In this episode of The One Small Change podcast, Susan Jarema shares the story of how a seemingly insignificant moment—watching her kids’ hamster on its wheel—sparked a crucial reflection on her professional life. After years of chasing client leads through marketing tactics and feeling stuck in a cycle, she realized the power of purposeful networking and building strategic partnerships. Susan discusses how shifting from a sales-driven approach to a relationship-focused strategy not only brought her business stability but also led to the creation of the Grand Connection community. This episode explores actionable steps for cultivating meaningful business relationships, the importance of clarity and consistency, and how small mindset shifts can lead to monumental change.

Guest Bio:

Susan Jarema is a serial entrepreneur, community builder, and networking strategist with over two decades of experience. She founded New Earth Marketing and co-created the Grand Connection, a thriving global network for collaborative entrepreneurs. Susan is dedicated to helping business owners grow through connection, mutual support, and strategic alliances. A lifelong learner and advocate for self-mastery, Susan integrates her passions for yoga, mentorship, and personal growth into her work, creating spaces that foster authentic relationships and collaborative business opportunities.

Chapters:

00:00 "Small Change, Big Impact"

04:05 Clarity Fuels Confidence and Consistency

08:25 "Building Genuine Collaborative Relationships"

12:58 "Grand Connection's Pandemic Origin"

13:43 "Connect, Create, Collaborate Framework"

18:31 Building Trust for Referrals

21:45 "Encouraging Objectivity and Collaboration"

23:33 "Building Relationships in Business"

27:22 "Grand Intro and Ask Guide"

32:09 "Be Yourself, Build Connections"

34:10 "Embrace Change with Courage"

Quote from the Guest:

“A really simple change in your mind is change for networking is to change your mindset from pitching towards collaboration.”

Link:

Connect with Susan at: https://www.newearthmarketing.com/ and https://grandconnection.ca/

Welcome to The One Small Change, and as always, I'm thrilled to

embark on this journey of exploration and transformation with you.

And I'm your host, Yvonne McCoy. I bring over 30 years of entrepreneurial

experience, and I have a passion for

discovering growth through the power of seemingly small change.

And I like to bring interesting people to you every week that you

can learn something from. And this week The person

who's going to be sharing her journey with us is Susan

Jarema, and she's going to share a small, unexpected,

or insignificant, you know, or maybe not so insignificant, um,

decision that sparked a remarkable transformation and growth

in either her personal or her professional life. And

the thing about these changes is sometimes we don't recognize it at the time

when it has. So Susan, Thank you for being

here. Thank you for being willing

to share your story and your fabulous gift, which we're going to talk about when

we get to the end. So tell everybody what it is you do and what

happened that made you decide to go in the direction

or pivot to doing what you're doing. Well, lovely to be

here, Yvonne, and very grateful for all of your contributions

in our community at the Grand Connection. You know,

you're— I learn from people like yourself all the time. So, you know,

when you're going around, it's meeting people that really creates a lot of change in

your life. I'm thinking back to, you know, some big

changes because I was, you know, you asked me, told me what I'm going to—

you're going to be asking me a few minutes ago. And I'm like, okay, where

was this big pivot in my life? And I had a—

I have— I had my marketing agency for— I've had it for over

2 decades now. So, I've been doing websites since

1995, a long, long time ago. They

were very different back in the day and the internet was hardly the same early

days either. There was no social media and all that. So, I went through a

lot of changes in the world of marketing. And having a marketing

agency, you are, you know, you like to try out

marketing tools and tactics and techniques and all the things because

it's exciting. Well, next shiny object, I'm going to give it a go. But

I was, I was a single mom at the time and getting

drained out. You probably know that feeling. And I was—

my kids had these hamsters and one of them's named Nibbles, and

it was on the hamster wheel. And, you know, I was just staring at it.

It's— I could hear it in the office going

all the time. I'm up working late and I'm thinking, I don't want

to be like this. Like, this is, this is like that hamster is running on

a wheel. I'm just like that hamster. It's actually losing weight.

I'm gaining weight because I was eating chocolate. And I wanted to be

in a place where I could have consistent clients coming

to me all the time. And how would I do that? I was always trying.

You're always just pushing, pushing and trying. You know, I was— I would

go and I would do a trade show. I would get an ad in the

paper. I would do an ad in the magazine. I mean, eventually it started to

be internet things, right? So you started doing article marketing, all the early sign—

early internet stuff. SEO got started, and I'm always trying

to get that next bit of new clients through the marketing efforts.

And then I realized, you know, if I could be strategic about it,

purposeful, and start networking more strategically. I

did do a bit of networking, but I was always just like, you know,

pitching and sort of just throwing it out there, collecting business

cards and, you know, following up, of course. But I wasn't getting

the strategic results that I wanted. That I could be getting later,

which I now looking back, I was like, why didn't I start this sooner? I

started looking for strategic partners, people that would— I did

websites. So who reaches the same people that

need websites or who notices the problem

that will need a website, like a coach or a business consultant would notice,

or a lawyer? The accountants often notice when their clients' websites aren't very good

or, you know, what they're doing. So I started finding those power

partners around me. And that's when life just changed.

So you've hit on so many things. I kind

of want to take a step back just to highlight some of the things that

you said, because I think one of the things that everybody

is looking for is they're looking for consistency,

right? And part of consistency comes when you feel

confident about what you're doing, and that confidence comes

from the clarity. And so people are looking

for consistency before they get clarity, so they're not feeling

confident, right? So I think that's one big thing

that we all share as entrepreneurs. I mean, I know that

for me, that was like, you know, you know, squirrel.

This week I'm pitching this, next week I'm pitching that, right?

Just to focus on the one thing that you do really well. But

here's the thing that you're talking— you talked about that, you know, was a really

hard lesson for me. And I

built my previous company before COVID

on referrals. And so I did not have a

consistent pathway to— for people

to find me, you know. And I came to

networking really, really late. And

so that's one of the things that I love about The Grand Connection is

that it is a warm,

friendly place to network. I mean, when I started networking,

it was like I looked at everybody in the room as having a dollar sign

on their forehead. Are they gonna buy from me? It had

nothing to do with relationships. It had, you know, it was

purely a— I was showing up for sales. I was not

showing up to connect. And that is probably the

absolute wrong way to belong to a community

and to network. So I just had to say that because that That was

the big mistake that I made. Yeah. And I see it all the time

coming through our community as well. People come in and they just want to sell.

They start pitching and talking and no one listens. They're not listening at all to

anybody else. And they don't build any relationships. And they go, oh, I didn't get

any clients. And I'm going, yeah, because nobody connected with

you. And I think the thing is, you

know, you really are building a relationship. You want

to, you know, you want people to know who you are so they can trust

you. And from that, you either build a collaboration

relationship, a friendship, right? Or

potentially a client. But if you go in with your sales hat

on, nobody actually gets to know you. And too many people go into

networking, I think, with, I do this, this, this, this, this,

this, this, I've got this degree, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And

if there was a client in the room, they wouldn't care because

they didn't get to know you. So tell us more about how, how

this revelation made you do what you now

do so fabulously. Well, I, you

know, I became strategic in my networking. This is back in the days of

in-person because that was, it was a long time ago. There wasn't even,

there wasn't even Zoom yet. So I would do it in person, but I was

very strategic and I got, you know, 3 or 4 really good

referral partners out of this. Of which, you know, I, I

either supported them in some way. It was very, very good relationships,

and that was 80% of my business. And then you're always—

no, I was. Going to say, talk about what a power partner is or

what a collaboration partner is, because I think people

misunderstand that. Yeah, so in The Grand

Connection, we focus on collaboration, and collaboration, I find—

now, this is sort of the second learning that I've had, a big change. So

the first one was how to find these strategic partners that I made— I called

I call referral partners. Some people might call them your power team. Your

power team is often used in those words. But I also say that

you have your power team, that it's a broader team, right? So

they would be referrals. But you can also have your collaboration team too.

Like, you and I are collaboration partners.

You've been on my stage many times. I've introduced you to lots of other people

who could be strategic partners for you, possibly some clients.

I'm here on your podcast as well, and you've— we've given each other

support through that as well as I've learned a lot from you.

So, you know, the other thing is

your, your kind of power team and your collab, you know,

is built on a real relationship. I know if I were

to call you up, you know, just like yesterday, I was like,

Susan, will you be on my podcast? And you're like, yeah, I'm there.

Do you know? I mean, it's, it's, it's so heartwarming as

opposed to people that,

you know, like you feel like you have to go through gatekeepers and you have

to do all, you know, do all these somersaults and, you know, kinds of things.

And you want to have a big group of that.

I mean, it doesn't happen overnight. And my thing was when I first started

doing affiliate marketing, because my idea of being personal

was putting first name into the email

And Chuck is like, no, you have to pick up the phone. No, you have

to actually reach out and touch people. And so the first

time I did it, he was like, and people said, oh,

yes, we'll do this. I was like, oh, my God, this is so different. I

mean, it's so heartwarming. And it's

way more fun. Chuck's a member of our community. I've had the opportunity

to meet him in person because he lives in the same city as me,

and he's helped me with my referral as program well. So Chuck is

an asset to a lot of us in the community. And it's definitely, you

know, those relationships, it doesn't happen overnight. Like, when did

you join our community? When did you first come in? I think it was in

'23, '22, something like that. It's been a couple of years. Yeah. But

we've been collaborating more in the last year because we've gotten to know, like, and

trust you. You spoke in our business growth buffet one time,

I think, and you were in the magazine. And then later on, you came and

you did a— You've done some mixers, you did the giveaways, and you, you really

get high on that leaderboard for the giveaways. Like, you, you participate

and you— but. But here's— this is one of the things I think you're going

to talk about later. But one of the things that I think people

do is they join communities because

somebody tells them that they should, right? But

they have no idea how to really be involved or

engaged. And the other thing is, if when you're not clear

you hesitate. So I was like, yeah, I should do this,

but, you know, you had to like get yourself pumped up. You know, what am

I going to talk about this time? You know, um, you know,

I, I don't want to— I don't want to take a misstep or whatever. But

it's so much easier when you know what you're doing, you know.

And, and I don't mean that it's the absolute perfect

end. It means what you're doing now. Right. Well, your,

your talk that you did at the last mixer was all on this

clarity, getting confidence through clarity. Yeah, that's a— it's

coming out in our podcast episode 10. It's probably already out now.

So anybody who's listening, you can hear Yvonne's talk for

free on the podcast, the Grand Connection podcast. And

that was a very good talk. Like, you had such amazing feedback afterwards. And I

think like some people in the community reached out to you to collaborate. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. And I have to tell you

that this woman comes with amazing

experience. She's running 4 businesses,

and yet the grand connection, I think, is your heart.

Yeah, it is. It is. I love it. I get to meet cool people all

over the world. I've been a life— like, I love learning.

So I, you know, when I guess you call it a life learner, I'm always

reading the latest new business book. I'm following

podcasts. I take— we have our self-mastery program.

Yoga is a practice, which is a practice about self-awareness. That's what yoga is

all about. So I'm— that's my life is just how to

grow and become more self-aware and to learn to be a better person. And

all of these skills that you learn for yourself become how you project

yourself in the world and become better at what you do in all

areas. For us entrepreneurs, ourselves, our life

is our business. It is what we do. It is us.

So it's such an important part of what we do here. Well, you know,

I think the Grand Connection to me is an unusual

community because there's something there for everybody.

So can I get you to talk about how, how you decided

to start this, how it evolved, what it's like now, why people should join

it now? Well, it was a change thing too.

I was at the Grand Canyon with Carolyn, my good friend,

and COVID hit. So, we were walking

around, the world had changed. We were supposed to go to a yoga conference and

it turned out that we spent the time hiking at the canyon because it was

still open and started thinking about how could we help

the people around us who were going to be struggling for this new pandemic.

Who knew at that time? You didn't know what was happening, where it was going

to go, and people needed to get online. So we knew that that was

happening, that there was going to be more of a virtual world. How are you

going to start doing selling online more, networking online? And that's

where the Grand Connection was born at the Grand Canyon. So that

was a catalyst for change. So something that just happened in the world that

made this happen. And then throughout meeting people

at the Grand Connection, I started to see what works and what

doesn't work for people. You know, like really learning to

listen more than you talk is a biggie in networking

and having that clarity at the beginning. And then I, I've developed

now our Connect, Create, Collaborate framework that I instill in

everything we do. And we have our Grand Plan Accelerator Labs where you build your

grand plan for growth, getting that clarity, which you talked about,

so that you know the people you wanna meet based on your goals and what

you're trying to do. And with the CCC framework, it's

about connecting to build those relationships. And then you,

you're creating trust, you're creating ideas, you're creating

shared values around, around something and shared purpose and goals.

And then you collaborate and it's a journey and you can't jump

into something immediately when you don't have the know, like, and trust. You

need to get to know people. It's not like, you know, you get married on

the first date. I mean, maybe the other person in Vegas does, but most of

us don't. You want to get to know each other, right? And, and,

you know, for me, one of the things that has happened when I— since I

started networking is, um, not every

networking group is for you, you know. And so I'm like,

try a couple of things, see, you know, see what you like, see what

you, you know, you don't dread going to, that you really enjoy

going to. But stick with, you know, the things that you— it's better

to do a fewer groups of networking that you

become known in, you know, that fit what you're doing. Because there's nothing—

to me, there's nothing better than if I go to a networking thing and some—

and I make a comment and somebody goes, you need to talk

to her because she does, you know, because that gives you more

credibility. But it doesn't happen overnight. You have to actually

participate and support other people before,

you know, you are fully

engaged in the thing and you've got a way to get into the community

easily, right? Oh yeah, you can get in with it. You can come to 3

events as a guest. So there'll be a guest pass in the, in the show

notes that you can grab and check it out and you just start

experiencing it. Another thing you need to do is just, you do need to

just get out there and start practicing because I believe clarity comes through

practice. It's you, you meet other people, you see

what's working. They— you get— it's like a mirror for you. You practice your

introductions, you see what works. You see, you know, if you say some introduction and

nobody wants to connect with you, well, that obviously wasn't resonating with people and

you need to go talk to Yvonne and get some clarity, right? Here's

the thing. Here's the thing that I think people are afraid of. And

it— this is like one of the big changes, you know,

little change, big change.

Entrepreneurship is an experiment.

It's not, you know, too many people are like, they're practicing to get

perfect, practicing to get perfect, practice. And this, when you think

you're close to being perfect, whatever you've been

practicing for is long gone. The world

keeps— you're shooting at a moving target. And I think

the other thing is We are too much in our own

heads. And so my, my thing that I have

finally settled on that I love is you don't need

to be fixed, you need to be found. And that actually happened in a

networking room. This poor person, people were telling you need to do this,

you need to do this. And I said to her, do you have clients? She

goes, yes. I go, do you get them results? She said, yes. I said, are

they happy with, you know, what they're getting? She said, yes. I

said, then you don't need to be fixed. You've already got their

solution. You just need more people to find you. Yeah, yeah. You

know, and everybody in the room went,

and I would have never come up with that on my own. You know, knowing

that reaction, it was like, this is what I'm helping people to do,

to be found, to have the right clients find it.

And so when you use your, um, the

accelerator and the clarification planning thing tool that

you've got, that can just jumpstart you.

It can exponentially move the needle forward for you.

Someone might come in and maybe there's some things they need to adjust in their

business. Maybe their offer isn't right and it's not aligned to their market. And

that's what you do. That's how you work with people as a strategist

and get those things all working together. When you come to the Grand Connection,

it is about getting found. We give you visibility right away. You get to

know people right away. And you build those relationships by showing up,

that's where the relationships deepen. And they can lead to then

people who start saying, as you said in the chat, oh, talk to Yvonne.

She's a great strategist. And they get to know you over time and

will refer you to other people. And you're not going to—

obviously, you're not going to refer somebody you just met because it's your

reputation when you give a referral. You want to be able to

trust them. I might have— we do have a lot of people that have VA

services in the community, and I don't know them all really well. And

so when somebody asks me, I, I need a VA, which happens about once a

week at least, somebody needs help to get a virtual assistant in

their team to delegate and leverage their time, um, I will

give a list of people and I'll leave it up to them to, to figure

out who's the right fit for them. But then there's certain people I know who

I built those know, like, trust relationships that I feel

really comfortable referring because I know that they will

create value, and I— the client will not be disappointed. And for

me, I'm solving a problem for somebody, and I'm, and I'm helping them.

And I, and I think the other— one of the things that I thought was—

that happened, did not happen in the community, happened someplace else. Um,

there were two people that I thought had, you know, there

was a possibility of an opportunity, right?

And the person said to me, well, I looked at, I looked at their

website and decided that, you know, they weren't for me.

And I was like, you didn't talk to them. You didn't get to

know them. I mean, you may have made the right decision,

but you never know in a conversation when you get to

know somebody better and what they do better, because some of us are not good

at putting stuff out in the world and stuff like that. And if you're like

me, I put my LinkedIn thing up and, and it

was probably up there for a couple of years and I never even looked at

it again. Meanwhile, my business was totally changing. You know.

And so you, you don't know who they know that may be

even better aligned than they are. And so, you know, it might

be found— it's like nurture all your relationships. Yeah,

you know, good people are worth it. And somebody took the time to think about

you. So, you know, and I absolutely agree with you.

It's like, I don't know exactly what you need, so here's somebody I

think, or here's 3 people that are in this area, see if,

you know, who's the person whose service And this is. Where

you're getting leads in many different ways. So you're building your strategic

partners. You want to have your group of people that really know, like, and trust

you. You may have that sort of— we call it circles of

influence. You may have that third level that knows about you

and might say that would be, say, well, you could try out Susan at New

Earth Marketing for a website. So this is where some of these other

principles that a lot of our speakers and the trainings that

different people do in the community like yourself, is, okay, your LinkedIn

profile should be up to date because people are checking that out. And so is

your website. Your website needs to reflect who you are. I always remind

people, we, we at our, you know, January events, have you

guys done an audit of your LinkedIn and your website lately? Because probably

you've changed what you've done in the last 6 months and need. To update those

things. Yeah. So the, the other thing is

one of the things that I see is that

people can be very subjective and not objective.

And by that I mean when something's going on, they go, what's

wrong with me? Right? What's wrong with me? And

so one of the things that I try to do is figure out ways

where you can make decisions that kind of takes

that self-criticism and stuff out of it. And

so for me, my— the way that I start my

relationships is I have my newsletter

and you can post something in my newsletter. And, you know, my point of

view is there's enough business for all of us, even people who

do things that are similar to what I do, right? Because we're all in

different stages of business. And I, you know, I might not be your

cup of tea, right? And so

if you go through the steps to get into the newsletter, you fill

out the, you know, you fill it out and, you know, I can put you

in and then I can see if my audience likes what you're doing.

You know, does anybody click on your link in that? And again, that takes some

time. It doesn't, you know, and then I

can see, okay, you're doing this on a regular basis. This is

probably somebody who's working on consistency the way I am,

right? So you're building— they're building trust with you, right? Yes. And

with my audience. Right. And then we move on to

something else. You know, we, you know, I see you're doing this. You've got these

events and stuff. Would you like to come on my podcast? Right.

And again, do you fill out the form that you need to fill out? You

know, one of the weird things that I found out,

you know, for those of you that are hearing this for the first time, I

have a concussion. And in the newsletter, I was promoting

all these people that I had, I think, have no idea that I was promoting

them because I was— they told me once and I just kept doing

it, you know. And

it was like I had to simplify my life. I couldn't

keep chasing, you know. Yeah, it's so weird to me

that, you know, the person who's the VA now is like,

you know, you— we sent these new— you know, we sent out requests and

these people didn't answer, people that I have been promoting for a really long time.

So it's been really— it's really interesting about building the

relationships. And, you know, and there's some people that I sent out, here's the

new link, and got answers right away. It's like, oh, Yvonne, this is great,

glad you're getting help, you know, here's my you know. So

relationships are something that will keep your business moving.

I mean, I think that's, that's the thing that I found that

was unexpected, is

relationships that you build and the things that you

do with them when you're not at 100%, they keep your

business moving. It's that momentum. And yeah,

and it's not— and, and it's You're getting the momentum in new

clients and leads and opportunities, but you're also getting it in

ideas, inspiration, mentorship. You're getting,

you're getting accountability from some of the people. So it's, it's

this group that's your— it is really a power team in

so many areas. Yeah, absolutely. All right.

We could keep talking forever, but there are a couple of things that we have

to be sure that we do. So Yeah, tell us about the gift. Tell

us what steps people should take, because that's really important, because

you've got. A great— well, the— my steps are part of the gift, so this

is really exciting. So I'll start with the gift, um, so that you can then

see, oh, I can do that in these steps. Um, we have access

to a guest pass, and the guest pass lets you pick 3 events from the

Grand Connection. And one of the best events to come to is our Grand Plan

Accelerator, where you get clarity on the people you want to meet. And we have

It's a full plan you do, and I have an AI assistant that

helps you do it very quickly. And it really turns the needle

and gives you these strategic, strategic alliances

and things like it. It maps it all out. People you need for skill

building, people you may need to meet for referrals, people you need for collaboration.

Maybe you want to start speaking more. You want to get on podcasts. So you

plan all that out in the grand plan. So I would say the number one

thing to do is to create some sort of a plan.

So decide who you want to meet and be intentional about the environments

you choose to meet people in. And how often does that happen? Once

a month. Once a month. So you need to click in there and see when

it's coming so you can make sure you put that in your— Yeah, yeah.

And you will get right away when you sign up, you will get access

to the workbook. So you'll get the template, which is the plan. You can

see it. I like to work backwards so you see what you're working towards. You'll

get access to the GPT immediately. So that you can actually start playing around

with it beforehand. And it also includes access to our

workbook on creating memorable introductions and an AI assistant for

that as well. So you're going to get a lot of things in this bundle.

It gets you going. So, so I just want to tell people, you should

think of, of when you introduce yourself as an

introduction. How would I introduce myself to somebody that I want to meet?

Not a pitch. Well, I like to somehow

in, in your introduction, you include something of, you know, what you

do in the value. But I'm saying the mindset about it is a pitch

is like, I'm selling you, I'm selling you, I'm selling you. An introduction is,

I am so glad, you know, not that you're using these words, but, you know,

I am, I want to meet you, you know. So we

break it into two parts, a grand intro and a grand ask. So the grand

intro is, is what you do and the value you offer. So people get an

idea what, what, where you are, what you're— how, because it may align.

And most likely in there, they'll understand what audience you're reaching.

So then your grand ask is, who do you want to meet?

And a big shift in your mindset is to think about,

who do I want to meet to collaborate with, rather than who do

I want to meet to sell to? Yes. When you're trying to sell to

somebody directly and you come into the room and, oh, I'm looking for for people

to buy my product or buy my service. I want people who want to buy

my program. Well, everybody's just looking at you like,

well, you know, we don't know you. How are we gonna— yeah,

you know, so you got to go through that know, like, and trust. But what

happens is when you're introducing yourself with clarity and people understand

what the value you offer, if that's for them, they're gonna jump on it

anyways. Yeah. And, and they know you have a collaborative mindset, so they're going to

resonate with your values more. And then they're going to also, if they knew

a friend that's looking for it and they resonated with your values just from saying,

hey, I'm looking to meet other heart-centered entrepreneurs who want to do podcast

swaps or something that's very collaborative, that's going to get people

interested in wanting to know more about you and what you do. Absolutely.

Absolutely. All right. So that was number 1. Number

2, get clarity. So we already kind of talked about getting

clarity on your offer and your introduction. So if that's clear, it's very easy to

make an introduction and your grand ask. Who do you want to meet, right? If

those are clear. So first one, have a plan. Second one, get

clarity. And then the third one is to just get out and do

it. So book an event, like come to an event and

commit to saying, okay, you know what, I'm going to join the Grand Connection for

a couple of months and really commit to making some connections. And

you're going to see the needle move with that. And You know, as you mentioned

earlier, you don't have to be perfect. You know, you don't have to go fixing

a whole bunch of things. Get out there and start practicing because you're going to

learn so much in those first couple of events that you do. It's

powerful. Absolutely. Absolutely. And the Grand Connection

has a lot of opportunities to do that every month, every week.

Okay. Time for the fun question. When was the last time you

did something new for the first time?

Well, I went down a new ski run today, but anyways, I won't talk about

that. Actually, I probably had done it before.

But I, you know, I did a podcast. I have my

own podcast now. I had been trying to make— have a podcast for

3 years that I just never got

focused enough to make it happen. And so in

2025, it was year of the podcast. I was

committed to making that happen. And I worked with Michelle Abraham, who you know from

our community. She runs the Grand Podcasters group, and she's helping me. And, you

know, having that mentor and somebody to support you along the way made it happen.

And I was nervous about doing this, Yvonne. I'm not a public

speaker, so this is very nerve-wracking. This is why, like, I

asked you, what are you going to ask me so I can sort of be

prepared? Even though I'm not even looking at my notes or whatever, I just like

to be prepared. And I haven't been out there speaking and I

sometimes ramble and my mind's going super fast. So I've been learning

this year, 2026 is the year of self-mastery.

So I'm trying to learn how to be able to be a

better communicator by not going— getting so

excited about things and, you know, being able to tap into your mind.

Be excited. That's what people want to hear about. But if I get really

excited, I'll talk too fast and I might start rambling about hamster

wheels or go into marketing websites.

This is, this is what I learned. What I learned is,

and I learned this from Avatel, who was one of, who's got a,

who's got a tech confidence thing on, on the Grant

Connection. I did a workshop that I had it all

wordsmithed and everything, and she said to me,

I don't know who that person was that gave that workshop. It's not the

person that I like working with. And so you

will attract the people who like the way you are. I mean,

people say to me— and you know, now I'm kind of loosey-goosey— and people

say to me, I love your energy. Okay, the people that

don't love my energy don't call me, and that's fine

because I probably am like, oh, I'm trying to pull stuff out of them. Like,

you know, I like people who are into action. So be yourself, be

whatever hamster wheel you want to be on. And you will attract

the people that, that are looking for that. Well, it's a little easier

if you can calm down a little bit. Be

yourself. That's the best you, you can be, you know.

So guys, I have to bring this to a close,

but you will find all the information about the Grand Connection

and the gift in the, in the notes. And so, you know,

you absolutely need to do that. But before we go,

I just want to— I had to go— I have to do the commercial part.

So be sure that you subscribe and share and engage in the podcast on social

media. One of the reasons I decided to do this was

I wanted to supercharge your business connect— your business

through connection. And it's my way of giving back to this community

and hopefully fueling your quest for growth and impact and

bringing interesting people to you every week so you can learn something different

and get a gift and and build your business. So I hope you will continue

to join me on The One Small Change so

that we can embark on this journey and we can have these tiny

shifts for monumental transformations. And if you haven't listened

to the first episode, you should do that. And there's also a couple of them

in there where I, you know, I talk all by myself about, you

know, what's the clarity checklist kind

of thing. And and get you to think about what should

I be doing? And, you know, just to say, have I done this? Have I

done this? Have I done this? And I just want to

know, Susan, if you were to give a quote, some last words,

what would it be?

Oh, well, you know, one of my

favorite quotes is— what is it?

You just get me on the spot here. So you didn't tell me you were

going to do this one. I forgot. Yeah, well, I'm just going to say something

of my own, like change.

I would just say that a really simple change in your mind

is change for networking is to change your

mindset from pitching towards collaboration.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And the last thing I'm

going to say is what I always say. Remember, the change can be simple, but

it's not always easy. And it requires courage and resilience and

a willingness to step out of your comfort zone. And so if you're feeling butterflies,

it probably means you're doing the right thing, that you're doing something new and

exciting. And so I wish that for you. And so I hope

you will continue to join me on the One Small Change. And until

I see you next time, stay very curious.

Bye.