
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Do you truly understand what you are worth? Are you getting the right level of compensation at work?
If you want to learn how to understand your real value, and also learn how to ask your boss for the right level of pay, then you’re going to really enjoy episode #146 on the Meeting Leadership Podcast.
That’s because we are interviewing Human Resources expert, Denise Liebetrau.
With more than 25 years of experience at Fortune 500 companies, Denise is on a mission to help business leaders get what they deserve so they can be as productive as possible at work and in their lives.
In this episode you’ll learn how to:
- Ask your boss for a raise
- Why you should value your own personal brand
- How to ‘play bigger’ and be so good that you can’t be ignored and a whole lot more
Denise Liebetrau

Denise Liebetrau is a HR Consultant and compensation expert with more than 25 years of experience at Fortune 500 companies. She partners with business leaders, to get the people, processes, performance metrics, and rewards in place to maximize profit and impact. She is also a Career & Salary Negotiation Coach that helps career-driven professionals get paid what they are worth and have careers aligned to their values. Learn more at www.ProsperConsultingLLC.com.
You can get in touch with Denise at https://prosperconsultingllc.com/
Listen On Your Favourite Podcast App!
Click Here To Read The Show Transcript
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Gordon Sheppard: If you are a leader who really wants to know your own worth so that the next time you go to ask for a pay raise, you actually get it, then you’re going to get a lot out of today’s episode on the Meeting Leadership Podcast. That’s because we’re interviewing HR expert, Denise Liebetrau.
Are you a professional who wants to become a more effective leader? Then get ready for practical tips from the coach with the experience and inspiration to help you succeed in any leadership situation. You’re listening to the Meeting Leadership Podcast with Gordon Sheppard.
Welcome to another episode of the Meeting Leadership Podcast. My name is Gordon Sheppard. I want to say thank you so much for being here. Thank you for being the type of leader who really gets this idea of putting meeting leadership into practice. Because you know that you can’t lead a great meeting without being a great leader and you can’t be a great leader without knowing how to run a great meeting. And you are coming to this podcast to pick up another skill, another tip, something strategy-wise you can put into action to make your next meeting outstanding. It is really, really good to have you here. I am also proud to let you know that this episode of the Meeting Leadership Podcast is brought to you by the Meeting Leadership Academy.
I can tell you the feedback that I’m getting as a trainer when I’m going in through the Academy to work with professionals, just like yourself, to work with you and your teams in half-day settings, one-on-one settings, doing the coaching, doing the training, really getting the inspiration now to help you go up a notch when it comes to leading outstanding meetings that actually impact your entire organization and that flows through all the way to serving your customers and your community at a higher level. I’m loving doing it. It’s something that I think you’re going to get a lot out of and there’s some terrific online resources for you there as well. Please check that out by going to meetingleadershipinc.com/academy.
If you are a leader who truly understands internally what you are worth, but you’re having a few struggles when it comes to asking for a pay raise, leading a meeting where you are truly respected by everybody in the room, you are going to get a lot out of today’s episode on the Meeting Leadership Podcast because today we are going to talk about how business leaders can get what they are worth and we’ve got expert Denise Liebetrau on the show.
I think the biggest thing that you’re going to pick up from this really wonderful interview is that Denise is going to ask you to put yourself first. She coined a phrase, she calls it you inc. When you think about it that way, you are responsible for yourself throughout your entire career. She really gets into the theme of that and a whole lot more, and the great thing is she is bringing all of her good 25 years of experience, working with fortune 500 companies to bear when she’s doing that. Now she’s on a mission, she’s got her own consulting company and all kinds of practical tips, information and advice that you can put into action to truly get what you are worth when it comes to really functioning at the highest leadership level in the workplace. With that in mind, here’s the wonderful interview with Denise. Denise, welcome to the show.
Denise L.: Thank you Gordon. I’m glad to be here.
Gordon Sheppard: I just so enjoy getting folks with your pedigree on the show. With all the work that you’ve done in the HR area with fortune 500 companies, you’ve had the experience in-house, you’ve got the consulting experience under your belt and it’s just going to be a great interview I know coming up, but for a lot of people that don’t know you, if you were at a party, how would you introduce yourself?
Denise L.: If I was at a party, I would say, hi, I’m Denise Liebetrau and I am the founder of a company called prosper consulting. I am passionate about making sure that people get paid what they’re worth.
Gordon Sheppard: This is highly valuable for any leader listening to this podcast and I know there’s so much more in your bio that we can bring forward, but I want to jump right in there and I know that you said you’re working on a book. What’s the working title for that book right now?
Denise L.: It’s called know your worth. Obviously it will have tips and ideas and things on how to get paid what you’re worth, but knowing your worth goes far beyond that. It’s about how do you have healthy relationships in the right boundaries in the workplace as well as personal stories, obviously included.
It’s about relationships, it’s about money and knowing your worth and it’s about health and prioritizing yourself and being aware of what you need to do in terms of priorities to have a great life.
Gordon Sheppard: What do you think gets in a leader’s way when they undervalue themselves in so many situations? What’s sort of blocking them in your opinion?
Denise L.: One of the things I see is just, especially in women more so than men, but for some leaders it’s about, “Well, if I do a good job, they’ll recognize it.” They are a little bit too humble and they don’t speak up and advocate for themselves. Letting people know what you want, whether that’s a promotion or a pay raise, and being able to have difficult conversations and being able to use your emotional intelligence in that space so that it’s not an emotional conversation, it’s a business conversation about here’s the ROI and the results and value I’m delivering, here’s what I know I’m worth. Let’s talk and come to a mutually agreed upon pay and non-cash rewards that are valuable.
Gordon Sheppard: You’re saying that with ease, obviously from your experience.
Denise L.: I know, you’re talking like you say that so easily.
Gordon Sheppard: All you do, you just sort of, you do this and you do that and whatever, but-
Denise L.: Yeah.
Gordon Sheppard: … There might’ve been a moment in your own life when you went through this transition and had that kind of aha.
Denise L.: Yes. Oh yeah. I think for many of us who end up in this space of consulting or coaching, when we heal ourselves and we get through our own worst experiences, we come out into the world and want to heal others and help others with the same type of thing. Yeah, there were certainly times in my life when I didn’t speak up and ask more in the right way or my timing was odd. I’ll give you an example. Being a leader in big companies where I was overseeing compensation and making sure that thousands of employees were being paid competitively, I oftentimes didn’t look at my own pay.
I looked at my team, I looked at everybody, but I hadn’t looked at my own pay. There was a time when I looked at my own pay and I had already been given notice that my job was ‘ending’, but my pay had been woefully below market and below a peer who was doing a lesser job and brought it forward. The timing and the way I asked was not received well, and so I didn’t get it.
But it was a really good lesson in terms of when you speak up about yourself, even for those of us who are in the trenches doing this, it’s hard. It is not easy to do. It was one of the catalysts and steps in my journey that forced me to go, “Okay, you got to teach people how to do this in the right way so that they don’t end up feeling and getting caught in the same situation.” [inaudible]
Gordon Sheppard: Look at the implications of that. That is brass tax. That’s not like, “I’m shy. I don’t want to bring it up. I’m not sure. I don’t want to upset anybody. I don’t want to play politics.” All that sort of stuff.
Denise L.: Yep.
Gordon Sheppard: That is a real implication because your packaged and going out that place would have been lower, lower value, so that impacts immediately your next whatever it was, three months, 12 months, whatever those things are. That’s remarkable.
Denise L.: It is. And when I first started my business and wanted to do the arm of my business, that’s about career and salary negotiation coaching for individuals. I did a spreadsheet because I’m a spreadsheet jockey and I calculated over the course of a career starting in your same mid-twenties until you retire in your sixties if you don’t ask for pay raises outside of the normal merit increases in normal pay increases. If you don’t ask every few years how much money do you leave on the table and it’s a half a million to over $1 million depending on your profession.
Gordon Sheppard: Holy moly. People are eating cat food when they’re retirement, but they could have maybe done something about it if they had been more proactive in those early decades of their life.
Denise L.: Exactly. And it’s the multiplier effect. If you think about in terms of salary, if you can maximize your salary every few years, and when you’re doing great work, it impacts life insurance, it impacts 401(K), it impacts pension if you’re having to be a part of a company that has that. It impacts far more than just cash. It impacts bonus payouts and stock rewards and so on and so forth. And so it really has a multiplier effect if you dig into it. So, yeah, I just don’t like seeing people leave money on the table. And I saw so many people make missteps and do career limiting things and I was just like, oh, I got to start talking to people about what they need.
Gordon Sheppard: Well, that is a big inspiration and you came by it. Fortunately for all of us with school of hard knocks and you survived it to come out and bring your message out to the world, which is a good thing. Now, you must help people in the moment of truth. So when they come to you they’re like, okay, I heard this great idea, I know you can help me. What are kind of some of the practical things that you help people? So I’m going to walk in, I’m going to negotiate my salary, I’m a senior leader. Like what are some… We don’t have an hour to do all your work, but what are some of one, two things that you would give sort of as advice for someone thinking about actually walking into that negotiation moment?
Denise L.: Yeah. So first of all, do you research? So I have a list of resources where you can find free compensation data online and all you have to do is go to Facebook and join my group called Know Your Worth and get paid for it. And in that group is a list of where do you go to find free comp data list of more than 10 different resources. And then two, there’s a job offer comparison worksheet. So it gives you all the cash and on cash things you should be thinking about. But the first thing you should do is what is the job worth? And then what are you worth in that job is the second step. So do your research, summarize it, and then what are you worth? And that’s the business case, the story you tell. So I always tell people you don’t start off by asking for more money.
You start by progressively telling your story over a period of time about the results you’re delivering. That is in the context of the business deems success. You’ll hear in any business, what are the financial metrics? How are they thinking about customers, operational success metrics, what are those things that they focus on that define success and then you talk about what you’re delivering in the context of that. So if you’re in a role and perhaps it’s a sales role and it’s about driving sales or bringing in revenue, you talk about that. If you’re in a marketing role and it’s about how do you pull in more customers and drive more market share or have more conversions through social media, you talk about that.
So it’s really building the business case and talking consistently over a period of time and not being humble and staying behind the scenes, but really being an advocate for yourself about what are you delivering that’s of value. When you have your value story well understood and then you ask for money it’s very easy for HR and senior leaders to say yes, but it’s again, how do you say it? When do you say it and how do you put it in that business context?
Gordon Sheppard: Well, and you can hear a piece in here, there was a woman on the show, her name, wonderful branding expert, and her name is Louisa Campos, and she says, you’re going to deal with branding whether you like it or not. And she’s not talking about just organizationally here, we’ve just talked about you individually. So then if you’re not sort of essentially branding yourself, consistently marketing yourself throughout your career doesn’t matter if you’re in an organization or not. You’re going to put yourself into a gym and you’re not going to deal with it. And you can go all the way from the fine details of like, did you comb your hair? But in this case, I like the sophisticated part of what you’re saying, which is being actually fully aware of the environment, knowing your actual financial worth and impact, and then getting those things out there, getting that message forward.
And funny enough, what I know around communication things, it takes ages for those messages to sink in. So you have to just accept the fact that your senior leaders are busy. They’ve got their own things in mind, but you’re going to have to actually kind of drip this out to them in the same way that you would have like a drip marketing campaign for any product and make sure they know this so that when it does come time and negotiation, you’re in a better position.
Denise L.: Yes and I will often work with my clients. It’s a personal marketing plan is what I help them develop. So you are the product. So think of yourself as you inc. You need promotional marketing plan. So how are you going to promote yourself? And one of the more sophisticated things I tell people is it’s not just you promoting yourself, it’s your boss promoting you. Your success depends on how you’re impacting other people’s success. So it’s thinking beyond just your own level of value. It’s how do you provide value to your boss? How is he or she getting measured in terms of their success? What can you do to help them out? It’s thinking about your bosses boss. It’s when the senior leadership is in a room and they’re talking about who’s next for a promotion or who’s a potential successor for the next job or who’s doing great work and she get more of the merit budget.
You want more than just your boss in the room speaking highly of you and so I will often talk to people and help them with presentation skills. How do you present in a way that makes you more impactful. And especially when I’m working with executives, we’ll talk about executive presence and I use a model that’s well-researched from Bates Communications because a lot of times when it comes to executive presence, people are like, well, I know it when I see it, but they can’t really tell you what that is. And what it really is it’s about character, it’s about substance. What are those qualities of a mature leader that inspire commitment and action and lead to you above and beyond effort and then their style. Those communication and appearance types of things that matter as a leader that set you apart.
Gordon Sheppard: This is just so valuable because we can hear somebody listening to this right now. They might be thinking you know what? I think I might be undervaluing myself, but you’re actually laying out the breadcrumbs for them to pick up to start to get a bit of momentum and obviously of course if they worked with you or dug into this, they could do more substantive work. And I love this idea of you inc because that actually never stops. And people think a lot of, say business owners that I deal with, for example, they think that stops when they retire and it just doesn’t because even that final 30 years you inc is a really good thing to kind of cherish and put into place. And I think at the core of what we’re talking about here is once you’ve got that internal value, you’re going to be better in your work, happier, happier in your home life and all that kind of thing.
If you get that sort of we focused on compensation. But again, we talked about the fact that this is really about self-worth. And the other part that we want to do in this podcast is think about those senior leaders. So now they’re just successfully gone in and they’ve gotten what they should get say on the compensation side, but then they’ve got to lead their teams. Some cases it’s tens, some cases it’s hundreds, some cases it’s thousands. And for me what happens is you can’t be a great leader without running a great meeting. You can’t have a great meeting without being a great meeting leader. So it starts at you inc, you’ve got the self-confidence you’re going in. How can you take this approach into helping a leader sort of get into a meeting situation and really be more effective in running a typical meeting?
Denise L.: Sure. So let’s talk about kind of my philosophy as it relates to better meetings. One should ask yourself, do you really need a meeting? One of the many things that pushed me into starting my own business a few years ago was I was really tired of sitting in meetings, six, seven, eight hours a day. It was ridiculous.
Gordon Sheppard: Thank you.
Denise L.: It was ridiculous. No, I mean the level of stakeholdering and that you had to do and hold hands and sing kumbaya to get something done was ridiculous. So what I first tell people is first stop and ask yourself, do you really need a meeting? Could an email do, could you just have a conversation with a couple of people by picking up the phone or oh my gosh, walk out of your desk area and go talk to somebody. Just stop by their desk. And then if you do have to have a meeting, great. Start on time, have an agenda, send it at least 24 to 48 hours ahead of time. Include any background information and what the goal of the meeting is, because I can’t tell you how many times I sat in a meeting and then you’d have to rehash all this background information for the one person in the meeting of 15 people. Oh my gosh, talk about a waste of time.
Gordon Sheppard: Talk about a waste of resources here. We were just talking about you inc getting in a position where you can actually save the company money or earn the money. You just talked about an easy low hanging fruit moment, where you’re saying wait a second.
Denise L.: Low hanging fruit. And one of the things to think about when you’re sitting in a meeting, imagine the total compensation of every person in the room and put that dollar sign per hour or Canadian dollars over the top of their head. Is it worth it to have that much talent sitting in that room talking about this topic or could you make it slower? I love Jeff Bezos two pizza rule. Have you heard of this?
Gordon Sheppard: Tell me that story.
Denise L.: Okay, so Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon has a pizza rule, and you keep meetings small enough that two pizzas can feed everyone. You don’t need an army in a room. A few people, right? And then if you really think you need an hour, challenge yourself to make it 30 minutes and what do you need to send ahead of time to really make it effective, efficient meeting so you can get through with everything, summarize it in the last five and get everybody out of there in 30 minutes.
Gordon Sheppard: I can hear, I’ve got a fellow thinker in this area, I can love more than what you’re saying, the passion of what you’re saying. I totally agree with. And funny enough, I’m in working now these days in the work that I do in this area with engineers and doctors and lawyers and senior leadership teams who are crying out in the same way. And it’s my sort of sole mission to get those things done. And then when I connect those meetings all the way up to their organization’s strategy, then we have a chance to actually really get the whole place running forward in the right way. But I need to back up for a second here and pick up on this self-worth piece. If I’m a senior leader, and this happens a lot. I’m a senior leader and I’m sort of working with you and I’m thinking about this.
I’ve worked at the comp thing, but I know that this self-worth pieces I’m working with you on executive presence these things. I’m going to go into a tough meeting situation. I’ve got a conflict in the meeting. I know I’m going to go in there. What is the internal voice sort of suggestion that you would have for a senior leader who’s going into that situation, who’s just getting on top of their self-worth so that they can kind of get themselves out of the way and be a good facilitator of the issue and not get caught up in the personality aspects?
Denise L.: Sure. So one of the things that often happens when you have a difficult conversation is your emotions get triggered, right? So one of the ways you can manage your emotions and exercise emotional intelligence is emotional self-awareness. There’s a number of components of emotional intelligence, but I do a lot of speaking on an emotional self-awareness because if you have that, you typically have the other components of emotional intelligence dialed in. And so one of the things you can do before the meeting is go, okay, I’m going to be in the room. Here is what the other parties in the room are going to care about. So it’s a bit like taking some of the components that I teach on negotiation and using your empathy, right? Empathy as a superpower and putting yourself in the other person’s shoes.
What does that other person going to care about? Why do they care about that? What’s going to trigger them? What’s going to trigger me? Labeling the emotions you anticipate yourself feeling. Thinking about that and preparing before you step in the room. I think too many times people step into rooms in difficult conversations and they haven’t done the upfront planning and preparation before they step in there. And then you can compose yourself, right? You can become steady, you can get calm or you can take deep breaths and then you can bring a level of objectivity and perspective to critical decision conversations. That’s really how powerful.
But I will grant you, it’s not easy. And so I often will describe myself as an HR whisper and I will often go by with my clients who are leaders and say, okay, let’s think about, and let’s talk about who’s going to be in the room with you, what you want to accomplish, what are their goals going to be? And is this a one and done type of a conversation. Are we planting some seeds here? And then it’s more of how do we influence and sell our ideas over a period of time to get to where people [inaudible 00:19:36].
Gordon Sheppard: Well, totally and the self-worth piece is so critical in this moment. And if leaders don’t have the self-awareness and they don’t know their self-worth, then suddenly they think they’re going into help with a negotiation or whatever that is. And they’re not in a position to do that. So again, if people can take away from the good wisdom even in the last minute or so that you’ve said where that self-awareness piece is really, really critical. Finding people like yourself for example, to go and work with, I can’t say enough about, there’s just no end of good coaching that’s necessary to help organizations move forward. While this is super rich, it’s again, I keep getting these great folks like you on the show. I want to talk for like four hours straight, but we’re going to move on here for a second and the last piece of these interviews that I always like to bring in here is a simple question and I’ll just say it out loud. What inspires you?
Denise L.: What inspires me? Service, service inspires me. I’m at the point in my life where I want to serve and leave a legacy and make a difference. It’s one of the reasons why I started my business is that I was playing smaller than I needed to and I needed to play bigger. And so I’ll give you a couple of examples is because I came out of fortune 500 firms and across industries, telecom, financial services, mining and so forth. I wanted to play bigger and so this has allowed me to do that. So not only in my career and salary negotiation coach, but I’m also an HR consultant that specializes in rewards. And so I help business leaders with their HR programs and stuff as well.
But I am also a certified board candidate and so I’m looking for my next opportunity to be on a public board of a small to mid-size firm in technology, construction, engineering, or the extraction industries. I am inspired to serve, I want to play bigger, I want to have an impact, a bigger role to play in organizations that care about their talent and their employees and doing good work in the world.
Gordon Sheppard: Well, it sounds like anybody that gets you in the room is going to be lucky to have you there. And I just need to jump in and go one level deeper here. And is there a moment where you’ve actually served and gotten results that you can share a story with us?
Denise L.: Oh yeah, so many. Let me think of a good one that’s recent. So I had a VP level person who’s really strong in communications and I helped her navigate three different offers in terms of landing the right job. And we negotiated, we got her more than $15,000 more and she landed up in a really good place. We thought and then she called me and she didn’t end up in the right place. And here’s the piece that people often miss. We didn’t spend enough time on culture. The culture of the organization that you step into, is it receptive to how you show up as a leader? Is it receptive to results and the outcomes that you can deliver? On the surface this organization said it was, but in reality it wasn’t.
So how do you get better about vetting culture and what the real decision making and actions are in a company versus what they say? Because people can say one thing, it’s what they actually do in reality that matters the most and so now I’m going to work with this leader and we’re going to do some more work on how do we get her in the right culture and the right business that allows her to relay play bag because where she landed wasn’t the right fit.
Gordon Sheppard: I hear so many important things in what you’ve just said. One, there’s hey, we didn’t get it right the first time. Hey, this interview process that we’re going through didn’t allow us to go deep enough on getting the right fit to occur. That’s something that’s so critical. I’ve been in facilitation moments where again, the senior person has brought me in with the right intentions and then you actually get there in a full day training or whatever and I’ve seen the sheep’s clothing come off and the wolves come and I think what stuns me is the pedigree in this situation what I’m talking about is everyone in the room could be leading the situation, but suddenly you’ve got, like you said, stakeholdering, I’m going to take that word away. That’s a great one. There’s stakeholdering going on, but it’s depressed.
I’d say they lost from that day. They could have lost in trust months and months of trust because when those things kind of go wrong. So again, that thing of we’re this type of company, we’re this type of place come on in and then you actually get there and that’s not how they’re playing. That would not only affect their hires, it’ll affect their customers and I think that’s a disaster.
Denise L.: Well, and that’s just dead, companies like that who say one thing and then do another aren’t sustainable over the long-term. Right? Because they’re not living in a place where they have integrity, right. And it shows up in the bottom line financially. They typically don’t sustain themselves. And this was a company that has over a hundred years in place, it’s privately owned and so on and so forth. What I am really good at helping people do is uncover the stories, tell their story of value and knowing their words. Tell that, but I’m also good at helping people uncover stories and companies to understand what are you really walking into and in this case is a coaching client.
She wanted just help on the negotiation, so that was the scope of our relationship, but now she’s like you know what? We’ve got to talk about the culture stuff and fit and how do I discover upfront and do that kind of intelligence work and it is like being a private investigator. So be a PI and figure out, am I going to walk into a work environment that’s going to allow me to perform at my best? If you can perform at your best, you can maximize your pay and other rewards. If you can’t, you’re going to be miserable and trust me life is too short to be miserable.
Gordon Sheppard: I’ve heard it’s North of 80% of people in corporate work these days are thinking about their next job. I mean, it’s just ridiculous. The fact that you can go along, walk beside people to help them understand their self-worth, help them kind of get what they’re worth. What a great value. I know you’re having with this service based approach. You can’t go wrong, Denise, if people need to get in touch with you what’s the best way to do that?
Denise L.: The best way to do that, I have a website so it’s one stop shop, so go to prosperconsultingllc.com. You’ll find it easy. You can click on the word connect and you’ll find out how to connect with me on Facebook and get those free resources. And I’m also on LinkedIn, but that’s the extent of my social media. I’m pretty focused in terms of what I do there. You can also get a free strategy call with me for 15 minutes, so click on contact and scroll down. You can schedule time to get access to my calendar right away. We can have a 15 minute conversation and I want to just encourage people, don’t hesitate to put yourself first.
I think in a world where we are challenged to do more and more in technology has taken over our lives. The true value in life is loving yourself and being self-aware and knowing your worth, and that is more than having boundaries and asking for what you’re worth. It’s about having the right boundaries and knowing what people do you invite in your life. Who do you network with in order to reach your goals? How do you focus at work to provide the best results to make sure that your brand or your reputation is solid? It’s a holistic way and a mindset of living.
Gordon Sheppard: Put yourself first. I have to pass along a story. I’d speak at conferences and do this kind of thing, so I’m in rooms full of, I can’t believe it, like professionals, like doctors, surgeons, all kinds of senior leaders, executives, engineer, all kinds of folks that need a whole bunch of what we’re talking about and one of the simple exercises that I do is I say, put your hand in the air. It could be 50 people, 200 people in the room, whatever it is. Put your hand in the air if you’re in at least one meeting per week and all the hands go up. Keep your hand in the air if you’re in at least two meetings per week, and they stay up. And then I say, count with me and I go, three, four, five, six. I’ve had people with their hands up at 25 and 30 meetings per week.
The next piece of that is to actually do that inventory and I say, go to your boss and just at least make them aware of it. So back to your put yourself first. That’s a simple tactic where they can start to go, this is crazy because as soon as we see those poor people, and it’s not funny, you see them holding their hand in the air. They’ve never thought about it this way. They’re just sort of getting through life, but what do they do their regular work? They’re doing it at night, they’re doing it on the weekends. They’re not present with their kids or their spouse or whatever they’re trying to do. It is a disaster. And that is just one example I think of another area where put yourself first is absolutely critical.
Denise L.: It is. And if you want to be so good, they can’t ignore you. It is about focus. You have to focus on what you want to accomplish. And we have so many things tugging at us, never in the history of humanity have we had so many different ways of getting information and we’re all in information overload, right? And what you have to do is get really clear on what is important to you and I’m going to give you a construct that I use as I make decisions and as I think about how I spend my time and prioritize things. So think about a triangle and on that triangle put the words on each point. Money, health and relationships. In the middle of it put time. If you think about the 24 hours in a day that we all have, you are trading between using money, earning money, saving money, health, mental, physical, spiritual, emotional. And then your relationships. Who do you love? Yourself, others, family, friends. Make sure you are living and choosing how you spend your time on purpose and focused.
Gordon Sheppard: This sounds like a great way to get out at your end of days and smile as opposed to having regrets. That simple triangle thing. Again, another bombshell. Denise, thank you so much for being on the show.
Denise L.: Thank you for having me, Gordon. I really appreciate it.
Gordon Sheppard: Now, wasn’t that just an outstanding interview? I mean, think about the theme of it. Know what you’re worth. Build your value. Take care of you inc because you are in charge. You’re in charge when you have to go and ask for that raise. You are in charge when you walk in to lead a meeting. You’re the one who can inspire yourself and the people around you. I just love holistic message that Denise brings forward.
And in addition to the wisdom that Denise passed along, I want to recommend a few other podcast episodes from the Meeting Leadership Podcast that you can put into action. And the first one I want to mention is called how to make a great first impression in a meeting? And you can get that by going to meetingleadershipinc.com/38. And then on episode 64 it’s called, how to deal with conflict in a team meeting>
And I know that we were talking a lot during the interview about this idea of knowing your worth when you go in there, this is also going to help you along. So you can get this episode by going to meetingleadershipinc.com/64. And then because Denise pointed out that you really should be conscious of the actual cost of a meeting, check out episode 20, it’s called how to measure the real cost of a meeting and you can get that by going to meetingleadershipinc.com/20.
And as always, this episode of the Meeting Leadership Podcast is brought to you by the Meeting Leadership Academy. If you are looking for some terrific live training options and online training options for you and your team to help you grow your skills, get inspired and really learn how to run outstanding meetings. Then visit meetingleadershipinc.com/academy. And for everyone who is already a subscriber thank you so much, and if you haven’t done it yet, make sure to hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app and leave a rating and review and we will definitely get back to you about that as well. And as always, thank you so much for listening and we’ll see you next time on the Meeting Leadership Podcast.
Thanks for listening to the Meeting Leadership Podcast. Be sure to subscribe for more strategies that help you become an outstanding leader and don’t forget to rate and review so we can bring you even more great content. We’ll see you next time right here on the Meeting Leadership Podcast.
Links From This Episode
- Prosper Consulting https://prosperconsultingllc.com/
- MLP 020: How To Measure The Real Cost $ Of A Meeting https://meetingleadershipinc.com/20
- MLP 038: How To Make A Great First Impression In A Meeting https://meetingleadershipinc.com/38
- MLP 064: How To Deal With Conflict In A Team Meeting https://meetingleadershipinc.com/64
- MLP 142: How Leaders Can Build A Remarkable Brand with Luiza Campos https:meetingleadershipinc.com/142
- Meeting Leadership Academy – https//meetingleadershipinc.com/academy
The Meeting Leadership Newsletter
Subscribe to get great tips, information and the inspiration you need to improve your meeting productivity and profitability!
Share Your Feedback
Please leave a review below, or make a suggestion for future episodes.
You can also support the show by subscribing, rating and reviewing on Apple Podcasts – or wherever you listen to the show.
Connect With Gordon Sheppard
• LinkedIn – http://linkedin.com/in/gordonsheppard
• Twitter – @gordonsheppard1

Gordon Sheppard
Gord is on a mission to change the world, one meeting at a time. Over his 25+ years in business Gord has run or participated in more than 2000 meetings! Not only is Gord the CEO of Business Expert Solutions Inc. (owner/operator of Meeting Leadership Inc), but he is also a Facilitator, Trainer, Business Consultant, Author, Speaker and Podcaster who helps leaders learn how to have great meetings, so they can build outstanding organizations and serve their clients at the highest possible level.