Cathey Armillas on Speaking with Passion and Heart and Leaning into What Makes You Unique Water the Bamboo: Unleashing Your Potential

Cathey Armillas is a marketing strategist, presentation coach, author of The Unbreakable Rules of Marketing, and the How to ROCK a Ted Talk program, and in this episode, she joins Greg Bell for a tell-all discussion about Cathey’s career growth, why she leans into her uniqueness and encourages other to do the same, and shares speaking tips for listeners.
Don’t miss this incredible conversation with Cathey Armillas.
Episode Highlights:
00:56 - Cathey’s Water the Bamboo story 03:59 - Cathey’s surprise call from the David Letterman Show 05:29 - How Cathey navigated her career early on being a young woman in a male-dominated industry 07:59 - How Cathey began coaching Tedx speakers 10:21 - Cathey’s Bamboo Circle 14:20 - Mistakes made and lessons learned 17:27 - Speaking tips from Cathey 21:54 - “Bringing down the wall” in presentations 24:49 - Typical day and week for Cathey 27:48 - Where Cathey gets her energy 30:20 - What Cathey’s brother-in-law said to her when she started her business 33:09 - Advice Cathey would give herself at the age of 19 35:53 - What distractions came up for Cathey as she progressed in her career 39:27 - What makes Cathey unique 42:37 - Embracing what makes you different 46:31 - What’s Going Well for Cathey Guest at a Glance
Cathey Armillas is a Marketing Strategist and the author of the award-winning book, The Unbreakable Rules of Marketing: 9 ½ Ways to Get People to Love You (www.unbreakablerules.com). Whether in the boardroom or on stage, people love Cathey’s enthusiasm, passion and directness. She has been notorious for creating wildly successful marketing strategies.
As a speaker, Cathey teaches people the Unbreakable Rules of Marketing so they can use them in their efforts to get people to love them, and love what they do. Her Unbreakable Rules has helped reach millions of people and quadrupled her clients’ sales. In one example, she created a viral marketing campaign for a client by shredding items such as soccer balls, torpedoes, even a Volkswagen, and posting videos of them online. It landed the client on the David Letterman Show, CNN, CNBC, and the Discovery Channel.
Cathey shows her authenticity and heart as a TEDx speaker, TEDx speaking coach and organizer. Cathey knows speaking from an organizer’s standpoint from her experience volunteering behind the scenes at TEDxPortland. Portland hosts the one of the world’s largest TEDx event in the world with an attendance of over 3,000 people. Secondly, Cathey has coached many to rock their TED Talk from young rising star celebrities to WWII War heroes. She has also been invited to deliver her own TEDx Talk. Though thriving as a guru in marketing, her TEDx Talk is titled: “Share your life”. Cathey opened up and showed her vulnerable side as she shared her personal struggle for happiness and where she finally found it.
When companies need to reach people in unique ways, they call on Cathey Armillas. Her clients range from big brand companies like Intel, Nike and Xerox; to mid-sized companies like Color Dimensions, OBS, Tripwire and SSI Shredders; to cities, agencies and creative organizations like Viacom and Ogilvy.

Notable Quotes
“I think if you're a young woman, Or if you're a young man or if you're anybody and you have something in you and you really feel like it's going to work, I feel like you just have to voice your opinion.” “If you have something to sell to the world, sell it from the bottom of your heart and people will usually buy it.” “A Ted Talk is a mini-marketing campaign for an idea.” “I think anybody that reaches out to get help from other people is already heading the right direction.” “There are speakers sometimes even if they're talking about a story that's from their life, you can tell, they're just like, Oh, I've told this story a hundred times, I'm being a news reporter right now. I'm not reliving this story; I'm just retelling the story. And so I try to get people in t