DREAM BIG: LYNN
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DREAMBIGINTRO-SERDULA: [00:00:00] Welcome to dream big with big dreamers conversations for career growth, inspiration, and insight. It's time to dream big.

Donna Serdula: Hey, Lynn. Thank you so much for joining me today. 

Thank you for inviting me. 

I'm excited to have you. Now I've known you for years, but just in case people don't know who you are. Of course, you're with straight talk writer LLC. And we can see right behind you 10 times your expertise.

That is your purpose. That is what you bring into people's lives and what your true desire is. But tell me a little bit about yourself very briefly. I'm the oldest of four 

Lynn Miller: children. I I grew up believing that hard work was the only way to be successful, and I found out after working really hard that wasn't necessarily the thing that was going to make the difference what I care about and what my purpose is going to make the difference.

It took me a long decades to figure that out, but I was trained as an opera singer. I didn't know that about [00:01:00] you. Yes, I was trained as an opera singer. The funny thing is I didn't want to be on stage. Don't ask me. Somebody said get talent. I said okay, let's see how I can use it. So I said, saw how I, I figured out how I could use it and I still do, but the big thing that 10 years of studying singing and opera did for me was teach me what practice will do for you, practicing and practicing will do for you.

And I've used that work ethic for my whole career. 

Donna Serdula: Now, I know that your father. Was an author, a writer, and you have recently just followed in his footsteps. You're, you a, you are a co author of a new book called lead from within. I am the 

Lynn Miller: co author of a book lead from within it. I have eight co authors and It was the, it was something that came out of a group that I belong to, which is the Inner Circle Business Network.

And the person in [00:02:00] charge, the co founder Kim Fleeman asked, said, I want to create a book that talks about leading and leading from the heart. And I want somebody, people to tell their story based on certain leadership traits, like resilience and persistence and all kinds of other things. And She said, Lynn, this is what would you like to do right about?

And I said, Oh, this thing, opportunity champion looks really good to me. 

Donna Serdula: Was this the first time that you saw opportunity champion? Cause that's, you're the one that introduced me to that term. I had never heard of it before. It's the first time I'd seen it to be honest with you. And so Kim just put it down there as a potential chapter.

Lynn Miller: Chapter. And she said that was a trait that entrepreneurs had their opportunity champions. And it's all about the book is really for entrepreneurs. And I said, Oh, I love opportunity. I want to talk about being an opportunity champion. And [00:03:00] then I started writing and I said a champion of what? And I got a little nervous.

Worked my, but wrote my way out through it. 

Donna Serdula: It was really fascinating. So like when you think of opportunity champion, it could go a couple different ways. So in your mind, what is an opportunity champion? 

Lynn Miller: An opportunity champion, I think what the biggest thing is to emphasize the champion. And I wanted to champion 10 extra expertise.

I wanted people to be able to expand their business easily using what they already had. And so championing growth for people who are experts and thought leaders. Is what I really get excited about, literally can't keep trying to find as many ways as possible for them to grow their business using what they really are great 

Donna Serdula: at.

So when, how would you define then? So when you think of an opportunity champion [00:04:00] what are who would you say like in this world that we can look at who already has the, that, that ability, that description? 

Lynn Miller: I think we have to distinguish between being an opportunity champion, which is a way of being a part of being for people and an opportunist, which is very self centered.

And I don't consider myself an opportunist. I know a lot of opportunists in the world. An opportunity champion is someone who wants, has a bigger purpose on making other people's worlds better. People's businesses, better people's possibility better. And I've just found that it's. It's like crazy inspiring to me to write about that.

Donna Serdula: So tell me a little bit more about your chapter. What are some of the big picture ideas or a plot twist that maybe we might find surprising? Biggest 

Lynn Miller: surprises were, first of all, being an opportunity champion does [00:05:00] not mean you're uber talented and that if you are famous, you will be an opportunity champion.

That's not it, because I tried that 

Donna Serdula: because that actually goes back to what you were saying earlier about practice, because oftentimes we think of, oh, someone is born with these talents, almost super super powers. But what I have found is it really is. It's repetition. It's practice.

It's doing things over and over again. And it's all of that experience that suddenly. Seems like talent, but in fact, it was something that was very deliberate and something that came together after, a long time, 

Lynn Miller: it is something that has evolved. I never even though my father wrote books.

I said, I said, I don't want to do that because he did it. And it was, he was good at it. And I was afraid I couldn't be good at it. So I practiced writing for about five or six years, just wrote on LinkedIn, wrote [00:06:00] for people, did all kinds of writing. And but this particular emphasis of being an opportunity champion and wanting to make a difference for others superseded anything that my ego wanted.

And I really wanted to get the answers out of people about what really Matter to them and how they wanted to make a difference in the context of the work that they do. And it so the lessons learned was talent isn't the only thing. It hard work isn't the only thing, actually, it's the opposite of that.

Hard work is not the way to be an opportunity champion. That persevering isn't necessarily the way to be an opportunity champion. All those things that relate to working hard don't really make you an opportunity champion. Finding a purpose that you believe in your bones is important [00:07:00] to you.

Is the beginning of being an opportunity champion and then really seeking ways as many ways as possible to help champion that those goals. Is the opportunity that you pursue. 

Donna Serdula: How would a person go about determining what is their purpose and how do they select that? 

Lynn Miller: To be honest with you, they have a they may have some underlying goals and purposes.

I find that they discover their purpose because by the way I interview them. So actually that brings us to your offering. Yeah, it's true. It was not necessarily just, all right, this is how to do it. But you can actually walk a person through and help them understand what they need to be doing and how to do it to become an opportunity champion.

Yeah, I just asked them I we start with kind [00:08:00] of their we look at how they grew up. And what was their first memory of being an opportunity champion and the stories that come out of that are fascinated, fascinating. When I started thinking about that for myself I really realized that one of my first actually it wasn't so young, but one of my first opportunities.

As an opportunity champion or one of my first stories that I remember is my father said, Hey, I'm a focus group interviewer and I have to tape record these people. Can you write notes. And ideas about what happened in this focus group and what people said so I can write the report. That was the first time I started using recordings and listening to figure out what answers were actually in the conversation and I do it every day now.

Donna Serdula: It's funny. It's the things that you didn't necessarily go to school for that imbue and [00:09:00] cause you to find your path and your meaning. So that's, I find the same thing for myself. There's oftentimes I look back and I think didn't go to school for this, but man, this is something I always love doing.

Now, here I am making it work for me. 

Lynn Miller: The other thing that just, was interesting for me is that when I. After I let go of, I didn't give up singing. I still do, but after I gave it up as a career, I went into retail and worked my way through the system of being of retail and ended up in the training space and training was like a calling learning and training were a calling for me.

Donna Serdula: And here you are helping people and training people and guiding people. And I would even say with the singing, there's always that is a bit of an inspirational element to that, that you're doing as well. 

Lynn Miller: I would say that the inspiration is probably the spark that keeps. Me going and the client going.

They get excited that I get excited. So [00:10:00] they want to tell me more. I get very inspired and excited by listening to people's stories. 

Donna Serdula: I keep thinking of that Zig Ziglar quote. If you can help enough people get what they want you'll have enough of what you want. But it's really the idea of if you can really help others.

It will come back to you. 

Lynn Miller: Yeah. I was surprised that when I was younger, looking back, I was surprised that I wanted, I thought I wanted to be famous and thought I wanted to be famous as key. Cause I didn't want to be famous. I just wanted to be a really good singer. Didn't want to be famous.

So when I realized that's all I really wanted to do was be a good singer, as soon as I figured out how to do it, I was ready for the next 

Donna Serdula: thing. Almost ticked that check box off and what's next. 

Lynn Miller: And then when I was in retail, I was like, I want to help this company make as much money as possible.

I grew it really rapidly. And then they said they're really, I was ready to have [00:11:00] kids. And they said, this is not the place for you. Don't, you don't want to be around all this traveling and. Being having bad at retail hours. So they put me in corporate training and I said, Oh, I can make a difference for the whole company.

Like the whole idea of impacting more and more people became a real pull for me. The more people I could impact the happier I was. And so it was no longer about me at all. 

Donna Serdula: And I feel that is where you are even now. It's how can you help, how can you keep helping and 10 timings, 10 times, 10 Xing.

It's their, what they're doing, their expertise, their know how. Now let's talk a little bit more. So you said that you've got this offering and you gave us a little bit of an idea. Who's the perfect person that should be coming to you? What, how can a person recognize that?

I need to reach out to Lynn, if 

Lynn Miller: if that person, the person who would want to reach out to [00:12:00] me has been a well kept secret about how great they are, they do well. They've been successful, but there's something about them that people don't realize about what their real mission is and what they really care about.

And how they want that to show up in the world. And they don't talk about that at the kitchen table. They don't talk about it in the boardroom. They don't talk about it on the bus. They don't talk about it anywhere. So this kind of more vulnerable conversation is a way of showing the strength of this expert from another point of view, which is, oh, by the way, your client this is how you show up for clients.

Donna Serdula: Awesome. So you're really giving them that objective third party viewpoint of this is how you're showing up, but then also being able to say, if you want to make a difference, here are some additions and changes that you can make to show up in a better way. 

Lynn Miller: Yeah. I really, I love [00:13:00] shining a light on other people.

I can't help it. It's it's what feeds me. And writing about it and asking questions gets me juiced up to write about it. So it's so the question asking for me has been something that I knew was a superpower, but I didn't know how to take advantage of it. And I did it when I helped people, TEDx their expertise in different ways by creating courses or attracting more customers, but this interview process.

Thanks. Is such a deep dive into the heart that I love what comes out from the people that I'm talking to that never they can't even believe it's when I transcribe it and they see their words on the page. They're surprised that's what they said. 

Donna Serdula: Yeah. What can you give us a little bit of a taste of someone's input or their own epiphany into something that they didn't even realize was so important to them.

[00:14:00] I was on somebody's radio show. His name is Steve Kidd. He's a very well known publisher, author, marketer. He's been in business for a long time. And I, he reached out to me. I said, why did, why are you reaching out to me? And he says, you looked interesting. I thought we would talk. And so we got to know each other.

Lynn Miller: And I said he told me he, I said, I'm just about to publish a book. I'd really like to talk to you about the book. He had me on his radio show and his questions were so deep and insightful. It was 15 minutes. It was the fastest 15 minutes I've ever had. And I said, I love how you ask questions to me and I want to do the same for you.

So we talked about this whole idea of opportunity champion. He says, Oh, I'm totally an opportunity champion. I said, I think you are, but let's see it. Let's show the evidence of that. And so I. I, I provided him a list of [00:15:00] four questions which turned into six questions and asked him about from beginning to end from the time he was five till now to the future, how he's evolved as an opportunity champion.

And I think even he was surprised. Mm said he started up by telling the story of how he, his brothers didn't want to, his parents gave them greeting card, holiday greeting cards and napkins to sell in the neighborhood. And his brothers didn't want to do it, but he said, so he said, could I try?

And he sold them all. 

Donna Serdula: Natural born salesperson. 

Lynn Miller: Natural born salesperson. He knew how to, he wanted to make money. And then he just, Was a researcher. So he used research as a real superpower to find out the most important things that world changers needed and world changers needed exposure. [00:16:00] They already had all the talent, but they needed the exposure and he realized books were the answer.

So he figured out. How to make, how to write, help people write and publish books and how to market them. So they would always be a number one bestseller. And he was a hundred percent successful. 

Donna Serdula: And now he recognizes he's an opportunity champion. Is he, has he changed anything because of this knowledge or this, these ideas?

Yes, he actually has. 

Lynn Miller: He built this system for marketing books that was so successful that other people started copying it. Didn't tell, but he didn't. He didn't know until it came back to him and somebody said, Hey, I've got a great way to market a book. It sounded 

Donna Serdula: familiar, huh? 

Lynn Miller: Exactly. It sounds familiar.

So he said but then he said, we have figured out how to make it easy for people to write and publish books, and they don't have to be millionaires or have lots of money to do it. What can I do for [00:17:00] that? And he did some research and discovered that illiteracy in Africa is rampant. Okay, and I'm literally telling you this because I spent 25 minutes with him in a conversation and he shared all this.

Illiteracy in Africa was rampant and 8 out of 10 people are illiterate. He said, I want to change that. So he took his vision that he had, he'd already published 4 to 5, 000 books and he said, what would it look like if all those illiterate people were literate? And he set up a vision to publish a million books.

and impact a billion readers. What, how does that not inspire you? I want to hear those stories from everybody. 

Donna Serdula: It's being, it goes to the name of this, which is dreaming big, right? The name of this [00:18:00] podcast is dream big. So he certainly is using this to dream so much bigger than ever before.

And that's a beautiful thing. 

Lynn Miller: What? Yeah. And when I came up with 10X your expertise just a few years ago, I had a dream that every expert who was, who. Speaker, an author or anything had a library of courses that they could, people could pay for. I literally saw a store with libraries of course, for people.

And I said, I want that. I want people to have this. So that's what I started, why I started doing it. But now I'm realizing there's stories that they can have, there's other things they can do. So the opportunity champion story became the. Something that would be a way of really highlighting all their strengths, everything they want for others, all the positives and teach lessons, but not in an instructional way.

Donna Serdula: Through story. [00:19:00] Yes. Yes. That's beautiful. Lynn, if a person wants to work with you, how are they, how can they reach out? What can they do to collide with you? 

Lynn Miller: They can find me on LinkedIn cause it's easy to find Lynn Ellen Miller cause there's only, I think there's only one actually. And they can email me at Lynn at straight talk writer.

com. And those are the two ways. But if you look under Lynn Ellen Miller, you, I will probably be the first one 

Donna Serdula: fabulous. So reach out and also where can they get the book lead from within 

Lynn Miller: read from within is on Amazon. Yes, it's on Amazon. It's on Kindle and it's in paperback and it's.

It's been my co authors have written about all sorts of aspects of leadership and really conquering fear and being resilient. And so my, I think the thing that's probably been the most gratifying for me is that. [00:20:00] In the process of writing about Opportunity Champion, I rose to the occasion and now I am one, like that's who I am every day.

Donna Serdula: In some ways the book Lead from Within really helped you lead from within and take on and pivot and do even more. So that already is a testament to the success of the book. Yeah, it's very exciting, Lynn. Thank you so much for coming on board. And is what's the next? What's your next moment?

What are you dreaming big about next? Oh, great question, Donna. 

Lynn Miller: I'm dreaming big about making sure everybody could be an opportunity champion for themselves and I am working on a workshop for that 

Donna Serdula: fabulous we'll keep our eyes out for it. Thank you so much for joining us. Bye bye.