Unlocking Superfan Potential: Transforming Mindsets and Relationships with Merianne Drew

Host: 00:01:54

Good morning, Merianna. Welcome to the business Superfan podcast show. How are you this morning?

Merianna Drew: 00:01:59

I'm great. How are you?

Host: 00:02:00

outstanding. Been going since: 04:00

Merianna Drew: 00:02:09

Awesome. Me too.

Host: 00:02:10

Tell us a little bit about your story of how you've evolved from your past to where you're working with individuals and helping get themselves out of their own way to keeping it simple. But I'll let you expand it a little bit more.

Merianna Drew: 00:02:24

So I've always been a little bit of a nerd. I'm very curious, and I really liked my nutrition class in college. From there, I just kept on doing my own education.

I didn't end up going into the health field via the conventional route.

I just started sharing the information that I was learning about our food system and why people are getting sicker and more obese with people in conversation. And people started to ask me for my cardinal.

Every time I thought about going the conventional route of getting a degree and dietician, certified dietitian or that kind of thing, I just got this strong feeling like that's not the route. And so when somebody told me what a health coach was, I did some more investigation research, and I thought that could be a really good fit.

So I went through my education from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, which gives a holistic view of health, not just food. I really enjoyed that and got a lot out of it. And then after that, I enrolled in Genesis Energetic health Institute.

I wanted to have a more deep domain expertise in nutrition and how to use food as medicine. As I started working with clients, I found it very rewarding.

But I also found out that most people already know how to take really good care of themselves and eat healthy, but most people don't do that. So I went about figuring out how to solve for that.

And so that took me a lot of different routes, a lot of different books, a lot of different teachers.

rebranded as a life coach in: 2019

During this time, I also was more chronically ill than I've ever been in my whole life.

Host: 00:04:20

Wow.

Merianna Drew: 00:04:20

And it was very embarrassing because here I was a health coach, when my body was falling apart and I went about trying to solve the chronic issues by physical herbs and using food, going to different practitioners, and nothing was working. Come to realize that the reason I was so ill is because my relationship was in crisis, and I was very stressed out because of it.

A lot of my perceived identity and the stability of my life was wrapped up in my relationship.

So once we were able to face our issues head on and fill the cracks in the foundation and build a whole different thing, my body healed very quickly and completely.

Host: 00:04:59

That's amazing.

Merianna Drew: 00:05:00

Quite a while.

Host: 00:05:01

Yeah. That sounds like a very interesting story. I want to definitely know more, because our mind is a very powerful tool.

I've manifested many things in my life just by telling myself that it was a reality, and it became a reality indeed.

Merianna Drew: 00:05:18

The mind is very powerful, and emotions flow from our beliefs.

Host: 00:05:21

Totally agree.

Merianna Drew: 00:05:22

Emotions do create a lot of different chemical processes in the body. I was really grateful that we were able to work together, my husband and I, to address our issues and heal ourselves and heal the relationship.

And then I also started noticing, since I had these tools, I could apply them with clients who, as we dug in, we found dysfunctional relationships.

As I was helping them to heal their dysfunctional relationships, I noticed that they were getting better, too, and the weight was coming off, and they were choosing to get off their medications. And I thought, this is really interesting. I'm seeing a pattern here. And so the research actually bears that out, too.

So we know that the number one determiner of a long and healthy life is the number and quality of social connections that we have, because we've all heard of those anecdotal stories that trump the science. Wherever somebody who has a doctor pepper every morning and a cigar and a whiskey every night, and they're 102, right?

Host: 00:06:24

Yeah, I've read those stories as well, and they're going, what are they doing?

Merianna Drew: 00:06:28

So there's something else at hand here. Right. We also know that social isolation is a greater risk factor for early death than smoking and not exercising.

Host: 00:06:37

In Japan, it was Okinawa, where people are living to 100 years old. It's a community thing. So they all go out together, exercise, do a multitude of different things.

They've got that team community environment where everybody helps one another, and they've got that social connection you're talking about. I think that there's a place in Italy that's got the same thing, and they've got a ton of people that are over 100 years old.

Merianna Drew: 00:07:05

Yeah, they call these the blue zone, actually, Japan.

It's part of the culture to eat whole, real food and out of all of the technologically advanced countries on the planet, Japan is the only one who has escaped that technological advance without also having obesity to go with it. And you go to Japan and you ask kids in school what their favorite foods are, and they say broccoli and rice.

Host: 00:07:29

Yep.

Merianna Drew: 00:07:30

They don't say pizza and hamburger.

Host: 00:07:32

Correct. Let's continue down that road. And how does this.

How does mindset, as you're talking and you glued your relationship back together, as you said, you sealed the cracks and the cement and everything else, how does that transcend into a work environment? Because if you've got issues at home, more than positive, you're going to have issues in the workplace.

Merianna Drew: 00:07:55

If you are experiencing stress at home because your relationship is embattled, you don't feel safe in your relationship, you don't feel connected, you feel abandoned. Whatever it is that feels bad in the relationship, that puts an enormous amount of stress on the body and on the mind.

And you take your body and your mind with you to work. Work can be very stressful. Right? We're solving problems. We're putting out fires. Whatever it may be. It can be, depending on what you do.

And it can be very stressful. In fact, my husband called me. It was yesterday. He called me, and he was just being chit chatty, and I was like, what's going on?

Cause it's in the middle of the work day, and his work was hectic, and it's really stressful. And I'm just so grateful that you're not stressful that I don't have stress at home to compound the stress that I have at work.

So I just wanted to say thank you.

Host: 00:08:47

And I was like, you're a superfan.

Merianna Drew: 00:08:49

He's my number one.

Host: 00:08:51

Kylie, as we mentioned, we're about to get married. She's my superfan, and I'm her superfan.

And I think that's important in a relationship, because you have that connection and you've got someone that's a fan of yours. That changes the dynamics.

Merianna Drew: 00:09:07

It changes everything in your life to know that as you approach home after work, you can become more and more relaxed as you get to home.

There are so many people out there who, as they approach home, tense up more and more because they know they've got a battleground to conquer there, too, and they're not conquering it. So they feel very frustrated, and they're getting a sense of learned helplessness because nothing I try, nothing I do is making it better.

And so they're getting checked out and disengaged. They're resigned to, this is never going to work, and I'm just going to have to put up with it or I'm going to lead this relationship.

But if they don't heal what's in them that created that relationship and contributed to it, they're pretty much doomed to repeat it with the next person.

And I think a lot of people intuitively know that when we get the feeling like we want to end something and sometimes things should end, but we also know intuitively that whether I end it or whether I stay, there's something going on here that is creating this. So start with yourself. Start a little bit. I might get temporary relief until I create the next sick dumpster fire of our relationship.

Host: 00:10:14

Yeah, no, totally agree. Up until my knee gave out and I need to get it replaced. Kylie and I will go out for a walk.

And that was our de stressor because we would share what took place at the office. And so she had this challenge, and that challenge. This customer called back, was ecstatic. He was a super fan, or she was a super fan of her.

Wrote her a phenomenal review. So she's flying high. That was our way of getting it out of us in a positive manner because we're also exercising.

We're outside, we're talking, we're walking. And when we would get back home, okay, now it's our time because we got it all out of our system.

Merianna Drew: 00:10:55

That's very smart.

And activity being in motion, when you're doing that, it's very useful for problem solving and getting unstuck from thought patterns that maybe created the stress that you're unloading. That movement is really key.

Host: 00:11:11

Yeah. And that's what keeps us together. That's one of the things is we do a lot of things together.

When I managed a company recently, that was one of the things that I instilled in the company, in the culture, was that we started doing things together.

So we would have periodically, we would have lunches, sometimes not the healthiest, because Costco was a mile away, and I would go get Costco pizzas and stuff. But the point was, we got together lunch, and a lot of times I did it unexpectedly. Nobody knew that was going to take place.

And that's how I created superfans within the company culture of my management style, because they come in and says, hey, we got lunch today. And everybody be like, but I brought lunch, put it in refrigerator, and eat it tomorrow. People were appreciative of that.

Merianna Drew: 00:11:59

Yeah. That's so important to create that environment of connectedness.

And shared experience in the workplace because otherwise you end up with rivalries and competition and gossip and all kinds of.

Host: 00:12:13

Just the team is the front line to prospective as well as existing customers as well as partners was an interpreting and translation company. You're dealing with the customer requesting an interpreter.

Then you're dealing with an independent contractor interpreter that doesn't work for you and is able to work for a multitude of other agencies. It's really important how that engagement goes.

Merianna Drew: 00:12:42

Because it's all relationships.

Host: 00:12:43

It's all relationship because you're the scheduler for the interpreter. You're not going to the customer. It's the independent contractor that's representing the company.

Mindset and attitude and engagement as we're talking is everything because if they don't feel appreciated and they don't have ability to vent back a little bit to the interpret coordinator, they're not going to perhaps do the interpreting job.

Merianna Drew: 00:13:09

And a lot of leaders don't realize that all of that culture and that feeling that people have when they're engaging in a business comes from the top down. It all starts with the leadership. And that's another place where relationships translate into the office.

Because you aren't good at relationships at home, you're likely not that great at relationships at the office.

There's still so many opportunities that leadership can take to better the way that they show up in the office to set the tone and the pace for everything in the office. Everybody's looking to the leader.

Host: 00:13:42

Yeah, totally agree.

Actually, in my new book that I'm in the process of writing, that's really one of the first chapter is having a growth mindset and teaching them about getting themselves out of their own way and empowering their team to make decisions. I use this example a lot, but its the best one out there.

Sir Richard Branson isnt busy checking the accounting, isnt busy checking how people are doing their jobs. Hes got people empowered.

Thats how the guy can be on his virgin voyages and greeting the passengers and having fun with the passengers because hes building up the brand or hes on the airline playing as a flight attendant, goofing off, or he's on his island entertaining people and you don't see him in the mix of the business. And yet he runs a multibillion dollar business. How does he do that? He's got the right mindset and he's empowered people.

Merianna Drew: 00:14:45

It stems in play.

Host: 00:14:46

What are some effective methods that people with conflicting personality types can deal with that situation both at home as well as in the work environment? And how does that affect things?

Merianna Drew: 00:15:03

Personality types can clash because there are different ways of seeing the world.

If we can learn to understand that other people have different perceptions and choose not to see their perception as a threat to ours, then we can get along very well with other people.

And we are able to let people have their own perceptions, let them have their own point of view without trying to take it from them and demanding that they see things the way that we see them. That's where a lot of conflict comes from, because we're individuals with subjective perspectives.

And if we see that subjective perspective that's different from mine as a threat to mine or destabilizing my perception, then we often get into attack and defend and war.

It really is just learning how to be secure in your own perception and allowing and accepting that other people are going to see things differently and then doing the effort to try to see things from their perspective as best you can.

Host: 00:16:02

I totally agree with that.

Because in our relationship when we first started off, I've come up with the rule that we're two individual people that have our own perceptions of life, our own goals, our own ambitions, etcetera. But we're coming together for the commonality between the two of us, and that's what we cherish.

And I can see that working into a work environment as well as you're getting different individual people, they're there for their own perspective, goals, objectives, and everything else.

And the commonality is that you're working to grow the company and create superfans for that company so that you've got now advocates that are basically promoting that company.

But if you can't take the time to say, okay, this person's personality is this way, they may come across abrasive, not their intent, and it's not personal. It's just their style that is the key, because people take it personally, and then it creates a multitude of problems.

And I know firsthand, and I've spent a lot of time trying to educate the other party, that this is their personality type. It's not personal. And you guys need to look at what you guys can work together on.

Merianna Drew: 00:17:18

Where's the common ground?

Host: 00:17:20

Exactly. And then focus on that and ignore the other part of the conversation.

Merianna Drew: 00:17:26

Right? Yeah. And I see this a lot with couples.

So typically, females are more emotionally based when they're looking at the world and making their model of their world, making decisions, assessing what to do, they're much more emotionally based than men. Men are more pragmatic, more using linear thinking, that kind of thing.

So the real disconnect happens when either one of them is expecting the other to think and process the way that they do and.

And they're dismissing the way the other person does it as invalid or nothing useful or not as important, or mostly just invalidating what they do and how they operate and demanding that they let go of that and that they abandon their way of operating for my way of operating. And that just really doesn't work.

Host: 00:18:19

It's a dead end.

Merianna Drew: 00:18:21

Totally. And we can come to appreciate the value of both of them. Right. Logic, linear thinking, rational stuff.

There's definitely a place for that, and it's great when it's used appropriately. And we also need to listen to our emotions, feel our emotions, process them, or they get stuck in our bodies and create disease.

Host: 00:18:40

And how important is acknowledging that you mucked up and saying sorry or I apologize? I handled it wrong both in a home environment as well. The work environment.

Merianna Drew: 00:18:55

Humility is a big thing that I work with all kinds of people on. I've noticed, though, specifically with women.

They really struggle with pride and men really struggle with cowardice in the marriage relationship or in the romantic relationship. But I think it would transfer to the office as well.

If you get into patterns of chickening out and not saying what should be said, then sometimes that happens at the office.

Host: 00:19:19

Yeah, I've seen where people are not getting along. I know one instance where somebody was curt with somebody and I pulled them aside and said, did you just realize? And they didn't realize it.

That was just their personality time. They were analytical personality. So they're a numbers person, and so it's just short, to the point, no editorial, no smoothing it over.

Boom, it's raw. I went to him and says, how would you like it if that was said to you? I guess I wouldn't like it. So I says, all right, then, man up and go apologize.

It took this individual a bit, but they finally went and apologized, and the other person was very grateful. And it just completely diffused the whole tension that was going on because this one was getting a negative attitude.

So they were not a super fan of that individual because of their curtness, and they felt disrespected.

Again, our mind plays games, but by getting that individual to acknowledged that they handled it wrong and they apologized for their wording, and that's the way they are, but they'll work on it. That diffused the whole situation, and everybody actually felt better.

And that individual, at the end of the day, came back to me and said, hey, you know what? I really appreciate you correcting me on that, because that's not the person I really want to be.

Merianna Drew: 00:20:42

That is so important that you said that everybody felt better. And, in fact, when we solve conflict together, we feel closer than we did before the conflict.

So a lot of people, when they brag about having a relationship where they never fight, I'm always thinking, oh, that's not the greatest situation, because when we solve problems together, we actually do come together more closely than before it all happened. Right. That's a really cool observation that you saw. When we can give each other grace, when we can really win that trick that the mind does. Right.

So a big part of what I do, Freddie, is I show people their minds and I help them see exactly what tricks their mind is playing on them. The deception that their mind is engaging in and the bait that they're taking from their brain. So that's half the battle. Right? How did I get here?

How did this mess happen? The other half is, okay, now I see what tricks my mind is playing. Now what do I do about that?

And that surrendering the perception that's causing the problem for giving it and then installing a perception that is better, not too far of a jump, because the brain, the nervous system, will not let us jump too far if it feels too unfamiliar to us.

So we've got to have a little bit better thought that'll create a better result or a little bit better result, and then step in those baby steps in that direction.

Host: 00:22:08

Yeah, totally agree.

I'll transfer that into a sales environment is you're dealing with a prospective customer and all seems to be going, and all of a sudden, you don't hear anything back from them. And so your mind starts to go into play. Okay, what did I do wrong? Did they buy from somebody else? What's going on?

Shoot them an email and call them right away. Timeout. They have a life. Things may be happening that are out of your control. You don't know what's going on, so don't assume anything.

Seven out of ten times, that person will get back to you maybe four days later. And now they're coming back and they're apologizing for not getting back to you, but they've had something to come up that they had to handle.

Right then, more importantly, you usually end up getting the deal because they feel bad that they didn't respond timely to you and you were doing your job, but they respected you because you gave them some road.

Merianna Drew: 00:23:02

Yes. And that right there, you just spoke to the biggest mind drama that most people deal with. We call this rumination.

So the brain hates unanswered questions. Our brain has evolved to be a really great problem solving machine, right? And so it hates unanswered questions.

And so the natural proclivity for the brain is to assume, to try to figure out and make up explanations and create a story for missing information. Really.

And the emotionally mature and mentally flexible person can sit on the fence when there's missing information and decide, I'm not going to assume good intent and I'm not going to assume bad intent. I'm not going to make up any story either way.

I am able to hold the feeling of uncertainty and this emotion, certainty, often that is most target emotion that people are going for when they're trying to control their outside environment. They're trying to create the emotion of certainty because they feel uncertain.

The only reason they feel uncertain because there's gaps in information and they cannot handle that uncertainty. They're unwilling to hold the feeling of uncertainty in their body. They can't tolerate it.

They're trying to create the feeling of uncertainty by changing the outside environment where we can just create the feeling of certainty with our mind.

Host: 00:24:24

Totally agree. And people need training on that. Yes. I've gone through thousands of hours of sales training, so I understand it.

I still catch myself because it's just human nature train. But I go, okay, hello. Quit doing that. Slap myself upside the head and go, okay, you're reacting. Quit reacting. I use the story.

You met somebody you're interested in romantically, you just meet them. I said, if you chase them, which is the same thing in sales, if you're chasing that person, what are they going to do?

Merianna Drew: 00:24:56

Run?

Host: 00:24:57

Run. If you're the calm, cool, collected person that's standing in a corner, and I don't care, I don't have a preconceived outcome.

You're all of a sudden attractive because you're not chasing.

Merianna Drew: 00:25:11

That's attractive coming from a place of being filled up. And graspiness comes from a perception of lack. I don't have and I need. Right. People are not attracted to that energy. People are attracted to.

I'm filled up. I'm whole, I'm full, Jeff.

Host: 00:25:24

I'm cool, I'm solid.

This is, I've had more success because I've had that attitude, that mindset, and I closed more sales in the business world and created more superfans because of that mindset. My customers, in the years I was in the software industry was my sales force. I didn't do prospecting.

My customers were telling me, calling me up or sending me an email saying, you need to talk to that company or this company. We just got done talking to them, and they're interested in the same technology. We told them how great you are.

I just show up and they'd say, okay, what do we need? How fast can you get it? And it was done.

Merianna Drew: 00:26:03

Yeah.

If anybody is in the sales role in any capacity, learning how to manage their own mind and their emotions is key, because you're not going to sell very well if you're not. If you can master that. You create a lot of superfans. And those superfans.

Like this week, on Thursday, I'm starting a new client who came to me as a referral from one of my previous clients. So it does work, but it starts with you, right? It starts with you being able to manage your mind and your emotion.

And sometimes you were saying that something happens and your brain comes up with an explanation for why it might be happening. So depending on the day that your health status can determine whether your brain goes negative or positive in that assumption.

Host: 00:26:47

I never thought of that.

Merianna Drew: 00:26:48

If you hadn't had enough sleep, if your blood sugar is crashing, I heard somewhere recently, I need to do some more research to verify it. But somebody told me that most phobias that people develop happen because of major crashes in blood sugar.

When an event happens, that creates the phobia.

So if you're moody because your hormones are tanking or whatever it is, that very much influences what your brain is going to do when you have missing information and people who have, like, chronic anxiety or they have unresolved traumas that is stored in the body as a constant state of alarm. Okay? And the brain is always tracking the body, and the brain sees that alarm bell and goes, oh, what could be wrong?

So it's on the hyper vigilance to find something that's wrong or to find a threat, even if a threat isn't there.

So it's so important for us to heal ourselves, to heal our bodies, heal our minds, heal our emotions, those old traumas from our childhood that we assigned meaning to, because they will come up in your present, and they will cause problems in your present relationships if you don't resolve them.

Host: 00:27:58

Yeah, you look at.

I'll take that into a business environment, and you look at a culture where the team is happy, they're having fun, they love the company that they're working for. They're telling everybody about the company. They're a super fan of that company, and it's collectively what's that company doing?

It's skyrocketing in business. They're going like gangbusters. And then you looked at other company where the culture is reactionary, people are not happy. It's just a job.

I'm here because I need the money. I don't like this place. I don't like what I'm doing. That company is flatlined if not going this way.

Merianna Drew: 00:28:43

An environment counts for a lot. Not just the company culture, but the actual environment. I was just reading this book last night called the Anatomy of Breakthrough.

Somebody did a wide study of a bunch of companies in the US. They surveyed startups, more developed companies, and companies that were on the Fortune 500, right?

They found that startups located in areas of high walking traffic, like where people. It was part of the environment that people just walked around.

Companies were doing better, more creative and breaking through on new ideas than companies situated in areas where people rode the.

Host: 00:29:18

Bus or drove a cardinal.

Merianna Drew: 00:29:20

Because walking, it helps the mind, it helps the body, it gets people unstuck. Literally, they're not stuck in a chair.

And so thinking can happen more efficiently and more grounded in reality, because your feet are on the ground.

Host: 00:29:34

It makes sense.

So you look at Apple, a very successful company, and that new office that they created, it's a campus, and people have to walk around to other places, and they got a park in the middle and everything else. And you're right. So that creates that environment that are ultra successful.

Merianna Drew: 00:29:53

Yeah, environment counts for a huge amount of how we show up and who we are. It's amazing how people, if you notice, you become a different person in a different environment.

You're a different person on vacation, you're a different person when you move houses.

You're a different person when you move states, because your routines change and that all influences your perceptions, mindset, your attitudes, and even with different people, right?

A lot of times I hear people say, I was this person in this relationship with a person who was cool, calm and collected, and then now I'm in a relationship with someone who's pretty emotionally volatile, and I'm emotional. My emotions are bubbling under the surface too. And I was never like this. It really makes a difference.

Host: 00:30:34

Oh, sure it does.

I had an earlier podcast, I had a gentleman by the name of Chris Carlisle, which was a strengthen training coach for the Seattle Seahawks, who is part of the Super bowl team. We talked about how a player can be mediocre on one team, so they trade them to another team, and all of a sudden they become a superstar.

What changed? Not that individual, the culture that they went into allowed that individual to be who they were. What you just said is so true.

So, Marianne, we're coming close to the end of the show here. Tell us a little bit about what offer do you have for our customers or our listeners? I should say so.

Merianna Drew: 00:31:11

I do one on one coaching, and my program is a twelve week program.

If you're thinking about exploring coaching and how that might benefit your relationships and decrease your overall stress, you can schedule a one on one discovery call with me. This is complimentary, and it's about 40 minutes to an hour.

We're going to talk about what's going on for you, what's working, what's not working, and really what you want to see moving forward, really create the vision of what is possible in your life. If I can help, I'll show you what that looks like. If not, I'll point you in a direction of somebody you can help.

Host: 00:31:45

Okay. How can people find you?

Merianna Drew: 00:31:46

You can find me on my website. It's maryandrew.com, and I better spell that because my name is spelled a little different, merianerew.com. and you can schedule a discovery call.

It goes straight to my calendar.

Host: 00:32:01

Okay. Miriam, thank you very much for being a guest on a business superfan podcast.

We've had a great conversation and I look forward to having you on a future show down the road.

Merianna Drew: 00:32:12

Yeah, great conversation. Thank you for having me.

Host: 00:32:14

Likewise.