📘 Your Playbook To Building A Business With Authenticity 🌟
Success is sweeter when it comes from a place of authenticity. In a world where businesses strive to one-up each other, your greatest edge is your unique self. Where do you start building a business with authenticity? This episode’s guest has the playbook for you! Eddie Villa is a marketing/strengths coach, specializing in helping people get clear with their message and themselves. He joins Adrienne Hill to share with us how you can unleash your strengths, the things that make you infinitely unique, and bring them to the world. How do you tap into your unique self? How can you remain true to yourself while speaking to what other people want? How do you apply this in your social media strategy? Eddie answers these questions and more. So tune in and embrace what makes you unique. Trust that the people who resonate with you will discover you, bringing you the kind of success that is better than you’ve ever imagined.
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I am super excited to be here with you with another power-packed speaker. We are here with the one and only Eddie Villa and he's a Marketing and Strengths Coach. He specializes in helping people get clear with their message and with themselves, break through hesitation to become consistent and produce daily results using their unique talents. That is super important in the world of social media where we're all trying to figure out how to be seen and noticed and build a brand. It's easier said than done, so we could never have a topic cover something like this without Eddie. Eddie, I'm so excited that you're here. I can't wait to dig in.
Thank you, Adrienne. This is going to be awesome. I'm super excited.
Yes, me too. I want to share a tiny little story with you guys. If you haven't met Eddie yet, when we first met and we were first talking, we were getting to know each other and talking about various things, but within a matter of minutes, he knew my personality. He knew things about me and it was fascinating to see the way his mind works. He's a fascinating guy. For anyone in the audience who may not have met you yet and this is their first time meeting you, do you want to tell us a little bit about you and your story? How did you become an expert on all things personality and seeing people in such a unique way? Tell us a little bit about that.
Thank you. I love talking with people, loving who they are, finding out what's great about them and just appreciating it, and honoring it as much as I can. I'm so glad that you appreciate that. Some people are a little weirded out when I can tell about things about them. What's important for people to understand is why this is more than just a love for me. This is an obsession. That brings up so much joy because I've been in so many dark places.
One of many, I would say, was when the Eddie that you're seeing was born. It was when my wife and I moved to a new state. We knew nobody and I had gotten a new job because I had just been fired from another job. I wanted to try again and go all in. When you get fired, it goes to work on your belief in yourself. It's an ultimate rejection. It's like, “Not only I'm we're going to reject you but I'm going to take money away from you.”
At that time, I had five children. Right now, I have seven. We moved to a whole new area, and what I learned was that when I went into this new job with the same kind of mindset that had led me to get fired from that other job, this new company fired me within 30 days. In a whole new area, knew nobody, and I get fired within 30 days. I would say the birth of this whole process of understanding why I do what I do came from me walking home carrying a box of my things.
I had a box of my things that was sitting on my desk like plants, pictures, and stuff like that. I'm carrying it home because I didn't have the guts to call my wife. I've been fired again. I walked like 4 miles trying to figure out what am I going to say to her not to leave me. “I know I'm messing up right now, but I promise I'll figure it out.”
It's easy for me to find jobs, but my problem was that if I found the job, I felt like this process would keep going. The reason I got fired is because I struggled with working hard for a company and having to reaudition for my job every single month. The more and more I grew in the company, the more and more they would demand of me. The more time I would lose. I went on salary, which meant I worked 24 hours a day and those kinds of things.
Long story short, the biggest problem because we are talking about clarity. This is why I love doing what I do because I want to help people be clear. In this moment, I have never had a lack of clarity because in that moment, I chose to believe that when they fired me, it meant I was no longer valuable and that was it. When I chose to believe I was no longer valuable, I started to act as if I wasn't valuable. Right then, my wife and I got introduced to a network marketing company that we believed in the product. We said, “Let's not work for anybody anymore. Let's just go do that.”
However, because I had been fired twice, I was in such a fragile state that I couldn't handle the noes you get when you start a network marketing company. I was getting noes left and right and it was worse because I was acting out of total desperation. I've never been more unclear in my life during that time. I decided, “I'm going to be a stay-at-home dad.” I'm going to tell my wife, “You do this and I'll back you up. I'll make sure the kids are taken care of. I'll make sure all the food is prepared. I'll do everything. I'll clean the house. You go build our business while I do this.”
She was gung-ho and rocked it. That's why I realized that there is such a thing as getting lost in parenthood. I didn't know who I was anymore. I was doing videos every day and putting them on YouTube, just talking about my kids and me playing with my kids. I know that sounds like a wonderful dad thing, but I didn't know who I was.
Cut to many years later, our network marketing business is doing well and I got to quit this little job I took just to make ends meet while we were growing it. Now, I'm at home and we have a successful business that my wife built and I have still no clue who I am. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do and what my value is. If someone were to come up to me and say, “Eddie, just be yourself.” I wouldn't know how to do that. That's when God got involved, which plays a big part in my life, and he introduced me to this concept of strengths.
I’m like, “You are valuable, Eddie. You do have strengths. There are amazing, incredible things about you.” Is that when you started to lean in and recognize that you put away that belief that you're not valuable?”
I did because I looked at the strengths the way strength is. It shows that not only am I valuable, but I'm also infinitely unique. I think I made that word up. I don't think anybody uses that word. What that means is that I'm different. You're different, Adrienne. We're all different than anybody that's ever been or ever will be. Even though we have some similarities, the bottom line is we're different. If I'm different, it means I have something infinitely unique to bring to the world and the people.
What is it if I have something infinitely unique to bring to the world? How do I do it? How do I figure it out? It was in December of 2019 that I decided all this learning I was doing about strengths and I got certified. I was coaching hundreds of people to understand this. In November or December of 2019, I made a decision that 2020 was going to be the year that I'm going to be me every single day.
I had no idea what was about to happen. By March 2020, when the whole world went through the beginning phases of its great reset, I had momentum. I created a podcast called Unleash Your Strengths, documenting my journey of understanding my strengths and how I am infinitely unique. Also, I learned how to be me step by step. By March 2020, when the world was going backwards, I was going forward faster than I'd ever been in my life.
I started this community called Unleash Your Strengths. I wrote two books within a year and a half that help people understand that they are massively valuable and there's a step-by-step to it. That's where this whole thing came from was me knowing what it feels like to not know who you are and to feel like you have to be something you're not in order to get what you want.
First of all, what I love about your story, it's incredibly vulnerable and I think it rings true for so many of us, especially for those of us who are entrepreneurs and we're building businesses on social media. It's such a loud competitive place. It's so hard to find your voice and yourself. For those of you reading, what I love about Eddie is if you're learning from a coach who's been fed from a silver spoon and they've never had a day of struggle in their entire life and everything they touch turns to gold, can that coach really help you through hard times? Probably not. What you went through was crazy to get fired from two jobs in a row. I can only imagine how that messes with your head.
It was a traumatic experience and I should have gone through therapy, to be honest. I would tell anybody who has gone through an experience like that, go to therapy. Find someone who will listen to you talk. I didn't do that and because I didn't do that, I spent three years of my life hating who I was and that time is gone. It's lost. What I wanted to do is I want to help other people not lose that time and bring value to the world by growing a business or whatever.
I guarantee there are people reading right now who either feel that way in this moment or have been there in the recent past. On top of it, to start a new business venture while you're in this place of mental struggle and push through everything it takes to do that even if you were on the support event supporting your wife. You supporting anyone in building a business is wicked hard. It is hard to do and not only to come through all of that but also to find your strengths as a coach who helps other people find their strengths. It's a cool incredible story. I'm so excited that you're here.
For those reading, we're all here because we want to build businesses. We want to leverage social media. We want to find our voice. That is easier said than done. It's a hard thing to do. The advice that everyone here is over and over. When it comes to sharing content on social media, you have to speak to their interests and not yours.
Speak to other people who want to hear, but at the same time, be your authentic self. Be yourself, but talk about what other people want. It seems like such an oxymoron conundrum. The crux of all of this is, “How do you be your authentic self yet also speak to what other people want?” Do you have any advice?
We're talking about strengths briefly. One of my lowest strengths is a strength called harmony. What that means is it's doesn't mean that I can't be harmonious or whatever but it means that for me to go through trying to do a business or produce on social media, beginning with the concern about what other people will or won't think or feel. If I begin with that process where I'm concerned about what they'll think or feel, I will shut down and no matter what I do, if I come from that mindset, no matter what I do, will be inauthentic.
It will not come from me. It will not be energized. I won't have joy or whatsoever while doing it. Let's be honest. If I'm going to create content for people, how good could that content possibly be if I'm not enjoying it? I would call it a venture into mediocrity to try to develop a weakness, for example. When it comes to speaking to other people's interests but doing it in a way that’s authentic to me, the way I look at it is that if I'm going to talk about something, I only talk about what I know. Like any writer would say, “I only write about what I know.”
What writers tend to write about is the things that they've experienced and that's why a lot of the writings are autobiographical. I feel like our business is autobiographical. If you have a passion for a business because of something personal for you, it doesn't have to be something you personally went through. It's something that you personally connect with.
Our business is autobiographical.
If you have a personal interest and a personal venture, commitment, or a message inside of a topic, the way I do it is I speak to that and then I allow my audience to decide whether or not it interests them. When you say speak or teach to other people's interests, I begin with the thing that I am passionate about and I'll allow the people out there that relate to it to come. It's almost like I'm calling my target market so that I can know what my target market is.
It’s like you're sharing things that you are genuinely interested and passionate about and trusting that the other people in the world who are also interested and passionate about those things will find you and go, “Me, too. I’m that way too.”
I come from this desire to be certain about what I speak about because some people will say, “I want to be confident.” One of the first things I learned when I hired a coach was that there’s a difference between confidence and certainty. If somebody were to come to me and say, “Eddie, are you confident you can help me, believe in me, and do the work?” “No. I'm certain.” There's a difference.
If I'm going to market something, then I'm going to market what I am certain about. If I market what I'm certain about, the right people go, “You're speaking to me.” One of the greatest compliments anybody's ever given me was someone say, “Eddie, it felt like you were talking to me personally.” As I've increasingly understood strengths, I get that gargantually more than I used to when I first started talking about whatever. One of the common feedback I get from people is, “Eddie, it felt like you were in my head,” or some people will go, “Does this dude have cameras in my house videotaping me?”
He's watching me right now.
For you, how I knew you at the beginning of every day, you've got your sheet of paper out and you got your list going. Not everybody starts that way. That's how you start, but that's the kind of thing that I love helping people see. That's a part of what's wonderful about you and let's honor that with everything you do so we go faster and we get what we want.
It’s because for those of us who are starting out, our businesses are only successful because we are consistent. Most of us don't have the money to hire help. If we're not consistent, the business isn't consistent. The money isn't consistent and then we end up going to work for people, which I'm not saying is a horrible thing. We do need people to work for people, but if that's not your goal.
Our business is only successful because we are consistent.
You're trying to be an entrepreneur and you're trying to not work for someone else.
It's the fuel of this machine and it's not just food. Of course, it's food, nutrition, and exercise but also strengthening your mind with belief in yourself that you can stay consistent and those kind of things.
I know there are so many people on social media who are trying to get their message out. They're trying to share the value they have. Let's be honest. Building on social media is tough. It's a loud and crowded place. It's hard to stand out. It's hard to find your tribe. A lot of people can relate to that. There are a lot of people who are struggling, so they think, “Maybe I need to be more like this person over here. Maybe I need to be more like that person over there. Maybe I should try writing a post the way they wrote or try talking about a topic similar to what this person talked about.”
They're looking at someone else's post that has hundreds or thousands of engagements. They make a similar post and it gets zero. They're going, “What? Why?” What you're saying is instead of picking a weakness or saying, “I think I need to be like so-and-so.” You're saying, “Figure out what your strengths are and lean into those.”
Do what brings you joy. Reels are one of the things I'm into right now and trying to understand. I'm a strategic thinker, which means if you ask me a simple question, you never get a simple answer. My father-in-law would say, “If you ask Eddie what time it is, he'll tell you how to watch is made.” For me, to quickly communicate a message in a reel for 5 or 10 seconds is a real challenge.
I'm getting into this idea of reels, but then when you look at what's popular in reels, I remember when I first started to get into it, I saw a lot of people dancing. A lot of us don't want to do reels or TikTok because we see a lot of people dancing. They think, “I don't want to do dancing,” but reels have nothing to do with dancing. That's just someone's way of doing something and that's their way.
What I've learned is that there are a billion different ways you can do a reel. In fact, there's a different way that you can do a reel for every single human being currently on the planet. Since everyone on the planet is different, it means there's a different way to do a reel. What I would challenge a person is if you were going to do something fun, what would you do? You could look at what other people do to give you ideas, but do something that lights you up and brings you joy.
I've found taking audios that are funny from TV shows or movies that other people use that I find when I scroll on reels. This is my way of doing reels. I'll scroll on wheels for about 3 to 5 minutes, whatever, and listen to audios. I'm like, “I like that audio.” I'll save that audio and then when I go to do a reel, I'll do a reel with that audio in a way that makes me laugh, think, or have fun. I then post those.
Even though I only have about 5,000 followers right now on Instagram, I found that some of my reels like that go between 8,000 or even 11,000 views. I'm not saying that's the end all but what we're trying to do is get more exposure. I'm like, “Cool.” Being me works because being me is how I work consistently.
You're never going to be consistent about creating anything if you're trying to be someone else.
Yes. If there is that thing, I don't know how to teach it. You're following the wrong guy if you want that. I try to say, “How about you just be you since you're being you anyway and just do that?” That's why I love stories and reels. Stories and reels are fun. I have an arcade game in my house where I love to play Dig Dug. I broke my own record on Dig Dug. I got 100,000 on Dig Dugs. I thought, “I'll share that on a Story.”
I shared that on a Story. It has nothing to do with my niche. Who cares about my niche? You're just sharing a story. You're letting people in on your personal life. I think we have to do this. You have to stand out and just be you. It's easy if you just go, “I got Legos in my office. How many people have Legos and a picture of Christ right next to it?” That's weird.
In my background, I’ve got cracks right here. I've got my strengths. I've got a quote that I wrote and then I got Rocky. I got toys. I got know Star Wars. I got Legos and I'm just being me. I don't care if other people like it or don't like it. What matters is I like it. It makes me happy. It brings me joy. That's why I do social media because I want to share what I love and it makes me happy. People like these things.
When I did that Dig Dug thing, I had people who had been following me for years and who had never commented on anything suddenly get engaged. I'm like, “Where have you been?” I've been talking about this forever and have never seen you. All of a sudden, I talk about Dig Dug, and here you go. Why is that a good thing? It’s because in social media, especially on Facebook and Instagram, people, when they interact with your stuff, start to see your other things. This is huge.
Social media is 1,000 opportunities where someone can relate to you in tiny ways. In your case, people related to the Dig Dug thing. How many times, for those of you reading, have you been scrolling and something stopped your scroll? You looked at a funny meme or read someone's post and thought, “This is my people. This is my kind of person.” Being authentically yourself, truly being yourself, and trusting that the people who are just like you or who resonate or can relate to you are going to find you. They're going to interact with you. They're going to discover you.
You can be it as high as you can. We're trying to connect with this little camera. You got this little camera trying to capture who you are. What I always try to tell people is be obviously you. Be so you that it's obvious. I would call it big without being loud and waving your hands like I'm doing now, but be so obviously you that they connect with it through the little camera. Social media becomes fun.
For tons of people, they're like, “Yeah. Whenever I post my personal stuff or whenever I post stuff about who I am as a person, I get engagement and then the minute I try to share information about my business, it’s crickets.” When it comes to crushing it with authenticity and building a business, do you have any advice for the audience on how to start making that shift?
Let me give you a couple of thoughts, and I'm going to start with that one. I'll be brief on that one. People on social media will interact with you saying, “I got a new job.” They'll say, “Congratulations.” You'll get all the love, the hearts, and all the things. If you say, “I started a new business.” It’s crickets. The reason we're getting crickets and I understand now when it comes to social media is that they're watching those posts. They’re paying attention to what you're doing because the average person does not build businesses.
The average person goes and gets job. They'll say, “We're the same,” and they connect, but when you decide you're going to go build a business or share a milestone in your business, For example, I wrote a book to tell the story of getting fired twice and helping people understand that you do have value. It's fun. As you can see in the cover, there's a corporation there and there's a guy who's chained to the corporation. Eventually, we break free and become unleashed.
I love it. Isn’t that what we all want as entrepreneurs?
Absolutely. When I told the world that I wrote this book, there is a lot of crickets and that bothered me. I'm like, “It's not easy to write a book. This means something to me. This is my legacy book. This is the book I'm going to train my kids because there's a lot of my story in here.” I train my kids how to read this book and why it's for them. I'm also going to teach them to teach their kids read this book and so on because I want my grandkids to learn from my struggles.
The reason I'm bringing that up is when I started telling people about how I wrote that book, it was crickets. It’s like dead air. Nobody engaged. There was nothing, but I know they paid attention because when I started texting all of my closest friends living in the area, I told them that I had written a book. This is bold, but I had a book signing event. I paid a few grand to rent and decorate a place.
I had hors d'oeuvres and all kinds of stuff and I sent personal text messages to about 40 people locally that were my friends and 28 or 29 of them showed up, but every one of them said, “This is amazing. Congratulations, Eddie. I'm so happy for you.” My point in bringing that up is that when I engaged them, they were so interested. I'm learning that when you share your business and the things you're trying to do that's different, people can't relate instantly. What we have to do is engage them with the story of why we did it, why we wrote it or why we created the business to begin with so that they can relate to it.
However, I guarantee you. They're watching and they're not just watching to see if you're going to fail or succeed. They're watching because they want to know how you're doing it because they want to do it. Anytime you're starting a business or sharing a post, trust me. They are watching it. They are watching you and they're curious to see if you're going to do anything with it or stick with it. Those posts where you say, “I got a new job,” or, “I crashed my car. This is terrible. Everyone's fine, but my car has to go to the shop.” There are a million comments.
It’s because everyone can relate to that.
Yeah, they can relate to that and dismiss it.
They comment in the moment and they never think of it again.
Never, but if you write a book or start a business, they're watching that.
It might be hard for them to relate because most people are not brave enough to start a business.
It's not easy.
They're watching, but they don't engage with you until you share something they can relate to. It’s not what the business is, but why you started it?
Let's be honest. If I told you, “Adrienne, I've been looking to invest money into businesses and I went and I bought five car washes.” Snooze but what if I told you that my uncle owned car washes and I used to idolize my uncle when I was a kid. When he passed away, I said, “I want to be like my uncle.” Finally one day, I made enough money to buy five car washes and named them all after my uncle.
That's going to land totally differently on social.
That's not even a true story and I got emotional. What we get to do with the things we want to do is share why we are doing them. Ladies and gentlemen, tell the story. If you felt compelled to do something crazy as start a business, tell them about how you became compelled to do that.
It’s the deeper layers underneath and not just the surface layer. Go deeper.
I love bringing this book because I am brutal. I talk about a pornography addiction that I had when I was a kid because my father had a drawer full of porn magazines in the bathroom. When I was growing up, I went to the bathroom and I opened the drawer. There are a bunch of magazines and I'm nine years old. I'm like, “I don't know what this is.” I started going through this stuff and developed a pornography addiction.
I talked about how those things affected me. The reason why I want my kids to understand this stuff so they understand these things. They are not afraid of it. What I want people to do is be brutally honest. Take your freaking heart out, cut it open, and show people that it's bleeding. You say, “I care about this, but all I want you to do is look at it. Also, consider that maybe it could help you too.” To me, I don't know how to market any other way.
You’re brave enough to be vulnerable and authentically yourself, even if the stuff you're talking about might be hard to talk about.
I learned this and this is a tip for everybody. If you want to inspire people, be vulnerable. It is the guaranteed go-to tool to inspire someone else to do something.
How many of us have things going on in our lives? We're hiding vulnerable moments from everyone because it's painful to talk about, but one person is brave enough to share.
If you want to get someone's attention, talk about things like that because I can tell you 90% or maybe 95% of the people on social media sharing and teaching have zero vulnerability. I'm not saying the whole world is like this. I only react to vulnerability. I only react to brutal honesty. One of my favorite people to follow is Ray Higdon because I feel like I know that man's whole life because I've been watching him and following him for years.
There was a point in time when I was one of his top affiliates when I was first learning affiliate marketing. I got to be a little closer to him. It was a brief time. These kinds of people show me who I want to be. I want to be the person on stage that helps them go, “You can totally be here. You don't have to be anything else that you see on the stage. You can just be you. You can bring something no one's ever seen before just by being you.” This is why there are a lot of personalities that aren't represented very well on social media because it's not natural to want to be.
Authentic Business: You don't have to be anything else that you see on the stage. You can just be you. You can bring something no one's ever seen before just by being you.
I want to share something quick. I've been reading Eddie's other book. He has multiple books. I just want to read this one little piece because it hits me. I'm not much of an underliner when I read books. I whip through and read them, but I underlined some things that jumped out at me. I want to share them because I hope it inspires the audience a little bit. There are 7.7 billion people in the world. That's a lot of people and a lot of them are on social media. There's a lot of potential, but there's also a lot of what feels like competition.
It's hard to stand out and feel unique. What Eddie was sharing in this book is to take those 7.7 billion people. If you look at your unique personality, all the facets that come together to make you who you are. Even if we just look at the top five little slices of your personality, the chances of having the same top five as someone else in the world would be 27,500 people who have the same top five as you. That's not 7.7 billion, which is pretty unique. If you drill it down to the top six instead of the top five, you're standing there with 234 people out of eight billion. You really are more unique than you think you are. At the same point, there are lots of people who might find relatable moments to you if you're brave enough to share them.
One of the points I'm making there is that if you take the infinitely unique combination of talents, strengths, beliefs, or core values that a person has, we'll call them tools. These are the tools I got to operate with, but then you bring in the infinitely unique combination of experiences you've had since the day you were born. There is never going to be a you ever and I've tried to help people believe that's true. It's absolutely true because what we do is we go through life thinking that our problems are unique but our talents and who we are is common.
We go through life thinking that and this is one of the reasons why we don't get vulnerable because I thought I was the only child that developed the pornography addiction. That's a lie. There are tons of people who have that problem. Maybe even some of your readers right now or maybe they even have situations where they're going to that right now. That's a problem.
All problems are common. If at least one person has ever had your problem, then that problem is far more common than you. The truth is our problems are common and we are infinitely unique. That means no matter what the problem is, even if we believe we are the ones that cause the problem, we are still the solution. All we got to do is be who we are at a high level.
Be who you are and be authentic. These are phrases that we hear a lot and they sound great. Anyone would hear that and be like, “I want to do that. I want to be myself. I want to be unique. I want to be brave. I want to be vulnerable. How?”
That's my favorite question. This is to the audience real quick. The next time somebody joyfully gives you the advice, “Just be yourself,” which sounds like great advice. One of my favorite authors who wrote Start With Why is Simon Sinek. He would say, “Just be you,” but if I walked up to Simon Sinek and I said, “Simon, you told me to be me. How do I do that?” I guarantee deer in headlights. What I've learned through this assessment is how specifically step by step.
If I tell you how to be you step by step, then you go, “That's who I already am.” I'm like, “Yeah.” You lean into it and then you get to embrace the wonderful joy of fear. You become an expert in fear because the more authentic you are, the more you will experience fear, resistance, and wonderful feedback from other people who wish they could be authentic like you and all that fun joy gets to follow.
The bottom line is you're being you. We need a common language. We need a way and terms to use to speak about who we are so that we can have common knowledge to talk about it so that you can say, “So-and-so, your strengths are XYZ. For you, if you were to create content that looked like this or if you were to show up in this way, you're going to be leaning into your strengths and do that for a couple of weeks or a couple of months and see what happens.”
What you're tapping into is, “I'm going to do the work that creates results and joy.” I'm going to do the work that gets results and I'm going to do it in a way that is me so that I also have joy. Nobody wants to watch a person create content that they're struggling to create. It's not fun for you to create. If it's not going to be fun for us to consume it. I'm trying to figure out ways to make that easier for people to get. I've created this quiz called the Leadership Quiz, which is like how you lead, and it's free. You can get it.
Authentic Business: Nobody wants to watch a person create content that they're struggling to create. It's not fun. If it's not fun for you to create, it's not going to be fun for us to consume it.
This is a free gift Eddie brought to the table for you guys. For those of you reading and realizing., “I want to know my strengths. I want to lean into them. I want to know how I should be showing up on social media to start getting better results,” there's a free gift. Tell us all about the gift, Eddie. We’d love to hear it.
What I've learned is that each and every one of us do four things our own way. We connect with people in one way or another. Some of us only connect with a select few. Some of us connect with a lot of people, but the bottom line is we connect with the right people our way. We all inspire people in our own way. Some of us are loud and wave our hands, and some support people. We do it differently.
Also, we all get things done. Some of us get things done better when we're by ourselves. Some of us get things done better when we're around other people and we all are creative. Some of us are good at standing in front of a big white dry-erase board and writing things out and some of us are better masterminding and connecting with other people and learning that way. The bottom line is we all connect, inspire, produce, and create our own way. What I've created this quiz to do is to help a person decide which one of these they want to begin with. If they start with one of those four, then they can see how they do all the other ones their way.
For example, the majority of your audience is going to be connecting relationship-type people. They connect with people, which means that they love to connect. They love to be of service. They don't want to make it about them. They don't like to be on camera when they're doing their social media. They would rather take pictures of their dog or their kids or the thing that they sell or whatever. What they want to do is inspire other people through the desire to connect.
What they want to do is they want to meet with people one-on-one. If I had somebody in front of me who was what I would call a connector, I would say meet with somebody you want to connect with. Ask them questions about what they want, where they want to go, and how you can support and love them. The more questions you ask and understand them, the more you will connect with them. The more you know how to help them, the more inspired they will be to move forward with you. The more you will know what to do, which means how to produce. The more ideas you will get and how to come up with your own strategies even.
It's amazing how strategic a connecting person can be when they're around people who are talking about what they need. All of a sudden, the connector becomes very creative versus the opposite, which is a creator or what I would call a thinker. A thinker is somebody who would come up with strategies and ideas before they even talk to people. They already have all the strategies. They have all the ideas. They have all the information and resources and then they take all that information and then they go to someone who needs it.
When they find someone who needs it, suddenly they become connected. They go, “We're connected now. How do I help you move forward because what I want to do is now move?” Now, they become movers. They are people that move people forward and now they become movers because they've shared that information with somebody they've connected with and become movers.
Movers are the people that move people forward.
They also become producers. “Now that we've connected, now that I've shared knowledge, now that we've connected, and now that we're deciding to move forward together, let's make a list.” Make a list and then get things done versus someone like you, who's a producer. We start with the list. A connector starts with the connection.
The mover starts with a group of people to move. The producer is like, “Let's make a list of what needs to be done,” and the thinker starts with the information, resources, ideas, visions, and so on. The purpose of this Leadership Quiz is to figure out which 1 of these 4 are you energized by beginning with so that you do all the others fully authentically your way.
It makes sense because it's the start that stops most people. If you knew what energy to start with, you could make so much more progress so much quicker.
It’s because you're defining how.
It’s your best way to do it.
It’s because people look at it like, “I want to be good on Instagram, but I don't want to be like those loud people.” That's definitely not a mover. We can already go, “You're not going to be waving your hands and telling a lot of stories and being all big and dramatic. There's a different style and energy you're going to bring to your social media versus someone who looks at social media as very unproductive like, “What am I supposed to do? Take pictures of my food and share recipes. How boring. That's not going to get me anything done.”
However, if you are a producer or the kind of person who makes lists, for example, then you're going to want your social media to be a systematic type process. My wife is a producer and what she does is she'll go, “Right now, I have time. I'm going to do as many reels as I possibly can.” To her, it is a systematic process. She's a producer. She'll go and record ten reels and not even know what the topics or the content is going to be. She'll just record videos with audios that make her laugh.
Now, she's got 10 or 20 batched reels that she will systematically release every day or sometimes twice a day. That's her systematic approach. For me, it's all about impulse. I'm a mover, which means that if I feel it, I'm going to move it. I could be walking down the street, “I got a great idea for reel,” and then I have to record it right then and there.
It’s because that's when you're feeling it. That's when you're ready to move your idea into reality.
I'm totally into moving other people with it. What excites me is thinking that there are people on the other end watching and they need it. That fires me up. Whenever somebody messages me back and goes, “Eddie, I don't know how you did it, but you knew exactly what I needed to hear.” To me, that's honoring my desire to be impulsive. That's the mover. It’s the one who goes,” I just want to move people. I want to tell people. I want to inspire people.”
Some movers just want to tell people what to do and they need to see them do it in order for them to feel fulfilled. What I'm learning is that movers only feel like they're moving if the people around them are moving. If they feel like the people around them aren't, they feel like they aren't. Even if they are, it’s sad. The producers are like, “I'm good. I'm doing what I need to do.”
Authentic Business: Movers only feel like they're moving if the people around them are moving.
“I'm doing my thing here.” I'm sure for those reading, even just this glimpse into each of these personalities, you're probably realizing like, “I think on that one, but maybe I'm a touch of this one. Which one should I start with?” The answer is grab the free gift and take the quiz to know for sure. You'll know it'll be the first stop into stepping into your own authenticity in a way where you're leaning into what you're good at so that you can show up in a more powerful way.
What I want to teach people is this document. I think it would be a good way to wrap this up. This is a what I call my Strengths DNA. This is what I would call my step-by-step process and it's all in this one long paragraphs. It's paragraphs of sentences here. What I've learned is how to help me and help other people to detail specifically how I want to approach all things. Whether it's social media, parenting, church service, or entrepreneurship, you want to be a better spouse, friend, son, or worshiper of Christ.
Whatever it is you want to be, this is your DNA. This is your one way of doing all things to stop people from believing they have to be one thing at work, a different thing at home, a different thing when they're with their friends, a different thing when they're by themselves, or different thing when they're with their kids. It's like, “Be one person all the time.” No more shifting gears because that's a waste of energy. This is what I want to get all of your audience to the point where they've got that.
When people embrace being their one true self all the time, do you hear reports of your clients telling you, “I have a lot more energy throughout the day?”
Yes. Their health is improving. I have a client who hired me. Results vary so I'm not making any claims here, but she has told me about certain health situations that have improved because she's walking more authentically. There are all kinds of science that'll tell you the way you think affects your cells. If you've got a lack of ease, you get disease. This is a way to walk where you're fueling your body.
My grandfather, my brother, and my dad died before the age of 55 due to heart disease. My dad had two strokes and a heart attack before he passed away and my brother had a heart attack. They all passed away before 55. I'm 47. You better believe I'm thinking about this. It's important that I think healthy instead of exercising or eating right. I want my mind to be strong and loving on who I am.
The program that you run in your mind absolutely impacts your body.
If you're going to do your business, then do your business that way. Here's your business and here's you and you need to fuel this business. If the business is not fueling you, you have to go to some external resource to get fuel and most often, our choices here are not good. We make bad choices here because we're trying to fuel us, so we can fuel this to fuel our bank account.
What if the business is a mission and being who we are is the thing that fuels the mission so every time we do the mission, it fuels us. We don't have to go to an external source. We just be us and fuel that. This is why people hire me to coach them privately is I want them to in that alignment all the time. Just be you through this whole process.
Authentic Business: What if the business is a mission and being who we are is the thing that fuels the mission, so every time we do the mission, it fuels us?
If someone's feeling like they constantly have an empty cup, their cup is not filled. They're constantly exhausted. It's probably a sign that they're not they're not being their one authentic self. They might be being different people for different purposes. It's mentally and physically depleting their reserves.
I call it honoring who you are. There's a part of this proclamation here that I have. “I love to do everything in a way that honors my desire to move people forward.” I love to do everything like interviews or writing a book or playing with my kids or whatever. I do everything in a way that honors my desire to move people forward.
My secondary is to think, create, and learn because I love learning. I love information. I love the process of learning even if I don't do anything with it. As long as I'm honoring those two desires, I become a better connector and a better producer. I have never been more productive in my life and I don't start my day off with a list as much as I'd like to. It sounds cool.
You recognize that's not for you or right for you.
My list is, “Who am I going to inspire?” I can't wait to get to it. I do a Facebook Live or an Instagram Live or a post or a reel or whatever. That's what gets me going. I'm fired up.
I'm such a list person. I have a device that allows me to have multiple lists that I revisit frequently. It’s so much joy checking off the box. I like it so much. You can be authentically you and be your best self and I'm being authentically me even though we're totally different. Also, we all have this within us. We just need to know where we should be leaning in and we'll find more energy, more joy, more results, and more peace.
Where do I start? If I'm a connector, I connect with somebody. If I'm a mover, I get in front of an audience. If I'm a producer, I get my list together. If I'm a thinker, I get in front of a book, an audiobook or a podcast and I begin. That's where I start. Once I start there, all the other things flow.
It’s like adding fuel to the fire to make all the other things happen after.
As a producer, I would never encourage you to just connect with somebody without having a list first, just go and try to move groups of people forward without having a list first, or go read a book without having a list first.
Thank you so much for that gift. I know that's going to be helpful to everyone in the audience because regardless of where you're at in your business or your life, if you're leveraging social media and you're in a position where you need to show up, you need to create content. You need to be appearing there for other people, you have to know how to show up. You have to know how to be your authentic self. If you want to crush it with authenticity, grab Eddie’s free gift. I understand you have a VIP gift for those who are VIP ticket holders. It’s a unique three-part training. Do you want to tell us about that?
I'll keep it brief and simple. Once we understand how we lead and begin, we've got to understand every step of that process and how it's unique to us. You mentioned about the 7.7 billion. I go more in depth on that to understand exactly how unique you are. Also, there's a second part to that, which is a video about how to take who you are and make a proclamation that you proclaim to the world, “This is how I do things. This is how I will bring you value. I will proactively claim it for me so that I never forget this is who I am.” It’s because when we doubt who we are, we become something weird.
You know it. You feel it. Your body is drained and de-energized. By proactively claiming it for ourselves and proclaiming it to the world, then we let the world know, “I'm not going to change who I am. I'm going to be who I am for you and for me.” That's the second part. The third part is, what is that step-by-step DNA process that you can get access to? That, ultimately, for me, is the value of this information. It shifts the way we think so that people stop thinking that they are vulnerable to their external world like, “I can just get real for just a second. I might even get a little upset but passionate about this.”
I was raised my whole life to think that whatever my external world wants, I have to meet that need. I'm learning that the external world will now be reacting to my internal world. My external world will now meet me based on who I am. I believe that God designed me to be a thing. You were designed by God to be a thing. We were all designed by God to be a thing and our external environment gets to benefit from it and not change it.
It’s like a light in a dark room.
No matter what that light looks like, it's all different. Our light looks different for everyone. You be that light as bright as you can so the external world starts to encourage and appreciate it. You want to get more of it and give back to you to continuously fuel your internal world. That's what this whole thing is about.
This training is for you to change your mind about the fact that your external world is not in charge of you. You are in charge of the external world like your home, family, friends, and the people you hang out with. You're in charge. That's the big message of this VIP content. It’s where you'll get that shift in the mindset that will shift your body and shift what to do.
It's so true. They say, “Be the light.” Truly, you can be and imagine if we all were. How much brighter would it be if we all leaned into that and we realize we shape our world and who's around us? We shape what our future looks like and being your true self, you're going to build exactly what you want if you're brave enough.
It’s honoring who we were created to be. That's all. God's got your back. What else do you need?
I can't think of a better way to end the interview than on that note, except maybe just understanding the unique way He made you, so grab the free gift so you can do that. He's got your back and you're in the right place. Thank you, Eddie. This was wonderful. We're so blessed to have the time with you.
Thank you.
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With that powerful interview, I'm sure we're all going to be thinking about this one for a little while and internalizing a whole lot of what we just learned, but definitely, if you have questions and if you're silently kicking me because you're like, “How could you not ask this question, Adrienne?” It's okay. We have a Facebook group. You can ask follow-up questions if you feel like I missed a big one, or you just want to meet Eddie, pick his brain, and get to know him a little bit. Meet us there and with that, we'll see you guys next time.
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About Eddie Villa
Eddie Villa is a marketing/strengths coach. He specializes in helping people get clear with their message and themselves. Break through hesitation to become consistent and produce daily results using their unique talents.
📘 Your Playbook To Building A Business With Authenticity 🌟
Success is sweeter when it comes from a place of authenticity. In a world where businesses strive to one-up each other, your greatest edge is your unique self. Where do you start building a business with authenticity? This episode’s guest has the playbook for you! Eddie Villa is a marketing/strengths coach, specializing in helping people get clear with their message and themselves. He joins Adrienne Hill to share with us how you can unleash your strengths, the things that make you infinitely unique, and bring them to the world. How do you tap into your unique self? How can you remain true to yourself while speaking to what other people want? How do you apply this in your social media strategy? Eddie answers these questions and more. So tune in and embrace what makes you unique. Trust that the people who resonate with you will discover you, bringing you the kind of success that is better than you’ve ever imagined.
#impactfulentreprenurshow #guestinterview #BuildWithIntegrity
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
I am super excited to be here with you with another power-packed speaker. We are here with the one and only Eddie Villa and he's a Marketing and Strengths Coach. He specializes in helping people get clear with their message and with themselves, break through hesitation to become consistent and produce daily results using their unique talents. That is super important in the world of social media where we're all trying to figure out how to be seen and noticed and build a brand. It's easier said than done, so we could never have a topic cover something like this without Eddie. Eddie, I'm so excited that you're here. I can't wait to dig in.
Thank you, Adrienne. This is going to be awesome. I'm super excited.
Yes, me too. I want to share a tiny little story with you guys. If you haven't met Eddie yet, when we first met and we were first talking, we were getting to know each other and talking about various things, but within a matter of minutes, he knew my personality. He knew things about me and it was fascinating to see the way his mind works. He's a fascinating guy. For anyone in the audience who may not have met you yet and this is their first time meeting you, do you want to tell us a little bit about you and your story? How did you become an expert on all things personality and seeing people in such a unique way? Tell us a little bit about that.
Thank you. I love talking with people, loving who they are, finding out what's great about them and just appreciating it, and honoring it as much as I can. I'm so glad that you appreciate that. Some people are a little weirded out when I can tell about things about them. What's important for people to understand is why this is more than just a love for me. This is an obsession. That brings up so much joy because I've been in so many dark places.
One of many, I would say, was when the Eddie that you're seeing was born. It was when my wife and I moved to a new state. We knew nobody and I had gotten a new job because I had just been fired from another job. I wanted to try again and go all in. When you get fired, it goes to work on your belief in yourself. It's an ultimate rejection. It's like, “Not only I'm we're going to reject you but I'm going to take money away from you.”
At that time, I had five children. Right now, I have seven. We moved to a whole new area, and what I learned was that when I went into this new job with the same kind of mindset that had led me to get fired from that other job, this new company fired me within 30 days. In a whole new area, knew nobody, and I get fired within 30 days. I would say the birth of this whole process of understanding why I do what I do came from me walking home carrying a box of my things.
I had a box of my things that was sitting on my desk like plants, pictures, and stuff like that. I'm carrying it home because I didn't have the guts to call my wife. I've been fired again. I walked like 4 miles trying to figure out what am I going to say to her not to leave me. “I know I'm messing up right now, but I promise I'll figure it out.”
It's easy for me to find jobs, but my problem was that if I found the job, I felt like this process would keep going. The reason I got fired is because I struggled with working hard for a company and having to reaudition for my job every single month. The more and more I grew in the company, the more and more they would demand of me. The more time I would lose. I went on salary, which meant I worked 24 hours a day and those kinds of things.
Long story short, the biggest problem because we are talking about clarity. This is why I love doing what I do because I want to help people be clear. In this moment, I have never had a lack of clarity because in that moment, I chose to believe that when they fired me, it meant I was no longer valuable and that was it. When I chose to believe I was no longer valuable, I started to act as if I wasn't valuable. Right then, my wife and I got introduced to a network marketing company that we believed in the product. We said, “Let's not work for anybody anymore. Let's just go do that.”
However, because I had been fired twice, I was in such a fragile state that I couldn't handle the noes you get when you start a network marketing company. I was getting noes left and right and it was worse because I was acting out of total desperation. I've never been more unclear in my life during that time. I decided, “I'm going to be a stay-at-home dad.” I'm going to tell my wife, “You do this and I'll back you up. I'll make sure the kids are taken care of. I'll make sure all the food is prepared. I'll do everything. I'll clean the house. You go build our business while I do this.”
She was gung-ho and rocked it. That's why I realized that there is such a thing as getting lost in parenthood. I didn't know who I was anymore. I was doing videos every day and putting them on YouTube, just talking about my kids and me playing with my kids. I know that sounds like a wonderful dad thing, but I didn't know who I was.
Cut to many years later, our network marketing business is doing well and I got to quit this little job I took just to make ends meet while we were growing it. Now, I'm at home and we have a successful business that my wife built and I have still no clue who I am. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do and what my value is. If someone were to come up to me and say, “Eddie, just be yourself.” I wouldn't know how to do that. That's when God got involved, which plays a big part in my life, and he introduced me to this concept of strengths.
I’m like, “You are valuable, Eddie. You do have strengths. There are amazing, incredible things about you.” Is that when you started to lean in and recognize that you put away that belief that you're not valuable?”
I did because I looked at the strengths the way strength is. It shows that not only am I valuable, but I'm also infinitely unique. I think I made that word up. I don't think anybody uses that word. What that means is that I'm different. You're different, Adrienne. We're all different than anybody that's ever been or ever will be. Even though we have some similarities, the bottom line is we're different. If I'm different, it means I have something infinitely unique to bring to the world and the people.
What is it if I have something infinitely unique to bring to the world? How do I do it? How do I figure it out? It was in December of 2019 that I decided all this learning I was doing about strengths and I got certified. I was coaching hundreds of people to understand this. In November or December of 2019, I made a decision that 2020 was going to be the year that I'm going to be me every single day.
I had no idea what was about to happen. By March 2020, when the whole world went through the beginning phases of its great reset, I had momentum. I created a podcast called Unleash Your Strengths, documenting my journey of understanding my strengths and how I am infinitely unique. Also, I learned how to be me step by step. By March 2020, when the world was going backwards, I was going forward faster than I'd ever been in my life.
I started this community called Unleash Your Strengths. I wrote two books within a year and a half that help people understand that they are massively valuable and there's a step-by-step to it. That's where this whole thing came from was me knowing what it feels like to not know who you are and to feel like you have to be something you're not in order to get what you want.
First of all, what I love about your story, it's incredibly vulnerable and I think it rings true for so many of us, especially for those of us who are entrepreneurs and we're building businesses on social media. It's such a loud competitive place. It's so hard to find your voice and yourself. For those of you reading, what I love about Eddie is if you're learning from a coach who's been fed from a silver spoon and they've never had a day of struggle in their entire life and everything they touch turns to gold, can that coach really help you through hard times? Probably not. What you went through was crazy to get fired from two jobs in a row. I can only imagine how that messes with your head.
It was a traumatic experience and I should have gone through therapy, to be honest. I would tell anybody who has gone through an experience like that, go to therapy. Find someone who will listen to you talk. I didn't do that and because I didn't do that, I spent three years of my life hating who I was and that time is gone. It's lost. What I wanted to do is I want to help other people not lose that time and bring value to the world by growing a business or whatever.
I guarantee there are people reading right now who either feel that way in this moment or have been there in the recent past. On top of it, to start a new business venture while you're in this place of mental struggle and push through everything it takes to do that even if you were on the support event supporting your wife. You supporting anyone in building a business is wicked hard. It is hard to do and not only to come through all of that but also to find your strengths as a coach who helps other people find their strengths. It's a cool incredible story. I'm so excited that you're here.
For those reading, we're all here because we want to build businesses. We want to leverage social media. We want to find our voice. That is easier said than done. It's a hard thing to do. The advice that everyone here is over and over. When it comes to sharing content on social media, you have to speak to their interests and not yours.
Speak to other people who want to hear, but at the same time, be your authentic self. Be yourself, but talk about what other people want. It seems like such an oxymoron conundrum. The crux of all of this is, “How do you be your authentic self yet also speak to what other people want?” Do you have any advice?
We're talking about strengths briefly. One of my lowest strengths is a strength called harmony. What that means is it's doesn't mean that I can't be harmonious or whatever but it means that for me to go through trying to do a business or produce on social media, beginning with the concern about what other people will or won't think or feel. If I begin with that process where I'm concerned about what they'll think or feel, I will shut down and no matter what I do, if I come from that mindset, no matter what I do, will be inauthentic.
It will not come from me. It will not be energized. I won't have joy or whatsoever while doing it. Let's be honest. If I'm going to create content for people, how good could that content possibly be if I'm not enjoying it? I would call it a venture into mediocrity to try to develop a weakness, for example. When it comes to speaking to other people's interests but doing it in a way that’s authentic to me, the way I look at it is that if I'm going to talk about something, I only talk about what I know. Like any writer would say, “I only write about what I know.”
What writers tend to write about is the things that they've experienced and that's why a lot of the writings are autobiographical. I feel like our business is autobiographical. If you have a passion for a business because of something personal for you, it doesn't have to be something you personally went through. It's something that you personally connect with.
Our business is autobiographical.
If you have a personal interest and a personal venture, commitment, or a message inside of a topic, the way I do it is I speak to that and then I allow my audience to decide whether or not it interests them. When you say speak or teach to other people's interests, I begin with the thing that I am passionate about and I'll allow the people out there that relate to it to come. It's almost like I'm calling my target market so that I can know what my target market is.
It’s like you're sharing things that you are genuinely interested and passionate about and trusting that the other people in the world who are also interested and passionate about those things will find you and go, “Me, too. I’m that way too.”
I come from this desire to be certain about what I speak about because some people will say, “I want to be confident.” One of the first things I learned when I hired a coach was that there’s a difference between confidence and certainty. If somebody were to come to me and say, “Eddie, are you confident you can help me, believe in me, and do the work?” “No. I'm certain.” There's a difference.
If I'm going to market something, then I'm going to market what I am certain about. If I market what I'm certain about, the right people go, “You're speaking to me.” One of the greatest compliments anybody's ever given me was someone say, “Eddie, it felt like you were talking to me personally.” As I've increasingly understood strengths, I get that gargantually more than I used to when I first started talking about whatever. One of the common feedback I get from people is, “Eddie, it felt like you were in my head,” or some people will go, “Does this dude have cameras in my house videotaping me?”
He's watching me right now.
For you, how I knew you at the beginning of every day, you've got your sheet of paper out and you got your list going. Not everybody starts that way. That's how you start, but that's the kind of thing that I love helping people see. That's a part of what's wonderful about you and let's honor that with everything you do so we go faster and we get what we want.
It’s because for those of us who are starting out, our businesses are only successful because we are consistent. Most of us don't have the money to hire help. If we're not consistent, the business isn't consistent. The money isn't consistent and then we end up going to work for people, which I'm not saying is a horrible thing. We do need people to work for people, but if that's not your goal.
Our business is only successful because we are consistent.
You're trying to be an entrepreneur and you're trying to not work for someone else.
It's the fuel of this machine and it's not just food. Of course, it's food, nutrition, and exercise but also strengthening your mind with belief in yourself that you can stay consistent and those kind of things.
I know there are so many people on social media who are trying to get their message out. They're trying to share the value they have. Let's be honest. Building on social media is tough. It's a loud and crowded place. It's hard to stand out. It's hard to find your tribe. A lot of people can relate to that. There are a lot of people who are struggling, so they think, “Maybe I need to be more like this person over here. Maybe I need to be more like that person over there. Maybe I should try writing a post the way they wrote or try talking about a topic similar to what this person talked about.”
They're looking at someone else's post that has hundreds or thousands of engagements. They make a similar post and it gets zero. They're going, “What? Why?” What you're saying is instead of picking a weakness or saying, “I think I need to be like so-and-so.” You're saying, “Figure out what your strengths are and lean into those.”
Do what brings you joy. Reels are one of the things I'm into right now and trying to understand. I'm a strategic thinker, which means if you ask me a simple question, you never get a simple answer. My father-in-law would say, “If you ask Eddie what time it is, he'll tell you how to watch is made.” For me, to quickly communicate a message in a reel for 5 or 10 seconds is a real challenge.
I'm getting into this idea of reels, but then when you look at what's popular in reels, I remember when I first started to get into it, I saw a lot of people dancing. A lot of us don't want to do reels or TikTok because we see a lot of people dancing. They think, “I don't want to do dancing,” but reels have nothing to do with dancing. That's just someone's way of doing something and that's their way.
What I've learned is that there are a billion different ways you can do a reel. In fact, there's a different way that you can do a reel for every single human being currently on the planet. Since everyone on the planet is different, it means there's a different way to do a reel. What I would challenge a person is if you were going to do something fun, what would you do? You could look at what other people do to give you ideas, but do something that lights you up and brings you joy.
I've found taking audios that are funny from TV shows or movies that other people use that I find when I scroll on reels. This is my way of doing reels. I'll scroll on wheels for about 3 to 5 minutes, whatever, and listen to audios. I'm like, “I like that audio.” I'll save that audio and then when I go to do a reel, I'll do a reel with that audio in a way that makes me laugh, think, or have fun. I then post those.
Even though I only have about 5,000 followers right now on Instagram, I found that some of my reels like that go between 8,000 or even 11,000 views. I'm not saying that's the end all but what we're trying to do is get more exposure. I'm like, “Cool.” Being me works because being me is how I work consistently.
You're never going to be consistent about creating anything if you're trying to be someone else.
Yes. If there is that thing, I don't know how to teach it. You're following the wrong guy if you want that. I try to say, “How about you just be you since you're being you anyway and just do that?” That's why I love stories and reels. Stories and reels are fun. I have an arcade game in my house where I love to play Dig Dug. I broke my own record on Dig Dug. I got 100,000 on Dig Dugs. I thought, “I'll share that on a Story.”
I shared that on a Story. It has nothing to do with my niche. Who cares about my niche? You're just sharing a story. You're letting people in on your personal life. I think we have to do this. You have to stand out and just be you. It's easy if you just go, “I got Legos in my office. How many people have Legos and a picture of Christ right next to it?” That's weird.
In my background, I’ve got cracks right here. I've got my strengths. I've got a quote that I wrote and then I got Rocky. I got toys. I got know Star Wars. I got Legos and I'm just being me. I don't care if other people like it or don't like it. What matters is I like it. It makes me happy. It brings me joy. That's why I do social media because I want to share what I love and it makes me happy. People like these things.
When I did that Dig Dug thing, I had people who had been following me for years and who had never commented on anything suddenly get engaged. I'm like, “Where have you been?” I've been talking about this forever and have never seen you. All of a sudden, I talk about Dig Dug, and here you go. Why is that a good thing? It’s because in social media, especially on Facebook and Instagram, people, when they interact with your stuff, start to see your other things. This is huge.
Social media is 1,000 opportunities where someone can relate to you in tiny ways. In your case, people related to the Dig Dug thing. How many times, for those of you reading, have you been scrolling and something stopped your scroll? You looked at a funny meme or read someone's post and thought, “This is my people. This is my kind of person.” Being authentically yourself, truly being yourself, and trusting that the people who are just like you or who resonate or can relate to you are going to find you. They're going to interact with you. They're going to discover you.
You can be it as high as you can. We're trying to connect with this little camera. You got this little camera trying to capture who you are. What I always try to tell people is be obviously you. Be so you that it's obvious. I would call it big without being loud and waving your hands like I'm doing now, but be so obviously you that they connect with it through the little camera. Social media becomes fun.
For tons of people, they're like, “Yeah. Whenever I post my personal stuff or whenever I post stuff about who I am as a person, I get engagement and then the minute I try to share information about my business, it’s crickets.” When it comes to crushing it with authenticity and building a business, do you have any advice for the audience on how to start making that shift?
Let me give you a couple of thoughts, and I'm going to start with that one. I'll be brief on that one. People on social media will interact with you saying, “I got a new job.” They'll say, “Congratulations.” You'll get all the love, the hearts, and all the things. If you say, “I started a new business.” It’s crickets. The reason we're getting crickets and I understand now when it comes to social media is that they're watching those posts. They’re paying attention to what you're doing because the average person does not build businesses.
The average person goes and gets job. They'll say, “We're the same,” and they connect, but when you decide you're going to go build a business or share a milestone in your business, For example, I wrote a book to tell the story of getting fired twice and helping people understand that you do have value. It's fun. As you can see in the cover, there's a corporation there and there's a guy who's chained to the corporation. Eventually, we break free and become unleashed.
I love it. Isn’t that what we all want as entrepreneurs?
Absolutely. When I told the world that I wrote this book, there is a lot of crickets and that bothered me. I'm like, “It's not easy to write a book. This means something to me. This is my legacy book. This is the book I'm going to train my kids because there's a lot of my story in here.” I train my kids how to read this book and why it's for them. I'm also going to teach them to teach their kids read this book and so on because I want my grandkids to learn from my struggles.
The reason I'm bringing that up is when I started telling people about how I wrote that book, it was crickets. It’s like dead air. Nobody engaged. There was nothing, but I know they paid attention because when I started texting all of my closest friends living in the area, I told them that I had written a book. This is bold, but I had a book signing event. I paid a few grand to rent and decorate a place.
I had hors d'oeuvres and all kinds of stuff and I sent personal text messages to about 40 people locally that were my friends and 28 or 29 of them showed up, but every one of them said, “This is amazing. Congratulations, Eddie. I'm so happy for you.” My point in bringing that up is that when I engaged them, they were so interested. I'm learning that when you share your business and the things you're trying to do that's different, people can't relate instantly. What we have to do is engage them with the story of why we did it, why we wrote it or why we created the business to begin with so that they can relate to it.
However, I guarantee you. They're watching and they're not just watching to see if you're going to fail or succeed. They're watching because they want to know how you're doing it because they want to do it. Anytime you're starting a business or sharing a post, trust me. They are watching it. They are watching you and they're curious to see if you're going to do anything with it or stick with it. Those posts where you say, “I got a new job,” or, “I crashed my car. This is terrible. Everyone's fine, but my car has to go to the shop.” There are a million comments.
It’s because everyone can relate to that.
Yeah, they can relate to that and dismiss it.
They comment in the moment and they never think of it again.
Never, but if you write a book or start a business, they're watching that.
It might be hard for them to relate because most people are not brave enough to start a business.
It's not easy.
They're watching, but they don't engage with you until you share something they can relate to. It’s not what the business is, but why you started it?
Let's be honest. If I told you, “Adrienne, I've been looking to invest money into businesses and I went and I bought five car washes.” Snooze but what if I told you that my uncle owned car washes and I used to idolize my uncle when I was a kid. When he passed away, I said, “I want to be like my uncle.” Finally one day, I made enough money to buy five car washes and named them all after my uncle.
That's going to land totally differently on social.
That's not even a true story and I got emotional. What we get to do with the things we want to do is share why we are doing them. Ladies and gentlemen, tell the story. If you felt compelled to do something crazy as start a business, tell them about how you became compelled to do that.
It’s the deeper layers underneath and not just the surface layer. Go deeper.
I love bringing this book because I am brutal. I talk about a pornography addiction that I had when I was a kid because my father had a drawer full of porn magazines in the bathroom. When I was growing up, I went to the bathroom and I opened the drawer. There are a bunch of magazines and I'm nine years old. I'm like, “I don't know what this is.” I started going through this stuff and developed a pornography addiction.
I talked about how those things affected me. The reason why I want my kids to understand this stuff so they understand these things. They are not afraid of it. What I want people to do is be brutally honest. Take your freaking heart out, cut it open, and show people that it's bleeding. You say, “I care about this, but all I want you to do is look at it. Also, consider that maybe it could help you too.” To me, I don't know how to market any other way.
You’re brave enough to be vulnerable and authentically yourself, even if the stuff you're talking about might be hard to talk about.
I learned this and this is a tip for everybody. If you want to inspire people, be vulnerable. It is the guaranteed go-to tool to inspire someone else to do something.
How many of us have things going on in our lives? We're hiding vulnerable moments from everyone because it's painful to talk about, but one person is brave enough to share.
If you want to get someone's attention, talk about things like that because I can tell you 90% or maybe 95% of the people on social media sharing and teaching have zero vulnerability. I'm not saying the whole world is like this. I only react to vulnerability. I only react to brutal honesty. One of my favorite people to follow is Ray Higdon because I feel like I know that man's whole life because I've been watching him and following him for years.
There was a point in time when I was one of his top affiliates when I was first learning affiliate marketing. I got to be a little closer to him. It was a brief time. These kinds of people show me who I want to be. I want to be the person on stage that helps them go, “You can totally be here. You don't have to be anything else that you see on the stage. You can just be you. You can bring something no one's ever seen before just by being you.” This is why there are a lot of personalities that aren't represented very well on social media because it's not natural to want to be.
Authentic Business: You don't have to be anything else that you see on the stage. You can just be you. You can bring something no one's ever seen before just by being you.
I want to share something quick. I've been reading Eddie's other book. He has multiple books. I just want to read this one little piece because it hits me. I'm not much of an underliner when I read books. I whip through and read them, but I underlined some things that jumped out at me. I want to share them because I hope it inspires the audience a little bit. There are 7.7 billion people in the world. That's a lot of people and a lot of them are on social media. There's a lot of potential, but there's also a lot of what feels like competition.
It's hard to stand out and feel unique. What Eddie was sharing in this book is to take those 7.7 billion people. If you look at your unique personality, all the facets that come together to make you who you are. Even if we just look at the top five little slices of your personality, the chances of having the same top five as someone else in the world would be 27,500 people who have the same top five as you. That's not 7.7 billion, which is pretty unique. If you drill it down to the top six instead of the top five, you're standing there with 234 people out of eight billion. You really are more unique than you think you are. At the same point, there are lots of people who might find relatable moments to you if you're brave enough to share them.
One of the points I'm making there is that if you take the infinitely unique combination of talents, strengths, beliefs, or core values that a person has, we'll call them tools. These are the tools I got to operate with, but then you bring in the infinitely unique combination of experiences you've had since the day you were born. There is never going to be a you ever and I've tried to help people believe that's true. It's absolutely true because what we do is we go through life thinking that our problems are unique but our talents and who we are is common.
We go through life thinking that and this is one of the reasons why we don't get vulnerable because I thought I was the only child that developed the pornography addiction. That's a lie. There are tons of people who have that problem. Maybe even some of your readers right now or maybe they even have situations where they're going to that right now. That's a problem.
All problems are common. If at least one person has ever had your problem, then that problem is far more common than you. The truth is our problems are common and we are infinitely unique. That means no matter what the problem is, even if we believe we are the ones that cause the problem, we are still the solution. All we got to do is be who we are at a high level.
Be who you are and be authentic. These are phrases that we hear a lot and they sound great. Anyone would hear that and be like, “I want to do that. I want to be myself. I want to be unique. I want to be brave. I want to be vulnerable. How?”
That's my favorite question. This is to the audience real quick. The next time somebody joyfully gives you the advice, “Just be yourself,” which sounds like great advice. One of my favorite authors who wrote Start With Why is Simon Sinek. He would say, “Just be you,” but if I walked up to Simon Sinek and I said, “Simon, you told me to be me. How do I do that?” I guarantee deer in headlights. What I've learned through this assessment is how specifically step by step.
If I tell you how to be you step by step, then you go, “That's who I already am.” I'm like, “Yeah.” You lean into it and then you get to embrace the wonderful joy of fear. You become an expert in fear because the more authentic you are, the more you will experience fear, resistance, and wonderful feedback from other people who wish they could be authentic like you and all that fun joy gets to follow.
The bottom line is you're being you. We need a common language. We need a way and terms to use to speak about who we are so that we can have common knowledge to talk about it so that you can say, “So-and-so, your strengths are XYZ. For you, if you were to create content that looked like this or if you were to show up in this way, you're going to be leaning into your strengths and do that for a couple of weeks or a couple of months and see what happens.”
What you're tapping into is, “I'm going to do the work that creates results and joy.” I'm going to do the work that gets results and I'm going to do it in a way that is me so that I also have joy. Nobody wants to watch a person create content that they're struggling to create. It's not fun for you to create. If it's not going to be fun for us to consume it. I'm trying to figure out ways to make that easier for people to get. I've created this quiz called the Leadership Quiz, which is like how you lead, and it's free. You can get it.
Authentic Business: Nobody wants to watch a person create content that they're struggling to create. It's not fun. If it's not fun for you to create, it's not going to be fun for us to consume it.
This is a free gift Eddie brought to the table for you guys. For those of you reading and realizing., “I want to know my strengths. I want to lean into them. I want to know how I should be showing up on social media to start getting better results,” there's a free gift. Tell us all about the gift, Eddie. We’d love to hear it.
What I've learned is that each and every one of us do four things our own way. We connect with people in one way or another. Some of us only connect with a select few. Some of us connect with a lot of people, but the bottom line is we connect with the right people our way. We all inspire people in our own way. Some of us are loud and wave our hands, and some support people. We do it differently.
Also, we all get things done. Some of us get things done better when we're by ourselves. Some of us get things done better when we're around other people and we all are creative. Some of us are good at standing in front of a big white dry-erase board and writing things out and some of us are better masterminding and connecting with other people and learning that way. The bottom line is we all connect, inspire, produce, and create our own way. What I've created this quiz to do is to help a person decide which one of these they want to begin with. If they start with one of those four, then they can see how they do all the other ones their way.
For example, the majority of your audience is going to be connecting relationship-type people. They connect with people, which means that they love to connect. They love to be of service. They don't want to make it about them. They don't like to be on camera when they're doing their social media. They would rather take pictures of their dog or their kids or the thing that they sell or whatever. What they want to do is inspire other people through the desire to connect.
What they want to do is they want to meet with people one-on-one. If I had somebody in front of me who was what I would call a connector, I would say meet with somebody you want to connect with. Ask them questions about what they want, where they want to go, and how you can support and love them. The more questions you ask and understand them, the more you will connect with them. The more you know how to help them, the more inspired they will be to move forward with you. The more you will know what to do, which means how to produce. The more ideas you will get and how to come up with your own strategies even.
It's amazing how strategic a connecting person can be when they're around people who are talking about what they need. All of a sudden, the connector becomes very creative versus the opposite, which is a creator or what I would call a thinker. A thinker is somebody who would come up with strategies and ideas before they even talk to people. They already have all the strategies. They have all the ideas. They have all the information and resources and then they take all that information and then they go to someone who needs it.
When they find someone who needs it, suddenly they become connected. They go, “We're connected now. How do I help you move forward because what I want to do is now move?” Now, they become movers. They are people that move people forward and now they become movers because they've shared that information with somebody they've connected with and become movers.
Movers are the people that move people forward.
They also become producers. “Now that we've connected, now that I've shared knowledge, now that we've connected, and now that we're deciding to move forward together, let's make a list.” Make a list and then get things done versus someone like you, who's a producer. We start with the list. A connector starts with the connection.
The mover starts with a group of people to move. The producer is like, “Let's make a list of what needs to be done,” and the thinker starts with the information, resources, ideas, visions, and so on. The purpose of this Leadership Quiz is to figure out which 1 of these 4 are you energized by beginning with so that you do all the others fully authentically your way.
It makes sense because it's the start that stops most people. If you knew what energy to start with, you could make so much more progress so much quicker.
It’s because you're defining how.
It’s your best way to do it.
It’s because people look at it like, “I want to be good on Instagram, but I don't want to be like those loud people.” That's definitely not a mover. We can already go, “You're not going to be waving your hands and telling a lot of stories and being all big and dramatic. There's a different style and energy you're going to bring to your social media versus someone who looks at social media as very unproductive like, “What am I supposed to do? Take pictures of my food and share recipes. How boring. That's not going to get me anything done.”
However, if you are a producer or the kind of person who makes lists, for example, then you're going to want your social media to be a systematic type process. My wife is a producer and what she does is she'll go, “Right now, I have time. I'm going to do as many reels as I possibly can.” To her, it is a systematic process. She's a producer. She'll go and record ten reels and not even know what the topics or the content is going to be. She'll just record videos with audios that make her laugh.
Now, she's got 10 or 20 batched reels that she will systematically release every day or sometimes twice a day. That's her systematic approach. For me, it's all about impulse. I'm a mover, which means that if I feel it, I'm going to move it. I could be walking down the street, “I got a great idea for reel,” and then I have to record it right then and there.
It’s because that's when you're feeling it. That's when you're ready to move your idea into reality.
I'm totally into moving other people with it. What excites me is thinking that there are people on the other end watching and they need it. That fires me up. Whenever somebody messages me back and goes, “Eddie, I don't know how you did it, but you knew exactly what I needed to hear.” To me, that's honoring my desire to be impulsive. That's the mover. It’s the one who goes,” I just want to move people. I want to tell people. I want to inspire people.”
Some movers just want to tell people what to do and they need to see them do it in order for them to feel fulfilled. What I'm learning is that movers only feel like they're moving if the people around them are moving. If they feel like the people around them aren't, they feel like they aren't. Even if they are, it’s sad. The producers are like, “I'm good. I'm doing what I need to do.”
Authentic Business: Movers only feel like they're moving if the people around them are moving.
“I'm doing my thing here.” I'm sure for those reading, even just this glimpse into each of these personalities, you're probably realizing like, “I think on that one, but maybe I'm a touch of this one. Which one should I start with?” The answer is grab the free gift and take the quiz to know for sure. You'll know it'll be the first stop into stepping into your own authenticity in a way where you're leaning into what you're good at so that you can show up in a more powerful way.
What I want to teach people is this document. I think it would be a good way to wrap this up. This is a what I call my Strengths DNA. This is what I would call my step-by-step process and it's all in this one long paragraphs. It's paragraphs of sentences here. What I've learned is how to help me and help other people to detail specifically how I want to approach all things. Whether it's social media, parenting, church service, or entrepreneurship, you want to be a better spouse, friend, son, or worshiper of Christ.
Whatever it is you want to be, this is your DNA. This is your one way of doing all things to stop people from believing they have to be one thing at work, a different thing at home, a different thing when they're with their friends, a different thing when they're by themselves, or different thing when they're with their kids. It's like, “Be one person all the time.” No more shifting gears because that's a waste of energy. This is what I want to get all of your audience to the point where they've got that.
When people embrace being their one true self all the time, do you hear reports of your clients telling you, “I have a lot more energy throughout the day?”
Yes. Their health is improving. I have a client who hired me. Results vary so I'm not making any claims here, but she has told me about certain health situations that have improved because she's walking more authentically. There are all kinds of science that'll tell you the way you think affects your cells. If you've got a lack of ease, you get disease. This is a way to walk where you're fueling your body.
My grandfather, my brother, and my dad died before the age of 55 due to heart disease. My dad had two strokes and a heart attack before he passed away and my brother had a heart attack. They all passed away before 55. I'm 47. You better believe I'm thinking about this. It's important that I think healthy instead of exercising or eating right. I want my mind to be strong and loving on who I am.
The program that you run in your mind absolutely impacts your body.
If you're going to do your business, then do your business that way. Here's your business and here's you and you need to fuel this business. If the business is not fueling you, you have to go to some external resource to get fuel and most often, our choices here are not good. We make bad choices here because we're trying to fuel us, so we can fuel this to fuel our bank account.
What if the business is a mission and being who we are is the thing that fuels the mission so every time we do the mission, it fuels us. We don't have to go to an external source. We just be us and fuel that. This is why people hire me to coach them privately is I want them to in that alignment all the time. Just be you through this whole process.
Authentic Business: What if the business is a mission and being who we are is the thing that fuels the mission, so every time we do the mission, it fuels us?
If someone's feeling like they constantly have an empty cup, their cup is not filled. They're constantly exhausted. It's probably a sign that they're not they're not being their one authentic self. They might be being different people for different purposes. It's mentally and physically depleting their reserves.
I call it honoring who you are. There's a part of this proclamation here that I have. “I love to do everything in a way that honors my desire to move people forward.” I love to do everything like interviews or writing a book or playing with my kids or whatever. I do everything in a way that honors my desire to move people forward.
My secondary is to think, create, and learn because I love learning. I love information. I love the process of learning even if I don't do anything with it. As long as I'm honoring those two desires, I become a better connector and a better producer. I have never been more productive in my life and I don't start my day off with a list as much as I'd like to. It sounds cool.
You recognize that's not for you or right for you.
My list is, “Who am I going to inspire?” I can't wait to get to it. I do a Facebook Live or an Instagram Live or a post or a reel or whatever. That's what gets me going. I'm fired up.
I'm such a list person. I have a device that allows me to have multiple lists that I revisit frequently. It’s so much joy checking off the box. I like it so much. You can be authentically you and be your best self and I'm being authentically me even though we're totally different. Also, we all have this within us. We just need to know where we should be leaning in and we'll find more energy, more joy, more results, and more peace.
Where do I start? If I'm a connector, I connect with somebody. If I'm a mover, I get in front of an audience. If I'm a producer, I get my list together. If I'm a thinker, I get in front of a book, an audiobook or a podcast and I begin. That's where I start. Once I start there, all the other things flow.
It’s like adding fuel to the fire to make all the other things happen after.
As a producer, I would never encourage you to just connect with somebody without having a list first, just go and try to move groups of people forward without having a list first, or go read a book without having a list first.
Thank you so much for that gift. I know that's going to be helpful to everyone in the audience because regardless of where you're at in your business or your life, if you're leveraging social media and you're in a position where you need to show up, you need to create content. You need to be appearing there for other people, you have to know how to show up. You have to know how to be your authentic self. If you want to crush it with authenticity, grab Eddie’s free gift. I understand you have a VIP gift for those who are VIP ticket holders. It’s a unique three-part training. Do you want to tell us about that?
I'll keep it brief and simple. Once we understand how we lead and begin, we've got to understand every step of that process and how it's unique to us. You mentioned about the 7.7 billion. I go more in depth on that to understand exactly how unique you are. Also, there's a second part to that, which is a video about how to take who you are and make a proclamation that you proclaim to the world, “This is how I do things. This is how I will bring you value. I will proactively claim it for me so that I never forget this is who I am.” It’s because when we doubt who we are, we become something weird.
You know it. You feel it. Your body is drained and de-energized. By proactively claiming it for ourselves and proclaiming it to the world, then we let the world know, “I'm not going to change who I am. I'm going to be who I am for you and for me.” That's the second part. The third part is, what is that step-by-step DNA process that you can get access to? That, ultimately, for me, is the value of this information. It shifts the way we think so that people stop thinking that they are vulnerable to their external world like, “I can just get real for just a second. I might even get a little upset but passionate about this.”
I was raised my whole life to think that whatever my external world wants, I have to meet that need. I'm learning that the external world will now be reacting to my internal world. My external world will now meet me based on who I am. I believe that God designed me to be a thing. You were designed by God to be a thing. We were all designed by God to be a thing and our external environment gets to benefit from it and not change it.
It’s like a light in a dark room.
No matter what that light looks like, it's all different. Our light looks different for everyone. You be that light as bright as you can so the external world starts to encourage and appreciate it. You want to get more of it and give back to you to continuously fuel your internal world. That's what this whole thing is about.
This training is for you to change your mind about the fact that your external world is not in charge of you. You are in charge of the external world like your home, family, friends, and the people you hang out with. You're in charge. That's the big message of this VIP content. It’s where you'll get that shift in the mindset that will shift your body and shift what to do.
It's so true. They say, “Be the light.” Truly, you can be and imagine if we all were. How much brighter would it be if we all leaned into that and we realize we shape our world and who's around us? We shape what our future looks like and being your true self, you're going to build exactly what you want if you're brave enough.
It’s honoring who we were created to be. That's all. God's got your back. What else do you need?
I can't think of a better way to end the interview than on that note, except maybe just understanding the unique way He made you, so grab the free gift so you can do that. He's got your back and you're in the right place. Thank you, Eddie. This was wonderful. We're so blessed to have the time with you.
Thank you.
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With that powerful interview, I'm sure we're all going to be thinking about this one for a little while and internalizing a whole lot of what we just learned, but definitely, if you have questions and if you're silently kicking me because you're like, “How could you not ask this question, Adrienne?” It's okay. We have a Facebook group. You can ask follow-up questions if you feel like I missed a big one, or you just want to meet Eddie, pick his brain, and get to know him a little bit. Meet us there and with that, we'll see you guys next time.
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About Eddie Villa
Eddie Villa is a marketing/strengths coach. He specializes in helping people get clear with their message and themselves. Break through hesitation to become consistent and produce daily results using their unique talents.
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We make no claims or promises of the exact amount of income you may or may not make from this training course, or any other course we offer. This is not a get-rich quick product. Any stable business worth having and worth building takes time and real work. The success you have or don't have relies on multiple factors, but most of them revolve around how well you apply what you learn and how hard and how consistently you are willing to work. If you are ready to apply what you learn and work hard, then this training can be a good start towards building your knowledge. Your success is entirely up to you. This page and offer is not affiliated with Facebook, Instagram, or Meta and is not endorsed by Facebook in any way. Facebook is a trademark of Facebook Inc.