How to Use Your Authentic Voice to Grow Your Business
Leslie Lyons is the Founder of Bombshell Movement Studio in Chicago, host of the Beyond the Pole: Tales from the CEO podcast, and a sales and leadership coach for female entrepreneurs. With a background in corporate sales, youth ministry (yes-she’s a Christian and the owner of a pole studio!), and as a leader for studio owners throughout the US, Leslie has spent her life pouring into women emotionally and spiritually. Now, more than ever, her dedication to helping entrepreneurial women lead with their heart and head is the exact type of leadership we need.
You can learn more about Leslie and the work she does at either www.lesliedlyons.com or https://www.bombshellmovement.com/.
Episode Transcript
Lindsay:
Welcome back to the Book Your Dream Clients podcast, bite-sized episodes from one coach to another to help create and scale your business with simplicity. No hustle required. It's your host Lindsay Maloney here and before we get started with this episode, I want to share something with you real quick. Have you been to my freebie vault lately? Because I have tons of free workbooks and masterclasses to help you get to the next level in your coaching business. And again, they are all free. All you have to do is go to Lindsaymaloney.com, click on free stuff and grab anything you'd like. Enjoy!
Lindsay:
We have a special guest with us today, Leslie Lyons, and we're chatting all about how to use your authentic voice to grow your business, to sell and to stand out. So sit back, relax and enjoy.
Lindsay:
Leslie, thank you so much for being on the Book Your Dream Clients podcast. I'm so excited to have you on today.
Leslie:
Lindsay, thank you so much for inviting me. Your listeners don't know, but it's bright and early Saturday, you know what they know, I'm an early bird, so they know Lindsay's been up for hours and Leslie just rolled out of the bed like...
Lindsay:
Well, you look great and I'm ready to get started because I think our people are going to love your story. So let's just dive in! Go ahead and tell us all about how you got started with your brick and mortar and your transition. We want to hear all about you!
Leslie:
Yeah, well Lindsay, thank you so much. I so appreciate you carving out some time to speak to me. Well, my name is Leslie Lyons and I am a multiple business entrepreneur. I have been working with women for over 30 years. Okay, don't try and figure out my age. Don't try to do the math because she was in kindergarten. I started working with women, but I've always had a passion for helping women to realize who they were, but more importantly, how to use their voice for impact. And this started when I was like a super, super little girl. It's probably important to kind of share how I got to owning the central movement studio. What I own here in Chicago, I always say I help women to reclaim their voice and their power through central movement. So by connecting to their inner knowing is really what we cultivate in our space.
But I have always been the little loud mouth girl who didn't know how to be quiet. Like I was the kid that when teachers used to move your desk and make you sit right next to them, like you were a very good kid. You probably knew about children like me though. I did. So just stop me from talking, they would move my desk right next to their desk because I was always talking. But what was funny is I remember I was in second grade and my teacher was having a conference with my parents and she was sharing the fact that I talked too much. By that point, my parents knew that right? They had raised me. They knew I talked too much, but it was something that stuck with me. This is second grade. I'm seven years old. I remember this being said, she was like, “The problem isn't that she just talks so much. The problem is, she gets other people to talk too.” And I was like, I remember resenting that when I was younger, because I felt like I was being punished for other people's actions. I was being punished and I was being accused of being the ringleader. Really I was standing in my power and being a leader. I was being an influencer at seven years old.
So for me it didn't stop there because I had a dad who affirmed my voice very early. When I was four and didn't want to eat broccoli. My mother came from a background where kids were seen and not heard. Okay. Very high respect background. My dad came from a very similar background, but he didn't think it was a smart thing. And so it came time for dinner. I loudly proclaimed I wasn't eating that. I didn't want to eat it. And my mother went into the mode, like, “Who are you talking to? You're going to eat that. If you don't eat it, you're going to have it for breakfast, kind of a thing.” And my dad stopped her and said she has a right to vocalize. If she doesn't like something, now she is going to eat it. But she has a right to tell you that she doesn't want to. And from that point on, that cemented in my mind, Lindsay that my voice mattered what a good dad and a good mom seriously, seriously. Those things you don’t appreciate until many years later, when I went into coaching and started working with women who had such a struggle with their voice, because while that was my story, they had opposite stories of when their voice was squelched at a very early age. So like most children, you don't really appreciate your parents in the thick of it, but in the reflection it's like, “wow, what a great gift that was for me”.
And so fast forward to me working in corporate and just still being a little loud mouth thinking my opinions matter because in my house, my opinions always mattered. And so here I am now a 25, 26 year old woman. And I'm like, why didn't you care about my opinions? What do you mean? I have great ideas. I have something to say. And they're like, we don't want to hear that. Right. So long story short, I left corporate because I could not deal with the constant putting baby in a corner kind of approach. I had gotten fired from jobs. I mean, it was just tumultuous to say the least. And I was like, I have to have my own platform to do what is important to me. And that's how I started my studio.
Lindsay:
I love that. So what did you find when you started your studio? Was it hard for you to get people to come in and what were they struggling with when they did come in?
Leslie:
Yeah, that's a great question. Thanks for asking that. Oh my gosh, yes! So now central moving studios, pole dancing for fun, fitness movement, connection, all the things it's very popular now. Even like five years ago I remember when I first did it. So 15 years ago when I started, it was very taboo. People were very much like, “what are you doing? Are you training women to be strippers and your youth minister, like, you know what you're doing, right? Like, I'm not sure that I want you around my kids.” Kind of a thing what's going on here. Right? That was 15 years ago. Actually 17 years ago when I started, because I opened the studio 15 years ago and people had no idea.
Well, fast forward when we went to our new church, about six years ago, my pastor saw Bombshell cause that's the name of my studio on my jacket. And this was a fairly large church. And so he would just see me in passing. So obviously he Googled it because it's like, who's this new parishioner here and what is the Bombshell stuff that you'd always wearing? Because here's the deal- I teach on Sundays. So I literally would be leaving eight o'clock service going straight to teach. So I'm already dressed. So when he finally got a chance to meet me, he was like, “So Bombshell, that's pole fitness. I've heard of that.” And that was like the two stories on just how times have changed. So when I first got started, people had a lot of questions about number one, why was I doing it? Me and my background, number two, if it was appropriate to be candid and how would this benefit me? I think what helped Lindsay. One of the things that I teach in my selling programs is about your authentic stories. And I think I actually had a little bit easier because I was a Christian. Because I was known in the community. I had it a little bit easier than other people who started studios. Then only because people knew me, done life with me. And so while they had questions, they had grace for me. It was like, I'm not sure what's happening. So they had experienced with me. So I think that was an advantage. But yeah, the separation of what I was doing, because for me, it was all about connection. It was all about asking the question, what type of woman was interested in coming 15 years ago is still the type of woman that shows up? Now the woman who feels a disconnection from her sensuality, even maybe her sexuality and she feels powerless. And a lot of women don't know it when they come in, but a lot of the tools and the practices and the things that we do that are off the pole, help them unearth what they were looking for.
Now I'm a good marketer too. So I've got the language on my website and all of the things that I talk about, but most women don't come in and say, “I feel powerless. What I feel is I feel lost. I feel this huge disconnect from my husband, baby. I don't feel like me anymore. And I want to get back to feeling like me” and what they find us do through that process is that me is always there. You just need to plug back into it and plugging back into it is not easy. You need tools, you need coaching, you need guidance with that. And it's so powerful for women to reclaim that part of them.
Why do you think women experience that disconnect in their lives? Well, I think there's a physical reason for it. Having a baby, your body is not true. For nine months and then if you breastfeed and you got another year going on, there we go. For something it's like, you're sharing your actual body, sharing your space is different than sharing emotional space. You're sharing your actual body. So things that like, if your body has changed, there's so much that has gone on hormonally and physically, right? So because of that, there's just the physical part of that for moms. So that's a real one. But for women who have not had children who feel disconnected, unfortunately there could be trauma and bone that has caused them to disassociate from their bodies because their bodies weren't safe for them is the best way for me to say that. Also it could have been situations where women gave their bodies to people who did not deserve it. And there's some working through that to reclaim it. There's the comparison syndrome of what bodies look like. And when bodies should look like, you know, social media, Instagram models, like what a body should look like. So there's so many reasons why women disconnect from their bodies, but at the base, it doesn't matter if it's the mom or if it's the woman who feels like she's lost her mojo because it's up to a 19 year old Instagram model, right at the base of that is this lack of feeling comfortable in their body. It doesn't matter. The reason the symptoms are the outcome is the same. The symptoms may be different, but the outcome is the same. And when you don't feel comfortable, Lindsay, in your body, the way that you show up in spaces, it reflects it.
And we're not talking about introvert extroverts here. I tell people this all the time, especially when people meet me, because I just shared the story. I've been a big mouth since I was a kid, right? I'm like, of course you're confident. Of course look at you. I'm like confidence is in being loud and extroverted. Some of the most powerful women I know, Lindsay women, a few words, my mentor, she hardly talks at all. But when she speaks stuff shifts because she's so reflective. She's so wise. She has quiet confidence, right? And that's what I want all women to have, whether it's extroverted, boisterous confidence, or if it's still, quiet confidence. That's why I want you to have. And when you aren't connected, you lack confidence. You doubt your decision.
How many women do you talk to as a coach yourself? Who doubt their decision-making? Way too many. It's like that comes from somewhere Lindsay. You know, we know this as coaches that comes from somewhere and it's helping them to see value in their voice. That's what makes me kind of choke up a little bit. Is that so many women don't think that their voice matters.No one cares what I have. Yeah. And I'm just like what? To see women step into that power because your voice is power.
Anybody listening to this, write this down. If you want to feel more power in your life, you are going to find it through your voice. You have to speak up for things that matter to you. You got to be the advocate for your family, but you gotta be an advocate for yourself first. You gotta be an advocate for things you care about. You gotta be an advocate for social issues. You gotta be whatever God has placed in your heart, your purpose, you gotta advocate for. So to see women step into that is my life's work.
Lindsay:
So needed. And you kind of hit it right there where you said so many people don't think that their voice matters. if I speak, it doesn't matter anyway, because no one's going to listen to me or they're going to think I'm stupid or it's going to be wrong. They just go down the checklist of all the negative things, the possible negative things that could happen. So they're just quiet. And then it just, it disconnects them even more if it's even possible. And that, that is so very sad because you know, just like how you brought up the introvert extrovert thing, I think it's such a stigma of introverts and I'm the definition of an introvert that they're shy and they didn't have nothing to say. And we have a lot to say, but like you said, when they speak, you listen, because they've been sitting there thinking about what they're going to say. And they're very thoughtful of what they're going to say. And I think that's so important to say that because if you feel like you are, that don't think that it's your job to be quiet. It's not your job to be quiet. So important to make that known.
Leslie:
Yeah. I'm like wisdom. And, and for those who believe in the Bible, wisdom is a person of very few words it's said over and over and over where there's plenty of words. Sin is sure to follow, like remind myself of that because I talk so much.
Lindsay:
Yeah. But that's okay. That's okay. That's how God made you.
Leslie:
I'm like, somebody's got to speak. It is me, you know, when you have children, Lindsay. So you know, the Dr. Seuss books Lorax. All right. So I speak for the trees for, they have no voices.
Lindsay:
Exactly! I love that. And, and you know, I think, so I am also a rapid transformational therapy practitioner and so I help women break those barriers too, and in a different way. And they with every single woman I've worked with, they've been shut down as a child in some way. Right? And that is, that makes me a better parent too, because I have some chatty Cathy daughters, they could just talk your ear off until they pass out in bed at night. Right? And so it's so important for me to keep it known that what they say matters. I don't want to make them feel like they have to be quiet. They have so much to say. And I always want them to know that whatever they say matters, even if they've told me that 8,000 times, and it has nothing to do with anything that we're doing, you got to let them say it. That's so important. I don't ever want to shut that down.
Leslie:
Oh, Lindsay, what a great mom, what a great time. And it ain't easy. Let's just be candid. I'd tell them, Hey, I doubt, you know, the consequences of that.
Lindsay:
There's so much trauma with the littlest things, the littlest things, and those little things matter so much as an adult sometimes. And the things that all of a sudden surface in your mind, like, gosh, I remember this one time when somebody said this to me and that has held me back ever since. And that person probably didn't mean you any harm, but it happened. It switched something off for you. So it just, we all have to be so mindful of how, not only how we treat ourselves, how we treat other people, because that affects how they feel about themselves as well. It's just a whole ripple effect.
Leslie:
Oh my gosh. Yeah. That's so, so true. So true. And thank you for the ammunition to be mindful of how we treat other people. Then you are part of someone's trauma. Yup, like I always say, I don't want my name to be mentioned on the therapist couch. Like I don't want somebody to be pointing to me that I have to raise it. How terrible would that be? Yes, it would be. It will be thank you for that admonition to, you know, be mindful of how our words affect other people, how they land for you. It's interesting because when I think about how I made the bridge from owning this brick and mortar business for the last 15 years, I started coaching about three years ago. And what triggered this for me is when you brought up about the stories that people have about how their voice was shut down. So I started by telling you how my voice was affirmed. Right? And I think because of my personality, are you familiar with the Enneagram at all? Very? Yes, okay. Well, I'm an Enneagram eight.
Lindsay:
Oh, I can totally see that. Yes. I have a five.
Leslie:
Oh my gosh. We were just talking about this yesterday. How we don't know any fives. Oh, I was doing an Instagram live with a creative agency and she had me on and we were talking about the Enneagram a little bit. And she was like, well, what's the most introverted number? I was like a five. She was an introvert. And I was like, but you're not a five. You asked for the most introverted, here we are. But because as an Enneagram, eight wing seven, one of my coping mechanisms is denial. So in order for me to continue to push forward and have the intensity, I have to suppress feelings. And I didn't realize this Lindsay until I started working with a coach. Enneagram as a tool. I didn't realize how much I suppressed because I'm so vocal. But that speaking was a way for me to cover up sensitive things. It was a way for me to be prickly, kind of like a porcupine. So you wouldn't get too close. You wouldn't know the things that really hurt me. The things that really scared me, I would just spine out people at a safe distance where I felt in control.
Well, when I got a coach it was because I was coaching and I always feel like if you're going to be doing something, you need to be experiencing the same thing. I felt like authenticity is a thing for me and integrity for me, not authenticity, but integrity for me. This is when it started coming up because here I was this very confident, very boisterous in my world and social and moral. I launched my coaching business. When I launched my coaching business, this isn't one of these rags-to-riches type stories, but I had authority in this industry and in the industry at that point for 12 years, I had a multiple six figure business. People knew me. So when I launched my business, I launched my business to the dream of a six figure coaching business. When I launched it, wow. Launched a group coaching program. Right? I didn't go the traditional route built up by authority. Right? You know, so where this started to come up, the insecurity for me started to come up was when I wanted to get outside of my bubble, when I wanted to expand my coaching outside of my industry. That's when these weird feelings started coming up and I was kinda like, what is this? Why am I confident in what I'm saying, why am I not what's happening?
Well, rewind a little bit. And I think about my dad affirming my voice. There was a period of time where I lost my voice because of the same things that we talked about with women. And for me, it was societal pressure at an age, going back to that story of being at second grade and being told that I was the reason that other people were missing me and kindergarten, my first offense was with Miss Lofton. I remember her name. I remember me being very assertive, being very proud. We had the line leaders and I thought she told me that I was going to be the line leader. So there was some type of thing that got crossed because she was pointing or something. So I proudly marched my little five-year-old self to the front of the line. And I remember turning to the person behind me. It was a little boy and saying, “I'm the line leader” and Ms. Lofton heard it. And she turned around and not only did she say I was not the line leader, she grabbed me by my ear and walked me to the back of the line and said, this is where you go.
Linsday:
Oh goodness.
Leslie:
I was like, Oh my gosh. It came out during this coaching for me. There's been all of this boisterousness though, was being told as many women with similar personalities that you're too much. And for all these years though, because I deal with denial is how I cope. I would just muscle up and people aren't going to like me anyways. So I might as well, I am dah, dah, dah, but those little things were eating away at my confidence, my real confidence, true self. I can only put myself in situations, Lindsay where I could win. Does that make any sense?
Linsday:
Perfect sense.
Leslie:
Yeah. If I couldn't win, I wasn't going to be in that world right now where I am as a coach afraid. And I'm like, this is not something I'm acquainted with. I was well acquainted with it. I had suppressed it, right?. So all of these years of being told you're too much. So you got miss Lofton putting you literally in your proverbial place, putting you in your place, saying this is where you go to women. In my church saying men don't like loud women. You aren't modest. You aren't demure or you'll never get a husband because men don't, that's not what femininity looks like. You're too much. You're too much. Then when I got married, it was very common for men to meet my husband for the first time, because they often met me first. And when they would meet my husband, it was very common for them to be like, “Wow, God bless you. You got a guaranteed place in heaven.” Cause how do you deal with this? You know? And it was always said with jest and joking, but it's slipping away in a way chipping away solidifying people. So all of those things and that chipping away over time led me to being in an abusive relationship. It led me to getting fired from jobs. It led to all this weird stuff that if you looked at me, you saw this extremely confident person, but if I couldn't win, I was very insecure.
We won three years ago when I'm launching this coaching business and I'm dealing with imposter syndrome. I'm dealing with a lack of really sharing who I am and what I believe things I taught in my studio, you know, like in my element, this one, it never showed up for me. But now that I was out of my element, all the things that I had walked women through those last 12 years, I was now having to take those tools and apply them to myself. If I was going to show up and build the coaching business that was going to be sustainable and purposeful and impactful and all of the things, I was going to have to deal with these demons that I didn't even realize I had. Right?
Linsday:
How did that go for you? Was it a big eye opener when you were done? You're never done working on yourself, but what kind of eye-opener was that?
Leslie:
Yeah, I think the first eye-opener was the suppression thing that I wasn't, as confident as I thought I was. Confidence is a part of my identity for sure. You know? And so to find that clutch my pearls like insecurities. Why? So number one, it made me more compassionate of a coach. That was it. Did I find out I was? Yeah, I thought I was, but no, I wasn't. I wasn't, I really didn't have compassion for that. I approach women who were afraid to use their voice with kind of like tough love, kind of like man, boy, girl exercises around using your voice and all of those things like, come on, we got to use your voice where I didn't really hold compassion for all the things we talked about why their voice was small. Right. I had to come into that. So that awareness happened for me year two of my coaching. Year one of my coaching was a hot mess, Lindsay.
It was a hot mess because I wasn't even a coach. I didn't even really have a framework. I wasn't, you know, I was just giving advice and I don't even call myself a coach. Now I'm a mentor because I got to give some advice to just holding space and, and helping you get to your brilliance. I've got to give you a little bit of advice too, though. I'm a mentor. So that was eye opening for me was my own insecurity, which turned into greater grace and compassion for the clients who I was serving. I think that was the biggest aha for me,
Lindsay:
I think. And you know, all of those moments in our life are, it helps us it when you go to the bird's eye view, when you're in the thick of it, and you're wondering why is God doing this to me? But ask yourself, why is God doing this for me? So in the future, I'm able to help other people climb through those weeds, just like I did with compassion. Like you said, like I needed to have that. And I wasn't utilizing that tool in my toolbox. And now you are, and that's why it's so effective. And you're actually changing lives from the inside out.
Leslie:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's such great context on that. Such a good reframe as why is God doing this to me? Who will this benefit? You know, pain has purpose. And I think that's something that's very unique to the Christian worldview, to be candid. All other traditions teach you, not all, but a lot teach you to avoid pain at all costs. Whereas we serve a suffering saver. So we're very much acquainted with pain. So when we talk about that, because a lot of my clients, I would say 99% of my clients are not Christians, which is weird to me too, because I am so vocal. But I, you know what I think it is Lindsay is because I cuss. I think people,
Lindsay:
I also think it's because, I mean, I love you for whatever you believe. I love you. But I also think that people kind of want to be in that space and they need, they need that. And I love that. Yeah.
Leslie:
I think God is very intentional about what he does, but I am I because, and so I think that's weird to them cause they're like, they go to your website and they see devout Christian. They see me and they're like -odd here. Somebody hacked your website. But I think it's truly because tough people feel very safe with me.
Linsday:
I can totally see that.
Leslie:
Feel protection for me. And that is what magnetizes them. But I always tell women when you're done working with me, because I actually take them through a framework that I have about helping them to sell more. And in order to sell more, you gotta use your voice, right? So once we're done that 12 weeks, you're not going to be a completely different person, but you're going to feel like a different person. You're going to have a level of confidence that will be the foundation for all of the growth work, visibility, work, things that you need in your business at the end of that 12 weeks. Because for me, let me ask you Lindsay. Now I'm going to interview you. When you're coaching a woman who is struggling with her voice, we talked about little T trauma or even big T trauma could impact it. What other things do you think you hear a lot of, in terms of why, other than the trauma that made them think their voice doesn't matter, what else comes up for those women?
Lindsay:
What comes up for those women when they don't feel like they don't, they don't have any confidence in themselves. So they feel like if they would put something out there they're so afraid of rejection, that's a big thing. They don't want to be rejected. They're always keeping themselves safe from that rejection. Yeah.
Leslie:
Yeah. And what's one of the tools you give them in regards to it.
Linsday:
Number one is listening to them. And so many people are so lonely and they don't have anybody to talk to. You know, they feel like, you know, maybe their spouses, like over the story, I'm not over your story. So just tell me about it. And if you need somebody to talk to I'm here, that's why I support them in the way I do. But it's also me. Like I can't hold your hand the whole way. So I have to help you let go of my fingers and be your own coach. Because if you're going to coach other people, I, I need you to stand on your own two feet. So giving those little steps of wins and then pretty soon like, wow, look I've been doing this all by myself. I'm doing really well. Like, you know, when you're teaching your kids to walk and just a little bits at a time that matter. So I'm all about small steps, small wins. And I love that because I think that's the best way to build confidence organically
Leslie:
Oh my gosh. So you like hold up a flashlight on their wounds for them.
Linsday:
Yeah. I say I'm, I'm dangling the carrot. Just keep going. Come on. You can do this.
Leslie:
I love it. I love it. I love it. Thank you for sharing that.
Lindsay:
Well, Leslie, this has been a fabulous conversation. How can people find out more about you? How can they go see your website and see what you're all about joining your program? All the things.
Leslie:
Yeah, absolutely. So if you own a brick and mortar business, that's kind of my specialty. Like I love helping brick and mortar people get more people through the door because that is a real thing. Foot traffic is a real thing, but you are burnt out from trying to sell all the things. And when it's something more authentic, that's kind of my zone of genius. So you can find out more about me at lesliedlyons.com. I'm also an IG. That's where you find me cussing on Instagram live under the same @LeslieDlyons.
Linsday:
Awesome. Thank you so much for spending time with me. I'm sure our listeners are going to love this episode. Please go share your love for her and share this episode with your friends. Leslie, thank you so much for being here.
Leslie:
Thank you so much. Thank you for the work you're doing. We need more of you in the world. May your tribe increase.
Lindsay:
Yes. Same to you, my dear. Thank you so much. Thank you. Before you go. I want to invite you to join my free Facebook group, simply type dreamclientcommunity.com in your browser request, access and go happily. We have amazing coaches in there just like you, who are starting and scaling their business. And we would love to see you there!