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Ladies Kickin' Ass
Welcome to "Ladies Kickin' Ass," the podcast where kickass women in the service and trades industries spill the real tea on making it big. Twice a week, host Tanya Wilson brings you the gritty, the pretty, and everything in between.
Catch us every week for a deep dive with a powerhouse entrepreneur. Hear her raw, unfiltered story—from breaking ground in her field to celebrating the ups and downs while scaling her business. These aren’t just chats but your battle plans for crushing it in your business and life!
Then, swing by later in the week for some fierce coaching. Whether from Tanya or a top-notch industry expert, you get the insider tips you need. We’re talking nitty-gritty business & life tactics—from whipping your systems into shape to mastering the art of a kickass workplace vibe and all the marketing savvy you’re skeptical about but seriously need. But let's not forget, it all starts with our mindset, so we'll pepper in some amazing support from women specializing in health, wellness, parenting, and personal development.
"Ladies Kickin' Ass" isn’t just a podcast; it’s your new squad. Here, you’ll link up with fellow badass women, share war stories, swap wisdom, and find tools to amp up your business and life! For every service-based entrepreneurial woman hustlin' to make her mark—welcome home. Let’s rise up and kick ass together!
Ladies Kickin' Ass
#129 - How to Crush Perfectionism and Embrace Your Best Self with Naeemah Elias
Ever felt like life was throwing you curveballs at every turn? Join us on this transformative episode of the Ladies Kickin' Ass Podcast as we sit down with Naeemah Elias, a trailblazing coach whose journey from the gritty streets of Chicago to the hallowed halls of Harvard will leave you inspired. Naeemah opens up about the trials and triumphs of navigating a world that often felt foreign, her struggle with perfectionism, and her relentless pursuit of success amidst personal and professional setbacks. From her early days influenced by her entrepreneurial parents to her rebirth as a powerhouse coach and single mother in Boston, Naeemah's story is a testament to resilience and the power of reinvention.
Ever wondered how to balance the demands of family life with personal growth? We dive into practical strategies for harmonizing family routines and communication, emphasizing the importance of individualized approaches for each child's needs. Discover how perfectionism can rob us of precious family moments and personal joy and learn the magic of allowing children to grow at their own pace. Naeemah shares her insights on the value of intentional breaks and staycations, shedding light on how these moments of relaxation can rejuvenate not just us but our entire household.
Tired of the hustle and bustle leaving you drained? This episode explores the importance of reclaiming time for self-care and finding calm amid chaos. Naeemah delves into her personal experiences with burnout, sharing how meditation, therapy, and mindful breaks transformed her life.
Learn about powerful tools like the Mindvalley app and Gay Hendricks' "The Big Leap," and how they can help you overcome imposter syndrome and expand your capacity for joy. We also discuss the importance of community and collaboration in personal growth, highlighting the transformative journey from corporate life to entrepreneurship and the joy of thriving in a self-directed career. Don't miss out on these invaluable insights and uplifting stories of growth and empowerment!
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Welcome to the Ladies Kickin' Ass Podcast, where we help you ignite your inner badass and create the service business of your dreams. I'm your host, Tanya Wilson, and together we'll dive into inspiring stories and expert coaching to set your journey on fire hey, ladies, welcome back to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Today we have an incredible guest with us.
Speaker 2:Naima is joining us.
Speaker 2:She's a powerhouse woman who has transformed her life experiences into a mission to help others break barriers and unlock their full potential.
Speaker 2:Naima has navigated a journey filled with challenges, resilience and amazing achievements, and I'm so excited for this dynamic coach to be able to dig in with us today and we're just going to kind of go there and talk a little bit about motherhood, starting a business, being a single mom to you know, trying to figure out how to navigate all the things and not beat the shit out of yourself about how you're not showing up perfectly all of the time and you know all of those things.
Speaker 2:It's a really good, feel good conversation to have two women that have really have been at the depths of like oh shit, to now being able to see like they've built two really awesome businesses. I think a lot more women need to be able to see women that have done this and talk about the struggles, of how they got there and this 10, you know overnight success. That was really 10 years of really really hard work. So, naima, thank you for taking the time to be with us today, and why don't you give us a little bit about your background and what some of those little struggles were and what you enjoy doing for work today?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Thank you so much, Tanya.
Speaker 2:I'm excited to be here and to talk about kicking ass with you today.
Speaker 3:So I grew up in poverty on the south side of Chicago and my parents are both entrepreneurs by spirit but with no resources right. So not having the ability to start a business, not having the ability to really sort of scale anything, they did little things. They made things and sold things. So I grew up in a space where entrepreneurship was valued, but I also grew up in poverty, as I said, and so the ability to get out of our circumstances really focused on education, of our circumstances really focused on education. So working really hard. And I learned young that I had to be perfect, everything had to be perfect, I had to get everything right, I had to get straight A's, I had to show up, I had to do all of the right things, I had to present myself the right way, everything had to be perfect. And I carried that with me well into my 30s, that with me well into my 30s. And it was really hard to always be perfect. It was really hard to always. I was so hard on myself, right, I was always hard on myself. So I got the straight A's, I did really well in high school and then I went to Harvard and so this was kind of a big deal right, like it wasn't common obviously you know from my town, from my school for somebody to go someplace like Harvard. And I talk about thriving as an outsider in my business, talk about being an outsider. I came from a space where I didn't always have food on the table and now I'm in this bastion of wealth and privilege and success and it was so strange for me, it was so odd. I didn't fit in, I didn't feel like it made sense, but I was still trying to be perfect, I was still trying to get everything right and I realized really early on that I was not the smartest person in the world, that I was not the smartest person in the room. And then I had so much that I had to learn. And so I went through the Harvard experience, sort of reciting myself, readjusting to where I fit in the world and being a little fish in a big pond instead of being that big fish in the little pond that I was before.
Speaker 3:So after I finished college, I went off and was a professional actress for a few years and had an amazing experience doing that. I toured as a puppeteer for a year and a half, which was really fun, and then I decided I wanted to be a mom, and it was this moment. It was it's time. I'm ready to be a mother and I wasn't ready to be a wife. I didn't understand what it meant to be a wife. I couldn't really get my head around what that was. I just wanted to be a mother.
Speaker 3:So got together with a childhood friend. We had a couple of kids. We were together for some years and I was unhappy. I was very unhappy and I lost my job. I had to file for bankruptcy, and so right after my third child was born, I found myself unemployed, with terrible credit, three children moving in with my in-laws and going to food pantries to get food to feed my children, and so everything had just fallen apart and I was at this point where I had to figure out how to restart my life.
Speaker 3:And so I ultimately, you know, I connected with a recruiter friend of mine who found an opportunity for me to move back to Boston, and at 35, I was back in a new city, three kids filing for divorce, restarting my career, not enough money to pay my rent, right, like everything was just kind of starting from scratch. And I asked my mom. I was like I need help. Can you? You know, can you come help me? Can you come help me? You know to figure this out. And she said, absolutely, but I won't be your husband. I was like, well, what does that mean? And she's like I've got too many girlfriends whose daughters moved back in with them and their lives became being their daughter's partner, raising their daughter's children, and they never were able to move on with their lives. They were never able to sort of recontinue their life trajectory. They just sort of reset as the co-parent for their grandchild. And she said I'm not going to do that. So you're going to build your career, you're going to date and you're going to reset yourself. And then I'm going back on the road, I'm going to go back to traveling, hanging out, doing the things that I want to do. This isn't my stopping point. And I was like, okay, twist my arm. If I have to date, I guess I'll date.
Speaker 3:So I did restart my life and I did get intentional about building my career and so at this point I was working at State Street and at State Street my day job was doing process design, transformation work. But I found this passion around training and developing people. I took my theater background and I was training the introverts and the researchers to speak in front of audiences. I was coaching young professionals and helping them to navigate their careers and ask for what they wanted and really kind of get outside of their comfort zone. And I did this coaching and training on the side for years and years and years. At some point I was hired to actually build a program to help to move people around the company, to do this mobilization work, so instead of laying people off, we can move them into new roles. And after years, after a decade of doing this coaching work, I realized that this is my life, this is who I am, this is what I want to be my purpose.
Speaker 3:And so in 23, I had the privilege of being laid off. I call it a privilege, right. I had the opportunity to leave the organization and to have some time to really kind of reset and rethink where I wanted to be. And I talked and networked and connected with all these different folks. And then I accidentally found a client. And then I accidentally found another client. I said, oh, I think I started a business. You know it. Just you know it kind of happened. And so then I reached out to all of these people that I had trained over the years and said, hey, this is the work that I want to do. Is there an opportunity for me to come and play at your company? And those people that I had helped out of the goodness of my heart and it wasn't my job were excited about the fact that I'm now doing this as a service and are bringing me into their companies. And so now my focus and my work is around helping people to thrive in corporate spaces, helping people with communication and confidence.
Speaker 3:And then I want to just kind of double back on the parenting piece of it, because you talk about, like the perfection, right? So, as a single mom with three kids they were two, four and six when I became a single mom there's no perfection. There's no perfection when you have two parents all in trying to get it right. But I was like there's no way I can do this on my own right. But the help that I needed was from the kids, right, and helping them to understand from the very beginning this isn't my house and you're living in it. This is our house and we are collectively responsible for it.
Speaker 3:So I got really intentional about teaching them independence, right, like I don't clean bathrooms. I hate cleaning bathrooms, and teaching kids how to clean bathrooms is really, really hard. But once you do it and you don't have to do it anymore, life changing right. And so helping the kids to learn the skills to have ownership, co-ownership of our household and feeling the responsibility for all of us to be able to thrive in this house was hugely important to me, and so I started a YouTube channel last year.
Speaker 3:I had been toying with the idea of a book and then I was working with a coach and we pivoted to a YouTube channel and I just sort of tell stories and I'm sharing. Like you know, here's how I approached teaching the kids to cook. Here's how I approached teaching them to clean up after themselves, how to clean a bathroom, taking public transportation right, like those kinds of things that they have to learn. But as parents, it's really hard for us to let go. It's really hard for us to let them do it poorly, let them fail and make mistakes and do it really poorly until they learn, because it's easier to just do it yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But I don't have the capacity or the emotional ability to do it myself. And then, finally, I'll touch on we'll say neurodivergence, right? So over the course of the years we've discovered sort of various levels of neurodivergence in each one of my kids. And then, as I'm connecting with them and understanding how they're approaching the world, I start to see similarities and I'm like, oh, I should get tested too, because that is the way you know. And so I have been, you know, like growing up, when we grew up, like none of that was a thing, like you just figured it out, right, but what if I had the language for it? What if I had tools that said you know, this is how your brain works and if you do this, it's actually going to make things easier for you. So I've been sort of navigating through undiagnosed neurodivergence and utilizing communication really to kind of help my kids to be successful, despite my insufficiencies, every step of the way. So that's my rambling story. It's a little bit all the pieces, but it's been joy.
Speaker 2:It's so good oh my gosh, there was so much goodness in there. I think for a lot of achievers, which is a vast majority of the people listening to this podcast, many of them are entrepreneurs in some aspect is that need for perfection? Yeah, and I truly believe that that comes from many different places. For me, I, oh, I'm horrible at this. I always want it like let's be the most efficient. My thing is like how efficient can we be at this? Like how can we make sense, how can we put it in a process and I think that's just from years of running a business too.
Speaker 2:Sometimes we have to realize that we can't run our personal lives in our homes like we run our business, you know, like it weren't, where we have employees and we pay them to do specific things that we ask them to do At home.
Speaker 2:We cannot be that perfection monster or that SOP person that we are at work. How have you, with what you've been doing, have you found a hack, a tip, a something where, if you are this person the boss, if you will, or the leader in a business and then you come home, like you talked about having different kinds of forms of communication with your kids? That's very true. Even so, with your husband, you know, or your spouse, when you come home and you're like you're still in like work mode and you have to come home and flip a switch and become mom mode and teach them and train them 50 times how to clean a bathroom, like, where have you been able to kind of like put that perfection down and be able to really like utilize it great in work, but being able to really be loving and have those different kinds of communication forms with your kids?
Speaker 3:So, tanya, I have to tell you I'm still learning, right. When my kids were younger, we had whiteboard lists in every room of every house, right? And so, like here's your end of the day, you know, get ready for bed list. Here's your after school list, here's your how to make a meal list, like, every room of the house had whiteboard stickers on the walls with to-do lists on them.
Speaker 3:And my kids communicate in different ways and they navigate the world in different ways, and so part of it for me was learning that I couldn't approach all of them the same way. Each one needed a different version of me to be able to achieve their own success. My middle child is profound with language, and so he gets really frustrated with me when I repeat myself he's just like I got it, you said it clearly the first time, you didn't need to say it a third time, and he gets frustrated when I'm not clear. And so, learning how to just kind of pause and be intentional about, like, what is the outcome that I want from the conversation, but also saying to him you have license to challenge me. You have license to say to me mom, I want you know, what I need from you in this moment is X Right.
Speaker 3:So he said to me once you always solve everybody's problems. Sometimes I just want to say what I want to say and I don't want you to solve my problems. And I was like great, okay. So when you come to me, I need you to say to me I just want you to listen or I need your help. And if you say I just want listening, mom, then I'll be listening, right, and with my husband.
Speaker 3:So we have been together for 12 years but we just got married this year and so he didn't live in our house and he didn't have to deal with like full on Naima all the time. But with him moving into the house, I realized that like I I do want everything to be just so, like I'll come behind him and like reorganize the dishwasher, yes and right, you know, and and and. So my mom told me in my first marriage early on she was just like if you want him to do things, you have to stop correcting him, because if he thinks that he can't do it right, he'll stop doing it all together and you'll end up doing everything, yep, like things yep like oh, that's uh really important, remember that yes, because they come in wanting to add value and wanting to be helpful, improve themselves and all of that.
Speaker 3:But if you keep correcting, then they'll, they'll check out right and you know. So I say to the kids I'm like my goal is not perfection, um, my goal is that you have these skills and you know how to do them. When you go out on your own, when you're living in your own house, you should know how to clean your bathroom. You should know how to wash your laundry, you know, and so I'm checking in occasionally. But you know I have to, like, check myself, right. I have to stop myself and and recognize they're not going to do things the way that I do them and my perfectionism is a shortcoming Right. It's not healthy, and so I don't need to impose my dysfunction on them. If they've learned the skill and they show that they're able to display the skill, then I just need to stand down and let them do it in their way. But it's a constant process for me, reminding myself you don't need to say anything else, you don't need to push any further, like, let it be, yeah, yeah yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:How do you think that that means for perfection, like having things perfect, like the dishwasher, like we can look at all these tangible things? But how do you think, mindset wise, that need for perfection has affected you personally.
Speaker 3:I know that I spend more time on things that don't matter than I should and that takes away my ability to spend time on things that would bring me joy. Right, and it's that simple, right. So you know, my son said to me once you don't always have to be doing something, mom, you should sit down, right. Right, and I know I want to spend time with my kids. I know I want to do things with them and I'm intentional about let's go out of the house, let's go do things in the world house, let's go do things in the world.
Speaker 3:One thing I started doing when they were smaller we had like no money is that we couldn't afford a vacation. We would do a staycation. So I would like, you know, book two nights at the Holiday Inn and, you know, with a swimming pool and it's, you know, no travel required, we would just like go and we'd all like cram into one room with two beds and they can go swimming three or four times. There's no laundry to be done, there's no cooking, there's no cleaning, it's just us hanging out, playing games and swimming, and I know that I'm removing myself from the pressure and responsibility of my house and I'm able to just sit and enjoy the space with my babies Right, and so I've, with my babies, right and so I've.
Speaker 3:I know that, like that's one of my like coping mechanisms, right, it's just like my strategies is, if I remove myself from the work that needs to be done, then I know I can relax and I can spend that time doing the things that I enjoy. Yesterday I had like a meeting at a government agency, so, like I gave myself the entire morning. I was like it's open from 830 to noon, I'm just going to be there from 830 to noon. Well, I finished what I needed to do by noon and instead of coming home and getting straight to work, I sat in a lobby and grabbed a cup of tea and read a book for two hours. Grabbed a cup of tea and read a book for two hours. Yes, right. So keeping removing myself from the space where the work is is a way to kind of give myself that space to have joy and indulge in the thing that that calms me and that gives me peace.
Speaker 2:Yes, we thank you so much for being so vulnerable and talking about that, because a lot of women just went oh we're talking, um, because I find myself it's like you were talking about me when you're talking about that. So I know there's other people that feel this way. Something I have started doing, which I never do, because my calendar. I was always so proud that it's very color coded and if it's purple, it's family, and if it's blue then it's work, and if it's pink then it's podcast and ladies kicking ass, and you know it's orange If it's a sports color, like it's so much.
Speaker 2:And I just sat down this last couple of weeks and I I had a small meltdown and I was like I am so busy all the time, like I don't follow up with my friends, I don't follow up with wonderful women I meet through this community, like I, how can I be more present? And I'm like how the hell could you be present when you're doing something all the time? Like I would, I, like I literally would go from one meeting to the next one and I'm like I'm going to be late on the Zoom because I got to run to the restroom and I haven't even scheduled enough time for myself to do that, let alone eat lunch or take a little walk or exercise or journal or do anything. It was like I would punish myself if I don't wake up at 430 in the morning to have me time, which was on my schedule.
Speaker 2:And for the record, 430 in the morning to have me time, which was on my schedule and for the record, 4, 30 in the morning is punishment well, and I I was like and then if I couldn't wake up because I didn't go to bed till late, because I was up doing crap, then I would be like, oh you're, you're letting yourself down. You know you're doing all this stuff. I just had to get into this. Like I cleared my entire week and I need to sit and focus, because we say like we want to spend time with our children our families are so important to us and we say this all the time but what my kids were seeing was that work was more important, that this meeting with someone else was more important, that I had to hurry and eat dinner and clean up real fast so I could go sit down and work some more. Yeah, that's what they're saying is important. So we say that things are important, but they're not. So I would super challenge people that, if you find yourself identifying in what we're talking about here, look at your calendar.
Speaker 2:We've always been taught, on a productivity phase oh, make it all pretty and make sure you time block, and you do all this. Where the hell is the time block for you, though? Like I just started stopping at Starbucks, I get my favorite little drink, I sit at a corner table and even if I am reading work emails or if I'm doing things that I feel like I never caught up on, or looking at my kids school in their grades and do they have like missing assignments, like all the things that we just don't make time for, but that's like my one hour a day that I get to sit and work on whenever I want to, if it's work, if it's something else, but I'm not at home doing laundry, which never ends with five children, I'm not cooking dinner, I'm not answering everyone's questions at work. I'm really taking time for myself. So, even if that is work stuff, but you're you're doing what you want to do and you're not always on someone else's agenda.
Speaker 2:I think that's the perfection too, because if you are a perfectionist, you are a people pleaser, which often means you end up putting yourself at the bottom of the list of everything, and we just really, really cannot do that anymore triggered right when I was working in corporate, my last couple of roles.
Speaker 3:I had stakeholders in Europe and I had stakeholders in Asia, so my call started at 7, 7.30 in the morning and I would have calls at 9.30 and 10 o'clock at night most days of the week, and there were times when I was running a global team where I might have three meetings at the same time and I had to figure out which one are we going to reschedule, which one I'm going to delegate and which one am I going to.
Speaker 3:And I would go through my workday and I'd get to about 5, 530 and there'd be a break. And that was a break for me to pause and think about what's everything that I told somebody I was going to do today. Am I shooting that to somebody else to do, or am I somehow going to figure out how to do it myself? But there was no time to do the actual work because I spent my entire life in overlapping meetings, and so when I started my business, one of the first things that I did when I set up my Calendly for scheduling, every meeting has a required buffer of half hour above and half hour below.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And so I no longer have that. Oh, my goodness, I'm not going to be able to go to the bathroom. Oh, my goodness, haven't eaten today. Right, there's going to be a half an hour in between every meeting for me to kind of reset, but if I need to send a quick email out afterwards, you know, with action items, whatever it is, that was a gift that I gave myself when I started my process, because I knew that I needed to have space to breathe. I knew that if I went into creating my own world in the mirror image of the corporate world that I lived, that I would go back to being burnt out just like I was when I was working in corporate.
Speaker 3:So that half hour, you know it means that the meeting can run long by 10 minutes, and that's okay, right, and I still have time to go put a load in the wash. I still have time to pause and talk to my kid before they run out for their activities and whatever it is that needs to be done. And if anybody wants my attention in the house three kids, husband, mom if anybody needs my attention in the house, at most I'll be available within an hour, right, and actually have time to engage. But I have all the colors and it's not family and work, it's like each kid has their own color and I have my own color and my husband has his own color, and there's a color for when I'm presenting and there's a color for business development and there's a color for coaching clients and all of those things. So like I can look at it and I'm like, oh, I'm doing great, I'm really balancing and all of that.
Speaker 3:But there's also those spaces, and those spaces are incredible because I feel like, you know, if I have a coaching session and someone is emotional and they're having a really tough time, I can't go directly from that into running a workshop for a corporation, right, right, I have to have that space to reset myself Because you know as much as as a coach, it's not my problem, it's your problem and I'm supposed to be helping you through it. I'm still absorbing the emotional qualities of this experience. I'm human and and I need to be able to have my human reset and sometimes that's just go in my room, close my door, put on a meditation sound and just have something in the background to just kind of calm my mind and my you know, my brainwaves before I step into the next thing, so that the starting meditation about a year and a half ago was one of the most powerful things I could have done for myself. Um, and being intentional about creating space for myself to breathe, um, it's just, it's huge huge.
Speaker 2:It's everything, it's everything. And I think for women that are like go, go, go, go go all the time for me, I kept saying I'm not a meditator, I don't do breath work, so that's not me I don't go, I laugh like if I'm gonna go work out, I want to punch something.
Speaker 2:You know, I really had that mindset and I was like the more I would I would go to events or something and they do like a breath work session or a meditation or something. And I remember doing a Tony Robbins program and Masterco was on there and that it was something I had never felt before, like just total. I don't know what it was with his voice, but I was just like totally calm, yeah, and it scared the shit out of me like why does this feel weird to be calm? Because I've been so much in that like go stop, and when you grow up kind of in, uh, I gotta show up so that somebody sees me, you know, um, you're in that fight or flighty type of mentality all the time.
Speaker 2:To feel calm feels very weird. But it is also something that has really helped me be able to get out of that cycle of going, going, going, going, going always have to be producing. If I'm not I don't have a color on my block today then that means I'm lazy today. That kind of impacted you too in learning to slow down and not having that negative self-talk that shows up of like if I'm not busy doing, then I'm lazy, like when your kid says you know, mom, you could sit down. My kids say that to me all the time. My husband really says that to me all the time and I'm like when I sit down I get that feeling of like I'm not being productive. How have you dealt with that, overcoming that perfectionism?
Speaker 3:So I think you know we start with the fact that I had complete burnout in corporate. Right, I had a point where I was exhausted. I was giving my all. I was working two full time jobs. Right, I had the day job I was paying for. I was giving my all. I was working two full-time jobs. Right, I had the day job I was being paid for. And then I had the additional work that I was doing on the side, coaching and advising.
Speaker 3:I was dealing with leaders who were, I'll say, protectors of the status quo and who weren't interested. They said that they were interested in the work and being intentional about creating space for people who don't have a seat at the table. But then, when they got in the room with you, their focus really was figuring out all the different ways that they could shut you down. And that was stressful for me because I was just like well, no, like everybody said that they that this was important, this is work that they wanted to do. And I got to a point where, you know, my husband, who was my fiance at the time, said to me you're angry all the time.
Speaker 3:You're exploding rage all over the house and everywhere. And I had to go into therapy and a year into my therapy process, my therapist said to me. She said I want us to take a moment to reflect. She said when you first came to me, you said I'm so angry and I can't imagine ever not being angry again. I said oh my God.
Speaker 3:I said that I said oh my God, I said that, and so I was angry, I was frustrated, I was overwhelmed, I was exhausted, I was completely burnt out and I was just exploding, like I couldn't contain or control my emotions. Yeah, so therapy, meditation I went through a whole nutrition program changed my relationship with food. I left my corporate job. I spent a summer traveling and communing with my children. I started my business. I lost 60 pounds.
Speaker 3:I had a year of transformation that was just completely off the charts, and now my prioritization of joy and giving myself space impacts how I interact in every circumstance, right and so, yeah, like if I have a half hour break, I like, literally just before we started, I went and sat down and watched half of an episode of American Horror Story. I was just like I've got a few minutes, I'm going to sit and just entertain myself. Like I said yesterday, I took two hours and I read a book. I know that I can go, go, go, go, go. I know that, because I did that my entire life, that I can go without sleeping. I used to joke sleep is overrated and I would get four to five hours of sleep.
Speaker 3:Three or four nights a week, and so I was operating at a consistent level of sleep deprivation. Well, we know that sleep deprivation counters like levels of drunkenness, right, in terms of your ability to function in the world, right no-transcript to have those moments, you know, each one can get a little bit longer, right? Like you know, when I started off meditating, I could do four minutes, six minutes, right, and now I can sit in calm for half an hour, right, I couldn't have imagined that two years ago. And so practicing calm, practicing patience with yourself, practicing moments of quiet, helps you to kind of build up your tolerance for, you know, for self-care. Why do we have to have tolerance for self-care? Right, but you build that tolerance and you find that space. So there's two things I want to toss out in terms of recommendations. So one is Vishen Lakhiani is the person who, like, transformed my mindset. He's got an app called Mindvalley and it's a collection of all of these gurus and you can find the path to meditation that makes sense for you, because there's 50 different meditation leaders in that space. There's nutrition programs, there's sleep programs, there's design, your life programs, there's all of this stuff. So the Mindvalley app has been huge to me, and then the book that I assign in my workshops and my trainings, that I bring to my off sites and that I mentioned all of the time, is the Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, and this idea of being comfortable with your zone of incompetence, like the concept of the zone of incompetence, helped me to understand my relationship with imposter syndrome and that's not what it's meant to be, but it literally reset my brain around imposter syndrome and allowed me to step out of it and say, oh, that's not imposter syndrome, that's just shit I don't want to do. You know right. And if I don't let anybody push me into that space, then I don't have to worry about whether I'm good at it or not. I don't want to do it Right. So, like allowing yourself to have a zone of incompetence and just being like, yeah, I'm cool with that. He also has a mantra in there that I love and a bunch of other things about this concept of your upper limit.
Speaker 3:And so you grew up a perfectionist like me and it's like we have all these things that we have to do right all of the time, and we also were taught a capacity for happiness and a capacity for joy. So, as children of excellence, we were taught don't make your brother uncomfortable, don't show off, don't bring too much attention to yourself. There's all these things, these don'ts around your excellence and your joy, and so you've been taught to tamp it down, tamp it down, tamp it down. As an adult, when you start to reach that threshold of joy that you set for yourself as a six-year-old, you start to sabotage yourself because you're not supposed to, you're not supposed to express that joy, you're not supposed to sit in it and you can't sit in it for too long and you can't expand it, because you learned that you aren't supposed to. So the big leap was like really powerful for me in terms of being able to stop upper limiting and allow myself to really sort of lean into my joy and expand it continually.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's so good. That book is incredible and I think when you read that book you read it more than once. Yes, you get something out of it every time. So if you have read the Big Leap before I know we've talked about that on other podcasts that we've recorded too it's a fan fave in this community. Yeah, I mean again if you haven't read it for a while, because it is amazing how it becomes applicable to those things that you're really working through at that moment. It's one of those good ones that would be like it's not a, it's a pretty quick read. So it's like one of those you could definitely have on an annual cycle and you'd be like, oh my gosh 100%.
Speaker 3:So I read it before I started my transformation and then I read it again this year and what spoke to me in that book, when I was still in the midst of all of the things, was completely different than what spoke to me after I had started my own business. Right, it was just. It was a completely different book and so, absolutely, you got to read it multiple times.
Speaker 2:And as you start building your confidence and building your life, your upper limit changes. And building your life, your upper limit changes. Yes, and many times you can be. You know, start here and be up five rungs and then you reset yourself back down here for some reason.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I think that's happened to a lot of us so it's like, oh shit, I don't belong up here, and then you end up falling back down or you kind of sometimes people refer to it as self-sabotage, whatever you want to call it. There's plenty of little like labels to go on it but really just continuing to know that that is there and it really is a thing, and if you're continuously paying attention to it, you don't climb five and drop three.
Speaker 2:You might drop one and then realize what am I doing and get back on that.
Speaker 3:So I think that is that's awesome One thing that I am in this moment. Right, I'm having a moment the way he talks about going through this journey with Kathleen, right, and I listened to the audio book. I don't know if you've done that. You should absolutely do it that way one time too right, but going through this journey with Kathleen and being able to support each other and recognize when the other is upper limiting, if you surround yourself with people who are not achieving not achieving right, but who are not trying to live their joy or who don't know how to live their joy, it's really easy to get pulled back down because you're not with other people who are trying to live in that space. So, recognizing how important it is to surround yourself with people who are trying to push their own upper limits and who are trying to push their capacity for joy, because you're doing it as a community and they can catch you when you fall and you can catch them when they fall and you're, all you know, elevating together- Absolutely.
Speaker 2:That's the whole purpose of this community. Is that? Because many times we look around and we're like's my people, like they expected to be answer, or your spouse, or your mom or your best friend, and those always scare people. My closest, closest circle of women, friends that I have very few of them live within 300 miles of me. We do a lot of this. We do a lot of phone calls. We do a lot of phone calls. We do a lot of texting each other, but we're building similar kinds of businesses there's, you know, you can find people one that you could help, two that you can collaborate with and three that you can learn from. I loved at the beginning of this, just a circle, full circle. When you said you know, you realized that you weren't the smartest person in the room anymore. That's when you know that you're on a trajectory of growth, when you know that because if you feel like you're the friend that everybody comes to for help all the time.
Speaker 2:Girl, you gotta find another circle to be a part of, and not that you can't help them. Please help them, because we need women to do that. But you need those people to help, that's right. Those people need you. So don't upper limit yourself on what that community looks like because it feels comfortable, because it sucks, going in a room being like, oh my God, like I know in here, it's absolutely incredible. I'm actually working with a team right now. We're developing a franchise and I sit in these meetings.
Speaker 2:We went through our FTV disclosure, which is like the big disclosure to sell the franchise, yesterday and I was like I feel like I need an interpreter. I I know my industry so well and I know what a success this can be, will be, but just I get lost in all of the lawyer speak, that is, in all of these documents that I'm like I had to like take a few minutes afterwards and be like this is a new level for you. I had to journal about this. This is a new level for me that I haven to journal about this. This is a new level for me that I haven't been in for a long time. I've been the boss, I've been the leader of this business for years and now I'm coming into something where I'm learning from people and I'm not the one that people are going to, I'm the one asking the questions. And what an opportunity for growth.
Speaker 2:It is so, so uncomfortable, but if you find yourself in a very comfy, comfy circle of people, you got you got to seek out those ones that you aspire to be, the people that you're watching. Reach out to them. It's amazing how many people I have reached out to, even just podcasts I listened to and I'm like that podcast was badass today and this is why it helped me. Thank you so much for talking about this, and it is amazing how many people that you think are completely untouchable respond to you and say one thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Because they rarely get the validation that they're trying. You know they're not seeking them, but they rarely get like oh, wow, we're actually making an impact and helping. Many times you're doing that very silently and nobody ever says anything. A lot of times people end up giving up because they feel like they're not making an impact. Meanwhile there's 100 people over here like dying for a next episode to come out, or dying for a new event to come out or a new course or something, a new book that you're writing. So it's just like reaching out and being able to say, hey, I'd love to learn from you. It's amazing how many people have have done that. How have you done things like that in your life to improve your circle of influence around you?
Speaker 3:So, like I said, when I was in corporate, I was being brought into rooms to coach and to teach and to train, especially young professionals who were sort of coming up, and so I got really used to being, you know, that go-to person.
Speaker 3:But I'll tell you, corporate, it will humble you, right. And so I frequently in my day job, found myself in rooms where I had no idea what I was doing. I'd have leaders say, hey, I'd love for you to come and join my team. And I'm like, well, I don't know anything about that. And they're like, we'll figure it out together. So each time I changed roles which was maybe every two years, slightly less every time I changed roles, I found myself in a room where I had no idea what I was doing. So I got comfortable with change and with learning spaces, you know, really early I also had just really incredible mentors who would tell me you're getting this absolutely wrong. And how powerful that is. Right, naima, this is absolutely not what we need here. Right, like, okay, right, help me understand, right. And so getting that kind of feedback, having people not just say you know you're failing, but like this isn't what we need, rethink it, this is the desired outcome, help us get to that and giving me a chance to try again to iterate until we got to the space where we were designing what we really needed to design. Um, what I learned from those experiences was that I get so much from being in the room with people who have more experience than me and who know more than me, and in my corporate world it was really easy to cultivate that. I had leaders that I respected. Every time I was looking for a transformation, a new opportunity, I would go on a roadshow of you know meetings and teas and coffees with them so that I could ask for guidance, I could ask for their feedback, I could ask for introductions, and that was a powerful, you know, tool for me to be able to kind of move through my corporate career.
Speaker 3:When I stepped out on my own, I very quickly realized that most of my conversations with my friends and my colleagues were about the struggles of working within the confines of a corporation, and while I could add value in those conversations, they no longer added value for me because I wasn't in that space anymore. So I have had this amazing network where people have introduced me to other consultants. I have three or four consulting networks that I've joined that have monthly calls where we talk about our challenges, we share our experiences, different communities of folks, or join communities of folks who are on the same journey that I'm on, either new to starting a business or have been running their own business for a while and are sort of grappling with the challenges of being an entrepreneur, being a boss, those kinds of things. And so now you know, my community today is completely different than what it was two years ago, because these are folks who share the challenges that I'm experiencing, who are asking some of the same questions and some folks have been entrepreneurs for 18 years and others have been entrepreneurs for 18 months and sometimes I can offer insight not a lot. Most of the time they're offering insight and I'm absorbing.
Speaker 3:But you know, I told my son at one point I'm like I never again want to be the smartest person in the room. I'm really intentional about surrounding myself with people who inspire me and help me to grow, to be the next best version of myself, and it's been really incredible because I see myself growing. I see myself changing right, like Tanya two years ago, if you'd asked me if I was going to start a business, I would have unequivocally said no, absolutely not. I have no interest in being a business owner. And now I'm thriving, I'm sitting in so much joy, and all of my work, all of my efforts are around helping people to elevate their lives, and I don't have to do anything else. Right, that's it, that's it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I love that. That's it. You know you can do what you want and that can be it. You don't always have to be doing it all and there will be great opportunities for people that continuously show up. You know, the strength is being able to say no to the things that aren't going to bring you joy, that aren't going to elevate your life. Just because you can doesn't mean you should, is one of my favorite things to say, because many of us doers will say but I could and you'll figure out a way to rearrange your life so that you can try to do something else, because we think we gotta be constantly moving and going yeah, so well, the no and the redirect is a really great way to give somebody else an opportunity, right, you ask me to do something and I absolutely like.
Speaker 3:I met a woman yesterday and she's just like I would love to partner with you, and here's what I'm thinking about. And as she described her business model, I was just like oh, I have a person who literally shares your vision and your purpose and who's building a nonprofit to do this work. You two should be partners for life. So I'm not going to take this on. I'm going to say no. And here's a person that you can build a relationship with and can you can do these things together, right? So my no doesn't have to be a shutdown. It can be an opportunity creation for somebody in my world who would love that opportunity that I don't want any part of.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love that so much. What a great, great way of thinking of that. It's so great. I remember a story from Dean Graziosi and he was talking about how his dad, the first time his dad came to like a big house that he had bought like a big, his first big home, and he had some a landscaper there mowing the lawn and his dad was very blue collar they grew up very poor was like why would you pay another man to do what is your responsibility? And his big thing with that was I'm giving this man the opportunity that I was given to be able to have that, you know, and I, for a long time I was like that too.
Speaker 2:I was like trying to run a business, I got five kids here, I got all this stuff and I was like I'm gonna hire something. Somebody had said to me you need to hire a house cleaner to come to your house at least. Then you would have to do that. And I was like like, yeah, responsibility, my job, it's my job. How I define myself as a woman. Yes, oh, my gosh.
Speaker 2:As we record this podcast, I'm like can somebody hear the vacuum out here? Because when I leave this podcast studio, my house is going to be gorgeous this morning, and I always have them come on Fridays because then I don't spend the entire weekend. I could be spending with my family cleaning my house, and you know what? It's a small operation. I know the person that owns this company. It is helping her build her dream while I'm in here building mine.
Speaker 2:And if we have more of that mentality, instead of thinking, oh, we have to do this, we got to do this, we got to do everything Like, how much more opportunity are we creating for people out there to live their dreams? You know we hold too tightly to things. It's the old sand adage. You know everything just slips away. But if you can, you know, invite people to the table and you can delegate some responsibility and employ people to be able to help you to keep your own mind and sanity. It can be a very beautiful life being an entrepreneur, absolutely, absolutely so, so good. Well, naeemah, if someone wants to reach out to you and connect with you, they want to learn more about you, what you do with your coaching programs. Where's the best place for them to find and support you?
Speaker 3:Absolutely, thank you. The best place to find me is on LinkedIn, so you can find me if you've so folks I'm looking for. If you are working in a corporate space and you feel like there's value in bringing someone in to do some public speaking coaching or some manager coaching, I can play there. If you are interested in life coaching, career coaching, those kinds of things, that's another space that I play. You can find me on LinkedIn, naima Elias, and so come, follow me, sign up for a free consultation. I'm happy to talk with you for 20 minutes and just kind of help think about like what do you need, like what helps you to elevate and step into that next step, and I would love to play. So reach out and let's connect and continue to build this amazing community.
Speaker 2:Awesome, awesome, and I will definitely link everything that you just talked about in the show notes to definitely collect or connect with Naima. This has been such an incredible conversation. You are like just the, the complete definition and epitome of what a lady's kicking a lady kicking ass is to me and it's observation of things.
Speaker 2:It really is, you know, going out and taking a risk and building a business and doing really cool things. But I always love to hear from everyone that is a guest on the podcast how they relate to that phrase. So when you hear the phrase ladies kicking ass Naima, what does that mean to you and your women?
Speaker 3:So I think it's a couple of things One, showing up at your best, but then two, recognizing that your best doesn't require perfection, right? So, being the best you that you can be and activating your community, asking for help and giving help, so that you are radiating your best self into the community around you.
Speaker 2:So good oh my gosh, so good. This was such an incredible conversation. I feel like I met my twin today in spirit and the way that we handle our lives. So thank you so much for sharing your time with us today and I look forward to continuing to connect with you.
Speaker 3:Absolutely Tanya. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:Thanks for being part of the ladies kick and ask community Cheers to all you badass women out there. Keep rocking your power, igniting your fire and making waves in the service industry. If you loved today's episode, please do me a quick favor. Take a screenshot, post it and tag us at Ladies Kicking Ass. Be sure to include the link to your favorite episode. Your support in spreading the word means the world to us as we aim to empower even more women. Hit that subscribe button to stay tuned for more kick-ass episodes. And don't forget a five-star review is the ultimate high five. Connect with us on social media. All the links are in the show notes. Thank you for being part of our tribe. Now go kick some serious ass, lady.
