Today, my guest is Page Fehling, a sought-after speaker, best-selling author, award-winning podcast host and, more importantly, my friend. Page is joining me on this episode because she’s a veteran news anchor with a 20-year career in broadcast journalism. Page recently left that role to open up a consulting firm specializing in helping companies and individuals gain confidence in what they do and how they communicate.
You heard right. Page is teaching people how to speak about themselves publicly, their ideas and their work. And she would love to teach you how to do that, too. In today’s episode, we talk about public speaking; Page shares tips on how to show up at work or outside of work and communicate who you are and what you do. Most importantly, we’re talking about the pivot she made during COVID-19 and what it was like for her.
Page was one of the first people I met when I moved to North Carolina. I love her warmth and enthusiasm, but more importantly, I admire everything she does. So, if you’re ready to become a better communicator, sit back and enjoy our conversation.
Punk Rock HR is proudly underwritten by The Starr Conspiracy. The Starr Conspiracy is a B2B marketing agency for innovative brands creating the future of workplace solutions. For more information, head over to thestarrconspiracy.com.
Benefits of Becoming a Good Communicator
Communication is key to getting what you need as an employee. So when your employer can look to you and know that you can clearly represent yourself and the company as a whole, they take notice. “That is a skill you can barely put a price tag on,” Page shares.
Being a good communicator is the skill that every employer wants and adds tremendous value for the employee. Employers take pride in saying “that’s my person” when people are impressed with your confidence and presence. They want to know who you are, where you work and who you work for, and this is why Page does the work that she does.
When you have that confidence, you open up opportunities you didn’t even know were waiting for you, like landing a new job or obtaining a raise. “When you come up to your next contract negotiation, or you’re going into a job interview, and you blow them away with your confidence in yourself and your ability to communicate whatever it is that you’re trying to get across, you are worth so much more to your company or to yourself if you’re self-employed,” Page explains.
Fear Is Not Permanent
While gaining that confidence to speak and represent yourself in public is excellent, many people still struggle because of fear. These fears are real but fixable, whether it’s the fear of blowing an interview, fear of lacking a good story to tell or concern about making good eye contact.
Page has heard all these fears and knows that one of the most common is making good eye contact. That’s why Page developed different workshops that help individuals and companies work through their fears, especially when it comes to eye contact.
Eye contact is essential because you want to see that the person actually listens to what you are saying. “The best quote, and I can never remember who said it, so I always just say you can give me credit for this quote, but they say eye contact is like an electrical current,” Page shares. “If you keep it on for too long, it can be shocking. If you turn it off too quickly, you lose power.”
This is not an easy skill for everyone, but practicing and developing methods to improve will help. “The more you practice it, the more natural it becomes,” she says.
Moving Past the Nerves
One thing to understand about nerves is that they’re an essential component of speaking. No matter how experienced you are, the nerves will hit you every time, but they can actually do more good than harm. Nerves should help you lock in and get focused, not shake you, make you feel bad and negatively affect your performance.
Page suggests putting yourself into a triumphant pose. This helps to put yourself into a more positive mindset physically. “Putting your body into space that makes you feel good, taking your mind off whatever it is that you’re talking about. If you’re playing your walk-up music and you’re getting yourself into some triumphal poses and taking your deep breaths, that’s just one really simple way to help,” she says.
Another trick, and one of Page’s favorites, is using a pen to force yourself to smile. Yes, a pen, but it really works! Page explains, “Put the pen in between your teeth and don’t let your lips touch the pen. Count up to 10 and back down to zero.”
Once you are done, you’ll find yourself smiling. “Studies show that, if you can put the muscles of your face into the shape of a smile, endorphins get released into your brain even if the emotion was not there,” she explains.
These and other tips can help you when you are feeling nervous, and doing simple exercises can significantly impact your mood. “Doing a simple thing like a five- to 10-second pen trick changes your energy,” Page shares.
[bctt tweet=”‘Doing a simple thing like a five- to 10-second pen trick changes your energy,’ says @pagefox46, a speaker, best-selling author and award-winning podcast host. Tune in to #PunkRockHR to learn how Page helps people become better speakers.” via=”no”]
People in This Episode
- Page Fehling: Website, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, ”Holy Crap, We’re Pregnant: Two Parents. Two Sides of the Story” book
Full Transcript
Laurie Ruettimann:
This episode of Punk Rock HR is sponsored by The Starr Conspiracy. The Starr Conspiracy is the B2B marketing agency for innovative brands, creating the future of workplace solutions. For more information, head on over to thestarrconspiracy.com.
Hey, everybody. I’m Laurie Ruettimann. Welcome back to Punk Rock HR. My guest today is Page Fehling. She’s a sought-after speaker, best-selling author, award-winning podcast host and, more importantly, my friend. Page is on the show today because she’s had a 20-year career in broadcast journalism. She’s a veteran news anchor who just recently left that role and opened up a consultancy to help companies and individuals gain confidence in what they do and how they communicate.
That’s right. Page is teaching people how to speak in public about themselves, about big ideas, about their workplace. And she would love to teach you how to do it. And in today’s episode, that’s what we do. We talk about public speaking. She gives some great tips, so you can show up at work and outside of work and communicate who you are and what you do.
But more importantly, we also talk about that pivot that she made during COVID and what that was like. Page is one of the first people I met when I moved to North Carolina, and I love her warmth, I love her enthusiasm. And most importantly, I just admire everything she does. So if you’re interested in learning how to be a better communicator, I invite you to sit back and enjoy this conversation with Page.
Hey, Page. Welcome to the podcast.
Page Fehling:
Thank you so much for having me.
Laurie Ruettimann:
I am giggling already. I’m so pleased you are here. And for people who don’t know who you are and what you’re all about, why don’t you tell us?
Page Fehling:
Yeah, so I’m Page Fehling, and I hope you’re giggling because you and I tend to make each other laugh. You certainly have made me laugh since I’ve ever known you. I am a former TV news anchor turned what I actually really thought I would be doing all along, which is teaching people basically how to communicate better with each other and on their own behalf. Just walking into the confidence of being able to speak in their authentic voices in a variety of settings. I do that in training classes, I do it on one-on-one coaching. And I really just try to help people learn how to — whether they want to give a TED talk or they want to just feel comfortable standing up at a chamber meeting — being able to say their name and what they do without their heart beating out of their chest. Or, having their heartbeat out of their chest, but doing it anyway. I try to help people with that.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Well, I know something about you, and that is you are a secret HR lady. Tell us about that.
Page Fehling:
Yeah. Because people always say, “How did you go from news to doing this?” And anyone who’s known me for a while, it’s not such a huge surprise because I always kind of did this type of thing on the side anyway, even in my 15-plus-year career in news. But my grandmother actually started in the ’50s when she wanted to get out of the house. She had six children and the fifth of those six children had special needs. And she said to my grandfather, “I just need something to get me out to do something for myself.” So she went to the local Junior League, and they said, “Can you teach finishing-school classes?” So she started off teaching women how to walk with books on their head and how to use the right fork and all of those manners-type things.
And it turned into, hey, can you teach secretarial skills? And she said — by the way, my grandmother had never been a secretary — “Sure. Yeah, I can teach secretarial skills.” Go learn secretary skills, teach that. It transitioned into evolving through the years in various different things. And later on, he was stationed at the Pentagon, and she started getting work with government, within the HR departments. They were looking for people to teach, which at the time were called soft skills. They now refer to them as power skills, I think, in the HR world a lot. They should if they don’t.
Laurie Ruettimann:
They should if they don’t. Absolutely.
Page Fehling:
Right. So anything around interpersonal communication in the workplace. And my mom and my uncle, two of the six, ended up doing the same thing. And when I was about 12 years old, my choice was: stay at home alone because my parents weren’t going to hire a babysitter anymore, be at the risk of bodily harm by my older brother who used me as a punching bag. It’s fine. We’re best friends now. But I could do that, or I could go to work with my mom. And I went to work with her, learned what she was teaching, jumped up there and taught some myself. And here I am today finally going back to what I thought I would be doing all along. I just took a 15-year detour into news there for a bit.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Well, let’s talk a little bit about that detour, because like so many people, you’ve pivoted during the pandemic. So what were you doing at the beginning in February of 2020?
Page Fehling:
Oh, gosh. I mean, shaking hands with people, right?
Laurie Ruettimann:
Well, yeah, you were.
Page Fehling:
Seeing human beings in real life. Remember what that was like?
Laurie Ruettimann:
Yes.
Page Fehling:
I was doing all of that. Career-wise, I was in news. I was hosting a morning show and having, honestly, the time of my life doing it. I loved my job for so long. For so many years I couldn’t believe I got paid to do it. I hosted a morning show from 4:30 in the morning until 9 in the morning. So four-and-a-half hours of live local news every morning. I would wake up at 1:57 a.m. That was not my favorite part of the job. I always tell people I woke up yesterday for work today. There was just a weird clock thing going on, but then I was done at noon, and I had the rest of the day to myself to be in a really bad mood and sleep as much as I could.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Well, I want to ask about that because they talk about the effects of lack of sleep on the body. Did you feel that?
Page Fehling:
Oh, 1,000%. Now, I will say this. I also had itty-bitty kids at the time and I wondered at the time. I said — and I still think it’s true in many ways — it was a great schedule for us because I had the second half of the day and my husband had the first half. We kind of covered our bases that way. If I could get that nap or get to sleep early enough, I think that combined, I would sometimes get a normal amount of sleep. But for the years that we did it, it actually worked well for us.
Laurie Ruettimann:
So I wonder what your life was like in local news as the pandemic emerged and what kind of additional pressures that put on your career. What did it feel like to be reporting on this?
Page Fehling:
It was the hardest thing, I would say. Really, the whole year of 2020, all of the news, what came into the news cycle, for me, during my career, those were the biggest times that I really was looking around going, “Are we keeping people safe or are we putting people in positions where we’re telling them that it is safe when it’s not? Or that something is happening that we’re putting into the news cycle and making it news when it’s not?” I mean, because it was not just coronavirus. It was coronavirus and then also George Floyd’s death, which led to much-needed conversations in our country and in our world and society. All of which, though, put a lot of pressure on news to get it right. The news always needs to get it right, but these were life and death situations that really, it was uber-important to do that.
And I give credit to anyone who works in news and anyone who works their butt off to do that because they try really hard to do exactly that. And at the same time they’re human beings. And it should go without saying that they’re not always going to get it right. And they’re sometimes going to have things lost in translational or just reworded in a way that people interpret a certain way or that is — you say the wrong thing and God forbid. So yeah, every script you read, you’re going, “Is this word OK? Is that phrase OK? What perspectives do we need to be taking into account here to be sure we’re telling all sides of all stories?”
Laurie Ruettimann:
So you go through 2020 and you have this experience, and here comes 2021 and we all think it’s going to get better, and it doesn’t. And you, at some point, make a decision to pivot. Tell us about that.
Page Fehling:
Well, like I said, for me, this was a decision that was a long time coming. It’s something I had kind of done along the way, sort of in conjunction with my news career. When you work in news, especially when you work on the on-camera side of things, you often get asked to MC something or to come speak at something. So I had dipped my toe, kept doing that for a long time. My husband and I also co-host a podcast together. We wrote a book together. So we were kind of out there in capacities that weren’t just Page from TV, Jake for Movement Mortgage. People knew both of us, really, in sort of a different capacity. So I think that it wasn’t a huge surprise to anyone when they saw the news. And it also wasn’t something that I all of a sudden went, “I can’t do news anymore. I need a change.”
It was sort of like the whole time I was looking around going, “When’s going to be the right time to transition out of news and do this thing that I really have wanted to do all along?” And when I say all along, I don’t mean that I was unhappy doing news. The reason I didn’t leave to do what I’m doing now before is because I couldn’t walk away from something I was enjoying and felt like I was actually contributing to our society in a way that I felt good about for so long. It was like, why would I do that? And then when that kind of backed off a bit more, the timing lined up and everything fell into place.
Laurie Ruettimann:
I find that so many working parents got their butts kicked during the pandemic. And when I brought this up to you earlier, I actually phrased it as working mothers. And you’re like, “No, working parents.” So I want to talk about that distinction, why that distinction is so important to you. And I wonder if it was just like so many women or men in the workforce where you were like, “I’m not surviving a pandemic to wait on my dream another day.” So take me through the distinction between working parent and working mother, though. Why is that important to you?
Page Fehling:
Oh, I love you for bringing that up because you’re so right. I feel like I often check people on that because I have to check myself on that. I do that all the time still to other mothers. It is 100% understandable that we all still say, “Working moms. How do moms do it?” I mean, listen, we grew up in a generation where it was still unusual to some extent to have a mom working out of the house. So I get why we all do it. I do it myself. But I think now that it’s more common for both parents to be working or for a mom to be working and a dad to be home or single parenting in a variety of ways. It’s important for a variety of reasons: A, to normalize that everybody can be out there working. And also, the more we keep making it mom-specific, the more it keeps just being the mom’s problem.
And that’s just not fair, right? I went to a working mom’s luncheon one time where we had a dad panel and one of the guys goes, “My wife wants to go back to work right now.” And he goes, “I’m going to be honest with you.” And this poor man said this in front of a room of working women. So bless him for having the courage to do this. He goes, “I want her to stay home because I don’t want to have to pitch in on kids’ lunches and kids schedules and —” And I went, good for you to be, because of course you do. I get that. I wish Jake and I had a third wife, a third spouse, to help us with that. Because depending on what you’re used to, it is easier if you kind of divide and conquer. But if it’s more fulfilling to both people to both be out there, then you make that work, too.
Laurie Ruettimann:
So I brought it up because I wanted to position originally the discussion around working mothers, because so many of them really did struggle to a higher degree than working fathers did during the pandemic. There’s all sorts of data around that. And I see so many working mothers, not necessarily working fathers, who feel like they have to make a binary choice during COVID. They can’t move on their dreams. They have to either be a parent or a worker. They have to make these ridiculous sacrifices to their sleep, to their well-being, to their dreams, to their passions. And I thought it was incredibly inspirational that in the midst of all this, which you are feeling and Jake is feeling as a parent, as well, that you did pursue your dreams. I thought that was really laudable and interesting. I don’t know. I mean, I think for so many people, they would be like, “Why now in the middle of COVID with all of this craziness? Even if you did love your job, why be an entrepreneur now?”
Page Fehling:
The fact of the matter is it’s not laudable at all. It didn’t take bravery on my part, it took privilege. And the reason that I was able to do it is because my husband has a solid job with a solid paycheck and benefits and security. So I’m able to do that. And you’re exactly right. So many people, and women in particular, felt — even if they didn’t “have to” — they felt like it made the most sense for them to be the one to step back from their career, because a lot of women still don’t make as much as a lot of men. So if they had a conversation between each other, if it’s a spouse situation and they went logically speaking, who makes more sense to stay home and homeschool the kids while they’re on virtual?
The one of us who makes more money should go to work and the other one should stay home and do this. Or if you are the only parent and you’re a mom or whatever the situation is, you can’t have a 5-year-old home homeschooling themselves and still be going to work. It was just a lose-lose. So for me, it wasn’t courage at all. It was the fact that I had the privilege, the luxury of being able to do that.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Well, one of the things I love about your new career, which is really your old career in your heart, in your bones. Your new career is that you’re working with individuals and employers to help people be better communicators. And I wonder if we can talk about the employee side for a second? What does it mean to be a good communicator as an employee? And why is this important to you?
Page Fehling:
I think if you are an employee, for whatever company it is, and your employer is able to look around and go, “Who in this room can we send out to any place, any space, any setting, and they will represent not only themselves, but our company well?” That is a skill you can barely put a price tag on. And if you are making blank salary right now, and you can go to your employer, or with your employer — let’s say you guys go together to a chamber event or to a meeting in the community, whatever it is. And you stand up and you just have presence and confidence and you’re able to show, and people are looking like, who is that? Who do they work for? What do they do?
If you’re the employer and you go, “That’s my person.” Hell yeah, get that person. There is no skill that you can put a price tag on. And then guess what? When you come up to your next contract negotiation or you’re going into a job interview and you blow them away with your confidence in yourself and your ability to communicate whatever it is that you’re trying to get across, you are worth so much more to your company or to yourself if you’re self-employed.
Laurie Ruettimann:
I love this idea of really just emphasizing communication skills for the worker, for the job seeker, for the employee. When I coach people who are looking for work, their No. 1 fear is that conversation in the interview, they’re going to blow it. They’re worried about not being able to tell a good story. They don’t make good eye contact, right? These are all things that are fixable. And I would imagine these are things you coach on, right?
Page Fehling:
Oh my gosh, yes. So I love that you just said eye contact. I do, like I said, two sort of forms for training with this. Either a company will bring me in and I’ll train their leadership or their people or whoever it is that they put in a group. Or because I’ve realized individuals need and want this themselves, I’ve put together these workshops myself where people come in from various different industries and they’re there on their own learning from each other, too, which is a really cool element. And we break down all of the different parts. And eye contact is one of them. The best quote, and I can never remember who said it, so I always just say you can give me credit for this quote, but they say eye contact is like electrical current. If you keep it on for too long, it can be shocking. If you turn it off too quickly, you lose power.
So in other words, not staring too much at people, whether it’s in a crowd, but kind of hitting on everybody. Little things like that, because like you said, when nerves kick in or if you feel like you’re just not naturally a good communicator to a group or in a one-on-one setting, there are things that you can do to go, “OK, we’re going to break down the actual components of this.” So that when the nerves kick in and you start to go, “Oh, I can’t do this. I don’t know what to do.” Oh yeah, there’s actual things — “I need to be looking about three seconds here and then about three — and it sounds silly, but the more you practice it, the more natural it becomes. I mean, nerves is the other big question I get from people, right? What do I do about nerves? By the way, I don’t know about you, Laurie. I speak much of the time for my work now. I still get nervous. Do you still get nervous, too?
Laurie Ruettimann:
Listen, lady. If I’m not nervous, something is wrong. That means I’m lazy or I’m silly or I’ve had too much champagne. I don’t know what it is, but if I’m not nervous, it’s going to go downhill. So yeah, nerves are an essential component. What do you advise?
Page Fehling:
So I say the same thing. I played softball my whole life, and the games that I was throwing up in the bathroom beforehand, I played the best because I’m on, right? Your energy’s kind of jiving. You’re alert and nothing’s going to happen. If you’re laid back going into it and you’re taking it, things are going to slip. If you’re not taking it seriously, and those nerves aren’t making you kind of lock in, but you don’t want it to let you be shaky or to make you feel bad. So there’s one really practical thing that I do, a couple of things. One is triumphant poses. And I tell people to get in triumphant poses. You’re a CrossFitter, too, right? You know the dumbbell snatches where you’re going up and you’re putting your hands in the air and taking up space in the room? Putting your body into space that makes you feel good.
Taking your mind off whatever it is that you’re talking about. If you’re playing your walk-up music and you’re getting yourself into some triumphal poses and taking your deep breaths, that’s just one really simple way to help. And one of my favorite tips — do you have a pen with you? If you’re listening, anyone listening at home, grab a pen or use your finger. We’re not as worried about germs when it’s our own, right? OK. So take this. I don’t know if this will play as well on a podcast, but people can still hear it, right? So put the pen in between your teeth and don’t let your lips touch the pen. Count up to 10. I’ll just do five for time. Count up to five and back down to zero. Ready? One, two, three, four, five. Five, four, three, two, one. Take your pen or your finger out. Laurie, what are you doing right now?
Laurie Ruettimann:
I’m smiling.
Page Fehling:
You are smiling. Exactly. And studies show that if you can put the muscles of your face into the shape of a smile, endorphins get released into your brain even if the emotion was not there. So I always tell people who, A, are nervous or B, have RBF, they just kind of come from a place of natural — their expressions, especially when nerves kick in, some people tend to shut down a little bit. Doing a simple thing like a five- to 10-second pen trick changes your energy.
Laurie Ruettimann:
I love it. That’s amazing. So I wonder if your lessons are different for communicators who primarily use Zoom or — we’re on SquadCast right now. I think the screen poses all sorts of complexities. I’m balancing an AirPod in my ear and I’ve got your face kind of next to the green dot that I’m staring at, right? So all of it is kind of different, and yet some of it is the same. So what do you have for that?
Page Fehling:
It is tricky. And it’s so funny because people always talk about transitioning into doing it in person. They go, “But you certainly couldn’t just — I mean, who can make it come alive when you’re just staring at a black hole the whole time?” Right? And I go, “Oh, I stared at a black hole for 15 years of my career. I got you.” If you’re on Zoom, we can still make this happen. So one practical tip I have for that, and I heard this actually from Barbara Corcoran, you know “Shark Tank,” the real estate mogul? She said when she first started doing on-camera work, it felt very unfamiliar to her. So she would take a picture of her mother and paste it behind where the camera is. And she would just make eye contact with her mom the whole time and tell her mom the story so that it felt familiar to her. But the key there, also, is that she had in the spot where her eyes were supposed to be.
I always have people take their phones out during the training too and take a picture. Again, if you’re listening or whenever you have a minute, just take your phone on selfie mode and put it on your own face and snap a picture of yourself looking at yourself, making eye contact with yourself, and then look at the camera, the actual camera hole and take a picture of that and scroll back and forth between those two pictures. And you’ll see what a difference it makes. You want to look at yourself or the person you’re talking to on a Zoom. If you’re talking to a single individual — Laurie, I’ve been looking into your eyes this whole time on this podcast, even though you’re just using audio. People at home, I’m getting to see Laurie this whole time, too. But if I were addressing a group of a lot of people, I would be looking at the camera so that they would feel like I was making eye contact directly with them the whole time.
Laurie Ruettimann:
That’s really great advice. And I think about the employer side of things, because there are a lot of reasons why employers should invest in better communication skills for their workforce. But I like your take on how this fits into a diversity, equity and inclusion and belonging strategy. Can you take us through that?
Page Fehling:
Yes. Because as you and I have discussed, you come from the world of HR through the decades and how that’s changed and —
Laurie Ruettimann:
Hey, you’re making me feel old now. Come on now.
Page Fehling:
I meant you and me.
Laurie Ruettimann:
The decades. Yes, two decades.
Page Fehling:
Listen.
Laurie Ruettimann:
It’s plural, but not three.
Page Fehling:
I was including myself in that as well. And what I was really thinking of is my grandmother, where this all started for me. I remember when she started, it was, fit this professional mode. It was, if you were going to be a professional, you need to look this way. You need to sound this way. You need to wear this, do your hair this way. And thankfully we are all now coming around to where we go, “Oh, people can be really good at all kinds of jobs and look different and sound different and have physical capabilities.”
And so helping employers see that when you look around — now, this comes from either the employer’s perspective or the employee’s perspective — when you’re looking around a room or a company and you say, “There’s nobody else here who looks like me or sounds like me, or has my background or my physical capabilities or practices, my religion.” Instead of thinking, “I don’t belong here, ” changing that mindset to “there’s no one else here who, for whatever reason, blank like me. What unique perspective do I bring to the table that people here may not have thought of?” Such a confidence builder for the individual who feels different. And it’s such a confidence instiller in the employer who’s able to look around and go, “All of us are in an echo chamber. What does this unique person say that we may not be thinking of?” I had a woman in class just the other day. Her first language is not English. She speaks Spanish natively. And one of the things I have people do is for one minute, they have to draw a question out of a hat and just talk about it for one minute, whatever it is. I think the one that she got was, if you were an aunt dropped into a blender, how would you get out? It’s silly stuff.
And she doesn’t speak English as her first language. And she got stuck on the word for blade, blender blade. And she kind of paused and she looked over and she goes, “See, this is what happens. I don’t speak this language. So I’m already nervous. And now I can’t think of the word.” And I said, “Well, what is it in Spanish?” And I can’t remember what it was in Spanish, but she said the word in Spanish, and it was a really cute kind of fun-sounding word. And people in my class went, “Oh, that’s good.” And she goes, “Yeah, it’s a little different.” And people started kind of asking questions, and it led to a really great discussion of two things. A, you just taught us something new. That was a really cool thing that none of us knew the Spanish word. And as a technique for as a speaker, it lets you go, “You got in a sticky situation there where you weren’t sure how to get out. By bringing in your audience, they helped you, and you made them feel more included, and it all kind of came together full circle.”
Laurie Ruettimann:
Oh yeah, that’s beautiful. I also worry that sometimes people feel stuck when they don’t speak English as a first language. That they have to be perfect or they have to present, quite honestly, as white. So do you ever address that in your sessions?
Page Fehling:
Yes, for sure, because you’re exactly right. I mean, I think it kind of goes back to, like you said, people now are more familiar with the term code switching, right? In terms of sounding white or even just bearing a regional accent — if you’re from the South or you’re from the North or feeling like you can’t talk that way. And again, the more we train the audience. I always tell people that the forgotten side of the listening communication partnership is don’t be an a-hole audience member. Because the only reason — when I get up there and I worry that people are nitpicking what I’m saying is because I know that sometimes, when I’m in the audience, I’m nitpicking what someone’s saying or how they’re saying it or what they have on or whatever the case is.
So part of it is changing our own mindsets and being more accepting and more understanding of whoever it is that’s up there. And also just knowing that brings value. Again, it is a diversity that comes to the table that otherwise people may not have heard and addressing it. I think it’s OK to say. It sort of lightens the tension in the room. If there is an obvious difference between you and other people in the room, saying that first thing and sort of easing that tension in the air, I think, helps everyone a lot, too.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Well, as we’ve been talking, I’ve been thinking about my own career because I’m a selfish narcissist. That’s how that goes. And one of the things —
Page Fehling:
With you.
Laurie Ruettimann:
— that I don’t miss about public speaking is that evaluation process, where at the end of your speech, the event planners will hand out that sheet of paper and go, “How did Laurie Ruettimann do?” Right? And a bunch of people who’ve never been trained on giving feedback and who have never met me leave all sorts of helpful and unhelpful comments. Like, “She was great. She’s funny. I didn’t like her shirt.” Or, “I didn’t like seeing her tattoos.” Right? I still got this. In fact, I was speaking in Wisconsin in October of 2021 and I got a comment saying, “We all dressed up for this event. I don’t think Laurie dressed up enough.”
And years ago, I would ask event planners proactively to strip out those kinds of comments. Just, “Hey, listen, I’m open to feedback, but if you get that, I don’t want to see it.” And I forgot to do that. And I saw it, and it really felt soul-crushing. So I don’t know if you’ve ever had that experience or if you’ve talked to other speakers and any thoughts on that. Because it’s sexist. It can be racist when it happens to other people. It can be sizeist, ableist, but more importantly, it’s just frustrating. And I’m like, “Did I survive a pandemic for this?” Right? So I don’t know —
Page Fehling:
It just kind of takes the wind out of your sails, right?
Laurie Ruettimann:
It really did.
Page Fehling:
Yeah. That’s hard. One piece of feedback I get a lot that does kind of — well, I don’t know if it even rubs me the wrong way, but I get it a fair amount — is that I talk too fast. And I spent my career for, as I’ve said a million times on this podcast, 17 years talking on TV, reading scripts. And guess what? I talk too fast. I know that to be true, especially when I get excited about something and I’m passionate about it, or maybe I’m nervous or whatever the case is, I can get rolling. And I just zoom. And I know as an audience member, when someone speaks too fast, it puts me on edge because it makes you feel like this person needs to calm down a little. I sweat a lot.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Or your brain can’t keep up with it.
Page Fehling:
Right.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Yeah, I get that. Right. Yeah.
Page Fehling:
All of those things. Depending on a couple things, for me, a lot of it comes in the confidence, too, of being able to go, “They’re right. I do talk fast.” I hope that the message that I bring and the overall feel that I bring to the communication of whatever the message and the topic is, that these people will, A, find enough value in what they’re learning from and with me. And B, enjoy my company enough to be able to look past some of those things that may or may not be true. And if they are true, I know it’s something I can work on.
Laurie Ruettimann:
I love it. Thank you for reminding me and also helping me to reframe the feedback. So, Page, I really want to get back to entrepreneurship because I just think it’s so fascinating when someone who has a regular paycheck decides to give that up and to go out and kill basically everything they eat. And that’s what you’ve done. You’re out there on the plains with a big spear in your hand going after water buffalo. I don’t know what you’re doing, but that’s the role of an entrepreneur. So what’s that been like for you? I mean, it’s crazy anyway, but now it’s COVID.
Page Fehling:
Oh, it’s such a graphic description, and it’s so true. Two things I would say. For me, what has made it work and made it not as scary is that I did lay that path leading into it. I didn’t just blow things up and go, “And now I’m going to do this teaching thing.” I didn’t leave to become an artist because I don’t know how to paint. I left to do something I had done all along, and I knew I had skills in and I knew that I could bring value. And then this piece of advice actually was given to me at a wedding shower, and I use it in every setting because I think it’s so good.
And it was a friend who just said, “Create your own normal.” And I find that to be so true. If you find that you want to do a career, leave a career — or to your point, what I loved about your book is that you made the point you might want to stay in your career, even though parts about it aren’t perfect. If you decide to do that, and you feel like everyone else in the world is going, “Pick up and follow your heart and do what you need to do.” If you think that it’s better for you to stay and make the best of whatever the situation is, and that is normal for you, and it works for you, then it works.
Laurie Ruettimann:
I wonder what has surprised you about yourself during this journey?
Page Fehling:
How bad I am at keeping my time organized has been a big surprise for me. I heard an interview a couple weeks ago from Dwyane Wade. And in this way, and only this way, I compare myself to a retired NBA player. But he talked about how when he retired from the NBA, his schedule went from, you wake up at 9 for breakfast, shootaround’s at 10, game pre-press is at 3, game time is at 7. Everything was structured for him. And he goes, “Now I wake up and I go, ‘I have a bunch of different things I need to do, but it’s up to me when I do them and how I do them.'”
I mean, the same was true for me. My alarm went off at 2 a.m.. I have two and a half hours from that point on to wake up, get dressed, hair and makeup, read scripts, be on set at 4:20 ready to read through four-and-a-half hours of live television scripts and interviews, et cetera. And now the world is my oyster, but if I don’t put a deadline on something, it doesn’t get done. And I’m the one who’s doing it all. So it’s hard. It’s been very much a learning process. I’m sure you can relate.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Well, for sure. And a lot of people laugh at the idea of a morning routine. And I absolutely live and die by my morning routine. It’s not glamorous. I’m not like Tim Ferriss or Gary V here but —
Page Fehling:
You don’t cold plunge every morning?
Laurie Ruettimann:
I don’t. I take it easy. I see my kitties, I ride a little bit, but I wonder if you have a morning routine and would you share it?
Page Fehling:
I wish that it was more of a routine. I will put it this way: I find that my most productive days are the days when I start with a 5:30 workout class and then I come home and I have — that gets me home just in time to get my daughter to the bus stop. Then I come home and I have about an hour while my boys wake up and I get them off and I take them to school. And then I come home and can really kind of get down to work by myself, because I’ve checked the box of the one thing that wakes me up, makes me feel good, makes me feel like I’ve already accomplished something for that day. So, for sure, starting off with a workout or moving my body in some capacity sets my day off right.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Well, Page, as we wrap up the conversation, I just wonder if there’s anything you want our audience to remember about this conversation we had because it’s wide-ranging. We’ve talked about the news, your entrepreneurial journey, being a speaker, going to speaking classes. What do you want people to leave with?
Page Fehling:
It might be a bit unexpected based on what we’ve talked about, but I think that a running theme throughout a lot of this — and it fits in with anyone who has a career change — is giving yourself and other people understanding and a little bit of grace in whatever it is that they’re going through. So if you are finding that you want to be a better communicator, but you feel like you’re not good at it yet, that’s OK. You can work at that. That is something you can be better at. If you’re in a job that you don’t love as much, that’s OK. You can do something about that.
If you are watching other people in either one of those positions, and you find yourself going, “Why doesn’t this knucklehead just blah, blah, blah?” You know what? Maybe they’re not ready to yet, but they’ll get there, too. And maybe you can be an example of a way that they can do that and they can learn from you, as well. So I think that it helps all of us with all of our confidence, and that translates into every other part of our life by giving ourselves and each other a little bit of like, “You know what? You’ll be all right.”
Laurie Ruettimann:
My friend, where can people find you, learn more about your good stuff and all things related to your ecosystem?
Page Fehling:
So my website is just my full name, all one word. And they’re both bizarre spellings and pronunciations, but it’s Page Fehling. Page is just like page in a book with no I. P-A-G-E-F like ford, E-H-L-I-N-G.com. I’m the same on Instagram. That’s really kind of where I live as far as social media goes. Just @pagefehling. Either one of those places, I’ll give you a pretty good idea and a way to reach me. I would love to hear from people.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Yeah. Maybe we’ll connect with you on LinkedIn. Are you out there?
Page Fehling:
I need to be.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Yeah.
Page Fehling:
I know.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Let me be your HR lady wake-up call right here.
Page Fehling:
I know. You’re so right, Laurie.
Laurie Ruettimann:
That’s where all the listeners are.
Page Fehling:
Yes. I’ll be there. I exist there. It’s not as familiar of a place for me. So, listen, if you’re listening and you see me on there, say hi because I’m the new girl, and I won’t know as many people on LinkedIn, and I would love a friendly face.
Laurie Ruettimann:
There you go. Well, thanks again for being a guest today.
Page Fehling:
Thanks for having me.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Hey, everybody. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Punk Rock HR. We are proudly underwritten by The Starr Conspiracy. The Starr Conspiracy is the B2B marketing agency for innovative brands, creating the future of workplace solutions. For more information, head on over to thestarrconspiracy.com. Punk Rock HR is produced and edited by Rep Cap with special help from Michael Thibodeaux and Devon McGrath. For more information, show notes, links, and resources, head on over to punkrockhr.com. Now, that’s all for today and I hope you enjoyed it. We’ll see you next time on Punk Rock HR.
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