00:22 Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Growth and Scaling Podcast. Today we have none other than Suzanne, who's come here to teach us some infinite wisdom about encouraging women. Suzanne, tell us who you are and what do you do?

00:37 Oh, thank you so much, Todd. I am so happy to be here. And for those of you listening out there, my name is Susan Peters. I am the CEO of the Woman to Woman Network. I specialize in training ambitious women to leverage their story, life experiences, and their voice to build their own profitable business. And if you can tell, Todd, I love what I do.

01:04 That's always a good thing. I love what you do too. As a father and as a husband, I have daughters. I love when people are out there trying to help the women in my life.

01:19 I love it.

01:20 So, Suzanne, tell us about who is it you're really trying to help. I know women is a very broad topic, a very broad audience. Who specifically are you trying to help with your business?

01:32  Okay, I meet women all the time. These women, a lot of them are stuck in unfulfilled jobs. They're stuck in jobs they don't really like, they don't want to do for the rest of their life, but I mean, we all have bills to pay. So they do what they have to do. But I also meet women who are, they already have their business, their business owners, some of them for several years, and they are also stuck because they are not seeing any growth in their business. They're not connecting with their ideal clients. They don't know what's going on. So both women, I know they sound completely different, but they have one thing in common. They both need my help. 

02:23 Ah I see.. I see..

02:24 So the women who are stuck in their unfulfilled jobs, I show them how they can escape your nine to five and step into entrepreneurship and simply use what they already know. Or as I like to say, teach what you know, because we all know something. We are all experts at something, whether it's something we learned through our life experiences or something we learned from some specialized training, we are all experts at something. So I have them tap into what it is they know, channel that, and structure it in a way that they can teach people what they know to save some people from some of the pain they are going through. And on the other side, the business owners, it's the same process. It's just, it's the same thing in a different process, I should say, because they are already business owners, but it's taking that same thing, what they know, what they specialize in and putting it in a way that it's connecting their ideal clients to their business. So I summer both women and I just say ambitious woman. Does that make sense? 

03:39 That's awesome. There you go. 

03:42 Yeah, ambitious woman.

03:43 Yeah, yeah. There you go. And so where are you finding, yeah, if you were to handpick though your perfect 10 or 15 clients, what would you say is the consistent attribute of these women that you'd like to help?

04:02 They are decisive. They are coachable. They take fast action. They are patient with themselves. They are confident, and when I say confident, they believe in themselves. They may not be confident in implementing certain things yet, but they believe in themselves, and they know that they are called to do more with their life than just exist every day.

04:39 Awesome. And how did you start down this journey? That's a great description. How did you start down this journey and what are some highlights of people you've been able to help so far?

04:52 That is like two pastas in one. Well, my journey started several years ago. Let me see if I can sit this nice and keep it well packaged for you. My journey started several years ago when I was 28. I had been like some of those women stuck in an unfulfilled job. Now, believe it or not, I was an accounting. I was an accounting officer in one of the largest insurance companies in my country, but I hated it. It was the most boring job in the world. Yeah! I had this bright idea to leave my good, good job and go start my own business. You know how that went, right?

05:48  I know how it goes for most people. Yes. Not so great.

05:50 I didn't know anything about running a business or managing employees so eventually my business failed and I literally lost everything. But for me the last straw was when I came home and there was an eviction notice on my door. I didn't know what I was going to do but I was at a point where I just wanted to give up. So I found myself just sitting on the floor in my bedroom. Just thinking about what am I gonna do? I don't wanna go on anymore. You know what? I'm just gonna take my life. But luckily for me, my bad habits saved me at that point. I don't know if you used to do this because I know I'm not the only one, but back in those days when I felt dumb, I would take out my phone and I would go on YouTube and I would bring up some really depressing music, right? And of course that only made me feel whist. So I was sitting there, listening to this music, just feeling whist and just, yeah, decided I'm gonna take my life. But the good thing is, my phone was connected to my neighbor's wifi, so it was going in and out, and for a while it was just stressing me out. But it went out again and just didn't come back, so I didn't take it on. And I literally got up and started searching my apartment for pills. Like, okay, no, I'm just gonna end this. I don't wanna go on anymore. I am done. For some reason, I couldn't find any pills, which was strange because I always had pills. So I sat back down and I'm thinking, I wonder if I were to drink this bottle of bleach. I wonder if it would kill me or if it would only hurt me. 

07:39 Oh my gosh. Yeah.

07:40 Yeah, I was literally wondering if I drink this bottle of bleach, would it kill me or would it hurt me? Because if it hurts me, then I would still have to live with the embarrassment of other people knowing I tried to take my life and I didn't want that. I was already embarrassed enough as is. But the funny thing is, just as I was in thought thinking about that, my phone reconnected to my neighbor's Wi-Fi. And for some reason, someone I hadn't listened to in a very long time, I heard his voice say, there's greatness within you. And for a second I did get startled because it was so sudden. But then, listen, I sat there and I started to laugh. Because I'm like, there's no greatness in me. You don't know me. And I was literally laughing at myself out loud. If you had simply been passing outside my apartment, you would have sworn someone was tickling me. I was laughing that loud. But that was the destruction I needed because right after that, my laughter turned into tears. And I sat there and I screamed at the top of my lungs because I didn't want to die. I just didn't wanna live that life anymore. But sitting there, that was less wrong on the line. I listened to him, then came Lisa Nichols, but I ended up spending that entire night listening to other people's stories. And not ordinary stories, stories of people who came back from the brink, who changed their life completely and were doing so many amazing things. And I found myself wondering if I could do that. So by the time morning came, I was no longer wondering how to take my life. The question was now, how can I change my reality? But of course, you know, I still had to go through some things first, things got, always tend to get bad before they get better. But still, in less than one year, I had completely changed my life because of that night. Since then, I have been obsessed with sharing my story. I have been obsessed with helping other people share theirs because of the impact it had on my life. So, I teach from my experience. So, yeah.

12:03 And Suzanne, tell us about how you've been able to take that experience and translate that into other people.

12:09 Okay, let me give you this example. Well, remember what I said. You can use your story, your life experiences, and your knowledge to not only help people impact their life, but you can also use it to build a business, to generate your income. So one client that comes to mind is Sharon. Growing up, now I did not know this because when I met her, she was like a fashionista. I mean, she's always looking good from head to toe. Like, oh. And she makes her own clothing. She's like really good. But she wanted to start her own fashion business. She wanted to style people and design clothing for them and all of that. And in prying, I asked her, so why this? And how did you get into this? And you know, I asked her a million and one questions. And then I realized growing up, she couldn't dress herself for anything. She didn't like her body. She didn't like her feet. She didn't like how she lived in pants. So we took her story of not being confident in her own body, not knowing how to dress to suit her body. And we built on that and showed people how she went from there to being this fashionista that everyone knows now. After I helped her build her business, within two days she already had two clients who wanted them to be her stylist. Within a week she had several orders for a shirt she had designed, for one shirt. All because she connected what she does, what she's good at, what she loves with her story. That was just amazing for me.

14:14 Gotcha, gotcha, that's awesome. What do you see as one of the most common challenges of these women you're trying to help?

14:16 Fear. No one wants to talk about their failures. No one wants to talk about the unhappy parts of their life, the parts that look really ugly. Everyone wants to keep those things quiet. So people are like, I ain't gonna tell nobody about that. But what we have to understand is when we share those parts of ourself, is not to make ourself look bad or anything like that is to help other people out there who are stuck in similar situations that we know we can help them. And the only way we can do that is by sharing our own journey. So that's just something for people to remember whenever that fear comes up, what are people gonna say? What are people gonna think? But what's gonna happen to the people that need to hear what you have to say if you don't say it? So you have to really look at it from the other side as in the positive impact you would make outweighs the fear that tends to hold so many of those women back, yeah.

15:22  For sure, for sure. I love it, I love it, that's wonderful. How, and what advice do you give to these people? What helps them make the change?

15:32 The chains with sharing their story.

15:38 Yeah, well with women in general with a similar type of issue.

15:43 I think one of the best things you can do, even if you don't know where to start or you don't know what you wanna do or what direction you wanna go in, is just to find yourself with a community of people that can support you. Once you have a supportive community, excuse me, once you have a supportive community of people who actually want to see you win and are there to support you and share you on, you can accomplish literally anything. However, if you know for a fact, because a lot of them don't know what they want, they just know they wanna do something, right? However, if you know for a fact that, listen, this is what I wanna do. I wanna speak on stages. I wanna build a business. I wanna really come out of my shell and make an impact in the world. My advice to you is to find someone who is already doing what you want to do and do whatever it takes to work with them, to learn from that person because I'm pretty sure that person can have a blueprint, a step-by-step plan that you can follow.

16:51 Sure. Smart.

16:52 Yeah, they always do.

16:55 And who is that person for you? Is there somebody that you'd like to give a shout out to who's been able to kind of guide you and mentor you through this?

17:04 I would give a shout out to, there's so many people, how can I choose? I want to give a shout out today to Derek Bucks. Yeah, to Derek Bucks. He is a sales coach. He is very good. And he has helped me shape what I do and package it for the, I'm trying to choose my words widely because there are so many different people involved. But with delivery, the delivery for instance, I have been doing some sales calls for my virtual summits and different things I have coming up. And he has just stepped in and has been taking control of my sales calls.

18:02 Awesome, awesome. 

18:03 So I definitely need to give him a big shout out. Derek Bucks for the win.

18:07 That's a great shout out. Great shout out, great shout out. Well, Suzanne, thank you so much for being here. I honestly appreciate so much your time and your insights here. And we hope to support you in the Women to Women Network. We're going to put links down below for anyone that wants to see and just figure out what you're up to. And we appreciate your time today, thank you.

18:33 Thank you so much for having me, Todd!

18:38  Oh, thank you.

18:39 I just remember who I should have showed it to.

18:43 Oh, who should you shout it out?

18:45 Andrina Phillips

18:48 Trina Phillips.

18:52 Andrina Phillips, can I tell you about Andrina and why I say that? 

18:58 Sure.

18:59 Andrina lost her husband earlier this year, a couple of months ago, and we connected at a mastermind event together. And one day she had sent me a message just like that out of the blue. She sent me a message, hey, I know we don't live that far apart. Let's meet together and do brunch. And we did that. The conversation was so different. We taught each other things that we didn't know because although we are in a similar business, we're in different fields. We were able to just pour into each other's businesses so much. And she is the reason I decided, you know what, Andrina, I have been thinking about doing these networking events for women. This is confirmation right here. I'm gonna start doing it. And she's the reason I started doing those events. So, I definitely have to shout out Andrina Phillips. Keep moving with Andrina.

19:57 I love it. I love it, I love it. Wonderful shout outs, we appreciate it so much. And I hope both of them feel the love that you have to share for them. Thank you so much.

20:07 I hope so too. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure being here.

20:13 All right, we'll catch all of you on the next episode. Thanks so much.