← Young and Profiting with Hala Taha
Young and Profiting with Hala Taha
Shadé Zahrai: The Dangerous Mindset Secretly Holding Entrepreneurs Back | Mental Wealth Series | E3
01:17:53
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A
Hey Young and profits. When I think back to the early days of YAP Media, I was way too scrappy. I'm talking about working out of coffee shops, bouncing between public WI FI networks and hotspotting from my phone just to get through on a client call without the connection dropping. But looking back, it was actually adding a lot of unnecessary stress because you realize pretty quickly your business is only as strong as your connection. It's how you run meetings, serve clients and keep everything moving. And that's exactly why I wish I had AT&T business back then. AT&T business is a reliable provider for small business owners. For Small Business Month, we celebrate small businesses by helping them run better. This means reliable uptime, easy switching, smart communications. You need a provider that is as serious about your success as you are. Like AT&T business built to work. Get AT&T business@business.att.com that's business.att.com Today's episode is sponsored in part by Huel AT&T business. Through Mintly and Prolon, Huel makes nutritionally complete meals that you can drink. Get 15% off with my code yap15@heal.com yap15@&t business delivers reliable business grade connectivity that gives your team a competitive edge. Switch to ATT business@business.att.com millions of people trust Remitly to move money globally. Use Code Business to get a hundred dollar bonus to after you send $300 or more with Remitly to redeem, visit the Rewards tab on the Remitly app and enter the code Business Prolon puts you in the right fasting state so you can lose weight and reset your body. Get 15% off plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their five day program. Just visit prolonlife.com Profiting as always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or@youngandprofiting.com deals you
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B
talk about these common pitfalls we all encounter in this journey of entrepreneurship. You call them mind pits. Can you explain what these mind pits are that entrepreneurs face?
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C
A lot of people who are lurking on social media, they're in this space. They have these amazing goals. They want to run these amazing businesses and have these followings on social media and do all these great things. They will feel ready at some point, but they're not taking action. And when we look at decades worth of research, there's one very common overarching theme. What do you think it is?
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B
Perfection.
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C
And it's overthinking Sometimes you just need to make a decision, commit to it. And even if after a number of years you realize, hey, it doesn't light my fire anymore, you still had that journey of growth.
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B
And what is your secret to profiting in life?
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C
My secret to profiting in life would
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A
be hey App Fam. We're officially in week three of our four week Mental wealth series where we're learning how to scale our businesses without losing our minds. Today we're sitting down with performance psychology expert Sade Zahra to talk about the mental traps that keep entrepreneurs stuck. From overthinking and imposter syndrome to productivity guilt and that inner critic that never lets you rest. To get the most out of today's episode, grab your free 30 day mental wealth playbook at yapmedia.com mentalwealth this week's worksheet is all about taming the inner critics. You're going to identify exactly which inner deceiver is sabotaging your success and turn that voice into an inner coach instead. Let's get right into it again. You can download your worksheet@yap media.com Mentalwealth
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B
Sade welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.
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C
Thank you Hala. It's such a delight to be here.
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B
I am super excited for this interview and when I was doing my research I found out that you have a really interesting backstory and your success was a long time in the making. You bounced around after college, you worked in law, you worked in business banking. So can you start off with a little bit about your career journey, what you dabbled in and how you ended up figuring out what you wanted out of your professional life?
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C
Yeah, it was a really interesting and varied journey, that's for sure. I think the best ones always are when you're figuring out your way as you go. So I went to college. I studied psychology and law. I always thought I wanted to be a psychologist. When I was in law school though, I was pushed down the route of commercial law because everyone around me just seemed so driven. So I spent the first four years of my career in a commercial law firm and it was just the worst fit for me. I'm totally non confrontational. I don't enjoy that kind of work and I found myself in this environment where I almost felt sick about going to the office every single day. So I knew it wasn't for me. I had so much self doubt and imposter syndrome as well, to the point that I would hide behind my cubicle so people didn't know I Was there, couldn't give me tasks because I was convinced I would fail and I wouldn't know what to do. Not a good fit. Decided to move into the banking and finance space expecting that a new start would mean I would leave the self doubt behind me. But it just came right along like a bad smell. Couldn't get rid of it and it stuck with me for many, many years. And so through that journey though I spent seven years in that environment, I had a lot of exposure. I worked in the strategy team, I worked in retail, distribution, sales. What I discovered though was that the thing that really lit my fire had nothing to do with my day job and everything to do with these moments of connection I would have with people who would ask for my help unrelated to again my job. But they'd come and say, sade, I've got a presentation coming up, can you help me prepare? Or I want to apply for this role, can you help me prepare? I'd never positioned myself as the go to coach within the company but people just started seeking me out because I loved it so much. And so that for me was the that inner kindling of a sign that I need to get out and do more of that. Finding ways to directly help people outside of an organization. So then this is now after 10 years of being in the corporate space. Took me a really long time. I discovered I needed to leave or I decided I was going to leave probably seven years in and then it took me three years to develop the confidence and the self belief to make the transition. Now I'm going ahead in the story but I think it's a really interesting piece that got me to where I am now. So I had so again 10 years corporate. My husband and I had decided, okay, we're leaving, we're going to relocate. We were in Australia at that time. We were moving to Southeast Asia to be closer to the rest of the world and closer to some of the clients that we had. We also had plans to really expand our business. We were dabbling in it when I was an employee, but this was it, we were going all in. So I leave, I have a week before the flight that's taking us to Southeast Asia, our new home. That was March 20, 2020 is when I leave my corporate job. The flight is seven days from then. In that seven days, I mean we'd sold our couch, we'd packed most of our things. And then the pandemic takes hold. COVID 19 is everywhere. International restrictions hit and we're not allowed to leave the country. So Our flight is canceled, we still have no couch. There's thankfully we didn't sell the bed in the fridge. But we were then left there thinking, what are we meant to do? We just had this wonderful plan to go and start a new life, to expand the business. And every single client engagement had been canceled or postponed. So now we're left almost twiddling our thumbs, had no idea how to reach people. And this is when, this is when I had the idea of thinking, okay, well, what does our business do? We help people. At that time, our business was essentially a leadership firm, so specializing in positive leadership, empowering teams, working with organizations, developing change readiness in people. We're like, okay, well, we can't go to the companies because we're not able to fly and everyone's in lockdown. But how do we still reach people? And so we're like, maybe we can get on social media now. Back then, that was a foreign thing to me, absolutely foreign to my husband. And I thought, Let me try. TikTok Everyone was talking about was this new thing. Now my husband Faisal was saying, he's my business partner, he was saying, this is for kids. This is for 15 year olds who are dancing and singing. Don't go on there. Might be a little bit embarrassing for you, but I thought, well, this is low risk. No one knows me there. Let me give it a shot. So I recorded 40 pieces of video content on confidence, self belief, managing workplace challenges, gratitude, mental health and Wellbeing, positive psychology. 40, 40 pieces. I scripted them in a day, recorded them the next day in a row. I just changed my hair and outfit, which meant I had 40 days worth of content and I couldn't back down. So then from the next day, I start posting every single day. And now the reason why I did it that way is because I know that if something doesn't work out for me, if I don't see traction in a couple of days, I assume, well, hey, I gave it a shot, it's not for me. And then I give up. But this way, I had 40 days and I could not back down. And it was the best thing I could have done because on day 21, prior to day 21, there was no traction, no engagement whatsoever. But day 21, something happened. One of the videos caught the attention of the algorithm and it went viral. Within four weeks, we had 75,000 followers. Within a number of months, it was over 200,000 followers. And we thought, we're actually connecting with people. And it all started from the 40 videos and from a Business perspective, of course, there's a fulfillment of reaching people and helping people. But. But from a business perspective, we started then having companies all around the world, Fortune 500s finding me on TikTok and reaching out for a webinar for their teams. So then we had JP Morgan Switzerland and Microsoft UK who found me on this platform that we thought was for kids. And then that's how we had our initial entry point into these companies. And it has since taken our business completely global because now short form content is such a core part of what we do. So that's. Yeah, that's the journey.
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B
Yeah.
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A
That's amazing.
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Thank you for sharing that story. And I'm going to dig into TikTok a little bit and your strategy on social media and building your personal brand. And it's amazing and very inspiring that you were able to pivot during the pandemic, totally change your client acquisition strategy, basically, and attract all these Fortune 500 companies to work with you. But I do want to dig into how you became an entrepreneur, because so many people who listen to my podcast right now are young, they're in corporate jobs, they have side hustles, they want to be become an entrepreneur. So my question to you is, was entrepreneurship natural for you or was that a hard thing for you to adapt to? Like being in corporate for 10 years? Was it hard for you to actually, you know, work for yourself and, and let go of the safety net of a corporate job?
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C
Yeah. This is such a great question and something I often think about because the. I call them, you know, like that analogy how if you see there's, you know, baby elephant and they'll chain it up when it's a baby, and then it learns that it cannot go beyond a certain distance. And then when that baby elephant is an adult, it doesn't have chains anymore. It just has a little piece of rope tied around its leg and it's not even attached to anything. But that elephant has become so ingrained with that belief that it cannot move, that it doesn't try. Same principle with corporate. I was very good at fitting a mold, being what everyone wanted me to be, being the yes person, doing what I was told. And I did it really well. And I excelled in my career because of it. But of course, in doing that, I then took that with me. This need for validation, this need to always feel like I'm working, I haven't been able to shake it. So it's funny that, you know, it's been however many years since I've left, I still take that with me. So that transition was really quite difficult and that's why it took me a full three years to really prepare myself and get ready for the transition out. So my transition, if I take those three years and just give you a couple of key insights as to what I was doing to get me ready. Firstly, I was really clear on the fact that I knew my vision was not to stay where I was. It was really clear that I had a vision for financial freedom. I had a vision for, you know, living life on my own terms, running a business that really lit me up inside and was genuinely helping people. So I kept that front of mind because the moment that dies down, you just get stuck in the doing and then 10 years pass, 20 years pass, you're still stuck in your corporate environment or your full time job. So really clear on that. I also started implementing pieces that would get me closer to where I needed to go. So I was offering my speaking for free, which did two things. One, it gave me a lot of good practice because I'll tell you now, I had no idea what I was doing when I started, but it forced me to get in front of stages to clarify a message and to become comfortable with that. And the second thing is it gave me great exposure to companies who later became clients. I was also recording everything I was doing, so I was getting snippets and putting them online. And then I was also accepting some coaching clients. So for me, an easy transition out was to run a bit of a coaching business on the side. That was my side hustle. So I had been doing that for about three years when it came to making the decision, I'll be completely honest, my husband. So I needed another person to give me the push and say, that's it, we're doing this. No more focusing on the risk. So I think for many people, if you don't have someone in your life who backs you and believes you've try and find one doesn't have to be a business partner, but just someone, a mentor, someone who has done it before, who you can look at. It's the role modeling or the motivational theory of role modeling. When you find someone who has done what you've done. And my husband has been an entrepreneur most of his life. He's run amazing businesses, scaled businesses, run a company similar to what we're doing now in South Korea. His, his journey's been amazing himself because he'd done it, I could see it. And then I was more ready to take that leap. I think back and you know I wonder if he wasn't in my life, it probably would have taken me another few years to really feel ready, because I, at the time, I didn't have a role model who had transitioned out. So the fact that a lot of your listeners have you and have the guests that you're speaking about and speaking with. Sorry, that in itself is that role modeling of. I've seen people who have done it. What is their journey? And it reminds them, hey, I can do it too.
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B
Yeah, this sounds like it reminds me of my own journey. I started my company as a side hustle during the pandemic, and my role model was my first client, Heather Monahan. And she was so adamant. She was like, you need to quit your job. You're gonna have a million, like, multi million dollar business. Like, you're crazy for staying in corporate. And she would push me and push me and p. Pushed me, and then finally I quit my job. So you're so right. Having somebody in your corner and somebody who's been where you want to be. Like, she's an entrepreneur. She's a speaker, she's an author. She's really, like, somebody who I aspire to be, like, in 10 years. She saw it before I could see it. Right. So I'm sure your husband also saw the same in you. So did you have any benchmarks? I remember it took me six months to leave corporate. I was already making six figures a month and had 30 employees, and I still didn't leave my job. Did you have any benchmarks? Yeah.
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C
Oh, my goodness.
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B
Oh, yeah. It took me a long time to. To quit my job because I was just. I had a great job at Disney, and I didn't want to let it go.
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C
What was the turning point for you? I'm curious. So what was that moment where you said, okay, this is.
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I got on the COVID of Podcast magazine. There you go. I was just like, all right. I'm like, obviously a top podcaster, and this is not a fluke. And so I quit my job and, you know. Yeah, how about you tell me about what benchmark did you have? Like, a certain number that you wanted to hit or goal that you wanted to achieve before you were like, okay, I'm done with my corporate job. I'm going to pivot now into this entrepreneurship space.
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C
I did. So when I started working in corporate, I had a salary figure in mind only because I'd heard someone else mention it when I was still in college. And I was like, that sounds pretty good. I don't even know if that's something I can, I can get. Because back then I was so limited by what I thought was possible because I hadn't seen anything outside of that. And what I mean by that is when I think about my family and the role models that I had, you know, my dad was always the one who would get up and go to work. My mother, she sacrificed her professional career to raise the kids. And she has a business, a very small business that does well, she runs it from home. She's a beauty therapist and laser hair removal, which is great for me. Hairy Persian. But in my mind, my father was the one who played that role. So for me, I. I didn't have a vision as to, you know, a career for myself. I just went to university or went to college, because that's what you did. And then I thought, well, you get your first job, that's what you do. The rest of it came along the way it came on the journey. But initially I had a salary figure in mind and which was great. I think it's important to have something to work towards, so long as it is achievable. Yet a stretch. It can't be something that you'll never get to because that's actually demotivating. And then I got there and like anyone else who is goal motivated or goal oriented, you get there and you're like, okay, well, maybe I can push it out just a little bit further. Maybe I can get just to the next level or get another 20k or you actually set your destination and then when you get to your destination, you don't stand on the mountain and think, wow, I got here. You think, okay, well which other mountain can I go and scale now? So there's this constant need to do something else. So that's kind of what happened. I hit my salary expectation. What I didn't think was possible at the time, and it wasn't as hard to get as I thought. And then I thought, okay, well let me try this one. And then I kept setting these new goals. So again, that's why for me, it was so important to have Faisal to say, okay, you can do this. Why are you wasting your time here? Move along. And for you, it was having Heather, and I think you said it so beautifully. They believe in you even when you don't. They can see a path for you even where you can't. They've been there before. I actually shared something on LinkedIn recently about how when we look at mentors and career development, there are different types of mentors. You can have and one of them is the champion. And the champion is someone who sees the path that you can follow and then advocates for you to get on that path. And then there's others that the supporter and the challenger and. But having someone who has been there and then gives you that nudge is amazing. Not everyone has the luxury of having that. And that's why you can also find that through people on social media that you follow. Or listening to podcasts like this. You can do it vicariously through others. But it's beautiful that you had that story yourself.
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A
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B
and think I better go to the
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A
dentist and if I don't go right then and there in the next day or two, it can easily turn into months. That's exactly why I've been using ZocDoc for years and honestly over 15 years now, it is the main way that I schedule my healthcare. Zocdoc is a free app and website that helps you find and book high quality and network doctors so you can find somebody that you love. I just open it up, search what I need, see the real reviews, check availability and book an in person or video visit instantly most of the time that same day. At this point ZocDoc is quite literally the way that I handle all of my healthcare needs and I love that I get to see all the doctors that I visited and it's just saved in my profile and it's like my
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B
go to place to understand what are
- [21:53]
A
the doctors that I've seen in every city so that I can just go back to the same doctor so they have my information. So stop putting off these doctor's appointments and go to Zocdoc.com profiting to find an instantly book a doctor that you love today. That's Z O c d o c.com profiting zocdoc.com profiting again, that's zocdoc.com profiting and thanks to Zoc Talk for supporting this message.
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B
So one last question on your backstory, and I really love that you were saying like you did speaking engagements for free. You dabbled in a lot of different career experiences. You didn't just stay in one field. You ended up getting into psychology at some point. You were in law, you were in banking, all these different things. And I talk about skill stacking a lot on the show because it's something that I really believe in. And I think a lot of young people, they are under this mentality that they should be paid right out of college and they're not really serious about acquiring skills. And for me, that seems like a really big problem because I'm somebody who's been working since I was 15, having all these different jobs, getting all these experiences. And I think that's what made me a really successful entrepreneur. Like from the start of me starting a company. It's because I had all these experiences and I worked for years, four free for a long time in many different instances. I worked at a radio station for free for three years.
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A
Right.
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And so I'm with you also did speaking engagements for free because you need to build up skills somehow and sometimes you get compensated with experience and knowledge and know how. So talk to us about how all these different experiences that you had 10 years leading up to you being an entrepreneur actually enabled you for success once you did something start your business.
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C
There's, as you said, there's this fallacy that I've gone to college, I'm going to get a job and be paid really well. And then that's just my career. I'll just, I'll be recognized for the hard work that I do and it will come to me. And we know that's not reality. And so you call it skill stacking. Is that the term you gave? Yeah, skill stacking. We call it career multipliers. So it's this idea that, and we use the analogy of a lock. So you know when you travel and you have those locks and they have the dials on them and you set the dials and usually they come with three dials. If I'm not mistaken, there's a reason why they come with three and not two or one, because one dial is way too easy for someone to crack. It's 1 in 9 or 1 in 10 if you count. 0, 2. Again, way too easy. Once you get to 3 it's more complicated now in the same way, when it comes to thinking about your career and when I was thinking about what my journey is going to look like. If I had a really linear path, it would be like having a career. I mean, a. A lock for my luggage, really valuable luggage with just one lock on it. And guess what? There are a lot of other people out there with just one lock on their little career luggage as well. I'm not any different to anyone else. So the question I was asking myself is, how can I have these career multipliers that allow me to acquire these skills that are different? Because every skill set you develop, as you say, comes together and converges into this really beautiful, unique package that you offer and no one else does. And that's why I often tell people the more varied your background, the more value you add, because you come from things from a different perspective. You're able to question things, challenge the status quo, rather than just accepting. And the worst thing you can say is, it's always been done this way, or that's just what we've always done. It's the worst thing you can say. It kills creativity, kills innovation. So on my journey, there were so many things I did. I also spent time as a professional dancer while I was at university, which taught me the value of having a goal and working really hard to achieve that goal and pushing your body, but also playing to your strengths. I'm not flexible. And so my dance partner and I, we were like, we're not going to try and compete on flexibility. Let's compete on what we do really well, which is turn patterns, which is really unique choreography. If we tried to compete on the thing I was not good at, we would have just failed. It would have been miserable, probably torn a muscle. So, again, finding out what you're good at, giving yourself the experiences, as you say, volunteering for things, doing them for free. Now, of course, there comes a time when you make that transition point. You can't just do things for free forever. Hala. You probably have experiences where people still reach out and say, hala, will you come and speak to this audience? You'll get exposure. Yeah, no pay, but exposure. You know, you gotta now use it.
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B
Always level up. You know, you've gotta start from somewhere.
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C
Exactly. But thinking about your career as, how can I create these multipliers? What else can I do? And then reminding yourself that no matter what you've done, there's always a lesson or an insight you can gain. My legal experience taught me the value of having an attention to detail. It also taught me that I don't like confrontation. I like to work through things in a really harmonious way. You know, someone could say, well, that's because you're female. I disagree. I think part of it is also just my nature, how I am. And so I learned in a legal environment that that is not for me because of that quality that I really value. And I have brought that people orientation to everything that I do. So there's so many ways that even the biggest wastes of time or the failures that we had, you know, they're not even failures because we learn the most. Only though, if we choose to seek out and mine the experience for the lesson.
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B
I really, really love this lock analogy. And it reminds me of preparing for this AI revolution that's going on. It's what makes us uniquely human, the fact that we can have all these different experiences and knowledge in different areas. And that way your job security is a lot safer in the future because you're a unique person with a unique set of skills and you can design a business that really is optimized for those skills that you've acquired over your career. So I love this advice. Okay, let's get back to your TikTok. So you ended up blowing up on TikTok. You then took an omni channel approach and started your following on Instagram, which is really impressive. LinkedIn, which is really impressive. From my understanding, you were actually pretty nervous to be behind a camera or it wasn't really natural to you. How did you overcome that? Because now you've got incredible stage. Stage presence and you're exuding confidence. So how did you overcome that?
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C
I just did it. So I. So if I think back even to my speaking career, I loved speaking, but I was so nervous doing it, I would freeze up. My whole body would be taken over by stress and anxiety and. But I loved it. So I thought, how am I going to get over this fear? Well, I'm just going to do it. I'm going to put myself in that position where I desensitize myself to those emotions. It's basically like if you think about ice baths, the way people are doing it now, I haven't done it myself. Have you ever been in an ice bath? What is it? Ice bath.
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B
An ice bath? Yes.
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C
Sorry, Ice bath?
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B
Yeah, I've done cold showers. I had Wim Hof on the show. So like, I know all about it, but. But I never did it.
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C
Yeah, I haven't done ice bath either. But the idea is you're desensitizing your body and desensitizing that stress reaction to remind yourself that, hey, it's okay. I've got this. So you're almost overriding this natural biological instinct that you have with control. And it's remarkable. The benefits are remarkable. As you know, the same thing was for me when it came to speaking. I needed to put myself in that position enough times that I no longer reacted to those butterflies in my stomach as though I was about to vomit. And I started to think, well, actually, no. This gives me energy that allows me to project further. This gives me the care factor that I need to do a really good job. So it allowed me to redefine it, but I had to do it. And that's why, for me, doing the free things upfront was really great, because the standard was much lower in terms of what people were expecting and what I was expecting of myself. It was free. So I started small, did them for free, built it up. Same thing applied with video. So when it came to doing video at that time, I was still comfortable to be on stage. I'd done it enough times that I didn't have that fear. But video is totally different. For some reason, for me, I couldn't. I couldn't cross that bridge to just feel comfortable with it. I think it's because you record it and then you watch it back and you're so vulnerable. I also knew that, you know, when you post a video online. So if we move into the psychology space when we look.
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B
Yeah, I would love to.
- [29:53]
C
Mission research and the psychology research. We make a first impression about someone in milliseconds so quickly, and it's based on how that person looks, their demeanor, their facial expressions, even the initial tone of their voice, their body language, all of these things. And typically, we judge people on two things when we first meet them. Warmth. Do I like this person? Do I trust this person? And then secondarily, Competence. Do I respect this person? Do I believe what they're saying? Do I believe that they are capable and competent? So we make these assessments. Now, when you're sharing static posts, it's much easier to demonstrate competence because it's words on a page. The warmth factor might come through in how relatable you are in your wording, but it's a very different level to when you're putting a video out because people are seeing you. They're seeing your face, hearing your voice, making these assessments about your micro expressions, and then making an assessment as to whether they like you or not, whether they respect you. Or not. It happens very quickly. And so, of course, on the one side, it gives video so much power because people really quickly know whether they like you or not. So the people that choose to follow, they're in it for the long haul. They're. They're, you know, loyal fans. Not all of them. There's always, I think, 5% of people who follow because they just want to troll or hate, you know, all love to them. They're going through their own challenges, but generally that's what we find happening. So I was at that turning point where I needed to get comfortable on video. I just did it. Before I did the 40 videos, I had started creating just a few short videos for LinkedIn, really short, helping employees, mainly within the work environment. How can they navigate work from home, how can they navigate challenges with their teams, etc. I did maybe three of them, and they were not very good. Like, they were really not very good. That's completely, objectively, not very good. Bad quality setup. I had a little microphone. The lighting was okay, but, yeah, not very good. But then I recorded these 40 videos. I just put myself in a position where I said, look, whenever we start something new, it's going to be a little sh. Tty. And that's okay. Embrace the sh. Because then you have all this room to grow from. It's actually better sometimes to start low because then you can only go up from here. One of the things I've found since many years now down the track is sometimes I'll create a really great piece of content. Hala, let me know if you've experienced this really beautiful piece of content. You share it and you think, how am I going to top that? And I will hold off for a couple of days rather than posting regularly, because I'm thinking, well, I've just posted something beautiful. How do I mean. Anyway, these things, these stories that we tell ourselves. But for me, just getting comfortable with it required me to actually do it and then detach myself from the outcome.
- [32:40]
B
Yeah, it's really good advice, and it's really inspiring. And I think something else that you did that was really smart. I have a social media agency, and I'm a huge LinkedIn influencer. And the way that I stood out on LinkedIn was talking about something that nobody was talking about, which was podcasting, right? And I stood out. Nobody was talking about it. Everybody in the. In the beginning would tell me, you know, this is not Facebook. Why are you posting this? And. But it helped me succeed because I stood out. And like you, at a Time when everybody was just doing dances on TikTok, you were putting out this, like, educational content and probably really helped you succeed because you decided to stick out. So my next question in terms of building your personal brand is, when you decided to branch off from TikTok and take this omnichannel approach, did you actually study the platforms or was your content just so good that, like, you just put out your videos everywhere and it just seemed to work no matter what platform you put it on?
- [33:34]
C
Back then, it was. It was such a genuine intent. It was really just, hey, if this helps one person, fantastic. Because we were coming at it from zero. Like, we. We had nothing to lose. So I just posted, and I didn't even know what time to be posting. I didn't even know initially that I was meant to be putting captions on to make them more accessible. All of these things I just posted. I think you're right, though. We got onto that platform when it was emerging, when there were not many people doing the style of video that we were doing, the talking head, helping people style video. And so that was really unique, and people resonated really strongly. And now it's exploded, which is wonderful. We then obviously had this omnichannel viewer. We're like, okay, well, let's take that content and just put it on the other platforms. Took me a really long time to get it onto Instagram, though, because Instagram was my. You know, people knew me on Instagram, and so there's this, oh, what are they gonna think? They're gonna cringe. You know, I think there's always this transition point when you're going from where you are now and all the people that know you, where you are to where you want to be. And it's almost like the people that know you now are actually not the people that you necessarily want in your community in terms of who you want to be, because they're. They're in a different world. But that making that transition is really hard. So for Instagram, took a lot longer to get onto there, but the response was really positive. The hardest for me was getting onto LinkedIn, though, sharing this content on LinkedIn, because LinkedIn was my prized corporate contacts. You know, leaders of companies I'd worked with and general managers and. And I felt so much scrutiny in terms of what will they think of me? Once we were doing really well, though, on TikTok and Instagram, I thought, you know what? I don't really care. I actually. I don't really care. And there are people who have chosen to leave people in that initial network that I worked with who have chosen to leave that platform or leave the connection or unfriend or whatever it's called on LinkedIn because my content doesn't resonate with them, which is totally okay because I want people who resonate with my content to be in my communities. So, yeah, it was an interesting transition. You just, you just have to do it.
- [35:36]
B
Yeah.
- [35:37]
A
That's awesome.
- [35:38]
B
Congratulations on.
- [35:38]
C
Thank you. And you too as well. What a remarkable story.
- [35:42]
A
Thank you.
- [35:43]
B
So let's talk about psychology. I know that your expertise is really high performance for employees, for entrepreneurs, overcoming self deception, like self doubt, mind pits, inner critics. And being an entrepreneur is hard. Right. And you've talked about the importance of having the right mindset and you talk about these common pitfalls we all encounter in this journey of entrepreneurship. You call them mind pits. Can you explain what these mind pits are and the three common mind pits that entrepreneurs face?
- [36:13]
C
So we were coming across a lot of people, whether it was through the Fortune 500s we were working with, but also in the entrepreneurial community. And we were hearing this common frustration that they were underperforming. And we wanted to figure out what is it that differentiates those who were super high performing and really happy from those who feel like they're underperforming. They have these amazing goals, but they're not getting there. And we recognize that there are some cognitive differences, differences in how people approach things. And so our business and part of my PhD research is looking into this cognitive difference. And fundamentally it comes down to how people approach their goals. I mean, there's, there's a lot to it, but I'm going to start just with the how people approach their goals piece. So we discovered these mind pits which people resonate with. They've either been in one or been in all of them. And there are three, as you mentioned. So the first one that we identified is where someone and a lot of people who are lurking on social media, they're in this space. Hala, I imagine a lot of people who follow in your community are also in this space. They have these amazing goals. They want to run these amazing businesses and have these followings on social media and do all these great things and they're researching and consuming and telling themselves that they will feel ready at some point, but they're not taking action. So they're stuck right at the beginning. We call it failure to launch. They're not launching. And when we look at decades worth of research, there's one very common overarching theme. What do you think it is?
- [37:35]
A
Perfection.
- [37:36]
C
Perfection. And it's overthinking. It's believing that you must be perfect. Otherwise people will judge you, people will criticize you. What will, you know, what if I fail? What will that do to me? This overthinking that is fueled by perfection leads to complete stagnation. Now, when we think about the brain, the brain is wired to magnify what we focus on. It's an evolutionary survival mechanism that we have which is designed to keep us alive. Negativity bias. However, when it comes to our goals and what we want to achieve, if we listen to that voice in our head, it will convince us that, well, we might fail, the risk is too high, don't do it. And so we wait, we hold back. So this is failure to launch. Now if anyone listening is in failure to launch, there's one really simple and it's almost so simple, it's almost counterintuitive. Really simple approach that comes from the research on goals. Peter Gollwitzer is the expert, the researcher, psychologist who's looked into this. And it's really simple. Those who are able to take action on their goals, they do three things which is captured in something called a goal. Intention. They just specify when they're going to get started, where they're going to do it and what they're going to do. And they usually have a phrase of at in I will. So they actually set themselves a goal and then you must take action. Don't let perfect get in the way of good enough for now. Remember, embrace the shitty. Good enough for now doesn't mean that's where it's always going to be. That's you getting started. You want to start in an environment where you know, you can grow and you can develop. I want to quickly tell you Hala, my first or I think my second ever video on TikTok. So my first one I was doing one of those voice, you know, like where you, you do someone else's voice, you take the audio and you just mime it. And then I had some messages about career and confidence pop up. That was my first one. My second one was a viral dance. So I thought that I had to create a dance in order to get any kind of cut through on that platform. And then thankfully I learned didn't need to do that. But the point is I just did it. I knew that it was only going to go up from there. So you just got to get started. That's mind fit number one. Failure to launch. And I know, I've been in this sometimes, I mean, I have wanted to do some things for so long and I keep convincing myself, oh, not yet, not yet. I think one of the greatest antidotes to growth is not yet. I mean, it's good that has the word yet in it. Because growth, mindset, it means it may come, but not yet is you giving yourself an out. So find something and just, just do it. Mind Pit 1 failure to launch. Now Mind Pit 2 is a really interesting one. So we discovered this initially I was having an interaction with this gentleman, this was back in Australia, and he was a highly talented young man. He was one year from finishing his PhD research. So he'd spent I think three or four years doing rigorous research and experiencing the world of academia. But then he came to me for some guidance. I was coaching him and he said that he was going to drop out. And then he also shared that he'd half finished his master's, his second master's, which was an MBA to pursue the PhD. So he hadn't finished that either. And it seemed like he was just not able to see things through. He wasn't getting anywhere with all these part completed commitments and he was treading water. So he was exhausting himself without going anywhere. And this is the second mind pit. We call it treading order. This is where people have so many goals and they're so excitable that they will start something and then get bored and then try something else and then go somewhere else and sign up for a business mastermind and never finish it and get a course and maybe do one lesson and 50 million self help books and they've read one chapter. It's this kind of behavior of too many things that you want to do that you don't take action. So the reason why we get stuck here, have you ever been in this?
- [41:22]
B
In this one, I don't fall into the first two buckets, I fall into the last one.
- [41:26]
C
Oh, got it. Okay, that one's coming, that's coming. So this one, it's driven by self doubt. Where you're questioning, is this the right thing for me, should I be doing this? Maybe I should do that. You also, you know, boredom comes when you've been doing something for a while. The initial dopamine hit tends to wane. And so you think, well, this is not as exciting as I thought it would be, let me try something else. And then, hey, that's really exciting initially because new is always exciting. Yay, dopamine hit. And then it fades. So you never commit 100%. Now, here's a really interesting thing. This gentleman I was speaking to, he did end up quitting his PhD. He dropped out. I don't know how someone does that after four years, but he did. And he started a charity working with underprivileged youth. And he's still doing that five years later. And he is extremely fulfilled and he's found his purpose. So what we discovered is that when a lot of people are in this pit, it's actually not that you can't commit, it's just that you're doing the wrong things and you are doing too many things. You need to just ask yourself, what is the most important thing for me to do right now? And so a really simple approach here is to remind yourself of the meaning of what you're doing and make sure that it aligns with who you want to be. And there's two quick tips I want to share here. The first one is in 18. No, in 1987. Different century, 1987, there were these two researchers, Valature and Wagner, and they proposed a way to understand how we interpret and think about our actions. And so basically there's a range, so we have a low level identification where we focus on the how of an action, the mechanism. So Hala, right now we're sitting and talking. That's the low level mechanism. The high level is where you emphasize the why of the action. It's the purpose, the goal of the action. So it's empowering entrepreneurs with tools to improve and transform their lives. That's the why it's so important we know this, right? We need to tap into the why in order to feel that motivation, but also to make sure that what we're doing is the right thing. So I encourage anyone who might be in this bucket or in this category hone into the high level meaning. There's always a low level meaning. What's the high level meaning? And then the second very, very quick tip is some people in this state because they don't have the motivation, the moment something challenging comes their way, they crumble and they just say, oh, not for me, I'm going to try something else. And so we encourage you to do something called a pre mortem. A pre mortem is a concept in the project management world. It's also called inversion. It's a really simple technique. You proactively think about all the things that could go wrong, all the obstacles that could get in your way, and then you troubleshoot before they happen. What will you do? You develop something Called an implementation intention. It's your coping plan. If then. Now, fascinatingly, the research from Peter Golwitzer tells us if you develop an implementation intention, you're going to be three times more likely to achieve your goal simply by having your if then plan. So if I start to lose motivation, then I will remind myself of my purpose and then reach out to my mentor. If something else, then I'll do something else really simple. So that's for our second mind pitch.
- [44:35]
B
Let me, let me ask you one follow up question about this one because I think treading water is actually really, really dangerous for people's careers. I have a lot of friends that fall into this bucket and what happens is that they, they never become very successful or make a lot of money because they don't have the discipline to focus and just get good at something. Even if it's temporary, even if you like work at something for four years and then you decide to quit, that's okay. But if you never actually get anything done, you just end up just going in circles, going in circles and really never actually creating a career for yourself and even experiences because you don't get far enough to really get skills. So I just want to call out that if you feel like you're falling in this bucket, you need to understand that focus is so important to actually grow skills and make money later on. And I think that you know, finding how to have that discipline, finding your why, finding your purpose, and really sticking to something, even if you don't necessarily like it for a little bit, just to gain the skills is really important.
- [45:32]
C
Totally. There was this beautiful quote. I can't remember who said it, but it's more is lost through indecision than the wrong decision. Sometimes you just need to make a decision, commit to it. And even if, as you say, even if after a number of years you realize, hey, it doesn't light my fire anymore, you still had that journey of growth, you've still learned new skills, you've skilled, stacked as you'd say.
- [45:52]
A
Yeah, right.
- [45:53]
C
You've developed those career multipliers because you chose to take that path.
- [45:56]
B
Okay, number three.
- [45:57]
C
Okay, number three. So this is the one hala that you're in and I am in it. And I think a lot of people are in it. It's the inability to be still. You keep pushing without giving yourself a break. You feel guilty when you stop working. You reach a goal, get to that destination and then you immediately input the next one into your gps. Right? It's never enough for you. So it's not that you have a discipline problem at all. You have iron discipline. You're just not able to see that actually you're work and you are not one and the same. That there is a distinction between what you're producing and your self worth. We call it destination obsession. You're addicted to achievement. It's also the reason why a lot of people will get to the end of their day, busy workday, they're in bed, they know they should be sleeping, but actually they're lying there scrolling on their devices. It's called revenge bedtime procrastination. And the reason why we do it when we have really busy daytime lives and a lot of that is self imposed, we might be bringing on a lot of that to ourselves. That moment right before bed is the only moment of personal control that we have. And we know that the sooner that we sleep, the sooner tomorrow arrives and then we have to get back to doing it all again. So we want to try and hold onto that as long as we can and then we sleep later because we're on social media. So revenge bedtime procrastination. This is also the realm of productivity guilt. You stop working Hala. Do you feel guilty when you actually stop working?
- [47:23]
B
Yeah, I've gotten better at it. But yes, for sure. For a long time I couldn't even not work weekends because I feel guilty about it.
- [47:31]
C
Yeah. And is that, were you like that when you were an employee or only when you became an entrepreneur?
- [47:37]
B
Both, but more so when I was
- [47:38]
C
an entrepreneur it's really interesting. I felt exactly the same thing. And for me a big part of it is when I worked in the corporate space I would, I. You know, you work and then you get your salary. It's, it goes hand in hand. So work and money come together. When you're an entrepreneur, it doesn't necessarily go like that. You can, you can design your, your work in such a way that it's not time for money. I mean, that's what you want to do, right? It's not time for money. You don't have to be working ridiculous hours. But a lot of us do it because in our brain we have this belief that if I'm making money then I must be working and if I make more money then I just must work more. It's almost, it's gone the other way and it's very confusing for us. And it's one of these things that drives this productivity orientation. So in this position, the best thing you can do if you're, if you're Here. And Hala, I'd love to ask you what you've done because you said you're getting better at it. Actually, before I even share my tip. What have you done that has really been effective for you?
- [48:40]
B
I think that I, I understood that I needed to temporarily put everything into my business for about four years where I just really worked 16 hour days, worked through every weekend, really put my relationships, I still cared about my relationships, but I deprioritized that and really prioritized my career. And then there came a certain point where I achieved a level of success. Success. And I was able to train more team members. I have a big team where I just felt like, okay, like weekends are off limits now and I just started setting these boundaries. Still work really late oftentimes, but I, I give myself the opportunity to have like no meeting Wednesdays and then sometimes I can go like get a facial or do, get my nails done or do whatever I want. I go on vacations all the time now. So it's just, I just basically realized that that sacrifice was temporary and I no longer needed to do that anymore. And you know, there's just different phases of your life. I think it's important to sacrifice at some point to get to where you want to go. But you can't do that forever. It's not healthy.
- [49:42]
C
Absolutely. And it's beautiful that you have created a life now that gives you the freedom you knew that you needed to put in the four years. And then unlike a lot of people who would get to the end of the four years and think, well, I just, I want to just keep going because I was able to do it and maybe I can take my business to even, even higher level. And it's this myth again that we're living where we think we must just always be connected and always on. But you've created that boundary which is so important. And that's essentially when it comes to this pit, this mind pit, this cognitive space that we're stuck in, there's no magic pill that's going to make it go away, other than setting a boundary with yourself. Because people in this pit are really good at getting things done, right? They're very good at getting things done. And so because we make time for what we prioritize, we actually need to prioritize the breaks, prioritize the weekends off, the days off to go and get the facial or whatever that is and then make them meaningful. So again, if we look at that high level, low level, meaning the low level is I'm taking A day off work. The high level meaning is I'm taking this day to rejuvenate, to become my best self, to build up my internal stores of energy so I can be my best for my team to lead my business and go harder. So it's having that the meaning behind your breaks and then even just starting really small, going for a walk, disconnecting from tech. So I think we are so connected to our devices and it's just getting worse. I mean with AI it's a wonderful thing, but I think also it's going to make us even more tethered. Hopefully we'll get to a point where technology actually does alleviate a lot of the daily grind. Currently it's done a lot to help it, but it's also again made us completely connected. I was having a conversation with Professor Pierce Steel, who's one of the foremost researchers in the realm of procrastination. And he said this beautiful line, he said we're amusing ourselves to death on social media with all of these extra things that we're occupying ourselves with. And I completely agree. And I think we're also killing our creativity by working so hard for so long. Taking these breaks helps. I mean, how do you feel after you have your no meetings or your no work Wednesdays or you know, the days where you go and invest in yourself? How do you feel when you come back?
- [51:54]
B
Totally re. Energized Completely. I mean like, and you as an entrepreneur, especially if you have employees, you're responsible for the energy of the company. So before when I was just working, working, working, working, like that made everybody anxious, you know, and now just more calm, understanding, relaxed. And I think that that improves the energy management of the company overall too completely does.
- [52:15]
C
And there are flow on effects to performance and engagement. And it's interesting when we look at again a lot of the psychology around the effect of a leader, there's something called trait affective presence, which I call. Well, I mean the researchers called it like a psychological vibe. It's essentially how people feel when they're in your presence, but also when they're just thinking about you. And you can be someone who they feel energized by when they're around and when they're thinking of or de. Energized by. And so as a leader, as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, it's so important that you do what you need to do to be that source of positive energy. Because again, as you said, emotions are contagious. If you're feeling anxious, if you're working so hard people are going to feel it no matter how much you try and hide it. So I just want to quickly mention for anyone listening, if you're really interested, to learn a little bit more about these mind pits and do a little self assessment to determine which mind pit you might be stuck in, I have created a special resource which you can download@shadehzerai.com mind pits so it's s H a D E Z a h r a I.com/mind pits which is M I n D P I T s and then you'll be able to figure out which one you're in. Although you probably know Hala, you knew I knew which one I was definitely in.
- [53:26]
B
Yeah. If you guys want that quiz, I'll stick it in the show notes for you to make it really, really easy.
- [53:35]
A
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B
I didn't.
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A
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B
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A
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- [58:01]
B
So let's move on to inner critics. You say that inner critics are basically a subpersonality that some of us develop. They're basically demons to us and they shine a spotlight on our weaknesses. So let's go through these quick fire style. I'm going to list them off, you tell me what it is and then let's talk about afterwards how we can overcome them.
- [58:20]
C
Sounds good.
- [58:20]
B
So the first one is the classic judge.
- [58:23]
C
The classic judge is that voice in your heads. It your head that judges you for what you did, what you didn't do, what you should have done. It's just you can't do anything right by the classic judge. So the default critical voice. Classic judge.
- [58:37]
A
The victim.
- [58:38]
C
The victim is the voice in our heads that leads us to feel completely powerless. Who am I to do anything differently? Who am I to make a change? You're focusing on things outside of your control. The victim also leads you not to take any responsibility for anything. Generally you don't. You can't identify that you have a victim because it won't let you. But other people in your life will think, oh yes, okay, that I can see that in you. So it's one of those that has a double, double edge. You don't notice it in yourself, but other people do.
- [59:07]
B
The protector.
- [59:09]
C
The protector. We call it the, yeah, the misguided protector. Its role is to try and keep you safe from harm. Now the harm that it's perceiving is the risk of criticism or judgment or failure. It highlights all the risks. And the thing is, when you listen to the protector, it does keep you safe. But you're also stuck because it paralyzes you from taking action. It magnifies everything that could go wrong to try and prevent you from putting yourself in a position where you might experience some kind of pain or rejection. So it's well intentioned but misguided.
- [59:44]
B
The neglector.
- [59:45]
C
The neglector is the one that convinces you that you are not worthy of care. Your needs don't need to be met. You don't deserve to set a boundary. You need to make sure everyone Else is happy with you, otherwise you're worthless. So it leads you to neglect your needs in preference of everyone else's. You're a constant giver.
- [60:10]
B
And the last one is the ringmaster.
- [60:13]
C
The ringmaster is the one that drives our destination obsession, that third mind pit. It's the one that pushes us and tells us we have not done enough, we don't deserve a break. It pushes us relentlessly to just keep going.
- [60:26]
B
Okay, and then how would we, instead of having an inner demon, start to develop an inner coach and overcome all of these inner critics?
- [60:34]
C
So the first thing to do is become aware that we have these critical voices. My PhD research is looking at self talk as a construct. And when you think about self talk, it's the voice in your head, the thoughts that you have it. There's a spectrum. So on one side we have self regulatory thoughts like oh, maybe you should go to the gym tomorrow because you haven't gone for the last three days. It's guiding you, it's not criticizing you or judging you. On the other end of the spectrum, we have the critical voice which says you better go to the gym tomorrow because you're lazy and fat. And all of these, it's judging, it's criticizing. You need to recognize that these inner critical voices, we call them inner deceivers. I had a TEDx talk about this early last year and it ended up being the top 10 most watched TEDx of the year. So people really resonate the inner critical voice. It's there to try and help us. It's well intentioned, it's just completely misguided. So acknowledge that you have this part of yourself, but then remind yourself you don't have to obey it, you can listen to it. Because if you try and deny it, we know what happens when you try to avoid your thoughts. They just pop back in and come up at inconvenient times. Like when you're trying to get to sleep or at 3am when you wake up and it's reminding you of all the things you've done wrong. It's there. Acknowledge it, but don't obey it. Flip your thinking around and say, okay, what is this trying to protect me from? Is there any real harm? And then what can I do instead? What resources do I have available to me to help me? So Hala, in your case, you needed Heather Monahan, who was your client at the time, to give you the push to get out. That's one way that you then stop listening to these voices that you would have had in your mind. For me, I needed Faisal. So for some people, it might be, I'm going to seek someone who believes in me to remind me when I'm hearing these voices that, hey, I am of value. I am worthy. It might be okay. I'm going to start really small, so there's very little risk of anything really going wrong, and then just gearing yourself to action. So become aware of it, acknowledge that you don't have to obey it, and then gear yourself towards action, because these critics will often prevent you from taking the right action. They take you down the wrong path. So then ask yourself, what is the right action here? What do I need to do? And then find a way to do it.
- [62:44]
A
Hmm.
- [62:45]
B
It's great advice. And I know that the ringmaster also has to do with imposter syndrome because it basically reminds you that you're a fraud. You're undeserving of success. So I'd love to move on to the topic of imposter syndrome. We've all heard of this term, but how would you specifically define it?
- [63:02]
C
So imposter syndrome is that voice in your head that convinces you that you are a fraud, you are undeserving of success, and leads you to attribute your success to others, luck or timing. So, and the important part about imposter syndrome is that you have to have a track record of success. So if you don't have a track record of success and you have these voices, then it's not considered imposter syndrome. That's probably just inner criticism. But if you have a track record of success and there's something in you telling you you don't deserve to be where you are because you didn't earn it, that's imposter syndrome. Now, really interestingly, with imposter syndrome, when we look at how it was initially discovered, so in the 70s, there were studies that were done initially it was just with women. It was in a population of women, and they found that 70% of them experienced this imposter feeling. Now, the researchers back then described it as an imposter phenomenon, not imposter syndrome, just a phenomenon of feeling like an imposter. Somewhere along the way, this feeling was. It was. What's the word? It was made to. To be a syndrome, which is not. It's. Obviously, we know it's not medically correct. It was pathologized, turned into a syndrome, and now it becomes this really negative thing that a lot of people will use as a crutch to prevent them from taking action. I can't do that because I have imposter syndrome, I can't say anything in that meeting. I have imposter syndrome. So it becomes an excuse that people will use to prevent them from taking action. What I always say when it comes to imposter syndrome is a really simple, beautiful. Reframe is the moment that you start to think, I don't deserve to be here. Instantly flip your mindset to what an incredible opportunity I have to learn, regardless or not, of whether I believe I deserve to be here or not. I am here. I have a ticket to the party. So I'm not, not going to go to the party. I'm going to go to the party and have the time of my life and learn as much as I can from these people I'm with. I experience this feeling of being an imposter when I'm in the academic community. Because I'm now in the PhD program. I'm learning. I'm in that learning phase working with people who have been in the industry for 30 years. They are absolute experts in their specific area of research. It's very easy for me to think, well, who am I? I don't belong here. And I remind myself, this is amazing. I can learn from these people. So simple. Reframe. A big part of it is just how we're approaching it and the narrative that we're telling ourselves.
- [65:31]
B
Hmm. I love that. And I knew that you also experienced imposter syndrome when you were in your law career. So what advice would you give to young Sade right now?
- [65:42]
C
The advice I would give is actually advice that was given to me when I moved into the banking and finance space. It is stop fixating on everything you don't know how to do, everything that you don't know yet and everything that you don't believe you're good at. Stop doing that. Shift your focus to actually what you bring, what are the qualities that you bring and if you don't know how to do. You know, back then, there were a lot of things I didn't know how to do. You know, basic case research and all of these things. But there were qualities I brought, like my growth mindset, my curiosity, my desire to learn and meet people and understand. I brought that with me and I needed to remind myself of that because it's those qualities that are transferable, regardless of what industry you're in, regardless of what you're doing. So even if you feel like an imposter, you can still bring those qualities and then learn what you need to learn until you feel like you Belong there. That's the advice I would have given myself.
- [66:39]
B
And I know that you say that self love is an antidote to imposter syndrome. So what is self love exactly?
- [66:46]
C
So I like to think of it as self acceptance. And self acceptance means I accept who I am, I accept my inherent worthiness. And if someone else doesn't agree with me or doesn't approve of me, that is not a reflection of who I am as a person. I don't need to take that to heart. So when it comes to imposter syndrome, we are doubting our worthiness. I am not worthy to be here. And so we need to remind ourselves, actually I am as a person. I am just inherently worthy regardless of where I am. Really. Interestingly, just on this, when we look at the mind pits or when we look at where people generally get stuck, it's predominantly for one of four reasons. And these four things that I'll take you through very quickly, they converge to create something called our core self evaluations, which is how we see ourself, the core of who we are, our self image and what researchers have done. Over the last 50 years, social scientists from all over the world have explored what's really going on and identified these four things. And the way that I describe them is like this. The first one is if you're finding it challenging in life, if you're not taking action, if you're stuck in a mind pit, the first reason is that you don't accept yourself. So you have a low self esteem. You don't fundamentally accept that you are worthy or you deserve success. And so you'll hold yourself back. If it's not that, it's that you fundamentally don't believe that you have what it takes in terms of your capabilities. I don't know how to do this. I won't be able to achieve the goal. And that's to do with self efficacy. Self efficacy is that belief that you have what it takes to achieve your goals. If it's not that. The third one is that you have what's called an external locus of control. You're focusing on things that you have no control over, and that's preventing you from taking action. That's why you're experiencing the challenge. The fourth one is that you are unable to manage your emotions. So you're either so filled with anxiety about what the outcome would be if you take action, or you're just not able to manage the feelings of overwhelm that you get when you're thinking about all your goals. Generally it comes down to one of these four things and it all comes down to how we see ourselves. So I'd say those four things actually come in because you can have self love, you can have self acceptance, but if you're really struggling emotionally, it's going to get in the way, you're going to feel like an imposter, and then that's going to derail you because you'll have that anxiety influx. The cortisol will run, you won't be able to think and it'll impact your performance. So I always say these are the four, like the antidotes or the four laws of confidence, if you like. Right. Self appreciate or self acceptance. Self efficacy. Believe in your capabilities, focus on what's within your control and take steps to manage your emotional state. The best piece of advice I could give, it's great.
- [69:33]
B
So you mentioned confidence, so let's move into that direction. How do you think we can project more confidence at work? What are your top tips?
- [69:40]
C
So with confidence at work, it's such a big topic and I remember talking about it a lot because I picked up on this when I was in the workplace. It seemed like those who were confident were assumed to be better at their jobs and they would often be the ones to get promoted and to accelerate their career trajectory because they exuded confidence. They weren't necessarily more competent than other people, but they were seen. And so there's this correlation between confidence and competence. So when it comes to how we look more confident, because the fact is, you know, when we think about what I said earlier, that when people meet us for the first time, they're making a judgment about whether they like us through warmth and whether they respect us through competence. And competence is demonstrated through confidence. How confident do you look? How confident do you sound? So really simple. The very first technique or very simple piece of advice I'd give or guidance. What's your posture? We spend so long looking down at our devices that we're developing. All of us are developing this slight hunch which is not helpful for confidence. Also, really interestingly, there was this wonderful research that was done with Amy Cuddy's team. What they did is they put people in a room and they either had a phone to look at or an iPad or a computer screen. Big one. So if you think about the postures they were taking on, people on the phone were hunched over, the iPad was sort of more neutral and the computer screen, they had a more expansive posture. They found that people who were sitting behind the computer screen ended up taking Action more than the other two groups. And it's actually entirely because of the posture, not because of what they were doing. So your posture not only impacts how others see you, but how you feel. So that's the first one. The second one, which I find really interesting is, you know, when you're around someone and they're just walking really slowly, they're kind of dawdling, and then you see someone else and they know where they're going, they have a mission. They are getting there. I mean, who looks more confident? The one. Yeah, the faster person, so long as they're not, you know, knocking people over and looking ridiculous. Generally, when you're walking, if you want to exude more confidence, have a purpose and walk with purpose as opposed to sort of dawdling around. So that was really interesting. There's some work that's done on looking at biological cues and how people walk and how that converts into perceived confidence. And they found that walking slightly faster can really help. And then smiling, really simple smiling conveys confidence, because if you lack confidence, your body will tell you not to smile. So if you see someone not smiling, the brain automatically goes, oh, they're not telling the truth, or something's up there. When I used to be in the dance world, I used to teach. And when I was teaching, if I were teaching in front of, let's say, I was teaching with other world champions, or again, imposter syndrome, because I wasn't one, but I was in that environment, I would always smile. I would just adopt a huge smile even if I wasn't feeling it. And I would start to feel that confidence trickle into the rest of my body because of how people would respond to me. So smiling is really powerful.
- [72:39]
A
Hmm.
- [72:40]
B
Really great tips. And I know that a lot of people don't just struggle with confidence, especially introverts. They struggle with showing their smarts and competence at work. So can you talk to us about how we can actually seem smarter? We're all probably smart in our own way, but a lot of us don't know how to exude this smartness to other people. So what are the things that we can do?
- [73:01]
C
Yeah, there's. There's a few tips. I'll give you three. I think the first one, though, prefacing it all, is to remind everybody that we don't live in a world yet where true merit is acknowledged and recognized. It's actually based on how you look and the relationships you have and all these other things. I always encourage people to yearn for the day when we live In a world where people are acknowledged for what they bring. But in any case, until we get there, very simple tips. The first one, to exude more confidence, especially if you're an introvert and that competence factor, you gotta be speaking up in meetings. And this is really difficult for introverts. I am an introvert. In meetings, I would struggle so much. If you're an introvert, you might feel this way even before I would raise my hand. So the moment my brain had the signal of, oh, I have an idea, or I have a question, hadn't even done anything with my body, but my entire body would start to sabotage, my heart would pump, my throat would constrict, and I hadn't done anything yet. So I had this whole thing going on inside of me and yet no one would know it. So as an introvert, really important to speak up because you need to be visible. And in meetings, that's when people are seeing who is engaged. And unfortunately, visibility is linked with perceptions of engagement. So simply see if there is a way that you can share something right at the beginning of the meeting. You might even get in touch with the person beforehand and say, I have something I'd like to share. Can you, as the host, can you pass over to me or put me in the agenda? That's really easy. You can share something relevant to the meeting. It can be an interesting insight that you read an article you came across, you want to let everyone know about whatever it is, share something at the beginning and then try and share something right at the end. Doesn't even have to be a value. It can just be, that was a great meeting. Everyone looking forward to the next one. There's something called the primacy and recency effect in psychology, where we're more likely to remember something that happens at the beginning and the beginning and the end of a session. So if you're speaking at the beginning and the end, even if you don't say much in the middle, people are more likely to remember you. So that's one of them. The next one is if you really want to elevate your competence. This is something that not enough people do. You want to capture and document. There's two ways you can document. Document whenever someone gives you a task. So we all know what it's like, whether you're a leader in a company or you're an entrepreneur. You give someone in your team a task and it's due in a week, and then you forget about it, and then they send you an email and like, here's the thing and you can't even remember what you asked them to do. So you have to go in there and so what you can do proactively, if you're that person who was given that task, you send an update maybe halfway through the week, hi, quick update on what's going on. Here's what you asked me to do. Remind the person. They will thank you for it. Here's what you asked me to do. Here is where I'm up to. Here are the roadblocks I've faced and how I've overcome them. And if I had more time, this is what I would do differently, or this is the help that I need from you. So you can update the person and then when it's due, you do the same thing. Here is what you asked me to do. Here is what I did. Here are the challenges that I came across. Here's what I would do differently if I could do it again. You're being really proactive whether or not that person reads it. You're getting into the habit of capturing a progress report for yourself. You have it documented because how many times have you received something from someone and you say, well, that's actually not what I asked you to do. Or you deliver something to someone and they say, that's not what you asked me to do. And you're thinking, yes, it is. I've got it written in my notes. When you document it and send them an email, it's there, it's written, it's evidence. So that's the first one. The second one is every Friday, incorporate something called a weekly win. Send an email to your. And this is specifically if you're a team member, whether you're working in a, you know, in a company, a big one or a small one. But send a weekly win email on a Friday to your manager and just let them know, this is what I have achieved this week, this is how I contributed to the team and these are my plans for next week. It can be very short, a couple of bullets for each of them, but you are reminding that person of the contribution that you're making without you physically having to say anything. And this is also wonderful when it comes to visibility because that person's going to be across what you're doing. Now, if you're a business owner and an introvert, I mean, Hala, I'd love your perspective. My perspective is I tell people, if I'm going to be the quietest person in the room because I'm an introvert, I tell people, hey, everyone, I'M an introvert. You might not hear from me much but I'm still processing and I might reach out to some of you afterwards to ask some follow up questions. People actually don't mind when you're really open and honest.
- [77:37]
B
Yeah, I don't. I, I'm like extroverted to if anything, like I have a problem like not speaking up and that would always be my negative feedback is that you talk too much in meetings. So I have the opposite issue. If anything, I, I try my best to help introverts and call on them proactively. We do things like daily updates every day and slack and huddles every morning and things like this. So there's little things that we can do to make sure. Especially because I've got teammate countries like the Philippines and they like as a culture really struggle with like speaking up at work and, and, and stuff like that. So I really try to help them through that process.
- [78:13]
C
That's beautiful.
- [78:14]
B
Yeah.
- [78:15]
A
So, all right, we are winding down
- [78:18]
B
here as we close out the interview. Curious to understand if there's any high performance hacks that we didn't cover that you feel like might be especially important for my audience to hear.
- [78:30]
C
One of the ones I love is the incredible power of something which has been found to be even more effective than a shot of coffee. Can you guess what it is? Any idea?
- [78:42]
B
Sleep.
- [78:43]
C
It's sleep, but it's naps. It's actually taking naps. I mean sleep's super important as well, but in terms of during the day, sleep, taking these short naps, meaning 15 minutes. The research is very, very clear. 15 to 20 minutes maximum. Beyond that you start to enter cycles of sleep and that's actually detrimental. Sleeping. Having a little nap earlier in the day is better for creativity. Later in the day is More physically restorative. 15 minutes. Set your alarm on your phone and just close your eyes. It's incredible what this can do for your energy. So that's one of them. The other one is the power of walking, especially when it comes to creativity. So we know that walking can help with focus, with reducing procrastination and increasing your energy when you come back in after you've been outside. And you're the important thing with walking though, and I've made this mistake. Don't take your device and if you do, don't read emails while you're walking. That just default, you know, it destroys the entire benefit actually. Look at nature around you. Look at the trees, look at the clouds. It's called soft fascination and it has these Beautiful restorative powers in the brain. But the other thing is, there was a study in 2014 from a, it was a Stanford researcher, and what she found was that when people went out for a walk and looked at nature around them and then came back in, they had more creativity. Their levels of creativity were significantly higher than those who were inside. And it actually persisted for a long time once they were back in and working. So if you've hit a creative block, which we all do, if you've hit that point of diminishing returns where you're just exhausted or you're probably procrastinating, just get outside for a walk. It's remarkably simple. But the research absolutely confirms, the science, confirms it is going to be so beneficial for you.
- [80:28]
B
That's great. Naps and walks. I had Daniel Pink on the show and he taught us about something called the napachino. And I love that. Have you heard? Have you heard it?
- [80:36]
C
I haven't heard it, but I love it.
- [80:37]
B
You drink coffee and then you take a 15 or 20 minute nap and then like, you get the boost from the caffeine. Caffeine kicks in in 15, 20 minutes, plus you get the boost from the nap. And he calls it a napuccino.
- [80:48]
C
That's brilliant. I love it. It's the double whammy. That's fantastic.
- [80:51]
B
Um, all right, so we end the interview with two questions that we always ask all of our guests. The first one is, what is one actionable thing our young and profits can do to become more profitable tomorrow?
- [81:02]
C
This is beautiful. So in terms of profit, I think the first thing is you need to define what that looks like for you. And of course we can talk about money, but I'm not going to talk about money. For me, profiting is how do you live a more fulfilling life where you are constantly growing? So the one thing you can do today, the biggest or the greatest piece of advice I can give you is create your to be list. What this means is write down a list of things that you aspire to be so that you're super clear on that. To be generous, to be loving, to be kind, to be someone who challenges the status quo, to be someone who makes a difference and has an impact. Write this down and then every decision that you make, make sure it aligns with that to be list. It becomes your filter system. And this is how you can make sure you're living a profitable life that is aligned with greater fulfillment and the person that you aspire to be.
- [81:51]
B
And what is your secret to profiting in life? And you already know this. But profiting doesn't have to be just money.
- [81:57]
C
My secret to profiting in life would be to be grateful for every step of the way, every learning, every challenging situation you have, every moment of suffering. Because suffering is what makes us stronger. Suffering. When we can change our perspective on suffering, this is what gives us that beautiful quality of being human. And it's the hardest thing to be appreciative and grateful during times of suffering. But if you can acknowledge how it's shaping you into a stronger and more refined version of you, then nothing is too much trouble and there is always time.
- [82:30]
A
Hmm.
- [82:31]
B
That's fantastic advice. Sade, it was so wonderful to have you on the show. Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?
- [82:38]
C
I would say come on to social media, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, you can jump. Actually, I do have a career training that might be helpful for anyone who is in the career space. It's shadezerai.com you know what, I actually don't know it off by heart. I'll share it with you. Hala, to put in the show notes.
- [82:53]
B
I'll put in the notes.
- [82:54]
A
That would be wonderful.
- [82:55]
C
Actually. I think you can get it from the homepage. If you just go sadhzariah.com you'll find it there. But please reach out and I'd love to hear if anyone, if anyone really resonated with something in this, in my beautiful conversation with Hala, let me know. It's always lovely to see what people connected with.
- [83:10]
B
Awesome. Well, you're super impressive. You dropped so much knowledge bombs in this interview. I feel like people learned a lot and were truly inspired by your story. So thank you so much for coming on the show.
- [83:20]
C
Thank you Hala. I had so much fun. I really appreciate being here.
- [83:25]
A
Yap gang. What I love about this conversation with Sade is she makes one thing so clear. Sometimes the biggest thing holding you back is not your strategy, your business model or your work ethic. It's the voice in your head.
- [83:38]
B
For entrepreneurs, that voice can sound like
- [83:40]
A
perfectionism, imposter syndrome, productivity, guilt, or the belief that you have to keep pushing non stop to prove your worth. But as Shade reminds us, you don't have to obey every thought that you have. You can pause, question that thought and rewrite the script. So here's your week three challenge. Go to yap media.com mental wealth and open the Taming the Inner Critics worksheet. Write down the exact thought that keeps coming up for you. Is it the classic judge telling you that nothing is good enough. The protector keeping you safe but stuck, the neglector telling you that your needs don't matter, or the ringmaster pushing you to work, achieve and never ever rest. Name it, write it down, then rewrite that voice into an inner coach. Turn I'm not ready into I can start small Turn I don't deserve this Into I deserve all the good things
- [84:29]
B
that life has to offer.
- [84:31]
A
Because mental wealth is not just about thinking positively. It's about building a mindset that helps you grow instead of one that keeps you trapped. So Yapam, I want you to take the challenge, do the worksheet and come back for week four where we'll wrap up the series with Dr. Benjamin Hardy. He's my all time favorite guest of Yap. I love his work. He is so brilliant and he's going to teach us all about his amazing concept of future self.
- [84:56]
B
See you next time.