On this episode of Monetize the Mic, Jess was thrilled to speak with Interview Connections client Alexandra Stockwell about uncompromising intimacy.

Alexandra Stockwell, MD is a Luxury Love and Intimacy Mentor, known as “The Intimacy Doctor.” She specializes in showing couples how to build beautiful, long-lasting, passionate relationships. She is the bestselling author of Uncompromising Intimacy and host of the highly acclaimed The Marriage Podcast. 

A wife of 25 years and mother of 4, Alexandra believes the key to passion and fulfillment, intimacy, and success, isn’t compromise--it’s being unwilling to compromise--because when both people feel free to be themselves, and know-how to love and be loved for exactly who they are, the relationship is juicy, nourishing, and deeply satisfying.

Jess first asks, “How did you go from being a medical doctor to a relationship coach?”

Alexandra explains that whenever we make important transitions or evolutions, we can tell different stories about it and they’re all true. Alexandra has a few different perspectives on her own story. When she was in her mid-30s she owned a small holistic medical practice. Alexandra worked really hard to get where she was in life. All her ambitions that had propelled her forward had all come true. She was married, she had three kids, she had paid off medical school loans, and yet she didn’t have the feeling of having arrived. Alexandra wasn’t satisfied; she didn’t feel enthusiastic to live that same way for another three or four decades.

People ask her, “Were you burnt out?” Alexandra feels that she wasn't experiencing burnout, but she just knew that she would end up burnt out. She was able to take a sabbatical and gave herself room to do things for no good reason. Alexandra did things because they felt good, not to achieve a particular goal. This experience was radical for her. 

Alexandra was still running her household with 3 children, so it wasn’t as if she was sitting around doing nothing. But she was still able to do things like taking a dance class and just sitting by the creek. She didn’t need a reason to do things! This made space for other aspects of her soul to emerge which eventually led her down the path of becoming a relationship and intimacy expert. That’s one story about Alexandra’s journey.

Another story about her journey is that her daughter had just turned nine. She saw that her daughter was so vibrant, so full of joy, and so happy. On the one hand, Alexandra had felt so grateful to have mothered her in a way where she could just feel so wonderful. On the other hand, on the inside, Alexandra was freaking out. When she was that age, Alexandra’s parents were getting divorced. Looking at her nine-year-old, Alexandra saw that she had disconnected from her own joy. 

She had disconnected from an aspect of herself that she really wanted to reconnect with. She also felt a motivation to change because if Alexandra didn't figure this out for herself, her daughter would also dial down her own vibrancy to match Alexandra’s. She had a personal wake-up call and a professional wake-up call that she needed more. This took her down a path to where she is now!

Jess sees a lot of service providers and coaches come to their businesses after having a personal breakthrough. Jess asks Alexandra, “How did you start finding your clients?”

Alexandra knows that in the entrepreneurial world and in the world of coaching, mindset is really important. She explains that her unconscious mindset really helped her get clients. Alexandra ended up in a training on sensuality and sexuality, and she enrolled because she wanted to have more gratifying sex and intimacy in her marriage. She was motivated by her own growth. However, this training also doubled as a coach training. 

Alexandra didn’t know what the coaching aspect was all about but she had a student’s mindset. She thought, “Well let me just go to the teaching lab and see what they’re covering. And what is a coach anyway?” 

She went to this lab and absolutely loved it. Alexandra felt like she had come home. So much of what she loved about medicine would be possible for her as a sex, intimacy, and relationship coach. She started to meet classmates and people just organically started asking her to coach them. These people didn’t know any of the details of her life; they didn’t know her expertise. People responded to who she was without having tangible information about her. There wasn’t any push or any effort at all. People asked her, and she coached them. There was so much ease in the whole process.

When Alexandra started coaching, it felt fun and engaging. She didn’t have any specific financial goals at the time. Her joy was in expanding her skills, finding out what people needed, and doing her best to be able to give it to them. Alexandra built her coaching to low multiple 6 figures before she even had a website! By illustrating her care and skill, she built her business solely on word-of-mouth referrals.

If her expertise were in website design and you met her at a party, and you connected, you wouldn't have any idea what her website design skills are. But in Alexandra’s niche and area of expertise, it’s about connecting and building trust. Her expertise is relevant in that initial conversation she has with people. If people like that initial conversation they have a lot more information about what Alexandra does. She has a skill that is so apparent during conversation, which makes Alexandra an amazing person to utilize the podcast guesting strategy!

Jess asks, “How does your medical training come up when you’re doing intimacy coaching?”

Alexandra answers that her medical experience is both a benefit and a hindrance. The benefit is that she is used to having intimate conversations with people. No client of Alexandra’s will ever say something that shocks her to a level of discomfort where she can’t be there with them. As a doctor, she has such a wide spectrum of experience and an authority that comes from years of clinical practice.

On the other hand, as a physician, when she listens to someone speaking, Alexandra is, in a way, discarding everything that doesn’t feel relevant. She is focusing on what she needs to, in order to make a diagnosis and have a plan for treatment. When she started relationship coaching and focusing on intimacy she felt a real limitation and restriction at first. Her sessions with clients were focused on an incredibly emotional area. Initially, Alexandra would be too directive and too mentally engaged. She really needed to learn to be present and a lot less controlling in the conversation. For Alexandra, this was both very challenging and also very healing.

You can connect with Alexandra at her website, alexandrastockwell.com, and download a free chapter from Uncompromising Intimacy!

On this episode of Monetize the Mic, Jess sat down with Interview Connections client Jean Atman to talk about clearing limiting beliefs!

Jean is a Soul Evolution Coach and Energy Medicine Specialist and is a leading expert on how to break free of negative life experiences - for good. She is well known in her industry as the go-to girl for helping people heal from toxic relationships and past traumas so that they can live a life filled with potential and ease. 

She has assisted over 20,000 people up-level their lives in her 21-year professional career and remains fiercely dedicated to that cause. Jean believes everyone can live a life of their dreams, and she thoroughly enjoys helping them tap into that potential! 

Jess is often asked, what sets people apart? What makes certain people so successful? Jess and Jean know that it all comes down to their beliefs. Jess asks Jean if she could talk a little bit about clearing limiting beliefs!

Limiting beliefs are a huge part of Jean’s work. Jean knows that we subscribe to these beliefs long before we know that we subscribe to them. A lot of our beliefs are tucked away and hidden in our subconscious mind. People that are having challenges and struggles in life can always find some limiting beliefs that are preventing them from living a life full of ease. 

Jean explains that limiting beliefs create an obstacle that says “You don’t deserve this, this won’t work for you.” There’s some underlying cause of that. But what is so cool about it is that when we can see those things, we can choose something different for ourselves. Once we unearth those limiting beliefs we can easily unpack it and create an improved way of living!

Jean recommends that we take control of our beliefs and thoughts.

When you think about your beliefs or thoughts, it evokes an emotion. How you feel creates your energy body. Jean’s work is all about energy, and she has seen how limiting beliefs show up as energetic congestion. People have trouble moving through their old belief systems because it’s part of their energy. 

Once people clear that energy body they don’t have as much struggle with changing. Thoughts create emotions, emotions create energy. Once you clear that, you have a path to choose more easily for yourself!

Jess remarks that energy and beliefs can seem so abstract. Jess asks Jean, “Do you have any actionable tips that people can use?”

First, Jean recommends that you recognize that you’re not in a place that you want to be. If you are in a state of suffering, worrying, etc you’re working through a limiting belief. Awareness that this is going on and the wisdom that it doesn’t have to be is extremely important. When you know it, you can see it, and you can start to unpack it. Awareness is key.

Jean then explains that intention is a powerful assistant for us. We’re suffering and we don’t want to anymore, so we choose not to. You need to start to feel into what you would prefer to feel instead. As humans, we tend to find all the evidence of why things can’t work. We get caught up in the hows, the whys, and the what-ifs. That stops forward movement. 

If we can stunt our over-excessive thinking, we can feel into what feels right and true to us. Jean asks that we tune into our authentic source. We have ease, and we have abundance. We have everything we need already within us. 

The only thing that keeps us from those things is the belief that we don’t have them. Jean tells her clients to silence the lies and limitations and feel into what they want to be feeling. This will change your energy and change your vibration. If you’re vibrating at a place of fear and worry, then you’re cultivating and creating more of that in your life experience. So if you can stunt that, and think “I’m going to choose to not feel that way” you will see the results you want to see.

Jean teaches that we can change our thoughts and our feelings instantaneously. The outcome of that might take a little time but if we have patience knowing that we changed our thoughts and emotions, the rest is coming. We just need to be patient and wait to see the results of that.

Jess knows that changing thoughts is easier said than done. There’s always an old version of us that tries to pull us back into the fear and lack mentality. Jess asks Jean if she has tools that can help us quiet that fear side of the brain and focus more on the future?

Jean responds that it’s tapping into what we want. Too many people focus on what we don’t want. It’s so important to take a step further and think about what we want. Until we know what we want, we have a harder time moving in that direction. 

So Jean asks that we get clear on where we want to go. What happens with fear is, it ignites the nervous system and we stay in a contracted state. Jean reads emotional energy, so she can see exactly what is happening in someone’s energy field. Jean and her clients start to move through what’s going on in their energy field, and it gives the clients the experience to feel things differently. 

Jean thinks that meditation is an effective tool. She teaches people how to get into their own inner worlds. If you can understand what’s happening inside yourself, you can make changes. People try to make changes externally but Jean emphasizes that change will not happen there. Change has to happen within. The more you understand yourself and what’s going on inside, the easier you can make change. 

The other important part of this change is consistency. Jean recommends that we take one thing and work on that one thing. Dedication and consistency to moving in that direction will pay off very quickly. Jean was feeling overwhelmed when her daughters were very young, and she felt that she didn’t have enough time. She said to herself, “I am creating this. I have plenty of time.” 

She felt into that and very soon after, she was getting everything done that she needed to get done with time leftover! If she had only sprinkled that in, it would have taken longer. She had to consistently give that one thought and feeling a lot of time and energy to make it happen quickly. Jean teaches to focus on one thing that is very important to you and dedicate some effort in that direction.  You will be surprised at how quickly things can shift for you. 

Jess asks, “What changes can people expect when they are diving into this inner work?”

Jean explains that the old ways of deep transformational work used to be a purge. We now don’t have to walk through the trauma to heal it. She is a huge advocate of energy clearing. When we clear our energy, all the emotions that were attached to our past trauma flow out as well. We don’t need to do talk therapy and get into all the trauma, the hurt, and the pain. We can remove the energy. The emotions around it become neutralized. What used to take months or years to heal, we can do much more efficiently. 

The awareness of something can radically shift the energy around it.

Jean notes that it’s so important to set intentions and recognize what you want. It starts offsetting all the old energy and trauma. Energy clearing accelerates the process. It doesn’t have to be all the old trauma purging, it can be much happier. Jean laughs with her clients all the time! Laughter can be just as powerful as a cathartic cry. 

You can connect with Jean at jeanatman.com and check out her free training about how to stop sabotaging beliefs from sabotaging your future!

On this episode of Monetize the Mic, Jess got to speak with Interview Connections Client Hilary DeCesare about relaunching yourself!

Hilary DeCesare is an award-winning entrepreneur, host of The Silver Lined ReLaunch, and is featured on many major networks including ABC's The Secret Millionaire. Hilary just launched the much-awaited 6-month business program The Fired Up Entrepreneur from The ReLaunch Co. This business program helps female entrepreneurs looking to launch or relaunch their business in 2021 take the right steps, in the right order, towards lasting business success.

The program stands out because it not only takes away the confusion and overwhelm on where to start, and how to start but outlines what actually works or is not working for female entrepreneurs in the changing business landscape. It's ideal for those that have a well-formed business idea or are tired of the one-win here and there approach or handful of fast fails that's keeping their already existing business small. 

Hilary specializes in launching or relaunching businesses by giving the proven foundational elements and steps needed when navigating the start to finish of building a business according to her Make, Grow, Keep Method.

Hilary firmly believes "Now is your time", and partners with women that are ready to go all in and hit the reset button. This starts with covering the 6 main pillars in her program: Clarity, mindset, time management, marketing, sales, and leadership. 

She saw a need to quiet the white noise in the business space that seemed to only cater to those that wanted to tell how, and created the program to show how to give any female entrepreneur the fast-pass to launching and relaunching a business saving them time, energy, and wasted money.

The ReLaunch Co. takes away the overwhelm and gives the simple A-Z steps to women entrepreneurs bridging the heart to the head to one's higher self, so that not only can they have success in their business, but also have a lifestyle filled with possibilities inside the acclaimed new program The Fired Up Entrepreneur.

Hilary is incredibly passionate about helping people in midlife. Jess asks, “Where does that passion come from? What was the moment where you said my purpose is to help people relaunch midlife?”

Hilary explains that midlife has become a massive area. It can be anywhere from age 35 to 55. She hasn’t talked to anyone who isn’t going through some kind of relaunch right now. People ranging from college graduates to 60-70-year-olds are realizing they aren’t where they want to be. A lot of people feel as if they need to love their lives, love their jobs, and the reality is that they’re not even at the like stage. They keep it to themselves and they don’t share that with others because there are a lot of feelings of guilt and shame associated with not completely loving your life. This kind of midlife identity crisis can happen at any age.

What Hilary realized is, we all are looking on the outside asking ourselves, “How can I get happier? What's wrong with me? What can I do?” We all are searching for the silver bullet. “If I find the right guy or, if I get the right job” etc, then we think that we will be happy. That feeling is only fleeting - that man or that job is not going to give you what you need for long-term happiness.

Hilary’s ReLaunch program works because it takes you through a process. Her program is not a “take a pill and everything is better” type of program. It is built on transitions that lead to transformations.

Hilary reminds us that we can’t look back on the things that have happened to us and ignore the silver linings that got us to where we are. After 100+ interviews on Hilary’s podcast, there hasn’t been one person who she’s interviewed that would change some of the most horrific relaunches and transitions they’ve been through because it was those transitions that got them to where they are now. They are where they are because of what they’ve been through, not in spite of it.

If you’re going through a transition right now, it’s so important to hear Hilary’s messages. She is so passionate about helping people to understand how they can relaunch themselves and find the silver lining of their obstacles. 

Hilary has seen incredible success, but it’s the hardships she’s endured that really help inspire people. Her failures have brought her to be a better coach, better business leader, and have helped her to share more and teach more.

At one time, Hilary was working with an online security company focused on children's safety online, and this company’s mission was very close to her heart.

Hilary was fundraising for this company and was pitching the product on a very large stage in front of a crowd. She had a 103 fever and felt like it was a total bust. After she got off stage, her phone rang and a man said he could help her raise two million dollars for that company.

Hilary was amazed. The man wanted her to fly to New York to meet up with his business partner. Immediately upon meeting him, Hilary had the intuition that this man was not good. She ignored her intuition, sat, and listened. Hilary decided she couldn’t work with him. 

Eventually, after going back and forth, she did end up having to work with that man. Her gut told her that it was not a good idea, but she continued to ignore it. Five years later, the entire company just combusted. The day it was all done, it was found out that the man was being investigated for a Ponzi scheme, and went to federal prison for 3 years. 

Hilary asked herself, “How do I relaunch out of this? I’ve been coaching people running other businesses. How do I become the entrepreneur of me?” Hilary began to still do what she knew to be true about business but she allowed for that higher self to come in. She allowed for that emotional connection of the heart. Hilary uses a 3H model: the heart to the head to the higher self. 

Hilary knows that if you’re not leaning into all three of those areas,  you’re never gonna scale the way you want because you are not where you should be. You’re not in that place that you know you’re supposed to be. Would Hilary go back and change anything? No, she would do it all over again. 

Until you start knowing what you don’t know, that’s when things really start to happen. You reach a point like, “Why am I not happy? Why am I not able to create more wealth or freedom for myself?”

For people going through a relaunch and they’re coming up against fear and breakdowns. Jess asks Hilary if she can speak to the importance of feeling those emotions?

Our world is starting to value emotional intelligence in a way that it never has before. Emotions are no longer being viewed as weaknesses. Hilary used to work in corporate where it wasn't okay to be emotional. You had to show up very masculine every day.

There’s so much going on in that resistance to feeling, feeling like you have to be happy, or you have to be fearless. You have to feel the fear to get on the other side of it.

Hilary recommends that we ask ourselves, “Is it showing up in my body?” Our bodies give us every indication - and yet we often ignore it. When you realize that your body is really telling you something and you ignore it, that’s when things start to build up. 

Hilary asks us to think about instead of pushing it off, ignoring it, and putting walls up, you instead think about why am I having that feeling in my chest? Why is it that I'm uncomfortable right now? Take a pause, because your higher-self intuition is literally trying to get to your head, and trying to give you some really important information. Try and listen to it. 

She explains that so often we are being given a signal, and our bodies are telling us something. If we can acknowledge that something is going on, we’ll build this muscle. That’s when we become powerful and we really can move forward! 

People tend to ignore these signals because they just don’t really want to deal with them. But Hilary explains that they’ll just keep showing up somehow. Hilary calls them BUGS: Beliefs Under Ground Surfacing. At night you see that one ant on your kitchen counter, and you kill it. Then when you wake up the next morning you see hundreds of ants because you didn’t really deal with it!

We keep pushing down our BUGS and then all of a sudden these limiting beliefs end up just saying, “I’m tired of knocking, you’re not opening the door. I’m gonna blow your door off!” That’s when you’re in that state of crisis. But you don’t have to be there! You can instead be in a state of relaunch which is going to take you out of crisis mode and get you on that path to get you to your next chapter.

You can connect with Hilary at www.therelaunchco.com!

On this episode of Monetize the Mic, Jess sat down with Gabrielle Dolan to talk about the importance of storytelling on podcasts.

Gabrielle can tell you a story or two. In fact, it was while working in senior leadership roles in corporate Australia she realized the power of storytelling in effective business communication. She is now a highly sought-after international keynote speaker and educator. 

Her impressive client list includes VISA, EY, Amazon, Vodafone, and the Obama Foundation, to name drop a few ...and she got to meet Barack Obama while undertaking that work. Gabrielle holds a master’s degree in Management and Leadership and has studied at Harvard. She is the best-selling author of several books including Real Communication: How To Be You and Lead True, a finalist in the Australian Business Leadership Book Awards for 2019. 

Plus, Stories for Work: The Essential Guide to Business Storytelling (2017), which reached number one in Australia’s best-selling business books. Her latest book Magnetic Stories: Connect with Customers and Engage Employees with Brand Storytelling is due to be published in March 2021.

She is the founder of Jargon Free Fridays. (Don’t ever say the word ‘pivot’ to her unless you are talking about basketball.) In 2020, her dedication to the industry was recognized when she was awarded Communicator of the Year by IABC Asia Pacific. She lives in Melbourne, Australia with her husband, Steve, and two daughters, Alex and Jess.

Jess and Gabrielle are big believers that storytelling is an incredibly important skill to have as a podcast guest. Jess asks Gabrielle, “What are the components of an effective story?”

It may seem obvious, but Gabrielle emphasizes that stories really need a beginning, a middle, and an end. In business, it’s gotta be succinct. You really don’t want to be sharing a 5 or 10-minute story. Your story should be 1 or 2 minutes and be very specific. Being specific helps people visualize something, and helps the listeners feel something. And ultimately that’s what a story does, it taps into emotion. 

Jess knows that facts tell but stories sell. Jess was recently coaching someone in the Interview Connections community and asked them to practice telling a story. Jess realized that their story wasn’t dropping people into the moment. 

How do you start a story in a way that has people really engaged?

Gabrielle teaches that the worst way to start a story is to tell people, “Let me tell you a story.” People are hardwired to listen to stories, but in a business setting when someone says “Let me tell you a story” the reaction is going to be something along the lines of, “Oh no, this is going to take forever.” 

The most effective way to start a story is with time and place. There are an infinite amount of variations of time and place so you can really make it your own every time. If you start with the time and place, people are now set up to listen to you differently. 

In a business setting, where things can often be all about data and facts and figures, and someone says “You know that reminds me of the time I went camping with my friends and...”

There’s a pattern interruption that’s going to make people want to pay attention.

Jess asks, “How do you end the story?”

Gabrielle knows that the ending is the hardest part. You don’t want to be ending your story with “The moral of the story is.” In a business setting, you want to be linking it back to the business message without it being directive. You could say something like, “The reason I’m sharing this with you is that it reminds me of what we’re going through right now, and imagine what we could achieve if we all…” There you can link your story back to the business. 

Gabrielle reminds us that you don’t want to be going on and on and on. That’s the biggest mistake people make! Gabrielle notices that people sometimes keep reiterating the point over and over. 

Once you’ve finished a story, it’s so important to always pause. Remember to stop talking for one or two seconds because that’s the real power of the story. That’s the moment where the listeners are really taking it in. But as humans, we generally don't like pauses so we tend to just keep talking.

Why do you think it’s hard for people to pause?

Gabrielle thinks that we just get really uncomfortable with the pause. Sometimes at the end of the story when people pause, the speaker might think “Why is everyone quiet? Maybe they didn’t get it.” But Gabrielle reminds us that people are just processing, and that pause is incredibly important.

Jess wants to know, how do you start building up this arsenal of stories that you share?

Gabrielle recommends that you don’t start with the stories at all. Instead, start with the messaging that you want to communicate. Ask yourself, what is it that you want to communicate? What are you trying to communicate on the podcast or interview or speech? You need to be really, really clear on what messages you want to communicate. 

Once you are clear on the messages, then you can ask yourself, “What are the stories that I can share?” Gabrielle recommends that you should think of two different types of stories. The first is your own personal stories. Ask yourself, why are you passionate about what you’re doing? In most cases, that’s starting from a personal value that you have. 

The second kind of story you can tell would be work or business-related story. Either way, you need to be clear on the message you want to get across. When thinking of your messaging, constantly ask yourself what story could I share to illustrate this?

People sometimes think that their stories aren't interesting and that people won’t care, but Gabrielle wants you to know that your stories are interesting! Telling stories creates a human connection. 

Someone doing a podcast interview is clearly passionate about what they’re doing, and they know what they’re talking about. That passion started from somewhere, so ask yourself, where did that start? Then you can tap into that. Be prepared to share those stories because they show your passion and credibility!

Gabrielle has worked with some huge names, like Amazon and VISA. Jess asks what she’s learned from her experiences working with such large companies?

What Gabrielle has found is that the vast majority of corporate leaders really want to do a good job. Those leaders really want to lead well and they want to communicate well. They’re human just like everyone else and they need to learn those skills. What Gabrielle has been surprised about is that very senior leaders still experience impostor syndrome and have said things like, “I don’t have the courage to do this, I have self-doubt.” 

Jess asks Gabrielle why she has decided to start podcast guesting? What drew her to be a speaker on podcasts?

Gabrielle released a book right at the start of lockdown, and she had done a few podcast interviews before. Since she couldn’t travel to promote her book, she decided to start speaking on podcasts as a different way to build momentum around the book. 

Gabrielle loves working in crowds! She runs a half-day virtual workshop, she works with major companies, she runs storytelling workshops and presenting with impact workshops. Gabrielle has also written six books! Ultimately, Gabrielle helps people hone their storytelling skills. 

You can read Gabrielle’s newest book is Magnetic Stories: Connect with Customers and Engage Employees with Brand Storytelling!

You can connect with Gabrielle at Gabrielledolan.com and get a free 7 Day Storytelling Starter Kit right here!