Welcome And Meet Dr. Christiana

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Leadership Insights Podcast with Co-Financial Group. I'm going to be your host, Chad Coe. The success in leadership isn't just about the decisions we make today. It's about the legacy we build for tomorrow. On this show, we talk to leaders from around the country who are open to sharing their wisdom, insights to help others. Today we have Dr. Christian Schroeder. She is the Small Steps Doctor, TEDx speaker, Fulbright Scholar, Keynotes on Confidence, Clarity, and Momum. This is going to be a ton of fun. She's also the creator of the Petite Practice, professor, best-selling author, and leadership strategist, helping professionals navigate change with clarity, confidence, and the momentum through small practical steps. So welcome to the show, Christian. I am so glad that you're here. Did I say your name right?

SPEAKER_01 0:54

It's Christiana, and that's maybe the first small step. How to Christiana, it is. It's actually a very common German name. And if you ever Google Christiana, there's also a politician, Christiana Amanapur, I think is her name, that has my beautiful same first name. So I'm really glad to be here. Welcome, audience.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

So it is a beautiful first name. I love the way that you say it. And I look forward to using it proper going forward.

Why Small Steps Create Impact

SPEAKER_00 1:27

As we get started here today, I really always like to start with go back 15 or 20 years and share with us how you got into the space of being a professor and into this leadership type, you know, movement on baby steps.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Yeah. Well, to be honest with you, I've been teaching now like since 2000. So it's been actually 26 years. Well, like 20 years really at the PhD level. And then I entered graduate school and helped already as a teaching assistant in before I earned my PhD. And looking back now, all my life, I always followed the petite practice approach. I always followed small steps that created the impact. And of course, if you think about that, that so many times when a bio is read, the first question that comes up is, how do you do this?

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

And then I just immediately answer it with just how you introduced me with small steps. I take small steps and that big impact.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

You know, I was sharing with you earlier as we were getting started that my whole life has been small steps, because if we chunk off everything that we do, I think I think it becomes too much. Exactly.

unknown 2:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

But do you also agree that we need to take the small steps in order to get where we want to go? And there's a lot of people out there that that kind of like don't take small steps. They just they just don't even get started. What's your idea for people to just get

Starting Messy Then Improving Systems

SPEAKER_00 3:05

started?

SPEAKER_01 3:07

To get started really means that you choose, you basically take your big project, you break it up into multiple steps, small steps, and you can choose them as small as you want to. There's like no rule how small it has to be. If you want to take a step that takes you five minutes per day, it's perfect, right? And then you choose that first small step. So what I'm really emphasizing is that taking action is really also something about control, that you are the agent of your own destiny. Because sometimes we feel there's a system that everybody seems to follow, and I just haven't latched onto it. And then people try new systems or what this person is doing over here, and they've quickly realized that everybody has to really figure out how big steps need to be for them individually and what steps they take first. And momentum is really created by following up on the second day, on the third day, on the fourth day, and taking small steps every single day consistently to then work towards your bigger goal.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

You know, that reminds me in 2000, I created a charity and I learned from the Ronald McDonald House charity. And I just decided that I was going to do it. And so when I started my first one, it was just a very small, tiny golf outing so I could get my feet wet. And I remember as people would come and tell me suggestions, we made a list and then we would build on it the following years. It's kind of like small steps to be able to build a big project, but we didn't jump in to try to make it like a really big exercise of nonprofit. We really dug in to just kind of like create it and let the momentum, what you're saying is let the momentum build you.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

Love it. This is such a great example. And I actually want to follow up with that as well. So I have a podcast and I publish books. And of course, sometimes people see the outcome. But in reality, I just got started. I just recorded on my cell phone. When I wrote my books, I basically just started typing. So that wasn't really like a magic system. I just every single day kept writing a little bit more. And with regard to the podcast, I just slowly upgraded my system from speaking into my cell phone to then eventually having a camera and an actual microphone. But that's also part of the small steps that you don't overwhelm yourself with learning everything all at once, but you're just going for it, you're trying it, and you're course adjusting as you tried that very first thing. And then you can take, you said you had your list of ideas with your charity, and then you can take more ideas into consideration over time, but you don't look at all of them and say, Well, let's see how we can create this one charity that does what everybody wants. You kind of think a little bit as a leader, it's like, okay, what are the main themes? And then I will slowly start weaving in more, or maybe those ones are not even then relevant anymore. So it's it's really what's what I always emphasize it's examining what you're doing, looking back, and then doing more of what worked well in the future.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

I I love every single thing you're saying. As an example, when I started the podcasting, I had to train the brain to be able to ask good questions, to be able to listen, to be able to be engaged. I just shared with you that this morning I have a new camera I'm trying out to see if it works better than the old camera. But it's like again, baby steps to get where we want to go, and then building on it to get where we want to go. And we all want to get somewhere, but even though I have a goal, and I want to talk about goals with you, I modify my goals over time because I don't think goals have to be

Goals Can Change Without Shame

SPEAKER_00 7:15

one, not it doesn't have to be set in stone, it gets to be modifiable, even every hour or every day, if it has to.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Completely agree because I think a goal, especially if it's a goal that's way in the future. Let's say you have a goal that's like five, 10 years out. And as you get closer, you have changed. And your, I mean, your mind has changed, your learning has changed, and your perception about how well that goal fits your current lifestyle has changed as well. So I always say a good leader, they are really the ones that can confidently adjust a goal. They're like, you know what, I don't think this actually fits really anymore. And we should maybe modify this a little bit. And I always say the best people are the ones that course adjust, but are also the ones that say, I have changed, and so will be the perception about what my goal will be. And they set a new goal. And I think that it is really like it's it's not like shame or anything associated with it. I think it's just that you have to trust yourself in figuring out what you enjoy and what you don't enjoy. And how will you know what you enjoy if you have never done it before? But all of a sudden you do it, you don't enjoy it, and then you're like, Well, my goal was to do it, now I don't enjoy it. Does that mean I'm stuck with it? No, just change it. It's like we tried this, cool. So now we just move on and we do it something different, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:49

Before we get to the confidence part, I want to talk about that. You can't be afraid to stop doing the things that you've done. So, as an example, I gave the I gave the charity up five years ago because I was ready for new challenges, which is for me to be an auctioneer for charities where I feel I was being a bigger, more impactful presence, versus sticking with something that wasn't working.

Undoing Old Paths And Reframing No

SPEAKER_00 9:12

So let's talk about this topic for a minute. Don't be afraid to undo what you've done. Yeah, because what is there to lose, right? You can't be afraid to lose.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

You only lose if you don't try. Then you're already lost. Because I always say if you you already have the no. If you try, there could be a yes. But if you don't try, then it will always be just the no. Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

And so much more fulfilling to try and get the anxiety and the stress around trying because you know that you're pushing yourself to become better, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Yeah, correct. And I want to add like two fun acronyms here for the audience, too. So one is I keep saying that a no is maybe a negative thing, is actually really not. If you figure out that you tried something and it's not what you really enjoy, then think, all right, no stands for next opportunity. Maybe I'm just going to try something different because now I know what I don't like doing. And I frequently talk with leaders and I ask them what's your goal, and they just kind of sit there and look at me. And then I'm like, okay, let's do this differently. Instead of making like a big map of like ambitious and great sounding things, let's figure out what you don't want to do. So let's start with the no side. What is it that you don't want to do? Uh, and then we can maybe weave from there where we actually want to go. So figuring out what you don't enjoy, figuring out where you don't want to go is an amazing learning tool. And think about it, fail, that's your second acronym for today, stands for first attempt in learning, right? F-A-I-L. If you don't fail and figure out what it is that you enjoy and don't enjoy, how can you ever come to the sale part, which is your second attempt in learning? I always say first you fail and then you sale because you got that out of the way. How good is that, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:22

I agree with you a thousand percent. I failed at every single thing I did, you know, give or take, for a lot of years up until my 30s, where this business here that I'm in, called Financial Group, I've really been able to be prosperous. But I even talk about the fact that in order to practice cold calling in 1998 and 1999, I used to cold call the operator to practice. And they weren't allowed to hang up and they had money, and you never know where it would go. If you don't try, you don't know. Yeah. But then I realized over time that I don't have any fear because I practiced, and my brain got used to continuing to do it and actually enjoy it, which led me to where I am today. Beautiful. Yeah. But so many people are afraid. I think a lot of people are afraid. And if you're tuning in and you're afraid, I would encourage you very strongly to

Confidence, Vulnerability, And Real Hustle

SPEAKER_00 12:15

reach out to us or to me, you know, to us, and to be able to communicate with what's going on for you that you want to do, and what are the baby steps that you could do to be able to get there? I just love that. So we talk about confidence as not a hustle and is the foundation of effective leadership. So we're going to talk about effective leadership. The other thing that we could touch on is you've communicated and advised over 10,000 students about leadership under pressure. So let's talk about confidence and what are these students taking away from this kind of interaction that you have?

SPEAKER_01 12:52

Yeah, so a beautiful question. And I can I want to frame hustle a little bit as like an action. And it's sometimes has a negative connotation to it. But if used correctly, hustle could actually be positive. We talked about the small steps. So if every day you hustle to get your small steps done, that's a good thing. But if every time when I ask you to help me with something and you say I'm too busy, then you're using hustle just as a mask in really tarnishing what you're actually all about. And I always tell my students when you create ideal client avatars or target markets, don't tell me that your target market is busy because everybody is busy. Everybody's hustling, but you just have to funnel your energy in the right way, and that means when I think about confidence, I think about being calm and composed and knowing that whatever you do will, you know, will be moving you forward. And it could also be that whatever you do could be moving you forward or maybe pausing, and it's confident to say, I'm going to take a pause right here, and that's maybe reevaluate where you are, instead of only hustling and pushing through. Because I think the main thing that a leader can really do is kind of read the room and understand where people are, but then also listen to what they say and be confident to say, I think you know more about this topic than what I do, and why don't you educate me about it? So it has a lot to do with vulnerability as well. And that's what I tell my students sometimes they ask me a question, and I'm like, I'm actually not familiar with that. So you can look it up or I can look it up, and why don't we talk about it next time?

SPEAKER_00 14:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

That's confidence.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

What is your idea around confidence? So in my world, I wrote a book called The Confident Leader, where I have examples about what gave me confidence, which is being an expert, asking good questions, being a gift giver, being a listener, doing certain things on purpose I find gives me the confidence that I could walk into a room and be able to communicate. The other thing is I have a belief system that people like me, they want to work with me. And eventually, when they're not busy doing what's important to them, they will come back. So let's talk about your idea around confidence and what it looks like and how people could get there.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Let's use that small steps, doctor. That's my title. The more you repeat small steps, the more confident you become in your skill. I'm a firm believer that when you look at athletes or you look at accomplished individuals, that they really got where they got today because they took small steps and they kept repeating the small steps. Yeah. So the whole discussion about talent versus skill, I'm a firm believer that we can all pick up skills and become confident if we just put in the work the small steps, the repeating and the action. And that's what I emphasize. Everybody can earn that confidence, but you just have to start with that first step and maybe even admit that you really don't know anything about the topic and then move on from there.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

So as we talk about that, I interviewed two people. One was Justin Gatlin, who was one of the world record holders years ago in the 100 meter, and John Coyle, a silver medalist in the speed skating. And I asked Justin, I was friendly with him, I said, Do you ever run a mile? And he says, Never. I practiced the simple steps to be able to do the micro things to make a difference, to be able to win, including the practice of just leaning in a fraction towards the finish line. And just think about the hundred meter versus a mile, two mile, five mile. He just focuses on the baby steps to be able to then one day to be a world record holder. And I think that's a good lesson for a lot of people is you don't have to do everything. You don't have to write a big book, just start with a little book. Right? You don't have to have a TV show or radio show. You could just start with a podcast or something that works for you in the lifestyle that you have. That's absolutely great advice and guidance. Thank you.

Prioritizing To Lead Without Burnout

SPEAKER_00 17:35

So, what do we do about leading through change without burning out? I feel like in the society that we're in today, everybody's burned out, everyone's frustrated, people are just overwhelmed. What are your thoughts around this?

SPEAKER_01 17:49

My thoughts tie in back with how we talked earlier about addressing hassle versus confidence. A good leader can also look at a multitude of to-dos or goals and then decide which ones are maybe higher priority and need to take immediate action on those, and which ones are maybe lower priority and could be put on the back burner or maybe for the future. And I think we tend to feel overwhelmed or burned out because we think everything is high priority, where in reality you can actually sit down and create a fantastic list or even a matrix. What's high priority, immediate action needed, what's lower priority, future action needed. And once you do this, you could even do this on a daily basis, where you just pick these three items that rise to the top in your high priority immediate action, stick to the three, get those done. Getting them done will lead to the confidence that on the next day you're going to tackle the next three things that are high priority, high action. And I think that we frequently just look at the full list and we try to do all of it. And again, small steps lead to action, but it's also the feeling that we get that really feeds the action that we need on the next day because we feel we accomplished something instead of feeling we just scratched the surface on 10 different things and never really finished one of them.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

So I have a question for you. So you have a lot of students, you have A, B, C, D students, some. So those people that are really struggling to move forward, do you have a success story about one or two students that you know took your advice, really dug in, and their life was changed because of it?

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Yeah. And actually,

A Student Story About Using Your Voice

SPEAKER_01 19:40

if you go to my Google business profile, there's a very long life story of one of my students that she just recently posted as a testimonial right there. Writing, I took Dr. Schroter's class, and it was hard. And it wasn't hard because she teaches complicated math concepts. It was hard because she taught me how to speak up in the classroom and how to actually use my voice when I articulate my thoughts. And at first I was very quiet and I frequently held back, and she really brought that out to me that I can use my voice and my thoughts to really let others know what my skills are. And it was then actually, she took multiple classes of my teaching. The last one where she left that testimonial was her senior project class. And the skills that I taught ended up teaching her how to communicate in an interview and land an amazing job. And she really traces that back to how she started being very quiet, very shy, and really stepped out of her comfort zone and then using her voice in a way that it really articulated the skills in an interview and convinced you know the employer to hire her.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Congratulations. You know, of the 10,000 people you've had as students, it just takes that one to make it all worthwhile, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:08

Really, yeah. And in my new book, Petite Practice, I'm actually using her as a story to get started. Because I think people don't need to be extroverts to become speakers, they don't need to be extroverts to show their confidence. In fact, frequently we tend to be very insecure or very nervous about even sharing our opinion in the classroom as I just communicated this student experience. But it is really just taking that first step, really, maybe just saying one sentence, maybe just agreeing with somebody that said something in front of you, and then really building it from there. I think that we tend to overestimate that speakers aren't born on stage and just wake up and grab a microphone. They all got started with these small steps, but they just kept repeating them and building a skill

How TEDx Practice Builds Calm

SPEAKER_01 22:05

as like a muscle that has trained the muscle and then became better over time.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

So what's funny is we have the picture of you with your TEDx presentation, and people think you could just get up there and speak. But how many times did you practice your speech to perfect it before before you got on stage?

SPEAKER_01 22:24

Well, that's a really fantastic question.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

So a lot of people think, oh, it's just memorizing the talk, isn't it? There's so much more to that. Because when you're on stage, these people might be looking at you, but some people might be, you know, coughing, looking at themselves. Who knows what's going on? So you have to have the speech so internalized it goes way beyond memorization. You have to be able to tell your speech like you tell a story. And that means it's not just like going through your notes once per day. It's really practicing the speech multiple times per day, whether that's with your family, with your friends, with your neighbors. That's really what I ended up doing. I had different audiences because every audience reacts differently when you tell them a speech. And then you're becoming that confident speaker because you practice so much that you're ready for anything that could happen in the audience. And I think that's really the trick here that sometimes, you know, even my students say, but I I I studied so much. And then I challenge them. I'm like, would you have been able to share the notes with me, even if, you know, even I would have taken the notes away, or if I say one word, would you have been able to tell me in which parts of your word that particular and which part of your notes that particular word came from? So you need to be so confident with your material. And you mentioned earlier the word expert, that you could just pick it up from any place from your notes. And that is way beyond knowing it by heart, but it's really using it to weave in your story.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

Yeah. It reminds me, I was taking a test for the series seven exam, and I got in early and I started writing on the sheet of paper, and I filled up the whole sheet of paper.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

And the guy came over and said, You started before the time allotted, and he took it away. Oh my God. And I redid the piece of paper, but at this time I could only do half the page. But I did have the material internalized and I did pass the second time I took it, because we we learned earlier that I take a lot of tests twice, because I'm not a great test taker. I might be great as a financial advisor and as a good listener and as a relationship person, but as a test

Books, Accountability, And Where To Find Us

SPEAKER_00 24:45

taker, given that I started out in remedial and in special lead, I had to learn how to overcome it. So that's one of my examples of the confidence on even being able to take tests. Because wow, like my heart sank. And there was there was no way back. They they wouldn't allow it. It was in a in one of those monitored uh test taking situations. So the TEDx went looks like incredibly well. And if we could talk about your books for a minute or two, we have Discover Your Superpower and the Petite Practice Planner. What do we get out of each book and where do we find them?

SPEAKER_01 25:19

Yeah, we of course, coincidentally, today is also Amazon Prime Day. They're all available on Amazon. And so you can go there and order your book wherever you are in the world and get it directly shipped to your house. If you want to learn more about all of my books, you can go to my website, dr. Christiana backslash books. And there's a lot of information about the new book that's coming out on August 16th. And I'm really excited because it has a lot of personal stories in there and a lot of secrets, small secrets that share how my life evolved around the petite practice and how I used it to get to where I'm at today.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

I think so many people are going to learn from this because, you know, we're not talking big concepts here. We're talking about like baby steps. We're talking about, you know, to achieve your goals, you have to first actually have a goal. And then you can't be locked into your goal. You're allowed to move your goal. The other thing I've realized is accountability. Uh, I am accountable to two people a day. One is my wife, and the other one is a gentleman where I check in with my weight every day. And what I found is that when I check in with the app on fasting, and when I check in with him, I'm finding myself being able to be more rigid around what I eat and what I do. And the proof is in the weight loss that I'm currently going through. But I I just love this that you're coming up with little things that people could do that just make a huge difference.

SPEAKER_01 26:49

Yeah. I have to tell you also a fun story. On my phone, I have a lot of success stories of different individuals that I meet that watched my TEDx talk. And they're like, oh, oh, let me share my petite practice with you. And then I'm like, Do you mind that I record you? And then I just get on my phone and I record the petite practice story that they used after they watched my TEDx talk on YouTube. And it's it's really heartwarming because everybody takes something away from it and matches it to their life, which is really how it should be. You shouldn't feel like, oh, I'm going to do what everybody else does. You have to figure out well, what is the deep down that you were always kind of afraid to admit you always wanted to do? That's what you really have to go to for. That's the big goal that you don't want to regret tackling. Let's break that big goal

Walks, Audiobooks, And Closing Requests

SPEAKER_01 27:40

down and let's take that first step today.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

I love that. As we kind of come to a close, I like to ask everybody now, what hobbies do you have and what are you not, what are you hobbies when you are not working? What are some hobbies you might have?

SPEAKER_01 27:56

I go for walks and I listen to audiobooks. And I am actually not even able anymore to listen to an audiobook now, if the speech is not at least 1.5, because I consume audiobooks so rapidly, about like one per week, I would say. But the walking is tremendously important for me because I used to kind of struggle with my back. And also, you know, just because I stand a lot as a teacher, you know, like my feet were sometimes hurting, and then I thought, oh, because I'm just too stagnant, I don't move enough. And walking has helped me so much in calm my mind, but then also just moving my body and enjoying nature and running into fun people that I would never meet otherwise. So it's a social aspect, but it's also strength that I'm getting because I take care of my mind. And I think again, it leads to that confidence. I I I'm okay stepping away from my work because I know that I need this break to come back stronger.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

I absolutely love that. I'm a huge audible person as well. Do you have one or two audibles that you recommend to a lot of people, other than the books that you wrote?

SPEAKER_01 29:09

Yeah, I mean, of course, we have the classics by Mel Robbins. She's really entertaining to listen to if you enjoy her books and she has a podcast as well. And then if you are into fiction or anything like that, I cannot emphasize how entertaining it is to listen to the Harry Potter books, even if you never listened to them before. The reader is quite tremendous. Have you have you listened to those, Harry Potter? Yeah, it's I mean, that's really a masterpiece, to be honest with you. And especially if you go a long distance and you need an audiobook that's like 12 hours or something like that, they're definitely good there. Not in the business category, but a tremendous expert reading and audible level, right there.

SPEAKER_00 29:57

Yep. I love that. So so share with everyone what's the best way for them to find you. They're gonna get the books. Everyone's gonna go out and get the book on Amazon Day. Share with us what's the best way for them to find you if they want to communicate.

SPEAKER_01 30:10

Well, you can sign up for the wait list of my new book. So go to my website, drchistiana.com backslash books. And of course, if you want to see how I look in action on that TEDx stage, we talked a lot about it. Go to my YouTube channel. dr.Christiana is my YouTube channel on YouTube. And you can also subscribe there. That would mean a lot to me because then whenever a new video drops, you immediately get it. And you are one of the first ones to watch it, comment it, like it, and of course share it with whoever else needs it in their life.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

Beautiful, fantastic. At Cofinancial Group, we help people retire and stay comfortably retired. We're interviewing people through our co-financial group leader leadership insights. We're having fun, we're trying to make a difference. You could download my book at cofinancial.com. And I look forward to more interviews and subscribe and like if you thought this interview was right up your alley. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. That was great. Very much great job.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

Now I'm really curious about.