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Welcome to the Never Been Promoted podcast with Thomas Helfrich. Get ready for a thrilling adventure as we uncover entrepreneurial journeys and life changing business insights every week. And now your host, Thomas.

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Welcome back to another episode of Never Been Promoted where we are trying to help you unleash your entrepreneur through the lessons, life and successes and failures of other entrepreneurs so you can learn something along the way if it's your first time listening. Thank you. And I always give out these things called dad points. And if you're a dad, you know exactly what I'm talking about. They are a gamification of life. And if this is maybe your second or if you've been here a few times, thanks again for coming back. You already know the dad points don't mean much, except it's just a thank you, virtually from me to you. Along our journey. Today, though, we're going to meet a new person. That's right. Because if I try a solo show, I'm not sure what I'd say. So that's why I need a guest. Today I'm joined by Cindy Scalicky. Good job. Her last name based on nodding. If you're listening, I like to butcher last names as much as possible so I can be as american as possible. But she's the founder of On Point Communications, and I think you're joining from Colorado. But why don't you take the floor, Cindy? And thank you so much for coming on today.

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Yeah, thank you so much, Thomas. It's great to be here. And yes, I'm calling in from northern Colorado, which has been my home for the last 16 years. And originally, though, I'm from the Midwest. So hello to all the midwesterners listening, everyone from Chicagoland. You are my people. I am originally from the suburbs of Chicago, born and raised about 20 years. And then I did end up working in the city a little bit after my undergrad, but yes, been in Colorado now for the last 16 years.

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So you're ahead of the weed induced real estate boom there.

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Yes, exactly.

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I mean, the prices have gotten really high.

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Yeah, good one.

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I smoked that one right past you, didn't I? It wasn't soft, gummy ish. It was really done here. Weed's good for you. Take it, people. All right. Except the kids that are listening, don't, right?

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No.

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Cindy, I always ask people to kind of set the table, maybe clear off because you're in Colorado. Let's clear off the driveway of the snow here and let's talk about your background credentials and what brought you up to On Point Communications.

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Yeah, I'd be happy to. So, basically, I'm like a message detective, is one of the ways that I describe what I do. And what that means is that I am someone who just absolutely loves to dive inside of the message and the messenger to see what I can find that's working well, and importantly, to see what's not working well when it comes to the way the message is structured, for example, a presentation or an investor pitch or a personal introduction, even, and go, you know, that didn't really stick the landing with the audience to get that speaker what they wanted. And so let's see what we can do to the message, and let's see what we can do to the messenger. Right. You the speaker. So I provide at On Point Communications. We are executive communications consultants, and we work with leaders up and down the flagpole of innovation to help them create amazing sticky messages that will land with their audiences so they can get what they want out of whatever that conversation is. A lot of times, it's investment dollars. Could be partnerships, could be advisors, could be a sale. So lots of variety in the reasons people are speaking to others, obviously, but we help in any of those ways to really strengthen them. Strengthen them.

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How did you get into that? That's a very specific field that I couldn't imagine a path my life ending there. So how did you.

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Yeah, it's an interesting journey. People say, well, are you a marketing consultant? Do you write web copy? No, we don't. Do you do just kind of presentation skills? Yes, we do, but they are way deeper and more molecular level when it comes to the type of work that we do with teams and individuals. How did I get started? Well, I am a rhetorician at heart. What is that?

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Could you find that word for the audience?

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I am going to.

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I can't type it fast enough to google it.

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Everybody get your pen and paper out. So, my undergraduate degree and my graduate degree are in rhetorical criticism. So rhetoric is the science and art of persuasion. So what that means is there are people out there in the world like me, and we are just laser focused on wanting to understand persuasion itself. What are people doing? What are they actually doing in order to try to persuade other people to do something different, believe something new, or try a new product. So I'll give you the definition, since you asked for it, Thomas. But Aristotle is the father of persuasion. Okay, so we go way back to learn his theory of persuasion, and he says, and I quote, of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word, there are three kinds. The first depends on the personal character of the speaker. That's you. The second, on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind, and the third on the proof, which is provided by the words of the speech itself. So what that means is if you draw a triangle on your paper, that is the rhetorical triangle that he argues is the essence of all persuasion. Speaker, audience, message. Many of you have probably heard ethos, pathos, logos. These are the ingredients of the persuasive cake that we all need to be sure we are balancing and advancing in our messaging. So did you ask me to tell you how I got into this? Would that be interesting, perhaps to hear.

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Of course. I want to hear your journey, and specifically, as you're going through it, talk about things that are going to help other entrepreneurs. This is like an aha moment. I love starting with the aha moment that triggered it.

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Sure. Well, it's a good thing that I listened to my gut when I was in my mid 20s because I started out at a state school in Illinois that I just wasn't really loving. And so halfway through my junior year, I made a really weird decision to jump ship and go to a different school. I mean, here I was three semesters from graduating, and I was like, you know what? I don't think I'm going to be very proud of that diploma. If it's the one that's on my wall, I'm not being challenged. So I jumped ship, and I ended up at St. Mary's College at Notre Dame, and that's where I met my teacher, my professor, who teaches rhetoric. Before that, I had no idea what it was. So in my first class, this is the assignment that we were given, and this will give the audience an idea how my brain works. Okay, so we get this assignment in our class, and it's a speech that's been written out on paper, line, skipping lines. It's Hillary Rodham Clinton's commencement address in 1996 from Wellesley College. Okay. And our assignment was to study the speech, read it, comb it, dissect it, and write a paper that said whether we thought it was an effective rhetorical act or not, did she do a good job? Did she stick the landing with her audience? Why did we believe that to be true if she did? Why didn't we believe that to be true if we didn't think she landed that? And we were supposed to use Aristotle's rhetorical theory as our support. So I just absolutely ate that assignment up, and I was so happy and fulfilled climbing inside her speech lines and understanding where did she put the story. Why did she put it there instead of there? And what was the function of doing so? How did she engage her audience? Why did she create certain data points that she thought would be attractive to this particular audience on this particular day, in this particular occasion of commencement? What was going on in the world? What were some of the things that she was trying to do to build credibility? How did she do that? And would those have worked with that audience? So those are some of the questions that I was asking myself as I wrote that paper. And I ended up closing down the library that night. They were like, excuse me, ma'am, can you please go home? Because the library is closed.

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Something no one's ever said to me, ever, right? Sleep in the library.

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Yeah. That was the light bulb moment. Okay. I figured out what I loved to do was called rhetorical criticism. That's what I had loved to do all my life. Just didn't know what it was or that it had a name. And Dr. Polly helped me find that passion, and then it just kept going. I went into global advertising after I graduated from university, I worked downtown in Chicago for a global ad firm. Had an amazing number of years there. And then I ended up back in graduate school. I cut the corporate tie after I left BBDO and I went to academia, I thought, well, I'll be a professor of rhetoric, like my mentor was. Well, I loved that. Two years in Georgia, I taught undergraduate skills and communications classes, and I researched. But then I cut the academia tie, too, because, you know, I didn't love the research enough to do it my whole life, so I loved it. But I just felt like there was something else out there. Then I got married. I had four children with my husband. We moved to Colorado, and I took time off after a small stint in public relations in Washington, DC. And I came here and I started on point about eight and a half years ago when all my kids finally went off into elementary school.

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I think a lot of women are in that spot where they stuck is not the right word, but you're somewhere between. There's no way I can start my own thing while I'm trying to do this. And it's not that it's husbands don't help, it's just that it's where it is. If you're a stay home dad, you'd face the same challenges. And even if you're equally contributing parents, it's hard to go with smaller children, for sure. Talk about that, though. I think a lot of women are in that spot. I think a lot of women would love to have their own thing. They have great educations, great pedigrees, great some kind of experience. Kids have come along, and now it's like, how do I jump in that game? So can you talk about that a little bit, how you felt and how you made yourself go do it?

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Well, it's a really interesting story, Thomas, because I know how many women are out there who have passions to go out and do great things in their careers, which I totally applaud. And then many of those women, and then maybe even another group of women, want to be moms and have families and grow a family at home. And how do you do those two things together? And to be totally honest, I never even thought I was going to go back into a working situation after I started to have kids. And that is the honest to God truth. I just thought, well, I'll do what my mom did. I was happy about that decision. I didn't really seek out climbing any kind of corporate ladder. Once I started our family, our kids are five and a half years apart, all, like, from the first to the fourth. So they're pretty close together. And I was going to be the stay at home mom that my mother was. What happened? That was really interesting. And that madeOn Point Communications a total surprise. And joy, I will add now, of course. But I thought, well, my kids are off to all day school. I'm just going to go out and look for a part time job to see if I can help supplement what my husband is doing with a lot of kids. A lot of kids go through college, and I wasn't able to get a job that fit the parameters of a school day, which is kind of what I wanted. Something part time. Long story short, I ended up sitting down with a woman who does presentation skills coaching, which is now what I do, of course. Right? And I was a. Wait a second. You can do this as a consultancy. I never really understood or knew that. And I had coffee, and Thomas, she hired me right on the spot at the coffee to coach her TEDx talk, which was coming up the following month. I discovered that for me, anyway, I could do both, but just not for me. At the same time, I didn't want to be in a corporate job coming and going with little kids. And so I wanted to raise our kids. And it took a lot of sacrifice, a lot of sacrifice about things we would have liked to have done, would have liked to have bought places we would have liked to have traveled. But we sacrificed those things because that was a core value for me and for my husband to stay home. And that's not everybody's choices, which is fine. But this has, for me, worked out to be a way that I can enjoy living my passion and working to support the family now that the kids are older.

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That's fantastic. And the TEDx piece, it's a very recognized brand in any really speaking opportunity. What you're describing, and I know we've talked offline a little bit about this, is what do you say and how you present it and the presentation model that you showed me at one point, and we've outlined a little bit about how you got to hook people and you got to have command. Can you talk about that and speak to it as an entrepreneur? Like, listen, you're doing to do a sales presentation, you're going to go maybe meet an investor, give them the three core things, maybe that they need to think about. If all else fails, they don't know what to do. What are the three things they must do in any interaction where you're trying to influence?

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Yeah, I'm going to go with the three that just popped into my head. And those would be to think way harder about your audience than you are, to figure out how to tell good sticky stories and to walk in with a confidence that you can do what you need to do to build the relationship. Okay, so confidence and relationship building, I guess, kind of in one. So let's start with the first one. What was the first one?

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I said it would be know your audience better than you thought.

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I said, know your audience.

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Okay, I'm Thomas. I'm in Atlanta.

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Taking notes for me? No, but the AI is.

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The AI is definitely good.

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Thank you. AI, when it comes to audience, what most people do is they think about the audience and they try to get an assessment of the audience. And we all know the term, like, audience analysis or audience adaptation. If you're reading, like, your public speaking book, right from college, well, that's great. And you do want to know your audience and do the best that you can to learn about them. But where people don't typically go is deep enough into trying to consider what it would be like to be in the conversation I'm trying to create. Let's say it's a sales conversation. Okay. If you're going to have a sales conversation with someone across the table, have you spent enough time pretending to be in their chair, listening to. To. Because if we can do that. Well, Thomas, that's the ticket to great messaging. And the reason is this, if we just come at people with all the things we want to tell them, we're going in the wrong direction. I say this to my clients constantly. I don't really care what you want to tell your audience. I don't really care what is it that they need to hear from you, where they are in order to move them. And those are usually different things. Right. Because we're these experts. We've garnered all this product knowledge, or just knowledge in general that we can't wait to kind of tell the audience in the finite time that we have with them, but you're going to end up steamrolling them, overwhelming them. Usually people are going way too deep into the weeds or details, and what we really need to go is, hey, where is my audience member? What do they know about me, my product line, the problem that I'm trying to help them solve, where are they? And then you build your message out. So audience, and trying to actually be your audience instead of only knowing them is the deeper step. So that's number one. The second thing is, can I ask.

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You in that spot? Right. I will tell you. And I make this mistake. I go too fast. I think more into it, and they're just nodding. And I know in the back of my mind there's no way they're getting what I'm saying right now. And I think knowing your audience is not even close to what your knowledge of understanding is. Even if you slow down, slow down more and take the moment to even ask, even if you're, like, publicly speaking, say, are we on the same page? Ask that question. Just kind of get people to, like, just get the agreeability going. Because what I find people do is they get lost. And I know, like, when someone's pitching me, if they've lost me and they have no interest in coming back, I just start working on something in the background and pretend to listen.

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Yeah.

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And they don't realize I'm doing it. But at that point, I'm like, I've just lost interest. But I'm just not trying to be rude. I probably should be. But so I think that the lesson being is really take your time to understand what the audience needs to hear from you and don't be afraid just to ask them if we cover this, is this what's going to meet your need? If we fast forward 30 minutes in this meeting, what do you got to hear? To look back and go, that was a great meeting. Ask that question. Because I asked that one to say, hey, what's going to make this the best meeting of your week? And I ask that piece all the time. So I think, just don't underplay that piece, because I think those people kind of brush over it. And I think it's actually very critical to even having the downstream of things you're about to talk about.

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Please continue. Yeah, no, you just said something really interesting, which was, I don't want to be rude to them, and maybe I should know kind of haphazardly. And I would say to you, that's the signal that the onus is on the speaker, to make sure that you keep your audience engaged. So it's not your job or our job, Thomas, to be like, oh, I should interrupt them and tell them that I'm bored. Right. It's the speaker's job to know that after they talk for a long time, they ought to pop in a rhetorical question. They ought to pause to say, is this resonating with you? What would you add to my list of things that people struggle with?

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In particular, you're giving me ideas of that initial idea that we were discussing. Right. I'm going to continue the next two pieces, but I think just at this point, in reflection in the podcast. Right. Is I want to work with you to determine TEDx speaking. And it didn't really occur to me that it doesn't really matter what I'm saying as much as what does the person want to learn based on my background experience.

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Yeah.

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And so if I'm up there as the never been promoted guy, a lot of people that would be interested are, how do I get started? How do I get over these fear of what my friends are going to think or the humility that I may leave a career or a job? And what are the first things I really need to go do to become an entrepreneur? How do I really cut that tie? And I would never have thought of presenting it that way, but I think that's what an audience would want to know, is, hey, start off with cutting the tie. Well, here's what you got to do. This is how you got to think, and this is what you're probably going to feel. And so continue with that, because that goes down to knowing the audience. There's a couple more, but go ahead. I think it's so critical of a moment there.

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No, that's great. And a good transition from point one we just talked about was audience and learning how to be the audience. And .2 is around sticky storytelling. And this really actually began in, that's how I got the job to coach this woman for a TEDx talk, because she said to me something like, what do you love about your. What are you good at? What do you really love? And I said, well, I love presentation skills, but I'm way more than the person who's going to help you with eye contact and hand gestures and moving around on the stage, which, although I love to do that, I really love the content part and figuring out exactly what the order should be of the storyline, of the speech. I like speech writing. I like creating logical flow for a message. And she goes, oh, you like content development? And I said, well, heck, yeah, I guess if that's what that's called. That's what I love.

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Is there a job name that?

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Yes, but the point she made was that I love storytelling and story function, which know right back to the Hillary Rodham Clinton example that I gave you. So it's really interesting, this particular week that we are recording this show, I have had five separate instances of doing a masterclass with a big team and then four in a row coaching sessions where we worked specifically on sticky storytelling. And what is a sticky story? Right. Well, a sticky story has the ability to stay in someone's memory for a longer period of time than a general story, than a vague story, than an indistinct kind of description of something. A sticky story includes things like years, people's names, the color of the carpet, the weather that day, the city that you were in, the feelings that you were having while you were in the middle of that career transition story. So I worked with a number of people on this exercise called the struggle story, and we all created. So I'm in a master class, I'm leading a full day last week in Toronto, and I put up a slide. It's called what's your struggle story? And the first line says, it's three points on the slide. And the first one says, this one time. The second point is, this thing happened like this transition. Right?

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Do the words in bandcamp come in.

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At any point during this one time at band camp? That was a worthy interruption.

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Going with this, I got to know I'm in. Yeah. More, more.

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Is there a bandcamp story?

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And a flute.

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Right. Okay. And the third one is. And I learned this. Right? So those three points outline the beginning, middle, and end of the five point story arc, the setting, the climactic turning point, and the resolution of the story. So I made everybody at their tables create a quick struggle story of their own about their career path. Like, when in your life did you learn something new? Kind of like your first question to me today, Thomas. And can you describe it in a quick 1 minute script? And then I gave them two minutes to write out a sloppy copy, and then they had to deliver that struggle story to their neighbor out loud. And those are the kinds of ways that we work with people to help them get those struggle stories, or just even regular sticky stories of learning out into the world so they stay in people's memories.

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I love it. Okay, so you have sticky stories. You got to really know this audience and dive into what they expect. It's not even knowing the audience as much as what they want. I think it's probably the what do they need to hear? And what do they want to hear?

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Then how do you pivot that need to hear? Yeah.

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Right. And how does your story deliver that? What's the third component?

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The third component is really having that self confidence to deliver the story or the sales pitch or the job interview or whatever you all might be trying to work on next for your next role or your next big thing. Right. You have to have the confidence and know the message so that you appear in control. Who wants to hear a sticky story from someone who's really done a good job on their audience, who's really nervous, who doesn't bring volume, who can't remember the message they created? So if we do one and two and we don't have three, you're kind of sunk and you've done all this work, but you don't come across credibly. So we really need to lock in some basic techniques around how to remember your message without memorizing it verbatim, which I never recommend. I mean, maybe like the first line. Right. Or the last line of certain things we do want to have.

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So, like talking points memorized. Like, hey, let's leave with this one idea. So it's like the memorable. That was a good thing to write that down. And then let's transition to the next kickoff.

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Yeah. In fact, my publisher has a great. I always credit him for this because I didn't think it up. But my publisher, Henry deVries, he says, what is your month after message? What is the message? You hope your audience remembers a month after, and you can change the timing to a day after, an hour after, a week after. But what's the message? What's the sticky part of the message? Right. So I hope people remember a triangle after they listen to this episode, and I hope they remember that it spells Sam speaker audience message. Right. That's what rhetoric is. That's what persuasion is. And those are the recipe ingredients. They need to be persuasive. That's at least a starting point for people listening today.

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Cindy, can you give me the three kind of summarize of the three main components of just telling your message and speaking and just delivering?

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Yeah. The three things I would tell anyone listening that they want to be really thinking hard about going out into a message they're creating or about to deliver would be trying to be your audience versus only knowing them. Right. Being sitting in their shoes, sitting in their chair, looking at you. What do they need to know? Want to know to move. The second is around sticky storytelling and telling stories that are memorable by using specificity. The key ingredient, the yeast in the sticky story is specificity. So get specific places, dates, times, people, weather, all the things that make a story come to life, that invites your audience member into your life, into your brain, your heart, the way that you see the world. And the third is really just that confidence in delivering the message. So if we do one and two correctly and well, it all falls away. If we are nervous, we have a lot of filler words. We don't know how to even have a good handshake or eye contact or you forget your message. Right. We have to rehearse and bring the confidence. So those are the three things that I would sketch for folks who are kind of just coming down this road.

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With us today, and I'll maybe extend your last one a bit. I think the flip side of that is overconfident and crass. And so if you come across as a know it all versus an educator of some sort or someone relatable, I think it almost has a worse effect because people can identify better with nervous, and they tend to very much so hate cocky and arrogant?

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Oh, absolutely. I think the pieces there that we want to say are vulnerability and authenticity, which don't fit into a person who is behaving like a know it all, those shouldn't live together. And so, yeah, we need to be credible, knowledgeable, and an expert. But the key word is relationship building. Like hyphenated word, we have to build relationship, and we need to be a trusted advisor in that role or a trusted service provider for the client that you might be reaching out to sell your product or service to.

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So On Point Communications, call it the shameless plug. If you made it this far in the podcast, don't skip forward. This is how you get a hold of her. If you want to learn how to become a TEDx talker, if you want to learn how to just nail a presentation for an investor, or just maybe present a vacation idea to a spouse. Whatever it is, you can learn from these simple skills. Sometimes that last one's the hardest one. So how do they get a hold of you? And who should get a hold of you?

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For sure? You guys can come find me at LinkedIn. It's my number one platform where I am, and that's just search for me. Cindy Skalicky S-K-A-L-I-C-K-Y. Find me at LinkedIn. Send me a connection request and tell me that you heard me on this podcast so I can give you a thumbs up there. And you can always visit my website for some of our we have a free training on the home page all about rehearsing. It's called the rehearsal trifecta and it will teach you a skill called how to rehearse without rehearsing to save you time and energy. So the website is www.onpointcommunications.com so it's on point as one word communications plural .com, you're on point.

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Does it have an e on the end or no e?

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No e. We are not like gross.

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No. Let's take one reflection moment. Some of the advice you've given to just anyone, entrepreneurs or not, it's spectacular. And if you can't find value in that, you're probably in that cocky know it all group and we'll have a guest on to help you with that one. But in your own journey and you reflect back, what do you think is some of the biggest takeaways that you've had and what I mean that or is a lessons learned. It might be when you wanted to start, when you wish you would have done this first, what is something you could give advice to anybody that you said, I wish I would have known this or had done this?

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Well, I guess I'm an oddball Thomas. I don't have any legitimate regrets. I do have learnings and I have one I'm going to share right now, but feel extremely blessed that I don't have the feeling of I should have started earlier. I wish I'd have known this thing because really On Point has been like this little present that I keep opening because I never even intended to do it right. And so that's a unique part of my story. But what I will say is I have found extreme value and confidence has been built for me in finding other people who are doing the one notch above me and hanging out with them. Okay, so finding circles of people who are doing the next level up and I won't say better than me, because that's not true. It's just the next level higher, the next number up. And I did have a moment where I was part of a group. I just joined this group of people who were making, like, two, three times as much as I was, and I would get on these networking calls with them, and this was like, 2021, early 2021. And I had one woman say to me, dang, Cindy, you have so much incredible stuff to offer. Why aren't you making more money? And I was like, I don't know. I want to figure this out, and I really want to be. I believe that I deserve to be at the next level. I agree with you, but I don't know how to get there. And then I found a way to get there, and I ended up hiring a team of coaches at do it marketing. So quick plug for David Newman and his amazing team, who I've been with for three years, and they have taught me how to do that. Thomas. So go find your people is what I would.

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Awesome. You know, as we kind of leave here, I want to grab a couple a. What's a really must read business book for entrepreneurs to go out there and read or listen?

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Oh, well, the boys in the boat, which is not a business book, but it is a potential allegory for business, and it's something that I teach at the beginnings of my master classes. Are you familiar with this book, Tom?

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I'm not, no. I'm learning as we go on this one.

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It just became a movie. It is the true story of the University of Washington crew, the rowing crew from 1936, who blew against all odds. Okay, talk about cutting a tie. They cut the east coast tie, I guess you would say, of the pro rowers. They made it to the 1936 Berlin Olympics against all odds, and they beat out all the east coast, Harvard, Yale, big rowing teams, and they won the gold in Berlin. And it is the story of what it means to row in the same direction at the exact right second of the boat that you are in. And it is such an inspirational and true story. And I found so many parallels to leadership, team building, and grit that just really inspired me. So that's a nonfiction amazing book that is now a movie. George Clooney directed it, I believe, and I saw it. It's incredible. The other book that's more practical is called made to stick, and that's a big orange book with a silver piece of duct tape on the front of it. It's about sticky storytelling made to stick.

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I think both those I hadn't heard of either of those. That's one I'm going to check out as you kind of follow on social media. Anybody really like content wise to keep it pay attention to on LinkedIn or otherwise?

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Oh, gosh. There are so many people whose content I love putting me on the spot, though. Ellen Melko Moore is someone I really look up to, and she actually has been one of my coaches for LinkedIn writing, so it's a good idea to follow her. She's extremely well versed in LinkedIn in general and especially at grabbing audiences right where they are to stop the scroll. And so I would tell you to go find Ellen Melko Moore. So it's her. Melko is her middle name and Moore, Moore. And so she's definitely someone who's worthwhile to follow. There are many others. Kind of.

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Yeah, that's a good one. And whenever you can find someone who you can really identify with their content, and they do well because it's always a struggle for people to write content. You could probably argue, I could argue that the engagement you give others is more important, but you still need your own when people do check you out, to be engaging in the same kind of methodology that you describe for speaking.

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I have one more.

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Oh, please.

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Yeah, I would drop Bill Stainton in there. Stainton, Bill is a good friend of mine. He's also won 29 emmys. He's a former director for one of the tv shows out in Seattle during the. He and I are in a mentorship group together, and he's funny. He's also done some TEDx talks, so Thomas, you should watch his. And he brings a lot of great humor, and he also talks a lot about innovation.

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He's a guy that you're going to recommend to come on the show. That's what's going to happen.

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You got it. Totally.

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That's how I found my guest. People you ask, this is one thing you got to take away. You got to know when to ask.

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That's right. Good job. Way to do it.

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All right, final question for you. Actually, we'll do two more. What do you think the most important entrepreneurial trait is, and do you have it?

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I would probably say optimism. And, yes, I do have it. I think that there are so many times I could have quit. In fact, I tried to quit a couple of times and go out and look for another job. And that's another kind of skill or feature of entrepreneurship that I think is really important is to be able to see through events and people what kind of decision you ought to make. Like, when I kept getting closed doors in 2020, when I was looking for a full time job after everything dried up for me, I kept getting closed doors and I was like, that means something. Pay attention. What's going on here in the greater world of Cindy? And maybe I shouldn't look for jobs anymore because something better is coming. So it's a little bit of intuition, I guess, but, yeah, optimism. The next one right thing is what you need to do right now. You got to do the next one right thing.

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Yeah. That's fantastic advice. And it's one of the traits that's not mentioned much, but optimism, there's opportunity in it, and so for it. Last question.

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Yeah.

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Have you ever been promoted?

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Well, yes, I would say I have been promoted. Right now is when I have been promoted.

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You can't promote yourself. This is from working for mothers. I should probably preface, oh, well, can.

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You define that term for me?

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Thomas, you were a project manager, and they said you have been promoted to senior project manager.

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Oh, yeah, I was promoted once when I was at was actually. That's a whole story, but we don't have time for it today. But I successfully delivered a competitive review at Bayer corporate in New Jersey, and that's what I needed to do well in order to get promoted, and I did it well, and I was promoted. So, yes, I have been promoted.

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Sorry, you'll have to look outside the club and fog the window. Promoted. Breath from the streets to see us partying in the cool guys club and women's club with cut ties. No, I'm kidding.

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Cut ties. But then I cut my ties after that.

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I'll still send you one. But if we don't have to refilm this whole thing because of technical issues, once again, if you're at this point, know that you don't know how many.

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Technical issues, we don't know the back.

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End, and if we actually have to refilm it, I'm not even going to mention it on the next filming. Thank you, by the way, so much for coming today.

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Yeah, this was a pleasure. It was wonderful to meet everyone a little bit just by sharing my story. I hope that it resonated with some of you, and I would love to stay connected.

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Yeah, I mean, selfishly, I don't care if anyone else does at this point. I'm so happy that I resonated with it. And if anybody else got it, I'm happy for you.

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But.

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One more time, how do people get a hold of you?

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Yeah. Come find me at onpointcommunications.com or at LinkedIn with my just search for my name, Cindy Skalicky, and we'll look forward to seeing you there. And I'll have some new information about a book I'm writing that's coming out this year. I forgot to mention that with my book conversation. So yeah, I'm writing a book on the how to model, which is our kind of claim to fame.

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Wonderful. Thank you. And for all of you who've made it to this point in the show, thank you. If this was your first time extra, thank you to you today because you made it through a whole podcast and we've hopefully helped you enough where you can come back and learn something else the next day. Until we meet again. Until the next show here on Never Been Promoted, once again, I'm Thomas Helfrich, your host. I want you to go out there, though, and find a way to unleash your entrepreneur. Thank you for listening.

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Thanks for listening to Never Been Promoted with Thomas Helfrich. Make sure to check the show notes for our guest contact information and any relevant links. Connect with Thomas personally at neverbendpromoted.com.