Bernie Borges [00:00:02]:
Imagine a weighted toy clown. You punch it, it hits the floor, but it immediately pops back up. Now look at your own leadership. When you take a hit, a lost client, a bad quarter, maybe a personal crisis, do you pop back up instantly or do you stay down for days? Most leaders let one setback derail their entire month. But today’s guest, Paula Chiocchi, has mastered the physics of resilience. From a toxic corporate gut punch to a life changing divorce. She didn’t just survive. She turned those hits into rocket fuel.
Bernie Borges [00:00:44]:
This isn’t just a story about bouncing back. It’s a masterclass on how to make your setbacks profitable. You’ll hear how Paula flipped some of her most difficult moments into her greatest assets. Her story will show you how to stop treating adversity like a stop sign and start using it as a competitive edge. If you feel like you’re winning on paper but losing your edge, Paula’s story may give you the strategy that you’ve been missing. Paula, welcome to the Life Fulfilled podcast. Let’s get right to it. You have an amazing story, and I know a little bit about your story.
Bernie Borges [00:01:24]:
You told me that your father was a big influence on your resilience, your bounce back. So why don’t we start there? Give us that backstory.
Paula Chiocchi [00:01:32]:
Well, Bernie, thanks for having me. I’ve known you for a while and I appreciate the invite to be on your podcast. Yes, my father was a big influence in my life. From the time I was a very little girl. I was taught to do the best I could do every day by my father and to look in the mirror at night and say, I did the best I could do every day. And that’s been a guiding philosophy for me because, well, it’s just important to be able to feel good about yourself at night, to know that you did put in the best effort and do the best you could do that day. But the other thing is that him being in military, we was pretty strict in our household. And I can remember as a kid, if you try to come forward and say, this is why I screwed up or how I made the mistake, it was always no excuse.
Paula Chiocchi [00:02:20]:
So for me, that no excuse went to no excuse for me not to get something done or for me to solve a problem or for me to power through whatever the issue is, because I have a firm belief that in business, even when there’s a problem or you make a mistake with a client or what have you, there’s always a fix and a workaround. And that’s your job as a leader. To figure out what those are to make the client happy and is to fix whatever the problem is.
Bernie Borges [00:02:49]:
Now, I know that you’ve had challenges along the way. Of course, you know, many of us have, but, you know, you’ve had your individual problems. As I said in the introduction, you’ve had some corporate toxicity. You’ve had a divorce. And so how have you reframed those challenges into success and opportunity?
Paula Chiocchi [00:03:09]:
Well, you know, corporate times, toxicity in the workplace is never fun. It actually ended up being the best thing that ever happened to me. And I say that because when I was a teenager, what I told my parents was that I was going to start a business and be a business owner one day when I was, like, 13. And then I went the corporate route, and I probably would still be there today if the toxicity didn’t happen, because that’s what pushed me out.
Bernie Borges [00:03:36]:
And.
Paula Chiocchi [00:03:36]:
And then it was like, okay, why don’t you go do what you really wanted to do anyway? And so, no, it didn’t feel good when you go through it. But in retrospect, I’m glad it happened because now I’m doing what I really always wanted to do.
Bernie Borges [00:03:49]:
So you’ve been an entrepreneur for how now?
Paula Chiocchi [00:03:52]:
Since 1998?
Bernie Borges [00:03:54]:
It’s a few decades. Yeah. Yeah. Now, I know that, you know, I’ve not been through a divorce, but I know many people who have. And, you know, you mentioned in your prep call that your divorce, while not a fun experience for anybody, it also was sort of a catalyst for you. So maybe you can elaborate on that.
Paula Chiocchi [00:04:14]:
Well, no, nobody wants to get divorced. Part of it is. And I can’t speak for other people, but for myself, I felt like a failure. Okay. And then I wasn’t able to make it work. But once I got past that, I was living in Houston, Texas, at the time, and I thought, you know what? I’m just gonna uproot and change my life. So I moved out to LA a couple years after the divorce, and that’s where I was able to found the business. And so it’s.
Paula Chiocchi [00:04:39]:
And it’s been great. I love living here. So you know that old saying, turn lemons into lemonade? I’m a firm believer in that one. In fact, to the point where I have a brother that says, I’m so sick of you finding the silver lining and everything. And I said, but that’s the only thing I know how to do. I mean, you look for the best part of it, you know, I mean, actually, it’s better on your psyche if you’re Able to do that, to be able to make lemons out of lemonade and go to the positive. There’s negatives all over, all around us, there’s negativity. And for me it’s like I want to be around positive based people and putting positivity into the universe if possible.
Bernie Borges [00:05:20]:
Now I know that also an aspect of your story is ambition. You even touched on it already. So maybe you can go back to that and elaborate on the role that ambition has played in your life.
Paula Chiocchi [00:05:33]:
Well, to me you need to have ambition and drive, okay, so you can be ambitious, but you don’t know what to do with how to get it done. So you need to me need the ambition and then the drive to get it done. But one of the things that was important to me based on that experience of toxicity in the work environment was to create an environment where that didn’t exist. So over the years, employees have come and gone, but always give a voice to the employees to hear what they had to say. Sometimes they’re right and I’m wrong. And I had three entrepreneurs come out from working, I mean, go and be an entrepreneur after working with me. And each one of them I’ve looked to mentor. They have to have ambition.
Paula Chiocchi [00:06:19]:
I’ve told them you’ve got to have the drive and the ambition and the stick to itiveness to be able to do that. And so that’s important to me that people understand that. It’s just not about, I’m in business, what are you offering? What are you going to do for people? How are you going to make it work? What are the components that you need to do? And that’s all about drive and ambition. And if you don’t have it, I would suggest don’t become an entrepreneur.
Bernie Borges [00:06:47]:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I’m living that myself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, for those that, that don’t know, I went through a 15 year journey where I had a business that I started. So it was an entrepreneurship. Then I did the unthinkable. Paul. I went back to corporate for three years.
Bernie Borges [00:07:05]:
I remember which, which was an interesting experience for me. And it was mostly good and it was mostly good because there wasn’t toxicity, it was good people. The gentleman I reported to was a really great guy, smart guy, good guy. He led with head and heart, which is what I’m all about. So it was a good experience. But then it was time for me to go to my next chapter, which is what I’m doing now, Fulfilled at Work Academy. And so that’s at the time of this recording a little bit more than a year. So I’m kind of back in that.
Paula Chiocchi [00:07:38]:
Which is also fulfilling you, right?
Bernie Borges [00:07:40]:
Absolutely. I mean, with an exclamation point, you know, 10 times over. Absolutely. Yeah.
Paula Chiocchi [00:07:46]:
It’s timely.
Bernie Borges [00:07:47]:
Yes, it is, it is.
Paula Chiocchi [00:07:48]:
The marketplace has changed. You know, back in the day, it was just, get your work done, go home. No voice, share a voice, no contribution. You know, it’s different now. People don’t want that anymore. They want to be. Be part of something. They want to be part of something that they can make bigger and better in the work environment.
Paula Chiocchi [00:08:08]:
You spend half your life at work. You want to be happy.
Bernie Borges [00:08:11]:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think we actually spend two thirds of our waking hours at work.
Paula Chiocchi [00:08:16]:
Is it two thirds?
Bernie Borges [00:08:17]:
Well, in terms of the awake time that we have, yeah, it’s two thirds of the time that we’re awake.
Paula Chiocchi [00:08:24]:
And for some of us, it’s more.
Bernie Borges [00:08:26]:
Yeah, yeah. Especially for your entrepreneur. You know the old saying, right? When you’re an entrepreneur, you can make your own hours. You can work any 18 hours you want.
Paula Chiocchi [00:08:38]:
That’s right.
Bernie Borges [00:08:40]:
So, you know, you said that, you know, things are evolving, things have changed. But there’s one observation that I’m making, and I’m seeing it also, not only anecdotally, but I’ve seen it in some data, Paula, and that is that command and control leadership is still out there, but yet there’s. This revolution is probably too strong of a word, but there’s definitely a resistance to command and control leadership. Why don’t you speak to that? Because I know you’ve experienced it, and I know that that’s not how you lead your people in your company.
Paula Chiocchi [00:09:15]:
Well, I mean, the truth of the matter is I have a tendency to command and control personality, and I think a lot of leaders do have that instinctually because that’s how they manage to get up and do what they do every day. So it’s a matter of checking those impulses, because I do think I’m right most of the time. So you don’t have to check the impulse and then bring people into the conversation. Bring the people that work for you to get their ideas and to me, have a mix of age, from the millennial to the Gen X or whatever, so you can get the different perspectives from the different generations, too. So I had to work on it. It didn’t come naturally. And so what I found is you have happier people that are employed by you if you adopt the inclusiveness and allow them to have a voice. It’s a big Deal.
Paula Chiocchi [00:10:11]:
And again, it doesn’t come naturally for me. I had to work on it.
Bernie Borges [00:10:15]:
I talk about self awareness all the time. I share the following data point. I’ve shared it many times on this podcast. In fact, it’s a fairly recent data point that I came across from Harvard, which is that only 15% of all of us, like in the human race, are self aware. And actually they. Yeah, and they, they actually put the descriptor in front of that. Sufficiently. 15% of us are sufficiently self aware.
Bernie Borges [00:10:42]:
Which, when I saw that, Paula, that was welcome data for me because I’ve known that anecdotally, just from life experience, just dealing with people both in the workplace and outside the workplace, who simply were not self aware of how they lead, how they interact, how they influence, how they get things done. And so when, why don’t you comment on that? Like what, what has been your self awareness sort of journey?
Paula Chiocchi [00:11:14]:
Well, first of all, I had no idea it was that low. I would have probably said 50% were self aware. But, man, that’s kind of disappointing to hear, actually. You know, for me, sometimes I think I’m too self aware because I am also an empath. So I can kind of feel what other people are feeling sometimes. That sounds crazy, but I’m able to compartmentalize it, you know, so I’m really good at that. So to me, the understanding, getting outside of yourself and understanding what somebody else may be going through, you know, because people have lives outside of work. Okay.
Paula Chiocchi [00:11:55]:
And truly, when people come in the door, I can kind of tell where they’re at just by looking at them. So again, that’s something that I don’t know. If you learn it, I think you can get better at it. But I think some people maybe are natural at it, because I know you are, and I think I am, but I think you can work on it. Excuse me. And get better at it.
Bernie Borges [00:12:16]:
So I describe it this way. While you sip your water and clear your throat.
Paula Chiocchi [00:12:22]:
Allergy season out here in la.
Bernie Borges [00:12:24]:
Okay, I describe it this way. There’s this concept of consciousness competent. So take a professional athlete in any sport, if they’re professional, they have become a conscious, competent. You can’t become a professional athlete if you don’t know exactly your routine, your skills, you know, and all the little details that go into being successful at the professional level.
Paula Chiocchi [00:12:55]:
Agreed.
Bernie Borges [00:12:57]:
However, there’s a lot of people in life that really go through life with unconscious competence. Like they may be good at something, but they couldn’t tell you exactly why or how it’s Just sort of a natural thing and they just kind of sort of do it that way and it just gets done. And their unconscious competence, when it comes to self awareness, I think we need to be conscious competence.
Paula Chiocchi [00:13:20]:
I agree.
Bernie Borges [00:13:21]:
You know, and that’s where I think, you know, my five pillar approach. Health, fitness, career, relationships and legacy. And so what I do is I ask leaders to look at themselves first, look at their own fulfillment across those five pillars.
Paula Chiocchi [00:13:34]:
Not easy to do.
Bernie Borges [00:13:36]:
Not easy to do. But what it does, Paula, is if I go through that exercise and then as a result of that exercise, I become self aware of where I’m fulfilled and where I’m not fulfilled, what that does for me as a leader is I can look at my people and say, you know, they’re going through their own version of the same journey I’m going through. Their details are unique to them, but at least I’m aware that they’re going through the same journey.
Paula Chiocchi [00:14:04]:
Yep, for sure. And then make some allowances for that, you know, because we are human beings, we’re not machines, we’re robots. And I would say that some people probably think I don’t do it the right way, being like that. But I think it is the right way. And hence I have people stay with me a long time. I think they know that I genuinely care about them and that they want the best for them. And then if they are going through a period of time, I’m available if need be, therapist or anything like that. But if, you know, somebody needs the time off or something like that, whatever, if there’s challenges to respect that.
Paula Chiocchi [00:14:48]:
Now as a leader, I don’t feel like I have the same. I don’t get accorded the same that I have to be on. Because you are the leader. I mean, you signed on to be the leader. And I think that comes from childhood too. My dad was a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force. He was a leader, you know, and that’s one of the other things you said, own the room. When you’re in the room, I don’t care how scared you are, own it.
Paula Chiocchi [00:15:13]:
You know, good advice. But back to what you were saying though. The employees and people that work for you, they’re there because they want to be under your leadership or they don’t stay and people will leave if they’re not happy or not giving. As you live this portion of your life with teaching people how to embrace being fulfilled and if you’re not happy where you’re working, then you shouldn’t be there because it’s difficult enough every day out there in the universe without coming into an environment you’re not happy about. I want people to be happy every day. They walk into that. And one of the things that we do is we really try to take care of our clients to the best of our ability, develop programs and campaigns. You know, being in the marketing business that are successful for them, that makes me happy.
Paula Chiocchi [00:16:07]:
And then they’re happy because I would.
Bernie Borges [00:16:09]:
I would argue that it makes you fulfilled. And the reason I’m nitpicking that is because. But the reason I nitpick it, Paul, is because happiness is an emotion associated with a circumstance. And I realize when you do something great for a client, that is a circumstance. But fulfillment is associated with achievement. So if you’re achieving something with your client, then that gives you that sense of fulfillment. And yes, there’s overlap. You can certainly experience fulfillment and happiness, but you can also have happiness all by itself associated with a circumstance.
Bernie Borges [00:16:43]:
It doesn’t really give you that deep sense of fulfillment. But I want to before I lose this thought. You’ve overcome a lot of adversity and you say that you’ve reframed so sales and even business as a game. So maybe you can kind of speak to that in the context of resilience. Because I would imagine in 28 years in business you haven’t won every single deal and opportunity that you’ve gone after. Right? So speak to that.
Paula Chiocchi [00:17:12]:
Well, to be honest with, I can’t remember which book it was I read years ago, but it was evaluating different types of employment and what made those people feel fulfilled in their work. So it gave an example of somebody that was cleaning five star hotels and how they would lay on the bed and see if there was dust on the fan going around and they put the little chocolates out and then they felt that they were part of, they were cross trained in the hotel and felt like they were part of something. Then when I read the section on, because I have a sales background, when I read the section on sales, it stayed that said that they mistakenly thought that salespeople just loved cold calling. That’s the worst part of it when I was in sales. But they said the ones that were the most successful, the ones that treated it as a game, I thought, well, that’s what I do, you know, because you’re going to win and you’re going to lose, but you can’t. If you lose, then where did we lose and why did we lose? How do we lose? How do we address that? But you’re not going to Win every deal. So I don’t like losing them and I want to know why. But then you look at it as, okay, I’ll get the next one.
Paula Chiocchi [00:18:26]:
And you can’t take it personal either because there might be varying reasons why you don’t win a bid or what have you. But yeah, I always treat it as a game. A good game, though. You want to get the client and bring them in, do a good job for them.
Bernie Borges [00:18:43]:
Is that a mindset that you’ve instilled in your people?
Paula Chiocchi [00:18:48]:
Yeah. Yeah, you need to. Because it would be false to think that you would win every deal. And then if you don’t. What I try to do, we have a debrief. You know, where did we fall short? Was it actually in the data itself? It wasn’t quite what they needed. Or did. Did we ask for charge, have too high of a cost on the proposal? Where did we lose and debrief on that and try to get it from the person that we’re trying to get the business from as well from them.
Paula Chiocchi [00:19:22]:
How did you come to your decision process?
Bernie Borges [00:19:26]:
I know that you are in at least one, if not more than one, mastermind group, CEO group. What do you see in those conversations when it comes to leadership, resilience, all that.
Paula Chiocchi [00:19:43]:
I’ve been in my executive group over 20 years, and what I see is a lot of people are missing all the things that you’re talking about. Don’t know how to relate to the employees, don’t know how to make them feel like they’re part of the team. Command and control, like you were saying earlier, you know, using. Using that. And I think in my specific group, there’s about 20 of us. I think they’re surprised that I’m able to step out of that command and control based on them knowing me. But again, it’s work. And I think some of the people, I thought, God, I could never work for that person, you know.
Paula Chiocchi [00:20:23]:
But then that also gets back to the toxicity in corporate America where I literally shifted that because I didn’t want that to happen again. I didn’t want anybody working with me to feel like that way I felt, you know, and I think I’ve done a pretty good job of that. But, yeah, I think the natural in leadership is, what I see is command and control is where they feel right. You know, I’m the leader, I’m the commander. I’m in control. Guess what? Sometimes I’m wrong. You know, Sometimes I think, well, this way we should do it. And somebody comes at it from a different Angle and I’m willing to admit when I’m wrong.
Paula Chiocchi [00:21:00]:
And I think a good leader will admit when they’re wrong. And that’s hard for a lot of leaders to do.
Bernie Borges [00:21:07]:
So you’re seeing a lot of the lacking self awareness, the command and control mindset, which unfortunately doesn’t surprise me. What about resilience? What are you seeing among the leaders that you interact with in the executive group? What are you seeing in the way of resilience? Because they’re also winning and losing. Right. So when they’re losing, whatever that might be, what are you seeing in the way of resilience?
Paula Chiocchi [00:21:34]:
Some really buckle down and kind of regroup. I mean one guy in my group who’s in the executive placement business, you know, and then in the economy book fell apart. He shifted to short term employment. He’s doing great, but he made the shift because he had to. Some people might just go out of business. Don’t need executive search right now in tech, uh oh, now what do I do? So that’s resilience. You know, you have to lay off almost all your people and rebuild from the ground. That’s resilience.
Paula Chiocchi [00:22:10]:
And I was very impressed when he was able to do that. And I think if you’re going to survive as a business owner, you better learn some resilience. You may not make it.
Bernie Borges [00:22:23]:
So. You know what I love about your story, Paula, is that it really touches almost all the pillars. I mean, we haven’t talked about fitness, but I mean health, I always say health is both physical and mental. So a lot of what you discuss here really is about of the mental game of life, not just in business, but of life. A lot of what we talked about, of course, is career related. You know, you had your corporate career and then the last 28 or so years, your own business, running a marketing company, but then also relationships. I mean, you can’t be successful doing what you’re doing, which you have been without having solid relationships in your own network company and as well as your network, as you said. And then the last one is legacy.
Bernie Borges [00:23:12]:
How much do you think about legacy?
Paula Chiocchi [00:23:15]:
Yeah, that’s one I hadn’t really thought a lot about. Okay, we should start thinking about it.
Bernie Borges [00:23:21]:
Well, here’s what I encourage you to think about, Paula. And legacy is not just how do you want to be remembered one day after you’re gone? Because some people would say that’s a morbid thought even though it’s just reality. Yeah, reality, yeah. But I say legacy is today. Like what’s the impact that you can have on people today. And from what I know of you, you’re already having a legacy impact just based on how you lead your people.
Paula Chiocchi [00:23:48]:
Well, I like the way that you frame that because I always think of a legacy as after you’re gone. You know, what mark did you leave, if any. So I appreciate that. I write that. There you go doing it now.
Bernie Borges [00:24:02]:
There you go. There you go. Well, your story is really inspiring. I know we didn’t get too personal, but I know you know a little bit about the. Your background in terms of some of the adversity that you’ve had and how you, again, you’ve really reframed that into a bounce back and into a positive, motivating mindset that has given you this success in life. Not just in business, Paul, not just in your entrepreneurship and running your company and doing great client work and all that, which is great stuff, but just. But in life in general, you know, so. So I love your story.
Bernie Borges [00:24:38]:
How can someone listening or watching want to connect with you and just want to get into your world?
Paula Chiocchi [00:24:45]:
Well, I’m on LinkedIn like everybody else and my website is outwardmedia.com o u t w a r d media.com and I’m on all the social channels, on Facebook, everything. So love to hear from people.
Bernie Borges [00:25:00]:
All right, terrific. Well, Paula, my listener knows that all that will be linked up in our show notes. And I just want to thank you so much for joining me for this episode on the Life of Phil podcast and just sharing your story in this conversation. I really, really enjoyed it.
Paula Chiocchi [00:25:16]:
Well, me too, Bernie, because I think what you’re doing is very timely and important, everything you’re doing. And I appreciate you.
Bernie Borges [00:25:23]:
Thank you, Paula.
