Monetize Your Adversity?

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Hello friends.

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Let's talk about the elephant in the room.

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Should you, do you monetize adversity?

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You know, I have a tagline in my business that is Monetize your authority because

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I truly believe that for professional women, for women of experience like

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you and I, our authority is the thing that matters and we should.

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Monetize it because when we go out into this world and monetize that thing that

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is innate to us, we create a better life for ourselves, but most importantly, more

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inspiration and a better life for others.

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But what about adversity?

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You know, we've all been through some stuff, right?

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But is it socially acceptable to share that adversity?

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In your business should you actually monetize it?

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That's what we're gonna talk about today.

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And the fact of the matter is people do it every day and you get to decide, and

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this is a question that I faced very early on in my business and it was a very

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important question that I asked before I stepped on the TEDx stage because the

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fact of the matter is, you know, when I look at those big events that happened

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in my life, For sure the birth and death of my firstborn son was, you know, the

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biggest adversity that I had been through.

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And you know, when I think back about around that time, He was

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born with a rare muscle disease.

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We lived in the hospital with him for five months.

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And when I say lived in the hospital, we were there 24 7.

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And something happens when you don't know how long you have with someone.

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I've heard this saying, love someone like they're going away or something like that.

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And there is some truth to like, Holding onto something you

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don't know how long you'll have.

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Like that experience taught me the art of presence, like real presence, you

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know, presence is like this kind of bud's word, like be present, but like truly I.

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When you have no idea if this is the last day you will have with

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your child, you take in every single moment, you create every single

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meaningful experience that you can.

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And so I'm actually very proud of the experience that we had with our son.

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It was obviously very challenging.

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My husband and I saw different parts of each other that we were able to rely on.

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We had laughter, we had joy.

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We had moments that, all the care providers would come in and say,

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what are you guys doing today?

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We had little parties in his room because, you know what?

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You have to celebrate life, not impending death.

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so we really took a unique approach to.

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My son and I had a choice to make.

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Is this something that I talk about?

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And, before I decided to do a TEDx talk, I had to kind of wrestle with

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this question because I knew that there would be people who would judge me.

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I knew that there would be people who would say, oh, well you're just using that

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experience to, you know, make money and.

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It was something that, you know now in hindsight, that was probably

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my own judgment, my own fear.

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I don't think that really anyone was saying that, but the way that I looked

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at this was, I do believe that we experience something that is unique

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and think, hopefully no one else will.

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Will experience that thing.

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But I think that there's always lessons to be shared.

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There's always different perspectives that we can provide to people once we

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are through it and have that hindsight.

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And so I did decide to talk about my story.

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I did decide to quote monetize it.

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Right?

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and so.

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Here's why I think that you all should consider the same, because

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first of all, let's look at the definition of monetization.

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It's really to convert something into money.

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Now, when we think about that something, and it's one of the hardest

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things you've ever gone through, maybe a diagnosis, death of a loved

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one, maybe a life-changing accident, like should you monetize that?

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You know, and it's, really like obviously a personal decision, but when

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we put so much weight on monetization, like it's a bad thing, right?

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Like there's many stories attached to money.

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Like money is evil, you know, rich people are assholes, like all of these things.

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But it's like, That's actually not true.

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Money is just a neutral state.

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Money is something that affords you to create a bigger impact to create

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something bigger than ourselves to make the world a better place.

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So why would that be bad to use our lessons from some of the

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hardest things that we've been through to help other people?

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Like, I just don't see that as a bad thing.

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And so, you know, if we can neutralize this and look at this from a standpoint

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of like, let's, let's look at like the less emotional, place from this, right?

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Because adversity happens to everyone big and small.

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Like you can get a flat tire on the side of the road on the way to a big meeting.

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Uh, we've all had a failed launch, right?

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We've all had a, really difficult client situation.

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And the fact of the matter is adversity is a marketing tactic, right?

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Like I just told this story.

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to my clients about an experience that my husband and I had at our school auction.

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And when you think about storytelling, the power of storytelling is

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telling real life stories the ordinary that become extraordinary.

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Sometimes those stories are extraordinary stories of adversity, but

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that's how we continue a mission is.

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Through storytelling.

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That's how we, build our audience.

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That's how we really create a movement is through storytelling.

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So if those stories happen to be about adversity, that

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is 100% a marketing tactic.

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And so, an example of this is when we were at this auction, I was up at the

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bar and I was getting a drink and I was talking to my friend and the live

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auction was going on, and I go back to our table and I literally sit down to

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this scene that is like etched in my mind.

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The auctioneer standing over my husband saying, sold for

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thousands and thousands of dollars.

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For something that was not worth thousands and thousands of dollars.

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And I looked at my husband, I was like, what did we just buy?

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He's like a parking spot.

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And I was like, you know, we can park for free, right?

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He's like, it's for the children.

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And so we're like, okay.

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You know, we go on with the auction.

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We have an amazing night.

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And I woke up the next morning in this moment of panic, I was like, oh my

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God, oh my God, what did we just do?

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What did we just spend thousands of dollars on?

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And then I realized it's just money.

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We have the ability to make unlimited amounts of money.

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Both my husband and I have the skillset and the mindset to bring

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in revenue into our lives with ease.

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And so that story became this lesson on money mindset and the progress that I

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have made around really allowing myself to spend money as well as receive money.

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And so when I told this story, To my clients, it became a lesson

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of, you know, how we view money and how we view our ability.

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So that's just an example of like, is that really adversity?

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No.

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But when we look at adversity from this place of like, okay, like

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that's something that happened that felt like adversity in the moment.

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Then it's not that big a deal to use it in our business, but we have so

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much judgment around the big stuff.

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We have so much judgment around, you know, when something bad happens, how we each

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should behave, what is expected of us.

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But here's the thing, monetization, as long as it's in alignment

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with your core values and is.

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Really there to drive forward a mission when it's based on a positive intention.

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It could never be wrong.

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And the fact of the matter is people buy with emotion and

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they justify it with logic.

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Think of the last big purchase you made.

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Did you like want it so bad because maybe you love the way you felt in this

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new dress or, or maybe like you sat in this car, you're like, Oh my God.

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I can imagine myself driving up through this mountain pass and feeling the

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breeze and just like loving life.

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And then you're like, and it makes practical sense because it gets

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really good gas mileage, right?

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So without that emotion, we create an impact.

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And I learned this the first time I told the story about my son, I was presenting

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to a group of about 50 physicians and I told a story about a moment in time

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with my son when we opened this box and it was filled, but we thought was like

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confetti or something, but we looked closer and it was filled with, a thousand.

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We didn't know the number at the time, but a thousand.

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Origami paper cranes that were folded, hand folded by my

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husband's family in Singapore.

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And with each little crane, they had set a prayer for my son and it was this moment,

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the most meaningful moment that we had.

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And we surrounded, we dumped all of these cranes into his, crib,

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his little incubator, and we had these amazing photos with him.

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And these cranes.

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It was just like this representation of him being surrounded by, just love and

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prayer and like his impact was beyond God.

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I'm gonna like cry just thinking about this.

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His impact was beyond this little NICU room.

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And when I got done with that keynote, there was a line of physicians

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wanting to talk to me and saying, thank you for humanizing this

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leadership thing that we're doing, because my talk was on leadership.

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And it allowed them to be vulnerable.

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It allowed them to be human.

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And I got invited to three different hospitals to help them

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in their leadership programs.

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So was that me monetizing my son's experience?

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I mean, at the surface I guess it was.

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Right.

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And did it open up?

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Amazing conversation for people.

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Did it allow me to touch more people in my mission?

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100%.

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So, we gotta get rid of this self-judgment we put on adversity.

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And it's a choice, right?

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Like adversity, 100%.

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How we use it in our lives, what we make it mean.

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It is 100% your choice because the fact of the matter is like right

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now, someone's looking to you for inspiration and you get to choose.

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You get to consider what it takes to build a business and how you

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want to build a business, and I want you to remember this one thing.

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People buy from humans.

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We are all part of this human experience.

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And when we open up the truth, when we open up the door to see a little bit more

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into ourselves, that allows and gives other people permission to do the same.

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And even for you who are selling to organizations, you know, this

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business to business, it's a human making the buying decision.

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Human to human is what matters when we are creating more impact.

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So don't be afraid to share your truth.

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Monetization of your adversity is not bad.

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It's not evil.

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It is the path to do good money in the hands of good people