Kevin Stafford 0:02
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the conversations with coaches podcast the delightful conversations with coaches podcast, as you can probably tell, it’s me, Kevin and I already have a smile on my face because I’ve been chatting. It took a matter of moments, probably less than 60 seconds to get an ear to ear grin on my face, seeing and talking with COVID Miko again, to reconfirm that I’m getting that last name pronunciation, right? Because it’s always better to ask than to just stumble over yourself. Clovette is back. And yeah, she it’s, I can’t tell you how delighted I am, I was already pretty happy like knowing she was on the schedule. And I’m just I’m like a level up from that already. So please join me as I reacquaint you with COVID. Let me just remind you from from our last episode, what club it’s all about. Club, it believes success happens when she finds a better way and shares it with others. She does that by challenging the status quo and thinking differently. After getting fired via voicemail from a software sales job. Now remember the story from last time COVID made a commitment to help 100,000 software salespeople secure their future by leveraging their existing intellectual property. Ultimately, what she brings is a trusting relationship where others can count on her with a major focus on how she desires to positively influence the communities that she chooses to serve. Call that. Reset the stage so that people can like see you as I’m seeing you and like remember you as I’m remembering you. Thanks for coming back on. This is just This is selfish. This is great. I love this.
Clovette Meikle 1:33
So excited. And you know, as I was listening to the bio about myself, right, everything is the exact same from how it was last year, right? The landscape. Oh my goodness, last year, except for one word. And that’s now it’s emotional. And focused on people helping people leverage their motional capital. Yeah. And we’ll get into Yes.
Kevin Stafford 2:03
By the way, that’s gonna be the title of the episode right there.
Clovette Meikle 2:08
Yes, and, you know, going back to getting fired by voicemail, a lot of times when things happen to us, and I just got to quickly shot out all of my zoomies, I used to work at zoom, a lot of them 1000s of them got laid off recently. And that’s right. I didn’t get fired by zoom, real emails, I don’t want to put that out, there was a completely different company. But when something like that happens to you, it’s so easy to feel like, oh, this happened to me, someone did something to me, right, especially when it attacks your income. And for me, the first thing I did when I happen is I went to LA, I went to LA for a month, and I just veg out. They don’t want to be you know, I live on the east coast now. And so I was like, I need to get back to LA, right, get back to wholeness, because it’s the perfect place if you want to get back into your wellness or health and wellness. And I was laying on the beach, and savasana yoga pose. And a thought came to me like how did I create this? I did not create this? And how like, what am I firing myself? How am I being untrue to myself? And the answer for me was that I have managed PTSD, some will say very successfully, others might not. I have managed PTSD for almost 20 years, right. And it’s something I’ve been managing in the background. And what I found is a lot of my colleagues at every job that I will go to and be like, how are you always so positive? You know, like, what do you read? And what are you doing? And upon further inspection, I will find out they were also dealing with PTSD or miss some type of mental deficiency, what someone would call mental deficiency, but they were dealing with it quietly. Right now their sales leadership because I come from a sales background may know they’re in therapy, but that’s about all they know. Right? And they had a deep fear that if they share exactly what it was that they were dealing with, that it will impact how they were viewed and if they were able to perform in their job, right.
Kevin Stafford 4:17
This must be in the air today because I’ve been talking about this on and off all day today. And it’s like it’s such a it’s so difficult to really under to really understand and embrace how how especially in leadership where you do have to present a certain kind of front and you have to be a certain kind of way and be inspiring example and merging that with the requirement to be vulnerable. And to demonstrate and to show it’s like you know, I’m I am struggling. You don’t need to know the details. You don’t have to invite everybody into every minut detail of your personal life. But it’s important that people see you as you are as if it’s some
Clovette Meikle 4:56
space for your own humanity.
Kevin Stafford 4:59
Yeah, makes you a better leader? Yes, you don’t think it’s going to you think somehow it’s going to diminish you as a leader, when really it’s going to take you to new levels of leadership. But that’s, that’s, that’s a hard thing to hear. It’s a hard thing to say to yourself, it’s a hard thing to hear coming from somebody else. But when you do, it’s like, you’re like, you know what? I think you might be right.
Clovette Meikle 5:19
Yes, I mean, the one instance where I did share it, I felt attacked, right? Every sales meeting, after that I felt was an attack or my therapy was an attack on, how are you managing? You know, is this related to right? So I totally get it. But at the end of the day, for me, one of my values is transparency, you see what you get with me? Right? Good or bad? Right, what do you see is what you get. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, this is how I created this. And I was like, okay, in order for me not to invite this experience, back into my reality, I have to own who I am. 100% 1,000%, right. And so I decided to become vocal about it, right? And inside of doing that, because, you know, I’m in transformation. So once I cover me, it’s like, okay, how can I help?
Kevin Stafford 6:12
Yeah, but you’re on ask on, you know,
Clovette Meikle 6:16
masculine, let’s get, get your head get your oxygen. It’s like, okay, how can I effectively hit that number 100,000 people, 100,000 souls 100,000. Salespeople, and have it be something that is authentic, based off of my own experience, you know,
Kevin Stafford 6:33
and that’s, honestly, I feel like that being this way in the world not only shows other people that they can do things this way, be vulnerable, be authentic, and have the success they want to have. And I think it simultaneously reveals to us, the kind of people we want to surround ourselves with the kind of people we want to work with the kind of organizations we want to work with that value this and understand its importance to their bottom line also, but their entirety, everything they’re trying to do all the people they’re trying to serve their clients, their customers, their employees, their partners, everyone. And it really, it becomes something that helps me to better evaluate and choose the people whom I spend my valuable time I liked my energy with. And so does it just the people who treat me more like a problem than a person when I showed them myself, tells me something about them, even as it helps to illuminate things about myself and the world around me. And it’s it’s good, it has a good has a good sorting and bonding and serving effect that I’m quite frankly, the more I practice it, the more I preach it.
Clovette Meikle 7:43
You see the beauty in it, right? Because you did what in what you don’t want to invite in your own life. Right. And that is
Kevin Stafford 7:52
the thing, right? As Dang, right? I love it, we just like jumped into the deep end, this is like this is this. I was gonna say it’s heavy stuff. It’s heavy, it’s more, it’s got gravity, you know, it’s dense stuff. But it’s like, it’s so important. And so valuable. I love it. I love I love and that’s again, one of the things I love about you as a coach is how how ready you are at the drop of a hat to go all the way into the deep end. And we can come all the way back out and get a little go go to the quote unquote shallow end and talk about techniques and tactics and you know, all the details of it, which are superduper important to which you also bring to the table but it’s just I love that ability to move from the from the big, heavy, dense stuff where it’s just like high level concept where it’s just like you, you can have what you want in the world, you could be vulnerable and authentic and successful. And you can have you can have it all really what you’re saying and then let’s talk about how you know, and let me show you let me show you how I so how you and how we can do all this together. It’s I get very excited about it. I get almost get over my skis. I’m just like, Oh, it’s so good to be a part of this movement. You know?
Clovette Meikle 8:54
Absolutely. You know, one of our favorite coaches His name is Kirby, I’m actually introduce you guys. He has this favorite quote that I love. Like you could have anything you could have any and everything that you want, but not all at the same time. And I think it’s so free because first of all, it busts the myth that there’s something out of your capacity to create. By it’s literally a false idea. But it also brings down into reality that you do have to focus on. I don’t want to say one thing at a time, but preferably right one thing at a time in a given moment, right? But intentionally pour your energy towards something or someone so that you can see it like a plant grow, you know? Yeah. And so for me, I’m always looking at how I can balance that right how can I bring my authentic self right have all that I want anytime that I want it while also I have the sense of like reality, right? When it comes to creating my goals. Are there small goals? Are they measurable? Am I really acquiring the result that I want because, as we talked about before you hit record, when you’re in personal development or transformation, a lot of times it can become romanticized. We’ll set these lofty goals, but we forget that some of the tactics that we use and sales or marketing or whatever industry we’re in, are required. You have to put those things in, right, yeah, having a daily routine and things of that nature so that we can actually meet our result and meet it with excellence.
Kevin Stafford 10:46
I that’s such an important important point and an important concept to be able to learn how to navigate because a lot of times we fall into this trap of thinking that if you if you want to dream big, you have to dream unrealistically. And if you want to, if you want to be realistic, you have to dream small. And that’s, that’s, again, that’s false. That’s false. You can dream big, and work on the details. In fact, that is that that’s the way dreams are dreams and details are details. And it’s like, it’s that focus that lets you do it. But yeah, I think we’ve we’ve we’ve bought into that false narrative that that dreams have to be small to be realistic, or achievable, or that our, our details have to be like real grounded, you know, are there for us to be able to dream, the way that we think that we shouldn’t dream rather than both? You know, we can have it all
Clovette Meikle 11:33
you can. Yeah. Prior to the advent of advertising, and television, we completely bought into whatever was put in a book. Now we completely buy into whatever we see on YouTube videos. And Twitter, right, we could really buy into those concepts without vetting them. And I think that’s when you start taking ownership of your own transformation, when you start vetting ideas, other people’s ideas and your own like, Wait a minute. Is that true? Isn’t it true? How much data is backed by this concept? I agree with it. Right? It’s so important.
Kevin Stafford 12:20
This is what the coaching is all about. Really, it’s like those these asking good questions. And when the when the questions are really good. So I’m just holding them open, you don’t have to immediately arrive at a solution. In fact, sometimes you just need to sit there and sit there with the uncertainty and be like, I don’t know about this. Maybe I should sit with it for a while. Think about it, feel on it, talk to other people about it, do a little bit of further research, sit and think about it some more. And you know what, the question is going to arrive at its destination, which may or may not be an answer, something to keep in mind. It’s gonna get there, you might arrive at a better question, which those are always the moments where I get really excited where I just like, a good question. And I was like, I don’t know how to answer it. I’m I’m quite sure how to approach it. I bring the right people into my life. I have coached how to talk it through with me. And then I arrive at a question that was really the question. I think I was going for all along. But I didn’t know it until I took the time to sit with it had the space held for me had the nudges that I needed to go in the right directions, all that stuff. That’s just what good coaching is all about. It gets me so I can be so excited. It’s so contagious. And yes, it can be inspirational, it can be these big dreams and this big, like, just really positive thing in your life that you don’t have to allow to shift over the line into romanticized you know, you have to romanticize it to be in love with it, you know, that?
Clovette Meikle 13:38
That’s so true. You know, one of the things that I think about often, because I feel like Eckhart Tolle, he friends is so perfectly like being the watcher. So instead of internalizing a particular experience that you’re going through, like almost having an out of body experience watching how, how am I interpreting this? What actions, you know, based off of my interpretations that I take, and then using that data, even with that question, right, how am I interpreting this question? Right? And then taking that data and using it to empower our big dreams? You know, I think it’s such an excellent concept especially when you kind of learn because when you when I first read it, I was like being the watcher like watching myself. me watching me, okay, got it. Right, but once I took it on, in a lot of cases saved my life and the life of others, because instead of being the person that immediately had an answer, or immediately was judgmental about a particular thing, I was able to really investigate my own interpretation, right, and then make a smarter, more holistic more human choice.
Kevin Stafford 15:03
Yeah, well put, yeah, it’s more human. And you really do give yourself the space to be fully human. When you do that, like you kind of allow rather than just be in your body, and be experiencing it and, and sort of, in a way a bit of a not not a slave to but sort of beholden to your reactions, like the way someone can say a certain thing or do a certain thing. And you could, you could immediately feel it inside you. And the feeling is it’s it’s your feeling it is correct, it is accurate, it is who you are. But you don’t want to allow what happens next, to be solely defined by that. You want the watcher to come in and help. And that’s. And again, when you when you lay it out like that, it sounds so simple. It’s like Oh, of course, that’s I could see how that would totally work. But we move through our lives. And we’re like we get we get the loss, we get confused, we don’t realize we have this power, we don’t realize we have these choices.
Clovette Meikle 15:54
And you know what, I’m finding what a lot of my clients, and I resonate with it, because I used to do it all the time, we immediately want to jump into a solution, right? So I’ll get my clients to come to me, they’re like, how do I fix this, and they immediately want to take some formula. So I’m sure strategy, some tactic and immediately solve it. And I’m like, Huh, you could do that. However, taking that approach, likely, you’re going to experience the same thing over again. So let’s take a step back. And really investigate how you are interpreting this how these facts, these experiences that is right in front of you, right, is really shaping your life and the decisions that you make, then once we have clarity on that, you know, then we can implement a strategy, which I think is the most powerful play, right? Because it is implemented and you know, with absolute certainty, this is not something that you’re gonna have to face again, it’s not gonna be a revolving door.
Kevin Stafford 17:01
And that’s not to not to toot your horn or anything like that. But you are, you’re nailing it and demonstrating exactly why you’re such a great coach. To be perfectly frank, you’re because you’re, you’re cutting right to the chase to be like, this is this is how simple it could be. It’s going to be work, there’s going to be some challenges, but this is how simple it can be ease need somebody who’s going to be able to tell you the right things at the right moments and tell you to wait, when waiting is a good idea to pause and hold space hold that space for you and with you when it’s when it’s when it’s right. And not to try to rush to the solution. And quite frankly, yes, this is why you’re such a great a great person to have, by some by your side by someone’s side, especially during periods of transformation, when there’s so much chaos around that it can be hard to it can be hard to see anything, let alone yourself clarity.
Clovette Meikle 17:45
Oh my gosh, you know, I am that for a lot of people. But honestly, if I didn’t have people that was that for me. I can’t go. It doesn’t work. You know, every one of us like each and every one of us can motivate ourselves, we say to affirmations, right? We get ourselves in a state of positive psychology, yes, that’s our responsibility. But when the heat is on, you need a partner, you need a trusted adviser. And the same things that I need is what I aspire to be for other people. Because I know that it’s a require is required to operate inside of integrity and applicability and excellence. When you are in chaos when nothing seems to be going right, right? Or you’re shooting for something that you really feel is bigger. This is bigger than me. We have all those questions that we really don’t say out loud. That’s when you know you need so
Kevin Stafford 18:50
maybe might be bigger. It might be bigger than me, but it’s not bigger than us.
Clovette Meikle 18:53
Exactly. Exactly. You know, I found myself telling my clients the same thing. One of my beloved coaches, you said to me, you don’t have to believe take my belief I believe for you. does not require your belief is not required.
Kevin Stafford 19:12
You’ll get there. Yeah. One of us at the front can hold the light for now. We’ll each have our own lights, eventually. Maybe you’ll be at the front of the at the front of the group. Next time. We need somebody there to lead the way. But for right now, just come with me. That’s so beautiful. Oh, well shoot, I was looking at the clock trying to be a good podcast host and the time is just it’s zooming by No pun intended. So you’ve demonstrated admirably and quite frankly impeccably why you’re such a great coach. So how can people find out more about you? How can people get how do people get to you? Like where can I find Where’s website LinkedIn social media. carrier pigeon, like snail mail, like what’s the what’s the best way to get more of this from you?
Clovette Meikle 19:58
Yeah, the quick I guess way is LinkedIn. I’m on LinkedIn every day. Even when I’m not posting I’m on and inboxes. So quickest way, I do have a page where you can schedule time with me at about me.com for slash callback. I make it easy. I’m also a clubhouse a lot. Tick tock. Yeah. If you’re a clubhouse we got the Kinect for sure.
Kevin Stafford 20:26
I haven’t been on clubhouse No. Well, I gotta say it kind of fell off my social media radar. It’s been it’s been LinkedIn for me LinkedIn and then still open to Twitter, which yeah, that’s, that’s more of like I’m watching the house burned down sort of situation. But then tick tock, because it’s just it’s such an easy way to like, get allow people to see me and get to know me before I even know they exist. Like it’s it’s, it begins the trust journey. Like it begins that vulnerability, that availability, that authenticity journey, before I even take the first step. And so I’m just like, just get out there. Absolutely, absolutely.
Clovette Meikle 20:59
And right now, um, is a perfect time for your listeners, because I am wrapping up my certification for hypnotherapy. And so I’m doing an initiative called Transform. 100. So I’m gifting 100 people, and my community hypnotherapy.
Kevin Stafford 21:19
Is that is that started as I already started? Because yeah, we’re recording this in the middle of February. We normally err until like later later in March. But I think it might bumped us up in the schedule. So that this, we get the word out about this. So this is available now. I’ll make sure this airs a lot sooner to today.
Clovette Meikle 21:35
Yeah, actually, I’m launching it tomorrow. I’m making my first post about it tomorrow. So we’re, you’re good? Yeah, cuz I don’t think I’m gonna get to 100 people in two weeks. Because it’s such a personal thing. Yes, I could do a group thing. But it’s such a personal thing. And I want everyone to get the value right from participating. And the three things that we’re going to be looking at is values, right? How to create values that drive your desire life, right? How to consistently hold on to those values, because one of the things I’ve noticed when my own clients, when they write their values, I have everyone write their values, I can pinpoint how they’re negating their own positivity. Mm hmm. So how do you write your values in a way that’s locked into your dream? Right? And then the third thing is actually receiving the hypnotherapy. Right. So the most common things I see especially for salespeople, and people that are looking to launch their own business or already inside their own business is imposter syndrome. Right? Feeling like, who am I to speak about this? Yeah, procrastination thinking that, Oh, I’m just such a huge procrastinator. No, you’re not.
Right, and how do you really deal with anxiety and all the things that come up when you go to communicate who you are, what you do, and the impact that you have on the world?
Kevin Stafford 23:08
I love that love. Okay. Yeah, I will. I’ll make sure this gets posted as close to today as possible. And I’ll just I’ll just direct people to your LinkedIn to like if check, find this post. Reach out, find out more get take advantage of this offer. If you missed it. She’s still here. A favor and connect. I’ll make sure all that’s in the show notes to club it. Can we do this again? In like a few months? I get to like an April or May or whatever, just because
Clovette Meikle 23:35
I’m always a yes.
Kevin Stafford 23:37
Oh, oh, oh, warms my heart. Okay. I have to be a responsible host as we’ve already hit our half an hour mark. That’s that that flew by. I’m looking forward to losing some time delightfully again in the near future. So thank you. Blessings to you. And to the audience. You’ve heard you know what to do next. Find out more about COVID and we will have the pleasure of sharing more time with you again very soon.