Helping women get their groove back by building communities and strong support networks from rural areas with Rebecca Undem in this episode of the LMScast podcast with Chris Badgett of LifterLMS. Chris and Rebecca discuss many topics relevant to course creators, such as community building and how to overcome the isolation faced by many online entrepreneurs.
Rebecca grew up in a small farming community in North Dakota with a population of 1,800 people. She reflects on and shares some experiences she has had growing up in an intimate community. There is a lot of support and love that you receive, but there is also a lot of eyes specifically watching you and an ever present pressure to conform to expectations.
Rebecca created the Small Town Survival Kit to help moms who are feeling stressed or invisible in their daily lives. She has all kinds of exercises, including one-minute mojos to boost your energy and provide some virtual assurance when the chaos of your daily life becomes too overwhelming.
Chris and Rebecca dive into how you can build support systems in your online education platform and in your life that will help you succeed. Rebecca shares her experience with a mastermind group company called Kickass Masterminds. Regularly connecting with people who understand your stresses and can contribute to helping you work out problems in your business can be vital when the tolls of entrepreneurship weigh the heaviest.
Doing away with vanity metrics will help you build a more engaged community, and in the long run it will make creating content easier. A large part of being authentic with your brand comes from not looking side-to-side and comparing yourself to other creators in your industry. Rebecca draws a clear distinction between comparison and inspiration that will help you improve your business without becoming discouraged by your competition.
To learn more about Rebecca Undem and the Small Town Survival Kit head to RebeccaUndem.com. She is also the author of a book called How Mommy Got Her Groove Back, which is a great resource for moms who are learning how to find success in their lives after having kids.
After visiting Rebecca’s site, head over to LifterLMS.com to find out more about how you can use LifterLMS to build your own online courses and membership site. If you like this episode of LMScast, you can browse more episodes here. Subscribe to our newsletter for updates, developments, and future episodes of LMScast. Thank you for joining us!
Episode Transcript
Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place if you’re a course creator looking to build more impact, income, and freedom. LMScast is the number one podcast for course creators just like you. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co-founder of the most powerful tool for building, selling, and protecting engaging online courses called LifterLMS. Enjoy the show.
Chris Badgett: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of LMScast. I’m joined by a special guest, Rebecca Undem, from rebeccaundem.com. That’s Rebecca with two C’s and then U-N-D-E-M dot com. Did I spell that right, Rebecca?
Rebecca Undem: You did.
Chris Badgett: Awesome. Well, welcome to the show. I’m super excited to talk to you today, because I live in a small town. I usually live in a small town. I used to live in a travel trailer that was moving around the country doing all kinds of different things, and I’m not your usual tech entrepreneur. I spend a lot of time just on a farm. I’ve built a little shed in the back of our farm where I run my business from while homeschooling our kids.
Chris Badgett: When I go to technology conferences and things, some people live in small towns and some people live in a big cities, and Silicon Valleys and giant cities from all over the world. One is not better than the other. When I used to live in a small town called Whitefish, Montana, they used to say like the Chamber of Commerce used to say it’s a small town without being small-minded and I really like that.
Chris Badgett: But what do you think about that quote and just welcome to the show.
Rebecca Undem: Thank you. I’m excited to be here and I love … I can’t wait to dive into more of your travel trailer story and all of that. It’s awesome. You’re definitely my people. Yes, being a small town without being small-minded, I think that kind of summarizes what my philosophy is and why I do the work that I do. It’s just to remind people that you don’t have … The size of your life doesn’t have to be determined by the size of the town that you live in and that you can …
Rebecca Undem: There’s just, like the fact that you and I are even having this conversation and the way that we’re having this conversation. There is so much opportunity out there for those that want it and desire it, to find it. And you don’t have to be limited by the limits that are present in your immediate environment.
Chris Badgett: Absolutely, and you have something on your website called a small town survival kit. What’s in there?
Rebecca Undem: To further define my audience, I speak mostly to women. I connect with women, and I think it’s partly because I’m a mom as well. I believe you said you have an eight and a six-year-old, right?
Chris Badgett: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Rebecca Undem: My kids are nine, seven and four. We’ve got very similar ages going on and it changes … Of course, parenthood changes us without question. But women, there’s just a lot of stuff that comes out for women. A lot of guilt, a lot of shame, a lot of uncertainty, and so that is just woven into the fabric of how I speak and what I say to people. Some guys get it, but women are really where my heart’s at.
Rebecca Undem: The small town survival kit I created, it’s meant to be encouragement. It’s meant to be light-hearted. There’s three audios in there like little quick … Really like one-minute mojos. It’s like when you’re feeling overwhelmed or when you’re feeling not seen. It’s meant to be just kind of a hug. I always say my goal is to give people a virtual hug. Let me know they’re not alone. Let them know they’re not crazy and give them just a few little resources to help make those days when your town just feels a touch too small. It’s encouragement.
Rebecca Undem: I think I’ve mentioned to you that it’s kind of broken out by whether you are a transplant to the small town you live in, whether you found yourself back in the town where you grew up in like me or if you love your small town and never left. You’re still in a small town. Yeah, so that’s the kit. It’s meant to help them survive.
Chris Badgett: That is awesome. There’s a couple of areas I want to go into with you especially you talked about guilt as a thing. And one of the things I noticed in the education entrepreneur community is whether they’re women with kids or whoever, education entrepreneurs tend to be a little bit isolated. Even if they’re surrounded by other people in their communities, they kind of get into this whole world and they can tend to feel a little bit misunderstood.
Chris Badgett: Where does this guilt come from or isolation like, can you speak to that little bit? Especially to people in small towns, how do they work through that?
Rebecca Undem: Well, therapy. Maybe. It depends on where your guilts are all coming from, but a lot … So, guilt specifically, I’ll address that first or just my thoughts on it. I think for me, I had … I grew up here so my community is 1,800 people in it. I’m in a small farming community in North Dakota. I grew up with three sets of grandparents. So the third was like a bonus of that. They were a couple that babysat us. They lived a mile down the gravel road from where I lived, and we just call them grandpa and grandma because we didn’t know better and they like it, so, we were all good with it.
Rebecca Undem: You grow up. You’ve got all the support and you’ve got all this love but you also have a lot of sets of eyes watching you and that need to conform in that feeling of just not standing out too far especially when you’re just … Because small towns are almost like the petri dish. Well, everyone experiences that in high school to a degree because you’re in a smaller … There’s just a smaller group of you.
Rebecca Undem: But that’s, I think, where some of the guilt comes from. You start to really think, “I kind of want to do this but I really should toe the line,” whatever that looks like and some of it is messaging we get from when we’re young. Some of it is religion. And small towns, our community, we’ve got like 10, 11 churches, something like … I mean like a lot of churches.
Rebecca Undem: And it’s all good, but I think again, it’s just other people’s expectations of what we ought to do, we start to hold that as truth, like this is what I’m supposed to do. And then as soon as you start to veer away from that, you feel like you’re not toeing the line, you’re stepping out and you feel not certain about that for sure.
Rebecca Undem: And sometimes, with motherhood, I think, it’s the guilt like there’s a one right way to do this and we all know logically that there’s not. But when you’re in it and you just think, “Oh, this is what I really want to do,” but everyone else is doing it this way. It always feels like one of these things is not like the other kind of thing. That’s where I think it comes from. That’s how it’s played out for me, just-
Chris Badgett: That makes a lot of sense and part of the solution to that, you mentioned earlier in our pre-chat is that women tend to have a gift for community building which is one of the things that’s essential to building an online course or training business. Whether that’s before the sale and you’re building like a tribe and audience or after the sale and you’re nurturing your community. You’re building systems for them to support each other and developing a community with you, the leader in the space.
Chris Badgett: What is it about women and community building? What can the men especially learn from the women about community building?
Rebecca Undem: Well, okay. So I have a lot of thoughts about community building because I think … And this is work I’ve been doing, so I’ve been on my own doing this work for five years now and I was doing the work prior but in a more corporatey kind of environment. One of the things that I think is really tricky about building community is that there are a lot of … In the online world, it feels like people are trying to take shortcuts.
Rebecca Undem: It feels sleek and it feels … Everything is like beefed up and spit-shined and you go and you look at it, and I just feel like people are really craving real. That’s what people really want. And so, I’ve done a lot. Like for example … I’m kind of circumventing your question, I’ll come back to it but it all fits together as far as I think of like, the know-like-and-trust factor. We talked about that.
Rebecca Undem: I think a lot of us are thinking about what can we do that people will like instead of starting with the known and saying, “What can I do to be the most me, and then the people that like it are actually my people.” Instead of vanity metrics of just getting more instead of better. I feel like that’s a major thing that everyone … Do you feel that way?
Chris Badgett: I do feel that way and as soon as you said slick and shortcuts, I immediately thought of like this six-pack-shortcuts-YouTube channel, like there’s all these like get rich quick or lose weight really fast or all these things. It’s just way too slick, and to me it feels a lot more easier and authentic to just be yourself and the people you attract, it sounds like a lot less work than trying to just help somebody find a shortcut and not necessarily express your whole self.
Chris Badgett: So, I 100% agree with you, and I hear it actually coming up in our community a lot, at LifterLMS software, I often asked people as a salesperson or whatever like, “How did you hear about us? Or what did you buy? What made you make the decision?” And I hear, it used to disappoint me. I would not hear like, “Oh, the products are amazing and all these features,” like what I would hear a lot was, “Oh, you guys have a really engaged Facebook group.” Or, “Chris, I really like and trust you. Your videos are authentic, they’re not too polished.”
Chris Badgett: And I’m like, at first it didn’t make any sense to me. I’m like, “But what about the product?” Which is awesome, but it happens so many times that now I get it, that people really do … They don’t want too much whatever you said, spit-shine, slick, polish.
Rebecca Undem: Great. Overly produced?
Chris Badgett: Yeah.
Rebecca Undem: Right?
Chris Badgett: Right. Yeah.
Rebecca Undem: So, when you’re in this space where you’re trying to create those things, whatever it is, if it’s a video series, you’re like me speaking from a stage, right? That’s primarily how I connect with people. You immediately go out and you look at how everybody else is doing it. And then right away, you’re in this game that you can’t win, frankly. And it all comes back to figuring out who you really are.
Rebecca Undem: This is actually something I say to the women that I speak with. I just said it on Sunday. I was in a small town here in North Dakota on Sunday speaking to like a 100 women. We’re about people, talking about finding your people. And I always say that you can’t fake your way into a real relationship with people and this is personal or business.
Rebecca Undem: If I come at you with all the slick advertising, slick marketing, and it looks really good and it sounds really good but at my core, that’s not really who I am, well, you’re not going to be a lifelong customer anyway. Because as soon as my facade cracks and I slip up and I show you who I really am, if you don’t connect with that, you’re not going to be there for the long haul, anyway. I think that’s the truth with personal relationships as well.
Rebecca Undem: How do we do that? I think some of it is to stop looking like stay in your lane. Get clear about what it is that you’re really good at and stop looking from side to side. And there’s a difference. For me, there’s a difference between comparison and inspiration, so I might look at somebody killing it in my industry and say, “Gosh, like what can I learn from her? What process is this person using that I can learn from?” That’s inspiration and that’s cool.
Rebecca Undem: If I’m looking at her and I’m saying, “Oh, God, if only I could be like her. Then, this all would be so much easier.” Then, that’s comparison and it’s pointless. It absolutely doesn’t serve us at all. That’s what I think we can do is just stop looking. Put your head down, focus on what it is you want to do, how you want to show up for people and do the work.
Rebecca Undem: I guess, in short, that’s what I think where we have to start and I still battle that every single day because I’m so connected on social media to people. It can be a real pull.
Chris Badgett: Yeah, I think flipping it like 80-20, like sometimes people get in this thing where they’re spending 80% of their time like on email list, watching videos, doing whatever and then 20% of time creating. If you flip it the other way and you’re creating and you’re staying in your lane, as you say, 80% of the time, it doesn’t mean you have to ignore the rest of the world. But at least minimize it.
Chris Badgett: And course creators are a really, really busy people and they’re very observational and they’re like looking at what’s going on in the industry. And there’s just huge slippery slope where I see people end up just in research mode forever. And then all of a sudden, they forgot where they were even going.
Rebecca Undem: Well, I kind of fell into that. I feel a little bit … In my business, you start to do the whole like, “Maybe I should try this, or maybe I should try that. And then you do and at some point, it got back to, I’m best in conversation with people. Like that’s why this kind of thing is totally my jam. I love it. I love talking to people about these kinds of ideas.
Rebecca Undem: You’re going to, maybe, laugh out loud at this but for the past year, one of my kind of ways to create free content was at Facebook Live. I’ve gone on Facebook Live at 9 a.m. Central time, every single Mondays since last June. I haven’t missed a Monday. Wherever we were like wherever we are on vacation, whatever we’re doing, I went on live.
Rebecca Undem: But I was alone. I was alone. And finally, it was like a month ago, I was on my mastermind call so I was telling you about my group and I said, “You guys, I’m just not loving this more.” And it’s hilarious, right? I should be able to pick up on this for myself. But I’m actually now kind of pivoting that. I’m going to be airing an episode. I’m creating an online talk show for women in small towns. They’ll be pre-recorded but they’ll be me sitting with somebody, similar to this.
Rebecca Undem: Sometimes they may not be right physically with me but we’ll be jamming on something so there’s dialogue and there’s conversation. And this has been my skill from birth so it’s funny. Even all of us [inaudible 00:15:35] where we go, “Well, this Facebook Live. So it’s going to be hot,” so I should do that. And I did it and I committed and I did it for the entire year. And it was fine.
Rebecca Undem: But it’s getting back to like, “What am I actually good at? What is my talent? What are my gifts? And how can I best use those in a real true, authentic way? Because then the “know” will happen in that know-like-and-trust. We want like to like circumvent being known and just skip right to trust because trust means buy. Well, that is not actually how this works at all.
Chris Badgett: Yeah, that’s awesome. Another way, I think you could get back to the authenticity space is to get off from behind the computer and do a little bit of speaking which I know you do. Some of the people who are watching this, they’re kind of new to stepping into the roles, the expert or maybe they’re really good at something and they don’t really have a teaching background and they’re trying to figure out how to teach effectively. And getting on stage or getting in front of a room with living, breathing human beings and you kind of open up a feedback loop that’s totally different than talking to a video camera on all day or making PowerPoint presentations, how did you get into speaking? And like if someone’s just wanting to get started, what advice do you have for just doing either free or paid speaking gigs?
Rebecca Undem: Right. I got started as a speaker actually with the Dale Carnegie Company. So Dale Carnegie who wrote the book How to Win Friends and Influence People. It’s a global training company and they’re franchised throughout the world. And we have a franchise here in North Dakota. At that time, I was in banking which feels like an entire lifetime ago because I was not meant to bank. That’s just not my thing.
Rebecca Undem: But I was doing it right up … Because I was following the plan. I had a plan and the plan was just like to kill it somewhere and so I got on the first ladder like I climbed the first rung and I just kept climbing. And at some point, I’m like this is pointless and I can’t do this for my whole life.
Rebecca Undem: I started exploring. I had gone to some of their … They had some 90-minute workshops here and there, and I was living in Fargo at the time. I had that moment sitting there as an audience member thinking, “This is the kind of work I meant to do,” and I had done bits and pieces of it in my job. But I just thought it’s kind of cool to think that there’s a company that teaches from the front of the room like this.
Rebecca Undem: Long story short, I reached out to them and started working with them. And when you’re out there again, I will say there is a lot of power in just reaching out, just making the phone call. If you see somebody doing something that you either want to learn more about or you want to work with them, we have to take the bull by the horns so to speak and just make the phone call. I made that phone call, sat down with her. There is no reason for her to have said, “Yeah, let’s work together,” but she did.
Rebecca Undem: I started working with Dale Carnegie. I learned a lot working with them, but I think primarily, I learned the art of facilitation and-
Chris Badgett: Were you presenting their kind of training. It’s like a training model. There was like a system in place that you would then take to your area?
Rebecca Undem: There was. Yeah, yeah, there was. Both content and delivery style. Managing a group can be super scary if you haven’t ever done it before. I did that for a number of years. The pivot that I needed to make for me and myself was what you just touched on. I didn’t want to be hampered in by the content that I was training nor the way that I trained it. I wanted to bring my full self to the table.
Rebecca Undem: I want to talk about parenting, because I’m sorry, but I think if you are a parent, it influences everything in your life. And it’s super relevant when you’ve got people sitting in the audience that are parents to just know it’s okay to talk about it. You homeschool your kids along with building this business. There’s no way that one doesn’t impact or influence each other.
Rebecca Undem: I just wanted to be me. I didn’t want to represent a brand because there’s a lot of weight that comes with that. For me, it felt freeing to just say, “Well now I’m on stage and it’s just me.” That was how I learned it but I learned a lot about myself. I learned what I didn’t want to do and being kind of hampered in by a company’s rules felt a little confining to me.
Chris Badgett: That makes sense and it serves its purpose though like you got … That was like your training ground with the Dale Carnegie System and that’s great. And I’m sure you help some people with … Become more effective and become better leaders and all that. But then, it just seems like a really great transition just training time before going all in on yourself.
Rebecca Undem: Right. And I’m not sure that I would have … I wouldn’t have made the leap right to what I’m doing. There’s no way. I don’t think that could have happened, so I’m really grateful for that experience and for the people that I got to work with.
Rebecca Undem: But for somebody that’s just starting out and is thinking like, “I would really love to kind of dip my toe in the water of speaking.” Start doing it for free. I think that’s actually really important. It’s different from how I did it. So I’m going to explain why. I had all of this foundation of how to be a good speaker. Also when I made the transition from training to speaking which is a distinction.
Chris Badgett: What’s the distinction?
Rebecca Undem: The distinction is really that training is about imparting knowledge. It is and so a lot of your people, your listeners might be more in that training aspect where public speaking tends to be more story-driven and tends to be more motivational. You’re trying to invoke feeling not necessarily impart knowledge. There’s a difference.
Rebecca Undem: So, sometimes there’s a blend. I think the best educators, the best trainers have a piece of this too. Know how to drive their point home through story. Story is super important. I would 100% recommend it. Now, I’ll get there in just a second. I hired a speaker, a speaking coach, to help me. I worked with her for an entire year before I stepped foot on stage as a speaker.
Rebecca Undem: I worked on that with her. I delivered it. She coached me on it and then she looked at me and said, “It’s worth this amount of money in the marketplace.” And I confidently went forward with that.
Chris Badgett: So, you had two like training grounds.
Rebecca Undem: I did.
Chris Badgett: You had franchise that you trained with and then you had basically a private coach. That sounds like getting very prepared which is awesome.
Rebecca Undem: I was serious about it. I was very serious about it. The difference is that I’m not necessarily going to say that all of your listeners need to do that. I don’t think you need to do that. Really, the speaking for free and trying it on is really their training ground that Dale Carnegie was for me. I didn’t know anything when I started with them.
Rebecca Undem: You have to just do it. You have to do it with the mentality that you’re not going to be that good at it right away and that that’s okay. I think for just the average person that’s got something they want to teach people, if they can find three points they want to share, let’s say, and come up with a story to support each one of those, and just tell their story.
Rebecca Undem: Tell their story while teaching the points. It will feel more conversational, and it doesn’t have to be that scary. And if they start smaller, they’ll feel less. Also, getting paid for it as a whole layer of weight and expectation that can hamper your creativity and your ability to learn because you’ll stay too self-focused instead of thinking about, “I’m just here to serve people.” Keeping that mentality is really important when you’re first starting up.
Chris Badgett: I think a lot of experts have … I’m going back earlier in your story where you were sitting in the audience and I think this happens to experts where they watch somebody even if it’s like Tony Robbins on TV or something. And you’re like, “You know what? I could do that.”
Rebecca Undem: Yeah.
Chris Badgett: What was it with you in the audience? What clicked when you would be like, “You know what? I should be up on stage maybe not doing this banking thing.” I don’t know. Can you speak to that moment in time?
Rebecca Undem: Yeah, absolutely, because I actually talked to people about this. I was in this journey of trying to figure out what am I supposed to really do with my life, because it’s sure as heck can’t be banking. I can’t do this for 40 more years. I don’t have it in me.
Rebecca Undem: I did some journaling. I’m not as reflective as I probably even could be but journaling at this time in my life was really important. I was in my early 20s. And I was asking myself the question, what jobs have you loved the most of all the jobs that you had? And what things have you done in extracurricular activities or recreationally? What are the things that you’ve done that brought you the most joy and made you feel the most alive?
Rebecca Undem: Everything, every answer ever came back to being in front of a group of people in some way, shape or form.
Chris Badgett: Are you an extrovert?
Rebecca Undem: Yeah. Like as high as the Myers-Briggs will go on the E.
Chris Badgett: It’s funny, I do a lot of teaching and whatnot but on the Myers-Brigg, I’m an introvert as high as it can go on that side.
Rebecca Undem: But We’re still getting along. It’s possible.
Chris Badgett: Yeah. That’s cool.
Rebecca Undem: I think it’s looking for cues. Again, this all comes back to getting back to who you really are as an individual. And I think, again, any of your course creators might be thinking of it … That they might think for themselves, “If I really want to take, if I want to up-level up-level my business which … Then I need to speak.” You don’t. No, you don’t. If you want to speak, then start. Start small. Start with a local association. Maybe have a few people in the audience that you know and that love you and that will tell you the truth.
Rebecca Undem: And you can say, “Watch for these things, these are the …” Put some people in the audience to help you out with this because if you aren’t experienced at it, it doesn’t matter who you are. When you first do it, you are so in your head that you can’t even think about what you should do differently next time. You’re just so in it trying to stay on topic and trying to do it right. And I still struggle with that sometimes and I have been speaking for a while.
Rebecca Undem: Help yourself out and just start. But I think the big thing with speaking is if you’re not … If that doesn’t sound exciting or interesting to you at all, then that just means it’s not your path to profit and that’s okay, right?
Chris Badgett: Yeah, and I just had an insight just in listening to you. For me, as a more extreme introvert, I’m not really drawn to the stage but what I have done and developed is one-on-one mentoring. Actually I have like four people that I mentor. They’re doing different things, different projects, some of them digital software entrepreneur, some of them were teaching based and different things.
Chris Badgett: But in getting out from behind my computer either going on long walks with these people, some of them are virtual meetings, it’s a similar thing where I’m getting out of the building. I’m telling a lot of stories not just like here’s the download of all the information you need. This is my experience that happened or I know this person that were here. This is what happened to Frank or Joe or Susan or whoever based on what you’re telling me is going on in your life. It’s a similar thing, just not on a stage.
Chris Badgett: Another thing that’s really interesting about your story is for you, it sounds like the support network is really important. You’re, what did you call it, a returner? You came back to your community? Is that what you-
Rebecca Undem: Right, I did. So, it can all boomerang. I’m a boomerang.
Chris Badgett: You have the support of the community you grow up with, probably friends and family around. You’ve gone to these different stages of your growth where you got support. But I know masterminding is also important to you. How does that help you?
Rebecca Undem: Can I plug the name of the company that I mastermind with? Awesome. Her name is Sara Christensen at Kickass Masterminds, just like it sounds. Sara and I actually met through … This would be an example of a not great mastermind, the one that we were in together as peers where it was an add-on to a line of business like through a membership. We were both in the membership and they said, “Hey, you know we’re going to add on this mastermind thing.”
Rebecca Undem: Well, a lot of times, adding on masterminds aren’t facilitated well but we made this amazing connection. We connected just as humans and Sara was making this pivot to create this business. And I’ve been a part of a dedicated mastermind. We meet once a month in Kickass Mastermind. Sara curated our group, and we talked about it all the time. There’s six of us total. We talked about it all the time that it feels like Sara used magic.
Chris Badgett: How often do you meet?
Rebecca Undem: We meet once a month officially, but we sidebar a lot.
Chris Badgett: How do you sidebar? Like email or Slack or-
Rebecca Undem: No, we use Voxer. We used the walkie-talkie app, Voxer. And then we do have closed Facebook group as well.
Chris Badgett: A group with just six people in it?
Rebecca Undem: Yeah.
Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. It seems like a lot of people are trying to grow these massive Facebook groups. But here you are with this like-
Rebecca Undem: Right. And it is the safe place. It is the safe place for me to talk about all things related to my business because I do want to make one quick distinction for anybody that might be feeling like this. I am back in the community where I grew up, so I have the support of a lot of family and friends. But I don’t have the understanding of a lot of family and friends, like most of the people that I actually share time and space with right here physically do not get my world at all. And I really mean it, at all.
Chris Badgett: I get that. I have people who were like, “What is Chris doing talking in his computer all day,” or, “What does he … He’s in his office running this business but I don’t really understand what he does.”
Rebecca Undem: Right. My parents, as I told you before, my dad is a fourth generation farmer and now, we’re fifth. If you were not like physically hurt, getting dirty, sweating, like working really hard, then you’re not working, to my family. I battled that and that’s a mentality that I have to constantly say, “But they’re not mean. They don’t understand, and it’s okay like they can feel how they want to feel but I don’t need to own it.”
Rebecca Undem: Yes, I am definitely supported but the mastermind does for me what my immediate people just can’t and it’s that they understand what running a business is really like. And I can’t express how amazing it is. I just needed them yesterday. When I say needed them, it’s like you feel very desperate and like, “Why am I still …” And for me, it’s a recurring thing that I tend to struggle with which is perfectionism in case anybody out there can struggle or understands that.
Rebecca Undem: And I kept saying, “Why am I still battling this?” And I went into Voxer and it was just like a verbal vomit all over them. And right away, they’re typing in and telling me what they think and offering ideas. One of them got on a Zoom call with me and spent some time with me. She’s a coach at some of these areas that I was dealing with. I can’t express what that’s like. It’s like on-demand, like I have a problem, they have answers and we show up for each other like that. And they’re thinking about my business when I’m not.
Chris Badgett: That is cool. Masterminding is something I’ve been doing for about eight years now. It’s just essential to growth and accelerating progress and increasing odds of success and all kinds of things. I’m a tech guy-
Rebecca Undem: More enjoyable too.
Chris Badgett: Yeah, because when you hang out with people that “get you”, that’s just relaxing, if you will.
Rebecca Undem: It is, right.
Chris Badgett: I’m a tech guy, so I have to ask what … I know Voxer is a walkie-talkie app, but are you talking to these people in real time or for some people, is it like a voice message and it’s kind of asynchronous or is it like a little bit of both? How does it work?
Rebecca Undem: Well, it kind of depends on what’s going on with each person.
Chris Badgett: Yeah, because somebody may be in a meeting and can’t talk.
Rebecca Undem: Right. Throughout the day like okay, so example, like over the weekend, I had an event. I was offline all day because I was live with people. When I got in my car, I’ve missed a bunch of Voxers. Sometimes, you listen to them. If you feel like you have something to add, you add it. If you don’t, you just like say, “Hey, I was out today but it sounds like you guys are doing okay,” and blah-blah.
Rebecca Undem: Sometimes it’s real-time and sometimes it’s not, and it’s okay. It’s not like any of us are … None of us are brain surgeons legitimately. There’s nothing that’s like an emergency. But if there were, we would figure out how to support each other. But it’s pretty real-time, I would say.
Chris Badgett: That’s cool. Could you speak to the structure of the actual monthly call?
Rebecca Undem: Yeah. This is another thing that I think Kickass does so well because the other one that we were in, it was like … You don’t have somebody dedicated to facilitating your mastermind. Even if you say, “We’re going to rotate that job,” like every month. Like Chris, this month, it’s your job and next month, it’s Rebecca’s job. It’s not the same as having somebody whose only objective is to be the facilitator. And Sara is just intuitively very good at it.
Rebecca Undem: Our flow, there is somebody on the hot seat. Usually, I think it’s just two of us or maybe three of us. I can’t really remember if it’s two or three. And you have a set amount of time to talk about whatever it is that you’re there to talk about. And ahead of the call, we have a document where you’re keeping track of not only your own accountabilities but if you’re on the hot seat, you put down the information about what it is you need help with.
Rebecca Undem: Sometimes it’s problem-solving, sometimes it’s just brainstorming. And you can identify what it is that you’re struggling with and you say, “Here’s what I’ve done so far.” Any links of step that you’ve got in creation, you throw it all in there and everybody looks at it before you get to the call. You’re not spending all the time explaining the problem. Everyone knows the problem already and you get right down to the nitty-gritty and you start helping each other.
Rebecca Undem: Everybody gets the opportunity several times in a year to be on the hot seat and then everybody else, you’re just updating accountabilities.
Chris Badgett: That is awesome.
Rebecca Undem: Yeah. It’s really good. And then the other cool thing that Kickass does specifically as they bring in guest experts based on whatever it is that we say we want. Like if we are trying to … A couple of examples, we’ve had somebody who excels in video. We’ve had social media support, so Instagram. Specifically, it was kind of what she jammed on. We have somebody that did PR.
Chris Badgett: So, guest experts based on the needs of the group. That’s really cool.
Rebecca Undem: Yeah. And we get to say that this is what we would really love and then she finds great people and doesn’t bring them in for free. She pays them. It’s all part of the payment that we make to Kickass to facilitate that experience for us.
Chris Badgett: That is awesome.
Rebecca Undem: It’s made all the difference in the world this last year.
Chris Badgett: Fantastic. Well, Rebecca, I’m really glad that Katie Elenberger introduced us. We interview Katie on this podcast. If you search for her, we talked about design and building a strong brand. Your website is rebeccaundem.com. Could you spell that and also tell the listener a little bit more about your survival guide kit, your small town survival kit?
Rebecca Undem: Yeah. It’s R-E-B-E-C-C-A-U-N-D-E-M dot com. That’s my website. And, yes, so the survival guide is … Again the idea is just … We’re not going to dive deep into anything. It really is just those times where you’re feeling lonely, isolated, misunderstood, frustrated maybe that your ideas aren’t either being heard or being validated. It can be really tricky. People think of small towns and it feels clicky and it feels like gossipy.
Rebecca Undem: My goal is just to provide these women with some quick wins, quick hits of inspiration so they can get them on a fly when they need them. The other things you’ll find on my website … I’m a speaker, so I speak at conferences. But kind of the newest thing that I did, so this is what I was doing on Sunday. I actually created or curated a small town women’s event and all of the marketing is done for them.
Rebecca Undem: If you’re a woman in a small town and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, we want to have her come in. We want to talk with her about this stuff.” The whole plan is done for you and I hope you make it happen in your small town because that was something, and again, sitting in an audience and you think, “Oh, my gosh. I love what she’s talking about.” You do the, “How would I get her to come to my town,” and then you just say, “Okay, never mind. I have no idea how to start. I have no idea what to do.”
Rebecca Undem: And like ironically, I am our small town’s Chamber of Commerce president. I really get the challenge of finding sponsorships or filling seats, how do you facilitate and how do you pull that. That’s one of the things that I’ve created for my business just to make it really accessible and easy. It can be the talk of your town in a good way.
Chris Badgett: That’s awesome.
Rebecca Undem: Yeah.
Chris Badgett: Can you just tell us briefly about your book too? Mommy Got Her Groove Back.
Rebecca Undem: Yeah. It’s called How Mommy Got Her Groove Back. Basically, it’s the story of how I learned to embrace the not plan, like I have this plan. I had this idea of what my life was going to be, supposed to be really. And we’ve been back in my small town now for 10 years. It was 10 years ago, my mom called me. She was going to be starting this business. I’m not kidding, it was a pumpkin patch which you should probably love because you do organic farming and you’re all into that.
Rebecca Undem: She wanted to create this experience for people in our community on the farm where I grew up. She called me and said that and from there it morphed into this discussion of, “Well, what if you guys move back? What if you move back here,” which still sounds weird even to say it out loud. And then we did.
Rebecca Undem: And then at the same time, my husband had actually already moved back permanently to kind of start the process. I stayed back to sell our house, and two days before I was going to be unemployed, no employer paid health insurance, living with my parents, that whole thing, I found that I was pregnant.
Chris Badgett: Oh, nice.
Rebecca Undem: With our first child. Literally, I was like I deserve a reality TV show. This is insane. Just like how does a girl that always did the right thing? Like I was a good girl that followed the rules and I listened and I went to college and I got a job and I’ve always been responsible. And it felt just like … I had a full tilt identity crisis at 28.
Rebecca Undem: I tell that story and then I talk about how being back here, how I really question how am I ever going to feel like myself again. I can’t see this actually working out long-term but my husband loves what he’s doing. And that’s a tug. Again, nobody talks about that. Professional or personal development gurus are just like, “You know, follow your bliss and do what’s good for you. And if it doesn’t serve you anymore, leave it.” Okay, well, my husband, I love my husband and my husband loves to farm and farming is connected to land. So here we are.
Rebecca Undem: The book is really about, I call it getting your groove back because I think that’s a feeling and a vibe that women can connect to like maybe they feel like they’ve lost something. And it’s not like kids steal it from us but they just changed the game. And they level the playing field because kids don’t care what your aspirations were and kids don’t care how smart you are and all of that. The premise of the book is to try to help women that are in small towns learn and see how to bloom more than plant in, meaning you can pick up.
Rebecca Undem: Yeah, sure. You can pick up and move, but you maybe don’t have to do that to feel fulfilled and purposeful. That’s what the book is about.
Chris Badgett: Rebecca, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your story with us.
Rebecca Undem: Thank you.
Chris Badgett: We wish you all the best as your career and everything continues to evolve. And I think you have really dropped a lot of ideas just in sharing your story that’s going to help a lot of people. Thanks so much for coming today. We really appreciate it.
Rebecca Undem: Thank you. Thank you for having me. It’s great talking to you.
Chris Badgett: And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMScast. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I hope you enjoy the show. This show was brought to you by LifterLMS, the number one tool for creating, selling, and protecting, engaging online courses to help you get more revenue, freedom, and impact in your life. Head on over to lifterlms.com and get the best gear for your course creator journey. Let’s build the most in engaging results, getting courses on the internet.
