Jamie Dandar McKinney is the founder and president of Jamie Empowers Incorporated, whose mission is to empower women to ditch doubts, speak up and achieve the careers they deserve and desire.
Jamie’s new book, “Speak Up Sister! The Professional Woman’s Guide to Confidence and Success,” is now available on Amazon. She told us that writing and publishing this book was the result of many ‘God Whispers’ along the way.
She spent the first 20 years of her career working in male dominated industries. In 2018, a magazine approached her and said,
“Hey, we want to do a feature story about a strong female in male dominated industry, and we want that to be you.”
When that article came out, it garnered such a positive response from women who could relate to Jamie’s stories, that she started getting requests to speak to women’s groups. When attendees at her presentations would speak with her after her talk, they wanted to know where they could buy her “book.” The idea of writing a book wasn’t even on Jamie’s radar at the time. After so many instances, however, she decided it was time to put her ideas down on the written page. When she shared her idea with a friend, he referred her to the owner of a publishing company and the rest is history.
Jamie feels she owes a great debt to her parents. As a young person, her parents very intentionally urged both Jamie and her two sisters to be involved in a variety of activities and sports and ultimately find one that would allow each of them to work toward a goal and excel. She feels that her parents helped her gain overall confidence at an early age. A confidence that persists to this day.
After studying the neuroscience that leads to a person developing confidence, she realized there is a formula that anyone can follow to build confidence, regardless of where they’re starting on their journey.
“As confidence builds, the quality of job performance increases which creates a continuous cycle of improvement. As a kid growing up, this started for me with dance lessons. It was a natural gift and my parents committed to further nurturing and developing it. Later, in my own career, I used this same principle as I observed individuals on teams I managed. I recognized and developed their natural skills sets which helped them gain confidence in their overall performance. It also gave them opportunities to excel and become the resident expert in a specific area.”
In her new book, “Speak Up Sister! The Professional Woman’s Guide to Confidence and Success,” one of the concepts Jamie discusses is the 5 Gifts of Confidence. We talked about a few of them during our interview.
Let Your Voice Be Heard
Creating visibility, especially for women in the workplace is a vital part of success.
“I’ve been in several situations, especially in the oil and gas industry, where I’m in the room with women engineers who are brilliant. They can do complicated mathematical algorithms in their head, yet their voice struggles to come out, and because of it, they are passed over for promotions.”
Jamie encourages women to let their ideas be heard. Once they believe in their ability and know the formula that channels their confidence, the frequency with which they speak up in a meeting room full of men, or on a Zoom call, skyrockets.
“You’ll feel butterflies in your stomach and your will heart pounding, yet confidence will give you the ability to get those words out.”
It is critical for your ideas to be heard. If you allow someone else to voice it, while you are doing a mental, should I or shouldn’t I, they will get the credit for something that should have been yours.
Fuel for Forward Motion
A lack of confidence makes everyone question their decisions or prevent them from making one at all.
In the book “Thinking in Bets,” the author Annie Duke, a professional poker player, says that every decision we make is a gamble. Every decision includes an element of risk, no one can predict the future. Jamie told us that confidence allows you to move forward, knowing you won’t ever have all the information. Staying stuck is not going to get you anywhere. The word decide comes from the root word cide, which means to kill.
“When you stop wavering, and de-cide, you kill off all other options, allowing you the freedom to move forward.”
The bottom line is that even if your decision or idea turns out to be flawed, steps can be taken to correct performance and move on. At the very least, you learned something and you’re no longer stuck.
Jamie also talks about the danger of frivolous, over-use of “I’m sorry.”
Through her experience Jamie has noticed that women in the workplace who “over-apologize” are unknowingly costing themselves opportunities, as well as inhibiting their own confidence.
According to Jamie, apologies are warranted if you’ve physically or emotionally hurt someone. In a workplace environment, this rarely happens. If a mistake is made on a report, or a client meeting ends badly, you have not hurt anyone physically or emotionally. Instead of apologizing, simply respond with gratitude and/or action. For example…
“Yes, thank you for pointing that out. Let me get right on it. Interesting. I hear you.”
There are so many positive responses instead of, “I’m sorry.” Maintain a confident posture and understand:
“Yes, I’m a leader. I’m doing my job. We all make mistakes and that’s fine.”
If you are the person always apologizing, even though your performance is solid, the likelihood is that you will be seen as insecure and that will affect your next performance review, as well as, any possible promotion.
Workshops
During 2020 Jamie has been conducting a series of virtual workshops to spread her doctrine of confidence and reach more women, especially emerging women leaders.
“Confidence and empowerment are not things easily contained. They are contagious and have a ripple effect. Through the virtual workshops, I am reaching more women and men, to proliferate the importance of confidence, to generate a larger impact, and drive their success.”
Her workshops, available as keynotes or spanning a longer timeframe, are life-changing, virtual experiences designed to help businesswomen achieve professional and personal growth.
Personal Life
Jamie and her husband currently reside in Colorado, where she can see the Rocky Mountains through her office window. She loves to ski and snowshoe, especially with the couple’s fur baby.
“I swear my dog has a smile on her face as soon as we hit the snow. I know she is saying, “Thanks so much! This is the best day of my life!”
Jamie has learned that confidence is an important tool to creating a successful life, at work, and at home. She has helped thousands of women succeed and she can help you, as well.
If you would like to learn more about Jamie or to request info about one of her workshops: https://www.jamieempowers.com/contact or visit her website here.
Plus, her new book, Speak Up Sister! The Professional Woman’s Guide to Confidence and Success can be found on Amazon.
Jamie can also be found on Instagram at and on LinkedIN.
