How did you hear about Juanell? How did you make the decision to work with her as apposed to with someone else?

 

I had decided to make the leap of faith and start my own full time consulting firm, Allston Communications, Inc., on July 1 2001, specializing in public relations management and professional speaking. Following my keynote address in October for the Alabama Women's Council of Realtors State Leadership Conference, my wife Elaine said to me, "Your speech on servant leadership was good, but you didn't have enough humor in it. People need humor, particularly after September 11th. Plus, it just needs to have stronger focus." So I made it a matter of prayer and in two weeks, I received in Saturday's mail a letter from someone in Dallas, Texas. It looked like a piece of unsolicited junk mail, but to me there is something in every piece of junk mail if you look at it.

So that hit me as being not coincidental. As I read the letter I found that this person was a business coach to the professional speaking industry and that caught my attention also. In reading the letter, she hit some bullet points that struck close to me. The biggest of which was her whole professional tone was also deeply spiritual. Bull's eye! It said all of the right things that needed to hit for Tim Allston.

So I then took the time to fill out the survey form and fax it into her. Roughly about two days later she called with her 45 minutes no-strings-attached marketing approach. There were several things that she said in the conversation that really resonated with me. Asking me questions about myself in terms of where I was in my professional speaking career. Also telling me what she was able to do for her clients. The key phrase that hit me was "she helps them find their DNA". Being the wordsmith that I am - one who makes his living in the words and has a degree in English - that struck me.

The other thing that really clenched it for me was she, very delicately asked me, "Are you an African American?" I said "Yes". She said "I thought so. There is something un-canny about African American male speakers." She says that they are the hottest commodity in the professional speaking market. The reason that it hit so close to home to me was because I am an African American male professional speaker. But also several months earlier I had the privilege of meeting a man, Bryan Townsend, who had just been inducted into the NSA Hall of Fame in 2001, a white man. I was chatting with him, because my younger sister was his attending nurse. He said to me, "Tim, when you jump out here they will want you more than they want me, because I don't mean to be insensitive, but as an African American male you will be able to bring them more than I could." This was an unsolicited testimony from him and a year earlier a mentor of mine, Michael Aun, who had just been inducted into the NSA Hall of Fame in 2000 said much the same thing to me. Now here are three white professional speakers saying this to me without any degree of connection or swapping notes. [Juanell] told me that she planned to do some research on this because there is a uniqueness that [she] couldn't put my hands on. I said, "I think it is based upon our age, for most of us in the black community from previous generations come out of the black church experience. If you take that experience and mix it with professionalism you have an unbeatable combination. You have information and inspiration."

Well, to make a long story short, she even offered to give me the names of her clients who I immediately e-mailed. Out of 21 [previous clients], six e-mailed me back immediately, roundly endorsing her and her program. Now it was simply coming up with the money. Fortunately I had a client at the time; a high paying client and when we ended our contract in January, its money was sufficient for me to be able to go to her. The clincher [for me] was I had a call from an old colleague of mine, one of my best friends, who I hadn't talked to in seven years. In our conversation he found out what I was doing and he mentioned the fact that a guy who looked up to him growing up back in Seattle was Keith Harrell, one of Juanell's star clients and also a black male. That was beyond coincidence. He then told me that [Keith] introduced him to Juanell at a recent NSA meeting. "If you follow what she has outlined, you will be successful," he counseled.

So I had all of these confirmations coming together at one time. That is the long answer to how I first became acquainted, than later met and contracted with Juanell.

If I can stand as a testimony, what she does works. I think the initial success that she had began with her drafting and writing the book The Zig Ziglar Difference. I think that in terms of global recognition, visibility, high profiling and credibility certainly [comes from] having done that book.

I think the other thing that gives her credibility is the bi weekly newsletter she now does. It allows all of us out here who need that fix to get it on a bi weekly basis. Certainly the other piece that cannot be denied is the personal testimonies such as mine . . . what she has done for us professionally, in terms of our career tracking and professional speakers.

 
I can see all of this now. I have been here in the office for about seven years and since I have been interviewing I have a completely different outlook on what Juanell does.

It was meeting with her for those two days in January 2002, which was my clear professional turning point. She has you fill out the forms about the Turning Points in your life. Well, meeting her was a major turning point in my life, too. What it did was it pulled together a group of seemingly unrelated incidences, experiences and exposures in my life. For one thing, I had been on the verge of what meeting with her sent me over the edge in doing.

She and I had assessed me as being a Level Two.

Is that going along with the seven fee levels?

Yes, the bottom line, I have been speaking in public since I was three years old. In fact my first public speech was on television at age three on a children's TV. show in 1958. What happened with Juanell simply moved it to another level. Prior to meeting Juanell I made a very intentional decision back in 1996. What happen then was actually funny; I was then the Assistant Director of Freshman Studies at Hampton University in Virginia. I was getting ready for my staff meeting and was sitting there ahead of time with one of our academic counselors. When there were just the two of us in there she turned to me and said "Can I ask you a question? What are you still doing here?" I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "you have everything that Les Brown has, why are you still here?" And for as much of a public speaker as I have been, I kind of sat there speechless and she said "Aha, you don't have an answer." That troubled me so much because I have been helping other people with their speeches, I have been writing speeches and making money as a ghost speech writer in other settings.

That is when I began to make some deliberate effort about professional speaking. I met Zig Ziglar in 1997 in Hampton, VA, and he gave me tremendous encouragement and motivation. He asked me, "Tim, let me ask you two questions: are you practicing? And, are you studying? If you are, then I'll see you over the top." At first, I viewed his words as merely boilerplate politeness. However, I began to focus on what he'd said to me, and then made it a matter of earnest prayer and fasting.

I began to pursue that intentionally, and I made a job change, moving from there to Alabama. After being at Oakwood College as its Executive Director for Public Relations for three years, I made a leap of faith. It was one thing to speak on the side and doing something else. Then speaking and saying this is my career, this is what I am going to do, this is where I am putting all of the eggs in my basket.

At the time that I connected with Juanell, I was Level Two of a speaker both in terms of fees and my own exposure. I had done a great amount of public speaking and a good amount of professional speaking, i.e. getting paid.

Did the Specialize or Die program meet your expectations?

Yes, as a first step towards meeting with her. What the Specialize or Die program did for me was help me to capture and capsulate my feelings of life experiences and exposures, and to begin to see some new patterns. Now mind you, I began that whole process in January. I had started my entrepreneur venture in June or July. So a lot of that thought process began to take place as I began to look at who I was and where I was going. It did help me to think and move fast forward.

 
The beautiful thing about meeting with Juanell at the time was the fact that the message and the ministry that we pinpointed was not something that was prepackaged or super imposed by her. It was truly out of the womb of my own experience. The Specialize or Die warm-up exercise helped me to get me in that frame of mind.

That is a comment that I have heard from most people. That Juanell pulls out your own message. It is not prepackaged. Other clients say that they are not scared to recommend or talk to people about the program. There is no fear that Juanell will create one of them. Every client is unique and there is no way that two could be alike.

Oh yes, I will tell that story to anyone at any time.

 
What was the best feature of the program?

Let me answer that in two ways. The first feature that hit me just blew me away. Now I was born, raised, Christian church school-educated, and have been a practicing Christian the majority of my life; even when I was acting foolish, I was still practicing it in some form. I had a very strong prayer life. When I came to meet with Juanell, we began our session, she asked me to tell my life story and then asked me what I wanted to get out of the two-day session. Then we would offer a word of prayer. I stopped her and said, "Well, where I come from and from my background, you typically pray first and then you proceed. So why are we using this tactic?" She said, "Well, the reason that I do this, Tim, is once you tell your story then we know specifically what to pray about." That blew me right out of the water. I had never heard that approach before. As much "church" as I had done, and as much pulpit-speaking as I had done in my life, I had never seen that approach before.

 
Now and following that, I have basically adopted that approach: basically every morning after putting together my daily to-do list; organizing my materials; getting ready to have my half hour or hour Bible study and prayer. Then after putting all of this together and writing out and prioritizing my list, I then pray and give God specific requests on which to work. That initial activity with her was not just an episodic thing, but has now become a matter of (successful) lifestyle management for me.

 
The second mind-blowing feature that I drew from our two days was distilling my life and my ministry (my DNA) into the message that I now take out here to the public. The message is that I have suffered all of my adult life with an addiction to my big and little egos. I am now trademarking with the federal government Ego-holism™ and Ego-holic Recovery™, as I am now a recovering Ego-holic™. That discovery/uncovery/recovery message is what I now take out here to the public.

The whole process of how Juanell and I got to that revelation was God-ordained. After meeting with her the first day we had a message, I had come there to Dallas with a message and a theme. We spent that whole first day talking, fleshing out that original message and theme. The next day I returned for what was supposed to be a routine 9-5 day.

 
She came in and said: "Tim, I have a confession to make to you. I have been wrestling with your original theme all night. Something is just not piecing itself together. Last night after we finished, there were some things that were just not fitting. I couldn't get a hand on it, I prayed about it last night and I prayed about it this morning and just as I put on my last stitch of clothing this morning it finally hit me. Let me ask you a question, Tim. Are you comfortable with your originality?"

 
"No."

"Why not?"

"You told me to tell my life story. It's basic white bread. There is no snap/crackle/or pop in my life. For example, I am no “Saul on the road to Damascus”, getting knocked down by God and later becoming the Apostle Paul, as he did. There is no drama in my world. I have no more dysfunction in my life than anyone else. I didn't come from the home of an abusive mother or an alcoholic father. I said there is no rags-to-riches story here. The only thing that is in any way out of whack is my ego."

Juanell said, "What?" and I repeated that the only thing out of whack in my life is my ego. I knew that in context everything else is fine, but my ego is what held me back throughout at least my adult life.
She said, "Tim that is it! That is it! When you came in here yesterday, you had this presence that filled the room. And when you sat there [and we] listened to you talk we kind of fell spellbound. You are so smart, so articulate, and so charismatic."

"Stop right there," I told her. "That has been my problem throughout my life. I have always been smart, I have always been articulate, and I have always been charismatic. The problem is that everybody has allowed me to be just that and never push myself beyond that . . . until I got married. My wife lets me get away with nothing."

"Tim, this is your message. Tim, I have heard every type of speech there is to hear in life and, believe me when I say that, there is nobody out here at all who addresses the issue of egos. That is your message from God."

And right there on the spot, both the message and the phrase leaped out of me: "I guess I am an Ego-holic -- in recovery," and we began to talk. I said, "I am a Michael Jordan fan. But why did the greatest basketball player ever to live have the need to come back out of retirement? Ego. Look at Enron. Why did Enron have the need to rape all of these people of their pension funds? It was ego." But it's not just big egos, but also little egos. I mean, why did Enron's former vice chairman commit suicide? Because he couldn't handle the pressure and thought of going to the "Big House".

What was supposed to be a session from 9-5 that day ended up going all the way to 1:30 the next morning. Stuff started coming out. Juanell said, "Tim you have a message from God; now run with it." I have taken that message and put it in the format of keynote speeches and pulpit sermons (“Blessed – then Lost and Found,” where I parallel my life's journey to that of the Prodigal Son in the Bible). I've also teamed with a partner, now we have created a unique seminar-workshop entitled "Evolving to your T. O. P.; Welcome to the Twin Cities of Egos." Additionally, I have turned this message into a bi-monthly column in Message magazine, one of the world's oldest Christian publications. Essence magazine is doing my story on my recovery from ego-holism in its upcoming September 2003 issue. All of this grew out of Juanell extracting my story out of me.
What are three major obstacles or concerns you had with your career before you worked with Juanell?
I can give you five. I call it my S.P.A.D.E.: my Selfishness, my Procrastination, my Arrogance, my Disorganization, and my poor Eye contact. I call them my S.P.A.D.E.'s in my life. I've determined that those five factors were (and are still) major contributors, self-imposed limiting steps or barriers I have placed on myself.

It sounds like a question that you have definitely thought of before.

Once I began to deal with the issue of ego-holism I could see the problems in others; but the healing has to start with me. I have to become both the example and the role model by which others will start to find their healing.

Explain what you walked away with that you would not have had if you did not worked with Juanell.

Easily, I came out with my DNA, a message that was uniquely mine. Everyone has an ego-holic problem – either they are the victims or they are the victimizer. Or both. Either they impose the problems on others, or they themselves are imposed upon by someone else. I came out of Juanell's with that message. It was not only a message that I could articulate, but it was a message whose credibility was based upon me making life improvements. It became a lifestyle management issue. I thank God that I have the ability to make those ongoing corrections, to “bleed in public” as it were, and to earn a living from presenting that DNA message. In a nutshell, I walked away from Dallas with a message. Then a couple weeks later, Juanell and I telephonically created the marketing plan that I am now loosely executing.

Did you eventually develop a branding that was uniquely yours? How much of this happened during your session with Juanell? How much of this happened as you continued to work through the process that she had defined?

Oh yes. That branding was initiated in Dallas, and was later fine-tuned through both prayer and painful soul-searching. Additionally, I have applied to the US Patent and Trademark Office for trademarks on Ego-holic, Ego-holism, Ego-holic Recovery, as well as on our logo. All of this directly and unequivocally grew out of my Dallas session with Juanell.

Did working with Juanell shorten your learning curve? How much? How did it do that?

Tremendously. Exactly how much, it's hard to say. Quite honestly and after meeting with Juanell, I later realized that 19 years earlier my mother had made the same evaluation of my runaway ego and limelight-lust, and I then chose to ignore it.

Is it possible to do this work by yourself?

Sure it is possible. It was one of the questions that I had posed to Juanell's previous clients, and their answers came back uniformly: Sure, they could have done it on their own, but it would have taken them much longer. Some estimated 2-3 years, and others said 5-6 years and I agree with that, too. It would have taken me longer, but part of the challenge is that when you are paying somebody to do something for you, there is a certain sense of "fast forward" that happens. Plus, as you are telling your story out to someone, it comes out differently than if you were unable to hear it. It's putting you in another person's shoes.

What would you change in the Specialize or Die program, if you could do it over again? What would make it better?

It has been so long ago since I did it that I don't recall its finer points.
That is one of the problems; it is a hard question for most of the people that I have interviewed, because most of them were in over a year ago.

I think it is five Turning Points.

I boiled mine down to three Turning Points. The process of doing the Specialize or Die program that helped me to whittle mine down to the three key Turning Points in my life. That process instigated and triggered a level of thinking and reflection that probably would not have happened otherwise. Its structure forced me to write, and writing forces one to think in a certain fashion. It was very good for me. Quite honestly, I have wanted to try this Specialize or Die strategy with some PR clients. But out of a sense with professional integrity, I would not do that, because I would not want to pimp off Juanell's program.

 

Juanell Teague's program changed my life and, as a result, I am now helping to change other peoples' lives both individually and corporately. Her program works, and I am a living testimony of it.

Do you believe 100% that your message has been defined and is uniquely yours? And do you believe that it will make a major difference in those lives that you touch?

Oh yes. I believe it and I know it already, because of the comments that people made and from the notes that people send to me. I know that it is making a change. For starters, it is making a change in my own personal life. It is an ugly and a painful process to see my own ego-holic problems.

Interestingly enough back in 1993, I sat down around January 1st and for the very first time, wrote out my life-goals. Of those first five goals, two of those goals were 1) to qualify to meet and marry someone to become my wife for life, and the other goal was 2) to create a system of learning or a school of thought that was unique. And I prayed and fasted to that end. Six months after writing that [list] I met Elaine who became "my wife for life", the second Turning Point in my life. Roughly nine years later, this Ego-holic message has been the fulfilling goal number 2. But once again, all of us are suffering from Ego-holism.

 
Let me just back up a bit for your benefit. I define Ego-holism as "the compulsion or the irresistible impulse to act and/or react acceptably due to feelings of inadequacy". Ego-holism differs from egotism, because egotism only addresses big egos and ego-holism addresses big and little egos. I feel that both big and little egos drain us and rob us of life. Big egos exhibit themselves with such characteristics as arrogance, selfishness, sexism, racism, classicism, elitism; and little egos exemplify procrastination, flirtation, profanity, low and no esteem. Each of those categories drains us, but they are also flip-flop categories. People have talked at these ego issues in an offhanded manner. My study and my upcoming autobiography, Are My Egos Destroying Us? The Confessions of a Recovering Ego-holic, and articles address the issues head-on – such topics as "The American Ego has landed" (the ego of this country and our rugged individualism), "Ego-holism: is it a race thing, is it a black thing? Is it a male or female thing? Is it a geographic thing? Is it an age thing?" I have started to do some research on that and have pulled together some very interesting information.
I believe that it is going to be a life-changing work; however, I don't believe that my work is going to be the be-all/end-all of it. I believe that my initial message will trigger other people to address the issue, write about the issue, improve and expand the research that I have done. Mine is just the first step.

Just hearing you talk, I have never heard this type of topic before, and just hearing you explain it is catching my attention very much.

Thank you. It is amazing. I am looking now at an e-mail from a client, the president of a large architectural firm downtown here in Huntsville, Alabama. Juanell told me in my marketing plan that because ego-holism and recovery are such strong issues that people will not embrace immediately, therefore, when you talk to prospective organizations find out what are their major problem areas and address ego-holism through that entry way.

This particular firm contacted me and said that it was having some communication problems and wondered if I could address those issues. In talking with the firm's president (she and I were classmates in a leadership program at the Chamber of Commerce), I told her of the work that I was doing with egos. She said, "Tim that is the number one problem." I recently completed a seven-seminar series with them, and this DNA message just keeps developing and rolling. Once again, its launch pad was Juanell Teague and her program.

Are there career concerns you have not addressed in Juanell's program? I guess what we're really looking for is how can Juanell improve what she's doing?

No because, like Toys R Us, egos are us. It is our personal, our spiritual, our financial, our emotional, and our academic underbelly. It is our career. By addressing the issue of ego-holism, I addressed both other people and me in a very holistic fashion. It covers the whole waterfront.

But if there were a way to simplify it, would that be your advice?

Because I do not know what became of other people's DNA, it's hard for me to say. If Juanell's session had been only one day, I don't believe my DNA message would have shaken out. But because it happened to be a two-day session, one day helped us see that we were going down the wrong path or, at least, not as beneficial a path as later developed. It was the second day that we were able to turn the corner and swim upstream. Juanell's only regret personally was that we could have easily done a third day, due to a prior commitment; but that was fine. She had given me enough ammunition to get me rolling.

I will be quite honest: the amount of money that I had to pay was also fine and motivating, because if I had paid too little I would have respected it too little. I paid enough for it to cause me some level of pain, and it truly got my attention. I came there ready to make that thing work.

 
Does her program give you the confidence that you're on the right career path?

Yes, without a question. As I said, what happened was the fact that there had been a bunch of little pieces in my life that came to some dead ends. What she did was pull out of me my own story and together, we looked at the patterns and projections. Everything really came together, and I was able to look at my life and say, "Oh, that's what where these little life-pieces have been leading to." I am a big endorser of Juanell and her program.

Number one, as a Christian, it will help me get to heaven, which is my bottom line in life. Number two: it will ultimately make me a better husband and father and a better friend. I am seeing some signs and results already, however, because of the kind of program that is my DNA, I keep unpeeling more layers of the ego-holic onion, getting deeper and deeper to some encrusted ugly problems of mine. But all of that is good; it is not just seeing problems, but also seeing what the solution is. The solution is what I have done. I have developed a six-step recovery program called the "Tim Commandments of Ego-holic Recovery." I keep going back to those steps. Juanell helped me identify those six recovery steps as potential book chapters, and they ultimately end up becoming my six-step program.

When Juanell is speaking about her program, what part of her program would you recommend that she concentrate on?

The one that she mentions and that her clients mention, and I'll phrase it in Ego-holic Recovery language: Juanell will help you find, discover, uncover and recover your DNA.