In this episode of the Rising Resilient series, we welcome back Sophie Lechner, Business Strategist and LinkedIn Coach for Mission-Driven Entrepreneurs. Sophie shares her expertise on empowering entrepreneurs to build confidence in business, create meaningful connections, and develop resilience in their personal and professional journeys.
INTRO
As my next guest on this Rising Resilient series, I’m welcoming back Sophie Lechner. Drawing from her diverse background in corporate, legal, and cross-cultural fields, Sophie reveals how she helps business leaders navigate LinkedIn, build confidence in business, and enjoy marketing with her unique MAGNET Model. Her forthcoming book, due for publication next March, is less about LinkedIn and more about just the general journey of entrepreneurs.
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Whether you’re building a small business or leading a purpose-driven organisation, this episode will give you some super-powered methods to strengthen your mindset and achieve entrepreneurial success.
After a long and varied career in corporate organisations, Sophie put her legal, financial, marketing and cross-cultural skills to work for mid-size enterprises. She founded Global Commerce Education to help business leaders successfully enter new markets. She’s coached business leaders from many countries on creating their brand presence in preparation for entering a new international market.
With a French mother and Pakistani father, she’s lived the power of connection & understanding. In her words: “From an early age, finding common ground, uncovering synergies & connecting people have always been second nature to me.”
She believes connecting people across differences, borders & eco-systems is the single most effective tool to open people’s minds to new perspectives, grow economies & reduce conflict. This conviction is what drives her coaching to help people facilitate connections as one important step towards that vision.
In our interview, we dive into essential strategies for mission-driven entrepreneurs looking to create connections, enhance their confidence and build resilience. You’ll learn actionable tips on how to find your “golden thread” for brand positioning, but on a personal level, how to stay focused, recharge, and overcome challenges while driving your purpose forward.
Tune in to discover the best practices that top entrepreneurs use to thrive and maintain a resilient mindset in the face of setbacks. Like myself, Sophie has been on LinkedIn since it launched 20+ years ago, and had plenty of success with the platform. But it wasn’t until March of 2020 when she fully realised how much LinkedIn is a black box for most small business owners.
So, she studied her own process and reverse-engineered what she did to develop The MAGNET Model, a roadmap for creating a powerful brand around your mission and forging a confident path to networking on LinkedIn, opening up those vital conversations and sales. Sophie’s forthcoming book, due for publication March 2025, provides a roadmap for mission-driven entrepreneurs to achieve impact, income and independence by bringing the joy of their client-work into their marketing and build confidence in business.
INTERVIEW
JAY:
Today I have Sophie Lechner you’ve been on the show before, it’s great to have you back. Welcome Sophie.
SOPHIE:
Thank you for having me, Jay. I’m excited to do this again, differently.
JAY:
Yeah, what I want to pull out today is around resilience for entrepreneurs. And so what I’d like you to do is to come at it from two sides. One is, yourself and your own resilience and your business journey a little bit of that, but also how you help your clients with those things, and that mentoring and coaching.
So our subtitle for the Rising Resilience series is tackling challenges and changes in your life and business with confidence, compassion and courage. There’s a lot more to it than that now. I’m realizing when I’ve done now several interviews, so don’t feel confined by those C words.
Let’s kick off in terms of how do you define resilience? What does it mean to you and what part of the theme spoke to you and why?
SOPHIE:
I guess to me, resilience is the ability to keep moving forward without having too much of an impact from external factors or even internal factors that could get in the way of our momentum. So we’re walking in a certain direction and then all of a sudden, something happens, either we feel bad or an event occurs. And resilience to me is the ability to kind of take on whatever’s happening good and bad and sort of fold it into the journey to continue going forward as you had planned.
And I think that it’s a thing that you learn, it’s a skill that you learn as you grow and as you encounter these obstacles. It’s one of those things I think should be taught in schools, but let’s not even start on that topic. But I think the more obstacles you have in your life, the more you learn it sooner. And I find that a lot of people who have a lot of obstacles growing up and in early adulthood end up a lot of times being more successful if they overcome all these obstacles, because they learn this resilience sooner and then that makes them so much stronger going forward.
JAY:
Yeah, that’s a good point. I love that expression, fold it into their journey.
What part particularly spoke to you in terms of the confidence, compassion, courage, challenges, changes? What jumped out?
SOPHIE:
My world, the last 10 – 15 years has been entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. I became an entrepreneur. I have learned a lot of resilience over that journey and the clients that I have and the entrepreneurs that I speak to, I find that the entrepreneurial journey really teaches you resilience if you have not learned it by then, you know. So it’s something that I encounter on a daily basis. And it’s to some extent without having actually used the word, which is interesting.
It has a lot to do with the book that I’m writing. We may get to that at some point. But I find that a lot of entrepreneurs just really are thrown into this world of entrepreneurship. And it’s hard. There’s just so many obstacles, internal, external. And you need to learn resilience. I mean, that’s one of the biggest teachings of an entrepreneurial journey. So it really spoke to me.
JAY:
So tell me then the clients, the entrepreneurs that you work with, what’s the nature of the work? Tell us a little bit about what you do, who you do it for.
SOPHIE:
Yeah, so I help mission-driven entrepreneurs – that’s the niche of people I really love to work with – I help them to build their audience on LinkedIn. I’m more specialized on using LinkedIn. So find their audience on LinkedIn, build relationships with them and really learn to hone their message and develop those relationships that are going to bring them business.
Also mission-driven entrepreneurs often have a big message. They have a lot of knowledge and wisdom they want to share, and LinkedIn is a great platform to do that. So that’s the work that I do. And I find that entrepreneurs often find themselves hitting a lot of self-doubt when it comes to building their audience.
I think the world of marketing is a big black unknown box for a lot of entrepreneurs. And so, they launch into this journey and then at some point realise, okay, you’ll need to learn marketing and sales. And I find that a lot of times what is being taught out in the world of marketing may or may not align well with an entrepreneur’s values and how their personality, how they like to interact in the world. And because they feel, okay, I’m learning this, you know, this is something new, so I need to do what I’m told to do.
Oftentimes they’re paying for coaches to tell them all these things to do. And they may not know what is aligned or not aligned with their values. And so they start doing things that are uncomfortable. And I find that a lot of times, it leads them into a whole world of self-doubt because it’s not working because they’re not really aligned behind these strategies. So leads them into this whole black hole of discomfort and lack of confidence and lack of results. And that’s when resilience comes in. You have to really learn to live with that, get out of it, move forward. So I see that happening a lot.
JAY:
And in fact, that’s another side of the coaching, isn’t it? Because, if you say, Oh, I help people with LinkedIn, it feels very tactical, but actually, it’s just a layer over what does marketing mean? What does sales mean? What’s the relationship building process? You’re simply, applying that to a platform. I know that your work goes a lot broader than like, here’s how you get your profile up on LinkedIn.
And I know we’ve spoken about this before and you help a number of my clients. So I’ve got an inside view as well as to the magic that you sprinkle on the work you do with them. So, yeah, I like all of that stuff. I think the alignment of values and personality and the relationship to self-doubt is really interesting because that’s a setback in itself and internal one, as you said earlier. Yeah, very interesting. And if we get time, we can go back into that.
What’s the focus of the book in relation to what you’ve just said? Does it go into those kinds of coaching areas? Is it more tactical? Is it a bit of both? Tell me a little bit about it.
SOPHIE:
So it’s actually not tactical at all, in the sense of LinkedIn. In fact, initially I started writing a book about LinkedIn and then, 20, 000 words in, I was like, well, that’s not the book I want to write. Actually, that aside and start again.
And you were just talking about how I help my clients with different things and more things than just LinkedIn. And that’s what I discovered as I was working with clients and they were telling me like, oh my God, this is so much more than teaching me LinkedIn. And so after a while I said, okay, this is great, but what is it, what is it? And so I did a lot of deep work to really understand, and a lot of customer interviews and stuff like that, to really understand what it is that I offer. And also going back to my last 20 years on LinkedIn and why did I have the successes that I had on LinkedIn?
And, finally I’ve understood what it is and I’ve codified it into a model that I call the Magnet Model, primarily because a lot of the marketing we’re taught is about pushing things on people and the whole philosophy of my model and my program is to attract people. So, I know it’s called inbound marketing, but that’s more of the tactics. It’s really about attracting. And at the centre of it all is the mission. And when you’re mission-driven – and a lot of people think they’re not, but they actually are, we can talk about that – if you put your mission at the centre of everything and you put your mission forward when you’re doing your marketing, then you don’t need to put the spotlight on yourself.
And that is a key thing for a lot of the entrepreneurs I work with. The most uncomfortable thing about marketing is putting themselves forward. So that’s the key thing. There’s a lot of other things in the model, but that’s the centre of it all is, is really to put the mission at the centre of everything.
JAY:
Yeah. That unpacks little bit of the layers of why I put ‘YOU’ at the beginning of my model, which is, you know, on the front of my book. And I’ve always been a big fan of not only attraction marketing and the pull, not the push, but education-based marketing as well. Because part of it is taking them from the problem that they have to the solution that you have. But I like the way you’ve just described that. Although you’re putting you at the centre, it’s your expertise, your mission, and why you do the work you do. A little bit like Simon Sinek’S Start With Why, isn’t it? You start with why in the middle and then the what, and then the how around the outside.
It’s all about layers is what’s coming up for me in terms of a theme here. So I can go in two directions here like one is, how does your own life experience and resilience help you help others, both in the entrepreneurship side, but just age and wisdom kind of thing as well. And then perhaps we can talk about the clients you support in terms of how some of those stresses and strains and obstacles as you put it show up for them.
SOPHIE:
Yeah. Yeah, I think you know, like everyone I’ve had things in my life, but I think the biggest place why I learned resilience was in my first business. Before doing this, I was helping small to midsize companies from abroad learn how to enter the US market. And I think in the process, you know, when I went back and analysed all the things I had done on LinkedIn, et cetera, I just realized that – and I need to say in that business, I burned myself out in a big way, so I ended up in a very bad place – that’s, that’s part of what I worked on and figured out is I think I was just not aligned. I was working too hard to be something that I thought was what I should be, which is one of the big things that I really help my clients with and I’ve talked about in my book, but when you try to be something else, someone else, then who you really are deep down is when things start going really wrong.
But the thing is, we often don’t realise that, right?
JAY:
Yeah, it’s like unwitting almost, isn’t it? You’re not doing it to deceive anyone.
SOPHIE:
Yeah. It just feels so natural. You fall into it. Like in my corporate career for about 20 years before I became an entrepreneur. And it was the same thing. I was trying to be all these different things, but I didn’t see that then. I see it now. So I think that’s one of the first things is to really learn, again another thing should be taught in schools learn who, who you really are.
At some point I did, I had somebody read my human design. Actually, she was one of your guests. So Leah, she did the human design for me and that was extraordinary. It was life changing. I finally understood, wait a minute, all these ways that I have of working that seems so backward and weird. And I don’t know, just shameful in certain ways. Like I was hiding the way I operated. So, that finally helped me understand that it’s fine. It’s legitimate.
There are different ways of working and you just need to know yourself and work with the way that you are. So again, back to that ‘YOU’, you have in the centre of your model – and in a certain sense, I do too – we need to start with who we are, what we want to be, who we want to be, and the life that we want. And if we don’t start with that, it’s all gonna go awry.
JAY:
That showed up as well in my interview with Berry, Berry Kruijning. She was talking about introverts, and we were talking about the workplace environment and the power of emotions at work, and really being able to be yourself in that respect, and actually pull on the strengths of being yourself.
It’s not about not hiding, it’s about actually being able to show all of your talents and not conform to a certain model of behaviour, which is what often happens, particularly in corporate. I had that as well in organisations that I worked in too, especially when some of them were male dominated. And, you’re on a treadmill as well to perform and there’s a lot of monitoring.
There was something that Chris Johnson said last time as well in the previous episode about who you used to be as a child at school. I don’t think she was necessarily talking about herself, but say you were like the clown and you’d like to make people laugh at school, you take that through and then no one takes you seriously.
And I think you said something about this at the beginning, it’s also about how we kind of evolve ourselves as well. We borrow models and leadership behaviours and styles almost from other people, and we’re constantly like chameleons in many respects. And sometimes you lose, well, who are you at the centre, and I think that’s where you’re coming from as well with the human design thing.
SOPHIE:
Yeah. Yeah. And you know, we talk a lot about confidence and the lack of confidence and how do you gain confidence? Yes, you gain confidence by doing the thing that you’re not confident with originally.
JAY:
That’s the courage part, yes.
SOPHIE:
Right, but I think the biggest driver of confidence, at least it was for me, is to finally be myself.
I can get into any conversation with anybody about anything and I’m fearless because it doesn’t matter if I don’t know the answer. It’s not about who I’m supposed to be. It’s about who I am. So whatever my answer is, is my answer.
JAY:
I agree entirely. And I don’t think you can do that necessarily when you’re in your 20s. I think it comes with a sense of, I don’t have to know the answer, of actually accepting that it’s okay to say, Yeah, I’ll go look that up. Actually, that’s a really interesting question kind of thing. Whereas I know when I was in my 20s, I felt I needed to know all the answers. And if I didn’t, somehow that was a failing on, on my part. Yeah. So I think that’s a very valid point.
SOPHIE:
Well, that’s the way we’re taught in school, right? You’re supposed to know the answers.
JAY:
Yes. Very true. Very true.
So how do you start working with someone? If someone comes to you and they’ve got a mission, they want to get more visible, and they’re a little uncertain about marketing. They’ve got certain conceptions about what marketing and sales is about. Maybe they think it’s icky, maybe they’re lacking in confidence. Where do you start if somebody is completely new to you, they found you, they’ve signed up to your program, what’s the conversation that you have with them?
SOPHIE:
So the first thing that we do when they start with me is actually a mindset exercise. Cause when I started teaching LinkedIn, I just went in like, okay, you want to learn LinkedIn? Here, here are the things. I realised, oh, wait a minute. There’s a lot of things that are getting in the way.
As you said, exactly misconceptions, you know, fears, limiting beliefs. I have this whole exercise. It’s a quadrant to help get all of that out of their heads initially, first for them to understand these things and work through them, but also be aware of them when, as we’re working together for three months, they come back up again, right?
So we do this exercise where I say, okay, what are all the reasons why you’re not on LinkedIn or you’re not communicating, you’re not doing this work so far until now? So they make a list. And then for each of those, I have them translate that into, well, what’s the limiting belief that could be underneath that. And I work with them to kind of figure it out – dig sometimes, you know, it’s a little slippery sometimes, right?
I do that and then I say, okay, so let’s turn those on their head. And what’s the empowering belief that would be the opposite of that? And then say, okay, well, this empowering belief, what would it look like once you’ve learned LinkedIn, you’re comfortable with all this, what would it look like?
And at the end, you have a list of all the things that we’re actually going to accomplish together and they’re going to develop and happen. And they are amazed at that work, because a lot of the things that, you know, the limiting beliefs, they get in our way, but we don’t always speak them out. They’re often amazed at what comes out in that exercise. And then, whenever something pops up again when we’re working together, then I can say, well, remember that thing and how we work through it. It’s a really useful tool for me and for them as we work.
JAY:
Interesting. We often talk about a personalised roadmap or here’s the strategy and the marketing that you need to do, but it’s that layer of, mindset work that needs to happen. What Is it that you need to develop in yourself in order for this strategy to work?
SOPHIE:
And I think that’s often underplayed and it helps you drawing that out to know what you’re looking for as resistances and stumbling blocks.
JAY:
Yes. Yeah. I love that, thank you.
We’ve talked about the fear and in resilience, we’ve talked about stress, anxiety, unease, and kind of how that eats away at you. So, how does that show up in the work you do with people to get visible on LinkedIn, say?
SOPHIE:
Yeah, a lot of the people I work with, I could call them introverts, but that’s like just an easy label. It’s not necessarily that. They’re just very outward focused in the sense they are all about helping others. And so when you’re very service driven, you tend to not want yourself to be seen and visible. So that’s a lot of what’s happening.
JAY:
Or make money. Sometimes people feel guilty for making money when they’re serving people. Yeah, yeah.
SOPHIE:
Exactly. And what ends up happening, what ends up really helping people is we focus on the mission and the people that they can help. One of the big things I say is your audience is your clients. So don’t keep all your expertise and your wisdom from your clients and feel like, oh, there’s this whole other world out there that is marketing. No, bring that joy you have of sharing your message and your wisdom with your clients, bring that over into your marketing and treat your audience and your readers as if they were already your clients.
So you’re sharing all this education and wisdom, and how to change the beliefs of your audience as well and transform those. Once they’re able to see that they have the ability to do this work, and that actually is their marketing, that’s the big game changer. Because then they’re happy, you know.
JAY:
Yeah. I mean, you’re already having an impact before someone becomes the client. Yes. My model is: engage, educate, enrol. So that educate bit in the middle is where the marketing happens. And if you get it right, there’s an elegant transition into sales because people suddenly get what it is that you can do for them and the result that they want.
What about yourself? You know, because business is hard, right? We’ve had some conversations or some challenges where you do really, really well and then you get to a kind of a stuck point and it’s like, yeah, how do I go to the next level? How do I do the next thing? And that’s not necessarily the only example but when you hit an obstacle when something comes up at you, when there’s a life crisis or whatever how do you react to that? What do you do? What’s your go to place for dealing with it?
SOPHIE:
I find that where I’m not able to cope well is where I’m too close to something and I’m forced into something I need to do. And so this pressure is what stops me from thinking straight, basically. It’s the amygdala in action, as opposed to the prefrontal cortex, speaking in different terms. And what I need then is just space and time.
So I have constructed my life around that, and that has to do with my human design as well. I need a lot of time because I don’t know exactly when my energy is going to be up or down. It’s not like three o’clock every day is my downtime, although that is pretty low usually. But it’s more than that, right? It’s much more fluctuating than that. So, I need to give myself the time and space to step away from whatever is pressuring me. And I’ve just got a lot of space fortunately in my life. I’ve built it in and so I’m able to do that.
And yeah, there’s events that happen, you know, external events, and then there’s a lot of times where I myself have put myself in those situations because I am always compulsively growing. And as an entrepreneur, I think we all have that, right? We push to grow.
So when I’m uncomfortable with something and I feel fearful, I remind myself that this is what it feels like to be growing. That it’s not fear. It’s just because this is me growing. It’s a growing pain. And once I remind myself of that, I’m able to think, okay, what is it that I’m growing towards? What is it that’s motivating me? Why did I put myself in this situation? And that gets me out of it because I get motivated by the people I can help and the thing that I want to achieve. Yeah. Thats how I deal with it?
JAY:
Growth happens outside your comfort zone. So you’ve got to get uncomfortable for that growth to happen, as you said. But yeah, and then it reconnects you to, well let me just, Get back to resetting, like why I’m doing the work I’m doing, and, you know, it’s not always going to be easy.
It’s nice to think that it would be easy and effortless and all of that lovely stuff, but, you know, you always hit these roadblocks for sure. What are some examples, what do you personally like to do in that space that you created for yourself?
SOPHIE:
It’s interesting because a lot of it is escaping, actually getting my brain engaged in something different. So what I found is – I know Stephanie talked about going for a walk and you do too. A lot of people do. If I go for a walk, it does nothing for me because my brain is overdrive anyway.
JAY:
We’re all different.
SOPHIE:
Yeah, exactly. We’re all different. And I’ve tried many different activities, but if my brain is still on overdrive, it doesn’t help. I actually find that I need to escape into something that really engages my brain, but it has to be just right. It can’t be too engaging where it gets me tired, and I can’t come back to the problem. It has to be engaging enough to get my brain to do something different. Yeah, so I have actually found a way in the last years that has worked really well.
It’s unusual. I watch TV shows in Spanish. I don’t know Spanish. At least I didn’t know Spanish. Now I feel like I really do. I can’t speak a word, but I understand Spanish shows completely. I don’t mean subtitles anymore, but I started this. I was like, Oh, you know, I just watched, there was a show that I liked and it happened to be in Spanish. I was like, fine, I’m a global citizen. I can watch this with subtitles. I enjoyed it.
And I started spotting words, like, Oh, that word means that, but it wasn’t voluntary. It just happened. And then gradually I noticed they were more and more words that I knew. Then I just made it a thing where I’m like, okay, I’m just going to, So I watched all kinds of shows and now I can tell easily an Argentinian from a Colombian from a Mexican.
JAY:
Wow.
SOPHIE:
Yes. Because it’s been four years, even if I watch silly shows, which, between us, a lot of them are very silly. My brain is working on that. And when my brain is working on that, but not so hard, it’s amazing how in the back of my mind, I’m actually making connections. I’ll be watching something and the subconscious part of my mind is connecting some of the things that I’ve been working on, talking to people. It’s kind of an unusual way, but that’s what I do.
JAY:
It’s very unusual. It’s incredibly intriguing and interesting. But yeah, that subconscious is what you’re trying to kick in. I can’t believe the people who don’t understand that that’s a thing. Because you know that whole thing when you’re trying to remember something and then you remember it as sort of randomly that it’s like, Oh, that’s who it was.
SOPHIE:
Yeah, there’s a reason we have ideas in the shower. Our mind is relaxed. We’re thinking about whatever, that’s the point. And yeah, it’s a similar thing. We’re not pushing on it.
JAY:
Of course, that’s why we have sleep as well. To allow our brains that space in a different way. As long as the show doesn’t make you unconscious in any of those spaces, the subconscious. It depends how silly it is, I suppose.
SOPHIE:
The story gets carried away and I watch a little too long. In the beginning, I felt very guilty about watching TV. Then I realised, no, there’s actually something happening. I’ll just do this once or twice during the day for a short period and often I will get up and come back to work and I feel so excited and so energized and I have new ideas or I’m able to deal with things. So I’ve justified it to myself now. It works.
JAY:
Absolutely, it’s an interesting one for other people to think about.
The boring answer that I have is I do puzzles, jigsaw puzzles. Oh, I do those too. I do those too. I thought you did. I thought I remember I was talking about that. Oh yes. Yes. I do.
So here’s a question completely out of the blue in some ways is: can you speed up resilience building? Would you say?
SOPHIE:
Oh, that’s an interesting thought. I think so, because you build resilience, whether you like it or not, it just happens. I think some of it just happens to you over time by sheer force of the events.
JAY:
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?
SOPHIE:
Yeah. Yeah. So stuff happens and if we survive, then we’re stronger. But if we become more conscious about it and understand the processes of it, and we’re able to consciously go through exercises or thought processes, we can teach ourselves to do it faster.
JAY:
Do it faster. Yeah. Yeah. And I think Carmen mentioned some of that as well right early on. It seems a long time ago now since that first interview. You said something earlier as well about The more setbacks you have, the kind of better you get at bouncing back, bouncing forward, etc. So I think that ties in with that.
Can you share a story of how you’ve helped someone else with their resilience in the context of your work?
SOPHIE:
Yeah, I don’t know that I would call resilience necessarily, but confidence. I think for sure. And that happens a lot with my clients. There was this one gentleman, and I like to use an example of men, because I have a lot of women, but I have about two thirds women and about a third men came to me and was very apprehensive about putting himself forward, having calls with people, just the whole idea and had no idea what to write. He was just convinced by someone that LinkedIn was the best way for him to go forward, but he contacted me. So we started working together, did the whole mindset exercise and we worked on, well, his profile, of course, but then the strategy to meet his audience where they are, and to share his wisdom.
Over time, it is just extraordinary to me to see the confidence that has been building in him through the interactions, because that’s the thing with LinkedIn. It can feel like it’s a big anonymous platform, but it’s made up of people. And so once you start interacting with people, if you’re nervous about the platform, there’s a level of comfort that comes back to you. So starting to have interactions with people based on the content that he’s putting out really grew his confidence and lately, he’s been putting out posts without my even reviewing them or helping him. He’s doing all the things that we learned and having huge numbers of views, but more importantly, the interactions and having clients come to him and he’s having collaborations with people that are bringing him clients as well.
Obviously, that’s the ROI – that’s the official result that I should get most excited about. What I’m more excited about is when people really are enjoying the journey and interacting with people and excited about having conversations with people they didn’t know before and seeing this confidence. I mean, he speaks louder, he’s clearer in his communication and it’s just a joy. He seems joyful.
SOPHIE:
JAY:
I was going to ask you that was like, is he actually enjoying it now or is he just better at doing it? So you’ve answered that. Yeah. That’s a really nice outcome for you as well, as the coach.
SOPHIE:
Yeah. Yeah, I care much more about people starting to enjoy the process than getting results, which, you know, from a business standpoint, doesn’t make sense. I mean, it gives me satisfaction, but it’s also because I know once they start enjoying it, they’ll continue doing it.
JAY:
That’s the thing: you’re not going to do something consistently on a regular basis or frequently if you don’t actually get some kind of fulfilment and joy as you said. So maybe that’s your positive superpower. That’s my final question here is: what’s your positive superpower for rising resilient either for yourself or your clients?
SOPHIE:
Yeah, I think what has been the most impactful that I’ve done for people to help them with this resilience is to help them really discover what it is that their mission is a lot of times. It’s not being really articulated and also their story – I call it the golden thread in my book – like going back to their story. And we do this in the process of doing the profile for the (LinkedIn) About section, but it really is quite a journey to go back and to say, okay, where did this start? When did you first get interested in this? And a lot of times when you go back, you start finding all these patterns. And even if you’ve had a long and complicated career, like I have, with many different changes and twists and turns.
A lot of people who have that, they feel clueless as to how to portray themselves because they’re like, well, none of this makes sense. I’m like: wait a minute, let’s talk. Well, it does make sense. You just don’t see it yet. And so we go back and then I start, it’s very easy for me from the outside to see all the patterns and all the things that are repeating and really to discover that golden thread. It gives people a lot of confidence to understand that about themselves. So I would say that definitely is a superpower of mine.
JAY:
Yeah. Brilliant, brilliant. I spent a lot of time with clients talking about professional identity as well as brand positioning. And I think those things are very intertwined. Because from where I come from, a lot of people come into business from a label in their professional niche, in their corporate job. And then when they become an entrepreneur and a business owner, we talk about branding. It’s like, oh, I don’t know. I’ve put myself in this corner. So that’s another way of looking at it. But yeah, patterns and story and that clarity, brings confidence and that, and the courage to be visible comes from there.
So thank you. You’ve explained that in a very brilliant way because when people are trying to write that bio, that about page, quite often it’s not about them – I often say this – it’s not about you. It’s about your mission and what you do for your ideal client. And just turning that around. I think that’s what you’re saying as well.
So, yeah, I think it is a positive superpower to help pull that out of somebody when it’s all ravelled in their long and varied career as I describe it for myself and I spent quite a lot of time doing that too and now I think it’s a very important starting place. You mentioned right at the beginning about aligning and that’s my starting place of my 7 dimensions of success is aligning and then targeting and then positioning, and then the branding comes from there.
SOPHIE:
Exactly. Yeah, the golden thread in my book is in the chapter about positioning because the story of where you come from is what makes you unique. And so even if your mission is similar to other people, nobody comes at it the same way. It’s a big part of your unique positioning.
JAY:
And then the writing becomes easier.
SOPHIE:
Yeah, yeah.
JAY:
Well, thank you so much, Sophie. This has been lovely. It’s lovely to reconnect with you anyway, but you shared so many great insights and again, a different perspective. Thanks for sharing some of your personal unusual resilience habits. That’s also very interesting. Thank you so much.
SOPHIE:
Yeah, it’s been a lot of fun chatting with you, Jay. Thank you.
Connect with Sophie Lechner
Website: https://www.themagnetmodel.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophielechner/
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