616 Sheila Unique:

They say success in business is all about who you know more than what …you know. It’s time to update that to say your success is about who you are being … and how you are relating to those around you … because your success will all come down to the success of your relationships – with your partner, your kids, your team, your vendors, and your customers.

MELINDA

I’m Melinda Wittstock and today on Wings of Inspired Business we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who has been innovating in the world of relationships for 17 years by helping people build great relationships from the inside out.

Sheila Unique is the CEO & Founder of Relatefully Training & Speaking, helping women grow their Self Awareness and resolve everyday life problems in relationships. She’s also a #1 International Best-Selling Author /Award Winning Speaker.

Sheila is truly unique (there is a whole story about that in a moment) and she’ll be here in a moment. First…

Sheila Unique is all about helping people step into their uniqueness. Known as the Relationship Renovator, Sheila is a transformational healer whose incredible insights bring relief quickly and easily without the long struggle of therapy and counseling. She helps people build authentic relationships from the inside out. An #1 International Best-Selling Author, Award-Winning Speaker and Educator, Sheila has helped tens of thousands of people resolve the unrest they feel inside and establish a strong relationship with the most important person in their lives—themselves.

She’s the author of Relatefully: How to Gain Greater Relationships from the Inside Out – and she shares her mission at Relatefully.com through her products, programs, and services.

Sheila says that “given the right tools, any situation can be brought to a state of calm, healing and transformation.”

Today we talk about your most important relationship: the one you have with yourself.

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Sheila Unique.

Melinda Wittstock:

Sheila, welcome to Wings.

Sheila Unique:

Oh, I’m excited to be here. Thanks Melinda. I’m looking forward to flying with you.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh yes, please. Let’s do that. I really want to start by asking you, how did you get into the relationship business to begin with?

Sheila Unique:

Oh my gosh. All of the things I struggled with in my own business, moving forward and how each interaction I had with somebody was a relationship. I also started to recognize in my own business that I had a relationship with the business. I had a relationship with money. I had a relationship with building clients. It all seemed to be a relationship. And that was the beginning of the journey of building relationships.

Melinda Wittstock:

And for female entrepreneurs, this is an interesting one, because we’re so in our business that it can be a constant, it’s constantly on your mind when it’s your own business as opposed to having a job. And how does that tend to interplay for women and their romantic relationships while they’re running, growing, scaling businesses?

Sheila Unique:

Whenever it comes to any relationship, Melinda, I’m sure you’ve experienced it, it’s all about communicating with others, and you bet that’s important. But what I’ve very much come to appreciate is the something that’s even more important is the communicating with yourself. And that comes through a whole different set of communication tools, which I’ve mastered in my life. And it’s about being aware of what’s going on inside, in relation to what’s happening outside of you. And that’s when you interact with the different people, do they get you to the place where you feel so darn good at the end of the day because of what you’ve accomplished in your business, or are you in this place where you’re frustrated because you can’t connect with that, people aren’t getting back to you, and it’s all about that inner communication.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, it’s the relationship with yourself. I’ve come to the conclusion over my entrepreneurial career as a serial entrepreneur, that ultimately it comes down to do we value ourselves, do we love ourselves, right? Are we in alignment with our true kind of inner being, if you will.

Sheila Unique:

Absolutely. But is it so much about love now as much as it’s about growing in awareness. And when I say growing in awareness, to me awareness is so important and I relate to it a lot, like looking in a mirror, because what’s being reflected back is filled with information. And it’s not the information that you get as far as, do I look good today, or is my hair straight? The information I’m talking about is what’s being reflected back, how you feel about what’s going on in your life, what’s going on in your business. Are you in a place where you are strong enough to move forward and deal with what’s going on around you as far as clients, as far as the finances, as far as what’s going on even in your personal life?

Melinda Wittstock:

So you said something about what reflects back to you. So if you’re in a bad relationship, or a toxic relationship, or if you’re having problems with your team, if the relationships just aren’t good. What does that tell you about what’s going on within you?

Sheila Unique:

The reflection is amazing, and I invite the listeners, I invite you Melinda, as a business woman, to be in a place where it’s not coming back at you, and reflecting back to you about how awful you are as a person, but the only time that I really encourage people to really pay attention, be aware, is when we’re in a place of reaction. And a reaction will be as much as closing down because you’re upset, or somebody has all of a sudden said something, or cut you off in conversation, or isn’t listening to what you have to say and your voice is getting louder. Those are the times where we need to pay attention. That’s reflecting back to us.

And I giggle off and when I think Melinda, how our reactions are more like red flags, not red flags in the sense that we have to stop, but red flags that we have to pay attention. “Something’s going on inside of me.” And the three things that I invite people to consider whenever there’s a reaction is the fact that, “What am I feeling? What am I thinking about? And what’s going on in my physical body?” All of those things are being communicated at a time when we’re reacting, and when we’re reacting we don’t always have the awareness to stop and go, “Nope, I’m not going to be angry.” Because sometimes it just comes out.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. I love this, the difference between acting and reacting. I always find that those triggers are actually opportunities. This is a classic thing for an entrepreneur to say, because you’re dealing with change all the time, sometimes things beyond your control, or other people who have their own issues, learning not to take those things personally necessarily, but seeing them as opportunities to learn. Like, “What is this telling me about myself?” And yes, it comes back down to what you’re talking about, about just being aware.

So when we think about women entrepreneurs, I think there’s a lot of fear that women have. There’s some sort of, I don’t know, it’s almost like a fear of success rather than a fear of failure. Because when we succeed and really shine our light, it can prompt fear of, “Oh, well, will my girlfriends still like me?” Or, “Will I find a man?” Or, “Will my man be threatened by my success?” It’s all that a hornet’s nest, which over the course of this podcast, more than 600 episodes in, this seems to be a pattern, or a theme that a lot of women struggle with. What’s going on there?

Sheila Unique:

That’s a beautiful question. And absolutely we’re all dealing with it, I know I deal with that when it comes to like, “Oh my gosh, all of a sudden, now here we are in front of a different audience and how will that be communicated?” So it’s all about really, you won’t know what’s really there inside of you, Melinda, until it surfaces. And that’s important to know, because we don’t know that there’ll be a reaction there until we’re in a conversation. All of a sudden we’re getting a little loud, then all of a sudden we’re getting a little bit upset. Well, we might not even be aware that there’s there. So we cannot plan for, “I’m not going to react, I’m going to just be level-headed.” And then somebody comes in and all of a sudden the technology doesn’t work, and now we’re getting a little bit frustrated. And underneath all of that is going to be some unrest.

Sheila Unique:

When you talk about, is this about being successful? Is this about failing? Underneath whatever our reaction is, will be the unrest. And to me, Melinda, I explain unrest in the sense of, you can have a really great sleep at night and wake up and feel rejuvenated. And so you’re in a restful place. But then there’s you’re on your third night, you’re planning for this big speaking engagement, or you’ve got the biggest client coming that you’ve ever had to deal with. And now you’re in this place where you’re not sleeping and you wake up in the morning, and four cups of coffee later, you’re just still struggling. That’s the sign that there’s unrest.

Sheila Unique:

So I come from it in the point of, when there’s unrest, you will only know that because a reaction will surface, and it won’t be what you’re dealing with in the immediate reality of what’s in front of you, as much as that’s where you find out, where is the unrest? Is it about me growing so fast? Is it about me having to deal with another person who’s rude? Is it about me having to deal with confrontation regarding a payment that’s missing? Those kinds of things surface so easily, Melinda, and again, we don’t always know what’s there until it surfaces.

Melinda Wittstock:

So how can we best overcome those fears though? Those fears of stepping into the light, being fully ourselves without that fear that somehow we won’t be liked, because women also, we all have this kind of coded into us for whatever reason, of people pleasing, just wanting to please everybody all the time, and sometimes forgetting about ourselves in that mix.

Sheila Unique:

Melinda, that’s real. We all deal with fears on a day-to-day basis. As a parent, the fact that we’re dealing with this pandemic and what’s going on, fears are so real, but they’re not something that we need to be stuck in, because what I love about everything that we plan in our day, or in our week, or the appointments, we are moving through them. That’s the thing that I want to acknowledge about this is that we are moving through everything. If it’s expressed as a fear, if it’s expressed as I’m excited to do it, I was even talking with someone the other day and sharing with them that even our physical body will express the fear. And if we go to the gym and all of a sudden it feels like we’re moving through quicksand and we can’t get our legs moving, but, oh my gosh, thank goodness I made it through this hour. Our physical body is even moving through it because that fear expresses itself mentally, emotionally, we’ll be a little more tight. Maybe our armpits are sweating a little more like mine are today. It’s so real, but everything is about moving through it, not staying in [inaudible 00:11:40].

Melinda Wittstock:

Absolutely. This is so true. So, you’ve been in business for over 17 years, Sheila, with Relatefully Training and Speaking. And what have been some of your lessons, in terms of your own relationships along that journey, building your business?

Sheila Unique:

I thought about this, this morning, when you were talking about that and I realized I was one of those people that started doing so many things years ago, and it wasn’t quite in the trend yet. And so I would let it go, and then I would try something new again, and then I would, well, let it go. And looking back, oh my gosh, if I would have stuck with those things that I started, I would be way further ahead today.

Now, let me add to that. Was I supposed to be way further ahead today? What I have come to learn in business is that I can try my darndest to be way ahead of where I am, but what matters is where I walk, what matters is where my feet are, is the expression, that today I’ve experienced all the things that I have. May they be failures. May they be bumps in the road. May they be sidestepping and having to deal with a family crisis. Whatever it is, it’s led me to this place. And I know that you’ve experienced the same thing too, because along our journey, we learn the things, what do we love most about what we’re doing? And what are the things we don’t like? And that takes experience after experience, after experience.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, Sheila, you began your life as an identical twin and here you are, and you’re called Sheila Unique. I want you to talk about your experience as being a twin and what that taught you about relationship and stepping into your own uniqueness?

Sheila Unique:

Wow. You have no idea. Being an identical twin, everything had to be the same. We had those same box haircuts. We had to wear the same clothes. Everybody related to us is the same. If we were getting a Christmas gift, anything, it had to be one gift, and we each had to have the same.

Now, along my journey, we get to my mum and dad’s 50th wedding anniversary, and everyone is still calling us the twins. I had no identity other than I was a twin. And in my life, things have to be exciting for the twins. And if I was going to make any decisions, it was for the twins. Well, I get to be 45, and all of a sudden I recognize, you know what, I don’t even know what it is to relate to myself as an individual. And here I am now on my second marriage and I love this man. I had no idea, Melinda, what was Sheila interested in? What did Sheila and her husband want to be doing? And we were told by a spiritual coach that we were so close even our partners couldn’t get between us. That was truly the time that I went from talking to my twin for three or four times a day to not talking to her for a year. And I literally closed down and went inside. And that was the beginning of my journey of finding me, and relating more fully with myself. And yes, I did marry a man whose last name is Unique. And Melinda, the universe has a way of bringing about change.

Melinda Wittstock:

I think that’s just so phenomenal that you met a man whose name was Unique.

Sheila Unique:

It truly is.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s interesting when you mentioned about the universe, because it has a plan for us, right? And we’re presented with all sorts of things along the way that are, it’s kind of part of our curriculum in a way is how I’ve come to see it. And it’s really what we do with that, that matters in the end. And I don’t know, there’s so many things that I know now that gosh, I wish I’d known much earlier in my life. And in my case, with a relationship, with teenage kids, with a growing team. At Podopolo, my podcasting app and player, we’ve gone from a team of two people to a team of more than 30 in just a few months.

Sheila Unique:

Wow.

Melinda Wittstock:

And so being really aware of relationship was absolutely vital to pulling that off and creating a great team culture, where everybody feels really good, everybody’s collaborating, everybody’s positive, there’s no ego, all of that, which was a major, major goal for me to be able to do, because I know that all businesses, especially highly scalable ones, at the end of the day it’s all about the team.

And so I realized, looking back, that all the lessons that I had along the way about relationship, whether it was a bad marriage, or earlier efforts in other companies to create great teams, all those lessons, all the stumbling blocks, all the mistakes, all the things, are what are allowing me now to have created this amazing team where everybody every day is like, the lifting each other up, helping each other, just having a good time as we build this amazing app and platform. So it’s interesting, because you look back and you think, “Yeah, okay. All those things were for a reason.” Does that make sense?

Sheila Unique:

Absolutely. And again, congratulations. You created that Melinda, you truly created that. And my journey is a little bit different in that I have had to go inwardly and really be with, how is my pain being expressed? How are my reactions being expressed? How is this coming across to somebody? Because you can make every effort to try to communicate so clearly to somebody and all of a sudden they take the message the wrong way. And you go, “Oh my God.” I know you’ve probably experienced that one a lot [crosstalk 00:19:05].

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, everybody has. And it’s an interesting thing when you’re communicating, because everybody is bringing their wounds to the table, everyone’s bringing every other time something has happened, and everybody’s hearing it the way they want to hear it, not necessarily how you’re saying it. So it’s quite a dance.

Sheila Unique:

You bet. And if I may add, this dance, Melinda, is also in the personal world, I’ll share with you an example. My daughter was getting married, this was back in 2010. And she’s running into problem after problem. Well, of course, I’m the know it all, that I’m the one that knows everything. And I shared with her, I says, “Well, maybe you need to be looking at this.” And she goes, “Mom, if you don’t want to go to the wedding, you don’t have to.” In that moment, Melinda, I said, “I am so sorry.” Hung up the phone. And I sat on my couch and I cried, and I did so much inner healing around that statement. And why? Because I came to learn that there’s no difference between gently making a suggestion, and outright telling somebody they need to change. And it taught me about communication. That was a big turning point for me. Now, when you talk about that successful team you have, that takes work. And I can tell already that there’s an energetic element that plays in all of that and everybody’s on the same page. And again, congratulations.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, thank you. There really is an energetic element, right? Because there’s the intention, and then there’s the awareness. There’s the, I’m not going to go all Eckhart Tolle with you, by the power of now. Also just attracting the people that you want to attract, but then also setting the vision, talking a lot about values and mission and who we’re being, not just what we’re doing, but attracting the right people, making sure that the right people are in the right seats, making sure they have all the resources they need, making it fun and getting out of their way. That has been just a very thoughtful exercise for me, but also one born of also, like you were saying about yourself, looking within.

Sheila Unique:

Oh, for sure. And to appreciate that there’s going to be days where every member of the team, every people, every person that we’re interacting with is going to have a high and a low, because that’s the way life is. That’s the way the energy is, the seasons come and the seasons go. You’re going to have an up in the finances, you’re going to have it down in the finances because we’re here to work through problems that are presented to us. And the problem could be presented through the team, it could be presented through a client, could be presented through just the person you’re interacting with over lunch. And now you head back to work and you just don’t have this really great feeling in your gut. You just talked about Eckhart Tolle, Melinda. I am so passionate, that’s what they talk about, is energy all the time.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, it is. It’s so energetic. And I found the more that I’ve gone on that spiritual kind of inner journey, the more that I attract the right people into my life.

Sheila Unique:

And the learning that comes from it, right?

Melinda Wittstock:

Mm-hmm (affirmative) Yeah. It’s sort of an interesting kind of manifestation where you move from that real hustle and it’s hard and stress and all that, into much more of a flow state where things just start to happen. And it’s a really interesting thing. And this is one of the reasons we talk so much on this podcast about the connection between personal growth and business growth. That they’re basically one and the same in the end.

Sheila Unique:

You bet. And when is it time for personal growth? When is a time for business growth? And that’s not something that’s easily identifiable as we go a longer journey because we go through different phases where we’re experiencing, oh, let’s say struggle with what’s going on at home. What I have very much come to appreciate is there’s no off/on switch as far as the difference between being personal and professional, because you take you everywhere you go, I call it 365/24/7. You are the only one you take to bed at the end of the day. You’re the one you wake up with in the morning, so the communication with you is most important. And like I said, there’s no, “Op, it’s time to go to work. Let me turn off my personal life.” “Oh yeah. Okay. It’s eight o’clock, well, now I’m working a little longer. Well now we’ll turn on the personal life and turn off the business switch.” That’s really never happened in my world. So where is the overlap? And if you’re dealing with something on a personal level that can come into the business world, and it’s just about being aware of what’s going on when it’s going on.

Melinda Wittstock:

Absolutely. So when your clients come to you, what tend to be their biggest issues and how do you walk them through the process to get to that transformation that you’re helping them with?

Sheila Unique:

Beautiful question. People come, mostly people that they work with right off the bat are at an emotional state where something’s got to change. And that’s when I know that they’re ready to quite visit what’s going on inside. And that’s where I guide my clients right off the bat, that something outside of you has caused you to feel some unrest and the unrest exists inside. So I invite my clients to consider, “When you’re talking about that, can you feel that?” And they’ll go, “Feel what?” And I say, “Well, can you feel that energy that’s kind of locking up at your back?” And they’ll go, “Oh, my back’s tight all the time.” And I’ll go, “Okay. As you’re talking about that, can you feel that?” “Yeah.”

And so the relationship that I work with, with my client is about helping them to gain a greater relationship with what’s going on inside as far as, “Okay, you’ve got all those thoughts going on in your head. How can we work with those?” Or, “You seem to be getting overly emotional when that person does that. Are you aware of that?” “Well, no. They always push my buttons.” Okay. But I guide them to, what specifically is it? Because as I mentioned earlier, it’ll never be what it’s right in front of you. It’ll always be something that has triggered and you used that word beautifully earlier. Something that has triggered this unrest, let’s find out what that unrest is. And to me, Melinda, it’s so important to have integrity in finding that to be in a place where, you know what, I truly have experienced that.

Sheila Unique:

And so to go there, oftentimes we think, “Well, I don’t like to be angry and I don’t want to feel angry.” And they say, “Let’s just get that energy moving.” Because this is about experiencing what you’re feeling fully, relating more fully with that. And I’ll guarantee it has been my experience. When you experienced that anger, you will also experience double or more the opposite of anger, which is love. And you’ll know that you’ve moved through that when you get to that place, where all of a sudden you’re thinking about things differently, you feel differently. You have a greater appreciation for your team. You have a greater appreciation for the person who just pushed all your buttons, the person who’s causing so much conflict and you see it differently. And there’s so much grace. There’s so much grace that can come through when we actually do our inner work. And I always say, Melinda, we’re rewarded for doing our inner work. And it comes through in the form of grace.

Melinda Wittstock:

Absolutely. This is so, so true. Oh my goodness. So Sheila, I could talk to you for a long, long time. You’ll probably have to come back on this podcast, but I want to make sure that people know the best way to find you and work with you.

Sheila Unique:

Oh, thank you. Easily, look me up at relatefully.com. And for your listeners today, Melinda, I’d love to share one of the sections from my new book. The book’s called Relatefully: How to gain greater relationships from the inside out. The section is on the physical body. And there’s so much wisdom that communicates through your own body and wisdom that you can easily learn, that’s so important. And I want to make sure you get it. So go to relatefully.com/the body. And I’d love to hear your feedback as far as what it means to you at this phase in your life. And Melinda, you truly are making the world a brighter place to be in, and I wish you and your team so much more success on your podcasts.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, thank you so much, Sheila. It was a delight to talk to you and thank you for putting on your wings and flying with us.

Sheila Unique:

You are more than welcome.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, that was great. Thank you so much.