Today’s interview and podcast is with an extraordinarily talented business accelerator and guide. Dr. Stephie’s unique and highly effective approach to business success allows businesses to flourish and people to release their inner genius. You can see why we are excited to talk with her today and share some of her brilliance. And speaking of brilliance…
Key Takeaways From This Podcast:
- Gain inspiration from Intelliversity’s Jericho Center of Medical Diplomacy, with Robert Steven Kramarz acting as Vision Master, and support it on social media. See our webpage here.
- Stay tuned for the introduction of the Story Pitching course, for evoking trust with investors through stories
- Connect with Dr. Stephie Althouse to avoid “double death” and to scale your business through her “Brilliance Extraction” process
- Intelliversity only recommends Guides like Dr. Stephie that we have personally engaged, benefited from and respect, to remove your own barriers to expressing your Vision Mastery potential and growing your company.
- Dr. Stephie removes the things that block you in both your inner and outer games, by
a. Clarifying your brilliance (inner game) and
b. Building systems out of it (outer game) so others can replicate what you do - Please share the post on LinkedIn announcing this blog/podcast.
Transcript of Interview
Hi, vision masters out there. This is Robert Steven Kramarz of Intelliversity. And this is your Vision Master podcast. And today we have a very special guest star today, Dr. Stephie Althouse, creator and originator of Top-Notch CEO, and the whole idea of Brilliance Extraction. Dr. Stephie, how are you?
Stephie Althouse:
Fabulous. Thank you for having me.
Robert Steven Kramarz:
It’s really our pleasure, my pleasure. I think the vision masters that are listening or reading this will really enjoy discovering who you are. And part of that process will be to tell them how you’ve been helping me personally, and Intelliversity the last couple of months. As, this is a case in point, I will never introduce you to a guide until and unless I’ve personally employed, engaged with, and found useful, successful, and powerful what that guide has to bring. And then I’ll introduce her to you, or him to you. So this is what’s happened here with Dr. Stephie, is what she’s done.
Some of you already know that Intelliversity is managing and has launched a project in the Middle East called the Jericho Center of Medical Diplomacy. This is the first of three short topics we’re going to talk about today. All of which involve Dr. Stephie. So in the longterm, what we’re seeking to do is solve a problem of religious cultural conflict in the Middle East that’s endangering the whole world. In the midterm, our strategy to do that is to deal with very deep, long-lasting chronic medical problems in the Middle East that are made worse by the religious conflict there. And in the shorter term, to really deal with and wipe out the scourge of breast cancer in the Middle East. Which turns out to be markedly worse in the Middle East for religious and cultural and economic reasons. So to that end, we’ve established the Jericho Center of Medical Diplomacy to be located in Palestinian territory.
And this got… Surprisingly Dr. Stephie had a lot to do with this both directly and indirectly. So what, Dr. Stephie, what do you recall as your involvement in this amazing process?
Stephie Althouse:
Well, at first I didn’t realize I was involved at all because I wasn’t the one who came up with the idea. And I wasn’t even the one who told you to get going on it and that you had done enough planning. That was Robbie Bohla, as we just discussed. But you came to me and said… Well, we had some conversations about creating courses from the knowledge that you have in your head, and story pitching came up. And the goal was to basically increase the impact of what you know about story pitching. Because you’re phenomenal at teaching other people, vision masters in particular, on how to create stories so that investors will listen up in a unique way and develop trust very, very quickly.
So, as we began to do this work, there was this side effect that happens that, as I’ve learned, has actually to do with and points back to Jericho Center of Medical Diplomacy, and that is telling your own stories on behalf of that medical center. What I found is that, and I think we’ve all had that experience, is that we may be really, really good at a certain skill and teaching other people how to put that skill into motion for them. But we are often so close to ourselves, that applying that skill to ourselves proves a little bit more difficult. Is that what happened?
Robert Steven Kramarz:
Well, it’s kind of what happened, not exactly in that order. But in discovering through you how to improve my story, or I should say our story, about the problem in the middle east, the breast cancer and of the cultural conflicts there. By improving that story, two things happened.
One, I actually launched the Jericho center of Medical Diplomacy and resources started pouring in. Money, expertise, contacts, even government, and rural contacts are facilitating the process. Never could have happened if I hadn’t really mastered how to tell the story. And it no longer was a dream… I didn’t have to prepare anymore. I was actually now able to execute and carry out this vision. In other words, be my own vision master
Secondly, it then dawned upon me and you that we should tell our vision masters how to tell their story so that they could attract the resources, contacts, and expertise they need. Talking to you out there, you need. So that your visions become real in the real world.
Stephie Althouse:
Absolutely. As a recovering Ph.D. chemist, I can firsthand tell you that it did not teach us how to tell stories well, or at all, in PhD graduate school. And that when you are working on making something happen with what you know, that storytelling is so effective. Way more than just telling facts. And in the course that we’re working on right now with the story pitching, we going, we explain how this works and we’re guiding people through it. And we’ve baked all these iterative processes of giving feedback to stories that you draft, and that we draft, etc. It’s phenomenal. To bake that feedback, that normally could only happen in person, to bake that into a course that could be used either with a guide or even without a guide.
Robert Steven Kramarz:
By the way, we’ve done all this on zoom for the last three or four months, the entire Jericho Center has been done on zoom, and the development of the story pitching course, which you’ll benefit by, all of this remotely. That’s an amazing side story.
Stephie Althouse:
It truly is!
Robert Steven Kramarz:
But I think I want to take a few minutes and let you tell your story, Dr. Stephie, about how you reached this point in your career. What was the big… When did the light go on about Brilliance Extraction specifically?
Stephie Althouse:
That’s a great question because I’ve done Brilliance Extraction different forms for quite a few years, but it probably was only about three years ago, three or four maybe, that I was sitting with Irene Donnell from P5 Marketing. We were sitting together and saying, “well, how can we do better? A better job, even better job at marketing talk, even better at closing?” And then Irene said, “You know what you’re really good at it is to pull wisdom out of someone’s head, and their vision and their plans and their knowledge. And you lay it before them in a way that they can see it from a new angle, with fresh eyes. And all of a sudden they can do all these marvelous things with it that they couldn’t do with it before.” And I said “Yeah. You know, that’s true. That’s exactly what I do. What do you call that?”
And so that’s where we coined this phrase, Brilliance Extraction. And now then that it had a name, I begin to flesh it out, even into a useable system. And today what it is, and for some time now what it is, is a three-step process where we look at what is that knowledge, this expertise that somebody is just carrying in their head. I called that brilliance. It’s not the thing that makes you think about everyday things. It’s the knowledge that you can’t be without, your organization can’t be without. It’s operational knowledge, all kinds of knowledge, often uniquely yours, once “packaged” can launch new opportunities and boost success.
Robert Steven Kramarz:
Let me interrupt you, Dr. Stephie, here so that we get the scenes set. What’s the situation that our vision masters may find themselves in right now that would motivate them to call you.
Stephie Althouse:
They go like, “Man, I am smart, I got all this knowledge. I got all these visions or this really big vision, and I have all this stuff on my plates, but I can’t delegate any of it. The people around me don’t get it. Or if they do it, they only do it half as good as I would do it. Or I have to do it myself.” And, and that severly limits the growth rates. They cannot scale. They can’t have the impact they envision. They can’t generate the kind of financial reward that they were hoping for.
Robert Steven Kramarz:
So in view, they’re frustrated because they can’t actually actualize their vision rapidly enough.
Stephie Althouse:
Frustrated and frankly, they’re exhausted.
Robert Steven Kramarz:
Exhausted.
Stephie Althouse:
Exhausted.
Robert Steven Kramarz:
Their plates are overflowing.
Stephie Althouse:
Right-
Robert Steven Kramarz:
So you’d take them through this process. Okay. I don’t want to get into details of that because we don’t have time for the details of it. But you take them through the process of Brilliance Extraction, right?
Stephie Althouse:
Yes.
Robert Steven Kramarz:
You did that for me. You actually, we’re still doing that. And what’s the end result now? How are they at the end of the process?
Stephie Althouse:
Well at the end of this, they had this plate full of, we’ve talked about this metaphor, full of food. There’s so much food on there. It’s like, this is all the stuff that you have to take care of. They can’t possibly eat all this food. So we teach them basically to take all this brilliance, which is the food, to hand it out to other people so they can grow and scale-up. Now they generate some space on that plate.
So they have time again. They have time to invent new things, think of new visions, take action on a key piece, or maybe take a break. Maybe to get a night of sleep actually for change. So at the end of the day, they’re going to be a heck of a lot more relaxed, a whole lot more successful, and they’re going to be proud. They’re going to be proud that their vision actually took root and made an impact in the world and left it a better place.
Robert Steven Kramarz:
You know, you talked to me about something when we first got going. You called that your avoiding the double death.
Stephie Althouse:
Yes.
Robert Steven Kramarz:
That was very clever.
Stephie Althouse:
Yes. I said that losing your brilliance – ideas, knowledge, and momentum can result in double death if you take it to the grave.
Out of that idea, I wrote this Declaration of Brilliance, and you can actually go to the website and find it there. But the Declaration of Brilliance, I have it right here. It actually says, here it is.
Robert Steven Kramarz:
You better read the essence of that.
Stephie Althouse:
Well, your life, you’ve learned so much. You’ve forgotten how much you’ve learned. Your expertise is second nature to you. It is you. Your life’s work is your baby. You have nurtured and grown it in good times and in bad. It makes a difference. Future proof it, scale it up and protect it.
And then there are five points here, one of which you referred to. So I’m going to read that one. That losing the brilliance in your brain is like a double death. Think about it. Do not take your expertise, your passions, what makes you tick to the grave. Share it. Now. And I’m not saying share it with your competition. I’m saying share it with the people that can help you grow this so that you get the reward you deserve. And then you get to make the impact that you are here to create.
Robert Steven Kramarz:
So now guys, ladies, now you know why Dr. Stephie, why I personally engaged with Dr. Stephie, why she is a guide in Intelliversity and why I’m recommending you reach out and talk to her. You’re offering that 30-minute consult, no charge?
Stephie Althouse:
Correct.
Robert Steven Kramarz:
How do they reach you, Dr. Stephanie?
Stephie Althouse:
Just go to Top Notch CEO and there’s a button where you can say, contact me, click there. And you can set up a 30-minute chat. And we’ll chat about what your brilliance is and what you’re up to, what you want to do with it. And then you will leave with something valuable, more than likely, that’s been my experience. And if we’re a good fit, great! And if we’re not, that’s okay too. I just love to connect with you and see what you’re up to.
Robert Steven Kramarz:
Thank you very much, Dr. Stephie. I hope you vision masters do that. If it at all touches you, you can always reach me at the intelliversity.org connect page. This is Robert Steven Kramarz. This is your Vision Master podcast, because that’s the way it will be. Signing off for now, see you next week.
Stephie Althouse:
Thank you.