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Stand Tall & Own It
Something shifted. You can feel it. You just can't name it yet.
Stand Tall & Own It is for women in the second half of life who are high-functioning on the outside and quietly disoriented on the inside. You built your life inside systems you trusted completely — until you realized you couldn't tell what was actually yours from what you'd just learned to navigate well.
Host Andrea Johnson doesn't offer formulas. She offers honest thinking, sharp observation, and the kind of conversation that makes you pull over and sit in your driveway.
This is where the real work starts.
Stand Tall & Own It
12. People Maximizer - Kristin Sherry
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Feedback or Questions? Send us a text!
Kristin A. Sherry is a globally recognized career expert, winner of the 2020 Career Innovator Award by Career Directors International, and creator of the YouMap career profile, which uncovers the Four Pillars of Career Fit in teens and adults, and TalentStory, a process of self-discovery for elementary-aged children. She is an international speaker and nine-time author, and Your Team Loves Mondays… Right?, selected as a Top Business Book Read by Training Magazine.
Topics discussed:
● Maximizing People [2:56]
● Understanding your own “Big Why” [7:53]
● Life is about serving others. [14:30]
● Do the work - understand your values and go from there [17:30]
● Default Principles: Purpose / Belief / Persistence / Desire or Passion / Intentional Action [22:36]
● YouMap 4 Pillars [25:15]
HOW you work
WHY you do it
WHAT you work on
WHO you are
Now what?
Productivity Habits [37:47]
Ruthless prioritization
Avoid fires and interruptions
Develop, manage and respect boundaries
● Advice for potential entrepreneurs: [45:35]
Know your Values
Get comfortable with a little risk
Be resourceful
● Looking to make a BIG CHANGE? Create a list (or a few) [47:18]
What is your ideal day? What makes you happy
What MUST you have / what are your deal breakers
What MUST you AVOID
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Books by Kristin Sherry, including YouMap, Maximize 365, Your Team Loves Mondays, Right?, and You’ve Got Gifts!
Please Understand Me: Character and Temperament Types by Kiersey and Bates
Discover YOU with YouMap
Win a FREE BOOK:
Kristin is generously giving one of her books to a lucky Intentional Optimists listener!
Will it be you?
Be the FIRST person to...
1. Snap a screenshot of this episode (Episode #12),
2. Tell us your biggest takeaway, and
3. Tag us, using #theintentionaloptimist
And we'll be in touch!
Where to find Kristin: YouTube channel; LinkedIn; Twitter; Instagram
Get involved!
Gab your FREE “Ultimate DISC communication Cheat Sheet”
Get your own DISC Assessment, and don't forget the 10% discount (code "PODCAST") at check out!
Email me at andrea@theintentionaloptimist.com so I can be your professional encourager!
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You're listening to Intentional Optimists, the podcast for unconventional leaders, where you'll find inspiration, learn to discover and develop your own strengths, and hear from inspiring women just like you who are making a difference in their community. Who knows? You just might find yourself stepping up as the next unconventional leader right where you are. I'm your host, Andrea Johnson, the original intentional optimist. Hi everybody, welcome to episode 12. In case you haven't yet figured it out, I'm a personal growth junkie. Specifically, I love personality type assessments. They all measure something different, and each one gives me one more puzzle piece to figuring out what makes me tick. The only way this is a surprise to you is if you haven't listened to at least the last two episodes of this podcast. You see, it all started back in college when I took the Myers Briggs. I've always felt like I was a square peg trying to fit into a round hole, and the companion book to that assessment, called Please Understand Me, became my favorite book. Suddenly, I understood why I didn't see things the way others did, like my parents and my sister. And I discovered language to help me communicate those differences to them. Just reading the one-page section about my own temperament provided so much validation, I cried. Now, our last two episodes were dedicated to the disc behavioral analysis, and as a certified consultant and leadership coach, this assessment is really helpful when I work with clients. But what happens when, like me, you need more than just one piece to the puzzle? Each assessment only measures one thing, like communication or skills, strengths, maybe how we process information. That's exactly what my guest and award-winning author and speaker Kristen Sherry encountered as a career development coach and consultant. So she set out to make her own. But I'm gonna let her tell you about that. Here's Kristen Sherry. Hello, Kristen, welcome. Thank you so much for having me, Andrea. I'm so excited you're here today. Um we have so many things we could discuss because you are quite an unconventional leader, and um the things that you do for uh for those of us who are looking to have personal growth be something that's one of the main things that we work on. Um, all of that is it's actually too big to put in one podcast. So today we're gonna focus down, and I've already given our listeners a brief introduction to you, but what I would love for you to do is for you to introduce yourself a little bit in ways that that you would like to uh to share with with them.
SPEAKER_00Sure, I appreciate that. And I don't have a long spiel because what I do is quite simple. My purpose is to help maximize people and help them maximize their own lives. And I do that through speaking, through writing books, and through coaching coaches. So those are the three ways I help people maximize their lives, and I do that with adults and children. Which is unusual.
SPEAKER_02Right? Um, not everybody can do adults and children. And um, so one of the things we like to look at here is how you are an unconventional leader. And we were joking before we get got started that you don't necessarily see yourself as a leader and or you hadn't in the past, and we'll get into that in just a little while. But what I'd love to know is why you do why you love helping people maximize themselves and how you kind of do the adult and child thing.
SPEAKER_00Well, I come by it honestly. My grandmother was a maximizer of people. My mother tells me a lot of stories about how my grandmother would encourage all of her nine children to really know who they were. And it's very unusual for someone born in 1912, to do that. But she would encourage all nine of her children to get an education. That didn't always have to be formal. But my grandmother was a mohawk woman from a reservation, and so it was very unusual for nine of her children, all born in the 30s and 40s, to all have college degrees and 13 degrees among the nine children. And it was because my grandmother really believed in maximizing potential. She passed that on to my mother, who did the same with me and my brother. And I seem to have inherited those same tendencies, so I do that as well. And I'm very burdened by people not realizing the unique gifts they have to bring to the world. And I feel like a lot of people go through life not unwrapping those gifts and benefiting the world with them. And that's a loss when people don't do that. And the reason I started working to help children through books and assessments for kids is because when I would talk to adults, they would say, Wow, when I was a kid, I was told these were bad things about me. And my best friends, they started to say, you know, you really need to help people sooner because they go through a lot of baggage by the time you reach them with these messages, and they're more resistant, I think, to the messages. Children tend to be a little bit more open and have that confidence, and then something happens when we go through puberty where that goes out the window. So I thought if I could reach children with this message that they have a unique contribution to bring to this world, maybe we can preserve their confidence and increase their self-awareness and have them reach those successes, whatever that means to them, because success is very personal, maybe they could reach those sooner or get on that path sooner.
SPEAKER_02You're literally telling my story. This was a destination kind of serendipitous connection. And um, the more I learned about you, I was sharing earlier that I was already following you on LinkedIn. I just hadn't really dived in very deep into seeing what you had to offer and what you were doing. And the more I did my research and the more I learned about you, more I thought, oh gosh, I really need to know this woman. And I I was joking with my with my husband. I said, I don't want this interview to turn into a coaching call, but it really could easily turn into a coaching call. Um, because the way you describe children, having this confidence and understanding, you're just kind of having this innate understanding of who they are, and then something happens. Um, sometimes it's puberty, sometimes it's the tribe that we're in. You know, it's like this is the way we do culture. And um, my story when you look on my website is exactly that. It's I was taught that women are quiet. I was taught that women um are not the leaders. I was taught that women are to be demure and to be, you know, sweet, and I'm loud and I'm I'm all that, right? And um, so it's taken me a really long time to get there. Um to and I'm still not a hundred percent there because we all are just growing all the time, right? But um, but to hear yes, you want to start with children, I'm like, yes, please do, because you know, my mission is then to help empower women, other women, to step into their own unique abilities. You know, I talk about unconventional leadership is leading in any place at any level with our unique strengths. And so I thought, man, this is a good connection. I love it. Yeah, so I think that that um that we're on the same wavelength, and it's really, really good. So tell me your big why. I heard you talk about um on another interview how one of the reasons that you've you're you're doing you're you're becoming really healthy, and one of the reasons you're doing that is because you're looking way into the future and deciding I want to be a different person in the future than I am now. And then I hear you looking back to the past saying your grandmother is this amazing example to you, which gosh, that's that gives me called chills to think that you have that legacy in your family. Yeah. Um, so is that your big what is your big why? Why do you do is it just that that she gave you that example and then you look forward?
SPEAKER_00So no, I actually have a a why behind my why. So there were two, and I don't think I've ever mentioned this on a podcast before, not not fully, but there were two events that were very significant that happened in my life when I was a teenager. The first was I switched high schools in my third year, so I was just getting ready to start my junior year, and I went to a new high school 45 minutes away from my previous high school. So I had to start over with no friends in 11th grade. Not easy. That's hard. It was not a smooth process. And at that same time, when I didn't have a core group of friends at school, I started to be bullied. And it was interestingly by an older boy who started bullying me who had a lot of emotional problems. He later reached out on Facebook, I don't know, 25 years later, to apologize as part of his 12-step process.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_00And and sought forgiveness, which I extended and we ended up becoming Facebook friends, which is really kind of a funny story. But he really made my high school years very, very unhappy. And so I went from this confident child that my grandmother instilled in my mother and then instilled in me to all of a sudden being in high school and feeling very low self-worth. I think it was a combination of not having a support system of friends. You know, I didn't want to tell my parents, my parents knew it was going on because he would call. It was before you had uh those voicemail, fancy voicemails. So you there was no call waiting. You were wired into the wall. I'm aging myself here, but uh so he would call our our phone all night long. My parents had to leave the phone off the hook to avoid the prank phone calls, so they knew something was happening. But I think going through that experience where I was being bullied, it pushed any potential friends away from me because people didn't want to get close to me because they would get embroiled in this behavior as well. So I started to have very low self-worth, and it had pretty dramatic consequences, Andrea. Number one, I decided I wasn't intelligent enough intelligent enough to go to college. I had a brother who was six years older than me who was doing his PhD when I was in high school, and that was very intimidating comparing myself to a sibling who was much older, so he was further ahead than I was. And so I decided I was just going to keep my job and that I had in high school, and I was working in a donut shop, serving coffee and donuts, and that was what I thought I was suited for. And then the second implication was because I didn't have high self-value or confidence, I made a very poor partner choice for my first marriage. Now, I don't want to disparage my former spouse on a podcast. I will say he has gone through the Celebrate Recovery program and has turned his life around and is an excellent father to our sons and is an excellent role model to the children of his wife. So, but at the time when we met, we were young. He was, I think I was 23 and he was 22. And I didn't recognize the red flags of dysfunction that I was about to get into. Um, just a very codependent relationship that was not healthy. There was no physical abuse or anything like that, but it was very emotionally unhealthy. And those experiences really set me up to make bad life decisions. So this is why I am so passionate about people having an accurate assessment of who they are and what they have to offer. And I always say this quote, and it's even on my personal website the more you know yourself, the less you rely on other people to tell you who you are.
SPEAKER_02Who is that?
SPEAKER_00Is that you? That's me.
SPEAKER_02That is a great quote because it's true, you know, when thank you for sharing that and being open because we all have experiences that are similar, you know, depending on you know where they fall in the spectrum for what's for what society deems to be big or bad or ugly or hard. We all have those kinds of things. I I have a history of bulimia and depression and um extreme obesity, and so you know, but I don't know that I was ever formally bullied, you know, it's like whatever it is, I was taught finally that I understood that I couldn't handle life on life's terms for some reason. And I needed to find a way to be able to do that and to know that you've taken, um, and I this seems to be a theme. People take the hard things that they've gone through and turn them into things that help them become strong and become their why to help other people. They make them a redeeming, a redeeming thing in their past, a redeeming thing in their future. So um that's that's pretty powerful to hear.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. I ultimately believe that all of the negative things that we go through can have a positive purpose in our life. And it may not feel like it in the moment, but you can always, you know, there's a actually a quote about that. Um, I'm trying to think what what that quote is off the top of my head. I can't recall it off the top of my head, but that you can basically repurpose your pain into serving other people. I really think that's what life is about. Life is about serving others, right? Whether that's through our abundance or whether it's through the pain, but we have to find what that call is on in our life and how we can make a difference in other people's lives.
SPEAKER_02Well, and I think that's kind of the definition of resilience, right? I mean, that's that's where it comes from, is the being able to do that. And, you know, for some of us, it's going to land in um in the spiritual realm, um, you know, where we where we fall in that spectrum. Um, for some of us, it's going to land in becoming physically or mentally well, um, all those kinds of things as as we know we're whole people. And that's we have to make sure that we have that whole approach to things.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Sometimes people will think, well, I don't have anything to offer. I don't have this story of how I overcame this traumatic abuse. It doesn't even have to be that because you have innate gifts. And that gift could just be your ability to organize so well that you help other people's lives go smoothly. I mean, it doesn't, you don't have to have some big traumatic, dramatic story. Everybody has value to offer.
SPEAKER_02Right. Um, so let's pivot here for just a real quick second and say, as you learned these things and went through these things, at what point did you realize that you actually had this to offer? So I would call this like your earliest memory of, hey, this is this is a switch for me. This is I I have this thing to offer and I want to do this.
SPEAKER_00So the first moment was in that year after high school working in a donut shop. And I'm washing uh toilet seats and mopping floors, and I had to do everything from clean the dirty toilets to to serve the coffee. And dealing with the general public every day was very eye-opening. And I thought, maybe I'm not, maybe I'm not stupid. I mean me. What do you mean? I'm not trying to disparage anyone here to say, but just Joe Public as a collective as a contrast made me realize maybe I can do more. So I decided to to go to college, and that's when I did my degree in um in the psychology department, majoring in neuroscience, and I became very interested in the brain and our thoughts and limiting beliefs and the reticular activating system where we have these default sort of thoughts processing, and I became very interested in psychology. And through that journey, I looked inward. And life is very noisy and very busy, and knowing things like your values and what's important to you isn't going to just come on a silver platter, you have to do the work. Right. And I decided to do the work to try and figure out who I was and what was important to me. And not only that, but making choices aligned to those things and proactively initiating change. And I also had another very significant moment in my life. And the funny thing is, I don't even remember whose funeral it was. I went to a funeral and I remember hearing all of the things that people were saying about the person who had passed away and thinking to myself, number one, I don't even think I could fill a room with people who would show up to my funeral, other than people who were obligated to come. I was quite young at this time. I was out of high school though. And number two, would they say these things about me? And I started to think about the legacy I wanted to leave. And I wanted people's life to be better because I was in it. And I started to shift from being this navel gazer who always dwelled on poor me or all of these things about my own life and started to focus on other people, and that's when everything changed.
SPEAKER_02I think that's when um whenever if you if you want to go to like the Bible, it says, as soon as you focus on others, that's when things get better. And every single time, like I was accused of being a navel gazer. So it's like the more you talk, there's so many things that are similar, you just realize them a lot younger than I did, um, which is exciting for me. And um, so when you have made these realizations, um you then so tell us a little bit of your story. You went to a you went to work. I know you have a history in HR, I know you did corporate coaching, you did all these things, but you also call yourself an accidental entrepreneur. So I'm interested in that story too. Of you know, you ended up doing these things for a living, and then you became this accidental entrepreneur. So, how did you do that?
SPEAKER_00So I differentiate, and I'm not saying this is right or wrong, but I differentiate being a solopreneur business owner and an entrepreneur. Yes, sure. Right. So I I started as a solopreneur, and I that wasn't necessarily accidental because autonomy isn't my number two value, and I figured out that I wanted to work for myself, but I didn't expect to create a product, an assessment tool. I didn't expect to have certification programs, like all of that stuff was completely unintended. I was simply creating something that I couldn't find in the market that I knew I needed to help people with to get help them reach their goals.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00And then other people started to ask me how they could use it, and that really necessitated creating the formal program. But it's funny because sometimes people will say, Oh, I'm trying to change careers. I really hate what I'm doing, but my career is just a mess. It's just looks like a hodgepodge of all these things. But I want people to understand what they've created is a unique talent stack. Instead of thinking that your past is just a jumbled mess, there are going to be threads of connections, patterns that maybe you can't see, that maybe someone else can help you see. But that talent stack is unique to you. The fact I at the time I felt like my career was just I was wandering in the desert. That's how I felt, just going from one thing to the next. I could see no sense in any of it. And I felt like I was always having this career identity crisis. But in hindsight, in the position where I'm living out my purpose, I needed the learning and development background, the training background to create the programs to be able to train coaches and the corporate coaching and the operations management work that I did helps me with the operations of running a business. I use everything I've done, every job I've done. And because my product, the UMAP profile, is a technology technically, you have to go online to do the assessments, and I understand the technology to be able to talk with the developer of what I'm looking for because I was a programmer at one point. So I use all of my background in my work. So think of your experiences as this talent stack that's unique to you. And what does that talent stack? Stack position you to do uniquely better than other people.
SPEAKER_02I don't even know how I don't even know how you land in a place like that if you weren't like completely and a hundred percent willing to do just what you said back in college is I decided that I was going to get better. I decided that I was going to do this. And I hear that as like it it keeps coming up in your in the way you speak. It's like I decided this and I decided that. Um, we all have some kind of a default principle that we we use in our lives. Um would you say that that's one for you?
SPEAKER_00Like I decided that you just decide things or yeah, decisive action is definitely a theme in my life. So purpose is the cornerstone. You have to have purpose and discover that, and then you have to have belief. So once you have purpose, then you you have to believe in yourself, then you have to have persistence because you can't give up, or you know, so many authors, for example, give up after writing their first book and it doesn't sell but 50 copies, and they say, Well, that was a waste of time, and they move on to something else. I didn't start to to reach any type of bestseller status until I had written three books. That's just the way it is. I mean, not with everyone. You have those rare examples where people get bestsellers from the first book, but that's not that's not usually people's experience. I mean, look at Stephen King or or people like so many rejections he needed a spike in the wall. A nail wouldn't wouldn't hold the weight of his rejection letters. So you have the belief, you have the purpose, you have the persistence, you have to have the desire. If you don't have that passion, right, then you're gonna procrastinate or focus on other things, and then you have to have that intended action, that intentional action. So those are really the five components, and that's all wrapped in a big wrapper of go big or go home. If I'm gonna do something, I'm going all in.
SPEAKER_02That's amazing. Um, so tell us about your so when you actually put these, um when you put this assessment together because you were working with people, and my understanding of your story is that you couldn't find the one product that people needed. And in order to help people understand their talent stack, you knew you needed certain components. So tell us about putting together, because it's not every day that somebody walks out into their own solopreneur career and actually ends up accidentally putting together an assessment that now has become something that people can use all over the world that you're starting to apply the principles to working with children and people are using them. I understand there's like even a special youth uh application of similar principles that you've kind of done in collaboration with somebody in United Arab Emirates and or may I I may be having the wrong exact country, but there's so much here that um you just how did you get started on the four, how did you identify the four pillars of the UMAP? And tell us a little bit about that because I want people to understand that.
SPEAKER_00Sure. So I I never wanted to be this person that created this product and said, okay, let's shoehorn people into what I've created. I I wanted the market to dictate the need. And so I interviewed people and I started to ask people about what makes you really happy at work. What do you when you think about jobs you've had, what did you love? And when you think about jobs that really just sucked your soul out of your body, like Joe versus the volcano. Yeah, what was it about those? And and I took notes. I took notes. I talked to 2,000 people. And it took a while, it took a long while to have those conversations. And I started to categorize the data into themes, and I noticed there were four things that really drove why people were fulfilled in their careers and why they weren't. It was how they work, why they work, what they work on, and who they are, which is your talent is the is the how. It sets your priorities. Your strengths really do set your priorities every day. My maximizer strength is my number one. And as a child, I would coach my friends to improve their life and reach their potential. When I met my first husband, I said, Well, if you're gonna be a line cook, why don't you become a chef? Maximizers like to help maximize people into their greatest potential, and I had no idea why I was doing that. My high school boyfriend was going to go to school for air conditioning and refrigeration to a trade school, which is fine. I saw a greater potential in him, and he is now a doctor of chiropractic and owns his own chiropractic clinic in Florida because I encouraged him to go to college. That's just it was something I just did. So I can't not do that. It sets my priorities. Exactly. Okay, exactly that I inherited from my mother and my grandmother before her. So, and my mother does have maximizer in her top five, and it's also her driving strengths because she's done the Clifton strengths. So the second thing, when people would complain about work, I would hear things like, I feel so abused and used, or I feel so disrespected. Um the thought of going to work gives me anxiety. I feel like I'm gonna have to go on out on medical leave because I'm so stressed. And it wasn't because they had too much work on their plate, it was because of the culture, the way their manager treated them, things they were asked or told to do in their role that didn't sit well with them, and that was values violations. People were having their values violated, and that's the why behind the why you work. And the third thing I found was a lot of language around energy. I'm so wiped out, I'm so exhausted, this role just drains the life out of me. And it's because people are doing skills that are burnout skills, not skills that energize them. So that's the what. What are you doing every day? That's where the rubber meets the road. And so I would say to people when you think about a great day at work and then a miserable day at work, you can have that in the same job. The difference between those days is actually what you were doing those days. Right. But people don't really sit and think about that.
SPEAKER_02And I actually helped, and I I actually use a values assessment with all of my clients because when our values are undermined, that's that's when the day just tanks immediately. It's a day breaker. Yeah, and that whole what, I actually helped with some data entry the other day, and it was like an all-day thing. I know. Um, and I literally I got heart palpitations. I told my husband, I said, This is if if somebody were gonna say, Andrea, this is what hell will be like for you, it would be like every day doing that all day long.
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh, it's so funny you said that because I always joke to my husband that hell would be for person if if if it was if hell was really like a cruel, cruel situation, it'd be tailored for each person and mine would be filling out forms all day. Anytime someone has hands me a packet and says, I just need you to fill these out, I'm like, can I pay you to do it?
SPEAKER_02And and I'm like, I just can't do the deliveral thing, you know. So it's just like, oh, you need me to help with those, really? In part it's my anxiety of getting it wrong, right? It's like if I do this wrong. Um, so anyway, so so we have the how, the why, the what, and the yeah, and the last one is the who.
SPEAKER_00So a lot of times people don't realize this, but our personality really sets our preferences, our motivations, and our needs. So my editor said something really funny in one of the children's book books. I was talking about people who have this the personality of the organizer. They like to have things in their place and be neat and organized. And I say they like to, and my editor writes me back because that's her. She says, Oh, I don't like this. I need this. This is not a like.
SPEAKER_02And and I find like we just my son is the first year of middle school, and um, we redid his room, and I like got it perfect. I am like, everything has a place, everything in its place. I could live on a boat, right? And it that's just where it comes. I don't know if that's where it comes from, but I understand that need. And so I literally walk into his room, I'm like, I need the Legos cleaned up, I need these things off the floor. Right. But he doesn't need mom, he doesn't need you can't impose your need on him, but at some point, it's my house.
SPEAKER_00I need so when we look at our work, if people have this intellectual need where they have to be challenged or where there needs to be mental rigor. I was just talking to someone yesterday and she said, I thought I wanted to be a coach, but I really, really hate it. And her her personality is social investigative, the helper and the thinker. And I said, Well, you are gravitating towards coaching because you're the helper, but do you find there's intellectual rigor in the problems you're helping your clients solve? And she said, Oh my gosh, you just nailed it. I don't feel mentally challenged. And I said, So just change up the type of coaching you're doing so that maybe you're helping people with breakthroughs. And she has learner as her driving strength. So if she keeps doing the same routine and she's not learning new things and she's not having intellectual challenge, she's really she she said, I'm gonna close my coaching practice. And I said, No, no, no, no, no, no. Let's not do that. Let's just figure out how you can put a twist in your services that you're offering so that it's really meeting those needs, those that your personality set.
SPEAKER_02And I think that's important to recognize because it doesn't just because we're not a hundred percent happy where we are, doesn't mean that we have to like quit our jobs and go do something else. It can mean that there's just a tweak. Yeah. Um, and one of the things I like about you that's really, really important to you is um accessibility of your information to anyone. And you make it very clear that you want your information to be accessible to people. Um, and so, you know, most of my listeners are not coaches, and um many of them will not necessarily do an assessment. I'm I'm an assessment geek. Like I knew my Myers Briggs when I was in high school, and I did the California and I did, you know, and I'm a disc consultant, you know. Um, but a lot of them aren't. A lot of people won't. Like my husband took it, but then his eyes glaze over when I try to tell it about, you know. So um you have the book, the U Map book, and it is designed for people to be able to walk through it on their own and to figure certain things out, correct?
SPEAKER_00Yes, yeah. So I I know that I I do not coach people, but I used to. And while I was coaching, I wrote the book and I put my entire process in the book. And the one of the beta readers said, Are you sure you want to give your entire process away? Because most books people write to entice you to continue on with them. So they give you a little, but you for the full thing you need, you need to contact them. And I said, No, my entire goal is to help people who cannot afford a coach. And you'll hear people say things like, uh, you know, it's about priority. It's just priority. Well, there are people who are really not spending anything but their basic needs. Right. Who are paying their rent, paying for food, paying for daycare, and still running out of money and don't have gas money to get to work.
SPEAKER_02Especially now.
SPEAKER_00Especially now.
SPEAKER_02Especially right now, in the middle of a pandemic when a lot of people do not have work to pay the bills.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's a very privileged position to be able to say, Oh, you know, people just aren't prioritizing coaching. It's like, no, some people really, really can't even get to work. I used to manage a team of 31 people, and I had people who called in sick because they would tell me, I don't have enough gas in my tank to make it there today.
SPEAKER_02That's reality, right? I mean, so then they don't have that. And so anyway, um, so to make things accessible, you you have the book, and um uh it is it is a book that they can read and they can figure things out to figure out what because you've used a lot of terminology, right? You've used a lot of your strengths, and um, are those kind of things in I have not actually read the book yet.
SPEAKER_00So um those things are all in the book for them to I provide alternatives. So the the values, the skills, and the personality piece are all free. But I use the Clifton strengths as part of UMAP, which I can't make free because I don't own it. It's owned by Gallup. But what I have done is in the book, I've put a reflected best self exercise that you can give to your friends to get a similar type of data for what talents are. So I do have a workaround in there for people to and then I ask them, look at what people say and the words, and then align them to the 34 strengths, and which ones do you think you have based on what because people are going to use that language. Oh, you have so much empathy. Well, empathy, empathy is a strength. Right. Well, you're you're always a learner and and you're you're really good at learning things. Well, learner is a strength. So they can look at the commonalities and pick their own strengths and still create their summary U map completely free outside of the cost of the book. And it's four dollars and ninety-nine cents, I believe, for the ebook. So Oh, okay, great. So, yeah, for five dollars, people can really take themselves through the entire coaching process. That's excellent. You know, people will say, Well, you know, people don't value free and they won't value it because it's only five a five dollar investment. But I thought, well, you know what? There are people out there who are very desperate for help that can't afford a coach. Right. And they've written me. I've had people write me from Africa who got a hold of of my book and said it's changed my life. I've received messages through my website. One my favorite was a 44-year-old man in IT who said, I'm in tears as I read through your book because he's worked in IT and IT makes you know, usually good money, right? And so he's always felt that he's had to stay in IT for that living, that standard of living that he's achieved, but he hates it. And he felt like the book released him. It showed him who he was and why he doesn't like IT and gave him permission to let it go and move on to something that would bring him joy. And he was crying tears as he wrote me the message through my website. And I just thought to myself, what a blessing to be able to, it's a privilege for me to be able to use my God-given gifts to help other people find theirs.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. Um, and as you know, and you're totally uh from this background, but when we want to grow and we want to actually have a good mindset for that, um, a lot of times we have habits and rituals that we use every day. Um, some of them are innate from our strengths, some of them are things we decide to do. Um, what is a habit or a ritual that you have that you use every day that kind of helps you stay in this mindset as you continue to grow and continue to write books and continue to grow your um your entrepreneurial journey?
SPEAKER_00I use ruthless prioritization. So I always look at what I must be doing and what I need to get done every day. And I make sure that I put it in this little electronic note and I set an intention that this is what I'm working on today. And I block the time off and I say no to everything else. I had someone message me who's done yesterday, I think it was yesterday, and she's done wonderful things for me. She opened an opportunity for me to get on the news and but I had my day set and they were very high priority things. And she said, Hey, can we jump on a call today? And I said, I would love to jump on a call with you next week. If it's really urgent, can you send me an email and I'll I'm happy to respond to it, but my day is packed. And I can do that now without feeling guilty, especially if someone's done something for me. It makes me feel guilty. But I think about, well, it's not just a no, it's what can I do instead? Could could I respond to an email when I find time? It might be 9 30 tonight, but yeah, so I really have to ruthlessly prioritize and I spend time in relationship building, strategy, planning, development, learning. I really avoid interruptions and fires. Crisis and so many times people spend their whole life, like I had a friend text me two days ago saying she was so stressed out because of work and just all of this stuff. And I said, you have to stop living in interruptions and fires, crisis and interruptions, because it's never gonna get better when you spend time in the planning and the and the strategy and the building and the relationships and the learning and all of that, it actually reduces your fires and interruptions.
SPEAKER_02Um, I there are days when I feel like I am a firefighter. Truly. I mean, I just there are, and some of it is job related and some of that you cannot avoid. You know, sometimes things just come up, but being willing to say, you know, this is a boundary issue, right? I mean, it's like you sound like you're really good at just establishing and drawing boundaries that are healthy for you and in the long run healthy for everyone else. And I find that that's something that uh I have a lot of conversations with people about are boundaries, just drawing those, being willing to draw them because we're taught. Um, we we talked earlier about life is about service, right? And so there's this two sides to the coin of, well, if life is really about service, then how do I ever say no? And um, you just you just said I just say no.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I didn't always, I I learned through a lot of pain. So one time I wrote a post on LinkedIn and it got a lot of attention, I don't know, two million views or something insane. And I got 500 messages of people asking me if I would review the resume. And I'm not a resume writer.
SPEAKER_01Oh.
SPEAKER_00And I to assuage my guilt, I said, Well, I'll pick 10 people and I'll say yes to them. So I chose 10 people, but I spent my entire weekend reviewing resumes and giving feedback. And I I thought to myself, I I can't, I can't do this. So a lot of times I will have lined up, here are people who can help you, um, here are free resources I've created, here's a person who has great free resources. I'll have a way to say no by giving them something of value. Um, but I ask people when they have trouble saying no, how many people do you know that that you view as successful and competent have no boundaries? And and how how much do you respect that? We don't we don't tend to have respect for people that have no boundaries, and is awful as that is to say it's true. The very successful people that have given quotes to my new book, for example, many of them said things like, would you show me example drafts of what you're looking for and then I'll modify it? Because they and and and I it sounds terrible to say that that's what people do, but that's what it that's what's done with a lot of the testimonials you see from busy best selling authors, the author themselves has written the testimonial and the person has modified it to their voice. Because we'll have to figure out ways of yeah. So I have realized that saying yes is actually selfish. Because if you say yes to something in a resentful way, right, that's an unkind thing to do to the person who's who needs help, who's excited about asking you to be involved in something. So I actually view it as unkind to say yes resentfully to people. The second thing is it's a little bit arrogant to think that you're the only person that can help someone. I have to save the world or who's gonna do it. Right. And the third thing is it robs other people of opportunity. So maybe someone else is meant to serve on that not nonprofit board that you really don't want to serve on. So I I look at and and I used to create so many terrible situations for myself by not having those boundaries. And my husband said to me one day, why don't you just say no to my manager at the time? And I said, I can't do that. He said, I do it all the time. And he and I said, Well, how do you do it? He said, Well, here are the things on my plate. I'd be happy to do that for you, but what's what needs to be put on pause or what needs to come off to accommodate that? And I thought, oh, that's never gonna work because my manager had Achiever as her driving strength. And she had no kids either. So, and work was her life. And I went and I did it and it worked. She said, Well, okay, those are all important, so never mind. I'll just I'll just delegate it to someone else. And she went and gave it to someone else who couldn't say no.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I manage, I do the same thing. I manage um a team and in a university setting, and they support faculty. Team members, and a lot of times it's it's like, how do I prioritize? I'm like, Well, you don't have to prioritize everything, ask them to prioritize it, right? And and when they have to prioritize it, it's amazing how things just get ordered very simply.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we I think we make things harder than they need to be.
SPEAKER_02And there's a reason for that. You know, a lot of it comes back to the confidence in ourselves, the confidence in who we are, the confidence in our skills and our own personality and our own preferences. And when we don't know what those are, then we we don't have the ability to say no, or you tell me what's important, right? You gave me these 10 things. And um it's I just I use that exact example um with my staff. Um before we wrap up things, um, normally I ask people what are some green flags? Because I'm the optimist, right? I mean, I'm intentional about it. Um, and part of that is just because I have to tell myself to be optimistic after that. Um, but normally I ask people, what are some green flags for somebody who might be interested in getting into this kind of work? However, um what you do is so super unique. And it may be that somebody else could do something like you've done. But I think if we go back and say, you left your job and decided, you know, I'm gonna honor my values, I'm going to honor my skills, I'm gonna honor these things. What are the kind of green flags that maybe you would give someone if they were looking for, uh, to say, in in honoring my values, I need to make a big change. Is that something that you could share with us?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. So I definitely think you need to look to your values because the answer lies within. My number two value is autonomy. So I knew that going out and becoming a solopreneur and then ultimately an entrepreneur was something that I really needed to do because of my desire for autonomy. I was never going to be the architect of my own career if other people were calling the shots for me. So you have to have some level of comfort with risk. And I don't mean reckless risk, I take calculated risks, but you never know when you're getting paid, when you when you're a business owner, you don't have a payday every two weeks. So you have to have some comfort with risk. I would also say that you have to be a resourceful person. If you're the type of person that always says things like, Well, I just I don't know how to do that, I don't know how to do that. If that's sort of a pattern, this is probably gonna be a stressful path because you have to believe I am capable, I am resourceful enough to figure it out, or find someone who else who knows. That's really important, right? Because there's a lot of uncharted waters.
SPEAKER_02A lot. And not always, they're not always blue oceans, right? Sometimes they're shark infested. Shark infested. My son is very into sharks right now, so I'm that's a very vivid picture in my brain. So um, so would that also sum up kind of your advice for somebody? Let's say they didn't necessarily want to do the solopreneur thing, but just like a big change. What would the advice be? Just to look at their values and and and um take stock of that in order to be able to say, I need to just make this tweak and I'm happy in this job, or I need to actually make a big change?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I I think that there's a couple of things you need to do when you're thinking about making a big change, is really thinking about what would your ideal day look like. So you can go through your past experience and list out all the things you've ever done that made you feel happy or satisfied or fulfilled and just bullet out that list. And then once you've done that, you can figure out what do I what must I have, your deal makers and your deal breakers, what must I have in my next move? So maybe I must have autonomy, I must have a short commute to work, I must have um people that I manage because I love managing people, whatever it is that you must have, and then what must you avoid, those deal breakers. You might say, I will never work in sales again, or whatever that looks like. So you want to know, you want to have a sense of what you want your day to be like, and then what you want to attract and what you want to avoid. And that'll be a lot of data for you. You can even do keyword searches online if you're looking for another position with some of the keywords from your ideal day and be open to what comes up for you. Be don't tie yourself to your industry and the job titles you've held. That talent stack that you have is transferable in so many different ways. I just interviewed a woman who landed a job at Amazon and she has a background in public health and social work, and she got tired of working in nonprofits, and now she works at Amazon and she's helping with their COVID strategy. So she's still pulling from her public health experience, but she's doing it in a corporate entity now, which is very different. So you can use your experience in lots of ways that you hadn't thought of. Show a trusted friend or mentor your list of your ideal day and your deal makers and your deal breakers. What comes up for them? What do they think? That's a good idea. Maybe identify someone. I'm never just a one-tip person, sorry. Maybe identify somebody who's achieved things. Now you won't achieve them the same way, but who's achieved things that you'd like to achieve? A role model. Yeah, a role model. And have a conversation with them. Um, it's not so much how they did it, but what are some principles that you can then extrapolate and apply to your own situation?
SPEAKER_02Um, so being able to do this a lot of times means that we have to increase our knowledge. And we talked about your book, and you shared with me earlier that one of the things you like to do is actually do a free book giveaway. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_00So I think of the books that I have, that the ones that might be most interesting. So the first one is called Maximize 365, a year of actionable tips to transform your life. And it's literally 365 tips in the area of finances, spirituality, career relationships, and health and wellness. So the idea is you you read this encouraging quote, you read this little blurb about this topic, and then there's a practical tip that you can start doing immediately to start getting progress in that area. And the beta readers said, I feel my life improving just reading the book, not even doing the tips. So that's one book I'm willing to happily give away. You'll get it before it even releases. I have copies, but it doesn't release till February 18th. Um, my second book is UMAP, of course, to help you uncover your four pillars, your strengths, values, preferred skills, and personality. I'm happy to give a copy of that away. I actually have a bunch of copies I just got from my publisher of You've Got Gifts, which is for elementary students from K to fifth grade, to help them uncover their talents. And it goes through uh through a magical story, but also there's an exercise at the end for them to uncover what their actual strengths are, which is pretty cool. So I have that one. And then I also have a book called Your Team Loves Mondays, right? And that's a book for people leaders, just in case.
SPEAKER_02That's great. So what we'll do is we will in when I when we do the outro for the show, um, what we'll do is we'll share exactly how um one of our special listeners will get to uh earn this free book and they'll get to choose. Yeah, they can choose whichever one of those four they like. Okay, great. And so we know that I I know that you are all over LinkedIn. So where can we find you? Um we're gonna share in the show notes your UMAP, um, your LinkedIn, that kind of stuff. But where's the best way, just in case people don't want to go to the show notes?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think probably the best way is to reach me on LinkedIn. I'm the Kristen Sherry with uh two I's in Kristen, no E. Uh I'm in Charlotte, North Carolina, um, because there's a bunch of Kristen Sherries on LinkedIn.
unknownReally?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. There's seven in North Carolina alone, but so uh I think I'm the only one in Charlotte, though.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00Or you can you can reach me at my umap.com, either way.
SPEAKER_02Okay. And we'll definitely put all of those links in the show notes. And the one thing we like to do prior to uh closing everything down is I like to ask everybody, what is the one thing that you can be optimistic about, even when everybody else thinks you're crazy? And it doesn't need to be serious, it doesn't need to be some kind of big universal truth, but what is that one thing that you can be optimistic about, Kristen?
SPEAKER_00That when you lean into what you do best and other people that other people need most, that magic will happen. So even if people are saying, oh, you can't do that, there's an 80% failure rate, nobody makes any money that way, when people are naysaying, know that when you discover what you do best and who needs it most, you will shine when you move into that place.
SPEAKER_02Oh, and that is a big universal truth. That's a good one. And I love that word magic because it a lot of times it's not two plus two equals four, right? It's like two plus two equals like ten when you when you get the right things together. So, oh, that's a really good one. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for sharing your story and your insights and all of the wonderful things that you have. So we're gonna share all this stuff in the show notes so people will be able to find you. Um so again, thank you so much for being here.
SPEAKER_00It was an absolute pleasure to spend this time with you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. All right, now did you take notes? I did, and I still needed help pulling all that information together. I'm struck by how well Kristen knows herself. Her work to help others figure out their careers enabled her to realize what she should and should not be doing. I mean, why do things you're good at but wear you out? And why do things you're not good at just to get better at them? Kristen honed in on her strength of being a maximizer and has become a people maximizer. She shared her overall guiding principle of go big or go home, which encompasses things like knowing your purpose and having belief, persisting and tapping into your desires and passions and then taking really intentional action. This principle has guided her from the day she decided to change her own future right into where she is now, helping the rest of us shape ours. Like several of my guests, Kristen didn't set out to be a leader in this space. Sometimes true leaders are revealed when they see a need and fill it. That's part of what it means to be unconventional. She recognized that all of her seemingly unrelated experience has perfectly equipped her to do exactly what she needs to be doing right now. And if you're unhappy in your current career or maybe you're potentially interested in working for yourself, Kristen had some great advice, including figuring out what you want your day to be like and maybe what you'd like to attract or avoid, then do some looking and be open to what comes up for you. But don't tie yourself down to the career or industry where your background is. That talent stack that you have is transferable in so many different ways. As we do with all our guests, let's look at how Kristen embodies the tenets of intentional optimism. First, she's optimistic. She helps others see the possibilities in themselves by revealing what they didn't even know was there. She courageously shared stories of her own resilience in the face of bullying, and she shares her vision with others so that they can see a different future. Kristen's definitely energetic, and she's invested in creating new and better in just about anything. I mean, that's part of being a maximizer. She uplifts others and is dedicated to good health and believes so strongly in the value of people that she's dedicating her life to helping others succeed. Kristen is wise. She's created an entire assessment to help others see all the sides of themselves in order to build their own confidence and further their career. As a people maximizer, she is dedicated to encouraging everyone she meets and helping them see how their talents all stack up as their unique skill set. And she's intentional. She knows herself well, has capitalized on her strengths, and is ruthless in her prioritization each day so that she meets her deadlines and goals. Then she takes intentional action on things that are aligned with her values and purpose. But I see Kristen as really present. She tapped into her curiosity to find the who, what, when, why, and how, developing an award-winning comprehensive career assessment tool for adults, teens, and now children. She's generous with her time and expertise, even encouraging new podcasters like me, and giving away copies of her books. She donates time and resources to those who can't afford them, and invests energy into empowering teenagers to develop real career paths in the Middle East. Here's the interesting thing. When we first met, and she listened to my episode on the importance of being present, she commented, I need this. Being present is my biggest struggle. Huh. It's all in the perspective, isn't it? Even this highlights how Kristen is unconventional in her leadership. Her passion for people to have an accurate assessment of who they are and what they have to offer, maximizing others, stems from her core values of serving. And now she's positioned as a role model to adults, teens, and children of how to overcome adversity, figure out how to help others, and then pursue that mission with tenacity. Kristen is clearly dedicated to personal growth, first figuring out her own strengths and skills while she helps others do the same. Now, if you've been paying attention, you know that Kristen is generously giving away one of her books to one attentive, intentional optimist listener. See? Generosity and dedication to helping others grow. The books that you can choose from are, one, a pre-release copy of Maximize 365, a year of actionable tips to transform your life. Or UMAP. You could even map out your own four pillars. Now if you're a teacher or have children you'd like to help grow, maybe you'd like a copy of You've Got Gifts to help kids K through fifth grade uncover their talents and strengths. But if you're a people leader, you might want a copy of your team loves Mondays, right? Now if you'd like to pick your free copy of one of these books, you need to be the first person to do these things. One, snap a screenshot of this episode, number 12. Two, tell us your biggest takeaway, and three, tag us using hashtag the intentional optimist, and we'll be in touch. Remember, unconventional leaders lead at every level, in any area, using their unique gifts. And Kristen embodies that to a T. She's dedicated her life to helping others celebrate their own unique gifts and empower them to step into whatever role they seek to fill. Her frustration with the limited set of tools she could use to help others spurred her on to create a tool of her own. So maybe you've identified a gap that your unique talent stack could fill. If so, step up! The world is waiting. The principles of intentional optimism and unconventional leadership are traits that you can develop, should you choose to. Now you can find Kristen on all the major platforms and we've listed each of them in the show notes. If you like what you're hearing, make sure you subscribe to this podcast. That way you'll catch every new episode as it releases, and you won't miss any other amazing unconventional leaders just like Kristen Sherry. Until next time. Hey, thanks for listening today. If you're an intentional optimist and you love this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review with a five-star rating. You can also snap a screenshot right where you're listening, share it to social media, and tag me. This helps others find us and we'll have an even bigger impact. If you're curious what it would be like to work more closely with me, or just to step up as an unconventional leader yourself, I invite you to schedule a free discovery session to talk with me and learn more. Just email me at Andrea at the intentionaloptimist.com. If you're looking for an encouraging and uplifting community on Facebook, hop on over and join the Intentional Optimist Group, women encouraging women from all over the globe. The community and email links are right here in the show description wherever you listen to the podcast. Until next time, remember, you're the answer. You are the future of leadership and the role models for future generations.
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