On the Brink with Andi Simon

Learn how to be your own boss and the power of saying no

Those of you who are wondering whether it’s time for you to leave that corporate life and start your own business, you’re going to love my guests today, Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoit Nadeau. They’re freelance writers and translators and the authors of the new bookGoing Solo: Everything You Need to Start Your Business and Succeed as Your Own Boss. Many aspiring entrepreneurs have plenty of skill and passion but don’t have a sense of how to run a business, which makes their advice so valuable. Are you an entrepreneur or solopreneur? You really should listen in.

Watch and listen to our conversation here

According to Julie and Jean-Benoit, a good business plan is basically six questions:

1. What do you want to do?
2. Why do you want to do it?
3. What’s the market?
4. What price do you want to offer?
5. What will you bring to people?
6. What’s the purpose, the “what for”?

To connect with them, visit their LinkedIn page or theirwebsite.

Want to learn more about what makes successful entrepreneurs successful? Here’s a start:

• Blog:10 Qualities To Drive Your Success As A Female Entrepreneur
• Blog:The 5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business
• Podcast:Marsha Friedman—How A Woman Entrepreneur Took A Little Idea And Turned It Into A Big Business
• Podcast:Sharon Cully—Great Ideas to Help Entrepreneurs Gain Time and Success

Additional resources for you

• My two award-winning books:Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in BusinessandOn the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights
• My third book,Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-written with Edie Fraser and Robyn Freedman Spizman
• Our website:Simon Associates Management Consultants

Read the transcript of our podcast here

Andi Simon:Welcome toOn the Brink With Andi Simon.I’m Andi Simon, I’m your host and your guide. And remember, my job is to get you off the brink. So I want to bring to you people who are going to help you see, feel and think in new ways. You know, and this is always my starting speech, because what I want my audience, whether you’re watching or you’re listening, is to learn something new. And the best way to do that is to see it and feel it and begin to get the stories from someone else who has done it and say, Oh, I can do that too.

So today I have a wonderful couple here to share with you their story and a new book. Let me tell you about them. Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoit Nadeau are the authors ofGoing Solo: Everything You Need to Start Your Business and Succeed as Your Own Boss. So those of you who are out there wondering whether or not it’s time for you to leave that corporate life and start your own business, or you’re already starting the business and want to know how to succeed at business, or you’re really thinking about, I don’t know, going back into business, it’s a good time to listen in and think about your own purpose and passion and where you could really have a great trip.

They are prize-winning authors and journalists. The husband and wife pair have been running a freelance writing business for over three decades. Look at the books behind them. I just love books and so many folks have no books. And I’m a book author and I love books. They’ve spoken across Canada, the US, Europe and Japan. Their work has appeared inThe New York Times, USA Today,The International Herald Tribune,France’sL’Express, and more.

They’ve published 15 books, written over a thousand articles, won more than 30 journalism and literary awards. They’re avid travelers, they’ve lived in Paris, which I love, where John Boehner was a fellow of the Washington-based Institute for Current World Affairs. They’ve been to Toronto and Phoenix, where Julie was a Fulbright Scholar at Arizona State University. They’re trilingual in English, French and Spanish, and they are based in Montreal, where they live with their twin daughters. I’ve told you enough. It’s enough for you to see that I got somebody really cool here for you today, and they’re going to help you. Just like I want to see things through a fresh lens. Thank you, Jean-Benoit and Julie, thanks for joining me.

Jean-Benoit Nadeau:Thank you. Thank you very much for having us.

Andi Simon:Now Jean-Benoit has told me I can call him JB. Tell us about your own journey. It’s one thing to read a bio, it’s another thing to begin to think through, How did they get here? Why this book at this time? You certainly have written lots. Jean-Benoit, would you like to start about your journey?

Jean-Benoit Nadeau:Okay. I began as a writer in 1987. As a journalist. I’d done some theater before that. I’d studied engineering, decided in the end that I wanted to earn a living writing, and began as a writer. And since I was not that employable because I had no experience, I started freelancing, which was my destiny as a creator. Anyway, I realized later that a couple of things went well. I got my degree in political science, and was freelancing, meanwhile, and in 1993 things were going well and a magazine in Montreal offered me a job. I took the job and I was employed 29 days and I quit. That’s when I became self-employed by choice. My father is an engineer. He had his own consultancy, which became quite large eventually, but he was an entrepreneur, and he’s the first person who told me, because I was telling him, I have no job, What am I? Oh, he said, you’re self-employed. Oh really? He said, Yes. I know what it was.

Andi Simon:Bravo to your father.

Jean-Benoit Nadeau:And then we discussed frequently until he became sick at the beginning of the middle of the year 2005. He was a good mentor. He mentored us a lot. And we realized quite early that a lot of the problems we were going through were the same that he was going through as an engineer. Aside from writing, you know, how do you negotiate? How do you manage without losing time? How do you finance your business and all these things?

And I gave seminars first for journalists because I had a certain amount of success as a writer. So I was giving seminars to journalists. And then in 1997, I published a book which is the original version of the book in French for the Quebec market. And I started giving speeches in Chambers of Commerce and associate trade associations and realized that I was right on the advice that we had developed, because I was already partnered with Julie. So the advice that we were developing applied to everybody who wants to be creative in their work, really. And then we never had good success. We sold like 30,000 copies of the book in the tiny Quebec market and in French. And Julie said at one point, That book is absolutely translatable. So we got the rights back from my publisher and she translated it, and here we are.

Julie Barlow:So I had been thinking for years and years of translating it, but just got buried under other projects. My writing career began much like jazz. I stumbled into it, began writing music, music reviews when I was in university. And I lost my confidence. I didn’t come from a background with a father who was an entrepreneur. I didn’t come from a business background at all. I didn’t even know you could really make a living as a writer.

Andi Simon:Aha.

Julie Barlow:And that’s not unusual in our field, you know, for people to have a skill and develop it but not have any sense of how to run a business. So I finished my education, finished my master’s degree, and then just started out. And, nevertheless, even with that help that we had, there’s a number of skills you have to really develop in order to make your passion into a business. Basically, I felt very fortunate to have your dad. And of course, we developed our own, our own by trial and error.

And over the decades we developed our skills and our tips, and I was very happy to translate the book. We have two editions of it: one for the United States and one for Canada. And it’s just great to share with others, not just creative people, but people who want to live their passion. They want to do what they want to do. They want to leave a job, start out fresh, out of school or whatever. There’s just some basic things that you need to understand to make it work so that you don’t get drowned in frustrations.

Andi Simon:You know, it’s interesting while I’m listening to you. So I’m in business 22 years now, and I launched my business after being in corporate as an executive in two banks and as an executive in two hospitals. And prior to that, I was ananthropology professor. I got my tenure and I was a visiting professor teaching entrepreneurship. And I was on a journey because I knew I was an anthropologist. I like to apply it among businesses that are going through change because people hate change. And I sort of helped them see, feel and think in new ways.

But when I launched it after 911, my PR firm said to me, Oh, Andi, you’re acorporate anthropologistwho helps companies change. And I went, Bingo. And so in a sense, he defined my passion, my purpose, the why. Then the question was, how? And I did what I used to do anyway, which was start to have lunch with people, you know, never eat alone. We started to network and network and network. And next thing you know, I had a half a dozen client

Ask yourself, how open are you to hearing an alternative point of view?

As I am always saying, the times are changing, fast. From global unrest to polarizing politics to toxic company cultures, everybody is having a challenging time talking to each other. To help us have better conversations so we can move forward together, I bring to you Rose Fass, a wonderful woman who will help us think about the conversations we’re having and how to turn them into powerful growth experiences. I interviewed Rose for this podcast inJune of last yearand what she said applies so strongly to our world today that I wanted to share her thoughts with you again. As she says in herbook,The Chocolate Conversation, conversations become who we are, what we hear, and how we build relationships. A lot to learn here. Listen in and please share.

Watch and listen to our conversation here

To connect with Rose

You can reach out to her onLinkedIn,Twitter,Facebook, or herwebsite, or you can email her at [email protected].

Want to communicate better and more effectively? Check out these 3 podcasts:

• Monique Russell—Why Is It So Hard To Communicate?
• Imogene Drummond—How Can A Brilliant Artist Show You How To Communicate Effectively—Online?
• Nadia Bilchik—How To Master Communication In A Virtual World

Additional resources for you

• My two award-winning books:Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in BusinessandOn the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights
• My third book,Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-written with Edie Fraser and Robyn Freedman Spizman
• Our website:Simon Associates Management Consultants

Read the transcript of our podcast here

Andi Simon:Welcome toOn the Brink With Andi Simon. Hi, I’m Andi Simon. As you know, I’m acorporate anthropologist, and my job is to help you see, feel and think in new ways. And for our podcast, I go looking for people who can help you do that as well. Our job is to get you off the brink. But unless you can see things through a fresh lens, begin to understand them in a new way, you get stuck, or stalled, or you know what you know, and your brain doesn’t really want to change anyhow, thank you very much, please go away. I’m happy where I am.

But today, the times are changing. We are in a world that is full of turmoil, everywhere, of all kinds. From COVID, to the Ukraine, to what’s going on in corporations, everybody is having a challenging time talking to each other. And so I brought you today a wonderful woman who’s going to help you think about the conversations that we’re having, and how to turn them into really growth experiences. The whole world is a conversation. We’re having a global conversation right now.

So today, we have Rose Fass here. Rose and I met fortunately, serendipitously at the Westchester Business Council, where she was presenting an absolutely brilliant presentation. And she’s going to share some of those insights with you. It was really so touching. I said, Wow, can I share her with our audience as well? Now, the Westchester Business Council is a marvelous organization. You have no idea how many people I’ve met there, it’s a really cool place. But each time I meet somebody and want to share them, they add some dimension to our day today.

Let me tell you a little bit about Rose and then she’ll tell you about her own journey. Rose knows, as she says, how to use her unique gift to take a mess and quickly put it in place with effective steps to teach desired outcomes. Interesting, isn’t it. So she loves to change as I do, and like me, is aculture change expert. She’s a natural facilitator who connects with all types of people at all levels of an organization, from the C-suite to the people closest to the work. She has over 45 years of experience in technology and consumer-based industries. During her career, Rose has opened businesses in the United States, has been a general manager with full P&L responsibility and led major corporate transformations. She was a chief transformation officer at Xerox and she’s going to tell you a lot about some of her learnings and why at this point she’s ready to help others do all kinds of transformation. These times, they are a-changing as Bob Dylan told us in the 60s. Rose, thank you for being with me today.

Rose Fass:Thank you, thank you so much. And it’s interesting that whenever I hear my bio, I have to smile a little because I go back to being this little kid in a very small neighborhood with a group of young Italian girls like myself just walking around and trying to figure out what it was that we were going to do when we grew up. So the interesting part about all of this is, I run a company right now called fassforward Consulting Group. And it’s probably the culmination of everything I ever did at Xerox. Later I went to Gartner with the now CEO of ServiceNow, Bill McDermott, and then met my colleague and partner there, Gavin McMahon, and we started this about 21 years ago. And I still feel like I’m a student of the subject that I talked about. So I want to bring myself into the room as little Rose, so you know who I am. Then we can decide whether any of us are a big piece of stuff, or we all buy into this world with our brilliance and our muddy shoes.

So I used to live in East Utica, New York. That’s where I was born, on Ruptor Street, and we had a four-room cold water flat that my dad worked very hard on, kind of getting it to where we would have hot water or mom wouldn’t have to boil it on top of the stove. Believe it or not, I’m 72 years old and I can actually think back to those days very fondly. But my claim to fame was I lived down the street from Annette Funicello. All of you young women, she was on the Mouseketeers and we were just all a bunch of Italian girls who could dance and sing and we were all cute. And we just could not understand why Annette got discovered by Walt Disney and ended up in Hollywood and we were left in East Utica. So for many, many days, I walked with a group of Italian girls home, complaining, whining, saying bad things and being green with jealousy.

I remember this one day, it was unusual because it was early spring, and if you know anything about upstate New York winters, they’re horrible. But the weather was nice and I saw my dad picking dandelions out on the front lawn. I went up to him very quietly, because I just wanted to scoot by. My father was a World War II Marine, a published poet and conversant in all the Romance languages, so he was a very interesting guy. I remember walking by and him saying, “Rose,” and I halted. I turned around, this little nine-year-old looking at him, and he said, “What do you see?” And he held up the dandelion. And I thought, Oh, God, I don’t want to do this. This philosopher, I don’t want to do this. And I said, “I don’t know Dad, I see a dandelion.” And he said, “Yes, darling, but I want you to look wider. I want you to look deeper. I want you to look beyond just the dandelion.” And he looked at me, and I said, “I don’t know Dad, what do you see?”

I think at that point, I had learned how to be very good at rhetorical responses, especially when I didn’t have an idea of what to say. I was so down in the dumps that I just didn’t have the energy to get into it. I usually did, because I think for my dad I was the one that appreciated poetry and philosophy. So he looked at me and he said, “Darling, I see the end of a long winter. I see the dawning of a new season. I see lovers walking hand in hand exchanging silence. I see children picking these out of the lawns and handing them to their moms to put them in juice glasses on the sills as a means of saying I love you.” And I looked at him. And I said, “You see a lot, Dad.” And he said, “Rose, soon this dandelion, this beautiful expression of spring is going to become a weed, and we like many homeowners are going to go to the nurseries and we’re going to get the stuff that will take it out of the lawn because we want to rid ourselves of this one beautiful expression of spring that’s now an ugly reminder of cleaning up the yard.”

And I looked at him. He said, “Because soon honey, the beautiful flowers are going to come along, the irises, the tulips, and yes, even the roses. But the beauty of the dandelion is not in its first expression of spring, it’s in the root, because it’s resilient. And all of us know that no matter how much we hack at them next year, they come back double fold. We named you Rose, but roses are fragile. In your heart, you need to be a dandelion.” That is my signature story.

I remember that day of standing there on that little patch of lawn and crying in the arms of the Marine and in the arms of the poet. And for whatever reason, letting it all out and feeling like I may be enough. I didn’t think I was but maybe I’m enough. And I think we women struggle with that. And so for the rest of my journey, I have reminded myself that we get kicked around, and we get hacked at. And we just have to be resilient. And so today, I think that’s probably more true than ever. And it has held me together for many, many years. Andi, so I want you know who I really am, the little rose, the woman who became who she is today, and that I am a combination of all of those beautiful moments when you learn through pain.

Andi Simon:Now, by saying that, I guess I visualized that scene with your father was exhilarating, maybe painful. But he was imparting to you wisdom that’s really hard to come by otherwise. Who else would you trust to listen to th

Learn how to get treated the way you want, at work and in life

Michele Bailey, a remarkable woman and my podcast guest inJune of last year, is on a quest: to help her clients make gratitude integral to the way business is done. Little wonder that her book,The Currency of Gratitude,focuses on the power of gratitude. As Michele tells us, gratitude is also about creating a healthy culture at work so people feel connected and support each other. As aculture change expert, this is right up my alley, which is why I wanted to bring you Michele’s insights again. Listen, learn, and feel free to share via social media or forward to a friend.

Watch and listen to our conversation here

The power of gratitude can be life-changing

A true trailblazer, Michele Bailey was a driving force in bringing the first Women Presidents’ Organization (WPO) chapter to Canada and currently sits on the WPO board as its international representative. She also is committed to supporting entrepreneurs in the underrepresented diverse and inclusion fields. Want to connect with Michele? Reach out onLinkedin,Twitter,Facebookand either of her websites:My Big IdeaorBlazing.

Need more gratitude in your life and your business? Start here:

• Blog:Time to Add Gratitude to Your Life—And Your Company’s Culture
• Blog:5 Ways You Can Find Happiness And Joy In These Turbulent Times
• Podcast:Richard Sheridan—How To Lead With Joy And Purpose!

Additional resources for you

• My two award-winning books:Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in BusinessandOn the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights
• My third book,Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-written with Edie Fraser and Robyn Freedman Spizman
• Our website:Simon Associates Management Consultants

Read the transcript of our podcast here

Andi Simon:Welcome toOn the Brink With Andi Simon. Thanks for joining us today. My job, as you know, is to be your host and your guide. What I want to do is get you off the brink. I want you to see, feel and think in new ways so that you can change. So I have with me today a wonderful woman, Michele Bailey from Canada. Michele and I met through theWomen Business Collaborative, an organization we’re both extremely involved with and very fond of, all of which is there to help women become the best that they can be. What I’d like to do today, though, is let Michele tell you a little bit about herself after I introduce her to all of you because her bio is beautiful. And I don’t want her to shortchange you because it’s really exciting.

She’s the founder of The Blazing Crew which is a brand and culture agency born out of her strategy-first approach to business. She has a flair for sharing stories, and a desire to enhance employee wellness while pursuing business goals. This is sort of interesting because as you listen to her today, you’ll know that business isn’t about selling things or making things, it’s about people things. And the wellness and well-being of your people and their belonging is not to be underestimated. It is the differentiator that can take you and separate you from the rest. And she’s shaking her head for those who are listening. And she’s saying yes.

Her advertising agency, Blazing, is turning branding inside out. Her My Big Idea and Employee Mentoring and Wellness Program is designed to propel individuals forward in their quest for personal and professional success. My Big Idea is a really cool one so it’s delivered virtually or in person. And it’s really uniquely designed for business owners, leaders and employees to address the challenges of work and personal life. And we’ll talk today about that work-life balance, who is in the pursuit of what I’ve never understood.

I’m ananthropologist, and I look at our society, and I can’t quite figure out why life and work are different. So work life and life work. I mean, this is all kind of a blend of being a professional. Since the time my kids were three weeks old, I knew that there was a blend, it wasn’t either or, there was together. It was who we were. So the difference and the balancing is a challenge, even for the guys.

Michele is on a quest to get her clients to take one important step further, to make true gratitude integral to the way business is done. True gratitude, as you’re listening or watching, we’re going to talk a lot about it because gratitude is not inconsequential, it is essential to our well-being. So her passion for gratitude is contagious. And I think you’re going to capture that. She has a new book out, and I’m so delighted to share it with you. It’s calledThe Currency of Gratitudeand was just published. And it offers a moving and straightforward guide to enabling business growth using gratitude as your currency, and you’re gonna say, But I think gratitude is not inconsequential.

Now Michele will tell you, she’s a biracial woman and has faced her share of challenges. Her boundless energy and vision have earned her international recognition as a champion of women in business. She’s a driving force bringing the first Women Presidents Organization chapter, the WPO, to Canada, and she sits on the WPO board as its international representative. I think you know enough about Michele to know that you want to listen carefully, and enjoy our time together. I shall thank you for joining me today.

Michele Bailey:Andi, I’m so delighted to be here.

Andi Simon:Well tell the listener who is Michele because you’ve had a journey. I can’t capture it reading your bio as much as I have enjoyed it. So give us a little bit about your background.

Michele Bailey:Thank you, Andi. First of all, I want to start by saying that I have lived in multiple states in different countries my whole life. It wasn’t until I turned 18 that I landed in Canada with going to school and I have stayed here. So I’m a dual citizen. I’m an American, as well as a Canadian. I have lived in New Hampshire, Vermont, New York City, Michigan, and the island of Haiti. So I have quite a varied background. And I’ve experienced many cultures which have allowed me to be the woman I am today.

And through this all, Andi, we’re talking about gratitude. I have to tell you, because I never stayed anywhere long, it was really hard to make friends because people knew that I’d be moving and they didn’t want to waste time on people that aren’t going to be hanging around. So at an early age, I made gratitude my core. I learned to embrace each and every relationship that was put in front of me, whether it be for a season or a lifetime, because people mean everything to me. This fast forwards us to being in Toronto today. So to take a step back, I have an agency called Blazing. You might not know who we are, but you will certainly have heard of the clients that we have done work for the last 27 years. And to be a woman in this industry for that long is really almost unheard of because it’s a dog-eat-dog world. It’s a burn-and-churn business. People usually don’t last longer than 18 or 24 months because you burn them out. However, Blazing has stood the test of time. And my average tenured employee is 11 years.

Andi Simon:Wow. In today’s world, that is amazing.

Michele Bailey:And Andi, that is actually why people kept saying to me, how do you hold on to people in an industry that is just so burn-and-churn for the length of time that you do. And I will tell you, it’s a few things. It’s about creating an awesome culture at work. So people feel connected. They want to love and they watch each other’s backs. That’s the first and most important thing.

It’s also about appreciating and recognizing the contributions they bring, both as team members and as individuals, also very important. So I didn’t know that Blazing was so special until people started saying to me, You don’t lose your people. And all the people you get are through word of mouth. You don’t have to use headhunters or you don’t have to use hiring people. I said, No, it’s all word of mouth. So that’s what I was doing at Blazing. When people were asking me what I do differently, I thought, I do something differently than most people I know. I do things like setting up my goals, both personally and professionally every year. I am very clear with what I need to do, as a business owner, as a leader, as a mother, and as a friend. So what I do is, I actually broke down my life into nine categories. And this is what led to the evolution and creation of My Big Idea.

My Big Idea helps people come up with their big idea. You can have work-life integration and blend. So Andi, I start every year by sitting down and answering 13 questions under reflection. What worked and what didn’t work this past year. And because it’s my homework for myself, I’m dead honest. Because if I’m not dead honest, I can’t change, improve, or discard things that haven’t been working for me. So I talk about things like, what was my biggest challenge? What was my biggest success? Who inspired me? And why? What do I need to let go of? Who do I need to let go of? Who do I need to allow in my life? Questions like that.

So I start with reflection, then I go into personal goals. And I again have 10 questions I’m asking myself, and then I have a section in my workbook where I have to list at least one, but not more than three, personal goals. And it has to be about me, not my kids, not my family, it’s got to be about me. I do the same for profes

Learn about another AI: Anthropology Intelligence

As acorporate anthropologist, some of my favorite conversations have been with fellow anthropologists. That’s why I wanted to share with you again the podcast I did inApril 2022 with Gillian Tett, an anthropologist who became a journalist, a bit by chance and then by design. Herbook,Anthro-Vision: A New Way to See in Business and Lifeis about the power of observation. Whether in Tajikistan as an aspiring anthropologist studying marriage rituals or reporting before the financial crisis of 2008, she mastered the art of listening to the stories being told, the resistance to change that people demonstrate, and the wisdom an anthropologist can offer. Could your business benefit from a little anthropology? Listen in for answers.

Watch and listen to our conversation here

We’re all creatures of our own environment.

As Gillian tells us, one of the problems with trying to use the methods of anthropology in a corporate setting is that the corporate world likes to see things in shades of black and white and on PowerPoints. For anthropologists say, life is grey and subtle and often contradictory.

Anthropologists love to observe, and by capturing the real lives of people, we offer insights that other data capture methods might simply ignore. We know that people don’t really know what they are doing and will often tell you what they think you want to hear. It’s their stories that offer opportunities to better ascertain the meaning of their culture, if it needs changing, and how to change it.

You can connect with Gillian onLinkedIn.

Want to learn more about how anthropology could help your business grow? Here’s a start:

• Podcast:John Curran—How Can Anthropology Help Your Business Soar?
• Podcast:Chris Diming—Isn’t It Time For A Little Anthropology in Your Business?
• Blog:Three Ways Corporate Anthropology Can Help Your Company Change

Additional resources for you

• My two award-winning books:Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in BusinessandOn the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights
• My third book,Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-written with Edie Fraser and Robyn Freedman Spizman
• Our website:Simon Associates Management Consultants

Read the transcript of our podcast here

Andi Simon:Hi and welcome toOn the Brink With Andi Simon.I’m your host and your guide and my job is to get you off the brink. So I try to find people who are going to give you a fresh perspective, see things through a clear lens.

Let’s just step back and take a moment to be a littleanthropologicaland begin to understand that you really don’t know what’s happening until you pause and think about it differently. And as you know,in my books, I help you see things through the eyes of my clients who all got stuck or stalled because their stories were so great that they couldn’t see all the things that were going on around them. And that’s why a little anthropology can help you change, grow and your companies get unstuck. As you know, I myself am acorporate anthropologist, which is why I’m so excited to bring to you today’s guest.

Today, Gillian Tett is with me. Let me tell you about why she’s so special, and why you’re going to enjoy watching her or listening to her. Listen carefully to the stories she has to tell. Gillian serves as the Chair of the Editorial Board and Editor at Large in the US of theFinancial Times. Forgive me for reading this, but it’s very important that you hear it.

She writes weekly columns covering a range of economic, financial, political and social issues. She’s also the co-founder of Financial Times Moral Money, a twice weekly newsletter that tracks the ESG revolution in business and finance, which has since grown to be a stapleFTproduct. In 2020, Moral Money was the SABEW best newsletter. I’ll tell you, it’s a great newsletter. Previously, Gillian was aFinancial TimesUS managing editor. And she’s also served as assistant editor for theFinancial Times markets coverage, and a lot of other things of great importance. I love to read theFinancial Timesand I bet you do as well.

She’s the author ofThe Silo Effect, which looks at the global economy and financial system through the lens of cultural anthropology. She’s also authoredFool’s Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets and Unleashed Catastrophe, a 2009New York Timesbestseller and Financial Book of the Year at the inaugural Spirits Book Awards.

I must tell you she has written really good books. I brought her here today because she has a new book out calledAnthro-Vision. And as you might imagine, it touched me and my heart. And I read right through it. I couldn’t stop because it was all about how, what she’s calling AI, not artificial intelligence, but anthropological intelligence, more intelligence and a whole new perspective. And what I would like you to understand is how a little anthropology can, in fact, help you and your business see things through a fresh lens and why it’s so important. Gillian, thank you for joining me today.

Gillian Tett:Well, thank you for interviewing me. And it sounds like we not only have a lot in common, but a lot to learn from each other. I’m interested in your own career and your own story because it sounds fascinating.

Andi Simon:Well, I have enjoyed reading about yours. But I’d like you to tell the listeners or the audience about who Gillian is because you’ve had a great journey that’s taken you to many places. And as ananthropologist, I smiled. Just a little aside, I took my daughters when they were four and five to Greece to study Greek women. And I know you’d appreciate this, I learned a whole lot about the Greek woman through my children. I’m not sure what my children learned, but they still love me. And so that’s all that matters. Tell us about yourself.

Gillian Tett:Anyone who reads my biography would think that I’m thoroughly weird. That has been the reaction of many business leaders, political leaders, economists, grown-ups who pretend to run the world, when they hear about my background because most people who work in high finance or business assume that if you’re going to be a journalist writing about them, you should have a PhD in economics or an MBA, or some kind of training in quantitative intellectual pursuits. And my background is actually in cultural anthropology. And I did a BA and then a PhD at Cambridge University in the UK.

And what anthropology really is about is looking at human cultures and systems, and what makes people and societies tick, not just in terms of the obvious things that we recognize, but most importantly, the things that we tend to ignore around us all the time. Just like psychologists look at our hidden biases in our brains, anthropologists look at our hidden biases and patterns and assumptions in society.

So in my case, I went into anthropology because I was fascinated by the rest of the world. I’ve always loved to explore and travel. And as a child, I dreamed of going to wacky weird places or places that seem weird to me. But like Indiana Jones, if you like the intellectual world, and cultural anthropology pretty much came out of that impetus in Victorian England, the idea that people would go off to other cultures to find the essence of what it meant to be human. And a lot of what anthropologists did in that way mid-century was indeed to go and travel. That’s changed a lot in the 21st century. I’ll come on to that in a moment.

But I went off in my case to a place called Soviet Tajikistan in 1989. And I spent about a year and a half of my life up in the high mountains in Tajikistan living with a group of wonderful villages. I imagine most people listening are saying, I’ve got no idea where Tajikistan is on the map, or what it’s like there. But basically, if you imagine the scenes you might have seen of Afghanistan on the news, and take out the black veils and put on very brightly colored clothes, then you roughly have the idea of what my village was like. It was in the high, high mountains of the Hindu Kush. And I was studying Tajik wedding rituals there. But I wasn’t just studying wedding rituals, I was looking at these rituals and symbols and ceremonies, and all the economic exchanges associated with weddings as a key to try and understand how the Soviet Tajiks reconciled their identities of being Islamic and communist at the same time.

Now, after I did my PhD, I then left Tajikistan. I actually became a journalist, originally a war reporter. And then I joined theFTand became an economics correspondent. And for the first few years, it felt as if all my training in cultural studies was completely irrelevant. But it’s funny how life works. Because a few years after I started writing about finance, I suddenly realized that actually human beings are humans wherever they are. And in just the same way that I went studying Tajikistan wedding rituals in the Hindu Kush, and looked at how they use symbols and ceremonies to express ideas about their world.

To give you an example, two investment bankers get together for gigantic ritualistic ceremonies called investment banking conferences, where they have all kinds of rituals like PowerPoints, and bar meetings, and golf tours. And those rituals and ceremonies and symbols also create social networks, and express all kinds of assumptions which could and should

Hear how to create a workplace where people love to work

I first had the pleasure of interviewing Konstantinos (Kon)Apostolopoulos for this podcastin July 2020as the pandemic was raging around the world. He and Dr. Elia Gourgouris had just co-authored the book,7 Keys to Navigating a Crisis: A Practical Guide to Emotionally Dealing with Pandemics & Other Disasters. Now Kon has written another book due out next year, calledEngagement Blueprint: Building a Culture of Commitment and Performance. And what is so fascinating about his new book is that it focuses on business culture change and employee engagement as the keys to business success. Kon and I are bothculture change expertsand so as you can imagine, I’m excited to learn what he has to tell us today, as I think you will be too.

Watch and listen to our conversation here

People seek out environments where they feel valued and their needs are being met.

Some keypoints from today’s discussion:

• An engaged workforce looks for things that need to get done because they feel appreciated and value helping the company move forward. They’re connected and understand clearly what the goals are, and they’re looking for opportunities to support their teammates in meaningful ways and make contributions that will make a difference for the organization and for themselves.
• They look at their daily activities as opportunities to learn, to grow, to capitalize on that, to invest in themselves.
• When that happens, work becomes learning, work becomes play, work becomes exciting.That’s the kind of place where engagement really thrives.
• People want something more than just financial success. They want, and need, to be valued and appreciated in what they do. We all do.

How to reach Kon

You can connect with Kon onLinkedIn,Facebook,Twitterand his websiteFresh Biz Solutions, or email him [email protected]. Also, takethe online version of Kon’s self-assessment questionnaireto learn what your organization can do differently to really soar.

Want to learn more about

• Podcast:Richard Sheridan—Joy in the Workplace
• Podcast:Maria Colacurcio—Stop The Revolving Door. Help Your Employees Embrace A Diverse And Equitable Workplace.
• Blog:Change Is All Around Us But It’s Terrifying. So How Do I Make Change My Friend?

Additional resources for you

• My two award-winning books:Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in BusinessandOn the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights
• My third book,Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-written with Edie Fraser and Robyn Freedman Spizman
• Our website:Simon Associates Management Consultants

Read the transcript of our podcast here

Andi Simon:Hi and welcome toOn the Brink With Andi Simon. Hi I’m Andi Simon. And as you know, my job is to get you off the brink. And I love to do it by bringing you interesting people who are going to help you do something important. You’re going to see things through a fresh lens. You’re going to feel things differently. And remember, we decide with how we feel and then you’re going to think about it. Because if you can see it and feel it, then your brain says, Oh, that’s what we’re talking about. And today, this is really a great opportunity, particularly coming out of the pandemic, still not being sure or certain about work and life and hybrid and all kinds of things. It’s time for us to think about that organization we want to build.

So today, somebody whom I interviewedearlier for this podcast, in July 2020, is coming back because he’s writing a new book, a solo book:Kon Apostolopoulos, who is a really wonderful gentleman who works with organizations to help them, like I do, change. Let me read you a little bit about his background. He’s founder and CEO ofFresh Biz Solutions, Fresh Like That, and Human Capital Management Consultancy, which provides performance improvement and training solutions to help organizations develop their people, improve business results, and reap the benefits of a comprehensive talent management strategy.

During the pandemic, he and Dr. Elia Gourgouris published a book called7 Keys to Navigating a Crisis: A Practical Guide to Emotionally Dealing with Pandemics & Other Disasters. That was terrific and very timely. He’s a regular contributor to Thrive Global and Achievers Engagement. I think what you’re going to love today is that he has had time to develop a new book on employee engagement. He calls itEngagement Blueprint: Building a Culture of Contribution and Performance.Is that the title? Did I get it almost right?

Kon Apostolopoulos:Almost right. Almost right.Commitment and Performance. Both of those are things we’re going to talk about today. And hopefully I put down a half a word and then I had a figure. The other half was on. So good thing we can laugh together.

Andi Simon:What I think for our listeners and our viewers is so important is that Kon brings both research and experience and expertise to this engagement question. And I love when he talks about it because you’re going to begin to think about that blueprint that you need, which lays out a pathway to change what’s maybe a little chaotic today into something where employees believe in the place and really want to participate and belong. Kon, thank you so much for joining us.

Kon Apostolopoulos:It’s such a pleasure to be with you again, Andi. Thank you for having me.

Andi Simon:Our problem is going to be to only stay within a half hour or so because we love to talk. There’s nothing better than getting together with people who share your passion and your purpose. I want you to talk a little bit about your background so they understand who’s Kon. And then we’ll talk about the origin myth of this new book, which is so important. Please share with them. Who is Kon?

Kon Apostolopoulos:Thank you. It’s a pleasure. Kon is right now a 30 year veteran of the Adult Learning Performance Improvement Change Leadership space. I essentially work with people. The company I founded about a dozen years ago,Fresh Biz Solutions, is focused on helping organizations, the kind of organizations that you and I know, Andi, that spend a lot of time and money building, developing very intricate business plans. Where I come in and help is that I ensure that they have the right people in the right place, ready and willing to execute those plans because without them, the organization really has a plan that’s not worth the paper it’s written on because it needs its people at their best to be able to execute those plans.

And a lot of times that comes through workshops and development. A lot of times that comes through one-on-one or group coaching efforts to enhance the commitment that people have as well as their competence. Sometimes it comes with tailored events that need to be facilitated to bring people together and aligned with the goals that we’re striving for, and ultimately working with my clients on their systems to make sure that every dollar that they invest in their people is a dollar well spent and it aligns to something that they target that is very purposeful rather than a “nice to have.”

So I’ve been doing that for a long time now and I’ve had the pleasure of working in a number of industries across the spectrum with a number of different types of organizations: public, private, smaller and now much more of that mid- to large-space organizations that have enough people where we can make a difference and truly create the kind of workplace that people can find themselves, they can really align themselves, see themselves achieving their goals, and, oh, by the way, helping the organization be successful as well, because we all deserve that kind of a workplace.

Andi Simon:Engagement, though, is always a strange word. People talk about it wishfully. I’m not quite sure they would know it if they saw it. And then I couldn’t be sure how they would feel it if it was there. So let’s start off with, you know, you’ve moved through the 30 years into working with organizations large and small, and now you’re beginning to really find ways to make a difference. Why? Why should we even think about this thing called employee engagement? Why does it matter?

Kon Apostolopoulos:Well, let’s approach that from a number of different angles. Let’s look at our protagonists in the story. Let’s talk about, first and foremost, the employees themselves. People seek out environments where they can feel like their needs are being met. And when we talk about engagement needs, we talk about the need all of us have, first and foremost, to be valued and appreciated in what we do.

Second of all, to feel like they belong in that environment, that they’re part of a team, part of a tribe. These are basic needs, fundamental needs that we all have. In addition to that, in our workplaces, in our careers, we all seek to feel like we are making a meaningful contribution, that we are able to be productive in what we’re doing. So at the end of the day, we feel like we’ve accomplished something.

And ultimately most of us want to know that we are operating in an environment that invests in us, supports us so we can continue to learn and grow so we’re not remaining stagnant. So from that perspective, from an employee standpoint, these are basic needs that employees are looking for in

Hear how to really live diversity, equity, and inclusion, not just talk it

I just love women who are changing the world, and Dr. Rohini Anand is one of them. A pioneer in DEI, Rohini is a global strategic Diversity, Equity and Inclusion leader, a highly revered board member and speaker, and a published author. In her book,Leading Global Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: A Guide for Systemic Change in Multinational Organizations, she provides businesses with a blueprint for changing their culture into one where everyone is welcomed, respected, and listened to. Does your organization need to change? Listen in as Rohini tells us how to do it.

Watch and listen to our conversation here

Rohini’s 5 principles for bringing about DEI change:

• The first principle: Make it local.Global change has to be anchored in an understanding of the local context. Change has to be rooted in the local particulars informed by the history, the culture, the language, and mores of each place.
• The second: Leaders must change to lead change. Commitment from senior leadership is absolutely fundamental to ensuring that DEI is sustained.
• The third: It’s good business to institute DEI. Frustratingly, 70% of change efforts fail. That’s why a change narrative has to be congruent with the organization’s purpose and how business is done.
• The fourth: Go deep, wide, and inside out.Organizations are interconnected systems that work in concert with each other. DEI needs to be infused in the internal processes and systems, as well as externally. There must be a systems approach.
• And the fifth principle: Know what matters, and counter.Metrics clearly provide a global framework, a cohesive narrative to spotlight problem areas and solutions. To be instruments for change, leaders have to have the right metrics, and they have to hold their teams accountable.

How to connect with Rohini

You can find her onLinkedIn,Twitter, and her websitewww.rohinianand.com, or email her [email protected].

Want to know more about DEI and culture change? Start here

• Blog:How’s Your Culture? Doing Fine Or In Drastic Need Of An Overhaul?
• Blog:How Storytelling Can Transform Your Culture And Energize Your Team
• Podcast:Kim Graham Lee—How To Build A Culture Where Men And Women Truly Support Each Other

Additional resources for you

• My two award-winning books:Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in BusinessandOn the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights
• My third book,Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, co-written with Edie Fraser and Robyn Freedman Spizman
• Our website:Simon Associates Management Consultants

Read the transcript of our podcast here

Andi Simon:Hi and welcome toOn the Brink With Andi Simon.I’m Andi Simon, and as you know, I’m your host and your guide. And I’ve started to tell people on our podcast a little bit more about me, because they keep asking, Who are you? So I’m acorporate anthropologist, and I’ve specialized for most of my career helping organizations and the people inside them change. And you must recognize that people hate change, your brains would just as soon I go away. But the podcast came about after my book,On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights, was published and won an award. And my second book just won an award as well,Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business.I’m honored to be able to share with you my insights into how people can change, and particularly howcorporate cultures must change.

So today’s guest is a very special woman. I can’t wait to share her with you: Rohini Anand. I met Rohini through theWomen Business Collaborative, where I’m a member, and she is as well. I read her new book,Leading Global Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: A Guide for Systemic Change in Multinational Organizations. Rohini has a wonderful perspective. I’m going to tell you a little bit about her and then let her tell you about her own journey.

But remember, our job is to help you see, feel and think in some new ways so you can do something. And the questions around diversity, equity and inclusion are profound. I cannot tell you how many CEOs have said to me, it took me three months to hire some people to diversify my culture. They only lasted three months. And I said, Okay, we have a bigger question here about what is your culture? And why should people belong to it? And humans want to belong.

So here’s Rohini’s background. She is a strategic Diversity, Equity and Inclusion expert, highly sought-after board member, a published author and speaker. She is recognized as a pioneer in DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) and has been on the forefront of leading businesses through lasting change for corporations, not for nonprofit organizations and government agencies worldwide. She was previously senior vice president of corporate responsibility and Global Chief Diversity Officer for Sodexo. And under her leadership, the Sodexo brand became synonymous with leadership in diversity, corporate responsibility and wellness.

And I have a hunch she’s going to tell you a little bit about her journey. But I’m excited because both in her book and in her work, she’s actually making things happen. And for all of you who are wondering, How do you make DEI happen?, you need to listen carefully because this is what’s happening. And now the question is, how can we share it so you can do it as well? Rohini, thank you for joining me today.

Rohini Anand:Thank you. I’m delighted to be with you, Andi. And looking forward to the conversation.

Andi Simon:Let’s begin, who is Rohini? What’s been your journey? Share it with the listeners, they love the stories.

Rohini Anand:Yeah, as you know, anyone involved in diversity, equity and inclusion work, this book is very personal for them. And my story is integral to who I am. I actually grew up in Mumbai, India, and growing up in India, almost everyone sort of looked like me. It is a country with a lot of diversity, many socio-economic classes, religions, ethnicities, languages, etc. I belong to the majority religion, Hinduism, and surrounded by others like me. I had the privilege of not having to think about my identity. So I moved to the United States as a teenager, and went to graduate school. And that really was my inflection point in my both literal and metaphorical journey.

And I have to say that my identity shifted from being a person who saw herself as the center of her world to being a foreigner to being an immigrant to being a minority, and I was totally unprepared for that. So it was only when I was identified as a minority did I realize the privileges that came with being part of a majority. I was part of the majority growing up in India, but I had not recognized my privilege in that way. And honestly, I was unable to until I was perceived as a minority and I experienced things differently. So the realization that identity is situational is fluid and informs the research that I did for my PhD and still informs my work.

So I would say that this vocation is very personal to me, understanding what it means to be perceived as a minority, as an outsider, is very much at the heart of diversity, equity and inclusion work. And I am fortunate that my vocation and my avocation are perfectly aligned. So it’s a little bit about my journey to the work that I do today. I continue to do this work. You’re right, I worked for Sodexo for 18 years. And we were hired from Sodexo in 2020, just before COVID hit, was the time to write my book. And since then I’ve been doing booktalks, strategic coaching and advising, and I’m on several boards, but I continue to do this work that’s so meaningful to me. It is part of who I am.

Andi Simon:Well, being who you are, when you were at Sodexo, I have a hunch you explored and learned a great deal about the challenges of building a diverse culture, particularly a global one. Now is that a good place for us to start to talk about the learnings that went on there because it was very profound. You went from India, I’ve been to India, it’s quite a complicated place. And coming here, discovering a culture that had a different attitude, different values, everything about you being here was different. And somehow you had to find a way of belonging, and humans want to belong. Some of the insights that came from the Sodexo experience would be really helpful, I think, to our listeners.

Rohini Anand:So Andi, when I joined Sodexo, there was a fairly serious lawsuit. And I didn’t quite understand or really recognize the seriousness of that lawsuit until about six months after I was hired, when it was certified as a class action lawsuit that was settled for over $80 million. It was a discrimination lawsuit filed by African Americans in the company. And I share that because you know what I say in the book, and the journey really was from class action to best in class. So that was the sort of situation that I stepped into.

But with the support of leadership, we were able to change the culture around and became known for leadership and diversity, equity and inclusion in the United States. And then it was a question of scaling this work globally. So what I found was that doing this global DEI work is very complex. It’s very dynamic. There’s

Learn how to let go of worry and fear by learning new habits

Today I bring you Joanna Hardis, a beautiful woman whom you’re going to love listening to. Joanna is focused on helping people with anxiety-related issues and obsessive compulsive disorders, so this is a person you really might like to know more about if that’s something that is in your life. She can give you strategies to help you break through the barriers that are holding you back and learn to let feelings be, which is what she talks about in her new book,Just Do Nothing: A Paradoxical Guide to Getting Out of Your Way.Like me, Joanna preaches that change is hard but we can do it, we really can change and have a happier, more fulfilling life. Listen in and enjoy.

Watch and listen to our conversation here

Change your thinking, change your behavior

Joanna teaches us that when your brain wants to go to the “worry story,” that state of mind that’s causing you to be anxious, that is when you can learn specific skills to say, “Nope, I’m going to let that story be.” It’s really about doing nothing with those thoughts, letting the thoughts be, letting the feelings be there. She says that you may feel worried, but you’re not going to engage in those feelings, you’re going to let them be, instead of trying to get rid of them which actually makes the worry and the fear stronger. This really is quite fascinating and as she says, paradoxical.

How to reach Joanna

You can connect with Joanna onLinkedIn,Facebook,Instagramand herwebsite. Her email [email protected].

Want to learn more about how to find more joy? Try these:

• Podcast:Paula Guilfoyle—How Do You Manage Your Emotions To Build Better Conversations For Exceptional Results?
• Podcast:Meg Nocero—Can You Feel Joy As You Rethink Your Life?
• Blog:You Can Find Joy And Happiness In Turbulent Times!

Additional resources for you

• My two award-winning books:Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in BusinessandOn the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights
• Our website:Simon Associates Management Consultants

Read the transcript of our podcast here

Andi Simon:Hi and welcome toOn the Brink With Andi Simon.I’m Andi Simon, and as you know, I’m your host and your guide. And I love to find people to bring to you who can help you see, feel and think in new ways so that you can get off the brink. I want you to soar. But sometimes we don’t really know how to do that. We want to. We may even visualize what life could be like if it wasn’t so…and fill in that blank. But how do I do that?

So today, Sarah Wilson, who I love, brought me Joanna Hardis, who is a beautiful woman who you’re going to love listening to. Let me tell you about her and then she’ll tell you about her own journey because she has a new book. And we’ll talk a little bit about the book today. It’s calledJust Do Nothing: A Paradoxical Guide to Getting Out of Your Way.

So here’s Joanna’s background. She’s a licensed independent social worker, a therapist and an executive coach in Ohio, and that’s her main business. She’s committed to helping people overcome complex challenges. And I know some people who watching this podcast are going to say, That’s me, I got it and it’s okay. So they can lead high quality lives. Her expertise lies in cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT, which you may know about, an exposure and response prevention for adults, children and adolescents.You can find her onLinkedInand learn a lot more about her.

A couple of things I just want to highlight. She really is focused on helping people in the face of anxiety-related issues and obsessive compulsive disorders. So this is a person you really might like to know more about if that’s something that is disturbing you and she can identify what’s holding you back and give you strategies to help move you forward. And today, the things that I think we’re going to talk about as we talk about doing nothing, it’s called empower you to understand, break through the barriers that are holding you back, create your own sliding scale of distress, and learn to let feelings be instead of letting them go. We’ll come back to these, and I’m sure Joanna is going to tell you a whole lot more about them. Please, thank you for joining us.

Joanna Hardis:Thank you for that lovely introduction, Andi. Appreciate that.

Andi Simon:Well, I appreciate having you. Our audience will as well. I’m curious about both your background, your journey, the origin of this great book, and then what our listeners will learn from our podcast today about this complex world that we’re in and the anxiety that often arises. And life is too short. We have to find better ways to live it. Your story.

Joanna Hardis:Yes. So how I got here. I imagine, well, I never intended to be a therapist. I sort of just happened to get here. I went to college, pre-med, not really even wanting to be pre-med. I wanted a fellowship in high school to do independent study and had a real interest in working with people with HIV. So I was in high school in the 80s when HIV was really emerging on the scene. I don’t know how it emerged, but I had an interest in working with people with HIV and AIDS.

So a friend and I got a fellowship to do independent study and worked with physicians at a local hospital working with people with HIV and AIDS. So I went to college, went to Cornell and had this real interest in having a career in HIV and AIDS, and was told at Cornell like, Oh, then you’re pre-med. And I was not a very savvy student, despite being at Cornell. So I was in a pre-med track and realized quickly that it was not for me. And went to my advisor who said, What do you like? And I said, I really like people. And so the advisor said, Okay, well, maybe you’re a social worker and not someone who at that time was very savvy.

Again, I said, Okay, well let me give this a shot. Let me give this social work thing a shot. And I got to do an internship. So I went to Costa Rica and lived and worked. And I thought that was incredibly cool. So I kind of found my way into social work, never thinking about other career paths like psychology or counseling, but really found my way into social work by happenstance. I started my career in HIV. I spent about a decade in HIV, still hold it very near and dear to my heart, but really fell in love with working with people and have a real interest in what makes people click and the brain and helping people move forward.

So my career started in HIV and AIDS and I got trained in cognitive behavioral therapy and have really always had this interest in helping people who are in very complicated situations, working collaboratively to move them forward. And so I have been able to partner with people throughout my career, and I’m in my 27th year as a cognitive behavioral therapist. I do that and really work with people in different areas of life.

So I’ve been with people with HIV and AIDS. I’ve worked in an eating disorder treatment center, which is unbelievably challenging. I’ve worked with young entrepreneurs. I have volunteered during the pandemic with therapy aides, just giving, volunteering with frontline workers to now having my own private practice where I have really committed to working with people with anxiety disorders because it just makes so much sense to me. Anxiety disorders and obsessive compulsive disorder.

Andi Simon:And there is an abundance. There’s an epidemic of this.

Joanna Hardis:Yes.

Andi Simon:And so it’s not as if you’re looking at a needle in a haystack. It is the haystack.

Joanna Hardis:It is. It is. And, you know, we know from data that parents who struggle, it has an impact on children. So I find it incredibly rewarding. I stopped seeing kids and adolescents during Covid because I had to move virtually. And so now my practice is adult. But I do work a lot with parents to change their behavior because we know that that can help children. We need a different way in which to help people that are struggling.

Andi Simon:And before we get into the book, which I’d like to know more about as to why you wrote it and what the listener can benefit from. But give us some context here for the audience, around where does anxiety come from? And the context, because what you’re talking about is that it becomes contagious. What’s going on with the parents? It gets picked up as normal by the children, who then spread it among other children who think we should all be anxious instead of we should all be happy. But I’m making that up. You help me help you, What is it like and how can we better identify it?

Joanna Hardis:Sure. And there is a difference between an anxiety disorder and anxiety, which is just a normal state and a normal reaction, for instance, to fear. So it exists on a continuum. So let’s walk it back a little bit to the difference between fear and worry, because oftentimes we confuse fear and worry. Fear is a response to a threat. So someone cuts you off on the highway and you get that fear. You get that flood of adrenaline in your whole body, you get the whoosh, the flood of adrenaline. That’s fear. It is a response to a biological threat, an external threat. Well, what if that happens again? What if someone cuts me off again? And what if that car is too close and oh my gosh, what if I need to go really slowly? That cognitive process to fear is what we call worry.

Andi Simon:Good. Great di

How can you achieve all that you are worth? Listen in and find out.

Are you a business or organization that wants to significantly accelerate your growth? Don’t miss my conversation with Jessica Yarborough. It’s one of my favorites over our six years of doing this podcast (has it really been six years??) and I wanted to re-share it with you so you too can learn from her wisdom in case you missed her the first timein 2022. We talk about the challenges people face who are not reaching their income goals and how this leads to some soul-searching. I love how Jessica says, “If you need to make a decision, go somewhere alone and be with yourself and your inner thoughts. The answer that you’re seeking will reveal itself.” Let’s all practice this.

Watch and listen to our conversation here

How build your sales, create long-term clients and hit your income goals, according to Jessica

• Research your clients
• Work with people with proven track records to bring you results
• Stay focused on the process.

You can connect with Jessica onLinkedIn,Facebook, herwebsite, herblogor herYouTube channel.

To learn more about scaling up your own business, here are some recommendations:

• Blog:The 5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business
• Podcast:Bruce Eckfeldt—How Can You Really Scale Your Business to Succeed?
• Podcast:Allison Maslan—Scale or Fail: Hiring the Right Folks for the Right Fit

Additional resources for you

• My two award-winning books:Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in BusinessandOn the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights
• Our website:Simon Associates Management Consultants

Read the transcript of our podcast here

Andi Simon:Welcome toOn the Brink with Andi Simon. Hi, I’m Andi Simon and as you know, my job is to help you get off the brink. I do that by looking for really wonderful people to come and speak to you about new ways to see things, feel differently, think about them, and actually do them.

So today I have Jessica Yarborough with us. What’s really interesting is that we found each other on LinkedIn. And LinkedIn is one of those remarkable places to help people see, feel and think in new ways. I think you’re going to love her story because she’s going to help you think about where you’re going and how she has some great tools and ideas about how to help you get there. So let me tell you a little bit about Jessica and then she’ll tell you her story.

Jessica has quickly developed a reputation of being one of the best business strategists and marketing and sales consultants for entrepreneurs like myself, and sales consultants who want to sell high value products and services. Her background is in international businesses and she’s built multiple companies. You are going to love today’s journey with her because it’s interesting. This is a wonderful story by a brilliant woman.

Jessica is a genius at showing entrepreneurs how to build an expert platform, rapidly raise their value, and build their credibility online to attract high-paying clients. She travels the world teaching and inspiring entrepreneurs and helping them grow their influence and income so they can have the impact that they want. This is such fun. I’m anxious to hear your story, as well as to share it with my audience. So who are you? And how did you get here? Tell us about yourself. It will be fun to share it, please.

Jessica Yarborough:Andi, thanks so much. Well, as you mentioned, and to your audience, I am a business strategist. And today I’m focused on helping scale up coaching and consulting businesses, but I didn’t start here. You know, many, many, many years ago I managed multiple companies. I actually built a startup here in San Diego but the work was intense and the hours were grueling. And I remember I actually, even though I built a company, literally, we didn’t even have desk computers on day one which was so phenomenal to build.

I actually was on vacation, and I had a spiritual awakening. And I had a moment where I realized that even though I had built something that I was really proud of, it wasn’t in alignment with where I wanted to go with my life. And now in that moment, I made one of the most empowering decisions in my life, which was to make a decision all on my own, and to follow that inner guidance. So essentially, I flew back to the United States, I walked away from my company, bought a one way ticket, and I spent four years traveling the world, going deep into personal development, spirituality, and really finding out who I was at the core of myself.

I had great adventure stories around that but I did come back to the US. After about four years, I got pregnant with my daughter and became a single mom. Okay, time to build again. And I started my consulting business literally, and raised a child on my own to build it to seven figures, and have helped many, many clients reach high six and seven figures in their own businesses.

Andi Simon:In my book,Rethink: Smashing the Myths of Women in Business, there are several women who went on their own journeys. One went through Africa. One went through Europe and Israel on $5 a day. As ananthropologist, the journey isn’t inconsequential. So I don’t want to jump immediately into who you are today. Can you share a little bit about some of the discoveries during that journey that prepared you for who you became. If you can, that would be really interesting to share.

Jessica Yarborough:I mean, I will say it was probably the most magical time in my life. There’s so many insights that you can garner from looking at other cultures. One of them being how similar we really are. It doesn’t really matter how you were raised. At the core, we all have the same basic needs. Being able to learn from other cultures, their food, their spirituality. From spending time in silent meditation at retreat centers in Thailand to literally, practicing yoga in ashrams in Bali, to living in the jungles of Costa Rica. There are so many different experiences that really colored my world, about nature, about spirituality or God, connection to the earth, about human beings and our desire for love and appreciation and connection. And all of those shaped who I am today. I don’t think that I would be the business woman I am today without them. I would have been successful had I continued on my trajectory when I was younger, but I would not be who I am nor have the same depth in terms of level of fulfillment and purpose.

Andi Simon:Well, with that in mind, my hunch is you’ve brought that to your clients. So there are some things that I know you would like to share about how you approach a client and their own trajectory to begin to infuse their growth. Whether it’s a consultant or anentrepreneur, or someone inside a company trying to grow their own capabilities, how do you approach a client? And how do you bring this wisdom to them, to inspire them to maybe rethink where they’re going?

Jessica Yarborough:Absolutely, we all need someone outside of us to help us see our own greatness. You know, hold up the mirror to what we cannot see. We are typically blind to our innate gifts. Even the most successful people I know, and I work with CEOs who have built 14 companies, and it’s hard sometimes for even them to own their brilliance, their gifts. Part of the first thing I do is hold up that mirror for them and help them not only to recognize the incredible achievements that they’ve made in their life, but to actually see the pattern of really where their strengths lie because we all can do a lot of different things. And part of growing and excelling at anything is to become an expert at anything. We have to choose what are the core things that really are our greatest gifts. What is our unique genius and then we need to codify them in a way that we can teach, we can inspire, we can transfer knowledge to others. And so that’s one of the first things I do with my clients is really help them codify, What is their genius?

Andi Simon:And do you do that in a particular process? Or is it done through conversational coaching? Or do you have a methodology that you can share?

Jessica Yarborough:Yeah, it’s phase one of my methodology. So I have five systems that I teach to scale up companies. And the first one is the foundation of everything. It’s your offer, your impact system, it’s how you’re going to make an impact in the world with your gifts. And this is the WHO understanding. Who do you want to serve at the deepest level? And that may not be who you served in the past.

We might completely reposition you. That’s the HOW. How you’re going to take your clients who are in the pain of their existing reality, they’re struggling, they’re frustrated, and you are going to essentially build a bridge to their ultimate vision. You are going to save them years of time and frustration, divorce, whatever it may be, and take them to their ultimate reality.

So codifying that, HOW, and then tying it into that WHAT. What it is you actually sell, and then bringing the WHY behind why it is what you do. All of that is absolutely necessary to the foundation of a business. What you do, who you are, who you serve, and how you do it.

Andi Simon:You know, as ananthropologist, I often work with my clients on their stories. Whether it is a corporate culture story, or it’s an individual one, we help them change. Usually, we’re helpi

Learn how to become the trailblazing leader you were meant to be!

Shellye Archambeau is an amazing woman. I was honored to interview her back in 2020 and was so impressed with what she had to say that I wanted to share her wisdom with you again. An experienced CEO and Board Director with a formidable track record of building brands and high performance teams, Shellye has dynamically led technology-focused organizations for over 30 years. Her secret? “You just need a lot of personal belief in your own skills and a vision of yourself as a leader.” As I always say, if you can see it, you can be it! And Shellye helps us all see it. Enjoy.

Watch and listen to our conversation here

A highly accomplished leader with an unassailable belief in herself

Yes, Shellye has had an illustrious career with a lot of firsts. But as she will tell you, being the first African American woman to achieve what she has was never easy. She broke through, forged ahead, and now inspires others to do the same. Her book,Unapologetically Ambitious: Take Risks, Break Barriers, and Create Success on Your Own Terms, powerfully tackles how you too can break through your own hurdles, road blocks and glass ceilings that might be holding you back. Want to surge ahead but not sure how? Listen in as Shellye tells us!

Meet Shellye Archambeau

The former CEO of MetricStream, a GRC company based in Palo Alto, CA, Shellye Archambeau has held executive positions at numerous major companies, including a 15-year career at IBM where she became the first African American woman to gain an international assignment. As well as being a guest lecturer at her alma mater, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Shellye is an author and a regular contributor for Xconomy. She currently serves on the boards of Verizon, Nordstrom, Roper Technologies and Okta, and is also a strategic advisor to the Royal Bank of Canada, Capital Markets Group and Forbes Ignite.You can contact Shellye onLinkedIn,Facebook,Twitter,Instagramand herwebsite. You can also email her at [email protected].

To learn more about how to be a better, more accomplished leader, check out these 3 podcasts:

• Sara Canaday—Can You See The Gaps That Are Holding You Back From Being A Great Leader?
• Dr. Srikumar Rao—Why You Must Undergo Personal Transformation Before You Can Become An Effective Leader
• Jennifer Kluge—Meet The Leader To Build Your Business Into One Of The Best And Brightest

Additional resources for you

• My two award-winning books:Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in BusinessandOn the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights
• Our website:Simon Associates Management Consultants

Read the transcript of our podcast here

Andi Simon:Welcome toOn the Brink With Andi Simon. Hi, I’m Andi Simon, your host, and it’s always such a pleasure and a privilege to have you join us for our podcast. Remember, my job is to help you get off the brink. And today, it’s a very important time for us to step back and rethink who we are, where we’re going, and really to begin to plan the next phase in our own lives, our careers. It’s a time of change.

And so I have with us today a wonderful woman that I want to share with you. Shellye Archambeau is a marvelous woman. I’ll tell you about her in a moment. But she’s got a message that I think is important for us to understand and begin to figure out how to apply to our own careers and our own lives. It’s a time to rethink what matters, and it’s a good time to hear from Shellye.

So a little bit about Shellye and why I have her here. She’s a businesswoman and former CEO of Metrics Stream. She was an executive at IBM and she had a 15 year career there. She was the first African American woman at the company to be sent on assignment internationally. She’s a guest lecturer for the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, her alma mater. She’s a writer, a co-author of the bookMarketing That Works, and she has been rated one of the top 25 brick and mortar executives by Internet World.

She’s received numerous awards throughout her career. In 2014, she was named one of the 46 most important African Americans in technology. The year before, she was number two on the list of the 25 most influential American African Americans in technology. This is just a long list of accolades and accomplishments, and that’s why it’s so exciting to have Shellye with us today. Shellye has a new book calledUnapologetically Ambitious. And she’s going to tell you more about its title, but also about what she hopes for you to learn from her own journey. Shellye, thanks for joining me today.

Shellye Archambeau:Oh, thanks so much for having me, Andi. I’ve been so excited and looking forward to this.

Andi Simon:Can I share with everybody that it’s your birthday?

Shellye Archambeau:Sure. I’m spending it with all of you.

Andi SImon:All your best friends. You didn’t know you had so many new best friends.

Shellye Archambeau:That’s right.

Andi Simon:But it is a special day for me because I was honored to meet you and I’m so excited to share with you. Please tell the audience about your own journey, because I think it’s an important one for them to understand how we get to unapologetically ambitious. Please.

Shellye Archambeau:Well, thank you very much. I really do appreciate it. So my journey, I actually have to start pretty young to really share the foundation that represents who I ultimately became. So I grew up the oldest in a family of four. My father moved around a lot as he built his own career and job, and we found ourselves moving from Philadelphia, which was an extremely diverse place, to California, a suburb way outside of LA, where I was the only black girl in my class, but I think it was actually in the whole school. And given that it was the 60s, you know, everything was just charged. You had the civil rights movement, you had everything going on during the Vietnam War. You had feminism rising. I mean it was just a very charged-up environment.

And here I am, a little girl going into first grade. We actually moved over Christmas. So here I am going into first grade, had to walk to school every day and people treated me terribly. I don’t know any other way to describe it. I walked along a busy thoroughfare every day and people would yell awful things at me out their windows. You know, kids would physically bully me. I got beat up by classmates. Meaning it was not a good situation.

So it taught me very early in my life that the odds were just not in my favor. So it caused me, first, to actually really close in as a kid. Fortunately, I had good parents and had a couple of teachers that really made a difference. And it became incumbent for me to really become intentional about what I did, really as protecting myself. So I learned early that if I wanted to do something, I needed to actually figure out how I could make it happen because it wasn’t just going to happen for me. And that same approach I actually have taken all through my career.

So I started early. I said, All right, what do I want, what do I need to do? And I was fortunate; in high school, I had a guidance counselor who asked me, Shellye, what do you want to do? And I said, I want to go to college so I can get a good job. And she said, Okay, well, what do you want to do in your job? And I said, I’m not sure. And she said, What do you like to do? And I loved running clubs. I was president of American Field Service and National Honor Society, and I ran the French club. All these things. I love running clubs.

And she said, Well, running a business is just like running a club. Get people together, right? What did I know? I said, Okay, great. That’s what I’m going to do. So I decided, no problem. So literally, I decided. I was like a junior in high school. I decided that I’m going to go run a business.

Andi Simon:I love your story. Keep telling me.

Shellye Archambeau:So anyway. But again, back to, I know the odds are not in my favor. And so when I did the research, and back then it wasn’t easy, research. Now you just click a few keys. Back then, it was going to the library looking at magazines. Well, I didn’t see anybody who looked like me running a business anywhere. So I said, All right, fine. How do I improve my odds to get this? How do I make this happen?

So I said, All right, I need to go to the top business school. And so I picked Wharton because Wharton had an undergraduate program. And I figured if I do Wharton undergrad, then I won’t have to go to grad school. So I can save a couple of years and a couple hundred thousand dollars. This is great. So the only school I applied to, I said, please, literally at the bottom of my application, said, Please take me. I don’t want to go anywhere else. I’m not applying anywhere else.

Now I’m not completely stupid. I applied early so that if they said no, I could do a backup, but I literally didn’t apply anywhere else. That’s the only place I wanted to go. And I had good grades. But anyway, I went to Wharton and then, you know, I pay attention, I listen, I do homework. And I was told, If you join industries that are growing and companies that are growing, there are more opportunities for personal growth. Great. So I looked around at technology, which was the growing industry. Good news? It still is. Yeah. And I picked IBM. So I said, I’m goin

Hear how to keep your seat at your own table that you build for yourself

What I love about my guest today, Nori Jabba, is that when she hit a brick wall—in her case, a series of job rejections—she pivoted and wrote a book about the whole job-search process and dealing with mulltiple rejections, calledKeeping Your Seat at the Table. Now she’s writing a second book but actually she’s not writing it, everybody else is writing it. It will be a compilation of other people’s stories about their journeys and their seats at the table. Want to contribute? Contact Nori on her websitekeepingyourseat.com. Listen and learn how to build your own table.

Watch and listen to our conversation here

Nori’s three things you need to build your own table

1. Forget about getting that seat or keeping that seat.It’s really about keeping your own seat at your own table that you build for yourself.
2. You can’t do it alone.You’ve got to lean on others. Think about who’s at that table with you. Who’s at your table?
3. Believe in yourself.It’s really about believing in yourself and loving your voice, loving what you bring to the table and knowing that you add value

How to connect with Nori

You can find Nori onLinkedInand herwebsite, and you can send her an email [email protected]@gmail.com.

To learn more about finding your purpose at work and in life, check these out:

• Podcast:Smita Joshi—We Are All Works In Progress! Think Of It Like Karma And Diamonds
• Podcast:Lisa McLeod—If You Want To Succeed, You Must Find Your Noble Purpose
• Podcast:Richard Sheridan—How To Lead With Joy And Purpose!

Additional resources for you

• My two award-winning books:Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in BusinessandOn the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights
• Our website:Simon Associates Management Consultants
  

Read the transcript of our podcast here

Andi Simon:Hi, welcome toOn the Brink with Andi Simon. I’m Andi Simon, I’m your host and your guide. And my job is to get you off the brink. What I like to do is bring you interesting people who are going to help you see, feel and think in new ways. Why is that important? Because your brain hates me, it doesn’t really want to see new things. It’s got a story stuck in there that only sees what conforms to it.So today we have to take you exploring, becoming ananthropologist, begin to step outside yourself and look in a new way.

So today I have Nori Jabba. Nori is a wonderful woman who’s coming with a new book to talk about. The name of the book isKeeping Your Seat at the Table. She’ll show you a copy of it in a moment. But Nori came to me through Kathryn Hall, who’s a wonderful publicist, and I just enjoy the guests she brings to my podcast because they’re all interesting people, men and women who are doing things exactly like we like to, in different ways. Nori, thank you for joining me today.

Nori Jabba:Thank you, Andi. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Andi Simon:Nori, I have a desire to hear about your story. You told me about it and I stopped reading bios because I think they’re helpful, but not necessarily capture the essence of who you are. But today is your story. So tell the listener or the viewer, who is Nori, what’s your journey been like, and how does it set up the tale that has gotten us to keeping your seat at the table? Please tell us your story.

Nori Jabba:So thank you, Andi, and it’s wonderful to be here today. So my story really began when I took six years off to have children, and I’d had a very successful career before that at a utility company as a senior real estate portfolio manager. And I took six years off and had three kids, and I was lucky enough to get a job after six years and went back to work. And then in 2012, that project went on hold.

So I decided to become a consultant and consulting was great. It gave me flexibility that I needed. And then after several years of consulting successfully in real estate development, I wanted to go back to work. I wanted to be on a team. I wanted the benefits and the structure that comes with being employed. And I’d had almost 30 years of experience. I’d won awards. I had a wonderfully professional resume and no one would hire me, no one.

And so I decided after so many rejections or non-responses that I was going to stop job hunting and start my own company. I’m from Silicon Valley and we start companies. That’s what we do. So I thought, no one will hire me, I’ll do my own thing and write a book about it. And so that was the birth of the book. And I have a liberal arts background. I love that you’re ananthropologist. I took a couple of anthropology courses in college and went to Grinnell College in Iowa and majored in English. So writing comes naturally to me.

And so I started writing the book. I joined an incubator program here in Silicon Valley to help me boost the company and hopefully get some seed funding for it. And during that process, we spent a whole lot of time focusing on purpose and drive and making sure we had what it takes to start a company because it is not an easy endeavor. And through that process, I realized I don’t really want to start a company, nor do I need to start a company. I want to be a writer. So that’s when I stopped with the company, tabled the concept, if you will, and wrote the book, and it was through the journey of writing the book that I actually did get the job that I was looking for. But I like to say that I got my seat back at the table as well, because what I learned through the process is that the table and your seat at the table is much, much more than just a job and success.

Andi Simon:Now, when you got the job back, was it in the same career or a different career?

Nori Jabba:It was a slight pivot, so it was within the umbrella of community development, but it was in affordable housing, strictly. My background is in real estate development for commercial and residential, but not property management, not affordable housing. Specifically, I had worked on multiple affordable housing projects, but this was just affordable housing. So yeah, it was a pivot. And during the pandemic.

Andi Simon:Well, the reason I asked is that in some ways we need a context for your own exploration in your own journey, and I love the fact that it was in urban and community development. You spend time abroad doing this. You’re a very successful woman who also found a wall and jumped over the wall. You know, we can talk about glass ceilings, but sometimes brick walls, and we don’t quite know what you do to do what?

But in many ways, it’s them who are trying to build their talent and begin to do something intentional. But why am I not a great fit for that talent? So as you finally moved along, we’ll talk about the book in a moment. You got that job and share with us a little bit about the journey to get it, because I have a hunch you stopped selling it the way you used to and you found other ways of getting inside. What was the trick?

Nori Jabba:So I wasn’t looking anymore. I had resigned myself to just continuing consulting, to give myself time to write the book and research the book. So the book was really the driver. And by not needing the job, by not being desperate is not the right word. I wasn’t as hungry. I had that self confidence that I was content and happy with what I was doing and I didn’t need the job in order to be fulfilled, and I think that confidence comes through. You know, I was standing taller. I was feeling good about myself. I knew that I was adding value as a consultant, and it was one of my clients that hired me full time. And how I presented myself with that confidence I think is so important.

So in my journey, I reached out to one of the managers of a company that rejected me. I came in second. I came in second so many times I can’t even tell you. And I asked her, would you have coffee with me? I’m writing a book and I’d love to talk to you about this. And I couldn’t believe she said yes, but she said yes. And I drove 60 miles to have coffee with this woman. And, you know, things happen for a reason, because if I had had to drive 60 miles every day to go to a job, it would have done me in any way.

So in retrospect, I’m really glad I didn’t get that job, but had a wonderful discussion with this woman who had never been asked, Why is it so hard for middle-aged women to get hired? And she fortunately was a middle-aged woman because otherwise I wouldn’t have wanted to listen to her had she been in her 20s. But, one of the things she told me was so important and it is that women, older women and older men, too, sometimes stop listening. And when you talk about being a good fit in a company, a good fit means you’re going to listen, and what was coming across in my job interviews was that I had lots of value to add, but that I wasn’t going to receive. I wasn’t going to listen. Maybe it did and it wasn’t lost on me.

The irony of the moment was because when she told me that I didn’t want to listen to her, I slumped back in my chair and thought, I’m doing exactly what she says women my age do. So I sat up straight and leaned in and decided, I’m going to hear what she has to say. I’m really going to listen. And from then on, I became a better listener. And the other thing she told me that was so valuable was that older workers, and men and women are dismi