How to Create Confidence and Shift Your Focus on Growth

My special guest with me here today is known as the Boston Heels, teaching how to empower you to create your confidence and live life to its fullest and ultimately achieving success. Coming from humble beginnings, she has become a best selling author, keynote speaker, entrepreneur, and founder of Boston Heels, having successfully climbed the corporate ladder for nearly 20 years. This inspiring thought leader is one of the few women to break the glass ceiling and claim her spot in the c suite. Please welcome the amazing Heather Monahan. Heather, I really appreciate your time and and chatting with me today.

Thank

And I started with paper routes and then bussing tables, waiting tables, bartending, all through high school and college, and ultimately landed out of school with the Gala Winery, and I joined their sales program, became their number one salesperson within the 1st year. And then I left the wine business to go to the radio business and start out as a seller there. Within the 1st year, became the number one seller on the sales team, and I was given an equity partnership opportunity in Saginaw, Michigan to move and lead a company valued at $25,000,000. And in under 3 years, I turned that property into a $55,000,000 property, made a lot of money at a very young age, and made a name for myself in the radio business as someone who could drive revenue, lead teams, and and really bring some massive results. So I left there and went to a publicly traded company in Florida, which I led that sales organization for 14 years, becoming the chief revenue officer.

And after being promoted three times and winning a number of different awards, I ended up getting fired when the CEO became ill and he elevated his daughter to replace him. So I took that opportunity 2 years ago to go to work for myself. I wrote and self published my first book, Confidence Creator, which trumped Trump for number 1 in business biography and has been a really massive success story. During that time, I learned to sell books. You need to get out and speak.

So I hit the speaker trail, and I ended up getting picked up by all the major speaker bureaus, Big Speak, GDA speakers, Harry Walker speaker agency, and APB speakers, and really turned that into my primary business. And during that time, I signed with Podcast 1 and launched my own show, creating confidence with Heather Monahan.

Because look at you now, you have, you know, these books and you've been speaking, you know, around the world and in helping, you know, a lot of a lot of women and men, I'm sure. So, like, with that being said, I know you talk a lot about confidence. So, Heather, what you know, I think all of us really struggle with confidence. You know, I have in the past, you know, me being bullied as a as a kid for 15 years, I I I had very little confidence. I had to build my own confidence in certain ways.

You know, how do you really create confidence in yourself when something has gone wrong has gone on for so long that has really become the new norm?

I just took the philosophy that works for McDonald's and every other major advertiser and I put it to work for me. So, you know, number 1, choose the right platform to run your ad campaign. Number 2, choose powerful messaging. Number 3, find a jingle or a music bed that elicits emotion and memory. Number 4, have a call to action to convert the opportunity.

And number 5, you know, you you want to pair a visual image with this audio campaign if you really want it to explode. So, you know, that was one of the ways I I truly ran a personal ad campaign for myself to myself to elicit confidence within me. But in addition to that, you know, I in my book Confidence Creator, I have 43 different chapters with 43 different tactics and strategies you can implement to create confidence within you because people have different reasons why they're lacking confidence, whether it be you're not following your passion and you're in accounting when you really need to be a painter and you're denying that to yourself, or it could be that you're surrounded by a villain and you need to fire that villain, or it could be that you're running a negative tape in your head to yourself and you're the one really holding yourself back. So I outline all the different strategies so that whatever the issue is that you're up against in that moment, you're able to tackle it head on.

I need to pay my mortgage. You know, what what options do I have? And I felt powerless. So on one of those rides, I just thought to myself, what there's got I believe that there's always a solution for any problem. I just haven't found it yet. So I was thinking, wracking my brain. Okay. What solution is there that I'm not seeing? There's gotta be 1. And it literally popped into my head as I had the radio on and the advertisements came on, and I thought, oh, my gosh.

I am an expert at advertising. I've been doing this for 20 years, making 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars for other people. Why don't I just leverage this methodology that I use for my clients to create success for my clients? Why don't I do that for myself? And in that moment, you know, I decided to put my expertise to work for myself, and wouldn't you know it worked.

And, you know, over a 30 day period very quickly, I was able to change my thought process. I was able to sell myself on my ad campaign, which essentially was that when I would feel fear, that meant fear is a green light, take action now, step into it. And instead of sitting quietly at the table when she would ignore me, I started raising my hand and saying, hi. Good morning. I'm over here.

You missed me, And I started shifting the power in the room. I started feeling and becoming more confident, and I really changed the dynamic. Now, ultimately, that woman ended up firing me when she became CEO, but I was able to put myself in a much more powerful position to stand up to her when she tried to get me to sign, basically, sign all my rights away. When she fired me, she had asked me to to sign an agreement that she would give me money for, basically, do a deal with the devil. She'd give me money if I would sign away my rights to ever talk about what happened while I was at the company.

And because I had been working on my confidence and building my confidence, I knew that I'm I'm not a sellout, and it was time for me to stand up for myself. And I pushed that opportunity away, and I walked out that door.

So it depends on what you are able to gravitate towards that works for you. I'm an action driven person, so action will always be the easiest thing for me to gravitate towards. So for me, creating confidence absolutely comes from taking action. Some people do not like taking action. It freezes them up and beliefs is the easier thing for them to work on, so those people should gravitate towards different, you know, affirmations, working on rewriting a tape in their mind.

And then other people really like learning and knowledge based applications are the way for them to create confidence, whether it be listening to certain podcasts, reading certain books. You know? So there's plenty of different ways to do it. It's really about you, what your holdbacks are, and what you gravitate towards. We all learn differently.

All that, that helps as well. Meditation helps, and also action. For me, if I don't see if I don't do any if I don't execute anything new and I don't see progress, you know, I know Tony Robbins talks a lot about progress and and, then I it's hard to build confidence for me. I I wanna work hard and do the best that I can, and and, and while I'm doing that, I wanna inspire and help other people. So that that that's kind of helped, you know, at least work for me.

But, you know, in your experience, what were what Heather, what were really the steps you took to define your purpose? I know you mentioned purpose before and self worth. Were there any steps that you took, aside from kind of just leaving, you know well, I know you you said you got fired, but starting your own your own thing and following your passion, is there for others, what are do you believe there's certain steps to define your purpose and self doubt?

And how can you drive revenue? He said, you need to stop that, and you need to put yourself first, pick your head up, and look around the world. Not your job, not this company. Look around the world and think about what is bigger that's out there for you. He said, because you're bigger than what you're doing.

And that I sat with that information for maybe even a year. And one day, I was asked to join a charity, and I thought, you know what? This is something different. It's outside of my world. This is kinda tapping into what my adviser and mentor had told me to do.

Okay. I'll I'll do it even though I didn't have time to do it. That's for sure. But it was gonna introduce me to a new world. So I think that, you know, taking opportunities even when you don't know where they're gonna take you, that's very helpful in creating new contacts, networks, perspective.

And what happened through me working for that charity was they asked me to speak, and I started speaking publicly for them. Now I spoke in the radio business for years, but I didn't realize that was something that could ever be a talent or a skill that people valued. It was just part of my job. So I I discredit it. Now that I was in this new world, the charity world, and I was getting asked to speak, I was seeing that there was huge value and a lot of praise and accolade that I got for that.

That started opening my mind up to, there's something here. I'm really good at this. Why haven't I been noticing that this is a differentiator for me? And I started gravitating towards more speaking events. And then someone said to me, you should take a stand up comedy class to really challenge yourself to grow.

I didn't wanna do it. And so what that meant to me is if I'm resisting this, there's a reason why I'm gonna have to make myself do it. And what I learned from that stand up comedy class is I have a superpower and it was speaking because I could stand on that stage ad nauseam and speak forever, and nobody else in the class could do that. So those strange, you know, different experiences taught me that there was something really powerful inside of me that I had never noticed before. So it all started with me putting myself, you know, picking my head up outside of my little world that I was stuck in and starting to push beyond that little world into new worlds.

1st, being the charity world, then next being that stand up comedy world. And those experiences really enlightened me to start seeing that there I had superpowers inside of me that I had been ignoring, that nobody else had been shining a light on, and I had been devaluing. So that started me down a different path. For other people. You know?

So number 1, put yourself into into different environments and and pick your head up outside of the the small world you're living in and start looking beyond it and and pushing yourself to access different industries, areas, and contacts. But another way is to reach out to 10 people in your life and send them an email, a text, or a phone call and say, listen. I'm doing some, you know, work into myself right now. Here's what I wanna know from you. What's unique, special, or different about me?

As I define my unique value proposition, I'd love your perspective and help. And you're gonna get back 10 emails from people giving you exactly what you haven't been able to see about yourself. And maybe they're gonna tell you, you know, you're the most energizing person I've ever met. You can lift people up in a second. Or maybe they're gonna say, you are so detail oriented and smart, and when I am stuck with a problem, I go to you.

But you'll see a pattern that will show up that maybe you haven't been noticing about yourself. And when you find that, there's gonna be clues in there that will help steer you to what's unique and different about you. And another way is to look at the things that you love to do as a child. When I was a child, this is before anyone told you you can't do that. That's, you know, a dumb idea or you shouldn't that's not a career.

When I was a child, I loved to perform, so I wanted to be in plays. Well, that was until one day when I was in school, someone said, well, you can't do that for a living. That's not gonna make you money. And so I walked away from that. Right? So now I I'm on stages every week for a living. That's what I get paid to do. Right? So here's the thing. Look back at your childhood. Look back and think, what were the things I love to do before people told me I couldn't do them?

We don't realize that that what we know could could teach and inspire and help so many people. You know what I mean? Like, even even like for for me with, like, marketing and and storytelling, certain things, you know, I I don't realize, like, oh, I know what I know, and I I know I'm good at it. But will other people find value in that if I try to teach them and educate them and and even speak on speak on stage, inspire them like you do? It's pretty crazy.

I love how you said that. You need to get out of that, like what your mentor mentioned, and get out of that that mental state and and shift and think about, like, this is a big world. A lot of people could learn.

If this message that I have and I do this to myself anytime I second guess myself. If there's a chance that my message could affect one person and I remember who I used to be when I didn't have confidence, when I didn't have mentors, when I felt alone. Wow. If I can share a message that could help that young girl, that young guy, that person, then it's selfish of me not to share it. I'm gonna make myself take this chance.

And when you ask and challenge yourself in that regard, how could you not share it? Right? So it's not up to you to judge who needs your information. It's up to you to put it out there to make the world a better place.

They love the business, and they wanna be like a the face for the business. How do they use their purpose and passion to to really create that brand? How how do they do that? What's is there something that you did? Obviously, you have your own personal brand. So what did you do to to really do to really, you know, build that that audience and and

So I basically sat down with a good friend of mine who was a CMO and she and I, as personal friends, just kind of start sketching out what are the brand pillars that represent Heather Monahan. And to me, that, you know, is transparency, being authentic, being a leader, being someone who is you know, wants to share and help others. And we just started sketching out, basically, like a whiteboard how you would do for a client, you know, what are these brand pillars that this brand is gonna stand for and and really stand on. And and you wanna ask yourself, what are those keys to who you are? And they can change and evolve.

It's not something that has to this is it in forever because those are the things that, you know, that freezes people. Like, oh, I'm stuck on my brand pillars. No. Who cares? You know, just bang out a bunch of ideas, lead forward with those because you wanna cross reference your content, your messaging against what those brand pillars are and be consistent with them.

But it's okay to evolve. You know, when I first started my brand 4 years ago, I didn't know I was gonna speak about confidence. I didn't know I was gonna write a book about confidence. Right? So I've changed and evolved my brand over the past 2 years immensely.

But back 4 years ago, I didn't know any of that was gonna happen. So the key is to take action and launch it. You can evolve it and grow it. I actually work with a company called Brand Builders that specializes in this. So if you are afraid that you don't know how to do it, you there's plenty of people out there.

Brand Builders is a great company to work with. My friend Rory was on my podcast. I do a whole show about this, about how to launch a personal brand. So there's a a lot of available information in the world that you can access, companies you can pay to help and you can hire to help you do this, or you can do it on your own. But the key is this.

Everyone's got a personal brand. It it's up to you if you want to be the one directing it or you want to be the one responding to it. And by that, I mean, I had a personal brand before I I launched mine 4 years ago. It was what other people said about me when I wasn't around. Now I decided to take the pen and write the narrative myself, and that was a massive shift.

It it angered my employer at the time, right, which eventually led me down a path where I got fired. But in the end, by being authentic and real and holding that pen, I took charge of where I was going instead of being batted around by where life took me.

But anything that that works for you that was

I used 8 professional pictures. I was vulnerable in the post. So for me, that's the recipe of success on LinkedIn, and you learn this stuff by practicing. I have some posts I put up that get 2,000 views, and then I have some that have 850,000 or, actually, I have a couple of posts that have a 1,000,000. So here's the thing, you need to be consistent.

You need to post with frequency, identify the platforms that are in growth phase. Right now, growing on Instagram's incredibly hard. They want you to pay to play, and I don't I have no interest in paying for, you know, to grow my audience. So gravitate towards the platforms that you don't have to pay. LinkedIn is a showstopper.

You can create a massive audience within 1 year, even within a few months if you're consistent. You and and show up as you. And some people will say this to me, well, that's easy for you to say, Heather. You have 20 plus years experience in sales and leadership. Well, let me tell you why I disagree with you.

That's irrelevant. So I could have started my brand when I was a brand new salesperson at the Gala Winery because I could have shared that story and what I was learning and the mistakes that I made. That's some might say that's even more interesting than hearing from an expert, someone who's been doing it for 2 decades. Right? So wherever you are in your journey, shine a light on that, who you are.

I I thought I got fired last week from my podcast company because inadvertently someone had mistake my show for another person's show. They told an advertiser of mine, oh, we're not carrying Heather's show next year. That advertiser sent me that email. I went into a tailspin thinking I had just lost my show because I didn't have all the information yet. Right?

So I had to reach out to my podcast company, talk to them about it, and find out that was never about my show to begin with. So sometimes there's just misinformation out there in the world. We need to take a step back from it and say, okay. There are lessons to learn on anything. We can I I can be an expert in being a rookie?

I can be an expert in showing them the crazy mistakes I make. And I posted about how I thought I got fired and what I learned from it, and that posted incredibly well. It doesn't have to be just about here's how you put together a business plan going into 2020, and here's my expertise around it. No. You know, those are the posts that don't do incredibly well.

The ones that do great are when you share your mistakes, your learnings, and who you really are. And maybe it's just that you're scared to be posting and but you're doing it because you wanna start growing and stepping into fears, how you're gonna do that and you wanna help others. You know, just be you, show up as you, and be consistent with it and do it with frequency, and you'll see the gains will come.

Or is it just being even just having consistent content like Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday? Don't first of

And sometimes, you know, I might feel confident in the morning, and confident all the time. And sometimes, you know, I might feel confident in the morning and that's when I should jump on it and leave myself reminders. So I share those stories because I think that I think that's great. And you know what? People might think it's great and it might serve part of my audience, but it's not up to me to judge or decide who it's gonna serve or not serve.

It's just about consistency in posting, and it doesn't have to be the same theme. You know, maybe I'll post this afternoon about a meeting I had yesterday where someone told me I'm taking the wrong strategy with my speaking engagements. Where someone told me I'm taking the wrong strategy with my speaking engagements. I'm learning as I go, and I like sharing those stories. That's not the same as the post that I had about my son, which was positive and how to improve things.

This was more of a, wow, I got some negative feedback today and it was hard to hear. Here's what I'm thinking about it. You know, how would you respond? So my posts are not the same. And if you go on LinkedIn and check out at Heather Monahan, you'll see they're all over the board. Sometimes I write articles. Yeah.

Pull that strategy. Fire it. Get rid of it, and take action on whatever the easiest way for you to move forward. Maybe it's just, you know, saying something a one line that you think is funny, but put something out there because that will allow you to start creating momentum to move forward and and do more.

What I didn't realize was allowing negative person to be in my space on a day to day basis was slowly chipping away at me. It was blocking me from positive opportunities and blocking What am I gonna do? I'm gonna post that I just got fired and I'm really hurting. What am I gonna do? I'm gonna post that I just got fired and I'm really hurting.

And that post went viral, and so many people reached out trying to help me. And then I got on the Elvis Duran show. All these amazing things started happening that would have never happened if that negative person had still been blocking villains are, we all have them. You know, some people, they're family members. Some people, it's their spouse.

Some people, it's a coworker or maybe it's just a neighbor. But there's that person that gives you those negative looks, that says negative things, that's trying to hold you back either subtly or in your face, those are your villains. And the minute you decide to protect yourself, put yourself first, and fire those people from your life, you'll see some really positive things start happening.

We need to to really just get rid of them and focus on ourselves and step into what makes us happy and and what we feel is, you know, makes us powerful and that's gonna help a lot of people. I love it. And and, you know, I I I've mentioned storytelling a few times, you know, and I saw in some of your talks and just your content. You you talk about your story, and and, I think that's inspiring. How do you use storytelling, Heather, to build yourself, essentially provide value and inspire others?

Right? So using story to sell is the way that I built my business in my career since I was 18 years old. So it's just essentially, you know, the best salespeople are the greatest storytellers. And the way that you learn how to to sell or the way that you learn how to tell your story is starting small. And it can start with a neighbor for a coffee.

And, you know, you'll see the minute you start sharing a story, people are engaged. They put themselves in that situation. Their mind starts, you know, taking that story on, and they feel connected to you. So story is it just really, it's a way to connect with others, but it's also a great way to sell whatever product or service or yourself in any situation.

That top 1% keeps failing but getting back up. You know, when I got fired, I could have just gone back to what I always knew known and and that would have been an epic fail, but instead, I decided to take a chance on me. It has not been smooth sailing. There's been countless times where my plan and strategy fell apart and and I failed. I was I partner with Perry Ellis, and then they let me go.

And I had to decide, should I go back to corporate America, or do I keep being an entrepreneur? I failed. I said I'm getting back up again, and this time I'm gonna have more revenue opportunities, more streams, more strategies so that when one fails, it's okay. It's not gonna be as hard a hit. And that's how I started building out my business.

So failure is really the starting point for you to say, am I gonna move forward and take this thing to the next level? Or am I just gonna give up, go home, and call this life a wrap?

Thanks for all the support and I'm gonna be giving you awesome content continuously. And we look forward to seeing you soon.