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I asked you to try to find your passion. Okay, so that was reviews, testimonials part that I wanted to share with you next. This is so crazy. A couple of crazy things. First of all, all right, I want to talk about progression and how it doesn't happen necessarily the way we think it will. Right? So here's a couple of different situations. First of all, in 2018, I think it was is when Confidence Creator came out and when I started finding out about the speaking business and that, you know, you should get a speaker agent, I knew nothing about the speaking business. I didn't even know it was a business in 2018. And so I googled it. I figured out there were speaker bureaus. So I started pitching myself to different speaker bureaus. And they told me I wasn't unique, I wasn't different. And to come back when I was special and unique and different. And then my book, Trump, Donald Trump's book on Amazon, the Business and motivation and autobiography list on Amazon, I was number one, and he was number two at the time he was president. I took that screenshot, I sent it to the president of a speaker bureau, and I said, I'm unique. I'm different. You don't have any authors on your roster that have trumped the president. And he laughed and said, oh, touche. Well done there, missy. Okay, I'm gonna add you to my roster, but I don't know how much business we'll get for you. But it was more. I just wanted to be the more I could see myself next to whoever it was, Bill Clinton or any of these other huge speakers that garner massive amounts of money for their speaking. It put me in another league, and I wanted to see myself in that league. Right. For me to believe it first and foremost, but then for other people to say, oh, wow, Heather's at the next level, already in good company. Good for you, Heather. Right. Okay. So I then leveraged that, getting that one speaker bureau. I started pitching myself to all the speaker bureaus, saying, oh, hey, I'm with APB speakers, gda Harry Walker. And then, you know, I thought you should know, maybe you'd want to add me Too, right? I was trying to create this FOMO for these other bureaus. It worked. The majority of them, not all, but the majority, ended up adding me. Okay, so from the end of 2018, I was with a number of speaker bureaus. And it's so crazy for me, Harry Walker Speaker Agency was always just one of this. The really elite of the elite. Just in my mind, right? I don't know why speaker bureaus. And so I thought, oh, I can't wait to the day I get booked by Harry Walker Speaker Agency. They have a lot of, you know, presidents on their line, really impressive speakers. Not that all the speakers bureaus don't. They do. But this one, for whatever reason, it just kind of struck me. It was one of the first ones I discovered when I was researching and I had no idea about the business. Okay, So I was with the Speaker Bureau since 2018. Nothing. Crickets, right? Then the pandemic hits. Everything disappeared. The speaking business for a while just completely shut down. There were so many layoffs in the speaking business. It was awful. And then slowly things started coming back in 2021 and a lot of virtual speaking was going on, right? But still nothing like how it had been. So during these times, I just was primarily landing speaking business because my social media, right, people would reach out to me on LinkedIn, the place where business gets done. If you are not active on LinkedIn, get active. Whether you're B2B or B2C, that is the place to be, pull business towards you so you don't always have to chase after it. So the majority of my business was coming from my LinkedIn feed and I was getting booked a lot and booked with amazing companies, Amazon, Google, you know, so many crazy huge companies and starting to enjoy some success. I was named top 40 keynote speaker in 2020. I was named top 50 overall keynote speaker 2022. Shout out real leaders. Okay, so things were getting better, but I still, in the back of my mind, right, I was still kind of bummed that, wow, those really elite speaker bureaus, they just had never booked me. Now I remember when I first started out in the speaking business, someone who had 30 years experience said, said to me, here's the best thing I can teach you, Heather. You'll want a speaker agent, you're going to want a speaker bureau until the day you've hit it, you've made it right, and everybody knows you. And then you won't want a speaker bureau, you won't want an agent, because everyone and every opportunity will be coming to you and it was frustrating to hear that at the time. Right? Because when you need an agent is when you haven't hit it yet, you haven't made it yet. That's when you need someone pitching and selling you, someone who knows how good you are, that cares, that says, no, this woman might not be known like, you know, Oprah Winfrey, but she can have a massive impact on your audience and you need to see her. And that person didn't exist. Right? So I knew in the back of my head that, you know, the way that everybody says they're gonna start showing up when you really started making it. But wouldn't you know, what a surreal moment. This week I received an email from Harry Walker Speaker Agency reaching out as if it was, you know, they had just signed me yesterday. Hey, Heather, we have a firm deal for you for two different speaking engagements. Wanda's send you both of the offers. Let us know if you have any feedback changes, and then let's go ahead and get the contract set up. And it was just this crazy moment. Remember I told you I signed with them in 2018 and here we are, it's 2022, and I'm getting my first couple pieces of business from them, which I'm so proud of, so grateful for. And I'm thinking about that conversation I had with that gentleman that when you really start making it, that's when you won't be so desperate for wanting the agent anymore and they're just going to start showing up. I'm starting. I'm not there yet, Right. But I'm starting to see how that's playing out. And as my business has picked up because of my LinkedIn, because of all the content I'm creating and putting myself out there and talking about my speaking business and getting recognized, obviously by real leaders twice was a huge deal, Right? So that was in good company. And headlining the event expo with Dame and John was huge. I've had a couple of really surreal big moments along the way that I understand how it's happening, but nonetheless, it's surreal. This is not the way I ever expected it to happen, by the way. I thought all this stuff would have happened back in 2019, the latest 2020, but no one could have predicted the things that were gonna happen. And the reason I share that story with you is just because you have a big goal and it doesn't happen for a while, in this case four years. Right. Doesn't mean it's not going to happen. Things don't always happen in the timeline we think they should they happen as they're meant to be. I can tell you this. I am so much of a better, more powerful, deliberate, intentional, successful speaker today than I was in 2018. And maybe that's why I didn't get booked back then. Maybe that's a gift. Because imagine if the biggest speaking bureaus in the world started booking me back then and I wasn't as good as I had the potential to be. The difference is, over the last four years, I've spoken for, I mean, literally a thousand, at least, different events, companies, summits. I can't even tell you how many. That's what I've been doing now for four years. So maybe this window of time and this waiting period was allowing me to build up my competence and put the reps in and put the time in to really refine my craft and become the best that I could be. So that's how I'm choosing to see it. So if you're waiting on some big goal and you're starting to forget about it, don't forget about it. Even if it is four years or six years or whatever it is, keep putting the reps in, Keep putting the work in. Don't give up. It could be right around the corner because it literally just happened for me this week, which is so crazy. Okay, here's another progression, one that I wanted to share with you, and then I promise I'll let you go. Okay? So back in, I don't know if it was 2018 or 2019, I don't remember, a professor from Harvard sent me a DM on LinkedIn in response to a video I created about sales. So I created content, which started the domino effect. He responded to that content I created and said, hey, you'd be a great guest speaker for my class at Harvard. Would you come in and teach a class for me? And I was beyond overwhelmed. I was so nervous. I had Harvard on a pedestal. I put him on a pedestal. I put me beneath everyone, right? The minute we put others on a pedestal, we're putting ourselves beneath them. So it's super important, especially in this day and age, we want everyone to be seen as equal. That means ourselves, too, right? So we have to stop putting people on pedestals. Just because they had better SAT scores than I did and they could get into Harvard doesn't mean that, you know, I'm not equal to them. What I ended up finding out when I taught that class is I'm a lot better at sales than they are. That doesn't make me better than them. Right? Remember, they have better SAT scores. Everybody has different things they're better at or different at or unique about them, and that's okay. But we all belong on a level playing field. So I had been so nervous to teach that class. I walked away with this amazing feeling of I added so much value. These kids were so book smart, but I'm real life smart and real life savvy, right? So I was able to. They had read every textbook in the world about sales, but they didn't understand how to apply that in real life. I come at everything from a real life, you know, business acumen type experience. I've lived it, I've done it. Here's what it's really like, and here's how you really can apply it to leverage your success. And they got so much value from it. So that experience taught me that, yes, I had to channel my inner Beyonce to get myself in front of the class that day. Yes, I was completely nervous. I practiced so much, I was sweating, right. The whole thing, but I did it. And when you move through those moments of fear and self doubt, you build confidence in yourself. And the more you do that, the easier it gets. So in 2020, when the pandemic hit, that same professor reached out to me and said, hey, I'm teaching a class, Professional Selling and Sales Leadership at Harvard. Would you be willing to be my teacher's assistant? I just got funded to have an assistant on this year because the class is so big. I said, yes, of course. I was nervous again, right? It was one thing for me to teach one class, but now for me to teach a whole semester, I didn't know what I was getting into. But anytime I feel fear, I know that is the green light that I need to go and go faster and step into it to create confidence within myself and go to that next level. That's my chance to grow. And I'm so glad I did. I had a great experience. It was way too much work, way more than I thought. And the money was too small. Right. The professors get paid well, but not a first time teacher's assistant, which is fine. I did it for the life experience. I made great contacts. I learned a lot about myself, but I became incredibly comfortable about Harvard. Right. Because now every Monday, I was teaching a class at Harvard, so it wasn't as scary as it had been before. Then that same professor does a lot of workshops for Harvard and speaking engagements, and so he started wrapping me into all these different things. So, you know, I have an app on my phone from Harvard and Just crazy. It became very normal. Like anything, the more you do something, the more normal it becomes. At one point, it was really scary, and now it's fine. You put the reps in, you know, you became competent. Now you're competent. So it was funny. Harvard graduate program, which was led by a recent Harvard graduate student who happened to be one of my former students, reached out to me, and they wanted to bring me in for a speaking engagement for women in leadership and an open Q and A. And I was not scared at all.