#57 - Building Belief with Heather Hansen: Court Reporting & Self-Advocacy

Hi Heather, welcome to the Court Reporter Podcast.

Thank you for having me, Bryn.

I love court reporters, so I'm delighted to be here.

I'm excited to talk about your experience with court

reporters as a trial attorney.

Heather Hansen is a keynote speaker and bestselling author of The

Elegant Warrior, which is a book that I'm reading and obsessed with.

Also, how to win life's trials without losing yourself.

She combines her experience as a trial attorney with her psychology degree and

time as a TV host to help those she serves to build belief in their leadership,

their products, and themselves.

She's appeared on the Today Show, CNN, Fox News MSNBC, Fox

Business, News Nation, and CBS.

She's given a TEDx on perspective and empathy, and spoken for Harvard Business

School, Stanford MedX, Google, Berkshire Hathaway Home Services, LVMH, and the

American Medical Association, Her most recent book is Advocate to Win, 10 Tools

to Ask for What You Want and Get It.

So Heather, wow, that's a really amazing bio, one of the best I've seen.

thank you.

why don't you tell us about your experience as a trial attorney,

working with court reporters, and how it led to where you are now.

I love court reporters.

I used to always say we can't do anything without them.

We can't start without them.

we have no record without them.

I was always super grateful for court reporters.

They also reminded me to slow down, which was good because if they needed

me to slow down, then that meant the jury needed me to slow down.

And so they were very helpful.

I studied psychology as an undergrad and, went straight

from undergrad to law school.

While I was in law school, I started working at a firm that did medical

malpractice defense, and I loved it.

I loved learning about the body.

I loved that it was a type of law where I have a knee.

So if I have to learn about a knee, I have to teach it to a jury, it actually

was interesting to me as opposed to construction litigation or criminal.

My boyfriend at the time was a DA.

None of that was as interesting.

And so I started there when I was a first year in law school and I was there

until I ended my legal career last year.

defending healthcare providers in medical malpractice cases.

I worked with court reporters, all the time in depositions.

And at trial

That's so amazing.

And your program, the main thing that you coach people on is how to advocate.

For yourself, and that's a big topic in court reporting because we don't

really learn how to do that and we need to really do that as it pertains

to protecting the record and our own needs sometimes everyone wants to

power through lunch break and then they also just start breaking the rules

and there's no boundaries and at some point the court reporter is just okay,

whatever, just like you get what you get.

it's true.

we all need to advocate for ourselves.

my business is build belief builders because advocating is building belief.

for all court reporters listening, the first thing is you've

got to build your own belief.

You've got to build your own belief that you deserve lunch.

You've got to build your own belief that it's totally fine

to ask for a bathroom break.

You've got to build your own belief that you are the most important

person in the room and that no one can do anything without you.

Because when you believe and you have that grounding of belief, then you are much

better at speaking up for yourself in an effective way because your energy changes.

the work I do is teaching people to believe in themselves and their

ability and their value and the value of a court reporter is immense.

And then once you're in that belief, I teach people how to get

other people to believe as well.

And we go through all of this sort of thinking about, you guys will relate to

this so well, I talk about your jury.

In your own belief.

It's your inner jury.

It's the part of you that decides what they're going to believe

what you're going to believe.

And your outer jury, which for a court reporter might be the judge.

It might be the attorneys involved in a case.

If you don't run your own agency whoever your jury is, you have to know

them what's important to them and then be able to speak to that so that you

can ask for what you want and get it.

Wow, that's inspiring.

can you elaborate more on creating evidence to present to the jury?

I've seen a couple of your posts listened to your podcast

and that concept is powerful,

the evidence thing is, in the courtroom, that's

what we use to build belief.

We use evidence.

And every day there's evidence out there.

So if I'm a court reporter and I want to believe that I want to get

a lunch break every time that I do a day long deposition, I want to make

sure that I'm getting lunch, my blood sugar goes low, all of these things.

The first thing I need to do is persuade myself.

I have to collect and create evidence that I need and deserve a lunch break.

So that evidence might be, and I talk about collecting and creating

evidence in two different ways.

Collecting is looking back in your past, or at other court reporters

and looking at people who get a lunch break and they're better for it.

They're more with it.

able to follow along with the conversation.

They can keep up with the speed of the different attorneys

because they got that lunch break.

That's collecting evidence.

you might want evidence that the attorneys aren't going to roll their

eyes or be rude the best way to get that evidence is to ask for the

lunch break and create the evidence.

everything we do can be evidence of something.

whatever it is that you want to prove the story that you want.

Tell to yourself and others and have them believe it.

You've got to be aware of what is the evidence to support this story.

it's everywhere.

Yeah.

it can be hard for reporters to, because like in the moment, it's

okay, my needs are, not as important as this really important case these

people's lives are on the line.

But really, I just need to use the bathroom or I'm just hungry.

I can push it a little more.

that ends up, turning into the whole day.

how would you recommend?

Start building those beliefs because you have to get the evidence first.

Is there some work you can do on that?

it's a lot about the story you tell yourself.

If you tell yourself if I ask for a lunch break, they're not going to hire me again.

They're going to hire a different court reporter.

They're going to be mad.

that's one story you could tell yourself.

And you might, there might be court reporters listening right

now that say, yeah, I have a lot of evidence that supports that story.

I've had people get mad.

But there's also the story that if you ask for the lunch break,

your work product is better.

You make fewer mistakes.

You turn it around faster.

There's a million things that are actually powerful about

asking for that lunch break.

And on top of that, you're better when you get home for your

family or your kids or yourself.

You're in better health.

You're more likely to not miss a day of work because you're struggling

because you've burnt yourself out.

So you've got to find a different story to tell yourself, knowing

every story has its evidence.

Court reporters know this better than almost anyone.

In the courtroom, everybody has the same evidence.

And they all tell different stories about it.

They turn and twist and play with the evidence until it supports their story.

the truth becomes whatever the jury believes.

What is the story you want to believe?

What is the story you want to tell yourself?

craft that story to make it a story that resonates with you,

that makes you feel something.

And then you want to collect and create evidence to support that story.

The subconscious mind likes repetition.

it's not enough to tell yourself the story once you've got to repeat the story.

You've got to keep looking for the evidence because you've spent a

long time telling yourself the story that you shouldn't ask for lunch.

now you've got to repeat a new story and do the work so that it

becomes the story you believe.

That's so true.

Yeah, repeating things is so important, and I think a lot of us who have

podcasts or who put content out there, we're often repeating the same message

in a different way over and over again, and it's not until maybe the

tenth time that it really sinks in.

the subconscious mind needs that repetition.

It does need the repetition, and it's worse these days.

I have a model in my work, and it's 9x9w.

It used to be 7x7w, and it probably should be higher the 9x9w

stands for nine times nine ways.

people in advertising said you had to repeat a message seven times, for

people to hear it that number has gone up to nine and might be 13 because

people's attention spans are lower and there's so much content that you can

get lost in advocating to someone else.

When you are asking someone else for something, you have to repeat

it more often, because they're not really hearing, they're not really

paying attention, they're letting it go in one ear and out the other.

And we do sometimes feel silly repeating ourselves, which is why for

me, it's the nine times nine ways.

What are different ways you can share the same message?

What are different ways you can share the same evidence?

if you can do it in different ways, repetition doesn't feel as boring.

if I want to believe something new, I'll repeat it to myself I might

put a sticky note up in my bathroom

I might talk to my coaching friends about it to repeat the message.

then I might do a hypnosis meditation.

before bed that has a similar message embedded in the hypnosis so that

I can repeat it to my subconscious we want to keep repeating these

things in different ways to talk to the different parts of our brain,

Yeah, that's so interesting.

So I would love to jump into that now because you mentioned the hypnosis,

I would love to just explore that and maybe try to break any preconceived

notions about hypnotism, like even me when I hear that for the first

time or not for the first time you hear it is like in the movies, and

it's like the thing that's Yeah.

Putting someone into a trance to do something scary.

those are the stereotypical ideas that people have when they think of hypnotism.

But, a lot of court reporters are in Christianity and it's believe in God

and think that it's like something that opposes, it's like myself too.

but I think it's something deeper.

It's something like, That can be very good.

So do you want to share, like how can we break those concepts and

what is it really?

I went to 12 years of Catholic school.

So I understand this hesitation and questioning.

my teacher, Grace Smith.

calls hypnosis meditation with a goal.

The truth of it is if you bring, if you have ever done a guided meditation, like

on insight timer is an app that I use.

And there's these meditations where they say they give you affirmations

or they say, you're going to have a great day or be kind to people.

Hypnosis is simply a period of time where what the hypnotist is

doing is putting your conscious mind to relaxation, not to sleep.

You're not asleep.

You are awake and aware, and what's going on the entire time, but it's relaxing.

your conscious mind so that we can speak to your subconscious

where beliefs habits and your emotions and your imagination live.

So while you're being hypnotized, you are never asleep.

It is not a truth serum.

You will never say things that you didn't want to otherwise say.

It is not mind control.

You will not do things that you wouldn't otherwise do.

It is simply a time where you are relaxing your conscious mind enough to allow your

subconscious mind to be open to change.

from the time you were born to seven, your brain was in what's

called theta brainwave states.

And you were very suggestible.

You were very open to suggestion.

And then as you got older, those suggestions stuck.

So as a hypnotist, I want to get your brain into theta brainwave states by

counting you down and relaxing your mind.

So that we can then make new things stick things that you

want, and it's all up to you.

All hypnosis is self hypnosis.

in the movies they're just stories, trying to make it salacious some

people who are listening might have seen a stage hypnotist get

somebody to cluck like a chicken.

But here's the thing that you need to remember about that.

Whoever goes up on stage.

during stage hypnosis, raise their hand to go up there.

So some part of them wants to act a little crazy to get out of

their normal, rule abiding self.

And so that person is likely willing to do some of those things that make

them a little bit different than they otherwise were the people who

don't want to don't raise their hand.

And so those people aren't doing anything that they don't want to

do, because you are never out of it.

when hypnotized.

Most of the time when I do a hypnosis, when the person's done,

they just say, I was so relaxed.

I didn't want to open my eyes.

I was so relaxed, but it wasn't like I was out of it.

I don't know what happened.

Never has that happened.

It's very much, a relaxing way for you to have a conversation with the part

of you that's often making all of the decisions and you don't even know it.

So how did, okay, so I heard

you say you lost a hundred pounds and hypnotism played a role how did

it help change your beliefs to lose?

I often eat late at night.

Sometimes that's a habit that I like want to break and maybe hypnotism can

help with that or, other things that I've been thinking of, like my beliefs

around making terrible investment decisions that don't end up, having

any yield, any return of investment.

So things like that, that have become these third beliefs, like how does

hypnotism help you Lose 100 pounds.

20 years ago, I went to a hypnotist and he sold us tapes.

And in this tape recorder is one of my old school tapes.

So what happened in the group hypnosis is he had us all together and he did the

induction where he counted down from 10 to one and relaxed our conscious mind.

his name is Barry Beter.

He said things like, food doesn't make you feel better.

Healthy feelings make you feel better.

Food is temporary.

It satisfies for too short a time That's a hypnotic suggestion I've heard many

times from him that I haven't memorized.

Yeah.

It's.

But he said a whole lot of things like that during our group session.

Then he took us out of hypnosis.

We took a break.

We chat with each other.

We come back in, we go back into hypnosis and he says similar things.

Another thing that he did is something that I do in my hypnosis,

which he created an anchor.

So I'm showing you if you're watching on YouTube, the anchor is to rub

your thumb and first finger together.

So when you feel like binging or eating something that you don't want

to eat, you do this and it reminds you.

You're subconscious of the suggestions you've heard, so it's not going to work

for you, Brandon, because you've not been hypnotized yet, but once you've

been hypnotized, this becomes a good, like when you do this, you just remember,

Oh yeah, I'm not really that hungry.

I don't really want that thing.

It's like a strange connection that anchors you back to the suggestion.

Another thing Barry did in the group hypnosis is he had

us choose a food to give up.

for me, I did a bunch over time, but the first one I did was chocolate

and he put us under hypnosis.

under hypnosis, he had us imagine a table of chocolate, then he had us take a big

paint brush and put the paint in poisonous paint and paint all over the chocolate.

Poisonous paint, poison on the chocolate.

And so then when you're out of the hypnosis, for me, I, for

years, didn't eat chocolate again.

I since do eat chocolate, but not that often.

And it's not, doesn't have the same pull.

I ended up doing that paintbrush exercise with cheese, which used

to be a big snacking food for me and potato chips, which used to

be a big snacking food for me.

so it is.

Suggestions like that.

But because it's a group hypnosis and not one-on-one, one-on-one,

hypnosis tends to work the fastest.

because you actually talk back and forth.

And so it's very interactive, but because it's group, you need more repetition.

So I bought those tapes and I did those tapes in the morning and before I went

to bed every day for probably a year.

And at the end of that year, I lost a hundred pounds.

more importantly.

I didn't think about food all the time.

I've written two books and I've started a podcast and I've started

a business and I truly believe.

That I would never have been able to do those things if I still thought

about food as much as I used to.

what did I eat yesterday?

What am I going to eat today?

Have I had too much Do my pants fit?

Did I work out enough for that chocolate cake I had for dinner?

how many points I used to do Weight Watchers, which is

a great way to lose weight.

But I used to be so Obsessed with all of that and the hypnosis helped

my subconscious mind to let that go.

I've kept that hundred pounds off for 30 years.

I was 20 ish and I'm 52 today.

So it's been 30 years.

I've kept that weight off.

probably 10 years ago, my ex fiance had a heart attack.

At 39 years of age.

And because of that, and because I was a medical malpractice attorney,

I had a lot of health anxiety I was always like, something's wrong.

We need to go to the doctor.

hypnosis totally reduced that anxiety for me.

more recently I was having trouble sleeping at night

because I was having back pain.

And I used hypnosis before bed and it has been a huge help there.

And I will, I know I've talked a lot about this because I'm passionate about

it, but one more thing I do want to say, there are phenomenal studies out of

Stanford and Harvard that show the value of hypnosis, especially for pain relief.

it's important people know these things because pain relief.

is problematic people take pills they can become addicted to and

doctors prescribe pills when hypnosis may work as well if not better.

if you are struggling with something to at least look into

it is definitely worth your time.

Yeah, for sure.

so there's a group that we're both in Coaching Patsy I posted

my experience of eating 12 ice cream sandwiches in one sitting.

I went to the grocery store and I bought them and then I just was like,

I'm just gonna try one but I ended up eating the whole box.

Yeah.

And I'm like maybe I should and I'm thinking about the hypnosis like

what the heck is what was I thinking like maybe I need to do that.

weren't thinking I said this on that post when you posted it it's

Beautiful you shared that because many people do that and don't talk about it and

we hide it and we're embarrassed of it.

And the truth of it is that something in your subconscious

was looking for solace comfort.

food often does that for us.

one of the most famous uses of hypnosis is smoking and smoking is much easier

because with smoking, you can hypnotize someone to hate smoking, to think about

smoking as if they're putting their mouth on the exhaust pipe of a car.

And when you tell this subconscious that it's much easier when the people person

wakes up, it's effective with smoking.

with eating, it's harder because we have to eat.

your subconscious thought it was protecting you when you started

eating ice cream sandwiches.

hypnosis is a good way to explore that.

And it does take repetition and it doesn't mean, I don't want the listeners

to think that all get hypnotized and then I'll just drop the weight.

or quit smoking, but it does change.

the urges

It's a phenomenal way to help women be more confident, to overcome

imposter syndrome, to overcome overwhelm, to stop procrastinating.

Because again, your subconscious brain thinks it's protecting you

by doing all of these things.

And part of the job of hypnotist is to.

explain to the subconscious brain that it's not, that it's healthier to do

the opposite of some of those things.

So interesting.

the only meditation I've done is sleep meditation, which is awesome.

I'll go on YouTube.

I used to have it on the sleep app, eight sleep app.

I think they're doing some updates, so it's not there anymore.

So I've been searching on YouTube for sleep meditation, and it

helps you fall asleep faster.

Very similar.

I still meditate every morning too.

So I they're different, but they're similar, but for meditation, insight

timer is an app that has tons of meditations, including sleep meditations.

And I highly recommend that if you are looking to start meditating or if

you are a meditator, insight timer has everything you could possibly imagine.

but hypnosis is different you are Talked into theta brain wave states

by the hypnotist and you want to be careful, like coaching hypnosis

is not a regulated industry.

So you want to make sure that you are working with a hypnotist who has some

experience and some certification.

My program, it's 500 hours of training.

It's a lot of 1 on 1 practice.

I had to read goodness gracious.

I think like 8 books, some go through a weekend program.

So if the listeners are looking to get into it, make sure you ask your hypnotist,

what their certification process was like.

Why do you think industries like coaching and hypnotism are not regulated?

That's interesting to me.

people have overlooked them for a long time.

There is going to be a move towards regulating both because

right now they're the wild west.

Is it because they're not scientific enough?

I think they've been overlooked because there's an impression

that there's not a lot of, danger.

I think there's an argument there is.

If you're coaching, if someone is a very, charismatic coach and

telling people to do things that is not necessarily appropriate, or

we've both seen some charismatic coaches who get people to invest a

lot of their money and go into debt.

I do think regulation is helpful.

But right now they are not regulated industries, which means, We are

ultimately the authority in our own lives.

if you're going to invest in a coach or a hypnotist really look into it,

do the research, and make sure you feel comfortable with your choice.

sure.

I've made that mistake multiple times they're so good at marketing and so

convincing and sometimes it's like enough for the brain to believe what they're

saying and be naive and just want you want to believe what they're saying is

true and you want to believe in yourself.

That you can accomplish whatever they're offering with their help.

That's what I see that, that is crazy.

I think that many coaches and hypnotists and anybody, weight loss plans, people

believe in that more than themselves.

It's this coach will help me make money.

This diet will help me lose weight.

This hypnotist will help me quit smoking.

But the truth of it is, You are the one with the power, as a coach,

that's one of the things that I have a membership and I'm adamant with

my members about this, that I am not going to tell you what to believe.

you decide what to believe.

believe in yourself.

Lean on my belief in you.

Yes.

That's what I'm here for.

And I will give you stories to use to repeat to yourself.

And I will show you evidence of all the reasons that I believe that you

can do this thing, but you've got to be the one to believe in yourself.

We want to outsource that and think, Oh, this program, women

tend to be terrible at this.

We think, Oh, that extra certification.

If I just get another certificate, if I just get more training,

then I'll be able to be hired.

No.

You, it's the belief that you need.

Because if you believe in yourself, that certification is just gravy.

you're selling yourself everywhere you go.

It's so important to have that deep belief in yourself to accomplish anything.

You can see it portrayed in the movies, you can see it like in life, in cases, in

court, you can tell when attorneys really believe in what they're fighting for.

I have said this since I started as a trial attorney.

If I don't believe it, I can't win.

if I thought the doctor committed negligence, I would talk about settling

or arguing the case on causation.

or damages.

Yes, the doctor made a mistake, but it's not worth what the other side wants.

I would never argue something I didn't believe because the energy.

Of belief is important juries can feel that court reporters can feel that.

And so for us, when we're talking about believing ourselves I actually

have a belief triangle in my work, and you have to believe it's either

yourself or others, but they have to believe you have to believe in you.

they have to believe you can help them.

when talking about belief, you have to believe you, which means that

when you make yourself a promise, I'm going to work out tomorrow, you

keep that promise so you believe yourself believe you have the qualities

experience and talents necessary most importantly, believe you can help you.

And for me, that means you have to believe that you have your own back.

That you will love yourself no matter what.

That you are there for yourself no matter what.

And when you have that belief you are magic.

Everything changes when you have that.

how does it work?

If someone joins your program, is it a group session do they sign up for

coaching what does that look like?

there's a ton in the program, but I'll give you the big overview

then we can get into the nitty gritty.

Okay.

It is called the Belief Builders Academy and it's a membership.

It's month to month, or you can pay for the year.

And the goal is, To get you into a place where you have that belief triangle

going and then you identify every month and every day, who's my jury today.

Today, I might want my partner to take me out to dinner, so he's my jury.

Tomorrow, I might want my boss to give me a raise.

I might want a new job and I'm interviewing with a bunch of people.

They're my jury.

the goal of the program, is for you to build belief in yourself

and then know how to build the belief of those different juries.

And the way that we do that is a number of ways there's a beautiful

community of people who support each other We meet weekly for group coaching

where people get coached by me.

I also have weekly office hours, which are first come first serve, but you

get 15 minute one on one time with me to go over your belief and how it's

going and what you're working on.

there's a monthly masterclass and the masterclasses on things like how to

use your body language was one, how to use your tone of voice was another.

October is going to be all about hypnosis and self hypnosis.

And so there's that masterclass.

That's available in the, in the portal for the program.

All of the old masterclasses are available to watch.

there is group hypnosis every month on a topic that people

choose, like self confidence, overwhelm, all of those things.

And there's a private podcast that's available just to the members.

And on that private podcast, there's recordings of the masterclasses.

And there's also hypnotic recordings of things like.

Like the self confidence, the overwhelm, so that you can listen

to them the way that I listened to those tapes for so long.

You can listen to them as much as you want, as often as you want,

to get that repetition so that the hypnosis can actually stick.

So all of that's included in the membership, but the purpose is to build

your belief in yourself and that belief triangle, and do it with other people

So I've never heard of the belief triangle.

That might sound crazy, but what can you break that down for

anyone who hasn't heard of it?

you wouldn't have heard of it because it's mine.

So

there's three parts.

You have to believe yourself.

When you make a promise, you keep it.

When you set an expectation, you meet it.

And so that means that when you say you're not going to have that

chocolate cake today, you don't have the chocolate cake today because you

want to keep a promise to yourself.

When you say that you're going to get up in the morning and read something

spiritual from the Bible or from a spiritual book, You don't hit snooze.

because you want to believe yourself.

It's not even about the reading.

It's about I want, when I make myself a promise, I want to believe myself.

those are the two sides of the triangle.

But the foundation is that believing that you have your own back.

And that's the self love.

That's the knowing that no matter what happens, I'm good.

I am a child of God.

I am a piece of this universe.

I am a miracle.

And so no matter what happens, it is all part of what's going to make me better.

give me more belief.

make me stronger.

that's the hardest part.

That's where hypnosis can be really helpful.

It's the most important part.

the same belief triangle applies to others.

you want others to believe you when you make a promise you keep it.

You want others to believe in you.

So you learn to tell a story about your experience effectively.

you want others to believe you can help them because that's

what they care about most.

How can they help me?

that belief triangle is important in the belief builders Academy.

That's amazing.

Yeah, it's funny, I'm actually, in the courthouse at lunch break

in the jury room right now.

the courthouse in Philadelphia City Hall is a beautiful old

building, some courtrooms are now electronic but others are ancient.

Speaking of electronic that's another topic that's a hot topic in

our industry is stenographic versus digital versus voice reporting.

All these new ways of getting the record down or emerging.

And I have nothing against any of those.

I have friends who are voice reporters.

I haven't spoken to digital reporters yet, I know you are, you're not

still like practicing as an attorney, you're full time coach, and you

said you also host a TV show, right?

Yeah, the TV show hosting.

just ended.

I am focused on the membership and keynote speaking now.

the TV show that I hosted is the long it was at the law and crime network.

So it's like a modern day court TV.

We would watch trials and then talk about what was happening during the breaks.

And it was interesting.

You bring up like the voice reporters in Massachusetts, which I don't know if the

court reporters who listen, the Karen Reed case was big news and we covered it.

in that courthouse, the court reporter was a voice reporter.

So she had the thing I forget what it's called over her mouth.

speaking it into the record.

it's really good to be aware of AI and digital and technology and the ways that

it is going to impact your industry and then just to stay ahead of it and get

creative about it, you've got to learn about it and don't try and hide your

head in the sand, try to ignore negative evidence, we just learned to work with it.

yeah, because, it might not even I don't see it even as negative

in, in many, in ways that many other people do, like people, a lot of

court reporters, stenographic court reporters, are have this fear and are

threatened by AI, but I think it could be a valuable tool to enhance our work

product, to help us be more efficient,

And not replace us, it's possible in the very long run, but right

now, definitely not at that level.

Yeah, I can't imagine not wanting a court reporter in the room.

To bring things back, to have that human interaction, I love my court reporters.

Thank you.

I'm so glad to hear that.

I can't tell you how many times I remember one court reporter pulled

me aside when I was a young attorney, and he said, you have to slow down.

I knew if he thought I had to slow down the jury probably

thought I had to slow down too.

So I really felt like it was really helpful.

That's awesome.

Yeah, I love attorneys like you, they understand the importance of the record

if the court is not hearing everything, that's important for the jury to hear.

And then there are those few bad apples that are send me a different

court reporter or something

Tough customers, right?

Trial attorneys like to fight.

That's part of their job.

they can be rough.

yeah.

It's understandable.

But okay, so I wanted to ask you that journey, I think you, I heard you talk

about it on a podcast a little bit.

The, like, how it was to go it was scary to go from being a Such

a successful trial attorney to pivoting into a different career,

especially something like coaching.

It was the hardest thing I ever did and the most rewarding.

I went from law school to my job and loved it at the beginning.

then I didn't love it anymore, I got certified to be a mediator, and that

I found to be a little too boring, and then I started doing television,

and I was like, oh, this is great.

I was doing, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, and all the channels, and I was like,

oh, this is going to be my thing, and then it just never really hit me.

And at the same time, I have a psychology degree.

I have always been an avid.

I read like 150 to 200 books a year and most of them are

personal development books.

And so I loved that.

And I knew I always wanted to write a book.

I wrote the book, The Elegant Warrior, which came out in 2019.

And it led to the opportunity to do some coaching and keynote speaking.

And so I always say, some people will say leap and the net will appear.

I wasn't leaping.

I was creeping.

It was like a slow, like I started doing more and more TV

and then I'm going back and forth.

York and then I got an apartment in New York, but I'm still going to Philly.

And then I wrote the book.

And so it was like, I had my, if I was like a plant creeping from one pot

to the other, I had roots in one pot, but I was growing roots in the other.

And then eventually over time, my passion for my business grew my.

Purpose for it grew like I knew exactly what I was meant to do and

the profits grew and It was time to completely move over it's been hard.

as an attorney, it's your identity.

introduce yourself.

I am an attorney.

I am a lawyer.

It is like a doctor or court reporter.

It's a very, it is a what do you do?

I am a lawyer.

And then for a long time, I was like, I don't know, how do I, even today, it's a

lot harder to explain what I do, right?

Because I'm not a coach, that's not the first thing that I would lead with.

I usually answer that question by asking questions.

I usually answer that question by saying who's your jury?

Who do you, whose belief do you want to build today?

And then I will just go through what I do to help people do that

because it's harder to explain.

Lawyer's very easy.

And then my family, I love my family so much, but my father

was like, what is happening here?

You're a very, you're a partner at a law firm.

You're at the peak of your career and now you want to start this new thing.

but it was really hard, but it was totally worth it.

Yeah, after you probably got through that little, I'm sure there was

a lot of resistance and hesitation and a rut in the beginning, but then if you push

through that and do what you feel called to do, there's no way that, it won't work

if you believe it.

Yes, that's it.

And you've got to collect evidence because there are days when you want to quit.

There are days when you're like, I should just go back to being a lawyer.

It's so much easier.

I'm not saying being a lawyer is easy because it's not, but I know that world.

I know the how.

And I think one of the things that's hard about entrepreneurship

is we don't know the how.

I know like a complaint comes in, I answer the complaint.

Derogatories come in, I answer the rogs.

I file a motion, they file a motion.

It's a very systematic process.

It's not entrepreneurship.

It's what should I do today?

What's going to move the needle?

So it's a very different thing.

Yeah.

The brain really gets comfortable with systemic things.

And, but the thing about court reporting is that, and I talk about this a lot,

the biggest difficulty for me and for a lot of us is that it puts you into a

position of entrepreneurship because, you start off as freelancing and.

it's you have to get your clients, you have to come up with your

rates, accounts receivable, accounts payable proofreading, scoping your

transcripts, making sure it's perfect, the formatting, there's so much to do.

That goes behind the scenes of turning in a transcript or, producing a

transcript, protecting the record.

There's so much that goes into it.

And it's really difficult for a lot of court reporters because

school doesn't prepare us for that.

So it's like that entrepreneurial mindset and practices, but we

have to figure them out as we go.

And that requires belief in yourself.

And.

Perseverance, and it's definitely not easy, it's definitely not

something we were expecting.

Yeah.

It's entrepreneurship.

as a defense attorney, it was a little bit different because we were

paid by the insurance companies.

And so you had consistent work coming in, but a patient's attorney,

the plaintiff's attorney, They had to go out and find cases and

find people that they could help.

And it's similar.

And there's a huge entrepreneurship piece to that.

That is it's hard, but it's also so valuable and it allows you to

collect so much evidence, right?

You have evidence that you know how to run a business.

You have evidence that you know how to keep your books.

You have evidence that you know how to get clients.

You have evidence that, you know, like so many things and you got to

let that land because it's amazing.

. Brynn: And one thing you brought up so about receiving a complaint, right?

So you received, that's part of the process of a lawsuit.

There's a complaint that comes in and in your book, the Elegant Warrior, there

was a chapter about complaints and how the also, the human mind tends to find

things to complain about sometimes,

I love how you said like a complaint without action is, it's just a complaint.

Could you elaborate on that concept a little bit?

Yeah, in the courtroom or

in the legal world, a complaint was just the beginning of the process and it was

something that we then had to act upon and ask questions about and turn around

and play with and experiment with.

And so if you just let the complaint sit there nothing happened.

but you have to question it.

one of my things that I talked about a lot in the membership is we do

things with delight or not at all.

I teach people how to know what they want, ask for it out loud and with

delight and master the art of the ask.

And so we can have delight even when we have complaints.

You can even find ways to delight in your complaints.

Especially it's all in the way that you look at it.

It's all in the perspective that you take.

If you look at a complaint and you're like, Oh, today it's a gorgeous

day, but Oh, it's been raining for five days and I'm so tired

of the rain and all this stuff.

Obviously there's, the rain is good for the the plants, the

rain is good for the atmosphere.

It means that we're due for some good days.

There's always a different perspective to look at things.

And also.

I think sometimes when it comes to complaints, one of my favorite quotes

and there's no attribution to it, and I'm going to paraphrase it a little

bit, but it's, if you're having a bad day, look at your day as if

it's a comedy instead of a tragedy.

And that's one of the things that allows me to get into delight.

Like when things are going bad and it's one thing after

another, I let it crack me up.

This is ridiculous.

And if this were a movie, people would be laughing at it because it's so ridiculous.

And if you can have that sense of humor about things, especially the things

that you typically complain about, you will find yourself to be much

more successful because the energy of delight is contagious and so powerful.

Oh my gosh.

I love, love, love everything about what you just said.

And I'm so glad you brought that up because that's one of the things that

I love so much about your content and your podcast is like the whole

three step thing that you just said.

could you say it again?

Just, it was amazing.

the first thing is knowing what you want.

The second is asking for it out loud and with delight.

And

then the third part is mastering the art of the ask.

And we've talked a lot about all of this today.

Knowing what you want means believing that you can have what you want,

believing that you're worthy of it, believing that you're valuable enough,

believing that it's possible for you.

Asking for out loud and with delight means you've got to believe in it and

yourself and that the thing that you're asking for also serves the other person.

And then mastering the art of the ask is when we look at the jury, the

people that you're asking, and what do they believe and what do they

need to believe in order for me to get them to where I need them to go.

So that's the three step process and delight is important at every step.

Okay, so as someone who has read hundreds of self development

books, has mastered, this coaching program, you have been running a

coaching program and probably have a lot of people in that program that

you're dealing with every single day and hearing a lot of their issues.

So what would be one thing that you would recommend for any of the

listeners who are new to the world of coaching and self development?

What is one thing that you can recommend getting started on having

a transformation one step that they can take what would you recommend?

Okay, so

I'm going to ring the bell of hypnosis because it's such a huge thing.

If you can find even hypnosis recordings.

So I'm going to, I have recordings in the membership.

There's apps out there that you can listen to hypnotic recordings of some

of people, for all kinds of things, but there's ones out there just like

mine for confidence for overwhelm for whatever it is, but addressing the

subconscious mind first is always helpful.

So that's the first thing.

The second thing I would say is that you've got to really start looking

at what you're making things mean.

And for you court reporters, this is true.

You're the best audience for this.

There's one medical record in the record.

One side makes it mean one thing.

The other side makes it mean another thing.

Nothing means anything by itself in the courtroom.

It's all what the attorneys want to make it mean.

And so the story that you're telling yourself, if it makes you feel crappy,

make the evidence mean something else.

Tell yourself a different story.

And I know I'm saying more than one thing, but it's really about that story.

Does it serve you?

And if it doesn't, get one that does.

And

Do you recommend doing that just like by trying to be conscious of what your

thoughts are or like writing them down?

What is your practice

for that?

I have a formula in the membership called the bear formula.

It's beliefs lead to your energy, lead to your actions, lead to your results.

And so if your energy or your emotion, is nervous, resentful, frustrated, angry.

And you're feeling that in your body.

That's the time to say, okay, what am I believing?

I actually have a little bit of a different approach than a lot of coaches.

I don't think your thoughts are what matter.

I think you have a million thoughts a day.

Should I have a hot dog for lunch?

Like thoughts are everywhere.

But your beliefs.

Like I shouldn't have had that hot dog for lunch.

That's a belief that makes you feel frustrated, upset with yourself,

guilty, shameful, whatever.

And then that leads to the action of, Oh, forget it.

I've been bad.

I'm going to have some cake too.

And then the result is, I shouldn't have had, you have almost the

same deal that your results are very similar to your beliefs.

And so when you feel a feeling, check on yourself, what am I believing?

And do the same with your good feelings.

When you're walking through the day, just feeling really good.

Say, okay, what am I believing?

Because that's a belief I want to double down on.

That's a belief I want to repeat.

That's a belief you are in theta brainwave state, that's suggestible brainwave state.

first thing in the morning and right before you fall asleep.

So repeat those beliefs that make you feel good when you first wake

up and right before you go to bed.

That's such a good tip.

And And like, I think it's easier said than done though.

Like, Do you, okay, do you just think it or you said you write it

on a post it, you put it up wherever you can to make it like visible.

Yeah, I do that.

I do self hypnosis every night.

I do meditation every morning.

I read something that's powerful for me every morning.

But when it comes to my beliefs, I will try to find a belief that feels better.

One of the things I'm very strict with the people in the membership are is

we're not going to go from believing I'm not ready for this job to I'm

the perfect person for that's this job you'd be gaslighting yourself,

and then you just get frustrated, but I'm not ready for this job to.

I'm almost ready.

I have a lot of the things they need.

I have the right passion for this job, like things that you could believe.

And then you start to, you think about that and you believe that.

And you're like, you know what, that feels good.

And then you start to collect and create evidence and write it

down in your evidence journal.

These are all the reasons that I'm the most passionate person for this job.

These are all the things that I do have for this job.

And then you start to be like, okay.

How I want to believe that I'm the perfect person.

How can I create evidence that I'm the perfect person?

Maybe I have to go and talk to this other person.

Maybe I have to read this book.

Maybe I have to take this online course.

Like then you start to get to the higher and higher beliefs that

get you to where you want to be.

And that part does involve some writing things down in your evidence

journal, but it's mostly the evidence that you're writing down.

I love the idea of an evidence journal.

I think I'm going to adopt that because I think it is powerful to do journaling.

And although I know that it's hard to actually stick to it, but it is

definitely a powerful habit to build.

Yeah.

And you've got to figure out your own way.

We are all our own authority.

There's no guru or person who knows you better than you do.

So like for me, I read this phenomenal book called Story Worthy.

It's about storytelling.

It's by a guy named Matthew Dix, and one of the things he recommends

is every day at the end of the day, just write a one line sentence

about the best story of the day.

it really makes you look back on your day and say if I have to have

a story, where was there a story?

It also has been good for me because it's made me work on making my life more

story worthy, like doing more fun things, I'm not good at doing that at night.

Like I'm very good at doing myself hypnosis at night, and

I've tried to habit stack.

So I've tried to make it so that before or after the hypnosis, I'll do that.

I'm good at doing it in the morning.

I journal in the morning and I don't journal every morning,

but I do read every morning.

So you've got to figure yourself out and not be like, Oh, I'm not doing it right.

Letting evidence that you've gotten it wrong somehow, or that

it's never going to work for you.

That is no good do not use that against yourself.

Find what works for you because everyone's brain works

differently and even hormones play into it, like the schedules we're

on, yeah, I think that's important.

Whether you're a night person or a morning person, yeah, there's

a million things, so don't let, don't think that someone out there

knows better about you than you do.

Yeah, for sure.

Okay, so I know we're like at the end, but I'll just ask you, I wanted

to touch on one thing, is do you know like the, like how do you

feel about the personality testing?

Have you done that before?

Do you know what you are?

I've done a bunch of personality tests.

I know in my answer to I, do I know what I am is no, I've done disc.

I've done, I know I'm an enneagram three.

I've done Colby.

I've done the INJR one, but I don't remember what I am.

I think that they are fun and I, you can use them as evidence if you want to,

especially if they resonate with you.

And I think that it's very difficult.

When I'm answering those questions, I'm like sometimes I'm like this and sometimes

I'm like this and this perspective, but there's also that perspective.

I know.

So I never, I answer it differently every day, so I Me too.

I was like,

it can't be reliable if I'm Yeah.

It's so subjective based on how you feel at that moment.

Sometimes I'm like this, sometimes I'm not, and a lot

of'em, I would just put five.

Which is basically right in the middle.

So it's like, how do you really determine based on that?

I was curious because I've been hearing a lot about these personality things

and I mean it is good to kind of, know them in order to understand other people

better, but I was just curious to know.

Are you do you like sweet or salty food better?

You have a favorite?

Yeah, I used to love salty, but I would say I have a sweet tooth.

I did something with hypnosis.

So my sweet tooth had come back and I know how to manage it for my weight.

So that was fine, but I was starting to feel crappy, like too much

sugar is just not great for you.

So I did a hypnosis with with one of my teachers and now I only eat sweets

when I'm out to dinner or like with a crowd and not when I'm home alone.

It's a great way to do it because it's very black or white, which the

brain likes that, but it's also, you're not taking it away completely.

So to answer your question, I love sweets and I eat chocolate

now, but I eat it rarely.

I'm going out to dinner tonight and I know that the man I'm

going with has a sweet tooth.

So I'll probably have dessert tonight and it'd be awesome.

That's so awesome that you were able to strike a balance and

it's not like you have to give up chocolate a hundred percent for your

whole life or anything like that.

So I love that.

I think.

Yeah, I'm getting more and more intrigued by this hypnosis thing.

It's

good

stuff.

It's really helpful.

Okay, so where can everyone find you and join learn about

joining your program and also follow you on social media?

So it depends on when this comes out right now, as we record my website.

is advocate to win.

And on the website at the bottom, you'll see a link for the membership

on October 1st, I'm rebranding and it will be belief builders.

And there, there will be a link on there for belief builders Academy.

But in the meantime, you can figure out the membership.

You can get on my membership wait list.

I'm doing a masterclass on how to persuade with delight on September 30th.

So I'll give you a link to that as well.

That's free.

And that's probably the best way right now as this transition

is happening to stay in touch.

What about Instagram?

My Instagram is at an elegant warrior,

anyone who hasn't listened to Heather Hansen's podcast and elegant

warrior, if you just type in an apple or Spotify, it's every episode is

really impactful.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It's been a lot of fun.

I've been doing it a long time and I love it.