We were lucky to catch up with Megan Billnoske recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Megan, thanks for joining us today. What’s something crazy on unexpected that’s happened to you or your business
It was about two months into owning my own business, and I made it a priority to volunteer once a quarter. Afterall, I had worked at an HR PEO company in Houston who gave us volunteer hours to go volunteer on company time. I thought – yes, this is important for good business! And because it’s easy and great to meet people at, I decided to sign up for a shift at the Houston Food Bank. I had been there previously while working at a large healthcare organization, so I knew the work and how to sign up.
The week that my shift was scheduled, I had an idea.
If every major corporation who came to volunteer at the Food Bank wore matching team shirts, why couldn’t I do that too? I mean, my team would be a team of one, but that’s okay. The little guys (small businesses) matter, too.
Well, I hemmed and hawed at the idea, thinking it was genius, then thinking it was dumb. This went on for days.
The night before my shift, the house was quiet, and I was having my favorite glass of wine in our kitchen. The Cinderella blue shirt was sitting there on the kitchen island. I took a sip, looked down at it. Took another sip, and then saw some glitter vinyl next to my Cricut machine. Took another sip, and thought….yep, this is about to happen. Note – I completely recognized that the color was Cinderella blue, and the ball I had coming up was a shift at the foodbank. Rags to riches story here? Mayyybe!
Time to b-e-d-a-z-z-l-e this baby!
Drinking wine and Cricuting is highly productive, as it turns out. Within about 10 minutes, I had a fresh cut white vinyl lettering: #IMSPIRE. I kept it short and sweet, with simple layout and words selection so that if someone looked up the hashtag online, they’d find me. (As you’ll see, I love things that have strategy too them – not just a shirt design, but a way for people to see the hashtag and actually find me online).
The next day comes, and my shift is in the morning. I get up early. Pop on my jeans, tennis shoes and blue shirt. Grabbed a granola bar and a bottle of water, and joined the millions of cars on the Houston freeways that morning.
There I am, sitting in my car, thinking…this is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. What am I thinking in my homemade shirt, in a team of one people showing up at this huge warehouse? Wafting away that imposture syndrome figure I call Moaning Murtle, I reframed it saying – I am here to do good in the world and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
I get to the Food Bank, and park. I gather my stuff and walk through the huge glass doors and arrive at the check in table. They took my name and said to wait in the main area until the groups are divided up for work that day.
As it turns out many of the Houston oil and gas companies were there, along with HP. There was a large group wearing black shirts and bright green writing. There was another large group wearing red from a huge hospital in Houston. What color is the HP team shirt, you might ask? Well, blue of course!
All of the groups were dismissed to their stations except for the solo volunteers. I asked the reception desk where I should go, and they said go with the blue group. So, I took my solo self right over to the HP group.
One Cinderella light-blue shirt, among 50 bright teal blue shirts for HP. *Gulp – no, I don’t feel out of place at all!
We get instructions and all divide out to the scan-a-can station. There are three people per station scanning items from one box and sorting them into another box. The whole room probably had 8 stations. Our task was very easy and repetitive – yes, please!
After instructions, everyone organically disperses into the stations. The one toward the back had two people at it, so I asked if I could join them. They enthusiastically welcomed me, and we got to work. The guy picked up the boxes, the lady scanned them and handed to me. I then put the item in the box and on the conveyer belt. On the other side was the exact same set up, and another team was also loading boxes onto the belt.
We work for about twenty minutes, when their HP photographer came around taking photos for their company marketing. *Gulp – please let me not be those, haha. The photographer insisted I was in the pictures though. Once the final one was taken, the group went back to working. And then… then it got crazy.
The photographer tried to read my shirt: “IMSPIRE? EmpSPIre? UMspere? What is that?”
I giggled with a smile and said, it’s my company, IMSPIRE, like the word inspire, but with a MMMMMegan twist. She asked me what I did, and I shared that I am a leadership trainer, speaker and coach.
I thought…WOW! This is amazing! I am so proud of this shirt right now!!
Three seconds later, she called on the lady across from me on the conveyer belt and said, “Hey, Jane, come meet Megan. She is a speaker and started her own company.” We shook hands and shared some small talk. Then, they both told me they were chairs for a group that acquires speakers for HP.
Whaaaaaaaaat?! How. did. this. just. happen.
We continued talking, swopped business cards and discussed speaking opportunities later that week – all because of my homemade #IMSPIRE Cinderella t-shirt. I took it as a sign to keep doing what I was doing! Have courage, be yourself and take a step.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Oh sure! Well, my name is Megan, and I’m a leadership development professional. My specialty is working with leaders who need help seeing their path through the confusion. Normally this happens when an organization needs to train their team (workshop), an individual needs to change careers (coaching), or when an event needs a speaker to kick it off with a powerful message (keynote). I do this from the company I started called IMSPIRE – modeled after the latin word inspirare – to breathe life into. That’s exactly what I do every day.
Looking back to how I got to where I am today, it’s an interesting and very long journey! Believe it or not, I fell into my profession of talent development by complete accident.
I graduated from Texas Tech University with a bachelor’s in Mass Communication, Studio Art/Painting minor. Well, in the recession, hardly anyone was hiring, so I took part time jobs to make ends meet. Then, after 6 months, I landed my first professional training job as a Texas Tech Admissions Counselor in Houston. And wow, did I love it!
Driving the Texas Tech car, doing public speaking and designing presentations. After a year, I started to get itchy thinking – I need something more. I’ll never forget a voice telling me to “Think Bigger”. So, I made a list of all of the amazing things I would love to have in a job – international travel, more money so I could get an apartment and move out of my parent’s house, working with people, doing speaking and probably in the famous oil and gas industry. Ten months later, I landed a job as a corporate trainer with a 34% salary increase, my first apartment and traveling to Singapore, Dubai, Scotland, England, Canda and beyond.
I had fallen into training and development by accident, and I love it so much that I’ve never left. Now, after 14 years at some of the best companies in Houston, training 14,000+ leaders around the world, having had 27 bosses and led over 50 people, I am happy to say that I still enjoy what I do – I help people grow.
My experience is quite well-rounded because of the opportunities that I strategically said yes to – different industries, different job titles, not afraid to change and not afraid to take assignments that were challenges. That includes leading strategic teams for the “Future of Work” as we returned from COVID, and also an enterprise-wide leadership development program for a large healthcare system. Most recently, accepting an invitation to serve as the President of the National Speakers Association (NSA) – Houston chapter. Step through fear, lead with courage and build the life of your dreams. It happens every day!
As a result, I’m able to offer a wide amount of knowledge to my clients through leadership training, speaking and coaching. My specialty is working with leaders, students and teams who are caught in the tornado of transition, change and ambiguity, without knowledge of where to go from there. I changed jobs 6 times, and started my own business by finding my way through ambiguity. And, funny enough, as an artist, a painting isn’t done until it goes through a lot of the messy phase. I look back and see how much that phase taught me.
Clients I work with normally need something energizing, fun and personalized. My typical coaching clients are ambiguous and high performers, running at life and their career. A typical training client needs a fun and innovative approach to the same old topic, and a typical speaking client needs me to share an invigorating message with personal stories and heart. It all just depends on what problem they’re trying to solve.
What I’m most proud of is the life I chose (and choose everyday) to build. I have not settled for unethical or cynical leaders. I have not settled for the sub-par boyfriend, or the job that hurt my health. I have not settled for the apartment that was robbed, or the car that I didn’t want. I always say that life is full of choices, and that’s exactly how I built (and am building) the life of my dreams.
Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?
I’d say my most favorite marketing story is one that involves my newsletter, called Lead Where You Are.
I started it on a whim, just as a long post of writing my thoughts on LinkedIn. Well, when I had written my post and clicked the “post” button, my good friend, LinkedIn, asked me if I’d like to publish an article.
Whoaaaa!
Well, yes. I don’t mind if I do.
So, I clicked to make it an article, and after I finished editing it, I clicked “post” and then it asked me if I wanted to start a Newsletter.
Shut the front door!
I went from ‘LinkedIn poster’, to ‘Article Author’ to “Newsletter Founder’ in a matter of 10 minutes. How incredible! I started posting an international travel story and leadership lesson each Tuesday in the month of October. Man, did I have a great time writing those! So much so, that I still write them to this day.
My very first post was about my red propeller plane ride to land in the Denali National park on a glacier. It was the most scared I have been in my life – getting into a tiny prop plane and flying into the mountains. I’m not afraid of flying or of small spaces, but I will admit that I made sure all of my beneficiaries were in order before that trip.
Well the article explains what happened and also showcases some of my favorite photos of the trip in order to help the reader feel and see the journey I went on. The aha moment was all about how stepping through that fear I had led me to experience the best excursion and experience of my entire life.
Sounds great, right! Happy ending. Now it’s an article that may help someone else in the world. Whoo! I was feeling proud for so much growth.
And then…
About a month after that first post, I was doing simple routine follow up with clients for future needs. I followed up with this one church organization to see if they still needed a speaker at their job networking meeting. Promptly, she emailed me back saying, “Yes, we’d love that! Can you speak on Stepping Through Fear – you know the article you posted in October?”
**Crickets after I read it.
**Shock followed.
**Running around the house like Ricky Bobby in Talladega Nights then followed!
My husband was sitting on the coach when I came in wailing my arms around, running, saying AHHHH! IT WORKED, IT WORKED!!!!
In fact, just reliving that memory brings a smile and a tear of pride to my eyes. What a wonderful sign of confirmation to keep emitting my energy and purpose into the world. It is needed and it is helping others.
The event date was picked and I did deliver a Stepping Through Fear presentation to the entire group who were looking for jobs. As it also turned out, they asked me to do a second presentation for the larger group that same day, and so I stepped through fear again by designing a custom live-painting presentation about the same Alaska story, but with many metaphors about how life and art are so similar. For example – I was painting the mountain that I saw in Alaska, and there was a river below it. Well, I painted the river, realized it was not in the right spot, and shared with the audience – even when we paint something in the wrong spot, we simply paint over it and reshape it to how it’s supposed to be. You get to create what you see on your canvas. And in another example, I shared how sometimes the paint gets too thick and will not spread across the canvas without water – that’s just like when we need to water down our priorities and enable us to cover the amount of ground we need to.
I am grateful to LinkedIn for subtly inviting me to become a Newsletter Owner which gave me a platform to share life lessons that may resonate with others. Turns out, that’s exactly what I was able to share with a room of 50 people looking for a job, stepping through fear to make ends meet, interview, take new jobs and start over. That’s the power of amazing marketing when the intention is to be a light to IMSPIRE others on their own journey.
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
Hands-down, the most effective strategy for growing my clientele comes in two buckets – Social Media and In-Person Events.
Most all of my clients come from the marketing I create and post on social media, in particular, LinkedIn. I follow companies, share posts from key leadership companies in my industry, reach out and spark conversations and send connection requests every Friday. My goal is to build an empire of like-minded people who see the world and leadership like I do. The more that we collaborate together, the more influence we have in the world to decrease the painful bosses, and increase the champion leaders.
My marketing on social media is all done in Canva – I love that program! I spend anywhere from 30 minutes to 5 hours a week in the software, either making content or scheduling it out into the future. Now that AI has really taken off in Canva, there are even more amazing things that tool can do.
My strategy for social media marketing is what I like to call triple-pronged:
1) I need to have fun making it! Is it colorful and full of energy? Is it simple to read and grab people’s attention? Does it use a neat video or a cool texture? What about animations that make sense? And finally – pop that fun IMSPIRE logo on there!
2) Does it appeal to what problems my target audience is experiencing? I design using the key fundamentals of the four styles in Everything DISC – Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Conscientiousness. Normally this means – big bolder title (D style); Colorful font and text with shapes and layout (i Style); Connection piece with heart and authenticity (S style) and details/bullet points and hyperlinks (with everything spelled right!) (C style).
3. Who else do I need to tag in this post to share the knowledge, event, thought or idea with? How else can this post be helpful to others? What’s the web of connectivity, sitting here waiting to be made? Make sure they make sense and tag them in the post as you tell the story.
The second bucket I mentioned is in-person events. This piece is critical for two reasons. First, it gets you out of the house (work from home, yes?) and with the people you need to be networking with (and add them on LinkedIn to stay in touch). Second, it also gives you primo content to post as marketing material – thanking others, shining a light on great venues and organizations.
In-person events typically include – conference presentations and/or participations, speaking at professional organization meetings, networking happy hours, industry events that are in your space, and so much more. I always say that the event needs to be of interest to me for my time, potential to grow my business, and the most of the time…just something that sounds fun!
Most of the time though – my clients come from this hybrid approach. Either they meet me on LinkedIn and we then meet virtually or in person. Or, they met me in person and then we chat via email or LinkedIn. At the end of the day you have to be in the spaces that make you happy because that energy will drive all of your connections.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.meganbillnoske.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/imspirebymeganbillnoske/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61550527157931
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganbillnoske/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@IMSPIREbyMeganBillnoske
