Turn Fear Into Flow: The Power of Brand Storytelling | Cathlyn Melvin - Part 1

Welcome to Wickedly Branded: Marketing, Magic, and The Messy Middle, the podcast where real conversations meet real strategies. I'm your host, Beverly Cornell, founder and fairy godmother of brand clarity at Wickedly Branded. With over 25 years of experience, I’ve helped hundreds of entrepreneurs awaken their brand magic, attract the right people, and build businesses that light them up.

In this powerful episode, Beverly sits down with TEDx coach and copywriter Cathlyn Melvin to explore the truth behind becoming visible, owning your message, and crafting what she calls a Power Idea, the foundational clarity that shapes every part of your brand and business. From navigating entrepreneurship as an introverted, neurodivergent creator to stepping onto the TEDx stage with confidence, Cathlyn breaks down the process of distilling your lived experiences into an idea that resonates, converts, and creates ripple effects far beyond the red circle.

Three Key  Marketing Topics Discussed:

1. Power Ideas & Brand Clarity: Cathlyn breaks down the concept of a Power Idea, the deep, foundational message that becomes the backbone of your brand, content, and visibility strategy. 

2. Visibility, Confidence, and Thought Leadership: Through her own TEDx journey, Cathlyn reveals the emotional and mindset work required to step onto any stage with impact, especially for introverted or neurodivergent entrepreneurs. 

3. Transforming Lived Experiences Into Marketing Assets: Beverly and Cathlyn explore how stories, client transformations, and personal insights become the raw material for content pillars, brand messaging, and powerful talks. 

Follow Cathlyn:
Cathlyn | LinkedIn
RightCat Creative | Instagram
RightCat Creative | Website

Dare to be Wickedly Branded

Transcript

Beverly: 0:11

Did you know that landing a TEDx talk can shorten your sales cycle, build instant credibility and open doors that you never even imagined? Today's guest knows exactly how powerful one idea can be. I'm your host, Beverly Cornell, the founder and fairy godmother of brand clarity. At Wickedly branded, we have helped hundreds of overwhelmed overachieving consultants, creatives, and coaches awaken their brand magic and boldly bring their marketing to life so that they feel more confident and attract their absolute favorite, most profitable clients. Today I am joined by the brilliant Cathlyn Melvin. She's a TEDx coach and copywriter whose work has been featured on TEDx, Thrive Global and over 50 podcasts through her company, Right Cat Creative. She helps entrepreneurs turn their lived experiences and thought leadership into visibility opportunities that actually convert. She's also the host of the group program, Amplify, guiding business owners just like you through the TEDx process. Cathlyn, I'm so excited to have you, welcome to the show.

Cathlyn: 1:14

Thank you so much. I'm excited to shed a light on what TEDx is all about.'cause a lot of the time it's hard to find information about how it works, what the process is, what it means.

Beverly: 1:25

A couple of my friends actually run the TEDx Detroit events. And it's always been something I've eye as a possibility. But my closet introvert is absolutely mortified. I'm excited to break some of that, those myths down possibly and learn how you got to the stage. So go back to your entrepreneurial journey, like what led you to start Right Cat Creative in 2021, and what did those early days look like for you and the brand?

Cathlyn: 1:53

First of all I wanna say I'm an introvert too. I am very introverted. I am neurodivergent. I've got a lot of different things going. I live with depression and anxiety, a lot of that stuff. So I'm not like just a natural extrovert who's yeah, it's easy. Everybody can do this. I've worked on it to get to the point where it feels easy now and it feels natural and fun. So going back, my first career was as an actor, I went to school for theater. Which. Might surprise you knowing that I'm an introvert, but actually the majority of professional actors identify as introverts because it's a career that's all about connection, which is really similar to speaking. Right.

Beverly: 2:36

Interesting. My husband and I met doing musical theater. So fun. So that's interesting that you say that. I love this one-on-one, like you and I having a chat today, I am all about it. I am so here for it. It's one of my favorite parts of my work. But you put me on a stage and have a hundred eyeballs staring at me and it becomes a whole like, whew, I can do this. And I do tend to channel the energy well, however, I might speak too fast or not really be present. And podcasting actually has been a way for me to master some of that a little bit to be more present in the conversation. I'm so excited to talk more about this and I love that you have this theater background. I was a dancer for 18 years, like I was on stage. Totally different though. When you're talking and sharing your ideas,

Cathlyn: 3:21

It's, especially when you're comparing a performance art. So I started out as an actor. My first formal business was an arts education company that I founded with another actor and educator. And we taught theater to kids all across the United States. We were in, 18 states of our programming. And when I was working with that company, I was writing everything. I was writing script and lyrics and music, but I was also writing our sales emails and our blogs and our website content and all our physical marketing collateral, our brochures and our postcards and everything that would go out to schools and organizations. The theater industry is a complicated and multi-layered one, and there were some things that I didn't love about it even though I loved the work of it when it came time for me to leave that industry, you might think that I switched right away. To writing and marketing. And I did not, I decided I was going to go to law school. So I had this vision of, the stability and the reliability, and I think I would make a really fabulous attorney. So I studied for the lsat, I took the lsat, I retook the lsat. Then it was 2020 and I had been accepted and I got a full ride scholarship to University of Florida. And I was like, that's great. And classes were gonna start in August of 2020. And the world had changed. My personal relationships had changed. I had this long-term relationship that ended and my world just fell apart. But I was like, you know what? I'm not in the mental head space to make a new choice right now. Law school is paid for. They're paying for me to go. I'm going to go. So even when I started school, I already knew that it wasn't really where I wanted to be. And I went through a full semester and part of the second semester and over winter break, my best friend and I had a conversation. She was like, you should be writing. We'll figure out how to make that work for you. And I was like, ah, I don't know, I'm gonna give myself to this next semester. And I didn't last through the next semester. About the end of February, I was like, yeah, no, hit the withdraw button. And that's when I went full-time with Right Cat Creative.

Beverly: 5:33

You told me before we started that the cat is actually Tucker, your cat. How Did you come up with the name?

Cathlyn: 5:39

So funny thing, Tucker wasn't actually my cat when I named the company, but I was living with him. He came with an old friend of mine had moved to Chicago and moved in with me. We got an apartment together and she brought Tucker and I fell in love with each other right away. I'm very much a cat person and I love affectionate cats. So Tucker and I bonded and my friend Felicia, who was Tucker's guardian at the time, at one point was like, Cathlyn, when you move away to Florida, would you consider taking Tucker with you? And I was like no, he's been with you for eight years. You are his person. This is what he's familiar with. And then COVID happened and my roommate. Went to quarantine with family in Wisconsin and I was left in Chicago with Tucker for four months, and it was just the two of us. So by the end of that I was like, Hey, Felicia, remember this conversation that we had? And yeah, Tucker moved across the country with me. He rode down in a van wearing his little harness, and hated it.

Beverly: 6:40

Tucker adopted you.

Cathlyn: 6:42

He did. It was very much one of those situations where he picked me.

Beverly: 6:46

I love that. So how did you go up with Right Cat Creative though?

Cathlyn: 6:50

So I originally wanted to be Blue Cat Creative, and that came from, I have this stamp and blue ink pad that my sisters gave me when I was in high school. And I've used as a book plate. So for 20 years, I stamp all of my books with that blue cat I wanted to be Blue Cat Creative, but apparently there's already a Blue Cat Creative. And there are actually a lot of Blue Cat themed businesses. I didn't wanna get stuck in what do I name my company? I wanted to name my company and get started. So I just made a list of other one syllable adjectives. And Right was the one.

Beverly: 7:22

So talk about who you help, specifically, who is it that really needs to do a TEDx talk and talk about an example of someone you've helped and what that has looked like for them.

Cathlyn: 7:33

I work with business owners. Usually it's women who come to me. I don't specifically advertise to women, but usually I do end up working with women and they are women who have been in business for a few years. They've been doing all the right things, and they might feel like stable or they might feel like, oh, I'm not quite stable and either I need to do something different to get to the next level, or I need to do something different to reach that stability. So they usually come to me when they're in that place and they're like, I know I can do a TEDx talk, or I know I want to do a TEDx talk. And I have this general idea of what I would like to talk about. And that's really the first step is that, what I call your big idea, and it's not distilled down, it's not clear, it's not concise, but it's this sort of cloud that floats. So usually what happens when people start with me is they come and they share that big idea, and then I synthesize it and I listen and I say, okay. I just heard four, maybe five different TEDx talks.

Beverly: 8:38

Yeah.

Cathlyn: 8:39

Because with TEDx, like the average TEDx talk is 12 and a half minutes long.

Beverly: 8:42

So short, you have to be so short and make really powerful thing happen in that 12 minutes

Cathlyn: 8:49

and you can, but it's hard to do by yourself'cause you're so close to it you tend to think that there needs to be a lot of layering in it. And something that I work on is peeling back those layers and Okay. What is that core idea underneath,

Beverly: 9:03

you call it something on your website, what do you call it? The power.

Cathlyn: 9:07

Power idea.

Beverly: 9:07

Power idea. Yeah. I like the word even the power idea. It just makes me stand up a little taller.

Cathlyn: 9:12

Yeah.

Beverly: 9:13

What got you to the TEDx stage Talk about you and how you got to the stage and what was your topic and what was that process like, just for you doing it.

Cathlyn: 9:22

Like many of my clients, TEDx had been something that was on my vision board or goals list. For a long time. Way back in high school, I was a competitive speaker and the category that I really loved competing in, one of the ones that I went all the way up to national competition in is called Oratory. And that style was basically TEDx style before TEDx existed because TEDx didn't actually exist until 2008 or 2009. So Ted started putting talks on YouTube in 2006. And they blew up. And I remember watching them and being like, this is what I used to do. This is fun, I could do this. And then when Ted X started, it became more reachable because Ted is like, Bill Clinton has given a TED talk. Shonda Rhimes, they're big household names a lot of the time. Whereas with TEDx and those locally, independently organized events, it's people like you and me aren't household names. We have some gosh darn good ideas and people wanna hear them. So I was working as an actor at the time. I went all the way through my first business and it was actually when I dropped out of law school. And I had just started Right Cat Creative that I decided to apply. I'd had this experience of withdrawing from law school and a lot of things that had gone into making that decision. So my TEDx talk is called the Brave Leap Sideways. And the idea is that it is so easy for us all in relationships, in our education, in our careers, to get stuck on this treadmill that's going faster and we can't keep up and it's not taking us anywhere. And the only way to get going on the path, that's the next right path for us, is to take our brave leap over the handrail of that treadmill and take a breath and figure that out from the next step. So yeah, that's how I ended up doing it. I only applied to two events, and then that was in April of that year. And in November I gave my talk.

Beverly: 11:27

So you said you're an introvert. Yeah. You said that. You like the oratory thing? I'm getting mixed messages. I feel like

Cathlyn: 11:34

I love having a script that's part of it. Knowing what I am going to say before it is my time to say it.

Beverly: 11:42

Okay. Okay. Fair. So as a dancer, I like choreography, so I get that like, when you have your own choreography, you know where you're supposed to be. I'm good, but if you leave me to my own devices, I'm a big clutz. But, do You believe that it can become a crutch too? We're so bent on, like memorizing the words that there's also this whole other side of it of like humanness and feelings and connection that can't be scripted. Did you have to worry about that at all with the Ted x?

Cathlyn: 12:09

I see this problem in my clients quite a bit, and the problem is that we stop short. We get so tied up in the memorization that we feel like once it's memorized, it's ready, it's not. Once it's memorized, then the performance work can start. Then you can start directing your talk. Then you can really focus on releasing your brain from thinking about the words. The head of Ted, his name is Chris Anderson, in his book, he talks about something he calls the uncanny valley, which is when we're giving our talk and we're so focused on our words and it feels a little robotic, it feels a little stilted. It feels like this doesn't feel quite human. And that you need to keep rehearsing and keep rehearsing. And I believe you need to keep rehearsing until you are super duper bored. Until you're like, this is eye rolling. Why would anyone wanna listen to this? When you get there, the next hill you get over is where you break through that uncanny valley and suddenly you're connecting and suddenly it's natural and soft and human again.

Beverly: 13:17

The uncanny valley. When I first started stepping in front of my brand and I started to do more talking and more of the podcasts and guesting and some of that, I definitely was more script driven. But what came from that, is that I have a lot of one-liners that are just mine that I call like my road markers. Like in this part of the conversation, we're gonna talk about the should suitcase and because I've talked about the should suitcase enough I feel really confident in where the conversation's gonna go and I'm able to be more present. But in the beginning I was like, the should suitcase is the thing that society places upon us and tells us all the things that we should do. But now, I'm like, so who's carrying the should suitcase do you feel like you should show up a certain way? Now it's just a different conversation. And maybe that is because I've said it enough that I'm bored, but now I can play with the idea, which is great.

Cathlyn: 14:08

And you create these building blocks. These are the stories I always tell about my clients. These phrases that I use. These are my what I call tidbits. That you can then pile together in an interview like this. Or if you're on a panel or when you're writing a talk that doesn't need to be memorized. You can be like, okay, this story is gonna lead into that anecdote, lead into these, this group of statistics that I always talk about. But I had the same thing, my first few podcasts that I ever gave years ago at this point, I got questions from the host and I wrote out answers, and I had my little paper right here so that I could be literally reading my answers. It just takes practice of telling those stories over and over again.

Beverly: 16:02

I have a story bank now, like I literally have a story bank of all the stories of show the examples of what I wanna say. Or I have client stories, so my stories of like my development and the major areas of where I took leaps probably through the uncanny valley. And then I have the client stories that prove the point I'm making. So it's like a one two punch Hey, do this thing, but then. Here's someone who did it, and this is what happened with that. So now I have the story bank of me, the story bank of them, and then I have these like building blocks of things that I talk about in there. And somehow the magic happens where it's all weaved together. And I can riff on any element of those building blocks using those, going back to my stories. But I feel like you have to say the story out loud a lot to fully own the story, which is so weird'cause it's your freaking story.

Cathlyn: 16:54

There's a difference between having the intellectual awareness of the story, this is how the story goes, and just being able to relax and let it flow. And it's that relaxing and flow that we wanna get to when we're up in front of an audience. Whether that's here where, hello audience you're not here with us in the room today, but you're listening later. Or whether you're giving a keynote live in front of 400 people. In part of my actor training. There all of these different methods of how an actor can go about creating their work. And one of the ways that I was trained, you do all of this table work first. You do all this text work in, in your script before you ever get up so that you've already intellectualized it to the point where you can let go and you can let that all drop out of your head. You don't need to be paying attention to it so that when you step into the rehearsal room, all of that prep work is done and you can move forward. When I work with my clients and we're starting to talk about, okay, what do you want to put in your talk? I give them what I call my content support guide. And it has a bunch of different categories of different types of evidence or structure that you want in your TEDx talk. And we just brainstorm that all out. And at first they might be like, okay, here is the story that happened to this. And that's where you're really Yeah. Getting the structure of that story. But the essence of the story doesn't come out until you're super duper comfortable with it up here.

Beverly: 18:30

Yeah, that makes total sense. So you went through this process, did you think it was easy to be a TEDx talker

Cathlyn: 18:36

For me, I went in with a really specific skillset. I had been a competitive speaker, for years I had written 10 minute talks. I had memorized them, I had performed them. I had this education as an actor, as a director, and I had a whole career doing those things professionally. So the thing that I really needed help with is I know that I can be a procrastinator. Unfortunately, I knew that going in, so I had a coach who we just met every week, just so I would have that external I need to do the work because otherwise I show up on the call and I feel the shame of not having done the work. But a lot of it, my training and my experience really fueled. I have this free call that I called TEDx Demystify that I do every few months. And on that call I'm like, look you are not alone. If you don't feel a hundred percent confident in how to pitch yourself to events, if you don't feel a hundred percent confident in how to distill your big idea into that one core statement. If you don't feel a hundred percent confident writing a talk that feels natural when it's spoken out loud. Because we're used to writing blogs. We're used to writing emails, and those things are intended to be read. Writing a speech is a different thing. That's why there are people who specialize in being speech writers. So there are all these different skill sets involved in TEDx and most people aren't going to feel a hundred percent confident in a any of them, let alone in all of them. So it's okay. And I encourage you to find either a coach like me who can help you in all of those areas or different people who you're like, oh, you know what I really need help with. I really need help with pitching. Cool. So find someone whose specialty is in pitching, pitching to TEDx.

Beverly: 20:22

Yeah. So is there somebody specific that you've helped that just as a story that you just love, that you saw them go from, holy crap, I'm doing this thing and I have this big goal to being super successful and having a really great talk and feeling so good about themselves afterwards that they did this hard thing but they did it well.

Cathlyn: 20:41

So one of my clients who gave her talk last year, her name is Cynthia Barnes and. She had a lot going on in her life. She had a lot going on professionally. She had a lot going on personally at the time. And she had gotten accepted to speak at an event and she was feeling overwhelmed by it. And we got to, a couple weeks before the event, and when we met up, she had this moment of, I can't do this. It's too much. I'm not ready, all of these like stories that had been bubbling under the surface came out and she felt like just stepping away and saying, you know what? I can't I'm sorry, but I have to withdraw. And together we pulled at those threads to figure out, okay, where are these stories coming from? What is it that you really feel is that barrier that you can't get over? And when we figure that out, I was able to lead her through some exercises. By the end of that session she cried and she was like, I can do this. She really did feel confident. And I don't get to see many of my clients speak live, but a handful I've seen. And I was in the room with her'cause she was speaking locally here. And afterward she was glowing. And then a few months later she posted this thing on LinkedIn that she was like a number of months ago, my TEDx talk went live and it changed my entire world. She talked about how that talk had become the foundation of a book that she was writing. It had changed how she was working with clients in a really foundational way. And that shift had given her the confidence, do a bunch of things in her personal life it was really emotional to go through that whole process with her and then see her walk out. And see even now, a year and a half after she gave her talk, how all of those ripple effects. Are happening. It's really beautiful.

Beverly: 22:36

That is the greatest gift I have is working with clients that I'm on this journey with them to discover more about who they are, their confidence, have some momentum, have some of those ripple effects with their marketing and their brand, and feeling totally and fully in alignment with what they're supposed to be doing. To see them in their own magic, and maybe that's it. It's the glow of it. And I feel like there is this moment with us as well. I've had the moment where I rebranded and there was this moment when I was gonna push publish in this new brand that I felt so incredibly excited about and really felt was the most me it's ever been so really deeply personal.

Cathlyn: 23:19

Very vulnerable.

Beverly: 23:20

Very vulnerable. I'm pushing publish and I'm like, what if they don't like it? What if they don't like me? And I was so excited on one side and I was so afraid on the other side. And after I pushed published and I took the deep breath and everyone was like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. This is so you wickedly branded is so you, and such affirming to that choice. That those things that kind of scare us sometimes are the best things we can do to push ourselves forward, to build more confidence, to feel more in alignment, to feel more empowered in our truth I get to witness that all the time with my clients who push publish on a new brand. And to see it more aligned with who they are to deeply feel confident in sending someone to their website. Like they, for the first time feel like they were actually showing up. And when you show up for a TED Talk, you are showing up. That's probably my biggest fear, to be honest. Cathlyn is I'm gonna show up and it's gonna to be there forever. It's recorded. It's on the internet. It's on the internet, and it is like a record of my complete whatever greatness or my complete failure in it. So it's that's what's scary to me is what if I don't do well?

Cathlyn: 24:34

And that's why you work with someone like me. So that you make sure that it's great. Yeah. And you're super duper proud.

Beverly: 24:40

I'm sure high performing women, mostly our listeners here can understand is this idea of I want it to be so good and so perfect. And so I'm afraid to even say it's ready because it has to be so perfect and so good and all the things as opposed to just you know what, like my very first podcast wasn't great. My podcasts now I think are really good. It's interesting how in our head we can be and how freeing, like when you talk about her, how freeing it can be to fully show up as you, to accomplish this thing. And to not let fear hold you back from something that was so incredibly important for your development as a human, but also as a business person in this world.

Cathlyn: 25:19

understood this concept of what I now call a power idea. And it's different from TEDx talks about ideas worth spreading. And your idea worth spreading is part, it's a small part of what I teach and create about power ideas. And one of the reasons that I settled on power. As that descriptor identifier is because having that awareness and understanding and way to speak about what the world that you're creating gives you personal power. Yeah. It allows you so much room to step forward and so much room to create yourself and your business, let alone own the power to create impact. And if you don't know what your power idea is, which I believe that talks about the challenges that you see in the world right now, what's wrong with the status quo. It talks about what could be difference, what sort of utopia you want to create, and then what do we need to do to get there? Like we as individuals, we as society, all of these different components come together. And when you can get that really clear and really concise and really sticky, that's what creates the power in your business to move forward.

Beverly: 26:34

I like that for a lot of reasons. Because we always talk about you have to have a really strong mission statement and vision statement and core values, and then you have this people call the elevator speech, but it's like your one main idea. And that is the main idea that drives everything. That's where your content pillars live. That's where you blog from. That's the thing that you wanna be known for. So the power idea is like the one main idea we use. Yeah. But it is so incredibly powerful. It is. People think it's, and I've used this example before when you narrow your focus in such a way and you own it a mile deep, right? It is freeing on how you talk about what you do, who you serve, and the transformation you offer. And the TEDx exercise, I'll call it, it's much more than that, can only help you own that even further, right? So we help you find that in yourself and in your brand, and in your marketing materials. But taking that and creating this idea we're spreading, which you say here, like it's more than that, but this idea that is completely yours is only going to magnify the clarity. And I could do it for a lot of other people, but not for myself because I was too close. When I took the time to really noodle with the idea and like really stretch it and do the things that I do for my clients, for myself we would take it a deep breath right now. It was like a breath of release of knowing, a deep knowing in your truth.

Cathlyn: 28:03

And you talk about going a mile deep when I'm creating power ideas with my clients, there are two different formats that we end up with and the first one is called Your Manifesto. It's called your Manifesto because it goes so deep. It's an essay. I have an example of one on my blog that is mine. So we've got this manifesto that can really dig into all of the components that go into a power idea. And then when we've written your manifesto, that's when we take a step back when we say, okay, what is your core statement? And your core statement then is what TEDx would call your idea worth spreading. It's one or two sentences. It's very clear, it's very graspable and you really need both, because a lot of people will think about everything is figureoutable for Marie Forleo, or start with y from Simonson. All of these like almost slogans that these thought leaders have and they reach for those, they say, I want one of those. But when that's what you reach for first you're building a castle on sand. Yeah. And it's gonna crumble. You need to do the legwork of creating that manifesto of really digging in and building up before you reach for the core idea. And you need your core statement before it turns into something that you can print on a t-shirt.

Beverly: 29:22

Okay. Hold on, stop the train for one second.'cause I want everyone to listen to this because we say this too, without clarity, you have no foundation for your marketing, your brand, and you're just spitting the wind, essentially. You're just throwing stuff on the wall and hoping it sticks, so this clarity, this core idea, the manifesto is the beginning like understanding kind of the whole truth of you. And then the golden thread that's through it is like the core idea, right? Then the core idea then becomes the foundation for the TEDx idea. But in my world, that becomes the foundation of your brand. So this is very concurrent. We are living in a very similar space, Cathlyn, and what you're saying is incredibly true and it's saying in a different way that I don't always say it. So for those that are listening, listen to the way cathlyn's saying, because maybe that's the way you need to hear it. But if you just build a logo or you just create a tagline and you haven't done some of that work underneath, it feels empty. It feels shallow. It's not strong and stable and like the thing with which to build upon. Yeah. And. I feel, oh, I just feel like what you do is like such a great extension on top of what we start, like we start the process for you and then you build it and make it like a concept to go out into the world with, like actually speak the words, we write the words, we get the ideas, but you are like the speaking of the words into existence in some way. And that's so good.

Cathlyn: 30:53

You reiterated how we need the depth, we need the foundation, right? But we also need the core statement. You need both. You need the manifesto to create this strength and the foundation. And if you can't condense your whole manifesto into a sentence or two, that is powerful and clear, there are people who aren't gonna hear you because they're gonna stop listening. There are people who aren't going to share your work because you haven't given them something that's truly graspable and shareable. So you need both of those formats.

Beverly: 31:25

Graspable and shareable. And what I found on social media and all the things that we do is that the things that people wanna share are things that uplift them, make them look smart, make them look connected. So this idea of shareable makes them have value to their community in some way, shape or form. So that it's not just about you, even though it is about you. It's not just about you, but also like how it can help so many others. It's utopia that you wanna create and the ways with which to do that, which is interesting. So this season's question is all about how do you bring everything together for your brand? So this is work for Ted Talks too. You have your theater, you have your performance, you have your oratory background and all of that copywriting. There's some coaching going on here. How do you activate all that into your unique space? To make right cat creative. How does that all come together in such a way it's uniquely you Cathlyn, and it's also so valuable to people.

Cathlyn: 32:28

For me and my experience in this business I started just as a copywriter. And then when I was getting my community behind my TEDx talk so that they could spread it out when it arrived, people started asking me, they started looking at my background and saying, oh, you are an actor, the director, an editor or writer, and I've given a TEDx talk. Can you help me? And so that's really how the TEDx side of my business organically was created. And it took a couple years of offering both of those services for me to really see what connected them. Like I saw that they were both marketing, I saw that they were both like ways of outreach. But it was really when I started thinking about what I ended up calling your power idea that I saw that is the foundation for all of the words that we use in our business. Whether it's in our copy, whether it's in our keynotes and interviews and other things, whether it's in our social media and emails, the blogs we write, like there has to be that thread that all roads lead back. When I say I'm a TEDx coach and a copywriter, people get it. People know what those two things are, but what I really am is your power idea creator. I create that foundation for you. Now, if that's what I went around calling myself, people would be like, I don't know what that means. And it probably wouldn't be very effective.

Beverly: 33:56

I beg to differ. I think there would be some power in that. Yeah.

Cathlyn: 33:59

I'll keep thinking about it.

Beverly: 34:01

There's a lot of TEDx coaches, but how many power idea creators are there?

Cathlyn: 34:05

I just feel like it is so essential, like the way that I have created the components and the formats of the power idea. I don't know that you can get what I want you to get for your business without all of those parts and pieces. So for a TEDx coach, just be like, let's create an idea worth spreading. You don't have the foundation then. So it's more than just creating your TEDx talk or your power talk It all has to come together.

Beverly: 34:34

So good though. If you're listening right now and you're thinking, oh my gosh, I need this power idea. I need to create a strong foundation for my brand. I would love for you to give us a review and let us know this is resonating and connecting with you because I think so many of us do something we truly love. We're brilliant. I know my listeners are brilliant and they're trying so hard to make the world a better place, Cathlyn. And they want to magnify their impact by having a strong brand and marketing, also the tools like a TEDx talk and how that can magnify them, but they don't know how and they sometimes get in their own way and there's all these other external things that are telling them, don't do it that way, do this way. If it's resonating that this has to all start from a foundational place so that you can grow outside of that, continue that ripple effect from it that you talked about with that particular example you gave. It has to be strong enough to handle all of that. And the power idea is huge. We call ours the brand Spark Blueprint. It's the spark. It's this thing that starts it all. We have different language for it, but it's incredibly important and it serves different purposes, but it's incredibly important to get that golden thread to help you go to the next step, whatever that looks like for you. And that's why you need someone like Cathlyn, or you need somebody like me to help you see yourself in a different way. That's the thing is everyone's oh my gosh. You see what's possible? Yeah, I see what's possible because I've been doing this for a long time, but I feel like I didn't think I deserved to know what made me special. I thought that I just did the work. I just was a marketer and I just did the work and the work to speak for itself and all those things. I did not think I had a story to tell. I didn't think that people would listen to my story. I didn't think that I had anything unique to offer the conversation. But I have a lot to add to the conversation. This is so important. I think especially for women and I'm with you. I mostly work with women, and women don't always feel like they have a place at the table. They don't always feel like they have a perspective that needs to be shared, that it is new or different. And I just want you all to listen, you all have something really special to add to the conversation. And it might just take some time with Cathlyn to make it happen. Don't live small, live big, I want you to live as big as possible. Hey there, you've just finished part one of the episode. How are you feeling? Excited, inspired, but we're just getting started. Next Thursday we're dropping part two, and you won't wanna miss it. Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter, so you'll be the first to know when it goes live. Until then, take a breather, let those ideas simmer, and we'll see you next week.