209: Dare To Show Up (Best of Fertile Imagination Book Launch Party)

Welcome to Episode 209. In today's episode, you are going to hear how I landed some big-name podcast guests on this podcast Unimaginable Wellness. You’ll hear from Beth Nydick, the creator of the F.A.M.E Formula. This conversation happened on my book launch day for Fertile Imagination. Beth Nydick is a PR expert. Definitely check her out. She is the type of mom who, like me, loves a good dare. As it relates to my book launch in October, a dare might be the key to your success. I want to invite you to consider that as the holiday season continues. You might need the jolt of energy that a good dare provides. What if you do show up to a holiday party with PR movers and shakers? Can that distinguish you? You’ll want to listen to this chat and take notes! The art of daring yourself to do things has worked for me, and it might work for you. 

If you love parties then please do say hi on Instagram which was where this party took place: https://www.instagram.com/melissallarena/

Shop/gift/review - Fertile Imagination: https://amzn.to/3F6AgMu

TRANSCRIPT

I also wanted to point out that Beth is an empty nester. And a lot of empty nesters have actually weighed in on Amazon in terms of reviews. For Fertile Imagination, my debut book, which launched and is available to you right now on Amazon, and you can purchase or write a review if you've already purchased it.

Here's something that you might not know. So empty nesters have weighed in and a lot of them say that they wish they had this book either back in the seventies as Kathy Ryan said, and she was an and made their executive and now she's a great grandmother. Or a book that they needed 20 years ago, such as my editor, Amanda  McMahon.

She's actually in Australia and you'll see her name in the book as my editor. Here's what she said and is available for you to read on Amazon as a review. She says, I was hooked the minute Melissa pitched her idea to me. Her passion for helping moms who want a rewarding, but balanced life is contagious.

Coupled with the wisdom of her podcast guests, we'll have you reach for a pen to fill out the questions at the end of each chapter. Every mom will find something in her book that speaks to them from challenging your inner, your imposter syndrome to acting classes to help create a new persona. Yes, I took acting classes.

Melissa says she knows how hard it is to find time for yourself. She has three sons, including twins, and that is true. So her humorous, self-deprecating stories will be relevant to you. So I love, love, love that Amanda shares this perspective. Isn't it interesting how you might not realize that in your own writing, but someone else who's like really in between the lines can notice how you approach and the tone of your voice.

So I wanted to share with you a snippet of Amanda's Amazon review because every single review matters so much. There are about 3 million moms who search and log into Amazon every single day. That is my back-of-the-envelope sort of shortcut thinking based on some of the stats they have online. And what happens is if a book has a hundred or more Amazon reviews, Amazon will go ahead and suggest the book as a product that they can purchase.

Right now, you know it, if you are shopping for the holidays. There are so many moms looking for the perfect gifts for their mothers, their grandmothers, their sisters, their friends, and their cousins. And wouldn't it be amazing if fertile imagination were suggested by Amazon? And in order to do that, it would be really important to have a written Amazon review.

On Amazon as soon as possible because timing matters every single day that I am not at that goal of a hundred Amazon written reviews. That's three million missed opportunities to tell a mom that she can do it. Others have done it. And here is how through the use of your fertile imagination. Enjoy this conversation with Beth Neidick.

And I hope that you absolutely get some value. If you are a woman in business and you've ever wanted to work with a very powerful influencer, I share some tips, and again, dare yourself to do something this holiday season. See if it puts a jolt in your step. It worked for me. Tune in and enjoy the conversation.

So I wanted to know how you got so many of my friends to talk to you today because I went back on their calendar and I looked at your list and I was like, Oh my God, we know all the same people.  And that made me think of all the big names who are in your book too. Yeah, all the big names. So I like talking to strangers and I think that's why I was able to like do this book.

Ultimately, 25 podcast guests have appeared on Unimaginable Wellness since 2017, James Altucher, Gary V, Susie Batiz, and Beth Comstock. These are like really outstanding individuals you see on TV that you feel like, Oh wow, they're like totally hard to grasp, get in touch with. But for me. My podcast started with a dare.

And so one day I was cooking rice and beans as a Latina mom does. And my husband was listening to James Altucher, who you may have heard of and he was chatting with Gary Vee saying anyone that launches a podcast because of this conversation, I will be your guest number three. And then the other person, whoever I kind of swapped right now said I'll be guest number four.

And so it's pretty hilarious because I thought it was going to be easy. I was like, Oh, surely they promised we were from like the East Coast. So we kind of get like, maybe not. Right. So you know what I had to do? I had to, with my husband, go to James Altucher's comedy club and show up there. And he poked fun at me, actually. 

I was like, what is it then, the butt of his joke or whatever. And so I tweeted at him after the fact and I said, yeah, it was me, the person you poked fun of. Can you be on my podcast? And he invited me to his home. To interview him. Yeah. Upper West side. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I had to get a crew. So of course I got a former podcast guest who was, who's the trombone dancer, by the way, he's in New York City.

He will play the trombone and dance. Okay. Jonathan Arons. And I asked a former client of mine, who's a military mom to come with me to manage logistics. And that's how it started. It was a dare and it's, it's really about doing things that other people won't do. So like you might want to approach people and you're a PR expert.

So you might want to approach people online, but if you show up in their comedy club, you distinguish yourself immediately. So that was one way that I got one person, James Altucher on my podcast. I showed up, I just showed up. Well, yay. Good, good for you. And that's honestly something I tell my clients all the time is like, it just sending an email or DM is not actually going to get you there, right?

You need an intro. You need something interesting. I think those grassroots old-school tactics, like postcards, or even a letter. Like, how much mail does Gary Vee's company actually get? Probably not that much because no one does anymore. But you send an 11 by 17  message or letter to him, he's going to open it, or at least his assistant will open it.

But anybody that you want, I hear so often from clients of mine that want to get their products on celebrities. And it's like,  DM them six times. And I'm like, That's actually not going to help you. What's going to actually help you is getting the publicist's email list or getting on the phone with the publicist or the manager.

There are so many more ways to do this not only being dared, which I love, love, love the fact that you were being dared, but that you just like showed up in the flesh because that's what makes the difference. And that's, it goes back to like what we actually, what we talked about the other day in private, it's about the relationships.

Yeah. Creating the opportunity for you to have a relationship that ultimately will be the opportunity for your success 100%. And I think it's about counting yourself in. And I think a lot of times we count ourselves out and we decline ourselves. Like we don't even give ourselves the opportunity to put the offer out and get a yes or no.

We say no in our head, or we say, you know what? They're going to say no. Right. And then you stop yourself. So like with Beth Comstock, who's also in the book, former CMO of GE, I didn't grow up with connections. When I saw GE, I would think like, I don't know the light bulb or whatever. And maybe I think Edison, is right.

Was he involved with the wrong company right now? Anyway, the point of the matter is it was something that just felt so far reached. Right. But with Beth Comstock, I went to ad week in New York City. And I showed up at like, I think it was the equality lounge or something like that. And I asked her, it wasn't even in person though.

That one, I did a follow-up. I had already gotten Gary Vee and when I asked her, do you know that she said yes right away? And then in the book, I document this. I chickened out, I chickened out because she said yes, right away. I had not felt like I earned it. Her being on my podcast, the way that I earned in my mind, Gary Vee and James Altucher with everything that I did, was like a hundred-day sprint of trying to reach out to these two guys.

And so with her, I remember, and I have this in the book when I talk about imposter syndrome and feeling like you don't belong, you're not enough. Like so many of us feel that way, whether you're a mom or a business owner, and you're trying to play bigger. I had to go up to Beth. A second time, this was a year later into it.

When I funny enough, there seemed to move me when I dared my client, my client to actually talk to a decision maker, cause she wanted to land a job opportunity. And I told her, I said, you know what, I'll do it with you. You talk to that person and I'll go back and I'll reach out to bed, come stop. And so I call that courage and company, right?

So sometimes you don't want to do it alone. And so you bring someone with you and that's what I did. I love that. I think it's also that's also like having people in your corner can give you the possibility of that big goal that big thing because like I'm, you know me I'm always transparent and I always tell my husband's like you tell everybody everything I'm like well that's what helps all of us.

I'm working on a big project for 2024. I spoke to three friends two of them Their advice was to keep it small. One friend gave me the possibility of what I could create from the project. And I didn't realize They were feeding into, like, safety and you're okay, and you put yourself out there and you could, right, I can retreat and kind of do this on a smaller level, and she was like, Do you know what your name is?

Do you know who you are? Like, we don't do things small, we do, and it's what, it's what you do, it's what I do, and I think so often we don't, we talk about the people that we keep in our circle, but we also think what, where their perception is. On the possibility of anything.  Oh, a hundred percent because that's why for me, Fertile Imagination is the title of the book.

It's like, you are looking at a vision. You're casting a vision that you may have never seen another mom in your circle, including in your family actually execute. So if your top five people have never run a marathon and all of a sudden you want to run a marathon, that's when you need to get fertile baby.

Okay, that's, that's when you need to just be like, all right, I got to figure this out on my own. And that's when sometimes you have to go outside of your family, outside of your circle, even outside of your country to find the people that are doing things that make you light. up. That's why the book has people from all over the world and people who have life experiences and many of them are totally unlike my own.

I don't have a similar life experience as Muyambi who created a nonprofit Cycle Connect in Uganda. Like he and I, we went to Tuck to business school, but we didn't even know each other at Tuck. Number one, that was me talking to a stranger again, which I really, I really love. But number two, he just has a completely different viewpoint on urgency, right?

So if there's a problem you want to solve anywhere around the world, and you're a mom and you're in the middle of a little community, let's say, or whatever, that urgency should be enough to make you say to yourself, I don't know if I have what it takes, but I want to solve that problem wherever your heart draws your attention to.

Right. So that's the beauty. I love that. Well, let's talk about those. I know you have three stages of the fertile imagination. Let's talk a little bit about that because I think, like, even when you just tell me about it, it helps me. So let's talk about it. Yeah.  So a fertile imagination, again, it's like having that vision.

You've never seen it before, but it's enough to drive you to like it. Do what it takes to make it happen. So there are three steps. The first one is waking up your imagination. So the deal is we're not sleeping as moms, but our imagination has been sleeping this whole time. So our imagination is only going to come out and play if it feels confident that we're going to play with it.

Right? So if you have this bright idea. And every time you had this idea, you kept pushing it away. Your imagination is not going to give you some more bright ideas. It's going to be like, this lady doesn't want to play. It's not safe. I'm not coming out. So it goes to sleep. So step one, wake up your imagination.

How do you wake it up? It's that inner work. It's reflecting on what you want. And, and your relationship with calling yourself creative as well. And when I say creative, it's not just like arts and crafts. It's like creative problem-solving. It's. Innovating. It's coming up with fresh ideas. Then it's about, okay, I woke up the imagination.

Now I want to play with it. Right? So it's like a muscle. If you don't use it, you lose it. So again, you're practicing. Okay. How can I re-imagine the way that I mother, for example, how can I reimagine the way that I bring this business idea to the market? How can I reimagine strategic partnerships or solutions to problems that have yet to be solved?

So it's cross-pollination. It's like all these businessy things that you could apply as a mom as well in your life, right? So that's. Playing with your imagination. And that's where you have the examples that I gave, like Beth Comstock, going to Korea, to a K-pop band, to come up with a brilliant idea for GE sounds hard to, to imagine, but that's what it is.

You got to go really all out. The third stage is about stretching your imagination. So any human out there, business owner, a mom, you want to duplicate yourself. This is how you duplicate yourself. You ask. For help, this is how you stretch your imagination. You tell other people your idea and you give them the language to be able to share that idea with their people.

Right? So it's about really taking this ability that you and I had as little girls, the ability to pretend right now is Halloween today. You see people pretending they're all sorts of things. Right. Yeah, we were like that. I may pretend that I was Madonna in the eighties. I pretended that I was punky Brewster maybe.

Right. And it was fun. It was fun. And we played with these ideas. And now as moms, it's like being a mom, it's, it's a role. It's an identity and you could really play with it. Just like being an entrepreneur, you could play with that. And so it's about having that psychological flexibility. With which to tackle life, life is an adventure.

You have to figure it out and be nimble. Yeah, I totally agree. And I'm listening to you as an empty nester mom because I'm going to, I'm in the next stage of what it actually like to be a mom. And as a mom, I know you have a lot of little kids in your house, not little, but little, little, or other mine, it takes time too. 

It took carve out that time to have that imagination because I think a lot of times moms don't take the 15 minutes in the bathroom to think they take it to just kind of decompress But that's that taking that time to actually think to roll over your ideas To really figure out what you want to be doing next, whatever chapter you're in.

I think that's really hard for moms to do. Like, what's your advice to, to, when you're like, well, I'm too busy to think about myself. How do we take the time to think about ourselves? Because to be honest, I have a lot more time now and it's, and it's, it's a little uncomfortable, to be honest. Really? Having time?

All the moms are listening to you like, what? Oh my god, I want to feel uncomfortable.  Oh, you're so funny years. I've been used to like be having them here.  And then for me, I didn't realize how much of my community was my kids' community. And now that that's moved on. There's a lot of space, and I now need to recreate the community of people who are supporting me in different ways. 

Yeah, I think this need for connection, this loneliness epidemic, and how moms seldom kind of like, fess up to one another. Like, this is how I feel, and I'm kind of confused of how to approach this, and it's something that we keep to ourselves oftentimes. I think giving ourselves time to reflect on anything, at any stage of motherhood, is the biggest value add for our entire lives.

For example, in the book, I interviewed someone who's known for Socratic method questions, Mark Champagne. And what he had to say was that let's imagine you're constantly interrupted. No mom knows what that feels like.  But yeah, we're constantly interrupted. Well, here's what happens. One interruption is going to take you off course for whatever you plan for that very specific day.

If you don't take a second to reflect on it, wait a minute, what was I planning to do right now as it related to my long-term plan? If you don't take that second, that pause.  Ask yourself deeper questions about why you're doing what you're doing that could be a 10-year, like off-track sort of road, as opposed to like a five-minute, like, wait a minute, let me get back on track and back on goal.

So those pauses, while they might feel like superfluous and not as.  you're in the heat of motherhood, they can absolutely save you a decade. For, I remember I was coaching 12 years now, working with women in corporations. They didn't have time to breathe, not even right. It was like, you're just moving and you're flying by the seat of your pants and all that stuff.

And for them, it's like, Oh, wait a minute. When I would work with them, it's like, I had not. Thought of what I wanted out of my career. I had not considered how I wanted to experience my life after work. Like there's so many unknowns and you know what happens? Other people define them for you if you don't take hold of that. 

Yeah. And put you in a place, right? And then there's not any possibility because I always talk to my clients the same way. It's like, what, what is possible for you for this lifetime? What is possible? Now what always comes up and I think we talked about before too and it's in the book like the stories of Why I Can't stories that when you can create that story like you can make anything mean anything so in this idea of imagination creating the story of I'm infinite and I can do anything I want and I think you live you and I really live by that Because who told you, you could write a book who told me I could write a book.

Oh, girl. Oh yeah. Everyone. Amen. Right.  Yeah. That's so that's the whole thing. You know, I wish like, I do wish sometimes that someone would just tell me like, play by play, like Melissa, you're writing a book now, then you're doing a Ted talk, then you're doing a this, but the truth of the matter is that if I don't choose it for myself, I'm actually not even as excited about it.

To be honest, I've, I've tried, I've tried to fake the funk and want what other people want for me, but it's really hard because that takes extra energy, right? Like if you have something you want to do and it comes from you, there's just like a surge that makes it possible. It's funny you say that.

Because I was at my therapist earlier. And I'm just talking about what I'm doing. I'm doing a launch and I have this project idea and he said when you talk about this project, you light up. He's when you love your business, but there's a different level of passion when you talk about this project and that, right?

That's like, oh, I should be paying attention to that because a lot of people don't. Your life is like when you imagine what could be possible or what cannot be possible. What do you see? A lot of the blocks are for the moms that you work with.  I think a lot of them, it's this collective agreement that there are excuses that are totally valid in all situations.

So it's almost like as moms, it's like, we don't have enough time. Like everybody agrees now. It's almost like we got into this room and we all spoke before the meeting. And we said, let's all agree that we can all say we don't have time. And that's the imagination from working. Or I don't, I want to spend time with my kids at this age.

They're only going to be one for one year, right? They're only going to be in this stage for that particular time. And what I say to that is. Our dreams also have timestamps, like if somebody's looking to get into AI, you need to do it now, not 10 years from now. Right. So there's timestamps. If you want to run a marathon in the age category of being a 40-year-old woman, yeah, you're going to be in your forties now.

I mean, I guess we could repeat it, but it's not realistic.  So. So it's like collectively we've said, okay, if a mom says she doesn't have time, take it as is and move on. Or if a mom says I don't have childcare or if I don't have the education or if I don't have the connections, then it's like we accept it.

And in the book, I mean, I spoke with someone that's a Hall of Famer rugby player. Okay. In gym class in elementary school, I was the last kid to get picked for every single team sport. So for me to talk to someone who is in a completely different position is like, like fairy tale land stuff. Right.

And, I could have like, by the way, no one told me to reach out to Phaidra Knight. That was me. Like, no one told me, I don't even watch Rugby. But I just felt like I wanted to talk to somebody who had a perspective on standards and the standards that you hold yourself up to. And so while we might have standards that our kids have to be perfectly polished when it comes to family photo sessions, not me, but people do.

My standard is, well, I need to constantly be growing professionally, like period. I don't need to work for Procter and Gamble to have a performance evaluation that I'm marking my success metric by, like I have my own, right? So to your point, Beth, it's like. How, what's the standard for your life?

Right? Like, is it okay for you to use time as an excuse? It's not my standard. Like it's, it's more like if I don't want to do it, I'll use time. But if I want to do it, I don't even think about time. We're like time warping, you know?  I love that. I love the whole concept of that. And when I talk to my clients and they're talking about their sales calls, if somebody says time, I'm like, that's an excuse, how do we reach?

Reframe what time is, but a lot of nerve talking this time and time. It takes time to read your book. So let's talk a little bit about why they should make the time to read your book. Absolutely. So the book is made and it's structured in a way that you don't have to read it in one sitting. That's not the idea.

The idea is it's a guide that you have on your bookshelf, right? And every time that you feel like you're stuck and you just need a little inspiration, you grab the book, you look at a chapter that really draws your attention. Like, let's say you don't feel decisive or you don't feel, or you feel like an imposter, go to that chapter and then see how someone else has managed to take that.

Feeling and like flip it in a different direction, right? Reframe it, reposition it. So if you're a mom right now who feels like, okay, there's got to be a better way. Like right now I feel like I'm dragging through life. I feel like I'm everybody else's cheerleader. I feel like I'm not myself. Self, right?

Like I don't, I'm not happy. Like if you're not happy right now, this is your opportunity to see what else might be available to you. If you've tried like the therapies and you've tried coaching and you've tried and I'm going out here. Because I have tried therapy and it takes me to the back, right?

History. And it's really hard to pull myself forward. Sometimes I've tried coaching and it just depends if you're in a business space and you want marketing coaching, then that's great. But that might not solve some limiting beliefs. Right. But if you feel like. You have more to give to yourself, right? If you feel like you have something inside of you that you want to put out in the world, then grab the book, grab the book, because you're going to see, you're going to see me and my mistakes, and you're going to see other people and like their greatest achievements.

And there's going to be this middle ground that is perfect for you. And I give you questions that you can use to tailor your path. So it's very practical, but it's also very approachable because you could just look at it like one chapter for a whole week if that's your heart's desire and take action. I  love that.

I love it so much. And like always, where can everyone buy your book? Just go to the link in my bio today. And if you're not a mom, you could give it as a gift in the Kindle format. So gifted to a mom who you believe in today is the day of imagination. Let's invite moms to rediscover our imaginations as well.

Use today to start.  Well, congratulations on the book and everything that you put together. I can't wait to read the book. I can't wait to be on your podcast. And I'm so grateful that we got a chance to catch up today. So thank you so much. Thank you.  Thank you so much, Beth. You're amazing. Have a beautiful rest of the day in the neighborhood and may you have amazing bagels very soon.

Thank you. Bye, everybody.  I love Beth's energy and I think that my energy matches her energy, but she's an empty nester. So isn't that cool? Like you could actually be in any season of motherhood and step it up. So I want to also invite you if you have shopped for the book Fertile Imagination, you take the opportunity two minutes today to go ahead, go to Amazon.com, look up Fertile Imagination or look at your orders, and then go ahead and write two to three sentences. In terms of the book itself, two to three sentences go a long way every single day. Three million moms log into Amazon and that's three million missed opportunities. If we delay one day of writing a review if you have not purchased the book.

Then I invite you to go ahead and shop the book. If the review resonated with you, go ahead and gift the book. If you are not sure how to actually like a gift your sister-in-law or your mother-in-law or your friend, something that really conveys the message that you believe in their ideas and you believe in them.

This would be the book to put in a stocking. This would be the book to put under a holiday tree. This would be a book. To give someone that you deeply believe in and that you want to see sore, enjoy the rest of the season and I hope you're done with your holiday shopping and I hope you're done with the things that might have really weighed heavy on your mind.

So thank you for this conversation and have a good one. 

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