Today we’d like to introduce you to Alyssa Dver.
Alyssa, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
After a very successful marketing career as a full time Chief Confidence Officer for 7 tech companies and then part-time for over 150 (as a consultant), I made the shift starting 3 years ago, and fully this year, to focusing on my confidence work.
I run the American Confidence Institute (ACI), which I co-founded with Lynette Rumble, and also deliver Kickass Confidence branded products including books, workshops, keynotes, small group professional development, and elite access coaching programs.
I fell in love with motivational theory in college and (only) saw marketing as the path to apply it. But my perpetual curiosity about what made some people confident, and so many not, led me to dabble in confidence-related research, which in turn led to my 2011 book, Ms. Informed: Wake Up Wisdom for Women. My ACI co-founder encouraged me to broaden the scope of my work to include men and to make it more relevant to corporations, which I did my 2015 book, Kickass Confidence.
While this was all brewing, I continued to look for ways to help my son, now 18, who was diagnosed 10 years ago with a neurological condition called dystonia. The top neurologists in the world advised putting Zak on heavy doses of brain-slowing medicines together with painful (and costly) Botox shots. Not only did the treatments not work that well, but we were warned that Zak’s condition might worsen, possibly leading to total paralysis and requiring brain implant surgery.
In my maternal quest to find ways of helping, I eventually found Dr. Farias, a medical doctor who was using movement therapies to work with dystonia patients successfully. Unfortunately, he based in Spain and I struggled to understand his book. Five years later, as I was planning a trip to Toronto with Zak, to investigate new options, something of a miracle happened. I received an email from Dr. Farias, announcing that he had just moved to Toronto! This spurred me to re-read his book. Now, thanks to my confidence work, I could understand what this doctor was doing and it made sense.
After meeting with Dr. Farias for 6 hours over only 4 days—using movement therapy to induce neuroplasticity (change in the brain) and confidence-building verbal therapies—Zak was able to gain significant control of his body, with no pain and at little cost. This proved to me that I had to continue doing my work with confidence—using Zak’s and my own confidence, along with the power of the brain to not only increase confidence, but in fact cure itself.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Of course not! First struggle is investing in a new business as the family breadwinner and having my oldest (of 2) son enter college this fall. Ouch! Making smart, financial choices is paramount and smarts when it comes back negatively.
In the business itself, deciding who to focus on and what is the specific outcome has been incredibly tricky. Everyone can benefit from more confidence and shows interest in my work: from CEOs, to students, at home parents and academics. However, the primary result they want to achieve is very different from one demographic to another….and yet, you may be an academic and yet a parent and woman – all with differing reasons for more confidence. So targeting people/organizations to sell keynotes, workshops, etc. to has been very difficult.
Lastly, being the content and delivery person doesn’t leave much room for sales and business development, marketing and infrastructure building. Finding the right people and partners to assist takes time and money.
Please tell us about American Confidence Institute.
I help growth-minded people control confidence so they STAND OUT, GET HEARD, and HAVE IMPACT personally and professionally.
To do this, I lead the American Confidence Institute to study social- and neuroscience, our own and 3rd party research, plus the proven techniques used by elite athletes, military and C-suite executives. I teach others to master the same mindset and behaviors through my Kickass Confidence books, keynotes, workshops, small group mentoring programs, elite access 1×1 coaching and experiential events.
I am most proud about being evidence-based and giving so many adults and teens, real tools and real reasons to feel great. We are committed to real data and real results. We don’t’ do motivational fluff nor consider one shot information dumps effective. We want to enable real transformation through brain training and habitual reinforcement.
Together with the neuroscience underpinnings to all our work, that sets us apart. I do also believe that my personal style is a welcome in corporate environments as I am a businessperson and professional speaker, not a coach or consultant.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Focused on the biz full time sooner. Part time led to many half-baked ideas and awkward branding…now trying to fix and harder given we are already down the path…
Contact Info:
- Website: www.Kickass-Confidence.com
- Phone: 508.881.5664
- Email: info@Kickass-Confidence.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alyssa.dver.3
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/kickaconfidence
- Other: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alyssadver/
Image credit: Enjoy Life
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