Turn Your Stories Into Impactful Messages: Live Signature Talks from Our Thought Leader Academy Grads with Melinda Hrynewycz, Moe Boles, and Sara Ecklein: Podcast Ep. 436

436-SYB-TLA-Grads.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

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Carol Cox:
The key to a powerful presentation isn’t just telling stories, it’s uncovering the lessons within them. You’re going to hear three of our recent Thought Leader Academy grads deliver versions of their signature talks where they do exactly this. On this episode of the Speaking Your Brand podcast. More and more women are making an impact by starting businesses, running for office, and speaking up for what matters. With my background as a TV political analyst, entrepreneur, and speaker, I interview and coach purpose driven women to shape their brands, grow their companies, and become recognized as influencers in their field. This is speaking your brand, your place to learn how to persuasively communicate your message to your audience. Hi and welcome to backstage with Speaking Your Brand. I’m your host, Carol Cox. Today, I have the honor of having three of our recent Thought Leader Academy graduates present ten minute versions of the signature talks that they worked on with us. During the past eight weeks, we’ve been helping them to identify their thought leadership message, create their signature talk and framework during that one on one VIP day that they each got, and also they were working on practicing their delivery with slides, multimedia, props and so much more. So today you’re going to hear and see a ten minute version of that signature talk. So a condensed version.

Carol Cox:
But it’s going to be a lot of fun because you’re going to get to know not only their topic but also more about them. And I think that’s really the beauty of the work that we do with all of our clients is that we really try to find the essence of why they do the work that they do, why that matters to them, why a personal story or an experience they had has shaped who they are today, and why their message is so important to the audiences that they’re presenting to. After each of the women give a ten minute version of their talk, then we’re going to have a roundtable conversation about their experience in the Thought Leader Academy and what’s next to them. Diane is saying hi in the chat. Thank you so much for being here. And if you are watching us live or on the recording, say hi. You’re welcome to ask questions along the way and also to participate. If there are any audience engagement questions that our presenters have. All right. Well, let’s go ahead and get started. First up we have Moe Boles who is at Tanner health, and she is going to talk to us about the very important work that she and Tanner are doing. Moe, welcome to the stage.

Moe Boles:
Thank you so much, Carol. I’m going to take just a few seconds to let everyone look at this big jar of jelly beans and give us your best guess as to how many are in the jar. You can jot it down or put it in the chat. Okay. Pencils down. All right. My name is mobiles, and I’m here today to talk to you about my favorite subject, women and children’s services at Tanner health. Now, for those of you who don’t know, Tanner is a non-profit health care provider in West Georgia with five hospitals and over 5000 employees. We rely on our foundation of donors to help provide supplies and equipment for our patient and our community. Now, most of us try to donate money from whatever we can gather to certain causes or organizations like churches or animal rescues or other local causes. But in today’s financial climate, this can be challenging because we don’t know what’s going to happen, and it’s hard to commit to donating money when we’re watching a global market roller coaster ride. I’d like to take a moment today to walk you through a brief tour of Tanner’s past, present, and future and paint a picture of the importance of our foundation of donors. Now, a little bit about myself. I am moguls, and I have been with Tanner for about 19 years. I’m a registered nurse, and most of my experience at Tanner was in labor and delivery.

Moe Boles:
But I’m cross-trained in all the other maternal areas, and I’ve spent some time working in accreditation services. So a good background at Tanner. And before that, I was in the business world, mostly with FAO Schwarz, for about 20 years, working on organizational leadership and operational management and things like that. So I’ve combined those two backgrounds into my role today, and I’m loving it and helping lead our women and children’s services here at Tanner. I do have a little bit of a personal interest and the role I’m in right now. About 24 years ago, my sister gave birth to a little girl, and here she is. Her name is Maddie and she was born at 28 weeks. And at that time, I wasn’t a nurse, so I didn’t know what that meant. But the doctor said that she had a grade four brain bleed, which meant that she was probably going to be deaf and blind and potentially in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. And we really didn’t know what her future was going to look like. So she spent three years in a NICU at a different hospital. Because at that time, Tanner didn’t have a NICU, and her parents lived really close to Tanner, but they had to drive almost an hour every single day for three months to get to their baby and be with her and take care of her.

Moe Boles:
And although that nursery and ICU did a fantastic job, it would have been really great to have a NICU at Tanner. If you flash forward 24 years. This is Maddie. Now, Maddie is amazing. She is a ballerina. She is a musician. She was in The Sound of Music, which is the picture you see on the left just last month. She teaches little kids how to dance, and she graduated from college this year. So had it not been for the skill of those nurses and physicians and respiratory therapists, the entire team in the NICU. I don’t know where Maddie would be right now, but I think it wouldn’t be where she is. So we’re very grateful. So going back into our past. This is a picture of what Tanner looked like when I started in 2006. We had a level one nursery so we could take care of pretty much, well, babies, but not the really sick ones and not the ones who needed that special care. Not triplets. We would have to send those people over to another hospital, about 45 to an hour away, and sometimes up to three hours away, and it was not the best situation. Just imagine if you had a newborn and you had just delivered a baby. Maybe you had a C-section, and the only way you could see that baby was to get in your car and go to a different hospital, drive through traffic.

Moe Boles:
Just a very stressful situation. So we did a great job back then with what we could do, but we didn’t have that NICU support that we needed for our community. And I remember a situation where I was a brand new nurse. I had only been a nurse for about six months in labor and delivery, and I had a very sick patient. She had preeclampsia, so her blood pressure was skyrocketing. She was at risk for seizures, which could have killed her baby. And we had to transport her to Atlanta. And I think I might have been as scared as she was. We were both trying to figure out what would be the best plan for her. Um, so we got her ready to put her on the ambulance, and I was going to go with her and monitor her and the baby on the trip over to the other hospital. And she looked up at me with tears in her eyes, and she said, am I going to be okay? And I really didn’t know how to answer her. I just looked down at her and said, I’ve got you. And tears filled her eyes and I tried to control my shaking. And we got her there and she was okay, and baby’s fine.

Moe Boles:
And she came to see me many months later and showed me the baby. So it all worked out. But I was thinking at that time, man, if Tanner had a NICU, it would be so much better for our community. And I didn’t realize it, but the leaders at Tanner were already working on that plan. So as the years went by, we were able to develop a NICU. And just about two and a half years ago, we had our five year NICU anniversary. So this is a picture of our anniversary parade. We invited all the families out who had had babies for the last five years, who graduated from our NICU, and they had a stroller, parades and decorated their strollers. And we were able to visit with those families and they were so grateful for the service we provided. Now going back to the jelly bean picture, the answer for the jelly bean number is 386. Did anybody come close to that? I don’t see. Well, if we had someone with 386, you’re correct. And you were the winner of the day. So you can feel good about yourself as you go through the rest of your afternoon. But that number represents the number of families that we were able to keep in our community in those first five years and keep them from being separated from their babies and let them just travel the short ride to our hospital to take care of them.

Moe Boles:
So that’s almost 400 families that are grateful for what we’re doing. We have a weekly meetings to discuss the people that we would like to spotlight, and a monthly magazine that goes out in the community. So this is just an example of one of those. And again, our community is just so appreciative of what we do. Now moving to our present. This is a picture of Tanner now, which is a lot different from what it was in 2006. And we continue to grow. We have a level three NICU and level three maternity services, which means we can keep more of these sicker moms and sicker babies with us. Keep them together. This is a picture of our lobby and a labor room and one of our NICU beds. So we’ve come so far and we’re so proud of the work we’re doing. If you look at the birth rates in the United States, you will see that they are declining across the country. That’s the chart on the left, but the graph on the right, those green bars, that’s West Georgia. And for some reason we’re not listening to the national rates. We just continue to grow Where birth rates are increasing every year, and we expect that to continue for the next few years.

Moe Boles:
Our NICU admissions are also increasing. Part of that is, is you may guess, our moms are getting older. People don’t want to have babies when they’re younger, so they wait until they’re in their 40s to have babies. And sometimes that creates a situation where they might need more NICU care. Last year alone, we had 20 days where we had more babies in our NICU than we could handle. We have a ten bed NICU and we had 15 babies for many of those days, so we’re trying to get creative with taking care of those. And then our smaller hospital, Billerica, usually can handle about 4 to 5 patients a day without feeling the stress. But this chart shows that we’ve had days where we had as many as 17 patients come through our very small labor and delivery unit in West Georgia in Billerica. So the growth is there. And incredibly, we are continuing with our quality initiatives and we’ve won several awards. Recently, we were named to the Newsweek Maternity Best Hospitals list. We received a designation from the Joint Commission. And just this year, we got a c CMS designation for birthing friendly for both of our maternity centers. So we are continuing to focus on quality. We also have a lot of initiatives coming up. This list is just a small list of the things we want to do, like adding music therapy for our NICU babies and adding a communication system where parents can dial in and see their babies and talk to them.

Moe Boles:
So a lot of great stuff coming up. We also have a plan to break ground on a brand new maternity women’s center in our Villarrica community, and that should happen this fall. And at that point, we hope to be able to move to a level two hospital in Villarrica. So if you’ve ever heard of the Texas A&M model of having the 12th man, that’s what I’d like to focus on right now. Texas A&M believes that the crowd is actually their 12th player, so they have 11 players on the field, and that crowd screaming and roaring actually contributes just as much as any one of those players. That’s how I see our foundation of donors. The donations we receive represent another player we’re in. They’re taking care of the families and the babies hands on. But we couldn’t do it without the assistance from our foundation of donors. So I’m asking you to be our 12th man and join in and help us take care of our community and our babies. If you’re interested in supporting Tanner and our NICU, there’s a QR code that you can scan for support. And we appreciate all of the support we get, whether it’s just emotional or financial. So thank you very much.

Carol Cox:
Fantastic, Moe. That was incredible. And I loved hearing those stories because it really does put, you know, as they say, a human face or a sense of baby face to the importance of the work that you’re doing, especially when you’re thinking about needing those donations and adding to your fundraising efforts. So we’re going to I’m going to ask you some more questions in just a little bit after Melinda and Sara go. But first let me ask, how did that feel to deliver that version?

Moe Boles:
It felt good. It it helps that we have practiced it several times, so I didn’t have to focus so much on the content. I just kind of let it flow. And it was it was pretty comfortable. So thank you.

Carol Cox:
And how did it feel to include those personal stories, especially about Maddie?

Moe Boles:
I’m proud of Maddie, and I’m proud of the fact that I have that personal connection to the work that I do. It felt good, and I think it’s an important story to tell, to let people realize that I’m not just here doing a job, and we’re not. We’re not all just showing up for a paycheck. Probably a lot of us have stories like that that we could share about people we know and relatives we have that that have been touched by this.

Carol Cox:
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we like to say here it’s speaking your brand that sharing your personal stories and especially sharing them with a lot of detail is what will connect you to your audience. It’s not the generic stories that do. It’s the more detailed, personal stories that do. Because even if someone hasn’t personally had a family member who had a baby in a NICU, they maybe had a friend who’s had one, or they’ve had someone that they’ve heard about or that they’ve known maybe in their workplace, and then they put themselves in that position as you’re telling the story. So then they have even a stronger connection to the message that you’re sharing, right? Yeah, exactly. Well, thank you again. Incredible job. And we’ll chat with you more in just a little bit.

Moe Boles:
Perfect.

Carol Cox:
Thank you. All right. Thank you so much. Next up we have Melinda Hrynewycz. And she is a health care executive. And she’s going to take us down a road that has two directions to go in. And we’re going to see which one the audience chooses. Melinda, welcome to the stage.

Melinda Hrynewycz:
Thank you. Carol, it’s an honor to be here. Today we’re going to be talking about a new way to say yes and to be brave. So at an early age, We’re asked to decide what it is we’d like to do for the rest of our lives. This expectation shapes our choices. Where we invest our time and energy. Commit our money. We pick a path. We commit to a path. But what if the best decision of your career was something that you never planned for? So a quick show of hands. Who here has ever worried about doing something the right way? What about said no to something because it scared you off of me. And what about is facing a new opportunity right now? Feel free to post in the chat too if you want to. Exactly. So if you look around, you saw at least our panel. You’re not alone. And that’s what we’re talking about today. We’re going to talk about those moments when we’re faced with a choice, big or small, and we wonder, is this right for me? Am I ready? What if it’s the wrong move? So this ladder may look familiar. Get in line. Take the next step. The perfect job is just around the corner. But the truth is, there is no right way. There is no perfect way to build a career or a life. In fact, some of the best things that I’ve done in my life have things I’ve never expected, things I didn’t plan for, and frankly, things I weren’t sure I wasn’t sure I was ready for.

Melinda Hrynewycz:
So who am I? I’m a licensed clinical therapist and I haven’t seen a patient in over a decade. Most recently, I’ve been the vice president of Patient experience and performance excellence at a healthcare system in rural West Georgia. So how did I get there? Well, three years ago, I was living in the San Francisco Bay area. I was working at a job that I really liked. I had a boss that I trusted and a life that I’d built. And then my boss, Jim, comes up to me and says, Melinda, I’m moving to Georgia. You should come. And I said hell no. Georgia. And so then Jim left, and he went to Georgia, and he would reach out periodically over text and tell me how great it was. And then I should join him in Georgia. And every time he casually reached out, I would casually say no. Um, he started asking me if I would work with some of these leaders, if I would help out a little bit and get some of his ideas off the ground. So I started meeting with some of these leaders casually, and Jim started to up the ante. He’d start to have more details in his text messages, until finally, one day he called me up with a real offer and he said, Melinda, come to Georgia, write your ticket, be a VP. What do you think? So he made me a real decision, a real offer, and I had to make a real decision.

Melinda Hrynewycz:
So I was faced with this choice. I liked California, I loved California. Was I really going to move across the country to a state I’ve actually never been to. Was I going to leave my friends? Was I going to leave my routine my whole life that I created? Um, throw another piece in that puzzle. I just started dating this amazing guy named Matt. Was I really going to either leave Matt or, gosh, consider moving across the country with this guy that I’d only been dating for three months. Uh, but the real questions, aside from those, they may seem like real questions was what if I hate it? What if Matt and I break up? What if I’m not ready for this opportunity? The gym’s offering, but it really boiled down to a single question, which was, what if I fail? And that’s a real obstacle, I think we’re not afraid of the opportunities. We’re afraid of messing up, not being perfect, of taking a step without knowing that it’s 100% the right step or worse. We’re waiting for someone else to tell us that we’re ready. So that’s why I’ve created the Brave Framework. Work. This is a way to help you evaluate choices, big or small, not based on fear or pressure, but really evaluating it on who you want to become. So today we’re just going to talk about the first three letters in Bray. That’s all we have time for. We’re going to go over boldness, reward and authenticity. However, I do have my contact information on the final slide, so if you’d like to connect after this, you can hit me up on LinkedIn or email me.

Melinda Hrynewycz:
I’m happy to talk to you about the other letters in the framework. So let’s go with B first. So B is for boldness. And boldness is really asking yourself, am I willing to explore the unknown, even if it stretches me in service of who I want to become? So being bold does not have to mean jumping out of a plane like I did here. Certainly doesn’t mean I have to jump jump out without a parachute. But in full transparency. I’m giving a thumbs up here. That’s that’s after the chute opened and I knew that I was going to live, so definitely you don’t have to jump without a chute. But it does mean are you being open to new ideas? So will this opportunity help me become more of who I want to be? Am I feeling like I could belong and thrive with this new opportunity and my dismissing it just because it’s unfamiliar? Am I really giving this opportunity a real shake? So ask yourself that, right? Um, so my example, when I started going through this real offer from Jim and I stopped saying no offhand, and I asked myself, am I just scared or is this truly wrong for me? And I realized I was scared, but it was the kind of scared that really comes with growth. So then we went to evaluate the opportunity with our next letter, which is R for reward.

Melinda Hrynewycz:
So reward can be much more than just the monetary, um that comes with that job title, um, or any sort of tangible items. For boards can be far, far richer. So when you’re evaluating the opportunity. Think about some more are letters or words. So reinventions one. Can I evolve or grow through this opportunity? I also like to think about reach by taking. This will expand my reach. While I have a chance to do more with what I want to do with my life. Could this reignite joy or passion for something that I’m excited about? And does this align with my values and belief system? So in moving to Georgia, when I looked at this through the lens of reward, I really felt like it would expand my reach. I could do more, I could influence more, I could grow more. I wasn’t just another liberal in California in a pond of people just like me. I really had a chance to stretch and grow and lead. So I want you to ask yourself this question what would not moving forward cost you? That’s another way to look at reward is the opposite Say okay. So final letter we’re going to go over today is authenticity. So does this opportunity to honor who you are or who you’re becoming. So more than just about being yourself, it’s making decisions that reflect your identity and your values. Asking does this match with what matters most to me? Do I know what I really want? Can I be myself in this space and I’m acting from my truth and not from fear? So spoiler alert I took the job.

Melinda Hrynewycz:
I moved to Georgia. I brought Matt with me. It’s going really well. Um, and we got here at the end of June, which a lot of people know is Pride Month. And so one of the first things I did in my community is I put up my, my pride flag. It’s important to me to show that I’m an ally to all. And Matt actually said to me, he’s from the South. He’s like, oh, you’re brave. Are you sure we want to be putting that up right away? Do we want to get to know people a little bit before we do that? And I said, no, absolutely. I want to put this up. So put up the pride flag. Nothing happened, which is fine every year. I’ve put it up since, but a couple of months ago one of my neighbours, who’s actually work colleague, came up to me in a director meeting and she gave me this. And if you guys can see, it’s a little rainbow bear, and this little bear who moved there meant a lot to her. She crocheted this and then gave it to me. And what she said was she saw my act of bravery. She saw my flag. She said it meant a lot to her to know that someone else would be an ally for others, because her daughter is gay. And so she wanted to make this for me as a symbol of something that I could hold on to about what I did and how that impacted her, that moment.

Melinda Hrynewycz:
That was a reward. That was the belonging. That was the authenticity. So I want you to think back and reflect on a time when you said yes to something that wasn’t authentic, and think about another time when you did feel the difference. So now I’ve got some homework for you. I want you to imagine your life if you make decisions out of that place. Not from fear, not from perfection, but out of boldness and reward and authenticity. What would that look like for you? So here’s your homework. I want you to sit down and ask yourself, who do I want to become? Make a list. Just jot down some ideas. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You haven’t figured it out by now. There is no way to be perfect, but you can do it by being brave. So full disclosure. That job I moved to Georgia for, it got eliminated two months ago. It was hard. It’s disappointing and I have no idea what is going to come next. But I do know this that I don’t regret saying yes because, yes, aligned with who I am. I chose to be brave then, and I’m choosing to be brave now with my next opportunity. And I hope that you guys will reach out to me and connect and tell me how you’re also being brave. Thank you so much for your time.

Carol Cox:
Fantastic. Melinda again. That was so well done and I and it felt so seamless and fluid. Even this ten minute version, integrating your personal story with the framework and these lessons for the audience to to take from it. How did that feel delivering it?

Melinda Hrynewycz:
Well, like Mo said, it’s a lot easier having gotten the practice several times leading up to it and having the coaching the VIP day with Diane was just phenomenal in helping me really craft the message. So when you stick in your personal stories, it’s a lot easier to just talk from the heart.

Carol Cox:
And when you had that VIP day with Diane going into it, I think you had already had an idea for your framework, right?

Melinda Hrynewycz:
Yes. So use some AI and ChatGPT to help narrow down some of my ideas. But with Diane and doing post-its really helped condense it even further and have a clear message of where I wanted to start and where I want to go.

Carol Cox:
And were you surprised That she was asking you a lot about personal stories as she was working on the board with the post-it notes.

Melinda Hrynewycz:
Well, it felt very seamless with Diane where she’s just trying to get to know you. And then before you knew it, she had this beautiful board put together where she incorporated all the different stories about how you could stick this in here and how you could stick that in there. And I love that we’ll be able to expand this talk into a 45 minute or a book or a seminar and also condense it down to these smaller talks. So it was a great opportunity working with Diane.

Carol Cox:
Oh, I love that. Yeah, she is excellent at what she does. All right. We’ll chat with you a little bit more in just a moment Melinda. So now let’s bring up our third presenter, Sara Ecklein. Welcome to the stage. Let me bring up your slides. There you go.

Sara Ecklein:
Happy to be here, Carol.

Sara Ecklein:
Melinda, I love your presentation. I took a lot out, and hopefully this kind of final presentation will kind of lead nicely into it. So, um. Legacy of love. I’m kind of changing. Turning the page and changing the topic. We’re talking about all things estate planning today. So how to plan with intention, with our identity, and really with integrity. So, do you have an estate plan? No. I’m seeing a lot of no’s. Any listeners I would love to know in the chat if you do. Um, for those that do have an estate plan, have you reviewed it within the last five years and have you communicated with your loved ones on this plan? This is a really important step, um, with your communicating with your proxies, who? The people that you named in these documents to act in the event of your incapacity and death. Um, the next piece. Have you communicated where your important documents are stored in your files? All of this kind of goes into comprehensive planning. So I want to start off with telling you a story that’s a bit unusual. At least for me, it was quite unique. Um, over the holidays, I was contacted by an attorney that I work with regularly asking me, do I have space in my in my caseload to take on additional clients? There wasn’t much information. Um, because she’s someone that I’ve worked with for many years. The answer was yes. I can make room. Um, for for this. Ask for this favor for her. Um, soon I find out that another professional, a professional trustee, was literally on her deathbed and I had two phone calls with her 30 minutes in length before she passed away.

Sara Ecklein:
So there was very little time to take on the information of the history of these cases, of these clients that she had been serving for, um, over two decades with both. And she also had, um, basically her family had to kind of pick up where she left off of sending me the actual physical files. So because of this experience, it’s just made me that much more curious of why did this happen? You know, I made some initial assumptions. You know, was she holding on to this work for money? Um, what what was this piece and why did she not have a proper plan, especially given the fact that she’s a professional doing this work? We we should know better and also do better. So it felt like kind of this deep lack of integrity. We’ll come back to Mary’s story later in the talk today. So what I find in this work is that most of us do know that we need to set up an estate plan. Um, it it might be on our to do list, but maybe we never get around to it. So why do you think we procrastinate? I don’t know if anyone in the chat can answer, but this is what I find in my, um. In my practice. This is what I usually think. We think the obstacles are right. A lack of time.

Sara Ecklein:
A lack of resources. A lack of connections. Like, who the heck do I need to work with? I have to hire an attorney. I have to name people in these documents. Who am I going to name? The more that I peel back the onion. Of why we don’t plan. I find that really what it comes down to is the denial of death that we really think that will always be in control. That there will always be a tomorrow. And, you know, as we see in Mary’s case, the story I was sharing earlier, I felt like this demonstrated exactly why we must all need to plan. And this isn’t planning isn’t only for the rich and the wealthy. It’s not only for people with children, it’s really for everyone. So hi, I’m Sarah Echlin. I’m a professional fiduciary. And what that means is I am a private trustee. I can also act as someone’s agent for both health care and financial decision making. I’ve administered over hundreds of trusts and estates. I’ve been doing this work for over a decade, and it’s an absolute honor to essentially carry out people’s final wishes. And it’s really what originally brought me to this work. So I’m going to tell you another story, and we’re going to go back in time. About 15 years ago, long before I was doing the work that I’m doing now, and I was actually working professionally as a chef, and I got the call from my partner at the time that her aunt was, um, referred to hospice.

Sara Ecklein:
And I was at the restaurant work wearing my apron, you know, prepping salad for the for the day. And I just knew that I needed to be there. So I dropped everything. We drove up, um, up north two hours. And little did I know that this would be one of the defining moments of my life and ultimately lead me to a career that I absolutely love. I describe it as a head and heart alignment for the work that I do, but I was with Lori the last three days of her life and My experience with with death in general, but also her death was everything was really stripped away. The busyness of life, the just kind of the noise and the chatter. And I was just forced into the present moment, being present to her, to her dying and also just being left with the love, the love that we share in the family. And that set my path on this trajectory where originally I thought I would be a hospice nurse. And I quickly realized, as I started going back to school, that nursing wasn’t quite the right fit. And eventually I wound up working for a professional fiduciary. And really, the rest is history. Like I said, you know, I describe it as a a head and heart alignment. And ultimately the the thread of end of life care very much goes through each and every one of my clients stories and lives, um, where ultimately carrying out final wishes is the work that I do.

Sara Ecklein:
So going back to planning, I find that there’s really three key elements that’s required. The first is intention, then identity and integrity. So today we only have time to touch upon one. And that’s going to be intention. So I find when most people come to this work you know estate planning we’re coming to to this with from a place of worry, a fear of not knowing. And what I believe is that this sets out a whole trajectory, not only for our own life, but for our family, our loved ones. And it has a ripple effect in really future generations. So coming to this work can deeply, deeply change not just our life, but those future generations. And ultimately, being connected from this place of love, of care and intention. This is where we want to be moving from. And this is really what I think can change the world. So we’re going to just briefly show you this. This is my legacy framework. Um, we’re running out of time already today. Um, if this work resonates, I would love to hear from you. You can connect with me on LinkedIn or even reach out by email. But I want to just leave you with this question. What’s the next thing that you need to take action on? Um, do you need to move from a place of just getting educated about what an estate plan is? Maybe you know enough about that, and you just need to get it done and set that date on the calendar and meet with your attorney.

Sara Ecklein:
Maybe you’ve set that that those documents up, but you haven’t done those next steps. There’s a lot of administrative work that goes along with the estate plan. After you’ve met with your attorney. And have you communicated this with your loved one? Again, going back to where we started. And then I would say, lastly, you know, this is an area that we need to tend to regularly having a yearly check in review, whether it’s looking at your estate plan documents and seeing that that plan is still makes sense, or just maybe checking in with the people that you’ve named in these documents. Are they still appropriate and able to act? So I have the Legacy of Love podcast, and it’s so much inspired by conversations like this. Um, this is absolutely what I love to do. There’s so many resources and many episodes there, from estate planning attorneys to financial advisors, and I really only bring on experts that lead from their heart, similar to my approach. And like I mentioned before, I would love to connect with you on LinkedIn if if you have any questions. And I do have a free resource, a free workbook. Um, the link is is listed right there, but it’s at my website, Trust and Honor Backslash workbook. And that’s really kind of an exercise to get clear on what what are your values, what are your wishes and what you really want to not only leave behind, but how do you want to live? Thank you.

Carol Cox:
Well done. Sara. You have such a calming presence. I can see how your clients really would really enjoy working with you. Because I can just feel that place of love that you’re coming from instead of fear and anxiety and overwhelm. So I’m sure that that’s so much of what you give to the people that you work with.

Sara Ecklein:
Oh, thanks for noticing that. Yes, that’s I feel like being present. Being calm. Um, you know, I speak to a lot that my daily meditation practice is kind of the the foundation of my life and how I can really serve and lead with heart.

Carol Cox:
How did that feel to deliver the ten minute version?

Sara Ecklein:
It was good. It was better than I thought it would go.

Carol Cox:
I know you’ve had a lot going on with your little one, so I’m so glad that you were able to make it here today.

Sara Ecklein:
Yeah.

Sara Ecklein:
I think, you know. Practice makes perfect. Perfect. Practice makes perfect. So I’ll continue to practice this. But I do think that this framework and, you know, working with you and your coaching, it’s really kind of helped where you can see where there’s so much where you don’t need to, like, memorize a script because you can you know this, right? It’s the work that I lived, the stories that I’m here to share. And that’s really, um, you know what? Where it’s important to lead from.

Carol Cox:
Exactly. Like we say, you know your stories, you know your content. It’s just a matter of putting it together in the flow so that you take the audience along the journey to get them interested and to see how this is relevant to them. And you did a beautiful job of doing that.

Sara Ecklein:
Thank you. Hopefully I didn’t lose anyone. I know estate planning can be quite dry and boring, but you know, that’s ultimately my message to is it’s that it’s really not so. Thank you.

Carol Cox:
Yeah. And let’s talk about audiences intended Attended audiences versus today. And I’m going to bring in Moe and Melinda for this. So obviously here on our LinkedIn live. And this is also going out to our YouTube channel, is that you don’t know who’s listening. It’s not your ideal target audience, you know. And I know Sara, for you, you’re mostly talking to professionals in your field. Moe. You’re talking primarily to other to people who work within Tanner health or people who are in your community. And then, Melinda, we can talk chat about your audience as well. And so, I mean, I’m going to have Moe you start me unmute you here. So I know that you recently got to deliver the pretty much the full version of this presentation to the Tanner Foundation. So tell us how that went and how did it feel now kind of repurposing it for this general audience here?

Moe Boles:
It felt really good in front of the the actual foundation, a larger group. Uh, it was a group that was at a higher level than I’m used to addressing. So I was a little extra nervous. But having gone through the sessions that we’ve had together and the sort of formula that you gave us to structure our talks around really made a difference in my confidence and my comfort level in addressing a group like that. So I was excited about it. Although that nervousness is always there. I think they call it use stress versus distress. So I had some of that use stress going on, but I think that was a good thing. And I don’t know that I would have done as well without the this personal stories that we inserted into it. I think that really made a difference. So I was I was grateful that I had that practice going into such an important talk.

Carol Cox:
And from what I heard through the grapevine, people who were there for your presentation said it was stupendous and that you were a rock star.

Moe Boles:
I got some good feedback. Yeah. Thank you.

Carol Cox:
Yes. You did. All right. Melinda. So, Melinda, tell us about who your intended audience is for your talk.

Melinda Hrynewycz:
Absolutely. I’ve been doing a lot of work with young professional women and have quite a number of mentees, and really working with Diane. We took the idea of this item that had just happened to me, and how could I use some real pain and real vulnerability to talk to a younger generation about not trying to get it perfect? So I’ve been reaching out to the local university, even my old sorority, for back in college to see if there are some groups or, um, really more the young professional women that might need to hear this message. So it’s not intended to be for my peers or the other executives, though it could be. But what I really like about it is that you taught us how we could take these different pieces of our big message, and how you could tailor it to the different audience that you might be targeting. So if I was going to talk to professionals, I might tweak it a little bit to talk about what else could they be saying yes to, to enhance the career that they’re in versus a young professional who’s so worried about, am I going to get this right? And just taking that pressure off themselves and doing something? So I love that we can tailor the talk to the different audiences that we want to speak to.

Carol Cox:
Yes. Yeah. And well done with that, Melinda here today. And then Sara, we work together in your VIP day. And as I mentioned, just a couple of minutes ago, your intended audience or other professional fiduciaries or attorneys who are in this space and do this type of work. And so that was like our that’s what we were thinking about as we were mapping out your talk. And then for here today, I said, well, this is very much a very general audience, but everyone needs an estate plan. And I felt like those things that we identified the identity, the integrity, the intention, the denial of death as the ultimate obstacle applies to everyone, whether they’re in your space or even just people like me.

Sara Ecklein:
Yeah. No, absolutely. And I think that that’s what I really appreciate about, like the framework. I can see where I can turn certain things on and off within my kind of signature talk, depending on the audience that I’m speaking with. Am I talking to just, you know, non-professionals and just a more general audience? Or am I, you know, speaking with professionals like estate planning attorneys and similar people doing this work. So, yeah. So it’ll be nice to next month. I’m, I am, um, speaking at a local fiduciary, um, chapter. And so I’ll be obviously turning on different things in my signature talk then, um, that’s more geared towards, you know, to speaking to not the general audience. So I’ll let you know how it goes.

Carol Cox:
Yes.

Carol Cox:
Please do. Well, and that is and this is what I love about this. So this is for those of you who are watching. So this is our framework. And you can see a bunch of post-it notes on here. So this ends up being about a 35 to 45 minute talk based on the number of post-its when we put it together. And then, of course, as you just heard, they condensed it into a ten minute version. But what what I find so useful about it is that just switch out the questions or just switch out some of the examples for whoever your audience is, like in Sarah. In your case, you asked us, do you have an estate plan? Has it been updated and communicated recently versus with the professional fiduciaries and attorneys you’re talking to? You would just switch the question, but ultimately the rest of it still applies.

Sara Ecklein:
Exactly. Yeah. Yep, I love that.

Carol Cox:
Yeah. Great. All right. Melinda, so let me ask you this. What do you feel like was your biggest takeaway from the eight weeks that you spent with us and the Thought Leader Academy? What are you taking with you going forward?

Melinda Hrynewycz:
Mhm.

Melinda Hrynewycz:
So you challenged us to see ourselves differently. In fact, you gave us homework to go into our LinkedIn profiles and change it to say I am a speaker. And that was a big change for me is thinking about speakers as this other thing or this other profession, instead of seeing myself as doing that already. And so again, giving myself that permission to say I am this, I can do this. And having that additional framework really gives me the confidence to go out and look for opportunities to speak, instead of maybe only saying yes when asked. So I’m going to actively go look for some speaking opportunities.

Carol Cox:
Yes, that’s one of the things we do challenge you all to do is to find speaking opportunities and to submit speaking proposals for conferences, or to reach out to local groups and organizations. One of the things that I love doing with you all is the pillars of your personal brand, because we have in here for you to think about what affiliations do you already have, whether it’s the universities you attended, sororities you were a part of, organizations that you are a part of at any time in your career, and going back to them and just letting them know, hey, I have this topic. Would you be interested in having me present to your audience on that? And that could be either in-person or virtual? All right, Sarah, let me go to you. So thinking about the Thought Leader Academy, what has been your biggest takeaway from the time that we spent together.

Sara Ecklein:
I mean, it’s very much connected to confidence. But I find that so much of what you say. Right? You are the messenger for this message of like, really feeling that and knowing that. And, you know, before I started, you know, I listened to your podcast. I heard that time and time again, but I hadn’t really connected that for myself. So I would say by the end of this journey working with you, I’m absolutely connected to that. And, um, you know that that’s where it is inspiring because it’s not just about, oh, let me book a bunch of, you know, presentations or podcast interviews. This is really about connected to the, the the message and the meaning. And ultimately I’ve been really connected to a movement and making that impact for the collective. So thank you Carol.

Carol Cox:
Oh, I love that. Especially the part of like creating this movement, this legacy of love, which is the name of your podcast too. I love that and yes, you, Each of you is the messenger that your audience is waiting for. As we like to say. Moe, what has been your biggest takeaway from the time you spent with us in the Academy? What are you taking with you as you go forward?

Moe Boles:
I think I have two takeaways. One is added confidence that I can do this. And the second part kind of feeds into that. And that is the the importance of storytelling, because I feel like I am a decent storyteller just in a casual setting, but I never saw the value of inserting my own personal and vulnerable stories into professional talks. But this has really shown light on the importance of that, and I feel like I’ll do that a lot more going forward.

Carol Cox:
Yeah, absolutely. You are a great storyteller. We’ve seen it on display during our group calls here, so I love that you’re taking that with you. And so thank you so much, Moe, Melinda and Sara for being a part of our Thought Leader Academy, for supporting each other and encouraging each other every week, as on our group calls. And I’m excited for you. You are speakers. You are thought leaders. Embrace that identity. Put that on your LinkedIn profile and go out there and deliver your very important messages and stories to your audiences, who are indeed waiting for you. For those of you who are watching and listening, if you would like to join us in our next Thought Leader Academy Group, you can get all of the details and apply as speaking your Brand Academy. Again, that’s speaking your brand academy. Until next time, thanks for listening.

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