Often bombarded by high levels of pressure, unrealistic expectations, and unwanted comments, women in corporate tend to suffer from imposter syndrome. Their self-esteem is either depleted or completely drained, making them afraid to take risks or chase their goals. To address this unfortunate reality, Clarissa Burt presents her concept of HIGH: living with honesty, integrity, greatness, and honor. Joining Rosie Zilinskas, the Founder and CEO of In The Limelight Media explains how to defeat thoughts that hold you back from building up self-esteem and finally step into your place of power. Clarissa discusses transforming failures into learning opportunities and why leaving the corporate world for a more fulfilling career is never a bad idea.
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In this episode, I have Clarissa Burt as my guest. She is an internationally acclaimed award-winning media personality, producer, director, writer, author and public speaker. She is also a former supermodel and the winner of the Celebrity Survivor show. Clarissa is the Founder and CEO of a company called In the Limelight Media. This is a multimedia platform consisting of TV, video, podcast, and a digital magazine. Her bestselling book entitled The Self-Esteem Regime was published on November 2021.
The reason I invited Clarissa on is because she is a communications expert. She has so much expertise in the communications industry as a professional that she wrote this amazing book. There are a bunch of different things that we’re going to be talking about. One of them is why we have a fear of failure. She has an acronym with the phrase, “I want to live HIGH,” but we’re not talking about that kind of high. HIGH is an acronym that she will explain during the episode.
She also wants you to know that you need to step into your place of power. We’re going to talk about all that. She’s also going to tell us a little bit about her book. All of this is relevant to women in the corporate world because a lot of times we suffer from imposter syndrome or lack of self-esteem. Clarissa tells us a little bit about how to be able to shed some of those thoughts that are holding you back and be able to build your self-esteem up. This conversation is going to be important if you’re struggling to step into the power of you, essentially, at work. Stay tuned for my conversation with Clarissa.
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Clarissa, it’s very nice to see you on the show. I’m going to go straight in and ask you a question. Last time that we spoke, you talked about people having the fear of failure. I want to know what your acronym is for that.
Failure is something that wells up in everybody frequently whenever life happens where we need to move forward or forge ahead. It’s those feelings of, “Am I going to be good enough? Am I going to make this happen?” All that fear starts coming up. The only thing it is is the fear of failure. When we had our conversation, you said, “What if you didn’t fail?” It is obviously right and a great way of looking at it. I love when you say that. The acronym is your first attempt at learning.
I’m hard-pressed to believe that the first car that came off the assembly line or the first light bulb is not perfect. Nothing comes out the first time perfectly. Sometimes it’s a work in progress. It may take a little longer than we like. The idea that you have failed means you’re one step closer to success. You should embrace failure because you know it’s inevitable. Why not make it your friend as opposed to your foe and have it, “I’m going to fail. I’m going to trip up. I’m not going to get it right the first time.”
The idea that you have failed means you are one step closer to success. – Clarissa Burt Click To Tweet
When we started to crawl and get off our bellies, it took us a minute. When we were done crawling and start walking, it took us a minute. When we were done walking, we started to run. It took us a couple of times to figure that out. It’s the same thing as riding a bike. I haven’t ridden a bike in years, but I know that if I am going to ride one, I would be fine. Life is going to present you with these things and you just have to know that it’s going to be okay. Failure is not necessarily a bad thing. We have put a connotation that it’s a horrible thing and it’s not.
Failure is a learning experience. Salespeople say, “After all the noes you get, however many noes, there’s always a yes.” It’s the same thing with the fear of failure. You can feel afraid, but if you stop trying, you’re going to stay stuck. Whereas if you keep going, even though you’re going to fail, then you learn from that and then you’re eventually going to succeed in whatever it is that you’re doing. Think of riding a bike, skateboarding or something like that. Olympians are the perfect example of that. They keep trying until they succeed in whatever it is that they’re talking about.
Practice makes perfect. We also say that it takes seven touches for the client to know, like and trust you. Those are the most important things. It may not take that first encounter, telephone call, coffee or however it is that you approach your clients. It’s going to be potentially seven touches. They may need a newsletter or two. They may need a follow-up call. It could be a text that you are following up with. They need to know that they can trust you and that takes time. Be patient and don’t be afraid of failing.
This show is about women in corporate. Tell me a little bit about how you would translate that fear of failure for women in corporate that are trying to advance in their corporate careers.
As women, we are used to having a little more difficulties than men. It’s a well-known thing that we have to try harder. A lot of times we downplay ourselves, our personalities, and the way we look. We have to be very careful to be able to work in a corporate workplace and juggle. There’s a little bit of a juggling game going on there because you want people to like you and to be personable, but not too much. You are always in this tightrope situation and feeling.
The most important thing that you need to remind yourself frequently is that you are at the table because you deserve to be at the table. You’ve worked very hard to be at the table, so you deserve to be at the table. There are ways to put boundaries in place in a corporate workplace that are easy to do. I say it’s with ease, joy and glory. People think that putting boundaries in place means you have to be stern, angry, hard or very harsh, and you don’t. You can say the same things with ease, joy and glory.
I know women out there get me when I say it. You can say it in a very kind way, “Can I talk to you about that for a moment, would you mind? What you said there, I feel a little uncomfortable. Let me explain why. I don’t want to call you out but I do want to explain how it made me feel.” In other words, don’t put them too much on the defense.
There’s that tight rope because you want to continue the relationship unless it’s something that is overt and blatant that then you have to call in HR. That’s a whole different animal right there. That’s probably a whole other podcast. You can learn how to approach a corporate environment, and it’s tough especially for younger girls when they’re coming up through the ranks. They’re working hard and doing all the right things.
They’re taking the courses and classes, and bettering themselves. At the same time, they don’t want to irk anyone. They don’t want to put anyone off. It’s very difficult. I understand, but at the same time, keep in the back of your mind at all times that you deserve to be there, or you probably wouldn’t be there. That is extremely important. Know your worth and your value. Remind yourself of that. Be firm and stern. Do it with a smile when at all possible.
I want to point out something that you probably didn’t notice that you did. Before I tell you what you did, I saw a TikTok. This is a psychologist. He was saying that in order to soften a message if you’re trying to say something, all you need to do is tilt your head a little bit. When you were giving the example of, “What you said made me uncomfortable,” you tilted your head at the same time. I noticed that because I’m noticing those things now. It brings a softness to the conversation. I don’t know if you did that on purpose or if it’s natural.
I do think it’s innate at this point because I have been in media for years, which means I’m in many different contexts, whether I’m on stage, in front of a camera or behind the scenes with the guy that puts a microphone on or whatever it is. I’m a communicator. I’ve known from a very early age what communication is and how it works from life and life experiences.
One of the most important things I will add to this is to never lose your cool. Never get angry and please don’t be upset. Upset happens in HR. It cannot happen in front of your constituent, at the board table, in your cubicle, in your office with windows, whatever it is or wherever you are. If you are aiming for leadership or a leadership role, leadership starts with yourself in the mail room.
I don’t care where you start or at lower corporate levels. Leadership starts with how you are acting and interacting with yourself and others. Also, boundaries and teaching others how you would like and would not like to be treated. It starts very early on. You also will teach people what you will and will not accept every day of the week. In every interaction you’ve got, make sure that you are feeling your value and validated. You may not always feel validated in corporate, but definitely never forget your value.
There’s this thing where you say that you want to live HIGH? What do you mean by that?
It’s a fantastic acronym that I coined. I want to live HIGH. I want to be better tomorrow than I am today. The way that I can do that is by living HIGH. That means living with radical Honesty, Integrity, Greatness and Honor. Certainly, that sounds very lofty like, “Who the heck does she think she is?” That’s okay. I’m fine with all of that. If we all came to the table with honesty, integrity, greatness or you can call it gratitude if you like, and with honor, I think we’d be able to change the trajectory of our lives and those around us.
If you come to the table with honesty, integrity, greatness, and honesty, you can change your life's trajectory and those around you. – Clarissa Burt Click To Tweet
If you’re at the water cooler and somebody’s trashing Susie Q, are you going to start fomenting with the rest of the pack or that pack mentality and say, “You’re right, she really is. She said that to me the other day. Did you see that dress she was wearing?” Are you going to walk up, listen to them and say, “I know Susie Q. That’s not my experience of her. Maybe she was just having a bad day that day. Maybe she needed a hug or a little extra love. I’m not trying to be too woo-woo. I’m just trying to say let’s cut her a little slack because when I’m in a bad mood, I wish you would do the same for me.”
When you walk away, you’re going to leave some jaws hanging. People are going to go, “I don’t know who she thinks she is,” but I will also tell you that you’re going to make them think. They’re going to question themselves and their integrity. I promise you that will happen. You’ve left a bit of a lesson behind with you which is extraordinary.
You say you want to stop at your power place. The acronym that you said about the HIGH, we do not mean like marijuana high at all.
We mean honesty, integrity, gratitude and honor. When you’re honoring yourself and others, what an amazing place to be. We did that at the water cooler. We hear living in gratitude almost ad nauseam, but it makes a great impact when you wake up every day. On my refrigerator, I’ve taped different mantras and images. With the reticular activating system, I’ve got the input for the things that I know I’m striving for should I ever forget them. Also, some of my affirmations. Affirmations are extremely important. Some people say they’re not that important, but when you continue the repetitive process of anything like when you are worrying, you’re praying for what you do not want. When you’re using affirmations, it is a constant reminder of what it is that you do want. It’s an extraordinary exercise to keep in your life at all times.
The other thing that I love to leave everyone with that they can remember is that we hear so much about, “I am enough. You are enough. Everybody’s enough.” If you take a look at the definition of enough, it is as much as is required. I am so much more than is required. I know that you are too, Rosie, and the gals here. I know that we all want empowerment, betterment, and improvement in our lives. You’re not going to be able to do that by doing as much as is required. I think that you’ll agree. That’s an important part also that we talk about a lot in my book. It is that enough is really not enough.
Tell me a little bit about when you step into your power place.
I talk about standing strong in your stead. We know life is going to trigger us when the hurricane comes through. That storm comes and goes, and you can always count on the next one. We hate to say it, but we do. It’s a part of life. Standing strong in your stead is something that is extremely important because when the storm comes through, you may lose a leaf or two or you could potentially even lose a limb, but you’re not going to be uprooted with the storm and transported away. That’s because you have all of the self-esteem tools in the shed that you need to be able to confront life with all of the strength, grace, and glory that will keep us sane, keep us moving forward again, and wanting to be better tomorrow than we are today, notwithstanding what just happened.
I can give you probably ten different things that had happened to me in the last few years, and many of us because we have experienced loss, whether it be the loss of friends, family, money, jobs, identity, hope or motivation. There had been a sense of loss, not for all, but certainly for many. The individuality, “Who am I? Who am I not?” We’re all worried and we’ve gone through loss.
This is a perfect example of what COVID has done to change the trajectory of all of our lives. Were you standing strong in your stead? Did you know that tomorrow is another day? Did you see the light at the end of the tunnel? Did you remain completely motivated? Were you sitting down with your list and saying, “If this, then that. If this happens, this is how I’m going to pivot right. I may need to pivot left.” What tools did you pull out of that shed to use in these very trying times?
I don’t know that these trying times are necessarily over. It’s not a doom and gloom message, but a message to say that we are still in it. I don’t know that we are out of it yet, but notwithstanding. Life is always going to throw a curve ball. Let’s get those tools that we need in the shed. When I say that, I mean, “What do we need to release? What do we need to let go of?” We hear that all the time, but have you done that work? Have you said, “I need to release that I don’t think I’m good enough?” Have you done the work then? That’s a big one. That takes work. What do you need to rebuild? What are you rebuilding? What are you building?
Here’s another one, responsibility. These are chapters in my book. Where is it that we are taking responsibility and where are we shirking responsibility? It’s knowing full well. For me, it’s finance. I hate numbers, accounting and spreadsheets. I don’t like charts. I can’t stand accountants. I don’t like contracts. I’m completely right-brained. I’m sure many in corporate are more left-brained than I am. There are things that I know I shirk. If I don’t have to, I will procrastinate, but I’ve started to say, “I got to learn a little more about it.” I might pull up a YouTube video or find a book and learn more about the things that scare me. Losing money scares me. I’ve made a concerted effort to make sure that these are things that I fortify for myself.
There is a lot of stuff there. Let’s go to your book. Your book is called The Self-Esteem Regime. Tell me why did you write this book?
I started when I was younger. I watched my mom. My mom was in a very toxic relationship. She was young. I was born in ‘59 so let’s go back to women in 1959. She was fresh out of high school and got herself pregnant, so here I am. She had no job. She married my father. It was twenty years’ worth of not a happy place. She was a beautiful woman. She didn’t have her picture taken. She’s like, “Don’t take my picture.” “Mom, you’re beautiful and gorgeous. What’s up with that?”
My grandmother is another beautiful lady who decides she had to lose weight. She didn’t have to lose an ounce. She was gorgeous. She takes two diet pills and chokes on them. It perforates her esophagus, and she spends the next six weeks in the hospital. I thought, “That was silly, grandma.” I then started modeling and working with some of the most beautiful creatures around the world. These are lovely looking and physically beautiful women. I could see that many of the girls were not feeling good about themselves for many different reasons.
I said, “What is it? What’s going on here? My perception of these women is so much bigger, better, stronger, and bolder than their perception of themselves.” That was a head-scratcher for me. I went, “Silly me. It’s the lack of happy and healthy self-esteem.” From a difficult childhood, I came through with bookstores. Back in the day, we have Waldenbooks, Borders Books, and Barnes & Noble. There was no Amazon but we have bookstores. They used to be called self-help and they had one shelf. That was all we had, but I devour it. It was my go-to for trying to unpack and break down what this thing called life was.
Now, if you walk into Barnes & Noble, it’s called personal development, self-improvement, self-esteem and self-help. It’s a billion-dollar industry. I knew that this book had to be written. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while. I did a speech on stage with the gentleman that co-wrote the book with me and others. I downloaded everything. He put it into beautiful wording for me. His name is Gary Krebs. He said to me, “I’ve listened to your speech. I’ve got to write your book.” That’s how it started.
It was picked up by a New York City publisher. We’re on Kindle, Audible as well, and Barnes & Noble all across the United States. Almost every library in the United States picked it up. That alone tells you that there is always a great need for comfort, first of all. Secondly, to remind everyone about the courage that it takes to continue to forge on, especially for those that go the extra mile or want to talk about the longest mile.
That is always the mile that is pretty much your alone. There are not that many people walking beside you if any. It’s dark. There’s a storm coming through. It’s thundering and lightning, and then there’s the big bad wolf behind the tree. You’ve got no raincoat and no umbrella. You just keep going up with standing because you know that you can see that little teeny light at the end of the tunnel. As you keep walking and forging through, the light keeps getting bigger, better, bolder and brighter. These are the crowning moments when you can pat yourself on the back and say, “I had naysayers. I might have been one of them. I was probably my biggest naysayer.” The book is written so that you are your own champion. You no longer are your own naysayer.
I want to equate this to The Great Resignation. A lot of people have been saying, “All these people that quit their corporate jobs are just lazy. They don’t want to work anymore,” which is ridiculous to me. I feel that it’s a lot of what you’re saying. They realize that their job in corporate was not meeting their needs, whatever those needs are, whether it’s having to take care of kids, loved ones or whatever, or they weren’t fulfilled anymore. What is your view on the people that participated in The Great Resignation? Good for them that they were able to find something else, but that may not be the case. I’m curious to know your opinion.
Let me remind everybody that if you don’t want to work a 9:00 to 5:00, be prepared to work 24/7. I don’t say that to deter anyone because I am a solopreneur and entrepreneur. I’ve always worked from a home office and I love it. I adore it. I do work an inordinate amount of time. I work double time. I’m not married. I don’t have children. It’s a little bit of a different case scenario, but no matter where you are, you’re going to be working. The beauty of being an entrepreneur or solopreneur however is it’s on your own terms, time and dime. You’ve got to take that into consideration as well.
There is not always a guaranteed paycheck. That’s something you might want to consider. We could be here all day with the pros and the cons of both, but should you decide to leave corporate to go home and work, know that it is still considered work. It’s funny how the perception of others will change. Everybody gets up and goes into the office every day. In my family, for example, my mother was in a car accident and she’s home right now. It’s funny how everyone thinks that because I’m home, I’m not working. I can certainly take care of her and I do happily. Don’t get me wrong. That’s not the point.
The point is now I’ve got to take care of business here, which usually is about a 12 to 13-hour day. I will work that much. I’ll get up real early and I work late. Now, I have to integrate something else because I have the freedom to do that, whereas the others don’t. Take those things into consideration as well. Pros and cons to both, never think that because you’re not in a corporate environment, you’re not going to be working your little tushy off because you are.
It’s going to be different things for different people. One thing that the pandemic did is it helped people evaluate the work that they were doing or their 9:00 to 5:00 job. A lot of people found that wasn’t fulfilling and they found different ways of becoming fulfilled. It brings me back to your HIGH acronym where they want to live their life with integrity, gratitude and honesty. At that time, they decided that a 9:00 to 5:00 job wasn’t for them. That applies to any kind of lifestyle.
At the end of the day, self-esteem is all about being happy. When I say happy, healthy self-esteem, it means you’re doing what floats your boat. You’re doing it with honesty, integrity, gratitude, greatness and honor, all of these lovely words that I love to offer up. As long as you are doing what’s making you happy, that is the end game and the end goal. There’s very little wiggle room after that.
Self-esteem is about being happy. It means doing what floats your boat. – Clarissa Burt Click To Tweet
When you say self-esteem, let’s define it a little bit more for people. How do you get self-esteem? How do you acquire it? What is it and how do you get it?
Self-esteem is how we value and perceive ourselves. It’s based on what kind of opinion have we formulated about ourselves in lieu of what we’ve heard, what we’ve been told and what we’ve seen. We’ve got a lot of stuff that happened with the natal tribe or what we learned at home that may not necessarily serve us once we move out. The same thing happens with your education process, where you went to school, what you learned, and whom you listened to. Even today with the news and what you read, what are you garnering from yourself?
Women have been going through lots of indoctrination through media for years, “You weren’t thin enough. You weren’t pretty enough or good enough. You needed this to lose weight. You needed that to feel better,” all this stuff that women know. Let’s not even talk about the pink tax, but let’s talk about the things that we have learned through the media. Thank God for Dove. Their self-esteem project did a lot of work around that. Let’s talk about faith. A lot of times your faith is another way of learning and another way they teach us.
In the Catholic faith, there were a lot of things that I learned like you were a bad girl if you did certain things and you were taught differently. What is it that you learned along the way that you know doesn’t serve you? Whatever it was that you were lost, and you started to create these opinions and beliefs about yourself, you have difficulty thinking now that you’re able to change because you’re going to hurt somebody’s feelings. Somebody’s nose is going to get out of joint, and your truth is no longer their truth.
This is what I talk about in the courage part. It’s the courage to stand up, move on, do what’s right for you, and live in your truth while not hurting anyone else or not wanting to hurt anyone else. I touched upon a very difficult childhood. I’m not here to bash my parents. They did the best they could with the tools they had in the shed at the time. For me, the toxic stops here. This is where I say, “I’m going to do the best I can to be a better person than I am now.” Self-esteem is what you’ve learned and garnered along the way that you have taken on as yours that you have believed is your perception of yourself, and it may not be.
What we do with self-esteem and with a book is to re-evaluate who you really are and how you can live with your happy self-esteem for the person you are. We call it an action plan for becoming the confident person you were meant to be. The key word is meant. You were meant to be something that you may not have learned. That’s a lot to unravel. That can be difficult for people.
Tell me 3 or 4 chapter names, and does it go through each chapter to help people acquire that self-esteem?
Absolutely. We go through the twelve chapters. We start with Release. What do we have to release? The second one is Rebuild. It talked about all the rebuilding pieces from the ground up. Some of it is ground-up work, not all of it. You will be taking a very deep dive. Let’s get back to that courage part and know that this might be a book that you might have to put down a couple of times or you are keeping on. It depends on your comfort level. The next one is Responsibility. We’ve touched upon that.
Replace, what is it that We have to replace in our lives? It could be relationships. These are difficult things. It could be thought processes or relationships. Remember that extra mile I talked to you about? Sometimes it’s the relationships in our lives that are not serving us. When I say serving, I mean they’re not supporting us. Some of these relationships in our lives that we have found ourselves in can be rather toxic. How do we get out of toxic relationships? How do we re-evaluate them? How do we put them in a different box on the shelf? We take down boxes and we take a look at what we’ve got in our lives. We put it back. Is it on a really high shelf, or is it one that’s easily accessible?
We’ve got to be mindful of that as well. I do talk about mirror therapy because one of the most important things you’ll ever do is to talk to yourself in a mirror. It sounds and feels weird. It is uncomfortable, and you might want to bring a tissue. I didn’t invent this, I learned it along the way. When you start looking at yourself in the mirror, to me, it is the most empowering and impactful exercise that you will ever do.
You start to tell yourself that you forgive yourself for whatever, how much you love yourself, and that you’re there for yourself. “Susie Q, I love you. I’m I am here for you. I forgive you.” Sometimes we think that what we’ve done in the past and the mistakes that we’ve made are life sentences. It’s not. It’s nothing more than a learning opportunity. We can’t always be down on ourselves about some of the mistakes we’ve made in the past. Move on. There’s not much more we can do about that except work on ourselves today.
Sometimes, we treat the mistakes we have done as a life sentence. However, they are nothing more than learning opportunities. – Clarissa Burt Click To Tweet
That sounds fantastic. Even the mirror thing, I got a little emotional picturing and forgiving myself for whatever situation. I want to bring to light that all of these things that Clarissa is talking about are things that will impact your personal life. It will help you figure out why you’re not advancing your career. If you’re stuck somewhere, maybe some of these things that Clarissa is talking about are going to be able to unlock something so that you can release it. That’s one of the biggest chapters probably that are going to impact people, the releasing. I love that it was your first chapter. Tell me a little more about the book.
We move on from there. We’ve got case studies in the book. We’ve got Clarissa’s Corner and the Clarion Call. There’s a review, homework and affirmations. Reinvent, “I will become the person I was always meant to be.” These are affirmations, “I will not settle for less than I deserve. I know that I deserve only the best for myself. I am not what others think of me. I was created for greatness and to inspire others. I’m excited about who I am becoming as I map out my future. I’m okay and say yes to getting up, moving on, and never looking back. I will do what is necessary to complete my reinvention and conquer the world.”
The book is pretty much anywhere where you can purchase it.
Barnes & Noble and Amazon. We’ve got on Amazon hard copy, Kindle and Audible.
You also said the libraries across the country.
I was thrilled when I learned that. That was very exciting. That was straight up even before the book was published. Get your hands dirty if you are stuck or even if you’re not. Self-esteem is one of those things where you can never take a test to get 100 on. It’s one of those things you’ll be working on all the time because of the triggers. Self-esteem 101, stop comparing yourself to everybody else because you are so lucky you get to be you. They call it self-esteem for a reason, so stop looking for the approval of everyone else. What everyone else thinks of you is none of your business.
This has been a fantastic conversation. Women in corporate are the perfect readers for this book because when you work on your self-esteem, you are working on your career. You’re going to have to do the work. You’re going to have to do some releasing, forgiving and reinventing. I think that’s all fantastic. Clarissa, you’ve given us a ton of different things that people can do, but can you provide me with maybe two tips that women in corporate can take away from everything that we’ve been discussing?
One of them is loyalty is when you’ve got my back behind my back. Remember that as you’re ascending a corporate ladder. I like to remind people that ascension is just as easy as your dissension. You can come up a ladder and the next thing you know, you’re right back down at the bottom rung and you don’t know how it happens. Remember the loyalty piece and the relationships that you’ll be creating. People remember how you treat them. Especially for those that want to be in leadership roles, that’s something to be mindful of on any given day.
Don’t ever forget anyone else as you are becoming your better self and as you’re becoming a leader. A leader means it’s stepping into greatness. It’s not all about you. It’s about those you’re leading. That’s very important. I love to leave you with that. The loyalty piece is a big one for me. One of the other ones that I love to say is, “I can do anything.” You can do anything until you can’t. By that I mean tomorrow is not always promised.
Who is it that you need to be picking up the phone and giving a ring to? Who is it that you need to ask forgiveness from? Who is it that you need to send a card to? A thank you card goes such a long way. “I’m sorry” is probably one of the most impactful and powerful things you will ever utter. You are never too big or too important in anyone’s life to say, “I’m sorry,” if it is definitely needed. Sometimes even when it’s not, “I’m sorry” can go a very long way.
We’re talking a genuine “I’m sorry.”
You can do anything until you can’t because tomorrow is not always promised. Remember that. Is it a friend, family, ex, child or parent? Who is it that you need to pick up a phone call and dust off old cobwebs?
Especially in these times with the pandemic where we’re separate from each other. That was unfortunate. Clarissa, this has been a wonderful conversation. You have left us with so much thinking to do, at least for me. It has been a positive impactful conversation for me. Before I let you go, any last words that you want to communicate?
Remember about the acronym. Also, for women, remember that it’s okay to cry. I often say, “Kleenex, clean up, and then go play dress-up.” Go have fun. Don’t forget in all of this, life is supposed to be fun. We’re supposed to be having a good time. That’s probably the most important thing I can impart as we say goodbye for now. Remember that we’re supposed to be having fun. Go play dress-up.
Thank you very much for your time. This was a great conversation.
Thank you.
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When I first spoke to Clarissa and invited her onto the show, she said, “Don’t worry, I’ll bring a lot of energy.” She completely over-deliver it. Her energy was through the roof. It’s very much appreciated, Clarissa. Thank you for coming to the show. A few things that I took away from the episode is that it’s important for us to work on our self-esteem. As women in corporate, there is so much negative self-talk that we are very good at, that we need to stop and think about the thoughts that we are thinking.
As she said, “Negativity begets negativity. Positivity begets positivity.” If you are looking for a resource to help you figure out why you are not moving ahead in the corporate world, you might want to get her book, The Self-Esteem Regime. It is pretty much in any bookstore, but also public libraries. Look for it there.
To recap Clarissa’s two tips, tip Number one, she said, “Loyalty is when you got my back behind my back.” Hopefully, someone at work or in life has your back even though you are not there. Specifically in corporate, this would be similar to you getting a sponsor. Someone that is advocating for you, even if you are not there. Along with that, she says, “Build relationships.” That’s huge. We all know that. More importantly, a relationship is how you make people feel is critically important.
Tip number two is, “You can do anything until you can’t. Tomorrow isn’t always promised,” which we all know. Who do you have to call and think? Who do you have to call and ask for forgiveness? Say genuine and authentic, “I’m sorry,” for something that went wrong. Take the time, even if it is two minutes, to call your parents, siblings or whomever so that you can build and foster that relationship. Those are fantastic tips. With that, remember to be brave, be bold, and take action.
Clarissa Burt is an internationally acclaimed award-winning media personality, producer, director, writer, author, public speaker, and former supermodel and winner of the Celebrity Survivor show! With hundreds of television and film credits to her name, this Who’s Who of International and American Women brings over 35 years of entertainment industry experience in both International and American markets.
Clarissa is the Founder and CEO of In the Limelight Media, a multi-media platform consisting of TV/video, a podcast, and a digital magazine. Her shows can be seen on ROKU, Amazon Fire, Apple TV, etc. and her podcast is heard on 15 different distribution platforms. Her bestselling book entitled The Self-Esteem Regime was published by Roman and Littlefield on November 11th, 2021. The audiobook was published by Recorded Books two weeks later. The book drops in Italy on November 11, 2022.
