“God does not gift mediocrity.” – Dethra Giles
About Our Guest
Dethra Giles is a four-time TEDx speaker, ranked a Top 100 HR Influencers by Engagedly Inc, selected as HR Gazette’s HRchat Pod Top 22 most influential experts in HR, and is a host of the Happily Ever Employed podcast. As the CEO of ExecuPrep, she leads an international Performance Optimization Consulting firm specializing in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Her methods and impact have earned her the title “University tested, and industry approved.” Her unique blend of advanced education and industry experience provides her the needed expertise to impact executives and high potential teams.
Her clients have included Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, Kaiser Permanente, The Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Army Corp of Engineers, and the Salvation Army. Dethra takes her education and years of experience and turns them into results-driven actions for her clients.
Episode Summary
This REWIND episode is powered by the Move to Millions Live & The Million Dollar Intensive
This episode originally ran earlier this season.
If there is one thing that burns my biscuits, it’s watching a talented woman business owner downplay and dismiss her gifts and significance. I’m sure it happens with men as well, but I have only experienced it amongst women. One of my gifts, is that I can see a woman who is brilliant and honor her brilliance without feeling that doing so stifles my own. And that is why I am so excited about today’s episode and guest. Far too often, tremendously talented business owners stifle their gifts and hide in plain sight calling it “humility.” If you think that being humble is the key to your next level, today’s episode will set you straight. My guest, Dethra Giles, shares a powerful quote from her good friend, “you’re not humble, you’re hiding.” Ouch. The truth of the matter is that we actually do the world a disservice when we don’t own and honor our gifts by taking up space. As Dethra unpacks her own story of walking boldly into her greatness, she will leave a tremendous amount of success clues for your own journey of honoring your gift and taking up space. If you are ready to own your brilliance all the way to the income and impact God preordained for you, grab your pen and paper and listen in now to discover:
- #1 way we stifle our gifts and call it humility
- How to start owning your brilliance and leveraging it to increase your impact and income
- And so much more
Important Links:
- Move to Millions Live
- Incredible One Enterprises
- DrDarnyelle.com
- Move to Millions Planner
- Move to Millions Book
Powerful Quotes from the Episode
- “We have a responsibility to take up space..”
- “I think that’s what the Bible is talking about when it says your gift will make room for you.”
- “Money is a byproduct of your gift making room.”
- “I have a very good friend, Sherry Riley, who is a very good friend and business partner. She always uses the statement, you’re not humble, you’re hiding.”
- “I can take someone from being a receptionist to a CEO just by the stuff that I say on stage.”
- “People compare gifts, and we know comparison is the enemy of success.”
How to Connect with Dethra Giles
Website: www.ExecuPrep.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/Dethra.Giles
Twitter: www.twitter.com/ DethraGiles
Last Book Dethra Read: She’s only been reading recipes lately
Favorite Quote: If you can’t teach it simply, you probably don’t know it well. ~Dethra Giles
Tool Dethra Swears By Own Her Move to Millions: Voxer
Incredible One Enterprises, LLC is not responsible for the content and information delivered during the podcast interview by any guest. As always, we suggest that you conduct your own due diligence regarding any proclamations by podcast guests. Incredible One Enterprises, LLC is providing the podcast for informational purposes only.
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I also thought my work will speak for me. Your work is mute. It does not speak for you. You are required to speak for it. So I realized in my hiding I wasn’t getting opportunities that people who were not nearly as good as I was were getting.
You’re listening to the Move to Millions podcast with Dr. Darnyelle J. Harmon. If you’re ready for high level conversations that position and prepare you to move your company cash flow and connection to and beyond the million dollar mark, let’s get this party started. This episode is powered by the Move to Millions live afterglow and open enrollment. If you missed us in 2023, listen to me. You do not want to miss 2024. Go now to Movetomillionseventergergerglow to get all the details. I am so excited for you. First of all, I need you to grab a whole notebook because the conversation that I’m about to introduce you to today baby, I don’t know if you’re ready, but here is the mandate from today’s guest, Dethra Giles. Okay, you need to take up space. Why? Because Dethra says God does not gift mediocrity. That could preach. Oh, I’m so excited for you. Your whole life is about to change with the most scintillating sense of joy, fulfillment, and abundance. My guest is going to bring it. Dethra is also a member of our Move to Millions Mastermind. I’m here to tell you my girl made the Move to Millions this year in her business, and we awarded her with the Moved to Millions Award at our event. That just happened a few weeks ago. Dethra. Giles is a four time TEDx speaker, ranked a top 100 HR influencer by engagingly Incorporated, selected as HR Gazette’s HR Chat, Pod top 22 most influential experts in HR and is the host of the Happily everemployed Podcast. As the CEO of Execut, she leads an international performance optimization consulting firm specializing in diversity, equity, and inclusion. Her methods and impact have earned her the title university tested and industry approved. That’s what I’m talking about. Her unique blend of advanced education and industry experience provides her the needed expertise to impact executives and high potential teams. Her clients have included Louis Vuitton, Moe Hennessy, kaiser Permanente, the center for Disease Control, the Army Corp of Engineers, and the Salvation Army. Dethra takes her education and years of experience and turns them into results driven actions for her clients. According to her, every organization can have optimal performance. Her job is to make it what it is by presenting work in a way that it had not worked before and providing coaching, training, and structure to fill in the gaps. By optimizing employee performance, organization, structure, and leadership, Dethra makes magic happen within organizations. She is a top rated speaker for the National Sherm, the Society of Human Resource Management, and an expert in delivering presentations that help build accountable teams and increase productivity. She holds a BA in English and Spanish from Mercer University, an MBA, and a Master’s of Science in Conflict Management, and she has served as adjunct faculty at the Federal Executive Institute, georgia State University, Mercer University, and as a faculty member of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business and the Tory Birch Foundation. Okay, if you haven’t heard me say it already, the girl is bad, and she is my client. So excited for Dethra and her getting her work out into the world. I remember when I first met her, she said, I am the absolute best on stage, and I’m here to tell you that the girl is powerful. And you’re going to see in just a few minutes. According to Dethra, her job is to deliver results to her clients by developing actionable strategies, optimizing performance, and eliminating distractions. Again, you have been warned that you need an entire notebook. I need you to grab pen and a notebook. We’re not even grabbing paper, y’all. We grabbing a whole notebook. In fact, the truth of the matter is, you really should have a Move to Millions podcast notebook. You all know I’ll be dropping these gems, and I’ve been bringing you the best of the best to continue to impart insights that you need on this journey to and beyond the million dollar mark. So, without further ado, I just can’t wait to introduce you to my guest. Let’s jump into my conversation, Dethra Giles.
Dethra Giles, I’m so excited to welcome you to the Move to Millions podcast. How are you today, my dear?
Oh, my gosh. I am so amazing. I cannot complain.
Awesome. Just before we jumped on for those of you who are listening, we were having a great little conversation, and we may or may not continue that conversation. I’m not entirely sure we’re going to see how it goes. But before we jump in, just take a quick moment and let everybody know who you are in your own words.
So I am Dethra. Giles. I am the founder and CEO of Executive Prep, an international consulting firm that gets to go around the world helping people and organizations optimize performance. We do that for three reasons to improve performance, productivity, and profits. And even though we say profits, we often work with nonprofits who will say. Dethra, we’re not profit based. And my thing is, you are not for profit, but you are also not for loss, just like us as individuals. So that’s me, and that’s who I am. I am the performance optimizer.
You know what I think is interesting about that? Because, yes, you are all those things. But just before we started recording, we talked about who you really are, and you did not introduce yourself that way. So let me rewind. Let’s try this again. Welcome to the Podcast Dethra. Take a quick moment and tell everybody who you are in your own words.
So, I am Dethra Giles, and I am one of the best public speakers in the entire world. I tell people that unapologetically, because I know that speaking is my gift from God. And God does not gift with mediocrity. So if I hit a stage, I am going to tear it down and make it uninhabitable for anyone that’s coming after me. So that is who I am.
There’s so many things I love about that Dethra, and I wrote down twice now, god doesn’t gift mediocrity. I love that.
I love that. First and foremost. The second thing that I love about what you said, because I find myself to be the same way. And I have not been invited back to places. And not that I was purposely trying to upstage whomever’s event it was, but one thing I’m not going to do is half step in my gift.
Absolutely not.
And so it turned into this whole other thing, and I have not been invited back. People are like, no, nobody wants to speak behind you. You did better than the host.
I’ve had that.
I literally at an event that I spoke at this 2022 Summer. It was hilarious because they had this closing speaker, and I was not The Closer. And a person that was organizing the event that had heard me speak before said, do not put this person after Dethra. I think Dethra needs to be our Closer. The organizers hadn’t heard me, and The Closer was their friend, so they put The Closer last. When I walked off the stage, The Closer, her face was beat red. She was ticked off. She was upset. And of course, you’ll see I dress a certain way. You’re going to see me the way I’m dressed. And she said, you come off the stage looking like this African queen, and I’m walking up here looking like a Delta flight attendant, and you have shut the crowd down, and now I have to come behind you. I had to hold my laughter, but everybody else that heard it, that was behind her, they were on the floor. But she was right. And I will probably not be invited.
And the thing is, it’s not your fault that God gave you this gift, because there’s something about having the gift of leveraging the power of your words to transform, to cut, to do all. You can perform surgery when you have the gift to speak and to speak powerfully, you will literally perform surgery on the whole audience. Absolutely. From the moment you open your mouth.
And taking up that space, one guy came up to me after one speech, and this guy was like, Six three. You all, I am five, six and a half. You need to get respect. My half, and I may be 130 on a good day. And he said, you seem so big on that stage, like you filled up this entire room. And this particular session, I was speaking to about 3500 people. He said, you were so big on that stage. And I’m like, I wasn’t big. My gift was big. And my gift is going to feel whatever room I’m talking in.
That’s so good. I love that. And what I heard as you were describing, even how tall you are and all of that, I heard small in stature only. And then you said, I wasn’t big. My gift was big. No, but you were big because you are your gift. And it’s important to say that because no matter who we are, when we have been given the gift and we all have actually been given the gift to take up space, we have to take up space.
Right?
And we all take up space differently. Yours and mine is through the power of speaking. Somebody else’s might be through the power of dance or the power of strategy or the power of coaching or whatever the power is. But we have a responsibility to take up space.
We have to. And I think that’s what the Bible is talking about when it says your gift will make room for you. And people often equate that to money. But I think money is a byproduct of your gift making room. When your gift makes room, that means it takes up space. And when you take up space, space is real estate and real estate cost.
And if you’re taking up real estate, people have to pay you for that real estate. And so first and foremost, the money is a byproduct. But first, it’s about taking up real estate.
That’s so good.
Dethra, I say that all the time, always pontificating on your gift will make room for you. But I never looked at it like real estate. That is so good. It is so good because I think what just happened for everyone who’s listening, who knows that they have a gift, who isn’t afraid of the power of their gift and maybe even sometimes downplays it, they all just got permission to not just let their gift make room for them, but to really inhabit the space that their gift is in. Like, far be it from whomever that didn’t listen to your friend who said, put her last. That’s a lesson they’re going to learn. What did Kevin Hart say you’re going to learn today? They learned today. Right. And it’s not your fault because that because we have a responsibility to show up and fully occupy the gift. And I think when we do that, and not even I think I know when we do that, this journey of building businesses, regardless of the work that we do. So let’s translate it right. So you are a powerful order. You use those skills of oration in tons of humongous rooms that then open up a conduit or door for your company to come into organizations and to further break down that gift that you have in a way that allows the employees to start to take up more space inside of their organization.
Absolutely.
It’s no mistake. It’s all very intentional when you understand. The first thing you said the second time you introduced yourself was that God does not gift mediocrity so powerful. How did you get to the point where you can now boldly and confidently articulate who you are in a way that isn’t disrespectful to anyone else? It’s only an admiration of who you are and who created you. How did you get there? Because I feel like so many people who will listen to this episode, they dance around this, and they don’t always come out as strong as you came out. So walk us through that.
Two things happen. One, I have a very good friend, Sherry Riley, who is a very good friend and business partner. She always uses the statement, you’re not humble, you’re hiding. And she put a nice bow on something that I had been mowing around in my mind for a very long time, because we’re taught to be humble, right? But I had to research what humility really meant, and I realized I wasn’t being humble. I was lying. And so many people that won’t step into their gift, they’re lying, pretending to be humble, like, you know your cake is better than everybody else’s. Why? When someone asks you about your carrot cake, you’re like, it’s good. You can get carrot cake from here. No, you know your carrot cake is better than their carrot cake. And when you don’t say that you’re not being humble, you are lying.
Here’s the other thing they’re doing, and this is the universal law, the law of circulation. It says that abundance is expanding around us at an ever increasing rate. But there are things we can do to stop abundance. And you know what one of those things are? Being humble downplaying and dismissing our greatness in exchange or because we don’t want to tell everybody who we really are. Like Sherry says, hiding. Hiding in plain sight, because we think that there’s a prize for hiding. Right? I say all the time. I literally just said I had a speaking engagement on Saturday, and I literally just said it there. If we had the cure for big sea cancer, we would never keep it to ourselves. We would shout it from the rooftops. And when you look up the word cancer in the dictionary, little sea cancer, the definition is disease. That means anytime something isn’t easy, that’s a cancer. So we all technically have the cure for cancer, but how many of us are shouting it from the rooftops in confidence and boldly declaring that we can solve a problem that our clients have been unsuccessful at solving on their own? We’re not, because we’re trying to be humble, which means that we’re really lying and we’re hiding. Girl, that’s good.
And that was the second part of it for me. The second part was, I know from my own faith as a Christian that a real Christian, not the pretend kind, but anyway, but that God created me for a purpose. And how I see that visually, because I’m a visual learner, is that there’s a hole in the earth that God was like Dethra hat. I’m creating her to fill this hole. And as long as I hide from what I’m excellent at, there are people falling in that hole that I was.
Put here to feel.
So I was like, am I going to keep lying and letting people fall into this hole or am I going to walk boldly in what I do? So not only do I feel the hole at level, I feel the hole at excess. So people aren’t only not just falling in the hole, they’re being catapulted from the hole that I filled.
That’s so good. And I love that it’s a visual because visuals, I think they stick more, right? Like, I can see myself deciding to play small or to downplay my gifts and my talents and then recollecting that I am a hole filler. And when I downplay and dismiss, somebody just fell into that hole and broke their neck, and now they’re dead because I didn’t show up fully.
Absolutely. That is so good. We have the key to when I say I optimize performance, that’s what I started with. But I do that when I’m speaking. I can take someone from being a receptionist to a CEO just by the stuff that I say on stage. I’m changing generations. I’m changing generational wealth, generational gap. Somebody’s child is going to go to college and graduate debt free because I stood in my gift. And I know that that’s not hyperbole. That’s factual. I had a person respond to me, send me a LinkedIn message the other day saying, hey, I listened to one of your talk on negotiations. I went back. I got a new job. So you motivated me to leave my job, apply for a new job. They offered me a salary. And based on what you told us, she said told me as if I was talking directly to her. It was a room full of people. She said, based on what you told me, I negotiated a $25,000 increase above what they offered me. Just based on what you said. Do you know what $25,000 a year can do for a family?
Yeah. That’s so good. Oh, that’s so good. We’re going to take a quick break, and when we come back, we’ll continue this conversation. We’ll be right back. It’s here. It’s here. You’ve heard me share about my new book, move to Millions a gazillion times. Well, now you can preorder your very own copy. The book officially releases November 7, 2023. And if you preorder your copy now, you’ll help us make history. Move to Millions the proven framework to become a million dollar CEO with grace and ease instead of Hustling Grind is already an Amazon bestseller. Grab your copy and our bonuses [email protected]. Welcome back to the move to millions. Podcast. I am here with Dethra oh, my goodness. How are you all feeling? That’s what I need to know right now. I hope that your whole body is reverberating at the realization that God created you to be a hole filler. And every time you shrink back downplay or dismiss your greatness in the name of mediocrity, someone falls into a hole and they die because you are not taking up the space that you were created to fill. Dethra oh, my goodness. I’m so glad that you decided to be a gap filler. I’m so glad. Like, the thought of your person who was in the audience, so not even your client that worked with you from the stage, you spoke a word into her life about negotiation, and she took that thing all the way to an additional $25,000 over and above what she was offered for the role. That is huge. And I know that that’s only one example. There are probably thousands of other stories of the people that didn’t slide in your DMs to tell you that that’s what you did for them.
Right? And I get those messages quite often. Hey, you gave me permission to leave my employer that was abusive. You gave me permission to do X. You gave me permission to start my business. And when I hear that, I’m like, okay. And the people listening, I want you to hear this very clearly. This is not just a Detroit thing. People are losing whatever it is. They’re dying. They’re dying on the vine. They’re not reaching their full potential because you won’t accept that God does not give with Mediocrity, you won’t step into your greatness. You won’t start to believe what my girl Sherry Riley tells us, that you are not humble. You are hiding, and you are not ready to come out of the shadows, but everybody that God has assigned to you is out in the light waiting for you.
Yeah, that’s so good. Just as a reminder that you can’t do what you were sent here to do if you don’t show up, like so many of us. I just did another podcast interview, and that conversation went down a path that is similar to the one that we’re having right now. She talked about most of us need to die to self, and she even said, Detroit, you’re going to love this. She said, if you ever feel like an imposter or dealing with impostor syndrome, it’s because you’re being selfish, because you’re making it about you. And that’s the same thing that happens when you are allowing people to fall into the gap. Like, you’re not filling what you were brought here to do. You’re not doing that work. And you have to do it without consequence to other people because there is a mission that is greater than you. Like, if you didn’t stand on whichever stage, pick one. Right? You stand on a lot of stages. If you didn’t stand on that stage and hold that space and deliver that message. So many other people’s lives, their destiny would not have been cemented had you not shown up. When you think about it like that, every single one of us who has a business, we literally are the catalyst for transformation, coming into the life of someone else. When we solve a problem, when we solve a little c cancer, we open up an opportunity for someone’s life to change.
And here’s what I think happens. I think people compare gifts, and we know comparison is the enemy of success. And what people will say is, okay, Dethra. You’ve spoken to 17,000 people. You speak to thousands of people. I don’t do that. All I do is run a cleaning service. Do you know how impactful the woman that owns the cleaning service that we hire for my home is for me? She literally gives me hours back in my day, in my life to do what I need to do so that woman can get 25,000 extra dollars per year for her family. Without her, I would not have the time that I have. So if she said, Dethra, I don’t speak on big stages. I just clean houses. Ma’am, your cleaning of houses allows me to get on that big stage. So you are a key ingredient. So don’t think just because you don’t have what someone else has or does what someone else does that what you do is not equally as impactful as what they do.
And I think that’s important that you say that, because whenever we use just, we’re limiting ourselves. It’s a limiter. So you’re giving yourself permission to think about who you are as small. But to use your quote again, god doesn’t give mediocrity. Like, there’s no way in the world you could be here with a gift or talent, and you’re supposed to be small. Act small, play small, think small, allow people to treat you small. None of that is supposed to happen because God didn’t have time to make a nobody. He only creates somebody. He only creates gap fillers, hole fillers. That’s all he has the time to do. And so recognizing the importance of you identifying your gift, settling in with your gift, and then leveraging that gift in a way so that you can be that change is, oh my gosh, that’s so huge.
Yeah, it is. People tell me, oh, I’m a nobody, and I will tell them very quickly. So remember when everybody said nobody could do it? No one was a fit. Nobody could step and fill those shoes. So nobody has a lot to do. Yeah, nobody has a lot to do.
Yeah. That’s so good. You said earlier, first, the question I asked you is, like, how did you get here? How did you get to this point of understanding the significance of taking up space? We got that beautiful Sherry Riley quote. Hey, Sherry, you’re not humble. You’re hiding how did that turn into the dynamicness of who you are? I feel like there are more steps, and I feel like the people that are listening, they’re trying to figure it out, are like, okay, that’s great, but you got to give me some more. So what happened next after you realized you were hiding one?
I had to recognize that I did not need permission to be great. And so this humility was essentially me asking for permission. If I don’t say I’m so great, they’ll tell me I’m great, and then they’ll offer me opportunities that they offer great people. If I pretend like I’m not that great, they’ll reaffirm me. And I began to realize and here’s the other one. Oh, I’m so glad the spirit put this on my mind. I also thought, my work will speak for me. Your work is mute. It does not speak for you. You are required to speak for it. So I realized in my hiding I wasn’t getting opportunities that people who were not nearly as good as I was were getting. I started to ask them. Part of my process was, I’m a researcher. I’m a professor. I love academia. I saw people getting what I wanted, and I asked them questions. Hey, how’d you get that speaking opportunity? Hey, how did you get connected to that person? And they began to say little simple things like, I asked, Wait, what? Or they showed me what they sent out for about themselves. And none of the people that was getting what I wanted were being humble about their abilities.
Yeah.
Every single one of them were putting their abilities on blast. I am great. I am good. I will change your audience. I will come into your company and optimize your profits. They were very clear, and they weren’t wishy washy or shaky or me about it. They were boldly saying what they were and could do. And I recognize the people that are doing what I want to do are bold in their assertions about their abilities. Wait a minute. Maybe I’m not getting what I desire because I’m not being bold in the assertion of what I can do. And so I began here’s the truth. I started slowly like, hey, I think I’m really good. How did that work? It got me better results. And as I saw the results improving, I began to get bolder and bolder, and I stopped being well, I kind of think and just said I am, because I am gifted by the I am. So I might as well say I am. I am great. I am amazing. I am the best speaker you can book for this event. I am the consulting firm. You want to come in? And I began to make sure I kept a record to support what I was saying. So it wasn’t just I am good. It was, here’s the feedback I got from my last talk. Here is what the companies I’ve consulted with have said about what happens to their profits after I leave.
I love that Dethra. That’s such a good little nugget that you just kind of slipped in there that I want to pull on for a second. So what I feel like I’m hearing you say is first is the realization that you’re hiding and you’re actually not serving humanity right? And then second, it’s like, okay, I don’t need permission from anyone else to be great, but what I need to do is look at these success clues that are all around me. I’m connected to people who are doing exactly what it is that I want to do. Let me just ask them. The worst case scenario is they don’t tell me, but maybe they give me a nugget, which is actually what happened for you. And as a result of getting those nuggets I asked, you started to become more bold, right? And so first it was, I think, and then you got the result and then you’re like, well, wait a minute, I don’t need to think this anymore. I can just be it. I can be in it. I can clearly declare that I am right. Which as we know I say I am, is our ability to summon or shun God’s presence. Because he is. And you just started walking that thing out and watched more and more opportunities. But here’s the key. This is the nugget I was getting to. You said I kept a record to support what I was saying. Success leaves receipts. And I love that you had those receipts that you could pull on, which is why now you’re being paid 20 plus thousand dollars to speak for an hour, just been signed to one of the top speakers bureaus that is really hard to get representation from. All because it started with you recognizing that you are God’s gift. You are that whole Filler girl. This is such a masterclass. I hope you guys are taking copious notes of just the simple things that Dethra has done that have made the difference in who she is and how she gets to show up. And the most important is recognizing her identity and being it already, stepping into it. Because if God said it, he already promised that he would make it good already.
And let me tell you, the power I’m glad you mentioned that. The power of receipts. One of the things I hate about urban vernacular is that it changes so quickly that we get over things that are powerful too quick and we don’t use them anymore. So we don’t use receipts anymore. But that’s such a powerful thing, a concept that we need to keep and.
Maintain because we weren’t using it anymore. Look, I still talk about receipts.
I do too, and I always will. And let me tell you why. Because the more receipts I collected, the more I was able to charge. When I had a few receipts. My fee was 5000. When I got a few more, it was ten. But now I have receipts, international receipts. You’re not calling me to your stage. And why? Because I can prove to you beyond the shadow of that receipts, people pay for certainty. The higher the likelihood of success, whatever it is, whether it’s your consulting or you engaging their audience, the higher the likelihood of success. The more they’ll pay you, the more questionable the success is. Your fee goes down. Your receipts are ensuring a higher likelihood of success, which is of value to people. And that’s why collecting those receipts are so important. So when someone says, oh, I only charge 1000, well, cool, because your receipts say your likelihood of success isn’t that high, when someone says, I charge 20 and I can show you that, hey, Louis Vuitton is one of my clients and they book me year over year. Okay, cool. I can see why I would pay that much for you.
Yeah. And I think also you often won’t get the opportunity if you’re only charging $1,000. I’m going to tell this quick story as a sidebar. So when I first came into the marketplace as a speaker, I remember I got on this one directory and it worked. Like, I got a call almost right away. And the man on the other end of the phone, he read my bio, watched my video, and wanted me to come and share my story at his event. I was whatever the thing is, wet behind the ears, breast smelling like simileac. I had no idea what to say to this man. And so he said, well, what’s your fee? And I said, $500. Because to me, I know you all can’t see Dieter, she just gave me the side eye. But to me, at that particular point in time, now this is 2007, 2008, making $500 for 30 minutes because I was still employee minded. Sounded like a lot of money. So the man was like, okay, well, we’ll get back to you. He never got back to me. So time goes on. I end up calling him, and I’m like, I’m waiting for the agreement. He’s like, well, we decided to go with someone else. That person charged $5,000. And I said, well, do you mind if I ask why? And he said, well, her fee is 5000, your fee is $500. The likelihood of our success is greater if we pay her $5,000. And we want to make sure that we bring in a quality speaker for this event. He’s like, I really like you, Darielle. So the next time we do this event, I’m going to call you again. Listen, I went and got some education D shirt by the time he called me again, and I was like, well, what’s your budget? And he was like, well, we have $7,500. And I was like, I normally speak for ten, but because you called me back the next year, I’m willing to do it for $7,500. And I got the gig, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I didn’t realize that the higher the likelihood of success, the more that I would be paid. So that is such a great lesson to learn. We’re going to take another quick break. We’ll be right back in just a few minutes with more from Dethra Giles. I know you love the Mood to Millions podcast. I know you can’t wait every single week for me to drop a new episode.
You know what that tells me?
It tells me that you’re also going to love my brand new book, move to Millions the Proven Framework to Become a Million Dollar CEO with Grace and Ease instead of Hustling Grind. Listen to me. Everything you need to know to make millions of dollars without losing your shirt, your sanity, or anything that’s important to you in the process is in this powerful book. It takes what you are experiencing each week on the podcast to the absolute next level. Go now to Movetomillionsbook.com to grab your copy. You are listening to the Move to Millions podcast. Our guest today is over here just dropping the gems, giving you all exactly what you need to take up more space and to do it without apology. Just before we went to break, we had found our way into this conversation about pricing and how the value of the solution we provide is going to dictate whether or not we get to do that solution for others. And so I’ve never been a fan of pulling numbers out of the air. Dethra never been a fan of just making a number up. I love that you were talking about those receipts that you’re able to show, which is why your speaker fee continues to grow. Right. And I think that it’s really important to help those who are listening that whether they’re speakers or not, because this could even relate to people in their business, right? Sometimes, actually, not even sometimes 100% of the time, the clients that we work with and the people that we meet, they have seven figure businesses when we meet them, they’re just not price right. They’re not positioned well. They haven’t figured out how to tell the story boldly and confident like you’ve been able to do in order to see the result show up and happen for them. So are there any practical tips that you can think of to share right here as it pertains to what you said so far? The more receipts, the more I can charge. People pay for certainty and the higher the likelihood of success, the more people will pay. What could you share without just pulling a number out of the air about how the listeners should be leveraging what they’ve accomplished and who they’ve already helped as they’ve been filling that gap or filling that hole and use that to raise their rates substantially.
So the number one thing I will say, and I do have a list because I get asked this question a lot. The number one thing I will say is don’t run from money conversations. Oftentimes people are afraid to talk dollars. And I won’t be specific with this, but I will tell you there are certain circles I want run in. No one will ever candidly say, this is how much I get paid for a speaking engagement. This is how much I charge for my services. Everyone talks around the numbers, but everyone’s afraid to actually say a number. Those circles do okay. They do all right. They get by. They can go on a nice trip here and there, blah, blah, blah, yakity, schmackety. But there are other circles I run in where everyone is very comfortable talking numbers. Hey, this is exactly how much I charge for speaking engagement. I’m going to refer you to them for their next year’s conference. I’ll tell you exactly what they paid me this year, right? This is exactly what I charge for services. And everyone’s comfortable talking those numbers. That circle does extremely well.
Absolutely. Because you have to normalize it. If you’re afraid to talk about it, that means you’re afraid to earn it, right?
And so my first thing for you is I encourage you to become comfortable saying your numbers and become comfortable surround yourself with people who are also doing the same. Because that circle, when I say they’re not doing a few good trips here and there, they’re finding their whole family business class on Emirates to Dubai for vacations. They’re buying literally one person that just bought their second private jet, sold the other one, used and bought another one. Right? So become comfortable talking about your numbers. And let me tell you why this is important. I used to be that person. I do okay. When I got with that group, I said, oh, my speaking fee is like I think at that time it was 12,001 of them looked at me and said, Are you crazy? I just booked a speaker that wasn’t nearly as good as you. For 25,000, your fee goes up to that night. I got a call and they said, someone emailed me and said, hey, we’re interested in you. What’s your fee? And I handshaken scared to type it on the keyboard. 20k. Guess what? They said, hey, right now my budget is only 18K. Can you work with that? You all listen to me. That was 6000 more than what I was charging less than 24 hours before I got that email. And guess what? I said no. But let’s see what we can work out because I really need to make 20K. What concessions can you make? Perhaps I can speak for 45 minutes instead of 60 minutes.
I love that. I love that you didn’t just take the 18K because it was a come up, a 24 hours increase, but that you still honored that you shakingly got out of your mouth that your fee was twenty k and that you could not do what you would do for 20K for eighteen k. I love that, Dethra. I love that. I hope you guys are taking notes and you just got a light bulb just went off of how you need to look at yourself instead of downplaying dismissing or taking what it is that they have. If you get less, they get less. Period. Point blank. There’s no way in the world that we are going to do what we charge people for, because now you’re out of integrity.
Absolutely. And here’s the deal. These people talk to each other, someone’s going to ask them, who did you get to speak? Oh, I got Dethra. Well, how much did she charge you? 18,000 for 60 minutes. And when I come to them and say, oh, my fee is twenty k. Oh, now, mind you, they probably have 20K plus in their budget.
Probably do. Yeah.
But can you do it for 18? Right. And so be integral with your word. If this cost 20K, it cost 20K. Now, here’s the other thing I will often do. What else can we do? I did one talk where they had this budget, and I said, okay, with that budget, again, I can’t speak for an hour, but I can speak for this amount of time. But here’s also what I would like to do. Can you guarantee me that decision makers with budget will be in the room and that I’m able to get a one on one with them separate from the talk, and they were excited. Oh, we could do that easily.
Yeah
From that meeting one on one with the decision makers, I made ten times what my speaking fee was going to be.
Yeah. That’s so good.
So good.
Oh, this has been so good. I mean, the bottom line, ladies and gentlemen of the Move to Millions podcast family, is that you are a gap filler. You are a whole filler, and you need to take up more space. This has been awesome. Dethra, before I let you go, I do want to just take a few minutes. And one thing I didn’t tell you guys is that Dethra is currently enrolled in our Move to Millions Mastermind. We will be celebrating her at Move to Millions live this May. I would love it if you, for just a few minutes, would just talk about your experience in the program, some of the results that you’ve gotten, and why you would tell other people that they should look into joining us in the Mastermind.
So here’s one thing I think people miss. Making money is about changing your mind first. Everyone wants to immediately jump to the money, or if I pay for this program, when am I going to make money? And the real thing I loved about working with you all was that it was about changing my mind first. Like when you said, these businesses come to me. I don’t make million dollar businesses. I make them become million dollar businesses because they were already that. I just teach them how to see it and get it. And that’s a mindset shift. Right? And so I love the mindset shift, but more than anything that I love, I love the attention to what I needed. It was like, we have all these people in the program and yes, you have your portal, and yes, you have this, and yes, you have that, but what do you need? Hey, it’s clear that the way we’re doing this is not working for you. So how do I impact you to get the results that you are paying for? And it was recognizing I’ve been in programs before and those programs felt very much like the check is already clear. Do what you want.
Yeah
This program felt very much like, no, I’m more invested in your success and achievement than I am with the money you got me. So, yes, the check has clear, but you paid me for something and I am dead set on delivering it.
Yeah. And I love that you pointed that out. Because we don’t look at our clients as a collective in the sense that we’re cookie cuttering their way to their next milestone. We really do want to customize the experience as much as we can. And so we make sure that we have enough coaches on the team to be able to show up and help people to get what they need. I mean, with you in particular, this woman, she is so busy. I mean, it’s a good thing. Her gift is making room for her. The stages are opening up, so expecting her to go and watch modules in a portal is probably not going to be the best way to support her. So of course she has that available for her team. That’s helping her to do the specific things that she needs to do. But our ability to customize that roadmap and then to support her has been absolutely essential in helping her to get to where she’s been able to get I think about and I don’t even remember, it was like remember we had that one call and you called me like the next day or maybe the day after? You’re like, I just made $200,000 just doing what you just said. Yes. How being able to customize the experience makes such a big difference for the clients, which I think is really awesome. Anything else that you would share about being in the Mastermind for people?
I would share. That one of my biggest regrets. I always tell people what’s the plus side and what’s the regret. My biggest regret is not making the time. Early on, I was adamant about getting in and getting started, but I wasn’t as adamant about clearing my calendar. And as I get more and more into it, I’m like, oh, my gosh, you really have to clear your calendar, because, like you said with the modules, I did one module the other day, and I was like, oh, shoot, wait. I had my people do this module. But I need to and I hit. My people like, is this what you all been learning? They were like, yeah, there’s some good stuff in there. Who was supposed to tell me? They’re like, you paid for it. We thought you knew. And so now, even though I’ve been in the program for almost a year now, I’m now going back. And I had my assistant April the other day, I said, here once a week, put on time on my calendar, because as a busy entrepreneur, if it’s not on your calendar, it’s not happening. Put time on my calendar for me to do these things because I’m seeing where the gap is and how I need to make time to fill it. So I would tell everyone, your time investment is as equally important as your financial investment, and you can’t get mad about your financial investment when you haven’t invested the time.
Oh, that’s so good. Oh, my gosh. That’s amazing. Okay, just before I let you go, I have to ask you our closing questions. So I like to ask these three questions at the end just to kind of round out our time together, because although we did get into business a little bit, we often don’t get into business. And I want to always leave our audience with some success clues that they can leverage as they continue to make their own move to millions. So my first question is, what is the book that has been absolutely instrumental as you’ve been moving your business to the million dollar mark?
Oh, my gosh. I can’t say one book, but I will give you three of my top books that are equally first, and I’m not giving them an order. So you’re like, well, you can’t say one, because first, it’s the one thing really narrowing down that you don’t have to do 5 million things or even three things. Sometimes you can get it down to one thing that can make all the difference. That book is so powerful for me. Two is selling to Veto. I buy this book for every coaching client and mentee that I have. It’s V-I-T-O very important. Top officer. And it really talks about how to get to the right people when you’re trying to close deals. And those deals can be business, whatever it is. But selling to Veto. And the third one is the circle Maker. That one is one of my I read it every single year book. The Circle Maker is, like, just reminding me how to pray around the stuff that prayer and action. So those are my three tops that are, like, game changer.
Okay, awesome. What is the one tool that you swear by that it has made such an instrumental difference in your life, in your business.
This is going to sound crazy, but Voxer. Voxer is an app that I use with my admin. And as we talked about before the call, my calendar, my text messages, and my emails are full. I mean, they’re so full that I can’t get to them every day. And so Voxer is that tool that I only use for my admin. No one if someone tries to friend me on Boxer, I delete it. The only person that communicates with me on Boxer is my admin, and that way I always have a direct line. So I get her messages, whatever is important. So Boxer has been like a game changer for me and my business.
Oh, that’s so good. And then lastly, what is one quote that whenever you’re having a moment, you think about this quote. You read this quote, you listen to this quote, and it gets you right back in step.
Oh, just picking one quote. I would say it comes from Things Fall Apart, which is one of my favorite books. And people misquote this as where it came from, but it came from Things Fall Apart, and it is until the lion learns to write, the hunt will always glorify the hunter. And because I feel like I’m really called to teach the lion how to write, and so anytime I start to waver, I remember, we can’t keep glorifying the hunter. You got to teach the lion to write.
That’s so good. Dethra. This has been absolutely amazing. I want to thank you for taking time to stop by the Move to Millions podcast to teach these people how to take up more space. This has been awesome.
It’s been my pleasure.
Was it good for you? Was it good for you? That’s what I want to know. Oh, my goodness. You all I have so many notes, but then at the same time, I have so many points in time that she was dropping a gem that I couldn’t even contain myself. I just had to stop what I was doing and pay attention. So many great things came out of this conversation. I’m not even sure what to highlight for you. One thing that she said, and this was a quote from Sherry Riley you’re not humble. You’re hiding. Listen. And you were created to fill a hole in the earth. If you don’t take up space, you will not fill the hole. People will fall in and die. I might have added the fall in and die part, but you get exactly what I’m saying. She said that she realized she didn’t need permission to be great and that her work would not speak for her. She was required to speak for it. She started putting her abilities on blast and kept a record of what she knew to be true so that she could experience results at the next level. You all, we’re going to put all of Dethra’s information in the show notes so that you can reach out to her so that you can stay connected and get what you need to take up more space. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did, and so I want to encourage you to make sure that you rate and leave us a review. Take a picture of yourself listening to this podcast episode and tag me in your stories so that I know that you are listening and you’re as committed as I am to helping more people find this podcast so that they too can make the move to Millions. I’ll see you guys next time. Take care. Thank you for joining me for the Move to Millions podcast. If this episode has impacted you in any way, would you please take a moment and rate and review? Doing so helps us to deepen our impact and expand our reach around the world. And if you are ready to start your very own Move to Millions, I highly recommend that you order your very own copy of my brand new best selling book Move to Millions the Proven Framework to Become a Million Dollar CEO with grace and Ease. Instead of hustle and grind. You can get your copy and our bonuses [email protected]. Until next time, remember, millions are your birthright and to access them, you need only move. I’ll see you next time.
