Jamie Dandar McKinney On Building Confidence Through Curiosity And Openness

Success in every line of work or situation can only be achieved by facing every challenge head-on without doubts or fear. Therefore, building confidence is key in establishing a strong character and mindset in whatever you do. Stephen Jaye sits down with Jamie Dandar McKinney to discuss how confidence starts with embracing a burning desire to learn and grow. She explains the power of eliminating negative self-talk and knowing when to shift confidence gears depending on the situation. Jamie also shares her work as the Founder of JMD Consulting, helping women leaders discover their confidence to reach the top of the corporate ladder.

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Jamie Dandar McKinney On Building Confidence Through Curiosity And Openness

One thing that keeps a lot of people settling for less is a lack of confidence. The inability to speak up, say what you want or even within yourself, believe that you are capable of and deserving what you want. This is a topic that inflicts a lot of people and is affected by this. It’s something that people are even sometimes ashamed to admit and how often this is something that impedes us from getting the life that we truly want. My guest, Jamie McKinney, specializes in helping people find that confidence. She is the Founder and President of JMD Consulting. Jamie, welcome to the program.

Thank you, Stephen. I’m so excited to be here with you.

A lot of people are thinking about self-confidence and do have issues with self-confidence. What made you feel like it was going to be the thing that you brought into the world with the business you started? What service do you want to provide for humanity?

This started very early in my career. The confidence I figured out was my survival skill initially. Once I started to figure out some of the nuances of it, it graduated to my thriving skill and that was important. I started my career in the automotive industry so it was very heavily male-dominated. That was my first job out of college.

I was the third female to join a team of 400. I was the youngest, on average, by about twenty years. I hadn’t grown up in the automotive industry so I didn’t have stories to regale with them. The one thing I did have that some of my comrades did not was a college degree. You remember the game, which one of these things is not like the others. That was me in a variety of categories.

There were shenanigans and resistance. I was also learning and new. I figured out though, early on that I didn’t have to be the smartest person in the room, the most experienced and certainly the most male as long as I carried myself and with confidence and lead with that confidence. It started out being my secret sauce and my way of having an advantage in an industry and a company in a place where my advantages were limited as I was gaining experience.

A lot of people would struggle with the idea of finding that confidence, whether it be survival or a thriving skill. One of the things that happen with a lot of people who lack self-confidence is doing whatever the boss says, not setting boundaries. “The boss told me I need to work over the weekend. I’m not going to say, ‘I’m sorry. My other parts of my life matter too.’” What gave you the courage to develop and show that self-confidence in this automotive industry where you were the one that’s not like the other for several different reasons?

One, I wanted to be there, be successful in business and learn. I was in an environment and a place that I saw as a challenge. I like challenges. Part of it, I was innately ready to learn and do something that I hadn’t done yet. To break it down to a smaller piece and this is something in my book I talk about is figuring out your “hit it to me” skill. The “hit it to me” skill is a reference to a baseball interview that Derek Jeter was on in early 2000.

I was listening to this interview while sitting on the couch in my apartment when I was fresh out of college. The journalist was interviewing Jeter and was teeing up this very dramatic question. He said, “Jeter, it’s the bottom of the ninth. The go-ahead runs on third. You’re standing there at a shortstop. The batter steps up to the plate. What’s going through your head?”

Jeter said, “Hit it to me.” He said it so fast and suddenly. I remembered that the journalist and I both leaned in and said, “What did you say?” Jeter sat back and not in a cocky or an arrogant way but in an unequivocally confident way. He said, “Hit it to me. That’s my job. When I’m in that situation, I know how to catch and feel that ball. I know how to get them out. Hit it to me.”

When he said that, it blew me away and got my wheels turning about, “I’m not a shortstop for the New York Yankees or anyone. In my job, what could be my skillset where I have that same unequivocal confidence.” One of the things that came naturally to me and that I enjoyed doing was speaking. Throughout college, I had to do many presentations.

I went to Ohio State so sometimes it’s standing up in a classroom with 300 people. I leaned into that and practice those skills to get even better. What started as one of my strengths became one of my superpowers. Everybody knew like, “Jamie is good at doing this.” It led to special opportunities that led to special invitations that I always said yes to.

While I wasn’t the most technically savvy person or maybe wasn’t the strongest in the chemistry part of what I was doing, I could communicate and speak in that manner and that worked in my favor. Everybody has a “hit it to me” skill, one, if not several. I specialize in drawing this out of people and showing them, “You do have this confidence and ability.” The cool thing about confidence is that once you grow it in one area, it has this compounding effect that allows you to become competent in other areas as well.

It sounds like it starts with confidence through competence. This “hit it to me” skill is what brings us from the point where I feel like a lot of people, when the equivalent of the bottom of the ninth situation comes around, whatever your equivalent is in your industry, this is when it’s on the line, oftentimes will dread to say, “I hope it goes to someone else. I hope someone else is the one that ends up being responsible and in charge out of this fear of messing up.” It doesn’t take any other skillset besides competence. Is there another aspect of your mindset that needs to be developed to avoid saying stressing over, even that 1 in 1,000 or 1 in 10,000 chance that you might somehow screw it up?

I love that you said confidence is built on competence because sometimes I hear like, “Is this a fake it until you make it situation?” I say, “No.” Confidence is not a substitute. For competence, that’s not a sustainable strategy. You’re spot on with that, Stephen. I wanted to make sure to highlight that. Along the lines of competence, failure, imposter syndrome, there’s a lot of different things that we call it. Any time you do something for the first time, you’re going to have a little trepidation because you haven’t done it and practiced before. The mindset trick that you can do is instead of being afraid, you say, “I’m going to be curious and learn.” The goal that you set in your mind is what your thoughts and body is going to collect evidence to support.

If you say, “I’m afraid that I’m fearful,” you’re going to collect all kinds of little bits of evidence to support that. You’re going to see other people judging you and all the things that you missed, as opposed to shifting your mindset to saying, “I’m going to be in discovery mode. This isn’t about being perfect. This is about making progress.”

When you think about your progress and then point to the things, for example, when you’re taking those first few steps, “I learned this and that. I know this now, which I didn’t know before,” you can use all of those to add to your confidence rather than deplete it, thinking about what you don’t have versus what you do.

Focusing on being curious and learning something from experience is this something someone can do in their mind leading right up to that challenge? Let’s say you’re about to give a key presentation or have a difficult conversation where you’re asking your boss for a raise. There’s going to be stuff going through your head like, “I can’t screw this up. There are consequences.”

People oftentimes think of the consequences of what happens if they fail or do something wrong. Is that shifts something that can be done at that moment in your head? Is it something that you need to train yourself on a day-to-day basis? When that moment comes, you’re less likely to ruminate on the consequences and more likely to think of it as, “I’m having an experience and learning something new. If I do this wrong, don’t get the raise and get bad reviews on my speech, I’m learning what I can do better next time.”

The answer is both. You can do that at the moment but if you do the latter part of what you said, Stephen, you’re going to be more effective. Confidence is like a muscle. Like any muscle, when we use it, it grows. When we don’t, it atrophies. You don’t go spend eight hours at the gym one day and then you work for life. It’s a couple of times a week, 30 minutes a day or whatever that is because how we do anything is how we do everything. You’ve probably heard that phrase before. Your competence is the same way.

In setting your mindset at the beginning of the day or the end of the day or whenever you’ve got time to concentrate, for some people they get up and it’s chaos. That’s not the time that they get good thinking time. One thing is recognizing and honoring where that space is. If you can’t think of a space, that’s a red flag. You could think of one because there’s a whole lot of other things that could wind up. It’s even for a few minutes to think through the consequences and outcomes that you want to generate and think about where your skillset will apply. Those things are very important.

When it comes to confidence, there are two primary circumstances where it gets rattled. One is in unfamiliar situations, the first time that you’ve done something and the second is in high stakes situations. When you’re asking for the raise, it’s a high-stakes conversation. To remedy that, you can always familiarize the unfamiliar by thinking through the situation that you’re going to be in.

What do you know about the person that you’re meeting with? What questions can you anticipate that person will ask? What’s the room going to be like that where you’re going to be meeting? Can you go sit in that room and walk yourself through what’s going to happen? Do you know the temperature in the room? Is it going to be too cold? Is it going to be too hot? Having that awareness helps your brain go into overdrive, thinking about all these unknowns to say, “It could be this or that but I’ve got an idea. I’m familiarizing it.” That’s one step toward it. There’s a lot there that can apply to public speaking.

With the high-stakes side of things, it’s not that you can reduce the stakes so much. However, your preparation going into it is going to build your confidence so that when you’re having the conversation, your voice and posture is going to be more confident. The preparation that you did, bullet points and notes that you go in with are all going to convey your preparedness, which fuels and feeds into your confidence.

Given the preparedness or competency, would you agree with the statement that everybody can be very confident or unconfident, depending on what particular situation or task they’re doing and whether or not they believe themselves to be competent in that task? That same person is doing something that they do every day. They’re confident but then they go somewhere else and it can be a very unconfident person. I don’t know what the opposite of competent is.

It’s insecure maybe. We can ebb and flow with that. One of the myths of confidence is that you’re either born with it or not. While there is a confidence gene, some people are naturally born with more than others. This isn’t the same characteristic as height. To the best of my knowledge, not much we can do about our height but competence is more like blood pressure. Your lifestyle changes. Your self-management of it can grow it and get it to the point that you want.

Here’s the thing with even the most confident of people. I’ve been studying and practicing this for years. I wrote a book on it. I still lose confidence in situations but I know the exercises to do proactively and at the moment. This is coming from straight from a recovering perfectionist the things that I can do afterward so that I can move on from that situation and not let it keep beating me up, taking up that space in my mind and doing those mental gymnastics that be used for something far more productive.

We talk about things people can do to improve their confidence. What about the other side of the coin? The number one thing or the top two things that people do regularly that wrecks their self-confidence that you could easily benefit from saying, “I need to stop doing this.”

One is to watch your self-talk. My signature coaching program is a twelve-week program. In the second week, we go through some exercises to create awareness around what is that little voice in your head telling you? Is it full of more doubt or championing? Recognizing that and going through some exercises to flip the narrative and take care of it. That first thing is to listen to what you’re telling yourself.

Are you saying things to yourself that you would never in one million years say to somebody else? Are you saying things to yourself that you would never say to the four-year-old version of yourself? That’s certainly something to recognize. If you are, it’s essentially like trying to run and carrying a boulder. That’s going to be difficult. You know how to run so if you can ditch the boulder, think about how much better that’s going to be.

How often is an unusually high or excessive amount of negative self-talk an issue that you encounter?

There’s negative self-talk in about every single client I start working with. The thing is, she knows that confidence is in there and she’s had it before. Usually, she’s gone through something or on the precipice of something and can’t quite figure it out. There’s a second response to your earlier question. I want to get back to you about what depletes confidence. Let’s put a pin in that and come back. She knows that confidence has been in there.

She’s been in an environment where some negativity, toxicity and things have been layering over her gifts and strengths. It’s a matter of peeling back some of those layers, recognizing some of the triggers and saying, “There’s my ‘hit it to me’ girl down in there. There’s that superpower and strength.” Once you draw that out of her, she’s like, “I’m unstoppable.”

One of my clients in her very first session grew up with some physical impairments. In her whole life, she’s been ridiculed or probably suffered in ways more than children without physical impairments. She’s an adult and very technically savvy. At the end of our first session, I asked her, “What’s your key takeaway from today?” She said, “I’m a warrior, Jamie. I’ve never thought of myself that way before.”

It’s true. She is a warrior. We’re all warriors. Sometimes we get these bad situations or toxic people, which is the second one that I wanted to mention. It makes us question and doubts those superpowers. It’s not that we’re all strong and everything, not at all. When you find that superpower and prioritize it, that’s helpful. Reminding yourself that, “I’m here for a reason. I have gifts. Other people benefit from my gifts and it’s a pretty powerful thing.”

It’s always amazing to talk to people. I’m lucky by being the host of this show. I get to talk to plenty of people who get goosebumps about it or at the very least are excited to talk about what they’re doing. One of the motivations behind starting this show was encountering a lot of people who aren’t in love with what they’re doing. They don’t get chills by what they’re doing. It’s something that pays the rent or mortgage. The other thing that a lot of people encounter or do that reduces their self-confidence is being around toxic environments and people. Is that how you described it? Is there a better way to think about this?

When you are in a toxic working environment around toxic people, that can chip away your self-esteem. It’s almost this slow poison. Initially, it might not feel like that big of a deal but over time, it will wear you. I can’t ever give the advice but you’ve got to quit your job. I don’t know what people’s financial situation is. I’m not going to recommend that without more information by any means.

However, it is something to be aware of because assuming that at some point you rise above that and you have a different situation where you’re more appreciated, their insecurities are not being transferred and thrown onto you, it will take a little bit to recover from that. It may sound a little dramatic but there is some PTSD that can come from that. If you recognize it and you know that you’re in that environment, I would highly encourage exploring other options.

What do you think is the best way to know? I’m assuming that this idea of a toxic environment or people can apply both works as well as other areas of life, whether personal life, family, friends or circles. What is the best way for someone to figure out whether or not there is an environment that they need to get out of?

When you wake up in the morning to go to work and whether that means walking into your home office or driving into work, do you wake up and immediately have dreadful thoughts? “How am I going to do this?” I talk about the Eeyore mentality versus the Tigger mentality. Do you wake up poor Eeyore with tail between your legs like, “I’ll do this because I have to?” Do you wake up more like Tigger? Maybe let’s be realistic. You’re not bouncing like, “I can’t wait to get to work.” There’s some element of excitement that you look forward to what you do, the people you work with, the cause that you contribute to, the product that you’re delivering or something. You can do the morning check.

After work, do you want to go home and flip on your couch and do nothing? Are you like, “Let’s go for a walk, make dinner and spend time with my family?” Are you excited to spend time with your family or are you like, “I need some time to decompress and wash this achiness off of me before I engage with my loved ones?” It’s not that tricky to diagnose. When you’re the frog in the boiling pot of water, it can be hard to recognize it.

It can be quite tough because I’ve been in situations in the past, witnessed other people and been this person as well, where you suddenly realized that this person is getting more and more negative. It shows up in lots of other areas. Do they randomly go on rants? How often does it happen? How often does the conversation turn to what’s bad when something good is happening? It’s a tough thing to see.

Other signs or indications are sloppy mistakes, things that the person wouldn’t normally mess up. Little things like two different colored socks. Those things happen sometimes. If you see a buildup of sloppy mistakes, that’s an indication. Also, trouble making decisions like a decision that would have been pretty easy before. “I’m going to the grocery store.” If you’re finding that used to take you 5 minutes and then it takes 10 or 15 minutes, that’s probably an indication that there’s some toxicity going on.

I’ve talked about this in other previous episodes about awareness, consciousness, seeing, observing what’s happening with you and being aware of it, as opposed to being always distracted. When you become aware of something like that, the next step would be to be like, “Something around me is toxic. I need to investigate.” One has multiple things going on in their life. “What’s causing me to become a less confident person at this point?”

One would consciously say, “This is why I’m losing my confidence,” but it’s more like identifying the trigger or doing a check. “These are the three places on any given day I spend the most time. What would I rank my happiness level while I’m spending time with each of these?”

How often is that thing that’s causing a negative impact on someone’s self-confidence, the news, social media or something else that we hear about quite a bit?

If you want to crush your confidence, go spend some time on social media unless you’re particularly unfriending or unlinking with people who are constantly complaining. It depends on what your triggers are. Everybody’s got different triggers but I like looking at happy things because all those things are making an impression on my subconscious mind. I’d rather feed it with positivity than with negativity.

I also want to talk to you a little bit about your business. You talked about your experience and that motivated you to start. What kind of people do you work with in this business? Are you working with people at different stages of careers and stuff like that?

That’s also both answers. My client avatar, as we say in marketing terms, is my most common client. She is an emerging woman leader. She’s anywhere between 25 and 36, 37 years old. She’s at the management level and wants to get to a director. She’s director and wants to get to VP. This is a pretty common blockage point in Corporate America.

Some people call it the broken wrong of the corporate ladder. Companies and industries hire entry-level 50/50 men and women but then as you go up the ladder, the number of women declines significantly. You can look at all the percentages and it drop-offs. I heard that there are more men named John in the C-suite of Fortune 500 companies than there are women.

Back to the client avatar, she’s in that phase of like, “There’s more for me. I’m ready. I just don’t know exactly how to get there.” That’s very true. A lot of companies don’t have the tools to plug in there and that’s exactly where I help. We look at that process and say, “Here’s what it takes to get promoted. Here’s your promotion plan.” In my three pillars of a leadership coaching program, 92% of the women in 2020 wound up with promotions or higher-level responsibilities.

One of the things that made me think of is the whole idea that a lot of companies promote people based on competence at your job but then when you go up to the next level, you need to learn a completely different set of skills. It’s to go from a doer-entry level to middle management. You need to learn how to manage people. When you go above that level, you need to learn how to think a lot more about big picture systems.

As part of your program, you teach these skills. I don’t think most corporations give you training when they’re saying, “You’re ready for a promotion. We’re going to train you on this new job function, which is completely different than the one you were doing. It’s great that you know what your new subordinates are doing because you’ve done it.”

There are three keys or tools essentially in fixing the broken rung. It’s creating visibility for yourself, getting credit for your work and what I call building your MAC team. It is an acronym for Mentors, Allies and Champions. As you’re moving up in your position, getting more specialized or particular to the company or industry for whom you work, the people who have done it before you, know what you don’t know. There’s often not a handbook or a training manual at that point. One of the best ways to learn that position and to do it proactively. You’re very strategic about enlisting mentors, allies and champions in your portfolio.

I was on a call and talking to one of my Shiro clients. She was sharing a success story that she was offered, not just 1 but 2 potential promotions in the same week. As we were talking through it and talking about the people who had offered these to her, it occurred to her like, “They were my mentors.” They have known her for a few years. They’ve seen her strengths, weaknesses, her leading as her authentic self, then this position and said, “You are a great fit for this.”

A lot of the women that don’t get that promotion get stuck at that broken ladder. How much of that issue is that they’re not getting viewed, noticed and in the eye of people? People at a high-level, who are making the decisions to make those promotions are oftentimes busy. They don’t have the time to be like, “I’m going to look at all the 1,000 people that are under my jurisdiction, underneath me in the organization.” They have so much to think about that mostly they’re going to be thinking about the people who naturally end up working with them because of their day-to-day operations.

It’s a lot, if not everything. The competence piece is certainly there. You have to know how to do your job and be doing a good job, if not a great job. It’s up to you to raise your hand and create that visibility. The leaders have a lot going on. Besides thinking about who might be a good fit for this role, they’ve got their job accountabilities. Where a lot of women get stuck sometimes is, “I don’t want to brag.”

First of all, it’s not bragging when it’s true. Second of all, creating that visibility and this is a mindset thing too, is not that you’re bothering that person. You’re doing them a favor by saying, “I would be a great candidate for this job and here’s why. You don’t even have to go searching. I’m right here. Tell me what I need to do to get to that next step.” They’re going to make it a whole lot easier on them. You’re doing them a favor. You’re not imposing.

There is a balance in there of assertive communication as opposed to passive or aggressive. There are some things to think through as far as how you’re using your voice and what words you’re choosing when there are some of those nuances but when you’re qualified, I highly encourage you to raise your hand or even apply to a job that you might not be ready for or an exact fit because that’s you signaling, “I’m ready for something else.”

I feel like a lot of people talking themselves up, whether that be asking for a promotion or in the case of people who are starting their own business, asking for someone’s business like, “Will you hire me to do this? Will you bring me on as a consultant? Will you bring me on for that?” I love the way you put it saying that you’re doing them a service because you’re telling them about something. Imagining it from the perspective of this busy person that has so much to do and eventually they’re like, “I need to know who to hire for this role. I’ll throw these things on the desk here but I have 48 emails in my inbox that I’m behind.”

By bringing yourself up, assuming that you’re confident, you’re doing them a favor by saying, “I’m someone that could fill this role.” My question is, there’s a balance between doing that too little, which is a bigger problem and too much in someone’s face. What do you think is the right balance as far as, “I want to get noticed. I want my boss and the people above them to notice me but I also don’t want to get it to the point where it becomes annoying?”

It’s like communicating with prospects. The phrase that I like to use is, “I’m trying to strike the balance between staying in front of you and not being this annoying little schnauzer who’s nipping at your ankles. Neither one of us wants me to be the annoying little schnauzer.” The best way I can answer that question is it’s not a matter of what I think. It’s a matter of what the person on the receiving end thinks and you can ask them. You initially put up your smoke signal and say, “I’m ready for this next level. I’d like to have this discussion. When would it be good for me to follow up with you?” You can take even more ownership of it and say, “I’d like to get on your calendar. Send me a note or I’ll follow-up with you again in two weeks.”

We spent a lot of time in so many different settings. Work is one of them, pursuing relationships, friendships, family, anything else and trying to guess what somebody wants. We’re looking at someone like, “I have to guess this. You want me to pick you up at 8:00, 6:00 or 9:00.” Sometimes the easiest thing to do is to ask, “What’s a good way to do it?” Usually, it goes a lot better but so many people don’t think to ask.

When you’re cultivating your MAC team who are ultimately going to be very instrumental in helping you get promoted, sometimes there’s awkwardness experience with, “How do I reach out? How do I send the email? How do I invite them to have this conversation to be my potential mentor and put the official label on our allyship together?” One of the things I do for my clients sometimes is they’ll send me the email and say, “Jamie, how do you think this sounds?” I’ll say, “Great. You might want to think about this or that.” I’ll put the timestamp in so that you’ve got control of it.

One of the things we all hate is ghosting. When you send the email and it feels like it went into some big dark hole and you go through this process in your mind of, “Are they ignoring me? Did I offend them? Are they being mean to me?” The answer most likely is none of the above or they’re busy. They had 174 other emails come in their inbox and it slipped their mind.

In that email, you can say, “I look forward to hearing back from you. If your inbox is overloaded right now, no worries. I’ll follow up again in two weeks.” You don’t have to go through the mental gymnastics and you can reach out again in two weeks. We do still have phones. I heard this statistic about smartphones that the phone function itself like number 5 or 6 on the list of things that we use our smartphones for.

I always like to do that too, call, leave a voicemail and say, “I sent you an email. Just want to follow up with a voicemail. We’d love to get on your calendar when it makes the most sense for you. Don’t worry about calling me back. I’ll be happy to send another email. If it’s easier, reply there or my number is this. Give me a call.”

One thing I’m wondering is you talk about mentors, advisors and champions. Do most people understand the difference between these three categories of people in your life? Even if you do understand the difference, is there overlap?

There can be overlap. At their core definitions, with mentors, you have the most formal relationship. You meet at a regular cadence. There’s a specific project, skill or something that you’re looking to develop that your mentor has expertise in. It’s very formal. They can be both inside your organization and outside. It’s best to have a combination of male and female inside and outside of your organization.s An ally on the other hand is most likely inside your organization around the same level as you on the org chart. I call this your doubles partner almost in a meeting with you.

Stephen, if you and I are in a meeting together and you’re promoting your show and I’m in the meeting there with you saying, “You know what else I love about Stephen’s show is he does such great work in preparing for it. He has some of the best questions I’ve ever heard show hosts say like, ‘I’m here to be your ally. You can count on me for that and I can count on you for that.’” It’s so helpful to have those genuine allies. Incidentally, to be a true ally, both of you have to be secure in your confidence, lift up each other’s strengths and not be intimidated when the other person knows what your weaknesses are. There’s a lot of trust between allies but you can use this very strategically.

Once I was out of automotive on the executive team at a company. There were two females on the executive team. We had complimentary VP roles. We were each other’s allies left and right, up and down. When one of us would say something, the other one would support it. She was there before I was there. After we’d been working together for a few months, she said, “I feel like the CEO listens to me more often and you’re in the room because when you reiterate what I say, giving her credit, it’s two people with the idea instead of one.”

That’s also a great way if you’re presenting. If you’ve got a public speaking or presenting fear, cultivate some allies in your audience ahead of time. That will be wildly helpful in calming your nerves, knowing that you’ve got friendly faces and you’ve got somebody to ask a question. If you want to ask a question, you’ve got your peeps in the audience there with you.

It sounds like the antithesis of a good ally is what some people would refer to as a frenemy. That person that’s secretly threatened.

That’s the person who’s going to steal your ideas, take credit for your work and that’s where you’re going to have to stand up for yourself, use your assertive voice or one of your allies can say, “Jeremy, Brittany was the one who originally said that. Thanks for building on her idea but she was the one who started with that.”

As a genuine alliance, as opposed to more of a transactional, a lot of employment is having way too much of a transactional relationship. That might be changing but traditionally, it’s been very much, “What do you do for me? What do I do for you?” We’ve all heard stories about insecure people taking credit for other people’s work. Alliance and real ally flips that on its head and says, “In work, this is how we work best together with someone and this is someone that has my back.” I think of it as how true friendship almost works.

You’ve got trust and awareness of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. You honor that and compliment it. That’s what I talk about why I refer to it as a doubles partner. You’re both winning in that situation. You’re elevating the conversation and the company in some way. You both will benefit from that. You can think of mentors almost like your pipeline for champions. Champions are experienced people with a lot of respect, either within the company or industry.

You stay on their radar or look up to them. Sometimes the way I describe it is, “Who’s your favorite aunt or uncle?” Your champion is that favorite aunt or uncle that you have at work. You have that relationship with them. You go to them to say, “Guess what I did? I had this awkward conversation with my manager. Can you talk through this with me and help me?” Champion is also the one who’s up there hovering. When he or she is in important and strategic meetings, special opportunities or something comes up, they’re the ones who are going to say, ”You know who we should consider for this? We should invite in Dina or Rachel.”

You have your consulting services and also you wrote a book. First, tell us about the book. Where someone would go to get ahold of you if someone is interested in talking with you about this twelve-week program or anything else that you might be able to help them?

The book is called Speak Up, Sister! The Professional Woman’s Guide to Confidence and Success. I’ve had a few men write it and they have recommended that I call it, Speak Up Sister and Mister, whatever works for you. Speak Up, Sister!, you can find it on my website. The first part of the book talks a lot about psychology and the foundational pieces of building your confidence and knowing that it is yours to build. You own it, have control over it and validate it. It’s not somebody else that is going to give or take it from you once you know where it starts, how to continue to cultivate it, how to continue to go to the confidence gym and have fun doing that.

Part two of the book is standalone chapters. You’ve got this foundational confidence in place. Here are some situations that you may find yourself running into in a working world. Here’s how to not just survive but to thrive through them with your confidence. This is the speaking upside, being relatable, taking criticism as if it were a compliment, building your MAC team, your mentors, allies and champions, all those sorts of things. This book is about doing, not just reading. At the end of each chapter, you will find a confidence challenge checklist. It will give you some ways to practice what you learned in that chapter. Knowing isn’t growing but doing is moving. This book is designed not just for reading but for actual action.

Your website is?

The website is JamieEmpowers.com. You can find information about the book there. You can order the book and find information about my workshop. The best way to get ahold of me is to go to the contact button on the website. Send me a note. I would love to hear from you. I’ve got open enrollment. Also, an exciting announcement is that online courses are coming out in January of 2022. If you want to be part of the founding member group, find me on my website and I will be happy to follow-up with you.

You talk a little bit about people who are trying to move up in organizations. Do a lot of these principles of confidence also apply to people who are starting up their businesses and people who are trying to generate a client base or maybe even trying to scale up and get to the next level with their businesses?

Confidence is foundational for everything. In business, starting a business or dating, it’s foundational for all of it. It relates to starting up a business. I’m sure you can look up the statistics on this but investors, Angel investors, they’ll tell you that they decide within about the first ten seconds mostly based on how someone is presenting themselves. That confidence piece is a huge part of it.

I’d like to encourage all those reading out there to work on their self-confidence. Many things can inhibit us from getting to where we want in life. I started this show by encouraging more people to get to that place. Look inside yourself. See what’s improving your confidence. There are people in your life that are improving your confidence and people that are draining your confidence, making you feel shitty about yourself. To get aware of that, get into the right spot and do some of these exercises to improve it.

Jamie, I’d like to thank you so much for joining me. Thank you to all the readers. Tuned back into the show where we will continue to have more interesting conversations with people who came into this world, started something interesting, made their impact and achieved in some capacity the life that they wanted. Thank you.

Important Links:

• JMD Consulting
• Speak Up, Sister! The Professional Woman’s Guide to Confidence and Success
• Workshop
• Contact

About Jamie McKinney

Jamie Dandar McKinney, MBA, is the author of Speak Up, Sister! The Professional Woman’s Guide to Confidence and Success. She is a certified professional coach for businesswomen, a keynote speaker, and a virtual workshop leader.