Adam Torres and Gloria Feldt discuss Gloria’s new book.
Subscribe: iTunes / Spotify
Apply to be a guest on our podcast here
Show Notes:
New book alert! In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Gloria Feldt, Co Founder and President at Take The Lead. Explore Take The Lead and Gloria’s new book, Mission Matters: Mission-Based Leaders Share Inspiring Stories on Power and Purpose (Women Leaders Edition, Volume 1).
Watch Full Interview:
About Gloria Feldt
Gloria Feldt is a nationally acclaimed expert on women, power, and leadership with expertise that comes from frontline leadership experience, a bestselling author, and in-demand keynote speaker. Selected for Forbes 50 over 50, she is cofounder and president of Take The Lead, whose mission reflects her life’s passion: to prepare, develop, inspire, and propel women to take their fair and equal share of leadership positions across all sectors by 2025 by providing breakthrough training, mentoring and coaching role modeling, and thought leadership.
Gloria is a bestselling author of five books. She is also formerly president and CEO of the world’s largest reproductive health and advocacy organization, Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Recognized as a Forbes 50 over 50 honoree in 2022, she was previously named by Vanity Fair one of “America’s Top 200 Women Leaders, Legends, and Trailblazers,” Glamour’s “Woman of the Year,” She Knows Media Inspiring Woman, Women’s eNews 21 Leaders for the 21st Century, Women Economic Forum Circle of Light award, Texas Monthly’s Texas 20, Martin Luther King Living the Dream Award, Diversity Leadership Alliance Diversity Leader Award, and Forbes 40 Over 40.
Gloria has been widely quoted and published, including by the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, The Daily Beast, Forbes, Fast Company, Time, Huffington Post, Glamour, Elle and Ms. She has appeared (among others) on CNN, MSNBC, the Today Show, Good Morning America and The Daily Show, and an infinite number of podcasts as both guest and host.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today is one of my favorite types of episodes. We’re doing a book launch today and we’re welcoming back you.
Gloria felt who is the co founder and president over at take the lead. And I I’m proud to announce an author in our most recent mission matters book that we did with women connect for good and Dr. Nancy, and I’m just completely thrilled to have you here, Gloria. Welcome back. Thank you, Adam. And I must say that was quite an opening for this show.
So I’m all pumped up now. I’ll take that from you. I’ll take that any day of the week. Fantastic. Well, we got a lot to talk about today. So, of course, I want to talk about take the lead. We’re, of course, going to talk about the book. And I and we’ll get into the power up conference. I want to do a little bit of a recap on that to that amazing experience experience of when I came and also what, what to expect in the future from the conference.
But before we do all of that let’s, let’s start with our mission matters minute. Where, where we share what we do and ask you what your mission is. So Gloria at mission matters, our aim and our goal is to amplify stories that we feel need to be heard from entrepreneurs, executives, organizations and companies.
That’s our mission. Gloria, what mission matters to you? My mission is for women to have full equality. And that really sums it up. Really. I, you know, I’ve done it in many different ways in my life, but if I’m asked to boil it down to the core of this mission. It’s always about advancing women and having gender equality.
Yeah. And and thank you for sharing that. And I know, even though we’ve spoken before, we have a lot of new audience. So I do want to go a little bit further into that. So when you say you’ve been, you’ve been on this mission for a while in different areas and different facets and different platforms.
Maybe talk a little bit about that before we go further into the book. Sure. Well, it started with actually, it started with the civil rights movement. In the, in the 1960s, I always say, you know, I’m very Googleable. So I just might as well go ahead and tell my age but it really started with the civil rights movement in which I learned a couple of really important things.
One is that people working together, even if they don’t have a lot of formal power or any formal power, work together and they have a clear mission, really accomplish things. They can, they can, they can, their mission matters. And they, yeah. They can accomplish great things. So I learned that. The other thing was just a more informal observation, which was that the women were doing all the frontline work.
Men were getting all the credit and all of the leadership positions. Yeah. I had this epiphany. Wait a minute. If there are civil rights, Women should have them too. And it was really at that point that I, and I was very young and had small children and I was just being a community volunteer. And it was at that point that I knew that whatever I did in life.
I would be working toward having equality for women. And it wasn’t too long after that, that the equal rights amendment was passed out of Congress. And I, I got involved somewhat in that. I was teaching at start at the time, and I was planning on being a high school social studies teacher. Yeah. And I was, you know, I had joined some women’s organizations.
I will say, I always say the League of Women Voters taught me everything about how you actually get things done or how the government actually works how you actually can have an impact on public policy. But I, so I, I was finishing my teaching degree and about to do my student teaching when my professor suggested I was, my final course was ecology.
And my professor suggested that I do my term paper on the small new Planned Parenthood affiliate in West Texas. I was living in Odessa, Texas. If there are Friday Night Lights fans here, I want you to know it’s a real thing. My children all graduated from Permian High School and really is the center of the universe there.
So I I, I Okay. All right. I learned a little bit about the organization when I was teaching Head Start because one of my teaching colleagues and believe it or not, her priest or both on her Catholic priest or both on the Planned Parenthood board at that time. That’s pretty progressive. Yeah.
Progressive, but their, their, their, their philosophy was, you know, we’re working with poor people. How, how can we tell them they have to have a baby every year? Cause we can’t feed them and clothe them, help them know how to plan their families so that they can really take good care of their children.
Very progressive at that time. Yeah. Very progressive at that time. Very progressive. Anyway, I, so I wrote my paper and I submitted my paper and literally two weeks later, the executive director who I’d interviewed called me and said, I’m leaving. I think you should submit a resume. Wow. I had never spoken to this woman.
I’d never met this woman before. How large was the organization at this point? Just roughly, roughly just to give us a while. Like five small clinics in West Texas. When you say startup, it was a startup at that point. Yeah, it was, it was just like three years old. Wow. And they had, it was Midland, Odessa, big, they weren’t in big spring yet.
They have, anyway, they had like five little clinics in little West Texas towns, very small. And I, I don’t even remember what the budget size was, but it was. It was minimal, but I yeah, but so I thought, well, I’ve never had a formal job interview before the jobs I’ve had. I have sort of just, you know, they’ve happened and because I was volunteering or something like that.
So, so it would be good experience. I’m in no danger of being hired because I know nothing about running an organization. I know nothing about this, or, you know, no danger of being hired. That’s funny. No danger. I like, you know, they would be fools. to offer me this job. But anyway, I, I think I figured out why they did offer me the job, which was that like they would hire, they would do national searches each year for three years and they would hire someone who would come in from someplace.
Else and they’d get to Odessa, Texas and they’re like, I’m outta here as soon as I can. And they would leave after a year. Well, I had been living in Odessa for a long time, so they assumed that I would be, you know, I understood the community. I understood the culture. Yeah. And I, and I would be staying there for a while, which, which was true.
So I that, so that’s how I got started. And fast forward. 30 years later, I retired as the national president, having been CEO of the Arizona affiliate in between for 18 years. So that, so that when you left the organization, like roughly the size, would you say, like, oh, well, roughly, I mean, like, yeah, just so people, I mean, I, I can’t glance over a 30 year career like that as a cliff note, come on, Gloria, I don’t want to assume.
Are you kidding me? I’m not, I’m not going to let you off the hook. Well, I have the. Privilege of growing that tiny West Texas affiliate into a medium size, really functioning affiliate. And then I went to Arizona where I grew a sort of an underperforming middle sized affiliate into one of the three or four largest in the country.
And at that time, I guess, I don’t know, our budget was approaching maybe, I don’t know. Six or 7 million, which was kind of real money. Yeah. Yeah. In the 1990s. And we were serving I can’t even like 60,000 patients. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or something like that. And we had 16, we had 16 clinics. Wow. And we had expanded our services greatly.
And then at the national organization I took over at a time when. Things were not real great, either financially or otherwise. And I had the opportunity to grow that as well. We pretty much doubled our budget. And by the time I left, the overall national organization was pretty much about a billion dollars, I would say.
So it was one of the biggest nonprofits in the country. Yeah, that’s amazing. Amazing career. And when I, and I was, I was thinking about you actually recently when I went to go, I was talking about my mother and some other things that had to do with her. And I remember, so she was the second employee at covenant house, Michigan, the first one being doc, a gentleman by the name of Dr.
Joseph. And I remember. moving. When I think about my childhood, moving them in, like literally being like, I don’t know, 15 16 carrying desks it and stuff like that, because it was very much a startup for that market. And now I look, they have, they’ve helped thousands and thousands of people in that market and they’ve and they have now different sales.
centers and all these other things and with helping, you know helping youth in that area. And I’m thinking about what it looks like and what it’s like to dedicate your life and you know, decades to building an organization in nonprofit. And I was just, you were, you were on my mind for that one. I was like, Oh my gosh, this is, it’s amazing.
The people that do these things. It’s very gratifying. I will say, I feel like I’ve been very lucky to make my life’s passion into my life’s work, but it wasn’t over. It wasn’t over. Oh no. Oh no. When I left, I, I thought I want, I seriously wanted to sort of semi retire. Yeah. I was planning on writing books, making speeches and you know, I called it piecework, you know, doing a little consulting here and there and having a much quieter life.
Well, Well so one of the books that I wrote because I became obsessed with trying to figure out why women hadn’t reached parity in leadership, even though we open doors and change laws. And we’d seen a woman first, almost everything, but women were still about less than 20%, actually 18 percent across the board in the top leadership of every single sector.
And what clicked for me was realizing that, you know, If you don’t have equal positions of leadership and therefore equal power and probably equal pay, by the way, we would keep fighting the same battles over and over and never win them. And I feel like that really just, that just lit a new fire under me to not just figure out the why, but the what do you do about it?
I wrote a book about that called No Excuses Nine Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power. And people started asking me to teach workshops, leadership workshops, what I had written in this book. Well, okay, that’s kind of fun because I, you know, I started out as a teacher. I figured it was so fun and it was so wonderful to see when I helped women shift their thinking about power.
From an oppressive idea of the power over, which has been the narrative of history and fighting and the assumption of scarce resources to a generative, creative, innovative way of thinking about power as the power to, to do your own innovating and creating and make life better for your family, your, your, your, your community, yourself, the world, your company.
And I would. Say that to women and it seems so simple. But it was like this huge, it was like a mask would fall off of their faces. And they had been sort of like holding back. And even those women who had been trying to rise in, you know, in the workforce, they, they were often like, they were like the only woman in the room very often.
And it was really hard. And they were in a, in a, in organizations that had a culture that they did not create. So it didn’t feel welcoming to them. And so they were often not happy with what they were doing. Well, as soon as I told them how to reframe, it’s just like, it opened up. Yeah, it just liberated them to think.
Why do you think that is? And I, I mean, and I know it’s gonna be different from person to person, but it’s almost like being given permission or the knowledge or the, I don’t want to use that word. That’s not the right word. But like, why do you think that is? Because I know exactly what you’re talking about in that feeling.
But why do you think that is for so many women? I think we, we all men and women grow up in the same culture. And so we ingest the same biases. Oh, yeah. You know, just the same biases. Kind of like programming. Like even if you know, you don’t know what’s happening, but it’s still happening, even if you do.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And, and so it’s not an evil plot. It’s just, it’s just how human beings are. So I think, I think it’s, you know, as women, we are so socialized. To, if you think about, you know, if, if you have a boy child and a girl child, you know that the little boys come out of the womb bouncing around knowing they own the world.
They, they, they have no, you know, they make noise. They’re messy, and everybody just thinks that’s so cute and. A little girl, you know, people say, Oh, she’s so cute. She’s so pretty. Isn’t she nice. She sits quietly. She stands in a row at school. What are those characteristics? It turns out serve a women very well.
Those are the things that actually help us do really well in school. For example, we learn reading quick, more quickly. We, we are able to sort of like integrate into the, you know, school life more easily. And we make good grades. We make better grades. By and large. But the downside of it is that it’s also very restrictive.
Women often think they have to be perfect in order to, to be qualified. The statistics are that if a man sees a job description and he can do one or two things, he will apply. If a woman sees that she can only do, if she doesn’t think she can do 80 or 90%, she will not apply. Because we have been conditioned to feel like we have to be.
Perfect. And, you know, perfection is the enemy of the, of the good, as they say. So, so I think those are the reasons why, Adam. I think, you know, it’s not, it’s not hardwired. It is not hardwired. It is culturally learned. Yeah, I see that. And I’ll use this word for myself. I don’t want to, I don’t want to project this on you.
But one of the reasons that for Mission Matters and the amount and the interviews we do and the types of guests we bring on, is I feel that by other people hearing other people’s stories in similar ways to us, How you’re teaching the nine different steps, which we’ll get into is as well. The number nine comes up often in your narrative.
So we’ll get into as well, but I feel like sometimes that connection or people hearing like a shared interest or a shared story, it almost gives people permission, like not YouTube for whatever they’re doing. If they’re an entrepreneur, if they want to be an, an activist, if they want whatever they want to do, like it gives them permission almost to be like, Oh, there’s somebody else out there that is like me or has that same background or they were able to do something and look, Oh, I can do that too.
So I love that. I love it. I think it makes it makes a lot of sense. And I think the fact that you were able to also kind of systematize that into your teaching and into your program so that you could maybe scale that to a larger audience that could then even empower more and more people. Like, I think that’s an amazing thing.
It’s exactly right. And I would add to it that, you know, I get really tired of telling my own story of being a teen mom in West Texas and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don’t get tired of hearing it. It’s all good. Going to college after I had three kids. And I, you know, I get really tired of telling that story, but, but I have learned it is important to share that because often the other thing is that people, people feel ashamed.
And embarrassed if they didn’t do things, the quote, you know, right way or normal way. And the truth is, I always say, you know, it doesn’t matter where you start, just start, just start anywhere, wherever you might be. And so I, you know, it turns out that it is actually for me kind of a superpower, not to have been like everybody else, but to have known what it felt like to be kind of weird and other and, and, and it’s not, you know, not live my life the way people were supposed to live their lives, you know, finish high school, go to college.
Mary blah, blah, blah. You need to do all these things in the proper sequence. Well, you know you just, you can make your life good regardless. And even whatever mistakes you make, learn from them, get up and move on and consider it a blessing. It’s great. So I want to, let’s, let’s switch it up a bit. I want to get in to spend some of the time we have here talking about the new book.
Ah, yes. So first off how fun, and I’m, I’m just so grateful to Dr. Nancy, Women Connect for Good, and like, just bringing this project together. Like, how about the group? I wanted to start with them. How about the group of authors that were assembled? Like, obviously, when I saw you and I’m reading the book and it goes chapter after chapter, and when I seen all of the rest of the authors, I’m like, I’ll tell you a quick story.
I when I read the final draft before I was like, so they compile everything for me and I read it and I’m going through, I’m like one chapter and two chapters and three chapters. Then I’m cheering up a little bit. I’m a little misty eyed and we don’t like mission. We’re, you know, business content.
Normally this was us taking a, I think, a leap forward. forward in terms of thinking about, like, really elevating other missions outside of business alone. But I was a little misty eyed and I told the managing editor, Hillary, I’m like, Hey, Hillary, you should have warned me. This is, I shouldn’t have been reading this like Saturday morning thinking it was going to be a light read.
Like it’s, it was deep. Can, can you talk about just maybe that concept of like the collaboration component of this? Right. Well, first of all, with a big shout out to Dr. Nancy O’Reilly, which is if she has one mantra that she says over and over and over again, it is we have to lift each other up and women need to support other women.
And so really, by collecting us all up to share our leadership. Tools and tips and our knowledge and our inspiration is that’s exactly what she was doing. And of course, she’s also one of the authors, but the fact that she was so excited to meet you, Adam, and to learn about how you put these books together.
And she saw immediately the power in being able to have mostly, these are all of the, the groups that Nancy supports with her foundation. And so we’re already like minded. Because, you know, we all have, we’re all passionate about a mission. And and, and so regardless of how we implement that, we’re, we’re pretty much all, all passionate about something.
So, and it’s such a fun community. This is the first time like we’ve done, we published over 400 authors. You may or may not know that, but we published over 400 authors and This is the first book we put together where obviously we’re normally, we’re bringing a lot of the community together and they feed off of different things.
We do events or otherwise. This is the first time I’ve been part of a project where I’m like, Whoa, like step back. Like, Oh, what’s going on here? There’s a conference here, a conference over there. And the, the outside of the book and outside of mission matters, like the community that’s been around. been built around like the missions that everybody’s, you know, having from their own angle and supporting women and progress.
They supporting each other and all their different events. Whether I seen Tiffany coming to your event, are you going to hers or like what they’re doing in Washington or all the pictures? I can’t keep up with this book. I can’t glory. I’m like, well, your observation is exactly right. I mean, a number of us who are authors in this book.
been colleagues and friends and, you know, people who have, have, have had similar but different missions and have supported each other along the way. And so that’s, that’s part of the really fun aspect of this. And actually, I mean, I, I really want to have a book party in New York. I’m in. I’m looking for an excuse.
So let’s let’s do it. You tell me, you tell me and I’ll do it. We already hit up DC. We hit up we obviously LA is going to be some more stuff coming out there. And yeah, I’m in, I actually happen to love giving book parties and, and I just think, you know, people love books and they love meeting the authors of books.
I think that was fun. But you know, I, it, it sort of leads me back to where I didn’t finish that, that part of my trajectory, which is I ended up the book, no excuses, ended up forming the basis for the organization, take the lead, which is a nonprofit organization that I co founded now just a little over 10 years ago.
We’re celebrating our 10th anniversary this year. And I’m so glad you were at our 10th anniversary conference. And concert. And it was, it was really great. Talk a little bit about that. Superwoman was there other than you and and Dr. Nancy, two other superwomen, but the other superwoman was there too.
Like, talk, talk a little bit about that. All right. Okay. Well, because it was our 10th anniversary, we thought we would splurge a little bit. And so we had the concert at the Kennedy center, which just took it up several notches. It was just, Wonderful to be in that venue. It was fabulous. And yes, our, our honoree, our leading woman honoree was Linda Carter, the, the Wonder Woman character that most people know.
I mean, there have been other people who have played that part now, but she’s kind of the one who defined it for our generations. And she was terrific. She gave an amazing speech. She also sings, but we, she didn’t sing at our concert. I was hoping she might sing as well, but we played some of her music.
So everybody heard some reason. Anyway, we had three with three different was there though. And some of the others, I follow some of them on Instagram now. Oh my gosh. So obsessed. They’re great. They’re amazing. I know we had these three different, completely different genres of music. And, and it was just, it was amazing.
We had Arsenevich. Indie pop group. But Betty and we had sweet honey and the rock who are just like the DC acapella choir, social justice oriented very much. So, and the three of them loved working together. They were like, well, we want to take this show on the road. So I don’t know. We’ll see. But then we had, we had the conference part in which we had panels and the topics were, our theme was.
Our theme, what was our theme? Our theme was together we lead. And so we had the panels together. We lead for health together. We lead for wealth together. We lead for telling your story. And that’s the one you were on together. We lead for all kinds, you know, we kind of went through the day following that, that model.
And and that was, that was, it was a great, it was a great day. It was a great day. We had some wonderful speakers and lots of, lots of really. powerful, not just inspiration, but we always ask our speakers to give people some concrete takeaways because, you know, sometimes you go to a conference and you get inspired and then you walk away and it’s like eating cotton candy.
Like no nutrition there. But but no nutrition. Yeah. Yeah. Right. But I’m, but I’m like, you know, again, the teacher in me wants people to have some actionable takeaways, some actionable learning that they’ve had from the conference and we, that was the first year we had done it in Washington, DC. Hmm. And we’re going to do it there again next year.
That was also my first, just a little fun fact, my first visit to Washington, D. C. just up by, I’d never even been. Yeah, that was amazing. I was like, oh, you finally got me here. Thank you. That’s good in and of itself. And we you know, what I discovered was because I’ve been in Washington, D. C. a lot, but it was always for political things that were happening.
Well, I got to know the women’s community in DC. There is a phenomenal women’s community, particularly of entrepreneurs, and they are so, they’re wonderful. So we will build on that. And our, our date for the conference, everybody put this on your calendar. Everybody put this now because our date for the conference is always women’s equality day, August 26.
And we haven’t decided yet whether we’ll do the concert the night before or the same day, but we’ve done it both ways. We just haven’t figured that part of it out, but put August 26 on your calendar and be prepared to be in DC and really highlight the The importance of Women’s Equality Day. Amazing. And we and one thing that I do want to get a little bit further into because it also relates to the book, of course, is, and I was just so impressed was when I was at the conference, and you may not know this, we haven’t really recapped it, like, about my experience.
there. But at the tables and just talking and just having general conversations was that many of the women that had been through some of your programs and they were all speaking the same language about power tools and like what that means. And so when you talk about substance I would, I got to see the benefit and I got having conversations and I’d be like, Oh, how do you know glory?
Or how do you know that? And they’d be talking about the programs and like what it’s done and what a difference it’s made in their career, their life and their trajectory. Can you maybe talk about that? Cause it all ties into it. And in the book, I know you wrote about the nine leadership power tools to advance your career, nine leadership power tools for entrepreneurs.
And then so I know we talked a bit about some of this, but like, can you get into that high level, like the program and what that looks like? Sure. So. Whatever the topic is, whatever the industry is that we’re working with, the core program always has these components. First of all, there is the that transformation of how you think about power.
I call that the power concepts. So we start with that. Then there are the nine leadership power tools. Those are really actionable things that I learned along the way. This program is not your basic nuts and bolts leadership program because there are plenty of those out there. But I’ve, I wanted to just do the things that I find I’ve found in my career did not get taught to me in any leadership program.
And they’re the ones that are, Most important as it turns out, because you have to know yourself. The best leaders know themselves very deeply and they show themselves to their people. And if you’re not comfortable with yourself, you can’t do that. So we so there’s the, the power tools fall into three.
distinct buckets. One are the self definitional tools, and those really get into know your history define your own terms. How do you want the world to know you? And and an assessment of what is the power and what are the strengths that you bring. So here’s what you’ve got. The second bucket is what I call the counterintuitive power tools.
And near the things you’ve often been told not to do. But I, you know, I teach people how to embrace controversy and use it in a positive way to get to better solutions and same with chaos. Carpe the chaos. And then also wear the shirt. In other words, let people know your values, your deepest values, because people follow people who have a point of view, they really respect you if you know what your belief system is and you share it with them.
And then there are the change leadership tools. Which are a little bigger systemic kinds of things like how do you create a movement whether and I don’t mean walking around with picket sign I mean, how do you organize people around you who think like you who support would support you and share your concerns?
How do you have the courage to actually talk about those issues? How do you? How do you build your strategy? So you go to where the points of power are, and you can make change by, by doing that together. So there’s that, there’s employ every medium, which is like what Mission Matters does. You, you have I noticed in the material that was sent to me for this meeting, you’re, we’re, we’re streaming on like five different platforms.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. We, we work around here. Everywhere. Every medium. You are the message. And then the ninth power tool is tell your story. Tell your story because your story is really your power and your truth. And so those are the nine leadership tools. And then so we’ve got the power concepts, the nine power tools.
Then each person who goes through the course creates her own strategic leadership action plan. And it has to be measurable and accountable. And we follow up for about three months to see if they’re actually working on their plan. And and then the, I think one of the secret sauce really is that we also create a community for each one of these courses or cohorts.
So w what, you know, the, it’s having that support group. Really helps. And I, you know, we’ve found that some of our, some of the Facebook groups that we set up eight years ago, nine years ago, the women are still in touch with each other and support each other. They, they go drinking together. They help, they’ll call on, call on their sisters.
So that’s what I learned from that. That’s what I learned from teaching. You know, when you teach, you learn. Yeah. That’s I learned. Yeah, it was. You know, it’s really the relationships that you create that are the most important thing. So now I have this whole course that I can actually, it is now available on our website and I’ll put it in the chat.
It’s now available as a self study online course, an entrepreneur version, and on the leadership track in an organization version so that people can tap into that knowledge anytime they want to, they can have all of it. It makes it very, You know, very affordable and and very accessible. So that’s the next step.
Great. Well, Gloria I gotta ask what’s next. I mean, I know you gotta, you got a lot more going on. Summit on women and wealth and power. You got entrepreneurship program. You mentioned the power. I mean, give me the updates. Like I can’t keep track. You’re very active on social media, by the way.
Everybody followed Gloria’s Instagram and leave that too. And well, but what’s next? What’s next? Well, I just have to put in a plug for this, Because, you know, you, you, you were talking about my energy level and I do have a very high energy level, but I’m also now blessed with having a digital twin that one of my board members created.
And you probably saw there. Oh yeah. Your digital twin. I remember now. Yes. They presented it at the conference. I am now beginning to understand the value of it because it is going to democratize all of this stuff. vast body of research that I’ve created over the years. And so in the next couple of years, that digital twin really is going to be a resource for anybody to ask questions.
Of me and the me that, that me that I, you know, but anyway, or just hang out or just hang out with you. How are you doing? Gloria, like have a glass of wine together, whatever.
So there’s that. But the so yeah, early next year, the two programs we have on the drawing boards right now are a conference in a smaller conference in Arizona called Women, Wealth and Power. And that’s sort of the next step of if you know, once you know your power, we power to what, you know, know your power and you’re already if you’ve been able to, Elevate yourself in leadership.
So what if you’re not doing some kind of good for the world? So well, you know, and the importance for women of understanding the power of building wealth and why we should think about building wealth and not be like me. I never negotiated for my salary. I just was happy when I could get direct deposit of my money in the bank and I didn’t have to look at it.
No, that wasn’t the way to be. You know, that wasn’t the way we really need to think more, more proactively about it. Our wealth and what we want it to mean for us and our families. And then the other one is kind of an outgrowth of our entrepreneur program which we did last year called, and part of it this year called nine excuse me 50 women can change the world in entrepreneurship.
And so we have been asked by JP Morgan Chase in Arizona to partner with them. They have a really good program. That’s very nuts and bolts for small businesses. They don’t have any of the mindset elements that I just shared with you. So we’re put these two things together and, and create a really cool course that will be free and available to people in, in Phoenix, in the Phoenix area.
So there’s that, but I will tell you that the experience of. that you just described of being with some of the women, so many of the women who have been through our programs because we honored a number of them at our conference and to hear them talk. And I realized, you know what? Our biggest asset is the thousands of women who have been through take the lead programs.
And so we are working to develop a way To have them be able to create their own programming locally, wherever they might be really, really exponentially multiply the reach and the power of what we’re doing. And I feel like, you know, like smack up the side of the head. Why didn’t I think of that before?
But it’s an evolution. No, these things are evolutions that I won’t. I won’t say a smack of the side of the head. I’ll just say that, like, it’s an evolution. Like bigger things happen. Like if you’d have thought I thought I was gonna be a podcast or they didn’t have that when I was even in school. What are you talking about?
Like I’ve done over 6000 interviews. What? Yeah, I wish I would have thought of like a million things. Exactly. Yeah. So all of these people, we’re going to be inviting them to actually help co create this whole plan. And it’ll probably take all of next year to get it up and off the ground. But, but I feel like that, you know, right now women are really hungry for something like that.
And it creates the connection and it also gives them the power to use their power to create their own, create their own programming, but, you know, go out there, let a thousand flowers bloom. Amazing. Final question, Gloria. If somebody is listening or watching this and they want to follow up, they want to learn more about the book’s easy.
That’s going to be in the show notes. So we’ll have a link for you in the show notes or anybody that’s looking. It’s on Amazon, all that good stuff. But about the Power Up Conference following you your, your amazing newsletter like how did they get involved? Well, I just put into the chat several things that people can just click, you know, can just copy and paste.
And paste and use. I personally am at Gloria Felt every on every social media platform that I’m on. So you just have to remember there’s a D T, the last two letters felt as F E L D T, which is kind of trips people up sometimes. But so I’m, I am there and I am very responsive. I actually do my own social media and I respond to my own social media.
I, Really shouldn’t be using my time that way, but you know, it gives me pleasure. So I do it. And and then take the lead on social media is at take lead women on some of them, depending on like Instagram and Twitter and the ones that you can’t have as many letters, but on LinkedIn and Facebook and some of the others, it’s at take the lead women.
The website is take the lead women. com. My personal website again is just my name, Gloria felt dot com. And actually there you can find out about the next book that I wrote after the, the nine ways women can change how we think about power book, no, no excuses. There’s a book called intentioning that has an additional nine leadership tools in it.
So then you can have. You’re going to have a lot of, you’re going to have like, 18 leadership. Everything I know about leadership is there. And yeah, and then I also put into the chat, and you can also find it on, through our website, is as if you’re interested in taking the course, the online course.
So there’s, there’s that, that link is there. And just a little tip here, which is, you know, we have Black Friday and Cyber Monday coming up. They’re going to be some really good deals on that course in the next few days. So keep looking. And and, and, and, and I’d really welcome to have many of your listeners join.
Amazing. Well, Gloria, again, thank you. Thank you so much for all you do and for being a part of the mission matters, a family and, and participating in the recent book release and everything else that you’re doing. I’m excited to continue to be involved with take the lead and to continue to build I think what you’re doing is amazing and for the audience, everybody tuning in, we’ll definitely put some links in the show notes so that you can go check out the website.
site. Definitely check out Gloria on social media to very active, great content. And if this is your first time with mission matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas and hopefully new inspiration to help you along on your journey as well.
So again, hit that subscribe or follow button and Gloria, thanks again for coming on. A pleasure, Adam. Thank you for having me.
