Isabel Hundt is the author of The Power of Faith-Driven Success: A Journey Toward Living Your Dream by 30 and certified vision and Transformation Coach and International Speaker. She’s a world visionary and an ambassador of Global Presence Leadership. She travels all over to share her enlightening message of tuning in to our true selves by understanding the connection between our heart and our brain. She is also teaching how to use our emotions as a powerful guide for success in all areas of our lives instead of experiencing emotions as a distraction. She’s a proud Christ follower, wife and a mother to son Jonah. Isabel enjoys kick boxing and body combat.
Question
- Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey
- How do you feel about customer experience in your own life, the things you’ve experience and what role do you think that plays in you being able to help people transform into their best selves?
- What are some everyday solutions that you believe can help improve customer experience?
- How do you feel about leadership in a business? What role do you think leadership plays in the whole customer experience process and the emotions around that as well?
- As a Visionary, as a Coach, what are some important considerations that you would recommend they take into account moving into the online space in order to be successful?
- How do you stay motivated every day?
- What is the one online resource, website, tool or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?
- What are some of the books that have had the biggest impact on you?
- If you were sitting across the table from another business owner and they said to you that they feel they have great products and services but they lack the constantly motivated human capital, what’s the one piece of advice would you give them to have a successful business?
- What is one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – something that you are working on to develop yourself or people?
- Where can our listeners find your information online?
- What is one quote or saying that you live by or that inspires you in times of adversity?
Highlights
- Isabel Hundt shared that she that when she was young, she had a lot of out of body experiences, at some point she had a head trauma and when she had the head trauma, she was out of her body and she could watch herself and there are other times where she felt like she could leave her body which was weird and she always reacted weird to other people that were in pain. For example, she laughed when they were hurting and she know why, she would say, “oh my god, it’s so embarrassing, I shouldn’t be laughing, it’s not funny, they are hurting” and looking back she knows it was a coping mechanism for her to not take on their stuff but when she was 12 years old, she had a vision that she would be moving the United States of America, she is originally from Germany where she grew up and her family is there. She had the vision and that she would be speaking in front of a lot of people and she didn’t quite know how it was going to happen because she didn’t have any connections and she also got into psychology and sociology around the same time, she grew up in the so call DDR, East Germany and they grew up Christian and so her dad wasn’t allowed study because he participated in church activities so when the walls came down he was finally able to get his Degree and that was when she was about 12 years old and that time she studied with him which was fun and when she was 18 years old, she went to the USA for an exchange year which was interesting because she really sucked speaking the language, she didn’t know what, “you’re welcome” meant. She then had to go back and she didn’t feel at home anymore, something didn’t feel right, it was just off and her dad would always say, “one day we’re going to do something together, we’re going to work together” and of course when you’re 19 years old you’re like, “heck no, I’m independent now.” She studied economics and failed, they kicked her out after 2 years and she started to have really bad depressions and she didn’t care if there was a car coming or not, she was just done with the world, everything was noisy and loud. When they kicked her out of university, she had to figure out what she wanted to do next and she finally admitted that she probably should go into the social science field because that’s what she was always been interested in, so she did that and started over and somehow she got into a really bad relationship with an American guy but that’s how she really came over so she is kind of grateful to him but that ended too after she finished her studying and she still came over and worked as a nanny. In that process she got to know her now husband and because he didn’t want to get married right away, she almost got deported and that was interesting. She had to go to Canada which was quite the experience and all that up and down and she didn’t what she wanted to do, she never felt like she really trusted her intuition and that’s when through a friend of a friend she started to get into the coaching world and she participated in a training, “This was exactly what I need to do because I need to understand who I am. I don’t feel German, I don’t feel American, who am I?” and within that journey of becoming a certified coach, she also realize that she is an empath which means that she experience the world more intense, she can see through people, she sees color around people, it’s a lot of stuff that she takes in and never knew how to trust that intuition or to work with it and throughout the journey she got to where she is today.
- Isabel Hundt stated that she used to do a presentation at Ball State University about customer service and they would look at like she’s crazy because nobody really understands that the customer service starts with you and they believe that customer service is the foundation to success in whatever you offer in your business, customer service is nothing different than creating relationships and being open to the experience with the other person. The problem that she sees often with customer service is that we don’t not have that self awareness, that often we don’t understand is what we focus on we create more of, what is going on inside of us is being reflected on the outside, that’s what’s happening around us. For example, if somebody comes into work and already has a crappy day and you have someone call you and they need help or support, you would react differently to them than if you had a happy or great day and even though the other person’s reaction wasn’t any different, you just experience it differently so if we have that awareness of what’s going on. For example, you can simply acknowledge, “oh shut, I have a crappy day today, I don’t know what’s going on, I feel frustrated, I feel angry, I’m not sure why” but if we just simply acknowledge it, you don’t have to go through the whole process of analyzing but just acknowledge it, we are able to take that apart from what we experience in relationship type of setting and we can say, “okay, I hear them differently, it’s nothing personal what they’re saying, I don’t have to react to it, I can set my stuff aside to be available to them” and that’s why she thinks self awareness is the foundation to great customer service, yet customer service is the foundation to successful life and business.
Isabel stated that emotions aren’t just emotions; they are what we make them, who would determine that anger has a certain chemical reaction in your body, we define it and we can acknowledge, “oh, that’s what’s going on, it’s okay, I am okay, I just don’t have to act on it react to it by pushing it on someone else”
- Isabel shared that for one, it depends on the setting but if you have a small business and it’s just you, definitely having a ritual every day, if it’s in the morning or before whenever you start working and for her, it’s usually around lunch time because she has a 3 year old when he’s finally asleep. Before she really start getting into work or connecting with people, she sits down and either meditate in her case and sometimes just a reflection yourself is really important just to understand, “okay, what’s going on today, what do I have to work through today that could get in the way for me to create successful connections with people that I really want to be of service to?” that’s the one thing that she really stretch with everyone. When she teach that at universities, the staff always looks at her like, “yeah, can we have a little more business like instead of all the psychology behind it” they don’t really want to take that responsibility, so it’s a little tough. If you can be compassionate with yourself and understanding and acknowledging it, you are more likely to show more compassion to those who you serve, if they have a bad day, you’re not jumping on board, you can just say, “hey, do you having a bad day? I’m sorry if you do, it’s okay and I still see you” so feeling seen creates the connection, the connection again is the foundation of a successful business. So the most important if you remember anything from this conversation, self reflection is the first thing someone should do to have a successful business.
- Isabel agreed that leaders have their own emotions and depending on your mode, your energy can manifest into the physical space and that can have a positive or negative impact on the staff and then eventually spill over to the customers. She stated that she used to work in corporate America for a year and she didn’t like it because she was the Administrative Assistant and was responsible for all those people and sometimes she would sit there and listen to people talk to customers and would say to herself, “do you actually want to work with that customer or you don’t? Because right now it sounds like you don’t” and even with each other. She thinks that customer service starts with the group itself, if there is tension within the people that work for you, those tensions come across with the customer, so for everyone that is a leader who is leading a group of people needs to stretch on team building and team building is the focus on self that’s why really successful companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook as well as Amazon, they all have life coaches, so their employees, most of them have at least one session a month or they have free access to a life coach and there is more of team building going on as their foundation than the actual growth of the business. If your team feels valued and seen, automatically your business will grow too because they do whatever it takes to grow this business because that means they feel a part of a big team, a mission, something that’s really important and that as a leader of a company if you have employees, for one you need to do the work yourself, that’s something she has realized, they usually send their employees to her workshops and expect that they will change the environment they are working in but they don’t want to do the work and that’s what hurts most companies.
Isabel stated that most of her clients are online. She said that for one, it is more convenient with a child at home that young but it allows her to work with people from all over the world, from France, Sweden, and India and all over the USA and she found and it depends on where you live. She stated that where she lives people are very conservative so it takes a lot to break through that wall and outside of it people are more open to what she’s talking about and what she teach and coach on. She does work mostly online but when she speaks, then she is travelling.
- Isabel stated that if you want to take everything online, the most important for her is authenticity, if suddenly you come across online differently than in your physical store, that will distract from your brand and people get confuse and when people get confuse, they will not buy from you. Authenticity, really understanding what you want to bring across online, what you want people to understand about who you are and your business that you can also implement or that you have already implemented in your brick and mortar business. Especially if you have a store and you want to take it online she really believes in help from people that have a lot of knowledge like Web Designers, they understand how to use different colors that really reflect your personality and your work because callers also have frequency as well as emotions where they create emotions or support certain emotions so people have to be aware of what they use even there online, what do you want to bring across, how you want people to feel when they look at what you represent. That goes back to personal development, Who are you? What is your message? What do you want to bring across? How do you want to serve people? What do you want other people to take away from it? And you can’t really answer those questions unless you are really aware of who you are and your purpose.
Isabel share that sometimes we take My Why a little bit too easy, it’s not just, “my WHY is to support my family financially” it needs to serve for the greater good. She stated that her WHY is to create a deeper connection inner culturally to understand that even though your background is different or the way you grew up or the traditions are different, it doesn’t make you any different as a human being. Her big Why is to bring people together to really connect on such a deep level that we can understand that without each other we can’t do anything and even if we live a thousand miles away from each other, we still impact each other in the way we think, in the way we operate, it has a ripple effect, that’s her greater purpose, that’s greater vision that she has so if you start with the WHY and only say, “my WHY is supporting my family” that’s not enough, that keeps it too limited and you don’t think outside the box.
- Isabel stated that what keeps her motivated is one, her Why, the essence of what she do what she do, she can’t just let it go, there’s too much at stake to not to do her work and she would be responsible. She always remind herself that if she doesn’t do the work that she is call to do, she is responsible for the people she could have impacted or that she could have supported and served if she had stuck with it, so the moderation is to keep that vision in mind, “Who am I impacting and what are the consequences if I succeed?” that is her biggest motivation and music helps her too. Music changes your vibration energy which the frequency of your body either increases or decreases depending on what you listen to and when she feels really demotivated, she listens to inspiring music and it feels like she is able to conquer everything, she is a leader and once she gets to that she feels she can move forward and stay motivated.
- Isabel stated that she was thinking about that question and she couldn’t quite find an answer, she was looking though everything that she is using but what she could not live without is her Virtual Assistant or her Web Designer the two people, she knows that they are not a tool or something that she uses online but those are the two things that if she didn’t have them her business would not be where it’s at or where she wanted it to go. She stated that they take such a load off her shoulders, it’s incredible. She stated that if you have an online business she would recommend that you get a Virtual Assistant and have a Web Designer always on your side. If something happens, within 2 minutes they can check, “okay, I got it” without you having to try and figure it out or make it even worst. Isabel stated that the other online resources that are really helpful like Buffer or Hootsuite are important if you want to save time and one thing that she learnt is focus on a few social platforms, don’t try to get into everything and get on board with everything new. Focus on 2 or 3 things that you are comfortable with and do whatever it takes to get your name out on those social platforms.
- Isabel shared that the book she read over the last year that really impacted the way she thinks and the way she experience things is The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You by Karla McLaren, it’s more written for empathy so if you’re not really an empathy and don’t want to get too deep into it, don’t read it but if you’re really interested in it then it will definitely help in coping with a lot of things and understanding a lot of things.
- Isabel stated that the advice that she would give is the advice that she gives herself everyday and that is trust. If you are in alignment, if what you do, what you send out is in alignment with what you have on your heart, that dream that really fires you up every single day, you need to trust. You can’t go out and follow everyone strategy and try to make everything work and sign up for every program that you can find just to make something happen, you need to trust and with every decision you make, ask yourself, “is that in alignment with who I am?, does this really work for me? And is it in alignment with my greater purpose?” If it’s not trust that you don’t need it at this time or ever but really trust. Trust, reflect and listen from within, those are the small advice points that she always give that she always give to herself as well.
- Isabel stated that the one thing that she is really excited about is doing sessions that are called Releasing Trapped Emotions because those are really important for us to be able to move forward otherwise we will always ending up where we started. Those are the 2 things that she is really excited about but she is also excited about working on a Ted Talk and that’s something she is doing right now and she got a lot of support from people who have done it before, who have the connections so she is super excited and nervous. In the near future she wants to create a more specific course about emotions and how to identify them and work through them with getting all wrapped up in it and that’s something she going to be working on in the spring and those are the few things she is working on right now.
- Isabel shared listeners can find her at –
www.isabelhundt.com
Isabel Hundt Facebook
Isabel Hundt Istagram
Isabel Hundt LinkedIn
Isabel Hundt Twitter
Isabel Hundt YouTube
- Isabel shared that she usually reverts to Matthew 17:20 and usually people say that you can’t bring the Bible into your business but for her it’s faith and science. It says, “So Jesus said to them, “Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.” And especially when we know the science part about it that we are able to just with the way we think, that we really can move mountains in that sense, just knowing that keeps her going. We are here, we are destined for something greater and we as a human world society, we have a responsibility to do better than what we’ve done so far.
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