The Transcript

Brad Wolff: 00:02 

Welcome to the “It Is About You Podcast”. Today I’m honored to have as my guest, Stacey Ruth with inside out marketing. Stacey, welcome to the show! 

Stacey Ruth: 00:18 

Thank you so much, Brad. I’m so excited to be here. 

Brad Wolff: 00:22 

Awesome! Now would you share a little bit about yourself and your organization? 

Stacey Ruth: 00:29 

Well, a little bit about myself. My goodness. I am a lifelong entrepreneur. And we don’t need to talk about how long that life is, but since I was 28 I have owned agencies. I’ve had a couple 

Brad Wolff: 00:47 

Well, so you’re about two or three years. That’s my calculation? 

Stacey Ruth: 00:50 

Two were three years. Yeah, just skyrocketed to the top for sure. And I also am a branding and marketing advocate on passionate about brands being clear about who they are with themselves and with their customers and with their employees. And I’m also, and this, I can throw a few people, so I’ll just go ahead and put that out there. Up front. I am also a spiritual practitioner. And I think that all three, being a leader, being a brander or marketer and being spiritual are absolutely in alignment. 

Brad Wolff: 01:37 

Absolutely! And I think more and more people are realizing the spiritual component, which I’m classifying as the deeper purpose behind what we’re doing. It isn’t about that you have to have a specific religion or anything like that. It’s about purpose driven at a deeper level than just making money. So I want to demystify what, at least my definition of spiritual is as it’s as, as I use it, because I’m not about to think that I can define how the universe in God or whatever really works cause I have no real understanding at a deep level. 

Stacey Ruth: 02:18 

Absolutely! And, and I think it’s very important. You’re, you’re touching on something that I think culturally is part of the, I’ll call it resistance that some people have to the idea of business and spiritual being in alignment. Spiritual as far as my definition of it is a, is that which is beyond the tangible and the material. That’s it. So you can be religious and spiritual. You can be religious, not spiritual, spiritual, not religious, they’re not they’re not equaled terminology. From my standpoint and how I work with individuals, I agree with you wholeheartedly about the idea of purpose. Also values are intrinsic to the spiritual component of business. And so I kinda take it to the extreme. I say all business is spiritual. 

Brad Wolff: 03:14 

Right? That there’s some deeper, there’s some deeper aspects beyond what we can identify and measure. 

Stacey Ruth: 03:20 

Yeah! And it’s not, it’s not a decision that the business leadership makes to be spiritual. They are spiritual. They got values, they got purpose, whether they’re going to operate on it consciously or not they have them. 

Brad Wolff: 03:36 

Stacey, I really appreciate your clarifying what you mean by that term because that term can be something that people get very uncomfortable with. And I think this really helps clarify what you mean because people do that. The term means different things to different people. I get that. So tell me a little bit about your journey that’s brought you to where you are at this point? 

Stacey Ruth: 04:01 

Okay! A little bit about my journey. Because you know, we’ve already determined it was only three years long. Right. So definitely I have found myself very much immersed in the business world, not just as an entrepreneur myself starting, I’d like to say I kind of came down from the mountain top, literally a and started my first business. I had not taken a vacation from my job previous to that for five years. I had worked nonstop for five years and long hours to boot. We’re weekends, the whole nine yards. So I really hadn’t stopped to breathe. And I took my first vacation and went all out and went to Sedona, Arizona, which is one of my favorite locations in the entire world. And it is just beautiful there. And I went, one of the vortex is, I don’t know how much you’re listeners know about Sedona, but it’s known for these energy centers. 

Stacey Ruth: 05:08 

And so there are beautiful hikes, beautiful views and vistas. And I had climbed one of those and I was up there just kind of soaking in the beauty and I just realized I was done with my work there and it was time for me to start my own thing. And I had, I didn’t have a clue about starting a business. This was before the internet was really underway and it was just a twinkle in a, what is it, Al Gore’s eye so, so I really had to just kind of a leap, ah, into the unknown if I was going to do this. And I did it in 90 days and in 90 days I had my first business, three major clients, including kept Kimberly Clark already lined up when I started. 

Brad Wolff: 05:57 

Wow! And that’s going on. That’s going on faith. That’s really good.  

Stacey Ruth: 06:01 

That was going on faith big time. And was everything, you know, sunshine and rainbows and unicorns from there on him? No have solid.  

Brad Wolff: 06:08 

If you told me what was then I would say, well, I think you’re on the wrong show. They’d be living on a different planet. And I might show you. To qualify to be on this show, you have to be human and living on earth. Okay? I never put that in. It’s in the fine print. 

Stacey Ruth: 06:27 

Okay! Got it. Yeah! I thought I saw that there. But, but that’s what got me started. And then from there, all of my clients, whether they were startups, fast growth or whether they were fortune five hundreds and I’m sitting with the CEOs and the VPs and you know, the leaders of these major and you know, scrappy startup companies. And I realized that every leader has the same challenges. They had the same challenge as I did when it boil it down fundamentally, you know, was I doing an IPO launch? No. But at the same time, the fears, the challenges, the obstacles had a common thread and that’s what 

Brad Wolff: 07:09 

And there’s only a few of them out there and no one’s inventing new ones. They just show up with a little different clothes. 

Stacey Ruth: 07:14 

Exactly! And I reached a point where it was time for me to take all of that wonderful learning that I had soaked up in 20 years of doing that work and see if I could reach a larger audience that I felt, especially in the gestalt that we have now that like we were talking about earlier, this elevated consciousness, this passion and purpose driven business that people are trying to develop conscious capitalism, B corporations. If you know about the benefit corporations that are starting to spring up and really help these organizations and these leaders live into that. 

Brad Wolff: 07:57 

Right? Because there‘s a real need, there’s a real desire bubbling up with people that there’s been something missing that they want. And that I think is coming out loud and clear. Now clearly you’re excited about what you do, Stacey. I don’t let them. If there’s any doubt, what excites you the most about what you do? 

Stacey Ruth: 08:20 

There are two things, I can’t just pick one. It’s too juicy. The first thing is absolutely watching the lights come on with a client. The transformation that is unfolding. I mean, you can see people when they hit that transformation point and it just touches your heart to be a part of that. Okay! Touches my heart to be a part of that. On the front end it is seeing individuals have hope that they can reach the transformation. So first they have to have hope, then commitment, and then the transformation occurs. And it doesn’t happen for everybody. Boy, when it does, it’s a beautiful 

Brad Wolff: 09:22 

Cause, it’s right. It may not happen now. It can happen at any time, but everyone isn’t going to have it happen just on command. 

Stacey Ruth: 09:30 

Right! and I’m not the catalyst for everyone, you know, different individuals speak different languages, but for those that I really can connect with and really can help it, it keeps me going. 

Brad Wolff: 09:43 

Absolutely! So based on your experience and with your work, what do you see as the keys to leadership effectiveness? 

Stacey Ruth: 09:57 

Well one of my passion points is that successful leaders, and some people will say, Oh! You’re talking about women. No, I’m talking about all successful leaders, not just women leaders understand, can connect with and trust their intuition. 

Brad Wolff: 10:27 

Hmm! 

Stacey Ruth: 10:28 

There are many research studies, well at least five though I’ve seen by high level organizations, universities that have talked with business and political leaders and when the data is not apparent to an individual, they all say that knowing a decision has to be made, they trust their intuition. Men, women doesn’t matter. Successful leaders need to understand that there is internal guidance that’s available to them and is 90% of their brain. A big part of the work that I do actually relies on neuroscience and that we like to think we’re logical and more linear and we’ve got the facts. But really most of the facts that we get are collected to support the belief that we already have. So… 

Brad Wolff: 11:25 

And the research is clear on that though, that’s part of the emotions that we are emotional beings. And in fact, if we are cut off and they’ve done research with people that are cutoff, that they don’t feel emotions, they can’t even make simple decisions because there’s nothing that pushes them to give weight to one decision over another. So we’re kidding ourselves that we can’t even make effective decisions if there aren’t emotions involved 

Stacey Ruth: 11:44 

Right? But there’s this pervasive myth, especially in business that business is logical and that is it. And that is all right. That’s not the truth. 

Brad Wolff: 11:57 

Well, when you’re dealing with people, you got to say, no, we’re not logical. 

Stacey Ruth: 12:01 

Right? So, right. 

Brad Wolff: 12:06 

Sometimes we are logical, but that’s not necessary what drives us. 

Stacey Ruth: 12:08 

Exactly! And so the other part of this successful leadership is really recognizing what their driving motivators are to be a leader. What, why be a leader? And there really are three basic drivers for someone to be a leader. They want power. And you don’t need to apologize for that. If you want power, you want power, go for it. They want freedom, freedom to make their decisions, to do what they want, when they want, the way they want. All of that. And then the other driver is passion. I have a passion for this and I, I want to lead in this because I care about it deeply. But behind each one of those motivators, there’s a balancing component that many people who move into power, move into freedom, move into passion, kind of forget. You also have to take this, this other half of it along and with power, the balancing is vulnerability. Brenae Brown talks about that so much. So if you’re going to be powerful, you’re going to be visible. You’re going to, people are going to take pot shots at you. You’re going to have to be authentic. You’re going to have to be transparent, you’re gonna have to be vulnerable. So that’s what it is. 

Brad Wolff: 13:26 

I want to highlight that one because I think it’s so big. And I also read research and it’s such a clear the data is so clear that the vulnerability, I call it authenticity or courageous openness is so critical to effectiveness. And the only reason we don’t regularly practice is because we’ve been conditioned not to practice it. But I want to highlight how important that is. 

Stacey Ruth: 13:56 

Absolutely! And then you know, there’s, there’s all of these individuals, most of them are solopreneurs who are starting these passion-based and you know, they’ll say purpose driven businesses and it’s wonderful. But the balancing component to that driver is commitment. So if you’re going to lean in to your purpose and your passion, you also are going to have to commit to the process of birthing that idea. And it’s not necessarily going to be, okay, here I am, I built it. Now they will come. And that can just deflate individuals that haven’t leaned into the commitment component. 

Brad Wolff: 14:37 

So what I’m getting from what you just said, Stacey, is a few keys and your, as you see in leadership effectiveness, one is the willingness to allow for intuition and as a key component of their decisions and other is that they realize whatever it is that’s driving them has to be balanced by the bar. It has to be balanced. You can’t just have power without being balanced with responsibility, with vulnerability. You can’t just have freedom without being balanced with commitment. So, in other words, whatever it is that’s driving you to realize there’s an offsetting balancing factor that you may not like that is so critical if you’re going to be effective. So that’s what I’m hearing with your view of leadership effectiveness, there’s two key components there. 

Stacey Ruth: 15:23 

Absolutely! 

Brad Wolff: 15:25 

So, those two key components. What are ways that you help leaders develop in those areas? 

Stacey Ruth: 15:34 

Well, certainly there’s an awareness that has to be created, but, but ultimately I teach leaders that they are actually, believe it or not, immune to their circumstances. If they know themselves and if they realize that their success starts within, hence the name of the company inside out, they understand that their strength, their intuition, their value, their meaning, it all comes from within. Then they really are immune to the market. They really are immune to their competitors. They really are immune to circumstances that are going on around them. And the same thing is true of brands. They really aren’t immune to their circumstances. If they’re clear on their purpose and there I call it brand affinity, which is an emotional component that every brand has in seven categories. Not all of them, but one category is, can be really strong for every brand that takes their employees and their customers beyond brand loyalty to self-identifying with the brand. 

Brad Wolff: 16:50 

And that’s the immunity component is because if you, if you have people that resonate with your message and your purpose, then they’re gonna. You’re eliminating the competition. Other things because they’re resonating with you, they identify with you and what you bring, 

Stacey Ruth: 17:06 

They self-identify with you. They see themselves as you. 

Brad Wolff: 17:11 

Right! So in other words, your circumstances aren’t a hindrance because there’s, there’s people that are going to identify but it’s getting, reaching them so that they get your message in the right way. 

Stacey Ruth: 17:22 

Correct! And there’s a whole, you know matrix that I take clients through that help them understand which component of brand affinity they really have. And I can do that internally with employees. I’m doing that in December and walking a group of employees through how they are representing the brand with their brand affinity and they’re the brand ambassadors. So that, that’s really powering to be able to see that. But that’s what I, when I say, and in my keynotes and my workshops that someone’s unstoppable. What we’re really doing is recognizing that the inspiration and the power and the influence comes from within. That’s the unstoppable component. 

Brad Wolff: 18:10 

Right? So as far as the ways that you help leaders develop, what I believe I’m hearing is that it’s getting in touch with that unstoppable, purpose-driven piece that’s just part of who they are inside and allowing that to be revealed so that it can attract people that, that resonate or identify with their particular unique message and energy. 

Stacey Ruth: 18:35 

Yeah! And not just revealed, but that they step into that, that they own that they exude that they’d be it. They live it. That’s it. 

Brad Wolff: 18:48 

Right! They don’t talk about it. They are that 

Stacey Ruth: 18:53 

Correct! Because too many organizations, too many brands have gone through the exercise and I hear them say, oh! We’ve done this, right. We’ve got our purpose. We’ve got our mission, we’ve got our vision, we’ve got our values. And they’re hanging up on the wall, but they’re not doing anything to live in those. And I shudder, well could upset somebody, but I shudder when I see a brand that has six or seven core values, six or seven is not core 

Brad Wolff: 19:30 

Right! It’s too many, got it. So basically you’re helping them really get to what’s core and live it and not get thrown off by all the distractions of what else they should be doing. 

Stacey Ruth: 19:43 

Or what their competitor’s doing or what the market is doing. 

Brad Wolff: 19:47 

All the external, you help them take their focus away from getting obsessed with all the externals out there. 

Stacey Ruth: 19:53 

Yeah! I mean, actually the externals can be leveraged that easily as they can be resisted. You know, it’s up to them 

Brad Wolff: 20:02 

Right! But they’re not, they’re not considering their success based on the, whether the externals all line up or not. It’s based on. 

Stacey Ruth: 20:09 

Right! And I’ll use my first agency though, the wow factory as an example because during our expansion, the largest expansion period was also the same time that nine 11 happened and companies pulled back. They pulled back on their expenditures. They pulled back on their travel, they pulled back on their marketing. And I think, I’m not exactly sure if it was eight, nine or 10, but our largest competitors went out of business. Because they lost clients, major accounts. And we kept going and growing. We got some of their… 

Brad Wolff: 20:53 

Right! And it wasn’t hurting though. It was actually the conditions were assisting you in some ways.  

Stacey Ruth: 21:00 

Well, and that’s the point where I started getting what brand Definity really was because we had created a persona around our brand. It was the wow factory, but early on the emphasis was on factory. So we were just turning things out at low cost. And that’s the kind of business we had. And we were burning out fast. And then we shifted to what we really wanted to be, what we really knew how to be, which was a creative inspirational resource for our clients. So we became, wow, we kept the name, it was still the wow factory, but we just started referring to ourselves as wow. And we found, the clients started referring to us as wow as well call out. Right? And so, so what happened was we started really growing when we leaned in and lived in to what we really knew we were.  

Brad Wolff: 21:55 

Got it. So you had to practice what you preached. 

Stacey Ruth: 22:01 

Correct!  

Brad Wolff: 22:02 

If you’re giving the advice that you’re not taking, it’s not real authentic advice.  

Stacey Ruth: 22:06 

Hey, well that’s the truth.  

Brad Wolff: 22:08 

Yeah! Well I wanted to highlight that because it’s easy to do. All of us have blind spots and we can lose sight of, we can get so focused on what other people are doing and what we’re, what we’re supposed to do to help others that we forget that it starts with us practicing those principles ourselves. It’s easy to get lost on that sometimes. So what do you see as the relationship between leadership development and personal development? Because we’re talking to some extent about personal development with these things.  

Stacey Ruth: 22:40 

Yeah! Well, I mean, personal development is about really understanding who you are, what you believe, what’s driving you and then amplifying your strengths mitigating any weaknesses or blind spots and, allowing yourself to really evolve and transform and grow. Okay. And then were you asking about the, the leadership component of it as well?  

Brad Wolff: 23:13 

Well actually what I’m wondering about in your mind, what’s the relationship between leadership development and personal development? How are they connected? 

Stacey Ruth: 23:21 

Oh! Well, I mean, so personal development is really about self-awareness at its core in, in my, in my definition of it. And leadership is about inspiring others into action. So if I’m going to inspire someone into action, I better be pretty self-aware. So, I and to me, personal development is a lifelong process. So if I choose to step into a leadership role in any area of my life that personal development is going to continue throughout my entire tenure, my entire life. And I mean, how am I going to inspire others into their own self-awareness and their own action if I’m not authentically standing in my own.  

Brad Wolff: 24:25 

Right! They’re part of the same thing then based on as my understanding what you’re saying.  

Stacey Ruth: 24:30 

But I think that as leaders, we are living examples. So if we want those whom we lead to be self-aware, we must be self-aware and we must say, and this is my self-awareness and you can have this too. 

Brad Wolff: 24:51 

Right! Because it’s what we model is going to have much more impact than anything we say.  

Stacey Ruth: 24:57 

Yeah! 

Brad Wolff: 24:58 

So what regular practices, Stacey do you have, that you find that is most helpful to your growth and development? 

Stacey Ruth: 25:10 

Well up primarily for me. And yeah, I am a licensed spiritual practitioner which is a fun five years of study. So I’m serious about my spirituality. But the spiritual practice that I have in the morning is non-negotiable. It doesn’t matter where I am. Next weekend I’m going to be at the national association of women business owners and I’m going to be rooming with one of my cohorts and she’s just gonna have to deal with it cause I’m gonna do my meditation and my prayer and my I do journaling morning pages because I’m also a writer and an author. And so I’m really going to be continuing that practice as I do when I’m in my personal space. So that’s crucial.

But the other thing for my personal development is my writing. That is part of who I see myself as a writer, as an author. I have been a speech writer, I’ve been a ghost writer, but I also rock my own stuff. So I write my own presentations, my own books and my own blogging. And that’s so important to me to make that commitment. So I commit an hour every day to right now it might be a blog, it might be part of my next book owning your own shift. There’s my plug. But to be able to do that is something that no one’s going to give me. I have to take that ownership myself. 

Brad Wolff: 26:49 

Right! So what, it appears that you’ve got a committed practice that you’re going to do every morning, rain or shine, convenient or inconvenient, and that is something that you find is really important to your development and your effectiveness, as you know, because when I say as a person who you are as a person, as is what you take with you as a business, as a business leader or anything else. So there’s no separation because you, we bring ourselves with us. 

Stacey Ruth: 27:20 

Right! But there is a third, third key thing and that is to give to others. So I guess I practice the, the go giver methodology. Bob Burg I believe is at least one of the authors of that. But to participate in associations to support nonprofits that I’m passionate about, but also to continue conversations that I had with someone. And I think that they might be interested in some information and to follow up and to, you know, share with them and to connect them. And it’s not about do you have a piece of business for me, it’s about how can I help you knowing that sooner or later you’ll either pay it back or you’ll pay it forward. 

Brad Wolff: 28:18 

Right! So what I believe I’m hearing is the motivation behind it is that you’re contributing and giving, not that there’s going to be some, you know, some immediate business or payment to you. That’s not, the driving force isn’t business to you. It’s the, it’s the driving force is actually giving and contributing. And I want to highlight that. So that’s a key. The energy that you’re doing it from is a key difference. Well, if I do this, then they owe me or whatever. 

Stacey Ruth: 28:50 

Well, yeah. And it’s, it’s not a needy energy. It’s, it’s an energy of, there’s plenty to go around. There’s plenty of us, but there’s plenty to go around. And, you know, how can I support you and create a community out of this experience? I can’t tell you. I’m so I guess amused is really kind of the experience that I have by the large number of individuals now on LinkedIn who, you know, don’t know you, they reach out. They say, hey! can we connect? And if you say yes out of that giving methodology, the next thing is, hey! Can I sell you my fill in the blank? And I’m like, I don’t know you. No, I want to have trust for you first. And that has to be established over time. 

Brad Wolff: 29:49 

Right! And there’s nothing that they’re talking about with respect to helping you based on what you want or need. 

Stacey Ruth: 29:57 

Well, they think they might kind of maybe know what, but they never ask. 

Brad Wolff: 30:03 

Right! I’d have to be pretty lucky to just hit what, what is important to you without knowing you? And I’m usually not that lucky. I’m not that good that I can just like, oh! I know exactly what she wants and what’s important. 

Stacey Ruth: 30:19 

Well, and even if you did, I wouldn’t necessarily trust you out of the gate. 

Brad Wolff: 30:24 

Yeah! Why would you, if you don’t know me? 

Stacey Ruth: 30:28 

Correct! 

Brad Wolff: 30:29 

That would be foolish. Just to trust someone you don’t know just because they appeared on LinkedIn or wherever. So Stacey, what’s the greatest success story you’ve been part of with the work that you do? 

Stacey Ruth: 30:43 

Oh, well, I’ll go back to the idea of coming down off the mountain top and with the inspiration and starting that first agency, the wow factory which had incredible success because I really do believe that that is walking the walk. If I’m asking other leaders to trust their intuition and to you know, follow that inner nudge that came from out of the blue and trust that I have to be a living example of that. 

Brad Wolff: 31:25 

So as far as the success story, is there any in particular that, that you’d want to highlight? As far as one of my clients? Yes. With the work that you’ve done with them and what impact it had on their success? 

Stacey Ruth: 31:43 

Well, definitely there’s, there’s one that is kind of a, I guess a passion, a story for me because I can so identify with this woman. She’s a photographer and she’s an excellent photographer who has had a lot of stories about why she couldn’t compete stories about not having the right skills, not having the right equipment, not having fill in the blank. And then when all of those were resolved, then it was, but I’m not doing something that is meaningful enough. And so she, she just had all of these external reasons not to be successful. And as we worked through each one of them, she developed this amazing vision for the type of work that she’s doing where she’s actually taking these photos of women that’s helping them to see themselves and their own worth, which, Oh, look at that she was struggling with her own self-worth. And now she’s helping other women break through and see their worth. And when she started telling other women about this photography that she was doing, which requires women to be very authentic and transparent and not trying to look like they’re on the cover of Vogue magazine, but then seeing the results and we’re like, oh! my God, I want to hit on that. She’s like, why did I wait? So, you know, it was something where she really knew what she wanted to do, but she wasn’t allowing herself to follow that intuitive nudge and trust the process. And when she did, the floodgates opened. I mean… 

Brad Wolff: 33:41 

That’s an example of inside out because as long as the inside wasn’t accurate, really in an alignment, the externals, there’s always an external, there’s never externals or an ongoing supply. 

Stacey Ruth: 33:54 

Absolutely!  

Brad Wolff: 33:55 

One reason is always there.  

Stacey Ruth: 33:57 

Yeah! I mean there’s, there’s large organization stories, but it’s the individual stories that really inspire me more  

Brad Wolff: 34:09 

Even an organizational story is a collection of individual success stories.  

Stacey Ruth: 34:15 

It is, And where you really get w where I really, you know, tear up or get choked up. And I, you know, there’s, there‘s my emotion vulnerability is really when I watched that individual again, that individual transformation occur.  

Brad Wolff: 34:32 

Right! That’s a big driver for you. Clearly. Being part of that transformation is payment. It is the value that drives you clearly. 

Stacey Ruth: 34:43 

Yeah! And it reinforces that what I believe is key and crucial is key and crucial.  

Brad Wolff: 34:55 

So I’m a big believer in failures and obstacles as things that move us to find ourselves and move us to our success. And any particular one that you’ve overcome that you feel has been pivotal to your success? I know you had in your origin story of, you know, the experience with I think it was Sedona? Is there any particular failure or obstacle that you feel like has really helped move you forward? Despite all… 

Stacey Ruth: 35:16 

Forged me in Fire?  

Brad Wolff: 35:37 

Yes! 

Stacey Ruth: 35:39 

And I don’t know if you know my story about the fire walk 

Brad Wolff: 35:42 

No, I don’t know.  

Stacey Ruth: 35:45 

Oh, well, that’s not my obstacle, but it is very metaphorical and representational of what has been my obstacle at my obstacle is I think it’s really a belief. And I’ve run up against that belief time and time and time again. I’ve gotten better and better at seeing it sooner and not throwing myself under the bus with it. But that belief is that I’m not enough.  

Brad Wolff: 36:18 

I think that is universal. It shows up in different ways. But I think that’s a universal belief of all human beings.  

Stacey Ruth: 36:28 

Absolutely! And you know, so for me it would show up in ways like when, when I started the wow factory, I didn’t believe that I could do this all by myself. So I gave away large shares of my company to business partners, which of course, you know, that’s a tool, but I gave it to business partners that didn’t, that weren’t aligned with what I wanted for the organization. And so then that had to be dealt with and it was a distraction to where we were going. I think it’s slowed us down. So, that kind of, I’m not trusting myself again plays 

Brad Wolff: 37:12 

The self-doubts, which we all have. I think what you’re highlighting is how that is something that’s an ongoing thing and that underlying fear of I’m not enough and there’s something wrong right within all of us. It doesn’t just go away, but well, we, our ability to fight notice it and deal with it better improves that voice will rear its head at when you least want it to also.  

Stacey Ruth: 37:42 

Well, it will. And then sometimes it shows up like I’m a victim of the situation. And I think that that’s the case with a lot of individuals who are in jobs that they’re not happy with. And so I was working on a client project before I started inside out marketing. That was all consuming. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that being all consuming, but I was traveling so much it was affecting my health and I couldn’t figure out a way out of it. And but I was very focused on I need a way out of it. And, and the overcoming of that resistance, that obstacle of this is actually affecting my health was for me to relax into it and to be able to say, look, this is what it is right now. And there’s nothing that’s gonna change about this at this moment. So I’ll just show up as fully as I’m physically able to do and do the best job I possibly can. And then we’ll see where this goes. And ultimately what happened was the projects came to a certain stopping point. And I was able to sell my shares in the company and, and start doing what I really wanted to be doing. And I didn’t have to really lift a pinky finger. 

Brad Wolff: 39:17 

Right! You just chose to, to perceive your obstacle differently. Your obstacle didn’t change, your view of it changed, which changed everything and everything will work itself out over time if we allow it to and we do the things that we need to do. 

Stacey Ruth: 39:37 

Well. And the shift is I believe always an internal shift, 

Brad Wolff: 39:42 

Right! Because if we’re looking for the obstacles that are external, then they’re always going to show up anyway. So until we shift internally, the obstacles will just never stop. 

Stacey Ruth: 39:54 

Correct! Yeah! 

Brad Wolff: 39:55 

It’s like the Indiana Jones movies where, you know, he kills this or fights off that and then you know, everywhere he looks as soon as he gets one of the years. 

Stacey Ruth: 40:03 

That’s absolutely the case. That and, and that’s many. I dunno most, but it’s many people’s experience and it doesn’t have to be that way. 

Brad Wolff: 40:13 

Right! Stacey It’s absolutely been an honor and a privilege to have you share really authentically who you are, your beliefs and the things that you do that are, that are that other people can do and get real value and benefit from. I want you to share any wet your web. You’re very welcome. Your website, any books that you’ve written or anything that other people can tap into now that they’ve heard? 

Stacey Ruth: 40:43 

Absolutely! Well certainly I invite people to check out truth and dare inside out marketing, which is my first book. It’s available on all the major retail sites. Also my website for my speaking and my marketing branding work is “UnstoppableBrandLeader.com” and I they can also find me “InsideOutSmart.com”. Okay. And I’m working on my second book right now, which is own your own shift and I’m really excited about and that should be out next year. 

Brad Wolff: 41:33 

Awesome! Well, I’m looking forward to hearing more about that book as this progresses. Stacey, thank you very much again, and we I’m excited about everyone getting to hear the things that you shared.  

Stacey Ruth: 41:50 

Well, thank you. I know we are both very likeminded individuals and it has been an absolute joy. Thanks!