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Iman Oubou: Stop Self-Sabotage & Empower Yourself · The Bold Lounge

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Bold Lounge Podcast.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Lee Burgess and I will be your host.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: If you're anything like me, you love hearing inspiring stories of people who have gone on bold journeys and made a positive impact on the podcast is all about those kinds of stories.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: Every week will be someone specifically important stories.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: I believe everyone has a bold story waiting to be created.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Tune in and get ready to be inspired.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the bold lounge.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Today we have Amon Ubu, and I'm excited to have her on the show and be able to share many things about her bold journey that have led her up to being an author of her most recent book, The Glass Ledge.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm excited to have you.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome, Amon.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for having me.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd love for my guests to introduce themselves versus me, because I think we all do probably a better job introducing ourselves.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: So, how would you introduce yourself to our listeners?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, to do it in a short version, I am currently the founder and CEO of Sway Media.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm also the author of The Glass Ledge: How to Breakthrough Self-Sabotage, Embrace Your Power and Create Your Success.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's my newest book that I launched last May.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And before that, I was a cancer research scientist and a former Beauty Queen, specifically winning the title of Miss New York US in 2015 and playing to sing second runner up at Miss United States and then going on to Judge Miss Universe in 2018.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: So my background is a little bit, I would say, uh for lack of better words, all over the place.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, I've I've been lucky to have the courage to pivot quite a few times throughout my career until I finally felt like I found something that truly fed my heart and fit made me feel alive and ended up kind of settling on the entrepreneurial career as opposed to corporate biotech, which initially was kind of my dream career going into the real world.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: I always thought it was going to be either a doctor or someone that works in RD and biotech, specifically on cancer research.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I did that and I definitely experimented with it.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I was honest with myself too, that when I did finally get to my dream job, it wasn't as fulfilling as I thought it would be.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: So at that point, I realized that, you know, I had to kind of move on and figure out what really drove me, what really was my passion.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how I ended up on the entrepreneurial side, specifically in the media tech industry.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for that.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's interesting just how people end up as entrepreneurs and how they may start with that intention or how, you know, we'll we'll talk about that today, kind of how you ended up on that path, which is a wonderful path.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously the path exactly meant for you, but you wouldn't have known that, you know, early on, most likely.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: So, how do you define bold in your journey, in your life?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: What does it look like?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think for me it's really about having the courage to live your life on your own terms, as opposed to giving into the outside world's expectation or maybe your family's expectations of you or your friends' expectations of you.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's very hard sometimes because we subconsciously don't realize that a lot of what drives us sometimes is external validation or external expectations.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so to be bold for me is to really be able to zone that out and focus on who you truly are at the core and live up to that potential.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Can you think back to your first bold moment based on that definition?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I think one would be, you know, when I first took the leap of going on medical missions around the world at the age of 22.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: It was looking back, it was quite a risky move, especially that we went to war zones for my very first medical missions.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: We went to South Sudan, which was in the middle of a civil war.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that was pretty bold that I really felt like I was meant to be there.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: I was meant to be part of that experience and to be able to help third world countries and remote areas of these third world countries to help restore proper healthcare, especially during a time of crisis.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And at the age of 22, even though I didn't really go to med school at the time, I had some training in the OR, but that was all about I really could contribute in terms of participation in the mission.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: But I really wanted to be there because I felt like that would open my eyes up to my passion and really open up the horizons of my my future career.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: So that was my very first move.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: And because of that experience, I think I really was, I fell in love with the thrill of adventurous career moves that just you didn't plan for.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because that was that helped that happened for me kind of out of the blue.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: I met a doctor who was doing a lot of these medical missions.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: He was very credible in the industry, and he said, I'm going on a mission here, and I just jumped in on that.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it was exciting.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I think because of that, then I came back and also decided to jump into this pageant world, which is something I did not know about at all.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And also I never really thought of myself as a girly girl or someone that would even dare to walk on stage in a swimsuit in front of thousands of people and really have that kind of confidence.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, I did it because there were so many learning lessons there for the taking.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I was bold to just jump into it, even though I had no idea what would come out of it.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it was just something that I had to, I would say, really overcome my fear of stage to be able to even do.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: So those are the two, I think, starting moments for me where I started being a little bit more bold and really going after what I truly felt like I wanted, as opposed to what people expected out of me.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, those are absolutely bold moments for sure.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to unpack both of them if you're okay with that.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: So if you think about you said it were courage to live your life, the life that really aligns with who you are versus what's expected of you, right?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we've all grown up and want to be accepted.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: We want to follow a path, we want to make our loved ones and our parents and our family proud.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a point, I think, at some point in your life where you're like, maybe this isn't actually what I like to do or what I'm good at or where I find joy, right?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: Or maybe I just needed to figure out this isn't for me, you know, and or I'm not good at it.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think that's how we learn.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: And when you went on your first mission and you went to, you know, obviously you're very young, at least I consider that very young, and thinking about what you learned from that moment, what what would you say your greatest learning was from the mission in Sudan?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think in terms of learning when it comes to uh what I truly enjoy out of life is impact.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think that mission really taught me so much about impact and how that truly brought me so much joy, no matter what the circumstances were.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was a pretty dangerous area.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was also not easy to be there for one month because one, there was a shortage of food.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: There was no good drinking water where we were, we couldn't shower.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was a very different in terms of lifestyle, obviously.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, but I realized that I didn't really mind it at all.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't struggle as much as I thought I would to keep up because I truly was overcome with the joy of impact that I was having on that community when I was there.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: And impact and just doing something that you love and being around a team of people that were as giving, as philanthropic, as as impactful as you are, was truly, I think for me, was like that's that's happiness for me.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: That that's the kind of work I want to end up doing in life.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: No matter whether it's missions or whether it's, you know, a company that I start, that's ultimately the feeling that I want to chase.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I wouldn't have really known about that had I taken the safe way and stayed back home and just gone to school, you know, and and just opted out of the mission experience.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: So that really made me also appreciate a lot of the, a lot of just the things we have here back home in the US, that we we tend sometimes to complain a lot.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then I got to really live and see people live in a way that really kind of changed my mind about what I want out of life.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: There were people who have who are so happy with absolutely nothing, and that really reframed and rewired my mind where I don't want a career just because of the money that comes with it.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: I want a career that truly helps me fulfill that impact that I'm chasing.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: So that really was the biggest lessons for that I that I acquired for medical missions.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I went on to do a few more after that, even though I thought I would come back and never do that again because I'm like, what am I, what am I thinking?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I ended up going, you know, to Kador next.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: I also led my own medical mission to my native country, which is Morocco.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: That was a two-year planning.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was really hectic and stressful, but ultimately it was worth it because the work that we did on the ground there was truly transformational and impactful.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And those are memories that I carry with me every single day, especially when I find myself kind of slipping back into my old ways of being ungrateful and complaining and, you know, kind of getting carried away with negative talk or self-talk.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Those moments that I lived throughout my medical missions were truly, I think, are gonna be with me for the rest of my life because they really changed me at the core.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: They they form you like that experience.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think what you said, one of the things you said was the impact was greater than the discomfort or the unease.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like it was more valuable to you what you were doing.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's a powerful message.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: What happens though, I think a lot for those in their careers or in their life or on their path to, you know, who they're meant to be, sometimes we stay in that, stay in that discomfort, or you stay in that unease and you don't feel like you're having an impact.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: You don't feel like you're in that right space.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: Would would you agree with that?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And also I think a lot of us are not just looking for a career that brings you stability and money and and security, but also I think we want to feel at peace with who we are in that career, with who we are at our job every single day, and also with the work that we do.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Does it matter?
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, do you feel like you're contributing to a greater good, something that's beyond who you are?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I think before those missions, I didn't think that way.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when I went to school, I was like, I'm gonna go become a doctor because of the money, or because, you know, even though I realize it's not always, you know, becoming a doctor is not necessarily going becoming rich.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, for me, it was always driven by security, stability, and financial upside.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: And after my medical missions were, by the way, I had to fund on my own.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't have much money, so I had to pay for my own trip.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: I had to fund all of everything that I did for that whole month.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: We weren't making any money, it was all volunteering work, but I'm like, wow, if I honestly did this for the rest of my life, I would be the happiest.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: The impact alone is something that I really found peace with.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so yeah, yeah, I agree with you.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think sometimes we're also being pulled into our comfort zone.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that moment for me really made me look into reaching a zone of excellence and impact as opposed to a comfort zone.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: So early on, I think you were using a skill set of self-reflection that I would think would be maybe more mature than others, maybe at that age, or you were really thinking through how things link together.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: So tell me how you make that pivot from the world you're in, you know, being in a science world, being in a STEM area, and then going into the pageant world, which again, I think every experience we have is a learning.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: And you you said that as well.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's a quite a pivot in the sense of a what I'll call a courage pivot, or you might have just called it that.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: How do you go from that world and what are the things you bring with you from the science academic world into it?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then what do you what are kind of the first things that you realized when you came into the pageant world that you needed to do differently or learn?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: I I think just the way I see myself is that I thrive on change.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: I I know some people don't like change and they get stressed out and anxious about it, but for me, I need it.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's what I do, that's what I enjoy most about life, is that I feel like every few years I need kind of a change of pace.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: I need to experience uh new things, whether in a career side or it could be a passion or a hobby, but I just like to live life to the fullest.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, that means getting as much experience, whether it's work-related or it could be fun, or it could just be acquiring a new skill or trying something that I never thought I would ever do.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: And pageantry falls in that space.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: And to be honest, though, I never really thought about it.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: My mom was the one who kind of nudged me into that world.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: I did throughout my college life receive a lot of invitations from the pageant, the Miss Colorado USA pageant to participate.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I definitely denied it every year because I was just, it just didn't really cross my mind that I would ever do a pageant.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: But then when I went on to Germany for an internship after college, my mom received the invite because they started sending it to my parents' home as opposed to my dorm or, you know, where I lived in college.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: And my mom went on to sign me up without me knowing.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: So when I got back from Germany, I got the acceptance letter that I was accepted to the fall Miss Colorado, USA pageant, and that it's gonna be October, and then you know, here's what you need to prepare for it.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so at that point it was a little too late, but I kind of argued a little bit with my mom about it.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm I'm not I'm not sure this is for me.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: And she's like, just do it.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: You need a new hobby, anyways.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up playing tennis and I got injured, so I stopped competing in that space, especially in sports.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: So my mom was like, Well, why not try something different?
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't require you to be an athlete because you're you were injured, but something that could also help you compete because I'm just naturally a competitive person.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: And she also kind of made the comment maybe this will help you get more in touch with your feminine side because I grew up a tomboy and that was not my mom's favorite thing about me.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I I obliged and I'm like, okay, fine, I'll I'll give it a try.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I honestly did not expect to fall in love with the process.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think, yeah, we think about pageants as the competition that you see on TV, and it's just, but what people don't realize is the amount of work that goes into those preparations to even make it on that stage.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, that was the process that I really enjoyed the most about pageantry because I really had to learn how to know myself so well from the inside out, from the outside in, because the whole point of winning a pageant is that you're able to sell judges on you being the best candidate out of hundreds of other women to represent your state or your country or the universe in a way that that makes you a role model for the young generation of women.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to really understand what that title meant for me, how would I use it, and really be able to communicate that and why I'm the best person to win that title.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so those skills ultimately helped me later on in my career when it comes to interviewing, when it comes to public speaking, when it comes to communications and just being articulate and just really knowing what you want and knowing how to communicate that.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then on top of that, there is that confidence that you acquire being on that stage and being able to do all of that, you know, that that gives you a lot of confidence in your life in other areas.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: There is poise, there is grace, and just being able to present yourself to people to deliberately judge and being okay with that.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think for me, that was the biggest thing.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, if I could walk in a swimsuit in front of thousands of people for to judge, then I can probably do anything in life at that point.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: So there were so many aspects of the experience that I really loved.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately I went on to compete more and more until I ended up winning a title.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that was my mom's objective from day one, anyways.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: But I really didn't think I was gonna genuinely fall in love with that experience.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of things that you can take from that, because I think there's a lot of us, including me, that don't really know the, you know, we only see what we see, right?
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: On the outside of something.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, when you get under the hood of this particular industry and the work that you do, and like you said, the preparation and the dedication and the routine and what you have to do to be fit and be healthy and be able to speak and you know, in the sense of like answer questions on the fly.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Have confidence, be open to critique always.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like you are probably in some way, every day, when you're in that world, being critiqued, and that can be extremely stressful.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: So managing stress, like I'm just like ticking off like several skill sets that we all need to be successful in life, honestly.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: But I think you're again gaining this experience.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: So, like you have this experience with the scientific world, with your degree, you get into the pageantry world, you're very successful in that.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then where's your next pivot and how you know, thinking about being bold?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you are really exploring who you are, what you're figuring out.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: What is your next bold pivot from the pageantry world?
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I think and again, I think sometimes what we don't realize is that when you pivot, it becomes a stepping stone to your next chapter.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I love about the different pivots that I, you know, ended up at the time unknowingly made, but each each pivot ended up getting me closer and closer to my dream life, to my dream career, to my dream job.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I won the title of Miss New York US in 2015, that ultimately gave me a platform I did not expect.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: It also gave me a voice I didn't think I had before then, because up until then, I was mostly in the RD world and as a scientist, kind of stuck in a lab all day long, not really interacting with many people, not being very vocal about what I care about, about my passions, you know, about the things that I want to change in the world, about the empowerment that I'm seeking.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: So when I won Miss New York, that was a platform that really gave me the chance to speak up on a lot of issues, especially for me, it came down to just women's empowerment and women entrepreneurship as well.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: I was at the time when I won, I was in corporate biotech, but because of the title, I ended up launching a podcast.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: So the next pivot was really a podcast that again, I hadn't, this was 2015.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was kind of just starting up.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: There weren't that many women-focused podcasts when it comes to entrepreneurship and just taking unconventional paths to success and interviewing women that may not just be, you know, celebrities or people that are known, but everyday women who have taken unconventional paths to success and learning from those stories.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I ended up launching a podcast that specifically focused on that.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it ended up really taking off.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: It was number two on iTunes and ended up really making a huge impact.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: And because of that, I started a blog that kind of went side by side with the podcast where I talked more about women's entrepreneurship, the lessons I learned from the women I interviewed, tips and advice from you know my own experience pivoting from scientist to beauty queen to podcaster at the time.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that really found a great audience.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so, because of that, I ended up quitting my corporate biotech job and going full-time into building a media brand that focused on helping women tell their stories better and share their voices and elevate their, you know, their thought leadership.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's what came Sway.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: So that leads us to Sway.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: And just in case the listeners don't know what Sway is, how would you describe it?
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, obviously it came out of the blog really expanding and being able to connect and probably amplify, you know, some of the things that you had seen as needs for others.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: So tell us a little bit about Sway.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: So Sway is really a publishing platform focused on elevating women's voices and helping women tell their stories and become thought leaders through content creation and content sharing.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: So we have a great kind of a membership model and a great network of professional women who are constantly sharing stories about resilience, strengths, their expertise as well.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that kind of became kind of a hub for I call it now content mentorship for professional women.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it's across different topics and different subjects and different expertise.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: You go onto the website and look at that.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think one of the key things too is you then I think are creating an opportunity for people to show their thought leadership, and specifically females, to break into getting out of their own way, which I think is something you've talked about in your book and how we may actually be the reason that we can't do something.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that's one of the things I talk about is that first step people have to make to realize like no one's coming to save them.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like you really you're in charge of you, and you can have support all around you, but until you make the decision to do something and to put in and to do the work, it most likely you'll end up being maybe in the same place that you're in now, and it may be an unhappy place, it may be an unhealthy place, like if you're not in the right health that you want to be in.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I think sometimes we get in our own way.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to to lever to the glass ledge.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now we've heard of the glass ceiling.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: I have recently learned of the glass cliff.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, from the perspective of, you know, I didn't even know I was glass cliffy most of my life.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: I call it free soloing the glass cliff.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like I'd get this really hard project, I'd be so stoked, like, oh, they really trust me.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really gonna knock this out of the park.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I would, but it would be at the cost of so many things.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I really never realized it was a glass cliff.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: I just thought I was like, you know, doing What I needed to do to get the job done.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then then we have the glass ledge.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I would, if you could define what the glass ledge is, and then I'd love to start talking about some of the key things that came out of the book.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so so um I think most of the time when I talk about the pivots and just the journey that I I've taken so far in my career, uh most people kind of assume things just fell into place and it all played out, and there were no hardships and no adversity that I uh that I personally had to overcome, which is very far from the truth.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think I think that one of the probably most difficult things that I have done, even in comparison to pageantry and you know, being on medical missions and being on cancer research is is starting a business.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: It is very hard.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, sometimes when we read in the media about people's stories, they make it seem so easy and and seamless, but then you really get into it and just it's one hurdle after another, and it just becomes a series of hardships that you just have to overcome and play the game, and one day it'll pay off.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: But so for me, fighting the patriarchy while sustaining a female forward media startup that further exposed me to unexpected gender-related adversities was basically a double-edged sword.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, on one hand, I was part of this like emerging generation of you know change agents who were collectively raising their voices and bringing vital issues to light, especially on the women's front.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: And on the other hand, I felt like I was stuck in this like echo chamber where feminism became more and more obsessed with victimhood and where the rhetoric focused more on what we women can't do instead of what we can do.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so I didn't really realize it.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: But at the time, subconsciously, I began to define myself by those wounds of gender-related adversities.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's ultimately where I felt like I found myself on this glass ledge, so to speak.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so the symbolic glass ledge refers to the internal battles, or I like to start to call them self-imposed glass ceilings that distort our beliefs about who we are and what we can accomplish.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so at some point, you know, I hit kind of rock bottom with my business back in 2018.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: It was just a very hard time.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: I was struggling with fundraising for many reasons, including sexual harassment and just really being kind of, you know, a young woman trying to make it in a world that's heavily male dominated, and especially that I don't come from that world.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: I have a completely different expertise, which is what's in biotech.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: It was a lot of, you know, hoop jumping to just even get like a hundred thousand dollar check in comparison to a lot of male startup founders in that space who were kind of raising five million at a time, and I just felt like I was getting nowhere.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so because of that, I ended up uh at rock bottom in 2018, you know, an investment kind of fell through and I had to lay off my entire team.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: I had to give up the office on the same day.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was just a really, really tough time that summer for me.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really when it started clicking.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: I started my immediate kind of reaction at that point when I was feeling so down and low was to start blaming anything and anyone I could for my misery and circumstances and how I even ended up there.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: But I realized that that was actually self-sabotaging.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't helpful in any ways because now I was no longer in control of my destiny.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: I was no longer in control of my path.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I had no accountability and no responsibility in where I ended up.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what most of us do.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's very easy to blame other people and blame society and whatever you can point the finger on for where you are, or maybe for where you're not at.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: But it's very harder, it's much harder to look kind of inward and take an objective evaluation of how you also contributed to where you are and how you can change that.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of for me saying, Oh, things should have been different, I should have been treated better by investors, people should have believed in me, and this and this and that, I started thinking, what can I do differently right now for myself?
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because no, like you said, no one is gonna come save me at that point.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was just a very hard and anxious time for me.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the only way out of it was to take accountability and responsibility and really think through, okay, what can I do now?
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: One step at a time to rebuild myself and rebuild this business where I'm not dependent on the outside world to come save me.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think one of the most powerful things, and it's actually your first chapter, it's called power.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I think what you're talking about here of this, I might call it another courage pivot, is you're taking what didn't go well, and you're like, I think there's something here, right?
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: And if you wouldn't have had that experience, we don't wish on anyone to have experience you had in 2018.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: But sometimes we learn the most from those types of moments.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: But what you did is you owned your personal power.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: It is easy to have, you know, what some people call the woe is me moment and blame it on external things.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there's always variables to someone's success and to their failures, but in the end, you're responsible for your own actions and what you do with what happens.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so taking that responsibility, I see what you're saying because I really do think that sometimes people don't take the ability to act.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: And in, you know, you describe uh in your book one of the things, you know, around power is that, and I'm just gonna quote it, although women's oppression is nothing new, we are our own worst enemy when we insist on our own powerlessness.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: So we sometimes potentially could go around and say that we don't have the power, and that actually then creates more opportunities for people to believe that or to think that or for people to act that way.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: What would you say about how do we change that?
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: What do we need to do differently as women, supporting each other as well, and being able to like change the way that we look at power when it comes to women?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think the first thing that we need to do is we should also we should look at the concept of empowerment, especially because that's become such a buzzword over the past few years, past decade.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because when we talk about women's empowerment, what's often implied is that we're asking for power to be given to us because subconsciously we think we don't have any.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: We're asking society or we're asking the patriarchy to give us the power, which you know underscores the preconceived narrative that just women don't have power.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, I think we should define empowerment as the process of becoming stronger, especially in directing one's life and claiming like one's rights and power.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I think a lot of the time we just don't step into it and we think we don't have it at all.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I think also to me, empowerment, and I talk about it's in a book, should also be about encouraging women to feel a sense of autonomy and control in their lives while cultivating a sense of accountability.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I really want to drive home with the book overall, is that yes, we can acknowledge that there are external factors that don't work in our favor.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's nothing new, you know, but but what are we gonna focus on?
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: Are we gonna focus on the things we can't control and the things that are gonna take a long time to change and need a collective kind of you know initiative to change?
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: Or are we gonna focus on things that we can each control individually and start building up from that and then paying it forward at that point?
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really that to me was the mindset that shifted everything in my life is when I'm starting to take control over my own path as opposed to falling victim to the outside world.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that starts kind of with the mindset and how you think about, you know, your actions and your decisions and how you also you react to what life throws at you.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's much more important than what life throws at you, is how you react to it.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of the time we take on that victimhood mindset and we're like, okay, you know, I can't do this because, you know, I'm a woman, or because people don't give much credibility to women.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the way I started thinking for a long time until my boyfriend then now fiance made this comment before I went on on stage one day.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, Do you really think you can't raise money because you're a woman?
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Yeah, I actually do think that.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, No, that that's not that's not true.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like you you can't think of it that way because you're already lost if you think of it that way.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: But again, because to me, I absorbed all of these statistics that are working against us.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, only 2.1% of venture capital goes to women.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm kind of looking at all these things from the outside world and saying, well, because of all of this, I can't raise money, but that's not true.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, so that that's really kind of the mindset that I sort of taken on.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I check myself when I'm starting to fall into that victimhood mindset again.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I can hear in your voice like the passion and like the get you get fired up about moments, like and I love that because I think that's key.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think for the longest time, I didn't even think about it.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't raised to think about if you're a girl, you can or you can't.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's lots of information out there in research that, you know, up until a certain age, girls do believe they can do anything.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: And there's some point in the middle that it it flips, you know.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I've had Dahlia Feldheim on the show, and she talked about she had this very famous marketing campaign about running like a girl.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it was so incredible to see like what a 10-year-old and a 12-year-old thought of running like a girl, and then what a 17-year-old and a 20-year-old or what a man would think of running like a girl meant.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's those types of moments that I don't, I wasn't even thinking like that, you know, as you grow up, but then as you get older and you're in conference rooms and you're sitting in situations where you're really just being honest or you're being authentic or you're still being professional, respectful, but you're disagreeing.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: But for some reason, you have a different definition of your behavior versus if someone else had done it of a different gender.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: It it is, it gets in you like, okay, I guess this is because I'm a woman, or because I have the deck stacked against me, or constantly, I mean, you're in like STEM is an area that again has statistics out the wazoo about how women are represented, right?
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, you're going into an entrepreneurial world where you need to raise investment.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: And again, like you said, and there's also, I've heard more and more in my conversations as I meet more entrepreneurs of like the behaviors that happen in some of the pitch meetings and the disrespect.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I can only imagine you had to have a couple of those where you felt like you wanted to walk out and like it was so inappropriate or whatever it may be.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it it the confidence that you have to have, the growth mindset that you have to have, like extremely powerful for what you do.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: One of the pieces in your book, you talk about the power pose, how that's defined.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm assuming that's you know, kind of being able to show the best part of you and what that looks like.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: But as you're talking, I'm thinking like there's a mental power pose, right?
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like of your confidence and how you can achieve and what you can do.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: And as someone's trying to like form up their mental power pose, right?
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: And kind of take that first step.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: What would you advise them to do?
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: What would be your advice?
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think again, I think it starts with accountability.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: So being able to sit with yourself in self-reflection and take inventory of how you acted in certain meetings in response to maybe a power imbalance, right?
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe something that triggered you and understanding why that triggered you, what are your trigger points?
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: And really, the more you get to know these things, the more you can control how you react in certain, you know, unfavorable environments or certain unfavorable circumstances.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point you take back your control.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: But if you don't know yourself that well, it's very hard to move through life with unshakable conviction and self-assurance.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: It starts with building yourself through self-awareness.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: So you need to be very self-aware and know your weaknesses, your strengths, what how you react to certain trigger points, how do those trigger points manifest physically and mentally and emotionally?
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: Can you control those emotions?
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: And because again, when we let our emotions take, you know, the best of us, then that's when I feel like we lose control.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: We start taking things personally and we lose sight of the big vision we have.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: We let certain comments or certain people treat that that are not treating us well affect how we see ourselves.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I think at that point, that's when you lose control over your and you lose power at that point as well.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: So it all starts with really sitting with yourself in self-reflection and being able to build that self-awareness so that no matter what comes at you, you're able to move through it with so much self-assurance and conviction that it doesn't even get to you anymore.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think you said some very important things there.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think that we either learn the hard way or they're instilled in us, or maybe they just come naturally.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think mine I learned the hard way.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: When you do take things personally and you do pivot in a way where your emotions come out or they come out in a way that can be misinterpreted 99% of the time, why you're reacting or why things happen, you're giving away your power and you're most likely giving away your ability to actually sway or use what you know and your expertise in the direction you want it to go.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: But the other thing is knowing yourself and taking time to understand who you are in the first place.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's interesting, you know.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: I told you a little bit about my journey that I took some time when I made the transition from the corporate world to where I am now, that I took time to like rebuild, renew, because I felt pretty fractured from everything just that had happened throughout my career, and that I hadn't taken the time to really know who I was.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember going through some of the exercises which I took time to do.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a Friday to Monday type of moments.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a I'm gonna print a workbook from a really well-known person, I'm gonna be ready to go on Monday.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think people think that sometimes.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not saying people can't go faster than others.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: I felt like I went pretty fast, but it took me a couple months.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: And knowing yourself better, and you still like you probably learn stuff about yourself every day.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't know about you.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: Do you feel like you still learn about yourself?
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, it's definitely a work in progress, and you need to approach it and know that too from the beginning.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: And to be honest, it's not like I'm completely cured from self-sabotage and that I sometimes don't doubt myself and that I go back to my old beliefs of thinking of myself as someone who's not as competent or not capable of achieving certain things.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: I definitely have those moments, but I think what's different now is that one, I know when I'm doing that and I can acknowledge it and stop myself.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I know how to start reframing my thought process and my mindset to focus more on positive beliefs and positive self-talk that can help me, you know, raise my vibration and do things because I truly believe in my capability.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I think prior to that, I wasn't, again, I'm gonna go back to the same concept.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't accountable.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't taking responsibility for the way I was driving myself to the ground.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was the one who had self-limiting beliefs and I didn't take accountability for that.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I thought people didn't believe in me, but deep down it was me who didn't believe in myself.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: So how can people believe in you when you can't even show that you believe in yourself?
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: But I wasn't the type of person at the time to really check myself and say, wait, you're doing it.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: You're doing this again, and this is working against you.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: You need to stop that.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so I let that negative self-talk run my life and run my career and run my business, and ultimately I ended up in rock bottom.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had to really realize how to acknowledge when I do that and how to stop that from happening again and changing my entire pattern.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: Very powerful words.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: And if you need to rewind that, I would because I think it's the accountability piece that's huge in this, and I think it's so important.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: I see it day after day in working with my clients and different engagements that taking accountable for what isn't feeling right or not going right or isn't going the way you want it, it's the absolute unsurmountable first step you need to take.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like you must take it, and it's not something you can ignore.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really happy and so thankful you were on the podcast.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: I want everyone to see below for the glass ledge and where to find it and check out Sway Media and that's Sway with two A's that's down below as well.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, Amon, for being on the podcast.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: This was a wonderful conversation.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening to the Bold Lounge podcast.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: Through the continuum of bold stories, vulnerability to taking the leap, you will meet more extraordinary people making a positive impact for others through their unique and important story.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: By highlighting these stories, we hope to inspire others to share the journey of the post with the bold.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: We hope you've enjoyed this podcast and look forward to sharing to the next bold journey.