and how it could innovate, and ways in which women really excel at applying technology in new ways. Whereas the VCs who are looking at it is the linear model of create a new technology rather than apply it differently in a business context.

This is an interesting thing too, with the money conversation, when you’re raising investment money. Because you’re giving them a chance to create tremendous returns. So, if someone is putting a million dollars in your company and they’re going to walk away with 100 million as a result of it, or at least 10 million, you’re actually providing them a lot of value.

But often the psychology of it is that they’re doing you a favor. If you show up with the literal begging bull in your hand, the relationship is not an equivalent one. There’s a real psychology around this. So, the money story for the woman has to be mastered in that sense, really, if there was ever a challenge of really knowing your value and the value of what you’ve created, and how much wealth you’re building for other people. As well as yourself, but for a good many others. All your investors stand to do extremely well as a result of your work, your innovation, your genius. Yes. If you want to really cure any kind of money psychology issues, just become a tech entrepreneur as a woman. It’s going to make you do it. Yeah.

Marla Diann:

That’s very interesting. It kind of takes me to the … Oh my gosh, I’ve tried to make inroads. I’ve made a little bit of inroads to the financial industry in teaching this money relationship stuff to both men and women. And the men kind of look cross-eyed at me when I’m doing like a masterclass or a webinar for financial advisors, because most of them are men. There are definitely sprinkles of women in there. And I do my best to use a language that they’re going to understand.

Marla Diann:

What I explain is, “Okay, you want your clients to listen to your financial advice.” And if they’re women, which we all know there are thousands of women that have portfolios or want to have portfolios, but don’t know how to do this. By showing them a bunch of graphs and numbers, initially, that’s going to make them kind of block out. But what will help them listen to your advice and follow your brilliance, if you will, and your expertise is to speak to them in a way that they understand. That you understand who they are as a woman and how she is in relationship with money.

So, it’s a great example. I had a financial advisor as a client. Super great guy out back East, who totally loved all this that I was teaching. He had a potential female investor client that was looking at hiring him. And he was giving me the scenario. This was in a couple of his coaching sessions and wanting to get help with how to bring her on, to sign her on. And he explained kind of her history and her habits and behaviors around money and things that she’s shared with him and he says, “How do I get her to take the leap?” And I said, “Well, she doesn’t trust you yet. She doesn’t trust you yet. You’re trying to show her, which is what he was doing, and that’s cool.” After he gains her trust is that he was trying to say, “Well, here, let’s go ahead and go through my questionnaire and let’s have you fill out what are your background and where are your investments? I mean, all the masculine.

And I said, “You’re missing the whole point. Is that she’s got a money story about not trusting men with money. And he says, “Well, how did you know that?” I said, “Because of everything you just shared with me. It’s my expertise.” I said, “What you just shared with me about her money history and the fact that she thinks she doesn’t have a lot of money when she’s got two million to invest. I says, “There’s a gap here. There’s a disconnect between her value, her worth and her trusting you because you represent what’s happened in her past. ”

It has nothing to do with your numbers, and your discovery call form, and let’s look at your portfolios that you have or where the money is. I said, “That’s all good. Have that ready when you develop the connection and are able to talk to her.” I said, “Ask her in a one-on-one conversation.

As part of that sales process, get vulnerable with her. Get vulnerable with her and ask her. So, these are the types of stories. I would tell these in the master classes with these men listening, and some of them kind of look cross-eyed. They’re like, “What? I have to talk to them about their feelings about money?” I’m like, “Yeah, that’s how women will make a decision to trust or not.”

Melinda Wittstock:

I love that you’re teaching men this because it is a two-sided thing. That’s fantastic. Marla, I realized that I could talk to you for probably hours longer. You probably have to come back on this podcast.

Marla Diann:

Oh, good.

Melinda Wittstock:

[crosstalk 01:04:55] like scratched the surface of your background. I mean, I could have gone, asked you loads of questions about PR, and social, and so many more things. But I want to make sure people know how to find you and work with you, because what you’re doing is so important for so many women. And I love this conversation. What’s the best way?

Marla Diann:

Yeah. Thank you so much. Sure. A couple things. One is, obviously, you can go to my website, which is Marla Diann. That’s D-I-A-N-N. I know you’ll have that in the show notes. There’s no E in my Diann. Marladiann.com. But what I have for all of your listeners is if you go to marladiann.com/special, it will bring you to a page that will allow you to sign up for a 30 minute, just an intro call about anything that came up for you in this podcast. To talk about.

Marla Diann:

And then I have three downloads. One is called Your Higher Earning Power. The other one is my top success books list, recommended books list. And the third one being that I work a lot with creatives of all types, not just to the arts. It’s called 10 Fun Ideas to Feed Your Creative Spirit.

Melinda Wittstock:

We’ll make sure that, that’s all in the show notes and all your ways for people to connect with you on social media and much more besides. And I’d love to extend the invitation too, to have you come on Podopolo when this episode airs and be able to take questions from our listeners there. Because Podopolo, of course, is an interactive podcasting platform.

So, when you or anybody listening to this podcast, downloads the free Podopolo app and follows Wings, you can interact with me and all of our guests there. And so, Marla, if you download it, I can add you as a guest with all your social links and all the things on Podopolo itself. If you want to be on hand, to be able to answer people’s questions or get a discussion that takes this discussion further, I invite you to do that.

Marla Diann:

Oh, thank you. I would love that. Are you kidding? I love this type of conversations.

Melinda Wittstock:

Fantastic. Well, I want to thank you so much again for all the insights and thank you for putting on your wings and flying with of us today.

Marla Diann:

Thank you so much. It was really quite an honor and a privilege to be here with you.