PP 691: How to Move From Surviving to Thriving Fast and Easy with Rodney Burris
“Our career is not something that we do. Those things should be expressions of who we are because you can’t ever do anything outside yourself.” -Rodney Burris
Most people who look successful in their careers are in reality, stressed out instead of living with a sense of fulfillment. If that sounds like you or someone you know, this episode will help you move out of that phase. Join Kim as she interviews Rodney C. Burris, a sought after speaker, development coach, and published author. Kim and Rodney relate their struggles and lessons learned to keep their business and personal life balanced. Going all-in does not guarantee success. Break the wall that keeps you from thriving! Your business is not a reality survival show. Abundance will knock at your door today!
Highlights:
02:01 Passionate About Everything
10:59 Chronic Sense Of Complacency
24:11 Rise From Zero
28:12 Surviving vs. Thriving
32:20 Part Of Business Is Our Story
37:09 What is a Career?
Resources:
Book
Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert
Go the F**k to Sleep by Adam Mansbach
Inspirational Quotes:
19:21 “Leadership space is something that a person is. It’s something that you are, not things you do.” – Rodney Burris
29:09 “Thriving means that there’s an abundance; there’s something to share.” -Rodney Burris
35:22 “The journey of an entrepreneur is not the pretty pictures that we see all the time. When we are putting out the pretty pictures, we’re alienating people who need us the most.” -Kim Sutton
37:09 “You can’t divorce the story from the person, and the business is the person.” -Rodney Burris
37:27 “Our career is not something that we do. Those things should be expressions of who we are because you can’t ever do anything outside yourself.” -Rodney Burris
39:25 “Whoever you want to connect with is waiting for you when you’re willing to be yourself.” -Kim Sutton
About Bridgit Dengel Gaspard:
Rodney C. Burris is an International speaker, Youth Advocate, Professional Development Coach, and Published Author. He has a BA in Psychology from Johns Hopkins University, as well as a Masters in Management from Capella University. He is deeply rooted in neighborhood empowerment and has encouraged area leaders to become more involved in the community, tutored struggling students, and reconnected fathers with their children, advising them on parenting and life skills. Rodney can help people realize how to become different and better than their circumstances/background/conditions by focusing on the simple changes that achieve the big goals. Rodney has assisted numerous companies with team-building, communication, data evaluation, and program development. His workshops and seminars are among the most popular in colleges, corporations, nonprofits, and schools throughout the United States and abroad.
TRANSCRIPTIONS:
Kim Sutton: Welcome back to another episode of Positive Productivity. I am thrilled to have you here. Before we jump into today’s episode, I just wanted to let you know that if you are looking to get on podcast guests, our guest today, so right, every day, you know me, if you’ve been around here for a while, you know that I’m not a bragger, I’m not a boaster, I will humiliate myself 10,000 times over before I will brag. But every day, I get 10, 15, 20 podcasts submissions. Most of them are generic copy paste. This one caught my eye, and I’m gonna read you what the headline, what the subject of this email set. I fell off my bike and conquered my chronic ideas. If you’ve been around here for a while, which I really hope you have, you’ve heard about chronic idea disorder. That is a phrase I coined in 2015. It’s an abundant entrepreneurial idea, something like that. I’m having brain farts this morning, but they’re awesome. Brain farts can result in great awesomeness. Our guest today though has overcome chronic idea disorder and is now a leadership development trainer, author, speaker and coach, Rodney C. Burris. Rodney, I’m so happy to have you here. Listeners, we are 21 minutes into our conversation because we are, well I’m gonna say, I’ll just open the door for you okay. We were shooting the — for 20 minutes. I know you’re having a blast talking. But Rodney, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for actually tailoring your submission to me, because I can’t tell you how boring the other ones get.
Rodney C. Burris: Well, Kim, I’m gonna tell you what happened. I have a mentor, and she’s an older woman that’s been working in media for like 30 years. She gave me an assignment. She was like, Rodney, you need to connect with minded people that are doing the work that you’re doing from their own lens, like from their own vantage point. You need to find them, you need to build bridges and you need to connect. And that was like a challenge for me for the month of, I don’t know, December or something like that. So I didn’t know where to start. I had no idea what to do. I decided to search the podcast and just see like, who could I have a great conversation with? Because I think that the more authentic and organic the work that we do, Kim, I feel like it’s most effective when people feel like, yeah, when you have that moment, when you’re like, yeah, that is the rest of it, it kinda is like the medicine goes down. I don’t want to ever come across sounding like a Wikipedia page of like, here, the 47 steps of the beneficial, like that’s dry. We have tons of that out there, and it’s just not how I approach things. I scoured the podcast world, and I saw hundreds. And if I can just say, maybe like 600, literally, I scan the titles and the websites of about 600. And what stood out to me about you, Kim, I was just flipping through, and I’m looking at your pages, and you were talking about having a bunch of kids, and anybody that knows me, your family here, Kim, I’m gonna laugh at me for saying this. But the truth of the matter is, everywhere I go, everybody has heard me say that my wife has a lot of kids. Okay, yes, their mind, but that’s not the point. Let’s not get sidetracked from the fact that she does, that lady has a lot of kids, and they all call me dad. I’m like, hey, but they’re my kids. So it is what it is. You’re talking about your kids, and the fact that you had five kids and it’s just so much about your, and we both have twins. We both have twins. And there seems to be a reverse order because your oldest child is a high schooler. But my twins are my oldest, and their high schoolers.
Kim Sutton: But you kept on going after twins, which is what I don’t understand. Your woman, your wife is one strong woman because after my twins, I mean, we already knew we were done. We went into the doctor’s office to get my tubes tied, and that’s where we found out. But if I hadn’t already made the decision, that pregnancy, that took care of it. So I can’t believe, I mean, that’s some strength because I was like, I’m done. I mean, I was already done. They were evicted. They were evicted at 38 weeks.
Rodney C. Burris: Yeah. Oh, well, that’s pretty far for twins.
Kim Sutton: There were 16 pounds of babies in there, like they were born right after Christmas. I could have been Santa Claus that Christmas at any mall like the North Pole could have hired me to stand in just give me a way,and facial hair because–
Rodney C. Burris: What day in December?
Kim Sutton: Well, they were born January 6.
Rodney C. Burris: Okay, okay. That is so crazy.
Kim Sutton: Seven and a half and eight and a half pounds for twins.
Rodney C. Burris: For twins.
Kim Sutton: Oh, I was in tears every day. I’m a strong woman, but I had enough. Take them out, I can’t do it anymore. AThey’re like, no, go home. We would be back the next day. I can’t do it anymore.
Rodney C. Burris: Gave birth to preschoolers.
Kim Sutton: I really did. I was all set up with preemie diapers. No, you skip right to size one.
Rodney C. Burris: You gave birth to three year olds. Oh, my goodness. Oh, wow Kim.
Kim Sutton: My smallest, I just need to put that out there.
Rodney C. Burris: Are you serious? Okay, so I’m gonna say this quote, one of my favorite quotes is, how a person does anything, is a good indicator of how they do everything. And the reason why I’m bringing that up is because, when you said that you took your twins to full term, basically just about. I was like, Kim, do you do everything to the max? I bet you that if you’re cleaning up, you go all out. If you are relaxing, you go all out. I bet you do the things that you do, probably 110%, just based on the size of your toddlers that you brought into this world. How accurate is that Kim?
Kim Sutton: Okay, it is accurate to the point. I love that you brought this up. Accurate to the point that I have to be passionate about what I’m doing. And that’s where chronic idea disorder comes in, because my ideas are always meant for me. Elizabeth Gilbert, I don’t remember the name of her book, but she wrote Big Magic, there it is. She wrote a book called Big Magic, and she was talking about how she had gotten the idea for a book. It just kept on sitting there. She had to let it go eventually because it wasn’t meant to be her idea. But I don’t tend. I’ve struggled with that because I get ideas, and then I think they’re mine. And then I need to start on them. Then I have 30,000 projects going. I’m over this now. I’m realizing that some ideas are supposed to be mine. And 99.9% of them are meant to be shared. So when it’s my idea, yeah, full out. I mean, I’m a gamer too. I talk about productivity all the time. I’m a gamer. And when I’m playing, I’m all in. I mean, don’t try to distract me.
Rodney C. Burris: What game do you play?
Kim Sutton: ARK Survival Evolved. I breed teams and dinosaurs.
Rodney C. Burris: Oh, wow. What platform is that on?
Kim Sutton: It’s on Xbox and PlayStation, but I play it on PC.
Rodney C. Burris: I am trying to get into Google Stadia. Do you know much about that?
Kim Sutton: I don’t.
Rodney C. Burris: All right. It is Google’s coming out with the whole, have you heard anything about it?
Kim Sutton: No. And my husband’s a game designer. So now I’m really curious.
Rodney C. Burris: So Google has entered the foray, maybe a year and a half ago, they had like a soft launch and then a bigger launch. But I think one of their biggest launches happened just before the COVID global pandemic. We didn’t really hear too much about it, but their entry is a complete cloud based system. So no console, like the Xbox or the PlayStation. No hardware to purchase. No software, well, no physical software to purchase. Everything is purchased through the cloud stream in real time, etc. And the only thing that you buy is the controller, which looks comparable to your PlayStation, Xbox controllers of today.
Kim Sutton: Hmm.
Rodney C. Burris: And you can play it on almost any device that supports Google’s product, like Chromecast, those sort of things. But a year ago, slightly under a year ago, I checked it out, Kim, and I didn’t like the game offerings of a bunch of sports games. A bunch of first person shooter games, and a bunch of like gory kinds of things. So all of them were games that have sold a lot of exclusive titles, but in a lot of games that you can play across systems, but nothing that really spoke to me. I’m kind of like an adventure quest kind of guy. I want to start here and go through the levels, level up my character and win the game.
Kim Sutton: Oh, and win the game. Okay. I was about to answer like a World of Warcraft, but I don’t know how people win that.
Rodney C. Burris: I’ve never played, I love the graphics on it. I’ve never played it, but I love the fact that you’re a gamer. My eldest sons, well, I have three boys. So Kim, your children, your five children, boy, girl mix?
Kim Sutton: Okay. Oldest one is a boy, he’s 18. 15 year old is a boy too. And then my twins and the youngest, who are six, are boy, girl and then the middle one is a girl.
Rodney C. Burris: Gotcha. So two girls and three boys like me. Awesome. How old are your twins?
Kim Sutton: They’re six, and my next one up is seven. Like my three youngest are 16 months apart.
Rodney C. Burris: You have triplets.
Kim Sutton: Yeah, what can we call them? What are those, like Irish triplets?
Rodney C. Burris: Irish? Yeah, that survivor Irish twin, but I’ve never heard of Irish triplets. That’s a good one. Yes, you’re crazy. I knew it. I knew it. As something about you resonated with the crazy of me. I was like, I gotta link up with this Kim Sutton because we are the same type of wacko.
Kim Sutton: It’s an awesome wacko. I used to judge myself off the wacko, I just need to put it off there. I didn’t feel comfortable talking to people because I know I have my quirks. And maybe you’ve experienced this too, as a speaker, being on stage and telling my story the way that I want to tell it from my voice. And even now that I’m writing my book on chronic idea disorder, I was really restrained for the longest time. It felt like, and this is such a bad analogy to use. I hope I’m not offending anybody. But sorry, not sorry. I was in a mental hospital chained to a bed. I’ve been in a mental hospital before as a patient, like 13 years ago, I was not chained to the bed. I was not constrained, but that’s how it felt when I was not speaking my voice. And when I started sharing, really speaking my voice, people would come up and they’re like, you’re funny. I didn’t realize I was funny. It’s dry humor, I guess. That’s a thing. But there’s just these little snarky comments that come out. Your wife and I need to connect actually. Listeners, you haven’t even heard about this, but I’m building a new brand called zombie. It was going to be mambi, but mambi is already trademarked. But it’s zombie mommy, and it’s all the snarky shit that I want to say, as a mom of my five kids. It’s a blog, and there will someday be a podcast, and all this gear that says the stuff that we really wanted to say,
Rodney C. Burris: Yes. Have you heard of the book called Go the — To Sleep, I bleeped it out for you out of kindness of yours.
Kim Sutton: No, but I’m gonna have to write that down. I’m writing it down.
Rodney C. Burris: Quote unquote. It’s not a children’s book, it’s a bedtime book. It’s a book that you read to your kids. And basically, it is written in the whole spirit of the, remember The Golden Goose books? You know that whole kind of series?
Kim Sutton: Yeah.
Rodney C. Burris: Basically, it’s just like a goodnight moon sort of thing. I know you’ve been playing and the day is done. You just got finished, I don’t know, something with eat. And now little chat, I asked you, please, go the — sleep.
Kim Sutton: But it’s for mom and dad, right?
Rodney C. Burris: Well, I don’t know if there are beautiful families out there, we don’t judge that have probably taken that wonderful story, and set little Jimothy down, tuck them in and said, Okay, I’m going to read this to you, and then we’re going to, I’m sure that there may have been–
Kim Sutton: There’s a problem because my seven year old, she’s in first grade, she can read words. She plays Roblox, and she just amazes me, these really long words that she can spell them herself. My husband can’t even, I can’t think of one right now. My husband, a poor speller though, he doesn’t know how to spell these words. But she would know what that said, and she would know if I skipped over it. There was one day, I don’t cook , I burn. My husband was working out of the house at that point, and I burnt dinner again. I said Mother Earth, right, right, right here. Okay. And I don’t typically swear on my kids. Or this was the last lesson that I couldn’t anymore. She was two years old, and she started doing laps around the island in the kitchen thing. Okay, all right. I guess that’s done.
Rodney C. Burris: Right before that. No more sneaking in Pig Latin, which I’ve never mastered in front of the baby. Kim, you mentioned the feeling constraints of the bit, so to speak, and it triggered a memory within me. So something that constraint me is I don’t know if this is a chronic idea. You’re the author of that whole term and I would love for you to help me See if where this falls in the whole spectrum. But I had this facilitating sense of complacency. Let me tell you what I mean by that. I grew up not having a lot. And I grew up with a very fearful mother. And I grew up with a dad who was like, when he was around, he was not present, for the most part. And when he was present, sometimes it was abusive, verbally, emotionally, that sort of thing. But most of the time, he was not in the same state, let alone the same house. My dad and I have a very phenomenal relationship now. And he knows that I share our story about traveling around and talk and stuff like that. So growing up in those conditions, and not having a lot, moving a lot. My mom moved me and my sister so much, I mean, from a city rescue mission, we were living in a car for a little bit. We lived in the quote unquote, proverbial projects, but it wasn’t proverbial. It was actual, the actual factual, low income gated community with the wrought iron fencing, huge call gates that, are they designed to keep the residents safe in danger out or are they designed to keep the residents locked in.
And I remember being a child kind of thinking about that. And once we moved there, and we moved, and we moved, and we moved, Kim, and I finally, as I was graduating, and going to college, I always have really, to score sound. So you know, snarky of me, but I always have decent grades. And by descent, I mean, pretty, pretty good grades, I did really well on standardized tests, I didn’t always have to study, I kind of retained information. And so I was this kid who had the mixture of being the class clown, and the straight A’s, you know, I would not do all of my homework, and then crank it all out at the end of the week and turn it in. And, you know, I was always that kind of kid. And so I always was like getting a certificate and getting in trouble, like being sent to the office for good things, or bad things. And that continued for a long time until I got to high school and I kind of leveled off. But I bring all that to say I didn’t realize until I was graduating that my mom was moving us socio economic levels. And we always lived at the bottom of whatever level or neighborhood or community that was because she was like, as soon as she had enough to like crosses over into the next ranking or whatever.
Kim Sutton: Mm hmm.
Rodney C. Burris: She did it. It was not like coasting there with the big bags and a big smile. It was like scratching and clawing. So it always felt like we never had enough. And sometimes, we literally didn’t have food. I bring all that up to say, it wasn’t until I got to college. A friend of mine who lived a really hard life and came from an abusive mother, violently abusive mother situation, he literally was like living on a street, homeless. We were homeless, living in a car and living in the shelter. He was living outside homeless for a while, got himself together. Finally shook the dust off, enrolled in college, did two years there and then transferred to my school, which was a pretty decent University. And by the time I was a freshman, he was in his early 30’s, I’ll always remember him. He’s had a profound positive impact on my life. He and I, Kim, and a bunch of guys were sitting around one day, and we decided to start this organization that was going to support guys on campus that came from challenging backgrounds. We were going to reach out into the city that we were in and kind of bring young men into the fold, we were going to put our money together by this big house, and just support each other and make life easier by having this network, this community. And I loved it. I thought it was great. I was a big talker about it in promoting the idea, and I never thought it could happen because of my chronic sense of complacency. Well, what I didn’t realize, Kim, is that although at the time I was a freshman, I still had the impact on my peers that I do now. I recognize my leadership space is something that a person is right. It’s something that you are, that leadership isn’t things you do. I’ve always been that guy, which is why I could be the class clown and still get my stuff. All that, I was able to navigate those spaces and bring the crowd with me. Well, I didn’t know that I hampered the entire idea, by me checking out. I view myself as some little startup kid that really didn’t matter to the group, it was older upperclassmen around.
A couple years later, a bunch of guys came back to me. It was like, yo, we followed your lead. I’m like, what? I just got here like you guys. The guy’s name is Will. I’m going to refrain his last name just out of respect, but Will told me the older gentlemen, he said: “Rodney, it’s amazing to me that you’re okay with talking about something good and positive for your own self, and never actually make it happen.” And when he said that Kim, a gong went off inside of me because that wasn’t true, simply about that house, or that project, that initiative. That was true about my entire freakin life, and I had no idea that it was rooted in as a child asking my mom for $2 to go on a field trip. And her flipping out because she did not like that she couldn’t give me two bucks, so she would flip out. I internalized that as I can be invited to interesting meetings, I can be invited to the table, I can be invited to wherever, but actually having it is not for me. I can either be depressed about it or revel in the idea that men would not have been nice and keep it moving. It took me so long after Will sent that to me. I was aware of it when he sent it, but the knowledge of it and the action past it, it’s not necessarily the same thing. So it was a chronic idea for me, Kim. I don’t exactly remember the moment where I fully broke out of it. I really feel liberated from it. Now, I’ve had awesome stories I could share about what the movement past looks like. But for the longest time, I load myself into a lie, Kim, telling myself that it was okay not to have, not to be good enough and what I have is fine, and struggle is all a part of it. So I would look for struggle Kim, I would look for suffering, I would look for the pain because I thought that was a part of the story. It doesn’t have to be, and it was a chronic idea to help me constraint for so long. What you said, it just kind of made me think
Kim Sutton: Yeah. I got to share, my parents divorced when I was three, and my mom struggled. We moved numerous times, several times because we were evicted. And the first stable place that we got into was because we were living with my mom’s parents, but there was always a struggle for enough.
Rodney C. Burris: Yeah.
Kim Sutton: And until, probably four years ago, three years ago. Well, I guess I didn’t really begin to understand it until 2015, 2016. However, many years ago, I was comfortable with my zero, as the coach who trained this to me, taught it to me, with my zero being zero. As long as my bank account wasn’t red, then I was fine. But I didn’t need more is what I was telling myself. I don’t even know about deserve. But I didn’t need more because I had done the minimum of what I needed to do.
Rodney C. Burris: Yeah, yeah.
Kim Sutton: And when he started to teach me about raising my zero, that’s where I began to get a hint, but I am stubborn as all heck. I really didn’t understand. I learned what I need to learn when I’m ready to learn. Sometimes I wish it didn’t take so long. But I really had to hit real bake low for me to understand that I am worth more than this. For me, that didn’t happen until the end of 2019. When that lack of confidence in myself, and diminishing my value, and listening to what everybody else said about me, took us into foreclosure in our house, we were talking about divorce because I was giving so much time to my business and in all the wrong ways that I wasn’t giving any time to my amazing husband. My health was as horrible as it could possibly be. And in that moment, I was like, I can’t do this anymore. I was about to go on stage for my first big speaking event ever. I was in Atlanta.
Rodney C. Burris: Wow.
Kim Sutton: My husband didn’t take me to the airport, which up until that point, he would always take me to the airport. He didn’t take me to the airport. Instead, he told me right before I got into the car that I think we need to talk about divorce.
Rodney C. Burris: Yeah.
Kim Sutton: I had it coming. I just need to put it out there. I was pissed at my husband because I spent the whole weekend. Besides, when I spoke, I spent the whole weekend in my hotel room crying. I had been looking forward to that event forever. I was so mad. But it took me a good week or two to understand. Wait a second, he was saying more than those words. I’ve been so okay with my view of successful. I thought that success meant having millions in the bank, but I wasn’t setting myself up for that. Because I was being complacent. And when I finally realized that that’s not what success means, it became a lot easier to actually have money in the account when I wasn’t focused on having money in the account. And when I started taking care of myself, taking care of my family and saying NO to people who didn’t deserve my yeses? That’s tough. I was giving more yeses to this one client than I was given than I had been giving for years to God. My faith is really important to me. There’s a problem there. When I wake up and respond to text messages on Sunday morning, and get to work for a client instead of spending time with God, and I’m gonna say this for every single day of the week, regardless of what your beliefs are, to you, Rodney or anybody out there, if you’re getting up and you’re going headfirst into work before you’re giving yourself and your Creator, or your spiritual beliefs or meditation, even if you don’t believe in anything higher, there’s a problem.
Rodney C. Burris: Yeah, it’s unbalanced right there.
Kim Sutton: Mm hmm.
Rodney C. Burris: You made me think of, I don’t believe in coincidences, Kim. And as you and I continue to flourish and bloom in our little partnership here, and being connected and all that kind of stuff, man, you’re going to hear me say this 1000 times, which is, I do not believe in coincidences. I believe that’s God’s way of kind of tapping me on my shoulder like, hey, pay attention to that. You see that? And you see how that also just kind of said the same thing, it’s no coincidence.
Kim Sutton: Because at the end of God, when I don’t feel his tabs for the first 30 times, he comes back with a two by four.
Rodney C. Burris: Yes, a whack–
Kim Sutton: And it hurts.
Rodney C. Burris: Yeah. Okay, I literally had two text conversations this morning before you and I jumped on that said, both of these two things that you and I just passed back and forth right here, one of those things was that whole zeroing out and not being in a red versus kind of leveling up to zero. That is the difference between thriving and surviving. You can survive. A buddy of mine said, Rodney, you remind me of a guy, this is back in my complacency years, that huge phase. He was like, you remind me of a guy whose noses above water. He was like, the interesting thing about it is you’re always leveling up, but you’re always at the level that keeps your nose right above the water. I mean, that’s a horrible existence, man. So that hit home. And then the other thing with surviving and thriving , thriving means that there’s an abundance. There’s something to share.My yeses now don’t come out of my lack, they come out of my abundance, they come out of my wealth to share. So I love that, and I love that your therapist, we’re kind of talking about that.
The other thing about, taps turning into wax. I have a friend of mine who believes she needs to change several relationships in her life. She has friends, and cousins, and work, and all of this sort of thing. So a part of her approach is she’s thinking that she just needs to shut off from everybody, not have any relationships and that sort of thing, not be connected to anybody, and that’s fine. It keeps you from bleeding out, it keeps you from over really committed to the yes and you don’t really mean it, it helps in that regard. But there’s a lesson about leveling up that kind of embedded in each one of those cousins, co workers, etc. And if we skip those taps, if we skip those moments to have our self reflected back to us in ways that we may not see, and if we didn’t have the hubby, the spouse, the kids, or whatever, if we just kind of just went through our own motions and ignored it, we’ll miss it. So those relationships help us see ourselves in a different light. I was telling her, I was like, sure, I mean, it will stop the bleeding. You’re right. If you just shut off, it will stop the hemorrhaging. However, God being such the cool and gracious guy that he is will bring this up in other mediums. And it may or may not be relationships next time, it may be the condition of your house, or your car, or some other thing that’s going to bring you face to face with whatever the imbued lessons were here embedded. And so yeah, I don’t want my taps, Kim, to turn the wax. I don’t want the two by four, I want to pay attention. So yeah, thanks for reminding me for myself.
Kim Sutton: Yeah, absolutely. No problem. I know I shared this with you, and I’m gonna do something that some people might think is not nice. But sorry, not sorry. Rodney, you are the guests episode. And because I just reformatted the show, this whole past month has been about developing a positive and resilient mindset. I think we just shared a lot about being resilient and building ourselves up. Next month, though, the whole theme is a feeling of success, and talking about mission, vision and our values. I want to invite you back to start that month.
Rodney C. Burris: Absolutely.
Kim Sutton: This was not staged, people. So I’m just thinking, I mean, we had a great 20 minutes. We both have hard stops today. But can we come back, and next week listeners, come back to Episode 692, a part two of this conversation because I think I can’t imagine what better way to segue than to continue our conversation. What do you think?
Rodney C. Burris: I’m over here cheating man. I’m glad that we are audio only because I have the biggest little grin on my face. Kim, I don’t know how, and I can’t explain this in a way that I think will make sense. I’ll do my best. Something about who you are comes across in your website, and I know that’s the intention. I know that’s the goal for those things, like those vehicles are intended to convey the person to people. I’ve looked at a bunch of websites. And you, Kim, you don’t come across as perfect. You don’t come across as I got it all together. You come across, there’s a certain resonance about you, if I may kind of be a little liberal in my description. And I knew it. So when I reached out to you, at the bottom of that thing, I said something along the lines of, I don’t know kindred spirit or something like that. It’s not to say that we’re like bobbsey twins or something like that, but I knew on some unspoken level that we would have a good vibe.
Kim Sutton: Mm hmm.
Rodney C. Burris: I knew it. And I wrote that to be here, kind of like watching it play out. Like looking at us chit chat, I think we would do this at Starbucks.
Kim Sutton: Or Clubhouse.
Rodney C. Burris: Get my act together for the next show so we can do clubhouse.
Kim Sutton: Yeah. Well, okay, listeners, we are not on camera today because my nose is running. Okay, y’all don’t need to see that. If you’re listening to this on YouTube, you can just say thank you in the comments for not having to watch me blow my nose 18 gazillion times to this whole episode. But I just want to share really fast before we wrap up for today’s episode. There was a point in 2017, I was at my first podcasting conference ever, and it was my first time I ever went up onto a stage. I was asked to introduce myself, the Positive Productivity Podcast and what it was about, and I was beginning to understand that it wasn’t about perfection. I still didn’t really have a vision for this brand, it was just a name that I got a zinger. And that was just the name that I heard. But the only thing that could come to mind when I introduce myself and the stories that I was sharing on the podcast was, I asked the people in the audience who has ever gotten an eviction notice, had their utilities shut off., been late on a car payment, at a car repoed, and who’s ever been through that, or have struggled with getting a mortgage because you’re an entrepreneur. There were 250 people in that room that day, and only three people raised their hands. But after I got on stage, they explained, I’ve been through all of that. The journey of an entrepreneur, I don’t think I was even on Instagram at that point, the journey of an entrepreneur is not the pretty pictures that we see on Instagram all the time. It’s a whole lot deeper than that. And I feel like when we’re putting out the pretty pictures that we’re alienating people who need us the most. So I’m here to share the good, the bad and the ugly, because I want people to know, yeah, you might have gotten an eviction notice today, but you can turn that around if you don’t cover your head up. I know, because I’ve done it. We’ve had cars, only one, please let that be the only one ever. We had a car repoed, we got back. We went through miscarriage. I know you went–
Rodney C. Burris: I wanted to mention that, I was just being respectful. But yes, we did. Absolutely.
Kim Sutton: And I want to share it like, when we were trying so hard, and I’m not saying, I’m not a doctor, I would fail my way through medical school. But when we stopped stressing about having babies is when we got pregnant. I think that the same can be said in our businesses. When we stop stressing about everything, then the answers will come. But our brains, our imaginations and our creative problem solving side, it gets constipated for lack of a better word when we’re stressed. I’ve never said that before. That was good. I’m going to have to put that in my book. Are you constipating yourself because you’re stressing too bad?
Rodney C. Burris: Yeah.
Kim Sutton: But anyway, I realized in that moment that I needed to share more of me, and that was 2017. 2019 was the hardest year in my business ever, and it was because a client had told me that my story had no place in my business.
Rodney C. Burris: What?
Kim Sutton: Yeah. That will be for part two.
Rodney C. Burris: You can’t divorce the story from the person, and the business is the person that will get in trouble with Kim, and I know this is maybe getting us into our next episode. I’m gonna shut up after this. But what happens is, we often think that, or career is something that we do. I mentioned about leadership before, those things should be expressions of who we are because you can’t ever do anything that’s outside of yourself. I’m going to be quiet. I’m going to be quiet. I couldn’t really delve into that. But I do know that I’m probably going to be getting a phone call.
Kim Sutton: Yeah, you’re getting a phone call, just drop us really fast.
Rodney C. Burris: Yes.
Kim Sutton: Where listeners can go connect with you. And then listeners, you need to come back for Episode 692, and listen to part two. We’ll pick up, and if it needs to go to part seven, then we’ll just keep this conversation going.
Rodney C. Burris: Thank you, Kim. So my name is Rodney C. Burris. Burris is spelled B-U-R-R-I-S. Anywhere online, if you want to do .com, if you want to do info@rodneycburris, you want to do Gmail, or Instagram, or Facebook, or Twitter, Rodney C. Burris. All together just like that. I’m all over the place. I would love to connect. Kim, I am grateful to meet you, I’m grateful to be connected and I’m looking forward to building. Thank you so much.
Kim Sutton: You’re so welcome.
Rodney C. Burris: Perfect. Thank you, Kim.
Kim Sutton: You’re welcome.
Rodney C. Burris: All right, bye. Bye.
Kim Sutton: I so hope that you enjoyed this first section of our conversation. I just want you to remember that your transparency, your story, your willingness to be yourself in all times is the most important thing. I joined Clubhouse about two weeks ago, and I will tell you that people can hear through BS. So if you are trying to position yourself on your website, on your social media, if you’re on Clubhouse now and you’re not giving your full story, then it’s time to change that my friend. There are thousands, maybe millions, billions of people out there who want to hear the real you. So just like Rodney and I were able to connect on a real level today. Whoever you want to connect with is waiting for you when you’re willing to be yourself. I want to invite you to head on over to the show notes page at thekimsutton.com/pp691, and leave your comments on this episode. Make sure to come back next week, Episode 692, so you can listen to the next part of our conversation. With all that said, go forth and make it a positive and a productive day.
