Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know

Erica: I have Her Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone. Her Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but they find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that quite honestly never comes. Inside HER, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum. We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, navigating hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it.

Erica: This isn't about hustling harder. It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career in life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside HER Collective. You can learn more and join us at www.joinhercollective.com. Because honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone.

Cornelia: Women don't like to say no. The reality is every every yes is a thousand nos, and so you need to decide what it is you wanna say yes to. And those are the those are the boundaries. Right? The these conditions have to be met to be given this golden thing called my yes.

Erica: I'm your host, Erica Rooney, and today's guest is Cornelia Shipley Berryman. She is a CEO. She is the founder of three c Consulting, and I invited her here today because she is up to some amazing things, including earning her PhD on top of all of this. So this woman is uber successful.

Erica: She owns her own business. She sits on boards. She goes to school, and she's doing what I like to say, all the things. So, Cornelia, welcome. I'm so glad to have you.

Cornelia: Well, Erica, thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here today.

Erica: Oh, it's amazing. So I would love to start out with tell me about Cornelia because you really are doing all the things.

Cornelia: I love that saying, all the things.

Erica: All the things.

Cornelia: Well, so I'm from Michigan originally. I went to Michigan and have a bachelor's degree from that wonderful institution. But, what I would say is I really am up to and committed to ensuring both that individuals and organizations can create spaces where both the individual and the organization can thrive. Thrive. So our firm specializes in the retention and advancement of mission critical talent.

Cornelia: We do the culture work to ensure that organizationally and infrastructurally, organizations are designed to ensure that their people can deliver on the mission critical imperatives of that business. And then we work with individuals and teams and groups to ensure at the individual level, those people have the capability that they need to be successful.

Erica: Amazing. So you're doing all the things in the business and all the things in your personal life as well. So tell me about this PhD that you are earning because it sounds just mind blowing.

Cornelia: Yeah. So my PhD is in conscious business ethics. It is a metaphysical degree. And for those of you who might be wondering, I had two options when I was getting ready to pursue my degree. I could pursue it in quantum physics or in metaphysics, and quantum physics is the math of creation and metaphysics is the thought of creation.

Cornelia: And so I didn't really want nobody told me there'd be math involved. Do you remember that one? Right? And so, I decided to pursue the path around the thought process of it. And so, my PhD is really focusing in on how our thoughts become things and how they serve as a first cause in creation and helping, we help our clients both on the corporate side and on the individual side understand that and then act in a way that's conscious and aware so that they can get the result they intend.

Erica: Amazing. So what led you to even wanting to get this PhD? Right? I mean, you're running a successful business. You're like, I'm thinking, this is enough.

Erica: You got a lot on your plate.

Cornelia: Well, I have been studying, you know, spiritual concepts and their application to business for several years. I were I have worked for several years with one of the nation's top mindset leaders, and the truth of the matter is most of us, both in business and in our personal lives, understand that we are the person at cause in the creation of what we're experiencing, whether we understand that on a conscious level or on a subconscious level. The question is if we are not understanding it on a conscious level, what happens is we say, this is happening to me instead of recognizing that I'm at cause in the matter of what I'm experiencing. And so whether you have an employee who you say is a poor performer or a child who you say is a poor performer, you're gonna see what you say. So it's part of the reason why if you are a person of faith, your faith will say to you, you know, guard your tongue, right, or some version of that is in your scriptural text.

Cornelia: The same thing is true in your business life. If you say your job is hard, know, I don't like the people I work with, every morning is a bad morning, I dread Mondays, you're gonna continue to create that in your in your life because that's what you're focused on. And we know both energetically, metaphysically, and from the quantum physic math of it all that the more you focus on something, that's what's going to expand. And so for me, having an understanding at a deeper level of these principles and more importantly, the application of them in a business context good jury.

Erica: Yeah. So the whole where the mind goes, the energy flows kinda thing.

Cornelia: That's a 100% correct.

Erica: No. And you're working with people to apply that in business. That's such a unique I mean, it's just I know that people do it, but it's such a unique way that you're going about it, I think.

Cornelia: Yeah. And we don't necessarily lead with it. Right? Like, it's not the conversation we have. You know, we run a council, for people who are responsible for culture creation.

Cornelia: It's called the conscious culture creation council. Right? Because we're very aware that you need to be intentional about the spaces you're creating to get the outcomes that you want. Because if you leave it to accident, you'll get what you get. And, you know, in the in the classic corporate speak, you get what you get and you don't throw a fit.

Cornelia: Right? Right? And so instead of having people get what they get, it should be that they get what they design and what they what they really desire.

Erica: Yeah. No lie. I said that to my children this morning when we were fighting about what treat to put in the lunchbox. I was like, you get what you get and you don't throw a fit. Oh, that's so great.

Erica: So tell me, like, a little bit of the backstory about how you decided to start this business, what led you to this, and, you know, you're on this constant path of growth and development, which I think is so powerful. What kinda led up to all this?

Cornelia: Yeah. So I started my career, working in sales and sales training and development for arguably the largest, consumer goods company in the world and, you know, did that work in that organization for ten years. And while I was there, I had an opportunity to do lots of HR kinds of things. So I got my HR bug early. Right?

Cornelia: This notion of how do you deal with people? How do you help improve the capacity of organizations to really deliver on their bottom line result? And, you know, when I graduated from SMU and was thinking about what I wanted to do next, I actually went into HR. But the longer I was in the role, I had some life things happen to me, not unlike many women, especially women who are in the sandwich generation. Although I'm I my husband and I are childless by choice, and at this time in my life, I wasn't married.

Cornelia: Both my parents got very ill, and I'm an only child.

Erica: And I was that's a heavy burden. That's a

Cornelia: Heavy burden. Right? It is. And so I tell people often that I'm an accidental entrepreneur because, I did this to be able to have the flexibility to take care of my parents, so I quit my corporate job at a different consumer goods company after I graduated from my MBA program and, started this business. So my last day in corporate was 2006, and I started working with our first corporate client 11/14/2006.

Cornelia: And so I knew from the time that I left corporate what I really wanted to be doing was helping organizations deal with their people problems. And what you know when you work in an organization is that all problems are people problems. Right? At the end of the day, they all boil down to people problems. And so the question just becomes, can you get your culture and your people rowing in the right direction to deliver on your mission critical objectives?

Erica: Yeah. So question for you. I mean, I love that you have this, you know, understanding of, like, I wanted a different type of life, so I got out of corporate. I started my own business. Was that an easy decision?

Erica: Did you struggle with making it? Was it, like, nerve wracking? I mean, talk me because I'm I'm feeling heart palpitations, but you make it sound like easy breezy beautiful cover girl over here. Just

Cornelia: It was it wasn't a hard decision for me because my parents were sick. Right? And so, my mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer. My father had had a stroke, had gone to sleep for twelve hours, and so he didn't get immediate medical care. Mhmm.

Cornelia: And so for me, it was a very easy decision to say, what I need to do is go home to be present with my parents. And, you know, they both did recover from those illnesses. They're they're both no longer with us, but, mercifully in part because I made the decision to not create additional stress for myself about were they okay and, making sure that they could get what they needed. They were both able to recover.

Erica: Yeah. Did you just have a feeling that it you were gonna quit, you were gonna take care of the parents, and that it would all work out?

Cornelia: I trusted that. Absolutely. And that you know, that's a metaphysical principle. Yeah. Right?

Cornelia: So if you can if you can stand in the space of believing that you'll see what you say, if I say it's gonna be okay, it's gonna be okay by right of consciousness. By universal law, it's got to be. Right? Because universal principles the first principle is for more life, for the betterment of.

Erica: Mhmm.

Cornelia: So there's no reason to believe if you're in a situation where you're stuck that you're meant to stay there. If you stay there on an energetic level, whether you are aware of it or not, you're choosing to.

Erica: I love that because I think so many people it's so much easier to put it on external things and not take that piece of it, that ownership, the accountability. And, really, that's what this podcast is about. Right? It's really about examining what are those things that are keeping you stuck, taking ownership where you can, and driving forward. So, I mean, that's amazing.

Erica: That's my whole belief and thought pattern too. You are just doing the work and studying it and learning it.

Cornelia: Yep. That's right. That's right. It's it's it's about taking personal responsibility, and oftentimes people don't want to be responsible for either what they've said or what they've done. And it's part of the reason why in organizations, people have such a hard time with accountability because people experience when they're being held to account, their initial reaction is to become defensive.

Erica: Yes.

Cornelia: Rather than to deal with their own behavior. And so whether it is your own individual behavior for a failure to navigate your career correctly or you wanna feel like because somebody did something externally to stand in the victim the victimization of that instead of saying, where's the opportunity for me to do something different so that this experience doesn't happen again is what will ultimately keep people stuck. It's because they don't say, what can I be doing differently? How can I take responsibility for where I find myself, whether they feel like they created the situation or not?

Erica: Yeah. Absolutely. Well and I'm a huge believer that accountability is the number one characteristic that will determine your success, whether that is you being accountable to someone else or you being accountable to yourself. Right? If you wanna be a fit person, be a fit person, but that is up to you to get up early every day and get your steps in and eat the salad instead of the cake.

Erica: In organizations, I mean, I will include myself in this. If someone came up to me and said I wanna talk to you about your accountability, I would feel a certain way real quick. Mhmm. So it's interesting that this one word that is I also look at as so positive, I also see as, like, a really scary word.

Cornelia: Yeah. And it's scary because people don't know how to how to be in a relationship to it. Right? We don't teach people, at least in The United States. Right?

Cornelia: I'm not gonna speak on

Erica: A little

Cornelia: Bit of detail for the moment. I'm just gonna talk about The US. We don't really teach people accountability in a way that is, lasting and gives people space to own what they want, right, and own their own behavior. So if we use your example this morning with your children, we're just gonna call your child Jane for the purposes of this conversation, and so when Jane comes and says, mom, I want a brownie instead of cookies, right, there's an opportunity to say, great, Jane, so let's talk about that. Here's how you can get cookies.

Cornelia: We can bake some tonight and you can take them to school. But if you want cookies, that's gonna require that you actually stir the mix and put them in the oven before the oven gets turned on. Right? There's all kinds of ways that you can start to instill in your children that what they want is achievable, first and foremost, but then they have to take action to get what they want. Instead of saying, mommy picked the rice crispy treat and, you know, there are no cookies in the house, so you're taking the rice crispy treat to school.

Cornelia: Right? You could say, okay. Great. Jane, you want you want these particular treats in a week? Wonderful.

Cornelia: Here are your lunch boxes. Put the treat you want in the box. If you forget, you don't get a treat.

Erica: I love it. There's also consequences.

Cornelia: And then suddenly, you start to learn, oh, if I take an action, I can get what I want. If I don't take the right action, I won't get the outcome I desire. Yep. And that's the piece that so many people understand on a subconscious level, but don't apply in every area of their life. They apply it in some places, but not in all.

Erica: Mhmm. Absolutely. Yeah. I think I hear a lot of and I see it in my own self too, areas where I can identify what it is that I'm doing that is leading to either positive or negative interactions. And then other times, it takes me a while to see that.

Erica: You know? And it's almost like I'm either I don't wanna see it, so I put those blinders up or I haven't learned that lesson yet.

Cornelia: Right. And the other piece that could be at play is simply that you're in a triggered state. Yeah. Right? So what psychologists will tell you is that you are either being run by your conscious awareness, or you're being run by your subconscious.

Cornelia: Your subconscious is created between the time you're you're born and the time you're seven years old. So for so many of us, when we get triggered, we're operating as a five year old. Right? Like, a five year old is making your decision because you're triggered, and the only the way that you responded when you were five, seven, 11 is actually dictating your response now. And so you have to be able to do the work to separate, here's what I'm experiencing.

Cornelia: What do I actually want in this moment? And then what do I need to do to get the result that I want instead of feeling attacked and unsafe, which is the trigger response typically.

Erica: It's so interesting. It's and it puts me, like, right into, like, my children's minds because my son is seven. So I'm, like, thinking, wow. Okay. This is making a lot of sense now.

Cornelia: Yep. Yep. Because he has something occur, and then he gets triggered. And then he responds in the way that he was self soothed in the past. Mhmm.

Cornelia: So if you have a you know, if John we're gonna call your son John. Right? So if John historically was sued when he cried and was then to be able to get what he wanted and you've been doing that for the last six years, at seven, he's gonna cry because what you taught him, what his experience has been is if I cry, I'll get what I want. The same thing is true in organizations. Right?

Cornelia: People say it this way, the squeaky wheel gets the oil.

Erica: Yep.

Cornelia: Right? Well, that's because organizations have trained people to believe that's true based on their response to some stimulus. Right? So if you're gonna change culture, you now have to change the actions you reward.

Erica: Yep. Right?

Cornelia: You have to reward the behavior that you want, not punish the behavior you don't. Right? Love it. To actually get culture to where you want it to be. That does not mean that people who behave poorly shouldn't be held to account for their bad behavior.

Cornelia: Right? We know one of the things that COVID taught us is that not everybody can work in every company. Because if you go viral, whether you're at the Capitol or, you know, you take an action like Central Park, Karen, and, you know, Franklin Templeton fires you, you have to be held account for your bad behavior. Yep. But to change culture requires a real focus on what is it that you need to drive your business results, and then how do you do those actions, and how do you reward your people for taking those actions Yeah.

Cornelia: In ways that create meaning and value and commitment and loyalty to your employee population, not to you.

Erica: Yeah. It makes me think about a lot of the work that Brene Brown did around shame and how she has shown that shame does not drive change. So organizations or if you're talking about within your family and your personal life, like shaming yourself or shaming an employee isn't going to drive that positive change that you want.

Cornelia: That's right. That's right.

Erica: Very interesting. Cornelia, you are so enlightened on all of this. Right? Like, I just it's so fascinating to me. But I imagine what is your sticky floor, and how does this work through your mind?

Erica: Like, do you just you see it immediately, you identify, and you rock on? Or how does this work in Cornelia's world?

Cornelia: So it works two ways. One, you know, fortunately, with our clients, I am able to kinda point out very quickly, you know, like, here's what's going on. Here's what you need to be thinking about. Here's how you need to be doing that differently. From a personal perspective, you know, I take my own medicine.

Cornelia: So, you know, I have a coach that I work with every morning. Right? And this morning included at in the morning, I was on a call with that person. And I'm on a call with that person every single morning at live. Right?

Cornelia: So being able to do your own work and focus on your own development is not a onetime experience, especially as a leader. Right? I have 26 people who work for me in The United States and Latin America. We have customers and clients that expect things from us. I've gotta make sure that my team is aligned, that we're able to deliver on what we've promised as an organization that requires that I do my work.

Cornelia: It also requires that my team do their work. Right? And that we create a culture where people can give actionable feedback. Right? Most people in organizations don't get actionable feedback.

Erica: Mhmm.

Cornelia: They get they get you did a great job or you did a bad job, but they don't get why they did a good job, what contributed to, you know, the value that was created, or what specifically went wrong, and more importantly, how they can improve. So in our business, we talk about here's what went well and here's what didn't, and let's talk about what the expectation was and how you either over or underperformed against that expectation.

Erica: Hey there, listeners. If you have ever felt like you're stuck in a place, held back by self doubt, perfectionism, or that pesky inner critic, you're not alone. We all face those sticky floors that keep us from reaching the heights we dream of. But guess what? It's time to shatter those limiting beliefs and toxic behaviors to uncover infinite possibilities.

Erica: My book, Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors, is your ultimate guide to smashing through barriers, overcoming limiting beliefs, and stepping into your full potential. This book has been endorsed by none other than the great Mel Robbins, best selling author and motivational powerhouse. It's also been featured in Success Magazine, so you know it's packed with insights that work. Inside, you'll find real life sticky floor stories, practical strategies to help you navigate your own sticky floor moments, and a whole lot of inspiration to keep you climbing. This isn't just a book.

Erica: It's your road map to success, confidence, and freedom. Grab your copy of Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors today at www.ericaandersonrooney.com. Whether you're in the boardroom, the classroom, or just starting out, this book is for you because no one, and I mean no one, deserves to stay stuck, no one deserves to feel small, and you have glass ceilings to shatter. Let's do this.

Erica: Number one, I think it is amazing that you do this every day. Right? Like, I meet with my therapist every week, and I and she holds me accountable. But every day, I mean, that really shows that you are dedicated to doing the work, which I think is incredible. And I think that's, like, real time results.

Erica: You know? You're not letting a few days go by and then kind of thinking it through what happened.

Cornelia: And I will tell you the thing that was transformative for me about that's connected to what you said was I learned a lesson that my mentor has teaches all the time, which is that things are simply a decision. Right? So I decided that I was gonna make this phone call, and then I stood in my decision, which requires every morning that at a particular time I'm up, awake, prepared to be on this call every day. It also means when people wanna meet with me at the time of the call, the answer is no. Right?

Cornelia: So you get clarity when you make a decision about what are the boundaries necessary to honor the decision that you've made. And people fall short, if we use your cake analogy, because they've made a decision, but then don't honor or create boundaries to support the decision that they've

Erica: Made. Yeah. You took the word boundaries right out of my mouth. But I think that's one of the hardest things that we can do sometimes is create boundaries and especially I know when I work with women, I see so many women that they intend to set the boundaries, but they put so many other people or things or organizations first that those boundaries are more of, like, in place if they're convenient. You know?

Erica: The convenient boundary is not really a boundary. So I have to ask. You are an author as well. Tell me about this book.

Cornelia: So, it's interesting. I wrote the book. It's called Design Your Life, How to Create a Meaningful Life, Advance Your Career, and Live Your Dreams. And, it is a piece of my for my foyer into this metaphysical journey. So when I was living in Australia in 2003, and what I learned a piece of what I learned in that experience was that Americans are taught that we have you know, we're the best country in the world, we have the best lifestyle, and what I found in Australia was that their their life was at a much simpler pace.

Cornelia: They lived life very differently than Americans. And it made me think about if these kinds of options exist outside of the borders of The United States, what are the options I really want for myself and my family? And this book is designed to help you first and foremost define success for yourself. Decide what is it that you're really striving for because we live in a in a culture where people are trying to keep up with the Kardashians. And if your scorecard is the number of Birkin bags and Jimmy Choo shoes you own, that's fine.

Cornelia: But if there's something else you want, keep score based on that. So it helps you really define success for yourself. It helps you sort out what is your personal brand and the problem you wanna be known for solving and helps you think through, excuse me, how to effectively market yourself in ways in particular for women that don't feel salesy. Right? We have a hard time as women, bragging about ourselves or sharing our accomplishments, so we give you a framework in the book to do that.

Cornelia: We also talk about boundary setting. I talk about that as your say yes standards. Right? Women don't like to say no. The reality is every every yes is a thousand no's, and so you need to decide what it is you wanna say yes to, and those are the those are the boundaries.

Cornelia: Right? The these conditions have to be met to be given this golden thing called my yes, and so we help people think through that. In the book, we talk about, you know, the rewards that you wanna create for yourself that will actually prompt you to take action, And then we spend some a little bit of time, in the beginning of the book setting some foundation around some principles you wanna think through in terms of what you value and what matters most to you.

Erica: So Cornelia, here's a big question, but it's what it's what's on my mind right now. How can we be more aware of those sticky floors that we're in so that we can do all these things that you're talking about, protect our boundaries, and not leave our life up to accident?

Cornelia: Yeah. I think the first thing everyone should think about is what is the practice you have to be grateful for what you already have? Everyone from Oprah Winfrey to Wayne Dyer to Brene Brown, pick pick your, you know, pick your guru, talks about the notion of gratitude. And if you don't have a gratitude practice, I would highly encourage people people to start a gratitude practice. It doesn't take much.

Cornelia: It's just about at the beginning and or the end or throughout your day, being grateful for the things you want to be experiencing. Right? Because the more you honor and focus on what you want, the more of what you want will come to you. That's the first thing I recommend. The second thing I recommend is that people pay attention to where breakdown is happening, and breakdown is a sign that you're tolerating something you don't want any longer.

Cornelia: Mhmm. So taking a look and noting where is breakdown occurring and then doing the work to, one, remove the toleration, and two, establish a say yes standard around wherever the breakdown has occurred. And typically for our clients, if they do those two things, they see rapid change. They see rapid change. And I, you know, I take my own medicine.

Cornelia: Every summer, I do a gratitude challenge that's, pretty intense. Right? I do it for a month, and I did it in July, and one of the things that I said I was going I was grateful for in the future was meeting a particular idol of mine. I wrote that down on July 18, and on August 18, she walked right up right past me, in of all places, Atlantis in The Bahamas. Right?

Cornelia: And I didn't know that was gonna happen, but it took less than a month for that to get manifest for the time I said I wanted to meet this person to the time this person literally presented herself to me and walked up to me and said something to me. She liked something I had on and said, my god. That's amazing. And that turned into a conversation. Right?

Cornelia: So you have to be able to practice this principle of gratitude both for what you have and for what you want.

Erica: Well, one of the questions that I'd love to ask all of my guests in closing is with Cornelia, if you had to go back to when you were making this leave of leaving corporate to take care of your parents, balance your life, and start on this amazing adventure of owning your own very successful business, being an author, and manifesting the hell out of all the things you want, what piece of advice would that be?

Cornelia: Give myself permission to want what I want. Oh, fine. Because so often, we don't do that, or we convince ourselves that what we want isn't possible. I want this but. Right?

Cornelia: And, there's a member of my team who always says we stand for the and, and so it's I want this and, not I want this but. And so to the degree that I could have stood in the place of really owning what I wanted and giving myself permission to try things on to determine if it was what I really wanted or not, I probably would have been in this position owning this business a lot sooner than I than I did. And I also recognize that things happen when we're ready. Right? That notion of when the student is ready, the teacher appears Yeah.

Cornelia: Is very accurate. And so the other thing I would say is give yourself some grace. Right? Don't beat yourself up because you're not where you say you want to be. So it's a question of you being really clear and committed to what it is you want and then being willing to do the work to create and have that happen.

Erica: Well, you've got me all sorts of motivated to, like, go out and ramp up my current gratitude practice and to, like, ramp up my manifestations and to just pour into that bucket. So thank you for that. Cornelia, where can people find you?

Cornelia: So, on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, it's at cornelia shipley. And then our website is just 3cconsulting.com with the number three. So the number three, the letter c, and then the word consulting.com. You can also get there by doing corneliashipley.com.

Erica: Amazing. And I will link all of that in the show notes. But, Cornelia, thank you so much.

Cornelia: You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me today. It was great. Yes.

Erica: If you liked this podcast, do me a huge favor and rate, review, and subscribe to this podcast as it truly helps the women who need it hear it first. You can do this by clicking in Apple Music, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcast.