The Incredible Disappearing Advisor, Fate, and Wite-Out with Dr. Jennifer Gardella
Dr. Jennifer Gardella [00:20:02] Yeah, it’s a really interesting story. So at the end of my about a year and a half before I graduated with my Ph.D., I started dating a friend from high school. Not alot of stories start at that point at the age of forty four. Forty three. And he owned a law firm in central New Jersey, a divorce and family law firm that had all of a sudden lost, like the phone stopped ringing. So it was a million dollar practice and then the phone stopped ringing. And it was in the day of when things like blogging and social first became very important and lawyers were killed by what was going on in the digital space. And so he knew and he had received emails, Twitter for attorneys, SEO, things that we all now take for granted right in the business world. And he said to me, look, I need all of this information synthesized. What better job for a Ph.D. student? Right. Take all this information to make me a list of what I have to do. It wound up turning into a job where I got my start, which was really neat. Then fast forward to the beginning of 2013. Again, just finishing my PhD, the job, the relationship ended. Therefore the job ended, which was interesting as well. And I started and so I went gangbusters to finish the Ph.D. And then it was like, well, what am I going to do now? And I called I lived in Lawrenceville, New Jersey at the time, and I called my buddies over at Educational Testing Service and I got that same line again. What all you really haven’t done anything like you had a Ph.D., but you still have been a stay at home mom and you have been working in the field and you didn’t publish that much. So I was like and so they said, look, well, I’ll help you out a little bit. We’ll give you a job. You’ll make like thirty five thousand dollars a year. I’m like, I can make that as an adjunct teacher in my bunny slippers. I am not doing that. But I also on the side had this very interesting skill set of helping small business owners like I had done for that law firm. What I had done for them was reclaimed the first page of Google. So I started this little business that I thought was going to go gangbusters. Right. I was like, Oh, I’m going to be sipping mai tais in Tahiti in no time. Turns out that you have to network and do all these things that they don’t teach you about in school at all. Learned how to do all that client. Bigger clients started to come into my world and willing to pay me a couple of thousand dollars a month, some less, so. But I should say a thousand dollars a month is like the average. And I went, I only really need ten of these guys. Are you ten of these guys pay me a thousand. I’ve got a six figure business. This could be awesome. At the same time, I was also teaching. I’ve I always kept my toe in the higher ed teaching, whether it be a rider university in New Jersey or at Rutgers. I loved it and I felt like I was still connected to the academic world. But I was going to hang a shingle and the beauty of owning a business, especially the business that I own, is that I can work around my schedule. So I have there’s a lot of benefits to starting your own gig. There’s all. But I also say it’s really just trading stress. As you know, we don’t report to anybody. We’re not building anybody else’s dream. We can’t get laid off tomorrow.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:23:14] Right.
Dr. Jennifer Gardella [00:23:15] However, where are the next clients coming from? It’s so it’s just a different type of stress that you should. But that’s how it. But that was the progression of how I kind of backed into it. And it turns out I do social media and blogging. My PhD is in educational statistics, research, educational psychology, those lines. There is no better degree to have to do social media and blogging. I know how people learn and absorb information and I can measure the heck out of it in Google Analytics. And it’s kind of fun because people are like, well, how do you know so much about analytics? I’m like, did you do not know? Like, I look at all the degrees on the wall, which is like there’s a lot of there’s a lot of degrees up here. So numbers are my thing. So don’t worry, I got this.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:23:59] Yeah. I actually had before I went into my second PhD program where, like I said, I walked away initially and came back. I was working in corporate America. And one day, a guy who wasn’t the guy that hired me, he said things happen, drama unfolds and he got pushed away. And then slowly they try to chip away at all the people he brought in. So they had their people in. And one day some guy walked in my office and was like, yeah, you’re going to walk out of here with whatever is yours. And and that’s it. We won’t see any more bye. And I went from making good money to no money in an afternoon. And so I decided, well, that’s not going to happen again. I’m not going to have one person be able to have that level of control. And that was probably close to 20 years ago now. But but that started the ball rolling for me. I went through adjunct teaching. I was teaching what they call full time adjuncts I was at. Several places my wife had our benefits in terms of health insurance and things like that, and then, yeah, you got the bunny slippers and bunny slippers, but you can you can work when you want to where you want to. And that’s the blessing and the curse of that kind of work, is that you can work what you want to, you want when you want to, where you want to, and you probably should be working wherever you are. It’s the flip side. Until you get a level of control over it and you’re running the business instead of running you.
Dr. Jennifer Gardella [00:25:26] Right.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:25:27] So for folks who and I’ve talked to a lot of our students have these aspirations to hang out a shingle, they all want to help in some way, which is the thing I find so rewarding about dealing with these people. When you peel back the layers of the onion, you ask them, why are you doing this? Why would you want to pursue your Ph.D.? Always it comes down to wanting to help something, seeing a problem that they thought they can make better somehow helping. And so when we talk to them about how they want to help a lot of them coaching and counseling and consulting come up, what advice would you give to folks who are, let’s say, maybe just about to finish up their doctoral degree or maybe they have finished recently and they need to or they want to. They’re thinking about this idea of building something that doesn’t exist to help people. What would you tell them?
Dr. Jennifer Gardella [00:26:15] Well, there’s a couple of things. First of all, you want to at first protect what you offer and I mean protect it because there’s a really big opportunity, for lack of a better word, when you start off to be the jack of all trades, like, oh, I’ll take that project, I’ll take this course, I can do that. And before you know it, you really have no idea what it is that you offer. So someone calls and says, what’s it like to work with you? And you’re like, Oh, I do this and you do that. And people don’t want to hear that. They want you to be an expert in one particular thing. Having said that,
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:26:47] If you’re everything to everyone, then you’re nothing to anyone. So you’ve got like
Dr. Jennifer Gardella [00:26:50] Jack of all trades expert enough, right.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:26:53] That that that really soft sells it literally. If you think you can do what you need me to do, I can do it. Like everybody is going to be like, no, that’s not what I want. I want somebody that can tell me, here’s what I do. This is who I am. Right. You should spend as much of your time pushing people away as you do drawing them towards you. When you’re doing that, the people that that you are trying to attract, they can appreciate the fact that I am this person. I’m not that person. You pushed away that person and they brought me in. You’re the right person for me. So psychologically, that’s hard for business owners if you do want to. I do projects that pay money. Whatever project you have that pays money, I do it right. I get over that. Yeah.
Dr. Jennifer Gardella [00:27:35] Yeah. So definitely offer services, Todd, whatever it is you do to a result for your client. So make sure if you look at all the big Internet marketers today, they always tell you to keep people out of jail, help them build their business, help make their home life happier, do something with a tangible result that they need. That’s critical. I’m learning in the market because in my space, it’s really hard to tie exactly what I do to a tangible cell. Right. So I’m actually introducing new programs into my business to help my clients with that aspect of it a little bit. The next is protect your brand. That’s something that I didn’t do. So I have a lot of different logos and a lot of different websites and a lot of different. And they all kind of work together. You can see the bigger picture. They don’t work closely together to make money, which is a big problem for me right now. Again, I’m blessed because I built my name up. But that’s the last point I want to bring up, build, you know, like and trust factor. And you have to be relentless about that. I backed into some interesting things and forced myself into some very interesting places to get the notoriety and the PhD when people hear, oh, it’s Dr. Jen that opens a multitude of doors, I get hired all the time, especially by big law firms, because they know if they bring me around a table of lawyers, no one’s going to question me because we’ve already cut through that ego on education. High-priced lawyers, they think they’re highly educated and smarter than everybody else. And I’m like, I think we’re all smart as each other. We’re done with that. But Bill. So build other things then. I’ve gotten hired. This is actually really great. Besides getting hired because I have a PhD, which has nothing to do with my business, I’ve gotten hired for doing a test prep that has a little bit to do with a small subset of clients that I like to take on. But the fact that I have a TED talk and if you watch it, you do hear my authenticity, you see my heart, all of those pieces. But people are like, wow, you did a TED talk. That’s amazing. Like, well, OK, but build a YouTube channel of you as a person on video, talking to your ideal clients, do podcast interviews about your expertise or about just wanting to help people. You know, for me to get on this podcast and talk to you and help students who are going through the dissertation process, that is amazing. You know, I’m honored to do it in other spheres. It could actually help build my business and it could help me build my business here. And I’m helping you build your business like I really do believe in all those relationships. And then you need to network yourself into the ground when it and I always say, you know, I’m Jerzy scrapie. Right? So I will weasel my way into networking groups and have over the years found the right ones. Nests found the right ones for me personally, and I have found a group of people in the professional sphere who support me like no other, and I’m not hesitant at all to reach out and say, OK, sales have dropped. What’s going on? Who do you got for me? I need to fill my pipeline again, blah, blah, blah, all that, because you just continually do that.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:30:50] I would say certainly all everything that you gave folks is good advice. Going back to that element of choice. You can you can create content however you want to. But what you want to be thinking about is if someone finds me and they think they like me, one of the things that are going to want to do is start bingeing on me. Who am I? What am I doing? If they are a reader and I do blogs, they’re just going to read they might read 10, 15, one hundred blogs. And then they’re like, yes, this is the person for me. I’m gonna pick up the phone or fill out an email. I’m going to do whatever you tell them to do to get in touch with you. But it’s anything that the person can kind of binge on once they think, yes, this person speak to me, this person knows me, this person understands me. They want to hear what it is you have to do. And quite honestly, once that happens, that makes the relationship building really easy for you. You get on the phone with someone and there’s the celebrity factor, even though you might be known to like five people. They don’t know you, they think of you as a celebrity in the same way that they would think of a movie star as a celebrity, having a celebrity in your niche is all that you need in the business. You don’t need to be, again, this little vacuous celebrity to everyone you want to be the helping, advising someone that they know, like and trust to the people that you serve.
Dr. Jennifer Gardella [00:32:15] And also you’ve got to be authentic. That’s a really big piece of this. But you also want to position your marketing. And this is something I do for my clients all the time. Position the marketing around what your ideal clients really need from you. Like what’s their big pain point? You know, it’s it’s great that I do social. What’s the problem that I solve? My clients are not getting on looking for the greatest social media consultant. They’re looking because they have no digital presence. So really make sure that right from the beginning, like I do wish that I was a lot tighter. I wish I looked a lot tighter right now, actually. And it’s just funny because I need to really tighten up all those pieces and I can’t save my life because I don’t take the time. I should say I choose not to right now.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:32:57] Physician, heal thyself. Right. But yeah, it’s a good point. Just to piggyback on the authenticity issue, don’t pretend to be something that you’re not unless you really, really, really are OK with that, because whatever you put out in the world, that’s what people are going to expect when they come to see. I know some people that like to make sure that everything they present is just perfect. And then when you talk to them, they’re not, which no one is right, but they don’t have that high polished gloss and sheen, just when they pop on the video or something like that, they’re a little bit more real. And the messaging they sent out there that I’m like perfect in every hair is right in place. And then they get on and they’re like, normal doesn’t. There’s a disconnect. Be who you want to be all the time, because whatever message you’re sending out there, the people who resonate that with that message, that’s who you’re attracting. And so if you attract people that resonate with this perfect image and then you show them something that’s less than perfect, there’s going to be a disconnect. Be who you are, be who you want to be all the time, and you get the right people coming to you. When I talk about pushing away the people who don’t like you, they just won’t come to you and they’ll figure out they don’t like you from afar and you will never have to deal with them. You’ll only be like. It’s a tough lesson for folks getting into business because this idea of pushing people away and and not needing and all that kind of stuff is tough when you’re first starting out.
Dr. Jennifer Gardella [00:34:30] Oh, yeah.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:34:33] So tell me a little bit you mentioned that. That you’re pretty good about getting out of situations that aren’t working, and I know that a lot of, you know, a lot of people particularly are talking about business that can be very, very hard. This idea of the sunken costs, you know, decision trap is something that a lot of people suffer. What would tell us a little bit about some of your thoughts on evaluating how we’re going to get out of this situation.
Dr. Jennifer Gardella [00:35:03] So there’s a lot of things that we do as business owners that we definitely don’t see. Well, it doesn’t actually increase our bottom line. Right. And you just you have to have them like you have to have the QuickBooks or some sort of accounting system. You have to have a website that you can’t tie results to. And I think what it really is a matter of is set yourself up with some goals and then chase them like a dog chasing a ball. And if you do that, you will inherently notice that everything else that you’re doing doesn’t matter if it’s not leading up to your goals. So I’ll give you an example for I’ve always had a million goals. I am an excellent, excellent goal setter. I then I’m terrible at it because it’s impossible to actually go after, let’s say, twenty five goals. I’m going to have five podcast episodes. I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that. I’m going to post on LinkedIn every day and I would drive myself crazy. Right. So this year at twenty twenty one I have three simple goals. I want one hundred clients in my business, I want my book written with a plan to publish and I want to find the next great love of my life. I went through a divorce in twenty twenty. I was a COVID divorcee and so I’m revving that up. Every single action that I take during eight to five ish ish. The hours I work are weird sometimes is going towards goal number one. I want one hundred clients in my business. Then I spend time every single night. We all have options at night, right? I make sure I get to the gym or exercise or walk or run outside or something and then I have a choice. Am I going to watch television or am I going to write my book while watching three thousand episodes on Netflix is not going to write my book. And then I kind of leaving the third goal to find the next great love. I’m leaving that one to the universe because I’m not getting online dating. He’s literally going to have to walk in my house. You have to change your goals
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:36:55] That’ll be pretty difficult here during lockdown.
Dr. Jennifer Gardella [00:36:56] I know, right? So why bother? So but my point is we get so wrapped up in should I be doing this? Should I be doing that? Should I and people or should I be there. What do I do with this. I’m like, well, what are your goals? And if you’re not running towards a goal. Then stop and do some service activity is not like I have a lot of people who are like, should I go to the business card exchange? So we’ll get back to that in the world at some point, I’m sure.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:37:23] Right.
Dr. Jennifer Gardella [00:37:24] Well, if you get business from going to a business card exchange and increasing the size of your business as one of your goals, awesome. Or if you do need to just get out of your house and go see people at the bank, you know, like because a lot of business card exchanges in my area happen to the networking banks of the fine. But that’s that’s how I evaluate everything. Is it helping me reach my goals?
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:37:47] I tell folks with their dissertations this all the time when one of the first conversations we have is what is your why? What are you doing? And in my universe, there’s two main types of of of whys, of motivation. One is I’m intrinsically interested in what I’m studying and what I’m doing. And that’s something that I really want to pursue. And if that’s really why you’re doing it, those are the folks we work with. So if I talk about pushing people like that’s not the folks I work with, the folks I work with, they want to have their degree so that they can accomplish things on the back end. And then I tell them, OK, your dissertation is now an obstacle to you achieving your goal. It’s not something that you want to nurture and invest and spend time. It is something I want to get done. And you can you treat those things differently? There are we have hobbies and we have jobs. And hobbies are things that we like to do until someone pulls us away. And jobs are things that we do as quickly as we can so that we can go somewhere else. And sometimes we’re lucky that our hobbies pay us and we can do something we really love. And we’re doing it all the time and that’s quit my job. But in fact, it’s just something I love and I’m going to keep doing it until I have to, like, get up and go eat or something like that. That’s awesome in your professional life. But you have to know that if your goal is to get out to the other side, then treat your dissertation like a job, something that you schedule, you punch a clock, get in, get out, and then you can do those other things. And so when people are looking at what decisions they should make, how should I do this? I should do that. Should I investigate this little byway here? Well, didn’t the committee already say that this project was good enough? Then, no, don’t look at that. Now you’re interested in it. They’ll look at it after you graduate. That’s fine. You can do whatever you want to do if you graduate, but your goals, you want to graduate so you could do these other things. So let’s keep our mind on that.
Dr. Jennifer Gardella [00:39:35] Right. Yeah.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:39:37] And then the other thing you mentioned about the book writing, that’s one of the reasons why we got into this is with the shutdown and everything. So many people, it just seemed to be part of the zeitgeist that people were just self medicating to Netflix all the time. When people wake up in a year or two, you know, they’re either going to think it was still, you know, twenty nineteen or. Well, I guess it was early twenty twenty when we shut down in the US or they’re going to say, I accomplished something, I did something. Here it is. I’m a published author now. I finished my doctoral degree. So that’s that’s what we’re hoping to, to help folks with to some extent.
