Doing the Work in Your Speaking Business with Oge Zogie

Person taking step up stairs

Oge Zogie still feels like a bit of an imposter when she says she has a speaking business. Even though she is just starting, she has a vision to become a life coach full time and help others with purpose and mindset. 

Oge had a 15 year career in education, where she spoke to one of the most challenging audiences to connect with, students. Now spends her daytime job doing change management, which includes facilitating workshops. After taking an online course and working with a coach, Oge realized if she wanted to pursue being a life coach, it wasn’t going to come from outside, but she was going to need to do the work.

Now, in the time she has outside of the change management, she pursues her real passion as a life coach, helping people to discover their own unique gifts, their own unique strengths, and helping them to get the confidence to pursue it.

What other lessons did Oge Zogie share? 

  • If you want to start something new, give it time every day. If you don’t, it won’t grow
  • Speaking isn’t about all the bells and whistles, it’s about landing your message
  • There is a lot of learning that comes from doing
  • Whatever path you take, it can all lead to speaking
  • Live streaming on Instagram can connect you with new clients, get instant feedback and provide ideas on what your community wants to hear
  • Take advantage of the networks that you have in the situation where you are

 

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Who is Oge Zogie?

Ironically, I grew up as a shy, introvert who was reminded constantly to speak up. My introduction to speaking began in my career as a primary school teacher. There, I experienced first-hand the power of speaking to inform and to empower. Children are a very transparent audience and I quickly learnt what elements contributed to effective speaking and what elements did not!

After 15 years, I successfully pivoted from teaching and I’m now pursuing my passion for coaching. My mission is to help others uncover their unique purpose in life and confidently pursue it while navigating all the changes that brings. Coaching has led me back to speaking once again and the prospect for growth is incredibly exciting!

I absolutely love a good story so I listen to audiobooks and podcasts regularly on the go. In my free time, I enjoy singing karaoke and dancing with my daughter, travelling, and making memories with family and friends preferably around a dinner table.

You can connect with Oge Zogie on Instagram and please check out her website

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Doing the work in your speaking business with Oge Zogi

Below is the full transcript from the show with Oge Zogie. Please note that there may be some errors as it was auto transcribed using Otter.ai. (referral link that provides us with a 1-month Premium Pass

Oge Zogie 0:00
Hi, Tim.

Tim McDonald 0:02
Hello. Oge, and welcome, everybody to the business of speaking show. I am your host, Tim McDonald, and I am so glad to be joined by my special guest, Oge today, how are you doing?

Oge Zogie 0:15
I’m great, Tim, thank you for having me on.

Tim McDonald 0:17
No, it’s so wonderful. And I love how connections can help bring us together. And we’ll get into that a little bit, because I’m sure it might be part of your story. But you know, really, for those of you just turning tuning in, for the first time, the business is speaking show is really about, you know, people interested in getting into the speaking world, or people may be just starting on their journey in the speaking world. But if 2020 hasn’t taught us anything, regardless of what we think we know, life has a new way of showing us that we don’t know nearly as much as we think. So with that being said, Oge, why don’t you tell us before we jump into how you got started, why don’t you tell us a little bit about what you focus on, you know, today, some of your major accomplishments, and then we’ll kind of go back to the beginning of how it all started.

Oge Zogie 1:10
Okay. So I think about my speaking business, so to speak, it’s, it’s in its infancy, really. And sometimes I must admit Tim, I feel like a bit of an imposter, calling it a business. But I, I choose to call it that, because that’s the vision that I have for it. And as a life coach, I speak to my clients, prospective clients, my audience through a platform I have on Instagram. And I talk about personal development topics, things like around the idea of purpose, and mindset, because those have been the two big areas where I’ve had my own personal transformation. So I really feel that desire to share this message with more people. So they can have the same kind of transformation that I’ve had. So I initially started by recording videos and posting them out onto the platform. And then about couple of months ago, I decided to do live chat sessions with my audience. And those have been really, really insightful. Because you get some, you get instant feedback, you get to see people’s reactions, and it’s just been wonderful. And every time I’ve done one of those, I get either an inquiry or a client. And so it just really validates the idea that it is, you know, a major part of my business. So, you know, I talked about being a life coach, but I’ve been I’ve done other things. So I’ve had a 15 year career in in teaching. So as a primary school teacher, and as you can imagine, speaking, is a really huge part of that. So I always say to people, that children are some of the toughest audiences to be in front of, because, you know, they they have no reservations in their in their reactions, and you know, straight away with it, your messages landing or not. So, I’ve had a career in teaching. And I pivoted from that, and I have a daytime career in change management. So in that respect, I handled the people side of change where I coordinate and facilitate workshops. So that’s a huge part of my role speaking and presenting. So but my true true passion is as a life coach, helping people to discover their own unique gifts, their own unique strengths, and helping them to get the confidence to pursue it. So those are some of the things that I’ve done that led me to this point.

Tim McDonald 3:43
Yeah, no, that’s so interesting. And I love how you started out by saying that, you know, you’re just kind of in the early stages and have this imposter syndrome. And I’m just kind of, but then you went on to explain how you try and help people what you work through. So can you explain, like, when you, you know, when was it that you kind of started thinking that this is what you wanted to do outside of education and your change management career.

Oge Zogie 4:11
Okay, so it’s, um, it’s really, I can pinpoint is, I guess, to February 2019. So it was around the time I was turning 39. And I don’t know if you do this, but usually around birthdays, I now have adopted the practice of just reflecting. It’s something I learned from my husband, he used to do it quite a lot. He’ll take the whole day off work, he’d go for walks and think about his life. And I used to turn my nose up at it, but now I actually appreciate it. So I was, you know, reflecting on my life, where it come from where I was going. And I came out of that time of reflection really with that desire to to discover what I was good at and pursue it. And at that time, I didn’t know what it was. So it took about a year cuz fast forward again, to next birthday about to approach 40, which I think is when a lot of light bulbs go on in people’s lives, I suppose in that midlife awakening, if you call it that, and I mean, I went through some programs, I had some help to really just distill down, what was my unique strength. And I used to always look outside for it, I used to think, oh, whatever it is I need to do, it’s probably something outside. But I really when I reflected in inside of me, and I started to notice those signs in my life, like people always find me approachable. People always come to me with issues and people say that I helped them to have clarity around it, I started to pick up on those signs. And that’s what led me to coaching. And I realized that speaking was going to be a vehicle with which I was going to then offer this service of coaching to people. So that’s kind of how I came about it. But um, I would say all that teaching, that career in teaching was preparing me for this in a way and and that’s one of life’s lessons, I guess that whatever happens to you, or whatever journey you’ve taken, was meant to be because it’s leading somewhere. So my I think my teaching career was leading me to this, being able to speak to talk to pupils, and teach them being able to speak to parents who were so like, emotionally invested in their children. So sometimes those conversations can be hard. So I think relating with parents helped me to develop that ability to have those difficult conversations. And I could even maybe trace it back to my childhood, I was really painfully shy Tim, you wouldn’t if someone had told me that I’d be doing this, I wouldn’t believe it, I was so reluctant to share any of my thoughts. Because I didn’t want to be criticized, I didn’t want to be told off. I didn’t want to get it wrong. So I was really, really shy. But I think in a way, ironically, that helped me to observe people more, he helped me to analyze people’s behavior more it helped me to, I don’t know, I lived in my head, I don’t know how healthy that was. But it really helped me to develop this ability to to, to pick up on things and to observe people and then build that ability to be able to connect with them based on what I had observed. So I feel like that, you know, plus the teaching career plus the change, because a huge part of coaching. In fact, the thread that runs through coaching is change. People always want to transform or change something in their life. So I didn’t know it to me, I felt like I couldn’t set it on one thing. But when I look back on it, all of these things were signs and just like threads in the story,leading me to this point.

Tim McDonald 7:44
I just love this, this story. And I think you and I could just have a talk about the voices in our heads for, you know, the next hour. But staying more focused on the show, I think I heard you say that you actually were reaching out and looking for help from others. And can you explain like, you know, I mean, I don’t need names or anything like that. But like, what type of help are you looking for? How did you find it? And how did it help you?

Oge Zogie 8:15
Okay, so I’m, I was looking, I used to be always been interested in anybody or anybody talking about, like, what what are your passions and how to how to discover where your passions were. So I went to a lot of online courses. And I went through I’m a Christian by background as well. So sometimes the spiritual sector, they also do things like that to help you, like uncover your gifts, your passion. And, you know, everybody always said everybody had one. But somehow I didn’t really find that I take personality tests, I take psychometric all these things, I do them. And I still didn’t quite land on it. But I think the thing that helped me was, it was an online course at the end of the day that helped me. And it was a, you just have a series of questions. So at the end, I had to still do the work. I had to sit down and really ask myself those questions that invited me to even go to my circle of people and ask them those questions. And then things started becoming a little bit clearer. So I would say yeah, online courses, there was a coach on that online course because we had a weekly coaching session that really did help to, to bring all this out. So yeah.

Tim McDonald 9:31
Oh, and I know that one of these major takeaways that I’m going to include, it’s already mentally noted, is I still had to do the work.

Oge Zogie 9:39
Yeah, I still had to do that work. Yes.

Tim McDonald 9:43
So um, you know, I know you, you were talking about the teaching career, and you can look back on it and know that you were speaking back then in front of the students and with parents. Did you know it at the time, or was it something that you just reflect back on.

Oge Zogie 10:01
Um, I don’t think I was hugely aware of it at the time, I think I just went with the, with the role at the beginning of my career, I just I wasn’t aware of it at the beginning of my career. But as my career developed, I realized that, yeah, this was what this was. And that it was one thing to speak, it is one thing to be understood. And, you know, in the teaching world, what has been the teacher knows that sometimes you go through things called observations where you are, that’s your chance to really like, show all your teaching techniques and skills and, and a lot of the time, even from the point of view, as an observer, you might notice that sometimes the teacher can get carried away with that bit, and almost not take care to ensure that the message lands with the children. So it’s all the bells and whistles come out, and, and the message doesn’t really land sometimes. And so I think, into, as I got into my career, realize the importance of stripping away all those things, and ensuring that my message gets across. And that was really the true the power of this weekend. And you could see that result, you could see the outcome, sometimes I could do something amazing, and the children just forget it. And then sometimes I could just bring it back to something that they can relate to something that’s relevant to them, and maybe even tell them a story from my childhood. And those are the ones they hung on to. And I realized, okay, there is this, there is a method to this thing, and it’s not just, you know, lights and shiny things, it had to be relevant to them.

Tim McDonald 11:41
Oh, that’s great. I love that, that reflection and how it kind of grew, as your career grew. You mentioned, that you’re still in change management as a career, and you’re doing coaching and everything now, I’d love to kind of know and hear from you. How has that been? You know, because so many people think, Oh, I need to quit my job to start this business. Right. And you are one who still has it and started a business. And can you explain kind of what some of the pain points are? What kind of the struggles were that you had doing that? Because I think so many people are just, you know, assume I don’t have the time. I don’t have, you know, the resources to be able to do this. Unless if I leave this and here’s somebody who you doing it. So I just love to hear? How are you doing it?

Oge Zogie 12:37
Well, I can totally relate the biggest pain point is, is time. Yeah, the biggest pain point is time. And I think maybe for some people as well. Switching contexts can be quite difficult. You know, one day you were in this hat, the next minute, you’re wearing that hat. So those are some of the pains that I realized that are there. But they’re definitely, and the way that I get around daisies to reframe it, I realized that there isn’t that much time. So I have to make every moment count. So I have to be really, I suppose not rigid, but I have to really be focused. In my time, I had to set up routines with my time. And I have to say that I don’t do this full time. So I work as a change manager three days a week, and I have two days a week where, where I focus on my coaching and my speaking. So that was the kind of balance that I try got, I didn’t leave one completely and go into the other. So. And in those two days, it’s very tempting as you would know, I mean, many maybe people might relate to this, when you’re working from home and you’re doing your own thing there is nobody policing you. So you have to have that focus and that timetable, and that, you know, routine that you say, this is what I’m going to do, because this is the outcome that I want. So you really have to learn to manage yourself. So for anybody, I guess, who’s thinking, I don’t have the time, and I don’t know if I can do both, it could maybe step back a little bit on one, it could, you know, split it, do part time on that and do that. Or just find a way to give something every day to that part. It doesn’t have to be long, it could be a half an hour, it could be an hour, give something every day to this other thing that you want to grow, and it will grow. If you don’t give it something it won’t grow.

Tim McDonald 14:28
Yeah, we talked about planting seeds all the time. And if we don’t water them and give them enough sun, they won’t turn into anything right and sometimes we don’t know what they’re gonna turn into. If we don’t give them the water if we don’t give them the sun, nothing’s gonna happen.

Oge Zogie 14:43
That’s right. And another thing is, you know, you’ve got networks in both. I’ve got a networking in my change management role in my even my past teaching role. And those networks are hugely they’re going to be so important to you, even as you do this other thing that you might think is so radically different. So just taking advantage of the networks that you have in the situation where you are, I’ve got a client from from where I do my work, because we were just chatting about something and I just posed the question, would you like help with that? And I, and then I’ve got the client from there. So you can almost marry the two worlds. If you I guess, if you see the possibilities and the advantages of both of them.

Tim McDonald 15:29
It’s It’s so interesting to me that you talk about this, because I think that’s one thing that most of us don’t give ourselves credit for. One is learned in the past, but it’s not just what we’ve learned. It’s who we’ve come in contact with. Right?

Oge Zogie 15:45
Yeah, yeah. So right, Tim, because your network is your network. And you know, just the power of talking to people you just never know, you just never know.

Tim McDonald 15:58
Well, as you decided to launch into your, you know, your coaching business and your, which involves speaking, how did you kind of know where you were going to start? what it was going to look like what you need to do first.

Oge Zogie 16:16
Like I said, I had the help of a coach. So I wouldn’t say I did it on my own, I had to help for coach that was able to guide me and say, Okay, these are some of the things that you need to do. These are some of it. So I guess I had all that theory. And I was sitting with it. But I think when the pandemic hit, I realized, okay, I don’t really have any other excuse. Now, I don’t really have any, like, it’s not super busy now. So there’s no better time than now. And so that’s what actually made me take the plunge the fact that we had the pandemic, so I had to gain all this knowledge, and I was kind of sitting on and I was, you know, I can be an over thinker. And I was sitting on it for a while. But I think with the pandemic, and just seeing how you never really know, what’s what’s, what tomorrow is going to bring. And then you could also see a lot of people like spiraling into, I don’t know, like, just negative emotions, and and I just thought, okay, I could help here, and I need to just start doing it. I guess I had to talk myself out of waiting to be the expert, or waiting to know everything. And I had to remind myself that there is a lot of learning that comes from doing, I have to almost let go of all the self consciousness because that was a really big barrier. Sometimes it’s self consciousness. And I think, you know, what does my client need instead, and focus on that, that rather than on myself, so I would say having a coach, just the environment, the pandemic, and then just just getting a bit out of my own self, and self consciousness with the things that actually moved me into Start to begin acting.

Tim McDonald 18:02
And I’m sure that part of your business is helping people get through their own thoughts, and things that are holding them back. So I don’t want to dive too deep into that. But for you, I just because this is something that I’m, I’ve gone through myself, I’m like, so fascinated with, you know, how it affects others? How did it work for you? How did you kind of get out of your head and out in the world to be able to make that transition? And from what people are gonna think of you to what you had to offer to help others?

Oge Zogie 18:37
Yeah. See that? I don’t even know if I’m completely out. It’s a it’s a journey as well. I’m gonna say, Tim. And I would say that, and it might seem like, I’m just preaching coach, Coach, but I had a coach. I had a coach, and, you know, in our coaching conversations, I would express a lot of this, you know, what if people don’t think I’m an expert, what if people don’t take me seriously? What if people don’t know me Just think, oh, how while all of a sudden, wherever you come from with this? And I’d express all these things and and, you know, my coach would just gently asked me, and so what does that mean for you? And what would that what’s the worst that could happen? And she just probe and I would just realize that actually, there’s this it couldn’t get worse. It couldn’t be worse. There couldn’t be anything that’s gonna happen that could harm me. And therefore I didn’t need to be afraid. So I think having that coach helped me to be able to recognize the fear and almost the the fact that it wasn’t valid, to be able to come out of it and I guess the encouragement of my friends as well when the encouragement of my close family and people that I shared my passionate with that helped me to say okay, well if they believe in you You believe in yourself, you know, you, you just have to try it, I guess. And I think that’s what helped me and, and I, this, I read a lot, I read a lot, I love to read a lot. So I read a lot about people’s stories, I read a lot about people’s what they’ve done. And I realized that if they could achieve that, then it’s possible. It’s possible. So it was, it was a mindset transformation, I would say, because I didn’t always think that way. I didn’t always think that way at all. But with the help of coaching, with the belief and support of the people around me, I think that was what helped me to start to just take my first step. And once you take that first step, it’s like diving into just cold water into this into the ocean or into the sea, you’d feel that shock at the moment. Once you you get in and then you just almost climatized and it’s much better than just trying to dip your toes and then your ankles, and then you’re just prolonging it, just jump in

Tim McDonald 20:59
love that. I think that’s gonna be a great way to kind of start getting to the close here. So, um, I usually ask the question, but I know you’re so early in your, in your journey of creating this business, I usually ask if you could go back to the beginning and tell yourself one thing that that you would change, what would it be? But I’m kind of thinking for you. Maybe if you if you do have one, you can share that. But for you, maybe I can ask what is one thing right now that you wish you knew about this world of speaking?

Oge Zogie 21:31
Huh? Wow. I wish. And I don’t know this sounds. I probably wish that I knew all of this when I was younger. So I wish that I probably had more time. I wish I knew all this stuff when I was younger, because I think my younger self was less inhibited. my younger self was more adventurous and my younger self would, would probably not have gone through all the pains and all the fears. But I’m just saying that I really don’t know. So if I’m done, I wish that I knew that. I knew a lot of this earlier. And also, I wish that I knew that when you experience something, it usually has a purpose. I fought against a lot of experiences, I’ve spent a lot of time being miserable in those experiences. And I’m not saying it takes the misery away. But I think myself now understands that if I am experiencing something unpleasant or pleasant, that there has to be a use for and I don’t know that just in my in, you know, head knowledge. I really truly believe it. Now, I think when I was younger, I didn’t really believe it. And therefore I wrestled against, you know, experiences, I wrestled against feeling like, you know, I was lost. And I wrestled with so many things that have now turned out to be the experiences that are part of my story. So I think just that relax, it’s all part of the plan. I wish I had known that.

Tim McDonald 23:18
I love that. So Oge, it’s been so great talking with you and hearing your story. I’d love if you can share how people can find you online, how they can connect with you.

Oge Zogie 23:33
Okay, thanks, Tim. It’s been my pleasure. It’s bit it’s just lovely to be able to talk to someone like you who understands the business the speaking and knows appreciate some of the different parts of the journey. So and people can reach me, I am on Instagram at OgeZogie. That’s my handle on Instagram. And my website is also simply OgeZogie.com. So that’s how people can reach me.

Tim McDonald 23:57
Oh, perfect. And we’ll make sure we have all those links in the blog post in the show notes on YouTube so people can not try and figure out how to spell that. So and for those of you you know watching right now, we just want to thank you so much for being part of this and being part of this experience with us in you know, one thing if you’ve never gotten to this point in the show before or you’re watching for the first time, is that we’re going to end the youtube broadcast, however, Oge has agreed to stay on with me for one additional question, and I’m going to ask her that, but the answer to that question is only available to our email subscribers. So if you just head over to speaking.business and sign up for our free weekly newsletter, you will get the exclusive content not only from Oge, but also from all of our other speakers who are on that I asked a different question to each and every week that we interview them. So thank you for watching and Oge, thank you for being with us.

Oge Zogie 25:00
My pleasure. Thank you, Tim. Thank you very much.

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