Empowering Businesses through Storytelling with Dawn Gluskin

Dawn Gluskin of Blissed Communications

Clear Directory member, Dawn Gluskin of Blissed Communications, talks about empowering businesses through storytelling. From selling to Fortune 500 companies to helping others build their own, Dawn believes in the power of making business personal. She dives into the connection between storytelling and transparency in business. Listen in to find out how you can use her techniques to empower your business.

Welcome to the In the Clear podcast, I’m your host Justin Recla and today we are talking to one of the members of the Clear Business Directory. Today we’re talking to actually one of my favorite people. She has such a unique story and a unique background, and what I love about what she does now is that she helps people tell their stories. Without further adieu we have Dawn Gluskin of Blissed Communications joining us on the show today. Dawn, welcome.

Hey, hey Justin. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

I’m glad to have you on the show because the story telling is such a vital role to transparency I believe.  That’s one of the reasons why I love what you do is because you help people tell their stories. You have quite an amazing story as well. Can you share with the listeners a little bit more about your background?

Yeah, sure sure. I just recently got into this. I always knew I was gonna be a writer when I grew up. My young five year old self knew this, however somewhere along the way the world convinced me that I would never make any money doing that, you know the whole starving artist thing, so I ended up going to school for business instead and that started a really long career in sales and marketing. Inside of that world, I accidentally got into the ultra sexy world of selling electronic components for a living.

I say it like that ’cause people that know me, ’cause I’m like creative, they’re like, “You did what? You’re not an engineer.” No, it was kind of an accident. It just was good work, I was able to make good money at it, I was selling to Fortune 500 companies and all that good stuff-

You had quite a run at it didn’t you?

Yeah, I was in that industry for like 12 years, so quite a run. I worked for a few different companies actually and then I went out on my own. I decided, you know I had that entrepreneur spirit, I’m gonna do this myself. So I went out and started my own company and we grew really fast. I went from zero to three million in annual revenue in the first two years, which is crazy growth. I was like, “Oh, I made it. This is it. This is great.” But I always said I had five amazing years in that business and I was open for seven, so long story short, the last two years weren’t so great. There were some regulations that came down actually at a government level effected our bottom line, I didn’t lay people off. Long story short ended up losing so much money I had to shut the business down, ended up with a big pile of debt. So I went from I made it to oh, what the you know. It wasn’t supposed to end like this.

So that sucks. That part of my life was actually pretty rough, but there’s some beauty in it. Two things happened. I spent about six months feeling kind of bad about it, like a failure, you know all that good stuff that the human mind likes to do. But then I realized two things. One is that I was still the same person that had all the successes I had in my life. I created a multimillion dollar business at 30 years old and all that good stuff, but two more importantly, I never wanted to sell electronic components when I grew up. I wanted to be a writer.  It brought me back home. It brought me to what I really wanted to be doing.

I absolutely love that because that’s got so many different components to it of you had this huge success, you were running a multimillion dollar company, and yet you still weren’t doing ultimately what you wanted to do, which ultimately led to oh look, now you’re no longer doing the electronic business, but now you’re actually doing what you were really wanting to do for the longest time. So your own story led to you being able to actually write your own story and help other people share there’s. I absolutely love the magic in that. Can you share with everybody what you’re doing now with Blissed Communications?

Yeah, I do a lot of different things. I do copyrighting and content strategy, a little bit of consulting, but really my favorite part of it is the story telling. I think it’s really important to weave story into everything we do from a marketing standpoint, but also from a life standpoint. It’s about owning your story. Especially in the business world there’s this stigma you have to show up in a certain way, don’t say that, they’re not gonna work with you if they know that about you. You’ve got to pretend.

And it’s really in the line of what you guys were doing with the Clear Directory because I’m saying, “No, people want hear that. Be authentic. Be transparent. Be vulnerable and it gives people a way to connect with you and that they can see the real you.” That is actually good for business. It seems counterintuitive, there’s people that have told me, “Don’t tell people that story. Don’t tell them that your multimillion dollar business failed.” But telling that story publicly is what has really helped me grow my new business ’cause people connect with that and they’re like, “Thank you for sharing that. Can I hire you to write my story?” There’s value in being transparent.

I absolutely love that. You’re so right, there’s a lot of people out there that would consider sharing the fact that you had a multimillion dollar business and that business no longer exists, a lot of people might consider that as a oh wow, what happened there? But really in the transparency piece, you get to leverage that because you learned so much in that process I can imagine that in sitting with it, in my opinion, it makes you even more powerful as a copyrighter, as somebody who helps share their story because you’re able to in full authenticity and transparency share yours.

Yeah. Absolutely. It kind of creates this ripple effect, which is what I’m finding out. That’s why people come to me. They’re like, “I’ve got this thing in my background and I want to just be more transparent about it and tell the world. Can you help me?” And what happens to is when we have these stories, or these things that happened in our lives, and we kind of sweep them under the rug, nothing ever goes under the rug.

You’re carrying that thing around with you everywhere you go and it’s really heavy. It becomes a burden, and then you can’t show up as who you really are and people feel it. There’s something off energetically, like what are you hiding? It’s just so much easier just to be like, “Here it is. Like me or not that’s cool, but this is what happened.”  It’s just so much easier.

It is. You’re absolutely right in that sense, and I love how the story telling really plays into the transparency piece ’cause you’re absolutely right. Energetically, you carry that information around with you, carry those experiences around with you and it’s freeing to be able to share that information, to share that story to say, “Look, here’s who I am. This is my backstory. This is what I’ve learned.” And approaching it from that transparency piece, because that really empowers businesses, especially business owners. It empowers business owners to say, “Hey look, you know what, I’ve got a history, I’ve got a story to tell and here it is.”

That’s what we do with the Clear Business Directory is show that business history from transparency piece, and what I love about what Blissed Communications is doing, is literally empowerment through storytelling. It’s absolutely beautiful.

Yeah, it really is. Those are some of the words that my clients have used that they’ve gone through the process they say, “This has been cathartic, it’s liberating.” All these great words. Freeing, and it’s good for business too because there’s that old marketing sales strategy you know like we buy from people that we know and trust. If you want people to know and trust you, especially in the digital world, you have to let them see you. If you’re putting up this façade, this kind of fake persona of who you want to be, you think people want to see, there’s gonna be something off. They’re not gonna feel it, but when you let them in you let them connect. It’s really powerful. It’s powerful in your personal life, but in your business life, people that’s the way the world’s going. We want more authenticity.

So true. And I can’t agree with you more. We get the same exact response from people who go through the Clear Directory process who may have something in their background, or they think it’s something that’s got a hold over them and what not then when they go through the vetting process for the Clear, they realize that when they read it on paper and they see how it shows up and they’re being transparent about it, it’s like a huge sigh of relief for them because they’re able to separate the emotional experience that they had attached to it from a technical viewpoint of how it actually shows up and it’s like this huge sigh of relief.

I love how the transparency piece and the storytelling of what you’re doing, there’s that overlay that really coincides with both of those. It’s absolutely neat to see. You’re absolutely right. The authenticity piece is really what customers, and clients, and the world in general is really looking for. I absolutely love that.

If you’ve been listening, we’re talking to Dawn Gluskin of Blissed Communications and when we get back from the commercial break, we’re gonna learn a little bit more about Dawn and her story and some questions that you can be asking her. We’ll be right back.

Awesome. Well welcome back. If you’re just joining us, we’re talking to Dawn Gluskin of Blissed Communications and we’re talking about the empowerment of storytelling. It’s such a powerful, powerful thing within business. Prior to the break we were talking about authenticity and transparency and how that can really empower business owners moving forward. Dawn, can you share with us a little bit more about some of the lessons that you’ve learned along the way?

Oh boy. So many lessons. Inside of my business, some of the biggest lessons I learned with my first business that I grew it really fast, and it wasn’t in the line that was really what I loved to be doing. I always wanted to be a writer, found myself in the tech world, I was making good money and I kept telling myself, “Okay, well let’s just do this for another year. I’m gonna save up a bunch of money and then I can sell the business.”

That other year turned into another year, turned into another year and that’s how we kind of do life. We’re like, “Tomorrow I’ll do that thing that I really love to do.” I guess in hindsight I can say luckily for me, the universe is on my side and it was like, “No, it’s not gonna go down like that.” I got the old universal 2×4 over the head that was sort of like a wake up call. Like no, you’re supposed to be doing something else. So in hindsight my business “failing”, I don’t even consider it a failure, but … Because it was such a blessing in disguise, but that happening led me to doing work that I love, that I’m excited, I get out of bed and I want to do it and it makes a change in people’s lives and impacts the world.

That was a blessing. You really need to follow your heart, follow your gut, your instincts and not be so concerned about money and, “Oh, other people think I should be doing this.” And all that other stuff that we get wrapped up in inside of our lives and then it gets too late. If you don’t get the 2×4, you end up in your deathbed looking back saying, “I wish I had done something differently.”

I can’t agree with you more. It’s empowering to know that taking action now and really paying attention to some of the signs the universe throws your way is so important. And sometimes the universe does have to take that 2×4 and hit you over the head, and there’s nothing wrong with that as long as you’re paying attention to it, right?

I absolutely love that. Dawn, what should some of the people that are looking to share their story, what kind of questions should they be asking you prior to deciding whether or not they want to work with you?

Oh why do they want to work with me as far as transparency? I mean really, what they need to ask themselves first is if they’re ready to step into that sort of truth and authenticity piece, right? Because some people aren’t down with that. Sometimes I talk about this on stage and most people are like, “Oh this is awesome.” There’s always those few people that are like, “I don’t know about all this. I don’t know about this whole revealing.”

So you have to be comfortable, you have to be ready. I always say too you have to do your own sort of self healing before you’re ready to tell the world. As far as working together, if we’re a match I always want to make sure that it’s gonna be a mutually beneficial experience so I encourage people to ask questions like, “Who else have you worked with? Let me see the copies? Let me see their story. I want to read some stories. What kind of results have you gotten?” Ask for testimonials. All that kind of stuff so that they can know and feel comfortable that I’m actually doing what I say I do. I’m not just talking about it, but I’m being about it with all of my clients. Those are really great questions for people to ask for anyone I want to work with.

I love it. Those are really good questions and I know from experience that we’ve seen you on stage and for the listeners that are listening in, if you haven’t connected with Dawn, I highly, highly suggest that you do. Especially if you’re ready to step into that space and share your story. Because you know what, my opinion, my personal opinion is that you have a story, and you are at a certain level in your life, in your business success or what not that is going to help somebody else, it’s going to motivate somebody else. In doing such, it’s going to open up the floodgates of abundance, and you’re going to attract the people in your business that you need to attract, and you’re gonna be able to help the people that you’re designed to help.

That storytelling piece is so, so empowering for business owners. I think it’s so important. Matter of fact, we’re up leveling the Clear Business Directory to include people’s why in their profiles, and we’re building a back end right now where all the members of their directory will actually be able to do a video on their why where they’re able to share their story.  I think we might have some additional conversations there Dawn as to what that looks like in, I think we’re gonna find ourselves even more.

Awesome. I love it. Good stuff. And I love what you’re saying too about the abundance opening. Don’t be stingy with your story ’cause when you share it, it helps you but it helps the world and it just all is like a big circle. It’s just a big giving circle. Receiving, giving, it all comes back, you know?

Yeah, I absolutely love that. Dawn, can you share with our listeners where they can go to find more information about you?

Sure, you can go to my website. It’s BlissedCommunications.com. And if you’re down with the social media, it’s just @DawnGluskin on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and all that good stuff.

Fantastic. If you’re also looking for additional information, you can also find Dawn’s profile inside the Clear Business Directory at ClearBusinessDirectory.com. Dawn, thank you so much for joining us on the show today and we look forward to having you back on the show in the future.

Thank you Justin, have a good one.

Thank you.