Day 342: Barbara Bellissimo

September 7, 2010 at 12:01 am, Category: Inspiration

“I certainly believe that nobody can do it alone.  That was one of the challenges I faced early on in my life was sort of giving up control or realizing that I can’t do everything well, and that it really is easier for me to find people, particularly other women, who can do things well that I don’t do well and to work together and collaborate.”

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Barbara, for being part of this Project, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?

Barbara Bellissimo: Sure, Toni.  Thanks for having me.  My name is Barbara Bellissimo.  I am Master Mentor and Personal Champion at howtoaskformoney.com.  My mission is to empower professional women to ask for and get the money that they deserve.

Toni: Well thank you very much Barbara, for being here.  When you think of that word inspiration, who do you inspire, and how does that happen?

Barbara: Ah, I thought you were going to flip that question around as who inspires me!  Who do I inspire?  I inspire women who feel really confident in their work and really passionate about what they do to crank up their courage and get over their money fears to ask for the pricing that they deserve, the value to embrace confidently the full value of their worth so that they can ask for and get the money that they deserve.

Toni: How do you … can you give an example of how you inspire women to do that?

Barbara: Sure.  A lot of it is reflecting themselves and their worth back to them.  One of my gifts is an ability to do that, to talk to various people in ways that they can hear.  I can quickly adjust messaging so that people can hear what I’m saying or get a message out of what I’m writing.  So I turned that gift into empowering women and talking with them, reflecting back to them their gifts, their value, their leadership qualities, and then working with them, training, practicing, championing them to use those leadership qualities to confidently ask for what they want.

Toni: Now, you use the word champion, which … I love that word, and when you champion people and inspire these women to go for their worth and their value, how does it help them then to explore their own potential?

Barbara: It’s really exciting.  We usually start with something small.  As with anything you’re just learning to do, you want to start with small projects so that you can build your confidence.  And it’s really amazing to see women who start out just asking their families to get out the door on time in the morning, three or six months later asking major clients for a $250,000 consulting job.

Toni: So it really is a building … that’s a great … what an example that is!

Barbara: It’s all about starting a movement.

Toni: Absolutely.  So when women start to feel that empowerment and their worth kicks in as far as the value of that, what else happens?

Barbara: It transforms their lives.  Once they start building confidence around their business, which is usually how I first meet women is they’re having challenges in their business or they’re working for nonprofit organizations and they’re having challenges raising money for their cause.  I usually meet them in a professional capacity.

And as they start building their confidence professionally, it seeps into and just becomes a natural part of who they are.  And in their personal lives, in their community service, they really start asking for what they want and getting it in terms of their relationship, in terms of their local government, in terms of basically whatever it is they want or need to make their lives what they want them to be, because they’ve built up this confidence around asking for money.  They can pretty much ask for whatever else they want and get it and start to create the lives that they deserve.

Toni: So Barbara, here’s the question – what inspires you?

Barbara: Powerful women inspire me.  My mother inspires me.  She was a single parent back in the late 60s, early 70s, raising three kids on her own when it wasn’t easy and there weren’t a lot of options open to professional women.

Women who sort of cast off stereotypes.  Women who have found the strengths internally to persevere and get what they want, ask for what they want and get it, and women who reach out and help other women.  Women who think of new ways to create a movement, to start to bring women together as a force, a powerful force.

Toni: Are there tools or resources that you find yourself going to on a consistent basis when you need to fill that inspiration bucket up?

Barbara: When I need to fill my own inspiration bucket up, I reach out.  I’m starting a mastermind group, so it’s a group of like-minded women, women who are working with other professional women in various ways, some more creatively than my work, helping women with logo design or artwork.  Others helping women to find their true purpose.

So I tend to go to that mastermind group when I need inspiration and pretty much say, “I’m tapped out.  I’m at the bottom of my own personal bucket, can you help me?  Can you share with me some things that have inspired you lately?”

I also have a group of four really good friends, girlfriends.  We’ve been friends for a long time, and when I feel I need my inspiration bucket filled up, I try and get us together for a weekend off where we can share our recent accomplishments and support each other through whatever is coming up next.

Toni: So it really is all about collaboration for you, isn’t it?

Barbara: Oh, it is.  It is.  I certainly believe that nobody can do it alone.  That was one of the challenges I faced early on in my life was sort of giving up control or realizing that I can’t do everything well, and that it really is easier for me to find people, particularly other women, who can do things well that I don’t do well and to work together and collaborate.

Toni: Right, and that’s what I’m picking up from you.  Not only in who you inspire as far as the women that you’re helping and championing them, but also what inspires you are other women and your friends, and, you know, the mastermind groups and so forth.

Barbara: Exactly.

Toni: There’s not a whole lot of isolation in any of these answers.

Barbara: Yes, that’s true.  Very true.

Toni: So what are you doing now to explore your own potential?

Barbara: Ah … I am working particularly with my mastermind group.  We were just talking last week in fact about fears and qualms around lots of opportunities.  There are lots of opportunities presenting themselves to me right now for whatever reason.  The Universe is kind and the Universe is presenting me with a lot of options right now, and I tend to find myself thinking, “Oh my gosh, if all of this happens, how am I going to handle all the clients?  How am I going to handle all the work?  How am I going to make time to do all these things?”

I’m really reaching out to my colleagues, particularly in the mastermind, to help me deal with those challenges to overcome those fears of success, if you will, and to really take things one step at a time and to celebrate the smaller things instead of worrying about the big giant issues.

Toni: What a great way to position your own fears, but also reaching out to resources, being able to be aware of that fear, and realizing that.  That is something that a lot of women don’t do is they don’t realize that there is a fear of success.

Barbara: Of course, of course.  And it’s actually been proven through research.  Back in the early 70s, there were a couple of psychological researchers who surveyed 150 professional women and discovered that each one of them felt like a phony and hence identified what is now known as the imposter factor, that women tend to attribute their success to external factors like luck or being in the right place at the right time and their failure to internal factors like “I wasn’t skilled enough” or “I didn’t know what I was doing.”  And men are exactly the opposite.  Various research studies since then have borne that out.

So some people may be listening to this and going, “Oh my gosh, it’s genetic, I have no choice,” but you do.  You do have a choice, and it really is about not being isolated and focusing on the internal and worrying that it’s your fault you’re not successful or that you’re feeling challenged, when it could be your fault that you’re actually going to be successful and to finding those qualities about yourself to help you do that.

Toni: Well thank you for being so honest about your own journey so that others listening or reading your transcript can benefit from that.  And just for being part of the Project, Barbara, we cannot thank you enough.  It’s been a pleasure.

Barbara: Oh, it’s been great for me, Toni.  Thank you so much.

Toni: Okay, Barbara, take care.

Barbara: You too.

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For more information about Barbara Bellissimo:  www.howtoaskformoney.com

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