You're listening to Women in Feud's radio, while women in the marketplace connect with purpose and spirit, where the conversation covers all things women, business and fascinating faith. And now, your host, Kristi Lynn Olson. Welcome to episode 20 of the Women in Feud's podcast radio show. In today's episode, I continue my interview series with another one of the fabulous co-authors from our Women in Feud's published book series entitled We Walked by Faith and Not by Sight, Women of Faith in the Marketplace.
It's a two volume book series available now on Amazon.com. There's a link in the show notes so you can get your copy today. I also want to share with you a very special bonus that you can receive just by downloading the Women in Feud's app. Did you know we have an app?
We want to give you a free e-book devotional called Love Notes of Encouragement for Women of Faith in the Marketplace. And it's only available when you download and register to log on to our Women in Feud's Broadcast Network app. When you log on and download the app on your mobile device, it's available for Apple or Android. You just need to register to log on to the app and then go to the channel icon on the bottom of your screen.
There you'll find the Women in Feud's podcast channel when you click on channels. Then you can find our podcast interview with a link to download your free copy of Love Notes of Encouragement. I like this e-book because it's really a devotional and a journal for you to be inspired and encouraged by reading special notes from our book series authors. And then there's a space below for you to reflect both on the note, what it speaks to you, and what you think God is prompting you to either do or be.
When you download the app, you will also be able to hear the entire uncut bonus versions of all of the WeWok by Faith book series interviews so far. And I just know you will learn something that speaks to you from each of these phenomenal women who are right now walking out there calling in the marketplace. So today's interview is with a lovely Debbie Strowman. She is 50 years old and became a believer at the age of 32.
When her daughter was young, she went through a divorce and they started finding out together about who this God person was. You see, everyone had told Debbie now she needed to find a godly man and she was supposed to be a godly woman. But she didn't really understand what that was. You have to understand she had just become a Christian and we're so good at thinking people understand what we talk about just because we've been in the church for our whole life.
So since she didn't know what she was supposed to look for, she started studying all of that about what God expected of her and what God looked for in a godly man and she hasn't stopped since. Her standards and everything she was learning taught her to pray for a man who would pray for her and take her to church. Well, she ended up marrying an ordained minister. Wow, not only did she get what she asked for, but she didn't understand how unprepared or unqualified she felt at that moment to marry a minister.
But God didn't think so. He thought that's exactly what she was supposed to do. Now, Debbie was in sales for 25 years and enjoyed the majority of those years selling. She currently has left the sales industry and is following her calling now of delivering hope one on one through a lot of different programs that she's involved with.
You're going to hear more about it. She has a certification with the John Maxwell leadership team, but she works with companies and individuals now to unlock their potential and find their purpose and passion, both at work and in their personal lives. So let's listen in right now and hear the rest of Debbie's story. Well, today I am so excited to welcome the lovely Debbie Strowman.
Now I have seen through Facebook. I know we all look at each other through Facebook that we probably share Debbie a love for tropical vacations. Would that be true? Absolutely.
Very much so. That's actually funny that you actually say that. Well, I love tropical things. I love looking at your pictures.
I also know that you are a visionary, a goal-setter, and definitely a woman whose passion is delivering hope to other women. And in your bio, and I think in your book, it says, One Woman at a Time. So Debbie, welcome and thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today. Thank you so much for having me.
It's a total honor. Well, one thing, now we're talking about the book We Walked By Faith and Not By Sight, Women of Faith in the Marketplace. And you started out with your chapter saying, at one time in your life, everyone told you you were to find a godly man and you were supposed to be a godly woman. Now, I wonder, and I don't know if you ever had this thought, but at the time, what did you think they were even talking about?
I mean, to you, what did a godly woman look like at the time? And then how would you kind of fast forward define to what it looks like for you now? Is there a difference? Well, when someone told me that, I had just gone through a divorce and I loved being married.
So I knew I needed to figure out what a godly woman was and what a godly man was. I had these two phrases were so foreign to me. So I had no idea what they were talking about. So I dove in to research for 10 years on marriage, what actually makes a successful marriage.
And I started practicing those things. And I started praying for that godly husband who would pray with me, who would take me to church. And I ended up marrying 10 years later after all my studies, I ended up marrying an ordained minister. Wow.
So God is faithful. God is faithful to his word. Yes, exactly. And then how I see that now is I used to, when I was married before, I would do things my way.
I would do things the way that the world was doing it. And that didn't really wasn't a very successful way. And so now I do it God's way. And according to his benefits package and his principles, and I am literally walking out my fairy tale marriage.
And it is very exciting. Well, and I think what's exciting for me and hopefully for our listeners as well is to see that as a role model because we don't, we see, usually we see all the diverse statistics and we see the negative sides of marriage. But to be able to look at you and your husband today and see that positive role model, even though, so admittedly you said you haven't had it all figured out, but you definitely are being that model and stepping into that space for other people. And I think that that is something to be commended.
So it sounds like you have a pretty good grasp of what it looks like to be that godly woman. Now what would you say to a woman who feels like she has to be perfect and she's never going to get there? What would you give her? I'm not sure I think we're ever going to get there.
I don't think we're ever going to be that perfect godly woman. My thought is what I always say is keep taking the step to the next stepping stone. Read that next book. Listen to that next message.
Say that next one prayer. Just keep on going. And the other thing I can say is be changeable at all times. Listen to a message and put it into action and be and be consistent with it.
And if you're not consistent, stand up and try it again the next day. Just keep being changeable and keep trying because in marriage, it's just an everyday process. It's just an everyday thing that we just want to be better at. So I'm not sure that I'm ever going to arrive at the perfect godly woman or ever have the perfect godly husband because we live in a sinful world.
I just know that I want to be a changeable person every day until the day that I go home. Wow. That is beautiful. So you know, you have this godly man, but you have been working.
You've got quite a career behind you and yet ahead of you. So 25 years you said that you, the majority of that was in the industry of selling. Now I always ask women, what strengths do they think really helped them the most in their career? So I think there's spiritual gifts that we all get.
There are also strengths and talents and certain things we've learned along the way. What do you think of now your 25 years in that industry helped you the most as far as your strength? How did you play to your strengths or your gifts and talents that helped you be successful? I would say that I was very different in the industry because I was really growing my faith at the time and being in a competing with the number one cosmetic company in the world and in such a competitive industry.
I sold products to the top 1% of this long industry in the country. So to the most wealthiest of wealthiest people. What I would say is that my integrity and my honesty and my willing to connect with people and encourage people and my sales was always the last. I always wanted to have integrity.
I always wanted to use the right words. I always wanted to sell at the right time. And I always wanted to encourage them and love on them and make sure that their life was amazingly happy. And then if I knew I could do that, I knew they would buy my product.
Do you think? Go ahead. Because I knew I had the most superior product no matter what company I was with. That I knew the selling of the product was easy.
However, I had to get them to believe in themselves first. Do you think that set you apart because I'm thinking of different sales people I've been involved with that hasn't been my career. But I've been on the kind of the vendor side of that. And that is definitely not the majority of the attitude that I felt when I was being sold to.
So do you think that was unique in the industry or am I just not understanding it? I think it was very unique in the industry to the customer. I think the customer bonded with me from day one. I did a whole lot of lunches.
I never wanted to go in and sell somebody and be gone like an hour later. I wanted to go in and connect with them. And I didn't want to just connect with the owner. I wanted to connect with all their staff because if I just relate to the owner, no one's going to sell my product.
I wanted to see who they were. And so I very much believe that I was very set apart. And at time that was very tough. But I knew I was going down God's journey and going through his path.
So I knew that I was on the right path. It was just a tougher path living and selling with integrity versus selling for a forecast. And that makes sense. I'm so glad that you could explain that a little better because some of us don't hear the words integrity, honesty, relationship in selling the way we would like to.
But it definitely is there. So you definitely had a unique event. But that, like you said, is how God wired you. And so if you play to those strengths, we know we will be successful because we're using the design that God gave us.
So I'm thinking also of 25 years of phenomenal success. You must have had early on this idea like I have to write a plan. I have to have goals. How important is it for us as women and men, but specifically women as our audience today to have a written plan versus that idea that just swims in my head and I'll get to it someday.
I would have to confess and say back in the day, I did not have that love of the way that I have her goals, dreams and visions now. So that wasn't the way that I started my career. What I can say is about 10 years ago, I fell in love with a mentor who just, who she just loved dreams and goals the way I do now. And so I live and breathe dreams and goals and visions because if the goal is not in front of you, you're only aiming at a blank wall.
If you don't know what the dart is and you don't know where your bullseye is, you're literally throwing a dart at a white wall. So whatever you put in front of your eyes, whatever you speak out your mouth, you will literally start attracting that to you and you to them. So no matter what it is, if it's something business driven, personally driven or as you know, women, sometimes we just want something frivolous and God wants us to have the desires of our hearts. So it's okay to have that frivolous goal.
Okay, so I think if you could give us three practical things, even if we only do it once a year, what would you suggest we do to kind of start writing? Let's say a woman is just going to start writing a plan or start thinking about goals. Can you give us kind of three tips that you do every year that really have helped you be successful in that? Well, I'm going to be honest with you and say that I used to do back in the day, I used to do my goals every single year in December and then I would review them the next December.
Like most of us. Yes, exactly. And so only 3% of the Harvard study that was done literally have written goals and reviewed them. So the 3% literally earned 10 times more than anybody else combined who doesn't have goals or who have in the swimming in their head and most people have in the swimming in their head.
And so what I can say is I don't teach or believe on a once in your process, what I would love people to start with is to just put all their dreams and goals on a piece of paper and then to put them on a vision board and then to practice them. And I love to teach people to practice the right way even though that they don't do it. So I'd love for them to imagine them and say them every day, but I'm even practicing it to get to the point where I'm consistent every day. However, I've had a lot of my goals achieved by even not being consistent every day.
So I can't imagine the day that I arrived at 365 days where I've said them, I've written them and I've imagined them. So my success will be at a different level when I start doing that every single day. I'm very, I'm very consistent with it, but I'm not consistent enough seven days a week. Wow.
But you know, that I was taking notes as you were talking because I fall into that category of I write them down the end of the year. And sometimes I do look at them like after the first quarter and I recourse, correct and readjust, but I have to admit in that middle part of the year, I just get going and pretty soon it's November, December and I'm like, oh, I should probably look at those goals again. So I love what you said about every day. We have to be so attuned to them not only visually, but speaking them.
I hear you say speaking them out loud envisioning yourself and not letting a day go past where you're not believing. Yes. And to me, I love to write goals down. I love to put it on a vision board.
I love to put it in a vision book. I even love to put it in the little vision note cards that I can put in my purse if I'm stuck at getting my tire changed at a tire store that I can be envisioning my goals. But the thing is that imagining them is even harder for me on a daily basis than it is saying or writing them because I feel like it, I don't want to say it's a waste of time because I know the process isn't, but it's time consuming when you have 10 personal goals, 10 business goals and five family goals. It's hard to take the time to write them, say them, imagine them, and then also write your gratitude.
And I'm starting to get to a point where I'm getting more consistent with all of that, including the imagination because I'm starting to value what other people's long time success has been through imagination. Some of the most successful people by Henry Ford used imagination. He hired someone just to imagine competitors, ideas and things to compete against. So Henry Ford did that.
We should be doing that. Absolutely. You know, I think back as a child, a lot of us can have maybe we were creative in our play or did a lot of imagining, but then somewhere along the line, even if I just think about myself, we were told I'll stop dreaming and sell big or maybe we were told not to be creative. So do you think we'd lose that as adults?
Absolutely. You're the second person this week who has told me that exact same thing as a child, they love to, they love to daydream and they love to imagine and they love to pretend. And the power of pretend and the power of your subconscious to imagine is powerful because your mind doesn't understand the difference between a lie and a and the truth. So if you're literally telling yourself something that haven't happened yet, your subconscious will create the solution to it, negative or positive.
So yes, I truly believe that through time, when we start to grow up, we think we have to get serious. Yeah, we, I think we have to be professional, but I also think there's a power in imagining and writing your goals down. Absolutely. And that is powerful.
I'm going to start imagining a little more. I think that is something that I definitely need to challenge myself on. So you know, you do individual goals for yourself and I've also understand that you go into teams and you've worked in different environments. How do you, when you have to go into an organization, work with a team, whether it's a sales organization or anything else, how do you go in and both motivate a team to help a business grow yet at the same time, inspire the individual hopes and dreams?
Because sometimes, you know, there might be a conflict there. So do you have any way that you can resolve that or what would be an example of that? We train very similar to most, to most companies. So one of the things that we do is we don't, even though we customize all of our programs, our tools are used differently for different, for different companies.
So we recently had a client that we had for two years and it was a very trendy company. It was a very up and coming company and they were dealing with a lot of turnover. And one of the things that they allowed us to do is they allowed us to do a program called dream manager. And that's literally managing people through their personal dreams and goals.
And what that is, is, is that an owner wants them to succeed in their forecasts and their sales goals. And what I want them to do is I want them to achieve those personal goals. However, what probably 98% of the United States does not understand is that you can't drive someone to your business goals unless you care about their personal goals. So we, so I got trained in this program called dream manager and I literally tested 40 women for two years out on this program.
And we increased this company's sales year over year by 466% in their profit. Wow, that is unheard of. So what was made from this is I really thought I was going in there and I was just going to help create their dreams and goals. I was going to get them to their Disney or B-Dipry or get a new car or get their Louis Vuitton purse or whatever their personal goals was.
That did not happen. What happened was everybody wrote their goals individually through their one on one session. However, the first step that stopped everybody was their personal life, their personal relationships. So once I could work them through their personal relationships, then their mindset was stopping them.
So then we improved their mindset and replaced their words and replaced their thoughts. And then at the very end, they all told me, I now have confidence and almost every one of them started asking about God. It was the strangest thing that happened in almost every 40 of the people. You know, isn't that God?
I mean, I'm hearing you talk about that and thinking, wow, that would never happen. But it did, you know? To me, I wanted to try it and I had told her, the owner, if it doesn't work, I'm going to put my name on and say it didn't work. However, what I know now is her sales increased, the turnover was reduced and everyone was happier and now they were getting all of their goals.
And people were coming after me and saying, well, you signed my Bible. Oh, you know what? I want to start going to church. I want to start certain leading.
I want to equally young husband. You know, oh, I want to get engaged and everyone was achieving what they wanted. But I thought it was about dreams and goals, which I love. However, God had a different plan and that was so much cooler.
Hello again. Thank you for listening in today for my conversation with Debbie Strowman. Now, make sure you go to her website if you're interested in learning more about setting goals and dreams, imagining and having accountability partners. You can go to her website at thestrowmans.com.
And the link is in the show notes. All you have to do is click above and click on the link. Her website there is there so you can just go right to it. Now I want to invite you to tune into the full uncut version of our interview where Debbie also shares more about marriage, accountability, expectations, feelings, choices and how to be a 360 woman.
So if you want to know more about that, you need to listen to the rest of our interview. Now where can you find that? I'm so glad you asked. You need to download the Women Infused app.
And when you download the app, make sure you download your copy of the free e-book, Love Notes of Encouragement for Women of Faith in the Marketplace. You don't have the app yet? Well, it's free and easy to download on any Apple or Android device. Just go to womeninfusedapp.com.
There's a link right here in the show notes. Once you download the app, just go to the podcast channel and find Debbie's Interview episode 20. Hey, well you're at it. Could you also do me a favor?
Could you tell all your girlfriends to download the Women Infused app? Just have them go to womeninfusedapp.com. You see, let me share our vision. Our vision is to reach 1 million women for Christ around the globe with faith teachings, lifestyle information and practical business and leadership principles for women of faith.
And if you know anyone who you think would like to have their own broadcast channel on our network, please have them contact me by email at christy-at-christy-lin-olson.com. There's a link in the show notes for that email as well. I would love to chat with them about it. So goodbye for now and remember, alone you are significant, but together we are amazing.
This has been Women Infused Radio, connecting women around the globe with purpose and spirit. And we want to connect with you. Get your free gift, unveiled voices, six things you need to do to define your value, voice and vision. For more information on the free gift and links to join the conversation on social media, visit us at christy-lin-olson.com.