818 Randi Braun: Know Your Value

I encourage everyone that I work with to take a salary, even if it’s not a huge salary. It’s so important for you to value your own time. And I know that businesses need to be lean, and we need to invest back in the business, but you also need to live.

It’s like, whatever you’re asking for, you can probably ask for more. Whether you are asking for funding, whether what you’re selling and pricing is yourself and your services, always more.

I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that the pay gap is wider for women in the entrepreneurship sector.

If you combine that with some of the systemic inequities, it’s kind of a miracle that the gap isn’t bigger.

Do you know your own value? Our subconscious beliefs about our worthiness and value often cause many female founders to underprice their services, over deliver to their clients, not ask for enough funding, underpay themselves, or perhaps not pay themselves at all. We are conditioned to put others ahead of ourselves, a belief that leads to burnout and slower, smaller business growth. Randi Braun says all that must change and she’s on a mission with her executive coaching company Something Major to change the game for women in business.

MELINDA

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 the CEO and founder of Podopolo, the interactive app revolutionizing podcast discovery and discussion and making podcasting profitable for creators. I’d like to invite you to take a minute, download Podopolo from either app store, listen to the rest of this episode there, and join the conversation with your questions, perspectives, experiences, and advice … Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together.

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who has coached women around the globe and partnered with more than 50 organizations across diverse sectors, including the Fortune 500, healthcare, start-ups, Big Law, public relations, entertainment, trade associations, government, and non-profits.

Randi Braun is the CEO and Founder of Something Major, and today we talk about her “I Forbid” list, the power of silence in negotiation, and why you never lose in entrepreneurship – you either win or learn.

Randi will be here in a moment, and first,

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We all know about the corporate pay gap and glass ceiling. That’s why so many women are getting off the corporate ladder and founding their own businesses in record numbers.

Yet with all that newfound freedom to create our own destinies, it is all too easy to fall into the trap of perpetuating the pay gap for ourselves in our own businesses. I know I have, often putting others’ needs and demands on my team ahead of my own, especially in those cash flow moments you’re sweating a payroll. Sure, we’re all building our businesses and funding may be scarce. Sure, we need to invest in other to grow and scale. Yet if we’re putting ourselves last, chances are we’re slowing our growth and burning ourselves out.

Problem is we all have subconscious beliefs about money and our own value. It manifests in lots of ways beyond underpaying ourselves – we often underprice, over deliver and not ask for what we want and deserve.

Randi Braun is on a mission to change all of that. She’s an expert at empowering entrepreneurial women who have demanding jobs and bold goals. As a certified executive coach and the CEO of the women’s leadership firm, Something Major, Randi is also a sought-after thought leader and speaker. She’s been featured in The Washington Post, Forbes, and Parents Magazine.

We talk sales, negotiation, funding, selfcare – everything you need to know about how to thrive as an entrepreneur.

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Randi Braun and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

Melinda Wittstock:

Randi, welcome to Wings.

Randi Braun:

Melinda, thank you so much for having me.

Melinda Wittstock:

I’m excited to talk to you because you’re not only an entrepreneur, but you coach women entrepreneurs. What’s the biggest thing that you have learned along the way, coaching female founders?

Randi Braun:

There have been so many lessons, Melinda, but one of the things that just jumps out at me is that we take our bad habits with us everywhere we go. One of the things that I often talk about with my clients or when people are new to entrepreneurship or they’re starting a new venture is this myth that it’s going to be different. It’s going to be different. “This is going to change my life.”

And I think that, Melinda, you and I both know, the women who listen to this podcast know that entrepreneurship can be incredibly life-changing and positive for women. But I think one of the things that we forget is that we take our established habits with us when we go from venture to venture or job to job.

And my biggest piece of advice for women entrepreneurs is to spend as much time looking at your P&L and your balance sheet and things that go into running your business as you do looking into who you want to be as a leader. What are the things that are important to you about your goals, about your values, about your priorities?

Someone, Melinda, gave me a great piece of advice once. Figure out who you want to be and the doing comes with ease. And I found, for me and for the women I coach, the closer I hold to that, the more I check myself on old stories and old habits, the more that becomes possible in the businesses we all run.

Melinda Wittstock:

I love that. Because we do manifest what we’re being, and yet I see so many women just turn into human doings. And yeah, we carry all that old stuff and all that story.

I’ve just found, on my own entrepreneurial journey, at the end of the day, it’s about releasing a lot of those old beliefs or subconscious drivers that keep us from really stepping into who we want to be. So just be that person [inaudible 00:02:17].

Randi Braun:

I couldn’t agree more. Couldn’t agree more. Couldn’t agree more.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. In the coaching, I imagine a lot of people come to you and it’s like, “Hey, I want to figure out how to be a seven-figure business or an eight-figure business.” Or, “I want to raise money.” Or, “I want to do all these things.” What proportion of your work is just really working on the person?

Randi Braun:

Yeah. I don’t know if it’s an exact proportion, but it’s a lot. I think it’s more than people expect because things are so interrelated. Right?

So one of the things I think about all the time is we could talk about revenue, we could talk about forecasting and projections and growth and fundraising, but how does it impact you as the CEO, as the founder, as the entrepreneur if you have a scarcity mindset, if you’re saying yes to bad business because you’re afraid that it’s the only business that’s going to walk in the door?

And I tell my clients all the time, Melinda, I grew up professionally. Before I was an entrepreneur myself, before I started coaching other entrepreneurs, I worked for many years in business development. And if there was anything I learned as a sales leader in traditional sales organizations, it’s this, it’s bad business begets bad business.

And what I see when I work with women entrepreneurs is when we bring our perfectionism to the table or when we bring our self-doubt to the table and we start to let that inform how we write the pitch deck or how we talk to the potential investor, all of a sudden, this line between what was our mindset and who we are at work is completely blurred.

And I think, Melinda, that there’s so much potential for women entrepreneurs. Women and especially working moms are actually the fastest-growing segment in this sector. But one of the things that concerns me is that I want us to feel like we can empower women to not just be entrepreneurs but to close the pay gap because women entrepreneurs are actually paid less compared to their male colleagues and women in corporate America.

And my greatest hope for where we are right now with women and entrepreneurship is that we’re going to have more women, more diverse women, and that women are going to keep making more money in this segment.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. Well, I think the thing that happens is we’re more likely to put other people ahead of ourselves.

Randi Braun:

Oh, yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

So not pay ourselves. So if you got to do something to grow your business, you’re going to sacrifice yourself first before others. Right?

Randi Braun:

Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:

And yet if you’re trying to serve from an empty cup, there’s not much left to serve. So on that issue of pay, how should women entrepreneurs pay themselves from the very beginning of having an idea and launching a business and through to really correct that? Because it does actually come down to us in the end. We’re the ones setting our own pay.

Randi Braun:

Yeah. I encourage everyone that I work with to take a salary, even if it’s not a huge salary. It’s so important for you to value your own time. And I know that businesses need to be lean, and I know that we need to invest back in the business, but you also need to live. I think that that’s really, really important.

I always [inaudible 00:05:17] woman entrepreneur that I talk to. It’s like, whatever you’re asking for, you can probably ask for more. Right? So whether you are asking for funding, whether you maybe work in professional services and what you’re selling and pricing is yourself and your services, always more.

I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that the pay gap is wider for women in the entrepreneurship sector. There’s a lot more asking that needs to happen in this sector.

And so if you combine that with some of the systemic inequities, it’s kind of a miracle that the gap isn’t bigger. But I’m really, really hopeful that as we have a focus, especially in the fundraising space, around more diversity at the founder level, more diversity in funding channels, that people will start walking the walk and that we’ll be able to close that gap over time.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. That’s a huge thing. You find yourself underpricing your services. Is that really just tied to what we believe our own value is? Either underprice it like so many women who say, “Oh, I’m raising a million dollars” when actually, they need five or they need $10 million.

Randi Braun:

Yeah, it’s funny. And this is where you go through life and you have these experiences and you don’t realize how they’re going to have this connected through line.

Like I said earlier, I grew up professionally in sales. I led a sales team. I myself was a sales leader. And then I started my own business. And it’s incredible how many things translate from the corporate world when it comes to a sales team to the one-woman sales team that I was when I started my own shop, to some of the other women that I coach.

And I think one of the things that comes through is too often I think sometimes, Melinda, we’re so afraid of hearing “no” that we forget where we’re trying to go when we’re looking for “yes.” And so that’s a different mindset shift. It’s also something called loss aversion. It’s something I write about in my book, Melinda. And it’s something that a lot of women fall into.

It’s a mindset where we start to minimize for failure instead of maximizing for success. And so you’re going out for a million dollars saying, no, they really need five. And you’re going to basically break your back to raise that $1 million. But then if it’s not actually what you needed, what do you actually do with it?

And then you’ve diluted yourself and given away some of your equity. And I think it’s really, really important for women to get clear about what it is they want and why, and to sit with their concern, to sit with their self-doubt. This is something I talk a lot about in the book is it’s not about being free from self-doubt. It’s about figuring out how to crack the code to live with it and move forward with it.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. This is true. Well, the whole fundraising thing is really hard. You have these stats that women that actually have companies that even qualify for venture funding, in other words, they’re scalable businesses, they could be billion-dollar businesses, we only get 2% of the money. And that number hasn’t moved in more than two decades.

So for any of your female founder clients that have those sorts of businesses that qualify for venture and they need to raise funds, how do you coach them? What do they do? Because there’s so many structural things that are in the way, but we’re entrepreneurs, we’re alchemists, we got to figure out how to turn coal into diamonds. So what are the biggest mistakes being made and how can we change that game?

Randi Braun:

Yeah. I think about, if you recall a few months ago when Elon Musk was in the process of will he or won’t he buy Twitter. And all of those text messages came out that he was basically the way that I group-text, group-chat my friends on my phone about where we’re going to have drinks on Saturday night. He was like, “Should I do it? How much money do you want to throw in?”

There’s so much privilege inside that ecosystem. And I think that one of the things that we need to do is we need to create opportunities for women to thrive. And so when I think about what’s out there, a lot of times I look at some of the women who are out there who I think do this really well.

Kate [inaudible 00:09:34], Katie Dunn, Vonetta Young. These are all women who have dedicated their careers to helping other women get investment-ready and pitch-ready. And one of the things that I’m most bullish about…

What I do from a coaching perspective is I help my clients think about what are your goals? Where do you want to be? And what I’m always really thoughtful about when I’m working with an entrepreneur is, hey, do I know someone who worked in investment banking for 20 years and now their whole expertise is helping women get investment-ready and pitch-ready? I’m there to make that introduction.

Women are so powerful when we pass each other’s names along and make the introductions and open the doors. And my hope is that in that little 2% sliver, I know that stat from Morningstar hasn’t changed, that we will continue as a community to open doors with each other and for each other, and that allies will show up to the table. But we’re going to do the best that we can while we wait for people to help us open those doors.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. Yeah. We are stronger when we play together. It’s interesting what you said about that text messaging thing with Elon Musk.

And men, I think, have a much easier time just talking about money. Like, “Hey, I have this great opportunity. You want to come in? You want to do this?” It’s just easeful for them. It’s natural, whereas it’s not so much with us. We have all this weird stuff about money. And you mentioned scarcity mindset before.

So how can women get more comfortable even talking about money and really knowing their value in the same way that men just… It’s an assumption. Like, “Yeah, of course [inaudible 00:11:05].”

Randi Braun:

It’s so funny because I feel like there’s so many different parts to that question. I think that so much of it is the socialization part of it.

There’s a lot of research, Melinda, about this phenomenon called the Good Girl Curse, which is that we are raised and socialized in ways to present as a quote, unquote, “good girl,” and what’s good manners and bad manners. I don’t know how you grew up, but most people grow up that talking about money is rude or uncouth. Right?

And I think that that’s something when we know that that has stickiness for women. This has been shown by so many researchers, people like Angela Duckworth, that it has that stickiness. It sticks with us. And so there’s a part of us that needs to realize, okay, wait, this isn’t just a fault in me. This is systemic. So that awareness is really helpful. That’s number one.

Number two is sometimes, Melinda, the only way out is through. One of the best experiences of my life was growing up in my sales career, one of my jobs in my early 20s was I was working in sales for a large, publicly traded company. And I would often have to go into rooms and pitch to, basically, boardrooms of white men who were old enough to be my father.

And I’m walking in there with my suit and my wheelie bag. And it just took reps. And it was a great piece of advice I got, someone said to me, “Getting good at anything, Randi, is like learning how to fly a plane. You just have to clock a certain amount of hours to be able to graduate from being the first officer to the captain.”

And so I think that every opportunity we have to practice talking about money, talking about negotiation, owning our message, we get stronger and better every time. I think that women tend to use a lot of hedging language when they throw out pricing or throw out ideas. And I talk about this in my chapter about owning our message. We tend to make statements in the forms of questions. We tend to apologize.

Research shows, Melinda, final thought, that we’re the fastest to come in and basically bring an end to an uncomfortable silence. Well, tension is a huge part of negotiation. It’s actually a huge tool in negotiations. But that’s not the way that so many of us were socialized, and it’s not how our interactions are practiced.

And so I think we need to not just equip women with the tools, but we need to give people the grace and just normalize, hey, this honestly takes work. And it’s going to be days where you’re two steps forward, one step back, but you got to learn. It’s not a failure if you learn.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. So this is the difference between mastery and perfection. I know some women who are, oh my goodness, perfectionists to the point where they can never grow their business because they think they have to perfect everything themselves, they have to do everything themselves.

It makes it really hard to ask people to do things or accept another’s work may not be done the same way you would do it. It’s just all that kind of stuff.

I think perfectionism is our biggest enemy in a way because we’re just struggling to prove our competence by doing all the things, so we burn out. But then we can’t scale because we’re not asking other people to do it or accepting we have a hard time receiving. Yeah. So it gets in the way of growing a business as well as [inaudible 00:14:07].

Randi Braun:

Can I add to that?

Melinda Wittstock:

Go ahead.

Randi Braun:

So this is really resonating with me because… Yes, yes, yes to all of that. And one of the things, Melinda, that I talk about in the book, in the goals chapter, is this is a huge pitfall that I see women fall into, especially women entrepreneurs, especially women who are thinking about even starting their own business, is that we wait and we share our goals only when they’re perfect, only when we have the whole business case or we have the whole pitch down.

And instead, Melinda, what I always tell my clients, and it’s what I tell anyone who talks about their goals, is we have to treat our goals like a contact sport. Because the most important feedback we’re going to get from people is when we’re struggling with something.

When something’s half-baked, it is someone in your network, someone in your circle, someone [inaudible 00:14:54] who has the missing ingredient to the half-baked idea that you have in front of you. It’s the introduction, the question, the piece of advice.

And in my experience, the entrepreneurs who are willing to be vulnerable, who are willing to be collaborative, who are willing to ask for help, who are willing to have a true board of advisors, not just those who have a fiduciary responsibility on a true board, they are the ones who are able to really block and tackle on the challenges and see opportunities that just weren’t there when they were holding it all to themselves.

And I think the standard that we do it all and have all the answers is way too high. And when I look at someone like an Elon Musk or a Steve Jobs, that is the myth that they built around themselves, that they had all the answers.

But it’s a well-known fact that Elon didn’t even really write the original code at Tesla. He was just the best business person in the room. And so I think that it’s so important in this world where we have all this mythology right now around entrepreneurship and unicorns that we’re really, really thoughtful about realistic expectations for what the process looks like.

Melinda Wittstock:

This gets into the ability to actually ask for help.

And I think if your mindset is such that, “Oh my goodness, I’m already an imposter. I’m going to be busted if I don’t know the answer to this.” And so then it stops you from asking for help.

And entrepreneurship is all about just inventing things. And everybody’s journey is different. So there’s more that you will not know on your journey than you will know. And so if you don’t ask for help or you don’t co-create with your customers, or if you’re not secure enough to really do that, it really holds you back. So just getting that muscle. It’s to do a delegation and receiving, but it’s actually about asking.

Randi Braun:

And I think that it feels really scary. And I just want to normalize that because so often, Melinda, what happens is that women come to me in my coaching practice and they bring this level of shame with them. “Why has everyone else figured it out? Why does it come so easily to her? Why are they having such an easy time with it?”

And the thing is, we live in a world where we only project the successes, and we need to normalize the failures. We need to normalize the experimentation. I’m a huge believer that if you are not failing at times, you’re not reaching high enough. You’re not stretching yourself.

It’s one thing to just take a blind leap. I don’t recommend doing that, but it’s another thing to make a hypothesis and test it. And I can tell you, Melinda, this is something that I work with every single day in my own personal development.

I was just beating myself up actually last week about a decision that I made in my business. It didn’t negatively really impact anybody else except me. And Melinda, I just found myself [inaudible 00:18:22], “That was so stupid. Why did I make such a dumb mistake? How could I think this is the right choice?”

And then I remembered. It was like, “Wait.” I actually did all my due diligence at the time. I made a very thoughtful decision with the amount of information I had. I sought guidance from others. I didn’t make a bad choice, Melinda. It’s just the cookie didn’t crumble the way I predicted it was going to.

And I remembered that Nelson Mandela quote, which is, “I never lose. I either win or I learn.” And I was like, “Wait.”

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh. Right.

Randi Braun:

“I didn’t fail. I didn’t lose. I didn’t win either. But I definitely learned because I did all the due diligence and I tested the hypothesis. And why am I punishing myself for the fact that I couldn’t predict the future?”

That was just even an aha moment for me. And I think that we need to cut ourselves some more slack. And when we get into those downward spirals, just like I was in… Just because I’m a coach doesn’t mean I don’t have self-doubt.

I write about in the book extensively, my own experiences with these things. But it’s the opposite. It’s about understanding, wait, I know I feel these things. How can I get curious about them? And I think that allowing room for curiosity, whether it’s about our self-doubt or anything else that’s happening in our business, is a place where it can be hard and sticky, but we come out a lot stronger.

Melinda Wittstock:

Here’s the thing. There’s so much about entrepreneurship that you can’t control. You can control your reactions or what you choose to take away from a failure or a hypothesis that didn’t work out.

But what I loved about what you said is that you’re making decisions based on what you know at the time. And what you know at the time is going to change, and that’s the whole part of learning. And you can do your diligence, you can ask all the right people all the right questions. Often, they don’t know either. And you just don’t know. Right?

And so this whole bit of compassion for ourselves is so important. I’ve found myself doing that too because you look back on something with the knowledge you have now and say, “Oh, how could I have done that then?” But you didn’t have the knowledge that you have now then.

Randi Braun:

100%.

Melinda Wittstock:

And so all that [inaudible 00:20:49] just doesn’t work. So how do you help women through this process? Tell me a little bit about your coaching process. And obviously, you’re learning as you go because you’re an entrepreneur yourself and you’re coaching entrepreneurs. So tell me about that process for the folks you work with.

Randi Braun:

Yeah, 100%. I think that, listen, there are so many different things that go into coaching, but one of the big themes that we’ve talked about today is this idea of self-doubt or inner critic.

And it’s one of the really central things I love to work with women entrepreneurs on. Because I think a lot of us walk around with imposter syndrome, and I absolutely positively detest that term. Because when we use the word “imposter syndrome,” we are internalizing the systemic bias and the institutional issues that we face as women in business. That’s actually about our institutions. It’s not about us.

When we talk about the inner critic, we give a voice to the self-doubt that’s inside of us, and we’re able to separate it out as a data point. And so what I like to do with my clients, this is something that comes up a lot with the women entrepreneurs I work with, is to help them think about where is perfectionism, scarcity, self-doubt impacting your business, and really go deep with them on who their inner critic is and where their inner critic is driving their business.

And I’ve done this so many times with women entrepreneurs. They’re literally forecasting. And their inner critic, essentially, that voice of self-doubt is running the forecast. And that actually becomes a business problem when you can’t accurately forecast and project your own revenue.

And so what I like to do with women is to help them understand, okay, let’s look at what is a good data point and a bad data point. Because the inner critic, the voice of self-doubt, Melinda, it’s often the loudest voice in our heads.

But as women entrepreneurs, we need to make decisions based on the trend line of data, not the outlier. And when we take the one piece of feedback we got seven pitches ago that no one else has brought up since, but it really cut us deep, and we’re making all of our decisions from that place, we don’t win.

When we’ve gotten really positive feedback from customers but our inner critic is beating us up about something that we got wrong, and we make decisions from that place, that’s not good either. Because with our business brains on, we would be curious about an outlier if we saw it plotted on the graph, but we would never, as CEOs, make a decision solely based on the outlier. No.

We would look at the trend line and what Sara Blakely, the CEO of SPANX, calls the dots between the… pardon me, the data between the dots.

And so what I like to help women entrepreneurs do is think about, okay, where is the intersection between your goals, your revenue, and your mindset? And that’s just an example I think because we talked a lot about perfectionism and self-doubt about how I think the inner critic plays into this.

Of course, I did grow up professionally in sales, Melinda, so I love to talk EBITDA with any woman who’s willing to sit down and talk EBITDA with me.

Melinda Wittstock:

I’ve just come to learn that it’s everything. It’s who we’re being, as much or even more than what we’re actually doing. But seeing that, just picking that apart a minute, that intersection between your… did you say your goals, your mindset, and essentially your results? [inaudible 00:23:59]

Randi Braun:

Yeah, that’s a paraphrasing of what I said. I think you said it better than I did, so I’m going to go with that for now.

Melinda Wittstock:

Okay. But talk to me about how do people get into that intersection. Because I think sometimes people aren’t even necessarily aware of how all those pieces fit together.

Randi Braun:

Yeah. I think 100%. Listen, this is what I tell anyone who will listen to me. You know that there are two strands of DNA, you know that double helix. And for me, there are two strands that make up the DNA of a fulfilled life, and our goals is one and our values is the other.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right.

Randi Braun:

And everything flows from that. And so when we’re making decisions in our business that aren’t aligned with our goals or when we’re feeling like we have to show up in a way that isn’t aligned with our values, it’s like having a genetic disease, Melinda.

And it’s like you can treat the symptoms, you can treat how it presents, but at the end of the day, you have a genetic disorder. And so in terms of how I think about it in my coaching process, I like to get really clear with my clients from the beginning of the conversation. What are your goals?

And we do a lot of exercises early about what are your values at this point in your life and your career. And everything starts from there.

I really believe in this idea of something I call the authenticity dividend, which is when you are staying true to yourself… We don’t want to be so laser-focused that we can’t take feedback or we can’t be open to ideas.

But when you’re true to yourself, your intuition, your values, your goals, and you’re building a business from that place, you get these dividends back in the places that you least expect them. It keeps you open to meeting the people who are going to make that unexpected introduction for you.

And I also think, Melinda, that it makes us a more confident version of ourselves, that we can be more confident when we’re talking about revenue and fundraising and projections. Money is intimidating. I think money is intimidating to everybody. And I think the more that we’re able to bring a mindset of strength and clarity and authenticity…

I could train someone a million tools about negotiation, but if they self-describe as a super, super anxious, insecure person, they’re not going to use those tools as effectively. And so it’s about parallel processing, upskilling people on tactical tools.

I could get nerdy about revenue and forecasting any day of the week with you, but it’s also about empowering people to figure out who they want to be as a leader. And I always say, final thought, Melinda, on this, my job as a coach is to help you so that six months from now, I always say at the end of a coaching engagement, you don’t even need me anymore because we’ve built you a whole new set of tools that you’re able to take with you in perpetuity without taking me in perpetuity.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. I love that. I love that. Interesting what you said about intuition too, because I think when we allow our analytic minds to override that inner knowingness… I look back, and with all honesty, any kind of, quote, unquote, “mistake” that I’ve made in my business, whether I’ve hired the wrong person or something’s happened, I’ve actually really honestly known the answer.

And when I’ve allowed myself to override it, that’s where problems have manifested. And it could be just like, “Oh, okay, this client doesn’t feel right, but yeah, we’ll go with it.” Or this person [inaudible 00:27:21], there’s a niggle here, and you go with it anyway. Those kinds of things. So getting much stronger on that intuition and just daring to be who you are and true to yourself is vital.

Randi Braun:

And the one thing I would add to that too is, for me, one of the big bellwethers that something is challenging or blocking my intuition is when I hear a lot of “should” in my brain. Or as one of my clients put it to me the other day, she’s like, “I have got to stop should’ing all over myself at work.”

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes. Yes.

Randi Braun:

And “should” is usually an indication of I’m taking some kind of external data point and I’m challenging my own gut feeling on this. Listen, I think our intuition is amazing. It doesn’t mean it shouldn’t go unchecked, but it shouldn’t go trivialized either.

And I think about another client I have, Melinda, where we were working together. She’s a founder. And about three months into our coaching together, she realized, wait, she actually knew what she wanted to do all along in revising some of the pricing structure for the offerings that she had.

But it was like she felt like she had all these “should” messages. “I should be directing my energy here. I should be pursuing this goal.” And just even in the last few months of making that pivot, her business is making so much more money because she was able to unblock out the shoulds, she was able to turn up the volume on her intuition, and she was able to bring the intrinsic know-how that she has to run her business.

And I think that’s what we forget as entrepreneurs. This is your business. It’s your baby. You started it for a reason. You gave up your dental and your 401(k) and your paid vacation time. There’s something inside of you that’s driving you.

Don’t turn down the volume on that. Turn up the volume on that. Stay curious about feedback. Stay curious about other people’s insights. Do your due diligence. And remember, you are here. You chose entrepreneurship for a reason.

And it’s really powerful to tap into that because I find that’s where we get the most joy. It’s where we get a lot of unlock out of our revenue. So those are just two quick client examples to put the fine point on that, Melinda.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, Randi, you have an “I forbid” list, things women are forbidden to say. [inaudible 00:29:52]. Talk to me about that. Where are we going wrong? What are we saying that we should never ever say ever, ever again?

Randi Braun:

Oh my God, it’s so funny. I had no idea this would be so resonant with people. But yes, I have in the book 16 things that I forbid you to say at work. And I won’t run through all 16. I’ll just pull out a few highlights.

First and foremost is we have got to stop saying sorry when what we really mean is, “Hello.” “Excuse me.” “Thank you for waiting.” “Nice to see you.” “I acknowledge your presence on this line in front of me.” Okay? We have got to stop saying sorry when we don’t mean sorry.

There is no reason to say, “Sorry for the delay in my response” when you are getting back to somebody minutes, hours, or even a day or two later. Let it hang. If you really feel like you need to say something, say, “Thank you for your patience.” That’s one.

Number two is that we often phrase our ideas as questions. And when we do that, we undermine ourselves. And then I also forbid, Melinda, just one more example, using crutch words. And I see this a lot in pitches, a lot of “just, just, just” or, “actually, actually.”

And so really being aware of what your kryptonite is on your crutch words. Because the truth is, Melinda, people pick up what you put down. And when we aren’t able to own our message, we undermine other people’s confidence in our abilities.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. I see so many women doing that, just like I’ve caught myself. I’ve eliminated the word “just” and apologizing for things. The “sorry” thing is a big thing. I had to get rid of that, especially because I’m Canadian. I had to really, really get rid of that. And the “actually” or all those qualifying words.

The other thing that you mentioned before is getting comfortable with allowing silence and not feeling like you need to fill the gaps or being the social hostess or whatever.

Randi Braun:

Silence, I think… This is just something I learned in the many years that I worked in sales. I just think that silence is one of the most important negotiation tools there is.

There is nothing more important than putting out your offer or putting out your pricing and just sitting in silence and listening to the reaction. Let the other person feel the uncomfortable silence.

I’ve literally been in sales conversations in my past life where people talk themselves into buying the products on the spot, even though the first thing that came out of their mouth was the sticker shock. This is a real story.

And so it’s so important that we learn to have silence. Sometimes I even ask people to… I suggest to people, if you feel like you’re not getting a good read on someone, ask them, “How’s this landing with you?” And then just be quiet and let them answer the question.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes.

Randi Braun:

[inaudible 00:32:45] we run away with the stories in our head.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. And you want them to share their objections with you so you can deal with them.

Randi Braun:

Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:

[inaudible 00:33:00]

Randi Braun:

And I would say that not just so that you can win them over, but this is something we don’t talk about enough, so that you can disqualify a bad lead.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right.

Randi Braun:

Sometimes it’s about hearing the objections so that you can be the best objection handler you are. I could talk to you all day about objection handling.

And then sometimes it’s about… We have conversion rates for a reason. I tell everyone, it’s like if your conversion rate is 100% on something, you haven’t priced your product appropriately or you haven’t priced your service appropriately.

And so sometimes we actually need to get to the objection early so that we can disqualify someone who is not a fit for us. Because that wastes our time and costs us money too.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. This is true. We can’t be all things to all people. And this goes back to knowing your value, the value of your time. Gosh, there’s so many things. Now, you also talk a lot about self-care myths. And given that so many women leaders in entrepreneurship or corporate or whatever tend to be burnt out, what are the self-care myths?

Randi Braun:

Yeah. So I have five of them in my book. I won’t walk you through all of them. But Melinda, do I have time to tell you a story about how I became curious about these myths?

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes, of course.

Randi Braun:

Okay. I do this work for a living; women’s leadership coaching. [inaudible 00:34:23] of our interview that I believe we take our bad habits with us everywhere we go.

And one of the things that I totally lost sight of, having taken my business from part-time to full-time 100 days before the start of the pandemic, and then being locked down with two young kids and a husband who had just quit on February 2nd, 2020, his job at IBM to be the first hire at a startup was like… It was literal chaos inside our house all the time.

And I was throwing myself into work, thinking that it was just giving me so much joy, which it was. And it was really the thing that was booing me. And like so many women, I gaslit myself on how exhausted I was.

And in June 2020, I was driving my car in broad daylight in Washington, D.C. when I fell asleep at the wheel. And I crossed six lanes of traffic, including the entrance to a highway on-ramp, and screeched my brakes before hitting a pedestrian.

I don’t usually like to use this word because of the historical undertones, but I was literally hysterical. I don’t know how else to describe it. And I was like, “Wow.” I was ashamed too, Melinda, like, “God, how could I do this? Literally, how could I do this? I’m so ashamed of myself, and I should know better.”

And this is where I got really curious. I was like, “Wait, I must be telling myself a story. And how are other people telling themselves stories?” So I just started listening over the years.

And I figured out these five self-care myths that high-performing women leaders tell ourselves to keep us at distance from our self-care. And I’ll walk you through three of them. One of them is the myth of indulgence. And it’s when a woman comes to me in coaching and she’s like, “You know what? Right now we’re raising our series A. And as soon as we close this round of fundraising, then I’m going to have time to take a vacation or a self-care day. It’s just an indulgence right now that I don’t have time for.” That is the myth of indulgence, and that’s just wrong.

The second myth, and I think, Melinda, this is the one that I was under the spell of that day that I fell asleep on the wheel, is the myth of gratitude. And it sounds like this. It’s like, “You know what? I shouldn’t be complaining about how stressed I am. I should be grateful because I have this great job and I have this great family, and so many people have it harder than me.”

And Melinda, just like we know that self-care is a conduit to our performance, not an indulgence, we have to remember on this myth that we have permission to be both stressed and blessed. And then when we don’t acknowledge our exhaustion, we’re not able to actually truly live into the gratitude we feel. And instead, we bully ourselves with it.

And then the final myth that I’ll share with you, there’s five in the book, but this is the last one I’ll share here, is the myth that maintenance is self-care. And so often, Melinda, I hear from women, “You know, Randi, I actually do get my own self-care time. So I don’t know why I’m so stressed out because when I go to Target and I can buy paper towels, and I’m not taking any work calls, and I’m just listening to my favorite podcast, that’s my me time.”

And Melinda, what we need to remember is that that is not self-care. That is literally running errands and having it not suck. That’s all that is.

And when we get into that mindset that that’s our self-care, it’s like getting into our car in one of those 100-degree sweltering summer days and being like, “You know what? I’m going to treat myself to air-conditioning today.” And it’s like, Melinda, that is not a treat-yourself moment. That is literally not dying from heat stroke.

And so whether it’s our self-care or our self-doubt, I hope that we will find opportunities to level up from not dying from heat stroke to truly actually caring for ourselves.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes. Gosh, so much to think about. My goodness. Randi, you’re going to have to come back on this show because I feel like we’ve covered a lot of ground, but I could have gone in-depth into any of the things that you’re talking about. I want to make sure that people know the best way to find you and work with you and, of course, get your wonderful book.

Randi Braun:

Oh, thank you so much. Melinda, it was such a pleasure. And there are three ways that people can stay in touch with me. Number one, you can go to my website, somethingmajorcoaching.com. You can contact me there, sign up for my free newsletter, find all my social media handles, learn about the book. That’s number one, somethingmajorcoaching.com.

The second is you can find me right on social media. I am Randi (with an “I”) Braun on LinkedIn. And I’m @something_major_coaching on TikTok and Instagram. And then finally, Melinda, people can easily find my book and order it via Amazon Prime or ask your local independent bookseller, if they don’t stock it, to order a copy for you. And it’s Something Major: The New Playbook for Women at Work.

I’m so proud, Melinda, that thanks to the support of women everywhere, this book debuted as a Wall Street Journal Bestseller. There aren’t a lot of books that are written by women, for women, on that list.

And I really hope that this book will encourage other women to write more business books by women, for women. Thank you so much for your support of the book. And I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed our conversation today.

Melinda Wittstock:

Likewise. Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Randi Braun:

I look forward to doing it again soon, Melinda. Thanks again.