I asked Sheri Guyse to speak at Confluence just two and a half days before the conference. She said yes and then tried to make me feel better about having asked.
“I’m such a procrastinator that if I’d agreed to do this a month ago, I might not have started preparing yet anyway.”
I’d asked a mutual friend what he thought she should talk about at Confluence, “Just get her up on the stage and have her talk about her life, and her journey.”
I didn’t listen. I tried to get her to prepare a slideshow and told her about my bias for actionable content, tips and tactics.
Then, on the morning of the conference I got this text.
So, an hour before I went on stage to host, we sat down together in the green room of the Lyric Theatre, the cleaning guy coming and going, and we hashed out some kind of arc for the interview.
It’s my job to get the best performance out of speakers, usually that means putting them at their ease. Sheri needed none of that, she was in her element, professional and very present (she recommends Eckhart Tolle). Almost immediately I knew it could work. Her instincts had been right, she didn’t need a slideshow, we just needed a couple of stools.
Five years ago Sheri had known very few people in Oklahoma City, now she seems to know everybody.
During a therapy session she had an epiphany, “I realized that I wanted a great big life”.
Since then her life has just kept getting bigger. Rather than shifting her focus, she keeps folding new interests in.
After being made redundant from a PR job with the City, she reached out to Keith Paul one of the owners of Good Egg Dining and asked him and his growing restaurant group to create a position for her there that would unite her interests in PR, social media and food. Incredibly he agreed. She wrote her own job description, and in some ways is still writing it.
When a friend of a friend needed a venue to play, she offered her living room. A year and a half later Sheri’s Living Room has gone from showcasing small local acts to touring local acts, to national touring acts like Leif Vollebekk (playing Sept 15th).
Music is Sheri’s great love. She’s a festival junky, and she’s learnt that if you talk to the musicians first, rather than to their booking agents, when the agent calls the artist, the artist usually says yes.
Her enthusiasm for them and their music is irrepressible. She wants them in her living room as a fan, seeking that shared moment of intimate wonder.
The goal is to build her personal brand to the point where people trust her taste enough that they don’t even need to know who’s playing, they’ll just show up knowing it’s going to be a “face melting experience”.
Great taste is Sheri’s weapon. I found this video of Ira Glass talking about taste, hard work and talent on the about us page of her blog. Sheri, like all of the most interesting people you meet, is a work-in-progress.
She’s crossed off fifteen of the one hundred and six items on her Mighty Life List.
The list looks like something might be added, or checked off, at any time. It’s the life list of someone who, by her own admission, says yes too often. Choosing what to say yes to has become important. Lucky for me, speaking at a live event was on the list.
When you live in the flow, opportunities to live a great big life present themselves. Brene Brown’s book, Daring Greatly, has practically become required reading for Sheri’s friends over the past year.
The book led her to life coaching with Kathleen Shannon, and it was Kathleen who pointed out how much of her time and energy Sheri puts into giving advice, and suggested that she herself become a life coach.
Sheri thought about becoming a life coach for a year, did some reading, and then said yes. Now she’s trying to fund 100 hours of life coaching training at Interchange Counseling in San Francisco with this INDIGOGO campaign (ending Sept 27th).
She’s bringing all her talents to bear – selling her legendary toffee, pre-booking life coaching sessions, and calling in favors to offer live cooking experiences.
The plan is to become even better at being human, to free herself so that she can find the space to help others do the same.
Life coaching wasn’t something I’d considered before meeting Sheri Guyse, but I just put $100 down on a bigger life.
Take some time to watch Sheri Guyse’s Confluence interview, or invest in her INDIGOGO campaign.
