232 MINISODE Mary DeMuth: Give Smart

Mary DeMuth is an author and entrepreneur helping business leaders grow their influence and impact as CEO of Book Launch Mentor.  Also a podcaster who brings her faith to the world with Pray Every Day,  Mary shares tips on how to hire, inspire and build great business relationships without “over-giving”. She also talks about her latest book The Seven Deadly Friendships – How to Heal When Painful Relationships Eat Away at Your Joy.

Melinda Wittstock:         Welcome to Wings, Mary.

Mary De Muth:                 Hey, it’s so great to be here.

Melinda Wittstock:         It is so good to see you and of course, we spent some time together recently at a wonderful podcasting conference called The New Media Summit. It was pretty awesome, right?

Mary De Muth:                 It was. It was eye opening and really a lot of education. It was great.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. Well, I’m excited today because two podcasters get to talk with each other. Of course, I always like to start these minisodes with what’s inspiring you right now.

Mary De Muth:                 I thought about it and first I thought okay, it’s always all of the women out there that are doing amazing things and I love to watch them, but I’ve been really taken by Adam Grant lately who has written a lot of books. One of the books he has written is “Give and Take.” He has this philosophy that actually people that do well in business are givers, but they’re smart givers. They know when to create boundaries around themselves and to give intelligently and not to burn out. I’ve just been thinking a lot about that lately.

Melinda Wittstock:         I love that. Smart givers. Because sometimes as women we can over give and there’s just nothing left of us. We burn out. We get an overwhelm. Being smart about it and having boundaries at the same time is really, really important. One of my segue into perhaps what’s challenging you right now. I mean we all have our challenges. Even when we’re like really succeeding and everything’s great, there’s still challenges.

Mary De Muth:                 Next week I am launching my 36th book. I am completely overwhelmed. I often tell people who write books, and they don’t believe me ever when I say this, but I tell them it takes more energy and time to launch a book than it does to write a book. I am in the troughs of overwhelm and trying to get all those details together and trying to be on shows and podcasts and blogs and trying to remember what my name is and all of that. Yeah, it’s overwhelm. Even getting to be a certain age, it’s forgetting details too, which has been really frustrating to me because usually I’m super detail-oriented, but that’s kind of changed a little bit the past couple of years.

I have to write everything down. I guess that would be my complete answer. I’m just a little overwhelmed right now.

Melinda Wittstock:         Okay. Well, before we get to your top pieces of advice, just tell me a little bit about your book.

Mary De Muth:                 It’s called “The Seven Deadly Friendships: How to Heal When Painful Relationships Eat Away at Your Joy.” It’s one of those books that I wanted to read and I couldn’t find. There’s all sorts of divorce recovery books out there, right? But there’s not a lot of friendship breakup recovery books. That’s what this book is about. It’s about why we attract toxic friendships and why we can be more intelligent about that and how we can heal in the aftermath of a broken relationship. That was a fun one to write. It’s definitely ripped from the headlines of my own life, so it’s a bit vulnerable. I’ll be busy running around promoting it in the next couple of weeks.

Melinda Wittstock:         It sounds like a great book and really needed because we’re only as good as the people we surround ourselves with. I find that sometimes people show up in our lives, they’re there for a reason because they show us something about ourselves.

Mary De Muth:                 That’s really astute and that’s something that I’ve been learning a lot lately is you’re right. I think it was Jim Rohn or Jim Rohn who says, “We’re the sum of our five relationships that we hang out with.” I’ve had to even lately had to look back and go, “Okay. Wait. Is that a good relationship for me,” because the people I spend time with are the people who are going to deeply influence who I am, my business, everything.

Melinda Wittstock:         All right. Okay. Mary, what are your top three go-to pieces of advice for women in business or any kind of leadership role?

Mary De Muth:                 Well, the first one I really wish I would take and it is to delegate your weaknesses. Today I was doing all sorts of social media posts and I thought, “I should be hiring this out. It’s so much work.” Finding out what I’m weak at and to delegate it to people who love it is actually a win-win because they win because they receive money for doing something they love and I win because I don’t have to do those things that I hate like spreadsheets. I hate them. I really need to hire someone to do those for me. The second one is to be faithful in small unseen places because who you are in those little places where nobody else sees you is actually who you really are.

In this world of social media where we can create some sort of crazy persona about ourselves is super awesome. I would rather air on the side of I’m just going to be myself and I’m going to have integrity in those small places because to me that really matters. Then one thing I learned while I was in my garden, I like to garden on the side, I had this gigantic yard and then a smaller littler part of a garden and I was working on like a three by three foot square. I realized the power of choosing small and tending large.

When I was able to focus on that three by three square and tend at large, I was able to make it produce really well because I was concentrating on that very small thing. What we tend to do is choose large and tend small. We choose like the big picture and we hit it like buck shot everywhere and then there’s no impact. Those are my three pieces of advice.

Melinda Wittstock:         Wow. That’s profound. I love this and I love the gardening metaphor because all too often as entrepreneurs there’s so much to be doing that it’s difficult sometimes to prioritize. Yeah, we do. I’m guilty of that sometimes. There’s so many things to be doing and, “Oh, look over here. Oh, look over there,” whatever, but having that focus is so important. Mary, when does your book come out, and how can people find it, and how can people also find you and your podcast and find you to work with you?

Mary De Muth:                 I actually mentor authors toward publication at booklaunchmentor.com. If that’s one of your passions, I can help you with that. Then the book is sevendeadlyfriendships.com. People can get a free quiz there to find out which toxic relationship they’re in. Then my podcast is PrayEveryday.show where if you feel like you need to be prayed for today. I pray for people 365 days a year, which is super crazy. I’m everywhere. I’m not choosing small tending large. My formal place is just marydemuth.com.

Melinda Wittstock:         Wonderful. Thank you for putting on your wings and flying with us.

Mary De Muth:                 Thank you. It’s been great to fly.