Stories That Move

Rachel Druckenmiller | Unmuting Your Potential

• DreamOn Studios • Season 1 • Episode 12

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What does it take to truly recognize your worth and align your life with your deepest passions and values? Join us for an enlightening conversation with Rachel Druckenmiller, a dynamic keynote speaker and leadership trainer, whose transformative journey epitomizes this quest. Rachel's inspiring story, from a wellness coordinator to a national director of wellbeing and employee engagement, is a testament to the power of embracing curiosity, character, and courage. She shares how her upbringing, surrounded by motivational influences, shaped her path toward a career that resonates with her personal interests and values. Her insights guide us in fostering an entrepreneurial spirit within organizations, emphasizing the impact of aligning work with our true selves.

Ever felt like your voice was lost amidst life's chaos? Rachel recounts her personal transformation from a muted existence to living boldly and fully expressed. Once a shy and quiet child, she overcame familial and health challenges by taking small yet impactful steps toward self-discovery. Her journey to "unmuting" herself began with voice lessons and grew into saying yes to opportunities that initially terrified her. Rachel's narrative reveals the joy and authenticity found in expressing our true selves, even if it requires facing our fears. We also delve into her battle with burnout, exploring how achievement can sometimes disconnect us from personal well-being, and how vulnerability can become a gateway to balance and fulfillment.

Amidst career transitions and personal setbacks, Rachel has emerged with newfound clarity and resilience. From confronting the harsh realities of burnout to reclaiming her life through creativity, she has navigated her challenges with grace and strength. As a primary breadwinner, she faced significant downturns during the pandemic, yet found solace and freedom in music, ultimately leading to songwriting. Rachel's story is a powerful reminder of the importance of self-compassion, seeking support, and the courage to prioritize personal happiness and health. Tune in to discover how her journey of adversity to artistry inspires us all to envision a life without limitations and take steps toward our ideal selves.

Rachel Druckenmiller
Website: https://www.racheldruckenmiller.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelbdruckenmiller/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unmutedlife/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/racheldruckenmiller

Listen to Rachel's music and other podcasts
https://www.racheldruckenmiller.com/resources

Speaker 1:

Everyone's had something that happened in their childhood that affected who they have become and how they show up in the world and what they think is possible and whether or not they believe they're worthy. I feel like the journey of my life and the journey that I'm here to invite other people into, is to connect to their own sense of worthiness, because you won't do any of this stuff for yourself that we're talking about today if you don't fundamentally believe in your value as a person.

Speaker 2:

Welcome back to another episode of Stories that Move. I'm Matt Duhl and, as always, I'm here with my co-host, mason Geiger. Today we're diving into a conversation that is all about elevating purpose, passion and potential, both in business and in life.

Speaker 3:

Yes, we are so excited to be joined by Rachel Druckenmiller, a keynote speaker, facilitator and leadership trainer with Unmuted. Rachel is also a singer-songwriter and has been featured communicator on TEDx. Rachel is all about activating curiosity, character and courage in leaders and organizations, helping people live more fulfilled lives, both personally and professionally. And here's something special.

Speaker 2:

Rachel will be one of the featured speakers at the Warsaw Growth Summit here in Warsaw on November 7th. This half-day event at the Warsaw Performing Arts Center is designed for individuals and business professionals that want to grow in order to maximize their potential and be the best versions of themselves. Make sure to head over to warsawgrowthsummitcom to grab your tickets to hear Rachel and some other incredible communicators.

Speaker 3:

We cannot wait for the Growth Summit, but today we get a special sneak peek with Rachel to dig into her journey and hear more about how she's inspiring leaders and organizations around the world. So let's jump right in and welcome Rachel Druckenmiller to Stories that Move.

Speaker 2:

Welcome back to Stories that Move. I'm your host, matt Duhl, with me, as always, mason Geiger.

Speaker 3:

How's everybody doing today?

Speaker 2:

Doing good and really excited for today's conversation. Really excited for today's conversation. Joining us from Baltimore. We have Rachel Druckenmiller, keynote speaker, leadership guru, facilitator, president of Unmuted and singer-songwriter. So excited to get into that. Rachel, welcome to Stories that Move.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much.

Speaker 3:

We're going to move people's emotions today and their minds. I'm super ready for it. I love it. Yes, I'm so excited. We had a little bit of pre-conversation as we were doing some tech setup and, yes, this is going to be a very fun conversation.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, absolutely so, rachel, for our listeners, start off, just introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about you and what you're doing in the world today.

Speaker 1:

So I think one thing to mention is I come from a place of possibilities, so my parents were both former teachers turned entrepreneurs. So I grew up in this environment where I just saw people making up what they did for a living and I assumed that was normal. And so when I started working I just figured, oh well, I'm just going to pursue the things that interest me and then I'm going to find someone to pay me to do those things. And and that's what I did I was very entrepreneurial in my work. I have always been interested in human behavior. I grew up with my, my dad, watching Oprah and listening to every Tony Robbins DVD or CD, so I was surrounded by this kind of talk and these kind of insights. And so when I got out of college, studied psychology and I got into my, into my career, I was an entrepreneur, which is something I don't think gets a lot of attention and I basically got to act like an entrepreneur while having a stable paycheck, which, at 21, felt really good.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

You know so. So wait, pause real quick just just define entrepreneur.

Speaker 2:

What does that mean to you?

Speaker 1:

So my understanding is it's somebody who works for somebody else but who has the inclinations and the proactive initiative of an entrepreneur, but they're kind of in the safety net of working for another organization.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I love that, love that.

Speaker 1:

Not running your own company. So I kind of got the best of both worlds. I got to dip my toe in the water a little bit and I made up my job when I was 21. I said I'm going to be a wellness coordinator. I have no early idea what that person does, but I'm going to find out and I'm going to give you a reason to keep me here doing that. And I stayed in that same company for 13 years and by the time I left I was the national director of wellbeing and employee engagement and was speaking at different locations all over the country to different organizations. And it was through that career that I really found my my passion for, for speaking and wanting to talk about the kinds of things I talk about now.

Speaker 2:

Wow, Wow. So tell us about unmuted. What is what is unmuted?

Speaker 1:

So when I left my corporate job, I thought to myself what do I want to declare? What do I want to say about what I'm doing next, about this next step in my journey? And growing up I was somebody who was very shy and very quiet and very guarded. Like I look back at home movies I don't know if you ever look back at home movies of yourself.

Speaker 1:

That's a fun adventure right and I look at myself and I'm just like a shell of myself. I mean, I was even my posture and the colors that I wore and the sound of my voice and the expressions on my face. They were muted. And I think a lot of it started with the fact that when I was younger I was five, six years old my parents went through a rough patch in their marriage. They separated for a period of time and my brother and I moved out with my mom for what I thought was like a year and my dad said it was a few months. When you're six, a few months is a year and you're not at your house.

Speaker 2:

You know, yeah, right.

Speaker 1:

And so I internalized all of that and I learned, oh gosh, you, you know, indirectly, you need to have it all together, you need to be on top of things, you need to be a good girl, you need to not cause trouble, you need to get good grades, you have to behave yourself. And so I internalized all that and I became the golden child and I became like a dream child for a parent. And those kids get rewarded everywhere. Maybe not necessarily socially, because I did struggle in that area, to be honest, I struggled with that but academically and the approval of parents and teachers, I always had that going for me and so and I was also sick a lot as a kid. So I had chronic ear, nose and throat infections from the time I was first surgery at four until I was 16. A bunch of surgeries.

Speaker 1:

And so there were these parts of my life, my, I silenced my emotions, you know, when I was upset or sad because good girls aren't allowed to be upset or or sad, or angry I, I silenced my body. I was just dealing with all these symptoms, didn't know what to do. The doctor just said well, take more medicine and move on. And I did that and I silenced my body. I was just dealing with all these symptoms, didn't know what to do. The doctor just said well, take more medicine and move on. And I did that and I silenced my voice.

Speaker 1:

Like I love to sing, my favorite thing as my little quiet person, my little quiet self, was locking myself in a room, putting on giant headphones, cranking up the music all the way to like Amy Grant, mariah Carey, sarah McLachlan, celine Dion and just singing for hours to an audience of literally no one, hoping that no one would actually hear me do this.

Speaker 1:

And it brought me so much joy, but never in front of anybody because I was so insecure and so self-conscious. So I muted. I even wore a black and white uniform, went to Catholic school for 12 years, black and white uniform. I mean, I was muted in just about every way that a person can be. And over the past you know, 40 years of my life, but really the past 20, I've been on this journey, this unfolding of unmuting, different aspects of myself. So when I left my corporate job and I really felt like I got to step into who I wanted to be, not who I felt like I had to be in that role, I said what do I stand for? Being unmuted, being fully expressed and boldly alive and and communicating what I think and want and need and feel, and helping other people do the same.

Speaker 3:

That's beautiful, the what were some of those early in that journey steps that you really started Like? I love the analogy of like unfolding. I don't remember. There's a book I was reading the other day and it was talking about so often we talk about like with children that it's like our job to mold them and really it's our job to unfold them and so it is that like, and so hearing you say that it's like yeah, what were some of those early unfold moments for you where you started to uncover these pieces?

Speaker 1:

I would say one thing that that shifted a little bit was, you know, when I was in high school, we I went to an all girls Catholic high school and they had a choir that I refused to audition for because auditioning was a prerequisite for getting into it. And I said, no, thank you. But my senior year I had a friend who was in choir and she also took private voice lessons. She said Rachel, I know you like to sing, you should do this, you should take these voice lessons. So I signed up with no intent to ever use them to perform literally, which sounds weird. Why would you take voice lessons if you never want to sing in front? Of anybody.

Speaker 1:

It makes no sense. And so I signed up and my instructor said what song do you want to sing at the year end recital? And I was like a deer in headlights. I was like, oh, I'm not, I'm going to be one of your students that does not do that. And she said well, all of my students do. So what do you pick? So I picked one of the most depressing songs on the planet Angel by Sarah McLachlan.

Speaker 1:

You're familiar, uh huh yeah you know the dog commercial yes, right I did not know the meaning at 17 of how really dark and heavy that song is and I went up to sing it and I could not wait to sit down. Like no part of that was joyful. The nine-year-old version of me went and hid in a closet. I I was. I was ready to be done with that, but it was a step right, like it. Sometimes we have to start saying yes to a thing, even if we're terrified doing it, even if we didn't necessarily enjoy it, to prove to ourselves that, hey, you can do the thing that you said that you wanted to do. So that was like especially with my voice, step one. And then when I got to college, I was a junior, it was actually my sophomore year. And then when I got to college, I was a junior, it was actually my sophomore year.

Speaker 1:

And something I like to invite people to think about is the power of accepting invitations that show up in your life. So all of us have opportunities. You know, people suggest something and we often disqualify or discount or diminish or push it off or do anything other than say yes to an opportunity. So I had a college professor. I was in Spanish, we had to take a language went to a liberal arts school and he said you have a knack for language if you thought of studying abroad.

Speaker 1:

And I was like I've lived in the same house my whole life in Baltimore, maryland, and no one in my family has ever been outside of the country. No, but every adult I talked to was like you can go live in Europe for four months. You should go do that. So I was scared because my Spanish was not so good and I decided to say yes, I accepted the invitation, I went and that was the most significant catalyst that changed things for me, because I immersed myself in this environment of vibrant and alive and expressive and musical and artistic and loud Spanish people. And I came back and I was a different person. And that was the first time I tried out for a solo in the gospel choir and I got it. And that was like there's so many other steps choir and I and I got it. And that was like there's so many other steps that like early on steps. Those were some of the beginnings of of my unmuting in terms of my voice.

Speaker 2:

I heard you, uh, give a talk. You've given a TEDx talk, which, congratulations. That's amazing. Um, in that you talked about being this, you know, director of wellness for your company, and yet things were not going super well for you. Talk to us a little bit about that and again, just some of how that began. More further, you kind of peeling back the layers of this unmuting.

Speaker 1:

So, as somebody who was a good little girl, who got all the gold stars and you know the buckets for reading books at Pizza Hut, right, you got pan pizzas, that was. That was a big deal.

Speaker 2:

I love those pan pizzas. Yeah for sure.

Speaker 1:

They're the best Read books, get pizza.

Speaker 2:

Good deal Win-win.

Speaker 1:

So when I was, I was in this role as a wellness person, you know, and I was doing all this work to try to be innovative for our company, for our clients, and I helped us start to get regional and national recognition as a top workplace and a healthy employer. And then I applied for this award in the fall of 2014. It was for the top 100 health promotion professionals in the United States and I applied the last day. This thing was due because I was like I work for some small company in Baltimore. No one's ever heard of what chance do I have? But again, except the invitation, somebody suggested I do it. I leaned in and I submitted Fast forward six months.

Speaker 1:

I find out not only I'm in the top 100, the top 10, I won the whole thing. So I won this contest. I get flown out to San Diego. I've been in the industry for 10 years feeling like I'm banging my head against a wall to try to get anyone to pay attention to what I'm doing and saying, and I suddenly have a national platform that I'd never had before. So I go out there, they're going to bring me on stage to give me a plaque and I said can I give an acceptance speech Because I'm like sometimes we have to invite ourselves, we have to throw our own party.

Speaker 1:

It's not always about accepting invitation, it's about saying I'm going to throw my own party here and just see if you'll be okay with it. So they, let me do it. And that was what got me to my first keynote. A year later they said after those 10 minutes I said we want you to keynote our conference next year. So that award happening to be named the number one health promotion professional in the United States was one of the best things that could have ever happened to someone like me and one of the worst things that could have ever happened to someone like me. Best because it was like the little gold star overachiever who wants to be the best at everything, was told you are the best. And she was like this is awesome. Yes. And then the little another part of me that felt like they said you're the best. You have to keep being the best you have to always be the best.

Speaker 1:

You can't screw up, you can't make a mistake, you can't not know the answer, you can't struggle with your own health. You have to be the prime model of all of this. And the pressure was so heavy on me that a year after the fall actually the year I had this keynote I had a dream that I was drowning and it was like here's your sign. And I ignored it Right. And then a six months later I ended up getting diagnosed with Epstein-Barr, which is an acute form of mono. I lost my voice, I had swollen lymph nodes. I I've never felt I mean I don't know if there's like tired, and then there's beyond tired. I don't know if you've ever felt like the. You sleep 12 hours a night and you don't feel rested, and you do it for months. You're like what's wrong with me? Yes, so I was living that and I was the director of wellbeing at my company and I was like well, this something's not. They just said I'm the best in the whole country and now I'm burned out with mono. This is not a good look and I was scared about that.

Speaker 1:

But I started to talk about it. I started like really going inside of myself and during that time I went through a process. I read this awesome. I worked with a coach who was trained in a methodology called immunity to change. It's created by these professors out of Harvard, okay. And we went through this process together. We really unpacked, like what was at the root of how I got to this point, and for me it was that, after a month long process of working together and kind of getting to the roots of some of this stuff, for me the core of it was essentially this big assumption that I was making was that I had to be good enough to be acceptable and to be loved. Like that, love and acceptance were on the other side of achievement. Once you achieve enough things, then you are lovable and acceptable. But if you do not achieve enough things, if you do not impress enough people, then what are you doing here? Enough things, if you do not impress enough people, then what are you doing here? And I believe that in my core. Wow.

Speaker 1:

And that was what got me to that spot was feeling like I had to prove myself my whole life and I started to talk about it. I started to talk about beating burnout three months after I got diagnosed because I was like I need to be honest with people about what's going on here, because no one in the wellness space is talking about this in an honest way. They're like manage your calendar and go for a walk, okay, but like what's at the core of why this is happening in the first place? It's a lack of worthiness and a desire for social acceptance. So that was a turning point for me because I started to unmute myself. I started seeing a therapist working with coaches, opening up to my friends, talking about things in a way I never had before, because I felt like well being in the pit of despair that I was in. Clearly, whatever I was doing wasn't working. Let me try something different. And people were so responsive and receptive to the vulnerability and then they started opening up to me wow, wow.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for sharing that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's, it's amazing so I'm gonna go out on a limb and say you do Enneagram, have you done Enneagram? What do you think? Yeah, what do you think.

Speaker 4:

I am, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say you do enneagram have you done?

Speaker 1:

what do you think? Yeah, what do you think?

Speaker 3:

I am. I'm gonna go three talking to a fellow three married to a nine, so that's of we'll say burnout for someone who's maybe

Speaker 3:

in that right now or on the verge of that. What are some of those as being on the other side of having gone through it that you can look back and be like? Here were the big perspective shifts for me on things that I viewed, and initially this was, yeah, as an achiever, it's like we take great pride in what we achieve and the things that we do and being there and having the answers, um, but then on the other side of it's like, hey, that's, that's not what it's all about and your worth isn't tied to that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, a couple of things I mean. One, fundamentally, was that asking for help does not make you incompetent. I mean one fundamentally was that asking for help does not make you incompetent. Because I thought if I am struggling with this and somebody knows well, then they're going to take me out of this role, they're not going to give me this opportunity, they're going to decide well, she doesn't have what it takes, we need to go find somebody else. Story.

Speaker 1:

I told myself told myself, right is you must have it together all the time, which means you must not ever need other people's help, and so one of the hardest things for me was sending an email to my boss at the time, who was our cfo, and communicate to him. Hey, I'm going through this experience with my health. Left unchecked, this can lead to neurological issues and lymphomas, so I'm really going to not ignore this. Here's what I need to have to have happen. I need to shift my schedule. I can't have any meetings before 10 am for the foreseeable future. I need an assistant, because I can't keep doing this all by myself. We need to limit the number of engagements I have during the week. I mean, I just laid it out and I was so terrified to press send.

Speaker 2:

Sure yeah.

Speaker 1:

Like terrified because of the story I told myself about what was going to happen if I did that and the response I got was nothing other than compassion. I mean, I had been at this company in some form at that point. I interned there prior to working there full time for like 13 years, 14 years. I've been at this company in some form. At that point I interned there prior to working there full time for like 13 years, 14 years I've been at this company and my boss went back and he said hey, rachel, whatever you need, like whatever you need, we're here to support you. And I think most people if they actually did that, if they were actually honest about what they were struggling with, that they would get a more compassionate response than they tell themselves they're going to get. So that's one thing I can share others, but I want to pause and see if you have any thoughts about that.

Speaker 3:

So follow up to that. How did you identify what you needed? Because I feel like so often as achiever, like you get caught in, like this is just what you needed, because I feel like so often as Achiever, like you get caught in, like this is just what you do, and you get caught in that loop. And so to really be like yeah, like I need to not have meetings before 10 am, and these are the things like like self-care is not top priority most of the time for a three. So it's like what was the process to even get to that state of knowing like hey, this is what I need to actually be able to start to recover from this.

Speaker 1:

Well, part of it was I was just so, so, so, so tired. And when I talked to, I worked with a nutritionist who was trained in functional medicine, so somebody who had a really, really thorough understanding of the systemic effect of this virus on the body. And she said to me she put me on like a regimen of supplements and whatnot to kind of get my body back to life, essentially. But she was one of the ones that said like you have to rest, like this will not get better if you do not rest. And I took her word as gospel and I decided that well, if my immune system is totally shot right now, one of the things that helps us restore our immunity is sleep. It's one of the most important things. And about a year after I burned out, I actually got a WHOP. There's R rings, there's everything out now. But I was like I clearly can't monitor myself, so so I got a whoop band because I needed something to tell me, like what's the quality of your sleep? How are you sleeping? Do you need more sleep? But you know, so I, I sort of got an external tool to help me with that and I've now had this thing for six and a half, maybe six years now at this point. So that and the other thing is I got more connected to community.

Speaker 1:

So I was the kind of person who just I did not tell my friends when I was having a hard time. I just didn't do it. I also didn't tell my friends much of anything because I put all my energy into work, so I could use work as an excuse to not socialize. I could use work as an excuse to not be engaged in different things that supposedly mattered to me, like family or other things. And I started to connect and get connected even to like a group of women that I went to church with and I went on my first women's getaway weekend with like a group of six girls. You know, a year after this happened, and I got in a text chain. I'd never been in a text chain before.

Speaker 1:

Is that bizarre At 33 or 34, I'd never been in like a group text with my friends, which sounds so weird now, but it was true, because I just didn't make time for people, I didn't check in on people, I didn't follow up. I was like a bad friend Not to keep calls on myself, but I wasn't like the world's best friend. And so I realized how lonely I felt and that if I was going to get connected and actually make any progress that I would probably need to open up to some people. And so I I started to do that, you know, I started to open up to people that I was close with and and allow them to speak into my life.

Speaker 1:

Like I had a friend who texted me a month after I got diagnosed and she said, um, warning, text message, warning, unsolicited observation coming. I said, oh boy, and it was a screen and a half of text. So I braced myself and she says you know, you seem to post about not worrying so much about achievement, about the importance of slowing down. How ironic, she said. But you yourself rarely slow down, she said. If I may say so, you don't seem content or fulfilled I was like oh boy, I thought no one could tell and I did.

Speaker 1:

I thought nobody knew and I felt so outed like for somebody who cares so much about how I'm perceived by other people to have someone call me out. It was called on a loving way, she said. I wish you could believe all the things you share with the rest of us.

Speaker 3:

Wow, that's a good friend. Yeah, no, kidding that's a good friend.

Speaker 1:

I started to let stuff like that in. You know, I previously was like Fort Knox, I like Fort Knox and like, and I started, I, I, I softened. I don't know how to technically explain how to soften, but I just became more receptive and open, instead of defensive, to people that I trusted, that I knew wanted the best for me. And it's a hard, you know, it's a lot. There's a lot that goes into this. There's a lot yeah. And those are just a couple of things, yeah.

Speaker 2:

That's good. So I want to make sure for our listeners. So what I know, um, as an Enneagram nine, uh, burnout is not limited to just Enneagram threes, right, um? And when I heard your, your TEDx talk, I mean the moment that just connected and endeared me to you is when you talk about you're in meetings and you're in this moment where you're not able to form sentences and words aren't coming, and you're in moments where you're like this shouldn't be hard but it's hard.

Speaker 2:

And I I had a very, very similar moment in another job where, um, same thing of just I, I'm, I'm not able to form sentences, I'm forgetting people's names. I mean names that I shouldn't forget, not like the extras in your life that you maybe see, like once every couple of years, but no, like people that I'm doing life with and in meetings with often, and I'm looking across the table and I'm searching, like trying to find their name and can't find it. And and that was the beginnings of me starting to to, you know, understand my own burnout. At the time I thought I was having a heart attack and my heart was fine, but it was. It was all the things that you're talking about.

Speaker 2:

And again, my, my wife, enneagram four, same thing. You know she's lived through a number of very, very high, intensive creative ventures that have led her to these places of yeah, just just extreme burnout, where you just end up in this pile of like I have nothing left to give, I have nothing left to offer. So, as you have shared your story, like you said, I'm sure now many people reciprocate and share with you. What have you heard from just different personalities and different people and ways that this has hit and affected their lives.

Speaker 1:

There's multiple stories, a few that come to mind. One I spoke at an HR. I do a lot with HR and I was speaking at an HR event. I think I don't know it's probably like the December of 2018, end of the year event, monthly meeting. I went and spoke about, you know, beating burnout and becoming your best self as I'm figuring out how to do that. And six months later, I speak at another event for HR in the building and construction space and a woman comes up to me and she says I heard you speak six months ago.

Speaker 1:

I don't know if I've told you this or not, but after that talk that you gave, it really gave me a moment to pause. She said because my commute, it was really taking over my life and I at one point went to pick up my son from school, pick him up or drop him off, and she said the people at the school asked me who? Who are you? She was like I'm his mother and because she wasn't able to be there, because her job, her commute, was such that she didn't allow her to drop her kid off or pick him up from school, she had to have another family member do that. The school didn't even know who the kid's mother was, and she said that's all I needed to realize that I could not be doing this anymore. She said so I changed jobs and I'm so much happier because now I can take my kids to and from school, that's I mean, I'm like I'm just the sort of, as my dad says, sort of metaphorically, I'm like blowing the whistle at the track.

Speaker 1:

That person has their shoes. They sort of metaphorically, I'm like blowing the whistle at the track. That person has their shoes, they're ready to go, they're ready to run. They just sometimes just need permission from somebody and I felt like I was that permission, you know. So that's, that's one example. I've had people leave keynotes and like they, they book vacations. Or I just booked two vacations, um, I haven't taken a vacation in years. I booked two of them.

Speaker 1:

I'm like that's amazing, um, or I have two of them I'm that when I was in like the just the worst part of my burnout I was not really happy with the answer. If I was honest with myself, I think a lot of us, if we're honest with ourselves about the answer to that question, we may not like we're never going to be proud of the answer we have to give. And she went home and talked to her partner about it and then, like two days later that same week, she went to her boss to ask to be taken off so she didn't have to travel anymore, so she could just be based where she lived and be in one office, which was basically like asking can I change half my job, which most people would be terrified to do?

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

But then her boss said yes, and she stayed at that company for five more years. She was on her way out the door, she was burned out, she was done and she stayed there like something, four to five more years. But I've stayed in touch with her and these are things that it's sort of like activating a sense of agency in people is, I feel like what I get to do. You can do this Like here's permission, this is your life, here's permission, this is your life.

Speaker 1:

We have a tendency, I find, to be more loyal to our jobs than we are to ourselves, and we will sacrifice ourselves at the altar of our jobs. We'll sacrifice our health, we'll sacrifice our marriages, we'll sacrifice our friendships, our free time, our sanity, our mental health, our physical health All at the altar. Alter our job. And that job can be taken from you in two seconds. You could put somebody else in that role in two days. So I think it's important for us to ask ourselves you know, who am I being loyal to?

Speaker 3:

So why do you think that we do that? Is that, is it a culture thing? Is it a like? Yeah, I feel like it's just becoming more, and more the norm.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we live in a very we live in a society where certain things have fallen away. There used to be community centers, there used to be neighborhoods. People used to be a part of communities outside of their work, and now work has become, for most people, the community that they invest their effort and energy into. And so if you become, for most people, the community that they invest their effort and energy into, and so if you're not, if you don't have other places to put that energy you're going to, it's like all your eggs are in one basket, and so work has to be everything.

Speaker 1:

Work has to be my sense of purpose. Work has to be meaningful to me. Work has to be where I find, where I find community, where I find connection, where I belong, and it has to be the thing that makes me money and allows me to do fun things. And work has to be where I get affirmed and validated and where people recognize me. We have put so much pressure on what work needs to be and we have neglected the other areas of our lives where we should be looking for those things to not just be coming from our job. So I think a lot of it is that all these other ways that we used to connect and commune and find value and meaning in our lives have fallen to the wayside for most people, and so work has become everything.

Speaker 2:

So for you, you have this huge moment. You work with your boss to adjust things and to kind of move towards healing. But we know, ultimately, as you've already told us, you ended up leaving that job and then taking a pretty big leap and probably a scary step at the time of starting your own thing. Talk us through that transition and just how you even in what you just said kind of just said hey, I was at the top of my game, I was award-winning, best in the world at what I did, and now I'm walking away to do something different. Talk to us through that.

Speaker 1:

I mean it was scary. Uh, there were a lot of things about it. I kicked that can down the road for so many years. I thought about leaving that job in 2012. I didn't leave till 2019. So I think that can happen too. Sometimes we know we need a change and again back to accepting the invitations and leaning into opportunities. I think, regardless of what somebody does for work, that every single one of us can do this in a more intentional way.

Speaker 1:

So it was in the fall of 2018. And I was at a conference that I had spoken at before the same conference. I won that award years earlier and I knew that I wanted to get into the speaking thing full time. This is what I want to do with my life. And so somebody introduced me to a guy who was a speaker and I said if there's a book that you could recommend somebody read, who wants to get into this, what would it be? And he mentioned a book called Steal the Show by a guy named Michael Port, and he said they have trainings. They do speaker trainings and you can look into it. So I ordered the book.

Speaker 1:

Before I left the bar, I went online, I looked at the price of their program. I laughed, I closed the window because I was like, well, that's never going to happen. That's more than graduate school was Okay. Next. And then I find out that, lo and behold, this company is having an in-person event, a three-day masterclass in Philadelphia, which is a train ride from where I live in Baltimore, and it was going to be in the hundreds of dollars, not the tens of thousands of dollars, and I thought I can play hooky from work for a few days and go to this, which is exactly what I did.

Speaker 1:

I just took off a couple days and took a train to Philadelphia, didn't know a soul, 500 people in this room, and I was immersed in this environment of people that were, that were training in improv and voice and and stagecraft and writing, and I was like a kid in a candy shop. I mean, I felt, I felt like my heart was going to beat out of my chest. I felt so alive and I had this knowing that I am supposed to do this and they are really good salespeople. And they did this altar call where it's like there's only 75, you know, but wait, there's only 75 slots and whatever. And I don't.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes I've gotten better at listening to what my body tells me. So if I'm in a situation where I feel like my heart is going to beat out of my chest, I really pay attention to that. That's my body telling me like, that's like pulling me toward it. Right, this is for you, pay attention. So I called my husband and I said Do you trust me? I'm about to dump out our bank account and we had. The only reason we had the money to pay for this is because two years earlier, my grandmother, my dad's mother, had passed away and she left us some money that was about 75% of the cost of this program that we hadn't spent, where women did not really have a voice, where she was married to a World War II vet who muted everything and suppressed everything and sometimes took it out on her, and she also loved to sing. My grandmother was in the choir at her church and I thought this would be like a really meaningful thing to do. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

To carry on her legacy in some way. So I invest in this program and I show up in this room of all these people from all over the world that are doing the thing that I realize I want to be doing, and it was the first time I ever thought to combine singing and speaking. I told a story about how I found my voice in gospel choir at that audition, my junior year.

Speaker 1:

I told the story. I sang the bit and they were like you must sing every time you get on stage. I said no, why would I ever do that? Like no, I'm speaking corporate Weird to sing on stage, I'm not doing that.

Speaker 1:

And then it became the thing I was known for there and as I felt myself expanding in this community of people and that's the other thing if you're ever feeling stuck, get connected to find a community of people that are doing the thing that you want to be doing and spend time with those people I was immersed in this environment of people. At the same time, I felt like I was shrinking in my corporate job, where I was like I wanna do more and I just felt like I was being tamped down. I was feeling myself expand. So my motif was even like the peacocks the peacock behind me, I love peacocks and it was like the thing I became known as and as I leaned into that, I had people saying more and more things to me.

Speaker 1:

I'd be at a sermon at church and our pastor would talk about. You know, once a bug sheds its exoskeleton, it can't put it back on. Like once. You know, you can't unknow. And my husband's, like you know, elbowing me in the ribs and I'm like I know, I know I get it, and it's just moved in this direction where I got to the point where I felt compelled. I said I was going to stand on stage and say you know, it's time to expand and be seen and heard for all that we are.

Speaker 4:

And I could not say those words and believe myself if I hadn't made the decision to tell my boss that I was leaving that job.

Speaker 1:

Wow, so that's spring of 2019. So I'm leaving. September 1st I had no business plan whatsoever. I had a hope and a prayer and a couple gigs booked and I I left my job september 1st.

Speaker 3:

I started unmuted it's incredible, it's inspiring it is yeah, just such a cool story. So from that moment until now, what does that journey looked like for you as you've kind of started to, now that you've entered the set of entrepreneurial entrepreneurship, and what that looks like and what's that journey been for you?

Speaker 1:

Really hard, I starting off. I mean you think you have this momentum. When you start a new thing, whether you're starting your own business or starting a new job or a new passion project we have all this energy. Right at first, we're like I'm so excited I can do anything. And then, four months later, by December of 2019, I had two gigs booked for all of 2020.

Speaker 1:

And I'm the primary breadwinner, married to a teacher, and I was like I don't think we're going to be able to live on me speaking two times. So a coach advised me on something that was really smart, that anybody listening could benefit from. He said make a list of all the people that you know and rank, order ABC, the extent to which those people could potentially make a connection for you, hire you or advise you in some way. And so I just made a spreadsheet of like over a hundred people that I knew and I started reaching out to them and I started having coffees and I started. I was like you'll pay me 1200 bucks to that done. You know, I didn't care. I, I, I, any, anything, anyone would pay me.

Speaker 1:

I said yes to because I just needed momentum and by the time March hit, I was at half of my goal for the year. For the whole year I was going to be exceeding the highest I ever got paid in corporate my first year in business and I was like this is awesome. And then the pandemic hit and 85% of my business that had been booked vanished in a matter of weeks. My husband was teaching elementary school physical education from our basement, remotely, so just use your imagination how terrible that was. And then, six weeks after, everything started to fall apart. My husband and I were out running outdoors because I told you you should go exercise, and a pickup truck took a right hand turn at a red light and hit me and I fractured my back.

Speaker 1:

May 3rd of 2020, yep and I was rushed to the hospital and they said you have a compression fracture in your back, and I was devastated. That year was already not the best and in that moment, I'm in the hospital by myself, because at that time you couldn't see anybody. My husband couldn't bring a phone. I was there by myself.

Speaker 1:

He couldn't even run the ambulance with me and it was a horrible time and I thought to myself laying in the hospital room crying, singing random things like hakuna matata. I don't know what I was doing. I just I needed something to like relieve all the that I was feeling. And, um, I thought to myself there's something here about rising up when we get knocked down that I'm going to use. Two days after the accident, I was giving a talk in a back brace. I was in a back brace for two months, just like this, behind a computer, to a group of HR leaders about building hope and resilience in the midst of uncertainty. Joke's on me Because I picked that topic prior to the accident.

Speaker 1:

People were struggling and because of what I'd gone through three years earlier with the burnout experience. I had practiced opening up. I had practiced being vulnerable. I had practiced showing the harder, less glamorous, painful parts of an experience and being able to talk about it publicly. And I would go on every single day and I was sharing updates with people. I was singing things to people. I was saying I know it's really hard and sometimes you just got to let yourself cry. And I mean that the I still have. You know, some I had PTSD from that experience and I was a year of seeing physical therapists and neurologists and acupuncturists and orthopedists and radiologists. I mean, I would never want to relive that year of my life for anything, but the gift that that time brought me was it made me want to reconnect to the thing that we opened talking about, which was this thing that brought me joy from the time I was very little, which was singing. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And during that time February of 2021, I started taking virtual voice lessons. So voice lessons for the first time in 20 years and it was an outlet for me. It was like what it had been before. It was this thing that, At a time where I felt so constricted and so not free, it was something that I could connect to, that made me feel free and alive at a time where I was so, so scared. And every Monday, I look forward to this. Every Monday, at three o'clock, I had these voice lessons and I would start sharing little snippets of music and I would share them on LinkedIn and people would say oh this is great, do more, and okay, and in the fall of 2022,.

Speaker 1:

I was talking to a coach and she said you should start putting music videos on LinkedIn. I was like music videos of what? And she's like covers, I don't know and I don't even know how to do that. So I talked to a guy that I go to church with who had just started a music production company, studied music composition in college, fresh out of college, and I said I think I want to record some covers and we had a session. We sat down together for our first session in his makeshift studio in his basement and he looked at me and he said what do you want to write your first song about? And I was like, oh, I don't know that. I know how to do that.

Speaker 1:

I don't play any instruments, I don't have any background in songwriting, I can't read music, but I have been through some stuff and I had a story to tell and I had things to share. And so when he asked me that the night before I had watched a documentary called bully about kids who were bullied and and with some really devastating outcomes, and one of the parents who lost one of his sons to suicide gave out these bracelets at these events that they would host to memorialize the lives of people that had been lost. And the bracelet said I am somebody on the bracelet. And so I looked at Leroy and I said I want to write a song about being somebody, because everybody wants to feel like there's somebody who matters and a lot of people don't. And that was the beginning. Six months later, five months later, on January 26th 2023, my first song released on Spotify and had several songs come out, a music video. I'm working on a new one now and it's just. It's been one of the greatest joys of my whole life.

Speaker 2:

So cool, okay, so thank you. This is awesome. So, so for the listener. Um, so you, you are the little girl singing in the closet with the headphones, hoping no one hears you belting out the Mariah Carey, to now releasing things on Spotify and music videos on YouTube. Yeah, what do you say to the listener who is stuck in the little girl in the closet phase? Who is stuck in the little girl in?

Speaker 1:

the closet phase. Yeah One. I would invite her to be gentle with herself, because that girl is doing that for good reason. She's just trying to protect herself and it's what feels safe. And so give a bit of compassion, like, don't hit her over the head.

Speaker 1:

And also to ask yourself hey, like what is the cost of you staying silent? What is the cost to you, to your potential and capacity to experience joy and fulfillment? What is the cost to the people that you love? What is the cost to the people that you're meant to serve and impact? What is the cost to the people that you love? What is the cost to the people that you're meant to serve and impact? What is the cost of you staying silent in that closet? What regret might you have in your life as a result of doing that?

Speaker 1:

And then to flip it and say what becomes possible if that version of you finds the courage to step out and be seen and heard? Like don't think about what could go wrong, because we all do that, naturally. What becomes possible for me to have people say to me in tears I've had a 54-year-old man say to me my whole life all somebody told me was that I wasn't somebody. And this is the first time that I feel like someone's really telling me that I am somebody, and I've just seen so many people through the music.

Speaker 1:

I write very message-driven music. You know the words, the lyrics are very intentional and I want them to communicate something really powerful. And when someone tells me that they listened to a song and they cried, or they listened to a song and they shared it with somebody, or they listened to a song and it healed something in them, like what's the cost of me? Not like they would have missed out on all of those opportunities to have growth and connection and joy and healing in their life because I was so focused on my own insecurities of not being good enough. Is that a fair trade? So that's what I would say what's the cost?

Speaker 3:

How does curiosity play into all of that for you?

Speaker 1:

It is it. I mean to be curious about ourselves. I'm such a question asker, right, like when someone's like tell me the roadmap, I'm more inclined to say there's a question my dad loves to ask that I often ask in the keynotes I give, which is if it were just right, what would it look like? And you think about your life and you're like anybody could ask themselves that question about any aspect of their life that they're feeling stuck in or that's not optimized in some way. Hey, just let's forget about what is practical, let's forget about what you've done before, what you think you're capable of. Let's just ask a possibility, activating question of if it were just right, what would it look like. Let's map out the vision for what that ideal looks like and then ask ourselves what's one step I can take toward that vision?

Speaker 1:

So, staying in a place of curiosity, right, curiosity of non-judgment, because I could look at my little self and be like I could judge her, which I've done many times. What's wrong with you? Why won't you share your voice? You love doing this in private. Why won't you let anyone hear you what's wrong with you? Like we it? Why would you let anyone hear you what's wrong with?

Speaker 1:

you like, we're so mean to ourselves, and part of it I actually have. I'll show you I have. This is my eight, nine year old self. Wow, and I have her on the back of my phone, yeah, and she just disappeared. But I, I, I. I sometimes will have to sit there. I will look, I will look into my own eyes for like a minute, because I had a therapist ask me.

Speaker 1:

She said what would she say if she saw you now? So maybe you'd be asking yourself that Think about the version of yourself that's holding you back. What would that youngest version of you that was the most connected to possibility but maybe still holding back, what would they say if they saw you now? Or what would they say if they saw you step into that version of yourself instead of the version that's held back and muted and silenced and suppressed? What would they say if they saw you? And my therapist asked me that, like after my first song release. She said what would she say if she saw you? And I said she would say would she say if she saw you? And I said she would say wow.

Speaker 1:

Like we're doing this, we did, we did this, oh my gosh. And it's like giving your, giving your little self, someone to be proud of. You know to say you've been through everyone. I've yet to talk to an adult who's like I got through life unscathed. I had no issues, no traumas, no drama. It's just been an easy ride.

Speaker 1:

Like you're lying or you're a narcissist, but okay, so either way, everyone's been through something. Everyone's had something that happened in their childhood that affected who they have become and how they show up in the world and what they think is possible and whether or not they believe they're worthy. And I feel like the journey of my life and the journey that I'm here to invite other people into is to connect to their own sense of worthiness, because you won't do any of this stuff for yourself that we're talking about today if you don't fundamentally believe in your value as a person, if you don't believe that you are somebody who matters and that you're enough I mean for each of you, if you think about like and for anyone listening, if you think about everything that had to go right to the earliest time, you can possibly remember and go back to the number of things that had to happen for any one of us to end up here. Your great, great, great great grandparents had to meet in such a way and they had to conceive a kid in such a way, and, and they had to conceive a kid in such a way, and then they had to conceive a kid in such a way, in such a place, and then that person had to meet this person to them because are you kidding me? Like no, what? None of us could orchestrate any of that.

Speaker 1:

And when you think about how any of us came to be, for us to, for someone to think I have I think that makes me so sad is for someone to think they don't have any worth and value as a person, yeah, or that the world would be better off without them. Like it breaks my heart, because I think everyone has value and everyone has worth and everyone has something to contribute. Yes, and sometimes we just need people to reflect back to us the goodness we cannot see in ourselves. And I feel like in my role, I get to be a mirror for people. I get to show people like you have this inside of you. Look how beautiful, look how amazing this is, look how amazing you are, look what you're capable of, yeah. And then they lean into that and then their life unfolds.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yeah, so awesome, and I mean we love that because you know what you're talking about is a version of why we do what we do, and just believing that everyone has a story right, everyone has a voice, everyone has a story and all of these amazing things and twists and turns that we have in our life all come together to just give us this beautiful mosaic of of experiences and so, um, yeah, absolutely love that Love that.

Speaker 3:

So for someone who wants to go on this journey with you, what does? That look like.

Speaker 1:

Well, I'm writing a book right now that's not out yet. That's going to have a lot of this in it. So different aspects of that I mean. For a starting point, follow me on LinkedIn so I share on there like just about every day. I'm very active on there. I'm on. You know, my music is wherever they stream music. I mean I share a lot of these similar messages in my songs.

Speaker 1:

I've been asked by enough people do you do coaching that? I'm actually like creating an offering for that because I've had so many people ask about it. Then I'm like again, accept the invitation. If enough people think you could help them do something, maybe you should pay attention to that. So that is a you know, kind of coming, coming attraction. But I just love to hear from people, as I know you do too. When somebody's affected by something like send us a message. You know people think like, oh, I don't know that person, they're inaccessible. No, no, no, please send us a message. We love hearing from you, we love hearing your story and you know getting resources where I can. If there's some way I can help somebody, I love when they just reach out and if I can offer something, then you know I'm happy to do that, to support them.

Speaker 2:

And for our local listeners here in Northern Indiana, you have an unbelievable opportunity to come and see Rachel live and in person. We are so excited. November 7th you will be with us at the Growth Summit speaking sharing more of your story. So, yeah, so excited to have you come into Warsaw. Thank you for being willing to do that.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for the opportunity to share my story. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely so. November 7th, get on warsaugrowthsummitcom. Get your tickets. Don't miss that. Rachel, this has been phenomenal. Cannot tell you enough how much this means to us and appreciate you. I'm going to go out on a limb and ask you would you, would you take us out with a song? You? Got anything.

Speaker 1:

Now that I'm crying and snotting all over the place. Let me get myself together.

Speaker 2:

Maybe even just a couple of bars.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'll sing a couple of bars. That connects to the message and I forgot to mention.

Speaker 1:

people can also find me on racheldruckandmillercom is probably the best place to get all the things I forgot to mention that minor detail we'll link it so the message at the end of my song somebody is, you are somebody, you matter and you are enough. And so I guess what I invite people to do as they're listening to this is to close their eyes and to put a hand on their heart, if they're comfortable doing that, and to really take this in and ask yourself what would happen if I really believed this. How would I show up differently in believe this? How would I show up differently in the world? How would I interact with people differently? So here we go.

Speaker 5:

You are somebody, you are somebody, you matter and you are enough. You are somebody, you are somebody, you matter and you are enough. You are enough, enough, enough.

Speaker 1:

You are enough there, you go Awesome.

Speaker 2:

Ladies and gentlemen, Rachel Druckenmiller, Rachel, thank you again. We appreciate you so much. Can't wait to meet you in person here very soon. I want to thank all of our listeners. Thank you for joining us today for this awesome episode of Stories that Move, and we look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you for joining us for this episode of Stories that Move brought to you by Dream On Studios.

Speaker 3:

Make sure to subscribe so that you don't miss the next episode. And remember, if you or your organization have a story you're eager to share with the world, Dream On Studios is here to bring that story to life.

Speaker 2:

Don't hesitate to reach out. You can find us on LinkedIn, instagram, facebook or visit our website at dreamonstudiosio. We understand how overwhelming it can be trying to bring your vision and story to life, but that's why we exist, and we've walked alongside hundreds of clients doing that very thing.

Speaker 3:

Yeah we believe every story has the potential to inspire, to move and to make a difference. Let's make yours heard.

Speaker 2:

Until next time, keep moving forward and keep telling those stories that matter.

Speaker 3:

Take care everyone. We'll see you next time on Stories that Move.