Your story, your brand. Pt. 4

Welcome to Leadership Sovereignty Podcast. I'm your host, Ralph Owens, along with Terry Bailey. In today's episode, we'll touch on topics such as how to create the personal narrative, recognizing those defining moments in your life, and the power of telling your story the right way. Enjoy the show. So okay.

So building the narrative. So what what's the what's the process, if we had to give a step by step guide on how to create the personal narrative? Where would we start?

So so we came up with about, I think about 10 things that can kind of help in that. I would encourage everyone to really kind of go through this process. Because I think it's a More importantly, it's going to help you understand you. And I think that's what the biggest benefit of this is. And I can't wait to go through it again, actually.

So here's number one, you know, or here's an example, right? To describe a childhood experience, a person that had a significant impact on who you are today. I'm sure we all can go back. We can all go back to something. I mean, I can, if we, man, I don't know if I want to go down memory lane today, but I've had some moments like that.

I'm just gonna say this, I remember there's a childhood friend, his name was Binky. I don't know why I looked up to this dude, but I just did. He's a great baseball player. And what I remember about him is he would always spend time with the younger guys. Now we're talking about older, we're talking probably three years.

Right? But when you were four years, but when you're 10 and they're 15 or 16 and there's a big gap between a 10 year old and a 16 year old. Right? But he would always take that time to help and to And he was a great player too. I just remember being a great player.

Very, really nice. And so I believe maybe that framed who I was coming up because I loved helping people. Right? So anyway, here's another one. Reflect on a moment or event in your life that changed your perspective or direction.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know for, for for me and you both, it was and I was just telling Sheba this the other day. We we didn't really know what was happening when we were working together at WashU.

We we we didn't we couldn't even fathom what was happening in the moment. We just knew we needed to keep everything running. Yes. Right? So for those who don't know at the time, we had a boss who, was having some personal issues and basically had to take some time off for what was it like nine months or something like that?

It was a long time, bro.

It was a long time. We had just gotten into this role. It was just me and Terry reporting to this boss. And, again, the boss had to take some personal time off and we it was they didn't replace the person. No one else came and gave us direction.

Nope. We were just left to figure it out. Right? That definitely was a defining moment in my life because I realize now for just this week, I'm spending some time with some younger guys, some younger technical guys who've probably been in the industry three to five years. Right?

Terry and I've been in the industry twenty five to thirty years. Okay. Just to give you some some some, reference there. And we are trying to troubleshoot an issue, a technical issue. And my mind went back to that time that Terry and I were working together and how we used to try to figure out issues.

So we in in technology, you start following breadcrumbs basically, and you start doing process of elimination. And, you know, what makes you a great technician is how fast you can get that process done and get to a solution. So by the end of the day, we had figured out what the problem was. And I was telling the guys, I was like, man, you just have no idea how good it feels just to be able to get back into, a troubleshooting situation like this, because it reminds me of when me and my best friend used to work together and how we used to have to figure out these types of issues. You guys have the benefit of having a whole team of people.

It was just me, him, and Google. Right? And we we and and and but it forced

us wasn't that good back then.

No. It wasn't stop. Not like it is.

Let reintroduce myself. That's where he's at today. You know what I'm saying? Right.

Right. Right. But that defining moment, that not having resources to to help us, which caused us to have to grow quickly and to learn a lot really, really fast changed the rest of my career because walking into other situations, was like, there's nothing gonna be as bad as that. I mean, like we were on calls for twenty four hours sometimes trying to get things up because we supported an electronic medical record system. I think it was like 2,000,000 patients, right?

Whose data was on, was on that system or something like that. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, failure was not an option. Right. Cause these people needed the access to their medical records and stuff.

So, yeah, that was definitely a defining moment for me. And again, it's funny because I, my, I still go back in my mind sometimes to, to that space that we were in and how clueless I was of what was happening. All I knew was I just wanna do a good job and I don't wanna let this fail. I don't wanna let Terry down, so I'm a keep pushing, you know, and that goes back to how we were pushing each other to be great.

You know, I Ralph, that's a great story. Here's here and I'm glad you brought that up. Right? Because here's the thing that I learned one of the biggest things that I gathered from that moment if you tell the story the right way, the checks will come. If you show your competence, the checks will come.

Ralph, remember when we got that job, we had two and I'm just gonna I'm not going too much down the technical term. We had two physical servers trying to run that entire environment. You remember that?

I do. Yeah.

When we were said and done, and I don't know how many five eighties we had, we probably had about 10, and had SANS, we had replication, we had data flying everywhere. But we were able to show competence and to tell the story and the checks came. Right? The business spent because we were able to articulate the value that our our our solution or offering would bring to the business. So that was the biggest thing I learned because I didn't I mean, we spent millions.

Yes, we did. We did. And we learned a new technology that was coming out that no one had ever taught us. We had to go figure it out.

Yep. Yep. Right. And and here's the thing though, I'm gonna say this. I learned that storytelling from you because, again, this is where that challenging and man, I remember you came back from Entasis or wherever you were.

I'm like, Ralph got a notebook? He doing presentations? This dude just stepped up his game.

I'm a

have to go. Let me go practice. Let me go. I was and I think I told you, I said Ralph, dude, man, I'm in bro. You killing it.

Yeah. That's crazy. That's crazy. That's the Yeah. Yeah.

That's a whole another topic, but exposure, man, you get exposure to a different environment. It will cause your skill set to step up. Right. And then you go back to where you came from. They'd like, wow man, you, you know, you're different.

When really all I did was mimic what I saw.

That's a whole another one.

Gotta remember that

one. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. So anyway, let's let's also again, we kinda got a little bit off. Hope you guys enjoyed that story though.

Again, just kinda going back and looking back and reflecting, you know, over successes. Here's another, I think, Ralph, I think you hit this one already. Share a story about a major obstacle that you faced. So I think we kind of hit that a little bit and how you overcame it. Again, this is you writing your narrative, right?

Because what you'll be able to do is cherry pick out of this when it comes to writing your goals. Okay?

That's right. Yep.

What's the next one on that list? You wanna hit that one, Rob?

Sure. Passions and interests. I think that's really important for people to understand. One of the things I do now when I interview people is, for a technical position, I ask them, you know, okay, aside from the stuff that we're talking about doing here at the job, what do you do at your house? What kind of technology do you have at your house?

If you're passionate about something, you don't have to just wait till you get to work to do it. When I was learning when I was first when I was first learning PCs, man, I had PC parts everywhere around the house. Motherboards. I was trying to figure out these modems, you know, NVRAM, all of that stuff. Right.

So, you know, and, and I say, I say even today that one of my passions is using technology to solve business problems. Right? So being able to articulate that is very, very important.

And what about I can vouch for that for Ralph, man. I go to his house. I'm like, you got a QR code doing that? That's nice.

Yeah. I mean, when you're passionate about something, nobody has to pay you to to learn and to and to develop it. Right? It's just something that you wanna do regardless. And and just a hint for the young folks out there listening to this, whatever that is for you, that's probably what you your gifting is and your calling is.

Right? Yes. Yeah. Thank you for listening to the Leadership Sovereignty Podcast. We hope that you not only enjoy the content but gained something to help you on your personal leadership journey.

Feel free to reach out to us on X and Instagram under the handles Leadership Sovereignty. Until next time, stay safe, peace, and blessings.