
The Ramble Refinery with Heather Sager
You can’t spell message without mess—because big ideas don’t show up fully formed. They start rough, unrefined, and a little all over the place. But that’s not a problem, it’s part of the process.
The best speakers, thought leaders, and business owners don’t wait for the perfect message—they refine it by showing up, sharing, and shaping their ideas in real time.
That’s what The Ramble Refinery is all about.
Welcome to the place where we normalize the messy middle of speaking, marketing, and business growth. Whether you’re leading workshops, speaking on stages, or showing up on podcasts, your voice isn’t just a marketing tool—it’s your most valuable business asset.
Hosted by Heather Sager, a speaking coach and business strategist who helps experts get their ideas out of their heads and into the world, this podcast dives into the raw, unpolished side of refining your message, using your voice, and growing your impact.
Because every great message starts as a mess—so get ready to ramble.
The Ramble Refinery with Heather Sager
Radical Responsibility & Speaking Like a Thought Leader
Your audience doesn’t need more tips, templates, or content. If information were enough, they’d already have what they want.
What they actually need is leadership—and that starts with how you show up.
In this episode of The Ramble Refinery, we’re talking about what leadership really looks like inside a personal brand. Not the curated version—the kind that shows up when launches flop, timelines shift, or things feel… off.
You’ll hear:
- The hard truth about why people aren’t paying attention (and no, it’s not the algorithm)
- How leadership shows up in your content—not just your backend decisions
- What radical responsibility looks like (without spiraling into shame)
- A cringeworthy story of failed leadership communication
- What it actually means to empower your audience to believe in themselves
If you’re building a brand around your voice and ideas, this episode will challenge you to step up—not just as a business owner, but as a leader your audience is actually waiting for.
EPISODE SHOW NOTES👇
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If you’re loving this episode, please take a moment to rate & review the show. This helps me get this message to more people so they too can ditch the hustle 24/7 life.
0:11
Well, hey friend, welcome back to another episode of The Ramble Refinery. We're gonna start off by just laughing at me because at the end of last week's episode, I called the show The Ramble Room, like four times, which is the name of one of inside my program, we used to have this practice lab where we'd practice things out, and I called it the Ramble Room so I kept calling it the ramble room, but that's not what the show is called. It's called The Ramble Refinery, where we embrace the messy middle that is business and this whole skill building around making our voices better, and we are comfortable with the idea that sometimes we get a little rambly, and a lot of people think that that's a bad thing. I think that rambling is a practice that we all need to embrace, especially as our role in business, because we're building businesses based around our expertise, based around our ideas. We're teaching others and it requires us to speak out loud often, and if you just think that when you speak out loud, it's going to fall out of your mouth in a perfect way, and you're going to sound like Brennan Burchard, or you're going to sound like Mel Robbins, or you're going to sound like whoever is that thought leader that you follow online and you like apply their wisdom into your life. If you think that you're going to sound as good as they sound right out of the key, you're cuckoo. You are absolute cuckoo because it is a skill. Every single speaker, every single teacher, every single thought leader, they start off by getting the reps in. It starts off awkward and rambly, and you get better over time, so that's what we embrace here. We embrace the whole refinement process. We know that you can be messy and rambly and still be successful like you know that whole saying that as you grow your business, you're going to look back and if you're not cringing over how you showed up a year ago, you're not growing. And if you want to stay in business, and if you want to be successful, you have to grow. So that's what we're all about here on the show.
2:14
Today's episode, we're going to dive into one of the, I think, most important topics around building a successful business, more specifically, a successful business in this industry, or you want to become a successful speaker, whether speaking is your primary source of revenue, that's your goal, or speaking is a supplement to help amplify your other offers, whether it's a book, whether it's your consulting, whether it's your courses, whether it's your services. That's what most of my audience uses speaking as an amplifier or speaking as a supplemental revenue source. But regardless where your, what your focus is, or what your business model is, you have to embrace this truth and it's your success is absolutely correlated. I have to think of the word here, absolutely correlated to your leadership abilities. John Maxwell famously says that everything rises and falls on leadership in business, and that thing could not be more true. I had the honor of meeting John years ago when I hosted him at one of the events that I produced back at my old company. We actually brought John Maxwell out multiple times to speak at our conference, and he became a trusted advisor within our leadership circle, but I had the ability to sit and have lunch with John and his leadership team backstage after one of the events and one, I learned a lot of incredible things from him, but his level of humility, his level of focus, his level of discipline around what leadership is and what it's not, it's incredible. There's a reason why he is the number one author in the world on the topic of leadership.
4:00
But I remember when I first heard him talking about this idea that everything rises and falls on leadership. Now, at the time, I was technically a manager. I had a small team under me, producing events. I had a small team of trainers. I saw myself as a quote, unquote leader, because I was a manager. But what I quickly learned was leadership has nothing to do with whether or not you have direct reports. Leadership is a way of being. It is an attitude. It is how you show up in the world. And I think some of the most influential leaders don't have employees or teams, or they're, let me say that differently. Maybe they have employees or teams, but that who they lead is way larger than the people who technically report to them, and that's why we're here. That's what we're talking about today. Because you and your business even, let's say you're like me and you have some contractors working with you, maybe you do have some actual employees on payroll in your business, regardless of the size, whether it's just you, or you have a team of a few, or you have teams of dozens, you are a leader, and whether or not you've really adopted that truth for yourself, I mean, you probably in some way, know that you are a leader. I'm going to really challenge you today to think about how you are showing up and speaking like a leader, whether it's to your team or, more importantly, what we're talking about is in your content that you put out into the world, whether it's on video, it's on stages, it's in your written content, it's on your website. Are you showing up as a leader?
5:46
Because what I'm noticing is, let's talk about a few things. So one, I hear from a lot of business owners is they get a little, how do I say this kindly? Get a little whiny. Why are people not paying more attention? Why are people not taking action? Why are people, I sent out an email, why are they not opting into the summit I'm participating in? Why are people not signing up for my webinar? We all can get a little whiny at times and wonder why. And there could be a lot of factors that go into this. But I'm reminded by a incredible quote, I read this in I'm reading, oh gosh, I can't remember the name of the book, but it's Robin Sharma's book, and he references his keynote speech in there at one of his famous quotes from his keynote. And it's this, victims make excuses. Leaders deliver results.
6:52
And so going back to it, a lot of times when I hear business owners, and I've been one of them, whining about the outcomes or the lack of action of the people that we're trying to serve. When we are in that state where we are whining or focusing or taking that victim blame game around what isn't happening or what people aren't doing, or whatever the circumstances of AI taking over our lives and ruining it for the rest of us, the pro marketers are just out there being schmucky. When we're placing all of that focus on the negativity or the excuses or the reasons of why we're not successful, how can we expect to experience success or experience results when our thoughts, our focus, our words are literally amplifying the result that we don't want. Do you get that, right?
7:44
When we're spending our time complaining about what's not working or what's not happening, we are not creating any success around what we actually do want. I mean, think about this. I have I have kids, and I get really frustrated when they complain all the time, and then I start complaining or griping to them about their complaining, which I have this outer body experience. This is happening around like, how on earth is me griping about their complaining? Me complaining about their complaining. How is that going to change how they're acting right now. Like, hello, they're children. They're not, it's gonna be like, Sorry mother, let me be super grateful and can I wash the dishes? No. Me whining about them. Whining is not changing the reality.
8:36
So what leaders do? Leaders can acknowledge what's actually happening, not get swept away or stuck in it. Leaders create their success. This is where leaders are honest about the facts of what's happening, but they don't attach all of these stories and emotions and blame and wallowing in the victim statements around them. Instead, they become proactive and start problem solving. Leaders get curious. Leaders focus on, what can we control? What can we do? And that's one of the one of the first shifts I really want to talk about today is if you find yourself in a moment of struggle that is absolutely normal. This is business. We're entrepreneurs. You are going to struggle. But the question is, how do you navigate the struggle? What is the hat that you're wearing as you're navigating the struggle. Right? Are you focused on all the things that are wrong, and are we blaming and are we taking that role of being the victim, or are we rising up and stepping up as the leader of saying, how are we going to navigate this? We being maybe me, myself and I. We might be me and my team. We might be, I don't know, insert whatever scenario here, but it's the the leaders responsibilities to be the one to actually take the actions to make the change.
10:03
I want to share with you a, I saw a scenario online this morning. I woke up early and I decided to go out on a walk at like 6:30 trying to get back into, well, side tangent. I'm trying to get back into establishing good healthy habits for myself, both physically, but also keeping my mind in this state of a strong leader. And part of that for me is reading books, listening to audio books. Those are two things that are really important to me, and I noticed that when I don't read books, what I'm doing is filling my brain with content I see online through Instagram or threads or Facebook. I don't say no. I don't, I haven't logged into Tiktok probably, well, since Tiktok shut down, you know, for a day. I was like, super into following Spencer on the like, last few days they shutdown after the California fires, but I haven't logged into Tiktok since, so that's not really my platform.
11:01
But anyways, when I'm not reading books, I find myself consuming more content online and even though I follow people that are really positive and it's great content, what I actually see in my feed is based off the algorithm of what I've watched. And I hate to admit it, but a lot of times with what I watched,is commiserating over kind of negative shit. And I don't love that, but it's almost like an autopilot thing that happens, that it's just, it just starts happening, and you start seeing these videos, and it's so easy to get sucked in and watch. I know you know how that works. It probably happens for you too, but I know in order for me to stay in the head space for me to be creative, for me be able to show up as the best coach for my clients, for me to create better content and actually have the capacity creativity, creativity and also, why was that so hard to say? Create, creatively. There we go. Creatively and enthusiastically, great content for this show, which I haven't for the last year. Honestly, a lot of it comes down to what information I'm putting in my head. And I like, for me, reading actual books, like personal growth books, business books, and listening to podcasts that puts me in a better frame of mind, and therefore a, it helps me stay up to speed or at the top of my game as a leader. And anyway, so this this morning, I just happened to, I woke up early to go on a walk, but I was just checking my phone before going out on a walk, and I saw a post inside this community that I'm in.
12:38
So quick, little, quick little side tangent story here. Last year, after I had baby Brooks, my husband had gotten an aura ring. You know, those like little fitness tracker rings that people wear and it tracts like your breathing and your sleep and your I don't know everything under the sun, probably what time you pee. And he, my brother or my husband is almost said my brother, which is super awkward, but whatever. Okay, no, my husband is very into data, like he is a data geek, like, loves information. Like he's hungry for any kind of data, any reference points. He wants to read the articles. So he's been loving the aura ring, and I was, I was thinking about getting one, but I was hesitant on the like price for it. I was like, Oh, do I really want to get one? Do I need one? Will I actually use it? My relationship previously with my Apple Watch was I became a little obsessive over it. So do I need to actually put that back in my life? So I was hesitant. But then I came across an ad on Facebook and the ad was for a ring, which was very similar to the aura ring, but it was a new company that was in startup mode, and they were doing kind of like one of those crowd fundraising. It was on a website called Indiegogo, which is like a Kickstarter type situation. So they were essentially had this deal. It was like a Kickstarter that if they got enough money, then they would move forward. So I paid the 100, 200 bucks. I can't remember what it was. I think I paid, actually $30 to get my name on a quote, unquote VIP list. And then once it kicked that, like it actually was going to happen and this company was going to be funded, then I had to pay my whatever $200 fee right to get my ring, and then I would be in the first shipment. So this is, this is over a year ago.
14:31
So I'm like, Okay, this is cool, right? It's not aura. I felt a little like rebel-ish of looking at a new company. I'm like, oh yeah, this is great. Like, Aura is awesome, but now they're a little too trendy and popular, and everybody has them, so let me go with this. Like, let me go with this, like, new indie company and I like the idea that it's a startup. I like the idea that I'm going to be on, like, the ground floor, helping another business owner get off the ground, like this is great. So I invest in, like, maybe January of last year. The rings are supposed to ship in April and come April, there's, so we're in a Facebook group, right? We were able to like make the purchase, and they created a Facebook group to keep us all abreast of what's going on. And come April, it's like, nope. The rings aren't shipping yet. We're still having some issues with the warehouse. It'll be another few weeks. Those other few weeks come, and then it's like, nope, not yet. We're having some issues with blah, blah, blah. It's going to be a little bit more time, and then this goes on for months, and by the time the first shipment goes then it's in customs issue that they were shipped, but they're now sitting in customs so they don't have them in the warehouse to be able to ship. And it was this repeated announcement of delays, excuses, delays, excuses. And furthermore, you would see in the comments of these early adopters who are early investors in this company, they're now starting to ask questions, because the the facts that are being shared, the information that they're sharing, is not really checking out, so long story.
16:04
Essentially, here we are a year and a half later, just a year and a half later, yeah, and people have their rings. A lot of people don't have their rings, including me, because, honestly, I gave up at some point, because they kept then asking us to fill out forms to put in our shipping information, and we were in the middle of not knowing where we're going to live and be in a move, and I didn't want to put the wrong one, because I didn't know when it was actually going to ship. So, long story short, I paid this money and I never got the ring. Come to find out, a lot of people paid money and still haven't gotten the ring, and the app that's supposed to go with it isn't working, and it's just now become a comical joke that I forgot I was in this group. I honestly don't even care about the ring at this point. I'm probably going to buy an Aura ring, which there is a whole lesson in that, by the way, that we can get into.
16:53
But coming back to it, this morning, I saw a post, and it was from the leadership team of this company. And I'm not going to name the company, because I don't want to throw them under the bus because this is not about them, but it's the how they've approached it. So they made a post, essentially saying, hey, we've heard from a lot of you that you're really frustrated. We hear you but here's the reality. We have spent all of this money, and we thought that by having these, whatever early investors, you all would be a lot more supportive of this whole process. But instead, many of you are complaining to the Better Business Bureau and whatever the other agency are. People are actually now making formal complaints against them, and these people shared that other companies who have been successful took x, y and z amount of time, but they are on a much shorter track, and as business owners, they are personally now in debt by 50 grand because of all these complaints happening, because these unforeseen issues, and the fact that their VIPs, who are supposed to be on their side, supposed to be their best advocates, but are now attacking them because of all of this, they've just made the decision to end the company. So they'll do their best to ship out the rest of the rings and try to get the app out. But pretty much, this is the end. And you can tell by my snarky nature in my voice here, that this was not the approach that you take. And so I almost commented on it, and then I decided I don't really care about random internet conversations. So I don't really place my opinion where it doesn't really like who cares? We don't need a pile on this. But I thought that this post was a perfect, perfect example of a lack of leadership. I'll read the quote again by Robin Sharma. Victims make excuses. Leaders deliver results.
18:42
So if this company had any question around why they had such difficulty getting funded, why they had such difficulty getting their products stocked, if they wondered why people were making so many complaints, it isn't because of the warehouse. It isn't because of their customer service agents being overwhelmed. It isn't because of customs. It isn't because of all of that crap. It is 100% because of their lack of leadership and their inability to see that. Their inability to take responsibility for them being the ones responsible, which I know I just said that was very redundant. Their lack of responsibility is them not taking responsibility. But that is why that company is going under. That is why they will never be successful. And it was so interesting to me, just to see that so clearly.
19:40
Now let's transition it to you. What does a product startup company have to do with you as a consultant, a trainer, a coach? Well, you might not have a product, but I guarantee that in your business, you will navigate very diffi conditions. So for example, right now, we're living in a world where people are using AI at an astronomical level, whether it's AI to write copy, AI to create branding, AI to create assets, AI to brainstorm. Ai, AI, Ai is everywhere, and what it's making or creating is this flood of content online, and now there is more information. There is more quote, unquote, influencers, there's more coaches, there's more content creators out there than ever. And what we're starting to notice, and quite frankly, we've seen for years, is we see a lot of the same shit being circulated over and over and over again. It's just being regurgitated. Think about this out my back window right now, I can see we have this really cute like pond fountain that came with our new, we live in a log cabin now in Bend, and this really beautiful water feature in the backyard that just, it's a small pond and it has this waterfall that shuts down, and at the bottom of it, there's a pump, and the pump cycles the water from the bottom all the way back up to the top. So the water is constantly being cycled through, which is great, because in the winter, when it gets super cold outside because of the cycling of water, it never freezes over, which sounds really beautiful, but that's what's happening with the content in the online space right now. Is content is just constantly being recycled and regurgitated by people? And that might seem scary. It might make you feel like, who the F is going to listen to me? How am I going to stand out? Like, how do I actually get people to pay attention? Because I know what I'm doing, I actually have experience on this topic, versus the other people who just seem to like, have started their business last month, or are just posting online. And it comes down to this very singular thing, thought leaders don't just regurgitate generic ideas. Thought Leaders actually bring their own thoughts, their own experience, their own bold opinions, and they lead people's thinking. Thought Leaders are actual leaders. They're not just regurgitating information. They're not reacting to what's going on. They're actually stepping up, and they're leading the way with their ideas.
22:31
Now I made the pivot talking from leadership to thought leadership, but I hope that you can follow me in this left turn that I'm making here is, as I said at the top of the episode, you may or may not see yourself as a leader of a leader leading people, as in your employees, but you are a leader leading your audience. You are a leader trying to attract more people into your following, whether that's from stages, whether that's from social whatever that looks like for you. But leadership from the stage requires you to lead people's thinking. It requires for you to stand up and challenge the beliefs that are holding them back. It requires you to stand up and have a vision for yourself and for others. It requires you to empower and encourage other people to want more, to reach for more, to find better ways of living, of being, of doing. Leadership requires you to stand even when you're struggling. It requires you to not sugarcoat shit, but to be real with people, but be real not in the struggle and like wallow in what's happening, but to still hold the vision we can honor that things can be hard while encouraging people to continue to take action. And what I see now more than ever, is a lot of commiserating around what's not working, and less putting on the blinders and believing that we still live in an incredible time, in an incredible world with incredible people around us if we choose to notice. And personally for me, I have to remind myself of that often, because it's so easy to get sucked into the negativity and the complaining and forget that. Oh, hold on, those things are pulling me off track.
24:39
So I'm going to kind of recap a couple things here. Leaders have a vision. Number one, if you do not have a clear vision for yourself, for your business, but most importantly, for your audience, that vision is kind of like the transformation that they seek. It's a vision to get rally aound of what life is like when people actually apply the things that you teach. You have to be the one to shout the vision from the rooftop, rooftops, and you have to be the one to constantly remind people why the vision matters. You have to hold that even on the cloudy days, even when it feels like the sky is falling you have to believe in the vision, because sometimes your people won't. Leaders, two. Leaders take aligned action, which that phrase aligned action, I really love, but also I cringe because it's really overused right now, but I'm gonna hold in it. Aligned action means that the actual things that you do have to match up with that bigger vision.
25:50
So let me give you an example of this. For me, with my vision for my audience, I know for you, you have a goal of wanting to take your message and have it reach 1000s, hundreds of 1000s, maybe even millions of people in your career. Some of you that might feel a little wild and crazy. Others, you might be screaming hell to the yes, like I have a vision. I want to share my story, my message, my ideas, with more people, whatever your reason for that is, you want to be able to do that on a grander scale. Maybe have a vision to speak on a really big stage. Maybe you want to do it a lot. Maybe you want to build a full time income based off speaking. I don't know exactly what your specific goal is, but I know that you have this calling inside of you saying, I know I meant to share things in a bigger way. Sometimes you might doubt that. Sometimes you might wonder, okay, how am I to get that? Am I even making sense? Like, is this worth it? Who's going to pick me, right? All those things can be true, but the vision is still there that you want to truly help and serve and make an impact on this world by sharing your message in a really big way. I know that. I know that vision is true for you.
27:04
Now for me, my actions have to align that vision, align with that vision. So for me, I have a vision of that too. Now how that shows up for me might look a little different for you. One of my ways of doing that is showing up to this microphone and sharing my message to the hundreds of listeners who listen each week. Notice I said hundreds and not 1000s. My show is not huge. My show is in the top one and a half percent of podcasts, which sounds really fancy, but that comes down to maybe five to 700 downloads a week. That's not huge. Also, that's very huge in comparison to some shows, right? It's all about perspective. But for me, in order for me to impact the hundreds of 1000s or millions of people that I ultimately want to help and serve and help them get their message out to 1000s, hundreds of 1000s, millions of people, it starts by me having the willingness to take action andaligned with that vision. I have to be the leader that I am asking my audience to be. The actions that I do reflect that. So whether or not I'm showing up, whether or not I'm focusing on leadership person versus being the victim or getting swept away in the negative conversations, my actions and my thinking have to align with the vision, that is true leadership.
28:25
Number three, leaders have radical responsibility. They take a radical ownership of their results. And I think this is the really big one. I know I hammered on this a lot today, especially in that example of that ring company. I want you to ask yourself the question right now, what results do I currently have in my business, both good, bad, neutral, whatever it is. What is the current reality you're at right now in your business, April of 2025? And can you take absolute responsibility for those without shaming yourself, without pissing on yourself, also without boasting and egotistically saying, yeah, yeah. Like, if you're gonna victimize yourself around the results, you also have to, I guess, celebrate on both sides. So anyways, but the radical responsibility is instead of blaming others, instead of blaming the market, instead of blaming AI, instead of blaming the algorithm, oh my gosh, for the people who freaking continually blame the algorithm, I just want to bang my head to the wall. We have to stop blaming and we have to start taking responsibility.
29:35
Now that doesn't mean that those external circumstances aren't happening. But the reality is, you can't control those external circumstances. You can't control the algorithm. You can't control what negative like. I don't know, how do I phrase it? You know people who complain all the time, and they're gonna find them to complain about. You can't control whether or not they post on your content, or you can't control whether or not they send an email to your customer service inbox. You can't control those things, but you can take responsibility around how you react to those things. You can put up better filters so that you're not the one getting those emails, so that your day isn't thrown off by it. You can take responsibility by with the algorithm. Well, shit, try some better content. I know a lot of social media managers joke all the time that they're like, you're like, tough reality, it just that your content sucks. And that very well might be true if you're creating reels that aren't popping off. I hate to say it, but like, are they good? Would you watch them if you were a stranger that stumbled upon it? Would you actually watch it? Take radical responsibility, and it's not that you're terrible. It's not that you're like, oh my gosh, destined to be bad. It's just that you don't have the skill to create good content yet, so take responsibility for that and learn it. Be willing to suck before you get better. But you have to be like, start getting better. Radical responsibility is so important. Radical ownership without then pissing on yourself for the lack of results like this is critical. This is what leaders do, is we evaluate the results and then we say, okay, so what are we going to do about it?
31:21
The other thing that leaders do, the last thought I'll leave you with. I mean, I have a lot of thoughts, but this is already a 30 minute episode, so we're going to wrap it up here, because I told my husband I was going to take 30 minutes to record a podcast, and then I'm on mom duty. But this last piece here is leaders are always empowering and encouraging their audience. And what I mean by that is, remember how I said that leaders have to hold the vision even when your people don't necessarily believe in themselves. As a leader, you have to truly believe in your audience's belief for them. That sounded weird. Believe in their belief. But you know what I mean? Like, the biggest objection that I see, it isn't money, it isn't time, it is that people, deep down, have lost belief in themselves. And I'm sure you've heard this before, but I would argue that you probably don't do enough of this when you're speaking from the stage or speaking on a webinar or talking to your audience near to the point of decision, people really doubt whether or not they're going to stick with something. They really doubt whether it's possible for them based off of their circumstances. People doubt whether or not they can actually make it happen, because whatever's happened in their past, maybe they're a chronic course buyer, maybe they chronically give up on habits, maybe they repeatedly have, I don't know, right? Had, quote, unquote, bad luck. You can't change how they view themselves, but what you can do is empower them to choose and think differently. I think a lot of times when people are talking to their audience, they want to coddle them, or they want to tough love the crap out of them.
33:25
So giving an example of this. Is when we coddle our audience is it's saying, like, it's not your fault. It's, I don't know, giving them all these reasons and excuses, which there is a time and place where we can use the, 'it's not your fault' type marketing. So for example, if someone's talking about personal finances, let's say that's what you teach. Well, the truth is, we're not taught financial like personal finance in school. So if somebody doesn't have healthy financial habits, it's no wonder they don't have financial like habits. It's not that they're just destined to be bad with money. It's just that they've never learned those habits. Because it's not something that we're taught in school, right? It's not your fault that you didn't know this. No one taught you. It's okay. That's not coddling, that's showing that the truth. But now where's where we need to shift and stop coddling is where now we have to say, now that you know that. The question is, what do you do? If you continue to have unhealthy habits, if you continue to overspend, if you continue to insert some other scenarios here around, whether it's budgeting or irresponsible financial spending, whatever example you want to put here, right? Then this is where you challenge them. Then it's no longer, right, other people's or it's no longer because you didn't know it. Now you're making an active choice to be financially irresponsible. So the question is, what will be your next step? Are you going to take the actions necessary for you to get your personal finances in order? Are you going to choose how you show up moving forward, or are you going to continue now that you know how you're operating? Is not going to get you where you are? Are you going to consciously choose to keep like along on that way, or are you going to choose to take different actions? Choose to educate yourself, choose to make changes in your financial well being. You see where I'm going here?
35:32
So there's this balance between we don't coddle. We call out and then we challenge but we challenge it towards the vision that we're wanting them to take them. This is, I think, actually a beautiful example of how all this comes back to when I'm talking about being a leader from the stage. Leaders don't shy away from challenging their audience. But unlike you've probably experienced with some kind of aggressive, bold in your face speakers, we're not just challenging people and screaming their face and just telling them to try harder, telling them to change their mind, telling them to, I don't know, do the damn thing. Instead, we're calling out why what's happening, and we're helping them understand why they're in the problem, right? We have empathy without coddling. This is encouragement, right? And then we challenge them to move forward. This is, like all of this, I probably could explain this a lot more beautifully had I, like written this all out ahead of time. But this is the Ramble Refinery, so you are getting me rambling in real time around the ideas in real time as I'm thinking them, which is literally what my pole podcast is about. If you go back to all the episodes. This is my ramble, this is my ramble refinery, so welcome. But coming back to all of it, is as a leader, you have to be the person to empower other people. Now, quite literally, that word, if you think empowering them, it's you're helping them step into their own power, helping them see their own power and choose to move forward in a powerful way. I don't know that that's the actual definition, but it's my definition of how I'm seeing that word right now. But as leaders, I really just want you one, adopting this idea I am a leader. How am I showing up as a leader today. And number two, how am I encouraging my audience? How am I empowering my audience to take action? How am I encouraging them to have a stronger belief for themselves and have them reconnect the vision of what they're after?
37:36
Okay, I hope this episode on leadership hit you exactly when it needed to in your business and your growth as a speaker. I'm going to continue to share with you the things that are coming up for me that are top of mind. If there is a topic that you would love to hear me ramble on, that you would like my insights on, my take on, if there's a curiosity that you have around speaking or building your thought leadership business. Shoot me a message on Instagram. I want to hear from you. I love to ramble based around what you all want to know more of so feel free to send me a message. Hit me with your question, or hit me with your topic that you would love to hear my take on. On Instagram. I'm @theheathersager. Until next time on the Ramble Refinery, go out there. Do it messy. Show up. Keep practicing. Show up for your audience. You are a leader. Start acting like it. We'll talk to you soon.