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106: Wendy Keller: I was not physically able to sit up

 Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we uncover the leadership like hat that help you to experience, break out performance faster and rocket to success. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

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Jim Rembach:    Okay Fast Leader Legion today I’m so excited because the person I have today on the show her story is absolutely awe inspiring. Wendy Keller was born and raised in Chicago but live all over the place. When Wendy was four her dad took off she didn’t see him again until she found him when she was 28. When she was six her mom remarried, soon after her parents joined in extreme fundamentalist Christian cult. They believe that the end of times were coming any day and that women were made solely to serve men. Despite this when she was 10 she won a district wide riding contest. At 11 she won her first sales contents. At 16 she graduated high school and begin college. She got her own dream job working in a newspaper and won a scholarship to attend Arizona State University. After her scholarship ran out she didn’t have enough money to stay her parent offered to pay her education if she switch to the college her church ran in Pasadena, California, that’s where you went if you hope to be a minister. She had no such hope, she wanted to be a journalist. After that College expelled her for claiming her love to a church outsider labeling it as sexual misconduct, Wendy was devastated. 

But then a few weeks later a handsome guy whose girlfriend had recently declined his marriage proposal started talking to her. She married him in less than a year. In time they had two darling beloved children, Jeremy Winston and Emilia Louise. Her marriage was suffering but the kids were the focus of their life. In 1989 Wendy started Keller Media, a literary agency helping writers to sell books and manuscripts to publishers. And in 1991   her family took a vacation to the London Book Fair. While driving down a little country road her husband forgot to look both ways at an intersection and the car was struck by another car traveling at 65 km/ph. Emilia died instantly, Jeremy was taken off life support three days later. Ever since March 15th 1991 when the children died Wendy has survived the grief of losing her children and her own horrendous injuries, giving birth again, surviving a divorce, a natural disaster, and a substance abusing child. And she has persevered. As of today, Wendy has personally taught over 20,000 authors how to get published and over 7,500 people how to get started as paid professional speakers. Today she is the author of 31 published books. She’s been a featured guest on 53 television programs and has been a guest on over 500 radio shows and has been interviewed, quoted in hundreds of publications. When currently lives in Marina del Rey, California. Wendy Keller are you ready to help us get over the hump? 

Wendy Keller:    You bet I am. Thanks for having me on the show.

Jim Rembach:    I’m glad you’re here. Now I’ve given our listeners a little bit about you but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better? 

Wendy Keller:    Oh, my gosh! Jim, I have so many current passions. Whatever book I’ve got up for sale is my current passion. Whatever book I’m reading is my current passion, whatever book I’m writing next—I got a lot of passions. And I love ideas and I love information and I love learning new things in all different kinds of (3:36 inaudible)of my life. So I’m a lot like the people who take the time to listen to your excellent podcast. 

Jim Rembach:    I appreciate you sharing that. Reading and learning more about you as a person and that’s one of the things we really try to do in the Fast Leader show because I always tell my guess it’s not what you do that makes you great it’s who you are that makes what you do great, there’s a very distinct difference. 

Wendy Keller:    For sure agree with you. 

Jim Rembach:    And a lot of folks, they talk about one of the biggest phobias of all you know being public speaking and when I look at your bio and the things that you’ve been through I’d rather choose the public speaking route. But you’re an inspiration to a lot of folks. And when I start thinking about the barriers that are preventing people to move forward and get themselves out there build their platform, it makes me wonder when I think about your story, why? So, why do people struggle? 

Wendy Keller:    I think people interpret things differently. When I speak on overcoming adversity which is sort of tangential to what I do as an agent. I just gave a speech this week and I talked about—people think that the deaths of my children is so devastating that it would stop anyone in the tracks and I know that it does and it was devastating it was 20 billion times worse than anyone could ever imagine unless they’ve been through it and there’s just no way to describe it but here’s the perspective that I’ve adopted that has been part of my success I guess in functioning after that catastrophic loss and it is this: When I was six years old I had a hamster his name was Caesar because we were studying Roman history in school and after a while I was real busy with school and he wasn’t a novelty anymore and I unfortunately didn’t think he needed food and water every day I was a little kid and Caesar died. 

My mom explained why he died and I was absolutely devastated and so sorry and I felt so guilty and I was in such grief over the death of my hamster, and you know I’m 7 years old at that time and then my grandma died when I was nine and then other people died and then I started to learn these bad behaviors for handling loss. Like when my hamster died my mom said, “Oh, we’ll get you a new hamster, stop crying.” So, I started to pick up this bad behavior and by the time my children died there is no way to get new children, and you know the same ones or any things, and that burden was so heavy that I had to get some help to handle it. And so I went to professional people and grief counselors and started studying and I learned some strategies to help me get through such a devastating loss. 

But I will say this for anyone listening who’s facing any type of loss or challenge whether it’s divorce or something of the world thinks it’s minor like your dog died or your hamster died all the way to your children died which I admit is a quite significant loss in life but the difference is everyone suffers at a hundred percent. Everyone suffers their own losses at these level that they’re capable and here’s the difference in that, number one it allows you to be compassionate with yourself and number two it allows you to be compassionate with the world. And as soon as you recognize you’re not oh, so special because something bad happened to you and then the pretty much bad stuff happens to everybody, it changes your perspective and allows you to go forward in a powerful way. 

Jim Rembach:    It seems easy for a lot of people to probably kind of look through what all the things that you just said while you’re in it, it’s tough. 

Wendy Keller:    Oh, yeah. 

Jim Rembach:    And it doesn’t happen quickly. 

Wendy Keller:    No, no. 

Jim Rembach:    And when you’re needing that inspiration there’s a lot of places that you can go seek it and sometimes they’re incorrect. On the show we like quotes to help us find that inspiration and hopefully pull this out and pushes to particular directions that we need to go. Is there a quote or two that has influenced you that you can share?

Wendy Keller:    There are many quotes that influenced me and I’m kind of a quote junkie I guess because I use them to buoy myself. Right now I’m reading, The Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks which is a book I returned to many, many times. But I would have to say that one of the quotes that has really been an inspiration personally, there’s another one that’s professionally inspirational but personally is the Lao Tzu quote, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.” And when I look at the daunting things I overcome or try to overcome or the goals that I have it’s easy to go, “You know, I wish I had done this 20 years ago, but you can’t start something  20 years ago or I wish I didn’t have to go through this but you don’t have to get started because if you just sit down and feel sorry for yourself or just sit on the side of the road going, “I can’t believe I have to do this.” You’re` going to have all kinds of problems and you’re not going to make any progress you just got to get out there and start whacking just whacking the weeds and forging your way. I think of myself with a machete going through a dense jungle like, “Okay, I hate this, I’m scared there might be snakes or spiders or who knows what or tigers or whatever, you just got to get started and that first step is the enormous one and after that things start to get a little bit easier.

Jim Rembach:    It does get easier and it does take time and it is a journey. When we start going through those things oftentimes we have to get through it it’s a long distance away but there are humps, what a humps that we have to get over through our lives. 

Wendy Keller:    I don’t know if there are humps as much as Mount Everest.

Jim Rembach:    True. 

Wendy Keller:    And about the time you finish one and you’re going on the other side you’re like, “I’m going to do great, it’s all downhill for me this is awesome.” And then you see the next peak. I would say that people would say “Oh, it’s peaks and valleys” like well, no, it’s mostly peak after peak in my life.  

Jim Rembach:    That’s so true and like I was saying you’re just an amazing— 

Wendy Keller:    It’s just for a lot of people, I’m not unique in that at all.  A lot of people they get one—you know like that game that the kids play check or cheese in a whack-a-mole where you hit that poor little animal on the head and try and get the next one and they pop up randomly, and that’s owning a business, that’s being successful in your career, that’s personal life, that’s raising teenagers, there’s all parts to that and that’s just human life everybody suffers at a hundred percent. That’s really comforting quote if you really meditating and reflect on it. 

Jim Rembach:    So, when you think about one of those mountains that you’ve had to get over can you share that with us and the impact it had on you? 

Wendy Keller:    Well, obviously, the deaths of the children but I have discussed that. I think the one that is a universal experience is my divorce. So, my divorce was fall out from—you know, we weren’t really happy like you said in the intro, we weren’t really happy before the kids I wasn’t happy before the kids died, for other reasons and ironically my ex-husband and I are friends now. He comes to my house once a month for dinner with our child and whatever because we eventually had another baby, our daughter is now graduating college, but I think that one of the challenges in the way that have been able to overcome the divorce which is obviously very common thing, relationship breakup subsequent to that, is by taking time to put my emotions in let’s say box A and in box B sort of really sort through it looking for the ways that I contributed or did not ameliorate or extinguish a behavior that was negative. I have an excellent friend his name is Ford Sakes, he’s one of the intelligent, socially intelligent people I’ve ever met in my life he designs websites in Wichita Ford Sakes, really a powerful speaker also. 

One of the things I learned from him in our friendship is that, you know, he was in therapy for something we were talking about and the therapist said, “When you do this, this happens and it creates that result so you should try to stop doing this” and on that day he stopped doing it. When I got involved in Tony Robbins personal power program I listen to the cassettes, say how long ago that was, I was not physically able to sit up much less walk because the car accident that killed the children left me so devastated but I did exactly, verbatim, every single thing Tony said in those and I took exactly those actions and I looked at myself to see what limiting beliefs and thoughts I was using and what repetitive behaviors were resulting from those thoughts and I apply them 100% I was on Tony’s infomercial as one of his success stories for four years because I got the results. Most people go, “Oh, Wendy I want to be an author, oh, Wendy I want to be a speaker and I say. “Okay, here’s the first thing you need to do.” Well, I don’t-really—can I start somewhere else, “would it be okay if I did something else first because I don’t really want to do that. It’s a good idea I’m sure you’re right but—and it’s the same way when we’re dealing with major obstacles in our lives we tend to want to take the easy fun part and blame the spouse’s friend into the divorce or blame our children if they’re not behaving the way we want them to or circumstances for not getting the raise but you know when you turn that mirror on yourself you really give yourself a chance to see some powerful insights.

Jim Rembach:    Yeah, but sometimes we don’t want that mirror to be able to look back at us. 

Wendy Keller:    Tough luck. 

Jim Rembach:    That’s true. 

Wendy Keller:    You want to grow or you want to sit there and whine. I was talking to my friend, Mark Victor Hansen, he wrote the Chicken Soup for the soul series of his buddy Jack, Jack’s a client, and I was complaining to Mark about something I was really angry about. In my publishing life that wasn’t going well and Mark listen basically probably to half of lunch and then he finally put his fork and he look me right in the eye and I’ll never forget this moment it changed my life he said, “Do you want to keep talking about the problem because we can or you could start to think about the solutions.” I’m like, oh, my god, I’m so embarrassed. And he was right.

Jim Rembach:    And I think for what you just said right there that’s often one of those mountains that we have to continually get over. It’s just that whole issue around keeping and bring it up and look in the past and reflect and be nostalgic instead of—my eyes are pointing out they’re not pointing in. 

Wendy Keller:    That’s true. Being reflective is a really important skill I think. People who waste years in therapy are waiting for the therapist to reflect back to them things as opposed to, and I’m not thinking therapies obviously helped me too and has helped a lot of people, but learning to journal or learning to be reflective or learning to meditate those factors certainly helped me enormously in my life. And I think they help anyone, men in our culture, particularly American culture, are socialized not to be reflective and some people don’t have that natural propensity because it wasn’t modeled for them in their youth but what a difference it can make even it was just subject-specific. Those who are entrepreneurs or those who are trying to overcome something usually we’re our own biggest obstacle. 

Jim Rembach:    So, when you start thinking about you had mention off mic that you’re getting ready to publish a brand-new book can you agree to tell for us please?  

Wendy Keller:    My newest book just came out it’s called The Ultimate Guide to Platform Building. It came out a couple of weeks ago and it’s doing great. It’s based on the consulting I do helping people build an enthusiastic and positive audiences that like them like and like their content. Whether you want to be a speaker or an author, a consultant or a doctor, an attorney, whatever. So, I’m really having fun promoting that book. I love helping people see how easy it is to find their personality and then match the platform building skills to that, just like you’re doing Jim, with the podcast this is for you. You’re good at it, you got it set up you got over 100 podcast. That’s fantastic that’s an important platform but that’s available for anybody who’s willing to take that first. 

Jim Rembach:    I know that for a lot of people like when we started the episode we are mentioning how they don’t take that step forward, how they’re fearful, and how they don’t look at the things of life that could be more devastating and they allow public speaking and getting themselves out there to be something that blocks them. What are some of the different pieces of advice that you would give somebody who is in that position? 

Wendy Keller:    Number one, go to our website and take a free quiz. There’s a quiz there that’s in tandem to my new book it’s at kellermedia.com /bizquiz. Keller Media is my last name. Go there and take that quiz and you’ll find out whether or not you even should be speaking. There are people who should not be speakers but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t do a podcast or start your own radio show or you would be okay standing in your living room in front of a video camera and starting a branded YouTube channel. There are billions and billions of ways at this time in history to really build out your success, your platform. You don’t have to be a speaker if it’s not what you want to do but there are permutations. If you really want to be a speaker for some reason and you don’t want to do keynotes like most of my clients do like Les Brown or Jet Hay Lead or you know I represent a labyrinth of the past president of the National Speakers Association, you don’t have to do that. 

You could do lectures, you could do trainings, you could do workshops, and you could be like my chiropractor and do ten people a month on a Wednesday night in your office. You could teach a class you could do adjunct teaching there’s all kinds of ways to do it if you want to do that but the great thing is there’s so many ways to build a platform. So, if you’re sitting they’re going, you know, I’m a little nervous about public speaking and I’m terrified this would be the worst thing ever because you probably will suck. But if you’re thinking, gosh, I’m a little bit nervous there are three things you can do right now that would make a difference in your ability to move forward as a public speaker. Number one is enroll yourself in a dance class. Performers have similar energy and speakers are performer energy. Enroll yourself in dance class, it’s not disco dancing where you’re dancing by yourself but dancing like waltzing and ballroom dancing or even a dance class like a jazz dance that’s where you’re dancing with the group even though you may not be touching one another that’s really important. If you don’t feel comfortable with that make the decision to take a comedy class. Every city in America probably has a comedy workshop, sign up for a comedy workshop even if it’s just a few weeks this will allow you to get out of yourself and move into a bigger space with your own sense of self. It’ll teach you to think on your feet if that’s not a natural aptitude for you. And if you don’t want to do dance and don’t want to do comedy other thing for you to do is sign up to speak. So, find a place that’s willing to bring you in, have it be at least a couple months from now weeks at the most at least a month or more from now would be ideal. And whether you’re going to give a lecture to the Ladies Auxiliary gardening club or you’re going to go be a guest lecturer at the local junior college it doesn’t matter that will force you, if you’re like me especially if you’re a deadline-driven person, it will force you to have something ready and do the best job you can and to find out if this is really the right destiny for you. Getting in front of people is how you get good at getting in front of people.

Jim Rembach:    Definitely practice and putting yourself out there. 

Wendy Keller:    Prepare and practice, yeah. 

Jim Rembach:    Makes it easier. So, when you started talking about the new book and all the work that you’re doing and all the clients that you’re representing, you talked about your daughter graduation in college, you got a lot of things going on and you always have a lot of things going on as you said, but if you think about all those things, what’s one of your goals?

Wendy Keller:    Oh, goal, personally or professionally? 

Jim Rembach:    Whichever comes to mind 

Wendy Keller:    Well I would say that my primary professional goal right now is to transition from the—the work we do—we represent a lot of brand-new authors, up-and-coming authors, I find that I have more value to give the world than just selling another 5 or 10 ten-thousand-dollar book. I have a lot of big clients but I also have this sense of service and responsibility because I have had the honor of 17 New York Times bestsellers—and so I’ve tried to sell smaller clients like, you know, at the $10, 000 level, and help them, grow themselves into becoming $100,000 clients where I’m actually making enough money to make it worth my time. I have that coterie but the majority of authors at this time in history are $10,000 or less. 

And so I don’t want to sell as many of those I want to use the platform book to really help people understand how a book is a component of a successful business marketing strategy not how it’s the only thing, I know your mom’s going to be real proud of you, but I don’t care unless I’m getting paid and you shouldn’t either. So I can teach you how to use a book to really grow your business, whatever your business is it doesn’t even matter what you want to do, you could be a dentist and I can show you how to use a book, publish yourself or self-published whatever to grow platform because that’s when passionate about. But I need to get out of doing the ten-thousand-dollar books we sold a bunch of those this year and it’s not helpful because the authors are not cute queued to be successful, so I’m actually hurting them by doing that and I feel I need to take responsibility. Unless they have a growing platform of fans they should not be doing a book and they as sure as heck should not be self-publishing. So, that’s a big important professional goal that I have this year. And my personal goal really this year includes taking better care of my mom. She’s getting older and it is time for me to step up as the oldest and as the only female child. 

Jim Rembach:    And the Fast Leader Legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on, let’s get a quick word from our sponsor. 

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Alright here we go Fast Leader Legion it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Wendy, the Hump Day Hoedown is a part of our show where you give us good insights fast so I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us a robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Wendy Keller, are you ready to hoedown?  

Wendy Keller:    Yes, I am. 

Jim Rembach:    Alright. What do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?  

Wendy Keller:    Time management strategies. 

Jim Rembach:    What is the best leadership advice you have ever received? 

Wendy Keller:    Put yourself in the other person’s shoes every single time. Show more compassion.

Jim Rembach:    What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success? 

Wendy Keller:    I am a pitbull. If you like it, you want it, you take it, you put in your mouth and you hold on until you get it. 

Jim Rembach:    What do you feel is one of the best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

Wendy Keller:    My absolute ability to learn anything new, technology, strategy, anything, I’m ready to learn. 

Jim Rembach:    What would be one book, other than your own of course and you several of those, that you would recommend to our listeners? 

Wendy Keller:    Web Copy That Sells by Maria Veloso, she happens to be our client but it is the best book on how to write any type of copy web or otherwise its focus on the other person’s actual needs. 

Jim Rembach:    Ok, Fast Leader listeners, you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going to fastleader.net/wendykeller. Okay, Wendy this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question? Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you’ve been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything you can only choose one, what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why? 

Wendy Keller:    Thank you for that question. I would take back the ability to be humble and not only learn but also treat other people more kindly. Other people have gifts differing and I need to realize that not everyone can be coerced into a model that I would prefer. 

Jim Rembach:    Wendy, it was an honor to spend time with you today, can you please share with the Fast Leader Legion how they can connect with you? 

Wendy Keller:    Great sure. We’re at kellermedia.com, stop on by. And if you are experiencing an emotional problem or challenge that you would like to connect with me, that’s under my eponymous website wendykeller.com. 

Jim Rembach:    Wendy Keller thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader Legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links from every show, special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster. 

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