SoulStirred: Stories of Growth And The Human Experience

Emily Garcia (00:03)
Welcome lovely listeners to SoulStirred Stories of Growth and the Human Experience. I'm Emily Garcia. And I'm Kasey Clark. We will be your guides on this journey. We are so glad you are here. Each week, we'll come together, sometimes with other incredible thinkers, creators, and adventurers, to generously share stories of self-discovery, recovery, triumph, and what it means to live a life on purpose. No matter where you are in your own journey,

connection is here for you at SoulStirred Settle in, take a deep breath in, and let's inspire each other. Welcome to SoulStirred

Emily (00:48)
Welcome back, SoulStard listeners. Today we are here with Joyce Feustel. We are so excited to have you here today, Joyce. Remember, listeners, we are hosting a 66 -day Gratitude Challenge. You can sign up to join the challenge at tribemindbody .com forward slash gratitude. And we want to thank some of our Gratitude Challenge participants. They are Denise Shannon, Melina Peterson, and Jennifer Murawski.

We are so excited to have a great group of people who have come together to be accountable for gratitude and the ways that it changes your life.

Today, we are here with Joyce Feustel founder of Boomer's Social Media Tutor, Social Media Tutor and trainer specializing in LinkedIn.

She has been in business full -time for just over 11 years and helps business owners and job seekers to be more effective and productive with their use of LinkedIn. Welcome, Joyce.

Joyce Feustel (01:43)
It was great to be here.

Emily (01:45)
Well...

Kasey (01:45)
We're so glad to have you. I can't wait to hear your story and to share it with our listeners.

Joyce Feustel (01:50)
And one of the nice things about being 75 is you got lots of stories. I have lots of stories.

Kasey (01:54)
Yeah!

Emily (01:54)
I bet we can't wait to hear as many as possible. Today, can you kick us off with telling us a little bit about your background and how you originally got into sales?

Joyce Feustel (01:58)
Yeah.

you bet. So I grew up in Wisconsin, actually on a farm. I'm oldest of four. I went to college in Madison, University of Wisconsin, Madison, met my husband after college. And I had just hit and miss jobs in my 20s, nothing I'd really call a career. Was a home mom for the better part of the 80s and into the early 90s, still very involved in my community. And then we moved out here when my husband and I were 46. That was 1995.

So there I am at age 46 trying to figure out what I'm going to do when I grow up. Well, one of the ways you can do that is informational interviewing. So I was working a job with a AAA at that time, and that meant I had a bunch of time during the week because we worked so many weekends. So I could go out and meet all kinds of people or just talk by phone to them. Well, one person said, Joyce, you're so peppy, full of energy. You seem like a chamber of commerce type of person. I'm like, you know.

Maybe I could be. See, back in Madison, I did have a little side hustle and I belonged to my own chamber there. And so I thought, sure. So I scouted around and thought, well, you know, I think there's a chamber right here in Lakewood, West Metro Chamber. So I got a contact there and I called this lady named Edna up and we set up an appointment for me to come to her office and have this informational interview. So she was so helpful because she'd worked at other chambers too. And

answered all my questions. I'm like, maybe I will look for a job at a chamber. Well, at the very end, she looks at me right in the eye and she goes, have you ever thought of going into sales? I said, well, no, I haven't. Would you consider going into sales? Well, maybe I would consider it. I have an aptitude test here. How about I give you this aptitude test? You take it right here. It won't take long and see what happens. I said, sure.

As we see these days, that will inform me. So I take this little paper and pencil aptitude test and we part ways. And the next morning she calls me up and she says, you did well on that aptitude test. I said, well, that's nice to know. In fact, she said, I'd like to offer you a job. Right here at the chamber, we need a membership rep. Now it's straight commission. I'll be clear with you. I think you have what it takes to be a very successful representative of our chamber and get us more members.

Kasey (04:29)
Wow.

Joyce Feustel (04:29)
That ladies is how I got into a 17 year career in sales. Because somebody saw sales in me.

Kasey (04:36)
Wow, you went to the information interview considering becoming a part of the chamber and they ended up hiring you to recruit other members to the chamber?

Emily (04:37)
How cool.

Joyce Feustel (04:46)
Yeah, but she did. She was very cagey and she did say anything about working there. She just said, have you thought of going into sales? Would I be open to taking this aptitude test? And that's all she said. She didn't say she had an opening. She didn't. Very. It is great. And you know what? I've never been motivated my money and my husband would say to me, why are you in sales? I said, well, I like to meet people. I like to know their story.

Kasey (05:01)
Wow.

Emily (05:02)
That's great.

Joyce Feustel (05:17)
I'm pretty good at helping people make decisions. I do have a few shortcomings such as I'm a big chatty Cathy and I don't get, as they say in sales to the close quite quick enough. I would have pretty much call myself a B minus salesperson, meaning yes, I did hit my numbers. Was I ever at the top of the heap? No. In fact, I'll never forget when I worked at the Better Business Bureau, they had these little like toy horsies with like Belker on them and they had this track.

with this other piece of Velcro, and when you would make a sail, then you'd move your little horse. I'm not making this up. You would move your horsey along this track. And where was my little horsey? Somewhere over here. And the leaders would be over there. And at any rate, my husband to this day will say, how's your horsey doing?

Kasey (05:59)
You

Emily (06:00)
How long were you there before you left?

Kasey (06:02)
Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (06:07)
Well, I was only there for a year at the West Metro Chamber. Edna, my supervisor, was let go in a reduction in force and I reported directly to the head of the chamber,

He hardly ever told me I did anything well. He never told me I did anything bad. He just kind of left me alone. And he was not very, friendly to my new members. And I would bring them in. I thought, well, this is not working. So I left for a job with a chamber member. So it was just over a year. Yeah.

Kasey (06:33)
Hmm.

Emily (06:35)
Wow, what came next?

Joyce Feustel (06:37)
then I worked for this member. I sold advertising and little specialty newspapers. I worked briefly with a state chamber, with the state nonprofit. Those were very, at that time, very toxic and bad environments for me. I'm not saying anything negative about how they are now. Got fired out of the second one. Then I went to work at the Better Business Bureau. That's where they had the horsies. And,

Yeah, then I was there. That was a lot like the chamber. It was a lot outside sales, talking with people, kind of joining up. In that case, it'd be more of a, what are like a customer good, like you want to have a good rating with a better business beer, we should be a member of that. So it was kind of a marketing move, I guess I'd call it. And then I got into education sales, the University of Phoenix for about two and a half years as a working in the enrollment department, more of an employment center.

And my final job was with the College for Financial Planning, my final sales job. And there I was what was called an enrollment advisor. So I would talk to either people currently financial advisors who need their continuing education credits. And we would have different certificate programs, you know, to help them satisfy those requirements and people who are entering the profession of financial planning and helping them kind of get a course study plan.

So that was why I talked to people from all over the US. That was inside sales, as was University of Phoenix, as opposed to outside sales.

Kasey (08:04)
You really are Peppy. It's what she said about you is true. I feel like I can feel this sense of excitement inside of me just having this conversation with you. It's like you built your whole career on the basis of just being a really natural relator. You're good at connecting. Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (08:19)
That's really how you put it like that. I think both my parents were extremely good conversationalist. And I'll never forget, I was very young, maybe 25 or 26. I was in this elevator at the city of Madison. I was working for the city government as a public health educator. And I knew this gentleman from another department and I was showing my folks my office. It was kind of exciting, my first real office.

Kasey (08:47)
Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (08:47)
And he got on the elevator, we were chatting. And somehow, during, I mean, just in the short elevator ride, he said to my folks, well, where does she get that gift of gab? I think something like that. And in unison they go, from me. So my dad, even more than my mom, he could meet anybody, anywhere, anytime and talk about practically anything. My mom was more of a talk.

Kasey (09:00)
Yeah.

Emily (09:01)
hahahaha

Joyce Feustel (09:15)
like sometimes annoyingly so like I can be. But I mean, she was a little bit more within her circles, she would do that. But she was pretty, they were both very extroverted. And they were both super involved with the community. So even though we lived on a farm, not in town, I still feel we were very much embedded and interfacing with our small town, you're where I grew up. And my dad had stamina like no other. And that's, it's one thing to have energy, but I think stamina,

Kasey (09:24)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (09:46)
is different. It's related but it's different and I have a lot of that too.

Emily (09:50)
know one of the things that is really fun to hear about your story is the boss that you had who recommended the things that you're doing now. Can you tell us that story?

Joyce Feustel (10:01)
yeah. I just say it was such a wonderful story. So we at the College for Financial Planning in 2010 rolled out social media. And you two ladies and other people like listening to this podcast, think back yourself to what you were doing in 2010, 14 years ago around social media when this is pre -Instagram even. So you have what was in Twitter, OX, so you have Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, right? So our College for Financial Planning got on all three platforms.

And I can to this day remember our manager standing in front of our enrollment team, almost all women, one guy I think saying, well, we have a little favor to ask of you folks. We need for you to chat up our social media. And they did a little slide presentation about what these three sites were. And we start rolling our eyes all this ladies really bread. Do we have to? Because we were mostly commission -based and salespeople, functionally, and we were enrollment advisors, but we were paid by our efforts.

my results. Well, he said, I will pay you $5. $5 for every time you get a Facebook page like, or get a Twitter follow, or get someone to join, say, a LinkedIn group. OK, well, we'll start. Then we started being a little less resistant. But me, I'm already thinking, I get in trouble when I go off script. Like when I talk about the Green Bay Packers, when I should be closing that deal.

Emily (11:25)
Yeah!

Joyce Feustel (11:25)
But he's from Wisconsin, so you have to talk about the Green Bay Packers. I mean, it would be awkward if you didn't. So anyway, now they're telling me I'm going to get to go off script and talk about something I like. Because though I was oldest on the team at 61, I was probably the most social media proficient, believe it or not. So I knew Facebook. I knew LinkedIn. I could talk about them till the cows come home, I wasn't too worried about Twitter. So I.

Kasey (11:32)
You

What?

Joyce Feustel (11:52)
I was fine with doing that. And so month after month after month, I'd be the leader of this little $5 spiff pack as they call it in sales, this little reward. And get this, my manager was 35. I'm 61. He was frankly blown away by how articulate and how encouraging and excited I would be about the College of Social Media. So we said two months into this rollout in March of 2010, we actually posted as a question.

Joyce, he says, since you are so clearly great at getting our students with the college engaged with our colleges social media, have you ever thought, kind of like the sales question, have you ever thought of helping other people, especially those in your baby boomer generation, to understand, help them understand social media like you understand it? I mean, this to me is a person who was an agist. Think about it. In today's times and conversations.

Kasey (12:40)
Wow.

Joyce Feustel (12:46)
He didn't see me as the oldest member of his team, just a few years away from retirement, as just like, well, you know, should be out of the door here in a couple of years. No, he thought about my personal wellbeing and what was going to happen to me after I retired. And he came up with a whole career for me. No, I haven't thought of that, Brett, but that's interesting. And so that's how it came to be. By six months from that month, I had set myself up with Secretary of State, traded with an accountant I knew.

Kasey (13:05)
Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (13:14)
She got my LLC all organized and I was official. But I did work there three more years, because I was making the best money I'd ever made, had the best boss I ever had, why would I quit, right? But I just, as they say, I just baby stepped my way then into my career full -time and then retired three years to the month from when he planted that seed.

I retired into my business, I should say.

Kasey (13:38)
Okay. What do you attribute that to? To being 61 years old and the most prolific social media coordinator manager in your company? What is it about you that makes you different from maybe some others that might be listening in that age group that are like social media? It didn't come from my time. I don't know how to operate it.

Joyce Feustel (13:58)
Well, just to clarify too, all I was doing was just chatting it up. I didn't have to do anything technically with it at my job, but I had been on Facebook and love Facebook. I've been on LinkedIn and I got met Toastmasters from all over the world, you know, Toastmasters communication and leadership group. So I very quickly adopted social media as this amazing communication tool. And as I, I meet people easily.

You know, that whole thing of how I met my husband through talking to these people on a bus. I so much like my dad can talk to anybody, anywhere, anytime. So now I'm getting to talk to people all over the world and be of help to them. So I think I, I'm really a social media fan and very comfortable with it. I mean, I don't have any great explanations other than just my overall human nature.

Kasey (14:32)
Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah, you're a natural networker. And social media brought you this like ocean of people to connect with at your fingertips.

Joyce Feustel (14:50)
I am definitely an actual network of people.

Well, precisely. Right. I mean, I was that way way before social media came out. I'm always was connecting people doing this and that. Yeah. So right. It was a natural extension of how I was already operating in the world.

Emily (15:09)
Yeah. If you don't mind, let's take a little detour because you mentioned it. Tell us how you met your husband.

Kasey (15:10)
Cool.

Joyce Feustel (15:11)
huh.

yeah. So my boyfriend at the time, things were kind of going south. He told me he had another girlfriend too. I'm like, wait a minute. I thought it was just you and me. I don't know. That was awkward. And then the student teaching was going badly. It was the second semester of my senior year. I don't think I've ever been so unhappy in my entire life. And my roommate situation was good. I mean, I could go on and on. So I thought, you know, I just need to change a scene. I'm going to go down to Chicago and see a friend of mine. So I get on this.

bus, this Greyhound bus from Madison, Wisconsin to Chicago. And I sat down, but I couldn't even read. I was in this funk. And then all of a sudden I hear this card game. Like, you know, when you know a game, you can kind of tell if you've ever played cards like the bidding and stuff. And I thought, that sounds like Sheep's Head. I think they only play that in Wisconsin. It's kind of weird, Sheep's Head. So I go over to these guys, these three guys, and I say, is that Sheep's Head you're playing? They go, yep. I says, you know, I played that in high school.

Would you deal me in? I want to see if I still remember how to play it. They go, well, sure. You could sit and play cards with us. I say, fine. So I'm playing cards with them. And I ask them, because I'm like that, well, why are you on this bus? Where are you going? What's happening in Chicago? Well, they were going to a meatpacking convention. And they don't like to drive in downtown Chicago, so they always take the bus. And they were from this very small meat. It's called a purveyor, P -U -R -V -E -Y -O -R, a very, very, like a boutique meatpacking plant.

where they would take just these really expensive sides of beef and cut them up into steaks and hamburgers. And it turned out as we got to talking that one of the two ladies in the meat packing and meat wrapping department was retiring. one of the three guys I was talking to said to the general manager, they said, he said, hey, Norm, you should offer Joyce that job.

Marv Leppard. So Marv, Mr. Leppard. So I can't obviously just offer you a job right here on the spot, but here's my card and you know, feel free to call and I'll set up an interview. Well, I didn't want to do this. See, I've worked blue collar jobs. I have packed pickles. I have reported on the cheating pickle packers. I packed things into boxes in a basement by myself. I hate blue collar work.

But I couldn't find anything else. So I called up Mr. Leppert and I called him up at home because I'm student teaching and it was long distance. Anybody listening to this remember long distance when it cost them money? So anyway, I called him at home and I got him on the phone. I got an interview. So I get hired and it's like 40 degrees in this cooler and I'm wearing this thermal jacket. And there I am and Vi is teaching me how to wrap meat. And who should be right there working in the department was Bruce, my husband.

Kasey (17:36)
Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (17:53)
They didn't tell me there was going to be a cute guy there. And I just practically fell in love with him right on the spot. And I was the happiest day of my life, I think, except for maybe when I had him married and had babies. But my whole life, my whole life just turned around because I met somebody who was just such a delight. And we've been married down 52 years. Isn't that just the sweetest thing? And he just makes me laugh every day. And I'll tell you, he can make me laugh while we're rapping beat. And that's...

Kasey (17:56)
No!

Joyce Feustel (18:21)
It's a pretty good thing. I'd never seen anybody with a work ethic like his and we had as much fun at the same time.

Emily (18:26)
Aww, I love that.

Kasey (18:27)
What a great story. Yeah. So you.

Joyce Feustel (18:27)
Well, thanks for letting me elaborate on that. It's kind of a legend story in our family. When my daughter got married, I heard a guy telling the story. He says, listen, I'll tell it better. It was my story.

Emily (18:31)
Yeah.

I'll tell you my first -hand experience.

Joyce Feustel (18:41)
you got me in second hand.

Kasey (18:44)
So you got Bruce, but how long did you work at the meatpacking plant? Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (18:47)
just that summer, just that summer. I had a trip planned with my brother that September. And so I just worked, yeah, just from June till maybe early September.

Kasey (18:52)
Yeah.

Yeah, what I love about that story is how sometimes in life we have to go to places and be in spaces that we don't necessarily want to be in, but it's so that we can find the part that is meant for us.

Emily (18:59)
Huh.

Joyce Feustel (19:10)
That's lovely the way you put it. And it reminds me also of the moving sliding doors, because if I wasn't on that bus that day when those guys were on it, I don't know, maybe what have I thought to work at that meat packing plant? I don't know.

Kasey (19:14)
Yes!

Yeah. And also you, assuming that you belonged in this card game full of men, you being the natural network that you network or that you are. I know how to play that game. Can I play that game? And it's like you manifested Bruce for you. Yes. Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (19:34)
There's a boldness about that move, I would say, that I have a risk taker. Like, this looks like a neat opportunity. I'm going to go for it.

Kasey (19:45)
Yeah, you are bold. I love that.

Emily (19:46)
Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (19:48)
I don't often use that word, but it was my angel. No, it's brave, I think, yeah. At my church, we have a word every year. Like I have all of them. I have light. I have light. I have confidence. And I keep them kind of surrounding me here at my computer desk. And here's, this year's Inspire Others. That's my year, my phrase for 2024.

Kasey (20:01)
Here you go.

Yeah, let's add coldness.

Yeah.

That's what you're doing here today. Inspiring me, inspiring us and our listeners. Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (20:15)
Yeah, I hope so. That's the plan. Mm -hmm.

Emily (20:21)
Okay. Now that we took you on the detour, I want to take you back to that boss and you started your company, Boomers. Was it called Boomers in the beginning?

Joyce Feustel (20:31)
Yeah, because he, the one he said, have you ever thought of helping other people, especially people in your boomers age group or your boomers generation? That's what really struck me. So I knew it a long time on that name. And I, I had the boomers part from the beginning I had, but so boomers and then social media, the word that I struggled with was what to put at the end. Cause

Emily (20:39)
oooo

Joyce Feustel (20:56)
I struggled, but then I finally thought, well, I trained to be a teacher way back then, way back when, you know, in my teens and twenties, that didn't really pan out. I'm too much of a free spirit. I don't like rules and bells and whistles, kind of a problem. But anyway, but I'm an educator. I think once you train as an educator, you're always for your life an educator. So then I came up with the word tutor. I say, God gave it to me. Somebody did something. So I put tutor at the end. Now, this is not a frequently searched term, I know.

Boomer social media tutor, but boomers is searched a lot. If you go like at your Google analytics kind of thing. So tutors seem to fit. Yeah.

Emily (21:33)
Wow.

How did you know it was time to leave the job and go full -time with your own business?

Joyce Feustel (21:41)
Excellent question. Well, I was thinking I'd work for like five years altogether from when I got the idea. But what happened is two things. Our college lease was up. It was a really virtual education, but we did have a headquarters and that's where I worked. And it was done on the north side of the... I live on the west suburban part of Denver for people listening not from here. And it was on the south part of...

DTC, you know, the southern part of the Denver Metro area, but they were moving a good three, four, maybe miles away down by Park Meadows Mall for people local hearing this. And it was going to be going from like 17 or so miles to maybe 20. It doesn't sound like a lot, but I'm already driving easily 45 minutes going home. And that just felt like a longer commute. I didn't like that. Plus my husband was having shoulder replacement surgery.

in toward the end of March and I would need to take time off and go on FMLA to, you know, be his caregiver and hang out with him. And I figured they're probably going to just still expect me to hit my numbers or something. But I just, I just, I went and saw, actually I saw a coach, I saw kind of a therapist, also a coach of sorts, and we talked it through, cried a bit. And I felt like, okay, maybe this is a sign, you know, these two things happening. It's time for me to blow this popsicle.

Yeah. And I went to my manager and told him, and of course, he managers aren't supposed to hug you, but he did that day. You know what he goes? I thought we were going to have you till you were 66. You know, and I'm 64 back then. And I know I'm sorry, Brett. And even the VP reached out to me, said, well, you could work from home. And I'm like, you even know my name, you know. But I was like, no, I'm I'm out of here.

Kasey (23:15)
Mm -hmm.

Joyce Feustel (23:27)
And then they gave me this amazing going away party and they'd gone around surreptitiously interviewing people about what I was like. And it was essentially a roast that just made fun of me in this really funny, loving way. It was absolutely hilarious. So it was the best mood taking I ever did, but you shouldn't have to retire to have it be that way to get kind of philosophical. But they showed me a lot of love. And to this day, I'm on Facebook and LinkedIn with a lot of those people.

Kasey (23:41)
wonderful. I have -

Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (23:54)
Yeah, they were my work family. They were special, six and a half years.

Kasey (23:58)
Yeah, I have to leave this job. I have to go build the dream that you dreamt up for me, manager. Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (24:03)
Yeah. Well, you know, there's a quote about go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Right. And I had that a little poster in my office and it's my favorite quote, but I didn't really know what my dreams were until my manager gave me one. That's right.

Kasey (24:09)
Your dreams, yes. Yes, the Dorada.

Yeah, yeah. And so now tell us about the dream that you're living with this boomer social meditator.

Joyce Feustel (24:24)
Well, it's pretty awesome. I get to help people, mostly 55 and older, but some younger, who are business people or job seekers, to help them get their LinkedIn to shine, to really showcase themselves well, whether they're marketing their business or whether they're looking for a job, as I said. And then how do you use LinkedIn? A lot of people think it's just a profile, but that's just like you're going to a dance and you've got a really good dress, but you don't know how to dance. So then you'd be sitting around looking pretty.

Kasey (24:52)
you.

Joyce Feustel (24:54)
but not getting to enjoy the music. So I do it through these two sessions, one on the profile and one on the use of LinkedIn. And I am very direct with it. I think it's partly Toastmasters, because Emily's done that, and we do a lot of feedback with love there. I'm also from the Upper Midwest, which I think they're nice and direct and to the point. So in a session, we just go lickety split, and we make so many changes in real time.

And the entrepreneurs who are in this, you know, the group that I know Emily from, you know, the supporting hearts and enterprises, they are like get it done gals, right? And so they love that when they're done, they hardly have any homework, maybe one or two little things to work on. So that's how it works. And I also can help people with Facebook, say like your business page. I have this new endeavor coming up. I'm a little nervous, but excited because Mary go my business coaches is going to work. I'm having starting on June 14th, a group.

LinkedIn coaching. So what's going to happen is we're going to have up to five people. They're going to send me in advance of things they want me to look at in their respective profiles. I'll look over their profiles. And then what we'll do is we'll say, start with maybe, maybe the background, like the banner on a profile. And we'll talk about each person's banner. And I'll say, okay, if they have one, you know, what's strong about it, what could be improved? Then we could go down and say to their profile headline, which almost always can be improved. So we'll talk about that. And

If you've ever done group coaching, it would be kind of like that. So we'll have an hour and a half together to really go through systematically some of them, you know, I would say probably the main sections of the profile. And it's only $97. So I think my regular rate is 150 or 270 for the two session package. So, and I get you the other thing that's going on, Casey, is I'm getting more and more speaking engagements. Like I'll speak to different business groups. I've spoken to she more than once on a usually on LinkedIn

Kasey (26:22)
Yeah.

Emily (26:34)
Wow.

Kasey (26:37)
very reasonable.

Emily (26:37)
That's it.

Joyce Feustel (26:49)
Or to Toastmasters, this communication and leadership group, how can a Toastmasters club showcase the club itself and the members in it by using St. LinkedIn? So because I was always pretty comfortable on video like this and with Zoom even more so. So I'm, I really, as a Toastmaster, 27 years, you can drop me into almost any environment. If I'm in person, just show me the outlets. You find that. And then I'm good to go. And it's...

Kasey (27:16)
Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (27:17)
I'm so energized by groups. It's really fun.

Kasey (27:20)
Yeah.

Emily (27:21)
Yeah, Joyce did a presentation for a group on LinkedIn and exactly what she's describing, what people are going to get in when they meet with her. It was so much value. All these things that I didn't even know were on LinkedIn, she showed us how to do. And then we're giggling the entire time because she's such a good storyteller and she uses so much humor. And at the end, everyone was

I mean, amazed by how much they had done on their LinkedIn profile, but also people were going, how did you learn to speak like that? And she said, Toastmasters. And I was like, I feel like I've heard of that. What is it? You need an affiliate link, Joyce, because I am a member of Toastmasters because of you. I said, well, I'm going to look it up. I'm going to go check one out. And then I joined maybe a month or a month and a half later. Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (27:58)
I'm so bad.

Wow, that's awesome. I mean, that's how I got into Toastmasters, because I heard a guy talking to a group of women business owners. It was about public speaking. And he referenced Toastmasters in that talk. That was right after I started with the Chamber of Commerce job. And I said, Toastmasters, like you, what's that? And then I looked it up, but then a lady at my own table stood right up and says, well, I belong to the Energetics Toastmasters, and it meets in Building 19 on the second and fourth Tuesdays at noon. And I'm like,

What did you just say? And she said it, I said, my chamber commerce was in building 22 of the same office park. So I, that was just a lay down. It was like she was meant to be there. Yeah. And it's just definitely. And so within less than a month, I was at my first meeting, joined the following month. Yeah. So yeah, nothing else. People listening to this podcast will say, Toastmasters. that's a thing. And you know, one other thing I was going to build on what you said too, a lot of things with LinkedIn are not intuitive.

Kasey (28:47)
Wow.

Emily (28:49)
some synchronicity.

Kasey (28:51)
Yeah.

Wow.

Joyce Feustel (29:08)
They're just not obvious. And you don't know what you don't know. Like there's a cool project section. But if you haven't seen it on somebody else's LinkedIn profile, you wouldn't even know that it existed. So it can be challenging.

Kasey (29:19)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Emily (29:24)
You are such an amazing resource.

Joyce Feustel (29:27)
Thank you.

Emily (29:27)
In your story, there are some parallels. There are a couple of things that I noticed. And first, there is an experience you've had more than once in which people saw a quality in you and could see you doing something other than what you knew was possible for yourself or that you hadn't envisioned for yourself. And I'm wondering if you have noted that and what you think, what you would attribute.

Kasey (29:27)
Absolutely.

Emily (29:54)
those experiences too.

Joyce Feustel (29:56)
Well, there's really two separate questions. I will say one sort of chapter of a book on that very same theme. Just that. Like when people, I forget how I worded it exactly, but when people see something in you that you hadn't thought of, be open to looking into it. Don't just toss it aside. So I think that I, how can I put it? I think I'm perceptive enough.

Kasey (30:16)
Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (30:23)
and trusting enough that even that complete stranger, Edna, when she made that observation, I'm like, well, there's an idea. There's an idea. That could work. And so, for example, I don't know if this has been still true for me. When I first took the StrengthsFinder with Gallup, now they call it CliftonStrengths, it's probably still my top 10. It's not now, but in my top strengths was...

Kasey (30:32)
Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (30:48)
Ideation, which we hear about like suicidal ideations, but there's good ideations. Ideations mean you can brainstorm. You can be creative and you, and I'm trying to think of some of the other ones that are strengths. But I think that one, when you let your mind go and you have that curiosity, which I've had all my life, then I think it, it makes you more apt to, to say, well, let me think about that. I'll be open to it. I appreciate you seeing that in me.

Kasey (30:51)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (31:19)
I don't have any other good thoughts about it, but I think sometimes, well, I think also, I think a combination, I didn't have Toastmasters with the first one, but I think a combination of Toastmasters and also being part of a spiritual community that I've been in for a long time, that's really helped me with my confidence and my self -esteem. Those things have helped me be more open to suggestions like that.

Kasey (31:46)
Yeah, yeah, and back to your relationship skills that you really show up in a way that is present and open and eager in relationship with others. And so you're listening to what's being said and you're able to hear and take in that feedback when someone sees something in you that you may not have noticed in yourself.

Emily (31:47)
Yeah, so cool.

Joyce Feustel (32:06)
All of those things are true, yes. Yeah, yeah. And people, I get it so many times, they will just say like, I love your energy. It does come up after speeches, I just want to tell you I loved your energy. So I think that is that's, again, the spiritual community, the Toastmasters, my own mom and dad, I have a lot of love. We can talk about gratitude at the end. I simply meet people where they are. I've taken my course in miracles. And just seeing everybody as a child of God,

Kasey (32:08)
Yeah, yeah, there's so much richness to learn from.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (32:35)
you know, being, being wanting to be of service. You know, I was lucky in my values recently and services right up there. One of the tough service, love, joy, forgetting the other two right now, but that's kind of the way I, you know, like I'm a toastmaster. Some people go to toastmasters as I've already mentioned more than once, simply be better speakers. I'm in toastmasters to be a mentor, to be a leader, to give back. And that's why Ralph Smedley started toastmasters is a wonderful quote, which I'll paraphrase.

Kasey (32:38)
and

Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (33:04)
that says speaking is not the end in itself. It's simply a means to get to the end, which is to be of service, which should be the leader. So I really emulate Ralph Smedley. He was an amazing man. He started that organization.

Kasey (33:12)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah. Well, and you lead it and you also live it, it sounds like you're in concert with what you call God, the universe, like allowing things to just come in, move through you, and then release in such a really lovely, lovely, unattached way.

Joyce Feustel (33:23)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

It's nice. And I think a lot of older people can go in that direction if they go with how they're naturally hardwired. If you look at other cultures, the older people are the wisdom keepers, right? They're the people that go to and they can reflect back and say, well, honey, have you thought of this or that? I think our society, if it shifts a bit, will value that more and name it as such. I think was it on Facebook or Instagram? Like,

What the heck with aging with grace? Age with audacity. I forget there's some other words with it, but I thought, man, that's me. Aging with grace. Aging gracefully, whatever that means, yeah.

Emily (34:06)
love that.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, Casey and I are both reading a book that is called The Five Invitations. And it is the author, I couldn't even pronounce his last name, but he talks about how part of aging is that our skin changes, our brains change, the way that we see the world changes, and that we're supposed to. If you think you're done growing or evolving, then you're on autopilot and you're in a bad place. So you have to just keep

Joyce Feustel (34:40)
Yeah.

Emily (34:41)
And I love that age with audacity. Is that what you said? Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (34:44)
Yeah, that's what I think of that. Not my direct quote. It was in this little poster thing. Just today, I think I saw it on either Facebook or Instagram. I'm like, yeah, that's me. Or something about you, there's another great quote about when you die, you want to be all used up. Everything and part of you just used up. And it's like I live my life so much to the fullest and then I die. So that's a nice.

Kasey (34:45)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I gave it I gave away all of the gifts that I came with while I was here Yeah, yeah

Emily (35:08)
Yeah. Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (35:12)
Yeah, right, right. Nicely put. to own that, the other day, this lady said, I'm having a senior moment. I said, no, I prefer to call that a brain fart.

Kasey (35:23)
Yeah!

Joyce Feustel (35:23)
Because that's what it is, is, you know, maybe we have a few more of those as we get older, so be it. Yeah, it's just like you had that slip, you know, and each of us can forget things. Don't beat yourself up.

Kasey (35:29)
Yeah.

just like a little bubble of air got in the way of that thought I wanted to grab onto, just like my brain farted. I love it, and it happens to me too. It happens to all of us at all ages.

Joyce Feustel (35:38)
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I think that happens to everybody. And it's just don't subscribe when you ascribe things, qualities to yourself, because you're old, only because you're old. Sometimes that can be true, but a lot of times it's not. I think it's a cop -out to be also that.

Kasey (35:57)
Yeah.

Emily (35:58)
Don't believe everything you think. I'm going to do my best to put this together because I'm having a thought about leadership. Because you talked about Brett, the boss who saw what you could do with social media and then talk to you about it. And then you have gone on to be a leader spiritually and in Toastmasters and in the work you do. And there is something about being a tutor.

Joyce Feustel (36:00)
I don't know what to do.

Mm -hmm.

Emily (36:27)
and being a leader and how they worked together. And as you were just talking about aging, I think there's something for people that you can be a leader for other people who are going, I'm getting older and it's all age, but that you can be that tutor in that way as well and a leader and saying, don't believe it just because you thought it, don't believe it.

Joyce Feustel (36:52)
Yeah, yeah, I actually have a friend who struggled a lot in the last three years because her husband died. And he did so much, especially everything technology wise. And we were looking something up and I was so proud of her because she managed to look this thing up on her phone and get it figured out and where is it located. And I just I don't try to push people when they struggle and not always like do it for them, but kind of show them how. I mean, that's why, for example, I don't.

Kasey (36:58)
Mm.

Joyce Feustel (37:22)
Like with my tutoring, I'd rather help people learn how to do something than just, than do it for them. Because I want empower them so they can go back to LinkedIn and maybe not remember every single thing, but I have the little quick notes I send them so they can look it up and they could always call me or email me. But I want them to own the experience. I have like the agency of it. And it's, yeah, I feel as if it's an honor to be a leader. I think it's a privilege.

Kasey (37:27)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (37:48)
and to take that approach of like this, what they call servant leader type of thinking and put humility, you know, the other day I participated in a contest, a competitive event for Toastmasters and I didn't place and I was disappointed. There were a lot of reasons why and I thought about it later. I had this whole like, I'm going to win. And I think I led with my ego and I didn't really lead with my heart. And if you would watch the woman who did win, it was all from her heart.

Kasey (37:53)
Yeah.

Mm.

Joyce Feustel (38:16)
the way she gave feedback. It was an evaluation contest, not a speaking contest. So we were seven of us, each on the same speaker. And then we're charged to give a two to three minute set of feedback to that speaker. And there's criteria that they use for how you do that. They call it evaluation. And I mean, I didn't do a bad one, but I didn't do as good as I could have done. But then cut myself some slack and that's up there in a funk, because I didn't show up like I wanted to.

Kasey (38:38)
Mm -hmm.

Joyce Feustel (38:43)
I showed up the best I could at that time. And just to get to that level of competition, because I'd won at the club and then the next level and the next level. And now we're talking people from all over Colorado, Wyoming. It's very, it's unusual to get that high. And I'd only done it once before in that event. So it was just to get to district. That was cool. So I learned something. Yeah, how far I made and why.

Kasey (39:00)
Yeah.

Emily (39:06)
take a moment to celebrate how far you did make it.

Kasey (39:06)
Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (39:11)
and step away from myself, instead of being jealous of these, the three winners, because they were all so good, just say, well, okay, take some, I went second. So that way I got to see almost everybody else, including the three people who placed. So that was a learning experience for me.

Kasey (39:28)
Yeah.

Boy, if I could count the number of times, I don't think I have enough fingers for the times in life where I have found myself face down because I led with my ego more than my heart. Thank you for saying that out loud, Joyce.

Joyce Feustel (39:42)
Yeah, that's a phrase I'm gonna maybe give a talk about sometime. I think it would be, it's a good lesson for all of us. Yeah, that's right, I love that phrase.

Kasey (39:46)
Yeah.

It's a good lesson. My heart always knows the way. And my heart always knows the truth if I can just set that other thing on a shelf long enough for my heart to be heard and felt. Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (40:02)
Yeah, and of course in miracles they talk a lot about ego as the thing to get away from, yeah.

Kasey (40:05)
Yeah. Yeah, I've read it too. I study it. I love that. Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (40:10)
In fact, here's a really quick story about that. So the manager I had that I told you at the Chamber of Commerce who just didn't give me the time of day. Well, guess what? I went in and that's when I did my most in -depth study of the Course in Miracles was after I left. And then about eight months, nine months later, he called me up and he said, well, how are things going at your job? I said, well, it's not really working out that great. Why are you calling me, Ken? He said, well, his like right -hand guy, like the COO of the Chamber.

Marcy left. I said, Marcy left. my gosh, you are in trouble or something. And there were these two big events, a big fundraiser, and there was like this political candidates forum and he needed help. So he brought me on on a temporary basis to help with both these events. And I saw Ken completely differently. I saw him as a child of God. I saw him like brother and sister, all the course stuff. And we had the best of times. I'm still friends with him on Facebook and LinkedIn and.

Kasey (41:07)
Of course.

Joyce Feustel (41:08)
You know, yeah, it just shifted everything. So that was so nice. You don't often get that second chance to come back around with somebody who you had issues with and the relationship has shifted. Even if he didn't shift, you know, I shifted. Well, then he kind of shifted too, sort of, yeah.

Kasey (41:12)
Yeah.

Yeah, you shifted. You changed the eyes you were seeing him through and then he looked very different. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm so glad to know you. My touching my heart. I'm we said right before we hit record that Joyce friend requested me on Facebook today and I accept wholeheartedly. I look forward to having connection with you today and beyond.

Joyce Feustel (41:29)
Yeah, exactly. That's right, Casey. That's very well put.

thank you! Aww.

You

Yeah, it's nice. It's really good. That's why I love social media. You know, you keep these connections of people sometimes you don't see for years. Like my high school friends, we just get together every five years. But you know, if there's anybody gonna respond to some little like excited, positive thing that happened, it's like your cousins or something. You know, they just pop right out and say, way to go Joyce. It's really sweet.

Kasey (41:52)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, remind you you have a cheering section out there and they're still watching what you're up to and championing you forward. Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (42:16)
Yeah, I know, like go figure. Yeah, and even on both LinkedIn and Facebook, like, my gosh, there's Bill, you know, I haven't thought of him in forever. And there he's out there in that cheering section. I don't even realize he's there. It is, see, there's negatives with social media and there's so many positives. I mean, I met a guy through that LinkedIn Toastmasters group. He was, I believe in Dubai and he was needing help with helping teenagers learn about.

Kasey (42:28)
Yeah.

Emily (42:28)
That's really fun. Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (42:44)
Toastmasters speaking in leadership. And so there's this whole thing that they have called gavel clubs, which are used in prisons where they can't have like a full blown regular club. And I put him in touch with some people that did that and that helped him. It isn't quite the same as with the teens, but I connected him and he asked me all these other questions and he would call me his Toastmaster mentor. You know, I never ever, this is before Zoom or you know, much of anything or Skype. So.

I would just email with him. But we had had such a lovely relationship and I wouldn't have met him. I wouldn't have ever intersected with him except for LinkedIn. So it's just to this day I find it so remarkable how we can form these lovely connections with people we may never ever meet.

Kasey (43:26)
Yeah.

Yeah, well, and you are a natural connector. You are a connector, and so no wonder you love social media because it provides a vehicle for you to connect. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (43:33)
That is true.

Yeah, it's just a whole other platform to so convenient, you know, credible. Yeah.

Emily (43:44)
Is there anything we didn't ask you that you want to make sure you have a chance to say?

Joyce Feustel (43:49)
Well, I only think this year we covered a lot of things.

I would say family. I have this awesome husband, Bruce, 52 years. I've mentioned him. I think that it's important to do marriage the way that marriage works for you. I remember when we were very young and newly married, I said, well, our friends, John and Chris, they go to the grocery store together. Do you think we should be going to the grocery store together? Because I was going to the grocery store. He said, let's face it. He says, you like to go to the grocery store. Yes, I love it. I get to see the people I know there. They're so friendly.

I do not like to go to the grocery store. So therefore you would just go right ahead and you do your grocery shopping on your own. And it sounds so simplistic, but I think we each do our own chores around the house and we have this lovely, to some extent, low maintenance kind of relationship of sorts, but that's the way marriage works for us. So I think it's important not to compare your insights with other people's outside and to have whatever it might be. And I have two children.

a daughter and a non -binary child. And now that's been a challenge because this individual was a daughter, but now she's not. And it's to be open to different people's views of themselves and to be respectful, I think is incredibly important. Those are things that I always want to remind people of, whatever it may be. And...

Kasey (45:06)
Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (45:14)
Yeah, to support your loved ones in ways that are helpful ways. Also, I'm really big fan of Ask Amy. And I think she is almost always on the money, the advice columnist. Some people, they'll write it as a, you were wrong. And she go, no, no, I said this. So for some reason, I'm not an advice columnist, but I like to see your insights into the way people tick. So yeah, that's what I start with every morning.

Kasey (45:20)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Emily (45:40)
Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (45:43)
Ask Amy in the comics. I have a newspaper. I like having a newspaper. So all those, I think when there's opportunities come up, give them a shot. You are more than you think you could be. We are not necessarily, don't believe everything you think, right? I think we can all be bigger, larger, was that Walt Whitman, versions of ourselves than we give ourselves credit. We think we can, but maybe we can't at some level. At some level, I think we can.

Kasey (45:46)
No.

Emily (46:09)
Yeah, that really is aging with audacity that we're never done, that we can be so much more and we can keep learning and we can keep learning about the people that we love too.

Kasey (46:10)
Yeah.

Joyce Feustel (46:22)
Yes, yes, in all their different shapes and forms and all of that.

Kasey (46:22)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Emily (46:26)
Yes. Yeah. Well, we are going to have all of your information in the show notes. But again, Joyce's business is Boomer's social media tutor. And if you want to find her, go to the show notes and she's on, of course, all of the social media platforms. yeah, not Twitter. We're not on there either.

Joyce Feustel (46:43)
Maybe not Twitter anymore. I'm like, I'm exfiltrate my ex right now. Yeah, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. You can find me any of those. Yeah.

Kasey (46:48)
Hahaha!

Okay.

Emily (46:53)
Yeah. And she does have something called nine ways to stand out on LinkedIn. How can people find that?

Joyce Feustel (47:00)
Well, they go to my website, BoomersSocialMediaTutor .com and it's right there. It comes right up and they can just download it, throw some on my mailing list, which is nice. Yeah, that's how they'll get it.

Emily (47:10)
To finish the episode, what are you grateful for?

Joyce Feustel (47:15)
I'm grateful that I had my wits about me. You know, when you're younger, you don't say that much, right? But as you're older, it's a phrase that comes up. You see, my grandmother had dementia and my mother was always afraid she would get dementia. Instead, she got Lou Gehrig's disease, you know, ALS, that was hard to see, but she kept her wits. I have an aunt and an uncle who had dementia, usually not until they were in their eighties. Maybe I'll get dementia someday.

Kasey (47:20)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Joyce Feustel (47:42)
But right now, I still have my wits about me. And even if I didn't have a lot of the physicality that I also appreciate, having my wits about me and being witty, having that natural sense of humor, it just goes a long ways.

Kasey (47:58)
Your wit is very intact and so is your beauty.

Joyce Feustel (48:01)
Thank you.

Kasey (48:02)
Mm -hmm.

Emily (48:03)
Yeah. Well, thank you, SoulStirred listeners for joining us. Thank you for joining us, Joyce. It was great to have you here. For our listeners, please download the episode, share it with someone who could benefit from hearing this episode, and please write to us. If you have questions, if there is a topic you want to hear on the show or you have feedback for us, please email us, SoulStirred Podcasts.

We would love to hear from you.

Kasey (48:34)
We appreciate you taking care of yourselves and each other. Bye bye.

Joyce Feustel (48:37)
Thank you.