Michele PW (Pariza-Wacek) Michele PW (Pariza Wacek), a copywriter and best selling author, joins Tonya Dawn Recla as she talks about her superpowers and building businesses based in love. Michele started as a freelance copywriter in 1998 and eventually grew an internationally known copywriting and marketing company that has helped her clients sell millions of dollars worth of products, programs, and services. Over the years, she had the experience of not only going through her own business-growing-pangs but assisting her clients through theirs. That experience is what she drew upon to author her bestselling “Love-Based Business” book series along with helping entrepreneurs all over the world grow business they love and that love them back. Listen in as she shares her deep wisdom about love.

Hello everyone. This is Tonya Dawn Recla, your Super Power Expert, and I have with us today Michele Pariza Wacek. I’m so excited to say your full name. Michele Pariza Wacek, and it’s Michelle PW, and she is lovely, so you all are in for a real treat. I love when we have these amazing guests on the show who merge these worlds of like the real practical and check the boxes and concrete here in the physical reality, but also they get it, right? They’re tapped in.

So she does these love-based concepts, and today we’re going to talk about Based In Love. She writes books about it, she’s the best selling author, and she inspires others to really approach things from a very different vantage point than what we’re used to. And so approaching business, marketing, everything from the perspective of love. So of course, here at Super Power Experts, we adore when that concept can get woven into everything that everybody’s doing. So without further ado, let’s go ahead and welcome her to the show. Welcome, Michelle. Thank you for joining us.

Well, thank you so much for having me.

Oh, absolutely. It’s my pleasure. So let’s jump right in, right away before we start talking about books and all of the amazing stuff you’re doing in the world, and first ask what are your superpowers?

I was raised in the practical no woo woo anywhere

I was raised in the practical, no woo woo anywhere.

Oh, so I think my big superpower is, well, I’ve got a few of them. I mean, one of the things is, I came from the realm of copywriting and marketing. So copywriting is obviously writing copy for businesses, and direct response copy. And one of the things that were a real big superpower was, I was really able to feel what people wanted to hear from businesses. And it is kind of a woo woo, you know, it’s interesting because I grew up, it’s so funny listening to you because I grew up, my dad’s a scientist. He’s a cancer researcher. So I was totally in the practical, and no woo-woo anywhere, so when I realized that I had this superpower, it was kind of strange because there was no actual basis of it. But that’s one of the reasons why I was so successful and so able to help my clients, is because I could really tap into what people wanted to hear, and really give that to them. So that was one of the big ones.

I’m having this little conversation in my mind, I’m like, “Oh my god, that’s so cool.” Da, da, da, da, da, da. Sorry. Occupational hazard in operating some of these phases. So I love the idea of the based on the practical, and no woo-woo anywhere. I love that concept. But in addition to that, what I think is so fascinating is how you read together this dialogue around copywriting, right, which is so specific in its approach, but what we’re learning is the idea that we have to work in this kind of more humanitarian, heart-based, emotion-based, like that’s what sells, right? So I’m always fascinated with the art of really, really good copywriting, both from the technical aspect but also from the pull, right? That attractive principle. What is your experience been with all that?

So it’s really interesting that you’d say that, because what happened with … Okay, one of the things that I realized about traditional, direct response copy that I call fear-based, and it’s funny because I have some reservations about calling fear-based emotions fear based, even though they are because I don’t want people to … It sounds very negative and judgmental, and the reality is those fear-based emotions, and fear-based emotions are like fear, greed, anger, shame, guilt. They have a place. Part of being human is they’re here and they do serve us in some capacity. So the idea is not to turn them off, the idea is to be welcome to what they have to say in our human existence, which is hard because they don’t feel very good, and I get it, but the reality is that running away and trying to numb ourselves, and not feel, it doesn’t work either.

But one of the things that I started to realize with traditional fear-based selling and fear-based marketing and fear-based copy, why so many people find it so icky, and you listening to it probably realize it too. It’s like the used car salesman, the slimy and authentic and all of that other stuff. It’s because it’s tapping into fear-based emotions. And here’s what’s happening. Let’s say you have a bad day at work, and then you’re really upset, so what do you do? You go home, and you have a drink because that’s how you deal with it.

Well, what traditional fear-based selling is, is that it’s basically triggering emotions. Usually, it’s fear or shame, and with that, so it’s triggering those emotions and so then the implied promise is if you buy the product or the service, those emotions will go away. So it’s almost like you are actually triggering that cycle that we have around like you have a bad day, you have a drink, you have a bad day, you start a fight with your spouse, you gossip, all the ways that we use to avoid feeling our emotions. That’s precisely the cycle that’s going on with our marketing. So part of what’s so great about the love based side of it is, we’re not into that cycle anymore. So it’s a way to help not only evolve ourselves as humans but evolve the whole human race.

I see more and more companies, more and more people opting out. And it’s like it just doesn’t feel good. I remember coming out of the counterintelligence realm and it was, I mean there was a lot there that just didn’t feel good, right? It was probably one of the most paranoid industries in the world. And I remember for a long time I was super resistant to anything that was, I don’t know, that even danced around fear. I even tell people this story of where it’s like, when my husband and I left government, we set out to be corporate trainers or something because we just didn’t want anything to do with any of that anymore.

And of course, as we entered into entrepreneurship, everybody wanted us to use the skills that we had used in the government, and I was like, no. We had a two-year-old daughter, I was like I want rainbows and unicorns. I don’t want to know that people are being deceptive. I don’t want to think that businesses aren’t doing what they say they’re going to do. Like I really just wanted to be Pollyanna-ish, and I just didn’t want anything to kind of silly that. And of course, the magic, the secret sauce is always in the intersection. But that was the experience.

What I took from that, and that staunch kind of standpoint that I had early on was, “I get to choose.” I get to choose where I’m putting my energy, and I get to choose what companies I’m listening to, and I get to choose whether or not to turn on a news channel, and I get to choose what infiltrates my day to day existence. And what a lot of us superpower experts stand to do is to remind people that they have that choice, and to assist them in evoking it rather than feeling at the mercy of something. And I do see that trend that a lot of people are opting out of that fear-based kind of concept.

Exactly. And that’s really, because it’s not, I don’t want to say, I mean it still can work and part of what I feel like I’m doing is, I’m here to educate so that you can make your choice, because I’m not here to be judgmental and say you have to use love based, well, that’s not very love based. But-

I love it. Love based is doing it my way.

We can help uplift the entire species

We can help uplift the entire species.

Exactly. So there’s always a choice. And my hope is that the more other people, for all of you who are listening, if you’re inspired by this, and you start to live this way, then you’ll inspire other people. Because it’s not really … It’s something that other people need to feel, experience and be inspired by in order to start the shift themselves. So I feel like we can just really start this whole movement and really just help us as a species, really up-level how we interact with each other and the rest of the planet.

I love that. So we’re going to take a quick break. We’ve been talking with Michelle P.W. about Based In Love. And when we come back, what I really want to tackle is, I think now the flip side around, the fear that the love based stuff can’t work. And how do you really build in that? So let’s take a quick break, but stick with us and we’re going to give you some tips on how to make sure that can work in your business. So stay with us, and we’ll be right back.

Find out more about Michele Pariza Wacek at LoveBasedBiz.com.

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