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Kathi Burns 0:04
Hi there, I'm board certified professional organizer Kathi Burns. I'm really glad you're here. This podcast is designed for busy entrepreneurs just like you who want to take better control of your business and move forward with less stress and more success. If this is your first time listening then thanks for coming. The Organized Energized podcast is produced for your enjoyment and show notes are found at ThePodcast@OrganizedandEnergized.com. Come back often and feel free to add this podcast to your favorite RSS feed or iTunes. You can also follow me on Twitter at Organize Energy and Facebook. All links are in the show notes. Now let's get into the show. Hi, everyone, this is Kathi with Organizing Energize and I'm back and I'm totally energized and excited today. Because my guess is Teresa de Grosbois. Teresa is a globally recognized influence expert with a passion to help change agents create more impactful businesses. She has been the number one best selling author of massive influence a high list habits of the highly influential, which has been on the bestseller list for seven countries since 2015. Yeah, she knows what she's doing. Teresa teaches marketing courses around the globe to business leaders and entrepreneurs about how to create massively successful word of mouth campaigns. Teresa has the international Evolutionary Business Council, which I'm a member of, a global community of speakers and influencers dedicated to teaching the principles of success. In the How to Become a best selling author program Teresa teaches, she has 100% track record of getting people to bestseller status. Today we're going to talk about the EBC we're going to talk about her writer's workshop coming up. If you feel like you want to write a book, you can do it quickly in Costa Rica with Theresa. So join me this is going to be a fun, fun discussion. I'll see you there. Welcome Teresa, I'm so glad that you're here.

Teresa de Grosbois 2:05
It's great to be here. Thank you so much for having me on Kathi.

Kathi Burns 2:08
Absolutely. So let's talk about your evolution as a designer and as an influencer in the marketing industry. Tell me about your past Teresa. So how did you get to where you are right now?

Teresa de Grosbois 2:22
Let me tell you, I had a beautiful linear process all planned out. Anything but and, I think that's really the entrepreneurial journey for so many people, it really does come from meaning. If we do what is the next most logical step for us, then life evolves and when we let life evolve, it's amazing where the current of our own life will bring us to. I actually originally started out working in the oil and gas industry in Canada, I couldn't have conceived the life I'm living now 20 years ago, like I couldn't have dreamed it, couldn't have dreamed that big. And yet, when you sort of surrendered to the direction your life is taking you it's pretty amazing where life will bring you.

Kathi Burns 3:10
Yeah, I totally agree with that. I like to say water over a rock, like trying to take the path that you tend to be leading led to, as opposed to trying to fight your way into where you think you're gonna go. Don't you think that that helps a lot more?

Teresa de Grosbois 3:26
Very much. There is a higher wisdom there that takes you where you need to go whether you want to go or not.

Kathi Burns 3:36
Yeah, kicking and screaming, or are you just gonna go with the flow? Go downstream. So I know that the Evolutionary Business Council, which we will affectionately call the EBC started as a mastermind, is that how it came about you were with like minded entrepreneurs and tell me about that story.

Teresa de Grosbois 3:54
Yeah, it's an interesting evolution in and of itself. The EBC was originally a brainchild that came out of a big event that I had done in Calgary. I had invited a lot of the people I like to mastermind with a lot of the top speakers in North America. And I thought it'd be really fun after the event to just bring everyone up to the mountains for a weekend and just hang out and mastermind together. So the night after the event ended, we're all sitting in this beautiful condo and out of my mouth pops someday when I'm influential enough, I'd love to start a community of highly influential people that are all about changing the world. And they all started laughing. And I'm sitting there like, I just told you guys my dream, and you're laughing at me. And Danielle Gutierrez looks at me Of course, he's one of the top Latino speakers in the world. And he looks at me and says, Wait a minute, Teresa. You were just on stage six hours ago telling people to notice when they say someday I will and inviting them to make that today. And then Jennifer Huff turns to me and says, so when are you going to do that, Teresa? And that was actually the moment that EBC was born. And it was actually kind of an experiment. Because I didn't set it up as the usual advanced mastermind, I kind of asked the question of what if we treated influence, like it was a currency, and built a funnel, like a marketing funnel to pull the most influential people toward us? And it was pretty amazing how it worked initially.

Kathi Burns 5:26
That's incredible. And how many years ago is that?

Teresa de Grosbois 5:29
That's 12 years ago now. And it's evolved significantly since.

Kathi Burns 5:33
Yeah. And it's a fantastic organization. I really, I enjoy it myself. So tell us who you were in the oil and gas industry? And then were you doing marketing in that industry? Is that how that happened? Or did you go into marketing from that?

Teresa de Grosbois 5:50
I was mostly leading big change initiatives in the industry. So I had a lot of opportunity to really understand what creates change and what creates influence. I was doing a lot of like management system work. And it was kind of fascinating. I started doing a lot of self help work that had me really doing a lot of inquiry, in fact, I can remember a specific moment where I had what I was in the middle of what I now affectionately call my really bad year. I had a year where, in the first six months of that year, my father had passed away. The business I had started had failed. My marriage had ended, my health was in a tailspin. All I can remember at that time was how deeply unhappy I was I had all the outward trappings of success, like the six figure income, the nice car. And I remember this one night, I'm sitting in the bathroom of my new post marriage breakup, condo. And I'm surrounded by tools because I'm always been an renovator and this bathroom is going to be my latest project. I'm literally bathed in my own tears, because the only thought in my head was, it's me that needs renovating. I remember looking back over my life, and I couldn't honestly remember the last time that I was tuned in turned on happy. But it was such a powerful moment I you know, I can laugh thinking about it now, because it was the turning point. It was the point at which I got serious about doing my own work and I started taking every self help course, under the sun, I got a lot more serious about my yoga and my health. And within a few years of that time, my life had radically shifted, and I wouldn't even have recognized myself.

Kathi Burns 7:34
It's interesting. So it takes a lot of sometimes it takes a massive amount of trauma before we're ready to make that shift, or before it's like, boom, boom, boom, boom, okay, maybe we do need to do something in our work. Maybe we shouldn't just be busy. And we should go inside and slow down for a minute. I know, I think we've all had that as entrepreneurs. Well, the reason that I think we become entrepreneurs who don't you think it's because you get that little calling, there's like, I can do something more with this. And the universe just knocks us on our side or knocks us off. First one says, yeah, maybe you should pay attention to that. So it sounds like that's what happened to you. And it's a common phenomenon. But what's uncommon about you is how, how massively you've been able to impact people. So where did the book come in, then after this? Because you have a number one best seller in seven countries? Let's talk about the book a little bit.

Teresa de Grosbois 8:32
Yeah, well, it was probably five or six years, maybe seven years after that time that I first wrote mass influence. I've been working in the realm of influence for a while, and I realized I really do need to write a book, to help the change agents of the world understand that becoming influential is not only easy, it's important. Because there's a lot of good people out there was a lot of negative self talk, like a lot of inner dialogue that stops them from stepping into their own influence. They think nobody's going to listen to them anyway. Or they're not important enough, or only the arrogant would want to be influential. We all have 1000 things we tell ourselves. The reality is the only people that don't have inner dialogue that stops them from stepping into influence in their own leadership tend to be sociopaths. Or conversation, right? Tend to stop themselves, right. So when you see a really good leader who's really about changing the world, they've had to do a lot of work to overcome all of that self doubt, that enabled them to become the leader that they are today.

Kathi Burns 9:37
I agree and what would you recommend to someone as like, step one I don't feel good enough. They're saying, I know I have this message. I don't feel good enough. I don't think that it's going to be accepted what would be the first step that you would advise him to do?

Teresa de Grosbois 9:54
Well, the first thing is to note that all human beings have that right like research now shows that we first start developing our most significant negative self beliefs around the age of two when we're first learning languages. So when we're in our very first failures in our life, we start telling our stuff to make sense of those failures, right? I'm too short, I'm too tall, I'm too dumb, I'm too smart, I am not good at speaking. Nobody's gonna listen to me, nobody loves me, there'll be something we would have said to ourselves in those early ages. And those messages that we start giving ourselves tend to become repetitive patterns that we keep living into, as we get older, and as we become adults. So step one is to try and get a handle on what are the most common things you tell yourselves in the moments where you really feel called to step up and lead or really call to push yourself to play a bigger game? What is it, that dominant thought that stops you, and see if you can go back and remember some of the first failures of your life when you first started telling yourself that, because it probably is a repetitive pattern, the same thing is probably stopping you everywhere. And if you can go back and make friends with that little inner child that created that two or three year old version of you that started first creating that messaging for you, and give that inner child a new job to cheer you on, instead of to warn you all the time. That's the thing that's really going to start turning the tables, we do a lot of inner child work in the evolutionary business counsel, especially in some of our more advanced programs, because it's a very quick route to get after some of that negative self talk that we created on ourselves.

Kathi Burns 11:39
Yeah, that's really good advice. And we all have that we all have some of it, and some of this more than others. So I think yeah, the great piece of advice is if you do find yourself stuck, step back and see that I think that's great advice. And once you recognize that self pattern, what would you say is the way to eliminate it and move forward?

Teresa de Grosbois 12:04
Well, the big thing is, and I grow this from Jennifer Huff's work with permission to give your inner child a new job. When you start making friends with your inner child, you want to lovingly comfort that inner child and tell them that it's not their job to ring the alarm bell anymore, it's not the job to go around, warning you all the time. Let your inner child be in charge, have fun, and play and cheering you on on the adventure, and let the adult you let the higher consciousness the part of you that's tuned into source and tapped into your own soul, let that part of you decide whether something's risky or something needs to be avoided. Not the two year old version of you that you don't want to be driving the bus.

Kathi Burns 12:47
Having them be in charge of play is a wonderful thing. I love that whole concept. For sure. I love the Evolutionary Business Council. Let's talk a little bit more about that membership and how it all came about. So all your friends had the mastermind, they said we'll start and did they say let's do it?

Teresa de Grosbois 13:12
Actually they did that group of people became the first advisory board for the Evolutionary Business Council, which is very cool. We spent the whole weekend dreaming and envisioning what the EBC might become. And they've actually been my greatest supporters on the road ever since as well. It's pretty incredible when you have a group of influential change agents at your back, it's pretty hard to fail, when you've got a community like the evolutionary Business Council around you, because they're pretty amazing individuals.

Kathi Burns 13:40
Yeah, all sorts of amazing people. I had joined earlier this year, and there are several, what we call deep dive dive training sessions that are coming up. And I know that there's one coming in September, that's about podcasting.

Teresa de Grosbois 13:58
We always do our deep dive retreats on the topics of influence, impact or profit. Because we believe those are the three pillars that every change agent, every entrepreneur that's about creating a more conscious sustainable world needs. So September one is our influence Deep Dive. And we're diving deep in the topic of how do you build a blockbuster show. So we're going to be focusing on podcasting, but a lot of the concepts that we'll be teaching and talking about could also apply to an online television show or, or even a docu reality TV show that you might apply to have covered on Netflix or something like that. It's we're really diving deep in the topics of how do you create a profitable model for your show? How do you be an awesome show host? How do you create an influential business model? And more importantly, how do you create profit from a show we'll be talking a lot about sponsorship with the queen of sponsorship herself. Charmaine Hammond these are the most advanced conversations Ron sponsorship in our industry, so it's going to be a really fun three days where we really roll up our sleeves and get stuff done on your business.

Kathi Burns 15:08
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. And for those of you who are interested in looking at the EBC or seeing if it's a good fit, there is an application process. And we'll put links below so that you can check that out. So I'm so intrigued. Okay, so you're living the life of having a retreat in Costa Rica. I'm so happy for you for that. I love Costa Rica. I've been there and four times already. Keep going back. So let's talk about your retreat just for a minute. Now you're living there full time?

Teresa de Grosbois 15:40
Yes, I do believe in really getting intentional about designing the life you want to live. So, Pam and myself came down here to found a conscious sustainable community, which we call Vista Mundo.  And our first little retreat center has now opened, we've got about half the lots in the community have sold, we're working with a developer Mark Copel, who's some he's a retired buffalo farmer from the US really lovely individual. Yeah. And we're really just having fun with it. We're planting a food forest every day, we go out and plant more flowers or trees. And just really being in alignment with the community that's loving and supporting of each other and, and founded on the principles of sustainability. So if that's something that interests you feel free to reach out. I'd love to have a conversation.

Kathi Burns 16:30
That's so funny. A buffalo, a buffalo farmer, huh?

Teresa de Grosbois 16:33
Yeah. He calls them duck buffalo, which he's actually a retired veterinarian, but on the buffalo farm in the States, and just a really, really love and people, development for our people.

Kathi Burns 16:49
I love it. There's nothing better than putting my hands in the dirt. I just love the fact that you can go out and grow things and start things from scratch. Costa Rica is so fertile. It's such an amazing place to grow anything. Pretty much grow there, right?

Teresa de Grosbois 17:03
Yeah. Gardening is mostly an exercise and feeding back the jungle here.

Kathi Burns 17:12
So if you had to do it all over again, is there anything that you would swap out with your life or anything at all?

Teresa de Grosbois 17:22
I've loved every failure and every success. I think in life, we need our failures, we need those moments where things aren't working, and I really do believe in the expression "Good is the Enemy of Great" If your life is all good, you never seek or strive for anything better, you never turn yourself around and say, Okay, wait a second, that didn't work what next. So I actually don't think I would trade a single failure. I've had lots of them, big external failures that people saw, but I've also had internal failures, where like, just in terms of my own commitment to my own self work just wasn't in alignment, or, I hate in a way that wasn't me. But I do think all of that becomes sort of the mosaic of who we are. And as human beings, we become perfect and all our imperfections. So truthfully, I wouldn't trade a thing. I've loved every moment of it, including the worst one.

Kathi Burns 18:24
Yeah, that's a really good answer. I totally agree that the through challenge comes triumph. I mean, you're not you don't stretch. You don't imagine if it's all complacency, and everything's just perfect. Then what is that anyhow, like, perfection is overrated. When I was writing my first book, that was my mantra. Perfection is overrated, and simply not worth it. Striving for that is just crazy in the making, anyhow. What is the best piece of advice that anyone's ever given you? That you think of a lot or just keeps popping into your head?

Teresa de Grosbois 19:01
I love what Jennifer Huff says Sheryl Sandberg has now written a book with this title. But I think Jennifer Huff was the first that said to me many, many years before Sheryl Sandberg was even known as an individual, which is lean in. I think just continuing to lean in the direction of your passion. Allowing yourself because as you lean in, you can see more certainly leaning around the corner, simply a whole new VISTA is available to you. And I think living life that way of if you're not sure where you're going next. That's okay. Just lean into whatever feels like it might be the right direction for you. And I think that's the best advice I've ever been given.Since many times, I've now become really good friends with Jennifer Hiuff stemmed out of originally just following some of her teachings and I think that's the best piece of guidance anyone's ever given me.

Kathi Burns 19:57
I love that lean in I will also put that right here. I think that's good, because I think you'll get more insight. That's really good advice. Yeah. So okay, so you're already a number one best selling author if you were going to write another book, or if unless you are?

Teresa de Grosbois 20:19
I'm always writing.

Kathi Burns 20:23
We want to be the first to know.

Teresa de Grosbois 20:24
I think my next book is going to be about not just influence, but influence and profit and how they play together to create impact. You often see people who are awesome at one superpower and not the other, there are people who are highly profitable. And then they use their profit to generate influence, they use their monetary proof to generate a certain amount of social proof. But they're not really the geniuses that influence that they could be. And then you see people who are highly influential, they understand the concept of social proof like nothing else, and they use their influence. And they tend to generate a little bit of profit from their influence. But there's not that many people you see that have that's two superpowers combined. And the key element that ties the two together, is really how good are you at getting people to take action. Because until people take action, you haven't really influenced them, you've just given them insight, but they haven't changed anything, they haven't changed their lives, right. And until you get people to take action, there is no profit in your business, you've given them good insight, but they will not pull out their credit card if they're not in action, right. And so when you master that, and the Evolutionary Business Council, we call that distinction mobilization when you master the ability to mobilize your following. And actually use that to generate amazing profit and use the profit to support the influence you're having, the force you can have in the world, the change you can create in people's lives, the impact you can have is phenomenal. So I think that's going to be my next book, I'm going to talk about how those three elements play together and how to understand the nuances of how they operate.

Kathi Burns 22:07
I love that I'm looking forward to that one. That'll be that'll be impactful for everybody. And of course, but yeah, and I agree, there's a lot of people who have the influence, but they just don't have the money behind them. Or if they might have the money behind them they're not necessarily influencing the way that could be to the highest and best so yeah. Okay, so I know we have a valuable free resource that people can can access down below this podcast, what is it that you are offering Teresa?

Teresa de Grosbois 22:35
If you want to actually practice your influence skills, you can come to our 30 Day influence challenge. So if you go to Mass influence the book.com, we're now actually giving the digital versions of my book away for free to celebrate its seven year anniversary on the bestseller list. Yeah, we've been in and out of the number one spot in small business marketing for over seven years now. So to celebrate that the digital version of the book is complimentary on most of the sites, Kobo iTunes, or iBooks. Kindle Kindle keeps trying to push it back up. So we have to keep bugging them. So depending on when you happen to be, if you're listening to the recording of this, when you happen to be checking, you might have to let us know. But we do give the digital version away complimentary. And then you can sign up for our 30 Day influence challenge, which is just 30 days, a real quick exercises you can do. They're just little mini emails we send you every day, where you do this little two minute thing every day, and you build your habits of becoming influential by doing the actions that highly influential people tend to do.

Kathi Burns 23:40
Yeah, that's a phenomenal resource. And it does take four to six weeks for us to change our habits. So 30 days is right spot on, for everybody. So I would welcome everybody that's listening to go ahead and start that 30 Day Challenge. If you really feel like you want to be influential you want to make an impact if you know that you have something that will benefit the world towards better go ahead and take the challenge for sure. And start, walk your talk kids, do it. That's what I say. Okay, is there anything that I should have asked you that I didn't anything that we want to talk about?

Teresa de Grosbois 24:16
I think you've covered it all. It's just been a joy to be here, Kathi. Thank you so much.

Kathi Burns 24:21
Absolutely. It's so good to connect and and I'm loving the EBC everybody check it out below, check the links. I am just so thrilled that you're living your dream in Costa Rica. And hopefully one of these days I will be down and see all the things that you've grown because it flourished.

Teresa de Grosbois 24:41
Please come on down. We'd love to see you.

Kathi Burns 24:43
Absolutely take care and thank you so much for your time and good Wi Fi and good blessings to you and happy fall everybody. Check out the EBC deep dive in September.

Teresa de Grosbois 24:57
Thanks for having me on Kathi.

Kathi Burns 24:59
Thank you. Take care

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