Silence no more! How to use your single most powerful tool – your voice w/Dr. Dee Holstine Vander Valk

✨“Brands: ways of conveying your beliefs and value you offer to the world.”💫  — Dr. Dee Holstine Vander Valk

Dee Holstine Vander Valk talks about how to uncover, recover, discover, and use the single most powerful tool at your disposal: your voice! 

In specific Dee explains:
💡the lies we tell ourselves in the context of impostor syndrome
➡️ she gives advice on how to deal with imposter syndrome and how not to listen to the lies we tell ourselves
➡️ knowing that words have power and you always have a choice, she gives advice to young girls to be courageous in not to be silent (and liked) but be heard (and unpopular) 
💡what psychologically safe disruptive thinking is about
💡what a personal brand and being your authentic self means to her
➡️ she gives helpful advice on how we can powerfully strengthen our personal brand

Dee brings new and challenging concepts together in open and innovative conversations with clients, audiences, and readers – with storytelling, humor, authenticity, data, strategies, and humility.

She works with brilliant women+ (and their allies/organizations) that seek to lift themselves and other women+ up to achieve meaning and impact in their lives. 

Dee is a sought after international keynote speaker and author, facilitator, coach, and consultant, specializing in upskilling and empowering individuals’ and corporations’ journeys to make sure women’s (+) voices are heard, womens’(+) stories are told, and womens’(+) contributions are seen. She is also the creator of the upcoming “ABCs for a New World: Including TEE”.

Get in touch with Dr. Dee Holstine Vander Valk:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teewithd
Website: https://www.teewithd.com

Get in touch with Brigitte Bojkowszky:
https://linktr.ee/bridgetbrands.com

Get in touch with Brigitte Bojkowszky:

• • Website BridgetBrands: https://www.bridgetbrands.com
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bojkowszkyb/
  • Book Significant Women: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0927YG1FH
  • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BridgetBrands
  • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brigitte.bojkowszky
  • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bridgetbrands
  • X: https://twitter.com/BridgetBrands
  • YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bridgetbrands

👉 Download Your Entrepreneurial Branding Starter Checklist: https://courses.bridgetbrands.com/f/entrepreneurial-branding-starter-checklist

Transcript

Unknown: 0:11

Ready for brand stories get inspired and learn from thought leaders, CEOs, business owners,and managers who tell their brand stories who share their valuable insights from their ownexperience. Welcome to BrandsTalk. I'm your host Brigitte. For print lovers this show is to helpyou develop and grow your brand in a more strategic and sustainable way. Walk the Talk. Let'sget started and dive with me into the world of brands. My guest today is Dr. Dee Holstine Vander Valk. She brings new and challenging concepts together in open and innovative conversations with clients, audiences and readers with storytelling, humour, authenticity, data strategies, and cue melody. She works with brilliant women that seek to lift themselves and other women up to achieve meaning and impact their lives by uncovering, recovering, discovering, and using the single most powerful tool at their disposal. Their voices, do us a speaker, consultant, coach, writer, and mom to two teenage boys. She loves her work and her life. And she wants the same for everyone whose life she touches. I want me welcome Dr. Dee Holstine Vander Valk, welcome to BrandsTalk. Hello, thank you. Happy to be here. I'm so excited having you as my guest today. We only recently connected via the C suite network. And you I think you gave a talk about authenticity. I did. Yeah. And I really loved it because it brought so much attention and an intensive discussion around it. Yeah, so that was really a great introduction. And I thought I have to have this woman on my show. Sounds good to me. Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah. So before we talk all things silent no more. Could you tell us a little bit about your background about your journey that brought you right there where you are now? Oh, well, since we've only got 40 minutes, I'll keep this. On the shorter side. I grew up in a small, small agricultural town in southern Alberta that's in Canada. And I was groomed to take over a family business, a family Corporation from a very young age. Except for I had different ideas about where I wanted to live in what I wanted to do. And so off I went to university, I majored in theatre, I became a theatre director and a writer and a performer. So Shakespeare and all that good stuff. And from there, I realised the parallels between theatre and being a director and leadership, and how the two of these things could could inform each other and create a really rich space to have conversations and really grow grow leaders. So I took that I ended up becoming a professor, I went off and did my, my PhD, and all the way through all of this, just about 30 years now. I've worked on helping people. And when I say people in the past, my my, the people that I've touched was a much broader category. I've narrowed that down for some reasons we might get into later, um, but people figure out what's on the inside that they want to share on the outside, and how to do that in a way that makes people sit up and pay attention. So listen, engage, remember, want more, come back for more, all of that sort of thing. So that's the really brief answer. Oh, and I will add that now that I'm on the keynoting circuit, which I avoided for a long time, and then just gave up and did, I found myself back talking to so many of the same audiences I grew up around. So I'm talking to supply chain and heavy industry and, and trades and all of that sort of thing, in addition to a much more diverse group, but because I grew up in this world, I speak the language of of this world and so I Much to my surprise, I have in some ways looped all the way back to my roots, and but with all the stuff I've brought with me since then, so there we go. That's beautiful, because it's usually all the experiences that we have in life, we somehow kind of flew back where we are coming from. It's usually there way of how it goes, right. And also your the combination of theatre and leadership because you play a role now as absolutely a role every day. And every we're doing it right now right now. Yeah, we're doing it. Right. Right, don't care. And so we come to that a little bit later when it comes to personal branding and the roles we play. So I would like to look back to when you started your, your company, when you start your own boss, how was that transition for you? How was it for you to really own it, to where there are challenges on the way what was easy, what was not so easy in this transition of becoming your own boss, um, a couple of things. One, I learned really early on, when I went into the world of working for other people that I didn't like working for other people, like, the entrepreneurial spirit was bred into me, I'm a fifth generation entrepreneur, right, so we're talking back into the late 1800s, this goes back. So I don't think I could have avoided it if I wanted. But so I learned really quickly, to actually be really clear with the people that were my employers about my needs. So I was I look back, oh, my gosh, I was bowled. Because I would say things like, I'm not coming in on time, and I might leave early, but you'll still get three times the work out of me that you'll get out of somebody else. So I got away with that, shockingly, but, um, towards my sort of mid to late 20s, I started to think about how I wanted my life to look, if I wanted to have a family and and things like that. And what I knew I wanted was to be able to have the flexibility of working hours that I determined locations that I determined that sort of thing wasn't thinking global or digital at that point in time. That's later on. And so I ended up starting my first Corporation at that point in time. And what the biggest challenge at that point in time was was really twofold. One was that I was young. And so even though I started in the world of teaching and coaching when I was 19 years old, by the time you're 29, you've got 10 years of experience, but people look at you and go, did you just start like in so getting people to believe that there was a body of work and expertise that that that that was what they were buying? That was one piece of it. And the other piece was that I was still working full time. So I was actually working the equivalent of four jobs at the same time and finishing my master's degree and started my PhD. Needless to say, at that time, I was very single, because there was no time for anything else in my life at that point in time. So so those were the initial challenges. Now, my age and my parents has caught up with my resume. So I have less of that less of explaining to do. But that was actually probably the biggest thing was being taken seriously, both as a young person and as a female was. So I've had ageism on the other side. So I have appreciation for the challenges that come with that for sure. Absolutely. Along with that, I looked up your website. There I found a quote by Anasuya Sengupta, it instantly caught my eye. Too many women in too many countries speak the same language of silence. Your response to that DEE is silence no more. Let's learn a new language together. One that has a powerful voice. So I would like you to elaborate on that a little bit. What is your vision with that and dimension that comes along? Oh, that's a small question. Haha. So where I live now, which is a city called Calgary. It's a very, very international city. And so a lot of the people probably 80% of the people I worked with when I was still sort of boots on the ground brick and mortar here. Were were immigrants. And so they were coming from it. I mean, my family's immigrant family, too, right. But it's just a matter of how many years and location. So what I discovered, really, early in that kind of work was that these women, it was mostly women that I was working with, and they were professionals. Right. So they were doctors, lawyers, dentists, bankers, engineers, you know, highly skilled, highly intelligent women who had emigrated for a number of different reasons. But between being, in many cases, ESL, so English as a second language, and coming from a different culture into this space. There were there were things that were barriers and Sometimes they were huge barriers, there was the language barrier. But before the language barrier was the confidence barrier, the the feeling like you, that you belonged that you could, you'd actually be yourself and that you would be accepted as yourself in this, frankly, very new environment. And so, so that kind of got me thinking about things I've, you know, had the stories and talk to people, and I love hearing people's stories. That's why you and I connect, yes, you're not from down the block, this is fabulous, like chocolate. So I from, from the word go from the time I was little that has been seeing the world through other people's eyes, this is something I just adore. So I got to hear all these stories. But the interesting thing was, the stories I was hearing from these women that came from elsewhere, were the same stories that were being shared by, you know, born in Canada, or born in North America, women behind closed doors, they weren't the things that that were necessarily, so this was before social media, even really, but they weren't the things that were being talked about publicly. They were the stories, the imposter syndrome, the shame, the guilt, the blame, all those sorts of things. So I could see the one, you know, from the the coming to Canada perspective, and I could see the other the growing up in Canada, and it was the same thing. They were saying the same thing to each other quietly, or to me privately, but they weren't saying it to the world. Because they didn't feel like their voice had any value. They didn't feel like anybody would listen, they didn't think that they were good enough at speaking, sometimes it was I don't have the right words, or people will think I'm stupid, or I always get cut off, or I get told quiet, because I'm a woman. And I should just be glad to be at the table. Never mind anything else. And then when I moved into a global space, and I started to build out from there, I started to talk to women all over the world, right? Literally, that were living all over the world. So whether that was Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, or Kenya, or China, or you know, all over the US all over Europe, exactly the same conversations were happening again, in this space. And so my answer to that was enough. Enough, somebody has to take the first step, somebody has to basically throw themselves out there under the bus, and take the risk, that there's more to this, and that we can change things. But we cannot change things alone. One person can't. But many people whose voices are being heard simultaneously in the various ways that they're sharing, that can be heard it gets loud enough, you can't ignore it anymore. So that's kind of the framework. Yeah. So what's your methodology? How do you teach that? So in what ways do you offer your your services basically? Okay, well, there's at least two answers to that question. So um, one of it one answer is the mindset piece, because so much of what we have to face is the mindset of ourselves, and how we, we perceive ourselves in the larger cultural spaces, we find ourselves, right. So many people that work on sort of empowering speaking and technical, like public speaking and all of that, they just jump right to the, this is how you present yourself on stage. This is how you gesture, this is what you wear, all of which is important. But that's a mask. Yeah, right. It's what's inside, right? And so what we have to do is we have to figure out, what do you care about? What do you believe in? What matters to you? If you were to look, you know, years out from now, and you were to write your obituary, what do you want it to say? And, you know, where's the gap between right now and that and how are you going to get there? Right? So we have to kind of do that, that deep work. And that is not something that people in general women in specific get the opportunity to do. Right, that space and that time and that non judgement. Your story is your story. I've got no right. To judge who you are the choices you've made the path that you're taking. That's not what I do. I hold that space, I ask the questions. I point you towards resources, I'm there to support that journey. And given my background, I have all kinds of things at my disposal, whether that's, you know, leadership theory or neuroscience or pedagogy how people learn how people process milk Confidence, all of that sort of stuff. So that's that piece. And then the other piece is the technical piece. Yes, you've done the mindset work, and you're ready to do it. But I also bring that now, this is how you do it. Okay, you're ready to do it. But this is how you actually make this happen. Because too often you either are dealing with somebody who will just teach you the action, or they'll teach you the mindset, but they won't teach you or guide you or walk with you the journey, the whole journey. And it is the journey, anybody looking for a quick fix. I'm not the person. Just, that's not how humans are, we're just, we're just not built like that. So whether that's, you know, I'm going in and I'm doing a keynote, which I do a tonne of. And I bring this the stories, and I bring the research and the theory and all these sorts of things. Because just that little bit of knowledge is powerful. Oh, I'm not alone, oh, I'm not imagining things, this actually really is happening. And I'm not crazy. That's one thing that a lot of women have that sort of doubt in the, I'm just making this up, I'm making this worse, I'm making this into something, it isn't all of those sorts of narratives we have going on. So, you know, I bring the same model into consulting or facilitating or whatever the the knowledge, the stories, the the baby steps, we'll just try a little of this. Now we'll try a little more of this. So the stretch, right, moving towards a stretch, what's the stretch for you? Okay, what's the next stretch for you? So it just depends on the nature of the relationship that we're having, whether it's one on one or a large group, but I still follow the same trajectory all of the time. From the the mindset work through to Okay, that's lovely. Now what? So that's the methodology, if you will, you have a couple mash together. Yeah. So this now what you have mentioned right now, because, but like to elaborate on that a little bit, gave a check box struggles to one on imposter syndrome. And other lot as we tell ourselves, and there was this other talk that psychologically safe, disruptive thinking, Is this about the what is this about the well, I use the model of what? So what now? What? Through everything I do, right? And so with the psychologically safe, disruptive thinking, we're taking again, two big different ideas and bringing them together. That's, that's what I do. I take different ideas. And I bring them together, and I see it say, Okay, now what do we see, when we do this? It's like, picking up a crystal and turning it around, and realising that every twist shows you something different. And neither, they're not better or worse. They're just different. And that's, that's the value in it. So looking at the psychological psychologically safe, workplace or space, what is that? What does it look like? It's attached authenticity, and, you know, inclusion and belongingness, and all of these ideas, right? But looking at this idea of disruptive thinking, and I want to put a caveat in here, just repeating this right now. But when I'm talking about disruptive thinking, I am not talking about the type of disruptive thinking that goes into management theory where we're looking at a completely disruptive idea. So I'm not using the language like that what I'm talking about when I use that language, is the idea that you can step into that space and say, This is what everybody else sees. But this is what I see. And a dialogue can come out of that. And it's safe to do that. And that's actually the benefit of having diverse people in the room, is that you get much more going back to the analogy of the crystal, you have much more that people see. And if it is a safe place for them to say, okay, hold on, hold on, has anybody thought about what's going to happen? If we do this? Or, Hey, there's this whole segment of the marketplace, it's not having their needs met? What do we explore going in that direction, or anything and everything right? Like if we were to develop our own software in house instead of having to outsource it, there's a million ways this conversation could go. But having those sorts of outside the about box, thoughts in a place where it's safe to have them, to me is the key to the future. Absolutely. Without doubt, and that's what leaders need to cultivate in themselves. And it's what they need to create the space and place for in their teams and their organisations. That is going to be where the differences that is going to be where people not only survive, but thrive. Yeah. And going forward. It's where the growth is getting fired from all these different perspectives that are coming in. You alone can only go that far. But that's right today. To another whole new level with other people in a safe room where you freely and safely can exchange ideas, also fears and hopes and and what has not work. But out of that you can come up with really creative ideas going forward. Absolutely. And just to just a little trick that everybody can use if they're listening, there's an activity in theatre and improvisation called Yes. And which you may or may not have heard of. But what we do often when we hear an idea that's outside of kind of our our realm will say, yes, but right, and the minute you say, but you've negated everything, you've cut off the energy, you've cut off the conversation. But what if you take and you go, Yes. And you take their idea, whatever it is, and you build on it, right? Yes. And we could do this? Yes. And we could look at this. And yes, and we could talk to this part of the team. Yes. And we could hire somebody for this, whatever it is, it creates an energy of synergy, a possibility of forward movement, that it's like, it's one of the first activities you do in improvisation in theatre, but it's incredibly powerful in a space where you want to create that safety and that innovation simultaneously. So there you go. There's your tip, everybody that's listening, write it down, try it out your next. Yes, and so inspire fans, absolutely. Great. DEE, you figured out very early in your life, that first of all, you loved birds, second verts had power third girls using verts powerful lever and reverted fourth, you had a choice. And you could be the option A to stay silent and being liked. And there's the other option being heard and maybe being unpopular, right? So you chose option B. Courageous. So what advice can you give to young girls to be as courageous as youever to choose option B. Number one, accept the fact that not everybody's gonna like you. And that's okay. That that's fine. In fact, if everybody does like you, you're probably not being you. That's probably what's happening. And so it's a cost benefit sort of thing, it may feel good in the short term to be feeling like you're included by pretending you're somebody that you're not, by being quiet by by saying the same sorts of things being compliant, whatever those sorts of things are, but I'm here to promise you that you will pay a price, you will pay a very high price for that. I now I deal with women that are around my age, who have chosen that a path and are now at the middle of their life. And COVID didn't help because everybody got time to sit with themselves and think about things in a lot of cases. They're realising that the life they're living is not the life that they want to live, nor is it a reflection of who they believe they are. And so how do you get out from underneath a mountain? Right, where you've created a whole life, lifestyle, world identity expectations from other people. And it's, and it's not where you want to be? How do you get out from under that, and that's part of the work that we do. But you can save yourself a lot of that. And I'm seeing this happening younger and younger. So the women I'm working with are younger and younger and younger in many ways. By by doing the work to figure out a who you are independent of family, faith, culture and community, right, the expectations that are put on you and who you are, and that not everybody's gonna like that. And that's okay. Because you get one life. You get one life, and the other people that are judging you and telling you what to do they get one life, but they don't get your life to get their life. And that's a hard thing to do. With, like I said, family, faith, culture and community. I know I've been there. I have been the person who went against the grain and when I went to university, my dad wouldn't talk to me for two months because I went to university. I went to university that's not a bad thing. But yet, you know, that's what happened. So that would be the advice. The number one thing I would say thank you so much. I have like experienced this when I communicated as a flight attendant, I want to stop flying and start studying as a student. So I I can relate to that. Very. Yeah, so your answer ties very well into my next question. You are and research and expertise space a speaker, facilitator, consultant coach and writer. So you are a woman thought leader, definitely. And you are an authentic personal brand with a powerful voice. So DEE, my question to you now, and what does it mean to be a personal brand? I've thought a lot about this question, actually. And to me, it seems like a really simplistic answer, but I walk the talk. Right? That's, that's what it comes down to. For me, it's not stuff I've say, or put on my website or put into social media, because I'm trying to get people to like me. Or, because I'm trying to close a sale, I'm trying to convert somebody to something. What you see is what you get. And so there's there's nothing hidden. This is exactly who I am. This is exactly what I offer. This is exactly why I offer it. And so anybody that works with me or for me that that's something frankly, I screen against, right, because there's an alignment piece as well. We should be able to be authentic together. And yes, I'll help you with that journey. Absolutely. I'm honoured to do it. But there's a there's a level of commitment to the authenticity, a commitment to being present, frankly, a commitment to learning and going oh, well, that did not go the way I imagined or planned I. Okay, no plan. So always. So for me being a personal brand means being the person, myself, that I present to the world and that I present through through my relationships and through the products that I offer and services I offer. That's yeah, and that circles back to what you have said before, he you will not be liked by everyone. So you're going to be in alignment Exactly. With those people that like you. That's right. That's not right to be everyone. Right. That's right. Any any tips or helpful advice of how we can powerfully strengthen our personal brand? Well, of course, speaking from the the perspective and lens that I use in my work, it is is doing that sort of deep work, what what are your values? What is your purpose? What is it that you want your life and subsequently your brand? To do? What's the legacy? That's a word I use a lot in my work, my work? What is the legacy? What do you want to leave behind when you and or your company are no longer here? Right? And so digging into that, figuring out what that answer, what those answers are not just having it on a page on your website, which admittedly, I do have a section that says, you know, my values are curiosity, number one and down no question. But not just the lip service, but internalising that accepting it, and then everything you create, and everything that you do, start from that spot and moves forward, listening to your intuition, if it doesn't feel aligned, is not aligned. It will never be aligned. You know, you're you might be able to squish it into the box and send it out in the mail right now. But I promise you, I promise you, there's gonna come a reckoning day when you have to face that, you know, you pushed something that wasn't authentic, it wasn't aligned. And now you've got Clean up on aisle seven kind of thing. So that would be what I would say comes back like a boomerang. Although it sure does. It sure does. I'm sure we've both got stories about that. So yeah, that would be you know, always doing the brave thing. Right? Because people are watching young women or watching the women around you are watching what you do, they're listening. And you will become a leader whether you choose to be or not, by the actions and frankly reactions that you have in these spaces and interactions. Talking about actions and reactions. The Are you willing to share any experience that was a major learning for you a setback that was important for you growing from it going forward, and in hindsight offered a huge opportunity. So an action that you said or an inaction which also is an action basically. So is there any Seeing a detour. And that was significant in the way that it shaped you and continues to shape you perhaps, Oh, happy to share, love to share. Everything's out there in the open. I had. There's, there's lots of answers I could give, but one of the one that pops to mind right now is, um, so I've had three corporations, so before children after children. And then when I moved into a digital global space, I had to reinvent things for a different marketplace. So in between the first and the second, no, actually, the second and the third, the second and the third, I was a game working by contract. So I was kind of an employee kind of Nah, that's, you know, how contracts work with with a place that I had long had a relationship with, and knew the people, it's a very sort of, it's a small community, globally, the do the kinds of things that I do in the way that I do them. So I was in this space, and I wanted desperately to be included. I wanted to be part of this, this space. But as it happened, everybody that was already in this space, was had been there forever, like I'm talking about since they were kids forever, like, for ever. And they were all 10 to 15 years older than me, this was not only sort of a career, but it was a lifestyle, a vocation a calling, right. But as it is for me as well, but they were very insular. And so even though they knew me, they knew my work, there was no question they're at, I had originated in another community, I had joined their community. So like, literally different cities kind of community. I had joined. But there was always stonewalling. There was always there was always these walls. And I would put, I would put ideas forward. And all of a sudden, they show up on somebody else's roster, right? They, it'd be their course, that would be their innovation. And and, you know, at first I was gracious about it, like, Okay, well, maybe, you know, maybe there's a reason, or maybe they had the same idea. But pretty soon, it was pretty obvious, there was something going on there. And even though I was included, and they got value out of my inclusion, I didn't get meeting invitations, I didn't get social invitations, I didn't get opportunities to develop new products or, or courses. And it was very clear that that wasn't going to change. Both both because I didn't share the history. But at the same time, I didn't share the Oh, this'll sound terrible. The worship fullness, I should have for the the model and the leadership structure. Right? I just looked at the world differently. And so it came down to the the conversation was very honest conversation where, you know, they were saying, What would you like to do? And where would you like to all of those sorts of things. And I had this conversation before. So I said, Well, you know what, I'm gonna be honest with you. There's really no point in us having this conversation. Why is that? Well, because we've had it before. And the reality is, I'm 1015 years younger than everybody else here. And it's not until people die, then I'm going to get a shot at at any of this. And that by my math is like when I'm 80 or 85. And I'm really not willing to stick around for that long, um, they were shocked and horrified. And all of the things you might imagine, you know, sometimes the truth has that effect. And I said, so you know, I'm all the same to you, I'm going to go my own way. Because frankly, I'm already doing it all my own my own anyways, might as well make it official. And the part I left out was and not lining your pockets in the process. So that was the moment where I realised that it doesn't matter how good you are at your job, and how well you play in the sandbox. Sometimes the smartest choice is to leave. And you can you can leave with an open heart and you can leave with a well learn some stuff from that and move forward. And it doesn't have to be it's not because I wasn't good enough. It wasn't because I didn't offer value or that I didn't try. It just wasn't the right place. And so it took me a while to get to that, but I got there and you know, I am proud of that. I'm proud of that. Because you know, when I relayed that to people in my circle, afterward, there was a sort of you said that you actually said it And I said, Well, yeah, I wasn't rude about it. But I did say it. Because I had to. Yeah, he would have gone a lot of ways. Yeah. I mean, he opened up room to do something new and let something go. That was not supportive anymore. Right? That's right. Yeah, that's right. I have one more brand in question to you. I love your company name, you call your company T with the. And I would like to know, whether there is a brand naming story behind, there is a brand naming story behind it tell us so. So first of all, just to be clear, it's te not te a although I did have to purchase all the domain, so that spelling it wrong. And we get routed to me. Actually, the original company name was called the eloquence equation. So I was looking at the the personal, the professional and the performative, which is what I've outlined in our conversation today. But in Canada, fairly recently, they went through a whole trademark sort of consolidation process. So we went from having like 250 different types of spots you could be in for for trademarking to like 46. And so in that process, everything that had to do with coaching, writing, performing anything like that got lumped into one box, okay, so I had all the rookie mistake, everyone, take notes, um, I had gone ahead with the branding, I'd gone ahead with all of the, you know, the logo, creation, all of that sort of thing. Under the assumption, and you know, what they say about assumptions, but under the assumption that all would be well, so imagine my shock when they came back to me and said, sorry, you can't have it. And the reason was, there was a woman who's she's not a corporation, she's just a sole proprietor in Quebec, which is one of our provinces. She, she runs a company called just eloquence, and she helps people with their writing projects, which of course, has nothing at all to do with what I do. And so even though eloquent, so she had eloquence in her name, and I had eloquence in my name. And because of this collapsing structure, they lumped all of what we did into one category. So there was no way to say, Well, this has nothing to do with that. So they said to me, you can't have it. So I'm already 1000s of dollars into the development of this situation. And so, I, you know, crying was, was what I wanted to do. But I didn't I remember, I got off with a lawyer and I sat right where I am right now with my tea cup going. Okay, what do I do now? Right. And after about an hour of basically just sitting and staring at nothing, I took the letters from the eloquence equation. And I collapsed them. And I said, Okay, t, and then my name d t with D. Perfect. Okay. I am, I'm, like, huge T afficionado. There's so much I can do with the you know, the rhyming, the catchiness, the concept of, you know, T guards, t tables, tea houses, like there's just so much room to play. And because I'm a word person, I love doing that. So I called up the lawyer and called up everybody, you know, the designer and stuff and said, What would it take to to make this happen? Luckily, the designers were very gracious about it, and said, Really, we're just changing the like, everything's been decided the pallets, all of that. So we can just change out the script, right? We've just changed what it says. So it was a very small project, of course, the legal fees or the legal fees, and there's no mercy there. Um, so I had to go through that process again and get copyrighted. But yeah, that's that's how it ended up happening. And once I went to the TE, I realised there was room for me to move in terms of what those letters now stood for. And so, after a whole process, I ended up with Transformation and Empowerment through expression. I like that because your first option that you actually want that did not work out and you were so desperate brought you to something much better. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I consider that to be the universe looking out for me that day, for sure. Yeah, yeah, it did. Definitely. Okay. DEE we are at the end of our shoot at us. But before I would like to do a quick wordrap, okay. And this is new to me. I know you mentioned this, but I'm like, I don't know what. Let's do it. Okay. All right. So

silence: 40:01

space to listen, voice connection to world, women 51% of the planet disruptive thinking, thinking that doesn't rely on accepted norms and conventions. Beautiful. And last but not least brands ways of conveying your beliefs and value offer to the world. Thank you so much. Great. Do I pass? Yes, you passed the test. Data loss. So do where can listeners find you if they want to get in touch with you? Ah, yes. Okay. So as I was mentioning earlier, it's T EE. All right, so it's a standard WWW dot t e with d, just the letter D. So te withd.com T with t.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn. I'm very active. They're very active there. And I might revise my Instagram later this year. But don't go looking for me there because Instagram and I had a we had a breakup. And I do have a presence on Facebook. But I don't spend as much time as there as I ought to. So LinkedIn and my my website will give you everything you need, including a way to contact me if if that's what you want. Okay, thank you so much. Yeah. DEE. Thank you for being my guest today. Yeah, it was my pleasure. And I think also the pleasure of all of our listeners to learn about No more being silent and about how we can uncover, recover, discover, and use the single most powerful tool at our disposal. Our voice. Thank you. The thank you so much. My absolute pleasure, take care. And that was my conversation withDr. Dee Holstine Vander Valk. If you liked my show, head over tobridgetbrands.com and sign up for my newsletter to never miss an episode. I look forward to welcoming you in my community. Also, don't forget to subscribe to my Brandstalk podcast onyour preferred app. share it on social media and if you find a minute or two, leave a quick grading or review. Thank you so much. I hope you will stay tuned in on the next episode. Whenwe dive into the world of brands.