Rockstar Camp Confidence: Megan Jo Wilson

Today I have with me Megan Jo Wilson, who is the creator and founder of the Rockstar Camp for Women. I'm pretty excited to talk to you about this today. I think this is such an interesting idea, Megan Jo, because when I read the impetus for this, it was all about confidence and it was all about having women get up on stage and be able to work with their own presence and their own voice. I guess I have to say that I see this quite a bit. There's quite a big difference between women and men and what they think they bring to any given situation. Yeah. So talk to me about your inspiration and why you decided this would be something you wanted to focus on. Well, I love what you said about this program, creativity and the human spirit, is that were those awards. Yes, absolutely. That's what it's all about. So thank you for your voice and your work in the world. The difference is stark between women's confidence and men's confidence, and I say that in a context of doing coaching work for 20 years now, working with men and women and doing business coaching. And that's where the really stark contrast became so revealed to me. I was teaching coaches how to build a profitable business as a coach, because most coaches get trained in the skills, but not how do I run a business. So I was running groups with men and women, and I'm teaching the tactics and know your client and create awareness and share what you're offering and charge a certain amount that will support your livelihood goals, your revenue goals. And the men, for the most part would say, okay, and they'd go do it, and the women would just sort of spiral in this perpetual, I'm not ready yet. I don't know how to be an expert in public, the highly trained, brilliant, passionate women. I'm terrified to do a Facebook Live or share a post about what I really think, and when it comes to charging money now I'm really uncomfortable because how do I receive revenue for my gifts, my wisdom, my talent? So that experience was like, wow, there's something really profound that I want to play with and see if I can shift, because these women have such medicine to bring to the world and they're just stuck in sharing it. So I think it's actually a crisis of confidence. I think it's pretty intense. Well, I have to agree with you because I do a lot of work with mentoring and coaching women, clinicians, and in particular women doctors who are leaders. And it's interesting when I bring up imposter syndrome with men, male physicians who are leaders versus female physicians who are leaders. The men will be like, most of the time, no, sometimes yes, but it's pretty rare. But women who have been in the profession for quite a while, they will say, I feel like I don't know enough. Why would people believe in me as a leader? And it sounds very similar to your experience, just in the broader context. Absolutely. And so what we tend to do then is get more training, get more certifications, try to collect more data, or I need, I'm not there yet, and it's just a huge cost for all of us. So I've been a singer and performer for my whole life, and I've done all this coach training and all this leadership development training. And in all my leadership development training, I was noticing like, oh, I know how to do that. I learned that by being a professional musician, live musician, I know how to feel the energy of a space. I know how to connect with the other people. I know how to command a stage. I know how to use my voice. I know how to show up and shine even if I'm tired and not in the mood. And I thought for years, there's got to be some way to play with leadership and voice and performance. And that's what Rockstar Camp was born out of really, because it is a leadership development program, the concert where these women are quite literally Portland House of Music here in Portland on stage spotlight live band, all men behind them by design a live audience cheering them and they just sing one song. None of them have musical training. Most of them have never sung in front of another person. And so they're having this somatic experience of being just not just seen and heard, but in the most extreme way and celebrated. So the concert is sort of the most spectacular piece of it, but it's really just a laboratory for us to see all the things that come up for a woman when she's placed in that position so that we can acknowledge it and heal it. And it's not our fault that we have imposter syndrome. We weren't born that way. Five-year-old girls don't have imposter syndrome. It's a learned condition, so you can unlearn it. Wrote your first song at 12? I did. And I love the story of singing Tina Turner on your Cape Elizabeth Lawn when you were growing up. So it sounds like when I know your background, I mean, it seems like you took this sort of five-year-old, 8-year-old, 8-year-old, 12-year-old energy, and you just kind of held onto it over time. That's so cool. That's beautifully said. So how is it that you were able to do this? And it's so hard for many women to do this. Part of it is probably, I don't know, my astrology, my personality, my purpose, my spiritual, who knows, right? I love to sing. I love to perform. I actually feel quite relaxed and at home, my version of rockstar camp would be playing basketball in public or standup comedy. I mean, there's many places in which I would be like, oh man, I can't do this. But I love what you're saying that my inner five-year-old is a part of my adult woman work. And I have this theory that because our culture is so confused, a lot of our gifts are the things that we were criticized for as kids. I, so I'm just meeting you, but I don't know. Your inner five-year-old, probably loved to talk to people and connect with people and play with people or your work in healthcare. You are interested in making the world a better place and interested in bodies and interesting. So yeah, I think play and the things that light us up and fill us up are a great compass for the work we're meant to do here. And the women that do rockstar camp, it's funny when I offer it, you, there's a stark response. So if I said to you, Lisa, what do you think about getting on stage to sing a song? How do you respond? Oh, me personally? Yeah. I love getting on stage\! So you're like, great, give me a microphone. Give me an audience anytime. Exactly. So for you, it's like, sounds fun. Yeah, let's do it. For many women it's like, oh, you couldn't pay me enough. There is no way I would do that. And then some women say, yeah, do it. That sounds fun. And then the ones who join are like, Ooh, there's something there for me. I'm terrified and I'm all in because there's something there that I know wants to be revealed. It's sort of like this archetype of the rockstar. It's like an archetype. Oh my God, this is why we love rock stars. They're so unapologetic and free. And if I could just tap into that part of myself, maybe I'd have more permission, which is what I hear all the time from my grads. I just have so much more permission to whatever. I just have more permission. When I hear you say this, it brings up for me this idea that the people who sign up for your camp are really being so brave. So brave. Because they're not necessarily the ones who automatically would sign up for a camp. Exactly. They're the ones who really have to make a conscious decision to move towards something that is really scary for them. So how do you reach that particular group of people? Yeah, well, they're out there. So like I said, I've been in the coaching industry for 20 years, so we're at a time now where personal growth is just almost an addiction for a lot of people. It's like, oh, how can I stretch my comfort zone even more? We are at a place where sort of science and spirit is really integrating, and it's like, I want to look at myself. I want to grow. I understand that challenges is the space where I grow. So that's sort of how I frame it. And I share that message in all kinds of ways through marketing and my coaching communities. I belong to a lot of women's groups and I haven't met a woman yet. And by the way, I did a rockstar camp for men, which was amazing experience, but I haven't met a woman yet who has said, well, I don't get it. I don't think that's really an issue. I think we're all really doing great. We are doing great. But you know what I'm saying, women get it when they hear about it, they get it. So you've created something relatable And a lot of personal growth experiences. The challenge is translating the depth of the work because it looks on paper, you've seen probably the photos, they're on stage and they're dah, and it's the lights, but it's also really deep. There's a lot of crying and screaming. And being in sisterhood is a huge component. Teaching women how to relate to one another with actual love, with actual admiration, with inspiration, which is our natural way of relating and is trained out of us from a very early age. So it's like such a relief and deep healing. So many of us have wounds with other women, so to be in community, that's why they're able to get on stage. They know their sisterhood's going to catch them at the end of it. And so when they have that, then they can face the next stage, which might be a podcast, a book, a play they want to write. These are some of the things my grads create. They're not starting a band. They're starting a movement. They're starting a mission. They're saying, well, if I could do that, I can do anything. I love that because it is true that if you do things that are hard, then the next time something that's hard comes along, you say, well, I did this last thing and now I can use that in that feeling, that information to do this next thing. As you said that this is a sort of an odd share, but I remember when I was in labor saying, if I can do this, I can do anything. I'll never be afraid of anything ever again. It's like it just stretches. You get to see what your capacity actually is in a somatic way, an embodied way. And our intelligence, women's intelligence is in the body. We are brilliant intellectuals, but our bodies have so much information and wisdom, but most of us are kind of operating from the neck up. It's like because what we're trained to do, so you have to be in your body to sing. You have to be in your soul to make art. You have to be present to just the joy of music. If someone sings a happy birthday or gospel song or whatever the song is with no emotion, it's like any art or paints without emotion, it's not going to move people. But if you know how to feel and move people, you have a huge, a fairy dust as a leader. So one of the things that I am, as you're talking, I was thinking about a situation that I was in that I was going to go on stage with an individual, and he was a long time performer and really great musician. He actually, he was my teacher in high school. Oh, wow. So I was going to go and I was going to sing, but I wasn't really feeling it. And he said, that's not my problem. They hired us to do this thing. So you need to show up and you need to put yourself out there. That's right. And you need to be and embody this performer person because that's what people are expecting. And I think that that also comes up for me when you're talking about this, because sometimes you really don't feel it. And we can't assume that all rock stars or people who get up in front of others always feel like doing it. I mean, sometimes it is actually work and that doesn't matter, Right? That doesn't matter. You don't wait for the inspiration because this is the job. I love that. I love that. And there are really practical tools and exercises that I'm giving these women to flip the switch, to flip the switch back into aliveness. I love that. That's not my problem. You have a job to do, and part of that job is bringing your aliveness and feeling to this show because that's what the audience will need. So how do you do that? How do you do that in a boardroom? How do you do that at a family table? How do you do that in a newsletter you're writing? And when you have the tools to do it? For women in particular, when we're in our aliveness, we're very compelling magnetic enrolling. And most of us, because again, we're trained out of that, just need some practices that can get us back into it. And they're very effective. And it's a discipline that it is a discipline because it's so easy to slip back into zombie mode, kind of. The idea that you've just described, this idea of practices and kind of processes and just show up and do the work. I think that is really powerful because a lot of times people get stymied by, I don't know what the next step is. I have this overarching vision for my life, but how do I actually get there? But I do think that when you break it down and you start acting as if you start creating the mental neuron connections, I do think it makes it much easier for the next time and then the next time and then the next time. So the fact that you're talking about moving your 20 years worth of coaching experience into, okay, I'm going to create some strategies, some practices, I'm not going to throw you up on stage right away. We're going to work through this process. And on the other side, you will have what you need to have gone to this place where you can perform in front of a group. And this arc of the camp now it's about three months. So actually I give them tools. It's like I give them enough that they can do it off, do it off. I give them enough that they can pull it off, but I don't give them a year to train their voice. I really want to push them in the deep end. And I remember one of my grad Susan going, wait, we're not, you're not going to give us voice lessons. And I do a little bit of vocal training, but I said, no, you don't need voice lessons. What you need to know is your magnificence and your pleasure. You need to sing with pleasure. If you sing for yourself and you are in your pleasure, you'll be magnificent. And even if you're not, you'll feel great about it anyway. And she said, I'm a little faint. I'll never forget the zoom call. She literally got faint. And this is how powerful the body is. This is why we get dry mouth and sweaty armpits and hands because our digestion system is shutting down, preparing for a battle, even when we're just about to do a keynote speech or a podcast interview or sing on stage, how amazing is the body that it does that it feels like battle. It feels like life or death for a woman to say, for many women, I will say, this is my voice. This is what I have to say. This is what I believe. This is my expertise. This is what I stand for. So me and Joe, in contrast, when you had the rockstar Kim for men, what did that look like? What did you, I guess, learn from that experience or observe from that experience so much. It was really funny. I did it because several men, friends of mine said, we really want to do this. One of them was even a little offended that I was only offering it to women. And I said, well, if I can get enough men that want to do it, I'll give it a shot. And I immediately had enough men who wanted to do it, which was fascinating. I did not change the curriculum. I did not change the tools because it really was a social experiment. And I worked with enough men, and I'm intelligent enough to know that women are not the only people who struggle with imposter syndrome. Women are not the only ones who have stories and inner critics and issues with our bodies and our presentation. And I really feel for our men are amazing men because a woman can go like this on her phone and find an empowerment workshop. There's just so much for them. For men, it's getting better, but it's a little bit harder to find community and support in being a man and being a white man in particular right now. It's a very strange place to be. So what I learned was, and we were laughing because the biggest questions were like, should the menu be the same? Should we have beer or wine? Do you want to have ribs? It was so silly. It was like people just feed them. What I learned was that we all, when we have access to this part of ourselves, this kind of rockstar quality, we have access to more permission and men need that too. And as we already addressed, when it came to things like bragging, taking up space in a group for example, there was just so little charge around it. There was just not any concern. It's just boys are given permission from a young age. You are supposed to take up space. You will be a leader. You are surrounded by examples of other men being leaders. So it's the cultural influence that's so profound, and they have deep rage, deep grief, deep despair, and actually the feminine that's in all of us can take us there. And for most men, diving into those depths is so unfamiliar and so liberating when they get to go there, especially rage that they get to be in their, because I have 'em really scream and we get baseball bats. It gets wild women. This isn't true of all women, but generally we are taught, we have permission to feel and to express our feelings so we can go there a little bit faster, but they really express so much gratitude for that permission to be with their, we're always with our feelings, but to have a space to go deep into it and be witnessed in it and honored in it and not told real men, don't cry or settle down. You're a little too angry right now. This could get violent. And that was just a really healing experience for them. This idea of rage is so important because I do think we've been almost, and by we, I am just as a member of the culture, not me personally per se, but we have been asking people to sublimate their rage, which is a very, anger is a very natural emotion, and it is a very somatic experience as well. And the fact of it is that if you have these energies and you sublimate them, they don't disappear. So I mean, anger management I think is probably not a bad idea, but it's not like the underlying impetus for the anger necessarily will go away and nor will the feeling. Especially with what has happened lately, you got it. It just seems like we're just setting, we're setting up our society, our culture for just some sort of eruption at some point. Well, it's erupting. I also feel that's true, but I didn't want to go too far down that path. Yeah, it's erupting, which I think is a huge reflection of what happens when it is sublimated. It will erupt. It is erupting. And if we had access to that in healthy ways, we would feel our heartbreak and our outrage at what's happening and then go, oh, I can feel it. I can be with it. What am I going to do about it? Of course, I can't just stand by and let this happen. Our culture is really good at distracting us and numbing us, and that's why we can just drive by a homeless person. Nothing didn't see it or look at the news and go back to shopping for sandals. If we had access to our feelings, which I think is what the artist brings to the world in a lot of ways. We're like the smelling salts. Go wake up and feel something. We'd have a very different world. So I love what you're saying, and I agree wholeheartedly. You presented the metaphor of the stretching and the empowerment of giving birth. And so they're right there for people who have had that experience. And not all people will have that experience, but men in particular, at least people who are biologically born male, most likely, they're not going to have that experience. They never have that ability to have this tremendous feeling of having gone through this powerful, powerful energy and then coming out of the other side Except when they were born. That's true. Good point. Because every human comes from a woman's body. And 8,000 years ago, 5,000 years ago, women were worshiped for it. And it was understood, we are the source of life. What could be more worship worthy than that? And then you see the arc of a culture that not only was like, I don't know about women, very intentionally, denigrated, erased, dismissed women. And it's really beautiful to see how that's shifting. And it's not just women who get it, our men get it. Too many of them really get it. And I kind of go, yeah, what we're doing, it ain't working so well. We need each other. And any feminist is not going to build the world she wants. We need our men and we need to love our men and learn from each other. And the patriarchy, which is a word that's thrown, it's kind. It's terrible for all of us really. So this is my project of giving the tools and playing with ways to decondition ourselves and see how that spreads. Sometimes I think many people, it's like, oh, is this even making a difference? I feel like it's a forest fire and I've got a spray bottle, but if you've got 4 million people with a spray bottle, we are going to put out the fire. So this is my contribution to all the beautiful work that so many people and women are doing to shift our culture and our world. You've said a lot of really powerful things, and first of all, I want to thank you for acknowledging that by othering people, we're not really going to get very far. I mean, it's always felt really uncomfortable to me to say, well, I'm going to put men over here and I'm going to be over here as a woman, particularly since I gave birth to one male child and I have three stepsons, but I also have five brothers and a lovely father, and I have a lot of really wonderful men and a wonderful husband. So it never felt great to me that in order to take back our power as women, we ended up having to take things away from people who also deserve to live. We're all in this together. And it's interesting too, when you look at history of feminism, activism, organizing, there's waves of feminism, I don't know if, but in my mom's generation, she just turned 80. What she learned, her generation of women in the seventies was really like, well, a lot of public rage, which we still have. But it was very, when we were trying to kind of claw our way out of this, it's like we did develop these claws and it was sort of like, man up and we're equal and I'm going to take back my rights. And then the feminine kind of got lost in feminism, the feminine being soft and receiving and nurturing. And so it's really interesting to watch what many call this fourth wave where it's like we're all in this together. We recognize this binary map is not going to work, and we all need to have access to this outrageous, playful, soft, nurturing, non-linear way, including that in addition to all the beautiful masculine qualities. We don't want to lose those. We need logic, we need linear, we need strategic. It's just we're so imbalanced in that side. We could go on about medical industry forever. But I had a physical this week and she said, how are you? I said, can you be more specific? She said, how's your mental health? I said, because she knows that I live with depression and anxiety. So she gave me that form. What's that form called that you do with the numbers? The PHQ nine. The PHQ nine, So I'm filling it out as always, and she looks at the numbers and she goes, oh, those are some high numbers. Are you concerned about your mental health? And I said, honestly, I am concerned that anyone right now would say they have no mental distress. That's what concerns me about the world we're living in, that so many people could say, no concerns, no concerns, nothing keeps me up at night. Everything's fine. She didn't quite know what to do with that, but we ordered some blood work. That seems to be the response that often we offer people. I'm like, okay, let's do some blood work. Let's see if, and this is not a criticism of your provider at all. No, she's amazing. Western medicine, yes, let's do some blood work maybe that will help you sleep better at night. Could I'll take it. But it's so interesting and I get it. It's like we're going to separate the emotional spiritual part of your life from what's happening in your body when they're just so deeply connected. And to imagine that how many questions are 10 questions could assess my mental wellbeing to me is insane. How are you feeling in the last two weeks? Just to me, it's absurd. Yes. I think you and I absolutely could have at least 10 podcast interviews on issues within the current healthcare system. I'm here for sure. And I know that you also worked within healthcare. And a great passion for it. Some days I'm like, I really should have been a surgeon. I just think it's fascinating. Amazing. Look, the bodies are amazing. So maybe we'll do a part two. Yes, we'll do part two. Right. One thing I wanted to ask you about, because this hasn't been part of the coaching that you've described or the rockstar camp for women, but you also are a writer. And you also I know have done some consulting work with Maryanne Williamson and there was another? Mama Gina is sort of her public name, Regina Thomas, hour of the School of Womanly And those are big names. So what I really am finding fascinating is that you're able to embody all of the spiritual and emotional and artistic, and you're also like, and this is a business. And I'm going to write books and I'm going to show people, this is a business, coaching is a business. I can work with Mama Gina and I can work with Marian Williamson, and we can create things that are a value that other people will want to invest in. And for some people, it doesn't have to be, for me, that's my path of living in a capitalist world. I need to generate money to pay for the things. I don't have other revenue streams coming in, right? It's on me. So that's the path that's worked well. And until we don't have a capitalist society, dunno how we'll ever get there, but I really want to support other women in getting in relationship with their money because successful business is a business that made a profit. And this is true of men too, but let's just say for so many women, understanding money being, I was going to say empowered, but it's even just baseline understanding of revenue generation. It's just such foreign territory for so many women. And it's not that if a woman just wants to be rich, to be rich, great. I don't really care what her desire is. But the really cool outcome of being in right relationship with your money is that you can do more of the thing you're good at in the world more than your message will have more impact and spread to more people. Because if I have the revenue to fuel my mission, to pay for the computer, to pay for the thing, to pay for my car that got me here, then I can bring more of what I have to bring ring. And that's really my passion. And I don't know why I have this odd combination of artist and strategist. Most of what I did with them was curriculum design, like sitting at my desk, just going module one, here's the worksheet. That's just part of how my brain works. I can actually relate to this because I do also a lot of leadership development, curriculum design, and I really like it. It's so fun, Right? It's really fun. Yes. But you're right that when you talk about being someone who likes to perform and someone who's artistic and someone who's spiritual, most people are like, oh, but those don't match up, but why couldn't they? Right? Well, you're going to get me started. There used to be a restaurant, I can't even think of the name of it, and it's probably better that I don't, they had an item on their menu called The Starving Artist. And when I was a young girl, I am an artist. So I grew up in Cape Elizabeth, Maine in a school system that had arts but didn't really center the arts. Very like sports centered, all white students, all white faculty. And I just wanted to do art. I just want to make art. What do you want to be when you grow up? I just wanted make art. And my stepdad said, that's your choice. If you want to be a starving artist, and everybody knows this term and artists, we even sometimes wear it as a badge of pride. I'm so broke, look at me. I'm so broke, I'm so starving. And I want to shift that narrative with every fiber of my being. Let's be abundant artists. Let's be resourced artists. I get, believe me, I get a good struggle can lead to some great art. But it's just so interesting that that narrative has survived for so long. Some of us get to be successful, some of us are starving. So I really love to teach artists, healers, coaches, spiritual teachers. You get to make money for your gift going to, what does Michael Beckwith said to be the light. You got to be able to turn the lights on. Something like that. Let's learn how to redirect resources to the people that have such important stuff to bring to the world. No more starving artists. Because this is the thing that often seems to come up, which is we're going to support artists by going to an opening. Fantastic. Thank you for coming. Also, please leave with some art. Please leave with some art. And also please, there's a couple things in the music industry that I find really wild most, I played music full time for maybe 10 years in a arc of loading, in setting up, soundcheck, performing, breaking down, getting home. That's about an eight or nine hour arc for a woman who gets her hair makeup done. You make negative $10 an hour, but for people to balk at a $5 cover charge, right? Five bucks, 10 bucks. I'm bringing live music into your life. You bought a Starbucks coffee this morning, that was 8 95, but you want to get on the guest list and get in for free and then have an $80 bar tab, but you don't want to pay $5 to see five musicians play their souls out for three hours. It's just very bizarre. Whereas people will spend quite a bit of money to watch professional sports. And I have no problem with that. I mean, I think sports are great. I spend $50 watching professional sports. I mean, it's completely fine. And also you're watching people who have gotten very good at what they do. So why can't that be true in the artistic field As well? And that's the other piece of my work and your work, it's like whose voices do we want to amplify? And it's the voices in the margins that have the most to teach us. So those are the folks that I want to women, people of color, queer people,