bLU Talks PEI Interview- Gabrielle Manski

[00:00:00] Hey guys, Corey Poirier here. Welcome to bLUTalks and I hope you enjoy this video.

[00:00:28] Hello everybody. I'd like to say we're back with another edition of the show, another interview. I'm so excited to have Gabrielle here with me and where I like to start is to get our guests to tell us a little bit about themselves. So can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do? Absolutely, Corey. Thank you. I'm honored to be here today. And who am I? I'm a supporter.

[00:00:52] Of anyone who is encountering a difficulty in life because that's how my life started. And I want to help those people navigate their situation, clear their limiting beliefs and move to a flourishing life where they are empowered to realize their vision. So I've had a big variety in my background. I've worked corporate. I've worked banking, teaching. I've been the owner

[00:01:22] of three successful businesses. So I have a strong business background as well. And so I provide a very integrated approach when I help people in my coaching business. So I call myself an empowerment strategist because you need a plan or you plan to fail. And strategy is very important. But we all

[00:01:45] have the capacity inside us to be empowered, to take life by the reins and find our true North star, our big P, which is purpose, life purpose, and find our inner strengths to support our journey. So when it comes to strategy, then let's start there. All right.

[00:02:07] What do you think maybe people get wrong or could do differently or better? Because strategy, I find, is one of those areas that for me personally, I'm kind of quote unquote, for lack of a better way of saying it, you know, they say the vision person, like I say, we should do this. And then I say, let's figure it out. And that's not really a strategy, right? So I kind of test as I go, but it's not really, it's not properly how you probably should do it. So what do you think people get

[00:02:34] wrong? Like I said, in strategy and what could we do better? People often limit themselves to one dimension of their life where they are having a difficulty, a setback, a failure. But really part of the Maskey protocol framework is that we deal with all the dimensions of life that are affected by one that you are having a problem with. And yes, vision is definitely a part of the roadmap

[00:03:04] that you're going to be following. Health and wellness is very important to the beginning as the strategy, because if you're having a problem at work or you've been laid off, for instance, if your health isn't up to snuff, you're going to have more of a struggle trying to navigate what avenues are right for you. And the other big thing to overcome is a limiting belief

[00:03:31] that there are no answers for you or your situation is impossible. So you need to overcome that and become open-minded, non-judgmental of all the opportunities that may be coming your way. And as well, you just have to be curious to see what all the possibilities are out there. I love it. And because it's one thing that it's my struggle area, as I kind of implied,

[00:04:01] and I feel like the one challenge is instead of me looking, because I think we probably should look at times, okay, what could go wrong? You know, what are they, when you're doing a business plan, what is it like the threats, the opportunities, I forget what a SWOT or something. I think strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities and threats. And that's one of the challenges sometimes is I'm like, we can make it happen. And I don't maybe look bigger picture, like what are the things that

[00:04:27] could stop this? And so I just go all in saying, this is what I want to do. All right, let's start. And that's not also easy on your team if you have somebody that wants to strategize, because you just kind of say, let's build this, go, go, let's start building. So yeah, so I think that's an important area is figuring out what can go wrong and thinking about that beforehand. And how are we going to deal with it if it goes wrong? Absolutely. Planning for obstacles ahead of time, trying to envision what could go wrong. If you have the support of another person

[00:04:57] or a team, perhaps that becomes easier as if everybody is brainstorming that. So you can plan when those obstacles do happen. If they don't happen, that's great. You can keep moving forward. And so I'm just curious, your thoughts around this, but you mentioned the key word there is team. And so there's obviously companies that have thousands of employees or team members. We talked about Disney

[00:05:24] and all their cast members. And then there's also our solo entrepreneurs that have no team members. And then of course, the solo entrepreneurs that work with partners as well, where they have some team members, but they're not employed by the company. So what do you recommend people do when it's a solopreneur situation and they don't have any partners? Like, should they still have some sort of way to get that feedback of what could go wrong? Meaning like, be a part of an association where another entrepreneur can say, have you thought about this? Like, how do you think they should get

[00:05:50] that strategic thing if it's just them by themselves? Absolutely. If you're solopreneur, isolation is definitely a problem that you need to overcome. And if you are having a difficulty, a roadblock in your business, or you just want to know what's happening in your particular area, your industry, then definitely through networking, you might find a close connection with someone who

[00:06:16] has a similar business that you do and have a frank talk with them. Networking is just a great place. Other associations that support your type of endeavor can give you ideas as well. Because these people are going to be more non-judgmental than if you ask your family or your partner who may already have

[00:06:40] a preconceived notion of your whole situation. So definitely need to reach out, you know, scour the internet, put in a question. You may get an answer you hadn't thought of. I love it. And I will say, one thing that really helped me a lot, and it's funny, I hadn't sort of thought about it when I was asked in the question, is creating a mastermind and having four or five other people to where,

[00:07:07] like what we did yesterday, where I can just say, here's what we're struggling with. And so once every, let's say two and a half, three months, I can say, here's our biggest struggle. What suggestions do you have? And then having that system of people saying, have you thought about this? What about this? And we saw it happen in real time yesterday when we were doing a mastermind. But that's another thing I think you can do. Like one is the networking, so you get access to different people all the time. But then the mastermind side of things, there's every day, there's probably thousands of masterminds getting

[00:07:36] together. So I'm sure you can find one somewhere in your area. But the other thing is, if you can't start one, that's what I did. I didn't find the one I wanted. So I started one. And we went with it for 10 years. And I'll be honest, this is the part we don't ever like to look at, but it does happen. Sometimes you grow the situation too. So for example, we had the same mastermind people for so long that at a certain point, if I bring up a problem, I already know what they're going to answer. And so sometimes, and I'm right now at this stage where I'm going to probably build a new mastermind

[00:08:04] soon. The other one's kind of on a hiatus because I need new people that can give me a fresh perspective. And also, I always say, if you're the smartest person in the room, you need to get out of that room. So the other thing is when you start a mastermind, try to bring in people that know stuff that you don't know. But I just want to add that I think a mastermind is another way to strategize. Any kind of activity, event, as you say, mastermind where you're actively participating is important.

[00:08:29] Because some masterminds, you're just sitting passively listening to different people contribute. And it doesn't really zero in on your particular business. Makes sense. So when it comes to strategy, when you're working with an organization or a person around developing their strategy, what kind of things do you need to know to actually help them determine what the best strategy is?

[00:08:55] To determine the best strategy, we have an informal meeting to start with just to learn about that person or that company's situation, what they feel their obstacles are, and who's involved in creating that situation and how they've tried to deal with it in the past. And then we go from there. And we always

[00:09:20] draw the question and the journey out of the person because you have the answers inside you. You just may not be aware of it. And this is an opportunity for them to really express their truth. Maybe there's something they've always wanted to try or they've been hesitant to speak up because the feeling of trust isn't there in the organization. So there are ways to go about it, definitely.

[00:09:50] And then I guess just winding down, last couple of questions. One I wanted to ask you again when I think about strategy and I think about planning versus just acting. What are your thoughts around, one of the things I think personally is that when you look at an organization, we hear about personality types and I always kind of associate them with roles. But you can have like what I call the red personality type that's all about what's in it for me and let's get this done and let's just

[00:10:17] focus on benefits and move on. And then you have the social one that's like make goes out and makes the sales probably. Then you have the one that's worried about the peace of mind, like make sure we're covered in case something happens. And then you have the analytical person that basically goes, okay, this will work. And let's say if they're an IT person, this will work on our system. What are your thoughts about when it comes to strategy and planning? Do you think it's important to have those different personalities on your team to bring different perspectives to how the plan should

[00:10:45] work? Absolutely, because different people coming from different dimensions or backgrounds, they will have different ideas. But sometimes it's helpful to switch the roles, different ways. Because we get embedded in that one dimension of our own, whether it's technical or something else, or sales. And we as a leader of either that organization or that department,

[00:11:12] it's up to that leader to bring in a cohesive group. Some of those people that you mentioned, they may not have much more than self-interest as you said before, right? So it's important for the leader not only to create trust, but a bond where we're all working towards the same goal. We're all

[00:11:38] working towards the same purpose. And the company overall will probably have a purpose of their own. But if that doesn't align with the employee, they're not going to be very invested in helping that situation to be concluded. So my last official question, when we talk about strategy and planning, is I think the challenge sometimes is people would like to do that, would like to strategize,

[00:12:06] would like to plan. But you know, again, we talk solo entrepreneurs, maybe they don't have the financial resources to put in. Do you think planning and strategy is something you can do whether you have resources or not? I mean, obviously you can do the part about sitting down and planning, but to execute on it, like, do you think there's ways we can do it even if we don't have the resources to do it? Or do you think it's just like you've got to figure out a way to use less resources to still get the same goal accomplished?

[00:12:32] I would say that if you have a strategy, then you need to look at efficient and effective ways to outsource anything that you don't have expertise in. Because it's an investment in your company, it's an investment in your goal, and not to look at it as a cost. Are you going to hire somebody that's cheap that gives you very little? Or are you going to spend the extra money and get somebody who's

[00:13:01] competent in that particular area that can help you reach your goal, your vision for your business? Well, it's funny you say that because, and I do have one last question, but it's funny you say that because we're going through something like this right now, where when you said about don't just go for, for example, the cheapest cost or the lowest cost or what have you. And I think I might have shared this yesterday, but we built, we had somebody, a family member, somebody we knew build a deck for

[00:13:27] us in the backyard. And the deck is the equivalent of a $20,000 deck and they built it for 7,000. That sounds awesome, except for the fact that we have somebody working on it today to fix all, we're paying extra to fix all the things that were wrong with that deck they built because we trusted a family member because it was cheap. I didn't hire the person, somebody else in my family did. But, but the point is the deck, like there's safety issues, like literal, it won't pass code

[00:13:54] because the person we trusted that they knew how to build it and it seems like maybe they didn't. But again, it goes to that point of you either pay now or you pay later. And you know, we got lucky because fixing the deck is say 3,000, it's still a $20,000 deck, but it's not really ideal to have your deck built wrong to then have to have somebody else come in and fix it. Right. So just what you said about, you know, you can try to find ways to do it on the cheap,

[00:14:18] but you mostly will always pay in the end. People appreciate your expertise in whatever industry you're in and you need to appreciate and utilize their expertise. And if you do make a mistake, if you do have quote a failure and you end up paying more for something because you need two people to rectify that situation, then that's a lesson learned and that builds your empowerment.

[00:14:44] I love it. So how can we learn more? That's my last question. Like if people want to reach out to you, go to your website, work with you, what does that look like? I'm on LinkedIn. It's Gabrielle Manski. I'm on Facebook as the Mansky Protocol, which is the name of my coaching business. And they can reach me at mp.gabrielmansky.com if they want to send me an email and get in touch. Amazing. Thank you so much, Gabriel. Absolute pleasure to be continued.

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