In this episode of The One Small Change Podcast, Yvonne McCoy is joined by Faith Rumer, a dynamic coach with a unique background in the arts to explore the transformative power of small changes towards authenticity and alignment. The conversation delves into why aligning your true self with your presence and work matters, especially as the world has shifted to more virtual interactions. Through personal stories and practical takeaways, listeners will learn how to step into visibility, lead with confidence, and embrace both growth and vulnerability. Whether you’re seeking to feel more alive in your daily life, boost your impact as a leader, or simply show up more powerfully in virtual spaces, this episode is packed with actionable wisdom.

Guest Bio:

Faith Rumer is a mentor and coach who specializes in helping leaders, entrepreneurs, and creative professionals align their authentic selves with their public presence and communication. With years of experience working with actors, singers, TV hosts, and diverse creatives, she empowers clients to live their fully expressed lives. Her work focuses on igniting powerful transformation through presence, voice, and connection.

Chapters:

00:00 Transitioning to Virtual Speaking

06:00 Playing in Les Mis Orchestra

07:09 Feeling unfulfilled in traditional success

12:16 Levels of leadership development

14:40 Struggling with communication skills

18:39 Being visible in virtual meetings

19:59 Overcoming shyness in meetings

25:29 Being present and mindful

28:42 Embracing Change and Courage

29:40 Yvonne appreciation and farewell

Quote from the Guest:

“When we say yes to fully expressing ourselves, we're going to be challenging our old beliefs, our feelings and judgments and fears. But as we get clarity on that and what we really want, we move through our feelings, we change our beliefs, we become more grounded, more truthful, more creative, and more resilient.”

Link:

Connect with Faith at: https://raisingyourimpact.com/

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the One Small Change. I am so

thrilled that you're here and that you are going to embark on this

journey of exploration and transformation. And I'm Your host,

Yvonne McCoy and I bring almost 35 years of

entrepreneurial experience. And I have an insane passion

for discovering growth through the power of seemingly small change.

And I'm glad that you joined this. Join me this week. Apparently

I'm still got rubber lips, right?

But one of the reasons I do this is because I like to bring really

interesting people into your world that are going to help you

in your exploration and help you with your transformation.

And this week we are talking with the amazing Faith

Rumer and she's going to share with us how a small

unexpected or insignificant. Insignificant. I'm

real having problems today, guys. Sparked a remarkable

change in her and makes her the best at what she does.

Faith, hopefully you can talk better than I can.

Well, first of all, I'm going to take in that I'm the amazing Faith roomer.

Thank you for that. I so appreciate that.

You know, what I do is I mentor and

coach. I coach leaders, entrepreneurs and lot of

creative professionals. Through the years, I've worked with a lot of actors and

singers and of TV hosts and YouTube sensations and

all kinds of people like that. And I help them align

who they truly are with how they show up, with

their presence, their communication and in their work so that

they can really have the impact and the prosperity that they want and

what I call live their fully expressed life.

So during the pandemic,

that was a while ago, right.

I had committed to going out and becoming a speaker, like going out and speak

because I sing and I use my music when I speak and I

wanted to reach people with my message and I committed to that

and that when I got out and I saw

the change of people before the pandemic, when I got out and saw the

change in people, when I could get on a stage and talk about what I'd

been through, how I found my voice, what was how I found

expressing myself. It was. It was amazing to see how

people change. And it really got me on fire to do it. Then the

pandemic hit and I couldn't go out and do it in person anymore.

And I had to learn like all of us how to do this.

Like we're doing it right now. And that, that

was a boy. That was a skill. It was a challenge and

it still is in some ways. So I want to

ask you kind of a strange question. We use

the word aligned a lot. And

I don't know whether or not people

really know what that means or what does it mean to them. Why is

it important to them that they're aligned? Well, and

that's a great question. You know, if we're not. If we don't know, first of

all, we have to get some clarity on what we really want. That helps

to align ourselves, first of all, because we don't do that. You know, it's like

I'm trying to get somewhere. I want to go travel somewhere, but I'm not really

sure where on the East Coast I want to travel to. I know I want

to go to the East Coast. Okay, but what if I

want to go to New York? Then

what am I going to do in New York? What's going to make me happy?

What's going to be. What's going to be, you know, bring me joy, what's going

to make me grow, what's going to make me come away from that trip

and say I did something meaningful and memorable? And I

remember that trip. So it's a little bit like that.

Aligning ourselves to what we want to do so

that we're not scattered all over the place, but we have a real clear destination,

but we're also aligning. And this is the really important part, what

an it is that makes us come alive.

And. And I think that that is part of my message as

well. I mean, yeah, it. It took me a really long time to get

there. And I always like to say it's not your fault

because we were raised a certain way, that you pres. Present

yourself a certain way, that you come off a certain way. Right.

And that just makes you generic.

Wow. We are talking the same language. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And the thing that makes you stand out

is probably the thing that you don't even know that you have most of

the time. So taking a step back, and I don't want to take all your

time, but, you know, my favorite saying is it doesn't matter how fast you're going

if you don't, you know, if you. If you're not going in the right

direction. And so, you know, I think it's

really important. I think alignment is about your business, that

you're doing the right things to get you the right results, but it's also

that you can feel comfortable in your own skin. You know,

it's kind of like either you like me or you don't. And that's

okay. I mean, because there are. It's a huge

world out there. Not everybody has to like you or need what you have.

But if you're going to be in business and you want it to be

sustainable, it takes so much energy to be somebody

else. It will burn you out. So I,

you know, I just. I absolutely agree with you.

You know, I think people are longing

to feel alive again, to wake up, excited, to feel

connected to who they really are. You know, and that can be something

like. Like, I work with people sometimes. I have a

client, and she's a

symphony musician, that quality. A violinist. And she

was. She told. This is a great story that she told me as we were

working together, that she was in the pit for Les Mis

for that. So that means she's in the orchestra for

Les Mis and she's playing. And she was hating it because she had to play

the same things over and over again every night. And she said she was

having a panic attack while she was playing it because it

felt so misaligned with who she was,

because she wanted to express herself differently. She wanted to

get out, and she wanted to do. Express her own music. So she

ended up going and creating an album and

doing that, and now she's doing more improvisation. But really what came up

for her is now that she. She's done all that, she's done a lot

of growth of mindset and spiritual growth. Now

she wants to go out and help other people with their creativity. And that's her.

Now that's aligned with what she's been doing for herself.

So now she has this new full person that she's out

there creating and expressing in a way that

is expanding. And I think that's part of what it is as human

beings that we're here to expand. And I think her

story is a fairly normal one, that she went

through all the training. You know, she had a gift. She went

through all the training, went through all the hurdles, ended up with

at a place which should have signaled success,

but wasn't her, you know,

and. And that's why we find all these. You know, we find lots of people

who work a job that they hate, Right?

Because that's kind of where, you know, I. I remember one time going,

saying to myself, I'm an adult. I have a husband,

I have a house, I have two cars, I have two dogs, I

have three, you know, 2.5 kids.

You don't get much more, you know, I have a job. You don't

get much more adult than this. But there's got to be more.

I mean, this can't be the end, right?

No, absolutely. And that might be, you know, like, she was. Like, she wanted to

do more expressing about how to mentor other people,

to be a coach, to bring in some creativity

workshops and things like that, which is what we're working on now for her. And

I can see her just light up about it.

And I. And that's the. For me, that's probably the

happiest part of working with people is when they

finally understand what they're good at.

It's like this wait, and this curtain just opens. It's

like, yes, this is it. And then the

confidence comes naturally, because you don't have to. You've already

got it. You've already got the building blocks. You've already got the skill

that make you good at what you do. And so you're not, you know, you're

not afraid. I said, I would like to do. This is

so crazy. I would like to do a mastermind of women

who are really competent, know their stuff, so if they get out to talk, they're

not worried about their content. They're going, I. I really want a comfortable

bra.

Yep. You know, so. So. All right, so

I don't want to stop you. I want you to tell me more. I want

you to tell me what we. The kinds of things

or opportunities that we're missing. Yeah,

Yeah. I. I think what's happening is like, you know, certainly

a lot of successful women, they're not struggling because they

lack skills, though sometimes we want to work on those skills. Like, I

work on people with communication and how to, you know, how to use their voice

and their presence and grow that. And that's really important. But once

you have that, what are you going to do with it? You know, once you

have your skill set? And what I find is that, like, here's it. Like, they're

editing themselves. I do this. I do it myself. Right. They're

holding back their ideas, their visibility,

maybe their leadership, their creativity, and even

their voice. And the other day on Sunday, I was walking

somewhere, and this thought came to me for myself. It's like,

step into your authority

as a thought leader, as a coach, even as a

singer, because I go out and I sing and I perform. So as I want

to step into that as well. I was watching

someone sing the other day, and they almost like they were

apologizing the whole time they were singing.

I'm kind of singing, you know, but not really exploring and expressing their

gifts. How many times have we seen that? What do we react

to people who fully are

owning who they are, that unique part of themselves?

I say that our impact, and it expands in direct

proportion to how fully we're willing to be ourselves.

I think that's true. And you mentioned something

else that we don't normally talk about on the podcast. So if you're

willing, I would like to talk about leadership,

because we don't talk about that often. And I think a lot of us, especially

if you're entrepreneurs, I think we don't think of ourselves as

leaders, and yet we really are. And

I have a whole theory about this. Like, everything

that's good, though you have your theories. It's like, that's

absolutely. That's where it starts. I should say philosophies or whatever. But anyway,

so let's talk about how important leadership

is in terms of being yourself

and being aligned. Hmm. Well, I think

the first thing, and this sounds kind of obvious, but you have to be the

leader of your own life. You know, where it is

that you feel like the out of alignment with leading your life,

you know, are you spending time not putting energy in the certain things that you

want to get better at? So, for example,

being a speaker, this is, you know, I. Practicing speaking

is important for me. And if I want

to go out and have that as leadership, have a leadership as a

speaker, I need to practice it. Well, you know, one of the things that I

always say is there's like, I consider that there are four levels of

leadership, okay? The first one is self leadership.

And we tend to not really develop that.

Our system of education, which is sit down, be quiet,

don't be seen, you know, doesn't really let you develop that

fully. The next level is kind of leadership or

management of projects, which we do extremely well as

entrepreneurs, generally speaking. And then you have to move on

to leadership of others. But if you don't know your own

leadership strengths and weaknesses and understand the

way you operate, it's very hard to lead other people.

And that makes it even harder to go to the last one, which is leadership

of an organization or a movement. And so I think

that's why a lot of coaching programs or when you work with a

coach, one of the things they go back to all the time is your

mindset. And you know, what, what is your philosophy about

leading? How do you lead? And

so I think a lot of leadership used to come from just

having information, which now information is

everywhere. And so part of the leadership is helping people

to clarify what they really need and be able to

implement the steps to get there. So I just want to say we all are

leaders. I mean, you Know, it doesn't matter if you're leading

one or if you're leading many. It's

important to have that and to understand it so that you

can be consistent in

what you're doing. Yeah. And that kind of accepting the authority over

ourselves and our business, you know, and then when we work with

our team, that work. I think clarity and getting

clear about how we want to express ourselves is super important

as well. That when I get in front

of my clients or anybody and I'm

coaching somebody or if I'm speaking, I want to be really

clear what's important to me and what I want to express.

So communication, I mean, I think communication is

huge. The best leaders, I guess, are clear

so that they can communicate well. Yeah, right.

And I had, I had, I had a. A chemistry teacher who was a

genius my freshman year and none of us could understand

a word. I mean, it was like he would go a

b XYZ and we're like, huh, do you

know? But a. A good leader, I think, is a

person who can communicate in a way

that people can follow and they can see themselves in that. And I think

one of the things that the pandemic did was I

think we're all craving a belonging now that we didn't

have before. I mean, I. I found myself thinking about this the other day.

And so if you can't communicate in a way that

brings. Makes people go, I want more. I want to be part of that.

I want to know it's going to be

falling kind of on deaf ears and you're not going to get to the results

that you want. Yeah, yeah. I it my book

truly be seen and heard. I talk about how to become an

awesome communicator. And I call awesome not just good,

because you can go online and find, you know, put

pauses in, make sure that you have your point and you're going to express

yourself this way, which is great because

that is having presence, dynamic

presence, which we need to be able to communicate. And dynamic presence

doesn't have to be loud. Right. It can be soft. I'm thinking of Mother

Teresa had dynamic presence. She had so much

dynamic presence that she could get people to

companies and people to give her millions of dollars for her causes.

So. So, you know, I like people to be able to take away things

that they can use. So talk about. Can you talk

about just everyday kinds of things that we can

do that will give us presence and authority?

Yeah, yeah. The other part of it, though, I do want to add, is that

we need dynamic presence. But we also need genuine connection.

And sometimes people develop that, then they don't have the

dynamic presence, or they develop the dynamic presence and they're not in

genuine connection. We need both. But to develop our

presence, you know, that's part of it.

I think that there's a big part about owning our voice.

So how can you do that every day? It sounds

kind of funny, but as an entrepreneur, as a business person,

we have to be seen and heard. So

that thing that we resist often about.

I'm going to go and put my. Put a video out.

I'm going to record myself. So what if you commit to

recording, I don't know, three

videos this week without them being

perfect? And there's the rub right there. They're not supposed to

be perfect. They're just supposed to be you. And so I think the other

thing, too is developing that presence. And because presence is about how we

present ourselves, right? We have to get real clear on our why,

what it is that we want. So when you make that video, what's the point,

Right? Are you just going to entertain people? Sometimes that's what people do in videos.

They want to entertain. They

want to help someone. They want to serve or support, which is great.

Or they want to start to express their

ideas. Now, I've seen that happen little by

little, people expressing their ideas. And I think it's that

willingness to go out and start to express your ideas.

I think the other thing I'm.

I've got lots of ideas that are going on in my head, but I think

the other thing is, which I always say at my

workshop is visibility starts with.

I mean, we're in a zoom world. Visibility starts with just being on a

camera. Yeah. So that people see you, they see

how you react to things. You may not say a word,

but when they see you in the next. In the next meeting or whatever, they

go, oh, she's doing some of the same things I'm doing. Maybe we should

connect. Or you ask a question

and somebody goes, oh, my God, that's a great question. I would like to

talk to them more. I mean, it is a simple, free

thing that you can do. And I can tell you that

I can have 20 people in a room and

at least seven of them are not on camera. I mean,

my last workshop, I literally said, okay, I'm gonna

bribe you guys, whoever answers this question. You can

put your information in the chat. Yeah,

but it shouldn't. You. I shouldn't have to bribe you. If you are sure

about what you do, if you Are, you know, if you

feel you are in the leadership and in the authority, you should want

people to see you. And you know, and, and, and

I will say that

about a couple months ago, I was writing a post and I was like, what

is the right picture for this? Right? What's the right image? And I was writing

about being yourself. And I was like, the right picture

is me. Isn't that funny? You

know, I so love what you just said because that. Make it like there's a,

there's a small step. Make a commitment in the next meeting or the next five

meetings you're in, not just the next meeting, but the next five to put on

your camera and then, and then contribute something. Ask a

question or contribute something. Now I, I

used to think of myself as shy, that I would

like, sit back and get information and not go out and, you know, talk to

people. And I really, really change that in myself. I've made a

commitment that I will always keep my camera on when I'm in

meetings. And it's, and it's, it's. Sometimes it's

difficult to do that, but. And then also to,

to speak up, to be the one who actually offers something in

the meeting. And I think that, that that's part of the

connection and part of the belonging, that you're not just the

voyeur, right? That you're actually. And, and, and

here's the thing, here's the thing.

You, when you participate, you actually learn more.

Right? And, and, and a perfect example of this

is, you know, even though some of us think of ourselves as

introvert and shy and stuff, and we, we tend to sit back.

I was, I was in a networking and masterminding kind of thing.

And, and the person, you know, that was

asking for help, everybody was asking her these questions. And I got so

frustrated. Yeah. And I said to, I said to,

I said to her, do you have some paying clients? She said, yes. I

said, do they love what you do? Do you get them the results that you

want? She said, yes. I said, then you do not have a

service delivery issue. You have a client

attraction issue. You don't need to be fixed, you need to be found.

And everybody in that room went, that is now

my new, that is now my new thing

I would have never done discovered on my own.

Right? And it's an interesting thing that I'll

like. For me, it feels vulnerable to get out in a

mastermind and express, like I'm having trouble with this or this is what I think,

or then say something and then the person kind of challenges you, which

they need to do for you to grow. And that can feel, Feel

very. For me, I would say

vulnerable. But there's strength in that vulnerability

to do that. Now when I'm coaching or teaching or teaching a group, I

have a group of a course in

being able to unlock and to empower our emotions.

That I do. It's an eight week course and it's really a beautiful experience.

But I teach, when I teach that course, I allow myself to be

in the moment with everyone. And we

have some, you know, some pretty deep moments, but things will come out of me

because I'm in the moment, that I'm not scripting myself, that

I'm reacting, that I'm being spontaneous, that I'm in that

and it will come out. That environment always makes

me feel more empowered than being in a

group mastermind where I'm saying, hey, I need help.

And I can understand that. I. I

think for me, when I'm someplace

and my emotions come to the surface, I mean, I

was kind of raised to not be emotional. Yep.

And so it is so scary. And I

am always amazed at how

supportive the room always is. Yep. You know,

because I think in so many situations we're raised

to believe that everybody's out for themselves. That, you

know, that it's not a safe place. If you show somebody your vulnerability,

it's like, you know, it's a chink in your armor kind of thing.

There was one other thing that I wanted to make sure that I asked you

about because I think it's very powerful.

So we talked about, you know, being visible, being on camera.

What do you think? Probably one of the hardest things

for me is to pause and

let things sink in. Talk about the power

of silence, I guess. Yeah, it's listening.

It's absolutely really listening. And you know, often

when we have tension up in here and up in our,

we're kind of trying to get our point across and we're up here and we're

doing this. What happens is we're not listening

anymore. We're all up here trying to express, trying to

get something. When we allow ourselves to breathe,

fall back down into our body now you can just see the difference

in my, my whole demeanor. Now I can sit

and listen because I'm not trying to get anything anymore.

Well, I think the other thing is

that it gives people the opportunity to

respond. So you can listen if you just go in at

100 miles an hour, which I have a tendency to do a lot chatgpt

says to Me, you need to pause. You didn't, you know,

and. And I think the other part to that is being on Zoom, sometimes

it's hard to. To, you know, stay on track and

read the chat and do those other things. So you do need those pauses

whether you're on Zoom or not, just to. Just to kind of

feel what's going on. Yeah, yeah. How often we are. You know,

the other thing that happens is you can be trying to do three things at

once. You're in your meeting on Zoom, and you're checking your emails and you're doing

this and you're not being present. So it's that present, being present with

somebody. And I really know that because of all the voice work that

I do and when I work with actors, how to be present in the moment,

they have to be present with their emotions and what's going on. You got to

get back into your body, got to drop down out of our head and

back down into our body. I cannot

believe that our time is up, as

I've talked about so many things. So

I'm just going to say that. That Faith has got a fabulous gift that you

need to make sure. Make sure that's one of the things you do, that you

need to breathe, be in your body, take pauses, listen,

make sure that you're on camera.

So, Faith, when was the last time you did something new for the first

time? Something new for the first time? You

know, it wasn't the very. The very first time I ever did something

was the first time I did something in that environment. And I was in my

church choir on Sunday and. And I just joined the

choir again, and we were doing

a song and she, the choir leader, was, you know, motioning to people

to do a little, like, ad lib solo over something. And

everybody was going along and I. And I kind of was like, oh, I'm not

sure I'm ready for this. And then she pointed to me and I

let it fly. I went. I said, you know what? I am not.

I am. I'm opening up fully. I am not going to edit myself

here. I'm going to be in the moment. I'm going to sing. And I got

done. And everybody was like, yeah. So that was something that

I did for the first time in that environment and gave myself

permission. Bravo.

Bravo. Yeah. All right, guys. You know, I gotta do a

commercial. So as the first step, make sure you subscribe and share

and engage on social media about the podcast,

because one of the reasons I did this is it is

designed to supercharge your business through connection. It's my

way of trying to help grow a community that we

can give back and have impact. And so I

hope you'll continue to join me for the one small change as we go

forward. And I've done a couple of

individual episodes that you might want to take a look at.

Faith, before we leave, what are your

last words of wisdom? What do you want us to remember?

Well, let's see. That's a really good question. I would

say.

That when we say yes to fully expressing ourselves,

we're going to be challenging our old beliefs, our feelings and judgments

and fears. But as we get clarity on that and what we really want,

we move through our feelings, we change our beliefs, we

become more grounded, more truthful,

more creative, and more resilient. And that's when

we can connect more deeply with others. And that's something AI

can't do. Oh. Amen.

So the time always goes really fast.

But this is what I want you to remember. 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. I always

say that, you know, if I don't have some butterflies on my

stomach, it means I don't care, right? Because I always want to do my

best, and you always kind of worry about that. But if you are

just being lackadaisical, it means you're starting to

stagnate. So I don't want that to happen to you. And so that's why

I bring all these wonderful speakers to you, so that you can look at

things that you can do and take action about right away.

So I hope you will continue to join me on the one small change as

we go on this journey of a bold vision and innovative

possibilities. And until the next time, stay

very, very curious. Thank you, Faith.

Thank you, Yvonne. It was such a pleasure. And what fun

it was. Yeah. All right, everybody. Bye.