Emily Merrell  00:00

Hey, my name is Emily Merrell. I’m a taco loving people connector, and I’m obsessed with playing the name game and all things networking. I’m the founder of second degree society, a female focused networking community, as well as a business coach for female business owners, passionate about bringing their business to the next level with the help of events, community and connections. I crave deep conversations and am continuously curious to see what makes people tick, and I’m invested in uncovering their stories with some life lessons along the way. This podcast is aimed to inspire and educate as you tackle your busy day. So join the conversation and tune in for the second degree podcast. I’m your host, Emily, and today I’m thrilled to have a very special guest on today’s podcast. Her name is Carrie V and when I was talking to Carrie about how to introduce herself, she said the most beautiful, beautiful way. She didn’t say a world renowned, incredible speaker, extraordinary blogger, beyond amazing content creator. She said, I want to be introduced as your your best friend, and I love that and your hype person. So Carrie V Welcome to the show, and I’m just so excited, because I am someone that dives straight into best friend relationships as well. So I am so grateful to have you here today. Thank

 

Carrie Verrocchio  01:29

you, Emily. It’s an honor to be here. I’m excited to talk to you. I feel like, I feel like, over the past week, I went from not knowing Emily to completely knowing and loving Emily. So thank you. Oh, well,

 

Emily Merrell  01:41

the feeling is mutual, and it’s so funny y’all just context of like, how do these podcast episodes come to life and how do these connections happen? And this connection in particular happened through a mutual friend of ours who were, I love her intros because they’re very vague and they’re like, you just should meet, but she’s one of those people that can provide those intros, and you trust them, don’t you think,

 

Carrie Verrocchio  02:08

I Oh, I totally agree, totally

 

Emily Merrell  02:10

So shout out to Lisa. And we got on a we got on a call, and loved each other. And fun fact, I was on her podcast last week, and it came out today, and then she sends me a message that her OBM is in a mastermind that I’m in as well. So we were destined to be talking weekly, what

 

Carrie Verrocchio  02:32

a small world, right? And she met you in person in Las Vegas, correct? Yes. And then I out emailed her our episode to get up on all of the sites, and she was like, Oh my gosh, what an incredibly small world.

 

Emily Merrell  02:46

She messaged me. She’s like, is there more than one second degree out there, I guess. And then saw my face, and was like, JK, that’s Emily. So I love, I love how it comes together well. So to kick things off, Carrie V, you also have a name that’s you probably first in the last name all the time. Do you do you like when people do that? Or do you prefer? Oh,

 

Carrie Verrocchio  03:10

1. So Carrie V is my stage name. My last name is veracio. And I got asked multiple, multiple times, how do you say that? How do you say that? And they would ask immediately before going on a stage, to introduce me and then completely be totally Yes, it was, and I don’t really mind it being butchered. I’m used to it, but it would embarrass them. They would come back and feel so bad. And so I worked with my business coach, and she said, Well, look, there’s Gary Vee. Why don’t you just be Carrie v? And it, we just started it, and it stuck. And so Carrie V is my stage name.

 

Emily Merrell  03:47

I love that, and I think it’s so cool to have a stage name too. So then you can separate your personal from your your work, and have a whole new identity if you want to, as Carrie long name that I won’t pronounce.

 

Carrie Verrocchio  04:04

I mean, I love the name barackio, yeah, and I think it’s very I think it’s just a strong, amazing Italian name, but it causes a lot of confusion.

 

Emily Merrell  04:15

I’m with you that I love, that you acknowledge the shame that the other people felt, and I’ve definitely on podcasts or moderating panels. All you’re thinking about is, don’t mess up this name, don’t mess up this name, and then you mess up the name, and you’re like, oh gosh, here I am. So okay, Carrie V How long has the Carrie V brand existed?

 

Carrie Verrocchio  04:38

The Carrie V brand has been around since 2019 is when I started seeing that, yeah, and it’s just kind of grown with me. It felt so odd at first, but now it just is a it has just grown into a part of me

 

Emily Merrell  04:55

and your identity. And I love that your your tagline, or like the the mantra. In which you live is Life is short, choose wisely. And that was 2019 that you you came up with that tagline,

 

Carrie Verrocchio  05:09

the Life is short, choose wisely is going back to 2010 Wow, yeah and yeah. What

 

Emily Merrell  05:16

prompted that?

 

Carrie Verrocchio  05:18

My brother it. All goes in with my signature story. My brother and I were very, very close. My oldest brother and we were we even looked alike when, when he passed away, and people came through the line at his funeral, everybody thought I was his twin sister. We just, even though he was four years older, we just were like I was his little mini me, and he was diagnosed with a incurable cancer, just way too advanced to do much of anything with it, and he passed away when he was 48 and a week before he died, he challenged me to Help others choose life while they still had life to choose. And I made him this promise that I would use my life to spread this message. And he told me, you have locked yourself in this prison called Corporate America. The only person who has the key is you, and you refuse to use it. You need to use your gifts. And he and I, and I promised him that I would do it, and I I went along in life after the funeral, just, you just walking through grief at that point, and I had no idea how I was going to fulfill this promise. I was, you know, just trying to help my mom and dad through this, my other brother, we were trying to stick together as a family and and figure out how we were going to call ourselves a family unit when one integral piece was gone from this from this world, and probably about four weeks after his funeral, I had this dream, and in this dream, I walked into a Restaurant, and sitting with his back to me, was a gentleman, and I knew it was my brother. I could hear his voice. I could hear his laugh. I saw the way the crowd was responding to him, and I just kept calling his name, and he was ignoring me. And I finally went and I stood in front of him, and I was like, why would you talk to me? I just invite you over for dinner, dude. I miss you. I don’t know why you won’t talk to me. And in my dream, he looked up at me and he said, I can’t talk to you because I died. Don’t you? Remember I died. I’m only here to give you a message. Life is short. Little sister, choose wisely, and I know holy chills, yeah, uh, still gives me chills to tell that story, and it was so it was so real. It was so incredibly real. I sat up in bed with such a force that it woke my husband up, and I said, I need to quit my job. And what were you doing? I was working corporate at the time as a as a business manager, and I just quit. I just quit. I mean, I stayed on as a consultant for about a year and a half to to transition and get somebody new in there, but I started to work on becoming a speaker and a better speaker. I was used to being on stages singing, but I worked on my speaking skills, and I and I worked on my coaching skills, and I and I worked on authoring skills and content skills. And when I look back that how all the pieces have fit together amazes me. The people that I met, coaches that I met Meredith, are my online business manager now, just how all those pieces fit together has been amazing. And I just really feel that my brother had his hands in there, caressing it along the way.

 

Emily Merrell  08:56

And was your brother an entrepreneur himself before he passed

 

Carrie Verrocchio  09:01

He was not though he worked. He was an electrical engineer and was brilliant. I still have a lot of schematics he drew when he was 10 and 11 years old. I I can’t read them. I have no idea what they say, but he was, he was brilliant, and he worked with companies as an employee, but had total autonomy over his time and flew all over the country. He was integral in helping get companies and their computers ready for the change over to 2020. My goodness, year, 2000 and same difference in our brain. And I remember, I remember asking and Bill, should I be scared? I I’m singing a concert New Year’s Eve into into the year 2000 should I be afraid that we’re not even going to get home? And he said, I have spent the last decade getting companies ready. Nothing’s going to happen. Nothing is going to happen. It’s going to be fine. Right? And it just he was, he was a brilliant person. So no, he wasn’t an entrepreneur, but he worked like an entrepreneur, and he thought like one.

 

Emily Merrell  10:08

And so it sounds like you, he saw this potential in you, that you had these multiple, from what I’m hearing, these entrepreneurial, spirited parts of you. You were a business manager, and then you were a singer, and so tell tell us about your singing career and how that integrated with your day job of business manager. Or were you a singing business manager? Because that’s been fun, too.

 

Carrie Verrocchio  10:33

I think I’m a singing everything, no matter what I do. I I traveled the country and worked with World Vision singing. I would do concerts, and then I would, I would talk about World Vision in my concerts, to find sponsors for children around the world. And I did that for about a decade, maybe a little bit more than that, when my kids were little. And we did that full time. It was amazing. It was it’s an amazing part of my life. And on the stage, I would always speak, and then I had a lot of feedback that as that everyone loved the music part, but then they then I was being asked to do day long events, and I would provide the music and the speaking for them, and it just kind of morphed together. And I then went through a change in my life, where I was I was going through a divorce with my first husband, and when that happened, that part of my life kind of slipped away. It was the grief of the divorce, it was the confusion of the divorce. It was okay, well, how do I continue on this path? When he was the one who ran the sound system, it just felt like everything was slipping away. And so that’s when I really dove into corporate America, my training, my, my, all of my training was in corporate and so I went back to corporate America, and that’s where my brother said, you, you locked yourself in this prison. You you put yourself in this space where you don’t have to take risks anymore and you don’t have to use you don’t really have to be responsible for those gifts that God gave you, because you’re just doing something else. You were just like, yeah, yeah, your wings and fly. So that’s that’s

 

Emily Merrell  12:22

incredible. I I’m always so so in awe of performers, and I think performers, we have so much to learn from performers, since you have a training that most people do not have, or have to Band Aid together through their lives in some capacity. So it really equips you. I feel like your training of being on stages and holding space and peacocking your body language, to show up, to fill a room, translates really beautifully into coaching. So when he gave you this, this message, life is short, choose wisely. Did you know what to choose?

 

Carrie Verrocchio  13:03

No, I had no idea what to choose, what to choose, or what to choose in the future. So I just began to take steps and I started to look back at the training that I already had. So I had music training from the time I was a little girl, and I had training on auditioning and training on talking to people. I had training on how to create stage presence without, you know, when you look, when you watch a movie, a movie video, a music video, those cameras are moving all over the place. So literally, the performer could stand in one spot, but those cameras are creating all these angles for you as the viewer. When you’re on stage performing, you have to create those angles for your audience. And so it’s different places where you move on the stage for specific words, like song by song by song, I worked with coaches on where to be on the stage at that point and when do I go to the next spot? And hours and hours of practice to get that right. And so when I, when I decided that I was going to fulfill this promise to my brother, I started to look back to that training, and thought, okay, I can do the same training with speaking. I can at least start getting that and then I and then I had an opportunity to jump into network marketing, which gave me more of an introduction to personal development and working with a team. And then I realized how much I loved working with teams to get them communicating with each other. And I thought, Oh, I could do some training on that. And all of those pieces just started to fit together so that the choices I was making were based on on steps I had been taking and looking ahead at what choice would further that desire to to dig deeper into that. And I’d always had people since. School coming to me for some kind of advice or coaching or or where do we go from here? And so I so I started to do training on coaching certifications too. I didn’t really know which piece was going to work out the best, or if I was going to be in all of them, or just one of them. I just started taking steps and trying things, and

 

Emily Merrell  15:21

at what point? So it sounds like you were, you were just following the little breadcrumbs that were laid out, and at times, the breadcrumbs went in different directions. How did you layer I’m going to use the breadcrumbs. We’re really leaning into this. How did you layer it into a sandwich, so that it actually worked for your life? And what are the elements that defined who your business is today? Yeah,

 

Carrie Verrocchio  15:42

so the way I layered it was by listening to the feedback that was coming to me. And I when I started work, working with my current business coach, she I was still in network marketing. I with her for a long time, and she asked me flat out, do you like network marketing? And I started saying, Oh, the products are amazing, and they love the workouts. And she’s like, No, no, do you like network marketing? And I said, it feels a little bit too corporate for me, like I want to out of corporate. And so she was the one who who encouraged me to offer this coaching, and when I did it, people jumped in, like, it blew my mind. How many people were like, Oh my gosh, we’re so glad you’re doing this. And so that became an integral piece of the sandwich, and it was what people wanted. They were asking me for it. Well, can you put together a group coaching program? Would you put together an online course that goes with that program? So I just started putting these pieces together. And I loved speaking. I knew I always loved to be on stage, so I so I wanted that to be a major piece. So I guess that’s one of the bread pieces as a sandwich, and and training is the other piece, and then sandwiched into that are my is the coaching piece and the podcast piece and the book piece. But the the real pillars are speaking, speaking and training.

 

Emily Merrell  17:13

And so what is, what is the difference between a training and a speaking engagement with you? And how can people who are listening and who are looking at the poo poo platter of options of life available to them figure out like, this is the great this is a great place for me to take a next step and explore further.

 

Carrie Verrocchio  17:35

Oh, that’s such a good question. So I’ll go to that, that second part first, when you’re looking at the poo poo platter.

 

Emily Merrell  17:41

I don’t know why I’m food motivated today, but yeah, I love it,

 

Carrie Verrocchio  17:45

though. You just took me back to Hawaii. Platter coming out when you are when you’re looking at all these options. And we all have all these amazing options, but if you have taken the time to think about why, why you want to do what you want to do, or why you want to do something different, or why you want a change, what, whatever that is that is motivating you, if you look at that, and then you look at your life goals, what are the things that You really want? I wanted more time with my family, less time actually sitting at a desk. Those are the things I really wanted. And I wanted to travel. I wanted to go places with the people I love, and I wanted to be able to visit people. And I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if I could get paid to go and travel? And that really made me focus on the speaking training piece, because that lets me do all of those things. And so when you’re looking at, when you’re looking at your platter of options, look at at the things that you’ve mapped out, take time. Let me put it this way, take time to look at the things you truly want, and then see what on that platter helps fit every piece of what it is you want, because some of them will fit one or maybe two, but you’ll have very few of them that fit everything. And then you go all in on those pieces that will get you where you truly want to be, because not everybody wants the same thing.

 

Emily Merrell  19:21

Yeah, I completely agree with that, and I love that you were you. You acknowledged what you wanted or like what you wanted and what you wanted, to define your life, to look like a time with your family, time to travel. And side note, y’all, last time I talked to her, she was just coming back from Arizona visiting a friend, slash speaking. So mission accomplished there. And I work with a lot of coaches who also want to get in front of audiences, and they have these visions of speaking, and I always like to tell them that, like, it doesn’t have to be a big stage for you to make an impact, right? Like, you can have a podcast, or you. Can use your Instagram, or you can speak to communities. But what were the steps that you took to get into this place, to get on a bigger stage? And any advice for people who are starting out?

 

Carrie Verrocchio  20:15

Yeah, lots, lots of advice, like,

 

Emily Merrell  20:19

read my book on it,

 

Carrie Verrocchio  20:22

lots of missteps that I took, I would, I would highly encourage reaching out to groups, whether they’re in your area, or places that you can speak to virtually. But things like Rotary Clubs are always looking for speakers. There are, if you Google women’s clubs or networking clubs in and name your where you live, so many things will come up. You have no idea of what is going on around you because you’re not a part of it. And we see what we see what we’re used to seeing. So we’re going to train our brain to see that there are other networking events that you can tap into and offer to come as a speaker, you’re probably not going to get paid, or if you do, you get like, a $25 gift card to the restaurant where the event is held. But hey, it’s amazing. Some of those have been we have found little restaurants when I started off right and reach out to people when you when go to vendor events and check out the network marketers are there because they’re all leading teams, and they are always looking for people to come and speak to their teams. You never know. I learned this from you last week when we talked about this. I’ve shared this story with so many people. You don’t know who’s going to be in your audience. Yeah, you have no idea. Create your own events. I did that in the beginning too. Sometimes there were 10 or 15 people that showed up, but they still follow me. They are still in contact with me. They still do business with me because I poured into them and served them as if they were a group of 1000s. You can always show up and give your very best. If there’s one other person in the room, give them your best. And you can find these places to speak very, very easily, actually.

 

Emily Merrell  22:09

And I love those recommendations where a lot of us and even guys, this should be a two part episode, where you should listen to the episode I recorded with Carrie V last week, and then listen to this one. You can see the references back and forth, but I think that to your point, it’s so, so easy for us to think that we need to go fishing in the in the ocean when we’ve got a fully stocked pond in our backyard. Yes,

 

Carrie Verrocchio  22:35

yes, and don’t overlook the importance of that fully stocked pond in your backyard. We we see people on on big stages, and we think, Oh, that’s what I want. And maybe, maybe you really do want that. But they didn’t start off in those stages, either, ask any of them. They all started off using the the little pond, even, like maybe the fish bowl in someone’s house. He started off small. John Maxwell talks about a young man who came to him after if you don’t know who John Maxwell is, he is the world’s leading leadership and communication expert and incredible speaker, and has his he has a group of coaches, speakers, trainers, that he certifies, and I actually stepped into that finally, in 2021 which was one of the best decisions I made for my business. But he tells this story of this gentleman who came to him after one of his presentations, and he said, Man, that’s what I want to do. I want to do what you did. I want to do what you do. And John Maxwell looked at him and said, I know you want to do what I did, but are you willing to do it or do what I do? But are you willing to do what I did? He said, That’s where most people, that’s where most people give up because they don’t want to do the hard work. They don’t want to to go and speak, to do a presentation to a group where two people show up. I mean, that’s where he started, and he says, and I was bad. I was so bad when I began, but I kept at it, and I grew I mean, I think He’s authored close to 90 books now. It’s, it’s insane. He’s, I think he’s 7875 or 7678 somewhere in there, now and and I’ve learned so much from him. If you want to be a speaker, start speaking. That is the best advice. Just start speaking. Go to those clubs and speak. Offer your services. There are you call a business and offer them a free training at lunch where you can speak to their group on communication, leadership, sales, whatever it is that they need and and and start growing your skills. You’re not going to grow your speaking skills if you don’t speak. Oh

 

Emily Merrell  24:45

Amen. Mic drop all the things on that one. And, and I, I so resonate with what you said that what would you do? What I did and, and I see that hesitancy with so many people that. Yeah, they this is a PSA for anyone that’s listening, and they’re in corporate right now, and they’re like, I want to be an entrepreneur so I can have all the flexibility and eat bonbons and take midday naps. And yes, that’s doable, but like, also being a corporate employee comes with some cushy benefits that entrepreneurship you have to, you have to fight for you have to, you have to Band Aid together and put together and earn your stripes in a different way. Yes, and I, I think there’s people like you and me, like we can’t go back to corporate, or we would be, we would be a shell of ourselves. Yes, but that being said, like they’re to your point, knocking on doors, speaking to two people saying yes to opportunities unpaid, probably traveling to opportunities unpaid. So you could use it as a case study. So what happened next? At what point did you take this free? I like to call them like deposits that you were putting into these people’s bank accounts, and you were able to say, Yes, I will speak on x, y and z, and this is how much I’m charging you.

 

Carrie Verrocchio  26:10

Yes, that was a that was a hard transition. It is. It was a very hard Well, for me, it was because I am a personality type that will give away everything, right? If you tell me that you like the sweater I have on, I’m like, Oh, here you can have it today. My

 

Emily Merrell  26:30

sister’s like, I like your Are those my sunglasses? I was like, no, but do you want them? Like, you

 

Carrie Verrocchio  26:36

see, I knew we were kindred. He’s like, No, but that does transfer over into business and, and I needed to learn that it was okay for me to say, this is what I charge and, and I started doing business training too. I mentioned that I joined the Maxwell leadership team that helped me more than anything, because the training, the training that I received in speaking in training and coaching in sales, was invaluable for how to put that proposal together and how to look professional in asking for that remuner remuneration for what I do and what I will provide to them. So that was a it was a transition, for sure, and it’s not something that I recommend you just pulling out of a hat somewhere. Get some really great training, even YouTube it, but find some training on how to put together a great proposal that you are handing in businesses hire keynote speakers. Nonprofits hire keynote speakers. They hire breakout session leaders, and if you put down that, you charge $1,000 for a keynote then they assume that they’re going to get $1,000 speaker. And that’s not what they’re looking for most of the time they they will automatically assume that if you don’t ask for that much, if you don’t ask for the what the going rate is, then you’re not really that good, and you’re just trying. And then they they just assume you’re not that good and and your mindset is probably, I’m going to use my price really low to get my foot in the door. And they’re happy that they can get the same value, the same great speaker for less money. And that’s not the way they do it at all.

 

Emily Merrell  28:26

No, it’s so true. It’s like the the psychology of pricing is fascinating. It is. It is fascinating. Yeah, you know, sell something for $29 no one wants to touch it. Sell the same thing for $2,500 it sells like hotcakes. Yeah. I mean, so you know, looking at your site, I love I love that. I see a sizzle reel. I see a lot of pictures of you speaking. Do you have any best practices for people who are like, Okay? Carrie V Emily, I’m going to do this. I’m going to set myself up as a speaker. What do I do now?

 

Carrie Verrocchio  29:03

Best practices. So the gosh, the one I just said, is speak and have someone come and video you, and then put those videos out there everywhere. When someone is looking for a speaker, they’re going to your social media channels and they are seeing how much you’re speaking. Are you putting videos out? Do you have a YouTube channel? Do you are you speaking on Instagram? Do you have people who are saying, Hey, she spoke at my event, and this is the way it went. Do you have anything? Do you have a one page, a speaker? One page which is so easy to put together, but do you have something to give them to say? This is what I speak on this is these. These are my signature talks. This is who I am. So all of those things really work together. I would say you don’t need to worry about building your website first. You need to worry about not even worry. You need to work on building you. First, you don’t need all the fancy websites and the the team behind you, all of that comes later. And I think we, often, people that I have worked with, always want to put the cart before the horse. 1,000% always, you don’t need all those fancy things. Those come one at a time, and don’t believe the people that are telling you, well, if you don’t have a website, you can’t build a business. That’s not true. I know speakers who are killing it out there, and they have yet to build a website. You I think, yeah,

 

Emily Merrell  30:33

such a point. But I was gonna say that’s such a good point, too. It’s just, it’s reputation, it’s to your point, YouTube, it’s it’s being found, which then begs the question, when, what are people typically searching for? So when you think about building your SEO, what are the what are the phrases or keywords that we should be incorporating in our photos or videos? Yeah, so it’s

 

Carrie Verrocchio  30:59

speaker, it’s keynote speaker, it’s breakout speaker, it’s corporate trainer, if that’s what you want to do. Those are the things that people are searching even keynote speaker in New York or keynote speaker in Colorado. Some companies want local speakers. Some companies literally want to in California, want a speaker from New York so they can say, we flew them all the way from New York or vice versa. It, it does do that. So you want to use that, that keynote speaker is important, that’s the main one. You want people searching, and you want your name to come up. Or keynote speaker on leadership, keynote speaker on motivation. Um, even motivational speaker, or leadership, speaker, communication, speaker, but you want that word speaker in there for sure.

 

Emily Merrell  31:45

I love that those are such incredible tips. And then my last question regarding speaking is, how often do you sing during your presentations?

 

Carrie Verrocchio  31:56

Almost always, really, almost always one line I will throw some kind of song in there, if it’s when I when I share the story about my brother. We, when we were kids, we used to, we used to put pillows into my dad’s oversized shirts, and we would jump up and down on on my mom and dad’s couch. You won’t know the song, bad, bad. Leroy Brown, but when I was a kid, it was a big song. And when I’m speaking and I and I start singing that song, everybody just starts singing along. Because if you were, if you were in my generation, or before, a little bit after, everybody knew the song about bad, bad Leroy Brown. And that’s, that’s one of my favorite memories of my brother. So I’ll throw that song in there, or there’s just always a song that comes up when I’m speaking. It’s like, oh, it’s kind of like the song, and I’ll just start singing it.

 

Emily Merrell  32:46

I love, I love that you’re able to integrate that part of yourself and not diminish it, continue to marry it into what makes sense for this world that you’re living now, this this authority that you’re presenting to the world, and you get to do it with a tune in your in your heart, I guess, as corny as that sounds in there. Yeah, that’s wonderful. Well, Carrie V, how can people find out more about you? Working with one of your I love your leadership trainings, going to one of your events, listening to your podcast. All Where does Carrie V hang out?

 

Carrie Verrocchio  33:22

Carrie V hangs out. My website has everything which is just Carrie v.com there’s two E’s after the V’s, so C, A, R, R, i, e, v, e.com, everything is on there. I also hang out on Instagram, Youtube and sometimes Facebook, but mainly on YouTube. Are you on LinkedIn? I am on LinkedIn. Yes, just really started using that. But yes, that has been a place that I have been able to connect with quite a few people.

 

Emily Merrell  33:53

It’s a fun tool. I just got an email that my premium membership expired. Was like, wait, no, it’s over that again. Turn,

 

Carrie Verrocchio  34:04

I know, I know, but it’s worth it. It’s so worth it. It really is. I

 

Emily Merrell  34:08

love, I love a good stalking of LinkedIn people. It’s, it’s fantastic. Um, well, Carrie, before we end, I’ve got some six fast questions for you so you don’t have to even think. You just answer what comes to your brain first and foremost. So the first one is, tell us an unknown fun fact about Carrie V and you’ve sent you shared so many I know, so it took away a lot of them.

 

Carrie Verrocchio  34:30

Oh, okay. Fun fact about me is that I love, love, love working on jigsaw puzzles. Oh, yeah, yeah. They

 

Emily Merrell  34:38

have like competitions for them, like people go places for it. No,

 

Carrie Verrocchio  34:42

that’s, I don’t think I’m anywhere near competition level. I just love to do them. And some of them I keep my husband just glued. One that I did was 1000 piece of this beautiful library with all these books. And I was like, I cannot take this apart. I can’t. Do it. I’m such a book fanatic, I

 

Emily Merrell  35:01

still have one from January downstairs, and I’m like, I need to put it away. Like, this is, this is problematic. It’s just sitting on a table still. But once you finish it, it’s so strong,

 

Carrie Verrocchio  35:13

and then it feels good to even, like, take the thing apart. Yeah, I have a circle of family, and we just, we initial the box, and we keep passing these puzzles.

 

Emily Merrell  35:23

Yeah, that’s a really good that’s a great, great practice, because, yeah, I never really know what to do at the end of a puzzle, except revisit maybe the next year. But yeah, I love that idea initially and passing,

 

Carrie Verrocchio  35:37

I don’t want to do this puzzle twice. So, yeah, it’s I’m

 

Emily Merrell  35:41

looking around, so for whatever reason. Oh, I know every Halloween I’ll dress up as Frida Kahlo. Essentially, I love that. So then what happens is I get gifted a lot of Frida Kahlo paraphernalia, literally, like Frida Kahlo. Frida Kahlo is gifted right there. Oh, my word. And puzzles, I get gifted more Frida Kahlo puzzles than I know what to do with. And

 

36:09

I’m like, Okay, I love this,

 

Emily Merrell  36:11

but enough’s enough. I’ve been gifted the same puzzle. Thoughtful. But my husband’s like, I don’t, I don’t want to put Frida together again. Um, so who would be a dream person you’d want to be connected

 

Carrie Verrocchio  36:28

with? Boy, the dream person to be connected with, really, would be the person who is looking for that keynote speaker, or they’re next to that business or women’s events. Love, love, love doing women’s events. I love that

 

Emily Merrell  36:43

very specific, um, What show are you currently watching the resident?

 

Carrie Verrocchio  36:49

And I don’t even know how old that show is. I have no idea, but I found it on Netflix, and I loved Grey’s Anatomy. So I thought, well, it’s another medical show. We’ll try it. And I am so, I am so, like, ridiculous, embarrassingly, invested in that show.

 

Emily Merrell  37:05

And now you’re a doctor, you know that’s what right like, but you feel like when in those real life scenarios, you’re like, I know what to do. He’s having a fill in the blank

 

Carrie Verrocchio  37:14

yes and and I transcribed medical records for quite a while. While I was building my business because I was still at home working as an entrepreneur. So I know all these medical terms. And I’m like, I know what that I know that term. I have no idea what it means, but I have typed it 1000s of times extra finger. That’s what it means. I love it. Oh, that’s so cool. I’ll

 

Emily Merrell  37:34

have to check it out. Um, what book are you reading? Or do you recommend reading?

 

Carrie Verrocchio  37:39

Um, so I actually am reading a great book now I’m leading a mastermind too. I like I grabbed it when you said that it’s called Chasing failure, by Ryan leak, and it is so it’s so good, the whole concept of we’re taught to chase success, and flips this whole thing, thing about and turns it into chasing the failures, because those are what lead to the success. Chase those failures with everything you have in you. I love that. It’s a great book, yeah, add

 

Emily Merrell  38:06

that one to the list. What is your favorite or most used emoji?

 

Carrie Verrocchio  38:14

I’m you know, it’s the one where you’re covering your face and shaking your head, yeah, that’s my favorite one.

 

Emily Merrell  38:19

Use it all the time. Fan Favorite over here too, that in the multi guy they Yeah. And then my final question for you today is, what permission Do you want to give our listeners today?

 

Carrie Verrocchio  38:30

Permission to dream small. Ooh, Dream small. I’m not going to take complete credit for that. I heard this in a I wish I could remember her name, and I can’t right now, but I, but I want to give credit where credit is due. So I borrowed this from another Speaker, permission to dream small, because we often look at these big dreams we have on the distance, and it stops us, because we have no idea how we’re going to leap 20,000 steps to that big dream. So the permission is to focus on just the next step and dream small enough to go the next step and then,

 

Emily Merrell  39:08

and it’s like, before you know it, you’ve eaten the elephant.

 

Carrie Verrocchio  39:11

Yes, exactly, exactly. I

 

Emily Merrell  39:13

love that. That’s a great, great, great advice. Well, Carrie. Carrie V Thank you so much for sharing your story and your inspiring journey from singing to corporate living to seizing these big stages and leading trainings and speaking engagements and coaching. Just so grateful that you’re in our sphere and in our world. Thank

 

Carrie Verrocchio  39:35

you so much. This has been a joy. Thank you and

 

Emily Merrell  39:39

listeners, make sure to follow Carrie B on all of her platforms, and we’ll see you the next time on the second degree. Have a great day, everyone.