Up Level Your Sales Strategy as a Leader, Entrepreneur, or Personal Brand with Justine Beauregard

When Justine Beauregard, a powerhouse in sales coaching, shares her entrepreneurial journey from youth, it's not just a conversation—it's a lesson in creating a legacy. Justine's narrative, steeped in the entrepreneurial spirit passed down from her family, echoes the resilience required to leap into business ownership and the crucial role of self-evaluation, accountability, and goal-setting in steering a venture to victory.
 
 This episode is your invitation to redefine what growth means to you, to consider how every choice and action contributes to the legacy you're actively constructing. Your personal and professional brand.
 
 The art of personal branding and the evolution of leadership aren't just buzzwords—they're chapters in the playbook of professionals aiming for their peak and purpose. In our conversation, we explore how to carve out a compelling presence without forgoing authenticity, and we tackle the challenge of crafting sales messages that strike a chord with various stakeholders. Embrace the wisdom shared in this episode, and chart your own course toward creating a legacy that's as memorable as it is meaningful.

Find Justine here:
Sell in Ways You Actually Enjoy | Justine Beauregard
Justine's Podcast
justinejbeauregard@gmail.com
LinkedIn

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Transcript

Cyndi: 0:00

This Leadership Lessons podcast is an interview with Justine Beauregard. She is an award-winning sales coach, having just received the best business coach as a part of Boston's Business Women's 2024 Awards. She is flipping amazing. She was my marketing coach a few years ago. She is a sales coach and she has hosted two Top 10 podcasts that have to do with both marketing and sales. Stay tuned to hear about Justine's philosophy and also her sales strategies for creating your leadership brand and legacy. Welcome to the Intentional Leaders podcast.

Cyndi: 0:46

Today, I am delighted to introduce Justine Beauregard to all of you. Justine and I had a chance to work together a couple of years ago. She helped me with some marketing coaching. Today she is known for being a sales coach and trainer. Welcome, Justine. Thank you so much for having me. It is an honor and a privilege. It's so great to see you again. You helped connect me to one of your other clients and has been the start of a beautiful friendship. Thank you for doing that as well. My pleasure. I loved looking into your background and understanding a little bit about how you've developed yourself, developed your business and come to find your space in the universe. You've had a lot of background in marketing. Then you went into this entrepreneurial space, where you've been for many years now. What interested you about being an entrepreneur? If you could think about a leadership tip that you would give, what would it be?

Justine: 1:47

Well, first, I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I'm one of those kids who said I want to be an astronaut. Then they became an astronaut and you go what. That's so unlikely. I am that person.

Justine: 1:58

When I was a child, I used to just start businesses all over the place. While other kids were swinging on the swings and sliding down the slide in the playground, I was laminating business cards for JJ's jewelry company and I was selling friendship bracelets for a dollar a piece or hosting puppet shows in my backyard and charging my neighbors and my friends and family $5 for admission to my sock puppet show. Finding ways to create my own path in life and own and have freedom over my income. Part of that stemmed from the fact that my maternal grandmother was a serial entrepreneur. She was one of the founders of Women in Electronics. My grandfather was retired and at home with the kids in his 40s and she was out there running multiple businesses with five kids. I just thought if she can do that in the 70s, I can do it now. That was definitely always on my radar. I think what really made that shift for me was when I was working in more of a corporate setting and my last job was actually in an educational nonprofit, so it was slightly different.

Justine: 3:05

Every career that I held, I always had these ambitions of growing and getting to a point where I would have enough expertise that when I was in my 50s, I would send me retire. I would start a consulting company and be able to control my schedule. Then I got pregnant with my first son and I have two kids now. When I got pregnant I don't know if it was the hormones or what was shifting, but suddenly my corporate career and all of those ambitions took a backseat to being a mother and being present with my family and my kids. I didn't feel like it had to be an either, or I didn't feel like it had to be a sacrifice. My husband and best friend and partner in life was like you've always wanted to own your own business. If you want to stay home with the kids, why don't you start a company? Now we can see how it goes. Here we are almost 10 years later and it's going pretty well.

Cyndi: 4:04

What a great supportive partner to say take a risk and know you well enough to know that this is where your energy is and that you could do it and support what some people would perceive as a really risky venture.

Justine: 4:17

A lot of people see entrepreneurship as a risk. I think everything is a risk. It's not siloed in its own little spot as this one thing is a risk. It's a risk to not be with your kids if that's what you want to do. It's a risk to be in a job where you could be terminated at will. It's a risk everywhere. Everything is hard, so choose your hard.

Justine: 4:40

Something I like to practice when it comes to leadership, especially as someone who runs my business. I'm working in it and on it all the time. Yes, finding a way to evaluate myself from an employee and an employer perspective on a regular basis is so important. I think it's very overlooked. As a business owner, it's very easy to look at myself in terms of the business and say how's the business doing? Is it profitable, is it healthy? Are the systems working? It's so interesting.

Justine: 5:15

The first time I did this, it was not a good outcome. Let me ask myself as an employer would I give myself a raise? Would I fire myself? Would I promote myself? Would I reprimand myself? Would I change anything that I'm doing from a leadership standpoint to make myself better as an employee? It was very glaring. I first asked these questions and I found I would probably be fired as an employee, not because I wasn't great at my job, but because I would show up late.

Justine: 5:54

I didn't complete all of the tasks that I said I was going to do. When I said I was going to do them, I changed my mind about things all the time. I was constantly obsessed over all the wrong things. I was wasting time left and right On paper. I was not a good employee. I didn't have the right systems in place to support myself. I wasn't choosing the right actions to support me.

Justine: 6:17

From an employee perspective, taking a look at that and going part of that is a leadership problem. As an employer, I'm not giving myself enough support. I'm not taking enough time to think through things. I'm acting too quickly and on the fly. I'm giving directives without actually having a real deep understanding of what those directives mean and what it's going to require of me as an employee. Looking at that from both sides there's accountability on both sides Doing that on a regular basis, even if it's quarterly I tend to do things in a quarterly manner in that way, where it's bigger picture, I'll look at myself and be like, okay, I want to get promoted this quarter. What am I going to need to do to step up my game? I'm going to have to raise sales. I'm going to have to do better and really create some goals as an employee that I want to hit and as an employer that makes it easier for me to hit them.

Cyndi: 7:11

You inspire me endlessly.

Justine: 7:14

The feeling is mutual.

Cyndi: 7:16

I would have never thought that in running a business, I am leading and I am evaluating and measuring my own success and my own accountability in that way, and what that looks like. I think that is brilliant. What a great strategy. What I love about that as well is you are applying the things that you're coaching people to do to be effective in the space that they're at. So you're being a great role model for what you're seeing people should do. And it's hard, it's courageous to say I was going to fire myself.

Justine: 7:49

No, I'm not going to. I think it's important that we tell the truth, and especially to ourselves. Who else cares? Who else is looking at this Like no one's seeing me do this evaluation and say I would fire me? I mean, I'm expressing it to you now because I've wanted to fire myself so many times.

Justine: 8:04

At this point I'm kind of conditioned to be like, well, that's par for the course, but most days it's.

Justine: 8:11

We can't improve until we're honest with ourselves. And if we phone it in and we say I am so good at my job and everything is going great, and we present this version of ourselves on social media, where everything is working and everything is fantastic, and also we need to get really honest and look at ourselves in the mirror and say, okay, everything might be true. And also it doesn't negate the fact that there's always room to improve, there's always opportunities to grow. Just by looking at that, you might not necessarily want to fire yourself every time you do an evaluation. Hopefully you don't. Hopefully it improves with awareness.

Justine: 8:48

But I think once you get to the point where you're like, yeah, and as an employee, how do I want to be supported right now, Something that we worked on was how do I give myself a little bit of time back to? There's a lot of more and more and more money, but what about our life experience and our joy and reconnecting with our loved ones and having a lifestyle that really fits where we are in life, versus always grinding towards the next step? Sometimes it can be exhausting.

Cyndi: 9:16

You taught me that, Justine, I vividly remember this conversation that you asked me about what the ideal day would look like a picture of an, a vision of it and I was like I don't know.

Cyndi: 9:29

I really didn't know because I didn't know what it was. I didn't know how to think about it in that way, other than you get up, you work hard and then eventually, hopefully, you try to go to sleep, but you kept pressing on like no, there's a bigger purpose here and what is the bigger purpose and what is your bigger goal and aspirations for your life and your family and this, and that you really stretched my perspective on it, as you said too, that honesty and that vision of what I wanted it to be, I was more able to get there. I do feel like there's a part of my life right now that is how I get to operate my business and my life in a way that is deeply connected to some of how you inspired me to think differently about that a couple of years ago. I think I'm on this better path because of that mindset you had and what you encouraged me to think about. It's a beautiful thing.

Justine: 10:20

That feels so good to hear and so validating. One of the really vivid conversations I remember us having was this moment where you said I want to grow and I said what does growth look like for you? And you were like grow my income, grow my business. And I'm like what can growth look like? You looked at me for a second and you were like I don't think anyone's ever asked me that or anyone has framed that in a way where I thought, oh, it's not just about the next level of success on paper.

Justine: 10:52

Growth can look many different ways and some of the things that had opened up it was this massive amount of opportunity to grow even more, like you don't have to give up your income to also grow in other ways.

Justine: 11:06

And sometimes, taking a step back to really reflect on what growth looks like for you, can add so much to your experience and so much to your income, even as an employee within a company, thinking about how do I want to grow this year, when you're really focused on growing yourself as a person within an organization and the leadership will see, oh wow, this person is really ambitious. They're taking initiative, they're doing certain things, they're presenting themselves a certain way. Think about the stark difference between someone who kind of strolls into work just on time every day and is dressed just well enough to fit in with the group, versus someone who's like you know what? I'm going to grow myself in terms of how I present myself in this company. I'm going to wake up 10 minutes earlier, I'm going to dress in a proper suit, I'm going to show up in this very specific way.

Justine: 11:59

Suddenly, people's heads are turning, the experience is shifting. Your experience has changed, your confidence grows, things evolve and suddenly you don't have to work so hard for the promotion, for the raise, or it just comes naturally to people to offer you opportunities that were not there before, simply because they notice that you're spending more time and attention on the finer details. Versus I want a promotion and then not changing anything to go make it happen Absolutely. Which.

Cyndi: 12:31

I have heard people say and kind of like what are you doing? Well, I've been here long enough or it's time or whatever other factors they use to believe that that is the next step. But, as you said, when you start showing up differently and growing differently, that organically puts you in a better position and a better space to be noticed and to gain credibility. Absolutely, you talked about operating in your zone of competence and operating in your zone of genius. Can you share a couple insights about that concept? Because I think that's kind of what you're saying is, I could come in and just do my job and operate in my zone of competence and be good at what I do. That's not necessarily fulfilling a purpose or a higher calling or what I can uniquely do.

Justine: 13:18

This is actually not something I can take credit for. This is Gay Hendricks, who wrote the book the Big Leap. There are actually four zones, so there's your zone of incompetence, your zone of competence, your zone of excellence and your zone of genius. What Gay talks about in that book is that most people operate in their zones of excellence. There are things that we're just naturally very good at. We just take to that thing really easily. For instance, my husband is exceptional at sports. You play a game with him and he picks it up in a second. He doesn't even need to know the rules. He's very naturally athletic and understands the rules of the game very quickly. He's not someone who loves playing sports.

Justine: 14:03

The difference between your zone of genius and your zone of excellence is that you are naturally good at something but you don't also have joy for that thing. It's finding the things where you can combine those skills and strengths. Your zone of competence is one step below your zone of excellence, which a lot of times our competence. As an example, as an employee, you might have a set of responsibilities. For me, as an employee of my own company, my zone of genius is in coaching and training people. I love spending that one-on-one time and giving them that present experience of me being with them and giving them guidance in the moment. My zone of competence is setting up my onboarding process. I can't do it. I'm not great at it. I had to teach myself how to come up with that. I can get it done, and I think every job has a combination of these things hopefully not incompetence. We don't want to do those things Right.

Justine: 15:03

The zones of competence that's like you have to fill out your time sheet and you have to do certain things that are more administrative. If you're not in an administrative role, then you have your zones of excellence, the things that you're really great at and that you stand out for, but you don't really love them, and then there's that really small group of things that you just excel at. That's what's behind the question of what do I want to be known for With this whole podcast and your mission in teaching about leadership in an intentional way. Some of those lessons come from exploring who we are as leaders and what we want to lead on, starting with the end in mind and really connecting. What is that thing that when I'm no longer of my body and people are thinking about me or talking about me. What are they saying? What is that thing that I'm creating now and planting the seeds for now that will continue to grow and live on?

Justine: 15:56

I've heard so many people talk about legacy as something that we leave behind, but I've heard recently a lot of podcasts with Brene Brown and Adam Grant and Simon Sinek all talking about how legacy is created. Today, legacy is the thing that you're doing now. You're building it. What is that thing that you want to be leading yourself with and others with, and be expressed in and really owning Absolutely?

Cyndi: 16:23

It's a really great observation. It's a great insight and it's a great shift in thinking. How do you build your legacy in the future? Justine, was this, cindy? Was that? All of us are absolutely building it as we speak. I think that's part of what we aren't conscious of is the effect that we're having. What are we doing that's working? Who are we at our core? What do we value? How do we represent ourselves? How much joy do we have in our job and how are we expressing that and how are we encouraging others by expressing it and finding it? All of those things. A lot of leaders that I work with don't have a chance to think about it or don't think to think about it Like oh all right, how do I show up? I'm curious to know from your perspective. You shifted from marketing to sales and when you think of leaders in organizations, you mentioned earlier to me that you think sales is harder when you're in an organization selling yourself than it is as an entrepreneur selling a service. So why do you think it's more complex and challenging?

Justine: 17:29

I think, again, it all comes to choose your hard. There are different ways that we could define what's easy, what's hard. It's all subjective and relative, but when it comes to working in an organization, you have so many more opportunities to sell yourself. In a day, as a business owner, I am selling myself to my customers and that's it really Versus. As an employee, I have to first sell myself on wanting the job that I'm gonna go for it. Then I have to sell myself to the organization to get the job. Then, every day, I have to sell my team on me in my role, doing what I do. Sell the leadership that I'm doing a good job at it. Sell our customers, depending on what role I'm in. I have to sell to vendors. I have to sell to partners. I have to sell to stakeholders and all of these different people throughout the organization. And it's like there's this whole ecosystem where we are selling actively, whether we own it or not, whether we know it or not. There's all these micro opportunities where we're able to sell ourselves, present ourselves, and we don't think about it because we just think this is the status quo.

Justine: 18:42

I go into my work and I do my job, but just like the example I gave earlier with the person who just shows up on time and just wears the right outfit. Is that selling yourself in a way that feels good to you? For many people that is we work in a job and we're like I don't owe them anything. I'm coming in and I'm gonna show up on time because that is my commitment to this organization. I'm gonna wear business casual because that's the requirement. You're gonna meet expectations. And then there's some people who go I wanna sell the crap out of myself today. I wanna really own what position I'm in. I wanna level up. I wanna move up. I want to be good at this and I want to be looked at for the right reasons For me, versus looked at for whatever people wanna look at me for. We get to have that confirmation bias of this is what I'm presenting and this is what I want people to notice about me.

Justine: 19:40

And we can influence that, just like you mentioned earlier with the joy at work. We get to choose the joy we have at work. We can see those zones of competence activities, those administrative things, as the joy sucking opportunities that we have to do every day. Or we can say you know what? These are just a small part of what I have to do in order to achieve this other bigger thing. They're part of the job description and I'm okay with it, because this is gonna fuel the rest of the things that I'm doing, or I really don't like this thing. Maybe there's a way that I could advocate for a part-time assistant or somebody in a position below me where I could work towards leveling up in my position, so that I'm not the one who's doing that grunt work anymore. I am leveling up and becoming more of a leader in the organization. There are so many ways around it. We just need to decide what we want and then go get it.

Cyndi: 20:36

Yeah, your philosophy is so awesome and the way you describe selling yourself, to your organization, to your leadership team, to your customers. It sounds exhausting For anybody who doesn't know what selling means or doesn't think of themself in that way. If you had to shed a little bit of light on how to raise the level of awareness about that, or some practical tips with how to do it, what would you advocate or advice would you give?

Justine: 21:03

In terms of selling ourselves. It all starts with your personal brand. One of the things that we had done when we were working together and that I do with a lot of my clients almost all of them, if they don't have it already is what is your mission statement, what is your vision statement? What are your values? This is usually an exercise that people think is company-based, like a company has a mission statement or a vision statement. I think we can have that from a personal brand standpoint. That again goes back to what do I want to be known for and who do I want to be. When you think about what are those things that you value, that's obviously going to shine a light on the things that you pay attention to. For the person who is like I just show up in business casual because that's what's required of me, that person probably doesn't value personal appearance as much as they value high integrity, work or showing up on time. Different things will mean values showing up versus other things which mean well, I don't care about that as much. Really, it all starts with how do I want to sell myself? In that way, often, there's different dynamics within each relationship Instead of pitching ourselves the same way to everybody, which is this old school masculine paradigm of selling I show up, I make an offer, I discount it and I'm done. That's kind of how people think about sales. I almost think about it like you're prescribing something very specific to each person that you're meeting and in order for a doctor to prescribe you a medication, for instance, they need to know your symptoms, they need to know who you are, they need to know your health history. They can't be giving you a certain medication that interacts with diabetes medication if you have diabetes. They can't be prescribing you something for anxiety when you have an allergic reaction to whatever that underlying drug is. They need to ask you certain things. With each of these dynamics, you need to be thinking about who am I showing up for and what are they needing from me?

Justine: 23:03

Often, that comes from a conversation when you get hired and you ask your manager or you're soon to be manager what makes the perfect person for this role, and they say well, we really value someone who shows up early, someone who is a go-getter, someone who does whatever. They're listing off all these qualities. You're making an internal note of what they care about as you think about how am I going to sell myself to this person or what ways do I want to get promoted? You're thinking I'm going to prioritize the things that they call detention to. When I go for the interview, I'm going to look at the website and see what the values of the company are and what other employees are saying on Glassdoor and things like that, so I can really get a sense of the culture and even more so.

Justine: 23:47

This is actually a tip that my mom gave to me when I started working in corporate. She said before you go in for any type of review or any type of promotion request from your manager, I want you to have a thick, thick folder of all of the emails and the correspondence and the different things that you have done. Well, people have shouted you out, they've said, oh, justine was on time, or she did this great job, or thank you so much. You're probably getting notes like that all the time from various people throughout the organization. That's something that I've translated into running my own business that I call the praise folder, where, when people say nice things about me, I capture those as screenshots, I add them to my website, I keep them in a folder and they just revitalize my energy around myself, the business, the brand I'm building, they reflect on.

Justine: 24:39

Are these things really the things that I value and want to make sure that I'm representing? Well, and when you're thinking about going for a promotion, for instance, you're looking at that job description of what role they're looking to fill and what feels important to them and you're not waiting until you're looking for the promotion to go fulfill those things. You're like let me make sure that I am this person already. In what ways You're looking for the matches between? Maybe they're looking for someone who values they're not going to say personal appearance, probably in a job description, but they say show up like they care. So you're going to say in what ways do I show up like I care? And then you're listing out all those things. As long as you align, then it's a match.

Justine: 25:23

I think this is actually a really important sales lesson, which is we don't want to convince people why we're great.

Justine: 25:30

We want to find the people who are already convinced when we go in. We need to be selling ourselves first on the thing that we want. Then we need to reverse engineer. I'm going to pitch myself in this way these are the ways that I match this job description. These are the ways that I fit in this role, and when you present yourself and your leadership team is going well, that's not really what we meant by that and that's not really what we want you feel like OK, then I'm either needing to move into a different organization where I can be appreciative for those things, or I need to find ways to bridge the gap a little bit better and figure out is this the place where I truly belong? Am I willing to move into those kinds of categories and what's that going to take, and am I willing to stick it out to do those things in enough time for me to get where I want to go? I think it's all about figuring out how to make things align, but without sacrificing your integrity in the process.

Cyndi: 26:29

You said many important things in how you're describing this, and a couple of things that jumped out at me is when you talked about brand. You talked about what do different people need from you, and then representing that more dynamically. It isn't a static brand necessarily, and I'm teaching a workshop this weekend and it's all about evolving your leadership to what people need from you, as opposed to. This is my style. This is how I'm showing up.

Cyndi: 26:57

I'm not suggesting people be inauthentic or not who they are, but being mindful, as you said, of what do people need for me, and people need different things for me. How would I show up in a way that is relevant and valued to them and, at the same time, as you said, not compromising my values? So I'm not being inauthentic and I'm not being something that's not true to myself, but I'm looking for those opportunities to serve in that way. That's a really cool way to describe it because, again, most of us think the brand is here's who I am and I'm always me in that way, as opposed to what do you need also from me?

Justine: 27:34

This is a big lesson in leadership soliciting feedback and being really intentional. We do need to constantly be growing and evolving, especially if we want to be in a position of leadership, because other people are going to be looking to us for different things, and sometimes those requests from other people in your organization or other people around you who say I need this from you now or I would really love it if you would touch on these couple of things and that can sometimes help us create growth that we wouldn't have created on our own, which is why working in a team is so important. We are social animals and we want to have a certain level of acceptance and we want to have this certain level of collaboration, and it does require an evolution of who we are and what we value, but also understanding where we're not willing to compromise and where our boundaries are, which is why those things are so important, because as we get exposed to the needs of others and the demands of others, this is where things can break down really fast if you don't have good boundaries in place and if you don't have a clear understanding and a perspective of who you are and how you're showing up, because as you grow in leadership, the demands on your time and your attention and your energy become more extensive because there's more people that are falling underneath your purview. As you're dealing with more of these people, it's understanding. Okay, how do I align myself to what they're looking for?

Justine: 29:05

Where am I willing to make compromises? Just like in a marriage, just like in a friendship and any other type of dynamic? You want to make sure I'm being me, but also I can't leave my dishes next to the sink instead of putting them in the dishwasher, because it's not respectful to my partner and what their boundaries are. Some things like that are not a big deal and other things are like. I am fundamentally always late and this is who I am. My partner needs to understand that and needs to have compassion for that, and there's always give and take and there's always learning and growing and what you're willing to work on and what you're not, and it's just finding what those lines in the sand are.

Cyndi: 29:41

Absolutely. That's so important. The last podcast I did was authenticity, and I have a hard time changing my style. It's complicated, based on the way I grew up and some of the things that were important to me, but it is about being real and true to yourself, but honoring what other people need or want. And you said again, something really important was what are those boundaries and how do you think about those boundaries? And a lot of people don't know what their boundaries are like. What are those values? But I also want to get your perspective on with people you work with. Sometimes, boundaries are based on limiting beliefs about either themselves or others. I wonder what do you experience around, either boundaries or limiting beliefs that you see that could be helpful for people to understand more fully in terms of their leadership brand.

Justine: 30:33

Well, first, I love the podcast Smart List. It's Will Arnett and Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes. They're fabulous. Yes, in one of the episodes they were talking about authenticity and Will Arnett said the minute you're trying to be authentic, you're inauthentic, because, by definition, being authentic means not questioning it. You are who you are and you show up in that way and you don't have to apologize for it. And I thought it was so brilliant. Authenticity and even boundaries have become sort of buzzwords. Yes, I would agree. A lot of people talk about I want to be my authentic self and I want to establish clear boundaries and all of these things. But what does it really mean? A lot of times, we set up boundaries without reasons and it stems from limiting beliefs. It's like I want to have this boundary around. What's a boundary of yours that we can use as an example? What are you not willing to do?

Cyndi: 31:31

What I do sometimes but I don't enjoy doing it is transactional training.

Justine: 31:38

Why is that a boundary for you? What's the problem with it that you see?

Cyndi: 31:42

The problem with transactional training is someone wants me to come in and just be a speaker to talk about an idea. What I get joy in and one of my strengths is being able to connect with people and relate to people and make sure whatever message I'm sending is aligned with what's important to that person and their values and what they're trying to accomplish. So when I just swoop in and do training, I feel like it's disconnected from mission or vision or values. I feel less purposeful. I feel like a commodity. Anybody can come in and talk about this. Why do you want me to talk about it? So I have a hard time doing transactional training when I'm not connected to the customer, the client or the organization in a way that I feel like it's going to be a sustainable message or that the learning experience is going to be meaningful and relevant to people.

Justine: 32:33

That makes perfect sense. That's something that you feel really strongly about. A lot of people think about limiting beliefs as this very broad topic. They feel not enough Trauma-based terminology, whereas I would say part of that stems from a limiting belief. I think all boundaries are actually created somewhat from a limiting belief. Part of that limiting belief that I'm noticing is that transactional selling has to be done one specific way. It has to be 100% automated versus.

Justine: 33:08

I love the idea of transactional training.

Justine: 33:12

I could actually show up in a way where I'm still able to deliver this content, but all I need is for them to fill out this three-minute-long questionnaire, plug in some details about their specific organization and their needs so that I can cater this transactional training to their people in a way that still gets that message across, but it doesn't maybe take full account of the way that I tend to like to deliver this, but it's also still able to be automated, and part of that goes back to it all stems from your mission.

Justine: 33:43

Would you rather sacrifice an opportunity to train people on the very unique and dynamic perspectives you have around leadership simply because you have a limiting belief around what transactional training looks like? It's really just taking that minute to expand your mindset and think in what ways can I establish a boundary that feels clear, that's actually based in something that feels good to me and feels relevant to me, that still allows that outcome to happen? And sometimes the answer is no. Listen, we're not even willing to fill out a three-minute questionnaire, we just want plug and play they're not your person, but I bet you 99% of people would say a three-minute survey and it's going to be more valuable for my team in these ways. Of course, I'm willing to do that. It still is exactly what I'm looking for and that is a balance, that's a compromise, but you're honoring your boundary, you're maintaining their boundary and you're expanding your thinking on something.

Cyndi: 34:43

That was cool. You just shifted my mindset around what bothers me about that? Because I think my way is right and that's not. So how is that limiting my ability to serve in a different way?

Justine: 35:00

Your perception is your reality too, and I think that, in a lot of ways, right and wrong is a very subjective, very black and white way of thinking. As a culture of people, we are conditioned to think in black and white. It's either right or it's wrong. It's either yes or it's no. We're either Democrats or we're Republicans. There is no middle ground, this gray area of well, why can't it be both Like? What does that version look like, where both sides can come to an agreement and still come out of it on the other side getting what they want with minimal sacrifice and effort? And again, this goes into selling, because all of this has to do with selling ourselves on the ideas that there is some sort of valid compromise in the middle of both areas that each side can walk away happy. It doesn't have to be. It's either fully transactional or it's either fully customized. There's something in the middle. Just figuring out how to position that.

Justine: 36:00

I kind of breezed over that language, but that language of if I were to give you a three minute or a 90 second survey where you could just take a couple boxes or fill out a couple form fields and let me know exactly what your team would love to hear or what you would love them to walk away with.

Justine: 36:17

I could give you the same presentation in the way that you want to receive it, but it's more valuable for your team. It's almost impossible for that person to not see the value in a 90 second or a three minute thing. Versus, of course, I want to compromise and sacrifice all my boundaries to give you something that feels transactional to me. I don't love that because, again, choosing your heart, in some ways you're sacrificing your mission Of getting intentional leadership training to people everywhere. In the way that you deliver it, you have a unique perspective and these people need to hear it. So isn't it worth it to explore something that maybe is a little bit different and allow you to open up that opportunity thresholds to be so much wider than just the people who want these fully custom trainings?

Cyndi: 37:11

It's an excellent insight. The evolution of how I can provide value in the way I'm perceiving it right now is based on my own beliefs about how I provide value as opposed to what value could I be offering and how do they need the value to be presented to them. It's a really interesting shift.

Justine: 37:32

Another thing that's true, too, is you've done this work for so long and in such a consistent manner that you have a course. You have this proven framework and collection of video. Technically, somebody could look at that and say, well, that's transactional training. I'm paying you a flat fee for an on demand container of the same material. But how you looked at it when you created the course? Because I was with you when you created that course yes, you were.

Justine: 38:01

I love the fact that I see these same patterns coming up with every person that I teach, and I know that my impact will be so much greater if I can get this to people in one specific way and I will train it better when it's on demand, because there is no room for like well, you know, I forgot that one part because I had a rough morning or something.

Justine: 38:25

Came up that consistency, it's another way of looking at how do I deliver something, and it's the fact that how do you define transactional training?

Justine: 38:35

Is it something where, well, it's just selling or trading training for money versus delivering an experience? Versus how you were looking at it when you created your course, was this information is so consistently delivered across all the people that I'm serving. Of course, it makes sense to package it up and give it to them in this way and in fact, it's not transactional because it's taking into account every individual experience with every customer that I've ever served and putting it into a way where they can digest it in their own time and in their own way, without me having to sacrifice the integrity of the training in the order that it's meant to be received. And so, just because you are an anti transactional person, you are a heartfelt leader who approaches your business in a very specific way, with a very specific set of values. By definition, you can't even offer transactional training Because, like will our net set on smart list, the minute you're trying to be authentic, you're inauthentic. The minute that you are delivering a training, it is non transactional because your values are that of a non transactional entrepreneur.

Cyndi: 39:46

This is why you're an amazing coach and a mind-bending one. I appreciate that. As we wrap up this episode, I'm curious when you think of your zone of genius and your joy. What are the kinds of people that you look to serve in terms of the impact that you can make, and who are you looking for?

Justine: 40:07

You know what's so funny? I am the anti-niche person. There is no one person in mind. You know this about me. I've had 600 clients across every industry, every age group, every gender. There is no one specific type of person.

Justine: 40:23

I used to say I love working with really smart people who care deeply about what they do and bring into the world, which is still true, but it's less about who I like to work with and more about what I bring to the table as a brand. I am able to help people craft really compelling and clear sales messaging that articulates their value to others. I'm able to help them create a sales process from start to finish that feels really good to them, that works repeatedly. I'm able to help people craft objectionless offers so they can show up and sell and not have to worry about someone saying it costs too much, I don't have the time Now, is not it for me? There are other offers out there that I'm still considering. I want you to be the one, the go-to person. These are the things that I'm really good at, especially helping people do demos of conversations, even an employee within an organization, sitting down and learning how to pitch themself for that promotion or understanding what their values are and how they're going to show up.

Justine: 41:23

It's all about that sales experience and process and it's very holistic. It could be positioning of an offer, it could be the design of an offer, it could be the messaging and some of the marketing components because I have that background. It could be the actual sales process and how you sell in real time to people. All of it is what I love to do and I love to see people get on to a sales demo with me.

Justine: 41:48

My favorite experience is they pitch me their offer, I give them some notes and then I pitch their offer back to them. Oh yes, my favorite part of that is at the end of the conversation, after I have pitched their offer back to them, knowing nothing about their business 10 minutes earlier, at the end of that conversation, they go I want to buy what I sell. That's brilliant. I love that because you should feel that way and often when they come in, they're like I know what I sell is good, but something isn't clicking, going from that to okay, this offer is really good, I'm excited to get it out there. That is the magic.

Cyndi: 42:28

That's so awesome. When you think about that, it's kind of like Justine, can you walk around with me all the time and keep pitching for me?

Justine: 42:36

I will say you're not the first person to say that. People do ask me that all the time.

Cyndi: 42:39

Can I keep you in my pocket so that every time I have you could just put a little earbud in people's ears and tell them what to say. You do have a magical power about that. You've done that for me and I'm confident you've done it to hundreds of people where, when you say the things that I've said, but you say them somehow differently and better, I'm like, oh man, it gives you this sense of tingles and thrills. This sounds so powerful and amazing and important. You have a magical way because of your skills, because of your experience, because of who you are at your core. You have a lot of the dynamics, personally and interpersonally, that allows you to listen at a very, very deep and curious and compassionate way. That makes all the difference as well. You're coming from a place of tremendous caring about others and helping them represent themselves in a really great way, and that's a beautiful gift.

Justine: 43:32

I appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Cyndi: 43:35

Justine, you've shared a lot of great messages today about choosing your hard, finding out what brings you joy. You've talked about personal branding and how important that is, and selling yourself, but also being cognizant of what people need from you, and how do you tailor the things that you are selling to make sure they're meeting the needs of the different stakeholders, also talking about boundaries and authenticity and those kinds of things. Is there anything else that you would share with this audience, particularly for those people who are trying to sell themselves in an organization that I didn't capture, that you think is missing from what we've talked about so far?

Justine: 44:16

Questions like this always stump me, because it's like picking a favorite of something. Oh, there's so much I could say there's so much more we could cover.

Justine: 44:23

I think the one thing that stands out to me is what you said a moment ago about I really care about people. That's so true, I really do care about people. Part of caring about people is challenging them and advocating for them. If I had to leave this off on one note, it would be stop playing small. If you are playing small in an area of your life where you feel like you deserve the promotion, it is time. A lot of those things that you said earlier about people just kind of going through the emotions and wanting more for their life. If you want that, go get it. Go adjust your boundaries, go learn how to level up your personal brand. Go make one choice today that's mindful, that will help you stand out in the way that you want to stand out. Go reflect on what your zone of genius is. Go buy the book the Big Leap. Dig into the thing that's going to help you really zone in on. What is that experience that's going to bring me joy? Because we get to choose what brings us joy and choose how we look at things, and we get to choose what our life and experience looks like. Even though I say, choose your hard, sometimes you also have to choose your joy and choose the easy and choose the fun too. What are those things? What is your personal brand statement? What are your values? What do you want to be known for? That's a lot of questions. Thinking this part of the episode, thinking about what do I want to dig into today? Maybe setting yourself up with a journal and going through one question at a time and giving yourself 10 minutes of personal growth. And listening to other episodes, like the one that you just did on Authenticity, or other ones that help you dig into topics and figure out in what ways do I want to be more of an intentional leader, level up in my leadership skills, become better at selling myself, be better with my personal brand, enjoy my experience more, create more opportunities for myself, be my best employee and employee yourself all of those things you can start to make significant progress.

Justine: 46:29

Another book is James Clear's Atomic Habits. One of my favorite examples is very early on in the book. If you leave an ice cube sitting on a table, in the room is 26 degrees, nothing is going to happen to that ice cube, even as you incrementally increase like 1% adjustments to the temperature until you get past that breaking point of freezing and start to warm up the ice cube. Nothing is going to happen. A lot of the things that you will do today, that you will choose to do to be your best self and create your personal brand and be the most intentional leader you can be, a lot of those things are subtle shifts and you have an exponential awareness of the things that you're choosing to do.

Justine: 47:14

You might dress really nicely for work tomorrow. That might be your one thing that you really latch on to and maybe nobody notices or says anything to you. You might go home that night and be like well, that wasn't even worth it. Nobody said anything to me. I really put in an effort here. I rocked it.

Justine: 47:31

I'm not getting acknowledged, but it's the consistency. A lot of the times it's sitting in the room until it gets past the point of freezing and the things that you do today are going to pay you back three, six, nine months from now. Making that choice and making it a choice that you can stand behind and be consistent with so that you can see results. Yes, maybe someone will call you out tomorrow, maybe you'll get your hair cut and they'll go. Man, cindy, you look great today Like what'd you do? What'd you change? And you're like I cut my hair, it feels fabulous. Covered my roots and maybe it's not something so obvious to them. Maybe it's something that means something more to you. Either way, whatever you choose to make that difference, you want it to be something that is meaningful to you, that's tied into your values and your personal brand. That also, you're okay doing if no one notices for months.

Cyndi: 48:19

Yeah, excellent point, but you're doing it to a purpose and for you. That's right. You're doing it for yourself and if anyone wants a support partner, I would say call Justine, email Justine, beauregard, because you will be that. What I loved about what you just said, and so true, is that compassion, yes, but honesty and challenge, yes, that is also a superpower of yours, as you translate. I care enough to be honest with people and I'm going to challenge everyone I work with to find that and to find that challenge and to take that challenge and to take that risk and, as you said, some things we believe are risky and they're really not Getting people beyond. That, I think, is a beautiful thing.

Justine: 49:03

Sometimes the bigger risk is doing nothing at all.

Cyndi: 49:06

Yeah, absolutely In the long term, you bet. And then, what kind of legacy are you building? She didn't take any risks. We didn't know who she was. She played it safe. Yes, exactly. Well, thank you so much for spending your time and your energy and sharing your wisdom with my audience. You have a podcast as well. That is very well followed. I will put that in the show notes so people can also follow you and continue to hear the messages that you so willingly and lovingly provide. Thank you for that, justine. Thank you so much. So maybe you want to upscale your leadership brand and get in touch with Justine. You can find her on her website, justinebowarkardcom. It's J-U-S-T-I-N-E-B-E-A-U-R-E-G-A-R-E. You will not regret it.