Jacqui Letran, a multi-award-winning author and an international speaker, joins Neva Lee Recla to talk about confident young entrepreneurs. Jacqui is a passionate and energetic leader who is truly gifted at helping teens transform into confident, happy and successful young adults. Jacqui teaches teens that success and happiness are possible, regardless of their current struggles or circumstances. Jacqui is an International Best-Selling Author, National Speaker, and Founder of Teen Confidence Academy. She has 17 years of experience in Adolescent Health as a Nurse Practitioner, Success Coach and Teen Confidence Expert. Jacqui is passionate and committed to guiding teens to achieve remarkable success in their academic and personal lives. Listen in as she explains her work encouraging kids and teens to be confident young entrepreneurs.

Thank you for coming on.

Definitely.

So what are your super powers? You have a lot of them, I can tell.

I bring fun into everything that I do.

Yes, I have tons of super powers. In fact, we all have tons and tons of super powers that we don’t recognize. But, the two super powers that I have that I really, really like is, one of them is, I bring fun into everything that I do. That is something that I have to have. And the other super power that I have is, I can see other people’s super powers before they can see it.

That’s awesome. I like that. So, mine, I like to call it gecko ability.

Oh.

So it’s chameleon ability normally, but I like to call it gecko because I can do different voices and I have that funny aspect to me.

Can I hear a different voice?

Do you know Miranda Sings?

No.

Hmm, what voice should I do. Okay, give me an idea of someone famous or something.

How about a cartoon character? Can you do any cartoon characters?

Not really. Miranda Sings is the only one.

All right, just do Miranda. I would love to see what you sound like as Miranda.

All right, so she wears a lot of lipstick so she’s a crazy character basically, she has her own show. So, Hello. I’m Miranda Sings.

Oh my goodness.

She has a funny voice, but she likes to do different characters and stuff, but she’s not actually like that in person.

That is awesome, but I prefer your voice.

Thank you. Yeah, I prefer my voice too. So, what advice do you, oh I forgot, so you’re a super hero, I’m a super hero, Ruth’s a super hero, how about we do a super hero pose.

Yes. We are all super heroes let’s do a pose.

So do you wanna do a super her pose, ’cause Groot and us are super heroes.

So, are you asking me to come up with a super hero pose that I like?  Oh, I don’t know if I know any, you’re putting me on the spot. What is your favorite one, maybe I’ll copy you for this one.

All right, ready.

Yes.

All right, I love it. Okay. So, what advice do you maybe have for some kids that, or teenagers that maybe how they can have more confidence in themselves?

Ah, that’s a great question. So there’s a lot of little things that you can do to be confident. But the most important thing I think, for anybody, whether you’re a little person, a teenager, an adult, is talk to yourself with kindness and kindness is definitely a super power, right.

Yeah.

Kindness is actually one of my favorite super powers and if you start talking to yourself with kindness, you can increase your confidence big time. Because think about it. If you want to do something right, you want to write a book, I know you’re writing a book, and when you think about it and you talk to yourself and you say, “There’s no way I can write this book, I’m nobody and I don’t know what I’m talking about.” Well, you’re not gonna get excited to write that book. You’re not gonna feel good about writing that book.

Yep.

But if you use kindness to yourself and even if you don’t have expertise in a topic and you say, you know what, even though I don’t have expertise, I’m willing to just explore and see what happens. Just changing that language can really boost that confidence and give you that slight motivation you need to go forward.

That is definitely, for sure. Actually, I know a lot of teens or young adults because I have a half-brother who’s 21, his name is Caden and my 17-year-old half-sister Danica, so I go to the teen program …

Oh wow.

I know quite a few teens.

And those teens that you know, can they use a little bit more kindness to themselves?

I don’t really know, I don’t know all those teens very well because there was only a week of yoga space, so I don’t know, but I know that they are very kind to me.

That is awesome. But that’s the one thing that we forget sometimes. We can be kind to other people much easier than we can be kind to ourselves. As to go back to that as one of the advice I can give to teenagers or young adults looking to boost up their confidence is, be kind to themselves. Treat themselves the way they would treat other people that they like.

Yeah, I agree. So, let’s see, do you have any questions for me?

So, your super power, how do you use that to better the world?

Well, that’s only one super power I have, well I actually, my shirt right now says “Dare to Dream”.

Oh cool.

I also have one that says, “My Super Power is Kindness.”

Oh, I love that.

So, that’s what you were saying. So, some of my super powers are, I have the power to bend time. So if I’m super excited to go somewhere I don’t necessarily want to wait two more hours to go, I speed up the time.

Okay, you gotta tell me how to do that. I need to know how to slow down time.

It’s just something you do in minds. It’s all in the, you believe you can do it, you can do it.

I like that. ‘Cause I believe if you believe in something strong enough, you can definitely make it happen.

That’s what I say sometimes, like if some of my friends are like, “I can’t do, I’m a terrible singer.” I say, “Well, if you say you can’t sing, guess what? You’re not gonna be able to sing.  But if you say you can and you’re a great singer, you will be the best singer ever.”

Yes.

It’s just that simple. You change your language.

Yes, very, very, very wise advice.

So, do you have any kids of your own?

I do. I have a son, he is 28 and a half.

Nice. Cool. So, what is his name?

Allen.

So, how many pets do you have at home?

I have three cats and a dog.

You were saying you had a cat earlier, before we started taping.

Yeah, I actually have three cats and a dog and I love cats. My cat here, Microphone right here. I’m the proud cat lady.

So, I was actually before we started the interview, I was looking on your Instagram account and I saw that you met Hayley Rose, she’s like my best friend.

Oh, that’s so cool.

…

I can see why, she is so sweet and she is just so much fun and we met, gosh, August of 2017 and we just connected immediately.

Yeah, I like that. Actually I did a product review for her books and the little toy Louis, the she gave me, a little stuffed dragon about that big.

Oh cool.

Do you know the characters, the character in her book?

I know Fifo, that’s the one that I’m familiar with.

Yeah, there’s a dragon, his name is Louis. The dragon manners.

Well, that’s a good thing for dragons to learn, manners.

Especially saying they’re all fire-breathing.

Exactly, right, can you imagine, “Hi, blaaaah.”  That’s so good.

What if they burp, you’re gonna burp out fire into your friend’s face.

I know. That would not be good. I don’t want to be there.

…learn manners.

I’m glad Haley Rose is teaching.

So, I see you have a little Groot in the background, have you seen Guardians of the Galaxy 2?

Of course, I have and I love that movie.

Uh-hunh. I agree. It’s so cool.

And I love little baby Groot when he starts dancing and stuff, he so cute.

Yeah, he’s adorable.

Yes.

So, you are writing a book called Unleash Your Inner Superpowers. Can you tell me little bit about that?

Yeah, it actually came out last year, November 2017, it’s right here with me, you can’t really see it well. Unleash your Inner Superpowers. Backwards on your screen I’m sure and the premise behind the book is that we all have inner superpowers like we talked about in the very beginning, but most of us don’t recognize that these are super power and because we don’t know they’re super powers, we don’t know how to use them to create the life that we all want and deserve.

So, in this book I talk about seven specific inner superpowers and I chose these seven out of the hundreds that we have because these particular seven can really help you to destroy your fear and your self-doubt and that’s where this book is really focused on.

Yeah, I hear you. I like that. So that’s a true statement. There’s powers that maybe can just be for fun, like time-bending, when you don’t want to wait two, three hours to go to the park you just speed up the time, that’s for fun. But, if you have like, stuff like, Wonder Woman super powers like that, then that’s something that could change the world.

We have these amazing powers within our body.

Most definitely. So with Wonder Woman, one of the things that she is so incredibly good at demonstrating her power, is her body. You probably seen her movies where she’s just standing there with her arms on her hips nice and strong and confident like that, yeah. That’s one of the super powers I talk about in the book. We have these amazing powers within our body that can either increase our confidence level or decrease our confidence level and just as simple as standing like this, helps me to feel more confident and look more confident, versus like this, right.

If you’re standing, like if you’re hands are in front of your stomach or something like that.

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Then that’s, you’re just holding them like this in front of your stomach, then that’s more showing you’re a little bit scared. Like when I spoke to those 2,500 people, there were times where I wanted to do that, but I said, nope, I’m not gonna do that because that is not showing confidence and it’s actually interesting. So you know if you’re speaking to a littler crowd versus a big crowd, with me I would expect that I would be more scared in front of 2000 people than 10 and 20 people, but it’s interesting, when I’m at the 2000 people it feels like I’m home, not like 10 people, probably because you know most of the people believe in you and then 10 people, you don’t know how many of those people believe what you’re doing, right.

So, I am so impressed that you spoke in front of 2000 people. I saw your clip and it’s amazing.

Thank you.

The biggest group I spoke to is probably 400 people and that was kind of scary at first, but like you said, you just can’t let your mind talk you into being scared, right.

What I should have done at the end, before walking off that stage, I should have just trust fallen, off the stage.

That would have been epic.

Because they would have caught me.

Of course they would. That would have been epic.

They would have been, oh no, Neva’s falling, we better catch her.

Well, you know, I am sure you’ll have another opportunity to do that sometime in the near future.

I am going to do that next time.

Awesome.

Okay, so we need to take a quick break. So we’ll be right back talking to Jacqui Letran about Confident Young Entrepreneurs. We’ll be right back.

Listen to her previous interview with Tonya Dawn Recla at SuperPower Up!: Teaching Teens How to Be More Confident

To know more about Jacqui Letran, you may visit JacquiLetran.com

Visit SuperPowerExperts.com/theNET for more!

To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.