Jeanne Sparrow
Appearances
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
This is what goes back to what we were talking about earlier about the past. That was something you did. It is not what you are doing.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
No, it's not about that. Because I think the more in touch I get with where I am, the more confident I am with where I am and the better I am to let other people, like I get to stay in my lane and I get to own my lane. And then I'm more happy to let other people do what they have to do around me. It's made me a better leader. It's made me a better collaborator. It's made me better for my clients.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
Oh, man. The book is, well, I just celebrated my 55th birthday. The book came out two days before my birthday, and it is a surreal moment, Ryan. I never thought I'd write a book. But my work led me to this point where a book was the best way for me to kind of explain how I think about things. And when you commit to a book and you actually have it physically in your hand, it's a whole thing.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
But I do think some people get lazy and say that they're being unfit. Well, this is just who I am. When you start talking like that, then it's in service to you. It's not in service to somebody else. And then you're frankly just being a dick. Like, no, don't do that.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
So there are a few different people I was talking to, most of all myself, like some of it was just about how I move through things. And, you know, when you go through the book, there's I tried to include a lot of different perspectives. Like I have a podcast as well that's on pause right now because the book has overtaken my life.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
But the whole point of it was to find out how what I believe to be true applies in other places. So I've talked to people wide ranging from authors to business leaders, other marketers, authors. I think I said that already. Entertainers, comedians, actors, writers, all these different kinds of people. to see entrepreneurs, you know, to kind of see where this happened.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
And I found it to be true everywhere in every phase of life. And when I first started doing this work, Ryan, there were people who told me, and it still happens in some of my trainings when I go in, they're like, I'm gonna try this out on my kids today because, you know, like there's a part of my process that that I call it live it, tell it, sell it. Live it is about you.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
To me, it's the three elements of how we communicate. Live it is about you. You have to understand how you affect other people. Tell it is about the vehicle by which we do it, the stories that we tell each other, because those are the things that, that's the connective tissue.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
And then sell it is about the people you're talking to because you're always selling something, but you got to know something about the people you're talking to and you have to talk to what they care about. If you don't talk to what they care about, then all you're doing is having a monologue and hoping somebody else listens. it is not a two-way street.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
And unfortunately, we don't do that with our young people. And so when I first wrote the book, I was really writing it for my clients, like the different kinds of people that I encounter.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
But what I've learned, because now I'm teaching at Northwestern in a grad communication program, and a lot of my students are fresh out of college, still kind of searching for themselves and trying to find their voice. And I have figured out that my work, I think, works best for people who are in transition.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
somewhere, they're either trying to level up, maybe in the corporate gig they have, trying to get to the next level up, trying to break through to the executive level or break through to the C-suite, or maybe just get out of middle management or into middle management so they can start moving up the things.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
For kids, young, I shouldn't say kids, but they kids to me, young people who are entering the workforce for the first time, the transition from college to real life is even harder than it's ever been, I think.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
Because the job market, the competition, the competition that these young people have been under since they started, like, you know, the shift from saying I'm trying to get grades to actually giving results is a very different thing. Like I told my the first day of class last quarter that I taught, I said to them, look, you're great in here. Doesn't matter to me.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
I was like, you're going to get an A if you're better at the end of this quarter than you are right now. And they looked at me like I had sprouted horns. They were like, what? I was like, I got assignments and stuff like that. But legit, you will get an A in this class if you just do the work.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
And by the end of it, what you turn in for the first assignment for the last assignment looks better than what you turned in from the first. And it's all about performance and how you deliver. So if you're better than you got an A. So don't worry about the grade. And literally some of these kids imploded on me.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
Like, cause they can't, I was like, but honey at work, nobody gives a damn about your, your grades that you got in college or grad school. What they care about is can you deliver what it is you need to do? And they looked at me like, is that the key? And these are kids that are about to be, you know, interviewing for their next job. So I, so I think that,
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
Like maybe for the soccer moms, the ones whose kids are growing up and they're going back into the workplace, or they've started a side hustle that they've done while their kids were little. And now they want to turn it into a legitimate business. I have a lot of entrepreneurs who've asked me for help. I think, yeah, that's who I wrote the book for.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
It's not who I initially wrote the book for, but that's who it's for. It's anybody who's trying to navigate a change in what they're doing.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
So that's what's happened. That's where I'm living right now. I'm freezing in Chicago and that's about it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
Because listen, that's, and again, this is what goes back to what we were talking about earlier about the past. That was something you did. It is not what you are doing.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
Not at all. Not at all. The reality is, is that the way we connect is through oral communication. As human beings, we are hardwired for stories and we are most hardwired for stories that we tell to each other.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
I bet if I asked you what was on your to-do list for today, just off the top of your head, without looking at your phone, you could probably remember like three out of the 10 things that are on there because they're the most important things to you. But if I asked you to tell me a story from your last family or from a family gathering when you were five years old, I bet you could remember it. Why?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
Because you remember stories. We connect through stories so many different ways. Our brains activate in different ways, whether it's our vision because we're imagining something, whether it's our senses, like we remember what something smells like, or what something sounded like. And the neural activity, the more neurons that are firing off, the more likely we are to remember something.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
A list doesn't have that kind of context. And so to me, the best people to lead, the best people to sell, the best people to market, the best people to do anything are the ones who can tell the stories that people remember. We remember commercials from 20 years ago. Why? Because they told a good story visually, auditorily, or whatever the word is.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
from an audio sense, visually, whatever the case is, like, even if it's a catchphrase, it's a catchphrase. The reason why we remember those, you know, catchphrases from back in the day, like, wait, what was one? Where's the beef? You know, because that, those three words have a story built into them.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
And so when I say speaking sensationally, I think that many of us have become way too dependent on texting people, emailing people. And there is not a lot of nuance in the written word, the way we communicate through those messages. In books, absolutely, because we have a lot more characters that we can use.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
But when we talk about social media, when we talk about texting and all those different things, we've become so reliant on that that it has damaged our relationships. And part of it, it has also damaged our way that we communicate with each other.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
A lot of the young people that I'm starting to teach now are the ones who were in important developmental stages during the pandemic when they weren't interacting with people as much outside of the people that they were in their pods with. And you can tell because they're not communicating verbally as well.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
The hawk. We call it the hawk when it comes. And the thing is, we get it off of two things of water. It's like the Lake Michigan is right there. So we're right off the Great Lakes. And then the river rips through the city. And yeah, there's no cold like Chicago cold. But that's why Chicagoans are so real. is because the cold keeps us honest.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
And I'm sorry, I don't care how good of a tool AI is, and it is, I don't care how good of a tool email and text and whatever other technology is next is, nothing will replace our ability to understand when somebody is explaining something to us and nothing will replace the way we get motivated when we are inspired by hearing other people speak. And that's the way stuff gets done.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
So if you can't speak sensationally, you're missing a part of what it is you want to do, whether that's selling your business or the products that your business or the services that your business provides, whether it's leading your team to get the results that you've been tasked with doing, whether it's taking something to the next level or actually speaking to audiences or being on podcasts, whatever that is.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
If you can't do that, success is going to be hard.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
And you know what? I would argue there's nothing wrong with calling it selling. I think that we have an aversion to calling it selling. But listen, man, you got four boys.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
But you got four boys. I bet your wife has to convince them and sell them on what dinner is going to be every night. And it's a negotiation. Like literally we are selling people on something all the time, even if it's just, you know, what couch we're going to buy or like, I really want that piece of, you know, art or that picture, or we got to go take a family photo for the holidays.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
Well, no, I don't really want to do that. You know, we're always selling somebody on something. And I think the better we get or more comfortable we get with that, because there's a negative connotation to selling as if we don't buy stuff all the time. Come on, man. Yeah. Like we're always trying to convince somebody of something. So let's let's just call it what it is.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
Like, let's let's get used to it and let's make it enjoyable. Like, it's fun. Have you ever met like the best salesman in the world? And you're just like, you know what? I'm a buy it. Why? Because you you sold me on it. Like, let's appreciate that again. My daddy told me he was like, gee, don't buy nothing from nobody you don't like.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
He was like, because he says some people, some people, you know, can convince you to buy, you know, ice, you know, ice when it's cold outside. He was like, they should be rewarded for their for their stuff. And we all should be at least giving it a little bit of effort. Some of us, I think, are better sellers than others.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
But I think we're doing ourselves and each other a disservice if we don't learn how to sell to each other. It's respect. Absolutely.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
And then we get Chicago summertime shy, which is one of the best summers you will ever have. I never knew growing up in Louisiana. I thought I loved hot weather, but I really love hot weather in the summertime in Chicago because you've earned it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
Fearlessauthenticity.com slash book is where you can always find everything about the book. That's where I'll have all of my appearances and things. Next stop, I'm actually going to New York to record my audio book, which will be out March 25th. Yeah, so because we pushed up some of the timeline for the hardcover, we didn't get a chance to do the audio book to come out at the same time.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
But I kind of like the staggered way of doing things. But I'm excited to read it myself. So that's the next big thing. And I am doing book clubs and stores. So if there's someplace you want me, if somebody's watching and wants me to come and speak to their group, or whether it's virtually or in person, reach out. at fearlessauthenticity.com book. And we will get you on the roster.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
Thank you, my dear. You're so sweet. That's an endorsement. I can I can I can get behind. I appreciate it. It's been fun talking to you, Ryan.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
You're getting it, sir. I'm putting together merch right now because I have like my dad. I've mentioned my dad a couple of times. He's got a lot of sayings and stuff. I call him Spro-isms. His nickname was Spro because people couldn't say Sparrow. But he's one of those old countrymen who had a lot of wisdom to share. And I put it a lot on my social media.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
So I'm turning them all into t-shirts and things. So you're going to get a nice little package.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
Same, same. Happy New Year to you, my friend.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
Yeah, I started when I was 17. In New Iberia, Louisiana, where I'm from, shout out to the home of Tabasco sauce. I was in speech, right? Well, you know, I come from a family of storytellers. Like my dad was, he could tell the same story. And listen, it didn't even have to be true. And to this day, I don't know which one of his stories are fully true or not.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
But they all made sense and they all made us laugh. And like we would always one up each other during the holidays. And this is both sides of my family. We would gather around for the holidays and talk and whatever. So I feel like I was trained as a kid to tell stories, to amplify other people's things. Like because the thing is, the best stories are not the ones that are just about you.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
They're the ones that are about other people, too. Right. And so when I was in high school, I was in speech and debate and the local radio station always liked to hire local kids because the nearby university had a great mass comm department. And so they were like trying to keep talent in the area. They were looking for people.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
My speech and debate coach sent me over to the local country Western station, I might add. Um, to go and audition for a gig. I got it. And I was working. That was my afterschool job. I would like get off school and then I'd go over to the radio station and work until it turned off.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
I don't know if you're old enough to remember when AM radio stations used to go off at night, but I had a whole FCC license and I turned that bad boy off.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
Maybe, maybe. So I remember that. The seeds are always sown and you don't see them until you like hit middle age and you start to realize that you have become your parents. Um, and that you do things that they do for better or worse, you know, but that's where it all started for me. And I didn't even think it was a career to be honest. Cause it felt like a hobby.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
It was, I was like, I was, I can't make money doing this. It's too much fun. And from there, when I went away to college, that's how I got up to Chicago, went to Northwestern and I was working on the radio station for fun for free and got an internship. And next thing you know, I have a whole career.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
Yeah. Regional Emmys here in Chicago, because I moved from radio to TV. It was kind of an opportunity that came up. And then, you know, you just do work, you submit it and people like it. And you're like, what? I got Emmys. Mine are packed away. I usually boast about them, but I just moved. So I haven't put my shelves up and things like that to have my brag wall up.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
But the thing about awards is that they're for what you used to do, what you have already done. For me, it's always, what are you going to do next?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
Or you end up looking in the rearview mirror and you end up was running into when running into what's in front of you. And that doesn't do anybody good. Listen, we have to know and look at the past to learn from it so that we don't make the same mistakes going forward. But don't be that person that peaked in high school. There's better that, you know, you have ahead of you and you.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
You know what I'm saying? Some people, like, they had really great lives when they were 18. Like, fam, you 152 now. You really need to start thinking about something else other than that. Like, you know, that's just my perspective.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
I'm always one to look forward and look about, you know, because I had a boss who said to me, you know, A, in radio, there's this thing, in music radio, there's this thing we call forward motion. where you're always pushing to the next thing. And I think because a lot of what we do in radio is really related to your expertise in marketing, it's about pushing the message forward.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
Because people don't care. They already heard the song you just played. Yeah, we could tell you what it is if you really liked it, but what you really care about is what's coming up next, because that's going to keep them listening.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
And so when I learned that philosophy, it really helped me to start looking ahead because people who can project what's happening next are the ones who are going to be successful and always on top of what's going on. But it is informed by where we've been before, for sure.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
So for me... discovering fearless authenticity has been sort of a circular path because it started with my media work. I had a boss who told me one time, same boss with the forward motion. He was very influential. And I think we all have those mentors in our lives that do it, but because they help us to see things and that helps us to get to our philosophies. But he said to me, he was like,
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
I don't pay you to play the hits. I pay you for what you say in between the hits because that's what's going to make people stay because they can get these hits anywhere else. And this is before Spotify and, you know, all the different streamers, iHeart, all of this stuff.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
Exactly. He was 100 percent right. And so it's and then it started when I went into TV, I realized every station is talking about the same four top stories. The reason why we watch particular stations, if we do nowadays, is because that's the the the perspective we want to hear that news from.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
Hey, Ryan, thanks for having me on.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
Same thing with if we only get our news online, like some people love TMZ, some people love MSNBC, some people love Fox, you know, because it's something about the people who are there that keep us there. There are a bunch of other marketing podcasts. There's something about you that resonates with the people who vibe with you. with you and the way you give that information.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
So that was kind of the first realization that my perspective mattered. Then I started to realize when I looked back at how I grew up, because I'm adopted. And I started to realize that your identity has a lot to do with how people connect to you. And I think what happens to a lot of us, like our mamas and our daddies always told us the same thing when we went off to school. Just be yourself.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
You're going to find your friends. Your friends are going to find you. But nobody tells you how to do that. And that when you get outside of your house, if you had a happy house to begin with, right, you start to have all of these other influences that tell you what you should be doing. And I hate that word should, because it's more of a judgment than it is a direction.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
And what I learned looking back at how I grew up, a lot of what I was doing when I was younger was trying to fit in, trying to please, trying to do these things. And I think as a young woman, especially, I'm a Gen Xer, so there were still a lot of gender roles that I felt I had to fulfill first or whatever. But
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
You seem like it to me. You seem like it just from the conversations we've had and what I've seen online of you and what you have done. Yes, sir. I would say fearless would be a very good adjective for you. And authentic, too. You seem really real to me. I mean, if it's not, you're doing a damn good job of acting.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
Really, it's about what resonates with you and understanding that when you do something that feels right in your gut, then you're on the right path and you're doing what you're supposed to do. I think a lot of us wake up at middle age and wonder how we got where we were. And some of that is because of the choices we make along the way.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
And that's really what fearless authenticity is to me, is all of us staying true to who we are. We're trying to grow in the way that we want to grow to do the thing we want to do. And our purpose finds us that way because we're all like pieces of a puzzle, Ryan. We all fit together and we're all here to do something particular. We don't have to know what it is because it's going to find us.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
But we have to be true to ourselves to do that.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
It's the truest brand, if you will.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
I know exactly where you're going, because this is a conversation I have often. I believe part of Fearless Authenticity, baked into it, is the idea that this is how we really build true community. Because if we are true to ourselves, then we find our people and our people find us. And it is also baked into this that we are in service to each other.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
not here to please each other, but to be in service. There is something that I can do that you cannot, right? And there is something you can do that I cannot. And we are here to share that with each other, that it doesn't work any other way. That's what community is really about. And I think as a fellow Southerner, you understand what I'm talking about.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
When you're from a small town, you understand how we are all connected, how the ecosystem is connected to each other. I think when we get into – and this is not to down urban life because I love living in a big city. And Chicago is like – you spent some time here. It's like a really big, small town.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
The thing is, is that if we keep in our minds and in our hearts the spirit of service, that what I am good at is to be used in in service of a greater, higher good. Then I think we get away from the selfish part of it. Now, some people's authentic selves might be kind of selfish. That means they got some growing to do. And I think, though, as you look at yourself.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
you start to see where you need to grow and where you've gone wrong. And it's easier for you to take that feedback when somebody's like, you know what, that hurt my feelings or that did not serve us as a group, as a team. There's nothing we can do, especially nowadays, that doesn't involve teamwork.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
And I can tell you almost every company I go into that brings me in, a lot of times they bring me in to talk about their external communication issues. And I know you know this because you've probably seen it in your work nine times out of 10. The issue is almost always an internal problem. in communication with each other.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
Like they need to get their story together inside before they're able to do it outside. And we focus so much on what we put out into the world that we forget about what's happening on a smaller level. So for me, Fearlessly Authentic is not a pass for you to be a jerk. It is...
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
a responsibility for you to be your best self, to be the highest version of yourself that is in service to other people, because that's the only way we move together as a world. Because the world is getting smaller and expanding at the same time. The way that technology has brought us together has also separated us.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Fearless Authenticity with Jeanne Sparrow
And I think that the more we lean into the human connection, and I know that this is resonant with your work, The more we lean into those relationships and things like that, the better off we're going to be. But the only way those things are really real is if we are real about it ourselves.