S1E4: Embracing Vulnerability to Build Trust and Enact Positive Change | Tiffany Sauder

Tiffany Sauder, President, CEO, and Visionary of Element Three, a full-service marketing agency in Carmel, Indiana, and headliner of the 2023 EOS Conference, discusses balancing personal and professional life, facing failure, and embracing vulnerability, discipline, and decisions for positive change. 

Tiffany is a podcaster and entrepreneur, but she is also a mom and a wife. Over the course of her journey, she felt pressure to leave things behind in her personal life to advance professionally and keep “winning the day.”

She quickly realized that she was “playing to win everything” in a way that was not serving her and started to question whether her sacrifices were truly worth it. 

She compares finding a balance between her professional and personal life to running a marathon:

[03:11] “I remember having this vision that I was running this race. I was crossing the finish line and nobody was behind me. Nobody was with me. I was all alone. My family wasn’t with me, my husband wasn’t with me, the people I was leading were not with me. I was all alone.”

This image brought on a radical shift for Tiffany, she decided that she had to change the way she ran her business, and her life. There was a choice between two options: admit failure and choose something else, or be prideful and accept defeat in the form of loneliness, divorce, and bankrupcy. 

She credits Visionary tendencies for acknowledging that she had to have the courage to embrace failure, let go of pride, and accept the need for help and change. 

Vulnerability was key to Tiffany’s process in beginning to trust people with the truth of where and who she was. 

A veil was dropped where she was able to own the worst and highest parts of herself and accept truth. Tiffany shares that being vulnerable, and being radically honest with yourself and others, especially with the people who can help you, is so important. 

[10:58] “If the fact that my marriage is not what I want it to be is a hundred percent my fault […] What could I do about it? If my business not being what I want it to be is a hundred percent my fault. What can I do about it?”

When you accept the blame, you reclaim your power and control to make change. 

Discipline and decisions go hand-in-hand, Tiffany explains. If you’re not enacting new disciplines, then you’re not really making any decisions—or change—at all. 

Any Visionary is capable of setting maximums for change, but what’s truly game-changing is setting minimums. Set a minimum routine or task as a goal instead of setting a maximum end result as a goal. 

Justin Maust, Element Three’s EOS Implementer®, joins the conversation to reflect on what the company was like when he and Tiffany first started working together. It was a desire to be truthful and self-honest and a recognition of a deep need for discipline that really allowed for the company to pivot.

Links

• Tiffany Sauder | LinkedIn
• Tiffany Sauder | Element Three
• TiffanySauder.com
• Big Wins & Battle Scars – A Journey of Hard Decisions, Finding Discipline, & Embracing Vulnerability – Tiffany Sauder EOS Conference Keynote